Gaston Browne is on course to win 15 of the 17 seats in parliament after calling snap election
Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, is set to win a fourth term in the country’s snap general election with preliminary results showing his party on course to win 15 of the 17 seats in parliament.
Addressing supporters early on Friday morning, Browne said: “You have spoken, you have spoken clearly. You have indicated that the Antigua and Barbuda Labour party (ABLP) is the best institution to run this country.”
The US is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany, the Pentagon announced on Friday, as Donald Trump also threatened Italy and Spain for not helping to reopen the strait of Hormuz.
The president’s move to reduce the number of personnel deployed in Germany came after the country’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said the US was being “humiliated” by Iran.
UNITED NATIONS: The escalating crisis in the Strait of Hormuz could push tens of millions into poverty, trigger a surge in global hunger and even tip the world toward recession, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned on Thursday.
The closure of the vital waterway is “strangling the global economy,” the secretary general said in remarks to the press.
Guterres decried the restrictions on free passage through the strait, a crucial chokepoint, which he said is impeding the delivery of oil, gas, fertiliser and other critical commodities.
Even if restrictions on shipping and trade were lifted immediately, “supply chains will take months to recover, prolonging lower economic output and higher prices,” he said.
Setting out three possible trajectories for a world still reeling from the shocks of a pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Guterres said the best-case scenario would see global growth fall from 3.4 per cent to 3.1pc, with inflation rising to 4.4pc and trade slowing sharply.
If disruptions arising from Iranian attacks and threats and the US blockade of Iranian ports continue through midyear, the consequences would deepen significantly, he added.
Under that scenario, 32 million people would be pushed into poverty, 45 million more would face extreme hunger as fertiliser runs low and crop yields fall, and “hard-won development gains” could be reversed overnight.
In a worst-case scenario, where severe disruptions persist through the end of the year, “we confront the spectre of a global recession with dramatic impacts on people, on the economy, and on political and social stability,” he warned.
“These consequences are not cumulative. They are exponential,” Guterres stressed, cautioning that the longer the vital artery is choked, the harder it will be to reverse the damage.
Guterres highlighted diplomatic efforts underway to break the deadlock in the US-Iran talks.
“My message to all parties is clear: Navigational rights and freedoms must be restored immediately,” Guterres said. “Open the Strait. Let all ships pass. Let the global economy breathe again.”
Workers wrote ‘Katrina declaration’, warning that funding cuts made US dangerously unprepared for natural disasters
Fourteen employees with the US Federal Emergency Management Agency returned to work this week, after spending eight months on administrative leave for signing a public letter criticising the Trump administration.
The so-called “Katrina declaration”, sent last August to members of Congress and a federal council formed to help determine Fema’s future, was written as a rebuke from the workers about the dangerous erosion in US capacity to prepare for and respond to natural disasters.
US President Donald Trump and the head of the Secret Service said on Thursday the federal agent injured during the attack at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner had not been hit by friendly fire, as authorities released a video of the incident.
Jeanine Pirro, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, posted the nearly six-minute video on social media amid lingering questions over whose bullet struck the officer.
Pirro noted that the security footage captured suspect Cole Tomas...
US president faced a 60-day deadline on Friday to end the Iran war or make the case to Congress for extending it
A US-Iran ceasefire that began in early April has “terminated” hostilities between the two sides for the purposes of an approaching congressional war powers deadline, a senior official of the Trump administration said on Thursday.
Donald Trump faced a deadline on Friday to end the Iran war or make the case to Congress for extending it, but the date was most likely to pass without altering the course of the war.
Air France-KLM has cut its capacity growth forecasts for this year as the Iran war drives up its fuel costs by billions of dollars.
The French-Dutch airline expects its fuel bill to increase by $2.4bn (£1.8bn) this year as a result of the surge in costs since the Middle East conflict began. In response, it has trimmed its expectations for capacity growth to between 2% and 4% this year, down from 3% to 5% previously.
Pair apologise in court after being accused of defrauding buyers including some of New York’s most prominent fine art auction houses
A father and daughter in New Jersey have pleaded guilty to running a years-long counterfeiting scheme to trick art galleries and auction houses into buying forged paintings of works by prominent artists such as Andy Warhol, Banksy and Pablo Picasso.
Federal prosecutors said Erwin Bankowski, 50, and Karolina Bankowska, 26, commissioned an artist in Poland to create at least 200 of the fakes and ultimately defrauded buyers of at least $2m.
• Trump warns Iran to ‘get smart soon’, accept N-curbs; signals months-long extension of naval blockade • Tehran warns of ‘unprecedented military action’ over shipping curbs • USS Gerald R. Ford to return after 10-month deployment in ME
TEHRAN/WASHINGTON: Amid reports about Iran’s plan to make a fresh proposal, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday rejected an Iranian offer to end the conflict, saying that the naval blockade would remain till Tehran agreed to a nuclear deal.
The US president told Axios that the blockade was “somewhat more effective than the bombing” and things would get “worse for them”.
“They want to settle. They don’t want me to keep the blockade. I don’t want to [lift the blockade], because I don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon,” he added during the 15-minute interview with Axios.
The Iranian proposal, passed along by Pakistan, had laid out red lines, including on nuclear issues and the Strait of Hormuz. The plan would reportedly see Tehran ease its chokehold on the strait and Washington lift its retaliatory blockade while broader negotiations continue, including over the nuclear programme. However, it was rejected and a new offer is on the cards.
However, The Washington Post in a report quoted multiple US officials as saying that the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford would depart the Middle East and begin the sail for home in coming days.
The planned withdrawal comes as an expected relief for roughly 4,500 sailors, who have been deployed there for 10 months, but a loss of significant firepower as peace talks between the United States and Iran stagnate.
Earlier, Iran’s Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad, according to Al Jazeera, said Iran’s supply and distribution of fuel remained stable despite the US blockade on Iranian ports. Iran’s parliament speaker Bagher Ghalibaf said the US wanted to divide Iran using the blockade.
The US president also discussed the Iran war with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, days after the visit of Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to St Petersburg.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, US President Donald Trump said he talked “a little bit”. “He told me he’d like to be involved with the enrichment, if he can help us get it,” Trump said, referring to retrieving Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. “I said, ‘I’d much rather have you be involved with ending the war in Ukraine.’ To me, that’d be more important,” he added.
Ghalibaf calls for unity
“The enemy has entered a new phase and wants to activate economic pressure and internal division through naval blockade and media hype to weaken or even make us collapse from within,” Ghalibaf added, calling for “maintaining unity” as the only solution.
However, the US president told oil executives that the US could extend its naval blockade of Iran for months more. “Iran can’t get their act together… They better get smart soon,” Trump posted on his social media platform, above a mocked-up picture of himself toting a rifle in front of explosions wrecking a desert fortress and the slogan: “No more Mr. Nice Guy!”
According to the administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, Trump discussed with the oil executives “steps we could take to continue the current blockade for months if needed and minimise impact on American consumers”.
Brent crude rises to $117
News that peace talks remained stalled pushed oil prices higher one again, with Brent crude for June delivery rising more than five per cent to $117 — its highest level since a fragile US-Iran ceasefire came into effect on April 8.
Iran has blockaded the Strait of Hormuz — a vital conduit for oil and gas shipments from the Gulf — since the US and Israel launched the war two months ago, sending shockwaves through the global economy. But its own economy is also suffering. On Wednesday, the Iranian rial fell to historic lows against the dollar.
Tehran warned on Wednesday of “unprecedented military action” against continued US blockading of Iran-linked vessels. Trump has stressed repeatedly that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, while Tehran says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.
‘No trust’
During a White House state dinner on Tuesday, Trump told Britain’s King Charles III and other guests that Iran had been “militarily defeated”, and added: “Charles agrees with me even more than I do — we’re never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon.”
But an Iranian army spokesman told state TV on Tuesday that “we do not consider the war to be over”, saying Tehran had “no trust in America”.
“We have many cards that we have not yet used… new tools and methods of fighting based on the experiences of the past two wars, which will definitely allow us to respond to the enemy more decisively” should the fighting resume, Amir Akraminia said in an interview.
Claudio Neves Valente, who killed himself after deadly attack, began planning for violence in 2022, authorities say
The gunman behind a deadly shooting at Brown University in December appeared to have been aggrieved by personal failures and sought retribution against those he deemed responsible, federal authorities said on Wednesday.
More than four months after Claudio Manuel Neves Valente opened fire on the Ivy League campus, killing two students and injuring nine others, officials with the FBI’s Boston division announced they had concluded a significant portion of their investigation into the shooter.
Leader mentions for first time lengths to which troops go to avoid falling into enemy hands while fighting for Russia
Kim Jong-un has praised North Korean soldiers who blew themselves up with grenades in order to avoid capture while fighting Ukrainian forces in Russia’s western Kursk region, confirming the existence of the extreme battlefield policy.
Mounting evidence, including from intelligence reports and testimonies of defectors, has indicated North Korean soldiers are explicitly told to resort to self-detonation or other forms of suicide to avoid falling into enemy hands.
KYIV: Ukraine and Israel were on Tuesday locked in a diplomatic row over allegations Tel Aviv had accepted shipments of grain, which Kyiv said Russia had “stolen” from parts of occupied Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Kyiv summoned Israel’s ambassador to protest the alleged shipments.
One of the world’s largest grain producers, Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of illegally exporting agricultural products from territory that Moscow has captured since it invaded in February 2022.
“Another vessel carrying such grain has arrived at a port in Israel and is preparing to unload,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in a statement on social media.
“The Israeli authorities cannot be unaware of which ships are arriving at the country’s ports and what cargo they are carrying,” he added.
The development came after an investigation by Israeli outlet Haaretz found that the cargo ship Abinsk, ostensibly belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet, had docked at Haifa a couple of weeks ago.
Although Kyiv said it had warned Israel about the ship’s cargo in advance, Tel Aviv claimed that Kyiv had not provided evidence to support its claims and rejected that the ship had arrived at the port of Haifa.
However, the Haaretz report indicates that this was not the first time that stolen grain from Ukraine was imported by Israel: by 2023, at least two ships carrying stolen grain had arrived in Israel, and at least one of them unloaded here.
“The Ukrainian government has not submitted a request for legal assistance… nor has the Ukrainian government provided evidence for its claims,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said at a news conference in response to a question.
Ukraine alleges Russia stole more than two million tonnes of grain from occupied territory in 2025. It said it had tracked shipments to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
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