China’s top UN diplomat slammed the US on Friday over its coercive behaviour, sanctioning of Chinese vessels and firms and for starting the Iran war along with Israel as Beijing assumed the rotating one-month presidency of the UN Security Council. The verbal blast came as Washington heaped more pressure on China on Friday by sanctioning a China-based petroleum terminal operator, the latest in a string of recent US moves to cut off Chinese funding to Iran under what the White House has dubbed...

The United Nations is bloated, costly, badly in need of reform, and too often works against US interests, but pulling out of the international organisation would see China expand its influence and leave Washington at a major disadvantage, according to testimony before a House oversight committee on Wednesday. The hearing came as the administration of US President Donald Trump has imposed an “America first” overhaul of international funding, leaving the UN, over the past 18 months, at what...

US President Donald Trump and other top administration officials were likely targets of a gunman who tried to storm a White House correspondents’ dinner, the acting US attorney general said on Sunday, after a major security breach in the heart of Washington. Chaos erupted at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night as shots were fired near a security checkpoint outside the subterranean ballroom where the glitzy, high-profile event was being held. Secret Service agents, weapons drawn, rushed to...

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Islamabad again on Sunday, just hours after US President Donald Trump told his special envoys not to go to Pakistan for ceasefire talks. Araghchi had left Pakistan’s capital on Saturday night after meeting with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir. Pakistan has been trying to get US and Iranian officials back to the negotiating table after Trump last week announced that a two-week...

In the latest cycle of threats and concessions that have marked US President Donald Trump’s approach to the war that he and his Israeli counterpart started against Iran, the mercurial leader said on Thursday he would destroy any boat attempting to lay mines in the blocked Strait of Hormuz. His focus on diminutive vessels followed his oft-repeated messaging that Iran’s larger naval vessels no longer exist as he renewed his effort to muscle Tehran’s frustratingly resilient regime to concede...