President Donald Trump announced this week that the United States will substantially reduce joint South Korea Military Exercises, a move that marks one of the most significant shifts in the decades-old US-South Korea alliance in years. The decision, posted by Trump on Truth Social, has triggered swift reaction from allies, analysts, and North Korea watchers…
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Kevin Rideout, an American missionary held captive in Niger since last October, has been released and is in the care of US officials, the Christian mission organization he served with said Friday. He is reported to be in good health and will soon be reunited with his family. Here is what is known so far,…
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Two attacks hours apart on Tuesday pushed the US–Iran war deeper into the world’s shipping lanes. Iran-backed Houthi Attack killed six people aboard a cargo ship in the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the first deaths from Red Sea shipping attacks in more than a year, and US forces struck a vessel they said was trying to…
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Oil prices today are back in rally mode. Fresh oil price news out of the Middle East shows Brent and WTI crude climbing on Friday after Iran published a restrictive draft plan for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints. The move has put traders, refiners, and governments…
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Iran says a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is nearly finalized but Tehran is drawing a hard line: the waterway will not fully reopen until Washington meets its own end of the bargain. The statement adds a new twist to a fast-moving diplomatic push that has kept oil markets, shipping companies, and Trump-watchers…
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Trump warns Iran that the current round of negotiations represents the “last chance” to end the five-month war, even as Tehran denies negotiations with Washington are taking place at all. The contradictory claims have rattled energy markets, sending oil prices higher for a second straight session as traders weigh the odds of a genuine diplomatic…
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President Donald Trump has warned that fresh US strikes on Iran are coming, with officials saying an operation could come as soon as this weekend. Within hours, Kuwait said it intercepted a new round of drone attacks it blamed on Iran, and a tanker was struck near the Strait of Hormuz. Here is what is…
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In the biggest development in the Gaza peace process since last October’s ceasefire, Hamas says it has agreed to disarm on the condition that Israel first meets its own obligations under the US-led plan. President Donald Trump called it a historic agreement. The details, and the skepticism, matter. And it lands even as the wider…
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New Delhi, May 15, 2026 – The optics were supposed to project solidarity. Eleven foreign ministers gathered in the Indian capital under India’s 2026 BRICS presidency, with the West Asia Crisis the US-Iran War in its 77th day, the Strait of Hormuz closed, oil markets in turmoil as the central item on the agenda. Instead,…
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New Delhi, May 15, 2026 – Sergey Lavrov has survived four decades of superpower summits, Cold War brinkmanship, and more hostile press conferences than most diplomats endure in a lifetime. It takes something unusual to make him pause. On Thursday, at the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhi, that something was a journalist who…