John Fetterman says he would leave Democrats if they became ‘anti-Israel’

• The U.S. State Department is hosting a meeting with international officials to discuss the threat of left-wing terrorism. • Counterterrorism experts argue that the Trump administration's specific focus on the far left fails to provide necessary context regarding the broader spectrum of political extremism.

• The U.S. has conducted strikes against Tehran for five consecutive days, while Israeli forces killed four people in Gaza, including a 6-year-old girl. • Israel’s Security Cabinet approved nearly $500 million for new settlements in the occupied West Bank, as half of congressional Democrats now support cutting military funding to Israel.

Vicki Brady due to appear at inquiry over mobile outage last week. Follow today’s news live.Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastTelstra’s bosses are set to be grilled over a nationwide outage that affected triple zero calls and businesses, disrupted payment systems and stopped trains in two states.Telstra’s chief executive, Vicki Brady, will be among a group of executives who will front a parliamentary inquiry into the incident in Canberra on Friday. Continue reading...

Liz Oyer tells of how she refused to ‘rubber-stamp a political favor’ in gun rights case involving Trump ally Mel GibsonFormer pardon attorney Liz Oyer condemned Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, over his Wednesday testimony to the Senate judiciary committee. Blanche fired Oyer after she refused to recommend restoring firearms rights to the actor and Trump ally Mel Gibson, who was previously convicted of domestic violence.“I declined to rubber-stamp a political favor for a friend of the president, and it cost me my job,” the former US pardon attorney told the committee on the second day of Blanche’s confirmation hearing. Continue reading...

Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller took aim at only leftwing activism at meeting of 66 nations against political violenceTop Trump officials on Thursday hosted a gathering of 66 nations to discuss the supposed threat of leftwing violence, and launched a series of diatribes, harsh even by the standards of the Trump administration, against leftism.The conference, convened by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and attended by Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, and Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, was billed as a “ministerial on the resurgence of political violence” but the focus was solely on crushing leftist violence. It came as Donald Trump ramps up his efforts to label his political opponents, and a rising number of politicians identified with the Democratic Socialists of America as “communists”. Continue reading...

Lack of change in key roles could mean next week’s policy announcements may lack radicalism many hoped forAndy Burnham’s Downing Street operation is beginning to take shape, with many of Keir Starmer’s aides due to remain at the centre of government.The incoming prime minister has now picked most of the senior No 10 jobs, according to those who have been involved in the process, and the names of several key staff were confirmed on Thursday. Continue reading...

About 100,000 children across the country drink the high-caffeine beverages dailyHigh-caffeine energy drinks “have no place in children’s hands” and will be banned from sale to under-16s in England from April next year under new laws designed to improve health outcomes in young people.About 100,000 children across the country currently drink high-caffeine energy drinks daily, with those in more deprived areas and households more likely to consume them, according to the government. Continue reading...

Fair housing complaints accuse Greystar of refusing to take tenants who use federal rent vouchersGreystar, the largest owner and manager of apartments in the US, systematically flouts local laws designed to make housing affordable to the poor, according to civil rights complaints filed with authorities in six states and the District of Columbia.The complaints – filed this week with government agencies in California, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington DC – accuse Greystar of 114 violations of state and DC fair housing laws. They allege that the company refuses to accept federal housing choice vouchers (also known as Section 8) in places that require landlords to accept them. Continue reading...

Agreement, without admission of liability, ends 19-month high court dispute that small-business owners said left them with large debtsVodafone has settled a long-running legal claim filed by 62 of its former franchisees who alleged the mobile phone group “unjustly enriched” itself at their expense by up to £85m.The small-business owners – some of whom said they had suffered suicidal thoughts because of the pressure exerted by the telecoms group – launched the high court claim in 2024 after running up large personal debts they said had been caused by their deals with the company. Continue reading...

Dawood Safi, 28, mounted a ‘frenzied’ and deadly rampage while in the grip of a psychotic episodeAn Uber driver who stabbed a dog walker to death in a “frenzy of violence” while in the grip of a psychotic episode has also been found guilty of trying to murder his landlord.Dawood Safi, 28, killed 49-year-old Wayne Broadhurst in the random knife attack last October, just minutes after attacking his landlord, Shahzad Farrukh, and a boy of 14. Continue reading...

More than 100 Democrats voted to cut military aid to Israel as US public opinion shifts – Republicans are noticing tooSomewhere in the days before Wednesday’s vote, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, sat down and wrote his caucus a letter urging Democrats to reject an amendment that would strip security assistance to Israel. For most of his tenure as Democratic leader, that kind of internal whipping operation would have been unnecessary, because the outcome would have been assumed.His own second-in-command voted the other way anyway. Continue reading...