Nasa to spend $20bn on moon base after cancelling orbiting station

• President Donald Trump extended his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by five days on Monday, saying the U.S. will delay striking Iranian power plants to allow envoys to hold talks with Tehran leadership. • Trump stated his government was holding "productive talks" with Iran, but Iran denied any negotiations were occurring and fighting showed no signs of slowing. • An Iranian warhead with approximately 100 kilograms of explosives struck central Tel Aviv on Tuesday, causing significant damage, while Iranian missile attacks also hit Kurdish positions in Iraq, killing 6 Peshmerga fighters and wounding 30 others.

More than £4m spent on 39 visits abroad, with most expensive being PM and officials’ £413,000 visit to Cop30Keir Starmer’s government is spending an increasing amount on foreign trips, with almost 40 visits abroad adding up to more than £4m since he took office, the latest transparency figures have showed.The prime minister had his most costly quarter for foreign travel in the last three months of 2025, with eight trips adding up to £1.2m. Continue reading...

Suella Braverman presses the FA to scrap diversity and inclusion policies, which she claims are ‘racist’Reform UK has been accused of seeking to insert “toxic politics” into football after the party pressed the Football Association in England to scrap diversity and inclusion policies.Suella Braverman wrote to the FA on Tuesday to ask for a meeting to discuss the governing body’s diversity policies, which Reform’s equalities spokesperson described as “utter woke nonsense”. Continue reading...

British investigators are circumspect, but experts and security officials say incident has hallmarks of Iranian intelligenceMiddle East crisis – live updatesFrom Golders Green, where four ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity were set alight in the early hours of Monday, a tangled trail likely leads across two continents to Tehran.British investigators are circumspect. Speaking at an event on Monday evening, Sir Mark Rowley, the head of the Metropolitan police, described a “very relevant and rolling threat” from Iran to the UK and specifically to Jewish targets but warned it was still “too early” to attribute the attack in north London to Tehran. Continue reading...

Lawsuit argues XAI failed to disclose risks, limitations and exposure to harm that come with using chatbotThe mayor and city council of Baltimore, Maryland, filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI company on Tuesday, alleging that its Grok chatbot violated consumer protections by generating nonconsensual sexualized images.Baltimore’s lawsuit argues that xAI deceptively marketed Grok as a general-purpose AI assistant and X as a mainstream social media site, failing to disclose the risks, limitations and exposure to harm that come with using the platform and chatbot. The suit, filed in the circuit court for Baltimore city, argues that the court has jurisdiction over xAI given that the company advertises and operates in Baltimore. Continue reading...

The former president was in prison for a coup attempt after losing the country’s last electionBrazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has been granted permission to serve his 27-year sentence for a coup attempt at home instead of in prison because of his failing health.The decision by supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes followed Bolsonaro’s hospitalization since 13 March for pneumonia, one of several health problems the former leader has faced since he was stabbed by a man in 2018 before he was elected president. Continue reading...

Marco Rubio welcomes release of Dennis Coyle, who was detained in January last year for violating unspecified lawsAfghanistan’s Taliban authorities have released the American academic Dennis Coyle after holding him for over a year, with the foreign ministry saying the release came on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.A statement from the ministry said the academic researcher had been released in Kabul on Tuesday, following an appeal from his family and after Afghanistan’s supreme court “considered his previous imprisonment sufficient”. Continue reading...

White House says Maga influencer appointed to role for tourism, exceptionalism and American valuesDonald Trump’s appointment of Nick Adams, the “alpha male” Australian turned American internet provocateur as a new special presidential envoy on Tuesday, could give fuel to theories that the White House is deliberately trolling the world.The president nominated the Sydney-born Maga influencer, who has a history of theatrically inflammatory and Islamophobic comments, as ambassador to Malaysia in July, but the Senate returned the appointment without a confirmation vote in January and Trump did not re-submit him. Continue reading...

I Swear’s Kirk Jones set to direct film based on the 1970s cult animation about a ‘very ordinary man’ who accessed different worlds via a magical fancy dress shopA live-action film based on the cult British kids’ cartoon Mr Benn is to go into production with I Swear director Kirk Jones at the helm.Mr Benn first appeared on TV on the BBC in 1971, in a series created by David McKee, who died in 2022. The series followed the adventures of “a very ordinary man who could do extraordinary things” when he visited a magical fancy dress shop, which acted as a portal to different worlds. Only 13 episodes were made before the series ended in March 1972, though a one-off episode was broadcast in 2005 on the kids’ channel Nick Jr. Continue reading...

California governor backtracks and says he meant to apply term to Israel’s future if it continues on present trajectoryThe California governor, Gavin Newsom, backtracked on earlier remarks likening Israel to an “apartheid state” in a new interview with Politico published on Tuesday.In the interview, the Democrat, who is widely expected to launch a presidential bid in 2028, said that when he used the term three weeks ago, he meant it to apply to Israel’s future should it continue on its present trajectory. Continue reading...

Greg Bovino says Trump’s immigration crackdown hasn’t gone far enough in exit interview with the New York TimesAs his retirement looms, Gregory Bovino, the US border patrol’s former commander-at-large, has contended that efforts to curb illegal immigration by Donald Trump’s administration have not gone far enough – showing no remorse over federal agents’ killings of two US citizens in Minneapolis in January.“I wish I’d caught even more illegal aliens,” he told the New York Times on Tuesday in an exit interview, during which he also referred to the Republican president as “the Trumpster” and acknowledged his retirement at the end of March was not entirely voluntary. Continue reading...