Trump to deliver TV address amid speculation over elections announcement

• 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.

Speculation surrounding tonight’s address has mounted since Trump promised big announcement without being specificTrump to deliver TV speech amid speculation over elections announcementSign up for the Breaking News US emailTrump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, returned from maternity leave Thursday and teased the president’s upcoming address from the White House briefing room.Fielding questions about the substance of the president’s televised address tonight – specifically reports that Trump plans to unveil new claims of interference in the 2020 election, despite the lack of evidence of widespread fraud – Leavitt argued that the president remains focused on the results because “the media has refused to acknowledge that tens of millions of Americans share his concerns about the sanctity of our elections.” Continue reading...

William Upham, a 35-year-old former marine, faces federal charges and up to five years in prison, officials sayA former marine and Republican write-in candidate for the US House in Florida has been arrested and charged in federal court with threatening to kill Donald Trump, according to the US attorney’s office.William Upham, 35, was taken into custody on Thursday after appearing in federal court in Jacksonville, Florida. If convicted, he faces up to five years in federal prison. According to public records, Upham is a write-in candidate, running in the Republican primary for Florida’s fifth congressional district. Continue reading...

President says he had to choose ‘one side or the other’ after breakdown of relations between ministry and military leadersUkraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has defended his decision to dismiss the country’s popular defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, and confirmed reports that relations had broken down between the ministry and the country’s top army leadership.Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, Zelenskyy said there had been a “challenging dialogue” between Fedorov – widely seen as a reformist and moderniser – and the military’s commander in chief, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi. Continue reading...

A crew in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Oakland spotted a pigeon ‘in distress’ after a vehicle fireHeartwarming footage of California firefighters treating perhaps their smallest patient on record has captivated the internet.A crew in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Oakland spotted a pigeon “in distress” earlier this week after a vehicle fire, and jumped into action to assist. Continue reading...

Move comes as prediction platforms rapidly gain popularity and offer opportunities to bet on virtually anythingKalshi is expanding its wagers to include bets on drug trial results, an expansion into new predictions territory as platforms continue to rapidly gain popularity and offer opportunities to bet on virtually anything.The betting platform said the expansion into clinical trials and FDA regulatory decisions would help surface information on drug trials that otherwise go unreported. A publicly listed contract on a drug trial would produce a “continuously updated, public probability that reflects the weight of the evidence, rather than the preferred message of the trial sponsor”, the company said. Continue reading...

Karoline Leavitt calls apparent bets on Kalshi prediction platform ‘deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace’Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator has been placed on administrative leave, the White House said on Thursday, after reports that he used his position to win $100,000 by placing bets on the president’s speeches using the online prediction market Kalshi.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president had been informed about the situation, which she described as “deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace”. Continue reading...

After Thelma Gaston disappeared, her companion was convicted of second-degree murderAuthorities in southern California announced this week that, after more than 40 years, they had identified the remains of a Los Angeles millionaire missing since 1981.The Riverside county sheriff confirmed in a statement that investigators, using genetic genealogy and dental records, had determined the remains found in a rugged area near Sugarloaf Mountain were those of Thelma Gaston. Continue reading...

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...