The Trump administration is packing immigration courtrooms and giving less lead-time on hearings in an effort to clear a decades-long backlog. The result is a historic rise in the number of people missing court dates and being immediately ordered deported as the system struggles to keep up, new data shows.

Dozens and often hundreds of immigrants’ cases a day are being assigned to individual judges in courthouses across the country, in what are known as “mega” master hearings, which have seen a significant increase this year. More than 1,300 such hearings were held in June alone, a nearly threefold jump from the previous June, according to data analyzed by Mobile Pathways, a nonprofit that tracks immigration court data to help immigrants, their lawyers and other organizations.

At the same time, the data shows, courts have severely cut the length of time many people are getting to prepare for complex immigration proceedings, from about six months to often just a little more than a month.

Iran warned this ​weekend against any “adventurous action” by the U.S. and said it would retaliate decisively if American forces follow through on ‌President Donald Trump's threats of fresh attacks on Iranian targets.

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi’s comments in separate phone calls on Saturday with senior Turkish, Pakistani and Saudi officials came just hours after Kuwait's army said it destroyed hostile drones launched by Iran against several vital facilities.

Speaking to Pakistan's Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir ​and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Araqchi said Iran would respond decisively to any "aggression" and discussed the consequences of “destabilizing actions" by ​the U.S., as well as prospects for heightened regional insecurity, according to Araqchi's Telegram account.

Max Blumenthal says he was singled out at airport after Trump ally Laura Loomer targeted him in online posts

When reporter Max Blumenthal went to a cafe in Tehran one night a few weeks ago to upload videos from his reporting on the funeral of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, he began seeing social media posts from Trump ally Laura Loomer targeting him, including one that suggested he should be “taken off the plane by US Marshalls when he lands back in the US … [and] detained”.

“I began to prepare myself for being harassed on my return,” Blumenthal said.

Effectively, that’s what happened, sparking a legal fight that freedom-of-the-press advocates say shows the determination of the Trump administration to crack down on members of the media whose reporting it disagrees with.

Director general accuses corporations of obstructing efforts to tackle obesity crisis after investigation by Guardian and others

The world’s biggest ultra-processed food corporations are hindering global efforts to tackle the obesity crisis by suing governments that try to promote healthier diets, the head of the World Health Organization has said.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, accused global food companies of obstructing the adoption of vital public health measures and costing countries billions of dollars in healthcare and legal costs in the process.

Almost 1 billion people worldwide are living with obesity, and unhealthy diets are one of the main drivers of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. Ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption is soaring and now makes up half the average diet in many countries, including the UK, the US and Australia.

Faced with a narrow path to winning control of the U.S. House, Democrats are seeing fresh opportunity in a northeast Ohio congressional seat where the Republican incumbent is facing mounting pressure over domestic abuse allegations in a bitter and drawn-out dispute with his ex-wife.

Allegations against U.S. Rep. Max Miller, a White House adviser during Donald Trump’s first term, have been public for years but have recently drawn increased media scrutiny amid an escalating legal back-and-forth with his former spouse, who is the daughter of U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio. That has Democrats sensing Miller could be vulnerable in a district he won two years ago with just over 51% of the vote.

Over the past week, they have called for Miller to resign, requested a congressional ethics investigation and suggested more help could be directed in the fall toward his Democratic opponent, union ironworker Brian Poindexter. Miller has denied the abuse allegations and filed defamation lawsuits against his ex-wife and a second accuser.

Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to push forward with a fund to compensate his allies if two Republican holdouts will not support his nominee for attorney general, injecting fresh uncertainty into a Senate confirmation vote planned for next week and underscoring once more his interest in securing payouts for supporters who feel unjustly persecuted.

Trump asserted in his Truth Social post that he would keep acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in his current role and press ahead on the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” if Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina refuse to back the former federal prosecutor who was key member of Trump’s defense team when the Republican battled four indictments.

Spain announced it was installing a 500-meter-long (1,600-foot) containment barrier on the sea border between its North African territory of Ceuta and neighboring Morocco after between 50,000 and 60,000 migrants breached the frontier earlier this week.

The death toll climbed to 67, including some who drowned and others who were killed in a stampede to cross a breakwater barrier, the Spanish government said Saturday.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez slammed the reaction of some other European Union leaders to the events in Ceuta, saying calls for Spain to be suspended from the EU’s borderless Schengen zone were “driven by prejudice, fake news, ignorance, or political interest.”

Donald Trump has been losing his own battle to cut interest rates.

The president likes to vilify high rates as an affront to the size and strength of the U.S. economy, saying that America deserves the cheapest borrowing costs in the world. Trump for months publicly pressured the Federal Reserve to slash its benchmark rates, claiming it would be “Rocket Fuel!” for growth and make housing more affordable.

But since the war in Iran began at the end of February, borrowing money has become more expensive, meaning fewer families can afford mortgages or auto loans. The government is getting squeezed, too — as it has spent $827 billion so far this fiscal year to service the national debt, more than it has devoted to national defense.

Prominent Fox News hosts have expressed concern, bewilderment and frustration over US objectives in Iran

Throughout his two presidencies, Donald Trump has leaned on reliable support from the conservative opinion wing of his favorite cable news channel, Fox News.

But, like a broad swathe of the American public, several traditionally supportive commentators on the channel have recently expressed concerns about whether the war on Iran is succeeding, suggesting that Trump is on increasingly dicey footing in the conservative media world he relies on for backing.

While he isn’t close to losing the support of hosts such as Sean Hannity or Jesse Watters, Trump has received scrutiny from one of the network’s top personalities, Laura Ingraham, who has regularly questioned whether the US has achieved the tactical wins it has claimed in Iran. He has also faced reliable skepticism from one of the network’s most prominent commentators about the armed forces, Johnny “Joey” Jones, a contributor and retired Marine Corps staff sergeant who lost both his legs in combat in Afghanistan.

Federal government plan outlines cuts of roughly 40% to California, Arizona and Nevada but fix is likely to be only temporary

The US government released its anxiously awaited plan for how to manage the Colorado River crisis on Friday, which includes the potential for harsh cuts in water supplied to California, Arizona and Nevada.

Under the proposal, the so-called lower basin states stand to lose up to 3m acre-feet (3.7bn kiloliters) a year – enough water annually to serve more than 25 million people and roughly 40% of their collective total. The so-called upper basin states – Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming – were spared from mandates restricting their supply.

The Colorado River supplies roughly 40 million people in seven states, two countries and dozens of tribes, and also irrigates 5.5m acres (2.2 hectares) of farmland. The federal government has limited jurisdiction over state-based water policy but is responsible for managing the dams at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two key reservoirs that lower basin supplies flow through.