The United States launched new airstrikes against Iran early Thursday, and Tehran responded by targeting U.S.-allied Mideast countries in an exchange of fire that threatened an interim deal intended to help end the war in the Middle East.

Back-and-forth attacks, including a day earlier, have repeatedly threatened the ceasefire. But Thursday’s appeared bigger all around, with sirens sounding at least three times in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters, and missiles targeting Kuwait and Qatar.

Unesco report shows children lost out to servicing debt in 113 countries, with 18 spending five times more on loans

education than they did repaying debt last year, according to the UN, at the same time as global aid to education is predicted to decline by up to 30%.

More was spent on servicing foreign debt than on education in 113 developing countries in 2025, according to research by the UN’s culture and education agency, Unesco. In sub-Saharan Africa, countries spent 3.6 times more on debt than education.

The situation is likely to be exacerbated by funding cuts, the agency warned. Low- and lower-middle-income countries have already lost 21% of the aid to education they were receiving in 2023 and could lose up to 30% by 2027. Some countries – including Afghanistan, Mali, Niger and Liberia – have already lost more than 40% in three years.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a man killed by federal immigration agents during a traffic stop in Houston this week, was not the intended target of the “enforcement operation”, the Department of Homeland Security said on Thursday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were reportedly seeking two people from Guatemala when they attempted to stop Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who had lived in the United States for 35 years, the New York Times reported.

Salgado Araujo, who was on his way to work early on Tuesday morning, was driving three other people in a white van. After the shooting, the three men were taken into custody. One of the three men has been identified by advocates as Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, the brother of the victim. The New York Times reported that he was still in an immigration detention center.

Greenland Energy says billions of barrels of crude could lie beneath territory and claims it has permission to bring drilling kit ashore – a claim denied by Nuuk

They may arrive at the same destination, but two passengers on the same flight can have strikingly different travel experiences.

One traveler breezes through a priority security lane and heads straight to an invite-only lounge for craft cocktails and a chef-prepared meal before boarding early. A flight attendant offering a glass of champagne and a warm hand towel welcomes the passenger to a spacious seat at the front of the plane.

The other traveler stands in a line at every step — security screening, a café selling $16 sandwiches, a crowded gate — then boards with one of the final groups, hoping there’s still room for a carry-on in the overhead bin before folding into a cramped middle seat. After the cabin lights dim, sleep comes in fragments, and a travel pillow does little to ease a stiff neck.

The contrasting journeys are no accident. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest U.S. airlines have pulled out all the stops to court premium passengers who are willing to pay for comfort, convenience and exclusivity. Budget-conscious travelers may notice a widening gap between the back of the plane and up front as the carriers increasingly build their businesses around selling first-class, business-class and premium-economy seats.

Brent crude benchmark rose to more than $80 a barrel, its steepest increase since ceasefire began

Oil markets have recorded their sharpest price rise in nearly two months after a series of attacks on fossil fuel tankers near the strait of Hormuz led Donald Trump to declare that the ceasefire deal with Iran was over.

At the same time, UK short-dated bonds suffered their worst day since the end of March as the prospect grew of a Bank of England rate rise to cope with the renewed inflationary pressures.

The yield or interest rate on two-year gilts rose 15 basis points to 4.35% with a rate rise in November fully priced in and a 50% chance of another in December. The market gave a 75% chance to one rate increase by the end of the year earlier this week.

Attacks on three locations across Iran came after three tankers in the strait of Hormuz were targeted on Tuesday

The US military carried out strikes on Iran for a second day, hours after Donald Trump said that an interim agreement to end the war was “over”.

Late on Wednesday Iranian state media reported explosions in the port city of Bandar Abbas in the strait of Hormuz; in Sirik, another southern coastal city; and the south-western Bushehr province, home to Iran’s nuclear-power-plant complex.

Trump wrote on Truth Social: “This is in retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran. If it happens again, it will get much worse!”

Reported cases of cyclosporiasis, an intestinal illness caused by a parasite, are nearing 1,000 in Michigan, local health officials said Wednesday.

Since June 22, at least 992 cases have been confirmed, a spokesperson from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) told ABC News. At least 36 people have been hospitalized.

Typically, the state sees about 50 cases per year, meaning cases are nearly 20 times higher than on average.

Donald Trump’s declaration at the NATO summit that the U.S. had returned to war with Iran didn’t lead to the usual gasping allies or perplexed officials.

If anything, it cemented Europe’s increasing reliance on itself.

As motorcades sped out of Ankara’s presidential place and down the barricaded streets ringing the Turkish capital on Wednesday, a half-dozen European officials said the ceasefire’s end only stiffened their resolve to be less dependent on the American militarily and stand alone.

“After seeing what’s happening in Iran and Ukraine, we first of all, have to build our own military might, and then everybody will respect us: Americans, Russians, Iranians or Chinese,” said a European official. “The more muscles you have, the less political anger you show.”

Donald Trump denied disaster aid to four Democratic-led states in a move that is raising new questions about whether he’s injecting political motivations into emergency management decisions.

Trump on Friday rejected $227 million in aid requests from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island for help recovering from a major snowstorm in February. Two days earlier, Trump approved Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster aid for six Republican-led states, while extolling the political virtues of GOP politicians and candidates in the states.

By now, it’s clear that the only way the tech industry can justify the cost of AI is if it replaces vast swaths of the human workforce with machines that run 24/7.

The bad news is that this situation has created a world-historic financial market that, by some metrics, is looking worse than the run-up to the Great Depression. The good news is that this future of an AI takeover is looking increasingly unlikely, at least at the industry’s current pace, a fact which is now dawning on some of the biggest rubes and dupes in the corporate world.

According to a new survey from “Big Four” accounting firm KPMG, a significant number of corporate executives are reeling from sticker shock over new usage-based AI pricing schemes. Though enterprises could once count on AI companies to subsidize the price of large language models via flat-rate contracts, that’s no longer a given, as the rising cost of computational power forces the entire tech sector into a defensive posture.