US-Iran ceasefire still holds but fresh strikes are the first big test for Trump
The US has attacked Iranian targets after Iran struck a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, in a spat which threatens to topple the fragile ceasefire agreement.
American aircraft struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, as well as coastal radar sites, according to US Central Command (CENTCOM). Iranian naval forces responded by striking US military targets in the region, though it is not yet clear what was hit.
It came after Iran launched a drone attack on a Singaporean cargo ship as it passed through the Strait of Hormuz, CENTCOM said.
New EU border checks should be suspended before peak summer, aviation industry leaders have said, after Brits reported huge delays due to the new Entry/Exit System (EES).
The system, rolled out fully in April, involves people from the UK having their fingerprints registered and photographs taken to enter certain countries.
The EES is used to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly in the EU.
For most UK travellers, the process is done at foreign airports.
Severe operational consequences disrupting passengers and putting border authorities, airports and airlines under unsustainable pressure.
Senior figures at three major aviation industry bodies wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission warning waiting times at border control had “increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours”.
Since it’s implementation, the EES has caused travel chaos for Brits.
England’s stunning victory over the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) may have England fans elated, but some are wondering if Tuchel is still the right choice to lead the team to a World Cup victory.
England had never lost to an African side in a World Cup match, and only once in their entire history.
Inside seven minutes, a defensive calamity and mistake from Jordan Pickford put the DRC on the cusp of history.
It was Kane’s two goals within the last fifteen minutes of the match which saw England narrowly take the win.
England’s full-backs were a mess against DRC because Tuchel went weird with his selection and Ezri Konsa looks jumpy.
Gareth Southgate protected an average defence that was the weak point of the team and England became boring to the point of fault. Tuchel is ostensibly doing mostly the same but without the defensive protection bit.
England now face Mexico in Mexico: far harder, far more altitude, far better opponent, far more febrile atmosphere. The worry from Atlanta that won’t leave this brain: what if better are better against us and we’re already living on the edge of incompetence?
Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with missiles and drones, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more.
Russia launched a series of strikes on Kyiv, hitting residential buildings and triggering a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko has said 13 people had been killed, with about three dozen locations across the city damaged in the attacks.
Many residents took shelter at metro stations after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, issued the first warnings of the attack.
Zelenskyy was forced to cut short a trip to Dublin on Wednesday, citing intelligence reports of a large-scale Russian attack.
Ukraine said on Tuesday it hit one of Russia’s largest satellite communication centers in north Moscow for the second time in just over a week.
Russian president Vladimir Putin also recently admitted Russia is facing fuel shortages after Ukraine launched repeated strikes on oil refineries, while Kyiv notably launched a large-scale attack on Moscow last month.
Three families reflect on the early signs of the illness, which affected their parents.
They include the things they missed or dismissed, what they’d do differently and what they’d want other people in the same position to know.
One of the first incidents that rang alarm bells for Robert was his mum falling victim to a suspected scam from someone selling mattresses door-to-door.
She also started to struggle with cooking and making her special dishes she’d been making for decades without a problem.
We [had] just sort of played along with everything. But on one particularly bad day, I blurted it out over the phone, ‘Because you’ve got dementia, mum!’ She threatened to kill herself, which was very scary. Maybe it’s something I should have explained properly to her from the get go…
I think we missed some of the really early subtle signs.
Rosie’s mother was diagnosed with Young Onset Alzheimer’s Disease at 58 but some symptoms, like brain fog, were put down to the menopause.
She had become more forgetful, and was repeating herself, but as she had always “been scatty” it was dismissed.
It was on strange things like going to the same buffet.
Chloe was just 14 when her mum, Sarah, was diagnosed with young onset frontotemporal dementia, a rare form of the disease.
Another time Sarah, who was diagnosed in her forties, forgot how to boil an egg.
On Saturdays, when she’d usually go shopping, she’d go out and come straight back home, almost like she forgetting
what she was going out for.
Officials have drawn up contingency plans to cut further green levies from energy bills if prices remain high this winter, The i Paper has been told.
Several options are now circulating among Burnham’s transition team who are believed to be weighing up how to deliver on that pledge. A Treasury source said work on a package was ongoing to help with rising costs.
Burnham could remove remaining green levies from energy bills, funded through general taxation instead.
One proposal would be to raise the bank surcharge from its current 3 per cent.
Replace stamp duty, loosen fiscal rules and tax the capital gains uplift on inherited assets.
A written statement published by the Chancellor said the remaining sum would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.
The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.
Sir Keir Starmer’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan had one big bet at its heart: drones are the future of warfare.
American company Anduril makes the “Seabed Sentry“- a weighted cylinder that uses sensors and AI to monitor what is happening under the sea. They could be used to listen out for spying and sabotage by Russian submarines. They are far cheaper than crewed submarines using traditional sonar.
A dozen of the cylinders can be dropped onto the seabed at a time by an autonomous submarine, with the devices forming a network which communicate between themselves and listens out for undersea activity.
The UK is woefully unprepared with the Royal Navy in a desperate condition. Whoever sits in Downing Street come next September will need to address matters of defence, homeland and cyber defence especially, with urgency.
Electric flying taxis could be above the streets of London by 2028, a manufacturer has claimed. Here’s what you need to know.
Vertical Aerospace is still testing the aircraft and it will need to be approved by both the approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). But the company says the aim is for air taxis to become as cheap and convenient as ordering an Uber to the airport.
Writer Sadhbh O’Sullivan looked into her own forgotten subscriptions when she became a first-time buyer, and realised how much she was wasting on things she wasn’t using.
I’d long considered myself to be quite a reasonable spender.
But the hidden costs across her bank accounts, like free trials that hadn’t been cancelled and memberships for abandoned services, proved otherwise.
It was full of small amounts, £2.99 here, £4.50 there. These small amounts added up.
According to a Nationwide survey almost one in five Brits don’t use every platform they pay for.
The bank suggests they could save as much as £400 a year by ditching them.
National Trading Standards’ 2025 research found 4.7 million people were paying for subscriptions they didn’t know they’d signed up for.
In 2024, a government report found unused and unwanted subscriptions cost consumers up to £1.6bn a year.
Hunt them down
Banking apps usually list your ‘subscriptions’ separately from direct debits and standing orders so you can easily spot what you’re shelling out on.
Check everything
You can be debited through credit cards, E-payment services, your mobile phone bill, Apple Pay or Google Pay.
Don’t vow to use a subscription you’re not going to, even if you
have good intentions.
Many businesses have changed from monthly to annual payments so look further back.
Make sure to track any subscriptions you have kept so you can cancel them, if need be, in future.
The Strait is a key international shipping lane through which around 20 per cent of the world’s oil and gas transits, and has been an important bargaining chip for Iran in the war which began in late February. Tehran effectively closed the waterway to exert pressure on the US by causing a spike in energy prices worldwide.
These attacks mark the first major challenge to a ceasefire brokered between the US and Iran earlier this month, which included the reopening of the Strait. However, the agreement still appears to be broadly holding.
CENTCOM said US forces conducted the strikes in a “powerful response” to Iran’s drone attack a day earlier on Singapore’s M/V Ever Lovely as it transited the Strait.
Donald Trump said one of the Drones “solidly hit the upper deck of a large and very expensive Cargo Carrying Ship”.
“Damage was done, but the Ship was able to proceed on its way. We knocked down three other Drones. Obviously, this is a foolish violation of our Ceasefire Agreement,” he said in a post on his Truth Social site.
Earlier, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had warned ships not to use the UN-backed transit corridor through the Strait of Hormuz without Tehran’s permission. Hours later, the Singaporean ship was struck off the coast of Oman while travelling on the UN-approved route.
US Vice President JD Vance said that Washington had “honoured” the ceasefire agreement, but warned that the US would respond to Iranian aggression.
“If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone,” he said in a social media post, referring to the memorandum of understanding the US signed with Iran. “But violence will be met with violence.”
In a statement carried by Iranian state media, the IRGC said the US strikes were a violation of the ceasefire and it warned “our response will be more extensive” if the aggression were repeated.
Ebrahim Azizi, who heads the Iranian parliament’s national security commission, said on social media: “The Strait of Hormuz is governed by Iran, so: Respect the rules”.
“This is not a violation of the ceasefire; it is ceasefire management,” Azizi wrote.
The attack on the cargo ship happened while the United Nations maritime agency was beginning an operation to move stranded ships out of the Strait using an alternative route, hugging the shores of Oman rather than sailing through the central part of the Strait.
The International Maritime Organisation halted the evacuations after the attack and said they will not resume until there are guarantees from Tehran that they will not attack other ships.
About 115 ships were able to move out of the Strait in recent days and there are still about 500 in the area, said Arsenio Dominguez, the agency’s secretary-general.
The opening of the alternative passage through the Strait was expected to relieve pressure on the world economy and remove Iran’s main source of leverage in ongoing peace talks with the US.
The incident has alarmed shipping firms, who are hesitant to transit the Strait without concrete security guarantees.
“A week of widening commercial confidence in the Strait of Hormuz has hit its first significant test,” said marine data company Windward on X. It said that while the Strait remains operationally open with 43 transits recorded after the incident, “the pace of normalisation has slowed.”
Marine data and analytics firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence has revealed that at least two tankers reversed course while attempting to transit the Strait on the UN-backed route near Oman after Iran insisted that vessels use only Tehran-approved routes.
More than two dozen ships were still transiting the Strait’s southern route after the attack, Lloyd’s said.
It also threatens to rattle ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran over the terms of a permanent ceasefire.
Under the interim understanding made between the US and Iran a week ago, the two sides have 60 days to agree on the terms of a permanent ceasefire. Key sticking blocks include the terms of passage through the Strait and the future of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
Meanwhile, Israel and Lebanon have signed a tentative agreement to end fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Both sides described the deal as a step toward peace to end the four-month-old conflict.
Nada Hamadeh, Lebanon’s ambassador to the US, called the framework a move toward “enabling our people to go back to their land and allowing all Lebanese to live in peace, security, and prosperity.”