escalates

A TOP Tory minister has said she fears her hotel room was bugged on a fact-finding trip to Taiwan.

It comes after a case against an accused Chinese spy, Chris Cash, collapsed last month when the Government refused to class Beijing as a threat to national security.

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Chris Cash, 30, and his friend Christopher Berry, 33, were both accused and denied spying for China.

Cash, a parliamentary researcher, received high level briefings from former MI6 spooks, ambassadors and ministers before he was dramatically arrested.

The former teacher, who had lived and worked in China, was accused of passing secrets to Beijing.

The Crown Prosecution Service case against the two alleged spies collapsed with ministers blamed for failing to provide key evidence that China was a national security threat at the time.

Starmer has since claimed that there was nothing he could do about the issue and blamed the former government for not designating China a threat when the offences took place.

The Daily Mail has now revealed that at the same time the Government was refusing to designate Beijing a threat, then foreign secretary David Lammy was doing just that.

He branded China an enemy of Britain during a debate in the commons in an effort to defend Labour’s surrender of the Chagos Islands.

The Shadow National Security Minister, Alicia Kearns, 37, has now revealed that she was a target during the alleged spy operation.

In what is thought to be a spy dossier, details of her hotel room in Taiwan were found.

When the senior Tory minister was on a fact finding trip to the country as chairman of the foreign affairs committee, she fears she was bugged by Beijing.

She told the Daily Mail: “They could have got in that room at any time.

“You can’t be sure that the room hasn’t got a bug or a camera somewhere.

“There could be photos of you walking around your hotel room naked.”

China had threatened that the mother-of-three’s trip would result in “repercussions.”

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She worked alongside Mr Cash for a year and raised concern that others he met through work may have been exposed.

Chinese dissidents, victims of transnational repression and people intimidated in secret Chinese police stations in the UK may have all been laid bare to Mr Cash.

The Shadow National Security Minister continued, saying Mr Cash worked at the heart of government policy on China.

He gained insight from the Foreign Office, Home Office, Treasury and Department for Business and Trade according to Ms Kearns.

Mr Cash worked on key government policy around China including the TikTok ban on government devices and exposing covert Chinese police stations in the UK.

The alleged spy managed to speak to every top China expert in the UK, finding himself in a position to glean information as “valuable as gold dust” to Beijing Ms Kearns believes.

The revelations could raise more questions about why the case against the accused spooks was dropped.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper admitted: “We know China poses threats to the UK national security.”

“I am deeply frustrated about this case, because I, of course, wanted to see it prosecuted.”

Ex-diplomat Charles Parton previously told The Sun that the Government’s refusal to brand Beijing a threat clearly showed “a desire not to offend China.”

Mr Parton, who was due to testify for the prosecution, slammed the CPS for failing to find new witnesses after the Government pulled its national security official at the last minute.

He told The Sun: “They are both to blame. The Government for withdrawing.

“But the CPS should have got some evidence from experts to say, ‘Is China a threat?’

“Then the jury could have said, ‘Yes, national security threat,’ and now we’re going ahead and trying this case.

“That smacks either of interference by the Government or just sheer incompetence.”

Chris Cash and Christopher Berry both deny all charges brought against them under the official secrets act.

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National Guard troops from Texas have arrived in the US state of Illinois, ahead of a planned deployment to Chicago that is strongly opposed by local officials.

The arrival of the troops on Tuesday is the latest escalation by the administration of United States President Donald Trump in its crackdown on the country’s third-largest city, and comes despite active legal challenges from Chicago and the state of Illinois making their way through the courts.

The Guard’s exact mission was not immediately clear, though the Trump administration has an aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Chicago, and protesters have frequently rallied at an immigration building outside the city in Broadview, Illinois.

The president repeatedly has described Chicago in hostile terms, calling it a “hellhole” of crime, although police statistics show significant drops in most crimes, including homicides.

“If you look at Chicago, Chicago is a great city where there’s a lot of crime, and if the governor can’t do the job, we’ll do the job,” Trump said on Tuesday of his decision to send the National Guard to the city against the wishes of state leadership. “It’s all very simple.”

There were likely “50 murders in Chicago over the last 5, 6, 7 months”, the president has claimed – although, according to government data, Chicago saw a 33 percent reduction in homicides in the first six months of 2025 and a 38 percent reduction in shootings.

Trump has also ordered Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, following earlier deployments to Los Angeles and Washington, DC. In each case, he has done so despite staunch opposition from mayors and governors from the Democratic Party, who say Trump’s claims of lawlessness and violence do not reflect reality.

A federal judge in September said the Republican-led administration “willfully” broke federal law by putting Guard troops in Los Angeles over protests about immigration raids.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said the president’s strategy is “unconstitutional, it’s illegal and it’s dangerous”.

Illinois and Chicago sued the Trump administration on Monday, seeking to block orders to federalise 300 Illinois Guard troops and send Texas Guard troops to Chicago. During a hearing, US Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge that Texas Guard troops were already in transit to Illinois.

The judge, April Perry, permitted the deployment to proceed for now, but ordered the US government to file a response by Wednesday.

Separately, a federal judge in Oregon on Sunday temporarily blocked the administration from sending any troops to police Portland, the state’s largest city.

The Trump administration has portrayed the cities as war-ravaged and lawless amid its escalation in immigration enforcement.

“These Democrats are, like, insurrectionists, OK?” the president said Tuesday. “They’re so bad for our country. Their policy is so bad for our country.”

Officials in Illinois and Oregon, however, say military intervention isn’t needed and that federal involvement is inflaming the situation.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, accused Trump of intentionally trying to foment violence, which the president could then use to justify further militarisation.

“Donald Trump is using our service members as political props and as pawns in his illegal effort to militarise our nation’s cities,” Pritzker said on Monday.

“There is no insurrection in Portland. No threat to national security,” Democratic Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has said.

What is the Insurrection Act, and can Trump invoke it?

When speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump made it clear that he’s considering invoking the Insurrection Act to clear the way for him to send soldiers to US cities.

“We have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it, I’d do that,” Trump said on Monday.

The federal law dates back to 1807 and gives the US president the power to deploy the military or federalise National Guard troops anywhere in the US to restore order during an insurrection.

Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein told Al Jazeera that presidential powers under the act apply only in cases of major rebellion, equivalent to the US Civil War, where normal law enforcement and courts can’t function. However, Fein added that it is unclear whether a president’s declaration of insurrection can be challenged in court.

“Congress, however, could impeach and remove Trump for misuse of the act in Portland,” Fein said, adding that military law obligates personnel to disobey orders that are clearly unlawful.

He said Trump’s use of the act in Portland would be “clearly illegal” even if it cannot be challenged in court.

The Insurrection Act has been invoked in response to 30 incidents, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The last time it was invoked was in 1992, in response to riots in Los Angeles by Republican President George HW Bush.

Police vehicles were filmed ramming into protesters as anti-government demonstrations escalated in Morocco on Tuesday. Officials said police were attempting to disperse ‘violent and unauthorised crowds.’

Israeli forces killed at least 36 Palestinians on Tuesday as they pounded Gaza from the air and ground, as world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York demanded an end to the two-year war.

Residential buildings continue to be flattened as Israel presses ahead with its plan to seize the enclave’s largest city.

Satellite imagery analysed by Al Jazeera shows Israeli army vehicles tightening a stranglehold around Gaza City, surrounding it from several directions. Footage verified by Al Jazeera shows tanks pushing into the Nassr neighbourhood, barely a kilometre from al-Shifa Hospital.

This destruction forms part of a pattern that a UN commission says amounts to genocide.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Tuesday warned that Israel’s military actions are “inflicting terror on the Palestinian population of Gaza City and forcing tens of thousands to flee”.

The suffering of Palestinians has drawn the attention of the global leaders, who have used the UNGA platform to demand a ceasefire in Gaza.

Addressing the UNGA, US President Donald Trump said that the Gaza war should stop “immediately” but dismissed the recognition of a Palestinian state by several Western countries, calling it a “reward” for Hamas.

The US president met leaders from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Turkiye, Indonesia and Pakistan on the sidelines of the UNGA. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said the meeting was “very fruitful,” adding that a joint declaration from the meeting would be published.

‘Stuck under the rubble’

Israeli strikes have hit civilians across Gaza. One man was killed and others wounded in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood, while another strike hit Palestinians queueing for water in Gaza City’s Daraj neighbourhood, sources told Al Jazeera.

Medical infrastructure is also being dismantled. Israeli shelling destroyed the main medical centre in Gaza City, injuring at least two medical workers, according to the Palestinian Medical Relief Society.

The charity said that troops prevented the evacuation of equipment and supplies, even as the facility served the wounded, cancer patients and blood donors. Other clinics in Tal al-Hawa and the Shati refugee camp have also been destroyed or besieged.

Hind Khoudary, reporting for Al Jazeera from az-Zawayda, described the devastation: “The situation continues to deteriorate, especially in the heart of Gaza City, where Israeli forces have been using artillery shelling and quadcopters to push more Palestinians to evacuate to the south and central areas.

“There have been endless appeals from Palestinian families saying their relatives are stuck under the rubble, but no one can reach them.”

No safe zones

Tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing Gaza City have ended up in the central and southern areas of the enclave, which are under constant bombardment. The Israeli-designated “safe zone” of al-Mawasi has itself been attacked repeatedly, with health officials warning that it lacks the basic necessities of life, including water, food [and] health services, while disease spreads through overcrowded camps.

Experts say the forced movement is itself part of the machinery of genocide: driving families into displacement under fire and stripping them of shelter, food and dignity.

At Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, doctors report that three Palestinians were shot and killed by Israeli forces near the supposed safe zone further south. Three children died from malnutrition in southern Gaza, according to hospital sources.

In August, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification declared that famine was under way in northern Gaza and would spread south. Gaza’s Ministry of Health warns that hospitals are now “entering an extremely dangerous phase” due to fuel shortages.

This collapse of health services and the deliberate obstruction of food and fuel deliveries has led to UN experts accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.

West Bank under attack

While global attention remains fixed on the destruction in Gaza, events in the occupied West Bank may carry even deeper implications for the future of the conflict.

Israel has threatened to accelerate annexation plans in the West Bank in the wake of recognition of Palestinian statehood by several Western countries, including France and the United Kingdom.

On the ground, violence has intensified. Armed settlers shot dead Saeed Murad al-Nasan in the village of al-Mughayyir, north of Ramallah, Al Jazeera Arabic reported.

Israeli forces raided multiple towns around Nablus and ordered the indefinite closure of the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge, the only gateway for goods and people between the West Bank and Jordan.

The tightening of settlements, killings and closure of borders are not isolated incidents. Together, they form part of what a UN report on Tuesday described as a systematic effort to secure permanent Israeli control over Gaza and entrench a Jewish majority in the West Bank.

It comes after a UN commission concluded last week that Israel’s policies – forced displacement, denial of return, destruction of infrastructure and the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon – meet the legal definition of genocide.

Mass expulsion continues from Gaza’s largest urban centre as hundreds of thousands of trapped civilians endure incessant Israeli bombardment.

Israeli leader claims Australian prime minister’s legacy ‘tarnished’ by decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stepped up his government’s bitter diplomatic dispute with Australia, claiming that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s legacy has been irrevocably blackened by his “weakness” towards Hamas.

In an interview with Sky News Australia scheduled to air on Thursday night, Netanyahu said Albanese’s record would “forever be tarnished” by his decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

“When the worst terrorist organisation on earth, these savages who murdered women, raped them, beheaded men, burnt babies alive in front of their parents, took hundreds of hostages, when these people congratulate the Prime Minister of Australia, you know something is wrong,” Netanyahu said in the interview, portions of which were posted online by Sky News before the broadcast.

Netanyahu’s accusation appeared to refer to a disputed statement that appeared last week in the Sydney Morning Herald, in which Hamas cofounder Sheikh Hassan Yousef was quoted praising Albanese for his “political courage”.

Following the report, Hamas publicly denied that any statement had been issued by Yousef. The Palestinian armed group, which governs Gaza, said Yousef had been in Israeli custody for nearly two years without means of communicating with the outside world.

Netanyahu’s broadside against Albanese follows an extraordinary missive earlier this week in which he claimed the Australian leader would be remembered by history as a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews”.

On Wednesday, Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke hit back at the Israeli leader, saying strength was “not measured by how many people you can blow up or how many children you can leave hungry”, though Albanese attempted to play down the spat by saying he did not take it personally.

Relations between Australia and Israel, traditionally close allies, have sunk to their lowest ebb in decades following Canberra’s decision to recognise Palestine.

On Monday, Australia said it had cancelled a visa for Simcha Rothman, a far-right member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, amid concerns that a speaking tour he had scheduled in the country aimed to “spread division”.

Hours after that decision, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar said he had revoked the visas of Australian diplomats to the Palestinian Authority.

Expressing dismay at the tensions, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said on Wednesday that it had written to both prime ministers to urge them to address their differences “in the usual way through diplomacy rather than public posturing”.

“The sum total of human wisdom would not have been diminished in the slightest if none of these public comments had been made,” the peak body for Jewish Australians said in its letter to Albanese.

“The Australian Jewish community will not be left to deal with the fallout of a spat between two leaders who are playing to their respective domestic audiences.”

Israel has come under mounting international pressure, including from some of its closest allies, over the scale of human suffering being inflicted by its war in Gaza.

More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since it launched its war on Gaza following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took 251 people captive during its incursion into southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities.

Tunisia’s General Labour Union (UGTT) is poised to take on President Kais Saied in a protest scheduled for August 21.

The union called for a protest against what it says are government attempts to undermine workers’ rights, and the use of intimidation to curb strikes, referring to a three-day UGTT transport strike at the end of July.

Since he seized power on July 25, 2021, Saied has radically undermined the role of parliament and political parties while granting himself vastly increased powers through a constitution revised according to his edicts.

Yet the UGTT’s ability to mobilise its hundreds of thousands of members stands as one of the few remaining counters to Saied, analysts say.

“The UGTT has always been more than just a trade union,” Hamza Meddeb of the Carnegie Institute, who has written extensively on the organisation, told Al Jazeera.

“It was established even before Tunisian independence, and played a significant role in achieving that,” he said of Tunisia’s liberation from France in 1956.

“Since then, it’s played both an economic role … as well as a political role, such as in 2015, when it was the principal force behind establishing the National Dialogue,” Meddeb continued, referring to a political crisis when the UGTT and three other civil society organisations helped prevent the collapse of Tunisia’s post-revolutionary democracy.

Inevitable confrontation

Matters reached a head between UGTT and Saied on August 7 when hundreds of Saied’s supporters rallied outside UGTT headquarters, accusing it of “corruption” and “squandering people’s money” after a three-day transport strike in late July paralysed much of the country.

The following night, Saied defended the anti-union protesters, repeating their calls for union “accountability” and stressing that, contrary to claims from both the UGTT and rights groups, his supporters had not intended violence.

“There are files that must be opened because the people are demanding accountability … so that their money can be returned to them,” Saied said in a video posted on the presidency’s official Facebook page.

Further confrontations between the president and the union were inevitable, but many analysts point to what they say is a union weakened by internal schisms and the threat to its decades-long monopoly on union power in Tunisia.

“For the past two years, the UGTT has been silent, certainly on the political side of things,” a political analyst who remained in Tunisia told Al Jazeera, on condition of anonymity.

“Saied even revised the labour code without consulting them,” they said of the May decision to change laws that affected many of UGTT’s members.

“Previously, making a decision on that scale without the UGTT would have been inconceivable,” he said.

A weakened union

Much of the UGTT’s relatively low profile lies in an internal rupture, prompted by its decision in 2021 to extend its board’s mandate from two to three terms, which is said to have splintered the union’s membership and undermined it.

“There are many in the UGTT who see the 2021 decision as a coup d’etat of the union’s own, which has really weakened the board’s decision to do anything,” Meddeb said.

“You also can’t avoid the fact that the financial situation across the country is getting much, much worse, which means that the core membership of the union – the state-dependent middle class – are also suffering, and are blaming a board they already have little faith in for that, too.

“So, when Saied calls it a ‘corrupt union’ … that makes sense to much of its membership,” Meddeb said.

“It’s also easy, [given its long history and close relationships with all of Tunisia’s past governments] for Saied to paint it as part of the country’s elite that has been holding its people back,” he concluded.

A rival union emerges

Moves to undermine the UGTT’s base are already under way.

On Monday, the government announced it would halt the longstanding practice of allowing union officials to receive their government salaries while on union business, with more such moves expected.

Saied is also said to be encouraging the rival Union of Tunisian Workers (UTT), which analysts such as author Hatem Nafti say could try to take advantage of any weakening of the bond between the UGTT and its membership, to boost its standing.

How successful that would be in light of the UTT leadership’s previous convictions on corruption charges, remained to be seen, he added.

That the UTT is ready to step into any breach left by the UGTT was clear last week, when it issued a statement accusing its rivals of what it said was the “defamation” of the president.

Nafti said that the government might also seek to halt the practice of deducting UGTT membership fees from state employees’ salaries at source before transferring the funds to the union, which would give UTT more hope of winning members away from UGTT.

“That Kais Saied would move against the UGTT was written from day one,” Nafti told Al Jazeera from Paris, where he now lives.

“Populism doesn’t allow any mediator between the leader and the people, so firstly, he got rid of rival political parties, then civil society and the media.

“Even the television networks that support him don’t show political programmes any more,” he said.

“The UGTT was the logical next step.”

A confrontation between Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Armenia’s top Christian clerics seems to be deepening, polarising the deeply religious South Caucasus nation of 3 million.

St Echmiadzin, the Armenian Apostolic Church’s headquarters, has been “taken over by the anti-Christian, immoral, antinational and antistate group and has to be liberated”, Pashinyan wrote on Facebook on Tuesday, adding: “I will lead this liberation.”

The dispute escalated late last month, with bells ringing tocsin over St Echmiadzin on June 27.

Usually, the loud and alarming sound signals an event of significance, such as a foreign invasion.

But on that parching-hot June day, the noise rang out to signal the detention of a top cleric who, according to Pashinyan, was part of a “criminal-oligarchic clergy” that was involved in “terrorism” and plotted a “coup”.

He said the “coup organisers” include the Church’s head, Karekin II, who has disputed with Pashinyan in a months-long personal feud.

But the conflict should not be seen as a confrontation between secular authorities and the entire Church, observers said.

“It’s a personal clash,” Richard Giragosian of the Regional Studies Center think tank based in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, told Al Jazeera.

But some Armenians still described the furore in almost apocalyptic terms.

“We lost our statehood so many times, so being part of the Church was equal to being Armenian,” Narine Malikyan, a 37-year-old mother of two from Armenia’s second-largest city of Guymri, told Al Jazeera. “Attacking the Church is like attacking every Armenian.”

The Church, whose doctrine differs from that of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox sees, has for centuries helped maintain the identity of Armenians while their lands were ruled by Iranians, Byzantines, Arabs, Mongols, Turks and Russians.

‘The Karabakh clan’

The conflict between Pashinyan and Karekin is rooted in the 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan that ended a decades-old “frozen conflict”.

In the early 1990s, Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Azeri enclave dominated by ethnic Armenians, broke away in a bloody war that uprooted up to a million.

Moscow-backed separatist leaders from Nagorno-Karabakh became part of Armenia’s political elite and cultivated ties with the Church.

The so-called “Karabakh clan” spawned two presidents who ruled Armenia for 20 years but were accused of corruption, cronyism and pocketing donations from Armenian diasporas in France, the United States and Russia.

In 2018, Pashinyan, an ex-lawmaker and popular publicist, led huge protests that toppled the “Karabakh clan”. He became prime minister with approval ratings of more than 80 percent.

Some protesters back then flocked to St Echmiadzin to urge Karekin to step down as they lambasted his penchant for luxurious cars and lavish parties.

‘An illegitimate child’

Two years later, Armenia lost Nagorno-Karabakh in a 44-day war that proved the superiority of drone attacks and hi-tech stratagems.

By 2023, Azerbaijan regained control of the entire Dubai-sized territory, while tens of thousands of its residents flocked to Armenia.

Karekin blamed Pashinyan for the defeat, even though observers have argued that the responsibility lies with his predecessors’s miscalculations.

Pashinyan struck back.

He claimed that 73-year-old Karekin – who was ordained in 1970, studied theology in Austria, Germany and Moscow and became the Church’s head in 1999, broke his vow of celibacy to father a child – and should, therefore, vacate his seat.

“If Karekin II tries to denounce this fact, I’ll prove it in all necessary ways,” Pashinyan wrote on Facebook on June 9.

He did not specify the details, but Armenian media “discovered” that Karekin’s alleged daughter is a medical doctor in Yerevan.

Karekin did not respond to the claim but accused Pashinyan of dividing Armenians.

“The anti-clerical campaign unleashed by authorities is a serious threat to our national unity, domestic stability and is a direct blow to our statehood,” the grey-bearded clergyman, clad in a ceremonial robe adorned with crosses, said on June 22 at a ceremony at St Echmiadzin.

A day later, a priest called Pashinyan “Judas” and claimed he was circumcised.

Pashinyan retorted by offering to expose himself to the priest and Karekin.

A failed detention

On June 27, dozens of intelligence officers interrupted a conference in one of St Echmiadzin’s tawny, centuries-old buildings to forcibly deliver another Pashinyan critic, Archbishop Mikael Adjapakhyan, to an interrogation.

But priests and parishioners summoned by the tocsin fought them off – while critics compared the incident to the 1938 killing of Armenia’s top cleric in St Echmiadzin during the Soviet-era crackdown on religion.

Hours later, Archbishop Adjapakhyan volunteered for an interrogation, telling supporters that he “was being persecuted illegally”.

He was arrested for two months – along with 14 alleged “coup organisers,” including another archbishop, Bagrat Galstanyan, opposition lawmakers and “Karabakh clan” figures.

The coup was supposed to take place on September 21, on Armenia’s Independence Day, according to its plan leaked to the Civic.am daily.

Also arrested was construction tycoon Samvel Karapetyan, who made his estimated $3.6bn fortune in Russia and owns Armenia’s main power company.

Karapetyan had threatened Pashinyan, saying if the conflict with Karekin is not solved, “we will take part in it all in our own way.”

The arrests were “a move by the Armenian government to preempt any potential Russian interference in the coming [parliamentary] elections that are set for June 2026”, analyst Giragosian said.

‘Pashinyan is hard to negotiate with’

Those opposed to Pashinyan’s Civil Contract Party have accused him of siding with Azerbaijan and Turkiye.

But Baku has its qualms about Pashinyan.

“Pashinyan is by far not a peace dove,” Emil Mustafayev, chief editor of the Minval Politika magazine based in the Azeri capital, Baku, told Al Jazeera. “He is hard to negotiate with.”

However, after the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, Pashinyan “began to take heed of Baku’s position”, Mustafayev said. “Of all possible options in Yerevan, he’s the least problematic partner one can have a dialogue with, no matter how complicated it is.”

Analyst Gigarosyan agreed.

“Pashinyan is the best interlocutor [Baku and Ankara] could hope for because of predictability and also because he’s looking to turn the page,” he said. “He’s not looking for revenge.”

And even though Pashinyan’s current approval ratings are well below 20 percent, his party may become a political phoenix and win the June 2026 vote.

Armenian opposition parties are either centred around two former presidents from the “Karabakh clan” who are deeply mistrusted, or are too small and splintered to form sizeable coalitions and influence decision-making in the unicameral, 107-seat parliament.

“They’re likely to win,” Giragosian said of Pashinyan’s party. “Not because of a strong degree of support, but because the opposition is hated and feared more.”

Tesla CEO says he has formed a new political party after falling out with US President Donald Trump over the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’.

Billionaire Elon Musk has followed through on his pledge to create a new political party in the United States after President Donald Trump signed his controversial budget legislation, the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill”, into law.

Musk in a post on X on Saturday declared the formation of the “America Party“, to “give back” the people of the US their freedom and challenge what he called the nation’s “one-party system”.

He cited a poll, uploaded on Friday – the US’s Independence Day – in which he asked whether respondents “want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system” that has dominated US politics for some two centuries.

The yes-or-no survey earned more than 1.2 million responses.

“By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!” Musk wrote on Saturday.

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom,” he declared.

The move comes amid a worsening of the feud between the world’s richest man and Trump over the new budget law, which the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said would bankrupt the US.

Musk was Trump’s main campaign financier during the 2024 election, and led the Department of Government Efficiency from the start of the president’s second term, aimed at slashing government spending.

The two have since fallen out spectacularly over disagreements about the “Big, Beautiful Bill”.

Musk said previously that he would start a new political party and spend money to unseat lawmakers who supported the bill, which experts say will pile an extra $3.4 trillion over a decade onto the US deficit.

“They will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” Musk had said.

There was no immediate comment from Trump or the White House on Musk’s announcement.

Trump earlier this week threatened to cut off the billions of dollars in subsidies that Musk’s companies receive from the federal government, and to deport the South African-born tycoon.

“We’ll have to take a look,” the president told reporters when asked if he would consider deporting Musk, who has held US citizenship since 2002.

It is not clear how much impact the new party will have on the 2026 mid-term elections, or on the presidential vote two years after that.

On Friday, after posting the poll, Musk laid out a possible political battle plan to pick off vulnerable House of Representatives and Senate seats, and for the party to become “the deciding vote” on key legislation.

“One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,” Musk posted on X.

All 435 US House seats are up for grabs every two years, while about one-third of the Senate’s 100 members, who serve six-year terms, are elected every two years.

Despite Musk’s deep pockets, breaking the Republican-Democratic duopoly is a tall order, given that it has dominated US political life for more than 160 years, while Trump’s approval ratings in polls in his second term have generally held firm above 40 percent, despite the president’s often divisive policies.

WASHINGTON — In a final push to prevent passage of President Trump’s signature legislation into law, Elon Musk, once his largest benefactor and later his top White House aide, threw the kitchen sink at his former boss.

The world’s richest man threatened to fund primary challenges against supporters of the bill “if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.” He threatened to fund the creation of a third party based on fiscal responsibility. And he accused the president of using the bill as a vehicle to defund the ability of courts to enforce contempt orders, making it all but impossible to hold him and his allies accountable for violating the law.

There is still a slim chance that Musk succeeds. But a Senate vote approving the bill on Tuesday brought Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to the doorstep of passage. The only thing standing in its way now is a handful of Republican lawmakers in the House.

Trump reacted to Musk’s campaign on Tuesday with a pointed threat. The Department of Government Efficiency, a federal program Musk ran at the start of the administration that aimed to reduce federal spending, could be directed to gut Musk’s properties of federal contracts, the president warned.

“We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said. Musk owns SpaceX, an aerospace company with deep ties to NASA, as well as Tesla and the X social media platform. “You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon — wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.”

“If DOGE looks at Musk, we’re going to save a fortune,” Trump later added. “I don’t think he should be playing that game with me.”

The “Big Beautiful Bill” included several provisions that could have rankled Musk, including a phaseout of green energy tax credits passed during the Biden administration that have benefited companies like Tesla.

But Musk said his priority in the bill was not its impact on the electric vehicle market. Instead, his concern is its overall price tag — a ballooning of the federal debt over the next decades that he said fundamentally undermines his work in the administration.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the Senate version of the bill will add $4 trillion to the debt by 2034, and even more if Congress votes later on to remove a series of expiration dates built into the legislation.

Musk left the Trump administration at the end of his tenure as a special government employee in late May, honored in the Oval Office by Trump with a press conference and a custom embroidered key. But the men fell out dramatically days later, trading insults in an acrimonious public feud that included Musk taking credit for Trump’s election victory.

Even within the last few days, Trump has offered mixed messages on the state of his relationship with Musk, wishing him only the best in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business.

By Tuesday morning, he was telling reporters that he would “take a look” at deporting Musk, a U.S. citizen.

“Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “and head back to South Africa.”

Iran and Israel have exchanged a barrage of missiles after the United States bombed key Iranian nuclear sites, dramatically escalating tensions in the Middle East.

Iran on Sunday launched two volleys of 27 missiles, targeting Israel’s main Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, research facilities, and command centres, an Iranian state news agency reported.

Air raid sirens were sounded across most of Israel, sending millions of people to safe rooms and bomb shelters as explosions and missile interceptions were seen above the commercial hub of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the port city of Haifa, and other parts of the country.

At least 20 people were wounded, according to Israeli emergency workers.

“This is certainly the first time that we have seen two volleys coming in such close succession. Usually, there are hours between each volley of missiles. This time, it was less than half an hour,” said Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, Jordan.

The targeted areas spanned the occupied Golan Heights in Syria to the Upper Galilee to northern and central Israel, affecting 10 separate sites either directly by missiles or by large shrapnel, Odeh said.

“There is extensive damage in those sites, especially in the Tel Aviv area and Haifa,” Odeh said.

Videos from Tel Aviv and Haifa towards the north showed rescue teams combing through debris, apartments reduced to rubble, mangled cars along a street filled with debris, and medics evacuating injured people from a row of blown-out houses.

In a statement, the Israeli army said it was investigating why no air raid warnings were sounded in Haifa.

Israel also carried out another wave of bombings on “military targets” in western Iran. The Israeli military earlier said its strikes destroyed Iranian missile launchers and targeted soldiers.

The latest exchange of missiles between the Middle Eastern enemies followed the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, with President Donald Trump saying the attacks had “obliterated” the three facilities.

Trump said Iran’s future held “either peace or tragedy” and that there were many other Iranian targets that could be hit. “If peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill,” he said.

Iran responded by saying it “reserved all options” to defend itself and warned of “everlasting consequences” if the US joined the war.

In a statement, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the US attacks on its nuclear facilities as a “gross and unprecedented violation” of international law.

“The world must not forget that it was the United States that, in the midst of a diplomatic process, betrayed diplomacy” by supporting Israel’s “aggressive action”, and is now waging “a dangerous war against Iran,” the ministry said.

It has become clear that the US “adheres to no rules or ethics, and in order to advance the aims of a genocidal and occupying regime, spares no lawlessness or crime”, it added.

Meanwhile, Israel said it will temporarily reopen its airspace for flights from 11:00 GMT on Sunday as it repatriates thousands of citizens left stranded overseas by its war with Iran, the country’s airport authority said.

Ben Gurion Airport “will open for landings from 02:00pm-8:00pm as part of Operation Safe Return”, the authority said in a statement, referring to the government’s efforts to bring home citizens.

Most airlines continue to avoid large parts of the Middle East after the US attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, according to the flight tracking website, FlightRadar24.

Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran’s leader is an “easy target,” sending jitters through risk markets such as cryptocurrencies on Tuesday.

“We don’t want missiles shot at civilians or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” He added. Trump also called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.”

The market has reacted negatively to the news. Bitcoin is down 1.7% at $105,000, Ethereum is down 2.2% at $2,500, and the total cryptocurrency market cap has dropped 1.3%. Some altcoins, such as Virtuals Protocol, IP, and Pudgy Penguins, are down over 7%.

However, seasoned investors are well aware that dips caused by geopolitical escalations often recover quickly. Put differently, the current low prices could mark a lucrative trading opportunity for investors. But what are the best coins to buy on the dip?

Snorter

That’s why the crypto trader bot sector is growing fast – and it’s why Snorter might be the best coin to buy on the dip. It’s a powerful Telegram-based trading bot that offers automated token sniping, copy trading, dynamic stop-losses, and rug-pull detection.

It supports Solana, Ethereum, BSC, Base, and Polygon, so you won’t miss an opportunity no matter where it launches.

The project is undergoing a presale and has raised $1 million in its opening three weeks.

This early success suggests genuine market interest, which could ultimately lead to long-term gains. Visit Snorter.

Bitcoin Hyper

Bitcoin Hyper is the new Bitcoin layer 2 blockchain built using the Solana Virtual Machine. Bitcoin’s security and Solana’s speed and programmability – that’s Bitcoin Hyper.

One of the most popular crypto sectors is meme coins, but Bitcoin’s meme coin ecosystem is relatively thin, especially considering its $2 trillion market cap. Bitcoin Hyper offers smart contract functionality and a seamless developer environment – alongside low fees and high speeds – hoping to cultivate a new meme coin ecosystem on Bitcoin.

The project also features a staking mechanism, which currently offers a 554% APY. However, this will decrease as the staking pool grows.

Bitcoin Hyper is also undergoing a presale and has raised $1.3 million so far.

With a strong use case, clear market interest, and lucrative staking rewards, it’d be no surprise if $HYPER skyrockets after hitting exchanges. Visit Bitcoin Hyper.

Fartcoin

Fartcoin is a Solana-based meme coin that launched on Pump.fun in Q4 of 2024 and quickly went viral. It peaked in January 2025, and then, after a deep selloff in line with the market-wide crash, it has risen once again.

It now trades at $1.10 with a $1.1 billion market capitalization and a $245 million 24-hour trading volume.

The project soared approximately 7x from its March lows to its local peak in April, massively outpacing most other meme coins.

Since its inception, Fartcoin has consistently outpaced the market average when conditions are bullish. So with prices currently on a dip, this could prove an opportune time to buy.

AB

AB is in an interesting spot. While most cryptocurrencies have dipped this week, AB is up 37%.

The project focuses on blockchain interoperability. It enables users to transfer assets between Ethereum, Solana, and other networks using the AB Connect protocol, and it also features a sidechain for the Internet of Things (IoT) and a main network for decentralized applications.

Like Bitcoin Hyper, its focus on cross-chain interoperability helps it stand out, and this has even caught the eye of Binance.

On June 7, AB was listed on Binance Alpha, a Binance Wallet feature that enables easy buying. This created a liquidity boon for AB, but the real benefit may still be to come. That’s because Binance says that projects listed on Binance Alpha are shortlisted to receive a listing on the main Binance exchange.

 

Best Wallet Token

Best Wallet Token is a new cryptocurrency that’s gaining popularity. As its name suggests, it powers a crypto wallet.

The wallet is called Best Wallet, and it boasts over 500,000 users. It stands out for its wide range of features and multi-chain support, allowing users to store cryptocurrencies from Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Cardano, Solana, and many more networks.

Some of Best Wallet’s features include a cross-chain DEX, a presale aggregator, a derivatives exchange, a staking aggregator, and an NFT gallery.

Users can get more out of the wallet by holding $BEST. It unlocks trading fee discounts, higher staking yields, governance rights, and access to promotions on partner projects.

It’s undergoing a presale and has raised over $13 million.

Best Wallet’s features go well beyond those of competitors like MetaMask and Phantom, yet they’re worth billions of dollars. In other words, $BEST has explosive potential. Visit Best Wallet Token.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not provide financial advice. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, and the market can be unpredictable. Always perform thorough research before making any cryptocurrency-related decisions.

Washington, DC – The ties between United States President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have seen highs and lows throughout the years.

But it all came crashing down on Thursday after months of what appeared to be an unshakable alliance in the White House.

A disagreement over Trump’s massive tax bill has escalated over the past few days, with Musk going so far as to suggest that the US president should be impeached.

In a series of social media posts, Musk launched personal attacks against Trump, culminating in a claim, made without evidence, that Trump is in the “Epstein files”.

Those documents relate to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and include travel logs and guest lists related to him and his associates. Part of the Epstein files remain secret, sparking curiosity and conspiracy theories about who might be mentioned.

Trump, meanwhile, responded with a social media fusillade of his own. He claimed he asked Musk to leave his White House role and suggested cutting the government subsidies and contracts awarded to the billionaire’s companies.

So how did the partnership between Musk and Trump collapse? And what may come next for the two men often described as the world’s richest and the world’s most powerful, respectively?

The honeymoon phase

A few months before the war of words between Musk and Trump erupted, the two seemed like an inseparable political force.

Musk had spent nearly $200m to elect Trump to a second term in 2024. Days after his successful election, Trump responded by appointing Musk to lead a newly created government cutting agency, called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Even the name of the department reflected the leeway that the billionaire investor had in Trump’s administration. The word “doge” refers to an internet meme of a dog, favoured by Musk, that became popular in 2010.

In the early weeks of Trump’s second term, Musk became one of the most prominent figures in the administration – and a lightning rod for public criticism. Under his leadership, DOGE sacked thousands of federal employees and gutted various agencies, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Musk appeared so powerful that some Democrats started to refer to him as “President Elon” to get under Trump’s skin.

But Trump and Musk presented a united front. During a Fox News interview in February, the US president and his then-adviser appeared side by side and heaped praise on one another.

“He gets it done. He’s a leader,” Trump said of Musk.

“I love the president. I just want to be clear about that,” Musk said of Trump.

Musk, who is originally from South Africa, started espousing right-wing views over the past few years and grew vocally critical of Democrats and progressives.

Those views became more prominent after he bought the social media platform Twitter, now X, in 2022. As he started to tilt rightward, he used the platform to bash irregular migration and efforts he believed aimed to police free speech, particularly with regards to identity politics and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even during Musk’s political realignment, however, he and Trump exchanged stern criticism. For example, in July 2022, Musk posted that Trump was getting to be “too old to be chief executive of anything”, much less the presidency.

He also initially backed Trump’s Republican rival in the 2024 presidential race, Ron DeSantis, even hosting the Florida governor’s campaign launch on X.

But the failed assassination attempt against Trump would cement Musk’s shift in allegiance. After a bullet grazed Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, Musk announced he would “fully endorse” the Republican leader.

He even joined Trump for a return to Butler in September of last year.

The unravelling

The cliche in politics is that there are no permanent enemies or permanent allies, only permanent interests. That appears to be the case for Trump, who has a history of firing advisers and disavowing former friends.

Musk is only the latest high-profile rupture – and one that might not come as a surprise to political observers.

The unravelling of Trump’s “bromance” with Musk comes at the tail end of a rocky few months, as rumours swirled about closed-door clashes between the billionaire and the president’s inner circle.

In April, Musk announced that he would be spending less time at DOGE. By that time, his role appeared to be diminishing, with the billionaire no longer dominating headlines or regularly appearing in the Oval Office.

Late in May, Musk criticised the White House-backed tax and budget proposal, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told the TV programme CBS Sunday Morning.

The bill cuts electric vehicle (EV) subsidies that boost Musk’s Tesla car company. But Musk has maintained his opposition to the bill lies in its increases to the national debt and its byzantine provisions: The bill clocks in at more than 1,000 pages.

The notoriously confrontational Trump, who had pinned his vision for the economy on the bill, kept his cool amid Musk’s early criticisms. He even acknowledged to reporters, “I’m not happy about certain aspects of [the bill].”

The two men made a public appearance together afterwards in the Oval Office, where Trump celebrated the end of Musk’s role as a special government employee. Even then, Trump insisted that Musk was “not really leaving” his team.

Once out of the government, though, Musk not only voiced discontent with the budget bill; he appeared to be lobbying against it. The bill had narrowly passed in the House of Representatives, only to face similarly steep odds in the Senate.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” Musk wrote on X on Monday.

“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

The US president shot back on Thursday, starting with an appearance in the Oval Office with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“ I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here,” Trump said. “ He had no problem with it. All of a sudden, he had a problem.”

Trump told the assembled reporters that Musk’s reaction was a backlash to his EV policies. He also speculated that Musk would have preferred to stay in the White House.

“ I’ll be honest, I think he misses the place,” Trump said. “ It’s sort of Trump derangement syndrome. We have it with others, too. They leave, and they wake up in the morning, and the glamour’s gone. The whole world is different, and they become hostile.”

Afterwards, Trump took his criticisms to his social media platform, Truth Social.

“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote in a social media post.

All the while, Musk had been posting on social media, criticising Trump’s bill and taking credit for his re-election campaign.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude.”

What’s next, and who will win?

What happens next remains unclear. Although Musk has gained popularity within the Republican base, his political rise was partly due to his association with Trump.

He may now find himself loathed by both Democrats and Trump loyalists.

The US president, on the other hand, has a track record of surviving public scandals, including criminal charges.

Trump has also shown apparent willingness to use the government’s power against his rivals, most recently ordering an investigation into the administration of his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.

Already, Trump has warned of risks to Musk’s businesses, including the rocket company SpaceX and the communications firm Starlink. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote.

Still, Musk can also hurt Trump’s agenda. In his inauguration speech, Trump envisioned planting a US flag on Mars, but on Thursday, Musk said he plans to decommission a SpaceX rocket that the US uses to reach the International Space Station, as retaliation for Trump’s words.

Musk could also align with fiscally conservative lawmakers to block Trump’s signature tax bill in the Senate.

Despite Musk going on the offensive against Trump on Thursday, the US president used one of his later social media posts to shift the focus to his One Big Beautiful Bill.

“I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago. This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress. It’s a Record Cut in Expenses, $1.6 Trillion Dollars, and the Biggest Tax Cut ever given,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“If this Bill doesn’t pass, there will be a 68% Tax Increase, and things far worse than that.”

June 5 (UPI) — President Donald Trump and former Department of Government Efficiency Director Elon Musk are slinging accusations after an apparent end to their short-lived friendship.

Trump on Thursday accused Musk of going “crazy” after the president canceled the federal electric vehicle mandate imposed by the Biden administration.

“I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday. “He just went crazy!”

Trump also has threatened to end all government contracts with the Musk-founded Tesla and suggested that would be a fast way to reduce government spending.

The president’s threat likely resonated with investors as Tesla share prices declined by more than 14% on Thursday and shed $152 billion in value from the EV maker.

Trump said he asked Musk to leave his advisory position with DOGE, although Musk was scheduled to exit the position at the end of May.

Musk earlier said Trump would not have won the Nov. 5 election without his help.

He contributed an estimated $250 million to Trump’s campaign effort.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk said Thursday morning in a post on X.

Musk has criticized the proposed “one big, beautiful” federal government budget bill as increasing the nation’s debt and negating his work with DOGE.

The entrepreneur opposes the spending bill that the House has passed and is before the Senate because it removed tax credits and subsidies for buying EVs, Trump claimed.

“I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done that months ago,” Trump said in a subsequent Truth Social post on Thursday afternoon.

“This is one of the greatest bills ever presented to Congress,” he continued. “It’s a record cut in expenses, $1.6 trillion dollars, and the biggest tax cut ever given.”

If the measure is not passed, Trump said it will trigger a 68% tax increase, “and things far worse than that.”

The president said the “easiest way to save money … is to terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts” with Tesla.

Later on Thursday, Musk in an X post said it is “time to drop the really big bomb” on the president.

Trump “is in the Epstein files,” Musk said. “That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

Musk did not say in what context Trump allegedly appears in the Epstein files, but ended his post with: “Have a nice day, DJT!”

He made a subsequent post that asks: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

Trump and Musk were very close during the first four months of the Trump administration and often appeared together at high-profile events.