u. k.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) is deploying one of its Voyager aerial refueling jets to help Saudi Arabia defend against ongoing attacks from the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels of Yemen. The decision marks the first publicly known international military assistance offered to Saudi Arabia specifically for its fight against the Houthis, which erupted over the summer. The move came hours before U.S. President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly meeting that he believes a peace deal with Iran will be reached after the U.S. midterm elections in November.

The British action is significant because, while it involves just one tanker, other key Saudi allies have yet to heed the Kingdom’s request for military help specifically to battle the Houthis. Although it’s important to note some assets already deployed to defend against Iranian attacks could be helping with the Houthi threat now.

Last week, Trump turned down a direct plea from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader, to attack the Houthis. Meanwhile, Pakistan and Turkey, which signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement with Saudi Arabia, have yet to provide any direct military aid. The pact holds that an attack on one is considered an attack on all; however, it doesn’t stipulate exactly what actions should be taken. 

Saudi Arabia, under repeated Houthi missile and drone attacks as well as suspected strikes from Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, is struggling to defend its oil infrastructure. The Kingdom is also facing a challenge supporting the anti-Houthi forces it backs in the Yemen civil war that reignited in the wake of the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran that began Feb. 28.

At issue beyond protecting the Saudis is growing concern over the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a key chokepoint now largely controlled by the Houthis, who are preventing the Saudis from using it to ship oil. 

Earlier this year, the Houthis imposed a blockade on the Strait, and began striking Saudi ships in the southern part of the Red Sea as well as critical energy terminals on that body of water. Iranian proxies have also struck the vital East-West pipeline that feeds oil to be transferred and shipped via the Red Sea in order to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran vastly curtailed shipping after the launch of Operation Epic Fury. The pipeline reportedly reopened today after being shut down following a long-range drone attack.

The stark reality is that if Saudi refineries are destroyed and the pipeline is shut down for months if not longer, the last major lifeline from the region, and especially to Europe, would be closed off, sparking a deeper energy crisis.

Concern over these factors spurred Britain to act, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) noted. It said it was acting on a request from Saudi Arabia and that the jet would “support Saudi Arabia’s defensive operations in aid of the legitimate Yemeni government.”

“Escalating tensions in the Gulf could have negative consequences here in the UK—such as rising prices, disruptions to energy supplies, and increased costs for British businesses,” the ministry explained. “The Houthis pose a threat to stability in the Middle East; therefore, it is in the UK’s national interest—economically and in terms of security—that they do not succeed in their aims.”

“We unequivocally condemn Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, and our position is clear: both Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government have the right to self-defense,” the ministry added. 

The jet will operate from a U.K. air base in Cyprus and will begin air-to-air refueling operations in the coming days, the BBC reported.

The MoD said the Voyager will fly only in support of missions to shoot down missiles and drones, though Saudi aircraft are also bombing Houthi ground positions in Yemen, in part to get at drone and missile launchers and storage sites. Houthi officials have accused the Saudis of killing civilians in some of these attacks.

It should be noted that, more than a decade ago, the U.S. was supporting the Saudi coalition’s previous bombing campaign against the Houthis by providing aerial refueling and intelligence. However, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis ended that in 2018 during the first Trump presidency after growing concerns over the large number of civilian casualties.

The Voyager can only refuel the Royal Saudi Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons, Panavia Tornados, and Italian Air Force Typhoons that have been in the Kingdom since before the fighting with the Houthis broke out, as well as any other similarly equipped allied aircraft. That’s because the tanker only has probe-and-drogue aerial refueling, not the boom required for gassing up other receptacle-equipped aircraft. You can read more about this in our story here.

The Voyager will not be the first British asset to be sent to help Saudi Arabia since the launch of Epic Fury. In March, the U.K. sent its Sky Sabre air defense system and troops to the Kingdom to help defend against attacks from Iran.

“This support builds upon the UK’s existing military contribution to Saudi air defense, which includes the deployment of an air defense system and British personnel to help protect against missile and drone attacks,” the MoD pointed out on Tuesday. “Saudi Arabia and Yemen are steadfast partners of the UK and play a vital role in regional stability. It is in the UK’s interest to safeguard regional stability, protect vital trade and energy supplies, and encourage a diplomatic resolution to the conflict in Yemen.”

The civil war in Yemen erupted in 2014 and expanded a year later when a Saudi-led coalition joined forces with the government ousted by the Houthis. The fighting between Saudi-led forces and the Houthis largely abated after a tenuous ceasefire was signed in 2022. The Saudis held off on getting involved in the recent Red Sea conflict which saw the U.S. and coalition warships duking it out with the Houthis, and eventually led to a U.S.-led air campaign over Yemen. The United Kingdom was the other significant player in that air campaign.

Tensions, as we noted earlier in this story, reignited in recent weeks after the Houthis joined the U.S.-Iran conflict on the side of their major supporter. 

On Tuesday, Houthi spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Sare’e claimed that Saudi Arabia conducted 19 airstrikes across rebel-held territory in Yemen that involved the latest round of civilian casualties. The Saudis have not directly responded.

As we stated earlier in this story, hours after the U.K. announced it was sending a Voyager tanker to Saudi Arabia, Trump addressed the ongoing conflict with Iran during his speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

The American leader called for international isolation of Iran and repeated his stance that he was at an inflection point on deciding what course to take moving forward. The situation has settled into an uneasy pause interrupted by sporadic Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. It has been weeks since the U.S. last struck Iranian targets.

“Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before?” Trump asked rhetorically. “Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?”

Trump added that he believes he will make a peace deal with Iran after the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, which could decide which party controls Congress. With gasoline and diesel price increases damaging the economy, the war and Trump’s handling of it have been very unpopular with voters.

In a CNN and SSRS poll, released Tuesday, 64% of those responding said the U.S. is not winning the war in Iran, while 36% disagreed. In addition, 78% of participants said Trump is not doing enough to end the conflict with Iran and 22% said he was.

After a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham following his UN speech, Trump claimed the Iranians still want to make a deal.

“They want to talk to us,” he said. “They have been talking to us, even today they’ve been talking to us, and the relationship is developing. But we can’t let them – and they understand that – we can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”

A U.S. negotiating team, including Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met with Iranian officials on the sidelines of Tuesday’s U.N. meeting. That sideline session lasted about three hours and went well, according to Trump, who offered no details on the discussions.

Trump: US officials met with the Iranian delegation for three hours – “it was a good meeting”

— Polymarket Intel (@PolymarketIntel) September 22, 2026

For their part, the Iranians said they are willing to negotiate, but on their terms.

“A senior Iranian official said Iran could reopen the Strait of Hormuz to Gulf shipping within seven days if the U.S. fulfilled Tehran’s demands to ease military pressure and lift an American blockade on Iranian ports,” Reuters reported. “The official added that Tehran had conveyed its latest proposal to Washington via mediators last week.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

LONDON — Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, have moved their two children to a new school over security concerns, a spokesperson said Tuesday, just weeks after the family returned to the U.K. to make a fresh start.

“The decision for the children to move school was taken following a discussion with the family’s security team about the practicalities of their current arrangements,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, had only just started the new school year in England after the family relocated from California in late August.

British media reported that the distance of the school run and the heavy traffic on the route were among the concerns raised by the couple and their security team. The family is living at a private, non-royal residence outside of London.

“This decision should in no way be interpreted as a reflection on the school or the exceptional care the children have received there,” the statement added.

The news followed reports that Harry and Meghan were awaiting a new risk assessment from the government committee that reviews protection of VIPs, including a decision on whether the family should be entitled to publicly funded security now that they live in the U.K.

Harry and Meghan gave up their royal duties and moved to California more than six years ago, saying they wanted to earn their own living. They later signed lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify.

Although relations with the rest of the royal family have soured since then, Harry has recently expressed an interest in reconciliation so he could spend more time with his father, King Charles III.

Harry has fought a long-running battle with Britain’s government for the restoration of publicly funded police protection, which was canceled when the couple gave up their royal roles.

He had previously said he couldn’t “see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the U.K.” without a security guarantee.

Earlier this month, the king reiterated that Harry and Meghan remain non-working members of the royal family and would continue to refrain from using formal royal titles, such as his royal highness and her royal highness, as they have done since 2020. The couple said they were surprised by the way the monarch issued that statement because they were given little time to review it.

LONDON — More than 400 flights were canceled Tuesday due to a technical issue in Britain’s air traffic control system, reported the flight monitoring website Flightradar24.

Britain’s National Air Traffic Services said a problem had been identified in its flight processing system and engineers were urgently working on the issue, which affected flights across the U.K.

In an update, it said it had “implemented a fix and our flight system is starting to recover.”

About 425 flights to and from U.K. airports, including Heathrow, were canceled, affecting services operated by multiple airlines including British Airways, EasyJet, KLM and Lufthansa.

The affected airports, which also included Stansted and City in London, as well as airports in Manchester, Birmingham and Scotland, said the technical issue caused disruptions. They warned passengers to check the status of their flight with their airline.

Budget airline EasyJet said some of its flights were “unable to operate” and that the system failure caused “delays to flights across Europe.”

Some passengers took to social media to complain about being stuck on the tarmac for hours. Many expressed frustration about a lack of communication from airlines.

Heathrow’s website showed that many short-haul flights departing for European destinations had been canceled or delayed.

Arriving flights did not appear to be affected. It was not immediately clear what caused the technical problem.

The Department of Homeland Security said Milo Yiannopoulos, a British citizen, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the New Orleans International Airport on Friday. He was deported to the United Kingdom that same day. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 29 (UPI) — Far-right political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was deported to the United Kingdom, immigration officials said Saturday.

The Department of Homeland Security said Yiannopoulos, a British citizen, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the New Orleans International Airport on Friday.

He was deported “back to his home country” that same night, a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to the BBC.

Yiannopoulos entered the United States legally in May 2019 but “chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws,” DHS said in a statement on X.

“Yiannopoulos was issued a final order of removal by an Immigration Judge on July 22, after failing to show up for his immigration hearing,” the statement added.

Yiannopoulos was an editor for Breitbart News and interned for former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

In 2024, he worked on the presidential bid of rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.

Yiannopoulos is a vocal supporter of immigration enforcement.

“California needs ICE checkpoints at supermarket entrances, gas stations, strip malls, intersections and government buildings, with on the spot deportation for anyone who can’t prove they are in the US legally,” he wrote on X last year.

In 2025, he said “We have got to deport millions and millions of people.”

“Without that, nothing else matters,” he added in a social media post.

LONDON — Prince Harry and his wife Meghan arrived in the United Kingdom on Wednesday, as they make a fresh start in Britain after six years in the United States, U.K. media reported.

The news comes less than a week after the couple surprised fans and critics alike with plans to return to Britain. The return was reported by media such as the BBC and the Daily Telegraph, with the newspaper reporting that their plane landed at Birmingham International Airport around noon.

Flight tracking websites showed a private charter flight from Van Nuys, arrived at the airport at 11:56 a.m.

The couple’s children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, have already enrolled at British schools and will start classes in September. The family plans to live at a private, nonroyal residence outside of London, but haven’t said exactly where that will be.

Harry and Meghan gave up their royal duties and moved to California more than six years ago to earn their living through lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify.

Relations with the rest of the royal family quickly soured as the couple said palace staff had been insensitive to Meghan’s mental health and leveled charges of racism and media manipulation at members of the royal family.

Harry recently expressed an interest in reconciliation so he could spend more time with his father, King Charles III, who is being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer. But relations with his brother, Prince William, who is heir to the throne, remain tense.

“Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‘the book lady.’”

Dolly Parton wore the moniker like a badge of honor, and she earned it too. Through her Imagination Library program, launched by the Dollywood Foundation in 1995, she put more than 330 million books into the hands of children across America, Canada, the U.K., Australia and the Republic of Ireland.

The program is rooted in a childhood of poverty and illiteracy — roots that those who knew Parton said she never denied or abandoned.

Parton, 80, died Tuesday after a brief battle with cancer. And although the country western superstar collected accolades — including 10 Grammy Awards, a National Medal of the Arts and two Academy Award nominations — across her storied career, Parton said her contributions to children’s literacy were most precious to her.

In 2023, the American Library Assn. awarded the singer-songwriter, book lady and philanthropist its highest honor — lifetime membership — to recognize her lasting impact on literacy and inspiring a love of reading in children.

“Dolly Parton represented the very best of America,” ALA President Maria McCauley told The Times on Tuesday, adding that, like people all over the world, she’s been playing Parton’s music since news of her death broke, particularly the song “I Can See the Light of a Clear Blue Morning.”

“That song has so much resonance right now,” she said, noting its lyrics capture a theme of resilience and faith in overcoming dark times.

“We want to make sure that Dolly’s vision, that reading is for everyone, becomes a reality. That’s something that we can all carry forward in memory of Dolly.”

Parton’s Imagination Library gifts a book a month to children signed up for the program from the time they are born until they are 5 years old. Parton described the program best when speaking with librarian Carla Hayden in 2018. “We send the book in the mail with their name on it. It’s not in the care of Mom and Dad — it’s got their little name on it, and they love to think, ‘This is mine.’ They wait at the mailbox. They get their little books, and to them, it’s personal.”

Parton understood the novelty of owning your very own book. Growing up in the Great Smoky Mountains town of Sevierville in east Tennessee, Parton was the fourth of 12 kids. Her father, a tobacco sharecropper, couldn’t read or write, and the family lived in a one-room cabin with no electricity. There were no books in the home, aside from the Bible.

The singer’s upbringing, particularly her father’s illiteracy and his shame around what he considered a shortcoming, was what inspired her to launch the Imagination Library. With the help of her dad, they set out to foster a love of reading in the kids of Sevier County. Reading, she believed, was the gateway to dreaming, and dreaming, the first step in the path toward success.

By 2000, the program had expanded beyond the Smoky Mountains and into a nationwide movement. By 2003, the Imagination Library had mailed 1 million books to budding readers. After the United States, the gifting initiative launched in Canada in 2006, then the U.K. in 2007, Australia in 2013 and the Republic of Ireland in 2019.

The program operates on a shared funding model split between the Dollywood Foundation — which manages the central overhead, administration, and global book-selection strategy of the Imagination Library — and local community partners including businesses, school districts, small or large organizations, or individuals who share in the mission.

Selina Brown, a U.K. author whose book “My Rice Is Best” was selected by the Imagination Library this year, said that 14,000 copies had been distributed across the U.K. to children in underprivileged areas. “To know that my book has gone into the hands of young children across the U.K. is absolutely incredible,” she told The Times.

Brown said that public figures often make shallow promises and vanity moves, but “with Dolly Parton, you can actually see her work manifest, and it really makes an impact. In the U.K. alone, there are children who do not have books in their house, and because of Dolly Parton, they now have their own library.”

Canadian author Melanie Florence, who penned “Sarabeth’s Garage” — another of Imagination Library’s picks — also grew up in a small town, with no bookstore, during a time with no online retailers. “If that had existed when I was a kid, being gifted a book that you get to keep, it’s a big thing, especially for a kid like I was, who just lived to read,” Florence told The Times.

“I think that’s such a beautiful legacy,” Florence said, “her music and this spirit of generosity.”

But it’s also a working legacy that Parton built to last, according to Dollywood Foundation’s president, Jeff Conyers.

“Dolly’s legacy was never meant to be something we simply preserve or look back upon,” Conyers said. “She built things that could keep doing good in the world.”

Conyers said the foundation was set to “make certain the love at the heart of her work continues reaching children, families and communities long into the future.”

Although the foundation is heartbroken after Parton’s death, he said, “the mission she gave us is as clear today as it has ever been, and we will carry it forward for generations to come.”

Washington, D.C., Councilmember Charles Allen said he was visiting family in east Tennessee more than decade ago when his 2-year-old niece went tottering off toward the mailbox. When her parents brought her back in, she was holding a book with her name on it. Allen said his brother had signed her up for Parton’s Imagination Library at the hospital just after she was born — “right then and there.”

Allen said he was inspired by “the joy on my own niece’s face when she opened up a book with her name on it” to write a D.C. law called “Books From Birth.”

“We basically borrowed that program and then partnered with them,” he said. “And now every child in D.C. from the time they’re born ’til they’re 5 years old gets a free book delivered.”

Allen said that the program is now 10 years old, and 4 million books have been distributed to about 100,000 kids: “It’s made a big impact.”

Allen met with Parton years ago and said she never forgot her roots.

“Watching her own parents struggle with literacy and kind of hiding it, she realized very quickly the power that she had as this just massive cultural and musical star,” he said, adding that she was going to use that power for something that would outlast her. “It’ll outlast me. It’ll outlast everybody.”

Children of D.C. “they know Dolly Parton,” he added. “They know she’s the lady that delivered the books. I have all the confidence in the world that she is smiling somewhere, knowing that so many people think of her as the book lady. That she was going to battle illiteracy, one kid, one family, one household at a time.”

In 2018, Parton donated her 100 millionth book to the Library of Congress.

During the ceremony Hayden, the librarian, asked the country star if she ever thought she’d be known so widely as “the book lady.”

Parton responded with her signature self-deprecating wit and wisdom: “I never thought about being the book lady — the painted lady, yes. The overexaggerated, overdressed lady — yes. But that just goes to show you that you can’t judge a book by looking at the cover, right? Or even a 100 millionth book by looking at the cover.”

In September, 336,004,951 books will have been distributed through Imagination Library. More than 3.6 million families have been registered globally.