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Spanish midfielder says he has ‘huge confidence’ in his abilities after his impressive performances as a substitute.

Spanish super-sub Mikel Merino admitted that neutralising the threat of Lionel Messi will be a “huge challenge” as La Roja prepare for their World Cup final showdown against Argentina.

“It’s a huge challenge, an incredible motivation for me and the whole team,” Merino said of facing Messi in his news conference on Friday.

“Being able to play against a side like Argentina, which has already won this trophy, makes the match even more significant, and I’m very happy to be experiencing this moment,” Merino told reporters at Spain’s training base in East Hanover, New Jersey.

Argentina skipper Messi, 39, has been pivotal in dragging the defending champions into Sunday’s final in East Rutherford, orchestrating a 2-1 semifinal victory over England with two assists.

Messi, the tournament’s joint top-scorer with eight goals, also inspired a dramatic comeback against Egypt in the last 16, when Argentina fought back from 2-0 down with 11 minutes remaining to win 3-2.

Arsenal ace Merino has played a decisive role in Spain’s road to the final, coming off the substitutes’ bench to score late winners in a last-16 defeat of Portugal and a quarterfinal victory over Belgium.

“I have incredible confidence in myself and my abilities, and every time I step onto the pitch, I believe I can make an impact for the team,” Merino stated.

“But honestly, it doesn’t matter who the hero is; the important thing is that the team wins in the end. “When you win a title, it belongs to everyone, not just the starting 11,” he added.

Merino, meanwhile, enthused about the “impressive” talent of 19-year-old Lamine Yamal, who will face Messi for the first time in a clash representing the past and the future of FC Barcelona.

Merino, 30, predicted that the final would be “an intense match” and that the referee would need to “control the intensity and frequency of challenges and fouls”.

“The faster the ball moves between us, the less time the opposition has to commit a foul,” he noted.

The midfielder, who said he did not have “very clear memories” of Spain’s first World Cup title in 2010, recalled the admiration of that trailblazing side.

“Being able to represent our country today and be those same players for new generations – for the children watching us – is something magical,” he said.

A video showing two plainclothes ICE agents tackling a man at the Las Vegas airport before walking away after bystanders intervened has reignited criticism of the agency’s arrest tactics. ICE later said he was arrested at Los Angeles Airport for overstaying his visa.

Five weeks after the start of the biggest-ever football tournament, it’s almost time for the day billions across the world have waited for – the FIFA World Cup final.

Spain, the champions of Europe, face defending World Cup winners Argentina in a title clash for the ages.

For Spain, it marks the final step in their quest for a second world title, 16 years on from their maiden triumph, while Argentina are chasing history to become only the third country to lift back-to-back World Cups.

Here are the top 10 things you need to know ahead of Sunday’s final in New York, United States:

Deja vu: Messi and Yamal meet again after two decades

The moment Argentina set up the World Cup final against Spain, social media was again flooded with the now-viral photo of a young Messi bathing baby Yamal during a TV commercial. At first, many thought it was an AI-generated image, but it’s indeed real and dates back to 2007.

During a UNICEF fundraising shoot at his former club, Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium, a 20-year-old Messi met Yamal, who was only five months old at that time and accompanied by his mother, Sheila Ebana.

Almost two decades on from that day, Messi and Yamal face each other in a clash of generations in the 2026 World Cup final.

“It is a true miracle of destiny,” the photographer Joan Monfort told BBC Sport.

Will Donald Trump attend the World Cup final?

Yes. The White House has said US President Donald Trump will attend Sunday’s World Cup final – his first appearance at the tournament. He will jointly present the trophy, along with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, to the winning team’s captain.

Though Trump was not at any game of the 48-team tournament, he was still involved – rather controversially. Trump personally urged Infantino to review a decision to hand a red card to US striker Folarin Balogun.

FIFA, then, broke its own rules to suspend Balogun’s one-game ban, allowing him to play in the quarterfinals, which the US lost to Belgium. The controversial decision drew criticism and once again put the spotlight on the growing influence of politics on sport.

Superstitions first: Argentinian President Milei won’t attend the final

It is common practice for the heads of state of the finalist nations to attend the ultimate showdown, but Argentinian President Javier Milei won’t be travelling to New Jersey. Why? Because of superstition.

Milei has decided to watch the game on a TV from his presidential residence, just like he did for each of Argentina’s seven matches en route to the final. He will also be putting on the same heavy jacket he wears each time.

In Latin America, and particularly in Argentina, so-called “cabalas”, or ritualistic beliefs and habits, carry unusual weight, reflecting their passion for the national team.

Canadian wildfire smoke blankets New York before World Cup final

Smoke from Canadian wildfires has blanketed much of the northeastern US, triggering ⁠health alerts, but a ⁠cold front expected on the weekend will help dissipate the dangerous haze in time for Sunday’s World Cup final in the New York area.

More ⁠than 80,000 people are expected to attend the World Cup final at the open-air New York-New Jersey stadium, while another 50,000 are ⁠expected to watch the game from Central Park in Manhattan.

New York City began feeling the effects of the wildfires this week, and local authorities issued an alert, urging residents to reduce strenuous outdoor activity and take extra breaks if they are outside.

On Thursday, the air quality ‌in New Jersey, the site of the stadium, was rated as “unhealthy for sensitive groups” by several air quality measurement platforms.

World Cup final: The most expensive US sporting event

As of Friday, the get-in price for the Spain vs Argentina final is $7,595, according to ticket-tracking service TicketData.com. The platform states a 10 percent increase in price over the last three days.

As per data from secondary ticket marketplace TickPick, the average purchase price for the final is $11,327, the highest ever recorded in US sporting history, surpassing the ticket prices for the NFL’s Super Bowl and the NBA Finals.

NFL-style half-time show

For the first time in history, a football World Cup final will feature a half-time show, inspired by the Super Bowl.

Expect fireworks to light up the New York skyline when a pop party kicks off, headlined by Madonna, Justin Bieber, Shakira, BTS, Burna Boy, Coldplay and others.

The performance is expected to last about 11 minutes, with the half-time break potentially extended to up to 30 minutes. Additionally, there will be a closing ceremony 90 minutes before kickoff, with Tom Cruise, Robbie Williams and Nicole Scherzinger expected to feature.

Record-breaking prize money

In December, FIFA announced a record World Cup prize fund of $727m –  a 50 percent increase on the funds distributed at the 2022 tournament in Qatar.

Four months later, the prize money on offer was further increased, with the world governing body projected to surpass $11bn in revenue in the current four-year cycle from 2023 to 2026.

FIFA’s December announcement on prize money said ⁠the champions would take home $50m and the runners-up $33m. Additionally, each qualified nation would ⁠be entitled to $1.5m to cover preparation costs.

World Cup trophy to arrive in bespoke Louis Vuitton trunk

As was the case in the last four finals, the golden World Cup trophy – the biggest prize in football – will be transported to the venue in a bespoke Louis Vuitton trunk designed by the French luxury ‌fashion house.

The trunk features a golden V for “Victory” – and “Vuitton” – across the front, with the brand’s recognisable monogram pattern and gold-plated brass corner protectors.

Golden Boot among awards up for grabs

Apart from the winning team earning the opportunity to lift the coveted World Cup trophy, players will also have a shot at individual glory.

As many as five official trophies, including the Golden Boot for the top scorer and Golden Ball for the best player of the tournament, will be handed out.

Messi leads the race for the Golden Boot, ahead of France’s Kylian Mbappe, who will feature in the third-place playoff a day before the final. Mbappe won the Golden Boot last year while Messi is bidding for his first such achievement.

The Golden Glove, Young Player and Fair Play are the other official awards presented by the FIFA Technical Study Group.

The referee lineup

The World Cup final will be officiated by Slovenia’s Slavko Vincic, who will be assisted by his compatriots Tomasz Klancnik and Andraz Kovacic.

Jordanian duo Adham Makhadmeh and Mohammad Alkalaf will be the fourth official and reserve assistant referee, respectively.

The Chinese leader called for more international cooperation in developing the technology at a conference in Shanghai.

Artificial intelligence should not be dominated by one country, Chinese President Xi Jinping has said, urging international cooperation on development at a major conference in Shanghai.

Xi also emphasised the importance of a “people-centred” approach to AI technology in his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference on Friday.

The conference showcases the cutting-edge technology Xi hopes will soon rival that of the United States.

Chinese AI models are gaining ground on the most powerful offerings from the US, attracting global users with lower costs.

But how to govern the booming sector has become a topic of debate amid concerns over the deployment of AI in military combat and its use by hackers or criminals.

In his address, Xi spoke of China’s role in ensuring equitable access to AI capacity-building for developing countries to prevent the creation of “new historical injustices”.

To that end, he announced China’s plans to cooperate with international bodies, including from Africa, Latin America, Asia and BRICS countries, to provide AI-related opportunities.

“AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation,” Xi said. “We should jointly oppose overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI or placing one country’s security over that of others.”

‘Ensure AI is always under human control’

The US and European Union have imposed restrictions on Chinese tech imports, citing national security concerns, while recent tussles between Washington and American AI labs have raised questions about who controls access to top technology.

In May, the US Commerce Department issued a notice affirming its restrictions on shipments of semiconductors to subsidiaries of Chinese companies located outside China amid concerns about loopholes in Washington’s export control regime.

The guidance said its licensing requirements for the export of advanced AI chips applied to all businesses with headquarters or a parent company in China.

At Friday’s conference, Xi also stressed the need for a “people-centred” approach to AI with humans at the wheel.

“We should put in place laws and regulations, technological monitoring, early warning, and emergency response systems, in order to … ensure AI is always under human control,” he said.

AI has become a strategic pillar of China’s industrial policy, driven by state investment aimed at building a domestic ecosystem, from chip production to consumer use.

Daily consumption in China of “tokens” – the industry unit of AI usage – has increased a thousandfold over the past two years, according to state media citing officials.

As Al Jazeera reported earlier, China, while lagging behind the US in access to the most cutting-edge semiconductors, holds the edge in powering the huge data centres that run on AI chips.

A typical data centre can consume as much electricity as 100,000 households, while next-generation “hyperscale” facilities can gobble up as much power as two million homes, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

China’s access to an abundant supply of cheap electricity places it in the ideal position to meet such colossal energy demands.

It already generates more than twice as much electricity as the US, a lead that is expected to widen amid an aggressive state-led investment in the country’s energy grid.

United States President Donald Trump has delivered an extraordinary primetime speech, alleging government “cover-ups” and “vulnerability” in the nation’s electoral system.

But experts were quick to point out that Trump failed to present any conclusive evidence that past presidential elections had been swayed by malfeasance.

In many ways, Trump’s speech on Thursday revisited any themes familiar to the Republican leader.

He made broad accusations about a “deep state” conspiracy involving his Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and he lashed out at familiar foes, including the news media and China.

For years, Trump has spread baseless claims that his loss in the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and “stolen”.

Trump stopped short of repeating his false claim that he had, in fact, won that race. But in his remarks, he sought to raise suspicion about the election’s outcome, pointing to declassified government documents.

Those files, however, painted a more nuanced picture than Trump portrayed, and they failed to substantiate his claims of a conspiracy.

After the speech, Democrats criticised Trump for attempting to mislead the public and reduce confidence in US electoral systems, with months to go until the November midterm election.

Here are the key takeaways from his address:

Trump claims China compromised election data

One of the biggest accusations of the night was levied against China, the US’s geopolitical rival.

“Starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history,” Trump said near the outset of his speech.

He claimed that Beijing, through “illicit” means, had acquired 220 million US voter files, including names, addresses and party preferences.

“Think of that: Tens of millions of voters’ data in 18 states have been bought, stolen or hacked by China,” Trump said.

A spokesperson for China’s embassy denied such claims, saying the country “has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the US”.

Trump, however, did not say that the information had been used to influence any election.

But critics pointed out that such voter information is already publicly available. Some states even sell that public data, for prices ranging from $0 to $37,000, as the US Election Assistance Commission explained in a 2020 report.

The documents declassified by the White House also appeared to indicate Beijing was, at least in part, drawing from publicly available data. It did, however, express curiosity at China’s increasing interest in such information.

“While the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government has historically demonstrated interest in US elections, this is a newly-identified interest for this individual actor,” a heavily redacted assessment said.

“The US voter registration information is available for public download, with 2021 voter registration information available for some states.”

Trump claims a ‘deep state’ cover-up, vows retribution

In Thursday’s speech, Trump returned to a conspiracy theory that helped define his first successful bid for public office in 2016: that so-called “deep state” actors had sought to undermine his presidency.

He claimed there was a “shadow government” with “rogue bureaucrats” who attempted to cover up Chinese efforts to influence the 2020 vote.

They even sought to suppress information from his daily presidential brief, Trump alleged.

“ These were briefings I would get almost every day. Everything was kept out that was of importance,” he said.

Experts, however, have noted that presidential briefs are usually heavily curated to contain intelligence perceived to be of high importance.

An intelligence community report compiled in January 2021 assessed with “high confidence” that China had considered launching an influence campaign in 2020 — but that it eventually decided against it.

The report was declassified in March 2021. It contained a minority opinion that indicated China “took at least some steps” to undermine Trump’s re-election chances “primarily through social media and official public statements and media”.

The publication of the report would appear to contradict Trump’s claims of a “cover-up”.

Still, in his speech, Trump said he had instructed his top law enforcement officials to “fire those involved in the cover-up and to file criminal charges, if appropriate, against these people”.

Trump says public ‘blatantly lied to’ about election security

Critics had warned that Trump could use Thursday’s speech to undermine confidence in US elections by spreading falsehoods.

Some television news outlets, including ABC, NBC and CNN, even opted not to air the speech in full on their main broadcast channels.

The timing of the speech is significant, as it comes less four months ahead of the midterm elections, which decide control of Congress.

Trump did indeed spend part of his speech voicing allegations that American voters had been deceived by the same “deep state” actors he accused of targeting him.

“For many years, Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including voting machines and ballot counting systems,” Trump said.

“They’re vulnerable, and they’re easily compromised, and people within our government knew that.”

But the declassified documents released by the White House did not appear to contain any major revelations about such claims. Potential vulnerabilities have long been known, and local and federal officials have sought to address them.

The fact that elections are administered on the state and local level has also been cited as a barrier against any widespread tampering.

Given the decentralised nature of US election administration, the US intelligence community has long assessed that large-scale voting manipulation would be all but impossible.

After Trump’s speech, Democrats dismissed Trump’s remarks as distortions designed to disincentivise voters from participating in elections.

“President Donald Trump continues to lie, distort the truth to try to sow doubt and suppress the 2026 election,” US Representative Jason Crow said in a video statement. “He doesn’t want Americans to vote. He doesn’t want their voice to be heard.”

Trump rehashes Michigan investigation

Trump made a gesture at unity in Thursday’s speech, arguing that election security should not be a “partisan issue”.

“It should cause to unite us, not to divide us,” he said at one point.

But the Republican leader fired off dubious claims against targets big and small.

He called for broadcasters that did not air his speech to lose their licenses. He berated California as “worse than any third world country”. And he rehashed a incident in the swing state of Michigan that took place well before the 2020 election.

The case involved allegations of fake voter registration forms. But the forms were not processed and did not have any bearing on that year’s election; they were flagged months before the vote took place.

The state Attorney General’s Office probed the incident, as did the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Neither found evidence that fraud had been successfully committed. It is believed that the forms were not part of an election scam but rather an attempt to meet workplace quotas.

Still, Trump portrayed the incident as a significant breach in Thursday’s speech.

“It was pay, play, and cheat,” he alleged, proceeding to blame former President Biden for failing to pursue the case. “The Biden Department of Justice slow-walked the investigation and killed it.”

He added that he had instructed the FBI to re-open its investigation, although the declassified documents the White House released did not appear to provide new evidence in the case.

Speech sought to cast doubt, but contained few revelations

Trump’s speech had been hyped as a major moment in the president’s second term.

On Tuesday, when the primetime address was first announced, Trump said it would contain “really big news”. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, warned reporters earlier in the day that the speech would “shock”.

But Democrats and election experts have argued that the speech was underwhelming — and would mostly serve to fire up Trump’s Republican base.

Indeed, Trump opened his remarks on Thursday with a resume of his second-term accomplishments, from border security to efforts to combat crime.

And he closed his speech with an appeal to pass the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation he has repeatedly championed to heighten voter requirements.

The bill would increase voter identification standards, requiring proof of citizenship in the form of documents like birth certificates and passports that some US citizens may not have.

Rights groups have argued the requirements could disenfranchise some citizens.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, political analyst Eric Ham said the speech was yet another push in Trump’s effort to bring elections under federal control.

“This is something that the president has had an ambition of doing for quite some time, and I think what we saw tonight was another shot across the bow at trying to fundamentally change elections,” Ham said.

Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, also decried the speech as a distraction from Trump’s political woes ahead of the midterms.

“Donald Trump is a feeble, unhinged conspiracy-peddling 80-year old failed President,” Jeffries wrote on social media. “The economy is a disaster under this guy and the American people know it.”

Moment a projectile struck a border area between Kuwait and Iraq, sparking a fire and sending thick smoke into the sky. The scenes emerged after Kuwait said it intercepted 32 hostile drones since dawn as Iran announced strikes targeting US assets in the country.

It was a Capitol Hill mystery. For nearly a month, United States Senator Mitch McConnell was not seen or heard from in public.

Little was known about the 84-year-old’s condition, other than that he was hospitalised on June 14. Conspiracy theories began to bubble online. One prominent right-wing influencer, Laura Loomer, even spread rumours that the Republican leader was brain-dead.

But after weeks of silence, McConnell confirmed on Sunday that he was on the mend after suffering a fall.

Still, the Kentucky Republican has increasingly appeared frail on Capitol Hill, freezing in front of cameras and walking unsteadily when not in a wheelchair.

Members of Congress are typically on the older side. The average age for a US senator is around 65.

McConnell’s poor health — and the sudden passing of his Senate colleague Lindsey Graham, 71, on Sunday — have reignited the question: What would happen if McConnell were unable to serve the remainder of his term?

The answer is the subject of intense scrutiny, as Republicans seek to preserve their majority in the Senate.

Who is Mitch McConnell?

A seven-term senator from Kentucky, McConnell is the longest-serving party leader in the history of the Senate.

He first entered the Senate in 1985, and in 2007, he became the head of the Republican Party in the chamber, a position he held until 2025.

He continues to serve as a senator, though he is not seeking re-election in November’s midterm elections. His term ends in January.

What is wrong with McConnell’s health?

On Sunday, McConnell said in a statement that a fall on June 14 rendered him “briefly unconscious” and landed him in the hospital. The senator also said he had dealt with a mild case of pneumonia.

But McConnell has long struggled with health and mobility challenges. As a toddler, he survived a severe bout of polio, though it left one of his legs partially paralysed.

McConnell indicated his condition was improving, but that he would not return to the Senate yet.

“With signs of continued progress, I’ve been able to move from hospital care to a rehabilitation center where I’ll keep regaining my strength,” he wrote.

His statement was accompanied by a smiling photo of the senator in a hospital bed, with what appeared to be a copy of Sunday’s Washington Post newspaper.

Has McConnell been hospitalised before?

This is not the first time the senior senator’s health has been a source of concern in recent years.

As recently as February, the veteran lawmaker was hospitalised for flu-like symptoms.

Also, in 2019, McConnell tripped and fell in his Louisville home, fracturing his shoulder.

According to reporting from the Louisville Courier Journal, he also collapsed three times in 2023, suffering a concussion and a broken rib that ultimately led to him using a wheelchair.

It was during that period that McConnell had several instances where he inexplicably appeared to freeze while speaking in public, prompting questions about his fitness to serve.

Why does his presence in the Senate matter?

Republicans have a controlling majority in the Senate — but only by a few seats.

With McConnell absent, the number of Republicans available to vote shrinks from 53 to 52 in the 100-seat Senate.

That could influence the outcome of divisive bills, when every Republican vote matters.

McConnell’s absence has already helped Democrats pass a resolution against President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, with four Republicans crossing party lines to vote for it.

McConnell also sits on the all-important Senate Appropriations Committee, which helps decide discretionary government spending.

The US government has a looming funding deadline on September 30, and McConnell’s continued hospitalisation could muddle efforts to pass funding measures.

What does McConnell’s absence reveal about Republican Party unity?

The Republican majority in the Senate has weakened over time, according to Stephen Voss, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky.

Moderates like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — alongside wild cards like Rand Paul — have shown willingness in the past to join with Democrats during critical votes.

But that small proportion of “swing” Republicans has grown during the midterm primary season.

A number of lame-duck Republicans have lost their re-election bids to party rivals, backed by President Trump. That makes them more willing to buck their party leadership from time to time.

“McConnell’s absence could become inconvenient depending on what sort of policy battles we see in coming months,” said Voss.

What has been the reaction to McConnell’s absence?

News of McConnell’s hospitalisation sent alarm rippling through the US political sphere.

Republican leaders attempted to reassure the public that the senator would soon return to his post. But as the weeks stretched on, questions about McConnell’s condition mounted.

Ultimately, on July 8, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear sent a letter to McConnell’s office, requesting an update on the senator’s health status.

Beshear has since called McConnell’s written statement on Sunday a “step in the right direction”, but he continues to push for more transparency, suggesting the Republican senator release a video update instead.

Some critics have called on McConnell to step down altogether, questioning his fitness for office. They include Democrat Charles Booker, who is running to succeed McConnell in the midterm elections.

Tres Watson, a Republican strategist and host of the Kentucky Politics Weekly podcast, sees no reason to doubt McConnell’s ability to serve, despite the recent health scares.

“I’ve been around the senator several times in the last year. His brain is functioning fine, his wit is there, his intellect is there, but the body is failing him, and he made the understandable decision not to run for another term,” Watson said.

What happens if Mitch McConnell is unable to serve the rest of his term?

If McConnell were to vacate his senate seat before his term ends, it may be tempting for Democrats to think Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, could appoint someone from his own party.

That’s not the case, however, because of a recent change in state law. Kentucky is now one of four US states where the governor does not have authority to fill Senate vacancies.

In 2024, Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law requiring Senate vacancies to be filled by a special election, which must be called by the governor.

But experts say holding a special election this year would be fraught with challenges, one of which is timing.

The new law says the governor must give 63 days’ notice before the special election. Senate hopefuls would have to file their candidacy no later than 56 days prior to the vote.

Even if McConnell’s Senate seat were vacated immediately, the earliest a special election could occur is September.

But experts say that cobbling together a special election would not make sense, since November’s midterm elections are barely three and a half months away. McConnell’s Senate seat is up for grabs in that race.

“Setting up the process would take time, so we wouldn’t get a senator in office very quickly, even if this process kicked off soon,” said Voss, the political science professor. “The probability that we’d get a replacement ahead of time is pretty low.”

Watson, the Republican strategist, agrees. He questions the efficiency of rushing to hold a special election, when the midterms are on November 3.

“We’re getting pretty close to Election Day,” Watson said. “They’re not going to put the commonwealth through the expense of having another special election just so someone could be a US senator for effectively one month.”

Could there be challenges to filling McConnell’s seat?

Yes, a significant challenge could be litigation. Kentucky’s 2024 law is largely untested, and it would almost certainly attract legal challenges.

“I think there’s a decent chance the issue could end up in the courts,” said Joshua Douglas, a University of Kentucky law professor who teaches election law.

Douglas believes there may be a contradiction between the new law and parts of the Kentucky Constitution.

“The 17th Amendment says the legislature may authorise the governor to appoint a temporary replacement, Section 152 of the Kentucky Constitution says the governor appoints one, and the Kentucky legislature now says there must be a special election after the new law,” Douglas said.

Voss explained that the legal challenges could delay any special election to fill McConnell’s seat.

“This is the sort of thing that lawyers know how to tie up in litigation,” Voss said. “There would be people involved who know how to slow walk the process.”

Why can’t the governor pick McConnell’s replacement?

The 2024 law stripped the governor’s authority to select a temporary replacement for a US Senate seat.

Governor Beshear vetoed the bill, but the state legislature, which has a Republican supermajority, overrode his opposition.

The measure is part of a broader strategy of Republican lawmakers to shift powers away from the governor since Beshear’s election in 2019.

“We’ve seen an overall attempt by the Kentucky General Assembly to shift power from the executive to the legislative branch,” Voss said.

But the 2024 law was not the legislature’s first attempt at limiting the governor’s ability to fill Senate vacancies.

Initially, in 2021, Republican lawmakers passed a bill that required the governor to choose a temporary replacement from a list of three provided by the executive committee of the former senator’s party. After filling the vacancy, a special election would be held.

According to Watson, Republicans passed a new version because they were concerned about legal challenges to the 2021 law.

Republicans in the state argue that the 2024 update is more democratic and aligns with the process for filling other vacancies.

Beshear is the only Democrat to hold a statewide office in Kentucky. The state has not elected a Democrat to the US Senate since 1992.

Who is running to replace McConnell in the midterms?

In the general election, Democrat Charles Booker, a former state legislator, is running against Republican Representative Andy Barr to succeed McConnell.

Published on
16/07/2026 – 14:24 GMT+2

TSMC posted a record quarterly profit on Thursday and raised its revenue outlook as booming demand for artificial intelligence chips continued to fuel growth at the world’s largest contract chipmaker.

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Taiwan-based TSMC reported earnings of $4.31 per share for the April-June quarter, beating analysts’ expectations.

Revenue came in at $40.2 billion (€36.8bn), above analysts’ estimates of $39.63 billion (€34.6bn).

In local currency, net profit reached a record NT$706.6bn (€19.1bn), up 77% from a year earlier, while revenue climbed 36% to NT$1.27 trillion (€36.8bn), as appetite for the advanced chips TSMC makes for customers such as Nvidia and Apple showed no sign of cooling.

Given that it manufactures semiconductors for almost every major chip designer, the Hsinchu-based firm’s results are closely read as a gauge of the wider sector and of broader AI demand itself, just as investors fret over a possible bubble.

CEO Che-Chia Wei described global AI-related demand as “extremely robust” and said he expected it to remain very strong until around 2029 or 2030. On that basis, TSMC now forecasts 2026 revenue growth of slightly above 40% year on year, up from its previous guidance of more than 30%.

Thursday’s figures confirmed what monthly sales data had already suggested.

As reported on Monday, June revenue jumped 67.9% year on year, and first-half sales rose 35.6% from the same period in 2025, slightly ahead of analysts’ consensus forecasts for the quarter.

TSMC shares rose about 1% after the earnings release but later pared those gains as a sell-off in AI-related shares weighed on benchmarks across Asia during Thursday’s session.

Expanding US manufacturing

Alongside the results, TSMC said it would spend an additional $100 billion (€87.4bn) to expand its manufacturing capacity in the US, on top of the $165 billion (€144bn) already committed to building six fabrication plants in Arizona.

The move would bring the company’s total US investment pledges to around $265 billion (€231bn).

The fresh funds are expected to fund four further Arizona plants dedicated to the most advanced chips, those of 2 nanometres and below, and are intended to “support the strong multi-year demand” from the company’s leading American customers, CEO Che-Chia Wei said during the firm’s earnings conference.

TSMC also said it would spend more this year than previously planned, increasing its capital expenditure budget to between $60 billion (€52.4bn) and $64 billion (€55.9bn), up from an earlier range of $52 billion (€45.4bn) to $56 billion (€48.9bn).

The announcement follows a trade agreement struck earlier this year between the Trump administration and Taiwan, under which Taiwanese companies committed to invest at least $250 billion (€218bn) in the US technology sector inreturn for lower tariffs.

Additional sources • AP

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio is hosting more than 65 countries for a conference focused on political violence from the far left, a designation that a number of critics say is being used to target legitimate opposition.

The “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism”, taking place on Thursday, brings together government representatives from around the world to coordinate on what the US Department of State calls a “renewed threat”  that has “remained a blind spot in the international community’s counterterrorism focus”.

Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Reuters news agency that “the far-left terrorism designations could be used to target lawful protest activity and political opponents rather than genuine security threats.”

Here’s what’s driving the summit and who’s attending:

What is this summit about?

The Trump administration’s 2026 counterterrorism strategy identifies three primary threats: “Islamist terrorism”, “narco-terrorism”, and “violent left-wing extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists”.

The strategy states that the third category of left-wing “extremists” has been traditionally ignored, and notes that Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September 2025 was executed “by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies”.

The counterterrorism strategy omits right-wing extremism and white supremacist groups, despite growing instances of violence that some of these outfits have been accused of – including several of those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2020, in an attempt to overturn the US presidential election that Donald Trump lost.

Thomas Renard, director of The Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, said the summit reflects a fundamental shift in how the US sees the threat.

“What we are seeing now in the United States is that counterterrorism has been completely politicised, instrumentalised,” he told Al Jazeera. “For instance, the threat from far-right terrorism, which was for decades considered as the primary domestic threat, has now completely disappeared from the US counterterrorism strategy.”

Who has been invited?

Invites went to more than 70 countries as the State Department wrote on social media that countries had shown “overwhelming interest”. It is reported that Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar will be present alongside representatives from multiple countries. The stated aim is to “expand coordination, enhance information sharing, and strengthen international law enforcement mechanisms”.

The summit follows a series of smaller meetings held earlier this year, including one in The Hague with law enforcement officials.

Renard says many European nations are expressing their unease with this ministerial meeting by sending relatively junior ministers.

“They are not particularly convinced that this is a topic that justifies this type of gathering, but at the same time, they don’t want to antagonise the United States either. And therefore, this is the compromise they found,” he said.

In November, 2025, the US designated four European groups as terrorist organisations: The German Antifa Ost, the Italian Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI), the Greek Armed Proletarian Justice and the Greek Revolutionary Class Self-Defense.

What is “far-left terrorism”?

The term is usually used by governments to describe movements accused of violence and driven by left-wing ideologies, including Marxism, socialism, or anarchism. Such movements usually describe themselves as anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.

Latin America saw several left-wing armed movements during the Cold War, a number of which carried out sustained campaigns of political violence, such as Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMNL) in El Salvador and the Tupamaros in Uruguay. Throughout the 20th century, Washington repeatedly backed hardline right-wing regimes that opposed left-wing movements across Latin America.

India has been dealing with the Naxalite rebellion, a far-left Maoist movement that started in the 1960s and claims to fight for the rural population. The group is seen as one of India’s most serious internal security threats. At its peak, about the year 2000, thousands of people were killed due to the conflict with the Naxalite rebellion.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Marxist groups like the Red Army Faction in West Germany were behind several assassinations, abductions and bombings that they argued were aimed at weakening the capitalist state.

By contrast, the Antifa movement, which the Trump administration has consistently tried to portray as a major violent threat, is a loose, decentralised collection of socialist-leaning individuals opposed to far-right extremism, white supremacy and authoritarianism. Several individuals described by prosecutors as Antifa members have been indicted on accusations of violence in US courts, especially in states like Texas that are ruled by Trump’s Republican Party, since he returned to power. In June, eight such individuals were sentenced to several years in prison: Benjamin Hanil Song, convicted of the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, was sentenced to 100 years in prison.

Far-right political violence and terrorism in the US

But the same Trump administration has pardoned all those charged with violence during the January 6, 2023 insurrection, including individuals accused of beating police officers.

This week’s summit also specifically focuses on far-left political violence but does not include the threat from far-right ideology and terrorism, similar to the counterterrorism strategy.

This, even though the Oklahoma bombing, which killed 168 people and wounded nearly 700 in the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in the US, was carried out by the right-wing hardliner Timothy McVeigh.

The Cato Institute, a US think tank in Washington, DC, stated in February that of politically motivated terrorism on US soil between 1975 and 2025, excluding the Oklahoma bombing and 9/11, “right-wing terrorists account for 45 percent of people murdered, Islamists are responsible for 32 percent, left-wing terrorists are responsible for 16 percent.”

Renard says the summit creates the very problem it claims to solve: “The United States, with this summit and with its strategy, is creating, actually, a blind spot about far-right terrorist threats, as that threat is strongly anchored and rooted in the United States.”

Lautaro Martinez scored a 92nd-minute winner as Lionel Messi inspired World Cup holders Argentina to a stunning 2-1 comeback victory over England, setting up a final against European champions Spain.

England had been on course to reach their first World Cup final since 1966 after Anthony Gordon fired them ahead 10 minutes into the second half of Wednesday’s semifinal, played in front of 68,239 fans in Atlanta.

The fierce rivalry between these nations has produced several memorable contests on the World Cup stage over the years, and this encounter will be remembered in Argentina as the stuff of legend after the South Americans denied England with two late goals.

Messi set up Enzo Fernandez to drill in an 85th-minute equaliser and then, with extra time looming, crossed for substitute Lautaro Martinez to head in the winner in the second minute of stoppage time.

No team has retained the World Cup since Brazil in 1962, and now Messi will become only the second player, after Brazilian great Cafu, to appear in three World Cup finals.

The final will be played at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Sunday, as the first 48-team World Cup culminates in a showdown between the reigning champions of Europe and South America.

The US military has continued strikes against Iran, hitting targets further to the country’s north as well as close to capital Tehran for the first time in the latest round of violence.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said early on Thursday it struck several military sites and assets in a bid to “further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten innocent mariners” in the Strait of Hormuz. The unit also said it disabled an oil tanker in the passageway.

At least 35 people have died, and more than 300 have been wounded in the latest wave of attacks that began last Wednesday after CENTCOM launched strikes on Iranian port cities close to the Strait of Hormuz. The US says the attacks are in retaliation for Iran hitting three commercial ships in the Strait.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it targeted US military assets in neighbouring Gulf countries.

Here’s what has happened in Iran and the US on Wednesday and Thursday and what both sides are saying:

Where did the US hit?

CENTCOM said in a statement early on Thursday that US air strikes targeted Iranian command centres, air defence sites, missile and drone capabilities as well as coastal surveillance facilities.

Multiple locations were hit, CENTCOM said, including Bandar Abbas on Thursday.

An earlier wave of strikes late on Wednesday hit coastal defence and cruise missile sites on Greater Tunb Island in a 90-minute bombing wave, CENTCOM added. The small, strategically located island sits near the Strait of Hormuz and is believed to hold a naval base, although details are not publicly available. It is also believed to be a point from which the Iranian military has disrupted shipping routes.

Meanwhile, Iranian media reported attacks in Bandar Abbas, Qeshm Island, Sirik, Chabahar, Konarak, Rask, Khondab, Khorramabad and Semnan.

A hospital in Ahvaz was forced to evacuate 211 patients after reportedly being hit in the strikes.

Air defences were activated in Tehran and neighbouring Pakdasht and Parchin on Thursday.  The Iranian military said an MQ-9 drone was downed over the city of Andimeshk.

CENTCOM, in a separate statement on Thursday, said it was enforcing a naval blockade reimposed on Tuesday by disabling a “non-compliant” oil tanker that was attempting to sail towards Iran’s Kharg Island using Hellfire missiles.

How has Iran responded?

Iran’s army claimed retaliatory attacks on US military assets in Kuwait and Bahrain on Thursday.

Kuwait: The Iranian army said in a statement it targeted radar systems, the Patriot defence system and fuel tanks belonging to US forces at the Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait. In an earlier statement, it said it hit a radar and gathering point for US soldiers in Kuwait, as well as US communications systems and fuel depots in Jordan’s al-Azraq airbase.

Bahrain: Drones also targeted US Super Hawk radars and Patriot defence systems at the Sheikh Isa airbase in Bahrain, the army added.

Jordan: Meanwhile, Jordan said it intercepted eight Iranian missiles on Thursday.

Iraq: Iraqi authorities said five drones attacked the city of Erbil, with two crashing near a US base and one shot down near the US consulate. Iran’s army has not claimed the attacks.

What are both sides saying?

Iran’s parliament speaker and lead negotiator, Mohammad Ghalibaf, said on Wednesday Iran is prepared for a fuller military confrontation if the US does not live up to the terms of the interim deal. The country is fighting an “existential” battle, he added.

The IRGC has, meanwhile, threatened to halt all energy exports from the Middle East over the US’s naval blockade, which was reimposed on Tuesday.

“The export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone or for no one,” it said in a statement.

Speaking at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, President Donald Trump reiterated his claims that Iran was pushing to strike a peace deal behind the scenes but did not provide details.

“They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle. We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them, or we just finish it off,” he said.

However, in a rare show of gratitude on Wednesday, Trump thanked Iran via his Truth Social platform for the release of Dena Karari, an American citizen the US says was “wrongfully” jailed in the country since 2024.

Meanwhile, US Vice President JD Vance, in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan released on Wednesday, defended the war on Iran but added that an agreement was needed between the two sides to end the conflict.

Argentina players held up a banner declaring ‘Las Malvinas son Argentinas’ after beating England to reach the World Cup final. The message refers to the disputed Falkland Islands, reviving the sovereignty dispute and raising questions over FIFA’s ban on political displays.

US President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the nation’s top intelligence official, Jay Clayton, evaded directly stating that Trump lost the 2020 election. During his Senate confirmation hearing Clayton said only that Biden had been ‘certified’ as president, adding ‘I am not an election denier’.

Nightly strikes between the US and Iran have been the heaviest since the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreement was signed a month ago. A former US ambassador tells Al Jazeera’s ‘This is America’ that Tehran has miscalculated in thinking that Trump would back down.

Monitor ranks Toronto as having the worst air quality on earth, surpassing Kinshasa, DR Congo, and New Delhi, India.

Toronto’s air quality has ranked the worst among all major cities in the world as smoke from wildfires in northwestern Ontario blankets the skies and spreads into the northeastern United States, triggering multiple health warnings and evacuations.

Wildfires continued burning through sparsely populated areas hundreds of miles from Toronto, Canada’s largest city, on Wednesday, sending smoke over a wide area, although cities in the area are not being threatened.

Environment Canada reported an Air Quality Health Index reading of 10+, classified as “very high risk”, for Toronto. Forecasts suggested that hazardous conditions could persist through Thursday night.

IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company, ranked Toronto as having the worst air quality across the globe, surpassing the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Kinshasa and India’s New Delhi.

“The biggest contributor to Toronto’s spike in air pollution right now is wildfires, though the higher-than-average temperatures are also playing a role,” Armen Araradian of IQAir told the AFP news agency.

While this year’s wildfire season in Canada has been fairly muted compared with recent years, there are more than 800 active fires nationwide.

A video that went viral on social media showed a Canadian National train surrounded by fire near Armstrong, Ontario. Canadian National employees in the area and residents of Armstrong were evacuated on Monday night, the railroad operator said in a statement. It suspended rail operations near Armstrong as a precaution.

Smoke from the wildfires also worsened air quality across the border in the US, with the states of Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire particularly affected.

Authorities in New York City have issued an alert over unhealthy air quality, urging residents to reduce strenuous outdoor activity and take extra breaks if they are outside on Wednesday and Thursday.

The National Weather Service said smoke could linger until the end of the week.

“We probably haven’t seen the worst of it yet for New York City. We probably haven’t seen the worst of it yet for the Great Lakes and upstate, and New England yet either,” Dan Westervelt, Lamont associate research professor at Columbia University, told the Reuters news agency.

More than 80,000 people are expected to attend the FIFA World Cup final at an open-air stadium in New Jersey on Sunday, with another 50,000 planning to watch the game from New York City’s Central Park, where skies appeared hazy.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul urged people, especially those with health conditions, to exercise caution.

The Canadian government has said that wildfire season began more slowly this year than in 2023 or 2025 – the two worst seasons for wildfires – but warned that fires were likely, due to warmer-than-usual temperatures across the country.

It said some 835 active fires were burning across the country on Wednesday, with 112 considered out of control, and most in the central provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario.

They have burned 1.9 million hectares (4.7 million acres) so far.

Greg Evans, a professor of chemical engineering and applied chemistry at the University of Toronto, said the city had been simultaneously hit with severe heat and wildfire smoke.

“I expect that this will occur more frequently over the coming decades, so cities and residents need to prepare for this in the future,” he said.

United States President Donald Trump is promising “really big news” in a rare primetime address on Thursday night, though he won’t say exactly what it is.

The surprise speech was announced on Tuesday. But when pressed by reporters about what he planned to talk about, Trump only revealed that the speech would be about elections and “a couple of other things”.

“It doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country,” he told journalists in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

Asked to elaborate, Trump said he wanted to “save it” for the speech.

“We’ll be discussing other things, too,” he added. “It’s going to be a very big announcement.”

The White House has since confirmed that the address will focus on elections, including information related to the 2020 presidential election, which Trump has falsely claimed he won.

The speech is also expected to discuss what the White House describes as vulnerabilities in US voting machines.

Here’s what we know about the upcoming primetime presidential address.

When is Trump’s speech?

Trump is expected to speak from the White House on Thursday at 9pm US Eastern Time (01:00 GMT Friday).

How can you watch it?

Major US television networks are expected to carry the address live. The Trump administration has requested airtime from major broadcasters.

It will also be livestreamed on WhiteHouse.gov and on the White House’s YouTube page.

Why is the timing significant?

Trump’s speech comes three and a half months before the November 3 midterm elections.

At stake is control over the US Congress. Currently, Trump’s Republican Party holds slim majorities in both of Congress’s chambers.

But Democrats are seeking to tip the balance in their favour, leveraging backlash to Trump’s second term.

Critics fear Trump may use his primetime address to erode voter confidence in the upcoming elections, or to assert federal influence over election administration, which is run at the state and local level.

There is also speculation that Trump may be angling to fire up his base amid drooping poll numbers. The research firm YouGov suggested this month that more than 57 percent of US voters disapprove of the president’s second-term performance so far.

What is Trump expected to talk about?

So far, much remains unknown about Thursday’s speech.

Administration officials say Trump will discuss newly declassified intelligence connected to its investigations into the 2020 presidential election.

They have also suggested that Trump will discuss alleged vulnerabilities in voting machines that could allow foreign cyber intrusions.

Trump has revealed little else. When asked this week whether the speech would focus on voting machine integrity, he replied simply: “It will concern that subject.”

What happened in the 2020 elections?

Trump was a first-term incumbent when he ran for a second term in the 2020 presidential election.

He faced Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who had previously served as vice president under Barack Obama.

Biden defeated Trump, winning both the Electoral College vote – which determines the presidency – and the popular vote, an important symbolic metric.

The Democrat scooped up 306 Electoral College votes and more than 81 million individual ballots, compared with 232 Electoral College votes and 74 million ballots for Trump.

Critically, swing states like Georgia, Michigan and Arizona voted in Biden’s favour.

After the election, Trump repeatedly rejected the results, and his supporters attacked the US Capitol during the Electoral College certification on January 6, 2021.

What is Trump’s history of questioning US elections?

Trump has spent years casting doubt on the integrity of US elections, even before 2020.

Before the 2016 election, he refused to say whether he would accept a loss to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

After winning his first term in office, he created a presidential commission to investigate his claims that he lost the popular vote due to widespread fraud. The commission was disbanded after finding no evidence to support those claims.

After losing the 2020 election, Trump repeatedly alleged that the vote had been stolen despite numerous investigations finding no evidence to support those claims.

In Georgia, he urged the state’s secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes”, the number needed to overturn Biden’s victory there.

Trump and his allies later faced two indictments – one on the state level, one on the federal level – over allegations they attempted to overturn the 2020 election results.

The federal case was dropped when Trump was re-elected in 2024, in accordance with Department of Justice norms not to prosecute a sitting president.

The state-level case, meanwhile, fell apart after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified from prosecuting the case.

Trump, however, has continued to assert he was the rightful winner of the 2020 race, despite there being no evidence to support the claim.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a federal cybersecurity watchdog, has called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history”.

Investigations, including several by Trump allies, have produced no evidence that vote-machine rigging or foreign cyber intrusions changed the outcome.

What has the administration done lately to advance Trump’s 2020 claims?

In January, FBI agents descended upon Fulton County, Georgia, to execute a search warrant to collect election materials related to the 2020 race.

Officials in Fulton County, which contains the state capital, Atlanta, have protested against the search and called for the return of the confidential election materials.

They have also claimed they were not given an inventory of what was taken.

An FBI memo obtained by US media this month indicates the agency has diverted hundreds of agents to the case, which officials say is about “irregularities that occurred during the 2020 presidential election”.

Trump has called on Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, to declassify documents related to the 2020 vote.

What do Trump’s claims have to do with the midterms?

Trump appears to be ramping up his election fraud claims as the November midterms approach.

According to a review published by the Reuters news agency in May, Trump claimed the 2020 vote was stolen more than 107 times over the preceding six-month period.

Already, Trump has suggested that California’s primary vote in June was “rigged”.

Just last week, he invited defeated Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt to the White House after crediting Pratt’s loss to voter fraud. “What they did to that guy was unbelievable,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday.

Trump has expressed fear he could be impeached if his party does not retain control of Congress in the midterms. Major Democratic victories in the midterms could also stymie his legislative agenda for the final two years of his presidency.

What has Trump done to advance his election reform agenda?

Since returning to office in 2025, Trump has pushed to overhaul voting procedures.

Under the US Constitution, election administration falls to the states. It is not within the federal government’s control.

But critics say Trump is attempting to nationalise the election and tighten voter access.

Trump has championed election restrictions like those in the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require voters to produce in-person proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate or passport.

Already, non-citizens are barred from voting. But opponents argue that the SAVE America Act would present a hurdle to legal voters who do not have access to such documents. Many states allow voting with other forms of identification, like a state driver’s licence or a Social Security number.

Trump has also sought to limit the use of mail-in ballots through bills like the SAVE America Act and executive orders. But federal courts have repeatedly blocked his attempts.

In June, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that states can continue to count mail-in ballots after election day, so long as they are postmarked on or before that date.

Trump has also faced legal challenges against his attempts to compel states to hand over their voter rolls and create a national voter file. And he has threatened to withhold funds – including from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) – if states fail to comply with his demands.

Earlier this month, his administration issued letters to election officials nationwide, warning that they “could be criminally prosecuted” if there are instances of non-citizen voting.

But non-citizen voting is exceedingly rare, as is voter fraud overall.

How have Democrats responded to Thursday’s upcoming speech?

Democrats have warned against giving Trump airtime for his unsubstantiated claims.

“Trump is going to use a primetime address to stoke misleading claims about our elections in order to justify interfering in our midterms,” Senator Mark Warner wrote on social media on Wednesday.

“It’s on all of us to follow the facts and not accept his constant stream of misdirections and lies.”

Another senator, New Mexico’s Ben Ray Lujan, pointed to Trump’s second impeachment as evidence of his willingness to subvert elections.

“This is the same man who was impeached after inciting an insurrection to overturn the election,” Lujan said, calling Trump “corrupt”.

New Mexico says the withheld records are critical to its criminal investigation into alleged abuse at Epstein’s ranch.

The United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) has said it cannot provide the state of New Mexico with unredacted files pertaining to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In a social media post on Wednesday, it argued that doing so would violate existing law.

“Federal law, court orders, and privacy protections for victims and witnesses do not allow us to release millions of unredacted documents,” the department wrote.

The post came in response to pressure from New Mexico’s Department of Justice, led by state Attorney General Raul Torrez, a Democrat.

In a letter released to the public last week, Torrez accused the administration of President Donald Trump of obstructing his state’s investigation by refusing to release critical documents.

But the US Justice Department (USDOJ) pushed back in Wednesday’s post, claiming Torrez’s request fell outside its authority.

“We will continue to follow federal law and the court orders that are in place,” the Justice Department said. “To capitulate to their demands would be to break federal law. Is that what the [New Mexico attorney general] is suggesting?”

The Epstein scandal has been a pressure point for the Trump administration since the Republican leader began his second term in 2025.

Critics say the administration has fallen short of its commitment to transparency, with some speculating that officials may be shielding powerful figures featured in the Epstein files.

Trump himself was part of Epstein’s social circle. He has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.

Epstein is accused of directing a sex-trafficking ring whose victims number in the hundreds.

In 2019, during Trump’s first administration, federal prosecutors called on New Mexico to suspend its investigation into Epstein’s activities in the state to allow their own case to proceed.

Epstein, however, died that year while in jail. His death was deemed a suicide.

New Mexico reopened its investigation in February after the second Trump administration released millions of records under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

In his letter this month, Torrez explained that his office has spent more than five months seeking the unredacted federal records it needs to proceed with its probe.

But the office has yet to receive all the files it requested, Torrez said. He called the Justice Department’s actions a “deliberate choice not to cooperate”.

“Every day the USDOJ withholds these records, the case that could be brought on behalf of New Mexico survivors becomes more difficult to make,” Torrez wrote.

“Witnesses relocate and become unreachable, memories already strained by years of trauma and silence continue to fade, physical and documentary evidence degrades or is lost.”

New Mexico is examining allegations that women and girls were trafficked to Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, a sprawling property he owned south of Santa Fe from 1993 until his death.

Documents released by the US Justice Department in January include an unverified tip about videos of sexual abuse and the alleged burial of two foreign girls on the property.

Survivors like the late Virginia Giuffre have also made allegations about sexual assault and other crimes taking place on the ranch. State officials say those allegations were never fully investigated.

The dispute comes amid growing scrutiny of the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files.

The administration continues to face questions about whether it fully complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed in November.

It required the Justice Department to publish its Epstein-related records within 30 days, with limited redactions to protect victims.

Millions of files were eventually released, many with heavy redactions, while the identities of some victims were exposed.

Holders Argentina will face Spain in the final after snatching victory from England in ⁠a highly charged encounter.

Lautaro Martinez scored a 92nd-minute winner as Lionel Messi inspired World Cup holders Argentina to a stunning comeback to beat England 2-1 and set up a final with European football champions Spain.

England had been on course to reach their first FIFA World Cup final since 1966 after Anthony Gordon fired them into the lead 10 minutes into the second half of the semifinal in front of 68,239 fans in Atlanta on Wednesday.

The great rivalry between these nations has produced several memorable contests on the World Cup stage through the years, and this will be remembered as the stuff of legends in Argentina as the South Americans denied England with two late sucker punches.

Messi set up Enzo Fernandez to fire in an 85th-minute equaliser, and then, with extra time looming, crossed for substitute Lautaro Martinez to head in the winner in the second minute of stoppage time.

It was maybe not quite up there with Diego Maradona’s legendary display in putting England to the sword in 1986, but the goals this time brought Argentina back from the dead and kept alive their hopes of winning back-to-back World Cups.

No team has retained the trophy since Brazil in 1962, and now, Messi will become just the second player after Brazilian great Cafu to appear in three World Cup finals. Italy are the only other side to defend a World Cup crown.

The 2026 final will take place at New York New Jersey Stadium in New Jersey on Sunday, as the first 48-team World Cup boils down to a confrontation between the reigning champions of Europe and South America.

Messi had waited until the age of 39 to get the chance to play against England, and he will now face Spain for the first time in a competitive game.

His career appeared to be complete when he dragged Argentina to glory in 2022 in Qatar, but he is clearly not done yet.

England, though, will have huge regrets as they head to Miami to play France in Saturday’s third-place playoff, a game neither team will want to contest.

The prospect of a first World Cup final appearance since their sole triumph 60 years ago was a momentous one, and they were so close, but will live to regret sitting back after Gordon’s opener.

The key men for Thomas Tuchel’s side during this campaign have been Jude Bellingham and captain Harry Kane, yet they failed to deliver on this occasion, and England’s players slumped to the turf at full-time.

Lautaro winner

Given the deep-rooted rivalry between these nations, this was always likely to be a game with an edge, and there was a palpable sense of tension at Atlanta Stadium.

Argentina’s players were clearly fired up, partly by a determination to hold onto their World Cup crown but also by a sense of what this fixture means.

That translated into a niggly contest, pockmarked by fouls in the first half, including Elliot Anderson being booked for scything down Messi.

There were no real chances to speak of in the first half, but England struck in the 55th minute.

Kane was involved in the buildup as the ball eventually came to Morgan Rogers on the right, and he whipped in a low cross towards the back post where Gordon stole in front of Nahuel Molina to score.

But this was the stadium where Argentina produced a stunning comeback from 2-0 down to beat Egypt in the last 16, and they were not done.

They threw everything at their opponents, as Jordan Pickford made a great save from a Nico Gonzalez header, and Alexis Mac Allister was then denied by the post in the 76th minute.

Fernandez was denied from range by Pickford, but moments later, he equalised, controlling a Messi pass on the edge of the area and letting fly past the goalkeeper.

Argentina smelled blood, and Mac Allister again hit the post before England failed to clear, and Martinez headed in the winner from an exquisite Messi cross to spark chaotic scenes of celebration and leave England completely deflated.

Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, has declared that the country’s armed forces have “complete freedom of action” against the “enemy’s aggression”, after a day of attacks by the United States killed seven Iranian troops.

The attacks on Wednesday were the latest in days of escalating hostilities between Washington and Tehran that appear to have doomed an interim peace deal they agreed to on June 17.

The US announced several rounds of air strikes on Iran overnight on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, saying its forces hit military targets in Iranian coastal areas near the Strait of Hormuz and on the Greater Tunb island.

Iran’s army said one attack struck a barracks in Bampour in the country’s southeast, killing seven personnel from the 388th Brigade and injuring several others. It pledged to deliver “a decisive response… at the appropriate time”.

Iranian media also reported that an overnight US attack hit a wheat storage facility in the  western Khuzestan province, which the US military denied.

The US announced its latest wave of strikes on Wednesday had begun at 10:30pm Iranian time (19:00 GMT), as Iranian media reported explosions in or near Bandar Abbas, Chabahar and Ahvaz.

Earlier, the US military also said it had redirected two commercial vessels as part of a renewed blockade on Iranian ports, which it began enforcing the night before.

Return to negotiations ‘extremely difficult’

Tehran said the repeated waves of US attacks had voided the memorandum of understanding with Washington that had underpinned the fragile ceasefire. Ghalibaf said Iran was “in an essential and existential war with America” and had no reason to continue adhering to the terms of the peace agreement.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Iran had abandoned its commitments under the memorandum because the US had reneged on its side of the deal.

“Our commitments remain in effect only as long as the other side fulfils its pledges,” Baghaei said.

He said Tehran had no plans to engage in further talks with Washington and was focused solely on defending the country.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar said the latest escalation made a return to negotiations “extremely difficult”.

“There’s now a low-intensity war, new sanctions are back on Iran, and there’s a US blockade again,” Serdar said.

However, he said, “if the Americans commit to the articles of the memorandum of understanding, then the Iranians say they’re open to engaging diplomatically”.

Iran renews attacks on Gulf neighbours

On Wednesday morning, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it targeted the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain as part of a “crushing response”. It said it also targeted a major US military logistics hub in Mina Abdullah, Kuwait.

Kuwait’s Ministry of Defence said later on Wednesday that it had downed at least four cruise missiles and 21 drones from Iran throughout the day.

Jordan’s military said it had downed three missiles from Iran.

Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Jasem AlBudaiwi condemned the latest “treacherous” Iranian attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, saying they “reveal Iran’s determination to drag the region into further chaos and instability”.

Zeidon Alkinani, founding director of the Arab Perspectives Institute, said that Iran’s continuing attacks on its neighbours had tested the patience of Gulf states, who oppose the US-Israel war on Iran and have staunchly advocated for diplomacy.

“The patience within the Gulf and the view of Iran may fall apart very soon,” Alkinani told Al Jazeera.

Trump says Iran ‘better behave’

US President Donald Trump warned on Tuesday that US attacks against Iran would intensify if the country’s leaders did not return to negotiations, even threatening to “knock out” Iran’s power plants and bridges.

But Trump declined to give Iran a firm deadline when asked on Wednesday, saying: “I don’t ⁠like giving deadlines, but ⁠they pretty ⁠much know; they ⁠know the story… they better ‌behave.”

Ghalibaf said Iran was still balancing diplomacy with military action in pursuit of its national interest.

While Iran has “never welcomed war… we must always be prepared for battle and stand firm to protect our national security and interests”, Ghalibaf said.

“We must also use the tools of diplomacy and negotiation to achieve and solidify our national interests.”

Sheinbaum has denounced remarks from DEA head Terry Cole as a baseless ‘political statement’ about Mexico.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has rejected a claim from the head of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that there is a deadly connection between her government and the country’s influential criminal cartels.

During her daily news conference on Wednesday, Sheinbaum pushed back, saying the DEA’s remarks seemed “more ‌like a political statement than one backed by evidence”.

She added that the DEA should focus on combating drug trafficking, distribution and money laundering within its own country. The US, she pointed out, is the world’s largest market for illicit drugs.

Sheinbaum has repeatedly faced accusations under US President Donald Trump that her country is “run” by cartels.

Several Trump officials have mirrored that assertion. On Tuesday, for instance, DEA Administrator Terry Cole said ⁠the Mexican government and cartel networks were “one and the same”.

The Mexican government responded by saying Cole’s remarks did not reflect its efforts to work with the US to combat cartels.

It added that Mexico continues to be willing to collaborate with the US to combat crime, as long as its sovereignty was respected.

Since Trump took office for a second term, Sheinbaum has faced pressure from her northern neighbour to crack down on crime in her country.

In response, she has pledged close cooperation with the US, while pushing back against Trump’s militaristic approach to Latin America.

Her administration has repeatedly rejected the prospect of the US conducting military operations on its soil without the federal government’s consent.

Initially, Trump and Sheinbaum appeared to forge warm relations, with the US president praising his Mexican counterpart as “marvellous”.

But Sheinbaum has become increasingly vocal in her criticism of the Trump administration in recent months.

In April, for instance, she rebuked the US for issuing an indictment against ⁠Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha, amid allegations his campaign worked with the Sinaloa Cartel to violently influence the 2021 gubernatorial election.

Sheinbaum said no evidence had been produced to back the US’s claim against Rocha. She also argued that rooting out corruption was a domestic issue, not an international one.

Earlier this week, Mexico filed criminal complaints with US prosecutors over the deaths of ‌Mexican ‌nationals swept up in Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

Sheinbaum’s remarks on Wednesday came as the US Department of the Treasury announced that two more criminal organisations in Mexico — the Juarez Cartel and Los Viagras — had been designated “foreign terrorist ⁠organizations and specially ⁠designated global ⁠terrorists”.

The Trump administration has made such designations in the past, as it has sought to frame its actions in Latin America as a war on so-called “narco-terrorists”.

Thousands of Argentina fans held a banderazo in the streets of Atlanta ahead of their World Cup semi-final against England. The fan tradition transforms public spaces into celebrations before a major match.

Ali al-Zaidi met US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday as Iraq’s prime minister. He carried the title. The power was another matter.

Eleven weeks earlier, after months of paralysis, the Shia alliance which is known as the Coordination Framework had taken just 25 minutes to choose him. That sudden consensus was forged under intense pressure from Washington DC.

The United States Treasury had frozen Iraq’s dollar lifeline, the cash shipments that fly from New Jersey to the Central Bank of Iraq. Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister, and the top contender to return to the premiership had to abandon his plans because of Washington’s veto.

Al-Zaidi, a 40-year-old banker with no political base, was the man left standing.His lack of an established political base is part of his usefulness. He owes his position less to Baghdad’s ballot box than to the pressure exerted by Trump’s Treasury.The banker’s own ledger is not clear.

In 2024, Iraq’s Central Bank barred al-Zaidi’s own institution, Al-Janoob Islamic Bank, from US-dollar transactions as part of a wider crackdown intended to curb illicit dollar flows to Iran. He was never charged. Neither the bank nor the man is currently sanctioned. But the file exists. Its existence could give Washington another source of leverage should al-Zaidi drag his feet.

The real power in Baghdad now sits in one man’s portfolio. Tom Barrack holds three titles at once: ambassador to Turkiye, envoy to Syria, and now envoy to Iraq. His influence rests less on diplomacy than on Washington’s financial leverage over Baghdad. Iraq’s oil revenue sits in an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In April, Washington blocked a cash shipment of nearly $500m drawn from those revenues and suspended parts of its security cooperation. Oil funds roughly 90 percent of Iraq’s budget. Barrack does not need to threaten military force when the administration he represents can reach directly into the financial system on which the Iraqi state depends.

Washington’s demand that Iraq bring all armed factions under state control remains far from resolved. Shia Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr dissolved his Saraya al-Salam militia in late May. Other militias such as Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Imam Ali have announced steps towards handing over their weapons or placing them under fuller state control. That is real movement. But Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba, the two factions most tightly bound to Tehran, have rejected full disarmament. In their own words, their weapons are not for bargaining. Washington has answered in kind. US strikes killed dozens of Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) fighters this spring; the Treasury has sanctioned seven militia commanders by name. Baghdad has set September 30 as its disarmament deadline, the same date on which the remaining US forces are expected to leave Iraq. Whether the hardest factions bend by then remains the open question that Washington has yet to answer honestly.

Even Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s authority has limits here, as it always has. Al-Sistani’s 2014 fatwa built the PMF’s founding myth. But his call was for men to defend Iraq under the state’s command, not to form independent militias. The hardline factions never answered to Najaf. They answer to Tehran. al-Sistani’s own representative in Karbala has also pressed publicly for exclusive state control of weapons. His influence remains significant, but it has never extended to full control over these factions, and the current standoff is making that reality harder to ignore.

The prize Washington actually wants, however, lies underground. Chevron is negotiating an expanded role in Iraq’s oil sector, while other US companies are pursuing contracts in gas, electricity and export infrastructure. Baghdad wants production up from 4.5 million barrels a day to 7 million within three years, though doing so would require a substantially larger OPEC quota. Western Iraq’s gas reserves, largely untapped, could one day elevate the country into a dominant regional energy player and exporter. This is the potential bonanza al-Zaidi is being asked to unlock in exchange for the loyalty Washington is seeking.

Kurdistan’s place in this emerging arrangement is still unclear. Barrack has called the old Baghdad-Erbil federal model outright “Balkanization”, a structure he blames for letting Iran fill the vacuum. Yet the same envoy spent much of June pressing the prime minister of the Kurdish region, Masrour Barzani, to reactivate the Kurdistan parliament and form a new cabinet, not dissolve it. Read together, these positions suggest a clear message: Washington wants a functioning, cooperative Kurdistan region, firmly inside Washington’s orbit, not an autonomous wildcard and not a vassal of Baghdad’s sectarian blocs either.

Stripped of diplomatic varnish, Washington’s vision for Iraq is this: no militias operating outside the state; no Iranian veto over Iraqi policy; no single sect running the table from Baghdad; a Western economic orientation locked in by contracts, not sentiment; American energy firms as the primary beneficiaries; and a prime minister who answers, in practice, to Tom Barrack before he answers to his own parliament. Whether Iraq is pressured towards the Abraham Accords, whether the old nationalist and Ba’athist-adjacent currents find any oxygen again, whether sectarian parties actually lose their seats at the ballot box, these remain predictions, not settled facts.

What is clear is simpler and starker. Iraq spent two decades as the ground on which Iran and America fought indirectly, through proxies and sanctions. It is now becoming something else: a state whose oil, banking system and militias are all being renegotiated at once under intense US pressure. At the centre of this transformation is a banker-premier chosen in twenty-five minutes and now expected to deliver by September 30.

The Gulf model, from Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to Manama, Kuwait, Doha and Muscat, took decades to lock in. Trump’s Washington wants to compress Iraq’s version into a single presidential term. Whether Baghdad survives that compression intact, or merely changes which capital it answers to, is the question al-Zaidi’s visit left unresolved.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.