US & Canada

Tehran, Iran – Iran is “not in a hurry” to resume talks with the United States over its nuclear programme, Tehran’s foreign minister has told Al Jazeera.

Iran remains prepared to engage in indirect negotiations with Washington if the US chooses to talk “from an equal position based on mutual interest”, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Al Jazeera Arabic in an interview at his office in Tehran that was broadcast on Sunday.

The official also asserted that a critical “shared understanding” regarding Israel is developing across the region.

Tehran’s top diplomat said conditions set by the US for talks to resume – which reportedly include an emphasis on direct negotiations, zero uranium enrichment, and limits on Iran’s missile stocks and its support for regional allies – are “illogical and unfair”.

That makes talks untenable, he suggested.

“It appears they are not in a hurry,” he remarked. “We are not in a hurry, either.”

Araghchi’s insistence comes despite the pressure from reimposed United Nations sanctions and other challenges facing the Iranian establishment.

Rather, the foreign minister said he believes regional dynamics are turning against Israel, the US’s closest ally in the Middle East.

“I sometimes tell my friends that Mr Netanyahu is a war criminal who has committed every atrocity, but did something positive in proving to the entire region that Israel is the main enemy, not Iran, and not any other country,” Araghchi said in reference to the Israeli prime minister.

The comments came two days after Oman’s chief diplomat, for the first time, publicly joined the chorus of disapproval aimed at Netanyahu and his hardline government.

“We have long known that Israel, not Iran, is the primary source of insecurity in the region,” Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad al-Busaidi told the audience at the IISS Manama Dialogue 2025 regional forum.

He said over the years, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has “at best sat back and permitted the isolation of Iran”, a stance that he believes “needs to change”.

In the past 48 hours, the heinous lie that the unlawful Israeli and U.S. bombing of Iran was motivated by an imminent nuclear threat has been thoroughly debunked by

– The International Atomic Energy Agency Chief, who has explicitly stated that Iran “is not and was not”… pic.twitter.com/C2uBzBLOHD

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) November 2, 2025

Oman has for years acted as a mediator between Iran and the US in nuclear, financial, prisoner exchange and other regional issues.

Tehran and Washington were slated to sit down for a sixth round of talks in mid-June, when Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities. That launched a 12-day war that killed more than 1,000 people in Iran and inflicted billions of dollars in infrastructure damage.

After media reports last week said the administration of US President Donald Trump had sent a new message to Tehran via Oman, Iran’s government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani confirmed that messages had been received.

But she did not elaborate on the content or Iran’s potential response. The White House has not publicly confirmed sending the missive.

During his interview, Araghchi said “almost all” of the about 400kg (880lb) of 60-percent enriched uranium possessed by Iran is “buried under the rubble” of nuclear facilities bombed by the US and Israel.

“We have no intention of removing them from under the rubble until conditions are ready. We have no information on how much of the 400kg is untouched and how much is destroyed, and we will have no information until we dig them out,” he said.

The Iranian foreign minister pointed out that China and Russia have formally announced they do not recognise the UN sanctions recently reimposed against Iran by the European signatories to its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

France, the United Kingdom and Germany have signalled they want to restart talks with Tehran. However, no substantial progress has been made.

In the meantime, they have imposed sanctions and restrictions, both in relation to Iran’s alleged drone exports to Russia and its nuclear programme.

The three European powers in September announced they were suspending their bilateral air services agreements with Iran, affecting Iranian carriers like Iran Air.

Some of the flights appear to be gradually coming back, though, with Iranian state television airing footage of an Austrian Airlines flight landing in Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport on Sunday night.

Germany’s Lufthansa is also scheduled to resume flights to Tehran, but the precise restart date has not been publicly announced.

The US president sent mixed signals over his plans for Venezuela as his military build-up in the Caribbean continues.

President Donald Trump has sent mixed signals over the potential for a United States military intervention in Venezuela, as he dismissed talk of “war” but threatened the South American country’s leader.

During a CBS interview, released on Sunday, the president warned that President Nicholas Maduro’s days are numbered. The comment came amid a build-up of US military units in the Caribbean, where the US has conducted multiple strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels that UN officials and scholars say are in clear violation of US and international law.

Asked if the US was going to war against Venezuela, Trump replied: “I doubt it. I don’t think so.”

However, when asked if Maduro’s days as president were numbered, the president replied: “I would say yeah. I think so.”

US media outlets have reported that Washington is planning strikes on military installations in Venezuela as part of its war against “narco-terrorism”.

Trump appeared to deny that he is planning attacks inside Venezuela, although he did not rule the idea out completely.

“I wouldn’t be inclined to say that I would do that,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you what I’m going to do with Venezuela.”

Maduro, who faces indictment in the US on drug trafficking charges, has accused Washington of using a drug offensive as a pretext for “imposing regime change” in Caracas to seize Venezuelan oil.

The US military has carried out more than a dozen strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific in recent weeks, killing at least 65 people. The campaign has prompted criticism from governments across the region.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk and rights groups say the attacks, which began in early September, amount to “extrajudicial killings” even if they target known traffickers.

Washington has yet to make public any evidence that its targets were smuggling narcotics or posed a threat to the US.

China has frequently accused the Philippines of acting as a ‘troublemaker’ and ‘saboteur of regional stability’.

The Philippines and Canada have signed a defence pact to expand joint military drills and deepen security cooperation in a move widely seen as a response to China’s growing assertiveness in the region, most notably in the disputed South China Sea.

Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr and Canadian Defence Minister David McGuinty inked the Status of Visiting Forces Agreement (SOVFA) on Sunday after a closed-door meeting in Manila.

McGuinty said the deal would strengthen joint training, information sharing, and coordination during humanitarian crises and natural disasters.

Teodoro described the pact as vital for upholding what he called a rules-based international order in the Asia-Pacific, where he accused China of expansionism. “Who is hegemonic? Who wants to expand their territory in the world? China,” he told reporters.

The agreement provides the legal framework for Canadian troops to take part in military exercises in the Philippines and vice versa. It mirrors similar accords Manila has signed with the United States, Australia, Japan and New Zealand.

China has not yet commented on the deal, but it has frequently accused the Philippines of being a “troublemaker” and “saboteur of regional stability” after joint patrols and military exercises with its Western allies in the South China Sea.

Beijing claims almost the entire waterway, a vital global shipping lane, thereby ignoring a 2016 international tribunal ruling that dismissed its territorial claims as unlawful. Chinese coastguard vessels have repeatedly used water cannon and blocking tactics against Philippine ships, leading to collisions and injuries.

Teodoro used a regional defence ministers meeting in Malaysia over the weekend to condemn China’s declaration of a “nature reserve” around the contested Scarborough Shoal, which Manila also claims.

“This, to us, is a veiled attempt to wield military might and the threat of force, undermining the rights of smaller countries and their citizens who rely on the bounty of these waters,” he said.

Talks are under way by the Philippines for similar defence agreements with France, Singapore, Britain, Germany and India as Manila continues to fortify its defence partnerships amid rising tensions with Beijing.

As inequality deepens and dissent is punished, many are looking to new voices like Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist running for New York City mayor on a platform of rent freezes, free public transit, and taxing the rich. Can candidates like him revive the Democratic Party in the United States, or is real reform from within impossible?

This week on UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks with journalist and former Bernie Sanders Press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray.

The United States and China have declared a truce in the trade war launched by US President Donald Trump in April, argues Evan Medeiros, former US National Security Council director for China.

Medeiros tells host Steve Clemons that the deal reached between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump resolves the urgent trade issues between the two sides – tariff rates, soya beans and rare earth minerals – but China “remains committed to ensuring that Russia doesn’t lose” in Ukraine.

The US has more than 200,000 soldiers surrounding China, Medeiros adds, but Washington knows that “nobody wants to choose between the US and China.”

This major investigative documentary examines the facts surrounding the murder of Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, as she was reporting in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, in May 2022.

It sets out to discover who killed her – and after months of painstaking research, succeeds in identifying the Israeli sniper who pulled the trigger.

It gets through the smokescreens of both the Israeli and US governments and reveals how the close political relationship between them frustrated efforts to obtain justice at the time.

Through interviews with an Israeli former national security adviser, a former deputy assistant US secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, Israeli soldiers and Shireen’s colleagues and family, the film challenges official versions of events – and, in doing so, highlights issues of accountability, press freedom and the geopolitical dynamics surrounding the case, particularly in the light of the Israeli killing of Anas al-Sharif and four of his Al Jazeera colleagues in Gaza in August 2025.

Many people remain unaccounted for while camps and towns surrounding el-Fasher are overwhelmed too.

Millions of people across war-ravaged Sudan, particularly its western parts, remain in dire need of humanitarian aid as key generals show no intention of ending the civil war amid ongoing violence and killings in North Darfur’s el-Fasher.

International aid agencies called on Sunday on the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to facilitate increased entry of aid while a roadmap by mediators has failed to produce a ceasefire so far.

A week after the paramilitary force seized el-Fasher, the state capital of North Darfur, after an 18-month siege and starvation campaign, the situation remains catastrophic.

Tens of thousands of civilians are still believed to be trapped in the final major city in the western region of Darfur to fall to the RSF while thousands more are unaccounted for after fleeing el-Fasher.

Only a fraction of those who fled on foot from el-Fasher have made it to Tawila, a town roughly 50km (30 miles) away.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Tawila, an official with a France-based aid agency said only a few hundred more people have turned up in the town over the past few days.

“Those are very small numbers considering the number of people who were stuck in el-Fasher. We keep hearing feedback that people are stuck on the roads and in different villages that are unfortunately still inaccessible due to security reasons,” said Caroline Bouvard, Sudan country director for Solidarites International.

Bouvard said there is a “complete blackout” in terms of information coming out of el-Fasher after the RSF takeover and aid agencies are getting their information from surrounding areas where up to 15,000 people are believed to be stuck.

“There’s a strong request for advocacy with the different parties to ensure that humanitarian aid can reach these people or that at least we can send in trucks to bring them back to Tawila.”

Many of the people who have managed to survive numerous RSF checkpoints and patrols to reach Tawila have reported seeing mass executions, torture, beatings and sexual violence. Some were abducted by armed men and forced to pay a ransom on pain of death.

Many more have been forcibly displaced to the al-Dabbah refugee camp in Sudan’s Northern State. Some have been there for weeks.

Reporting from the camp, Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan said over the past few days, more displaced people have poured in from el-Fasher, exacerbating the humanitarian situation.

People are in need of food, clean water, medication and shelter as many are sleeping out in the open. Thousands more could turn to the camp as well as other surrounding areas over the coming days as people flee the slaughter by RSF fighters.

The United States, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Egypt, as mediators, have all condemned the mass killings and called for increased humanitarian assistance.

“The RSF must stop engaging in retribution and ethnic violence; the tragedy in El Geneina must not be repeated,” the US Department of State said in a statement on Saturday in reference to the massacre of Masalit people in West Darfur’s capital.

“There isn’t a viable military solution, and external military support only prolongs the conflict. The United States urges both parties to pursue a negotiated path to end the suffering of the Sudanese people,” it said in a post on X.

US lawmakers have also called for action from Washington in the aftermath of the el-Fasher takeover by the RSF.

Republican Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Friday called for the US to officially designate the RSF as a “foreign terrorist organisation”.

Nigeria’s presidential spokesperson welcomes US assistance ‘as long as it recognises our territorial integrity’.

Nigeria says it would welcome assistance from the United States in fighting armed groups as long as its territorial integrity is respected after US President Donald Trump threatened military action in the West African country over what he claimed was persecution of Christians there.

In a social media post on Saturday, Trump said  he had asked the Department of Defense to prepare for possible “fast” military action in Nigeria if Africa’s most populous country fails to crack down on the “killing of Christians”.

A spokesperson for Nigeria’s presidency, Daniel Bwala, told the Reuters news agency on Sunday that the country would “welcome US assistance as long as it recognises our territorial integrity”.

“I am sure by the time these two leaders meet and sit, there would be better outcomes in our joint resolve to fight terrorism,” Bwala added.

In his post, Trump said the US would immediately cut off all assistance to the country “if the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians”.

Earlier, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu pushed back against claims of religious intolerance and defended his country’s efforts to protect religious freedom.

“Since 2023, our administration has maintained an open and active engagement with Christian and Muslim leaders alike and continues to address security challenges which affect citizens across faiths and regions,” Tinubu said in a statement.

“The characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians.”

Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people, is divided between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south.

Armed groups have been engaged in a conflict that has been largely confined to the northeast of the country and has dragged on for more than 15 years. Analysts said that while Christians have been killed, most of the victims have been Muslims.

‘No Christian genocide’

While human rights groups have urged the government to do more to address unrest in the country, which has experienced deadly attacks by Boko Haram and other armed groups, experts say claims of a “Christian genocide” are false and simplistic.

“All the data reveals is that there is no Christian genocide going on in Nigeria,” Bulama Bukarti, a Nigerian humanitarian lawyer and analyst on conflict and development, told Al Jazeera. This is “a dangerous far-right narrative that has been simmering for a long time that President Trump is amplifying today”.

“It is divisive, and it is only going to further increase instability in Nigeria,” Bukarti added, explaining that armed groups in Nigeria have been targeting both Muslims and Christians.

“They bomb markets. They bomb churches. They bomb mosques, and they attack every civilian location they find. They do not discriminate between Muslims and Christians.”

Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow of Africa studies at the Washington, DC-based Council on Foreign Relations, agreed and said the Trump administration should work with Nigerian authorities to address the “common enemy”.

“This is precisely the moment when Nigeria needs assistance, especially military assistance,” Obadare said. “The wrong thing to do is to invade Nigeria and override the authorities or the authority of the Nigerian government. Doing that will be counterproductive.”

Police in Evanston, Illinois, are investigating a violent arrest by a Customs and Border Protection agent who repeatedly punched a man’s head against the road. It happened after the agent’s vehicle was rear-ended, and a hostile crowd formed telling federal officers to leave, who responded with pepper spray and pointing their guns at protesters.

It’s unclear whether the man being punched was the driver behind the collision or part of a crowd that formed to pressure federal officers to leave. The incident sparked outrage from local leaders and renewed tensions over federal immigration enforcement in the Chicago area.

Will Smith’s 11th-inning home run allows LA Dodgers to win Game 7 against Toronto Blue Jays and record seventh World Series title in franchise history.

Will Smith homered in the 11th inning after Miguel Rojas connected for a tying drive in the ninth, and the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 in Game 7 on Saturday night to become the first team in a quarter century to win consecutive Major League Baseball (MLB) World Series titles.

Los Angeles overcame 3-0 and 4-2 deficits and escaped a bases-loaded jam in the ninth to become the first repeat champion since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees, and the first from the National League since the 1975 and ’76 Cincinnati Reds.

Smith hit a 2-0 slider off Shane Bieber into the Blue Jays’ bullpen, giving the Dodgers their first lead of the night.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who threw 96 pitches in the Dodgers’ win on Friday, escaped a bases-loaded jam in the ninth and pitched 2 2/3 innings for his third win of the Series.

He gave up a leadoff double in the 11th to Vladimir Guerrero Jr, who was sacrificed to third. Addison Barger walked, and Alejandro Kirk grounded to shortstop Mookie Betts, who started a title-winning 6-4-3 double play.

Dodgers rally to win Game 7

With their ninth title and third in six years, the Dodgers made an argument for their 2020s teams to be considered a dynasty. Dave Roberts, their manager since 2016, boosted the probability that he will gain induction to the Hall of Fame.

Bo Bichette put Toronto ahead in the third with a three-run homer off two-way star Shohei Ohtani, who was pitching on three days’ rest after taking the loss in Game 3.

Los Angeles closed to 3-2 on sacrifice flies from Teoscar Hernandez in the fourth off Max Scherzer and Tommy Edman in the sixth against Chris Bassitt.

Andres Gimenez restored Toronto’s two-run lead with an RBI double in the sixth off Tyler Glasnow, who relieved after getting the final three outs on three pitches to save Game 6 on Friday.

Max Muncy’s eighth-inning homer off star rookie Trey Yesavage cut the Dodgers’ deficit to one run, and Rojas, inserted into the lineup in Game 6 to provide some energy, homered on a full-count slider from Jeff Hoffman.

Toronto put two on with one out in the bottom half against Blake Snell, and Los Angeles turned to Yamamoto.

He hit Alejandro Kirk on a hand with a pitch, loading the bases and prompting the Dodgers to play the infield in and the outfield shallow. Daulton Varsho grounded to second, where Rojas stumbled but managed to throw home for a force-out as catcher Smith kept his foot on the plate.

Ernie Clement then flied out to Andy Pages, who made a jumping, backhand catch on the centre-field warning track as he crashed into left fielder Kike Hernandez.

Seranthony Dominguez walked Mookie Betts with one out in the 10th, and Muncy singled for his third hit. Hernandez walked, loading the bases. Pages grounded to shortstop, where Gimenez threw home for a force-out. First baseman Guerrero then threw to pitcher Seranthony Dominguez covering first, just beating Hernandez in a call upheld in a video review.

The epic night matched the Marlins’ 3-2 win over Cleveland in 1997 as the second-longest Series Game 7, behind only the Washington Senators’ 4-3 victory against the New York Giants in 1924.

Al-Sharaa’s trip, planned for November 10, will be first-ever visit by a Syrian president to the White House.

United States President Donald Trump will host Syria’s interim leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, for talks on November 10, according to Washington’s envoy to Damascus, in what would mark the first-ever visit by a Syrian president to the US capital.

Tom Barrack, the US envoy to Syria, told the Axios newspaper on Saturday that al-Sharaa is expected to sign an agreement to join an international US-led alliance against the ISIL (ISIS) group during his visit.

The Reuters news agency also cited a Syrian source familiar with the matter as saying that the trip was expected to take place within the next two weeks.

According to the US State Department’s historical list of foreign leader visits, no previous Syrian president has paid an official visit to Washington.

Al-Sharaa, who seized power from Bashar al-Assad last December, has been seeking to re-establish Syria’s ties with world powers that had shunned Damascus during al-Assad’s rule.

He met with Trump in Saudi Arabia in May, in what was the first encounter between the two nations’ leaders in 25 years.

The meeting, on the sidelines of Trump’s get-together with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, was seen as a major turn of events for a Syria that is still adjusting to life after the more than 50-year rule of the Assad family.

Al-Sharaa also addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September.

Barrack, the US envoy to Syria, told reporters on the sidelines of the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain that Washington was aiming to recruit Damascus to join the coalition the US has led since 2014 to fight against ISIL, the armed group that controlled about a third of Syria and Iraq at its peak, between 2014 and 2017.

“We are trying to get everybody to be a partner in this alliance, which is huge for them,” Barrack said.

Al-Sharaa once led Syria’s offshoot of al-Qaeda, but a decade ago, his anti-Assad rebel group broke away from the network founded by Osama bin Laden, and later clashed with ISIL.

Al-Sharaa once had a $10m US reward on his head.

Al-Sharaa, also referred to as Abu Mohammed al-Julani, had joined fighters battling US forces in Iraq before entering the Syrian war. He was even imprisoned by US troops there for several years.

The US-led coalition and its local partners drove ISIL from its last stronghold in Syria in 2019.

Al-Sharaa’s planned visit to Washington comes as Trump is urging Middle East allies to seize the moment to build a durable peace in the volatile region after Israel and Hamas earlier this month began implementing a ceasefire and captives’ deal. That agreement aims to bring about a permanent end to Israel’s brutal two-year war in Gaza.

The fragile ceasefire and captive release deal continues to hold, but the situation remains precarious.

Israeli strikes in Gaza earlier this week killed 104 people, including dozens of women and children, the enclave’s health authorities said. The strikes, the deadliest since the ceasefire began on October 10, marked the most serious challenge to the tenuous truce to date.

Meanwhile, Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli air strikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.

Barrack told the Manama Dialogue earlier that Syria and Israel continued to hold de-escalation talks, which the US has been mediating.

He told reporters that Syria and Israel were close to reaching an agreement, but declined to say when exactly a deal could be reached.

Israel and Syria have been Middle East adversaries for decades.

Despite the overthrow of al-Assad last December, territorial disputes and deep-seated political mistrust between the two countries remain.

Canadian PM says anti-tariff ad featuring Ronald Reagan ‘offended’ Trump, who has since cut off trade talks with Canada.

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney says he apologised to Donald Trump over an anti-tariff advertisement that has drawn the United States president’s ire and disrupted trade talks between the two countries.

During a news conference in South Korea at the end of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on Saturday, Carney stressed that he is responsible for negotiating Canada’s ties with its largest trading partner.

“I did apologise to the president. The president was offended,” the prime minister said of the advertisement, which was produced by the Canadian province of Ontario.

“I’m the one who’s responsible, in my role as prime minister, for our relationship with the president of the United States, and the federal government is responsible for the foreign relationship with the US government,” Carney added.

“So, things happen – we take the good with the bad – and I apologised.”

The US-Canada relationship has deteriorated over the past year amid Trump’s global tariffs push, which saw him impose steep duties on his country’s northern neighbour.

Ontario’s commercial, which featured a 1980s speech by former US President Ronald Reagan in which Reagan said tariffs can lead to “fierce trade wars” and unemployment, worsened that already tense situation.

The Trump administration suspended trade talks with Canada over the advertisement, which Washington has claimed misrepresented Reagan’s views and sought to unfairly influence a looming US Supreme Court decision on Trump’s tariff policy.

Last weekend, the US government also announced an additional 10 percent levy on Canadian goods after the commercial was not immediately pulled from broadcasts in the US.

On Friday, Trump told reporters that he did not plan to resume trade negotiations with Canada despite getting an apology from Carney.

“I have a very good relationship, I like him a lot – but you know, what they did was wrong,” the US president said.

“He [Carney] was very nice, he apologised for what they did with the commercial because it was a false commercial. It was the exact opposite; Ronald Reagan loved tariffs and they tried to make it look the other way.”

The Ontario commercial used real excerpts of Reagan’s speech, but the statements were presented in a different order than how they were originally delivered.

The US and Canada, which share the world’s longest land border, traded $761.8bn worth of goods last year, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative.

Los Angeles Dodgers send the World Series to a decisive seventh game after defeating Toronto Blue Jays in Canada.

The Los Angeles Dodgers kept alive on Friday their hopes of becoming Major League Baseball’s (MLB) first repeat champion in 25 years, with a 3-1 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays that pushed the World Series to a decisive seventh game.

With their backs against the wall and facing elimination for the first time this postseason, a Dodgers team that had no room for error got six solid innings from starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto while Mookie Betts and Will Smith provided the offence.

Toronto thought they tied the game on an inside-the-park homerun in the ninth on a bizarre play, when the ball was lodged at the bottom of the outfield fence where Dodgers outfielder Justin Dean immediately raised his hands to rule the play dead.

A video review went the Dodgers’ way and determined it was a ground rule double, which left Toronto with runners on second and third with not outs.

Ernie Clement then hit an infield pop and Andres Gimenez lined out to left before Kike Hernandez turned the double play when he fired the ball to second base to get Addison Barger out and end the game.

The Dodgers victory put on hold, for one day at least, a coast-to-coast party in Canada, where fans of the lone MLB club are desperate to celebrate the Blue Jays’ first World Series triumph in 32 years.

Dodgers’ season on the line in Game 6

As they were at the start of the season, the Dodgers came into the World Series as an overwhelming favourite and with few expecting the Blue Jays to produce much of a challenge and even fewer calling for it to go the distance.

With their season on the line, Los Angeles opened the scoring in the third on a run-scoring double by Smith, before Betts singled in a pair of runs to put Los Angeles ahead 3-0.

Barger led off the bottom half of the third with a double before scoring on a George Springer single to get the Blue Jays within two.

The Dodgers’ starting rotation had been the team’s strength this postseason, but the Blue Jays picked it apart en route to grabbing a 3-2 lead in the World Series before Yamamoto once again took matters into his own hands.

The Japanese ace, who threw complete-game gems in his previous two starts, struck out six batters and allowed one run on five hits across six innings before the Dodgers turned to a bullpen that has been their weak link all season.

The Blue Jays threatened in the eighth when they got runners on first and second with one out before Roki Sasaki retired Bo Bichette and Daulton Varsho grounded out to end the inning, before once again getting close in the ninth.

Play was temporarily disrupted in the sixth inning when a spectator scaled the outfield wall and stormed the field with a United States flag before he was promptly taken down by security guards and escorted away.

Game 7 will be played on Saturday in Toronto.

Reporters blocked from key White House area without prior approval, citing structural changes and security concerns.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration has barred reporters from accessing part of the White House press office without an appointment, citing the need to protect “sensitive material”.

In a memorandum on Friday to White House Communications Director Steven Cheung and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, the National Security Council (NSC) said journalists were “no longer permitted” to visit a section where Leavitt’s office is located, “without prior approval in the form of an appointment”.

The National Security Council said the change was made because structural changes to the NSC meant White House communications officials are now “routinely engaging with sensitive material”.

“In order to protect such material, and maintain coordination between National Security Council Staff and White House Communications Staff, members of the press are no longer permitted to access Room 140 without prior approval in the form of an appointment with an authorized White House Staff Member,” the memo said.

The White House move follows restrictions put in place earlier this month for reporters at the Department of Defense, a move that prompted dozens of journalists to vacate their offices in the Pentagon and return their credentials.

Previously, credentialed White House journalists could access Room 140, which is a short hallway from the Oval Office known as “Upper Press”, on short notice to speak with Leavitt, her deputy Cheung and other senior officials.

The White House Correspondents Association, which represents journalists covering the White House, could not be reached for immediate comment.

The Trump administration removed Reuters, The Associated Press and Bloomberg News from the permanent “pool” of reporters covering the president months ago, although it allows those outlets to participate on a sporadic basis.

Friday’s announcement comes weeks after the crackdown on press access by the Defense Department, which now requires news outlets to sign a new policy or lose access to press credentials and Pentagon workspaces.

At least 30 news organisations declined to agree to the Pentagon restrictions, citing a threat to press freedoms and their ability to conduct independent newsgathering.

The Pentagon policy requires journalists to acknowledge new rules on press access, including that they could be branded security risks and have their Pentagon press badges revoked if they ask department employees to disclose classified or certain unclassified information.

President Donald Trump has thrown himself into the ongoing debate over the United States government shutdown, calling on the Senate to scrap the filibuster and reopen the government.

But that idea was swiftly rejected on Friday by Republican leaders who have long opposed such a move.

The filibuster refers to a Senate rule that requires 60 votes to overcome objections. Currently, that rule gives the minority Democrats a check on Republican power in the Senate.

In the chamber that’s currently split 53 to 47, Democrats have had enough votes to keep the government closed while they demand an extension of healthcare subsidies. Yet, neither party has seriously wanted to nuke the rule.

“THE CHOICE IS CLEAR – INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER,” Trump said in a late-night social media post Thursday.

Trump’s sudden decision to assert himself in the now 31-day-long shutdown – with his highly charged demand to end the filibuster – is certain to set the Senate on edge. It could spur senators towards their own compromise or send the chamber spiralling towards a new sense of crisis. Or, it might be ignored.

Republican leaders responded quickly, and unequivocally, setting themselves at odds with Trump, a president few have dared to publicly counter.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said he is not considering changing the rules to end the shutdown, arguing that it is vital to the institution of the Senate and has allowed Republicans to halt Democratic policies when they are in the minority.

The leader’s “position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged”, Thune spokesman Ryan Wrasse said Friday.

A spokeswoman for Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, the number-two Republican, said his position opposing a filibuster change also remains unchanged.

And former Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who firmly opposed Trump’s filibuster pleas in his first term, remains in the Senate.

House Speaker Mike Johnson also defended the filibuster Friday, while conceding “it’s not my call” from his chamber across the Capitol.

“The safeguard in the Senate has always been the filibuster,” Johnson said, adding that Trump’s comments are a reflection of “the president’s anger at the situation”.

Even if Thune wanted to change the filibuster, he would not currently have the votes to do so in the divided Senate.

“The filibuster forces us to find common ground in the Senate,” Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah posted on the social media platform X on Friday morning, responding to Trump’s comments. “Power changes hands, but principles shouldn’t. I’m a firm no on eliminating it.”

Debate has swirled around the legislative filibuster for years. Many Democrats pushed to eliminate it when they had full power in Washington, as the Republicans do now, four years ago.

But ultimately, enough Democratic senators opposed the move, predicting such an action would come back to haunt them.

Trump’s demand comes as he has declined to engage with Democratic leaders on ways to end the shutdown, on track to become the longest in history.

He said in his post that he gave a “great deal” of thought to his choice on his flight home from Asia, and that one question that kept coming up during his trip was why “powerful Republicans allow” the Democrats to shut down parts of the government.

But later Friday, he did not mention the filibuster again as he spoke to reporters departing Washington and arriving in Florida for a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago home.

While quiet talks are under way, particularly among bipartisan senators, Trump has not been seriously involved.

Democrats refuse to vote to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate an extension to the healthcare subsidies. The Republicans say they won’t negotiate until the government is reopened.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on CNN that Trump needs to start negotiating with Democrats, arguing the president has spent more time with global leaders than dealing with the shutdown back home.

From coast to coast, fallout from the dysfunction of the shuttered federal government is hitting home. SNAP food aid is scheduled to shut off. Flights are being delayed. Workers are going without paychecks.

And Americans are getting a first glimpse of the skyrocketing healthcare insurance costs that are at the centre of the deadlock.

“People are stressing,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as food options in her state grow scarce. “We are well past time to have this behind us.”

United States President Donald Trump has announced that Nigeria will be placed on a watchlist for religious freedom, based on vague claims that Christians in the country are being “slaughtered” by Muslims.

In a social media post on Friday, Trump explained that the African nation would be added to a Department of State list of “Countries of Particular Concern”.

“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria,” Trump wrote. “Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. I am hereby making Nigeria a ‘COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN’.”

The Nigerian government has denied such allegations in the past. But critics warn that designating Nigeria a “country of particular concern” could pave the way for future sanctions.

Trump also appears to have bypassed the normal procedure for such matters.

The 1998 International Religious Freedom Act created the category of “country of particular concern” in order to help monitor religious persecution and advocate for its end.

But that label is usually assigned at the recommendation of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom – a bipartisan group established by Congress – and specialists in the State Department.

In Friday’s post, Trump explained that he had asked the House Appropriations Committee and two congressmen, Representatives Riley Moore and Tom Cole, to “immediately look into this matter”. Both are Republican.

Trump’s claims appear to mirror language pushed by right-wing lawmakers, which frames fractious and sometimes violent disputes in Nigeria as a case of radical Islamists attacking Christians.

Experts, however, have called that framing largely inaccurate, explaining that strife in the country is not explained simply by religious differences.

Nigeria is divided between a majority-Muslim north and a largely Christian south. The country has struggled with violent attacks from the group Boko Haram, which has created turmoil and displacement for more than a decade.

Disputes over resources such as water have also exacerbated tensions and sometimes led to violent clashes between largely Christian farmers and largely Muslim shepherds. Nigeria has denied, however, that such clashes are primarily motivated by religious affiliation.

Still, Representative Moore echoed Trump’s assessment in a statement after Friday’s announcement.

“I have been calling for this designation since my first floor speech in April, where I highlighted the plight of Christians in Muslim majority countries,” Moore said.

He added that he planned to “ensure that Nigeria receives the international attention, pressure, and accountability it urgently needs”.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, another Republican, also applauded Trump’s decision. “I am deeply gratified to President Trump for making this determination,” he said in a news release. “I have fought for years to counter the slaughter and persecution of Christians in Nigeria.”

Since returning to office for a second term in January, Trump has sought to bolster his base among the Christian right in the US.

At a prayer breakfast in February, he announced his administration was establishing a task force to root out anti-Christian bias in the federal government.

Later, in July, his administration issued a memo allowing federal employees to evangelise in their workplaces.

While Trump denounced alleged anti-Christian violence in Friday’s post, his administration has also been recently criticised for its policy towards refugees: people fleeing persecution or violence in their homelands.

On Wednesday, Trump announced the lowest-ever cap on refugee admissions in the US, limiting entry to just 7,500 people for all of fiscal year 2026.

In a notice posted to the Federal Register’s website, he explained that most of those spots would “primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa” and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination”.

Critics were quick to point out that refugee status is awarded for fear of systematic persecution, not discrimination.

Still, Trump has continued to ratchet up diplomatic tensions with South Africa, falsely claiming that white Afrikaners are subjected to a “genocide”, an allegation frequently pushed by figures on the far right.

A surge in chikungunya cases has hit southern China, fuelled by climate change, urbanisation and global travel. Experts warn the next pandemic is inevitable – but have we learned enough from COVID-19 to be prepared?

Presenter: Stefanie Dekker

Guests:
Carmen Perez Casas – Head of pandemic prevention, Unitaid
Albert Fox Cahn – Founder, Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP)

Footage shows FBI and state police vehicles in Dearborn, Michigan, near Fordson High School, conducting an investigation. This comes after FBI Director Kash Patel said in a social media post that multiple people allegedly plotting a violent “terrorist” Halloween weekend attack were arrested.

China and the United States have agreed to ease their trade war – for now.

There have been concessions from both, with some of the most painful measures put on hold for a year.

So, what tactics did each side use in the battle between the world’s two biggest economies? Will they work? And what’s the longer-term outlook: agreement, or more trouble ahead?

Presenter: Nick Clark

Guests:

Andy Mok – Senior Research Fellow at the Center for China and Globalization think tank in Beijing

Neil Thomas – Fellow on Chinese Politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis in Washington, DC

William Lee – Chief Economist at the Milken Institute in Los Angeles