Tehran has urged international action against the US president's "reckless and belligerent" remarks.

Iran has lodged a formal complaint with the United Nations Security Council over US President Donald Trump's threats of military action, branding his remarks "reckless and belligerent."

Trump recently threatened Iran with bombing strikes "the likes of which it has never seen" if it does not accept a nuclear deal. The Iranian leadership condemned the statement and vowed retaliation if attacked.

In a letter to the Security Council on Monday, Iranian UN Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani accused the US of committing an "egregious violation of international law."

"Tehran strongly warns against any military adventurism and will respond swiftly and decisively to any act of aggression or attack by the United States or its proxy, the Israeli regime, against its sovereignty, territorial integrity, or national interests."

The document also urged the international body to "fulfil its responsibility under the UN Charter to maintain international peace and security" and to "unequivocally condemn" the US threats.

To bar Marine Le Pen from running for the French presidency, a court of first instance convicted her of "misappropriation of public funds," not the other way around. It wasn't the offense she was charged with that led to her being stripped of her right to be ineligible, but it was invented to justify this sentence.

Strangely, no one in the political class saw fit to point out that the Presidency of the European Parliament has changed its conception of the role of MEPs and now considers those who persist in practicing their original role as MEPs to be criminals.

Marine Le Pen was sentenced on March 31, 2025, for "embezzlement of public funds" to four years' imprisonment, two of which were suspended, a €100,000 fine, and five years of ineligibility with provisional execution, that is, even before any possible appeal. Twenty-four other officials of the National Rally and the party itself were sentenced.

Trump's ultimatum to Iran? Colonel Doug Macgregor compares the Trump ultimatum to Iran to that which Austria-Hungary delivered to Serbia in 1914: An offer, in short, that 'could not be refused'. Serbia accepted nine out of the ten demands. But it refused one - and Austria-Hungary immediately declared war.

On 4 February, shortly after his Inauguration, President Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM); that is to say, a legally binding directive requiring government agencies to carry out the specified actions precisely.

The demands are that Iran should be denied a nuclear weapon; denied inter-continental missiles, and denied too other asymmetric and conventional weapons capabilities. All these demands go beyond the NPT and the existing JCPOA. To this end, the NSPM directs maximum economic pressure be imposed; that the U.S. Treasury act to drive Iran's oil exports to zero; that the U.S. work to trigger JCPOA Snapback of sanctions; and that Iran's "malign influence abroad" - its "proxies" - be neutralised.

The UN sanctions snapback expires in October, so time is short to fulfill the procedural requirements to Snapback. All this suggests why Trump and Israeli officials give Spring as the deadline to a negotiated agreement.

The organization had a huge influence on the relationship between Prague and Moscow, Stanislav Novotny has told RT.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) financed a long-running anti-Russian campaign in the Czech Republic, former Czech police chief Stanislav Novotny has told RT. In an exclusive interview on Wednesday, Novotny said Washington's primary channel for funding political projects abroad had played a major role in shaping Czech-Russian relations.

According to the former police chief, who is now a lawyer and journalist, US billionaire George Soros has also had a significant influence on the deterioration of ties between Prague and Moscow through his Open Society Foundations. Novotny remarked:

"A lot of money was poured into civil society organizations of political nature which were waging a war against Russia. Such organizations should simply be removed."

He accused the Czech government of spending taxpayers' money on stoking anti-Russian sentiment by contributing financially to the organizations.

The strike on Krivoy Rog this week has reignited the familiar chorus of accusations from Kiev and its Western backers. Ukraine claims dozens of residential buildings were damaged, hinting - without evidence - that Russia deliberately targeted civilians. But once again, beneath the fog of war and politicized narratives, a more complex and revealing truth emerges - one that the mainstream media and Western officials seem all too eager to ignore.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the strike hit "a meeting place of commanders of military units and Western instructors in one of the restaurants" in Krivoy Rog. Video footage and on-the-ground reports from Russian war correspondents support this claim. There is no indication that a cluster munition, often used to inflict wide-scale damage, was deployed. Instead, a single high-explosive missile appears to have been used, striking with precision and targeting a specific structure. The implication is clear: this was not a random or reckless act, but a targeted military operation.

The outrage from Kiev rings hollow, especially considering the Ukrainian military's well-documented habit of embedding its personnel and foreign mercenaries in civilian areas. This is not speculation; it's a pattern. Nearly one month ago to the day, Russian forces struck a hotel in Krivoy Rog used as a base by foreign mercenaries. The outcry then was similar, but the facts held up - military targets were embedded within what Kiev called "civilian infrastructure."

The decision comes shortly after Beijing retaliated against Washington's previous tariff rise

US President Donald Trump has raised the tariffs on Chinese goods to 125% in response to retaliatory measures imposed by Beijing earlier on Wednesday.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that "based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World's Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately."

He expressed hope that Beijing would realize that "ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable."

The move came hours after China's Finance Ministry announced a tariff hike of its own, which brought tariffs levied on American imports to a total of 84%, thus mirroring Washington's previous increase by 50%.

China has accused the US of undermining global stability.

China has described new US tariffs as "bullying," arguing that they threaten to undermine the stability of the global economic order and escalate trade tensions between the world's two largest economies.

Commenting on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian condemned Washington's decision to impose a 34% tariff on Chinese exports to the US on top of an existing 20% levy, bringing total duties to at least 54%.

The tariffs are "unilateralism, protectionism, and economic bullying," Lin told a regular press conference, adding that they "seriously impact the stability of the global economic order."

China's Finance Ministry declared on Friday that it would impose a matching 34% tariff on all US goods, set to take effect on April 10. Beijing has also filed a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The European Union has also floated a "zero-for-zero" tariff resolution with the Trump administration

The European Commission on Monday proposed counter-tariffs of 25% on a range of American goods in response to President Donald Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum, according to media reports.

The tariffs on some goods will go into effect on May 16, while others will begin later this year, according to a document viewed by Reuters.

Maros Sefcovic, the European Union trade chief, said the counter-tariffs would impact less than the previously announced 26 billion euros.

The Trump administration will be allowed to resume deporting suspected Venezuelan gangbangers under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act after the Supreme Court on Monday lifted a lower court order that blocked the deportations.

In a 5-4 decision, the high court ruled that the Trump administration was "likely to succeed on the merits" in a lawsuit filed in a Washington, DC, district court challenging the removal of five Venezuelan men under the centuries-old law.

"The detainees are confined in Texas, so venue is improper in the District of Columbia," read the conservative majority opinion.

The court also determined that anyone the Trump administration is seeking to deport under the Alien Enemies Act must be afforded notice "within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek [a court hearing] in the proper venue before such removal occurs."

At Tuesday's House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing, Matt Taibbi explained how an Obama executive order led to the Censorship Industrial Complex.

MATT TAIBBI: Mr. Chairman, Madam Ranking Member, thank you. My name is Matt Taibbi, I'm the editor of the Independent Site Racket, and I've been covering digital censorship issues since 2018, the fictional ones. On March 14th, 2016, Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13721, Developing a New Integrated Global Engagement Center to Support Government-Wide Counterterrorism Communications Activities Directed Abroad.

It directed the Secretary of State to create a new body, the GEC or GEC, to quote, counter the messaging and diminish the influence of international terrorist organizations, including ISIL, Al-Qaeda, and other violent extremists abroad. Seven years later, while working on a story involving internal communications at Twitter, I found myself reading emails between GEC officials and Twitter executives about subjects ranging from COVID-19 to the 2020 election to Donald Trump. Once, Mr. Chairman, you were right to point out that they were once focused abroad, but by this time, GEC officials were largely concerned with domestic English language accounts, people with no ties to terror groups or relationships with adversary nations like Iran, China, or Russia. When I went back this weekend through those documents to find examples of GEC pressuring Twitter to remove or deamplify Americans accused of misinformation, I found an exchange that we Twitter Files reporters missed in 2023. A lawyer at the company asked several other executives if they had any, quote, appetite for writing GEC a letter to ask them to stop going to the media with sensationalist claims about epidemics of foreign bots. One of the company's senior communications executives gave a remarkably candid answer.