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America at 250: still a ‘democratic experiment’

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America at 250: still a ‘democratic experiment’

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This weekend marks 250 years since the Second Continental Congress, representing the 13 American colonies, assembled in Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence. The country had already been at war for more than a year and would continue its armed struggle against Britain for another seven. But on July 4 1776, the United States of America was born.

The ideas that found expression in the Declaration were not new. Tensions between the British crown and its American colonies had been percolating for years. And the philosophical ideas behind America’s revolutionary fervour were also finding expression in Europe, particularly in France and Britain.

As Tom Cutterham, a professor of American history at the University of Birmingham, writes, the sort of ideas that inspired America’s revolutionary thinkers had for some years “been closely tied to questions about corruption, oligarchy and executive tyranny in Britain itself”. He points to the likes of Thomas Paine, John Wilkes, Granville Sharp and Catharine Macaulay who were writing passionate arguments against British despotism.

Macaulay argued that the authority of a monarch rests on a contract between ruler and ruled which, if broken by the monarch, is void. It’s an idea which is said to have inspired Benjamin Franklin’s contribution to the Declaration of Independence. Cutterham tells the stories of the Britons who supported America’s struggle to throw off its colonial masters.

Read more: America at 250: the Britons who supported the War of Independence

This weekend’s celebration of America’s 250th birthday comes at a time of deep division in the US. There are even two separate organisations planning rival events. One – America250 – was set up in 2016 by the US congress and signed into law by Barack Obama. The other – Freedom250 – was launched in 2025 by the current president, Donald Trump. The former was specifically established as a bipartisan committee, while its hard to see that latter as anything but a partisan expression of the president’s vision of America.

The situation mirrors the debate raging in the US over American history itself, writes Andrea Loux Jarman, an expert in US constitutional law at Bournemouth University. As Jarman notes, early on in Trump’s second presidency, he issued an executive order, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, which targeted what the administration likes to call “woke history”.

Part of this has involved removing or rewriting information panels in museums which, the order says: “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times)”. Instead educational information should “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people”.

Needless to say information in museums and galleries about the horrors of slavery are among the “woke history” on the Trump administration’s target list. It’s a row which is likely to find its way to the Supreme Court before it can be resolved, writes Jarman.

Read more: As the United States turns 250 there is bitter rivalry over who gets to tell the country’s story

With this ideological struggle in mind, it’s vital that the celebrations do not overlook the huge contribution that African Americans have made to their country’s history, writes Jenny Woodley, a specialist in American history at Nottingham Trent University.

Even as the founding fathers were honing the ideas that would overthrow British rule, in 1772 an enslaved woman named Phillis Wheatley published a poem that compared her enslavement to “the iron chain, Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand Had made, and with it meant t’enslave the land”.

Nearly two centuries later, in his I Have a Dream speech, Martin Luther King Jr called the Declaration of Independence a “promissory note” that guaranteed all people their inalienable rights. He said the bank of justice was not bankrupt and it was time for all Americans to “cash this check”.

Martin Luther King: US constitution was a ‘promissory note to which every American was to fall heir’.

But as the US celebrates 250 years since this promissory note was issued, “the ‘bank of justice’ is looking increasingly short of funds”, writes Woodley. She says it’s vital this celebration is one that is shared by all Americans, or – to borrow from the US constitution: “We the people”.

Read more: USA at 250: the Black American struggle for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

It’s commonplace to read of American democracy as “an experiment” or a “work in progress”. For many of us, just how fragile that work remains was illustrated by the events of January 6 2021, when a mob stormed the US capital in an attempt to prevent Congress from ratifying the results of the 2020 election, which Trump still insists was fraudulently stolen by his opponents.

Happily democracy prevailed that day. But over its 250 years there have a number of occasions when the US has been deeply divided and democracy itself was thought to be imperilled. Historian Sarah Trott, of York St John University, recounts five of the most dangerous moments for the American experiment.

Read more: America at 250: five times the US constitution has come under threat

Ukraine on the offensive

For more than four years Ukraine has endured a war of aggression from its much larger neighbour Russia. And, despite the Russian expectation that Ukraine would capitulate in less than a week after Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has so far proved resilient in the face of whatever Russia has thrown at it.

A woman waztches an apartment block burn in Kyiv, July 1 2026.

Russia targeted civilian areas of Kyiv in a massive overnight bombardment on July 1. AP Photo/Danylo Antoniuk

And in recent weeks the mood music coming out of both Moscow and Kyiv has changed significantly. Mounting Russian casualties, shortages of food and fuel and an apparent deadlock on the frontlines are taking their toll on Russian morale.

Meanwhile the success of Ukraine’s drone warfare and its ability to strike at targets deep inside Russia have enabled it to chalk up some important successes. This is especially the case in Crimea, writes Jennifer Mathers, who explains why the peninsula, often referred to as the “jewel in the crown” of Putin’s vision for a pacified Ukraine, is of such significance in this war.

Read more: State of emergency in Crimea as Ukraine focuses pressure on ‘jewel in Putin’s crown’

But four years of war have taken a huge toll on civilian life in Ukraine, especially for those families who have been divided by the conflict. Irina Kuznetsova, who researches the impacts of displacement for people in Ukraine’s war-torn regions, details the obstacles faced by separated Ukrainian families.

Read more: Ukrainian families have been torn apart by the war – reunifying them is no easy task

Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

NYT: Israel plotted to kill Iran peace negotiators to derail talks

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NYT: Israel plotted to kill Iran peace negotiators to derail talks

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, left, with Abbas Araghchi, center, traveled to Switzerland in June for a second in-person meeting with Vice President JD Vance and the American delegation. Photo: Pool / Urs Flueeler

Trump administration officials reportedly believed that the Israeli government intended to assassinate Iran’s top negotiators—including the country’s foreign minister—during peace talks with the US in an effort to sabotage diplomatic progress.

The New York Times reported Thursday that “American concerns about the targeting of two particular Iranian officials—Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Parliament—spiked during delicate ceasefire negotiations that began in April.” In response, the US “went so far as to ask other countries in the region to warn Iran about the possibility Israel could target the two officials,” according to the Times, which cited unnamed current and former American officials.

The US and Israel have killed dozens of top Iranian officials since launching their illegal joint war in late February. But the allied countries reportedly removed Araghchi and Ghalibaf from their target list in late March, opening the possibility of high-level negotiations to end the war.

But Israel remained bent on targeting the negotiators, according to the Times, whose reporting was later corroborated by The Washington Post.

The Times detailed one dramatic incident in April, when Ghalibaf was planning to travel to Pakistan’s capital to meet with US Vice President JD Vance:

Pakistani fighter jets escorted the Iranian airplanes carrying a delegation of more than 70 Iranians from the border of Iran to Islamabad and back again when the session was over.

But on the way back to Tehran, an Israeli security threat emerged.

Iran’s security forces notified the plane carrying Mr. Ghalibaf back to Tehran that they had picked up intelligence that Israel planned to attack the plane and that two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iran’s airspace from its western border near Iraq, the two officials said.

Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser for Mr. Ghalibaf, who accompanied him to Islamabad, confirmed this account on his social media page. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Mashhad, Iran’s closest airport to the Pakistani border, and the Iranian delegation traveled some eight hours by land back to Tehran, Mr. Mohammadi and the two officials said.

The Post reported that “cracks emerged” between the US and Israeli approaches to the war following Israel’s assassination of top Iranian national security official Ali Larijani in March.

“They’ve wiped out everybody,” Trump told reporters in late March, suggesting Israel’s assassination campaign was making it difficult to find potential negotiating partners.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in response to the new reporting that “Israel is a state that, on paper, is a US partner, but in reality is so extreme in its obsession to undermine US diplomacy that it even tries to assassinate those the US engages with in crucial negotiations.”

“I can’t recall a government as terrified of peace as the one running Israel,” Parsi added.

At present, the Israeli government – led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – is endangering tenuous US-Iran peace talks with its continued occupation of and assault on Lebanon, which Iran has highlighted as a key factor in the negotiations.

Visiting occupied southern Lebanon earlier this week, Netanyahu declared to Israeli troops that “our insistence is that we will not leave … until the threat is removed.”

Parsi wrote earlier this week that “beyond his long-standing desire to use American force to subjugate Iran to Israeli domination and achieve a regional balance favorable to Israel,” Netanyahu “now also has stark political and personal reasons to restart the war” with Iran.

“The [US and Iran’s memorandum of understanding] has come at a steep political cost for Netanyahu,” wrote Parsi. “His prospects for reelection in October are weaker than they have been in months. Once seen as the Israeli leader uniquely capable of delivering President Trump, he now confronts the prospect that both the war and the ensuing diplomacy will leave Israel in a strategically weaker position—undermining the very case he has made for his leadership.”

“And of course,” Parsi added, “if he loses the elections, he will likely spend the next few years in jail, as he will lose his immunity as prime minister and face trial over corruption charges.”

-Common Dreams

Despite the darkness, I still see signs of hope in America

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Despite the darkness, I still see signs of hope in America

The last time America celebrated a big anniversary, I was all of three years old. Even so, I retain a few fuzzy memories from a sunny summer afternoon in small-town Michigan: climbing on a cannon in front of the courthouse, watching a parade, and seeing my dad, a veteran and Centreville city councilman, giving a short talk about democracy.

Only later would I realize the significance of the date: July 4th, 1976, America’s bicentennial.

America was imperfect and inconsistent in its approaches to “freedom,” but the country had done some big, difficult things in recent decades. We had led the charge to roll back the tide of fascism and Holocaust during World War II. We had begun to confront internal demons through the nonviolent activism of the civil rights movement. And, critically for my own life trajectory, we had landed on the Moon.

The ’70s were hardly a simple or heroic time, but I was too young to experience the turbulence of the era. My dad fought in Vietnam but returned before I was born, and I have no recollection of Watergate or waiting in lines for gasoline during the 1970s energy crisis.

Instead, I came of age in the 1980s, watching the Berlin Wall fall and American pop dominate the global charts. When I entered the job market during the 1990s, the economy was booming. Our investments in basic research and universities made this country the preeminent scientific and economic power in the world. By the start of the new millennium, with China only beginning its rise, there stood just a single superpower in the world. Despite our many problems and failures, America remained something one could still celebrate in an imperfect world.

And then—what?

It remains difficult to pinpoint the moment in my life when it felt like my country started to lose the plot. Oh, there were signs, like the September 11 attacks and the botched response that drew us into interminable entanglements in Afghanistan and Iraq without “fixing” either country. The financial collapse in 2008 accelerated wealth inequality. Increasingly online, Americans started populating echo chambers and imbibing conspiracies, and distrust of the media grew. No one could agree on a common set of facts anymore, let alone debate them in good faith. More kids wanted to become social media influencers than astronauts.

Anger, isolation, and paranoia rose. Big things weren’t getting done, couldn’t get done. With the rise of smartphones, life shifted even further toward screens to mediate the world. The forces of ignorance and grift even managed to turn parts of Americans against vaccines, arguably the single most life-saving medical invention in human history.

All of this played out against an increasingly poisonous political environment. When Donald Trump was first elected a decade ago, many Americans were struggling and felt unserved by the existing political class. Trump campaigned on addressing those frustrations, promising disruption instead of the status quo. Americans chose disruption, and they got it. They also got hatred, contempt, bullying, misogyny, narcissism, corruption, lies, and a palpable love for dictators—and what were these but symptoms of advanced political disease?

The numbers show that Americans have been unhappy with the direction of the country—though for different reasons—for twenty years. And in 2026, Americans’ optimism about their own futures has fallen to a record low, lower even than during the pandemic, when people at least still believed tomorrow would be better.

The author, at left, climbs onto a cannon on America’s bicentennial.

Credit: Bruce Berger

The author, at left, climbs onto a cannon on America’s bicentennial. Credit: Bruce Berger

For someone who has watched the last quarter of a century unfold in real time, all this can feel a little hopeless. And as a father of two daughters who recently became young adults, I worry about the world we’re leaving to them.

Because we have real problems. The planet is warming. Generation Z is coming into a workforce with uncertain job prospects and futures darkened by artificial intelligence. Billionaires increasingly run the show—and often not in society’s best interests. Goodness knows when younger people will be able to buy a home, once considered the bedrock of achieving the American dream. And we’ve thrown so many addictive habits at them, from corrosive social media to pervasive online gambling, how can we expect them to thrive?

Finding some hope

It would be easy to wallow in this mess—to doomscroll as the world washes away.

But on this anniversary of the United States of America, I believe we are not without hope. It may feel like America has been careening along the highway of enshittification since the turn of the century, but the thing about driving on highways is that you can always take an off-ramp. The truly remarkable thing about this country is its ingenious ability—through elections, immigration, freedom of speech, and economic mobility—to constantly remake itself.

We need to become makers once again, working against the rage, the despair, the grifting, and the misinformation wherever we find them. And we can. Based simply on what I’ve seen as a journalist over the last quarter century, reasons for hope remain. It can be useful once in while to gather these reasons about us as armor against despair.

About a decade ago, when I left the Houston Chronicle newspaper to write about space full-time for Ars Technica, I also started a website focused on local weather. Our purpose was clear: In an era of sensationalized storm coverage, Space City Weather would provide no-hype information about weather impacting the lives of people in Houston. We stuck to that, and when giving public talks, I often joke, “Boring is our brand.”

But in a world awash in clickbait and shouting, the quiet work we have done with Space City Weather still resonated with people. When storms threaten the community, it turns to us—because it trusts us. For many Americans, there remains a hunger for credible, evidence-backed news and information. Of course, if you’re reading Ars Technica, you share such a hunger already. But you are not alone.

I spend most of my days writing about space, and I’ve met so many good people in this industry working to extend humanity’s reach to the Moon, to Mars, and to worlds beyond. Courageous and ingenious people build satellites to spy deforestation on Earth, to gather sunlight for energy rather than burning fossil fuels, to connect people around the world, and to secure resources from asteroids and other worlds so we need not strip-mine our own planet. Not all of this will succeed, and not all of these actors are heroes, of course. But if you want to find faith that humanity can still build toward a brighter future, you could do worse than spend a little time on the space beat.

More generally, much of my life has been spent writing about science. I revere the people who gather insights about our universe and attempt to tease out new secrets from nature. It has been a dark time for science, with the White House attempting to slash science funding across federal agencies, undermining “woke” research, and setting ridiculous health policies over vaccines. But even here, where the damage is being done gleefully and wantonly, the US Congress has stood up to these funding cuts in a bipartisan manner. For most Americans, knowledge is not yet the enemy.

Progress does continue, even among the retrograde orbit of our political life. In recent decades, we have seen great advances against cancers like childhood leukemia and metastatic melanoma, and the next 10 to 20 years should bring additional progress with cancer vaccines. As our population ages, there will be a greater focus on advancing aging science. We will continue to see wins with genetic diseases. The story is similar in physics, astronomy, chemistry, and the other sciences.

When I first started writing about science in the mid-1990s, consider how difficult it was for scientists to collaborate using the time-tested tools of books, printed journal articles, and telephones. Today, researchers can access almost every bit of knowledge about a specialized topic, instantly; work globally with hundreds of scientists; sequence genomes cheaply; and run models on powerful supercomputers. And science is now global. No single government or religion can halt its progress. When America showed the world during the latter half of the 20th century that basic research begat economic development in a big way, the world took note.

Finally, reality itself has a way of fighting back against lies and propaganda. Yes, it takes far longer than one would like. But in the end, badly built rockets explode. False medical claims don’t cure. Companies with corrupt accounting—early in my career, I covered Enron’s bankruptcy case in New York City—eventually fail. More recently, we have seen commercial satellite imagery and communications provide incontestable truths about Russian activities on the ground in Ukraine, undermining attempts at propaganda. As Shakespeare wrote, “Truth will out.”

Power surge

There are so many reasons to be unhappy about the state of America, the world, and humanity as we come to the nation’s 250th birthday. But America has been resilient. And the beauty of this country is that every person has the power—small in isolation but much greater in the aggregate—to make change. That power is not wholly spent, nor wholly eclipsed, by anti-democratic forces. Because I am unlikely to greet America when it turns 300 years old, the best time for me to exercise that power is today. I hope you’ll join me.

West African states begin withdrawal from ICC

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West African states begin withdrawal from ICC

Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have officially begun a one-year process to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), the court has announced.

The three West African countries previously said they would leave the ICC, describing it as “a tool of new colonial oppression,” according to Reuters.

The presidency of the ICC’s governing body confirmed that Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger had submitted formal notices of withdrawal, triggering a one-year process to leave the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the court.

In a statement, the presidency said the move could weaken global efforts to end impunity and undermine the pursuit of justice. It urged the three countries to remain committed to the Rome Statute.

The statement also stressed that withdrawal does not release a state from any obligations arising during its membership of the Rome Statute.

READ: ICC prosecutor Karim Khan suspended over misconduct allegations

How the US has celebrated its independence over the years

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The plans for the 250th anniversary of the American revolution, which kicks off in earnest on July 4, have drawn media scrutiny in the US. One issue has been the subject of recurrent discussion: the role of President Donald Trump.

Behind this scrutiny is the claim that Trump is co-opting the anniversary for his own agenda. His administration’s alleged sidelining of the non-partisan “America250” commission, which was established by Congress in 2016, in favour of his rival “Freedom 250” organisation has drawn particular comment.

The 250th anniversary, it seems, has become a hotly contested battleground.

This is not entirely without precedent. As historian Michael Hattem explains in his 2024 book, The Memory of ‘76, Americans have long argued over the revolution’s lessons and legacy. This can be traced to the late 18th century, when US politics began to assume some of the adversarial qualities all too familiar today.

In the 1790s, the arguments were generally between Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists and Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans. For Federalists, who were keen to rebuild the relationship with Britain, July 4 celebrations often emphasised order and strong government.

For the Democratic-Republicans, however, the anniversary offered an opportunity to criticise what they saw as Federalist fealty to Britain. The result was that July 4 commemorations often became highly partisan.

Statue of Alexander Hamilton outside Hamilton Hall, Columbia University.

A statue of Alexander Hamilton on the campus of Columbia University in New York. Spiroview Inc / Shutterstock

Competing claims on July 4 recurred in subsequent decades, especially during the 1850s when sectional tensions between the north and south worsened. At the centre of these tensions was slavery.

For African-American abolitionists, the ideals articulated by the Declaration of Independence provided weapons with which to attack the evil of slavery in the south. The most powerful example of this was an 1852 speech given by Frederick Douglass in which he pointedly asked: “what to the slave is the fourth of July?”

The outbreak of civil war in 1861 further intensified the sectional divide over July 4. Many white southerners even drew parallels between the south’s status in the union and that of the 13 American colonies in the British empire.

According to this view, just as American colonists had been oppressed by the “tyranny” of Britain’s King George III – who they held responsible for the imposition of taxes and restrictive legislation – so was the south similarly oppressed by the north’s refusal to countenance the expansion of slavery.

By tracing this connection, historian Paul Quigley notes that these southerners used July 4 to present “themselves as the real Americans and northerners as traitors”. This was the memory of 1776 used to justify secession. The view of the then-president, Abraham Lincoln, was of course the complete opposite. For him, it was the union which was the true heir to the ideals of July 4.

Yet more arguments over the revolutionary past followed during the centennial of 1876. The anniversary came amid an economic recession and towards the end of the period known as “Reconstruction”. This period had seen the federal government readmit southern states into the union while also attempting to secure the rights of the formerly enslaved.

For some white northerners, the centennial was seen as an opportunity to promote reconciliation with the south. One consequence of this was that African-American contributions to the revolution were marginalised, something black communities in turn actively contested.

Attempts by local elites to dominate July 4 commemorations in cities like Boston similarly provoked pushback from recent immigrants and minority groups determined to ensure their inclusion in the commemorations. As a result of these tussles, the centennial of 1876 was marked by what historian Jack Noe has called “the deep sectional, partisan and racial divisions of an unreconciled nation”.

The 1976 bicentennial

Similar to its predecessor, the 1976 commemorations followed an enormously divisive conflict: the Vietnam war. And, again like the 1870s, the anniversary also unfolded during an era of economic uncertainty. An oil crisis in 1973, caused by an embargo imposed by oil-producing countries in the Middle East, was quickly followed by a recession that lasted until 1975.

There were even accusations of corruption levelled at the Bicentennial Commission, which had been created to plan the 200th anniversary, and linked to the activities of the Nixon administration. The commission was dissolved in 1973 and replaced by a new organisation called the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration.

Supporters affiliated with VVAW march in protest during the Bicentennial, Philadelphia 1976

US citzens march the streets of Philadelphia in protest against the Vietnam war, 1976. Wikimedia Commons

The bicentennial was thus another fraught anniversary. There were high-profile events in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, some of which were attended by Queen Elizabeth II at the invitation of the then-US president, Gerald Ford.

Following the social unrest of the Vietnam era, as well as the political turmoil of the Watergate Scandal which had led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as president in 1974, many Americans found escape in patriotic nostalgia. The anniversary even drew interest abroad. One small village in northern England, Warton in Lancashire, marked the occasion with a ten-day party due to its ancestral connections to George Washington.

Elsewhere though, the 200th anniversary again revealed domestic division. From the left came criticisms of excessive commercialisation, with historian Jesse Lemisch identifying a slew of what he called “bicentennial schlock”.

In some American towns and cities, meanwhile, commemorations likewise exposed discord. In Boston, for instance, the anniversary became tied up with local tensions linked to the desegregation of schools.

The revolutionary past has long been a contested battleground in the US, particularly during periods of partisan politics, social tumult and economic uncertainty. In this regard, the 250th anniversary has much in common with its predecessors.

Signals beneath the noise

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Signals beneath the noise

Subscribe now with a one-month trial for only $1, then enjoy the first year at an exclusive rate of just $99.

Japan Inc. looks past the weak yen
Scott Foster writes that despite a 40-year low in the yen, rising bond yields and geopolitical headwinds, Japan’s corporate sector remains surprisingly resilient. Strong business confidence, record foreign investment and fresh capital raising for AI and strategic industries suggest investors are backing Prime Minister Takaichi’s long-term industrial agenda.

Germany’s state-led investment masks private-sector retreat
Diego Faßnacht argues that Germany is drifting toward a more state-directed economic model as entrepreneurs lose confidence and private investment falters. While defense spending and public investment may support growth in the short term, they cannot replace the innovation and productivity generated by a healthy private sector.

Ukraine’s drone successes haven’t reversed Russia’s battlefield gains
James Davis reports that Ukraine is using long-range drone strikes and strategic messaging to convince Western governments that momentum has shifted, but Russia continues to make steady advances on the ground. The competing narratives are reinforcing hardline positions on both sides, making a negotiated settlement increasingly remote.

President Trump Claims Iran Has Agreed To ‘Just About Everything We Need’ in Negotiations

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President Trump Claims Iran Has Agreed To ‘Just About Everything We Need’ in Negotiations


US President Donald Trump said Iran has agreed to “just about everything we need” in negotiations over the memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the war, while describing Tehran as significantly weakened.  

Speaking in a wide-ranging interview with CNBC, President Trump did not specify what commitments he believed Iran had made.  Negotiations on a final settlement remain in their early stage, since the two sides have yet to resolve disagreements over the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic shipping route that Iran closed early in the war, disrupting the global economy. 

“We’re negotiating, and we’ll see,” President Trump said. 

The president denied the conflict could be viewed as a conventional war, saying, “This is not a war per se. This is the denuking of Iran.” 

“You can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,” President Trump said. He described Iran as “a spoiled child” and the “bully of the Middle East.” 

“You’ve had your way for many years with your parents, and all of a sudden they come down hard on you, it takes you a little while to get used to it,” he said. “They’ve had their way for 47 years.” 

Throughout the interview, President Trump argued that Iran’s military capabilities had been severely degraded. 

“They have no navy, they have no air force, they have no radar, their leaders are all dead,” he said. “Their strength is gone, their bravado is gone.” 

He also credited the US naval blockade with causing economic hardship inside Iran, saying, “They have 300% inflation, they’re making no money.” 

President Trump defended the targeted killings of Iranian leaders, saying they resulted in more “rational” figures taking power and had produced some degree of “regime change.” 

“We’re on the third set of leaders, and we actually get along with them,” he said, referring to strikes that killed the predecessors to Iran’s current leadership. “I think they’re much more rational. By the way, I think that’s regime change, but I’m not looking for regime change. I’m looking for something very simple. They cannot have a nuclear weapon.” 

President Trump also repeated his claim that Iran would purchase US agricultural products under a future peace agreement. 

“They’re making no money, so we’re going to take some of the money, and we’re going to buy them. They need food. They need corn and wheat and soybeans, and we’re going to have exclusively our American farmers provide,” he said. 

Abdolnaser Hemmati, the governor of Iran’s central bank, told the Iranian news agency Tasnim last month that “there is no obligation to buy agricultural inputs from the US.” 

 

 

Migrant arrivals to Italy fall 30% in first half of 2026, UNHCR says

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Migrant arrivals to Italy fall 30% in first half of 2026, UNHCR says


Nearly 2,800 migrants arrived in Italy by sea in June, marking a 10% decrease compared with the previous month, according to data from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Since the beginning of 2026, a total of 14,388 migrants have reached Italy by sea, representing a 30% decline compared with the same period in 2025.

The UNHCR said that 56% of all arrivals so far this year have involved Lampedusa.

On the humanitarian front, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that 1,400 people lost their lives in the Mediterranean during the first six months of 2026. According to the agency, 62% of those deaths occurred along the central Mediterranean route.

Since January, Libya has remained the main country of departure, accounting for 83% of migrant landings in Italy. Algeria and Tunisia together accounted for a further 8%.

The UNHCR said that, between January and June, migrants from Bangladesh made up 30% of arrivals, followed by Somalia at 11% and Sudan at 10%.

The agency also reported that unaccompanied minors represented 19% of all sea arrivals during the first half of the year.

Between January and June 2026, 22% of people arriving by sea were rescued in the Mediterranean by non-governmental organisations, according to the UNHCR.

Woman’s hip replacement disintegrates, causing severe metal poisoning

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Woman’s hip replacement disintegrates, causing severe metal poisoning

A 56-year-old woman was admitted to a hospital with an array of alarming symptoms that were only getting worse. For eight weeks, she had a painful “pins and needles” feeling that started in both of her feet and then began working its way up her legs. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she was unable to feel her feet on the ground. She frequently stumbled and clutched at walls to stay up. But the tingling numbness was moving into her hands, too. Then came neurological symptoms. She told her doctors about short-term memory problems and difficulty concentrating. She was irritable and had no appetite. She was experiencing heart palpitations, too.

According to a case report this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, her doctors looked through her medical history for clues, finding nothing that immediately stood out. She had high blood pressure, a history of anxiety and depression, and hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid). They did notice that, although she had managed the thyroid problem for more than a decade at the same dose of medication, she had been switched four weeks earlier to a stronger dose. But the dosage change didn’t immediately raise any red flags.

She also had a history of hip problems. Twenty years before, she had a hip replacement that stemmed from an injury she sustained in a car crash ten years before that. While more than 90 percent of hip replacements last at least 30 years, the woman’s started failing her after 19.

The year before her current condition, the hip prosthesis had become dislocated. At the time, doctors were able to put it back into position without surgery, but she continued to have pain and problems walking. Imaging also indicated that the lining in the hip socket was failing. So about three months before her alarming symptoms developed, she had surgery at a different medical facility to replace parts of her artificial hip joint, a surgery described as a hip “revision.”

The doctors didn’t have the medical records for the revision, but they didn’t think complications from such a surgery would explain her current condition. Of course, it’s possible the surgery could have damaged nerves, causing tingling and pain, which she was experiencing. But such damage would likely only affect nerves on one side of her body—the side with the hip replacement, which was her left side. But she had pain, tingling, and numbness on both sides. Further, nerve damage from surgery wouldn’t explain her other symptoms.

The doctors performed a thorough exam and began testing. They noted that her heart rate was elevated, a condition called tachycardia. She also had reduced sensitivity to touch in all four limbs. They considered a long list of possible causes: Vitamin B12 and copper deficiency, a rare immune disorder, chronic inflammation, and an autoimmune disease. But there were no clear leads.

They noted that her blood work showed elevated levels of hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein in red blood cells that binds and transports oxygen. They also did an X-ray of her hip, which showed that the artificial joint was in the proper place. But it also showed deposits in the tissue around the joint.

Harrowing hip

At that point, the records from her hip revision came in. The report clarified that 20 years ago, the woman had received a titanium and ceramic hip joint. Specifically, the joint included a titanium shell (acetabular shell) that fit into the hip bone, a ceramic liner in that shell, then a ceramic ball (femoral head) on the top of a titanium stem (femoral stem) that extended into her thigh bone (femur). Over time, the ceramic liner in the acetabular shell shattered, and the ceramic femoral head began directly moving against the titanium shell.

The main prosthetic components in total hip arthroplasty are shown separately, assembled, and in position within the native hip joint.

Credit: New England Journal of Medicine, 2026, Bajwa et al.

The main prosthetic components in total hip arthroplasty are shown separately, assembled, and in position within the native hip joint. Credit: New England Journal of Medicine, 2026, Bajwa et al.

During the hip revision, a surgical team replaced the destroyed ceramic liner with one made of polyethylene. They also replaced the ceramic femoral head with a cobalt–chromium alloy one. The original titanium acetabular shell and femoral stem were kept in place. The report noted that the team had to do extensive cleaning of the woman’s hip to try to clear out all the fragments of the wrecked ceramic liner that had scattered in the joint and surrounding tissue.

After seeing the report, the woman’s doctors immediately understood the problem: She had severe cobalt poisoning.

The hallmarks of cobalt poisoning fit the woman’s array of symptoms neatly. Cobalt toxicity causes nerve problems, like her pain, tingling, and numbness; cognitive impairment, like her memory and concentration problems; cardiac problems, like her tachycardia and palpitations; and thyroid dysfunction, explaining why she recently needed to have her thyroid medicine increased.

Cobalt also stabilizes a protein called hypoxia-induced factor, a transcription factor that activates specific genes to spur the production of red blood cells, usually in response to low oxygen levels. But with toxic levels of cobalt, the transcription factor is active without low oxygen levels, leading to abnormally high amounts of hemoglobin-carrying red blood cells—explaining the woman’s high hemoglobin levels.

The one thing that didn’t fit was the rapid progression and severity of her toxicity. In cases of cobalt toxicity linked to hip replacements, the symptoms usually develop over many months, not weeks, as in the woman’s case. The doctors speculated that after the revision was done, there may still have been ceramic microparticles from the previous shattered liner left in the joint. Those particles may have been grinding in the joint, causing mechanical wear on the cobalt-chromium femoral head that released cobalt into the surrounding tissue and bloodstream.

Metallic muscles

The doctors sent the woman to have a second hip revision surgery. When surgeons opened the joint, they immediately understood why her toxicity had progressed so quickly. A pool of grey, metallic fluid filled the joint while the tissues and muscles around the hip were necrotic and stained silver-gray with cobalt. (A picture of what the surgeons saw is here, but be warned that it’s graphic.)

Surgeons extensively cleaned the joint, trying to remove all of the dead, cobalt-infused tissue. They also replaced the cobalt-chromium femoral head with one made of ceramic and replaced the old polyethylene liner with a new polyethylene liner. The same day, doctors started the woman on a chelation therapy to clear the cobalt out of her body.

Three days after the surgery, lab tests came back with the level of cobalt in her blood. Before surgery, the tests found she had 592 nanograms per milliliter of cobalt in her blood. A normal value is less than 10 ng/mL. Her chromium level was 62.4 ng/mL, while a normal level is less than 0.2 ng/mL.

Her recovery was slow, non-linear, and incomplete. In the first months, her walking improved and she was able to step down her thyroid medication to her old dosage. But her nerve problems persisted. Two weeks after she was discharged from the hospital, she developed tinnitus, which also persisted. Tinnitus is a common feature of cobalt poisoning, thought to be from cobalt-mediated injury of the cochlear hair cells or the auditory nerve.

A year after her hospital stay, she reported less nerve pain, improved walking, and less frequent tinnitus.

In the case report, her doctors note that the use of cobalt–chromium alloy in hip replacements has declined “substantially” in the last 15 years. They remain in use for some purposes, though, such as certain types of hip revisions. When they cause toxicity, it’s usually due to mechanical stress over long periods and specifically involves cobalt; chromium isn’t as much of a concern. The kind of chromium used in implants is predominantly trivalent (not the hexavalent kind in environmental pollution). Chromium can damage bone near the implant, but it has relatively limited uptake by cells and isn’t linked to systemic toxicity like cobalt.

In the woman’s case, the daily grind of residual ceramic debris from her previous artificial hip significantly sped up wear-and-tear of the cobalt-chromium femoral head, which in turn sped up the release of cobalt, causing her systemic toxic illness, the doctors concluded.

Young Boy Kills Multiple Monks with Parents’ Truck

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Young Boy Kills Multiple Monks with Parents’ Truck


An 11-year-old boy allegedly took his parents’ pickup truck without permission before losing control and plowing into a line of Buddhist monks in Thailand, killing nine and injuring 13 others.

The horrific crash happened Thursday morning in Mukdahan province, about 370 miles northeast of Bangkok, as 35 monks began a 160-mile pilgrimage walk to neighboring Ubon Ratchathani province.

The group had reportedly been walking for only about 30 minutes when the pickup truck suddenly swerved off the road and slammed into the procession.

Five monks were pronounced dead at the scene. Three others later died at a hospital, while officials subsequently confirmed that a ninth monk had also succumbed to his injuries.

Thirteen monks were hospitalized, including three who were listed in critical condition, according to the provincial administration.

Shocking surveillance footage shared by the Ruam Jai Mukdahan Rescue Association showed the monks walking in a single-file line along the side of the road moments before the truck barreled into them.

One survivor, identified as Phra Sompong, said he was chanting a Buddhist meditation mantra when he saw the pickup approaching.

“I saw a boy driving a pickup truck, approaching. At that moment I was chanting ‘Buddho, Buddho,’” the monk recalled in a video shared by rescue workers.

“Then suddenly the truck hit at full speed and crashed us like this,” he said.

Sompong said he and another monk managed to leap out of the truck’s path just in time.

“The first nine monks in line survived. But others who were hit were thrown into the air,” he said.

CCTV footage from a nearby property reportedly captured the monks calmly walking along the road as several vehicles passed. A loud crash could then be heard before the procession abruptly came to a stop.

Police said the 11-year-old boy had taken the truck from his parents without their permission and was believed to have lost control while driving.

Witnesses told investigators the pickup appeared to be swerving before it slid off the road and smashed into the monks.

“The suspect is a child,” Police Major General Pairoj Thaiphutsa, commander of the Mukdahan Provincial Police, told reporters.

“The vehicle has been taken for forensic examination to determine the cause.”

Police said the boy was being held and would be questioned in the presence of state child-protection officers.

Authorities also called the boy’s parents in for questioning as investigators worked to determine who was responsible for supervising him and how he was able to gain access to the vehicle.

“We’ve asked the child’s parents to come in so we can determine who is responsible for the child’s care, so we can go on with the legal process,” Pairoj said.

Buddhist monks are deeply respected in Thailand and are frequently seen walking in public processions or accepting food and other offerings from local residents.

Mukdahan Governor Worayan Bunnarat said the devastating incident should serve as a warning to parents and the wider public about road safety.

“This case should be a lesson not just for our province, but for the public in general when it comes to preventing road accidents,” he said.

“I think everyone involved, especially parents, needs to help, because no one wants something like this to happen.”

The exact cause of the crash remains under investigation.

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