Live updates: US accused of war crimes in UN report

Russia and China have ended a United Nations Security Council mandate for the independent monitoring of international sanctions on Iran, reviving their argument that all UN measures on Tehran had been removed under a nuclear deal with world powers.

All UN sanctions on Iran were reimposed a year ago after France, Britain and Germany accused Tehran of violating the 2015 nuclear pact meant to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons.

This included the return of an independent panel of experts to monitor and report to the 15-member Security Council on violations and recommend further action.

“Without an independent panel of experts, this council loses its principal source of impartial, evidence-based reporting on sanctions violations, creating a monitoring gap that only benefits the Iranian regime and those who profit from evading those measures,” Deputy US Ambassador Jennifer Locetta told the council after the vote.

Unsurprisingly, Iranian leaders have praised the change.

“The unipolar order in which one side extracts concessions through force and coercion has ended,” Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted on X.

“China and Russia’s vetoes rejected the political abuse of the Security Council and reaffirmed the rule of law. We must defend multilateralism; unilateralism serves no one’s interests.”

The head of the US Postal Service says work on a computer system that would have been crucial to Trump’s plans to limit mail-in voting has stopped after a Supreme Court order.

“There’s an injunction, so we’re not doing anything,” postmaster general David Steiner told Associated Press in an interview.

Steiner has remained non-committal over Trump’s bid to use the USPS to shake up mail-in voting, saying it was not his job to pursue an agenda.

Trump issued an executive order earlier this year demanding the USPS compile state voter registration lists, which would be used to send out - or withhold - mail ballots.

States were also ordered to adopt uniform postal vote protocols.

Whistleblowers recently have said other hidden measures had been ordered, including throwing out whole consignments of votes if one improper one was detected.

After the US Supreme Court struck down Trump’s bill this week, Associate Press was able to obtain a copy of a memo sent to USPS employees saying the service would “not be enforcing any of these new rules in the 2026 federal election.“

“First and foremost, for Election Mail it is business as usual,” the memo read.

“We continue to follow established protocols, and we remain entirely focused on our core mission: delivering the mail safely and securely for voters and election officials across the country.”

US President Donald Trump has been snapped examining a poster depicting an apparently demolished Kennedy Centre, just hours before his administration told a court the building needed to be temporarily closed.

It comes as legal dramas continue to play out around the centre’s future.

Trump tried to add his name to the John F Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts early in his second term.

However, a judge ultimately ruled that only Congress could authorise renaming the centre, and Trump’s name was removed from the building.

This week, the Kennedy Centre board - which has been stacked with Trump allies - voted to temporarily close the building, citing “structural deterioration” to the courts.

Read the full article here.

Trump has posted a new suggestion for his Washington beautification campaign which almost literally fits the definition of gilding the lily.

The president, without the context of a statement or declaration, posted a mock-up photo of the Iwo Jima Memorial covered in gold leaf.

The gilding is something of a motif for Trump, under whose tenancy the White House has also been glitzed up.

The Iwo Jima Memorial - officially the US Marine Corps War Memorial - is a plinth-mounted statue depicting six US Marines raising a US flag at the Battle of Iwo Jima in Japan in World War II.

The original photo of the flag-raising was taken by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.

The sculptor, Felix De Weldon, cast the statue in bronze.

It was paid for without public funds, relying largely instead on donations from Marines and veterans.

The memorial opened in 1954.

President John F Kennedy in 1961 decreed a US flag must fly over the memorial for 24 hours a day.

One expert observer says the Houthis’ rapid advance in Yemen, breaking a stalemate that had held since 2022, might end up hampering the rebel group as much as helping.

The Houthis have seized key islands and positions around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial Saudi shipping lane.

“Most of the coverage has interpreted the offensive as a new lever for Iran – a key ally of the Houthis – in its ongoing war with the United States, or a fresh threat to Saudi Arabia and global shipping,” international relations expert Mahad D Darar wrote for The Conversation.

“Such framing is not wrong, but it is incomplete. The more consequential question, I believe, is what the offensive means for Yemen itself, and where it leaves both a civil war that had quietly stalemated for years and the Houthis’ own unresolved problem of legitimacy.“

Darar said the battlefield leverage the Houthis have gained in Yemen may be offset by a loss to their “broader standing”, with 100,000 people forced to flee the new offensive.

“For the Houthis, the gamble to advance now may backfire,” he said.

“It is one thing to take territory and quite another thing to hold it. Moreover, the Houthis may now find themselves controlling a strait the world wants reopened while still lacking the one thing that strait was never going to buy them: a whole country that actually consents to their rule.”

US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has given a speech to an anti-vaccine group, pledging to “stay in this fight” amid the worst measles outbreak in the US in decades.

Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic who promised to not restrict access when seeking confirmation as Trump’s health secretary, gave the keynote address at the Children’s Health Defence conference - an organisation he founded before going into politics.

He called Trump a “strong and steadfast friend” to vaccine skeptics.

“President Trump will not allow the government to treat parents who question vaccine orthodoxies as lepers,” he said, as reported by CNN.

“We have not taken vaccines away from anyone. We have preserved access, but we have started asking the questions that you and millions of American parents have been asking for years.“

The current administration has rejected multiple established vaccine norms, including immunisation schedules, and has tried to circumvent the CDC.

Kennedy claimed these efforts were being hampered by “entrenched interests”.

“I didn’t come to Washington to protect institutions from uncomfortable questions,” he said.

“I came to make those institutions answer those questions, and I intend to stay in this fight as long as I am able.“

A lapse in vaccination rates has been blamed for a current measles outbreak in the US.

The disease was declared eliminated in the country in 2000, but there have been more than 3200 cases, including several deaths, in the US this year.

The US has approved the potential sale of $US24.3 billion ($34.18 billion) of super-advanced fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom has long sought to acquire the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jet, which until now has only been operated by Israel among Middle Eastern countries.

The US State Department said it had approved a possible sale after Saudi Arabia had asked to buy 48 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, and 49 engines.

The F-35 possesses stealth capabilities that allow it to escape detection.

“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major non-NATO ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region,” the department said in a statement.

“The proposed sale will improve Saudi Arabia’s capability to deter current and future threats by strengthening its homeland defence, and improving interoperability with US forces, and other regional and NATO forces.“

The US maintains a position of ensuring it supplies Israel with more advanced weaponry than other Middle Eastern partners.

“The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the military balance in the region,” the department said.

Donald Trump remains beloved by his faithful followers and for better or worse, a political giant for everybody else.

But even as he seeks to plant his name on everything from new warships to the Kennedy Centre, there’s one group of people trying very hard not to talk about Trump - his fellow Republicans.

CNN has published a new analysis that shows Trump is barely mentioned in TV advertising by Republicans campaigning ahead of the mid-term elections.

More than 500 Republican ads aired on US TV from September 1 to September 15, representing an investment of more than $US160 million ($225 million).

Just 12 mentioned Trump, equivalent to $US1 million ($1.4 million) of that spending.

“The president is not the best message or our best messenger at this point,” a Republican strategist told CNN anonymously.

Trump just last week urged voters “pretend I’m on the ballot” at the Republican National Convention in Dallas.

Polls have opened in Russia’s legislative election, though it’s unlikely President Vladimir Putin is worried about being ousted from the Kremlin.

Russian elections under Putin are tightly controlled and his United Russia party is projected to preserve its majority in the Duma.

The election will be held across three days, from September 18 to September 20, which allows voting officials to manipulate the count.

European and other international observers have historically noted large-scale fraud in Russia’s elections, while persecution of opponents limits political opposition to Putin.

Most parties on the ballot have been handpicked by the Kremlin to support Putin.

But the election could still show signs of weakening support for the government.

“To me, the real indicators of public support for the government are the vote margin for Putin’s party and the extent to which the Kremlin places its thumb on the scale to maintain its party’s two-thirds majority of parliamentary seats,” political science Professor Regina Smyth wrote in The Conversation.

Houthi rebels in Yemen have released a video they claim shows a downed F-15 fighter jet that had belonged to Saudi Arabia.

The footage shows a field of burning wreckage, followed by fighters displaying a tailfin with what appears to be a Saudi flag emblazoned on it.

The video has not been independently verified, but Reuters said no version had been found online earlier than September 16.

CNN military analyst and retired US Air Force colonel Cedric Leighton said the markings on the tail were “consistent” with Saudi Arabian F-15 aircraft.

The rebel group claimed to have brought the US-made fighter down with a locally-crafted surface-to-air missile.

The Saudi F-15 jets are based on the F-15E Strike Eagle which in today’s dollar terms costs over $US65 million ($91.4 million) to manufacture.