President, after talks with Qatari PM, suggests end to war coming ‘fairly soon’ and military escalation not needed

Donald Trump has said that the war in Iran is “effectively over” as he played down concerns that the US would escalate its military campaign against Tehran after the midterm elections.

During a White House press conference, Trump said that Israel and Gulf allies in the region were well protected from Iran and that an escalation was not needed.

As war rages on in Kyiv and other cities, the first lady celebrates her single-city ceasefire with Russian and Ukrainian envoys

Beaming from a podium in the White House’s Grand Foyer, Melania Trump welcomed senior Russian and Ukrainian officials on Thursday to celebrate a ceasefire in an embattled Ukrainian town for which she has become the unlikeliest broker.

The evacuation from Oleshky, a frontline Ukrainian town now occupied by Russia where 800 people lived through a protracted humanitarian crisis, may seem like a sideshow at this point in the war. Russian missiles and drones continue to rain down on Kyiv and other major cities, and a single Russian strike described as a “double-tap” bombing killed 40 people in Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday.