Hung Cao, acting US navy secretary, answered questions from US senator Kirsten Gillibrand in a letter

Eight US navy personnel assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group have attempted suicide since the start of their lengthy deployment as part of the US war on Iran, Hung Cao, the acting US navy secretary, revealed in a letter to the US senator Kirsten Gillibrand on Tuesday.

“Since the beginning of Lincoln’s deployment, there have been a total of eight suicide attempts across the strike group,” Cao wrote, responding on behalf of US defense secretary Pete Hegseth to Gillibrand’s inquiry about the quality of life aboard the fleet. “This number includes the Lincoln crew and sailors from the carrier airwing, strike group and destroyer squadron staff, escorting destroyers and all embarked aviation squadrons.”

In 2024 ethics filing, US health secretary pledged to ‘not engage in writing, editing, marketing or promotional services for any of these books during government service’

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, received $4m over the last year in book advances from allies within the Make America Healthy Again movement, according to a new report.

The advances were for upcoming books by Skyhorse Publishing, a publishing house belonging to Tony Lyons, a friend of Kennedy Jr who is also president of Maha Center, a non-profit that describes itself as “tackling America’s health crisis through education, investigation, innovation and action”.

President lays out red carpet as treasury secretary announces extension of ‘Busan agreement’ pausing trade war hostilities

• AI, trade, Taiwan and climate: what will and won’t be on agenda at Trump-Xi summit

Donald Trump has welcomed Xi Jinping to the US, taking the unusual step of greeting the Chinese leader on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews to kick off his state visit to Washington.

Xi’s plane was met with a lavish arrival ceremony that included a 30-metre-long (100ft) red carpet flanked by US service members, a military flyover by two B-1 bombers and a presentation of the flags and national anthems of both countries.

Republican senator calls bribery allegation ‘categorically false’ as ProPublica reports Trump derailed FBI inquiry

Democrats in Maine on Wednesday accused Republican senator Susan Collins of corruption after a major media outlet reported that the FBI had proposed investigating her for allegedly accepting bribes – before Donald Trump derailed the inquiry.

The article from the investigative newsroom ProPublica rocked the race for Collins’s Senate seat, which is crucial to Democrats’ hopes of winning control of the chamber in the 3 November midterm election. The outlet reported that in the run-up to Collins’s successful bid for a fifth term in 2020, the head of her Super Pac had solicited a campaign donation from contracting firm Navatek, which demanded assurances of business from the government in return.

Kremlin yet to respond publicly to US invitation that is likely to raise concerns from Ukraine and EU countries

The United States has invited Vladimir Putin to take part in the meeting of the G20 scheduled in Miami in December in what would be the first major summit with the Russian leader present since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The invitation, which marks a significant reversal by the Trump administration of Russia’s international isolation, was announced by Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, during a press conference on the sidelines of the United Nations conference in New York.

Andy Burnham’s accusation against the Kremlin tells half the story. Domestic extremists amplified by US big tech are part of the same problem

In November 2020, Barack Obama warned of an “epistemological crisis” facing western democracies. Polarisation and radicalisation were corroding trust in established information sources. “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work,” the former US president said.

That vulnerability has grown since then. Democracy’s enemies have become more determined to exploit it. This is the threat that Andy Burnham highlighted in a speech at the United Nations this week. The prime minister accused Russia of waging an “industrial-scale assault” on the UK’s information environment using bot armies and fake websites to spread falsehoods, interfere in elections, foment discord and poison inter-community relations.

It is sad and dangerous that at such a perilous moment, the United States is saddled with a president like Trump

Donald Trump’s speech on Tuesday to the United Nations general assembly was an object lesson in his lawless rule and remarkable capacity for self-delusion. Disregarding the UN charter’s emphasis on the peaceful resolution of disputes, he doubled down on his violent unilateralism while denigrating the global issues that the UN is designed to address.

For many, the headline remark was his musing about whether to “annihilate the Islamic Republic” of Iran. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”

Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, a senior fellow at Yale University and a former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments

Justice department cites national security to support ban on CNN, Politico and MS Now as trio file lawsuit in response

The US Department of Justice has defended Donald Trump’s decision to ban three new organizations from the White House, arguing in a court filing that access to the grounds was a “privilege” and citing national security concerns.

Lawyers for the US president doubled down on Trump’s claims about CNN, Politico and MS Now reporting “Fake News”, and insisted the ban did not violate the first amendment because “access to the White House is a privilege, not a right”.

Administration is holding back Covid vaccines for all children in at least 11 states and one US territory

The Trump administration is holding back Covid vaccines for all children in at least 11 states and one US territory, and officials have not indicated when or whether the shots will become available.

It’s the latest step by top officials to restrict vaccines in the US – and it sets a precedent for holding back other immunizations, experts said.

Two leaders could discuss tech safety issues and US-China trade ties but may skip over climate emergency

• Analysis: AI looms large over Trump-Xi meeting

The leaders of the world’s two superpowers are meeting in the US on Thursday for Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the US in more than a decade. The last time the Chinese president was hosted in Washington (by Barack Obama in 2015), the issues on the agenda included cybercrime, technology, the climate crisis and human rights. The star of the day was Ne-Yo, who serenaded Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, with Peng reportedly singing along at the state dinner.

This time, Xi is meeting Donald Trump, who has overhauled the world order and recalibrated the US-China relationship. Trump is contending with a China that is in a much stronger position than it was 10 years ago. Here are five things to look out for at the US-China summit.

The PM’s shiny newness could explain the easy ride he got this time. But who would dare predict the ever-shifting weather in the president’s head?

Watching footage of Andy Burnham at the UN general assembly on Tuesday was like watching your child from behind a tree in the playground. Are they making friends? How normal do they seem relative to the average? How will they react when they come into contact with that hulking great child who seems to be running things? Burnham’s first face-to-face with Donald Trump was billed as a knife-edge encounter that, due to the latter’s capriciousness, could go either way. In the event, it was drama-free, leaving observers to ask: was it Burnham’s brilliance or simply the weather in Trump’s head?

To viewers at home, Burnham’s performance at the press conference looked like that of a man who had worked out his best approach was to go for the sheepish, slightly cheeky air of the junior partner. Burnham is 24 years younger than Trump, on top of everything else – which can afford a certain licence to the less powerful person in any exchange. At the last minute, the meeting had been moved behind closed doors and afterwards, in a windowless room at the UN, the two men appeared side by side, mirroring each other’s body language: just two guys, legs akimbo, shoulders hunched, hanging on a bench in the locker room.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Brandon Herrera, a YouTuber known for making outrageous pro-gun statements, is the frontrunner to represent a district devastated by mass shootings

The video begins with Brandon Herrera staring intently into the camera. He is filming himself in a hotel room seated between twin beds, his black hair slicked back and beard neatly trimmed. He is wearing a T-shirt branded with his trademark nickname, “The AK Guy”, above the image of a semi-automatic rifle primed for action.

Three days earlier, on 3 August 2019, a white nationalist armed with a semi-automatic firearm not dissimilar to the one stamped across Herrera’s chest entered a busy Walmart store in the Texas border city of El Paso and opened fire.

One of the largest labor unions in the US targets eight battleground states in ‘workers v billionaires’ campaign

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), one of the largest labor unions in the US, has launched a “workers v billionaires” political campaign tour targeting members in eight battleground states and encouraging them to support pro-worker candidates in the midterms.

IAM has nearly 700,000 active and retired members in North America, covering workers at corporations that include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, United Airlines and Harley-Davidson. The union is targeting members and voters in Maine, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Illinois.

Trump says further talks possible as barrel of Brent crude falls to below $100 for first time in two weeks

Iran has pushed back on claims that it dropped former preconditions for reopening the strait of Hormuz in surprise talks held in New York under the mediation of Qatar between Tehran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Trump said the three-hour talks held in a room at the UN headquarters had gone very well and been very productive. He suggested further talks were possible imminently, which led to the price of a barrel of Brent crude to fall to below $100 (£75) for the first time in two weeks. Witkoff said the talks had been “encouraging, constructive and successful”.

Iran war, rising prices and president’s low ratings give Democrats advantage, but Republicans have poured cash into key races – could it be decisive?

• Sign up for The Stakes 2026: your weekly guide to the US midterms

Donald Trump pulled out all the stops at the Republican party’s midterm convention two weeks ago. In speeches aimed at the voters who will soon decide whether to keep Republicans in control of Congress for the final phase of his presidency, the president dangled $5,000 checks, and warned the United States would turn into a “communist country” if Democrats are elected.

The unprecedented political gathering amounted to a Hail Mary pass at retaining control of Congress, which history indicated Trump’s Republican allies had always been likely to lose in the 3 November vote. Two weeks later, with election administrators in several states already sending out mail ballots, there is no indication the gambit has worked.

In an interview before the White House’s media ban, Carlson called on reporters to push back against Trump’s misogyny

Donald Trump has achieved something rarely seen in Washington: uniting rival television networks against him. When he banned CNN and MS Now – along with Politico – from the White House, their competitors suspended shared coverage of the US president’s events.

Gretchen Carlson, a journalist, author and former Fox News host, hopes this will not be the only example of solidarity from a White House press corps facing what she describes as an “outright onslaught” from the administration.

In today’s newsletter: The PM’s first face‑to‑face with​ the US president marks a fragile reset

Good morning. In the early hours of Tuesday a plane carrying Andy Burnham, a handful of UK ministers, an excited group of British political journalists, and Burnham’s wife, Marie France, landed at a New York airport for one of Burnham’s first major outings as prime minister: a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump.

Considering the president once described Burnham as the mayor of “a town,” and the prime minister once said Trump wouldn’t be welcome in said town (Manchester), the meeting yesterday afternoon went remarkably well.

UN general assembly | Donald Trump has called on nations to unite to isolate Tehran and bring down global energy prices, as he gave a bellicose defence of his administration’s foreign policy and decision to strike Iran.

The far right | Charities have condemned footage of a far-right activist using a blade to slash an inflatable dinghy in the Channel while a rescue worker was onboard, in a further escalation of organised anti-immigration protest.

UK news | Children as young as 13 in the UK have been referred to a specialist clinic for a “devastating” bladder condition linked to sustained use of ketamine.

West Bank | British banks and financial institutions are receiving warnings from MPs that they should not invest in Israel’s E1 settlement project.

UK politics | Andy Burnham has opened the door to fighting the next election on the UK rejoining the EU, but said his immediate priority was continuing to rebuild bridges with European allies.