World Echo

The White House pushed back on Tuesday after Democrats accused President Donald Trump of suggesting Iran should "take out" the major US cities of Los Angeles and San Diego. Viral footage showed comments by Trump at a midterm elections rally in Nebraska on Monday, where he said high oil prices from the Iran war were justified by the need to stop Tehran from getting nuclear weapons. "It's a little bit high. It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe," Trump said. "They can take out a city. Let them take, let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay, and it's going to be over with very soon." Democrats — who control the state of California where both Los Angeles and San Diego are located — accused the 80-year-old Republican president of encouraging Iran to hit the two urban centres. "Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemie...

Former German foreign intelligence chief August Hanning was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of ​paying for access to classified documents and using them ‌to prepare an analysis for a foreign intelligence service, federal prosecutors said. Prosecutors did not identify the foreign intelligence service, and it was not immediately ​clear whether the analysis reached its intended recipient. Prosecutors allege ​that five years after his tenure as head of ⁠the BND intelligence service ended in 2005, Hanning agreed with ​a former BND office manager to receive confidential intelligence information in ​exchange for payment. The office manager, identified as Manfred D. in line with privacy rules, was also arrested on Tuesday. Prosecutors said D. is suspected of having ​supplied around 2,000 documents over the years, including classified material ​intended solely for internal use within the BND and senior-level intelligence briefings ‌at ⁠the chancellery. Read: Kremlin say...

French lawmaker Gabrielle Cathala called on Interior Minister Laurent Nunez to resign over police intervention against high school students, as criticism mounts over the government’s handling of nationwide student protests. Cathala, a lawmaker from the left-wing France Unbowed (LFI), addressed Nunez in the National Assembly on Monday, citing students who had been maimed, lost an eye or suffered a broken jaw during the demonstrations. Referring to Nunez’s announcement that 10 investigations had been launched into incidents during the protests, Cathala said: “Our issue is not opening investigations after these children’s lives have been ruined; our issue is preventing this violence.” She called for a change in France’s policing doctrine toward de-escalation and said footage showed plainclothes officers breaking windows and police firing various projectiles at students. “Mr. Minister, you must resign. You have nothing left to do here,...

American Karl Deisseroth and Germans Peter ​Hegemann and Georg Nagel won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their discoveries on light and optogenetics ‌that have helped understand how the brain works. The Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute medical university said Deisseroth, 54, Hegemann, 71, and Nagel, 73, were selected for their "discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics." BREAKING NEWS The 2026 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.” pic.twitter.com/pkDDEBWtkz — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 5, 2026 Optogenetics "makes it possible to switch on, or off, the activity of individual nerve cells in a living brain," said Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet. "This ​method...

Israeli forces restarted excavation work Sunday west of Al-Asha village in Syria's southern Quneitra as part of a project known as the “Sufa Line,” or “Sufa 53,” according to Syria Alikhbaria TV. Military vehicles and bulldozers were seen digging near the separation line with the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, extending a route that runs through rural communities from northern to southern Quneitra. For residents, the project has meant the loss of agricultural land, damage to grazing areas and vegetation, and changes to the natural flow of rainwater in a province where many families depend on farming and livestock. What is Sufa 53? Israel began work on Sufa 53 in mid-2022 near Hadr in northern Quneitra before extending it south through areas near Jubata al-Khashab, Al-Hamidiyah, Qahtaniyah, Bir Ajam and Bariqa toward Al-Asha. The project includes a military road roughly eight meters wide, deep trenches, earth berms reaching about five meters in heigh...

Iran will target all US military bases and American vessels if Washington launches a ground invasion of the country, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned. Ali Fadavi, head of the advisory group to the IRGC commander-in-chief, made the remarks a day earlier while appearing on an Iranian state television program. “If the Americans launch a ground attack, then we will target every location related to the Americans, American bases and every vessel related to the Americans,” he said. Fadavi argued that the US understands military force, saying Americans “understand missiles hitting their warships” and “missiles hitting their bases.” He also said Iran’s production of military equipment exceeds the rate at which it is being used, claiming the country’s current capabilities have increased significantly compared with the previous two wars. Turning to the Strait of Hormuz, Fadavi said Iran and Oman shou...