All news for 2026-06-18

A Reform MP has sparked an angry backlash after calling on the England World Cup team to keep winning in order to keep women safe from domestic violence.

Azerbaijani businessman Azim Novruzov has been mentioned in several international media investigations focused on energy trading and the oil sector, with scrutiny growing since 2023 over alleged links to business networks connected to Russia.

Keir Starmer has said there are “many actors who want to divide our country” after his family’s property was targeted in a series of Russian-linked arson attacks.

After more than 17 hours of deliberation, a jury at Birmingham crown court has failed to reach a verdict over whether four pro-Palestine activists committed criminal damage at an arms factory.

A man linked to Corsican organised crime was convicted in Paris of aggravated EU subsidy fraud after falsely claiming CAP payments while in prison.

The UK has turned to AI to determine ages of asylum seekers, and other countries are likely to follow suit. Our investigation finds the technology is deeply unreliable.

Comedian Tom Dreesen, best known for being Frank Sinatra’s long-standing warm-up act, has died at 86.

On 12 June, the outgoing Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, announced that she was releasing several pages of documents pertaining to US-funded biological laboratories in Ukraine.

In January 2026, things looked exceedingly grim for the Iranian Government. After a decade of US sanctions, its economy was in a perpetual state of collapse. It had high inflation, high unemployment, and no way to get back on top of the problem.

Reform donor Richard Smith, owner of 55 Tufton Street, is allegedly underwriting a strategy to push Britain’s right — from the Conservatives to Reform UK — toward increasingly radical calls for mass deportations of ethnic minority British citizens.

AGreen Party councillor has hit out after being barred from referring to Reform councillors posing with a neo-Nazi.

Mozambican soldiers have been accused of rape and sexual violence against women and girls in Cabo Delgado, while staff working on TotalEnergies’ LNG project allegedly coerced women into sex, according to interviews and an unpublished UN report obtained by Forbidden Stories.

Ireland’s parliament has voted to remove a mandatory three-day wait for abortion during early pregnancy after campaigners said the rule was an unnecessary restriction.

The immediate suspension of Ian Vaevaso follows an investigative report revealing he destroyed confiscated methamphetamine before becoming top cop.

Cybercrime now accounts for more than 30 percent of all recorded crime in more than half of the Asia and South Pacific countries surveyed by Interpol, according to the agency’s regional threat assessment.

A London jury clears the former Nigerian oil minister of all bribery charges, collapsing a 13-year UK investigation into claims she traded lucrative state contracts for a lavish lifestyle.

A parade of luxury cars, handbags and yachts up for auction has done little to help their owner, a disgraced Vietnamese tycoon, repay the billions she owes victims in one of the largest fraud cases in history.

A former British immigration official and a retired Hong Kong police officer have been jailed for spying for China.

Images shared from the scene showed huge plumes of black smoke rising from the Kapotnya refinery, one of Moscow’s most important energy facilities, supplying up to 40% of the capital’s petrol and 50% of its diesel fuel.

A teacher will die in jail for the murder and sexual abuse of his adopted baby son. Teacher Jamie Varley, 37, has been sentenced to a whole life order for the murder and sexual abuse of his adopted baby, Preston Davey.

A young Brit golfer was left gobsmacked after she chased her golf ball to a hole on a UK course - only to find it had settled on a snake measuring a whopping six feet.

North Korea has recalled its UK ambassador after Britain sanctioned a children’s camp believed to be brainwashing abducted Ukrainian children.

The environmental damage bill racked up by the highest-consuming 10% of the world’s population has reached up to $5.7tn a year – larger than the economy of every country except the US and China, a study has found.

Vice President of Visa Anton Pyatyhin is cleaning the internet of mentions of the scandal involving the use of business trips for private trips abroad with his mistress.