Former Israeli premier Ehud Barak has called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be removed “with sticks and stones” if he attempts to undermine the upcoming general election through military aggression against Lebanon.

“I fear Netanyahu may try to sabotage the elections, and he can do it very easily … If he tries, we will have no choice but to remove him with sticks and stones,” Barak said during an interview on Sunday.

Netanyahu, 76, has led the current coalition administration since late December 2022.

His party, Likud, has been described as the most right-wing since Israel was illegally established as a political entity on the occupied Palestinian territories in 1948.

The current term of the Israeli parliament expires in October 2026, with elections expected to be held in September or October.

Barak warned that Netanyahu “could sabotage the elections” by attacking Lebanon, which in turn would force the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, or Iran, to retaliate.

“Netanyahu wants an endless war because he understands that ending it would accelerate his trial,” Barak warned.

Netanyahu is currently standing trial on corruption charges and is also wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) since 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, where Israel’s genocidal assault has killed over 72,000 Palestinians and wounded 172,000 others.

Barak condemned Netanyahu for attacking Iran, saying “Israel is paying the price for Netanyahu’s arrogance and lack of foresight,” because “none of the objectives of the war against Iran have been achieved.”

He also said that the negotiations between Washington and Tehran are “very bad” for Israel and that Netanyahu is to blame for any upcoming agreement.

The arrangements under discussion between Iran and the US are “not an agreement, but a memorandum of understanding that [fails] to address either missiles or Iran’s regional allies,” Barak said.

On Monday, the secretariat of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) said that Tehran and Washington have finalized the text of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on ending the war, bringing an immediate and permanent halt to military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon, and terminating the US naval blockade against Iran.

The MoU, finalized late Sunday, will be signed on Friday in Switzerland.

Under its terms, the war and all military attacks, including in Lebanon, have ended immediately, and the US naval blockade of Iran has been lifted.

Further technical and political talks are expected to follow the signing to address implementation details.

Source: Presstv

US vice president JD Vance is now sitting at the bottom of the political ladder in the country, with approval numbers sinking to levels never seen before for a vice president at this stage in office, according to CNN.

Drawing on aggregated national polling averages tracking Vance since he took office in January 2025, the data reveals that the vice president’s standing has nosedived sharply, landing him in the “historically the worst” position when compared with his predecessors at the same point in their terms.

The numbers tell a stark story. Vance’s net approval rating has plunged from a positive 3 points down to negative 18 – a dramatic 21-point swing in the wrong direction.

“Down he goes,” CNN data analyst Harry Enten, who worked on it, remarked on air while presenting the details, adding that Vance is “not doing too hot to trot at this point.”

For context, Enten walked viewers through the records of other vice presidents at comparable moments in their tenures. Kamala Harris stood at minus 13, Mike Pence at minus 7 and Joe Biden at a net positive of 4.

While Enten acknowledged that vice presidents have generally become less popular over time, he noted that this trend alone does not fully account for the severity of the former Ohio senator’s dramatic collapse.

The sharp decline, Enten suggested, is not happening in a vacuum. Vance appears to be “dragged down along with the president of the United States,” caught in broader political headwinds weighing on the entire administration.

Trump’s ratings have also dramatically sunk amid his deeply controversial foreign policy decisions, including the unprovoked and illegal war against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Interestingly, it coincides with Vance’s role as the lead US negotiator in talks with the Islamic Republic of Iran in Islamabad, which ended early on Sunday on a negative note.

The talks, which followed the 40-day war of aggression against the Islamic Republic, failed to produce any breakthrough due to the US delegation’s maximalist demands.

Source: Press TV

North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party has again chosen Kim Jong Un to be its general secretary, state media report.

The announcement by the rubber-stamp party congress on Sunday comes as little surprise given the Kim family has ruled the dictatorship since the late 1940s.

State-run KCNA said that under Kim’s leadership North Korea “radically improved” its “war deterrence”, “with the nuclear forces as its pivot”.

Despite long-standing international sanctions, North Korea has continued to build its nuclear capabilities, regularly testing banned intercontinental missiles. But the secrecy of the regime makes it harder to evaluate how much progress the military has made.

Kim, who took over control of the regime after his father’s death in 2011, has invested heavily in the nuclear weapons programme, turning Pyongyang into a far bigger challenge for the West, and especially the US.

He is expected to announce the next phase of the country’s weapons programme during the congress, which is now in its fourth day. Before it started, North Korea unveiled what it said was a range of nuclear-capable rocket launchers.

The congress, which has been held once every five years in the last decade, began on 19 February.

With some 5,000 party members in attendance, according to KCNA, it offers a rare glimpse into the structure of political power in North Korea, which remains quite opaque even to the keenest watchers.

The meetings are considered to be the most important political event and provide insight into where the country’s priorities lie, from foreign policy to its nuclear ambitions.

While Kim has remained at the top of North Korean leadership, the party congress’ presidium, or executive committee, has been reshuffled since the last meeting in 2021. More than half of its 39 members have been replaced, according to state media.

In his opening speech last week, Kim vowed to boost the country’s economy and people’s standard of living, which he described as “heavy and urgent historic tasks”.

And all eyes are on whether Kim’s daughter, Ju Ae, will make an appearance.

Earlier this month, South Korea’s spy agency said that Kim had chosen Ju Ae as his heir. Kim Ju Ae, believed to be 13 years old, has become an increasingly prominent figure at official events – inspecting missiles and attending Beijing’s military parade with her father.

Source: BBC

Former US presidential candidate Kamala Harris says she will not run for governor of California.

Following her unsuccessful 2024 presidential bid, reports suggested Harris was weighing entering next year’s election to lead her home state of California, where she had served as a US senator and worked as a prosecutor.

“After deep reflection,” the former vice-president, a Democrat, said in a statement on social media, “I’ve decided that I will not run for Governor in this election.”

“For now, my leadership – and public service – will not be in elected office,” she added, saying she would share “more details in the months ahead about my own plans.”

Her decision leaves the door open for her to mount another try for the White House in 2028, while also removing a possible frontrunner from the race to succeed Governor Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat understood to have his own presidential ambitions.

In her statement, Harris appeared to address worries within her own party about its direction and future after she lost November’s election to President Donald Trump.

“As we look ahead, we must be willing to pursue change through new methods and fresh thinking—committed to our same values and principles, but not bound by the same playbook,” she posted.

Primaries for California’s next governor are set to take place in June 2026, before the general election in November. Newsom is completing his second and final term and the new governor will take office in 2027.

Democrats dominate the state’s political leadership, and whoever wins the party’s nomination will be expected to then take the governorship. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last Republican to serve as governor, left office in 2011.

An economic powerhouse of America, California would be the world’s 5th largest economy if it were a country. It’s also home to the Silicon Valley, where companies like Apple and Meta are based, giving its governor, as well as its regulations and laws, influence at the national level.

Source: BBC

US President Donald Trump is speaking at a rally in Michigan as he marks 100 days in office

“We’ve just gotten started,” he tells a crowd of supporters at the celebratory event

Since re-entering office three months ago, Trump has reshaped the US government with a flurry of executive actions

Earlier today in a briefing to mark Trump’s 100th day as US president, the White House criticised Amazon as “hostile” and “political”

It followed reports suggesting the online retailer will show consumers how much the president’s tariffs add to the cost of its products

Amazon says any plan to list import charges was never approved and it “is not going to happen”

Source: BBC

US President Donald Trump has blamed Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky for Moscow’s invasion, and said he could meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin before the end of the month.

Trump has also increased pressure on Zelensky to hold elections – echoing one of Moscow’s key demands to strike a deal.

Odessa’s governor says a large residential area has been left without power after a “massive” Russian strike on the Ukrainian port city. One person has been hospitalised.

Russia says Ukraine has attacked an oil refinery in the city of Syzran. No casualties have been reported.

Latest developments

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Culled from France 24

The sight of senior Russian and American officials back around a giant negotiating table is extraordinary.

For many, most of all Ukrainians, it will have been very hard to take.

In Saudi Arabia, Moscow achieved something major: after three years of all-out war on its neighbour and isolation by the West, it was back at the “top table” of global diplomacy.

Not only that, Russia looked for all the world like it was the one calling the shots.

Even as air raid sirens continue to sound across Ukraine, that’s exactly the image Moscow wants to project.

This was not a defeated Russia, forced to the negotiating table. It was more like the US inviting the aggressor to set out its terms.

True, US officials went into the process saying they wanted to feel out Russia, check whether it’s serious about peace.

But Donald Trump had already drawn his conclusions. Last week, after he spoke to Vladimir Putin by phone, he announced that the Russian leader “wants to see people stop dying”.

Trump could have responded by telling him to withdraw all his troops.

Instead, he clearly wants to cut a deal with Moscow to end the war, as he promised voters, and move on.

After more than four hours of talks in Riyadh, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio emerged to the press and announced the first steps towards negotiations had been agreed, with teams to be formed on both sides.

He’d concluded that Russia was ready to engage in a “serious process” to end the war.

But why was he so sure?

Across the table was Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, still under sanctions for what the US Treasury called Russia’s “brutal war of choice”.

When Lavrov met the Russian media, he told them the US had proposed a moratorium on attacking energy infrastructure.

“We explained that we have never endangered the civilian energy supply and only target what directly serves Ukraine’s military,” was the minister’s reply.

That’s not true.

I have personally walked through the ruins of civilian power plants that have been directly targeted by Russian missiles.

This is the country that the US is attempting to engage with, although there is ample evidence that it can’t be trusted.

Russia has also shown zero sign of conceding any ground: why would it, when the Trump administration has already agreed that Ukraine will never join Nato, as Moscow demands, and won’t get its occupied land back?

That’s why, for Ukraine’s allies, it won’t only be the image of US and Russian officials seated at the shiny Saudi table that jarred. It’s also how they talked.

“Laying the ground” for future investment sounds like a promise of dropping sanctions: no reckoning for Russia’s war of aggression, then, just reward.

These are, of course, the earliest of early days.

But in Moscow, officials and state media sense the start of Russia’s return to where it believes it belongs: face to face with the US, as an equal.

Source: BBC

South Korea’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol has been charged with insurrection after he attempted to declare martial law in December.

His ill-fated attempt to impose military rule plunged the country into an unprecedented political crisis and he becomes the first sitting president in South Korean history to be charged with a crime.

The indictment comes after a court in Seoul rejected a request to extend Yoon’s detention on Saturday, which meant prosecutors had to make a decision on whether to charge or release him before Monday.

“The punishment of the ringleader of insurrection now begins finally,” Han Min-soo, a spokesman from the main opposition Democratic Party told a press conference.

Fear, fury and triumph: Six hours that shook South Korea

Separately, the Constitutional Court has begun deliberations on whether to formally dismiss Yoon as president or reinstate him.

The impeached president has largely refused to co-operate with the criminal investigation over the martial law declaration.

Yoon is set to stand trial along with his former defence minister and senior military commanders, who are accused of helping him plan and carry out the attempt to seize total power.

In an unprecedented televised announcement on 3 December, Yoon said he was invoking martial law to protect the country from “anti-state” forces that sympathised with North Korea.

At the time, the embattled leader was in a deadlock over a budget bill, dogged by corruption scandals and several of his cabinet ministers were under investigation.

The military announced all parliamentary activity was suspended and sought to impose controls on media outlets.

The opposition’s Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung urged people to protest at the National Assembly and asked his fellow lawmakers to immediately vote to repeal the order.

Less than two hours after Yoon’s declaration, 190 lawmakers who gathered – including some from the president’s party – voted unanimously to block it.

Soldiers equipped with rifles were seen entering the parliament building through smashed windows as a dramatic confrontation ensued.

Thousands of civilians gathered in front of the assembly and tried to block the soldiers.

Yoon was was impeached by parliament and suspended from his duties on 14 December.

The affair has triggered South Korea’s worst political crisis in decades and has polarised the country.

Many of his hard-line supporters have rallied around him. On Friday, tens of thousands gathered to protest, demanding he be released and returned to office.

If Yoon is removed from office, a presidential election would be held within 60 days.

The prosecutors’ office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Source: BBC