By Bo Erickson and Parisa Hafezi WASHINGTON/UNITED NATIONS, Sept 25 (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping turned to the Middle East war at their summit on Friday, as Iran pressed Washington to accept a seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and halt regional fighting. China is highly dependent on the flow of Middle Eastern ‌oil, which has been disrupted by Iranian threats on tankers leaving the Strait of Hormuz and the advance of Iranian-allied Houthis along chokepoints in the Red Sea. Xi urged the United States and ‌Iran to return to the June framework agreement that led to a short-lived ceasefire and continue negotiations toward a broader settlement, according to China’s state news agency Xinhua. Trump, meanwhile, warned Xi against providing support to Iran and received assurances that China would not ​do so, the US ambassador to China said on Friday, the final day of Xi’s three-day state visit. The flurry of diplomacy underscored the global stakes of the seven-month-old conflict, which has disrupted oil flows through one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes and drawn in regional and world powers. Xi’s visit coincided with the United Nations General Assembly, where Iran and the US engaged in diplomacy through Qatari mediators. Iran welcomed Xi’s push for a return to the June framework, but also placed renewed emphasis on its peace proposal, formally unveiled on Thursday. “Iran has conveyed to the United States through Qatar a concrete seven-day plan. If the necessary conditions are met, the strait ‌can be reopened, a normal maritime passage restored within seven days. The ⁠choice now rests with the United States,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told reporters at the United Nations on Friday. “The seven-day timeline will start as soon as the United States accepts this plan,” he said. Washington has yet to publicly respond to the Iranian offer, but a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “We ⁠are having positive and constructive discussions through the mediators, and we continue to discuss the nuclear issues.” If the US agrees, the warring parties could start wider talks “on mutually agreed subjects,” Araqchi said. Tehran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and hostilities would end on all fronts, including Lebanon. The plan in turn requires the United States to lift its blockade on Iranian ports, release Iran’s frozen funds, and waive its oil sanctions. But separately, a senior Iranian official told ​Reuters ​that Iran will show no flexibility over its nuclear program even if the United States accepts its peace deal. ​Iran would grant no concessions over its rights, including enriching uranium or shipping its ‌highly enriched uranium out of the country, the official said. Trump has vowed Iran will never develop nuclear weapons. RETURN TO DIPLOMACY? The Iranian seven-day proposal comes after previous attempts at diplomacy have failed to end the war, which began on February 28 with US and Israeli strikes. Since then the war has alternated between pauses and renewed strikes, killing thousands while degrading Iran’s conventional forces and damaging Iran’s already ailing economy. Iran and its allies have retaliated by extending the conflict throughout the region. Iran has struck US allies in the Gulf with drones and missiles while its Houthi allies in Yemen have targeted Saudi interests. Iranian-aligned militias in Iraq were blamed for a pipeline attack that temporarily took more Saudi oil off the market. All the while, Iranian-backed Hezbollah has been engaged with Israeli forces in Lebanon. WARNING TO CHINA The US warning to China came amid ‌reports that China had supplied Iran with shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers and that Tehran had found ways to evade sanctions ​on its oil sales with Chinese help. David Perdue, Trump’s ambassador to Beijing, said in a CNBC interview that Trump reiterated to ​Xi that direct or indirect support for Iran was “totally unacceptable.” Asked separately on Fox News if that ​meant China would stop assisting Iran, Perdue said, “They assured us yesterday they’re not doing that.” The war’s widening toll was also visible on the Arabian Peninsula, where Saudi ‌Arabia’s allies moved to shore up the kingdom’s defenses. With the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized Yemeni ​government under assault from Iran-linked Houthi fighters, and Houthi ​missiles striking inside Saudi Arabia, allies of the kingdom have united to show support. Defense officials of Turkey and Pakistan, both partners in a joint defense pact with Saudi Arabia, met in Riyadh on Friday to review the security situation and discuss intelligence cooperation, military coordination, and integrating forces, the Saudi defense ministry said in a statement. The statement came a day after Saudi, Pakistani ​and Turkish foreign ministers met within the framework of the Mecca Joint Defense ‌Agreement. The violence in Yemen has prompted a new humanitarian crisis, the United Nations children’s agency said on Friday, reporting a rise in acute malnutrition among children. (Reporting by Bo Erickson in ​Washington and Parisa Hafezi at the United Nationas; Additional reporting Hatem Maher, Yasmine Ghania and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, Timour Azhari in Riyadh, and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; Writing by ​Aidan Lewis, Ros Russell and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Gareth Jones, Alex Richardson, Andrew Heavens and Sanjeev Miglani) This article originally appeared on Reuters at https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/allies-unite-behind-saudi-arabia-015411569.html

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday turned away an attempt to use a new Missouri congressional map backed by President Donald Trump, putting an end to a long-running legal dispute as absentee voting is underway in the midterm elections.The justices halted a federal appeals court ruling that would have revived the Republican-friendly map for the November elections, which will determine control of Congress. There were no noted dissents.The Supreme Court instead let stand a decision by the Missouri Supreme Court, which ruled earlier this month that a citizen petition prevents the new map from being used unless first approved by voters in a November referendum. The decision means Missouri residents will vote under the same congressional districts used in the 2024 and 2022 elections.”At this late date, ordering reversion to the 2025 map in the midst of an ongoing election would usher in electoral chaos,” the high court wrote in an unsigned opinion. “The District Court and Court of Appeals should not enjoin or otherwise prohibit the use of the 2022 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri.”Republicans had hoped the new House map — which already was used in the August primaries — could help them win an additional seat as part of a nationwide redistricting battle pushed by Trump to gain an edge in the midterms.A panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that switching districts between the primary and general elections would violate the U.S. Constitution. The panel directed a district judge to bar Missouri from using anything other than the new map but delayed the order’s effect until next Monday to allow time for an appeal to the Supreme Court.The legal wrangling has caused confusion for more than a million potential Missouri voters — nearly 1 in 4 statewide — who were shifted from one district to another, resulting in different candidates on their ballots. Absentee voting began Tuesday under the 2022 congressional districts. Thousands of ballots already had been mailed, and some already have been cast.A decision from the Supreme Court is “a big sigh of relief,” said Kansas City election director Shawn Kieffer. He added, “We just want it over, so we can do our job properly.”Republican redistricting focused on Kansas CityRepublicans currently hold six of Missouri’s eight House districts. At the urging of Trump and Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe, Missouri lawmakers last September passed revised districts that were intended to help them win seven seats in the midterms.The redistricting significantly reshaped a Kansas City-based district held by longtime Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. It shed parts of Kansas City to neighboring districts with Republican incumbents and stretched the remainder of Cleaver’s 5th Congressional District far eastward into rural Republican areas.The result was about 59% of potential voters were new to the district, according to an Associated Press estimate. The ripple effects also shifted some voters in most of Missouri’s other congressional districts.Cleaver was unopposed in the Democratic primary. Republican state Sen. Rick Brattin won a six-way Republican primary under the revised districts. They remain the candidates for the general election, even though the district boundaries have reverted to their prior lines.Brattin was a plaintiff, along with Republican Rep. Bob Onder and two other voters, in a federal lawsuit that led to the 8th Circuit’s ruling and the last two appeals to the Supreme Court.Missouri’s redistricting prompted a big legal fightAt least 16 lawsuits have been filed in state and federal courts related to Missouri’s congressional redistricting. The battle has been the longest and most complex among roughly a dozen states that sought to change their U.S. House districts over the past year.Missouri’s new map survived most of the lawsuits, including ones contending that mid-decade redistricting violated the state constitution and that the new districts ran afoul of requirements to be compact. In one case, the Missouri Supreme Court allowed the new districts to be used while election officials worked to verify petition signatures seeking to put the map to a statewide vote.Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins waited until the legal deadline on Aug. 4 — the day the new districts were used in the primaries — to reject the petition. He asserted referendum petitions aren’t allowed for congressional redistricting.The Missouri Supreme Court ruled Sept. 3 that the referendum petition was valid. It ordered Hoskins not to use the new map and to instead use the districts adopted in 2022, after the last census. The U.S. Supreme Court let that ruling stand on Sept. 8. But minutes later, U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark issued a conflicting order in favor of the new map.The U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 10 blocked Clark’s order from taking effect. That day, the Missouri Supreme Court held Hoskins temporarily in contempt for telling local election authorities to use the new map after Clark’s order.But that wasn’t the end of the matter. The 8th Circuit, hearing an appeal of Clark’s blocked order, ruled in favor of the Trump-backed map Monday. That’s what led to the latest decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, said the group was pressing forward with its campaign to persuade voters to permanently reject the new map in the November referendum.”We have said from the beginning, people, not politicians will be the final deciders on this DC power grab,” he said in a statement.___Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed to this report.___Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court and redistricting at https://apnews.com/hub/redistricting.This article originally appeared on Associated Press at https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/supreme-court-rejects-trump-backed-220254898.html

Dale Caldwell outside his home in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on 9 September.Photograph: Kyle Mazza/Shutterstock Dale Caldwell, the lieutenant governor of New Jersey, resigned from his position on Friday, after the release of a report accusing him of sexually harassing a female staffer, among other ethics violations. New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, announced on Friday afternoon that Caldwell had submitted his resignation to her earlier in the day. The decision by Caldwell, 66, came one day after Sherrill called on him to step down after an investigation determined he violated state ethics rules and engaged in behavior that constituted sexual harassment. Related: New Jersey datacenter fined $1.1m after visual investigation showed dozens of unpermitted generators The 61-page report said it found credible evidence that Caldwell made romantic advances toward a female staffer’s friend, tried to secure a promotion for his girlfriend and gave tickets to personal guests without reimbursement. The New Jersey Globe was the first to report on Caldwell’s resignation. Thomas Calcagni, a lawyer for Caldwell, said in a statement they would “continue to forcefully challenge the report”. “Dr Caldwell’s resignation, submitted to put an end to the targeted campaign to discredit his character, does not in any way diminish our outrage concerning the investigative process and its specious findings,” Calcagni said. “Counsel is fully exploring all legal remedies to ensure a true, balanced, and unbiased record.” Sherrill, a Democrat, said she would appoint the state’s acting comptroller, Shirley Emehelu, as the acting lieutenant governor. “We can no longer tolerate the culture of silence, sweeping things under the rug or kicking cans down the road,” Sherrill said Friday at press conference in Trenton, the state capital. “New Jerseyans deserve fairness and they deserve accountability.” The change-up comes just weeks before midterm elections, which the lieutenant governor is responsible for overseeing. The New Jersey governor initiated an investigation into Caldwell in May after receiving an anonymous letter that accused him of “bringing uninvited female guests to events while traveling using taxpayer funds” and “hitting on women at functions”. Ultimately, investigators concluded that aspects of the allegations were credible. In one instance, investigators said Caldwell made a romantic advance toward a female staffer’s friend and then made a “derogatory or demeaning reference” about women after his advances were rebuffed. Caldwell allegedly told the staffer that women like them were ambitious and successful and needed a man in a position to help them, “but you young women are looking for young sperm”. Investigators also found that Caldwell advocated for the promotion of his girlfriend, a state employee, to a “senior leadership position”. Caldwell acknowledged that he did not disclose the nature of his relationship with the state employee until he was confronted. Caldwell had pushed for his girlfriend’s promotion, even after being informed he was under investigation. Ultimately, she did not get the promotion and no longer works in state government. Credible evidence also determined Caldwell brought at least three personal guests, including his girlfriend, to ticketed events, in his capacity as lieutenant governor, without advance authorization or payment. After Sherrill announced the report’s findings and called for Caldwell to resign, it was unclear whether or not he would step down. As lieutenant governor, Caldwell was also serving as New Jersey’s secretary of state, who is the chief elections officer. With just 39 days until the midterm elections, Sherrill said she was tapping Emehelu to ensure “all eligible New Jerseyans can make their voices heard”. “Shirley is a veteran of the US Department of Justice and the New Jersey attorney general’s office. She has the judgment to run these elections and the strength to stand up to Trump’s attacks on voting,” Sherrill added. Sherrill has 45 days to name a permanent replacement for Caldwell.This article originally appeared on The Guardian at https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/jersey-lieutenant-governor-resigns-sexual-191207359.html

By John Kruzel WASHINGTON, Sept 25 (Reuters) – The US Supreme Court revived on Friday an expanded immigration database that President Donald Trump’s administration said aims to combat voting by noncitizens but critics contend could disenfranchise eligible voters. The justices granted the Justice Department’s request to block a judge’s order that had stopped state officials from using Social Security ‌numbers and other information to conduct sweeping checks of the citizenship status of registered voters against federal records. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices dissented from ‌Friday’s order. The majority said the plaintiffs’ arguments likely fail because federal law expressly authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to request and receive information relating to citizenship and immigration status from other agencies, including the Social Security Administration. The administration’s data-sharing arrangement is ​one in a series of actions boosting the federal government’s involvement in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections in which Trump’s fellow Republicans seek to maintain control of Congress. The U.S. Constitution gives individual states the primary authority to run and administer elections. The Department of Homeland Security last year redesigned a federal database known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, used to verify a person’s citizenship and immigration status. The revamp allowed users to search many records at a time and to conduct searches using individuals’ Social Security numbers. In a social media post on Friday, James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, ‌replied to a post about the court’s order, saying, “Yes, you read that ⁠right. We had to file an emergency petition in the Supreme Court just so we could use government data to help states stop noncitizens from illegally voting.” Since the federal database was expanded, several Republican-led states have compared their voter lists to the database, and some voters flagged as potential noncitizens have had their ⁠registrations canceled. Critics say such election-related actions by Republicans are driven less by concerns over election security than by an attempt to gain political advantage by narrowing the electorate, risking the disenfranchisement of eligible, often Democratic-leaning voters. Trump has carried out hardline policies toward immigration and has made false claims of widespread voting fraud including in his 2020 election loss to Democratic former President Joe Biden. Advocacy groups that sued to block the revised SAVE system said that the ​new ​approach has resulted in people who were wrongfully identified as noncitizens being kicked off voter rolls. They have argued ​that SAVE can be outdated, meaning immigrants who have become naturalized US citizens ‌and are thus eligible to vote are sometimes labeled as noncitizens. The modified system’s overall error rate is not publicly known. The Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department did not provide that information when asked. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which represents the plaintiffs, called Friday’s decision “profoundly disappointing,” saying it puts Americans “at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the administration’s unreliable voter purge database weeks before the midterm elections.” In a dissent on Friday that was joined by her two fellow liberal justices, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that “the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take.” In their Supreme Court filing, the advocacy groups cited a Travis County, Texas, election official ‌who said 25% of the system’s noncitizen matches there involved people who had already proven their US citizenship, and ​news reports finding that at least 81% of the system’s responses in St. Louis County, Missouri, were erroneous. The voting rights ​group League of Women Voters and privacy rights group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in ​September 2025 to block the Trump administration’s modified system. They said that the revamp violated federal privacy and other U.S. laws. In a June ruling blocking the revamped ‌database, US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington, D.C., said the system was ​haphazardly assembled and contained unreliable citizenship data. “All in all, ​the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “This court cannot stand idly by while that happens.” The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a 2-1 ruling on September 4 declined to halt Sooknanan’s ruling, prompting the administration’s request to the Supreme ​Court. In a Supreme Court filing, Justice Department lawyers called the judge’s order “indefensible,” ‌arguing that it “threatens the integrity” of the midterm elections. Texas, which intervened in the case in support of the administration, has disputed claims that the system is unreliable. Due to separate ​litigation in Florida, the Trump administration has been able to continue using its modified SAVE system in the Republican-led states of Florida, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio. (Reporting by John ​Kruzel; with additional reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham and Daniel Wallis) This article originally appeared on Reuters at https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/supreme-court-restores-trumps-mass-153415643.html

A new report on Charlie Kirk’s assassination says his Turning Point USA organization insisted he speak outdoors despite security concerns, while the university where he was killed didn’t properly assess dangers such as the possibility of a rooftop shooter. Those were among the key findings in an after-action report released Friday by Utah Valley University. The external, independent review found that the university failed to conduct a formal security assessment, did not create a written event action plan and deferred critical decision making for the conservative activist’s talk to Turning Point USA. Kirk, 31, was killed on Sept. 10, 2025, by a sniper perched on a rooftop more than 400 feet (122 meters) away, authorities said. He had been debating students in an outdoor courtyard on the Orem, Utah, campus surrounded by tall buildings and elevated walkways, and with several thousand people in attendance. The report makes nearly 150 recommendations, including hiring a police sergeant to focus on campus events and creating clear criteria for when events must be moved indoors or to more controllable venues because of crowd size and line-of-sight concerns. In a statement, Utah Valley President Jon Anderson said the university has a responsibility to “learn from the findings of this review, and follow through on its recommendations.” “This requires humility, an honest examination of our policies and practices, and a commitment to act on what we learn,” said Anderson, who took over as president last month. He added that the university has made “meaningful progress in strengthening campus safety over the past year.” That includes hiring a chief public safety officer to coordinate with campus police and other emergency response agencies and hiring more campus police officers. At the time of the shooting, the university had just 13 sworn officers, which the report said was not sufficient for Utah Valley’s size and the types of events and activities held on its campus. Utah Valley is the state’s largest university, with about 50,000 students on a sprawling campus beneath the Wasatch Mountains. Tyler Robinson has pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder in the shooting, a charge that could make him eligible for the death penalty if convicted. Prosecutors say he told his romantic partner that he “had enough of his (Kirk’s) hatred.” No trial date has been set. Last week, Kirk’s family sent a wrongful death notice — a precursor to a possible lawsuit — accusing Utah Valley officials of hastening his death with a string of “reckless decisions.” They included failing to conduct an adequate risk assessment, failing to establish a secure perimeter and failing to have first responders immediately available, which led to Kirk being taken to a hospital in a private vehicle instead of an ambulance. The family’s lawyer, Brett Parkinson, said in a statement that the report reaffirms those allegations. By hosting the event, he said, Utah Valley assumed responsibility for the safety of all in attendance, including Kirk. “The buck stopped with UVU leadership and law enforcement,” Parkinson said. “Justice for Charlie and his family requires true accountability for UVU’s fatal shortcomings that day.” According to the after-action report, a Turning Point representative insisted at an August 2025 planning meeting that Kirk speak at a courtyard on campus because he had been there previously and the organization was familiar with the location. Some Utah Valley officials expressed reservations about holding the event in an outdoor space with tall buildings around, but ultimately allowed the event to proceed. “In our assessment, those decisions were consequential,” the report said. The location “created significant protective operations considerations,” the report said, but the planning process failed to include a documented line-of-sight assessment, pre-event briefing or walk-through with security stakeholders. Nor was there clear coordination with the speaker’s private security team and external law enforcement partners, the report said. An Associated Press review found that the campus did not use several public safety practices that have become standard at events around the country. Among other things, campus police did not fly a drone to monitor rooftops or coordinate with local law enforcement to secure the event attended by about 3,000 people. Nor were there bag checks or metal detectors. ___ Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.This article originally appeared on Associated Press at https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/report-finds-many-security-deficiencies-183243447.html