Morning Headlines

The Trump administration is preparing sweeping new economic sanctions targeting Iran after roughly 23 weeks of conflict, signaling a shift away from military operations toward economic strangulation. The move comes as Iran's inflation hits 77% and the OECD has raised its US inflation forecast to 4.2% — partly due to the war's spillover effects.

Unprecedented rainfall — three times the monthly August average in half a day — inundated Chiba Prefecture east of Tokyo, killing at least eight people and triggering Japan's highest-level heavy rain warning for the region for the first time. More than 100,000 residents received evacuation orders as landslides and power outages spread across the area.

With the November midterms less than three months away, polling shows Trump's economic case — built on the claim that a 'golden age' is already here — is failing to land, as inflation exceeds 3% and gas tops $4 a gallon partly due to the Iran war. Americans are now nearly evenly split on which party they trust more on the economy, putting Republican control of Congress at risk.

August 15 is the fifth anniversary of the Taliban's return to power, and girls above sixth grade remain banned from school while women are barred from universities — the world's most severe restrictions on female education. New reporting finds the crisis has also begun degrading boys' education, as classrooms pivot to rote religious instruction at the expense of practical skills.

Firefighters across France, Britain, and Croatia battled Europe's fifth heatwave of the summer, even as Japan endured record rainfall in the same week — a pattern scientists say illustrates simultaneous climate extremes becoming the norm. The back-to-back disasters are stretching emergency services across two continents.