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Australian officials say a car drove into a large crowd standing on a road to cheer on the Newcastle Knights rugby team north of Sydney, injuring 10 people

The Trump administration suspended all U.S. consular services in Brazil on Friday in what one political economist feared was a ploy to “interfere in the country’s democratic elections this weekend.”The State Department told Reuters that the suspension of all consular services across the South American nation was due to “security concerns,” but did not provide additional details, including what those concerns were or when consular services would be restored.“Consular Services in the US Embassy and Consulates in Brazil will be suspended starting Friday, October 2 due to security concerns," the State Department said in a statement, according to Reuters. "US citizens seeking emergency assistance during this time should not come to the Embassy, the Consulates, or other US diplomatic facilities."The timing of the move was suspect, argued David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International and former advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Brazil’s first-round presidential election is on Sunday, pitting Flávio Bolsonaro — a far-right politician supported by President Donald Trump — against incumbent Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a progressive Workers' Party member and frequent Trump critic.“Holy s---. In an UNPRECEDENTED move, the United States suspends ALL embassy services in all American consulates in Brazil… with no justification whatsoever,” Adler wrote in a social media post on X. “Yet another fear-stoking effort to interfere in the country’s democratic elections this weekend.”Brazilian political commentator Julio Freiress — whose commentary was cited by the Brazilian Supreme Court earlier this year — expressed similar concerns.“Trump has already started interfering in the Brazilian election,” Freiress wrote, according to an automatic translation by X’s Grok chatbot from its original Portuguese. “There's no reason whatsoever for the United States to suspend embassy services. There's already a whiff of interference in the air.”

President Donald Trump is trying to rewrite his own predictions about how long the war with Iran would last, but CNN's Daniel Dale subjected his revised public claims to a fact check.Seven months after launching the war on the last day of February, the 80-year-old president claimed Thursday that his much-repeated "four to six weeks" estimate referred only to eliminating Iran's nuclear threat, not to the entire conflict."I stated, numerous times, that it would take 4-6 weeks to get rid of THE IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT, and I did it in one night! The rest of the time is just to make sure it stays that way," Trump wrote on Truth Social.In an interview with TIME Magazine published the same day, a reporter told Trump that "most people heard you say four to six weeks." Trump blamed the media: "No, I think the press fed it to them."But CNN's review found that Trump and his former press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, repeatedly described the weeks-long timeline as applying to the war as a whole.On March 2, less than three days into the fighting, Trump told CNN's Jake Tapper, "I always thought it would be four weeks. And we're a little ahead of schedule." Later that day, he said in a speech, "We projected four to five weeks."At a March 10 briefing, Leavitt said the "initial timeline was about four to six weeks to achieve the full objectives" of the operation. She listed goals that went well beyond nuclear weapons, including destroying Iran's missiles and navy and weakening its proxy groups.Trump repeated the estimate twice at a March 26 Cabinet meeting. "We estimated it would take approximately four to six weeks to achieve our mission, and we're way ahead of schedule," he said.On March 31, Trump went further. He told reporters the U.S. could be done "within two weeks, maybe; two weeks, maybe three." Asked to clarify, he added: "We'll leave."As recently as April 8, Leavitt said Trump "stated this would be a four-to-six-week military operation to dismantle the military threat" posed by Iran.CNN asked the White House for any example of Trump limiting his timeline to the nuclear threat. The White House offered none and instead sent back a statement insisting Trump was "right" without addressing the request.Many experts also dispute Trump's separate claim that he eliminated Iran's nuclear threat in a single night.Trump has been distancing himself from the estimates for months. In April, he accused Democrats of claiming he "promised 6 weeks to defeat Iran.""He can quibble about whether he made a promise or offered an estimate," Dale concluded. "But the record shows the “six weeks” figure came from his own mouth."

Explosive new reporting on Fernando Cerimedo — the far-right operative dubbed “MAGA’s Man” in Latin America who was jailed for allegedly ordering the murder of his pregnant mistress and is under investigation for drug trafficking — featured what one journalist called an “extremely unsurprising” cameo from President Donald Trump’s son.Cerimedo is an Argentine political consultant and publicist, and is connected to Trump’s orbit in several ways. He was honored at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort as 2025’s “best Hispanic political consultant,” and has business ties with Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager who’s now running a pro-Israeli online influence campaign.In August, Cerimedo was arrested in Bolivia following the shooting of Nadia Beller, a Bolivian lawyer and activist who was reportedly pregnant with Cerimedo’s child. Cerimedo had been married to former Argentine government official Natalia Basil since at least 2024.Bolivian authorities are investigating whether Cerimedo had arranged for his mistress to be killed, as well as for his alleged links to drug trafficking. In some of the Spanish-language reports, photos of Cerimedo with Donald Trump Jr. had surfaced, something that immediately caught the attention of journalist Ryan Grim, co-founder of Drop Site News.Grim also pointed to the Trump administration’s recent move to revoke the visas of Bolivia’s attorney general — who oversees the Cerimedo probe — and other officials over alleged corruption, accusing the White House of working to cripple the case.“This is why they are now physically coming after the Bolivian attorney general,” Grim wrote in a social media post on X. “The right in Latin America is heavily bound up in drug trafficking and Cerimedo’s arrest was/is threatening to expose it all. Don Trump Jr cameo extremely unsurprising.”According to the Associated Press, the Trump administration started the process to revoke visas for 27 Latin American officials from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, which the outlet noted were all nations “friendly with President Donald Trump.”“Those leaders have complained that many of those targeted by the visa revocations were hindering their efforts to fight crime,” the Associated Press’ report reads.This is why they are now physically coming after the Bolivian attorney general. The right in Latin America is heavily bound up in drug trafficking and Cerimedo’s arrest was/is threatening to expose it all. Don Trump Jr cameo extremely unsurprising. https://t.co/qDIJBjveqn— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 1, 2026

A $50 billion investment deal touted by President Donald Trump during a Wednesday Oval Office event is running into pushback from the ally he says agreed to it.Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters South Korea would invest more than $50 billion in the long-stalled Alaska LNG pipeline project, plus another $120 billion in U.S. nuclear power plants, as part of a "broader trade package." That earned applause in the Oval Office on Wednesday.Sen. Dan Sullivan, an Alaska Republican who has pushed the pipeline for years, celebrated on X: "Alaska LNG is happening thanks to a $50 billion+ investment from South Korea that we announced today at the White House. This project will deliver low-cost energy for Alaskans for generations and create 10,000+ good-paying jobs. A historic day for our state!"But South Korea's government says the celebration is premature, the Wall Street Journal reported early Thursday morning.Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan pushed back on the U.S. framing, saying "the announcement went far beyond what was agreed, as the countries agreed to proceed with the Alaska project only on the premise that commercial reasonableness is guaranteed," according to the Korea Times.South Korean President Lee Jae Myung echoed the objection, insisting no blank check had been written. "We agreed to begin working on the Alaska LNG project on the conditions that, first, its commercial viability is confirmed and, second, it complies with Korea's legal procedures," Lee said.According to the Journal, Seoul has reportedly secured "a $20 billion annual investment ceiling and a $200 billion overall cap" as part of the broader trade framework, guardrails that leave the specific Alaska pipeline commitment far from finalized despite Wednesday's applause line. "The clashing versions add another twist to protracted, and often contentious, talks between Washington and Seoul over last year’s trade pact. South Korea has pledged $350 billion in U.S. investments, plus an additional $100 billion for American energy purchases, in exchange for dropping tariffs on most goods from 25% to 15%," the Journal reported.

Evangelical voters who once worshiped President Donald Trump are quietly abandoning the conservative party, a religious expert with close ties to the White House told Raw Story.Professor J. Derrick Lemons — author of the upcoming book “Trump and the Politics of Prayer: Inside the Spiritual World of His Faith Advisory Team” — told Raw Story that the religious community cannot forgive their president. “It's not like the cheerleader years of yesteryear,” said the University of Georgia’s Religion department head. “The midterms are not looking good.”Lemons has devoted his career to studying the influence of Christian pastors on American society, focusing in recent years on their complex and sometimes duplicitous relationship with Trump. In his 2022 article “The Room Where It Happened: How Evangelical Leaders Used a Closed-Door Meeting to Change Sentiment for Donald J. Trump,” Lemons spoke with Trump's evangelical advisor Reverend Johnnie Moore about a 2016 meeting orchestrated to draw voters to Trump’s side. "Organizers knew the questions that needed to be asked, and these questions were vetted with candidate Trump in advance,” Lemons wrote. "These staged questions allowed candidate Trump to provide correct answers to the key issues evangelicals cared about...The result is that millions of evangelicals who were on the fence about candidate Trump voted for him.”And they voted in droves.Evangelicals comprised a record 26 percent of the electorate in 2016 with more than 80 percent of white born-again voters throwing support behind Trump, according to Time.Their support continued into 2020, as Lemons explores in his soon-to-be released book about Trump’s Faith Advisory Team's actions ahead of the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021.Those leaders framed Trump’s efforts to remain in the White House as a mandate to “re-Christianize” America — and this prepared them to present Trump’s 2024 return as a resurrection, Lemons argues.In his interview with Raw Story, Lemons said faith leaders were able to make this pitch because Trump, in his first term, had bucked a political norm: he'd kept his promises to them.“Trump really delivered some significant wins for evangelicals,” Lemons told Raw Story. “That explains a lot of excitement.”That’s why, in 2024, roughly 80 percent of evangelical voters were once again willing to vote for a man convicted of fraud, found liable for sex abuse and accused of conspiring to steal an election, Lemons argued. When Trump promised an isolationist policy — they believed him.But as gas prices soar, evangelicals’ concerns have come to mirror those of Trump’s top critics, Lemons told Raw Story; that his Defense Department lacks an exit strategy and Iran has only been empowered by U.S. aggression.“If anything, Iran discovered that they had more control than maybe they even thought they had,” Lemons said, summarizing evangelicals’ views. “What's the end game here?”Recent polling from Reuters aligns with Lemons’ ear-to-the-ground perspective. In a June poll, about 54 percent of evangelicals said the war was not in line with their Christian values — and Trump's approval rating among evangelicals stood at just 52. “He really ran on ‘Isolationism of America’... the next thing you know, you're in a war,” Lemons said. Now, “There's anger in the evangelical community.”

President Donald Trump on Wednesday recounted what he repeatedly called an “amazing” story about an Israeli plumber who supposedly helped save a plunging passenger plane — while acknowledging he didn’t know whether the extraordinary account was true.Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relayed the story to him after a FlyDubai Flight plunged thousands of feet amid a violent cockpit incident.“I did speak to Bibi Netanyahu at length about this event,” Trump said.Trump claimed an injured pilot managed to open the cockpit door before an Israeli plumber rushed in, pulled the other pilot from his seat and grabbed the controls.“Having never flown a plane, he took the stick, lifted it up and leveled out the plane before it crashed,” Trump said.“Now, this is the story that I heard,” Trump quickly added. “I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s the story that I got from Bibi.”Trump then dropped what he called “the craziest thing” about the wild tale.“When I asked why he did that, he said he watches the show ‘Air Disasters.’ You know the show? It’s that crazy show,” Trump said. “But he said he watches it a lot, and he learned from watching that show sort of how to fly.”"I mean, you tell me, this is the craziest thing," Trump said.Trump repeatedly marveled at the account, telling reporters and those in the Oval Office with him on Wednesday that it was “the most amazing story.”He also remained captivated by the plumber’s apparent actions.“Well, now maybe I will start watching it,” Trump said of ‘Air Disasters.’

At the same time Donald Trump's approval numbers are hitting lows never seen before, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is enjoying a burst of popularity that's letting him push his agenda through with little resistance.The reason? His refusal to be bullied by the American president has Canadians and political rivals lining up behind him as his party adds new members. Carney is barreling forward with "a rewiring of Canada's economic, national-security and foreign policies" that, in some cases, would once have been "unthinkable" and unpopular, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. A political novice until he won the premiership last year, Carney has vanquished opposition that might have felled his predecessors thanks to a confrontation with Trump that has given him "unthinkable" popularity.Polls show Carney's Liberals would win a majority if an election were held today. According to the Journal, "Polls show that Carney’s Liberals would win a majority if an election were held today. A survey released Tuesday from Nanos Research found that Carney was the preferred choice for prime minister of more than 60% of respondents, the highest level it has recorded for him."That has lawmakers from "across the political spectrum" defecting to the Liberals over the past year, and his opponents are struggling to land a punch; Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has spent recent months fending off critics in his own party."Even in Alberta, a conservative stronghold, people view Carney more favorably than Poilievre or Premier Danielle Smith, according to the report."I cannot remember, in my adult life, a prime minister having this good an 18 months," said Darrell Bricker, chief executive of Ipsos told the Journal. "There has been very little pushback against any of the things that he's proposed."Lori Turnbull, a political scientist at Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University, said Carney likely wanted to pursue many of these policies regardless, but the conflict with the U.S. "gives him a logic, gives him a narrative that might make more sense to people." She added: "The way he's describing it is essentially we're in an emergency situation, we're in a kind of something that's similar to a war. He's made this about our sovereignty, and so it all kind of fits together."