Donald Trump should take heed of the Republican Party’s crushing defeat in the midterms, according to Iran’s chief negotiator, or the US government will face dire consequences.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, wrote on X that whether out of “conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message”. He warned that if the US government did not listen, “it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare”.
The cost of Trump’s war against Iran has become increasingly clear to Americans in recent months. The US President told Fox News on Tuesday that the war was a factor in the defeat of his party in the midterms. “It was a factor,” he said, “but the war in Iran is more important than what happened this evening.”
How you ‘smart fridge’ could be hacked
Household appliances, energy meters and even microwaves are vulnerable to hacking from hostile states, experts have warned.
Here’s how…
Fridge hack
Hackers sent temperatures soaring in supermarket freezers across 10 countries on Tuesday – including Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and Sweden.
The incident occurred three weeks after an unprecedented cyber attack caused French freezers to heat to 50°C, spoiling millions of euros worth of food.
How was the attack carried out?
Older internet remote-control boxes that manage refrigeration were targeted with an automatic defrost function, triggering dozens of shops, including IKEA.
Security experts believe a state actor like Russia may be to blame for the attacks, which also affected fridges in a small number of British businesses.
While state-linked attackers are more likely to target supply chains or national infrastructure to cause maximum disruption, experts are now calling for homeowners to reconsider if they need appliances that connect to the internet and action from government.
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Warnings from the Government
Millions have ‘smart fridges’
A YouGov poll last year showed more than two million Britons have smart fridges.
MP Graeme Downie said people in the UK should reconsider the connected appliances in their homes.
Cellular modules
Downie warned against the use of smart cellular modules that can connect to the internet or mobile network.
What else is vulnerable?
Luke de Pulford, the co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which monitors the threat from Beijing, said any firmware in devices that requires remote software could be vulnerable to hacking from a foreign-based entity.
- “Energy smart meters, microwaves, smart TVs – those are all things that are vulnerable. But also Chinese-made CCTV equipment. These are all devices that are well known to be vulnerable,” he said.
Taking pets abroad may be about to get easier – here’s why
Pet owners are likely to get easier access to the European Union for their pets under a new UK-EU agreement, it has been reported.
Pet passports
Pet passports will be revived under a new UK-EU sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement due to be agreed ahead of a joint summit reports.
Post Brexit, pet owners paid £200 to obtain an animal health certificate in order to take them abroad. Under the proposed deal, pets will now be a given a passport.
New deals with the EU
- 1Travellers will be able to bring their dogs, cats, and ferrets into EU territory for the duration of their lifetime without the need for expensive certificates. This will be implemented from 2028.
- 2UK ministers also hope to agree a deal to give car manufacturers access to the EU’s Made in Europe scheme.
- 3The EU is also looking to agree a youth mobility scheme allowing up to 100,000 Europeans to work aand study in the UK a year. Separately, Brussels is also looking for a reduction in tuition fees for EU students.
UK may have to accept almost 100,000 young Europeans a year to unlock Brexit deal
British negotiators think they can strike a youth mobility agreement with the EU while staying under the “psychologically important” figure of 100,000 visas, The i Paper can reveal.
Why Rice Krispies is no longer made from whole grain rice
Kellogg’s has removed rice grains from its Rice Krispies and Coco Pops cereals after “changing weather conditions” affected the quality and availability of the ingredient, the firm has said.
New formula
Rice Krispies has been reformulated to use rice flour instead of rice, while Coco Pops now contains a blend of rice flour and corn flour in place of rice.
Under the new recipes, the cereals now also contain wheat gluten, meaning they are no longer suitable for shoppers with a wheat allergy or coeliac disease.
Kellogg’s spokeswoman:
“This recent change helps us maintain consistent quality at a time when changing weather conditions are affecting the quality and availability of some of the and grains used in our cereals.”
The change in formula comes after this year’s El Niño weather phenomenon caused widespread droughts, floods and heatwaves across much of Asia where most of the world’s rice comes from.
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What to know as Republicans suffer brutal election losses
The Democrats have made sweeping gains in a bruising night for Donald Trump and the Republicans.
Sweeping victories
The US midterms have seen the Democrats flip key Republican Senate seats in places such as and .
The stunning results have been widely regarded as a consequence of the cost of living crisis which has been driven by the US-Israeli war with Iran. Losing both houses will now make it hard for Trump to drive his legislative agenda.
Key Republican losses in the Senate
Democrat James Talarico defeated Trump-backed Ken Paxton in Texas.
Democrat Sherrod Brown won in Ohio, defeating Republican Jon Husted.
Democrat Annie Andrews beat Trump’s hand-picked candidate Darline Graham to take the seat.
The losses keep coming
Democrat Troy Jackson won, taking the state’s Senate seat for the first time in 29 years.
Abdul El-Sayed is projected to win, becoming the first Muslim senator in US history.
Paralympian Josh Turek won a Senate seat in the state for the first time in 18 years.
Democrats needed a net gain of four seats in the 100-member Senate to win a majority, while in the 435-member House, they needed three. Democrat Senator Jon Ossoff, who won re-election in Georgia, told supporters “the American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption, and incompetence of the failed lame-duck President Donald J Trump”.
Trump’s response:
I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!
Posting on his social media platform Truth Social, the President sought to defend the bruising results.
While offering to work with opponents, he also posted a picture of a red baseball cap emblazoned with the word “Veto”, suggesting he would block legislation they sought to take through Congress.
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Why you feel completely broke
A decent salary and watching what you spend is increasingly not enough for people to feel well off– here’s why.
Cost of living
The UK is suffering the worst decade in terms of the growth in household incomes since records began.
Due to cost of living pressures and a lack of substantial wage growth, leading think-tanks like the Resolution Foundation predict that a typical working-age household will see their disposable income fall by £1,050 or 3 per cent between now and 2029.
Disposable income growing slower
Slow growth, inflation and stubbornly high housing costs are the main culprits. While disposable incomes fluctuated throughout the 1970s and 80s, they generally rose again after a fall. Not so since the 2008 global financial crisis, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic.
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House prices rising faster
The average house price in the UK is currently around 6.5 times the average income, compared to around 3.5 times in 1996 and 2.5 times in 1966.
- One could argue that it is why Andy Burnham thinks Britain should rejoin the European Union and why we’ve heard so much about growth – now rebranded as “good growth” – in order to improve incomes.
More people paying higher rate income tax
One of the major reasons behind stagnated income growth is the constant freezing of tax thresholds – levels that won’t change until 2030.
You are now dragged into paying the higher tax rate of 40 per cent if you earn £50,271 or more. You stay in that bracket until you earn £125,000, but at £100,000 a year you lose your personal tax-free allowance and your entitlement to state-funded free childcare.
The NHS blood test which could find several cancers
Blood tests capable of detecting signs of several cancers from a single sample will be offered to NHS patients in a world-first trial.
New blood tests
Thousands of patients will be invited to take part in the Stride-RCT study, which aims to catch cancers at a time when treatment is more likely to succeed.
The tests – which use AI and other cutting-edge technology – could also help GPs identify patients with cancers that are difficult to diagnose.
How will the tests be rolled out?
Who is eligible?
More than 20,000 patients aged 45 or older will be invited to take part.
The tests will be offered to patients who present with symptoms such as persistent bloating or abdominal discomfort.
Where will they be available?
The £8.5m government-funded trial will be offered in more than 200 GPs across England.
How do the tests work?
The tests are designed to detect signs of cancers including bowel, pancreatic, ovarian, stomach, liver, kidney, bladder and prostate cancer.
Some work by identifying tiny fragments of DNA that are shed into the bloodstream by tumours. Others measure proteins in the blood, or use AI to analyse results.
The tests aim not only to identify possible cancer cells but also to indicate where in the body it may be developing.
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Many see the election results as a plea for an end to the war, largely because the alternative is likely to mean the conflict drags on, increasing the cost of living for Americans and others around the globe.
Trump and Pete Hegseth, his self-styled Secretary of War, have used up a great deal of missiles and other weaponry over the last eight months, leaving parts of the US arsenals worryingly bare. They’ve also used up a great deal of US military credibility, which will take years to rebuild.
Whether Trump decides to escalate will affect America’s status and capabilities in matters of war and peace across the world. It will affect what progress, if any, can be made in peace talks in Ukraine, as well as future standoffs in the East and South China Seas with China over Taiwan.
The US President has talked up and then down renewed attacks on Iran in recent days but may now be looking for someone to take his anger and frustrations out on.
If Trump does use increased force against Iran – which it looks like his commander in the region, Admiral Brad Cooper, has advised against – he will have to act quickly. He probably has only a few days to decide whether to escalate or negotiate, and few in the US are advising him to do the former. The limitations of US forces – particularly warships in the region – as well as the growing scrutiny by US media, new legislators and his own Vice President will make escalation increasingly difficult in coming weeks. JD Vance came out today to blame the war for the Republicans’ historic defeat. “The reason we lost is the war. The President himself said so last night,” he said.
On Wednesday, three ships were reported to have been hit in the Straits of Hormuz. This followed the US bombing of Qeshm Island earlier this week, in retaliation for a missile launch against a US aircraft.
Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group, a prominent Iran hawk, told on Monday that “there are still substantive differences between both sides, so an escalation seems inevitable. Things will get nasty very quickly.”
Only Trump can truly know what he will do next, and even he might not know. Over the weekend, he hinted at another military strike on Iran, saying the US was “going to have to give them the hammer” before telling the Financial Times days later that he had no immediate plan to strike Iran.
The focus may now shift to Hegseth, who will come under intense congressional scrutiny when the new Democrat majorities are sworn into office in January. Hegseth is likely to be questioned over ordering US forces to target civilian boats in the Caribbean. At the time, he suggested that they were drug smugglers but provided little evidence to back up his claim.
He is also likely to be hauled before committees to answer questions over how the war on Iran has been conducted. The audit will read like a list of failures; the US and Israel have not achieved any of the aims set out by Trump: regime change, popular uprising or removal of nuclear materials and ambitions.
Instead, Iran has exerted control over the destiny of two great maritime choke points – Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, via the Houthis. Any peace agreement is likely to give Tehran an enhanced grip on the Strait of Hormuz.
The new Democrat-controlled Congress is also likely to question projects like Hegseth’s plan for a $1.5 trillion defence budget.
Trump stalwarts told the BBC that the midterm results would make Trump less inhibited in his final two years in office, and that he could pretty much do what he wants in terms of foreign and military affairs. This is highly questionable – since Congress is supposed to hold the real powers on going to war – but points to a worrying new reality of a President with little left to lose, and his legacy at the forefront of his mind.
The biggest argument against any renewed attacks is the failure of the conflict so far and the sheer amount of damage being wrought daily. Since March, some 125 merchant ships have been hit in and around the Strait of Hormuz, with 34 attacked in October alone. The waterway is still threatened with complete periodic closures.
What comes next in Iran is no longer about the midterms, but about Trump’s goals before he leaves office. For now, Trump’s great peacemaker posture seems to be facing the big short, and time may finally be up for the brand of developer-diplomacy led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
Trump won’t want to be shown up again. The midterm failings may humble him or make him lash out – and Iran could be the testing ground for his most ambitious aims.