Americans | Pakistan

• US embassies urge citizens to ‘consider departing’ the region • Iran says any country acting as US defensive shield will be engulfed by flames of war • Official insists Tehran planning for worst-case scenarios • 30 commercial vessels redirected by US naval blockade, says Centcom • Tanker struck by ‘unknown projectile’ off Oman; Kuwait destroys hostile drones • Houthis deny plans to impose fees on ships sailing through Red Sea TEHRAN: United States embassies in capitals across the Middle East urged Ame­rican citizens to beware of an “unforeseen escalation” in the regional conflict and asked them to be ready to leave on Saturday as Iran’s military accused the US of “escalating tensions” in the region and warned countries against cooperating with Washington. US embassies in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates posted the alerts online. “Americans in the region should consider departing, or be prepared to depart should there be escalation,...

A year after the Trump administration dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID), most Americans still support foreign aid to provide disaster relief, prevent disease outbreaks and improve security, according to a new poll commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation and released on Tuesday. The poll of 2,022 voters showed Republicans and President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) base were sceptical of foreign aid before getting more details. Nearly all Americans overestimated by far how much Washington spent on such programs, with over a third thinking they accounted for 20 per cent of the annual US budget. When told that foreign aid accounted for just 1pc of the US budget before 2025 and briefed on what it accomplished, Americans’ support grew to 70pc from 54pc, the poll showed. Republican support reached 58pc, and even MAGA Republicans, defined as those who primarily support Trump over the party, backed aid by 50pc, the foundation said. Trump, who made cutting off foreign a...

The Trump administration intends to increase its efforts to strip some naturalised Americans of their US citizenship, according to internal guidance obtained by The New York Times. The move comes as US President Donald Trump, in a prime-time address, pledged to further intensify his hard-line immigration policies, signalling a broader crackdown on migrants and stricter enforcement measures across the country. Internal instructions issued this week to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) field offices direct them to “supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100–200 denaturalisation cases per month” in the 2026 fiscal year, the Times reported. That would mark a dramatic increase in denaturalisation cases, which, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Centre, stood at about 11 per year between 1990 and 2017. A USCIS spokesperson told Reuters that the agency’s focus was on individuals who “unlawfully obtained US citizenship”, asserting that the expanded denaturalisation push forms part of effort...

A deal for the Chinese parent company of popular video-sharing app TikTok to sell its US operations would see the creation of a board dominated by Americans, the White House said on Saturday. “There will be seven seats on the board that controls the app in the United States, and six of those seats will be Americans,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News. She said a deal could be signed “in the coming days.” The United States has forcefully sought to take TikTok’s US operations out of the hands of Chinese parent company ByteDance for national security reasons. Under President Donald Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, the US Congress passed a law to force ByteDance to sell its US operations or face a ban on the app. US policymakers, including in Trump’s first term, have warned that China could use TikTok to mine data from Americans or exert influence on what they see on social media. But Trump turned to the platform, which is hugely popular with young Americans, to garner support during his ul...

Tens of thousands of Americans attended rallies on Saturday to protest United States President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown in major cities from New York to Atlanta to Los Angeles, on a day marred by the assassination of a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota. The protests marked the largest outpouring of opposition to Trump’s presidency since he returned to power in January, and came the same day that thousands of military personnel, vehicles and aircraft would march through and fly over Washington DC in a parade celebrating the US Army’s 250th anniversary. Saturday is also Trump’s 79th birthday. The Republican president has ordered National Guard troops and US Marines to Los Angeles, a heavily Democratic city — a deployment that California Governor Gavin Newsom has challenged in court. Anti-Trump groups planned nearly 2,000 demonstrations of varying sizes across the country to coincide with the parade. Many are taking place under the theme ‘No Kings’, asserting that no individual is above the...