Canadian wildfire smoke ignites cross-border feud over Ottawa's 'willful negligence'

As smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to drift across parts of the United States, forestry experts say Canada could reduce the severity of some fires through more aggressive forest management.

The issue reached the White House Friday, with President Donald Trump accusing Canada of failing to properly manage its forests and threatening to factor the economic cost of the smoke into tariffs on Canadian imports.

"We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air," Trump wrote on Truth Social. He said he planned to call Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and accused Canada of refusing to engage in "basic Forest Management and Debris Removal," calling it "Willful Negligence."

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Andrew Hale, a Canadian fellow at Advancing American Freedom, argued that Canada’s wildfire policies have failed to prioritize forest management.

"Canada has a policy of not keeping reservoirs. They also will not cut firebreaks and will not thin their forests," Hale told Fox News Digital. "This is the result of the undue influence of environmental groups who are firmly politically motivated and have divorced themselves from science and good stewardship. Canada and the rest of North America is suffering as a result," he said.

Earlier this week, four Republican members of Michigan's congressional delegation — Reps. Jack Bergman, John James, Lisa McClain and John Moolenaar — sent a letter to Carney saying residents in their state were once again experiencing unhealthy air because of smoke drifting south from Canadian wildfires.

"We are done accepting apologies in place of action," the lawmakers wrote, accusing Canada of underinvesting in forest thinning, fuel reduction and prescribed burns while calling for measurable plans to reduce future wildfire smoke crossing the border.

The criticism comes as Canada's own Senate has reached a similar conclusion on one point: while it says climate change is making wildfire seasons longer and more severe, the country also needs to do substantially more to prepare its forests before fires ignite.

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The Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry released a report in June titled Canada on Fire: The Catastrophic and Escalating Effects of Wildfires on Lives and Communities after holding 17 meetings, hearing testimony from 79 witnesses and receiving 23 written briefs from scientists, government officials, Indigenous leaders and industry experts.

The committee concluded that Canada's three most recent wildfire seasons demonstrated that climate change was accelerating fire behavior "beyond the capacity of existing systems." At the same time, it found that prevention efforts have not kept pace with the growing threat.

Much of the report focuses on what experts call "fuel management" — reducing the amount of dry grass, dead trees, fallen branches and other vegetation that allows small fires to become large, destructive wildfires.

"Several witnesses agreed that prescribed fire is the most important risk-reduction tool for helping to manage or slow wildfire on the landscape and restoring ecological integrity," the report said.

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One witness, Paul Hessburg, a professor at the University of Washington's School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, said that climate change is making wildfire conditions worse but does not eliminate the value of proactive forest management.

"The punchline is, with climate change, these conditions will intensify with less snowpack, more fires, bigger fires, hotter fires," Hessburg told the committee. "The question is: Can we restore resilience? We can. We can bring back these elements and put the governors back into the landscape that historically regulated the flow of fire."

Jason Hayes, a senior research fellow in energy and environmental policy at the Heritage Foundation, said the practical solution is to spend more time managing forests before fires begin rather than relying primarily on emergency response after they start.

"The best thing to do is get out, space and thin, do prescribed burns and recognize that these are renewable resources," Hayes told Fox News Digital. "If we did that, then we would have much less intense wildfires."

Hayes acknowledged that carrying out those recommendations across Canada would be far more difficult than simply identifying them. He said many fires burn in remote areas of northern Ontario and other parts of Canada that are difficult to reach because they are far from roads and population centers.

"You have to fly in, and it's just difficult to do," Hayes said.

Witnesses to the Canadian Senate committee also warned that Canada faces practical challenges beyond forest management, including shortages of wildfire-management expertise and an aging fleet of firefighting aircraft. The report cited testimony that provincial fleets still include 22 older CL-215 aircraft and that at least 20 aircraft require immediate replacement.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Office of Prime Minister Mark Carney but did not receive a comment in time for publication. 

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Incoming UK PM Andy Burnham rejects Thatcher-era policies, signals leftward shift

Britain’s incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham used his first speech as Labour leader Friday to condemn the economic model established in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher and promise greater public control of essential services, signaling a shift to the left from outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer. 

Burnham, who will formally become prime minister Monday, said that Britain had taken "a series of wrong turns in the 1980s," when political power was centralized and economic power was transferred to private companies. He was unopposed to run as party leader, having been nominated by 379 Members of Parliament to lead it.

"The country surrendered control of the essentials — housing, water, energy, transport — and left people exposed to higher costs," Burnham said during the July 17 speech in London, according to a transcript of his remarks.

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He declared that four decades of neoliberal economic policy had "not been kind" to the working-class and industrial communities that traditionally supported Labour and described his ascent as the country’s most significant political turning point in 40 years.

"The government I lead will confidently lay that path out starting next week," Burnham said. "That is why this change today is the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years.

Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, said Burnham’s speech offered a clear ideological signal but little detail about how his government would carry it out. "With Burnham, there is a lot of light and heat, but not much actual substance," he added. "We are all still waiting to see what that substance might be."
 

Mendoza said, "If he thinks Britain has been on the wrong track for the last 40 years, what is the right track? Is it socialism of a past kind? Is it some form of statism? What does he actually intend to do?"

Burnham's speech offered the clearest indication yet that the former Greater Manchester mayor intends to move the party away from Starmer’s more cautious economic positioning and toward greater state ownership, expanded council and social housing, giving more power to regional government and increased state involvement in essential services.

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Burnham said Labour would no longer attempt to imitate the right and far-left parties. "We won’t try to out-Green the Greens or out-Reform Reform."

Although he did not explicitly advocate returning Britain to the 1970s or refer to the late Lady Thatcher by name, free-market critics portrayed his attack on her reforms as an effort to revive the state-dominated economic policies that preceded her government.

Britain experienced the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79, when millions of workers participated in widespread strikes over pay that disrupted daily life. The strikes left trash uncollected, reduced hospital services and affected public transportation. The unrest is widely seen as a major factor in the election of Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives in 1979 as voters turned against the unions and the Labour government of that time.

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The Adam Smith Institute responded to his speech by publishing a lengthy defense of the Thatcher era, highlighting reductions in income and corporate tax rates, privatizations, rising homeownership and fewer days lost to labor strikes.

"Since you mentioned the 1980s, Andy Burnham, here’s a reminder of what was achieved," the free-market think tank wrote before listing economic indicators it said improved during the period.

According to the free-market think tank, the top rate of income tax fell from 83% to 40%, the basic rate dropped from 33% to 25%, and corporation tax was reduced from 52% to 35%. It said inflation declined from a peak of 21.9% in 1980 to 2.4% in 1986, while the number of working days lost to strikes fell from 29.5 million in 1979 to 1.9 million in 1990. The institute also said homeownership rose from 55% to 67%, the number of individual shareholders increased from 3 million to 11 million, and national debt fell from 47% of gross domestic product to 28%.

Emma Schubart, a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society who previously worked at the Adam Smith Institute, told Fox News Digital that Burnham’s speech demonstrated what she described as a fundamental misunderstanding of taxation and economic incentives.

"The biggest takeaway is that he comes across as pretty economically illiterate," Schubart said in an interview Friday. She called Burnham’s "demonization" of Thatcher polices "strange and needless."

Schubart argued that Burnham’s message was internally contradictory because he presented his leadership as a national renewal while proposing to dismantle reforms associated with the 1980s.

"He keeps saying he’s bringing a renewal to the U.K. and a new chapter," she said. "But then he also says, ‘We’re going to go back to the ’70s.’ You have to pick one."

Burnham nevertheless insisted he would be a "pro-business leader," while calling for greater public control of essential services, new powers for regional governments and closer cooperation with private businesses.

The ideological shift presents an immediate political gamble. Burnham must unite Labour’s competing factions, reassure financial markets and respond to Reform UK’s growing challenge — all while taking office without winning a national election. 

Mendoza warned that Burnham’s effort to appeal to the left could complicate relations with the Trump administration. "The government could most definitely clash with the United States under Burnham’s vision, because the voters he is trying to bring back into his tent include many of those who are deeply hostile to America.

"If he adopts U.S.-friendly policies, he risks alienating the voting coalition he is trying to create," he continued. "But if he decides to pick fights with the United States, he risks damaging British national security and the alliance with America, which matters far more to the country than any electoral coalition."

Burnham is expected to be sworn in as prime minister on Monday by King Charles III.

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Leaked Iran report finds record public anger as regime focuses on holding power

A confidential report prepared for Iran’s presidency is raising a consequential question for Washington and its allies: Do extraordinary levels of public anger and support for systemic change justify reassessing whether the Islamic Republic may be more vulnerable to regime change than previously believed?

The classified document, titled "What Iran Wants," reportedly found that only 9% of respondents supported maintaining the status quo, with 53% calling for fundamental or structural reforms and more than 19% favoring changing the political system outright.

Taken together, nearly three-quarters of those surveyed reportedly supported either deep structural reform or replacement of the existing system — findings that could strengthen arguments that Iran’s political crisis has moved beyond dissatisfaction with individual leaders or policies.

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IranWire reported on July 13 that it had obtained the document, which was compiled by Ali Rabiei, President Masoud Pezeshkian’s social adviser and a former government spokesman. It was based on polling conducted by the Ara Opinion Research Center in May 2026 and circulated among institutions within Iran’s governing structure in June, according to the outlet.

Miad Maleki, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the report should prompt a fresh assessment of the potential for political upheaval inside Iran.

"If anything, this research understates the depth of Iranians’ rage," Maleki said. "And that is what makes it remarkable: even a survey prepared for the regime’s own president, by its own pollsters, records anger levels above 63%, well beyond the highest rate Gallup has ever recorded anywhere in the world, alongside 81% struggling to put food on the table and a majority expressing hopelessness."

Maleki cautioned that polling conducted under an authoritarian government cannot be treated as precise because respondents may fear the consequences of expressing opposition.

"In a police state where expressing the wrong opinion can cost you your job, your freedom, or your life, respondents self-censor, which means these findings are best read as a floor, not a ceiling," he said.

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The complete survey methodology was not included in the material obtained by IranWire. The report reportedly did not disclose how respondents were selected, who was questioned or whether the sample reflected Iran’s geographic and demographic makeup.

Its findings therefore cannot be independently verified or treated as definitive measurements of Iranian opinion. The report also cannot establish that dissatisfaction will translate into an organized movement capable of removing the government.

Still, its findings portray multiple pressures converging at once.

Approximately 64% of respondents reported persistent anger, up roughly 12% points from a previous government survey conducted in December 2025. Half reported hopelessness, approximately 48% reported sadness or depression and about 45% reported persistent fear or anxiety, according to IranWire.

Economic distress also appears central to the public anger.

More than 81% experienced severe or partial difficulty obtaining enough food, while 75% struggled to cover medical costs, IranWire reported. Fifty-four percent said their income did not cover current household expenses, and only 8% reported earning enough to save.

Respondents blamed domestic governance more frequently than international pressure. 46.9% cited government inefficiency as the cause of Iran’s economic problems, 26.3% blamed corruption and 20.7% cited foreign sanctions.

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That finding could be especially significant to the regime-change debate because it suggests many Iranians do not primarily blame outside powers for their deteriorating living conditions.

The document also points to a crisis of institutional confidence. Roughly 60% reportedly distrusted major government institutions, while 61.2% negatively assessed officials’ ability to solve Iran’s problems. Distrust of the government, parliament, judiciary and state television remained above 50%, IranWire reported.

The report’s recommendations, however, reportedly centered on managing dissatisfaction rather than addressing demands for systemic change.

Rabiei urged state institutions to better explain the impact of sanctions, moderate the rhetoric used by officials and religious platforms, present a more inclusive image through state television and avoid policies that place the government in direct confrontation with society.

IranWire’s follow-up analysis argued that the recommendations treated Iran’s crisis primarily as a communications and public-perception problem. The report offered few concrete proposals involving institutional accountability, political liberalization or fundamental economic reform, according to the outlet.

Maleki said the findings were consistent with the expanding scale of unrest, citing demonstrations that spread from more than 80 cities in 2017 to more than 200 cities across all 31 provinces this year, alongside what he described as a quadrupling of strikes.

"Iranians have moved from being skeptical of what another revolution might bring to concluding there is no alternative to one, because reform has proven impossible," Maleki said.

Yet the report does not resolve one of the largest obstacles to regime change: The Islamic Republic has spent decades building institutions designed to monitor, deter and violently suppress organized opposition.

"This regime was born of revolution, by revolutionaries," Maleki said. "Preventing and crushing the next one is the one thing they genuinely know how to do."

He nevertheless argued that further unrest was inevitable.

"So the discontent will translate into renewed protest," Maleki said. "The question is not if, but when, and whether anyone is prepared to stand with the Iranian people when it does."

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Asian nation with 1,500-year-old imperial line insists only men can become emperor in policy revision

Japan’s Parliament voted Friday to enshrine male-only succession for the imperial throne, part of a monarchy that traces its origins back roughly 1,500 years.

Lawmakers did so by revising an Imperial House Law dating back to the 1800s, despite warnings from experts that limiting succession to men in the paternal line will hasten the decline of Japan’s shrinking and aging imperial family, according to the Associated Press.

To address the dwindling number of eligible heirs, the revisions allow distant male relatives to be adopted into the imperial family to father future successors. However, strict rules remain in place limiting the throne to men with royal blood. The changes also allow princesses to retain their royal status after marrying commoners.

The new rules passed by Parliament come as many Japanese had been calling for Princess Aiko, Emperor Naruhito’s 24-year-old daughter, to be allowed to succeed him — now an impossibility.

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"The emperor is a symbolic figure, and I don’t see why women cannot serve in the role," Junichiro Tsujimaru, a 78-year-old sushi chain founder, told the AP.

Under current law, the 66-year-old emperor's younger brother is next in line. After that, his 19-year-old nephew, Prince Hisahito, will inherit the throne, and then the emperor's 90-year-old uncle.

Hisahito is the only boy to be born in four decades, and only five of the 16 adults in the imperial family are men.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and other conservatives say the male bloodline is the source of the emperor's authority and legitimacy.

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"It’s a declaration to prevent female monarchs … and to defend the male-lineage at all costs," Hideya Kawanishi, a Nagoya University expert on monarchy, told the AP. "They cannot say it’s male chauvinism, so they call it tradition."

Chizuko Ueno, a prominent feminist and sociologist, recently suggested it was ironic that Japan's first female prime minister was the one to ensure male-only succession.

Ueno said the new rules "treat male royals as stallions and put female royals under pressure as ‘childbearing machines’ to produce male offspring."

Japan has had eight empresses descended from the male line in its centuries-long history as a hereditary monarchy. The last woman to reign was Empress Go-Sakuramachi, who sat on the throne from 1762 until 1771, when she abdicated in favor of her nephew.

Female eligibility for the throne was first eliminated in 1890 under the original Imperial House Law.

That change was carried over into the modern Imperial House Law, enacted in 1947, the same year Japan’s new constitution stripped the emperor of governing authority after the country’s defeat in World War II.

Like Britain’s royal family, Japan’s imperial family remains an important national symbol.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Resource-rich nation praises US ties amid Washington-Beijing critical minerals race

UNITED NATIONS — The Democratic Republic of Congo does not view growing American involvement in its critical minerals industry as a contest with China, the country’s foreign minister told Fox News Digital, arguing that Kinshasa needs multiple partners to transform its vast natural wealth into prosperity for its people.

"I don’t like talking about competition. I like talking about complementarity," Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner said in an exclusive interview at the United Nations.

"A country as big as the USA, but also a country as big as the DRC and as big as China, they do not develop just with one single partner," she added. "They develop with different partnerships that respond to different needs and that bring different expertise to the table."

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The comments come as the Trump administration seeks to increase American access to Congo’s copper, cobalt, lithium, gold and other strategic resources, while reducing U.S. reliance on mineral supply chains dominated by China.

A strategic partnership signed by Washington and Kinshasa Dec. 4, 2025, calls for increased economic cooperation, investment and the development of secure and transparent critical-mineral supply chains. The agreement accompanied a broader regional framework linking economic integration to efforts to end decades of conflict between Congo and Rwanda.

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A separate arrangement involving DR Congo’s state mining company Gécamines and commodities trader Mercuria could give U.S. buyers priority access to some copper and cobalt supplies, Reuters reported Dec. 5, 2025. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation also expressed interest in taking a strategic stake in the partnership.

Kayikwamba Wagner said relations between the U.S. and DR Congo were taking "a more concrete shape" based on mutual economic interests.

She said Kinshasa welcomed "more U.S. interests in the DRC" that could help the country turn its mineral wealth into "tangible transformations for the lives of Congolese," while also delivering benefits to American partners.

Speaking separately at a high-level U.N. meeting on critical minerals Tuesday, Kayikwamba Wagner warned that the global shift toward clean energy must not reproduce an economic model in which raw materials leave Africa while processing, technology and most of the profits remain elsewhere.

"The global energy transition must not become another extractive transition," she said. "If it merely replaces one form of dependency with another, it will have fallen short of its promise."

She called for foreign partnerships to support local processing, infrastructure, technology transfers, research, industrialization and access to financing — not simply secure supplies of raw materials.

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The minerals push is closely connected to the U.S.-mediated peace process between the DRC and Rwanda. The countries initially signed a peace agreement in Washington June 27, 2025, before presidents Félix Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame reaffirmed the deal and signed related economic agreements on Dec. 4. The framework was intended both to reduce fighting and attract Western investment to a region rich in cobalt, copper, tantalum and other minerals.

Kayikwamba Wagner acknowledged that the agreement had not ended the violence but said Washington’s willingness to impose consequences for violations showed that the process remained meaningful.

"This is a 30-year conflict we’re dealing with," she said. "It’s not going to happen overnight."

She praised the administration for sanctioning the Rwanda Defense Force and senior Rwandan officials over what the Treasury Department described as their support for the M23 rebel group. Treasury said in March that the RDF had supported, trained and fought alongside M23 as it seized territory and strategic mining locations in eastern Congo. Rwanda has repeatedly denied supporting M23.

"I find it encouraging to see that we have with us a partner that is not willing to give up at the first obstacle," Kayikwamba Wagner said.

She was in New York as the DRC, which holds the Security Council presidency for July, elevated the connection between natural resources, armed conflict and sexual violence.

Kayikwamba Wagner said rape and other forms of conflict-related sexual violence had risen sharply in areas held by M23 and Rwandan forces, affecting women and girls as well as men and boys.

Victims in occupied areas, she said, often lack access to courts, healthcare or other avenues for redress.

"This is also one of the reasons why we continue to be mobilized against this illegal occupation of eastern DRC," she said, arguing that restoring state authority was essential to providing survivors with justice and medical care.

In her U.N. remarks, she cited the Rubaya mining area, which is under M23 control and supplies a significant share of global tantalum demand. She said U.N. experts estimated that at least 1,400 tons of coltan were smuggled into Rwanda during the first year after the mines were seized, generating approximately $800,000 per month for the armed group.

The Treasury Department imposed additional sanctions on June 25 against a network it accused of working with M23 to smuggle minerals from eastern Congo into Rwanda, saying the action was intended to support the Washington peace framework and improve transparency in regional mineral supply chains.

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Iran calls on Houthis to prepare to cut off Red Sea gateway — can the terror group do it?

Iran has reportedly instructed Yemen’s Houthi terrorists to prepare to close a critical Red Sea gateway if the United States attacks Iranian power infrastructure Reuters reported, a threat experts warn could sharply disrupt global shipping even if the group cannot completely seal the waterway.

"This threat should be taken seriously," Nadwa Al-Dawsari of the Middle East Institute told Fox News Digital. "With recent escalation and U.S. strikes on Iran, Tehran has already signaled that the Bab al-Mandab could become part of its response."

Three sources told Reuters on Thursday that Iran’s leadership had discussed using the Houthis to shut the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and recently conveyed the request to the group. A source close to the Houthis said missiles and drones had been deployed near the waterway and that the group was awaiting an order to begin attacking shipping.

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Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former British ambassador to Yemen and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, warned in a recent Fox News Digital report that a full resumption of the Houthi maritime campaign could trigger wider fighting.

"It will be interesting if the Houthis do go all in, and resume their campaign against Red Sea shipping with full intensity," Fitton-Brown said. "This will draw international anger and likely result in Israeli and U.S. strikes on Sana’a and Hodeida."

"There is potential for a general escalation if this happens, albeit one in which the allies have a clear military advantage," he added. 

Al-Dawsari said the Houthis have continued developing the weapons needed to threaten the narrow shipping corridor despite largely refraining from maritime attacks over the past year.

"While the Houthis have largely refrained from attacking shipping for about a year, they have continued to advance their maritime capabilities, including missiles, drones and sea mines," she said. "They may not be able to fully close the strait, but they could significantly disrupt shipping and raise costs and risks for commercial traffic," she said.

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But the group would not necessarily need to physically control the waterway. Its previous missile and drone campaign demonstrated that repeated attacks — or even a credible threat of them — can push major shipping companies to reroute vessels around Africa, driving up insurance, fuel and freight costs.

The Bab el-Mandeb connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea and Suez Canal, making it one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints. The consequences of renewed attacks would be especially severe because Iran has already disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, historically the principal route for roughly one-fifth of global energy supplies.

A substantial volume of Gulf oil has consequently been redirected through Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Reuters reported that the Bab el-Mandeb route now carries approximately 7% of global energy supplies and that Saudi Arabia has shifted about 70% of its energy exports through Yanbu.

The reported instructions also raise new questions about how much control Tehran exercises over major Houthi military decisions. 

"Any decision to escalate in the Bab al-Mandab would be strategic and tied more to the interests of Iran and the Axis of Resistance than to Houthi interests alone," Al-Dawsari said. "Decisions of this magnitude are likely coordinated through the Axis’s joint operations room under IRGC oversight."

A source close to the Houthis claimed representatives of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Yemen would control the timing of any move against the strait, Reuters reported.

The latest warning follows earlier Houthi threats against maritime traffic. In the June 12 report, Fox News Digital reported that the group had announced a complete ban on Israeli-owned ships in the Red Sea and declared them "legitimate targets."

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A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital at the time that the actions of Iran and the Houthis were "unacceptable" and "dangerous," warning that they could inflame regional tensions and further disrupt global supply chains.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has "repeatedly condemned" Houthis attacks against ships in the Red Sea and called on all parties Thursday to avoid further escalation, his spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, told Fox News Digital.

"Any disruptions or attacks would endanger the safety and security of seafarers, freedom of navigation and the stability of global supply chains and have a negative impact on the economic and humanitarian situation in Yemen and beyond," Dujarric said. "The Secretary-General underscores that U.N. Security Council Resolution 2722 (2024) must be fully respected in its entirety," he said on the resolution condemning at least two dozen Houthis attacks on commercial vessels since November 2023 and demanding an immediate end to the attacks. 

The emerging threat has also renewed scrutiny of the Iranian weapons networks that helped build the Houthis’ missile and drone arsenal.

Amr Al-Bidh, foreign affairs chief of the Southern Arabian Transitional Council, said that the reported threat also exposed broader failures in the handling of Yemen’s security crisis. "The fact that individuals convicted of trafficking Iranian weapons to the Houthis and leading terrorist operations are now being released under a U.N.-brokered deal only underscores how poorly the Yemen crisis is being managed," he said, "the main beneficiary of this vacuum is Iran, as seen in its credible threat to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait."

In a July 15 letter obtained by Fox News Digital, the Southern Arabian Transitional Council formerly known as the Southern Transitional Council, a southern Yemeni separatist movement that seeks greater autonomy or independence for the territory of the former South Yemen, warned U.N. Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg that a U.N.-facilitated detainee agreement may include people the council says were convicted of assisting Iranian weapons transfers to the Houthis.

An annex identifies individuals the council alleges were members of a cell that smuggled drones, aviation fuel and heavy and medium weapons from Iran to Sanaa.

The Office of the U.N. Special Envoy for Yemen said it received the letter only after the agreement had already been signed and stressed that it does not determine which detainees are released.
"We have received the letter after the agreement was signed," spokesperson Ismini Palla told Fox News Digital. "The United Nations – as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – do not decide who is released and who remains in detention. Our role is limited to mediating the negotiations and ICRC leads on the implementation of the release operation."
Palla added that "the names of those released are proposed and agreed between the parties under the framework of the Stockholm Agreement on prisoners’ exchange of 2018."

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department and the Iranian Mission to the United Nations on the latest developments.

Fox News' Paul Tilsley and Reuters contributed to this report.

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African growth boom follows Trump push to replace aid with trade

FIRST ON FOX: Many African economies are accelerating – booming – since the Trump Administration shifted policy focus from aid to trade, a senior State Department official told Fox News Digital.

In some African countries, doom was forecast when the Trump administration severely cut back USAID funding, but instead there’s been unprecedented economic growth, credited to the Commercial Diplomacy Strategy, introduced at the beginning of President Trump’s second term.

Now, "nine of the 20 fastest-growing economies (in the world) are in Africa," Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs Frank Garcia told Fox News Digital.

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Garcia added, "African economies are responding positively to the shift from aid to trade. In 2025, U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa increased by 23% to $22.6 billion. And continue to grow this year."

When the Administration cut USAID by 83% early last year, "The predictions were catastrophic: economies heavily dependent on foreign donors—from Ethiopia to South Sudan and Malawi — were expected to collapse. Instead, something quite different happened," Anna Mahjar-Barducci, Project Director at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), told Fox News Digital.

"The African continent proved far more resilient than expected, citing Ethiopia, which revised its 2026 growth forecasts upward despite the funding cuts," Mahjar-Barducci continued. "According to projections by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow between 4.3% and 4.6% in 2026, outpacing Asia as a whole, whose growth is forecast at around 4.1%. Growth is propelled by massive hydroelectric investments, construction, mining and expanding coffee exports."

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"This is no minor detail," she continued. "For decades, we were told that without international aid Africa would collapse. Now that aid is genuinely drying up, much of the continent is not only avoiding collapse —i t is accelerating. This is precisely the argument that a long-standing school of African economic thought, now more relevant than ever, has advanced for years: aid is not the solution. In many cases, it is part of the problem."

Assistant Secretary Garcia explained how the strategy works:" We see this economic acceleration in Africa. In order to best capitalize on it, the United States is focused on driving private investment, sustainable growth in terms of partnership and treating African nations not as aid recipients, but as capable commercial partners."

He added "Our embassies (in Africa) work directly with the private sector to identify the policies, laws, and regulations constraining U.S. trade and investment. We then work with partner governments to develop practical reforms, identify the officials responsible for implementing them and determine where technical assistance may support implementation."

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It's a strategy that appears to be working, with Garcia adding, "The Bureau of African Affairs has worked on 37 commercial transactions that have closed since the beginning of the (current) Trump Administration, representing $25.67 billion in total value, with more still being reported. Embassies across the continent are actively working to close hundreds more. Top sectors include Energy 24%, ICT 19%, Critical Minerals and Mining 11%, Aerospace 8%, Agriculture 8%, Infrastructure 8%."

Mahjar-Barducci criticized the way USAID worked, telling Fox News Digital," When aid flows to governments rather than markets, it tends to finance projects designed in Brussels, Rome, or Washington which are not responding to the actual needs of local economies. Poverty cannot be overcome by treating people as permanent recipients of charity. Poverty can be reduced by recognizing people as entrepreneurs, workers and economic partners capable of building their own prosperity."

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Trade, rather than aid works, Mahjar-Barducci claimed. "The Trump administration's more transactional approach to aid — access to critical minerals, or to citizens' health data, in exchange for funding — should not be dismissed as merely cynical. Unconditional transfers have long been the deeper flaw in the traditional aid model: money with no strings attached removes any incentive for a recipient government to reform and often entrenches the same officials responsible for the underlying poverty."

Enter the America First Global Health Strategy. A senior State Department official told Fox News Digital this week that the administration "has signed 34 bilateral global health Memoranda of Understanding(MOU) representing more than $24 billion in new health funding, including more than $14.3 billion in U.S. assistance, alongside more than $9.6 billion in co-investment from recipient countries."

"24 of these MOUs were signed with sub-Saharan African countries," the official continued. "These new bilateral MOUs are designed to continue life-saving care, build resilient healthcare systems, reduce dependency on American taxpayers and strengthen country ownership."

The administration has also decided to cut funding for a U.S. anti-AIDS program known as PEPFAR. Africa has been hit hard by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. UNAIDS, the United Nations program that deals with the virus, reports that South Africa has the highest infection rate in the world. 

But the State Department official Fox News Digital spoke with says South Africa must take some of the blame for cutting help to its own people. "The United States has decided to initiate a phased drawdown of PEPFAR programming in South Africa, following South Africa’s failure to make demonstrable progress on policy requests by the administration. The United States communicated to [the] South African government multiple times at many levels that PEPFAR funding would be terminated if they failed to address President Trump’s concerns."

"PEPFAR was never intended to be permanent," the official added. "Its success is measured by countries' ability to sustain and build upon these gains. South Africa is a middle-income country and is more than capable of supporting its own health programs."

Fox News Digital reached out to the South African government, but received no response.

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