World
Severe storms kill at least 21 across US Midwest and South
Severe weather sweeping across the American Midwest and South has left at least 21 people dead, with officials warning that the death toll may rise.
In Kentucky, at least 14 people were confirmed dead, with local authorities saying nine people were killed after what appeared to be a powerful tornado touched down in the south-eastern part of the state.
Structures collapsed, and a car was flipped on a motorway as the storm ripped through the largely rural area. Authorities said there were also multiple reports of serious injuries.
While the US’s National Weather Service has not yet confirmed that it was a tornado which struck Kentucky, meteorologist Philomon Geertson said it was likely.
“Lives have been changed forever here tonight. This is a time we come together, and we pray for this community,” said the mayor of London, Kentucky, Randall Wendle. “I have never personally witnessed what I’ve witnessed here tonight.”
Only two months ago, severe weather caused at least 24 deaths and widespread damage in Kentucky. Hundreds had to be rescued during that storm.
Missouri pounded by storms
At least seven people were killed in neighbouring Missouri and tornadoes were also triggered in Wisconsin by the severe weather.
More than 600,000 homes and businesses across a dozen states lost power as of Saturday, with Missouri and Kentucky among the hardest hit.
St. Louis mayor Cara Spencer confirmed the deaths of at least five people in the city and said more than 5,000 homes were damaged.
“This is truly, truly devastating,” she said. “The loss of life and the destruction is truly, truly horrendous.”
The city’s fire department said three people had to be rescued after part of a nearby church collapsed, but one of these people died. A curfew was imposed Friday night in the neighbourhoods damaged the most.
The US National Weather Service said tornadoes also hit Illinois, with more severe weather conditions expected all the way to the Atlantic coast.
The total number of injured was not immediately available. However, hospitals in area reported receiving dozens of injured – some in serious condition.
Additional sources • AP
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As President Donald Trump continues to express anger at NATO European allies for their lack of help in the war with Iran, he’s making clear their behavior comes at a cost.
In the weeks during the war and since the ceasefire, the president has hit back not just with words but with definitive actions against several of those countries.
Germany
On Saturday, Trump said that he would withdraw more than the initial 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany as stated by the Pentagon, after Berlin’s leader denigrated the American effort to stop Iran’s regime from building a nuclear weapon.
TRUMP WEIGHS PULLING US TROOPS FROM GERMANY AMID CLASH WITH CHANCELLOR OVER IRAN WAR
President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz meet in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 2026, to discuss issues including recent U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
A day earlier he said about Germany that “We’re gonna cut way down. We’re cutting a lot further than 5,000.” The Trump administration previously announced a contraction of 5,000 troops in Germany after the country’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Iran’s regime “humiliated” Trump.
In an apparent state of panic, Merz walked back his attack on Trump and his Iran strategy on Sunday. The chancellor wrote on X: “The United States is and will remain Germany‘s most important partner in the North Atlantic Alliance. We share a common goal: Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.”
Trump ratcheted up his troop reduction number against Germany amid his comments about downsizing U.S. boots on the ground in Spain and Italy because they failed to aid America in the war against Iran. The president’s anger at Western European countries has been simmering for weeks and could lead to profound changes in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
TRUMP CRITICIZES SPAIN AMID IRAN, NATO RIFT AS PM SANCHEZ FACES QUESTIONS OVER POLITICAL MOTIVES
Nile Gardiner, the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital, “The lack of support for the United States has been nothing less than treacherous. I think the president has the right to be outraged by the lack of support from key European allies.”
An Iranian flag is planted in the rubble of a police station, damaged in airstrikes on March 3, 2026, in Tehran, Iran. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
He said, “There is a very deep-seated cultural appeasement in Europe toward the Iranian regime that goes back many decades, and a flat-out refusal to accept the reality of the immense dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran. European leaders are sleepwalking toward destruction with this perilous path they have taken.
TRUMP IS RIGHT ABOUT NATO’S WEAKNESS — THE REAL QUESTION IS HOW DOES AMERICA FIX IT
“The lack of support for the United States is how far Europe has gone toward losing its moral compass. Iran is a genocidal regime that threatens to wipe Israel off the map.” He noted that the Islamic Republic has killed huge numbers of its population.
Gardiner, a former advisor to Lady Margaret Thatcher said, “If you listen to European leaders, it’s as if the U.S. is the villain here.”
Merz, speaking last week in Marsberg, criticized the U.S. approach to Iran, saying Washington was being “humiliated by the Iranian leadership” and expressing hope the conflict would end “as quickly as possible.”
Gardiner said of Merz’s remarks, “Comments like these actually help the propaganda of the Iranian dictatorship. It is astonishing that a German chancellor would make these kinds of remarks at a time of war… and the German chancellor is giving comfort to the Iranian regime. It is disgusting.”
Numerous Fox News Digital press queries sent to Merz’s spokesman Stefan Kornelius were not returned.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the U.S. conflict with Iran “reckless” and “unjust.” (Yves Herman/Reuters)
Spain and Italy
Before his announcement on the troop withdrawal from Germany, and in response to a question about reducing U.S. troops in Spain and Italy, Trump responded, “I mean, they haven’t been exactly on board. Yeah, probably. Yeah, I probably will… Italy has not been of any help to us. And Spain has been horrible. Absolutely horrible.”
Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has taken a belligerent stand toward the U.S. and Israeli military campaign against the Iranian regime, forbidding the U.S. from using its military bases in Spain to refuel aircraft or prepare for military action. He has decried the campaign as illegal while staying quiet on the regime’s murder of thousands of protesters and its increased drive to produce ballistic missiles and acquire nuclear weapons-grade enriched uranium.
Gardiner said, “The Spanish have been the worst by a long way. At least the Germans and Italy have allowed the use of its own bases. The Spanish have refused to cooperate in any way with the war.”
Trump told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera last month about the country’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, “I’m shocked at her. I thought she had courage, but I was wrong.”
The Europe expert, Gardiner, sees a wide gulf between how mainly Western European countries and the United States view the preservation of Western civilization, freedom, democracy and liberty.
French President Emmanuel Macron listens to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during a working session with world leaders at the G7 summit in Borgo Egnazia, Italy, on June 13, 2024. (Andrew Medichini/AP)
“Europe has lost both its ability and its will to fight. The United States is clearly willing to fight to defend Western civilization and the free world. Much of Europe has given up on this, especially Western Europe. It is an appeasement mindset cojoined with weakness and pacifism and also a growing acceptance by European leaders of mass migration and Islamification.”
He added, “Europe has fundamentally changed over the last 20 years beyond recognition, and yet Europe’s ruling elites accept it seemingly as a fact, with some notable exceptions.”
France and the U.K.
Trump took the United Kingdom and France in March to task for their postion on the war against Iran.
“The Country of France wouldn’t let planes headed to Israel, loaded up with military supplies, fly over French territory,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“France has been VERY UNHELPFUL with respect to the ‘Butcher of Iran,’ who has been successfully eliminated! The U.S.A. will REMEMBER!!!,” he wrote.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris on Feb. 17, 2025, before an informal summit of European leaders to discuss the situation in Ukraine and European security. (Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump also wrote, “All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you.”
“Number 1, buy from the U.S., we have plenty, and Number 2, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.”
“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!”
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Gardiner said the crisis over the Iran war shows that Europe has surrendered. The big Western Europeans have embraced “defeatism,” and “they do not care. It is as simple as that. And future generations will have to pay the price for the course Europe is taking now,” he said.
Fox News’ Brittany Miller and Solly Boussidan contributed to this report.
Published on
Ukraine’s top negotiator Rustem Umerov will hold talks with US officials in Florida on Thursday on how to end the full-scale Russian invasion, Kyiv said on Thursday, amid stalled negotiations during the Iran war.
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“The Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine will hold a series of meetings today with envoys of the President of the United States,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in a post on X.
Zelenskyy said Kyiv had “defined the key tasks,” which includes discussing a potential prisoner exchange with Russia and security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine.
“Rustem and I discussed work with our European partners on Drone Deals. We are preparing the agreements reached at the highest level, as well as new steps in joint technological work,” Zelenskyy wrote.
US-mediated talks on ending Europe’s worst conflict since World War II have shown little progress since February, when Washington shifted focus to its war with Iran.
Umerov last met with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Florida between 21-22 March.
Since returning to office, Trump has pushed Moscow and Kyiv to negotiate but months of talks have failed to bring the warring parties closer to an agreement to stop the fighting, triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion four years ago.
The already stalled talks were put on the back burner from late February, when the US-Israeli air campaign against Iran began.
Even before the Middle East war, Russia and Ukraine remained at odds over the key issue of territory.
Ukraine has proposed freezing the conflict along the current front lines.
But Russia has rejected this, saying it wants the whole of the Donetsk region despite it being partly controlled by Ukraine, a demand Kyiv says is unacceptable.
Kremlin ceasefire
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said on Thursday that it would begin a two-day ceasefire with Ukraine starting at midnight that is meant to cover its patriotic 9 May parade, after ignoring a Ukrainian ceasefire earlier this week.
Moscow warned foreign diplomats in Kyiv that it will strike the Ukrainian capital if Ukraine targets its World War II victory parade.
“Yes, we are talking about the 8th and 9th of May,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, when asked if the ceasefire would come into effect from midnight.
Asked about the Ukrainian ceasefire on 6 May, a counter-offer by Kyiv which dismissed Moscow’s demand to stop fighting as “utter cynicism,” Peskov said, “There was no Russian reaction to this.”
The Kremlin ordered a scaled-back version this year, with no military hardware to be on display, over the fear it could be targeted by Ukraine.
Additional sources • AFP
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