Category World News

On Tuesday, the investment bank made Sunak’s appointment official.

Sunak, who is still a Conservative member of parliament from a seat in northern England, started his career at Goldman as an analyst before joining a number of hedge funds.

Sunak became the wealthiest British prime minister after facing criticism for being out of touch with the majority of UK voters due to his combination of his previous career in financial services and his wife’s wealth, whose father co-founded the Indian IT services company Infosys.

Since resigning as Conservatives leader in July of last year, the party suffered its worst defeat in more than a century. He has largely remained out of the spotlight. earlier this year, he accepted positions at Stanford and Oxford.

Sunak, who previously served as the UK’s finance minister, is one of many senior politicians who are now holding positions in finance because of their strategic stances and connections.

According to Goldman Sachs’ CEO, David Solomon, “I’m thrilled to welcome Rishi back to Goldman Sachs.” He will collaborate with senior executives from the firm to provide advice to clients around the world on a range of significant topics, while also offering his unique perspectives and insights on the macroeconomic and geopolitical landscape, Solomon said.

A suspected attack by Yemen’s Houthi group on a Liberian-flagged cargo ship in the Red Sea has killed three sailors and wounded two others, a European Union naval force says.

The attack on the Greek-owned Eternity C late on Monday follows the Houthis claiming they attacked another vessel on Sunday in the Red Sea, a vital maritime trade route.

While the Houthis have not yet claimed the attack, the US Embassy in Yemen and the EU force blamed them for it.

“The Houthis are once again showing blatant disregard for human life, undermining freedom of navigation in the Red Sea”, the embassy, which has operated out of Saudi Arabia for nearly a decade due to Yemen’s wider war, said on Tuesday.

“The intentional murder of innocent mariners shows us all the Houthis ‘ true colors and will only further the Houthis ‘ isolation”.

The Houthis say that are targeting Israel-linked ships as part of a campaign to pressure the Israeli military to end its assault on Gaza, which rights groups have described as a genocide.

After Sunday’s attack on a vessel called Magic Seas, the Houthis said ships owned by companies with ties to Israel are a “legitimate target”.

“Our operations will continue to target the depth of the Israeli entity in occupied Palestine, as well as to prevent Israeli navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas and to disrupt the Umm al-Rashrash]Eilat] port, until the aggression against Gaza stops and the blockade is lifted”, the group said in a statement.

The twin assaults mark a revival of attacks on ships in the Red Sea and potentially signal the start of a new armed campaign threatening the waterway, which had begun to see more traffic in recent weeks.

The EU, Israel’s largest trade partner, had condemned Sunday’s attack.

“It is the first such attack against a commercial vessel in 2025, a serious escalation endangering maritime security in a vital waterway for the region and the world”, the bloc said in a statement.

“These attacks directly threaten regional peace and stability, global commerce and freedom of navigation as a global public good. They can negatively impact the already dire humanitarian situation in Yemen. These attacks must stop”.

The two Houthi attacks and a round of Israeli air strikes early on Monday targeting three Yemeni ports&nbsp, raised fears of a renewed campaign against shipping that could again draw in US and Western forces.

The administration of US President Donald Trump launched an intense bombing campaign in Yemen earlier this year, but Washington and the Houthis reached a ceasefire in May, with the Yemeni group agreeing to halt attacks against US ships.

The escalation comes as a possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas hangs in the balance, and as Iran weighs whether to restart negotiations over its nuclear programme following its war with Israel in June.

Between November 2023 and January 2025, the Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors. Their campaign has greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $1 trillion of goods move through it annually.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has decried the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying that the United Kingdom could take further action against Israel if a ceasefire deal to end the war in the Palestinian territory does not materialise.

Speaking to the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Lammy also criticised the new aid distribution mechanism in Gaza via a group backed by the United States and Israel, dubbed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

“We’ve been very clear that we don’t support the aid foundation that has been set up,” Lammy said. “We it’s not doing a good job. Too many people are close to starvation. Too many people have lost their lives. We have led globally on our condemnation the system that has been set up.”

Hundreds of Palestinians have been gunned down by Israeli fire while seeking GHF assistance over the past weeks.

Asked by a legislator whether the British government will take measures against Israel if the “intolerable” situation in Gaza continues, Lammy said: “Yes, we will.”

Last month, the UK joined Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway in sanctioning Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich for inciting violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank.

Weeks earlier, the UK had also suspended talks for a free trade agreement with Israel over the blockade on Gaza, which has sparked a starvation crisis in the territory. And last year, London halted some arms exports to Israel.

While welcoming the moves, some Palestinian rights supporters have criticised them as symbolic and failing to impose serious consequences on Israel for its apparent abuses of international humanitarian law.

On Tuesday, Lammy condemned settler violence and the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that they are “flouting international law”.

Pressed on whether the UK’s pressure on Israel has led the Israeli government to alter its behaviour, Lammy acknowledged that the change is “not sufficient”. Still, he defended London’s record, including recent moves against Israel and support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

“I am very, very comfortable that you would be hard pressed to find another G7 partner or another ally across Europe that’s doing more than this government has done,” he said.

Ultimately, Lammy played down the UK’s sway in the Middle East, saying that it is “but one actor”.

The UK is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It is also a major trade partner of Israel. And according to numerous media reports, the British Royal Air Force has conducted hundreds of surveillance flights over Gaza to help locate Israeli captives in the territory.

The UK has also cracked down on Palestinian rights activists at home, recently banning the advocacy group Palestine Action and arresting dozens of its supporters.

The Labour government in the UK has not recognised Palestine as a state – a move that several European countries have made over the past year.

Lammy said London wants its recognition of Palestine to be part of a concrete push towards the two-state solution, not just a symbolic gesture.

He added that the UK wants to recognise Palestine at a moment that helps shift “the dial against expansion, against violence, against the horrors that we’re seeing in Gaza, and towards the just cause that is the desire for Palestinian statehood”.

But Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Emily Thornberry warned Lammy that with settlement expansion and annexation threats, if the UK continues to delay the decision to recognise Palestine, “there won’t be anything left to recognise”.

Iran says it has not requested talks with the United States over its nuclear programme, as claimed by US President Donald Trump.

“No request for a meeting has been made on our side to the American side,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Tuesday in comments carried by the country’s Tasnim news agency.

The clarification came a day after Trump, during a dinner in the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Iran was actively seeking negotiations on a new nuclear deal following the 12-day war with Israel last month, which the US also joined.

“We have scheduled Iran talks. They want to talk,” Trump told reporters. “They want to work something out. They are very different now than they were two weeks ago.”

Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff – also present during the dinner – had even said the meeting could take place in the next week or so.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times newspaper on Tuesday that Tehran remains interested in diplomacy but “we have good reason to have doubts about further dialogue”.

Sanctions relief

On June 13, Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign on Iran that targeted military and nuclear sites as well as residential areas, killing senior military commanders and nuclear scientists. Iranian authorities say the Israeli strikes killed at least 1,060 people. Israel says retaliatory drone and missile fire by Iran killed at least 28 people.

The US joined the war, bombing Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, just days before a planned meeting between Tehran and Washington, DC on reviving the nuclear talks. Trump then went on to announce a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

The negotiations, aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief, would replace the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – a deal signed with the US, China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union – which Trump ditched during his first term in office.

Floating the prospect of more talks on Monday, Trump also dangled the prospect of lifting punitive US sanctions on Iran, imposed after the US withdrawal from JCPOA, with further restrictions piled on this year.

This month, the US issued a new wave of sanctions against Iranian oil exports, the first penalties against Tehran’s energy sector since the US-backed ceasefire ended the war between Israel and Iran.

“I would love to be able to, at the right time, take those sanctions off,” said Trump.

Towards the end of last month, Trump said he was working on “the possible removal of sanctions”, but dropped his efforts after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed “victory” in the Iran-Israel war.

Tehran’s denial regarding talks with the US came after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told US journalist Tucker Carlson that Iran had “no problem” resuming talks so long as trust could be rebuilt between the two sides.

The interview, aired on Monday, provoked a backlash in Iran, with the critics accusing Pezeshkian of being “too soft” in the wake of last month’s attacks on the country.

“Have you forgotten that these same Americans, together with the Zionists, used the negotiations to buy time and prepare for the attack?” said an editorial in the hardline Kayhan newspaper.

The conservative Javan daily also took aim at Pezeshkian, saying his remarks appeared “a little too soft”.