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The White House was forced to deny on Monday that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ phone was hacked a second time after it emerged that British Prime Minister Andy Burnham received texts from a person he thought was President Donald Trump’s top aide.
Politico first reported that Burnham had briefly “engaged” with text messages purporting to be from Wiles, a veteran Florida political operative who is the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff, before becoming concerned that the messages in question were not actually from Wiles.
The prime minister’s office said the “few messages” exchanged were “of no significance” and described the incident as a “national security matter” on which there would be no further comment.
But the incident was concerning enough that the British government contacted the White House about it through their embassy in Washington over fears that Wiles’ phone had been breached as it was a year ago, when business people and political figures began receiving t..

President Donald Trump has threatened to launch an attack on ally Oman over the Strait of Hormuz, which remains largely out of service amid the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran.
A 60-day period to negotiate a ceasefire deal between the parties expired on Monday with no news of an extension and talks deadlocked in the same position as two months ago.
“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s**t out of them,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. The president had previously threatened to “blow up” the country in May if it did not “behave”.
He told the outlet that the US had a backchannel with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and added: “They should put up the white flag of surrender.”
open image in galleryPresident Donald Trump appears to have become increasingly frustrated by the conflict he started in the Middle East in February (AFP/Getty)The IRGC hit back at the comments saying they were “fantasies resulting from delusions and nightmares of defeat an..

It has been a summer defined by a single image: a raging fire tearing through woodland, sending thick plumes of black smoke into a dusty sky.
Across the world, wildfires have scorched more than 370 million acres of land across 80 countries so far this year, a land mass larger than France, Spain and Germany combined.
No region has been spared. Fires have torn through the savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa, the lush rainforests of South America and the luxury resorts on France’s Atlantic coast, worsened by record-breaking heatwaves and widespread drought.
open image in galleryFirefighters looking at the burnt-out remains of a house following a blaze in Stourbridge (PA)In the UK, several heatwaves have triggered huge wildfires in the New Forest and the West Midlands in scenes described as “apocalyptic”. More than 1,017 blazes have raged so far this summer – topping last year’s record-breaking total – with almost half of those in July alone. And more than 1,400 acres – the equivalent to 900..

Hegseth says US can keep up naval blockade ‘indefinitely’ after Tehran vows to prolong warQatar has denied accusations from Iran that they are holding Iranian pilots.
Tehran was accused of violating Qatari airspace in March and failing to ⁠respond to attempts to contact them.
A Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson said on social media on Saturday that search and rescue teams later found the remains of one of ⁠the pilots and that it ​had ⁠contacted Iran to coordinate a handover.
The spokesperson said Tehran had yet to respond ⁠to an invitation to review details of its operations.
The ​statement ⁠came after Iranian ‌state news agency IRNA cited a senior military official as saying three Iranian pilots had been captured ‌alive by Qatari forces after ejecting ‌from fighter jets during a combat mission targeting a military base in Qatar.
An Iranian ​military official said on Sunday that Qatar should let an Iranian ⁠team in to investigate the fate of Iranian pilots who Tehran says are ⁠being..