25 September 2026 – Short News

Today in our brief news: 49 to 50 in the U.S. Senate: Trump’s Iran war continues, even as 4 Republicans break ranks and gas prices eat away at the election campaign.

Meanwhile, Canada is seriously gaming out something that long sounded like a bad joke: a possible U.S. military attack. Starbucks is closing another 250 locations. Pope Leo XIV is traveling to a France where the Church has long since stopped having the final political say.

Also: At least $2 billion is said to have moved through a Russian payment network designed to get around sanctions. And the former head of RT France is now on the EU sanctions list.

49 to 50: Senate lets Trump’s Iran war continue while the bill hits Americans at the pump - Democrat decides the result – Demokrat entscheidet das Resultat

By a single vote, the latest attempt in the U.S. Senate to stop Donald Trump’s war against Iran through Congress has failed. 49 senators voted in favor, 50 against. Four Republicans, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Thom Tillis, this time joined most Democrats in opposing the continuation of the war. Democrat John Fetterman voted against the resolution. Since Trump launched the war on February 28, this was already the Senate’s 14th vote on a war powers resolution. Tim Kaine of Virginia accused his colleagues of having supported what he considers an illegal war for months while ignoring their own constituents.

The unease is growing where foreign policy suddenly shows up on the receipt at the gas station. Diesel now costs more than $6 a gallon, almost twice as much as before. Around half of the rural voters surveyed believe the economy is now worse than it was when Trump began his second term. Groceries, fuel and health care costs rank among their biggest concerns. Senator John Kennedy had just returned from Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska and called on Trump to give a prime-time television address. People were confused about the war and angry about the cost of living, he said. Kennedy still voted against the resolution. Josh Hawley also opposes a congressional stop and believes Trump’s military actions fall within the president’s authority.

Things already look different in the House of Representatives. At the beginning of September, the House approved a resolution against the war for the third time, with 7 Republicans joining Democrats this time. In June, even the Senate had passed such a resolution. One day later, Republicans changed course after an angry meeting with Trump. Bill Cassidy initially defended his vote, got into a confrontation with Trump over it and later switched sides after receiving a briefing from the White House.

According to the available figures, the war has now cost $43.5 billion. The White House has requested another $87.6 billion for the war and other programs, but the package is stuck in Congress. Thomas Massie went even further and moved ahead with impeachment proceedings against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Republican leaders then sent the House home for its election recess. The Iran war continues. So do the votes over it.

Leo XIV comes to France, where the Church no longer has the final say

Pope Leo XIV is traveling to France for four days, and his arrival alone shows how much interest the visit is drawing. When his plane lands at Paris-Orly at 10 a.m. Friday, church bells across the country are expected to ring. Up to 1 million people are expected. Emmanuel Macron will first receive him at the airport and then again later at the Élysée Palace. A packed schedule follows, with a speech at UNESCO, vespers at the reopened Notre-Dame Cathedral and a major youth event in Paris. It is the first visit by a pope to France in 18 years.

Leo is coming to a country that has moved politically and socially far away from the Catholic Church’s former power. In 2024, the right to abortion was written into the French Constitution. Parliament has since also passed a law allowing adults with incurable illnesses to receive lethal medication. The Catholic Church rejects both and continues to insist that human life must be protected from conception until natural death. Leo is expected to defend that position without publicly scolding France. French secularism requires the state to remain religiously neutral while also protecting the right to believe or not to believe. That separation goes back to the 1905 law, which was also specifically intended to limit the Catholic Church’s influence at the time. On top of that comes the severe credibility crisis caused by sexual abuse within the Church. Leo is therefore arriving in a country where religious authority no longer automatically carries political weight.

Along with questions of protecting life and assisted dying, the pope wants to talk about war, peace and artificial intelligence. On artificial intelligence in particular, the issue for him is what human dignity still means when machines reach ever deeper into decisions and daily life. Lourdes and Metz are also on his schedule. France is treating the visit from a security standpoint almost like a major Olympic event. In Paris alone, 14,000 police officers, gendarmes and soldiers, along with 2,500 firefighters, are expected to be deployed on Friday. Mounted police, bomb disposal teams, anti-drone measures and protection against possible terrorist attacks are also part of the operation.

For Macron, the visit comes at a difficult time. His term is nearing its end, and his approval ratings are close to record lows. The cost of living, government debt and the condition of public services are weighing on his administration. Now he will be standing next to a pope whose popularity will command France’s attention for a few days. Leo XIV, however, is not bringing a government policy with him. He is bringing demands that France will listen to without necessarily adopting them.

Starbucks closes another 250 locations: The turnaround gets expensive even as customers come back

Starbucks is once again closing the doors on hundreds of locations across North America. Another 250 coffeehouses are set to close because the company believes they are not performing well enough. That amounts to around 1 percent of the roughly 18,000 locations in the region. Most of the closures are expected to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2026. This will not be cheap. Starbucks expects around $300 million in additional restructuring charges. Last year, the company had already closed weaker locations, including even its well-known Seattle roastery. That restructuring was estimated to cost around $1 billion.

CEO Brian Niccol is intensifying his effort to get Starbucks back to growth and stronger profits. The former head of Chipotle has been running the company for two years. Shorter wait times, simpler menus and better operations in kitchens and stores are all part of his “Back to Starbucks” plan. At the same time, corporate jobs have been cut and some regional offices have been closed. The company is also slowing down expansion. For 2026, Starbucks now expects only around 440 new company-operated and licensed stores worldwide. It had previously expected 600 to 650. What stands out is that the closures are not happening because of a new sales crisis. Through July, Starbucks had reported four straight quarters of comparable sales growth. Customer traffic also increased across all income groups, according to Niccol. Even the relatively expensive coffee drinks held up better than many other nonessential purchases, despite American households being squeezed by high food and fuel prices.

That is exactly why the more uncomfortable part of the turnaround begins now. Winning customers back is one thing. Making significantly more money from them again is another. Analysts see the new closures as understandable but warn that investor patience could wear thin if sales and margins do not keep improving. Starbucks is growing again while closing stores at the same time. 250 locations are now finding out just how expensive a fresh start can be.

Canada suddenly prepares for the unthinkable: Carney had a possible U.S. invasion war-gamed

Mark Carney does not believe a U.S. invasion of Canada is likely. He prepared for it anyway. The Canadian prime minister said he had deliberately had “extreme risks” examined over the past year, including a military invasion by his country’s most important ally. Anyone in a position of responsibility, he said, has to consider scenarios that fall outside the ordinary. Anything else would be irresponsible. The statement would be remarkable enough on its own. But it comes after months in which Donald Trump repeatedly referred to Canada as a possible 51st state. In February 2025, Trump publicly wrote that Canada should become part of the United States. He later posted AI-generated images showing Canada in the colors of the U.S. flag. What Washington liked to sell as political provocation has long since become a subject of military planning in Ottawa.

At the beginning of 2026, the Canadian armed forces had already developed a model of a possible U.S. attack for the first time in around 100 years. The scenario assumed that American forces could seize key Canadian positions within a week, possibly even within two days. According to that assessment, Canada lacks the troops and modern equipment needed for a conventional defense. The planning therefore also included fighting with small units, armed civilians, drones, sabotage and ambushes. Carney talks about all of this in a deliberately matter-of-fact way. His years running the central banks of Canada and the United Kingdom trained him to calculate even the worst-case scenario. At the same time, his country is in a trade war with the United States. Both sides are imposing tariffs while Trump continues to pressure the neighboring country.

And yet Carney still talks about having “good relations” with Trump. He said they can pick up the phone and discuss problems directly. He still believes a trade agreement is possible. That is how far relations between Washington and Ottawa have come: They negotiate over tariffs while keeping plans ready in case the neighbor shows up with soldiers.

At least $2 billion: Rosneft-linked traders fed foreign currency into Russia’s A7 sanctions-bypass network

Russia’s A7 payment network is said to have received at least $2 billion in foreign currency from traders linked to Rosneft. The money came from a total of 16 companies associated with oil trader Coral Energy, now known as 2Rivers Group. The companies mainly transferred UAE dirhams into accounts belonging to A7’s foreign shell companies. In return, money flowed back in rubles, mostly through Promsvyazbank. That is exactly the kind of cross-border business A7 was created for. According to the internal records available, at least 138 such transfers can be traced. Traders linked to Rosneft paid A7 companies in Dubai, while ruble payments were made in parallel to accounts belonging to Hurus Trade, which are linked to the 2Rivers network. Particularly explosive: The payments were allegedly backed up with fake documents. Inside the company, this was called “creating legends.” Invoices, for example, listed supposed deliveries of grain or fuel oil to Algeria even though the actual deals were different.

Rosneft was apparently far more than just another supplier of foreign currency for A7. In June 2025, around two-thirds of all the foreign currency received by A7 is said to have come from companies linked to Rosneft. Internal reports said almost the entire volume of foreign currency was being supplied through Coral and several affiliated companies. 2Rivers was explicitly described in those documents as a Rosneft trader from which A7 bought yuan. Sibur and Evraz are also named as additional sources of foreign currency. A7 was created at the end of 2024 together with Promsvyazbank and fugitive Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor. Promsvyazbank serves Russia’s defense sector. Shor had been convicted in Moldova for his role in the theft of $1 billion from the country’s banking system and later fled.

After major Russian banks were cut off from the SWIFT international payment system, A7 developed into an important tool for cross-border payments. The Kremlin publicly supports the project. The company itself claims that almost 19 percent of Russian companies’ foreign trade transactions now run through its network. Two billion dollars is therefore not some minor detail in a complicated payment system. It shows how a separate financial system was built so sanctioned business could keep moving. It is just that grain, fuel oil and trade invoices apparently do not always mean the same thing there as they do on paper.

From RT France to the EU sanctions list: Brussels freezes Ksenia Fedorova’s assets

After France, Ksenia Fedorova can now barely gain an economic foothold anywhere in the European Union either. The former head of RT France has been placed on the EU sanctions list. Brussels accuses her of spreading accounts of Russia’s war against Ukraine in France and other European countries that matched positions promoted by the Russian leadership. The consequences are serious: Her assets are frozen, no one in the EU is allowed to provide her with money or other economic resources, and she is banned from entering or transiting through EU countries. Fedorova rejects the accusations and describes her appearances as an alternative view of foreign policy and the war.

Her history in France goes back years. After working for RT and running the Berlin-based video agency Ruptly, Fedorova took over RT France in 2017. As early as 2018, the channel clashed with the French media regulator over a report on the chemical attack in Douma, Syria. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU banned the distribution of RT and Sputnik in 2022. RT France initially continued operating until its accounts were frozen in early 2023 and Fedorova eventually announced that the channel was shutting down. That did not mean she disappeared from French public life. She appeared on CNews and Europe 1, wrote for several publications associated with businessman Vincent Bolloré and published a book in 2025 in which she portrayed France’s treatment of RT as a campaign against dissenting opinions.

In the summer of 2026, the political dispute turned into a personal sanctions case. On July 29, France ordered her expulsion and accused her of activities that affected the fundamental interests of the state and served Russian influence campaigns. One day later, her assets were frozen for 6 months. Fedorova was already outside France at the time. A Paris administrative court rejected her emergency appeal against the measures. According to French authorities, Germany had already denied her entry in 2024.

Even so, her articles continued to appear in French media, and CNews even considered bringing her back on air by video link from abroad. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez then warned the network of possible criminal consequences, even if Fedorova were not paid for the appearance. Now the EU has followed suit. What began as a dispute over a Russian state broadcaster has now ended with an entry ban, frozen assets and sanctions across the European Union.