King tells of ‘profound sadness' in letter to Trump after Texas floods
'Following the devastating flooding in Texas, His Majesty King Charles has written to President Trump to express his profound sadness at the tragic loss of life,' the embassy said.
Following the devastating flooding in Texas, His Majesty King Charles has written to President Trump to express his profound sadness at the tragic loss of life.
He offered his deepest sympathy to all families who have lost loved ones and paid tribute to courage and selflessness… pic.twitter.com/jdP01kANGK
— British Embassy Washington (@UKinUSA) July 7, 2025
'He offered his deepest sympathy to all families who have lost loved ones and paid tribute to courage and selflessness of the emergency service and volunteers.'
Operators of Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, said they lost 27 campers and counsellors, confirming their worst fears after a wall of water slammed into cabins built along the edge of the Guadalupe River.
With additional rain on the way, more flooding remains a threat in saturated parts of the US state.
Authorities said the death toll was sure to rise as crews looked for many people who were missing.
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New Statesman
23 minutes ago
- New Statesman
Trump is serious about getting tough on Putin. No, really.
Photo byDonald Trump appears, belatedly, to be reaching the conclusion that Vladimir Putin cannot be entirely trusted. 'We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,' he remarked during a cabinet meeting last week (8 July). 'He's very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.' He expanded on that theme during a meeting with Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte in the Oval Office on 14 July, where the US president was expected to deliver a 'major announcement' on Russia. After speaking to Putin on the phone, he said, 'I always hang up and say, well that was a nice phone call, and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and I say, 'strange.' And after that happens three or four times, you say, 'the talk doesn't mean anything.'' Even the first lady, Melania Trump, had noted the discrepancy between his 'lovely' phone conversations with Putin and the devastating war he is waging against Ukraine. 'I go home, I tell the first lady, 'you know I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation,'' Trump recounted. 'She said, 'oh, really? Another city was just hit.'' Since returning to power in January – whereupon he had promised to end the war within 24 hours – Trump had believed a peace deal with Putin was within reach 'about four times,' he opined, 'but it just keeps going on and on and on.' With this pattern so clearly established and Putin so demonstrably uninterested in serious peace talks, there was growing anticipation in Washington that Trump was about to signal a radically new approach. Perhaps the major announcement would turn out to be an unequivocal declaration of support for Ukraine and a commitment to pass the bipartisan sanctions package that is currently gathering momentum in the senate and would impose a 500 percent tariff on countries that buy Russian oil and uranium (such as China and India). Fool Trump four times, one might think, and, to quote George W. Bush, 'you can't get fooled again.' To be fair, Trump did announce that Ukraine would now receive the air defence systems and other crucial weaponry that Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly requested – and which his own administration had previously suspended – which is unequivocally good news for Kyiv. Although he was characteristically vague on the details of what, exactly, would be sent. 'Everything. It's Patriots [the US-made missile defence system]. It's all of them,' Trump said as Rutte nodded along encouragingly. The one detail he did want to stress was that the US would not be paying for them. Instead, they would be sending the weapons to Nato, where 'rich' European countries would apparently foot the bill, and then send the weapons on to Ukraine. 'This is really big,' Rutte interjected, demonstrating, once again, his fluency in Trumpian rhetoric and his apparent comfort with public acts of self-abasement in an attempt to secure the US president's support for European security. (During their previous meeting, Rutte referred to Trump as 'Daddy.') 'This is Europeans stepping up.' If he was Putin, Rutte suggested, he would now be left with little choice but to take these negotiations 'more seriously.' Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Alas, this is an unlikely outcome. Far from offering a stirring invocation of the need for Ukraine to prevail and Washington's unending commitment to standing with Europe against Russian aggression, Trump repeatedly distanced himself from the war. 'This is a Biden war. This is a Democrat war,' he said. 'Not a Republican or Trump war.' 'This is not Trump's,' he stressed again as he answered reporters' questions. 'We're here to get it finished and stopped.' Twice, he pointed out, 'they're not Americans dying,' noting that he and 'JD [Vance]' have a 'problem' with the war, which they had both campaigned on a promise to bring to an expedited end. 'There are no winners here,' Trump concluded, as though he was surveying a bad real estate deal. 'This is a loser.' His comments did not exactly signal robust support. As for the senate's sanctions package, which is being touted in DC as a 'sledgehammer' that will enable Trump to end the conflict, the president himself sounded noncommittal, offering only that it was 'good that they're doing it.' Instead, he promised to impose 'very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days.' Those tariffs would be set 'at about 100 percent,' Trump said, calling them 'secondary tariffs' but offering no further details as to what this meant. (Secondary sanctions are generally imposed on third countries trading with a targeted nation, so this could mean imposing 100 percent tariffs on US imports from countries that trade with Russia, but it is not clear.) Asked how much further he was prepared to go if Putin continued to escalate his attacks on Ukraine, which has been subjected in recent weeks to the heaviest aerial bombardment since the start of the war as the Russian military, Trump responded: 'Don't ask me a question like that.' For all the dramatic billing, the problem with Trump's latest strategy is that it is essentially the same strategy that he has already tried. He is threatening Putin with very serious consequences if he doesn't end the war, while signalling that he, personally, and the US in general, has no real interest in that war beyond ensuring that 'we get it finished.' Agreeing to continue supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself, or at least to sell those weapons to Nato, is better than the alternative for Kyiv and allows the Ukrainian military to keep fighting, but it is not the same as committing meaningful funds and political capital to ensure Ukraine's survival against the Russian onslaught and European security. Trump has the votes to pass a massive new military aid package in congress immediately if he so desires. Evidently, he does not. There is no doubt that Trump's tone on Putin has decidedly soured in recent days. Perhaps he is genuinely reconsidering his previously admiring assessment of the Russian president, and a more consequential policy shift will eventually follow. But for now, he is choosing to respond to Putin's habitual obfuscation and clear track record of stringing him along by giving him another chance – this time another 50 days – to mend his ways, and warning that this time is really serious about getting tough. Perhaps the fifth time will turn out to be the charm, and Putin will now be persuaded to enter serious negotiations and call an end to his assault. But it is more likely that he will interpret Trump's announcement as giving him another 50 days to bombard Ukraine and grind forward on the battlefield, where he believes the Russian military has the upper hand, albeit at a glacial pace and tremendous cost. Tellingly, the Russian stock market rose after Trump's announcement. Moscow, it seems, was bracing for much worse. [See also: Putin's endgame] Related
The Herald Scotland
34 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
Why have we let the RMT wreck our ferry services?
Generous pay can be justified where high-level skill and responsibility is called for or work is onerous, dangerous, or living conditions unpleasant. Is the level of skill and responsibility of a CalMac steward or cook, for example, greater than, say, a care worker, nurse, teacher, bus driver, or many others? I suggest not. CalMac's fortnight on, fortnight off plus up to 10 weeks' paid holiday works out at a 21-week working year, which may be enhanced by overtime as sickness cover kicks in. The state-funded pension is infinitely more generous than any other in the public service. Why so? The single en-suite staterooms for each crew member, coupled with gym, messroom and steward-served meals, on a ship that ties up at night, is a level of luxury unheard of elsewhere. On a Royal Navy frigate, ratings share six or nine to a room with tiered bunks. Only lieutenant commanders and above have a tiny cabin to themselves. Only the commanding officer has an en suite. Yet those vital ships can be at sea for months on end. But that's not the worst of it. Successive Scottish governments have so long appeased the RMT, that, to vast public expense, the larger CalMac ships carry twice the crew actually required, terminals are grossly over-manned and the RMT dictates that no alternative be allowed to operate within the state-funded network. Why? They love nationalised industries, because they know they can run rings round generalist civil servants and ministers in a way they cannot with hard-nosed commercial managers. They know that if communities ran their own ferry services, the whole rotten system of privilege and excess would collapse to be replaced with something vastly more efficient to the great benefit of our island communities. Roy Pedersen, Inverness. Read more letters Don't blow a fortune on EVs The Government is poised to announce a £700 million fund to encourage people to buy more electric cars, which will include cash for infrastructure such as pavement gullies for cables to enable roadside charging and grants to make them cheaper to buy. I fully agree that the climate is changing, whether it is due to mankind's pollution or natural causes, and whether we believe and accept the most dire predictions of flooding, drought, mass migration and death the impact will be, as Ed Miliband warns, a massive impact on the British way of life. But how will blowing £700m on a few thousand more electric cars on UK roads avoid, or mitigate, the "climate disaster" when the UK only contributes to 1% of global warming? We should be focusing on resilience. Surely the money would be better spent on planning and constructing proper defences for the predicted weather impacts? As well as avoiding the impacts of other countries' carbon profligacy it would be better way of achieving the economic growth we keep getting told is required to fix the other – in my view greater – day to day threats to our way of life such as poor education, obesity, lack of cheap housing, policing social media, immigration and defence. This is what other countries are doing. For example Indonesia is moving its capital from Djakarta to Nusantara because of the threat of flooding, a huge project which will boost its construction industry by 8.5% every year until 2028. Or is this more about shoring up Ed Miliband's increasingly loopy environmental policy defences and providing an "off ramp" for car manufacturers who face a £15k fine for every internal combustion car sold above their quota limit? Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven. • George Herraghty (Letters, July 12) is upset because his local wind turbines are not turning (Herald 12/7/25) He should be comforted when they are whizzing round and the excess electricity generated is used in the various pump-storage facilities, which can be switched on at short notice as required – for example when "the wind industry is on holiday". David Hay, Minard. Social security: mind the language The piece by Citizens Advice Scotland's Jonathan Boyd ('Why it's vital to get social security right', The Herald, July 12) resonated deeply with me on several levels. As part of my 30 years of service with the now Department of Work and Pensions, I spent several years in the 1980s striving enthusiastically to introduce plain English into the department's communications at all levels so that the maximum number of people could read, understand and respond to them. Those efforts, while initially successful, have now palpably dissipated, not only within DWP but within the public sector at large. Meanwhile, the average reading age in the UK, at 9-11 years, has remained stubbornly and shamefully unimproved since the 1980s. Coincidentally, during the 1980s and 1990s, I worked as a voluntary adviser with the Citizens Advice Bureaux in Blackpool and later in Perth, where I witnessed at first hand how a lack of basic literacy skills and comprehension contributed so directly and fundamentally to the day-to-day difficulties of so many clients. Sadly, in this respect also, the comprehensibility of so many official communications seems not to have improved in the last three decades. At a purely personal level, I am gratified that the CAB's Help to Claim service also recognises the importance of the disadvantages people with hearing difficulties face; a hidden, but nonetheless very real, disability which many like myself are loath to acknowledge. Jonathan Boyd is right; social security should be simple and accessible to all. It should not need bodies such as CAB – worthy as they are – to help navigate clients through a needlessly incomprehensible and hostile nightmare. Iain Stuart, Glasgow. Library assistants and economics With regard to the decision taken by North Ayrshire Council to employ four library assistants to do the work of five librarians ("Second council cuts school librarian posts", The Herald, July 12), perhaps it would make sense to put library assistants in charge of every aspect of the council's work. We would need fewer binmen, fewer teachers and if we elected library assistants we would need fewer politicians. Now that would be a saving. Graeme Arnott, Stewarton. Tariff trouble for US citizens It is widely reported that the US Customs take has surpassed $100 billion for the first time and only nine months into a fiscal year. In the main due to Donald Trump's tariffs, this could reach $300bn by the end of the fiscal year when President Trump applies yet more tariffs on August 1. Whilst this may boost treasury receipts, do the American electorate realise that it is they who are paying? The last major increase in tariffs exacerbated the negative effect of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Let us hope that the MAGA brigade wake up before it is too late. Peter Wright, West Kilbride. Should Keir Starmer get tough with Benjamin Netanyahu? (Image: PA) Who could vote for Starmer now? On the 10 o'clock BBC News on Sunday (July 13) there was yet another report on the suffering in Gaza imposed on the Palestinians by the Israeli government. I don't need to describe the horrendous scenes. Your readers will be only too well aware of the horrors the Gazans and their children are going through. Israel's former prime minister Ehud Olmert is reported online as having said: 'The 'humanitarian city' Israel's defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing ... Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank and construction of the camp would mark an escalation.' What is unacceptable from the UK's perspective is Keir Starmer's failure to make a statement along the following lines: 'Enough is enough! I have told the inconceivably malign Benjamin Netanyahu that I no longer support his criminal actions in Gaza. And what is more I will do everything I can to stop him building his concentration camp in Gaza for the few Gazans that are left alive.' How can any voter in the UK so much as contemplate ever voting for Keir Starmer again until he does so? John Milne, Uddingston.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
I'm disappointed but not done with Putin, Trump tells BBC
Donald Trump has said that he is disappointed but not done with Vladimir Putin, in an exclusive phone call with the US president was pressed on whether he trusts the Russian leader, and replied: "I trust almost no-one." Trump was speaking hours after he announced plans to send weapons to Ukraine and warned of severe tariffs on Russia if there was no ceasefire deal in 50 days. In a wide-ranging interview from the Oval Office, the president also endorsed Nato, having once described it as obsolete, and affirmed his support for the organisation's common defence principle. The president made the phone call, which lasted 20 minutes, to the BBC after conversations about a potential interview to mark one year on since the attempt on his life at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Asked about whether surviving the assassination attempt had changed him, Trump said he liked to think about it as little as possible. "I don't like to think about if it did change me," Trump said. Dwelling on it, he added, "could be life-changing". Having just met with Nato chief Mark Rutte at the White House, however, the president spent a significant portion of the interview expanding on his disappointment with the Russian leader. Trump said that he had thought a deal was on the cards with Russia four different times. When asked by the BBC if he was done with Putin, the president replied: "I'm disappointed in him, but I'm not done with him. But I'm disappointed in him." Pressed on how Trump would get Putin to "stop the bloodshed" the US president said: "We're working it, Gary.""We'll have a great conversation. I'll say: 'That's good, I'll think we're close to getting it done,' and then he'll knock down a building in Kyiv." The conversation moved onto Nato, which Trump has previously criticised as "obsolete". Asked if he still thought this was the case, he said: "No. I think Nato is now becoming the opposite of that" because the alliance was "paying their own bills". He said he still believed in collective defence, because it meant smaller countries could defend themselves against larger ones. President Trump was also asked about the UK's future in the world and said he thought it was a "great place - you know I own property there".He spoke about how he was looking forward to an unprecedented second state visit to the UK in September this year. On what he wanted to achieve during the visit, Trump said: "Have a good time and respect King Charles, because he's a great gentleman."
