Man, 26, arrested for murder of former British politician found dead in her home

2026-07-10T12:57:00-0400 / CBS/AP

A murder investigation was launched Friday into the death of Ann Widdecombe, a former member of Parliament who was found dead in her home in southwest England, police said. A suspect was arrested Friday afternoon.

The 78-year-old former Conservative lawmaker and prisons minister had “sustained serious injuries” when she was found on Thursday in Haytor, on the edge of Dartmoor National Park, according to a statement from Devon and Cornwall Police.

Police said earlier they were seeking a White male suspect, who U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer described as “clearly dangerous,” according to CBS News partner BBC News.

The BBC reported the man, 26, was arrested on Friday afternoon. The suspect was described by police as a British national. Police said it is too early to say if the suspect knew Widdecombe. A motive for the attack has not been determined.

When asked if there was evidence that Widdecombe’s death was politically motivated, Starmer said he would not speculate about the case, according to the BBC. Starmer, who recently resigned as prime minister and is holding the position until an election is held, said that Britons should “rise above any political differences,” and said he had spoken to top officials “to urge everybody to come together.”

Ann Widdecombe attends the Best Heroes Awards at The Waldorf Hilton on Oct. 16, 2025, in London. Dave Benett/Getty Images for Best Heroes Awards 2025

Widdecombe served in the House of Commons as an MP from 1987 to 2010 and was known for socially conservative views opposing abortion rights and expansion of LGBTQ+ rights.

She found fame after leaving Parliament as a contestant on the “Strictly Come Dancing” and “Celebrity Big Brother” reality television shows. Widdecombe’s “Strictly Come Dancing” partner Anton Du Beke called her death the “saddest of news” on social media and said he was devastated by the news.

Widdecombe later joined the Brexit Party and became a spokeswoman for the anti-immigration Reform UK party. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson called her a “heroic Brexiteer and a great speaker who could move Tory audiences to such ecstasy that she was a very hard act to follow.”

The management company that represented her after she left politics said her life and career were driven by strong Christian values and a commitment to public service.

“She loved the cut and thrust of political debate and, 16 years after leaving Parliament, was still actively campaigning for Reform UK and offering forthright views on the hot topics of the day,” Cloud9 Management said.

“As Ann once said … ‘we get one go this side of eternity, one go. Life is not a dress rehearsal, you take opportunities that you like and you go for it, that’s my philosophy.’”

Widdecombe told the BBC in 2008 that she had spent time in Dartmoor National Park as a child. She told the BBC that she named her home Widdecombe’s Rest and that she planned to spend the rest of her life there.

Prince Harry, Meghan visit King Charles after security controversy

July 10, 2026 / 2:34 PM EDT / CBS News
By Mark Osborne

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, visited King Charles on Friday after a week of controversy surrounding security in the U.K.

Harry, Meghan and children Prince Archie and Princess Lillibet were hosted by King Charles and Queen Camilla at Highgrove House, according to Buckingham Palace. The palace said it was a private family visit and thus no details or photos would be shared.

Harry and Meghan had planned to come to the U.K. as part of a visit tied to the Invictus Games, a sporting competition for injured veterans started by Harry, a veteran himself. But CBS News’ international partner BBC News reported the prince was reconsidering bringing his family on a trip to the U.K. scheduled for July because his request for taxpayer-funded police protection was rejected by British authorities.

Harry visited the U.K. alone over the last week, with the Sussexes’ representatives telling CBS News that the prince, “continues to explore every available option to enable the visit to proceed safely and to give his children the opportunity to enjoy the UK.”

Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, arrives at Chatham House in central London on July 7, 2026. JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty

After stepping down from his public role and moving to California, Harry and his family had their security downgraded, however, and it is now determined on a case-by-case basis by the U.K. government’s Royal and VIP Executive Committee.

In addition to tension over moving to California and stepping down as senior royals, the prince’s tell-all book, “Spare,” and their interviews and a documentary, in which they were highly critical of their treatment at the hands of the royal family, have created a bumpy relationship with his father and brother, Prince William.

It was a rough week in general for Harry, who lost a long-running legal battle Tuesday against the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

Harry was among several claimants in the case — along with Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley — who accused the publisher of the popular tabloids of unlawfully gathering information about them through methods such as phone tapping, intercepting voicemails and impersonating people to obtain personal information.

However, the U.K. High Court dismissed the claims, saying they could not be proven.

In a similar case, the publisher of The Sun newspaper paid the duke “substantial damages” in an out-of-court settlement last year and profusely apologized for hacking his phone to find out information.

Duarte Dias contributed to this report.

The White House is upgrading its front door to fortify the entrance

2026-07-10T17:57:42.679Z / CNN

By Betsy Klein, Kaitlan Collins

PUBLISHED Jul 10, 2026, 1:57 PM ET

A tarp covers scaffolding on the North Portico of the White House, on Friday.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

The White House is making security-focused upgrades to its front door, an official told CNN, in a project that’s expected to take months.

The changes, which sources said have long been advocated by the US Secret Service, are aimed at fortifying the White House entrance at the North Portico, which has recently been obscured by scaffolding and a tarp as workers repair the exterior columns at President Donald Trump’s request.

But unlike many of Trump’s projects around the White House — from hanging gold signage to paving the Rose Garden — the work on the front door is not cosmetic, and instead focused on enhancing its security, the White House official said.

The US Secret Service did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

The security enhancements come as Trump has been the target of multiple assassination attempts, including at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton in April. And last month, there was an alleged plot to attack the UFC fight on the White House South Lawn. Officials have pointed to those incidents as justification for the president’s sprawling, 90,000-square-foot ballroom project, which they’ve said is expected to include a sophisticated drone port and sniper nests, along with a secure underground bunker.

The door of the North Portico of the White House is visible as workers perform maintenance on the portico’s columns on June 22.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The North Portico fortifications are expected to be complete by approximately mid-September, the White House official said.

On Friday morning, a third panel of tarp featuring an image of the White House exterior was unfurled around the North Portico scaffolding, where the work on the columns is ongoing.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had predicted that the column project, which involves stone restoration work, would be done “quickly,” and it was unclear why the tarp had been installed.

“It’ll go very quickly. I think they’ve been up, maybe, just about 10 days now, but these guys work very quick,” Burgum said in a recent appearance on “The Katie Miller Podcast.”

Gas prices climbing again as U.S.-Iran tensions flare

2026-07-10T13:27:00-0400 / CBS News

By

Updated on: July 10, 2026 / 1:30 PM EDT / CBS News

Fuel prices are headed back up amid renewed military clashes between the U.S. and Iran.

The national price of gasoline rose on Friday to $3.88 a gallon, up from $3.84 a week ago, according to AAA. In recent weeks, prices at the pump fell to as low as $3.80 on July 5, down from more than $4.50 in May, after Washington, D.C., and Tehran signed a temporary ceasefire last month.

Regular gas averaged $2.98 a gallon just before the Iran war started in late February. “Gas prices are going up again, as the future of the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran remains uncertain,” the auto group said in a report.

The latest spasm of violence in the Middle East is reviving concerns that a prolonged conflict could disrupt trade through the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf waterway that handles roughly 20% of global energy flows. President Trump reiterated his stance on Friday that the ceasefire with Iran was “over” after less than three weeks, while noting that the U.S. would continue negotiating.

The number of ships traversing the strait on Thursday fell to 34, the lowest daily level since June 28, when Iran launched drone attacks in the region following U.S. airstrikes on the Islamic Republic, according to S&P Global MINT and S&P Global Commodities at Sea.

“Iran-linked and sanctioned traffic remained elevated, accounting for roughly one-third of total crossings,” the financial research firm said of the ships navigating the strait on July 9.

The price of oil accounts for 51% of the cost of a gallon of gas, making it the biggest factor affecting fuel prices, according to the Energy Information Administration. The cost of refining crude into gas, jet fuel, heating oil and other energy products accounts for roughly 20% of gas prices; other factors include marketing and distribution expenses, as well as local and federal taxes.

Other geopolitical events are also constraining the world’s crude and gas supplies. Attacks by Ukraine on Russian oil refineries and other facilities are taking a toll, according to Patrick De Haan, a petroleum expert at GasBuddy, which tracks U.S. gas prices.

“Every refinery knocked offline in Russia removes refined products like gasoline and diesel from the global market, even if crude oil itself keeps flowing,” he said in a report.

“Moscow’s response made a tight global market even tighter,” De Haan added. “Russia has now banned diesel exports outright, layered on top of existing restrictions on gasoline and jet fuel exports, in an attempt to keep fuel inside the country.”

De Haan also noted that the seasonal pickup in driving, when fuel demand typically jumps during the summer, pushes up gas prices. Meanwhile, environmental rules require refineries to produce summer-blend gas to reduce heat-related evaporation — a shift that can cost between 10 and 25 cents per gallon, he said.

Edited by Aimee Picchi

Israel shared intel on Iranian hardliners’ desire to target Trump, sources say, as Netanyahu looks to influence course of war

2026-07-10T19:14:24.704Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/10/politics/israel-intelligence-threats-trump-iran

The Israeli intelligence shared with the Trump administration of Iranian threats to assassinate President Donald Trump reflected a desire among elements of Tehran’s hardline leadership to target the American leader, according to an Israeli source and a US official, rather than a specific, detailed plan to carry out such an operation.

The new commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Ahmad Vahidi, was part of the group advocating for such a plan, the Israeli source told CNN. Vahidi has been included in lists of “obstructionists” within the regime who are viewed by the Trump administration as actively undermining negotiations, according to a source familiar with US planning. The US has considered directly targeting leaders on the list if full-scale war resumes, the source said.

Two US sources familiar with the matter said recent US intelligence assessments show no indication of a new, specific Iranian plot to kill Trump, but rather a steady drumbeat of chatter about various Iranian actors wanting to do so. The desire to target Trump is not unique to Iran’s leadership. Mourners at the days-long funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by Israel in the opening strikes of the war in late-February, held signs calling on Iran to kill Trump.

In a Friday interview with the New York Post Trump downplayed the significance of the Israeli intelligence, first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, saying that Iran had long threatened his life.

“Israel came up with nothing,” he said, describing himself as Iran’s “number one” target “for a long time.”

The intelligence sharing by Israeli officials comes at a time when Israel has been increasingly sidelined as the Trump administration grapples with how to end its war with Iran. Two Israeli sources say the Trump administration doesn’t want Israel involved in the fighting over concerns of losing control of the conflict.

One of the sources said the prevailing Israeli assessment is that Trump does not want a return to a full-scale war and that the most he may be willing to do is to reinstate the naval blockade on Iranian ports.

Trump, on Friday, posted to Truth Social that “the United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the Cease Fire is OVER!,” referencing Iranian leadership, while adding that he had agreed to continue talks aimed at restoring a pause in fighting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been skeptical of Iran’s intentions in ongoing talks and has never believed Tehran was negotiating in good faith. Instead, Netanyahu has favored a return to war in an effort to weaken the regime.

US intelligence officials are broadly aware that Israel feels cut out of the decision-making process and is ramping up efforts to influence the Trump administration’s thinking on Iran in multiple ways with the goal of steering them away from accepting what it considers a bad deal, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The sources said there is a measure of skepticism within the US intelligence community about information provided by Israel because of that perception of the desire to impact Trump’s decision making.

To that end, Israel has increasingly attempted to feed information, both through the US intelligence community and to other more friendly administration officials that they believe could impact Trump’s thinking on Iran, as part of that effort. That includes how Israeli officials framed the intelligence revealed in recent reporting of the claimed new plot to assassinate Trump, the sources said.

But fundamentally, nothing has changed as far as the threats against Trump since he took office for his second term as far as what the US intel community has been monitoring, one of the sources said.

While US intelligence officials have been concerned that multiple Iranian actors might want to try to assassinate Trump, they have assessed that Iranians either have not been able to develop a plan or have not received approval from Iranian decision-makers to carry out a specific plot, the source added.

During the first Trump administration, the US tracked a number of threats against former officials, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who is a hawk on Iran. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was also a target of the Iranian assassination plot, according to a federal law enforcement source familiar with the investigation and a source close to Pompeo.

CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo contributed to this story.

Appeals court temporarily blocks Justice Department’s release of Biden conversations with biographer

July 10, 2026 / 12:33 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the Justice Department from turning over to a conservative think tank redacted transcripts and audio recordings of conversations former President Joe Biden had with his biographer roughly a decade ago.

A panel of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed to issue an administrative injunction that stops the release of the material to the Heritage Foundation for 10 days.

The court said in a brief unsigned order that the purpose of its injunction, which expires at 11:59 p.m. on July 20, is to “give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion.”

The recordings at issue in the legal fight date back to 2016 and 2017, when Biden sat down with his biographer, Mark Zwonitzer, for his memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.” But they gained interest from the Heritage Foundation several years later following an investigation by former special counsel Robert Hur into Biden’s handling of sensitive government records after his vice presidency, which ended in 2017. The former president was not charged with any crimes stemming from Hur’s investigation.

The special counsel’s report, released in 2024, included passages that referenced Biden’s conversations with Zwonitzer. The special counsel wrote the recordings showed the former president’s “diminished faculties and faulty memory,” and said his conversations with Zwonitzer were “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”

Soon after Hur’s report was released, the Heritage Foundation filed a public records request for material the special counsel relied on to write specific portions of the report, including the excerpts that referred to Zwonitzer’s recorded conversations with Biden.

The Justice Department initially withheld the audio tapes and most of the written transcripts, citing certain exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act. But once President Trump returned to the White House, the department said it intended to provide the material to Congress and the Heritage Foundation.

Biden moved to intervene in a lawsuit the Heritage Foundation had filed in 2024 to force the release of the transcripts and tapes. But last month, a federal judge initially rejected a request from the former president to block the disclosure.

Shortly after she issued her decision, the judge, Dabney Friedrich, agreed to stop the Trump administration from releasing the information for three weeks to give the D.C. Circuit time to decide whether to take action itself. That order was set to expire at 5 p.m. Friday.

Biden’s lawyers had argued to the D.C. Circuit that disseminating his discussions with Zwonitzer would be harmful and likened their disclosure to the public release of diary entries or private text messages.

“The private conversations at issue were never intended to be shared with a wider audience, and the Department has them only because it collected the recordings as part of a criminal investigation that resulted in no charges,” they argued in a filing.

Biden’s legal team also said there is no immediate need for the Heritage Foundation to access the material.

“This FOIA action has been pending for nearly two and a half years, and there is no meaningful public interest — let alone one that must be satisfied in the immediate days or weeks — in the disclosure of decade-old conversations of a former President who is now a private citizen, and who neither holds nor is seeking public office,” they said.

But the Justice Department said the public has an interest in seeing the information that Hur relied on during the course of his investigation.

“Releasing the materials will allow the public to assess the persuasiveness of Hur’s determinations,” department lawyers told the D.C. Circuit in court papers.

Democratic candidate Brad Lander on why he calls himself a ‘liberal zionist’

1:55 PM EDT, Fri July 10, 2026 / CNN

By Dana Bash, CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/10/politics/video/nyc-house-candidate-brad-lander-israel-ip

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Democratic candidate Brad Lander on why he calls himself a ‘liberal zionist’

Inside Politics

Democratic House candidate Brad Lander recently ousted an incumbent member of Congress in a Democratic primary where opposition to Israel played a major role. He joins “Inside Politics” to discuss his views on the US-Israel relationship and why he calls himself a “liberal zionist.” He tells Dana Bash, “I want it to actually honor international law and Palestinian human rights so it can be the Jewish and democratic Israel that I grew up believing in.”

2:37 • Source: CNN

What happened under Trump this week

2026-07-10 12:05 p.m. EDT / The Washington Post

He met with NATO leaders, and a judge ordered him to pay $5.8 million for defamation.

President Donald Trump poses with world leaders at this week’s meeting of NATO allies. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Analysis by Amber Phillips

Here’s what happened under President Donald Trump’s administration this week that you may have missed.

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Trump admin. to support heavy tariffs on Russian oil in effort to end Ukraine war, sources say

July 10, 2026 / 2:08 PM EDT / CBS News

By Jennifer Jacobs, Jennifer Jacobs Senior White House reporter

Jennifer Jacobs is a senior White House reporter at CBS News.

Jennifer Jacobs, Margaret Brennan, Margaret Brennan Moderator, “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan;” Chief foreign affairs correspondent

Margaret Brennan is moderator of “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on CBS. Based in Washington, D.C., Brennan is also the Network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent and a contributing correspondent to 60 Minutes. Additionally, she appears regularly on the “CBS Evening News,” leading coverage from Washington when news breaks on the political and foreign affairs fronts.

Margaret Brennan, Nikole Killion

Nikole Killion Congressional Correspondent

Nikole Killion is a CBS News congressional correspondent based in Washington D.C., who has covered some of the biggest stories on Capitol Hill since 2021. Killion has also served a key role in CBS News’ election coverage during the 2024 and 2020 presidential races covering the Trump, Biden, and Harris campaigns.

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The Trump administration will support a draft bill that would impose heavy financial penalties on purchasers of Russian oil, adding to economic pressure on Moscow, all in an effort to bring Russia’s four-year war on Ukraine to a close, sources told CBS News.

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told CBS News that the Trump White House has approved the latest draft of a bipartisan Russia sanctions bill.

A Ukrainian official told CBS News that on Friday, Graham informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that it has the support of the White House.

White House spokespeople didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Both senators emphasized that Ukraine is turning the tide on the battlefield, and Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to be brought to the table. Graham indicated to CBS News that Putin’s constant attacks are a factor in Mr. Trump’s thinking, and the president has found Ukraine’s recent success on the battlefield to be persuasive.

The bipartisan bill aims to increase economic pressure on Russia. It is not clear how soon the tariffs would go into effect after the legislation is signed into law.

It would allow high tariffs to be imposed on countries that continue to buy Russian oil and natural gas. India and China are the two biggest buyers of Russian oil.

blob:https://www.cbsnews.com/e69672c0-3e83-43a6-b44e-00a8f08d4afc

Blumenthal did not yet have a vote count, but he believes there will be Democratic support for the bill. The Connecticut senator also credited timing: Recent declines in the price of oil since the cooling off of the war with Iran are making this a more palatable decision.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota had previously told the senators that he’d move the bill when they had the votes. The Senate returns to Washington on Monday.

Blumenthal said that the movement on sanctions was not the only big win for Ukraine. He also said that Zelenskyy adroitly handled his meetings with Mr. Trump at the NATO summit this week, both securing the long-sought license to produce Patriot interceptors and persuading Trump to sign off on purchases of Ukrainian drones for U.S. usage. Zelenskyy had made a direct request for the licenses from Mr. Trump during an appearance on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” in May.

Blumenthal, Graham, Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and GOP Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi hailed the agreement and said they expect to roll out the legislation “very soon.”

“As Russia intensifies its slaughter of civilians, it is imperative that the legislative and executive branches work together to create tools to exact a heavy price on those who buy Russian oil and natural gas, fueling the Putin war machine,” the senators said.

Zelenskyy has been notified of the president’s approval of the tariff plan, one of the sources said. The Ukrainian president met with Graham in Kyiv Friday and said in a post on X that “Lindsey briefed me on the work underway in Congress on the relevant bill.”

Can a pro-Israel Jewish Democrat be the party’s 2028 nominee? Hear what progressive House candidate Brad Lander thinks

2026-07-10T18:02:49.833Z / CNN

Dana Bash

By Dana Bash, CNN

Published 2:02 PM EDT, Fri July 10, 2026

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Can a pro-Israel Jewish Democrat be the party’s 2028 nominee? Hear what progressive House candidate Brad Lander thinks

Inside Politics

Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander joins “Inside Politics” after defeating incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in a New York City primary. Lander, an outspoken critic of Israel, says accusing Israel of genocide won’t be “a litmus test in the presidential race” but “I do think a reset in the US-Israel relationship is,” he tells Dana Bash.

2:59 • Source: CNN