As Iranians brace themselves for the effect of the latest US sanctions, a new social media campaign has been launched asking officials to disclose their wealth and how their relatives might have benefitted from their support for the regime.

The hashtag #where_is_your_kid? began trending on Twitter last week following news reports that some politicians’ children were apparently being promoted to top state jobs despite a lack of experience and enjoying luxury lifestyles with their inflated wages.

The campaign gathered steam after the circulation of photos of the extravagant wedding of Mohsen Muradian, the son of Iran’s ambassador to Denmark, to Iranian model and designer Anashid Hosseini, which…

A teenage Youtube star has been killed in a car crash after driving 100mph down the wrong side of a motorway in California.

Trevor Heitmann, an online star who called himself McSkillet, was reportedly driving faster than 100mph when his £200,000 McLaren sports car crashed head-on into an SUV, killing its driver and passenger.

A 43-year-old San Diego woman and her 12-year-old daughter, who were travelling in the Hyundai SUV, died in the incident, the Medical Examiner’s Office said on Friday.

The California Highway Patrol and San Diego Police Department identified the sports car driver as 18-year-old Heitmann.

Pictures of the aftermath of the crash show pieces of burned and twisted metal.

Under his online alias, Heitmann had made a fortune selling digital "skins" used to customise guns and knives in the first-person shooter video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO).

But he was banned from an online marketplace for allegedly being involved in a skin gambling website called CS:GO Magic and had allegedly been suffering from mental health issues.

Heitmann, who had almost a million followers on YouTube,  is thought to have lost access to hundreds of thousands of dollars after being banned.

One eyewitness who saw the crash, Hector Puga told NBC News: "That car in front of me swerved, slammed and exploded within a fraction of second all I could do was hold on to my steering wheel and run over everything that exploded."

A woman who witnessed the crash told 10 News: "It was like a scene from a movie. All the cars were stopping. There was smoke. Fire. Loud noise.

"As soon as I look up in front of me, that car other there was flying and tumbling down the freeway."

Anthony Brennan, who identified himself as Heitmann’s friend and business partner, said on Twitter: "The fact is that three people lost their life and my heart is broken for all of them.

"I pray that they are all in a better place and for their family and friends and loved ones. You never know what’s happening in someone’s life and it will take time to understand this whole thing."

Donald Trump has signed an executive order allowing for sanctions over election meddling amid fears Russia, China, Iran and North Korea could target the November midterms. 

Any individual, entity or country which authorises, directs, sponsors or supports interference could be hit with economic penalties under the US president’s new order. 

The punishments could include blocking assets, restricting export licenses, limiting access to US banks or even deporting those who are found to have been involved. 

It is an attempt to guarantee the legitimacy of the congressional and state-wide elections on November 6 as well as future votes after Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential race. 

The move will ease pressure on Mr Trump to act. He was heavily criticised in July for not blaming Russia for the 2016 interference during a press conference with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in Helsinki. 

John Bolton, the White House national security adviser, said the action showed that Mr Trump has “taken command of the issue” of election meddling, adding: “It is something he cares deeply about”. 

Dan Coats, the US director of national intelligence, said that the intelligence community had not yet spotted activity on a scale of that seen before the 2016 election, but warned that escalation was only a “keyboard click” away. 

He named Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as countries who could have the capability to interfere in the November midterms and were being monitored by US intelligence. 

Both men gave a briefing on Wednesday outlining details of the executive order, which creates a framework to act should election meddling be identified. 

First the intelligence services will have 45 days to assess whether there has been an attempt to manipulate or influence a US election. 

Then the US attorney general and Department of Homeland Security will have a further 45 days to decide whether to go forward with sanctions. 

Mr Coats said that in such circumstances “automatic sanctions” will come into effect. The State Department and Treasury can then decide whether to impose more hard-hitting sanctions. 

The move appears designed to be a shot across the bows of hostile countries, warning them off attempting to influence the midterm elections which are now just eight weeks away. 

Local teams running the elections have been trained on how to protect their systems from cyber-attack. Intelligence officials believe the US electoral system is better protected now than it was before the 2016 vote. 

Mr Coats said of the executive order: “This clearly is a process put in place to try to assure that we are doing every possible thing we can, first of all, to prevent any interference with our elections, to report on anything we see between now and the election, but then to do a full assessment after the election to assure the American people just exactly what may have happened or may not have happened."

A 10-term Democratic congressman has conceded defeat to a Boston city councillor who is now poised to become Massachusetts’ first black congresswoman in a race with parallels to a New York upset that rattled the party in June.

The Democratic nominating contest fight between US Representative Michael Capuano, 66, and Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, 44, was his first since 1998.

"Clearly the district wanted a lot of change," Mr Capuano told supporters on Tuesday as he conceded. "I’m sorry that this didn’t work out."

With no Republicans on the ticket in Tuesday’s nominating primary, Ms Pressley is all but certain to succeed Mr Capuano in Washington in November’s congressional elections.

Ms Pressley argued she would bring new energy and awareness of the needs in the state’s only congressional district where a majority of residents are not white.

The race echoed the June primary in a safely Democratic New York City congressional district where first-time candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat a 10-term incumbent, sparking fresh enthusiasm for progressive candidates across the United States.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez, 28, congratulated Ms Pressley on Twitter.

Both candidates had collected high-profile endorsements, with the Boston Globe newspaper backing Ms Pressley and the Congressional Black Caucus supporting Mr Capuano, who is white.

Polls and political observers predict the state’s nine House seats will remain in Democratic hands, along with the seat held by US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive voice often cited as a possible 2020 White House contender. Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican who regularly shows up in polls as one of the United States’ most popular governors, is also expected to be re-elected.

Democrats need to pick up 23 seats in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate nationwide in the November 6 general election to gain a majority that could allow them to counter Republican President Donald Trump’s agenda.

The French town of Calais has been no stranger to public disorder in recent years, with recurrent battles between police and migrants or striking ferry workers making headlines across the world.

But now the port town is facing a bizarre new threat, according to its council: an alliance of hunters and farmers seeking to take revenge on vegans bent on turning the largely carnivorous French off meat.

The risk of trouble was so great that the council decided to cancel a vegan festival due to be held in the town centre on September 8.

The move was the latest episode in an ongoing battle between vegan militants and butchers and other providers of meat in the north of France.

So far it has been radical non-meat eaters who have been on the offensive, vandalising several butchers’ shops in the region and elsewhere in recent months, prompting the French federation of butchers to issue a plea for police protection.

But now the Calais mayor’s office said it had to ban the upcoming vegan event to "guarantee public safety" and to protect organisers and visitors from the "risk of an outbreak of public disorder."  

It provided no details but said authorities had become aware of a "series of operations aimed at stirring up trouble.”

Farplace, the association that organised the festival, was more specific about where the threats were coming from.  It claimed on the event’s Facebook page that town hall officials had told it that “hunters and farmers had come together to make very clear threats about what might happen if the event was held.”

The head of the butchers’ federation in the region, Laurent Rigaud, said that if the festival had gone ahead, “We were ready to organise a big barbecue (in Calais), along with hunters, farmers, and restaurateurs.”

He said about 400 people had said they would turn out for the meat-eating event, but insisted that they would have remained peaceful. “We wanted to… show that we are not the violent ones, but that there are extremists among the vegans,” he told Le Figaro newspaper.

The festival organisers are currently looking for another venue to rent “outside of Calais” to host the event. With just three per cent of the population vegetarian or vegan in France, the notion of dropping meat from the menu has been slow to catch on and even frowned upon in a country proud of its boeuf bourguignon and foie gras.

French butchers have been subject of some scrutiny in recent months following a spate of hard-hitting reports from abattoirs and battery farms revealing apparently inhumane conditions in which animals are being kept and killed.

Russia will next month hold its biggest war games since the fall of the Soviet Union, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday, a massive military exercise that will also involve the Chinese and Mongolian armies.

The exercise, called Vostok-2018 (East-2018), will take place in central and eastern Russian military districts and involve almost 300,000 troops, more than 1,000 military aircraft, two of Russia’s naval fleets, and all of its airborne units, Shoigu said in a statement.

The manoeuvres will take place at a time of heightened tension between the West and Russia, which is concerned about what it says is an unjustified build-up of the NATO military alliance on its western flank.

NATO says it has beefed up its forces in eastern Europe to deter potential Russian military action after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014 and backed a pro-Russian uprising in eastern Ukraine.

The war games, which will take place from Sept. 11-15, are likely to worry Japan, which has already complained about a Russian military build-up in the Far East, something Moscow has linked to Tokyo’s roll-out of the Aegis U.S. missile system.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is due to attend a forum in the Russian city of Vladivostok over the same period, and a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said on Tuesday that Tokyo always paid attention to shifts in Russian-Chinese military cooperation.

Shoigu said the war games would be the biggest since a Soviet military exercise, Zapad-81 (West-81) in 1981.

"In some ways they will repeat aspects of Zapad-81, but in other ways the scale will be bigger," Shoigu told reporters, while visiting the Russian region of Khakassia.

Shoigu said that both Russia’s Pacific and Northern Fleets would take part, while the Russian Ministry of Defence has said that Chinese and Mongolian military units will also participate.

Asked if the cost of holding such a massive military exercise was justified at a time when Russia is faced with higher social spending demands, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said such war games were essential.

"The country’s ability to defend itself in the current international situation, which is often aggressive and unfriendly towards our country, means (the exercise) is justified," Peskov told reporters on a conference call.

When asked if China’s involvement meant Moscow and Beijing were moving towards an alliance, Peskov said it showed that the two were cooperating in all areas.

China and Russia have taken part in joint military drills before but not on such a large scale.

NATO spokesman Dylan White said that Russia had briefed the alliance on the planned exercise in May and that NATO would monitor it. Russia had invited military attaches from NATO countries based in Moscow to observe the war games, an offer he said was under consideration.

"All nations have the right to exercise their armed forces, but it is essential that this is done in a transparent and predictable manner," White said in an emailed statement.

"Vostok demonstrates Russia’s focus on exercising large-scale conflict. It fits into a pattern we have seen over some time: a more assertive Russia, significantly increasing its defence budget and its military presence."

Shoigu this month announced the start of snap combat readiness checks in central and eastern military districts ahead of the planned exercise.

"Imagine 36,000 armoured vehicles – tanks, armoured personnel carriers and armoured infantry vehicles – moving and working simultaneously, and that all this, naturally, is being tested in conditions as close as possible to military ones," Shoigu said on Tuesday.