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.

Islamic state leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in his first purported speech in nearly a year, has called on followers to persevere, according to a statement posted on the group’s media outlet.

"For the Mujahideen (holy warriors) the scale of victory or defeat is not dependant on a city or town being stolen or subject to that who has aerial superiority, intercontinental missiles or smart bombs," Baghdadi said in a recording posted on his al-Furqan media group.

Reuters was unable to verify whether the voice on the recording was Baghdadi’s.

Islamic State, which until last year controlled large areas in Syria and Iraq, has since been driven into the desert following successive defeats in separate offensives in both countries.

Baghdadi, who declared himself ruler of all Muslims in 2014 after capturing Iraq’s main northern city Mosul, is now believed to be hiding in the Iraqi-Syrian border region after losing all the cities and towns of his self-proclaimed caliphate.

The secretive Islamic State leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded since leading his fighters on a sweep through northern Iraq. His whereabouts are not known but Wednesday’s message appears to suggest he is still alive.

One of his sons was reported to have been killed in the city of Homs in Syria, the group’s news channel reported earlier this year.

Baghdadi’s last message came in the form of an undated 46-minute audio recording, released via the al-Furqan organisation in September, where he urged followers across the world to wage attacks against the West and to keep fighting in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. 

Outside a McDonald’s in Latina, Italy, the city’s teens are clutching cigarettes and milkshakes while engrossed in a passionate debate about identity.

The discussion taking place under the golden arches that are perhaps the most recognisable symbol of globalisation is about whether or not a local park named after Mussolini should no longer bear the name of Italy’s wartime fascist leader.

This is Europe’s lost generation, weighed down by endemic youth unemployment. Now, after a decade of austerity and stagnation, some are reawakening the ghosts of their fascist forefathers as they search for meaning and occupation in an age of economic disruption.

A new wave of citizens are questioning whether,…

Donald Trump is to spend at least 40 days campaigning across America for the mid-term elections – more than either Barack Obama or George W Bush did while in office. 

The US president has tasked his aides with getting him out of Washington DC and in front of voters as much as possible in the run-up to the November election. 

Mr Trump’s 40 days on the road between August 1 to November 6 will make him the “most aggressive campaigner in recent presidential history”, according to a person familiar with his thinking. 

Mr Bush, the former Republican president, spent 33 days travelling in each of his two mid-term election campaigns while Mr Obama spent 36 and around 22 days in each. 

The campaign blitz is the clearest sign yet that Mr Trump believes his personal charisma and record in office can help swing races in favour of the Republican Party. 

However it comes with political risks, leaving the US president more politically vulnerable should the widely anticipated ‘blue wave’ of Democratic support come to pass at the ballot box.

The mid-terms, which take place two years after every presidential election, see votes for all House of Representatives seats and a third of Senate seats, as well as  races for statewide governors. 

Sources close to the US president spelled out their mid-terms strategy on Tuesday and made clear Mr Trump’s determination to hit the campaign trail. 

“The president’s objective this fall is to get more support in Congress so that he can keep winning on behalf of the American people. This means an ambitious campaign schedule unlike any previous president in recent history,” a source familiar with his thinking said. 

Mr Trump will hold at least eight rallies and 16 fund-raisers in up to 15 US states in the coming weeks, according to a source. 

North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nevada, Kentucky and Tennessee are all expected to be visited, with other states likely to be added. 

Sources said that Mr Trump believes he can turn out the unusual coalition of supporters, which included traditional Democrat voters, that swept him into the White House in 2016. 

They also said the US president was helping secure a record number of donations for his party and defended his strategy of holding rallies, saying it would drive up new voters. 

The sources defined what success would look like for Mr Trump: Adding seats in the Senate, where Republicans hold 51 seats and Democrats 49; holding the Republican majority in the House of Representatives; and doing well in governor races. 

However they warned that the president was fighting against “history”, noting that opposition parties have gained seats in every mid-term election since the US civil war except for two: 1934 and 2002.