US president defends economic policies as polls show growing angst among voters over prices.

United States President Donald Trump has defended his administration’s record on lowering prices as he faces growing discontent from Americans over the cost of living.

In a speech to McDonald’s franchise owners and suppliers on Monday, Trump claimed credit for bringing inflation back to “normal” levels while pledging to bring price growth lower still.

“We have it down to a low level, but we’re going to get it a little bit lower,” Trump said.

“We want perfection.”

Returning to his regular talking point that Democrats had mismanaged the economy, the Republican president blamed cost pressures on former US President Joe Biden and insisted Americans were “so damn lucky” he won the 2024 election.

“Nobody has done what we’ve done in terms of pricing. We took over a mess,” Trump said.

Trump, whose 2024 presidential campaign focused heavily on the cost of living, has struggled to win over Americans with his protectionist economic message amid persistent affordability concerns.

In an NBC News poll released this month, 66 percent of respondents said Trump had fallen short of their expectations on affordability, while 63 percent answered the same for the economy in general.

Voter angst over prices has been widely identified as a key reason Republicans suffered a shellacking in off-year elections held early this month in multiple states, including New Jersey and Virginia.

Despite repeatedly playing down the effects of his tariffs on prices, Trump on Friday signed an executive order lowering duties on 200 food products, including beef, bananas, coffee and orange juice.

Trump has also floated tariff-funded $2,000 rebate cheques and the introduction of 50-year mortgages as part of a push to address affordability concerns.

While inflation has markedly declined since hitting a four-decade high of 9.1 percent under Biden, it remains significantly above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.

The inflation rate rose to 3 percent in October, the first time it hit the 3 percent mark since January, although many analysts had expected a higher figure due to Trump’s trade salvoes.

Trump, who is well known for his love of McDonald’s, spent a considerable portion of Monday’s speech praising the fast-food chain and casting the company as emblematic of his economic agenda.

“Together we are fighting for an economy where everybody can win, from the cashier starting her first job to a franchisee opening their first location to the young family in a drive-through line,” he said.

Trump also offered “special thanks” to the fast-food giant for rolling out more affordable menu options, including the reintroduction of extra value meals, which were phased out in 2018 and are priced at $5 or $8.

“We’re getting prices down for this country, and there’s no better leader or advocate than McDonald’s,” he said.

The UN Security Council has voted in favour of a US-drafted resolution that endorses US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza.

Included in the plan is the establishment of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), to which, the US says, multiple unnamed countries have offered to contribute.

The resolution was backed by 13 countries – including the UK, France and Somalia – with none voting against the proposal. Russia and China abstained.

Adopting it was an “important step in the consolidation of the ceasefire,” a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. Hamas has rejected the resolution, saying it fails to meet Palestinians’ rights and demands.

Writing on Telegram after the resolution passed, Hamas said the plan, “imposes an international guardianship mechanism on the Gaza Strip, which our people and their factions reject”.

“Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favour of the occupation,” it added.

Under the resolution, the ISF will work with Israel and Egypt, along with a newly trained and vetted Palestinian police force, to help secure border areas and ensure the process of permanently disarming non-state armed groups, including Hamas.

Until now, the police there have operated under the authority of Hamas.

Mike Waltz, the US’s ambassador to the UN, told the Council that the ISF would be “tasked with securing the area, supporting the demilitarization of Gaza, dismantling the terrorist infrastructure, removing weapons, and ensuring the safety of Palestinian civilians”.

The Security Council also approved the creation of a transitional governance body called the Board of Peace (BoP), which would supervise governance of a Palestinian technocratic, apolitical committee and oversee the reconstruction of Gaza and the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Financing for reconstruction of Gaza following two years of war would come from a trust fund backed by the World Bank, according to the resolution.

Under the resolution, both the ISF and the BoP would work alongside a Palestinian committee and police force.

Trump called the Security Council vote “historic” and said it was a way of “acknowledging and endorsing” the BoP, with its final membership to be announced soon. He is expected to chair it.

“This will go down as one of the biggest approvals in the History of the United Nations, will lead to further Peace all over the World, and is a moment of true Historic proportion!” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Unlike earlier drafts, the resolution references a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood. It is language several council members pushed for.

Israel strongly opposes the creation of a Palestinian state, a significant hurdle in the path to future statehood. Key Arab states had pressured drafters of the resolution to include Palestinian self-determination in the text.

The UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson stressed that the resolution needed to “translate… into concrete and urgently needed steps on the ground” and lead to “a political process for the achievement of the two-State solution”.

The US, the Palestinian Authority, and several Arab and Muslim-majority nations including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have called for the quick adoption of the resolution.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) said in a statement that the resolution’s terms needed to be implemented “urgently and immediately”.

Russia and China did not exercise their vetoes, but abstained to allow the resolution to pass, largely because the PA and eight other Arab and Muslim nations backed it.

Both Moscow and Beijing criticised the resolution. They said there was little clarity about the key mechanisms’ composition, that it did not ensure the participation of the UN, and that it failed to explicitly reiterate a firm commitment to the two-state solution.

The initial phase of the plan – a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the handing over of hostages and detainees – came into force on 10 October. Waltz described it as a “fragile, fragile first step”.

Trump’s peace plan in effect suspended the fighting between Israel and Hamas which had raged since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage in that attack.

More than 69,483 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military action in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Cook’s lawyer says the criminal referrals against her ‘fail on even the most cursory look at the facts’.

United States Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook’s lawyer has offered the first detailed defence of mortgage applications that gave rise to President Donald Trump’s move to fire her, saying apparent discrepancies in loan documents were either accurate at the time or an “inadvertent notation” that couldn’t constitute fraud given other disclosures to her lenders.

Cook has denied wrongdoing, but until Monday, neither she nor her legal team had responded in any detail to the fraud accusations first made in August by Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte.

She has challenged her removal in court, and the US Supreme Court has for now blocked Trump’s firing attempt and will hear arguments in the case in January.

A Department of Justice spokesperson said the department “does not comment on current or prospective litigation, including matters that may be an investigation”.

In a letter to US Attorney General Pam Bondi seen by the Reuters news agency, Cook’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said the criminal referrals Pulte made against her “fail on even the most cursory look at the facts”.

The two separate criminal referrals Pulte made fail to establish any evidence that Cook intentionally deceived her lenders when she obtained mortgage loans for three properties in Michigan, Georgia and Massachusetts, the letter said.

Lowell also accused Pulte of selectively targeting Trump’s political enemies while ignoring similar allegations against Republican officials, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Lowell said other recent conduct by Pulte “undercut his criminal referrals concerning Governor Cook”. That behaviour includes the recent dismissal of the FHFA’s acting inspector general and several internal watchdogs at Fannie Mae, one of the mortgage-finance giants under FHFA control.

The letter also cited a recent article by Reuters that said the White House ousted FHFA acting Inspector General Joe Allen right after he tried to provide key discovery material to federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia who are pursuing an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

James was charged with bank fraud and lying to her lender also after Pulte made a referral to the Justice Department. She has pleaded not guilty, and she is seeking a dismissal of the case on multiple grounds, including vindictive and selective prosecution.

Cook’s case is being handled in part by Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, whom Bondi named as a special assistant US attorney to assist with mortgage fraud probes into public figures.

The case is still being investigated, and no criminal charges have been brought. The department is also separately investigating Democratic California Senator Adam Schiff, also at Pulte’s request.

Previously unknown organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach have been presented and performed in Germany for the first time in 320 years.

Germany’s Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer called the discovery of the two pieces a “great moment for the world of music”.

They first caught the attention of the Peter Wollny, a researcher of the German composer and musician, in 1992 when he was cataloguing Bach manuscripts at the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels.

The organ works – the Chaconne in D minor BWV 1178 and Chaconne in G minor BWV 1179 – were undated and unsigned. Mr Wollny spent the next 30 years working to confirm the identity of the pieces.

They were performed at the St Thomas Church in Leipzig, where Bach is buried and where he worked as a cantor for 27 years.

The two pieces were played by Dutch organist Ton Koopman, who said he was proud to be able to perform them for the first time in 320 years.

He said the pieces were “of a very high quality” and would be “a great asset for organists today, as they are also suitable for smaller organs”.

They are believed to have been composed early in Bach’s career, when he was working as an organ teacher in the town of Arnstadt in Thuringia.

Mr Wollny, who is now the director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig, said they displayed several characteristics unique to the composer.

“Stylistically, the works also contain features that can be found in Bach’s works from this period, but not in those of any other composer,” he said.

They are believed to have been written down in 1705 by one of Bach’s pupils, Salomon Günther John.

At a presentation of the works, Mr Wollny said he was “99.99% sure that Bach had written the two pieces” and they have now been added to the official catalogue of his works.