Donald Trump confronted CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins as he arrived at the United Nations General Assembly in New York with first lady Melania Trump on Tuesday.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the president told Collins, days after his administration blocked CNN from White House access.

As Collins questioned him about the Iran war, Trump replied: “It’s an honor to be here. I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me. You said you weren’t gonna cover me, you shouldn’t be covering me.”

Before walking away with Melania, Trump said the United States was “making a lot of progress” and that “our country is doing really, really well.”

Another reporter then asked Trump what message he had for Vladimir Putin. The president turned back and answered emphatically: “Settle the war.”

The heated confrontation followed the Trump administration’s decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House over coverage the president dismissed as “fake news.”

The dispute intensified Monday when the three outlets sued, arguing that the ban violated their First Amendment rights. The television pool—ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN and NBC—also said it would boycott White House events in solidarity.

Trump is set to address the General Assembly before beginning a full day of diplomatic engagements, including meetings with UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as talks with Gulf leaders.

Trump is also scheduled to sign an agreement with Denmark and Greenland that would permit an expanded US military presence on the Arctic island. Later in the evening, he is due to hold a closed-door pull-aside meeting with Venezuela’s leader Delcy Rodríguez.

His appearance at the annual summit comes as the wars in Iran and Ukraine contribute to a fuel squeeze in the United States, with retail diesel prices climbing above $6.50 a gallon for the first time on record.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Trump is willing to meet with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian during his time in New York.

“This is a president that will meet with anybody for the most part, because he believes that engaging with people is important if you’re going to solve problems,” Rubio said on NBC’s Today show.

“It doesn’t mean you’re going to end up agreeing with them, but it’s important.”

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell about 1 percent to roughly $99 a barrel as optimism returned to the markets.

According to a White House official, Trump will use his speech to argue that “he is using American power to confront longstanding challenges and reshape the world to America’s benefit.”

“We expect the president will highlight how he has and his administration have confronted complex problems head-on around the world,” Mike Waltz, Trump’s ambassador to the UN, told reporters.

Waltz suggested Trump could also revive his attacks on the body, which he has accused of failing on war and peace, pushing a ‘con job’ on climate change and promoting the ‘invasion’ of migrants into Europe. 

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Trump has already scaled back US funding for the organization, raising questions about its future. 

Trump told last year’s General Assembly that the US had ‘demolished’ Iran’s nuclear capabilities after he ordered strikes on three key sites in June 2025. He also claimed ‘everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.’

He returns nearly seven months into a war with Iran that has become a major issue for Republicans ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. 

US and Israeli strikes have killed much of Tehran’s top leadership and degraded its military capabilities, while an American blockade of Iranian oil has put further pressure on its economy. 

But Iran has effectively strangled the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil previously flowed, while Tehran-backed Houthi rebels have made the alternative Bab al-Mandab Strait increasingly perilous. 

Drone strikes by Iran-backed militias in Iraq forced Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline earlier this month to shut down, further increasing pressure on the energy market. 

Qatar and other mediators are trying to overcome a ‘deep deficit of trust’ between Washington and Tehran and get the two sides back to talks, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said on Monday.

‘Either we sign a deal now or sign a deal 10 months away,’ al-Ansari told the Concordia Annual Summit. ‘The only difference is the number of dead and destruction that we see.’

The Greenland deal, announced last week, follows Trump’s repeated threats to ‘take over’ the island by military force if necessary. Greenland remains Danish territory under the agreement.

Trump claimed last week that he had got Russia and Ukraine to stop targeting each other’s energy infrastructure, after promising on the 2024 campaign trail to end the war on Day One. 

Zelensky said he would sign up if Russia did. Moscow said it would only comply if Western energy sanctions were lifted first. 

But both sides have kept striking energy infrastructure, including a massive Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow over the weekend involving some 450 aircraft. 

Trump flies back to Washington to greet China’s Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, with the TV pool’s boycott threatening to leave the state visit without network coverage. 

Melania’s office has taken a different line, allowing CNN to cover her announcement at the St. Regis hotel in Manhattan on Tuesday, a source familiar with the matter told the Daily Mail. 

A retired firefighter who claimed he was homeless and sleeping on a mattress in his former wife’s home has lost his legal bid for a portion of his late father’s $1.3 million estate. A judge dismissed his request for $50,000 in rental assistance as a “contrivance” and rejected claims that he was genuinely destitute.

John Freeman, 76, brought the case against his 63-year-old brother, Mark Freeman, in the NSW Supreme Court after their father, Kenneth Freeman, died in May 2024 aged 98. John had been excluded from the will.

John argued that his father had been mistaken in describing him as having “established himself in life” and being in a reasonably comfortable financial position.

He told the court he was homeless, without sufficient money and dealing with health difficulties. John maintained that his father would have made provision for him if he had understood the full extent of his financial circumstances.

Justice David Hammerschlag delivered a scathing assessment, describing John as an “unimpressive, unpersuasive and unconvincing witness”.

The judge pointed to John’s record of travelling to Thailand at least four times during the previous two years, despite his claims that he was living in poverty.

John paid only $50 a week in rent while in Thailand, owned a car and spent extended periods there. Those circumstances led the judge to conclude that he could live comfortably on his Age Pension.

Justice Hammerschlag was also unconvinced that John had any genuine plan to make Australia his permanent home.

The failed inheritance claim also left John facing legal costs of approximately $171,000—almost twice the $50,000 he had sought.

“With monotonous regularity, the Court must deal with family provision claims where any positive result the claimant might achieve is dwarfed by the claimant’s legal costs,” Justice Hammerschlag said.

“And there is an expectation that legal costs, or a material portion of them, will be paid out of the estate because the claimant cannot afford them.”

The estate was worth “a little over $1.3 million”, with most of its value tied up in the family home in Revesby, Sydney.

Kenneth left everything to Mark, who receives a disability pension, had lived in the family property all his life and had spent years caring for both of his parents.

In a statement attached to his will, Kenneth said Mark had “devoted himself to looking after his parents” and had given up opportunities to accumulate wealth.

“I am concerned that after my death he will not have a place to live and it is therefore my firm intention that I wish my whole estate to go to the benefit of my son Mark. I have given very careful thought to this question before making my decision,” he wrote.

“I feel that my other children Carol, Kenneth John and Robyn have all established themselves in life and to varying degrees are in a reasonably comfortable financial position.”

The court found Mark had devoted years to caring for both parents, while John made no meaningful contribution to his father’s welfare.

Justice Hammerschlag went further, finding there was evidence that John had ‘taken advantage’ of his father. 

The judge also rejected John’s claim that they shared a particularly close relationship, finding he had painted a ‘rosy picture’ and ‘seldom visited’ despite regularly travelling between Australia and Thailand.

‘Nevertheless, John maintains that his relationship with the Deceased continued to be happy, healthy, loving and close. The few smiling photographs on special occasions tendered by John do not prove this,’ the judge said.

The court heard that John wanted $50,000 of the payout to fund rental accommodation in Warrnambool so he could live near one of his sons.

Justice Hammerschlag described the proposal as a ‘contrivance’ and said the $50,000 figure had been ‘plainly plucked out of the air’, adding that advancing the claim on that basis ‘is, or borders on, unethical’.

The judge further noted it would fund only about two years’ rent despite being advanced as a solution to John’s housing needs for the rest of his life.

‘I am unpersuaded that John has any genuine intention of living permanently in Australia… To the extent that he says he does, I disbelieve him,’ he said.

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The judge found John had effectively lived in Thailand since 2014, where living costs were significantly lower.

Despite claiming to have little money, he travelled there several times after his father’s death, including a nearly two-month trip in 2026 to honour the memory of his late partner, Toi.

Mark’s lawyers argued that any inheritance could simply be used to fund further time in Thailand. The judge said there was ‘force’ in that argument.

John also claimed he suffered glaucoma, cataracts, high blood pressure and spinal problems and needed money for medical expenses.

However, Justice Hammerschlag found there was limited medical evidence supporting several of his claims, including his assertion he still required a catheter.

The court was shown a text message sent by John in December 2023 in which he said he was ‘getting better’ after taking antibiotics and was ‘peeing ok again’, adding that an E. coli infection had blocked his urethra and prostate.

By contrast, Mark suffers from a lengthy list of documented health conditions including severe asthma, depression, anxiety, bladder and prostate disease, diverticulitis and osteoporosis with spinal fractures. A medical certificate from his GP confirmed those conditions.

The court also heard John had cashed in his firefighter superannuation in the 1980s and later sold his home after accumulating tax debts, but gave little detail about how he had come to be in financial difficulty.

John divorced his first wife, Stephenie, in 2001 after he was unfaithful, a deeply personal chapter of his life that has now become part of the public record because of his decision to contest his father’s will.

Despite the split, the pair remained on good terms and she was housing him at the time of the case, with John telling the court he was sleeping on a mattress on the floor at her home and paying board.

The judge also accepted Mark’s evidence that their father was never invited to John’s second wedding and found there was little evidence he had ever met John’s second wife, Kris, or many of his grandchildren.

Earlier in the judgment, Justice Hammerschlag noted the case followed a familiar pattern in inheritance disputes but found Mark’s evidence should be accepted over his brother’s.

Remarkably, while describing his relationship with his parents as close, John incorrectly stated in his first affidavit that his mother had died in about 2006 when she had actually died in 2010. 

‘He got that wrong. It was 2010. Perhaps this reveals something of the nature of his relationship with his parents,’ the judge observed.

Mark alleged that during one visit to Sydney, John asked their father if he could stay for a few days but ended up remaining much longer while contributing nothing towards household expenses.

John disputed the account, but the judge accepted Mark’s version of events, finding it was supported by text messages exchanged between the brothers.

The court also heard John’s claims of falling into financial hardship in 2014 when he was forced to sell his home to pay tax debts and costs associated with his divorce.

However, the judge noted that he provided little detail about how he accumulated the debts, what became of the proceeds from the sale of his home, or how he came to be left with virtually nothing.

Justice Hammerschlag also said that if Kenneth had been mistaken about his son’s financial position when making the will, ‘that was John’s own doing’ 

He ultimately ruled that Kenneth’s wishes should stand, finding he had deliberately chosen to leave his estate to Mark, the son who had cared for him for decades and had the strongest claim on his bounty.

The estate also included a 2000 Toyota Camry, shares and some cash used to help administer the estate and pay funeral expenses.

The judge also rejected John’s claim that his late mother had amassed hundreds of valuable antiques and collectables, finding the items had little commercial value.

Photographs produced by Mark showed little more than a Royal Doulton plate, a handful of metal boxes and a vanity box.

‘Hundreds is a big number,’ Justice Hammerschlag observed.

To fund the $90,000 payment he was seeking, John proposed that Mark take out a reverse mortgage against the family’s Revesby home.

But the judge rejected the proposal, finding no provision should be made for John and ruling against an outcome that would erode the inheritance their father had deliberately left to the son who spent years caring for him.

John’s claim was dismissed and he was provisionally ordered to pay his brother’s legal costs.