• Chris Wright believes gas prices have peaked in US.
• Rising gas prices create political headwinds for Trump.
• US officials heading to Pakistan for Iran talks: Trump.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Sunday said he believes gas prices have peaked but predicted that they may stay above $3 per gallon until next year.

Gas prices have risen during the US and Israeli war on Iran and Iranian attacks on US bases in the Gulf region, creating political headwinds for President Donald Trump ahead of the November midterm elections, where his Republican Party will defend slim majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Gas below $3 a gallon “could happen later this year, that might not happen until next year. But prices have likely peaked, and they’ll start going down,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” programme. “Certainly, with the resolution of this conflict, you’ll see prices go down.”

Trump administration officials have offered differing views on how gas prices may shift. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week predicted gas prices would fall to the $3 per gallon range this summer, while Wright on Sunday laid out a lengthier likely timeline to reach that price.

Trump himself has said that gas prices may remain elevated until November.

All of them have said gasoline will eventually get cheaper once the Iran war ends. “Under $3 a gallon is pretty tremendous in inflation-adjusted terms,” Wright said. “We’ll get back there for sure.”

The average price for a gallon of regular gas on Sunday was $4.05, according to an estimate by AAA, compared to $3.16 a year ago.

The US and Iran on April 8 agreed to a 10-day ceasefire, but Trump on Sunday accused Iran of violating it with attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz this weekend. US officials will arrive in Pakistan for further negotiations on Monday, Trump wrote in a social media post.

“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable deal, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” he posted, revisiting a threat he had made prior to the ceasefire.

• PM Modi extends condolence over incident.
• Incident occurs at licensed factory in Tamil Nadu.
• Tamil Nadu CM expresses “immense sorrow”.

A blaze broke out at a firecracker factory in southern India on Sunday, killing at least 20 people and injuring six others, police said.

Local police chief N Shreenatha told AFP that “20 people are confirmed dead” after the incident at a licensed factory in Tamil Nadu state’s Virudhunagar district.

Rescuers were still operating at the site, he said, adding that the cause of the blaze was unknown.

Industrial accidents are common in India, often due to poor adherence to safety regulations and weak enforcement.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a social media post, extended his “condolences to those who have lost their loved ones” in the “deeply distressing” incident.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said the deaths were “tragic”, expressing his “immense sorrow” in a post on X.

An explosion at a power plant in central India this week killed more than 20 people.

Last month, another fire at a fireworks factory in western India killed 17 people.

Britain’s government is set to announce legislation next month to move the country closer to the European Union, as the Iran war sours the UK’s so-called special relationship with the United States.

President Donald Trump’s unpredictability and stream of insults towards America’s historic ally is adding impetus to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s bid to deepen ties with the 27-nation bloc, a decade after Britons narrowly voted to leave the EU.

“We have a government that is already eager to move closer towards the EU, and the events in Iran provide an opportunity to speed up that process,” Evie Aspinall, director of the British Foreign Policy Group think-tank, told AFP.

Starmer’s administration is preparing an EU “reset” bill that will give ministers powers to align UK standards with EU single market rules as they evolve — something called “dynamic alignment”.

King Charles III will announce the legislation on May 13 when he reads out Starmer’s legislative plans for the coming months, a government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Starmer has repeatedly called for a deeper economic and security relationship with Europe since his Labour party won the 2024 general election, ousting the Conservatives, who had implemented the 2016 Brexit referendum.

He has upped those calls in recent days, telling Dutch leader Rob Jetten on Tuesday that “he believed the partnership between the UK and the bloc needed to be fit for the challenges we were facing today”.

The EU is Britain’s biggest trading partner, while the International Monetary Fund warned this week that the UK will be the advanced economy hardest hit by the Iran conflict.

“Certainly Iran has made it [the reset] more prescient,” said the UK official.

“We need to build economic resilience across the continent,” they added.

Starmer refused to involve Britain in the US and Israel’s initial strikes on February 28, angering Trump, although he has since allowed American forces to use UK bases for a “limited defensive purpose”.

Under pressure at home for his disastrous decision to appoint former Jeffrey Epstein associate Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington, Starmer has received plaudits for standing up to Trump in the face of repeated taunts from the US president.

Days ago, Trump threatened in a phone interview with Sky News to scrap a US-UK trade deal that limited the impact on Britain of his tariffs blitz.

“There’s no doubt that there is now momentum in the UK-EU relationship partly as a result of Trump’s unreliable behaviour,” David Henig, an expert on UK’s post-Brexit trade policy, told AFP.

“Independent UK trade policy looks much harder, the prospects of working with the EU much brighter.”

Brexit regret

Starmer’s administration hopes to table the EU legislation in the next few months, meaning it could come around the time of the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum, held in June 2016.

MPs will get to approve whether to provide the government with a mechanism to adopt EU rules — sometimes without a full parliamentary vote — in areas where it has already signed deals with the bloc.

They include a trade agreement designed to ease red tape on food and plant exports and plans for an electricity deal that would integrate the UK into the EU’s internal electricity market.

Britain and the EU are also aiming to finalise negotiations on a youth mobility scheme in time for a joint summit in Brussels expected in late June or early July.

Starmer has ruled out rejoining the single market or returning to free movement.

The Liberal Democrats, Britain´s traditional third party, wants him to cross one of his other red lines by negotiating a customs union with the EU.

“We need to be doubling down on relations with reliable partners who share our interests and values,” the Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesman Calum Miller told AFP.

But Brexit remains a toxic issue and the hard-right Reform UK party, leading opinion polls and headed by Eurosceptic firebrand Nigel Farage, have branded the legislation “a betrayal” of the referendum’s narrow result.

Surveys regularly now show, however, that most Britons regret the vote to leave the EU, something Starmer hopes to capitalise on.

Rising cost-of-living pressures on family households, which UK finance minister Rachel Reeves has blamed on Trump for starting the war “without a clear exit plan”, could also influence minds.

“When the relationship with the United States is fracturing, it means there’s reduced opposition to a closer relationship with the EU among the public,” said Aspinall.