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The U.S. State Department said Wednesday it is restarting the suspended process for foreigners applying for student visas but all applicants will now be required to unlock their social media accounts for government review, Associated Press reported.

The department said consular officers will be on the lookout for posts and messages that could be deemed hostile to the United States, its government, culture, institutions or founding principles.

In a notice made public Wednesday, the department said it had rescinded its May suspension of student visa processing but said new applicants who refuse to set their social media accounts to “public” and allow them to be reviewed may be rejected. It said a refusal to do so could be a sign they are trying to evade the requirement or hide their online activity.

The Trump administration last month temporarily halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students hoping to study in the U.S. while preparing to expand the screening of their activity on social media, officials said, according to Associated Press.

Transatlantic airfares have dropped to rates last seen before the pandemic, data shows, the latest sign that fewer Europeans are traveling to the U.S. due to concerns about U.S. border controls and President Donald Trump's policies, Reuters reported.

The trend could extend into and beyond the summer holiday period, typically the busiest time for airlines and travel companies.

Overseas arrivals to the United States fell 2.8% in May from a year ago, according to preliminary data from the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office within the U.S. Department of Commerce. Travel from Western Europe fell 4.4% in May, led by a decline in travelers from Denmark and Germany.

Forward bookings suggest sustained declines are on the horizon, with total inbound bookings to the U.S. in July down 13% year-over-year, according to OAG Aviation, an analytics firm, according to Reuters.

Iran's 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cuts an increasingly lonely figure, Reuters reported.

Khamenei has seen his main military and security advisers killed by Israeli air strikes, leaving major holes in his inner circle and raising the risk of strategic errors, according to five people familiar with his decision-making process.

One of those sources, who regularly attends meetings with Khamenei, described the risk of miscalculation to Iran on issues of defence and internal stability as "extremely dangerous".

Several senior military commanders have been killed since Friday including Khamenei's main advisers from the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's elite military force: the Guards' overall commander Hossein Salami, its aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh who headed Iran's ballistic missile program and spymaster Mohammad Kazemi, according to Reuters.

President Donald Trump kept the world guessing about whether the United States will join Israel's bombardment of Iranian nuclear sites as the Israel-Iran conflict entered its seventh day on Thursday, Reuters reported.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump declined to say if he had made any decision on whether to join Israel's campaign. "I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do," he said.

Trump in later remarks said Iranian officials wanted to come to Washington for a meeting and that "we may do that." But he added, "It's a little late" for such talks.

The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain plan to hold nuclear talks with their Iranian counterpart on Friday in Geneva aimed at persuading Iran to firmly guarantee that it will use its nuclear program solely for civilian purposes, a German diplomatic source told Reuters.