Category Archives: Trump administration

US not ready to seek deal to end war with Iran, Donald Trump says

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Tehran wants ceasefire but terms ‘not good enough yet’, US president claims, as both sides launch new waves of strikes

Donald Trump has warned he is not ready to seek a deal to end the US-Israeli offensive against Iran, saying that though he thought Tehran was keen to negotiate a ceasefire, the US would fight on for better terms.

Trump’s comments came as Iran launched fresh missile and drone attacks on countries in the Gulf and on Israel, and Israeli and US warplanes launched new waves of strikes on Iran.

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Middle East crisis live: Trump ‘surprised’ Iran has targeted Gulf countries and claims US ‘decimated’ Kharg Island

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US president said he did not want to make a deal with Iran yet, while claiming that he might hit Kharg Island again ‘just for fun’

The Trump administration’s communications licensing tsar fired a warning shot over the US broadcasting industry Saturday, threatening to cancel the spectrum permits of broadcasters pushing what he termed “hoaxes and news distortions”.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Brendan Carr posted on social media that broadcasters running “fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”

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FCC chair threatens to throttle news broadcasts over ‘hoaxes’ about Iran war

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Brendan Carr posts that he may cancel spectrum permits of ‘mainstream news’ outlets for ‘misleading’ coverage

The Trump administration’s communications licensing tsar fired a warning shot over the US broadcasting industry Saturday, threatening to cancel the spectrum permits of broadcasters pushing what he termed “hoaxes and news distortions”.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Brendan Carr posted on social media that broadcasters running “fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”

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‘Could be the making of him’: Starmer’s allies praise stance on Trump and Iran

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Refusal to kowtow to US president has won public backing – and left Badenoch and Farage playing catch-up

It is not often that Keir Starmer’s allies believe he has Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch on the run – but on Iran, they think he is on the right side of history and public opinion.

“It could be the making of him,” said Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs committee, who was first out of the blocks to say she thought Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran were illegal. “You’ve not had a British prime minister say no to an American president since Vietnam. This is a big deal.”

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‘No clear goal’: lack of Iran war plan has unleashed chaos and could stymie US military for decades, say critics

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White House contends with reality of shoddy preparations for war and unclear conditions for victory

As US and Israeli jets descended to deliver the opening salvos of the war in Iran, Donald Trump’s back-of-the-envelope plan for regime change in Tehran was about to run into the reality of the largest US intervention in the Middle East since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.

That reality came quickly.

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Cuban president confirms talks with Trump officials amid US blockade

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Negotiations aimed to ‘find solutions to the bilateral differences’ between the countries, Miguel Díaz-Canel said

Cuban officials have held talks with the US government, the country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, confirmed on Friday, amid growing pain inflicted by a punishing US fuel blockade and frequent power failures.

“These talks have been aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences we have between the two nations,” Díaz-Canel said in a prerecorded statement to senior Communist officials.

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An environmental activist and her family escaped death threats in Honduras. ICE deported her husband anyway

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Oscar, Ana and their children fled violence for safety in the US. Now Oscar, afraid and alone, is back in Honduras – ‘at the mercy of God and his will’

As soon as Oscar’s deportation flight landed at the La Lima airport in Honduras, he put on his baseball cap. On the airport shuttle toward the terminal, he pulled his cap even lower – trying to obscure his face at various police checkpoints.

His parents picked him up in a car, and drove him to a lodging they had arranged for him – miles away from his family home. He has hardly stepped outside since. “Because I can’t trust anyone – not the authorities, not the government, not a police officer,” he said. He has visited his mother a handful of times since the US deported him three weeks ago, and only under the cover of night. “They will kill anyone here. There is death everywhere.”

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‘America’s mortal enemy’: Pete Hegseth expressed extreme antipathy toward Iran for years

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Comments in books, speeches and videos shed new light on defense secretary’s personal commitment to war on Iran

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has expressed a violent antipathy towards Iran for years in books, Fox News broadcasts, educational videos and a 2018 speech to an Israeli media conference in Jerusalem, a Guardian review has revealed.

In a 2020 book, for example, Hegseth wrote that Iran’s leaders were “actively seeking the military means – especially nuclear weapons – to bring the West to its knees”. And in a 2017 video for PragerU, the hard-right media platform, Hegseth described Iran as “America’s mortal enemy”.

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‘America’s mortal enemy’: Pete Hegseth expressed extreme antipathy toward Iran for years

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Comments in books, speeches and videos shed new light on defense secretary’s personal commitment to war on Iran

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has expressed a violent antipathy towards Iran for years in books, Fox News broadcasts, educational videos and a 2018 speech to an Israeli media conference in Jerusalem, a Guardian review has revealed.

In a 2020 book, for example, Hegseth wrote that Iran’s leaders were “actively seeking the military means – especially nuclear weapons – to bring the West to its knees”. And in a 2017 video for PragerU, the hard-right media platform, Hegseth described Iran as “America’s mortal enemy”.

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Oil price tops $100 again as Iran strikes economic targets across Middle East

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Vast release of emergency crude reserves fails to quell mounting fears around energy supply crunch, rattling global markets

Oil prices again topped $100 a barrel on Thursday as widespread Iranian attacks on Middle Eastern energy facilities overshadowed a vast release of government reserves.

As Donald Trump vowed to “finish the job” and press ahead with the US-Israel war on Iran, the country’s regime stepped up retaliatory strikes on economic targets across the region.

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Oil price tops $100 again as Iran strikes economic targets across Middle East

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Vast release of emergency crude reserves fails to quell mounting fears around energy supply crunch, rattling global markets

Oil prices again topped $100 a barrel on Thursday as widespread Iranian attacks on Middle Eastern energy facilities overshadowed a vast release of government reserves.

As Donald Trump vowed to “finish the job” and press ahead with the US-Israel war on Iran, the country’s regime stepped up retaliatory strikes on economic targets across the region.

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Nearly 4,000 US meatpacking workers to strike at plant run by top Trump donor

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Workers at JBS USA to strike Monday in what will be the first labor strike in the meatpacking industry in decades

About 3,800 workers at JBS USA, the world’s largest meat producer, are set to strike on Monday in what will be the first labor strike in the industry in decades.

The walkout threatens to put further strain on US meat prices – ground beef prices soared 15% last year – and could prove a headache for the Trump administration as it struggles with poor polling on cost of living issues.

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Experts fear ‘unethical’ vaccine trial in Africa is ‘prototype’ for US studies under RFK Jr

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Danish researchers whose work on effects of vaccines has been called into question are at center of US vaccine policy

New details are leading experts to fear that an “unethical” vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau is the “prototype” for studies under Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US department of health and human services (HHS) and longtime vaccine critic.

At the center of US vaccine policy is an unlikely set of Danish researchers whose work on the health effects of vaccines has been called into question. The study in Guinea-Bissau would have looked at the overall health effects of giving hepatitis B vaccines by only vaccinating half of the newborns in the study at birth despite an 18% prevalence rate in adults of the illness, which can lead to serious and sometimes fatal health consequences.

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Trump claims Iran or ‘somebody else’ could have carried out deadly school strike

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President makes evidence-free claim despite video showing US Tomahawk missile hit naval base next to school

As oil prices surged amid the widening war with Iran, Donald Trump suggested, without evidence, on Monday that the strike on an Iranian elementary school could have been carried out by Iran or “somebody else”.

During back-to-back appearances in Florida, Trump was asked whether the US would accept responsibility for a strike that hit the school and killed scores of people, many of them children, after video evidence showed a US Tomahawk struck the naval base next to it.

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Ig Nobels to move awards to Europe due to concern over US travel visas

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Scientific awards – which honor research that makes people laugh and then think – to move away from ‘unsafe’ US

The annual Ig Nobels, a satirical award for scientific achievement, are shifting for the first time from the US to Europe due to concerns about attendees getting visas, organizers announced on Monday.

Organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, a digital magazine that highlights research that makes people laugh and then think, the 36th annual ceremony will be held in Zurich. It’s usually held in the US in September, a few weeks before the actual Nobel prizes are announced.

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Middle East crisis live: Mojtaba Khamenei chosen as Iran’s new supreme leader; oil prices soar past $100 a barrel

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Iran has named hardliner Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader; Donald Trump says oil price spike ‘a small price to pay’ as markets tumble

Donald Trump has said a decision on when to end the war with Iran will be a “mutual” one he’ll make together with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Times of Israel has reported.

It said Trump also claimed in a brief telephone interview on Sunday that Iran would have destroyed Israel if he and Netanyahu had not been around. The US president said:

Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it … We’ve worked together. We’ve destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel.

I think it’s mutual … a little bit. We’ve been talking. I’ll make a decision at the right time, but everything’s going to be taken into account.

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US energy chief says spike in gas prices will fall ‘before too long’ amid Iran war

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Chris Wright says price increase would last weeks, not months, and that US would not target Iran’s energy industry

Chris Wright, the US Department of Energy secretary, said on Sunday that the spike in energy prices would last weeks, at the worst, not months, and that the US would not target Iran’s energy industry.

His comments come amid rising anxiety that Iran’s response to the US-Israel strikes, which caused a reduction in shipping through the strait of Hormuz and production slowdowns in some oil and gas producing states in the Middle East, may cause broad economic turbulence and higher inflation.

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Judge rules Kari Lake unlawfully ran US media agency, voiding mass layoffs

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Lake, whom Trump appointed without Senate confirmation to run Voice of America parent agency, cut over 1,000 jobs

A federal judge ruled Saturday that Kari Lake unlawfully led the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) for several months last year and voided mass layoffs and other actions taken during that period to dismantle the agency.

The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is an independent federal agency that oversees the Voice of America (VOA), the US’s largest and oldest international broadcaster, and provides grants to Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other news agencies.

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How Trump’s EPA rollbacks give US states new tools in climate suits

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Vermont and New York face high stakes to protect climate superfund laws as it faces attacks from Trump’s DoJ

By rolling back a bedrock climate legal determination, the Trump administration has undercut its attacks on a groundbreaking state climate accountability law, green groups have argued in court.

Trump’s justice department has asked a judge to kill a first-of-its-kind 2024 Vermont “climate superfund” policy requiring major polluters to pay for damages caused by their past planet-heating pollution, partly on the grounds that that federal law, not state law, governs greenhouse gas emissions. But last month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the endangerment finding, the scientific determination giving federal officials the authority to control those very pollutants.

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White House worries as gas prices jump amid ongoing US-Israel war on Iran

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US drivers are largely insulated from higher oil prices caused by Middle East turmoil – but only to a point

Across the US, the average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline has jumped nearly 27 cents in a week, to $3.25, and American consumers are bracing for higher prices at the gas pump as the US-Israel conflict with Iran threatens to disrupt the global oil supply.

That fear has entered the White House too, where Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is reportedly hunting for ideas to lower gasoline prices and officials are getting “screamed at” to bring good news, according to Politico.

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