Category Archives: Trump administration

Middle East crisis live: Hezbollah urges Lebanon to pull out of talks with Israel; blockade of strait of Hormuz begins

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Hezbollah says it will not abide by agreements that result from the Lebanon-Israel talks in the US; Trump claims Iran wants to make a deal

Pakistan has reportedly proposed hosting a second round of talks between the United States and Iran in Islamabad in the coming days, before the end of the ceasefire, the Associated Press has reported.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter with the press, said the proposal would depend on whether the parties request a different location.

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US military says it killed two people in another boat strike in eastern Pacific

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Dispatch of vessel strike, like most of military’s statements on strikes conducted in area, did not provide evidence

The US military said it killed two people in a strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Monday, claiming the targets were involved in “narco-trafficking operations”.

The announcement, like most of the military’s statements on the dozens of strikes it has conducted in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea, did not provide evidence to support its claims that the targets were engaged in narco-trafficking.

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Brazil’s former spy chief who fled country arrested by ICE agents in US

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Alexandre Ramagem fled country after he was sentenced to 16 years for his role in plotting military coup in Brazil

When Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison for an attempted coup, six other members of his cabinet were also found guilty and all began serving their sentences – except for one.

Days before the verdict, Alexandre Ramagem, Bolsonaro’s former spy chief, fled by car to Guyana and boarded a flight to the United States, where he has remained ever since.

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Orbán’s defeat holds lessons for US: ‘Autocrats may rise, but are not invincible’

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Stunning loss of rightwing populist in Hungary carries symbolic significance for opponents of Donald Trump

For US Democrats seeking rays of light in the dark landscape of Donald Trump’s authoritarian onslaught, illumination has arrived from the unlikely source of Budapest.

Viktor Orbán’s stunning defeat in Hungary’s general election – ending 16 years of unbroken rule for his governing Fidesz party – carries symbolic and psychological significance for American politics out of all proportion to the central European country’s modest size and distance from the US.

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Planeloads of negotiators and too little time: US and Iran’s 21 hours of talks

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The two sides turned up to test one another’s resolve. It was probably unrealistic to expect a dispute that has taken up years of discussion to be settled in one marathon session

It was if the two delegations in the Iran-US peace talks in Islamabad hoped that the sheer number of negotiators flown into Pakistan could overcome the handicap of having only a finite number of hours in which to settle a 20-year dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, now overlaid by complex new issues such as future control of the strait of Hormuz and US compensation for its attack on Iran.

Iran sent two planeloads of negotiators. They included many members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), present to ensure that no gains made in the field were relinquished at the diplomatic table. Diplomats fanned out across political, legal, security, economic and military files. One Iranian-drafted technical explanation on nuclear facility safety ran to more than 100 pages.

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US state department revokes green cards of three Iranian nationals it links to regime

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Three arrested by federal agents had family ties to Iranian military general, regime spokesperson or security chief

United States federal agents arrested three Iranian nationals – including the son of a revolutionary at the center of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis – after the US state department terminated their green cards, the department announced on Saturday.

State department officials revoked the green card status of Seyed Eissa Hashemi, whose mother was an Iranian revolutionary who served as the spokesperson for Iran’s regime during the hostage crisis that defined the late Jimmy Carter’s presidency. The state department also revoked the green card – or legal permanent resident – statuses of Hashemi’s wife and son.

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Is Iran Trump’s Suez crisis, or just a passing thunderstorm?

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Britain’s standing in the world was never the same after its assault on Egypt in 1956. Now the US risks repeating history in the Middle East

Donald Trump’s addiction to framing every event in the most apocalyptic terms is what allows conservative commentators such as Mark Levin to praise him as “a once-in-a-century president”.

But Trump cannot play out his entire presidency on a reckless high wire without eventually falling off – potentially taking America with him into a steep decline into the unknown.

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Four men deported by US to Eswatini have right to see lawyer, court rules

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The men, sent to the southern African country in July, have been denied in-person counsel for nine months

Four men deported by the US to Eswatini and denied in-person legal counsel for nine months while detained in a maximum security prison have the right to see a local lawyer, Eswatini’s supreme court ruled.

The men, from Cambodia, Cuba, Vietnam and Yemen, were sent to the small southern African country, formerly known as Swaziland, in July despite having no connection to the country, as part of Donald Trump’s administration’s efforts to ramp up deportations.

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War has given Iran new leverage for nuclear programme, say US former envoys

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Negotiators of 2015 deal say Tehran has seen how cutting off Hormuz strait can help it counter asymmetry of power

Former US envoys who dealt with Iran have said that the US-Israeli attack on Iran and Tehran’s subsequent closure of the strait of Hormuz have given Iran new tools and resolve to resist pressure to shutter its nuclear programme.

Two senior negotiators for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama-era agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief, said the Trump administration’s war had handed Iran a coveted weapon by demonstrating its ability to cut off the strait of Hormuz, an economic chokehold that one negotiator said would help Iran “balance the asymmetry of power” with the US.

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’He’s mentally unstable’: Iranian American in Congress condemns Trump’s war and pushes for his removal

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Democratic representative Yassamin Ansari says the war has only more deeply entrenched the Iranian regime

Donald Trump is an “evil human being” who “wants to be an emperor” and should be removed from office over the war in Iran, Yassamin Ansari, an Iranian American member of the US Congress, has told the Guardian.

Ansari, the daughter of Iranian immigrants who decades ago fled the regime, spoke out after the president threatened to wipe out Iran’s civilisation before backing down and announcing an uncertain two-week ceasefire.

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Netanyahu says there is no ceasefire in Lebanon as Israel launches fresh strikes

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Israeli PM says he will continue to attack Hezbollah ‘with full force’ after attacks that killed more than 300 people

Benjamin Netanyahu has said there is “no ceasefire in Lebanon” and Israel would continue “to strike Hezbollah with full force” as the country’s military launched fresh strikes.

The Israeli prime minister’s remarks and latest attacks on what the IDF called “Hezbollah launch sites” came shortly after Donald Trump said he had asked Netanyahu to be more “low-key” in Lebanon.

Later on Friday, a US state department official said Israel and Lebanon will hold talks in Washington next week. The announcement came as Netanyahu ordered his ministers to seek direct talks with Lebanon focused on disarming Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

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A day in the life of a 19-year-old in ICE detention: ‘I feel that this nightmare is not going to end’

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Olivia has been detained for months at the sprawling Dilley center in Texas. She has lost 20lb, and wakes up every day with a headache

Each day in detention feels like 48 hours for Olivia.

The 19-year-old asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been at the Dilley Immigration processing center in Texas for more than four months.

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Thursday briefing: ​What difference will the ceasefire in the Middle East make, and will it hold?

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In today’s newsletter: The truce offers a reprieve after weeks of turmoil, ​b​ut unresolved disputes and competing interpretations ​of what was agreed, threaten to pull the region back toward crisis​ at a moment’s notice

Good morning. On Tuesday, just an hour before the deadline imposed by Donald Trump for Iran to reopen navigation in the strait of Hormuz or face a wave of “civilisation-ending” strikes, a two-week pause in hostilities was announced. After weeks of US and Israeli attacks on Tehran, and Iranian retaliation across the region, the news prompted relief among world leaders.

But unanswered questions are piling up. Israel’s assault on Lebanon continues, with Trump describing that conflict as a separate skirmish not included in the deal, despite Iran seeming to think otherwise. Overnight the US president has used social media to warn that “the ‘shootin’ starts,’ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before” unless Tehran complies with “the real agreement”.

Middle East | The fate of the two-week ceasefire in the Iran conflict looked in peril as both sides gave divergent versions of what had been agreed. Iran halted the passage of oil tankers because of an alleged Israeli ceasefire breach.

Middle East | Israel carried out its largest attack on Lebanon since its war with Hezbollah began, killing at least 254 people and wounding 837.

Middle East | The UK has a “job” to help reopen the strait of Hormuz, Keir Starmer said on arriving in the Middle East, as Iranian reports said the key shipping route was closed again just hours after the supposed US-Iran ceasefire.

Ukraine | The US has ignored compelling evidence that Russia has been helping Iran to target US bases in the Middle East because it misguidedly “trusts” Vladimir Putin, according to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Education | Many English universities are taking excessive financial risks with borrowing and expansion of student numbers, threatening not only their own survival but that of others in the sector, the thinktank Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) has warned.

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Pam Bondi will not appear at scheduled House hearing on Epstein files, DoJ says

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Justice department says Bondi will not appear for House deposition since she was ousted as US attorney general

Former US Attorney General Pam Bondi, the former US attorney general, will not appear next week for a scheduled deposition before the House oversight and government reform committee to answer questions about the justice department’s handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and its release of the Epstein files, the committee said.

In a statement on Wednesday morning shared with the Guardian, a spokesperson for the House oversight committee said: “The Department of Justice has stated Pam Bondi will not appear on 14 April for a deposition since she is no longer attorney general and was subpoenaed in her capacity as attorney general.”

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How Pakistan secured ‘biggest diplomatic win in years’ with Iran ceasefire

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Analysts say Pakistani officials’ efforts led to breakthrough that has helped avert catastrophe, at least for now

Pakistan’s leaders had almost lost hope. After more than two weeks of frantic negotiations, phonecalls and diplomatic summits to try to end the US-Israeli war with Iran, it looked like the conflict might instead be escalating into Islamabad’s worst nightmare.

In a cabinet meeting held at about 5pm on Tuesday, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, was morose. “We should brace ourselves for the impact of the war,” he told his cabinet ministers. “The situation has really become very bleak. The chance of peace has become dim.”

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Explainer: What is in Iran’s 10-point ceasefire plan and will the US agree to it?

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Two-week ceasefire comes after Trump spoke to Pakistan’s leaders, with China also believed to be exerting influence over Tehran

The US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire on Tuesday barely an hour before Donald Trump’s deadline to obliterate Iran was set to expire, with Tehran agreeing to temporarily reopen the strait of Hormuz.

Israel also agreed to the ceasefire, the White House said. As Trump announced he was suspending his plans to escalate attacks across Iran, the US president said he had received a 10-point proposal from Iran which was a “workable basis on which to negotiate”.

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US seeks to deport Kilmar Ábrego García to Liberia despite new Costa Rica deal

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Man born in El Salvador has been fighting removal to series of ‘third’ countries after mistaken deportation last year

US government attorneys on Tuesday told a federal judge the Department of Homeland Security still intends to deport Kilmar Ábrego García to Liberia, despite a new agreement with Costa Rica to accept deportees who cannot legally be returned to their home countries.

The Salvadorian national’s case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by homeland security officials.

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ICE arrested more than 800 people after tips from TSA, investigation shows

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Reuters uncovers that the TSA shared more than 31,000 traveler records with ICE for immigration enforcement

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested more than 800 people following tips shared by federal airport security officials from the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency through February 2026, according to internal agency data reviewed by Reuters – a figure far above what was previously publicly known.

The leads came from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which supplied ICE with records on more than 31,000 travelers for possible immigration enforcement, the data showed.

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Donald Trump says ‘a whole civilisation will die’ if Iran ignores demands

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Attacks on Iran increase and Israel tells Iranians to avoid train travel as deadline to reopen strait of Hormuz looms

Donald Trump warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Tehran does not accept his demands, amid a wave of bombing as Israel told Iranians their lives would be at risk if they used the country’s railways.

A rail bridge in the central Iranian city of Kashan was one of the first reported bombed on Tuesday by Iranian state media, with two people reportedly killed as Israel’s military said it had launched “a wide-scale wave of strikes targeting dozens of infrastructure sites”.

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Trump tells Artemis II crew he saved Nasa despite trying to slash agency’s budget

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Astronauts had a call with the US president from space after setting record for the farthest-traveled humans from Earth

The crew of Artemis II phoned home from above the moon on Monday night after their record-breaking day, to find Donald Trump musing about how he had saved the US space agency, Nasa, from closing down and telling the astronauts how much they deserved the honor of the president seeking their autographs.

The intermittently uncomfortable 12-minute Earth-to-space call, facilitated by the Nasa administrator and Trump acolyte, Jared Isaacman, featured a lengthy period of silence, several references by the president about his friendship with the retired Canadian ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky, and how “America is the hottest country in the world right now”.

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