Motorcyclists with a club comprised of ex-US Marines collided with a pickup truck on a rural highway in New Hampshire on Friday, killing seven and leaving the biker community reeling.
Related: Nine people die in Hawaii plane crash
Continue reading...Donald Trump has said that if Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon, it will be prosperous and have the US president as “a best friend” – but also warned that the Islamic Republic would be “obliterated” in any war between the two countries.
Related: Will he? Won't he? How Trump's impulses are driving his Iran policy
Continue reading...Officials say raids intended to target as many as 2,000 families in Houston, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles in so-called “mass roundup”
Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard defends Joe Biden in a series of tweets calling out her rivals for criticizing him.
(3/3) …we need to find common ground with each other. That is not possible without civility. We don’t need another president who is going to continue to divide our country. We need a president who will unite us. United we stand, divided we fall.
It’s been a busy day in Washington. Here’s what’s happened so far:
Continue reading...US president tweets that he intervened 10 minutes before planned retaliatory attack
Donald Trump has said the US air force was “cocked and loaded” to attack three Iranian targets, but he withdrew the order with 10 minutes to spare after being told the airstrike might kill as many as 150 people.
Trump said in a series of revelatory 9am tweets that he decided late on Thursday that the death toll was not a proportionate response to the Iranian shooting down of a US spy drone off the Iranian coast 24 hours earlier.
Continue reading...President Donald Trump did not escalate Iran's shooting down of an American drone, saying that it might have been a mistake executed by 'a general or somebody' being 'loose and stupid'. Trump told reporters on Thursday that the incident was a 'new wrinkle' in escalating tensions between the US and Iran.
Continue reading...US considers response to shooting down of US drone that Tehran claims was flying in Iranian airspace
US security officials have been summoned to the White House to discuss a response to the shooting down of a US spy drone, which Donald Trump has called a “big mistake” by Tehran.
Iran said it shot down the unmanned aircraft in its airspace. The US military has said it was downed over international waters in the strait of Hormuz.
Continue reading...Release of colour images adds more clarity to debate but fails to prove responsibility
The sophistication of the attacks on two shipping tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week had already led most independent analysts to conclude Iran was responsible for the high-profile explosions.
But there has been scepticism from some key countries, including Germany and Japan, after the US initially released a grainy black and white video it said showed Iranian forces removing an unexploded mine from one of the two targeted ships. Iran has denied involvement.
Continue reading...Political row sparked after government gave US permission to use island for anti-narcotics flights
The Galápagos Islands are at the centre of political row in Ecuador after the government agreed to allow US anti-narcotics planes to use an airstrip on the archipelago which inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Dozens of people demonstrated outside the main government office in Quito on Monday to protest against a plan they described as a threat to the world heritage site’s unique environment – and an attack on Ecuador’s sovereignty.
Continue reading...Washington and Moscow blame each other for a near-collision between warships in East China Sea on Friday morning. A US guided missile cruiser, the USS Chancellorsville, and a Russian destroyer came within 50 metres of each other while on patrol
Continue reading...Trump and Macron laud Russell Pickett, sole survivor of US infantry company that led the charge
As Russell Pickett, 94, from Tennessee, was helped to his feet by the French president and hugged by Donald Trump, the 15,000 people gathered at the American cemetery in Normandy to commemorate the D-day landings 75 years ago stood to applaud.
“A tough guy,” the US president said, gesturing to the sole survivor of Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division, which led the charge 75 years ago on to Omaha beach, a chaotic bloodbath which became known as the “suicide wave”and was made infamous by the Hollywood film Saving Private Ryan.
Continue reading...Veteran and 2020 candidate said Trump’s willingness to pardon soldiers ‘undermines the very foundations ... of this country’
Donald Trump’s willingness to consider pardons for US soldiers accused or convicted of war crimes “undermines the very foundations, legal and moral, of this country”, Democratic candidate for president Pete Buttigieg said.
Related: ‘The president's insane’: book by CNN's Jim Acosta charts Trump war on press
Continue reading...Donald Trump announced on Friday that the US would send 1,500 troops to the Middle East as a protective measure after a breakdown in relations with Iran. ‘Right now, I don’t think Iran wants to fight and I certainly don’t think they want to fight with us,’ the US president said
Continue reading...White House downplays prospect of conflict but blames Iran for tanker bombings and Iraq attack
The US will send hundreds of additional troops and a dozen fighter jets to the Middle East in the coming weeks to counter what the Pentagon has said is an escalating campaign by Iran to plan attacks against the US and its interests in the region.
And for the first time, Pentagon officials on Friday publicly blamed Iran and its proxies for recent tanker bombings near United Arab Emirates and a rocket attack in Iraq.
Continue reading...Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, was a key architect of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Now he is stoking tensions with Iran. Julian Borger describes how the standoff could get out of control. Also today: Katharine Viner on how the Guardian is updating its language when reporting on the climate crisis
John Bolton, who has been called “the most dangerous man in the world”, was not Donald Trump’s first pick for his national security adviser. But after a series of resignations, he was plucked from a life of Fox News appearances to reprise his career as the foremost military hawk in the US. Now he has his sights set on Iran and has pushed for a buildup of US military assets in the Gulf.
The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, tells Anushka Asthana that as tensions rise, so do the chances of an accidental – or deliberate – escalation towards war. The echoes of the drumbeat to war in Iraq in 2003 are all too apparent, and it was Bolton’s role in that crisis that prompted a Guardian columnist to attempt to make a citizen’s arrest of him in the tranquil surroundings of the Hay literary festival in 2008. George Monbiot describes how he came out second best from that encounter.
Continue reading...Destroyer moved near Scarborough Reef to ‘challenge excessive maritime claims’, says commander of Seventh Fleet
A US warship has sailed near the disputed Scarborough Shoal claimed by China in the South China Sea, a move likely to anger Beijing at a time of tense ties between the world’s two biggest economies.
The destroyer USS Preble carried out the operation on Sunday, a US military spokesman said. The busy waterway is one of a growing number of flashpoints in the US-China relationship, which also include a trade war, the blacklisting of tech company Huawei US sanctions and Taiwan.
Continue reading...Nicolás Maduro appeared on the brink of being forced from power in an uprising plotted by the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó. But key figures stayed loyal, allowing the president to begin reprisals. Tom Phillips in Caracas has watched it play out. Plus: Owen Jones on public schools and who gets to go to Britain’s elite universities
Juan Guaidó described his attempted uprising last month as the “final phase” of his plan to oust Nicolás Maduro. But after a day of chaos and confusion in which Guaidó’s mentor, Leopoldo López, was sprung from house arrest, the Venezuelan president was still in power and many of the plotters had gone into hiding.
The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, is in Caracas and describes to Anushka Asthana the sense of defiance among supporters of Maduro, and Guaidó’s mood of optimism in an exclusive Guardian interview.
Continue reading...Formal request for a meeting is the closest the Guaidó camp has come to requesting US military intervention to help oust Maduro
The head of Venezuela’s national assembly, Juan Guaidó, has asked for a meeting with the US military for “strategic and operational planning” in the power struggle between the Guaidó camp and the government of Nicolás Maduro.
In a letter to the head of US Southern Command (SouthCom), Guaidó’s representative in Washingon, Carlos Vecchio, pointed to worsening conditions in Venezuela as the standoff continues and “the impact of the presence of uninvited foreign forces that place our country and others at risk”.
Continue reading...National security adviser John Bolton says any Iranian attack on US or its allies will be met with ‘unrelenting force’
The US has said it is sending an aircraft carrier and a bomber taskforce to the Middle East in response to what it called “a credible threat” by Iranian regime forces.
The deployment of forces was first announced by the national security adviser, John Bolton, on Sunday, and confirmed by the acting defence secretary, Patrick Shanahan, on Monday. Neither official gave an explanation of the alleged Iranian threat. According to one report, information passed on by Israeli intelligence contributed to the US threat assessment.
Continue reading...Navy rear admiral John Ring was relieved of his duties on Saturday. About 40 prisoners are being held at the facility
The commander of the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba was abruptly fired for unknown reasons over the weekend.
Navy R Adm John Ring was relieved of his duties on Saturday. A statement from US Southern Command said the change in leadership was “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command”, and would “not interrupt the safe, humane, legal care and custody provided to the detainee population” at Guantánamo.
Continue reading...Destroyers William P Lawrence and Stethem transited through the waterway on Sunday as Pentagon ups the ante with Beijing
The US military has sent two navy warships through the Taiwan Strait as the Pentagon increases the frequency of movement through the strategic waterway despite opposition from China.
Sunday’s voyage risks further raising tensions with China but will likely be viewed by self-ruled Taiwan as a sign of support from the Trump administration amid growing friction between Taipei and Beijing.
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