And so to war. Again. After a ceasefire and a hiatus, Donald Trump is now into the second day of a new phase of bombing Iran, with the US military claiming to have struck 170 Iranian targets in the past 48 hours.
This is no surprise. Speaking at the Nato summit in Ankara this week, Donald Trump said he believed the US-Iran memorandum of understanding was “over”. He described Iran’s leaders as “evil, sick people” and threatened renewed military action and even a new blockade of Iranian ports, while also leaving the door open to further negotiations.
Those remarks followed a fresh round of US strikes on southern Iran after Tehran attacked commercial vessels transiting the southern part of the strait of Hormuz, outside the shipping corridor it had designated, and were also the precursor for the attacks.
Late on Wednesday, explosions were reported across a further three locations in Iran. Conflict will only escalate from here. On Truth Social, the US president wrote: “This is in retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran. If it happens again, it will get much worse!”
Wally Funk, a trailblazing aviation pioneer who was denied the opportunity to become a Nasa astronaut and half a century later became the oldest woman to travel into space, has died aged 87.
A key government agency is proposing to lessen the scope of environmental reviews for nuclear reactors, limiting public input and exempting some reactors altogether.
President Donald Trump has terminated two of the federal Election Assistance Commission's three members, eliminating the panel's ability to help local election officials prepare for the 2026 midterms.
An Israeli strike on Tuesday killed Mohamed Fawaz al-Wahidi, the public relations director for the Egyptian Relief Committee in Gaza.
The Irish parliament on Tuesday approved legislation to prohibit the import of products from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Federal agents killed a man at a Memphis motel on Wednesday morning in a Drug Enforcement Administration operation with the Memphis Safe Task Force, the fourth officer-involved death since the anticrime initiative began in September.
A Manhattan federal court judge on Wednesday ordered the release of the more than $5m Donald Trump owes E Jean Carroll following her successful 2023 sexual abuse and defamation trial against him. Less than an hour after the judge issued his order, Trump filed paperwork indicating he was appealing the decision.
The senior legal counsel to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine is stepping down nearly a year ahead of schedule — the latest top official to leave or be pushed out of the Pentagon since the start of the second Trump administration.
