US foreign policy
US passes 600,000 deaths from coronavirus – live | US news
The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports: Joe Biden is officially tapping a leading voting rights lawyer for a role on a federal appellate court. Biden is nominating Myrna Pérez, the director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice, to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd circuit, …
TikTok to launch court action over Donald Trump’s crackdown | Technology
TikTok has said it will mount a court challenge to the Trump administration’s crackdown on the popular Chinese-owned service, which Washington accuses of being a national security threat. Amid tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, Donald Trump signed an executive order on 6 August giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with TikTok’s …
Mike Pompeo: ‘enormous evidence’ coronavirus came from Chinese lab | World news
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, claimed on Sunday there is “enormous evidence” the coronavirus outbreak originated in a Chinese laboratory – but did not provide any of the alleged evidence. Pompeo’s claims, made in an interview with ABC’s This Week, represented an escalation in rhetoric. He had previously said the US was looking …
US accuses Russia of exploiting conflict in Libya | World news
Fears that Russian mercenaries, unofficially backed by Moscow, are tipping the scales in Libya in favour of the military leader Khalifa Haftar appears to have prompted the US to issue a strong warning to the general to pull back. The US has been accused of taking little interest in the eight months of fighting on …
Iran has ‘military advantage over US and allies in Middle East’ | World news
Iran now has an effective military advantage over the US and its allies in the Middle East because of its ability to wage war using third parties such as Shia militias and insurgents, according to a military thinktank. In one of the most detailed assessments of Iran’s strategy and doctrine across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and …
US restricts visas for Chinese officials over internment of Muslim minorities | World news
The US has imposed visa restrictions on Chinese government and Communist party officials accused of being involved in the mass internment of more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang province. The restrictions, announced by the state department on Tuesday, come a day after the US commerce department imposed export restrictions …
Democrats to subpoena ambassador blocked from testifying by Trump – live | US news
The scramble and fallout from the call, described by six people familiar with it, parallels and expands upon details described in the whistleblower complaint. The anxiety and internal concern reflect a phone conversation that deeply troubled national security professionals, even as Trump now insists there was nothing wrong with how he conducted himself. And it …
Trump scandal: Ukraine fears it could become Russia of 2020 election | World news
As Democratic lawmakers plan to impeach Donald Trump for abuse of power, the novice Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy must run a gauntlet of US partisan pressure that he has sought desperately to avoid. Zelenskiy is squeezed between a US president urging him to dig up dirt on his political rival Joe Biden and a Democratic …
Trump’s new world disorder: competitive, chaotic, conflicted | US news
It was, by all accounts, a furious row. Donald Trump was talking about relaxing sanctions on Iran and holding a summit with its president, Hassan Rouhani, at this month’s UN general assembly in New York. John Bolton, his hawkish national security adviser, was dead against it and forcefully rejected Trump’s ideas during a tense meeting …
Emmanuel Macron floats plan at G7 to defuse Iran tensions | World news
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has floated a plan at the G7 summit to defuse rising tensions in the Gulf by partially lifting the US oil embargo on Iran in exchange for Tehran’s return to full compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement restricting the country’s nuclear programme. Donald Trump was noncommittal about the plan. Asked …
