Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has hit out at the “hard-hitting” sanctions introduced by the Donald Trump administration on Monday against the country’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, calling the action “mentally retarded” in a live TV address.
The president has meanwhile continued to deny the historic rape accusation made against him by New York writer E Jean Carroll, insisting he could not have done it because the alleged victim is “not my type”.
Almost 250 children being held in a US Border Patrol detention centre in Clint, Texas, have meanwhile been moved into shelters after a public outcry over the squalid conditions they were forced to endure, with even their most basic needs going unmet.
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Acting ICE director Mark Morgan's appearance on Fox and Friends this morning was, as the man says, "absolutely beyond parody".
Brutal from Democratic congressman Ted Lieu.
Here's Chris Riotta with a preview of tomorrow's Democratic 2020 debates, the first of which takes place tomorrow night.
Trump has told The Hill he does not think it is appropriate for USA co-captain Megan Rapinoe to kneel in protest during the "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Women's World Cup, currently underway in France.
Rapinoe's gesture echoes that of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, whose "Take a Knee" gesture during the national anthem calls out injustice in America.
"I love watching women's soccer," he said in the Oval Office. "They’re really talented."
He was less emphatic on the question of equal pay for female footballers: "I think a lot of it also has to do with the economics... I mean who draws more, where is the money coming in. I know that when you have the great stars like [Portugal’s Cristiano] Ronaldo and some of these stars … that get paid a lot of money, but they draw hundreds of thousands of people."
"But I haven’t taken a position on that at all," he added. "I’d have to look at it."
More from the border, where the FBI is investigating the death of a woman and three infants outside of McAllen, Texas, near the Rio Grande.
Officials said there are, as yet, no signs of foul play and speculated that the four may have died from heat exposure and dehydration, underlining again the risks people are prepared to take to reach sanctuary in the US and the importance of humane treatment in the processing of their asylum applications.
Here's John Bolton's holiday snaps from Israel.
Doesn't really seem like a pool party kind of guy does he?
Iranian fishermen have found parts of the US drone shot down by the Islamic Republic last week, the country's ambassador to Britain, Hamid Baeidinejad, said on Tuesday.
He posted his message on Twitter along with a picture of a man standing next to a fishing boat and what appeared to be a piece of metal marked with a US Air Force logo.
Iran has said the drone was shot down in its territorial waters, a claim now endorsed by Russia, while US officials have said the drone was in international waters.
Former US President Jimmy Carter offered rare praise for President Trump while teaching Sunday school at a church in his home state of Georgia.
Speaking at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, Mr Carter praised Trump's response to Tehran, according to NPR.
"I agree with President Trump on his decision not to take military action against Iran,” he said. "I had a lot of problems with Iran when I was in office."
France has issued another call for de-escalation and dialogue between the US and Iran, as world leaders prepare for the Group of 20 summit.
Government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye said French diplomats had several high-level contacts in the past weeks with Iranian and American officials looking for ways to ease the tensions.
France's President Emmanuel Macron will meet with Mr Trump at the G20 summit in Japan that starts on Friday.
We are all used to the president's exaggerations by now, but no doubt the White House will issue a release at the end of the month lauding the achievement.
However, it is worth keeping in mind that the stock market numbers for June are unusually high compared to the rest of 2019 and are not truly reflective of what the market is doing.
However, it is worth keeping in mind that the stock market numbers for June are unusually high compared to the rest of 2019 and are not truly reflective of what the market is doing.
Donald Trump has been tweeting about the stock market, one of his favourite topics. In it, he rather-oddly thanks himself.
Digging into the numbers the the S&P 500 has seen a 7.3 per cent month-on-month jump as of the end of last week. That is the highest percentage gain month over month since 1955. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 7.8 per cent over the same period, the best performance since 1938.
Digging into the numbers the the S&P 500 has seen a 7.3 per cent month-on-month jump as of the end of last week. That is the highest percentage gain month over month since 1955. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 7.8 per cent over the same period, the best performance since 1938.
Here's the folks on Fox and Friends speculating that Trump's acting Homeland Security secretary Kevin McAleenan leaked information to the press to stop ICE agents carrying out mass deportations, giving the president little choice but to postpone the raids he had trailed on Twitter.
"I'm the only one who has actually won in a Trump state."
Here's Clark Mindock's interview with Montana governor and 2020 Democratic contender Steve Bullock.
Trump has reportedly moved to reassure Japan this morning he is committed to a military treaty that both nations have described as a cornerstone of security in Asia, after a media report said he had spoken privately about withdrawing from the pact.
Bloomberg reported on Monday that Trump had discussed ending the pact which he believed is one-sided because it obligated the United States to defend Japan if attacked but did not require Tokyo to respond in kind.
The report said Trump was also unhappy with plans to relocate the US base on Japan's Okinawa island.
"The thing reported in the media you mentioned does not exist," chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters in Tokyo when asked about the report.
"We have received confirmation from the US president it is incompatible with the US government policy," he added.
Under the security agreement, the United States has committed to defend Japan, which renounced the right to wage war after its defeat in the Second World War.
Japan in return provides military bases that Washington uses to project power deep into Asia, including the biggest concentration of US Marines outside the United States on Okinawa and the forward deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group at the Yokosuka naval base near Tokyo.
Ending the pact, which also puts Japan under the US nuclear umbrella, could force Washington to withdraw a major portion of its military forces from Asia at a time when China's military power is growing.
It would also force Japan to seek new alliances in the region and bolster its own defences, which in turn could raise concern about nuclear proliferation in the already tense region.
Washington's close ties to Tokyo have also benefited US military contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, which have sold billions of dollars of equipment to Japan's Self Defense Forces.
On a visit to Japan in May, Trump said he expected Japan's military to reinforce US forces throughout Asia and elsewhere as Tokyo bolsters the ability of its forces to operate further from its shores.
Part of that military upgrade includes a commitment by Japan to buy 97 F-35 stealth fighters, including some short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL)B variants worth more than $8 billion.
Japan says it eventually wants to field a force of around 150 of the advanced fighter jets, the biggest outside the US military, as it tries to keep ahead of China's advances in military technology.
In an attempt to put the Mueller report before the American public, a cast of Hollywood actors including Annette Benning, John Lithgow, Sigorney Weaver, Mark Hamill, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Zachary Quinto, Kevin Kline, Michael Shannon, Alyssa Milano, Alfre Woodard and Justin Long gave a dramatic reading of it in New York last night.
The Investigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts by Robert Schenkkan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, was billed as "a live play... ripped from the pages of the Mueller report".
Alarmed by reports of the conditions prevailing at Border Patrol detention centres in Texas, members of the public have been seeking to donate goods to the children interred but are being turned away, reports The Texas Tribune.
President Trump said yesterday he doesn't believe he needs congressional approval to in order to make a military strike against Iran but likes "the idea of keeping Congress abreast."
"I do like keeping them - they have ideas, they're intelligent people, they'll have some thoughts. I actually learned a couple of things the other day when we had our meeting with Congress, but I do like keeping them abreast, but I don't have to do it legally," he told The Hill.
Opinions on the subject differ on Capitol Hill.
"He must have the authority of Congress before we initiate military hostilities into Iran," Nancy Pelosi said on Friday after the cancellation of retaliatory air strikes.
But the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jim Inhofe, feels differently.
"You got to keep mind, Iran, they're a bunch of terrorists and they hate us. And we're at war with them," Inhofe told CNN. "And you know, this is serious stuff. And I don't think that we, I think the president could find himself in a position where he would have to do something and do something right away in the best interest, and he has the power to do that."
Inhofe argued Trump has the executive power to do so even if such a step falls outside the 2001 Authorisation for Use of Military Force, which was passed in the wake of 9/11 and permits immediate responses to terror attacks from the likes of al-Qaeda and Isis.
Despite some strong words from Tehran this morning, John Bolton believes Washington's pressure campaign against Iran would lead it to enter negotiations.
"They'll either get the point or... we will simply enhance the maximum pressure campaign further," Bolton told reporters after meeting his Russian and Israeli counteparts in Jerusalem.
"It will be, I think, the combination of sanctions and other pressure that does bring Iran to the table."
Russia is saying this morning it has military intelligence showing that the US drone shot down by Iran last week was in Iranian airspace at the time and Tehran was therefore justified in its actions.
Speaking at a briefing for journalists in Jerusalem, Nikolai Patrushev - secretary of Russia’s Security Council - also said evidence presented by the United States alleging Iran was behind attacks on ships in the Gulf of Oman was poor quality and unprofessional.
The director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Robert Ashley, told Fox News on Monday that the intelligence community continued to assess that Kim Jong-un was not ready to give up his nuclear weapons.
Stephen Biegun, the US special envoy for North Korea, said on Wednesday that Washington had no preconditions for talks but that progress would require meaningful and verifiable North Korean steps to denuclearise.
The State Department said Biegun, who led working-level talks with North Korea in the run-up to the Hanoi summit, would visit Seoul from Thursday until Sunday for meetings with South Korean officials.
Tension mounted last month when North Korea test-fired a series of short-range ballistic missiles, although Trump and South Korea both played down the tests.
On 11 June, Trump said he had received a very warm, "beautiful" letter from Kim, adding he thought something positive would happen.
North Korea's state news agency, KCNA, said on Sunday that Kim had received a letter from Trump, which he described as being "of excellent content", but did not disclose any details.
KCNA said Kim "would seriously contemplate the interesting content".
Pompeo, who will also be in Seoul for Trump's visit, did not discuss the contents of the president's letter, but said Washington had been working to lay foundations for discussions.
"I think we're in a better place," he said.
Asked if working-level discussions would begin soon, Pompeo said: "I think the remarks you saw out of North Korea this morning suggest that may well be a very good possibility. We're ready to go, we're literally prepared to go at a moment's notice if the North Koreans indicate that they're prepared for those discussions."
