1. ‘Mother of all bombs’
The US dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat on Afghanistan. The military said it had targeted an Isis “tunnel complex” and that it took “every precaution to avoid civilian casualties” but did not describe those precautions.
Read Spencer Ackerman’s coverage
Summary
The attack was announced as the US admitted killing 18 fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces in a separate friendly-fire incident this week. Asked whether he had authorized the use of the giant GBU-43/B bomb, Donald Trump replied...
Assad: chemical attack ‘fabrication’
‘Everybody knows’
Uhhh, everybody knows exactly what happened. What I do is authorize my military … We have given them total authorization and that’s what they’re doing and frankly that’s why they’ve been so successful lately.
– Donald Trump
Summary
No, but *this* bomb will win the Afghanistan war after 15 and a half years
— Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) April 13, 2017
2. UK spies passed tip on Trump team
Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington in late 2015 to contacts between members of Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told.
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4. Mar-a-Lago fails food safety test
Food inspectors cited a kitchen at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida resort where Trump has hosted multiple world leaders for dinner, for “high priority” violations including offering diners potentially parasitic raw fish and storing meat in broken coolers.
5. Trump targets Planned Parenthood
Donald Trump signed a bill allowing states to withhold federal money from Planned Parenthood, overturning a Barack Obama-era regulation that prohibited that. The White House said Trump had “restored respect to states’ rights”.
... and another thing:
I made a little timeline of Trump's statements on China and currency manipulation, because what happened yesterday is just amazing. pic.twitter.com/LJ0piX9ERQ
— Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) April 13, 2017
