Raises Questions

Sacked Foreign Office chief tells MPs he was briefed that UKSV considered Mandelson ‘a borderline case’UK politics live – latest updatesAn account of Peter Mandelson’s vetting process given by the former top civil servant Sir Olly Robbins has raised new questions about whether Robbins was misled about the findings of the agency responsible for vetting.Robbins, who was sacked from his role of permanent secretary at the Foreign Office last week after revelations in the Guardian, gave testimony about the process to a select committee. Continue reading...

Ahmed Shihab-Eldin was arrested after reporting on friendly fire incident during US conflict with IranMiddle East crisis live – latest updatesThe detention of a prize-winning international journalist over his reporting of a friendly fire incident in Kuwait is raising questions about the crackdown on freedom of speech across the Middle East as a result of the US-Israel war with Iran, the Committee to Protect Journalists has warned.Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, born in the US and a Kuwaiti national, was arrested on 3 March during a brief visit to Kuwait. He published footage of a US air force F- 15 E Strike Eagle crashing in al Jahra west of Kuwait city. On his Substack he said the pilot and weapons officer had successfully ejected and survived. He added that video circulating online showed local residents assisting one of the crew in a civilian truck. Continue reading...

National intelligence director said voting machine seizure was requested by US attorney in Puerto Rico – who’s been trying to revive 2020 election conspiracy theoryWhen the US director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, testified on Thursday that her office seized voting machines from Puerto Rico, she said it was at the request of the office of the US attorney in Puerto Rico. Left unsaid was that the prosecutor, as the Guardian previously reported, has been the center of a push by Donald Trump supporters to revive a long discredited conspiracy theory purporting to link Venezuela to Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat.Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, the conspiracy theory maintains, controlled electronic voting machines worldwide and remotely manipulated results in 2020 to deprive Trump of a presidential victory. Continue reading...

$11.3bn more than enough to fund EPA or National Cancer Institute, where administration sought to slash budgetsSign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inboxThe US spent $11.3bn on just the first week of its military assault on Iran. This huge expenditure dwarves the annual budgets of many of the public health and scientific agencies the Trump administration has sought to cut, raising stark questions about the country’s priorities.In the six days that followed the US and Israel’s joint attack on Iran on 28 February, $11.3bn was spent on American taxpayer-funded bombs that hit the country and caused hundreds of deaths, the Pentagon has told lawmakers. This figure does not capture the full cost of the conflict, such as deployment of forces, and will now be far higher given the ongoing nature of the war. Continue reading...