America

    Donald Trump explicitly declared that he was ready for a new nuclear arms race with Russia and claimed that the United States would win it. In comments that alarmed non-proliferation experts and undermined decades of US nuclear policy Mr Trump said: "Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all." It came as the US president-elect also released what he called a "very nice letter" he received from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, congratulating him on his election victory. According to a translation by Mr Trump's team the letter was dated Dec 15 at the Kremlin, addressed to "His Excellency Donald Trump" and signed "V. Putin". "ensuring security and stability in the modern world" and "bringing "bilateral co-operation to a qualitativel...

    Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin fired the starting gun on a new nuclear arms race on Friday as they both vowed to launch a major expansion of their countries’ arsenals. Mr Trump, the US president-elect, said on Twitter: The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes. That appeared to be a response to sabre-rattling remarks hours earlier by Mr Putin. Speaking at an end-of-year meeting with his defence chiefs, the Russian president said strengthening nuclear capability should be a chief objective for 2017. We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defenc...

    Donald Trump's pick to lead his new National Trade Council is an economist who supports closer ties with Taiwan and has authored a book called Death by China: How America Lost its Manufacturing Base. The President-elect named Peter Navarro to head the White House group and praised him as a visionary who would develop trade policies that shrink our trade deficit, expand our growth, and help stop the exodus of jobs from our shores. Mr Navarro is an academic and one-time investment adviser who has authored a number of popular books and made a film describing China's threat to the US economy as well as Beijing's desire to become the dominant economic and military power in Asia. Mr Trump made trade a centrepiece of his presidential campaign and railed against what he said were ...

    The actor Tom Arnold has claimed to have video of Donald Trump using racist language, obscenities and denigrating his own son in outtakes of The Apprentice. I have the outtakes to The Apprentice where he says every bad thing ever, every offensive, racist thing ever. It was him sitting in that chair saying the N-word, saying the C-word, calling his son a retard, just being so mean to his own children, Arnold told Seattle-based radio station KIRO. The actor and comedian said a contact from the reality TV show passed him the material before last month’s election, but he did not release it because of a confidentiality clause and the expectation that Trump would lose. the people sent it to me, it was funny. Hundreds of people have seen these. It was sort of a Christmas video th...

    With only a month left in his presidency, Barack Obama announced an indefinite ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and on the Atlantic Seaboard adding a difficult barrier for the incoming Trump administration should they decide to undo Mr Obama’s environmental legacy.  Mr Obama invoked a provision of the obscure 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, a law passed in protection of coral reefs and life in marine sanctuaries.  The action comes as Donald Trump finalises his Cabinet before taking office in January. Mr Trump has vowed to roll back many of Mr Obama’s major environmental policies, and withdraw the US from the Paris global climate change agreement in which nations vowed to lower their emissions significantly.  The President-elect has only reaffirmed...

      The FBI had no probable cause to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails just under two weeks before Election Day, according to a federal judge who ordered the unsealing of the search warrant documents. FBI investigators seized a laptop belonging to the husband of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s husband, Anthony Weiner in a sexting scandal investigation. Agents found thousands of emails sent by Ms Abedin on the laptop, and petitioned a judge to reissue a warrant to search the emails. The agents believed the emails likely contained classified information sent from Ms Clinton’s private server while she was Secretary of State. Democrats, including Ms Clinton herself, attributed Donald Trump’s unexpected victory to a congressional letter from FBI dir...

    At least five Democrats who had been committed to back Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Electoral College cast ballots for other people on Monday, the largest number of faithless electors seen in well over a century. The 538 electors were voting across the country to confirm Republican Donald Trump as the next president. The event is normally a formality but took on extra prominence this year after some Democrats urged electors to revolt and switch to Clinton, who won the national popular vote on Nov. 8. In the end, it was not Republicans breaking ranks. The Democratic dissidents - four from Washington state and one from Maine - underscored deep divisions within their party and effectively dashed long-shot hopes by some activists that Republicans pledged to Trump might back Cli...

    Carole Joyce of Arizona expected her role as a GOP elector to be pretty simple: She would meet the others in Phoenix and carry out a vote for Trump, who won the most votes in her state and whom she personally supported. But then came the mail and the emails and the phone calls first hundreds, then thousands of voters worrying that Trump’s impulsive nature would lead the country into another war. Honestly, it had an impact, said Joyce, a 72-year-old Republican state committee member. I’ve seen enough funerals. I’m tired of hearing bagpipes. But I signed a loyalty pledge. And that matters. Such is the life these days for many of the 538 men and women who are scheduled to meet Monday across the country to carry out what has traditionally been a perfunctory vote after most eve...

    President Barack Obama said Friday he had confronted Vladimir Putin in person over allegations of Russian hacking when they met ahead of the US election, telling him to ‘cut it out’ and promising a firm response. Just five weeks before he leaves the White House, the outgoing president has vowed to retaliate against Moscow over the cyber-meddling, which US intelligence says was designed to help Republican Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, a Putin critic. Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us because we can do stuff to you, the US president told a year-end press conference, at which he went the furthest yet towards pinning direct blame for the hacks on Putin. Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin, Obama said....

    US president Barack Obama warned that America will take action at a time and place of our choosing over Vladimir Putin's hacking of the US election. In a dramatic escalation of the hacking row Mr Obama told National Public Radio: "I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections we need to take action. And we will. At a time and place of our own choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicised. Some of it may not be. He added: Mr Putin is well aware of my feelings about this because I spoke to him directly about it. Mr Obama was referring to a candid and blunt meeting with the Russian president at the G20 summit in China in September . On Thursday Mr Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest confirmed the White House believe...