The Atlantic magazine published on Wednesday details of plans for US airstrikes in Yemen that were mistakenly shared by Trump administration officials with its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on the commercially available messaging app Signal.
Ukraine and Russia accused one another on Wednesday of flouting a truce on energy strikes brokered by the US, and the European Union said it would not meet conditions set by Russia for a planned ceasefire in the Black Sea.
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro will stand trial for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the government after he lost a 2022 election, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday, moving swiftly in a case that could reshape the political landscape.
Transcript of US attack plans shared with journalist
The Atlantic magazine published on Wednesday details of plans for US airstrikes in Yemen that were mistakenly shared by Trump administration officials with its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on the commercially available messaging app Signal.
When asked by Reuters to comment, the White House referred to an X post on Wednesday by national security adviser Mike Waltz, who wrote: “No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS.” The Atlantic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Here are excerpts. Sentences preceded by asterisks are Reuters explanations for military acronyms and other context.
On 11 March, Goldberg received an invitation to the group chat from Waltz.
Also on the Signal chat were other administration officials including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice-President JD Vance, CIA director John Ratcliffe, and national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard. They were discussing a forthcoming US attack on Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.
On 15 March — the day of the attack — Goldberg says the chat turned operational.
At 11.44am Eastern Time, Hegseth posted in the chat a “TEAM UPDATE”.
The text continued, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.”
[Centcom, or US Central Command, oversees troops in the Middle East.]
The Hegseth text continued:
- “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”.
- “1345: ’Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”.
[This was 31 minutes before Hegseth said the first US jets would be launched and two hours and one minute before the window of time the attack would begin.]
The Hegseth text then continued:
- “1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”.
- “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ’Trigger Based’ targets)”.
- “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
- “MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”.
- “We are currently clean on OPSEC”.
- “Godspeed to our Warriors.”
*OPSEC refers to operational security, which means ensuring safety and security of an operation are not violated ahead of its execution.
At 1.48pm, Waltz said: “VP. Building collapsed. Had multiple positive ID. Pete, Kurilla, the IC, amazing job.”
[IC refers to the Intelligence Community. Army General Michael “Erik” Kurilla is the head of US Central Command.]
Vance replied, “What?”
At 2pm, Waltz responded, “Typing too fast. The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
Vance responded, “Excellent.”
Thirty-five minutes after that, Ratcliffe, the CIA director, wrote, “A good start,” which Waltz followed with a text containing a fist emoji, a US flag emoji and a fire emoji.
Later that afternoon, Hegseth posted: “CENTCOM was/is on point.”
Hegseth added, “Great job all. More strikes ongoing for hours tonight, and will provide full initial report tomorrow. But on time, on target, and good readouts so far.”
A powerful US Senate Republican called on Wednesday for an official probe of the officials’ discussion of the sensitive attack plans after critics argued that US troops could have died if the information had fallen into the wrong hands.
Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters he and Senator Jack Reed, the panel’s top Democrat, would ask President Donald Trump’s administration to expedite an inspector-general report and provide a classified briefing.
“We are signing a letter today asking the administration to expedite an IG report back to the committee. We’re sending a similar letter to the administration in an attempt to get ground truth,” Wicker told reporters at the Capitol.
“The information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified,” said Wicker.
Democrats criticised the administration for what they saw as playing down, rather than acknowledging, the incident at previously scheduled intelligence committee hearings at the House of Representatives and the Senate.
“I think that it’s by the awesome grace of God that we are not mourning dead pilots right now,” Democrat Jim Himes of Connecticut told the House.
“Everyone here knows that the Russians and the Chinese could have gotten all of that information,” said Himes.
At the hearings, administration officials insisted the chat had not included classified information. Democrats disputed that, and Republicans acknowledged that it had at least included sensitive information.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham issued a statement saying he supported Trump’s national security team and praised the administration’s handling of the incident, but noted the content of the messages “do in fact detail very sensitive information about a planned and ongoing military operation”.
“This is classified information,” Democratic Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois said at the hearing, calling for Hegseth’s resignation. “It’s a weapons system as well as sequence of strikes, as well as details about the operations.”
Separately, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Senate Democrats wrote to Trump and his top officials urging a Justice Department probe into how a journalist was inadvertently included in a secret group discussion of sensitive attack plans.
Trump said his administration would look into the use of Signal but voiced support for his national security team.
Waltz, the national security adviser who organized the Signal chat, said in an interview with “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News on Tuesday: “I take full responsibility” for the breach, but that no classified information was shared.
Ukraine and Russia’s truce agreements quickly run into trouble
Ukraine and Russia accused one another on Wednesday of flouting a truce on energy strikes brokered by the US, and the European Union said it would not meet conditions set by Russia for a planned ceasefire in the Black Sea.
The US announced separate agreements with Ukraine and Russia on Tuesday to pause their strikes in the Black Sea and against each other’s energy targets, but the rhetoric from Moscow and Kyiv suggested they remained far apart.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said the US side told Kyiv the deals were effective as soon as they were announced. But the Kremlin said the Black Sea agreement would not enter force until a sanctioned Russian state bank was reconnected to the international payment system. Europe said that would not happen until a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.
The Kremlin contends it has already been implementing a pause on energy attacks since 18 March, though a senior Ukrainian presidential official said Russia had attacked eight Ukrainian energy facilities since that date.
On paper, the agreements are a tangible step towards a ceasefire after Russia launched its February 2022 invasion, unleashing the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two that rages on along a 1,000km frontline.
Led by Trump, who wants a quick peace, the US on Tuesday published two separate joint statements with Moscow and Kyiv outlining the deals, but neither document set out a clear timeline for their implementation.
Overnight, Russia said it had taken down nine drones, including two over the Black Sea. It also said Ukraine tried to attack a gas storage facility in Russian-occupied Crimea and energy infrastructure in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk regions. Ukraine said it conducted no such strikes.
Ukraine’s military reported 117 Russian drone attacks overnight. Local officials said the city of Kryvyi Rih had been hit by the biggest drone attack it has faced yet.
Zelensky called on the US to further sanction Moscow, which he said was clearly not pursuing “real peace” after the latest night of Russian drone attacks.
“Launching such large-scale attacks after ceasefire negotiations is a clear signal to the whole world that Moscow is not going to pursue real peace,” wrote Zelensky on X.
Zelensky later arrived in Paris for a European summit on Ukraine.
Diplomats have told Reuters that most of the curbs the Kremlin says should be lifted before a Black Sea truce comes into effect relate to European Union sanctions and restrictions.
The EU said it was not targeting trade in food, grain or fertilisers in any way and made clear it would not budge on sanctions while Russian forces remained in Ukraine.
Brazil Supreme Court to put Bolsonaro on trial for alleged coup attempt
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro will stand trial for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the government after he lost a 2022 election, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday, moving swiftly in a case that could reshape the political landscape.
A five-judge panel decided unanimously to put Bolsonaro on trial. If found guilty in the court proceedings expected later this year, Bolsonaro could face a long prison sentence, isolating the far-right firebrand who has avoided naming a political heir.
Soon after the ruling, Bolsonaro held a press conference in Brasilia to deliver a lengthy defense against what he called “grave and baseless accusations”.
“It seems they have something personal against me,” he said, referring to the judges. Coups, he said, “have troops, have guns and have leadership. They haven’t found who this leader would be.”
In his opening remarks on Wednesday, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, screened dramatic footage of Bolsonaro’s supporters storming government buildings in violent scenes that unfolded just a week after the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in January 2023.
Moraes cast that insurrection as the result of Bolsonaro’s “systematic effort” to discredit the election he lost and then conspire to overturn using violence, with the help of senior military officers and cabinet members.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain who served as Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2022, is accused of five crimes, including an attempt to violently abolish the democratic rule of law and a coup d’etat. He has denied any wrongdoing and denounced the case as politically motivated.
Wednesday’s ruling, roughly a month after Brazil’s top prosecutor presented charges, reflected an extraordinary pace for a top court that often takes years to decide major cases.
The speed reinforced views that the justices are keen to wrap up the trial before the 2026 presidential campaign gets under way.
Bolsonaro has insisted he will run for president again next year, despite a ruling by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court that barred him from running for public office until 2030 for his efforts to discredit the country’s voting system.
Ahead of the landmark court hearing, Bolsonaro called a beachfront rally in Rio de Janeiro, hoping to seize on Lula’s waning popularity and pressure Congress to pass an amnesty Bill favoring him and his jailed supporters.
The demonstration, which some allies suggested could draw more than a million backers, was widely considered a flop after two independent polling firms found that only between 20,000 and 30,000 people showed up.
Still, political analysts expect the trial to galvanise Bolsonaro’s most avid supporters, who have been working to undermine the Supreme Court’s credibility in Brazil and abroad.
Fear of more war haunts Kursk as Russia expels Ukrainian troops
In the Russian region of Kursk, where Ukraine has been fighting for more than seven months, people say they want peace but fear there will be more war.
Ukraine’s incursion into Russian territory was launched in August — more than two years into a major war triggered by Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour — shocking a border region that hadn’t seen conflict since World War Two.
Now, with Russia close to expelling the last Ukrainian troops, Kursk’s populace is counting the cost.
For some residents like Leonid Boyarintsev, a veteran of the Sino-Soviet border conflict of 1969, the surprise enemy offensive served as justification for Russia to double down on its military activities in Ukraine.
“When we are victorious, there will be peace because no one will dare to come crawling in again,” the 83-year-old told Reuters in the town of Rylsk, adding that he blamed the West for stoking the conflict in Ukraine. “They will be too afraid to.”
The damage that has been unleashed on towns and cities in the Russian region has brought home the horrors of war long suffered by Ukrainians.
In ancient Rylsk, 26km from the border, the scars are everywhere — from the smashed merchant buildings from Tsarist Russia to the families still struggling with children living apart in evacuation.
“We want peace, but it is very important that the peace is long term and durable,” town Mayor Sergei Kurnosov told Reuters in the ruins of a cultural centre that was destroyed in a 20 December Ukrainian attack.
Six people were killed and 12 injured in the attack, Russia said. Russia said the cultural centre was destroyed by US-made Himars missiles. Abandoned music books lay beside silent pianos and a theatre stage showing a shattered scene of rubble and glass.
Just like Ukrainians, many Kursk residents crave a return to normality
Here too, air-raid sirens have become the daily soundtrack of life. While Russia has now pushed out almost all Ukrainian forces from Kursk, the area has been heavily mined, and drones continue to attack. Many civilian cars speeding along a road near the vast Kurchatov nuclear power plant had drone jamming devices strapped onto their roofs. Residents shopped for food and vapes as artillery boomed in the distance.
“It’s all very scary indeed,” said Rimma Erofeyeva, a music teacher in Rylsk who said people in the town wanted the fighting to stop though believed that God was protecting them. “The really scary thing is that people have got so used to this that they don’t even react to the sirens any more.”
Ukrainian forces smashed into the Kursk region on 6 August, supported by swarms of drones and heavy Western weaponry, and swiftly seized almost 1,400 sq km of territory, according to Russian generals. But, within weeks, the area under Ukraine’s control shrank as Russia piled in forces.
The latest battlefield map from Deep State, an authoritative Ukrainian site that charts the frontlines from open-source data, showed Ukraine controlled less than 81 sq km as of 23 March.
By contrast, Russia controls about 113,000 sq km, or about 20%, of Ukraine.
China poses biggest military, cyber threat to US, say intel chiefs
China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US, according to a report by US intelligence agencies published on Tuesday that said Beijing was making “steady but uneven” progress on capabilities it could use to capture Taiwan.
China has the ability to hit the US with conventional weapons, compromise US infrastructure through cyber attacks, and target its assets in space, said the Annual Threat Assessment by the intelligence community, adding that Beijing also seeks to displace the US as the top AI power by 2030.
Russia, along with Iran, North Korea and China, seeks to challenge the US through deliberate campaigns to gain an advantage, with Moscow’s war in Ukraine affording a “wealth of lessons regarding combat against Western weapons and intelligence in a large-scale war”, said the report.
Released ahead of testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee by Trump’s intelligence chiefs, the report said China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) most likely planned to use large language models to create fake news, imitate personas, and enable attack networks.
“China’s military is fielding advanced capabilities, including hypersonic weapons, stealth aircraft, advanced submarines, stronger space and cyber warfare assets and a larger arsenal of nuclear weapons,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the committee. She labelled Beijing as Washington’s “most capable strategic competitor”.
“China almost certainly has a multifaceted, national-level strategy designed to displace the United States as the world’s most influential AI power by 2030,” said the report.
South Korea wildfires kill at least 24
The death toll in the wildfires raging across South Korea’s southeastern region rose to 24, and the pilot of a firefighting helicopter was killed when the aircraft crashed on Wednesday, as the country battled some of its worst forest fires in decades.
The deadly wildfires had spread rapidly and forced more than 27,000 people from their homes, said the government. The blazes, fuelled by strong winds and dry weather, have razed entire neighbourhoods, closed schools and forced authorities to transfer hundreds of inmates from prisons.
“We are deploying all available personnel and equipment in response to the worst wildfires ever, but the situation is not good,” said Acting President Han Duck-soo, adding that the US military in Korea was also assisting.
The Korea Forest Service said 24 people had been confirmed dead in the fires. It did not give a breakdown, but earlier the Safety Ministry said 14 people had died in Uiseong county, and four other deaths were linked to a blaze in Sancheong county,
Many of the dead were older people in their 60s and 70s, said Son Chang-ho, a local police official.
The Forest Service also said one of its firefighting helicopters crashed while trying to extinguish a blaze and the pilot was killed.
South Korea relies on helicopters to tackle forest fires because of its mountainous terrain and the incident led to the brief grounding of the fleet.
Indian stand-up comic sets off free speech debate with parody song
Indian stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra faces police scrutiny for a performance seen to have criticised a key politician and ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, fanning concerns about the limits of free speech in the world’s largest democracy.
The ensuing violence triggered comments on social media and prime-time shows, even as Kamra refused to apologise over an accusation that his use of the term “traitor” referenced Eknath Shinde, the deputy chief minister of India’s richest state.
“I don’t fear this mob and I will not be hiding under my bed, waiting for this to die down,” Kamra, a known critic of Modi, with more than six million subscribers on social media, said in a statement on Monday.
Kamra’s parody song about a traitor did not identify anyone but angered workers of Shinde’s hardline Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party, who ransacked the performance site and complained to police that his act had defamed the leader.
News media said Kamra declined to appear before police in the financial capital of Mumbai, citing death threats against him by party members, and sought a week to do so.
Shinde, who rose to prominence in the Shiv Sena, a long-term ally of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has said he did not support violence by his party workers, but added that Kamra’s jokes were not in good taste.
Over the weekend, his supporters ransacked the Habitat studio in Mumbai’s northwestern suburb of Khar where Kamra had performed, forcing it to down shutters for the time being.
On Wednesday, about a dozen police officers cordoned off the studio, its signage blacked out.
Shinde became chief minister of the western state of Maharashtra in 2022, helping bring it under Modi’s control after engineering a revolt in the party when it broke ties with the BJP. He took on the deputy role in a later administration.
Supporters inferred his identity from attributes mentioned in Kamra’s song.
UK finance minister trims spending plans in face of slowing economy
Briton’s finance minister, Rachel Reeves, facing a weak economy, trimmed her spending plans in a Budget update on Wednesday that gave some reassurance to investors, but the risks of a global trade war could put tax hikes back on the table later this year.
Britain’s Budget watchdog halved its forecast for economic growth in 2025 and said a catch-up towards the end of the decade would not make up all of the difference. It also raised its forecasts for public borrowing and inflation.
Reeves sought to pin the downgrade on “a changing world”, citing the war in Ukraine and uncertainty overhanging the world economy, which is at risk of upheaval from Trump’s trade tariff plans.
“The global economy has become more uncertain, bringing insecurity at home as trading patterns become more unstable and borrowing costs rise for many major economies,” she said.
However, the Budget watchdog said an increase in employers’ taxes announced by Reeves in her first full Budget last October would weigh on growth in earnings for workers from next year, representing another brake on the economy.
Reeves said she would not let the slowdown jeopardise her Budget plans, and she acted to rebuild a nearly £10-billion fiscal buffer that had been more than wiped out in just five months by the weaker economic outlook and higher borrowing costs.
“These fiscal rules are non-negotiable. They are the embodiment of this government’s unwavering commitment to bring stability to our economy,” she said in her speech, which focused heavily on increased defence spending.
The centre-left Labour government also announced £4.8-billion of cuts to welfare payments, angering some of its legislators. DM