State secretary frames strikes as necessary to protect US forces from retaliation; Chuck Schumer tells reporters ‘this is Trump’s war’ and ‘he has no strategy’

• Hegseth says US won’t get ‘bogged down’ in Iran

• What is the legality of the US and Israeli attacks on Iran?

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While speaking today, Pete Hegseth acknowledged the fourth US service member killed in Iran’s counterattacks.

“War is hell and always will be,” he said. “Our grateful nation honors the four Americans we have lost thus far and those injured – the absolute best of America.”

A picture is emerging of one of the worst avalanche disasters in US history, and the women among a tight-knit group of friends who died

The ringing of a phone echoed through the Nevada county, California, sheriff’s office just before noon on 17 February.

The 911 call brought devastating news: an avalanche had occurred on nearby Castle Peak – a 9,110ft (2,780-meter) mountain north of the Donner summit in the Lake Tahoe area. A group of backcountry skiers had been on the mountainside, returning home from a three-day expedition, during a heavy winter storm. While six had survived, more than half their group was missing.

Reports say move could come this weekend as White House urges Iran to ‘make a deal’ with Trump on nuclear program

The US military is ready for possible strikes on Iran as soon as this weekend, multiple news outlets reported Wednesday citing unnamed sources.

However, the reports said, Donald Trump has yet to make a final decision on whether to carry out an attack. The president has repeatedly demanded Iran cease its nuclear program, and has warned he intends to use force if no deal is reached.

One skier still missing and six others rescued after group engulfed in Sierra Nevada mountains during severe storm

Eight skiers who went missing after an avalanche swept the Castle Peak area of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California have been confirmed dead, authorities said during a Wednesday press conference.

One skier is still unaccounted for, while six others, who had been stranded, have since been rescued.

Group was skiing in snow-hit Sierra Nevadas, while winter storm brings heavy rain and floods to other parts of state

Six skiers have been found after a group of 16 went missing this morning as heavy snowfall blanketed California, prompting avalanche warnings in the Sierra Nevada mountains, closing coastal roads and causing flooding in Los Angeles.

The 10 remaining skiers are still missing, according to the sheriff’s office in Nevada county, California. The group was in the Castle Peak area, where an avalanche was reported around 11.30am. According to the sheriff’s office, the group consisted of four ski guides and 12 clients.

Evidence reveals that Gregory Bovino told a federal agent who shot a Chicago woman, ‘you have much yet left to do!’

Transportation secretary Sean Duffy said the El Paso airport closure was to “address a cartel drone incursion”.

“The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region,” Duffy said on social media. “The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming.”

Three-year-old black coat female, known as BEY03F, crossed into LA county around 6am on 7 February

A gray wolf wandered into Los Angeles county for the first time in more than a century on Saturday morning.

“This is the most southern verified record of a gray wolf in modern times,” Axel Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the California department of fish and wildlife, said.

‘They cannot erase our history. Our Pride flag will be raised again,’ says Manhattan borough president

The Trump administration has removed a large pride flag from the Stonewall national monument in New York City, marking the latest move by the federal government to end diversity initiatives and sanitize the history shared in national parks.

The monument commemorates the June 1969 riots that followed a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The six days of protests against the police action were a key moment in sparking the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and the site has since become a national symbol of LGBTQ+ Pride.

With some of Ukraine’s most valuable biodiversity sites and science facilities under occupation, experts at Sofiyivka Park in Uman are struggling to preserve the country’s natural history

In the basement laboratory of the National Dendrological Park Sofiyivka, Larisa Kolder tends to dozens of specimens of Moehringia hypanica between power outages. Just months earlier, she and her team at this microclonal plant propagation laboratory in Uman, Ukraine, received 23 seeds of the rare flower.

Listed as threatened in Ukraine’s Red Book of endangered species, Moehringia grows nowhere else in the wild but the Mykolaiv region of Ukraine. Of those 23 seeds, only two grew into plants that Kolder and her colleagues could clone in their laboratory, but now her lab is home to a small grove of Moehringia seedlings, including 80 that have put down roots in a small but vital win for biodiversity conservation amid Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Trump broke precedent by not releasing his tax returns when he ran for president

“I do not want to hear that “everything that’s been done here has been perfect”, Homan said, without referring specifically to the fatal shooting of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Homan noted that while no “agency is perfect” he did not come to Minneapolis to create “headlines”. The federal immigration enforcement surge is “going to improve because of changes we’re making”, he said.

Two officers involved have been placed on administrative leave in standard protocol, says CBP spokesperson

• Two agents who shot Minnesota man on leave as Trump says he will ‘de-escalate’

• Lawmakers condemn ‘disgusting’ attack on Ilhan Omar at Minneapolis town hall

Two federal officers fired their guns during the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, according to an initial review by the Department of Homeland Security that was obtained by NBC News.

Three sources told NBC News that the preliminary report, from a Customs and Border Protection internal investigation led by the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, was sent to congressional committees yesterday, including the House homeland security and judiciary committees.

Condition of victims unknown; shooting comes one day after an ICE agent killed US citizen in Minneapolis. This blog is paused

• Two people shot by US federal agents in Portland, police say

• ICE agent in Minneapolis killing identified as 10-year law enforcement veteran

• Trump news at a glance: president says his morality is ‘the only thing that can stop me’

Since early December, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations – many of them masked and brandishing rifles – have grabbed people at hardware stores and gyms, or outside homes and schools around the cities.

They have violently tackled undocumented immigrants as well as US citizens, including advocates and protestors.

This live blog is now closed.

• Woman fatally shot by ICE agent during raid, video shows

• Shock and outrage at scene of Minneapolis ICE shooting: ‘This is just sad’

Miranda Bryant, the Guardian’s Nordic correspondent, also has written this handy explainer on why Donald Trump is renewing calls for a takeover of Greenland:

In Pennsylvania, US president attacks Ilhan Omar and Jasmine Crockett and makes multiple false claims, including that ‘prices are way down’

A federal judge in New York has granted the justice department’s request to unseal grand jury documents in the sex-trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell – the companion and accomplice of the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. It comes after the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Donald Trump signed last month.

The legislation requires the Department of Justice to release the full tranche of records related to disgraced financier, in a searchable format by 19 December.

Ruling will impact elections as soon as the March primaries

• US supreme court approves redrawn Texas congressional maps

Among the beneficiaries of Donald Trump’s pardons and commutations, there is a group that legal experts and political scientists see as some of the clearest evidence of how such actions undermine the rule of law: those who were released from prison and again arrested for different alleged crimes.

During his first term, Trump issued 237 acts of clemency – including to someone who was a predatory lender and drug smuggler and to another who ran a Ponzi scheme. Since taking office again, Trump has issued more than 1,600, most for people involved in the January 6 attack on Congress.

Home perched in Hollywood Hills, constructed for $37,500 and made famous by Julius Shulman photo, listed for $25m

The Stahl house – a paragon of Los Angeles mid-century modern architectural design – is for sale for the first time in the home’s history.

The cantilevered home, perched in the Hollywood Hills, hit the listings market this week. The asking price: $25m.