© ustradenumbers.com
WASHINGTON, Mqy 6 — The United States has completed its offensive operations against Iran, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday, even as Washington warned it was ready to unleash a “devastating” response to any new attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Rubio’s remarks came after Washington’s top military officer said American forces remain ready to resume combat operations if ordered, as clashes in the vital waterway threatened to unravel a fragile ceasefire.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards navy warned of a “firm response” if ships deviated from its approved route through the strait, as the country’s chief negotiator said Tehran “had not even started yet,” following a spate of attacks in the crucial trade route.
The United Arab Emirates announced it was intercepting a barrage of missiles and drones from Iran for a second day—a claim Tehran “categorically” denied.
“The armed forces...did not launch any missile or drone operation,” Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya command said.
Iran fired missiles and drones at US forces on Monday, while Washington said it struck six Iranian boats it accused of threatening commercial shipping, in the sharpest escalation since a month-long truce.
US Central Command remains “ready to resume major combat operations...if ordered,” General Dan Caine told reporters.
“No adversary should mistake our current restraint with a lack of resolve.”
President Donald Trump urged Iran to “do the smart thing” and make a deal, saying he did not want to kill more Iranians even as the ceasefire teetered.
He earlier dismissed the conflict as “a little skirmish,” adding: “Iran has no chance.”
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth had said the United States was “not looking for a fight” but warned attacks would face “overwhelming and devastating” force.
‘Malign presence’
Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said the status quo was “intolerable,” warning the US “malign presence will diminish” as Tehran vowed to retain control of Hormuz.
Monday’s exchange of fire came as the rivals enforced dueling maritime blockades following Trump’s plan to guide ships out of the Gulf.
The war, sparked more than two months ago by US-Israeli strikes, has battered the global economy despite a weeks-long ceasefire.
Israel’s air force chief Omer Tischler said the military was ready to “deploy the entire air force eastward if required.”
Military chief Eyal Zamir added that the army remained on “high alert” and ready to respond to threats in the Gulf.
Iran denied any naval losses but accused Washington of killing five civilians aboard boats.
Despite tensions, Danish freight giant Maersk said one of its ships had transited Hormuz under US escort.
The UAE called the attacks “a dangerous escalation,” while Saudi Arabia urged efforts toward a political solution.
Rubio accused Iran of “holding the world’s economy hostage” through threats to shipping and the laying of sea mines, and said Washington and Gulf allies had drafted a UN Security Council resolution demanding Tehran halt attacks and disclose the location of mines.
The proposed measure would also require Iran to end efforts to charge tolls in the strait and support a humanitarian corridor, with a vote expected in the coming days, Rubio said.
European and US stocks advanced Tuesday while fears that the ceasefire could fall apart weighed on Asian equities.
Talks remain deadlocked, with only one round of direct negotiations so far.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tehran remained open to dialogue, but rejected US “maximum pressure” demands as “impossible.”
Rising energy costs are adding to economic strain and creating a political headache for Trump ahead of midterm elections.
European allies warned prolonged disruption would hit their economies.
“These attacks are unacceptable,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said on X, warning that Gulf security has “direct consequences for Europe.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Iran to return to talks, echoing calls from French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. — AFP
WASHINGTON, May 6 — President Donald Trump said yesterday he was halting the US military operation to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz after just one day, in a bid to reach a deal with Iran to end the Middle East war.
Trump’s so-called “Project Freedom” to help vessels leave the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow chokepoint to the Gulf where Iran has seized control in response to being attacked, began on Monday.
But the US leader said on Truth Social that he was now pausing it after a request by mediator Pakistan and other countries, saying that “Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement” with Tehran.
“We have mutually agreed that, while the Blockade will remain in full force and effect, Project Freedom... will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and signed,” Trump said.
Washington is maintaining a blockade of Iran’s ports in a bid to pressure Iran to make a deal to end the war that the United States and Israel launched on February 28.
Tensions had been soaring over the Hormuz operation, with the United States saying it had sunk seven Iranian boats, and several civilian vessels coming under attack, allegedly from Iran.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier yesterday that the United States has completed its offensive operations against Iran, which it dubbed “Operation Epic Fury”.
Rubio’s comments echoed statements to Congress nearly a month into a fragile ceasefire.
“The operation is over—Epic Fury—as the president notified Congress. We’re done with that stage of it,” Rubio told reporters at the White House.
The clashes in the Strait of Hormuz were not part of the original war, he said.
“This is not an offensive operation; this is a defensive operation,” Rubio said. “And what that means is very simple—there’s no shooting unless we’re shot at first.”
Israel and the United States attacked Iran on February 28, killing top leaders and destroying major military and economic sites but not forcing the collapse of the Islamic republic, which has responded with missile and drone attacks across the region.
Trump on April 8 declared a ceasefire with Iran that he has since extended even though negotiations with Tehran have been at a standstill.
Rubio said the United States has “achieved the objectives” of the war.
“These guys are facing, they are facing real, catastrophic destruction to their economy,” he said, while adding that Trump still preferred a negotiated deal with Iran. — AFP
WASHINGTON, May 4 — President Donald Trump said yesterday that “very positive discussions” were underway with Iran on finding a solution to the war, but nevertheless added US forces will soon start escorting ships out of the blocked Strait of Hormuz.
Earlier, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmaeil Baqaei, told state television that Tehran had submitted a 14-point plan “focused on ending the war,” and that Washington had responded to it in a message to Pakistani mediators.
“I am fully aware that my Representatives are having very positive discussions with the Country of Iran, and that these discussions could lead to something very positive for all,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
The US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, killing the Islamic republic’s supreme leader. Tehran responded with strikes on US military bases and Israeli targets in the region.
A ceasefire came into effect April 8, and there has been one round of direct peace talks in Islamabad since, with the two countries deadlocked.
Iran has maintained a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz since the war began, choking off major flows of oil, gas and fertilizer to the world economy, while the US has imposed a counter-blockade on Iranian ports.
Trump said “countries from all over the world” had requested American aid in navigating through the key waterway and out of the Gulf.
“For the good of Iran, the Middle East, and the United States, we have told these Countries that we will guide their Ships safely out of these restricted Waterways, so that they can freely and ably get on with their business,” Trump said.
“This process, Project Freedom, will begin today morning, Middle East time.”
He called it a “humanitarian gesture,” saying many of the marooned ships were “running low on food, and everything else necessary for largescale crews to stay on board in a healthy and sanitary manner.”
Trump offered few details on how the mission would work. But an operation to guide ships out of the narrow strait could put US service members precariously close to Iranian forces.
In a post on X, US Central Command said starting today, its forces would begin supporting Project Freedom with guided-missile destroyers, over 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned platforms and 15,000 service members.
“Our support for this defensive mission is essential to regional security and the global economy as we also maintain the naval blockade,” Admiral Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, said in the post.
As of April 29, more than 900 commercial vessels were located in the Gulf, according to maritime intelligence firm AXSMarine. There had been more than 1,100 at the start of the conflict. — AFP
WASHINGTON, May 3 — Nato said yesterday it was working with the United States to understand Washington’s decision to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany as a rift in transatlantic ties deepens over the Middle East war.
The Pentagon’s announcement of the troop withdrawal follows a spat between US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said on Monday that Iran was “humiliating” Washington at the negotiating table.
It also came as Trump announced that tariffs on cars and trucks from the European Union would jump from 15 per cent to 25 per cent next week, accusing the bloc of failing to comply with a trade deal signed last summer.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Friday the withdrawal of around 5,000 troops from Germany was expected “to be completed over the next six to twelve months.”
Nato said yesterday it was “working with the US to understand the details of their decision on force posture in Germany.”
“This adjustment underscores the need for Europe to continue to invest more in defense and take on a greater share of the responsibility for our shared security,” Nato spokeswoman Allison Hart wrote on X.
There were 36,436 active-duty US troops in Nato ally Germany as of December 31, 2025, compared to 12,662 in Italy and 3,814 in Spain.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said yesterday the US troop withdrawal “from Europe and also from Germany was to be expected.”
Republican concern
The decision is being met with skepticism by top Republican lawmakers who oversee US military policy.
In a joint statement yesterday, Senator Roger Wicker and Representative Mike Rogers, chairs of the Armed Services Committees in their respective chambers, warned that pulling troops from Germany risks “sending the wrong signal to Vladimir Putin.”
Even though European allies are boosting defense spending, “translating that investment into the military capability needed to assume primary responsibility for conventional deterrence will take time,” they said.
The duo noted that Germany had heeded Trump’s calls for greater spending on defense and that it had allowed American planes to use German bases and airspace during the ongoing conflict with Iran.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
Trump has threatened to slash US troop numbers in Germany and other European allies during both his White House terms, saying he wants Europe to take on greater responsibility for its defense rather than depending on Washington.
He now appears determined to punish allies who have failed to back the Middle East war or contribute to a peacekeeping force in the crucial Strait of Hormuz waterway, which Tehran’s forces have effectively closed.
Trump said on Thursday he might pull US troops from Italy and Spain due to their opposition to the Iran war.
“Italy has not been of any help to us and Spain has been horrible, absolutely horrible,” he told reporters.
“Yeah, probably, I probably will. Why shouldn’t I?” Trump said.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Thursday that Berlin was “prepared” for a reduction in US troops and “discussing it closely and in a spirit of trust in all NATO bodies.”
However, Wadephul said large American bases in Germany are “not up for discussion at all” and cited the example of Ramstein Air Base, which he said has “an irreplaceable function for the United States and for us alike.” — AFP
In the winter of 923, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck the heart of Puget Sound. Shorelines slid into the water, the seafloor rose up, and a tsunami swept through the region.
The Seattle fault zone, actually a mesh of faults that runs right under its eponymous city, was responsible for this quake. The fault continues to pose one of the deadliest threats to the Pacific Northwest; if a similar quake were to hit today, it would threaten millions of lives and cause billions of dollars in damage.
Two new papers dig into recurrence intervals, or the quiescent periods between earthquakes, for the Seattle fault zone. They offer good news and bad news: One study, published in Geology, found that in the past 11,000 years, the massive 923 event was the only quake of magnitude 7.5 or greater. The other study, published in GSA Bulletin, found that smaller, but still damaging, quakes occur more frequently than previously thought.
The new research indicates the worst-case scenario of frequent 923-style events is less likely than some scientists thought, said Harold Tobin, a geophysicist at the University of Washington and head of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, who was not involved in either study. But researchers also found that “the less worse, but still bad scenarios” are more likely than previously thought.
“For a fault that has had so much attention, there’s so much we still don’t know.”
The Seattle fault zone is a thrust fault system that stretches about 75 kilometers (46 miles) from the foothills of the Cascades east of Seattle to the Hood Canal, which runs along the shores of the Olympic Peninsula to the city’s west, passing under Seattle along the way.
Geologists began rigorously exploring the fault system in the early 1990s, intrigued by gravitational anomalies, uplifted marine terraces (stair-step geological formations along coastlines), and evidence of a roughly 1,000-year-old tsunami. All these features hinted at a major, shallow earthquake on a local fault zone—likely the 923 event.
But “for a fault that has had so much attention, there’s so much we still don’t know,” said Elizabeth Davis, an earthquake geologist at the University of Washington who led the Geology study.
The most pressing questions are how big quakes on the fault get, how often they hit, and, ultimately, what risks the fault poses to people who live in the Puget Sound area.
“It takes some real geologic sleuthing to get at those tough questions,” Tobin said.
Davis focused on the activity of the main fault, which can generate the biggest quakes in the Seattle fault zone complex. It was responsible for the 923 quake. But the existing record went back only about 5,000 years.
“We just don’t know what the recurrence interval for these big quakes is,” Davis said. “We wanted to lengthen the record.”
To do so, Davis and her collaborators turned to marine terraces, the oldest of which date back to the end of the last ice age about 11,000 years ago. The quake in 923 raised terraces by about 8 meters (26 feet), and scientists wanted to look for similar-scale uplift in terraces all around the sound.
The researchers mapped more than 150 terraces around Puget Sound and measured their depths. After accounting for regional slopes, they estimated uplift over time that could have been caused by quakes.
They found that in that 11,000-year period, only the 923 event generated significant uplift. Thick sediment mantles could mask smaller events but not 923-scale quakes, Davis said.
Estimating true recurrence intervals requires knowing the timing of multiple events. But the finding is “not bad news,” she said. It provides some evidence that the recurrence interval is likely not shorter than about 5,000 years.
“That could give us more of a buffer between now and when the next big one like that will happen,” said Stephen Angster, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist who led the GSA Bulletin study.
Angster’s work focused on Seattle’s secondary faults, which are smaller, mostly blind faults (those not visible at the surface) capable of generating damaging earthquakes. Previous work had shown that one of these secondary faults generated a magnitude 6.7 earthquake, highlighting the risk they pose. Angster wanted to explore rupture histories of these secondary faults, particularly whether they could rupture independently from the main fault.
The researchers used a suite of paleoseismic tools, including magnetic data, field and lidar mapping, trenches dug across faults, and geochronology. They studied two newly identified secondary faults that have orientations similar to the main fault.
They found three new earthquakes to add to the region’s seismic history, including the oldest and youngest events in the known record, which were around 11,000 years ago and in the early 1800s, respectively. The earthquakes appear to be evidence of ruptures that occurred independently of the main fault, suggesting that the smaller—but still dangerous—secondary faults should be considered in hazard modeling.
With that lengthened record and the addition of three quakes, the recurrence interval the researchers found was about every 350 years over the past 2,500 years. This timing refined the previous estimate of every several hundred years.
There also appears to be an increase in activity over the past 2,000 years.
“Maybe we should be paying attention to that,” Angster said.
“There are other earthquakes that aren’t as big but that occur more frequently. Those might not be as catastrophic, but it would be a very bad scenario for Seattle” if such events occurred.
“These are both carefully done studies,” Tobin said. “We now have evidence that the 923 event was the biggest in 11,000 years. But there are other earthquakes that aren’t as big but that occur more frequently. Those might not be as catastrophic, but it would be a very bad scenario for Seattle” if such events occurred.
It’s still to be determined whether the risk from secondary faults will be incorporated into the National Seismic Hazard Model, which includes the 923 quake but not smaller ones along the Seattle fault zone. The secondary faults were left out in previous efforts because they are shorter than the minimum length required to be included and because of uncertainties in their potential rupture magnitude.
—Rebecca Dzombak (@rdzombak.bsky.social), Science Writer
Kerry Washington learned how to tear up the floor from Jennifer Lopez.
In fact, the Scandal star learned all her dance moves from the “Let’s Get Loud” singer when they both attended the same Boys...
I’ve only ever been charged by two species. The bear took only a few quick steps before stopping.
The snowshoe hare, on the other hand, well, I was reminded of the killer bunny scene in Monty Python’s The Holy Grail.
In 2014, on a trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, a showshoe hare charged toward me. I wondered with confusion how this was going to play out when he stopped, regarded me for a moment, and then ran off into the woods just over a yard away from me.
I had a similar experience this summer while hiking the Sherman Peak Loop Trail in eastern Washington. As the trail snaked up the mountain, I rounded a curve to see a snowshoe hare sitting on the trail. I stopped. The hare didn’t move. Suddenly, he bolted in my direction. I wasn’t sure what his intention was when he slowed and came right at me. Initially, I thought he was going to blow past me. I was simply between him and a preferred hiding spot, a warren or a family. I stomped my foot as he stopped next to me, and he startled, disappearing into the brush. I’m not quite sure whether he touched my pant leg or not. It all happened so fast!
What is it with the snowshoe hare?!? I’m reminded of an exotic animal veterinarian who remarked, “If rabbits had canine teeth, they would rule the world.”
Starting up the connector trail, I thought, “This must be the bobcat’s favorite trail,” because of the frequency of feline scat along the route. Joining the loop on the east side, the habitat is dark and wet with a few mosquitoes. Small rivulets trickle across my path.
The forest opens up to a rock slide dotted with dense stands of willows, where I talk aloud as I hike so as not to surprise wildlife – snowshoe hare or otherwise.
Elk sign becomes prevalent along the way, and the mountainside is covered with huckleberry bushes. Two people on muleback, going downhill, pass me. Mules are perfect for this rugged terrain. As I continued to climb, rounding along the south side, wildflowers began to flank the trail. Although it’s called the Sherman Peak Loop, I expected it to loop around the peak. But with all of this elevation gain, I’m beginning to wonder if the peak isn’t part of the loop!
The route levelled out at 1150 feet from where I started, 6400 feet above sea level, in an area of meadows, with lupine and pine trees. There’s mountain lion scat on the trail. I stop to look for any other signs of this beauty. I find that I’m more at ease where the trail traverses treed slopes thick with windfall. It seems like animals are less likely to hang out there, but these broad, park-like flat areas are easy-going for all of the animals that call this mountain home. It makes me a little uneasy.
From this side of the mountain, there are views southward for days. I can almost see my house from here!
Passing the Kettle Crest trail junction, I round onto the west side. I leave the forest and stop in awe at the expansive fields of wildflowers – lupine, buckwheat, paintbrush.
The ground squirrels are chastising me, chattering from their lookouts downslope. I keep stopping to marvel at the beauty.
The carpets of flowers get more dramatic with each step. I can’t afford to linger as much as I’d like because I got a late start today.
Leaving the meadows, I enter a dense stand of young trees crowding the trail. Again, I’m talking to myself, nature, no one, and everyone. My bear spray is at hand, but it’s best that I don’t need it. I’m curving around to the north side on a gentle descent, again seeing the bobcat-sized feline scat that was so common at the outset. There’s another snowshoe hare just off the path. It’s not until this moment, when I see the scat and the hare together, that it clicks.
Snowshoe hares are lynx’s favorite prey. This could be lynx scat!!
When I get back to civilization, I learn that I was hiking in the Colville National Forest Lynx Recovery Zone! My first lynx (scat) encounter!!
This loop has been a wonderful trip through a diversity of habitats. Over three hours and five-and-a-half miles, every step was a delight.
If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any images you see here, please email me at SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.
Subscribe here to receive an email whenever a new blog posts.
The post Sherman Peak Loop Trail appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.
Login