Prince Harry called for Donald Trump to be “given a chance” his father-in-law has revealed in his first broadcast interview. Thomas Markle told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that he was angry about something Trump had done when he spoke by phone to Harry for the first time last year.

“I’ve always have a bad attitude about Donald Trump and that’s never going to change,” he said. “My God, I’ve got to apologise to the rest of the world for my president. All Harry actually did was say because Trump was new, he said: ‘Give him a chance.’” Markle speculated that his son-in-law may have since changed his attitude to the president. “I think Harry has probably changed his mind by now – I certainly hope he has,” he said.

Markle’s remarks underline the controversy of Trump’s visit to the UK next month. The prospect of an awkward meeting between Trump and the Queen was delayed after an invitation for an official state visit was postponed. Asked what Harry thought about Brexit, Markle said: “He said he was open to it. He didn’t know one way or another, he was just saying he had to be open to it, and see how it went. That’s pretty much what’s his attitude. This is just conversation between two guys about politics nothing cast in stone, just the way you talk.”(theguardian)…[+]

Melania Trump’s spokeswoman has said the first lady “hates to see children separated from their families”, in what at first appeared to be a rare public statement at odds with her husband’s policy of separating children from their parents at the Mexico border. Stephanie Grisham said the first lady believed “we need to be a country that follows all laws”, but also one “that governs with heart”. She added: “Mrs Trump … hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform.”

Former first lady Laura Bush has made a similar plea, writing in the Washington Post that a zero-tolerance policy was “cruel” and “immoral”. But unlike Melania Trump, Bush placed responsibility firmly on the Trump administration’s policy, not “both sides”. “The reason for these separations is a zero-tolerance policy for their parents, who are accused of illegally crossing our borders,” she wrote.(theguardian)…[+]

Russia appears to have upgraded a nuclear weapons storage bunker in its Kaliningrad enclave, in the latest sign of Moscow’s increased emphasis on nuclear arms in its standoff with Nato, according to a new report. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has published satellite images which the group says show a storage facility in the Baltic coast enclave between Poland and Lithuania being deepened and then covered with a new concrete roof in recent months. “It has all the fingerprints of typical Russian nuclear weapons storage sites,” said Hans Kristensen, the director of the nuclear information project at FAS. “There is a heavy duty external perimeter of multilayered fencing. The bunkers themselves have triple fencing around them as well. These are typical features from all the other nuclear weapons storage sites that we know about in Russia.”

The work on the bunker began in 2016, and the new roof was put on earlier in the summer. “Its a site we have been monitoring for quite some time and there have been and there have been some upgrades in the past but nothing as dramatic as this one. This is the first time we’ve seen one of the nuclear bunkers being excavated and apparently renovated,” Kristensen said. “These pictures don’t prove that there are nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad now, but they do show it is an active site,” Kristensen said.(theguardian)…[+]