Erfan Soltani, 26, is reportedly facing imminent execution, as rights groups fear for more than 18,000 people detained in the crackdown

• Iran protests: live blog updates

• Hundreds of gunshot eye injuries found in one Iranian hospital

• Iran protests: what we know so far about the anti-government demonstrations

Donald Trump has threatened to “take very strong action” if Iranian authorities begin executing anti-government protesters this week, as the reported death toll from the crisis surged past 2,500.

“If they do such a thing, we will take very strong action,” Trump told CBS News in an interview broadcast on Tuesday night, hours before the US president was due to be briefed on the scale of casualties inside Iran.

President speaks to CBS News about killing of woman by ICE agent and defends immigration crackdown

Donald Trump has defended his administration’s increasingly violent immigration crackdown, describing the 37-year-old woman killed by federal agents as likely a “wonderful person” whose “tough” actions justified a lethal response.

Trump’s comments, made during an interview with CBS News after touring a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, came as tensions continue to rise in Minneapolis days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good at the wheel of her SUV on a residential street last week.

Colvin refused to give up seat to white woman in Alabama in 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks’ act of defiance

US civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin, arrested at age 15 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white woman in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks’ similar but more famous act of defiance, died on Tuesday at age 86.

Although she remained a largely unsung figure in the civil rights movement for decades, Colvin’s 1955 act of rebellion inspired Parks and others and helped form the basis for the federal lawsuit that outlawed racial segregation in US public transportation.

Administration issues warning to US citizens: ‘Leave Iran now’ – key US politics stories from 13 January at a glance

Donald Trump has told Iranians to keep protesting and said help was on the way, in the clearest sign yet that the US president may be preparing for military action against Tehran.

“Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! … help is on its way,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday. He added that he had cancelled all meetings with Iranian officials until the “senseless killing” of protesters stopped.

In speech, president delivers triumph assessment, claiming US prices are down despite official data showing otherwise

Donald Trump claimed victory on the economy after 12 months back in office on Tuesday, declaring it to be the “greatest first year in history” as many Americans express alarm over the cost of living.

In a stream-of-consciousness speech at the Detroit Economic Club, the US president delivered his gold-tinted view of how the economy has fared on his watch. Prices were down, he claimed, despite official data showing otherwise, and productivity was “smashing expectations”.

Trump officials announce ‘largest operation in DHS history’ as 800 border agents flood into city alongside ICE

Federal officers in Minneapolis used teargas and eye irritant against activists on Tuesday as the Department of Homeland Security announced it was carrying out “its largest operation in DHS history”, deploying hundreds of border agents on top of the thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents already in the city.

A DHS official told CBS News that there were currently 800 Customs and Border Protection agents and 2,000 ICE officials in the Minneapolis area as tensions have risen in recent days.

Groups say EEOC demand for names and personal details echoes dark history and threatens safety and civil rights

Several faculty groups have denounced the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain information about Jewish professors, staff and students at the University of Pennsylvania – including personal emails, phone numbers and home addresses – as government abuse with “ominous historical overtones”.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is demanding the university turn over names and personal information about Jewish members of the Penn community as part of the administration’s stated goal to combat antisemitism on campuses. But some Jewish faculty and staff have condemned the government’s demand as “a visceral threat to the safety of those who would find themselves identified because compiling and turning over to the government ‘lists of Jews’ conjures a terrifying history”, according to a press release put out by the groups’ lawyers.

Study from research firm finds that US greenhouse gas emissions grew faster than economic activity last year

In a reversal from previous years’ pollution reductions, the United States spewed 2.4% more heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels in 2025 than in the year before, researchers calculated in a study released on Tuesday.

The increase in greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to a combination of a cool winter, the explosive growth of datacenters and cryptocurrency mining, and higher natural gas prices, according to the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm. Environmental policy rollbacks by Donald Trump’s administration were not significant factors in the increase because they were only put in place this year, the study authors said. Heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas are the major cause of worsening global warming, scientists say.

Experts say obscuring plane’s military identity would constitute a war crime

The US aircraft that carried out the first airstrike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean was reportedly disguised as a civilian plane – a possible war crime.

The New York Times reported that the aircraft had been painted to obscure its military identity, and its munitions were hidden inside its fuselage rather than visible under its wings.