President Donald Trump has dismissed as "fake news" a New York Times report that he ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller last June, but backed down after White House lawyer Don McGahn threatened to resign.

Three top US senators, including John McCain, the former White House hopeful, slammed a new Osama bin Laden manhunt film for suggesting torture helped find the al Qaeda chief.

The CIA is reviewing a top secret intelligence report to decide whether Washington miscalculated the extent of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons programmes, it emerged today.