Japan's Emperor Naruhito waves to members of the public on May 4
Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
During this trip to Japan, President Donald Trump will be the first foreign guest for the country's new emperor.
Former Emperor Akihito, 85, stepped down in April, and was replaced by his 59-year-old son, Crown Prince Naruhito.
That means Trump and first lady Melania Trump will be Naruhito's first official foreign guests, and Trump's trip will be the first state visit of a foreign leader in Japan's Reiwa era.
Japan's eras mark who the emperor is and form the basis for the Japanese calendar system. Akihito presided over the Heisei era, which ended the day he stepped down.
Japan's Emperor Naruhito waves to members of the public on May 4
Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
During this trip to Japan, President Donald Trump will be the first foreign guest for the country's new emperor.
Former Emperor Akihito, 85, stepped down in April, and was replaced by his 59-year-old son, Crown Prince Naruhito.
That means Trump and first lady Melania Trump will be Naruhito's first official foreign guests, and Trump's trip will be the first state visit of a foreign leader in Japan's Reiwa era.
Japan's eras mark who the emperor is and form the basis for the Japanese calendar system. Akihito presided over the Heisei era, which ended the day he stepped down.
The small blast occurred around 5:30 pm local time (11:30 am ET) in a central shopping area, near the intersection of Victor Hugo road and Sala road. Its cause has not been fully determined yet.
French President Macron characterized the explosion as an attack, telling an interviewer this evening, "I'm late because there was an attack in Lyon."
"As far as I can say there are no victims — there are wounded," he added.
A spokesman for the Lyon prosecutor told CNN that the explosion could have been caused by a parcel bomb packed with nails.
On Twitter, the Auvergne Rhone Alpes regional police said the chief of police and prosecutor were on the scene. It also tweeted photographs of the evacuated scene, and said that a security perimeter has been put in place, asking the public to avoid the area.
Emergency responders are assisting the wounded, a spokesperson for the Police Nationale told CNN, adding that that the priority would be assisting victims, "regardless of if it was a car crash or a terrorist attack."
"The reasons for the explosions will be searched for later," they said.
In his statement, Mr Shanahan said he had "approved a request from the combatant commander for additional resources" in the region.
He said the move was intended to "safeguard US forces given the ongoing threat posed by Iranian forces, including the IRGC [Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps] and its proxies."
Mr Shanahan said that "additional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft" would be deployed as well as a team of engineers. He said a fighter aircraft squadron would also be sent.
Earlier on Friday, President Trump told reporters outside the White House that a "relatively small" deployment had been approved.
"We want to have protection in the Middle East," he said, adding that the extra troops would be "mostly protective."
A military boost amid high tensions
The additional 1,500 troops will add to the more than 50,000 US military personnel already spread across the region.
The deployment, which is smaller than some of the numbers talked of earlier in the week, comes at a time of high tensions. US officials say there's been a spike in threats against American assets from Iran and its proxies.
The Pentagon is portraying this as a defensive rather than offensive move. Mr Shanahan said earlier this week that US action had already forced Iran to put its planned actions on hold.
President Trump, meanwhile, has indicated that he does not want a war with Iran. He's had to rein in more hawkish aides, such as his National Security Adviser John Bolton. But on Twitter he has sounded more impulsive, warning last weekend. "If Iran wants to fight that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!"
Mr Trump reinstated the sanctions last year after abandoning the landmark nuclear deal that Iran has signed with six nations - the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany.
The US has proceeded to send an aircraft carrier, B-52 bombers and a Patriot missile defence battery to the region because of "troubling and escalatory indications" related to Iran.
London -- Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May announced on Friday that she will resign on June 7, following a mutiny in her Conservative Party over her handling of Britain's withdrawal from the European Union. May met with the leader of a group of hardline Brexit supporters from her party earlier Friday to agree a timetable to stand down and allow a successor to be chosen from amongst the Conservative ranks.
May is expected to continue as caretaker prime minister until her party elects a new leader. That internal election process will begin in the days immediately following her resignation on June 7. The leader of the party automatically becomes the prime minister.
Speaking to the nation outside her office, May said she believed that "if you give people a choice, you have a duty to implement what they decide," referring to the 2016 public referendum that saw the nation opt to leave the EU. "I have done my best," she said.
"I have done everything I can to convince MPs," she said, noting that she had "tried three times" to get the deal she reached with European negotiators approved by Parliament.
"I believe it was right to persevere even where the odds against success seemed high," she said. "But it is now clear to me that it is in the best interests of the country for a new prime minister to lead that effort." (Watch the video below to see more of May's remarks.)
U.K. PM Theresa May says she will resign amid Brexit mutiny
May said "I deeply regret" being unable to deliver on the Brexit commitment.
"I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honor of my life to hold," she said. "The second female prime minister, but certainly not the last."
Choking up with tears, May continued: "I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love."
The humiliating spectacle of the prime minister detailing her departure date followed a toxic response to the latest draft of her Brexit plan -- her forth -- this week from cabinet colleagues and fellow Conservative lawmakers.
May had previously said she would step aside once a Brexit deal had been passed by parliament, and launched a fresh bid on Tuesday for lawmakers to vote on it in early June, but the government postponed that vote.
MPs have already overwhelmingly rejected three slightly different versions of the EU divorce plan May's government spent more than two years hammering out with European leaders. Her latest proposals, which included giving them the option of choosing to hold a new referendum on the deal, prompted a furious reaction among Conservatives.
Pressure intensified on May after Andrea Leadsom -- one of the cabinet's strongest Brexit backers -- resigned on Wednesday from her post as the government's representative in parliament. In her resignation letter Leadsom told the prime minister she no longer believed that her approach would deliver on the 2016 referendum result to leave the EU.
EU leaders and British Prime Minister Theresa May agree to Brexit extension
What happens next
With the stalemate in Parliament, Britain's originally scheduled EU departure date of March 29 was extended, first to April 12, and now to October 31 which, as CBS News contributor Simon Bates noted, is Halloween. Amid the political paralysis, the clamor for May to stand down grew fast, and it intensified after disastrous results for the Conservatives in the May 2 English local elections.
It will likely take a few weeks for the party to pick its new leader from about four lawmakers who have put their names forward.
Once the new prime minister takes office, they will have until the end of October deadline to do what May failed to; get a divorce proposal agreed to by parliament and then presented back to the EU for approval by the other 27 member states.
If that doesn't happen, Britain would likely crash out of the EU with no future arrangements in place -- a so-called "no-deal" Brexit. Economists and analysts have warned that such a disorderly exit would likely hit Britain's economy hard and cause backups of goods and people at entry points. Some have predicted shortages in Britain of medicines and even some food items, given expected bottlenecks at shipping ports.
LONDON — The deaths of three more climbers on Mount Everest have raised concerns that a traffic jam of mountaineers near the summit is making the ascent even more treacherous.
Officials and mountaineering agencies confirmed to NBC News Friday that three Indian nationals died on Thursday while trying to climb the world’s highest mountain, which sits on the border of Nepal and Tibet, an autonomous region of South-west China.
Nihal Bagwan, 27, died after collapsing from exhaustion on the balcony area of the mountain where he was waiting in a line to reach the summit, according to Krishma Poudel of Peak Promotion, a mountaineering agency in Nepal.
Anjali Kulkarni, 54, and Kalpana Das, 49, also died while descending the mountain on Thursday, according to Mira Acharya, the director of Nepal’s Department of Tourism. Their cause of deaths is not yet known, she added.
The news comes after it was confirmed that an American man from Utah also died earlier this week having reached the summit and fulfilling his life’s dream, his children told NBC affiliate KSL-TV. Don Cash, 55, was a passionate climber who had left his job to join the "Seven Summits Club," — in which climbers attempt to summit the highest mountain on every continent.
May 23, 201902:03
Five climbers have died on Mount Everest since the beginning of the climbing season which started on May 14, according to Acharya. She said the fifth climber was a 28-year-old Indian national, Mr. Ravi, who died on May 17.
Tweeting a picture of a long line of climbers waiting to get to the summit on Wednesday, the British broadcaster and adventurer Ben Fogle, the U.N. Patron of the Wilderness, called on the countries that share Everest to limit the number of climbers on the mountain suggesting instead for a marathon-style lottery system for climbing permits.
Since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of the mountain in 1953, attempting the 29,029 ft peak has become more and more popular. Expeditions can cost tens of thousands of dollars, according to the British Mountaineering Council. A total of 560 people reached the summit of Everest last year, according to Acharya.
Poudel explained the mountain was busy during peak season. “There’s a long queue during the summertime as there’s a limited window to climb — a lot of people tried to summit yesterday and day before," she said, using a British word for line.
Poudel said that lines to reach the summit started from the balcony area of the mountain but said she did not know how long Bagwan had been waiting there. “Before you reach the summit you have to wait and every minute counts at the height,” she explained, but cautioned that she could not say if waiting there had caused Bagwan’s death.
“You’ve been walking since 8 a.m. the day before without eating or a proper rest and exposed to that temperature there’s a high risk of being frostbitten and hypothermia,” she added.
Poudel said that Bagwan was barely conscious when Sherpas brought him down to Camp 4 — the last pit-stop ahead of what is commonly referred to as the “death zone” before the summit. He died there at around 11.30 p.m. Thursday night, she added.
She would not comment on whether officials should limit the number of climbers on the mountain but acknowledged that if there were fewer people it would reduce the risk that they suffer from exhaustion in the line. “Waiting for hours at that kind of height really takes a toll,” she said.
Acharya, of the Department of Tourism, said she could not comment on the question of whether the lines were dangerous for climbers.
Saphora Smith
Saphora Smith is a London-based reporter for NBC News Digital.
