John McCain, a maverick Republican, dies at 81

WASHINGTON — US Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who ran for president in 2008 as a maverick Republican and became a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, died on Saturday. He was 81.

An Arizona senator for more than three decades, McCain had been suffering from glioblastoma, a brain cancer, since July 2017 and had not been at the US Capitol this year.

He died on Saturday afternoon at his ranch in Arizona with his wife Cindy and other family members at his bedside. 

McCain frequently battled with Trump and his family has said he did not want the president to attend his funeral.

Flags flew at half-staff at the White House on Sunday. Trump has Tweeted his "deepest sympathies and respect" to McCain's family.

All five living former presidents — Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter — paid tribute to McCain's courage and character.

McCain will lie in state in both Phoenix, Arizona, and in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, DC.

He will receive a military funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral, where Vice President Mike Pence was expected to attend, before being buried at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Cindy McCain said her husband had "passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the place he loved best".

McCain's death brings to 50 the number of Republican-held seats in the 100-member US Senate, with Democrats controlling 49. Republican Arizona Governor Doug Ducey will appoint a member of his own party to succeed McCain after the funeral.

That could also give Republicans a slight edge in the battle to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court because McCain had been too ill to vote this year.