When Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night for the first time in his second term, the make up of the packed crowd will serve as a reminder of political tensions that frame both the administration’s and the opposition’s most contentious policy arguments. The carefully curated guest list, assembled by the…

A bill that would have required women seeking medication abortions to get ultrasounds has been vetoed by Wyoming’s Republican governor, who questioned whether it was reasonable and necessary especially for victims of rape and incest. “Mandating this intimate, personally invasive, and often medically unnecessary procedure goes too far,” Mark Gordon wrote in a letter explaining…

The Trump administration appears to be walking back its directive to fire probationary employees. The reversal comes less than a week after a federal judge in California temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering the US defense department and other agencies to carry out the mass firings of some employees, including probationary employees who typically…

A 42-year-old woman has been charged with the murder of her two-year-old daughter who died after being found in a pond. Police were sent to a report that Annabel Mackey had gone missing from her home in Kingsley near Bordon, Hampshire, on 10 September 2023. The child was found a short time later at Kingsley…

The US state department has reinstated the “foreign terrorist organization” designation for Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi group, fulfilling an order announced by Donald Trump shortly after he took office. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced on Tuesday the department had restored the designation, which carries with it sanctions and penalties for anyone providing “material…

US Senate Democrats banded together to torpedo a Republican bill that would ban transgender athletes from women’s sports, defeating the legislation in a razor-sharp party-line vote of 51-45 on Monday evening. The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, led by Tommy Tuberville, a senator from Alabama, crashed before reaching the 60 votes needed…

Severe thunderstorms are forecast to batter the southern and central United States on Tuesday, with a threat of tornadoes, damaging winds, blizzards, flash flooding and dust storms possible from the southern Plains into the lower Mississippi Valley and south-east. Meteorologists warn that a line of powerful thunderstorms will probably sweep through Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and…

Warning: this article contains graphic details that some readers may find disturbing A man accused of killing his housemate in a “brutal attack” and scattering his body parts across parks and nature reserves in Greater Manchester sent text messages from the dead man’s phone in an effort to cover up the murder, a court has…

Invasive Asian hornets are eating hundreds of different species of insects in Europe, including many which are important pollinators, researchers have warned. The findings, from tests of the guts of more than 1,500 larvae, raise new concerns over the “extra threat” the hornet poses to native insects already under pressure from farming, changes in land…

Thirty officers at a southern California juvenile detention facility have been charged for their role in facilitating so-called “gladiator fights” between youth in their care, the state’s attorney general said on Monday. A grand jury indictment alleges the officers at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles county allowed and sometimes encouraged nearly 70 fights…