The Guardian

Golden Tempo surges to take Kentucky Derby as Cherie DeVaux becomes first female trainer to win

Golden Tempo won the 152nd Kentucky Derby on Saturday, making Cherie DeVaux the first woman to train the winner of the opening leg of the Triple Crown.Ridden by Jose Ortiz, Golden Tempo – who was at the back of the back early – charged down the stretch to make history for DeVaux in the 1 1/8-mile race at Churchill Downs in Louisville, winning at odds of 23-1. Renegade was second, with brother Irad Ortiz Jr aboard, and long shot Ocelli (70-1) was third.“I don’t even have any words right now,” DeVaux said. “I just can’t. Just so, so so happy for Golden Tempo. Jose did a wonderful job, a masterful job of getting him there. He was so far out of it.”DeVaux is just the second female trainer to win any Triple Crown race after Jena Antonucci with Arcangelo in the 2023 Belmont Stakes. She won the Derby in her first opportunity, eight years since starting her own stable.“I’m glad I can be a representative of all women everywhere that we can do anything we set our minds do,” DeVaux said.Cherie DeVaux is the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner. Photograph: Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesDuring the week, DeVaux shifted

Person found dead in car after it plows into health club in Portland, Oregon

A person was found dead after a vehicle plowed into a health club in downtown Portland, Oregon, early Saturday morning, police said. Investigators later found explosives inside the car.Portland police and the Portland fire and rescue department responded to the Multnomah Athletic Club shortly before 3am after the vehicle crashed through the front entrance and caught fire. Once the blaze was brought under control, a person was found dead inside the vehicle, police said in a statement.An explosive disposal unit was called in after evidence of an explosive device was discovered, police said.Sources said the driver of the vehicle was a former employee of the club, the Oregonian newspaper reported. According to investigators, one of the sources said, the former employee – allegedly disgruntled and with mental health issues – rented a car on Friday, which he used to drive into the building and around the first floor of the facility before setting off the explosive devices, believed to be a mix of propane tanks and pipe bombs, the Oregonian reported.The club’s first floor housed a casual restaurant, formal event spaces, a members’ lounge overlooking Providence Park, a retail store and the front desk. Other amenities included workout rooms, pools,

Two buses, three hours and 13 miles: how Americans in ‘transit deserts’ get groceries without cars

Zen’Yari Winters’ job, at a pet shop in East Memphis, Tennessee, should be a 20-minute trip from her house. She leaves herself three hours to get there. “The bus is always, always late,” she said – if it shows up at all.It’s not just her work commute that’s affected by the time-consuming guessing game that is riding with the Memphis Area Transit Authority (Mata). The only full-service grocer in the Chelsea-Hollywood area where she lives closed in 2025. To shop for food in person, she could take two buses for a 13-mile (20km) trip to Walmart. But she risks waiting at bus stops for hours with perishables – or shelling out about $24 for an Uber back.So instead, every two weeks, she buys at least $35 worth of groceries online to avoid a $6.99 fee for a smaller order and pays a $7 monthly delivery charge not covered by her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits. “That’s literally my only option,” she said.Winters is just one of 16 million Americans without cars and one of almost 25 million living in a “transit desert” where the public transportation supply is lower than demand. For them, accessing healthy, affordable food is both

Spirit Airlines ceases operations and US transportation secretary announces measures to help passengers

The US secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, has announced a series of measures to help Spirit Airlines passengers following the low-cost airline’s collapse early on Saturday after running out of cash and the failure of rescue talks with the Trump administration.Duffy said that larger US airlines, including United, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest, had agreed to cap ticket prices specifically for Spirit customers who need to rebook canceled flights, subject to a Spirit flight confirmation number and proof of payment.American Airlines and Delta Air Lines would also offer reduced fares on high-volume Spirit routes, and ultra-low-cost carrier Allegiant has committed to freezing fares across routes that overlap with the failed carrier. A third airline, Frontier, would offer a 50% base-fare reduction to affected travelers, it was announced.Duffy also said in a statement on X that most major US carriers will extend travel pass benefits and spare seats to Spirit pilots, flight attendants and other employees who need to return home after being stranded by the company’s collapse.Spirit once operated hundreds of daily flights on its bright yellow planes and employed about 17,000 people, but early on Saturday it announced that after 34 years in business it had “with great disappointment …

‘They don’t belong in our environment’: US vineyards battle spotted lanternflies as invasive insects spread

Around grape harvest time about three years ago, an employee at Zephaniah Farm Vineyard in Leesburg, Virginia, noticed bugs, about 1in long with gray and black wings and a bright red underwing, atop some trees.While the insects were pretty, they were there for the grapevines and not welcome guests at the vineyard, which sits atop a farm that the Zephaniah family has run since 1949.They were spotted lanternflies, invasive insects that probably played a role in the fact that the vineyard produced about half as many grapes in 2025 as the previous year, according to Tremain Hatch, a co-owner and viticulturist.“If we spend as much time farming the grapes but we have half the crop and we’re able to make half the wine, that is not a good thing,” Hatch said.Zephaniah Farm is not the only US business that has seen lanternflies suck away their revenue.Their US population has increased in recent years and affected the winemaking and forestry sectors. In New York, for example, researchers estimated that the bugs could cost wineries millions of dollars.Scientists are uncertain what the lanternfly population numbers could look like this summer and fall, but they expect them to continue to spread across the

From Mumford & Sons to ‘free speech’ YouTuber: Winston Marshall’s dramatic career change

On a Los Angeles stage in 2011 Winston Marshall, then the banjo player for the folk rock band Mumford & Sons, could scarcely believe what was happening. Not only was he playing at the Grammys, he was playing alongside Bob Dylan, legendary composer of social justice anthems and one of his heroes.About 15 years later, Marshall once again found himself stateside, this time on a very different stage. Appearing on Fox News in his new guise as a conservative YouTuber, Marshall advocated what he admitted was an “outlandish idea” to stop small boat crossings in the Channel.It would be feasible, he argued, to blockade one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes with a giant floating wall, armed with mines. He also described those making the crossing as “military-aged men” – a regular descriptor deployed by the right.Both the extreme nature of Marshall’s suggestion, and the fact he delivered it on American right’s premier platform, marked the next stage in his evolution from pop star to the latest conservative “free speech” YouTuber.Winston Marshall quit Mumford & Sons following controversy around his support for Unmasked, a book decrying the leftist protest movement antifa. Photograph: Tim Mosenfelder/WireImageThe fact that he is the son

At 41, LeBron James is turning back the clock and taking the Lakers on a storybook playoff run

The date is 12 March, and the Los Angeles Lakers are in the midst of a run that’s garnering a lot of well-deserved attention, in a month that sees them lose just two contests and win 15. The spirit of the locker room is at an all-time high, and it’s clear in talking to LeBron James, the 41-year-old storied veteran and greatest-of-all-time candidate who recently put his ego aside to accept a role as the team’s third option, that he believes what many around the NBA are starting to as well: his Lakers have a real shot at contention.“As you get older, you appreciate the moment more than anything. When you’re younger, you think about what you’ve done in the past, or what’s to come in the future,” he tells me when I ask how he’s been able to be so present of late, in light of the ups and downs of a topsy-turvy Lakers season. “But the only thing that we know for sure is happening is the moment.”The sentiment was more poignant than even James knew at the time. The wind would be swiftly and mercilessly knocked out of those buoyant sails just a few short weeks later,

‘Living in survival mode’: Houston’s embattled immigrant community faces health, climate and petrochemical crises

Cándido Álvarez has made it his policy never to go to the doctor.“Not when I’m sick, not even when it’s serious,” he said. “I prefer not to go.”So when, amid one of Houston’s increasingly sweltering summers recently, he said his body temperature reached a whopping 120F during his construction job at an unventilated bodega – and when blood in his urine indicated that such extreme heat exposure was likely damaging his kidneys – he acknowledged it was an alarm bell. But not enough of one to get him to the emergency room.He remembers how just four hours at the hospital when he had Covid-19 landed him with a $7,500 bill.“I’m going to die not so much from the illness but from thinking about how I’m going to pay the rent,” he said.Originally from Honduras, Álvarez, 47, is an undocumented immigrant who has lived in the US since 2015 and in Houston for almost as long. Unlike his wife and three kids, he doesn’t have health insurance, despite constantly facing risks on the job such as contact with mold and insulation debris, threats made worse by bosses who don’t provide basic safety equipment such as masks and eye protection.He has often

Rescuers release humpback whale that was stranded off German coast

Rescuers have released a young humpback whale that became a national sensation after it was beached in shallow waters off the coast in Germany, although marine experts have said its chances of survival are low.The whale, variously nicknamed Timmy or Hope, was released into the North Sea off Denmark after being transported there in a water-filled barge by rescuers.The 10-metre long calf swam out of the barge and was later observed blowing through its blowhole and swimming freely “in the right direction”, according to Karin Walter-Mommert from the rescue initiative.The rescue attempt had been criticised by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) as “inadvisable” because the whale appeared to be “severely compromised” and was unlikely to survive after its release.Experts from the Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund on Germany’s Baltic coast also recommended the creature should be left to die in peace.The whale has been described as lethargic and covered in blister-like blemishes, and parts of its mouth were believed to be caught in a fishing net.The whale that was stranded in the Baltic Sea off the German coast since March, blows a fountain at the open North Sea on 2 May after leaving a floating barge that had been towing him.

‘We have to mock the site’s insanity’: comedian Tim Heidecker on the allure of becoming Infowars’ new boss

Tim Heidecker on the Onion’s potential Infowars takeover: ‘I think for a little while it’s going to be fun to play with [Jones] and just keep reminding people of what an oaf he is.’ Composite: The Guardian/Getty ImagesIf you’ve tuned in to Infowars over the years, you might have heard a very angry man screaming about the 2020 election being stolen for “reanimated corpse” Joe Biden, or chemicals in the water turning frogs gay, or the Sandy Hook school shooting, which killed 20 children and six staff members, being faked. Founded in 1999, Alex Jones’s Infowars has long been a platform for toxic conspiracy theories with real-life consequences, in addition to weird dietary supplements. But if the Onion has its way, the InfoWars of the future will have a very different impact.The satirical newspaper has been working for several years to take over the site, amid legal battles over Jones’s false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. Pending a Texas court’s approval, the platform could soon be in the hands of the Onion and a newly installed creative director, comedian Tim Heidecker, known for his surreal sketches and mockery of the far right. The result would be the transformation

Less financial stability, smaller social safety nets: inside the gen Z investing boom

Ambrico Ranginui first heard of cryptocurrencies when he was 12 years old. By the time he was 16, he had saved enough from birthday gifts and his allowance to invest.“Growing up in a single mum household, it made me quite a determined person to get ahead,” Ranginui said. “I wanted to find new avenues to make money and crypto was so fascinating at the time.”He’s part of a new boom of gen Z investors who have jumped into markets more enthusiastically than previous generations, and are putting money into everything from safe-haven bonds to AI startups, earlier than ever before.Nearly 30% of the generation born between 1997 and 2012 started putting money into markets in early adulthood, before they even entered the workforce, compared to just 15% of millennials and 9% of gen X, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) report.Crypto taught Ranginui a fast, painful lesson about financial markets’ volatility. Ranginui said he lived in a state of stress and anxiety for about a year, constantly checking his investments instead of living in the moment with his friends or in his classes.He won’t say how much he lost, but it was enough to stop investing in crypto. “There

‘Go inside, he will kill you’: Israeli militants step up West Bank school attacks

The Israeli reservist shot 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan in the head just outside the western gate of the Mughayyir boys’ secondary school, where he was studying in ninth grade.Aws collapsed instantly, bleeding heavily. More shots rang out as his friends ran to his side, picked up his now-limp body and rushed him out of the line of fire, their path along the school wall marked by a trail of their classmate’s blood.Footage from inside the building showed terrified children and teachers crouched in stairwells, shouting at others to get down. Another video captured the shooter, a reservist in partial military uniform, taking aim at the school from the hillside above.Children and teachers crouch in stairwell as shots ring out – videoA few minutes later the same man killed the younger brother of an English teacher Waheed Abu Naim, whose family live beside the school. Jihad Abu Naim was 36; his wife is heavily pregnant with the couple’s first child, a girl due this month.Aws and Abu Naim were shot dead on 21 April amid a wave of settler violence in the occupied West Bank, much of which has targeted schools and students in the territory.Mughayyir, a village of about 3,000 people

Trump says US navy like ‘pirates’ while seizing a ship in Iranian blockade

Donald Trump has said the US navy acted “like pirates” as he described an operation seizing a ship amid the tit-for-tat American blockade of Iranian ports.“We … land on top of it and we took over the ship. We took over the cargo, took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” said Trump at a rally in Florida on Friday.“We’re like pirates,” he added to cheers from the crowd. “We’re sort of like pirates. But we’re not playing games.”Trump’s comparison of US naval activity to piracy comes as legal experts raise alarms about Iran’s blockade of the vital strait of Hormuz and its plans to charge a fee for ships passing through it.Tehran effectively closed the waterway – a key route for oil and gas shipments – after the start of the US-Israeli air campaign against Iran on 28 February.The US announced a blockade of Iranian ports last month after peace talks in Pakistan failed to achieve a breakthrough.The US Central Command, responsible for US forces in the Middle East, said it had redirected 45 vessels to “ensure compliance” with its blockade as of Friday.Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon chief, told reporters in April that the blockade will last “as

Steve Hilton: could this British former Fox News host be California’s next governor?

Few political aspirations have proved more futile over the past two decades than running as a Republican for statewide office in California. Yet Steve Hilton – transplanted Brit, erstwhile business entrepreneur, a former Downing Street adviser to David Cameron and a former Fox News host who says he is friends with half of Donald Trump’s cabinet – is having a remarkably good time of it.With less than six weeks to go before a primary election that has proved to be both dramatic and wildly unpredictable, most polls put Hilton narrowly ahead of a fractured field of Democrats in the race to succeed Gavin Newsom as governor. It is an astonishing turn of events in a state where Democrats enjoy supermajorities in the state legislature and a two-to-one advantage over the Republicans in voter registration.Hilton and a second Republican polling in the top tier, Riverside county sheriff Chad Bianco, have been boosted in part by disarray in the Democratic ranks, where no candidate has emerged as a clear frontrunner in a crowded field and one leading contender, Eric Swalwell, was drummed out of the race and out of politics last month following sexual assault and misconduct allegations. Swallwell has strongly denied

‘Deplorable’: ICE hires firm accused of ‘torture’ to track down undocumented children

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has awarded a contract to a private security company that has faced accusations of “torture” and “enforced disappearance” to assist in tracking down undocumented immigrant children who arrived in the US alone, a contracting document shows.ICE has stepped up its work so much in pursuing these minors in the US that it has contracted out some of its mission to a third party to put “boots on the ground” and locate immigrant children previously released from US government custody.The agency characterizes the work of tracing immigrant children who reached the US without authorization and were released into communities while they go through immigration court proceedings as “safety and wellness checks”. ICE says it wants to confirm the children’s location, school enrollment and overall wellness, including checking for signs of abuse or trafficking, according to the contracting document.But an internal ICE document reviewed by the Guardian last year shows ICE actually runs the operations with the aim of deporting the children or pursuing criminal cases against them – or their adult sponsors sheltering them legally in the US. A critic at the time called ICE’s efforts “backdoor family separation”.“Accusations that ICE is ‘targeting’ and arresting

German museum to return rare Irritator dinosaur skull to Brazil

It is a 113-million-year-old bone of contention.After Stuttgart’s museum of natural history bought a fossilised dinosaur skull in 1991, researchers found it was the most complete spinosaurid skull known to date, belonging to a previously unknown genus of the huge meat-eating dinosaurs.Palaeontologists studying the skull in 1996 dubbed the genus Irritator – reflecting the annoyance they felt when they discovered the snout had been tinkered with – and the particular species challengeri, after Professor Challenger from Arthur Conan Doyle’s dinosaur adventure novel, The Lost World.But as study after study was published, other interested parties were watching with irritations of their own: experts in Brazil, where the skull is believed to have originated.According to a Brazilian law passed in 1942, fossils found in the country belong to the state, and, since 1990, specimens can be exported only with a permit and a partnership with a Brazilian scientific institution.No one knows exactly when Irritator was dug up, or when it left Brazil, so its precise legal status has been a matter of deep concern.Now, thanks to what has been described as as a major achievement in global restitution, Irritator challengeri is heading home.A joint declaration by Germany and Brazil issued this month

The White House power play post-dinner shooting: do what we say or else

Less than 72 hours after a man was arrested for trying to assassinate Donald Trump at the White House, the justice department rushed to court to make an extraordinary filing.The subject of the emergency was a lawsuit by the National Trust for Historic Preservation seeking to halt the construction of a new White House ballroom. A federal judge ruled earlier this month that construction had to stop, though an appeals court later paused that ruling.Filled with vitriolic language, the purpose of DoJ’s Monday filing was to make clear that the failed assassination attempt only strengthened the administration’s argument for why a new ballroom was needed. “Saturday’s narrow miss – which marks the third assassination attempt on President Trump since 2024 – confirms what should have already been obvious: presidents need a secure space for large events, that currently does not exist in Washington DC, and this court’s injunction stalling this project cannot defensibly continue, for the sake of the safety of President Trump, future presidents, and their families, cabinets, and staff.”The episode was one of several this week that underscores how the Trump administration is willing to quickly capitalize on cases of violence to pursue its political goals. The administration

‘One of the most profound encounters of my life’: could existential therapist Emmy van Deurzen change the way you think?

The existential therapist Emmy van Deurzen moved to the UK inspired by RD Laing, the Scottish anti-psychiatrist who said insanity is a “perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world”. It was 1977 and Van Deurzen, who is Dutch and had studied philosophy and psychology in France, found work with the Arbours Association in London, a therapeutic community based on Laing’s ideas, in which people in crisis, psychiatrists and therapists lived together as equals. It was a rude awakening.Arbours aimed to create space for people to “explore their madness”. “Now that was a very interesting idea,” Van Duerzen says, “but in practice it meant that people self-medicated, with alcohol and pot, and it was not a happy situation.” The residents were often very depressed or psychotic, and it was common to be woken up at night because someone was seeing things or had become suicidal. Van Deurzen came to believe that anti-psychiatry had “lost courage”: it had proposed a different way of thinking about madness, but having released people from asylums and taken them off neuroleptic drugs, it was “kind of leaving them to it”. “And this is what I realised wasn’t good enough,” she says. When people are experiencing a

‘Such huge consequences’: pressure mounts on France to act on enslavement reparatory justice

In the French port city of Nantes, once France’s largest departure point for ships that trafficked enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, a new wooden mast rises 18 metres into the sky from the waterside.The Mast of Fraternity and Memory, inaugurated this month, marks a turning point in France’s complicated relationship with the legacy of its history of enslavement – just as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, comes under pressure to make key announcements on a process of reparatory justice.“We’re not responsible for the past, but we are responsible for the present and future,” said Dieudonné Boutrin, a descendant of enslaved Africans who were trafficked from Benin to the French Caribbean island of Martinique.Dieudonné Boutrin: ‘We’re not responsible for the past, but we are responsible for the present and future.’Boutrin, 61, who created the mast, heads the grassroots organisation La Coque Nomade Fraternité, dedicated to “breaking the silence” around slavery and fostering discussion on reparatory justice and community relations.The mast, a permanent, standalone structure, is unlike any other commemoration piece in France: conceived by descendants of enslaved people and built by local students at vocational colleges. Inaugurated this month alongside a new International Federation of Descendants of the History of Slavery,

‘We feel angry – and we have reason to be’: Brazil’s resurgent punk scene is a howl of outrage at injustice

As black-clad police combatants charged into the hillside favela and opened fire, a black-clad punk scurried out of the community in the opposite direction, his hands trembling from fright.“Holy shit! All those guns! Things are getting ugly!” spluttered Rodrigo Cilirio, the founder and bassist of one of Rio’s most enduring punk bands, as he took cover behind a tree.It was here in the Morro da Lagartixa on Rio’s volatile northside that Cilirio’s group, Repressão Social (Social Repression), was born just over 30 years ago: a howl of rage against the relentless cycle of urban violence, police brutality, deprivation and discrimination that continues to plague the outskirts of Brazil’s largest cities.Veteran punk Rodrigo Cilirio at his home in the Morro da Lagartixa (Lizard Hill) favela in Rio, a day after a neighbour was shot during a police operation. Photograph: Alan Lima/The Guardian“[Punk] is my way of letting it all out so I don’t choke to death. It’s my voice,” Cilirio, 47, explained while waiting for the gunfire to subside near the favela where he grew up.“This is what we are exposed to,” the black musician sighed of that morning’s gun battle, during which one local was shot in the leg. “Punks

‘It’s super weird, super odd, super rare’: meet the twins who have different dads

I like being a twin. It defines who I am,” Lavinia Osbourne tells me on the 49th birthday she shares with her sister, Michelle. “It’s amazing to have a twin and have a built-in friend for ever,” Michelle says. “I’ve been really blessed to go through this journey with someone else.”Lavinia and Michelle know that those of us who haven’t shared a womb with a sibling can be fascinated by twins: their similarities, how they differ, whether there’s any kind of mysterious synergy between them.“There’s twin magic. It does exist – it’s a thing,” Michelle says. “I can feel when she’s upset, and she can feel when I’m upset.” They have even felt each other’s physical pain, Lavinia says. “There was a time when she spilled hot water on her leg, and I felt it.”Lavinia and Michelle aren’t identical twins. They share the same striking eyes, but the lower halves of their faces are different. Their personalities differ, too: Michelle describes herself as a “homebod”, an introvert who would prefer to mark her birthday with a candle on a sponge cake, whereas Lavinia, the self-proclaimed “exuberant” twin, wants to make a night of it at a Cuban cabaret show. They’re

The tipping point: what happens when deaths outnumber births?

In Japan, there are now companies that specialise in cleaning the apartments of elderly people who have died alone and gone undiscovered for weeks or months, while adult incontinence pads have outstripped nappy sales for more than a decade. In Italy, depopulating villages are selling homes for €1 to attract new residents and keep services running. In the UK, falling pupil numbers are already closing schools and classrooms in parts of London.These are not isolated curiosities, but signs of a broader shift taking place across much of the developed world. “In the EU in 2024, 21 of 27 countries had more deaths than births,” said Prof Sarah Harper, the director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing. Across Asia and the Americas, too – from Japan and South Korea, to Cuba and Uruguay – many countries are seeing the same pattern.It reflects two long-running demographic changes: people are living longer, and the average number of children they are having – something demographers refer to as fertility – is falling.In the UK, the latest projections from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that deaths will outnumber births every year from 2026 onwards, driven by falling fertility and the large, postwar

Ukraine war briefing: Russian oil hub of Tuapse hit for fourth time as environmental disaster mounts

Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Black Sea port of Tuapse on Friday for the fourth time in 16 days as authorities struggled to cope with a growing environmental disaster from toxic black smoke clouds and oil leaking into the sea. Ukraine’s SBU security service said drones had again struck the seaport and refinery that make Tuapse an important hub for Russian oil exports. Local Russian officials said a major operation was under way to put out a fire at the port but no casualties were reported. The refinery has been hit and set ablaze at least twice since 16 April, halting production, in attacks that have thrown up dense black clouds over the town and caused oil slicks along the coastline, ruining the beaches of the popular resort. Russian authorities had so far cleared more than 13,300 cubic metres of fuel oil and contaminated soil along the coast, they said on Friday. State TV showed a reporter standing on a blackened beach and using a spade to show how deep the oozing filth had seeped. Russia launched almost 410 drones at Ukraine in a daytime attack that including injuring 10 people in the western city of Ternopil, Ukrainian officials said on

US appeals court blocks mail-order access to abortion drugs

Access to mifepristone, the FDA-approved medication used to end pregnancy, could become severely limited following a ruling from US appeals court on Friday, which temporarily blocked the drug from being dispensed through the mail.The decision is for now the most sweeping threat to abortion access since the supreme court rolled back abortion rights in 2022, said Kelly Baden, vice-president at the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights advocacy group.“If allowed to stand, it would severely restrict access to mifepristone in every state, including those where abortion is broadly legal and where voters have acted to protect abortion rights,” she said.The so-called “abortion pill” is part of a two-drug regimen backed by decades of evidence for its efficacy and safety, and is used in the majority of abortions in the US.Usage has risen in recent years, especially in the aftermath of the 2022 ruling from the supreme court that overturned federal protections for a right to an abortion. In the year after that decision, the FDA formally modified its regulations to allow the drug to be prescribed online, expanding its use even in states where abortion care was being constricted.The drug has become a key target for the anti-abortion movement, and a

Trump news at a glance: US troops to be pulled from Germany as president’s feud with Nato allies intensifies

It appears Donald Trump is following through on his threats to reduce US military presence in Europe.The Pentagon announced on Friday that 5,000 troops will be withdrawn from Germany over the next six to 12 months.The president’s move to reduce the number of personnel deployed in Germany came after the country’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said the US was being “humiliated” by Iran.A senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said recent German rhetoric had been “inappropriate and unhelpful”. Trump has also threatened Italy and Spain for not helping to reopen the strait of Hormuz.The pending withdrawal comes amid a widening rift between the US and Nato allies over the war in Iran. Germany is the US military’s biggest basing location in Europe, with about 35,000 active-duty military personnel, and serves as a key training hub.US withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany after Merz says US ‘humiliated’ by IranIt is unclear how much support Trump would have for a significant drawdown. Since the end of the cold war, US bases in Europe have become key forward-staging sites and logistical hubs for US military operations, launching and supporting wars including in Iraq, Afghanistan and, most recently, Iran.Read the full storyVideo shows moment

Judge blocks Trump administration from deporting 3,000 Yemeni refugees

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from forcing about 3,000 Yemeni refugees to leave the US, ruling that temporary protected status repeatedly granted to them and due to expire Monday should be extended again.Judge Dale E Ho in Manhattan extended the status temporarily while a lawsuit seeking to preserve the protections plays out. In an emergency order, he wrote that people granted the status are ordinary, law-abiding people whom the US government had determined could face threats to their safety if they were returned to a country facing an ongoing armed conflict.Amid its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has terminated temporary protected status for people from nine countries, including Haiti, Venezuela and Ethiopia. Before Ho’s ruling, protections for Yemeni refugees were set to end on Monday, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.People with temporary protected status are eligible to remain in the US, may not be removed from the country and are able to receive work and travel authorization.In his ruling, Ho criticized former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, saying Congress had established a process for temporary protected status to be altered or rescinded, but she had not followed it.He was particularly critical of a social

US withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany after Merz says US ‘humiliated’ by Iran

The US is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany, the Pentagon announced on Friday, as Donald Trump also threatened Italy and Spain for not helping to reopen the strait of Hormuz.The president’s move to reduce the number of personnel deployed in Germany came after the country’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said the US was being “humiliated” by Iran.A senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said recent German rhetoric had been “inappropriate and unhelpful”.“The president is rightly reacting to these counterproductive remarks,” the official said.The Pentagon said the withdrawal was expected to be completed over the next six to 12 months.A brigade combat team now in Germany will be pulled out and a long-range fires battalion the Biden administration had planned to begin deploying to Germany later this year will no longer deploy, the official said.Germany is the US military’s biggest basing location in Europe, with about 35,000 active-duty military personnel, and serves as a key training hub.The withdrawal from Germany comes amid a widening rift between the US and Nato allies over the war in Iran.Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has spoken out against the US-Israeli war on Iran from the start, while Rome had performed a balancing act until

Bard president Leon Botstein stepping down after inquiry into his Epstein ties

Leon Botstein has announced he is stepping down from the helm of Bard College, after an independent review of his contacts with Jeffrey Epstein found the college president’s frequent interactions with the convicted sex offender “could have alerted” him to the possibility that he and Bard would be facilitating Epstein’s abuse of women.An investigation by the WilmerHale law firm, which had been commissioned by Bard’s board of trustees earlier this year to review Botstein’s interactions with Epstein, found the Bard president – who had previously claimed he was not friends with Epstein – made about 25 visits to Epstein’s townhouse, a two-day visit to Epstein’s Little St James Island, and that there were two visits by Epstein to Bard. These visits, WilmerHale reported, included “multiple women” who have since been identified as victims of Epstein.Epstein and Botstein, who has not been charged with wrongdoing in connection with his relationship with the accused sex trafficker, were in contact from 2012 to 2019.The WilmerHale review also suggested that Botstein had been warned by a senior faculty member that he should not engage with Epstein, who the president was courting as a donor to the college. The report by Wilmer Hale found that

Ancient Roman gravestone found in New Orleans back yard returned to Italy

A nearly 2,000-year-old Roman grave marker discovered in a New Orleans backyard has now been returned to Italy.The marble epitaph – dating back roughly 1,900 years – was officially handed over to Italian officials in Rome on Wednesday during a ceremony led by the FBI. The event also marked the repatriation of another antiquity recovered in the US, the agency said.The artifact first came to light last year when Tulane University anthropologist Danielle Santoro and her husband, Aaron Lorenz, were clearing undergrowth in their yard. The couple noticed a slab with an unusually smooth surface and a carved inscription that appeared to be in Latin.Santoro reached out to experts, including the University of New Orleans archaeologist Ryan Gray, over concerns that their historic home might sit atop an unmarked burial site.Further analysis, assisted by Tulane University’s classical studies professor Susann Lusnia and other specialists, revealed the stone to be a grave marker dedicated to Sextus Congenius Verus, a Roman sailor and military figure believed to have lived in the second century. The artifact also matched records of a piece reported missing from the city museum in Civitavecchia, near Rome.The Roman grave marker, in the background, at a repatriation ceremony in

Trump tears up part of EU tariff deal to raise import duties on cars and lorries

Donald Trump has said he is tearing up part of the tariff deal he struck with EU leaders at his golf course in Scotland last summer, criticising Brussels for taking so long to ratify the deal.Blindsiding Brussels late on Friday, a public holiday in much of Europe, he announced that he would be increasing tariffs on cars and lorries imported into the US from the EU from 15% to 25% from next week.Vehicles made in the US by EU companies would be exempt from the increase, he wrote on Truth Social.“I am pleased to announce that, based on the fact the European Union is not complying with our full agreed to Trade Deal, next week I will be increasing Tariffs charged to the European Union for Cars and Trucks coming into the United States,” Trump wrote.In a follow-up comment, he said – appearing to refer to EU promises of investments – that “many automobile and truck plants are currently under construction with 100 Billion Dollars being invested, A RECORD in the History of Car and Truck Manufacturing. These Plants, staffed with American Workers will be Opening Soon.”The EU parliament’s international trade committee chair, the German MEP Bernd Lange, said:“This latest