New U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a call on Friday with Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son in which he urged Vietnam to address trade imbalances and also discussed shared concerns about China. In the call, the first between the two top diplomats under the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, the two hailed the 30th anniversary of U.S.-Vietnam relations and progress made under a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership the countries agreed in 2023, a State Department statement said. While praising the two countries' economic cooperation, Rubio "encouraged Vietnam to address trade imbalances," it said.
Tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists, joined by masked neo-Nazis, converged in Washington on Friday to hear President Donald Trump address a rally.Makovey, a 27-year-old construction worker, told AFP that he supported Trump's recent decision to pardon 23 anti-abortion activists jailed for blockading abortion clinics.
Two US military planes carrying dozens of expelled migrants arrived in Guatemala on Friday, authorities said, without specifying whether they were part of the deportation operation launched by President Donald Trump.The second, with an unspecified number of migrants on board, arrived Friday morning.
Fighting has escalated sharply in recent weeks in eastern Congo, where rebels have seized key towns and are closing in on the city of Goma, the government’s last stronghold in the region bordering Rwanda. The offensive by the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group has stretched local hospitals to the limit, with hundreds of wounded coming in every day as civilians get caught in the crossfire. Explosions from Goma's outskirts have been reverberating across the city of 2 million people this week.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a bid led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a case testing the separation of church and state. A lower court blocked the establishment of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, ruling that its funding arrangement violated the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment limits on government endorsement of religion. The Supreme Court took up an appeal of that ruling by a state school board and the organizers of the proposed school.
U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the name changes as part of a flurry of executive actions hours after taking office on Monday, making good on a campaign promise. "As directed by the President, the Gulf of Mexico will now officially be known as the Gulf of America and North America's highest peak will once again bear the name Mount McKinley," the Interior Department said in a statement.
Nigerian soldiers killed 79 militants and suspected kidnappers over the past week, the army said Friday, in an operation targeting a decades-long insurgency by Islamic militants in the northeast and attacks by various armed groups in the northwest. The West African country has been ramping up efforts to secure the country as some 35,000 civilians have been killed and more than 2 million displaced in the northeastern region, according to the U.N. Kidnappings have become a common occurrence in Nigeria’s northwest, where dozens of armed groups exploit the region’s limited security presence to carry out attacks on villages and along major roads.
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to take on a new culture war dispute: whether the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school should be allowed to open in Oklahoma. The justices said they would review an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision that invalidated a state board's approval of an application by the Catholic Church in Oklahoma to open a charter school. The conservative-dominated high court has issued several decisions in recent years signaling a willingness to allow public funds to flow to religious entities.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio clashed with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi over Taiwan on Friday, with Donald Trump's top diplomat denouncing Beijing's "coercive" moves."The secretary also stressed the United States' commitment to our allies in the region and serious concern over China's coercive actions against Taiwan and in the South China Sea," she said.
President Donald Trump's administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to put on hold planned arguments in a bid by fuel producers to challenge California's standards for vehicle emissions and electric cars under a federal air pollution law. The new Republican administration also made similar requests in three other cases involving the actions of federal agencies, giving an early indication that it will take a fresh look at a number of legal issues before the court and potentially change positions from Trump's Democratic predecessor Joe Biden. The expected changes in the government's position may be a closer ideological fit for the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority, which includes three justices appointed by Trump.
A Washington state woman has been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont on Monday.
Vice President JD Vance on Friday told anti-abortion activists at the March for Life rally in Washington that the country had failed its citizens.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has halted all pending environmental litigation and reassigned four career Justice Department attorneys focused on environmental issues, according to three sources familiar with the matter and a pair of memos seen by Reuters on Friday. The memos order the division not to file any new lawsuits or other legal briefs and to halt all pending settlements and consent decrees to give the new Republican administration time to reconsider previously agreed deals. The change, one of the memos said, is meant to ensure the federal government "speaks with one voice in its view of the law and to ensure the president's appointees or designees have the opportunity to decide whether to initiate any new cases."
Though ICE has an online tip form for anonymously reporting suspected criminal activity, the agency said it isn't offering $750 rewards.
The former “Chairman” of the Proud Boys struck a cautious and less rambunctious tone than in the past in his first major interview since his release.
A jury acquitted New England Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers on Friday in his assault and battery trial.
A TIME analysis found that nearly two-thirds of the executive actions Trump has issued mirror or partially mirror proposals from Project 2025.
Hundreds of truckloads of aid have entered Gaza since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire began last weekend, but its distribution inside the devastated territory remains an enormous challenge.The needs are enormous, though, particularly in the north, and it may take longer for the aid surge to have an impact in all parts of the territory.
Four young women soldiers, abducted by Palestinian militants on October 7, 2023 while serving near the Gaza border, are set to be released on Saturday, according to a list provided by Hamas as part of its ceasefire agreement with Israel.Three other women soldiers were taken hostage with them: Agam Berger, who is still held in Gaza and presumed alive; Noa Marciano, whose body has since been repatriated to Israel; and Ori Megidish, who was freed alive by the Israeli military in late October 2023.
More than four years after his death, Richard Lapointe's family is set to receive a nearly $5.9 million award from Connecticut for his wrongful, quarter-century imprisonment that ended in 2015 when his murder conviction was overturned in the rape and killing of his wife's 88-year-old grandmother. Lapointe's case became a cause celebre, receiving widespread publicity from advocates for the disabled and celebrities, including writers Arthur Miller and William Styron, who called for his release. The award by the state claims commissioner's office, which now moves to the legislature for approval, was issued Jan. 2 after years of legal battles between Lapointe's lawyers and the state attorney general's office.