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U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled Tuesday that 14 states can proceed with their claims against Musk and DOGE. The states, through their attorneys general, sued in February over the defendants’ alleged constitutional violations.

The states had asked Chutkan to temporarily block DOGE from accessing any data systems or terminating any federal employees. But the judge denied that request on Feb. 18. She found that there were legitimate questions about Musk’s authority but said there weren’t grounds to justify a temporary restraining order.

Chutkan agreed Tuesday to dismiss President Donald Trump as a defendant in the lawsuit, but she refused to dismiss the claims against Musk and DOGE.

The billionaire entrepreneur, who supported Trump’s candidacy with at least $250 million and has worked for his administration as a senior adviser, said he was “disappointed” by what the president calls his “big beautiful bill.”

The legislation includes a mix of tax cuts and enhanced immigration enforcement. While speaking to CBS, Musk described it as a “massive spending bill” that increases the federal deficit and “undermines the work” of his Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.

“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful,” Musk said. “But I don’t know if it could be both.”

The progression of Ms Caldwell's addiction – from youthful misuse to life-threatening compulsion – has become increasingly common. The Annual Report of America's Poison Centers found there was a 58 % increase in reports of intentional exposure to nitrous oxide in the US between 2023-2024.

In a worst-case scenario, inhalation of nitrous oxide can lead to hypoxia, where the brain does not get enough oxygen. This can result in death. Regular inhalation can also lead to a Vitamin B12 deficiency which can cause nerve damage, degradation of the spinal column and even paralysis. The number of deaths attributed to nitrous oxide poisonings rose by more than 110% between 2019 and 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Until recently users would take single-use plain metal canisters weighing around 8g and inhale the gas using a balloon. But when usage spiked during the pandemic, nitrous oxide manufacturers began selling much larger canisters online – as large as 2kg – and, eventually, in shops selling electronic vapes and other smoking paraphernalia.

(Mary Trump, the US president’s niece and a vocal critic of his business and political career) explained that much of her understanding of her uncle comes from when she was in her 20s and Donald hired her to ghostwrite his second book.

“He is the only person I’ve ever met who’s never evolved, which is dangerous by the way,” she said. “Never choose as your leader somebody who’s incapable of evolving – that should be one of the lessons we’ve learned, for sure.”

“Donald didn’t have any friends, so she felt sorry for him, but whenever they included him, they regretted it. Nobody in Freddie’s circle could bear to be around this arrogant, self-important, humorless kid.

She added that she does not “understand people who are afraid of Donald, because he’s so pathetic. I would be embarrassed to be afraid of him.”

Speaking out in public or sharing footage of these “care homes”, or Dar al-Reaya, has become impossible in a country where voices on women’s rights appear to have been silenced. But over the past six months, the Guardian has gathered testimony about what it is like inside these institutions, described as “hellish”, with weekly floggings, forced religious teachings and no visits or contact with the outside world.

Conditions are reported to be so bad that there have been several cases of suicide or attempted suicide. The women can spend years locked up, unable to leave without the permission of their family or a male guardian.

“Every girl growing up in Saudi knows about Dar al-Reaya and how awful it is. It’s like hell. I tried to end my life when I found out I was going to be taken to one. I knew what happened to women there and thought ‘I can’t survive it’,” says one young Saudi woman who later managed to flee into exile.

Traces of glyphosate, a pesticide linked to cancer, has been found at very high levels in menstrual products, according to a report by the Pesticide Action Network UK (Pan UK), the Women’s Environmental Network and the Pesticide Collaboration.

This is concerning, according to the authors, because chemicals absorbed through the vagina directly enter the bloodstream, bypassing the body’s detoxification systems. This means even small traces of chemicals in direct contact with the vagina could cause health risks.

The researchers tested 15 boxes of tampons from UK retailers across a range of different popular brands. Glyphosate was found in tampons in one of the boxes, at 0.004 mg/kg. The UK and EU maximum residue level for drinking water is 0.0001 mg/kg, making this 40 times higher than permitted levels of glyphosate in drinking water.

There is an 80% chance that global temperatures will break at least one annual heat record in the next five years, raising the risk of extreme droughts, floods and forest fires, a new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has shown.

For the first time, the data also indicated a small likelihood that before 2030, the world could experience a year that is 2C hotter than the preindustrial era, a possibility scientists described as “shocking”.

In 2024, the 1.5C threshold was breached on an annual basis for the first time – an outcome that was considered implausible in any of the five-year predictions before 2014. Last year was the hottest in the 175-year observational record.

The state’s top court ruled that a district judge applied the wrong standard in rulings in December and February that allowed abortions to resume in the state. Nearly all abortions were halted under a ban that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

In Tuesday’s two-page ruling, the court ordered Judge Jerri Zhang to vacate her earlier orders and reevaluate the case using the standards the court laid out. Zhang ruled that she was allowing abortions to resume largely because advocates were likely to prevail in the case eventually. The Supreme Court said it should first consider whether there would be harms from allowing abortions to resume.

The state emphasized in their petition filed to the state Supreme Court in March that Planned Parenthood didn’t sufficiently prove women were harmed without the temporary blocks on the broad swath of laws and regulations on abortion services and providers. On the contrary, the state said Zhang’s decisions left abortion facilities “functionally unregulated” and women with “no guarantee of health and safety.”

Nusslock felt her civil rights were being violated, she said, even as she lay in the hospital bed curled in on herself, bleeding and mourning the loss of her twin girls. The doctor had said that her pregnancy needed to be terminated immediately to protect her from infection and other serious complications but hospital policy prohibited it, according to two lawsuits filed by Nusslock and California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Both complaints allege that Providence, the Catholic health system that owns St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka, illegally denied Nusslock emergency abortion care and discharged her instead. They also allege that multiple pregnant women have been denied abortions at St. Joseph Hospital during medical emergencies.

Catholic companies own about 13% of hospitals in California, but operate 20% of the state’s maternity wards, according to a CalMatters analysis of state data. In the rural northern counties, they represent an even greater share at 35%.

The labor prosecutors’ office in Bahia state said in a statement that they are seeking 257 million Brazilian reais ($50 million) in damages from BYD, China JinJiang Construction Brazil and Tecmonta Equipamentos Inteligentes.

The lawsuit stems from an investigation that led to the rescue last year of 220 Chinese workers from the construction site of BYD’s new factory in the city of Camaçari. Prosecutors said the workers were brought to Brazil under false pretenses and with visas that did not match their jobs.

“Working conditions were extremely degrading. Five settlements were kept by BYD, JinJiang and Tecmonta. Some workers slept on beds without mattresses and had their personal belongings alongside with their food,” the prosecutors’ office said. “There were few bathrooms, which were not gender-assigned. In one of the settlements, there was one toilet for 31 people, forcing workers to wake up at 4 a.m. for their personal hygiene before their work.”

The three Australian Capital Territory Court of Appeal judges unanimously rejected the 61-year-old former army lawyer’s appeal against the severity of a five years and eight months prison sentence imposed a year ago.

The judges also rejected McBride’s argument that as a military officer he had sworn an oath to Queen Elizabeth II and therefore had a sworn duty to act in the “public interest.”

“It is my own conscience and the people of Australia that I answer to. I have kept my oath to the Australian people,” McBride said in the lawyers’ statement.

Under South African law, foreign-owned companies are required to sell 30% of their subsidiaries to shareholders who are Black, or from other racial groups disadvantaged under the former apartheid system of white minority rule, in order to acquire a license.

However, Communications Minister Solly Malatsi on Friday proposed easing the requirement, prompting criticism from various political parties. The proposed change would allow Starlink and others to fulfill their empowerment requirements through things like investing in skills development and job programs and striking deals with local suppliers.

The minister put forward the directive days after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House, when Trump made baseless claims that white South African farmers were being systematically killed, raising eyebrows.