business

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Friday gutted three oversight offices by placing more than 100 workers on paid leave, a Trump administration official and two former officials said. The workers, including those in the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, were given layoff notices as part of a large-scale government … Read more

Rachel Reeves will raise the spectre of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget in the lead-up to next week’s spring statement as she tries to persuade her Labour colleagues to accept the steepest departmental cuts since austerity. The chancellor will tell her fractious party she has decided to cut public spending rather than increasing borrowing because of … Read more

An 18-year-old has been charged with murder following the fatal stabbing of a man by an alleged machete-wielding group amid plans to ban the weapon. Timothy Leek was stabbed to death near the Marriott Waters shopping centre in Melbourne’s south-east on the night of 14 March. The 24-year-old victim from Clyde was in a Lyndhurst … Read more

The dwindling freedom in Hong Kong over the past few years has been described as “death by a thousand cuts”. Critics have been jailed, elections have been transformed into “patriots only” affairs, journalists have been harassed and hundreds of thousands of people have left. This week, an obscure legal development has, in the eyes of … Read more

It stole two woolly hats from the head of a 91-year-old pensioner. It clawed a jogger’s scalp and left him reeling. It is said to swoop in from behind without making a sound, has a penchant for tall men’s heads and – so far – has evaded capture. But the violent reign of the Flamstead … Read more

A federal judge who temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s administration from deporting accused Venezuelan gang members under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act law condemned the lawyers for being “intemperate and disrespectful” in court. The Washington DC-based judge, James Boasberg, continues considering whether to maintain his ban – and whether officials violated it, which would expose them … Read more

A snorkelling boat carrying 13 people, including 11 Australian tourists, capsized in rough seas off Indonesia’s resort island of Bali on Friday, killing a woman and injuring two others, police said. The Sea Dragon boat was on its way from a port in Bali to Nusa Penida, a popular tiny island near Bali, when it … Read more

Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday, in the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration. It will be effective 24 April. The move cuts short a two-year “parole” granted to the immigrants under … Read more

Oleg Gordievsky, the UK’s most significant cold war double agent inside the KGB, has died at his home in Surrey aged 86. Gordievsky, who would eventually defect to Britain from Moscow under threat of exposure, was considered a key agent operating for the UK’s intelligence services working within the Soviet Union. While counter-terrorism police were … Read more

Denmark and Finland have updated their US travel advice for transgender people, joining the handful of European countries that have sought to caution US-bound travellers in recent weeks as reports emerge of ordeals at the American border. Denmark said this week it had begun advising transgender travellers to contact the US embassy in Copenhagen before … Read more