Words ‘at conception’ in order gesture to push by anti-abortion movement to give embryos and fetuses legal rights

One of Donald Trump’s new executive orders, which claims there are only two genders, quietly incorporates tenets of fetal personhood – the legal doctrine, pushed by the anti-abortion movement, that life begins at conception and that embryos and fetuses therefore deserve full legal rights and protections.

“‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” reads the order, which was issued just hours after Trump took office on Monday. “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

NLRB-sanctioned vote in February of 4,300 workers could produce only second unionized Amazon warehouse in US

An independent group of workers at an Amazon warehouse in Garner, North Carolina, are seeking to form the second unionized warehouse at Amazon in the US.

Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (Cause) filed to hold a union election at the warehouse, which, despite Amazon claiming they were “very skeptical” the group would have enough legitimate signatures for the petition, was approved by the National Labor Relations Board.

The simple truth is that Trump ignored almost every major issue facing this country’s working families in his first speech

I was at the Trump inauguration on Monday, and needless to say, I disagree with almost everything he had to say.

What really struck me, however, is not what he said, which was not surprising given his general rhetoric – but what he didn’t say. The simple truth is that Donald Trump gave a major speech, the first speech of his second presidency, and ignored almost every significant issue facing the working families of this country.

Leaked documents shed light on how Israel integrated the US tech giant into its war effort to meet growing demand for cloud and AI tools

The Israeli military’s reliance on Microsoft’s cloud technology and artificial intelligence systems surged during the most intensive phase of its bombardment of Gaza, leaked documents reveal.

The files offer an inside view of how Microsoft deepened its relationship with Israel’s defence establishment after 7 October 2023, supplying the military with greater computing and storage services and striking at least $10m in deals to provide thousands of hours of technical support.

After 30,000 appointments to apply for asylum were cancelled, the fragile calm at the US-Mexico border is at risk

The train rumbled through the makeshift immigrant camp in Mexico City, blaring its horn and sending people scattering to hug the wall.

It passes through at 10am like clockwork, said the residents – almost all of whom have been planted there for months, waiting for the chance to request asylum in the US.

British record store chain to triple size of Rockefeller Center location with 300-capacity room featuring built-in stage

A mosh pit may seem out of place in Rockefeller Center, better known for its Christmas tree, rinks and hoards of tourists. But a British record store chain wants to change that.

Rough Trade is tripling the size of its site at the major shopping center this spring, expanding its downstairs to create space for more vinyl, merchandise and events with artists.

Orders repeal directives expanding healthcare access and options for lower-income and middle-class Americans

Within his first 48 hours back in office, Trump has signed several executive orders that threaten the healthcare of millions of Americans.

Amid a flurry of executive orders, some of which were signed live on TV on inauguration night, the US president issued several orders that repeal Biden-era directives that had expanded healthcare access and options for lower-income and middle-class Americans.

Controversial move follows flurry of executive actions including suspension of refugee resettlement programme

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The Pentagon is set to deploy up to 1,500 active-duty troops to the US-Mexico border as part of Donald Trump’s aggressive new immigration enforcement strategy, marking a significant militarisation of the southern border.

The controversial move, defence officials told the New York Times, comes amid a flurry of executive actions targeting immigration in the early days of Trump’s presidency. The Washington Post on Wednesday reported that the number could be much higher, with military officials preparing to send as many as 10,000 troops to the border.

Aside from legal challenges, those who didn’t vote for the man have little means of resisting – and are frankly still in shock

It is a strange effect of the second Trump presidency that, where Donald Trump and his allies know the ropes this time round and have grown in assertiveness, their opposition seems paralysed, rather than emboldened, by experience. After Trump’s inauguration in 2017, millions of people took to the streets. This week, a lot of Trump-haters in Washington simply skipped town for the inauguration weekend. This, it seems to me, is less an indication of resignation than caution and lingering shock. Whatever happened last time didn’t work. So now what?

It is an unnerving position, not knowing what to do, and in this case requires a lot of self-soothing in the form of mantras, “It’s only four years”, and “He’s a lame duck, anyway” (because he cannot serve another term). Opposition will not be about sending a message through the medium of public demonstration – the time for that, clearly, has passed, not least because Trump won the popular vote.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

The reporter’s mother, Debra Tice, has not entered Syria to search for her son for nearly 10 years, but associations like Hostage Aid Worldwide have helped create renewed hope

Debra Tice had managed to gather her family in one place in early December – no easy feat given they were spread across the US and Australia. When they planned their reunion months before, the Tice family had no idea they would be together to watch the Assad regime fall after a lightning 11-day rebel offensive toppled the 53-year rule.

“It was amazing for us to be together like that – it doesn’t happen often – to watch that together,” Debra said from a hotel room in Damascus. Only one member of her family was missing from the reunion, her son Austin Tice, a journalist who was kidnapped at the age of 31 in a suburb outside Damascus in 2012, while reporting on the Syrian civil war.

We see untrammelled power with fawning courtiers. George Washington would have recognised the new system at the White House

Donald Trump’s triumphal return to the White House was American political theatre on steroids. This was, of course, exactly the returning president’s intention. “Shock and awe” was the en vogue phrase in the Trump camp to describe it, as the president sought to obliterate the Biden era in a blizzard of executive presidential orders and day-one Maga movement payoffs.

Trump’s second inauguration was exceptionally well worked. Where or whether it all lands in the form of delivered policy is a different issue. To some, it may feel petty to note that the last US “shock and awe” exercise – the Iraq invasion of 2003 – also generated a feast of indelible images of American power. But that one certainly did not end well.

From Trump’s Project 2025 to a huge aid cut by the Dutch, donors are turning their backs on the developing world

Foreign aid spending reached a record high of $223bn (£180bn) in 2023, new figures released this week from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) confirmed.

Yet, in 2024, eight wealthy countries announced $17.2bn in cuts to official development assistance (ODA), and three others hinted at reductions, all to take effect over the next five years.

Washington looks happy for the video app to harvest users’ data – as long as China does not reap the rewards

If the Chinese-owned TikTok is deemed definitively by the US to be a national security threat, it is hard to see how the UK or other western countries could conclude differently.

But the fact that Donald Trump has walked into the White House talking of a reprieve for the video-sharing network, which restored its service in the US after going dark for a day, suggests something simpler is at work – Trumpian geopolitics.

Houthis in Yemen said 25-member crew of Galaxy Leader had been freed ‘in support’ of the Gaza ceasefire agreement

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Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have released the crew of the Galaxy Leader more than a year after they seized the Bahamas-flagged vessel off the Yemeni Red Sea coast, Houthi-owned Al Masirah TV has reported.

It said on Wednesday the crew were handed to Oman “in coordination” with the three-day-old ceasefire in Gaza’s war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Letter from Academy leadership also says show will ‘move away’ from live performances to celebrate songwriters

The Oscars will go on as planned in March, though with special accommodations to acknowledge to devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, according to a new update from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

A letter from the CEO, Bill Kramer, and president Janet Yang, sent to all members on Wednesday, confirmed that the ceremony will “celebrate the work that unites us as a global film community and acknowledge those who fought so bravely against the wildfires”.

Forty-six Democrats joined Republicans to further bill requiring detention of undocumented immigrants for theft

The US House on Wednesday gave final approval to a bill requiring the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with theft-related crimes, sending the proposal to Donald Trump’s desk and giving the new president his first legislative victory as he presses his hardline immigration agenda on multiple fronts.

The House vote was 263 to 158, with 46 Democrats joining every present Republican in supporting the Laken Riley Act, named after a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was murdered last year by a Venezuelan national who was in the US unlawfully. The House vote came two days after the US Senate passed the legislation in a vote of 64 to 35, with a dozen Democratic members backing the bill.

After unveiling of Stargate, Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Satya Nadella of Tesla, OpenAI and Microsoft trade barbs

Major tech moguls had their claws out for each other on Wednesday, hissing at their rivals over enormous pledges to invest in AI that had been announced by Donald Trump the day before.

Trump announced Stargate, a $500bn project to be funded jointly by OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, on Tuesday. During the announcement, the president was flanked by the leaders of those companies: Sam Altman, Larry Ellison and Masayoshi Son, respectively. Son is slated to be the chair of the project. All three are multibillionaires. Absent from the photo op was a representative from MGX, Abu Dhabi’s state AI fund, another principal investor.

Donald Trump signed executive order to rename body of water in honor of ‘American greatness’

The US Coast Guard (USCG) and the state of Florida have started referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America – a new label pushed by Donald Trump – despite the name of the body of water not yet being formally changed.

On Tuesday, following a flurry of executive orders signed by Trump on his first days in office, the USCG announced that it would deploy additional assets to multiple locations, including the “maritime border between Texas and Mexico in the ‘Gulf of America’”. Similarly, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, cited the new moniker in a winter storm executive order on Monday, saying “an area of low pressure [was] moving across the Gulf of America”.

JD Vance, Mike Johnson and others had said those guilty of violence would be excluded before president changed tack

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Donald Trump’s allies have been forced to perform political summersaults over his pardons for more than 1,500 rioters convicted of attacking the US Capitol after saying beforehand that no clemency would be shown to those guilty of violence or attacking police officers.

The inauguration day pardons also threatened to trigger a revolt among Republican senators, several of whom bluntly condemned them without extending the criticism to Trump himself.

President decrees end of DEI offices, roles and initiatives within 60 days and repeals civil rights-era equity policies

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All US federal employees working in diversity offices must be put on paid leave by Wednesday evening, the Trump administration has ordered, after instructing government agencies to shut down the programs.

“Send a notification to all employees of DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility) offices that they are being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately as the agency takes steps to close/end all DEIA initiatives, offices and programs,” said a US office of personnel management memo.

US president tells his Russian counterpart to ‘settle now and stop this ridiculous war’ or face repercussions

Donald Trump has threatened Russia with taxes, tariffs and sanctions if a deal to end the war in Ukraine is not struck soon, as the new US president tries to increase pressure on Moscow to start negotiations with Kyiv.

Writing in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump said Russia’s economy was failing and urged Vladimir Putin to “settle now and stop this ridiculous war”.

Hughes fire ignites north of Los Angeles late Wednesday morning as Eaton and Palisades fires burn for third week

Additional evacuations were ordered for residents near a large fast-moving wildfire north of Los Angeles, as parched southern California endured another round of dangerous winds ahead of possible rain over the weekend.

The Hughes fire broke out late on Wednesday morning and quickly ripped through more than 9,400 acres (3,760ha), sending up an enormous plume of dark smoke near Castaic Lake, a popular recreation area about 40 miles (64 km) from the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires that are burning for a third week.

From LNG to drilling in Alaska, here’s everything you need to know about Trump’s energy and climate executive orders

Through a flurry of executive orders, a newly inaugurated Donald Trump has made clear his support for the ascendancy of fossil fuels, the dismantling of support for cleaner energy and the United States’ exit from the fight to contain the escalating climate crisis.

“We will drill, baby, drill,” the president said in his inaugural address on Monday. “We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have – the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it. We’re going to use it.”

Expert Austin Kocher explains why the ‘clown show’ of Trump orders will nonetheless fuel confusion and anxiety

Donald Trump began to enact his promised immigration crackdown just hours after taking power, issuing a barrage of executive actions that have incited panic and chaos across the US and at its borders. But much of the orders’ content will be difficult to enforce, and many will face strong legal challenges.

Trump’s executive orders on immigration didn’t read like presidential actions so much as a “stream-of-consciousness mess … strung together in a lattice of nonsense”, wrote the political and legal geographer Austin Kocher, who had been issuing hourly immigration policy updates on his blog throughout inauguration day.