International

Yemen's Houthi rebels have released the crew of the Galaxy Leader, a vehicle carrier seized in November 2023 at the start of their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war.

The move by the Iranian-backed Houthis marks their latest effort to de-escalate their attacks following a ceasefire in Gaza.  However, it came as US President Donald Trump moved to reinstate a terrorism designation he made on the group late in his first term that had been revoked by President Joe Biden, potentially setting the stage for new tensions with the rebels.

The Houthis said they released the sailors after mediation by Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula that's long been an interlocutor with the Houthis.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's executive order ending the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship regardless of the parents' immigration status.

US District Judge John C. Coughenour ruled in the case brought by the states of Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, which argue the 14th Amendment and Supreme Court case law have cemented birthright citizenship. The case is one of five lawsuits being brought by 22 states and a number of immigrants rights groups across the country. The suits include personal testimonies from attorneys general who are US citizens by birthright, and names pregnant women who are afraid their children won't become US citizens.

Signed by Trump on Inauguration Day, the order is slated to take effect on February 19. It could impact hundreds of thousands of people born in the country, according to one of the lawsuits. In 2022, there were about 2,55,000 births of citizen children to mothers living in the country illegally and about 1,53,000 births to two such parents, according to the four-state suit filed in Seattle.

The US is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship — the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil” — is applied. Most are in the Americas, and Canada and Mexico are among them.

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to declassify files on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Asserting that the victims' families and the American people deserve to know the truth about these assassinations, the executive order directs the Director of National Intelligence to present a plan within 15 days for the "full and complete release" of all John F. Kennedy assassination records. It also directs the Director of National Intelligence to immediately review the records on the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations and present a plan for their full and complete release within 45 days.

"That's a big one. A lot of people are waiting for years, for decades. And everything will be revealed," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office wherein he signed the executive order.

This executive order stated that continued withholding of the John F. Kennedy records is long overdue and not in the public interest.

At least 242 million children in 85 countries had their schooling interrupted last year because of heatwaves, cyclones, flooding and other extreme weather, the United Nations Children's Fund said in a new report Friday.

UNICEF said it amounted to one in seven school-going children across the world being kept out of class at some point in 2024 because of climate hazards.

The report also outlined how some countries saw hundreds of their schools destroyed by weather, with low-income nations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa hit especially hard. But other regions weren't spared the extreme weather, as torrential rains and floods in Italy near the end of the year disrupted school for more than 9,00,000 children. 

Thousands had their classes halted after catastrophic flooding in Spain.

While southern Europe dealt with deadly floods and Asia and Africa had flooding and cyclones, heatwaves were “the predominant climate hazard shuttering schools last year,” UNICEF said, as the earth recorded its hottest year ever. More than 118 million children had their schooling interrupted in April alone, UNICEF said, as large parts of the Middle East and Asia, from Gaza in the west to the Philippines in the southeast, experienced a sizzling weekslong heatwave with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

“Children are more vulnerable to the impacts of weather-related crises, including stronger and more frequent heatwaves, storms, droughts and flooding,” UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said in a statement. “Children's bodies are uniquely vulnerable. They heat up faster, they sweat less efficiently, and cool down more slowly than adults. Children cannot concentrate in classrooms that offer no respite from sweltering heat, and they cannot get to school if the path is flooded, or if schools are washed away."

Around 74% of the children affected in 2024 were in middle- and low-income countries, showing how climatic extremes continue to have a devastating impact in the poorest countries. 

Flooding ruined more than 400 schools in Pakistan in April. Afghanistan had heatwaves followed by severe flooding that destroyed over 110 schools in May, UNICEF said. Months of drought in southern Africa exacerbated by the El Niño weather phenomenon threatened the schooling and futures of millions of children.

And the crises showed little sign of abating. The poor French territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean off Africa was left in ruins by Cyclone Chido in December and hit again by Tropical Storm Dikeledi this month, leaving children across the islands out of school for six weeks. Cyclone Chido also destroyed more than 330 schools and three regional education departments in Mozambique on the African mainland, where access to education is already a deep problem.

UNICEF said the world's schools and education systems “are largely ill-equipped” to deal with the effects of extreme weather.

Rupert Murdoch's UK tabloids made a rare apology to Prince Harry in settling his privacy invasion lawsuit and will pay him a substantial sum, his lawyer announced on Wednesday.

News Group Newspapers offered a “full and unequivocal apology to the Duke of Sussex for the serious intrusion by 'The Sun'between 1996 and 2011 into his private life, including incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for 'The Sun',” attorney David Sherborne read from settlement statement in court. It was the first time News Group Newspapers has acknowledged wrongdoing at 'The Sun', a paper once known for featuring topless women on Page 3.

The statement itself was remarkable in breadth, acknowledging “phone hacking, surveillance and misuse of private information by journalists and private investigators” aimed at Harry, allegations NGN had strongly denied before trial. The statement even went beyond the scope of the lawsuit to acknowledge intruding on the life of his mother, the late Princess Diana.

“We acknowledge and apologise for the distress caused to the duke, and the damage inflicted on relationships, friendships and family, and have agreed to pay him substantial damages,” the settlement statement said.

The bombshell announcement in London's High Court came as the Duke of Sussex's trial was about to start against the publishers of 'The Sun'and the now-defunct News of the World for unlawfully snooping on him over decades.

Within hours of President Donald Trump's inauguration, the new administration took down the Spanish-language version of the official White House website.

The site — currently https://www.whitehouse.gov/es/ — now gives users an “Error 404” message. It also included a “Go Home” button that directed viewers to a page featuring a video montage of Trump in his first term and on the campaign trail. The button was later updated to read “Go To Home Page”. Hispanic advocacy groups and others expressed confusion at the abrupt change and frustration at what some called the administration's lack of efforts to maintain communication with the Latino community, which helped propel him to the presidency.

The Spanish profile of the White House' X, @LaCasaBlanca and the government page on reproductive freedom also were disbanded. Meanwhile, the Spanish versions of other government agencies such as the Department of Labor, Justice and Agriculture remained available for users on Tuesday. Asked about the changes, White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields responded that the administration is “committed to bringing back online the Spanish translation section of the website.”

“It's day two. We are in the process of developing, editing and tweaking the White House website. As part of this ongoing work, some of the archived content on the website went dormant. We are committed to reloading that content in a short timeline," he said without elaborating.

Trump removed the Spanish version of the page in 2017. At that time, White House officials said they would reinstate it. President Joe Biden reinstated the page in 2021. The page's removal coincided with Trump's first-day wave of executive orders highlighted by the launch of an illegal immigration crackdown that was one of his key campaign pledges. Trump on Monday declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border and announced plans to send US troops to help support immigration agents and restrict refugees and asylum.

According to 2023 Census Bureau estimates, about 43.4 million Americans — 13.7% of the US population age 5 and older — speak Spanish at home. The US has no official language.