Kristi Noem secured US Senate confirmation as homeland security secretary on Saturday, putting the South Dakota governor in charge of a sprawling agency that is essential to national security and Donald Trump’s plans to clamp down on illegal immigration during his second presidency. The Senate worked on Saturday as Republicans successfully sought to install the…
Leading environmentalists have called on the government to introduce a natural history GCSE immediately, amid fears it could be postponed until 2030. The previous Conservative administration had supported creating the GCSE, which would teach pupils how to observe, identify and classify plants and animals. However, campaigners have claimed the plans had been shelved by Labour…
Keir Starmer is under growing pressure to forge closer economic links with Europe five years on from Brexit, as a major new poll shows voters clearly favour prioritising more trade with the EU over the US. The MRP survey of almost 15,000 people by YouGov for the Best for Britain thinktank shows more people in…
Large numbers of troops from Rwanda have been pouring across the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help rebels seize the regional capital of Goma before an emergency UN meeting about the crisis takes place on Monday, intelligence officials have warned. Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) soldiers are believed to have secretly crossed…
Almost three years ago, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine wiped out Europe’s largest source of gas and shocked global energy markets, setting the stage for quarter after quarter of better-than-expected earnings for the fossil fuel producers ready to profit from the volatility. Now those returns are beginning to cool. But as markets have reduced to a…
Mark Rylance took a “significant” pay cut along with other members of the Wolf Hall team to get the second series made, the director Peter Kosminsky has said. The BBC drama, based on Hilary Mantel’s final novel in her epic Tudor trilogy, returned last year with Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. The original…