Following President Trump's executive order, the VA will restore GI Bill benefits to 899 veterans initially, with more cases under review for discharge upgrades.

Media figures questioned Sen. Chuck Schumer's leadership after Democratic senators voted in favor of ending the longest government shutdown in American history.

Archaeologists discovered an Egyptian ceramic vase in a Pompeii fast-food kitchen destroyed by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, revealing cultural exchanges in the ancient city.

Prince William protects his children with honest communication after his own painful childhood, royal experts say following his candid interview about parenting.

North Carolina ranks 9th nationally for human trafficking with 301 cases in 2024. Charlotte serves as a major hub due to interstate highways and gang activity.

Beijing is flexing its might to show its displeasure with the Japanese leader’s comments about defending Taiwan, but its aggressive approach risks backfiring.

© Pool photo by Maxim Shemetov

The brutal detention of three people who came to the U.S. legally reveals a cruel system that operates with impunity.

Some of the pieces seem fine, but the base is increasingly fragile

© Eric Helgas for The New York Times

The former prime minister, who fled to India last year, was tried in absentia for ordering the use of lethal weapons during the uprising that drove her from power.

© Rajib Dhar/Associated Press

Under the new rules, people granted asylum would have to wait 20 years, rather than the current five, before applying for permanent residency.

© Henry Nicholls/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Donald Tusk says ‘worst fears confirmed’ over damage on route used to ferry aid deliveries to Ukraine

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now in Paris for his day of meetings with France’s Emmanuel Macron and the French army.

In the first few minutes of his visit, the pair have signed a letter of intent on defence purchases, standing in front of a Rafale jet fighter, rumoured to be part of the order.

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© Photograph: Twitter/X

© Photograph: Twitter/X

© Photograph: Twitter/X

Hasina sentenced in absentia by court in Dhaka over deadly crackdown on student-led uprising last year

Bangladesh’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina has been sentenced to death in absentia by a court in Dhaka for crimes against humanity over a deadly crackdown on a student-led uprising last year.

A three-judge bench of the country’s international crimes tribunal convicted Hasina of crimes including incitement, orders to kill, and inaction to prevent atrocities, carried out as she oversaw a crackdown on anti-government protesters last year.

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© Photograph: Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

© Photograph: Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

© Photograph: Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

The memo was put together by Republican staff on the oversight panel, after Democrats on the committee released three hand-picked emails from the disgraced financier that mentioned President Trump. 

The search for a gingko-toothed beaked whale had taken five years, when a thieving albatross nearly ruined it all

It was an early morning in June 2024 and along the coast of Baja California in Mexico, scientists on the Pacific Storm research vessel were finishing their coffee and preparing for a long day searching for some of the most elusive creatures on the planet. Suddenly a call came from the bridge: “Whales! Starboard side!”

For the next few hours, what looked like a couple of juvenile beaked whales kept surfacing and disappearing until finally Robert Pitman, a now-retired researcher at Oregon State University, fired a small arrow from a modified crossbow at the back of one of them.

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© Photograph: Craig Hayslip

© Photograph: Craig Hayslip

© Photograph: Craig Hayslip

I have been fortunate, and I know it. Now I’d like more successful people to admit that meritocracy is a myth

• Julian Richer is the founder of Richer Sounds and the Fairness Foundation

When you think about what has got you to where you are today, what pops into your head first? Perhaps hard work and determination, aided by a degree of talent? No doubt these have played an important role. But how much do you think that factors outside your control – what we might think of as luck – have influenced your path in life, for good or ill?

I believe that many of us – especially those who consider ourselves successful – underestimate the role that luck has played in our lives. And I’m not just talking about random life events, like winning the lottery, I’m thinking about luck in the broader sense of the circumstances into which each of us is born.

Julian Richer is a retail entrepreneur, author and philanthropist who founded Richer Sounds in 1978. He is the founder of the Fairness Foundation

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© Illustration: Nathalie Lees

© Illustration: Nathalie Lees

© Illustration: Nathalie Lees

Thriving business districts in North Carolina city now at a ‘standstill’ after at least 81 were arrested over the weekend

Many communities in Charlotte, North Carolina, were reeling after federal Customs and Border Protection teams descended on the city at the weekend and arrested at least 81 people – while normally-thriving immigrant enclaves and business districts came to a standstill.

Federal agents were deployed in what the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), calls Operation Charlotte’s Web, sparking protests.

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© Photograph: Grant Baldwin/Getty Images

© Photograph: Grant Baldwin/Getty Images

© Photograph: Grant Baldwin/Getty Images

The latest in our ongoing series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort movies is a trip back to 1980s London and the predatory music industry

I used to watch Breaking Glass when I worked a very corporate job in the City. With its vision of London at the end of punk and the beginning of the Winter of Discontent, the film provided me a blast of gritty, unvarnished relief in the light of endless training courses and encouraged groupthink.

Released in September 1980, it was disliked by critics (Q magazine memorably quipped: “Breaking Glass? More like Breaking Wind … ”) but through today’s eyes feels relevant again.

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© Photograph: United Archives GmbH/Alamy

© Photograph: United Archives GmbH/Alamy

© Photograph: United Archives GmbH/Alamy

Since I was a teenager I had struggled in winter, experiencing excessive tiredness and low mood. A specific instruction lifted the gloom

I’m pretty sure I must be half human, half plant – how else to explain why I need the light to thrive? During the brighter seasons I feel fine, but when winter comes and the light begins to fade, I start drooping.

I have struggled with seasonal affective disorder (Sad) since I was a teenager. The symptoms of Sad are similar to regular depression, with low moods and lethargy, and can be equally debilitating. Over the years I’ve experienced the full Sad spectrum, from moments of excessive tiredness and carb cravings (yes, those are official Sad symptoms), to a low point of breaking down crying on the kitchen floor after school because it was so cold, dark and bleak.

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© Photograph: Awaiting credit info

© Photograph: Awaiting credit info

© Photograph: Awaiting credit info

A song to the consolations of winter is delivered with the grace and precision typical of this intellectually ambitious poet

Now Winter Nights …

Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Now let the chimneys blaze
And cups o’erflow with wine,
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques and courtly sights,
Sleep’s leaden spells remove.

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© Photograph: Public domain

© Photograph: Public domain

© Photograph: Public domain

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

• China travel warning for Japan sends shares in tourism and retail companies plunging

A man convicted over a 2020 Twitter hack that compromised accounts of high-profile figures including former U.S. President Barack Obama has been ordered to repay £4.1m worth of Bitcoin, Reuters reports.

The hack, also involved the accounts of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Apple.

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© Photograph: Franck Robichon/EPA

© Photograph: Franck Robichon/EPA

© Photograph: Franck Robichon/EPA

President Donald Trump indicated Sunday that he plans to meet with New York City’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and said they’ll “work something out,” in what could be a detente for the Republican president and Democratic political star who have cast each other as political foils.

Thikra: Night of Remembering is Akram Khan Company’s last touring show. Here, the choreographer and dancer’s collaborators recall how he motivated them

Nitin Sawhney, composer, collaborated on multiple projects with Khan, including Kaash (2002), Zero Degrees (2005) and Vertical Road (2010)

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© Photograph: Camilla Greenwell

© Photograph: Camilla Greenwell

© Photograph: Camilla Greenwell

The Frattini Bivouac is part of a Bergamo gallery’s experiment to ‘think like a mountain’. But in the thin air of the Italian alps, curatorial ideas are challenged in more ways than one

At 2,300 metres above sea level, Italy’s newest – and most remote – cultural outpost is visible long before it becomes reachable. A red shard on a ridge, it looks first like a warning sign, and then something more comforting: a shelter pitched into the wind.

The structure stands on a high ridge in the municipality of Valbondione, along the Alta Via delle Orobie, exposed to avalanches and sudden weather shifts. I saw it from above, after taking off from the Rifugio Fratelli Longo, near the village of Carona – a small mountain municipality a little over an hour’s drive from GAMeC, Bergamo’s Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea – the closest access point I was given for the site visit.

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© Photograph: © Tomaso Clavarino

© Photograph: © Tomaso Clavarino

© Photograph: © Tomaso Clavarino

Abdalmonim Alrabea has appeared in hundreds of videos in which he expresses support for paramilitary group accused of committing genocide

A British citizen based in Sheffield appeared in a TikTok live broadcast laughing along while a notorious fighter from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group boasted about participating in mass killings in the city of El Fasher.

The video, broadcast on 27 October, is just one of hundreds posted to social media in which 44-year-old Abdalmonim Alrabea expresses support for the RSF and the ethnically targeted atrocities it has committed in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

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© Photograph: https://www.youtube.com/@wdabowk

© Photograph: https://www.youtube.com/@wdabowk

© Photograph: https://www.youtube.com/@wdabowk