Sarah Weddington, who won a landmark court case to make abortions legal across the US, has died at the age of 76. The Texas lawyer passed away in her sleep early on Boxing Day morning at her home in Austin, her former student and colleague Susan Hays said. She had been in poor health for

Hundreds of flights have been called off for a third day in a row in the US as the Omicron variant of COVID continues to spread. More than 720 commercial flights going into or out of the US were cancelled on Sunday, according to a tally on flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. This meant thousands of people

A British mother, who ran a property business in Coral Springs, has been shot dead in Florida. Sara Michelle Trost, 40, was discovered in the driver’s seat of a vehicle suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, officers said. “Despite immediate medical treatment, the driver succumbed to her injuries on scene and was pronounced dead,” the Coral

When Duane “Yellow Feather” Shepard was a child, his mother would point out Bruce’s Beach and tell him: “That used to be our people’s land.” Decades later that small slice of land, nestled next to the Pacific Ocean in the glittering city of Manhattan Beach in California, is finally being returned to his family’s ownership.

A surfer has been killed in an “apparent shark attack” off the central coast of California on Christmas Eve, authorities have said. The surfer, whose identity has not yet been released, was found in the water near Morro Rock, about 200 miles (320km) north of Los Angeles. in Los Angeles, California, at around 10.45am on

Scientists say a “new era of astronomy” could be brought in as they prepare to launch the James Webb Telescope today. The device is expected to profoundly transform scientists’ understanding of the universe and our place in it. NASA, which produced the $10bn infrared telescope in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies, has

A White House Christmas event took an awkward turn on Friday when a caller dropped a vulgar anti-Biden slogan into a conversation with the US president.  Joe Biden was hosting a traditional festive phone call with children tracking Father Christmas’ sleigh when their father told the president “Let’s go Brandon”. Mr Biden, apparently unaware of

Alec Baldwin has shared a Christmas message thanking his supporters for their well wishes but says Halyna Hutchins’s death is “never going to be behind us”. The 63-year old actor said he feels “lucky” to be at home with his family this Christmas and spoke of a “really tough” period following the fatal shooting incident

A 14-year-old girl has been shot and killed in a Los Angeles clothing shop’s dressing room after police opened fire on an assault suspect. Police also shot and killed the suspect at the Burlington shop in the North Hollywood area of San Fernando Valley, police said. A man had been acting erratically and threatening to

A singer-songwriter has accused Chris Noth of groping her nearly 20 years ago in another allegation against the Sex And The City actor. Lisa Gentile, a New York musician, claimed Noth threatened to “ruin her career” if she told anyone about what happened. Detailing her accusation at a news conference, Gentile said she met Noth,

A former US police officer who said she mistakenly fired her gun instead of her Taser in the fatal shooting of a man has been found guilty of manslaughter. Kimberly Potter was convicted over the death of 20-year-old motorist Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in April in Minneapolis. Potter, 49, was found guilty of

Five suspects have been arrested after US congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon was carjacked in Philadelphia. The Democrat representative for Pennsylvania’s 5th congressional district was held at gunpoint as her car was stolen on Wednesday afternoon. She was unharmed in the incident which is said to have occurred as she walked to her sport utility vehicle

Ghislaine Maxwell will spend her 60th birthday in prison after the jury deliberating her fate was sent home for Christmas. The former girlfriend of disgraced billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein turns 60 this Saturday, 25 December, with the jury not expected to return until next Monday. Jurors ended their second full day of deliberations into the

A former US senator and his wife have been taken to hospital after their $5.5m mansion was destroyed in a fire. Charles ‘Chuck’ Robb, 82, and Lynda Robb, 77, were injured when the blaze engulfed the luxury property in northern Virginia. Dramatic pictures showed firefighters battling to extinguish the inferno as it ripped through the

Donald Trump was booed by some of his supporters as he admitted to having received a COVID-19 booster jab. The former US president heckled by audience members in Dallas on Sunday when he admitted he had received a another dose. It comes as US officials and scientists call on the population to get vaccinated amid

A group of missionaries, who trekked for up to 10 miles by moonlight with a baby and a toddler to escape their kidnappers in Haiti, are being reunited with their families in America. The 12 people, from Christian Aid Ministries, a US-based church, took their chance to slip past guards on 15 December and used

The US government is buying 500 million at-home rapid COVID tests that Americans will be able to order online for free starting in January, Joe Biden says. The president also announced that more testing sites will be set up. And 1,000 military medical personnel will be deployed as part of efforts to help hospitals overwhelmed

The stars of Sex And The City have said they are “deeply saddened” by sexual assault allegations made against co-star Chris Noth. Two women have accused Noth, who played Mr Big in the hit series, of assaults in 2004 and 2015. The actor has called the claims “categorically false” and said the encounters were consensual.

Omicron is now the dominant form of coronavirus in the US and made up 73% of new cases last week, according to federal health officials. It represents a near six-fold increase in the variant’s share of infections in just one week. In some areas Omicron is even more dominant, responsible for an estimated 90% of

A tornado carried away two babies in a bath but they survived relatively unscathed, their grandmother says. Clara Lutz put 15-month-old Kaden and three-month-old Dallas in a bathtub to protect them as deadly tornadoes wreaked havoc in the US last week. She told a local TV station she left them with a blanket, a pillow

Footage of Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion in Florida has been shown in court as the closing arguments of Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial take place. The video of the late paedophile’s Palm Beach estate was shown as evidence in Maxwell’s federal sex-trafficking hearing. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 1:56 Inside Epstein’s Florida mansion

Dr Anthony Fauci says Omicron is “raging around the world” as he warned of the increased risk posed to unvaccinated people. President Joe Biden’s chief medical officer said the new variant has an “extraordinary capability” for transmission. He called on Americans to get their vaccines, take tests and wear face masks in a bid to

Facebook has alerted around 50,000 people who the company believes were targeted by “cyber mercenaries” – private companies often hired by authoritarian states to spy on individuals. The victims included “journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, [and] families of opposition and human rights activists” the company warned in a threat report published on Thursday. The

Joe Biden has visited the graves of his first wife and infant daughter, as he marks 49 years since they were killed in a car crash. The US president visited St Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware on Saturday with First Lady Jill Biden and daughter Ashley. Mr

An 18-year-old woman and a 13-year-old boy managed to escape a burning building in New York by climbing out a window and scaling down a pipe, video footage has shown. The fire broke out on the fourth floor of an apartment block, located in Avenue D, in the East Village area of Manhattan, at around

A man was kicked off a flight in the US for wearing women’s underwear as a face mask. In footage taken by another passenger and shared widely online, Adam Jenne can be seen wearing a pink thong over his face as he sits in his seat before the flight from Fort Lauderdale to Washington took

Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal team at her trial has tried to discredit her accusers by suggesting there were discrepancies between the statements they gave to the FBI and what they have said in court. Four women, testifying for the prosecution, allege Maxwell recruited and groomed them when they were teenagers for sexual abuse by her ex-boyfriend

Partial human remains found nearly 40 years ago in a bin bag have been confirmed as those of Frank Little Jr – a former songwriter and guitarist for R&B group The O’Jays. The bag was found on 18 February, 1982, behind a now-closed business in Twinsburg, about 25 miles southeast of Cleveland. But it wasn’t

Sex And The City star Chris Noth has said allegations of sexual assault made against him by two different women are “categorically false”. The US actor, best known for his role as Mr Big in the hit TV series and current spin-off And Just Like That, has been accused of assaulting two women more than

A former employee of Jeffrey Epstein has told Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial that she “never” witnessed any misconduct by the British socialite in the six years she worked with her. Cimberly Espinosa, 55, started working for J Epstein & Co as a legal assistant in October 1996 when she was 28 years old. She later became