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Unusually aggressive lone star ticks, common in the south-east, are spreading to areas previously too cold for them

Blood-sucking ticks that trigger a bizarre allergy to meat in the people they bite are exploding in number and spreading across the US, to the extent that they could cover the entire eastern half of the country and infect millions of people, experts have warned.

Lone star ticks have taken advantage of rising temperatures by the human-caused climate crisis to expand from their heartland in the south-east US to areas previously too cold for them, in recent years marching as far north as New York and even Maine, as well as pushing westwards.

The ticks are known to be unusually aggressive and can provoke an allergy in bitten people whereby they cannot eat red meat without enduring a severe reaction, such as breaking out in hives and even the risk of heart attacks. The condition, known as alpha-gal syndrome, has proliferated from just a few dozen known cases in 2009 to as many as 450,000 now.

The surprise announcement comes one day after Tillis opposed a massive bill for Trump's agenda in the Senate.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., announced Sunday that he would not run for re-election, one day after he drew Donald Trump’s ire for opposing the party’s sweeping domestic policy package.

The surprise decision opens up seat in battleground North Carolina that was already set to be one of the most hotly contested races of the 2026 midterms.

Republicans are now forced to scramble to find a replacement for Tillis in a race that is a top target for Democrats in next year's midterms.

Donald Trump has said that he will withhold funding for New York City if presumptive Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor after November’s general election and doesn’t do the “right thing.”

Tuvalu, one of the countries at greatest risk from climate change, which experts say is boosting sea levels, has a population of 11,000 on its nine atolls scattered across the Pacific.

More than one-third of the people in the tiny Pacific nation of Tuvalu, which scientists predict will be submerged by rising seas, have applied for a landmark climate visa to migrate to Australia, according to official figures.

Tuvalu’s ambassador to the United Nations, Tapugao Falefou, told Reuters on Sunday he was “startled by the huge number of people vying for this opportunity”, and the small community was interested to learn who the first lot of climate migrants would be.

Tuvalu, one of the countries at greatest risk from climate change, which experts say is boosting sea levels, has a population of 11,000 on its nine atolls scattered across the Pacific between Australia and Hawaii.

The novel and untested approach has been introduced by Democratic lawmakers in at least four states.

Democratic legislators mostly in blue states are attempting to fight back against Donald Trump’s efforts to withhold funding from their states with bills that aim to give the federal government a taste of its own medicine.

The novel and untested approach — so far introduced in Connecticut, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin — would essentially allow states to withhold federal payments if lawmakers determine the federal government is delinquent in funding owed to them. Democrats in Washington state said they are in the process of drafting a similar measure.

These bills still have a long way to go before becoming law, and legal experts said they would face obstacles. But they mark the latest efforts by Democrats at the state level to counter what they say is a massive overreach by the Trump administration to cease providing federal funding for an array of programs that have helped states pay for health care, food assistance and environmental protections.

The world's richest man had some harsh words for Donald Trump's so-called "big, beautiful" bill on Saturday.

Elon Musk worked with Trump for months after the election, only to have a spectacular blow-up after his exit from the White House. That public fight began due to Musk's criticism of Trump's signature bill.

Musk appeared to make up with Trump, and started holding his tongue more. It has been weeks since reporters have had anything to say about Musk criticizing Trump or his legislation.

Prosecutors allege more than a million Medicare recipients had their information stolen and used by the defendants for fraudulent claims

US federal prosecutors charged 11 people on Friday in a Russia-based scheme to bilk Medicare – the American health insurance program for the elderly and disabled – out of $10.6bn through fraudulent billing for expensive medical equipment.

The “transnational criminal organization” orchestrated a “multi-billion-dollar health care fraud and money laundering scheme” that included purchasing dozens of medical equipment companies from prior legitimate owners to perpetrate the fraud, according to the indictment dated 18 June.

More than a million Medicare recipients had their personal information stolen and used by the defendants to file for billions of dollars in claims from Medicare and its supplemental insurers, prosecutors said in the filing.

Feeling stalled in life in the face of economic obstacles, young Chinese consumers are finding comfort in “small indulgences” such as milk tea and Labubu figurines.

Young people in China may not be buying cars or houses, but there’s always money for milk tea and toys.

It’s a challenging time to be a young person in China: The world’s second-biggest economy is growing far slower than it was when their parents were their age, with the U.S.-China trade war threatening to further weigh on growth. Competition for jobs is cutthroat and monthly youth unemployment stands at about 15% on average, with Chinese universities churning out a record 12.22 million new graduates this year.

Feeling “besieged” in life in the face of these economic obstacles, young Chinese consumers at home and abroad are finding comfort in smaller purchases.

Within hours of the ruling, which curbs nationwide injunctions, challengers filed new court papers seeking to block Trump's plan via a different legal avenue.

Almost as soon as the Supreme Court released its ruling limiting the ability of judges to block Donald Trump's plan to end birthright citizenship, challengers brought new legal claims seeking the same result by a different means.

While the court on Friday said judges cannot issue sweeping "universal injunctions" that can apply nationwide in many cases, it left open the option of plaintiffs seeking broad relief via class action lawsuits.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed such a lawsuit in New Hampshire on behalf of immigrants whose children may not obtain U.S. citizenship at birth if Trump's order were to go into effect.

In a separate case in Maryland, in which groups had obtained a nationwide injunction, lawyers filed an amended complaint seeking similar class-wide relief for anyone affected by Trump's plan within hours of the ruling written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Exclusive: Operation Wedlock lasted up to 20 years and took MI5 teams across world amid panic about ‘another Philby’

Britain’s spy chiefs were forced to launch one of the most sensitive and risky investigations since the cold war over fears a senior officer at the foreign intelligence service MI6 was a double agent for Russia.

The extensive hunt for the alleged mole, called Operation Wedlock, was run by MI6’s sister agency, MI5, which deployed a team of up to 35 surveillance, planning and desk officers, who travelled across the world.

One trip took an entire surveillance team to the Middle East for more than a week, the Guardian has been told, where the officers were put up in a CIA safe house. This trip was particularly hazardous, it’s understood, because the officers travelled to the country without the knowledge of its government, and would have been illegal under international law.

As the supreme court upends precedent again and again, the liberal justices reveal the divisions within the legal body

On Friday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered an acidic sermon against the court’s 6-3 decision to end lower courts’ practice of issuing nationwide injunctions to block federal executive orders, reading her dissent directly from the bench in a move meant to highlight its importance.

“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” states Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson. “Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”

Edward Coristine, 19, has been given a job at Social Security Administration after quitting Elon Musk’s ‘department’

Edward Coristine – the 19-year-old who quit Elon Musk’s controversial so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) earlier this week, where he gained notoriety in part for having used the online moniker “Big Balls” – has in fact been given a new government job, this time at the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Coristine, whose lack of experience and super-loyalty to Musk saw him become a flashpoint for outrage at Doge’s ruthless but haphazard efforts to slash government spending and fire thousands of workers, resigned from Doge earlier this week.

However a spokesperson for the SSA, Stephen McGraw, told Wired magazine that Coristine was now working for that department.