Tag: bbc.com

New plaques have appeared under the portraits of former US presidents at the White House. Unlike Donald Trump’s previous statements about his predecessors, which have been delivered through speeches, interviews and social media posts, these plaques – installed outside the West Wing – represent a more permanent attempt to shape the long-term view of past…

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that will expand access to cannabis, a long anticipated move that would mark the most significant shift in US drug policy in decades. The order directs the US attorney general to reclassify cannabis from a Schedule I narcotic, to a Schedule III drug – placing it under…

A husband and wife have died after being trapped in a private sauna room that caught fire in Japan on Monday. Tokyo police are investigating whether a faulty doorknob trapped the couple inside the room at Sauna Tiger, in the city’s Akasaka district, local media has reported. Investigators also found that the facility’s emergency alarm…

The UK has named career diplomat Christian Turner as its new ambassador to the US, Downing Street has confirmed. The previous ambassador, Lord Peter Mandelson, was sacked by UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer after evidence, including emails and photos, emerged showing his continued association with the paedophile Jeffery Epstein. Turner has spent nearly 30…

A Romanian court has sentenced Wiz Khalifa to nine months in prison for smoking cannabis on stage. The American rapper, real name Thomaz Cameron Jibril, admitted to smoking a joint during his performance at the Beach, Please! festival last year in Costinesti. A Romanian appeals court overturned an earlier fine of 3,600 Romanian lei (£619;…

A former Nascar driver and his family were among the seven people killed in a plane crash at a regional airport in North Carolina, the car-racing organisation has said. A highway patrol spokesman said people on the ground confirmed that Greg Biffle was among those who boarded the plane. The Cessna C550 crashed while landing…

An HR executive caught on the big screen at a Coldplay concert embracing her boss has described how “the harassment has never ended” following the viral moment. Kristin Cabot has spoken publicly for the first time about the video in which she was seen hugging Andy Byron, then-CEO of tech company Astronomer, at the show…

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have released a batch of around 70 photos from the estate of late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It was the third such release from a tranche of over 95,000 photos the committee has acquired from Epstein’s estate. It includes images of quotes from the book Lolita written across…

The board of the Kennedy Center has voted to rename the performing arts centre the Trump-Kennedy Center, according to the White House. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on social media that the board voted unanimously to make the change due to “the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the…

A new offshore wind farm has been given the go-ahead in the hope that it will power one million UK homes in the future. The Five Estuaries site will include up to 79 turbines off north Essex and south Suffolk – at least 37 km (23 miles) from the coastline. The RWE project will sit…