For years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pushed ethnic minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs to adopt an identity rooted in Chinese nationality and allegiance to the ruling Communist Party.

Now, that push has been codified into a sweeping new law that reaches into classrooms, neighborhoods and homes – and gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders that it believes violate its rules.

The statute, officially known as the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, came into effect on July 1. It bans acts that “undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division” among China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities, which include a Han Chinese majority that makes up over 90% of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

The U.S. Justice Department and 17 states reached settlement agreements with three major egg producers this week to resolve allegations that the companies illegally colluded for years to raise prices, including when the cost soared to record highs last year.

The states and federal government accused Cal-Maine Foods, Versova and Hickman’s Egg Ranch of a behind-the-scenes arrangement to “artificially inflate the daily price quotations for eggs” between June 2022 and March 2025. In particular, their investigation found that the companies coordinated on what bids they would submit to Urner Barry Publications, a company that runs an index key to determining how much grocery stores, restaurants and others pay for billions of eggs each year.

In turn, that meant “higher prices for eggs sold to consumers,” alleged the complaint, which was filed in Iowa on Monday, the day the settlement terms were announced.

The Trump administration cost the American taxpayer $11 billion by telling workers not to work under Elon Musk-inspired efforts to gut the federal workforce last year, a report found.

The Office of Personnel Management initiated the Deferred Resignation Program on January 28, 2025, after Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sent the now-infamous “fork in the road” email to federal employees, allowing them to resign and continue to receive pay through September 30, 2025.

It resulted in nearly 140,000 federal workers being paid not to work for weeks or, in most cases, months, the cost totaled between $11.1 billion and $15.1 billion through March 2026, government watchdog Public Citizen’s analysis found.

Move follows supreme court refusal to hear Trump’s appeal of civil case verdict in sexual abuse and defamation case

The New York journalist E Jean Carroll asked a judge on Tuesday to mandate that Donald Trump pay her the $5m she is owed from a jury verdict that found the US president liable for sexually abusing her in the 1990s and defaming her after she publicly described in 2019 being attacked by him in a city department store.

Lawyers for Carroll filed papers in a federal court in Manhattan one day after the US supreme court refused to hear Trump’s appeal of the civil case verdict in 2023.

The author and advice columnist argues in the filing that Trump is unjustly trying to delay even further releasing the funds to her, after he has made repeated challenges to the civil jury’s decision.

House Republican leaders sent lawmakers home for a nearly two-week holiday recess Tuesday after several hardline conservative members rebelled on the floor to demand stronger action on Donald Trump’s much-desired voter identification bill.

It’s the second straight week that House floor activity has been brought to a standstill over the SAVE America Act, a Republican-written measure that the President has pressured Congress to pass. The legislative impasse before the Fourth of July weekend dealt another blow to Speaker Mike Johnson, who has struggled to rein in an increasingly fractious and razor-thin majority in the chamber.

The continuing blockade from GOP hardliners came despite Trump’s plea to stop their “grandstanding” in the chamber, after lawmakers said they would block other legislation from advancing until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act. That also canceled last Friday’s votes.

The Ukrainian military struck a Russian oil refinery in Ufa on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, as Kyiv continues its pressure campaign seeking to push Russia to end the war.

"This is an entirely just response to everything Russia is doing against us," Zelenskyy said on social media. "Peace is needed, and this is exactly what Russia’s leadership must realize. Russia must end its war."

Iran says it has exported more than 40 million barrels of crude oil since the U.S. removed its naval blockade two weeks ago.

Tehran is now selling oil at a 20% premium: chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

Iran has agreed to let ships transit the Strait of Hormuz toll-free for 60 days under an MOU with the U.S., but said it will retain control over the waterway’s administration.

It has been four days since a small plane slammed into Beijing's tallest skyscraper, killing the pilot – the only person on board – and wounding 13 others, but it's still unclear why, and how, that happened.

A 60-word report detailing the basic facts in state-owned Beijing Daily is the only official statement China has published so far on the crash, which happened just a few kilometres from Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party's headquarters.

Friday's collision left holes on the side of the 109-storey CITIC Tower, which have since been boarded up. Dramatic footage of the incident has been scrubbed off the internet. At least three aviation firms tell the BBC they've been told to suspend light aircraft operations but declined to elaborate, saying they had been instructed not to discuss it.

Jackson criticized her fellow justice's “ahistorical” interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

Echoing the Trump administration’s sentiments, Thomas argued in his dissent that the 14th Amendment “was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”

Thomas also argued that the Civil Rights Act, which became the foundation for the 14th Amendment, had ensured citizenship to people born in the U.S. and “not subject to any foreign power.”

“The Citizenship Clause [of the 14th Amendment], which the same Congress passed shortly after the Civil Rights Act, was understood to have the same meaning,” Thomas wrote. “It guaranteed citizenship to persons who were both ‘born . . . in the United States’ and ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”

Jackson called this “ahistorical,” denying that the “text at issue conferred citizenship only on freed Blacks and those in analogous situations.”

Jackson also blamed the Trump administration and Thomas for repurposing the amendment, adding that the Civil Rights Act initially only included Black people but was later expanded to include people of all ethnic backgrounds.

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday cleared Philip Morris-owned Zyn nicotine pouches to be marketed as less harmful than cigarettes, giving the tobacco giant a major regulatory win as the Trump administration loosens restrictions on nicotine products.

The decision, first reported by Axios, allows 20 Zyn products to carry a modified-risk claim saying that switching from cigarettes to Zyn lowers the risk of mouth cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

Zyn pouches contain nicotine but not tobacco. They are placed between a user’s gum and lip and have surged in popularity among conservatives, tech workers and others who promote them as a cleaner alternative to cigarettes and chewing tobacco or a productivity aid.

The health secretary has advocated for deregulating certain peptides, but FDA scientists point to a lack of data about their safety and effectiveness. Some haven’t been studied in humans.

Peptides are molecules made up of chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Thousands are found naturally in the body but they can also be made synthetically in a lab.

They’ve seen a recent surge in popularity as wellness influencers and popular podcasters have touted them for weight loss and as remedies for injuries, joint pain and myriad other issues. Kennedy has said he’s used peptides on injuries with “really good effect.”

But they exist largely in a “gray market”: They’re not FDA-approved drugs, but they can be found online from unregulated suppliers. In April, Kennedy reclassified 12 peptides as Category 1 substances, the first step toward adding them to a list of substances that compounding pharmacies can make. (Compounding pharmacies make customized versions of medications that aren’t available at standard pharmacies.) Kennedy said at a House hearing that month that the Biden administration had incorrectly flagged the peptides as posing safety risks.

The annual report also included $80 million in income from settlements tied to lawsuits he filed against companies like ABC, CBS, Meta and YouTube.

Donald Trump earned more than $635 million from a licensing agreement with a cryptocurrency group specializing in “meme” coins bearing his name last year, an amount that pushed his total crypto holdings past $1 billion, according to a lengthy financial disclosure form he released Tuesday.

The figures from 2025 — the first year of Trump’s second term — were disclosed to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in a 927-page document. By comparison, President Barack Obama’s final disclosure form was eight pages, while President Joe Biden’s was 11 pages. Vice President JD Vance’s form for last year is 17 pages.

Trump’s meme-coin earnings came on top of more than $236 million worth from additional crypto token sales, and an additional sale of equity worth more than $65 million associated with Trump family crypto venture World Liberty Financial. There’s also more than $290 million classified as income from cryptocurrency wallets associated with World Liberty.