​ House Republicans reject Senate deal, prolonging partial government shutdown. 1 hour ago. Nathan Williams. Republicans in the US House of Representatives have rejected a bipartisan deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and instead approved a different plan, prolonging the shutdown that has caused huge delays at airports.. Their Senate colleagues backed a bill that would have reopened most of DHS but excluded funding for immigration agencies to garner support from Democrats.. House Republican leaders rejected this, with Speaker Mike Johnson labelling the Senate bill a “joke”.. TSA agents, who manage US airport security, have not been paid in more than a month due to the impasse. Congress is now heading on a two-week break.. House Republicans are demanding that the legislation includes money for immigration enforcement, and their plan would mean funding DHS at current levels – including for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – for 60 days.. “Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” Speaker Mike Johnson said.. They passed the measure in a 213 to 203 vote late on Friday. The bill will head back to the Senate for approval but top Democrat Chuck Schumer described it as “dead on arrival” in the upper chamber.. Democrats have pushed to halt funding to immigration agencies covered under DHS without reforms.. With Congress taking a two-week break, funding for the DHS – which covers TSA agents, as well as ICE and Customs and Border Protection – appears unlikely to pass any time soon.. President Donald Trump signed an order directing his administration to pay hundreds of airport security agents. The DHS posted on X late on Friday: “TSA officers should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday, March 30.”. The move may be met with legal and political challenges, as the US Constitution tasks Congress with authorising spending for the federal government.. There has been widespread disruption at airports across the US, where travellers have faced hours-long queues due to a shortage of TSA officers at security checkpoints.. Around 50,000 agents with the TSA have been working without pay since mid-February. This has reduced the number turning up to work each day and led to hundreds quitting.. Currently, only a third to 50% of its TSA checkpoints are operating, according to Jim Szczesniak, director of aviation for the Houston Airport System.. A few hours before the Senate vote, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would sign an executive order “to immediately pay our TSA Agents”.. “Trump should never have had to step in to rescue TSA workers and US air travel,” said the Republican Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, addressing the chamber after the vote.. “We’re here because, thanks to Democrats’ determined refusal to reach an agreement, there will be no Homeland Security funding bill this year,” he said.. Schumer said the package included funding for the TSA, US Coast  

​ BySteve Sutcliffe. BBC Sport journalist. 27 March 2026. Updated 17 minutes ago. Golf legend Tiger Woods has been released on bail following his arrest on charges of driving under the influence after rolling his car in a crash in Florida.. The Martin County Sheriff’s Office said the 15-time major champion was also charged with property damage and refusal to submit to a lawful test.. Woods, 50, rolled his Land Rover after clipping a truck in Jupiter Island on Friday afternoon, according to Sheriff John Budensiek, who said officers had not suspected him of impairment by alcohol but possibly by an unknown substance.. Woods, who had to crawl out of the passenger door, passed a breathalyser test after the crash before refusing a urine test. No-one was injured.. He was kept in jail for eight hours – the minimum allowed under state law – before being released on bail.. Image source, Getty Images. Budensiek said the crash happened after Woods allegedly attempted to overtake a pressure cleaner truck at a “high rate of speed”.. DUI investigators came to the scene and “Mr Woods did exemplify signs of impairment”, Budensiek said.. “They did several tests on him,” Budensiek said. “He did explain the injuries and surgeries that he’s had and we did take that into account, but they did some in-depth roadside tests.”. Woods was placed under arrest after the incident, which took place on Beach Road just before 14:00 local time (19:00 GMT).. Budensiek said investigators at the scene and at jail were “really not suspicious of alcohol being involved” and Woods passed a breathalyser test with “triple zeros”.. Budensiek said Woods was “co-operative but was trying not to incriminate himself”.. “He has a right to refuse that test,” Budensiek said.. “There is a statute which he will be charged with for refusing to take that test, but we will never get definitive results as to what he was impaired on at the time of the crash.”. US President Donald Trump said: “I feel so badly. He has got some difficulty. There was an accident. That’s all I know.. “He’s a very close friend of mine. He’s an amazing person – an amazing man.”. The charges against Woods are misdemeanours, not felonies.. The BBC has contacted his representatives for comment.. Image source, Martin County Sheriff’s Office. More trouble for Woods. Woods has played a limited schedule since the serious car crash in 2021 that left him with extensive injuries and fortunate to be alive.. In 2009 he hit a fire hydrant, a tree and several hedges in a bizarre collision outside his home.. The incident sparked accusations of extramarital affairs which led to the end of his seven-year marriage and the loss of lucrative sponsorship deals.. In 2017 police officers found Woods slumped at the wheel of his parked Mercedes-Benz not far from his Florida home.. A toxicology report found he had several legal medications in his system and marijuana’s active ingredient.. He was sentenced to a year’s probation after pleading guilty to rec  

​ ‘The gravest crime against humanity’: What does the UN vote on slavery mean?. 8 hours ago. Fernando DuarteBBC World Service. AFP via Getty Images. The United Nations General Assembly this week overwhelmingly backed a resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade “the gravest crime against humanity”.. Welcoming the vote, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the wealth of many Western nations was “built on stolen lives and stolen labour”.. Noting the “barbaric punishments that maintained control – from shackles and iron collars to flogging and sexual violence”, he said it “was not simply forced labour”.. “It was a machinery of mass exploitation and deliberate dehumanisation of men, women and children. The wounds run deep and often go unrecognised.”. The resolution, backed by African and Caribbean countries, is not legally binding but analysts say it sends a powerful message.. “It is already a huge and significant step in political terms to have this debate at the UN, even when it has a more symbolic value,” Almaz Teffera, a senior researcher on racism at Human Rights Watch, told the BBC.. She says it could increase the chance of progress on discussions about reparations, or some form of compensation.. The resolution was adopted by 123 votes to three, while 52 countries abstained, including the United Kingdom and EU member states.. The United States, Argentina and Israel voted against it.. Dr Erieka Bennett, who leads the Ghana-based Diaspora African Forum,told the BBC the vote had a personal meaning for the descendants of people who were enslaved, like her.. ”It means that I’m acknowledged, it means that my ancestor finally rests. For me personally as an African American I’m overwhelmed – until you’ve been a part of what happened, it’s very difficult to understand what this really means.”. Countries affected by slavery have been asking for reparations for more than a century. But the debate has intensified in recent years, particularly after some nations and businesses which historically profited from African slave labour formally apologised and announced measures of atonement.. What is the case for reparations?. From the 15th to 19th Centuries, around 12-15 million African men, women and children were captured and trafficked to the Americas to work as slaves.. They were sent to colonies controlled by European countries, such as Spain, Portugal, France and the UK. Two million people are believed to have died aboard the infamous slave ships.. The effects of centuries of exploitation are still felt to this day.. In Brazil, the largest recipient of enslaved Africans – 4.9 million, mostly while it was a Portuguese colony – black people are twice as likely to live in poverty as whites, according to the country’s official statistics body (IBGE).. Reparations are intended to work as a restitution – an apology and repayment to black people whose ancestors were forced into slavery. The motion, proposed by Ghana, urges UN member states to  

​ Iran war splits older and younger conservatives – as pressure builds for Trump to find exit ramp. 7 hours ago. Anthony ZurcherNorth America correspondent, reporting from CPAC in Dallas. A majority of the American public, polls suggest, have been against the ongoing US-Israeli military campaign in Iran from the day it started.. Republicans, however, have largely stuck by their president as the war approaches the end of its fourth week.. But that may be changing.. At the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas, some of the party faithful expressed concern about why the US started this war, how Donald Trump is going to end it and whether the effort has been worth the costs.. “I just wish that there was more transparency on why we’re doing what we’re doing, that way you could send your loved one overseas and be OK with that,” said Samantha Cassell. “I hope it comes to an end quick, because it’s the cost of living, the oil and gas, the prices are only going to keep going up.”. Cassell, who lives in Dallas, and her friend Joe Bolick were attending their first CPAC conference. He also had his doubts about the war.. “I don’t see an endgame yet,” he said. “What are we actually trying to achieve? Is it true regime change? What does that look like? Who to replace them? I think we kind of got ourselves stuck.”. CPAC has been welcoming ground for Trump for a decade, shifting from a libertarian-leaning gathering to one dominated by Make America Great Again loyalists. The conservative conference has traditionally been held just outside Washington DC, but this year it moved to a sprawling hotel complex near Dallas, Texas.. The atmosphere at this year’s conference was similar to the past. A cavernous main auditorium offered days full of panels and speakers. A floor below, the exhibit hall featured plenty of conservative kitsch – a bus with the president’s face on it, Trump 2028 T-shirts and glasses commemorating the 2024 attempted assassination of Trump with “bulletproof” written on it and a faux bullet embedded in its side.. US envoy ‘hopeful’ for meetings with Iran ‘this week’, as Tehran says Israel hit nuclear sites. Three charts that are warning signs flashing for Trump on Iran war. Why is it so hard to pass through the Strait of Hormuz?. Some things were different, however.. Even more than a thousand miles from Washington DC, the war in Iran was a common topic of conversation. And if there has been a recurring theme among the dozens of people interviewed by the BBC, it is that the conflict is creating a generational divide within conservative ranks.. Toby Blair, a 19-year-old college student at the University of South Florida, travelled to Dallas for CPAC with his friend Shashank Yalamanchi, a first-year law student. Neither said that they believed the Iran war was in America’s best interests.. “I don’t like that it’s become America’s job to find bad people and get rid of them,” he said. “Especially when you have so many people at h  

​ Rubio says US expects to finish Iran war ‘in next couple of weeks’. 12 hours ago. Paulin Kola. Reuters. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the US expects to finish its operations in Iran “in the next couple of weeks”.. The objectives were being achieved and were ahead of schedule, he said at the end of a meeting in France of foreign ministers from the group of major Western economies, known the G7.. Referring to peace talks that President Donald Trump says Iran wants – which Tehran denies – Rubio said there had been messages, but it was unclear who was left to represent the country.. Several top Iranian leaders have been killed since the US and Israel began the war on 28 February. In the meantime, the US is sending troops to the area to give the president options, Rubio said.. Follow the latest updates. Trump and his top officials have consistently said their operations in Iran would last four-to-seven weeks.. As the fourth week is about to end, Rubio’s time frame would fit with those predictions – although he also mentioned that it was a question of “weeks, not months” when he answered a series of questions from reporters.. Trump is widely reported to have passed on to the Iranians – via Pakistan – an outline of a 15-point plan to end the war.. However, when asked by reporters if the Iranians were going to give their response on Friday, the US secretary of state said: “We haven’t gotten it yet. Look, we’ve got messages. We’ve had an exchange of messages and indications from the Iranian system, whatever’s left of it, about a willingness to talk about certain things.. “We’re waiting for further clarification about who was it that we would be talking to, what we would talking about, and when will we be talking.”. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff later said he was “hopeful” there would be meetings “this week”.. “We have a 15-point deal on the table that the Iranians have had for a bit of time. We expect an answer from them and it would solve it all,” Witkoff said.. Trump told reporters on Friday that he had paused a threatened attack on Iran’s power plants to give talks a chance.. “Iran is being decimated,” he said, adding: “We are talking now. They want to make a deal.”. On Friday, Iran said that Israel had carried out attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities as well as two of the country’s largest steel plants – prompting Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to threaten to exact a “heavy price”.. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the country’s powerful military force that underpins the regime, said it would retaliate by targeting industrial infrastructure connected to the US or Israel.. In their statement after the talks, the G7 foreign ministers called for “the absolute necessity to permanently restore safe and toll free freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz”, which Iran has closed in retaliation.. It was a reference to Iran’s threat to charge a fee, Rubio said.. There have been reports that IRGC has already been charging s