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The Trump administration announced it will pay nearly $1 billion to French energy giant TotalEnergies in exchange for the company abandoning plans to build offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean and instead pursue fossil fuel projects in the US.

The current administration has thrown up roadblocks at every turn for offshore wind projects; a type of energy that President Donald Trump has personally reviled for years. After trying and failing to block construction on more mature projects, this announcement is the first sign of a new strategy: The federal government is paying to stop wind farms before they begin.

A federal judge is allowing the release of deposition videos of two former DOGE staffers, ruling that the risk of "embarrassment and reputational harm" is not enough to overcome the public interest in the videos.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on Monday lifted an earlier order requiring a group of nonprofits to remove the videos from the internet after lawyers with the Justice Department argued that the former DOGE staffers faced threats because of the depositions' release.

While Judge McMahon acknowledged that the former staffers faced threats, she said the DOJ could not prove a "particularized harm" to the former staffers that would overcome the public interest in their official conduct as government employees.

Federal immigration agents will “hate” being deployed to assist airport security operations amid Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staffing shortages, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official told Newsweek.

“The HSI agents will hate it,” the official said, referring to Homeland Security Investigations personnel. “I’ve not heard any talk of this within ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations). They want us arresting and deporting aliens.”

The official, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said they first heard about the reassignment when they were contacted by Newsweek over the weekend.

Conservative justices appeared ready to strike down so-called “grace periods” for election officials to count mail-in ballots after Election Day.

Signaling a threat to millions of voters who cast mail-in ballots across the country and overseas, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared ready Monday to bless a recent push by Republicans to restrict how and when late-arriving mail-in ballots are counted.

The Republican National Committee, and Mississippi’s Republican and Libertarian parties have asked justices to unwind a Mississippi law passed in 2020 that allowed absentee voters to mail in their ballots with a postmark as late as Election Day. Under the state law, election officials were ordered to count ballots received as late as five days after Election Day. (Over 30 states currently have grace period rules for mail-in ballots that are similar.)

Paul Clement, the attorney representing the Republican National Committee, told the justices that all ballots, including mail-in ballots, must be received “into official custody” and counted by Election Day or be invalidated.

Seemingly suddenly disinterested in preserving states’ rights, Justices Neal Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly appeared to share the RNC’s sentiments about the necessity of a singular Election Day —or one without grace periods for the counting of ballots. Justice Samuel Alito appeared to put a fine point on the majority’s grievances.

Gleaming trails of bomblets in night sky have become familiar to Israelis as Tehran exploits apparent vulnerability

The Guardian, which reviewed the impact of dozens of Iranian strikes alongside statements from Israeli officials, has identified at least 19 ballistic missiles carrying cluster warheads that penetrated Israeli airspace and struck urban areas since the beginning of the war with Iran on 28 February.

Those attacks have killed at least nine people and wounded dozens, reflecting a broader shift in Iran’s tactics that appears to have exposed a vulnerability in Israel’s air defences.

Since the start of the war, Iran’s cluster munitions – which disperse dozens of bomblets mid-air – have tested Israel’s highly advanced, multi-tier missile defence network, including Iron Dome, which is designed to counter threats across ranges, altitudes and speeds, exposing gaps that interception alone has struggled to close.

New online accounts on Polymarket platform betting a total of $70,000 suggest ‘some degree of inside info’

Several accounts on the online platform Polymarket laid bets on a US-Iran ceasefire over the weekend that appeared to show signs of insider knowledge, according to experts.

Eight accounts, all newly created around 21 March, bet a total of nearly $70,000 (£52,000) on there being a ceasefire. They stand to make nearly $820,000 if such a deal is reached before 31 March.

An account that made the same bet was created shortly before the US struck Iran on 28 February. It also placed a winning bet on those strikes, which raised similar questions around insider trading, and so far has bet on nothing else.

The new accounts all appear to have been created late last week, around the time when the US president, Donald Trump, appeared to first double down on war with Iran, then suggest in an after-markets Truth Social post that he was considering “winding down” military operations.

Donald Trump has claimed there have been talks between the United States and Iran over the past day in which the two sides had “major points of agreement”, appearing to avert a potentially severe escalation of the conflict.

Tehran has denied the claim, in which Trump also speculated that a deal could soon be done to end the war. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said no talks had been held with the US since the bombing campaign began 24 days ago.

Trump’s threat at the weekend to “hit and obliterate” Iran’s power stations and energy infrastructure if Tehran did not allow shipping to move freely through the strait of Hormuz, and Iran’s threat to destroy infrastructure across the Middle East in retaliation, had raised fears of a deepening conflict and global economic crisis.

Hungarian foreign minister was accused of passing information from closed-door talks to Moscow.

The EU is limiting the flow of confidential material to Hungary and leaders are meeting in smaller groups — as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned of long-standing suspicions Viktor Orbán’s government is sharing information with Russia.

But there will not be any formal EU response to a fresh set of allegations because of the possible impact on the Hungarian election on April 12, according to five European diplomats and officials who told POLITICO they were concerned about the risk of Budapest leaking sensitive information to the Kremlin.

“The news that Orbán’s people inform Moscow about EU Council meetings in every detail shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has backed Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar in the election, wrote on X on Sunday. “We’ve had our suspicions about that for a long time. That’s one reason why I take the floor only when strictly necessary and say just as much as necessary.”

Marine Le Pen's National Rally failed to win big target cities such as Marseille, Toulon and Nîmes, but the party still thinks it has the upper hand nationwide.

The far-right National Rally may not have won the string of big target cities it was hoping for in France’s local election on Sunday, but its leaders said they had still built up a grassroots momentum that would propel them to victory in next year’s presidential contest.

The 2027 presidential election is seen as a decisive moment for the EU as the Euroskeptic and NATO-skeptic National Rally is the current favorite to win the race for the Elysée. This week’s municipal elections are being closely scrutinized to gauge whether Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration party is still France’s predominant political force.

All in all, it was a mixed night for the far right. Its biggest victory came on the Riviera, where one of its allies won Nice, France’s fifth-biggest city. The National Rally had also campaigned hard in other significant southern cities such as Marseille, Toulon and Nîmes. It performed well in all of them but was beaten into second place.

Nine people hospitalised and airport closed after landing plane hits fire truck responding to separate incident

The pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada Express regional jet have been killed after it collided with a fire truck while landing at New York’s LaGuardia airport, in an incident that closed the airport.

The collision also caused serious injuries with nine people in hospital. It happened as a firefighting vehicle was responding to a separate incident, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.

The Air Canada Express CRJ-900 plane, operated by its partner Jazz Aviation, was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members from Montreal, based on a preliminary passenger list that remained subject to confirmation. Jazz is owned by Chorus Aviation.

A statue of Christopher Columbus has been placed on the grounds of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, the latest effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to recognize the controversial explorer.

The statue is a replica of one that was tossed into Baltimore’s harbor in 2020 during Trump’s first term at a time of nationwide protests against institutional racism.

Trump endorses a traditional view of Columbus as a leader of the 1492 mission seen as the unofficial beginning of European colonization in the Americas and the development of the modern economic and political order. But in recent years, Columbus also has been recognized as a primary example of Western Europe’s conquest of the New World, its resources and its native people.

and productive conversations with Iran and he will order the military ​to postpone any military ​strikes against Iranian power plants ⁠and energy infrastructure for five ​days.

Trump's move followed a threat by ​Iran to attack Israel's power plants and those supplying U.S. bases ​across the Gulf region if ​the U.S. targets Iran's power network.