Usa

US President Donald Trump is not allowed under the First Amendment of the US Constitution to block his critics on Twitter, judges have ruled. A court challenge was brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and seven people who had been blocked by the president's fam

A judge in Minneapolis has sentenced lawyer Paul Hansmeier to 14 years' imprisonment for a scheme which saw him upload pornographic material to file-sharing networks before threatening to sue people who downloaded them, Ars Technica reports. “It is almost incalculable how much your abuse of tr

A judge in Utah has been suspended without pay for six months after he made critical comments about President Donald Trump in court and on social media, CNN reports. According to the ruling of the Utah Supreme Court, Judge Michael Kwan's Facebook posts were "laden with blunt, and sometimes indelicat

Washington has become the first US state to approve composting of human remains as an alternative to cremation. Governor Jay Inslee signed a new law allowing licensed facilities to provide “natural organic reduction”, which changes a body into roughly two wheelbarrows' worth of soil over

Tens of thousands of convictions for cannabis possession could be dismissed or reduced automatically under a pioneering scheme launched by prosecutors in California. District Attorneys Jackie Lacey of Los Angeles County and Tori Verber Salazar of San Joaquin County have jointly announced their parti

The governor of California has announced an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty in the US state. Governor Gavin Newsom, who was sworn in at the start of the year, will today sign an executive order granting a reprieve to prisoners on death row and closing down the execution chamber

The US federal courts have warned they will run out of money next Friday because of the partial shutdown of the US government. US lawmakers have been unable to agree a federal budget because Democratic Party representatives will not agree to President Donald Trump's demand for $5.7 billion to build