The special counsel appointed to investigate Russian influence in the 2016 US presidential campaign is now examining whether Donald Trump tried to obstruct justice, according to a report.

The company that managed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server says it has no knowledge that the server was “wiped”. If it wasn’t, 30,000 emails Clinton says she deleted could be recovered, according to a report in The Washington Post.

About 20 women were brought back to a hotel in Colombia by US Secret Service and military personnel in an incident last week involving alleged misconduct with prostitutes, US Senator Susan Collins said yesterday.

PUSHING toward a historic Supreme Court confirmation vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday approved Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice, after nearly unanimous Republican opposition.

Barack Obama has picked Senator Joe Biden of Delaware as his US vice presidential running mate, a Democratic party official said today.

Nebraska’s supreme court has ruled that electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment, outlawing the electric chair in the only US state still using it as a sole means of execution.

Controversial US attorney general Alberto Gonzales has announced he will resign his position as the United States’ top law enforcement official.

This Monday morning, in common with most email users, I will weed my way through offers of shareholding in companies so hot, they’ve doubled in value over the weekend, through offers of prescription painkillers sent in plain wrappers and through promises that my sex life will be vastly improved once I buy the product guaranteed to give me a bigger penis.

Bertie Ahern today urged the US Senate to pass immigration legislation that would benefit the estimated 50,000 to 70,000 illegal Irish immigrants in the United States.

Former US president Jimmy Carter has criticised the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping programme, saying he believes the president has broken the law.

US president George Bush has personally approved a secretive eavesdropping programme more than three dozen times since October 2001, a senior intelligence official has said.

A KEY Republican committee chairman put the Bush administration on notice yesterday that his panel would hold hearings into a report that the National Security Agency eavesdropped without warrants on people inside the United States.

THE American Senate yesterday rejected attempts to re-authorise several provisions of the USA Patriot Act as infringing too much on Americans’ privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration.

Negotiators from the two chambers of the US Congress reached an agreement today to extend the Patriot Act, the government’s premier anti-terrorism law, before its major provisions expire at the end of the month.

THE White House yesterday said President Bush is confident Harriet Miers will be confirmed to the Supreme Court, even though a Democrat on the Senate panel that will hold hearings on her nomination said she doesn’t have the votes.

US ATTORNEY GENERAL John Ashcroft told Congress yesterdaty that a major arrest over the weekend “is a severe blow to al-Qaida that could destabilise their terrorist network worldwide.”

A Washington meeting to discuss the proposed transatlantic link-up of British Airways and American Airlines turned into a grilling of US airline chiefs over security following the September 11 terror attacks.