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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With the latest U.S. missile strikes, President Donald Trump appears to have reset America’s red line for military intervention in Syria over the use of chemical weapons. What’s unclear is where that red line now stands. The United States said its strikes were a response to President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons attack on April 7 that administration officials say employed chlorine and perhaps even sarin, a more deadly nerve agent. “A large body of information indicates that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the U.N. Security Council on...

Women vomit, march, then vie for office in record numbers under Trump Ellen Wulfhorst 4 Min Read NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When late-night election returns showed Donald Trump winning the U.S. presidency last November, Laura Moser vomited and Christine Lui Chen crawled into bed to cling to her young daughter. Then they got down to business and joined the thousands of women who have responded to the Trump presidency by running for political office. More than 20,000 women in the United States with an interest in running for office have contacted Emily’s List, an advocacy group supporting female...

Original link with original headline retrieved from Google cache: "Trump hugs children, serves food in visit to victims of Harvey"The original link (currently unavailable on Internet Archive due to technical error possibly caused by redirect: "The search engine encountered the following error: Search engine returned invalid information or was unresponsive. We are working to resolve this issue. Thanks for your patience.") now redirects to new headline 12 hours later: "Trump hugs Harvey's victims in test of presidential mien"

In the coming weeks, as Houston turns its attention to rebuilding areas devastated by Tropical Storm Harvey, people like Jay De Leon are likely to play an outsized role – if they stay around. De Leon, 47, owns a small construction business in Houston, and he and his 10 employees do exactly the kind of demolition and refurbishing the city will need. But like a large number of construction workers in Texas, De Leon and most of his workers live in the United States illegally, and that could make things complicated. However, undocumented immigrants are growing increasingly nervous in Texas...

President Donald Trump has stepped up his attacks on Republican senators, an approach he may regret if he is someday impeached and the Senate has to weigh charges against him stemming from an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. More than half of the 11 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would be central to any proceeding to remove Trump from office, have tangled with the Republican president, including on Thursday when he fired off early-morning tweets.

The Trump administration told a U.S. appeals court that federal law does not ban discrimination against gay employees, a sharp reversal of the position former President Barack Obama took on a key civil rights issue. The U.S. Department of Justice, in a friend of the court brief, told the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Wednesday that Congress never intended Title VII, which bans sex discrimination in the workplace, to apply to gay workers. The department also said the court owed no deference to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that enforces Title VII...

Two senior Republican U.S. senators criticized Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday for saying that Russia may have the "right approach" on Syria and for what they called his lack of focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. "His statements about Syria really disturb me. No, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin does not have it right when it comes to Syria," Senator Lindsey Graham said. In separate television interviews, Graham and Senator John McCain, prominent Republican foreign policy voices, took aim at Tillerson's remarks last week that Russia may have "got the right approach" and the United States the wrong approach to...

A federal judge in Texas on Saturday issued a court order barring enforcement of an Obama administration policy seeking to extend anti-discrimination protections under the Affordable Care Act to transgender health and abortion-related services. The decision sides with Texas, seven other states and three Christian-affiliated healthcare groups challenging a rule that, according to the judge, defines sex bias to include "discrimination on the basis of gender identity and termination of pregnancy." In granting an injunction one day before the new policy was to take effect, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor held that it violates the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Michelle Obama will be ceding the title of first lady to Melania Trump next month, but she may hold for some time the other distinction she earned during her time in the White House: America's best known advocate for healthy food. The non-profit organization she helped create as first lady, Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), where she is honorary chair, will continue its work convincing food companies to improve nutrition content and labeling of products, the group said. "Michelle Obama has been a tremendous leader in this space," said Larry Soler, president and chief executive...

General Motors was under fire this weekend after a casting call for Cadillac sought members of the controversial alt-right movement. According to an image of the casting call posted by the news agency Reuters and many, many others, the notice said an agency filming the ad was looking for "any and all real alt-right thinkers/believers." "This is a beautifully artistic spot that is capturing all walks of life of America," the casting call says, adding that it would be filmed later this month. "Standing together as a union. This is not meant to be offensive in anyway. Just a representation...

Muslims across the United States feared they were being targeted for surveillance this week when they received automated polling calls asking them to press one if they identified as Muslim or two if they did not. Many worried President-elect Donald Trump was making good on his campaign promise to register all Muslims in the country or private citizens were laying the groundwork for a registry. The calls were in fact sent out as part of a survey by Emerge USA, a non-profit organization seeking to empower Muslim-Americans. The group created an algorithm to call Muslims for a poll on their...

Reuters was reportedly the only news service to be providing video coverage of Donald Trump’s visit to a Detroit church on Saturday, and a mystery voice could be overheard ordering someone to “shut down” the feed before the event had concluded. Bishop Wayne T. Jackson was presenting Trump with a prayer shawl and two Bibles when a hushed voice off camera could be heard saying, “I’m shooting this, I don’t care what…” Moments later, the same voice said “Shut this down?” “Shut it, yeah,” another voice said.

What does a jihadi have to do to get credit these days? If screaming “Allahu akbar” isn’t enough to make his motive clear, what is? Would he have to drop his knife and announce: “I follow Allah. I pledge my allegiance to the Islamic State. That is why I did what I did”? No, a convert to Islam named Edward Archer said that after he shot and seriously wounded police officer Jesse Hartnett, and the Mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, responded: “In no way shape or form does anyone in this room believe that Islam or the teaching of Islam...

If this poll accurately reflects the US electorate, get ready for the mother of all gender gaps (so to speak) in November if Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination. The frontrunner has a major problem with women, according to this Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted over the first half of March, and it has gotten worse rather than better over the last six months. Half of all women have a “very unfavorable� view of Trump, in an election that could pit him against the first female major-party nominee: Real estate billionaire Donald Trump’s coarse rhetoric has won him some fans,...

Why — and how — Russia won in Syria By Josh Cohen March 15, 2016 Here’s what Russia achieved — and why it was so successful. First — and most importantly — Russian bombing turned the tide of the war in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s favor. Second, Putin recently achieved an important diplomatic objective by forcing the United States to acknowledge that Russia plays a key role in determining Syria’s future. Third, Putin responded to Turkey’s shoot down of a Russian jet by humiliating Ankara, an emerging rival in the Middle East and Central Asia. Putin also grievously wounded Turkey’s...

Reuters rolling poll (Trump 38.4, Cruz 16.2, Rubio 10.8)

It used to be said of OPEC that it was like a teabag - it only worked in hot water. If that is so, conditions on world oil markets could hardly be more difficult as prices languish at almost seven-year lows near $40 a barrel. Yet, rather than closing ranks, OPEC is finding that an intensifying battle for market share, worsened by deep regional differences between Saudi Arabia and Iran, is driving it further apart. Halfway through last Friday's six-hour meeting, an unexpected dispute erupted over the defining feature of the cartel. In a move sources say was masterminded by...

The Syrian army said on Saturday that Turkey had recently increased supplies of weapons, ammunition and equipment to what it described as terrorists in Syria, and accused its northern neighbor of firing shells at Syrian army positions. "We have certain information that the Turkish government has recently increased its support to the terrorists and the level of their supplies of weapons, ammunition and equipment necessary to continue their criminal acts," an army statement said. The Syrian government describes as terrorists all the groups fighting President Bashar al-Assad in the 4-1/2-year-long war that has moved into a higher gear since Russia...

A steadfast performance by Jeb Bush in Tuesday's Republican debate has halted the sense of desperation around his U.S. presidential campaign and may buy him time to counter the rise of chief rival Marco Rubio. The fourth Republican debate in the search for a 2016 presidential nominee was characterized by a steady stream of attacks against front-runner Donald Trump and mistake-free performances by Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, two up-and-coming U.S. senators in the race. But the most relieved candidate after the two-hour encounter inside the Milwaukee Theatre was Bush, the former Florida governor who was outclassed...

Thu Sep 24, 2015 11:19am EDT Related: World, Russia, Syria Syrian army uses new Russian jets to strike Islamic State: monitor Syrian government forces used newly arrived Russian warplanes to bombard Islamic State insurgents in Aleppo province in northern Syria, a group monitoring the civil war said on Thursday, in an attempt to break a siege on a nearby air base. Russia is bolstering its ally Damascus against rebels with military aid that U.S. officials say has included fighter jets, helicopter gunships, artillery and ground forces. The air strikes, which began earlier this week, were accompanied by ground attacks near...