Donald Trump has signed an executive order making it easier to fire thousands of the best-paid workers in the US government aspart of a broader drive by his administration to overhaul the federal workforce.
The order, released by the White House and the office of personnel management (OPM) on Wednesday, strips job protections from a mostly senior group of federal workers – about 8,000 employees – earning up to almost $200,000 a year, and who are deemed to be “influencing” government policy.
In a call previewing the move, Scott Kupor, director of the OPM, which oversees the government’s human resources policies, said the administration needs to employ people willing and able to carry out orders to achieve the administration’s policy priorities.
“You can have any political views, but if you allow those views to basically interfere with your willingness to actually carry out lawful orders and policy directives with the administration, then this provides a mechanism obviously for people in those agencies to be able to be removed effectively at will,” he said.




The US military attacked a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, killing two men, as the Trump administration wages a months-long campaign against alleged traffickers in Latin America.
When Leen Ezzeddine stood before her classmates at Harvard Medical School, the moment could have been framed as a familiar story of immigrant success: a Lebanese woman graduating as a doctor from one of the world’s most prestigious institutions.
Knocking on strangers’ doors on a warm May afternoon in Trenton, New Jersey, Adam Hamawy did not seem fazed when more than a few went unanswered.
The Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings for residents of several villages in southern Lebanon, ordering them to move north of the Zahrani River.
The US military said it had carried out another strike Friday on a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing three men in the third attack this week and pushing the overall death toll above 200 people.





























