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The inquiry, first reported in the New York Times, follows a report by that newspaper last month about bank employees in its U.S. compliance division who had flagged suspicious financial transactions to their superiors who then opted not to escalate them to government authorities.

The transactions were notable because they were linked to companies controlled by U.S. President Donald Trump and his son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, according to the report.

Trump rejected the report last month, saying he had little need for banks because he had so much cash on hand and denying that the money came from Russia.

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The crown prince of Saudi Arabia should be investigated over the murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi because there is “credible evidence” that he and other senior officials are liable for the killing, according to a damning and forensic UN report.

In an excoriating 100-page analysis published on Wednesday of what happened to Khashoggi last October, Agnes Callamard, the UN’s special rapporteur, says the death of the journalist was “an international crime”.

“It is the conclusion of the special rapporteur that Mr Khashoggi has been the victim of a deliberate, premeditated execution, an extrajudicial killing for which the state of Saudi Arabia is responsible under international human rights law,” she says.

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A number of congressional Democrats on the committee say Hicks’ appearance amounted to her not complying with the subpoena. They claim she did not answer questions about her time in the White House or the findings outlined in the Mueller report.

At every turn, lawyers for the administration object to questions and claim she is immune from answering anything related to her time in the White House, Democrats said.

She did, however, answer questions about her time on the Trump campaign.

Some Democrats said the hearing only pushed them further down the path toward impeachment proceedings.

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Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.

A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia.

“What we saw was amazing,” Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters. “It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.“

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US authorities on Tuesday seized more than $1bn worth of cocaine from a ship at a Philadelphia port, calling it one of the largest drug busts in American history.

The US attorney’s office in Philadelphia announced the massive bust on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, saying law enforcement agents seized about 16.5 tons (15 metric tons) of cocaine from a large ship at the Packer Marine Terminal. Members of the crew were arrested and face federal charges.

“This amount of cocaine could kill millions — MILLIONS — of people,” US attorney William McSwain said in a separate tweet.

Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has blocked the inclusion of Saudi Arabia on a list of countries that recruit child soldiers, dismissing his experts’ findings that a Saudi-led coalition has been using underage fighters in Yemen’s civil war, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The decision, which came after a fierce internal debate, could prompt new accusations by human rights advocates and some lawmakers that the Trump administration is prioritizing security and economic interests in relations with Saudi Arabia, a major US ally and arms customer.

Pompeo’s move comes amid heightened tensions between the US and Iran, the Saudis’ bitter regional rival.

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An image showing sled dogs ankle deep in water where thick ice would normally be has gone viral.

The image, taken by Steffen Olsen, a scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute, shows the devastating extent of ice melt in Greenland.

The water the dogs are walking through, according to CNN, is due to flooding from excessive melting of Greenland’s ice sheet, the second largest in the world.

Olsen was reportedly on a mission to retrieve climate monitoring tools his colleagues placed on the sea ice when he snapped the now-viral photo.

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