Christa Pike now walking after failed US execution, lawyer tells BBC

Hurricane Isaias developed late Wednesday as the first Atlantic hurricane of 2026, taking aim at the Gulf Coast from Mississippi to the Florida Panhandle.

The U.S. Senate candidates in Texas could hardly be more different: James Talarico , a former seminarian turned Democratic state lawmaker who speaks in calm cadences about love and empathy, and Ken Paxton , the pugnacious Republican state attorney general who speaks about a refusal to compromise. Youth mental health is in decline. Even as researchers explore what's causing the problem, momentum is gathering among policymakers from both parties to crack down on social media companies. Several major companies are being sued, investigated, and, soon, potentially regulated. That they may be harming kids' mental health is a key reason.

Athens — As the United States wages a costly war with Iran and Europe struggles with the grinding conflict in Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood before the Acropolis on Wednesday and reached back more than two millennia to argue that the answer to the West's current problems can be found, at least in part, in ancient Greece. In a speech timed to the sunset from the Pnyx, where Athenians gathered for their democratic assembly, Rubio cast ancient Greece as the source not only of Western democracy and philosophy, but of what he described as the character that fueled the West's rise.