The Resistance Rises

The Federated States of Micronesia's biggest tourism asset has become one of its largest threats, with as much as 22 million litres of oil from World War II shipwrecks slowly leaking into the ocean.

The resolution of negotiations between Australian mining giant BHP and China's state-backed iron ore buyer China Mineral Resources Group could reshape not just the resources industry, but also interna...

The shape of things to come.

A bioterrorism surveillance program rolled out in 2003 was paused suddenly yesterday. Here's what that means.

As rare earths re-emerge as a central battleground in the US-China trade war, Australian companies are already striking deals to supply America. A policy expert says talks at the White House next week...

A judge is temporarily blocking the Trump administration from carrying out its latest round of federal employee layoffs. Judge Susan Illston with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled Wednesday that widespread reduction-in-force notices sent to about 4,000 employees last Friday were “both illegal and in excess of authority,” and granted a temporary restraining order blocking agencies from proceeding with those layoffs. A temporary restraining order approved by Illston bars the Trump administration from “taking any action to issue any reduction-in-force notices to federal employees … during or because of the federal government shutdown.” The TRO specifically covers all federal programs, projects and activities that include any bargaining unit members represented by government employee unions who are leading the lawsuit. The order also prohibits agencies from “taking any further action to administer or implement RIF notices” issued on Oct. 10. That means agencies can no longer require federal employees to perform work to further administer or implement RIF notices during the shutdown. Illston is giving defendant agencies two business days to provide a list of all RIF plans, “actual or imminent.” A Supreme Court ruling this summer allowed the administration to proceed with an earlier round of layoffs. But in light of the latest round of layoffs under the government shutdown, Illston said evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management “have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off — that the laws don’t apply to them anymore and that they can impose the structures that they like, on a government situation that they don’t like.” Illston said some impacted employees haven’t gotten their RIF notices yet, because the notices have gone to their work emails and “they’ve been forbidden to go to their work emails while on furlough.” “They are not even in a position to get RIF notices when they’re sent,” Illston said. Trump administration officials told the government on Friday that RIF notices went out to about 4,200 federal employees. But it later provided revised figures, after agencies rescinded hundreds of RIF notices. “There have been many errors made. I keep getting revised declarations under oath from people who say, ‘Well, I didn’t mean the last one. I was off by about 2,000, because it’s a fluid situation.’ And what it is, is a situation where things are being done before they’re being thought through,” Illston said. This is a developing story and will be updated The post Court blocks Trump administration’s latest mass layoffs for federal employees first appeared on Federal News Network.