Nicola Sturgeon has announced she will stand down after eight years as First Minister, telling a press conference “the time is now”.

For the first time, the leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees are all women, as is the top White House budget official. Can they avert a fiscal disaster? They’re determined to try.

WASHINGTON — Inside a grand committee room in the Capitol on a recent afternoon, Senator Patty Murray paused at the end of the 31-foot conference table to re-enact how, as a rank-and-file lawmaker years ago, she would have to stand up and wave to catch the attention of the men running negotiations from the center of the room.

The daughter of an abattoir worker and fruit picker, Sepuloni could have exactly the expertise the PM needs to tackle a brutal cost of living crisis

C armel Sepuloni admits her father, who arrived from Samoa in 1964 unable to speak English, had difficulty taking in the news that his daughter was shortly to become New Zealand’s first Pasifika deputy prime minister.

Ardern says she slept soundly ‘for the first time in a long time,’ as colleagues in New Zealand deplore her treatment as PM and race begins to replace her

Jacinda Ardern has said she slept soundly after her shock resignation “for the first time in a long time”, as speculation grows that abuse and threats against the prime minister contributed to her stepping down.