Donald Trump's administration has told the Supreme Court that transgender workers are not protected by federal civil rights law and can be fired because of their gender.The US government is arguing workers should only be protected from discrimination based on their “biological sex”, court filings have revealed.A Supreme Court ruling in favour of the administration’s position would set a legal precedent, marking a major setback for LGBTQ rights since the Obama administration.The court filing relates to an upcoming court case involving transgender funeral home worker Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job after telling her employer about her transition.“In 1964, the ordinary public meaning of 'sex' was biological sex. It did not encompass transgender status,” the document filed on Friday reads.The 1964 Civil Rights Act states employers cannot discriminate based on sex, race, colour, religion, and national origin. “Title VII [of the act] does not prohibit discrimination against transgender persons based on their transgender status,” the filing argues. “It simply does not speak to discrimination because of an individual’s gender identity or a disconnect between an individual’s gender identity and the individual’s sex.”Under Barack Obama, the Justice Department decreed that Title VII did protect transgender workers. This meant Court of Appeals judges sided with Stephens in 2018.But former attorney general Jeff Sessions reversed the government's stance after Mr Trump took office in 2017.The Trump administration has since banned transgender people from joining the US military, reversing an Obama-era policy that allowed them to openly serve.The ban, which puts 14,700 jobs at risk, was formally upheld by the Supreme Court earlier this year.Mr Trump has previously claimed to be “perhaps the most pro-LGBT presidential nominee in the history of the Republican Party”.The Supreme Court will hear Stephens's case on 8 October. It is one of three cases concerning LGBTQ workers rights expected to come before the court in the autumn.

The former convenience store employee was accused of gunning down a teenager that stole a beer from a Tennessee convenience store.

An Iranian tanker caught in a stand-off between Tehran and the West has raised an Iranian flag and has had a new name painted on its side, Reuters images of the stationary vessel filmed off Gibraltar showed on Sunday. British Royal Marines seized the vessel in Gibraltar in July on suspicion that it was carrying oil to Syria, a close ally of Iran, in violation of European Union sanctions. Video footage and photographs showed the tanker flying the red, green and white flag of Iran and bearing the new name of 'Adrian Darya-1' painted in white on its hull.

A 16-year-old girl is missing from Northwest Indiana and her family believes she may be with a man they have a protective order against for stalking, police say.

Drones launched by Yemen's Houthi rebels attacked a massive oil and gas field deep inside Saudi Arabia's sprawling desert on Saturday, causing what the kingdom described as a "limited fire" in the second such recent attack on its crucial energy industry. The attack on the Shaybah oil field, which produces some 1 million barrels of crude oil a day near the kingdom's border with the United Arab Emirates, again shows the reach of the Houthis' drone program. Shaybah sits some 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) from Houthi-controlled territory, underscoring the rebels' ability to now strike at both nations, which are mired in Yemen's yearslong war.