Watch Live: Rubio testifes about Venezuela at Senate hearing

The hearing provides the first opportunity for lawmakers to publicly question the secretary of state about the capture of Nicolás Maduro and the future of Venezuela.

Trump continues to rail against Ilhan Omar after Minneapolis town hall attack – live

Trump calls Minnesota congresswoman a ‘fraud’ who ‘probably had herself sprayed’; Omar says ‘I don’t let bullies win’ in remarks after town hall attack

• Omar sprayed with unknown substance at Minneapolis town hall

Two federal officers fired their guns during the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, according to an initial review by the Department of Homeland Security that was obtained by NBC News.

Three sources told NBC News that the preliminary report, from a Customs and Border Protection internal investigation led by the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, was sent to congressional committees yesterday, including the House homeland security and judiciary committees.

Imran Khan’s health in ‘grave danger’ after being diagnosed with serious eye condition in jail

Family members and lawyers say Pakistan’s former PM suffered dangerous blockage in right eye while in prison

Pakistan’s incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan is facing severe eye damage and is being denied proper access to medical treatment while in solitary confinement, according to officials from his political party.

Khan, 73, considered to be Pakistan’s most high-profile political prisoner, has been in jail since August 2023. He is serving sentences for corruption and leaking state secrets, which he has claimed are part of a state-sponsored campaign to keep him out of power.

Threat of US-Iran war escalates as Trump warns time running out for deal

US president says armada heading towards Iran is ‘prepared to fulfil its missions with violence if necessary’

The threat of a US-Iranian war may be looming closer after Donald Trump warned time was running out for Tehran and said a massive US armada was moving quickly towards the country “with great power, enthusiasm and purpose”.

Writing on social media, the US president said the fleet headed by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was larger than the one sent to Venezuela before the removal of Nicolás Maduro earlier this month and was “prepared to rapidly fulfil its missions with speed and violence if necessary”.

Tax season is here — don't fall for these common scams

The FTC is warning taxpayers to keep an eye out for phishing and smishing scams aimed at stealing tax refunds and personal data.

BBC names Rhodri Talfan Davies as interim general director

Director in charge of investing in programming outside London will take over Tim Davie’s role while corporation seeks permanent replacement

The BBC has named senior executive Rhodri Talfan Davies as its interim general director, as the corporation continues the search for a permanent replacement for Tim Davie.

Davie, who resigned in November after the row over the BBC’s editing of a Donald Trump speech, will remain in the role until the start of April. Talfan Davies will then take over.

Exclusive discounts from CBS Mornings Deals

On this edition of CBS Mornings Deals, we show you items that might just become essentials in your everyday life. Visit cbsdeals.com to take advantage of these exclusive deals today. CBS earns commissions on purchases made through cbsdeals.com.

Ben Crump says ICE actions in Minneapolis are an "assault on our constitution"

While speaking with "CBS Mornings" about his debut novel, "Worse Than a Lie," attorney Ben Crump addressed the federal response in Minneapolis and said ICE's actions have been an "assault on our constitution." Crump also commented on what advice he would give the families of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Qatari plane hits Milan airport lights during arrival of Winter Olympics staff

Aircraft carrying 104 personnel damaged lighting tower while making ‘wrong manoeuvre’ after landing

A Qatari military cargo plane carrying security staff in Italy to assist with law enforcement for the Winter Olympics struck a lighting tower on Sunday as it manoeuvred upon landing at Milan’s Malpensa airport, it has emerged.

The aircraft was carrying 104 personnel from the Gulf state’s elite security forces, plus huge jeeps and snowmobiles, as part of an agreement made with the Italian government, despite Qatar not competing in the games.

Texas man slated to be first person executed in U.S. this year, for double murder

A Texas man is slated to be first person executed in U.S. this year, for killing his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. At one point he escaped for three days.

The last man left in a Moldovan village: Laetitia Vançon’s best photograph

‘Dobrușa once had a population of 200. Grisa now lived there alone with his 120 ducks and other animals. The two other remaining residents were murdered by a farmer from a neighbouring village’

This was taken in a village in rural Moldova that no longer exists. Thirty years ago, Dobrușa had a population of 200, and was typical of settlements found across the country after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. When this man Grisa moved there in 2000 to start a sheep farm, the population had declined to 70. When this was taken, in July 2019, he was the sole resident of the village. He was 65.

A few months before I took it, the only other remaining residents – a couple in their 40s – were murdered by a farmer from a neighbouring village. Their half-naked bodies were found on the ground. They’d been beaten to death. It was a very dark story and, after this terrible incident, Grisa told me he no longer felt safe living alone there. He was thinking about moving to a bigger village.

Amazon laying off about 16,000 corporate workers in latest anti-bureaucracy push

The layoffs mark the second round of mass cuts at Amazon since last October, when the company laid off roughly 14,000 employees across its corporate workforce.

China lags behind US at AI frontier but could quickly catch up, say experts

Beijing’s AI policy is focused on real-life applications but Chinese companies are beginning to articulate their own grand visions

Standing on stage in the eastern China tech hub of Hangzhou, Alibaba’s normally media-shy CEO made an attention-grabbing announcement. “The world today is witnessing the dawn of an AI-driven intelligent revolution,” Eddie Wu told a developer conference in September. “Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will not only amplify human intelligence but also unlock human potential, paving the way for the arrival of artificial superintelligence (ASI).”

ASI, Wu said, “could produce a generation of ‘super scientists’ and ‘full-stack super engineers’”, who would “tackle unsolved scientific and engineering problems at unimaginable speeds”.

The womanosphere urges dubious followers to back ICE: ‘Don’t let compassion cloud you’

Conservative figures such as Riley Gaines and Allie Beth Stuckey are urging their followers to ward off empathy for victims of ICE’s crackdown

Riley Gaines, the former collegiate swimmer turned anti-transgender activist, makes motherhood and femininity a core part of her brand. Her husband, Louis Barker, is a naturalized US citizen who moved to this country from the UK. The couple welcomed their first child, a daughter named Margot, in September; Gaines said there was “nothing” she would not do to protect her baby. But do not think that Gaines is at all sympathetic to families targeted by ICE.

This weekend, Gaines spoke on her podcast about Liam Ramos, the five-year-old boy taken by ICE agents from his driveway in Minneapolis. Images of Liam, clad in snowpants and wearing a blue hat with bunny ears, being held by a federal agent prompted widespread disgust in the US. How could a preschooler be considered one of the “dangerous” criminals Trump’s administration rails against?

NTSB blames D.C. midair collision on systemic failures: "100% preventable"

Nearly one year after a Blackhawk helicopter and an American Airlines flight collided near Washington's Reagan National Airport, the NTSB blamed the accident on systemic failures within air traffic control, Army aviation and the FAA. The NTSB chair said the accident was "100% preventable." Kris Van Cleave has more.

Greetings from Mumbai, where residents take breathing space where they can find it

Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.

GM tops earnings expectations, announces dividend increase and stock buyback program

GM recorded $7.2 billion in special charges for the fourth quarter of 2025, largely related to its pullback in electric vehicles and restructuring in China.

Intel says it will match government's 'Trump accounts' contribution to kids of employees

The 530A program, often called "Trump accounts," passed last year as part of the administration's "big beautiful bill."

The government is barreling toward a partial shutdown over DHS funding. Here's what to expect

The U.S. government may partially shutdown on Saturday months after a record 43-day closure in 2025.

Southwest ends open seating after 54 years. Here's what the last flight was like

Southwest Airlines replaced open seating with assigned seats after more than 50 years.

CBS Boise chief meteorologist Roland Steadham killed in plane crash

Roland Steadham and one other person were aboard a small plane that crashed into the icy Payette River on Tuesday.

Dutch parties strike minority coalition deal three months after D66 election upset

Christian Democrats and VVD join centrist D66 party three months after surprise win left fragmented parliament

The leaders of three Dutch political parties have agreed a new coalition deal, paving the way for a rare minority government in the Netherlands almost three months after elections that produced an upset victory for the centrist D66 party.

The liberal-progressive, pro-European party, led by the probable new prime minister, Rob Jetten, will join up with the conservative Christian Democrats and the right-wing VVD in a government that holds only 66 seats in the 150-seat lower house.

Starbucks stock jumps as coffee chain's traffic grows for the first time in two years

Shares of Starbucks have fallen more than 3% over the last year.

Sinner set for ‘toughest challenge’ in semi-final against Djokovic after swatting Shelton

• No 1 seed eases past American 6-3, 6-4, 6-4

• ‘It’s a grand slam, it’s always very difficult against Novak’

Jannik Sinner is under no illusion about the difficulty of his semi-final meeting with Novak Djokovic after defeating Ben Shelton on Wednesday. “It’s one of the toughest challenges we have in our sport,” he said. “It’s great to have Novak playing at this very, very high level. It’s a grand slam, it’s always very difficult against Novak. Let’s see what’s coming.”

Sinner’s 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 quarter-final victory over the seventh seed extended his commanding record against Shelton to 9-1, with Sinner winning 22 consecutive sets since the 23-year-old American won their first meeting. Such dominance over one of the best young players indicates just how far ahead Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are of the rest of the field.

Indiana judge targeted in shooting by motorcycle gang members, prosecutors say

Authorities say the shooting of an Indiana judge and his wife in their home was a gang attack and a planned assassination attempt. Five people were arrested last week and charged in the shooting. Jericka Duncan reports.

Kim Keon Hee, wife of South Korea’s ousted president, jailed for corruption

Ex-first lady sentenced to 20 months for receiving gifts for political favours, as Yoon Suk Yeol awaits rebellion verdict

The wife of South Korea’s ousted president Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to 20 months in prison for corruption, as her husband awaits a verdict on a high-stakes rebellion charge that could result in the death penalty or life imprisonment.

Kim Keon Hee was sentenced for receiving luxury gifts including a Graff diamond necklace and a Chanel bag from the Unification Church in return for promises of political favours.

Details emerge about victims killed in private jet crash in Maine

The victims in a private jet crash in Bangor, Maine, include a Texas mother who had been planning her daughter's wedding and a chef from Hawaii.

Family describes being without power days after the winter storm amid frigid temperatures

As millions across the eastern U.S. deal with frigid temperatures, nearly half a million people are still without power following the severe snow and ice storms over the weekend. Kati Weis reports.

Mortgage demand drops 8.5%, as interest rates swell to the highest level in 3 weeks

Mortgage rates rose last week, causing a large drop in demand for refinances. Homebuyer demand was essentially flat.

‘A catalyst for change’: how sustainable Copenhagen became fashion’s ‘fifth city’

In 20 years, Danish capital’s fashion week has pushed for greener standards and catapulted homegrown talent to global success

When it comes to fashion weeks, there used to be four key cities: New York, London, Milan and Paris. While they remain titleholders, a host of other cities from Berlin to Seoul and Lagos have been vying for the same recognition to become “the fifth fashion week”. But so far only one real winner has emerged: Copenhagen fashion week.

On Tuesday, the Danish showcase, which has helped catapult homegrown brands including Ganni into the international spotlight while spearheading sustainability initiatives, kicked off the start of its 20th-anniversary celebrations.

‘It’s not too late to fix it’: internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee says he is in a ‘battle for the soul of the web’

Founder of the world wide web says commercialisation means the net has been ‘optimised for nastiness’, but collaboration and compassion can prevail

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When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free.

Today, the British computer scientist’s creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people – and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended.

My petty gripe: tempted to start a conversation with the stranger in the elevator? Please don’t

There are unspoken rules about being in an elevator, people! Unspoken being one of the most important

• Read more petty gripes

Most people don’t relish being locked in a confined space, in close proximity to strangers, travelling at speed. And yet, so many people do nothing to elevate the experience for others.

I am floored at the enthusiasm of people who stand at the crack of elevator doors waiting for them to open, as if it were 9am at the Black Friday sales. When the doors open, they recoil in surprise – presumably they were expecting to be the first passengers on the maiden voyage of this metal tube sliding up and down the building’s shaft.

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: Still wearing a cross-body bag and French-tucking your shirt? Sorry to say, your wardrobe is cringe

If you’re wearing tight clothes and flashing your ankles, you may want to make some bold changes

Is your wardrobe cringe? Does it make you look out-of-touch and cause younger and cooler people to look upon you with pity? Do you really want me to answer that? Never mind, I’m going to anyway, so buckle up. Brutal honesty is very January, so I will give it to you straight. But before we get down to dissecting your wardrobe, two quick questions for you. Do you put full stops in text messages? Were you baffled by Labubus? If the answer to those two questions is yes, then I’m afraid the signs are that your wardrobe is almost certainly cringe.

Being cringe is essentially being old-fashioned, but worse. Being old-fashioned is what happens when you grow older with grace and dignity. Cringe is when you lose your touch while convincing yourself you are still down with the kids.

Snap establishes Specs subsidiary for its AR glasses

Snap on Wednesday said its unit working on the development of augmented reality glasses is now housed under a wholly owned subsidiary named Specs Inc.

Tyson Fury set for heavyweight boxing comeback in April on Netflix

• Former world champion to face Arslanbek Makhmudov

• Briton has been training in Thailand ahead of his return

Tyson Fury is to make his comeback against Arslanbek Makhmudov on April 11 in a fight that will be screened on Netflix.

Fury announced his retirement a year ago in the wake of successive defeats to Oleksandr Usyk but has been training in Thailand ahead of his return to the ring.

Centrist ideas no longer wanted in Conservative party, says Kemi Badenoch

Party leader tells MPs that one-nation Tories doubting her rightward direction ‘need to get out of the way’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Centrist ideas are no longer wanted in the Conservative party, Kemi Badenoch has said, arguing that one nation-type Tories or others who have qualms about her rightward direction for the party “need to get out of the way”.

Making a speech in Westminster intended to set out her vision for the party after a spate of recent defections to Reform UK, the Conservative leader hit out at what she called the “tantrum” of Robert Jenrick and others.

NASA plane makes belly landing at Texas airport, video shows

Video shows the NASA WB-57 plane touching down with a jolt, its wings bouncing as yellow fire and white smoke bursts from beneath it.

Budapest mayor charged over his calls for people to defy Hungary’s Pride ban

Gergely Karácsony urged people to take to streets in June in pushback against Orbán government’s attack on rights

Prosecutors in Hungary have filed charges against the progressive mayor of Budapest, seeking to fine him months after hundreds of thousands of people heeded his call to take to the streets in defiance of the government’s ban on Pride.

The June march made headlines around the world after the ruling Fidesz party, led by the rightwing populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, backed legislation that created a legal basis for Pride to be banned, citing a widely criticised need to protect children.

U.S.-India trade talks could get a boost as America sees life going on without it

There could be a renewed push to conclude a U.S.-India trade deal, analysts say, as the White House sees other countries signing trade deals.

Autonomous trucking startup Waabi raises $750 million to expand into robotaxis

Khosla Ventures, G2 Venture Partners, Uber, Nvidia and Volvo are all investing in the Toronto-based, driverless tech startup.

Why Max Richter’s Hamnet needle-drop left me cold | Tom Service on music

In a new weekly column about the world of classical music, Tom Service bemoans Hollywood turning pieces into slop through overuse. Plus: Philip Glass withdraws his symphony from the Kennedy Center

Back in 2008, Transport for London came up with a ruse to dispel antisocial behaviour: it piped classical music into supposedly problematic stations in the crime hotspots of south London. I think that was when I realised just how far the association of classical music with relaxing affect instead of real emotion had gone. Once an entire genre has become associated with relaxification, it’s enough for you to hear the sound of an orchestra and think, “This isn’t for me”. Whatever its BPM, classical music will only be a backdrop, the sound of luxury goods, the sound of cultural anaesthetic.

The playlist included the finale of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony – music that is obsessive and wild, the sound of barely controlled hysteria, full of harmonic grind and rhythmic assault. This radical and Dionysian music, that was literally made to push communities of orchestras and listeners to their extremes in the early 19th century, was being reduced to calming and inoffensive aural wallpaper.

Greenland will not give in, PM says, as Denmark warns world order as we know it is over

Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen on Wednesday issued a defiant message on the Arctic island's future.

Texas man scheduled to be executed for killing ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend

Charles Victor Thompson would be the first person executed in the US this year for the 1998 shooting deaths

A Texas man who at one time escaped from custody and was on the run for three days after being sentenced to death for fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend nearly 27 years ago was scheduled on Wednesday to be the first person executed in the US this year.

Charles Victor Thompson was condemned for the April 1998 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend, Glenda Dennise Hayslip, 39; and her new boyfriend, Darren Keith Cain, 30, at her apartment in the Houston suburb of Tomball.

Iraq’s former prime minister denounces ‘blatant American interference’ in election

Nouri al-Maliki responds to Donald Trump’s threat to withdraw US support for Iraq if he is returned to power

• US politics live – latest updates

Iraq’s former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has angrily denounced “blatant American interference” in the country’s election after Donald Trump threatened to withdraw US support if he was returned to power.

“We reject the blatant American interference in Iraq’s internal affairs and consider it a violation of its sovereignty,” al-Maliki, who is nominated by the country’s dominant political bloc to return to the premiership, said in a statement on Wednesday.

‘Political thunderstorm’: inside Trump’s attacks on the Somali community

The US president’s clamp down on immigration and flouting of the rule of law in Minnesota is entrenching long-established reserves of solidarity

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Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, distressing scenes continue to unfold on the streets of Minneapolis, as confrontations between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and protesters intensify. Behind the headlines, there are communities, in the US and beyond, for whom this is a generationally traumatic moment. I spoke to Somali experts and activists across the diaspora, in Mogadishu, and in the state of Minnesota, which has the largest Somali community in the US. The picture that emerged was of anxiety but also solid resolve.

For almost all of his second term, Donald Trump has been fixated on Somali Americans, making derogatory comments about both them and Somalia, linking his opinion of them to justify anti-immigration policies in general, but particularly in Minnesota, a state that is home to more than 100,000 people of Somali descent. He appears to be particularly personally exercised by Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who is of Somali origin, and who has exchanged barbs with him, taking his revenge on her entire demographic. So deep is his hatred that when Omar was attacked this week by a man who sprayed her with an unknown substance, Trump responded by calling her a fraud who “probably had herself sprayed”. But the broad reason for picking on the Somali community, according to Prof Idil Abdi Osman, at Leicester University, is that it is convenient. The shift towards the right in Europe and the US, she told me, constitutes a “political thunderstorm” that “Somalis have become absorbed in” because “they become an embodiment of the kind of communities that Trump can easily target and use as a scapegoat – that is convenient for the populist narrative”.

An artist’s tent in Gaza and Starmer in China: photos of the day – Wednesday

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Rubio faces Senate scrutiny as he defends Venezuela policy

At his first Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing since Nicolas Maduro was seized, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warns the U.S. could still use force to pressure Venezuela's adminstration.

Bundee Aki start in doubt for Ireland’s Six Nations opener against France over ‘disrespect’

• Veteran dropped for alleged outburst at match officials

• Andy Farrell dealt further blow by Hugo Keenan injury

Ireland are set to kick off the Six Nations next week without two of their most influential and experienced backline players. Bundee Aki and Hugo Keenan, key members of last year’s British & Irish Lions tour to Australia, should have been involved against France next week but are now facing spells on the sidelines for contrasting reasons.

Aki has not travelled to Ireland’s training camp in Portugal following a “misconduct complaint” relating to an alleged post-match incident with match officials at the weekend after Connacht’s URC game against Leinster.

Talent, tech and grit: how Team GB’s Big Tricks and Adrenaline dept got its mojo back | Sean Ingle

Snow athletes have rebounded with a radical overhaul after funding was cut in response to poor results at Beijing Winter Olympics

Just days before the Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina, the young Team GB members who think nothing of flying 30ft in the air while spinning like gyroscopes have once again proved they have the X Factor. Last Friday, Mia Brookes, 19, soared to X Games gold in the snowboard slopestyle in Aspen. Zoe Atkin, 23, followed suit in the freeski superpipe and before the weekend was through Kirsty Muir, 21, added a third gold in the freeski slopestyle, along with a big air silver.

All told it was a hugely successful time for GB Snowsport, with Charlotte Bankes winning her first World Cup snowboard cross event since breaking her collarbone in April in China the previous week. Little wonder, then, that Atkin is bullish about the British skiers’ and snowboarders’ chances in Italy.

Rubio to warn that US is ‘prepared to use force’ if Venezuela does not meet demands

Secretary of state does not rule out further US military action in Venezuela, according to prepared remarks

The Trump administration is ready to take new military action against Venezuela if the country’s interim leadership strays from US expectations, according to Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state.

In prepared testimony for a hearing before the Senate foreign relations committee, Rubio says the US is not at war with Venezuela and that its interim leaders are cooperating, but he notes that the Trump administration would not rule out using additional force following the capture of Nicolás Maduro early this month.

Labour risks election wipeout unless it improves Britain’s high streets, study finds

Decay of town centres a top issue among voters, especially Reform UK supporters, and is fuelling resentment against Westminster

• How has your local high street changed since 2019? Check your postcode

• The struggling billionaire-owned high street that shows Reform’s road to No 10

Labour will be “washed away in a tide of discontent” at the next general election unless it tackles the decline of Britain’s high streets, a study has warned, as Guardian analysis lays bare the changing face of town centres.

Research by the University of Southampton found people feel high streets have declined more than any other part of their local area over the past decade as household brands collapsed and shoplifting rose.

Trump admin rewrites nuclear safety rules. And, NTSB releases findings on D.C. crash

NPR obtains documents showing the Trump administration secretly cut nuclear safety rules to fast-track new reactors. And, investigators blame systemic failures for a deadly midair crash near D.C.

A poor surprise reveal for Highguard leaves it fighting an uphill battle for good reviews

​In the fiercely competitive market ​of the online multiplayer game, Highguard​’s rocky start means it now has a lot to prove

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In the fast-paced, almost psychotically unforgiving video game business, you really do have to stick the landing. Launching a new game is an artform in itself – do you go for months of slowly building hype or a sudden shock reveal, simultaneously announcing and releasing a new project in one fell swoop? The latter worked incredibly well for online shooter Apex Legends, which remains one of the genre’s stalwarts six years after its surprise launch on 4 February 2019. What you don’t do with a new release, is something that falls awkwardly between those two approaches. Enter Highguard.

This new online multiplayer title from newcomer Wildlight Entertainment has an excellent pedigree. The studio was formed by ex-Respawn Entertainment staff, most of whom previously worked on Titanfall, Call of Duty and the aforementioned Apex Legends. They know what they’re doing. But the launch has been … troubled.

Amazon tells workers it will cut 16,000 jobs worldwide in second big wave of layoffs

Workers informed after message erroneously said affected employees in US, Canada and Costa Rica had already been told

• Business live – latest updates

Amazon has told workers it is cutting 16,000 jobs around the world to streamline its operations, hours after sending out a message to staff about the layoffs apparently in error.

It is the second big wave of job cuts at the US online retail company, and comes just three months after the company said it was slashing 14,000 roles. Amazon employs about 1.5 million workers worldwide.

Lucinda Williams review – Americana legend brilliantly rails against a world out of balance

Limelight, Belfast
At 73, the lodestar of Americana still writes with urgency, as the patient force of her band sends the music grooving skywards

‘Thanks for being receptive to my complaining,” Lucinda Williams says late on, deadpan, after a run of songs circling power and consequence. Outside, Storm Chandra keeps the streets jumpy. Inside Belfast’s Limelight, a sold-out crowd sits on fold-up seats for a show shifted from Mandela Hall at short notice, the room oddly calm for a venue known for sweat and shoving.

Williams is a lodestar in the broad galaxy of music still called Americana, and two days after turning 73, she has the authority of a multiple Grammy winner who writes with urgency. She is living with the after-effects of a stroke, stepping on and off stage with care, yet once she’s behind the mic she radiates resolve. If anything, the voice sounds newly burnished; the phrasing more deliberate, the vibrato catching the light.

‘Shameful’: Trump’s EPA accused of prioritizing big business over public health

A year into Trump’s second term, critics say the EPA is rolling back dozens of protections and giving a leg up to polluters

After a tumultuous year under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has adopted a new, almost unrecognizable guise – one that tears up environmental rules and cheerleads for coal, gas-guzzling cars and artificial intelligence.

When Donald Trump took power, it was widely anticipated the EPA would loosen pollution rules from sources such as cars, trucks and power plants, as part of a longstanding back and forth between administrations over how strict such standards should be.

Pressure grows on Stephen Miller after Alex Pretti killing but Trump unlikely to cut ties

Outrage followed ‘would-be assassin’ lie but experts say architect of ICE drive too dominant a figure to be shunned

Pressure is growing on the key White House senior adviser Stephen Miller over the killing of the intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by border patrol agents in Minneapolis and its politically divisive aftermath.

Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policy, finds himself in the rare position of being contradicted and excluded from crucial decisions by the US president.

Man sprays Rep. Ilhan Omar with unknown substance at town hall

Rep. Ilhan Omar was calling for the abolishment of ICE and for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign when a man sitting in the front row rushed up and sprayed her. He was arrested and Omar was not injured, police said.

As the U.S. bids adieu to the World Health Organization, California says hello

In the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from WHO, California is the first state to participate in the agency's disease monitoring network. Are others following?

What is Nipah virus? Key things to know about the disease amid cases in India

Highly contagious virus, which spreads from animals to humans, has a high fatality rate and there is no vaccine

Airports across Asia have been put on high alert after India confirmed two cases of the deadly Nipah virus in the state of West Bengal over the past month.

Thailand, Nepal and Vietnam are among the countries screening airport arrivals over fears of an wider outbreak of the virus, which can spread from animals to humans and has a high fatality rate.

Russian and Ukrainian military casualties in war nearing 2m, study finds

Thinktank says about 1.2m Russians troops killed, wounded or missing to date and 600,000 Ukrainians

The number of Russian and Ukrainian troops killed, wounded or gone missing in nearly four years of war could reach 2 million by this spring, according to a study, as Moscow’s invasion shows no sign of abating.

A report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates Russia has had about 1.2 million casualties, including as many as 325,000 deaths, while close to 600,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed, wounded or gone missing.

TikTok virality gives Jeff Buckley his first US Top 100 hit 29 years after his death

Lover, You Should Have Come Over enters charts at No 97, after becoming popular on social media platform

Jeff Buckley has achieved his first US Hot 100 hit single, 29 years after his death, with Lover, You Should Have Come Over at No 97 this week.

TikTok virality is behind the success, as a new generation of listeners discover Buckley’s spirited, romantic songwriting and pair it with videos on the social media platform. TikTok videos don’t count towards US chart positions, but viral trends drive listeners towards songs on streaming services that do count.

Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

Virginia ‘Ginny’ Oliver, had entered the business when she was eight and liked ‘being along the water’

Maine’s governor has hailed the life of a woman who spent nearly 100 years fishing for lobsters as “amazing” and expressed hopes that her memory inspires “the next century of hardworking” fishers in the state.

The subject of Governor Janet Mills’ tribute, Virginia “Ginny” Oliver, died on 21 January at age 105, according to an obituary published on Monday by her family.

Why would anyone buy Lily Allen’s haunted house? I have an inkling ... | Polly Hudson

The Brooklyn townhouse is filled with spectres of her ill-fated marriage to David Harbour. But perhaps the buyer has some creative ideas

How long a minute is depends which side of the bathroom door you’re on. Now it appears that how much a $1m loss matters depends how eager you are for your business to be concluded.

That’s pretty eager apparently – and unsurprisingly – if you’re Lily Allen and David Harbour. The former couple have just accepted $7m for the Brooklyn townhouse they listed for $8m in October.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Pregnant, 19 and facing down a mutiny: how did Mary Ann Patten steer her way into seafaring lore?

Finding herself in charge of her sick husband’s clipper, a self-taught working-class teenager overcame storms, icebergs and a disloyal first mate to get her ship to safety

No one knows exactly what Mary Ann Patten said in September 1856 when she convinced a crew on the verge of mutiny to accept her command as captain. What is known is that Patten, who was 19 and pregnant, was a force to be reckoned with.

After taking the helm from her sick husband in the middle of a ferocious storm off the coast of Cape Horn, the notoriously hazardous tip of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago off southern Chile, she successfully put down the mutiny and navigated her way to safety through a sea of icebergs.

Former law enforcement trainer sees "unanswered questions" in Alex Pretti's shooting

A former federal law enforcement trainer says the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers raises serious concerns about their tactical decision-making and use of force.

A moment that changed me: I went on holiday – and for the first time I felt I stood out

Leicester, where I grew up, was a ‘super diverse’ city. But when I went on a short trip with a friend, it gave me a glimpse of another world

When I was 24, I visited Ireland for the first time. It was the autumn after I graduated from university, and a friend who had won an award for her dissertation used her prize money to rent a beach hut on Valentia Island, so that we could spend a week working on our novels.

The stone hut stood very close to the water’s edge on the western tip of Ireland, overlooking the expansive metal-blue of the Atlantic. The island possessed a rugged kind of beauty – cliff edges, a lush rainforest, cold frothing water. It astounded us. As did the tranquillity. It was what we had come in search of.

Copyrighted art, mobile phones, Greenland: welcome to our age of shameless theft | Jonathan Liew

The human impulse to steal has been accelerated by AI, inequality and our political leaders – with profound consequences

Last week I discovered that an article I wrote about the England cricket team has already been copied and repackaged, verbatim and without permission, by an Indian website. What is the appropriate response here? Decry and sue? Shrug and move on? I ponder the question as I stroll through my local supermarket, where the mackerel fillets are wreathed in metal security chains and the dishwasher tabs have to be requested from the storeroom like an illicit little treat.

On the way home, I screenshot and crop a news article and share it to one of my WhatsApp groups. In another group, a family member has posted an AI-generated video (“forwarded many times”) of Donald Trump getting his head shaved by Xi Jinping while Joe Biden laughs in the background. I watch the mindless slop on my phone as I walk along the main road, instinctively gripping my phone a little tighter as I do so.

Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist

The Spin | How Sandhill Ashes cricket match helped to rebuild a community ravaged by bushfire

A record-breaking heatwave in Australia is a potent reminder of how cricket responded to previous wildfires

It’s bushfire season once again in Australia. A record-breaking heatwave, plus intense winds, have resulted in a tinder-box landscape and hard-to-control blazes in large areas of the south east.

“To be frank,” said Jason Heffernan, chief officer of Victoria’s Country Fire Authority on Tuesday, “the state is very, very dry. Any fire that takes hold will be a challenge for the community.”

US dollar sinks to its lowest level in four years

Dollar drops against basket of currencies after Donald Trump brushed off concerns over slide

• Business live – latest updates

The US dollar has fallen to its lowest level in four years after Donald Trump brushed off concerns over the currency’s fall, sending investors fleeing to traditional havens including gold and the Swiss franc.

The dollar dropped by 1.3% against a basket of currencies after the president’s comments on Tuesday, marking its fourth day of declines, then slipped by a further 0.2% on Wednesday morning.

‘It turned out I had a brain tumour …’ Six standup comics on what spurred them to get on stage

When it comes to origin stories, comedians have some of the strangest – from performing for a £5 bet to getting back at their boss to making an unlikely pact with a friend

Not all standup comedians wake up one day and decide to be funny for a living. That wasn’t the case for John Bishop, anyway. He took up comedy to avoid paying a bar’s cover charge and to escape his failing marriage – a story that inspired Bradley Cooper’s new film, Is This Thing On? And Bishop is not the only comic with an unusual origin story. From impressing girlfriends to losing their voices, brain tumours to bad bosses – or not wanting to lose a £5 bet – British comics told us the reasons they became standup comedians and the lengths to which they went to get on stage for the first time.

Hudson River turns to ice after heavy snow in New York City – video

Video shows the Hudson river partially frozen near the George Washington Bridge in New York City after a heavy winter snowstorm. Eight people were found dead outside over the frigid weekend in the city, officials said, as New York experienced its snowiest day in years, recording 20-38cm (8-15in) of snow. At least 30 deaths were linked to a winter storm that hit North America's north-east. Some regions may not see temperatures rise above freezing until early February with the midwest, in particular, forecast to shiver in exceptionally frosty conditions

CBP has a history of excessive force. Critics say they were unprepared for Minnesota

Experts say federal immigration agents' skills are a dangerous mismatch for urban settings such as the Twin Cities

My husband was murdered on holiday – and my whole world collapsed

Each year, about 80 British people are victims of a homicide overseas, and grieving loved ones have to navigate the aftermath. Eve Henderson describes losing her husband, and her fight to help others

On a Sunday in October 1997, Eve Henderson looked down at her husband, Roderick, as he lay in a hospital bed, unable to make sense of what she saw. She was, she says, “a block of stone”. They were in the neurological ward of a huge hospital on the outskirts of Paris. It had taken Henderson an hour to find, travelling on the Métro with the name scribbled on a scrap of paper,. Roderick looked comfortable when she arrived; he was a good colour, but there was a round red mark in the centre of his forehead and a small tube inside his mouth, attached to something she later learned was breathing for him.

“He looked fairly alive,” says Henderson, “and I just stood there. A doctor came in. She was in tears and I thought: ‘Bloody hell, am I meant to be crying?’ You’ve got no emotion, you’ve got nothing. You don’t know what to say or where you are. That’s what shock does to you.”

Gonna be golden? Who will – and should – win the big awards at the 2026 Grammys

The top categories are stacked with quality, from Bad Bunny to Kendrick Lamar, Chappell Roan and K-pop hits – but here are the artists who most deserve to triumph

Bad Bunny – DTMF
Sabrina Carpenter – Manchild
Doechii – Anxiety
Billie Eilish – Wildflower
Kendrick Lamar & SZA – Luther
Lady Gaga – Abracadabra
Chappell Roan – The Subway
Rosé & Bruno Mars – APT.

To keep AI out of her classroom, this high school English teacher went analog

Forth Worth teacher Chanea Bond says sticking with pen and paper keeps generative artificial intelligence out of her American literature classes.

The Trump administration has secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules

The rewrite was done to speed up the construction of a new generation of nuclear reactors. Critics warn it could compromise safety and public trust.

Starmer vows to raise issues ‘that need to be raised’ with Xi amid push to free Jimmy Lai

PM may also discuss fate of Uyghurs with Chinese leader on trip aimed at improving economic relations

• ‘Very low bar’: Starmer faces slim pickings in China

Keir Starmer has said he will “raise the issues that need to be raised” on human rights with China’s president, Xi Jinping, as he arrived in Beijing for the first trip to the country by a UK leader in eight years.

The prime minister has come under pressure from rights groups to try to secure the release of Jimmy Lai, the jailed former media tycoon and one of Hong Kong’s most significant pro-democracy voices.

The Puma by Daniel Wiles review – a visceral tale of cyclical violence

A father and son move to the Patagonian woods – but intensity wanes when a search for home becomes an obsessive quest for revenge

When the protagonist of Daniel Wiles’s debut novel Mercia’s Take, set in a mining community during the industrial revolution, left a bag of gold downstairs unprotected and then went to bed, I actually closed the book, in an attempt to stop the unfolding disaster. After finding this seam of gold, miner Michael dreams that his son will be able to go to school, rather than join the other children who work in the mine, like “blind, bald rodents unearthing themselves in search of scraps of candlelight”. In the novel, which won the 2023 Betty Trask prize, everything closes in on Michael: lungs clog, tunnels collapse, horse-drawn narrowboats are attacked by robbers in the sooty dusk. It’s a vivid reminder of the cost, in bodily suffering, of resource extraction.

The Puma, Wiles’s second novel, is also a serious and intense historical novel about a father with limited resources who attempts to break a cycle of violence. In the early 1950s Bernardo, a more morally ambiguous figure than Michael, has brought his young son James across the Atlantic from England to the house in the Patagonian woods where he himself grew up. James chatters blithely about becoming a footballer, but Bernardo is distracted. He thinks he sees “shadows of his family walking in and out”, reminding him of a childhood in which “his eyes were wide and hurt by the twilight and he was barefooted and emptyhearted”.

Rabbit Trap review – feral child lends eerie magic to Dev Patel fairy folk rock horror

The 70s musicians who choose to lay down some tracks in remote Welsh countryside may not really surprise, but one young local is startlingly memorable

There’s an oscillation of weirdness in this feature debut from Bryn Chainey, who takes us deep into the traditional folk-horror thicket with a fervently atmospheric and intriguingly acted, if finally directionless drama set in 1970s Wales. Like Daniel Kokotajlo’s recent Starve Acre or Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men, Rabbit Trap swathes you in ambient sound design and insists on a kind of atavistic authenticity in the 70s stylings themselves: the woollens, the gloom and the analogue recording equipment. Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen play Darcy and Daphne, an English couple involved in the music scene; she is a folk singer whose last LP was called Mono Moon. They have come to the remote Welsh countryside to work on her new album, a bit like Led Zeppelin, whose experience recording in primitive Welsh cottages in the early 70s deserves a folk-horror treatment of its own.

They rent a cottage featuring the kind of windows at which, in Withnail’s immortal words, faces look in at. Darcy is Daphne’s producer and sound engineer and tapes interesting sounds thereabouts for use on the record – birdsong, rainwater dripping into a barrel – but is also picking up a strange thrumming from the shroomy netherworld. Soon this English couple find themselves befriended and yet menaced by a smudgy-faced, jumper-wearing feral Welsh child (rather brilliantly played by Jade Croot) who could be any age from nine to 54, telling uneasy Darcy about the Tylwyth Teg fairy folk and showing him a rabbit trap in which the captured bunnies are transformed into fetish sacrifices.

Hitchcock’s The Lodger has been turned into a vertical microdrama. What’s next – Psycho on Snapchat?

A silent-era classic has been reframed for the vertical scroll of phone screens. Is this innovation, sacrilege, or just another way to repackage cinema history?

‘Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake,” said Alfred Hitchcock. Who knew that anyone would take the knife to one of his most beloved silent films, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), and turn it into a vertical microdrama?

The Tattle TV app has announced that it will be streaming serial killer drama The Lodger on its phone-friendly vertical platform, telling Deadline that it is “one of the first known instances of a classic feature film being fully reframed for vertical, mobile-first consumption”. So will it set a trend? And if so, how can we stop it?

I’m only joking, of course. There will always be those who see archive cinema as just so much more content to be re-appropriated in new formats. And there will always be old-guard purists – who, me? – who wince at the thought. Still, Tattle TV, you have my attention, so let’s talk about it.

We won’t be getting this mini-Hitch in the UK, or the EU for that matter, due to rights, but lucky US viewers will be able to watch the film that Hitchcock considered “the first time I exercised my style” in a format that largely disregards that style. The Lodger will be presented with its squarish 4:3 image either extended or cut down to fill a vertical phone screen. So there will often be parts of the image missing, which is a problem.

The opening shot of The Lodger is a chilling closeup of a woman screaming, her head tilted so that her entire face fills the frame, lit from behind to emphasise her blond hair. Hitchcock told Truffaut that in The Lodger, he presented “ideas in purely visual terms”. This closeup represents the terror spreading across London as a ripper targets young, golden-haired women. Is the idea intact, even if the image isn’t? Hitchcock, a well-known stickler for carefully composed frames, may well disagree. I would.

Which football league had the fewest teams finishing with a positive GD? | The Knowledge

Plus: two sets of fathers and sons involved in one match, more record wins and losses and ‘sixes and sevens’

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Twelve of the 18 Bundesliga teams have a negative goal difference,” notes Damian Cerase. “I suppose this is down to Bayern handing out weekly drubbings, given that their GD is +57 after only 18 games. What’s the greatest disparity in a full season between the number of teams registering positive or negative GDs?”

“At the time of writing in the Bundesliga, all teams haven’t quite played the same number of games but nevertheless 66.6% of the teams have a negative goal difference,” begins Chris Roe. “For a complete season, the highest percentage in the English league system is from tier two in 2005-06 when 17 of the 24 teams (70.83%) had a negative goal difference; no doubt this was in part due to champions Reading, who had a +67 goal difference for the season. This example is narrowly ahead of two Premier League seasons (1998-99 and 2017-18) when 14 of the 20 (or 70%) had negative GD at the end of the season.

Shrinking season three review – Harrison Ford is the best thing about this unapologetically soapy show

This warm, inoffensive but undeniably mawkish comedy about a therapist is cosy but preposterous. Sometimes it’s like the excellent Ford is in a totally different programme

Such is the surfeit of TV offered up to us in the streaming age that there are whole shows featuring A-list actors that only two of your friends have heard of and even fewer are watching. A case in point: Apple’s Shrinking, a dramedy from the creator of Scrubs and Ted Lasso about a grieving therapist who, rather than merely nodding and looking sad, decides to get brutally honest with his patients.

Now in its third season, its brightest star remains Harrison Ford, who plays our protagonist Jimmy’s (Jason Segel) grouchy but good-hearted boss. It’s probably for the best that it isn’t in the big leagues: while Shrinking has its moments of greatness, the series is – by and large – an unapologetically soapy confection best enjoyed, like most sweet things, in moderation.

Shrinking is on Apple TV now.

Even British teenagers want tighter laws around social media – but let’s make it part of a broader vision for children | Gaby Hinsliff

We need an honest reckoning with other factors that threaten young people’s wellbeing, from poverty to academic stress

Our children’s feelings are not for sale, and nor are they to be manipulated.

So said Emmanuel Macron this week, after French lawmakers voted to ban under-15s from social media. Admittedly, he then repeated these sentiments in a post on X, in the time-honoured manner of parents solemnly lecturing children to do as we say, not as we do.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email [email protected] or [email protected]. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

‘Animals in the zoo’: Iga Swiatek backs Coco Gauff over Australian Open privacy concerns

• American was caught on camera smashing racket following defeat

• ‘It would be nice to have some privacy,’ says Polish second seed

Iga Swiatek backed up Coco Gauff’s complaints about a lack of privacy at the Australian Open by claiming tennis players are treated like zoo animals.

Gauff sought a spot away from public view to let her frustration out by smashing a racket following her quarter-final loss to Elina Svitolina on Tuesday, only to find out she was on camera after all.

1/27: CBS Evening News

Customs and Border Protection review finds 2 agents opened fire on Alex Pretti; One of the benefits of being an active grandparent? Slower cognitive decline

David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God by Peter Ormerod review – the making of a modern saint

An exhilarating account of Bowie’s spirituality and the quasi-religious nature of his work, from Space Oddity to Blackstar

It has become a tired cliche among fans to say that everything went wrong in the world after Bowie died in 2016. It also misses the point: rather than being one of the last avatars of a liberal order that has crumbled around our ears, Bowie prophesied the mayhem that has replaced it.

In his later years, he thought that we had entered a zone of chaos and fragmentation. This is what allowed him to be so prescient about the internet – not its promise, but its menace. There is no plan and no order. There is just disaster and social collapse. Those looking for reassurance should not listen to Bowie (please listen to something, anything, else). His world, from Space Oddity through to the background violence of The Next Day and Blackstar, was always drowned or destroyed or incinerated: “This ain’t rock’n’roll, this is genocide” as he exclaims at the beginning of Diamond Dogs.

Sanctions are not a humane alternative to bombs. They are economic warfare with civilians as collateral damage | Kenneth Mohammed

In the Caribbean and Latin America, the lived reality of these measures – presented in the language of diplomacy – is stark

Across borders, cultures and faiths, most ordinary people want the same things: the ability to earn a living, put a roof over their heads, feed their families and watch their children grow up with a future. These are not radical ideas, but they are today routinely sacrificed on the altar of geopolitics.

When power and profit take precedence, governments abandon the everyday realities of those they claim to protect and serve, especially when domination of another country’s resources, markets or political direction is at stake.

Protecting one of Europe’s last wild rivers: a volunteering trip to the Vjosa in Albania

Now a ‘wild river national park’, the Vjosa needs more trees to be planted to preserve its fragile ecosystem. And visitors are being asked to help …

Our induction into tree-planting comes from Pietro, an Italian hydromorphologist charged with overseeing our group of 20 or so volunteers for the week. We’re standing in a makeshift nursery full of spindly willow and poplar saplings just above the Vjosa River, a graceful, meandering waterway that cuts east to west across southern Albania from its source 169 miles away upstream in Greece.

Expertly extricating an infant willow from the clay-rich soil, Pietro holds up the plant for us all to see. Its earthy tendrils look oddly exposed and vulnerable. “The trick is not to accidentally snick the stem or break the roots,” he says. Message registered, we take up our hoes and head off in pairs to follow his instructions.

The volunteering week is the brainchild of EcoAlbania and the Austria-based Riverwatch. Back in 2023, these two conservation charities succeeded in persuading the Albanian government to designate the River Vjosa as Europe’s first “wild river national park”. It was a timely intervention. According to new research co-funded by Riverwatch, Albania has lost 711 miles (1,144km) of “nearly natural” river stretches since 2018 – more, proportionally, than any country in the Balkans. Now, the question facing both organisations is: what next?

On our first evening, Riverwatch’s chief executive, Ulrich (“Uli”) Eichelmann, gives a presentation setting out his answer. But before he does, we have a dinner of lamb and homegrown vegetables to work through. The traditional spread is a speciality of the Lord Byron guesthouse in Tepelenë, a small town in the heart of the Vjosa valley and home to EcoAlbania’s field office – our base for the week.

Smothering, bullying, stabbing: how it feels to be in one of the hottest places on Earth

Everything felt like it was swelling, and despite my diligent consumption of water and Hydralyte, I couldn’t quite escape the persistent, low-level nausea. Even thinking took longer

My mother grew up in Warracknabeal, a speck of a town four hours from Melbourne, Australia, in the wide, wheat country of the Wimmera – that part of Victoria where the sky starts to stretch, where you can see weather happening 100 kilometres away.

Once or twice a year, our family would pack into the rattling old LandCruiser and drive up to visit my grandmother. It can’t always have been blistering weather but my memories of those trips are shot through with summer heat: the peeling paint of my grandmother’s house, the blasted-dry grass of the reserve over the road and its ancient metal monkey bars, so hot they burned your hands. Once, a dust storm blew up while we were there, engulfing the small weatherboard house in howling dirty orange.

Why is Greenland so rich in natural resources?

Island’s mineral and resource wealth is result of mountain building, rifting and volcanic activity over 4bn years

As recent manoeuvres over Greenland have made plain, this mostly ice-covered island contains some of the greatest stores of natural resources in the world, with huge volumes of oil and gas, rich deposits of rare-earth elements and rocks bearing gems and gold. So why did all the planetary goodies end up here?

Writing in The Conversation, the geologist Dr Jonathan Paul from Royal Holloway, University of London, explains how this mineral and resource wealth is tied to the country’s geological history over the past 4bn years. Greenland is a bit of a geological anomaly, with land that has been pummelled in three different ways: mountain building, rifting and volcanism.

From the Burnham row to the China visit, avoiding hard choices is the Starmer doctrine | Rafael Behr

Whether at home or abroad, the pattern of ducking difficult arguments and calling it pragmatism is the same

There comes a point in a prime minister’s career when foreign travel offers respite from domestic trouble. Even when relations with the host country are tricky, as Britain’s are with China, the dignifying protocols of statecraft make a beleaguered politician feel valued.

Next comes the phase where missions overseas feel dangerous because plotters can organise more openly against absent leaders.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Trump wants our attention. Let’s stop falling for his geopolitical clickbait | Catherine De Vries

Whether he’s targeting Greenland, tariffs or Iran, Trump’s agenda is to distract – because a Europe that is always reacting is never planning

When Donald Trump reassured the world that he would not, after all, use force to acquire Greenland – after days of threatening as much – he was doing what he does best: turning geopolitics into a spectacle. Whether Trump ever truly believed the US should acquire a vast Arctic territory belonging to a Nato ally is secondary to the fact that, once again, he ensured that Europe and the rest of the world were focused on his agenda.

Trump is not a politician who responds to events – he seeks to make them. Not because he is deeply invested in policy detail, but because he understands a defining feature of contemporary politics: attention is power. In an era of information overload, there is no scarcity of data or analysis; what is lacking is attention. And whoever controls that controls the debate.

Placebo make theatre debut with score for Brecht production by Royal Shakespeare Company

Alt-rockers will score Hitler allegory The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, with Mark Gatiss in the title role

Alt-rockers Placebo are set to collaborate with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) by scoring a new production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

Written in 1941, the play is about a Chicago mobster who seeks to control the city’s vegetable trade through corruption, intimidation and violence: a clear allegory of how Adolf Hitler had swept to power during the 1930s.

In Alexander brothers trial, first witness testifies to being sexually assaulted

The first witness at the federal sex trafficking trial of three brothers, two of them high-end real estate brokers, testified Tuesday in a Manhattan courtroom that the thrill of attending a party at a celebrity's apartment turned into a nightmare.

Mother describes losing 3 sons in frozen North Texas pond: "I couldn't help them"

Three young brothers died after falling through the ice on a pond near their temporary home. Their mother says the tragedy unfolded in seconds as she tried to pull them out.

DOJ says it will finish releasing Epstein files soon, but doesn't offer timeline

Top Justice Department officials said Tuesday they expect to finish reviewing and publishing files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein soon, but cannot provide a specific timeline.

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York review – John Turturro steals this simple, charming tale

Sundance film festival: the actor plays a pickpocket who steals from the wrong person in a leisurely, straightforward crime thriller with a sting in its tail

Noah Segan’s light-footed crime noir The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is a film obsessed with the gap between the old and new. There are memories shared about how things used to be, and some older characters refusing to keep up with digital progression, while there are eye-rolls from the younger generation, poking fun at those losing touch with how the world now operates. I’d argue that the theme is often a little overplayed, a classic case of writer-director Segan – a frequent Rian Johnson collaborator – telling rather than showing. But his film makes a convincing case for the old, a brisk throwback to a 70s-era character-led thriller, made with borrowed flair from yesteryear.

The title is itself partly borrowed from a Simon and Garfunkel song and speaks to a protagonist of a dying breed, a pickpocket who prides himself on the old ways; though he might swipe smartphones, he doesn’t own one. He’s played by John Turturro, an actor who hasn’t enjoyed many a lead role of late – his last was in the ill-received Big Lebowski “sequel” The Jesus Rolls and that’s only because he wrote and directed it himself. But this is a welcome step up, or step back up, for someone deserving of something more substantial to tear into. Fittingly, he’s someone who would have arguably had a more prominent career as a leading man in a different time.

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

Man hospitalized after exchanging gunfire with Border Patrol agents in Arizona

A man was hospitalized after allegedly exchanging gunfire with Border Patrol agents in Arizona on Tuesday, according to the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

Can Syria keep the world safe from IS fighters?

Syrian government forces have seized swathes of territory from Kurdish groups – including camps holding IS prisoners. Will Christou reports on why this is a dangerous moment

Will Christou reports on Syria for the Guardian and has been watching the new government’s lightning-fast takeover of territory in the country’s north-east. “All of a sudden, two major provinces that were under the Kurdish forces’ control fell in a number of hours and Syrian government forces swept in,” he tells Annie Kelly.

Soon the forces were at al-Hawl camp, the largest camp holding suspected Islamic State militants – and then they were taking it over. In the chaos of the handover, more than 100 prisoners escaped and not all were found again. The camps have long been controversial: al-Hawl has an area filled with foreign fighters whose governments, for the most part, refuse to take them back. Then there are the women and children, some of whom have grown up at the camp. Thousands are languishing there, suspected but never tried.