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Donald Trump's leverage over Visa and Mastercard highlights a blind spot in Europe's independence' strategy. Emulating India's response might helpWhen the centre-left French politician Aurore Lalucq posted a warning last Wednesday that Donald Trump could cut off Europe from international payment systems, the clip went viral. To many, her message made sense. After all, if Mr Trump was prepared to test allies' boundaries over Greenland, it is not far-fetched to imagine Visa and Mastercard becoming used against a recalcitrant Europe.The US can turn off payment systems it controls. Russia learned this first-hand after sanctions were rightly applied for its invasion of Ukraine. As up to 60% of Russian retail transactions depended on Visa and Mastercard for authorisation, the ban left many ordinary people stranded without access to funds and unable to buy goods. Under Mr Trump, America's goal is to help Europe correct its current trajectory". Given such talk, Ms Lalucq, who chairs theEuropean parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee, is not wrong in calling for an Airbus of European payments" to protect the EU. Continue reading...

News of Tracee Mergen's decision came before agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, another US citizen in MinneapolisA supervisor in the FBI's Minneapolis field office who unsuccessfully attempted to investigate the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in the city on 7 January has resigned, according to multiple reports.News of agent Tracee Mergen's resignation surfaced shortly before federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday. Pretti and Good were both 37-year-old US citizens. Continue reading...

Multiple small-business indexes show an uptick in optimism as well as an easing of cost pressures and uncertaintyRegardless of all the challenges they face, small businesses have been doing pretty well in this country across the board. Don't believe me? Take a look at some of the latest numbers.For more than 50 years, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) has published a monthly report of small-business economic trends, based on a random sample of the organization's approximately 300,000 member firms. This survey is one of the longest and most consistent of any I follow, using the same questionnaire since 1973. So where do things stand? Continue reading...

Generative AI is being pushed into healthcare - and diagnostic risks may deepen the class divideIn southern California, where rates of homelessness are among the highest in the nation, a private company, Akido Labs, is running clinics for unhoused patients and others with low incomes. The caveat? The patients are seen by medical assistants who use artificial intelligence (AI) to listen to the conversations, then spit out potential diagnoses and treatment plans, which are then reviewed by a doctor. The company's goal, its chief technology officer told the MIT Technology Review, is to pull the doctor out of the visit".This is dangerous. Yet it's part of a larger trend where generative AI is being pushed into healthcare for medical professionals. In 2025, a survey by the American Medical Association reported that two out of three physicians used AI to assist with their daily work, including diagnosing patients. One AI startup raised $200m to provide medical professionals with an app dubbed ChatGPT for doctors". US lawmakers are considering a bill that would recognize AI as able to prescribe medication. While this trend of AI in healthcare affects almost all patients, it has a deeper impact on people with low incomes who already face substantial barriers to care and higher rates of mistreatment in healthcare settings. People who are unhoused and have low incomes should not be testing grounds for AI in healthcare. Instead, their voices and priorities should drive if, how, and when AI is implemented in their care.Leah Goodridge is a lawyer who worked in homeless prevention litigation for 12 yearsOni Blackstock, MD, MHS, is a physician, founder and executive director of health justice, and a Public Voices Fellow on technology in the public interest with The OpEd Project Continue reading...

In his fresh intoxication with global conquest, Trump is following an established pattern - one that promises disasterTo many observers, Donald Trump's open bellicosity - his threats to attack Greenland and Iran, and his recent kidnapping of Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro - looks like an ideological reversal. Donald Trump betrayed his MAGA base today [by] launching a war of choice to bring regime change in Venezuela," tweeted Democratic congressman Ro Khanna on 3 January. The day before, former Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote: President Trump threatening war and sending in troops to Iran is everything we voted against in 24." On 20 January, National Public Radio reported that Trump supporters share confusion and anger over the president's focus on Greenland".The sense of whiplash is understandable. As a candidate, Trump often denounced war. Now he is infatuated with it. But while Trump seems uniquely set on dismantling the postwar order in the service of his quest for global domination, there is precedent for his transformation. Continue reading...

The president's approval ratings are plummeting and most Americans see him as an aberration. It is now up to them to curtail his despotic reignDonald Trump is a monster, and a stupid one at that - as his foul slander of British soldiers who served in Afghanistan shows. His bid to seize loyal ally Denmark's sovereign territory; his norm-shattering, profoundly ignorant speech in Davos last week; and his contemptuous bullying of UK and EU leaders have definitively demonstrated what an existential, unappeasable, unspeakable menace the 47th US president truly is.All the post-Davos talk is about what the UK, the EU and Nato must do in future to resist and constrain Trump, and how to counter his attempts to demolish the global rules-based order. Yet a sense of proportion is required. If his policies and posturing are removed from the equation, it's clear that the unedifying but familiar postwar world of great power rivalries and de-facto spheres of influence remains largely unchanged. Continuities outnumber ruptures. It's also clear this crisis is not ultimately one Europe can solve.Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator Continue reading...

Experts say guidance is refreshing' as it puts more emphasis on responsibility of companies and societyThe American Academy of Pediatrics has released new guidance on how to protect children's mental health in the digital age - emphasizing the need for systemic changes as well as parental engagement that goes beyond limiting screen time.Jessica Schleider, an adolescent psychologist and professor at Northwestern University whose lab develops digital mental health interventions, said the new policy statement was really refreshing to see", because it contrasts with conventional wisdom that places too much of the safety burden on individual parents. Common advice like limiting individual youth access to screens", or asking parents to keep tabs on their children's every digital movement is not only impossible, but for adolescents in particular, potentially invasive", Schleider said. Continue reading...

A video filmed by a bystander shows the moment ICE federal agents shoot and kill a man in Minneapolis.The US Department of Homeland Security said that Alex Pretti was pronounced dead at the scene. The federal agency said an agent fired 'defensive shots' during the altercation.

The US was founded on boycotts of British imports. As we mark the country's 250th anniversary, that spirit is alive and wellThis year, as the United States commemorates the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding and the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it's worth remembering the substantial role boycotts played in the American resistance and independence movement.The founders' sustained protest of Great Britain's Stamp Act and Townshend Duties -which taxed printed materials, glass, lead, paper, paint and tea in the colonies - placed enough pain and pressure on British merchants and the parliament that the majority of these taxes were repealed. And while the colonists were boycotting taxed British imports, they built an alternative made-in-America marketplace in the process, becoming domestic producers of homespun clothing, paper and other necessities. This building of alternative institutions and self-reliance were an essential complement to their boycott. They divested from British goods while investing in homemade goods. Both types of actions were necessary.Michael Shank is director of programs at the Albert Einstein Institution and adjunct faculty at New York University's Center for Global Affairs and George Mason University's Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. Continue reading...

With midterms looming some in Congress have dissented from the president - but it still falls well short of a rebellionDonald Trump pulled back from the brink on Greenland but not before causing untold damage to the Nato alliance. The US president's sabre-rattling may also have shaken the faith of his own Republican party.Trump's fleeting threat to conquer the Danish territory prompted the most strident Republican opposition to anything he has done since taking office a year ago. It came on the heels of challenges to his authority over military powers, healthcare legislation and the Jeffrey Epstein files. Continue reading...

Target, Delta and Hilton targeted with actions leading up to economic blackout of no work, shopping or schoolSome of the US's biggest companies are coming under increasing pressure to speak out about the Trump administration's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)'s operations in Minnesota.Workers throughout Minnesota have been pressuring their employers to act following the death of Renee Good, an unarmed woman killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis earlier this month. Continue reading...

Alex Pretti's death could be a moment of reckoning for Democrats to call time on Trump waging war on his peopleWearing helmets, gas masks and camouflage fatigues, the federal agents took aim and prepared to open fire. It's like Call of Duty," one could be heard saying via a TV mic, referring to a first-person shooter military video game. So cool, huh?"This was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday after armed agents, wearing masks and tactical vests, wrestled 37-year-old Alex Pretti to the ground and shot him dead. The killing took place just over a mile from where Renee Good was fatally shot on 7 January, a scene that itself was less than a mile from where police murdered George Floyd in May 2020. Continue reading...

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Maxwell Alejandro Frost says attacker told me Trump was going to deport me' as police say suspect arrestedThe Florida congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost said he was assaulted by a man who said Donald Trump would deport him at a party during the Sundance film festival in Utah.Last night, I was assaulted by a man at Sundance Festival who told me that Trump was going to deport me before he punched me in the face," Frost said in a Saturday post on X. He was heard screaming racist remarks as he drunkenly ran off. The individual was arrested and I am okay." Continue reading...

Announcement comes as anger toward DHS - which oversees ICE - intensifies after Alex Pretti fatally shotIn the wake of another fatal shooting of a US citizen in Minnesota by a federal officer, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said his party would block a funding package next week if it includes money for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).The announcement, which dramatically escalates the potential for another partial government shutdown, comes as anger towards homeland security, which oversees ICE, intensifies among the party after a group of federal agents violently restrained and then fatally shot 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Continue reading...

Pair testify that Pretti did not hold weapon and was trying to help woman federal agents had shoved to the groundTwo witnesses to the killing of Alex Pretti have said in sworn testimony that the 37-year-old intensive care nurse was not brandishing a weapon when he approached federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, contradicting a claim made by Trump administration officials as they sought to cast the shooting of a prone man as an act of self-defense.Their accounts came in sworn affidavits that were filed in federal court in Minnesota late Saturday, just hours after Pretti's killing, as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of Minneapolis protesters against Kristi Noem and other homeland security officials directing the immigration crackdown in the city. Continue reading...

Protests erupt across US after American citizen Alex Pretti shot dead, as video shows he had been holding a phone and not a gun, contradicting federal claims - key US politics stories from 24 JanuaryUS federal law enforcement officers fatally shot an American citizen in Minneapolis in the second such killing in less than three weeks, sparking major protests in cities across the country.Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old registered nurse living in Minneapolis, was shot dead after being sprayed with a chemical agent and wrestled to the ground by federal agents when he appeared to come to the aid of a person being shoved to the ground by an officer. Continue reading...

Wave of demonstrations comes a day after thousands marched through Minneapolis streets to protest ICELarge protests spread across US cities on Saturday - including Minneapolis, New York City, San Francisco, Boston and Providence, Rhode Island - after 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a registered nurse living in Minneapolis, was shot dead by federal agents.The wave of demonstrations come just one day after thousands marched through the streets of Minneapolis to protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Protesters again braved the extreme cold to speak out against the agency and show support for Pretti and others who have been harmed by the surge of immigration agents who have flooded the city in recent week. Continue reading...

Video evidence reviewed by Guardian shows Alex Pretti, killed by agents in Minneapolis, held a phone, not a gunVideo recorded by witnesses to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday shows that the 37-year-old registered nurse was holding a phone, not a gun, when he was tackled and shot, directly contradicting the claims of senior Trump administration officials that he threatened to massacre" officers.In the aftermath of the killing, which was recorded by multiple witnesses, the Department of Homeland Security released an image of a handgun, which Donald Trump referred to as the gunman's gun" in a social media post. Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, said at a briefing that Pretti had approached US border patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun", though she later declined to say whether or not Pretti pulled the gun out. Continue reading...

Nurse Alex Pretti, 37, shot dead as heartbroken' parents condemn administration's sickening lies' about killingUS federal law enforcement officers on Saturday fatally shot an American citizen in Minneapolis, the second such killing in less than three weeks.The killing of US citizen Alex Pretti, 37, comes after Renee Good, also a 37-year-old American citizen, was shot dead on 7 January by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis, with video showing her trying to drive away from a confrontation, sparking protests nationwide. Continue reading...

Pretti, 37, worked in the ICU at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System and had assisted on scientific research

A 37-year-old nurse was shot and killed on Saturday. Much remains unknown, unclear or unconfirmed

Dangerous weather engulfing large area of country as 16 states plus DC declare states of emergencyA powerful winter storm with more than 140 million Americans in its crosshairs started sweeping across much of the US on Saturday, packing heavy snow and sleet as well as freezing rain and causing widespread power outages.Snowfall was already being reported on Saturday morning across parts of the plains, the south and the midwest, including in areas of Oklahoma, Iowa, Tennessee, Kansas, Texas and Missouri. Continue reading...

Ilhan Omar said: It is beyond shameful these federal agents are targeting our residents' after Alex Pretti fatally shot

Federal agents release chemicals into the air and arrest people after shooting and killing a 37-year-old man

Video provided to the Guardian appears to show the moments before the fatal shooting of a man by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday. At a news briefing, the Minneapolis police chief, Brian O'Hara, said the person who was shot is believed to be a 37-year-old man who lived in Minneapolis and was an American citizen. Continue reading...

Eyewitness video appears to show the incident during which a man was shotby fedral law enforcement officers in Minneapolis.At a news briefing, the Minneapolis police chief, Brian O'Hara, said the person who was shot is believed to be a 37-year-old man who lived in Minneapolis and was an American citizen.In a statement, the assistant homeland security secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said the shooting occurred as ... officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis" against a person they said was present in the country illegally and wanted for assault. McLaughlin's statement said an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun", and that officers attempted to disarm" him. The statement accused the man shot of having resisted" Continue reading...

A massive winter storm system brings emergency declarations and nearly 10,000 flight cancellations throughout large parts of the country

The rules-based global order is rapidly disintegrating. It's time for middle powers to stand togetherThe French president Emmanuel Macron borrowed some lines from Hugh Grant about bullies at the World Economic Forum in Davos. His target was Donald Trump, who had leaked a conciliatory text message from Macron who, evidently, was trying to get the US president to the table to shore up the rapidly disintegrating global order.In the love-it-or-hate-it Christmas film, Love Actually, Grant - playing the foppish British prime minister of the day - confronts the US president, saying: A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend, and since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger."Zoe Daniel is a three-time ABC foreign correspondent and the former independent member for Goldstein. She is the chair of Mental Health Victoria Continue reading...

A jury in San Francisco found Antoine Watson guilty of manslaughter and assault - rather than murder and elder abuseThe 2021 killing of 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee sent shockwaves through San Francisco and brought national attention to violence against Asian Americans during the pandemic.This month, five years on, the case has returned to the headlines, sparking renewed controversy. Last week, a jury declined to convict the perpetrator in the attack on charges of murder and elder abuse. Instead, Antoine Watson, 24, was found guilty of manslaughter and assault. Continue reading...

Hated by All the Right People is the first book to reckon critically with arguably the most dangerous media personality of the Trump ageTucker Carlson, the podcaster and former Fox News host, once told a hostile conservative crowd that rightwing media needed to be more responsible. In a 2009 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he argued that publications on the right should hold themselves to a higher standard.This is the hard truth," Carlson said. If you create a news organization whose primary objective is not to deliver accurate news, you will fail." Conservatives loved to complain about the New York Times, he added, when what they really needed was their own New York Times. The crowd jeered and booed at him. Continue reading...

Minneapolis protests have transfixed the US, but Kaohly Her's city, home to a large immigrant population, has been targeted by ICE for half a yearKaohly Her has one of the most striking background stories in US politics - a Hmong refugee born in a bamboo hut in the mountains of Laos who came to the US at age three as part of a Vietnam-war era resettlement program.Now, as the newly installed mayor of Saint Paul, the city twinned with Minneapolis, she has emerged as an important figure in Minnesota, the solidly Democratic state targeted by the Trump administration's exercise of controversial immigration policies. Continue reading...

Activists say the retailer has met with clergy but not spoken out against ICE or safeguarded employees and customersWhile thousands of protesters marched through downtown Minneapolis yesterday to demand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents leave the city, a smaller group of activists set their sights on a specific destination: the downtown headquarters of national retailer Target.Dozens of clergy members and their supporters planted themselves in the atrium of the store. Say it loud and say it clear, immigrants are welcome here," the group chanted. Something 'bout this isn't right - why does Target work for ICE?" Continue reading...

As Trump-deployed agents pervade the region, students struggle to carry on with lessons while carrying grief and fear that they or their loved ones will be takenIn south Minneapolis, a special education student logged on for their online class from the basement. They were hiding because immigration agents were banging at the door.A second grader started having a panic attack in the middle of art class because agents had arrested his dad. His teacher had to ask a colleague to watch the other students, bring him outside, and hold him for half an hour to help calm him. Continue reading...

Ryan Wedding, a Canadian Olympic snowboarder accused of becoming a cocaine smuggling kingpin linked to multiple murders, arrived handcuffed at Ontario international airport in California on Friday.Wedding, escorted by FBI agents, was flown to the US from Mexico to face charges of drug trafficking, conspiracy to murder, witness tampering and money laundering.Kash Patel, the FBI director, said Wedding was arrested on Thursday night in Mexico City after years on the run.Patel said Wedding was the 'largest narco-trafficker in modern times', akin to the drug lords Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman and Pablo Escobar

Novak Djokovic and Iga Swiatek were among the winners while Naomi Osaka withdrew on a heat-disrupted dayVan de Zandschulp has only been broken once in the tournament himself, so Djokovic is unlikely to get anything for free there.*Van de Zandschulp 0-1 Djokovic (*denotes next server) Continue reading...

It has become difficult to feel shock at the actions of the Trump administration. But this useless cruelty is shamelessLiam Ramos is five. In photographs of his arrest on Tuesday, released by the school district where he is enrolled as a preschooler, he is wearing a large blue hat with a bunny face and ears. According to the superintendent, Liam had just arrived home from school with his father when ICE agents apprehended the two and arrested them. Allegedly, one of Liam's relatives, who was outside at the time, begged for the little boy to be allowed to stay there in their care; instead, both father and son were captured by the federal agents and quickly transported to a detention camp in Dilley, Texas. Liam's father has no apparent criminal record; he has a pending asylum case. Does it need to be said that the child does not have a criminal record, either? In one picture, a white man's hand clutches, claw-like, on to the back of Liam's Spider-Man backpack. In another, a masked man stands behind Liam, stooping slightly to reach the small child, as the boy stands at the front door of his home. According to school officials, the agent instructed Liam to knock on the door and ask to be let into the house in order to see if anyone else was home - essentially using a five-year-old as bait".Liam is the fourth child from his Minneapolis-area school district to be seized by ICE agents since the surge of federal immigration forces in the city. According to school officials, two 17-year olds were also taken - one snatched alone from their car, another captured at home with her mother. Another child, a 10-year-old girl in the fourth grade, was allegedly also taken by the federal forces - while on her way to school with her mother.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

The deadline for Trump's justice department to release the files came and went, but experts say there are still optionsFor months, the 2025 news cycle was dominated by the disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.Public outrage over the continued secrecy surrounding Epstein investigative files - which Donald Trump failed to release fully early in his second term, despite campaign promises - was growing. Continue reading...

The 46th president largely exists as Trump's foil, with his successor blaming him for the country's woesIn bitter cold beneath the US Capitol dome, he walked to a marine helicopter and shared parting words with Donald Trump. Then, arriving at Joint Base Andrews, Joe Biden offered farewell remarks to his loyal staff. We're leaving office," he said, We're not leaving the fight."But, one year later, Washington, and the world, have mostly moved on from the 46th president. Biden, 83, has been writing a lucrative memoir, planning a presidential library and fighting prostate cancer. He was once the most powerful man on the planet, but now Biden's public appearances have been scarce and his influence has palpably diminished. Continue reading...

The Philadelphia Union product has added end product to his trademark hustle - can he keep the good form going?Timing is everything in a World Cup year, and Brenden Aaronson's has been pretty much perfect.Scoring a goal and putting in a top performance against your team's biggest rival is something all players dream of. To do so when your family is watching in the stands and a reporter from your home town newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, is in the press box makes it all the better. Aaronson did all of the above at Elland Road for Leeds United against Manchester United earlier this month. Continue reading...

While the threat of retaliatory measures to stop the annexation of Greenland worked, it remains to be seen if Europe has the unity to follow throughThe past couple of weeks have seen the most spectacular crisis escalation in the transatlantic relationship, over the US threat to annex Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark. It risked becoming a major conflict among the members of Nato, the most powerful security alliance in world history - until now.On Wednesday, after a meeting with Nato's secretary general, Mark Rutte, the US president, Donald Trump, backtracked on his threats to slap tariffs on countries that got in the way of his annexation project. As European leaders huddled together over dinner for a post-crisis debrief in Brussels on 22 January, they congratulated themselves on their unity and appreciated the intervention of Rutte, or Daddy diplomacy". If these really were the conclusions of the latest debacle in transatlantic relations, they are missing important parts of the story.Rosa Balfour is director of Carnegie Europe Continue reading...

Once dismissed as a basement game, table tennis is enjoying an unlikely US revival as the Oscar-tipped biopic Marty Supreme collides with a wave of new playersFor decades in the US, table tennis has lived a double life: one of the most widely played sports in the country, yet still dismissed by many as a basement pursuit. Now, unexpectedly, it is having a cultural moment.The release of Marty Supreme, a film steeped in obsession and myth, and loosely based on postwar American table tennis champion Marty Reisman, has pushed ping-pong into the pop-culture mainstream - just as US Major League Table Tennis sells out matches, clubs report growing interest, and younger players pick up paddles for the first time. Continue reading...

In the US, comedy has long filled the space vacated by partisan news media. Now France is following its leadSometimes the freedom and openness of comedy means it is better able to respond to world events than news media. Take South Park's raucous, unhinged and visually disturbing depictions of Donald Trump - most recently, cheating on Satan (who is carrying his spawn) with JD Vance in the White House. Fair enough: Trey Parker and Matt Stone very much own this terrain.But there's no reason why satirical TV programmes such as The Daily Show should have to take on the role of news provider, investigative journalist and critic. And yet, over the past three decades, the failings of the US corporate media to adequately cover the country's dilapidated politics has pushed people such as Jon Stewart into filling the void.

In casting doubt on Nato's reliability, US president references Afghanistan campaign - which involved 40,000 Australian troops and left 47 dead

As the two cartoonists set out to draw on the same theme - Trump and a world in turmoil' - to the same deadline, Guardian photographer David Levene visited them in their studios