US president tells group to release all of the Hostages now ... or it is OVER for you' as White House enters negotiationsDonald Trump has posted a fresh ultimatum to Hamas, telling the group to release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you".Shalom Hamas' means Hello and Goodbye," he wrote in a social media post on Wednesday, in an apparent reference to the beginning of direct talks with the group. Continue reading...
Officials say slashing of US Department for International Development leaves power vacuum for adversariesHundreds of diplomats at the state department and US Agency for International Development have written to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, protesting against the dismantling of USAid, saying it undermines US leadership and security and leaves power vacuums for China and Russia to fill.In a cable expected to be filed with the department's internal dissent channel", which allows diplomats to raise concerns about policy anonymously, the diplomats said the Trump administration's 20 January freeze on almost all foreign aid also endangers American diplomats and forces overseas while putting at risk the lives of millions abroad that depend on US assistance. Continue reading...
New York, Chicago, Boston and Denver mayors use platform at Capitol hearing to reject claims about crime and gangsA congressional hearing designed to criticize sanctuary city policies unexpectedly shifted on Wednesday, as a planned attack by Republican lawmakers instead dissolved into a platform that amplified Democratic mayors' arguments about immigration and urban safety.Before a packed room on Capitol Hill, the House oversight committee, led by its Republican chair, James Comer of Kentucky, sought to portray sanctuary cities - a city that touts municipal laws that protect undocumented migrants - as havens for criminal activity and foreign gangs. Continue reading...
Kingsley Wilson disputed innocence of Leo Frank, widely agreed to have been wrongly convicted of girl's 1913 murderThe Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has condemned a past social media post by the Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson that disputed the innocence of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman whom most historians agree was wrongfully convicted of killing a 13-year-old factory worker and lynched in 1915 during a wave of antisemitism in the US.Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl. He also tried to frame a Black man for his crime," Wilson wrote on X in response to an August 2024 tweet by the ADL marking the 109th anniversary of Frank's lynching. The ADL turned off the comments because they want to gaslight you." Continue reading...
Disney is reportedly cutting staff across ABC News Group and its entertainment network as media layoffs continueThe popular political poll news and analysis website, 538, is being shut down as part of a broader shuttering effort across ABC News and Disney Entertainment, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday night.Disney is reportedly cutting 200 positions across ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks, including shutting down the data-driven 538. Continue reading...
Tiffany jewelry worth $770,000 allegedly gulped during arrest will need to be collected ... after they are passed'A suspected thief gulped down two pairs of diamond earrings during his arrest on the side of a Florida Panhandle highway last week, detectives say, leaving them with the unenviable task of waiting to collect" the Tiffany & Co jewelry worth nearly $770,000.An X-ray of the suspect's torso showed what the Orlando police department believed to be the diamond earrings - a white mass shining brightly against the grey backdrop of his digestive tract. Continue reading...
Lawyers for Brad Sigmon said he chose a death by firing squad because he thought lethal injection would be tortuousSouth Carolina's supreme court has rejected what is likely the final appeal of convicted murderer Brad Sigmon, clearing the way for his execution by firing squad on Friday.Sigmon's lawyers wanted to delay his death so they could get a fuller hearing in court to learn more information about the drug South Carolina uses in lethal injections. Sigmon said that lack of information forced him to choose to be shot to death. The state also has an electric chair, but Sigmon said he didn't want to suffer being cooked alive by electricity. Continue reading...
Southern California Edison accused over Eaton fire, which killed 17 people and destroyed nearly 10,000 structuresLos Angeles county is suing Southern California Edison, alleging the utility's equipment sparked January's deadly Eaton fire.The fire was one of several major blazes that tore through the region starting on 7 January. It killed at least 17 people in the Altadena area of Los Angeles, and destroyed more than 9,400 structures. Continue reading...
As the White House handpicks members of the press pool, questions for the president amount to fluffy valentinesYou know we're in trouble when Fox News emerges as the great defender of freedom of the press. But such was the case when Jacqui Heinrich, a senior political correspondent at Fox, responded to the news that Trump's White House would now handpick the reporters who get to cover the president in small settings, with the post: This move does not give the power back to the people - it gives power to the White House." Heinrich was specifically responding to press secretary Karoline Leavitt's Orwellian claim that letting Donald Trump choose who would cover him was designed to restore power back to the American people".The fruits of the new policy were richly on display during the sickening scene that unfolded in the Oval Office last week. If the president and JD Vance's disgraceful treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn't bad enough, there was the unprecedented role that the press" played in the unseemly drama. Continue reading...
by Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent on (#6VPWN)
Nigel Higgins said to have given assurances about CEO days after child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's death in 2019The Barclays chair Nigel Higgins's assurances that Jes Staley had no particular relationship" with Jeffrey Epstein, days after the child sex offender's death in 2019, convinced the City regulator that there was no reason to investigate the bank's chief executive, a court has heard.Jonathan Davidson, a former director of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), made the comments during a hearing of Staley's legal challenge against the UK regulator on Wednesday. Continue reading...
Trump is getting comfortable in power. And Democrats are nowhere to be seenWhat was the point of Donald Trump's address to Congress on Tuesday night? The annual speech - called the State of the Union" address in every year except the one just after the president's ascent to office - has long been a somewhat outdated bit of political theater, an event light on policy specifics and heavy on messaging in an era in which political messaging's most effective venues have long since moved online.It's perhaps even less clear what a speech to Congress is supposed to mean for this president, who has proven himself so indifferent to constitutional limits on his power - or for this Congress, which has shown itself so willing to abdicate its own constitutional responsibilities. It seems, like so many of the formalities of American politics do now, a bit like a phantom limb: something that Americans keep feeling for long after it has been excised. How long will it be, one wonders, until everyone stops bothering to go through the motions? Continue reading...
Trump has given the first speech to Congress of his second term as US president. While Republicans stood and cheered his points, Democrats were largely unimpressed. Al Green, a Democratic representative from Texas, was expelled from the House for interrupting while other Democrats held up signs that said 'Save Medicaid' and 'Musk Steals'. Melanie Stansbury held up a sign as Trump entered the chamber that said 'This is not normal' but it was ripped out of her hand by the Republican Lance Gooden
The Trump administration's tariffs have sparked tension with co-hosts Canada and Mexico. That's bad news for a tournament that is supposed to unite nationsThe start of the run-up to a World Cup is traditionally an upbeat affair. New stadium launches, inclusion-friendly marketing and merch campaigns, the unveiling of a tournament song or quirky mascot: these are the traditional signals by which host nations announce that the big show is approaching. This time, pre-tournament preparations are taking shape a little differently. Thanks to Donald Trump and his determination to pursue economic armageddon against the US's co-hosts, Canada and Mexico, the tone for the 2026 World Cup is being set not by Shakira or an anthropomorphic keffiyeh but by reciprocal tariffs, a flurry of cross-border insults, and crumbling diplomatic relations between the host nations. On Tuesday, Trump confirmed that the US will begin imposing levies on most imports from Canada and Mexico; Canada immediately retaliated, and Mexico looks set to follow. Welcome to the Trade War World Cup; please tip your host 25% of the entrance fee on your way in. If things continue on their current course, the 2026 tournament will be the first installment of the World Cup to be co-hosted by the antagonists of an active international economic conflict.Whether things do in fact continue as they are is, of course, difficult to predict: Trump's approach to policy is famously erratic, and the protectionism that marked his first administration was leavened by various exemptions and carve-outs to the tariffs imposed on trading partners, a cycle of aggression and moderation that could be repeated this time round. With the first match still 15 months away, there's plenty of time for the deterioration in diplomatic relations between the co-hosts to give way to reconciliation. But as things stand today, with Trump and his cabinet lackeys apparently hell bent on trashing the global economy and humiliating traditional allies, that hope seems pretty remote. The US - which is due to host 75% of the matches during the 2026 tournament, and every fixture from the quarter-finals onwards - looks set to steam into the approaching World Cup with a spirit of hospitality roughly equivalent to Roy Keane sizing up Alf-Inge Haaland's knee. Continue reading...
Black student unions at US colleges are fighting to stay in operation as state laws targeting DEI initiatives threaten their existenceFor Nevaeh Parker, the president of the Black student union (BSU) at the University of Utah, Black History Month is usually a buzzing time on campus.The school's BSU hosts several events - kickback parties and movie screenings - throughout the month. The Black cultural center, where students would usually congregate and attend activities, would be full. And the month's crown jewel would typically be a conference at the college for Black high schoolers in the area. Continue reading...
Sign waving in the chamber and a fiery outburst was followed by more forceful statements after the speechDemocrats panned Donald Trump's first prime-time speech to Congress since returning to the White House as reaction to the address revealed a country still deeply split on political lines and an opposition party unsure of how to deal with his radical agenda.The Democrats' exclusion from the corridors of powers - Democrats are in the minority in both the Senate and House of Representatives - has left them with limited options on how to effectively respond to Trump's hardline 1hr 40min oration that amounted to a celebration of his purported achievements during his six weeks back in office. Continue reading...
Democrats protested from the chamber as he thanked Elon Musk and spoke about upending US foreign policy. Plus, half of world's CO emissions come from 36 fossil fuel firms'
The paper's billionaire owner, who barred it from endorsing Kamala Harris, is leaving human journalists out of the equationThe past few months have been brutal ones for the readers and journalists of the largest news organization in California, the Los Angeles Times.Since he bought the paper in 2018, the billionaire and medical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong has become something of a Donald Trump acolyte. Continue reading...
Experts say victory for state could give green light for other states to attack those who help women travel for procedureA bellwether test of states' ability to prosecute people over abortions that take place across state lines will hold a critical hearing on Wednesday, when Alabama abortion rights supporters will square off against the state attorney general over his threats to prosecute groups that help women travel for the procedure.In the months after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, clearing the way for Alabama to ban virtually all abortions, Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall repeatedly suggested that abortion rights activists who help people go out of state for abortions could be charged as participants in an illegal conspiracy. The Yellowhammer Fund, an abortion fund that helped people pay for the procedure, and the West Alabama Women's Center, a former abortion clinic that pivoted to providing services like miscarriage management, joined with other abortion rights advocates to sue Marshall over his comments. Continue reading...
Republicans aren't simply shrinking the government. They're investing billions in defense, border control and prisonsLast week, the federal human resources department sent out a seven-page memo ordering agencies to submit detailed plans on how they will work with the so-called department of government efficiency" (Doge) to slash their payrolls. To do this, they were to eliminate whole job categories - except one. Untouchable were positions necessary to meet law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or public safety responsibilities".While we've had our eyes on the wrecking ball-Doge pulverizing social services, environmental protection and scientific research, we've hardly taken notice of what is being constructed. In the footprint of the already shabby, now half-demolished US welfare state, the Trump administration is building a police state. Continue reading...
A new book charts the history and characters around one of the most thrilling and striking moves in all of sportsYou can still see the moment online, 42 years later: The Philadelphia 76ers' Julius Erving pulling off his January 1983 rock the cradle" dunk against the Los Angeles Lakers. Yes, Dr. J cradles the ball in his arm as he goes airborne and slams it home over the Lakers' Michael Cooper.It's the greatest dunk of all time," says Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist Mike Sielski. Continue reading...
Who is really suffering from this conflict? We are, said the US president, in a move straight from the populist playbookDuring a dramatic Oval Office meeting last Friday, US president Donald Trump confronted Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a move that upended the long-established narrative of Russia as the aggressor and Ukraine as the victim.In the conversation, which quickly escalated into a tense exchange, Trump accused Zelenskyy of prolonging the war with Russia by refusing to engage in peace negotiations with Vladimir Putin. His rhetoric suggested that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for escalating the conflict and that the US had unfairly borne the burden of Ukraine's resistance. Trump constructed a new hierarchy of suffering, one in which the US emerged as the primary victim, Ukraine as the source of its burdens and Russia as innocent of blame.Lilie Chouliaraki is professor of media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the author of Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood Continue reading...
Emi Gurbuz's son was murdered in Hanau by a far right terrorist. Her plea for justice five years on drew an astonishing reaction from the stateThe first time I went to Hanau, I was creeped out by how ordinary it was. This mid-sized city of 100,000 people right in the geographical centre of Germany, looked and felt like many other places in western Germany I had been to: built around a bombed and reconstructed old town, expanded by a soulless mall with a multiplex cinema, surrounded by a vast industrial area and neighbourhoods separated along class lines. What the city prides itself on is that the Brothers Grimm grew up here in the late 18th century before they started publishing folk tales such as Cinderella and The Frog Prince. Since 2020, however, Hanau stands for something else: it's the place where a far-right gunman killed nine people he assumed to be immigrants, and afterwards killed his mother and himself.The attack on 19 February of that year not only left a deep wound within immigrant communities throughout the country, it again raised questions about how seriously the German state takes rightwing extremist terrorism, even after the infamous murders by neo-Nazi terrorist cell the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which spanned most of the decade from 2000.Fatma Aydemir is a Berlin-based author, novelist, playwright and a Guardian Europe columnistDo 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.
US president Donald Trump declared America was 'back' after a radical start to his presidency that has seen his administration slash the size of the federal workforce, upend longstanding American alliances and rattle markets with an escalating trade war. Democrat Al Green was removed from the House in protest as Trump touted the 'swift and unrelenting action' of his administration and praised the work of his billionaire adviser, Elon Musk
In a long and menacing - but also boring - speech to Congress, Trump mocked his opponents. Across the aisle the resistance was stirringWell, at least he didn't give a Nazi salute, declare war on Canada or pull the plug on Nato. You never know these days. But this was the night that Donald Trump finally turned the once reverential occasion of a speech to Congress into just another sordid campaign rally.Deigning to address the branch of government he has so comprehensively sidelined in his first six weeks in office, Trump went off script and went long (a record 100 minutes). He lied, he weaved, demonised immigrants, he sold his economy as the greatest ever, he played the victim, he praised Elon Musk, he lambasted Joe Biden, he repeated himself and he lied some more. Continue reading...
Representative Al Green, a Democrat of Texas, was escorted out of the House chamber after interrupting Donald Trumps address. Trump had been bragging about his electoral victory, framing it as a landslide, but the win was one of the closer results in US history
President praises letter from Ukraine's leader backing peace talks and says US will get Greenland one way or another'Donald Trump has said he appreciated Volodymyr Zelenskyy's willingness to sign a minerals deal with the United States and come to the negotiating table to bring a lasting peace in Ukraine closer.Earlier today, I received an important letter from President Zelenskyy of Ukraine," the US president said in a speech to Congress after last week's disastrous meeting at the White House. Quoting from the letter, Trump said Zelenskyy told him that Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians." Continue reading...
In his address to a joint session of Congress, Trump says he has a message for the people of Greenland. 'We strongly support your right to determine your own future,' he says. 'If you choose we welcome you into the United States of America.'Referring to his goal for the US to take control of Greenland, Trump says: 'I think we're going to get it - one way or the other, we're going to get it ... We will keep you safe. We will make you rich and together we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before.' Continue reading...
The new administration threatens to undo decades of progress in America, but as North Africa and the Middle East have shown, there is power in female solidarityFrom outside the US looking in, those of us who have experienced the tumultuous years since the Arab revolutions feel a strange sense of familiarity: the chaos of the Trump-Musk administration, the attacks on minority groups, the elevation of men - a number of whom have been accused of violence against women - to cabinet positions.Trump seems to have started his second term with the same ferocity, callousness, violence and ignominy in which his first term so notoriously ended. Amid the shock of the past few weeks, a sense of panic can be immobilising. But that is exactly what such a strategy is designed to do. Continue reading...
The president delivered a falsehood-laden speech, touting successes amid rattled markets and backlash from alliesDonald Trump delivered a divisive, falsehood-laden speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, touting the successes of his first weeks back in office even as his tariff policies have rattled global markets and his criticism of Ukraine has stoked backlash among European allies.Addressing lawmakers for roughly an hour and a half in the longest such speech to a joint session, the president's sweeping proclamations and biting attacks on Joe Biden prompted many Democrats to walk out of the House chamber as Republicans offered Trump one standing ovation after another. Continue reading...
The president's marathon address to a joint session of Congress was littered with false claims he's been corrected on but continued to repeatDonald Trump's marathon address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday was littered with false claims, many of them falsehoods he has previously stated, been corrected on, and continued to repeat regardless. Here are some of the main statements he made that are just not true. Continue reading...
As the world awaits Donald Trump's first key speech to Congress in second term, here are the key US politics stories from Tuesday at a glanceIn Donald Trump's first address to Congress since returning to the White House - and his first major speech in a chilling six weeks in office - the president claimed a mandate justifying his sweeping executive orders, despite having won the popular vote by 1.5 points - the smallest margin for any successful presidential candidate since Richard Nixon in 1968.Trump's second term has already seen him initiate sweeping mass layoffs of federal employees, and mobilize officers from nearly every federal law enforcement agency and the US military to carry out his campaign promise of mass deportations. He has rattled Europe and other American allies with his pursuit of a peace deal to end Russia's war in Ukraine on terms preferential to Moscow. Continue reading...
Wearing pink and holding signs that read Protect Medicaid' and Musk steals', Democrats protested and heckled as Donald Trump gave an address to Congress laying out his vision for his second term
Mike Johnson orders Texas lawmaker's removal after Green repeatedly interrupted Trump's joint speech to CongressHouse speaker Mike Johnson ordered Texas representative Al Green removed from the House chamber on Tuesday night after the congressman repeatedly interrupted Donald Trump's joint address to Congress on Tuesday, shouting: He has no mandate."As the president started his speech by discussing his electoral victory, Democrats heckled and booed. When Green refused to sit down, Johnson directed the sergeant-at-arms to remove him. Republican lawmakers responded by chanting Hey Hey Hey Goodbye". Continue reading...
Council rejects Kristin Crowley's bid and backs decision of mayor, who said firing was in best interest of public safetyThe former fire chief in Los Angeles, Kristin Crowley, failed to regain her job on Tuesday after she was ousted by Mayor Karen Bass last month following the most destructive wildfires in the city's history.Crowley made her case to the LA city council on Tuesday for why she believes her firing was unwarranted, to which the council voted 13-2 to reject the proposal and back Bass's decision. Continue reading...
Administration to drop Idaho emergency abortion lawsuit and back South Carolina in Planned Parenthood funds caseThe Trump administration fired off a series of dramatic attacks on abortion rights on Tuesday, as it signaled its plan to to drop out of a case defending access to emergency abortions while asking the US supreme court for permission to join a case against the abortion provider Planned Parenthood.The justice department said it would move to dismiss the case over emergency abortions, which had been originally filed by the Biden administration, according to court papers filed by the largest hospital network in Idaho. The Biden administration had sued Idaho over its near-total abortion ban, which it accused of running afoul of a federal law that protects patients' right to health care in emergencies. Continue reading...
Peter Marocco assigned as head of Inter-American Foundation after White House fires president and CEOThe White House has installed Peter Marocco as head of a small independent international development agency, part of a broader push by Donald Trump and Elon Musk to dramatically reduce US foreign aid.Marocco, a Trump loyalist who presided over the administration's evisceration of foreign aid programs at USAid and the state department, was placed in charge of the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) on Friday, after the White House fired the foundation's president and CEO, Sara Aviel, according to a letter sent by the chair of the agency's board of directors and reviewed by the Guardian.Andrew Roth contributed reporting from Washington Continue reading...
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