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There's no shame in not knowing what he'll say next: neither does he. But that didn't stop many claiming to make sense of itIn weeks like this, the mask slips somewhat. Politicians love the illusion of control. It's the special power that differentiates them from us lower orders. They are the ones pulling all the levers. Nothing ever happens that takes them unawares. They are the ones with answers to everything. They need it to be this way. Not just for their own psyches but for ours. It's somehow comforting.And then along comes Donald Trump and our emperors have no clothes. Their limitations on view to everyone. Scrabbling around just to stand still. Trying to make sense of the world in real time, just like the rest of us. Making it up as they go along. Continue reading...

Jannik Sinner continued his title defence, Naomi Osaka won a tetchy contest and qualifier Nikola Bartunkova shocked Belinda BencicCilic has punched his ticket into round three for the first time since 2022, with the 37-year-old and 2014 US Open champ taking out the 21st seed Shapovalov in straight sets. Decent win, that. He'll face the winner of Casper Ruud v Jaume Munar.Stan is still alive! He's broken Gea in the final game of the fourth set to snatch it 7-5, finishing off with a vicious backhand winner down the line. It's got to be one of the most devastating shots in tennis hasn't it? I don't think even Federer's single-handed backhand quite had the equal beauty and brutality that Wawrinka's does. They're going to a fifth. Continue reading...

Audrey Denney is trying to win a House seat twice - first in a special election, and then again after the district is redrawnInside an old Craftsman on the northern end of California's Sacramento valley, Audrey Denney is spending the day on the phone - calling constituent after constituent to discuss rising healthcare costs, wildfire insurance premiums and cuts to benefits - and to solicit donations.It's the mundane way in which an epic, and uphill, battle for control of the US Congress is being fought. Continue reading...

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate says campaign launched last year has attracted dozens of new partnersStacey Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, will announce on Thursday that the campaign she launched last year to fight authoritarianism in the US has attracted dozens of new partners, representing millions of voters, to form a coalition.Abrams, a Yale-trained lawyer and former minority leader of the Georgia house, was the first Black woman to win a major party nomination for a gubernatorial race in 2018. After her second loss to Brian Kemp in 2022, she receded from the spotlight, taking a teaching position at Howard University in 2023. In the wake of Donald Trump's re-election, she launched 10 Steps, an initiative to organize and mobilize opposition to the threat to democracy posed by authoritarian policies in the administration and the Republican party. Continue reading...

From food stalls to revitalised downtowns, Venezuelans have shaped midwestern towns, but new US policy threatens their futureAt a former Coca-Cola bottling plant in downtown Indianapolis, Venezuelans Juan Paredes Angulo and his mother, Andreina, five years ago delivered on a decades-long dream to open a food stall, sharing regional Venezuelan food with a part of America better used to Tex-Mex and Chinese takeout for international cuisine.Hearing of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro's capture by US forces in an overnight military raid earlier this month came as a complete shock. Continue reading...

Exclusive: sources say powerful figures in the regime secretly pledged US and Qatari officials they would welcome Maduro's departureBefore the US military snatched Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, earlier this month, Delcy Rodriguez and her powerful brother pledged to cooperate with the Trump administration once the strongman was gone, four sources involved at high levels with the discussions told the Guardian.Rodriguez, who was sworn in on 5 January as acting president to replace Maduro, and her brother Jorge, the head of the national assembly, secretly assured US and Qatari officials through intermediaries ahead of time that they would welcome Maduro's departure, according to the sources. Continue reading...

Jeson Nelon Presilla Flores, charged with stalking armored truck in 2022, allowed to self-deport to South AmericaFederal immigration authorities allowed a suspect in a $100m jewelry heist believed to be the largest in US history to deport himself to South America in December, a move that stunned and upset prosecutors who were planning to try the case and send him to prison.Jeson Nelon Presilla Flores was one of seven people charged last year with stalking an armored truck to a rural freeway rest stop north of Los Angeles and stealing millions worth of diamonds, emeralds, gold, rubies and designer watches in 2022. Continue reading...

International coalition of legal groups focuses on political intimidation of lawyers and judges in US - once a role modelThe US has been awarded a new dubious distinction: it has been selected as this year's focus of an international coalition of legal groups and bar associations as a country where lawyers and judges are so politically intimidated that the rule of law is under threat.The decision to put the spotlight on the US for Thursday's International Day of the Endangered Lawyer" underlines how rapidly America has plummeted in global esteem. For decades the US has been held up as a role model of a democratic judicial system. Continue reading...

The president's scramble to win back voter affection after negative polls has led him to spew incoherent proposalsA vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper," Donald Trump promised Americans on the eve of the presidential election. During the US president's first year back in office, however, food prices rose faster than they did during Joe Biden's last.Facing negative poll numbers, Trump is taking a tack that few Republicans have dared contemplate before: spewing out a rain of often incoherent proposals to signal he feels voters' pain, in order to recapture their affection. Continue reading...

Think I'm exaggerating? Consider the copious amounts of evidenceWhich way, western man?That was the title of a racist tract published in 1978 by William Gayley Simpson, a former leftist Christian pastor turned one of the most influential neo-Nazi ideologues in American history. The book helped radicalize an entire generation of white supremacists in the US, with its vicious antisemitism, opposition to all forms of immigration and open praise for Hitler. The purpose of the book, wrote Simpson, was to reveal organized Jewry as a world power entrenched in every country of the white man's world, operating freely across every nation's frontiers, and engaged in a ruthless war for the destruction of them all".Mehdi Hasan is the editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo Continue reading...

Gains come after US president says he will not use military force to acquire territory and cites framework deal'European markets rose on Thursday after Donald Trump cancelled plans to impose fresh tariffs on eight European countries, in what analysts said was a return of the Trump Always Chickens Out" (Taco) trade.The FTSE 100 gained 0.8% to a high of 10,225 points, while Germany's Dax and France's Cac were up 1.4%. The pan-European Stoxx 600 was also up 1.4% and Wall Street is forecast to open higher on Thursday. Continue reading...

One of the Broncos, Rams, Seahawks and Patriots will claim the championship in a few weeks. Here are the factors that will help decide the resultA month ago, the Rams looked like a near-complete team. Special teams aside, they had answers everywhere. Coaching. Quarterback. Playmakers. A defense that could steal a game if necessary. They're still a formidable opponent, but cracks have started to emerge. Continue reading...

In today's newsletter: What began as a temporary mechanism to oversee Gaza's reconstruction is quietly mutating into a permanent system of external control, raising urgent questions about who will govern in PalestineGood morning. Donald Trump wants to be the supreme leader of the world.That may sound hyperbolic, but it is difficult to read the latest plans for his so-called Board of Peace" as anything else. What was initially framed as a narrow mechanism to oversee Gaza's reconstruction has quietly shifted into something far larger. In Trump's most recent announcement, Gaza barely features at all.Davos | Donald Trump dropped his threat to impose tariffs on eight European countries, claiming he had agreed with Nato the framework of a future deal" on Greenland. Danish, Greenlandic and other European officials pushed back on Trump's claim, pointing out Nato has no authority to make such a deal.New Zealand | Emergency services in New Zealand are searching for several people, including a child, believed missing after a landslide hit a campsite during storms that have caused widespread damage across the North Island.Media | Prince Harry has accused the publisher of the Daily Mail of wanting to drive him to drugs and drinking" by placing his life under surveillance, as he told the high court that it continued to come after" him and his wife.Reform UK | Nigel Farage apologised for 17 breaches of the MPs' code after failing to declare 380,000 on time, describing himself as an oddball" who does not do computers.South Korea | Former PM Han Duck-soo has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for his role in an insurrection stemming from former president Yoon Suk Yeol's failed martial law declaration. Continue reading...

Nato chief Mark Rutte says there is a lot of work to be done', as some Danish MPs voice concern at Greenland apparently being sidelined in US president's talksDonald Trump's announcement of a framework of a future deal" that would settle the issue of Greenland after weeks of escalating threats has been met with profound scepticism from people in the Arctic territory, even as financial markets rebounded and European leaders welcomed a reprieve from further tariffs.Just hours after the president used his speech at the World Economic Forum to insist he wanted Greenland, including right, title and ownership," but backed away from his more bellicose threats of military intervention - Trump took to social media to announce the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland" and withdrew the threat of tariffs against eight European countries. He later called it a concept of a deal" when he spoke to business network CNBC soon after Wall Street closed. Continue reading...

Trump's tariff retreat should lull nobody into dropping their guard. The EU must join forces with Canada, Japan and other like-minded countriesEU leaders would do well to meditate on the seminal lesson that the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, delivered at this year's World Economic Forum.In an incisive analysis of the new age of predatory great powers, where might is increasingly asserted as right, Carney not only accurately defined the coarsening of international relations as a rupture, not a transition". He also outlined how liberal democratic middle powers" such as Canada - but also European countries - must build coalitions to counter coercion and defend as much as possible of the principles of territorial integrity, the rule of law, free trade, climate action and human rights. He spelled out a hedging strategy that Canada is already pursuing, diversifying its trade and supply chains and even opening its market to Chinese electric vehicles to counter Donald Trump's tariffs on Canadian-made automobiles.Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre Continue reading...

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Trial of Adrian Gonzales in Corpus Christi was the first over the hesitant law enforcement response to the 2022 attackA former Uvalde schools police officer was acquitted Wednesday of charges that he failed in his duties to confront the gunman at Robb Elementary during the critical first minutes of one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.Jurors deliberated for more than seven hours before finding Adrian Gonzales, 52, not guilty in the first trial over the hesitant law enforcement response to the 2022 attack, in which a teenage gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers. Had he been convicted, he faced up two years in prison on more than two dozen charges of child abandonment and endangerment. Continue reading...

Superintendent says Liam Ramos and his father were taken into custody while in their driveway and sent to TexasUS Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained a five-year-old Minnesota boy on Tuesday as he returned home from school and transported him and his father to a Texas detention center, according to school officials.Liam Ramos, a preschooler, and his father were taken into custody while in their driveway, the superintendent of the school district in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, said at a press conference on Wednesday. Liam, who had recently turned five, is one of four children in the school district who have been detained by federal immigration agents during the Trump administration's enforcement surge in the region over the last two weeks, the district said. Continue reading...

Trump told Davos attendees the US won't use military force to take Greenland but demanded immediate negotiations' - key US politics stories from Wednesday 21 January at a glanceIt was quite a day in Davos.Donald Trump began his time at the World Economic Forum Wednesday with a rambling, racism-drenched speech in which he attacked European leaders and reasserted his demand to acquire Greenland. But hours later, the US president backed down and eased off his threats to impose tariffs on several allied nations, claiming he had reached the framework of a future deal" concerning the US's involvement in the Danish territory. Continue reading...

Woman who's eight months pregnant sent to Colombia by ICE, despite belated court order to keep her out of the airA 21-year-old woman who is eight months pregnant and in a state of medical distress was deported Wednesday afternoon, a human rights attorney said, despite a court order, issued too late, to keep her out of the air.We are trying to get her the medical attention she needs immediately," said Anthony Enriquez, vice-president of US advocacy and litigation at the Kennedy Human Rights Center, whose client, Zharick Daniela Buitrago Ortiz, was sent back to Colombia. Continue reading...

Ruling presents Democrats with opportunity to pick up another US House seat in November electionsNew York must redraw its congressional map, a state judge ruled on Wednesday, handing Democrats another key opportunity to pick up another US House seat before this fall's midterm elections.The ruling from Jeffrey Pearlman, a New York state supreme court justice, comes after a Democratic-aligned law firm challenged the boundaries of New York's 11th congressional district, which includes the borough of Staten Island and portions of south Brooklyn. The district is currently represented by Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican, the only GOP member representing New York City in Congress. Continue reading...

US justice department's website shows the disgraced former CEO petitioned Donald Trump over fraud convictionTheranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has asked Donald Trump to commute her sentence after she was convicted of defrauding investors in her now-defunct blood-testing startup that was once valued at $9bn, a notice on the US Department of Justice website showed.The justice department's office of the pardon attorney lists the status of her commutation request, which was made last year, as pending. Continue reading...

Immigration enforcement has sent a surge of federal agents to the fishing state, with about 50 arrests so farThe Trump administration has begun another targeted immigration crackdown, sending a surge of federal personnel to Maine, an ocean fishing state, in a plan dubbed by the government Operation Catch of the Day.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is aiming the push at Somali immigrants living in the north-eastern state, according to reporting by the New York Times. Continue reading...

Scale and speed of president's moves have stunned observers of authoritarian regimes - is the US in democratic peril?Three hundred and sixty-five days after Donald Trump swore his oath of office and completed an extraordinary return to power, many historians, scholars and experts say his presidency has pushed American democracy to the brink - or beyond it.In the first year of Trump's second term, the democratically elected US president has moved with startling speed to consolidate authority: dismantling federal agencies, purging the civil service, firing independent watchdogs, sidelining Congress, challenging judicial rulings, deploying federal force in blue cities, stifling dissent, persecuting political enemies, targeting immigrants, scapegoating marginalized groups, ordering the capture of a foreign leader, leveraging the presidency for profit, trampling academic freedom and escalating attacks on the news media. Continue reading...

House committee opens prospect of using one of its most powerful punishments against an ex-president for first timeHouse Republicans advanced a resolution on Wednesday to hold former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress over the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, opening the prospect of the House using one of its most powerful punishments against a former president for the first time.The Republican-controlled House oversight committee approved the contempt of Congress charges, setting up a potential vote in the House. It was an initial step toward a criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice that, if successful, could send the Clintons to prison in a dispute over compelling them to testify before the House oversight committee. Continue reading...

After covering Trump's immigration policies from Chicago and LA, the Twin Cities operation feels like a marked escalationThe Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial board described the Trump administration's immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities as a military occupation". Local leaders have used words like siege" and invasion". After a week of reporting in Minneapolis and St Paul, I wouldn't know how else to describe the scene.I've been covering the administration's immigration policies since Donald Trump's inauguration on 20 January last year. I was in Chicago in January last year, when the administration assigned hundreds of federal agents to conduct enhanced targeted operations" in the city. I was in Los Angeles last summer, when agents began seizing workers at car washes and garment warehouses, grabbing bicyclists and raiding churches. Continue reading...

Donald Trump stepped up his demands about taking Greenland but said the US would not use military force during a long and rambling speech to thousands of business and political leaders at the World Economic Form in Switzerland.Guardian reporter Jakub Krupa explains what we learned from Trump's Davos address and what this means for European leadersTrump said he would be dropping his idea to add a 10% tariff on goods to eight European countries who opposed his ambition to take over Greenland. He said he had spoken to Nato's secretary general and 'formed the framework' for a future deal with on Greenland Continue reading...

In victory for Trump administration, appeals court has temporarily lifted injunction as JD Vance set to visit stateAn appeals court has temporarily lifted restrictions from a federal judge in Minnesota that blocked ICE agents from pepper-spraying and arresting peaceful protesters.In a victory for the Trump administration, the eighth US circuit court of appeals on Wednesday granted the justice department's request for an administrative stay of a preliminary injunction issued last Friday by Judge Katherine Menendez. Continue reading...

Governor's office says US pavilion bowed to pressure and pulled scheduled fireside chat' with Fortune magazineThe office of Gavin Newsom, the California governor, said his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos was canceled under pressure from the Trump administration.Newsom had been scheduled to sit down with Fortune at an event sponsored by USA House, the country's official headquarters at the annual gathering of world and economic leaders. But before the talk was due to begin, his team says, the USA House bowed to political pressure from the Trump administration and denied the governor entry. Continue reading...

Brandon Wright alleges criticism of the homeland security secretary is protected by the first amendmentA former employee of the Department of Homeland Security who was fired after video circulated of him on a date criticizing the agency's head, Kristi Noem, sued the department on Monday, alleging the termination violated his first amendment rights.Brandon Wright, who worked at DHS for eight years in IT, said in a federal lawsuit that his time at the agency came to an abrupt end" because of the yellow journalism tactics" deployed by an unidentified woman he met on the dating app Bumble. Continue reading...

Scott Bessent's maladroit efforts to calm European anger and Americans' puzzlement over Greenland have fallen flat

President's anti-Somalia tirade and insults to European leaders were in line with aide Stephen Miller's worldviewDonald Trump turned up in Davos wielding an insult bazooka. He mocked Emmanuel Macron's aviator sunglasses, chided Mark Carney (Canada lives because of the United States"), asserted that the Swiss are only good because of us" and had a dig at Denmark for losing Greenland in six hours" during the second world war.But beyond the fractious rhetoric, the US president brought a deeper message on Wednesday that sought to unify the west rather than divide it. It was his most dark, insidious and sinister project of all. Continue reading...

The president's address in Switzerland featured a range of dubious assertions, from exaggerated to falseDonald Trump's address at the World Economic Forum in Davos featured a parade of dubious claims about everything from peace deals to windfarms. Several assertions ranged from exaggerated to provably false.Here's what Trump got wrong.

The prime minister has a duty to be candid with the British public about the scale of the global realignment caused by a volatile US presidentOne foreign policy achievement that Donald Trump prefers not to boast about is his role in helping Mark Carney win last year's Canadian general election. The incumbent Liberal party faced crushing defeat before Mr Trump threatened to annex Canada. Mr Carney's candidacy was buoyed up by a patriotic rally against US bullying.Perhaps because his country has also been coveted by Mr Trump, Mr Carney has given one of the most clear-sighted responses of any democratic leader to the US president's designs on Greenland. Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, the Canadian prime minister set out the challenge for countries whose security and prosperity have depended on a global system underwritten by the US.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. Continue reading...

In his second term, Trump's bluster has been accompanied by an emotional and aggressive approach to foreign policy

Expiration of expanded subsidies has left many with higher healthcare costs - and some with no coverage at allThe final day for most Americans to enroll in an Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance plan that begins in February passed earlier this month, closing a critical window at a moment of deep uncertainty for millions who rely on the law for coverage.The deadline arrives as federal subsidies that once kept premiums affordable have expired, sharply increasing costs while lawmakers remain deadlocked over whether, and how, to restore them. Continue reading...

The opportunity for this tournament's legacy is in the fan fests, camps and tune-ups accessible to more than the lucky fewIn Germany, fans watched the games on screens in crowded town squares, their roars careening off ancient buildings, or from the banks of rivers, peering at floating, double-sided big screens on barges. At the next World Cup, in South Africa in 2010, people gathered in parks and open-air markets and hotel lobbies and unlicensed, makeshift bars in people's garages. In Brazil, four years later, fans spilled from the bars on the Copacabana or watched in restaurants or in streets closed for the occasion - not as if anybody was driving during the Selecao's games anyway.During the 2018 World Cup, Russia surprised visitors - and its own citizens - with its friendliness as spontaneous parties broke out all over the country. The reason the 2022 World Cup in Qatar didn't entirely feel like a real World Cup is that those sorts of spontaneous soccer gatherings just didn't seem to be happening, or not at the same scale, at any rate. The absence of hordes of supporters just milling about everywhere contributed to the feeling of being at a Potemkin World Cup. Continue reading...

Magali Lafourcade says the two envoys were convinced the far-right leader's corruption trial had been political

Trump administration acknowledges that Elon Musk's cost-cutting operation accessed Americans' sensitive dataAfter months of denials, the Trump administration has acknowledged in a federal court filing that employees working for Elon Musk's supposed cost-cutting operation accessed and improperly shared Americans' sensitive social security data.The justice department court filing, submitted on Friday in an ongoing lawsuit, reveals that a member of the so-called department of government efficiency" (Doge) signed a secret data-sharing agreement with an unidentified political advocacy group whose stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and overturn election results in certain states. Continue reading...

A grand bargain on immigration could address problems with both the old approach and Trump's new approachImmigration is one of the most divisive issues facing the United States, as it is in many countries. An ICE agent's killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis is only the latest outrage that has brought the issue to the fore.Facing a 30 January deadline to renew funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which houses ICE, Democrats are now insisting on limits on ICE, at risk of another shutdown. It may be a pipe dream, but it is worth asking whether now might finally be a time to forge the long-elusive bipartisan agreement on immigration.Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, is published by Knopf and Allen Lane Continue reading...

In a rousing speech, Mark Carney made the case for unity in the face of Donald Trump's new world order. We reproduce it hereToday I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics - where the large, main power, geopolitics - is submitted to no limits, no constraints.On the other hand, I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states. Continue reading...

To tie ourselves to the worst excesses of the Trump regime would be an act of national sabotage

Emma Raducanu is out but US prodigy Iva Jovic will face Paolini in the third round, with Zverev and De Minaur also throughRaducanu out but head held high'Norrie is doing his thing again, upping it when he needs to for another mini-break and 6-2. I wonder if it's a cognitive thing, because it's not like he wasn't trying his best when struggling earlier in the set, so it's not an effort thing, but I guess focusing for hours at a time is hard if not impossible and there's a kind of locked-in version that intensifies as the match does ... and, as I type, he serves out to lead Nava 6-1 7-6(3) having saved two set points not that long ago.Obviously Zverev finds an ace to restore deuce - he may be resigned to his fate of never winning a slam, but his serve remains one of the best shots in the game, and from there, he ends a long hold. And back with the breaker, Norrie has a mini-break and a 3-2 lead. Continue reading...

US civil rights activist who as a schoolgirl protested against segregation on Alabama's busesAlthough she was a pivotal figure in the US civil rights movement, Claudette Colvin, who has died aged 86, never received the full recognition she deserved for her courageous and groundbreaking protest against segregation.On 2 March 1955 Colvin, aged 15, was riding a bus home from school in Montgomery, Alabama, with seats in the front reserved for white passengers, while those in the rear were designated for black people. She was in a neutral" zone from which, as the bus filled up, the driver could order black passengers to move to the back. When she refused to give up her seat to a white woman, the driver called the police, and Colvin was arrested. Soon afterwards she appeared before a juvenile court. Charges of violating segregation laws and disturbing the peace were eventually dropped on appeal, but her conviction for assaulting a police officer was upheld. Continue reading...

Mark Ruffalo, Brian Eno and Abigail Disney sign letter timed to coincide with World Economic Forum in Davos. Plus, what if this was the year we finally learned to rest? Don't already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning.Almost 400 millionaires and billionaires from 24 countries are calling on global leaders to increase taxes on the super-rich amid growing concern that the wealthiest in society are buying political influence.What did the letter say? A handful of global oligarchs with extreme wealth have bought up our democracies; taken over our governments; gagged the freedom of our media; placed a stranglehold on technology and innovation; deepened poverty and social exclusion; and accelerated the breakdown of our planet," it reads.What else is happening at Davos? Trump has top billing at the conference today and is scheduled to give a special address in the early afternoon (2.30pm local time, or 8.30am EST). He was expected to use this speech to outline his affordability agenda, but given his threats against Greenland his address is now expected to take a more international turn.This a developing story. Follow our live blog here. Continue reading...

From firing lawyers and government officials to pursuing indictments - president has created a culture of vengeanceDuring his first year in the White House, Donald Trump has pursued a campaign of retribution unlike any other president in US history.That Trump would pursue such a campaign is not surprising. Since he launched his first run for president in 2015, Trump has channeled the politics of grievance into political success. Returning to the White House after surviving two impeachments and four different criminal cases against him, Trump has used the might of the federal government to punish those he believes have wronged him. Continue reading...

We sat down with the basketball legend at the O2 to discuss his ties to Tottenham, Vancouver, Majorca and MacclesfieldBy No Helmets RequiredDoes your background, growing up outside basketball's mainstream on Vancouver Island with English parents, help you appreciate how people in places such as London or Berlin feel when a big NBA game comes to town? Yeah. That's true. I didn't watch much basketball on TV until I started playing at 13, so can relate to coming upon something new and exciting. At the same time, the world's so small now with social media access. But it is interesting to go to parts of the world where basketball is smaller and see how can we make the game accessible to them.Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker and John Amaechi were guests at the O2. But every team had a foreign player on opening night this season, with 135 players from 43 countries across the league; up from 7% in 1992 to 24% now. Are the current Europeans different to that generation or have they just had more opportunities? Europeans have always been quite good. It's not like Serbia wasn't always great at basketball but, as the game has grown, the possibilities grow. The world gets smaller with the internet and social media. There's not as much difference; everyone has access to all the pertinent information. The NBA is more accessible nowadays to people from Europe, Africa and every corner of the world. It's only natural that more Europeans have success in the NBA. Continue reading...