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There is no way to rationalise the horrors inflicted on Gaza's innocent children. Now is the time to mourn them fullyFor the past week, Palestinians in Gaza have been returning to their homes, now mostly reduced to rubble - and to their dead who still lie beneath. It is only now that we will start to get a fuller picture of the true toll of this war - only now that any kind of grieving or mourning can begin, a process that has been physically and emotionally denied to the Palestinians throughout the past 15 months. Once the final tally becomes clear, what will probably emerge is a colossal death toll of children.Already, indications point to it being children that have made up the majority of casualties. UN analysis of verified deaths during a five-month period confirmed that of those who died, 44% were children. Most often, those children were five- to nine-year-olds; 80% of them killed in their own homes. Continue reading...

US president had called for retaliatory measures' after Colombia's president, Gustavo Petro, blocked two military aircraft carrying deporteesThe US and Colombia pulled back from the brink of a trade war on Sunday after the White House said the Colombians had agreed to accept military aircraft carrying deported migrants.Donald Trump, the US president, had threatened tariffs and sanctions on Colombia to punish it for earlier refusing to accept military flights carrying deportees amid his sweeping immigration crackdown. Continue reading...

Executive order comes two days after visit to LA, which has been devastated by wildfires that burned over 35,000 acresDonald Trump on Sunday issued an executive order directing the federal government to override the state of California's water management practices if they are found to be ineffective.The order comes two days after the president visited the Los Angeles region, which has been devastated by a series of wildfires that have killed at least 28 people and burned more than 35,000 acres. Continue reading...

Ice confirms enhanced targeted operations' in a city on edge after Trump officials warned of enforcement actionsUS federal authorities have begun immigration raids in Chicago, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) statement confirmed on Sunday, just days after incoming border czar" Tom Homan said officials were reconsidering" after details leaked into the press.In a statement, Ice said its agents, along with the FBI, ATF, DEA, CBP and the US Marshals Service, had begun conducting enhanced targeted operations" in Chicago to enforce US immigration law and preserve public safety and national security by keeping potentially dangerous criminal aliens out of our communities". Continue reading...

Memo offers further guidance to stop-work' directive and how to achieve Trump's America first policyDonald Trump urged US Agency for International Development (USAid) workers to join the effort to transform how the federal government allocates aid around the world in line with his America first policy. His administration threatened disciplinary action" for any staff ignoring the its orders, issued days into Trump's second presidency.A sharply-worded memo sent Saturday to more than 10,000 staff at USAid offered further guidance to Friday's stop-work" directive that effectively put a sweeping freeze on US foreign aid worldwide. The memo, reviewed by Reuters, laid out expectations for the workforce on how to achieve Trump's goals. Continue reading...

Palestinians in Gaza remain steadfast after the US president suggested that Palestinians should leave the territory and move to neighbouring nations. Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday: 'You're talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.' 'I'd like Egypt to take people. And I'd like Jordan to take people,' he added. In response, former Palestinian Authority minister Ghassan Khatib said: 'I think that the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and everywhere, together with the Jordanians and the Egyptians, will definitely reject this proposal.' In a press conference on Sunday, the Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said: 'Our rejection of displacement is firm and unwavering'

Conversation on Sunday was the two leaders' first call since the inauguration of the new US presidentPresident Donald Trump and the prime minister, Keir Starmer, have spoken over the phone and agreed to meet soon".The two leaders spoke for 45 minutes on Sunday in their first call since Trump's inauguration. According to Downing Street's readout of the call, they discussed trade and the economy and security in the Middle East. Continue reading...

Official cites review of course curriculum at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, where new recruits get basic trainingDonald Trump's order halting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has led the US air force to suspend course instruction on a documentary about the first Black airmen in the US military, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, a US official said on Saturday.The famed Black aviators included 450 pilots who fought overseas in segregated units during the second world war. Their success in combat helped pave the way for Harry Truman's decision to desegregate the armed forces in 1948. Continue reading...

Eighty years after the Nazi death camp was freed, the testimony of survivors is as crucial as everMemory is fragile. A decade ago, 300 survivors gathered at Auschwitz to commemorate the Nazi death camp's liberation. On Monday, 50 will assemble for the 80th anniversary. The median age of Holocaust survivors was estimated at 86 in a study published last year. At 97, Esther Senot is still keeping the promise she made to her dying sister Fanny, whose last wish was that she tell what happened to us ... so that we are not forgotten by history." Almost 1 million of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust were killed at the complex in German-occupied Poland, along with smaller numbers of Poles,Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, gay men, political prisoners and others. Its name has become synonymous with evil.The Auschwitz museum's decision to ban speeches by politicians this year may be in part pragmatic. Holocaust memory has too often been a battleground in Poland. The museum's mission stands above politics, yet cannot be wholly insulated from global affairs. Vladimir Putin has attended in the past, but there will be no Russian presence this time. Earlier thismonth, Poland's deputy foreign minister appearedto suggest that authorities would be obliged to arrest the Israeli prime minister if he travelled to the ceremony, because the international criminal court hasissued a warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu's arrest for alleged war crimes in Gaza. The Polish prime minister, DonaldTusk, insisted Mr Netanyahu would be able to attend safely, though Israel's delegation is not expected to include him.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...

Senator Lindsey Graham says pardoning violent offenders is a mistake' and could spur more violenceJD Vance on Sunday tried to offer a rationale to a record number of executive orders and controversial policy shifts enacted by Donald Trump during the first five days of the latter man's second presidency, claiming without evidence that the moves accomplished more than Joe Biden" and his administration did in the last four years.But one of those moves - Trump's blanket pardons for about 1,500 people who attacked the US Capitol in early 2021 - was labeled a mistake" by a prominent fellow Republican of the president and Vance: US senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who feared the clemency could end up spurring more violence. Continue reading...

Trump began his inauguration day encircled by a bevy of oligarchs, but ended it giving favor to his mobThe most sacred ceremony conducted at the Trump inauguration undoubtedly for Donald Trump personally, with its mystical meaning elevating him to his greatest height as an emperor, was the prayer for Fred Trump. Father Frank Mann, a retired priest from Brooklyn, offered a blessing to the ruthless real estate operator who made his fortune in the borough and bankrolled his son's pilgrimage over the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan to blow a half-billion dollars through six bankruptcies and the financial collapse of the Taj Mahal Hotel and Trump Castle casino in Jersey City, and a blessing for Fred's wife, too, without whom this day would never be the miracle that has just begun".Father Frank had struck up a relationship with Donald after he sent him a photograph of how he had weeded the Trump family gravesite at the Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery. A single tombstone marks not only Donald's parents, but also Fred's father and mother, Donald's original immigrant grandparents - Friedrich deemed an undesirable in Germany - and Fred Jr, subject of Fred's abuse that helped drive him into alcoholism and his early spot in the family plot. From their place in heaven," intoned Father Frank, may they shield their son from all harm by their loving protection and give him the strength to guide our nation along the path that will make America great again".Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth Continue reading...

The US president has said he wants the territory's residents to move to neighbouring countries and that they could be displaced 'temporarily or could be long-term'. His remarks followed a call with Jordan's King Abdullah on Saturday.Speaking to reporters on Air Force One about the call, Donald Trump said: 'I said to him: "I'd love you to take on more because I'm looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it's a mess, it's a real mess." I'd like him to take people.'The president also told reporters he had ordered the resumption of shipments of 2,000lb bombs to Israel, after Joe Biden had paused their delivery owing to concerns about civilian casualties in Gaza caused by the weapons

California, New York and other states resist by expanding healthcare and education and limiting detention centersAs Donald Trump tightens the nation's immigration policies, lawmakers in Democrat-led states are proposing new measures that could erect legal obstacles for federal immigration officials and help immigrants lacking legal status avoid deportation.The resistance efforts in California, New York and other states are a counterpoint to the many Republican-led states advancing measures to aid Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, highlighting a national divide. Continue reading...

This is what crony capitalism looks like. Trump's delay contravenes the law Congress passed last springThe Trump TikTok flip-flop continues as the 47th president has shoved his finger into the eye of Congress. With scant legal authority, he has paused the divestment of the app by ByteDance, its Beijing-based parent. After issuing an executive order on point, the president then held out the possibility that Larry Ellison of Oracle, a Trump-backer, or Elon Musk, the world's richest man, would scoop-up TikTok.This is what crony capitalism looks like. Trump's delay contravenes the law Congress passed last spring, which set a 19 January 2025 divestment deadline. Last week, the US supreme court unanimously held that Congress acted within its constitutional rights to sever the link between TikTok and China. Continue reading...

In his first few days in office, the president reversed four years of work on DEI efforts in the federal governmentWithin his first few days in office, Donald Trump reversed four years of work to increase diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the federal government.Since taking office, he's signed a flurry of executive orders, two of which amount to crackdowns on DEI within the federal government. One overturns Joe Biden's efforts to increase DEI programs in the federal government, while a second bans DEI measures from being taken by the federal government. Continue reading...

Those who work from home and their office-based colleagues need to understand each other better - and that starts with language. Here's my new corporate glossaryI note, wearily, that the work culture wars grind on. We are in the midst of yet another push to get staff back in to the office, with Amazon, Morgan Stanley and Asda all desperately trying to stuff the human genie back into its cubicle bottle. Staff at the Office for National Statistics and the Land Registry, among others, have voted to strike to preserve their right to work from home (WFH). Stuart Rose, former CEO of M&S and until November executive chair of Asda, told Panorama that home work isn't proper work" and the Mail quotes a Gen Z CEO" saying he is wrong. Can't we all just get along?One possible explanation for the continued conflict is that we have become strangers to each other. Absence made the heart grow more suspicious: our office-based overlords think we WFHers have become an army of side-hustling slackers. We, meanwhile, know them only by their diktats: to us they are as blankly remote and unrelatable as extras in Severance.Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Experts suggest that replicating the conditions that saw neighorhoods burn to the ground may not be the best policyGavin Newsom signed a $2.5bn wildfire relief package this week, with the goal of helping Los Angeles rebuild faster". Both the California governor and the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, pledged to suspend environmental and other regulations to make rebuilding homes and businesses easier. Donald Trump has reportedly said he wants the city to recover quickly so that the 2028 Olympics, which Los Angeles is hosting, can be the greatest Games".But many environmental and urban planning experts say that Los Angeles should actually be pausing, and taking a moment to consider how and where to safely rebuild communities located in high-risk wildfire zones. Continue reading...

Republican governor installs conservatives including self-described anti-feminist to University of West Florida boardFlorida's rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, has engineered a second hostile takeover" of a liberal-leaning state school, education watchers say, after he installed a number of staunch conservatives to the board of trustees at the University of West Florida (UWF).The move almost exactly mirrors the governor's 2023 seizure of power at Sarasota's New College of Florida, in which he ousted the sitting board of the popular liberal arts school and replaced them with hardline cronies in what a national university professor's union denounced as an aggressively ideological and politically motivated" move. Continue reading...

Adapting themselves to Trump's zero-sum worldview, global leaders ditched any appeal to high-flown ideasIn the heady mountain air of Davos last week, away from the parties and the back-slapping tech bros, another, more beleaguered crew touted their wares: the multilateralists.On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, representatives of aid agencies, development banks and multilateral lenders grabbed a moment with the many world leaders present, vying for attention among the glitz. Continue reading...

The first first lady to come back as a brand has launched her own meme coinAn old Slovenian proverb has always been so precious to me. Roast chickens don't fly into mouth by themselves." Or chicken cooked any way that is both appetising and elegant.At one of our beautiful Mar-a-Lago receptions I had the chef sprinkle the finest gold leaf on to the generous individual portions, which were flown simultaneously to every guest by a flock of trained parakeets, each bird dyed a pastel shade to match immaculate table settings I had personally supervised over many exhausting months. I later had the honour to share this serving suggestion with her majesty Queen Elizabeth II. But I knew from my mother that chicken must first be earned.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

Fashion industry cosying up to new president over fears his ire - and tariffs - could snip profits, critics claimDonald Trump's second presidency has sent shockwaves across industries since Monday - and fashion is no different. If, on the surface at least, the culture around fashion tends to skew centre left, this is is also ultimately a business about making money, and that means keeping the powerful onside.Major players showed their true colours last week. Among the tech billionaires and surprise celebrities at Trump's inauguration was Bernard Arnault, the CEO of fashion conglomerate LVMH, with two of his children, Delphine and Alexandre. Trump's daughter Ivanka, meanwhile, wore LVMH brand Dior, while Usha Vance (wife of JD) went for Oscar de la Renta. Though new first lady Melania wore relatively unknown designer Adam Lippes, her stylist Herve Pierre told Women's Wear Daily that more brands are now keen to dress her for the publicity, compared with the last time she was in the White House. Continue reading...

Ditching hanging out for isolated scrolling on our sofas is a dangerous habit that warrants help on a par with gamblingOver the decades, research has chipped away at our most cherished ideas about human specialness: it turns out that we share such things as theory of mind, empathy, and time perception with many other creatures.But there is one feature of humanity that we can claim to be uniquely our own. Animals - unless captured by humans or infected with zombie parasites - tend to act staunchly in their own interests. Why is it that this frog or that bat or this humming-bird behaves in the peculiar way it does? The answer is almost always the same: to further its survival and the propagation of its genes. Continue reading...

South Dakota governor will take on Trump's anti-immigration mission, air travel and natural disastersKristi Noem secured US Senate confirmation as homeland security secretary on Saturday, putting the South Dakota governor in charge of a sprawling agency that is essential to national security and Donald Trump's plans to clamp down on illegal immigration during his second presidency.The Senate worked on Saturday as Republicans successfully sought to install the latest member of Trump's national security team. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth was confirmed in a dramatic tie-breaking vote by JD Vance Friday night, joining the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe. Continue reading...

The American tennis player Madison Keys said that 'lots of therapy' helped her secure her Australian Open title, after she beat the world No 1, Aryna Sabalenka, in the final on Saturday. 'Actually getting help, talking to someone, not just about tennis but how I felt about myself,' she added. 'If I hadn't done that, I don't think I would be sitting here.'At 29, Keys is the oldest first-time women's Australian Open champion in the Open era. 'I'm just really proud of myself,' Keys told a reporter. 'I didn't always believe that I could get back to this point.'

The conversation is no longer just about the present conflict, there is already an undeclared covert war under wayDonald Trump's characteristically vociferous attempt last week to pressure Vladimir Putin into ending the war in Ukraine, which Russia's leader launched three years ago next month, is a welcome shift. Throughout the US election campaign, the Republican candidate complained about the cost of military aid to Kyiv. He claimed the war would never have started had he been in the White House, and boasted he could end it in 24 hours". Trump also avoided personal criticism of Putin. The nature and history of their relationship has long been clouded in mystery. It still is.Yet Trump's tone and emphasis have changed markedly since he began his second term as US president on Monday. Putin's refusal to enter into unconditional negotiations endangered Russia as much as Ukraine, he said. I think he should make a deal. I think he's destroying Russia." Overt threats quickly followed. Russia's economy was imploding, Trump said. Putin should settle now and stop this ridiculous war" or face US tariffs, taxes and additional sanctions. We can do it the easy way, or the hard way - and the easy way is always better." Continue reading...

The US president threatens tariffs, leaves the World Health Organization and the Paris climate deal - all in his first week

Report reveals that teen who killed one student in Nashville area interacted with Wisconsin shooter who killed twoTwo teenagers who carried out deadly shootings before killing themselves at their respective high schools in attacks roughly a month apart from each other appear to have crossed paths online, according to a new joint report from ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch.The first shooting took place on 16 December at the Abundant Life Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin. Two people - a teacher and a 14-year-old student - were killed by the shooter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, before she killed herself. Continue reading...

From the piano used for The Wizard of Oz to backyard studios, losses have performers and composers concerned for the futureBehind Duane Funderburk and his wife's Altadena house, past the french doors and through the trees, stood a studio they had built themselves. It was a haven where Funderburk often played his grand piano, a Yamaha he bought in 1982.It had the most incredibly strong lower end - the bass notes of that piano were phenomenal," said Funderburk, an artist-in-residence at Lake Avenue church in Pasadena. Continue reading...

Whatever deal the US president is eyeing over the app, it is further proof some digital giants wield disproportionate cloutLate on Saturday 18 January, TikTok, the short-video app beloved of millions of users mostly aged between 18 and 24, went dark in the US. This was not because of a power outage, but because its owner switched it off. For an explanation of why it did so, though, we have to spool back a bit. For years, TikTok has been a thorn in the sides of US legislators and national security officials for two reasons. First, it's owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, which doubtless does whatever Xi Jinping tells it to do. Second, TikTok hoovers up phenomenally detailed data about its young users. The average session lasts 11 minutes and the video length is about 25 seconds. That's 26 episodes' per session," says blogger Prof Scott Galloway, with each episode generating multiple microsignals: whether you scrolled past a video, paused it, rewatched it, liked it, commented on it, shared it, and followed the creator, plus how long you watched before moving on. That's hundreds of signals. Sweet crude like the world has never seen, ready to be algorithmically refined into rocket fuel." The thought of personal data with this granularity falling into Chinese hands seemingly drove the American deep state, not to mention Meta, Google and co wild. And Congress got the message.In April last year, Joe Biden signed into law the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a statute that had attracted unprecedented bipartisan support on its path through a divided Congress. The act basically mandated that TikTok's owner would have to sell it to an American company or be banned in the US. It was scheduled to come into force on Sunday 19 January 2025. Continue reading...

Despite fewer silly glitches, you now get an executive summary of the world, with all interesting complications removedI often find myself thinking of a sentence by the American novelist Nicholson Baker about the size of thoughts: Most are about three feet tall, with the level of complexity of a lawnmower engine."The sentence comes to mind when I'm presented, casually, with ideas produced by our new emotionless sidekick generative AI". The most insistent examples of this come at the top of Google searches, which, rather than simply providing real world" links to that morning's query - What time does the pub open?", say - offer first a little machine-generated reply that allows you to imagine yourself slickly informed. Continue reading...

Results from Shell and Exxon this week will be weaker - and Trump's desire to drill may result in oversupplyAlmost three years ago, Russia's invasion of Ukraine wiped out Europe's largest source of gas and shocked global energy markets, setting the stage for quarter after quarter of better-than-expected earnings for the fossil fuel producers ready to profit from the volatility. Now those returns are beginning to cool.But as markets have reduced to a simmer, oil executives have warned that profits are also going off the boil. A glut of new oil and gas projects, stoked by a pro-fossil-fuel agenda from the White House, could mean weaker markets in the future too. Continue reading...

The confusing and vague executive order underscores how complex sex is and why it's hard to reduce it into a neat binaryHas the moment we've all been waiting for arrived? After both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris failed to break the biggest glass ceiling, has a woman finally ascended to the highest office in America? Legally speaking, is Donald J Trump the first female president? Continue reading...

The right is ecstatic about the end of the Biden era - but remains polarized about some of Trump's decisionsAmericans really do inhabit two worlds: some shed tears of sadness at the advent of Donald Trump's second presidency. Others cried, too - with joy.Across the conservative, post-liberal" and alternative media spheres, journalists, pundits and some social media circles celebrated the end of the Biden era with the enthusiasm of rebels toppling the relics of a collapsing dictatorship. As Trump swore his presidential oath, the writer Walter Kirn, a pro-Trump, anti-establishment agitator on X, grandiloquently declared: This is a revolution against a corrupt ancien regime." Continue reading...

Inspectors general at state, defense and transportation departments removed in apparent violation of federal lawDonald Trump fired 17 independent watchdogs at multiple US government agencies on Friday, a person with knowledge of the matter said, eliminating a critical oversight component and clearing the way for the president to replace them with loyalists.The inspectors general at agencies including the departments of state, defense and transportation were notified by emails from the White House personnel director that they had been terminated immediately, the source said on condition of anonymity. Continue reading...

First full-scale replica of Frank's attic annexe goes on show next week on International Holocaust Remembrance DayThe first-ever full-scale replica of Anne Frank's attic annex goes on show in New York next week, part of an ongoing effort to maintain awareness of - and combat - antisemitism in the midst of conflict in the Middle East and political tensions in the US.Eighty years on from Frank's death, aged 15, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, the exhibition at the Center for Jewish History in downtown Manhattan aims to introduce new audiences to one of the most famous victims of Adolf Hitler's final solution". Continue reading...

Mayor skips city events to attend inauguration and meet Trump, raising questions about nature of pair's relationshipEric Adams's recent meetings with Donald Trump, and a recent interview on rightwing pundit Tucker Carlson's show, have raised questions about whether New York's mayor is more focused on obtaining a pardon for criminal charges against him than in effectively leading the city.Adams, a Democrat who faces a federal indictment for allegedly accepting bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources, met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida shortly before the president-elect took office; went to Trump's inauguration, rather than attend scheduled events in the city for Martin Luther King Day; and did an interview with Carlson, a former Fox News host who frequently criticizes Democrats and has promoted conspiracy theories about immigration. Continue reading...

Michael McMahon condemns president for commuting death sentence given to Len Davis, 60, over 1994 murderJoe Biden was hypocritical - and blindsided" the victim's daughter - when in December he commuted the death sentence given to a corrupt former police officer after he orchestrated the murder of a woman who filed a brutality complaint against him, according to the retired assistant US attorney whose job it was to prosecute the case.In a guest column published on Friday by Louisiana's Advocate newspaper, Michael McMahon said the clemency given to the ex-New Orleans policeman Len Davis was morally depraved" - and not revealed to the family of Kim Groves, the slain woman, until virtually the last minute, all but violating US justice department policies designed to give victims' loved ones a voice in such decisions. Continue reading...

Class-action lawsuits allege algorithms turn down claims in seconds and critics say reform is needed for lasting changeInsurance coverage denials have risen in recent years in the US, driven in part by automated algorithms powered by AI - and some recently launched artificial intelligence tools may fight back by generating automatic appeals.But to see more lasting change, health experts say that the health insurance system needs greater reform to control high prices and ensure coverage. Continue reading...

Madison Keys caused an upset by defeating the No 1 seed Aryna Sabalenka 6-3, 2-6, 7-5 to win her first grand slam titleSabalenka 0-2 Keys* (*denotes server) Sabalenka nets a backhand on Keys' first serve and after a high volley the world No 14 makes it 40-30. Sabalenka goes wide in the final point and what an excellent service game from Keys to back up that early break.*Sabalenka 0-1 Keys (*denotes server) Sabalenka starts with a double fault but a rocket of a forehand down the line makes it 15-15. But the Belarusian double faults again and Keys faces a break point ... the American works Sabalenka into the corner and breaks the champion serve. Early unexpected nerves from Sabalenka! Has she got it out of her system? Continue reading...

The president has wasted little time in pushing a radical rightwing agenda at the start of his second termThis time last week Stewart Rhodes was serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy over his role in a deadly attack on the US Capitol. On Wednesday, two days after Donald Trump's inauguration as president, Rhodes was inside the Capitol building, wearing a Trump 2020 hat and relaxing at a Dunkin' Donuts.With mere strokes of a pen, Trump has launched a rightwing political revolution in America, deploying troops to the US-Mexico border, assailing a constitutional right to citizenship, reversing gender and diversity policies, all but abandoning the fight against the climate crisis and freeing violent criminals who backed him. Continue reading...

Religious extremists from the US are bolstering local opposition by pouring money and messaging into the country under the guise of supporting family values'Sierra Leone is on the precipice of making history in its parliament this week. A new bill being debated would see a deadly centuries-old British colonial law abolished and monumental strides made to protect the safety of women and girls.For a country where sky-high maternal deaths are a national emergency, the safe motherhood and reproductive health care bill is a lifeline. The new legislation would decriminalise abortion and provide that any girl or woman, regardless of economic status, can seek the reproductive care needed from a qualified medical professional - whether that involves the decision to conceive, to access contraception or to make the difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy. Continue reading...

Figure skating's quad god' takes aim at a third straight US national title starting on Saturday, but for the first time as the incumbent world championNo matter how you look at it, Ilia Malinin is already one of the most technically accomplished men's figure skaters of all time. From his history-making quad axel, to his personal best scores - almost three points higher in the free skate than previous record holder Nathan Chen - when the 20-year-old reigning world champion heads to the US figure skating championships in Wichita, Kansas, this week, there's little doubt that he'll collect yet a third straight national title on the road to the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics.He's skating to music by rapper NF and rock band Falling in Reverse, and fans won't just see the American skater complete a now-expected array of quad jumps, and his signature Raspberry Twist, (a move taken from acrobatics), he's also included a newly sanctioned backflip. It's all part of an underlying ambition to, Help the new, more modern generation of people come and see what skating is," he said to me this week. Given the mind-blowing fact he's been working on a quint (an eye watering five rotations in the air) as a side-project", if there's one athlete that can bring a Biles-like level of fandom to a sport well past its heyday, it's Malinin. Continue reading...