Secretary of state does not rule out further US military action in Venezuela, according to prepared remarks
The Trump administration is ready to take new military action against Venezuela if the country’s interim leadership strays from US expectations, according to Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state.
In prepared testimony for a hearing before the Senate foreign relations committee, Rubio says the US is not at war with Venezuela and that its interim leaders are cooperating, but he notes that the Trump administration would not rule out using additional force following the capture of Nicolás Maduro early this month.
Labour will be “washed away in a tide of discontent” at the next general election unless it tackles the decline of Britain’s high streets, a study has warned, as Guardian analysis lays bare the changing face of town centres.
Research by the University of Southampton found people feel high streets have declined more than any other part of their local area over the past decade as household brands collapsed and shoplifting rose.
The man accused of assaulting congresswoman Ilhan Omar has a reported history of sharing political posts, including one that criticised Omar, on social media.
According to CNN, the 55-year-old Minneapolis resident, who has been identified as Anthony James Kazmierczak through jail records, has shared political posts in the past, in. In 2021, he shared a political cartoon criticising Omar’s stance on security spending amid calls to defund police.
In the fast-paced, almost psychotically unforgiving video game business, you really do have to stick the landing. Launching a new game is an artform in itself – do you go for months of slowly building hype or a sudden shock reveal, simultaneously announcing and releasing a new project in one fell swoop? The latter worked incredibly well for online shooter Apex Legends, which remains one of the genre’s stalwarts six years after its surprise launch on 4 February 2019. What you don’t do with a new release, is something that falls awkwardly between those two approaches. Enter Highguard.
This new online multiplayer title from newcomer Wildlight Entertainment has an excellent pedigree. The studio was formed by ex-Respawn Entertainment staff, most of whom previously worked on Titanfall, Call of Duty and the aforementioned Apex Legends. They know what they’re doing. But the launch has been … troubled.
Limelight, Belfast At 73, the lodestar of Americana still writes with urgency, as the patient force of her band sends the music grooving skywards
‘Thanks for being receptive to my complaining,” Lucinda Williams says late on, deadpan, after a run of songs circling power and consequence. Outside, Storm Chandra keeps the streets jumpy. Inside Belfast’s Limelight, a sold-out crowd sits on fold-up seats for a show shifted from Mandela Hall at short notice, the room oddly calm for a venue known for sweat and shoving.
Williams is a lodestar in the broad galaxy of music still called Americana, and two days after turning 73, she has the authority of a multiple Grammy winner who writes with urgency. She is living with the after-effects of a stroke, stepping on and off stage with care, yet once she’s behind the mic she radiates resolve. If anything, the voice sounds newly burnished; the phrasing more deliberate, the vibrato catching the light.
Outrage followed ‘would-be assassin’ lie but experts say architect of ICE drive too dominant a figure to be shunned
Pressure is growing on key White House senior adviser Stephen Miller over the killing of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by border patrol agents in Minneapolis and its politically divisive aftermath.
Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policy, finds himself in the rare position of being contradicted and excluded from crucial decisions by the US president.
A year into Trump’s second term, critics say the EPA is rolling back dozens of protections and giving a leg up to polluters
After a tumultuous year under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has adopted a new, almost unrecognizable guise – one that tears up environmental rules and cheerleads for coal, gas-guzzling cars and artificial intelligence.
When Donald Trump took power, it was widely anticipated the EPA would loosen pollution rules from sources such as cars, trucks and power plants, as part of a longstanding back and forth between administrations over how strict such standards should be.
Centrist ideas are no longer wanted in the Conservative party, Kemi Badenoch has said, arguing that one nation-type Tories or others who have qualms about her rightward direction for the party “need to get out of the way”.
Making a speech in Westminster intended to set out her vision for the party after a spate of recent defections to Reform UK, the Conservative leader hit out at what she called the “tantrum” of Robert Jenrick and others.
Highly contagious virus, which spreads from animals to humans, has a high fatality rate and there is no vaccine
Airports across Asia have been put on high alert after India confirmed two cases of the deadly Nipah virus in the state of West Bengal over the past month.
Thailand, Nepal and Vietnam are among the countries screening airport arrivals over fears of an wider outbreak of the virus, which can spread from animals to humans and has a high fatality rate.
Lover, You Should Have Come Over enters charts at No 97, after becoming popular on social media platform
Jeff Buckley has achieved his first US Hot 100 hit single, 29 years after his death, with Lover, You Should Have Come Over at No 97 this week.
TikTok virality is behind the success, as a new generation of listeners discover Buckley’s spirited, romantic songwriting and pair it with videos on the social media platform. TikTok videos don’t count towards US chart positions, but viral trends drive listeners towards songs on streaming services that do count.
Virginia ‘Ginny’ Oliver, had entered the business when she was eight and liked ‘being along the water’
Maine’s governor has hailed the life of a woman who spent nearly 100 years fishing for lobsters as “amazing” and expressed hopes that her memory inspires “the next century of hardworking” fishers in the state.
The subject of Governor Janet Mills’ tribute, Virginia “Ginny” Oliver, died on 21 January at age 105, according to an obituary published on Monday by her family.
The Brooklyn townhouse is filled with spectres of her ill-fated marriage to David Harbour. But perhaps the buyer has some creative ideas
How long a minute is depends which side of the bathroom door you’re on. Now it appears that how much a $1m loss matters depends how eager you are for your business to be concluded.
That’s pretty eager apparently – and unsurprisingly – if you’re Lily Allen and David Harbour. The former couple have just accepted $7m for the Brooklyn townhouse they listed for $8m in October.
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Finding herself in charge of her sick husband’s clipper, a self-taught working-class teenager overcame storms, icebergs and a disloyal first mate to get her ship to safety
No one knows exactly what Mary Ann Patten said in September 1856 when she convinced a crew on the verge of mutiny to accept her command as captain. What is known is that Patten, who was 19 and pregnant, was a force to be reckoned with.
After taking the helm from her sick husband in the middle of a ferocious storm off the coast of Cape Horn, the notoriously hazardous tip of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago off southern Chile, she successfully put down the mutiny and navigated her way to safety through a sea of icebergs.
Leicester, where I grew up, was a ‘super diverse’ city. But when I went on a short trip with a friend, it gave me a glimpse of another world
When I was 24, I visited Ireland for the first time. It was the autumn after I graduated from university, and a friend who had won an award for her dissertation used her prize money to rent a beach hut on Valentia Island, so that we could spend a week working on our novels.
The stone hut stood very close to the water’s edge on the western tip of Ireland, overlooking the expansive metal-blue of the Atlantic. The island possessed a rugged kind of beauty – cliff edges, a lush rainforest, cold frothing water. It astounded us. As did the tranquillity. It was what we had come in search of.
The human impulse to steal has been accelerated by AI, inequality and our political leaders – with profound consequences
Last week I discovered that an article I wrote about the England cricket team has already been copied and repackaged, verbatim and without permission, by an Indian website. What is the appropriate response here? Decry and sue? Shrug and move on? I ponder the question as I stroll through my local supermarket, where the mackerel fillets are wreathed in metal security chains and the dishwasher tabs have to be requested from the storeroom like an illicit little treat.
On the way home, I screenshot and crop a news article and share it to one of my WhatsApp groups. In another group, a family member has posted an AI-generated video (“forwarded many times”) of Donald Trump getting his head shaved by Xi Jinping while Joe Biden laughs in the background. I watch the mindless slop on my phone as I walk along the main road, instinctively gripping my phone a little tighter as I do so.
A record-breaking heatwave in Australia is a potent reminder of how cricket responded to previous wildfires
It’s bushfire season once again in Australia. A record-breaking heatwave, plus intense winds, have resulted in a tinder-box landscape and hard-to-control blazes in large areas of the south east.
“To be frank,” said Jason Heffernan, chief officer of Victoria’s Country Fire Authority on Tuesday, “the state is very, very dry. Any fire that takes hold will be a challenge for the community.”
The US dollar has fallen to its lowest level in four years after Donald Trump brushed off concerns over the currency’s fall, sending investors fleeing to traditional havens including gold and the Swiss franc.
The dollar dropped by 1.3% against a basket of currencies after the president’s comments on Tuesday, marking its fourth day of declines, then slipped by a further 0.2% on Wednesday morning.
World’s richest person targeting symbolic date in June for flotation of rocket company
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is considering a flotation valuing the rocket company at $1.5tn (£1.1tn) that will reportedly be timed for early summer to coincide with a planetary alignment and the multibillionaire’s birthday.
The world’s richest person is targeting a symbolic date of mid-June for the initial public offering, according to the Financial Times. This would be around the same time as Jupiter and Venus appear in close proximity to each other and shortly before Musk turns 55 on 28 June.
When it comes to origin stories, comedians have some of the strangest – from performing for a £5 bet to getting back at their boss to making an unlikely pact with a friend
Not all standup comedians wake up one day and decide to be funny for a living. That wasn’t the case for John Bishop, anyway. He took up comedy to avoid paying a bar’s cover charge and to escape his failing marriage – a story that inspired Bradley Cooper’s new film, Is This Thing On? And Bishop is not the only comic with an unusual origin story. From impressing girlfriends to losing their voices, brain tumours to bad bosses – or not wanting to lose a £5 bet – British comics told us the reasons they became standup comedians and the lengths to which they went to get on stage for the first time.
Video shows the Hudson river partially frozen near the George Washington Bridge in New York City after a heavy winter snowstorm. Eight people were found dead outside over the frigid weekend in the city, officials said, as New York experienced its snowiest day in years, recording 20-38cm (8-15in) of snow. At least 30 deaths were linked to a winter storm that hit North America's north-east. Some regions may not see temperatures rise above freezing until early February with the midwest, in particular, forecast to shiver in exceptionally frosty conditions
Each year, about 80 British people are victims of a homicide overseas, and grieving loved ones have to navigate the aftermath. Eve Henderson describes losing her husband, and her fight to help others
On a Sunday in October 1997, Eve Henderson looked down at her husband, Roderick, as he lay in a hospital bed, unable to make sense of what she saw. She was, she says, “a block of stone”. They were in the neurological ward of a huge hospital on the outskirts of Paris. Travelling on the Métro, the hospital name scribbled on a scrap of paper, it had taken Henderson an hour to find. Roderick looked comfortable when she arrived; he was a good colour, but there was a round red mark in the centre of his forehead and a small tube inside his mouth, attached to something she later learned was breathing for him.
“He looked fairly alive,” says Henderson, “and I just stood there. A doctor came in. She was in tears and I thought: ‘Bloody hell, am I meant to be crying?’ You’ve got no emotion, you’ve got nothing. You don’t know what to say or where you are. That’s what shock does to you.”
The top categories are stacked with quality, from Bad Bunny to Kendrick Lamar, Chappell Roan and K-pop hits – but here are the artists who most deserve to triumph
Bad Bunny – DTMF
Sabrina Carpenter – Manchild
Doechii – Anxiety
Billie Eilish – Wildflower
Kendrick Lamar & SZA – Luther
Lady Gaga – Abracadabra
Chappell Roan – The Subway
Rosé & Bruno Mars – APT.
Keir Starmer has said he will “raise the issues that need to be raised” on human rights with China’s president, Xi Jinping, as he arrived in Beijing for the first trip to the country by a UK leader in eight years.
The prime minister has come under pressure from rights groups to try to secure the release of Jimmy Lai, the jailed former media tycoon and one of Hong Kong’s most significant pro-democracy voices.
*Shelton 1-1 Sinner A big serve makes 15-0, but a decent return on to the line incites a netted forehand. No matter, Shelton shows good variety in the next rally, an inside-out backhand clipping the sideline for a winner, before an ace makes 4-15. But caught at the net having not done enough with the volley, he’s passed, then a netted slice takes us to deuce, and pressure. Shelton cannot afford to be be broken in the first game; he punishes down an ace, but is immediately hauled back, then another big serve allows the clean-up forehand. Ach, but just when a fantastic serve out wide looks to have set up the point, an overhit forehand restores deuce, and Shelton, despite nailing 10/10 first serves in this game, is having to deploy his entire array of shots to hold. He makes advantage again, sends down a decent second serve with the wind behind it, and a quality return renders it useless; back to deuce we go, Sinner slowly extracting his soul, but this time, Shelton makes advantage and closes out the game. Already, this is a lot of fun.
Shelton 0-1 Sinner* (*denotes server) Sinner hooks a forehand long, a shot that looks pretty relative to the mustard trainers, olive top and white hat, shorts and socks he’s been handed – why do they continually dress him in nonsense? Why does he let them? He soon makes 30-15 and Shelton misses the chance to properly get after a short second serve … but a framed forehand sends the ball into orbit and at 30-all, he has the sniff of a sniff. And this is more like it, the American coning in off a deep forehand, and it earns him break point; here we go. Ahahahaha, but you know what’s coming next: yes, a service winner that makes it 23 out of 29 break points saved in the tournament, backed up with a succession of forehands which facilitate the overhead putaway then, when Shelton goes with a drop, but down the line, not cross, which allows Sinner to rush in and mete out forehand treatment. He’s into the match.
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