US secretary of state to visit region amid concern over Trump threat to ‘take back’ canal and tensions over China

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, will travel to Central America this week on a five-country tour that will focus on limiting migration to the United States, curbing Chinese influence in the region and on securing Donald Trump’s ambitious goal of reasserting US control over the Panama canal.

Rubio will travel to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic from Saturday to Thursday this week, meeting with the presidents of each. It is the first time in more than a century that a secretary’s first official visit abroad will be to Central America.

Firefighters believe Palisades fire started from small blaze that may have reignited due to hurricane-force winds

As Los Angeles grapples with the aftermath of the devastating fires that killed dozens and laid waste to entire neighborhoods, the potential causes of the disasters are beginning to come into focus.

The siege of wildfires, sparked amid powerful Santa Ana winds earlier this month, created chaos around the city for weeks. They scorched around 60 sq miles (155 sq km) of the city, destroying the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods, and killed at least 29 people. Preliminary estimates of the economic losses have exceeded $250bn. Firefighters have only recently managed to achieve near containment of the fires, and residents begin returning to what remains of their communities, looking for answers.

Internal email says agency is ‘reviewing’ programs and contracts that ‘promote or incubate gender ideology’

US state department employees must scrub gender pronouns from their email signatures by Friday evening, according to an internal email obtained by the Guardian, joining the list of other agencies reportedly sent a similar memo.

The directive came from former ambassador Tibor P Nagy, now the acting under-secretary for management, writing to staff that the department was also launching a comprehensive review to eliminate what he called “gender ideology” from government communications and programs.

US neighbors hit with 25% tariff and China with 10% as Trudeau pledges ‘forceful but reasonable’ response

Donald Trump will impose sweeping tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China on Saturday, the White House said, potentially setting the stage for a damaging trade war between the US and three of its biggest trading partners.

Goods exported from Canada and Mexico to the US will be hit with a 25% tariff, while products from China face a 10% levy, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters on Friday.

Manchester United are simultaneously the world’s fourth-richest club while taking away free cereal bars for stewards

Bad news for Marcus Rashford, who was described by Ruben Amorim last week as being so poor in training that he would rather play his goalkeeping coach. Great news, on the other hand, for new 63-year-old wide forward Jorge Vital, now weighing up a number of offers from Serie A and Saudi Pro League clubs, and whom Manchester United are hopeful of shifting from the wage bill before the end of the transfer window.

For this cash-strapped theatre of ghosts, trying to build its new cast of dreams on the bones of the old, perhaps every pound helps. Corporate box guests at Old Trafford no longer get a free match programme each and are instead invited to download the dictated thoughts of Amorim via a QR code. Free cereal bars for matchday stewards were cut at the beginning of the season. The annual £100 staff Christmas bonus was replaced by a £40 M&S voucher. Concessionary tickets for children and the senior citizens were temporarily withdrawn.

Sundance film festival: A desperate wannabe attaches himself to a singer on the rise in a darkly compelling breakout from Alex Russell, writer for Beef and The Bear

There’s something remarkably assured about Alex Russell’s attention-demanding thriller Lurker, a buzzy Sundance debut that’s made with an unusual amount of self-awareness. The majority of this year’s first-time narrative films have been cursed with an overabundance of either in-your-face style or precariously stacked ideas (or, even worse, both) and a frantic need to show how much one can do, often showcasing how little can be done well.

But Russell, a TV writer whose credits include Beef and The Bear, is the rare freshman who knows exactly the right balance, often choosing less when others choose too much, his film a relatively simple yet extremely confident introduction. It’s a contemporary pop-culture riff on an obsessive psycho-thriller, the kind we were flooded with in the 90s in which an outlier enters the life of someone who has something they want, recalling Single White Female and The Talented Mr Ripley as well as something more recent and comedic like Ingrid Goes West. Russell takes this formula and extracts most, if not all, of the heightened genre elements to give us something a little more grounded, dialogue more rooted in reality and a canny realisation that murder isn’t always needed to create menace.

Lurker is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

• Six Nations updates from Paris, 8.15pm GMT kick-off
• Predictions: who will win and why | And mail Daniel

There are a bunch of new laws in place for this year’s Six Nations:

Conversions must take place within 60 seconds.

Lineouts to be formed within 30 seconds (same as scrums)

No stoppage for lineouts that aren’t straight if the defending team doesn’t contest.

9s (or players at the base of a ruck, maul or scrum) have more protection from defenders (effectively given more space).

20 minute red card – players can still get sent off, but after 20 minutes they can be replaced by a teammate, which means we can hopefully stop talking about red cards ruining games.

Victims in the crash included figure skaters, a group of friends traveling to hunt and the flight’s pilots and crew

• Washington DC plane crash – latest updates

A fatal crash on 29 January took down a commercial jet and a US military helicopter on a training flight near Washington DC’s Reagan National airport. Authorities have said all 64 people on the American Airlines flight were presumed dead as well as three more on the army helicopter, making the incident the deadliest US air tragedy since 2001.

• Colombian links up with Cristiano Ronaldo in £71m deal
• Neymar rejoins Santos from Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal

Jhon Durán has completed his move from Aston Villa to Al-Nassr for a fee of up to £71m, becoming the latest player from one of Europe’s top leagues to move to Saudi Arabia.

The 21-year-old Colombia international will team up with Cristiano Ronaldo and wear the No 9 shirt. The initial fee is about £65m and represents a significant profit for Villa, who signed him from Chicago Fire for £18m. Durán has scored 12 goals in 29 games for Villa this season, including a memorable winner against Bayern Munich in the Champions League.

Palestinians return to Gaza, Americans survey the aftermath of the Palisades fire and Hindus gather at the Shahi Snan in India: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

• Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

Sharp rise in population in 11 of 16 cities expected to continue as rising temperatures make it easier for the animals to breed, say researchers

Rat numbers are soaring in cities as global temperatures warm, research shows.

Washington DC, San Francisco, Toronto, New York City and Amsterdam had the greatest increase in these rodents, according to the study, which looked at data from 16 cities globally. Eleven of the cities showed “significant increasing trends in rat numbers”, said the paper published in the journal Science Advances, and these trends were likely to continue.

Move to issue 03-mini model follows sudden arrival of much cheaper Chinese rival DeepSeek’s R1

OpenAI is releasing a new artificial intelligence model for free, after the company said it would speed up product releases in response to the emergence of a Chinese rival.

The startup behind ChatGPT is issuing the AI, called o3-mini, after the surprise success of a rival product by China’s DeepSeek. It will be available without charge – albeit with usage limits – to people who use the free version of OpenAI’s chatbot.

IRS handbook containing mentions of taxpayers’ ‘inequity’ and ‘inclusion’ have been wiped, WSJ reports

As the Trump administration continues to get rid of diversity programs throughout the government, it is deleting any mention of the words “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusion”.

That meant that in the Internal Revenue Service’s procedural handbook for employees, the terms were wiped out when referring to finances and tax procedures rather than actual DEI programs, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Without Fews Net, recognised as ‘a vital life-saving tool’ for preventing food crises, people will die, experts warn

The system for monitoring global food crises appears to have been suspended after President Donald Trump’s executive order froze US foreign aid.

The website for the US-funded famine early warning systems network (Fews Net) was not accessible on Friday. A banner said reports and data were “currently unavailable” without elaborating.

• Winning bid for 49% stake values London Spirit at £295m
• Welsh Fire stake sold for reported £35m to tech entrepreneur

The Hundred is set to deliver an eye-watering windfall for English cricket that exceeds all projections after a Silicon Valley consortium featuring the chief executives of Microsoft and Google claimed a 49% share in London Spirit for £144m.

It was the first of two sales to take place on Friday afternoon, with a 49% stake in Cardiff-based Welsh Fire later sold for a reported £35m. The England and Wales Cricket Board has now raised around £279m after similar stakes in Oval Invincibles (£60m) and Birmingham Phoenix (£40m) were claimed 24 hours earlier.

Emily Hernandez, 24, killed Victoria Wilson, 32, and injured her husband in a 2022 Missouri wreck

One of the US Capitol attackers pardoned by Donald Trump at the start of his second presidency has been handed a 10-year prison sentence for killing a woman in a drunk-driving crash, according to authorities.

Emily Hernandez served 30 days in federal prison after she joined the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and was photographed holding the broken nameplate of Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker at the time.

The American president’s sabre-rattling over Greenland should alert member states to the need for solidarity and a reset

European leaders, Sir Keir Starmer among them, will gather on Monday in Brussels to informally discuss defence and security issues five years after Britain left the EU. When the meeting was set last year, few expected US aggression toward a European nation to be on the agenda. But initial incredulity at Donald Trump’s bellicose claims on Greenland, a Danish territory, has been followed by shocked expressions of solidarity with Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen. A bullying 45-minute phone call between Mr Trump and Ms Frederiksen was described as “horrendous”.

So it begins. As Europe reacquaints itself with Mr Trump’s aggressive “America First” brand of diplomacy, further such provocations can be guaranteed. Fighting talk emanating from the White House will sometimes be a prelude to eventual compromise. But there can be no doubt that the challenges raised by the president’s second coming are substantial and wide-ranging.

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Few sights are as majestic as an 82-year-old legend being nonplussed at promoting Captain America: Brave New World. Plus: is Thunderbolts* Marvel’s answer to The Suicide Squad and will Tron: Ares be as good as it looks?

There are moments in life when you expect to be confronted by greatness: hearing a live orchestra swell into the opening notes of John Williams’ Star Wars theme; standing at the edge of the Scottish Highlands; watching a dog somehow open a fridge and retrieve a beer for its owner. And then there are moments when greatness sneaks up on you in the form of an 82-year-old Hollywood legend, materialising like a grumpy mirage, one metre from your face, during what you thought was a routine Disney presentation of new movies and TV shows.

Harrison Ford is not a man one simply stumbles upon. He is a force of nature, a living relic of an era when leading men didn’t have to spend six months on a chicken-and-rice diet before taking their shirts off. And yet, here he is, looking suitably nonplussed with the entire concept of being on a stage, fielding questions alongside his Captain America: Brave New World co-stars in an impromptu Q&A with all the enthusiasm of a guy who somehow finds himself trapped in the world’s most boring hostage video.

• India 181-9; England 166; India win by 15 runs
• Concussion replacement Harshit Rana takes key wickets

An appetising decider at the Wankhede on Sunday seemed likely. The hosts were 12 for three, stunned by a triple-wicket maiden by Saqib Mahmood, Jos Buttler finally on the right end of the toss. Three and a bit hours later the series belonged to India, England 3-1 down with one to play, and a tinge of substitute controversy in there too.

Hardik Pandya and Shivam Dube were the saviours, hitting 53 apiece to set England an imposing target of 182. Dube was conked on the helmet during his knock, prompting a concussion replacement, with Harshit Rana coming in for his Twenty20 international debut during the England innings. With Rana a far more significant bowling threat, this was hardly a like-for-like change, as the playing conditions demand.

Plan to tighten migration policy was brought by the opposition leader Friedrich Merz with the help of AfD

The German parliament has rejected a bill to tighten immigration controls brought by the frontrunner to be the next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, with the backing of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland.

It came after a similar but non-binding motion was passed by parliament on Wednesday with the votes of the AfD, prompting a wave of protest from those who said it was a breach in Germany’s longstanding “firewall” between the far right and the mainstream.

Two-page document praises loyalty of Yang Tengbo and says he is ‘at very top of tree’ within Duke of York’s network

The full text of a gushing letter written by Prince Andrew’s adviser to the alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo reveals how intimate the relationship between the two had become in the aftermath of the prince’s disastrous 2019 interview with the BBC.

Extracts from the correspondence were quoted in a judgment upholding a decision to exclude Yang from the UK last month, but the two-page letter written by Dominic Hampshire at the end of March 2020 is eye-catching for its tone.

• England captain expresses fears over paywall plans
• ‘Rugby needs more eyes on it, not less’

The England captain, Maro Itoje, has called for Six Nations organisers to keep the championship on free-to-air TV on the grounds that rugby union needs more exposure, amid fears the championship will disappear behind a paywall next season.

Itoje, who leads England for the first time in Saturday’s Six Nations clash with Ireland in Dublin, issued an impassioned plea, pointing to how he grew up watching the championship on the BBC and ITV.

European Central Bank picks two themes for redesign submissions: ‘iconic personalities’ or rivers and birds

He was a master of notes, and now the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven could be one of the faces of the redesigned euro, the first time the EU currency’s banknotes have been revamped.

In a process that started in 2021 and has already involved a public inquiry and two multidisciplinary advisory groups, the European Central Bank (ECB) has selected two themes for the redesign.

Music A-listers from Dr Dre to Olivia Rodrigo perform at fundraising extravaganza FireAid at neighboring LA arenas

Making my way through the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, it was clear that FireAid was set to be a different kind of musical extravaganza. Taking place simultaneously at both at the state-of-the-art arena (which opened in August) and the longtime city staple the Kia Forum, the roster, which included everyone from Joni Mitchell to Peso Pluma, was announced in the wake of the devastating fires that struck the area earlier this month and broadcast around the world to raise funds and awareness, the atmosphere before showtime was neither celebratory nor subdued, striking a delicate balance to coalesce over a common love for Los Angeles and its ongoing strife.

A red carpet where flashbulbs are usually popping was mostly quiet as a mouse, with photographers invariably checking their lenses; perhaps the stars in attendance knew it would be inept to have a fashion moment on such an occasion. Even inside the arena, the usual pre-concert buzz of boisterous mingling and drink sipping was missing.