As Trump-deployed agents pervade the region, students struggle to carry on with lessons while carrying grief and fear that they or their loved ones will be taken

In south Minneapolis, a special education student logged on for their online class from the basement. They were hiding because immigration agents were banging at the door.

A second grader started having a panic attack in the middle of art class because agents had arrested his dad. His teacher had to ask a colleague to watch the other students, bring him outside, and hold him for half an hour to help calm him.

Minnesota governor decries ‘federal occupation’ after another deadly shooting less than three weeks after ICE officer killed Renee Good in city

• Man shot in Minneapolis by federal agents identified as nurse Alex Pretti

• ‘How many more Americans need to die?’: mayor lambastes Trump

In a statement sent to the Guardian, assistant secretary of homeland security Tricia McLaughlin said that at 9.05am local time, “as DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis” against a person they said was in the country illegally, who she said was “wanted for violent assault”, “an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.”

McLaughlin said that “the officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted” and that “more details on the armed struggle are forthcoming.”

• Trump tells New York Post he will skip Super Bowl

• NFL stands by Bad Bunny amid rightwing backlash

Donald Trump said he will not attend next month’s Super Bowl in northern California, citing the distance to the game, amid an ongoing culture-war backlash over the NFL’s choice of half-time and pre-game performers.

Trump told the New York Post he plans to skip the 8 February championship game at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara because the trip is “just too far away”, adding that he would have considered attending if it were a shorter flight. The decision means Trump will not repeat his appearance at last year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans, where he became the first sitting US president to attend the NFL’s showcase event.

Winter storm system brings emergency declarations as snow and ice create unsafe driving conditions and power shortages

• Snow, sleet and power outages: 140m Americans under warnings for massive winter storm

The severe cold weather has created unsafe driving conditions on many roads throughout the midwest and southern US today. Sheets of ice are currently coating several streets and highways, causing increasing risk to drivers.

Even after the ice has been cleared away, it often quickly comes back due to precipitation and freezing temperatures. Officials are urging people to stay off the roads. Sgt Ellis from the Tennessee highway patrol posted a video on social media demonstrating the dangerous conditions.

Amid the tumult of the WEF in Davos this week, some investors are leading the way by ditching US government bonds

There is a way to file for divorce from Donald Trump and Europe needs to grab the opportunity.

To the public it will look as if nothing has changed. But behind the scenes the EU and the UK could close the joint bank account and cut up the credit cards, or at least set in motion a form of financial separation that limits the power of a controlling former partner.

President also claims US refineries will process seized Venezuelan oil, saying ‘we take the oil’

Donald Trump on Saturday said he would impose a 100% tariff on all Canadian imports if the North American country makes a trade deal with China.

Beside that tariff threat, another Trump foreign policy maneuver to make news on Saturday involved the president announcing the US had taken the oil that was on recently seized Venezuelan tankers.

The deadline for Trump’s justice department to release the files came and went, but experts say there are still options

For months, the 2025 news cycle was dominated by the disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Public outrage over the continued secrecy surrounding Epstein investigative files – which Donald Trump failed to release fully early in his second term, despite campaign promises – was growing.

Fire department was responding to report of gas odor in Bronx building when explosion occurred during frigid night

A gas explosion sent fire racing through the top floors of a high-rise apartment building in New York City early on Saturday, killing one person and injuring 14 others as temperatures plunged into the single digits overnight, authorities said.

Firefighters responded shortly before 12.30am to the 17-story New York City housing authority (Nycha) building in the Bronx, where people were seen leaning out of windows calling for help as flames engulfed parts of the top floors, officials said.

Driver taken into custody after car crashes through airport entrance and strikes Delta ticket counter

A car crashed through the entrance of Detroit’s metropolitan Wayne county airport on Friday evening, striking a ticket counter and injuring six people, airport officials said.

The driver was taken into custody, the Wayne county airport authority (WCAA) said in a statement. The cause of the crash was not yet known, and airport police were investigating.

It has become difficult to feel shock at the actions of the Trump administration. But this useless cruelty is shameless

Liam Ramos is five. In photographs of his arrest on Tuesday, released by the school district where he is enrolled as a preschooler, he is wearing a large blue hat with a bunny face and ears. According to the superintendent, Liam had just arrived home from school with his father when ICE agents apprehended the two and arrested them. Allegedly, one of Liam’s relatives, who was outside at the time, begged for the little boy to be allowed to stay there in their care; instead, both father and son were captured by the federal agents and quickly transported to a detention camp in Dilley, Texas. Liam’s father has no apparent criminal record; he has a pending asylum case. Does it need to be said that the child does not have a criminal record, either? In one picture, a white man’s hand clutches, claw-like, on to the back of Liam’s Spider-Man backpack. In another, a masked man stands behind Liam, stooping slightly to reach the small child, as the boy stands at the front door of his home. According to school officials, the agent instructed Liam to knock on the door and ask to be let into the house “in order to see if anyone else was home – essentially using a five-year-old as bait”.

Liam is the fourth child from his Minneapolis-area school district to be seized by ICE agents since the surge of federal immigration forces in the city. According to school officials, two 17-year olds were also taken – one snatched alone from their car, another captured at home with her mother. Another child, a 10-year-old girl in the fourth grade, was allegedly also taken by the federal forces – while on her way to school with her mother.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

The 46th president largely exists as Trump’s foil, with his successor blaming him for the country’s woes

In bitter cold beneath the US Capitol dome, he walked to a marine helicopter and shared parting words with Donald Trump. Then, arriving at Joint Base Andrews, Joe Biden offered farewell remarks to his loyal staff. “We’re leaving office,” he said, “We’re not leaving the fight.”

But, one year later, Washington, and the world, have mostly moved on from the 46th president. Biden, 83, has been writing a lucrative memoir, planning a presidential library and fighting prostate cancer. He was once the most powerful man on the planet, but now Biden’s public appearances have been scarce and his influence has palpably diminished.

US legal cannabis industry seeks new ways to incorporate weed into meals after a tough year for business in 2025

Food and stoner culture have always gone together, but these days chefs and cannabis professionals are working together to find thoughtful, new ways to incorporate weed into meals.

For National Hot Pastrami Day on 14 January, a celebrated Jewish deli in Chicago teamed up with a local Illinois dispensary to give customers free pastrami sandwiches garnished with cannabis-infused mustard.

Prosecutors say cuts to funding and training limits their ability to bring child predators to justice

The US Department of Justice has slashed funding and training resources for law enforcement working on investigations and prosecutions of sex crimes against children under the Trump administration, which limits their ability to carry out this work.

Major cuts include the cancelation of 2025 National Law Enforcement Training on Child Exploitation, due to be held in Washington DC in June. The conference is an annual event that provides technical training to prosecutors, state and federal law enforcement officers on investigating online crimes against children.

The native of Thunder Bay, Canada, has been compared to Pablo Escobar and El Chapo – but is he really as big a figure as US prosecutors have claimed?

To compete at the highest levels of snowboarding, racers must master carving, edging and balance at speeds stretching the limits of imagination. They can fluently read the nuances of snow and fine-tune their bodies to cross the finish line faster than anyone else.

The Canadian snowboarder Ryan Wedding had these skills – but also the quality that catapults amateurs to an elite level: a highly competitive instinct to succeed that can at times manifest in a desire to crush fellow competitors.

Really, why wouldn’t you wash yourself after using the toilet? If you won’t listen to me, then listen to Zohran Mamdani – and get your straddle on

The first time I heard a bidet mentioned in the US – or at least what it’s used for – was at the start of an off-Broadway play I saw in 2015 called Threesome. An Egyptian-American couple are in bed waiting for a white man they’ve invited to join them for the tryst of the title. He bounds on to the stage after using the bathroom, and the couple yell at him, “Go back and wash your ass!”

Like that couple, and Threesome’s playwright, Yussef El Guindi, I’m Egyptian. In Egypt, bathrooms in every home, as well as those in public buildings, are fitted with some kind of contraption for washing after using the toilet: a bidet, a standalone low oval basin next to the toilet that one straddles – or, more popularly, a shattaf, a fixture in the toilet itself through which water streams out. Sometimes, the shattaf is a small showerhead attached to the wall next to the toilet. I’ve recently learned that its name in English is a bum gun. It’s my favourite kind of shattaf, because you can control the water pressure.

Mona Eltahawy writes the FEMINIST GIANT newsletter. She is the author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, and Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution

In the US, comedy has long filled the space vacated by partisan news media. Now France is following its lead

Sometimes the freedom and openness of comedy means it is better able to respond to world events than news media. Take South Park’s raucous, unhinged and visually disturbing depictions of Donald Trump – most recently, cheating on Satan (who is carrying his spawn) with JD Vance in the White House. Fair enough: Trey Parker and Matt Stone very much own this terrain.

But there’s no reason why satirical TV programmes such as The Daily Show should have to take on the role of news provider, investigative journalist and critic. And yet, over the past three decades, the failings of the US corporate media to adequately cover the country’s dilapidated politics has pushed people such as Jon Stewart into filling the void.

The problem was identified as long ago as 2000 by the US economist Paul Krugman. He castigated the press for being “fanatically determined to seem even-handed”, to the point they were unwilling to call out outrageous untruths. “If a presidential candidate were to declare that the Earth is flat,” Krugman wrote, “you would be sure to see a news analysis under the headline Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point.”

It was this context that provided American satire’s cathartic triumph in the first years of the 21st century. The Daily Show began conducting harder-hitting interviews than most primetime TV shows. Stephen Colbert rose to prominence by playing a fake conservative talkshow host, in an open parody of Bill O’Reilly’s mid-2000s show on Fox. And then John Oliver pioneered “investigative comedy”, frequently doing a better job of breaking scandalous stories than the news programmes he was satirising.

Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist. H​is memoir, Generation Desperation​, is published in January 2026

Sea lion named Confetti was rescued early January and has ‘really great chance’ of being released, marine biologist says

A rescued sea lion is recovering in Los Angeles after a marine care center discovered he had two bullets in his head.

The sea lion, named Confetti, was rescued from Ballona creek, a watershed connected to the Santa Monica bay, on 5 January, the Marine Mammal Care Center Los Angeles announced on Thursday.