37-year-old shot dead by federal agents on Saturday
Tyrese Haliburton and Angel Reese post on social media
A number of prominent US sports stars have condemned the killing of a registered nurse, Alex Pretti, by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Pretti, 37, is the second person shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis in less than three weeks as protests over Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown sweep the city. Senior Trump administration officials have claimed Pretti intended to “massacre” federal officers with a handgun but video of the killing appears to contradict those claims.
The president’s approval ratings are plummeting and most Americans see him as an aberration. It is now up to them to curtail his despotic reign
Donald Trump is a monster, and a stupid one at that – as his foul slander of British soldiers who served in Afghanistan shows. His bid to seize loyal ally Denmark’s sovereign territory; his norm-shattering, profoundly ignorant speech in Davos last week; and his contemptuous bullying of UK and EU leaders have definitively demonstrated what an existential, unappeasable, unspeakable menace the 47th US president truly is.
All the post-Davos talk is about what the UK, the EU and Nato must do in future to resist and constrain Trump, and how to counter his attempts to demolish the global rules-based order. Yet a sense of proportion is required. If his policies and posturing are removed from the equation, it’s clear that the unedifying but familiar postwar world of great power rivalries and de-facto spheres of influence remains largely unchanged. Continuities outnumber ruptures. It’s also clear this crisis is not ultimately one Europe can solve.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
Experts say guidance is ‘refreshing’ as it puts more emphasis on responsibility of companies and society
The American Academy of Pediatrics has released new guidance on how to protect children’s mental health in the digital age – emphasizing the need for systemic changes as well as parental engagement that goes beyond limiting screen time.
Jessica Schleider, an adolescent psychologist and professor at Northwestern University whose lab develops digital mental health interventions, said the new policy statement was “really refreshing to see”, because it contrasts with conventional wisdom that places too much of the safety burden on individual parents. Common advice like “limiting individual youth access to screens”, or asking parents to keep tabs on their children’s every digital movement is “not only impossible, but for adolescents in particular, potentially invasive”, Schleider said.
Snow, sleet, freezing rain and perilously cold temperatures forecast to sweep eastern two-thirds of nation
More than 500,000 households and businesses in the US are without power and more than 9,600 flights are expected to be cancelled ahead of a monster winter storm that threatens to paralyse eastern states with heavy snowfall.
Forecasters said snow, sleet, freezing rain and dangerously frigid temperatures would sweep the eastern two-thirds of the nation on Sunday and into next week.
Home secretary says climbdown was ‘as good as it gets’ from US president despite failure to apologise for remarks
Donald Trump’s climbdown over his claim that UK troops avoided the frontline in Afghanistan has been greeted with cross-party relief in Westminster despite his failure to apologise for remarks widely condemned as offensive and false.
In a rare clarification, the US president praised British troops as being “among the greatest of all warriors” and acknowledged that 457 had died in Afghanistan.
With midterms looming some in Congress have dissented from the president – but it still falls well short of a rebellion
Donald Trump pulled back from the brink on Greenland but not before causing untold damage to the Nato alliance. The US president’s sabre-rattling may also have shaken the faith of his own Republican party.
Trump’s fleeting threat to conquer the Danish territory prompted the most strident Republican opposition to anything he has done since taking office a year ago. It came on the heels of challenges to his authority over military powers, healthcare legislation and the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Alex Pretti’s death could be a moment of reckoning for Democrats to call time on Trump waging war on his people
Wearing helmets, gas masks and camouflage fatigues, the federal agents took aim and prepared to open fire. “It’s like Call of Duty,” one could be heard saying via a TV mic, referring to a first-person shooter military video game. “So cool, huh?”
This was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday after armed agents, wearing masks and tactical vests, wrestled 37-year-old Alex Pretti to the ground and shot him dead. The killing took place just over a mile from where Renee Good was fatally shot on 7 January, a scene that itself was less than a mile from where police murdered George Floyd in May 2020.
In the search for stability, some western nations are turning to a country that many in Washington see as an existential threat
If geopolitics relies at least in part on bonhomie between global leaders, China made an unexpected play for Ireland’s good graces when the taoiseach visited Beijing this month. Meeting Ireland’s leader, Micheál Martin, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China’s president, Xi Jinping, said a favourite book of his as a teenager was The Gadfly, by the Irish author Ethel Voynich, a novel set in the revolutionary fervour of Italy in the 1840s.
“It was unusual that we ended up discussing The Gadfly and its impact on both of us but there you are,” Martin told reporters in Beijing.
Maxwell Alejandro Frost says attacker ‘told me Trump was going to deport me’ as police say suspect arrested
The Florida congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost said he was assaulted by a man who said Donald Trump would deport him at a party during the Sundance film festival in Utah.
“Last night, I was assaulted by a man at Sundance Festival who told me that Trump was going to deport me before he punched me in the face,” Frost said in a Saturday post on X. “He was heard screaming racist remarks as he drunkenly ran off. The individual was arrested and I am okay.”
Pair testify that Pretti did not hold weapon and was trying to help woman federal agents had shoved to the ground
Two witnesses to the killing of Alex Pretti have said in sworn testimony that the 37-year-old intensive care nurse was not brandishing a weapon when he approached federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, contradicting a claim made by Trump administration officials as they sought to cast the shooting of a prone man as an act of self-defense.
Their accounts came in sworn affidavits that were filed in federal court in Minnesota late Saturday, just hours after Pretti’s killing, as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of Minneapolis protesters against Kristi Noem and other homeland security officials directing the immigration crackdown in the city.
“I’m 70 years old and I’m fucking angry,” the man yelled, as clouds of chemicals hung in the sub-zero air in Minneapolis, capturing the sentiment of a city that has now seen two people killed by federal agents in less than three weeks.
Agents shot and killed a 37-year-old US citizen at about 9am on Saturday, with other observers watching and videotaping their actions, in an area called Eat Street, a corridor of largely immigrant-owned restaurants and businesses.
Dangerous weather engulfing large area of country as 16 states plus DC declare states of emergency
A powerful winter storm with more than 140 million Americans in its crosshairs started sweeping across much of the US on Saturday, packing heavy snow and sleet as well as freezing rain and causing widespread power outages.
Alex Pretti, 37, killed by border control near arena
Game rescheduled for Sunday amid safety concerns
The NBA game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Golden State Warriors was postponed on Saturday afternoon following another fatal shooting by a federal officer in Minneapolis.
The game was rescheduled for Sunday afternoon. The Timberwolves and Warriors are also scheduled to play on Monday night.
After anger at claim alliance’s troops ‘stayed off frontlines’, US president says British forces are ‘great and very brave’
Donald Trump has said UK soldiers who fought in Afghanistan were “among the greatest of all warriors” after previously drawing criticism for his claims that Nato troops stayed away from the frontlines during the conflict.
In a post on social media on Saturday, the US president said: “The great and very brave soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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