Kristi Noem says that more officers are being deployed amid protests in several cities
He has warned he is considering “very strong” military action over the regimes crackdown on protesters.
Possible actions for the US include military strikes, deploying secretive cyber weapons against Iranian military and civilian sites, placing more sanctions on Iran’s government and boosting anti-government sources online, sources say.
President’s memo stating US ‘shall withdraw’ from UNFCCC marks first time any country has tried to exit the agreement
The Trump administration’s long-anticipated decision this week to pull the US from the world’s most important climate treaty may have been illegal, some experts say.
“In my legal opinion, he does not have the authority,” Harold Hongju Koh, former head lawyer for the US state department, told the Guardian.
Strike, amid an intense flu season, is expected to disrupt activity at institutions such as Mount Sinai and Montefiore
Thousands of nurses are set to walk off the job at several of New York City’s largest hospitals on Monday, staging a strike amid an intense flu season.
The action comes three years after a previous strike that compelled some of the same hospitals to move patients elsewhere and reroute ambulances.
Leftwing leader rallies his supporters as US president accuses him of drug trafficking and threatens military action
A leftwing South American firebrand calls for his followers to rally in public squares nationwide to defend his country’s sovereignty and decry verbal attacks from Donald Trump. The US president accuses the leader of personally flooding American streets with illegal drugs and imposes sanctions against him and his wife. Threats of military action are followed by a phone conversation between the two leaders.
One might imagine that this is a description of the buildup of tensions that led to the 3 January special forces raid on Caracas to capture the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, to face several criminal charges in New York.
If bans on trans youth athletes are upheld, more girls could face ‘invasive sex testing’ and trans people could broadly lose civil rights protections
The US supreme court will consider state bans on transgender athletes on Tuesday in a major LGBTQ+ rights legal battle that could have far-reaching consequences beyond youth sports.
The court is hearing oral arguments in two cases brought by trans students who challenged Republican-backed laws in West Virginia and Idaho prohibiting trans girls from participating in girls’ athletic programs.
As it did in 2003, the US is underestimating the potential for instability as Trump resurrects one of the Iraq war’s biggest myths
“Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!” Paul Bremer, the US proconsul in Iraq, famously declared at a press conference in Baghdad on 14 December 2003, a day after US troops had captured Saddam Hussein. Iraqis in the audience broke out in cheers, leapt up from their seats and pumped their fists in the air – many had waited decades for that moment. “This is a great day in Iraq’s history,” Bremer said, adding: “The tyrant is a prisoner.”
I was in the audience that day in Baghdad, covering the Iraq invasion’s aftermath as a correspondent for a US newspaper. It quickly became clear that Bremer and other jubilant US officials would use the occasion – US soldiers dragged the disheveled former Iraqi dictator out of a hole in the ground where he had been hiding near his home town – to declare that America’s war had reached a decisive turn. Despite a growing insurgency led by ex-members of the Iraqi security forces, US officials in Baghdad and Washington projected confidence that victory was in sight now that Saddam was locked up and headed for the gallows.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University
US president repeats his desire for the territory; EU defence commissioner says attempt to take Greenland by force would mark end of Nato
Meanwhile, EU defence commissioner Andrius Kubilius warned that it would be the end of Nato if the US took Greenland by force, as he stressed that EU members would also be under obligation to come to Denmark’s assistance, Reuters reported.
“I agree with the Danish prime minister that it will be the end of Nato, but also among people it will be also very, very negative,” commissioner Kubilius told Reuters at a security conference in Sweden.
“Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything.”
Elon Musk’s X “is not doing enough to keep its customers safe online”, a minister has said, as the UK government prepares to outline possible action against the platform over the mass production of sexualised images of woman and children.
Peter Kyle, the business secretary, said the government would fully support any action taken by Ofcom, the media regulator, against X – including the possibility that the platform could be blocked in the UK.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another looks unstoppable ahead of the Oscars, despite Timothée Chalamet’s triumph over Leonardo DiCaprio for best actor
The biggest backlash brewing concerns Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, lauded by critics and embraced – especially in the US – by audiences as one of 2025’s key cultural landmarks. The thriller did win two Globes – for cinematic and box office achievement and original score – but both wound up not really counting. The first is the Globes’s consolation prize (it was won by Barbie in 2023 and Wicked last year); the second wasn’t even broadcast on the telecast. Coogler missing out on screenplay to One Battle After Another was perceived by some as a slap in the face – the Oscars and Baftas separate the category into original and adapted, however, so a corrective could come.
The territory and the European bloc are trying to see off the US president, who has said control of Greenland is essential to national security
The Trump administration has said repeatedly that the US needs to gain control of Greenland, justifying its claim from “the standpoint of national security” and warning that it will “do something” about the territory “whether they like it or not”.
This puts the EU and Nato in a difficult spot. Greenland, a largely self-governing part of Denmark, is not a member of the bloc but Denmark is; while the Arctic island is covered by the defence alliance’s guarantees through Denmark’s membership.
He has survived loss, breakdown and schooling by ‘scary nuns’, but the anguish is still there in his art. As his new show thrills Paris, the US-based, Irish-born artist talks about the pain that drives him
When I ask Sean Scully what an abstract painting has over a figurative one it’s music he reaches for. “You might ask, what’s Miles Davis got over the Beatles? And the answer is: doesn’t have any words in it. And then you could say, what have the Beatles got over John Coltrane? Well, they’ve got words.”
It’s clear which choice he has made. Scully, who paints rectangles and squares and strips of colour abutting and sliding into each other, is an instrumentalist in paint rather than a pop artist. The meaning of his art is something you feel, not something you can easily describe. He has more in common with Davis and Coltrane than with the Beatles. In addition to improvisational brilliance, his new paintings even colour-match with Coltrane’s classic album Blue Train and Davis’s Kind of Blue. For Scully, the greatest living abstract painter, is playing the blues in Paris. In his current exhibition at the city’s Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, long, textured blue notes as smoky as a sax at midnight alternate and mingle with black and red and brown in a slow, sad, beautiful music that doesn’t need words, art that doesn’t require images.
One Battle After Another and Adolescence have led this year’s Golden Globes with four wins apiece.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture epic took home best comedy or musical film. It also earned him best director and screenplay, marking his first-ever Golden Globe wins.
US president claims ‘Iran wants to negotiate’ as rights groups report that regime’s crackdown on protest has killed hundreds
Donald Trump has claimed Iran has reached out and proposed negotiations, as he considers “very strong” military action against the regime over a deadly crackdown on protesters that has reportedly killed hundreds.
Asked on Sunday by reporters aboard Air Force One if Iran had crossed his previously stated red line of protesters being killed, Trump said “they’re starting to, it looks like.”
Fed chair accuses DoJ of threatening criminal charges over building renovation projects because central bank defied Trump’s interest rate demands
The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve, a significant escalation in Donald Trump’s extraordinary attack on the US central bank.
Powell said the Department of Justice had served the Fed with grand jury subpoenas on Friday, threatening a criminal indictment related to his testimony before the Senate banking committee in June last year, regarding renovations to the Fed’s historic office buildings in Washington DC.
Multiple Torah scrolls were damaged after fire broke out early Saturday at Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson
A suspect has been taken into custody after a historic synagogue in Mississippi was badly damaged in a fire that authorities described on Sunday as an arson case.
According to officials, the blaze broke out shortly after 3am Saturday at Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson. No one was hurt in the fire.
Lawyers for Abu Zubaydah accused British intelligence services of providing questions to his CIA interrogators
The UK has settled out of court by paying a “substantial sum” to a Guantánamo Bay detainee who was suing the government for its alleged complicity in his rendition and torture, according to the inmate’s legal team.
Lawyers for Abu Zubaydah have accused the British intelligence services of providing questions to his CIA interrogators to put to him while they were torturing him at a string of CIA “black sites” around the world where he was held between 2002 and 2006.
Stars from Bob Dylan to Brandi Carlile remember rock band co-founder as ‘beautiful human’ after his death at 78
The death of Bob Weir, the Grateful Dead co-founder, rhythm guitarist, vocalist and writer of much of the legendary psychedelic rock band’s songs, drew a chorus of tributes from fellow musicians and fans who described him as a “musical guru” and “the last actual hippie”.
Weir recently survived cancer but died from “underlying lung issues”, according to a statement posted on Saturday on Instagram.
No more Venezuelan oil or money will flow to the communist-run island after Maduro’s fall, says US president
Donald Trump has told Cuba to “make a deal” or face unspecified consequences, adding that no more Venezuelan oil or money would flow to the communist-run Caribbean island that has been a US foe for decades.
As Cuba, a close ally of Venezuela and big beneficiary of its oil, braced for potential widespread unrest after Nicolás Maduro was deposed as the South American nation’s leader, the US president ramped up his threatening language on Sunday.
One of the founding members of the Grateful Dead, brilliant guitarist and writer of many of the group’s key songs
Though perhaps not as instantly recognisable as the band’s guru-like lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, who has died from cancer aged 78, was an indispensable pillar of the Grateful Dead as guitarist, singer and songwriter.
Weir, Garcia and their bandmates first came together in San Francisco in 1965, and would become integral players in the psychedelia boom and the city’s summer of love in 1967, fuelled by the mind-expanding drug LSD.
Health minister Nina Warken says Robert F Kennedy Jr’s assertions that German doctors are facing legal action are unfounded
The German government has sharply rejected claims by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, that doctors in Germany have faced legal action for issuing vaccine and mask exemptions during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The statements made by the US secretary of health are completely unfounded, factually incorrect, and must be rejected,” Germany’s health minister, Nina Warken, said in a strongly worded statement released late on Saturday.
A congressional hearing this week underscored the danger a WBD deal would pose to journalism and the American public
Donald Trump wants CNN sold. He has said so repeatedly and publicly, demanding it “should be sold” in any deal involving Warner Bros Discovery. Now one of America’s largest media companies is racing to oblige him, while another looks to consolidate its power. Wednesday’s House judiciary hearing on streaming competition – where lawmakers voiced concern over the Trump administration’s influence and a potential merger’s toll on consumers – made clear just how dangerous both options are for free speech, audiences and democracy itself.
Netflix has bid $82.7bn for Warner Bros Discovery, only to be countered by a hostile $108bn takeover bid from Paramount Skydance, led by David Ellison, son of Trump’s ally Larry. Neither deal serves the public interest, and both are dangerous for the future of free expression. Both would produce an unprecedented concentration of power over what Americans watch and which stories get told.
Courtney C Radsch is director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty at the Open Markets Institute
Danish prime minister says country is at a crossroads and accuses US of turning its back on Nato
Mette Frederiksen has said that Denmark is at a “fateful moment” amid Donald Trump’s threats to take over Greenland, accusing the US of potentially turning its back on Nato.
Speaking at a party leader debate at a political rally on Sunday, the Danish prime minister said her country was “at a crossroads”.
Content creators are leveraging their high follower counts to apply for the visa for ‘individuals with extraordinary ability’
Content creators and influencers in the US are now increasingly dominating requests for O-1 work visas. Astoundingly, the number of O-1 visas granted each year increased by 50% between 2014 and 2024, as noted by recent reporting in the Financial Times.
These visas allow non-immigrants to work temporarily in the US. The O-1 category includes the O-1A, which is designated for individuals with extraordinary ability in the sciences, education, business or athletics and the O-1B, reserved for those with “extraordinary ability or achievement”.
Shots to prevent respiratory syncytial virus recommended only for high-risk babies even as experts hail jabs’ success
As US officials move to restrict vaccines, including the shots to prevent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), more evidence is emerging to confirm how dramatically the jabs reduce hospitalizations.
Announced last week as part of new restrictions on one-third of all routine childhood vaccines, RSV shots are now recommended only for high-risk babies, instead of all infants. The Trump administration announcement was led by prominent vaccine critic and health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.
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