Labor unions and progressive organizations have called on workers across the state to stay home in an ‘economic blackout’

• Full report: Economic blackout in Minnesota to protest against ICE: ‘No work, no school, no shopping

Talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States have begun in Abu Dhabi, according to the United Arab Emirates’ ministry of foreign affairs.

The UAE is hosting a rare set of trilateral talks, bringing together negotiators from Russia, Ukraine, and the US. The talks have started today, and are scheduled to continue over the next two days.

Much-anticipated trial scheduled in New York over killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson

Luigi Mangione’s federal murder trial in the killing of the United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson is scheduled to start with jury selection on 8 September, triggering one of the most eagerly anticipated criminal trials in recent US history, a judge said on Friday.

Judge Margaret Garnett of announced the trial date to a packed Manhattan federal courtroom shortly before an evidence-related hearing in his case.

Three suspects face attempted murder counts after Steven and Kimberly Meyer were shot at their Lafayette home

Five people have been arrested in connection with the recent shooting of an Indiana state judge as well as his wife at the couple’s home.

In a statement, police said three of the suspects face counts of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the 18 January shooting of Judge Steven Meyer and his wife, Kimberly, in Lafayette, Indiana.

As a lightning government offensive leaves the Kurdish-dominated SDF reeling, the political horizon needs attention as well as security

In little more than a fortnight, a dramatic Syrian government offensive appears to have undone over a decade of Kurdish self-rule in the north-east and extended President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s control. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) held around a quarter of the country and many critical resources – but were forced out of much of it within days. Though the SDF has effectively agreed to dissolution in principle, it has not shown it will do so in practice: a worrying sign for a fragile truce. A peaceful resolution is in everyone’s interests. Forcible integration by Damascus would risk breeding insurgency.

The US relied upon the SDF in the battle against Islamic State. But Donald Trump has embraced “attractive, tough” Mr Sharaa – a former jihadist who had a $10m US bounty on his head until late 2024. The US administration became increasingly frustrated at the SDF’s failure to implement last spring’s agreement to integration into the new army, apparently due to internal divisions. Tom Barrack, the US special envoy to Syria and ambassador to Turkey, wrote this week that the rationale for partnership with the SDF had “largely expired” because Damascus was ready to take over security responsibilities.

US president asks ‘whatever happened to global warming?’ Well, it could be making our winter storms worse

Donald Trump has erroneously cited an enormous winter storm that is set to deliver freezing temperatures and heavy snow to half of the US as supposed proof that the world is not heating up due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Trump, who has repeatedly questioned and mocked established climate science in the past, posted of the storm on Truth Social: “Rarely seen anything like it before. Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain – WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???”

From derailing meetings by telling fictional stories about serial killers to Davos, the president has left people confused and concerned

Donald Trump vowed to “plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars” during his inauguration speech last year, a bold promise that spoke to otherworldly achievements.

But during the first year of his second term, it is on the planet Earth where Trump has sought to plant the US flag. He has deployed troops to US cities, as waves of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents terrorize communities. Trump has ordered the invasion of Venezuela and the capture of its leader, is engaged in ongoing saber-rattling over Greenland, and has threatened historic US allies should they oppose his efforts to seize the autonomous territory of the Danish kingdom. He has amplified online claims that Nato is a bigger threat to the US than historical adversaries China and Russia.

Dissenting voices were few and far between as the US president brought his smash-and-grab politics to the WEF

“If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, was the darling of Davos this week as he rallied resistance to Donald Trump’s smash and grab politics and his voracious appetite for other countries’ wealth and land.

“Call it what it is,” he told delegates. “A system of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion”. He urged “middle powers” to band together or be crushed, and was rewarded with a standing ovation.

The US president took his bullying doctrine to Davos and hit a wall of opposition. If this creates a new western alliance against him, all to the good

The temptation is strong to hope that the storm has passed. To believe that a week that began with a US threat to seize a European territory, whether by force or extortion, has ended with the promise of negotiation and therefore a return to normality. But that is a dangerous delusion. There can be no return to normality. The world we thought we knew has gone. The only question now is what takes its place – a question that will affect us all, that is full of danger and that, perhaps unexpectedly, also carries a whisper of hope.

Forget that Donald Trump eventually backed down from his threats to conquer Greenland, re-holstering the economic gun he had put to the head of all those countries who stood in his way, the UK among them. The fact that he made the threat at all confirmed what should have been obvious since he returned to office a year ago: that, under him, the US has become an unreliable ally, if not an actual foe of its one-time friends.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Worker illegally provided classified information ‘related to national defense’ to journalist, justice department says

A federal grand jury in Maryland has indicted a Pentagon contractor whose alleged leaking of classified documents sparked an “outrageous” FBI raid on a Washington Post reporter’s home.

According to the justice department, Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones illegally provided sensitive and secret information “related to national defense” to a reporter who it says then wrote and published at least five articles using it.

Snow, sleet and freezing temperatures are forecast for the south, midwest and east coast over the weekend

• Trump says the big US winter storm is proof of climate hoax – here’s why he’s wrong

The dangerous monster storm threatening half of the US was bearing down on Friday with 16 states and Washington DC already declaring emergencies and areas typically unused to prolonged Arctic temperatures bracing for power failures and supply shortages.

At least 230 million people are likely to be affected by the huge winter weather system as it forms in parts of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains and surges across southern and midwestern areas from Friday, blowing up the east coast on Saturday and as far north as Maine by Sunday.

Ryan Wedding turned himself in at US consulate in Mexico City and is due to appear in court in California on Monday

Ryan Wedding, the Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug kingpin, has been arrested after turning himself in at the US embassy in Mexico, law enforcement officials announced on Friday.

Wedding, 44, had been sought by the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for his role in overseeing what the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, called the “one of the most prolific and violent drug-trafficking organizations” in the world.

Avatar director, who moved to New Zealand after the Covid pandemic says he will soon be a citizen of a country where people ‘are, for the most part, sane’

James Cameron has said that New Zealand’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is the reason behind his decision to relocate there from the US.

Speaking to Stuff, Cameron – who shot much of the most recent Avatar feature in the southern hemisphere – described being the US under Donald Trump as “like watching a car crash over and over” and said his New Zealand citizenship was “imminent”.

More than $1m has been raised by Elon Musk and others to commission ‘sterile’ street art of Iryna Zarutska – whose death has become a rightwing flashpoint

Like most blocks in Bushwick, New York, Evergreen Street is blanketed in street art and graffiti. But this month, an incongruous new mural appeared, towering over the street corner. Painted on the side of Formosa, a popular Taiwanese dumpling joint, the image of a blond woman stretches across two stories and an entire apartment block, her right eyebrow fractured by bedroom windows.

The mural is one of a number that have been painted across the US depicting Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was killed last year while riding the light rail in Charlotte, North Carolina. Zarutska was traveling home from her job at a local pizzeria when she was stabbed from behind three times.

Does a society truly become safer when part of its population learns to live in constant fear?

On 15 June 2025, the Trump administration issued an official statement directing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to begin what it described as “the largest mass deportation operation in American history”. Major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York were identified as primary targets. The stated goal was to keep communities “safe and free from illegal alien crime, conflict, and chaos”. Federal agents rapidly became a part of many residents’ everyday lives.

No stable state can protect its borders, public order and the legitimate interests of its citizens without immigration law and effective enforcement mechanisms.

Abdul Wahid Gulrani is a political sociologist from Afghanistan, whose work focuses on migration, gender and national security. He is currently engaged in teaching and research at Georgetown University and the George Washington University