US president says armada heading towards Iran is ‘prepared to fulfil its missions with violence if necessary’
The threat of a US-Iranian war may be looming closer after Donald Trump warned time was running out for Tehran and said a massive US armada was moving quickly towards the country “with great power, enthusiasm and purpose”.
Writing on social media, the US president said the fleet headed by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was larger than the one sent to Venezuela before the removal of Nicolás Maduro earlier this month and was “prepared to rapidly fulfil its missions with speed and violence if necessary”.
Aircraft carrying 104 personnel damaged lighting tower while making ‘wrong manoeuvre’ after landing
A Qatari military cargo plane carrying security staff in Italy to assist with law enforcement for the Winter Olympics struck a lighting tower on Sunday as it manoeuvred upon landing at Milan’s Malpensa airport, it has emerged.
The aircraft was carrying 104 personnel from the Gulf state’s elite security forces, plus huge jeeps and snowmobiles, as part of an agreement made with the Italian government, despite Qatar not competing in the games.
Conservative figures such as Riley Gaines and Allie Beth Stuckey are urging their followers to ward off empathy for victims of ICE’s crackdown
Riley Gaines, the former collegiate swimmer turned anti-transgender activist, makes motherhood and femininity a core part of her brand. Her husband, Louis Barker, is a naturalized US citizen who moved to this country from the UK. The couple welcomed their first child, a daughter named Margot, in September; Gaines said there was “nothing” she would not do to protect her baby. But do not think that Gaines is at all sympathetic to families targeted by ICE.
This weekend, Gaines spoke on her podcast about Liam Ramos, the five-year-old boy taken by ICE agents from his driveway in Minneapolis. Images of Liam, clad in snowpants and wearing a blue hat with bunny ears, being held by a federal agent prompted widespread disgust in the US. How could a preschooler be considered one of the “dangerous” criminals Trump’s administration rails against?
Charles Victor Thompson would be the first person executed in the US this year for the 1998 shooting deaths
A Texas man who at one time escaped from custody and was on the run for three days after being sentenced to death for fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend nearly 27 years ago was scheduled on Wednesday to be the first person executed in the US this year.
Charles Victor Thompson was condemned for the April 1998 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend, Glenda Dennise Hayslip, 39; and her new boyfriend, Darren Keith Cain, 30, at her apartment in the Houston suburb of Tomball.
Iraq’s former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has angrily denounced “blatant American interference” in the country’s election after Donald Trump threatened to withdraw US support if he was returned to power.
“We reject the blatant American interference in Iraq’s internal affairs and consider it a violation of its sovereignty,” al-Maliki, who is nominated by the country’s dominant political bloc to return to the premiership, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, distressing scenes continue to unfold on the streets of Minneapolis, as confrontations between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and protesters intensify. Behind the headlines, there are communities, in the US and beyond, for whom this is a generationally traumatic moment. I spoke to Somali experts and activists across the diaspora, in Mogadishu, and in the state of Minnesota, which has the largest Somali community in the US. The picture that emerged was of anxiety but also solid resolve.
For almost all of his second term, Donald Trump has been fixated on Somali Americans, making derogatory comments about both them and Somalia, linking his opinion of them to justify anti-immigration policies in general, but particularly in Minnesota, a state that is home to more than 100,000 people of Somali descent. He appears to be particularly personally exercised by Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who is of Somali origin, and who has exchanged barbs with him, taking his revenge on her entire demographic. So deep is his hatred that when Omar was attacked this week by a man who sprayed her with an unknown substance, Trump responded by calling her a fraud who “probably had herself sprayed”. But the broad reason for picking on the Somali community, according to Prof Idil Abdi Osman, at Leicester University, is that it is convenient. The shift towards the right in Europe and the US, she told me, constitutes a “political thunderstorm” that “Somalis have become absorbed in” because “they become an embodiment of the kind of communities that Trump can easily target and use as a scapegoat – that is convenient for the populist narrative”.
Secretary of state does not rule out further US military action in Venezuela, according to prepared remarks
The Trump administration is ready to take new military action against Venezuela if the country’s interim leadership strays from US expectations, according to Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state.
In prepared testimony for a hearing before the Senate foreign relations committee, Rubio says the US is not at war with Venezuela and that its interim leaders are cooperating, but he notes that the Trump administration would not rule out using additional force following the capture of Nicolás Maduro early this month.
Trump calls Minnesota congresswoman a ‘fraud’ who ‘probably had herself sprayed’; Omar says ‘I don’t let bullies win’ in remarks after town hall attack
Two federal officers fired their guns during the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, according to an initial review by the Department of Homeland Security that was obtained by NBC News.
Three sources told NBC News that the preliminary report, from a Customs and Border Protectioninternal investigation led by the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, was sent to congressional committees yesterday, including the House homeland security and judiciary committees.
Outrage followed ‘would-be assassin’ lie but experts say architect of ICE drive too dominant a figure to be shunned
Pressure is growing on the key White House senior adviser Stephen Miller over the killing of the intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by border patrol agents in Minneapolis and its politically divisive aftermath.
Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policy, finds himself in the rare position of being contradicted and excluded from crucial decisions by the US president.
A year into Trump’s second term, critics say the EPA is rolling back dozens of protections and giving a leg up to polluters
After a tumultuous year under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has adopted a new, almost unrecognizable guise – one that tears up environmental rules and cheerleads for coal, gas-guzzling cars and artificial intelligence.
When Donald Trump took power, it was widely anticipated the EPA would loosen pollution rules from sources such as cars, trucks and power plants, as part of a longstanding back and forth between administrations over how strict such standards should be.
Lover, You Should Have Come Over enters charts at No 97, after becoming popular on social media platform
Jeff Buckley has achieved his first US Hot 100 hit single, 29 years after his death, with Lover, You Should Have Come Over at No 97 this week.
TikTok virality is behind the success, as a new generation of listeners discover Buckley’s spirited, romantic songwriting and pair it with videos on the social media platform. TikTok videos don’t count towards US chart positions, but viral trends drive listeners towards songs on streaming services that do count.
Virginia ‘Ginny’ Oliver, had entered the business when she was eight and liked ‘being along the water’
Maine’s governor has hailed the life of a woman who spent nearly 100 years fishing for lobsters as “amazing” and expressed hopes that her memory inspires “the next century of hardworking” fishers in the state.
The subject of Governor Janet Mills’ tribute, Virginia “Ginny” Oliver, died on 21 January at age 105, according to an obituary published on Monday by her family.
Finding herself in charge of her sick husband’s clipper, a self-taught working-class teenager overcame storms, icebergs and a disloyal first mate to get her ship to safety
No one knows exactly what Mary Ann Patten said in September 1856 when she convinced a crew on the verge of mutiny to accept her command as captain. What is known is that Patten, who was 19 and pregnant, was a force to be reckoned with.
After taking the helm from her sick husband in the middle of a ferocious storm off the coast of Cape Horn, the notoriously hazardous tip of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago off southern Chile, she successfully put down the mutiny and navigated her way to safety through a sea of icebergs.
The US dollar has fallen to its lowest level in four years after Donald Trump brushed off concerns over the currency’s fall, sending investors fleeing to traditional havens including gold and the Swiss franc.
The dollar dropped by 1.3% against a basket of currencies after the president’s comments on Tuesday, marking its fourth day of declines, then slipped by a further 0.2% on Wednesday morning.
World’s richest person targeting symbolic date in June for flotation of rocket company
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is considering a flotation valuing the rocket company at $1.5tn (£1.1tn) that will reportedly be timed for early summer to coincide with a planetary alignment and the multibillionaire’s birthday.
The world’s richest person is targeting a symbolic date of mid-June for the initial public offering, according to the Financial Times. This would be around the same time as Jupiter and Venus appear in close proximity to each other and shortly before Musk turns 55 on 28 June.
Video shows the Hudson river partially frozen near the George Washington Bridge in New York City after a heavy winter snowstorm. Eight people were found dead outside over the frigid weekend in the city, officials said, as New York experienced its snowiest day in years, recording 20-38cm (8-15in) of snow. At least 30 deaths were linked to a winter storm that hit North America's north-east. Some regions may not see temperatures rise above freezing until early February with the midwest, in particular, forecast to shiver in exceptionally frosty conditions
Amazon has told workers it is cutting 16,000 jobs around the world to streamline its operations, hours after sending out a message to staff about the layoffs apparently in error.
It is the second big wave of job cuts at the US online retail company, and comes just three months after the company said it was slashing 14,000 roles. Amazon employs about 1.5 million workers worldwide.
Man arrested and charged with assault after spraying strong-smelling liquid at Minnesota Democrat from syringe
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was sprayed with an unidentified substance by a man with a syringe on Tuesday as she gave her first in-person town hall of the year in Minneapolis, during which she called for ICE to be abolished “for good” and DHS secretary Kristi Noem to resign.
Omar had only been speaking for a few minutes when a man in the audience got up and began to shout, while spraying her with the liquid. People at the meeting said the liquid had an acidic smell.
In the Caribbean and Latin America, the lived reality of these measures – presented in the language of diplomacy – is stark
Across borders, cultures and faiths, most ordinary people want the same things: the ability to earn a living, put a roof over their heads, feed their families and watch their children grow up with a future. These are not radical ideas, but they are today routinely sacrificed on the altar of geopolitics.
When power and profit take precedence, governments abandon the everyday realities of those they claim to protect and serve, especially when domination of another country’s resources, markets or political direction is at stake.
Whether he’s targeting Greenland, tariffs or Iran, Trump’s agenda is to distract – because a Europe that is always reacting is never planning
When Donald Trump reassured the world that he would not, after all, use force to acquire Greenland – after days of threatening as much – he was doing what he does best: turning geopolitics into a spectacle. Whether Trump ever truly believed the US should acquire a vast Arctic territory belonging to a Nato ally is secondary to the fact that, once again, he ensured that Europe and the rest of the world were focused on his agenda.
Trump is not a politician who responds to events – he seeks to make them. Not because he is deeply invested in policy detail, but because he understands a defining feature of contemporary politics: attention is power. In an era of information overload, there is no scarcity of data or analysis; what is lacking is attention. And whoever controls that controls the debate.
Three boys in Texas die after falling into icy pond, while outages mean many in US south still without power
A colossal winter storm was responsible for more than 40 deaths as it brought more snow to the north-east and maintained icy conditions in the south, leaving many across the US without electricity.
The deaths were registered in more than a dozen states afflicted by severe cold, according to reports. There were still about 550,000 power outages in the nation on Tuesday morning, according to poweroutage.us. Most of the outages were in the south, where weekend blasts of freezing rain caused tree limbs and power lines to snap, inflicting crippling outages on northern Mississippi and parts of Tennessee. Officials warned that it could take days for power to be restored.
Singer’s former assistant alleges he sexually assaulted her when she worked for Manson Records between 2010–2011
A judge in Los Angeles has reinstated a lawsuit against heavy metal star Marilyn Manson under a new law enabling old sexual assault cases to be heard in court.
The lawsuit, filed in May 2021 by a former assistant to the musician, had been dismissed in December because it exceeded the statute of limitations, a maximum time period for initiating legal proceedings after the related events took place.
Crash that killed 67 was ‘100% preventable’, says NTSB chair at hearing that addressed history of missed opportunities
National Transportation Safety Board members were deeply troubled on Tuesday over years of ignored warnings about helicopter traffic dangers and other problems, long before an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk collided a year ago, killing 67 people near Washington DC.
The placement of a helicopter route in the approach path of Reagan national airport’s secondary runway created a dangerous airspace and a lack of regular safety risk reviews made it worse, the board said. That was a key factor in the crash along with air traffic controllers’ over reliance on asking helicopter pilots to avoid other aircraft.
Report emerges as Trump signals he may reduce the surge of ICE and other federal agents in the state
As federal immigration crackdowns in Minnesota continued on Tuesday, an initial report to Congress from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) obtained by various news outlets indicates that two officers fired their guns at Alex Pretti during his fatal shooting.
The report emerged as Donald Trump signals he may begin reducing the surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents in the state.
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