Deputy attorney general makes announcement over fatal shooting in Minneapolis as fierce protests there continue

The US deputy attorney general announced on Friday that the justice department has opened a federal civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of the Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti last Saturday by immigration officers, as fierce protests continued on the streets there.

“We’re looking at everything that would shed light on that day,” Todd Blanche, deputy to the attorney general, Pam Bondi, said at a press conference on Friday morning in Washington DC.

Groups say arrests of ex-CNN anchor and Georgia Fort are ‘extremely alarming’ and an ‘attack on the first amendment’

Press freedom groups are warning that the arrests of two independent journalists, including the veteran former CNN anchor Don Lemon, signal a chilling new crackdown on US media by the Trump administration.

Lemon was taken into custody on Thursday night by federal agents in Los Angeles, despite a magistrate judge declining to sign off on charges against him a week ago in connection with a protest at a Minnesota church against violent government immigration enforcement actions.

Famous figures including Woody Allen were invited to party with disgraced financier and Mountbatten-Windsor, documents indicate

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor attended an intimate party with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein months after he was released from prison, files suggest.

The US justice department released another cache of documents relating to the disgraced financier on Friday.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Child sex offender sent thousands of pounds to Reinaldo Avila da Silva, according to documents published by US justice department

• Epstein files latest: updates as more files released

Jeffrey Epstein sent thousands of pounds in bank transfers after his release from prison in 2009 to Peter Mandelson’s husband, according to emails published by the US Department of Justice on Friday.

The latest documents raise fresh questions about Epstein’s relationship with Mandelson, who was sacked as the UK’s ambassador to Washington when details of his support for the disgraced financier emerged in September.

Actor, also known for Beetlejuice and her work with Christopher Guest, died after a brief illness

• Catherine O’Hara managed to make difficult characters utterly delightul

• Catherine O’Hara: a life in pictures

Catherine O’Hara, actor known for Schitt’s Creek, Home Alone and Best in Show, has died at the age of 71.

Her manager confirmed the news to Variety. She died after a brief illness.

Island country only has oil enough to last 15-20 days, and 12-hour blackouts have become commonplace

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has warned that Donald Trump’s move to slap new tariffs on countries sending oil to Cuba could trigger a humanitarian crisis on the island, which is already suffering from chronic fuel shortages and regular blackouts.

The US president signed an executive order on Thursday declaring a national emergency and laying the groundwork for such tariffs, ratcheting up the pressure to topple the communist government in Havana.

Nurses gathered outside a Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan to mourn Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who was killed by federal agents in Minneapolis

Arctic air will freeze Tennessee and Florida, as 230,000 households in region remain without power in area

Freezing weather that will reach deep into Florida was moving across the south-eastern US on Friday as millions braced for another weekend blast of winter storms following last week’s deadly assault that killed at least 85 people.

Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in southern states were without power for a sixth day on Friday as the next onslaught of blizzards, ice and biting cold winds approached.

Queen guitarist says ‘everyone is thinking twice about going there at the moment’ when asked about touring plans

Queen guitarist Brian May has ruled out touring in the US for the foreseeable future, because of the potential danger it would pose.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, the 78-year-old said: “America is a dangerous place at the moment, so you have to take that into account.

Batch includes more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images related to disgraced financier, Todd Blanche says

• Elon Musk had more extensive ties to Epstein than previously known, emails show

The US deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said on Friday that the justice department had released more than 3m pages of documents related to its investigation into the disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in a long-awaited announcement that appears to represent the bulk of the so-called Epstein files that have dogged Donald Trump politically.

In a testy news conference, Blanche said that the release would include more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, which will have “extensive redactions”. He added that the Trump administration had produced roughly 3.5m pages in an effort to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. He said that they include large quantities of commercial pornography and images “that were seized from Epstein’s devices”.

Whether it’s Minneapolis or Greenland, the US president will do just enough to get through a damaging news cycle, then carry on as before

Don’t be fooled. When it comes to Donald Trump, what might look like a full retreat is almost always a mere tactical withdrawal, designed to buy time. He’ll step back when he’s forced to, under pressure, but will then revert the instant the pressure lets up. Too often, his opponents, whether at home or abroad, allow themselves to be played, confusing a mere pause for a surrender – and the risk is strong that they’re making that same mistake all over again.

This week, the US president won praise in some quarters for moving to “de-escalate” the war he has been waging on the people of Minneapolis. Following the killing of Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse who posed no threat and yet was shot at least 10 times by masked agents of Customs and Border Protection or CBP, Trump signalled that he wanted to calm things down.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

The man who created House Party, wrote for the Black Panther comics, produced Django Unchained and briefly ran BET talks his illustrious career

Reginald Hudlin’s home office is a monument to an audacious American dream – the Black scion who grew up far from Hollywood glamour and rose to become one of the industry’s most adaptable storytellers. On the walls, a framed Black Panther comic page he penned glints under glass near a portrait of Jamie Foxx – a souvenir from Hudlin’s stint producing Django Unchained – and a piece of the Martin Luther King memorial that he was gifted while shooting the Disney sports drama Safety. “Look, I’m pleased with my life,” he tells me with a wry smile. “But honestly it’s taken a lot of trickery to get people to let me do these crazy things. It’s taken a lot of effort, but the reward is always worth it.”

Hudlin may be the nearest thing in Hollywood to a real-life Forrest Gump, given the things he’s done, the folks he’s worked with and the history he’s made. On Marvel Comics’ Black Panther graphic novel, Hudlin was the writer who repositioned the franchise as an explicit Black empowerment allegory, laying the foundation for Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster feature films. On the big screen, Hudlin has directed Eddie Murphy in Boomerang, Samuel L Jackson in The Great White Hope and Chadwick Boseman in Marshall.

Capital punishment taken off table but Mangione will still face federal charges over killing of Brian Thompson

The death penalty is off the table for Luigi Mangione after a New York federal judge dismissed the charges that were eligible for capital punishment in the case accusing him of killing the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York in December 2024.

In a written court order on Friday, US district judge Margaret Garnett dismissed counts three and four against Mangione, including murder through use of a firearm, which carried a potential death sentence, and a weapons charge.

Tehran’s nuclear ambitions date back to the shah and the 1970s and remains undimmed despite the damage caused by sanctions

A desperate effort to avert war between the US and Iran is once again under way, but trying to locate common ground between the two countries over Tehran’s nuclear programme has been made more difficult by escalating US demands, and by Iran’s ideological, deeply nationalist attachment to the right to enrich uranium.

Iran’s ambitions to run its own nuclear programme pre-date the arrival of the theocratic state in 1979, and can be traced back to the mid-1970s when the shah announced plans to build 20 civil nuclear power stations. This prompted an undignified scramble among western nations to be part of the action, with the UK energy secretary at the time, Tony Benn, having more than a walk-on part.

Following in a long American tradition of identifying fascists, a network of leftists has set out to name and shame Trump’s immigration agents

Last week a photographer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune filmed a border patrol agent approach a protester, lying prone in the street, and aim a canister of pepper spray at his eyes. The protester was already detained, three other agents pressing his body into the pavement, but the agent can nevertheless be seen spraying the orange chemical irritant, which causes excruciating pain, at point-blank range.

The agent probably thought he would enjoy anonymity for this bit of brutality. The federal police terrorizing Minneapolis remain largely nameless as they dole out horrifying – and in two cases, fatal – violence against anyone opposing Operation Metro Surge. But within two hours of the Star Tribune posting the footage to social media, a group called Pacific Antifascist Research Collective claimed to have identified him.

Ukraine president says he will wait to see if Putin complies with Trump request to halt strikes on energy infrastructure

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he was waiting to see whether Russia would observe a proposed pause in strikes on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure, as Kyiv endures a spell of bitter winter cold.

Donald Trump on Thursday claimed that Vladimir Putin had agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for a week after he issued a personal appeal to the Russian leader due to the extreme weather in Ukraine.

The first lady’s premiere was marked by conspicuous absences. It turns out chumminess with the president might just come at a cost

Who wasn’t on the red carpet at the official Melania documentary premiere in Washington DC was so much more intriguing than who was. No offence to defence secretary Pete Hegseth, but if I wanted to see formalwear struggling to contain Crusades tattoos, I’d hang around outside the Spartak Moscow Christmas party. Not that it was a red carpet, because the carpet at the “Trump-Kennedy” Center was black. No one bothers hiding the grift any more, with the movie’s own producer openly explaining that this aesthetic was “all about supporting this luxury brand that [Melania’s] creating”. They should have dressed the event like a colon, since Donald’s is effectively where it was being held.

Anyway: arrivals. There was Melania and Donald Trump – she finally got him out of hair and makeup – who were holding hands, a coincidentally convenient way to cover his skin if his glam squad didn’t truck in enough concealer. In recent months, Trump has had terrible bruises on the tops of his hands and even more terrible excuses for why they keep appearing. Aspirin, Swiss furniture, shaking lots of hands – the list of things that aren’t cannula sites grows longer every week.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Lemon’s lawyer said he was taken into custody after attending protest in which demonstrators disrupted a church service earlier in January

• Who is Don Lemon, the ex-CNN anchor arrested over a Minnesota church protest?

• US politics live – latest updates

Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor, was arrested late on Thursday on charges that he violated federal law during a protest at a church in Minnesota earlier this month.

Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Lemon, said that Lemon was “taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy awards”.

Donald Trump now has the firepower in place, but using it might not end well

A fortnight ago, when Donald Trump first threatened Iran’s regime, telling protesters in the country that “help is coming”, there were not enough US military assets in the Middle East to back up the rhetoric. That has now changed, although plenty of questions remain about what an attack on Iran could achieve.

An aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, has arrived in the Indian Ocean, dispatched from the South China Sea alongside three destroyers equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles. Its eight-squadron air wing includes F-35C and F/A-18 jets and, critically, EA-18G Growlers to suppress anything that is left of Iran’s air defences after last year’s war with Israel.

Mobile Fortify lets agents obtain vast amounts of information on anyone by scanning their face

The lethal force Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is meting out on American streets is rightly drawing loud condemnations from politicians and editorial boards across the nation and around the world. Now is the time we must start paying attention to another highly damaging part of ICE’s arsenal: the agency’s deployment of mass surveillance.

I’m referring specifically to Mobile Fortify, a specialized app ICE has been using at least since May 2025. (Usage of the app was first reported last June by 404Media.) What is Mobile Fortify? It’s an app for facial recognition that can additionally take “contactless fingerprints” of someone simply by snapping a picture of a person’s fingers. The app has been used more than 100,000 times, including on children, as alleged in a lawsuit filed by the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago. And it’s dangerous.

Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist

The prediction market’s disciples and CEO believe its an unbiased way of knowing the future. But experts warn users could reshape the world to win big

In the early hours of 13 June, more than 200 Israeli fighter jets began pummeling Iran with bombs, lighting up the Tehran skyline and initiating a 12-day war that would leave hundreds dead.

But for one user of the prediction market Polymarket, it was their lucky day. In the 24 hours before the strike occurred, they had bet tens of thousands of dollars on “yes” on the market “Israel military action against Iran by Friday?” when the prospect still seemed unlikely and odds were hovering at about 10%. After the strike, Polymarket declared that military action had been taken, and paid the user $128,000 for their lucky wager.

Raid on Fulton county election office is part of the Trump administration’s wider US push to fuel false claims of fraud

The FBI raid on the Fulton county election office Wednesday was an aggressive new front in Donald Trump’s effort to use his 2020 election loss to continue to sow doubt about American elections ahead of the 2026 midterms.

As Trump sought to overturn the 2020 election, false claims of malfeasance during ballot-counting in Atlanta became a key part of the big lie about a stolen election. Misleading surveillance video showing ballots being retrieved from suitcases became the basis for a myth that fraudulent ballots were included in the tally. Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer and a close ally at the time, was ordered to pay $148.1m to the election workers as part of a libel suit for spreading lies about them. He later settled.

Pick of former Fed governor to replace Jerome Powell comes as White House seeks to tighten grip on central bank

Donald Trump has announced Kevin Warsh as his nomination for the next chair of the Federal Reserve, selecting a candidate who has been an outspoken critic of the US central bank.

The move ends months of speculation about who the president would pick to replace Jerome Powell, as he waged an extraordinary campaign to influence policymaking at the Fed by repeatedly calling for interest rate cuts. Powell’s second term as chair is due to end in May.

Seeing large men dressed in goggles and trenchcoats echoes the camp fascism of musical comedies

An aspect of ICE’s deadly performance in Minneapolis that goes hand-in-hand with its mission to intimidate is the absolutely farcical tone of the ICE aesthetic. Broadway numbers like Springtime for Hitler in The Producers and, more recently, Das Übermensch in Operation Mincemeat, a showstopper performed with a German techno beat and Nazi boyband – “Third Reich on the mic” – vocals, present fascism as an essentially camp enterprise and we’re reminded this week that ICE fits the mould entirely.