Robust fourth-quarter earnings take into account holiday shopping season, but first-quarter estimates disappoint
Amazon outdid Wall Street’s expectations with its earnings from the fourth quarter of 2024 on Thursday but forecast a weak upcoming quarter.
The retail giant ended the year on a strong note, reporting $187.79bn in revenue and $1.86 per share, beating analysts’ estimates of revenue of $187.3bn and share price at $1.49.
Ange Postecoglou mused recently about hope and the inherent futility of it with the way that things have gone for Tottenham this season. Every time the manager had seen “light at the end of the tunnel”, he said, it had “usually been an oncoming train”.
It was an appropriate way to describe Liverpool, who did not so much roll into the Carabao Cup final, their first such showpiece under Arne Slot, as steamroll their way there. They refused to countenance any other outcome and they utterly flattened Spurs. Who can stop Liverpool this season? It is the question on everybody’s lips as they look down from the summit of the Premier League and eye glory in the Champions League and FA Cup, too.
Move comes day after Trump executive order banning trans athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports
The NCAA changed its participation policy for transgender athletes on Thursday, limiting competition in women’s sports to athletes assigned female at birth.
The move came one day after Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. The order gives federal agencies latitude to withhold federal funding from entities that do not abide by Title IX in alignment with the Trump administration’s view, which interprets “sex” as the gender someone was assigned at birth.
The NCAA policy change is effective immediately and applies to all athletes regardless of previous eligibility reviews under the NCAA’s prior transgender participation policy. The organization has more than 1,200 schools with more than 500,000 athletes, easily the largest governing body for college athletics in the US.
“We strongly believe that clear, consistent and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions,” the NCAA’s president, Charlie Baker, said. “To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard.”
The NCAA’s revised policy permits athletes assigned male at birth to practice with women’s teams and receive benefits such as medical care while practicing.
Space rock now has 2.3% risk of collision – up from 1.3% in December – but danger is likely to fall with more data
It might not be the world-ending apocalypse foretold in the Netflix drama Don’t Look Up, but astronomers have significantly upped the odds of a direct hit from a giant asteroid currently hurtling towards Earth.
According to Nasa’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (Cneos), the odds of a strike in 2032 by the space rock that goes by the somewhat unassuming name 2024 YR are calculated to be 2.3% – a one-in-43 chance.
President also makes baseless claim that USAid money has been illicitly funding news organisations
Donald Trump has called for the “termination” of 60 Minutes, a long-established fixture of US journalism, in a fresh onslaught against the media that also included baseless claims that money from the country’s beleaguered foreign aid body had been illicitly funding news organisations.
The demand that 60 Minutes be taken off the air came in a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform. It was the latest salvo in his long-running dispute with the CBS program over its editing of an interview with Kamala Harris, last year’s defeated Democratic presidential candidate, over which Trump has lodged a $10m suit alleging “election interference”.
US attorney general issues memo to break up effort started after 2022 Ukraine invasion to target those close to Kremlin
The US justice department under Donald Trump is disbanding an effort started after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to enforce sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin.
A memo from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, issued during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs.
Photos show gift, reportedly nod to Israel’s deadly attack on Hezbollah, during which devices simultaneously detonated
Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly gave Donald Trump a “golden pager” during their meeting in Washington DC this week, in an apparent reference to Israel’s deadly attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon last year.
In photos circulating online, the golden pager can be seen mounted on a piece of wood, accompanied by a golden plaque that reads in black lettering: “To President Donald J. Trump, Our greatest friend and greatest ally. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Just look at the chaos Trump is causing in the Department of Education to understand the nature of his second term
In retrospect, the weeks between the election and Donald Trump’s first executive order seem like a phoney war. Everyone knew that something bad was about to happen, but there was still a sense it might not be so bad. After all, Trump’s first four years had been less terrible than observers predicted. That was always a mistake: aspiring autocrats are most dangerous when they come to power a second time. But even those bracing for shocks could hardly have expected Trump to be so blatantly lawless and destructive once back in office. This approach – sabotage bureaucracies, violate the constitution, then see what happens – might now be applied to education.
Trump’s choice of education secretary, pro-wrestling billionaire Linda McMahon, seemed positively harmless compared with figures like the walking talking threat to public health known as Robert F Kennedy Jr. Though she has an accusation of having enabled the sexual abuse of young boys in the wrestling world hanging over her, McMahon denies all wrongdoing.
Player misses Arsenal cup tie to protect mental wellbeing
Club had condemned racist and misogynistic abuse
Khadija Shaw withdrew from Manchester City’s League Cup semi-final at Arsenal on Thursday night to protect her mental wellbeing having been subjected to racist and misogynistic abuse after the sides’ Women’s Super League game on Sunday.
Shaw made her 100th appearance for City when she came on 66 minutes into the 4-3 loss to Arsenal at City’s Joie Stadium.
President José Raúl Mulino denies making a deal that US ships can transit the canal free of charge
The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, has accused the US of peddling a “quite simply intolerable falsehood” about the Panama canal, as Donald Trump’s pledge to “take back” the waterway continued to poison relations between the two countries and cause alarm around Latin America.
The US state department claimed late on Wednesday the Central American country had agreed to no longer charge US government vessels to pass through its canal – a move that would supposedly save Washington millions of dollars a year.
With the Winter Olympics set to begin one year from today, here’s a look at 20 Americans worth keeping an eye on
The longtime ice dance partners, together on skates from 2011 and married since last year, finally broke through for their first world championship after years of near-misses in 2023, then went back-to-back last year in their adopted hometown of Montreal. Known for their deep chemistry, bold storytelling and technical brilliance, they are coming off a record-tying sixth US title in January and will be hotly tipped to complete the first ice dance three-peat at worlds in 28 years next month in Boston. On current form they’re the team to beat in Milan with the team event offering the potential for double gold.
Keir Starmer said Thursday’s quarter-point rate cut from the Bank of England would be welcomed by many voters who would see “more money in their pockets”. The prime minister is right, at least when it comes to borrowers on floating-rate mortgages, and Labour will be glad the nine-member monetary policy committee (MPC) has signalled clearly it is in cutting mode.
The Bank’s governor, Andrew Bailey, said the MPC would be “taking a gradual and careful approach to reducing rates further” – and the fact that two of the MPC’s nine members wanted a larger, half-point cut signals more to come.
Elon Musk-led razing of US foreign aid agency led strong-arm rulers in Hungary, Belarus and elsewhere to celebrate
Moscow has welcomed the impending dissolution of USAid, joining a chorus of strongman leaders declaring victory over an organisation they have long portrayed as a vehicle of American political interference.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Thursday described USAid as “anything but an aid, development and assistance agency” and instead branded it a “mechanism for changing regimes, political order [and] state structure”.
The artist’s new survey at the Whitney shows how she has found a way to create work involving sound as a deaf artist
Existing somewhere in the overlap between the worlds of conceptual and representational art, Christine Sun Kim has developed a rich expressive language by examining the interesting questions around language, music and her personal expression as a deaf person. Informed by her experiences living in a world where most take the ability to hear for granted, Kim’s art is striking in the complexity and emotional heft that hides beneath its minimalist exterior.
With All Day All Night, the Whitney offers a welcome career survey of Kim’s work. Building on the institution’s longstanding relationship with the artist, the show feels thorough, insightful and composed, as well as looking forward to the next chapters of Kim’s creative output.
ECB chair condemns ‘oppression of women and girls’
But no ‘unilateral’ action for Champions Trophy game
England have confirmed they will play Afghanistan in the upcoming Champions Trophy despite pressure to boycott the fixture in response to the Taliban’s violation of women’s rights in the country.
This is not just about one terrible set of allegations. Health, the law, checks and balances: it is testing public confidence in everything
Beyond reasonable doubt. Those words carry a heavy moral burden, and so they should. Jurors hold another human being’s life in their hands, and must be convinced there is no other rational explanation for the facts presented to them than the defendant’s guilt. But what happens when those facts start to shimmer and blur, to multiply and divide confusingly before your eyes?
Lucy Letby is officially Britain’s worst serial child killer, serving 15 life sentences for murdering seven babies and trying to kill seven more. But her case has become as troubling to some medical professionals as it is attractive to conspiracy theorists because of the stubbornly persistent doubts at its heart. There are things we may never know for sure about those babies’ last moments.
Tech company removes error about gouda cheese after blogger points out ‘unequivocally’ untrue statistic
Google has edited an advert for its leading artificial intelligence (AI) tool, Gemini, before its broadcast during the Super Bowl after it was found to contain false information about gouda cheese.
The local commercial, which advertises how people can use “AI for every business”, showcases Gemini’s abilities by depicting the tool helping a cheesemonger in Wisconsin to write a product description, including the erroneous line that gouda accounts for “50% to 60% of global cheese consumption”.
The rest of the world has largely ignored the horror of this conflict, but will find its effects ripple outwards
As Sudan approaches its third year of civil war, the dynamics are suddenly shifting. Sudan’s military, which launched a major offensive against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in September, made swift progress in Gezira state, and in recent days has abruptly and unexpectedly regained ground in Khartoum.
Whether it has truly turned the tide – as key backers appear to believe – has yet to be seen. Even if the capital can be fully retaken and secured, reconstructing the devastated city would be an immense task. The RSF might well entrench themselves elsewhere; this may further spur their ferocity in the western region of Darfur. Meaningful negotiations between the warring parties look even more distant. There is still less prospect of a return to civilian politics, overthrown in a coup by the partnership of the army chief, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF leader, Lt Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – known as Hemedti – before they turned on each other.
The Sandman spin-off Death: DC Compact Comics Edition was due to be released later this year
DC Comics has pulled a Neil Gaiman title that was due to be published later this year.
Death: DC Compact Comics Edition was meant to come out on 2 September, but listings have been scrubbed from online bookshops and Amazon, reported Bleeding Cool.
New editions of her novels are aimed squarely at the BookTok demographic – but will this make these classics appeal to fans of “spicy” romance?
What will get young people reading classic literature? Better blurbs? Changes in the school curriculum? Flashy new biographies of dead authors? Or might it be pastel pink covers emblazoned with characters that look as if they just got back from Comic-Con?
Publisher Penguin Random House (PRH) is trying its luck with the latter: its youth imprint, Puffin, has announced a series of new editions of Jane Austen novels pitched at young romance readers. Although Austen’s stories will remain the same, the covers of these editions feature cartoonish illustrations of the characters, and are being marketed as “full of meet-cutes, missed connections and drama”. This description makes it sound as if these classic works are akin to the kind of contemporary romance novels that are hugely popular on TikTok with teenagers and young adults.
Facilities overwhelmed by wounded people and unable to get supplies in or transport patients out
Patients with gunshot and shrapnel wounds have crammed into overwhelmed hospitals in Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, many with serious injuries and in need of blood, after M23 rebels backed by Rwanda marched into the city.
At least 2,900 people have been killed and thousands more wounded since the militia entered the city on 26 January, according to the UN. Fighting raged for the best part of last week.
Once stripped of his power, the Eagles’ salary cap savant has since been the architect of three Super Bowl teams in eight years. But this year’s edition might just be his masterpiece
Howie Roseman has taken on folklore status in the NFL. Whenever the draft and free-agent seasons roll around, you hear the chorus: Howie has done it again! As general manager, Roseman has led the Philadelphia Eagles to three Super Bowl appearances in eight years, winning one title. But this year’s team is his magnum opus.
Repeated playoff heartaches can warp a team’s self-perception. Every flaw becomes magnified. Two years after losing the Super Bowl to the Chiefs – and last season’s disappointing end-of-year collapse – Roseman tore down his roster and built a fresh juggernaut, with fewer than half of the players who played the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII remaining on this year’s roster.
The Toon Army are having to be creative to get to Wembley in hope of seeing Newcastle’s first trophy in decades
Engineering works on the east coast mainline mean Newcastle supporters travelling to Wembley by train during the weekend of next month’s Carabao Cup final face considerable delays and disruption. Yet if the prospect of spending part of an extended journey on a replacement bus service and, judging by Thursday’s prices, often paying more than £400 return for the privilege, does not sound overly appealing, the Toon Army remain undeterred.
The prospect of being able to say “I was there” should Newcastle finally win their first major trophy since the 1969 Fairs Cup – and a first piece of domestic silverware since the 1955 FA Cup – dictates bank balances are being stretched to the limit.
Greek civil protection authorities announce measures after an estimated 7,700 tremors in less than a week
Greek civil protection authorities have declared a state of emergency on Santorini as natural disaster experts voice mounting fears over the “intense” seismic activity that has rattled the island.
The emergency measures were declared by the island’s town hall hours after seismologists recorded a 5.2-magnitude earthquake – the most powerful tremor to be felt on Santorini since the first of an estimated 7,700 temblors were registered last week.
When is anyone supposed to do anything? Bathing, stretching and cooking: the relentless grind of self-care consumes 112 days of my life each year
It was the sixth time I’d washed my hands that day. My red, raw wrists stung as I toweled off, protesting the friction and New York’s bone-dry winter. Being a dog owner (twice-daily poop exposure) during peak respiratory illness season (strangers coughing on you) is no joke.
I thought about how life is a procession of vital, unskippable tasks: washing and eating and resting and pooping and exercising and brushing your teeth on a loop, forever.
Ke Huy Quan’s first live-action film since his Oscar win recycles its predecessor’s hit formula into a gloatingly gory mob romcom co-starring Ariana DeBose
In his first live-action film appearance since winning an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once, comeback kid Ke Huy Quan has chosen a movie that recycles the earlier one’s hit formula. Martial arts action plays out incongruously in quotidian locations; life lessons are combined with close-quarter combat. One difference is Love Hurts’s gloating reliance on gore: a hand is impaled with a knife, a pen is buried in a man’s eyeball, teeth stick to the duct tape ripped from a hostage’s mouth. It all rather puts the “ick” in karate kick.
Quan plays Marvin Gable, a realtor whose chirpiness conceals his past as a hitman for his crime-boss brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu). For his last job before going straight, Marvin was asked to kill Rose (Ariana DeBose), his one-time sweetheart who stole millions from the mob. But he took mercy, and now she’s back. Tired of lying low (“Hiding ain’t living,” she says), Rose is out to take revenge on those who wronged her, among them a snivelling accountant played by Rhys Darby of Flight of the Conchords, and to rekindle affections with her old flame. Well, it’sValentine’s Day after all, as Marvin’s voiceover keeps reminding us.
The actor was due to attend the Goya awards on Saturday but has pulled out and has also been dropped by publishers
Karla Sofía Gascón will not attend this weekend’s prestigious Goya awards as the fallout from the Spanish actor’s racist and Islamophobic social media posts continues with her being dropped by her publisher and criticised by prominent politicians.
New paper suggests abstract expressionist may have been unaware of the images because of his bipolar disorder
Monkeys, clowns, self-portraits, elephants and bottles of alcohol are among the things that could be hidden within the work of Jackson Pollock, one of the giants of 20th-century abstract expressionism, according to new research.
The American painter, who used a “drip technique” to pour or splash paint on to a horizontal surface, once said he stayed away from “any recognisable image” in his work.
Donald Trump has restated his proposal to take over Gaza amid widespread opposition – even from his own supporters – saying the territory would be “turned over” to the US by Israel after it concludes its military offensive against Hamas.
Weather alerts in place for 100 million people as states from Nebraska to Massachusetts brace for disruptions
A series of back-to-back winter storms will hit parts of the midwest, north-east and mid-Atlantic as weather alerts were put in place on Thursday for about 100 million people across 22 US states.
Slippery and dangerous travel conditions are expected through the middle of next week. States from Nebraska to Massachusetts are seeing snow, sleet and freezing rain. Forecasters warn that the cold and hazardous weather may cause power outages and difficult travel conditions during Thursday’s commute and beyond.
The president’s Gaza proposal is a signal that old-school, blunt-force US expansionism seems to be back in fashion
Donald Trump’s proposal that the US take ownership of the Gaza Strip, expel and resettle the people there, and turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” has outraged Palestinians, shocked the international community and even confused many of his own conservative voters.
Yet the announcement seems like yet another sign that the president, while sometimes distancing himself from the neoconservative foreign policies that entangled the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, is willing to pursue – or at least entertain pursuing – an undisguised US imperialism that has more in common with the expansionism of Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson, the 19th- and early 20th-century presidents associated with some of American’s most brazen and violent conquests.
Manager must put semi-final loss to Newcastle behind them with depleted squad attempting to chase down Liverpool
“Mikel Arteta, it must be the ball.” With hindsight, the Arsenal manager would probably not have criticised the equipment used in the Carabao Cup after his side’s chastening defeat in the first leg of their semi-final against Newcastle at the Emirates last month. But after another traumatic 2-0 loss to Eddie Howe’s side – Arsenal’s third blank in a row at St James’ Park – during which home supporters gleefully teased Arteta about his comments, it was surely not his only regret.
Three times since the Spaniard won the FA Cup seven months after succeeding Unai Emery in 2019, Arsenal have reached a semi-final and failed to progress. On the previous occasion they reached this stage of the Carabao Cup, three seasons ago, they were also beaten 2-0 in the home leg, by Liverpool. It is a trophy they have not won since Steve Morrow’s decisive goal against Sheffield Wednesday in the 1993 final, after which the Northern Ireland midfielder was dropped by Tony Adams and broke an arm.
The US president is quick to roll out the red carpet for an ally wanted for war crimes. Now Europe must stop placating them
Donald Trump’s proposal to evict 2 million Palestinians from Gaza is an unashamed declaration of support for ethnic cleansing. As so often, he seems ready to ignore moral and legal codes alike. “Deportation or forcible transfer of population” is listed in the Rome statute of the international criminal court as a crime against humanity. And yet a US president has put that idea on the table. Trump insists this would be in everybody’s interest. According to him, Palestinians would not want to return to their homes. “I have heard that Gaza has been very unlucky for them,” he recently said. The population is, in Trump’s words, “living in hell”, with “death and destruction and rubble and demolished buildings falling all over”. He made no mention of Israel’s responsibility for that death and destruction and rubble.
More than 30 years ago, during the early months of the bloody Bosnian war that I had been reporting on as the eastern Europe editor of the Independent, the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadžić, explained to me that the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population that was then under way was, in fact, doing the Bosniansa favour. “We let them go,” Karadžić explained with a smile, “with their luggage and everything.” Like Karadžić, Trump does not hide the fact that Palestinians who are forced to abandon their homes would have no choice in the matter. Sitting next to Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump suggested: “I don’t think they’re going to tell me no.”
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Résumé of pop singer and RNC co-chair will now include hosting a show focusing on ‘the Golden Age of America’
Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of the president, will host a new show on Fox News, the network announced, in a further sign of the fluidity between the rightwing news channel and the Trump administration.
My View With Lara Trump will air on Saturday nights, Fox News said in a press release. It said Trump’s show “will focus on the return of common sense to all corners of American life as the country ushers in a new era of practicality”.
Linda Geddes tests new approach developed in Italian lab that involves alternating egg between different temperatures
Delia Smith demands one minute of simmering plus six of standing with the pan lid on. Heston Blumenthal brings his to the boil from cold. Now scientists have weighed in on the perfect way to boil an egg, and the results are egg-stremely tasty.
From a materials perspective, cooking an egg within its shell is more complicated than it might at first seem. Chefs are challenged by the fact that an egg’s components: yolk and white, are made of different proteins that denature and thicken at different temperatures: 85C (185F) for the white and 65C (149F) for the yolk.
It’s not often that actors criticise their own work. But whether it’s down to movies being slammed for whitewashing or transphobia – or just shonky sets – occasionally they feel they have no choice
When it comes to what movies can get away with, tastes change fast. Just ask Benedict Cumberbatch, who decided to play for laughs a non-binary character named All in Ben Stiller’s 2016 film Zoolander 2. That said, the role was controversial at the time – there was an online petition urging a boycott. But it has only looked more tone-deaf over time.
Area known as La Negresse will be renamed after court decides it is demeaning to people of African origin
A French court has ruled that the seaside city of Biarritz must rename its La Negresse historic district, possibly named after a black woman, after a case brought by activists who argued it was an outdated legacy of colonialism.
The ruling caps a long-running attempt by activists to force authorities in the resort on the Atlantic coast to drop what they say are “racist and sexist” placenames.
New trailers for Fantastic Four, Smurfs and Jurassic World movies give us an early glimpse at a summer that’s looking even more tired than usual
It’s Super Bowl season, which means it’s also time for movie studios to start rolling out trailers for some of the biggest, most anticipated movies of the summer. This week alone has seen the release of the first trailers for Jurassic World: Rebirth, Fantastic Four: The First Steps, and – hold your breath – a new Smurfs movie, joining the Superman trailer that was unveiled a few weeks ago. These are likely to be supplemented by additional Super Bowl ads for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon, among others.
If this all sounds familiar, well, it should. Unless Disney drops a spot for their upcoming Pixar cartoon Elio, every summer movie receiving the big Super Bowl promo will be a sequel or a high-profile reboot (which is what we’ve been trained to call a remake). This is because just about every big movie coming out in summer 2025 is, yes, a sequel or a reboot of a well-known franchise. The coming attractions include Thunderbolts*, a Marvel entry that looks like a de facto sequel to Black Widow; more traditional follow-ups to Jurassic World, Mission: Impossible, and The Bad Guys; legacy sequels to The Karate Kid and Freaky Friday; reboots of the entire DC Universe (via Superman), as well as the Smurfs and The Naked Gun; a John Wick spinoff called Ballerina; remakes of Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon; and new horror installments in the 28 Days Later, M3GAN, Final Destination, and I Know What You Did Last Summer series.
We would like to hear about tattoos you regret, and your experiences of having them removed
Comedian Pete Davidson has revealed that he underwent a lengthy process of removing around 200 tattoos.
“I’m trying to clean slate it, trying to be an adult,” he said during a recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. He added that he only saw himself keeping “two or three” of them.
Buttler: ‘We were 40 or 50 runs short on that total’
A different format, a much-changed India, but the same result. England fell to a four-wicket defeat in the opening one-day international at Nagpur, Shubman Gill top-scoring with 87 in a successful chase of 249.
Gill, who did not play in the preceding Twenty20 series, was backed up by half-centuries from Shreyas Iyer and Axar Patel in what was no straightforward reply. England’s spinners found assistance, with India requiring technique and ticker to take the lead in the three-match series.
Connexion
