Jabs to prevent influenza, rotavirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and other vaccines are no longer fully recommended
The Trump administration will slash routine vaccine recommendations during childhood from 17 to 11 jabs – the biggest change to vaccines yet under the purview of longtime vaccine critic Robert F Kennedy Jr.
The changes, which US health officials announced on Monday afternoon and are effective immediately, will erode trust and reduce access to vaccines while allowing infectious diseases to spread, experts said.
Sir Keir Starmer and European leaders must defend the rule of international law, as a dangerous new world order emerges
The initial reaction of European leaders to Donald Trump’s illegal military intervention in Venezuela was not only weak, it also had the briefest of shelf lives. Refusing on Sunday to condemn the attack as a breach of international law, European Union member states called hopefully for “a negotiated, democratic, inclusive and peaceful solution to the crisis, led by Venezuelans”. The delusional nature of that response was laid bare as Mr Trump told reporters the same day: “We’re in charge.”
So much for the restoration of democracy. The US president also repeated threats of further military action, should the repressive regime left behind when Nicolás Maduro was seized fail to do Washington’s bidding. As Mr Trump’s marginalising of the Nobel prize-winning opposition figurehead María Corina Machado illustrated early on, the will of Venezuelans is not on his list of priorities. Operation Absolute Resolve was about exercising raw power to dominate a sovereign nation, and controlling Venezuela’s future oil production.
Degrading pictures being posted on Elon Musk’s site despite the platform pledging to suspend people who generate them
Degrading images of children and women with their clothes digitally removed by Grok AI continue to be shared on Elon Musk’s X, despite the platform’s commitment to suspend users who generate them.
After days of concern over use of the chatbot to alter photographs to create sexualised pictures of real women and children stripped to their underwear without their consent, the UK’s communication’s watchdog, Ofcom, said on Monday that it had made “urgent contact with X and xAI to understand what steps they have taken to comply with their legal duties to protect users in the UK”. Ofcom added that it would assess whether an investigation is necessary based on the company’s response.
William Defoor, 26, to appear in court Tuesday after arrest for alleged attack on vice-president’s Cincinnati home
A man arrested during an incident where someone appeared to be trying to break into the Ohio house of JD Vance with a hammer is to appear in court on Tuesday.
The vice-president on Monday thanked law enforcement in Ohio for arresting someone he referred to as a “crazy person” who had turned up at his Cincinnati home overnight.
Rosen, who led Sega from the 1960s into the 90s and who died on Christmas Day, was a hugely important figure in the history of arcade and home gaming
It is difficult to think of a more influential figure in the arcade game industry than David Rosen, who has died aged 95. The co-founder of Sega, who remained a director of the company until 1996, was instrumental in the birth and rise of the video game business in Japan, and in the 1980s and 90s oversaw the establishment of Sega of America and the huge success of the Mega Drive console.
As a US Air Force pilot during the Korean war, Rosen found himself stationed in Japan, and once the conflict was over, he stayed on, intrigued by the country and seeing possibilities in its recovering economy. In 1954 he set up Rosen Enterprises and noticing that Japanese civilians now required an increasing number of new ID cards he started importing photo booths from the US to answer the demand. From here he expanded to pinball tables and other coin-operated machines, importing them for installation in shops, restaurants and cinemas. In 1965, he merged the company with another importer, Nihon Goraku Bussan, whose coin-op business Service Games was shortened to Sega for the new venture.
Trial is the most severe criminal case brought against US students who staged protests against Israel’s war in Gaza
Five Stanford University students are facing trial beginning on Monday over felony charges stemming from a pro-Palestinian protest on campus – the most severe criminal case brought against some of the thousands of students who staged nationwide protests and encampments against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The northern California students are part of a group of 12 who were charged with felony conspiracy to trespass and felony vandalism in connection to an hour-long, June 2024 occupation during which the group barricaded themselves inside the university president’s office to demand Stanford consider a student resolution to divest from Israel, among other requests.
US defense secretary also started proceedings that could strip Kelly from retired military rank and cut pension
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday that he had issued a formal censure to Democratic senator Mark Kelly and initiated proceedings that could strip the Arizona lawmaker of his retired military rank and cut his pension, escalating a dispute that began when Kelly urged service members to resist unlawful orders.
Just days after a covert mission to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and strike the capital city, Hegseth announced that Kelly faces retirement grade determination proceedings, a rare administrative action that could see the former astronaut and navy captain demoted in his retired rank. Hegseth accused Kelly of making “seditious statements” that undermined military discipline.
Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota who ran for vice-president in 2024, announced on Monday that he is abandoning his quest for a third term in office.
The move comes after ongoing fraud of social services cases caught the attention of US Republicans, including Donald Trump, who then used the cases as a pretext to go after Somali residents.
Walz said in a statement that he wasn’t able to “give a political campaign my all”.
Pacific Grove is known as ‘Butterfly Town USA’ for its role as an overwintering spot. As the insect’s population plummets, residents are coming to its rescue
In the tiny seaside village of Pacific Grove, California, there’s no escaping the monarch butterfly.
Here, butterfly murals abound: one splashes across the side of a hotel, another adorns a school. As for local businesses, there’s the Monarch Pub, the Butterfly Grove Inn, even Monarch Knitting (a local yarn shop). And every fall, the small city hosts a butterfly parade, where local elementary school children dress up in butterfly costumes. The city’s municipal code even declares it an unlawful act to “molest or interfere” with monarchs in any way, with a possible fine of $1,000.
Weiss is embroiled in her first major controversy as editor in chief as her handpicked anchor takes evening news show
Taking charge of CBS News in early October with no television industry experience, and already facing both deep skepticism from many network employees and a faltering business model, Bari Weiss began with a lot working against her.
Still, her three months as editor in chief have been more chaotic than even many of her critics expected. “There is blood in the water,” said one CBS News journalist, who, like the others quoted in this story, was not authorized by the network to comment.
First and only GLP-1 pill on the market costs significantly less than injectable versions
The first pill version of the blockbuster GLP-1 weight loss drugs has been launched in the US by Novo Nordisk at a lower cost than jab varieties, accelerating a price war in the sector.
The Danish pharmaceutical company said on Monday that its once-a-day Wegovy pill, which received approval from the US regulator just before Christmas, was now available in the country.
South American nation’s tar-like oil is what many Gulf coast facilities were built for but ramping up production to 3m barrels a day will be a long game
Clustered along the US Gulf coast are some of the largest and most complex heavy-oil refineries in the world. These sprawling industrial hubs, owned by major US oil companies, stand ready to emerge as some of the major victors of Donald Trump’s swoop on Venezuela.
In some ways, these refineries are a relic of another time; built to process the heavy, unctuous crude imported from Latin America before the boom in lighter US shale oil emerged earlier this century.
This weakens the only mechanism we have to prevent world conflict, namely the UN. The international community must stand up for the rule of law
Volker Türk is UN high commissioner for human rights
The US military operation in Venezuela undermines a fundamental principle of international law, agreed after the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust: states must not use force to pursue their territorial claims or political demands.
I am deeply disturbed by these events – and by some of the reactions I have seen. A narrative is emerging that seeks to justify the US military intervention as a response to the Nicolás Maduro government’s appalling human rights record.
Volker Türkhas been the UN high commissioner for human rights since 2022
Zohran Mamdani’s optimistic inauguration contrasted in every single way with Trump’s brazen invasion of Venezuela
The new year opened with a pair of scenes that illustrated the great divide within the US and the stakes of the ongoing contest over its future. On 1 January, in a star-studded inauguration ceremony of uncommon pomp and optimism, Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist, was sworn in as the new mayor of New York and delivered a speech that declared the era of small government and centrist inhibition to be over, and a new dawn of ambitious social welfare programs to begin.
The new mayor’s inauguration is the culmination of a decade of growth from the Democratic party’s insurgent left wing, and results from a feat of organizing within the country’s largest city that relied upon mass mobilization from downwardly mobile and economically disenfranchised millennial and gen Z voters. It was hailed as a generational shift in US politics, inaugurating a new, 21st-century vision for the party.
Hours before his life and the fate of his country was changed dramatically, Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, was exchanging smiles and handshakes with a Chinese delegation in the presidential palace in Caracas.
On Friday evening, shortly before he was seized by US forces, Maduro wrote on Telegram of his meeting with China’s special envoy for Latin American affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi: “A fraternal meeting that reaffirms the strong bonds of brotherhood and friendship between China and Venezuela. Through thick and thin!”
If Trump can invade Venezuela, why can’t Putin invade Ukraine? Or Xi Jinping seize Taiwan?
No matter how you slice it, Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela is an act of naked aggression. It is blatantly illegal and sets a disturbing precedent of indifference to national sovereignty that tyrants worldwide will be eager to exploit.
The ostensible reason for the US president’s military incursion was to arrest Nicolás Maduro on criminal charges for drug trafficking. But that does not justify invading Venezuela to seize him.
Most people join social movements to try to change the world, but many also find community and a greater sense of purpose
When Lani Ritter Hall’s beloved husband of more than 40 years, Gus, died in 2022, she felt a bit unmoored. Taking care of him had been the thing that got her out of bed in the morning, and with him gone, the 76-year-old felt she’d lost her purpose.
A surprise raid on the capital in the dead of night, ending with the capture of the country’s leader. By the following day, the invading power announces it will rule the nation for an indefinite period.
That was how Vladimir Putin envisaged his full-scale invasion of Ukraine playing out in February 2022. Instead, it was Donald Trump who pulled it off in Venezuela, in an operation condemned by many as illegal, whisking away the Kremlin’s historic ally Nicolás Maduro, who now faces trial in New York.
An attack by the United States on a Nato ally would mean the end of both the military alliance and “post-second world war security”, Denmark’s leader has warned, after Donald Trump threatened again to take over Greenland.
Fresh from his military operation in Venezuela, the US president said on Sunday the US needed Greenland “very badly” – renewing fears of a US invasion of the largely autonomous island, which is a former Danish colony and remains part of the Danish kingdom. Greenland’s foreign and security policy continues to be controlled by Copenhagen.
From territorial overreach to deportations, the current president is not as much of an anomaly as he might seem
‘Almost everyone is a little bit in love with the USA,” declares Edward Stourton in his introduction to Made in America. And why not? It is the land of razzle-dazzle and high ideals, of jazz music, Bogart and Bacall, Harriet Tubman and Hamilton, a nation that was anti-colonialist and pro-liberty from its conception, whose Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal”. Why, then, does this same country so often produce clown-show politics, racism at home and abroad, and imperial ambitions, latterly in Greenland and Canada? Why does it regularly show contempt for the world order it helped create? Why did it once again elect Donald Trump?
These contradictions have kept an army of journalists, White House-watchers and soothsayers in business for generations. Alistair Cooke, perhaps the greatest British exponent of the genre, interpreted the country via the minutiae of everyday life, observing people at the beach, say, or riding the subway. Stourton, another BBC veteran, who first reported from Washington in the Reagan years, takes almost the opposite approach. He looks at Trump and Trumpism through the run of history, arguing in a series of insightful essays that the 47th Potus is not an American aberration but a continuation, an echo of dark and often neglected aspects of the country’s past. Trump, he concludes, is “as American as apple pie”.
Venezuelan president captured by US in shocking raid is seen being led in handcuffs on his way to court
Thedeposed Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, is expected to appear in Manhattan federal court on Monday afternoon on drugs and weapons charges after his extraordinary capture by US special forces this weekend.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seized in a shocking pre-dawn raid at a compound on Saturday during an assault on Caracas. At least 40 people, including civilians and Venezuelan military members, reportedly died in the attack.
Lawyers for both Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, said that their clients won’t seek bail at this time; the next hearing will take place on 17 March
A UK minister would not be drawn into saying whether his government believes the US capture of Venezuela’s president was influenced by the country’s rich oil reserves.
Asked on Sky News why he thought Donald Trump had captured Nicolás Maduro and said America would “run” Venezuela, Home Office minister Mike Tapp said:
This is for Donald Trump to answer, and I think he has said in his press conference, which I watched with interest around narco-terrorism and that threat.
It’s not just the triumphalism in the White House. Leaders loth to oppose this gangsterism must think how that looks to Putin, Xi and in the UAE
I never thought it possible that you could look back on the Iraq war, and the foreign invasions of the “war on terror” in general, and feel some measure of nostalgia. For a time when there were at least concerted attempts to justify unilateral interventions and illegal warsin the name of global security, and even a moral duty to liberate the women of Afghanistan or “free the Iraqi people”.
Now, as the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, is in essence abducted and Venezuela taken over by the US, there is barely any effort to situate the coup in any reasoning other than the US’s interests. Nor are there any attempts to solicit consent from domestic or international law-making bodies and allies, let alone the public. The days of the US trying to convince the world that Saddam Hussein did in fact have weapons of mass destruction despite secretly having no reliable intelligence were, in fact, the good old days.
Connexion
