In the search for stability, some western nations are turning to a country that many in Washington see as an existential threat

If geopolitics relies at least in part on bonhomie between global leaders, China made an unexpected play for Ireland’s good graces when the taoiseach visited Beijing this month. Meeting Ireland’s leader, Micheál Martin, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China’s president, Xi Jinping, said a favourite book of his as a teenager was The Gadfly, by the Irish author Ethel Voynich, a novel set in the revolutionary fervour of Italy in the 1840s.

“It was unusual that we ended up discussing The Gadfly and its impact on both of us but there you are,” Martin told reporters in Beijing.

Maxwell Alejandro Frost says attacker ‘told me Trump was going to deport me’ as police say suspect arrested

The Florida congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost said he was assaulted by a man who said Donald Trump would deport him at a party during the Sundance film festival in Utah.

“Last night, I was assaulted by a man at Sundance Festival who told me that Trump was going to deport me before he punched me in the face,” Frost said in a Saturday post on X. “He was heard screaming racist remarks as he drunkenly ran off. The individual was arrested and I am okay.”

Pair testify that Pretti did not hold weapon and was trying to help woman federal agents had shoved to the ground

Two witnesses to the killing of Alex Pretti have said in sworn testimony that the 37-year-old intensive care nurse was not brandishing a weapon when he approached federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, contradicting a claim made by Trump administration officials as they sought to cast the shooting of a prone man as an act of self-defense.

Their accounts came in sworn affidavits that were filed in federal court in Minnesota late Saturday, just hours after Pretti’s killing, as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of Minneapolis protesters against Kristi Noem and other homeland security officials directing the immigration crackdown in the city.

Federal agents release chemicals into the air and arrest people after shooting and killing a 37-year-old man

• Minneapolis shooting – latest updates

• Man killed in Minneapolis by federal agents identified as VA nurse Alex Pretti

“I’m 70 years old and I’m fucking angry,” the man yelled, as clouds of chemicals hung in the sub-zero air in Minneapolis, capturing the sentiment of a city that has now seen two people killed by federal agents in less than three weeks.

Agents shot and killed a 37-year-old US citizen at about 9am on Saturday, with other observers watching and videotaping their actions, in an area called Eat Street, a corridor of largely immigrant-owned restaurants and businesses.

Dangerous weather engulfing large area of country as 16 states plus DC declare states of emergency

A powerful winter storm with more than 140 million Americans in its crosshairs started sweeping across much of the US on Saturday, packing heavy snow and sleet as well as freezing rain and causing widespread power outages.

Snowfall was already being reported on Saturday morning across parts of the plains, the south and the midwest, including in areas of Oklahoma, Iowa, Tennessee, Kansas, Texas and Missouri.