Reports say move could come this weekend as White House urges Iran to ‘make a deal’ with Trump on nuclear program

The US military is ready for possible strikes on Iran as soon as this weekend, multiple news outlets reported Wednesday citing unnamed sources.

However, the reports said, Donald Trump has yet to make a final decision on whether to carry out an attack. Trump has repeatedly demanded Iran cease its nuclear program, and has warned he intends to use force if no deal is reached.

Lunar new year has ushered in a rare zodiac symbol with a reputation for energy and independence

As the lunar new year begins, the focus has turned to the Chinese zodiac and the arrival of the year of the fire horse – a rare pairing in the 60-year lunar cycle.

Drawing on Chinese metaphysics, the fire horse blends the horse’s reputation for energy and independence with the intensity of the fire element, giving it a distinct place in the zodiac tradition.

Depop, which is owned by Etsy, has 7 million active buyers on its marketplace, nearly 90% of whom are under the age of 34

Online seller eBay has agreed to purchase secondhand fashion marketplace Depop from Etsy for about $1.2bn in cash, the companies announced on Wednesday, with eBay hoping the acquisition will help it capture a younger demographic.

The deal comes at a time when used clothing has become increasingly popular, sought out by Gen Z shoppers searching for unique items that cost less than new ones, and who want to keep older items from heading to landfill.

Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt highlights US cancellation of military aid to Ukraine last year, saying situation was unfair on those killed but also Americans ‘who were footing the bill for this war effort’. What we know on day 1,457

Owner calls it ‘ludicrous’ Dissent Cafe and Bar was shut down after complaint, the first in Australia’s capital since new federal hate symbol laws

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Police have seized art posters from a Canberra music venue and bar that depict world leaders and others, including Donald Trump and Elon Musk, wearing Nazi uniforms, and are investigating whether new federal hate symbol laws were broken.

David Howe, owner of Dissent Cafe in Canberra’s CBD, said his venue was shut down for around two hours on Wednesday night as police investigated a complaint about hate imagery relating to five posters in the window.

Research suggests more than 75,000 killed in the first 16 months of conflict, 25,000 more than announced at the time

More than 75,000 people were killed in the first 16 months of the two-year war in Gaza, at least 25,000 more than the death toll announced by local authorities at the time, according to a study published on Wednesday in the Lancet medical journal.

The research also found that reporting by the Gaza health ministry about the proportion of women, children and elderly people among those killed was accurate.

Lawsuit is first by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over workplace DEI in Trump’s second term

A US civil rights agency has sued a bottler and distributor of Coca-Cola products it accuses of sex discrimination over an employee networking event that excluded men, its first lawsuit over workplace diversity programs since Donald Trump took office. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, says Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast violated federal law when it hosted the event for about 250 female employees at a casino in Connecticut in September 2024.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It is owned by Kirin Holdings, a Japanese company. Coca-Cola is not a defendant in the case.

After crew on flight 543 reported smoke in the cockpit, passengers and crew exited Airbus A320 via slides

Traffic was temporarily disrupted at Newark Liberty international airport in New Jersey on Wednesday after a Florida-bound JetBlue flight suffered an engine failure on takeoff and returned to the airport, officials said.

Crew on flight 543 reported smoke in the cockpit, and after an emergency landing, passengers and crew exited the Airbus A320 on a taxiway via slides, the Federal Aviation Administration said. No injuries were reported.

• Australian finishes second behind China gold medallist Xu Mengtao

• Skier makes ‘heartbreaking’ call for loved ones not to join her in Livigno

Australian freestyle skier Danielle Scott told her family and friends last month to cancel their plans to watch her compete at the Olympics because she was feeling so low about her form.

That meant the aerials veteran’s loved ones, husband Clark aside, weren’t in Livigno to watch the four-time Olympian achieve a lifelong dream when she finally clinched a medal on Wednesday.

One skier still missing and six others rescued after group engulfed in Sierra Nevada mountains during severe storm

Eight skiers who went missing after an avalanche swept the Castle Peak area of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California have been confirmed dead, authorities said during a Wednesday press conference.

One skier is still unaccounted for, while six others, who had been stranded, have since been rescued.

Actor allegedly also made remarks to man who dresses in drag, and was seen dancing on Bourbon Street after arrest

The actor Shia LaBeouf allegedly aimed homophobic slurs at two men – one who identifies as queer and the other who dresses in drag – as the Transformers star was arrested for purportedly battering them at a bar early on Tuesday morning in New Orleans, the victims said.

Jeffrey Damnit – who was born with the last name Klein and was listed as one of the victims by New Orleans police – said in an interview on Wednesday that he was wearing mascara, eye shadow and lipstick when LaBeouf tried to beat him up “while screaming, ‘You’re a fucking faggot’”. He also shared a cellphone video showing LaBeouf in the back of a vehicle being examined by first responders, glancing over at Damnit and saying: “Faggot.”

• Woman says she was pregnant during alleged assaults

• Lawsuit seeks monetary damages of more than $1m

• Rice was suspended to start 2025 for role in car crash

A former girlfriend of Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice filed a civil lawsuit this week in Texas alleging he assaulted her during a span from December 2023 to July 2025.

Dacoda Jones, with whom Rice has two children, said she was pregnant during many of the alleged assaults. She filed the suit on Monday in Dallas County, Texas, and is seeking damages of more than $1m, according to attorney Ron Estefan.

Dangerous days have nearly tripled in past 45 years – and increase largely driven by human-made warming

The number of days when the weather gets hot, dry and windy – ideal to spark extreme wildfires – has nearly tripled in the past 45 years across the globe, with the trend increasing even higher in the Americas, a new study shows.

And more than half of that increase is caused by human-caused climate change, researchers calculated.

Whichever way you look at it, Arsenal did not produce a performance worthy of champions. No one in red and white will want to remember this freezing cold night at Molineux – but it will live long in the memory of Wolves’ Tom Edozie, whose debut goal was a just punishment for the Premier League leaders’ ineptitude.

Arsenal are five points clear of Manchester City, having played a game more, and will feel their icy breath on their shoulders after winning twice in their past seven matches.

A hard-fought victory over OH Leuven at Meadow Park sent Arsenal through to the quarter-finals of the Champions League, where they will face Chelsea next month. The visitors tested Renée Slegers’s side when Sára Pusztai cancelled out Alessia Russo’s goal but a penalty from Mariona Caldentey and second from Russo secured the win, earning them a comfortable 7-1 aggregate score.

This was a disjointed performance from the hosts but it will have done little to dampen the high spirits in north London.

The greatest American skier of all time won her first Olympic medal in 2014. The 12 years in between have been marked by brutal ups and downs

A lot can happen in 12 years. If you’re Mikaela Shiffrin, as a teenager you can become the youngest ever person to win the Olympic slalom, stack a couple more medals at the next Olympics, become the most successful World Cup skier of all time with a record 108 victories, go 10 more Olympic races in a row over three Winter Games without reaching the podium, overcome the two biggest crashes of your career and subsequent battles with self-doubt and post-traumatic stress disorder and eroding trust in your own skiing, and then bring it all back home with a second Olympic slalom gold.

You can also lose your dad.

State regulators walk back suspension threat and say Tesla has stopped misleading drivers about the safety of its cars

Tesla will avoid a 30-day suspension of its dealer and manufacturer licenses in California, its biggest market, after the US electric vehicle maker stopped using the term “autopilot” in the marketing of its vehicles in the state.

Tesla now uses the term “supervised” in references to its full self-driving technology and has stopped using “autopilot” entirely in its marketing in the state.

Yoon Suk Yeol could face the death penalty when judges rule on the martial law crisis that many in South Korea see as a dark moment they would rather forget

South Korea is awaiting one of the most consequential court rulings in decades this week, with judges due to deliver their verdict on insurrection charges against the former president Yoon Suk Yeol and prosecutors demanding the death penalty.

When Yoon stands in courtroom 417 of Seoul central district court on Thursday to hear his fate, which will be broadcast live, he will do so in the same room where the military dictator Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death three decades ago. The charge is formally the same. Last time, it took almost 17 years and a democratic transition to deliver a verdict. This time, it has taken 14 months. Chun’s death sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment on appeal, and he was eventually pardoned.

US president had recently said the plan was the best deal Starmer could make

Donald Trump has urged Keir Starmer not to hand the Chagos Islands over to Mauritius, warning he was “making a big mistake”.

Under the deal agreed last year, Britain would cede control over the British Indian Ocean Territory but lease the largest island, Diego Garcia, for 99 years to continue operating a joint US-UK military base there.

Unite Here, the US’s largest hospitality workers’ union, says ICE crackdown is harming tourism and costing jobs

Donald Trump’s immigration policies are having a chilling effect on the hospitality industry, where nearly a third of workers are immigrants, according to the largest hospitality union in the US.

The number of employed hospitality workers dropped by 98,000 from December 2024 to December 2025, according to a report from Unite Here, which represents 300,000 workers across the hospitality, food and tourism industries in the US and Canada.

Through more than 300 photos, the New York City artist Clémence Polès Farhang captures the immigrant story and unconventional womanhood

Clémence Polès Farhang started Passerby magazine around the time she immigrated to New York City. She says she wanted to explore womanhood as she navigated her own, and used publishing as a way to “deconstruct the internalized misogyny” from her own education. Polès Farhang’s mother, who left Iran during the revolution, believed women should have the right to choose what to do with their bodies, “yet would dismiss any woman who didn’t conform to conventional expectations”, says Polès Farhang, such as those didn’t dress “in a way she considered put together, or didn’t marry into heteronormative relationships within the right social class”.

“I remember being scolded in my early 20s for embarrassing her by leaving the house barefaced,” she says.

When the Qarabag manager, Gurban Gurbanov, declared before kick-off that Newcastle possess “a style of play that does not suit us”, there were suggestions that he was playing mind games. Long before half-time it was fully apparent that he had rather understated things.

Had this been a boxing match it would surely have been stopped by the 20th minute. Qarabag were utterly overwhelmed by the pace of their guests, and that of Anthony Gordon in particular. Gordon scored four times, boosting his tally in the Champions League this season to 10 goals.

Meta chief says it has improved identifying underage users but adds ‘I always wish we could have gotten there sooner’

The Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, testified at a landmark trial of social media companies on Wednesday. Plaintiffs’ lawyers grilled Zuckerberg about internal complaints that not enough was being done to verify whether children under 13 were using the platform.

Zuckerberg claimed Meta had improved in identifying underage users but also said: “I always wish that we could have gotten there sooner.”

Dozens of world leaders head to Washington for what White House says will largely be a fundraiser on Thursday

Dozens of world leaders and national delegations will meet in Washington DC on Thursday for the inaugural meeting of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, as major European allies declined to join the group and criticised the organisation’s murky funding and political mandate.

The White House has indicated that the summit for his new ad hoc council at the renamed Donald J Trump Institute of Peace will heavily function as a fundraising round, with Trump announcing on social media that countries have pledged more than $5bn toward rebuilding Gaza, which has been devastated in the war with Israel and remains in a humanitarian crisis.