Trump shelves Canada-Mexico tariffs; Musk says he is not to blame for mass firings of federal workers – key US politics stories from Thursday at a glance
Donald Trump has performed another reversal on tariffs, delaying duties on many goods from Canada and Mexico again. Trump said the reversal has “nothing to do” with turbulence in the stock market in recent days, as investors weighed his economic plans. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 fell 1.8% on Thursday. “I’m not even looking at the market,” he claimed.
It was also a day where the focus fell on the power wielded by Elon Musk and the president’s plans for US consulates in Europe.
Back-to-back mishaps indicate big setbacks for program to launch satellites and send humans to the moon and Mars
SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft exploded on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, dooming an attempt to deploy mock satellites in the second consecutive failure this year for Elon Musk’s Mars rocket program.
Several videos on social media showed fiery debris streaking through the dusk skies near south Florida and the Bahamas after Starship’s breakup in space, which occurred shortly after it began to spin uncontrollably with its engines cut off, a SpaceX livestream of the mission showed.
Person from Lea county had been unvaccinated and did not seek care but virus not yet confirmed as cause of death
An adult who was infected with measles has died in New Mexico, state health officials announced Thursday, though the virus has not been confirmed as the cause of death.
The person who died had been unvaccinated and did not seek medical care, a state health department spokesperson said in a statement. The person’s exact age and other details were not immediately released.
Humphries and Cross produce nine-darters in defeats
The world champion, Luke Littler, beat Nathan Aspinall 6-3 to win night five of the Premier League in Brighton, where there were two nine-dart finishes.
Littler, who added the UK Open title to his growing collection last weekend, had too much for Aspinall, closing out his second nightly win to keep the pressure on Luke Humphries at the top of the table. Earlier Humphries, the world No 1, had hit a nine-darter in his quarter-final defeat by Rob Cross, who then also produced a perfect leg as he was later edged out 6-5 by Aspinall.
Monarch shares soundtrack to his life, including disco, reggae and Afrobeats, to celebrate Commonwealth Day
Kylie has a legion of fans around the globe, but it might come as a surprise to many that the king is one of those who can’t get her out of his head.
The princess of pop, alongside Bob Marley and Grace Jones, are among the music artists beloved of Charles, it was revealed on Friday as part of Commonwealth Day celebrations, which falls on Monday.
‘Compelling evidence’ suggests figure is Lady Jane Grey, making it only known depiction made before 1554 execution
She was known as the “nine-day queen” and was used as a pawn in the ruthless ambition that defined the Tudor court. But for centuries, historians have struggled to find a single portrait of Lady Jane Grey that was painted during her lifetime.
Now, research by English Heritage suggests a mysterious portrait depicts the royal who reigned over England for just over a week in the summer of 1553, and who was executed less than a year later.
Calls for more support as study finds musicians in England and US have among highest rates of suicide
Musicians have one of the highest suicide rates in the world because the music business contains so many difficulties such as intense touring, performance anxiety and low earnings, researchers have suggested.
The finding that unusually large numbers of musicians take their own lives show that “the music industry is a profoundly dangerous place”, according to a co-author of the study.
Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko denied they were part of a reported White House plot to remove Ukraine leader from power
Ukraine’s opposition leaders have confirmed they have held discussions with members of Donald Trump’s entourage, but denied on Thursday they were part of a reported White House plot to remove Volodymyr Zelenskyy from power.
The former president Petro Poroshenko said he had held talks with US representatives but added that he opposed Trump’s demands for wartime elections. Poroshenko, who lost to Zelenskyy in the 2019 presidential vote, said a poll should only be held once martial law ends.
BoM path track map predicts cyclone off Australia’s coast to make landfall in SE Qld on Saturday morning near Brisbane, the first storm of its size to do so in decades. Follow the latest updates today
Welfare recipients told to perform mutual obligations as cyclone bears down
We have a news story this morning about the impact the cyclone is already having on life in Queensland.
Fallen trees and giant stands of bamboo blocked the single road to our farm until the army and council brought heavy machinery to clear a path some time after.
We were without running water or power for days, maybe weeks, the packing shed a makeshift kitchen where we ate meals cooked off a gas barbecue and drank instant coffee made with rainwater and UHT milk to the hum of a generator.
After an extremely difficult month in which she was pursued across tennis tournaments in Asia by an obsessive spectator, Emma Raducanu struggled to find her range and rhythm on her return to competition and was comprehensively defeated 6-3, 6-2 by Moyuka Uchijima of Japan in the first round of the Indian Wells Open on Thursday.
Over the past few years, the organisers at Indian Wells have marketed the tournament as Tennis Paradise, a reference to the handsome mountainous landscape that surrounds the court and its warm, sunny weather. In reality, though, the conditions are often some of the most hellish on tour. Along with the slow conditions because of the dry, dusty desert air, gusty wind can make it incredibly challenging for all players.
Australia’s close-knit literary community – from writers and agents through to the Australian Society of Authors – have reacted with outrage. Black Inc, the publisher of the Quarterly Essay as well as fiction and nonfiction books by many prominent writers, had asked consent from its authors to train AI models on their work and then share the revenue with those authors.
Now I have a dog in this race. Actually two dogs. I have published four books with Black Inc, have a fifth coming out next month, and have a contract for a sixth by the end of the year. And I have also been an AI researcher for 40 years, training AI models with data.
Democratic California governor faces backlash after saying trans women playing in female sports was ‘deeply unfair’
Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California believed to be eyeing a run for president in 2028, is facing fierce backlash from LGBTQ+ rights advocates after his suggestion that the participation of transgender women and girls in female sports was “deeply unfair”.
In the inaugural episode of his podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom, the governor hosted conservative political activist and Maga darling Charlie Kirk. The co-founder and executive director of the rightwing Turning Point USA, a Phoenix-based organization that operates on school campuses, told Newsom: “You, right now, should come out and be like: ‘You know what? The young man who’s about to win the state championship in the long jump in female sports – that shouldn’t happen.’ You, as the governor, should step out and say: ‘No.’”
State department also looks into merging some bureaus in Washington amid Trump effort to slash US government
The US state department is preparing to shut down a number of consulates that are mainly in western Europe in the coming months and looking to reduce its workforce globally, multiple US officials said on Thursday.
The state department is also looking into potentially merging a number of its expert bureaus at its headquarters in Washington that are working in areas such as human rights, refugees, global criminal justice, women’s issues and efforts to counter human trafficking, the officials said.
Descendants of enslaved Africans and Indigenous people interned on Baliceaux in 18th century hail ‘historic victory’
Members of the Garifuna community are celebrating “a historic and long-awaited victory” after the Caribbean nation of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) announced the purchase of a privately owned island where thousands of their ancestors perished from disease and starvation.
The uninhabited island of Baliceaux has long held great significance for the Garifuna people, the descendants of enslaved Africans and Indigenous Kalinago and Arawak people.
New Uefa figures show extent of Premier League power
Report says Chelsea 2024 squad was most expensive ever
The Premier League’s financial power continues to blow its European rivals out of the water, with combined revenues almost double those in Germany and Spain according to newly released figures from Uefa.
In the latest evidence of England’s sizeable competitive advantage, Uefa’s annual European club finance and investment landscape report showed Premier League clubs reporting revenue of just over €7.1bn (£5.9bn) in the 2023 financial year. The top flight’s nearest competitors, La Liga and the Bundesliga, brought in €3.7bn and €3.6bn respectively. It forms part of a wider picture in which revenues in the continent’s top divisions totalled €26.8bn, 17% more than before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Pontiff nearing three weeks in hospital in Rome after being admitted with respiratory problems
Pope Francis has recorded and released an audio message thanking those who have been praying for his recovery, his voice breathless as he nears three weeks in hospital with pneumonia.
“I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your prayers for my health from the square, I accompany you from here,” Francis said in a message broadcast in St Peter’s Square.
Simone Ashley tries her best in Amazon’s gimmicky romantic comedy but it’s too flimsy and forgettable to demand our attention
I am generally wary of streaming platform originals, so often do they feel like the fast fashion of the film world: cheap, disposable, chasing ephemeral interests and brittle with repeat use. But I will give Netflix, Amazon and co props for this: for nearing a decade now, they have attempted to fill a void left by the theatrical box office, whose hollowed-out market rarely supports the mid-budget adult films – particularly romcoms and erotic thrillers – that routinely entertained non-franchise audiences in decades past. Only occasionally do they succeed, as in the case of Netflix’s Do Revenge or Players, but the mission remains worthwhile.
Picture This, a new romcom from Amazon Prime Video, has promising elements suggesting it could be one of the better entries. Namely: the presence of Simone Ashley, the always luminous breakout star of the Netflix confection that is Bridgerton; Hero Fiennes Tiffin, nephew of Ralph and Joseph and perhaps best known for his role in the Tumblr smutty After trilogy; and the ever-relevant plot of becoming an unsolicited charity case as a single woman at the ripe age of 30. But though the two leads are capably charming – or, in the case of Tiffin, baseline attractive as a nice hometown guy not given much to do – the movie still has the imprint of a tech company’s content assembly line: cheaply made, over-lit, bumpily paced, ludicrously dialed-up characters without much comic payoff.
Armed men loyal to ousted dictator attack checkpoints in Latakia province in deadliest strikes so far against new government
Thirteen Syrian security officers have been killed in clashes with remnants of the Assad regime in the deadliest attack against the country’s new authorities since the dictator was toppled.
Armed men attacked checkpoints and security officers in the coastal town of Jableh and the countryside of Latakia province, as part of a “premeditated” attack on Thursday, according to the provincial head of Syria’s general security directorate, Mustafa Knefati.
Judge orders reinstatement of Gwynne Wilcox to National Labor Relations Board after her removal by US president
A federal court ruled that Donald Trump’s abrupt firing of a former senior official at the top US labor watchdog was illegal, and ordered that she be reinstated.
Gwynne Wilcox was the first member of the National Labor Relations Board to be removed by a US president since the board’s inception in 1935.
Ryan Wedding, 43, wanted for role in billion-dollar cross-border drug trafficking operation and several homicides
Authorities in the United States have offered a $10m reward for information that leads to the arrest of a Canadian former Olympic snowboarder-turned-international drug kingpin.
Police in Los Angeles said on Thursday that Ryan Wedding – also known as “El Jefe”, “Giant” and “Public Enemy” – is wanted for his role in a billion-dollar cross-border drug trafficking operation and for several homicides linked to his drug sprawling network.
President’s decree claims white South Africans being unjustly discriminated against and orders end to foreign aid
The state department has ordered an immediate pause on most US foreign assistance to South Africa, according to a cable seen by the Guardian, officially implementing a contentious executive order by Donald Trump.
The directive, issued on Thursday, implements Executive Order 14204 targeting what the administration called “egregious actions” by South Africa. It orders all state department entities to immediately suspend aid disbursements, with minimal exceptions.
US Ryder Cup captain filmed giving a locker room speech
‘I meant no disrespect, I was more speaking to our guys’
It transpires the viral moment of Netflix’s latest series on golf may have been as much of a surprise to the main protagonist as those looking on.
The assertion of Keegan Bradley, the US Ryder Cup captain, during Full Swing that his contingent are “gonna go to Bethpage to kick their fucking ass” in September immediately looked like golden material for Europe’s locker room. Shane Lowry, likely to be an important part of the European team, was asked last week whether he was aware of Bradley’s sentiment. “Oh yeah,” said the Irishman. “We have all seen it.”
In the end, two outstretched hands were decisive. The first, from Bruno Fernandes, probably denied Manchester United their victory; the second, from André Onana, definitely denied Real Sociedad theirs.
United deservedly got themselves into a first-leg lead when Joshua Zirkzee guided a side-footed shot beyond Alex Remiro that appeared to set them up for a win and potentially even one big enough to virtually see them through. But an eagle eye and a video replay revived their Basque opponents, allowing Mikel Oyarzabal to equalise from the spot with 20 minutes left and in the last of those they nearly scored again. Which was when a figure in yellow flew to the rescue.
Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform by Lunar Outpost landed near the moon’s south pole after eight days
A small but rugged robotic moon rover developed by a Colorado company became the first commercial exploration vehicle to touch down on the lunar surface on Thursday.
Mission managers were unable to immediately confirm that the landing of the spacecraft it was traveling in had been fully successful.
If Ange Postecoglou was hoping that things might be different for Tottenham in the Europa League, then he was sadly mistaken. An abject display in which his side fell behind to an early own goal from the unfortunate Lucas Bergvall and then failed to lay a glove on AZ Alkmaar means the Australian’s chances of maintaining the proud record of winning a trophy in his second season at every club he has managed now rest on next week’s second leg.
The home side – who are known as the cheese heads – could have been out of sight after repeatedly finding holes in the Spurs defence had it not been for two excellent saves from Guglielmo Vicario, including one to deny the Tottenham academy graduate Troy Parrott in the first half. Even though Spurs have not even reached the quarter-finals of this competition in five attempts since 2013, Postecoglou said beforehand that his players sensed an opportunity to win it now that some of them are back from injury. But the sight of Tottenham’s record signing, Dominic Solanke, limping off late with a suspected back problem on his return from seven weeks out with a knee injury potentially made it an even more disastrous evening for the head coach.
Leaders endorse Ursula von der Leyen proposal as French president calls Vladimir Putin ‘an imperialist who seeks to rewrite history’
European leaders holding emergency talks in Brussels have agreed on a massive increase to defence spending, amid a drive to shore up support for Ukraine after Donald Trump halted US military aid and intelligence sharing.
It came as French president Emmanuel Macron warned on Thursday night that “the only imperial power that I see today in Europe is Russia” and called Vladimir Putin as “an imperialist who seeks to rewrite history” after the Russian president appeared to compare him to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Billionaire Trump ally and Greg Abbot tweet about Frank Zamora, who was let go after refusing to remove pronouns
The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and, later, Elon Musk showed support on Wednesday for the firing of a state employee who refused to remove his pronouns from his work email signature.
Frank Zamora, 31, was let go from his job as a program manager at the Texas real estate commission (TREC) last month because he refused to comply with a mandate from the organisation to employees to remove gender pronouns from email signatures.
The CEO of the Women’s Super League and Championship has ruled out the complete scrapping of promotion and relegation but did not deny they are exploring a relegation pause as part of league expansion plans.
As revealed in the Guardian, one of the options being explored by the body responsible for the professional women’s game, Women’s Professional Leagues Limited (WPLL), is a four-year pause of relegation to grow the top two divisions to 16 teams each.
Category-four Larry crossed the coast near Innisfail on 20 March 2006. It blew hurricane-force winds over 200km/hour and we had the eye pass directly over us
The most vivid image that comes to mind when I think about cyclones is my uncle Rodney, drenched in his thongs and shorts and tropical shirt, machete by his side, crouching in a sodden orchard. He’s holding a drunken parrot in the palm of his hands and he’s laughing.
This was in the days that followed Larry, which crossed the far north Queensland coast near Innisfail on 20 March 2006. The Bureau of Meteorology forecast Larry as a category five severe tropical cyclone, although a re-analysis of the data would later suggest Larry was a category four system when it crossed the coast. Whatever, Larry blew hurricane-force wind speeds of well over 200km an hour and we had the eye pass directly over us. So let us not quibble about categories.
MJ the Musical has already made millions for Jackson’s estate. But as the Broadway hit opens in Australia and the estate prepares to face two of Jackson’s alleged victims in court, fans may ask: is buying a ticket OK?
There’s a moment in MJ the Musical where the King of Pop tells a prying reporter: “I want to keep this about my music.”
Over the last four years, as the jukebox musical has swept through the US, London and Hamburg, netting four Tony awards and more than US$245m to date on Broadway alone, the debate that has followed it has mirrored that which followed the bombshell allegations aired in the Emmy-winning 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland: can we separate Michael Jackson’s impeccable musical legacy from his deeply tarnished public image?
Flight controllers struggle to confirm status of Intuitive Machines’ probe in firm’s second lunar landing in just over a year
The Athena robotic spacecraft has touched down on the lunar surface in the second moon landing for the US space company Intuitive Machines in little more than a year.
The nearly 5 metre tall probe set down shortly after 5.30pm UK time on Thursday after a tense descent to Mons Mouton, a high and relatively flat mountain about 100 miles from the moon’s south pole.
With a mixture of regret, laced with incredulity, European leaders gathered in Brussels to marshal their forces for a power struggle not with Russia, but with the US.
Even now, of course at the 11th hour, most of Europe hopes this coming battle of wills can be averted and the Trump administration can still be persuaded that forcing Ukraine to the negotiating table, disarmed and blinded, will not be the US’s long-term strategic interest.
Extremists linked to Reichsbürger movement also planned to kidnap health minister and create conditions for civil war
A German court has jailed five members of an extremist group linked to the Reichsbürger (Reich Citizens) movement for plotting a coup and to kidnap the health minister.
The defendants, four men, aged 46 to 58, and a 77-year-old woman, who belonged to the self-styled “United Patriots” group, were sentenced to between five years and nine months and eight years’ jail by the Koblenz higher regional court on Thursday.
Decision made after attempts to raise more funds had been unsuccessful, agency tells authorities
Food rations for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have been slashed in half by the World Food Programme, days after refugees in Kenya protested against a reduction to their rations.
The WFP, which is funded entirely by voluntary contributions and provides assistance to more than 150 million people, said it did not have enough funds to continue to provide the full ration so would be reducing the food voucher to 726 Bangladeshi taka (£4.60) per person, from 1,515 taka.
Donald Trump has deliberately picked a fight with its northern neighbour. This malign strategy must be stopped
It is two months since Justin Trudeau announced his resignation as Liberal party leader and Canada’s prime minister. After a decade in power, Mr Trudeau had become increasingly unpopular. Two out of three Canadians thought he was doing a bad job. The opposition Conservatives led in almost every poll. With the Liberals staring a 2025 general election defeat in the face, Mr Trudeau’s ministers forced him out. His successor will be chosen this Sunday.
But then came Donald Trump. Mr Trump wants to strengthen the US at the expense of its neighbours. His hostility to Canada is thus visceral and deep. Without any justification, he promised illegal 25% tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican imports. As a fig leaf for his intentions, he falsely claimed that Canada’s 5,000-mile border with the US was an open door for migrants and drugs. He talked, repeatedly and deliberately, of annexing Canada and making it the 51st state. He mocked Mr Trudeau, referring to him as merely a state governor.
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(Interscope) After some noteworthy musical and cinematic misfires, Gaga gets back to her core themes of sex, sleaze and celebrity on an album that sounds not retro, but relevant
Lady Gaga’s single Abracadabra is enjoying its fifth consecutive week in the UK Top 10. You can imagine a collective sigh of relief chez Gaga: she has been experiencing what you might call a case of career sea sickness, in which unadulterated commercial triumphs have been followed by very public flops. In the credit column, there’s Die With a Smile, a power-ballad duet with Bruno Mars that went to No 1 in 28 countries and spent 10 weeks as the world’s biggest-selling single. (Released last August, it also appears on Mayhem.) In the debit, there was her starring role in the disastrous Joker: Folie à Deux, a film that was estimated to have lost Warner Brothers something in the region of $150m (£116m), and which seemed to take both the Gaga-heavy soundtrack and her own, jazz-based “companion album” Harlequin down with it. You might have expected the legions of Little Monsters (as her fans are known) to rally around the latter, but apparently not. Outside of a couple of remix collections, it was the lowest-selling Lady Gaga album to date and her second jazz album to noticeably underperform: a follow-up collection of duets with the late Tony Bennett, 2021’s Love for Sale, failed to replicate the success of its predecessor, Cheek to Cheek.
One theory is that Gaga’s eclecticism might have succeeded in confusing people. The fact that you never quite know what she’s going to throw out next – electronic dance-pop, soft rock, jazz, country, AOR – should be cause for celebration, but perhaps it has proved a bit much in a world dominated by streaming’s overload, where artists are advised to maintain a clear brand lest they get lost amid the sheer torrent of new music. Maybe what was needed was a bold restatement of Gaga’s original core values. That was precisely what Abracadabra, and indeed its predecessor, Disease, provided: big dirty synths; big noisy choruses; high-camp, fashion-forward videos and, in the case of Abracadabra, a hook apparently designed to remind listeners of the word-mangling intro to 2009’s Bad Romance.
Caroline Cotto’s research group taste-tests meat alternatives so plant-based companies can attract new customers – and help the climate
I am sitting in a Manhattan restaurant on a frigid Thursday in January, eating six mini servings of steak and mashed potatoes, one after another. The first steak I am served has a nice texture but is sort of unnaturally reddish. The second has a great crispy sear on the outside, but leaves behind a lingering chemical aftertaste. The next is fine on its own, but I imagine would be quite delicious shredded, drenched in barbecue sauce and served on a bun with vinegary pickles and a side of slaw.
If you peeked into this restaurant, you’d see nothing out of the ordinary – just a diverse range of New Yorkers huddled over plates of food. But everyone present is here for more than just a hot meal. We’re participating in a blind taste test of plant- (or sometimes mushroom-) based steaks, organized by a group of people who hope that better-tasting meat alternatives just might be a key to fighting the climate crisis.
German’s first squad will be announced next Friday
Bullingham ‘really pleased with how he’s approached it’
Thomas Tuchel has reached out to a host of England players, seeking to build early connections as he works off a 55-man longlist for his first squad announcement next Friday.
The manager, who started his role on 1 January, is preparing for the World Cup qualifiers against Albania and Latvia at Wembley towards the end of the month and, according to the Football Association’s chief executive, Mark Bullingham, has made a dynamic impression.
Police found boy, now 14, after responding to a burglary call and arresting his mother, who didn’t have custody of him
A boy who was allegedly taken by his mother, who didn’t have custody of him, seven years ago from Atlanta was found last month in Colorado after the mother was arrested in an unrelated incident in suburban Denver, authorities said on Wednesday.
Rabia Khalid, 40, was arrested on 23 February after sheriff’s deputies were asked to investigate a suspected burglary taking place at a vacant home that was for sale, the Douglas county sheriff’s office said. The deputies found two children in a vehicle outside the property and a man and a woman coming out of the home who initially told them they were working for a realtor, it said in a press release.
Donald Trump pulled back from his trade war with Canadaand Mexico on Thursday, temporarily delaying tariffs on many goods from the two countries once again.
Two days after imposing sweeping tariffs on all imports from his country’s closest trading partners, the US president announced that duties on a wide range of products would be shelved until April.
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