US deputy attorney general tells reporters that White House had ‘nothing to do’ with review of files and ‘did not tell department what to redact’

• US justice department releases more than 3 million new pages of Epstein files

Among the files released by the US justice department today is a copy of Ghislaine Maxwell’s police booking intake form from July 2020.

It includes a picture of Maxwell in what looks like a prison orange jumpsuit, along with personal details including her full name and a redacted address in Bradford, New Hampshire.

files that contain personally identifiable information of victims or victims’ personal and medical files, and any similar files that, if disclosed, would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy

any depiction of child sexual abuse material or child abuse images

anything that would jeopardize an active federal investigation

anything that depicts or contains images of death, physical abuse or injury

files covered by various privileges, including deliberative process privilege, work product privilege, and attorney client privilege

Island country only has oil enough to last 15-20 days, and 12-hour blackouts have become commonplace

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has warned that Donald Trump’s move to slap new tariffs on countries sending oil to Cuba could trigger a humanitarian crisis on the island, which is already suffering from chronic fuel shortages and regular blackouts.

The US president signed an executive order on Thursday declaring a national emergency and laying the groundwork for such tariffs, ratcheting up the pressure to topple the communist government in Havana.

Israeli military’s U-turn in accepting official figures comes after years of attacking data as ‘Hamas propaganda’

Israel’s military has accepted the death toll compiled by health authorities in Gaza is broadly accurate, marking a U-turn after years of official attacks on the data.

A senior security official briefed Israeli journalists, saying about 70,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli attacks on the territory since October 2023, excluding those missing.

With Donald Trump tearing up the world order, governments across Europe are having to confront the fact that most of the technology they rely on comes from US companies. French officials have taken a step this week to reduce their dependence on US digital infrastructure, announcing they have stopped using Zoom, the US-owned video meeting software, in favour of a French-made program. But how viable is this? And what are the risks? The Guardian’s Michael Safi speaks to the tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker

Actor who was a celebrated figure of Bangladeshi cinema after being discovered by the Indian director Satyajit Ray

Few performers’ careers have encompassed both discovery by Satyajit Ray and working opposite sometime Likely Lad James Bolam. Yet this was the distinction the actor Jayasree Kabir, who has died aged 73, achieved while shifting between the southern and northern hemispheres as work and family commitments required.

Launched while still a teenager in Ray’s 1970 film Pratidwandi (The Adversary), Kabir compiled a modest yet highly selective list of credits, including several key titles of Bangladeshi cinema, before making her final screen appearance in a 2004 episode of the BBC’s primetime ratings winner New Tricks, starring Bolam.

Rotterdam film festival
A set of shorts by film-makers from Afghanistan, Iran, Ukraine, Syria and Somalia are shocking, funny and mysterious in equal measure

With considerable chutzpah and elan, and in her capacity as producer and UNHCR Goodwill ambassador, Cate Blanchett has achieved a geopolitical film-making coup. In concert with festival authorities in Rotterdam, she has secured cash and commissioned short films on the subject of displacement from five directors – including Mohammad Rasoulof, now in exile from his native Iran due to his pro-democracy activism, in effect making his first public statement since the recent massacres and apparently expressing his fears that he may never go home again.

The films are far from solemnly earnest – this is an anthology of five brilliant miniature artworks. By turns shocking, funny, confessional and deeply mysterious, this is a tremendous collection; the constituent films of which benefit in some enigmatic way from being shown together. What Ealing Studios’s Dead of Night did for scariness, these films may have done for 21st-century exile.

Whether it’s Minneapolis or Greenland, the US president will do just enough to get through a damaging news cycle, then carry on as before

Don’t be fooled. When it comes to Donald Trump, what might look like a full retreat is almost always a mere tactical withdrawal, designed to buy time. He’ll step back when he’s forced to, under pressure, but will then revert the instant the pressure lets up. Too often, his opponents, whether at home or abroad, allow themselves to be played, confusing a mere pause for a surrender – and the risk is strong that they’re making that same mistake all over again.

This week, the US president won praise in some quarters for moving to “de-escalate” the war he has been waging on the people of Minneapolis. Following the killing of Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse who posed no threat and yet was shot at least 10 times by masked agents of Customs and Border Protection or CBP, Trump signalled that he wanted to calm things down.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

• Supporter took ‘Time 2 Sell’ banner from under seat

• West Ham say ban for regulations breach not content

West Ham have banned a season-ticket holder who held up a banner calling for the club’s owners to sell up. Joshua Wood said he was infuriated after receiving a letter accusing him of breaching ground regulations by taking from under his seat an oversized banner at last Saturday’s home game against Sunderland.

Protests have been held at many matches this season targeting David Sullivan, the largest shareholder, and Karren Brady, the vice-chair, and the anti-board sentiment was evident when a banner stating “Time 2 Sell – Name Your Price” was held up during the first half last weekend.

Striker strives for long stay in the Premier League, years on from ‘losing love to play football’ during poor run with Basel

‘Are you a professional footballer?” was a question Thierno Barry had dreamed about answering in the affirmative, but on this occasion modesty was the best policy. The Frenchman was on a Zanzibar beach, surrounded by a group of 10-year-old boys he had schooled in a kickabout that helped him rediscover his love of the game after a difficult start in Basel.

Switzerland was next on Barry’s path after he had proven his talent in the Belgian second division at Beveren but it was not a smooth trajectory. “Two stupid red cards” in his first two appearances and failing to score in 16 Swiss league games left Barry needing to get away, so he headed to Africa and switched off his phone to enjoy the tranquillity of the Indian Ocean, a world away from football.

The draft – one of the Beat Generation’s defining artefacts – will be part of a wider sale of pieces from the Jim Irsay Collection at Christie’s in March

Jack Kerouac’s original typescript scroll for On the Road – the 37 metre (121ft) long roll of paper on which he typed his defining Beat novel in a three-week burst – will go under the hammer at Christie’s in March, with a sale estimate of £1.8m to £2.9m ($2.5m to $4m).

The scroll is one of the centrepieces of the Jim Irsay Collection, one of the most extensive private collections of music, literary, film and sports memorabilia ever assembled.

The man who created House Party, wrote for the Black Panther comics, produced Django Unchained and briefly ran BET talks his illustrious career

Reginald Hudlin’s home office is a monument to an audacious American dream – the Black scion who grew up far from Hollywood glamour and rose to become one of the industry’s most adaptable storytellers. On the walls, a framed Black Panther comic page he penned glints under glass near a portrait of Jamie Foxx – a souvenir from Hudlin’s stint producing Django Unchained – and a piece of the Martin Luther King memorial that he was gifted while shooting the Disney sports drama Safety. “Look, I’m pleased with my life,” he tells me with a wry smile. “But honestly it’s taken a lot of trickery to get people to let me do these crazy things. It’s taken a lot of effort, but the reward is always worth it.”

Hudlin may be the nearest thing in Hollywood to a real-life Forrest Gump, given the things he’s done, the folks he’s worked with and the history he’s made. On Marvel Comics’ Black Panther graphic novel, Hudlin was the writer who repositioned the franchise as an explicit Black empowerment allegory, laying the foundation for Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster feature films. On the big screen, Hudlin has directed Eddie Murphy in Boomerang, Samuel L Jackson in The Great White Hope and Chadwick Boseman in Marshall.

Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, announces on Friday that the DoJ is releasing more documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein

• Ex-CNN anchor Don Lemon arrested on charges connected to Minnesota church protest

Among those arrested by federal agents for a protest earlier this month at a Minnesota church is Georgia Fort, an independent journalist who was covering the demonstration.

“Agents are at my door right now. They’re saying that they were able to go before a grand jury sometime, I guess, in the last 24 hours, and that they have a warrant for my arrest,” Fort said in a video posted to Facebook, apparently shortly before she was taken into custody.

This is all stemming from the fact that I filmed a protest. As a member of the media, we are supposed to have our constitutional right of the freedom to film, to be a member of the press. I don’t feel like I have my first amendment right as a member of the press, because now federal agents are at my door, arresting me for filming the church protest a few weeks ago.

Don Lemon is an accomplished journalist whose urgent work is protected by the First Amendment.

There is zero basis to arrest him and he should be freed immediately.

Capital punishment taken off table but Mangione will still face federal charges over killing of Brian Thompson

The death penalty is off the table for Luigi Mangione after a New York federal judge dismissed the charges that were eligible for capital punishment in the case accusing him of killing the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York in December 2024.

In a written court order on Friday, US district judge Margaret Garnett dismissed counts three and four against Mangione, including murder through use of a firearm, which carried a potential death sentence, and a weapons charge.

Launch of R&D centre could pave way for deal for UK’s Jaguar Land Rover to build cars for Omoda and Jaecoo owner

Chinese carmaker Chery is to open a research and development headquarters in Liverpool, in a move that could pave the way for a deal for the British manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover to build its cars.

State-owned Chery’s commercial vehicle arm will base the headquarters for its European operations on Merseyside, including research, engineering, and commercial functions.

Motorcycle-riding militants launch strikes using heavy weaponry and drones, damaging planes belonging to Ivorian carrier and Togolese airline

Islamic State in the Sahel has claimed responsibility for an audacious assault at the international airport and adjacent air force base in Niamey, the capital of Niger, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist activity and communications worldwide.

The attack, which began shortly after midnight on Thursday, reportedly involved motorcycle-riding militants who launched a “surprise and coordinated” strike using heavy weaponry and drones, according to statements released via IS in the Sahel’s propaganda arm, Amaq news agency.

• Serie A club have offered £35m for France strker

• Palace yet to firm up bid to Wolves for Strand Larsen

Oliver Glasner has said Jean-Philippe Mateta will not be in Crystal Palace’s squad to face Nottingham Forest on Sunday because the striker is “not at his best”, owing to uncertainty over his future.

Milan are understood to be hopeful of completing a deal for Mateta, having entered the race to sign him, though they have yet to reach the £40m asking price. The Italian club have offered a deal worth up to £35m for the 28-year-old, who has made no secret of his desire to leave to further his ambitions of a World Cup call-up in the summer.

Tehran’s nuclear ambitions date back to the shah and the 1970s and remains undimmed despite the damage caused by sanctions

A desperate effort to avert war between the US and Iran is once again under way, but trying to locate common ground between the two countries over Tehran’s nuclear programme has been made more difficult by escalating US demands, and by Iran’s ideological, deeply nationalist attachment to the right to enrich uranium.

Iran’s ambitions to run its own nuclear programme pre-date the arrival of the theocratic state in 1979, and can be traced back to the mid-1970s when the shah announced plans to build 20 civil nuclear power stations. This prompted an undignified scramble among western nations to be part of the action, with the UK energy secretary at the time, Tony Benn, having more than a walk-on part.

Following in a long American tradition of identifying fascists, a network of leftists has set out to name and shame Trump’s immigration agents

Last week a photographer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune filmed a border patrol agent approach a protester, lying prone in the street, and aim a canister of pepper spray at his eyes. The protester was already detained, three other agents pressing his body into the pavement, but the agent can nevertheless be seen spraying the orange chemical irritant, which causes excruciating pain, at point-blank range.

The agent probably thought he would enjoy anonymity for this bit of brutality. The federal police terrorizing Minneapolis remain largely nameless as they dole out horrifying – and in two cases, fatal – violence against anyone opposing Operation Metro Surge. But within two hours of the Star Tribune posting the footage to social media, a group called Pacific Antifascist Research Collective claimed to have identified him.

A clinical psychologist on why men still don’t seek help for their mental health

When Jake, a businessman in his 50s, first arrives at my therapy practice, it’s obvious that he has some misgivings. Jake’s marriage to Louise is in trouble, and she has insisted he come and see me. “If not for Louise, you wouldn’t be here, would you?” I enquire tentatively. He looks sheepish at first; then emboldened, he gives an emphatic “No.” As is almost always the case, Jake’s wife has registered a problem that has passed him by, and prompted his visit. Over the next few weeks, we sift through a maze of obstacles, and in the end, Jake is full of emotion: “I’m alone in the world, everyone leans on me, there’s no one for me,” he says. “There’s no one to turn to.”

It’s a common pattern, one I’ve seen throughout my 35 years as a psychologist specialising in male mental health. Men make up only 33% of referrals to NHS talking therapies. They don’t come easily, and when they do seek help in a crisis, they can disappear as suddenly as they arrive. Yet male vulnerability is clear – men report lower levels of life satisfaction than women and make up three-quarters of suicides and problems with addiction. But despite the increase in awareness around male mental health, men still tend to think there’s a stigma to speaking with a professional, even though most of those who have tried therapy have a positive experience.

Milestone appears to resolve escalating tensions over the question of Kurdish autonomy in north-east Syria

The Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces have reached an agreement to extend a fragile ceasefire into a permanent truce, laying a framework for integrating Kurdish forces into the state and ending nearly a month of fighting.

The agreement on Friday appeared to resolve escalating tensions between the two sides over the question of Kurdish autonomy in north-east Syria and paved a way for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to join Syria’s new army through negotiations, rather than battle.

• Serb keeps dream of record 25th grand slam title alive

• 38-year-old battles past world No 2 in five gripping sets

At 1.33am on Saturday morning in Melbourne, four hours and nine minutes after his night shift had begun, Novak Djokovic collapsed to the floor with his arms aloft and stared up to the skies in utter disbelief. While Djokovic would normally reserve his most exuberant celebrations for triumphant finals, in truth this result was an even greater achievement than some of his victories in majors.

The Serb is 38, an age at which most players are long finished, yet somehow he is still competing for the biggest titles. On Rod Laver Arena, the most important stage of his career, he pulled off perhaps his greatest upset, recovering from two sets to one down to topple Jannik Sinner, the two-time defending champion and second seed, 3-6, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 to return to the final of the ­Australian Open. No player in the open era has come close to achieving Djokovic’s longevity. Merely being one of the best in the world at his age is an unprecedented achievement, yet here he outplayed and outlasted one of the two dominant men in the sport, breaking a five-match losing streak against Sinner.

Starmer confirms immediate removal, but it is unclear if sanctions remain on former MP, academic and barrister

China has lifted the sanctions it imposed on serving British MPs and peers in a significant sign of warming relations after Keir Starmer travelled to Beijing for landmark talks with Xi Jinping.

Nine UK citizens were banned from China in 2021, including five Conservative MPs and two members of the House of Lords, targeted for highlighting human rights violations against the Muslim Uyghur community.

The first lady’s premiere was marked by conspicuous absences. It turns out chumminess with the president might just come at a cost

Who wasn’t on the red carpet at the official Melania documentary premiere in Washington DC was so much more intriguing than who was. No offence to defence secretary Pete Hegseth, but if I wanted to see formalwear struggling to contain Crusades tattoos, I’d hang around outside the Spartak Moscow Christmas party. Not that it was a red carpet, because the carpet at the “Trump-Kennedy” Center was black. No one bothers hiding the grift any more, with the movie’s own producer openly explaining that this aesthetic was “all about supporting this luxury brand that [Melania’s] creating”. They should have dressed the event like a colon, since Donald’s is effectively where it was being held.

Anyway: arrivals. There was Melania and Donald Trump – she finally got him out of hair and makeup – who were holding hands, a coincidentally convenient way to cover his skin if his glam squad didn’t truck in enough concealer. In recent months, Trump has had terrible bruises on the tops of his hands and even more terrible excuses for why they keep appearing. Aspirin, Swiss furniture, shaking lots of hands – the list of things that aren’t cannula sites grows longer every week.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist