Former NBC sports reporter Michele Tafoya launched Republican Senate campaign in Minnesota, seeking to flip an open Democrat-held seat in November's elections.
Scott Bessent replied to a question on Danish investments by saying that ‘Denmark’s investment in US treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant’
Former Nato secretary general and former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned that the “time of flattery has ended” as Europe needs to step up its response to Trump’s threats over Greenland – but still look for off-ramps to avoid escalation whereever possible.
Speaking to BBC News this morning, he warned that a US attack on Greenland “would be the end of Nato,” and push Europeans to urgently step up its defence in its own right, regardless of the US.
“I think those three areas would accommodate the concerns of President Trump.”
“Time has come to stand up against Trump.”
“So I think that we should solve this problem in a diplomatic way. Of course, I appreciate Denmark’s voice, … it’s our partner, but I’m looking at the Greenland as a strategic point in a [broader] geopolitical issue between the free world of democracies … and Russia.”
The chancellor said Starmer was focused on trying to ‘de-escalate and get the best deal for Britain’
Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, was doing a media round this morning to promote the government’s £15bn warm homes plan. Fiona Harvey and Jillian Ambrose have the story here.
We face two major challenges: a cost of living crisis holding the economy back, and decarbonising in an uncertain world. The warm homes plan is an important moment because the £15 billion package makes progress on both.
The plan helps fight fuel poverty and cut bills, while contributing toward net zero. It is the type of action, uniting affordability with climate ambition, that we need to see more of to deliver genuine economic and geopolitical security.
The UK has some of the highest energy bills and least efficient housing in Europe, so warm homes plan that tackles both is something this government absolutely has to get right. This is an important step in that direction.
The government is rightly moving away from a myopic focus on insulation. Funding has been extended to low-carbon technologies like heat pumps, solar panels, and batteries, which have the potential to cut bills and emissions faster, with far less disruption for households. But more grant funding is still needed – not just loans – to ensure that the benefits of solar panels and battery storage reach fuel-poor households, where they will make the most impact.
Israeli prime minister accepts position on US-proposed body with initial remit to oversee Gaza ceasefire
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Wednesday that he had agreed to join a US-backed “board of peace” proposed by Donald Trump, despite his office having earlier criticised the composition of its executive committee.
The body, chaired by the US president, was initially presented as a limited forum of world leaders tasked with overseeing a ceasefire in Gaza. More recently, however, the initiative appears to have expanded well beyond that remit, with the Trump camp extending invitations to dozens of countries and suggesting the board could evolve into a vehicle for brokering conflicts far beyond the Middle East.
The arrest of Frenchie Mae Cumpio has been described as a ‘travesty of justice’. On Thursday a court will deliver its verdict, potentially sentencing her to 40 years in prison for alleged terrorism
For weeks before the police came for her, Frenchie Mae Cumpio had noticed odd incidents. The Filipino journalist – just 21 years old but already hosting a radio show and working as executive director of a local news website – told colleagues that a stranger had begun turning up and asking after her at the boarding house where she lived. She was sent a bouquet of flowers designed for a grave. She reported that two men had been following her on a motorcycle.
Cumpio believed it was deliberate intimidation. She had recently published a series of reports after visiting poor rural farmers who said they were being harassed by army units in the region.
Developments in Minnesota closely mirror a scenario explored in a 2024 exercise conducted at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, which I direct
In just the past week, ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, shortly after she returned from dropping her child off at school. They blinded two protesters by shooting them in the face with so-called “less deadly” weapons. They fired teargas bombs around the car of a family carrying six children, sending one child to the emergency room with breathing problems. They violently dragged a woman out of her car and on to the ground screaming. They have shot protesters in the legs. They have forcibly taken thousands of individuals to detention facilities, separating families and casting people into legal limbo – often without regard to their legal status.
Claire Finkelstein is the Algernon Biddle professor of law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She is also the founder and faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center
We had a mass snowball fight and a disco, and I slept in a room full of drunk men with wet socks. It was fun, but in future snowstorms I won’t be rushing to the pub
In all my years of reporting, nothing seems to fascinate people more than the four days I spent snowed in at Britain’s highest pub last year. It was early January and the Met Office had issued severe warnings for snow. It dawned on me that people were about to live out a British fantasy of being snowed in at their local pub. I knew where I needed to be: The Tan Hill Inn, high up in the wilderness on the very northern edge of the Yorkshire Dales national park.
Our nation’s fascination with rubbish knows no bounds – as was proved by one recent online debate
Even if you’ve never been anywhere near it, the Mumsnet message board is legendary. Since it launched in 2000, it has changed the vernacular – “am I being unreasonable?” is not just a question, it’s a shorthand for the type of person who asks it – and introduced us to the penis beaker (one maverick husband’s postcoital hygiene regime, made infamous). It’s a screenshot of society, a cultural thermometer; if it’s happening on Mumsnet, it’s big news. And one of the most popular recent threads is about bins.
The post that kicked it off was written by a woman who lived opposite an empty house where tenants had moved out. The landlord popped round late at night to drag the bins out for collection, and the next morning, at 6.45am, she could hear the lorry approaching. The coast was clear, and she still had a backlog of rubbish from Christmas. Deciding it was a victimless crime, she slipped one of her bags in their bin, which easily had room. Enterprising? Without a doubt. Moral, though?
As lottery picks and MVP candidates pile up, North Texas is emerging as one of the NBA’s most fertile talent pipelines
Another season, another name, another kid from Dallas. At street level, the city appears to be like any other – yet it continues to produce league-shaping NBA players. The main highway through Dallas cleaves down the middle of Texas. Taking it south brings you closer to the center of the state’s basketball talent pool. The road slopes downward as the city’s cosmopolitan polish thins out, neighborhoods split cleanly from downtown by sun-baked concrete and beige. Pink, green, and blue houses sit behind chain link fences, where yards are scoured down to dirt. Auto mechanic shops line the frontage roads with open bays and hand-painted signs peeling in the sun. Farther south, the road dips again, and space opens up to the heart of the story.
The world needs global leaders to clearly and firmly denounce the havoc Trump is wreaking on the US and international order
Hundreds of global CEOs, finance titans, and more than 60 prime ministers and presidents are in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual confab of the world’s powerful and wealthy: the World Economic Forum.
This year’s Davos meeting occurs at a time when Donald Trump is not just unleashing his brownshirts on Minneapolis and other American cities, but also dismantling the international order that’s largely been in place since the end of the second world war – threatening Nato, withdrawing from international organizations including the UN climate treaty, violating the UN charter by invading Venezuela and abducting Nicolás Maduro, upending established trade rules, and demanding that the US annex Greenland.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now
LIV rebels are appealing against DP World Tour sanctions
Forthright McIlroy wants duo to show their commitment
Rory McIlroy has challenged Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm to demonstrate their commitment to the Ryder Cup cause by settling fines for their LIV Golf participation.
McIlroy pointed towards motivation used by Europe during victory at Bethpage last September after it emerged the United States players were paid to play in the Ryder Cup.
Lawyers for Prince Harry previously laid out 14 articles about him they allege were secured using unlawful information-gathering by Associated Newspapers
The Duke of Sussex believes he has faced a “sustained campaign” of attacks for having “the temerity to stand up” to the publisher of the Daily Mail, the high court heard on Tuesday.
Lawyers for Prince Harry made the claim as they set out 14 articles about him they allege were secured using unlawful information-gathering by Associated Newspapers Ltd, which publishes the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.
At the Shed in New York, attendees wearing enhanced glasses are witnessing an experimental new play where actors appear in video form
You sit in a circle at the Shed, the cultural center in Manhattan’s futuristic Hudson Yards, waiting for the show to begin. Through your enhanced glasses, you see four empty chairs facing you, just out of reach. You watch strangers look out for the actors to arrive. As they do, one at a time, you feel unsettled – each locks eyes with you, specifically. “Don’t panic,” the esteemed British actor Ian McKellen assures you, as the actors take their seats.
Except the actors are not there, really – McKellen, along with co-stars Golda Rosheuvel, Arinzé Kene and Rosie Sheehy, appears in An Ark, a new play at the Shed, in video form, a nearly opaque specter overlaid on the candy-apple red carpeting and crisp white walls of the theater and the outlines of your 180 or so fellow audience members. The experimental new play, written almost entirely in the second person by Simon Stephens (whose most recent show, the Andrew Scott-starring Vanya, wowed audiences at the Lucille Lortel theater last year), is one of the first so-called “mixed reality” shows staged in New York, blending physical experience with digital elements. Over 47 minutes, the actors address you, the viewer, directly. Their gaze remains trained on you. Don’t panic, they repeatedly assure. (Though due to some technical malfunctions at the preview I attended, there was some panicking.)
Our passion for these cute-looking salamanders means they are everywhere – except in the wild, where the species is under increasing threat
Axolotls are the new llamas. Which were, of course, the new unicorns. Which triggered a moment for narwhals. If you are an unusual-looking animal, this is your time. Even humans who have never seen an axolotl – a type of salamander – in the smooth and slimy flesh will have met a cartoon or cuddly one. Mexican axolotls have the kind of look that is made for commercial reproduction. The most popular domestic species is pink. Some glow in the dark – and their smile is bigger than Walter’s in the Muppets.
At Argos or Kmart, you can buy axolotls as cuddly toys, featured on socks, hoodies and bedding, or moulded into nightlights. You can crochet an axolotl, stick a rubber one on the end of your pencil or wear them on your underpants. The Economist says they’re a “global megastar”. More than 1,000 axolotl-themed products are listed on Walmart’s website. They grace US Girl Scouts patches, McDonald’s Happy Meals, and the 50-peso bill, a design so popular that, last year, the Bank of Mexico reported that 12.9 million people were hoarding the notes.
Ma de la Luz Mejia Rosas became unresponsive after riding Revenge of the Mummy on Nov. 25 and reportedly died two weeks later from a ruptured aneurysm.
“Members Only: Palm Beach” star Ro-Mina Ustayev stopped by the Page Six studio to chat with “Virtual Reali-Tea” co-hosts Danny Murphy and Evan Real about her reality TV debut on the Netflix show. She discussed her feuds, her polarizing fashion sense and more with us. Plus, Ro-Mina responded to Bethenny Frankel’s viral “Walmart Birkin” comparison...
Apparent move follows withdrawal of Kurdish forces from al-Hawl, where about 24,000 people are detained
Syria’s army has reportedly entered the country’s vast al-Hawl detention camp that houses relatives of suspected Islamic State jihadists, after Kurdish forces withdrew.
A large group of soldiers opened the camp’s metal gate and entered while others guarded the entrance, according to an Agence France-Presse journalist at the scene.
Nigel Farage has apologised for 17 breaches of the MPs’ code of conduct after failing to declare £380,000 of income on time, saying he is an “oddball” who does not do computers.
The Reform UK leader and MP for Clacton said he had relied on a senior member of staff to submit his income to the register of interests and had been let down, but he took full responsibility for the error.
Lindsey Halligan, who as a top Justice Department prosecutor pursued indictments against a pair of President Donald Trump’s adversaries, is leaving her position as her months-long tenure has now concluded, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday night.
Manchester United transfer gossip abounds once more, Mikel Oyarzabal the latest striker in their sights. They had their people in Spain at the weekend watching Real Sociedad’s win over Barcelona, and though they were also there to check on Marcus Rashford – who they apparently want back in the summer – La Real’s Spain forward is reportedly very much on their radar. Oyarzabal, 28, has a €75m (£65m) release clause, mind, and a summer swoop might be more likely than a move now.
Another United target is Rúben Neves, though they may face stern competition for the midfielder from Real Madrid. Neves is in the final six months of his contract with Al-Hilal in Saudi Arabia and is thought to be keen on a move back to Europe. Meanwhile the latest rumoured contenders for the permanent manager’s gig at Old Trafford include Frank Lampard of Championship table-toppers Coventry, Getafe’s José Bordalás and the Rayo Vallecano manager, Iñigo Pérez.
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