Mayor was a highly visible presence during icy blizzard and, unlike some of his predecessors, seemed to get things right
Winter storms have historically been a landmine for New York City’s mayors, with every inch of snow bringing the potential for public criticism over unglamorous issues such as plow deployment and salt distribution.
There’s a long history of experienced mayors getting it wrong. But Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected New York City leader, appears to have passed his first test with flying colors.
Trump loyalists are upset the administration has blamed Pretti’s shooting on him exercising his right to carry a gun
Gun rights groups have long been among Donald Trump’s most loyal allies. But following the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the alliance is showing rare cracks.
In the days since the shooting, the movement has forcefully defended its stance that the second amendment is a means to keep Americans safe from government overreach and abuse and has stood fast in its fight to expand Americans’ right to carry concealed firearms in public and private spaces, even as Trump administration officials, and Trump himself, suggested otherwise.
(Rough Trade) The much-hyped LA singer – who has been compared to Tim Buckley, Elvis and more – certainly has a beautiful voice, though he can lean too eagerly on his influences
Scrolling back through Tyler Ballgame’s Instagram posts is a striking experience. Barely a year ago, they largely comprised flyers for – and cameraphone footage from – gigs in tiny Los Angeles bars, the kind that make as much virtue out of the fact that entry is free as of who’s playing: one bills his performance alongside a vintage clothes market and “tarot readings”. A support slot with a minor jam band called Eggy is a very big deal indeed; the news that he’s playing a show in London is greeted with disbelief: “What,” asks one baffled correspondent, “does London know of Ballgame?”
Things changed dramatically over the ensuing 12 months. Not long after his first trip to London, a video of him performing live at a Los Angeles bar called the Fable began circulating online. By the time he came back to the UK to perform at Brighton industry showcase the Great Escape, he had signed to Rough Trade. Critical hosannas began raining down on Ballgame: he has variously been compared to Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, Jim Morrison and Tim Buckley.
In the winter of despair, it was a day of the vile and a night of the obscene
It was the worst of times and then even worse; it was the age of lies and then more lies; it was an epoch of preening and cowardice. In the winter of despair, it was a day of the vile and a night of the obscene. It was a tale of two films, one featuring the stark killing of a protester on a cold Minneapolis street and the other starring Melania Trump striking poses in a “documentary” shown at a private screening at the White House.
Throughout the day of Saturday, 24 January, videos of the killing by ICE agents of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the Veterans Administration hospital, on a street in Minneapolis were broadcast endlessly on TV news channels and seen by tens of millions online. The videos clearly showed Pretti with his phone in his hand, holding his hands up as he approached ICE agents who had pepper-sprayed a woman. He was coming to her aid, a Good Samaritan. The ICE agents instantly attacked him. One frame of a video shows one agent with his gun drawn, pointed at Pretti’s back as he fell hands still in the air. Agents appear to have shot him 10 times in five seconds.
Galvan’s death was determined through a recent DNA testing of partial remains of a girl found under a bridge in Missouri City, Texas, three weeks after she disappeared at age 15, said Robyn Cory, her mother.
Makers take a stand through ‘Melt the ICE’ red knit caps and sparkly nails – all while raising funds for those affected by immigration raids
In the nine years that Gilah Mashaal has owned Needle & Skein, a yarn store in the suburbs of Minneapolis, she has tried to maintain a rule that “nobody talks politics” in the shop. But amid the weeks-long occupation of the Twin Cities by federal immigration paramilitaries, Mashaal and one of her employees decided to turn one of their weekly knit-alongs into a “protest stitch-along”.
They didn’t want to return to the “pussy hats” that symbolized women’s resistance to Donald Trump in 2016, so Paul, their employee, did some research and came back with a proposal: a red knit hat inspired by the topplue or nisselue (woolen caps), worn by Norwegians during the second world war to signify their resistance to the Nazi occupation.
Source says two aircraft on ground ‘destroyed’ although authorities yet to comment on situation
Gunfire and loud blasts have been heard at the main airport in the Nigerien capital of Niamey, according to the Reuters news agency and an independent source.
A witness told Reuters they heard explosions just after midnight. The airport is next to Base Aérienne 101, a military base previously used by American and then Russian troops.
Holburne Museum, Bath The feted photographer’s latest exhibition starts with images of ancient scultures depicting devotion and violence, before moving to war pictures and brooding Somerset landscapes
Few people have seen as much horror as Don McCullin. The feted photographer, now 90, witnessed major conflicts and disasters up close for decades. You can only imagine, through his widely published black and white pictures, how that might have affected him.
McCullin’s latest exhibition, Broken Beauty at the Holburne Museum in Bath, begins with four recent pictures of ruined Roman sculptures. These images – the white ruins photographed against black backgrounds so they float – are reminiscent at first of museum postcards, representations of representations that refer to ancient history and myths of fatal ambition, desire and domination. There’s a crouching Venus, her arms missing and head half-shattered. A hermaphrodite struggles to get away from a lascivious satyr. A headless Amazon and the Roman emperor Commodus, known for his uninhibited cruelty, are fighting on horseback. Their pockmarked surfaces and broken limbs suggest the collapse of the great empires, the fragility of ideals that are obliterated by time, like marble.
Channel 4’s baffling documentary consists of a lorryload of content creators flapping their hands while providing no new information or insight. A triumph of noise for noise’s sake
By now, the fallout from Brooklyn Beckham’s Instagram broadside against his parents has reached a point of total saturation. There have been news reports, memes, obsessive TikTok deep dives and newspaper thinkpieces covering the story from every conceivable angle. “Brooklyn Beckham is doing his best” said the New York Times. “It’s time to believe adult children when they speak out against their toxic parents,” said BuzzFeed. “The Beckham family feud is every mother’s worst nightmare,” said the Independent. And on it went.
So you have to respect Channel 4 for gazing out across this exhausting event horizon of a story and identifying a gap in the market. Until now, nobody has managed to turn the Beckham family drama into a shrill 30-minute primetime documentary where a lorryload of content creators flap their hands while providing no new information or insight. Thanks to Beckham: Family at War, that gap has been filled. Congratulations, everyone.
Ocado has revealed its Canadian partner is closing a warehouse that uses its robots and automation technology in another blow to the UK online delivery group’s business model. Shares in Ocado dived almost 10% on Thursday after it announced that Sobeys would be shutting the Calgary facility, saying it was “largely due to the Alberta grocery e-commerce market’s size and the rate of expansion being slower than originally anticipated”.
The decision came less than three months after Ocado’s US partner Kroger closed three warehouses, knocking almost a fifth off the UK company’s value.
Major powers have renewed diplomatic links while others seek deals to deport migrants. And all the while gender repression is getting worse
Afghanistan’s Taliban government has now issued its most extreme edict yet. It is already the only regime in the world where girls are excluded from secondary education. Now it has gone further, debarring all Afghan women from any contact with schools or education and doubling down on what has been rightly condemned as “gender apartheid”.
This latest wave of repression, which is likely to be classified by United Nations legal authorities as a crime against humanity, marks the victory of the extreme Kandahar clerical faction over Kabul-based government ministers. It is also the latest step in the plan of supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada to erase girls and women from public life.
Gordon Brown is the UN’s special envoy for global education and was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010
Analysis finds at least 150 channels on messaging app that are distributing AI-generated images and video
Millions of people around the world are creating and sharing deepfake nudes on the secure messaging app Telegram, a Guardian analysis has shown, as the spread of advanced AI tools industrialises the online abuse of women.
The Guardian has identified at least 150 Telegram channels – large encrypted group chats popular for their secure communication – that appear to have users in many countries, from the UK to Brazil, China to Nigeria, Russia to India. Some of them offer “nudified” photos or videos for a fee: users can upload a photo of any woman, and AI will produce a video of that woman performing sexual acts. Many more offer a feed of images – of celebrities, social media influencers and ordinary women – made nude or made to perform sexual acts by AI. Followers are also using the channels to share tips on available deepfake tools.
Cheers erupt at each killing blow in an arena facing extinction after a landmark court ruling
On the outskirts of Cartagena – far from the brightly coloured facades of the old city and the 500-year-old fortress walls overlooking the Caribbean – a crowd of about 300 people erupted into a roar. Given Colombians’ passion for football, it could have been the celebration of a goal.
But the cheers followed the bloody climax of bout in a cockfighting ring whose white padded walls were now splattered with blood.
Despite no criminal charges being brought against them, four officers have been detained since the MV Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge, killing six workers
Several crew members of a ship that collided with a bridge in Baltimore almost two years ago are still being held in the US by federal authorities despite the fact that no criminal charges have been brought against them.
In the early hours of 26 March 2024, the MV Dali departed the port of Baltimore bound for Sri Lanka. While navigating the Fort McHenry channel, the 1,000ft-long Singapore-flagged cargo vessel lost power before striking the bridge. The impact resulted in the deaths of six people who were working on the bridge at the time.
As senators refuse to fund Trump’s immigration crackdown, a partial shutdown is likely. For Democrats, it’s the right move
Shut it down!
It took not one but two killings of unarmed white American citizens by immigration enforcement agents for the Democrats to commit to withholding funds from the Department of Homeland Security, the agency of which Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the border patrol – the killers – are part.
Projects this year expected to triple global gas capacity, forecast finds, as concerns grow over impacts on planet
The US is leading a huge global surge in new gas-fired power generation that will cause a major leap in planet-heating emissions, with this record boom driven by the expansion of energy-hungry datacenters to service artificial intelligence, according to a new forecast.
This year is set to shatter the annual record for new gas power additions around the world, with planned and under-construction projects earmarked for 2026 set to nearly triple the amount of existing gas capacity, a report by Global Energy Monitor (GEM) found.
The UK could introduce a universal basic income (UBI) to protect workers in industries that are being disrupted by AI, the investment minister Jason Stockwood has said.
“Bumpy” changes to society caused by the introduction of the technology would mean there would have to be “some sort of concessionary arrangement with jobs that go immediately”, Lord Stockwood said.
You can’t argue with Svitolina’s run to the last four. She’s beaten Shnaider, Andreeva and Gauff – who, admittedly, had her absolute worst day – without losing a set, won in Auckland before that, and won’t ever have felt better about her game. I’m excited to see what her plan is, because we can be sure she’ll have one.
People who knew Pretti describe him as ‘generous with his time’ and denounce the Trump administration’s assessment of him
Travis Vanden Heuvel had been following the recent news out of Minnesota for weeks. On Saturday morning, like many others, he saw video clips of the second fatal shooting by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis this month.
But the story became personal later that day. That afternoon, Vanden Heuvel’s former choir director reached out to tell him that the man who had been shot was Alex Pretti – a childhood friend with whom he had been in choir.
Have you even started the new year if you haven’t thought about having a wardrobe clearout? A recent trip to my local supermarket suggests that residents of my home town have been doing just that in their droves, with textile recycling bins overflowing on to the pavements. And we may think donating our unwanted clothes does us a favour while helping out someone else and potentially the environment, but there’s a chance we could be doing the exact opposite.
“Because our clothing is so overproduced in such large quantities, when you donate to charity, often it’s not getting resold,” says Aja Barber, author of the book Consumed. And she warns that much of our donated clothing won’t end up in the well-intended places we had hoped it would. “[It] will most likely end up in landfill or be exported in the waste colonialism chain, which means our excess volumes end up in countries like Ghana, Kenya and Uganda. It’s a business, but when a lot of the clothing is trash to begin with, sadly it creates a lot of pollution.”
While the desperation to keep Trinity Rodman is understandable, tweaking the salary cap could be a big mistake
Perhaps it was all worth it in the end. As a tearful Trinity Rodman signs the most lucrative contract in the history of women’s football – flanked by the Washington Spirit owner, Michele Kang, and a young fan called Emma in pink braids – the internet is already burning white hot. The podcasters will feast for days. After months of bungling US soccer finally has its money shot and, in more ways than one, the numbers are going to be stratospheric.
But then Rodman has always been an effortless creator of content: a true footballer for the TikTok generation. From the spectacular strikes to the famous Trin Spin, from the vivid streaks in her hair to the viral goal celebrations, Rodman’s ability to convey the joy of the game in snackable morsels is the root of her appeal. Aged 23 she already has an Olympic gold medal and 49 international caps, to which she can now add a £1.5m-a-year deal and her very own rule.
Under Donald Trump, the White House has filled its social media with memes, wishcasting, nostalgia and deepfakes. Here’s what you need to know to navigate the trolling
It started with an image of Trump as a king mocked up on a fake Time magazine cover. Since then it’s developed into a full-blown phenomenon, one academics are calling “slopaganda” – an unholy alliance of easily available AI tools and political messaging. “Shitposting”, the publishing of deliberately crude, offensive content online to provoke a reaction, has reached the level of “institutional shitposting”, according to Know Your Meme’s editor Don Caldwell. This is trolling as official government communication. And nobody is more skilled at it than the Trump administration – a government that has not only allowed the AI industry all the regulative freedom it desires, but has embraced the technology for its own in-house purposes. Here are 10 of the most significant fake images the White House has put out so far.
Kaja Kallas also played down the idea of ‘a European army’ saying that it remained to be a domain for national authorities
EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos also strongly criticised Russia for its continuing attacks on Ukraine.
Arriving for the EU foreign affairs council this morning, she said:
“The news we are getting from Ukraine nearly every morning are horrific. What Russia is doing. There is a state terror. It’s far beyond the war [as] they are bombing people while they are at home, freezing to death, [and] bombing passenger trains …”
“I can’t speak about the years; [as] I was saying there is some level of fundamentals which have to be fulfilled. But of course, we also have to consider the very important historical moments. So we will discuss with the member states how to bridge the time we need for the accession process, and of course, to react to this situation.”
“We will work until the end to get the unanimity we need for this process. This is the only way we have to keep going, working also with the Hungary, and this is what we are doing.”
“After more than a decade of hostilities and almost four years of full-scale war, the people of Ukraine continue to endure immense suffering. Daily civilian casualties, widespread infrastructure destruction, and mass displacement are further exacerbating the massive humanitarian needs.
With Russia’s ongoing attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, millions in the country are exposed to freezing temperatures.”
Wolves are braced for a bid totalling £50m for Jørgen Strand Larsen from Crystal Palace. The Norway striker is expected to exit in this window, and Palace are in advanced discussions to sign him.
The agent Jorge Mendes is leading negotiations on behalf of Wolves, with an initial £45m, plus £5m in add-ons, mooted. It remains to be seen whether rivals would move to match or exceed that offer; Leeds are viewed as the most serious competition but Palace are in pole position.
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