Wu-Tang members pay tribute to Grant with GZA saying ‘His passing is a profound loss’ and Method Man posting ‘I am not okay’
Oliver “Power” Grant, a close affiliate and early backer of the hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan who had a hand in many of the group’s albums and business ventures, has died aged 52.
The death was confirmed by Wu-Tang Clan. “Rest in power, Power,” the collective wrote on social media. A cause of death was not revealed.
Defence minister says pace has already increased but more nets needed amid Russian attacks; Zelenskyy says Ukrainian delegation to meet Trump envoys. What we know on day 1,464
Ukraine will speed up the placement of anti-drone nets over roads in frontline areas, aiming to cover 4,000km of roads by the end of this year, the defence minister has said. A growing number of nets have been installed over the past year but more were needed, Mykhailo Fedorov said, adding that an additional 1.6bn hryvnias ($37m) had been allocated from the budget to bolster protection measures and counter Russian drones. Moscow has been targeting military supply routes and rear bases deeper and deeper into Ukraine with the remotely piloted aircraft and drones have also struck hospitals, infrastructure and civilian traffic. Nets can snag propellers and prevent drones from reaching their targets. “In just one month, we increased the speed [of coverage] from 5km per day in January to 12km in February,” Fedorov said on Telegram on Wednesday. “This significantly improved the safety of military movements and ensured stable functioning of frontline communities. In March, we plan to close 20km of roads per day.”
A Ukrainian delegation will meet Donald Trump’s envoys on Thursday in the run-up to another round of trilateral talks with Russia, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, is due to hold talks with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Geneva, the Ukrainian president told reporters on Wednesday. Thursday’s meeting will include addressing details of a possible postwar recovery plan for Ukraine, Zelenskyy said, adding that he had also tasked Umerov with discussing a possible prisoner exchange. Ukraine expected the US-brokered talks with Russia to take place next week, Zelenskyy said. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s economic affairs envoy Kirill Dmitriev planned to travel to Geneva on Thursday to meet US negotiators for talks, the Russian state news agency Tass reported. A US push for peace has already brought Russia and Ukraine to the table in Abu Dhabi and Geneva this year but the talks produced no breakthrough as the war enters its fifth year.
Repairs to the Druzhba pipeline that carries Russian oil to eastern Europe cannot be completed quickly despite requests from the EU and protests by Hungary, Zelenskyy said on Wednesday. “Firstly, it’s not that fast,” he told reporters, adding that Russian strikes had destroyed the pipeline linking the Black Sea port of Odesa with Druzhba. “This is not their first strike, and they continue to hit the energy sector.” Shipments of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia have been cut off since 27 January, when Kyiv says a Russian strike hit pipeline equipment in western Ukraine, and Slovakia and Hungary say Ukraine is to blame for the prolonged outage. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said during a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday to mark the war’s fourth anniversary that the EU was asking Ukraine to speed up repairs. Zelenskyy said: “They advise us to repair it, but they know that there have already been attacks on Druzhba. Our people were injured so that it would work.”
The first Ukrainian drone production plant has started its operations in Britain, Ukraine’s ambassador said on Wednesday. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, a former commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, said the producer, Ukrspecsystems, founded in 2014, had proved the efficiency of its drones on the frontline. “Ukraine is fighting a war amid constant missile strikes, infrastructure destruction and threats to production facilities,” he said on Telegram. “Therefore, the launch of production in the UK has a deep strategic logic.”
Switzerland’s government announced that the purchase and import of Russian liquefied natural gas would be completely banned from 25 April, as the country aligns itself with the latest round of EU sanctions. It added that in the case of pre-existing long-term supply contracts, a transition period would apply until the end of the year.
In an interview with People magazine before the release of her memoir, the 54-year-old actor said she spends a lot of her days in bed due to the pain that comes with movement.
The Guardian will run an extract from Christina Applegate’s memoir, You With the Sad Eyes, on 28 February
Vice-president makes announcement with Mehmet Oz, who says other states will be next after Minnesota
JD Vance announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration would “temporarily halt” more than a quarter-billion dollars in Medicaid reimbursements to the state of Minnesota, escalating Donald Trump’s newly announced “war on fraud”.
Vance said the action was to ensure Minnesota was “a good steward of the American people’s tax money”, part of its crackdown on the state following a fraud scandal linked to residents of the Somali community in Minneapolis, which prompted the administration to send thousands of federal immigration agents into Minneapolis and that resulted in the deaths of two US citizens and widespread protests.
Hospitals that cause harm and injury to women and babies during childbirth often resort to a “cover-up” of their mistakes, falsify medical records and deny bereaved parents answers, a damning report has found.
“Negligent” care has devastating emotional and psychological consequences for families, disputes between maternity staff have a “disastrous” impact on mothers, and ethnic minority and poorer women have worse outcomes because of racism and discrimination, Lady Amos said.
Banning families from being involved in investigations into the mistakes they encountered.
Conducting inquiries into errors which families think are poor quality and do not properly reflect what occurred.
Driving distressed families to instigate legal action as a way of getting at the truth after they were “denied openness and honesty in the aftermath of harm and bereavement”.
Failing to treat families who have lost a baby with compassion.
Supa Nova by Chanté Timothy, a graphic novel about a young Black girl with a love for science, won the children’s fiction category and inaugural children’s choice prize
Six female authors have been crowned winners of the 2026 Inclusive Books for Children (IBC) awards.
The literacy charity’s prizes celebrate the best UK-published inclusive titles for children aged one to nine. This year marks the second time that all the winners have been women since the prizes were launched in 2023.
Killing of Ruben Ray Martinez on 15 March 2025 in Texas was not disclosed by the department until media reported it
A grand jury on Wednesday rejected indictments over the fatal shooting last year of a US citizen by a federal immigration agent during a traffic encounter in Texas, prosecutors said.
The shooting of Ruben Ray Martinez on 15 March 2025 by a Homeland Security investigations agent wasn’t publicly disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security until the Associated Press and other media outlets reported it last week.
Millwall beat Birmingham to keep up promotion push
Coventry extended their lead at the top of the Championship to five points after coming from behind to win 2-1 at Sheffield United, while Millwall went third by beating Birmingham City 3-0 on Wednesday.
After a run of two wins in eight games caused Frank Lampard’s men to blow a comfortable advantage in the race for promotion to the Premier League, Coventry have bounced back with three consecutive wins.
Vinícius Júnior ran to the corner and danced again, just as he had done in Lisbon a week ago, but this time all around him there was celebration. There was also relief. With 10 minutes left on a nervous night at the Santiago Bernabéu, he had been set free to put the ball past Anatoliy Trubin and Real Madrid into the last 16 of the Champions League.
Victory was his, 2-1 here, 3-1 on aggregate and well beyond that too, so he set off and shook his hips before the flag the same way he had eight days earlier, fans released from their fears, applauding, a point proved and passage secured. “I’m happy for him: he deserved it,” the Real head coach, Álvaro Arbeloa, said.
Federal officials search district chief Alberto Carvalho’s home, but allegations being examined remain unclear
The FBI raided the headquarters of the Los Angeles unified school district, the second largest school district in the US, as well as the home of Alberto Carvalho, the district’s superintendent, federal officials confirmed on Wednesday.
An unnamed source familiar with the investigation told the Associated Press that authorities served warrants that were part of an “ongoing investigation”.
Chipmaker’s quarterly earnings surpassed Wall Street’s expectations every quarter for multiple years now
Nvidia released its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, with the chipmaker revealing higher than expected revenues and extending its yearslong streak of surpassing Wall Street’s sky-high expectations.
The company receives the vast majority of its revenue from its data center business, which has been buoyed by the tech industry’s immense investment into AI infrastructure. On Wednesday, Nvidia reported 75% year-over-year growth of this vertical to $62.3bn. The world’s most valuable publicly traded company, Nvidia has dominated the chip market as its processing units have become the backbone of the artificial intelligence boom. The company also posted an enormous total profit for the fiscal year: $120bn.
Trump quipped about inviting US women to White House
Knight says there is respect and support with men’s team
Hilary Knight, the captain of the US women’s ice hockey team, has responded to comments made by Donald Trump after the Americans won gold at the Winter Olympics, calling the president’s quip a “distasteful joke”.
After the US men’s ice hockey team won gold on Sunday, Trump called into the locker-room celebration and invited the players to be his guests at Tuesday’s State of the Union address.
Department commissioner will be Erin Dalton, who conducted outreach in Pennsylvania among unhoused communities
Zohran Mamdani, New York’s mayor, has hired Erin Dalton as a new commissioner of the city’s department of social services.
The hire comes as the new mayor has faced scrutiny over the city’s handling of its unhoused population following the deaths of at least 20 people who were found outdoors during an especially cold winter.
Rare clash off island’s coast took place amid oil embargo and heightened tensions between two countries
Cuba’s government claims it thwarted an attempt by gunmen to infiltrate from the US, after its coastguard fired on a Florida-registered speedboat in an exchange of fire near its shores, killing four people and wounding six.
The interior ministry claimed people arrested after the firefight on Wednesday said they “intended to carry out an infiltration for the purposes of terrorism”.
Axon sees ‘major opportunities’ as Congress proposes $20m for ICE body cameras but data privacy experts warn of risks
The largest body-camera maker in the US celebrated its latest financial results on Tuesday – reporting record revenue and forecasting major growth – as it prepares to cash in on the Department of Homeland Security’s planned rapid acquisition and deployment of these devices nationwide.
In Tuesday’s earnings presentation, body-camera maker Axon, which also makes the well-known Taser device, announced that it blew past Wall Street expectations with $797m in revenue, up 39% year-over-year.
Saffery Champness alleged to have been auditor for Sale
Saracens were fined £5.36m and relegated in 2020
Saracens will consider their position over an alleged undeclared conflict of interest at the centre of the disciplinary process into the 2019 salary cap scandal. The club were fined an unprecedented £5.36m for salary cap breaches over the previous three seasons and were relegated to the Championship, but the punishment has come under fresh scrutiny with these new allegations.
Saracens point to an allegation made about the accounting firm Saffery Champness and claims that the level of fine handed down was “largely based upon advice provided to PRL”.
Antonio Tejero, who has died aged 93, was part of rightwing network whose efforts were thwarted by King Juan Carlos
The Spanish officer who led his armed followers into the Spanish congress in a failed military coup in 1981 has died on the same day that the socialist-led government declassified documents relating to the murky attempt to overthrow the country’s post-Franco democracy.
Antonio Tejero, who died aged 93, was part of a network of rightwing police and military officers whose efforts to seize power were thwarted after King Juan Carlos refused to support the coup and ordered the generals to obey the democratic constitutional order.
Larry Summers, former president of Harvard University, will resign from teaching at the end of the academic year, a spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian.
The news of his formal resignation comes “in connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government”, a Harvard spokesperson, Jason Newton, said in a statement.
The State of the Union address has been in decline for decade as a TV spectacle, and Trump probably hastened that trend
In fulfillment of clause 1 of section 3 in article II of the US constitution, Donald Trump duly gave Congress “Information of the State of the Union” last night.
Information … and more information. At an hour and 47 minutes, this was the longest State of the Union address in history. As he has so often done in the past, Trump bobbed and weaved impressively (“the weave” is his own term for his meandering speaking style). He zigged and zagged, taunting Democrats for much of the speech (he called Zohran Mamdani a “communist” and took pot shots at Democrats throughout the night), while claiming to be a unifier when the mood struck.
Israel welcomes move described by Palestinian Authority as undermining possibility of an independent state
The US will provide on-site consular services in two Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank for the first time, breaking with previous policy, in a move that has been criticised by Palestinian officials as “a clear violation of international law”.
In a post on X, the US embassy in Jerusalem said that as part of an initiative to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence, it would provide Americans with routine passport services in the West Bank settlement of Efrat on Friday “for one day only”.
Democrats accuse president’s address of litany of lies as Republicans hail his bullish claims about year back in office
Congressional Democrats lined up on Tuesday night to call Donald Trump a liar and Republicans said America had never been greater. The country’s longest-ever State of the Union address had ended, and the two parties had, again, watched entirely different speeches.
Trump’s address ran for nearly two hours, with the president touching on tariffs, border security, military recruitment and energy production, among other topics. He told the country the economy was booming, inflation was under control and a golden age was at hand, but Democrats were not persuaded.
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