Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Mike Pompeo urged countries to disconnect from Maduro’s government financially as Britain issued eight-day ultimatum
Britain has issued the embattled Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, a stark ultimatum, warning him it would throw its weight behind the country’s self-declared interim leader unless he called an election within the next eight days – as the US government called on the world to “pick a side” in the crisis.
Echoing calls from Berlin, Paris and Madrid, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, said on Saturday it was clear Maduro was no longer the legitimate leader of the Latin American country after last year’s “deeply flawed” election.
Measure will fund government for three weeks after US economy lost more than the $5.7bn funding president requested for wall
Donald Trump has signed legislation to end temporarilythe longest-ever partial shutdown of the US government, which has left hundreds of thousands of federal employees without pay for more than a month.
The US economy lost $6bn during the month-plus hiatus because of lost productivity and business, according to a finance industry estimate – more than the $5.7bn of taxpayer funding the president demanded for his long-promised wall along the US-Mexico border but failed to get Congress to agree to.
Insurgents demonstrate their commitment by naming top commander as chief negotiator
Taliban and US negotiators have reportedly agreed parts of a potential peace deal a day after the Afghan insurgents signalled their commitment to talks by naming one of their most senior commanders as chief negotiator.
News of progress in the Qatar talks, and the appointment of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, appeared to offer for the first time in nearly two decades a glimmer of real hope for a path to peace in Afghanistan.
British newspaper pulls article peppered with false claims about US first lady from its site
The Daily Telegraph has paid “substantial damages” to Melania Trump and apologised “unreservedly” to the US first lady after making a number of false claims about her life in an article.
The claims were made in a story entitled The mystery of Melania, which ran on the cover of last Saturday’s Telegraph magazine, but the newspaper has now said it included a number of errors about Donald Trump’s wife which should not have been published.
The piece promised to tell the truth on what it described as the “most private and enigmatic” of presidential wives after interviews with “White House insiders, Slovenian school friends and photographers”.
‘Prominent woman says curse word’ has become a news genre unto itself – just ask Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Rashida Tlaib
I’m going to let you in on a shocking secret: sometimes women swear. Here’s another revelation: there is generally nothing newsworthy about a woman swearing. I am eager to emphasize this because you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise: “Prominent woman says curse word” is a highly popular, highly sexist, news genre. Just look at the recent headlines about the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Modern life has led to greater isolation, which can fuel an array of disorders. If there are medications for social pains like depression and anxiety, why not loneliness?
Loneliness is part of the human condition. A primeval warning sign, like hunger or thirst, to seek out a primary resource: connection. Millions of years of evolution have shaped us into creatures who need social bonds in the same way that we need food and water.
And yet we increasingly find ourselves isolated. Loneliness is no longer a powerful enough driver to break us out of the silos created by modern life. Like our insatiable love of high-calorie foods, what was once an adaptive tool has become so misaligned with the way we live that it’s causing, in the words of the former surgeon general Vivek H Murthy, an “epidemic”.
The blase attitude of Trump administration officials is a world away from the experience of federal employees – who fear a repeat in three weeks’ time
Even as he announced an end to the longest government shutdown in US history, Donald Trump warned that a new shutdown could begin in just three weeks “if we don’t get a fair deal from Congress”.
That threat meant that clouds of uncertainty still remain in place for hundreds of thousands of government workers and unknown others whose lives were interrupted or derailed by a shutdown precipitated and prolonged by the president’s demand for a border wall, which he redoubled on Friday.
Beginning with Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, the former adviser for Donald Trump has made a career of ruthless campaigning
The raid happened before dawn, a Swat team of heavily-armed FBI agents in camouflage uniforms rushing between Florida palm trees to confront their target. The spectacle was laden with melodrama, surprisingly so given who had ordered it: Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation who has turned understatement into an art form.
Caught between the political savvy of Nancy Pelosi and the wrath of Ann Coulter the president secured not a penny for his wall
Richard Nixon once said there can be no whitewash at the White House. But it would be fair to say there is now a white flag.
It was metaphorically waved by Donald Trump in a chilly yet sunny Rose Garden on Friday when he declared an end to the partial government shutdown after 35 tortuous days.
The US president, Donald Trump, renewed his call for a border wall and threatened another government shutdown or emergency action if he did not get a ‘fair deal’. This came as the president announced he and congressional leaders had reached a short-term deal to reopen the government for three weeks while negotiations continue over the president’s demands for money to build a wall at the US-Mexico border. Trump announced the agreement on Friday to break the 35-day impasse as delays at the nation’s airports and widespread disruption brought new urgency to peacemaking efforts.
Roger Stone, a longtime ally of the US president, says he has been falsely accused of lying to the House intelligence committee and will plead not guilty to the charges filed against him. Stone told reporters outside Fort Lauderdale courthouse in Florida: 'There is no circumstance whatsoever under which I will bear false witness against the president, nor will I make up lies to ease the pressure on myself'
Roger Stone has apparently called into InfoWars, the website-cum-radio show of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
The InfoWars website seems to be having some problems, so I couldn’t listen in. But Paul Joseph Watson, InfoWars editor-at-large and noted crank, says Stone told the website:
Stone says just before 6am 29 agents burst into home w weapons, allowed him to dress, scared death out of his wife, taken to FBI Miami Dade, where he says agents treated him very well, then did bond hearing - shackled hands and feet - Special Counsel and US atty there, $250k bail https://t.co/HyKA5Fmmlt
Of course, Roger Stone wasn’t the only Trump ally appearing in federal court this morning.
Around the same time Stone was shuffling into Fort Lauderdale court in chains, Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was in the US District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington DC.
His eyes tired and his hair streaked with grey, Paul Manafort looked morose and walked gingerly, with a limp, during his first court appearance in months on Friday.
The former Donald Trump campaign chairman, imprisoned in Virginia as he awaits sentencing, wore a suit and was not handcuffed during the hour-long hearing at the US District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, which focused mainly on procedure.
A New York judge signed off on the disgraced Hollywood producer's move to swap his legal team before his trial on sexual assault charges. The new legal team includes Jose Baez and Ronald Sullivan, who once represented one of his most prominent accusers, Rose McGowan, on drug charges.
It was time once again on Friday morning for Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, to go on television and say that the arrest of a Donald Trump campaign associate had nothing to do with the president.
This time the arrestee was Roger Stone, a longtime Trump political adviser, taken into custody in a 6am raid by FBI agents on his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Stone was charged with lying to Congress, obstructing an investigation and witness tampering. In the past, Stone has denied all wrongdoing.
Marzieh Hashemi tells Guardian she was denied halal food and had hijab removed while held as ‘material witness’
An American newscaster for the Iranian government’s Press TV network, who was detained by the US government without being charged, has complained of mistreatment as she was held as a material witness in a criminal case.
The criminal indictment of Roger Stone is packed with the kind of colourful details one might expect from the flamboyant rogue, who has been dealing in dirty tricks for more than 40 years.
Filmed in July 2016, Roger Stone tells the Guardian's Oliver Laughland 'I have access to all the right people,' and rejects the idea that he's Trump's fixer: 'I'm just an FOT – friend of Trump'
Jeremy Hunt is first senior European minister to agree to attend controversial meeting
The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has agreed to attend a summit organised by the US in Warsaw originally billed as an alliance to confront Iranian aggression, but only on the condition that the US secretary of state hosts a meeting on Yemen on the summit’s margins.
Hunt is the first senior European minister to declare that he will attend the summit, which starts on 13 February. European diplomats have been reluctant to attend, suspecting that the event is part of a US drive to undermine Europe’s support for the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015.
Staff discussed what to do with high-spending children before deciding to refuse refunds
Facebook has settled a class action lawsuit that had accused it of allowing children to run up huge bills on their parents’ credit cards as part of a concerted effort to maximise revenues.
Court documents obtained by the US-based Center for Investigative Reporting, initially sealed as part of a lawsuit filed in 2012, revealed Facebook staff discussed what to do with the “whales”, as they referred to the high-spending children, before deciding to refuse refunds.