Richard Grenell’s visit prompts fresh speculation of rapprochement between Washington and Caracas
A Donald Trump special envoy has flown to Venezuela to hold talks with its authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, fuelling fresh speculation of a possible deal between the two governments.
Richard Grenell, a prominent Maga cheerleader and diplomat who was the US ambassador to Germany during Trump’s first term, was set to land in Caracas on Friday, according to CNN.
Continue reading...Pharmaceutical company says that it will not go ahead with investment at Speke, near Liverpool
Donald Trump’s White House will invoke emergency powers to introduce tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Reuters reports:
Two sources familiar with the matter said that Trump was expected to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as the legal basis for the tariffs, declaring a national emergency over fentanyl overdoses that killed nearly 75,000 Americans in 2023 and illegal immigration.
The statute enacted in 1977 and modified after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 gives the president broad powers to impose economic sanctions in a crisis.
Continue reading...Court papers seen by the Guardian mean Jes Staley’s appeal against FCA ruling will demand answers on links to sex offender
The former chief executive of Barclays, Jes Staley, is gearing up for an explosive trial next month, that will force him to address evidence suggesting he hid the depth of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the sex offender he referred to as “family”.
Court documents seen by the Guardian reveal myriad allegations made by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), including that Epstein messaged Staley about sex, women and foreign holidays, while working behind the scenes to bolster Staley’s career by liaising with government officials, business leaders and royalty.
Continue reading...Trump’s meme coin has some conservatives complaining over ‘most blatant ponzi scheme in history’
When Donald Trump announced – three days before assuming the presidency of the United States, and followed shortly by Melania Trump – that he was launching a self-named “meme coin” cryptocurrency, many in the crypto industry were quick to express frustration. Ethics experts were also alarmed.
Among Trump’s base, however, a similar backlash – smaller, more muted, but similarly anguished – has been taking hold.
Continue reading...Emily Hernandez, 24, killed Victoria Wilson, 32, and injured her husband in a 2022 Missouri wreck
One of the US Capitol attackers pardoned by Donald Trump at the start of his second presidency has been handed a 10-year prison sentence for killing a woman in a drunk-driving crash, according to authorities.
Emily Hernandez served 30 days in federal prison after she joined the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and was photographed holding the broken nameplate of Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker at the time.
Continue reading...Messaging app said it had ‘high confidence’ some users were targeted and ‘possibly compromised’ by Paragon Solutions spyware
Nearly 100 journalists and other members of civil society using WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Meta, were targeted by spyware owned by Paragon Solutions, an Israeli maker of hacking software, the company alleged today.
The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp telling the Guardian it had “high confidence” that the users in question had been targeted and “possibly compromised”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: More Danish people regard US as a threat than see North Korea or Iran as danger
Almost half of Danish people now consider the US to be a considerable threat to their country and the overwhelming majority oppose Greenland leaving to become part of the US, new polling has found.
The research by YouGov, shared exclusively with the Guardian, comes after weeks of tension between Denmark, Greenland and the US over Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that he plans to take control of the autonomous territory, which is part of the Danish kingdom.
Continue reading...Bankrupt Roman Catholic archdiocese replaced members at church-affiliated non-profit over $16m dispute
The archbishop of New Orleans’ bankrupt Roman Catholic archdiocese on Thursday abruptly fired and replaced top leaders at a church-affiliated food bank, with those dismissed saying it was because the non-profit refused to contribute to paying survivors of child sexual abuse by clergymen.
The ousted members of Second Harvest’s board of directors say the changes “follow months of increasingly aggressive pressure placed on Second Harvest to contribute as much as $16m toward helping to resolve victims’ claims related to the church’s sexual abuse-related bankruptcy”, which has been pending since May 2020.
Continue reading...Conservative New Orleans court ruling for people between 18 and 21 comes amid major shifts in firearm legal landscape
A conservative US appeals court on Thursday ruled that a ban on handgun sales to people between the ages of 18 and 21 violates the second amendment.
The ruling, handed down by a panel of three judges on the fifth US circuit court of appeals in New Orleans, comes amid major shifts in the national firearm legal landscape following a landmark US supreme court decision that expanded gun rights in 2022.
Continue reading...Skeptical senators ruthlessly questioned Trump’s national intelligence director nominee ahead of confirmation vote
Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s nominee for national intelligence director, refused to call the whistleblower Edward Snowden a “traitor” but sought to rein in her unorthodox views on foreign dictators and opposition to electronic surveillance during a tense confirmation hearing that could sink her nomination to oversee the country’s sprawling intelligence community.
In a three-hour hearing before the Senate intelligence committee, Gabbard, a former congresswoman and member of the Hawaii army national guard, partially recanted her views that Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine, said she had “no love” for the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and denied meeting with Hezbollah representatives during a trip to Lebanon in 2017.
Continue reading...Deployment of special forces veterans is unprecedented and poses risk that Americans could be drawn into fighting
A US security firm is hiring nearly 100 US special forces veterans to help run a checkpoint in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas truce, introducing armed American contractors into the heart of one of the world’s most violent conflict zones.
UG Solutions, a low-profile company founded in 2023 and based in Davidson, North Carolina, is offering a daily rate starting at $1,100 with a $10,000 advance to veterans it hires, according to a recruitment email.
Continue reading...Research shows voters losing faith in traditional centre-left and centre-right to deliver meaningful change
Voters in western democracies are turning away from mainstream political parties and towards populists because they are losing faith in their ability to implement meaningful change, a major report based on surveys of 12,000 voters has found.
The popularity of traditional centre-left and centre-right parties across major democratic countries has plummeted from 73% in 2000 to 51% today, according to research by the Tony Blair Institute.
Continue reading...José Raúl Mulino rules out talks on waterway with secretary of state: ‘That is sealed. The canal belongs to Panama’
Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, has ruled out discussing control over the Panama Canal in a meeting with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who is set to visit the Central American country in his first official trip abroad this weekend.
Mulino’s comments during a weekly press conference come after Donald Trump threatened to take control of the canal, claiming it is being operated by China. The Panamanian government strongly denies the accusation.
Continue reading...The president wants to detain thousands of people at a site that is notorious for its secrecy and history of abuse
It has been denounced as “America’s gulag”: a secretive, abuse-ridden Caribbean prison camp for terror suspects that Donald Rumsfeld once said contained “the worst of the worst”.
“All of us have scars in our souls, deformities, from living at Guantánamo,” a former Yemeni inmate recalled of his time at the notorious military detention facility in south-east Cuba.
Continue reading...NIH fellows say policy changes including funding freeze would ‘severely limit’ researchers’ ability to do their work
A union representing about 5,000 researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has issued a legally binding demand to bargain over Donald Trump’s sweeping policy changes, including a funding freeze, a communications blackout and a staff travel ban.
The NIH is the largest biomedical institution in the world, providing more than $40bn annually to fund health research, providing grants to more than 300,000 researchers at more thab 2,500 universities, medical schools and other research institutions globally, with nearly 6,000 scientists performing research in its own labs.
Continue reading...Search and rescue operation under way after plane carrying at least 64 people collides with military helicopter. Plus, how Serbia’s students rose up
Good morning.
A regional American Airlines jet carrying at least 60 passengers and four crew members has crashed after a midair collision with a US army Black Hawk helicopter while landing at Reagan national airport near Washington DC, prompting a large search-and-rescue operation in the Potomac River.
What do we know so far about fatalities? At least 18 bodies have been recovered, according to CBS News, citing a police official, and scores more are feared dead.
What happens next? Search and rescue operations are continuing. Pete Hegseth, sworn in just days ago as Donald Trump’s defense secretary, posted on social media that an investigation had been launched by the army and the defense department.
This is a developing story. Follow our live blog here.
What’s the latest on displaced Palestinians in Gaza? For a third straight day, thousands of Palestinians in southern Gaza trekked by foot, motorbike and animal-drawn carts back to their homes in the war-ravaged north. The UN estimates more than 376,000 Palestinians have reached northern Gaza.
Continue reading...Reported move would make Japanese group largest financial backer of US startup behind ChatGPT
The Japanese investment group SoftBank is reportedly in talks to invest up to $25bn (£20bn) in OpenAI in a deal that would make it the biggest financial backer of the startup behind ChatGPT.
The lender is considering putting a sum of between $15bn and $25bn into the San Francisco-based company, according to the Financial Times.
Continue reading...Abrupt decision to pause all foreign aid could exacerbate violence in region already struggling with organized crime
The Trump administration’s abrupt decision to immediately pause all US foreign aid programmes could exacerbate violence in Latin America, driving more migration from a region already struggling with the rise of organised crime, experts have warned.
The world’s largest aid provider by far, the US disbursed $1.5bn (£1.2bn) to South American countries in the 2023 financial year, funding a broad range of projects, including humanitarian, military, environmental and economic aid.
Continue reading...Howard Lutnick testified at his US Senate confirmation hearing for his nomination to head commerce department
Donald Trump’s nominee to run the commerce department, Howard Lutnick, said on Wednesday that Canada and Mexico can avoid looming US tariffs if they act swiftly to close their borders to fentanyl, while vowing to slow China’s advancement in artificial intelligence.
Lutnick, a billionaire Wall Street CEO, at his US Senate confirmation hearing said he has advised Trump to pursue across-the-board tariffs country by country to restore “reciprocity” to America’s trading relationships and said he would erect stronger curbs on China’s access to US technology, including advanced AI semiconductors.
Continue reading...President has made clear he wants rates to fall as benchmark interest rate now sits at a range of 4.25% to 4.5%
Federal Reserve officials decided on Wednesday to hold interest rates steady as uncertainty over Donald Trump’s impact on the US economy looms and inflation remains above the central bank’s target levels.
This is the first time Fed policymakers have met since the president, who has made clear he wants rates to fall, returned to the White House. The benchmark interest rate now sits at a range of 4.25% to 4.5%.
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