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‌Stoppage-time penalty from Erling Haaland gives City ‍dramatic win and narrows gap to ⁠leaders Arsenal to six points.

In recent months, Addis Ababa has accused Eritrea of supporting rebel fighters on Ethiopian soil.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni slams anti-Olympics protesters as 'enemies of Italy and Italians'.

A movie theater puts up a poster for the screening of a documentary about Melania Trump, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic) 2026-02-08T18:00:47Z NEW YORK (AP) — Hollywood largely ceded attention to football over a slow box-office weekend, with the survival thriller “Send Help” repeating as No. 1 in ticket sales and the Melania Trump documentary “Melania” falling sharply in its second weekend. Super Bowl weekend is typically one of the lowest attended moviegoing times of the year. It was the second slowest weekend last year and in 2024 it ranked dead last for moviegoing. Studios instead put their focus on advertising movies for the massive television audience. Among the trailers expected to hit the NFL broadcast Sunday were The Walt Disney Co.'s “Mandalorian and Grogu,” Lionsgate’s Michael Jackson biopic, “Michael” and Universal Pictures’ “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” In North American theaters, the Disney.-20th Century Studios release “Send Help,” directed by Sam Raimi, lead all films with $10 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. With $53.7 million globally thus far, the R-rated survival thriller has proved a solid midbudget success. Disney meanwhile watched its remarkably long-lasting “Zootopia 2" cross $1.8 billion worldwide in its 11th week of release. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); “Melania,” from Amazon MGM, added 300 theaters in its second weekend but dropped steeply with to $2.4 million in ticket sales, down 67% from its much-discussed debut. The rapid downturn means the Brett Ratner-directed documentary is likely heading toward flop territory given its high price tag. Amazon MGM paid $40 million for film rights, plus some $35 million to market it. The North American total for “Melania” stands at $13.4 million. Amazon MGM has not released international figures, though they’re expected to be paltry. Kevin Wilson, head of domestic distribution for the studio, said the movie’s box-office performance “is a critical first moment that validates our wholistic distribution strategy, building awareness, engagement, and provides momentum ahead of the film’s eventual debut on Prime Video.” freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); The film’s ticket sales — which would be very good for a less expensive documentary — were a talking point throughout the week. Late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel hammered the movie’s sales. Kimmel called them a “rigged outcome.” Elsewhere in theaters, the Italy-set Kevin James romantic comedy “Solo Mio” debuted with a robust $7.2 million, a major win for the Christian-oriented Angel Studios. “Stray Kinds: The Dominate Experience,” a K-pop concert film released by Bleecker Street, launched with $5.6 million. The Luc Besson-directed Bram Stoker adaptation “Dracula” opened with $4.5 million, a studio-best debut for the indie distributor Vertical. One of the most unusual releases in theaters, however, remains the low-budget indie “Iron Lung.” The YouTube filmmaker Markiplier, whose real name is Mark Fischbach, self-financed and self-distributed the R-rated video game adaptation, along with writing, directing and starring in it. In its second weekend, “Iron Lung” collected $6.2 million, bringing its two-week total to $31.2 million. It cost $3 million to make. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); Top 10 movies by domestic box office With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore: 1. “Send Help,” $10 million. 2. “Solo Mio,” $7.2 million. 3. “Iron Lung,” $6 million. 4. “Stray Kids: The Dominate Experience,” $5.6 million. 5. “Dracula,” $4.5 million. 6. “Zootopia 2,” $4 million. 7. “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” $3.5 million. 8. “The Strangers: Chapter 3,” $3.5 million. 9. “Shelter,” $2.4 million. 10. “Melania,” $2.4 million. JAKE COYLE Coyle has been a film critic and covered the movie industry for The Associated Press since 2013. He is based in New York City. twitter mailto

Documents that were included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files are photographed Friday, Jan. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File) 2026-02-08T18:15:28Z CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Pablo Guanipa on Sunday was released after more than eight months in prison, he said in a video posted on social media. Guanipa, one of the closest allies of opposition powerhouse María Corina Machado, had been held at a detention facility in the capital, Caracas. “Today, we are being released,” Guanipa said in a video posted on X. “Much to discuss about the present and future of Venezuela, always with the truth at the forefront.” He was detained in late May and accused by Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello of participating in an alleged “terrorist group” plotting to boycott that month’s legislative election. Guanipa’s brother Tomás rejected the accusation, and said that the arrest was meant to crack down on dissent. “Thinking differently cannot be criminalized in Venezuela, and today, Juan Pablo Guanipa is a prisoner of conscience of this regime,” Tomás Guanipa said after the arrest. “He has the right to think as he thinks, the right to defend his ideas, and the right to be treated under a constitution that is not being enforced today.” freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); Juan Pablo Guanipa’s release comes during mounting pressure on the government of acting President Delcy Rodríguez to release all people whose detentions months or years ago have been linked by their families and nongovernmental organizations to their political beliefs. Rodríguez was sworn in as Venezuela’s acting president after the capture of then President Nicolás Maduro by the U.S. military last month. Her government last month announced it would free a significant number of prisoners — a central demand of the country’s opposition and human rights organizations with backing from the United States — but families and rights watchdogs have criticized authorities for the slow pace of the releases. 获取更多RSS： https://feedx.net https://feedx.site

Documents that were included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files are photographed Friday, Jan. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File) 2026-02-08T15:30:20Z NEW YORK (AP) — The FBI pored over Jeffrey Epstein’s bank records and emails. It searched his homes. It spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world’s most influential people. But while investigators collected ample proof that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found scant evidence the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men, an Associated Press review of internal Justice Department records shows. Videos and photos seized from Epstein’s homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands didn’t depict victims being abused or implicate anyone else in his crimes, a prosecutor wrote in one 2025 memo. An examination of Epstein’s financial records, including payments he made to entities linked to influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, found no connection to criminal activity, said another internal memo in 2019. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); While one Epstein victim made highly public claims that he “lent her” to his rich friends, agents couldn’t confirm that and found no other victims telling a similar story, the records said. Summarizing the investigation in an email last July, agents said “four or five” Epstein accusers claimed other men or women had sexually abused them. But, the agents said, there “was not enough evidence to federally charge these individuals, so the cases were referred to local law enforcement.” The AP and other media organizations are still reviewing millions of pages of documents , many of them previously confidential, that the Justice Department released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act and it is possible those records contain evidence overlooked by investigators. But the documents, which include police reports, FBI interview notes and prosecutor emails, provide the clearest picture to date of the investigation — and why U.S. authorities ultimately decided to close it without additional charges. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); Dozens of victims come forward The Epstein investigation began in 2005, when the parents of a 14-year-old girl reported she had been molested at the millionaire’s home in Palm Beach, Florida. Police would identify at least 35 girls with similar stories: Epstein was paying high school age students $200 or $300 to give him sexualized massages. After the FBI joined the probe, federal prosecutors drafted indictments to charge Epstein and some personal assistants who had arranged the girls’ visits and payments. But instead, then-Miami U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta struck a deal letting Epstein plead guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. Sentenced to 18 months in jail, Epstein was free by mid-2009. In 2018, a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea deal prompted New York federal prosecutors to take a fresh look at the accusations. Epstein was arrested in July 2019 . One month later, he killed himself in his jail cell. A year later, prosecutors charged Epstein’s longtime confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell , saying she’d recruited several of his victims and sometimes joined the sexual abuse. Convicted in 2021, Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison term. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); Prosecutors fail to find evidence backing most sensational claims Prosecution memos, case summaries and other documents made public in the department’s latest release of Epstein-related records show that FBI agents and federal prosecutors diligently pursued potential coconspirators. Even seemingly outlandish and incomprehensible claims, called in to tip lines, were examined. Some allegations couldn’t be verified, investigators wrote. In 2011 and again in 2019, investigators interviewed Virginia Roberts Giuffre , who in lawsuits and news interviews had accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters with numerous men, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew . Investigators said they confirmed that Giuffre had been sexually abused by Epstein. But other parts of her story were problematic. Two other Epstein victims who Giuffre had claimed were also “lent out” to powerful men told investigators they had no such experience, prosecutors wrote in a 2019 internal memo. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); “No other victim has described being expressly directed by either Maxwell or Epstein to engage in sexual activity with other men,” the memo said. Giuffre acknowledged writing a partly fictionalized memoir of her time with Epstein containing descriptions of things that didn’t take place. She had also offered shifting accounts in interviews with investigators, they wrote, and had “engaged in a continuous stream of public interviews about her allegations, many of which have included sensationalized if not demonstrably inaccurate characterizations of her experiences.” Those inaccuracies included false accounts of her interactions with the FBI, they said. Still, U.S. prosecutors attempted to arrange an interview with Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. He refused to make himself available. Giuffre settled a lawsuit with Mountbatten-Windsor in which she had accused him of sexual misconduct. In a memoir published after she killed herself last year, Giuffre wrote that prosecutors told her they didn’t include her in the case against Maxwell because they didn’t want her allegations to distract the jury. She insisted her accounts of being trafficked to elite men were true. freestar.queue.push(function () { window.fsAdCount = window.fsAdCount + 1 || 0; let customChannel = '/dynamic_' + fsAdCount; let adList = document.querySelectorAll(".fs-feed-ad") let thisAd = adList[fsAdCount]; let randId = Math.random().toString(36).slice(2); thisAd.id = randId; let thisPlacement = fsAdCount == 0 ? "apnews_story_feed" : "apnews_story_feed_dynamic"; freestar.newAdSlots({ placementName: thisPlacement, slotId: randId }, customChannel); }); Prosecutors say photos and videos don’t implicate others Investigators seized a multitude of videos and photos from Epstein’s electronic devices and homes in New York, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands. They found CDs, hard copy photographs and at least one videotape containing nude images of females, some of whom seemed as if they might be minors. One device contained 15 to 20 images depicting commercial child sex abuse material — pictures investigators said Epstein obtained on the internet. No videos or photos showed Epstein victims being sexually abused, none showed any males with any of the nude females, and none contained evidence implicating anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey wrote in an email for FBI officials last year. Had they existed, the government “would have pursued any leads they generated,” Comey wrote. “We did not, however, locate any such videos.” Investigators who scoured Epstein’s bank records found payments to more than 25 women who appeared to be models — but no evidence that he was engaged in prostituting women to other men, prosecutors wrote. Epstein’s close associates go uncharged In 2019, prosecutors weighed the possibility of charging one of Epstein’s longtime assistants but decided against it. Prosecutors concluded that while the assistant was involved in helping Epstein pay girls for sex and may have been aware that some were underage, she herself was a victim of his sexual abuse and manipulation. Investigators examined Epstein’s relationship with the French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who once was involved in an agency with Epstein in the U.S., and who was accused in a separate case of sexually assaulting women in Europe. Brunel killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on a rape charge in France. Prosecutors also weighed whether to charge one of Epstein’s girlfriends who had participated in sexual acts with some of his victims. Investigators interviewed the girlfriend, who was 18 to 20 years old at the time, “but it was determined there was not enough evidence,” according to a summary given to FBI Director Kash Patel last July. Days before Epstein’s July 2019 arrest, the FBI strategized about sending agents to serve grand jury subpoenas on people close to Epstein, including his pilots and longtime business client, retail mogul Les Wexner. Wexner’s lawyers told investigators that neither he nor his wife had knowledge of Epstein’s sexual misconduct. Epstein had managed Wexner’s finances, but the couple’s lawyers said they cut him off in 2007 after learning he’d stolen from them. “There is limited evidence regarding his involvement,” an FBI agent wrote of Wexner in an Aug. 16, 2019, email. In a statement to the AP, a legal representative for Wexner said prosecutors had informed him that he was “neither a coconspirator nor target in any respect,” and that Wexner had cooperated with investigators. Prosecutors also examined accounts from women who said they’d given massages at Epstein’s home to guests who’d tried to make the encounters sexual. One woman accused private equity investor Leon Black of initiating sexual contact during a massage in 2011 or 2012, causing her to flee the room. The Manhattan district attorney’s office subsequently investigated, but no charges were filed. Black’s lawyer, Susan Estrich, said he had paid Epstein for estate planning and tax advice. She said in a statement that Black didn’t engage in misconduct and had no awareness of Epstein’s criminal activities. Lawsuits by two women who accused Black of sexual misconduct were dismissed or withdrawn. One is pending. No client list Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News in February 2025 that Epstein’s never-before-seen “client list” was “sitting on my desk right now.” A few months later, she claimed the FBI was reviewing “tens of thousands of videos” of Epstein “with children or child porn.” But FBI agents wrote superiors saying the client list didn’t exist. On Dec. 30, 2024, about three weeks before President Joe Biden left office, then-FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate reached out through subordinates to ask “whether our investigation to date indicates the ‘client list,’ often referred to in the media, does or does not exist,” according to an email summarizing his query. A day later, an FBI official replied that the case agent had confirmed no client list existed. On Feb. 19, 2025, two days before Bondi’s Fox News appearance, an FBI supervisory special agent wrote: “While media coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein case references a ’client list,’ investigators did not locate such a list during the course of the investigation.” ___ Aaron Kessler in Washington contributed to this report. ___ The AP is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents. MICHAEL R. SISAK Sisak is an Associated Press reporter covering law enforcement, courts and prisons. He is based in New York. twitter mailto

Narges Mohammadi was arrested in December for making "provocative remarks" at a memorial, where she was also reportedly beaten.

Brenton Tarrant is serving a life sentence after murdering 51 people in the March 2019 attack on two mosques in New Zealand.

The guitarist, composer and band leader fused Ghanaian music and funk to create tracks sampled around the world.

Morgan McSweeney resigned Sunday as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, stepping down amid mounting criticism over his role in advising the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the United States. In a resignation statement obtained by The Guardian , McSweeney said the decision to appoint Mandelson was "wrong" and accepted full responsibility for recommending it, calling his departure the "only honourable course" under the circumstances. "He [Mandelson] has damaged our party , our country and trust in politics itself," the former chief of staff wrote, noting the decision to resign wasn’t easy. McSweeney said the controversy had damaged public trust and called for a fundamental overhaul of the government’s vetting and due-diligence process, while pledging his continued support for Starmer and the Labour government’s agenda. UK PRIME MINISTER SUGGESTS FORMER PRINCE ANDREW SHOULD TESTIFY IN EPSTEIN INVESTIGATION Emails and documents made public by the Justice Department in January show Mandelson maintained contact with Jeffrey Epstein after his 2008 conviction on two felony counts of soliciting prostitution, one of which involved a minor. The Associated Press reported that newly surfaced documents indicate Mandelson may have passed along sensitive government information to Epstein in the period following the 2008 global financial crisis. The outlet also cited documents and financial records indicating Epstein transferred a total of $75,000 in 2003 and 2004 to accounts connected to Mandelson or his husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva. BILL CLINTON COMES OUT SWINGING AGAINST COMER FOR REJECTING PUBLIC EPSTEIN HEARING: ‘STOP THE GAMES’ Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty told the House of Commons on Sept. 11 that Starmer asked him to withdraw Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the United States after emails showed Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein was "materially different" from what was known at the time of his appointment. "In particular, Lord Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information," Doughty said. "In the light of that and mindful, as we all are, of the victims of Epstein’s appalling crimes, Lord Mandelson has been withdrawn as ambassador with immediate effect." Mandelson resigned from the Labour Party on Feb. 1.

Iran is prepared to pursue diplomacy while remaining ready to defend itself if challenged, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday, arguing that Tehran’s strength lies in its ability to stand firm against pressure. "We are a man of diplomacy, we are also a man of war; not in the sense that we seek war, but … we are ready to fight so that no one dares to fight us," he said, according to Press TV, Iran’s state-run English-language broadcaster. Araghchi made the remarks in Tehran at the National Congress on the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Policy, two days after Iran and the United States held nuclear talks in Oman. Fox News previously reported that negotiations between Iranian and U.S. officials in Muscat, the capital, were held face-to-face, marking the first such meetings since U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in June. IRAN PUSHES FOR FRIDAY NUCLEAR TALKS IN OMAN AMID RISING TENSIONS WITH US FORCES: SOURCE Iran’s Foreign Ministry described the talks as "intensive and lengthy" in a post on X, saying the meetings allowed both sides to present their positions and concerns. "It was a good start, but its continuation depends on consultations in our respective capitals and deciding on how to proceed," the government account said. It added there was broad agreement on continuing the negotiations, though decisions on timing, format and the next round will be made following consultations in the two capitals, with Oman continuing to serve as the intermediary. US MILITARY SHOOTS DOWN IRANIAN DRONE APPROACHING USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN ARABIAN SEA, OFFICIAL SAYS Araghchi said Sunday that Iran views its nuclear program as a legitimate right and is seeking recognition of that position through negotiations. "I believe the secret of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s power lies in its ability to stand against bullying, domination and pressures from others," he said, according to Press TV. "They fear our atomic bomb, while we are not pursuing an atomic bomb. Our atomic bomb is the power to say no to the great powers," the top diplomat added. "The secret of the Islamic Republic’s power is to say no to the powers." President Donald Trump has expanded the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and the USS Michael Murphy, a guided-missile destroyer. Other U.S. naval assets , including the USS Bulkeley, USS Roosevelt, USS Delbert D. Black, USS McFaul, USS Mitscher, USS Spruance and USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., are positioned across key waterways surrounding Iran, from the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea.

North Korean authorities executed teenagers for watching the South Korean television series "Squid Game" and listening to K-pop, human rights researchers announced in early February. Amnesty International cited testimony from an escapee with family ties in Yanggang Province who said people, including schoolchildren, were executed for specifically watching the popular survival drama series. It also separately documented accounts of forced labor sentences and public humiliation for consuming South Korean media elsewhere in the country, particularly for those without money or political connections. "Usually when high school students are caught, if their family has money, they just get warnings," said Kim Joonsik, 28, who was caught watching South Korean dramas three times before leaving the country in 2019. WATCHDOG HIGHLIGHTS NATIONS WHERE CHRISTIANS FACE PERSECUTION AROUND THE GLOBE "I didn't receive legal punishment because we had connections ," he told Amnesty International in an interview. NORTH KOREA MISSILE LAUNCH THAT PUT SOUTH KOREA, JAPAN ON HIGH ALERT ENDS IN FAILURE Joonsik said three of his sisters’ high school friends were given multi-year labor camp sentences in the late 2010s after being caught watching South Korean dramas, a punishment he said reflected their families’ inability to pay bribes. "The authorities criminalize access to information in violation of international law, then allow officials to profit off those fearing punishment. This is repression layered with corruption, and it most devastates those without wealth or connections," said Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International's deputy regional director. RUSSIA'S TURN TO NORTH KOREA FOR MUCH-NEEDED AMMO A ‘LAST RESORT’ IN UKRAINE CONFLICT: ‘HITTING THE DREGS’ "This government's fear of information has effectively placed the entire population in an ideological cage, suffocating their access to the views and thoughts of other human beings," she added. "People who strive to learn more about the world outside North Korea, or seek simple entertainment from overseas, face the harshest of punishments ." Several defectors told the human rights organization that they were required to witness public executions while still in school, describing the practice as a form of state-mandated indoctrination designed to deter exposure to foreign culture. "When we were 16, 17, in middle school, they took us to executions and showed us everything," said Kim Eunju, 40. "People were executed for watching or distributing South Korean media. It's ideological education: if you watch, this happens to you too."

It was the first time in years that a conservative party preaching nationalism, patriotism and respect for the monarchy came out on top.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi won a sweeping mandate from voters for her economic agenda and tough stances on immigration and China.

Polls predict a comfortable victory for António José Seguro, but a nationalist’s presence in the runoff showed that Portugal is not immune to Europe’s rising nationalist tide.

A library in rural Alaska needed help providing free Wi-Fi and getting kids to read. A children’s museum in Washington wanted to expand its Little Science Lab. And a World War I museum in Missouri had a raft of historic documents it needed to digitize. They received funding from a little-known federal agency before the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to dismantle it last year. The Institute of Museum and Library Services is now accepting applications for its 2026 grant cycle. But this time, it has unusually specific criteria. In cover letters accompanying the applications, the institute said it “particularly welcomes” projects that align with President Donald Trump’s vision for America. These would include those that foster an appreciation for the country “through uplifting and positive narratives,” the agency writes, citing an executive order that attacks the Smithsonian Institution for its “divisive, race-centered ideology.” (Trump has said the museum focused too much on “how bad slavery was.” ) The agency also points to an executive order calling for the end of “ the anti-Christian weaponization of government ” and one titled Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again . The solicitation marks a stark departure for the agency, whose guidelines were previously apolitical and focused on merit. Former agency leaders from both political parties, as well as those of library, historical and museum associations, expressed concern that funded projects could encourage a more constrained or distorted view of American history. Some also feared that by accepting grants, institutions would open themselves up to scrutiny and control, like the administration’s wide-ranging audit of Smithsonian exhibits “ to assess tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals .” The new guidelines are “chilling,” said Giovanna Urist, who served as a senior program officer at the agency from 2021 to 2023. “I think that we just need to look at what’s happening with the Smithsonian to know that the administration has a very specific goal in mind when it comes to controlling the voice of organizations and museums across the country.” An agency spokesperson told ProPublica it is not unusual for the institute to publish directors’ letters with grant applications, and that this one informs readers “about this Administration’s thematic emphases in the semi-quincentennial year.” He did not comment on criticisms that those letters insert political themes into a historically nonpartisan program. “Under President Trump’s leadership, IMLS is working to revitalize our cultural institutions, urging less traditional applicants to consider working with us, and to promote civic pride and a deep sense of belonging among all Americans,” he said, adding that any institution that “meets programmatic requirements and goals” outlined in the funding opportunity “will receive all due consideration and undergo peer review.” The spokesperson did not say how alignment with Trump’s executive orders would be weighed in the selection process or address concerns about the administration’s intrusion into funded institutions. Established in 1996, the institute is the only dedicated source of federal support for libraries and one of the primary federal funders of museums and archives. Its long-running grant programs promote community engagement and public access to information, while bolstering institutions’ ability to care for collections and prepare for disasters. One grant, named after former first lady Laura Bush , helps recruit and train library professionals. Last March, Trump attempted to eliminate the agency through an executive order and fired director Cyndee Landrum, a career library professional. Attorneys general from 21 states and the American Library Association sued the Trump administration to block it from dismantling the agency; the courts have halted the efforts for now. To head the agency, the administration appointed Deputy Secretary of Labor Keith E. Sonderling, who does not appear to have prior professional experience in museums or libraries. (An institute spokesperson didn’t comment on concerns ProPublica passed along about this.) In a press release announcing his appointment as acting director, Sonderling said, “We will revitalize IMLS and restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations.” Ten days later, he put nearly all of the agency’s 75 employees on administrative leave, fired the board and rescinded some previously awarded grants. The grants were reinstated under court order in December, and the agency is now accepting applications for 13 grants whose awards range from $5,000 to $1 million. According to Grants.gov , the agency now expects to award nearly 600 grants totaling more than $78 million. ProPublica spoke with directors who ran the agency under every previous presidential administration dating back to Barack Obama’s. Though each era brought different priorities, they said, those changes were implemented with input from the field — not by encouraging applicants to align their work with a president’s worldview. With the new guidelines, they said, the administration is signaling a preference for certain types of projects and narratives. Crosby Kemper III, a lifelong conservative Republican appointed by Trump to lead the agency in 2019, stayed on into President Joe Biden’s term. While he was not a fan of the former president’s emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion and feels that the library and museum fields needed a course correction from their natural lean to the left, he believes that what is coming out of the current Trump administration is not helpful. “All these Trump executive orders — and I mean all of them — are just extensions of his own animus towards anybody who disagrees with him and his outsized ego,” said Kemper, who called the orders “nonsense” and the grant guidelines “horrific.” “It’s clear the administration wants a whitewashed story, if you’ll pardon the pun there. And that’s wrong.” Leaders of the American Historical Association, the American Library Association and the American Alliance of Museums warned that changes to the agency’s grant language and recent funding actions have led to uncertainty across the field. Among questions raised: Would the government revoke grants it had already awarded, as it did last year? Would accepting the money open up institutions to broader investigations, like the 52 universities scrutinized over their DEI practices ? The institute spokesperson did not comment on either of those questions. Sarah Weicksel, the American Historical Association’s executive director, said institutions are even worried about how they would be perceived if they took the funds. “They’re wondering, is accepting the grant a sign that they accept the executive orders that have been laid out here?” Questions also remain about whether enough staff is left to process the applications properly. The agency’s $112 million budget for this year is roughly a third of the funding it has received in recent years. The agency did not answer a question about its current staffing, but in its most recent Congressional Budget Justification document, it requested support for 13 full-time employees . Former agency officials said that number is low, but that they trusted the remaining staffers to choose quality projects and, in the words of Kemper, “do the right thing.” But staffers are only part of the process. Typically, each grant application is reviewed by volunteer library and museum experts. Susan Hildreth, who led the agency from 2011 to 2015, questions the lack of information about the current process on the agency’s website . “I couldn’t find it anywhere in the documentation,” she said. The institute spokesperson said the grant process remains the same as previous years. Opinion polls consistently find that libraries and museums are among the most trusted public institutions in the country by Americans across the political spectrum, and Urist said they are trusted because of their independence. “When the federal government puts its thumb on that scale, it threatens the trustworthiness of these community anchors.” Weicksel said it’s important for the public to know how the administration is aiming to shape institutions essential to the nation’s culture and ability to understand itself and its past. Patty Gerstenblith, distinguished research professor of Law at DePaul University, agreed, saying that the administration’s actions raise serious First Amendment concerns. “Certainly at a minimum,” Gerstenblith said, “people should know that the government is using its funding as a way of essentially coercing a different presentation of American history.” The post Grant Guidelines for Libraries and Museums Take “Chilling” Political Turn Under Trump appeared first on ProPublica .

Senators introduced legislation on Thursday that would require prescription drug labels to identify where the medication was made, adding momentum to a yearslong campaign to bring more transparency to the often elusive generic drug industry. At a hearing last week, members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging criticized manufacturers for routinely concealing the locations of their drugmaking plants as well as the suppliers that provide key ingredients. ProPublica described this lack of transparency — and how it was enabled by the Food and Drug Administration — in a series of stories that found the agency had quietly allowed troubled foreign drugmakers to continue selling generic medication to unsuspecting Americans. The Clear Labels Act , introduced by committee chair Rick Scott, R-Fla., and ranking member Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is meant to help patients, doctors and pharmacists know more about the drugs they use and prescribe. Current labels often list only a distributor or repackager of a medication and sometimes provide no information at all. The proposal calls for labels to disclose the original manufacturer as well as the suppliers that produced their key ingredients. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., also signed on to the proposed legislation. “Every American deserves honesty and transparency about what they are putting into their bodies,” Scott said. “It is wholly irresponsible that we’re living in the dark when it comes to where our medicines are made.” ProPublica had to file public records requests and sue the FDA in federal court to obtain information about where generic drugs are made and whether government inspectors had flagged those factories for safety or quality concerns. ProPublica ultimately created a first-of-its-kind tool that empowers consumers to find the information themselves. Ninety percent of the prescriptions in the United States are for generics, many of them manufactured overseas. For patients and their doctors, identifying where medication was made and the safety records of those factories had been nearly impossible until now. Rx Inspector , the tool ProPublica introduced late last year, includes factory location information and inspection histories when available for nearly 40,000 generic drug products. Doctors, patients and researchers say they are already using it to better understand where medication comes from and to find more information when a generic causes unexplained health problems. The Clear Labels Act would require manufacturing location information on packaging for brand-name drugs as well as generics. Ohio State University professor John Gray, who testified at the hearing, suggested that packaging could include a QR code linking to the data on a website. Gray is working to assign quality scores to specific versions of generic drugs and said the code would allow patients and doctors to easily find those scores while researching medication and their manufacturers. “Low-quality drugs have human consequences,” Gray said. Gray said he is using Rx Inspector to fuel his work, which is funded by the Department of Defense. The tool, he said, “allows you to find out where … your drug is made easily.” The push for more transparency comes on the heels of a bipartisan investigative report that Scott and Gillibrand released last year, calling for sweeping changes in the FDA’s oversight of the generic drug industry. Among other things, the senators asked the FDA to alert hospitals and other group purchasers when foreign drugmakers with serious safety and quality failures are given a special pass to send their products to the United States. Since 2013, ProPublica found, the FDA allowed more than 20 troubled overseas factories , mostly in India, to continue to send certain medications to the U.S. even after those facilities were banned because of concerns about contamination and other breaches. The agency didn’t actively track whether the imported drugs were harming users and kept the practice largely hidden from the public and Congress. The lawmakers also called on the FDA to conduct more drug testing. The agency doesn’t routinely assess generic drugs once they are on the market, even if they come from factories with quality and safety violations. ProPublica recently tested several versions of three of the most widely prescribed generics in the United States and found that two had irregularities that could risk the health of consumers. At the hearing last week, the committee’s fourth on generic drugs in recent months, lawmakers and witnesses said knowing more about where drugs are made is an essential first step to improving drug quality. For years, pharmacists and members of Congress have pushed for more transparency to help patients and doctors make informed decisions about health care. “Everyone deserves to know where their medications are coming from,” said University of Utah Hospital pharmacist Erin Fox, who has advocated for more information. Fox and others also said they support a drug-quality rating system, which would allow hospitals and government agencies to assess generic drugs based on quality and not just price. “You never go to the supermarket and buy the lowest price, most bruised fruit or go on Amazon and buy the one-star product because it’s cheaper,” said Dr. Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine and health policy at Stanford University. “And yet that’s the generic drug market, and that’s 90% of the prescriptions that we write as physicians. And that’s just not tolerable.” A spokesperson for the trade group for brand-name drugmakers said in a statement to ProPublica that the industry would “welcome conversations about how to strengthen the biopharmaceutical supply chain.” The generic drug lobbying group said that additional labeling requirements would impose “significant costs in exchange for limited returns,” and that drug manufacturers already disclose country of origin information under U.S. Customs and Border Protection rules. The post The Clear Labels Act Would Change What You Know About Your Prescription Medication appeared first on ProPublica .

Minutes after a federal agent shot and killed a Mexican immigrant in a Chicago suburb last September, a group of police officers stood on the sidewalk trying to figure out the answer to a question of protocol: Who would investigate the shooting? “Wouldn’t it be state’s, at a minimum?” one Franklin Park officer asked, according to body camera footage. Chief Mike Witz shook his head. “No, because it’s a federal shooting,” he said. “You’re not going to investigate a federal officer.” His officers didn’t investigate. In their report, they didn’t even note the names of the two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the scene of Silverio Villegas González’s death. Instead, they deferred to the FBI. Local law enforcement officials also did not investigate when a Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a U.S. citizen in her car in Chicago less than a month later. Or when an ICE agent in Phoenix shot a Honduran man during a traffic stop later that month. In fact, local police did not open investigations into six of the 12 shootings by on-duty federal agents that have led to the deaths or injuries of citizens and immigrants since September, a ProPublica analysis found. In three other shooting cases, state or local police said they have opened inquiries, which they called a routine practice in those jurisdictions. And in Minnesota, where ICE and Border Patrol shot and killed two U.S. citizens and injured a Venezuelan man last month, state police have tried to conduct independent investigations only to be thwarted by the Trump administration, which has gone so far as to block officers from a scene, even when they had a judicial warrant. In almost every instance, President Donald Trump’s administration blamed the injured and dead for the shooting within hours of the incident, raising questions about whether federal officials can fairly and objectively investigate their own. Legal experts and advocates for immigrants say this apparent lack of accountability demands that local authorities step up and exercise their power to investigate and prosecute federal agents who break state laws — from battery to murder. “Local police and the state have gotten a free pass,” said Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago and the co-founder and director of its Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project. “Residents have every right and should be demanding that, ‘Hey, state authorities, police, local police: Protect us. Arrest people who kill us, who batter us, who point guns at us and threaten and assault us without legal cause to do so.’” Body camera footage shows then-Franklin Park Police Chief Mike Witz responding to his officers’ questions about whether they would investigate the shooting of a Mexican immigrant by federal agents. Obtained by ProPublica It’s usually the opposite scenario: federal authorities coming in to investigate a troubled police department. But local authorities have investigated and charged federal agents in the past . It’s just rare and complicated. The federal supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution bars local interference with federal law enforcement officers when they act reasonably and within the scope of their duties. But given the aggressive tactics employed by immigration agents under the Trump administration, Futterman and other legal experts said local police and prosecutors are morally obligated to at least try to hold federal law enforcement officers accountable. “We’re in an environment right now where ICE officers are blatantly and egregiously violating the Constitution and the law,” said Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The federal government has made it very clear that they are not going to do anything to provide any sort of accountability backstop to its officers. Unfortunately, because Congress is not taking any steps to rein ICE officers in, there really is no option other than states protecting their constituents’ rights.”  In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that agents are “trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers.” All use-of-force incidents are properly reported and reviewed by an appropriate law enforcement agency, the spokesperson said. Immigration agents at the border have long been criticized for use of deadly force and lack of rigorous investigations afterward. But now the same militarized force is on display in major American cities far from the border, where residents are not used to their presence.  The shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last month — and the federal government’s resistance to a routine local investigation — has prompted Democratic and some Republican officials across the country to call for more accountability. Last week, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order directing police officers to document alleged illegal activity by federal immigration agents and refer any evidence of felonies to prosecutors.  California’s governor and attorney general issued a reminder to local police of their rights to investigate federal agents. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes launched a website asking residents to submit evidence of federal agents’ misconduct. And prosecutors from nine jurisdictions around the country announced a new coalition to provide mutual support to law enforcement authorities bringing charges against federal officers. In Minneapolis, prosecutors say they’re working with state police to investigate in spite of resistance from federal officials. So far, DHS officials have refused to provide evidence or even the names of the agents involved in the January shootings . Prosecutors went so far as to obtain an emergency order to require that federal agencies preserve evidence in the Pretti case. A judge dropped the temporary restraining order on Monday, following assurances from the federal government that it would maintain investigative materials.  The prosecutors said they believe they can still gather enough evidence to make an informed decision about whether to charge the federal agents. “We get cases submitted to us every day that don’t have all the evidence we would like,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in an interview. “We would certainly like the gun. We would like the shell casings, that kind of thing. But it’s also not a mystery as to why these people died.” Even after getting a judicial warrant, investigators from the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension were turned away by federal agents from the Minneapolis intersection where Pretti, 37, was shot and killed. Federal officials also excluded the BCA from the investigation into the death of Renee Good, who was shot and killed in her car two weeks before Pretti.  BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said he’d never seen his officers physically stopped from doing their job by another law enforcement agency. Across the country, he said, state agencies like the BCA routinely investigate deadly force incidents like this one. “We’re in uncharted territory here,” he said. Within hours of each killing, Trump officials publicly labeled the dead “domestic terrorists.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti was “brandishing” a gun when he approached the officers, while the Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino claimed Pretti was planning a “massacre.”  Video footage contradicted the administration’s version of events. Pretti, for instance, never unholstered his gun, which he was legally allowed to carry.   Early last week, Trump sent Bovino and Border Patrol agents away from Minneapolis, and on Wednesday DHS officials said they would pull another 700 agents out of the state — signs  the administration may be changing its approach in response to rising criticism. The FBI is now investigating the Pretti shooting, and the Justice Department announced Friday that it had opened a civil rights investigation.  A DOJ spokesperson did not answer questions for this story but referred reporters to a press conference last weekend in which Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said DHS is following its normal investigative protocols in the Pretti shooting.  Meanwhile, the Justice Department has said it has no plans to investigate Good’s shooting.  “We don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody putting his life in danger,” Blanche told Fox News. Residents set up a memorial to Silverio Villegas González, who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Franklin Park, Illinois, in September. Todd Heisler/The New York Times/Redux Police in Franklin Park and Chicago have not explained why they didn’t open their own investigations into the two shootings last fall. In the Franklin Park case, the decision to let the FBI alone investigate the killing of Villegas was made within minutes of the shooting, according to dispatch records.  Villegas, a 38-year-old restaurant cook, was shot as he tried to drive away from ICE agents who had pulled him over. As in Minneapolis, the Trump administration’s narrative of what happened did not match the evidence. DHS claimed that Villegas dragged one of the agents, causing serious injuries. The agent fired “because he feared for his life,” officials said. Police body camera footage released after the shooting showed the agent downplaying his injury as “nothing major.” At the scene, Franklin Park police officers directed traffic and interviewed a witness, the footage shows. At one point, one officer told his colleague that the police department was “just securing until they get here,” referring to the FBI. Witz, who was then the police chief but has since retired, could not be reached for comment; the current chief did not respond to interview requests. A similar situation unfolded in Chicago on Oct. 4 after a Border Patrol agent fired into the vehicle of a woman who federal officials claimed “ambushed” them. Marimar Martinez was charged with assaulting federal agents, though the charges were later dropped.  At the time, the Chicago Police Department said officers had responded to a call about a shooting “to document the incident” and to “maintain safety and traffic control.” When asked last week why it didn’t open an independent inquiry, the department directed ProPublica to its October statement, which made clear the police were “not involved in the incident or its investigation” and directed questions to federal authorities.  As the events in Minneapolis continued to generate criticism nationwide, Chicago’s mayor unveiled his executive order that directed officers to investigate federal immigration agents who break the law and to refer them for criminal prosecution. In a statement, the mayor’s office said the initiative was a response to “the absence of legal repercussions in the wake of the shooting of Marimar Martinez in Chicago and the killings of Silverio Villegas González in Franklin Park and Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.” Legal experts said they were not aware of recent examples of Illinois law enforcement agencies investigating an on-duty federal agent, though last month a suburban police department obtained misdemeanor charges against an off-duty ICE agent accused of attacking an activist who was filming him while the agent was pumping gas.  Illinois State Police officials said they would investigate federal agents who were accused of breaking the law if they are asked to do so. Meanwhile, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called on a state accountability commission to examine the roles of key Trump officials in the escalation of aggressive tactics during a monthslong immigration enforcement campaign in Chicago and its suburbs late last year. Pritzker had previously established the commission to​ gather videos and testimonies about federal agents’ conduct, and to create a public record of what happened. The commission lacks subpoena power but can refer information about potential violations of state law to law enforcement agencies or prosecutors. “Just imagine if the agents who shot Mr. Villegas González back on Sept. 12 had been publicly disciplined,” Rubén Castillo, a retired federal judge who chairs the commission, said at a hearing Friday. “Maybe, just maybe, the Minnesota shootings would not have occurred, and two people would be alive who are now dead.” He added: “We will have conversations with those in local law enforcement to suggest prosecutions that should be occurring even as we speak.” Police and federal law enforcement gathered at the Minneapolis intersection where Renee Good was shot and killed by federal agents in January. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times/Redux In California, neither the Los Angeles nor Ontario police departments investigated after two men were shot by federal immigration agents in separate October incidents and then accused of assaulting federal officers — despite video evidence and victim statements that conflicted with the accounts officials provided. A federal judge dismissed the case against one man, a Mexican immigrant and popular TikTokker; the other, a U.S. citizen, pleaded not guilty and has a trial scheduled for April. Police in Phoenix also said they are not investigating the shooting of a man who federal officials say fled immigration agents last October, leaving the case to the FBI and ICE. And local police in Portland, Oregon, are not investigating an incident where federal agents shot at a Venezuelan man who had allegedly hit an unoccupied Border Patrol vehicle with his car in early January, injuring him and his passenger. The man was later charged with assaulting an officer. Unlike in some of the other cases, the Oregon attorney general’s office has opened its own investigation. In contrast, police in Pima County, Arizona, and Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and the Texas Rangers have all said they opened investigations into recent shootings involving federal immigration officers. Asking local officials to investigate their federal counterparts does not come without challenges. Police officers and prosecutors are wary of being seen as interfering with federal law enforcement operations. They may be reluctant to damage their already complicated relationships with agencies with whom they sometimes partner.  Then there’s the worry about the political consequences, including the threat of losing federal funding, a dynamic that’s particularly acute under the Trump administration. “This particular federal government has lobbed all kinds of threats and acted on threats against local authorities and state authorities for failure to cooperate or not do what they want them to do,” said Futterman, the University of Chicago law professor. “It’s a reason in itself not to bite a hand that feeds you.” Even when local officials open their own investigations into federal agents, there’s no guarantee they can bring the cases to court. Federal agents can claim immunity in response to state charges, legal experts said, and can move their cases to federal court. That immunity stems from a Supreme Court ruling more than a century ago. During the Civil Rights Movement, that immunity was used when the federal government wanted to protect its law enforcement officers tasked with enforcing then-controversial efforts like desegregation in hostile states.  Now local officials face the opposite challenge: protecting their constituents’ constitutional rights from what they believe is excessive force at the hands of federal officers.  Steve Descano, the commonwealth’s attorney for Fairfax County, Virginia, would be the first to admit that nothing about prosecuting federal agents is easy. During the first Trump administration, Descano brought state manslaughter charges against two U.S. Park Police officers who shot and killed a Virginia man. A federal judge dismissed the case in 2021 and said the officers were entitled to immunity because their actions were necessary and proper. Still, Descano, who is part of the coalition of prosecutors aiming to hold federal law enforcement accountable, said he believed he and others have a responsibility to do so.  “If they are not willing to take these actions,” he said, “then they are cowards and they are not worthy of their positions.” The post “You’re Not Going to Investigate a Federal Officer” appeared first on ProPublica .

Norway’s ambassador to Jordan and Iraq has resigned after an investigation was launched into her ties to late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the foreign ministry said on Sunday. Mona Juul, who played a key role in the secret Israeli-Palestinian negotiations which led to the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, is among several high-profile Norwegian figures swept up in the latest Epstein file release. “This is a correct and necessary decision. Juul’s contact with the convicted abuser Epstein has...

The presidents of Argentina and Romania said on Sunday they have been invited to attend the inaugural meeting of US President Donald Trump’s controversial “Board of Peace” in Washington on February 19. Originally designed by Trump as a mechanism to oversee the Gaza truce and post-war reconstruction, the board’s mandate has since expanded, prompting concerns among critics that it could evolve into a rival to the United Nations. Writing on his Facebook page, Romania’s President Nicusor Dan said...

The toll in a building collapse in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Sunday rose to five dead, state media reported, as rescuers searched for survivors in the second such incident in weeks. The state-run National News Agency reported “the collapse of an old building” in Tripoli’s Bab al-Tabbaneh neighbourhood, the poorest in the impoverished city, adding that security staff evacuated adjacent buildings fearing further collapses. “Eight people have been rescued so far while five victims...

Met Office issues fresh yellow warning for rain as parts of England are still recovering from extensive flooding More than 200 flood alerts were active across the UK on Sunday as parts of England and Wales braced for more downpours after the Met Office issued a fresh yellow warning for rain. The warning spans noon to midnight on Monday, covering parts of southern Wales as well as south-east and south-west England. The Met Office said that “10-15mm of rain is likely fairly widely with 20-30mm in some places exposed to the strong south to south-easterly winds”. Continue reading...

US president attacks freestyle skier in post Hess had said representing the US was ‘a little hard’ Donald Trump responded to Hunter Hess on Truth Social on Sunday, calling the Olympian a “real loser” and criticizing comments the US freestyle skier made in a press conference days earlier. Hess was asked in a press conference on Wednesday what it was like to represent the US in the Olympics given the current situation in the country, which has included ICE raids in Minnesota and a number of geopolitical crises . Hess said representing the US at the 2026 Winter Olympics brought up “mixed emotions” and that it was “a little hard.” Continue reading...

Exclusive: Childnet, a UK charity part-funded by US tech firms, edited out warnings by two young speakers at its 2024 Safer Internet Day event An internet safety campaign backed by US tech companies has been accused of censoring two teenagers they invited to speak out about the biggest issues facing children online. Childnet, a UK charity part-funded by companies including Snap, Roblox and Meta, edited out warnings from Lewis Swire and Saamya Ghai that social media addiction was an “imminent threat to our future” and obsessive scrolling was making people “sick”, according to a record of edits seen by the Guardian. Continue reading...