Minimalist News

Was Anthropic's Claude Used In AI Kill-Chain During Maduro Venezuela Raid Anthropic's AI tool, Claude, was reportedly used during the Delta Force raid to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. As one X user joked about what U.S. officials might have prompted the chatbot: "Claude, tell me where to find Maduro so we can capture him with no casualties." The Wall Street Journal reports that Claude is "the first AI model developer to be used in classified operations by the Department of Defense." Anthropic's model was reportedly used by Palantir Technologies in the daring Delta Force raid to capture Maduro, which allegedly included bombing multiple

Demented: Councillor Pushes Kids To Send Valentine's Cards To Illegal Male Migrants Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, A Green Party councillor in the UK has sparked outrage by announcing plans to take her young grandchildren to deliver handmade Valentine’s Day cards to adult male asylum seekers at a migrant camp. This comes amid widespread local opposition to the government’s decision to house hundreds of illegal migrants in a former military base, and fresh revelations about horrific crimes committed by similar arrivals. Anne Cross, an East Sussex County councillor, made the announcement at a heated public meeting, claiming it would help “dispel fear” by encouraging people

In Latest Blow To Free Speech, German Courts Could Issue "Speaking Ban" Against Top AfD Politician Via Remix News, German courts are currently deliberating whether leading Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician Björn Höcke could be hit with a “speaking ban” during a campaign event in the city of Lindenberg im Allgäu. The move could signal a worsening of free speech in Germany, with Höcke using the legal proceedings to make the case that his fundamental rights are being violated. “Democrats of all countries, look to Germany! Right now, German courts are seriously deliberating whether I should be issued a speaking ban for political events!

3 Detained, 1 Rumored Suicide As SWAT Team Swarms Home Near Guthrie's House In a dramatic Friday night development in a case that's garnered enormous public interest, three people were detained as a SWAT team executed search warrants connected to the abduction of the mother of NBC "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie -- and a neighbor claims another person shot himself in the head. Action unfolded at two locations -- both of them only about two miles from Nancy Guthrie's Tucson residence. As this is written, police have yet to reveal details.  A Pima County sheriff's deputy mans a roadblock near a home that was

Newsom Tells Europe "Trump Is Temporary," Doubles Down On Failing Green Agenda California Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke at the Munich Security Conference earlier on Friday, telling European elites that President Trump is "temporary" and will be gone within three years. Newsom, noticeably angered by Trump's push for deregulation and the rollback of climate policy, lashed out at the president, calling him "more destructive" than the current occupant of the White House. The issue for Newsom is that he still operates within the climate crisis framework promoted by globalists, even as the West is moving on from two decades of nation-killing green policy regime

UK's Insane New Trans Guidance Says School Kids As Young As Four Can 'Change Gender' Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, The UK government has issued new guidance allowing primary school children, some as young as four, to ‘socially transition’ the gender by changing their pronouns at school. According to reports in The Times, the guidelines state that parents should be involved in the “vast majority” of cases where a child questions their gender, and schools should not initiate steps towards social transitioning. However, the move has sparked outrage, with critics arguing it undermines parental rights and exposes vulnerable children to harmful ideologies.   > ??? UK Schools issued new Gender Rules >

European Official Warns That Americans Can Be Silenced By EU Online Speech Laws Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Europeans who face criminal charges for what they said or wrote warned that Europe’s speech laws can silence Americans as well, regardless of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections.  Finnish Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen arrives to attend a court session at the Helsinki District Court in Helsinki, Finland, on Jan. 24, 2022. Antti Aimo-Koivisto/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images While testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Paivi Rasanen, a member of parliament in Finland, recounted how she has been prosecuted

The Unsettling Truths The Epstein Files Reveal About Power And Privilege Authored by Patrick Keeney via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The public fixation on the Epstein files has settled, predictably, on the most lurid elements of the story. This is understandable. Sexual exploitation, particularly of the young, is among the most corrosive of crimes, and the scale of Epstein’s abuse, as well as the apparent indifference of powerful institutions to it, demands moral outrage. But to focus exclusively on the sexual scandal is to miss the deeper and more unsettling lesson the affair reveals. Documents that were included in the U.S. Department of Justice release

Germany, France Hold Secret Talks On Continental Nuclear Shield In Pivot From US Has Europe really embarked on a nuclear reset, rethinking its US-led deterrent architecture? For the first time since the Cold War, major European capitals are openly debating the need for an independent nuclear deterrent - an emerging theme on clear display this week at the Munich Security Conference. We've reported before that the turning point came in March, when Washington temporarily halted battlefield intelligence sharing with Ukraine - a move that forced allies to confront the prospect that Washington may no longer serve as a dependable security guarantor, also

Stolen Land At The Grammys: How Hollywood Groupthink Threatens Democracy Authored by Patrick Keeney via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Commentary Among the consolations of youth is the certainty with which one holds beliefs about the world. There is comfort in the conviction that one’s moral bearings are firmly set, that one’s understanding of complex questions is not only sincere but also correct. The world appears legible; right and wrong seem sharply drawn; doubt and nuance are dismissed as weakness or evasion. The 68th Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony at Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Feb. 1, 2026. Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for

WhatsApp & YouTube Blocked In Russia, Telegram Throttled As State "Super-App" Falters The West has been calling Russia's ever-tightening internet regulations on its citizenry a "digital Iron Curtain". Already over a period of months and years of the Ukraine war, various popular US-based social media apps have been throttled and even banned, but this week things have escalated with YouTube and WhatsApp being blocked in Russia: > Russia's internet regulator Roskomnadzor has removed"youtube.com" from its DNS (Domain Name System) servers. If a user tries to access the site directly without a VPN (Virtual Private Network), their router can no longer assign the address to its

Amazon's Ring And Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal The Severity Of The U.S. Surveillance State Authored by Glenn Greenwald via Substack, That the U.S. Surveillance State is rapidly growing to the point of ubiquity has been demonstrated over the past week by seemingly benign events. While the picture that emerges is grim, to put it mildly, at least Americans are again confronted with crystal clarity over how severe this has become. One of Google’s Nest surveillance cameras, whose recordings can be accessed by Google even if users don’t subscribe to the security firm’s services. CC Photo Lab / Shutterstock The latest round of valid panic

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots Last month, President Donald Trump sent Homan to Minnesota to personally oversee immigration enforcement operations and end the chaos, after ICE and CBP officers shot two protesters and the situation began to spiral out of control. Soon after, Homan successfully convinced Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to allow local law enforcement to coordinate with federal agents, prompting an initial drawdown of 700 agents. “Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less law enforcement officers to do this work in a

US-Controlled ATACMS Missiles Deployed In South China Sea, 10km Off China's Mainland Authored by Drago Bosni Mere days after the US-backed government in Taipei launched the so-called Joint Firepower Coordination Center (JFCC), defined as “an enhanced firepower coordination effort in close cooperation with the United States”, multirole sources have confirmed that the Chinese breakaway island province of Taiwan is deploying the overhyped and exorbitantly overpriced M142 HIMARS MLRS (multiple launch rocket system) to the islands of Penghu and Dongyin. The US-made system is also equipped with ATACMS missiles, extending its reach to 300 km. Taipei insists that this will “strengthen the effectiveness of the kill chain”, while its Ministry

CIA Releases Video To Recruit Spies In China Amid Xi's Top Brass Purge The CIA rolled out a new recruitment video Thursday aimed squarely at prying open cracks inside China's military establishment - already as a Xi CCP purge of top military officials has been underway, according to Reuters. This latest video features a "disillusioned mid-level Chinese military officer" pitching other officers in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the idea of quietly switching sides and feeding US intelligence - which seems a bit on the nose. Reuters described the release as the "latest U.S. step in a campaign to ramp up

India Explores Gas Power Boost To Stabilize Grid During Peak Hours By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com, India considers boosting the run rates of its gas-fired power plants during evening peak hours to support the grid amid the surge in renewable power generation, India’s Power Secretary Pankaj Agarwal said on Friday.   “For the last three years we have been studying whether gas plants can run for eight hours in the evening and remain shut during the rest of the day,” Agarwal said at a meeting with power plant executives, as carried by Reuters.  India has reduced in recent years its gas-fired power fleet from 25

"Low Profile" Doomsday Nuclear Bunker Hits Market, Just 3 Hours From DC Continuing our coverage of privately owned nuclear bunkers for sale, we generally find Cold War-era underground sites clustered in the Midwest. However, a recently listed bunker in the hills of central Pennsylvania sits roughly a three-hour drive from Washington, D.C., and New York City, offering a rare Mid-Atlantic bug-out option. Coldwell Banker real estate agents Blain Berrier and Greg Rothman listed the Cold War-era underground nuclear bunker, originally constructed in the late 1960s as part of what they describe as the AT&T Long Lines project. It was engineered for durability,

When It Comes To Climate And Energy, Let's Retire The Politics Of Fear Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), In the latest example of the scare tactics favored by climate change alarmists, it was announced last month that 2025 “was the third-warmest in modern history, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change monitoring service,” as reported by NBC News. A light display created using drones is performed near the U.N. headquarters ahead of the 78th U.N. General Assembly in New York City on Sept. 15, 2023. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images The story added: “The conclusion came as no surprise:

From Border Incursions To Stadiums: Counter-Drone Systems To Protect World Cup Games Whether the brief shutdown of El Paso airspace was driven by a reported U.S. military directed-energy counter-drone weapon or what senior U.S. officials characterized as a Mexican cartel drone incursion remains unresolved at the moment. Our assessment is that, with FIFA World Cup matches just months away, the Trump administration is racing to deploy counter-drone systems. After all, President Donald Trump signed last year's "Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty" executive order, which set the stage for accelerating counter-UAS and airspace security technology. On Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that, through

FBI Warns Of Romance Scams Ahead Of Valentine's Day Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Love is in the air, but it might be too good to be true for some hopeful romantics searching for love online, according to the FBI. A woman holds a phone displaying the TikTok app, in this file photo taken on Aug. 11, 2024. Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch Times The FBI warned dating app surfers ahead of Valentine’s Day to beware of criminals using romance scams. “The criminals who carry out romance scams are experts at what they do and will seem genuine, caring, and believable,” the

Luis Muñoz Pinto, 27, who was sent to notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador, would like to clear his name after US judge’s ruling A US federal judge’s order that some of the Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration to a notorious prison in El Salvador must be allowed to return to the United States to fight their cases has been greeted with hope and a sense of vindication – but also fear – by one of the deportees. US district judge James Boasberg ruled on Thursday in Washington DC that the Trump administration should facilitate the return of deportees who

Wall Street Journal says Claude used in operation via Anthropic’s partnership with Palantir Technologies Claude, the AI model developed by Anthropic, was used by the US military during its operation to kidnap Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Saturday, a high-profile example of how the US defence department is using artificial intelligence in its operations. The US raid on Venezuela involved bombing across the capital, Caracas, and the killing of 83 people, according to Venezuela’s defence ministry. Anthropic’s terms of use prohibit the use of Claude for violent ends, for the development of weapons or for conducting surveillance. Continue

Social media account for Palmerston, who retired in 2020, announces death of ‘Diplocat extraordinaire’ Palmerston, a rescue cat who became the chief mouser of the Foreign Office, has died in Bermuda. The cat, adopted from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, retired in 2020 after four years of service in Whitehall. Continue reading...

* Norwegian-born skier storms to historic slalom gold * ‘Your difference is your superpower,’ says 25-year-old As the snow fell in Bormio, and the fog settled in, Lucas Pinheiro Braathen made history by becoming the first South American to win a Winter Olympic medal. Then, as the realisation that he had won gold for Brazil in the men’s giant slalom, he collapsed to the floor and allowed the tears to flow. “I just hope that Brazilians look at this and truly understand that your difference is your superpower,” he said, still sobbing away. “It may show up in your skin or

The Canadian prime minister told residents of Tumbler Ridge that the country is ‘with you’ Canadian prime minister Mark Carney has told residents of Tumbler Ridge that the country is “with you, and we will always be with you”, during a candlelight vigil for the eight victims of a mass shooting that has shattered the small mining town. The prime minister, holding hands with opposition leader Pierre Poilievre while flanked by First Nations chiefs and local officials, paid tribute to the families enduring the loss of loved ones, after the shooting at a local school that has become one of the most

Discipline committee decides to terminate Miles Kwan from studies because of ‘multiple acts of misconduct’ A Hong Kong university student who had called for accountability over a deadly fire at an apartment complex in the city has been expelled by the school for disciplinary offences. Miles Kwan, a politics student, was detained for two nights by the city’s national security police last year for “seditious intent” after handing out flyers calling for an independent investigation into a fire that killed 168 people in November. Continue reading...

Customers flock to Daoxiangcun to pick up cakes selected by the president during lunar new year tour around city A Beijing pastry shop visited by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, on a lunar new year tour this week has been swarmed by customers hoping to get their hands on Xi-approved sweet treats. Traffic was brought to a standstill in Beijing’s capital as the president took a tour around the city on Monday and Tuesday. Continue reading...

Army in turmoil after Xi Jinping placed top general under investigation for suspected corruption last month The CIA (the US’s Central Intelligence Agency) has published a Mandarin-language recruitment video aimed at Chinese soldiers, in an apparent attempt to capitalise on the recent instability in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) after a series of high-level purges. The video, published on the CIA’s YouTube channel on Thursday, is titled The Reason for Stepping Forward: To Save the Future. Continue reading...

Japan says vessel failed to comply with order to stop, with incident coming weeks after row with China over Taiwan Authorities in Japan have seized a Chinese fishing boat and arrested its captain in a move that is likely to inflame an ongoing diplomatic row between Tokyo and Beijing. The seizure, which occurred on Thursday about 105 miles (170km) from the south-western port city of Nagasaki, came after the skipper refused an order to stop for an onboard inspection, according to media reports. Continue reading...

South Korea’s spy agency monitoring whether girl, believed to be 13, will appear at political conference this month South Korea’s spy agency has told lawmakers it believes the teenage daughter of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, is close to being designated as the country’s future leader, as Kim moves to extend the family dynasty to a fourth generation. The assessment by the national intelligence service (NIS) comes as North Korea is preparing to hold its biggest political conference later this month, where Kim is expected to outline his main policy goals for the next five years and take steps to tighten

After a fast kick-off in Australia, e-scooter hire crackdowns fuelled by safety concerns have seen shared ebikes pull ahead * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Rental ebikes are booming in popularity as e-scooter hire operations decline across Australia amid what some have labelled a “moral panic” over safety. The ebike boom has been led by Sydney, where the number of vehicles on streets nearly doubled in 2025 as US operator Lime deployed thousands more. Continue reading...

‘Angus Taylor presents us with a new question: can a soufflé rise once?’ the prime minister said in a speech to a Labor conference The prime minister has borrowed from a sharp-tongued predecessor to launch his first attack on the new opposition leader, Angus Taylor, asking: “Can a soufflé rise once?” Albanese played on an infamous insult from former prime minister Paul Keating, who asked whether a soufflé rises twice when Liberal Andrew Peacock mounted a challenge to regain the party leadership in 1989. Continue reading...

The Victorian senator’s elevation may help mitigate the effects of the party dumping its first female leader after only nine months. It also suggests the moderates still hold influence * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast After nine months in the political wilderness, Jane Hume has made a triumphant return to the Liberal party’s senior leadership team. The Victorian senator was installed as deputy leader on Friday after Sussan Ley was ousted by Angus Taylor just 276 days into the job. Continue reading...

Western Australia and Madagascar struck by destructive winds and rain, while Finland and Norway have coldest January since 2010 Tropical Cyclone Mitchell hit the coast of Western Australia last week. It initially developed as a weak tropical low over the Northern Territory in early February, then tracked over Western Australia’s Kimberley region and eventually reached the Indian Ocean. Fuelled by warm waters, Mitchell intensified into a tropical cyclone and moved south-west, hugging the coast of Western Australia and eventually deepened to a category three storm. Continue reading...

Conservationists estimate coal exported from expanded mine to release CO2 equivalent of about half Australia’s annual carbon footprint * Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The Albanese government has approved the expansion of a Queensland coalmine that will clear habitat for threatened koalas and greater gliders and add further fuel to the climate crisis, conservationists say. The extension of the Middlemount mine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin – jointly owned by US company Peabody and China-owned Yancoal – would see about 85m tonnes of coal exported over 24

Mette Frederiksen tells Munich Security Conference that Denmark is willing to work with the US, but ‘there are, of course, things that you cannot compromise on’ Rubio insists that the US “do not seek to separate, but to revitalise an old friendship.” He says “we do not want allies to rationalise the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it.” “We do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker. We want allies who can defend themselves, so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength. This is why we do

Speaking in Munich, Volodymyr Zelenskyy also called for a clear date for his country to be allowed to join the EU Ukraine wants security guarantees for a minimum of 20 years from the US before it can sign a peace deal with dignity, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said ahead of talks next week with Russia and the US. He was speaking in Munich on Saturday where he also called for a clear date for Ukraine to be allowed to join the EU. Some EU officials have put the date as early as 2027. Continue reading...

Bouquets imported to Europe found to be heavily contaminated, often with chemicals banned in EU and UK Stay away from roses this Valentine’s Day, environmental campaigners have warned after testing revealed them to be heavily contaminated with pesticides. Laboratory testing on bouquets in the Netherlands, Europe’s flower import hub, found roses had the highest residues of neurological and reproductive toxins compared with other flowers. Continue reading...

Intelligence agencies say deadly toxin in skin of Ecuador dart frogs found in Navalny’s body and highly likely resulted in his death * Munich Security Conference – live updates Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, was killed by dart frog poison administered by the Russian state two years ago, a multi-intelligence agency inquiry has found, according to a statement released by five countries, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. The US was not one of the intelligence agencies making the claim. Continue reading...

The UK prime minister says stronger security relies on greater cooperation and integration across the continent * Munich Security Conference – live updates Keir Starmer said there was an urgent need for a closer UK defence relationship with Europe, covering procurement and manufacturing, so that the UK would be at the centre of a stronger European defence setup. In a rare visit to the Munich Security Conference, the British prime minister told the audience, to applause, “we are 10 years on from Brexit. We are not the Britain of the Brexit years.” Continue reading...

Militant group’s infrastructure and weapons storage facilities were hit, as Washington praised Damascus for fresh coalition role The US military conducted 10 strikes on more than 30 Islamic State targets in Syria between 3 and 12 February as part of a campaign against the extremist group in Iraq and Syria. US Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement on Saturday that the US had struck IS infrastructure and weapons storage targets. Continue reading...

USS Gerald R Ford will take about three weeks to sail to region, amid push for Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions Donald Trump has ordered the world’s largest aircraft carrier to sail from the Caribbean Sea to the Middle East in an effort to increase pressure on Iran amid discussions over curbing its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. The USS Gerald R Ford and its supporting warships should take about three weeks to return to the region, where they will join the USS Abraham Lincoln, dramatically increasing the military firepower available to the US leader. Continue reading...

EU’s head of foreign policy claims ‘Board of Peace’ is vehicle for Trump with no accountability to Palestinians or UN A bitter dispute between Europe and the US over the future of Gaza has broken out into the open, with the EU’s head of foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, warning that Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” was a personal vehicle for the US president that removed any accountability to Palestinians or the United Nations. Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, also accused Trump of trying to bypass the original UN mandate for the board, and said Europe, one of the chief funders of

Annexe holding 6,000 women and children is now mostly empty, raising security and humanitarian concerns Most of the foreign families of suspected Islamic State fighters have left al-Hawl camp since the Syrian government took control of the facility, prompting security and humanitarian concerns over their whereabouts. About 6,000 women and children from 42 different countries were previously held in the foreigners’ annexe of al-Hawl camp in north-east Syria, which housed some of the most radical former members of the extremist group. The foreigners’ annexe was separate from the part of the camp that contained about 20,000 Syrians and Iraqis. Continue reading...

Union urges Leonard Blavatnik to scrap Channel 13 deal, saying it is part of Netanyahu plan ‘to capture the media’ Israeli journalists have appealed to a British billionaire not to proceed with the sale of a stake in an Israeli television channel, which they warn would represent a severe blow to the independence of the country’s media. Sir Leonard Blavatnik, listed by the Sunday Times as the UK’s third richest person, is selling a nearly 15% share in Channel 13, a commercial channel that has run critical news coverage of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in recent years, including investigations into the prime minister’s

Voting was largely peaceful in an election seen as a test of Bangladesh’s democracy after years of political turmoil The Bangladesh Nationalist party, led by Tarique Rahman, has won a sweeping victory in the country’s first election since a gen Z uprising toppled the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina. Results from the election commission confirmed the BNP alliance had won 212 seats, returning the party to power after 20 years, while the rival alliance, led by the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, won 77 seats. Continue reading...

Destined to a perilous life with no right to an education or to vote, state recognition ‘gives them hope’, campaigners say Through the decades that the Daulatdia brothel in Bangladesh has existed, children born there have been invisible, unable to be registered because their mothers were sex workers and their fathers unknown. Now, for the first time, all 400 of them in the brothel village have their own birth certificates. That milestone was reached after a push by campaigners who have spent decades working with Bangladesh’s undocumented children born in brothels or on the street. It means they can finally access the

Jailed then exiled in London, Rahman returns home as the main contender to be next prime minister of Bangladesh Tarique Rahman, who after 17 years in exile is the main contender to be the next prime minister of Bangladesh, has pledged to end entrenched corruption and put the country on a “new path” as voting began in the first free and fair elections in almost two decades. Speaking to the Guardian before polls opened on Thursday morning, Rahman promised a new era of clean politics, including a “top down, no tolerance” approach to graft, if his Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) was brought

Jamaat e-Islami, oppressed under Sheikh Hasina’s rule, could take unprecedented share of the vote on Thursday As the clock hit midnight, the women held their flame torches aloft and marched into the Dhaka night. “The people have given their blood, now we want equality,” they shouted above the roar of the traffic. For many in Bangladesh, the past few weeks have been a cause for jubilation. The first free and fair elections in 17 years have been promised for Thursday, after the toppling of the regime of Sheikh Hasina in a bloody student-led uprising in August 2024 in which more than 1,000

With medication largely unaffordable in the country, experts hope community support and a change in diet could reduce soaring type 2 diabetes rates A return to the traditional lentil and rice dishes that have nourished generations of Nepalis could save them from a diabetes epidemic prompted by the influx of western junk foods, doctors have said. In a country where one in five of those over 40 has type 2 diabetes, the foods enjoyed by their grandparents have showed remarkable results in reversing the condition. Continue reading...

At his official installation, Archbishop Richard Moth recognised the Catholic church’s failures but insists it’s a time of ‘opportunity’ The new leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales has said the church has failed vulnerable people, urging more work to be done to address the struggle of refugees and learn from victims of abuse. At a ceremony where he was officially installed in his new role as archbishop of Westminster, Richard Moth said: “Here, I am most aware of every occasion on which members of the church, or the church as a whole, have failed – most especially when the vulnerable

HMRC figures show 11% rise in young million-pound earners, with influencers and tech pay cited as key Their generation is often derided for being work-shy, self-centred and overly sensitive. But when it comes to making money, people under 30 are proving they are something else entirely: successful. A record 1,000 taxpayers under 30 earned more than £1m last year, an 11% increase on the year before, HMRC records show. Continue reading...

Museum’s revitalised galleries bring together 250 objects to show how design shapes modern life What do the first ever baby monitor, Nigeria’s 2018 World Cup kit, an 80s boombox, the smashed parts of Edward Snowden’s computer, a “Please offer me a seat” badge and a Labubu have in common? They are all included in the V&A’s Design 1990-Now galleries, which reopen to the public this week. The galleries, which run across two rooms on the upper floors of the museum, also house a collection of antique books. The displays cover six different themes including housing and living, crisis and conflict, and consumption

Co-author George Cottrell is close aide to party leader Nigel Farage and served several months in US prison As a choice for a book title, How to Launder Money certainly caught the eye. But then again, its co-author George Cottrell claims to know what he’s talking about. A close aide to Nigel Farage, Cottrell served several months in a US prison after being convicted there in 2017 for wire fraud – a chapter in his life he referred to at his book launch party on Thursday night. Continue reading...

Senior policing source says ‘tsunami’ of claims expected after US release of papers relating to disgraced financier British police have set up a new national group to deal with allegations that Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking of women had ties to Britain, as well as claims against his associates, such as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. At least three British police forces are dealing with allegations triggered by the revelations about Epstein and his associates in documents released in the US, with more claims of wrongdoing expected by police officials. Continue reading...

Speaking with progressive YouTuber, former US president stressed ‘unprecedented nature’ of agency’s actions Barack Obama publicly gave his support to demonstrators in Minneapolis for standing up to the “unprecedented nature” of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minnesota. Speaking in an interview with progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen on Saturday, the former president discussed the power that US citizens hold when standing up for the values they believe in and his hopes for the next generation of American leaders. Continue reading...

Senators said repeal was ‘particularly troubling’ and was counter to EPA’s mandate to protect human health More than three dozen Democratic senators have begun an independent inquiry into the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) following a huge change in how the agency measures the health benefits of reducing air pollution that is widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis. In a regulatory impact analysis, the EPA said it would stop assigning a monetary value to the health benefits associated with regulations on fine particulate matter and ozone. The agency argued that the estimates contain too

Clients including Chappell Roan and Abby Wambach cut ties to firm after communications came to light Casey Wasserman, a leading Hollywood talent agent whose clients include Chappell Roan, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lamar, is selling his business after communications with Ghislaine Maxwell were exposed as part of the US justice department’s recent dump of investigative documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein. Wasserman, son of famed Hollywood dealmaker Lew Wasserman, said late on Friday he was putting his eponymous talent and marketing agency on the block, citing the impact on the company from “past personal mistakes” and telling staff he felt that he

13% of federal civilian workforce is affected, although DHS – which spurred budget standoff – remains funded A limited US government shutdown came into effect on Saturday – the third of Donald Trump’s second term – after negotiations between the White House and Democrats in Congress failed to agree on new restrictions for federal immigration agents. The shutdown affects about 13% of the federal civilian workforce and is confined to agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which screens airline passengers. Continue reading...

Sheriff’s, FBI and forensics vehicles passed through roadblocks 2 miles from missing 84-year-old woman’s home Law enforcement investigating the disappearance of Today show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy, sealed off a road near her home in Arizona late Friday night. A parade of sheriff’s and FBI vehicles, including forensics vehicles, passed through the roadblock that was set up about 2 miles (3.2km) from the house. Continue reading...

Africa’s top regional body is hosting its annual summit in Ethiopia this weekend to discuss the future of the continent of some 1.4 billion people, as the organisation faces widespread discontent. Set up to “promote the unity and solidarity of the African States,” analysts say the African Union faces a legitimacy crisis among youth for failing to meet their expectations. Meanwhile, several African countries battle military coups, disputed elections and protests inspired by economic hardship...

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and the country’s main opposition leader held hands Friday as they paid tribute to the victims of one of the worst mass shootings in the country’s history at a vigil in a devastated British Columbia town. Carney and Pierre Poilievre, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, joined hands as an Indigenous leader sang a prayer outside the town hall in Tumbler Ridge. Carney and Poilievre also spoke. The Prime Minister named each of the six people killed at...

Award-winning Indian writer Arundhati Roy has said she is withdrawing from the Berlin Film Festival over jury president Wim Wenders’ comments that cinema should “stay out of politics” when asked about Gaza. Roy said in a statement on Friday that she was “shocked and disgusted” by responses from Wenders and other jury members to a question about the Palestinian territory at a press conference the day before. Roy, whose novel The God of Small Things won the 1997 Booker Prize, had been announced as...

The United Arab Emirates is rapidly eclipsing Hong Kong and emerging as a credible rival to Singapore as Asia’s most dynamic trading hub, thanks to an ambitious post-pandemic campaign of economic diplomacy. Defying global headwinds from war and instability across its own region, the UAE’s non-oil trade almost doubled between 2021 and 2025 to reach 3.8 trillion dirhams (US$1.03 trillion), Prime Minister Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum announced on January 31. That surge – powered by an aggressive...

During an entrance exam for a top middle school in Japan in January, students were asked to read two poems depicting life in Palestine and write responses to key passages. Controversy soon followed on Japanese social media over the use of the material related to war and displacement. Some criticised the test section as politically one-sided for lacking Israeli views, while others praised the school for choosing a subject that, despite its complexities, has galvanised the world after much...

The US Government experienced its second shutdown in four months on Saturday, as funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) halted, underscoring Washington’s growing partisanship and dysfunction. But in an ironic twist, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, at the centre of the Congressional showdown, will continue to operate despite being part of DHS, given its independent source of funding. In an unprecedented move, US President Donald Trump’s administration has allocated at...

The US military said on Friday it killed three alleged drug traffickers in a strike on a boat in the Caribbean. The attack raises the death toll from the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats to 133 people in at least 38 attacks carried out since early September in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. “Three narcoterrorists were killed during this action. No US military forces were harmed,” US Southern Command said in a statement on social media. A video linked to the post...

Around a decade ago, aboard a train winding through China’s landscape, Wang Ning, the founder and chairman of Beijing-founded international art toy brand Pop Mart, shared with designer Kenny Wong Shun-ming the story of his early attempts at entrepreneurship. As a fresh graduate, Wang struggled to sell affordable men’s suits sourced from Yiwu in Zhejiang province, eastern China, experimenting with small-scale arbitrage and learning first-hand how difficult it was to connect products with...

There is this old British chestnut that says justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done. Justice has been amply served in the 20-year sentence handed down to former media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, but it has not been seen to be done in many quarters, especially in the West. There is the reality of justice and the appearance of it, and the two don’t always or even usually coincide. There are two main reasons behind the widespread Western criticism of Lai’s case. One is that...

The Trump administration spent more than US$35 million to deport roughly 300 migrants to countries they had no connection to, doling out millions of dollars in lump sum transfers to foreign governments without a system to track how the money was used, according to a report released on Friday. The figures from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats average out to a cost of roughly US$116,666 per person deported. In Rwanda, which received seven deportees, the total cost reached about US$1.1...

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen”, as he sent a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East to ratchet up military pressure on the Islamic republic. Trump’s comments were his most overt call yet for the toppling of Iran’s clerical establishment, and came as he pushes on Washington’s arch-foe Tehran to make a deal to limit its nuclear programme. At the same time, the exiled son of the Iranian shah toppled in the...

A viral AI-generated video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting atop a building is causing a stir online. The 15-second video comes from the latest AI video-generation platform, Seedance 2.0. The platform was launched this week by its owner, ByteDance, the same Chinese parent that oversees TikTok. As the video circulates online, the Motion Picture Association and other industry stakeholders have called out the video for its unauthorised use of copyrighted works. MPA’s CEO, Charles Rivkin, wrote...

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s landslide electoral victory on Sunday signals a troubling shift: Japan’s unsettling turn to the right. In a post-US-led world order, safeguarding Japan’s security will require reaffirming, not abandoning, its post-war pacifist constitution. At the recent World Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a telling admission about the US-led international rules-based order: it was never truly fair. Canada benefited from...

On the margins of a glitzy security event in Bavaria, the foreign ministers of France and Germany revived a dormant diplomatic format with China. In what was described as part of a larger effort to prevent the world’s superpowers from picking Europe apart, France’s Jean-Noel Barrot and Germany’s Johann Wadephul hosted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday. It revived a configuration not seen since the days of French President Emmanuel Macron’s first term, talks that Wang said were “both an...

President Donald Trump boasted on Friday about a secret US “discombobulator” weapon that can block Russian and Chinese defence systems, as he met the elite troops who captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Trump’s comments at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina marked the first time he has talked about the mysterious device at a public event, after previously letting some details slip in interviews. “They even talk about the discombobulator, because they never got a shot off,”...

Brazilian prosecutors and police launched an extensive crackdown on a Chinese electronics distribution network accused of laundering more than one billion reais (US$190 million) over seven months through a system allegedly related to one of Latin America’s most powerful crime syndicates. The Primeiro Comando da Capital, or PCC, syndicate allegedly sold imported consumer electronics throughout Brazil via a Chinese e-commerce platform called “Knup Brasil”, including mobile phone chargers,...

⁠The Trump administration sued ⁠Harvard University on Friday, accusing it ⁠of failing to comply with a federal investigation and seeking documents to determine whether the university had illegally considered race in its admissions process. The move comes less than two weeks after US President Donald Trump said ‌his administration was seeking $1 billion from Harvard to settle probes into school policies, after a news report that said Trump had dropped his demand for a payment from the Ivy League...

The US eased sanctions on Venezuela’s energy sector on Friday, issuing two general licences that allow global energy companies to operate oil and gas projects in the Opec member and for other companies to negotiate contracts to bring in fresh ‌investments. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a general licence allowing Chevron, BP, Eni, Shell and Repsol to operate oil and gas operations in Venezuela. Those companies still have offices in the country and stakes in...

Consumer inflation in the US cooled slightly more than expected in January, government data showed Friday, as energy prices dipped. Analysts say the figure allows the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates again later this year, but warn that policymakers need to see sustained improvement to do so – despite US President Donald Trump’s insistence that there is virtually no inflation. The consumer price index (CPI) rose 2.4 per cent year-on-year, the Department of Labour said, down from December’s...

As Hong Kong braces itself for the Lunar New Year tourist surge, and perhaps long-awaited evidence of a return to the tourism heydays of 2017 and 2018, spare a thought for the US and mounting evidence of a “Trump slump” in US tourism this year. While UN Tourism data shows that international tourism was up by 4 per cent globally in 2025 – back to levels not seen since the Covid-19 crash in international travel – the US stood alone worldwide, with at least a 4 per cent fall. US President Donald...

A French tourist who went missing in northeastern Chad after heading off to visit an oasis in the desert has been found dead “after a fall”, Chad’s tourism minister said on Friday. The 70-year-old man – from the city of Dijon, according to a French newspaper report – had been missing since Wednesday. He was part of a group visiting Chad for the International Festival of Saharan Cultures in the city of Amdjarass, about 100km (60 miles) from the Sudan border. “We found the body in the Bachekele...

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon is due in federal court in Minnesota on Friday to enter a plea in a criminal case stemming from his coverage of a protest at a church against US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Lemon, now an independent journalist, livestreamed a protest against Trump’s deployment of ‌thousands of armed immigration agents into Democratic-governed Minnesota’s biggest cities. The protest disrupted a January 18 service at Cities Church in St Paul. He was charged with...

The mother of two infants found dead in a freezer in eastern France has been charged and placed in pre-trial detention, a prosecutor said on Friday. The case is the latest suspected instance of infanticide to emerge in France in recent years. Prosecutor Cedric Logelin said the 50-year-old woman was charged late on Thursday, a day after she was arrested in the western Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and admitted to freezing her newborns. No one else has been charged, he added. The grim...

The United States will send the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Middle East to back up another already there, a person familiar with the plans said on Friday, putting more American firepower behind US President Donald Trump’s efforts to coerce Iran into a deal over its nuclear programme. The USS Gerald R. Ford’s planned deployment to the Middle East comes after Trump only days earlier suggested another round of talks with the Iranians was at hand. Those negotiations did not materialise...

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. ‘Time is ripe’: why China is eyeing another vast canal link to Southeast Asia China has almost finished building the US$10 billion Pinglu Canal to deepen trade ties between its southwestern provinces and Southeast Asia. Now, it is...

The US military said it completed a withdrawal from a strategic base in Syria on Thursday, handing it over to Syrian forces, in the latest sign of strengthening US Syrian ties that could enable an even larger American drawdown. The al-Tanf garrison is positioned at the tri-border confluence of Syria, Jordan and Iraq. Established during Syria’s civil war in 2014, the United States initially relied on it as a ‌hub for operations by the US-led coalition against Islamic State militants who once...

Goldman Sachs’ chief legal ⁠officer Kathy Ruemmler has resigned, CEO David Solomon said on Thursday, after recent documents by the US Justice Department showed she accepted gifts from late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and advised him on how to address media inquiries regarding his crimes. The departure of Ruemmler, who was among the top executive officers of the Wall Street firm, was the most high-profile banking exit after the release of the latest Epstein documents by the US Justice Department...

US President Donald Trump on Thursday revoked a landmark scientific finding underpinning US regulations to curb planet-warming pollution, marking his biggest rollback of climate policy to date. The repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding” was paired with the immediate elimination of greenhouse gas standards on automobiles. But it also places a host of other climate rules in jeopardy, including carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and methane leaks for oil...

Across social media, a curious phrase has been circulating: “You met me at a very Chinese time in my life.” It appears under videos of hotpot dinners, DHGate hauls, Chinese streetwear fits and users joking about switching their phone interfaces into Chinese “for the aesthetic”. It has even spawned an ecosystem of spin-offs: “Chinamaxxing”, “you will turn Chinese tomorrow” and countless posts where people half-joke about becoming “more Chinese” by the day. But beneath the humour of what looks...

The families of victims of a shooting in a remote Canadian Rockies town grappled with unrelenting grief on Thursday as details emerged about those killed in the country’s deadliest mass shooting in years. Authorities said the 18-year-old alleged shooter, identified as Jesse Van Rootselaar, killed her 39-year-old mother, Jennifer Jacobs, and 11-year-old stepbrother, Emmett Jacobs, in their northern British Columbia home on Tuesday before heading to the nearby Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and...

The Trump administration reached a trade deal with Taiwan on Thursday, with Taiwan agreeing to remove or reduce 99 per cent of its tariff barriers, the office of the US Trade Representative said. The agreement comes as the US remains reliant on Taiwan for its production of computer chips, the exporting of which contributed to a trade imbalance of nearly US$127 billion during the first 11 months of 2025, according to the Census Bureau. Taiwan’s exports to the US will be taxed at a 15 per cent...

In January, James Zimmerman returned to the American Chamber of Commerce in China (AmCham China) as its chairman. He previously served in that role for four one-year terms in 2007, 2008, 2015 and 2016. A lawyer by training and a resident of China for 28 years, Zimmerman has witnessed the rise of the world’s second-largest economy, the challenges it has faced and the attendant changes to how American businesses operate in the country. In this interview, Zimmerman assesses the potential of US...

Hong Kong stands at a definitive demographic crossroads. With one-third of our population projected to be over 65 by the 2040s, the city can either treat ageing as a fiscal burden or it can transform longevity into a sustainable growth engine. Drawing inspiration from Andrew Scott and Lynda Gratton’s work on the 100-Year Life project, Hong Kong should boldly embrace longevity as a new development frontier. By leveraging our unique strengths in finance, world-class regulatory frameworks and...

The United States has issued a warning that Peru risks eroding its sovereignty after a court ruling limited state oversight of a Chinese-controlled megaport, prompting a sharp rebuke from Beijing and intensifying geopolitical tensions over a strategic hub on South America’s Pacific coast. The dispute centres on the Port of Chancay, a US$1.3 billion deep water facility located about 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Lima and majority owned by China’s state-run shipping giant Cosco Shipping...

The Paris prosecutors' office on Thursday said that nine people were being detained as part of an investigation into a suspected decade-long, €10 million (US$11.8 million) ticket fraud scheme at the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum. The arrests took place on Tuesday as part of a judicial investigation opened after the Louvre filed a complaint in December 2024, the prosecutors’ office said. The loss for the museum over the past decade is estimated to exceed €10 million, it said. Those...

The UK’s top civil servant resigned on Thursday, the third senior aide to Prime Minister Keir Starmer to quit in a matter of days in fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. “Chris Wormald will stand down as the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service by mutual agreement from today,” said a joint statement released by the government. His departure came after two top aides quit earlier this week over the row triggered by the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington...

A UK childcare worker who filmed himself sexually abusing youngsters at a nursery where he worked and downloaded over 26,000 indecent images of children was on Thursday jailed for 18 years. Vincent Chan, 45, who admitted a raft of 56 charges including sexual assault, was described in court as “every parent’s worst nightmare”. Passing sentence, Judge John Dodd told him he was guilty of an “utterly wicked, perverse and depraved” campaign of sexual abuse. “You became a sexual predator and someone...

US President Donald Trump is privately musing about exiting the North American trade pact, people familiar with the matter said, injecting further uncertainty about the deal’s future into pivotal renegotiations involving the US, Canada and Mexico. The president has asked aides why he shouldn’t withdraw from the agreement, which he signed during his first term, though he has stopped short of flatly signalling that he will do so, according to the people who spoke on condition of anonymity to...

A federal judge in Florida on Thursday set a February 2027 trial date for US President Donald Trump’s US$10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC. Trump filed the suit against the British broadcaster last year over the editing of his speech ahead of the US Capitol riot in a documentary on the flagship BBC current affairs show Panorama. Trump alleges that the BBC’s editing of his January 6, 2021 speech made it appear that he had explicitly urged supporters to attack the Capitol, where...

US President Donald Trump’s point man on Thursday announced the end of an aggressive immigration operation in Minnesota that triggered large protests and nationwide outrage following the killing of two US citizens. Thousands of federal agents including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducted weeks of sweeping raids and arrests in what the administration claims were targeted missions against criminals. “I have proposed and President Trump has concurred that this surge...

China on Thursday reduced tariffs on European Union dairy imports worth over US$500 million, in the final ruling of an 18-month anti-dumping investigation started in response to the bloc’s duties on Chinese electric vehicles. The new tariffs ranging from 7.4 per cent to 11.7 per cent on dairy imports from the EU will ‌apply for a five-year period from February 13, replacing the 21.9 per cent to 42.7 per cent range imposed in a preliminary decision in December, as stated by China’s Ministry of...

Two of China’s leading carmakers, BYD and ⁠Geely, are among the finalists vying to purchase a Nissan–Mercedes-Benz plant in Mexico, according to a ⁠person familiar with the matter, as China seeks a manufacturing foothold in a country where US tariffs are fuelling factory closures and lay-offs. The finalists emerged from nine companies expressing interest in acquiring the factory, including at least two other major Chinese manufacturers: Chery and Great Wall Motor, according to two sources...

China has bought some Venezuelan oil that was bought earlier by the US, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright. “China has already bought some of the crude that’s been sold by the US government,” Wright told the media in Caracas, without giving details. “Legitimate Chinese business deals under legitimate business conditions” would be fine, he said, when asked about possible joint ventures in the country. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said he wasn’t familiar with Wright’s...

The perpetual question of “who governs” finds stark expression in today’s US-China rivalry. As the two powers compete, the contrast between governance-by-technocrats in China and the predominance of lawyers in the United States is shaping each country’s respective development path. China is set to approve its 15th five-year plan, which will set development goals and strategies through 2030. It prioritises critical technological breakthroughs and industrial integration. Meanwhile, in the Trump...

Russia launched a barrage of ballistic missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities in overnight attacks, officials reported on Thursday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow was “hesitating” about another round of US-brokered talks on stopping the fighting. Washington has proposed further negotiations next week between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Miami or Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, which was the location of the last meeting, Zelensky said late on...

The DHS is flooding social media companies with administrative subpoenas to identify accounts that are protesting ICE. Social media companies have pushed back but are largely complying. Our tech reporter, Sheera Frenkel, explains.

Problems at detention centers operated by CoreCivic extend far beyond recent measles outbreaks.

An upcoming Senate primary contest in Illinois, which is likely to pick the state’s next senator, has centered on Democrats’ future approach to federal immigration policy.

The toxin was found in the body of the Russian dissident Aleksei A. Navalny, who died in prison two years ago, five governments said, challenging Russia’s official account.

People protesting the Iranian government gathered near the security conference in Munich, as well as in other cities. More U.S.-Iran talks are expected Tuesday.

Nancy Guthrie, 84, the “Today” show anchor’s mother, vanished from her Arizona home on Feb. 1. In the time since, very little new information has come to light.

He speaks English. She speaks Mandarin. The secret to their happy marriage: Microsoft Translator.

As the United States prepares to turn 250, the Trump administration is turning the celebration into a pay-to-play spectacle where even a speaking role on the National Mall is up for sale.

The tech heroes turned zeros are leading us to our doom.

On Valentine’s Day, consider the ways in which we’re sticking to established paths — and the places where we yearn to deviate.

Brenda Ogden lost her waterproof prosthetic leg 10 months ago, and with it, her zest for swimming. Then a local fossil hunter stumbled upon it.

Mr. Klein, who led an education technology company after running the New York City school system, met with Jeffrey Epstein over a period of several months in 2013.

The national party, which is nearly $100 million behind its G.O.P. counterpart, bought the list for $6.5 million.