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 deadly attacks in Canadian history. Continue reading...

Strike appears to be first in Caribbean since November, with vast majority of recent strikes happening in the Pacific The US military’s Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, said it had carried out its second deadly boat strike this week. The command said the latest strike killed three suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean on Friday. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the Southern Command said in a statement. The command included a video of the strike with its announcement, which shows a boat traveling through the water as it explodes into flames after being hit with what looks like a missile. Continue reading...

Democratic representative also condemns US capture of Nicolás Maduro, Trump’s threats to annex Greenland and US support for Israel’s war on Gaza – key US politics stories from Friday, 13 February at a glance Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused Donald Trump of tearing apart the transatlantic alliance with Europe and of seeking to introduce an “age of authoritarianism”, as she condemned his administration’s foreign policy in front of its allies’ top policymakers at the Munich security conference. Speaking at a panel on populism on Friday, the New York representative outlined what she called an “alternative vision” for a leftwing US foreign policy, challenging the Trump administration’s shift to the right in front an audience of US allies who have grown increasingly wary of the US’s increasingly nationalist – and militaristic – global posture. Continue reading...

New York congresswoman criticizes ‘unconditional’ US aid and calls for enforcement of Leahy laws Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said during a Munich security conference panel on Friday on the future of foreign policy that the Democratic party’s next presidential nominee should reconsider the country’s military aid to Israel. Hagar Shezaf of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz asked the US congresswoman if she thought “the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 elections should re-evaluate military aid to Israel”. Continue reading...

President insists he will also restrict mail-in voting, even if Congress fails to pass the Save America Act Donald Trump threatened on Friday to impose a requirement that US voters present photo identification before being allowed to cast ballots in the upcoming midterm elections. Trump insisted he will push for the change even if Congress fails to pass the Save America Act, which cleared the House earlier this week but faces an uphill battle in the Senate. The bill would impose a national photo identification requirement to vote, in addition to requiring proof of citizenship to register and drastically limiting mail-in voting. Continue reading...

Aldwych theatre, London William Nicholson’s take on CS Lewis’s marriage to an American divorcee should have you in bits but it fails to feel as eviscerating as it should The drama of love and loss in Shadowlands has played out movingly in film and on television. William Nicholson’s take on CS Lewis’s marriage to an American divorcee is that of late-found passion, terminal illness and a crisis of the celebrated writer’s Christian faith. In all its iterations, it is an old-fashioned weepie. In this production, originally staged at Chichester Festival theatre, it just feels old-fashioned. It has charm and pulls you into its sadness but seems as creaky as the half-filled, wood-panelled library in its backdrop. There is too much a sense of a drama unfolding, from the moment Lewis (Hugh Bonneville) receives a letter from American fan, Joy Davidman (Maggie Siff), to his slow falling in love and her descent into illness. Continue reading...

Defender’s current contract expires at end of the season ‘We wouldn’t be in talks if we didn’t want him to stay’ Arne Slot has described Ibrahima Konaté as “vital” to Liverpool and the club has not given up hope of convincing the defender to sign a new contract. Konaté has endured a tough time on and off the pitch this season but has impressed since returning from compassionate leave against Newcastle following the death of his father. Liverpool’s central-defensive rebuild is under way with the signings of Giovanni Leoni and Jérémy Jacquet, for an initial £26m and £55m respectively, but Slot insists Konaté remains an essential part of his plans. Continue reading...

British PM to tell Munich Security Conference that Europe together is ‘sleeping giant’ and will say UK won’t turn away from its allies Keir Starmer will say the UK and Europe need to step up their commitments to Nato and avoid the risk of overdependence on the US for defence, as he sets out one of the main planks of his foreign policy vision on Saturday. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, the prime minister will warn against the idea of the UK turning inwards on security, instead calling for a focus on what he will call the “sleeping giant” of shared European defence capabilities. Continue reading...

The heavy US favorite falls twice in the free skate as Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov capitalizes to claim a shock Olympic title in Milan For nearly two years, Ilia Malinin has made men’s figure skating feel predictable in the most spectacular possible way. On Friday night on the southern outskirts of Milan, the Olympic Games reminded the sport – and perhaps Malinin himself – that predictability is never guaranteed on its biggest stage. The overwhelming favorite entering the free skate, the 21-year-old American instead saw the Olympic title slip away to Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov after an error-strewn performance that will rank among the biggest upsets in modern figure skating history. Continue reading...

Berlin film festival: Shahrbanoo Sadat is a charming presence in front of the camera and a skilled film-maker behind in this shrewd and contemporary tale Afghan film-maker Shahrbanoo Sadat is a warm and approachable presence as writer, director and star of No Good Men – a tale of Afghanistan’s women in 2021 as they are about to be surrendered to the Taliban with the withdrawal of US troops. It’s an urgent tale, which incidentally closes with a fervent finale reminiscent of Casablanca – although the central turnaround in the male lead’s heart, gallantly disproving the title, is maybe a bit smooth. No Good Men is screening at the Berlin film festival and will be released at a later date Continue reading...

Pedro Neto scored a superb hat-trick as Chelsea made light work of Championship promotion hopefuls Hull City to saunter into the FA Cup fifth round, as Liam Rosenior marked his return to his former club with a convincing victory. This had all the makings of a potentially tricky evening for the Blues, with Hull nestled inside the Championship’s top six and pushing for a return to the Premier League under Sergej Jakirovic despite operating under restrictions in the last two transfer windows. Continue reading...

Johnny Flynn and John C Reilly offer casting heft, but this moody, technically sound tale of an unfolding epidemic in 1870s Wisconsin lacks emotional substance There is some very concerted image-making and mood-making in this technically accomplished yet unsatisfying drama from first-time, Norway-based director Dara Van Dusen. It is a sombre tale of the American old west, adapted by Dusen from the novel by Stewart O’Nan, and somehow has the feel of a short film indulgently taken to feature length. Its visual gestures and set pieces, although striking and often shocking, felt for me disconnected from any emotional truth – a truth that sustained, developed storytelling may have provided. The setting is a frontier town in Wisconsin in 1870, and Jacob (Johnny Flynn) is both sheriff and pastor – although he wears neither badge nor religious garment. He has seen traumatising service in the civil war, in which he appears to have achieved high rank, although some in the town are suspicious of his Norwegian background. He is married to Marta (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and they have a young child. Continue reading...

Briton triumphs by nearly a second in Milano Cortina First British man to win individual winter gold since 1980 And on the seventh day, Great Britain finally won their first medal of the Olympics. At nine o’clock on Friday night Matt Weston, the man his teammates call “Captain 110%”, won the gold in the men’s skeleton after four faultless races across the two days of competition. The 28-year-old broke the track record at the Cortina Sliding Centre four times in the space of four races, and won in a final combined time of 3min 43.33sec, almost a full second ahead of the runner-up, Germany’s Axel Jungk. Weston is the first British man ever to win the Olympic skeleton title. And he did it all despite starting the year with a four-inch tear in his right quad that meant he had to miss pre-season training. Continue reading...

Scotland have lost only two of the last eight clashes with England but Borthwick’s squad are unscarred by failure In one of sport’s weirder coincidences, England are about to play must-win games against Scotland in both rugby and cricket on the same day. The forecast 3C temperatures for the Calcutta Cup encounter may be cooler than in Kolkata – appropriately the venue for the T20 World Cup group fixture – but a white-hot contest inside a chilly Murrayfield can be absolutely guaranteed. Because this particular collision, the 144th since the sides first met at Raeburn Place in 1871, looks set to shape the Six Nations prospects of all involved. To say Scotland are under additional pressure following their defeat by Italy in round one is to state the obvious. And England, too, will take the field knowing the time has come to demonstrate whether or not they are the real deal. Continue reading...

Former CNN anchor said he was working as a journalist when he was arrested at protest during church service Former CNN host turned independent journalist Don Lemon pleaded not guilty to federal civil rights charges on Friday, following a protest at a Minnesota church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official is a pastor. Four others also pleaded not guilty in the case. Lemon did not comment to reporters as he entered the courthouse accompanied by his attorney Joe Thompson. Roughly two dozen protesters stood outside the building, chanting “Pam Bondi has got to go” and “Protect the press”. Continue reading...

US homeland security eyeing 24 buildings, some as ‘primary locations’ for deportations, in escalation of Trump agenda US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) expects to spend an estimated $38.3bn on a plan to acquire warehouses across the country and retrofit them into new immigration detention centers with capacity for tens of thousands of detainees, according to documents the agency sent to the governor of New Hampshire. The documents, published on the state’s website on Thursday, disclose that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates it will spend $158m retrofitting a new detention facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and an additional estimated $146m to operate the facility in the first three years. Continue reading...

A skier from France is also killed with manslaughter investigation to be carried out by mountain rescue police Two Britons are among three skiers to have been killed in an avalanche in the French Alps. The pair were part of a group of five people, accompanied by an instructor, off-piste skiing in Val d’Isère, in south-east France. A French national, who was skiing alone, was also killed. Continue reading...

Letter from committee on oversight says it is clear the former ambassador ‘holds critical information’ Peter Mandelson has been asked to testify to the US Congress over his relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Robert Garcia, ranking member of the committee on oversight and government reform, and congressman Suhas Subramanyam have written to Mandelson requesting he be questioned as part of the investigation into Epstein. Continue reading...

German chancellor rebuts idea of American unilateralism and says ‘democracies have partners and allies’ The US acting alone has reached the limits of its power and may already have lost its role as global leader, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, warned Donald Trump at the opening of the Munich Security Conference. Merz also disclosed he had held initial talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, over the possibility of joining France’s nuclear umbrella, underlining his call for Europe to develop a stronger self-standing security strategy. Continue reading...

Wuthering Heights is the latest film to turn heads over anachronistic costumes, but it’s not by any means the first Emerald Fennell’s retelling of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights finally hits cinema screens this weekend. Ever since the first set photos were released, the anachronisms of the costumes have been central to the conversation. As fashion industry watchdog Diet Prada put it: “The costume design for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights scandalised audiences with its freaky mix of Oktoberfest corseting meets 1950’s ballgowns meets futuristic liquid organza meets … Barbie?” Continue reading...

Congressperson says US president and Marco Rubio are tearing apart transatlantic alliance Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused Donald Trump of tearing apart the transatlantic alliance with Europe and of seeking to introduce an “age of authoritarianism”, as she condemned his administration’s foreign policy in front of its allies’ top policymakers at the Munich Security Conference. Speaking at a panel on populism on Friday, Ocasio-Cortez outlined what she called an “alternative vision” for a leftwing US foreign policy, challenging the Trump administration’s shift to the right in front an audience of US allies who have grown increasingly wary of the US’s increasingly nationalist – and militaristic – global posture. Continue reading...

Protests in Buenos Aires, Lindsey Vonn crashes at the Winter Olympics and Bad Bunny performs at Super Bowl LX – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists Continue reading...

Nikhil Gupta faces up to 40 years over alleged India-backed attempt to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun The Indian man who US prosecutors accused of plotting to kill a prominent US-based activist after being recruited by an agent of the Indian government has pleaded guilty to three criminal charges, according to a spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Manhattan. Nikhil Gupta faces a maximum 40 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and money-laundering charges in connection to the failed attempt to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US resident who is an advocate for a sovereign Sikh state in northern India. Continue reading...

Rising evidence that secondhand vapour from e-cigarettes poses health risks, government says Vaping in cars carrying anyone under 18 will be banned in England under government plans to reduce the harm caused by smoking and e-cigarettes. The move is included in the tobacco and vapes bill, which will also outlaw smoking, vaping and using heated tobacco in playgrounds and outside schools and hospitals. Continue reading...

Ghanaian guitarist, arranger, singer-songwriter and cult hero who rose to fame outside Africa only late in life Ebo Taylor, who has died aged 90, was one of the great innovators of west African music, a Ghanaian guitarist, arranger and singer-songwriter who never received the fame he deserved outside Africa until late in life, by when he had become a much-sampled cult hero. It was only in 2010, when he was 74, that he released Love and Death, his first solo album to be given an international distribution. Recorded with members of the Berlin-based Afrobeat academy, it included new versions of songs from earlier in his career that until now had been heard only on imports or compilations. And it showed how – like his far more celebrated Nigerian friend Fela Kuti – he had fused African and western styles to create a style of his own. Continue reading...