Raid on Fulton county election office is part of the Trump administration’s wider US push to fuel false claims of fraud

The FBI raid on the Fulton county election office Wednesday was an aggressive new front in Donald Trump’s effort to use his 2020 election loss to continue to sow doubt about American elections ahead of the 2026 midterms.

As Trump sought to overturn the 2020 election, false claims of malfeasance during ballot-counting in Atlanta became a key part of the big lie about a stolen election. Misleading surveillance video showing ballots being retrieved from suitcases became the basis for a myth that fraudulent ballots were included in the tally. Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer and a close ally at the time, was ordered to pay $148.1m to the election workers as part of a libel suit for spreading lies about them. He later settled.

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The network’s editor-in-chief unveiled a curious list of 19 people to be paid contributors across different platforms

A focus on wellness, nutrition, longevity and cosmology, mixed with more than a sprinkling of conservative ideology, appears to represent Bari Weiss’s vision to revitalize CBS News, and regain the trust of the network’s lost viewers and employees.

Editor-in-chief Weiss on Tuesday unveiled a curious list of 19 individuals – including podcasters, influencers, restaurateurs, climate deniers and a number of other opinionated writers – who will be paid contributors offering their wealth of wisdom and insight that will help CBS become, in her words, “fit for purpose in the 21st century”.

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London-based satirist hails ‘amazing’ ruling that found Gulf state targeted and attacked him for his criticism

A London-based Saudi dissident who a judge decided should receive more than £3m in damages from the kingdom for assault and the hacking of his phone has insisted that it must pay up or face enforcement action.

Mr Justice Saini ruled that the Saudi government infected the phone of Ghanem al-Masarir with Pegasus spyware and, while surveillance was continuing, in 2018, its agents attacked him outside Harrods in central London.

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Exclusive: ‘Regional defence’ settler units are escalating violent displacement of Palestinians, Israeli reservists and activists say

Israel’s army has become a vehicle for violent settlers to escalate their campaign against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, with reserve units drawn from settlements functioning as vigilante militias, according to Israeli soldiers and activists, and the United Nations.

Hagmar, or regional defence units, were set up across the West Bank from October 2023, as conscripts and the standing army deployed there prepared to move to Gaza.

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White Moss by Anna Nerkagi; The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin; The Roof Beneath Their Feet by Geetanjali Shree; Berlin Shuffle by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz

White Moss by Anna Nerkagi, translated by Irina Sadovina (Pushkin, £12.99)
“You, too, need a woman!” Alyoshka’s mother tells him. “Even a plain one, as long as her hands and legs aren’t crooked.” And Alyoshka, part of the nomadic Nenets people in the Russian Arctic, does find a wife, but can’t consummate their marriage: he’s still in love with a girl who left for the city years ago. This novel takes us around the camp, from Alyoshka’s family to Petko and his friend Vanu discussing old age to a new arrival who shares his tragic story of alcohol addiction: “The devil had entered my soul, and it was fun to be with him.” Meanwhile, Soviet representatives, intended to support the Nenets people, come and go: “They didn’t stick, because strictly speaking there was nothing to stick to.” This story of a solid community where people stick instead with one another is a perfect warming tale for winter.

The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Daunt, £14.99)
Agathe, a 30-year-old French woman living in New York, is so estranged from her sister Véra that when she receives a text message saying “Papa’s dead”, she replies: “Who is this?” Now she returns to the family home in the Dordogne to help clear out his things. “If we set fire to the books, there’d be nothing left.” Relations remain difficult: Véra communicates only by text message; she hasn’t spoken since the age of six. This is a book of absence and silence – village shops are closed, streets deserted, Agathe’s husband in the US doesn’t reply to her – and written with apt spareness. “I’m following the advice of decluttering influencers,” Agathe tells us, but it’s her past that she needs to offload, and slowly we learn the history of the family breakup. The balance between revelation and continued mystery makes this book both tantalising and satisfying.

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Pick of former Fed governor to replace Jerome Powell comes as White House seeks to tighten grip on central bank

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Donald Trump has announced Kevin Warsh as his nomination for the next chair of the Federal Reserve, selecting a candidate who has been an outspoken critic of the US central bank.

The move ends months of speculation about who the president would pick to replace Jerome Powell , as he waged an extraordinary campaign to influence policymaking at the Fed by repeatedly calling for rate cuts.

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Seeing large men dressed in goggles and trenchcoats echoes the camp fascism of musical comedies

An aspect of ICE’s deadly performance in Minneapolis that goes hand-in-hand with its mission to intimidate is the absolutely farcical tone of the ICE aesthetic. Broadway numbers like Springtime for Hitler in The Producers and, more recently, Das Übermensch in Operation Mincemeat, a showstopper performed with a German techno beat and Nazi boyband – “Third Reich on the mic” – vocals, present fascism as an essentially camp enterprise and we’re reminded this week that ICE fits the mould entirely.

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Als Trump dreigt Groenland te pakken, is er meer klandizie, weten inkopers van goud en zilver. Zo ook in Hengelo, waar taxateur en klant geduldig bekijken of het bestek van oma écht van edelmetaal is. „Als het koningswater bloedrood kleurt, is het zilver.”

Donald Trump said he had asked Vladimir Putin to "not fire into Kyiv and the various towns for a week" due to the "extreme cold."

Donald Trump said he had asked Vladimir Putin to “not fire into Kyiv and the various towns for a week” due to the “extreme cold.”