Order allows direct flights from US to Venezuela, as major oil companies already on ground to assess potential operations
Donald Trump has ordered the immediate reopening of commercial airspace over Venezuela, weeks after US military forces toppled the dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Speaking at the White House during his cabinet’s first meeting of the year, Trump said he had just concluded a telephone conversation with Venezuela’s acting president (and former vice-president), Delcy Rodríguez, in which he informed her of the decision to restore flight access.
Meta wowed Wall Street with improvements in ad targeting fueled by AI alongside huge investment. Microsoft had less to show for its billions spent
Big tech earnings so far this week have sent a clear warning: investors are willing to overlook soaring spending on artificial intelligence if it fuels strong growth, but are quick to punish companies that fall short.
The contrast was clear in Thursday’s stock market reaction to earnings from Microsoft and Meta, highlighting how dramatically the stakes have changed since the launch of ChatGPT started the AI boom more than three years ago.
Protesters need support following the bloody crackdown by a ‘zombie’ regime – not wild threats or worse from the US president
The brutality of Iran’s crackdown on protesters is almost unfathomable. Despite the authorities cutting off communications and destroying evidence, it is clear that a regime never reluctant to shed its citizens’ blood has done so with unprecedented zeal, sensing an unprecedented threat from unrest across the country, challenging not only its policies but its very existence.
Officials have reported 3,000 deaths, but human rights groups have tallied many more, and a network of medical professionals has estimated that 30,000 could have been killed. Security forces shot people dead as they fled a fire and are arresting doctors for helping the wounded.
A ground rent cap is a good start, but ministers need to go further in reforming an unjust system
Changes to lease agreements, leading to steeply increasing ground rents over recent years, are an outrage. An estimated 18% of leaseholders in England and Wales – around 1m households – have a so-called “modern ground rent” lease, with escalating charges that make it impossible in many cases to remortgage or sell. Cost-of-living pressures, including food and energy price rises, make it all the more urgent that their situation is addressed. Angela Rayner was right to argue in the Guardian last week that ministers must pick a side.
This market should never have been allowed to develop in the way that it has. An investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority found no evidence that leaseholders get anything for these annual fees – which are separate from service charges that pay for the maintenance of common areas. Campaigners for leasehold abolition are right that the rent-seeking behaviour of freeholders is wrong. Mortgage lenders, as well as politicians, should have put their feet down years ago.
Star says seaside town ‘inhabited by creativity’ and shares love for a local restaurant after dropping in on Tracey Emin
If you were to guess where Madonna goes on holiday, you might think Mustique or the Maldives – Margate probably would not make the list.
But the pop superstar spent the weekend there and enthused in an Instagram post that “the whole town seems to be inhabited and energised by creativity”, and that “whenever I go there, I feel like I’ve entered a dream”.
New study into ‘heritability’ shows that 50% of the variation in human lifespan could be down to genetics
Some people who live to a great age put it down to an evening tot of whisky, others to staying out of trouble. Now scientists think they may have unlocked a key secret to long life – quite simply, genetics.
Writing in the journal Science, the researchers described how previous studies that had attempted to unpick the genetic component of human lifespan had not taken into account that some lives were cut short by accidents, murders, infectious diseases or other factors arising outside the body. Such “extrinsic mortality” increases with age, as people often become more frail.
That's billion with a B. So if you held out hope that filling out surveys or shitposting through it might turn this ship around, no. That much money has an event horizon.
Two years ago today, Hind Rajab’s dreams were stolen.
She dreamed of becoming a doctor—to help people, to heal. She loved the sea. She loved the color pink. She loved her family. She loved to play. She was a child, exactly as children everywhere are: full of tenderness, curiosity, and big dreams for a future she never got to live.
This portrait is a moment of remembrance—and an act of refusal. Refusal to let her be reduced to a statistic. Refusal to let the world look away.
Hind’s story, told in The Voice of Hind Rajab, is not an exception. It is the story of tens of thousands of Palestinian children whose names we will never know, whose dreams were never recorded, whose lives were stolen in silence.
Remembering Hind is a call to action—to do everything in our power to protect and fight for the millions of Palestinian children who are still trying to live. To show up and demand every child be afforded the right to live. To play. To hope. To dream. To live in dignity and not constant fear.
Today and every day—we remember Hind and every child who has been killed and every child who needs us to show up for them.
In honor of Hind and all children, a limited run of signed prints with proceeds going to the Palestine Red Crescent Society will be sold via this link HERE.
In een drugsonderzoek zijn woensdag en donderdag zes mensen aangehouden. Het gaat om vijf mannen uit Schiedam, Oostvoorne en Bleiswijk. Ze zijn tussen de 29 en 39 jaar oud. Een zesde verdachte, een 61-jarige man, werd aangehouden in het Spaanse Marbella. Ook nam de politie een grote partij drugs in beslag.
