MicroWave

Secretary of state calls the US ‘a child of Europe’ and urges continent to back a new world order

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has described America as “a child of Europe” and made an emotional but highly conditional offer of a new partnership, insisting the two continents belong together.

In a much-anticipated speech at the annual Munich Security Conference, he said the US was intent on building a new world order, adding “while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe”. The US and Europe, he said “belong together”.

Admitting the Americans may come across as a little direct and urgent, he said this was only because the US was profoundly concerned by the fate of Europe, and knew their destinies were intertwined.

Overall the tone of the speech was greeted with relief by the delegates in the hall, although many pointed out Rubio was not offering a partnership of equals, but an alliance largely framed in Donald Trump’s terms.

The contrast is striking: In Europe, some people whose names come up in the Epstein files are facing consequences — but in the U.S., not so much.

European royals, government officials, politicians and others are losing jobs and titles over their connection to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. European law enforcement agencies are opening investigations based on recent troves of documents released by the U.S. government.

Prominent Americans with apparent ties to Jeffrey Epstein — including Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick— have so far largely kept their positions of power.

Years of steadily climbing coffee prices have some in this country of coffee lovers upending their habits by nixing café visits, switching to cheaper brews or foregoing it altogether.

Coffee prices in the U.S. were up 18.3% in January from a year ago, according to the latest Consumer Price Index released on Friday. Over five years, the government reported, coffee prices rose 47%.

Virtually all coffee consumed in the U.S. is imported. Though tariffs affected some imports of coffee in 2025, they ultimately were removed. Climate issues — drought in Vietnam, heavy rain in Indonesia, and hot, dry weather in Brazil — are blamed for reducing yields of coffee crops and driving up global prices.

Intelligence agencies say deadly toxin in skin of Ecuador dart frogs found in Navalny’s body and highly likely resulted in his death

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.

Navalny died in a remote Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence. Samples from his body were secured before his burial and sent to the laboratories of two countries.

The UK, describing the poisoning as barbaric, said it would be reporting Russia to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, as a flagrant violation by Russia of the chemical weapons convention (CWC).

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 are currently in countries outside Venezuela, saying they must be given the opportunity to seek the due process they were denied after being illegally expelled from the US last March.

Boasberg added that the US government should cover the travel costs of those who wish to come to the US to argue their immigration cases.

After the Trump rocked the continent with his threat to take Greenland, the prime minister praises Europe as a ‘sleeping giant’

Britain’s “Brexit years” are over, Sir Keir Starmer will tell world leaders on Saturday as he calls for closer security ties with Europe – and less reliance on Donald Trump’s United States.

After transatlantic tensions flared following the US president’s repeated threats to take Greenland from Denmark, the prime minister will call for Europe to curb its dependence on the US, while praising the continent as a “sleeping giant” whose economic and military might can defeat its enemies.

After surviving the most tumultuous week of his premiership so far, including an attempt to oust him from office, Sir Keir will also warn that turning inwards, as the UK did during Brexit, would amount to “surrender” in a perilous era.

On paper, the Americans are getting what they’ve long demanded.

A Europe that spends much more on defense and is much less reliant on Washington for its security. But Donald Trump may not like what American pressure is creating.

Leader after leader from Europe took to the podium of the Munich Security Conference on Friday and talked about boosting military budgets and reframing the transatlantic alliance as a “NATO 3.0.”

But then they followed that with hard-edged appeals to European patriotism and calls for the continent to boost its own arms, space and tech sectors to be less dependent on outsiders — including the United States.

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.

President of Protect Our Care issues one-word statement to US health and human services secretary: ‘Resign’

A prominent healthcare advocacy group is calling for the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to step down from his post after he downplayed Covid risks by saying: “I’m not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.”

Kennedy, who was appointed secretary of the federal health and human services (HHS) department despite his avowed anti-vaccine activism, made that remark on the 12 February episode of Theo Von’s podcast This Past Weekend.

The president of Protect Our Care, Brad Woodhouse, issued a one-word statement on Kennedy’s comments: “Resign.”

Lawmakers left Washington for a long weekend without resolving an impasse over much-criticized agency’s funding

The Department of Homeland Security has begun a partial shutdown, after funding for the much-criticized agency expired, with a range of services, including domestic flights and the US Coastguard, now vulnerable to disruption.

The shutdown was all but confirmed on Thursday, after the Senate failed to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to pass the DHS appropriations bill and lawmakers left Washington for a long weekend without resolving the impasse.

Democrats say they won’t help approve more funding until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis last month.

Wendy’s is closing several hundred U.S. restaurants and increasing its focus on value after a weaker-than-expected fourth quarter.

The Dublin, Ohio-based company said Friday that its global same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, fell 10% in the October-December period. That was worse than the 8.5% drop expected by analysts polled by FactSet.

U.S. same-store sales fell even further in the fourth quarter. Wendy’s said late last year that it planned to close underperforming U.S. restaurants, but it gave more details about those closures Friday.

Leqaa Kordia was taken into custody last March, nearly a year after being arrested at a protest at Columbia

Calls are mounting for the release of a Palestinian woman who has been held in immigration detention for nearly a year following her arrest at a pro-Palestine protest, with several elected officials weighing in after a medical emergency renewed attention to her case.

Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old originally from the West Bank, was arrested in April 2024 at a protest against Israel’s war in Gaza outside Columbia University. (She was not a student there.) The charges against her were dismissed the following day, but last March, nearly a year after the protest, she was taken into custody when she checked into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in New Jersey.

Kordia has been held at the Prairieland detention facility in Texas since then, despite a judge twice ruling that she poses no threat and may be released on bond.