News

The Gates Foundation Trust holds hundreds of millions of dollars in fossil fuel extractors despite Bill Gates’ claims of divestment made in 2019.

End-of-year filings reveal that in 2024 the trust invested $254m in companies that extract fossil fuels such as Chevron, BP and Shell. This was a nine-year record and up 21% from 2016, Guardian analysis found. Adjusting for inflation, it was the highest amount since 2019.

Bill Gates, the tech billionaire and founder of Microsoft, was ranked by Forbes as the world’s wealthiest man for most of the years between 1995 and 2017. In 2000, he and his then wife, Melinda, set up the Gates Foundation, which is now the third largest charitable foundation in the world. It uses its resources for a range of causes including public health, poverty reduction, education and climate adaptation.

Divestment first became an issue for Gates in 2015. At the time, a global campaign by religious figures, climate activists, students and other charities called for large foundations to divest from fossil fuels.

The law was clear: Donald Trump’s Department of Justice was required to disclose all investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein by 19 December 2025, with rare exceptions.

One month after this deadline mandated by Congress’s Epstein Files Transparency Act, however, Trump’s justice department has not complied with this law, prompting questions about when – and whether – authorities will ever release investigative documents about the late sex offender.

Justice department attorneys said in a 5 January Manhattan court filing that they had posted approximately 12,285 to DoJ’s website, equating to some 125,575 pages, under this legislation’s requirements. They said in this same letter that justice department staff had identified “more than 2 million documents potentially responsive to the Act that are in various phases of review”.

That these DoJ’s disclosures apparently comprise a drop in the bucket – and have done little to shed light on how Epstein operated with apparent impunity for years – has roiled survivors’ advocates and lawmakers. They include attorney Spencer Kuvin, who has represented dozens of Epstein’s survivors.

They note that the Department of Justice has also flouted another requirement of this act, which requires that the attorney general provide a report identifying “categories of records released and withheld and summarizing all redactions and their legal bases” within 15 days of their disclosure deadline.

“To date, no such report has been provided. Without it, there is no authoritative accounting of what records exist, what has been withheld, or why, making effective oversight and judicial review far more difficult,” they wrote. “Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act.”

What began as a joke on social media has snowballed into one of the most talked-about political satire campaigns in Europe this year. More than 200,000 Danish citizens have now signed a viral petition proposing that Denmark buy the U.S. state of California, a tongue-in-cheek response to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s past interest in acquiring Greenland.

Under the fictional proposal, Californians would be welcomed into the Kingdom of Denmark with a package of benefits that reads like a parody of Nordic governance. The petition promises “rule of law, universal health care, and fact-based politics” as immediate perks of Danish administration.

To underscore the absurdity, the organizers also pledge a lifetime supply of Danish pastries for all 39 million residents of the state. The petition’s website jokingly notes that while Denmark cannot solve every problem, “we are very confident about pastries.”

The satirical plan goes further, outlining a full cultural “Denmarkification” of the West Coast. Los Angeles would be rechristened “Løs Ångeles,” while Danish-style cycling infrastructure would spread across cities more famous for traffic jams than bicycles.

Even California’s most iconic institutions are not spared. Disneyland would be rebranded as “Hans Christian Andersenland,” a nod to Denmark’s most famous storyteller, Hans Christian Andersen. The petition cheerfully asks readers to imagine fairy tales replacing cartoon mascots, and even suggests that Viking helmets might become standard park attire.

Archive link

A carnivorous power is one that struggles to curb its appetite and recognize its own limitations. Since the start of 2026, almost one year after he returned to the White House, Donald Trump has sought to seize Venezuela's oil, launch ground operations against drug cartels, notably in Mexico, decapitate the Iranian regime, and, finally, acquire Greenland, whether through persuasion or by force. He has pursued all these goals, all while more extensively deploying the United States military on the domestic front to help police hunt for undocumented migrants, especially in Minnesota. This dizzying display of power has even alarmed his own base, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, not for reasons of principle or legality, but because he has dispersed his efforts and shown a lack of focus on Americans' everyday lives.

US public opinion has overwhelmingly rejected the ambitions expressed by the White House regarding Greenland. According to a CBS-YouGov poll, 86% of Americans surveyed, including 70% of Republicans, opposed using force to take control of the autonomous territory, which falls under Danish sovereignty, and 70% also objected to the idea of purchasing it. Nevertheless, Trump opted to escalate tariff measures on Saturday, January 17, in an effort to twist the Europeans' arm.

Europe has, so far, not been the US's primary target in its use of tariffs as a tool for punishment. At the end of August 2025, Trump decided to impose an additional 25% tariff on India, raising the total levy on goods exported to the US to 50%, because India was buying Russian oil. The measure caused lasting damage to the US's bilateral relationship with New Delhi, and while it led India to reduce its Russian oil purchases, it fell far short of completely stopping the flow, the outcome Trump had wanted. Meanwhile, the case of the eight European countries targeted is more serious, given that they are US allies and members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Furthermore, the United Kingdom is, thanks to its supposed "special relationship" with Washington, one of the few countries to have concluded a bilateral trade deal with the Trump administration. Now, that deal is under threat too.

In a major assault on human health, the Trump administration is changing the policy of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding the control of air pollution. A review of internal EPA emails conducted by the New York Times found that consideration of the impacts of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, two of the most prominent components of air pollution, would no longer be included as part of the evaluation of the effects of industrial air pollution on humans. A draft of the new regulation was released, signed by the EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, on January 9, 2026.

A 16-year-old was among protesters sexually assaulted in custody by the security forces in Iran during the nationwide uprising that has left thousands dead, according to a human rights group.

Two people, one of them a child, detained in the city of Kermanshah in western Iran told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) that they were subjected to sexual abuse by riot police during their arrest.

Six years after the US justice department launched an immediate criminal investigation of the video-recorded killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, deputy attorney general Todd Blanche confirmed on Sunday that the department is “not investigating” the fatal 7 January shooting of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in the same city.

The killing of Good, less than a mile from where Floyd was murdered in May 2020, was recorded on at least five phones, including one held by the ICE agent who shot her, Jonathan Ross.

Blanche, a former personal lawyer for Donald Trump before he won his second presidency, dismissed the need for any criminal investigation of Ross during an interview with Fox News. He suggested that the officer was cleared by the publicly available video evidence.

“Is the FBI conducting an investigation into that agent, into the shooting?” Blanche was asked, in response to criticism from Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz.

“One ICE agent said if we let you see your clients, we would have to let all the attorneys see their clients, and imagine the chaos,” said another attorney who asked not to be named. “And I said to that person, yeah, you do have to let all the attorneys see their clients. You do have to accommodate that. That’s the Constitution. You chose to put them here. I didn't bring this guy here, you did."

Mind you, the 6th amendment guarantees the right to an attorney:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Any "trial" where you can get kept in jail until your court date, can be kicked out of the country for life, where you can't get a jury, where you get a "judge" who is an executive branch employee who gets fired if they rule in your favor, and where your don't get any chance meet with your lawyer is something that shouldn't be allowed by the constitution.

A New Hampshire Episcopal bishop has garnered national attention for warning his clergy to finalize their wills and affairs, preparing for a "new era of martyrdom."

At least 21 people have died and many more have been injured after the derailment of an Iryo train with 300 passengers on board in Adamuz, which crossed into the adjacent track and collided with an AVE train on the Madrid-Huelva route.

President Trump’s power over the Federal Reserve will be front and center at the Supreme Court next week.

The justices on Wednesday will hear arguments on whether Trump can fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook over accusations of mortgage fraud.

Looming over it all is the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chair, which came into public view last weekend.

In his second term, Trump has looked to reshape independent agencies that have long enjoyed protections that prevent the president from firing those who lead them on a whim.

Trump argues it infringes on his constitutional authority to oversee the executive branch, part of an expansive view of presidential power known as the unitary executive theory.

“Once Trump controls a majority of the Fed, he can use the Fed’s vast powers to enrich himself personally – to reward his billionaire friends and to punish his enemies,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a critic of Powell’s who has defended him against Trump’s firing threats, told reporters. “That has been his strategy across the government.”

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 prevents the president from firing the central bank’s governors except “for cause.” The law does not, however, explicitly define what “cause” means.

Epstein invited her to come sit down next to him. “He explained that he was a philanthropist, known by so many people, a very generous man, and had sent so many young people to university, often the kids of women he’d been at school with. I completely believed him.”

Oh says Epstein told her she need a bachelor of fine arts degree to make it in the art world and was offering her a scholarship to New York’s School of Visual Arts “with no strings attached”. But, Oh said: “He attached a lot of strings to that scholarship. When I wouldn’t do all that he wanted he took it away.”

Other similar stories aired last week via victim interviews with Democrats on the House judiciary committee. It also comes as a new, perhaps voluminous tranche of Epstein-related documents is expected to be released by the justice department in the coming days.

“Mr Epstein repeatedly lured young women into his network by promising to help them gain admission into colleges and universities,” said the Maryland Democrat congressman Jamie Raskin in letters sent to Columbia University and New York University asking for more information on this aspect of the scandal.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Monsanto's argument that federal pesticide law should shield it and parent company Bayer from tens of thousands of state lawsuits over Roundup since the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a cancer warning label. The case could determine whether federal rules preempt state failure-to-warn claims without deciding whether glyphosate causes cancer.

Archive link

In the long history of direct and indirect US interventions in Latin America – historians have counted at least 70 – the current president Donald Trump has accomplished something unprecedented. For the first time, the United States launched a military attack against a South American state, Venezuela.

In the past, invasions had targeted the US's immediate neighborhood: Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean; the most recent of which was in Panama in 1989, marked by the abduction of the ruling general, Manuel Noriega. A few troops had also been sent in the 19th century to more distant countries, mainly to protect US citizens.

This time, with the January 3 abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, "a threshold has been crossed, and the consequences are unpredictable," said Jorge Heine, former Chilean minister and diplomat, in Responsible Statecraft, a publication of the Quincy Institute, a think tank based in Washington. According to him, the official justification for the operation – that Venezuela was exporting large quantities of fentanyl to the US – was reminiscent of the pretext of "the non-existent weapons of mass destruction" during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The history of US interventions in Latin America in the 20th century unfolded in four major acts: First, the "Big Stick" ideology of Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), characterized by an indiscriminate use of power, then the "Good Neighbor policy" of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945), marked by spectacular withdrawals. Then came the Cold War, punctuated by coups orchestrated in the shadows and direct interventions. In the late 1980s, the US shifted its attention away from the continent and toward other areas. But it is now returning to Venezuela in force.