Bald eagles and Lynyrd Skynyrd: is Budweiser’s all-American Super Bowl ad serious?

Featuring an unlikely animal friendship, the commercial boasts enough patriotic iconography to verge on self-parodyThree years after its sister brand, Bud Light, faced a rightwing boycott over a transgender spokesperson, Budweiser’s new Super Bowl ad, American Icons, contains absolutely nothing that could be mistaken for social progress. Instead, it features an unlikely friendship between two animals whose blood runs red, white and blue: a bald eagle and a Clydesdale horse, the Budweiser icon. An adorable foal trots out of a barn, and the viewer is injected with a single minute of American iconography so pure that it would make Lee Greenwood nauseous.The horse meets a struggling baby bird who gets caught in the rain, prompting the horse to stand over the bird as a roof. The pair become pals and grow up together, the bird riding on the horse’s back as it grows larger

Amazon reveals plans to spend $200bn in one year day after Bezos guts Washington Post

Amazon announced plans to spend $200bn on artificial intelligence and robotics this year, the latest tech giant to vow fresh enormous investments in the artificial intelligence arms race.The news of the investment comes one day after the Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced it was cutting approximately a third of employees.Amazon also reported $213bn in revenue on Thursday. The fourth quarter earnings of the ecommerce and cloud computing giant came in slightly below Wall Street estimates even as sales and growth surged.Amazon will increase capital spending to $200bn this year from $125bn, CEO Andy Jassy said in a press release

JD Vance’s first Olympic appearance unfolds with more photo-ops than protests

Several thousand spectators who turned up for a Thursday afternoon hockey game in Milan’s western suburbs may have gotten a sneak preview of the 2028 Republican ticket when US vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio attended the United States women’s Olympic opener. With one hockey game already postponed because of norovirus, Olympic organizers could have been forgiven for hoping to avoid any other sudden waves of nausea inside the secondary rink across town.Vance is in Italy to lead the official US delegation at Friday’s opening ceremony, joined by second lady Usha Vance, Rubio and billionaire Tilman Fertitta, the US ambassador to Italy and owner of the NBA’s Houston Rockets. The group watched Thursday’s game from the second and third rows at center ice behind the scorer’s table alongside Olympic gold medal-winning hockey sisters Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson and Monique Lamoureux-Morando.Maybe it was the roughly four dozen US Secret Service agents forming something close to a Roman testudo around Vance’s party that tempered any potential negative reception

Home Office says nearly 60,000 people deported from UK or left voluntarily since 2024 election

Nearly 60,000 unauthorised migrants and convicted criminals have been removed or deported from the UK since Labour took office, the Home Office has said.The announcement came amid claims that the government was promoting “harmful stereotypes” by equating migration with criminality.Officials said the figure was the highest number in a decade.The department said 15,200 people who were in the UK illegally were removed since the 2024 election – a 45% increase on the previous 19 months.A statement said 43,000 people left voluntarily after being told they were in the UK illegally

No 10 defies calls to sack Morgan McSweeney over Mandelson appointment

Downing Street has defied calls to remove Keir Starmer’s most senior aide, insisting Morgan McSweeney retains the prime minister’s confidence, as frustration grows over a wait for documents on Peter Mandelson, which some fear could last for weeks.Amid warnings from Labour backbenchers that McSweeney’s survival would leave Starmer’s position “untenable”, Starmer apologised to victims of Jeffrey Epstein for appointing Mandelson, a close friend of the convicted child sex offender, as US ambassador.A day after a chaotic Commons deal to release vetting papers over Mandelson’s appointment left many Labour MPs mutinous, there was still fury about the role of McSweeney, the PM’s chief of staff.One Labour MP said: “People want [McSweeney] to go, more than ever before. The current situation is unsustainable

Seth Meyers on Trump skipping the Super Bowl: ‘Of course he is worried about getting booed’

Late-night hosts looked into Donald Trump’s excuses for not attending a Super Bowl where he would be booed and the dubious audience scores for the Melania documentary.With the Super Bowl just days away, Seth Meyers looked into why Donald Trump, usually one for attention, does not plan to be in attendance. “Given Trump’s love of football and attention, you might have expected him to show up to the Super Bowl on Sunday, especially since he went to last year’s Super Bowl,” the Late Night host said.But Trump has told reporters that he won’t attend the game because it will be played in Santa Clara, California, outside San Francisco, which is “just too far away”, though he acknowledged that he had received “great hands [at] the Super Bowl. They like me,” he said, adding that he “would go if, you know, it was a little bit shorter”