European leaders who know their continent’s history must now see that the US president is siding with the forces of tyranny
In January 2018, when Donald Trump was in the second year of his first term as US president, Angela Merkel, in her 13th year as German chancellor, gave a gloomy speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. She opened her remarks with a warning from Europe’s past. Politicians had “sleep-walked” into the first world war. As the number of surviving eyewitnesses to the second world war dwindled, she added, subsequent generations would have to prove they understood the fragility of peace. “We need to ask ourselves if we have really learned from history or not.”
Fast forward eight years. Vladimir Putin’s territorial aggression harries Europe’s eastern flank. To the west, Trump, now in his second term and guest of honour at Davos, threatens to annex Greenland. This is not a world that has internalised the lessons of the 20th century.
Regime appears to have turned to digital currency issued by Tether in the face of sanctions
Iran’s central bank appears to have been using vast quantities of a cryptocurrency championed by Nigel Farage, according to a new report.
Elliptic, a crypto analytics company, said it had traced at least $507m (£377m) of cryptocurrency issued by Tether – a company touted by the Reform UK leader – passing through accounts that appear to be controlled by Iran’s central bank.
Critics accuse leading firms of sabotaging climate action but say data increasingly being used to hold them to account
Just 32 fossil fuel companies were responsible for half the global carbon dioxide emissions driving the climate crisis in 2024, down from 36 a year earlier, a report has revealed.
Saudi Aramco was the biggest state-controlled polluter and ExxonMobil was the largest investor-owned polluter. Critics accused the leading fossil fuel companies of “sabotaging climate action” and “being on the wrong side of history” but said the emissions data was increasingly being used to hold the companies accountable.
Coconut bars with matcha, a nutty rubble for soups, sandwiches or toast, and super-simple almond butter flapjacks
I love a Bounty, although I call them paradise bars. I also love matcha (and not only for its health-supporting benefits). Though my partner doesn’t enjoy drinking matcha tea, when I mix it into the sweetness of the coconut filling, even he’s on board. Then, a very munchable and grabbable savoury granola, and flapjacks that you can throw together in minutes for a week’s worth of on-the-go snacks.
In a speech at Davos, written by Carney himself, the Canadian prime minister laid out his doctrine for a world of fractured international norms
For much of Mark Carney’s career as an economist and central banker, he existed at the nexus of global thinkers and multilateral institutions. The “rockstar banker” was a fixture at summits, where he spoke beside business leaders and the political elite, espousing the values of international cooperation and the need for open economies and shared rules.
But after less than a year as prime minister of Canada, Carney offered a blunter assessment of the world on Tuesday: “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
Briton falls to disappointing 7-6 (3), 6-2 loss to Austrian world No 55
28th seed’s struggles with same issues as opening matches of season
Emma Raducanu crashed out of the Australian Open in the second round with a poor 7-6 (3), 6-2 loss to Anastasia Potapova after a tepid, error-strewn performance in Melbourne.
Having only lost to grand slam champions inside the top 10 at the grand slams last year – Elena Rybakina, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek twice – defeat to world No 55 Potapova is Raducanu’s worst first-week result by ranking since the 2024 Australian Open, which was her comeback major from an eight-month layoff.
Abe was killed in 2022 while campaigning in the western city of Nara
A Japanese court has sentenced a man who admitted assassinating the former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe to life imprisonment on Wednesday, according to NHK public television.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, earlier pleaded guilty to killing Abe in July 2022 during his election campaign speech in the western city of Nara.
Sami al-Saei has defied social stigma to speak out about what a report calls a ‘grave pattern’ of sexual violence
Warning: contains graphic descriptions of torture
Sami al-Saei said he heard the Israeli prison guards who raped him laughing through the assault, before they left him lying blindfolded, handcuffed and in agony on the floor to take a cigarette break.
At least one of the group knew a crime was being committed and intervened, not to stop the torture but to prevent its documentation. Al-Saei said he heard the man warning others “don’t take a photo, don’t take a photo” as they attacked.
This breathless and hugely entertaining financial heist show isn’t just packed with twists. It’s a clever meditation on the evil of money – in which you’re rooting for the Game of Thrones star
The trick, Zara Dunne tells her new underling as she shows her round the trades processing floor of the pension management company for which they both now work, is not to dwell on the fact that every day that passes is another day wasted. And to know where the nice biscuits are. This is very good advice for any twentysomething starting their first job, but especially one called Myrtle, as this one is, whom I imagine has already had much of the stuffing knocked out of her by her peers’ reactions to this odd parental choice of moniker.
Soon, however, they are all in need of substantially more comfort than even a chocolate Hobnob can provide, as a team of armed villains swarms the floor. From there, the glossy new six-part thriller Steal kicks into high gear and doesn’t let up for a moment. The baddies – sporting not masks but sophisticated, subtle prosthetics that can fool all the facial recognition software the police will soon be applying to the CCTV footage – herd Zara (Sophie Turner, continuing to deliver sterling work post-Game of Thrones), Myrtle (Eloise Thomas), Zara’s friend and colleague Luke (Archie Madekwe) and the rest of the rank into one conference room while the management committee is locked in another. A couple of gruesome beatings later, so that nobody is in any doubt about the dedication of the villainous gang, Luke and Zara are yanked out and forced to help them execute a set of trades worth £4bn, and the committee is forced to sign off on them all. At one point, Luke crumbles and Zara must step in to save the day. She is hailed as a hero once the thieves have completed their hi-tech heist and left the building.
State provision for psychological health services is lamentable. Until things improve, let’s not judge those who turn to an app for help
It’s a sunny afternoon in a Roman park and a peculiar, new-to-this-era kind of coming out is happening between me and my friend Clarissa. She has just asked me if I, like her and all of her other friends, use an AI therapist and I say yes.
Our mutual confession feels, at first, quite confusing. As a society, we still don’t know how confidential, or shareable, our AI therapist usage should be. It falls in a limbo between the intimacy of real psychotherapy and the material triviality of sharing skincare advice. That’s because, as much as our talk with a chatbot can be as private as one with a human, we’re still aware that its response is a digital product.
When I swapped my iPhone for a Nokia, Walkman, film camera and physical map, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But my life soon started to change
When two balaclava-clad men on a motorbike mounted the pavement to rob me, recently, I remained oblivious. My eyes were pinned to a text message on my phone, and my hands were so clawed around it that they didn’t even bother to grab it. It wasn’t until an elderly woman shrieked and I felt the whoosh of air as the bike launched back on to the road that I looked up at all. They might have been unsuccessful but it did make me think: what else am I missing from the real world around me?
Before I’ve poured my first morning coffee I’ve already watched the lives of strangers unfold on Instagram, checked the headlines, responded to texts, swiped through some matches on a dating app, and refreshed my emails, twice. I check Apple Maps for my quickest route to work. I’ve usually left it too late to get the bus, so I rent a Lime bike using the app. During the day, my brother sends me some memes, I take a picture of a canal boat, and pay for my lunch on Apple Pay. I walk home listening to music on Spotify and a long voice note from a friend, then I watch a nondescript TV drama, while scrolling through Depop and Vinted for clothes.
I was 23 and one of my closest friends had just died. Our friendship group all but moved into the Bard’s back room, insulated from time and gossip, doing our best to comfort one another
The Crown Bard in Rhyl had always been there, on the main road on the way out of town. Despite living a five-minute walk away, I don’t remember ever going there in my teens, but I must’ve passed it thousands of times. Local wisdom dictated it was where the rugby lads drank, while the pub directly opposite was where you’d find the football crowd.
Gelsenkirchen savings bank was raided over Christmas by criminals who used huge drill to access vault
Faqir Malyar, a carpet trader from the western German city of Gelsenkirchen, was on his way to visit one of his customers during the Christmas holidays when he heard news on the radio of an astonishing bank heist. Thieves had drilled a hole in the wall of the vault of a local Sparkasse – savings bank – and made off with the contents of almost 3,250 deposit boxes.
The robbery, likened by a police spokesperson to the Hollywood film Ocean’s Eleven, made international headlines: it is estimated that the thieves’ haul could have been worth as much as €300m (£260m), a sum that would make it the one of the biggest bank heists in a country wearily familiar with them.
The maverick theatre-maker Pip Simmons, who died two years ago aged 80, is captured on stage and off in a book by photographer Sheila Burnett documenting the radical troupe’s years of European touring
Incident in Spain took place days after collision between two high-speed trains in Andalucía that killed at least 42
A commuter train has hit a collapsed retaining wall near Barcelona, killing the driver and injuring 37 people, four of them seriously, firefighters have said.
Four people are believed to be in a critical condition after the incident in the Catalonia region of north-eastern Spain, a spokesperson for the region’s fire service, Claudi Gallardo, told reporters.
Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has decried Europeans for their “complicity” in failing to stand up to Donald Trump’s demands that he be allowed to buy or annex Greenland.
Newsom, a frontrunner among Democratic candidates for president in 2028, told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday that Europeans were being “played” by Trump and that their efforts to negotiate with him were “not diplomacy, it’s stupidity”.
The 85-year-old bestselling author’s final novel, Adam and Eve, will be published in English in October
Bestselling novelist Jeffrey Archer has announced his next novel, Adam and Eve, will be his last, coming out 50 years after his debut was published.
The 85-year-old author has sold more than 300m books around the world since his first novel, Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less, was published in 1976, according to his publishers. His 1979 novel, Kane and Abel, was his biggest hit, selling more than 34m copies in 119 countries and 47 languages, and being reprinted more than 130 times.
Carney warns US-led global system of governance is enduring ‘a rupture’ as US president flies in for showdown with European leaders over Greenland
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney has said that the US-led global system of governance is enduring “a rupture,” defined by great power competition and a “fading” rules-based order.
His speech to political and financial elites at the World Economic Forum comes a day before US President Donald Trump was set to address the gathering in Davos, Switzerland.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization began in 1949 as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, but has expanded in size in the decades since
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) was created at the outset of the cold war, with its founding aims to act as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and guarantee the security of its members through political and military means.
At its core is the principle of collective security and the belief that an attack on one member is an attack against all, as enshrined in Article 5 of the treaty. Article 5 has been invoked only once – in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US in 2001.
Cost of living likely to dominate the agenda ahead of 7 November poll as centre-right National party battles to retain power
The prime minister, Christopher Luxon, has announced New Zealand’s next general election will be held on 7 November, kickstarting a campaign cycle that could become one of the country’s most contested in years.
On Wednesday, Luxon told reporters the National party would continue its agenda to “fix the basics and build the future”.
Debris balls have washed up on Sydney’s beaches after a weekend of heavy rain, with the objects found on Malabar beach next to a sewage treatment works and also in Botany Bay.
Sydney Water erected a sign at Malabar beach warning of the potential pollution.
Popular Mavic drone will be replaced by homegrown option with longer range, says minister; digital transformation of Ukraine defence ministry and military announced. What we know on day 1,428
Ukraine’s new defence minister has announced troops will begin fielding a homegrown replacement for the Chinese-made DJI Mavic drone. Reliance on China for drones and components has been a major concern for Ukraine given Beijing’s close relationship with Moscow. The retail-grade Mavic is used widely for aerial reconnaissance on the frontlines by both sides, even though Ukraine already builds many of its own “suicide” attack drones – as well as defensive versions used to take down Russian drones. Mavic drones are prized by Ukrainian army units, who are often supported by volunteer groups that continuously run campaigns to source Mavics and raise funds to buy them. Mykhailo Fedorov, the defence minister, said: “We will have our own Mavic analogue: the same camera, but with a longer flight range.” Fedorov did not disclose the manufacturer of the Ukrainian version.
Fedorov on Tuesday promised a sweeping data-driven overhaul of Ukraine’s military to reward commanders achieving results on the battlefield and give Ukrainian forces the upper hand. Fedorov said he would start by overhauling the vast defence ministry’s management and spending, emphasising the importance of “the mathematics of war”. He promised a mission control system for drone flightsand for artillery crews to increase the data available about crews’ performance and effectiveness. Fedorov said Ukraine would establish a system allowing its allies to train their military artificial intelligence models on Kyiv’s combat data collected throughout the war including combat statistics and millions of hours of video taken by drones.
Overnight Russian strikes on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih killed a 77-year-old man and a 72-year-old woman, and wounded a 53-year-old woman, said Oleksandr Ganzha, the head of the regional military administration. The missile and drone attack also damaged several buildings, he added. Kryvyi Rih, is about 80km (50 miles) from the frontline and is the hometown of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Earlier, a Russian air attack cut power to more than a million Kyiv residents and affected substationscarrying power from Ukraine’s nuclear plants on Tuesday. Ukrainian officials had warned in recent days that Moscow would target nuclear-related facilities. The UN atomic watchdog said several substations critical for nuclear safety were affected by the attack, while power lines to some other nuclear plants were affected.
Drone and missile strikes killed four people: three in the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia and one in the Kyiv region surrounding the capital. Other regions in the east, south and north of Ukraine also came under attack. “In Kyiv alone, as of this evening, more than one million households remain without power,” said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his Tuesday evening address. “And a significant number of buildings have no heating, more than 4,000 apartment buildings.” Authorities in the northern region of Chernihiv bordering Russia said 87% of the population was without power.
All off-site power was also temporarily lost at the Chornobyl plant – where the reactor destroyed in the world’s worst civil nuclear catastrophe is entombed and requires constant monitoring for safety. “While Russian officials speak about the ‘importance’ of power lines, their forces deliberately strike substations, directly endangering nuclear safety,” said Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha.
A new round of peace talks at the weekend between US and Ukrainian officials was followed on Tuesday by a meeting at Davos in Switzerland between envoys for presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Kiril Dmitriev, the Russian envoy, said their meeting on a possible peace deal to end the war had been “very positive” and “constructive” and claimed that “more and more people are realising that Russia’s position is right”. Dmitriev met Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Zelenskyy urged the US to pile more pressure on Moscow, saying it had “not yet had the strength” to stop Russia. “Can America do more? It can, and we really want this, and we believe that the Americans are capable of doing this,” said the Ukrainian president. Zelenskyy said some of the Russian missiles fired on Tuesday had been produced this year and called for tougher sanctions on Moscow to curb its production. He said he was ready to travel to Davos if Washington was ready to sign documents on security guarantees for Ukraine and a postwar prosperity plan.
For years, Beijing has struggled to gain a foothold in Greenland, in part because of US and Danish unity. Trump’s fraying of that alliance could create the opening it needs
According to Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, China and Russia must be having a “field day” about Donald Trump’s plans for Greenland, which Kallas says will divide Nato.
But according to Trump, his plans are motivated by a desire to counter the very threat that Kallas identified. “World peace is at stake! China and Russia want Greenland, and there is not a thing that Denmark can do about it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.
The ‘very stable genius’ zigzagged wildly in a packed press room – Nato’s future lies in the hands of a modern Caligula
“I was quite the baseball player, you wouldn’t believe,” said Donald Trump, suddenly wistful as he recalled his salad days when his mother would tell him, “Son, you could be a professional baseball player,” and he would reply, “Thanks, mom.” Carpe diem!
Not for the first time on Tuesday, the US president had veered wildly off topic. The point of this story was a “big powerful building” that “loomed over the park” in Queens, New York, where he used to play little league baseball. When he asked his mother why it had bars on the windows, she told him it was a mental hospital.
Connexion
