Scott Bessent replied to a question on Danish investments by saying that ‘Denmark’s investment in US treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant’

Former Nato secretary general and former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned that the “time of flattery has ended” as Europe needs to step up its response to Trump’s threats over Greenland – but still look for off-ramps to avoid escalation whereever possible.

Speaking to BBC News this morning, he warned that a US attack on Greenland “would be the end of Nato,” and push Europeans to urgently step up its defence in its own right, regardless of the US.

“I think those three areas would accommodate the concerns of President Trump.”

“Time has come to stand up against Trump.”

“So I think that we should solve this problem in a diplomatic way. Of course, I appreciate Denmark’s voice, … it’s our partner, but I’m looking at the Greenland as a strategic point in a [broader] geopolitical issue between the free world of democracies … and Russia.”

The chancellor said Starmer was focused on trying to ‘de-escalate and get the best deal for Britain’

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, was doing a media round this morning to promote the government’s £15bn warm homes plan. Fiona Harvey and Jillian Ambrose have the story here.

And here is the government’s news release.

We face two major challenges: a cost of living crisis holding the economy back, and decarbonising in an uncertain world. The warm homes plan is an important moment because the £15 billion package makes progress on both.

The plan helps fight fuel poverty and cut bills, while contributing toward net zero. It is the type of action, uniting affordability with climate ambition, that we need to see more of to deliver genuine economic and geopolitical security.

The UK has some of the highest energy bills and least efficient housing in Europe, so warm homes plan that tackles both is something this government absolutely has to get right. This is an important step in that direction.

The government is rightly moving away from a myopic focus on insulation. Funding has been extended to low-carbon technologies like heat pumps, solar panels, and batteries, which have the potential to cut bills and emissions faster, with far less disruption for households. But more grant funding is still needed – not just loans – to ensure that the benefits of solar panels and battery storage reach fuel-poor households, where they will make the most impact.

Israeli prime minister accepts position on US-proposed body with initial remit to oversee Gaza ceasefire

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Wednesday that he had agreed to join a US-backed “board of peace” proposed by Donald Trump, despite his office having earlier criticised the composition of its executive committee.

The body, chaired by the US president, was initially presented as a limited forum of world leaders tasked with overseeing a ceasefire in Gaza. More recently, however, the initiative appears to have expanded well beyond that remit, with the Trump camp extending invitations to dozens of countries and suggesting the board could evolve into a vehicle for brokering conflicts far beyond the Middle East.

The arrest of Frenchie Mae Cumpio has been described as a ‘travesty of justice’. On Thursday a court will deliver its verdict, potentially sentencing her to 40 years in prison for alleged terrorism

For weeks before the police came for her, Frenchie Mae Cumpio had noticed odd incidents. The Filipino journalist – just 21 years old but already hosting a radio show and working as executive director of a local news website – told colleagues that a stranger had begun turning up and asking after her at the boarding house where she lived. She was sent a bouquet of flowers designed for a grave. She reported that two men had been following her on a motorcycle.

Cumpio believed it was deliberate intimidation. She had recently published a series of reports after visiting poor rural farmers who said they were being harassed by army units in the region.

Developments in Minnesota closely mirror a scenario explored in a 2024 exercise conducted at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, which I direct

Since January 6, roughly 2,000 ICE agents have been deployed to Minnesota under the pretext of responding to a fraud investigation. In practice, these largely untrained and undisciplined federal agents have been terrorizing Minneapolis residents through illegal and excessive uses of force – often against US citizens – prompting a federal judge to attempt to place limits on the agency’s actions. The Trump administration is encouraging the lawlessness by announcing “absolute immunity” for ICE agents. But if the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, does not heed the court ruling, the consequences may be nothing short of civil war.

In just the past week, ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, shortly after she returned from dropping her child off at school. They blinded two protesters by shooting them in the face with so-called “less deadly” weapons. They fired teargas bombs around the car of a family carrying six children, sending one child to the emergency room with breathing problems. They violently dragged a woman out of her car and on to the ground screaming. They have shot protesters in the legs. They have forcibly taken thousands of individuals to detention facilities, separating families and casting people into legal limbo – often without regard to their legal status.

Claire Finkelstein is the Algernon Biddle professor of law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She is also the founder and faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center

We had a mass snowball fight and a disco, and I slept in a room full of drunk men with wet socks. It was fun, but in future snowstorms I won’t be rushing to the pub

In all my years of reporting, nothing seems to fascinate people more than the four days I spent snowed in at Britain’s highest pub last year. It was early January and the Met Office had issued severe warnings for snow. It dawned on me that people were about to live out a British fantasy of being snowed in at their local pub. I knew where I needed to be: The Tan Hill Inn, high up in the wilderness on the very northern edge of the Yorkshire Dales national park.

Our nation’s fascination with rubbish knows no bounds – as was proved by one recent online debate

Even if you’ve never been anywhere near it, the Mumsnet message board is legendary. Since it launched in 2000, it has changed the vernacular – “am I being unreasonable?” is not just a question, it’s a shorthand for the type of person who asks it – and introduced us to the penis beaker (one maverick husband’s postcoital hygiene regime, made infamous). It’s a screenshot of society, a cultural thermometer; if it’s happening on Mumsnet, it’s big news. And one of the most popular recent threads is about bins.

The post that kicked it off was written by a woman who lived opposite an empty house where tenants had moved out. The landlord popped round late at night to drag the bins out for collection, and the next morning, at 6.45am, she could hear the lorry approaching. The coast was clear, and she still had a backlog of rubbish from Christmas. Deciding it was a victimless crime, she slipped one of her bags in their bin, which easily had room. Enterprising? Without a doubt. Moral, though?

As lottery picks and MVP candidates pile up, North Texas is emerging as one of the NBA’s most fertile talent pipelines

Another season, another name, another kid from Dallas. At street level, the city appears to be like any other – yet it continues to produce league-shaping NBA players. The main highway through Dallas cleaves down the middle of Texas. Taking it south brings you closer to the center of the state’s basketball talent pool. The road slopes downward as the city’s cosmopolitan polish thins out, neighborhoods split cleanly from downtown by sun-baked concrete and beige. Pink, green, and blue houses sit behind chain link fences, where yards are scoured down to dirt. Auto mechanic shops line the frontage roads with open bays and hand-painted signs peeling in the sun. Farther south, the road dips again, and space opens up to the heart of the story.

Welcome to Duncanville.

The world needs global leaders to clearly and firmly denounce the havoc Trump is wreaking on the US and international order

Hundreds of global CEOs, finance titans, and more than 60 prime ministers and presidents are in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual confab of the world’s powerful and wealthy: the World Economic Forum.

This year’s Davos meeting occurs at a time when Donald Trump is not just unleashing his brownshirts on Minneapolis and other American cities, but also dismantling the international order that’s largely been in place since the end of the second world war – threatening Nato, withdrawing from international organizations including the UN climate treaty, violating the UN charter by invading Venezuela and abducting Nicolás Maduro, upending established trade rules, and demanding that the US annex Greenland.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now

• LIV rebels are appealing against DP World Tour sanctions

• Forthright McIlroy wants duo to show their commitment

Rory McIlroy has challenged Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm to demonstrate their commitment to the Ryder Cup cause by settling fines for their LIV Golf participation.

McIlroy pointed towards motivation used by Europe during victory at Bethpage last September after it emerged the United States players were paid to play in the Ryder Cup.

Lawyers for Prince Harry previously laid out 14 articles about him they allege were secured using unlawful information-gathering by Associated Newspapers

The Duke of Sussex believes he has faced a “sustained campaign” of attacks for having “the temerity to stand up” to the publisher of the Daily Mail, the high court heard on Tuesday.

Lawyers for Prince Harry made the claim as they set out 14 articles about him they allege were secured using unlawful information-gathering by Associated Newspapers Ltd, which publishes the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.

At the Shed in New York, attendees wearing enhanced glasses are witnessing an experimental new play where actors appear in video form

You sit in a circle at the Shed, the cultural center in Manhattan’s futuristic Hudson Yards, waiting for the show to begin. Through your enhanced glasses, you see four empty chairs facing you, just out of reach. You watch strangers look out for the actors to arrive. As they do, one at a time, you feel unsettled – each locks eyes with you, specifically. “Don’t panic,” the esteemed British actor Ian McKellen assures you, as the actors take their seats.

Except the actors are not there, really – McKellen, along with co-stars Golda Rosheuvel, Arinzé Kene and Rosie Sheehy, appears in An Ark, a new play at the Shed, in video form, a nearly opaque specter overlaid on the candy-apple red carpeting and crisp white walls of the theater and the outlines of your 180 or so fellow audience members. The experimental new play, written almost entirely in the second person by Simon Stephens (whose most recent show, the Andrew Scott-starring Vanya, wowed audiences at the Lucille Lortel theater last year), is one of the first so-called “mixed reality” shows staged in New York, blending physical experience with digital elements. Over 47 minutes, the actors address you, the viewer, directly. Their gaze remains trained on you. Don’t panic, they repeatedly assure. (Though due to some technical malfunctions at the preview I attended, there was some panicking.)

Our passion for these cute-looking salamanders means they are everywhere – except in the wild, where the species is under increasing threat

Axolotls are the new llamas. Which were, of course, the new unicorns. Which triggered a moment for narwhals. If you are an unusual-looking animal, this is your time. Even humans who have never seen an axolotl – a type of salamander – in the smooth and slimy flesh will have met a cartoon or cuddly one. Mexican axolotls have the kind of look that is made for commercial reproduction. The most popular domestic species is pink. Some glow in the dark – and their smile is bigger than Walter’s in the Muppets.

At Argos or Kmart, you can buy axolotls as cuddly toys, featured on socks, hoodies and bedding, or moulded into nightlights. You can crochet an axolotl, stick a rubber one on the end of your pencil or wear them on your underpants. The Economist says they’re a “global megastar”. More than 1,000 axolotl-themed products are listed on Walmart’s website. They grace US Girl Scouts patches, McDonald’s Happy Meals, and the 50-peso bill, a design so popular that, last year, the Bank of Mexico reported that 12.9 million people were hoarding the notes.

Apparent move follows withdrawal of Kurdish forces from al-Hawl, where about 24,000 people are detained

Syria’s army has reportedly entered the country’s vast al-Hawl detention camp that houses relatives of suspected Islamic State jihadists, after Kurdish forces withdrew.

A large group of soldiers opened the camp’s metal gate and entered while others guarded the entrance, according to an Agence France-Presse journalist at the scene.

Reform UK leader, who failed to declare £380,000 on time, says he is computer-illiterate ‘oddball’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Nigel Farage has apologised for 17 breaches of the MPs’ code of conduct after failing to declare £380,000 of income on time, saying he is an “oddball” who does not do computers.

The Reform UK leader and MP for Clacton said he had relied on a senior member of staff to submit his income to the register of interests and had been let down, but he took full responsibility for the error.

Today’s tell-all is keeping the plates spinning

Manchester United transfer gossip abounds once more, Mikel Oyarzabal the latest striker in their sights. They had their people in Spain at the weekend watching Real Sociedad’s win over Barcelona, and though they were also there to check on Marcus Rashford – who they apparently want back in the summer – La Real’s Spain forward is reportedly very much on their radar. Oyarzabal, 28, has a €75m (£65m) release clause, mind, and a summer swoop might be more likely than a move now.

Another United target is Rúben Neves, though they may face stern competition for the midfielder from Real Madrid. Neves is in the final six months of his contract with Al-Hilal in Saudi Arabia and is thought to be keen on a move back to Europe. Meanwhile the latest rumoured contenders for the permanent manager’s gig at Old Trafford include Frank Lampard of Championship table-toppers Coventry, Getafe’s José Bordalás and the Rayo Vallecano manager, Iñigo Pérez.

With 64% of the city’s residents relying on buses and trains so overloaded that up to 10 passengers die a day, anger is rising over a taxpayer-funded road most will never use

Mumbai is known for its graphic inequality, its gleaming high-rises where the rich live with panoramic views of the Arabian Sea standing next to windowless hovels perched over drains. It is home to 90 of India’s billionaires, but also to more than six million slum dwellers, about 55% of central Mumbai’s population.

Now Mumbai has a new symbol of the gulf between rich and poor: a high-speed, eight-lane motorway on its western coast, which critics say serves only the wealthy despite being built with taxpayers’ money.

Ored Recordings documents chants, laments and displacement songs of the Caucasus threatened by erasure. After the invasion of Ukraine, its ‘punk ethnography’ has never been more urgent

In May 2022, a few weeks after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, musician Bulat Khalilov was attending a demonstration in Nalchik, a southern Russian city in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. As he joined a group congregating around the monument to the Circassian victims of Russo-Circassian war, Khalilov was approached by a policeman and sensed trouble. To his surprise, the officer asked: “Are you from Ored Recordings? I follow you on Instagram. You’re doing great.”

Their gathering still had to be dispersed, but the enthusiasm that Ored Recordings inspires even among enforcers of the law speaks volumes about the power of what Khalilov and his friend and label co-founder Timur Kodzoko call “punk ethnography”: the recording of religious chants, laments and displacement songs at family gatherings, local festivals, in people’s kitchens, to fight against the erasure of Circassian culture.

Éanna Hardwick and Steve Coogan star as furious Keane and his luckless manager McCarthy in this retelling of the Man Utd star’s infamous 2002 walkout

Here is a sports drama which is also a true-life psychodrama of the Irish republic. In the run-up to the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan, the nation was convulsed with dismay when mercurial star player Roy Keane stormed out of Ireland’s chaotic training camp on the Pacific island of Saipan and got on the first plane home after a colossal row with manager Mick McCarthy. Could it really be true that Ireland’s key performer was going to let the side down? Was he just a spoilt Man U brat? Or was Keane a true Irish patriot, insisting on high standards of training and management for Irish football which this (English-born) manager wasn’t providing?

It’s a story which is capably, straightforwardly told by film-makers Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa, and well acted by its leads Éanna Hardwicke as Keane and Steve Coogan as McCarthy. It is almost like a theatrical chamber piece, putting us on the spot with the two male egos as they butt heads – but perhaps giving less sense of the angst they were creating back home.

Live updates from all of the action at Melbourne Park
Raducanu out but ‘head held high’ | Mail Daniel

Norrie is doing his thing again, upping it when he needs to for another mini-break and 6-2. I wonder if it’s a cognitive thing, because it’s not like he wasn’t trying his best when struggling earlier in the set, so it’s not an effort thing, but I guess focusing for hours at a time is hard if not impossible and there’s a kind of locked-in version that intensifies as the match does … and, as I type, he serves out to lead Nava 6-1 7-6(3) having saved two set points not that long ago.

Obviously Zverev finds an ace to restore deuce – he may be resigned to his fate of never winning a slam, but his serve remains one of the best shots in the game, and from there, he ends a long hold. And back with the breaker, Norrie has a mini-break and a 3-2 lead.

Rolling coverage of the World Economic Forum in Davos

• Nervous rex: the Davos elite brace for Trump and his dinosaur diplomacy

Q: Is the US worried that institutional investors in Europe might pull out of the US Treasury market, such as pension funds in Denmark?

Bessent brushes this aside, saying

The size of Denmark’s investment in US Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant.

It is less than $100 million.

They’ve been selling Treasuries for years. I’m not concerned at all.

Family splits are more common than people realise and are typically caused by abuse, new partners and differing beliefs

Family therapists say they typically come across three reasons why parents and children become estranged: abuse, new partners, and irreconcilable differences over morals, values and beliefs.

At least two of these were evident in the Beckhams’ highly publicised family feud, which culminated in Brooklyn Beckham’s scathing Instagram post this week announcing his estrangement.

The fab five convene in Washington DC for the show’s 10th and final season – and one last, escapist feelgood hurrah

In 2018, hopes were not high for Queer Eye. Having dredged the sea floor of early 00s nostalgia, Netflix announced that it had reimagined Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a makeover series that churned out 100 episodes between 2003 and 2007. In it, switched-on gay men had told clueless straight men how to dress, act and behave. Fifteen years after it debuted, however, that concept felt like a relic. At best, it was a testament to an era in which queer representation on screen was still rare and mostly dealt in unthreatening stereotypes. Bringing it back sounded unpromising, like yet another dead-end television reboot.

When Queer Eye launched, however, it had undergone a makeover of its own, and confounded most expectations. It chopped the name in half, ditched the focus on straight men as its subjects – though, ever inclusive, they were very much part of it – and dragged itself into a more emotionally literate and sensitive era. The five men at its core did fashion and style, of course, but they were delicate about it. The idea was not to shame people for their bodies or personal taste – a common feature of early 00s makeover shows – but to give them a helping hand, lift them out of the doldrums and make them feel as if they and their lives had value and worth.

It’s time to stand up for ourselves. With targeted action and tariffs, we can help push back the bully in chief

• Ed Davey is leader of the Liberal Democrats

Donald Trump is behaving like an international gangster. His threats to Greenland this week have crossed a line, blackmailing America’s closest allies and threatening the future of Nato itself. From leaking messages with other world leaders to whining about the Nobel peace prize, the US president has gone from unstable to seemingly unhinged. And our government needs to wake up.

For months, Keir Starmer has pursued a strategy of quiet appeasement. He told us that by avoiding confrontation the UK could carve out a special status that would shield our industries from the coming storm. Only a few months ago, Trump hailed the “special relationship” at Windsor Castle after being lavished with a state banquet. Now, thanks to his actions, it is nearly in tatters. Starmer’s Mr Nice Guy diplomacy has failed.

Ed Davey is leader of the Liberal Democrats