Official text, signed by Trump, outlines plan to ‘cultivate resistance’ in EU nations to their ‘current trajectory’
Donald Trump’s administration has said that Europe faces “civilisational erasure” within the next two decades as a result of migration and EU integration. In a policy document, it argues that the US must “cultivate resistance” within the continent to “Europe’s current trajectory”.
Billed as “a roadmap to ensure America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history and the home of freedom on earth”, the US National Security Strategy makes explicit Washington’s support for Europe’s far-right parties.
“As you can imagine, draw day is quite something when international football is one of your things. I want to chip in on possible groups of death. These are the two of the hardest groups I could come up with:
From an enraging indictment of Spotify to Del Amitri frontman Justin Currie’s account of Parkinson’s and a compelling biography of Tupac Shakur, here are five titles that strike a chord
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist Liz Pelly (Hodder & Stoughton)
Enraging, thoroughly depressing, but entirely necessary, Mood Music offers a timely, forensically researched demolition of Spotify. In Pelly’s account, the music streaming giant views music as a kind of nondescript sonic wallpaper, artists as an unnecessary encumbrance to the business of making more money and its target market not as music fans, but mindless drones who don’t really care what they’re listening to, ripe for manipulation by its algorithm. Sharp business practices and evidence of its deleterious effect on the quality and variety of new music abound: the worst thing is that Pelly can’t really come up with a viable alternative in a world where convenience trumps all.
Men of a Certain Age: My Encounters With Rock Royalty Kate Mossman (Bonnier)
There’s no doubt that Men of a Certain Age is a hard sell, a semi-autobiographical book in which the New Statesman’s arts editor traces her obsession with often wildly unfashionable, ageing male artists – Queen’s Roger Taylor, Bruce Hornsby, Steve Perry of Journey, Jon Bon Jovi among them – through a series of interviews variously absurd, insightful, hair-raising and weirdly touching. But it’s elevated to unmissable status by Mossman’s writing, which is so sparkling, witty and shrewd that your personal feelings about her subjects are rendered irrelevant amid the cocktail of self-awareness, affection and sharp analysis she brings to every encounter. In a world of music books retelling tired legends, Men of a Certain Age offers that rare thing: an entirely original take on rock history.
The writer of the Tony award-nominated Slave Play remains in custody after authorities say they found MDMA in his bag
American actor and playwright Jeremy O Harris, known for the Tony-nominated Slave Play, was arrested last month at an airport in Japan on suspicion of attempting to smuggle illegal drugs into the country, local authorities said late on Thursday.
Harris, 36, was stopped on 16 November at Naha airport on Okinawa island after a customs officer discovered 0.78 grams of crystal containing the synthetic narcotic MDMA in his tote bag, an Okinawa regional customs spokesperson said.
Everyone’s favourite former PM is back! Her mission? To save Britain from its current ‘doomloop’ with, you guessed it, a YouTube talkshow
Will you be seeing a pantomime this year? Birmingham’s got Gok Wan and Biggins in Robin Hood, Bradford has Sinitta in Snow White, while Bromley landed Su Pollard for Beauty and the Beast. And at the end of YouTube’s infinite pier, there’s The Liz Truss Show, staring She’s-Behind-You herself. Curtain up on that one is tonight at 6pm.
According to the producers, Liz’s show “confronts the issues that others tiptoe around”. Wow. The lives, loves, and clinical explanations? Let’s just say I’d watch that. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the format. Instead, like all seasonal entertainment, The Liz Truss Show is based on a fairytale. “The deep state and their allies in the media and politics tried to destroy me,” madam explains in a statement, “now I’m back.” Are the gilt markets the deep state now? Honestly, I can’t keep up. You’ll remember that the irony of Truss’s flameout at the hands of market forces was particularly acute given that she had spent an entire career explaining that free markets were the greatest judge of absolutely everything. Small ideological adjustment: free markets are now the greatest judge of everything except the ideas and personage of Liz Truss.
The US plans to expand the number of countries covered by its travel ban to more than 30, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, has announced.
Noem, in an interview on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle on Thursday evening, was asked to confirm whether the Trump administration would be increasing the number of countries on the travel ban list to 32.
French president’s remarks come a day after a report claimed he had warned Washington could betray Kyiv
Emmanuel Macron has said there is “no mistrust” between Europe and the US, a day after a report claimed the French president had warned privately there was a risk Washington could betray Ukraine.
“Unity between Americans and Europeans on the Ukrainian issue is essential. And I say it again and again, we need to work together,” Macron told reporters during a visit to China.
As Australia’s batting linchpin helps hosts pull away, England’s premier paceman is yet to get him out in a Test
Jofra Archer versus Steve Smith in 2019 is already Ashes folklore. The atmosphere at Lord’s that afternoon was charged in all senses, a huge slab of cloud bringing darkness to the day. Fresh off a match-winning World Cup final, Archer marked his Test debut with what was then the fastest spell recorded for England. Smith was in the middle of a Bradman-hued streak of 774 runs in seven innings. All that could pause him was a short-pitched attack of building ferocity, one that finally dropped Smith with a bouncer to the neck. It was a pure duel, the kind that cause spectators genuine fear.
In the immediate aftermath, and again as Archer took six-fers in wins at Headingley and the Oval, one principal idea came up in every discussion: imagine, what might he be able to do in Australia? Imagine him on a fast and bouncy track in Perth or Brisbane. It was: “I can’t wait to get you to the Gabba,” but born of admiration rather than antagonism. The show, we all imagined, might be a spectacle.
The 92-year-old actor made the announcement again as he received an award at the Red Sea international film festival in Saudi Arabia
Michael Caine has offered an update on his possible retirement from acting at the Red Sea international film festival in Saudi Arabia, appearing to call time on his career for the fourth time.
Taking to the stage to accept a lifetime achievement award, the actor said: “I kept going until I was 90, which was two years ago, and I thought to myself I’m not going to do anything else because I’ve had all the luck you can get.”
The anti-coagulant rodenticides also unintentionally harm wildlife across the state, including endangered species
The administration of Gavin Newsom, the California governor, is moving to loosen restrictions around the most toxic rat poisons, even as a new state report shows the rodenticides are unintentionally poisoning wildlife across the state, including endangered species.
Blood-thinning, anticoagulant rodenticides were significantly restricted when a 2024 state law approved after 10 years of legislative wrangling required the California department of pesticide regulation to limit the substances’ use unless data showed species collaterally harmed or killed by it had rebounded.
Brownlow is best known for restoring silent movies, but in conjunction with Andrew Mollo, he made two features, in 1964 and 1975, that look astonishingly prescient today
Anyone who has sat in the dark and watched the beautiful, glowing images of a silent film come to life on the screen has plenty to thank Kevin Brownlow for. Since the 1960s he has been on a quest to collect, preserve and restore these fragile artefacts of early cinema – thousands of which were lost, binned, or melted down for their silver content. He even won an honorary Oscar in 2010 for his efforts. But perhaps less well known is Brownlow’s career as a film director; not just with the various documentaries and TV shows related to his passion for silent movies, but in feature films that are as good as any of the more celebrated products of British cinema’s 1960s and 70s golden age.
Brownlow, in conjunction with co-director (and historian) Andrew Mollo, has two brilliant features on his CV: It Happened Here, released in 1964, and Winstanley, released more than a decade later in 1975. But that was it. Brownlow, now 87, seems pretty sanguine about it. “We did try,” he says. “If producers had been enthusiastic, I’m sure we’d have made at least one more feature.”
Late wickets offer tourists hope amid string of spills
The ball may be pink and the meal breaks off-kilter, but for so much of the second day in this pivotal day-night Test match, the atmosphere inside the Gabba was an all-too-familiar one for England’s supporters.
Gone was the triumphalism that met Joe Root’s first Test century on these shores 24 hours earlier and in its place a creeping sense of dread. The bottom line is: England’s bowlers spent most of the day sending down so many long hops and half-volleys as to make Jackson Pollock look positively precise.
Two men who survived a US airstrike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean clung to the wreckage for an hour before they were killed in a second attack, according a video of the episode shown to senators in Washington.
The men were shirtless, unarmed and carried no visible radio or other communications equipment. They also appeared to have no idea what had just hit them, or that the US military was weighing whether to finish them off, two sources familiar with the recording told Reuters.
Rinaldo Nazzaro says detention of suspected Base members in Spain justifies ‘resistance … by any means necessary’
After Spanish police and Europol’s counter-terrorism section arrested three suspected members of the Base – a globally proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist group – in the eastern province of Castellón, its American leader living in Russia was defiant and signalled further actions.
In a text message to the Guardian, Rinaldo Nazzaro called the arrests another “example of political persecution” by world governments that are “further justifying our resistance to its hegemonic rule by any means necessary”.
ACIP vote follows two postponements and contentious meeting and comes as RFK Jr pushes for vaccine delay
After a delay and an unusually contentious meeting, a federal vaccine advisory panel was expected to vote on Friday whether to change the longstanding recommendation that all newborns be immunized against hepatitis B.
The first day of the meeting of the advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) on Thursday was marked by heated debate over restricting access to the hepatitis B vaccine for infants and a decision to defer the vote by a day to give members more time to review the wording. The panel, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on how to use vaccines, had twice before postponed the vote.
Michael Dell’s $6.25bn gift spotlights how the super-rich use ‘charity’ to win access, favour and influence
Pity the billionaire class. The 0.001% are so unpopular these days that when tech billionaire Michael Dell and his wife announced the donation of $6.25bn into the “Trump Accounts” of 25 million children, one of the largest single philanthropic donations in American history, Dell had to hurry to assure us that his was not at all about currying favor with Donald Trump.
Connoisseurs of all things delicate and deeply felt will love the music put out by A Colourful Storm, the Melbourne-based DJ’s indie label
From Melbourne Recommended if you like the C86 compilation, AU/NZ jangle-pop, Mess Esque Up next Going Back to Sleep out now
Melbourne-based DJ Moopie, AKA Matthew Xue, is renowned for engrossing, wide-ranging sets that can run the gamut from gelid ambient music to churning drum’n’bass and beyond. He also runs A Colourful Storm – a fantastic indie label that massively punches above its weight when it comes to putting out charmingly moody experimental pop music, from artists as disparate as London-based percussionist Valentina Magaletti, dubby Hobart duo Troth, and renowned underground polymath Simon Fisher Turner.
In 2017, the label released I Won’t Have to Think About You, a compilation of winsome, C86-ish indie pop. Earlier this year, it put out Going Back to Sleep, a quasi-sequel to that record which also functions as a neatly drawn guide to some of the best twee-pop groups currently working. Sydney band Daily Toll, whose 2025 debut A Profound Non-Event is one of the year’s underrated gems, contribute Time, a seven-minute melodica-and-guitar reverie. Chateau, the duo of Al Montfort (Terry, Total Control) and Alex Macfarlane (the Stevens, Twerps), push into percussive, psychedelic lounge pop on How Long on the Platform, while Who Cares?, one of Melbourne’s best new bands, channel equal parts Hope Sandoval and Eartheater on Wax and Wane.
Elsewhere, Going Back to Sleep features tracks from San Francisco indie stalwarts the Reds, Pinks and Purples; minimalist Sydney group the Lewers; and sun-dappled folk-pop from Dutch duo the Hobknobs. It’s an unassuming compilation that’s almost certain to become well-loved and frequently referenced among connoisseurs of all things delicate and deeply felt. Shaad D’Souza
The British Museum is infused with Sufi spirit, Henry VIII’s storied Ottoman dagger gets its own show, Rego’s art is renewed and a Fabergé sets a new record – all in your weekly dispatch
Henry VIII’s Lost Dagger A curious quest for the Tudor tyrant’s lost, highly phallic dagger in the house where modern gothic began.
• Strawberry Hill House, London, until 15 February
Digging a trench alongside your vegetable bed is an easy way to dispose of food and plant waste, and enrich soil for next year’s crops
On a visit to our friends’ house recently, the subject of food waste came up. They haven’t got a tucked-away spot to set up a compost bin or heap in their garden, and their local council doesn’t collect. They had put their effort into bokashi composting in the past, but with a baby on the way I suspect they’ll have more than enough to do without taking on the added responsibility of caring for a bucket of fermenting kitchen scraps.
But as they’re already accustomed to burying their bokashi-ed vegetable peelings, it got me thinking about how low effort and high impact trench composting can be for those without room for a larger system. Trench composting is the simple process of putting your compostable matter – fruit and vegetable waste, plant material from the garden, grass clippings, leaves, etc – into a trench near where you’re planning to grow your crops next year. Over the coming months, this organic matter will slowly decompose, enriching the soil and improving its structure, making it ready to welcome the following season’s plants. No further effort is required from you to engage in this ancient approach.
Gary Walters managed the president’s official residence for 37 years – now he’s sharing his most vivid recollections
Gary Walters has a “special feeling” about the White House East Wing. He met his future wife Barbara when she worked in the visitors’ office there. But asked to contemplate the wing’s destruction by Donald Trump, the former chief usher evidently still believes that discretion is the better part of valour.
“All the presidents and first ladies have made changes in one manner or another – some larger than others,” Walters, 78, says with the measured cadence of a man who has spent a lifetime guarding privacy. “One of the things that I have seen not commented on was back to when the West Wing was built.
An eco-masterpiece, icy intrigue, cyberpunkish cyborgs, memory-eating aliens and super-fast travel sends the world spinning out of control
Circular Motion Alex Foster (Grove)
Alex Foster’s novel treats climate catastrophe through high-concept satire. A new technology of super-fast pods revolutionises travel: launched into low orbit from spring-loaded podiums, they fly west and land again in minutes, regardless of distance. Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, our globe starts to spin faster. Days contract, first by seconds, then minutes, and eventually hours. It’s a gonzo conceit, and Foster spells out the consequences, his richly rendered characters caught up in their own lives as the world spirals out of control. As days become six hours long, circadian rhythms go out of the window and oceans start to bulge at the equator. The increasing whirligig of the many strands of storytelling converge on their inevitable conclusion, with Foster’s sparky writing, clever plotting and biting wit spinning an excellent tale.
When There Are Wolves Again EJ Swift (Arcadia)
There are few more pressing issues with which fiction can engage than the climate crisis, and SF, with its capacity to extrapolate into possible futures and dramatise the realities, is particularly well placed to do so. Swift’s superb novel is an eco-masterpiece. Its near-future narrative of collapse and recovery takes us from the rewilding of Chornobyl and the return of wolves to Europe, through setback and challenge, to 2070, a story by turns tragic, alarming, uplifting, poetic and ultimately hopeful. Swift’s accomplished prose and vivid characterisation connect large questions of the planet’s destiny with human intimacy and experience, and she avoids either a too-easy doomsterism or a facile techno-optimism. We can bring the world back from the brink, but it will require honesty, commitment, hard work and a proper sense of stewardship.
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