Amid the tumult of the WEF in Davos this week, some investors are leading the way by ditching US government bonds
There is a way to file for divorce from Donald Trump and Europe needs to grab the opportunity.
To the public it will look as if nothing has changed. But behind the scenes the EU and the UK could close the joint bank account and cut up the credit cards, or at least set in motion a form of financial separation that limits the power of a controlling former partner.
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© Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP
© Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP
© Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP
Many of those moved into an asylum return centre have held jobs for years and can speak the language
“Sweden did this for us,” said Sofiye*, making a supportive scooping up gesture with her hands. “And then, bam.” She dropped them to the ground.
Sofiye, who has three children, arrived in Sweden from Uzbekistan as an asylum seeker in 2008, and for much of that time she was able to build a life in the Scandinavian country. The family lived in a flat in a Stockholm suburb and Sofiye worked for the municipality in the home help department. She learned Swedish and her children went through the Swedish school system. Her youngest son was born in Sweden and her 18-year-old son, Hamza, who is studying in college to be a technician, doesn’t know life anywhere else.
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© Photograph: Josefine Stenersen/The Guardian
© Photograph: Josefine Stenersen/The Guardian
© Photograph: Josefine Stenersen/The Guardian
Searching for a quieter hiking route, Rory Buccheri found tranquility on the historic Romboleden pilgrimage
© Rory Buccheri
© Doug Mills/The New York Times
While the threat of retaliatory measures to stop the annexation of Greenland worked, it remains to be seen if Europe has the unity to follow through
The past couple of weeks have seen the most spectacular crisis escalation in the transatlantic relationship, over the US threat to annex Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark. It risked becoming a major conflict among the members of Nato, the most powerful security alliance in world history – until now.
On Wednesday, after a meeting with Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, the US president, Donald Trump, backtracked on his threats to slap tariffs on countries that got in the way of his annexation project. As European leaders huddled together over dinner for a post-crisis debrief in Brussels on 22 January, they congratulated themselves on their unity and appreciated the intervention of Rutte, or “Daddy diplomacy”. If these really were the conclusions of the latest debacle in transatlantic relations, they are missing important parts of the story.
Rosa Balfour is director of Carnegie Europe
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© Photograph: Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images
In search of an alternative side to Hungary’s capital, Henry Roberts visited a giant circus and dance show on the outskirts of the city
© Báline Hirling
Shift in relations and unpredictability of Donald Trump make it ‘risky to store so much gold in the US’, say experts
Germany is facing calls to withdraw its billions of euros’ worth of gold from US vaults, spurred on by the shift in transatlantic relations and the unpredictability of Donald Trump.
Germany holds the world’s second biggest national gold reserves after the US, of which approximately €164bn (£122bn) worth – 1,236 tonnes – is stored in New York.
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© Photograph: Michael Dalder/Reuters
© Photograph: Michael Dalder/Reuters
© Photograph: Michael Dalder/Reuters
Kyiv says Moscow used 396 drones and missiles in ‘another night of Russian terror’ on second day of talks in UAE
Russia launched a major drone and missile attack targeting Ukraine’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, early on Saturday, as US, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in the United Arab Emirates for a second day of tripartite peace talks.
“Peace efforts? Trilateral meeting in the UAE? Diplomacy? For Ukrainians, this was another night of Russian terror,” the country’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said after the latest Russian assault on critical infrastructure.
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© Photograph: Ukrainian emergency services/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ukrainian emergency services/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ukrainian emergency services/AFP/Getty Images
In the US, comedy has long filled the space vacated by partisan news media. Now France is following its lead
Sometimes the freedom and openness of comedy means it is better able to respond to world events than news media. Take South Park’s raucous, unhinged and visually disturbing depictions of Donald Trump – most recently, cheating on Satan (who is carrying his spawn) with JD Vance in the White House. Fair enough: Trey Parker and Matt Stone very much own this terrain.
But there’s no reason why satirical TV programmes such as The Daily Show should have to take on the role of news provider, investigative journalist and critic. And yet, over the past three decades, the failings of the US corporate media to adequately cover the country’s dilapidated politics has pushed people such as Jon Stewart into filling the void.
The problem was identified as long ago as 2000 by the US economist Paul Krugman. He castigated the press for being “fanatically determined to seem even-handed”, to the point they were unwilling to call out outrageous untruths. “If a presidential candidate were to declare that the Earth is flat,” Krugman wrote, “you would be sure to see a news analysis under the headline Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point.”
It was this context that provided American satire’s cathartic triumph in the first years of the 21st century. The Daily Show began conducting harder-hitting interviews than most primetime TV shows. Stephen Colbert rose to prominence by playing a fake conservative talkshow host, in an open parody of Bill O’Reilly’s mid-2000s show on Fox. And then John Oliver pioneered “investigative comedy”, frequently doing a better job of breaking scandalous stories than the news programmes he was satirising.
Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist. His memoir, Generation Desperation, is published in January 2026
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© Illustration: YouTube
© Illustration: YouTube
© Illustration: YouTube
There are fears that Europe is exhausted with the war, worries about Trump’s logic but some hope of a silver lining
In the Benedikt cafe in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, one wall is covered by a giant map with countries and territories cut out of lacquered wooden pieces, with Greenland at its apex.
The waiter has not been following news of the Greenland crisis and Donald Trump’s desire to annex the Danish territory. But the echoes of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin’s imperial land grab of the waiter’s own country are clear to him. “They’re crazy. The pair of them.”
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© Photograph: Nina Liashonok/Reuters
© Photograph: Nina Liashonok/Reuters
© Photograph: Nina Liashonok/Reuters
Wolves killed more than 2,100 reindeer in Finland last year, and herders are blaming the Ukraine war
Juha Kujala no longer knows how many reindeer will return to his farm from the forest each December. The 54-year-old herder releases his animals into the wilderness on the 830-mile Finnish-Russian border each spring to grow fat on lichens, grass and mushrooms, just as his ancestors have done for generations.
But since 2022, grisly discoveries of reindeer skeletons on the forest floor have disrupted this ancient way of life. The culprits, according to Kujala: wolves from Russia.
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© Photograph: Danny Green/naturepl.com
© Photograph: Danny Green/naturepl.com
© Photograph: Danny Green/naturepl.com
Prosecutors had opened an investigation into allegations that the singer had sexually assaulted two former employees
© Samir Hussein/Getty Images
Friday’s announcement and the recount, which is expected to last for a few weeks, have fueled fears that a yearlong political crisis would continue
© AFP via Getty Images
Danish veterans say, ‘when America needed us after 9/11 we were there’
© AP
ICE in Minneapolis, Russian airstrikes in Kyiv, protests in Greenland and the Africa Cup of Nations final in Rabat – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Warning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing
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© Photograph: Jalaa Marey/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Jalaa Marey/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Jalaa Marey/AFP/Getty Images
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