The world’s richest man looks to move Canada to the right as the beleaguered prime minister prepares to departThe decision by the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, this week to resign as head of the Liberal party has set in motion a leadership race against the backdrop of a looming general election, which will be held amid political turmoil triggered by Donald Trump’s America First economic nationalism. It has also given Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, an opportunity to inject himself into yet another country’s political turmoil.Since Trudeau’s resignation on Monday, Musk has posted repeatedly about Canadian politics on X – the platform formerly known as Twitter he bought in 2022 for $44bn. He has praised clips of Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s Conservative party, while relishing in Trudeau’s downfall and engaging with rightwing Canadian influencers. Continue reading...

Politics

Kristrún Frostadóttir, who entered politics just four years ago, speaks to the Observer about feminism, the far right and reopening talks on joining the EUNearly 45 years ago, Iceland made history by producing the world’s first elected female president of a country, setting it on a path to being the global feminist frontrunner it is today.Since then it has had multiple female presidents and prime ministers, but it wasn’t until three weeks ago, when social democrat Kristrún Frostadóttir took office, that the country’s two top positions were both held by women at the same time. It comes after Halla Tómasdóttir became Iceland’s second female president in August. Continue reading...

Economics

Sweden's government says the country will contribute up to three warships to a NATO effort to increase the alliance’s presence in the Baltic Sea as it tries to guard against sabotage of underwater infrastructure

Events

In 1983 David Hurn met one of his photographic heroes, André Kertész , and jokingly suggested that, when he reached Kertész’s age of 89, he would remake his seminal volume, On Reading. True to his word, the Magnum photographer has now done so. Wherever Hurn travelled as a photojournalist, he took images of people reading books, magazines and, lately, on mobile phones. “One of the things that happens in every country in the world is people read,” he says. “It’s lovely to read – the touch of the paper, the ease of being able to check back a few pages. But we’re at a time now where we’re not quite sure whether, in the future, books on paper are going to disappear.”David Hurn’s On Reading is published by RRB Photobooks (£35) Continue reading...

Culture

With Centrica and National Gas at odds over the UK's gas stocks, the Government may be forced to turn to the EU to ensure supply, in a move which could spell disaster for consumers.

Science

This provocative novel contains two narratives: the memoir of an activist starting a new life and the violent manifesto of a spy cop who knew herAnna McCormick, as many people did, is discovering that the first pandemic lockdown is playing havoc with time. Becalmed in her deliberately fortress-like London home with her young adult son Paul, she is simultaneously under pressure – teaching primary school children on Zoom, maintaining her stockpile of tinned goods, attempting to communicate with her mother’s care home – and forced into unnatural, unwanted inaction. As a survivor of domestic abuse, and several other threats to her safety and sanity, she is aware of the immense prize – a sanctuary, a job, meaningful relationships – she has secured, but also of its precariousness. Amid these conditions of unbidden contemplation, she begins to write a sort of memoir.So too does Buster, the shape-shifting, monstrous undercover cop who once infiltrated the OrKestrA, the “merry little band of...

Politics

The French territory of Mayotte is on red alert again with another cyclone heading toward the islands off Africa that were devastated by their worst storm in nearly a century last month

Events

Emergency crews were unable to pass through Rushup Edge and Mam Nick, near Edale on Saturday morning due to vehicles obstructing the icy Derbyshire Road.

Events

MSF medical teams provide vital care in the war-torn country where pregnant women, new mothers and newborns are dying needlessly at alarming ratesDonate to our charity appeal hereIn Sudan, where a war that has caused the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster is in its second year, Dr Javid Abdelmoneim has his own daily struggles, trying to save lives in a place where the health system has all but collapsed.Rockets and bullets have an immediate effect on people caught in the crossfire, but the wider consequences of war are wreaking havoc on the population’s health. Continue reading...

Politics

The UK's Health Security Agency confirmed a country-wide amber cold health warning will last until Tuesday, January 14, amid a warning that deaths could be 'likely'

Events

California governor calls president-elect’s claim that water is being withheld from southern California ‘delusional’Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, appeared briefly to put his long-running feud with Donald Trump to one side on Friday, when he invited the president-elect to Los Angeles to survey devastation from the wildfires and meet with first responders, firefighters and the “Americans” affected.“In the spirit of this great country, we must not politicize human tragedy or spread disinformation from the sidelines,” Newsom wrote in a letter to Trump on Friday. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans – displaced from their homes and fearful for the future – deserve to see all of us working in their best interests to ensure a fast recovery and rebuild.” Continue reading...

Politics

The French territory of Mayotte is on red alert again with another cyclone heading toward the islands off Africa that were devastated by their worst storm in nearly a century last month

Events

Robert Jenrick (left) has called for the financial aid to stop and for a visa ban to be implemented until the country cooperates with the deportation of citizens living in the UK such as Adil Khan (bottom right)

Politics

Chilly Brits have been taking shelter from the bitterly cold snap by propping up bars up and down the country to warm up. They necked 150 million pints in the first 10 days

Events

Cold-weather health warnings were extended until Tuesday as much of the country endured below-zero temperatures, with -18.9C (-2F) recorded in Altnaharra, Scotland on Friday night.

Politics

The president-elect is obsessed with drilling for fossil fuels, not to mention taking control of Canada and Greenland and renaming the Gulf of MexicoYou can buy a copy of this cartoon Continue reading...

Events

Greenland's leader, Múte Egede, expressed his willingness to engage in negotiations with President-elect Trump.

Politics

Holyhead port is currently closed following damage from Storm Darragh, in December, but is expected to partially reopen next week

Events

Countries that cherish democratic values need to take a stand against the president-elect’s throwback to unabashed American expansionismWatching politicians promise one thing, then do another, is a common experience in all democratic countries. Situations in which voters do not expect a politician to keep his word, and in many instances fervently hope and pray he will not, are rarer. Donald Trump, the US president-elect, fits this latter category. When Trump threatens to subjugate Canada, a Nato ally, by force, unilaterally annex Greenland, the autonomous territory of a friendly EU state, and override Panama’s sovereignty for bogus security reasons, most people assume he is not serious and his remarks carry little real significance. This response, while comforting, is a mistake.It’s entirely possible that Trump, pumped with hype, hot air and testosterone in the lead-up to his 20 January inauguration, is being gratuitously disruptive. He likes to shake things up. It amuses his Make A...

Politics

The artist, famed in the UK for her extraordinary fissure in the turbine hall, has turned her focus to the climate catastrophe and the plight of migrants, but old concerns about her country remainAs the world turns toward another fractured year, Doris Salcedo, the Colombian artist, is at work trying to fathom how to create a house out of human hair. Salcedo, 65, has long made herself a channel of collective trauma, her art expressing profound anger at political crimes and atrocities at home and abroad – as well as creating imaginative spaces for mourning. Her hair project, she says, comes in response to what she has come to think of as “domicide”: the calculated bombing and destruction of places that people call home.“Most of my work is a response of some kind to war,” she says. “And we have all witnessed – of course for decades in Colombia, but also now in Ukraine and Syria and Sudan and in Gaza – this destruction of houses for the sole purpose of escalating human suffering. In Gaz...

Events

EXCLUSIVE: An expert has weighed in on 'deranged' Donald Trump's repeated desire to own Greenland, highlighting the eerie similarities to 'Germany in the 1940s'

Politics

Not a shot fired, not a snowball thrown... if President Donald Trump is genuine in his blustering threats to seize Greenland for the United States, military experts believe it could be easily done.

Events

The cold snap in the UK has caused havoc to the football fixtures up and down the country

Politics

A British woman plunged to her death after taking a wrong turn while mountain climbing near the Camino de Rey path, which was once considered the most dangerous walk in the world

Events

It is the coldest January overnight temperature since 2010 with much of the UK enduring below-freezing temperatures overnight as the wintry weather continues.

Politics

Japan and Indonesia have pledged to deepen economic and defense ties during a visit by the Japanese prime minister amid heightened global geopolitical tensions

Events

Alessandra Ambrosio showcased her body in a bikini while enjoying another beach day in her home country of Brazil - amid the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles.

Politics

The woman was killed after she plunged 500ft in Malaga, a popular Brit tourist resort, while her male friend was able to make a miraculous escape and was rescued

Events

President-elect Donald Trump has tossed expansionist rhetoric at U.S. allies and potential adversaries with arguments that the frontiers of American power need to be extended into Canada and the Danish territory of Greenland, and southward to include the Panama Canal

Politics

The woman was killed after she plunged 500ft in Malaga, a popular Brit tourist resort, while her male friend was able to make a miraculous escape and was rescued

Events

A pretty picture postcard pub in the Lake District has been named as one of the best in the country and is the perfect place to stay to explore.

Politics

A winter storm that dropped heavy snow and glazed roads throughout the U.S. South is maintaining its icy grip on much of the region into the weekend

Events

Last month, her father was sentenced to 20 years for drugging her mother then inviting dozens of strangers to rape her. Now their daughter tells of the ‘crushing double burden’ of being the child of both victim and perpetrator – and the mental torture of not knowing what he did to her• ‘Did he abuse me?’ Read an exclusive extract from Caroline Darian’s memoirFour years ago, Caroline Darian thought she had a normal life. She was in her early 40s, she had a home in the Paris area, a job as a communications manager, a husband who worked for a TV breakfast show and a six-year-old son. She got on well with her parents, who had retired to the picturesque village of Mazan in Provence in the south of France, to a house with pastel-blue shutters where they would all often spend long summers together in the garden under the mulberry tree and splashing in the pool – with barbecues and music, dinner and board games on the patio and country bike rides with her dad.Darian remembers the exact mome...

Politics

There is a narrow window. Public media and fair reporting must be supported: the rules must be upheldIn early 2017, Mark Zuckerberg was on what might be termed an “apology tour” of the United States. In the tumultuous few months since Donald Trump won his first presidential victory, the young chief executive of Facebook was reeling from his company’s part in serving US voters Russian disinformation, and widespread accusations that the social media platform had disseminated a vast spray of “fake news”. Fighting a rearguard action, Facebook announced changes to its algorithms, and a major initiative to include “third-party factcheckers” as part of the content moderation efforts.Touring the country, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla, stopped off in Selma, Alabama. They posed for a casual photo outside the offices of the iconic local paper, the Selma Times-Journal. Zuckerberg posted a heartfelt “thank you” to journalists “who work tirelessly and sometimes put their lives in danger to s...

Politics

A stunning seaside region in one of the top tourist destinations has an abundance of places to visit including the country’s most photographed beach

Politics

The UK is set to see milder weather move in over the weekend but weather maps show parts of the country will see another Arctic blast later in the month with more snow

Politics

This could be one of Wales' most underrated places to live but it's an absolute gem

Politics