Flagship

US plans migration crackdown

US authorities moved to tighten immigration controls in the early days of President Donald Trump’s term. The Pentagon deployed 1,500 troops to the US-Mexico border, in addition to the 2,500 already stationed there. Lawmakers passed a bill requiring the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with crimes, while the White House expanded officials’ deportation powers and stopped the arrival of refugees who were already approved to enter the country, among other measures. Though attention has focused on the crackdown in the US, others in the West are similarly taking a hard line on immigration: North African countries, which receive money from the European Union to tackle migration across the Mediterranean, have begun expelling sub-Saharan Africans in growing numbers.

Saudi pledges mega US investment

Saudi Arabia said it wants to increase investments and trade with the US to $600 billion over the course of Donald Trump’s presidency, shortly after Trump put a similar price tag on making his first international trip to the kingdom. In a phone call, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman feted the American leader as having the potential to create “unprecedented economic prosperity.” Trump had warm ties with the kingdom during his first term, and the two countries have neared a deal involving Saudi normalization of relations with Israel that would further deepen security links between Washington and Riyadh. “The new administration is pushing hard for an Israel-Saudi agreement,” the editor-in-chief of Arabian Gulf Business Insight wrote. “Watch this space.”

Davos awaits Trump

Attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos — which this year “started late… and felt light” — eagerly awaited a live videoconference with US President Donald Trump today. Trump’s session, which will also feature a Q&A, points to how attention at the annual gathering of global business executives and world leaders in Switzerland has been trained across the Atlantic on the new US administration’s early days. The day’s agenda underscores how the rise of Trump-like figures worldwide sits in tension with Davos’ free-trade internationalism: Also speaking today is Argentina’s president, whose libertarianism is far from a perfect analog for Trump’s interventionist policies, but who has nevertheless become “a star among an ascendant global right,” The Wall Street Journal said.

EU’s energy transition success

The European Union’s fossil fuel use fell to its lowest level in 40 years last year, thanks to a boom in renewables. Coal use dropped 61% in a decade, while solar output tripled and wind power doubled. The shift has saved the EU $60 billion in fuel imports and could wean the bloc off Russian gas, energy analysts said. Other countries, though, are betting that fossil fuels will remain relevant for years: Russia announced a new gas pipeline to Iran, hoping to open up new export markets, and Libya and Kuwait plan to significantly boost their oil refining capacity. Germany, meanwhile, expects to be reliant on coal backups into the 2030s thanks to its decision to shut down nuclear plants.

EU, China diverge from US on EVs

The European Union plans to create bloc-wide electric vehicle subsidies to boost its embattled car industry and compete with China. A European Commission executive told the Financial Times at Davos that European leaders were still “shaping” potential measures, but that some sort of EU subsidy was likely, rather than member states competing. Beijing heavily backs its carmakers, which the West sees as unfair, but which has led to BYD becoming the world’s biggest EV seller. The US may go the other way: Former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act backed US EV makers with tax credits, but now that Republicans control all branches of government, the credits are expected to end.

Russian ‘spy ship’ confronted off UK

British warships confronted a Russian “spy ship,” raising concerns of attacks on undersea cables and of growing escalation in UK waters. The British defense minister said the Yantar had been “mapping the UK’s critical underwater infrastructure” and that two surface ships and a submarine had warned it away. Chinese- and Russian-linked ships have been accused of attacks on data cables and pipelines in the Baltic Sea and off Taiwan in recent months, and improved mapping of those cables would make such attacks easier. The minister said that Britain had changed its rules of naval engagement, allowing warships closer to suspicious vessels: NATO has also stepped up surveillance of marine infrastructure to protect against sabotage.

Colombia unrest flares up

Colombia’s government reissued arrest warrants for the leaders of the National Liberation Army, a paramilitary group with which Bogotá was in talks to end the country’s decades-long internal war. Recent attacks by the rebels have led to dozens of deaths and the displacement of tens of thousands after years of falling murder rates. In response, President Gustavo Petro, himself a former guerrilla fighter, has declared war against the group, prompting the UN Security Council to summon Colombia’s foreign minister. “Beyond being useless, the declaration shows that the president has lost his grip on the country,” an expert wrote in Colombian daily El Tiempo.

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SAfrica remembers WWI dead

Cape Town opened a memorial to South Africans who died during World War I, a move that “rights a 110-year-old wrong,” Al Jazeera wrote. The memorial — made up of hundreds of posts with the name and date of death of the deceased — pays tribute to the almost 1,800 predominantly Black non-combatants who died while serving Britain’s forces in what were then its colonies in Africa. The monument is part of a wider push by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to correct inequities in commemoration, including the deaths of more than 100,000 Black Africans who died fighting for the Allies in the Great War.

China opens up to Hollywood

China is increasingly allowing Hollywood films into its theaters, part of a plan to boost spending and revitalize a flagging economy despite Beijing’s concerns about foreign influence. A total of 93 foreign films were shown in China in 2024, the most since 2019. Most cinemas are in malls, and moviegoing is associated with shopping and spending, activities the government is keen to promote. Beijing’s concerns of films acting as a vector for Western propaganda and immoral behavior are longstanding, but push against its need to boost spending: The authorities’ attitudes oscillate “between the two extremes of nationalistic pride and liberal globalization,” one China scholar told Bloomberg.

Sports players not dumb

The stereotype of athletes being stupid is false, and the average professional soccer player is in the 90th percentile for intelligence, new research suggests. Despite some high-profile gaffes — the England star Jack Grealish struggling to point to England on a map of England, for instance — a study found soccer players tested very high on working memory, executive function, and other cognitive abilities. A researcher told The Times of London that this was unsurprising, since players “need to plan properly, see the right path, anticipate,” all at high speed. It’s not just soccer players: In 2018 basketball’s LeBron James revealed astonishing, near-photographic recall of the plays from a game, a skill that researchers said was “quite normal” for elite sportspeople.

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• Britain’s foreign secretary meets with his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo.
• Storm Éowyn is expected to make landfall in Ireland and Britain, and citizens are warned of a “likely danger to life.”
• Novak Djokovic plays Alexander Zverev in the semifinal of the Australian Open.

The time it took Mexican runner María Lorena Ramírez to complete the 100 kilometers (60 miles) of the Hong Kong Ultramarathon. Although Ramírez ended far behind the winner — perhaps partly explained by the fact that she ran in sandals and a long skirt — her completion of the race is the latest achievement for the Rarámuri community. The Indigenous group, native to the high sierras of Northern Mexico, has long drawn interest from the international running community, many of whom travel to their towns to study the form that allows the Rarámuri to run such long distances.

Wafu Cooking: Everyday Recipes with Japanese Style: A Cookbook by Sonoko Sakai. Japanese “fusion” cuisine became a craze in the 1980s, but this cookbook by a chef of Japanese-Swiss heritage argues that it goes back a lot further than that: “Many dishes now thought of as quintessentially Japanese are fusions once considered foreign to the country,” The Associated Press noted, even Japanese staples such as gyoza and tonkatsu. “Wafu” means “Japanese in style,” and each dish was “wafued” as it arrived: Sakai continues the tradition by adding miso to bolognese or soy to a white-bean chilli. Buy Wafu Cooking from your local bookstore.