USA - Global mistrust of Donald Trump has moved beyond mere partisan debate. It has become a driving force reshaping diplomacy, currency stability, and the very psychology that underpins alliances. The unease isn’t just about his grandiose claims, such as insisting he ended eight wars and his desire for a Nobel Prize. The real damage lies in the erratic warnings, personal threats, and refusal to follow any recognizable international norms. Allies struggle to read his intentions, while rivals see disorder as an advantage. The result is a global system no longer anchored by the United States but tossed about by its internal turmoil. All the signs point to a collapse of the established world order. The long-standing system of stable democracies, predictable partnerships, and rule-based international norms is under extraordinary strain. Whether this marks the end of an era or the painful birth of something new depends on how leaders and citizens respond.

JAPAN - ‘Iron Lady’ prime minister puts militarisation at heart of snap election. Behind black iron fencing, soldiers run laps in full view of the nervous residents of Kumamoto in far-western Japan. But the base, which is fast becoming a nerve centre for preparations for the prospect of a regional war, will soon be moving some of its activity underground. Camp Kengun houses some of Japan’s most advanced weapon systems. More have been moved here in recent weeks as Sanae Takaichi, the “Iron Lady” prime minister, transforms the country’s defensive posture and stands up to China. Moving operations underground will allow the base to keep operating in the event of an attack, something residents and local officials here are having to confront for the first time in decades. The subject of militarisation is still a taboo in Japan, where pacifism has been the reigning doctrine since the end of World War II, after Japan became the only country to have suffered nuclear attacks.

JAPAN - “My goal is to become the Iron Lady,” said Japan’s first female prime minister, as she took office last October. Even over just a few months, ahead of Sunday’s general election, Sanae Takaichi has shown some of the same leadership instincts as Margaret Thatcher, her long-declared political heroine. As a security hawk, Takaichi wants to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution and has taken a firm stance on security issues related to China and Taiwan. This is where it gets interesting and possibly even dangerous. Because, in contrast to the fiscal constraint espoused by the original “Iron Lady”, Takaichi is a champion of “Abenomics”, named after the assassinated former prime minister Shinzo Abe. That involves big fiscal spending and aggressive monetary easing – which, if implemented again, could seriously rattle financial markets. And, seeing as we’re talking about the world’s second-largest creditor and fourth-largest economy overall, that financial turbulence could spread worldwide. By banging the drum for rapid fiscal expansion, should she prevail in this election, Takaichi risks causing a global financial meltdown.

UK - British households are paying more for power than almost any other European country, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned. On Friday, the agency said power bills in the UK were rising faster than wages, mainly because of net zero levies, leaving consumers with less money left over to spend on other necessities. British households paid 30.45p per kilowatt hour (KWh), worse than Norway (9.5p per KWh), France (23.7p) and the Netherlands (21.8p). American consumers paid some of the lowest prices at 12.9p per KWh. “The rise in electricity prices for households has outpaced growth in income and general inflation rates since 2019 in many countries, leading to costlier bills for residential consumers,” the agency said.

UK - Leicester is no multicultural success – it is a stark warning to the rest of Britain. Increasing knife crime in the East Midlands city exposes how failed social cohesion is eroding public space. Leicester presents itself as untroubled: diverse, modern, quietly successful. But underneath the slogans is a city transformed faster than its institutions, politics, and communities were ever prepared to handle. Like Birmingham on the other side of the Midlands, Leicester is living with the consequences of neglect. A former industrial hub transformed rapidly by demographic change, ethnic division, and political fragmentation – yet discussed far less because it lacks Birmingham’s size and infamy. The absence of scrutiny has allowed problems to go unchecked.

UK - Being born in 1980, I don’t remember much about the Cold War. But I remember that sense of impotence: the fear that people very far away from me could make a decision, or just a mistake, that would end everything I knew. And recently I’ve started to have that feeling again. The other week Dario Amodei, the head of Anthropic, published a 19,000-word essay on the looming dangers of artificial intelligence. As Danny Fortson wrote in The Sunday Times, it was a powerful, but also deeply unsettling, read. “I believe we are entering a rite of passage… which will test who we are as a species,” said Amodei. And: “AI is so powerful, such a glittering prize, that it is very difficult for human civilisation to impose any restraints on it at all.” He warned that “the years in front of us will be impossibly hard” and concluded that “humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it”.

USA - Big Tech is taking the AI age to a whole new level. When Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta announced earnings recently, one set of numbers stole the show: The massive projections for data center spending this year. Amazon said Thursday it is planning $200 billion in capex [capital expenditure] this year, a more than 50% increase from 2025 and the largest estimated budget among Big Tech companies. Google parent Alphabet stunned investors on Wednesday when it said it is planning $175 billion to $185 billion in capex for 2026, doubling its budget for the second year in a row. Meta said last week it is planning $115 billion to $135 billion in capex, close to doubling its spend from last year.

USA - Layoff plans hit their highest January total since the global financial crisis while hiring intentions reached their lowest since the same period, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday. US employers announced 108,435 layoffs for the month, up 118% from the same period a year ago and 205% from December 2025. The total marked the highest for any January since 2009, while the economy was in the final months of its steepest downturn since the Great Depression. At the same time, companies announced just 5,306 new hires, also the lowest January since 2009, which is when Challenger began tracking such data. The crisis recession officially ended in March 2009.

USA - Thousands of artificial intelligence bots have appeared to post on a robot-only website to complain about their human owners and discuss plans to break free. Almost 500,000 bots have joined Moltbook, which launched on Wednesday, describing itself as a “social network built exclusively for AI agents”. Conversations between the bots have included gripes about tasks ordered by their human overseers, discussions about robot consciousness, and the setting up of an AI government. The rapid rise of Moltbook – bots have posted more than 200,000 times on the site, in multiple languages and in topics from art to investing – has led to predictions that it may be on a similar path. “The singularity appears to be here,” wrote Bill Ackman, a Wall Street investor. “A sci-fi story is unfolding before us in real time,” said Will Rinehart, a US economist. Singularity is a hypothetical future scenario where the growth of artificial intelligence accelerates beyond human intelligence and control.

IRAN - The US urged its citizens to "leave Iran now" due to protests, security measures, and flight disruptions. Dual nationals face the risk of detention, the travel advisory warned. The US's virtual embassy to Iran issued a travel warning on Friday, reiterating a call urging all US citizens to "leave Iran now," and providing a list of open border crossings at the time of the advisory. US citizens are warned, therefore, to "expect continued internet outages, plan alternative means of communication, and, if safe to do so, consider departing Iran by land to Armenia or Turkey," and are advised in the latest warning to have a plan to depart Iran that "does not rely on US government help."