Good morning.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, believes he can deliver “a historic solution” to the Ukraine crisis ahead of his arrival in Moscow for talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
After a flurry of diplomatic activity that included talks with the US president, Joe Biden, this weekend and three phone calls with Putin, Macron will land in Moscow on Monday seeking a “de-escalation” of the tense standoff on Ukraine’s eastern borders.
Russia has denied planning to invade Ukraine but has tens of thousands of troops near its neighbour’s borders, prompting the US to order about 3,000 extra troops to bolster Nato’s eastern flank in Poland and Romania.
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday that an invasion could take place “as soon as tomorrow”.
Why does Sullivan believe this? The White House believes Moscow has assembled at least 70% of the firepower it needs to give Vladimir Putin the option of a major military operation by mid-February.
What else is planned for today? While Macron is in Moscow, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will be in Washington for talks with Biden, aiming to narrow differences between the US and German approach to the crisis.
What has Germany done differently? The German government has refused to act on Kyiv’s calls for arms and has been vague over the future of the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany.
Trump’s incendiary Texas speech may have deepened his legal troubles, experts say
Donald Trump’s incendiary call at a Texas rally for his backers to ready massive protests against “radical, vicious, racist prosecutors” could constitute obstruction of justice or other crimes and backfire legally on Trump, say former federal prosecutors.
Trump’s barbed attack was seen as carping against separate federal and state investigations into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and his real estate empire.
Trump’s rant that his followers should launch the “biggest protests” ever in three cities should prosecutors “do anything wrong or illegal” by criminally charging him for his efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory, or for business tax fraud, came at a 30 January rally in Texas where he repeated falsehoods that the election was rigged.
Legal experts were astonished at Trump’s strong hints that he would pardon many of those charged for attacking the Capitol on 6 January last year in hopes of thwarting Biden’s certification by Congress if he runs and wins a second term in 2024.
Spotify CEO condemns Joe Rogan over use of N-word but won’t ‘silence’ him
Spotify’s chief executive officer Daniel Ek says he “strongly” condemns racial slurs and other comments made by popular US podcaster Joe Rogan, but will not be removing him from the platform.
Ek’s comments, sent in a letter to staff seen by Reuters, come on the heels of Rogan issuing an apology for the second time in a week, the latest for using racial slurs after a montage video surfaced showing him repeatedly using the N-word.
Ek said it was Rogan’s decision to remove a number of past episodes from The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, following discussions with the music streaming platform and his own reflections on some of the content in the show, including the usage of racially insensitive language.
Ek reiterated his stand on Spotify’s content moderation policies and said that he believes the company should have clear boundaries around the content being published. The company should take actions when they are crossed, but he cautioned that cancelling voices is a slippery slope.
What else did he say? “While I strongly condemn what Joe has said ... I want to make one point very clear – I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer,” he said.
In other news …
Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has given her first interview to an independent media organisation since she alleged on Weibo that a senior Chinese official had coerced her into sex, saying it was an “enormous misunderstanding”. The tennis star was accompanied by a Chinese official who also acted as translator.
Navy officials on Sunday identified a Seal candidate who died after an intense training session known as Hell Week, and promised to investigate the episode that left a second sailor in hospital. Kyle Mullen, 24, of New Jersey, died in hospital on Friday night, the officials said, giving no cause of death.
Scientists and politicians “probably killed hundreds of thousands of people” by damaging the reputation of the AstraZeneca vaccine, according to an Oxford scientist who worked on the jab. Prof John Bell said: “They have damaged the reputation of the vaccine in a way that echoes around the rest of the world.”
The mayor of Canada’s capital declared a state of emergency on Sunday and a former US ambassador to Canada said groups in the US must stop interfering in the domestic affairs of America’s neighbour as protesters opposed to Covid-19 restrictions continued to paralyse Ottawa’s downtown.
Stat of the day: the number of deaths among homeless people has shot up by 77%
The number of Americans dying while homeless has surged dramatically in the past five years, an exclusive analysis by the Guardian in conjunction with an academic expert at the University of Washington has shown. An examination of 20 US urban areas found the number of deaths among people living without housing shot up by 77% in the five years ending in 2020. Untreated disease, violence, exposure, overdoses and car strikes are all added hazards of living on the streets.
Don’t miss this: ‘Adults are banning books, but they’re not asking our opinions’
Huddled together on foldout chairs, facing down a table laden with muffins, pretzels and a stuffed toy pig are members of Kutztown’s Banned Book Club, which meets every two weeks to read and discuss literature that conservatives across the country are working to ban from school libraries. The book club members, all aged between 13 and 16, are gathered at a time of crisis. In the past year the book-banning movement has already seen works that mostly address race or LGBTQ issues removed from libraries in Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming and Pennsylvania.
… or this: Books overboard!
The supply chain crisis over the last year has caused quite a splash for the book publishing industry – literally. In early January, a large shipping vessel coming from Taiwan was stalled in the mid-Atlantic, its arrival into the port of New York delayed by port congestion. Intemperate weather – huge waves and powerful ocean winds – knocked 60 containers overboard. Another 89 containers were damaged as the ship rolled in the waves. Containers full of books at the bottom of the ocean are just one problem for an industry facing a host of shortages
Climate check: A third of Americans are already facing above-average warming
More than a third of the American population is currently experiencing rapid, above-average rates of temperature increase, with 499 counties already breaching 1.5C (2.7F) of heating, a Guardian review of climate data shows. The US as a whole has heated up over the past century due to the release of planet-warming gases from burning fossil fuels but though the climate crisis is convulsing the US, it is doing so unevenly. Hotspots of extreme warming have emerged.
Last Thing: Original Fight Club ending restored in China after backlash
The Chinese streaming platform Tencent Video has restored the original ending to the film Fight Club after it amended the Chinese edition to tell viewers police had “rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals”, prompting a widespread backlash. The wholesale reversal of the anti-capitalist, anarchist denouement to the 1999 hit film, which stars Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter, made international headlines last month.
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