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Donald Trump has suggested Britain’s decision to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is among the reasons he wants to take over Greenland.
The US president, who is travelling to Davos in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, made the claim as he ramped up his rhetoric on acquiring the Arctic territory.
Trump fired off a flurry of posts on his Truth Social platform overnight about taking over Greenland, which is a territory of Denmark, a Nato ally of the US. Trump wrote: “Shockingly, our ‘brilliant’ Nato Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital US Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.”
What else did Trump share on Truth Social? He leaked private text messages from France’s Emmanuel Macron and Nato’s Mark Rutte discussing his latest policy moves, and reiterated his intention to take over Greenland as “imperative for national and world security”, saying “there can be no going back”.
This is a developing story. Follow our live blog here.
‘The struggle continues’: MLK Day celebrated amid tense political climate
Martin Luther King Jr Day was marked with parades and services across the US on Monday. But the celebration for the achievements of the slain 60s civil rights leader was tempered by contemporary anxieties over racial and social equality and the Trump administration’s crackdown in Minneapolis.
At a rally in Harlem, the Rev Al Sharpton referred to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother of three who was killed by an immigration officer in Minneapolis earlier this month.
“If she cursed them out, does that give them the right to shoot her?” he said. “Now they’re talking about sending in the national guards, sending in more ICE agents. We are in a state that Dr King would have been fighting against this country going this far.”
What was said at other rallies and events? In Washington, Wisdom Cole, the senior national director of advocacy for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said elevated fears within racially diverse and immigrant communities meant that MLK Day observances were forced to take a more urgent tone. “We are faced with increased police and state violence inflicted by the government,” he said. Meanwhile, Zohran Mamdani, the newly installed New York City mayor, framed inequality as an economic issue at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s annual MLK Day celebration.
Noem backtracks on ICE pepper spray denial amid tension in Minneapolis
Kristi Noem first denied that federal agents were using chemical agents against protesters, then after being shown video footage turned to blaming the protesters themselves, as tensions continued to run high amid the Trump administration’s surge of federal officers into Minneapolis.
The head of homeland security, who has acted as spearhead for the ICE operation in the city – known as “Operation Metro Surge – told the CBS show Face the Nation on Sunday that her department had not used pepper spray against crowds.
A federal judge on Friday had ordered federal law enforcement to stop using pepper spraying against peaceful protesters, whom Noem has accused of attempting to hinder the immigration crackdown.
What did Noem say? She first denied the judge’s finding, but after being shown a video of chemical agents being used on four occasions, she backtracked and said her department “only use those chemical agents when there’s violence happening and perpetuating and you need to be able to establish law in order to keep people safe”.
In other news …
Brooklyn Peltz Beckham, son of David and Victoria Beckham, has apparently permanently cut ties with his family in a social media post, describing a feud that has been speculated about for months.
The aurora could be visible across Canada and most northern US states last night, after a major disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field.
A UPS driver recently charged into a burning home outside Los Angeles and carried a centenarian woman out to safety in what officials called a “remarkable” example of “people looking out for one another in a moment of need”.
Stat of the day: China’s population falls again as birthrate drops 17% to record low
China’s population fell for a fourth consecutive year in 2025 as the birthrate plunged to another record low despite the introduction of polices aimed at encouraging people to have children. Registered births dropped to 7.92 million in 2025 – or 5.63 for every 1,000 members of the population – down 17% from 9.54 million in 2024, and the lowest since records began in 1949.
Culture pick: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms review – this is the Game of Thrones we all need now
The latest Game of Thrones spin-off is not going to set the world on fire, either literally within the show or metaphorically without it, but the real world is now too Westeros-like for us to cope with any more, writes Lucy Mangan: the land of fabled violence is now our safe space.
Don’t miss this: At nine, I disappeared into home schooling. No one came looking
“Mom insisted I needed a ‘free-form education’ outside public school,” writes Stefan Merrill Block. “After four years of loneliness, I gave up hope that someone would get me out. One day I will learn that there, in 1990s Texas, I had fallen into the invisible space of home schooling where there is no requirement for a child to take any test of basic grade-level learning.”
Climate check: Antarctic penguins have radically shifted their breeding season – seemingly in response to climate change
Penguins in Antarctica have radically shifted their breeding season, apparently as a response to climate change, research has found. Dramatic shifts in behaviour were revealed by a decade-long study. The changes threaten to disrupt penguins’ access to food, increasing concerns for their survival.
Last Thing: ‘Make America Go Away’ – spoof Maga caps soar in popularity amid Greenland crisis
Red baseball caps spoofing Donald Trump’s Maga hats have become a symbol of Danish and Greenlandic defiance against the US president’s threat to seize the frozen territory. The caps reading “Make America Go Away” – parodying Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan – have gained popularity, along with several variants on social media and at public protests.
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