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Spain train crash: rescue efforts continue as death toll rises in Córdoba crash – latest updates

Sam Jones is Madrid correspondent for the Guardian Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, said the cause of the accident had yet to be established. Speaking at a press conference at Atocha station in Madrid, he added it was “really strange” that a derailment should have happened on a straight stretch of track. This section of track was renewed in May, he said. Puente said most of those killed and injured had been in the first two carriages of the second train … A journalist from the public broadcaster RNE, who was travelling on one of the trains, said the impact had felt like an earthquake. Passengers had used emergency hammers to break carriages windows and get out, he said. A woman named Carmen posted on X that she had been onboard the Málaga to Madrid train. “Ten minutes after departing [from Córdoba], the train started to shake a lot, and it derailed from coach six behind us. The lights went out.” You can read the full story here:

High-speed train crash in southern Spain leaves 39 dead

At least 39 people have been killed and 12 are in intensive care after two trains collided in southern Spain on Sunday night in what the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called “a night of deep pain for our country”. A high-speed Iryo train travelling from Málaga to Madrid derailed near the municipality of Adamuz in Córdoba province at about 7.40pm on Sunday, crossing on to the other track where it hit an oncoming train, Adif, Spain’s rail infrastructure authority, posted on X. The second train, which was operated by the state rail company, Renfe, also derailed and went down an embankment, authorities said. “Approximately 300 people were onboard at the time of the accident,” Iryo said. “The derailment affected cars six through eight. The Guardia Civil and firefighters are currently working intensively at the scene to evacuate all passengers and have set up a joint emergency response team. “Iryo deeply regrets the incident, has activated all its emergency protocols, and is collaborating closely with Adif, Renfe, and the relevant authorities to determine the causes and manage the situation as effectively as possible.” On Monday morning, emergency services in Andalucía said 122 people had been treated for their injuries and 48 people were still in hospital, of whom 12 were in intensive care units. “There are many injured – I am still trembling,” María San José, 33, a passenger on the train that first derailed, told El País. Another witness told the public broadcaster RTVE that one of the carriages of the first train had completely overturned. An unidentified passenger on the second train – which was going from Madrid to Huelva – told public broadcaster TVE: “There were people screaming, their bags fell from the shelves. I was travelling to Huelva in the fourth carriage – the last, luckily.” Television images showed medical crews and fire services at the scene. The Córdoba fire chief, Paco Carmona, told TVE that while the Iryo had been evacuated within hours of the accident, the Renfe carriages were badly damaged, with twisted metal and seats. “There are still people trapped. The operation is concentrating on getting people out of areas which are very narrow,” he said. “We have to remove the bodies to reach anyone who is still alive. It is proving to be a complicated task.” Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, said the cause of the accident had yet to be established. Speaking at a press conference at Atocha station in Madrid, he added it was “really strange” that a derailment should have happened on a straight stretch of track. This section of track was renewed in May, he said. Puente said most of those killed and injured had been in the first two carriages of the second train. Sánchez is due to visit the area on Monday, while the king and queen were following the developments with concern, a spokesperson said. “Tonight is a night of deep pain for our country due to the tragic railway accident in Adamuz,” the prime minister wrote on X. “I want to express my most sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims. “No words can alleviate such immense suffering, but I want them to know that the entire country stands with them in this extremely difficult moment. All emergency services are working in a coordinated manner without rest.” The regional president of Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno, offered his condolences to the families of the victims, adding: “Our hearts are broken.” A journalist from the public broadcaster RNE, who was travelling on one of the trains, said the impact had felt like an earthquake. Passengers had used emergency hammers to break carriages windows and get out, he said. A woman named Carmen posted on X that she had been onboard the Málaga to Madrid train. “Ten minutes after departing [from Córdoba], the train started to shake a lot, and it derailed from coach six behind us. The lights went out.” Footage posted on X by another Iryo train passenger showed an Iryo official in a fluorescent jacket instructing passengers to remain in their seats in the darkened carriages, and asking those with first aid training to keep watch over fellow passengers. The official told passengers they would be evacuated when it was safe to do so, but that at that moment the safest place was on the train. He also urged people to conserve their mobile phone batteries so they could use their torches when they disembarked. The passenger wrote: “In our carriage we’re well but we don’t know about the other carriages. There’s smoke and they’re calling for a doctor.” Spanish media reports suggested 400 people had been on the two trains. Local television images showed a reception centre set up for passengers in Adamuz, a town of 5,000 people, with locals bringing food and blankets as night-time temperatures hovered at about 6C (42F). Adif has suspended all rail services between Madrid and Andalucía. Spain’s deadliest rail crash this century happened in July 2013, when a train travelling at 111mph (179km/h) derailed on a stretch of track with a 50mph speed limit in the north-western region of Galicia, killing 80 people. Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

What is it like living in Greenland and being threatened by Trump?

Good morning. Donald Trump’s recent outburst that it would be “unacceptable” if the US can’t gain control over Greenland continues to drag the world’s largest island into the centre of global geopolitics. The largely autonomous Danish territory, sparsely populated but strategically vast, sits between North America, Europe and Russia – and as the Arctic ice melts, its importance is growing fast. Climate heating is shrinking the Arctic ice cap, opening up sea routes that were once the preserve of icebreakers and exposing valuable mineral resources beneath Greenland’s retreating ice sheet. Now what was once seen as a frozen backwater is being viewed increasingly as a strategic prize, helping to explain why Trump’s previously outlandish-sounding threats are being taken far more seriously in Europe’s capitals. They have begun to push back against his declaration of tariffs. For today’s newsletter I spoke to our Nordic correspondent, Miranda Bryant, who has just returned from Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, where families are quietly wondering whether they will have to flee as politicians find themselves in the sights of a superpower. First, the headlines. Five big stories UK politics | Robert Jenrick was described as “the new sheriff in town” and the politician needed to give Reform UK political “heft”, according to a leaked media plan. Romford MP Andrew Rosindell has also defected. Jeffrey Epstein | A New York City artist who said Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell shopped her around to men is among the survivors claiming that Esptein used the lure of a university education to ensnare her. Iran | President Masoud Pezeshkian warned on Sunday that any attack on the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would be a declaration of war. Social media | More than 60 Labour MPs have written to UK prime minister Keir Starmer urging him to back a social media ban for under-16s, with peers due to vote on the issue this week. China | China’s proposed mega embassy in London is expected to get the go-ahead this week, after years of wrangling. In depth: A gateway between continents As the map above shows, Greenland has always had the potential to be strategically important – but until recently it was locked away by ice. Now it is becoming a gateway between continents and a platform for projecting military and economic power. “I went to Nuuk this time last year, just before Trump became president but after Donald Trump Jr had visited,” Miranda tells me. “Returning this January, the tone and the mood was quite markedly different in terms of how seriously Trump’s threats were being taken.” *** Why Greenland, and why now? The ice retreat doesn’t just make the map look different – it makes shipping routes viable, exposes seabeds and minerals, and brings the high north into the everyday business of global trade and security. Greenland has gone from being a distant outpost to a potentially vital piece of infrastructure. Trump is not inventing the Arctic’s strategic importance. In any future conflict between nuclear powers, missiles would pass over the polar region. The US already operates early-warning systems at Pituffik in north-west Greenland. Russia has rebuilt cold war-era bases across its Arctic coastline. China has declared itself a “near-Arctic state” and is expanding its polar presence. For Trump, access and cooperation are no longer enough. Control is the prize. *** Greenland’s political fault lines That has a knock-on effect on Greenland’s own politics. Miranda tells me that all of the major parties support eventual independence from Denmark on one timescale or another. However, in the short term, Trump’s rhetoric has forced a brutal reprioritisation: security first, sovereignty later. Premier of Greenland Jens-Frederik Nielsen stated: “Greenland does not want to be part of the US … We choose the Greenland we know today, which is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark”. This statement gave people something solid to hold on to. Naleraq, the second biggest party in the Inatsisartut after last year’s election, thinks Greenland should negotiate directly with the US, without Denmark. That’s exactly the kind of crack Trump can try to prise open. Denmark’s own military presence in Greenland is, Miranda tells me, more than the two dog sleds Trump has mocked it as. But it is not exactly a “dominant presence” on the island. *** The resources at stake The melting ice is also turning Greenland into an economic frontier. New shipping routes promise to redraw the global trade map, while the island’s rare earth reserves – critical to everything from smartphones to guided missiles – have become a focus of growing foreign interest. Greenland ranks among the world’s top countries for rare earth deposits, but until now, much of it has simply been too frozen to exploit. Trump has already shown how he links security and resources. One of the first acts of his second term was to force Ukraine into an agreement giving the US a share of future profits from its minerals. Greenland fits the same pattern. Over the weekend Trump began threatening a tariff trade war with Europe over Greenland, a move described by British prime minister Keir Starmer as wrong in a call with the US president on Sunday. *** When a threat stops feeling hypothetical This is not an abstract power game. In Nuuk, families are now tracking military flights on their phones and talking to their children about what it would mean to become American. Miranda says the difference is not just Trump’s words but the sense that they might now be acted on. “People told me that Venezuela made a huge difference to how serious the threat feels,” she says. “When he first started saying he wanted the US to acquire Greenland, it was strange, and almost laughable. Now it feels real.” Trump’s threats may still prove to be bluster. But in a world where international law feels increasingly fragile, even the possibility of a superpower deciding to take what it wants is enough to make a small, peaceful society feel exposed. “People are thinking through things they never imagined having to think about,” she says. “Do you leave before it happens? Do you wait? If soldiers arrive, do you submit? Do you protest? Will there be shooting? There’s been no guidance from the authorities, so people are trying to work it out for themselves.” *** Europe’s impossible dilemma Greenlandic leaders were visibly emotional after the Washington meeting. Miranda points out that Greenland’s foreign minister Vivian Motzfeldt later gave an emotional interview telling a broadcaster how intense the pressure had been. This is not normal diplomacy. This is people being leaned on by a superpower. When I recently spoke to our diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, about Europe’s response to Trump’s actions in Venezuela, he explained how realpolitik and fear leave leaders with limited room for manoeuvre. The Guardian’s defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, noted this week that Trump’s approach “underlines a crude return to cold war style military concerns in the White House.” Denmark can offer more troops, more bases and more cooperation – and is already trying to do so – but it cannot easily confront a nuclear-armed partner that is openly talking about conquest. That leaves Copenhagen, Brussels and Nuuk trying to defend a principle that suddenly looks fragile: that borders cannot be changed by force, even when the ice around them is melting. And that doesn’t offer much reassurance on the ground. One woman Miranda met recently panicked after seeing a US Hercules aircraft leave the American base at Pituffik on a flight-tracking app. “She thought it was coming to Nuuk to invade,” she says. “That’s the level of anxiety now – people watching the skies and the seas themselves because they don’t know what else to do.” Guardian live Guardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US? On Wednesday 21 January, join Jonathan Freedland, Tania Branigan, Anand Menon and Nick Lowles as they reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency – and to ask if Britain could be set on the same path. Book tickets here What else we’ve been reading I enjoyed Steve Rose’s interview with Ed Zitron, the tech author, podcaster and cult AI sceptic, who one supporter called “a lighthouse in a storm of insane hypercapitalist bullshit”. Lucinda Everett, newsletters team Davos always has a hint of Marie Antoinette about it – but ahead of the next World Economic Forum meeting Heather Stewart and Dan Sabbagh wonder whether we’re reaching “off with her head” territory, with Donald Trump intent on smashing up the establishment rules. Toby Moses, head of newsletters Emily Retter’s piece, about the rising number of cases of Scabies, and the misery of those suffering with the condition, makes for alarming reading. Lucinda Cory Doctorow offers a degree of reassurance for the future. Even as he’s sure the AI bubble – “asbestos in the walls” of our society – will burst, there is hope that we can rebuild something better from the toxic wreckage. Toby I read Angela Giuffrida’s fascinating report about the sightseers ditching Venice’s cultural landmarks in favour of hotspots from the Bezos wedding. Lucinda Sport Football | An extra-time goal gave Senegal, who walked off the pitch after the award of a controversial penalty, a 1-0 win against Morocco in the Africa Cup of Nations final. Football | Newcastle had to put up with a disappointing point away at Wolves today with a 0-0 draw, meanwhile Aston Villa lost 1-0 at Villa Park to Everton, meaning they were unable to take advantage of an opportunity to move to second in the Premier league. Tennis | Emma Raducanu rallied impressively from a slow start and early deficit to open her Australian Open with a solid victory, moving into the second round with a 6-4, 6-1 win over Mananchaya Sawangkaew. The front pages “EU weighs up €93bn retaliation for Trump’s Greenland ‘blackmail,” is the splash on the Guardian on Monday, a story most UK papers led with. “Blackmail,” says the Mirror, “Europe threatens to strike back over Greenland,” has the Telegraph. “Fears Trump’s tariffs threat will rip NATO apart,” is the headline at the Express, while the Times runs with: “PM warns of ‘downward spiral’ in US tariffs row.” “NATO now ‘heading for disaster’ in Trump row,” writes the Mail. “Trade war looms with America as UK and EU unite against Trump’s Greenland threat,” says the i. “Farage wants to axe Holyrood,” says the Record, while the Metro has “Reclaiming the tea break,” and finally the Sun with: “Jesy love split after twins agony.” Today in Focus The transgender refugees fleeing the US Jane-Michelle Arc is a 47-year-old transgender woman from San Francisco. She decided to apply for asylum after an incident where she was crossing the road outside her apartment and a woman in a truck threatened to kill her. The Guardian’s Helen Pidd meets the US citizens attempting to claim asylum in the Netherlands. Cartoon of the day | Tom Gauld The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Eugene Teo began weightlifting at 13 seeking confidence but he later became obsessed with extreme bodybuilding. From ages 16 to 24, he trained for hours every day, followed restrictive diets, dehydrated himself for competitions and structured his life entirely around his body, damaging his health and relationships. Despite looking muscular, he struggled with basic movement and chronic pain. Realising his obsession brought no joy, Teo shifted focus to mobility, endurance and overall health. Now a fitness coach he trains less, eats more flexibly and values function over appearance, feeling stronger, fitter and happier. “Ten years ago, my body was capable of turning heads on the street,” he says. “That was fun – but it was the only thing it was capable of.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

China’s economy hit growth goal last year despite Trump trade war and property crisis

Chinese authorities can say they hit their growth goals last year, but Donald Trump’s ongoing trade aggression, a slow-motion housing market collapse and unhappy consumers remain major challenges for the world’s second-largest economy. Data released on Monday showed the Chinese economy grew by 5% in 2025, steady on the year before and hitting the official target of “around” that pace. Experts had expected punitive US tariffs would deliver a major blow to China’s economic performance in 2025. Instead, the country defied expectations by recording its largest-ever trade surplus (US$1.2tn) as it found alternative markets for its products and American tariffs proved less punitive than originally threatened. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s chief economist, Luke Yeaman, said navigating a fraught geopolitical landscape remained a “major wildcard”, but that China’s economy should continue to grow through 2026. At the same time, Yeaman warned “the structural challenges plaguing China’s domestic economy are not going away”. Among thoseis a four-year housing market meltdown that has left Chinese homeowners depressed and unwilling to spend. Home prices have plunged by more than 20% since their peaks in 2021, which in addition to the blow to consumer confidence has also left a looming debt crisis in the property sector that casts a pall over the country’s economic prospects. While much of the developed world fights to contain inflation, China has battled deflation in recent years, with consumer prices climbing by just 0.8% in 2025. Yeaman said Japan in the 1990s and early 2000s set a gloomy precedent. “Even without a banking collapse, property busts can suppress growth for years,” he said. The head of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, Kang Yi, said on Monday that while the world’s second-largest economy “faces problems and challenges”, it would “maintain stable, sound growth momentum this year”. But the latest figures masked a slowdown in late 2025, with output in the December quarter only 4.5% higher than a year earlier – the weakest since late 2022. Citi analysts describe a “K-shaped” economy of contrasting fortunes, as retail sales disappointed in December, even as exports and manufacturing climbed again and underpinned overall growth. Further complicating the picture is that experts have long warned that official statistics are not reliable, with Capital Economics estimating the latest growth numbers could be inflated by as much as 1.5 percentage points. China’s leaders have vowed to “significantly” lift household consumption as a share of the economy over the coming five years. Household spending accounts for under 40% of annual economic output, unusual for a country of China’s income level and against a global average of 60%. As part of efforts to boost the economy, last year the Chinese government provided 300bn yuan (US$43bn) in subsidies to households that traded in old appliances for new ones. While that scheme will be extended into this year, Moody’s Analytics analysts said the start of 2026 “brings a sense of déjà vu to China’s economic debate”. “Once again, officials are promising stronger support to lift confidence and stabilise growth. And once again, households and businesses are wondering whether action will match the rhetoric.”

‘They’re emboldened’: British far-right activists step up harassment of asylum seekers in northern France

Not far from a camp in Dunkirk where hundreds of asylum seekers sleep, hoping to cross the Channel to the UK, are some chilling pieces of graffiti. There is a hangman’s noose with a figure dangling next to the word “migrant” and, close by, another daubing: a Jewish Star of David painted in black surrounded by red swastikas. Utopia 56, a French group supporting migrants in northern France, posted the image on X on Christmas Day with the comment: “This is what comes from normalising the extreme right’s rhetoric, a visible, unapologetic, unabashed hatred.” It is not known who was responsible for the graffiti. But one thing is clear: it comes after a period of growing activity on French soil by far-right British activists, some of whom have harassed and intimidated asylum seekers in the places where they sleep, or boasted of slashing dinghies to prevent crossings. And to many of those who work to support asylum seekers in northern France, that activity has been hothoused by the rightward shift of mainstream British politics. “The reason why they’re coming out and doing this stuff is because they’re emboldened,” said Lachlan Macrae, of the group Calais Food Collective. He said his group had found water containers stabbed, or with soap poured in to render the water undrinkable. “They come with bulletproof vests and they go on to the beaches. They’ve been harassing people and streaming this content. As the ground is ceded to the far right, the far right has grown in response. Far-right groups in Calais are the norm now.” French groups supporting asylum seekers also say that water tanks, which they provide for asylum seekers who have difficulty accessing other sources of water, are being vandalised and damaged, making them unusable. Asylum seekers who have had unwelcome visits to their sleeping spaces by far-right activists have insisted that although they are fearful, they refuse to rise to the bait when the activists goad them. While hostility from far-right agitators in northern France where migrants are camped is not a new phenomenon, unwelcome visits from British anti-migrant campaigners have increased in the last 18 months. The first signs were in the summer of 2024, when Alan Leggett, who styles himself as Active Patriot, was pictured striding along French beaches calling for an end to Channel crossings. He was followed last summer by activists from the far-right UK Independence party (Ukip), including its leader, Nick Tenconi, who filmed themselves in Calais confronting mainly Sudanese asylum seekers living in a squatted warehouse and intimidating advocacy groups who defended the asylum seekers. In November last year, the phenomenon kicked up a gear. Raise the Colours, the Birmingham-based anti-migrant group that has draped union jack and England flags on lamp-posts and street furniture across Britain, launched Operation Overlord, a series of trips to France to “stop the boats” which Daniel Thomas, a key figure in the organisation at the time, said was “for our grandfathers, for our families and above all for our children”. In the last few days, Thomas and Raise the Colours have parted company. Thomas continues to organise around action to “stop the boats” using the title Operation Overlord, prompting Raise the Colours to rename its northern France activities Operation Stop the Boats. They do not appear to have parted on good terms. Named after the Normandy landings on D-day in 1944, Operation Overlord, when part of Raise the Colours, circulated appeals for stab-proof vests, plate carriers, high-powered torches, thermal cameras, drones and encrypted radios. Raise the Colours sought to recruit people online with an 11-page form described as a “volunteer pre-screen application”. One man who said he was ex-army posted a call on Facebook to “ex-squaddies” to go and patrol the French beaches 24/7. Raise the Colours has livestreamed footage of activists harassing asylum seekers waiting to cross the Channel. It has also posted videos of activists holding up deflated dinghies that they claim to have slashed, thus directly preventing some Channel crossings. However, some French NGOs supporting asylum seekers in northern France say that the dinghies had already been abandoned in sand dunes when Raise the Colours found them. The anti-fascist media organisation Searchlight posted video footage of some members of Raise the Colours running away in northern France, although it is not clear who they were running from. On Wednesday last week, France’s interior ministry issued a statement banning 10 unnamed far-right activists associated with Raise the Colours for “having carried out actions on French soil”. But Raise the Colours says it has recruited 22,000 people to support stopping the boats in northern France. Even assuming the numbers willing to travel to northern France will be significantly smaller, it raises questions about how effective the French ban on 10 activists will be. The current ban does not apply to anyone else who might attempt the same thing. So far there is no indication that the ban has acted to deter the far right from harassing asylum seekers in northern France more broadly. Tenconi, as well as speedily rising through the ranks to lead Ukip, is chief operating officer at Turning Point, the UK offshoot of the US organisation founded by Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated last year. In parallel to Raise the Colours’ Operation Overlord, Ukip has set up a “border protection mission”. Under that banner, Tenconi was filmed on a visit to France last June wearing black boots and gloves and shouting “fuck you” to asylum seekers. During another visit last year, Tenconi and his associates shone torches in the faces of asylum seekers sleeping in the open air. They started chanting “you shall not pass”. Footage of the incident showed the asylum seekers looking startled and fearful. There is no evidence that these visits have deterred people from coming to the UK, with more than 41,000 crossing the Channel in 2025, the second highest annual figure since crossings began in 2018. Steve Smith, the CEO of Care4Calais, said: “The vile harassment and threatening behaviour of these far-right actors is appalling, but let’s be clear, they’re achieving nothing other than gathering social media views.” At the moment there is no absolute ban on far-right activists travelling to France to intimidate asylum seekers, and the UK Home Office has so far declined to comment on whether government or police in the UK are taking any action against those who have already done so. Instead A Home Office spokesperson said:“This government is bearing down on small boat crossings.We have stopped 40,000 crossing attempts since this Government came into office through our joint work with the French. We have detained and removed almost 50,000 people who were here illegally. Our pilot deal with the French means those who arrive on small boats are now being sent back.” So far in 2026, 520 people have crossed the Channel in nine boats, a significant number despite poor weather conditions that is likely to rise as the weather improves. And now that Thomas has split from Raise the Colours and is continuing Operation Overlord under different management, a new rivalry on the UK far right may only increase the headaches for the French government. Ukip’s crowdfunder for its “border protection force” is still receiving donations, while Thomas is promising to put small teams in France in various locations on 24 January. In a rambling video post, he states of the French government: “Clearly we have rattled them very very severely.” He adds: “We are going to send people into France by air, land and sea. They will be given information about where to go.” Raise the Colours’ rebranded operation in northern France, meanwhile, boasts of having military and data experts to assist it “to successfully assemble the biggest pushback ever seen by ordinary people”. The group adds: “This is an organised mission that will carry on until we have the final result of stopping the boats.”

EU considers retaliatory measures over Trump Greenland tariff ‘blackmail’

The EU was weighing up retaliatory tariffs on American goods and even deploying its most serious economic sanctions against the US as European leaders lined up to criticise Donald Trump’s threat to levy new taxes on imports from eight nations who oppose his attempt to annex Greenland – which one minister called “blackmail”. “Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral,” the leaders of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland said in a joint statement. “We are committed to upholding our sovereignty.” The EU’s top diplomats met for crisis talks on Sunday and discussed reviving a plan to levy tariffs on €93bn of US goods, which was suspended after last summer’s trade deal with Trump. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, called on fellow leaders to activate the EU’s powerful anti-coercion instrument – commonly known as the “big bazooka” – if Trump went ahead with his tariff threats, French media reported, citing his team. After the talks broke up, the head of the European Council António Costa announced an emergency EU summit, which is likely to take place on Thursday. The EU, he said, showed “readiness to defend ourselves against any form of coercion”. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said Trump’s tariffs would be a mistake, and the Dutch foreign minister, David van Weel, described the US president’s threats to allies as “blackmail”, as reaction from European leaders continued to pile up. The anti-coercion law, which has so far never been used, enables the EU to impose punitive economic measures on a country seeking to force a policy change. Trump on Sunday doubled down on his threats against Greenland, claiming in a social media post that Nato had been telling Denmark for 20 years that it had to deal with the “Russian threat” to the territory and that it “unable to do anything about it”. He added: “Now it is time, and it will be done!!!” According to diplomatic sources, the EU was also considering reactivating a package of counter-tariffs against €93bn US goods, which were drawn up in response to Trump’s previous economic threats but suspended after the two sides struck a trade deal last summer. The measures would impose duties on US cars, industrial goods, food and drink. The ambassadors of the EU’s 27 member states were meeting on Sunday in an emergency session after Trump threatened tariffs on the six EU nations plus the UK and Norway. But the EU remains far from agreement on retaliatory measures against Trump. “At present, there is no question of deploying the ACI [anti-coercion instrument] or any other trade instrument against the US,” an EU diplomat said. The €93bn counter-tariffs are suspended until 6 February and several sources stressed the desire for dialogue with the US. A second EU diplomat said the situation was seen as very serious: “There was a clear and broad understanding that Europe and the EU cannot start reneging on key principles in the international order, such as territorial integrity.” In a joint statement, those countries said their Danish-led military exercise Arctic Endurance was in a commitment to strengthening security “as a shared transatlantic interest” and “poses no threat to anyone”. Trump had accused the countries, which have all deployed troops to Greenland in the last week, of playing “a very dangerous game” and said they would be subject to 10% tariffs from 1 February, increasing to 25% from 1 June. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump said the tariffs would be levied “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland”, a largely autonomous territory that is part of Denmark. The threats to Greenland have cast a long shadow over Nato and thrown into doubt the EU-US trade deal that the bloc signed with Trump last August. The leader of the European parliament’s largest group, the centre-right European People’s party, Manfred Weber, tweeted on Saturday that “approval is not possible at this stage”, a conclusion Socialist and Green MEPs had already reached. Ratification of the deal, which would reduce EU tariffs on some US goods to zero, had been expected by February. Macron said on Saturday that Europe would not change course in its opposition to a US takeover of Greenland, declaring: “No intimidation or threat will influence us – neither in Ukraine, nor in Greenland, nor anywhere else in the world when we are confronted with such situations.” In a joint statement, the EU leaders Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa said tariffs would “undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral”. The pair, who had been in Paraguay signing a trade deal with four South American countries in the Mercosur bloc, are understood to have been blindsided by Trump’s latest threats. Meloni, one Trump’s strongest EU allies, told journalists in Seoul that she had spoken to him “and told him what I think”, describing the proposed sanctions as a “mistake”. The Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, who bonded with Trump over their shared love of golf, said European countries stood united in support of Denmark and Greenland. “Tariffs would undermine the transatlantic relationship and risk a dangerous downward spiral,” he wrote on X. Germany’s deputy chancellor, Lars Klingbeil, said his country would always extend a hand to the US in the search for common solutions, but “we will not be blackmailed, and there will be a European response”. A spokesperson for the Bundeswehr said on Sunday the reconnaissance mission to Greenland had been completed as planned, after the German newspaper Bild reported that German troops were flying home. Speaking for the British government, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, said Trump’s decision on tariffs was “completely wrong” but she declined to say if the UK would retaliate with its own countermeasures. Spain’s leader, Pedro Sánchez, said a US invasion of Greenland would make Vladimir Putin “the happiest man on Earth” by legitimising the Russian president’s attempted invasion of Ukraine and sounding the “death knell for Nato”. Sánchez’s interview to La Vanguardia, published on Sunday but apparently conducted before Trump’s latest threat, reflects the broad European support for the Danish territory. After the Trump broadside, the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, tweeted: “China and Russia must be having a field day.” She went on: “If Greenland’s security is at risk, we can address this inside Nato. Tariffs risk making Europe and the United States poorer and undermine our shared prosperity.” Kallas warned against the dispute “distract[ing] us from the our core task of helping to end Russia’s war against Ukraine”. Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who was in Washington last week for talks about Greenland, said Trump’s announcement came as a surprise, after the “constructive” talks held with the vice-president, JD Vance, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio. “The purpose of the increased military presence in Greenland, to which the president refers, is to enhance security in the Arctic,” Rasmussen wrote. Trump’s latest threat underscores allies’ seemingly impossible job to appease Trump without ceding Greenland to the US. Trump criticised the motives of countries that deployed troops to Greenland in the name of enhanced security while also mocking Denmark for not doing enough to defend the territory. “China and Russia want Greenland, and there is not a thing that Denmark can do about it. They currently have two dogsleds as protection, one added recently,” he wrote. Denmark announced last week that it was increasing its military presence on the island, while troops from the seven other countries targeted with tariffs went to Greenland on a short scoping mission designed in part to show the US that European Nato members were serious about Arctic security. The threats represent an “existential crisis” for Nato, said one former official at the transatlantic alliance. Robert Pszczel, now a senior fellow at the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw, wrote on X: “Pretending that we are not dealing with an existential crisis for Nato is no longer possible nor desirable. “Threats made by the current US administration towards allies of the [US] and the use of economic blackmail are direct violations of article one and two of the North Atlantic Treaty,” he wrote, referencing parts of the agreement on peaceful settlement of disputes among allies and promoting “peaceful and friendly international relations”. The head of the European parliament’s trade committee, Bernd Lange, said the EU needed to activate its anti-coercion instrument, a law that allows wide-ranging economic sanctions in response to hostile actions from another state. The anti-coercion instrument, originally conceived in response to China, allows the EU to take wide-ranging punitive measures against a country seeking to use economic coercion, such as tariffs or investment restrictions. Lange, a German Social Democrat, said Trump was using trade as an instrument of political coercion, adding: “The EU cannot simply move on to business as usual.”

15 years after Fukushima, Japan prepares to restart the world’s biggest nuclear plant

The activity around the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant is reaching its peak: workers remove earth to expand the width of a main road, while lorries arrive at its heavily guarded entrance. A long perimeter fence is lined with countless coils of razor wire, and in a layby, a police patrol car monitors visitors to the beach – one of the few locations with a clear view of the reactors, framed by a snowy Mount Yoneyama. When all seven of its reactors are working, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa generates 8.2 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power millions of households. Occupying 4.2 sq km of land in Niigata prefecture on the Japan Sea coast, it is the biggest nuclear power plant in the world. Since 2012, however, the plant has not generated a single watt of electricity, after being shut down, along with dozens of other reactors, in the wake of the March 2011 triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chornobyl. Located about 220km (136 miles) north-west of Tokyo, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant is run by Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the same utility in charge of the Fukushima facility when a powerful tsunami crashed through its defences, triggering a power outage that sent three of its reactors into meltdown and forcing 160,000 people to evacuate. Weeks before the 15th anniversary of the accident, and the wider tsunami disaster that killed an estimated 20,000 people along Japan’s north-east coast, Tepco is set to defy local public opinion and restart one of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s seven reactors. On Monday, Tepco said it would delay the restart, originally scheduled for the following day, after an alarm malfunctioned during a test of equipment over the weekend, according to public broadcaster NHK. The reactor is now expected to go back online in the coming days, NHK added. Restarting reactor No 6, which could boost the electricity supply to the Tokyo area by about 2%, will be a milestone in Japan’s slow return to nuclear energy, a strategy its government says will help the country reach its emissions targets and strengthen its energy security. But for many of the 420,000 people living within a 30km (19-mile) radius of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa who would have to evacuate in the event of a Fukushima-style incident, Tepco’s imminent return to nuclear power generation is fraught with danger. They include Ryusuke Yoshida, whose home is less than a mile and a half from the plant in the sleepy village of Kariwa. Asked what worries him most about the restart, the 76-year-old has a simple answer. “Everything,” he says, as waves crash on to the shore, the reactors looming in the background. “The evacuation plans are obviously ineffective,” adds Yoshida, a potter and member of an association of people living closest to the facility. “When it snows in winter the roads are blocked, and a lot of people who live here are old. What about them, and other people who can’t move freely? This is a human rights issue.” The utility company says it has learned the lessons of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, and earlier this year pledged to invest 100 bn yen (£470m) into Niigata prefecture over the next 10 years in an attempt to win over residents. The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, whose 6,000 staff have remained on duty throughout the long shutdown, has seawalls and watertight doors to provide stronger protection against a tsunami, while mobile diesel-powered generators and a large fleet of fire engines are ready to provide water to cool reactors in an emergency. Upgraded filtering systems have been installed to control the spread of radioactive materials. “The core of the nuclear power business is ensuring safety above all else, and the understanding of local residents is a prerequisite,” says Tatsuya Matoba, a Tepco spokesperson. That is the one hurdle residents say Tepco has failed to overcome after local authorities ignored calls for a prefectural referendum to determine the plant’s future. In the absence of a vote, anti-restart campaigners point to surveys showing clear opposition to putting the reactor back online. They include a prefectural government poll conducted late last year in which more than 60% of people living within 30km of the plant said they did not believe the conditions for restarting the facility had been met. “We take the results of the prefectural opinion survey very seriously,” Matoba adds. “Gaining understanding and trust from local residents is an ongoing process with no end point, that requires sincerity and continuous effort.” Kazuyuki Takemoto, a member of the Kariwa village council, says seismic activity in this region of north-west Japan means it is impossible to guarantee the plant’s safety. “But there has been no proper discussion of that,” says Takemoto, 76. “They say that safety improvements have been made since the Fukushima disaster, but I don’t think there is any valid reason to restart the reactor. It’s beyond my comprehension.” ‘The priority should be to protect people’s lives’ Just weeks before the planned restart, the nuclear industry attracted fresh criticism after it emerged that Chubu Electric Power, a utility in central Japan, had fabricated seismic risk data during a regulatory review, conducted before a possible restart, of two reactors at its idle Hamaoka plant. “When you look at what’s happened with Hamaoka, do you seriously think it’s possible to trust Japan’s nuclear industry?” Takemoto says. “It used to be said that nuclear power was necessary, safe and cheap … We now know that was an illusion.” Adding to local concerns are the presence of seismic faults in and around the site, which sustained damage during a 6.8-magnitude offshore earthquake in July 2007, including a fire that broke out in a transformer. Three reactors that were in operation at the time shut down automatically. The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa restart is a gamble for Japan’s government, which has put an ambitious return to nuclear power generation at the centre of its new energy policy as it struggles to reach its emissions targets and bolster its energy security. Before the Fukushima disaster, 54 reactors were in operation, supplying about 30% of the country’s power. Now, of 33 operable reactors, just 14 are in service, while attempts to restart others have faced strong local opposition. Now, 15 years after the Fukushima meltdown, criticism of the country’s “nuclear village” of operators, regulators and politicians has shifted to this snowy coastal town. Pointing out one of the many security cameras near the plant, Yoshida says the restart has been forced on residents by the nuclear industry and its political allies. “The local authorities have folded in the face of immense pressure from the central government,” he says. “The priority of any government should be to protect people’s lives, but we feel like we have been deceived. Japan’s nuclear village is alive and well. You only have to look at what’s happening here to know that.”

Ukraine war briefing: Russian attacks kill two as Ukrainian strikes trigger blackouts in occupied south

Moscow kept up its hammering of Ukraine’s energy grid in attacks that killed at least two people overnight to Sunday, according to Ukrainian officials. At least six people were wounded in the Dnipropetrovsk region, the emergency service said. Russia also targeted energy infrastructure in Odesa region, it said. A fire broke out and was promptly extinguished. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram that repairing the country’s energy system remained challenging “but we are doing everything we can to restore everything as quickly as possible”. The Ukrainian president said two people were killed in overnight attacks across the country that struck Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Khmelnytskyi and Odesa and included more than 200 drones. The military said 30 strikes had been recorded across 15 locations. One person was killed in the second-largest city of Kharkiv, said mayor Ihor Terekhov. Ukrainian drone strikes damaged energy networks in Russia-occupied parts of southern Ukraine, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power, according to Kremlin-installed authorities there. More than 200,000 households in the occupied part of southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region had no electricity on Sunday, the Kremlin-installed local governor said. Nearly 400 settlements have had their supply cut because of damage to power networks from Ukrainian drone strikes, Yevgeny Balitsky said on Telegram. Ukrainian crews have started repair works on the backup power line connecting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the power grid, under a ceasefire brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based UN organisation said on X post on Sunday. The fate of the plant – occupied by Russia and the largest in Europe – is a central issue in ongoing US-brokered peace talks. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has said a US invasion of Greenland would make Russian president Vladimir Putin “the happiest man on Earth” in a newspaper interview. Sanchez said any military action by the US against Denmark’s Arctic territory would damage Nato and legitimise the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. “If we focus on Greenland, I have to say that a US invasion of that territory would make Vladimir Putin the happiest man in the world. Why? Because it would legitimise his attempted invasion of Ukraine,” Sanchez said in an interview in La Vanguardia newspaper published on Sunday. “If the United States were to use force, it would be the death knell for Nato. Putin would be doubly happy.“ Ukraine’s top negotiator said talks with US officials on ending the war with Russia would continue at the World Economic Forum opening this week in the Swiss resort of Davos. Rustem Umerov, writing on Telegram, said on Sunday that two days of talks in Florida with a US team including envoy Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner had focused on security guarantees and a postwar recovery plan for Ukraine.