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Denmark and Greenland prepare for US talks as Trump says territory’s PM has a ‘big problem’ – Europe live

In other reactions, German defence minister Boris Pistorius said that any move by the US to take control of Greenland would be an unprecedented situation for Nato, echoing earlier warnings from the EU defence commissioner, Andrius Kubilius. “The least we can say is that it would be a real unprecedented situation in the history of Nato and in the history of any defence alliance in the world,” he said at a press conference in Berlin yesterday.

Iran’s judiciary vows fast trials for arrested protesters despite Trump threats – live

Dozens of Pakistani students studying in Iran have returned home through a remote southwestern border crossing, a Pakistani immigration official said on Wednesday. Federal Investigation Agency spokesperson in Quetta city, Samina Raisani, said about 60 students crossed into Pakistan on Tuesday through Gabd border in Balochistan province with valid travel documents. More students were expected to return through the same crossing later Wednesday, she said. Mudassir Tipu, Pakistan’s ambassador to Iran, said Tuesday that Iranian universities had rescheduled exams and permitted international students to leave the country.

Wednesday briefing: Over-budget and under-regulated – the NHS’s ADHD crisis

Good morning. Hundreds of thousands of people are seeking attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses in England – but the system designed to help them has turned into a fragmented marketplace that is costing the NHS far more than planned. A Guardian investigation has found services are on track to overspend their budgets by £164m this year. The months-long investigation found growing demand is being pushed into an under-regulated – and highly profitable – private sector that, in some cases, is leaving patients dangerously unsupported. It has also landed in the middle of a rancorous political debate about whether ADHD is being overdiagnosed – an argument that ignores the very real struggles that are driving people to seek help in the first place. For today’s newsletter I spoke to Sarah Marsh, the Guardian’s consumer affairs correspondent, who worked on the reporting, to find out how the investigation came about, what it found about the way NHS England is struggling to help people to get, or deal with, an ADHD diagnosis, and where she hopes the findings can make a difference. Before that, here are the headlines. Five big stories Iran | China has threatened to retaliate against Donald Trump after the US president said he would impose 25% tariffs on countries that trade with Iran UK politics | A vast new Chinese embassy complex in east London is almost certain to be formally approved next week despite worries about security risks and the effect on Hong Kong and Uyghur exiles in the capital. Pollution | High-profile studies reporting the presence of microplastics throughout the human body have been thrown into doubt by scientists who say the discoveries are probably the result of contamination and false positives. Social media | Keir Starmer has told MPs that he is open to the idea of an Australian-style ban on social media for young people after becoming concerned about the amount of time children and teenagers are spending on their phones Asylum | A Palestinian citizen of Israel has been granted asylum in the UK on the basis of a “well-founded fear of persecution”, despite a former home secretary’s personal interference in the case to try to block the claim. In depth: How the system meant to deliver ADHD care in England got broken ADHD is usually associated with difficulty sustaining attention, hyperactivity and impulsivity – but as anyone who has tried to navigate the diagnostic maze will know, the labels are often less revealing than the lived experience. In an opinion piece for the Guardian, Gabor Maté – diagnosed in his early 50s – wrote that his diagnosis “seemed to explain many of my behaviour patterns, thought processes, childish emotional reactions, my workaholism and other addictive tendencies, the sudden eruptions of bad temper and complete irrationality … my propensity to bump into doorways, hit my head on shelves, drop objects.” Sarah, who has written about her own ADHD diagnosis before, says the crucial point is that people are not seeking help on a whim. They are seeking it because they are struggling – and a system that can’t offer timely support is pushing them into a patchwork of private assessments, paperwork and uncertainty. Sarah’s investigation began in August, after David Rowland, director of the Centre for Health and the Public Interest, started scrutinising NHS spending on ADHD diagnosis and services. “That part of gathering data took months, because obviously with freedom of information requests you have to go back and forth,” says Sarah. “Alongside that, we did a separate investigation talking to people who worked for the private clinics, to get a sense of what the issues are. And we also had a callout on the website to gather case studies. “We wanted to find out if the money was being well spent – if patients were being looked after, and if they were being given a clear pathway for getting the help they needed.” *** The spending gap Rowland’s work found a widening gap between what NHS England budgeted for ADHD services and what it is now likely to spend. Analysis of data from 32 of England’s 42 integrated care boards (ICBs) suggests spending is projected to reach £314m by April 2026, more than double the annual budget of £150m – leaving an estimated £164m overspend that local health bodies may have to offset elsewhere. It also found that a growing slice of this spending is flowing to private providers, as people turn to “right to choose” to bypass long waiting lists. Nineteen ICBs also provided data on how much of their ADHD budget went on private companies, which showed that spending on private ADHD services more than tripled over three years, rising from £16.3m in 2022-23 to £58m last year. Campaigners and clinicians raised concerns about an under-regulated market, which includes providers that aren’t registered with the Care Quality Commission carrying out NHS-funded assessments. Sarah says the investigation found that private companies – “often private equity-backed firms” – are making “huge” money from the current system, and “there is little criteria for what private companies need to do to get greenlit to provide the service”. Part of the problem, she adds, is that while there are guidelines, there is still no single national framework setting out what a good ADHD assessment looks like – or the qualifications required to diagnose it. Some clinics use quality standards from bodies such as the UK Adult ADHD Network, but the absence of a consistent baseline leaves patients and GPs stuck arguing over whether an assessment is good enough. *** Quality control “One thing I would say,” Sarah tells me, “is that there are people who have positive experiences as well as negative experiences of private services. There’s always going to be a huge range of quality.” But across dozens of accounts, the same problems kept surfacing. “A lot of the same stuff came up time and time again,” she says: people getting a private diagnosis and then being unable to secure a shared-care agreement with their GP (whereby the GP takes on long-term care and prescription of medication); assessments that felt rushed or superficial; and patients who were left not knowing where to go once the report had landed in their inbox. “For a lot of people, it’s the bit after diagnosis that falls apart,” Sarah says. “They might have spent months waiting and hundreds or thousands of pounds on an assessment, only to find their GP won’t accept it, or the clinic won’t respond, or their medication isn’t reviewed properly. So they’re left stuck – still unwell, still waiting, but now in a system that doesn’t seem to belong to anyone.” For some families, those administrative and clinical gaps have had devastating consequences – as the Guardian’s reporting on the tragic death of Ryan White shows – turning what was meant to be a route into care into a prolonged period of isolation and risk. *** A political football The diagnosis of neurodiverse conditions and making accommodations for them has become increasingly politically charged. In November, Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice described children wearing ear defenders in school as “insane” and claimed there was a “crisis of overdiagnosis” of neurodiverse conditions (positions he later attempted to row back on). The health secretary, Wes Streeting, has ordered a clinical review into the diagnosis of mental health conditions, autism and ADHD, saying that he knew from “personal experience how devastating it can be for people who face poor mental health, have ADHD or autism and can’t get a diagnosis or the right support. I also know, from speaking to clinicians, how the diagnosis of these conditions is sharply rising.” Response was polarised. In the Times, Hadley Freeman demanded that Streeting “must stand up” to what she called “the ADHD activists” [£]. In contrast, John Harris, who has written a memoir about how music helped him connect with his autistic son, wrote for us that Streeting should not be on “the right’s callous overdiagnosis bandwagon”. Sarah is wary of how the “overdiagnosis” debate obscures the reality of what’s really happening. “What I would say from researching this is you’ve got people that need help,” she tells me. “Whether ADHD is the right diagnosis or a misdiagnosis is kind of by the by. They’re not seeking help because they want a diagnosis. They’re not spending thousands of pounds on private treatment for no reason. They’re seeking help because they are struggling.” She suggests that Streeting’s review needs to start there – and ask why so many people have reached the point where they are desperate enough to pay, wait and fight their way through a system that too often fails to join up. *** What will happen now? “The big thing that struck me,” Sarah says, “is that you’ve got a system that is just not functioning well, and the people really affected are the patients. They essentially can’t get treated because the NHS waiting list is so long. Then, if they get help privately, there is this disjointed system which is letting them down. It just feels like somebody needs to look at the system and say, ‘Is this money being spent effectively?’ And it doesn’t seem to be. “The next question is: ‘How can we make it better?’ And I think, hopefully, our investigation raises that question – and puts some pressure on to answer it.” The people trapped in a broken system must be hoping that too. What else we’ve been reading Women are going feral for Heated Rivalry, the gay hockey TV drama that has taken the world by storm. But what does it say about female sexual desire? Julia Carrie Wong investigates. Aamna Mohdin, newsletters team The revolution will be computerised – in this piece for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cooper Quintin details the tools, tips and tricks that hackers are using to fight back against ICE in the US. Martin It has almost been 10 years since Brexit. While much coverage of the anniversary will focus on the political earthquake it brought, Anneke Schmidt’s moving piece on the impact on her personal life is well worth a read. Aamna Photographer Tristram Kenton was granted access to a new space-themed immersive multiplayer stealth game from the Punchdrunk theatre company in London, and it looks fantastic. Martin If you want to understand what’s happening in the US right now, don’t just focus on Trump, writes Arwa Mahdawi. Pay close attention to his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who has a frightening vision for the future. Aamna Sport Football | Manchester City closed in on a place in the Carabao Cup final after two second-half goals gave Pep Guardiola’s side a 2-0 first-leg victory against Newcastle. Tennis | Emma Raducanu offered an impressive demonstration of her resilience at the Hobart International as she rallied from an overnight second-set deficit in her rain-delayed first-round match to defeat Camila Osorio of Colombia 6-3, 7-6 (2). Football | Xabi Alonso has left his job as coach of Real Madrid, only seven months after arriving for his first day at the club’s Valdebebas training ground. The front pages The Guardian’s top story is “‘Help is on its way’: Trump calls on Iran’s protesters to remain defiant”. Likewise the Telegraph has “Trump: Help is on the way” and the Financial Times says “Help is on its way, Trump tells Iranians”. In the Metro a North Sea catastrophe has its court sequel: “Russian captain ‘did nothing’ to avoid US tanker”. “The rail deal” – the Mirror celebrates Labour’s “northern powerhouse pledge”. The i paper’s rendition is “Labour promises new rail links for the north – but not until 2030s”. The Times runs with “New Starmer U-turn over compulsory IDs”. The Express leads on “Elderly living in poverty ‘could exceed 2 million’”. Today in Focus Is Marco Rubio playing Trump? How far will Rubio go to achieve his own objectives? With Lauren Gambino Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Jacarandas is a Colombian abortion helpline that uses eye-catching illustrations to appeal to young women and teenagers. Established after abortion was decriminalised in the country in 2022, the all-women team provides a WhatsApp service offering advice on abortion and sexual rights, as well as legal support for those who have been denied their right to free abortions or had bad experiences with providers. The playful communication approach is working: Jacarandas is the most-followed Spanish-speaking abortion account on social media, with almost 400,000 followers on TikTok and 312,000 on Instagram. Since it started, it has received messages from more than 26,300 people, and provided advice to about 700 users a month in 2025. Although abortion is legal up to 24 weeks in Colombia, 93% of Jacarandas users have an abortion before 12 weeks. 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. And if you took up the challenge of the King William’s College 2025 quiz over the holiday period, the answers are now available here. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

‘The settlers brought the violence’: the ethnic cleansing of a West Bank village

Five decades in the south Jordan valley were ending in a day, and Mahmoud Eshaq struggled to hold back his tears. The 55-year-old had not cried since he was a boy, but as he dismantled the family home and prepared to flee the village where his whole life had played out, he was overwhelmed by grief. While Eshaq’s children loaded mattresses, a fridge, sacks of flour and suitcases of clothes into a truck, masked soldiers escorted a teenage Israeli shepherd down the main village road, where he posed for photos on his donkey, flashing a V sign. The ethnic cleansing of Ras ‘Ein al ‘Auja was underway, and the men and boys who made life untenable for Palestinians here had come to celebrate. Eshaq’s home, a community of about 135 families, was the largest and most established of the Bedouin villages dotted on hillsides in this part of the Jordan valley. By the start of this year, it was also the only one left. A campaign of intensifying settler violence – arson, mass theft, beatings, intimidation and destruction of property – forced out village after village until their last remaining neighbours, in nearby Mu’arrajat, fled in July. Israeli settlers now have full control of more than 250 sq km (100 sq miles) of land in this part of the occupied West Bank, where a decade ago only Bedouin herds grazed, said Dror Etkes, founder of settlement monitoring group Kerem Navot. Palestinians have been forced out of this area, which the international community has earmarked as part of their future state. “We were living here peacefully, but they made us into an enemy. The settlers brought the violence,” Eshaq said. “I haven’t cried my whole life, but this morning I was crying. This is a terrible day for us.” He grew up gazing across the Jordan river at mountains rising sharply toward white hilltop towns, and splashing in the wadi where his children and grandchildren later played. At night the clear desert skies are crowded with stars. The bedouin families who live there are descendants of refugees forced out of the Naqab, or Negev, in what is now Israel, in 1948. Poor, isolated and with little political influence even within Palestinian society, they are relatively easy targets for settlers. The project to push them out of their homes began before the war in Gaza but gathered speed and strength as political and media attention focused elsewhere. “When the war started settler leadership understood they had an unprecedented opportunity to step up ethnic cleansing for the area,” Sarit Michaeli, international director of rights group B’Tselem. “The midterm goal is to remove Palestinians from all the open land in the West Bank, and they are doing this with the full participation of the Israeli government. The settler maps make clear that ultimately they want to empty the land of Palestinians.” The campaign of forced displacement here is run from small outposts where teenage boys and a few adults manage flocks of sheep, goats and camels. Taking land by building homes and communities on it is slow and expensive. Taking control of large swathes of dry hills by bringing in animals and using them to intimidate, isolate and bar Palestinians is much more efficient. The foot soldiers in this war of Israeli expansion are young men, including minors sent to outposts by the state under a programme for at-risk youth. “In recent years, the Jewish shepherds have continued to conquer more and more territory,” read one message in a settler WhatsApp group celebrating the forced displacement of a village last year. “With all due respect to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], the critical and decisive work of Jewish settlement and the expulsion of the enemy is done by those 15- to 16-year old boys, the ‘Hilltop Youth’.” But if the tools are unsophisticated, the project is anything but. The boys in jeans and slogan T-shirts are part of a state-funded, state-backed project, deploying violence with near total impunity. Settlers attack Palestinians using all terrain vehicles and other equipment handed out at public ceremonies by politicians including the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler. Security forces in the occupied West Bank have resources and time to cull hundreds of crocodiles on a rogue farm, but not to protect Palestinians. In Ras ‘Ein al ‘Auja, security forces regularly arrest Israeli peace activists and Palestinians, but either ignore settler violence in the area, or support it. Last year when a court ordered the army to coordinate the return of Palestinians driven out of neighbouring Mu’arrajat, the soldiers only stayed a few hours. When they left settlers descended, driving residents out again. In the two years since October 2023, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed over 1,000 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, one in five of them children. No one has been tried or convicted for any of these deaths. Last year, settlers beat an American citizen to death, prompting US senators to warn there was no accountability for Palestinian lives, and shot a prominent activist on camera. The Israeli military recorded a 25% increase in settler violence last year, Haaretz reported, much of it attributed to larger and better organised groups getting support from politicians and well-known activists. Tipping point In the new year, violence reached a tipping point for some families in Ras ‘Ein al ‘Auja, after settlers cut several houses off by ploughing up a dirt track and established a makeshift outpost inside the village. They roamed between houses at night severing electricity cables, emptying water tanks and pushing into rooms filled with sleeping women and children. Last Thursday, 26 families, more than 120 people, decided the risk of staying outweighed the pain and cost of leaving. Most lived on the edge of the village and their departure left Eshaq’s family effectively on the frontline. “This week we haven’t eaten and haven’t slept,” he said. It only took a couple of days before he also concluded staying was too dangerous. The children at least were relieved, after the terror of the settler home invasions “They want to go right now, straight away,” said Rawan, 24, holding nine-month old Yacoub, as her four-year-old son Mousa played nearby. Neighbour Mohammed Reshad was packing up as well after a night raid by settlers who stole clothes and mattresses. “They took things from me and my two sisters,” said his nine-year old granddaughter Jana. The truck cost 1,800 shekels (£425) to hire, a small fortune here, and they are still debating where to go. “Is there anyone who will protect me from the settlers? If there is, I will stay,” he said. Each family that packs up leaves those who stay even more vulnerable. Na’ef Ja’alin, a 50-year-old father of 10, is still in his home out of desperation, not hope. “The ones who have left have family who can give them a plot of land. Me and my brothers have no place to go,” he said. “I have no money, and land is very expensive.” Mainstream support The project to displace Palestinians is being carried out by violent extremists backed by far-right cabinet ministers. But annexation of this area is a long-standing, mainstream project in Israel, backed by politicians across party lines. Yigal Allon, then a cabinet minister from the secular Labor party, laid out an initial plan soon after Israel seized the West Bank in 1967. He wanted Israel to hold on to a strip of land along the Jordan valley to serve as a security buffer. The CIA described the plan as inflammatory and impractical but noted that the government was already putting some elements in place. “Israel unrealistically feels that the Allon plan is a workable solution to the problems of the occupied territories and has implemented some of its features,” a now declassified memo warned. The plan was never officially adopted but has persisted in Israeli political imagination, helped perhaps by the fact that two Israeli roads roughly delineate Allon’s land grab plans. The strip of territory he wanted for Israel – and which includes Ras ‘Ein al ‘Auja – now lies between highway 90 near the Jordanian border and the “Allon Road” that twists and turns along the mountain ridges down the centre of the West Bank. On official maps this highway is labelled with a jumble of route numbers – 458, 508, and 578 – but all Israelis know it as the Allon Road. The hills that slope down to the river Jordan are sparsely populated, semi-desert land, too dry for agriculture but suitable for grazing. Settler herding outposts have proved a particularly efficient instrument for mass dispossession here. Last May, settler leader Elisha Yered celebrated the destruction of another village here as a template for the wider West Bank. “This is what redemption looks like!” he posted on social media after the people of Mughayyir al-Deir fled. “God willing, one day we will force you [Palestinians] to the places you belong, in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.” A map published by a settler news outlet to mark that displacement showed the village within an aspirational Israeli-controlled area covering nearly 400 sq km, an area bigger than Gaza. Across the West Bank, settlers have seized over 18% of the land designated for a future Palestinian state, said Etkes, with very few repercussions. Canada, France, the UK and other European countries imposed sanctions on violent settlers and last year recognised a Palestinian state, but the obliteration of Palestinian communities on the ground only continues to gather speed. “The culprits are so well known, not just the violent settlers but the instigators, the officials who are enabling and funding this forcible transfer,” said Michaeli. “But unfortunately I think we are much further from any sort of international accountability than ever.”

Trump warns US will ‘take very strong action’ if Iran starts executing arrested protesters

Donald Trump has threatened to “take very strong action” if Iranian authorities begin executing anti-government protesters this week, as the reported death toll from the crisis surged past 2,500. “If they do such a thing, we will take very strong action,” Trump told CBS News in an interview broadcast on Tuesday night, hours before the US president was due to be briefed on the scale of casualties inside Iran. There are fears that one of the many thousands of protesters arrested last week, Erfan Soltani, is facing imminent execution after being tried, convicted and sentenced since his arrest on Thursday last week. The 26-year-old was arrested in Karaj, a city just on the north-west outskirts of Tehran, at the peak of the protests before the internet blackout. Amnesty International has highlighted his case, warning of concerns that Iranian authorities might “once again resort to swift trials and arbitrary executions to crush and deter dissent”. Last year, Iran hanged at least 1,500 people, Norway-based Iran Human Rights group said. Trump told CBS he was aware a “pretty substantial number” of people had been killed over the more than two weeks of demonstrations. The number of dead climbed to at least 2,571 early on Wednesday, as reported by the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). That figure, which includes 12 children, dwarfs the death toll from any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. More than 18,100 people have been detained, the group said. Iranian state television has offered the first official acknowledgment of the deaths, quoting an official saying the country had “a lot of martyrs”. On Tuesday evening, the state department warned US citizens to leave Iran immediately, and various western countries issued similar travel warnings. In his CBS interview, Trump was asked about the hangings reportedly set to begin in Iran on Wednesday and what he meant by “we will take very strong action”. The president referenced the recent US strikes on Venezuela and the 2019 killing of then Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, before issuing a warning to the regime. “We don’t want to see what’s happening in Iran happen … When they start killing thousands of people. And now you’re telling me about hanging. We’ll see how that works out for them. It’s not going to work out good,” he said. Earlier, Trump had posted a message of support to protesters on Truth Social. “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” he wrote. “Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” In response, Iran’s UN mission vowed Washington’s “playbook” would “fail again”. “US fantasies and policy toward Iran are rooted in regime change, with sanctions, threats, engineered unrest, and chaos serving as the modus operandi to manufacture a pretext for military intervention,” the statement posted on X said. A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson characterised US pressure on Iran by saying that “external forces hostile to Iran are trying to use the growing public tension to destabilise and destroy the Iranian state”. Iranian authorities have insisted they had regained control of the country after successive nights of mass protests nationwide since Thursday. For the first time in days, Iranians were on Tuesday able to make phone calls abroad after authorities severed communications during the crackdown. Security service personnel have apparently been searching for Starlink satellite internet terminals, as people in northern Tehran reported authorities raiding apartment buildings with satellite dishes. While satellite television dishes are illegal, many in the capital have them in homes, and officials broadly had given up on enforcing the law in recent years. Activists said on Wednesday that Starlink was offering free service in Iran. Meanwhile, Iranian state media has aired at least 97 confessions from protesters since 28 December, according to HRANA. The group said testimony it has collected from those released shows these confessions are coerced, often after torture. The group says such coerced confessions can lead to severe consequences, including state executions. Witnesses, who have spoken to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said police were present at major intersections, and security officials in plain clothes were visible in public spaces. Anti-riot police officers wore helmets and body armour while carrying batons, shields, shotguns and teargas launchers, they said. With Associated Press and Reuters

Cymbal of unity? South Korea and Japan leaders bash out K-pop hits after summit talks

If international diplomacy is as much about tone as substance, the leaders of South Korea and Japan seem to have nailed it. In a scene few anticipated, South Korean president Lee Jae Myung and Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi spent the last moments of a crucial summit seated behind matching drum kits in matching blue uniforms as they bashed out hit song Golden from Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters and BTS’s Dynamite. Takaichi, who played drums in a university heavy metal band, complemented Lee’s newfound chops. “The president learned to play the drums in just five, 10 minutes,” she said in a video posted on her office’s YouTube channel. Lee demonstrated abundant self-awareness of the gap in skill levels, posting on Tuesday: “Although our tempos were a bit different, we both tried to match the rhythm together - we will create a future-oriented relationship with one heart.” Tuesday’s jam session came against a significant backdrop. The two-day bilateral summit, held in Nara, the home prefecture of Takaichi, came just a week after Lee’s visit to Beijing where Xi Jinping urged him to stand on “the right side of history”, language widely interpreted in the context of Beijing’s tensions with Japan and the US. Now Lee was in Nara, positioning himself as a friend to both sides, navigating between feuding neighbours. The impromptu drum performance was Takaichi’s surprise. She had remembered Lee’s throwaway comment during their first meeting in Gyeongju that drumming was his lifelong dream. After the performance, they signed and exchanged drumsticks. The personal touch had begun earlier. When Lee arrived at his accommodation before the summit, Takaichi made an unscheduled appearance to greet him, bowing 90 degrees – a gesture of deep respect that made Korean headlines. She told Lee’s wife, Kim Hea Kyung: “I’ve seen you on TV, [in person] you’re absolutely beautiful.” Takaichi, known as a hardline conservative and security hawk, has wielded her genuine affection for K-culture, including roasted seaweed, cosmetics, and K-dramas, as a diplomatic bridge. Beyond the theatre, they delivered substance: DNA testing for victims of the 1942 Chosei coalmine disaster, cooperation on scam crime, the launch of economic security talks, and North Korea. On Wednesday morning, they visited the ancient Horyu-ji temple together. Thornier issues, including “comfort women” and territorial disputes, remained conspicuously absent. But for now, the two leaders found their rhythm.

Iran protests: what we know so far about the spiralling anti-government demonstrations

Escalating protests have swept through Iran in recent weeks, sparked by an economic crisis that has evolved into a widespread anti-government movement, and one of the most destabilising episodes of unrest the Iranian regime has faced in years. Despite the internet blackout, reports have emerged that at least 2,000 people have been killed during the demonstrations, with hundreds of protesters sustaining gun shot wounds to the head and eyes. The Iranian government has accused the US of seeking to manufacture a pretext for military intervention, as US president Donald Trump has pledged that “help is on its way”. Here is what we know so far: Donald Trump has said the US “will take very strong action” against Iran if the regime starts to execute people as part of their crackdown on the spiralling protests. Trump told CBS News: “When they start killing thousands of people – and now you’re telling me about hanging. We’ll see how that’s going to work out for them.” Erfan Soltani, a 26-year-old man arrested in connection with protests in the city of Karaj is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, according to the Iranian Kurdish rights group, Hengaw. Authorities had told the family that the death sentence was final, Hengaw reported, citing a source close to the family. The US president has urged the protests to continue, and again suggested US military action could follow. “Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! … help is on its way,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, a day after the White House press secretary said airstrikes were among “many, many options” the US president was considering. More than 2,000 people have been killed in the protests – more than 90% of whom were demonstrators – and over 16,700 people have been arrested, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said. Doctors in Iran have described overwhelmed hospitals and emergency wings overflowing with protesters who had been shot. One ophthalmologist in Tehran has documented more than 400 eye injuries from gunshots in a single hospital. The US state department has said US citizens should leave Iran now and “if safe to do so, consider departing Iran by land to Armenia or Türkiye”. The US virtual embassy for Iran says citizens should “plan alternative means of communication” due to “continued internet outages” and “have a plan for departing that does not rely on US government help”. Donald Trump announced that he was cancelling meetings with Iranian officials “until the senseless killing” stops, signalling a possible breakdown in de-escalation efforts. Trump is expected to receive a briefing on Tuesday night on the scale of casualties in Iran. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is offering people in Iran free internet through Starlink’s satellite service, according to Bloomberg News, as the internet blackout in the country surpassed the five-day mark. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met in secret with Reza Pahlavi, the exiled former Iranian crown prince, last weekend, Axios reported. A senior US official told the outlet the pair discussed the protests. In previous messages that have been blocked by the Iranian government internet shutdown, he has said that he is ready to lead a transition. In response to Trump’s social media post that “help is on the way,” Iran’s UN ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani said the US president was inciting violence, threatening the country’s sovereignty and security and seeking to destabilise the government. “The United States and the Israeli regime bear direct and undeniable legal responsibility for the resulting loss of innocent civilian lives, particularly among the youth,” he wrote in a letter to the UN security council. Russia on Tuesday condemned “subversive external interference” in Iran’s internal politics, saying any repeat of last year’s US strikes would have “disastrous consequences” for the Middle East and international security. Britain, France, Germany and Italy all summoned Iranian ambassadors in protest over the crackdown. “The rising number of casualties in Iran is horrifying,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen posted on X. Underscoring international uncertainty over what comes next in Iran, which has been one of the dominant powers across the Middle East for decades, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he believed the government would fall.

Ukraine war briefing: Estonia leads with entry ban on Russians who fought in Ukraine

The Estonian government has banned 261 Russians who fought in Ukraine from entering Estonia. “This is only the beginning,” said Markus Tsahkna, Estonia’s foreign minister. “We call on other countries to do the same.” Estonia, which borders Russia, has called for a Europe-wide visa ban on Russian veterans of the Ukraine war, and has gained support from Baltic and Nordic countries. Its interior ministry estimates as many as 1.5 million Russians have taken part in the invasion, about half of them having served on the frontline. Estonia’s interior minister, Igor Taro, said the threat posed was “not theoretical”, adding that the Russians had “combat experience and military training, and may often have a criminal background”. The interior ministry said those who had committed atrocities in Ukraine had “no place in the free world”. The move was praised the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrij Sybiga, who called entry bans a “necessary security measure” and “a clear signal that impunity will not be tolerated”. Ukraine said its forces struck a drone manufacturing plant in the western Rostov region of Russia where the governor reported a local state of emergency there after two “enterprises” were hit. Various reports identified the target as the Atlant Aero plant at Taganrog making Russia’s Molniya strike and surveillance drones as well as parts for Orion drones. Video footage and photographs showed buildings well ablaze. Two Greek-owned oil tankers were hit in the Black Sea on Tuesday, one of which was scheduled to load Kazakh oil on Russia’s coast, officials said. The Maltese-flagged Matilda and Liberian-flagged Delta Harmony did not sustain major damage and there were no injuries, Greece’s maritime ministry told Agence France-Presse. The Matilda was headed to load Kazakh oil at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal near Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk when it was attacked, Kazakh state energy firm Kazmunaygas said. Ukraine has previously targeted the shared CPC terminal as it seeks to deprive Russia of oil revenue. Russia struck cities across Ukraine overnight into Tuesday in one of its biggest attacks of the new year so far, killing at least four people and knocking out heat and power, exposing millions to dangerous winter cold. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said Russia had launched nearly 300 drones, 18 ballistic missiles, and seven cruise missiles during the attacks on eight Ukrainian regions. Emergency power cuts were introduced in the capital, Kyiv, and also in the Chernihiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, the energy ministry said. Kyiv residents have endured days of interrupted power and heating supplies after the last big Russian strike last week.