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Iran crisis: foreign minister says country ready for negotiations but also ‘fully prepared for war’

The last major protests in Iran were triggered, in 2022, by the death in custody of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, who died in an Iranian hospital days after being detained by the regime’s morality police for allegedly not complying with the country’s hijab regulations. She was travelling with her family from Iran’s western province of Kurdistan to the capital, Tehran, to visit relatives when she was reportedly arrested for failing to meet the country’s strict rules on women’s dress. Witnesses reported that Amini was beaten in the police van, an allegation the policy deny, and Amini’s family and activists say she was killed by a blow to the head while in custody, a claim denied by Iranian officials. Her death sparked months of anti-government protests that marked the biggest show of opposition to Iranian authorities in years. The protests after Amini’s death shook Iran’s Islamic authorities but subsided in the face of a crackdown in which rights groups said hundreds of people were killed.

US will have Greenland ‘one way or the other’, says Trump – Europe live

Chair of the Danish parliament’s Greenland committee, Aaja Chemnitz, told reporters that the planned meeting with US senators was “good news” as it was “important for us to use all the diplomatic connections we have at our disposal.” Chemnitz, a Greenlandic politician sitting in the Danish parliament, said there were “lots” of incorrect claims about Greenland, and “it is absolutely crucial we get some truths on the table.” But she declined to give more information about the meeting, saying the details are yet to be fully decided.

Carney heads to Beijing as Trump’s America First agenda forces Canada into trade rethink

During the final stretch of Canada’s spring election campaign, Mark Carney told a debate audience that China was the country’s “biggest geopolitical risk”. He pointed to its attempts to meddle in elections and its recent efforts to disrupt Canada’s Arctic claims. When Carney’s government plane touches down in Beijing this week, it will be the first time a Canadian prime minister has been welcomed in nearly a decade. The trip, undertaken amid the rupturing of global economic and political alliances, reflects a desire by Ottawa to mend a broken relationship with a global superpower that uses its vast and lucrative market to both woo and punish countries. But Carney’s state visit, the result of methodical diplomatic calculations, also speaks to the pain of a trade war with the US and an urgent need to expand Canada’s exports in order to offset mounting economic punishment inflicted by its neighbour and largest trading partner. “There is a risk that China views Canada as weak, struggling and abused by President Donald Trump’s administration – and it sees an opportunity to present itself as the reasonable and stable adult in the room,” says Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat and senior Asia adviser for the thinktank International Crisis Group. “The Communist party has given up persuading people that they’re benevolent. Instead, they offer competence and predictability. But it also gives Mark Carney leverage to say: if you think our relationship with the United States is getting worse, what are you willing to give us?” Despite the diplomatic cordiality on display, those briefing Carney “don’t have any illusions about the kind of leader they’re dealing with”, says Kovrig. “This is a fraught relationship.” Kovrig himself reflects the perils of the relationship. In 2018, Chinese officials ordered the detention of Kovrig and fellow Canadian Michael Spavor, jailing the pair for more than 1,000 days in protest against “a political frame-up” and “persecution” against the telecoms executive Meng Wanzhou. The arrests and subsequent diplomatic standoff quashed any hope of Canada negotiating a long-sought free trade agreement. For years, Ottawa has looked to China as a key market for its heavy oil, metallurgical coal, timber and agricultural products. Carney has framed the visit to Beijing as an attempt to create a “stable” relationship with China, despite allegations of Chinese meddling in Canada’s electoral system in recent years, though none of its efforts are believed to have swayed the results of the past two elections. China has also shown a willingness to take punitive steps against key Canadian industries. After Canada joined the US in putting a tariff on Chinese electric vehicles in 2024, Beijing placed 100% duties on Canadian canola oil and meal and months later, added an additional 75.8% anti-dumping tariff, shutting Canadian producers out of their second-largest market. “In a normal circumstance would you do any business with someone who is involved in blackmail, hostage taking and mass human rights violations and, quite possibly, crimes against humanity?” says Kovrig. “Of course not. But China is the outlier case because it’s so large that you can’t just shun it. And you have to carve out a space for diplomacy and economic opportunities because if Canada wants to defend its sovereignty and remain a prosperous country in the world, then it needs to find ways of attracting foreign investment.” Shifting from ‘America First’ Since becoming prime minister, Carney has signalled he wants to reset the relationship between the two countries, pushing a “reliance to resilience” plan to diversify trade away from the US which, until recently, bought 76% of Canada’s exports. But the “America First” economic policy pursued by the White House has forced Carney to rethink the foundational structure of his country’s economy. While Canada’s federal government has looked to its new Indo-Pacific strategy to forge new partnerships, Canada also wants to grow its presence in China, which makes up only 4% of exports. Following a string of meetings between Canadian senior ministers and their counterparts, in September, Carney met Chinese premier Li Qiang and a month later, Carney spoke to President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the global summit in South Korea, telling reporters the relationship between the two countries had reached a “turning point”. The January state visit reflects a “very deliberate and incremental diplomatic dance” between the two parties, said Roland Paris, the director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. Paris, who also served as a foreign affairs adviser to the former prime minister Justin Trudeau, says Beijing and Ottawa have a number of overlapping interests, noting the talks are expected to centre on energy, agriculture, international security and trade between the two countries. But hopes that the meetings lead to a removal of retaliatory tariffs on Canadian industries requires careful diplomatic manoeuvring. “The logic for [the last two Canadian governments] was that it’s possible to have trade with China while also trying to work on points of difference between the two countries,” he said. “You can walk and chew gum at the same time.” Canada has long seen its liberal values as a core component of laws and institutions and by extension, its foreign policy – something that has frustrated Chinese officials. Among the frictions for Canada are a swath of human rights abuses by China, sustained allegations of electoral interference and Chinese actions in the Arctic. “It’s important to remember that China is not our friend,” says Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. “This is not a country that follows reasoned arguments and wants to have friendly relations. The geopolitical and transnational repression risks that have long concerned Canada have not changed.” She points to China’s decision to execute four Canadian citizens, despite protests from Canadian officials, Ottawa’s concerns about the conviction of pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai and China’s increased presence in the Arctic, including placing monitoring buoys in waters Canada considers its own. “It’s understandable that the prime minister is looking for other markets. We do need to diversify – that’s very clear,” McCuaig-Johnston says, adding that Chinese investment in Canada’s oil and gas industry was “safe” but worries about Beijing encroaching into the clean energy sector. Her research has profiled numerous instances of joint-ventures that end with Canadian companies leaving “out of frustration and in despair” and their Chinese counterparts keeping the Canadian intellectual property, the technology and the equipment. “The reality is: we should stay miles and miles away from any discussion of aerospace technology, artificial intelligence and critical minerals,” she says. “This is a very challenging diplomatic trip and I hope we can make some safe deals on trade, but we must be careful about not opening up other sectors and putting them at risk.” Analysts say a successful visit by Carney is likely to lead to a flurry of near-term agreements that serve the interests of both sides. But Kovrig hopes that behind closed doors, Carney will use the summit to also press Xi on longstanding issues of political detainees and rights violations, cautioning that Beijing officials are likely to use Carney’s reputation to “burnish” China’s own credentials. “There is a belief that because China is big, it must offer vast commercial opportunities. But few foreign firms reliably make profits there that they can repatriate. Most of what Canada sells China is energy and commodities,” says Kovrig. “Beijing’s power depends on fear, and its legitimacy rests on myths. We can push back against all of that. We can and we must.”

‘Big step forward’: Myanmar military faces Rohingya genocide case at UN court

“Finally, I feel like our voices are being heard, and like something is going to happen that is positive for the community,” says Monaira*. She was forced to flee her home in Myanmar in 2017, when the military launched so-called clearance operations across Rohingya villages. During the violence, her brother was taken by military soldiers, shot dead, and his home set on fire. “Children were thrown into the fire in front of my eyes,” says Monaira, who was raped by military personnel. She is among the survivors of the Myanmar military’s brutal crackdowns on the country’s Rohingya minority, many of whom hope to move a step closer to long-awaited justice on Monday, as a genocide case opened at the UN’s top court, the international court of justice (ICJ). The case, which was filed by the Gambia, centres on military operations in 2016 and 2017 that forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh. “We demand justice,” says Monaira, who travelled from Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh to The Hague to listen to hearings. The proceedings are the first genocide case the ICJ has heard at this level in more than a decade and are likely to set a precedent for how future allegations are assessed, including South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide. The Gambia’s justice minister told the court at the start of Monday’s hearing that the case was not “about esoteric issues of international law”. Dawda Jallow said: “It is about real people, real stories and a real group of human beings – the Rohingya of Myanmar. They have been targeted for destruction. They are farmers, labourers, teachers, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents.” Myanmar “turned their lives into a nightmare”, he added, “subjecting them to the most horrific violence and destruction one could imagine”. The Gambia will present its first arguments from Monday until Thursday. It has accused Myanmar’s military of systematic clearance operations against the Rohingya, and of committing mass murder, rape and torching villages, with the “intent to destroy the Rohingya as a group in whole or in part”. “We did not bring this case lightly,” Jallow told the court. “We brought this case after reviewing credible reports of the most brutal and vicious violations imaginable inflicted upon a vulnerable group that had been dehumanised and persecuted for many years.” Myanmar has denied the allegation of genocide and will present its arguments from 16-20 January. Unusually for the court, survivors will give evidence in the case. Proceedings will end on 29 January. Previously, Aung San Suu Kyi, 80, travelled to the court to defend Myanmar against the allegations of genocide. She is being held in detention at the behest of the military, which seized power in February 2021, plunging the country into civil war. Tun Khin, the president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, says that after decades of violations of international law, the ICJ case marks “the first time the Burmese military are in court having to defend themselves”. “It’s a big step forward on the long road to justice and accountability,” says Tun Khin, who is also chair of the Arakan Rohingya National Council. In 2020, the ICJ imposed emergency “provisional measures” on Myanmar, ordering it to prevent genocidal violence against the Rohingya minority and preserve any evidence of past crimes. However, rights groups say the military has continued to commit atrocities. Shayna Bauchner, an Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, says the Myanmar military’s “vicious cycles of abuse and impunity” needs to end. “This should begin with governments holding the junta to its legal obligation to comply with the ICJ-ordered provisional measures.” The ICJ case is not a criminal proceeding against individuals but will determine whether Myanmar breached its obligations under the genocide convention. Separately, in 2019, the international criminal court (ICC) prosecutor opened an investigation into alleged crimes against the Rohingya, and in 2024 the ICC prosecutor requested an arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief of Myanmar’s military, alleging crimes against humanity. The ICJ case could set a precedent for how genocide is defined, including whether genocidal intent can be inferred from cumulative patterns of violence, displacement and rhetoric, rather than explicit orders. Antonia Mulvey, the founder and executive director of Legal Action Worldwide, which has worked with hundreds of survivors of the military crackdowns, says: “At a time where we’ve seen increased armed conflicts, attacks on international justice institutions, attacks on international law and human rights, it can never be a more important moment to start 2026 with a case like this.” A judgment could be issued within six to 12 months, she says. Even if the court’s orders are not implemented in the current environment in Myanmar, they would still represent a crucial step forward, Mulvey adds. “Let us not forget that situations can change and overnight you can have a change of government, and the court order will remain,” she says, adding that the case will also offer long-awaited recognition of what Rohingya people have endured. * Name has been changed

Monday briefing: How Elon Musk’s Grok is being used as a tool for digital sexual abuse

Good morning. Last week, the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, said: “We cannot and will not allow the proliferation of these demeaning and degrading images, which are disproportionately aimed at women and girls.” Her words came in reaction to the growing scandal of Elon Musk’s Grok AI tool being used to digitally undress photos of women and children to create public deepfaked sexualised images of them without their consent. The row rumbled on through the weekend, with the deputy prime minister, David Lammy, telling the Guardian on Saturday that JD Vance, the US vice-president, agreed that the proliferation of AI-generated sexualised images of women and children was “entirely unacceptable”. Other government ministers insisted a ban on X was a possibility and Musk fired back that “they just want to suppress free speech”. What makes it all so disturbing is not just the scale of the abuse but how quickly it moved from fringe behaviour to something visible, searchable and effectively normalised on one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. Within days, Grok had become a tool not just for humiliation and harassment of women, but for the creation of imagery that child protection groups say meets the legal definition of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). For today’s newsletter I spoke to the Guardian’s global technology editor, Dan Milmo, to discover how the scandal developed, what – if anything – politicians can do to prevent these kinds of images being made, and what it tells us about the broader technology and internet landscape in 2026. Before that, here are Monday’s headlines. Five big stories Iran | Iran has warned the US not to attack in support of protests that have rocked the country, with hundreds killed, as Donald Trump weighed the options for a response from Washington. Politics | David Lammy has suggested the court backlog of nearly 80,000 trials could be cleared in a decade if parliament agrees to slash the number that require a jury. Europe | The EU is reportedly demanding guarantees the UK will compensate the bloc if a future government reneges on the Brexit “reset” agreement that Keir Starmer is negotiating, with diplomats calling it the “Farage clause”. Cuba | Donald Trump has told Cuba to “make a deal” or face unspecified consequences, adding that no more Venezuelan oil or money would flow to the communist-run Caribbean island that has been a US foe for decades. Cryptocurrency | Downing Street has been urged to ban all political donations in cryptocurrency in the forthcoming elections bill amid concern that it could be used by foreign states to influence politics. In depth: ‘AI is testing the boundaries of law and ethics’ “I felt horrified, I felt violated, especially seeing my toddler’s backpack in the back of it,” Ashley St Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s sons, said of an image of her as a child in which the AI had put her into a bikini, turned around and bent over. Dan tells me: “What you’re seeing here is a very familiar Silicon Valley story – move fast and break things. A powerful new technology is pushed out at speed with weak or untested safeguards because the priority is growth, attention and beating rivals to market. Only once the damage becomes impossible to ignore do the companies start talking seriously about safety.” Which is what happened when X decided to block non-paying users from Grok’s image generation tool on Friday, stopping a large portion of the abuse. It was a move described by Downing Street spokesperson as unacceptable. “The move simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service,” they said. *** How did the Grok AI scandal erupt? The trend for making the sexualised public images had, Dan says, a kind of “meme-y trollish” quality to it, and “really snowballed over Christmas”. Content analysis firm Copyleaks reported on 31 December that X users were collectively generating “roughly one nonconsensual sexualised image per minute”, often directly in reply to women who had posted perfectly safe-for-work images of themselves on the platform. Nearly three-quarters of posts collected and analysed by PhD researcher Nana Nwachukwu at Trinity College Dublin were requests for nonconsensual images of real women or minors with items of clothing removed or added. The UK-based Internet Watch Foundation said its analysts “have discovered criminal imagery of children aged between 11 and 13 which appears to have been created using [Elon Musk’s Grok AI tool]”. Nwachukwu’s research suggested that the way the images spread also reflected the culture of the platform itself, with users coaching one another on prompts, refining Grok’s output and sharing the results, turning the abuse into a kind of grotesque game. *** How did Elon Musk and X react? Musk’s may have tried to switch off the tool for most people on Friday, but users reported that the separate Grok app, which does not share images publicly, was still allowing the generation of sexualised imagery of children. X said last week: “We take action against illegal content on X, including CSAM, by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary.” Musk himself commented: “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.” That was an abrupt turn from an initially rather glib response. As Nick Robins-Early reported at the start of the year, email inquiries to xAI – the company that owns and makes Grok – for comment about the story were greeted with the reply “Legacy Media Lies”. That trollish tone again. The Grok scandal poses a real reputational threat to Musk and X, though. With his affiliation to the Maga movement and the way he has influenced the social media platform’s recommendation algorithms, Musk has been hailed as a hero of the political right. Yet, as Sophia Smith Galer argued in this opinion piece: “Protecting women and children is a core tenet of conservative values … we’re going to see if they are still willing to defend a US company in the name of free speech, even when it allows people to create sexualised content of children.” *** What – if anything – can politicians do about it? Under the UK’s Online Safety Act, the communications regulator Ofcom has the power in serious cases to seek a court order to block a website or app in the UK. It can also impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s global turnover. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, said Ofcom “has our full support to take action in relation to this”. As Dan and Amelia Gentleman explored in this useful explainer about the legality of the creation of these sort of images, social media regulation is a nascent area. Trying to control the deployment of artificial intelligence is on the next level. The key issue here, Dan tells me, is speed. At the point when I spoke to him, Ofcom hadn’t even announced a formal investigation. “You can see how the legislation, even when it’s in place, is being outstripped by not only the development of this AI technology, but the impact of it,” he says. “People who’ve been unwittingly stripped never wanted those images to appear in the first place, and they obviously want them taken down. In the meantime, Ofcom has to go through all these regulatory hurdles before X might face any punishment.” Meanwhile, Indonesia blocked access to Grok on Saturday. Swift action is possible. In December, ministers promised new laws to ban “nudification” tools, although it remains unclear what the timeline is for their introduction. “It does feel that the Online Safety Act can’t please anyone,” Dan says. “Some people will say that’s probably a good thing and shows that the act is doing its job. At the libertarian end people say that it impinges free speech, but on the other hand, there are child safety campaigners who say that the act doesn’t go far enough and isn’t being implemented quickly enough or with enough rigour.” There is also a personal reputation angle to this for those in power, as politicians are among the most avid users of the social media platform. Ministers have said that they are considering leaving X, and the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, has faced questions about whether it is ethical for him to be declaring earnings from X when he appears to be sharing a platform with AI-generated CSAM. Farage said he was “very worried” about the images but believed the company would listen to criticism. *** The worst is yet to come … “In the five years that I’ve been covering this sector, online sexual harassment has been an ever-present problem, and it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s diminished,” Dan says. “The internet, AI and social media are really testing the boundaries of law and ethics.” And finding a solution isn’t helped by the clash of cultural worldviews between the US and Europe. JD Vance has been vocal in saying that European efforts at tech regulation are a threat to free speech (although perhaps Lammy’s report of their conversation suggests even he now has concerns). But perhaps what makes the Grok scandal – and the response to it – so unsettling is how it collapses several of the internet’s worst failures into one episode: powerful technology released without restraint, platforms designed to reward outrage and cruelty, and a political system that struggles to move at anything like the speed of harm. For the women and children targeted by these images, the damage is already real. The question now is whether anyone with the power to stop it is willing to move as fast as the technology that enabled it. What else we’ve been reading Emma Beddington’s interview with neuroscientist Ben Rein, about how socialising not only makes you feel good but can help you live longer, made me consider exiting my January hibernation a little early this year. Lucinda Everett, newsletters team Louise Donovan looks at an unexpectedly dark side to floristry – the horrifying ramifications of the use of unregulated pesticides and an industry oblivious to the dangers they present to a largely female workforce. Martin The piece I never wanted to see written but thoroughly enjoyed: Eamonn Forde considers whether David Bowie’s legacy is finally fading. Time to up the musical indoctrination of the young people in your life? Lucinda The market cap for the survivalist industry in the US is forecast to be nearly $300bn by the end of the decade. Jasper Craven meets two big names in mainstream disaster preparedness for Wired. Martin Time comes for us all, and Coco Khan’s feeling it – as gen Z have started pining for 2016 as if it were vintage style from the 1930s: “Call me soppy, but people in their mid-20s feeling that their best years are behind them, sounding like pensioners, is very depressing.” Toby Moses, head of newsletters Sport Football | FA Cup third-round weekend contained one of the biggest shocks in the competition’s history, when Macclesfield defeated holders Crystal Palace on Saturday. Yesterday, Brighton joined in the fun, travelling to managerless Old Trafford to defeat Manchester United 2-1 thanks to former United star Danny Welbeck, pictured above, who scored the 64th-minute goal. Cricket | The Ashes fallout continues, with Mark Ramprakash writing that the future of England’s head coach, Brendan McCullum, must be in doubt – suggesting that Alec Stewart could be the man to step in. NFL | Brock Purdy threw a go-ahead touchdown pass to Christian McCaffrey late in the fourth quarter, San Francisco used a trick play on a TD toss from wide receiver Jauan Jennings, and the 49ers eliminated the defending Super Bowl champions Philadelphia Eagles with a 23-19 wildcard victory on Sunday. The front pages “Iran warns US not to attack as protester death toll soars” – that’s the Guardian this morning, while the Daily Mail has “Shot dead, Robina, 23, a victim of the Mullahs’ death squads” – our version is here. The Telegraph says “Ban the IRGC, Starmer is urged” referring to Iran’s revolutionary guard which protects Iran’s dictatorship. The i paper runs with “We’re not ready to bomb Iran yet, warn US generals” while in the Metro it’s “Fire and fury as Iran revolts”. Monday’s Financial Times splashes on “EU demands ‘Farage clause’ in talks over Brexit reset”. The Express has “Pharmacies in crisis after Labour’s tax raid”. The Maccabi Tel Aviv saga grinds on in the Times – “MPs to urge sacking of police chief in fans ban” – as does the Epstein saga in the Mirror which lambasts “Mandelson’s sorry excuse”. Today in Focus How to fall in love with winter Writer Katherine May talks about ‘wintering’ and learning to love the darkest months of the year. Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad In this week’s instalment of the Guardian’s series A new start after 60, Helen Smith shares her experience of adopting a Guide Dog mum – a dog that provides puppies to be trained. After the Covid-19 pandemic, Smith was feeling “increasingly isolated”. Her children had left home and she was living in Germany, where she had moved in 1998 for her husband’s work, only to lose him in 2011 to a virus. “I thought there must be more to life than working in my garden, working on my business, and seeing my family occasionally,” she says. By June 2022, Smith knew she wanted to return to the UK and look after a Guide Dog mum. She moved back to her home county of Warwickshire and within a month found Blossom, who has brought her new friends, a community, and renewed confidence. “I go out and have dinner at the cafe, and she’s lying at my feet, says Smith. “If I hadn’t got her, I would never go to a cafe by myself. Blossom has given me confidence to do all sorts of things.” 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

‘Act of family vengeance’: French defamation case highlights perils of writing autofiction

The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz is famously credited with the line: “When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.” In contemporary European literature, a book these days is often the beginning of a familial feud. With thinly disguised autobiographical accounts of family strife undergoing a sustained boom across the continent, it can increasingly lead to family reunions in courtrooms. Such was the case with the French historian Cécile Desprairies, who on Wednesday was sued for defamation by her brother and a cousin over the depiction of her late mother and her great-uncle in her 2024 novel La Propagandiste. “The author’s resentment toward the targeted individuals permeates the entire work, which is conceived as a genuine act of family vengeance,” the plaintiffs said in their legal complaint. They claimed there was an “absence of evidence” for the novel’s central plot, a woman’s collaboration with the Nazis, and asked for the book to be withdrawn from the market and pulped. In the novel, which was longlisted for the Prix Goncourt in 2023 and, in Natasha Lehrer’s English translation, praised as a “clever and vivid book” in the Guardian, the narrator, Coline, tells the story of her morphine-addicted mother, Lucie, betrothed in her first marriage to a “convinced pro-Nazi” and designer of propaganda posters during the Vichy occupation. While the author has rejected the book’s classification as a roman à clef – a novel in which real people may be thinly disguised as fictional – she has made no secret of being inspired by her own childhood. “Most of the protagonists I was able to draw inspiration from were dead, so there’s a liberation of speech,” she told French television in 2023. Desprairies’ book can be grouped in the genre of life writing that the French author and literary critic Serge Doubrovsky in 1977 christened autofiction, a hybrid of autobiography and experimental fiction that has made inroads on the bestseller lists over the last decade via the Italian writer Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend and the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle. Autofiction often focuses on painful or traumatic childhood experiences. From a legal point of view, “the trouble is that it’s very difficult to write about your own experience without touching on the experience of others”, said Larissa Muraveva, a researcher at Grenoble Alpes University. Knausgård, whose six-volume My Struggle series frequently thematises his difficult relationship with his alcoholic father, was threatened with a defamation lawsuit by his uncle before publication of the first volume. In 2018, Bergen’s National theatre was threatened with libel over a stage adaptation of an autofiction novel by Vigdis Hjorth, by Hjorth’s own mother. These threats never materialised into court action and in Norway families portrayed in autofiction have tended to find satisfactory retribution via creative means rather than legal channels. Knausgård’s former spouse Linda Boström Knausgård has published a novel that appears to dispute her ex’s fictionalised account of their breakup, while Hjorth’s sister Helga and a rumoured former lover, Arild Linneberg, a literary critic, have written their own “counter-novels”. Melissa Schuh, a lecturer in English literature at Kiel University in Germany, said: “The suspicion that some critics have harboured against writers of autofiction is that it allows you to have it both ways. In the context of fiction writing, it frees you from limitations of established genre conventions and lends your writing a possible air of authenticity. From the perspective of nonfiction writing, autofiction allows you to creatively use literary devices of fictionality but also to a degree inoculates you against potential legal action.” In France, however, novelisation has been less successful at shielding seemingly autobiographical accounts against court action, which may have emboldened Desprairies’ relatives. In 2013, the prominent autofiction writer Christine Angot and her publisher, Flammarion, were ordered to jointly pay €40,000 in damages for invasion of privacy against her lover’s ex-partner in her novel Les Petits. Another author, Camille Laurens, was taken to court by her husband in 2003 over the use of their daughter’s name in the novel L’Amour, Roman, though she won the case. Natalie Edwards, a professor of French and head of modern languages at the University of Bristol, said: “It’s striking that there has also been a huge memoir boom meeting a very litigious culture in the US, but we haven’t seen as many legal disputes as in France. In France, a very vague law around privacy has met a very vague writing style.” In Desprairies’ case, the situation is different in that her relatives are suing her not for invasion of privacy but for “public defamation of the memory of the dead”. Mark Stephens, an English solicitor who specialises in media law, intellectual property and freedom of expression, believes they should not get their hopes up. “The law on the freedom of the press of 29 July 1881, the law that defines defamation in France, only protects the privacy rights of living people,” he said. “Descendants cannot sue for a blot on a family’s honour unless they can convince a court that their own reputation has been denigrated.” In her plea, Desprairies’ lawyer argued that linking the story of the book to the author’s living relatives would require “an extreme knowledge of genealogy or a power of divination, which readers do not have”. Stephens said: “As it stands, their claim looks pretty weak, if not to say impossible. French courts will be slow to muzzle a novelist exposing uncomfortable truths. Family pride makes poor law, and even worse literature.” A verdict in the case is expected on 17 March.

What can the EU and Nato do to stop Trump from trying to claim Greenland?

The Trump administration has said repeatedly that the US needs to gain control of Greenland, justifying its claim from “the standpoint of national security” and warning that it will “do something” about the territory “whether they like it or not”. This puts the EU and Nato in a difficult spot. Greenland, a largely self-governing part of Denmark, is not a member of the bloc but Denmark is; while the Arctic island is covered by the defence alliance’s guarantees through Denmark’s membership. European leaders have strongly defended sovereignty, territorial integrity and the right of Greenland and Denmark to decide on matters concerning them, but there is as yet no clear strategy on how to deter Trump – or respond if he does make a move. Here are some of the options. Diplomacy, and Arctic security The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is due to meet the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers on Wednesday but Denmark’s ambassador to the US, Jesper Møller Sørensen, and Greenland’s envoy, Jacob Isbosethsen, have already begun lobbying US lawmakers. Diplomatic overtures will aim in part to address US security concerns, first by stressing that an existing US-Danish defence treaty from 1951, updated in 2004, already allows for massive expansion of the American military presence on the island, including new bases. In a message aimed squarely at Republicans beyond Trump’s Maga circle, they will also underline that, as Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, put it, a US attack on Greenland, in effect one member turning against another, would mean “the end of Nato”. More concretely, Nato ambassadors reportedly agreed in Brussels last week that the transatlantic alliance should move to boost military spending in the Arctic, deploying more equipment and holding more and bigger exercises to help allay US security concerns. Although Trump’s claims that Greenland “is full of Chinese and Russian ships everywhere” are plainly exaggerated, diplomats believe some kind of concerted western move to strengthen Greenland’s external security could be the least painful way out of the crisis. EU officials have said this could be modelled on Baltic Sentry, a Nato operation launched last year to secure infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, and Eastern Sentry, which expanded the concept to more broadly protect Europe’s eastern flank from drones and other threats. Economic sanctions In theory, the EU – a market of 450 million people – has considerable economic leverage over the US and could threaten retaliatory measures ranging from shutting down US military bases in Europe to banning European purchases of US government bonds. The most widely touted sanction is the EU’s anti-coercion instrument or “trade bazooka”, which gives the European Commission the power to bar US goods and services from the EU market, apply tariffs, strip their intellectual property rights and block their investments. But that would require the bloc’s national governments to agree to use it, which – unwilling to inflict economic harm on the bloc, and eager to keep the US onboard over Ukraine – they have seemed unlikely to do even when faced with Trump’s threatened trade tariffs. Europe relies on US tech companies in all manner of areas, noted Jean-Marie Guéhenno, a former top UN official: “Whether it is data protection, artificial intelligence or software updates, including for defence, Europe remains at the mercy of American goodwill.” For any threat of economic sanctions to be effective, moreover, Trump would have to believe it was real – which, so far at least, it all too clearly is not. Invest in Greenland Greenland’s economy relies heavily on annual subsidies from Denmark, totalling about DKK4bn (about €530m) last year, which cover roughly half of the vast territory’s public spending budget and represent about 20% of its GDP. Trump’s promises to “invest billions” could be matched by the EU in an effort to keep the island – which, at some stage in the not too distant future, is thought likely to vote in favour of independence from Denmark – out of the economic clutches of the US. A draft Commission proposal from September suggests the EU could double its commitments to Greenland to match the annual Danish grant, while the island could also apply for up to €44m of EU funding for remote EU-associated territories. While Washington may have billions more to offer than Brussels, Greenlanders may, once they have won their independence, be wary of laying themselves open to rapacious US corporations and reluctant to lose their Nordic-style social security system. Commit troops All the above would take time. Moreover, it is not clear that Trump’s Greenland ambitions would be satisfied by treaties or enhanced Arctic security: US “ownership” of the island was “psychologically needed for success”, the US president told the New York Times. In a paper for the influential Bruegel thinktank, Moreno Bertoldi and Marco Buti argued that EU governments should “proactively protect Greenland from US expansionism”, adding: “The EU has a rapid deployment capacity and it should be activated.” In agreement with Copenhagen and Nuuk, they said, European troops should be deployed on the island “as a signal of Europe’s commitment to Greenland’s territorial integrity”. While that would not prevent US annexation, it would render it far more complicated. “While there would be no need for an armed confrontation, the spectacle of the US taking prisoner the troops of its closest allies would ruin US credibility, tarnish its international reputation and strongly influence the US public and Congress,” they argued. A German government spokesperson said last week that Berlin was working on a plan “including European deterrence” for if the US tried to take Greenland, while France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, last year floated the prospect of deploying a French military contingent. The EU’s rapid deployment capacity is a framework for quickly deploying up to 5,000 troops from several different member states, under EU command, for crisis response outside the bloc. It could change US calculations, experts and some politicians believe. “No one believes a war between the US and the EU is desirable or winnable,” said Sergey Lagodinsky, a German Green MEP. “But a US military move against the EU would have devastating consequences for defence cooperation, markets, and global trust in the US.” That may make Trump think twice.

Civil society groups condemn ‘dangerous’ plans for more anti-protest powers

More than 40 civil society groups including the TUC, Greenpeace and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have joined forces to oppose “dangerous” plans to increase police powers to ban protests in England and Wales. They said an amendment in the crime and policing bill, which would require police to consider the “cumulative impact” of repeated protests in the same area when imposing conditions on demonstrations, represented a “draconian crackdown on our rights to freedom of expression and assembly”. In a joint statement, published on Monday, the groups, which also include Amnesty International UK, Liberty, Quakers in Britain and the National Education Union, said: “The size of an ‘area’ is not specified, and police are not required to take into account whether the protests are for the same cause or involve the same people. “Although government statements make clear these powers have been brought forward in response to the mass national marches for Palestinian rights, the impact of this change of law would be wide-ranging. “An anti-racist march could be blocked from Whitehall because of a previous farmers’ protest, or a pride march restricted because a far-right demonstration was recently held in the same town.” When announcing the new police powers in October, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said repeated large-scale demonstrations over Gaza had caused “considerable fear” for the Jewish community after a deadly terror attack on a synagoge in Manchester. Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: “Instead of addressing its responsibilities under international law [with respect to Israel’s actions in Gaza] and addressing the core demands of the protestors, which are supported according to opinion polls by a majority of the British public, successive governments have instead sought to repress protest through ever more draconian laws. “The right to protest – including in solidarity with the Palestinian people or in opposition to the policies and actions of the British government – is a precious democratic principle that is under the gravest threat and must be defended.” The joint statement, which was also signed by other trade unions, charities, NGOs, faith, climate justice, and human rights organisations, called on the government “to immediately drop its dangerous proposal”. Lyle Barker, a policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said: “The government must stop introducing new anti-protest powers until the review of current laws has taken place – and instead work to protect our basic human right to make our voices heard when those in power refuse to listen.” The joint statement said the civil rights movement, the campaign for women’s suffrage and the movement against apartheid in South Africa all relied on the “cumulative impact” of repeated protests over many years. It added: “No protest movement has ever brought about change through a one-off demonstration.” Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the TUC, said: “Restrictions on the right to protest are a major concern for the trade union movement in this country. With the far right on the rise in the UK and across the globe, we must be extra vigilant in defending basic human rights and democratic norms.” A Home Office spokesperson said: “The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy, and it is a long-standing tradition in this country that people are free to demonstrate their views. “These new powers will not ban protests, but they will help protect communities from repeated disruption while protecting the right to peaceful protest.”