Donald Trump has cited Britain’s transfer of the Chagos Island to Mauritius as one of the reasons why the US needs to annex Greenland, describing the handover as an “act of GREAT STUPIDITY”. The US president says he has agreed to a meeting of “various parties” about the Arctic territory at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, after a “very good” phone call with Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte. The UK government is launching a consultation on a social media ban for under-16s after more than 60 Labour MPs said they were prepared to defy the party line and vote for an outright ban. Ministers will examine a range of options, including introducing age limits, stopping technology companies from accessing young users’ data, and limiting addictive features such as “infinite scrolling”. A routine vaccine that protects older people from shingles may also keep them biologically younger, according to a study of around 4,000 over-70s. The DNA of those who had the jab looked “younger” at a molecular level than those who did not, and they also experienced less inflammation, reducing the risk of heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on eight European nations for opposing his plan to seize Greenland makes one thing perfectly clear, says Le Monde: Europe’s strategy of “appeasement at any price” has become totally untenable. Until now, the continent’s leaders have doled out “endless flattery” – and accepted a ludicrously one-sided trade deal – in the hope that it will keep the US president onside and stop him abandoning Ukraine. With the principles of territorial integrity and national sovereignty now at stake, that approach will no longer cut it. A weak response will not only help Trump follow through on his plan – outlined in his recent National Security Strategy – to shatter European institutions and impose America’s will on a “fragmented mosaic of states”. It will also send a signal to Moscow and Beijing that the bloc will always “retreat” from defending its territorial and economic interests.

Europe’s dithering really is “inexcusable”, says Eliot Cohen in The Atlantic. Trump’s approach to foreign policy – on Venezuela, Iran, Gaza and everywhere else – isn’t complicated. He loathes “conventional diplomacy”, and while he is willing to pursue brief bombing (or kidnapping) campaigns, he has “no tolerance for bloody battles”. Greenland is no different. If Europe were to permanently deploy thousands of troops to the Arctic territory – with surface-to-air missiles and orders to fight “to the last round of ammunition” – Trump would almost certainly back down. “Too many body bags.” Similarly, if Brussels responded to Trump’s tariffs with comparable retaliatory sanctions, denying American companies access to the world’s third largest economy, he’d change course on those too – just as he did with China and Brazil. Such robust responses may seem unpalatable to Europe’s leaders. But “that’s the world they are in”.

There have long been rumours that Ayatollah Khamenei is ill and plans to flee to Moscow, says Simon Sebag Montefiore in The Times. It’s safe to assume that most of Iran’s elite have similar “escape plans”. Last week the anonymous daughter of a senior regime figure who secretly backs the protests phoned an opposition news outlet, in tears over the slaughter, saying “houses, so many dollars, false passports are all prepared for us”.

David and Victoria Beckham’s eldest son Brooklyn has poured petrol on the flames of a long-rumoured family feud, says Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph, with a lengthy social media post attacking his parents for “controlling” him throughout his, er, childhood. The 26-year-old claims “Brand Beckham” has persistently tried to ruin his relationship with his wife Nicola – daughter of American hedge fund billionaire Nelson Peltz – including Victoria withdrawing the offer to make her wedding dress at the last minute. In one especially striking passage, Brooklyn describes his mum hijacking the first dance at his wedding to perform something called the mother-son dance “on” him, adding: “I’ve never felt more uncomfortable or humiliated in my entire life.”

The year got off to a “cheerful start” in China, says Cindy Yu in The Times. Topping Apple’s paid-apps chart there last week was “Are You Dead Yet?”, where users have to tap a big green button each day, and if they fail to check in for 48 hours an email is sent to their emergency contact. This is clearly a reflection of the country’s growing loneliness problem: some 125 million Chinese live solo, more than the entire population of famously lonely Japan. But it also speaks to a “more general nihilism” that characterises China’s young.

This is a generation struggling with the pressures of their lives, from all being only children – and therefore “the sole vessel of parents’ misplaced hopes and failed dreams” – to going through a school system that “resembles battery farming more than preparation for life”. Some talk about “lying flat” rather than participating in the rat race; others compare themselves to chives, which regrow quickly when cut, because they are “replaceable to demanding employers”. Humour has become a coping mechanism. Students post “alternative” graduation photos with them face-planted on the lecture hall steps or throwing their thesis in the bin. When a toy manufacturer accidentally sewed a smiling mouth upside down on a horse plushie, the resulting “Cry Cry Horse” went viral for its “adorable tragedy”. Beijing doesn’t see the funny side of all this – the Are You Dead Yet? app has mysteriously disappeared from the app store – because it rightly senses the anger and disillusionment lurking underneath. Life in China is “objectively better” than it was a few decades ago. But the nation’s “psychological health” is worsening.

4️⃣😱 One reason Are You Dead Yet? has made such a splash is the bluntness of its name. The Chinese are deeply superstitious, particularly about mortality: some hotels don’t have room numbers containing the number four because it sounds like “si”, the word for death.

Top Democrats see Kamala Harris as “politically toxic”, say Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein in Axios, but many in the party faithful, in particular black voters, still view the former vice president as an “exalted, historic figure”. On a recent swing through southern states to promote her book, 107 Days, Harris was greeted like a rock star – auditoriums in New Orleans, Jackson and Memphis were packed with thousands of fans clamouring for her to run for the presidency again in 2028. The party’s powerbrokers don’t expect her to oblige. But these events definitely had “the energy of a campaign-in-waiting”.

Gen Z is well known for having less sex than previous generations, says Felice Basboll in The Spectator. But not in Denmark. According to a new report, Danes between 15 and 25 stand alone in the West, their sexual stats unchanged since the 1970s. The explanation appears to be simple. Most young Danes leave university with little debt and reasonable career prospects, and quickly move out of their childhood home because rents are affordable. They have enough cash to go out, they drink more than any other Europeans, and best of all, unlike the millions who still live at home elsewhere in Europe, a date doesn’t have to “meet your mother before you can get her into bed”.

It’s Veronika the cow, says Annie Roth in National Geographic, who has stunned scientists by perfecting the art of picking up sticks, rakes and brushes and using them to scratch herself. The 13-year-old Swiss brown, who lives in an idyllic mountain village in the Austrian countryside, chooses the right tool for the job – preferring a stiff-bristled brush to scrape the tough hide on her back, say, but switching to something smoother for her soft, sensitive tummy. According to scientists from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, this is the first example of tool use in more than 10,000 years of human-cattle history.