King Charles says “the law must take its course” after the arrest this morning of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of misconduct in public office. The former prince, who turns 66 today, is in custody for questioning as police assess allegations that he forwarded confidential material to Jeffrey Epstein while he was a trade envoy for the UK. Donald Trump has withdrawn support for Keir Starmer’s Chagos Islands deal, accusing the prime minister of surrendering to “wokeism”. The US president said the plan, for which he voiced approval just two weeks ago, risked ceding control of the Diego Garcia military base that he said was crucial for carrying out potential air strikes on Iran. David Attenborough will explore the wildlife of British gardens in a five-part BBC series to mark his 100th birthday in May. Secret Garden, due to be broadcast in April, will feature pine martens in the western Highlands, dormice in south Wales, swallows in the Lake District, otters in Oxfordshire and blue tits in Bristol.

From Davos to Munich, “the clamour is rising”, says Boris Johnson in The Wall Street Journal. We can’t stand Donald Trump, Europe’s politicians tell us, and we can no longer rely on American military leadership. “This is the hour of Europe! It’s time for European strategic autonomy!” Having seen the tearful ovations that greeted Mark Carney’s speech at Davos – according to which the free world is “apparently going to be led by (checks notes) Canada” – everyone has been chiming in: Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron, even a beleaguered Keir Starmer. “My friends, I agree.” And if we want to assert our strategic independence, we have a “golden opportunity” to do so immediately: by throwing our full support behind Ukraine.

We should start by giving Kyiv the means to take out the factories that make Russia’s drones. The Germans are still sitting on their arsenal of Taurus cruise missiles through fear of “escalation”, but “the only person who fears escalation is Mr Putin himself”. We should also launch a concerted operation to impound the “shadow fleet” of sanctions-busting oil tankers that help fund the Kremlin’s war machine. And why not hand over the billions in frozen Russian assets to the Ukrainians? Because we’re afraid of being sued by Vladimir Putin? “In what court? In what world?” It’s true that the Americans are deluded if they think Russia wants peace, and that they could and should be doing much more. “But what, mes amis, is the European alternative?” Our leaders need to do something bold and risky to show that there is substance behind all their grandiose rhetoric. “Or else they need to put a sock in it.”

🔫📈 In fairness, the EU has been quietly “gearing up”, says Joseph de Weck in The Atlantic. The bloc has for the first time agreed to use EU-wide debt to help finance defence spending, which will pump up to €150bn into the continent’s capacity to produce and procure arms. Germany is on track to have the world’s third largest defence budget by 2030, with no more than 8% of it going on American arms. The Düsseldorf defence giant Rheinmetall will “soon be able to produce more artillery shells than the entire US defence industry”.

We are closer to a “major war in the Middle East” than most people realise, says Barak Ravid in Axios. In his bid to force Iran to curb its nuclear programme, President Trump has deployed massive military firepower to the region: two aircraft carriers, a dozen warships, hundreds of fighter jets and multiple air defence systems. But US officials don’t think negotiations will secure any significant concessions from Tehran, and Trump’s military and rhetorical build-ups make it harder for him to back down. One White House aide puts the chances of “kinetic action” at 90%. And unlike last month’s pinpoint operation in Venezuela, any incursion would likely be a “massive, weeks-long campaign”.

The latest travel trend is a “sleepcation”, says Natasha Dangoor in The Wall Street Journal. Tired of being tired, Gen Zs and millennials are shunning sunrise hikes and sea swims and checking into fancy hotels for some serious shut-eye. Special “sleep packages” offer CBD gummies, bath bombs, weighted blankets and satin lavender eye masks, as well as extensive pillow menus with options ranging from “bamboo charcoal memory foam” to “honeycomb hole”. One travel blogger banked 16 hours on the first night of her doze-filled trip last year, then ate breakfast, had a bath and headed straight back to bed.

When Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced last month that his government would offer residence and work permits to hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants, says Christopher Caldwell in The New York Times, many declared him the “leader of a new global opposition”. Sánchez claimed his policy was not only more humane than the migrant round-ups then dominating headlines in Donald Trump’s America, but also represented a “better economic model”. Last year, the FT hailed Spain as “Europe’s standout economy” while Le Monde called it the “economic locomotive of Europe”. This, to put it mildly, is a load of cojones.

Spain’s economy has long been vastly over-reliant on tourism, which itself depends on a constant influx of unskilled workers to staff its hotels and restaurants. This generates cash, but has done nothing to move Spain into the ranks of Europe’s “advanced economies” – one reason why unemployment is stuck at 10%. Contrary to “elite opinion”, the Spanish aren’t buying it. Residents of Barcelona complain of the “tourism industrial complex”, which ruins their city and sucks money into the pockets of real estate developers, international hotel chains and the far-off families of migrant workers who send their wages home. Sánchez had to introduce his migrant amnesty by decree, knowing it would never get through parliament. In his first electoral test after doing so, his party lost a fifth of its seats in the regional chamber while the anti-immigration party Vox doubled its own tally. Defenders of the Sánchez amnesty claim it will act as a counterweight to populism. But just like Angela Merkel’s disastrous decision to open Europe’s gates in 2015, it will probably end up doing the exact reverse.

The Substack writer Jonn Elledge has compiled a fun list of “people and things that seem somehow out of time”. They include the fact that Bruce Forsyth was born 16 months before Anne Frank; Dmitri Shostakovich watched the musical Jesus Christ Superstar (and, according to composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, “said he wished he’d composed it”); Margaret Thatcher, David Attenborough and the late Queen could all have been in the same year at school; Bertrand Russell’s life (1872-1970) overlapped with those of both Andy Burnham and Emperor Napoleon III; and Brad Pitt is just over three months older than Nigel Farage. Read the rest here.

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, says Tom Whipple in The Times, we visited friends with eight grown-up children. Naturally, I asked the dad for his parenting tips. He leaned towards me and dropped his voice so that only I could hear. “You want to know The Trick?” he asked. Yes, yes I did. He got me to move closer still. “The Trick,” he said, slowly, almost whispering, “is when they have to put on jackets, make sure they hold the sleeves of their jumpers.” And then, chuckling the chuckle of a man whose childcare days were behind him, he wandered off to make a coffee.

On the left is Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man; on the right is a censored version used by Italy’s state broadcaster, Rai, in the opening credits for its Winter Olympics coverage. The newspaper Corriere della Sera was the first to pick up on the genitalia erasure, asking: “What happened to the Vitruvian Man’s genitals?” Opposition politicians quickly added to the backlash, urging the culture minister to “shed full light” on the redaction. This is the second penis-based controversy of the Milan-Cortina Games: claims that ski jumpers were injecting their private parts to increase the surface area of their suits – giving them an aerodynamic advantage – was dubbed “Penisgate”.