The Week 1576

A woman whose baby got trapped in her burning car has credited two strangers with saving her child’s life. Alex McClean, 21, was driving on the A465 near Merthyr Tydfil when smoke began to fill her car. She stopped in a layby and got out, but then couldn’t open a door to extract her baby. As the situation worsened, she started to panic, but Wesley Beynon and his uncle Marc Wilding came to her aid, and managed to get a door open. McClean said she’d never forget their heroism. A pet cow in Austria has been identified as the first member of its species to be observed using a tool. For a study in Current Biology, Veronika, a 13-year-old Swiss brown, was filmed picking up a broom with her tongue,…

Crisis over Greenland What happened Donald Trump addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos as tensions over Greenland threatened to trigger a full-scale rupture in transatlantic relations. The US president, who’d insisted before the summit that there would be “no going back” on his plan to acquire the Danish-controlled Arctic island, ruled out resorting to force but called for “immediate negotiations”. Denmark had warned that US military action would spell the end of Nato. Last week, the UK joined seven European Nato countries in dispatching a small number of troops to Greenland for a military exercise. In response, Trump announced that he would be imposing an extra 10% tariff on all imports to the US from those eight Nato allies from 1 February, increasing to 25% from 1 June, until…

What happened Days after the shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, became the highest-profile Conservative yet to join Nigel Farage’s party, the Tories lost another MP to Reform UK. Andrew Rosindell was shadow minister for foreign affairs under Kemi Badenoch. Rosindell is the fourth sitting Tory MP to switch; 18 ex-Tory MPs have also defected. In extraordinary scenes last Thursday, Kemi Badenoch had sacked Jenrick from her front bench, saying that she had “clear, irrefutable evidence” that he was planning to jump ship. Reportedly, she’d been handed a copy of his resignation speech – which included scathing criticisms of senior Tories – after it was found “lying around”. Hours later, Jenrick appeared at a chaotic press conference alongside Nigel Farage to confirm his defection. He called his former party “rotten”, “dishonest”…

Controversy of the week China’s “mega-embassy” “Ministers like to talk tough about refusing to compromise when it comes to Britain’s national security,” said the Daily Mail. So it is “deeply troubling” that Labour decided this week, after months of delay, to allow China to go ahead with the development of a “mega-embassy” at the former Royal Mint in London. It is on the edge of the City, “and just a few minutes from Westminster as the drone flies”; Beijing “could not ask for a better location from which to conduct espionage and influence operations in this country”. No doubt Keir Starmer is trying to “curry favour” with President Xi Jinping before a proposed visit to China, and thinks that “kowtowing” on the embassy “will lead to closer trade ties and…

Sienna Rose is a soul singer who has amassed nearly 3.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify since releasing her first single in 2024. One of her smoky, jazz-infused tracks, Into the Blue, has been played six million times. Yet according to streaming service Deezer, which has AI detection tools, Rose does not exist, and her music is computer-generated. Clues include the fact that she has never performed a gig, she has minimal presence on social media and many of her songs have a “telltale hiss” running through them. The BBC has agreed to tailor-make “content” for YouTube. The landmark deal was struck after new figures showed that, last month, YouTube had, for the first time, more viewers in the UK than the BBC.…

Generation rent, with reports that rents fell last year for the first time on record. The 0.7% dip in the cost of newly agreed rents was put down to more tenants leaving rental properties to become first-time buyers, and more young people staying at home with their parents, rather than entering the rental market. The biggest fall, of 3.7%, was in inner London. Amol Rajan, who revealed that he is leaving BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, to start a new life that will not involve getting out of bed as early as 3am most weekdays. The presenter, who has four young children, said he planned to unleash his “inner entrepreneur” by launching his own company. However, he will continue to host University Challenge and his BBC podcast.…