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Past week Ukraine Gaza Switzerland AI / ChatGPT Media UN Trump China Youth Travel
Al Jazeera: Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,428 — 22 January 2026 (LINK)
— Ukraine's Ukrinform news agency said Russian forces dropped 768 guided missiles and high-explosive aerial bombs over the past 10 days in areas of Ukraine's Donetsk region still controlled by Ukrainian authorities, destroying almost all remaining infrastructure, according to the head of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration, Vadym Filashkin.
— Ukrainian forces attacked a port in the village of Volna in Russia's southern Krasnodar region, killing three people and injuring eight, the regional emergency services task force reported, according to Russia's TASS state news agency. Veniamin Kondratyev, Krasnodar regional governor, said earlier on Telegram that the attack caused four oil storage tanks to become "engulfed in flames".
— A military court in Moscow sentenced an Uzbek man to life in prison after finding him guilty of killing top Russian general Igor Kirillov and his assistant in a Ukraine-backed bomb attack in 2024.
AP: Trump is rolling out his Board of Peace at Davos at a time when US leadership is being questioned — (LINK)
— Some 35 countries had agreed to sign on to the project, a senior administration official told reporters. Norway and Sweden have indicated that they won't participate, after France also said no. Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said "the time has not yet come to accept the invitation," according to the STA news agency, with the main concern being the board's mandate may be too broad and could undermine international order based on the U.N. Charter.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte defends Trump at World Economic Forum, Davos: — 22 January 2026 (LINK)
— "For the United States to stay safe, you need a safe Arctic, a safe Atlantic, and a safe Europe. My predecessors always took the view that they should not comment on [tensions] in public. So, sorry, no comments from me on Greenland. Statements from me will not add anything here."
— When it comes to the Arctic, I think President Trump is right, other leaders in NATO are right: we need to defend the Arctic. We know that the sea lanes are opening up. We know that China and Russia are increasingly active in the Arctic. There's only one country bordering on the Arctic outside NATO, that's Russia. There is a ninth country, which is China, which is increasingly active in the Arctic region.
— "Do you really think that without Donald Trump, eight big economies in Europe, including Spain and Italy and Belgium, Canada, by the way, also outside Europe, would have come to 2% [of GDP on defence] in 2025 when they were only on 1.5% at the beginning of the year? No way. Without Donald Trump, this would never have happened. He has forced us in Europe to step up, to face the consequences that we have to take care more of our own defence."
— Trump "said last night in his presser that he was doubtful whether the Europeans would come to the rescue if Article 5 would be triggered. I tell him: yes, they will. And they did on the 11th of September — 9/11 — in 2001 when, for the first and only time, Article 5 was triggered."
— "In the 1980s in Afghanistan, the Soviets lost 20,000 in 10 years. Now they lose 30,000 in one month [in Ukraine]. Ukraine should be our number one priority, and then we can discuss on all the issues, including Greenland. But it should be Ukraine first because it is crucial for our European and US security. [...] Russia is on a war economy footing. They spend 40% of the state budget on defence."
WEF: Davos 2026: What to know on Day 3 (LINK) 21 January 2026
Business leaders react to Trump's Davos speech: Europe "bluntly, needs to do better". "Trump basically admitted there is a housing bubble in the US." "Last two times Trump spoke at Davos he stuck extremely close to the teleprompter. Not this time." "You have to look at Europe and say their choices on energy policy have put them in the position they're in right now which is fairly weak economically and in a global position. And I thought he made a very good case for that" — 21 January 2026 (LINK)
Business Insider: I was in the room for Trump's Davos speech. The crowd was eerily silent until he mentioned Greenland. — 22 January 2026 (LINK)
— I was sitting among the 1,000 or so people in the Davos hall, some of whom were standing in packed aisles. If Trump wanted a raucous applause for his laundry list of accomplishments that he sees as crowning achievements over his first year, he didn't get it [...] — without the applause he is more used to on home soil. The only noise from the audience here was muted, nervous laughter. The biggest laughter came when Trump brought up French President Emmanuel Macron wearing aviator sunglasses at Davos a day earlier: "Those beautiful sunglasses. What the hell happened?" After Greenland, Trump abruptly pivoted to his greatest hits: "rigged elections" and the "crooked media." That left the crowd more confused. Some started looking at their phones. When Trump criticized the fiery Tuesday address of Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney, he delivered perhaps his boldest line: That Canada only exists because of US defense. "Oh wow," someone behind me blurted out. A minute later, a few people started heading for the exits. Later, when Trump started attacking the country [they were in] in, Switzerland, more people streamed out. After Trump said [the Swiss President] "rubbed me the wrong way," there were audible gasps. More audience members left or looked at their phones. At the end, [after he returned to his script] there was applause, with about a third of the audience giving a standing ovation.
Buzzfeed: 12 really, really awkward moments from Donald Trump's Davos speech. George Conway: "Today is the most humiliating day in the history of the United States. At least until tomorrow." — 22 January 2026 (LINK)
— He told people in Switzerland (a mainly German-speaking country) that they would all "be speaking German" if the US hadn't been there during World War II.
— He told the crowd Switzerland was "only good because of us."
— He said that the people in "Iceland" called him "daddy."
The story beind Macron's $770 sunglasses: His office told Reuters he wore the sunglasses because of a burst blood vessel in his eye, and he was indeed spotted last week with one bloodshot eye — 21 January 2026 (LINK)
Philip Nitschke, Australian inventor of the 'suicide pod', says AI could one day decide mental capacity of those who want to end their life — 22 January 2026 (LINK)
— Sarco's first and only use in Switzerland in September 2024 triggered an international outcry. Police arrested several people, including Florian Willet, CEO of the assisted dying organisation The Last Resort, and opened criminal proceedings for aiding and abetting suicide. Swiss authorities later said the pod was incompatible with Swiss law. Willet was released from custody in December. Soon after, in May 2025, he died by assisted suicide in Germany. Swiss prosecutors have yet to determine whether charges will be laid over the Sarco case. The original device remains seized, though Nitschke says a new version — including a so-called "Double Dutch" pod designed for two people to die together — is already being built.
IUCN launches group to conserve at-risk microbes vital to life on Earth: "For the first time, we have an official recognition that microbes need to be included in the conservation agenda" — 21 January 2026 (LINK)
— "We cannot talk about either climate change or biodiversity loss without talking about microbes, because we need them to keep the ecosystems healthy and working, and we need them to keep the organisms working." These tiny organisms produce as much as 20% of the oxygen in global seas.
— Previously unknown microbial communities growing on Australian tree bark uptake significant sums of methane (a greenhouse gas at least 20 times as powerful as carbon dioxide), along with carbon monoxide and volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), pollutants harmful to human health.
AI at Davos 2026: From work impact to Europe's place. Here's what the tech leaders hope and fear — 21 January 2026 (LINK)
— Artificial intelligence (AI) has infiltrated nearly every conversation at Davos 2026, rivalling the prominence of traditional hot-button issues such as trade tariffs, international competition, and geopolitical tensions. 'Once in a lifetime opportunity for Europe' — Jensen Huang, Nvidia. "We as a global community have to get to a point where we are using [AI] to do something useful that changes the outcomes of people and communities and countries and industries" — Satya Nadella, Microsoft. The most intelligent entities on the planet can also be the most deluded' — Yuval Harari. 'Not selling chips to China is one of the biggest things we can do' — Dario Amodei, Anthropic. ' More meaningful jobs created' — Demis Hassibis, Google DeepMind. "Many people interact with them with the false belief that they [AI] are like us." — Yoshua Bengio.
