Donald Trump is considering imposing a 10% tariff on Chinese-made goods as soon as next week in retaliation for the country’s role in the supply of fentanyl in the US. He also issued an executive order closing all government diversity, equity and inclusion schemes – calling them “dangerous, demeaning and immoral” – and put all DEI staff on paid leave. Prince Harry has settled his High Court legal action against the publisher of The Sun just as the 10-week trial was due to begin. News Group Newspapers offered a “full and unequivocal apology” to the Duke of Sussex for phone hacking, surveillance and other intrusions into his private life, in a settlement thought to total at least £10m. Footballers aren’t as thick as they seem. A study of 200 professional players in Brazil and Sweden found they consistently outperformed the average person at a range of cognitive tasks, from working memory to problem-solving. On me (pointy) head, son.

Can’t we have a “golden age” too?

Not to get all British about state events, says Marina Hyde in The Guardian, but Monday’s inauguration really was an “occasion devoid of a sense of occasion”. The whole affair was so budget I constantly expected someone to grab the mic and say: “Could the owner of a red Honda Civic please move your car as it’s blocking in the burger van.” Or perhaps to ask: “Is there anyone who knows about tech in the house?” as viewers around the world waited “in mortified vain” for country singer Carrie Underwood’s backing track to kick in. Naturally, the busty outfit worn by Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos’s fiancée, attracted more attention than Donald Trump’s pledge to “summarily rename bits of the world” while annexing others. At least there was Melania’s “sartorial defensiveness” to enjoy. “Tailoring by Adam Lippes, millinery by Iron Dome.”

I know I should have found the inauguration crass, says Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph, but if I’m being honest it looked like a “fun party to which I wasn’t invited”. On one side of the room were the DC elites and tech giants; on the other, people who believe those folks are “bloodthirsty lizards”. The ex-presidents all rocked up: “President Clinton and her husband Bill; the Bushes; Obama alone; Joe Biden accompanied by his nurse, a Canadian lady called Kamala, or so he believes.” The Supreme Court justices wore their barber gowns. While we’re “stuck indoors with Keir and Rachel playing a tedious game of bridge”, the US is enjoying the sound of the YMCA and Tiffany Trump popping champagne. “The Golden Age of America begins right now!” declared the new president. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear someone say that about Britain for once?

It would have been better for Democrats if Donald Trump had won a second term in 2020, says Tina Brown in The New Statesman. Inflation, “post-Covid moroseness” and the chaos of the Ukraine war “would have probably done him in”, and the Democrats could have spent the time finding a killer candidate to beat his successor. There would have been no January 6 (“or hysterical liberals talking about it on cable shows every night for four years”), no “wasted efforts to put Trump behind bars” that served only to make him a hero. And in contrast to the clown-car inner circle from his first administration, Trump now has advisers who “know where the levers of power are and how to use them”.

The virtuoso American pianist Ruth Slenczynska – the last surviving pupil of Sergei Rachmaninov – turned 100 this month. To celebrate, here she is performing a minuet in G major by Beethoven, aged five, in 1930. See the full clip here.

This is still the best time to be alive

Every January, says Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times, I write a column about how, in the grand scheme of things, we’ve just lived through the “best year ever”. This year, despondent about the plight of children in Gaza, atrocities in Sudan, fires in Los Angeles and the return of Donald Trump, “I didn’t have the heart to write it”. But when I looked at the data, I had the same realisation I always do: the big trends are going right. Take child mortality. For most of human history, about half of newborns died in childhood (as recently as 1950, more than a quarter did). In 2024, the UN reckons humanity achieved an all-time low of 3.6%. Since 2000, more than 80 million children’s lives have been saved.

Historically, most human beings lived in extreme poverty, but that share is plummeting by around 30,000 people a day. In 2024, we reached a new low of around 8.5% of the global population. When I was a child, a majority of human beings were illiterate – we’re now approaching 90% literacy worldwide. There’s a ceasefire in Gaza, and the brutal Assad regime has been toppled. Three of the world’s worst humanitarian crises of the last decade – Yemen, Ethiopia and Syria – are in better shape. In medicine, scientists have just developed the first antipsychotic medication for schizophrenia in decades and a vaccine against a form of breast cancer may enter phase 2 trials this year. Stunning improvements in solar, wind, nuclear and battery technology offer a credible path to decarbonising and may result in energy being cheaper than ever. For all the challenges we face, there has been no better time to be alive.

The US is light-years ahead of Britain when it comes to launching rockets, says Juliet Samuel in The Times. But what few realise is that Elon Musk gained much of his expertise while on the board of a British company called Surrey Satellite. The firm specialised in launching smaller and cheaper satellites than its peers and showed Musk that networks of small satellites can achieve things large single units can’t – a concept central to his Starlink system of wifi-providing satellites.

To The Daily Telegraph:

My uncle took his driving test in our home town, Falkirk, in the 1950s. There was no test centre, so an examiner came on the train from Glasgow a couple of days each week. The trick was to book the 3pm slot, which involved driving up the hill to the station. Providing you did not have a collision, he would pass you and catch the 3.30pm train back. You could then drive home alone.

Bryan Kennedy
Chorleywood, Hertfordshire

It’s a meteorite crashing on to the driveway of a home in Charlottetown, Canada, says CBS News. Footage from the house’s doorbell camera shows the moment of impact – a sudden puff of smoke – as the celestial debris slammed into the paved path to their front door. Chris Herd, a space rock boffin from the University of Alberta, says it’s almost certainly the first time a meteorite strike has ever been recorded with sound. Listen for yourself here.