Talks between the US and Iran scheduled for Friday have been brought back from the brink of collapse after the US initially rejected Iran’s request to move them from Turkey to Oman without the presence of a group of Arab states.

Iran’s foreign minister said late on Wednesday that the talks would proceed in Oman after reports of a last-minute effort by Arab states to convince the White House not to walk away from negotiations.

“Nuclear talks with the United States are scheduled to be held in Muscat on about 10am Friday,” wrote the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. “I’m grateful to our Omani brothers for making all necessary arrangements.”

US officials have also indicated the talks in Oman will go forward. They will take place amid a massive buildup of US naval and airpower in the region and appear to be a last chance for Tehran to avert a US strike against the country’s leadership and nuclear programme.

The world is in a “democratic recession” with almost three-quarters of the global population now living under autocratic rulers – levels not seen since the 1980s, according to a new report.

The system underpinning human rights was “in peril”, said Philippe Bolopion, executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), with a growing authoritarian wave becoming “the challenge of a generation”, he said.

Speaking before the launch of the human rights watchdog’s annual country-by-country assessment, published on Wednesday, Bolopion said 2025 had been a “tipping point” for rights and freedoms in the US. In just 12 months, the Trump administration has carried out a broad assault on key pillars of American democracy and the global rules-based international order, which the US, despite inconsistencies, helped to establish. It was now working in the “opposite direction”, he said.

Citing Donald Trump’s calls on Republicans this week to “nationalise” the US voting system and revelations that a member of an Emirati royal family was behind a $500m investment into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, Bolopion said: “Every day you see confirmation of this trend, but when you step back you see an organised, relentless, determined assault on all of the checks and balances that are meant to limit executive power in US democracy – a system designed to limit power and protect rights.”

Another link that's difficult to categorize. There's little opinion here, so this seems like the correct placement.

At any rate, this is roughly an hour going through the history of nukes and treaties, and if you don't already know of Tom Nicholas, you really should.

About 50 residents of a community outside Chile’s capital spent Saturday trying their best to power an entirely human-operated chatbot that could answer questions and make silly pictures on command, in a message to highlight the environmental toll of artificial intelligence data centers in the region.

Organizers say the 12-hour project fielded more than 25,000 requests from around the world.

Asking the Quili.AI website to generate an image of a “sloth playing in the snow” didn’t instantly produce an output, as ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini would. Instead, someone responded in Spanish to wait a few moments and reminded the user that a human was responding.

Then came a drawing about 10 minutes later: a penciled sketch of a cute and cartoonish sloth in a pile of snowballs, with its claws clutching one and about to throw it.

“The goal is to highlight the hidden water footprint behind AI prompting and encourage more responsible use,” said a statement from organizer Lorena Antiman of the environmental group Corporación NGEN.

Last week, Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner formally announced the US government’s long-awaited “master plan” for the future of the Gaza Strip—one Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has said was in the works for two years. Kushner could not have chosen a more fitting venue for the spectacle: the World Economic Forum at Davos, where the powerful gather to congratulate themselves for expressing concern about crises they have no intention of resolving.

The picture Kushner painted of a “new” Gaza—replete with looming luxury high-rises and sprawling resorts—is unrecognizable not only from the morbid expanse of rubble that Israel has turned the territory into during more than two years of genocide, but also from the once-teeming city that endured, despite all odds, under a suffocating Israeli blockade for decades. But there is something even more sinister at the heart of Kushner’s vision: the effective absence of Palestinians.

Kushner has never been shy about his support for Israel’s most extreme fantasies for Gaza—fantasies that begin with ethnic cleansing. But he also knows that a single, overt act of ethnic cleansing on the scale that many Israelis openly dream of might be too controversial to launder through Davos-speak—and that the prospect of a mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza in one fell swoop has already triggered international backlash that the architects of this project would rather avoid. So the Kushner plan is built around something more marketable, more reproducible at scale: attrition. Or, to put it another way, the fulfillment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reported order to close aides to “thin out” Gaza’s population.

Cuba’s top officials are putting on their military uniforms to supervise defense exercises and have fanned out across the country urging local leaders to cut red tape, adopt a new mentality, and shake off their lethargy, as the Trump administration escalates regime-change efforts against the island nation after violently abducting strategic ally Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and first lady Celia Flores on January 3.

On Thursday, President Trump issued a menacing executive order alleging that Cuba represents an imminent danger to national security and the region. Titled “Confronting the Cuban Regime,” the order threatens to slap tariffs on any country that exports oil to the socialist nation. It comes as shock waves from events in Venezuela reverberate throughout a land already exhausted from a grueling economic crisis that has left residents navigating collapsing infrastructure and services, runaway inflation, and shortages of basic goods.

Since December, when the United States announced a new national security doctrine based on dominating the Western Hemisphere and then, in early January, attacked Venezuela, the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened that Cuba is next.

With the smoke still lingering over Venezuela from the violent assault that left 32 Cuban military and intelligence personnel dead and others wounded, Trump announced that there would be no more Venezuelan oil or money for Cuba and warned its leaders to make a deal “before it’s too late.”

"what Putin will do next — that he’s unpredictable and thus dangerous. We’re rendered stunned, spun, and flummoxed by the Kremlin’s weaponization of absurdity and unreality.” - year 2014. September 9, 2014 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/russia-putin-revolutionizing-information-warfare/379880/

themoscowtimes.com/2026/01/28/…

For more than five decades he’s pounded the pavements of Paris, becoming part of the city’s cultural fabric as he strikes up conversations, greets longtime friends and offers parodies of daily news headlines.

On Wednesday, the efforts of the man believed to be France’s last newspaper hawker were recognised, as Ali Akbar, a 73-year-old originally from Pakistan, received one of France’s most prestigious honours.

In a ceremony at the Élysée Palace, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, described Akbar as the “most French of the French” as he made him a knight of the National Order of Merit in recognition of his distinguished service to France.

“You are the accent of the sixth arrondissement, the voice of the French press on Sunday mornings. And every other day of the week, for that matter,” said Macron. “A warm voice that, every day for more than 50 years, has boomed across the terraces of Saint-Germain, making its way between restaurant tables.”

First, American forces would strike with poison gas munitions, seizing a strategically valuable port city. Soldiers would sever undersea cables, destroy bridges and rail lines to paralyze infrastructure. Major cities on the shores of lakes and rivers would be captured in order to blunt any civilian resistance.

The multipronged invasion would rely on ground forces, amphibious landing and then mass internments. According to the architects of the plan, the attack would be short-lived and the besieged country would fall within days.

The target was Canada, part of a classified 1930 strategy – War Plan Red – for a hypothetical war with Great Britain where the US would seek to deny it any foothold in North America. A collaged artwork of Trump wearing a Maga hat and medals, standing in front of the Capitol building with helicopters and fighter jets flying in the background. The image has been designed to look like an oil painting.

But the invasion plans, once dismissed as a fumbling historical quirk, have taken on fresh relevance as the US pivots its foreign policy to an increasingly aggressive view of its “pre-eminence” in the western hemisphere and turns its sights on both foes and allies.

“These vehicles make dozens of trips back and forth from storage facilities … I have seen bodies in these trucks so stuck together it required strength to pull them apart. The blood was still fresh and dried up when they overcrowded them in piles.”

One witness at Behesht-e Sakineh, who was granted access to the site to look for the body of a friend, says he personally searched through hundreds of “stacked” bodies and was told by graveyard staff that they had “received thousands of bodies just in the past two days”.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is executing a political gambit by calling a surprise snap election three months into her tenure.

She’s not the only one, though, it turns out.

Since the first media reports on the impending election emerged, two opposition parties — the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) and Komeito — have also taken a big risk, by deciding to form a new party.

A Lower House election set for Feb. 8 will see two large forces face each other — Takaichi’s conservative ruling bloc comprising the Liberal Democratic Party and the Japan Innovation Party (JIP), against the opposition’s new centrist party, the Centrist Reform Alliance (CRA).

The question is: Will Takaichi’s carpe diem moment pay off?

At a news conference Monday evening, Takaichi said the snap poll will essentially be a referendum on who leads the country — herself or an opposition leader — in an attempt to make the election about herself, rather than the parties.

Amsterdam city council has passed a legally binding ban on advertising for fossil fuels and meat products across public spaces in the city, becoming the first capital in the world to prohibit such ads through local law.

The city council voted 27-17 on Thursday (January 22) to approve the measure, which from May 1 prohibits advertising for high-carbon products and services such as flights, petrol and diesel vehicles, gas heating contracts and meat products across all public spaces in the city, including on buses, trams, and in metro and train stations.

The day before the vote, JCDecaux — the world’s largest outdoor advertising operator, controlling ad space on bus shelters, billboards, and street furniture, all of which are covered by the ban — sent an email to all party groups in the Amsterdam city council, warning the ban would have “far-reaching financial and legal consequences”.

The ban covers product advertising –– ads for flights, petrol cars, and meat –– but not corporate branding by fossil fuel and aviation companies, which can continue until contracts expire. Fossil fuel companies and other high-carbon industries can still run campaigns in public spaces, as long as they don’t advertise specific products. That continues until Amsterdam’s contract with JCDecaux expires in 2028, after which all corporate advertising will be prohibited under the new terms.