THE BIG STORIES
Trump casts his eyes to Panama, Greenland… and Canada

📣 President-elect Donald Trump refused to rule out using military force to seize the Panama Canal and Greenland. In a rambling press conference last night, held less than two weeks before he takes office, he said: “I’m not going to commit to that”… “It might be that you’ll have to do something. The Panama Canal is vital to our country [….] We need Greenland for national security purposes.” It may all be trollling, but his comments were taken seriously by politicians in the countries he mentioned; they issued rejections of varying firmness. The remarks came as Donald Trump Jr and others arrived by jet in Greenland, in what was described as a private visit by Greenland’s government. Trump senior also, later, posted maps on social media that showed Canada as part of the United States. (AP) (New York Times)

📣 There’s been a big surge in flu hospitalisations in Scotland with warnings that accident and emergency departments are working at four times their capacity. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine described the health service in Scotland as being “in the depth of a winter crisis”. (The Scotsman)

📣 UK borrowing costs hit their highest level since 1998 yesterday. A big bond sell-off meant the yield - effectively the interest rate - on 30-year government debt hit 5.22%, which is higher than it went after Liz Truss’s mini-budget disaster in 2022. The rise in costs means Rachel Reeves could be forced to make further spending cuts, raise taxes or break her own fiscal rules. (Guardian) (FT)

IDEAS
Meta’s MAGA for it

🗣️ We’ve all spent days watching Elon Musk’s misinformation inflame a row over child abuse in the UK, so it’s easier to see how Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to scrap Meta’s fact-checkers, reduce “censorship,” and promote political content on Facebook is consequential.

Meta is far bigger than X. Zuckerberg’s move affects three billion Facebook users and two billion Instagram users, shaping what whole continents see, share, and discuss. If X's experience is any indication, this shift to a more loose “user notes” policy, similar to that on X, will likely allow misinformation and other abuses to stay on Meta’s platforms longer.

I’ve run human moderation on big (although nothing near Facebook-sized) platforms. It’s messy (full of difficult decisions) and hard (the work is gruelling and labour-intensive). Meta’s existing policies were also far from perfect. But they were a check, and their dismantling will, say critics, impact elections, political debates, mental health, law, and more, the world over.

Three key moments led here: Trump’s August threat to jail Zuckerberg over election interference, Trump’s November election victory, and Zuckerberg’s Mar-a-Lago dinner that month. Liberal Nick Clegg’s exit, Republican Joel Kaplan’s rise, and cage sport CEO (and Trump supporter) Dana White’s appointment to the Meta board followed, paving the way for Meta’s swing to the right.

What next? Zuckerberg also criticised Europe’s “institutionalised censorship” in his video. We may be entering a world where part of the Meta/Trump entente is White House support for sweeping away global barriers to US tech companies - Trump has already indicated it’s an issue. Everything becomes a negotiation.

The enactment of online safety laws like the UK’s Online Safety Act - big parts of which come into force in March - could easily rile a Trump White House. And then it becomes a bargaining chip: sure, have your online safety laws… but we’ll have our tariffs on - say - your whisky. What price your scruples? The Art of the Deal, indeed.

🗣️ Axios: Behind the Curtain: The new gatekeepers

🗣️ The Guardian: An extinction-level event for truth on social media

🗣️ The Telegraph: Facebook just signalled the end of the fact-checker as censor - good riddance

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 The Scottish Government’s budget will, barring a strike from Mars, pass, after Anas Sarwar used an interview on Good Morning Scotland yesterday to say his MSPs would abstain, thus ensuring its passage. The BBC’s Glenn Campbell has a clear-eyed piece of analysis on it all. (BBC)

📣 Just how much has the Scottish government saved in an efficiency drive? John Swinney has been accused by Labour of trying to “pull the wool over the public’s eyes” over claimed £200m savings that may - or may not - have been achieved in the last two years, with further savings of nearly £300m to come by the end of 2027. Although, to be honest, the way The Herald describes the various figures seems quite clear… (The Herald)

📣 The Edinburgh Filmhouse will reopen this summer after a refurb. It closed in October 2022, a post-Covid victim of a wider collapse which also sucked in the (now revived) Edinburgh International Film Festival. Brian Ferguson of The Scotsman got the exclusive.

📣 It’s going to get very cold tonight - The Sun points out that temperatures in parts of the Highlands will reach -16C, “which is colder than the city of Novosibirsk” in Siberia (a balmy -12C). (The Sun)

AROUND THE UK

📣 The Times reporter who revealed the “grooming gangs” child abuse scandal more than a decade ago says we still don’t know the root causes of the problem, and more research was needed to understand issues of religion, culture and social cohesion that had allowed the criminality to flourish unchecked for years. (The Times)

📣 A rogue SAS unit has been accused of committing war crimes in Afghanistan by the head of a “rival” special forces unit. “Multiple instances of murder” were committed by the soldiers, it is claimed. (The Telegraph)

📣 A search and rescue operation is under way in the Dolomites in northern Italy for two British men who went missing on an “off-grid” hiking trip. Samuel Harris and Aziz Ziriat were last heard of on January 1. (BBC)

AROUND THE WORLD

🌎 Dramatic images show wildfires are burning out of control near Los Angeles, destroying homes and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands. (AP)

🌎 A new respiratory virus has emerged in northern China, with inevitable parallels being drawn with the rise of Covid five years ago. But the virus is not new, is less deadly, and we’re all a lot more alert to these things, explains The Independent.

🌎 Austria could be about to get its most extreme chancellor since the 1940s, says The Economist. There is still some coalition-forming wrangling to be done, which may negotiate away some of Herbert Kickl’s more extreme policies. But the worry is “that Austria exemplifies the Putinisation of central Europe.” (The Economist) (Monocle Daily audio)

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

💰 An earnings announcement from Next was positive, but concerns are not far away. The chain’s sales and Q4 profits were up, with full-year profits pencilled in at more than £1bn. But the underlying tone was gloomy: it faces £67m more in wage costs in 2025 because of the last budget, and sales growth is expected to slow. That final point was taken by analysts as being an ominous sign for the UK’s high streets. (The Scotsman) (The Herald)

💰 Scottish commercial property investment certainly didn’t struggle last year: volumes were up 30% year on year to more than £2bn, according to Knight Frank, with hotels especially strong. (The Scotsman)

SPORT

⚽️ Mikel Arteta reckoned the ball was a problem in his Arsenal side’s 2-0 defeat at home to Newcastle in the Carabao Cup. They certainly looked like they were playing with a petrol station “flyer” during the game, with a number of shots over the bar… (Mail) Tottenham host Liverpool tonight in the other semi-final first leg: it’s at 8pm on Sky Sports Main Event.

⚽️ Two Scottish Premiership games tonight: Celtic host Dundee United and Kilmarnock play Motherwell. Neither game is on broadcast TV. (Sun)

⚽️ Manchester United are having a January sale… they’d welcome offers for Mainoo, Garnacho, Højlund Yoro, De Ligt and Ugarte as they look to rebuild their squad. (Guardian)