In the News

Now 91, Doniecka still remem­bers the Ger­man phrase “schneller, schneller, pol­nis­che Sch­weine”, or “faster, faster, Pol­ish pigs”, she said dur­ing an inter­view in her Warsaw flat. Today she will be among some 50 sur­viv­ors who will return to Aus­chwitz for the 80th anniversary of its lib­er­a­tion by Soviet troops at a spe­cial cere­mony with heads of state, includ­ing Bri­tain’s King Charles III. They will pay homage to the estim­ated 1.1mn vic­tims who died at the camp, the epi­centre of the Holo­caust built by the Nazis near the town of Oświęcim in occu­pied Poland. Most vic­tims were Jew­ish, but many Pol­ish, Roma and Rus­sian pris­on­ers of war also died there.

Donald Trump insisted he was serious in his determination to take over Greenland in a fiery telephone call with Denmark’s prime minister, according to senior European officials. The US president spoke to Mette Frederiksen, the Danish premier, for 45 minutes last week. The White House has not commented on the call but Frederiksen said she had emphasised that the vast Arctic island — an autonomous part of the kingdom of Denmark — was not for sale, while noting America’s “big interest” in it.

President Trump on Tuesday granted a pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road drug marketplace and a cult hero in the cryptocurrency and libertarian worlds.

Oilfield services company SLB is facing growing pressure from US lawmakers to pull out of Russia following the imposition of sweeping new sanctions against the nation’s energy sector by the Biden administration. Two US congressmen told the Financial Times the company, better known as Schlumberger, should get out of Russia or risk breaching US sanctions. Lloyd Doggett and Jake Auchincloss issued the warning following an order published by the Biden administration on Friday, prohibiting the provision of US petroleum services to persons located in Russia from February 27.

Western sanctions against Moscow have so far failed to effectively curb Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ability to wage his illegal war against Ukraine. Much of the weakness of the sanctions regime centers on energy. One still unsanctioned but critical target should be the network of companies associated with Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear corporation, which continues to expand its reach despite the ongoing war.

Pfizer’s chief executive Albert Bourla decamped with his top management team to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for an off-site meeting, in the latest attempt by corporate America to ingratiate itself with the US president-elect.

A group of nearly 40 Democratic lawmakers is praising the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for reportedly considering updates to free trade agreements with Canada, Mexico and Colombia that would rein in investor protections. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce earlier this month accused the agency of “secretly renegotiating” the investment chapters of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement through side letters, calling on the Biden administration not to continue with the effort. But a group of Democrats, led by House Ways & Means Committee member Lloyd Doggett (TX), House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro (CT) and Senate Finance Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), argues such efforts are necessary to prevent corporations from “weaponiz[ing] undemocratic international tribunals to attack domestic policies and prioritiz[ing] narrow corporate interests at the expense of those countries’ workers, consumers, small businesses, and the environment.

Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, said he hopes funding for pediatric cancer research is added back to the spending bill as Congress scrambles to pass a bill to fund the government on Friday.