FRENEMIES

Not allies, not enemies: Britain’s ties with China


By AFP
January 26, 2026


Britain's Keir Starmer is in China this week, marking the first visit by a UK prime minister in eight years - Copyright POOL/AFP Jordan Pettitt

Britain’s Keir Starmer is in China this week, marking the first visit by a UK prime minister in eight years.

It is the latest in a string of Western leaders seeking a rapprochement with Beijing, as US President Donald Trump turns on traditional allies.

Starmer hopes to boost trade after years of strained relations, but must balance this with security concerns raised in the UK over a potential threat posed by China.

Here are the three key questions surrounding the visit:



– Where do relations stand? –



London and Beijing enjoyed what they describe as the “Golden Era” a decade ago — a time when then-prime minister David Cameron and Chinese President Xi Jinping famously enjoyed beers together at a British pub.

But relations soured since 2020, when Beijing imposed a national security law on Hong Kong and cracked down on pro-democracy activists in the former British colony.

Human rights abuses, alleged spying and cyber attacks, and China’s perceived support for Russia’s war in Ukraine also strained ties.

Nevertheless, China remains Britain’s third-largest trading partner, though UK exports to the East Asian country plummeted 52.6 percent year-on-year in 2025, according to British government statistics.

And in December, Starmer said that it would be a “dereliction of duty” not to engage with Beijing.



– Why is Starmer visiting now? –



Relations began to thaw soon after Starmer took the helm in 2024 following a closed-door meeting with Xi in Brazil in which the UK prime minister said Britain would look to cooperate with China on issues such as climate change.

But a protracted row over Chinese plans to build a vast new embassy in London complicated plans for Starmer to visit.

Beijing purchased the building, on the site of the former Royal Mint, in 2018, but opponents argued that the “mega embassy” will be used for espionage and pressure rights activists in Britain.

The plan was finally approved on Tuesday and made way for China’s invitation to Starmer with a UK government spokesperson saying intelligence agencies have plans to “manage any risks”.

Starmer’s trip also comes as Britain faces a rift with its closest ally, the United States, following Trump’s bid to seize Greenland and his brief threat of tariffs against Britain and other NATO allies.

With Trump increasingly tearing apart the global order, “China might not be an ally, but it is also not an enemy”, Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London told AFP.

Facing a lacklustre British economy, Starmer will also be looking to seal trade deals to boost growth at home.



– What’s on the table? –



Starmer will arrive with an entourage of industry executives hoping to promote British business through a UK-China CEO Council, a body that has lain dormant for years.

Created in 2018, the council once brought business and industry executives from both countries together when relations were in their “golden era”.

Starmer is also expected to raise the case of Hong Kong media mogul and democracy supporter Jimmy Lai, a British citizen and founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily tabloid.

The 78-year-old is facing years in prison after being found guilty of collusion charges in December under the new national security law.

Xi and Starmer are also likely to discuss Ukraine, where Beijing is accused of enabling Russia’s invasion through its close economic ties to Moscow.

The visit will represent a “shift toward managed re-engagement rather than renewed strategic trust”, according to Jinghan Zeng, an international relations scholar at City University of Hong Kong.

While progress could be made on climate change, trade, and people-to-people exchanges, “concrete outcomes will probably be modest”, he said.

Canada’s Marineland gets ‘conditional approval’ to sell whales to US

By AFP
January 26, 2026


An aerial view of belugas at Canada's now-shuttered Marineland theme park - Copyright AFP/File Angelos TZORTZINIS

Canada’s federal government on Monday gave Marineland conditional approval to sell its 30 imperilled beluga whales to parks in the United States, after rejecting an export request to China.

Marineland, a once lucrative tourist attraction near Niagara Falls, has said it is in deep financial trouble, cannot afford to care for the whales, and will be forced to euthanize them if it can’t find them a new home.

The park has been mired in controversy for years. Twenty animals, including 19 belugas, have died there since 2019, according to a tally by The Canadian Press.

Marineland, which is closed to visitors, thought it had a solution last year when it forged a plan to sell the whales to the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, a lavish theme park in China.

Fisheries Minister Joanne Thompson rejected that plan, saying it would perpetuate the whales’ exploitation.

Marineland presented Ottawa with a new plan last week to sell the 30 whales to a series of parks in the United States.

“Today, I met with Marineland regarding their proposal to export the remaining whales to US facilities,” Thompson said in a statement.

“I provided conditional approval,” Thompson said, adding that final permits would be granted once Marineland provides additional information.

Marineland has said all the beluga deaths at the park resulted from natural causes, but animal welfare officials from the province of Ontario have been investigating the park for several years.

Clickbait and ‘AI slop’ distort memory of Holocaust


ByAFP
January 26, 2026


The Auschwitz concentration camp -- seen here in a genuine AFP photo -- was liberated in January 1945

 - Copyright POOL/AFP Dominique JACOVIDES

Johanna Lehn and Pierrick Yvon

An emaciated and apparently blind man stands in the snow at the Nazi concentration camp of Flossenbuerg: the image seems real at first but is part of a wave of AI-generated content about the Holocaust.

As the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, experts warn that such content — whether produced as clickbait for commercial gain, or for political motives — threatens efforts to preserve the memory of Nazi crimes.

AFP’s Fact Check team has noted a surge of such imagery on social networks, distorting the history of Nazi Germany’s murder of six million European Jews during World War II.

Among the AI-generated images that have gone viral is one of a little girl with curly hair on a tricycle.

She is presented as Hannelore Kaufmann, a 13-year-old Berliner who purportedly died at the Auschwitz extermination camp, of which the 1945 liberation by Soviet troops is commemorated on Tuesday.

However, there is no record of her ever having existed.

Another example is a fake image created to illustrate the invented story of a Czech violinist called “Hank” at Auschwitz, which was called out as false by the camp museum.

After early examples emerged in the spring of 2025, by the end of the year “AI slop” on the subject “was being shown very frequently”, historian Iris Groschek told AFP.

On some sites such content was posted once a minute, said Groschek, who works at memorial sites in Hamburg, including the Neuengamme concentration camp.

With the exponential advances in AI, “the phenomenon is growing,” said Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the foundation that manages the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorials.



– Exploiting ’emotional impact’ –



Several Holocaust memorials and commemorative associations this month issued an open letter warning about the rising number of these “entirely fabricated” pieces of content.

Some of them are churned out by content farms which exploit “the emotional impact of the Holocaust to achieve maximum reach with minimal effort”.

The picture supposedly from Flossenbuerg camp falls into this category, as it was shown on a page claiming to share “true, human stories from the darkest chapters of the past”.

The memorials warned that fake content was also being created “specifically to dilute historical facts, shift victim and perpetrator roles, or spread revisionist narratives”.

Wagner points for example to images of “well-fed prisoners, meant to suggest that conditions in concentration camps weren’t really that bad”.

The Frankfurt-based Anne Frank Educational Centre warned of a “flood” of AI-generated content and propaganda “in which the Holocaust is denied or trivialised, with its victims ridiculed”.

By distorting history, AI-generated images have “very concrete consequences for how people perceive the Nazi era”, says Groschek.

The results of trivialising or denying the Holocaust are in evidence in the attitudes of some younger visitors to the camps, particularly from “rural parts of eastern Germany… in which far-right thinking has become dominant”, said Wagner.



– ‘Confident, loud, aggressive’ –



Staff have observed Hitler salutes as well as other provocative and disrespectful actions and comments.

Such behaviour is only “by a minority, but a minority that is increasingly confident, loud and aggressive”, he told AFP.

In their open letter, the memorials called on social media platforms to “proactively combat AI content that distorts history” and to “exclude accounts that disseminate such content from all monetisation programmes”.

“The challenge for society as a whole is to develop ethical and historically responsible standards for this technology,” they said, adding: “Platform operators have a particular responsibility in this regard.”

German Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer said in a statement to AFP: “I support the memorials’ call to clearly label AI-generated images and remove them when necessary.”

He said that making money from such imagery should be prevented.

“This is a matter of respect for the millions of people who were killed and persecuted under the Nazis’ reign of terror,” he said, reminding the platforms that they had “obligations” under the EU’s Digital Services Act.

Groschek said that none of the American social media giants responded to the memorials’ letter, including Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram.

TikTok responded by saying it wanted to exclude the accounts in question from monetisation and implement “automated verification”, according to Groschek.

Some of the fake Facebook posts about Hannelore and Hank were still online on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Greece probes factory fire as fifth victim found


By AFP
January 27, 2026


The explosion early on Monday gutted an entire section of the Violanta factory

 - Copyright Eurokinissi/AFP Thanasis Kalliaras

Investigators in Greece on Tuesday were looking into the causes of a fire that killed five workers at a biscuit factory in the country’s worst industrial accident in years.

The explosion early on Monday, caught on nearby security cameras, gutted an entire section of the Violanta factory outside the city of Trikala, 245 kilometres (150 miles) northwest of Athens.

“The case will be investigated to the end… possibly, even today, we may have an initial picture of what caused the fire,” Civil Protection Minister Giannis Kefalogiannis told state TV ERT.

Five women died and company staff told local media the toll would probably have been higher had other staff not been taking a break at the time.

Four of the victims were found soon after the blast but the fifth was only recovered on Tuesday morning as pockets of fire made the operation difficult, the fire department said.

The deaths have shocked local communities around Trikala, which provide much of the company’s workforce.

Colleagues and relatives said the women who died had chosen to work the night shift so they could be with their children during the day.

The Violanta company in a statement insisted it “strictly applies protocols and procedures, adhering to all measures for the safety of our staff and facilities”.

“We are mourning five of our own,” the company said, adding that it was “fully” cooperating with the investigating authorities.

The blaze is one of the deadliest industrial accidents in Greece for many years.

A local trade union on Monday said it had never been allowed to inspect the facility that burnt down.

Over 200 people died in work-related accidents in 2025, according to the federation of technical company employees.

In 1992, 15 people died in a refinery explosion in the industrial zone of Elefsina, near the port of Piraeus.

Three people had died in a dynamite factory explosion in Itea, central Greece, in 2022.

The Violanta plant in Trikala, the company’s first and biggest, produced 12,500 tonnes of biscuits, cookies and wafers per year, according to the company website.

The brand is among the fastest growing in Greece, with a major presence in shops, and exports to around 40 countries.

GLOBALIZATION REDUX

China’s Anta Sports to become top Puma shareholder


By AFP
January 27, 2026


Puma has been struggling with weak demand in recent months and saw sales decrease more than 15 percent in the third quarter of last year - Copyright AFP/File Christof STACHE

Chinese athletic goods giant Anta Sports will buy a controlling stake in historic German sportswear brand Puma for $1.79 billion, a stock exchange filing showed Tuesday, as it expands its international presence.

Anta will buy 43 million shares for 35 euros apiece from the French billionaire Pinault family’s Artemis group, the statement to the Hong Kong exchange said, giving it a 29 percent stake.

The price is a more than 60 percent premium to Puma’s last close, according to Bloomberg data, and values the deal at 1.51 billion euros.

Anta said in the statement that the stake would “further enhance its presence and brand recognition in the global sporting goods market”, including China.

“We believe Puma’s share price over the past few months does not fully reflect the long-term potential of the brand,” Anta chairman Ding Shizhong said.

While the statement said Anta had no plans to launch a full takeover of Puma, it will “carefully assess the possibility of further deepening the partnership between the two parties in the future”.

Artemis said the sale would allow it to “redeploy its resources to new value-creating sectors”.

The deal is expected to close by the end of the year, though it is subject to regulatory approvals, and the company will buy shares with cash.

Anta declined to comment on the deal when contacted by AFP.

The firm, based in China’s southeastern Fujian province, is one of the world’s largest sportswear companies.

Founded in 1991, it is the parent company of many global brands through its subsidiary Amer Sports, including Wilson, Arc’teryx and Salomon.

Anta closed its acquisition of Finland-based Amer in 2019, leading a consortium in a deal worth about $5.2 billion.

It also controls rights in the vast Chinese market for foreign sportswear firms including Fila and Descente.

Anta has become the world’s third-largest sportswear brand following Nike and Adidas, according to data analytics firm Euromonitor International.

Puma, however, has been struggling with weak demand in recent months and saw sales decrease more than 15 percent in the third quarter of last year.

CEO Arthur Hoeld, who was appointed last year, has said the brand had become “too commercial” and was undergoing a “reset” last year to improve on brand heat, distribution quality and product offering.

Hoeld told investors in October that the company’s goal was to “become a top three sports brand in the future again”.

He deemed 2026 a “year of transition”, vowing a return to growth in 2027.

Puma is set to release its 2025 full-year financial results on February 26.

Spain unemployment drops below 10% in first since 2008


By AFP
January 27, 2026


A busy restaurant terrace in Palma Beach, in Palma de Mallorca, on July 18, 2025 - Copyright AFP JAIME REINA

Spain’s historically stubborn unemployment fell below 10 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, official data showed on Tuesday, a first since the 2008 financial crisis.

The jobless rate in the European Union’s fourth-largest economy was 9.93 percent in the period, 0.52 percentage points below the preceding quarter, the National Statistics Institute said.

It was the lowest reading since hitting 9.6 percent in the first quarter of 2008, at the onset of a global recession that left deep scars in the Spanish economy.

“For the first time since 2008, unemployment falls below 10 percent. Spain has almost 22.5 million people with jobs, a new record,” Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez posted on X.

The service sector, which includes the vital tourism industry that represents around 13 percent of annual economic output, accounted for the bulk of the fall, alongside agriculture and industry, the statistics office said.

Spain’s economic growth has been consistently outperforming peers in the developed world, but its unemployment rate has been the highest in the European Union.

The rate peaked at around 27 percent in early 2013 in the wake of the economic crises but has steadily fallen in recent years as the tourism sector performed strongly after the Covid-19 pandemic.

The leftist government is aiming to bring it down to around eight percent by the end of its term in 2027, which it says corresponds to full employment.

Spain to regularise 500,000 undocumented migrants


By AFP
January 27, 2026


Spain is one of Europe's main gateways for migrants fleeing poverty, conflict and persecution - Copyright AFP Antonio SEMPERE

Spain’s left-wing government approved Tuesday a plan to regularise around 500,000 undocumented migrants by decree, the country’s latest break with harsher policies elsewhere in Europe.

Migration Minister Elma Saiz the beneficiaries would be able to work “in any sector, in any part of the country”, and extolled “the positive impact” of migration.

“We are talking about estimations, probably more or less the figures may be around half a million people,” she told public broadcaster RTVE.

Saiz said at a news conference after Tuesday’s cabinet meeting that “we are strengthening a migration model based on human rights, integration, coexistence, and compatible with economic growth and social cohesion”.

The measure will affect those living in Spain for at least five months and who applied for international protection before December 31, 2025.

Applicants must have a clean criminal record. The regularisation will also apply to their children who already live in Spain.

The application period is expected to open in April and continue until the end of June.

The plan will be passed through a decree that will not need approval in parliament, where the Socialist-led coalition lacks a majority.

The conservative and far-right opposition lashed out at the government, saying the regularisation would encourage more illegal immigration.

Alberto Nunez Feijoo, head of the Popular Party, the main right-wing opposition group, wrote on X that the “ludicrous” plan would “overwhelm our public services”.

“In Socialist Spain, illegality is rewarded,” he said, vowing to change migration policy “from top to bottom” if he took power.



– ‘Social justice’ –



The Spanish Catholic Church was among the organisations praising the move, commending “an act of social justice and recognition”.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says Spain needs migration to fill workforce gaps and counteract an ageing population that could imperil pensions and the welfare state.

Sanchez has said migration accounted for 80 percent of Spain’s dynamic economic growth in the last six years.

Official data released Tuesday showed that 52,500 of the 76,200 people who pushed up employment numbers in the final quarter of last year were foreigners, contributing to the lowest jobless figure since 2008.

Spain’s more open stance contrasts with a trend that has seen governments toughen migration policies under pressure from far-right parties that have gained ground across the European Union.

Around 840,000 undocumented migrants lived in Spain at the beginning of January 2025, most of them Latin American, according to the Funcas think-tank.

Spain is one of Europe’s main gateways for irregular migrants fleeing poverty, conflict and persecution, with tens of thousands of mostly sub-Saharan African arrivals landing in the Canary Islands archipelago off northwestern Africa.

According to the latest figures published by the National Statistics Institute, more than seven million foreigners live in Spain out of a total population of 49.4 million people.

Teens underwhelmed by France’s social media ban


By AFP
January 27, 2026


France became the first country in Europe to pass a ban on children using social media - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP MARIO TAMA

Marine Pennetier with Simon Dennis and Benjamin Massot

Teens and tweens were split Tuesday over a looming ban on social media for under-15s in France, with some admitting the risks of overuse — while others laughed off the measure and vowed to dodge it.

France’s National Assembly passed a bill in a marathon overnight session that would impose a minimum age for using social media, becoming the first country in Europe to follow Australia, which banned under-16s from TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and other sites last year.

Parents keen to curb their kids’ phone use cautiously welcomed the measure, which was championed by President Emmanuel Macron and must now pass the Senate.

The legislation’s targets themselves were divided — some acknowledging the dangers social media can bring, others venting their incomprehension and plotting ways to get around a ban.

Esther, a high school student in Paris, said the idea was “super” — on paper.

“But the problem is, when (kids) turn 15, they’re going to get submerged by this wave. That’s the year you start high school, and you need to be focussing on other things besides social media. They should ban it for under-14s instead,” she said.

And not all social networks are equal, she insisted.

“The ones where you scroll non-stop (should be banned), because that’s what ruins your brain,” she said. But other apps “are key for social life”.

That view is shared by 11-year-old middle-schooler Aya, also from Paris.

“Social media makes some kids crazy, they stop doing anything else. And there are disgusting things on TikTok, it’s not appropriate for kids,” she said.

But “at the same time, it’s important in an emergency. I use WhatsApp to talk to my parents. They’re not going to ban WhatsApp, are they?”

WhatsApp and other private messaging platforms are not covered by the ban.

At a high school in Marseille, one 16-year-old said she had already imposed a ban on herself.

“I deleted TikTok, it was taking up too much of my time,” she said.

“I couldn’t get my homework done, my head was always somewhere else… Honestly, I think it’s a great idea.”

An August 2025 poll found 79 percent of parents and 67 percent of young people in France favoured a social media ban for under-15s.

Polling firm Odoxa found 46 percent of young people said they had felt low self-esteem comparing themselves to others on social networks, and 18 percent said they had been harassed or insulted online.



– Brother’s ID –



Parents meanwhile questioned the feasibility of the ban, while some said more attention needed to be focussed on prevention.

A ban “is a start, but it’s not enough”, said Emmanuelle Poudreas, whose son Clement took his own life in 2024 at age 15 after being cyberbullied on WhatsApp.

“We need the state to mobilise at every level to prepare our young people to be digital citizens,” she told AFP.

“How can we ban digital tools in middle and high schools when regional governments are financing those tools and they are being provided to students to use?”

National parents’ federation PEEP raised similar concerns.

“There’s this impression we’ve solved a problem. No. We’ve become aware of a problem, but we haven’t fixed it,” the organisation’s president, Emmanuel Garot, told AFP.

He called for more education on the risks of social media and stricter regulation of tech companies and “their damned algorithms”.

“Let’s not fool ourselves, kids are inventive. They’ll find ways to get around the ban soon enough — VPN or other social networks we barely know about.”

Ylies, a third-year middle-schooler in Paris who uses Snapchat and TikTok, already has a plan.

“What am I supposed to do? Stare at the wall?” he said.

“I’ll just open a new account and say I was born in 2004. If they ask me for ID, I’ll use my brother’s or one of his friends’.”

Hidden rhythm brings microscopic particles into unison


By Dr. Tim Sandle
SCIENCE EDITOR
DIGITAL JOURNAL
January 27, 2026


Scientists have long known that injecting a large quantity of reflective particles into the upper atmosphere could cool the planet - Copyright NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS (JAPAN)/AFP Handout

Swimming in a shared medium makes particles synchronise without touching, according to a new academic study. This means particle physics meets nature – from blinking fireflies to cells in a beating heart, synchronization occurs across nature. Researchers found similar behaviour emerges in a simple system of microscopic particles.

The study showed how , when suspended in liquid, the particles naturally oscillated together as though they sensed one another’s motion. By using computational modelling, the scientists found the particles influence each other’s motion by stirring their shared medium. Applications include vibration control and improving acoustics.

In terms of significance, the research offers a framework for designing adaptive, frequency-tuneable materials. These are advanced, smart materials designed to dynamically adjust their operating frequencies, stiffness, or resonance properties in response to external stimuli like temperature, electricity, magnetism, or mechanical deformation.

Northwestern University engineers have discovered what happens when many of particles come together. The y discovered that groups of tiny particles suspended in liquid oscillate together, keeping time as though they somehow sense one another’s motion. Nearby particles fall into sync, forming clusters that appear to sway in unison — rocking back and forth with striking coordination.

According to computer simulations, the conductor behind this coordination is the liquid itself. As each particle oscillates, it gently stirs the surrounding fluid. Those tiny ripples flow outward to nudge neighbouring particles.

Even though the particles do not directly touch one another, they influence each other’s motions. The motion of the fluid enables the particles to “feel” one another at a distance.

The findings could help explain how complex, collective behaviour emerges without communication or signalling. By moving through a shared medium, individual components can influence one another’s timing. The results suggest that in biological systems, too, the environment itself — whether fluid, tissue or air — may play a crucial role in orchestrating collective rhythms.

Called synchronization, emerging coordination across a group of individuals is common in nature and engineered technologies. Yet the researchers did not expect to see this phenomenon emerge so clearly in a simple physical system.

By combining the detailed simulation with experiments and a simplified mathematical model, the team demonstrated that fluid-driven interactions alone could explain why the particles synchronized. The researchers even could predict which colour (or oscillation phase) each particle would adopt based on its position within the group.

Now that the underlying mechanism is clear, the researchers wish to learn how to control the synchronisation. By tuning particle density, geometry and confinement, future work could turn the collective motion on and off — laying groundwork for programmable materials and microscale systems with functions that emerge from coordinated behaviour.

The findings also offer a new physical framework for understanding how synchronization arises in living systems, where motion through shared fluids plays a central role.

The research appears in the journal Nature Communications, titled “Self-oscillating synchronematic colloids”.

Lula, Macron push for stronger UN to face Trump ‘Board of Peace’


By AFP
January 27, 2026


Trump launched his "Board of Peace" initiative last week in Davos - Copyright AFP/File Fabrice Coffrini

Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and France’s Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday defended the United Nations in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s creation of a “Board of Peace.”

Both Brazil and France were invited by Trump to join his new global conflict resolution organization, to be headed by Trump himself.

France has already declined the invitation.

The leftist Lula has echoed concerns that Trump is seeking to create a rival to the UN “where he is the owner.”

In a phone call on Monday, he asked Trump to limit the activities of the “Board of Peace” to Gaza and “include a seat for Palestine.”

In a separate call on Tuesday, Lula and Macron “defended the strengthening of the United Nations” and agreed that “peace and security initiatives must be in line with the mandates of the (UN) Security Council,” Brazil’s presidency said.

Trump launched his “Board of Peace” initiative last week in Davos, flanked by allies including Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Argentina’s Javier Milei.

Although originally intended to oversee Gaza’s rebuilding, its charter does not seem to limit its role to the Palestinian territory.

Permanent members must pay $1 billion to join, leading to criticisms that the board could become a “pay to play” version of the UN Security Council.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over the war in Gaza, has said he will join.