‘At the table or on the menu’: a turbulent Davos week with Trump’s circus in town

“If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, was the darling of Davos this week as he rallied resistance to Donald Trump’s smash and grab politics and his voracious appetite for other countries’ wealth and land.“Call it what it is,” he told delegates. “A system of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion”. He urged “middle powers” to band together or be crushed, and was rewarded with a standing ovation

Strong UK pay growth could limit interest rate cuts, Bank policymaker warns

The Bank of England may not be able to lower interest rates as much as expected this year, due to strong UK pay growth and expected rate cuts in the US, one of its top policymakers has said.Megan Greene, a member of the Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC), which sets interest rates in the UK, said she was concerned that wages appeared to be growing strongly again this year and this could stop inflation from easing.In a speech in London at the Resolution Foundation, a leading thinktank, Greene said a decline in wage growth “may have run its course”, pointing to recent Bank of England surveys that suggest employers are planning to hand out pay rises of 3.5% or more this year.The latest official figures showed wage growth, excluding bonuses, weakened slightly to 4

Young will suffer most when AI ‘tsunami’ hits jobs, says head of IMF

Artificial intelligence will be a “tsunami hitting the labour market”, with young people worst affected, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned the World Economic Forum on Friday.Kristalina Georgieva told delegates in Davos that the IMF’s own research suggested there would be a big transformation of demand for skills, as the technology becomes increasingly widespread.“We expect over the next years, in advanced economies, 60% of jobs to be affected by AI, either enhanced or eliminated or transformed – 40% globally,” she said. “This is like a tsunami hitting the labour market.”She suggested that in advanced economies, one in 10 jobs had already been “enhanced” by AI, tending to boost these workers’ pay, with knock-on benefits for the local economy

TikTok announces it has finalized deal to establish US entity, sidestepping ban

TikTok announced on Thursday it had closed a deal to establish a new US entity, allowing it to sidestep a ban and ending a long legal battle.The deal finalized by ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, sets up a majority American-owned venture, with investors including Larry Ellison’s Oracle, the private-equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX owning 80.1% of the new entity, while ByteDance will own 19.9%.The announcement comes five years after Donald Trump first threatened to ban the popular platform in the US during his first term

Bullish Borthwick tells England to target Six Nations triumph in Paris

Steve Borthwick is plotting an ­English raid on Paris and has called on his side to set their sights on clinching a first Six Nations title in six years in the French capital on Super Saturday.England have not won the title since the Covid-hit championship in 2020 and last managed the grand slam in 2016 when Eddie Jones’s side clinched a fifth straight victory at the Stade de France.Borthwick was in bullish mood after announcing a settled 36-man squad for the tournament, naming a pair of uncapped props in the 19-year-old Billy Sela and Emmanuel Iyogun amid injury problems in the front row, while Exeter’s 22-year-old flanker Greg Fisilau will hope to make his debut. The head coach also ­welcomes back George Furbank, who has struggled with calf and arm injuries recently and has not played for England since November 2024.A clutch of players including Fin Smith, Ollie Lawrence, Fin Baxter, Tom Roebuck and Ben Curry will head to next week’s warm weather training camp in Girona for rehabilitation but it remains to be seen whether they will be fit to face Wales at Twickenham for England’s opener on 7 February

Borthwick’s task is to strike the right balance with thriving England ready for takeoff | Robert Kitson

Precise formations, instant decision-making, absolute synchronicity. It is not hard to grasp why Steve Borthwick and his assistants spent an instructive day with the Red Arrows last month in preparation for a Six Nations campaign in which they would love to soar even higher and leave their rivals gazing at their vapour trails.Squadron leader Borthwick was particularly struck by the clarity of the Red Arrows operation – “They were so clear and to the point about what they must do better” – and how the world-renowned air display team choose their elite personnel. “The lead pilot basically said: ‘Every one of these pilots is a great pilot. What we’re going to select on is the character of these people