SWITZERLAND - At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, the Davos elites have gathered under intense scrutiny from surging populism and a mass rejection of globalism. Instead of the usual smug confidence, top figures openly confessed to collapsing trust and fading relevance, desperately calling for “dialogue,” “cooperation,” and renewed alliances while the ground shifts beneath them. BlackRock CEO and WEF co-chair Larry Fink set the tone of vulnerability early on, stating, “The world now places far less trust in us to help shape what comes next,” adding “If the World Economic Forum is going to be useful going forward, it has to regain that trust.” Fink conceded that the group is “an elite gathering trying to shape a world that belongs to everyone,” adding that, “Many of the people most affected by what we talk about here will never come to this conference. Dialogue is the only way a room like this can earn the legitimacy to shape ideas for people who aren’t in the room,” Fink further declared.

SWITZERLAND - Volodymyr Zelensky said Europe was weak and fragmented in a speech at Davos, attacking its leaders for being too indecisive to stand up to Russia, China or Donald Trump. The Ukrainian president said European powers were too busy arguing among themselves to join together and become a “truly global power”. In a remarkably aggressive address to the World Economic Forum on Thursday, he said the countries funding the Ukrainian war effort “love to discuss the future but avoid taking action today”. He singled out the decision to send “40 soldiers” to Greenland as insufficient to protect the island. The Ukrainian president mocked European nations for sending too few troops to the island for any meaningful defence. “Forty soldiers will not protect anything,” he said. “What message does that send to Putin, to China – and even more importantly, what message does that send to Denmark, your close ally?”

USA - Trump: Watching Iran closely, we have a massive armada heading in that direction. Trump added that he threatened Iran with US airstrikes if the Islamic Republic's regime carried out hangings of protesters and political dissidents as planned, and Tehran backed down as a result. "We're watching Iran. We have a lot of ships going that direction just in case... We have a massive fleet heading in that direction, and maybe we won't have to use it. We'll see." He also threatened that the administration would set a 25% tariff on anyone dealing with Iran. This will take effect "very soon," he warned.

SWITZERLAND - US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace is taking shape. It was launched in Davos at the World Economic Forum on Thursday with a signing ceremony for its charter members. This is an important move for the US administration and provides an opportunity to cement the initiatives that Trump has pursued. The Trump doctrine in his second term has focused heavily on ending conflicts around the world. He claims to have helped end eight conflicts. The Israel-Hamas War is one of the most important. While in Switzerland, Trump said, “Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want to do. And we’ll do it in conjunction with the United Nations.” Much work remains to be done now that the board is being formed. It remains to be seen whether more European countries will join. It is also unclear if other large countries, such as Russia, will join.

SWITZERLAND - Donald Trump's quest to gain control of Greenland appeared to have taken a leap forward at a high-stakes showdown with America's European allies in Davos. And it was the result of a familiar Trump negotiation strategy. Before his appearance at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort on Wednesday, Trump started by setting out a maximalist position that would cause widespread outrage. The president suggested he might invade the icy wasteland, which would constitute an attack on NATO ally Denmark, of which Greenland is an autonomous territory.

SWITZERLAND - NATO secretary general Mark Rutte has delivered a reality check to Donald Trump, telling him that one NATO soldier died for every two Americans in Afghanistan after the US President doubted the Western alliance. Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland yesterday, Trump said, 'I'm not sure that they'd be there for us if we gave them the call', as he tried to rally momentum for his now-abandoned plan to acquire Greenland from Denmark. 'I know them all very well. I’m not sure that they’d be there. I know we’d be there for them. I don’t know that they would be there for us,' the US President said.

GREENLAND - Greenland’s importance has not changed, even if the recent spotlight makes it feel that way. The island sits astride the shortest route between North America and Eurasia. That means that any long-range missile, bomber, or hypersonic system launched between the US and Russia would need to pass near or directly over Greenland. From Washington’s point of view, it’s a strategic necessity rather than a diplomatic provocation, and the island plays a key role in the defence of North America. Greenland is also part of the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap, a North Atlantic corridor that’s long been used to track Russian submarine movements from the Arctic into the Atlantic. During the Cold War, this choke point was critical for tracking Soviet naval assets – and it’s becoming so again.

SWITZERLAND - BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink - the new "mayor of Davos" after founder Klaus Schwab resigned last April - used the opening of the World Economic Forum this week to deliver an unusually stark warning to the global elite: Artificial intelligence, if left on its current trajectory, risks deepening inequality, hollowing out the professional class and becoming the next great failure of modern capitalism. “Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, more wealth has been created than in any time prior in human history, but in advanced economies, that wealth has accrued to a far narrower share of people than any healthy society can ultimately sustain,” Mr Fink said, adding "Most of the people affected by what we talk about here will never come to this conference. That’s the central tension of this forum: Davos is an elite gathering trying to shape a world that belongs to everyone."

USA - New York Times bestselling author and Breitbart News Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer details in his new book how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is “using our openness and generosity against us” by sending thousands of future military pilots posing as civilians to the United States to learn how to fly. Schweizer’s latest exposé, The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon, delves into the little-known concern of Chinese pilots being sent to the US for training with “virtually no oversight” before returning and serving in their own country’s military. “The People’s Republic of China has a pilot problem,” the investigative journalist writes in The Invisible Coup. “Beijing needs five thousand pilot cadets every year to meet the demand for both military and civilian pilots. Because the Chinese military tightly controls the country’s airspace, it can domestically produce only about 1,200 pilots a year. So, Beijing quietly erected a system to train three thousand of them a year in the United States.”

USA - With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures in the nation’s northern tier, a new storm is set to emerge this weekend that could coat roads, trees and power lines with devastating ice across a wide expanse of the South. The storm arriving late this week and into the weekend is shaping up to be a “widespread potentially catastrophic event from Texas to the Carolinas,” said Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It is likely to expand as far south as Texas and into the East. The storm has been named Winter Storm Fern by The Weather Channel. According to The Weather Company forecasters, Fern could affect over 180 million in the US with snow and/or ice, over half the nation’s estimated population.