OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle will form a massive joint venture, dubbed Stargate, to fund American artificial-intelligence infrastructure. Announcing the deal alongside Donald Trump, the AI giants said they could spend as much as $500bn in four years. Stargate will initially build data centres in Texas, with more planned for other states. The president claimed the project would create “over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately”.
Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said his country had launched a “large-scale and significant military operation” in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the West Bank, to “eradicate terrorism”. The move comes a mere two days after a ceasefire in Gaza. At least ten people were killed and dozens injured, according to the Palestinian health ministry. On Monday Donald Trump reversed the Biden administration’s sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Mr Trump said he would hit the European Union with tariffs, a day after he threatened a 25% levy on goods coming into America from Mexico and Canada. He gave no timeline for hitting EU imports, or what the level might be. He reiterated that China was also in line for tariffs, perhaps as early as February 1st.
Volodymyr Zelensky said “at least 200,000” European peacekeepers would be needed to enforce any ceasefire deal with Russia. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Ukraine’s president also warned that “there is no ocean separating European countries from Russia.” Mr Zelensky is trying to secure a meeting with Mr Trump, who has repeatedly promised to quickly end the war in Ukraine.
Turkish authorities arrested nine people after a fire killed 76 people in a hotel in Kartalkaya, a ski resort, on Tuesday. The hotel’s owner was among those detained as part of the investigation. Witnesses claimed that the building’s fire alarms did not go off during the blaze. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, declared a day of mourning over the incident.
Brazil lost 30.8m hectares of vegetation to wildfires in 2024, an increase of 79% on the year before. According to a new report by MapBiomas, a monitoring group, nearly 60% of the loss was in the Amazon rainforest. Drought and deforestation—as well as blazes deliberately lit by farmers to clear land—were largely to blame.
News Group Newspapers, Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper business, issued an apology to Prince Harry over accusations that investigators employed by the Sun acted unlawfully. NGN also agreed to pay “substantial damages” to the prince as part of a settlement, which was reached before the matter went to trial. Prince Harry has engaged in lengthy legal battles against British tabloids.
Figure of the day: $2.2bn, the amount that Venture Global, an American energy firm, aims to raise at its IPO. Read the full story.
Correction: A previous edition of The World in Brief included a quotation that we incorrectly attributed to George Orwell. Sorry.
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