Donald Trump may allow America’s last remaining nuclear arms control treaty with Russia to lapse. The New START agreement runs out on 5 February but “if it expires, it expires”, Trump told The New York Times. 

If the agreement, signed in 2010, is not renewed or replaced, it would leave the world’s two biggest nuclear powers “free to expand their arsenals without limit, for the first time in half a century”, said the paper. Between them, they have about 87% of the world’s nuclear warheads.

What is New START?
START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is the name used for a series of bilateral nuclear arms control treaties between the US and Russia, which began with START I in 1991. They aim to limit and reduce the number of nuclear weapons held by both countries. The New START agreement caps deployed strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550 each, and delivery vehicles (such as missiles and bombers) at 700.

Will it be replaced?
Moscow and Washington are both “preoccupied by the war in Ukraine”, so they haven’t “held any talks on a successor treaty”, said Reuters, although there have been some informal statements.

In September, Vladimir Putin proposed that both parties should adhere to the limits for a further 12 months. He has also argued that the nuclear stockpiles of Britain and France should be up for negotiation. Both France and Britain have rejected that suggestion, and Western experts are “divided” on it. Although it would “buy time to chart a way forward” and send a “political signal that both sides want to preserve a vestige of arms control”, it would also allow Russia to keep developing weapons systems outside the scope of the treaty.

Then there is China. One US analyst argued that agreeing to Putin’s proposal would “send a message” to Beijing that Washington would not “build up its strategic nuclear forces in response to China’s fast-growing nuclear arsenal”.

What does it all mean for the world?
Trump has previously said he would like to pursue “denuclearisation” with Russia and China, to reduce the “tremendous amounts of money” each nation spends on nuclear weapons.

But Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that Beijing’s accelerating nuclear programme may push America to increase its stockpile, which could lead to a “Cold War-like arms race”.

“Being late is one of the quickest ways to strain relationships,” said Indian Express. But is your chronically tardy friend actually being rude? “Time blindness” – the inability to determine how long a task will take, or conceptualise how much time has passed – is becoming an increasingly understood condition.

‘Built-in excuse’
The concept was first recognised in the 1990s, when Russell Barkley, a retired clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Massachusetts, linked time impairment to people with ADHD or autism, calling it “temporal myopia”.

Of course, “anyone can have issues with running late”, Stephanie Sarkis, a psychotherapist in Florida, told The Associated Press, but, for people with ADHD, there’s a “functional impairment”. This “impacts family life and social life”, as well as work and “money management”.

“What’s new is how broadly the label” of time blindness “now gets applied,” said Vice. It’s in danger of being used as a “built-in excuse” by people who hate small talk and fear arriving early, or those who feel they don’t have much control over their lives and want to reclaim a few minutes from responsibilities.

Practical solutions
If a person’s chronic tardiness is “one star in the constellation of symptoms”, said Sarkis, then it could be treatable. Studies suggest that stimulant medication prescribed for ADHD is also effective at treating time blindness. Other “solutions tend to be practical”, said Vice. These can include “external timers”, checklists and deliberately “overestimating how long things take”.

But the “uncomfortable truth” people need to face is that, even if their lateness comes from “different places”, it can still “feel the same on the receiving end”.

Italian farmers pour milk on Milan’s streets to signal their opposition to the EU-Mercosur trade deal, which has finally been approved after 25 years of negotiations between the EU and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Once signed off, it will create the world’s largest free-trade area, although some EU farmers fear it will affect their livelihoods.

Marco Bertorello / AFP / Getty Images

Essex: Otten Hall, Belchamp Otten
An impressive Georgian house in a dreamy setting of elegant landscaped gardens, within a conservation area. Main suite, 4 further beds (1 en suite), family bath, kitchen, 3 receps, snug, artist’s studio, duck pond, outbuildings, garden, parking. £1.6m; David Burr.

Northumberland: Lemmington Lodge, Lemmington
A fine, castellated timber lodge. 3 beds (2 en suite), family baths, kitchen, recep, parking, garden. OIEO £495,000; Sanderson Young.

Gloucestershire: Chantry Cottage, Syde
This charming Grade II Cotswolds cottage is in an idyllic setting. 3 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 4 receps, garden, parking. £1.7m; Savills.

Sutherland: Stoer View, Lairg
An attractive contemporary bungalow in a magical location, featuring a split-level wraparound decked terrace with stunning views over Badcall Bay. Main suite, 3 further beds, family bath, kitchen/living/ dining room, conservatory, garden, parking. OIEO £495,000; Strutt & Parker.

Anglesey: Morawelon, Llanfaethlu
A handsome house, set in nearly six acres, with panoramic views and private access to the beach. Main suite, 3 further beds, family bath, shower, kitchen, recep, outbuildings, garden, parking. OIEO £1.25m; Jackson-Stops.

Oldies like me have to face facts: we need repeat driving tests
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The i Paper
“I have just turned 76,” writes Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, and every year “brings new infirmities” – “one has to accept that and adjust”. The plan to “impose mandatory eye tests” on drivers over 70 “totally makes sense to me”. In fact, I think we should sit “another driving test”. My generation gets “frightfully cross” about changes that affect “the way we want to live and act”, but this “an essential safety measure”, not “a war on the old”.

Tehran is gasping, the Iranian regime is about to collapse
Tom Tugendhat in The Telegraph
The protests in Iran by people “of every age and demographic” are “about liberation”, writes MP and former Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Tugendhat. The “calls for the end of the ayatollahs” and “for freedom have been heard from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf”. The first days of 2026 “could hardly have gone worse for the 86-year-old Supreme Leader”. Although “he is fighting back”, his “regime is struggling” and “the question now is: what next?”

The perpetual adolescence of the childfree
Jimmy Nicholls in The Critic
“Not wanting kids is perfectly valid,” writes Jimmy Nicholls, but “the childfree movement could do with growing up”. It’s true that, “existential bliss aside”, parenting small children is “a trudge through sleep deprivation, contagious illnesses” and “a social calendar centred on soft play rather than the pub”. But the “hysterical fears, easy prejudices” and “apparent nihilism” of those who promote their “objections” to parenthood come across as “petulant, ill-considered and frankly childish”.