Ahead of high-stakes talks, people tell of alarm, thoughts of fleeing and lack of information on what to do if US invades

• Europe live – latest updates

When she was living in Denmark, the seemingly unshakeable safety of Greenland was a comforting source of reassurance for Najannguaq Hegelund. Whenever there was any instability in the world, she would joke with her family: “Well we will just go to Greenland, nothing ever happens in Greenland.”

But in the past two weeks – during which Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened military action on the largely autonomous Arctic territory the US president claims he “needs” for national security purposes, despite it being part of the Danish kingdom – Hegelund, 37, has realised this is suddenly no longer true.

Having lost the faith of his party and the public, the prime minister turns to dad jokes – and he’s even worse at those than running the country

Not another one. On Tuesday evening, the government announced that it wasn’t going to make digital ID cards mandatory after all. Just months after Keir Starmer had made digital ID cards the cornerstone of his plans to stop migrants working illegally.

It’s getting hard to keep up. At Christmas, we had the U-turn on inheritance tax on farms. In the New Year, we had a U-turn on business rates for pubs. All U-turns that were undoubtedly for the better. All U-turns that came with their own numbing predictability. Almost as if the government hadn’t thought things through. Surely not.

St Michael’s Mount launches major operation to clear up devastation caused by 112mph winds

The tidal island of St Michael’s Mount in the far south-west of Britain is usually a place of peace and quiet.

But it has become a hive of noisy activity as gardeners equipped with chainsaws and wood chippers get to grips with the devastating damage caused by Storm Goretti.

He has broken his ankles, endured 365 days in a cell and faced down the 20th century’s worst winter. Yet he says he is not a masochist. We meet the man Marina Abramovich calls ‘the master’

For one year, beginning on 30 September 1978, Tehching Hsieh lived in an 11ft 6in x 9ft wooden cage. He was not permitted to speak, read or consume any media, but every day a friend visited with food and to remove his waste.

The vital context here is that this incarceration was voluntary: Hsieh is a Taiwanese-American artist whose chosen practice is performance art, undertaking durational “actions” for long periods. Marina Abramović has called him the “master” of the form. In 1980, seven months after the end of Cage Piece, Hsieh began another year-long work, Time Clock Piece, which required him to punch a factory-style clock-in machine in his studio, every hour of each day for 365 days.

If you’ve ever refused to knock down a game’s difficulty level, or chased a purposefully pointless achievement, you might have this pernicious but pleasurable affliction

• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Studies on gaming’s effect on the brain usually focus on aggression or the cognitive benefits of playing games. The former topic has fallen out of fashion now, after more than a decade’s worth of scientific research failed to prove any causative link between video games and real-world violence. But studies on the positive effects of games have shown that performing complex tasks with your brain and hands is actually quite good for you, and that games can be beneficial for your emotional wellbeing and stress management.

That’s all well and good, but I’m obsessed with the concept of “gamer brain” – that part of us that is drawn to objectively pointless achievements. Mastering a game or finishing a story are normal sources of motivation, but gamer brain is inexplicable. When you retry the same pointless mini-game over and over because you want to get a better high score? When you walk around the invisible boundaries of a level, clicking the mouse just in case something happens? When you stay with a game longer than you should because you feel compelled to unlock that trophy or achievement? When you refuse to knock the difficulty down a level on a particularly evil boss, because that would be letting the game win? That’s gamer brain.

The world No 7 on his teenage trip to west Africa, his fundraising efforts and finding his form ahead of the Australian Open

ith a smile, Félix Auger-Aliassime says: “Well, imagine you’re 13. I had been to Europe. I had been to America. I live in Canada. And then you go to Togo; it’s a little different, you know?”

Auger-Aliassime, the seventh best tennis player in the world, was describing the homecoming he enjoyed 12 years ago as he first caught a glimpse of Togo, the country his father, Sam, was born in and emigrated from to Canada before his son’s birth. It was a significant moment in his life.

Talks fail to solve ‘fundamental disagreement’ over Arctic island controlled by Copenhagen

Donald Trump reiterated on Wednesday that the US needs Greenland and that Denmark cannot be relied upon to protect the island, even as he said that “something will work out” with respect to the future governance of the Danish overseas territory.

The remarks, which came after a high-stakes meeting between US, Danish and Greenlandic officials, indicate that fundamental differences remain between how Washington, Copenhagen and Nuuk see the political future of the island.

US president says ‘important sources’ also told him executions not going ahead as Iran extends order closing its airspace to commercial flights

• US and UK military to withdraw some personnel from Middle East amid Iranian threats

• Analysis: why western diplomats are wary of predicting end days for Iran’s regime

• Massacres and executions: what are we hearing from inside Iran? – podcast

For the first time in days, Iranians were able to make calls abroad from their mobiles on Tuesday, according to reporting by Associated Press. Texting services have not been restored, however, and nor has the internet.

Although Iranians were able to call abroad, they could not receive calls from outside the country, several people in the capital told Associated Press. The internet remained blocked, they said, though it is possible to access some government-approved websites.

Cloudfare - an internet infrastructure provider, and one of several companies and monitors tracking the status of internet traffic in Iran – said traffic volumes have remained “at a fraction of a percent of previous levels”. Its latest update as of 01:00 UTC (which is about three hours and 30 minutes ago), shows a continued widespread blackout. Iran has been under an internet shutdown since Thursday night.

Brief windows of connectivity were observed on Friday, but these did not last, according to Cloudfare.

Netblocks, an independent global internet monitor, also notes that while some phone calls from Iran are connecting, there is “no secure way to communicate” and the general public remain cut off from the outside world.

Survey by education thinktank finds ‘contradictory’ attitudes towards free speech at UK universities

One-third of students think Reform UK politicians should be barred from speaking on university campuses, according to a survey of student attitudes towards free speech that organisers described as “contradictory” and confusing.

While 69% of students told the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) survey that universities should “never limit free speech”, similar numbers also supported speaking bans on specific political parties.

Families are concerned about possibility for intelligence services to veto officers giving evidence after disasters

Keir Starmer is facing the prospect of Labour MPs rebelling on his manifesto-promised Hillsborough law after talks broke down with families over how the duty of candour would apply to serving intelligence officers.

Starmer was introduced at last year’s Labour conference by Margaret Aspinall, whose son James, 18, was one of the 97 people killed in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. She praised him for pushing forward with the bill after months of arguments over its future.