A snap election triggered by Olaf Scholz will be crucial in shaping Europe’s response to last week’s events in the US

Spying a possible silver lining to events in the US, some commentators have speculated that the re-election of Donald Trump may at least concentrate minds among mainstream European leaders. Faced with a rapidly emerging new world order, and with homegrown far-right movements making the political weather, their response has at times appeared sluggish and unconvincing. Perhaps the shock of Trump 2.0 will finally convey the fierce urgency of now.

The sudden collapse of Germany’s fractious SPD‑led coalition government, as the US election verdict became clear, certainly points to a quickening of the political tempo. Olaf Scholz is a famously cautious, meticulous politician, with a reputation for equivocating. Not last week. In summarily sacking his finance minister, Christian Lindner, and triggering the exit of the Free Democratic party (FDP) from the government, Chancellor Scholz launched a sequence of events that will lead to snap elections in the spring, or even earlier.

Verse’s connection to nature can inspire awareness and hope amid the climate crisis, offering clarity beyond data

Poetry has a big debt to nature, its muse and source of metaphor for centuries. As the UN climate conference begins, it is time to pay it back. Poetry must give nature a voice to express its dire predicament. “I will rise,” declares the furious river in the Scottish makar Kathleen Jamie’s poem What the Clyde Said, After Cop26 – just as the River Xanthus in Homer’s Iliad rose in revenge against Achilles for filling it with so many bodies.

Ms Jamie’s poem appears in a new anthology, Earth Prayers , edited by the former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy. “We are in the age of anthropogenic climate breakdown, possibly the Age of Grief,” Ms Duffy writes in the foreword. The 100 poems, ranging from classics such as Matthew Arnold’s 1867 Dover Beach to #ExtinctionRebellion by Pascale Petit , remind us not just of the beauty of the natural world, but its fragility.

Financial lifeline could alleviate fears end-of-life services are at risk of closure from tax hike and higher wage bills

The government is likely to offer a financial lifeline to the hospice sector amid fears end-of-life care providers are at risk of closure due to the double blow of the employers’ national insurance rise and higher wage bills, the Guardian understands.

Officials have been looking at the options for providing more funding to hospices and other end-of-life care through the NHS partly to offset the impact of the national insurance rise , which the sector believes could cost it £30m a year.

• Coach will not be able to take opening training session
• United expect visa to be granted soon

Rúben Amorim is yet to be granted a visa despite starting his first official day as Manchester United’s new No 1 on Monday and will not be able to take an opening training session.

The 39-year-old will travel to the club on Monday to begin his tenure but, while United expect the visa to be granted soon, it is unclear what duties Amorim can actually undertake until this occurs.

• McGregor and Kühn score in 2-0 win at Kilmarnock
• Referee Nick Walsh cuts short minute’s silence

Callum McGregor and Nicolas Kühn continued their goalscoring form to ensure Celtic emerged from a difficult test at Kilmarnock with three points and top spot in the Scottish Premiership.

McGregor’s cross drifted into the net in first-half stoppage-time and Kühn sealed a 2-0 victory at Rugby Park when he finished from a tight angle in the 71st minute. It was the Celtic captain’s fifth goal of the season and Kühn’s 10th.

Celebrity hairdresser known for his pioneering 1970s styles the Wedge and the Scrunch

After Vidal Sassoon changed the look of women’s hair with his radical geometric cuts in the early 1960s, variants of his original shapes prevailed. Short cuts kept close to a head’s profile, longer bobs swung in movement but dropped straight as a curtain at rest.

Then in 1974, Sassoon’s young artistic director, Trevor Sorbie, saw how a model’s locks fell full and chunky as he pulled a brush through them, and, impromptu, cut that shape into her hair. This was 3D geometry. Voila, the Wedge, so striking that Vogue allotted it an unprecedented double-page spread. The cut was imitated worldwide, an emblem of the 70s like the platform soles and wide flares it balanced.

Total number of arrivals by small boats reaches 32,691 this year, up 22% on same time last year but lower than 2022

Nine boats carrying 572 people have been intercepted while attempting to cross the Channel, according to the Home Office.

The latest crossings come after Keir Starmer announced plans to tackle what he described as the “national security threat” of people smugglers, pledging an extra £75m and a new team of detectives.

Grey and misty weather has been a mainstay this month – but brighter skies should arrive soon

If things have felt especially gloomy this week, it is not just the politics.

The grey mist that seems to have descended is down to an outlier weather event that has been under way since the start of November, with some regions of England recording just a few minutes of sunshine this month.

Writer best known for the novel Gabriel’s Lament and a sympathetic biography of the brothel madam Cynthia Payne

The writer Paul Bailey, who has died aged 87, believed in ignoring surfaces or trying to see past them – to identify what was special about the ordinary and overlooked, and what was recognisable and understandable in the unfamiliar. His first career was in acting, and he always aimed to escape narrow egoism. Like the hero of his wonderfully entertaining novel Peter Smart’s Confessions (1977), Bailey “hated self-display” and was a “keen observer of it in others”.

His lifelong suspicion of preciousness was reflected in the priorities and approach of his work as novelist, critic and broadcaster. Reviewing his weekly Radio 3 conversations with writers (1988-92), the Daily Telegraph described him as a “perfect interviewer”.’