Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that US President Donald Trump’s threat to take Greenland would spell the end of Nato, the trans-Atlantic defence alliance. So who is the woman standing toe to toe with Trump?

A career politician in the truest sense, she was first elected as a member of the Danish Parliament in 2001, the day after her 24th birthday. After nearly two decades at the heart of the country’s politics, where she held roles including Justice Minister and Minister for Employment, she was elected Prime Minister of Denmark in June 2019, aged 41, the youngest leader in Danish history.

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing - her premiership has survived a pandemic, an early election, and inflation driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, as the jam-making mother-of-two faces her biggest international challenge to date - Stephen Smith looks back at the life and career of the woman named the ‘second most powerful person in Europe in 2026’ by Politico.

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Producers: Laurie Kalus, Katie Solleveld and Keiligh Baker

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The newly-appointed British ambassador to the United States, Sir Christian Turner, is a career diplomat whose experience spans almost three decades. He was about to take up the role of the UK's ambassador at the UN but after Lord Mandelson was abruptly pulled from his ambassadorial role in the US late last year, Sir Keir Starmer diverted Turner to replace him.

Born in Crawley in 1972, Turner attended the prestigious Marlborough College, before pursuing English literature at the University of Manchester, and later a doctorate at York. After flirting with documentary-making, he pivoted to public service, entering the Cabinet Office in the late nineties. He has closely advised several prime ministers, including Theresa May with whom colleagues say he shared his love of card games.

After an initial posting to Washington ended in 2006, his career has flourished at the foreign office. Mark Coles finds out more about the UK’s new man in DC, as he prepares to navigate ties with the Trump administration in a delicate moment for the so-called ‘special relationship’.

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Lord Peter Ricketts, former National Security Adviser

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Producers: Ben Carter, Katie Solleveld and Laurie Kalus

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KTN News Kenya

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The new Mayor of New York and at just 34, the youngest since 1892, is sworn in. He is the first Muslim and Indian American to lead the nation's largest city. Zohran Mamdani was born in Uganda, Africa, to parents of Indian descent and it was a childhood filled with bird song and nature. He was seven years old when his family moved to New York, to Manhattan's Upper West Side and that's where Mamdani began to make his mark. He started making music as rapper, Mr Cardamom but after releasing only a few songs, it seemed politics was a better fit.

Zohran Mamdani ran an impressive campaign, recruiting an army of volunteers 100,000 strong to pound the pavements and knock on doors. His social media videos in multiple languages credited with vastly increasing voter turnout from a range of South Asian communities. A left-wing democratic socialist, his message was laser focused on affordability; he promised to freeze the rents and make buses free, all paid for by a tax on New Yorkers making over $1 million per year. But now he's won the election can he actually deliver on those promises? Mark Coles hears from Mamdani's mother the filmmaker Mira Nair, colleagues and journalists to find out what shaped the man making history.

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Karl Bushby, the British man walking around the world, is almost home. The former paratrooper set off from Chile in 1998. He walked through the Americas, crossed the frozen ocean from Alaska to Russia, and last year became the first person to swim the Caspian Sea between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. These are all huge achievements in their own right but for Bushby they were just sections he had to complete to finish his epic journey.

Originally scheduled to finish in 2006, Bushby is now 56 and still going. Geopolitics has played its part, with Russian and Iranian visa rejections some of the main causes of delay.

He arrived in Budapest last month and with the English Channel being the only obvious remaining obstacle to navigate, he should be back in Humberside by this time next year.

Stephen Smith finds out who he is and what's kept him going for so long.

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Dame Mary Berry has been teaching Brits to cook for more than half a century. Aged 90, she remains a staple on our screens at Christmas.

Born in Bath in 1935, Berry was the middle child of two brothers. She struggled in school and studied Home Economics class instead of Maths.

Berry left school with no qualifications but continued to pursue her love of cooking, training at the famous Le Cordon Bleu school in France.

In 1971, she began her TV career with slots on shows like Collector’s World and Good Afternoon with Judith Chalmers, where she’d teach viewers how use newfangled items like freezers and tinfoil.

Over the next four decades, Berry would go on to write dozens of cookbooks, feature in and present her own cooking programmes, and teach thousands to cook in her Aga lessons, which she hosted in her own home.

But it was her role as a judge on Bake Off that introduced her to a new generation of viewers, and cemented her as one of the nations best-loved cooks.

Stephen Smith looks back on her decades-long career.

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David Harewood, who turned sixty this week, returns as Othello for the third time on stage. It’s a role he first took on in 1997, becoming the first black actor to play the part at London’s National Theatre.

Growing up in multicultural Birmingham in the sixties and seventies, he was born to immigrants from Barbados.

Described as gregarious by his teachers at school, Harewood showed an interest in entertaining from an early age and subsequently trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of the Dramatic Arts.

In his early twenties, he had a psychotic breakdown, something he spoke about in a recent documentary.

A string of roles in TV and film followed. And then came his breakthrough role as CIA agent David Estes in the acclaimed hit US TV show Homeland.

Mark Coles looks back at his career.

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Stephen Smith profiles the former racing driver and marketing guru who's turned around McLaren's fortunes and led them to Formula 1 glory. Born in California in 1971, friends and colleagues paint a picture of a fiercely competitive man with ‘noble intentions’.

After dropping out of high school Zak Brown’s life changed after meeting former F1 world champion Mario Andretti when he was 15. He traded watches he’d won on the Wheel of Fortune game show to buy a go-kart.

Brown won races as a driver but never really hit the big time. He then set up the world’s most successful motorsports marketing company before being lured to the F1 grid by McLaren in 2016. The team were in dire straits and in serious need of a cash injection. In less than 10 years, Brown has completely turned around the team’s fortunes and led them to back-to-back constructors’ championships. But will his refusal to favour one of his two drivers cost both of them the drivers’ championship?

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Presenter: Stephen Smith

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The Coventry MP who left the Labour party and joined Jeremy Corbyn's new left-wing ‘Your Party'. Zarah Sultana's husband and friends tell us how her upbringing shaped her politics and reveal her questionable taste in music. 'I think she would describe her taste as no taste', claims her husband Craig Lloyd. She was born in Birmingham to political parents who were both members of the Labour party. Her father even took her on a Labour party delegation to the occupied West Bank when she was a student, an important trip that inspired her to join those campaigning for a free Palestine and she's continued campaigning ever since. Her political career hasn't always been smooth sailing, leaving the Labour party over a row about lifting the two-child benefit cap. However her friends say she is driven by something deeper than her own career aims, she's trying to reshape British politics.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene is a darling of MAGA. But this week a disagreement with Trump over the Epstein files has seen him brand her as a traitor.

Born in 1974 in the suburbs of Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene had a conventional upbringing. She graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Business Administration, and later owned her family’s construction business and a stake in a CrossFit gym.

But like so many Americans, Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was a turning point for Marjorie Taylor Greene. In 2020, the newly-styled ‘MTG’ ran for election in her home state, winning a seat to the House of Representatives. Soon she was a recognised name on the national stage, known for her provocative style and endorsement of conspiracy theories.

In the years since, MTG has aligned herself so closely with the president that some called her ‘Trump in heels’. But her campaigning for the release of the Epstein files has caused a rift between her and her one-time hero.

Stephen Smith spoke to Professor Gina Yannitel Reinhardt, senior POLITICO staff writer Michael Kruse, QAnon expert Gabriel Gatehouse, political scientist Andra Gillespie and Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Patricia Murphy, about career, her life in politics and what this rift could mean for her future.

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David Hockney is arguably Britain’s most loved living artist. He's known as a colourful character, not only because of his vibrant, colour rich paintings of Californian landscapes, glittering blue pools, and thick Yorkshire woodlands, but also his own carefully curated image from the 1960s- bright blond hair and oversized thick black round glasses.

He delights in using new technology to create; from the polaroid, to the fax machine, and his iPad.

Now, more than 60 years into his career, aged 88, David Hockney is not slowing down.

His image has recently been depicted by drones in a light-show in the skies above Bradford, in a colourful tribute to the city’s most famous son.

Becky Milligan speaks to his muse, the textile designer Celia Birtwell, art historian Marco Livingstone, dancer and contemporary Wayne Sleep and art critic Waldemar Januszczak.

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