In a break with tradition, US president Donald Trump invited a handful of world leaders to his second inauguration. Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni was among them. Her relationship with the new administration is crucial for her country, whose exports could suffer under a Trump tariff regime. The rest of the European Union, meanwhile, could gain a new link to Washington or see Meloni develop a dialogue that places Italy’s needs first. Specialist Jean-Pierre Darnis examines what’s at stake for Rome and Brussels, and looks at the debate in Italy over a potential infrastructure contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink – currently on hold amid concerns voiced by opposition lawmakers.

The billionaire Musk, whose raised-arm gesture at a post-inauguration rally struck many as a fascist salute, has stated on his social platform X that low birthrates “pose a bigger risk to civilization” than climate change and that “strong men”, emerging from hardship, “create good times”, while “good times create weak men”. Researcher Felix Schilk frames Musk’s posts within a millennia-old narrative of societal decadence and decline that opponents of democracy have used to urge “redeemers” such as Trump to “save” nations – a word Musk used in his recent claim that only the far-right AfD party “can save Germany”.

Research into childhood trauma – including studies of Romanian children who were abandoned and then neglected in orphanages after dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu introduced extreme policies to boost the birth rate in 1966 – has found a range of neurobiological effects. While neglect tends to affect parts of the brain that handle planning and reasoning, physical or sexual abuse affects areas that comprise the brain’s “alert system”, which can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. Macià Buades Rotger, a lecturer who specialises in social neuroscience, also notes that many people can overcome childhood adversity, and that neurobiological and psychosocial factors that lessen the impact of chronic stress can lead to “post-traumatic growth”.