Table of contents for 1546 in The Week

Trump’s strikes on Iran: a “spectacular success”? “He came, he bombed, he ended the war.” That’s how Donald Trump would sum up the events of the past week, said The Economist, but the reality was a little more complicated. Last Saturday, 48 hours after giving Iran a two-week deadline, the US president launched the largest-ever strike by B-2 stealth bombers. Seven of the planes undertook a 37-hour surprise mission during which they dropped 14 bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Trump hailed the operation as a “spectacular military success”, saying the bombs had “totally obliterated” the sites. The next day, in what was seen as a token response, Iran fired 14 missiles at a US base in Qatar. All but one of the missiles were intercepted and there were no…

Controversy of the week The assisted dying bill “It is done,” said The Times. “In perhaps the most consequential legislation so far this century, the relationship between the state and the individual has now been fundamentally altered.” The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which will allow doctors to administer fatal drugs on request to adults with a terminal diagnosis of six months or less, passed the Commons by 314 to 291 votes last Friday. Introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, it is a “flawed and dangerous” bill that is hazy in principle – terminal diagnoses are often proved wrong – and lacks necessary safeguards: an amendment refusing the “service” to those who fear being “a burden” was rejected. Britain is “a less civilised country today”, said The Daily…

Maternity and neonatal services in England will be subject to a rapid national investigation. The Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced that investigators would scrutinise ten of the worst-performing maternity units in detail, and give a “system-wide” review of the failings in the sector. The announcement followed a number of maternity scandals at hospitals across the country, which have uncovered deaths and injuries of both babies and their mothers due to failures in their care. The review will begin this summer, with a report due back in December.…

Reims, France Champagne shame: The conditions endured by grape pickers in the Champagne region of France have been put under the spotlight by a human-trafficking trial that began in Reims last week. Svetlana Goumina, the Kyrgyz owner of a recruitment agency, is accused of luring 57 West African migrants, most reportedly undocumented, to the region from Paris, on the promise of well-paid work. On arrival, they were housed in cramped, unsanitary sheds, fed starvation rations, threatened with knives when they complained, and made to work for ten hours a day for little or no pay. An inspector who visited, in response to a local’s tip-off, described the conditions as a “serious breach” of the workers’ “health, safety and dignity”. Goumina is on trial alongside two associates and a French subcontractor…

1 Be Prepared, written and performed by Tom Lehrer 2 Waltz in C-sharp minor, Op. 62 No. 2 by Chopin, performed by Khatia Buniatishvili 3 Well, Did You Evah? by Cole Porter, performed by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra 4 A Hard Day’s Night by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, performed by The Beatles 5 Never Say No by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, performed by The Fantasticks New Off-Broadway Cast 6 Swan Lake, Op. 20, Act IV: No. 28 Scène. Allegro agitato by Tchaikovsky, performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra (cond. Richard Bonynge) 7* It Ain’t Me Babe by Bob Dylan, performed by Joan Baez 8 Short People, written and performed by Randy Newman * Choice if allowed only one record Book: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust Luxury: a hot shower, a fluffy towelling robe…

Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb” earlier this month was a stunning success. Drones were smuggled into Russia in “sheds”, loaded onto lorry containers. The lorries were parked near five air bases spread across Russia; the containers’ roofs retracted simultaneously to release drone swarms, destroying or damaging at least 20 crucial aircraft, some of which were irreplaceable. The operation was also, according to many analysts, a wake-up call for Western armed forces. If the Ukrainians were able to smuggle drones into an authoritarian state like Russia (and Israel was able to mount a similar operation in Iran), wouldn’t Nato countries be vulnerable to China or Russia in the same way? In particular, there are worries that drones could be brought into the US aboard Chinese container ships. In The Atlantic magazine, the military…

The first two drugs to have been shown to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s will not be available on the NHS. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has ruled that the benefits of donanemab and lecanemab are too modest to justify their cost. The drugs work by clearing the toxic protein amyloid from the brain, and have been found to delay the transition from mild to moderate dementia, potentially giving patients four to six extra months in which they could live without daily care. But some scientists have doubted if the benefits would be noticeable in a real-world setting. The cost of treating the 70,000 or so eligible NHS patients has been estimated at £1.5bn a year for the drugs alone; once other costs – including regular scans…

If a mother kills her newborn infant, she risks being sent to jail, said Bel Mooney in the Daily Mail. But if she takes a pill to poison her unborn child at full term, she will face no sanctions. It makes no sense to me, but last week, MPs voted for that to become the law. In the free vote, 379 to 137 supported the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi’s amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales. This would make it lawful for a woman to terminate her own pregnancy, by any means, at any point up to birth. In the late 1960s, I supported the campaign that led to abortion becoming legal in some circumstances. I believe in a woman’s right to choose.…

“To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.”Hubert Humphrey, quoted in The Hill “Be nice to America – or we’ll bring you democracy.”US bumper sticker popular after the invasion of Iraq, quoted on The Knowledge “The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people that they will have a chance of maltreating someone.”Aldous Huxley, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “When history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity.”C.L.R. James, quoted in The Spectator “Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation.”Chess grandmaster Max Euwe, quoted on UnHerd “Power does not corrupt: it reveals.”Adage, quoted in The Times “War hath no fury like…

Victorian values To the Financial Times Thomas Aubrey argues that we should return to Victorian funding models for infrastructure. And he cites London’s sewage system, constructed by my great-great-grandfather. Sir Joseph Bazalgette essentially borrowed against future municipal tax revenues. In fact, his scheme did have one similarity with today’s great works: overspend. Benjamin Disraeli as chancellor let him borrow £3m. Then Sir Joe deliberately “over-specced” the project, designing it for a future London population of 4.5 million when, in 1858, it was just above two million. He not only understood that the capital would grow, but also that cleansing the city would allow it to grow. The result was that he had to go back to the chancellor in 1862 (William Gladstone) and get another £1.5m authorised. Well worth it,…

“Readers of a sensitive disposition” might want to look away now, said Clive Davis in The Times, because it is not possible to describe this new musical at Stratford East without “wading through a vast expanse of very British toilet humour”. Created by the team behind the hit comedy podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno, Lovestuck is based a story – which went viral online in 2017 – about a young woman who produced an unflushable poo while on a first date. Her solution to this embarrassment was to wrap it up and throw it out of her date’s bathroom window. Alas, it became wedged between two panes of glass, and she then became stuck upside down as she tried to retrieve it. “There’s a hell of a lot of…

Although it is based on Mary S. Lovell’s biography of the Mitford family, this new drama “could easily be mistaken for a work of fiction”, said Megan Bull in the Radio Times. The aristocratic Mitford sisters (Nancy, Diana, Decca, Pamela, Deborah and Unity) were almost implausibly “outrageous”, and their antics – political and romantic – enthralled the public in the 1930s. Narrated by Nancy (Bessie Carter), the series traces the family’s fortunes from the Wall Street crash to the eve of the Second World War, by which point Diana (Joanna Vanderham) had eloped with Oswald Mosley, while Unity (Shannon Watson) had become a devotee of Adolf Hitler. The series is full of “fun, fashion and froth”, but it also poses a serious question: “Could you stand by your family, no…

Visitors wanting to see the Mona Lisa can expect to pay a supplement in addition to the basic entrance fee for the Louvre, when it reopens after its renovation, says Simon Calder in The Independent. Work on the “Louvre New Renaissance” will begin next year, with some parts of the €800m renovation continuing until 2031. The Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, recently confirmed that da Vinci’s painting is set to get its own 3,000sq m “Mona Lisa trail” situated beneath the main courtyard. Other proposed changes include the addition of a new entrance for visitors. General entrance fees will cost €30 (£25.50) for non-EU citizens, while European visitors will visit at a discounted rate of €22 (£19). It is not known how much the additional Mona Lisa fee will be.…

Suspecting Brian of infidelity because of recent secretive behaviour, Miranda says she wants to end things. When he confesses he’s been taking bridge lessons with Martyn, Miranda challenges him to a tournament. As Pip and Stella plan a picnic, the school calls to say that Rosie has upset another child – Pip doesn’t believe it. Kate is excited about becoming a grandmother; Jakob tells her he doesn’t want to go on Peggy’s family holiday. With Fallon off and a stock order missing, it’s chaos at The Bull, but the village shop saves the day. At the bridge tournament, Brian is sure that Justin is up to something. The evening goes well for Brian and Miranda, and they admit they love one another. Stella tries to talk sense into Justin about…

Ragù Unit 25, Cargo 2, Museum Street, Wapping Wharf, Bristol (0117-911 0218) Bristol’s Wapping Wharf, with its many shops and restaurants, has become a “true independent food destination”, says Grace Dent in The Guardian. Its newest addition is Ragù, a “cool, minimal, romantic ode to Italian cooking” housed in a converted shipping container. Owned by Mark and Karen Chapman (who also run nearby Cor), it offers what could be “some of the most skilful cooking anywhere in Britain right now”. Our meal began with crisp, lightly battered artichoke fritters, served with “punchy aïoli”. Then came crespelle (a type of cheese-smothered pancake) in tomato brodo – a dish that isn’t as humble as its sounds. It was the “richest, most drinkable-by-the-bucket tomato brodo I’ve ever tasted”. Of the mains, the “star…

Duolingo offers relatively easy lessons in more than 40 languages. It can be quite addictive, and has a “streak” feature to keep you motivated. There’s no limit to how many languages you can learn for free, but the quantity of material varies by language. The paid version has lots of bonus content. Busuu has courses in 13 languages with well-structured, culturally relevant lessons, using the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). It also has paid options. Quizlet enables you to make digital flash cards and browse those made by other people. It has a special feature for grammar and vocab learning. You have to pay to access quite a lot of it. With a colourful layout and lots of images, Drops is good for visual learners and those…

Jnane Rumi Marrakech Recently opened as an 11-bedroom hotel, this 1960s villa sits in “oasis-like” gardens a mere five minutes’ drive from Marrakech’s medina. Few other properties in the city offer such a perfect combination of peace and convenience, says Arta Ghanbari in House & Garden, and its interiors are lovely too. Sensitively restored, they combine traditional tiled floors, handmade textiles and local antiques with “bold splashes” of deep colour, and an exceptional collection of modern North African art. The “Moroccan-meets-modern-French” cuisine is good, and there’s a hammam, and a long outdoor pool. Doubles from £500 b&b; jnanerumi.com.…

Revolut: Musk-style pay deal Is Revolut’s founder Nikolay Storonsky on Elon Musk’s level? He’d certainly like to be paid in similar style, said Patrick Hosking in The Times. Under “an incentive deal” – struck years ago, but leaked last week – he stands to gain a “shares jackpot” worth billions, if he manages “to treble the valuation” of the London-based digital bank from the present $45bn to $150bn. Storonsky already owns 25% of the business he founded in 2015; this deal means he could be handed an additional 10% stake. Share payouts like this are controversial because “they significantly dilute other shareholders” – one reason why a Delaware court declared a planned $56bn payout to Musk by Tesla “null and void” last year. But unlike Tesla, Revolut is still privately…

Farage sets his sights on the Bank Tom Rees Bloomberg In the nearly three decades since Gordon Brown handed control of interest rates to the BoE, the move has been broadly viewed as very successful in helping to keep inflation under control, says Tom Rees. That consensus is now breaking down – and the catalyst is the surge of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party. In its 2024 manifesto, Reform “vowed to revamp the BoE’s bond operations” – claiming £35bn a year could be saved by ceasing to pay banks interest on bonds held at the BoE as part of its £895bn QE operation. Now, in an echo of Donald Trump, the party is “challenging” the Bank’s independence – with Farage privately discussing the possibility of taking back control of interest…

The week’s best shares Amaroq Minerals The Mail on Sunday Greenland-based Amaroq owns mining rights to gold and rare-earth minerals that are crucial for wind turbines, EVs, smartphones and military kit. Profits from ramped-up gold production should accelerate exploration. Buy. 80p. Empire Metals The Mail on Sunday Titanium is vital for defence and renewable energy – and essential for paints, plastics and paper. Empire’s vast mine of exceptionally pure titanium dioxide in Australia is state-backed. Still, not for the faint-hearted. Buy. 23p. Fresnillo The Times The Mexico-based precious-metals miner is benefitting from the advance of gold, which JPMorgan forecasts could rise to $6,000/oz. Production is beating expectations, with costs set to fall. Buy. £14.47. United Airlines Holdings The Daily Telegraph One of the most profitable in the sector, the US…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1471 Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 7 July. Send it to The Week Crossword 1471, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. By Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 6 Do you get it with an attractive kipper? (6,5) 9 Flying bats around one − they usually come out at night (5,5) 10 Old boxer getting caught on bet (4) 11 All these bat and bowl in a game (8) 13 Act like an idiot and get lost (4,2) 14 Hot tripe with cold…

British adults now spend more time on their mobile phones than watching TV. The gap between the two had been steadily decreasing for years, but according to The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, watching telly had retained the edge until this year. Its survey revealed that adults use their phones for three hours and 21 minutes a day, on average, up from 1 hour and 17 minutes ten years ago. They watch TV for three hours and 16 minutes a day – seven minutes less than in 2015. Supermarkets are reporting soaring sales of “functional” health drinks, as younger consumers swap alcohol and caffeine for matcha tea, kefir, mushroom “shots” and kombucha. Ocado says its sales of such drinks are up 54% year on year.…

Councils in more deprived areas of England are set to receive a greater share of government funding, under a planned overhaul announced by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner. Councils get around half their funding from central government, calculated according to a complex formula that ministers believe does not properly reflect higher demand for council services in poorer areas, and their weaker council tax income due to lower property values. Illustrations of what this will mean for each area will be published in the autumn. The Tory MP Greg Smith accused Labour of waging “class war”.…

Boca Chica, Texas SpaceX fireball: Elon Musk’s hopes of sending an unmanned mission to Mars next year took a further blow last week when a prototype Starship blew up before launch. The explosion was reportedly the result of a “major anomaly” in a high-pressure gaseous nitrogen tank – known as a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) – which is used to store and deliver propellant to the engines. The ship was almost fully fuelled with 1,200 tonnes of liquid oxygen and liquid methane when it exploded, and part of SpaceX’s Starbase complex in Texas was damaged in the resulting fireball. The distance between Earth and Mars varies from 34 million to as much as 250 million miles, making launches very time-sensitive. The next “transfer window” falls in late 2026, and…

“My friends and I increasingly find ourselves reminiscing about our pre-smartphone childhoods, like refugees remembering a country left long ago. We recall the endless waiting and the various means we used to pass the time. We examined paving stones. We peered into cracks and picked satisfying paint flakes from the walls. In the car, we misted the glass with our breath and raced the raindrops. We chewed paper, bit our forearms, spent hours face-down studying lawns. If you’d asked us back then, we would have said we were bored to death. But we lived in constant communion not with a touchscreen but with the real world, and in retrospect it was sort of wonderful.” Mary Wakefield in The Spectator…

Politicians love to ride white elephants George Monbiot The Guardian Will it carry prestige? Will ministers be able to pose beside it in hard hats? Will it provide lucrative contracts for big corporations? These are the criteria that guide infrastructure spending, says George Monbiot. Consider the Lower Thames Crossing, a scheme expected to cost as much as £10.2bn by the time it’s finished and to which the Government quietly allotted another £590m last week. All that for a 14-mile stretch of road that will just shift congestion to the next pinch point. The scheme’s benefit-cost ratio (BCR) was initially estimated by National Highways at a “shocking” 0.48 – meaning for every £1 spent, just 48p would be returned to the economy. By throwing in some vaguely defined “wider economic benefits”,…

Like school shootings, acts of political violence are becoming “almost routine” in America, said Lisa Lerer in The New York Times. In the past three months alone, we’ve seen arson attacks on the Pennsylvania governor’s residence and the Republican Party headquarters in New Mexico; two Israeli embassy staff members gunned down outside an event in Washington; and protesters set on fire in Boulder, Colorado. So perhaps it was not “really so surprising” that, a fortnight ago, a man dressed as a police officer went on a house-to-house shooting spree in Minnesota – killing one state representative, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, and badly injuring another lawmaker and his wife. The suspect, Vance Luther Boelter, who was later captured, visited the houses of at least two other officials who weren’t at…

The prince that became T. rex When two partial dinosaur skeletons were found in Mongolia in the early 1970s, they were deemed to belong to a known species and placed in a museum drawer, where they remained for the next 50 years. Now, the 86-million-year-old bones have been re-examined, and found to belong to a new species, which is the closest-known ancestor of T. rex, though it was a lot smaller than that monster. Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, or Dragon Prince of Mongolia, as it has been named, weighed around 750kg – similar to a horse and an eighth of the weight of an adult T. rex. But while its body was slender and gangly, the predator’s skull had features that would, over the course of 20 million years, evolve to give…

Benjamin Netanyahu is a “big gangster” now, says his former bodyguard, but he has always been “a little thief”. In The New Statesmen, Ami Dror recalls escorting the Israeli PM and his wife Sara to smart restaurants in the late 1990s. “The first time they left without paying the bill, the owners usually didn’t mind,” Dror says. “The second time they were puzzled. By the third time the Netanyahus left without paying, they were angry, literally chasing them in some cases out of the restaurant.” Keira Knightley is no slouch in the looks department – but even she can start to feel uncomfortable among the fashion elite. “All of a sudden, I am aware of my arms, and how they move, and they don’t seem to be moving correctly,” she…

In the early hours of last Friday, two activists from Palestine Action climbed over a fence into RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, said Dominic Adler on UnHerd. They then filmed themselves riding unimpeded on scooters across the vast airbase – “a critical part of Britain’s defence infrastructure” – and vandalising two Voyager air-to-air refuelling tankers. Reportedly, they smashed the aircraft with crowbars and sprayed paint into their engines. Their aim, they said, was to “disrupt British military support for Israel”. But their main achievement was to provoke the normally “glacial” Home Office into rapid action. By Friday evening, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, had let it be known that she planned to proscribe Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act; on Monday, she confirmed that it would be put to a…

Since Ben Stokes took over as England’s Test captain, he and his fellow Bazballers “have given their fans plenty to cheer about and a few reasons to moan”, said Lawrence Booth in the Daily Mail. For much of its duration, the first Test against India at Headingley looked as if it might fall into the latter category. On a “sunny first morning”, Stokes put India in to bat – a decision for which he was heavily criticised. He then watched, helplessly, as India’s top order piled on the runs: three of their batters scored centuries, and at one point they were 430 for three. Conventional wisdom would have dictated that a draw was now “the height of England’s ambitions”. But a draw is the one result that “Stokes despises”. And…

To The Daily Telegraph Israel has been on the front line fighting Islamist tyranny for almost 50 years. Western calls for “de-escalation” in Israel’s understandable offensive against that tyranny are misplaced. Never forget that the ayatollahs of Iran have spent almost five decades trying to murder the Jewish people of Israel. By contrast, the Israelis seek only to destroy Iran’s genocidal regime, and hope then to live in peace with the Iranian people, as they did until the Islamists overthrew the Shah in 1979. William Shawcross, London To The Guardian As Simon Tisdall writes: “The roots of major conflicts often reach back decades” – and this is true of the Israel-Iran vendetta, which dates back to the 1950s, when Israel built its nuclear facility in Dimona and Charles de Gaulle…

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig, 1969 (Puffin £7.99). New Yorker cartoonist William Steig’s picture books are all wonderfully told and often deal with transformations: such as what do you do if you find yourself being turned into a pebble. I love the expressions Steig puts into his creatures with simple, perfect lines, and how animals stand in for humans. My hero! The Shrinking of Treehorn by Florence Parry Heide and Edward Gorey, 1971 (out of print). This story perfectly portrays the feeling of powerlessness in childhood. Little Treehorn finds himself shrinking – no magic potions involved – and nobody cares… least of all his parents. Still, it’s a humorous story with exquisite drawings by Gorey. The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, 1946 (Penguin £9.99). My…

Programmes Albert Speer: Hitler’s Architect of Lies German historian Heike B. Görtemaker introduces a never-before-broadcast 1971 interview with Hitler’s architect. Mon 30 Jun, BBC4 21:00 (90mins). Scrublands Season two of the Australian crime drama. Hoping for a quiet holiday, Martin is perplexed by a call from a childhood friend. Mon 30 Jun and Tue 1 Jul, BBC2 21:00 (45mins and 50mins respectively). Storyville: The Srebrenica Tape Documentary about the return of a young Bosnian woman to the town of her birth to learn more about her father, who was killed in the 1995 massacre. Tue 1 Jul, BBC4 22:00 (90mins). Mary Earps: Queen of Stops Profile of the Lionesses’ goalkeeper, with family, teammates and Earps talking about her rise to the top. Wed 2 Jul, BBC1 22:45 (45mins). Films North by Northwest…

Serves 4 50g desiccated (dried) coconut 30g lemongrass 30g fresh galangal or ginger root zest of 1 and juice of 2 limes 3 tbsp Thai green paste 1 tsp fish sauce 350g uncooked fish pie mix, in bite-sized pieces 150g uncooked peeled prawns (shrimp) 2 large celery sticks, finely diced 50g floury potatoes 300ml coconut milk 2 tbsp cornflour (cornstarch) pinch of caster sugar handful of Thai basil leaves, chopped 50g butter 1 tsp ground turmeric 1 tsp nigella seeds fine sea salt • Dry-toast the coconut in a frying pan over a medium-low heat for 2-3mins until it turns golden brown but not burnt, then tip onto a plate to cool. • Next, make a paste in a small blender or grinder by whizzing together the lemongrass, galangal, lime…

Alfred Brendel 1931-2025 One of the greatest pianists of the postwar era, Alfred Brendel, who has died aged 94, was the first person to record Beethoven’s complete works for solo piano, said The Daily Telegraph. His interpretations of Schubert’s later piano sonatas “added to their growing recognition as masterpieces of Western music”; and audiences flocked to hear him play Haydn, Mozart and Bach. More surprisingly, he championed Liszt’s piano works – which were then regarded as showy and superficial – and did much to rehabilitate their reputation. He also played Schoenberg, and admired Harrison Birtwistle. Some critics, in the US in particular, found Brendel’s playing too austere, didactic and dry. He was certainly intellectual: living in Hampstead, he counted Isaiah Berlin among his friends; and with his tweed jackets, thick-rimmed…

Luca de Meo The “surprise hit” of the European car market this year is the revival of the classic Renault 5, which has been storming sales in France and turning heads abroad, said The Economist. “The remodelled R5 neatly combines retro chic and original styling” (there’s an optional “baguette-holder”) with “state-of-the-art EV touches”. Fans say this reinterpretation of a classic bears all the hallmarks of Luca de Meo – an auto industry “turnaround star” who, in his five years at the wheel, has steered Renault “out of a powerslide into irrelevance”. It also marks his swansong. De Meo has “stunned the automotive world” by swapping his oily rags for handbags and glad rags. After more than 30 years in the car business, he’s off to take charge of Gucci’s parent,…

The Uffizi Gallery, after a visitor posing for a photo tore a hole in a 17th century painting of a Medici prince. The Italian man wanted to create an amusing image of himself striking the same pose as the prince; but as he stepped back, he stumbled over a low barrier and put his hand through the canvas. Uffizi director Simone Verde said that tourists coming to the gallery in Florence to create social media content were a growing “problem”. Shoot-’em-up video games, with news that the most popular game on the Roblox platform, with 17 million active players globally, is about gardening. Subscribers to Grow a Garden buy seeds and watch them grow on a little virtual plot of previously barren land. About a third of players are believed…

Only 19% of British adults are satisfied with the job that Keir Starmer is doing as PM, while 73% are dissatisfied. In nearly half a century of Ipsos polling, no other PM has been so unpopular at this stage in their first term. 46% of people who voted Labour at the last election say they would not do so now. 52% of Tory voters say the same. Reform UK now has 34% of the vote share. Labour has 25%. The Conservatives fall a distant third on 15%. Ipsos/The Daily Telegraph 82% of Jewish Israelis support the mass “forced expulsion” of Palestinians from Gaza, according to a poll of 1,005 taken in March; 54% strongly support it. 56% back the expulsion of Arabs from Israel. Geocartography Knowledge Group/Haaretz…

My role in Jaws This month marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Jaws. Since then, a lot of attention has been focused on Bruce – the mechanical shark that was used during the film’s troubled production. But Jaws also contained remarkable footage of real great whites – thanks to two underwater documentary filmmakers from Sydney. Valerie Taylor and her husband Ron filmed the sequences in South Australia. It went well at first. “We baited the sharks and had three great whites swimming around,” she told Laura Rutkowski in the Radio Times. These, however, were not big enough to satisfy the producers, so they had to use a half-size shark cage, a small boat and a small, ex-jockey stuntman (under five feet tall) to make them look bigger; then,…

A Taiwanese couple hired two pole dancers to perform outside their son’s secondary school to mark his graduation. The show took place outside Taichung Municipal Wanhe Junior High School in mid-June, just after the ceremony. The boy stood looking embarrassed as the two women danced around him. His mother, who was not named, said she wanted to give “an unforgettable graduation gift” to her son, but the school asked parents “to celebrate graduations in a more rational manner”. A “swan whisperer” has been banned from Hyde Park after kissing the birds and assaulting two people. Anders Fernstedt, a homeless man, “stroked, cuddled and kissed” swans in the central London park in March 2023. He then attacked a volunteer who told him to stop interfering with the birds, and a local…

ARGENTINA House arrest or photo opportunity? La Nación (Buenos Aires) Has the concept of house arrest ever been so abused, asks La Nación. Our former president, the Peronist left-winger Cristina Kirchner, who was convicted of corruptly giving public works contracts to cronies, has just started a six-year jail sentence recently upheld by the supreme court, after she had exhausted every appeal. Being over 70, she’s allowed to serve it at her home in Buenos Aires. Fine; but she has no right to exploit that situation to whip up her supporters, thousands of whom gather daily to pay homage outside her flat. And that’s exactly what she’s doing, turning her sentence into “a political spectacle”. First, she sent the crowd a recorded message claiming, once again, to be a victim of…

“It normally takes much more than just a year in power for a prime minister to face a full rebellion,” said David Maddox in The Independent. But Keir Starmer is already “staring down the barrel of a defeat” in a crucial vote in the Commons. Well over 100 Labour MPs are threatening to vote down the Government’s flagship welfare reform bill, when it comes to the Commons next week. It’s not just the usual suspects, either: there are ten Labour select committee chairs on the list. Last week, Vicky Foxcroft, a whip, resigned in protest, saying she would not be able to vote for the cuts to disability payments. It’s possible that ministerial resignations may follow. For the Government, the stakes are high: reforming welfare is such a crucial issue…

Reform UK suffers from the “curse of populist parties everywhere”, said Eliot Wilson in The i Paper. By which I mean: it’s better at expressing generalised discontent than explaining how exactly it would go about changing things. Nigel Farage went some way to addressing that shortfall this week by unveiling a specific policy to lure wealthy non-doms back to the country. Under his scheme, people whose permanent home for tax purposes is outside the UK would be able to pay a one-off entry fee of £250,000 for a “Britannia Card”, which would exempt all their offshore income and assets from UK taxation for at least a decade. Reform reckons the policy would raise between £1.5bn and £2.5bn a year. This money would be redistributed to the lowest 10% of earners,…

The British and Irish Lions’ game against Argentina last Friday – which took place at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium – was “supposed to be a launch party for the 2025 tour” and a “chance to make a statement ahead of their arrival in Australia”, said Chris Foy in the Daily Mail. But the “best-laid plans” have a habit of not panning out; and instead, Andy Farrell’s squad will have touched down “in inquest mode” after suffering a chastening 28-24 defeat. Argentina, it’s true, put in a spirited performance, and scored three superb tries from long distance (their opponents managed two). But in defence, the Lions were “carved open time and again”, while their attack “lacked cohesion and precision”. This was a “ragged” performance, which leaves Farrell with much to ponder. Twenty…

David Hockney at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert We celebrate David Hockney for the bizarre blend of modern mannerism he produced in Californian exile: his deathless portrait of Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, for instance, or his glorious pool paintings. But his juvenilia, produced when he was just out of college in a gloomy London where homosexuality had yet to be decriminalised, is just as impressive. This show brings together a rapturous selection of works from the early 1960s, ranging from a reimagining of Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, here transposed to Manhattan, to murky (but frequently funny) semi-abstract canvases dotted with slogans and the distinct iconography (love hearts, vaguely phallic shapes) that peppered the painter’s work of the period. It’s an embarrassment of riches that testifies to Hockney’s uncanny ability to shift register…

● Dress to make it quick in the changing room: slip-on shoes, say, and shirts without fiddly buttons. If you’re after a dress, wear one; otherwise wear loose separates. ● Shop early as stores will be less crowded, rails better stocked and staff less tired. ● Always pick up the item you want to try in two sizes: the one you think/hope you are and one size up from that. ● It’s easy to end up with too many party outfits or boring basics. Look for pieces you can wear every day to make you feel special. Interesting, but not dramatic. ● Don’t assume certain things won’t suit you. Give novel styles a try. But avoid colours you never wear. If in doubt, stick to navy or white – timeless…

Frederick Forsyth 1938-2025 Frederick Forsyth, who has died aged 86, wrote a series of bestselling spy thrillers – many of which drew on his own life. A former fighter pilot, he worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris during the de Gaulle years, and in the 1960s, he travelled to Nigeria to cover the brutal civil war in Biafra. There, he claimed to have been recruited as an informant for British secret services. He worked as a courier for MI6 and was nearly caught by the KGB while fetching a package from a Russian mole in east Germany. He would imply that, compared to this, writing was quite dull. He said he had only “bashed out” his first novel, 1971’s The Day of the Jackal, because he was out of…

Capitalism and Its Critics by John Cassidy, 2025 (Allen Lane £35). The New Yorker’s star economic journalist views capitalism through the lenses of critics down the centuries: from the Luddites and Thomas Carlyle, to Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty. His conclusion, says Martin Wolf in the FT, is that it’s “the worst possible system except for all the others that have been tried”. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, 2025 (Pan Macmillan £22). As a senior adviser at Facebook, the author saw how its leaders operated at close quarters, says The Guardian. Meta called her memoir “false and defamatory”. It’s certainly “a riveting corporate kiss-and-tell”, says The Economist – portraying Mark Zuckerberg as “unfeeling and shallow”. The Art of Uncertainty by David Spiegelhalter, 2024 (Pelican £22). “Using some intuitive assumptions and…