Airline passengers face days of travel chaos after yesterday's air traffic control glitch, which saw more than a quarter of UK flights cancelled. Though the fault was fixed within hours, aircraft and crew are now out of position and schedules continue to be disrupted. The NHS is to offer blood pressure checks at barber's shops, churches and other community hubs, in a bid to cut heart attacks in men. Largely due to lifestyle factors such as drinking and smoking, men are twice as likely to suffer heart attacks as women. The mother of the Spanish football federation boss Luis Rubiales has gone on hunger strike in a church to protest her son's "inhuman" treatment. The organisation's regional presidents have publicly demanded that Rubiales resign for forcing a kiss on a female player, says the Daily Star. "You can't get your mummy to sort this one out, señor." |
Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972) |
A mafia president is better than a mafia state |
"We are not the mafia. We don't seek revenge like they did in… The Godfather." So said Russian TV host Vladimir Solovyov last week, denying that the Kremlin bumped off Yevgeny Prigozhin. But "Qui s'excuse, s'accuse", as the French say, and the killing had "all the hallmarks of a mafia hit", writes Gideon Rachman in the FT. This should be no surprise. Vladimir Putin follows a "mobster honour code", where betrayal and disloyalty "can never be forgiven". As deputy mayor of St Petersburg in the 1990s, he forged close ties with the city's underworld. And the Russian intelligence services, his old employers, maintain links with organised crime, which has "useful expertise" in smuggling, money laundering and murder. |
Of course, it's worth remembering that the day after Prigozhin's death, a former US president was indicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (Rico) – a law "specifically designed to go after the mafia". Criminal or not, Donald Trump has long adopted the "mannerisms and mores" of a mob boss. His first FBI director, James Comey, recalled a private dinner where the newly elected president told him: "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty." Comey later said it reminded him of "Sammy the Bull's Cosa Nostra induction ceremony". But while Putin and Trump overlap on style, the systems they operate in are vastly different. There is zero chance of Putin being investigated over Prigozhin's death or any other crimes. Trump, by contrast, could realistically be given a jail term. Whatever its problems, the US is still a "nation of laws". Russia is nothing more than a "mafia state". |
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This video of a kingfisher striking its prey from the viewpoint of the poor old fish has racked up more than a million views on X (formerly Twitter). Watch a longer video here. |
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In 2015, Rory Stewart's father died in his arms after suffering a heart attack. When the then Tory MP returned to work on Monday, his boss, Liz Truss, asked him how his weekend had been. "I explained that my father had died," he writes in his new book, Politics on the Edge. "She paused for a moment, nodded and asked when the 25-year environment plan would be ready." |
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Taylor Swift: sold hundreds of thousands of CDs last year. Amy Sussman/Getty |
Gen Zs have redefined CDs as pieces of collectable merchandise, says The Washington Post. The plastic discs now make up only 3% of the music industry's earnings, down from 96% in 2002. But a small, devoted group of superfans are sticking with them, in part because the economics of CDs means a larger chunk of their money goes to the artists they love, even compared with "hundreds of streams" online. CDs are also "easier to store and less pricey than vinyl records", and have the perfect turn-of-the-millennium "Y2K aesthetic" for young music lovers. |
Light-fingered rogues in Trainspotting (1996) |
Technology is making shoplifting easy |
A "new mood of lawlessness" is gripping shops across the country, says Martha Gill in The Observer. Co-op despairs that shoplifting is "out of control", while John Lewis has taken to offering police officers free coffees so they hang around the store and deter thieves. Overall, shoplifting has increased by a third in the first half of this year, and doubled over the past six years. "It's a delicate subject." The crime "seems to reflect social need" – it rises when the economy dips, as we're seeing in the current cost-of-living crisis. And society has never treated the offence too seriously, as illustrated by all the lovable "light-fingered" rogues in literature. "Dickens is full of desperate characters driven to theft." |
So what to do? We can't expect police to shoulder all responsibility – the number of officers required to guard every shop from thieves would "border on the absurd". The wider problem is technology. In most areas of life, technological improvements make it harder to break the law. The use of deadlocks has "decimated car theft"; domestic burglary has diminished in the face of double-glazing and alarm systems. Yet in modern shops we have the "opposite phenomenon": goods that were once behind counters are now "laid out near the door, ready for the taking"; automated self-checkouts mean customers effectively monitor themselves. And crucially, levels of staff – part of whose job it is to "maintain order" – have fallen sharply. Automation, in shops at least, has "led to lawlessness". |
Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in Red, White & Royal Blue
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A new genre of love story has "conquered pop culture", says Time magazine: the "wholesome romance". Decorated with "cute illustrations of adorable couples", these books leap out from displays in "gummy-candy hues" and are full of gentle humour and happy endings. Gone are the "bloodsucking dreamboats" and "BDSM billionaires" of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. The new literary heartthrobs are more "vanilla": Casey McQuiston's bestselling Red, White & Royal Blue – recently adapted into an Amazon film – features a cutesy prince and the down-to-earth son of a politician. Apparently female audiences are fed up with "Hollywood's conflation of love with predation" and want something "less stressful". |
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Thanks to falling battery costs and a tax exemption, many electric cars in China are now cheaper than their petrol-powered equivalents, says Bloomberg. EVs currently account for 37% of car sales there, way ahead of the government target of 25% by 2025. Seven of China's top 10 best-selling cars last month were electric or hybrids, with Tesla's Model Y in a comfortable first place. |
It's a coded announcement for the Rolling Stones's 31st studio album, seemingly titled Hackney Diamonds. The advert, for a fictional glass repair business, recently appeared in the Hackney Gazette, and references famous Stones songs like Satisfaction and Gimme Shelter. "Hackney diamonds" is local slang for broken glass, says BBC News – "specifically the shards left on the ground after car and shop windows are smashed during a robbery". |
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"To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer." American humourist Bill Vaughan |
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