Surgeons have successfully completed the UK's first womb transplant. In a 17-hour operation, a 40-year-old woman donated her womb to her 34-year-old sister, who was born without the organ. The recipient told doctors she wants to have "as many children as I can". India is hoping to become the first nation to land a spacecraft near the moon's south pole. The Vikram lander is scheduled to touch down on the lunar surface around 1.30pm UK time, which would make India only the fourth country to complete a soft landing on the moon. Britain's recent hot spell could be the last of the year, according to the Met Office. Temperatures are expected to peak at 27C in some areas today, then drop for the bank holiday weekend and the next few weeks. |
Police standing guard at JD Sports on Oxford Street. Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty |
The "lawlessness" that threatens our cities |
Two weeks ago, says Jenni Russell in The Times, hundreds of teens turned up to Oxford Street for a planned "looting spree" of JD Sports. Despite the heavy presence of Met Police officers, who'd been tipped off about "widely shared posts" on TikTok, troublemakers had to be fought to the ground with batons and 34 youths were given dispersal orders. Fearing that the UK might be on a path to the "lawlessness" of American cities, the Home Secretary's response was "furious and fierce", ordering that the kids responsible be locked up. But she's guilty of "acute political hypocrisy". Over the past 13 years, successive Tory governments have effectively "decriminalised most shoplifting". |
In the years since George Osborne's budget cuts, police haven't had the officers or resources to deal with low-level crimes. Shoplifting items worth less than £200 is now a "summary offence", meaning you can pay a £70 fine via post and not attend court. "Theft incidents" from shops have doubled since 2016 to around eight million a year, while the number of thieves charged has collapsed: a decade ago it was more than 80,000 annually; last year it was 21,000. My local grocer is robbed daily of "easily resellable" goods like coffee, confectionary and cleaning products. Bigger firms are targeted by gangs: Space NK is being terrorised by a Romanian ring; Jigsaw says a group that routinely steal clothes sometimes return "just to laugh at staff". This disorder threatens our "already fragile" high streets and undermines trust within communities. The government must remember that justice and security are not "optional extras", but "the fundamental duty of a state". |
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Winners of this year's Nature inFocus Photography Awards include shots of two Nubian ibexes showing off their horns before fighting; a tiger fishing out an Indian softshell turtle from the lake for lunch; an ant sipping honeydew secreted from an aphid; and a brown booby dipping its head underwater to try and chow down on some anchovies. See the rest here. |
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Bosses at top firms on the FTSE 100 index received a bumper average pay rise of 16% last year, says the FT. That puts their median earnings at £3.91m, a £530,000 increase on the previous year, and 118 times the median UK wage. The fattest fat cat, AstraZeneca's Pascal Soriot, took home £15.3m. |
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Kissing Merkel: "a waste of time and energy". Ralph Orlowski/Getty |
Nicolas Sarkozy's new 592-page memoir includes plenty of pops at his foreign counterparts, says Le Monde. He complains bitterly about Angela Merkel's "pusillanimity", describing their discussions as a "waste of time and energy", and Franco-German relations as "a way of the cross that is as essential as it is boring". Barack Obama doesn't fare any better: Sarkozy describes him as "cold, introverted, and only moderately interested in all those surrounding him". |
Hunter Biden (left) and his father, the US President. Teresa Kroeger/Getty |
The grubby dealings of Hunter Biden |
"I have long dismissed the Hunter Biden story as an irrelevant sideshow," says Henry Olsen in The Washington Post. Evidence that emerged in 2020 suggested that, when Joe Biden was vice president, his son tried to use that fact to generate business in China and Ukraine. It looked grubby but didn't implicate the older Biden in wrongdoing. Recent developments, however, "have gotten my attention". Hunter's former business partner has testified before a House Committee that Joe Biden attended dinners in Washington with Hunter and members of Burisma, the Ukrainian firm on whose board Hunter served, and "regularly participated in phone calls with Hunter and his clients". |
That might not be illegal, but it "sure does stink". And Republicans have long alleged that Joe Biden made money out of the arrangement, referring to a 2017 email which suggested that Hunter would hold 10% of a Chinese energy deal for a mystery "big guy". Democrats respond to these accusations with "whataboutism", pointing out how foreign officials "spent hundreds of thousands of dollars" to stay at Donald Trump's hotel in Washington during his presidency. But when it comes to Trump's alleged crimes, they also talk about applying the rule of law "even-handedly", regardless of the political power of the person involved. Surely that principle should also apply to Hunter and Joe Biden? The whole sordid affair must be thoroughly investigated. |
If you've ever bought a bottle of wine en route to a party and found it wouldn't fit in your handbag, says the Daily Mail, you need a "wine bag". Designers are hopping on the trend for creating "sustainable and stylish" vino-shaped accessories so you can ditch the ugly carrier bag. Posh plonk-holders include Anya Hindmarch's seagrass model with large eyes attached (£225); a cork-topped carafe by Ancient Greek Sandals (£200); and Mulberry's two-bottle carrier in "vintage oak" leather (£495). |
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Over the past two decades, more than 1,500 items worth millions of pounds in total have been pinched from the British Museum, says The Times. The loot is thought to have been stolen by a single thief – possibly a former employee – who sold many of the artefacts online for a fraction of their true value, or simply melted them down. It's not the first time concerns have been raised about the museum's leaky security: in 2002, an undercover reporter for The Sunday Times carried out part of an ancient Greek statue without guards batting an eyelid. |
It's a scoop of ice cream that is believed to be the first food made from plastic waste. Central Saint Martins student Eleonora Ortolani worked with scientists to break down a small amount of plastic and turn it into vanillin, the flavour molecule in vanilla, which she then used to create her inventive dessert. The new synthetic ingredient needs to be approved by food safety bodies before anyone can guzzle on recycled gelato, but Ortolani is already planning to repeat the process to make other molecules for savoury dishes. |
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"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." Walt Disney |
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