What happened
Donald Trump joined tens of thousands of people at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona for a memorial service honouring Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old conservative activist assassinated this month while speaking at Utah Valley University.

Who said what
Trump called Kirk a “martyr to American freedom”, telling the crowd his mission would continue. Kirk’s widow Erika also spoke, saying she forgave her husband’s shooter because “the answer to hate is not hate”.

In direct contrast to Erika Kirk’s show of forgiveness, the US president “gave a message of anger and vengeance”, said The Guardian. “I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them,” said Trump. The service “mixed religious devotion with a raw battle cry” intended to “galvanise the political movement of the polarising activist”, said The New York Times.

What next?
Erika Kirk has assumed leadership of Turning Point USA, the group her husband founded at the age of 18. Supporters vowed to press on with organisation’s agenda, framing Kirk’s death as the spark for a renewed conservative crusade.

What happened
Manual driving lessons are stuck in reverse in the UK, with internal figures from AA and BSM showing that only 75.3% of instructors now teach in manuals, down from 86% in 2022. If the trend continues, half of all instructors could switch exclusively to automatic cars within a decade.

Who said what
Mark Born, head of the AA and BSM instructor academy, predicted that manual lessons would soon be a “niche business", with scarcity likely to push prices up. Industry trainer Adam Bragg said instructors were moving over faster than learners, many of whom still relied on hand-me-down manual vehicles.

Automatic vehicles “typically require fewer lessons to reach test readiness”, but automatic learners “tend to have lower pass rates”, said The Guardian. Because of this, the move away from manual lessons could put further strain on an already overstretched driving test system, said Jason Tilley, of the Tilley School of Motoring in Nottingham.

What next?
The AA forecasts that by next year one in four licences will be for automatics. Licensing reforms, including a fast-track route for drivers to upgrade from automatic to manual, are already under discussion.

Ryanair is locked in an “ongoing feud” with Spain’s airport operator Aena, according to The Telegraph. The Irish budget airline has “slashed” a million seats from flights to the country’s “key regional routes” this winter, stopping all journeys to Jerez, Tenerife North, Valladolid and Vigo.

The hostile move follows Aena’s proposed 6.62% fee increase, which Ryanair has branded “excessive”. Its response has been to “go nuclear” on a selection of routes, cutting its Spain schedule by 41%. This means shutting down its two-aircraft base in Santiago and significantly reducing capacity at Asturias, Santander, Vitoria and Zaragoza.

During the “escalating public row”, Maurici Lucena, chair and chief executive of Aena, has “hit out” at Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, accusing him of “lying continuously”, said the Financial Times. He told the paper the decision had “nothing to do with Aena’s fees”, and claimed the budget airline was obscuring the “real underlying issue” – that it doesn’t want to “face the political and reputational cost of abandoning some regional airports”, and associated job losses in some cases. Aena said it was “truly a pity” that Ryanair’s communications policy “appears to be governed by hypocrisy, rudeness and blackmail”.

Ryanair has “hit back at the allegations”, said The Mirror, urging Aena to “call our bluff” by reducing the fees at “Spain’s empty regional airports”. A spokesperson for the budget airline added that the company “always goes where costs are lower and it will happily go back to regional Spain when they stop charging Madrid/Barcelona prices". Until then it’s "adiós Aena!”