What happened
Benin’s government moved quickly to reassert control yesterday after a group of soldiers attempted to overthrow President Patrice Talon (pictured above), briefly seizing state television and declaring all institutions dissolved. The plotters, calling themselves the Military Committee for Refoundation, claimed to have removed the president and installed Lt Col Pascal Tigri as their leader. Security forces loyal to the government retook key sites, while Ecowas – West Africa’s regional bloc – ordered the rapid deployment of troops from Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Sierra Leone to reinforce constitutional authority.

Who said what
Talon, who is regarded as a close ally of the West, “has been praised by his supporters for overseeing economic development”, said the BBC, but his government “has also been criticised for suppressing dissenting voices”.

The attempted coup was the “latest threat to democratic rule in the region”, said The Guardian. Militaries have in recent years seized power in Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea and, only last month, Guinea-Bissau. Still, it was a “surprising development in Benin”, where the last successful coup took place in 1972.

What next?
Talon insisted that the situation was now “totally under control” and vowed “this treachery will not go unpunished”.

What happened
Lando Norris claimed his maiden Formula One championship after securing the third-place finish he needed in the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, finishing just two points ahead of yesterday’s race winner Max Verstappen. The result delivered McLaren their first drivers’ and constructors’ titles double since 1998 and confirmed Norris as Britain’s latest world champion after a late-season surge that transformed a slow start into a winning campaign.

Who said what
An emotional Norris admitted “I’ve not cried in a while and I didn’t think I would cry, but I did”, adding that he had “learned a lot” from Verstappen and teammate Oscar Piastri.

Norris has “fulfilled his wildest dreams”, but “boy was it a close-run thing”, said Kieran Jackson in The Independent. In the end he “repelled (last night’s) race winner Max Verstappen’s magnificent fightback by just two points”.

What next?
Norris’s title sets up a fierce rivalry with Verstappen heading into next season, with McLaren now the benchmark after reclaiming championship-winning form. There will be “major changes to F 1 as a new car era begins” next year, said Isabelle Barker in The Sun, which will “almost certainly shake up the pecking order”.

The king and queen of the Netherlands touched down in Suriname last week: the first visit by the Dutch royal family in 47 years. “We will not shy away from history, nor from its painful elements, such as slavery,” King Willem-Alexander said before the trip, referring to “our shared past”. But the past remained a source of tension in the present as the king and queen prepared to meet representatives of slaves’ descendants.

A 2023 study found that the Dutch royal family had earned the current equivalent of £475 million between 1675 and 1770 from colonies “where slavery was widespread”, said The Guardian. An act to abolish slavery in Suriname and other Dutch-held lands was passed in 1863, and the evil practice was phased out over a 10-year “transition” period.

In 2023, the king issued a formal apology for the Netherlands’ role in the transatlantic slave trade, echoing a similar address in 2003 when he acknowledged the devastation caused by slavery and his own family’s involvement in what he called humanity’s greatest genocide.

A reparations commission appointed by Caribbean governments deemed the Dutch “the most brutal and calculating of the European nations” during colonial rule, said Caribbean Life. The commission said the country had “invented the blueprint for the slave trade”.

Willem-Alexander had previously offered $200 million (£149 million) to raise awareness about the legacy of imperialism in Suriname. Now, the king and his delegation are “being reminded” that the grant should not be considered part of a reparations package, said the news outlet.