Trailblazer Tomoka Nishiyama has become the first female kishi – a professional player of shogi, a Japanese board game often compared to chess.

Shogi has two professional classifications: kishi, which is, in theory, open to women as well as men, and joryū kishi, which is for women only. But, since the Japanese Shogi Association was established in 1924, every single kishi player has been a man. Nishiyama has the honour of “breaking a century-old ceiling” in an overwhelmingly “male-dominated game”, said The Japan Times.

‘Stifling’ maleness

On an 81-square shogi board, there are wooden counters that can be played in a similar way to the rooks, kings, bishops, knights and pawns of chess, but there are additional complexities. Players also control “jewels”, “lancers” and “silver generals”, and nearly all captured pieces “can be redeployed to attack their former king”, said The Times.

Professional shogi matches bring together “some of the country’s most brilliant minds in subtle contests of technique, strategy and intuition” but there is “an atmosphere of stifling maleness”. For years, it’s simply been assumed that women are “intellectually incapable” of competing at the highest levels. Nishiyama’s achievement finally puts paid to that.

Not that her rise to the top was easy: she had encountered “repeated setbacks” in her journey to kishi, said The Japan Times. Her first effort, in 2021, fell short and, in 2025, she narrowly lost another bid, defeated 2-3 in an examination in which candidates must win three matches against five professionals. She finally made it under a new ruling that allows five-time winners of the “prestigious” women’s Hakurei title to qualify for professional status – which she formally accepted this week.

Shoulders of giants

All this follows a breakthrough for joryū kishi players last December, when the Japanese Shogi Association overturned a rule it had introduced eight months earlier that barred new mothers and women in the last six weeks of pregnancy from title matches.

It was a measure reportedly intended to protect women’s health but, when Kana Fukuma, who once held six of the eight major women’s championship titles, forfeited a title under this rule, she protested loudly. “I was forced to choose between titles and giving birth,” she told Japanese media. The rule was eventually rescinded but shogi officials bear “a heavy responsibility for the confusion it caused”, said The Mainichi.

After confirming her kishi status, Nishiyama thanked the senior female players who “have always been kind to me” and “taught me about the difficulties of being a woman in shogi”. I’m aware that their history “is what has allowed me to be where I am today”.

New Orleans

On a corner lot in the Garden District, this 1845 sidehall Greek Revival is a 10-minute drive from Magazine Street. Recently updated with an elevator, solar panels, and a new front porch, historic details include 12-foot ceilings with original plaster medallions, double parlors with tall windows, wood floors, and tiled fireplaces.

Upstairs, all four bedrooms are en suite. French doors open to a leafy courtyard and parking. $1,990,000. Scott James, Rêve Realtors/ Luxury Portfolio International, (917) 699-0083

Yarmouth Port, Mass.

Built circa 1850, this three-story Cape Cod home near a village and Gray’s Beach features a wraparound, columned porch. The restored and updated five-bedroom includes wide-plank wood floors, six fireplaces, chunky moldings in the two living rooms, original claw-foot tubs, a primary bedroom on the first floor, and a sunken dining room with French doors.

The property has a garage, a barn, sprawling yards, and a deck. $1,800,000. Sheri Sibley, Engel & Völkers, South Shore, (781) 258-7340

Camden, S.C.

In a historic district near Kendall Lake Park, this 1885 five-bedroom has twin chimneys and a porte cochere supported by Corinthian columns. A foyer with antique heart-pine floors branches off to formal sitting and dining rooms with high ceilings and dentil crown molding.

An expanded great room includes a living area and bonus kitchen. Outside are a walled yard, palm trees, and covered porches. $1,400,000. Debbie Elliott, Peace Sotheby’s International Realty, (910) 471-3181

Mebane, N.C.

The Griffis-Patton House, built 1839–40, is a refreshed brick home on more than 10 acres with views of Mebane-Graham Lake. The four-bedroom features original plaster walls, high ceilings, wood floors, double crown molding, a kitchen with exposed brick and a Blue-Star range, and a primary bedroom with a coffered ceiling.

The grounds include an L-shaped pool, plus a barn, gardens, and a well house. $2,150,000. Brandon Blackman, Hodge & Kittrell Sotheby’s International Realty, (252) 495-3778

Boston

In Beacon Hill near Louisburg Square, this 1833 five-story brick townhouse was home to author Nathaniel Hawthorne. A wallpapered foyer opens to a staircase and an updated kitchen with a banquette and high-end appliances.

The living room features crown molding, wood floors, one of five fireplaces, and an adjoining wet bar. The lowerlevel, private-entry guest suite includes a kitchen and wine cellar. Out back is a landscaped brick patio. $6,399,000. Diana Coldren, Compass, (617) 953-7237

Rumford, Maine

About 90 minutes from Portland, this 1898 fivebedroom with Greek Revival and Colonial Revival elements features symmetrical door and window placement and an entry portico with Doric columns.

The eclectic home includes a dining room with a curved wall, a music room with crown molding, and a living room with French doors. The nearly 1-acre lot has a patio, garage, pool and pool house, yards, and mature trees. $375,000. Kristal Fecteau, Coldwell Banker Team Real Estate, (207) 671-9712

There’s a lot for parents and guardians to consider about the new so-called Trump accounts, said Ashlea Ebeling and Richard Rubin in The Wall Street Journal. The Treasury Department has now created a Trump account “for any child with a Social Security number who is under 18 at the end of the year.” This new type of savings account is “a custodial individual retirement account for children,” and it comes with $1,000 of seed money from the federal government for children born between 2025 and 2028. “Parents or guardians must claim the accounts”—on the Trump Accounts app or at TrumpAccounts.com—to request the free cash or make their own contributions, up to $5,000 a year. The money has to be invested in a low-cost exchange-traded fund “that tracks the performance of the S&P 500.” The accounts can also receive “donations of individual stock from nonprofits,” and beneficiaries won’t pay taxes on dividends or capital gains. But withdrawals of any funds, including the government seed money, will “count as taxable income”—and there may be an early distribution penalty for withdrawals before age 59½.

Despite those limitations, said The Washington Post in an editorial, these accounts “offer real promise.” They could become a valuable “wealth-building tool” for millions of children who otherwise might not have any long-term savings. The “twin magic of compound interest and long-term returns” can help them pay for college, start a business, or buy a house, market permitting. It’s a “historic” achievement, said The Washington Times. The White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates that, if maximum contributions are made for a child born this year, that child would have $303,800 in their Trump account by age 18, “projecting average stock market returns.” Talk about “setting up children for success.” Trump may have “done more for America’s children than any of his predecessors.”

Letting rich billionaires donate stocks to these accounts “feels icky,” said Catherine Rampell in The Bulwark. The Trump administration recently “changed the ways that benefactors could benefact,” allowing them to give shares of individual stocks as long as they reach at least 5,000 kids. More importantly, “the recipients cannot refuse the gift” and have to hold it for five years. A newborn could then theoretically become a shareholder in a company that “manufactures weapons, runs casinos, or is helmed by a possible neo-Nazi.” Elon Musk, for example, said recently that he is donating one share of SpaceX stock to “every kid in America” through Trump accounts. Such tie-ups turn “an otherwise inoffensive concept” into a vehicle to help rich donors “offload overvalued stocks onto children” and score a “big tax write-off” before the market crashes.

New York City’s big new Roy Lichtenstein show turns out to be “far more touching than I had anticipated,” said Jason Farago in The New York Times. Lichtenstein, who’s routinely celebrated as one of pop art’s visionaries, is usually credited with deflating high art by borrowing from comic books while reducing painting to components simple enough that a machine could reproduce them. In truth, the native New Yorker rendered each of the famous Ben-Day dots on his canvases “with something a lot like love,” a revelation that helps make the show “the most momentous exhibition of the season.” At a time when many of us are routinely deluged with AI-generated images, we see Lichtenstein (1923–97) modeling a constructive, decades-old response. With each dot painted by human hand and each choice he made in selecting from existing images and reworking them, he was insisting on the importance of a singular human vision, answering his own era’s flood of mass-market imagery by “keeping faith with a beauty that could last for all time.”

Lichtenstein wasn’t a lazy plagiarist, said David Smith in The Guardian. At the Whitney show, the artist’s sketchbooks and preliminary drawings show how often he altered the images of his source materials, “re-engineering line weights, cropping compositions, and shifting color fields to agitate the viewer’s eye.” The impact of his innovations was immediate, and the museum has re-created his breakthrough 1962 solo show at the Leo Castelli Gallery. His prescience was also such that by 1968, he was already speaking about his Ben-Day dots in relationship to new technologies that were translating visual imagery into transmittable data.

There’s no doubt that Lichtenstein is one of the winners of the American century, said Jerry Saltz in NYMag.com. He changed art forever, and “his style is one of the most recognizable in all of art history.” But while the Whitney show is “jazzy, bright,” and “packed to the rafters” with “paintings that jump off the walls,” its thesis falls flat. “The curators say every picture is an argument about seeing,” but Lichtenstein’s argument is the same every time, making “Like New” an illustration of “what happens when a revolutionary visual language becomes so familiar that the revolution disappears and leaves little to chew on.”

Lichtenstein’s best works, all from 1962 to 1965, were “satirical commentaries on American consumerism, the good life, the heroic male, and standardized beauty,” said John Yau in Hyperallergic. Unfortunately, he exposed the limitations of his style as soon as he began using it to produce mock re-creations of works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, and other past masters. “He went from being a satirist of America’s ideals of comfort and beauty to being a parody of himself.” If we’re being honest, he never recovered.

Science fiction is a broad genre, and in one of its most beloved forms, it’s fused with the dynamics of a thriller. The best of these films are simultaneously suspenseful, thought-provoking and dazzling.

‘Aliens’ (1986)

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the lone survivor of the slow-burn rampage in 1979’s “Alien,” reluctantly tags along with a squad of Marines to a colony menaced by the Xenomorphs. This “perfect sequel” is a “war movie fused inextricably with science fiction,” said Ian Nathan at Empire. (Netflix)

‘12 Monkeys’ (1995)

Convict James Cole (Bruce Willis) is sent back in time from 2035 to find the source of a manufactured virus that wipes out 99% of the global population. The film succeeds as a “vigorous work of dark surprise-filled science fiction,” said Janet Maslin at The New York Times. (Prime Video)

‘Children of Men’ (2006)

As a long fertility crisis threatens total societal collapse, Theo (Clive Owen) escorts a pregnant woman to safety through a bleak U.K. teeming with refugees and fear. This masterful parable is a “fast-paced, kinetically shot dystopia,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (Prime Video)

‘Annihilation’ (2018)

Biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) joins an expedition into a slowly expanding extraterrestrial bubble in which plant and animal life, as well as reality itself, are subject to bizarre mutations. Watching this “shimmering sci-fi art installation” is a “foreboding, unique and wholly challenging experience,” said David Crow at Den of Geek. (MGM+)

Corporate chiefs embraced President Donald Trump when he returned to the White House last year. Some wanted to avoid a crackdown, while others wanted to curry favor with the administration. Now, they are increasingly worried about consequences if Democrats take back control of Congress in November.

‘Holding Trump accountable’

Leading executives “fear a reckoning” after the midterms, said The Washington Post. Silicon Valley firms such as Meta, OpenAI and Palantir that “ingratiated themselves with Trump’s Washington” now anticipate a Democratic Congress that will scrutinize their dealings with the president. Companies tied to Donald Trump Jr. and Elon Musk are also expected to get a close look. Trump-aligned businesses have a “very rough couple years ahead,” said Democratic strategist Cooper Teboe to the outlet.

Corporate investigations could be Democrats’ “secret weapon for holding Trump accountable,” said Molly Claflin at MS NOW. For example, Chevron “gained the rights to vast oil reserves in Venezuela” after making “multimillion-dollar contributions” to presidential projects, while R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company made similar donations before the government lifted vaping restrictions. Democrats would be continuing a “long tradition” of delving into big businesses to “investigate government corruption.”

Democrats are “coming for the CEOs,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Private-sector officials “may not have liked writing checks for the inaugural or White House ballroom” but also had little choice “given how much leverage” Trump had over their businesses. Regardless, corporate America should “lawyer up.”

‘Perils of plutopopulism’

Democrats in Congress are split over “how hard to go after companies that courted the White House,” said Politico. “The corruption is everywhere,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to the outlet. Others would prefer to focus on affordability issues instead of “weaponizing the federal government,” said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto to Politico.

CEOs are now discovering the “perils of plutopopulism,” said Chrystia Freeland at the Financial Times. Businesses embraced Trump believing he would “deliver tax cuts and deregulation.” That bet is “starting to go wrong” now that the president’s “political star is shining less brightly.”

AI is causing “a crisis of trust” in publishing, said Vauhini Vara in The Atlantic. Earlier this month, Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza won the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing—worth $13,000—for a short story that “has all the personality of a chatbot.” That may not be coincidental: Pangram, an artificial-intelligence-powered AI detection tool, flagged “almost the entire story as AI-generated.” Kundizeza is not the first award recipient to be flagged by Pangram; it deemed one of the winning stories in this year’s Commonwealth Short Story Prize to have been entirely authored by AI. Kundizeza says his story, “The Blue Fighter,” is “entirely my work.” Pangram is reputed to be “highly accurate”—the company claims its tool misidentifies AI use in just 1 out of 24,000 cases—but it’s not infallible. So who should we trust? The author or Pangram?

This is exactly the “chaos” that publishers feared, said Anna Silman in The Wall Street Journal. Publishing houses have tried to crack down on AI usage by authors, inserting strict clauses into book deals and leaning on Pangram to vet manuscripts. But “a new AI scandal engulfing” the industry seemingly every month is “forcing a reckoning over the nature of authorship.” The Big Five publishing houses—Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, and Macmillan—have been reluctant to “make sweeping pronouncements about” the technology, possibly because they’re waiting to see if people care whether the books they’re reading are AI-generated or AI-assisted, “especially in genres like fantasy and sci-fi.” Meanwhile, many writers feel that a contract clause “that relies on the honor system lacks the teeth necessary to combat” intellectual dishonesty.

I write a lot, and I use AI, and I’m worried that “I’ve started to internalize” how a chatbot thinks, said Alex Kirshner in Slate. I’ve begun to “self-police against this,” modifying my drafts “to sound less like AI.” I also put my work into Pangram “before it appears anywhere else” to ensure that “the model concurs that I wrote it myself.” It feels dystopian—I’ve had to “rewrite sentences of my own work in hopes of satisfying this new integrity god.”

Still, we need the “AI slop detectors,” said Brian X. Chen in The New York Times. The tools do more than pick out obvious indicators of AI authorship, such as the excessive use of em dashes and bullet points. They’re trained to understand how AI models make decisions on word selection and phrasing. Pangram, which costs $20 a month, is incredibly “useful for sniffing out annoyances like AI-written email scams and phony online reviews.” Yes, the technology “still has a long way to go.” But “at the rate that slop is proliferating on the web,” it’s an “empowering” tool for people who still want to read the human-written word.

With the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays battling in the World Series, Major League Baseball has something it rarely gets: a small-market Fall Classic. But with a potential December lockout on the horizon, this year’s World Series could affect the game’s future beyond the baseball diamond.

What did the commentators say?

This World Series is “equally intriguing for what it means on the field” as for “what it means off the field, as terms such as ‘market size,’ ‘payroll’ and ‘revenue sharing’ have become as big a part of baseball as hits, home runs and RBIs,” said NBC News. The small-spending Brewers and Rays beat out several big spenders to make it to the Fall Classic: Milwaukee “swept the Los Angeles Dodgers and their $412 million team in the NLCS,” while Tampa took down the New York Yankees’ $310 million-payroll club.

Whoever emerges victorious will be the first team to win the World Series in the bottom half of the league’s spending since the Kansas City Royals in 2015, a “rebuke of sorts to what MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred had to say about the sport,” said NBC. Manfred “has set this winter up to be a big huffy showdown over runaway major market payrolls and the desperate need to install a salary cap,” said The Wall Street Journal. But the opposite happened, as a “couple of crafty, thrifty, well-run teams with low payrolls but dynamo management knocked out the spenders to reach the big show.”

For team owners, it “plays right into the hands of their opponent in the labor dispute,” said the Journal. The MLB Players Association has long argued that a “cap isn’t necessary, because money isn’t what delivers championships.” But the “truth is it’s a bit of both — a baseball team needs smart management and talent development, but having loads of money can make up for mistakes.”

What next?

Many players also see the small-market World Series as a positive trend. “It kind of paints a different picture, right? You don’t really need all the money out there to win baseball games,” said Brewers closer Trevor Megill to USA Today. “It kind of just matters who’s in the clubhouse and what they are willing to do for each other.’’

When you make a purchase using links on our site, The Week may earn a commission. All reviews are written independently by our editorial team.

Naomi Alderman is the author of The Power, a 2016 best seller that won the U.K.’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. In her new novel, The Strangers, a writer also named Naomi Alderman is wrestling with grief when she discovers an alien animal species that begins proliferating.

‘The Vintner’s Luck’ by Elizabeth Knox (1998)

I read this in my early 20s when I was starting to work hard on my writing. I thought, If I can ever write anything as good, I’ll be happy forever. In 1808, a French winemaker meets an angel and, impossibly, they fall in love. It is about everything: love, sex, faith, death, memory, redemption, God. Buy it here.

‘Possession’ by A.S. Byatt (1990)

The best and classiest and most intellectual kind of mystery novel. In an archive, a researcher finds lost letters exchanged by two Victorian writers. Why were they writing to each other? Were they having an affair? And who else wants to uncover the truth? Just superb. Buy it here.

‘Leech’ by Hiron Ennes (2022)

I could not put this down, in a way I hadn’t experienced for years. A doctor arrives at a strange old castle to replace his predecessor who has died suddenly. But when he performs an autopsy on the older doctor, something strange wriggles inside him. A full world you can sink into that grips like, indeed, a leech. Buy it here.

‘Chocky’ by John Wyndham (1968)

A young boy believes he’s in contact with an alien. But the alien can’t be seen or felt; it’s only communicating with the boy’s mind. It can’t be real, can it? But if not, where are these strange new ideas in his mind coming from? The book is mesmerizing on parental love and as a weird tale. Buy it here.

‘The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James’ (1931)

James is the Victorian master of the ghost story. An M.R. James protagonist tends to be an academic—someone driven by curiosity who doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. His novels are absolute master classes in how much to reveal, how much to leave to the reader’s terrified imagination. Buy it here.

‘Ficciones’ by Jorge Luis Borges (1944)

Borges writes stories that are an idea, an absolute crystalline unforgettable thought. I fell into these as a teenager, read them again and again; I could practically recite The Lottery in Babylon by heart for you. You’d also get a decent education just reading all the writers Borges mentions in his stories. Buy it here.

Israelis go to the polls today. It’s their first general election since the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 led to war in Gaza. With opinion polls suggesting that Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition is “neck and neck” with the main opposition bloc, this is a nation “deeply divided and ready for a fight”, said the BBC. Most Israelis see this election as “the most consequential in their country’s history”, said The Guardian.

What did the commentators say?

For Israelis in Netanyahu’s electoral strongholds, the prime minister is their “champion and protector against enemies across the region” and against a loathed “domestic ‘elite’ they perceive as undermining the will of the people” by succumbing to “international pressure to allow a Palestinian state”, said Neri Zilber in the Financial Times.

Elsewhere, the atmosphere is very different. On Saturday, thousands rallied in Tel Aviv to protest against Netanyahu’s government and call for an independent inquiry into the security failures that led to the 7 October Hamas attacks. “Taking part were leading figures from opposition parties, including Gadi Eisenkot,” said Al Jazeera. The Yashar party leader, and Netanyahu’s main centre-right rival, “was greeted by chants of ‘Who’s coming? The next prime minister’”.

Division has also arrived by air. As most Israelis living abroad are not allowed to vote by post, “expatriates need to cross oceans to cast their ballots”, said The Telegraph. Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics estimates the number of citizens living abroad at 600,000, so the expat vote has the “potential to tip the scale”. There’s much talk “about the thousands coming home, determined to remove Netanyahu”, said Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator, “but thousands also are coming to keep him in office”.

The young will be a crucial voting demographic. More than 500,000 Israelis have reached voting age since the last election in 2022. This generation “came of age after the Oslo process collapsed” and were teenagers when the October 7 attacks occurred, said The Guardian. “Bucking global trends,” they “are more right-wing than older generations”.

What next?

The first exit polls will be published at 10pm local time (8pm in the UK) but neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor Eisenkot’s are projected to win the 61 seats needed to form a majority government. There’s likely to be weeks or months of political wrangling before any workable coalition government can be formed.

The “critical balance of power” will almost certainly be held by the two Arab-majority groupings, said the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Yolande Knell. Most of the other parties, including Eisenkot’s Yashar, have so far said they would not work with Arab parties, because of “a lack of shared values”. The Arab groupings are open to alliances but they have their own policy aims, not least a solution to “rampant gang crime”. In this high-stakes election, it’s “Arab citizens could yet decide who wields power in Israel, and they see this vote as key to their own future in the country”.

‘The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East’ by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s latest best seller is “a triumph of blood-and-thunder narrative history,” said Sean McMeekin in The Wall Street Journal. At a time when conflict in the Middle East is again touching lives around the world, the British historian has delivered a sweeping and energetic account of the region’s turbulent last 125 years. Beginning in 1902, when the young prince Ibn Saud seized Riyadh to puncture Ottoman dominance, “Montefiore doesn’t play favorites, subjecting all his characters to scrutiny.” We get British and French meddling during and after World War I, the dramatic reset brought on by the next global conflict, and Cold War machinations that enflamed new conflicts. Then comes the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which Montefiore characterizes as epochal in its impact. “Not all his stories are original,” of course, “but he enriches them with fascinating details.”

“While vast in scope, The Cauldron is written in a way that is equally accessible to regional experts and neophytes,” said Jonathan Harounoff in the New York Post. Often, his story is carried by “the compelling and, at times, insidious characters who helped forge the Middle East we know today.” Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani, Qatar’s founding emir, sired 56 children. King Farouk, who ruled Egypt for 16 years, was addicted to gambling, food, and sex. As Montefiore marches readers though various crises and flashpoints, said Mark Urban in The Times (U.K.), he shows a determination to nail down which actors deserve blame. “Time and again,” he shows that the region’s leaders have been more than mere puppets, having more agency than self-regarding Westerners might suspect. And though he rips into Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, today’s Israeli right wing, and many other regional players, “this is not a polemic but a work of history in which his judgments are rooted in deep research.”

The astonishing scope of the book is “both its greatest strength and its principal weakness,” said Sam Kiley in The Independent (U.K.). At his best, Montefiore “can make a complicated political order suddenly legible through a few deft sentences,” but the pileup of rulers, coups, and wars at times becomes “so dense that the reader can struggle to retain a firm sense of causation.” He also “distributes sympathy unevenly,” favoring pragmatists over fervent believers and, subtly, Israelis over Palestinians in the Middle East conflict that so often looms largest in the minds of outsiders. Montefiore is “too candid about Israeli wrongdoing to be described as an apologist.” Better yet, he’s written a book that anyone could learn from. “Its scholarship, range, and vitality make it an impressive achievement.”

‘Death of an Ordinary Man’ by Sarah Perry

“Death of an Ordinary Man is not a remarkable story,” said Amy Bloom in The New York Times. “What is remarkable is this book.” In 2022, a 77-year-old man was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and died nine days later. Because the man was her father-in-law, British novelist Sarah Perry watched that small drama unfold at close range after she and her husband moved in to provide 24-hour care. In Perry’s attentive account of those nine days, “there are no celestial visits, no shocking reconciliations.” Instead, there’s incontinence, there’s paperwork, and there are good and bad medical people—“all the things people ordinarily don’t write about.” Those details belong in this gift of a work, though, because “Perry’s entire point is that this condition of being alive includes, inevitably and properly, the process of dying.”

In speaking of her own experience in those final days, Perry “captures the feeling of existing in a strange, panicked void,” said Karin Altenberg in The Wall Street Journal. Perry and her husband, Robert, both previously busy with other things, suddenly find themselves caretakers sleeping on the floor of their patient’s bungalow. The world outside ceases to exist as nurses, relatives, and clergy visit. Meanwhile, Perry and Robert are figuring the logistics of end-of-life care in real time straight through to their charge’s final breath. Many of us are likely to find ourselves in a similar situation one day, and through her “deeply tender” account, Perry has “extended a hand to the reader with profound grace.

“It’s not easy to account for what makes this book so special,” said Joe Moran in The Guardian (U.K.). David Perry, the ostensible subject, was such a content, reserved Englishman that “some may even find him a little boring.” In part, Perry’s beautifully written book “works its magic through the adamantine detail and quiet lyricism with which it recounts a particular, unrepeatable life.” More than that, though, “what makes this book gem-like is that it succeeds in conveying the reality of death as this monumental, mythic thing that coexists surreally with the mundane world of council bin collections.” Though the breakdown of David’s body isn’t dignified, Perry notices that it’s also transfiguring, right down to this ordinary man’s fingertips.

Fjord

Directed by Cristian Mungiu (R)

★★★★

The film that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year is “a car crash occurring in what feels like real time,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. “One of the year’s undisputed highlights,” the newly released drama follows a family that’s torn apart soon after they move from Bucharest to a Norwegian village and their fundamentalist Christian beliefs generate suspicion. When the parents, Mihai and Lisbet, are accused of child abuse based on slim evidence, all five of the couple’s kids, including two teenagers and a breastfeeding infant, are taken away by child services. With co-stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve delivering performances that give little away, the movie “poses prickly questions it astutely refuses to answer.” Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, who previously won the Palme d’Or for 2007’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, never reveals whether Mihai and Lisbet are guilty of serious mistreatment or not, said Monica Castillo in The A.V. Club. But while his latest award winner is “expertly crafted,” it belies his disdain for Norway’s progressive liberalism and the government overreach he thinks the mindset spawns. Fjord also “loses its focus” once a fed-up Mihai summons fellow religious conservatives to stand with him and his wife during their trial. “Excellent” work from Reinsve and Stan help save the movie from tipping into didacticism, said Brian Tallerico in RogerEbert.com. But Mungiu also hasn’t fully made his mind up about Mihai and Lisbet and the values they espouse. “One of the things that makes Fjord so rewarding is the sense that he’s exploring how he feels about these people and these issues along with us as their story unfolds.”

‘La Bola Negra’

Directed by Los Javis (R)

★★★★

Arriving in U.S. theaters after wowing festival audiences, this Oscar contender from Spain “has the sweep and audacity of a great modernist novel,” said Dana Stevens in Slate. “An at times exhausting but ultimately nourishing feast,” La Bola Negra toggles between three gay protagonists separated by nearly a century of time as it highlights the links between fascism and homophobia. “Not every one of its interweaving stories lands with equal power,” and some passages feel rushed, but “too much movie is better than not enough.” Each tale, “at first oddly, works in a slightly different register,” said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. In 1937, Sebastián, a musician forced to fight for the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, falls for a wounded prisoner named Rafael, initiating a love story that turns wrenching. By then, we’ve also met Carlos, who, in an “almost fairy-tale-like” 1932 setting, is barred from an elite club because of his sexuality. And we’ve watched Alberto, a grad student from our own era, begin investigating his grandfather’s past. It takes a while to see the stories’ links, but once you do, “the structure feels cleverly satisfying” despite the movie’s “unnecessarily overwrought” third act. Still, co-directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi—aka Los Javis—“execute this mighty vision with thrilling technical bravado,” said Richard Lawson in The Hollywood Reporter. It is “high time” we had a gay war epic of this much “scope and soulfulness and invention.”

‘Klara and the Sun’

Directed by Taika Waititi (PG-13)

★★★★

“Adapting a complex, questioning novel as a cockeyed child’s-eye comedy worked once before for Taika Waititi,” said Guy Lodge in Variety. But even fans of 2019’s Jojo Rabbit are unlikely to be moved by Waititi’s “twee, pulseless” adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel about an android purchased to be the companion of a sickly 14-year-old. In this disastrous misfire, “the filmmaker’s kooky affectations fight the stoic sadness of Ishiguro’s storytelling at every turn.” Jenna Ortega stars as Klara, the tale’s “Artificial Friend,” playing the robot as “a ditsy, cutesy innocent,” said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. Being solar-powered, Klara worships the sun as a god. But whereas Ishiguro made something of such fable-like story elements, Waititi’s “unbearably mannered” film “winds up saying nothing substantial or meaningful (or funny) about artificial intelligence, love, or grief.” And when we reach the twist ending, it’s “as unsatisfying and contrived as everything that has gone before.” The two leads do what they can, said Ben Gibbons in Screen Rant. Ortega has a tough assignment, and “her ability to imbue her character with emotion while still feeling robotic is impressive.” Mia Tharia, meanwhile, plays 14-year-old Josie “with enormous confidence, magnetism, and charm.” Alas, the actresses’ work is wasted on an adaptation that turns out to be “a ham-fisted sci-fi comedy with a hollow message.” Clearly, Waititi was “not the right choice for this story.”

Leading scientists have called on the government to cancel cuts to the UK’s science budget that could force the closure of the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, home to the world’s third largest telescope.

The Lovell Telescope – the brainchild of Bernard Lovell, the British physicist who worked on the government’s secret radar programme during the Second World War – became operational in the 1950s.

Since then it has offered up scientific breakthroughs beyond its creator’s “wildest dreams”, said A.S. Ganesh in The Hindu. "From quasars to black holes, and pulsars to gravitational lenses”, the Jodrell Bank Observatory has “played a crucial part in our better understanding of the universe”.

Why is the observatory under threat?

In July, UK Research and Innovation, the government’s non-departmental public body responsible for science funding, announced that Jodrell Bank would not be prioritised for further investment after its existing agreement ends in March 2028.

UKRI said it had to channel investment towards projects that deliver “the greatest long-term impact”. The agency has an annual budget of nearly £10 billion, but the government wants to make “substantial savings after cost overruns as a result of soaring electricity and staff costs at UK facilities”, said The Guardian.

Under the current arrangement, Jodrell Bank receives around £2.8 million per year. If it cannot secure further funding, it will have to cease scientific observations from April 2028. As well as risking the loss of 28 jobs at the site, closure would also affect nearly 3,000 scientists who use its observations in their research, said the BBC.

The scientific community’s reaction?

Scotland’s astronomer royal, Professor Catherine Heymans, spoke for many in the community when calling the decision “a real act of national self-harm”.

Last week, leading scientists including physicist Brian Cox, professor at the University of Manchester, which hosts Jodrell Bank Observatory, warned Chancellor John Healey that the threat to the UK’s largest telescope is “just the tip of the iceberg”, said The i Paper.

In an open letter, they argued that planned funding cuts of up to 30% for the wider particle physics, astronomy and nuclear sector will “cause lasting and possibly irreparable damage to the UK’s scientific capabilities”.

Will the government intervene?

The government has said it is “exploring” long-term options for Jodrell Bank. Earlier this month, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the House of Commons that he had recently met staff at the University of Manchester to explore potential solutions. Scientific decisions must be “made on the basis of the science”, he told MPs, “but that still doesn’t mean there isn’t a future for Jodrell Bank as an asset”.

Andy Burnham has also pledged to find a way to save the telescope. Attention now turns to Wednesday’s Budget to see if Healey will pull a surprise announcement out his red briefcase to secure the facility’s future.

Given the variability of last year’s snowfall, you would think heading to larger, more accessible resorts would give you the best guarantee for a full week of skiing. But “smaller, lesser-known resorts can often have bigger snowfalls, more vertical, fewer skiers and better off-piste”, said Alf Alderson in The Telegraph. Cheaper lift passes, shorter queues and fewer interruptions on the slopes also sweeten the deal, without compromising on skiing quality. Here are some of the best spots.

Heiligenblut, Austria

This tiny village beneath Austria’s highest mountain is “blissfully quiet”, said Sean Newsom in The Sunday Times. Each winter, the main road to Heiligenblut is “closed by snow”, and “few bother” to “wriggle in round on the back roads to ski its modest but spectacular area of intermediate-friendly slopes”. Heiligenblut is home to “mind-blowing” views of the 3,798-metre Grossglockner and a “non-existent (in a good way)” après-ski culture, allowing for proper relaxation. Anyone with an interest in ski touring or off-piste skiing will be “thrilled by its back-country potential”.

Tetnuldi, Georgia

The Georgian resort has “deserted slopes, deep powder and truly wild alpine panoramas”, said Alderson in The Telegraph. As you approach, you can see the “eponymous 4,858-metre Mount Tetnuldi, one of four Georgian peaks higher than Mont Blanc, glowering down at the pistes”. The resort has “consistently good snow and almost 1,000 metres of vertical” to explore. The long journey there is definitely “worthwhile”. “The 25km of marked pistes are a good warm-up for the world-class back-country skiing that’s the area’s big attraction.” At its foot, there is the town of Mestia, which is “famed for its stone Svan towers that date back to the 12th century”.

Brundage Mountain Resort, Idaho, US

This North American resort has an “uncrowded and unpretentious” vibe, said Ted Thornhill in The Independent. Just above the small mountain town of McCall, the resort offers a “classy experience”, welcoming both “strong skiers craving room to roam, and families who enjoy the low-stress atmosphere”. The après-ski is “friendly and relaxed”, once you’ve finished for the day on the area’s “famously light, dry snow”. “The average annual snowfall is around 320 inches and there are plenty of runs on which to relish it.”

Sainte-Foy-Tarentaise, France

“Sit in a lift queue at Val d’Isère or Tignes for long enough and someone will eventually mention Sainte-Foy, the resort a few minutes down the valley that regulars would rather keep to themselves,” said In the Snow. The whole area is “refreshingly uncrowded”, and though it only has 26 marked trails, its lift-accessed off-piste and powder terrain is “some of the best in the Tarentaise”. The low-key resort is in a prime location, with Val d’Isère, Tignes and Les Arcs “all easy day trips if you fancy a change of scenery”.

Vogel, Slovenia

“Vogel is one of the most spectacular ski resorts in Slovenia, if not in the whole of Europe,” said Tristan Kennedy in Snow. Most of the pistes are suitable for easy and intermediate skiers and expand on to “plenty of open, rolling terrain”. Vogel sits above Lake Bohinj – “just around the corner from that Instagram favourite, Lake Bled” – and has views over the Julian Alps and Triglav National Park. The resort’s “biggest selling point” is that it relies “entirely on natural snow, with no artificial snowmaking”.

Across Malawi, filling up your petrol tank has become an endurance test. In the past four weeks, fuel shortages have become a “national emergency” across the southeast African country, said The Guardian.

Drivers wait for hours at empty forecourts for deliveries, while one has morphed into a “makeshift village” where some camp out for days. At Mount Meru petrol station in Zomba, the former capital and Malawi’s fourth largest city, drivers sleep “under the bellies of trucks” and “aggressively block any queue-jumpers” as the situation turns “patience into hostility” at the nation’s petrol pumps.

‘Terrifying’ atmosphere

Fuel shortages have been a “recurring problem” for years in Malawi and were a “major issue” in last year’s general election, said Reuters. There had been a temporary improvement but the onset of the Iran war has plunged the country back into crisis.

Despite being one of the poorest countries in the world, Malawi has one of the “highest fuel pump prices in Africa” at more than $3 (£2.25) a litre, said Semafor. The recent crisis has sparked a “nationwide crackdown” on stockpiling and “black market sellers”; petrol stations “caught hoarding” could risk losing their licence and unauthorised sellers face arrest.

The result is a “terrifying” atmosphere at petrol stations, where attendants face a “barrage of verbal abuse” and threats from “angry motorists”, said The Guardian. For those who rely on vehicles for their jobs, there is a particular “psychological toll”, while low-income commuters reliant on shared transport also face soaring fares.

Easing pressure

Malawi relies on imported fuel but supplies have been hit by a shortage of foreign currency, primarily US dollars.

The country has been “urgently” encouraged to “diversify its struggling economy”, said Deutsche Welle. Currently, Malawi depends on tobacco exports, but increasingly unpredictable harvests related to climate change and dwindling smoking rates across key European markets have significantly impacted revenue. Diversification into more reliable sectors, including tourism, has been floated as a means to bring in the hard currency needed to allow the nation more access to global markets.

The International Monetary Fund is making “considerable progress” on a support package that would help stabilise Malawi’s economy, said Semafor.

Pressure is also being applied on the government to “change its importation policies” to open the fuel market to more suppliers, said Malawi24. The Consumers Association of Malawi says that licensing more operators to import fuel and sell it “at prices that reflect the cost of securing supplies under the current market conditions” will ease pressure on supply, “even if consumers have to pay higher prices”.

When you make a purchase using links on our site, The Week may earn a commission. All reviews are written independently by our editorial team.

As one of the most popular and top-selling genres, romance has long transported readers into captivating love stories. These four swoon-worthy novels are perfect for anyone seeking an amorous read.

‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen (1813)

Scholars celebrate Austen’s “pioneering use of free indirect discourse,” but you don’t need to be an expert to appreciate that “she helped invent the romantic comedy as we know it,” said Time. A “drolly perceptive chronicle” of Elizabeth Bennet’s “bumpy courtship” with Fitzwilliam Darcy, Austen’s “second and most influential novel” is the “ultimate slow burn.” ($25, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘Outlander’ by Diana Gabaldon (1991)

After World War II, British combat nurse Claire and her husband embark on a second honeymoon to reconnect. Instead, she somehow “winds up in 1743 Scottish highlands” and falls in love with warrior Jamie — a “very different and very passionate relationship,” said Forbes. The first in a beloved series, this novel is best for fans of “time travel, historical fiction and very long novels.” ($30, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘The Notebook’ by Nicholas Sparks (1996)

The bond between Noah and Allie, the star-crossed lovers at the center of both the novel and the classic 2004 film, has ensnared romantics for decades. Their love feels “both idealized and grounded,” spanning “years, obstacles and ultimately memory loss.” The result is “more powerful than a typical love story,” said Business Insider. ($25, Hachette Book Group, Amazon)

‘Before I Let Go’ by Kennedy Ryan (2022)

Yasmen and her ex-husband, Josiah, try their best to coparent and run a business together, but they keep being pulled back into each other’s arms. Kennedy Ryan’s “emotion-driven books” are “anything but fluff,” tackling deeper issues such as “mental health and neurodivergence, social injustices, and climate change,” said Marie Claire. ($40, Hachette Book Group, Amazon)

Although SpaceX and Tesla may be publicly inseparable from the outsize personality of their CEO, Elon Musk, legally and technically they are separate businesses. But a change might be imminent, as he’s considering a merger of his two kingdoms. The move could consolidate his authority and buttress his megariches.

‘Elon Inc.’

Musk announced last week that the two companies have formed committees to explore creating a conglomerate with dealings in rockets, cars and artificial intelligence, said Axios. “I think it would be a good idea,” he said on an earnings call with reporters, per the outlet. (SpaceX and Tesla are already collaborating on AI chip production.) The joint enterprise would be “massive,” said Axios. The companies currently have a combined capitalization of more than $3.5 trillion.

The SpaceX-Tesla combo would be the “world’s largest ever merger,” said the Financial Times. The combined firm would be a “new type of 21st-century conglomerate” centered around AI and a “leading position in industries ranging from space exploration to robotics.” There has “never been a company like it of any scale,” said analyst Gene Munster to FT.

This would “create a de facto Elon Inc.,” said The New York Times. The alliance has also “raised concerns” from policymakers and critics who believe the world’s richest man has “already amassed too much power.” The merger would give Musk official control “over an increasing slice of the world’s economy,” said Jill Fisch, a business law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, to Marketplace.

The Trump factor

The proposal comes at a moment when Musk has “regained access to the White House” after a falling-out with President Donald Trump, said Bloomberg. The advantage is not “guaranteed to last,” though. As such, a push is on to officially announce a deal in the first half of 2027 “so that it closes during this administration” before a “potentially less-accommodating political and financial environment takes hold.”

A would-be power shift may explain Musk’s gargantuan spending on the 2026 midterm election. His giving to GOP candidates has blown “past the $400 million mark as of mid-October,” said CNN.

Since the pandemic, mortgage rates have mostly been climbing. It’s looking like that trend is unlikely to reverse course in 2027.

In bad news for home buyers and sellers alike, economists at the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, are now “predicting much higher mortgage rates through the end of 2026 and into 2027,” said CNBC. Stubbornly high inflation is a major driver, as is the bond market. Here is what to know.

Could mortgage rates finally fall next year?

Probably not. Fannie Mae recently revised its previous projections for mortgage rates to adjust them even higher. As of mid-October, “rates are expected to average 7.4% in the fourth quarter of 2026 before climbing to 7.5% in early 2027, and could remain there for the rest of the year,” said NerdWallet. Previously, in September, Fannie Mae “predicted that the average 30-year mortgage rate would be 6.8% in the fourth quarter and 6.7% in 2027.”

While Fannie Mae is certainly a major player in the industry, as one of two government-sponsored enterprises that backs mortgages, it is not the only one forecasting that rates will head this way. Mike Fratantoni, a chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, has also predicted that “mortgage rates will remain elevated above 7% through the end of next year,” said Realtor.com.

Why have mortgage rates been persistently high?

There are a few major contributors. “Inflation is too high, leading central banks to raise short-term rates, while budget deficits and debt are unsustainably high, leading bond investors to push up longer-term rates,” said Fratantoni to MarketWatch.

Another contributing factor is that the “Federal Reserve also raised its benchmark rate for the first time in more than three years,” said CNBC. “Mortgage rates do not follow the Fed’s rate exactly, but they do react to how the central bank sees inflation going forward.”

How will elevated rates affect the 2027 housing market?

The current state of the housing market will likely foreshadow what is to come if rates stay around where they are now. As of this fall, “higher rates have already put the housing market in an early deep freeze,” with pending sales “down 8.5% in September year-over-year, according to Zillow,” said CNBC.

The reality is, the “higher mortgage rates go, the harder it gets for home buyers to qualify for a mortgage,” said MarketWatch. This has a domino effect, with home sellers in turn “struggling as buyers shy away from the market,” forcing price cuts. This can potentially provide a little more bargaining power for buyers who do decide to stay in the game.

Netflix should be on top of the world. The streamer has far more subscribers than rivals Amazon Prime, HBO Max or Disney+. But revenue and viewership growth has slowed, the streaming service is cutting staff and there are no hits like “Stranger Things” or “Squid Game” on the horizon.

What did the commenters say?

Netflix investors have been “increasingly worried” since the company’s failed bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, said The Wall Street Journal. While the service has the lowest cancellation rate among major streamers, Netflix has recently “struggled” with subscribers “spending less time watching programming on the platform.” That is a critical marker. Strong viewership tells executives “customers are satisfied and less likely to cancel their subscriptions.” Company stock has fallen 40% over the last year.

The problem is “keeping viewers hooked,” said The New York Times. Shows like “Beef” and “The Night Agent” are shedding audience in their latest seasons. Viewers are instead “drifting toward TikTok and YouTube for the attention Netflix used to own,” said Investing.com’s Jesse Cohen in an analysis, per the Times. While Netflix accounts for just under 8% of all U.S. viewing time, YouTube comes in at 14%.

The service has also suffered a “brain drain” that is affecting its hit-making ability, said Drew Taylor at The Wrap. The Duffer Brothers, who created “Stranger Things,” have left for Paramount, and filmmakers like David Fincher and Noah Baumbach are also departing. The key to any revival “will be to reestablish those relationships.”

What next?

Netflix earlier this month announced layoffs of 1,000 employees, as well as the departure of several top executives, said Variety. “I know that we could do better,” said co-CEO Ted Sarandos on an earnings call, per the outlet.

Peter Rice, the newly installed chief content officer at Netflix, “understands talent relations” and will help make the streamer a place where Hollywood creators “love to do” their “best work,” Sarandos said. Can wooing hitmakers help Netflix find its way back to dominance? “Stranger Things” have happened.

Economists have spent much of 2026 watching to see if the artificial intelligence bubble will burst, much like the boom-and-burn cycle of dot-com pioneer companies in the late 1990s. But another possibility looms. The wild enthusiasm for AI could settle into a sensible soft landing that spares the world a hard economic crash.

‘Reassessment under way’

Wall Street continues to believe that AI will “transform markets and the economy,” said Axios. But investors are also “pulling back funding” and looking for “evidence that their investments will actually pay off.” The markets that had a “blind enthusiasm for all things AI” are now beginning to “differentiate between players, business models and financing approaches," said JPMorgan’s David Lebovitz to the outlet. That does not have to be scary. Call it a “rational exuberance phase,” said Axios.

The recent decision by Australian data center company Firmus to pull back from a planned initial public offering is “triggering the usual angst” about the AI bubble, said Patrick Commins at The Guardian. The growing skittishness by traders “doesn’t mean the whole thing is a disaster,” said NAB economist Sally Auld to the outlet. But there is a “reassessment under way” of AI’s anticipated returns.

The damage from a popped AI bubble would be “severe but not permanent,” said Ruchir Sharma at Foreign Affairs. It will likely follow the cycle of previous technological revolutions, with the rise of artificial intelligence “moving forward even as the speculative frenzy around it fades.”

‘Double whammy’

Fears remain. The “untold billions poured into AI” have driven the economy, but the “boom could quickly invert” if profits are elusive, said Futurism. The fallout could ironically result in job losses and end up “accelerating the replacement of workers with AI,” said Greg Rosalsky at NPR’s Planet Money.

One possible solution to that “double whammy” scenario is a tax on AI and robots that would make it “economical to continue employing humans” while funding the safety net, said Rosalsky. But there is a less-frightening path forward, as well. A downturn could “leave businesses with less money to invest in AI,” making them reliant on human workers.

The midterm elections don’t take place solely on Nov. 3, said Chris Brennan in USA Today. With about 8 million votes cast early or by mail, they’re “already underway”— and so are President Trump’s “attempts to disrupt the process.” Insisting without evidence that voter fraud is widespread, his administration sued California recently to keep the state from counting the ballots of 20,000 voters it alleged are noncitizens. His Department of Homeland Security already tried claiming that 15,000 noncitizens were registered in Nevada; DHS later narrowed the list to 185—and Nevada then found all 185 were citizens. Trump has publicly stated elections were rigged or fraudulent on more than 70% of days since his return to office, and his claims are growing more desperate, with Democrats “poised to take control of Congress and bring oversight and accountability to his second term.

Local and state officials are now bracing “to defend their elections against what used to be a reliable ally”: the federal government, said Zolan Kanno-Youngs in The New York Times. Trump is falsely claiming voting machines can be rigged or hacked by foreign governments; earlier this year, the FBI raided an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized voting records from the 2020 election. The president’s most rabid supporters are “urging him to consider drastic actions,” such as declaring martial law. Motivated by “a growing sense of alarm,” about 10 current and former national security officials are “discreetly advising” states on how to prepare for election interference, said Noah Robertson in The Washington Post. Among the possible threats: deployment of troops or ICE to polling sites to scare away voters, the seizure of ballots or election machines, and threats to arrest and prosecute election officials.

But so far, “Trump’s election meddling lies mostly in ruins,” said David Ignatius, also in The Washington Post. He’s “failed in nearly every phase of his assault,” thanks to “determined legal resistance.” The Supreme Court blocked him from using the Postal Service to limit mail-in ballots. States keep refusing demands to hand over voter rolls. If Trump “were a batter in a baseball game, he would have struck out, over and over.” Hundreds of lawyers are working with Democrats “to prevent election sabotage,” but the best defense “is an anti-Trump turnout at the polls so large that even he can’t challenge it.”

What happened

As the most destructive riots in modern French history engulfed the country last week, France ordered troops into the streets and imposed curfews in multiple cities. Shattered glass littered sidewalks after rioters smashed and looted thousands of shops, torched cars and buildings, and attacked police, who fired tear gas and water cannons. The protests began in September as student demonstrations over underfunded, understaffed schools, but they soon mushroomed into a larger, less coherent outpouring of rage involving at least half a million protesters. In Limoges, the clock tower of the 19th-century city hall collapsed in flames; masked vandals broke into Marseille’s city hall and toppled the statue of Marianne, the national symbol; and Paris’ iconic Monument to the Republic was damaged. Over the weeks of demonstrations, at least 1,250 people have been injured — the majority police — and more than 7,000 have been arrested. President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged some “legitimate demands” but vowed that “those who destroyed must pay.”

The unrest soon spread across Europe, where nearly every capital saw protests, some of them violent. In Belgium, buildings, monuments, and public facilities were damaged. Italy sent 500 soldiers to combat looting and arson in Milan, where most of the hundreds arrested were teens. Ongoing demonstrations over the housing shortage swelled in Spain and Portugal, where students set up tent camps in city squares. In Albania, where anger over development in a nature preserve has spawned an antigovernment movement, protesters hurled Molotov cocktails. President Trump and Vice President JD Vance sought to tie the riots to the upcoming midterms. “If you want to see what is at stake in this election,” Trump said, “just look at what’s happening in France.” Vance shared a post of the burning Limoges tower with the comment “This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.”

What the columnists said

France is no stranger to protests, said Nora Bussigny in The Free Press, but these “civil-war-like scenes” are new and horrifying. Law-abiding citizens are “traumatized.” One young Parisian mother told me that when she warned the rioters ransacking a café outside her window not to sully their cause by looting, they shouted, “You bourgeois bitch, we’re going to rape you!” Then they tried to break into her apartment.

These are not “mere schoolchildren,” said Noah Rothman in National Review. “Within their ranks, the protesters have incubated” the “civilizational cancer” of antisemitism, and it’s a radical and violent strain. Rioters in Paris burst into Ohaley Yaakov synagogue, “scattering holy books across the floor, overturning tables, and opening the Torah ark — defiling its contents.” It’s not that this was an explicitly anti-Jewish protest. But the protesters in France, as in the U.S., have adopted the Palestinian flag as a catchall symbol of oppression, and violence as their strategy. When will we “wake up to the West’s peril?”

These riots had many causes, said Sylvie Kauffmann in the Financial Times. The country “is adrift, politically, fiscally, and socially,” and its political class is only making things worse. Farleft party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon of France Unbowed has “tried to capitalize on the chaos,” openly sympathizing with the protesters and even joining protests last weekend. The “main beneficiary,” though, is likely Marine Le Pen, whose far-right National Rally party wants to expel migrants; she is now favored to win the presidency next April.

The postwar French social compact was “never really tenable,” said Bret Stephens in The New York Times. American progressives have often gazed longingly at France’s “sacrosanct social benefits,” which include universal health care, cheap tuition, and retirement at age 62. But funding all that is insanely expensive. Government spending now makes up “a whopping 57%” of France’s GDP. Nearly a third of its education budget is eaten up by pensions, so its poorer schools are crumbling. Debt outpaces GDP altogether. It’s not surprising that these “policies of national self-impoverishment have broader effects on social cohesion and national security.” Young talent is fleeing, and those who remain are rioting in the streets and fighting one another for dwindling resources.

“It’s not only France that’s feeling the heat,” said Lionel Laurent in Bloomberg. Most Western countries are aging and feeling the sting of inflation, especially in ballooning housing costs. That’s why affordability is the main question in the French election next year as well as in the U.S. midterms. What’s missing from the politicians “is honesty on the reforms that are needed — both from politicians and the aging electorates that are blocking inescapable change.”

What happened

Trump administration envoy Steve Witkoff praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian” on a visit to St. Petersburg last week, after President Trump stunned U.S. allies and lawmakers from both parties with a string of decisions that will aid Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. In Russia to discuss possible peace talks between Trump, Putin, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Witkoff hailed Putin for releasing Stephen Hubbard, a retired American teacher who was snatched from his home in eastern Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion. Hubbard, 74, was imprisoned on what the State Department called false charges of fighting for Ukraine; fellow prisoners said he was tortured for being American. “You are a humanitarian, sir,” Witkoff told Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine has killed at least 15,000 civilians. “I salute that and I commend you.”

Trump issued an executive order last week suspending sanctions included in legislation that he signed last month, which would have hit top buyers of Russian energy and Russian officials and companies. Trump said the sanctions pause was needed because he didn’t want to “drive Russia away from the bargaining table.” The waiver came a week after Trump announced he was suspending other energy sanctions to buy hundreds of thousands of tons of Russian diesel fuel. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said the U.S. cut off advanced warnings on incoming missile strikes for several days and had limited Ukraine’s access to the satellite internet service Starshield, used to guide Ukrainian attack and defense drones. The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk, whose Starlink supplies Starshield under a Pentagon contract, ordered the slowdown after consulting with Trump. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon had not manipulated the service, but noted that Starlink has “terms of service” that need to be complied with.

Zelensky said it would be a “historic mistake” for the U.S. to switch sides and support Russia. But Trump claimed “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine” and hasn’t “been doing much,” despite its increasing attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and on civilians. He spoke just hours after a drone strike on a park in Kharkiv killed six people, including a 1-year-old who died in her stroller. “We’ve given tremendous amounts to Ukraine,” Trump said. “We’ve got nothing back.”

What the columnists said

“Trump’s assistance to Putin keeps growing by the day,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. In waiving the sanctions contained in the law — which was championed by the late GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham — Trump claimed he was serving the national interest. “But the opposite is true.” Trump’s best pal Putin responded to this “gift” with one of the war’s fiercest strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, hitting more than 15 power facilities. Meanwhile, the administration “still hasn’t come clean” on who throttled Starshield, or why the delivery of crucial Patriot interceptor missiles to Ukraine is being held up. After the midterms, there must be a “bipartisan reckoning.”

The dealmaker in chief may be eyeing business opportunities, said Jonathan Lemire and Simon Shuster in The Atlantic. Instead of “a battle for the modern, rules-based world order,” many Trump allies see the Ukraine war “as an impediment to future business deals with Russia.” If Kyiv just surrendered, it would “open up avenues to Russia’s diesel, rare earth minerals, and other resources.” The New York Times has reported that the administration has discussed a possible multibillion-dollar deal for assets owned by Russia’s Lukoil. That deal would directly benefit a Trump donor as well as Middle Eastern executives with ties to Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Trump has finally achieved his heart’s desire, said David Corn in Mother Jones: “a deal with Putin.” For decades he’s hungered to do business in Russia; as president, he’s laid bare his yearning “to be a Putin BFF,” providing cover for “a foreign adversary that has attacked American democracy repeatedly.” Trump, who couldn’t give a fig about international laws or Ukraine’s democracy, has seen Russia’s invasion “mainly as a nuisance” blocking him from the alliance he craves. “Putin’s criminality and barbarity were obstacles.” But Trump “has decided to move past that. Vlad is his man.”

For Republicans and Democrats alike, Trump’s “shocking” actions should be “the last straw,” said Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review. Russia is “an enemy committed to our destruction,” led by a “murderous dictator.” Trump is “giving him aid and comfort” as he wages war against a democratic ally, bent on its “conquest.” And he’s doing it all as Russia is “actively abetting Iran’s military operations” against the U.S. with intelligence and drone weaponry.

“America is now an ally of Russia,” said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. In thrall to Putin, Trump has not only betrayed Ukraine; he’s “abandoned the Western order, the most successful—and powerful— security arrangement in human history.” And he seems to have done so to serve not national interests but his own. Until now, “Manchurian candidates and red presidents” allied with Russia were “the stuff of paranoid fiction. But this alliance now exists.”

“The question at issue is not just about Ukraine and Russia,” said Mark Hertling in The Bulwark. “It is about what the United States stands for.” For 250 years, Americans have believed in “sovereignty, self-determination, and opposition to territorial conquest.” Now Trump is executing a “disturbing and shameful abandonment” not only of Ukraine but of those bedrock principles. In America’s long history we haven’t always lived up to our values. “But rarely have we so obviously and notoriously abandoned them.”

Oxford Street has been a “key thoroughfare” in London since the capital was called Londinium, said The Times. “Where the Romans used chariots or animal-drawn carts, modern Britain filled Oxford Street with double-decker buses, black cabs and e-bikes. Until now.”

From today, after “2,000 years of traffic”, a half-mile stretch of the “nation’s high street” will be pedestrianised. The hotly contested measure has been championed by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, but had been opposed by the local council.

What are the new rules?

Now all ordinary cars, buses, taxis, private vehicles, (e-)bikes, scooters and pedicabs will be banned between Selfridges and Ikea by Great Portland Street. Bus routes will be diverted to neighbouring streets, such as Wigmore Street, Henrietta Place and Cavendish Place.

Emergency vehicles will continue to have access at all times, and essential services for business will have designated overnight hours.

Oxford Street will become more like Times Square in New York, or the shopping streets of “La Rambla in Barcelona or Strøget in Copenhagen”, said the Financial Times. This change is certainly “welcome”, as the area has gone through a “bleak period” since the pandemic. Vehicle-free streets suit the modern and “changing nature of retail”, which emphasises marketing, displays and brands over transactions.

How did it happen?

The development comes after “years of proposals, abandoned schemes and political wrangling”, said London’s The Standard. Though there has been a debate “stretching back to the early 1960s”, the idea was first formally promised in Sadiq Khan’s election manifesto for London Mayor in 2016.

There was a consultation a year later, but plans were then abandoned after the Conservative-led Westminster City Council – which controls the area – withdrew its support. Pedestrianisation was “revived” in 2024, as part of Khan’s “wider transformation” of the area.

Why has it been controversial?

This “thorny issue” has “foxed mayoral administrations for years”, said the BBC. To circumvent the council’s rulings, Khan created a development corporation, a mayoral body that could take control of the area and assume planning powers from the council. Doing this in a semi-residential area was “unprecedented”. A development corporation been used only twice before – at brownfield sites developed for the Olympic Park in east London and Old Oak Common in west London.

However, it could only be permitted if it had the approval of central government. After Labour’s landslide election victory in 2024, Angela Rayner, the housing, communities and local government secretary, granted approval for the plan, which would have been “unlikely” in previous years.

Critics called the decision “anti-democratic”, said The Telegraph. Local residents are concerned that rerouting buses will cause congestion, and larger footfalls won’t be matched with adequate police resources or security.

For Khan, who has prioritised clean air throughout his tenure. this is a “political victory”, said The Guardian. The scale and importance of Oxford Street, with its millions of foreign tourists each year, will mean the £150 million scheme will be of “interest to city planners around the world”.

Is there more to come?

This is “only the first stage of a much bigger redevelopment”, said The Standard. Authorities will monitor and collect data over the Christmas period and begin developments in the spring for an “eventual permanent redesign” of Oxford Street.

By the start of next summer, visitors should see “more than 50 new trees, two new public squares and better signage”, said The Independent. “More than 100 new seats, dining tables and new lighting are also to be installed.”

A student-led protest movement has won the Serbian parliamentary elections, defeating Aleksandar Vučić, the strongman who has ruled the country for 14 years. “After toppling governments in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, and rattling others in India, Kenya, and Vietnam,” it seems Gen Z protests “have come for Europe”, said Judah Grunstein in World Politics Review.

The Student List – which has no obvious leaders and whose candidates were not politicians but academics, engineers, farmers and athletes – attracted voters angry at government fraud and corruption with the slogan “Serbia or Mafia?”.

Vučić threw “the kitchen sink at the campaign to skew the result his way”, including taking control of all Serbia’s broadcast channels, “cranking up the nationalist rhetoric” and “cultivating support from Moscow”, said veteran central Europe correspondent Misha Glenny in The Guardian. But he and his once-dominant Serbian Progressive party were beaten, in a result that will reverberate across European countries already rocked by their own student protests.

What did the commentators say?

“Protest movements always respond to local factors,” said Grunstein in World Politics Review. But the student grievances in Serbia “and their underlying causal factors” have “more than a passing similarity” to those in France, Spain and Italy: “educational systems starved of funding, a bleak employment outlook and scarce opportunities for housing”. And corruption “is often the trigger that catalyses anger over the rest”.

In Serbia, the catalyst was the 2024 collapse of newly renovated station roof in Novi Sad, killing 15 people. What started as weekly student protests against the corruption that allegedly lay behind the botched building project “soon became a national movement” that “encompassed far more sections of Serbian society, including farmers, actors and judges”, said the BBC’s Europe editor Paul Kirby.

When Vučić, “clearly shaken” by the scale of the protests, announced snap elections last month, the students made a “calculated decision” not to stand as candidates themselves “as the electorate would probably not voted for a list of candidates with little life experience”.

Instead, they “turned months of university sit-ins” and “anti-corruption marches into a serious parliamentary challenge” by hopping on bicycles, walking across the countryside and knocking on doors to build a 250-candidate campaign slate “unlike anything Serbia has seen”, said Noah Sanders on Geosirius.

The Student List successfully “transformed itself” from “social revolt into electoral legitimacy”, said Ljubiša Ivanović on Euronews. They were vilified by pro-government media but used their energy to attract voters across the country who were disillusioned with their local politicians. Their message, said The Associated Press, was “focused on a non-partisan effort to rebuild Serbia’s economy and restore its democracy”. This youth-led victory over an authoritarian leader echoes the recent defeat of Viktor Orbán, once Vučić’s staunch ally in Hungary.

What next?

“Winning an election is one thing; governing a country is another,” said Euronews’ Ivanović. Student List must now “formulate policies on the economy, foreign affairs, the European integration process, social policy and the rule of law”. Its newly elected parliamentarians, with little to no experience of governing, will be tasked with implementing an 11-point programme that includes purging ministries of officials linked to organised crime, “freeing” Serbia’s media and restoring transparency to public procurement.

“For years, Serbian politics revolved around one dominant question: whether a political force could challenge Vučić. The answer has now been given. It can.” But “the force that did it was not one of the established opposition parties, but a student movement” that’s only two years old. It’s a “political earthquake”.

Elon Musk has “learned to love political spending again,” said Chad de Guzman in Time. After splashing at least $250 million on getting President Trump back in the White House, the world’s richest man announced last year that he’d spend “a lot less” on future campaigns because “I’ve done enough.” Instead, he’s become the biggest single donor this midterm cycle. Since July, Musk has given at least $276 million to various Republican groups—$158 million of which went to the GOP’s main Senate super PAC, “one of the largest known political donations in history.” That infusion of cash allowed the super PAC to launch a $149 million ad campaign for Ken Paxton, the GOP’s struggling candidate in the Texas U.S. Senate race. Musk’s huge spend “isn’t surprising, given what’s at stake for him if Republicans lose.” Democrats have vowed to investigate the multibillion- dollar government contracts held by SpaceX, Tesla, and other Musk companies if they win the House—and to subpoena Musk over his role leading DOGE, which slashed hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and gutted foreign aid.

Musk has learned that candidates “want his money but not him,” said Jim Newell in Slate. Back in 2024 and 2025, he was everywhere: “prancing about onstage with Trump,” living at Mar-a-Lago, and handing out million- dollar checks to Wisconsin voters. This time, he’s confined himself to insulting Democrats on his social media platform X and making donations that, while eye- poppingly large, are “effectively less than couch change” for a man worth about $1 trillion. “That’s some intimidating profligacy,” said Noah Rothman in The Boston Globe. But Musk’s money will make a difference on Election Day only if his beneficiaries can pair it with a compelling message. As voters keep telling pollsters, “that’s the missing part of the GOP’s 2026 strategy.”

As “a prominent and powerful white supremacist,” Musk has his own message, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. On X, he traffics in extremist conspiracy theories about brown and Black “invaders” destroying “‘Western,’ meaning white, civilization.” He “heavily promoted” the movie Citizen Vigilante, in which the hero kills Arab and African immigrants. He supports “remigration,” the forced deportation of nonwhite citizens to their supposed countries of origin. Yet Republicans are allowed to pretend such rhetoric from the party’s “most important donor” is irrelevant to them, even while Democrats are often asked to denounce Hasan Piker, a popular but niche far-left streamer. “I think Republicans should have to answer” for Musk’s ugly views. And if Democrats win Congress this November, they should work to ensure that no one man will ever again “have all this power.”

What is the administration doing?

In a first in U.S. history, the government has separated tens of thousands of children from parents who were arrested on immigration violations, often deporting them without their kids. Many such parents entered the U.S. legally as asylum seekers and have been working and raising families while pursuing citizenship. This spring, the Brookings Institution counted more than 146,000 children who are U.S. citizens and have had a parent deported; more than 22,000 have had both parents deported. Sometimes deportees are given the option to take their children with them—but not always. When Physicians for Human Rights interviewed women deported to Honduras this year, they found that many had not been asked if they had children, while others simply had their kids taken. One was parted from her 2-month-old breastfeeding baby. Migrant advocates say the crisis mirrors 2018, when the first Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the southern border sparked an uproar. “It’s leading to all the same forms of trauma,” said Kelly Kribs, an attorney for immigrant children. “But the speed and the scale of the separations now is at a level we’ve never seen before.”

What happens to children left in the U.S.?

Many go to relatives or friends, but because deportees have little or no time to arrange for care, some end up in foster care. When Marlyn, a Venezuelan with a pending asylum application, landed in ICE detention after a traffic stop in Alabama, her two young children, including a 2-year-old just weaned, were left with her co- worker. When she chose to accept deportation rather than endure prolonged detention in a case likely to fail, she said she begged to have her children sent with her. “I told them, ‘I have no one to take care of them.’ But they never did anything.” Nearly a year later, Marlyn has been unable to arrange extradition for her toddler, who doesn’t recognize her in video calls. Some parents choose to leave their kids behind because they are returning to countries roiled by violence. One Haitian woman, identified by The Guardian only as L.T., made the wrenching decision to leave her sick baby with a grandmother, knowing that there wouldn’t be medical care in gang-plagued Haiti. Now she’s racked by fear that her daughter could wind up with strangers. “I’m terrified of losing my baby,” she said.

What does the law say?

The law allows for parents to be deported without their children, but until recently there were protections. ICE policy held that federal agents should avoid separating families and either deport them together or confirm a caregiver is in place. The Trump administration revised the policy to say agents should do that “when operationally feasible,” which advocates say gives ICE leeway to ignore it. The administration insists it doesn’t intentionally separate families, and that this only occurs when parents make the choice to self- deport. But critics say otherwise. ICE is intent on meeting its deportation quotas, said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), even “if that means tearing families apart and traumatizing children.” Migrant advocates also cite a growing trend of children being taken from parents and put into federal custody.

Why is this happening?

Children of detainees are being reclassified as unaccompanied minors and sent to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. When Luis, a construction worker from Venezuela, was detained with his 11-year-old son, Andrés, after being arrested in El Paso, he said agents removed Andrés and transferred him to ORR instead of sending him to his grandfather. Case workers said Andrés couldn’t sleep in foster care and screamed for his parents at night. It’s not clear how common such reclassifications are, but Mother Jones spoke to a dozen lawyers who confirmed the trend. “They’re kidnapping people’s kids and keeping them in government custody,” said Jen Smyers, who was a Biden-era ORR official. There’s a process for applying to get them out, but the administration has made it arduous—to protect children from predators, it says—and ICE has arrested undocumented people who apply.

Are minors ever deported alone?

Frequently. An analysis by Pro Publica found that judges have issued over 10,000 removal and voluntary departure orders for unaccompanied minors every month, a rate four times higher than in Trump’s first term. Most of these children came from Central American countries riven by violence and economic upheaval, have no criminal record, and are pursuing legal residence. Minors with Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, granted to those who’ve suffered parental abuse or neglect, used to be protected from deportation, but the Trump administration ended that policy. It also ended $200 million in annual funding for the Acacia Center for Justice, a nonprofit that provides legal services to migrant children.

Has there been pushback?

Not much. Migrant advocates say there’s been a notable shift from 2018, when blowback over family separations led to legal challenges, bipartisan opposition, and an eventual climbdown. This time, there’s no explicit policy to challenge in court, and the separations are happening outside public view—no media images of children in cages. Advocates also cite less resistance within the administration, as staffers who might have objected have left or been laid off. The fallout in human trauma will be vast, experts say, especially for the youngest children. “They are left with a sense of abandonment that’s kind of imprinted,” said Michele Heisler, a doctor with Physicians for Human Rights. Her organization also documented signs of trauma among separated mothers, including panic attacks and uncontrollable crying. The “gratuitous level of cruelty,” she said, “is hard for all of us to understand.

As leaves fall and the nights draw in, every coffee shop’s “non-negotiable” autumn fixture is sweeping consumers up in a “sea of spice-infused foam”, said Metro. You’d be hard pushed right now to find a menu where pumpkin spice latte is not on offer, with every establishment “from high-end bakeries to budget spots offering their own signature twist”.

The pumpkin spice latte made its debut in US Starbucks outlets in 2003 but it wasn’t until 2015 that it contained “any actual pumpkin”, said Britannica. The name came from the fact that the original cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg spice blend was the same as that used in pumpkin pie. The aim was to create a drink that captured the essence of autumn, and it’s proved such a hit that Americans now “guzzle about 20 million” Starbucks “PSL”s every year.

The pumpkin spice latte has “become a cultural phenomenon greater than itself”, said NPR. Over the years, it’s been seen as “shorthand” for everything from “basicness” to “femininity, and even for white culture”. But its most enduring impact is the “$500 million-dollar industry” it generates every year.

With the average pumpkin spice latte now costing £5.25, you may want to try swapping your coffee shop’s “autumn favourite” for a homemade creation, said The Telegraph.

The “real secret to the drink’s success” is in the “warming” blend of spices that is sweetened with pumpkin purée. Even if you don’t have a milk steamer to produce the signature latte froth, you can create a delicious “all-in-one” version of the PSL by putting 200ml milk, 50ml espresso and 1 tbsp tinned pumpkin purée in a pan, adding 1 tbsp brown sugar and a pinch each of ground cinnamon, ground ginger and ground nutmeg. Heat gently, whisking once steaming. Pour into a mug and top with a swirl of cream and another pinch of cinnamon.

Fifa’s controversial president Gianni Infantino looks “increasingly likely” to be re-elected unopposed for a fourth and final term, but there could be a “sensational twist”, said Dan Roan on the BBC.

Senior figures within European football want former Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger to run as a “surprise candidate”. But would Wenger, currently head of global development at the governing body, “really challenge his own boss”?

‘Break the chain’

“At first glance”, the Frenchman “looks an unlikely figure to stir a revolution from within”, said Oliver Brown in The Telegraph. He turned 77 this week so “he would not exactly represent fresh blood”, but he “could fundamentally change an ossified bureaucracy that has produced just three presidents in 52 years”.

Infantino is a divisive figure. Critics accuse him of prioritising money and political relationships over human rights, sports integrity and the welfare of players.

The role of president of world football’s governing body has been “debased” and “mired in the machinations of keeping power by whatever means necessary”. But Wenger – “a true football obsessive” – would “break the chain”. He’s “seldom come across as financially motivated” and he could “snatch Infantino’s core vote” in Africa. “So please, Arsène, in the name of sanity, declare your candidacy now.”

Any hopefuls may be planning to “keep their identity under wraps until the last minute to catch Infantino and his acolytes off guard”, said Alyson Rudd in The Times.

The “smart money” is on Wenger. He “commands global respect and was quick to distance himself” from FFE – Infantino’s deeply unpopular plan to sell-off some of the commercial rights to Fifa competitions to a private investment firm – “despite being part of the Fifa family”. He has “universal appeal” after his success in Japan and is popular in Africa having “supported the growth of the game on the continent”.

But he may “value working from within Fifa as it stands, rather than risk being sidelined” and “ending his footballing life as a loser”. There would be “something particularly galling about coming second to a character who was prepared to sell the soul of the beautiful game, is partial to private jets” and “openly fawns over” Donald Trump.

‘Intriguing prospect’

In Zurich, where Fifa is based, there’s “no indication” that Wenger, who joined Infantino and others for dinner last week, is “plotting a bid”, said Roan.

But a “large number of Fifa’s staff” want Wenger to run and they “believe he could change the organisation’s image”, so “it is an intriguing prospect”.

Wenger hasn’t commented on the speculation. Any reluctance to stand on his part “probably comes from the fact you cannot risk losing to Infantino”, said John Cross in the Daily Mirror.

The president “looked damaged beyond repair after the summer but has gone round the world on a charm offensive – and it appears to have worked, outside of Uefa of course”.

The Italian received a further boost after a “major U-turn” from the head of the Asian Football Confederation, who had previously signed a joint letter with other federations criticising Infantino over his FFE plan. Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa told the AFC Congress in Tokyo – which Infantino attended – that “we reaffirm our full commitment, of course, to supporting you as you seek a new mandate as president”.

The deadline for candidates is 18 November so all eyes in the meantime will be on Wenger.

John Steinbeck grew up among the fertile fields and mountains of Monterey County, California – a landscape he “vividly” described in his novels.

Fans who wish to explore his “beloved homeland” could start at his childhood home (now a restaurant) in Salinas, said Jacqui Agate in The Telegraph. At the nearby National Steinbeck Centre, you can see Rocinante, his camper truck.

Next, take the River Road Wine Trail through “a Steinbeckian swoop of sun-baked hills” to Pinnacles National Park, with its “tawny” crags and canyons. You could also visit the V6 Ranch in Parkfield – a cattle ranch that’s “about as close to Steinbeck’s agrarian beginnings as you can get” – and the coastal Post Ranch Inn, now a luxury resort, where he worked as a ranch hand in the 1920s.

A welcoming city in northern Spain

It’s not a “fashionable” place, but I love the city of León in northern Spain, said Annie Bennett in The Sunday Telegraph.

As a key point on the pilgrimage route to Santiago, it has a long history of “welcoming” visitors, and has some glorious architecture, including a gothic cathedral that is among the most “magnificent” in Spain, and the Basílica de San Isidoro, a Romanesque masterpiece with dazzling 12th-century frescoes depicting bible stories and scenes of rural life.

But it’s León’s tapas bars, more than anything, that “keep luring me back”. A glass of wine costs about €2.50 and is always served with a snack – perhaps a local speciality such as croquetas with local cured beef and Valdeón blue cheese. And the Parador de León is a gem – a former 16th-century pilgrims’ hostel, including a “sumptuous” breakfast.

Fair Isle’s magnificent migrants

Fair Isle is the UK’s most remote inhabited island – part of Shetland, but isolated from the rest of the archipelago, lying as it does 25 miles to the south of the main island of Mainland.

With sea cliffs up to 200 metres high, it is wild and spectacular, said Mike MacEacheran in The Times – and, thanks to its unique position, it’s a dream for birdwatchers, particularly during the autumn migration.

On a nine-night (two spent on the ferry) trip with Naturetrek, I stayed at the Fair Isle Bird Observatory, in a “cosy” room with “terrific sandy bay views”. Our guide, ornithologist Nick Boyd, was excellent, and we saw dozens of species, including a common rosefinch, a rare Fair Isle wren, and a buff-bellied pipit, “blown thousands of miles off course from North America” – a “once-in-a-decade sighting” that left me feeling “ecstatic”.

The Atlantic was the largest private yacht ever built when it emerged from a New Jersey shipyard in 1903. Two years later, it set a record for the fastest transatlantic sail crossing for a monohull yacht that would remain unbeaten for nearly 100 years. Sadly, the Atlantic suffered the “ultimate ignominy” in old age, said James Stewart in the Financial Times, becoming a floating tea room, before being broken up in 1982.

Later, however, a faithful replica, also called the Atlantic, was built. Completed in 2010, this 65-metre three-masted schooner is “a vision from yachting’s golden age to inspire romantics and dreamers” – and, following a refit last year, it will be available from this December to book on a weekly basis as it embarks on an “epic” journey around the world. “Few objects inspire devotion like great sailing yachts” – and on a recent day trip from Saint-Tropez, I found that the new Atlantic’s dozen crew (all dressed in matching navy trousers and monogrammed shirts) spoke of it with a “zeal” that was “way beyond professionalism”.

The biggest replica schooner afloat, it is a thing of great beauty, with a dozen sails, shiny brass fittings, and a “glossy raven-black hull”. Standing at its tip, with the “blue-black sea racing below”, I felt like I was “flying” – and it wasn’t hard to imagine its predecessor’s record-setting voyage as one of 11 cruiser-racers competing in the 1905 Kaiser’s Cup race. In that event, it sailed from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, to Lizard Point in Cornwall in 12 days, four hours, one minute and 19 seconds, despite having to contend with a three-day gale. Below decks, the new Atlantic has six double cabins, with carved panelling, mahogany parquet, green marble and walk-in showers with unlimited hot water.

Rates for a week on board start at €150,000 – which sounds only “slightly less scary” when you work out that that comes to £10,725 per head, assuming a party of 12, including all meals and wine.

James Stewart was a guest of Atlantic (atlantic-yacht.com).

One of the greatest privileges of my craic-riddled culinary career has been to work in the hallowed grounds of Ballymaloe House, said Oisín Davis. It is the epicentre of Irish cuisine, and I’ve been lucky enough to guide hundreds of the world’s best bartenders through its walled gardens to share the simplest of philosophies with them: farm-to-table food and farm-to-glass cocktails. It’s also where I grew to love lemon verbena, a wonderfully perfumed, citrus-tasting herb that adds a deliciously fragrant note to this dessert.

Ingredients (serves 6)

• 12 fresh lemon verbena leaves or 1 tbsp of coarsely chopped fresh rosemary, plus extra to decorate
• 100ml (plus 4 tsp) boiling water
• 300g fresh or frozen blackcurrants (thawed if using frozen)
• 60ml Glendalough Single Grain Double Barrel Finish Irish Whiskey
• 200g caster sugar
• 3 egg whites

For the whipped cream

• 250ml double cream
• 1⁄2 vanilla bean, split in half lengthways and seeds scraped out

Method

• The day before, put the lemon verbena or rosemary needles in a jar with the boiling water. Get the lid on, then once cooled, shake for a few seconds and let it infuse overnight in the fridge.
• Preheat your oven to 110C (230F). Line a large baking sheet with non-stick baking paper.
• Strain the liquid from the lemon verbena or rosemary, then pour into a saucepan on a medium heat. Add the blackcurrants and half of the whiskey. Simmer until the blackcurrants start to break up, then stir in 50g of the sugar until it’s dissolved. You now have a compote but you’re going to need some purée from it, so press 4 tablespoons of the compote through a fine mesh sieve. Discard the pulp in the sieve but set aside both the purée and the compote.
• Put the egg whites in a spotlessly clean, dry bowl and use an electric mixer to whisk to stiff peaks. Add the remaining sugar a little bit at a time, while continuously whisking until the meringue is stiff and glossy. Turn off the mixer, then slowly drizzle in the purée. Fold it through with just one stir to create a marbled look.
• Dollop six equal portions on to the lined sheet, using the back of a spoon to shape them into circles. Bake for 1.5 hours, then set aside to cool completely on a wire rack.
• To serve, whisk the cream, remaining whiskey and vanilla until it forms soft peaks. Dollop on top of each meringue, then add a spoonful of compote and decorate with extra lemon verbena or a rosemary sprig.

Taken from The Irish Whiskey Cookbook: 50 Recipes to Cook, Sip and Savour by Oisín Davis.

Because a handful of authors dominate mainstream horror fiction, it can be easy to miss how rich and diverse literary horror is, including, of course, the work of Stephen King. These four novels combine sharp prose with well-crafted terror.

‘The Haunting of Hill House’ by Shirley Jackson (1959)

An enormously influential work of dread, Shirley Jackson’s classic haunted house tale remains one of the rare horror books to receive literary awards. It is “one of the 20th century’s finest horror novels — and maybe the definitive haunted house story,” said Lara Zarum at The New York Times.

‘The Stand’ by Stephen King (1978)

Among Stephen King’s dozens of fiction books, “The Stand” remains his epic masterwork. It is about a flu named Captain Trips that wipes out 99.4% of the world’s population and forces the survivors to choose between the forces of good and evil. King’s “most sweeping horror novel” is also a “kind of inventory of American culture,” said Kirkus Reviews.

‘Come Closer’ by Sara Gran (2003)

Short enough to read in a single sitting, Sara Gran’s chilling story of an architect succumbing to demonic possession will leave readers stunned and unsettled. A “book that could damage the unwary psyche,” its “genius is in making the strange details so commonplace and incidental that ambiguity survives,” said Neil McRobert at Esquire.

‘The Grip of It’ by Jac Jemc (2017)

A troubled young couple moves from the big city and buys a small, haunted house, in a familiar set-up made terrifyingly unsettling by the way the reader is plunged into nonlinearity and fear alongside the characters. In “prose that is poetic and bereft of consolation,” Jemc “unsettles our notions of the boundaries between ourselves, our partners and anything else that may hurt us,” said Ahsan Butt at The Rumpus.

South Asian Americans report facing rhetorical and physical attacks, egged on by right-wing politicians and intellectuals. The latter are debating the so-called Indian question of whether ethnic minorities can truly assimilate into the American community. And the conversation, critics say, has dark echoes.

‘Scourge of hate’

Indian Americans and South Asian migrants have “become a conspicuous target of online conservative anger,” said Vox. People of Indian heritage are not “being stereotyped as antisocial, criminal, coming here illegally,” said journalist Zaid Jilani to the outlet. Instead, their growing prominence in business and academic “positions that I think a lot of people have typically associated with white folks” have made them a “status threat” to middle-class Americans.

The result is a growing “scourge of anti-Indian American, anti-South Asian hate,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) to The New York Times, after a Hindu temple in Illinois was targeted in an alleged mass shooting plot. Critics point to rhetoric such as that used by Bo French, a Texas Republican who sparked controversy last month when he posted an image of South Asians at a college football game. The “problem” of migration is “now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” said French on X.

Other observers cite “The Indian Question,” a Rufo & Lomez podcast episode recorded in September by conservative commentators Jonathan Keeperman and Christopher Rufo. Many Americans “prefer to live in a homogenous [sic] society,” said Keeperman on X. Critics of Indian migration are pushing back against progressive attempts to “subdue any explicit political effort to maintain a white majority.”

‘Nativists have prevailed’

Talk of an “Indian question” amounts to the “mainstreaming of anti-Indian bigotry,” said Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic. A “historical rule of thumb” is that bad things happen when “your social identity is being made the name of a ‘question.’”

“Playing by America’s rules is no longer enough” for Indian immigrants, said Anang Mittal at Firstpost. The United States “told immigrants to come legally on the basis of merit, and Indians did.” But it seems “the nativists have prevailed, for now.”

Antibiotic-resistant shigellosis infections have been spreading in the U.S. Many are sexually transmitted and can affect the most vulnerable communities.

What are the symptoms and transmission methods?

Shigellosis is a gastrointestinal illness caused by a group of bacteria called Shigella. Associated symptoms include acute diarrhea, vomiting, stomach pain and fever up to seven days. In most instances, those with shigellosis are able to recover on their own, but patients with more severe cases may require antibiotics and hospitalization.

The primary way shigellosis spreads is through the fecal-oral route, usually from contaminated food and water. However, another transmission method has become increasingly prevalent: There is a “distinct and intensifying sexual transmission of shigellosis,” said a study published in The Lancet. Traditional preventative measures for the disease, like handwashing and food safety, are “not likely” to help with this type of spread.

The infection is most commonly passed between men who sleep with other men. “Many men who have sex with men are unaware of the serious and increasing risk posed by sexually transmitted Shigella,” senior study author Kate Baker said in a statement.

How common is it?

While there is public concern about the spread of the illness, there has not yet been a major outbreak. According to the most recent CDC data, almost 15,000 people have been diagnosed with shigellosis in the U.S. in 2026, and it has been found in 47 states. These numbers are similar to last year’s count. But there has also been a rise in the number of antibiotic-resistant cases.

Among nearly 17,000 Shigella species isolates with resistance data, extensively drug-resistant (XDR) isolates increased between 2011 and 2023, according to an analysis by the CDC. Most U.S. outbreaks “involved drug-susceptible strains and primarily affected children,” but “national surveillance data indicate that most XDR cases occurred among adult men.”

XDR shigellosis is risky for children and disadvantaged populations like the unhoused. The infection has “gone from being relatively treatable with off-the-shelf drugs” to being “close to untreatable over the course of the last decade or so,” said Baker.

With four political factions working together to defeat Israel’s right-wing Likud Party in upcoming elections, there is a real possibility that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may lose power for the first time since the Gaza war began. But this doesn’t necessarily mean conditions in the region will improve for Palestinians.

What did the commentators say?

Israelis consider the Oct. 27 election to be important, but for “Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the stakes are just as high — even though they do not have a vote,” said The New York Times. Netanyahu has long vowed to “prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, and his government has built Israeli settlements in the West Bank at a breakneck pace.” Many Palestinians are “desperate to avoid another four years” of his government.

Still, even a victory that ousts Likud from power “may bring only marginal change for Palestinians suffering record levels of settler violence and mass displacement,” said Al Jazeera. While the opposition coalition of the Yashar party, the Democrats, the Yisrael Beiteinu party and the Together alliance have joined forces against Netanyahu, there is “little daylight between them when it comes to Israel’s foundational policies in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot, who could potentially become Israel’s next prime minister, also opposes an independent Palestinian nation. The election is “unlikely to produce a sweeping shift in policies that have hampered a decades-old peace process,” said Reuters. Even if Netanyahu is ousted, the new coalition “effectively repudiates the ‘two-state solution’ that underpinned international peace negotiations for generations.”

What next?

Whether Netanyahu stays or goes, he has left an indelible mark on Israel. The “security doctrine he champions — opposition to a Palestinian state, stifling Iran’s nuclear ambitions, stationing troops in neighboring countries to neutralize perceived threats and the insistence that peace comes from strength, not the other way around — is now utterly mainstream,” said Bloomberg. With no end in sight to the destruction in Gaza, no “matter who wins, there will be no fundamental shift in our policy,” Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the U.S., said to Bloomberg. “It may even be a more aggressive policy.”

The UK is facing a greater threat “than we have, certainly for most, if not all, of my lifetime”, Wes Streeting told the BBC.

The defence secretary was referring to the vulnerabilities discovered in PHP, a programming language used in up to 70% of websites. Since then “millions of attacks” have been launched in attempts to exploit the flaw, said The Times, and a “patch” has been rolled out to help sites deal with the issue. The government announced 32 of its services were offline, though there is no indication of a breach.

For many, this episode has highlighted the dependence on, and vulnerability of, internet use. With AI growing ever more powerful – and likely being used by hackers as well as those researchers who found the PHP vulnerabilities – this could be just the beginning of an era of disruption.

What did the commentators say?

In the last few days, the internet has been “tested in a way I have not seen in my – or its – lifetime”, said Andrew Griffin in The Independent. Usually global catastrophes “capture our attention and excite our energy”, whereas the “gradual weakening of things we depend on engenders boredom”. But we need to be aware that AI does threaten the world, just not in a traditional way. It does so in a “way so dull and disengaging that we don’t even realise”.

“The future is here” and our digital infrastructure is “looking very fragile”, said Chris Stokel-Walker in The Guardian. “The solution is the same one we keep talking about, but rarely actually do anything about.” Large tech companies, who make “billions” from software they are obtaining for free from open-source data, “should contribute properly to maintaining it”. Unless we start “properly valuing those who keep our internet safe”, the internet will break, again.

There have been warnings of this crisis for the “better part of a year”, said Matteo Wong in The Atlantic. In the last few weeks, there have been major cyberattacks on “governments, data centres, and hospitals in Ukraine, Russia, Argentina, Bangladesh and Indonesia”.

“Bulking up” IT departments and using passkeys and two-factor authentications are still “important”, but the “most urgent and practical advice being given now is to retreat: prepare to simply go offline”. There is little time now to prepare for the “deluge” of AI-based hacking. In fact, “the dam may have already broken”.

The PHP “patch” does not spell the end of these “dramatic” issues, said an editorial in The Times. “Millions” of websites will still need to be updated, despite the fix, and even then, hackers could use the opportunity to “illuminate their route into systems that may still be sitting unprotected”.

Government preparedness should be an absolute “political priority”. Pilot projects on cyber defence and the AI Safety Institute represent “sensible” first steps, but “more must be done” in the form of public awareness and creating “decisive state emergency levers” in times of crisis. We should not panic, but the coming weeks will “no doubt reveal continuing threats, especially to smaller bodies with less stringent security”.

What next?

“There’s a race on” between attackers and the tech companies who are rolling out the “patch”, said Rowland Manthorpe on Sky News. “The trouble is, this patch doesn’t cover all PHP sites.” Based on data gathered from around 2.6 million services, about 75% don’t run newer versions of PHP, and so it will be “much harder” for them to implement the fixes.

In the long term, AI “could be amazing” for developing cyber defences, but for now it seems the “attackers might have the advantage”. So “we could be in for a bumpy few years”.

In Brazil’s tightly contested presidential election, another contender is back in the spotlight: the outsized role social media plays in its politics.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva accused Meta of using “biased algorithms and AI restrictions“ to favour opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, said The Associated Press. The son of the far-right former president, Jair, won 47% in the first round of the election compared with 45% for the incumbent.

Lula filed a complaint against the US tech company, claiming it had subjected his campaign to “unjustified reductions in reach”. It claimed Meta had artificially inflated accounts and adverts associated with Bolsonaro, a key ally of Donald Trump.

Meta denies wrongdoing, but ahead of the run-off on Sunday, “questions have festered over whether the digital arena has been a level playing field”, said Al Jazeera.

What is Brazil’s social media footprint?

Brazil is one of the world’s biggest markets for social media. The South American nation boasts about 180 million users, said Statista: more than three-quarters of the population. “Brazil is a power machine on the internet,” actress Fernanda Torres told Variety. “We’re heavy, heavy users.”

And with social media “eclipsing traditional advertising”, political ad spending on Meta’s sites has “grown at a breakneck pace”, said Al Jazeera. But critics warn this shift has “put political hopefuls at the mercy of Big Tech corporations and their biases”.

Left-wing actors in Brazil still “lag significantly behind the far right when it comes to digital communication”, said anthropologist Leticia Cesarino. The logic that underpins the attention economy is “structurally beneficial to the kind of alarmistic, simplistic, affect-laden far-right discourse”.

What are the allegations against Meta?

Google and TikTok are not allowing political advertising, which left Meta’s services as “the only large-scale channels for paid digital campaigning”, said The Guardian.

Meta temporarily disabled ads on Lula’s official campaign Facebook page. He was also briefly unable to boost his Instagram posts, while Bolsonaro could. Lula’s lawyers included this in “evidence” that Meta was “actively trying to interfere” in Bolsonaro’s favour.

Ekō, a digital advocacy non-profit coalition, published a report alleging that Meta had favoured Bolsonaro’s campaign. UN rights experts said reports of restrictions on Meta platforms were concerning. “Information, including from Meta employees, suggests that accounts linked to one side of the presidential race were disproportionately curtailed,” the experts said, without specifying which side.

What is Meta’s defence?

Meta called Lula’s allegations “false and unfounded”, said The Guardian, saying there had been “technical incidents” that affected campaigns from “different parts of the political spectrum”. But Meta’s own semi-independent oversight board said it was “concerned by recurring enforcement failures in Meta’s election integrity efforts”, citing Brazil’s election, where there had been an “over-enforcement of Meta’s fraud policies” against Lula.

Brazil’s top electoral court ruled that Meta could not “reduce the distribution of political contact, restrict searches or remove posts in a way that creates an imbalance”, said The Associated Press. Meta says it has complied with the court order to treat both election campaigns equally.

“We apply the same rules to all candidates, parties and political viewpoints in Brazil,” Meta told The Guardian. “We do not suppress content to harm one side or give preferential treatment to any side.”

Masked protesters clad all in black have been a feature of protests around the world for decades. But the “Black Bloc” are back in the news this week, accused by the French government of turning peaceful protests into rioting and violence.

Originating among anarchist and radical left activists in West Germany in the 1980s, the Black Bloc are “temporary groups formed for a specific protest” that “operate without hierarchy”, said Canadian professor Francis Dupuis-Déri on The Conversation back in 2017.

Their tactics spread through activist networks in the US and Canada in the 1990s, culminating in the infamous “Battle of Seattle” during the 1999 World Trade Organization summit. Since then they have been prominent in the anti-austerity movements of the 2010s, and recent youth-led protests that have gripped France and other countries in Asia and South America.

‘Like an orchestra without a conductor’

Ideologically identified with “anarchist, anti-capitalist and anti-fascist movements, Black Bloc participants eschew political parties and hierarchical organisations”, said the Financial Times.

They “pose a big problem” for both the police and for trade unions, “who do not want chaos to mar their traditional demonstrations” against government policies.

“They are very well co-ordinated, but in a horizontal way,” said Guillaume Farde, from Sciences Po university in Paris. They have no organised leadership, tactics are disseminated via social media or encrypted messaging apps, and gatherings are often impromptu. “It is like an orchestra who knows the music so well that they do not need a conductor.”

‘Free spirits’

The “founding fathers” of the Black Bloc were “autonomist and anarchist activists”, said Le Monde, “but the spectrum has broadened to include more individuals” who “define themselves as free spirits”.

The movement is certainly “difficult to pin down, both politically and socially”, said historian Sylvain Boulouque in Le Monde in 2019. “It forms a heterogeneous ensemble with variegated political traditions.”

France’s domestic intelligence service “partially shares this analysis”, said Le Monde, citing a police source that said: “Behind the black blocs, real ideologists are developing a doctrine and structure that unifies and deploys propaganda.”

Others see this as an attempt by the authorities to make the Black Bloc into something they are not. “Black bloc doesn’t mean anything”, Henri, a 40-year-old who does not define himself as an anarchist, autonomist or extreme leftist, told Le Monde. “Black is just because it’s not distinctive. It’s the best way not to be identified. We’re all in the same boat.”

Find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest news and other global events by putting your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week.

As a super El Niño intensifies in the Pacific Ocean, coastal beach erosion is devastating Southern California and beyond. But concrete reef structures powered by artificial intelligence could help to combat the environmental crisis. They can help beaches recover and even predict future erosion patterns.

Methodology

Born from a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the company Coastal Assembly uses AI along with satellite and ocean data to “predict coastal erosion patterns and create submerged structures that harness currents to coax the beach back,” said The New York Times. It has placed 54 marine-concrete artificial reef structures near the JW Marriott Maldives Resort & Spa, helping the ocean “build about 90 feet of new beach in six months,” said AccuWeather.

After two years, the beach has now “doubled in size,” and the artificial reef is “filled with new coral and marine life, from fish to sea anemones,” said Fast Company. The usual solution to coastal erosion is to “dredge sand to try to replace what was lost.” But that “works only temporarily, and it harms marine ecosystems.” Coastal Assembly’s method has the “potential to aid communities in adapting to climate change by reducing the time and cost of complex coastline modeling and predicting the areas most vulnerable to erosion,” said the Times.

Challenges

The artificial reefs are custom. It’s not “one-size-fits-all because every beach has a different bathymetry [underwater landscape],” said Coastal Assembly co-founder Skylar Tibbits to Fast Company. It has “different wave conditions” and “complex parameters that make each beach unique.” In addition, the “dynamics of coastal erosion are complex,” said the Times. Sand and sediment are “always eroding and accumulating with seasonal currents,” and rising sea levels can contribute to more coastal loss.

Time will tell if artificial reefs can be a long-term solution. Beaches are “our primary natural defense to backshore erosion and coastal flooding,” said coastal geomorphologist Adam Young to AccuWeather. "Without that sand buffer, waves have less distance to lose energy before reaching roads, homes and bluffs.”

“Massive, ambitious, controversial, and expensive”, Jaguar’s luxury electric GT is here at last, said Top Gear Magazine, and setting a new tone for the marque – “all electric, more luxurious, rarer, bespoke”. The Type 01 is also the “last-chance saloon” for the carmaker. “If this car bombs, Jaguar dies.”

With more than 150 prototypes, and put through its paces from the Arctic to Death Valley, it is the most extensively tested Jaguar. It’s also the most powerful, aerodynamic and patented Jaguar of all time. At two metres wide and 5.2 metres long, it’s got “immense presence”, though its low stance and raked rear do make it look rather like a “cartoon villain getaway car”.

Jaguar has ripped up the rule book with the Type 01, which is built on an all-new platform. It is made from 73% aluminium but still weighs about 2.9 tonnes, said Evo. It is “unapologetically imposing”, with “towering proportions”, yet it only seats four.

With a 120kWh battery, and three e-motors – a 260kW front motor and twin 310kW rear motors – for a combined 1,015bhp, it has a claimed range of 450 miles. It can do 0-62mph in 3.2secs, with a top speed of 150mph, and charges from 10%-80% in just 22 minutes on a fast charger.

The Type 01 sits on massive 23-inch wheels, and the low profile and long bonnet make it look “a bit like a Batmobile”, said T3. Its interior is “gentler”, with a choice of NeoGrain fabric or leather. The driver gets a 24-inch OLED screen, and there’s a smaller 7-inch infotainment screen in the centre.

There’s no rear windscreen, just a digital rear mirror on the dash, which houses a panoramic soundbar. There’s a voice assistant for hands-free operation in 18 languages. Orders are expected to open early next year.

Togo has asked its citizens to contribute texts, recordings and translations to “develop AI models that address the linguistic diversity of the country”, said AI for Developing Countries Forum.

More than just a “regional experiment”, it is a “blueprint for how developing nations can use technology to assert their cultural sovereignty and economic relevance in the digital age”.

Africa has around 2,000 languages but very few are represented comprehensively in AI models, said academics on The Conversation. Failing to be a part of the tech revolution not only “marginalises millions of people” but also “increases the technology divide”.

98% of African languages ‘unsupported’

AI’s inability to handle most African languages comes down to the “gap between the number of real-world speakers and a language’s digital footprint,” said African Business.

According to research published in the Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, across six large language models (LLMs), eight small language models and six specialised small language models, only 41 African languages were represented. Only four – Amharic, Swahili, Afrikaans and Malagasy – were “always handled”. “Over 98% of African languages went unsupported.”

According to OpenAI, the number of ChatGPT users in Africa is “growing faster than in any other region, said The Economist. Yet, despite the surge in popularity, even the best LLMs “falter in African languages, typically scoring 10-30 percentage points lower on benchmarking tests than they do in English”. The models mainly struggle with numerous dialects and “code-switching”, which is when speakers use different languages at the same time.

“The root problem is lack of data.” Much of the training for “smaller” languages is taken from Bible verses. High-quality audio fit for speech recognition is also “scarce”, so researchers are “recording how people talk” to build the data supply.

It’s not just a lack of text and speech that is the problem, said the academics on The Conversation, it’s also the infrastructure that supports it. “Basic tools” like dictionaries, terminologies and glossaries are missing. Then there are inadequacies in African language keyboards, fonts, spell-checkers and tokenisers – which “break text into smaller pieces so a language model can understand it”. All of these impact orthographic variation – how the same words are spelled differently across regions – tone marking and “rich dialect diversity”.

‘Global North cultural assumptions’

The texts that dominate LLMs “reflect Global North cultural assumptions, about individualism, competition and about globalisation”, said University World News. By definition, therefore, this is a continuation of the “long history of epistemic marginalisation” of the Global South.

The lack of African languages in LLMs has become a “major concern for the continent’s policymakers and tech leaders”, said Semafor. The World Bank estimates that Africa has only 0.6% of global data-centre capacity, despite having 18% of the world’s population.

Africa’s “main link” to the AI revolution has been through minerals such as cobalt and copper, but the “bigger prize” is through productivity, or being able to harness the end product of AI. Currently, however, there isn’t the infrastructure or energy to achieve this, meaning that AI is “unlikely to add meaningfully to growth”.

African AI companies need to break beyond being “suppliers to the AI revolution or just consumers of finished AI products”. Their continent needs to be the place where the “revolution delivers its biggest gains”.

Building AI models from scratch is “expensive” and uses “limited resources”. By adopting and adapting existing models, the continent’s outputs can evolve more quickly. And Togo’s initiative suggests that the future of AI in Africa “may hinge less on who builds the biggest model than on who makes the technology useful to the most people”.

With polls looking dire for Republicans ahead of next month’s highly anticipated midterm elections, President Donald Trump and his allies are reportedly wasting little time on the most pressing question of this election cycle: Who will take the blame for the likely, if still theoretical, electoral drubbing? Cue the MAGA infighting, as various White House operators and GOP power brokers jockey to avoid, and in some cases direct, the president’s guaranteed post-midterm scapegoating.

‘Knives are now fully out’

Although Trump has “proven largely incapable of getting out of his own way,” he’s “keenly aware of the grumbling within his party” over the GOP’s midterm prospects and has “begun looking for someone else to take the fall,” said Puck. “Currently at the top of the list” is former White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, who “crafted the party’s midterm strategy.” Days away from a potentially “dire midterm reckoning,” Republicans are “turning their cannons” toward Blair and consulting partner Chris LaCivita, the two men tasked with the “herculean job of maintaining control of Congress,” said Politico.

The hostility toward Blair and LaCivita follows their recent trip to the Balkans to “advise a Russia-friendly regime’s reelection effort” even as GOP prospects “dwindle back home,” said Politico. That excursion “opened the floodgates,” said one source to the outlet. The “knives are now fully out for these two.”

‘Ice maiden is melting’

“These days,” Trump has also been looking to place blame on Susie Wiles, his “once-unassailable White House chief of staff,” for the midterms, said Politico. The president is “musing about replacements for his top aide” while getting “plenty of encouragement from rivals” to Wiles and those settling scores.

Trump’s “ice maiden is melting,” said The New Republic of Wiles. She’s in “some deep sh-t,” said one Trump adviser to Zeteo. At the same time, the president has “tried to pour cold water” on rumors of her fate by “releasing effusively supportive statements” and characteristically condemning the media as “fake news.”

A movie doesn’t have to be set on Halloween to be scary, but it doesn’t hurt. The holiday atmosphere can provide an extra element of suspense when done right, as in these four notable films.

‘Halloween’ (1978)

Horror legend John Carpenter’s lean franchise-launching slasher deftly adds a supernatural aspect to his unkillable knife-wielding mental institution escapee, Michael Myers. The classic puts “viewers through a troubled nightmare of suspense and uncertain dread,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (AMC+)

‘Ginger Snaps’ (2000)

In this Canadian cult classic that doubles as a coming-of-age story, a sardonic goth transforms into a werewolf in the days leading up to Halloween and terrifies her younger sister. The movie, through character-building and atmosphere, “has fun with its own premises without turning into an empty camp exercise,” said Dave Kehr at The New York Times. (Peacock)

‘Trick ’r Treat’ (2007)

Arguably the best horror anthology ever, the movie features four intersecting segments centered around a demonic, pumpkin-headed trick-or-treater seeking to avenge sins of the town’s past. It’s a movie that “feels less like it was merely set on the holiday and more like it was built out of everything people love about it,” said Arleigh at Through the Shattered Lens. (HBO Max)

‘Hell House LLC’ (2015)

In this found footage gem, a documentary team seeks the truth about a haunted house massacre by tracking down its sole survivor, who has tapes. With a slow-burn buildup, this “genuinely suspenseful” movie “carefully sets up its scares in a way that actually contributes to the story,” said Luiz H.C. at Bloody Disgusting. (AMC+)

When President Harry S. Truman, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met at Potsdam in 1945, the goal was for World War II’s victorious leaders to coordinate plans for postwar Europe. Eighty years later, Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed another seismic trilateral meeting — this time between himself, President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, Russia continues its attempted invasion of Ukraine, a country conspicuously left off the invitation list.

What did the commentators say?

Putin is attempting to “capitalize on warming ties” between himself and Trump in the hopes of negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine that “would favor Moscow,” said The Wall Street Journal. But by omitting Ukraine, Putin’s “unprecedented” summit would “send alarm bells ringing in European capitals and beyond.” Coordinating a summit of global superpowers “appeals to Trump’s idealized view of the world” — a vision that would entail powerful leaders carving up territory with Trump “taking his seat, recognized by all, as one of those great powers,” said Slate.

Publicly, Trump has shown interest in Putin’s summit as an opportunity to address atomic weaponry. “I would do it, not so much for Ukraine,” he said to reporters this week, per Bloomberg. “We would have it to talk about denuclearization.” For years, Trump has had an “aspiration to reach a deal” with Russia and China regarding nonproliferation, said Axios. But “so far, Putin and Xi haven’t shown much openness to the idea.”

While the three countries have “overlapping interests,” they lack a “common strategic vision,” said Denis Simon, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, to the South China Morning Post. Nuclear weapons offer the “most obvious potential starting point,” yet issues like Ukraine, Taiwan and the “broader international order” would “inevitably enter any conversation” among the trio.

What next?

Chinese officials have “privately welcomed” the potential talks but “have not pushed aggressively for them,” said the Morning Post. There is “no clear understanding yet regarding the meeting itself or its potential agenda,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to the Journal. Still, all three parties “acknowledge the hypothetical possibility of such a meeting taking place.”

Crossword - Oct. 30, 2026

Sudoku - Oct. 30, 2026

Crossword - Oct. 30, 2026

Sudoku - Oct. 30, 2026

This week’s question: British army veteran Karl Bushby is nearing the end of his record-breaking 36,000-mile, 28-year walk across four continents—a trek that was slowed by, among other things, being mistaken for a spy in Russia and falling down a cliff in Alaska. If Hollywood were to make a movie about Bushby’s epic hike, what should it be titled?

How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest@theweek.com. Please include your name, address, and daytime telephone number for verification; this week, please type “Extra-long walk” in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, Oct. 27. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page of the Nov. 6 issue and at theweek.com/contest on Oct. 30. In the case of identical or similar entries, the first one received gets credit. All entries become property of The Week.

Click here to see the results of last week's contest: Smile protest
The winner gets a one-year subscription to The Week.