Americans woke up to a decidedly bluer map this morning, as sweeping Democrat victories in Kansas, Texas and beyond dramatically realigned the country’s electoral makeup. With Congress soon to be under Democratic control, Republicans face a potential end to an era defined — and perhaps doomed — by President Donald Trump.

What did the commentators say?

After imploring voters “not once, not twice, but 47 times this fall” to act as if he himself were on the ballot, Trump got his wish, said Peter Baker at The New York Times. “Just not the way he hoped.” That Democrats won as decisively as they did suggests the country is “signaling the beginning of the end of the Trump era.”

There is “something bigger than the misadventures” of any one Republican candidate at play, said John Kennith White at The Hill. The “stench of political death has repelled even Trump’s most devoted followers,” as voters demand an “end to the anything-goes rhetoric” in favor of “leaders they can admire.”

GOP hopes that Trump’s previous victories were a “political realignment grounded in expanded support” from “working-class minority voters” have been “reduced to rubble,” said Ronald Brownstein at Bloomberg. The electoral “drubbing” also “exposed some cracks in the core MAGA coalition” of white men who did not attend college and rural voters that has “sustained Trump since 2016.”

Trump, “like lots of populists,” forgot the “economic bit of populism,” said Janan Ganesh at the Financial Times. That lapse made it “hard to distinguish him from a laissez-faire Republican of yesteryear.” A “voter rebellion” against Republicans could “force conservatives to rethink their undying allegiance” to the “80-year-old lame-duck leader,” said Steve Peoples at The Associated Press. Before polls closed Tuesday, some GOP candidates had already “begun to distance themselves from him.” These midterms mark the “beginning of a high-stakes fight” over the United States’ “political future in the twilight of the Trump era.”

What next?

How Trump responds to the midterm results will “shape the GOP’s fate,” not only for the remainder of his term but in the 2028 race to succeed him, said Bloomberg. While “Trumpism may be receding,” said the Times, its namesake has the “power of the presidency for two more years.” Trump may do “everything he can to remain a dominant voice for as long as he can.”

The blue tsunami many polls predicted came to pass Tuesday as Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress. Now, Democratic politicians are debating how to handle the upcoming GOP minority. Some want to work together with Republicans, while others say investigating the GOP and stonewalling President Donald Trump should be top of mind.

‘Lawyer up’

Many Democrats seem eager to “fight on nearly every front the president has opened,” said Nik Popli and Julia Terruso at Time. The incoming Democratic leadership is seemingly “preparing a legislative offensive aimed at reversing some of the administration’s most unpopular policies.”

Republicans should “lawyer up,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement. Democrats may “use their new subpoena power and agenda-setting authority” to investigate alleged corruption among Trump’s family, alongside setting up probes into “Elon Musk’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency” and the “Department of Homeland Security’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics,” said Chris Marquette at Politico.

The party is most likely to “achieve lasting gains through sustained oversight investigations directed toward two goals,” Claire Finkelstein said at The Guardian: “providing accountability in the executive branch and strengthening the institution of Congress itself.”

Not after ‘political retribution’

Other Democrats, including some who will be taking up new jobs soon, feel that focusing on Trump is the wrong approach. “They didn’t send us to Washington for political retribution,” Sen.-elect James Talarico (D-Texas) told CNN after his victory. “They sent us to Washington to lower costs, to root out corruption, to get this economy back on track.” While there will be investigations, Democrats are “focused on delivering on the affordability agenda,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told NPR.

More moderate Democrats, including the likely next House speaker, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), are also “expected to be scared of a handful of new members aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America,” said The Washington Post editorial board. While the threat of democratic socialists “might discourage” centrists like Jeffries or Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer from “negotiating in good faith,” there is also a “strong case for unexpected levels of cooperation, or at least compromise, over the next two years.” Americans voted for divided government, but that “doesn’t mean they chose paralysis in the face of an impending fiscal emergency.”

After a horror-heavy October, studios are rolling out their awards bait. These four movies are among the more alluring new options this November.

‘Godzilla Minus Zero’

Part creature feature, part rumination on the horrors of WWII, this sequel’s narrative picks up in 1949, two years after the events of 2023’s hit “Godzilla Minus One.” The story follows Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) when a new monster emerges from the depths. It’s a “dream sequel, fully living up to the spectacular promise of the first,” said Jason Adams at Pajiba. (in theaters Nov. 6)

‘Possible Love’

Still reeling years after losing his manufacturing job, Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and his wife, Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon), are befriended by a wealthy couple making a documentary, leading to unsettling connections. It’s a “heart-stopping and novelistically layered stunner,” said David Ehrlich at IndieWire. (Nov. 6 on Netflix)

‘I Play Rocky’

The uplifting story of how then-unknown Sylvester Stallone (played here by Anthony Ippolito) wrote and starred in the 1976 film “Rocky” gets the biopic treatment. The film is a “cleverly crafted crowd-pleaser,” said Owen Gleiberman at Variety. (in theaters Nov. 20)

‘Paper Tiger’

In this stylish, ’80s-set thriller, Hester (Scarlett Johansson) and Irwin (Miles Teller) must protect their family from Russian gangsters when Irwin’s brother, Gary (Adam Driver), offers him a seemingly irresistible business opportunity. It’s a “bruising movie that reveals the heavy price of pursuing the American Dream too recklessly,” said David Rooney at The Hollywood Reporter. (in theaters Nov. 20)

With open enrollment underway, many people face a stark reality when it comes to healthcare. A slew of insurers are vanishing from marketplaces, most notably the Affordable Care Act exchange. This could leave many without coverage options for 2027.

At least 11 insurers fleeing

The ACA, or Obamacare, is at the center of the insurer pullouts as the insurers “reassess the profitability of their marketplace participation,” said health policy organization KFF. At least 11 insurers have announced plans to leave the ACA marketplace in 2027, including major companies like UnitedHealth, PacificSource and Cigna. The latter, which has more than 350,000 ACA enrollees, will “exit the 11 states in which it currently participates both on- and off-exchange.”

The ACA isn’t the only target. Other insurers believe that “flat Medicare Advantage rates as proposed by the Trump administration” would “likely force them to take a deep look at the benefits they offer,” said industry outlet Fierce Healthcare. The funding changes at a “time of sharply rising medical costs and high utilization of care will impact seniors’ coverage,” Chris Bond, a spokesperson for insurance lobby AHIP, said in a statement per the outlet.

Creating ‘discontinuities in care’

This insurer exodus could lead to problems for sick people, especially lower-income Americans. If someone has a “doctor who doesn’t accept the fewer number of options that are available to you, that can be very disruptive, especially if you’re someone who has a chronic illness,” Miranda Yaver, a professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh, told NBC News. “This is going to create a lot of discontinuities in care and coverage for people.” The changes also mean “constant upheaval, whether it’s the plan pulling out or the subsidies have changed or the doctor network has changed,” insurance broker Jennifer Chumbley Hogue said to the outlet.

Such withdrawals ultimately “reflect a familiar cycle,” said the industry outlet healthinsurance.org. Insurer participation in various markets has long been “cyclical over time, generally increasing when the individual market was healthier and larger and decreasing when it was sicker and smaller.” Decisions on what plans to offer are primarily “driven by insurers’ assessment of profitability and overall market stability.”

This week’s question: A museum in Scotland has removed the mummified remains of an ancient Egyptian priest from public view, citing the “absence of consent from the deceased individual or their descendants.” In seven words or fewer, come up with a catchy advertising slogan that could help advance the cause of mummy rights.

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 “Mummy rights” in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, Nov. 10. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page of the Nov. 20 issue and at theweek.com/contest on Nov. 13. 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: E-bike jousting
The winner gets a one-year subscription to The Week.

“No one seems to want to apologise for the transatlantic slave trade, do they?” said Tom Peck in The Times. The prime minister and King Charles were both in the Caribbean for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua yesterday, a summit dominated every year by growing calls for slavery reparations.

King Charles, the head of the Commonwealth, spoke of the “monstrous injustice” of the trade that forced an estimated 12-15 million enslaved people from Africa, about 4.7 million to the Caribbean, and caused unquantifiable human suffering. It “fills my heart with horror and my soul with the most profound personal sorrow”.

But he “artfully declined” to apologise for Britain’s role. Even Andy Burnham, “one of the great apologisers of his generation”, stopped short. Of course, the problem with apologising is that sorry will “inevitably open the door to what it has always really been about” – reparations.

‘Shouldn’t be liable for historical wrongs’

It’s right and patriotic to have the “difficult conversations” that Commonwealth members have been asking for, said Burnham in The Guardian. That’s why Britain is offering a “structured dialogue” with nations affected by the slave trade.

But I do not believe financial reparations are the “right answer”. British people today shouldn’t be “liable for historical wrongs, however heinous, that happened in a different age under different laws and in which they played no personal part”.

What about those who profited from the trade? Ghana, “one of the biggest slave-trading countries”, is leading the campaign directed at Britain, which was “not the most guilty” of those countries involved, said historian Robert Tombs in The Telegraph. It’s demanding to be “compensated for its own crimes against humanity”.

Muslim countries were “arguably the cruellest” in exploiting enslaved people; Brazil, France and the US were among the biggest buyers. “If reparations are due, all these should pay them.”

‘Meaningless attempt at appeasing’

But meaningful reparations “cannot be reduced” to the improved debt repayment conditions Burnham proposes, said Verene A. Shepherd, vice-chair of the Caricom Reparations Commission, on Al Jazeera. What we, “the descendants now living with the legacies of chattel enslavement and colonial terror”, want is debt cancellation and monetary compensation. We “reject the notion” that a country that profited from slavery should not now be held responsible. “It is time for Britain to apologise and pay its debt.”

Ultimately, sorrow without accountability is a “meaningless attempt at appeasing the ‘natives’”, said Caribbean analyst Kenneth Mohammed in The Guardian.

The Commonwealth “presents itself as an association of equal, independent nations”. If members can’t “secure meaningful engagement from Britain on one of their most consequential historical grievances”, how equal is it? The Caribbean “need not accept neocolonialism and historical amnesia” as the price of partnership.

The UK is considering spending £450 million a year to give students from the EU discounted university fees, said The Guardian. But it wants access to the bloc’s “Made in Europe” protectionist industrial scheme in return.

What is ‘Made in Europe’?

The European Commission’s proposed Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) is designed to help stimulate demand for European-made clean technologies, while reducing reliance on producers from abroad, most notably China but also the US.

Covering strategic sectors such as steel, aluminium and cement, electric vehicles, batteries, solar and ⁠wind power, hydrogen technology and nuclear energy, the law aims to use the €2 trillion of member states’ public procurement to shore up struggling domestic industries and push into newer growing sectors. Supporters of the scheme say rivals such as the US, China, and India already have similar rules in place and this would merely bring the EU in line with much of the rest of the world.

“If we do nothing, then it’s quite clear that very soon, 100% of clean tech technology will be ⁠produced in China,” said Stéphane Séjourné, an EC executive vice president, in March. “It’s quite possible that our cement, steel industries will be offshored completely in the next few years.”

Will it work?

The problem is that “EU governments disagree over where Europe ends”, said Euronews. France has been pushing for a strict EU approach while Germany wants a more open model, allowing products made “with” Europe, provided those countries grant European companies equivalent access in return.

Last month, Germany and France reached a compromise that would allow suppliers from non-EU members like the UK, Norway and Switzerland to qualify for “European origin” status.

This is “causing deep concern among other allied carmaking nations” such as Japan, South Korea and Turkey, which will still be shut out from the scheme, said Deutsche Welle. Excluding Turkey, which has enjoyed seamless access to the EU market since the mid-1990s, would also harm European car production rather than strengthen competitiveness against China, said Ayhan Zeytinoglu, from the Turkish think tank the Economic Development Foundation.

Will the UK be able to join?

The “Made in Europe” scheme has become a major obstacle to the UK’s long-hoped-for Brexit “reset” with the EU. Wrangling over rules affecting British businesses has twice delayed a UK–EU summit, which is finally due to take place on 20 November.

Andy Burnham said in September that he would make the case for Britain to be considered a “trusted partner” under the scheme, warning that excluding the UK could damage the British car industry.

The UK and EU have already agreed a draft deal on removing post-Brexit checks from food and agriculture exports. Burnham’s government now hopes the promise to subsidise EU students could be enough to win over EU negotiators in the “Made in Europe” talks.

“We are willing to give the Europeans what they want on fees, but we will have to get something significant in return,” a source told The Guardian. “The biggest prize we are pushing for right now is access to Made in Europe, so there is a deal to be done there.”

There aren’t many shows that can claim to be as “straightforwardly creepy” as Apple TV’s “Nocturne”, said the Financial Times.

The 10-part drama is based on two books from the bestselling “Joona Linna” series by Lars Kepler (the pen name of husband and wife co-authors Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril), with the setting transported from Sweden to the suburban town of Fairhaven, Pennsylvania.

Here, in the “bowels of a secure psychiatric hospital”, we meet Jurek Walter (Stephen Graham) – “a calculating and manipulative serial killer with an unsettling singsong voice” who is locked away indefinitely. But when one of Walter’s last presumed victims stumbles out of the woods “filthy, half-starved and mute with shock”, the boy’s reappearance poses a new question: “If Jurek has been under lock and key all this time, then how is he still pulling the strings?”

Old wounds resurface for the detective who was in charge of the case, Jonah Lynn (Liev Schreiber). The former policeman turned recluse comes out of retirement to try to figure out whether the boy’s missing sister is still alive. He is helped by his god-daughter Saga (Zazie Beetz), who is a top FBI agent willing to go undercover in a psychiatric hospital to get close to Walter.

But the pair soon find themselves “trapped by Jurek’s mind games once more”, and the show unfurls with “pulsating, edge-of-your-seat suspense”, said AV Club. The “effectively claustrophobic” production design helps to “amplify the dread” but it’s Graham’s performance as Walter that really dials up the “creepy factor” of the “superbly disturbing” thriller.

“It has taken a while but I think the torch may finally have passed from Anthony Hopkins as the screen’s most profoundly unsettling and instantly-absorbed-by-the-cultural-imagination serial killer,” said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Oddly still and “occasionally emitting a high-pitched giggle”, Graham’s Walter gives Hannibal Lecter a run for his money. He is both “mesmerising and utterly terrifying” to watch.

The show is not without its “puzzling moments” and “plot contrivances”, said Variety. But even amid its more “far-fetched” storylines the show remains “thoroughly captivating” throughout. “Intensely haunting and totally shocking, ‘Nocturne’ keeps its cards close to its chest as it pushes the audience towards a staggering conclusion.”

A slew of fraud perpetrators appear to have found a new target: writers. Many people looking to promote their latest novels are reportedly falling victim to these scammers, who may promise authors access to the reading public while preying on them financially.

How are scammers zeroing in on authors?

Some involve book club scams, where “writers with published books have been receiving invitations from reading communities that start to unravel after a basic Google search,” said author Snigdha Poonam at The Dial. Other scams include situations that “sound too good to be true” for writers, including offers to “publish our next book, market our book, handle social media for us, represent us as agents and get us book-to-movie deals.”

Once the scammers are able to secure payment, often the “paper trail leads to Nigerian third parties holding bank accounts in America,” said The Dial. Author John Cocks paid a ‘Mary Brown’ $478 “for a book trailer and some commissioned reviews,” said The Guardian, after ‘Brown’ promised to “assist in the distribution to her ‘wide network’ of book clubs.” Cocks later noticed the PayPal receipt listed a Nigerian named Dayo Oguntuase.

AI also plays a large role, as it can “help to tailor emails, produce fake pictures and documents, and create websites” to lure in writers, said The Times. Authors who “normally consider themselves very tech savvy, not at all susceptible to any kind of scam,” are “suddenly being confronted” with AI-created deception, Eleanor Dawson of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain told the outlet.

How can authors protect themselves?

Use trustworthy sources. If an author hires a “qualified freelance marketing or PR team, you will pay significantly more ,  but you will also receive actual strategy, real outreach and meaningful expertise,” said Literary Hub. Once authors “know what to look for, the ‘read’ flags are hard to miss.”

Waterbury, Vt.

Vista House, an award-winning modern 2019 four-bedroom, is wrapped in floor-to-ceiling double-paned, argon-filled windows looking out on the Green Mountains. The chef’s kitchen includes a glass-walled breakfast nook, while the walk-out lower level has three suites, a kitchenette, a media room, and a living area.

Also on the wooded 12-acre property are a terrace, a cantilevered deck, and a screened porch, and ski areas and downtown are nearby. $3,400,000. Meg Kauffman, LandVest Christie’s International Real Estate, (802) 318-6034

Phoenix

About 10 minutes from Scottsdale’s Old Town, this 2018 modern five-bedroom on Camelback Mountain has a butterfly roofline resting on a glass-and-steel facade. The home has exposed beams and concrete walls, stone floors, and a kitchen with two eat-in islands.

The 1-plus-acre lot includes a stone-wrapped pool, a firepit with built-in concrete seating, an outdoor kitchen, and decking with city and desert views. $8,499,000. Michel Edery, Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty, (480) 747-4795

Los Angeles

Designed by Craig Ellwood and James Tyler, the 1956 Kuderna House exemplifies California mid-century modern in all-glass, steel-framed form. In a gated Hollywood Hills community, the boxy twobedroom main house includes hand-poured terrazzo floors, walnut-clad walls, and an exposed brick fireplace.

The double lot includes flat yards, a patio, an infinity lap pool, and a one-bedroom guesthouse accessed by a canary-yellow spiral staircase. $4,995,000. Elizabeth Donovan, Coldwell Banker Realty, (213) 948-7983

New York City

This renovated 1910 four-story brownstone in South Harlem has an entirely glass back wall facing a private garden with a lawn, and alfresco dining areas. The modern four-bedroom has high ceilings, a steel-and-oak staircase, and an eat-in Gaggenau kitchen, plus a library, bar, den, and second-floor terrace.

The home is walkable to Morningside Park, and near dining and cultural venues such as the Apollo Theater and the Studio Museum. $4,000,000. Jed Lewin, The Agency, (917) 609-0466

Biltmore Forest, N.C

Originally designed by Bert King, this 1964 glass-and-stone, mid-century modern four-bedroom with glass walls and skylights is about 15 minutes from Asheville. With large volumes of open space, the main area has wood floors and wood-clad ceilings, a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace, a clean-lined kitchen with open shelving, and floating stairs down to a walk-out lower level.

Several balconies and patios overlook the nearly 1.5-acre, wooded lot. $3,450,000. Brent Russell, Howard Hanna Beverly-Hanks Asheville-Downtown/ Luxury Portfolio International, (828) 528-1829

Denver

In Riverfront Park’s 2005 Glass House building, this one-bedroom condo has floor-to-ceiling windows that frame city, park, and mountain views. The updated apartment includes exposed concrete ceilings and posts, a sleek kitchen with marble subway tile, and a glass door to a balcony.

Among the shared amenities are a pool, grills, a theater, a club room, and a gym. Bike paths, green space, and pedestrian bridges to shops, dining, and venues are steps away. $559,000. Lindsay McBride, LIV Sotheby’s International Realty, (303) 618-3622

Republicans facing a likely electoral blowout in today’s midterms are looking ahead to a very different election. It is one that will determine who leads the party through a new term as the likely minority in one, if not both, chambers of Congress. While current Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has signaled he intends to stay on as party leader, other Republican aspirants are eyeing the midterms as an opportunity to move up the leadership ladder.

What did the commentators say?

There is a “shadow election battle” now “quietly underway” among Republicans to lead “what is expected to be a diminished House Republican Conference,” said Politico. Speaker Johnson’s “recent hints that he intends to remain GOP leader” have “rattled the party’s leadership outlook,” said The Hill. The prospect of Johnson remaining in party leadership has prompted “fresh new questions” about the GOP’s place in the coming Congress, as most House speakers during the modern era have “stepped out of Congress after losing the gavel.”

“Most” Republicans expect Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Steve Scalise (R-La.) to “make a play for minority leader,” said Semafor. But both lawmakers have “publicly refused to entertain questions” about a potential leadership fight “on the record,” said The Washington Post. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), current GOP caucus whip, has also been “floated as a potential minority leader,” though he said he “plans on running for whip again next Congress.”

Johnson staying on as party leader is “not out of the realm of the possibility,” as members of his caucus “like him,” said one GOP insider to the Post. “Alas,” said Puck. What was once shaping up to be a “clear-cut race between Scalise and Jordan,” Republican leaders with “opposing styles and vastly different strengths and coalitions,” might now become a “three-way battle.”

What next?

The “size and ideological makeup” of the post-midterms GOP conference will be “key factors” in any leadership race, said Puck. “Heavy losses” that “obliterate moderates representing swing districts” would place the GOP in a “smaller but more conservative minority.”

While the U.S. Secret Service may be best known for protecting government officials, its latest mission involves investigating workplace violence. And in a nation where this type of violence is commonplace, a new report from the agency hopes to help prevent future incidents

‘Examining 50 incidents of mass violence’

The report, “Preventing Targeted Workplace Violence,” attempts to identify patterns or similar behaviors among perpetrators of workplace attacks. It begins by “examining 50 incidents of mass violence” in which “128 people were injured and 119 were killed,” the report said. Nearly all of the perpetrators, 47 out of the 50, experienced “noteworthy life stressors within five years of their attack,” including personal problems, financial hardships and employment-related issues.

Many of the perpetrators had a criminal history. Among the 16 employees who were actively employed at the place they attacked, over 40% of them had a “history of domestic violence,” and when including all 50 of the studied attacks, that “number goes up to 53%,” Lina Alathari, the head of the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, told ABC News. Many of the attackers also had prior criminal charges, including some who “engaged in violence directed at romantic partners or relatives, prompting victims to seek protective orders or restraining orders,” the report said.

‘Thinking, behavior and circumstances of workplace attackers’

The ultimate goal of this initiative is to “look at how can we prevent targeted workplace violence,” Alathari said to NBC News. “What is the thinking, behavior and circumstances of workplace attackers?” Many workplaces can identify warning signs early and potentially stop a tragedy while also taking additional steps. This includes “empowering those who may be experiencing stalking, harassing, threats from romantic partners or other relatives to feel connected enough to come forward and ask for help.”

The best thing employers can do is not ignore these signs. Do “not wait until a direct threat is made,” former Secret Service agent Michael Matranga said to NewsNation. This doesn’t mean “questioning workers about their private lives” but rather working with HR departments to “build behavioral security into their policies.” If employers “don’t have a healthy workforce, then you end up with these particular types of tragic events.”

Bonds have gotten “a bad rap,” said Oyin Adedoyin and Miriam Gottfried in The Wall Street Journal. When the Federal Reserve quickly cranked up interest rates to counter inflation in 2022, both the stock market and the bond market “fell in tandem, burning investors conditioned to think of bonds as their portfolio’s primary line of defense.” Both markets rose over the following three years, fueling concern that bonds are no longer the hedge against risky equities that they used to be. Fear not. This year, “bonds are doing what they are supposed to be doing”— moving inversely to equities. The S&P 500 is on pace to post double-digit returns for the fourth year in a row, and a bond selloff has dropped prices dramatically. It has “dragged on returns for people who already own them,” but pushed up fixed-income yields to enticing levels for those on the sidelines. It has also helped revive “the classic 60-40 portfolio,” where a diversified mix of 60% stocks and 40% bonds “cushions volatility.”

“How quaint,” said Michael Santoli in CNBC.com. Suddenly, it doesn’t look so bad to be “prudent” as money flows into bond funds again. The present S&P 500 dividend yield of under 1.4% represents “a modern low,” at a time when “high-grade corporate debt yields 6% with low default risk.” This presents “the best opportunity for buying bonds in decades.” The stage is now set “for another quarterly rebalancing shift in favor” of fixed income. “We don’t know” how “the macro and policy paths will inform market prices.” Consider diversification “an offering of humility before the market gods.”

“It’s good to be a saver again,” said Allison Schrager in Bloomberg, but “saving isn’t quite as safe as it used to be.” I agree that, “with higher yields, the 60-40 is back”—or deserves reconsideration as an investment paradigm. Just know, however, there’s still “no free lunch in finance.” If inflation continues to rise, it “means more uncertainty about real bond returns.” All the increased government debt could also send panic through the bond markets at any given moment. So “safety pays now, but only because it has become less safe.”

Both stocks and bonds are “less effective diversifiers than many investors realize,” said Mamadou-Abou Sarr in Kiplinger. If you own an S&P 500 index fund, you probably think you’re diversified in equities. Not so. In reality, “a small group of stocks has an outsize influence on your returns.” On the flip side, investors should “no longer assume” the 40% bond allocation provides the same level of resilience it once did. It may be time to “consider investing in real assets,” like commodities, infrastructure, and real estate investment funds. Successful investing “isn’t just about choosing the right eggs—it’s about choosing the right baskets.”

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.

Terrence Holt is a physician, former literature professor, and the author of an acclaimed story collection, In the Valley of the Kings. His first novel, Soldiers & Sailors, follows a doctor who is transformed when he begins working at a veterans home.

‘The Mennyms’ series by Sylvia Waugh (1993–96)

Waugh wrote this series because “the world is too cynical, too lacking in magic.” Marketed as children’s fiction and anything but, the books offer a deep and serious consideration of what it means to be alive. I don’t think I’ve ever been so profoundly moved by any series fiction. Buy it here.

‘The Complete Morgaine’ by C.J. Cherryh (2015)

Morgaine displays all of Cherryh’s extraordinary gifts: powerful writing, propulsive plotting, complex human (and alien) characters in fully elaborated worlds tantalizingly similar to our own. Were she not a genre writer, she’d be on her way to Stockholm to pick up her Nobel. Buy it here.

‘Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov’ translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2000)

A doctor and a writer of deceptively simple, risk-taking short stories (who else could get away with “A Boring Story”?), Chekhov has been the godfather of most of the short fiction written in English in the past century. Buy it here.

‘The Heart Sutra’

One of the foundational texts of Buddhism. I can’t claim to understand half of its few hundred words, but any sacred text (or is it a philosophical tract?) that states “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” is something every writer should know by heart. Buy it here.

‘The Odyssey’ by Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore (1965)

Homer’s adventure story has been my favorite work of fiction since I first learned to read. This lucid translation makes no apologies for preserving Homer’s (to us) nonidiomatic constructions. Reading it, I feel as if I’m in touch with a mind that, after 2,500 years, still leaves such clear traces of its utterly alien world and its immediately familiar humanity. Buy it here.

‘The Book of Job’ (King James translation, 1611)

I’m not remotely religious, but I return to the Hebrew Bible almost as often as I do The Odyssey. The tale of Job’s suffering, in a world determined by an inscrutable power, tackles the most important thing I know about being human, in words so beautiful they give me chills. And in the King James translation, I feel like I’m at the springhead of modern English. Buy it here.

‘The Sea Has No Mercy’ by Bernie Taupin

★★★

Growing up in England, Bernie Taupin was obsessed with American “cowboy lore and stories, and with country ballads,” said Barry Mazor in The Wall Street Journal. Now 76, the longtime Elton John lyricist has refined that love of Americana into a “quite personal collection of songs.” The Sea Has No Mercy is his first solo album in 40 years, with all the songs written by him alone. The title track has a “deceptively sweet melody” tempered by his “voicecracking rasp.” Billy the Kid, Neil Armstrong, and George Jones haunt the “dirge-like” standout “Ghosts of Greater Men,” as Taupin ponders the prospect of meeting these legends in the afterlife.

Ever since he anointed himself the Brown Dirt Cowboy to John’s Captain Fantastic back in 1975, Taupin has often allowed himself to be distracted by “Western shtick,” said John Aizlewood in Mojo. These songs are more distinctive. They transcend genre, even if they’re steeped in American roots music. “Come on California” is a “rueful” waltz featuring Brandi Carlile on backing vocals, while Taupin’s “grizzled, Tom Waitsian” growl on “Joker” suggests “the old dog is up for new tricks.”

‘Dopamine Chamber’ by Fontaines D.C.

★★★

This is “a rock album with the heart of a dystopian sci-fi epic,” said Jon Dolan in Rolling Stone. The fifth album from Dublin-based rockers Fontaines D.C. “has a similar world-building spirit” to its Grammy-nominated 2024 predecessor, Romance, but pushes “deeper into electronic moodiness and orchestral sweep.” The band’s sonic palette and songwriting show impressive growth here, but their lyrics have grown much darker. They imagine “doom on all sides” from impending AI extermination and transhumanist tech oligarchs bent on living forever. Yet there is hope in songs like “One Man,” which constructs “a dream-pop cathedral,” and “Where Is Gone?,” a duet featuring Rosalía that goes down like a smooth 1960s mood piece from Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood.

“Sometimes great, sometimes scattershot,” Dopamine Chamber “isn’t nearly as revolutionary as Romance,” said Grant Sharples in Paste. Yet Fontaines D.C. retains its “knack for searing anthems.” The album lives up to its title with “outsize, immediate rock songs” like “Happy for You” and “Demolition,” refreshing jolts to pierce the pervading gloom.

‘Fudge’ by Michael Kiwanuka

★★★

Michael Kiwanuka’s “beautiful but willfully understated” fourth album, 2024’s Small Changes, turns out to have a sister album, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. Fudge was recorded at the same time, its songs not exactly written but “jammed into existence” by Kiwanuka and his live band. It wasn’t released until now because the singer-songwriter, 39, suffered a stroke that limited his ability to speak, let alone sing; he’s still recovering in a residential facility. That lack of extra polishing time leaves Fudge rough around the edges—“Across the Sky,” an acoustic number, “starts abruptly in the middle of a chord, as if someone frantically hit the record button after Kiwanuka started playing”—but it feels “vivid and alive,” with the vibrancy of “warm and unforced” performances.

This is “a sun-soaked daydream of an album, awash in afternoon light,” said Melanie McFarland in Salon. It’s easy “to get lost in its layers of strings, to chase a cello’s lusty glide past innocent piano notes.” Kiwanuka is always at his best live. But as we wait to hear how he recovers, and if he will ever tour again, Fudge lends itself to many repeat listens.

‘The American Way of Killing’ by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell’s breezy, analytical style “may appear to work when addressing a subject that readers have never really thought about,” said Gary Younge in The Guardian. “But it breaks down with one that has been covered extensively”—like gun violence in America, the subject of his newest best seller. No one has been able to adequately diagnose why the U.S. has the highest rate of gun violence in the Western world. And the British-Canadian author of The Tipping Point and Blink hasn’t either, despite taking a different tack. Instead of laying out a single argument, as he’s done in other books, here he offers “a series of discrete, and at times related, observations.” Invoking the tale of the blind men who each focus on just the trunk or just the tusk, he says he hopes these observations will together give us a “sense of the whole elephant.” Yet the approach “somehow misses several elephants in the room.”

“The American Way of Killing may not change minds, but it may loosen them considerably,” said Terri Schlichenmeyer in The Philadelphia Tribune. Staying “calm, considerate, and balanced,” Gladwell argues that our debates about gun violence teem with misunderstandings and misrepresentations. He correctly points out, said Jessa Crispin in The Telegraph (U.K.), that of the roughly 45,000 gun deaths a year, the majority are impulsive or accidental, not the planned mass shootings that make the headlines. Gladwell doesn’t think banning assault-style rifles will change much—they account for a small slice of shootings—but don’t mistake him for a gun rights advocate. He handily argues that the Second Amendment specifically pertains to protecting plantation owners against slave rebellions, not everyone’s right to bear arms. Still, Gladwell is notorious for getting facts wrong, and it’s impossible to read him “without anticipating the long list of corrections that will soon follow.”

I was “genuinely fascinated” by some of Gladwell’s points, said Ron Charles in his Substack newsletter. He explains that American doctors have more experience treating gun wounds than doctors anywhere else in the world, which superficially makes our nation seem less deadly than it is. But I sighed when he accused gun control advocates of engaging in “gun control theater,” one of many examples of “glib overconfidence” that “has the weird effect of making me object even when I agree with him.” And his book “doesn’t ultimately get us much closer to understanding” why we tolerate mass carnage, year after year. “Gladwell behaves as though the answer lies in our failure to see something he can reveal to us with a flourish.” Sadly, “I’m afraid the answers lie in a knot of political, cultural, and financial pathologies strangling this country.”

‘Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up’ by David Byrne

David Byrne’s ode to rediscovery “belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who cares about creativity or culture,” said Adam Grant in The New York Times. Drawing on his reading of esoteric academic journals, the former Talking Heads frontman has written a “deeply researched, stimulating” account of so-called sleeping beauties: ideas, artworks, and technologies that were ignored, laughed at, or forgotten before ultimately being embraced. His “clear-eyed, hopeful” analysis is a reminder that geniuses “are often overlooked because they emerge ahead of their time” and that— even centuries later—it is “never too late for our work to find an audience.”

Byrne has assembled three-dozen case studies, and “some are better-known than others,” said Sukhdev Sandhu in The Guardian. They include Antoni Gaudí— the now celebrated architect of Barcelona’s towering Sagrada Família—who fell so far from favor that, when he died in 1926 after being hit by a tram, he was mistaken for a beggar. Then there’s 17th-century Dutch master Vermeer. He was largely forgotten until the mid-1800s, when a French critic saw one of his paintings in a museum and published a catalog. But the book’s “most revelatory chapters eschew art for environmental and infrastructural stories.” In one standout, Byrne recounts how southern India’s medieval Chola dynasty financed “a complex network of pools, wells, and tanks” to channel monsoon overflows. Lost for centuries, those waterways have been revived through the work of “dogged” local activists.

“These stories of vindication are inherently compelling,” said Timothy Farrington in The Wall Street Journal. But a larger lesson never coheres, because Byrne sorts his micro-narratives into six “fairly arbitrary” categories that provide little practical guidance in spotting future sleeping beauties. And it’s “disappointing that Byrne writes so little about his own experience as a reanimator”: In 1988, he founded a record label, Luaka Bop, to introduce American audiences to lesser-known classics of world pop and psychedelia. Some of that specificity would have been welcome. Instead, the reader walks away with some “sturdy generalities,” and the lesson that the past “isn’t necessarily worse.”

We have spent many summers in the Swiss mountains with our three young children. The combination of clean air, outdoor life and pleasantly cool weather is hard to beat. Yet we had never had the chance to visit St Moritz. So when the opportunity arose to spend 24 hours at Badrutt’s Palace – the grande dame at the heart of the resort – we jumped at it.

For all its scale – the site extends over roughly six acres – one of the Palace’s charms is how intimate and woven into St Moritz’s town centre it feels. Walk along Via Serlas and the high-end boutiques suddenly give way to the hotel’s recessed driveway. Vintage Rolls-Royces wait beside the revolving door as immaculately liveried staff quietly choreograph guests’ comings and goings.

Opened in 1896 by Caspar Badrutt, the hotel has long been a playground for the glitterati; Coco Chanel, Audrey Hepburn and Alfred Hitchcock – who even has a suite named after him – were all regulars. As we were whisked to a table in the gardens overlooking the glittering lake on a warm August afternoon, a glass of Ruinart and a plate of petits fours felt like a fitting start to what would prove to be a stay where we felt wonderfully spoilt.

Why stay here?

As tempting as it was to stay put beside the lake, it was time to head to our room in the Serlas Wing. This 25-room-and-suite addition is across Via Serlas from the main Palace and is reached by a private underground walkway, which also conveniently connects guests directly to the luxury shopping on the street above.

Where the main building revels in Belle Époque grandeur, the Serlas Wing is calm and contemporary: dark oak, natural stone, Loro Piana fabrics and floor-to-ceiling windows. Our room felt beautifully considered rather than ostentatious, with an exceptionally comfortable bed, crisp white linen and a superb bathroom complete with a decidedly modern Japanese high-tech toilet.

Despite its scale, you never feel like just another room number. Hundreds of staff work across the hotel during the summer season, which perhaps explains the extraordinary level of attention. Badrutt’s was also named winner of The World’s 50 Best Hotels’ Art of Hospitality Award in 2026 – an accolade that felt entirely justified after our stay.

Grand hotels can often feel daunting with small children in tow, but Badrutt confidently avoids that trap. The classical service is warm rather than stuffy, and our children were greeted just as enthusiastically as we were.

Eating and drinking

You would need much longer than 24 hours to work through the dining options. Six restaurants operate during the summer season, ranging from Mediterranean cooking at La Diala and French cuisine at Le Relais to Swiss dishes at Patrizier Stuben and Pizzeria Heuboden in the historic Chesa Veglia. Then there is Le Grand Hall, the hotel’s famously glamorous “living room of St Moritz”.

Our first lunch, however, was at Paradiso, Badrutt’s mountainside restaurant high above St Moritz. We climbed into one of the hotel’s vintage Rolls-Royces – one in the Palace fleet was previously owned by Queen Elizabeth II – and were chauffeur-driven to the chairlift. The children were spellbound, as were we. The smell of old leather and engine oil, the heavy doors and the view of St Moritz slipping past the windows only added to the sense of occasion.

From the top of the lift it is a gently undulating 10-minute walk to Paradiso, whose south-facing terrace enjoys an uninterrupted panorama across the Engadin mountains. The restaurant majors on Alpine comfort food alongside more international favourites, while its extensive cellar runs to more than 500 wines. After cycling over the Flüela Pass that morning, I needed little persuading to settle in for a long lunch in the sun.

That evening we ate Italian food at Chesa Veglia before retreating to Le Grand Hall for a cocktail. Our children were far too excited to sleep, so joined us for extravagant hot chocolates instead. They weren’t exactly on their best behaviour, but nobody – guests or staff – seemed remotely bothered. It summed up rather neatly how Badrutt’s manages to feel grand without ever becoming stiff.

Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day, and Badrutt’s lived up to expectations. It is served in Le Restaurant, a soaring Belle Époque dining room with vast windows overlooking Lake St Moritz and the mountains beyond. Live harp music plays as you work your way around an enormous buffet, supplemented by an à la carte menu and a dedicated children’s section.

Children are also catered for with a small play area tucked discreetly in the corner, to which ours disappeared, affording us the rare luxury of finishing our coffees in peace.

Things to do

Our summery stay continued when, after lunch, we returned to the hotel to find four e-bikes waiting outside, two equipped with children’s trailers. Around 15 minutes later we were at Lej da Staz, a small bathing lake hidden among the trees.

We parked the bikes, stripped down to our swimwear and jumped from the wooden jetty into the bracingly cold Alpine water. We changed afterwards in the surprisingly well-equipped public changing cabins before riding back to the hotel.

For a longer stay, hiking and cycling routes spread out across the Engadin directly from St Moritz, while sailing and paddleboarding can be arranged on the surrounding lakes. Back at the hotel there are also tennis and padel courts.

Palace Wellness is similarly substantial, with a 25-metre indoor infinity pool and a heated outdoor pool overlooking the lake and mountains. Completely redesigned in 2024, the outdoor pool is now the largest in St Moritz. Our children loved the jets and bubbles and would happily have remained there for the afternoon.

My 50-minute T-Shape 2 treatment was considerably more high-tech than a traditional massage, combining low-level laser therapy and bipolar radiofrequency with vacuum and deep mechanical massage. Designed to aid circulation, lymphatic flow and muscle recovery as well as offering more cosmetic benefits, it felt particularly welcome after several hours on the bike the previous day.

Crucially for parents, Palazzino Kids Club is complimentary for hotel guests aged three to 12. Our children usually tolerate kids’ clubs rather than embrace them; here, when we returned to collect them a few hours later, we found them still busily absorbed in activities and playing. They did not want to leave, which is about the strongest endorsement I can give.

Older children have the Palace Arcade next door, a separate hangout packed with games consoles and arcade machines.

The verdict

We arrived half-expecting Badrutt’s Palace to feel vast and impersonal: a grand old hotel trading a little too heavily on its history, with the formality and tired interiors that can sometimes accompany this level of heritage. We could not have been more wrong.

There is certainly no shortage of grandeur, but underneath it is a hotel that feels warm, remarkably unstuffy and, perhaps most surprisingly, enormous fun.

Summer seems to soften St Moritz without sacrificing any of its glamour. You can spend the morning cycling through forests, swim in an Alpine lake in the afternoon and still be drinking a perfectly made cocktail beneath a carved Belle Époque ceiling that evening. More importantly for us, Badrutt’s combines old-world polish with a genuinely relaxed attitude to families.

After years spent on the other side of the Flüela Pass, we had finally discovered a different side of St Moritz. Twenty-four hours wasn’t nearly long enough; next time, we’ll be staying longer.

Fergus was a guest of Badrutt’s Palace; badruttspalace.com

‘Wicker’

Directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson (R)

★★★

A lonely woman receives a magical husband.

Wicker “is not your mother’s olden-times cinematic fable,” said Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. Instead, viewers are treated to “a kooky, sex-crazed folk tale” about a fisherwoman in a vaguely medieval village, played by Olivia Colman, whose lifelong loneliness is cured when a basket maker weaves her a sentient wicker husband. Alexander Skarsgard is the soft-spoken, doting, and frisky wooden spouse, and “you emerge from Wicker with the sense that no other actor could have played this creature.” Likewise, the fisherwoman’s awakening into randiness “feels singularly like something only Colman could sell.” Yet the actress also imbues her long-suffering, ostracized character “with grounded pathos” that anchors “the rest of the movie’s airy whimsy.”

Wicker is “at its best when charting the power of desire,” said Angelica Jade Bastién in NYMag.com, and “it’s rare to see an older woman’s sexuality and interiority explored with authenticity and care.” Alas, “I regret to inform you that Wicker is nowhere near as horny as it needs to be.” Frustratingly, the focus moves from our protagonists’ bedroom frolics to the townsfolk, who are outraged at a steamy love that reveals their own lack.

There’s also a conventional late-film tonal shift that doesn’t work, said Odie Henderson in The Boston Globe. “It’s hard to buy that a woman this smart would fall for the requisite crisis that ends the second act of most movies.” But that’s “a small flaw.” This otherwise delightful film provides “sharp commentary on the way men treat heterosexual relationships—and men ought to pay heed.”

‘The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’

Directed by Noah Segan (R)

★★★

An aging thief targets the wrong mark.

“Somehow, despite a 40-year career full of memorable roles, John Turturro is still underrated,” said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. This quiet gift of a new movie, in which he plays an aging pickpocket still skillfully plying his fading trade, “lets him showcase all of his best qualities: He gets to be quick-witted and fleet-footed, but also full of love and grief.” Though Turturro’s Harry Lehman gets himself into a jam when he lifts the wallet of a mob-connected subway passenger, the movie remains less about Harry’s subsequent race to save his skin than “the loose spider web of connections that we create, by necessity or affinity,” with the people we interact with on a routine basis.

The film is “obsessed with the gap between the old and new,” to the point that it arguably overplays the theme, said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. And a third-act cameo by a former Oscar winner feels out of place rather than like a happy surprise. But Noah Segan’s wistful crime drama runs a tight 88 minutes and never ceases to be engaging, and “Segan does manage a satisfyingly bittersweet ending.”

It helps that the director has packed the film with terrific actors, said Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Times. Besides Turturro, we get Tatiana Maslany as Harry’s estranged daughter, Giancarlo Esposito as a detective who has tangled with Harry for years, and Steve Buscemi as Harry’s go-to fence. “This one’s a low-key charmer. Start spreading the news.”

Vulnerabilities found in a decades-old open-source web technology almost “broke the internet” recently, said Zack Whittaker in TechCrunch. The existence of bugs in PHP, a 31-year-old programming language used by roughly 70% of all websites and web apps worldwide, had been known for years “but weren’t considered exploitable.” That changed with AI. Security researchers using frontier OpenAI models reported that they “found a way” to weaponize those flaws, raising the risk that hackers could “break into any unpatched system on the internet without needing a password or any other credential.” The researchers notified the PHP Foundation, which released patches to fix the bugs—but companies still must race to update their websites before any hackers break into them. Matthew Prince, the chief executive of cybersecurity giant Cloudflare, said there have been “an exponential number of attempts to exploit the bugs following their disclosure.” It’s likely we’re not yet “out of the danger zone.”

“This is the cyber equivalent of an unexploded bomb,” said Zoe Kleinman in BBC.com. The weaknesses in PHP have been “quietly resting there for years”—until AI arrived and “the clock started ticking.” So far, the bomb “remains intact,” with no reported incidents, though it may be a while before the full extent of the damage is clear. Web developers will need “thoughts, prayers, and maybe a strong coffee” to keep their systems safe. The welfare of the entire internet comes down to one man, said Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic. Ondrej Sury, who lives in the Czech Republic, is responsible for maintaining and automating the patches for PHP. He is an “unsung hero,” and a reminder of how much of the internet’s infrastructure “is maintained by small crews of volunteers”—against an army of bots.

That’s why it will take “more than a handful of exhausted developers to keep us safe,” said Chris Stokel-Walker in The Guardian. The PHP Foundation, a nonprofit group of users, says developers identified the issue in 2024, but it was “too expensive and too tricky to fix.” There’s an easy solution here. Big Tech companies make billions of dollars from open-source software they essentially “get for nothing.” They could easily allocate resources to keep their platforms’ foundations from collapsing. Unless more companies act, this is only the beginning, said Matteo Wong in The Atlantic. “More websites will be defaced, more personal information will be stolen, and ransomware will proliferate” as AI-powered hacking matures. Organizations that have been “lulled into a false sense of security”— relying on older software and the idea that only a few skilled hackers could get access—should be “waking up from a trance” now that anyone can deploy thousands of AI agents to sniff out vulnerabilities and automate attacks. By next year, PHP-ocalypse may be “remembered as normal, or even tame.”

US voters head to the polls today for midterm elections billed as a referendum on Donald Trump, even though the president’s name will not appear on a single ballot.

Up for grabs are all 435 seats in the lower house of Congress – the House of Representatives, where the Democrats expect to secure a majority – as well as 35 out of the 100 seats in the Senate, where the competition is predicted to be far closer.

Democrats would need to win four of seven Senate races deemed to be a “toss-up” by independent elections analyst The Cook Political Report to give them control of Congress, and with it “the power to limit Trump’s ambitions, reject his judicial nominations and investigate his administration”, said the BBC. Here are the races to watch:

Michigan

Probably the most hard-fought and vitriolic Senate race in this election cycle. Republicans have tried to paint Democrat candidate Abdul El-Sayed as a socialist and an Islamic extremist with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Polls have remained neck-and-neck but a late shock endorsement for Republican challenger Mike Rogers by Haley Stevens, who lost the Democratic primary to El-Sayed, could have a decisive impact. Crucially, this is one of the few toss-up Senate seats currently held by the Democrats, and winning it back would be a boost to Republican hopes of clinging on to a majority in Congress.

Alaska

Democrat candidate Mary Peltola, the first Indigenous Alaskan to be elected to the House of Representatives, has campaigned for the Senate on a platform of “fish, family, freedom” to come within touching distance of flipping the Republican seat.

While Alaska’s ranked-choice system has historically made it harder for pollsters to predict the winner, the election campaign has also been marred by controversy and accusations of dirty tricks with the appearance of two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. One is the incumbent Republican senator, the other a retired teacher with no prior political experience, sparking claims he had been induced to run by the senator’s opponents in the hopes of confusing voters.

Texas

The Lone Star state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly 40 years, but polls show rising star James Talarico is in with a fighting chance. At more than half a billion dollars and counting, it is the most expensive Senate race in US history, with Republican challenger and arch-Trump loyalist Attorney General Ken Paxton trying to paint his opponent – who once suggested God was non-binary – as far-left on culture issues. But Talarico, a 37-year-old former teacher who studied to be a Christian minister, has nonetheless managed to cut through with voters in the traditionally deep-red Republican stronghold.

Kansas

Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, but rising farming and fuel costs linked to Trump’s war in Iran, as well as the impact of the president’s immigration crackdown on rural businesses, means the state is unexpectedly up for grabs. The Democrats have also benefited from picking charismatic Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton as their candidate in a state with a large evangelical and mainline Protestant population. The latest polls show him narrowly ahead of incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall in what would be a hugely symbolic gain for the Democrats.

One of Britain’s biggest unions has called for a blanket ban on problem airline passengers, after a survey of members revealed the majority of aviation workers had suffered some kind of abuse.

Unite found that 72% of ground staff, including those working as security, ground handlers or customer service agents, and 71% of cabin crew receive verbal abuse at least monthly. Just under a third of ground staff and 42% of cabin crew reported being physically assaulted.

According to the UK Civil Aviation Authority, the number of serious disruptive passenger incidents has more than doubled since the pandemic, with more than 1,000 reported last year.

Booze and bad behaviour

While flight delays, cancellations and baggage issues contribute to disruptive behaviour, by far the biggest factor is alcohol. In the Unite survey, 95% of cabin crew and 55% of ground staff said intoxication was the biggest trigger for abuse.

Being drunk on a plane is a criminal offence, punishable by a fine of up to £5,000 and two years’ imprisonment. But earlier this year Ryanair boss, Michael O’Leary, told The Times the airline was having to divert almost one aircraft a day because of drunken and aggressive behaviour by passengers, and called for morning drinking at airports to be banned. “Until somebody creates an accident that causes a plane to crash and kills hundreds, no government will take this problem seriously and airlines are tearing their hair out,” he said.

Under current data protection rules, airlines are prohibited from sharing passenger details with each other, meaning someone banned from a flight or airline can easily book with another carrier.

However, the Department for Transport set out plans this summer to create a national database of disruptive passengers, which would be co-operatively managed by the government and the airline industry. This would alert airline staff to passengers with a history of abuse, and they could then decide whether to let them fly or not. Repeat offenders could be banned for life from all airlines operating out of the UK.

‘Alarm bells’

The proposal is broadly welcomed by airlines, airport staff and the public, with three-quarters of 5,000 UK adults surveyed by YouGov supporting the database’s creation. However, civil liberties campaigner Josie Appleton, of the Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life, said the proposal “should ring alarm bells”.

She told LBC the plan “sets a dangerous precedent of government working with private companies to bar people’s access to transport and services” and warned of the potential for “blacklists in other areas”, asking “who decides who goes on the list, what is the benchmark, and how long would they be on the list for?”

The US has been seeking its own version of a “no-fly” database for years “without success”, said Christopher Elliott, founder of consumer watchdog Elliott Advocacy. The Protection from Abusive Passengers Act would bar passengers fined or convicted for assaulting or intimidating crew or other travellers. Yet despite putting safeguards in place, including linking a listing to a fine or a conviction, and building in an appeal and a process for removing people added in error, the bill has repeatedly failed to be passed by Congress.

When it comes to cultural city breaks, there are few places more iconic than Barcelona.

The Catalan capital has been a popular destination for decades, and with good reason. Sitting just south of the glorious Costa Brava, it provides the perfect mixture of urban fun and beach break, with around 300 sunny days per year and almost three miles of golden sand and warm Mediterranean waters.

But visitors can also expect an unrivalled food scene, a thriving nightlife, world-class museums, unique architecture and a medieval old town that entices you to just keep wandering. So, perhaps it’s time to brush up on your Catalan, pack the sun cream, and head to the Spanish coast for some well deserved fun in the sun.

Things to do

First things first, this is a must-see. After 144 years of construction, architect Antoni Gaudí’s masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia, was inaugurated this summer after the final piece of the Tower of Jesus Christ was installed in February.

It still isn’t completely finished but nonetheless this church is the spiritual heart of Barcelona, a monument to the creativity and ambition of a historic city. As such, it gets very busy and it is best appreciated with a tour guide to explain Gaudí’s vision and point out the little details that make it special. We used Get Your Guide, which meant we had speedy entry as well as a local expert who helped us appreciate its significance. This also had a boat trip included, a lovely way to cool off after a day walking Barcelona’s lanes.

If you’re feeling inspired by Gaudí, take a 30-minute walk through the Eixample district from the Sagrada Familia and you will find the Casa Batlló, known as the house of bones, and Casa Milà, with its surreal undulating exterior. Further afield is Park Güell, a complex of gardens featuring Gaudí’s signature architectural details and colours.

Back in the centre, wander from the Plaça de Catalunya down the famous La Rambla boulevard, under construction at the moment, towards the Gothic Quarter. Here you will find the 700-year-old Catedral de Barcelona, the Basílica de Santa Maria del Pi and several squares, including the Plaça Real and the Plaça de Sant Jaume, where city hall sits.

Views and more can be found at Montjuïc, a park on a hill that you can either walk up to, take public transport or ride the cable car. There is lots to discover, from a 17th-century military fortress to the almost 100-year-old Magic Fountains.

Barcelona is a creative city and art lovers won’t want to miss the Picasso Museum, the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Fundació Joan Miró or the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona.

Try the Palau de la Música Catalana, L'Auditori or Gran Teatre del Liceu for concerts of international significance, while you can find flamenco in venues like Los Tarantos and Tablao Flamenco Cordobes.

Football fans may also fancy a pilgrimage to Barcelona’s famous Camp Nou stadium.

Eating and drinking

Mercat de Boqueria is the most famous food market in Barcelona, but you can also find fresh produce at Mercat de Santa Caterina, while Mercat de Sant Antoni and Mercat Ninot are popular with locals.

There are so many tapas bars, you won’t struggle to find one, but Bar Nuri in the Poblenou district stands out for its high quality. Bar Cañete also specialises in local dishes you won’t find elsewhere, and Ca l’Agut serves traditional Catalan food.

La Pajarera sky lounge in the Bless Barcelona overlooks Plaça de Catalunya down towards the sea, and has some of the best sunset views in the city. The menu is small but delicious, with sandwiches, ceviche and a peach and walnut salad that is to die for.

Fauna in the Kimpton Vividora offers something new again. Day-to-day the menu focuses on Mediterranean ingredients like Iberian ham or mató cheese, but they also do residences with local eateries and up-and-coming chefs, such as a recent collaboration with restaurant Jugoria that proved hugely popular with local foodies.

Where to stay

Bless Barcelona is the city’s latest opening. Situated on Plaça de Catalunya, it couldn’t be better located for exploring the city centre or getting out to other districts. There are 119 rooms and suites, many of which have views down La Rambla towards the Med, all designed in sophisticated neutrals with luxury touches like Diptyque products, a sparkling wine on arrival, and fluffy robes.

The rooftop pool, complete with the aforementioned views, is perfect for relaxing after a busy day on your feet. An extensive breakfast buffet is served in SINEDIE alongside a la carte options such as eggs royale.

Jaymi McCann was a guest of Bless Barcelona, Fauna and Get Your Guide

Christmas market cruises are a great way to capture the festive spirit while seeing the world. Ships become a “moving base while Europe does the costume change” as “ordinary streets” are transformed into “Advent villages strung with lights”, said Dayvee Sutton on Yahoo.

Belgium and the Netherlands

Ditch the hassle of airports for a no-fly “bargain break” with Ambassador, said The Sunday Times, visiting the Christmas markets of both the Netherlands and Belgium. On the four-night trip from London Tilbury, the first stop is Bruges, where you can enjoy the “sparkles” of the Winter Glow festival. This is followed by Rotterdam where you’ll stop at the Markthal – home to “foodie gifts” ideal for the season, as well as a wide range of live entertainment.

Prices from £669pp, full board, including tips

France, Germany and the Czech Republic

This bumper trip with Viking visits three countries, two rivers and a host of Christmas markets across 11 days. Starting in Paris, the ship moves on to Reims before passengers get to experience the “colourful stalls” of Mainz and Bamberg, said The Independent, complete with the “scent of spiced gingerbread”. The cruise ends up in “pretty Prague”, with two days to explore the Czech capital.

Prices from £3,795pp, flights and transfers included

Hungary, Slovakia and Austria

Sailing on a round-trip from Budapest, a five-night cruise with Riviera Travel offers the ideal mini-break for those keen to soak up the “festive feeling”, said Travel Weekly. A highlight is the stop at the Slovak capital of Bratislava, where it is just a “quick hop and skip over the road” to the city’s main square and festive market. Moving on to Vienna, travellers can celebrate the “city of music” on board with a classical recital, while ashore, there are plenty of stalls to pick up Christmas treats.

Prices from £1,699 including flights, transfers, Wi-Fi, lunchtime drinks and unlimited drinks after 6pm

Portugal and Spain

While the Douro river may not be the “obvious choice” for a Christmas cruise, there is plenty to explore within this region, and it is ideal for those who want the festive experience “without the crowds”, said The Sunday Times. Aboard the Avalon Alegria, this seven-night cruise is a true celebration of Portuguese traditions from “vinho verde and olive oil” to the must-try port made famous here. Guests will have the chance to “make traditional Christmas decorations” on board, and, after crossing the border into Spain, the “ancient city” of Salamanca awaits, with tasting opportunities from nougat to tasty Iberian cured hams at the Old Cathedral Christmas market.

Prices from £2,433pp, including drinks with meals, happy hour and excursions

Everyone is familiar with big-hitting Caribbean destinations like Jamaica and Barbados. But the 32-island archipelago of St Vincent and the Grenadines is far less famous. What it lacks in visibility, though, it makes up for in vibrant charisma.

St Vincent is the main volcanic island of the group. Far from the hustle and bustle of better-known destinations in the West Indies, it’s a green and extremely pleasant land with a peaceful beauty.

What to see

The first three “Pirates of the Caribbean” films were shot on St Vincent. The lovely Wallilabou Bay near Barrouallie on the west coast of the island doubled as the films’ central location, Port Royal, and is a rough and ready but highly evocative shrine to the much-loved films. It appeared in the very first scene in which Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) sails in his leaky ship past the grim spectacle of three deceased brigands strung up on a rock arch in the bay next to a placard declaring: “Pirates, be ye warned.”

The seafront is packed with props from the movies including Captain Jack’s smashed-up ship, the wreckage of the Black Pearl and a grisly noose, a fearsome line of cannons, a pillbox-shaped dungeon where brigands were locked up and several enormous skeletons wearing ragged corsairs’ outfits.

At the small Pirates of the Caribbean Museum, you can try on battered tricorn hats and dusty coats to conjure up the ghost of Captain Jack. If you really want to summon up the outlaw spirit, you can even buy a bottle of Sparrow’s Premium Rum from the local shop.

It’s also well worth visiting Layou Petroglyph Park. The centrepiece of the archaeological site is a massive rock which is more than 20 feet long and features an intriguing engraving of a powerful being. Occupying a calm spot beside the Rutland River, the petroglyph is thought to have been carved about 1,700 years ago by the Arawak people. At its heart is a figure shaped like a mountain which is believed to be the god Yúcahu. He is apparently surrounded by cascading lava. This deity may reflect the neighbouring La Soufrière volcano, which still erupts with alarming frequency.

But this is merely speculation. The pleasure in this petroglyph lies in the fact that it prompts endless guessing games. We will never truly know what it portrays – making it all the more rewarding.

Where to stay

Situated on Buccament Bay on the southwestern coast of St Vincent, Sandals St Vincent has 301 rooms, but it never feels crowded. Ringed by an imposing chain of mountains, it fans out over a spacious 50 acres.

There is an absurd amount on offer for guests here. You can try everything from swimming in one of the resort’s five pools (including the longest in the Caribbean) to kayaking into a nearby bat cave. Sandals has free bikes to borrow, from the many racks dotted around the property. These enable you to explore the furthest corners of the site, much of which is festooned with gloriously flourishing bougainvillea.

But “liming” – a local word for “relaxing” – is an equally enticing prospect. It is an often-irresistible temptation to spend a whole day in our enviably luxurious beachside villa with a private pool. We are lucky enough to enjoy the services of a butler – I know, I know – who ministers to our every need. His superpower is knowing exactly what we’ll want next. That's why, when we show up every morning at the gorgeous beach, he has already laid out towels on loungers and left us a cool-box overflowing with our drinks of choice. You could very happily spend two weeks at Sandals St Vincent and the Grenadines without ever setting foot outside it.

The selection of food on offer at Sandals – every cuisine under the sun served at 12 restaurants – is just as dazzling. Having sampled the delights at Japanese, Italian, steak and seafood restaurants, we alight on the best of all. Buccan is authentically Vincentian, providing family-style dining. The local food, enlivened by a blend of 22 herbs and spices, is prepared over a firepit and brought to the table in clay pots. Traditional dishes such as callaloo soup, saltfish buljol and roasted breadfruit sing with flavour.

The verdict

St Vincent possesses an unexplored, get-away-from-it-all tranquillity that many more boisterous Caribbean islands would sell their last rum punch for. As Quincy, our very knowledgeable driver, puts it, St Vincent is a place “free from traffic, noise and stress, where you can free your mind.”

James Rampton was a guest of Sandals St Vincent and the Grenadines; sandals.co.uk

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.

That crisp fall weather is coming, and indoor reading’s coziness beckons. November brings a fresh batch of must-reads, including an autobiographical tour of LeVar Burton’s career and a timely debut that touches on racism and xenophobia.

‘Stations’ by Louise Kennedy

Kennedy’s sophomore novel, “Stations,” follows the relationship between Róisín McCaffrey and Red Camelin. Their love is “doomed before it can truly begin,” yet it is one Róisín never lets go of during the 25 years the novel spans, said The Boston Globe. Kennedy has earned a spot alongside “contemporary Irish greats.” (out now, $28, Random House, Amazon)

‘The Misogynists: A Reckoning with Modern Art’ by Allison Leigh

Art historian Allison Leigh pulls the curtain back on how misogyny shaped the modern art world. The book’s “deeply researched cultural history” of the careers of “six art world giants” reveals how toxic they were to women, said Lit Hub. The “misogynistic exploitation” by these “still revered icons” was “shocking even to their contemporaries.” (Nov. 10, $35, Abrams, Amazon)

‘The Squatters’ by Saba Brelvi

Saba Brelvi’s promising debut “touches on multiple hot-button topics,” including “migration, refugee resettlement, racism, xenophobia, wealth inequality” and what we owe as a society “to the least among us,” said The AV Club. It tells of an American expat living just outside London who faces a predicament when helping asylum seekers goes wrong. (Nov. 10, $29, The Dial Press, Amazon)

‘Take My Word for It: A Memoir’ by LeVar Burton

LeVar Burton takes readers through the decades of his award-winning screen career. The book centers on three pivotal moments in Burton’s life: dropping out of college to star in “Roots”; hosting “Reading Rainbow”; and playing the blind engineer Geordi La Forge on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” He also discusses mental illness and “why he’s become a literacy activist,” said The New York Times. (Nov. 10, $32, Random House, Amazon)

Adolf Hitler’s Alpine retreat has been burnt down in a suspected arson attack and German authorities now have a dilemma: rebuild it or not?

The Kehlsteinhaus, known in English as the Eagle’s Nest, perched 6,000ft up on an Alpine peak. It was built in 1938 to host – and impress – visiting dignitaries. Unlike the vast majority of Nazi monuments, it survived the war and its aftermath, and became a popular landmark and tourist spot – until last month, when an apparently deliberate blaze almost completely destroyed it.

‘Shrine for neo-Nazis’

The Eagle’s Nest was part of Obersalzberg, a Bavarian mountainside retreat that also included Hitler’s holiday home, the Berghof. After the Second World War, the Bavarian state government “wanted to raze Hitler’s favoured hideaway” but “local officials made the case to keep it going, at least in part”, said The Observer. The views are spectacular and there’s a “polished brass” lift to take you up there. “Tourism is tourism after all.”

The Eagle’s Nest official website calls the building “an architectural masterpiece” but it must “not be forgotten” that it was “intended to overshadow all the horrors of those years” and the “inhuman dictatorship it served”.

Now, the fire has “reignited difficult questions regarding the future of the mountaintop site”, said Smithsonian Magazine. Debate is raging about “whether, and how, to rebuild at the toxic site for the next generation of visitors, while mitigating the never-quite-banished risk of creating a shrine for neo-Nazis”, said The Guardian. It’s a fraught question, “particularly given the resurgence of the far right in Germany and in Europe more broadly”.

‘A sensible solution’

Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, has pledged that the state will consult with historians, local authorities and preservationists to find a “sensible solution” that would “continue to do the work of remembrance”.

Keeping it open to the public would promote “transparency”, while keeping it fenced off would encourage “rumour and legends”, Sven Keller of the Obersalzberg Documentation Centre told The Guardian. And leaving the Eagle’s Nest as a ruin would only make it “even more fascinating” to unwanted pilgrims. “We should find ways to integrate” what remains after the fire with “new information and education”: “the fire added a new layer” to its history.

Others, including Nazi-era historian Felix Bohr, oppose any rebuilding work at all. “Hitler’s megalomania should remain a ruin,” he told the paper. Our focus should be on “coming to terms with Nazi ideology, not restoring its stage sets”.

“For many, Germany has become a model for dealing with the legacies of dictatorship, war and genocide,” historian Gerald Steinacher, an expert on the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, told The Christian Science Monitor. But, as this debate over the Eagle’s Nest shows, “how best to deal with Nazi buildings and sites remains an ongoing struggle”.

Age may be just a number. Your credit score, however, carries a lot of weight. Those three digits can influence whether or not you get approved for everything from a credit card to a mortgage, as well as the interest rate you end up paying. It can even hold sway over landing a job you applied for or securing an apartment rental.

While age and credit score are not directly related, it can be useful to see how your score compares to those of your peers. This will help you gauge how well you’re doing in this particular financial metric and how it may affect your financial life overall.

What is the average credit score by age?

As of 2026, the average FICO scores by age were as follows, said NerdWallet:

Ages 18-29: 676

Ages 30-39: 686

Ages 40-49: 702

Ages 50-59: 718

Ages 60 and up: 752

For reference, FICO scoring ranges from 300 to a top score of 850. Scores within the range of 670 to 739 are considered good, while scores between 740 and 799 are considered very good.

Does your age affect your credit score?

Your age is not technically a factor in calculating your credit score. However, it can influence two factors that go into determining your score: the length of your credit history and your mix of account types.

“Older generations tend to have higher scores because they’ve had more time to establish a solid credit history,” said SoFi. The accounts they own will have inherently been open longer. It is also likely they have a wider range of accounts under their name, as they have had more opportunity to borrow money, and for different purposes, such as buying a house or a car.

People in different age brackets additionally tend to be in distinct financial situations. For example, younger generations are likelier to have student loan debt, driving up their overall utilization rate, and “they are less likely to have home equity or savings to tap in the event of financial emergency or job loss,” said Experian, which may leave them more vulnerable to missing a payment or carrying a balance.

Meanwhile, “baby boomers are more likely to have paid-off or low-balance mortgages, empty (or emptier) nests that often mean fewer trips to the grocery and fewer needs for another vehicle to finance,” said Experian. This can all make it easier to stay on top of payments and steer clear of racking up a balance.

How can you improve your credit score?

While there is no shortcut to increasing the age of your credit accounts, there are several steps you can take to boost your score.

Make payments on time. Payment history “makes up a significant chunk of your credit score,” which is why it’s “important to avoid late payments,” said Equifax.

Pay down debt. Another factor your score takes into account is your credit utilization rate, or how much of your available balance you are using. Paying down debt can help lower this rate, thus improving your score. On a credit card, paying your balance in full can also help avoid accruing interest charges.

Keep tabs on your credit report. The more you know, the more effectively you can take action. If your score is lower than you would like, “check your credit reports to learn what may be causing the drop in your score and dispute any errors with the credit bureaus,” said NerdWallet.

“I’ve never seen a viler ad,” said David French in The New York Times. Vivek Ramaswamy, the GOP candidate for governor of Ohio, confirmed recently that his campaign was behind a truly despicable spot attacking his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. The ad features Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, who calls her daughter a “liar” and insinuates she has mental health issues. What Arthur doesn’t mention is that she lost custody of her children after their stepfather was indicted in 1978 for raping the 12-year-old Acton; Arthur joined her husband when he fled the jurisdiction rather than face trial. If Ramaswamy had “a molecule of decency,” he’d pull the ad and apologize for “wielding that evil mother as a weapon against her own daughter.” But we learned long ago “that there is no bottom for MAGA,” so Ramaswamy instead defended his smear tactics—saying they were needed because Acton “won’t debate me”— and threw $4 million in funding behind the ad.

“The blowback was instantaneous,” said Paul Waldman in Public Notice. As well as Democrats, “one Republican after another” criticized Ramaswamy for deploying Acton’s “alleged child-rapist-defending mother,” including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Ohio Sen. Jon Husted— the latter of whom is locked in a tight midterms race. As the toxic fallout from the ad spread, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved the gubernatorial contest from “toss-up” to “Lean Democrat.” Still, Ramaswamy did secure the support of “the two most powerful Republicans in America.” Vice President JD Vance said he was “disgusted” by Republican “whining,” while President Trump said he wished the mothers of his opponents had been as “brave” as Arthur. That Ramaswamy has ended up in this mess is no surprise. Trump has remade the GOP in his own image: “cruel, vulgar, often hateful.” But most politicians, including Vance and Ramaswamy, lack the “dark power” that Trump possesses and instead come across as “atrocious jerks” when they try to emulate him.

As well as being in terrible taste, this ad was terrible politics, said Erika D. Smith in Bloomberg. Ramaswamy chose to essentially “ally himself with the ally of an alleged pedophile” at a time when 75% of Americans believe the Trump administration has been protecting the wealthy pals of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. We’ll soon see if this ugly gamble pays off for Ramaswamy, said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. The repugnant ad should permanently shatter his political ambitions. But if he wins on election day, the video will likely be framed as a “career-maker.” And “he’ll have confirmed post-liberalism’s central thesis—that the key to political success is unabashed ruthlessness.”

What happened

President Trump escalated his attacks on the midterms voting process in several states recently, as his administration appeared to be setting the stage to cast doubt on the validity of widely anticipated Democratic wins. The Justice Department sued to block Alaskan election officials from declaring a winner in the Senate race unless it was Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, arguing that voters would be confused by the presence of a candidate with a nearly identical name, Dan J. Sullivan. Alaska uses a ranked-choice voting system, and Republicans argued the other Sullivan was planted to siphon votes away from the incumbent in favor of Democrat Mary Peltola. Alaska’s Supreme Court already permitted both Sullivans to remain on the ballot. Trump took personal credit for bringing the suit, telling reporters, “I’m the one who said do it.”

Meanwhile, a judicial panel in California rejected a last-ditch request from the Trump administration to set aside as many as 20,000 mail-in ballots from people it claims could be noncitizens. The panel noted that the timing would interfere with California’s ability to administer elections. The Justice Department also sent a letter demanding the segregation of any ballots submitted by 400 more alleged noncitizens in Washington, one of nine states where the Department of Homeland Security has recently conducted door-to-door searches for illegal voters. District Judge Araceli Martínez- Olguín blocked that effort as well, noting inaccuracies in the Justice Department’s list and the risk of giving U.S. citizens “ objectively reasonable” fears of prosecution.

What the columnists said

The Alaska lawsuit is “genuinely bizarre,” said Harry Litman in The New Republic. The Constitution clearly grants states the power to administer elections. The federal government “has no role” in trying to pre-emptively minimize confusion over “something that hasn’t happened and may never happen.” It’s “positively Looney Tunes.” The presence of same-named candidates may be a “pretty crafty” Democratic ploy, but it’s perfectly legal. Yet now, if Peltola wins, “Team Trump will have its talking point ready.

Trump’s administration has also been making “near-daily announcements” about people charged with noncitizen voting, said Kyle Cheney and Myah Ward in Politico, but the claims of sweeping voter fraud are nonsense. When Los Angeles County officials reviewed a 200-name sample of the 20,000 alleged illegal voters, they found 112 had not been sent ballots, more than 70% never voted in California, and nearly 40% of those with listed birthplaces were born in the U.S. Of course, this may not be about catching criminals, but rather “stoking the fire of distrust.”

These efforts might fizzle if the Democrats “win big,” said Stephen Collinson in CNN.com. But if Republicans lose by tight margins, we could see weeks-long battles over certifying the results. And there’s no Bill Barr equivalent “to debunk potential claims of fraud.” Trump said recently he would accept the results “if they are honest elections.” That ominous caveat is now “impossible to ignore.”

After months of fiercely fought campaigns across the country, the 2026 midterms are finally here. Have Democrats convinced voters to send them to Washington as a bulwark against Donald Trump’s MAGA government? While early election data shows Democrats in a strong position to capture one, if not both, chambers of Congress, nothing is set in stone until polls close tomorrow night.

‘Huge chance’ but ‘still not 100%’

A “wave of new polls” could “point to just that” for Democrats, said anchor John Berman on CNN: “a wave.” If polling from The New York Times and Siena bears out on election day, Democrats will “take the Senate with room to spare.”

Data showing Democrats nine points up on Republicans is “important” because that “easily overcomes GOP redistricting,” said CNN’s Chief Data Analyst Harry Enten on “The Enten Scale.” Although Enten placed odds of the Democrats taking the House at more than 90%, he said Democrats have just 72% odds of flipping the Senate — a “huge chance” but “still not 100%.” The GOP’s 29% likelihood of keeping the Senate “ain’t nothing.”

Democratic advantages have allowed candidates to play in races Republicans “thought were unreachable,” said Fox News. But “only to the point of making them battlegrounds.”

‘Inherently imprecise’ but usually ‘in the ballpark’

The media “just can’t let go of their obsession with polls” in an election “dominated by ‘horse race’ reporting,” said USA Today. “Breathless updates” about single-point shifts in certain races presume “such statistical noise actually matters.” But while polls are “inherently imprecise” and subject to “many sources of error,” you can trust them to “usually be in the ballpark,” said pollster Nate Cohn at The New York Times.

Early voting impact

Democrats are “flexing their early voting strength,” said The Guardian, having cast 43% of early votes compared to Republicans’ 31%. The “overall picture” of early vote trends “offers few positives for Republicans,” said the Times, affording observers “clues about which subgroups are turning out.” Still, the “impact” of the early votes will ultimately “be known only after polls close.”

With Republicans clinging to power against a flurry of polls that predict a blue wave during this week’s elections, an additional foe could spell trouble for the GOP: libertarians. Some believe a roster of Libertarian candidates could ruin Republicans’ best chances during the midterms.

‘Could lead some conservatives to cast protest ballots’

While many analysts say the GOP’s efforts are futile due to nationwide frustration with the Trump administration, there are numerous battleground states in play. But “unhappiness with President Donald Trump could lead some conservatives to cast protest ballots,” said Thomas Beaumont at The Associated Press. Some voters may be swayed to vote Libertarian, a party which runs on a “message of nonintervention and limited centralized authority.” The party “could draw enough votes to affect the outcome in a number of these races,” GOP former Ohio state lawmaker Gene Krebs told the AP.

Three key states include Iowa, Kansas and Texas. Libertarians there are “polling in the low single digits, but their appeal to disaffected Republican voters could prove decisive in races with little separating the major-party contenders,” Sarah Fortinsky said at The Hill. Texas may end up the most prominent example, where Libertarian candidate Ted Brown “offers Republicans wary of Paxton an alternative to both their scandal-ridden Senate nominee and Democrat James Talarico.”

‘Boosting third party spoilers is a bipartisan sport’

Even as Republican strategists are worried, others think the Libertarian Party could hurt Democrats in a similar manner. In U.S. politics, “boosting third party spoilers is a bipartisan sport,” said Isaac Arnsdorf, Mariana Alfaro and Erin Cox at The Washington Post. In “Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia battleground races, independents and Green candidates have popped up as left-wing alternatives to Democrats,” even as “social media and voter registration history show them as supporters of President Donald Trump.”

Overall, the “big question is not just how much of the vote Libertarian candidates will win in these contests” but also whether Democratic PACs spent enough money “in support of those Libertarian candidates,” said Lauren Egan at The Bulwark. While it “can be a risky and controversial tactic, promoting third-party spoiler candidates is not without precedent.”

Sitting in the southeastern corner of Arizona, Chiricahua has for centuries been a central part of Apache life and last month was designated the 64th U.S. national park. Here’s how to best experience it.

Extraordinary rock formations

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge named Chiricahua, pronounced “cheery-COW-uh,” a national monument, courtesy of its geological marvels. The area’s mind-boggling rock spires were created from a volcano’s “spectacular series of eruptions,” said NASA’s Science blog. They look like Bryce Canyon’s hoodoos, but unlike those, Chiricahua’s were first welded together rather than borne of erosion.

To experience a sense of the park’s breadth, drive to Massai Point where a “manageable half-mile nature trail offers sweeping views from different vantage points,” said Kris Ann Valdez at Afar. You can also explore on foot on the 3.3-mile Echo Canyon loop, with its forays into grottos, or trek across the “park’s showstopper,” the Heart of Rocks loop, with legendary formations like Duck on a Rock, said the travel company Timberline Adventures. The best months for a temperate visit are March to May and September to November.

Birding and bedding

“One of the legendary spots in all of American birding,” Cave Creek is where you can spot the “spectacular” Elegant Trogon, a species that “links southeastern Arizona with the tropics,” said Arizona Birding Trail. The Trogon is a rare find, but the park also hosts 200 to 500 resident and migratory species, along with the coatimundi, a sleek cousin of the raccoon.

Willcox, the closest town with “basic services,” is 45 minutes to an hour away by car, said National Park Obsessed. You can also sleep in your tent at Bonita Canyon Campground, located in a forest of oak and pine on the western limit of the park.

“A beloved D.C. golf course welcomes everyone,” said Alex Kirshner in Slate, so “of course, President Trump wants to change that.” He doubled down two weeks ago on his campaign to turn the East Potomac Golf Links, an affordable municipal course popular with a wide mix of Washingtonians, into an elite professional course that can host major tournaments. Preservationists and golfers sued, and District Judge Ana Reyes ordered Trump to give advance notice before starting work. But after sending an emailed notice at 4:55 p.m. on a Friday, his administration felled over 400 trees. A hearing last week grew heated after an irate Reyes scolded his lawyers. While I’m “not the Lorax” speaking “for the trees,” the judge fumed, I do speak “for the rule of law.” Trump responded by calling the judge “a crazy lunatic” and by insisting construction would begin “IMMEDIATELY.”

This is “a warning sign” for the entire country, said Kyle Feldscher in CNN.com. Trump’s plan not only reduces the course from 36 holes to 18; it eliminates a green space along the river popular with families, runners, and cyclists. If Trump can seize public parkland, what’s to stop him or successors from “changing other precious parks into expensive retreats for the rich?” Redesigning a public golf course “ranks very, very low on the list of priorities of the American electorate,” said Jim Geraghty in National Review. But days before a critical election centered on affordability, Trump was in a power struggle with a federal judge who got in his way, demanding she recuse herself. Ironically, Trump described the current course as “terrible and very unsafe,” after his administration dumped debris from the White House’s demolished East Wing there—and it tested positive for lead.

The golf course battle reveals Trump world’s contempt “for the idea that rules or laws ought to apply to them,” said Paul Waldman in MS.now. “Judges really don’t like it when lawyers lie to them or defy their orders,” yet Trump’s lawyers keep doing just that. A new analysis found judges in 90 cases stated in court that they couldn’t trust administration lawyers, and in 34 cases questioned whether the administration was defying court orders. Trump may enjoy immunity from prosecution, but his lawyers don’t. If Democrats regain power, they should seek to disbar or prosecute “the officials who have carried out his attack on the rule of law.”

How pricey is beef now?

It’s one of the biggest sources of sticker shock at the supermarket. The price of beef has far exceeded the rate of inflation, with ground beef at over $7 a pound in September, nearly 20% more expensive than it was two years ago, and steak at nearly $13 a pound, up 16%. Last year, we spent roughly $45 billion on beef, a 10% jump over the previous year. That’s partly because, though the growing U.S. population eats more beef and veal per capita than any other nation save Argentina, our beef cattle herds are currently the smallest they’ve been in 75 years. The consequences of this shortage show up on individual shoppers’ receipts: McDonald’s charges over $6 for a Big Mac, and a burger in a sit-down restaurant in New York or California can run $30 or more. Even in Texas, the onetime mecca of cheap beef, the state’s approximately 3,300 barbecue joints are facing the impossible choice of either selling brisket at a loss, dropping it from the menu, or closing their doors altogether, as several have been forced to do. “I spend $100,000 a month on groceries to bring in here— $45,000 of that is brisket alone,” said Russell Roegels, a longtime Houston pitmaster. “Everybody’s at risk these days. You’re one bad week from closing.”

Why are we short of cattle?

Mainly because of years of drought in cattle-producing states. Water scarcity depletes grain, grass, and other plants that cows eat, forcing ranchers to either buy supplemental feed or thin their herds to keep afloat financially. “It really had an effect on forage availability,” said Cameron Mulrony of the Idaho Cattlemen’s Association, “and just any place to go with those cows.” Though ranchers are able to partly compensate by raising cattle that weigh hundreds of pounds more than their 1950s counterparts, rising production costs hit every stage of the beef supply chain. Steer and heifers cost more to fatten at feedlots. Meatpacking plants have to pay more for them, leading even giants such as Tyson and JBS to post nine-figure losses in the first half of 2026. Consumers then pay more for the meat. Still, not all the industry’s woes can be blamed on the environment. The Trump administration has also dealt it multiple blows.

What has the government done?

President Trump’s tariffs on imports, followed by successful legal challenges against them, added a jolt of volatility to the market. Trump ratcheted up tariffs on Brazilian beef to 76% in July 2025 before walking them back later that year. Then the Iran war sent the prices of diesel and fertilizer soaring, which increased the costs of transporting beef and growing feed. Trump’s immigration crackdown also hit the industry hard— as it did the rest of agriculture—because the immigrants who make up a significant portion of livestock workers were scared to come to work. “These ICE operations,” industry groups in Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma said in a joint statement, “are having a massive chilling effect on the legal, documented, skilled workers that put beef on the table.” (Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin denied such raids occurred in Kansas.) And finally, the USDA closed the border to Mexican cattle for 15 months to try to stop the spread of the New World screwworm. The flesheating parasite was once eradicated from North America, but reappeared in Mexico last year and reached the U.S. in June.

What’s being done to tame prices?

Casting about for ideas, the Trump administration has proposed antitrust enforcement against the four meatpacking corporations that control 85% of the industry, opening up additional federal lands to cattle grazing, and an initiative to let ranchers process their own meat. The USDA started readmitting Mexican cattle in August. Ranchers welcomed those proposals. But in August, Trump signed an executive order suspending tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of lean beef trimmings from Argentina, Brazil, and elsewhere, which would be sold at a 25% discount to the market price, and that made ranchers livid. Tim Brunner of the Montana Cattlemen’s Association called the plan “absolutely idiotic.”

Why were ranchers upset?

Though tariffs were intended to protect the beef industry, they artificially constricted the total U.S. supply. Then, when some were abruptly lifted, ranchers were caught in a bind: The price of their cattle dropped while their operating costs did not. And the executive order allowed in dubious foreign meat. The ultra-lean trimmings imported on the cheap have been frozen, possibly for years, intended to be mixed with fattier domestic meat to make ground beef. There could be safety concerns around that: The European Union just banned Brazilian beef because of the types of antibiotics used in it, and China recently refused a shipment of tainted Argentine beef. While prices did dip 1% in the month after Trump’s decree, economists estimate the imports will only end up shaving a few cents off a pound of hamburger.

What else might get prices down?

Lawmakers from cattle states have a few ideas. Legislation proposed by Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) in October would make more cattle eligible for the USDA’s Livestock Risk Protection program, which could create a financial cushion so ranchers can save heifers for breeding. Still, ranching will always be a low-margin business, and fewer people want to go into it. Ranchers over 65 already outnumber those under 35 by 4 to 1. With the demand for beef holding steady (see box), price pressures are likely to remain strong for years. “The truth is that we may have to accept an uncomfortable reality,” said sixth-generation Kansas rancher Katie Tonn. “Beef is simply more expensive than it used to be.”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to water down plans to double the length of time foreign workers must wait before they are eligible to settle permanently in the UK following opposition from within the Labour Party.

As originally laid out in November 2025, the proposals would extend the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) from five to 10 years. The lowest-paid workers, including many employed in the care sector, faced an even longer wait, of 15 years. Adding yet more controversy, the changes would apply to migrants already in the UK. Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, said making the rules apply retrospectively was “un-British” while Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh called for more “compassion” in migration policy.

As Mahmood prepares to unveil her revised plans, the prime minister and home secretary are maintaining a united front, said John Rentoul in The Independent, “but we do not yet know what it is that they are united on”.

What did the commentators say?

“Mahmood is tying herself in a large and unedifying knot,” said James O’Brien in The i Paper. Moving the goalposts for overseas migrants already here is a “breach of the metaphorical contract” and sends an “ugly” message that such workers are “irreversibly second class”. By making settlement harder for vital care workers in particular – who do work British nationals consider “beneath them or too poorly paid” – Mahmood would show she been influenced by “immigration rhetoric as opposed to immigration reality”. She is “pandering to feelings built on lies”.

It would be a “grave error” for Mahmood to change her original plans, said The Telegraph in an editorial. The situation Labour finds itself in is “depressingly familiar”: the government insists it supports border controls, but objects to policies to secure them. Indeed, Mahmood may be forced to “retreat” from the “necessary” changes to ILR to regain backbench support. But she must break free from this “Faustian pact. She was right the first time round.”

Given the backlash, the Home Office could compromise by changing the rules only for new arrivals. But that would be “defeating the entire purpose of the reforms”, said David Shipley in The Spectator, which was mitigating the impact of the “ruinous” so-called “Boriswave” of immigrants.

What next?

“The exact shape of the compromise has been fought over for months,” said Rentoul in The Independent. By now, Burnham and Mahmood will have “calculated where to draw the line so that they can be sure that they have a solid majority of Labour MPs behind them”.

Burnham runs a better “ego management programme” with Labour backbenchers than Keir Starmer, and so is unlikely to have a repeat of last year’s backlash over welfare reforms.

The government will also benefit from a divided opposition on the right. As architects of the Boriswave, any Conservative criticism of Mahmood’s plan will sound hypocritical, while Reform UK “is finding it increasingly hard” to compete with Restore’s more extreme positions on immigration.

Investors withdrew $3.6 billion (£2.7 billion) of assets from the cryptocurrency exchange Binance when it reopened for business after what is thought to be the biggest financial theft in history.

Hackers stole around $6.3 billion on Thursday, though Binance claims to have “replenished” around 90% of that into customer accounts.

It took “no more than 30 minutes” to move the “eye-watering” sum, said the Financial Times. The funds may prove “impossible to recover”, said CoinDesk, renewing the “debate over the safeguards exchanges need to prevent a security breach from becoming a financial catastrophe”.

How did it happen?

Crypto exchanges like Binance, which has more than 300 million registered users worldwide, are especially “tempting targets” for hackers, said The Wall Street Journal. While traditional stock exchanges don’t hold the securities of their investors, and only facilitate trades, crypto exchanges often store their customers’ cryptocurrencies. Hackers can therefore directly access customers’ funds from the exchanges’ crypto wallets.

Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said on X that the security breach could have originated via a “compromised” laptop belonging to one of the company’s engineers. However, this would not have been a “single ‘one-click’ action”, but a “more complex attack process”.

Who was behind it?

Crypto analysis firm TRM and other researchers have attributed the attack to a North Korean hacking unit TraderTraitor, based on “robust on and off-chain intelligence”. This has yet to be confirmed.

“If North Korea is proven to be the culprit, it would be little surprise to US law enforcement officials and private experts,” said CNN. TraderTraitor has been “behind many of the largest crypto hacks in recent memory”, said WSJ, including the previous record theft of $1.5 billion last year from Bybit, another major cryptocurrency exchange.

What will happen next?

Binance said on X it has frozen more than $3 billion (£2.2 billion) – around half – of the stolen crypto and promised to cover all money lost in the hack from existing funds.

Freezing the crypto means the hackers “cannot move, transfer or cash out” their takings, essentially “trapping the tokens inside the wallet before hackers can convert them into other cryptocurrencies or launder them”, said WSJ.

Recovering the losses may prove more problematic. This requires a “separate legal process” involving court orders or a seizure warrant, Ari Redbord, from TRM, told CNBC. Recovering Bitcoin in particular – which accounts for around a quarter of the haul – is “more challenging because they have no issuer that can directly freeze the assets”, said Eric Jardine, from Chainalysis. “There is no standard recovery timeline. A technical freeze may happen quickly, while returning funds can take months or years.”

The “biggest sign” that winter is around the corner is a “steaming bowl of porridge on the breakfast table”, said Chloe Mac Donnell in The Guardian.

Traditionally made by heating oats with water or milk and a pinch of sugar or salt, this simple and “humble dish” has been around for centuries. But now it’s going from “drab to decadent”, as people gripped by the latest fibremaxxing trend latch onto its high-fibre promise and look for inventive ways to dress it up for the 21st century.

Searches for organic jumbo oats at Ocado have jumped by 98% year-on-year, while content creators on social media are sharing recipes for inventive toppings – both sweet and savoury – that embrace everything from miso to “sour cherry and pistachio butter”.

Cafes are getting in on the act, too. At Cafe Cuil on the Isle of Skye, the menu features properly traditional, coarse pinhead oats soaked in oat milk overnight and finished with a seasonal topping – currently, hazelnut brittle praline and poached pears. And in central London, 26 Grains offers a “five-grain porridge topped with fig-and-red-grape jam and a dollop of whipped cream”.

And then there’s a whole “world of less obvious approaches”, said Anna Shepherd in The Telegraph. You can turn porridge into a “decadent dessert”, like a previous winner of the World Porridge Making Championship, with sticky dates, “layers of creamy caramel sauce” and a garnish of honeycomb. This is “no mere breakfast porridge”.

Or you could go down the savoury route and give the “controversial” viral Cheddar and Marmite recipe a go. Pile handfuls of grated cheese into your cooked porridge, then add a swirl of the “like-it-or-loathe-it” yeast extract and a blob of butter. “Behold, a salty, stodgy-supper porridge – just the thing for chilly autumn evenings.”

For another savoury take that’s an “unexpected delight”, try adding rolled oats and stock to a simmering shallot, garlic and tomato sauce, said Sang Yoon in Food & Wine. When the oats are tender, stir in torn basil leaves, grated parmesan, butter and seasoning. Top the lot with a poached egg for a “delicious, incredibly satisfying meal”.

A biotechnology firm, Warhound, wants to clone and genetically modify military dogs to be used for tasks like bomb detection, searches and policing. The company is working to ensure the process is humane, though some experts are concerned.

Copy and pasting dog DNA

Warhound will “find top dogs that have finished training and biobank their genetic material,” said Fortune. Then, through genetic engineering, the company will “focus on eliminating common health conditions that impact these breeds,” said Wired. In the future, more advanced changes might be made, like “incorporating olfactory receptor genes from wolves.” The company was created by Palmer Luckey, the founder of the military defense company Anduril Industries, and Ben Lamm, the co-founder of the genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences.

The new startup will combine Colossal’s “breakthroughs in genetics, cloning and animal biology” with Anduril’s “advanced defense technology,” said a press release by Warhound. Colossal Biosciences previously gained notoriety for its deextinction efforts, like trying to bring back the dire wolf, dodo and wooly mammoth. Anduril will “provide software and hardware, such as protection vests and goggles, to assist the dogs and their handlers with situational awareness and coordination,” said TechCrunch.

Controversial ethics

The company claims “animal welfare is central to the program” and is working with the American Humane Society, said the release. “By improving health, durability and training success,” Warhound will reduce the number of dogs needed for assignments and “enable safer, more effective missions.” We “ask dogs to put their lives on the line to protect ours,” said Lamm in the release. “Yet we are still relying on outdated approaches to breeding and training.”

While the “science the company proposes is possible,” it is “prone to error, inefficiencies and a slew of ethical concerns,” said Scientific American. The process “requires a lot of dogs to have invasive things done to them and to be killed in order to produce one cloned puppy,” said Lisa Moses, a veterinarian and bioethicist at Harvard University, to the outlet.

The idea was irresistible: sell up, move on to a luxury cruise ship and spend the rest of your life seeing the world.

But for some of the passengers aboard Villa Vie Odyssey, the dream of permanent escape has hit a very earthly obstacle: an “extraordinary” rise in the cost of fuel, said Euronews. It means an epic voyage has now been brought to an abrupt halt in Cambodia. And the instruction for those on board is to “abandon ship” altogether.

Dream runs aground

The ship set sail from Belfast in October 2024, but not before a series of delays that cost the company millions of pounds and left passengers stuck for months.

US-based operator Villa Vie Residences offered a “never-ending cruise around the world with stops at more than 400 ports of call and a global circumnavigation every three-and-a-half years”, said Business Insider. “Permanent residences” were available from $120,000 (£90,000), while some cabins were rented from $3,500 (£2,600) a month.

Then came the fuel crisis. With the oil “chokepoint” of the Strait of Hormuz cut off due to the Iran war, energy prices were sent “soaring around the world”. While the company had budgeted for monthly fuel expenses of $1,800 per cabin, this skyrocketed by “as much as 344%” to around $6,000 to $8,000.

“Nobody that’s tried residential cruising has succeeded, and we’ve gone further than anyone else,” Mikael Petterson, Villa Vie’s founder and executive chairman, told BI . “But I think we would have been absolutely fine – and we would have seen this through – if there was no Iran war.”

Lynn Montoya, from Wyoming, who was travelling with her husband Paul, was less sure. She said residents on board the cruise ship were repeatedly asked to contribute additional money for fuel and other expenses, including a call to raise funds for fuel to leave Cambodia. “We were tired of every two to four weeks being asked for money for fuel, money for everything,” she told The Associated Press. “We had hopes, but they just kept sinking further and further into the hole through mismanagement.”

Lanette Canen and Johan Bodin told the BBC they felt “heartbroken” that their “dream had been crushed”. Yet, they said, the experience was “worth it”. “We loved our two years on Odyssey – the adventures, the places we visited and the friends we made along the way.”

Uncertain future

Villa Vie announced that the Odyssey was suspending operations while it was docked this week at the port of Sihanoukville in Cambodia.

The company said it was working with passengers on disembarkation plans and “temporary living arrangements”. Villa Vie will focus on “restructuring and recapitalisation over the next 60 days”, said The New York Times. “No outcome is assured,” it said, and the ship could “eventually be sold” to settle outstanding costs.

One passenger, Holly Hennessey, told the BBC she is prepared to wait. “Until they say we are done – done done – I am not giving up. I could never duplicate this lifestyle. The idea of going home? It would be so trite.”

Fill the grid with numbers one to nine so that each row, column and square contains every digit exactly once. This game will update daily.

Fill the grid with numbers one to nine so that each row, column and square contains every digit exactly once. This game will update daily.

You have six tries to guess the five-letter word. Type in the letters and hit enter. After each guess, the colour of the tiles will change if you choose the correct letters. A green tile means the letter is in the correct spot. A peach tile means the letter is in the word but is in the wrong spot. The tile will not change colour if the letter is not in the word. This game will update daily.

Guess the four-digit number in six tries. Choose your number and tap enter to submit. Each tile will change to green if the digit is correct and in the right position, or orange if it is correct but in the wrong position. A dark grey tile means the digit does not appear anywhere in the number. Come back here tomorrow for the next Guess the Number game.

Fill the grid with numbers one to nine so that each row, column and square contains every digit exactly once. This game will update daily.

Cat-sized Australian marsupials that look to have an ever-present grin, quokkas are among the internet’s favourite “goofy furballs”, said Mike Atkins in The Times. For the best chance of seeing them in the wild, head to Rottnest Island, which is home to 80% of their global population.

Just 30 minutes by ferry from Fremantle, in Perth’s southern suburbs, this seven-square-mile island was even named after the creatures (“rottnest” means “rat’s nest” in Dutch – a 17th-century sea captain’s taxonomic error). But there are other reasons to visit, too, including its 63 “knockout” beaches, “jagged” limestone sea cliffs, lovely cycling trails, and pleasant places to stay (I chose a “glamping eco-resort”, Discovery Rottnest Island).

Rotto (as the locals call it) is a place of “rugged glory”, and Fremantle is also worth an extended stay en route. It has a “bohemian, laid-back” vibe and a beautiful centre, full of Victorian buildings with “intricate” wrought-iron balconies.

The quiet days of autumn in Alghero

With its own international airport and a fine old town commanding “dress-circle views of the Med”, the little city of Alghero in northwest Sardinia is a great place for a short break in autumn, said Kerry Walker in The Telegraph.

At this time of year, its “tangle of alleys and cobbled piazzas” is far less crowded than in summer, as are “outstanding” local restaurants such as Musciora and La Saletta (Algheresi cuisine is among the most distinctive in Sardinia, thanks partly to the strong Catalan influence that is a legacy of the island’s near-four centuries of Spanish rule).

And there’s much to explore beyond the city’s “whopping”, honey-coloured ramparts, including nearby white-sand beaches, the “colossal” Grotta di Nettuno sea caves, and the Porto Conte Regional Natural Park, a “coastal wonderland” where much of the spectacular car chase in the 1977 Bond movie “The Spy Who Loved Me” was filmed.

Memories of Tenzing in North Wales

Before conquering Everest in 1953, Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay and their fellow climbers spent weeks training on Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa). Their memory is still cherished at the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel, where they stayed, said Gareth Roberts in The Guardian.

Built in 1810, the hotel sits alone at the foot of the mountain and feels “timeless”, with its roaring fires and rolltop baths. The hotel’s then landlord, Christopher Briggs, became a friend of Tenzing, and his grandsons – who now run the place – remember the climber from later visits as always smiling and to have been “incredibly kind”.

Photos of him and other climbers adorn the walls, and there’s a cabinet full of equipment and mementoes from the 1953 expedition.

He’s done it again, said Vera Magalhães in O Globo (Rio de Janeiro). If anyone was capable “of pulling off an unprecedented turnaround against all odds”, it was President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who this week won a historic fourth term in office.

Brazil’s working-class hero suffered a shock defeat in the first round of the presidential election in early October, coming second to Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro (aka “the Trump of the Tropics”), who is currently under house arrest for plotting a coup.

Short-lived celebrations

No other candidate has gone on to win the second round after losing the first. But the Workers’ Party (PT) leader, who was accused of arrogance and of failing to understand the needs of young gig-economy workers, shook up his strategy, said Igor Gielow in Folha de São Paulo. He announced a number of populist measures and mobilised ten million followers via a new WhatsApp channel “Exército do Lula” (“Lula’s Army”). In the end, “the fear of a Bolsonaro returning to power” was enough to mobilise the centre-left voters who had sat out the first round: Lula won Sunday’s vote with almost 52% to 48%; his vote surged from 54 million in the first round to 64 million.

Lula’s celebrations will be short-lived, said Míriam Leitão in O Globo. He governs a country “more divided than at any time during his previous three terms”. Bolsonaro, who is under investigation as part of a money-laundering probe, initially rejected Sunday’s result amid a row over voting hours being extended at the last minute by a supreme court judge who was previously Lula’s lawyer. He later fled to the US.

The chaos was a fitting end to one of the ugliest elections in recent years, said Paulo César de Oliveira in Correio da Manhã (Rio de Janeiro). Not since the 1964-1985 military dictatorship “has there been such a heavy, radicalised political environment”. The deep animosity between the two candidates was on full display during the televised debate held two days before the vote, said Stephen Gibbs in The Times. It “descended into a shouting match”, with Lula calling his hard-right rival “a habitual liar, a thug”. Bolsonaro, for his part, had the word “corrupt” written on his palm to serve as a reminder, as he put it, for what Lula’s Workers’ Party stood for. He would be keeping his distance from his opponent during the debate, he declared, “because my wallet could be stolen”.

Spending spree

The grimiest part of the whole race, said Roseann Kennedy in Estadão (São Paulo), was the vast spending spree Lula went on after losing the first round. In the final three weeks of the contest, the PT accelerated spending on measures announced in the last year, totalling R$354 billion (£50 billion) – “institutionalised vote-buying” on a huge scale. That includes forgiving the debt of micro-entrepreneurs, and pushing through a 15% increase to the Bolsa Família programme, which provides cash to low-income households – even changing the payment schedule so people would receive the benefit days before the final vote. It makes a mockery of Brazil’s electoral law, which prohibits incumbents from granting these benefits mid-campaign.

Worse, Lula’s last-minute splurge will only aggravate Brazil’s deteriorating public finances, said O Globo. They are just one of a series of crises the president immediately faces in his fourth term. There are also the accusations of corruption against Lula’s inner circle, including his eldest son. And the fact that he’ll be governing with a hostile parliament which, following the first round of elections, now has a distinctly conservative (and Bolsonaro-friendly) profile.

Brazil’s president already has an “extraordinary biography”. He led historic workers’ strikes during the military dictatorship, and helped draft the 1988 constitution. Imprisoned after governing for two terms, he stormed back to power in 2022, becoming a “symbol of democracy” when he defeated Jair Bolsonaro. Now, having just turned 81 years old, Lula faces his biggest challenge of all.

There’s a technique within this recipe that, once mastered (and it’s fun and easy to master), you’ll want to use for other vegetable dishes, said Adam Byatt. It’s a quick dish, and more of a lunch than a side dish. The leeks are steamed whole and dressed with a vinaigrette to which I have added chives, but these could be replaced by chopped tarragon or chervil, or whatever herbs you fancy. For me, this has to be one of the most beautiful things in cookery.

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 6 leeks
• 100ml good-quality vegetable or chicken stock
• 100ml champagne vinegar or chardonnay vinegar
• 200ml champagne or dry white wine
• 3 sprigs of thyme, leaves picked
• 2 tsp sea salt flakes
• 2 heaped tsp Dijon mustard
• 200ml extra-virgin olive oil
• ½ bunch of chives, finely chopped
• freshly ground black pepper

Method

• Keeping the leeks intact, trim the wiry strands from the roots, remove the dark-green tops of the leeks and run under cold water to remove any dirt.
• Lay the whole leeks in a large sauté pan and pour in the stock, vinegar and wine. Add the thyme leaves and season well with the salt and some pepper. Cover the leeks with a cartouche of baking paper.
• Over a medium-high heat, bring to a rapid boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, or until the leeks are soft and giving. Remove from the heat and leave to cool slightly in the pan.
• Once slightly cooled but still warm, remove the leeks from the pan and transfer them to a chopping board. Remove 1cm from the root end and then slice them lengthways down the middle. Place the leeks on a warmed platter.
• Return the pan to a medium heat and reduce the braising liquid by three-quarters, then remove from the heat. Whisk in the mustard, then whisk in the oil in a steady stream and finish with the chives.
• Spoon this vinaigrette over the leeks and serve. You can also finish with extra soft herbs like chervil, if you like.

Taken from Trinity: The Cookbook by Adam Byatt

Crossword - Nov. 6, 2026

Sudoku - Nov. 6, 2026