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2 August, 2023

Donald Trump has been charged with attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 election. The former president faces four criminal counts from federal prosecutors, and lead investigator Jack Smith says he wants a “speedy trial”. Trump’s 2024 campaign has released a statement rubbishing the charges as politically motivated and “reminiscent of Nazi Germany”. Artificial intelligence can be safely used in breast cancer screenings to halve the workload of radiologists, according to a new study. Research involving more than 80,000 women in Sweden has found that AI-supported scans could speed up diagnosis, with no loss of accuracy. The Royal Marines have lost an assault rifle in Dartmoor National Park. A group of commandos misplaced the (thankfully unloaded) SA80 firearm during drills, says The Sun, and it hasn’t been found despite a “fingertip search” of the area.

Biden with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last year. Anadolu Agency/Getty

Biden’s radical plan for the Middle East

Last week, says Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, Joe Biden sent two of his top advisors to Riyadh to hash out the details of a “big Middle East deal”. The idea is that the US would sign a mutual security pact with Saudi Arabia, which would in turn normalise relations with Israel – but only if officials in Jerusalem commit to resuming talks with the Palestinians. This would force Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition of “Jewish supremacists” to choose between annexing the West Bank, or having “peace with Saudi Arabia and the whole Muslim world”. However radical the Israeli government seems, it can’t risk ostracising both the US and the entire Islamic community by opting for the former. It’s a canny plan – one that could be a “game changer” for the Middle East.

It’s certainly intriguing, says Fred Kaplan in Slate, but the deal would have a “terrible impact” on Biden’s broader foreign policy. To justify support for Ukraine and strategic competition with China, the US president has repeatedly described world politics as a “contest between democracy and authoritarianism”. This rationale would “implode” if the US formally allies itself with a country ranked in one democracy index “between Libya and Uzbekistan”. Even more dangerous is that the Saudis are demanding nuclear technology – for “peaceful” purposes, of course. If the mullahs in Iran believe their “mortal enemies in Riyadh” have Washington’s blessing for an atomic project, they’ll no doubt ramp up their own nuclear programme and tighten bonds with Russia and China. It could well “trigger a new Cold War” – one that, given the number of nuclear powers involved, would be even more “complex and dangerous” than the first.

The internet’s “favourite glass of the moment”, says Rachel del Valle in Punch, is a statement square coupe. With a “razor-sharp rim and long, thin stem”, they’re a nightmare to drink from. But the so-called “mature silhouette” adds a sense of occasion to any tipple, so much so that American interior brand Crate & Barrel has completely sold out of the cubic chalices until at least October. “Even if you’re drinking, like, juice,” says one cocktail blogger, “it’s going to make your drink look really, really sophisticated.”

When it emerged in April that a contractor had bought and set up a controversial Israeli spying tool for use by the US government, the White House claimed ignorance and tasked the FBI with finding the culprit. After a thorough investigation, says The New York Times, the FBI has an answer: “it was the FBI”. The intelligence agency says it had been using the NSO surveillance tech unwittingly, after being “misled” by the contractor.

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This clip from the World Jump Rope Championships last month has racked up almost three million views on X (formerly Twitter). As one user said: “My knees hurt just watching.”

Jon Hamm in Mad Men: not a t-shirt or hoodie in sight

Come on chaps, stop dressing like slobs

When I go to work on the Tube, says Ethan Croft in the Evening Standard, “I am squeezed in between t-shirts and hoodies, feeling stuffy for having bothered to put on a jacket and tie”. Around my office in Liverpool Street – “the heart of finance capitalism” – proper menswear is thin on the ground. In Whitehall, the centre of government, a “seascape of navy and charcoal suits” has transformed into a “realm of denim jeans and shortened trousers”. A friend who works at a major consultancy firm says it’s full of shorts and multi-coloured beanbags. “They wanted to look like Google and they ended up looking like a pre-school class.”

This scruffiness was pioneered by tech firms, which presented dressing badly “as the mark of an innovative company”. But another reason many of us have stopped dressing like grown-ups is “because we’re not growing up”. Although we’re physically ageing, the difficulty of finding a stable home and raising a family in the capital means that our twenties, thirties and even forties “transform into an extended adolescence” – and we dress to reflect it. The problem is, few men are handsome enough to look good in casual clothes. The beauty of the old, suited-and-booted formula is that it smartened everyone up, “no matter how podgy, lanky, short or tall”. Far from snobbish, it’s a look that’s “deeply egalitarian”.

👖💼 Not all smart dressers get it right – including Rishi Sunak. The American menswear guru Derek Guy tore into the PM this week for wearing expensively tailored suits “with sleeves and trousers two to four inches too short”. Guy dismisses the theory that the 5ft 7in leader does it to make himself look taller – he thinks Sunak just doesn’t realise that shin-exposing formalwear hasn’t been trendy for about 20 years. Whatever the explanation, says Stephen Bush in the FT, “the combined effect is to make him look like a sixth-former who has outgrown his uniform”.

Christopher Furlong/Getty

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Cara Delevingne eating spicy chicken wings on the YouTube show Hot Ones

Sales of hot sauce are rising fast in the UK, says The Guardian, in a sign that “the traditional British aversion to spicy food” is breaking down. Waitrose has seen a 55% rise in purchases, and now stocks more than 20 different tongue-sizzling condiments. Nando’s, which sells its fiery peri-peri sauces in supermarkets, has supplanted HP (of brown sauce fame) as the UK’s “third biggest name in table sauces”.

A recent correction in The Guardian:

An obituary of Ann Clwyd referred to her as “the first female MP to represent a seat in the valleys of the south Wales minefield”; that should, of course, have been “coalfield”.

It’s Britain’s wonkiest pub, which will be closing its doors after 192 years. The Crooked House, in Himley, near Wolverhampton, is famously lopsided: one side is four foot higher than the other, reportedly because of subsidence caused by nearby mining. Now the slanty structure has been snapped up by a private buyer, who plans on putting it to “alternative use”.

“Nothing is ever as good as it is in the beginning.”

Lauren Bacall

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