12 June - The Knowledge

In the headlines

“Nic nicked,” says The Sun, after Nicola Sturgeon was arrested and questioned for seven hours yesterday over the handling of SNP donations. First Minister Humza Yousaf is facing growing pressure to suspend the former leader from the party, with one of his MPs telling the BBC that the “soap opera has gone far enough”. Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has died aged 86. The flamboyant billionaire media tycoon served nine years in office, the longest of any postwar Italian leader, weathering countless sex scandals and corruption allegations. A town in East Yorkshire still can’t take down its Christmas tree because a wood pigeon is living in it. Beverley’s festive fir was supposed to be removed in January, says Metro, but it’s illegal to destroy the nest of a wild bird. Six months on, its “green needles have turned a rather unattractive shade of brown”.

Architecture

Architectural Digest has compiled a list of the world’s most unusual bus stops, including a wave-shaped design in Georgia, inspired by Gaudi; a shelter made from 90 steel discs to look like floating waterlilies in Japan; a stop with an embedded spiralling stairway in Austria; and a station in Kyrgyzstan shaped like a traditional kalpak felt hat. See the full list here.

Noted

I’ll never forget a conversation I had in 2016, when doing a story about Californian wine, says Marcel Theroux in The Daily Telegraph. I went to a vineyard run by the adult child of an extremely rich Chinese businessman. Chatting about China, I expressed my “amazement that after years of flexible and pragmatic leadership, the country was now in the hands of Xi Jinping, an apparently doctrinaire ideologue”. My host listened with a totally blank expression, then said: “And this, our second wine, has elements of stone fruit and cassis.” Conversation over.

Inside politics

The first Nadine Dorries heard that she wasn’t on Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list was when a journalist asked her about it on Thursday evening, says The Sunday Times. The following morning, she told a senior minister that the ex-PM had been given “personal assurances” she could be on the list without having to stand down as an MP immediately. She was told that wasn’t the case, and that she needed to have resigned already or made clear her intention to do so. Dorries asked if she could be put back on the list if she stood down that day. “The answer was no.” She asked if Rishi Sunak would promise to put her up for a peerage down the line. Again, it was a no. “She resigned hours later.”

Gone viral

This video of a flying squirrel seemingly faking his own death for attention has been viewed 23 million times on Twitter. “The little guy is a movie star,” commented one user. Watch the full clip here.

On the way out

Currywurst is losing favour among Germans, says Semafor. The dish – chopped-up sausage topped with curry ketchup and curry powder – has long been a staple of the national diet. But according to a report by one of the country’s largest caterers, it’s now only the third-most popular workplace meal, behind spaghetti bolognese and – “gasp!” – pesto pasta. And given more than half of Germans are trying to cut down on meat, “the wurst is yet to come”.

Snapshot

It’s a rare pink beach in Sardinia, which the Italian coastguard is worried will be destroyed by tourists. The colourful cove on the island of Budelli gets its colour from the rosy shells of micro-organisms living in the sea grass, which are crushed by the currents and mix with the sand. Swimming in the waters has been banned since the 1980s to prevent the sea grass getting damaged. But with an estimated 127 million people heading to Italy this summer – a greater influx than before the pandemic – there are fears even more people than usual will flout the rules.It’s a rare pink beach in Sardinia, which the Italian coastguard is worried will be destroyed by tourists. The colourful cove on the island of Budelli gets its colour from the rosy shells of micro-organisms living in the sea grass, which are crushed by the currents and mix with the sand. Swimming in the waters has been banned since the 1980s to prevent the sea grass getting damaged. But with an estimated 127 million people heading to Italy this summer – a greater influx than before the pandemic – there are fears even more people than usual will flout the rules.

Quoted

“Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you’re doing.”

Alain de Botton