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15 November

In the headlines

The “hero” cabbie who reportedly locked the suspected Liverpool suicide bomber in his cab, then staggered away dazed after the blast, has been discharged from hospital after suffering only minor injuries, says Mail Online. Four men have been arrested in connection with the incident. Covid booster jabs will be offered to the under-50s to stave off a “winter wave”, says Steven Swinford in The Times. British pasta makers “are earning a pretty penne” thanks to Brexit, says the Daily Star. Imports from Italy have fallen by 25% in recent months. After sunshine and 16C highs this week, we’ll be plunged into a -11C “deep freeze” the next, says the Mirror. 

Comment of the day

Snapshot

 

TV

The trailer for the Sex and the City reboot is out, and it’s as ridiculous as you could hope for, says Mia Mercado in The Cut. It features endless questionable outfits, lots of squealing and plenty of shots of the ladies having brunch – “as ladies are wont to do”. Not only that, its release coincided with Taylor Swift’s new album and the end of Britney Spears’s conservatorship. “It’s a great time to be a nostalgic millennial!” The show will be on our screens on 9 December.

Life

The third time I played at Glastonbury, I crowd-surfed, recalls singer James Blunt in The Guardian. It was a disaster. As soon as he leapt off stage, he realised it was too high to climb back up. “I started shouting at a guy on the stage to help me up,” says Blunt, 47, “but then realised he was the BBC cameraman and I was shouting “Help me!” to the nation.”

Tomorrow’s world

Rolls-Royce has secured £405m of funding to develop 16 mini nuclear power stations in the UK. The size of a football stadium, each one would generate low-carbon electricity for 1.3 million homes. Scheduled to go live from 2031, the “small modular reactors” would cost £2bn each to build – 10 times less than the troubled Hinkley Point C project in Somerset.

Noted

Cocaine with a street value of £33m has been found in frozen onion rings on their way from France to Britain, says BBC News. The 418kg stash was discovered in a lorry on Thursday evening, just before the vehicle entered the Channel Tunnel.

Snapshot answer

It’s Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, a new art warehouse in Rotterdam that’s open to the public. Designed by Dutch architecture firm MVRDV, it houses the entire 151,000-piece collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, says Amy Frearson in Dezeen. (Most museums can only show a small amount of their holdings at any one time.) Works are stored in glass display cases, just as they would be in a gallery. Not everyone is a fan: it looks like a “monumental Ikea salad bowl”, says Oliver Wainwright in The Guardian.

Property

A decade ago, Robbie Williams bought an £8.1m house in Wiltshire, set in 71 acres half a mile from a landfill site. Because of the stench – and the view, once leaves fall from tactically planted trees in autumn – the 47-year-old singer has been unable to sell it, despite dropping the price to a bargain £6.75m. “The smell is not that bad in the winter months, but it can hum a bit in the hot summers,” one local tells Mail Online.

Quoted

Quoted 15-11

“Corrupt politicians make the other 10% look bad.”

Henry Kissinger