Skip to main content
The Knowledge logo

In the headlines

The leaders of France, Germany and Italy backed Ukraine’s bid to join the EU during a joint visit to Kyiv yesterday. The European Commission is expected to grant the country candidate status today, the first step in a process that normally takes around a decade. England’s most senior doctor has warned his colleagues against prescribing “a pill for every ill”. NHS Medical Director Stephen Powis says 10% of all GP prescriptions are unnecessary – that’s 114 million doses a year, costing nearly £1bn. A Republican congresswoman has said Jesus could have defended himself from crucifixion if he’d carried a gun. “The little Twitter trolls, they like to say, ‘Oh, Jesus didn’t need an AR-15,” said Lauren Boebert. “How many AR-15s do you think Jesus woulda had? Well, he didn’t have enough to keep his government from killing him.”

Comment

Celebrities

Give me Kim over Marilyn every time

When Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress to the Met Gala, huffy types suffered a “collective fit of the vapours”, says Julie Burchill in The Spectator. You’d have thought someone had “wiped their nose” – or worse – on the Stars and Stripes in front of the White House. And of course, Monroe is a monumental cultural figure. But if I had to choose between the two as a “role model” for young women, “I’d choose Kim”. Why? Because in a man’s world, the best way for women to be is “tough, not tender”.

US politics

Don’t write off US democracy

To paraphrase Mark Twain, says David Rothkopf in the Daily Beast, reports of the death of American democracy are greatly exaggerated. The ongoing congressional inquiry into the January 6 insurrection has yielded some truly shocking details about that “attempted coup”. But the hearings have also shown that “some of the people we thought were the worst enemies of democracy” still had their limits. Attorney General Bill Barr, Vice President Mike Pence, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner – when talk turned to rejecting the results of the election, these people all “drew the line” and stood up to Donald Trump. That’s not to say they deserve a medal. But when it came down to it, they did “the right thing”.
Gone viral

A video of Jay-Z planting a kiss on the cheek of his (mortified) 10-year-old daughter Blue Ivy has racked up more than 12 million views on Twitter. It just goes to show, wrote one user, even an “all-time rap legend” is just an “embarrassing dad” to his kids.

Quirk of history

In 1945, a hapless German navy captain had a bowel movement that “sank an entire submarine”, says Mental Floss. After he “finished his business”, the aptly named Karl-Adolf Schlitt realised he didn’t know how to work the U-boat’s new loo. He called in an engineer, who promptly turned the wrong valve – sending seawater and faeces gushing into the bathroom. “It was, in a literal sense, full of Schlitt.” When this ghastly mixture then flooded the battery compartment, releasing toxic fumes, Captain Schlitt had “no option but to race to the surface” – whereupon, under fire from Allied forces, he and his crew had to abandon ship. Talk about the “turd Reich”.

Zeitgeist

Sales of “mouse jigglers” have apparently shot up, says Deborah Ross in The Times. “Mouse jigglers? Me neither.” It turns out they are “a sort of pad with a rotating disc on which you place your computer mouse” to keep it darting about and to prevent the screen entering sleep mode, even if you’re out sunbathing. The point is that many of those working from home are being monitored remotely, and a sleeping laptop is a sure sign of idleness. “Late-stage capitalism, isn’t it adorable?”

Sport

Professional ice hockey in North America has always involved fighting, with players periodically throwing down their sticks and slugging it out. Now a new league has ditched the pretence that anyone’s interested in the hockey. In Ice Wars International, eight players don full hockey gear and brawl on the ice until one victor remains. The inaugural bout, in the Canadian city of Edmonton, was won by Daniel “Diamond Hands” Amesbury, who knocked out his own brother to take the title.

Noted

If you’re ever after some light relief, on no account head to the Telegraph’s opinion pages. Here are five recent headlines:

“Work-shy Britain is sleepwalking into a doom-spiral of decline”

“Britain is in ruins thanks to the failed dogmas of our permanent Leftist elite”

“Mediocre Britain has resigned itself to a heartbreaking cycle of decline”

“The three despicable myths that are dooming Britain to eternal mediocrity”

“Elite groupthink is driving Britain into a nightmare of inflation, idleness and rage”

Snapshot

It’s Mars. The photo, taken earlier this week by the NASA rover Perseverance, is “perhaps the most evocative photo ever taken” on the red planet, says astrobiologist David Grinspoon on Twitter. “I can’t stop staring at it and marvelling at this landscape.”

Quoted

quoted 17.6

“Everything is negotiable. Whether or not the negotiation is easy is another thing.”

Carrie Fisher