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22 September

In the headlines

Russia has released five British fighters captured in Ukraine as part of a prisoner swap brokered by Saudi Arabia. Shaun Pinner, one of two British volunteers who were previously sentenced to death by a Kremlin-backed court, says they escaped execution “by the skin of our teeth”. Donald Trump and three of his children are being sued for fraud by the state of New York. In the new case against them, the Trumps are accused of inflating the value of assets, such as listing a $220m Manhattan property at $524m, to secure better loans from banks. “It’s the art of the steal,” says Attorney General Letitia James. Unborn babies prefer carrots to kale, says The Guardian. Scans of foetuses after their mothers had eaten the vegetables found they were twice as likely to have a “crying expression” after the kale, and twice as likely to have a “laughter-like expression” after the carrot.

Comment

Arise, Sir David? It’s about time

“It’s beginning to get ridiculous,” says Louis Chilton in The Independent. What more does David Beckham have to do to bag a knighthood? Over the weekend, the former footballer was spotted waiting 13 hours “with the rest of the hoi polloi” to see the Queen, rather than flexing his celebrity status to skip the line. It’s just the latest development in his bid for national treasure status. Beckham has captained England’s football team, ferried the Olympic torch along the Thames, held meetings at Downing Street to tackle global food poverty, and even flown out to Afghanistan to “gladhand” with British troops. Short of “recolonising some small part of the Asian continent”, there’s little more he could do to endear himself to the establishment.
On the way back

Intrepid travellers will once again be able to fly in luxury airships, says Bloomberg, if the ambitions of OceanSky Cruises bear fruit. In February 2024, the Sweden-based company is planning to launch trips for up to 16 passengers between the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and the North Pole. OceanSky plans to transform the Airlander 10 airship, a model developed for US Army surveillance, into “a fusion of sightseeing vehicle and floating luxury hotel”, complete with a glass-bottomed observation room. Potential passengers can forget about the explosive disasters of the past: modern airships use helium rather than flammable hydrogen, and their balloons are divided into “multiple internal chambers”. Reserve your cabin here.

Zeitgeist

According to this year’s “emoji trend report” – a breakdown of American texters’ preferences by software company Adobe – the three most popular symbols are 😂, 👍 and ❤️. To woo a new beau or belle, the top three emojis to use are 😘, 🥰 and 😍. The three most likely to ruin your chances are 💩, 😠 and 🍆.

Sign of the times

The Kremlin has reportedly banned airlines from selling flights to men aged 18 to 65, after one-way tickets out of Moscow sold out following fears that ordinary Russians could be conscripted to fight in Ukraine. Online searches for “how to leave Russia” topped Google’s search terms on Tuesday night, when Putin was originally scheduled to address the nation. On Wednesday, after he announced the mass mobilisation of 300,000 reservists, searches for “how to break an arm at home” peaked.

Gone viral

American health officials have warned TikTokers not to try cooking “sleepy chicken”, says Olivia Truffaut-Wong in The Cut. The bizarre trend involves drenching meat with NyQuil, or other over-the-counter cold medicine, to create the doze-inducing dish. One video features the person preparing the nightmare concoction complaining that even the steam “really makes you sleepy”. The health department’s candid response: “The challenge sounds silly and unappetising – and it is.”

Quirk of history

Thriller writer Felix Francis tells an excellent anecdote about Winston Churchill, says Patrick Kidd in The Times, “which may even be true”. The great wartime PM was heading to Broadcasting House to address the nation after a military success, but the official car would not start, so he took a cab and asked the driver to wait for him to finish. “Sorry guvnor,” the driver replied, “but Winston Churchill is on the wireless in half an hour and I want to get home to listen.” Touched, Churchill tipped him a fiver, which prompted the cabbie to reconsider. “All right guvnor, I’ll wait for you,” he said. “Bugger Churchill.”

Snapshot

It’s a startlingly clear snap of Comet Leonard, taken by Gerald Rhemann as the icy dirtball streaked across the sky on Christmas Day. The picture won him top prize in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. Extraordinarily, Rhemann managed to capture the exact moment the meteor’s gas tail disconnected from its body and was swept away in the solar wind.

Quoted

quoted 22-09-22

“A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.”

WH Auden