Oil prices fell sharply and stock markets rose this morning after reports that the US and Iran are nearing a deal to end the war. Sources told Axios that discussions on the one-page memorandum – under which Tehran would pause nuclear enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief, and both sides would end transit restrictions through the Strait of Hormuz – are the closest the two sides have been to an agreement since the war began. Zack Polanski has admitted that he wrongly claimed to be a spokesperson for the British Red Cross during his campaign to become deputy leader of the Green Party in 2022. The party’s now leader told the Today programme that while spokesperson was “the wrong word”, he had hosted various fundraisers for the charity, and that journalists trying to make a story out of it were “scraping the barrel”. Plans to transform London’s BT Tower into a luxury hotel could see a swimming pool built 177 metres above Fitzrovia. MCR Hotels, the American developer which bought the former Post Office Tower for £275m in 2024, has drawn up proposals to redevelop it, including offering public access to the top of the tower for the first time in half a century.

For more than a decade, says Le Monde, the vast, impoverished west African nation of Mali has been at near-constant war with the world’s jihadis, including breakaway units of al-Qaeda, their rivals from ISIS and Boko Haram, and most recently fighters from Nusrat al-Islam. A military coup in 2020 installed Assimi Goïta, the current self-proclaimed president, who declared he would protect the country with help from Russia’s fearsome Wagner Group (now Africa Corps), and in 2022 booted out French troops – a major boost to Russian global influence and one in the eye for Europe. Now the worm has turned. Last month Russia’s mercenaries beat a negotiated retreat, leaving behind a “bloody, inescapable war” and a humiliation for Russia.

It’s not just Mali where Moscow is disappointing its clients and haemorrhaging prestige, says Walter Russell Mead in The Wall Street Journal. In Iran, its missile defence kit has been obliterated. Russia has lost important allies in Syria, Venezuela and most recently Hungary, where the electoral defeat of Viktor Orbán has deprived Vladimir Putin of his closest European ties and opened the door to embarrassing investigations into how Kremlin roubles have ended up in the pockets of European business and political elites. Meanwhile, Moscow’s grip on the post-Soviet sphere is also crumbling: Armenia and Azerbaijan are “actively co-operating” with the West; some Central Asian republics now have better ties with China than with Russia and are courting investment from Turkey and the EU. And the Ukraine war is going nowhere, while feeding hundreds of thousands of military-aged men into the meat grinder, pushing the best educated to flee the country and gutting the civilian economy. Far from being the next Peter the Great, Putin may end up “the man who broke Russia”.

Before Labour got into power in 2024, says Patrick Maguire on Substack, Tony Blair’s former aide, Roger Liddle, hosted monthly dinners for party bigwigs including Peter Mandelson, Morgan McSweeney and Wes Streeting. McSweeney told MPs last week that these get-togethers – to which Keir Starmer wasn’t invited – were of little importance, and therefore not evidence of the Labour leader’s powerlessness. What McSweeney didn’t mention was that another attendee later had a blue plaque made for Liddle’s kitchen, reading something like: “The Labour Party Was Saved Here, 2019-2021”. I’m yet to see a plaque for the kitchen table where Starmer’s leadership campaign had its early meetings, “or, indeed, for any other table he was ever actually invited to sit at”.

The author Isabel Allende has taken the same approach to writing books since 1981, says David Epstein in The Atlantic: she clears her calendar from 8 January, starts writing a new novel on that date, and doesn’t stop until it’s finished. She’s not the first writer to go to extreme lengths to stay focused. Maya Angelou rented hotel rooms and took down any artwork so as not to be distracted. Victor Hugo locked up his clothes so that he wouldn’t be tempted to get changed and head outside. Marcel Proust lined the walls of the bedroom where he worked with cork to dampen outside sound.

If a Labour prime minister leads his party to its worst set of election results “possibly ever”, says The Independent, should he be allowed to carry on? The already swirling speculation over the prime minister’s future will no doubt reach “tornado proportions of intensity” after tomorrow’s local elections. “Yet there is still a case for Sir Keir.” First, as the Tories (and the country) learned from Liz Truss, swapping leaders often does more harm than good. A leadership election now would mean the final decision on choosing the next PM would be made by the Labour membership, a group neither especially “blessed with wisdom” nor “in touch with the wider electorate”.

Then there’s the problem that there is no clear successor. The Labour membership is dominated by the “soft left”, which rules out competent candidates from the right of the party such as Wes Streeting, Shabana Mahmood and former special forces officer Al Carns. Instead, they would likely vote for someone “made in their own image”: Ed Miliband, Angela Rayner or Andy Burnham. Miliband was “viscerally rejected” by voters at the 2015 general election, and his unwavering environmental ambitions would see him torn apart by the Tories and Reform UK. Rayner’s much-vaunted “authenticity” was fatally compromised by her tax affairs, which still aren’t resolved. And Burnham “isn’t even an MP”. It’s also hard to see any of them shining on the international stage, which is the one thing Starmer has excelled at, most recently making the critical correct call “not to go to war”. No matter how awful the situation may feel, a leadership contest would only add to the general sense of disarray. “This is not a moment for change.”

Someone at a party once asked the father of Coldplay’s Chris Martin what his children did, says Ed Halford in The Times. “I’ve got one son who’s an international rock star,” he replied, “and another who works in a bank.” “Oh really?” said the other chap. “Which bank?”

The betting site Polymarket puts the odds of Donald Trump Jr being the Republican nominee for the 2028 presidential election at a measly 3%, well behind JD Vance on 39% and Marco Rubio on 21%, and a little shy of Tucker Carlson’s 6%. There are good reasons to think the president’s eldest son is “underweighted”, says Edward Luce in the FT. Donald Sr shows every intention of remaining involved, and the likes of Rubio and Vance can’t be trusted to stay loyal. Don Jr “craves to please his father”. It’s easy to imagine the MAGA election machine swapping one Trump for a successor.

It’s the Familiar, says Christopher Mims in The Wall Street Journal, the latest invention by Colin Angle, the inventor of the Roomba. The man known as the “Steve Jobs of robot vacuum cleaners”, who led iRobot for nearly three decades before leaving in 2024, says that while the new device can’t talk, it will “react to your actions and feelings” in an “emotionally intelligent” way. The idea is for people to give it to their ageing loved ones to keep an eye on them. Not sinister at all.