Keir Starmer has condemned the ban on supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv football club attending their Europa League match against Aston Villa next month. Ministers are exploring how they can overturn the decision, which was made by Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group after West Midlands police said allowing fans of the Israeli club to attend would be “high-risk”. Donald Trump says he will meet Vladimir Putin in Budapest within the next two weeks to “bring this inglorious war between Russia and Ukraine to an end”. Following a “lengthy” phone call between the two leaders yesterday, the US president also said that American and Russian officials would reconvene for “high-level” talks next week. An almshouse in Bermondsey designed to combat loneliness in older people has won this year’s Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize. The 59-flat complex has communal facilities, including a roof garden, courtyard and community kitchen, which the award’s judges said “sets an ambitious standard for social housing among older people”.

China’s spying is far more serious than people realise

Perhaps the most serious outcome of the “China spying” scandal, says Tim Shipman in The Spectator, is that it shines a light on an embarrassing truth: Britain has been thoroughly and repeatedly penetrated by foreign intelligence. High-level government sources tell me far worse scandals have been hushed up in recent years. One “very serious” case, in which Russia hacked the Ministry of Defence and Downing Street, was suppressed to “avoid embarrassing a former Prime Minister”. The most catastrophic breach came when the Chinese bought a company that controlled a data hub used by Whitehall departments to exchange information, including on highly classified projects, handing Beijing a “goldmine” of secrets. Dominic Cummings recently described the moment, in 2020, when Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson were told about this “truly amazing penetration of critical infrastructure”: the two most powerful men in Britain stared in “open-mouthed amazement” and mouthed “what the fuck”.

None of this should be a surprise. China has long been a “kleptomaniac about information”, constantly probing for chinks in Britain’s defences. In terms of cyber, says one source in the security world, “we know they’re definitely trying to pre-deploy so they can shut down systems when the day comes”. Liz Truss and Johnson were both told, when prime minister, that their phones were being targeted. It’s no surprise the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ are all “pissed off” with Keir Starmer over the impression that he would rather cosy up to Beijing than take Britain’s security seriously. Even more incredulous are the China hawks in America, who have long argued that the UK underestimates the Chinese threat. The PM has done nothing to disabuse them.

One little-discussed outcome of Brexit, says Stephen Bush in the FT, is what an “utterly rotten deal” it’s been for the Conservative Party. The Tories rely – for votes and for parliamentary talent – on “successful people in the middle of their careers”. These people nearly all voted against Brexit. But today, an “essential condition” for entry into the upper echelons of the party is being willing to at least pretend you think Brexit was great. This “never-ending lobotomy” is deeply corrosive. Until pro-Europeans can once again hold high office, the Tories will remain defined by past glories not future triumphs.

Dozens of Japanese Sumo wrestlers arrived in London on Wednesday, ahead of the Grand Sumo Tournament at the Royal Albert Hall, says Ben Willcocks in the Daily Mail. Before the competition got under way, the robust rikishi made the most of being in the capital. Viral social media videos show the wrestlers stopping in for a British McDonald’s, visiting Big Ben, taking Lime bikes for a spin, re-creating the famous Beatles pose on Abbey Road’s zebra crossing and guzzling Guinness in a Soho pub. Kanpai!

Don’t fall for Putin’s propaganda – he’s losing

Years ago, while working inside Russian propaganda outlets, I noticed an unspoken rule, says Andrew Ryvkin in The Atlantic: “No matter the crisis, Putin can’t lose.” Today, many Western commentators are unwittingly following that very mantra. Before the Russian leader touched down in Alaska to meet Donald Trump in August, numerous publications called it a “victory” for Moscow; afterwards they denounced it as a humiliation for the US. When Russia started sending dozens of drones into European airspace last month, CNN said the confusion it caused amounted to a success for Russia. While the West is busy amplifying the Kremlin’s narrative, they’re missing the fact that “Putin is not winning”.

The Alaska summit, for example, did nothing to advance his goals. American weapons continue to flow into Ukraine; India has been hit with higher US tariffs for buying Russian oil; and Washington is now providing Kyiv with the intelligence to strike targets, including energy infrastructure, deep inside Russia. Militarily, Russia is “bogged down”. There are no tanks rolling towards Kyiv, no major cities under siege, and Moscow does not have air supremacy, “or even superiority”. Russia is also losing its “sphere of influence”. A recent peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan was brokered by Washington, not Moscow, and the Azerbaijani president is openly considering supplying Ukraine with lethal aid. At home, ordinary Russians are starting to see “palpable changes in their daily life” because of the deteriorating economy – internet outages, shuttered airports, petrol shortages, widespread unemployment. If commentators had a more “clear-eyed view” of Putin, they would see he has “bet everything on a failed invasion”.

🚀🇷🇺 Having forced Hamas to accept his peace deal for Gaza, Trump should now do the same to Putin, says Marc Thiessen in The Washington Post. The best way to do so would be to follow through on his suggestion to sell Kyiv some long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles. These would allow the Ukrainians to take out crucial facilities deep inside Russia: air bases that deliver devastating cruise missiles and glide bombs; the Alabuga drone factory in Tartarstan, which pumps out thousands of Iranian-designed devices; the Kerch Strait bridge connecting Crimea with Russia; and vital oil and natural gas production facilities. Putin would have “no choice but to sue for peace”.

Airbags in cars effectively “hack” your hearing, says Lewin Day in Hackaday. The safety devices are inflated using an explosive burst of gas that makes an “incredibly loud sound” – so loud it can cause instant damage to the ear. To get around this problem, engineers at Mercedes-Benz came up with an ingenious solution. When the airbag system detects a collision, it initially sends out a short noise signal that triggers the “stapedius reflex”, an involuntary muscle movement that protects your ears from excessive sound levels. So when the airbags then fire, a fraction of a second later, no damage is done.

One of the problems with the Gaza peace deal, says Rory Stewart on The Rest Is Politics, is the idea that the enclave can be run with a purely “technocratic” administration. Because these things always become political. Hamas is already fighting with “tribal, semi-criminal” groups that have been armed by Israel. When they start shooting each other on the street, whose side do you intervene on? “Who do you shoot?” It’s the same with economic development. Why, locals will ask, are you building hospitals in that community and not this one? Why are you hiring that contractor, when he’s crooked as hell? It’s the same as British politics – why are you investing in Bolton instead of Dorset? – except the locals are heavily armed and not averse to executing their enemies.

It’s a hat made out of discarded cigarette butts, says Natasha Levy in Dezeen, designed to reimagine “unpleasant and seemingly worthless” waste. Central Saint Martins graduate Olivia Gino made the filter-based fez by extracting a fibre called cellulose acetate – first washing the fag ends in hot water and ethanol, before subjecting them to a “cold rinse” and then finely tangling the tiny threads together into a kind of felt. With an estimated 4.5 trillion cigs flicked away worldwide every year, she won’t run out of raw materials. Check out her Instagram here.