Donald Trump has announced a “tremendous” package of sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies – Rosneft and Lukoil – which are crucial for funding the Kremlin’s war machine. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent lamented Vladimir Putin’s “refusal to end this senseless war” and said the US would go “further” if needed. The grooming gangs inquiry is in turmoil after the front runner to lead it became the second candidate to withdraw. Child protection expert Jim Gamble said the process had become a “toxic political football” beset by “opportunism and point-scoring”. Four victims have quit the advisory panel and say they will only re-join if safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who has been accused of lying to MPs about the scope of the inquiry, resigns. King Charles and Pope Leo XIV prayed together during an ecumenical service at the Sistine Chapel this morning. It is the first time a British monarch and a pope have worshipped together since Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church in the 16th century.

Elon Musk and the “virus of hate”

This week, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times, almost five years after Donald Trump was thrown off nearly every social media platform over January 6, the US president flooded those same platforms with an AI-generated video of him in a fighter jet, wearing a crown, dumping tons of faeces on the heads of protesters. In many respects, this astonishing shift in Western attitudes to free speech is “the triumph of one man”: Elon Musk. When the Tesla billionaire bought Twitter three years ago, he scrapped content moderation in a bid to expel what he called the “woke mind virus”. Every other social media company quickly followed suit, leaving a situation where nobody was policing anything online. “Which was, and remains, a problem.”

The reason it’s a problem is that if the social media companies won’t regulate online speech, governments will try to do it for them. The White House has just revoked the visas of six foreign citizens for posts celebrating the murder of the activist Charlie Kirk. Here in Britain we have so-called “non-crime hate incidents”, which were always a recipe for disaster – the Metropolitan Police announced this week that it will no longer investigate them. Twenty years ago, we had gatekeepers: newspaper editors knew that, as publishers, they had a “responsibility for whatever they facilitated”. Not so, social media. And that presents a conundrum. In a liberal society, tech companies need to act like responsible publishers. “Yet the same liberal society, by virtue of being liberal, cannot possibly force them to do so.” The woke mind virus was bad, yes, but it has a counterpart – “a virus of hate, rage, bigotry and public political debasement” – which is no better. And that’s suddenly all around us. “Look up, see the jet, feel it spatter us all.”

Prince Andrew encapsulates everything society hates, says Annabel Denham in The Daily Telegraph: “boorishness, entitlement, arrogance”. But am I alone in feeling just a tiny bit sorry for him? He wasn’t the only one to be taken in by Jeffrey Epstein – the late paedophile “rubbed shoulders with half the Davos set” – and many of us would consider sticking by a friend who went to jail. Whatever happened between him and Virginia Giuffre, he hasn’t been charged with any crime. As for complaints that he “cosied up to Beijing”, that was literally his job as Britain’s trade envoy, at a time when the British government was doing exactly the same. The fact that this “rather pathetic man” has become a national hate figure – “a cross between Fred West and Jimmy Savile” – says more about us than it does about him.

Appearing on The Celebrity Traitors is a much more “isolating” experience than it looks, says Laura Pullman in The Sunday Times. The contestants, who reportedly all received the same £40,000 appearance fee, stay in the same hotel near Ardross Castle, 25 miles north of Inverness, where the action is filmed. But they can’t talk to one another – they can only leave their room if they’re chaperoned by a member of the production team – and they have to use “production-issued phones” to speak to their families. There are also strict rules about drinking on camera, with a miserable two-drink maximum per night. It’s enough to make anyone feel traitorous.

The reformed jihadi rebuilding Syria

Syria was left “in ruins” by the Assad regime, says James Snell in Engelsberg Ideas. Fourteen years of brutal war destroyed up to a third of the country’s homes, meaning vast building projects are urgently required. Corrupt government departments need purging and deep reform; armed groups must be folded into the ministry of defence, made to follow new rules of engagement and slowly disarmed; and the law must be “made, kept and enforced”. In short, “there’s much to be done”. And for the past 10 months, interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa has been working, with remarkable success, to prove this possible.

Since his official appointment in January, the former al-Qaeda jihadi has been on a crash course in how to run a country. He has appointed new ministers, including technocrats with immense experience and relative novices willing to push themselves hard – anecdotes of “government by WhatsApp” and ministers “replying to messages and issuing instructions at all hours” are plentiful. Perhaps their biggest success yet came earlier this month when the interim government staged parliamentary elections. In the run-up, critics said that violence would mar the day, and that trying to run elections was simply too dangerous. Instead, “order largely prevailed”. There were no bombings or kidnappings. Delegations were chosen peacefully, and soon they will congregate in Damascus to inaugurate a new parliament – the first “freed from the tyranny of the Assad family”. Of course, there’s no way of knowing how this parliament – which will theoretically only be in office for 30 months before another set of elections – is going to pan out. But the fact that the country is once again, in no small part thanks to al-Sharaa, “safe enough and capable enough” to hold a peaceful vote gives us every reason to hope that the “promise of a democratic Syria can be fulfilled”.

JPMorgan’s new $3bn headquarters in Midtown Manhattan is “one of the most expensive towers in America”, says Alexander Saeedy in The Wall Street Journal. The bank had to tear down its old base at 270 Park Avenue – the tallest building ever voluntarily demolished in the US – floor by floor from the top down. The new 60-storey building will accommodate 10,000 workers and has 19 restaurants, several coffee shops that offer straight-to-desk delivery, and an English-style pub on the 13th floor called Morgan’s. But it’s hard to keep the masters of the universe happy. Employees say the new digs are a little “cramped”.

OpenAI wants to be far more than just a chatbot, says Megan Morrone in Axios. This week the company launched its own web browser, Atlas, to take on the likes of Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari. Sora 2, its AI video-generation and sharing app, looks to be “the first real competitor to Meta’s social media dominance since TikTok”. It has partnered with the world’s biggest retailer, Walmart, so that US users can buy the chain’s products directly from ChatGPT. And Jony Ive, who designed the iPhone, is working with the firm to create AI hardware, reportedly including a smart speaker, smart glasses, a digital voice recorder and a “wearable pin”.

It’s a jacket potato coat, says Ruby Betts in Dezeen, the result of a collaboration between Aldi and the fashion brand Agro Studio. The limited-edition puffer, described by the designer as “comfort food chic”, has a mottled brown exterior and a fluffy white fleece lining, and comes with a silver outer poncho to create the impression of a tattie wrapped in foil. Disappointingly, the sartorial spud isn’t available on general sale – to stand a chance of winning one, you have to follow, like or tag a friend on the supermarket’s social media channels.