GPs have been told they must stop dismissing patients they are struggling to diagnose, after the death of a young woman who was turned away 20 times by the NHS. Airbus satellite engineer Jessica Bradley died of cancer aged 27, having been repeatedly brushed off with online consultations. Under “Jess’s Rule”, GPs will now be required to perform extra checks and seek second opinions when they can’t figure it out themselves. Donald Trump says pregnant women should avoid paracetamol and instead “tough it out”, claiming the safe and widely used painkiller is linked to autism. Contradicting the scientific consensus, the US president also criticised childhood immunisations and said “pills and vaccines” were behind a “meteoric” rise in ADHD and autism. Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show will return to US televisions tonight, less than a week after the host was suspended in a spat with government regulators over comments he made about Charlie Kirk’s killer. ABC’s parent company Disney said it was reversing the suspension – which immediately became a flashpoint for free speech in the US – after “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy”.

How 2008 changed everything

When people are asked to pick the main reason Britain is “on the wrong track”, says Sam Freedman on Substack, they generally choose Brexit or Covid. Pretty much everyone working in government policy has a different answer: the 2008 financial crisis. The economic effects were, of course, enormous. Productivity growth ran at 2% a year between 1993 and 2008; since then it has averaged 0.5%. The subsequent austerity measures had massive long-term effects: the lack of capital investment has left the NHS without enough beds or diagnostic equipment; cuts to local government led to multiple council bankruptcies and shabbier public spaces. I remember one meeting in 2012 where Boris Johnson, then the mayor of London, compared the effects of austerity to “the bombing of Dresden”.

It isn’t just Britain still feeling the effects of 2008. The Eurozone crisis that followed the crash provided a “major breakthrough” for the radical right in Europe – the “alternative” in “Alternative für Deutschland” refers to Angela Merkel’s insistence that there was no alternative to bailing out the likes of Greece and Portugal. In the Middle East, the global financial crisis helped push up food prices and youth unemployment, fuelling the 2011 “Arab Spring”. The resulting civil wars in Syria and Libya “led directly” to the refugee crisis in the mid-2010s. Vladimir Putin also came under significant pressure, and responded by shifting his narrative away from economic growth and towards a “viciously right-wing nationalism”. Meanwhile, China emerged much stronger from the whole period, its economy having grown rather than contracted, and invested hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure across 150 countries in a “direct challenge to US global dominance”. Be in no doubt: in Britain and everywhere else, 2008 “changed everything”.

The Estonians are under no illusions about the threat from Russia, says Gideon Rachman in the FT, or who their real friends are. Visiting the foreign ministry in Tallinn last week, I saw in the corridor outside the offices of the most senior officials a large reproduction of the vote tally from last year’s UN debate on Ukraine, in which the US sided with the Russians. The message was clear: “Don’t assume that Trump’s America is on our side.”

The London nightclub Tramp may be setting up a new “wellness” centre, says Andrew Ellson in The Times, but it will always be “synonymous with hedonism”. Keith Moon once received a temporary ban after swinging from a chandelier, prompting him to tearfully ask the club’s owner “where else he would party”. Princess Margaret, Prince William and Prince Harry were all regulars in their time, and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson famously celebrated her 21st birthday there wearing a bikini, a fur coat and a snorkel. In the early 1980s it achieved the rare distinction of hosting “three James Bonds on the same night”: Roger Moore, Sean Connery and George Lazenby.

The benefits of a shrinking population

It’s terribly fashionable nowadays to worry about shrinking populations, says The Economist. Elon Musk, “a father of many”, has urged humanity to follow his example on the basis that “low birth rates will end civilisation”. Two thirds of the world now live in countries where the fertility rate – the average number of children per woman – is below 2.1, the level needed to maintain a stable population. China’s head count is forecast to more than halve by 2100. Most of the fears about this are economic. “Fewer people means fewer brains”, and thus slower innovation. Rising public debts will increasingly fall on fewer shoulders, “many of them ageing”. Megacities may be fine, but “small towns could hollow out as the last school closes”.

People need to stop panicking. Artificial intelligence is clearly advancing faster than populations are shrinking, which will surely reduce the drag on innovation from “dwindling numbers of human boffins”. People are staying healthier for longer, so they should be able to stay productive for longer. In a study covering 41 countries, a 70-year-old in 2022 had the same cognitive abilities as a 53-year-old had in 2000. As long as that progress continues, it will slow the shrinkage of labour forces. And there is plenty of real-world evidence that a declining population need not mean a poorer one: Japan has been shrinking for almost two decades, yet living standards have “risen markedly”. It’s true that the make-up of the global population will change – more African, less Chinese, and so on. But big cultural and geopolitical shifts are nothing new. “The world has coped with them in the past, and can surely cope again.”

Nick Cave has long been one of our favourite subjects for celebrity sightings, says Popbitch. The most memorable? He once took part in a 100m dads’ race at his kids’ school wearing a full suit and Gucci loafers, smoking a cigarette. “He walked the length of the track then put his smoke out on the finish line.”

In honour of Donald Trump’s state visit last week, The New York Times created a (slightly snarky) royal family etiquette test. Would you know which formal mode of address to use when speaking to the king? When do you have to stop eating at the banquet? What did Australian PM Paul Keating do to Queen Elizabeth in 1992 to prompt The Sun to call him the “Lizard of Oz”? Give it a go here.

It’s Władysław Grochowski, a Polish tycoon who is offering cash and other prizes to couples who conceive in his hotels, says The Times. Parents who present proof of staying at one of the 23 Arche chain hotels alongside their child’s birth certificate can claim a free party to celebrate their baby’s baptism, while cash incentives of 10,000 zloty (around £2,000) are on offer to homebuyers for every child born in the five years after they purchase a property from the company. Poland’s population – currently around 37.5 million – has been falling for 12 years, leading to predictions it may halve by 2100. Not on Władysław’s watch.