Ursula von der Leyen says Europe has entered an “era of rearmament”, after Donald Trump paused all US military aid to Ukraine last night. The European Commission president has outlined plans to mobilise €800bn of new defence spending. More than half the world’s adults and a third of young people will be overweight or obese by 2050, according to a new global study. Experts point out that the research, published in The Lancet, doesn’t consider the potential impact of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. Mice perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on unconscious companions. Researchers in California found that in more than half of cases, rodents rushed to revive drugged friends, pawing at their chests, licking their faces and pulling on their tongues to clear their airways.

How Ukraine can fight on without America

Americans are convinced that without their help, Ukraine is doomed, says Gideon Rachman in the FT. A former top defence official tells me a cessation of military aid could “cripple Ukraine within weeks”, essentially handing the country to Putin. But in Kyiv last week I encountered a far more positive attitude among Ukrainians actually involved in the conflict. This was not mere bravado but a “reasoned assessment of how the war is being fought”. Specifically, Ukraine’s expertise in drone warfare, honed over three years of fighting, has fundamentally “changed the nature of the conflict”. The boss of one major drone firm argues it would now be impossible for Russia to mount a serious assault on Kyiv: “Any large concentration of troops or tanks would be decimated by Ukrainian drone attacks.”

This tech, manufactured in Ukraine, accounts for a major chunk of the “shocking losses” Russia has taken over the past year – some 400,000 troops killed or wounded, for a territorial gain of just 0.5% of the country’s land. Admittedly the Ukrainian military relies, for now, on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network to connect and fly their drones, and US intelligence helps identify profitable targets. But with European assistance, those in the know believe Ukraine could find workarounds to keep fighting. Rather than physically conquering all of Ukraine’s territory, Putin’s preferred outcome is now installing a “pro-Moscow puppet government in Kyiv”. That’s why he, “with Donald Trump’s support”, is suddenly pressing for elections in Ukraine. But even massive Russian interference might not be enough to deprive Volodymyr Zelensky of electoral victory. Ironically, Trump has just given him a “huge boost in the opinion polls”.

💪⛷️ Donald Trump and JD Vance played the tough guys in the Oval Office, but “Zelensky is the real thing”. At the start of the war, he stayed in Kyiv when Russian forces were closing in and the city was under bombardment. “Vance, by contrast, chose to move to a secure location when confronted with a few hecklers on a skiing trip this weekend.”

The final price tag for the notorious £100m HS2 bat tunnel is on track to be a fifth higher than previously thought, says the FT. It turns out the widely circulated estimate for the mesh structure – designed to protect not-very endangered bats from the not-very-high risk of bumping into trains in Buckinghamshire – uses a figure from 2019. Adjusted for inflation, the sum today would be more like £120m. Given the kilometre-long tunnel (which has already cost £65.5m) won’t be finished until next year, the final cost could be considerably higher.

Rich Americans have long socialised at swanky country clubs, says Alessandra Codinha in Vogue, but Gen Zs with cash to burn are migrating to a new hangout: the wellness club. At the “alarmingly chic” $395-a-month health club Hume in LA, youngsters flit between the sauna and a cold plunge pool before chatting over matcha lattes on the rooftop. The five-floor Hollywood wellness space Heimat ($350 a month) has extensive spa treatments, a Michelin-starred restaurant and an expansive co-working space. In fact, there’s so much communal activity going on that the gyms seem “almost beside the point”.

Playboy’s return to “unabashed nudity”

Farewell, then, to the “woke” version of Playboy, says Rowan Pelling in The Daily Telegraph. The top-shelf magazine was relaunched in 2019, two years after the death of founder Hugh Hefner, with an eye on the #MeToo movement: there was a “zero-nudity” policy, Playboy bunnies were rechristened “brand ambassadors”, and the big photoshoots featured the likes of plus-size singer Lizzo and gender non-conforming pop star Halsey. “We strive to be more inclusive,” the new, ultra-progressive editorial team declared, “stretching and redefining tired and frankly sexist definitions of beauty, arousal and eroticism.” Unsurprisingly, this left readers rather cold. So the magazine has now admitted defeat and relaunched again, bringing back “Barbie-proportioned figures and unabashed nudity”.

None of this comes as a surprise. Expressions of human lust have been remarkably consistent throughout human history: from ancient fertility symbols like the “super-buxom” Venus of Willendorf and the generously endowed Adonis of Zschernitz, to the “explicit brothel murals” of Pompeii and Thomas Rowlandson’s bawdy etchings of Georgian London. All of it involves an “idealised view” of the human figure, and that view – broadly speaking – hasn’t really changed. It’s why many “perfectly rational” women over 50 openly lust after Leo Woodall, the 28-year-old hunk in the new Bridget Jones movie, and why women who claim they want their lovers to be “sensitive, feminist allies” secretly swoon over “SAS types”. Playboy’s climbdown should serve as a welcome reminder that the moralisers can always be ignored.

When the Oscars took place after Donald Trump’s first inauguration, in 2017, says The Economist, the event had an openly political tone. The host, Jimmy Kimmel, “needled Trump mercilessly”; stars wore blue ribbons in support of the American Civil Liberties Union, a watchdog group fighting his agenda. This year, politics was barely mentioned. When one winner made an oblique reference to “the chaos we’re living through”, the orchestra swiftly played her off stage; the two “charming Iranians” who won Best Animated Short Film kept their speech “anodyne”. Hollywood has ditched the #Resistance in favour of “toeing the line”.

When World War One broke out in 1914, says Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The New York Times, “no fewer than eight countries were ruled by descendants of Queen Victoria”. By the end of the conflict, two of them – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the queen’s grandson-in-law – had lost their thrones.

It’s bubble tea made by Mixue Ice Cream and Tea, a Chinese company that now has more outlets than any other food-and-drink chain in the world, says The Wall Street Journal. Mixue (pronounced ME-schweh) has 45,000 stores across Asia and Australia, compared to around 43,000 worldwide for McDonald’s and 40,000 for Starbucks. The branding is an acquired taste: the mascot looks like “the love child of Frosty the Snowman and the Michelin Man”, and the stores play a 30-second jingle on loop (listen here). But Mixue’s products cost an average of just 65p, which goes down rather well with Chinese consumers struggling with the country’s economic slump.