Two babies would have survived and five others wouldn’t have been attacked if hospital bosses and doctors had taken earlier action over concerns about Lucy Letby, a landmark inquiry has concluded. The Thirlwall inquiry said executives at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Cheshire delayed contacting the police in an “exercise in spin” that prized the “prevention of reputational damage” over investigating an increase in deaths on the neonatal ward. Donald Trump has rejected calls for the US government to tighten regulation of the AI industry, saying fears the technology could destroy humanity are a “HOAX”. The US president’s comments came after senior industry figures including Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis backed a call by Anthropic’s Dario Amodei to slow down the rush to advance AI models. Welsh actor Matthew Rhys made history at the Emmy Awards last night by winning two lead acting prizes in the same year, for supernatural comedy Widow’s Bay and psychological thriller The Beast in Me. Other big winners included Noah Wyle for The Pitt, Allison Janney (The Diplomat) and Jean Smart (Hacks). For the full list, click here.

After two historic donations from crypto billionaires, Reform UK are looking “very financially secure”, says Fraser Nelson on Substack. But they may end up “politically weaker”. The fact that Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne were willing to hand over £36m apiece is likely to raise questions about precisely what it is they are hoping for in return. Reform has promised they will never receive trad donor baubles like knighthoods or peerages. But it’s worth noting that the party has a detailed Crypto Finance Bill “ready to be enacted on day one”, which includes slashing tax rates on crypto profits to 10% and establishing a national Bitcoin Reserve Fund. Reform has nothing like this kind of policy detail for any other area of government – it doesn’t even have a spokesman on defence. What kind of political party is that?

I have good news for those freaking out that “Delo and Harborne can buy the next election”, says John Rentoul in The Independent: “They cannot.” Even very large sums of money only make a difference at the margin, and sometimes not at all. Remain spent twice as much as Leave in the Brexit campaign; Hillary Clinton outspent Donald Trump $580m to $340m in 2016. In 1997, James Goldsmith paid for a Eurosceptic outfit called the Referendum Party to outspend Labour and the Tories put together, through a massive advertising campaign that included posting a VHS tape to five million households. “It won 2.6% of the vote.” There’s nothing any donor can do about the “clash of egos” at the top of Reform, which is already the party other voters most want to keep out – many Tories would vote Labour to stiff Farage, and vice versa. “All the money in the world cannot change that.”

Largely overlooked in the AI safety debate are the many ways in which the technology is already being used by bad actors, says Zachary Basu in Axios. Anthropic said in its latest threat report that its model, Claude, had been used by an Iran-linked operation to help target US naval forces; by a weapons cell in Yemen to develop guidance software for rockets and missiles; by a China-linked group to hunt Uighurs in Syria; and by a consultant in Mali to create “a nationwide system capable of collecting call records, texts and voice traffic”. Claude did at least refuse a request to do dangerous virus research – but advised the user to try a rival model with weaker safeguards.

Long characterised by “crisp white tablecloths and rigid formality”, the luxury cruise ship industry has shifted towards more “personalised” travel, says Ceyland Yeğinsu in The New York Times. The new 679ft Four Seasons 1 accommodates only 222 guests in 95 residential-style suites, and is designed to “emulate the superyacht experience”. Spread across four floors at the top is the 9,974 sq ft Funnel Suite, which has its own plunge pool, gym, spa, and bedrooms with wraparound floor-to-ceiling windows. The price is available only on request, but on previous voyages it has sold for more than $300,000.

Sydney Sweeney is “at it again”, says Paul Burke in The Spectator, appearing in an ad for a sports betting app entirely naked but for the odd bat or ball, sultrily repeating the word “sports”. It’s a wilfully silly ad, obviously intended to spark a fuss. “Mission accomplished.” Among those taking the bait was British sprinter Amy Hunt, who used a post-race interview to declare: “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women’s sports looks like. Hard work, sweat, blood, tears.” Well, yes. Nobody says otherwise. This is an ad – advertisers have always used beautiful people to sell their products because it “makes that sale a lot easier”. Raging against beautiful people in adverts is as pointless as “raging against athletic people in the 400 metre hurdles”.

Like most women I know, says Harriet Walker in The Times, I’ve long been on Sweeney’s side. When she appeared last October at Variety’s Power of Women event in a see-through dress, “her God-given jugs sitting exactly where they should”, it felt nothing less than “insurgent” in a red-carpet climate of “stick figures and the surgically altered”. But the reaction to this ad among my friends has been unanimous: “Ugh, really?” It’s a “real shame”, texted one. “I thought she looked cracking in that tits dress but this is the most gargantuan backward step.” Because whenever a woman is “pointlessly and publicly” naked like this, the rest of us are taken less seriously. General sexiness is one thing, but this is the logic of cigarette girls and bikini-clad game show assistants: women are just “collateral totty” to grab the attention of men.

🍈🍈 Oh come on, says Marina Hyde in The Guardian. “Sweeney adds to the gaiety of the nations.” I’m delighted that she’s out there “pissing off reflexively judgemental people”, and I truly loved it when, after a different controversy, she posted a picture of herself in a sweatshirt reading: “SORRY FOR HAVING GREAT TITS AND CORRECT OPINIONS”. I do hope she finds a way to continue apparently not giving a toss – and that everyone else considers “they might have more fun if they took a leaf out of her book”.

The American airman who was rescued 50 hours after being shot down over Iran in April has told his story for the first time. “Dude 44 Bravo” – his call sign during the operation – told 60 Minutes his parachute was damaged so he hit the ground at up to 100mph, breaking his back, an arm and a shoulder, and spraining his ankle. He still managed to hike up a 7,000-foot ridge to escape Iranian search parties, before messaging the Pentagon: “I’m hurt, I’m moving, God is good.” That kicked off an extensive rescue mission involving more than 90 special forces soldiers, two of whom eventually found Bravo and took him to safety.

The first person in Britain, and perhaps the world, to be convicted of drink-driving was a London taxi driver, in 1897, says Ian Mansfield in IanVisits. George Smith, 25, was driving one of the new Bersey electric cabs when he began swerving across the road, eventually mounting the pavement and smashing into 165 New Bond Street (now a Givenchy shop). He was arrested and certified as drunk by a police surgeon, and the following day pleaded guilty, acknowledging that he’d had “two or three glasses of beer”. He was fined 20 shillings, roughly the equivalent of a week’s wages.

It’s Chloe from Blooms & Greens, a gardening content creator who has racked up more than 674,000 followers on Instagram. With Monty Don leaving Gardener’s World after 23 years, says Jeremy Clarkson in The Sunday Times, the BBC will presumably replace him not with someone who actually knows anything about gardening, but with a “character” – the kind of person who thinks “being zany is the same as being funny”. What they should do instead is hire Chloe. “She’s like Monty Don, if he was 50 years younger, and Irish, and a girl. I could watch her for hours.”