David Walliams has been named as the celebrity who tried to prevent the publication of allegations that he abused his position to exploit young women for sex. In a joint investigation by The Guardian and ITV News, the 55-year-old comedian is alleged to have groomed fans as young as 15 and harassed women in the workplace over many years. He denies the claims. The US military has evacuated aircraft from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk in the wake of a threat from Iran. Two American refuelling tankers were reportedly diverted from the British base to Germany yesterday morning, followed by several other tankers later in the day. Donald Trump said last night that fresh US strikes on Iran were “highly unlikely” and that the war is “effectively over”. The 81-year-old British author M John Harrison has become the oldest-ever winner of the Booker Prize. Mary Beard, chairwoman of the judges, said The End of Everything, set on the Kent coast in the years after a mysterious catastrophe that caused societal collapse, “turns you upside down” but “leaves you with a twinge of optimism”.

“It’s always the ones you most expect,” says Poppy Sowerby in UnHerd. At least, that has been the conclusion of the internet sleuths who have spent the past few days digging up long-buried clips of Russell Brand making off-colour jokes in his big-haired heyday. “See,” these online posters are saying, “this is what a rapist looks like.” And it’s understandable: there’s Brand – sentenced yesterday to 10-and-a-half years in prison for rape and sexual assault – offering to send his personal assistant to Jimmy Savile, and bragging about convincing women to trust him by acting gay, before “bang! Pregnant!” But what’s too easily memory-holed is that Brand’s “conspicuous, hypersexual persona” was a rather effective sleight of hand. Yes, in retrospect, the sex jokes look stark, but in context they were “naughty asides” in a “rougher, readier” TV culture that loved nothing more than unpredictable stars. Something “happening” – a fracas, a sly joke, a flash of nudity – was precisely why we watched.

The whole affair highlights our “deep confusion” about sex, says Theo Hobson in The Spectator. The liberal orthodoxy holds that there is nothing wrong with an “outright sexual hedonist” like Brand, and even that there may be something good about his honesty. “Only Mary Whitehouse-type prudes seek to scorn such self-expression.” Of course, in real life most people are wary of extreme sexual promiscuity, yet almost no one dares to articulate the secretly mainstream view that “sex shouldn’t be treated flippantly and hedonistically”. A deep cultural fear of sounding old-fashioned or moralistic means most people are scared to speak up. During Brand’s pomp, it’s almost unimaginable that anyone in the world of TV would openly dissent from the minority view that “sex is just fun”. Perhaps the real lesson is that “mainstream opinion has to learn to pipe up”.

China’s podcast industry has boomed in recent years, says The Economist, particularly among the young. More than 80% of listeners on the podcast platform Xiaoyuzhou are aged between 18 and 35, and users listen for an average of 80 minutes a day. All of which rather worries the state. Though podcasts must heed censors’ guidelines, they are starting to promote more “open discussion”. Many hosts are proudly feminist and eagerly discuss women’s rights, for example, and in 2025 one of the most listened-to genres was “personal growth”, which promotes the idea that life’s problems are “not all one’s own fault”.

Young entrepreneurs in San Francisco approach romance like they do their work, says Emmy Martin in The New York Times. One dating coach, who charges clients $5,000 a month, talks of potential matches as the “top of the funnel”, and the number of dates they land as their “conversion rate”. Most clients treat their first coffee date like a final-round interview, and the standards are unforgiving. One 24-year-old AI founder is looking for someone who went to Stanford or MIT, is beautiful but not “hot”, and with a good personality, something he says is “very, very hard when in San Francisco”.

When Andy Burnham declared war on people listening to music on the bus without headphones, says Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian, he was mocked for “fiddling while Rome burns”. What next? Jail time for finishing the milk and putting the empty carton back in the fridge? But the prime minister has since doubled down on the small stuff, personally weighing in on thoughtless idiots leaving electric Lime bikes in the middle of the pavement and hinting at a crackdown on so-called “pervert glasses” – wifi-enabled specs that let the wearer take videos, frequently of unwitting women. That might sound like a small win in the fight against Big Tech, but at a time when many report feeling helpless in the face of larger forces, it would give young women back some small sense of control in life, “and that matters perhaps more than we think”.

All these policies are about exerting control in situations where we feel it’s been taken from us, and where real change can be made. There simply isn’t much Burnham can do to affect, say, the unpredictable behaviour of Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, or about Iran, oil prices, or a stock market slump that may or may not herald the start of the AI bubble bursting. But combating small acts of selfishness, which make a surprisingly big subliminal difference to how people feel about their lives and where they live, is very much in his gift. “Take back control” is a powerful slogan. If Burnham can re-interpret it to mean a country where the state works, Big Tech no longer operates with impunity and masked-up local dirtbags on illegal e-bikes get banged up by the police – “well, isn’t that what we used to call governing”?

After the embarrassment of admitting he had an affair with a suspected Chinese spy, Jensen Huang won’t even be able to hide away from his family at the office, say Anissa Gardizy and Robbie Whelan in The Wall Street Journal. The Nvidia CEO’s two children, daughter Madison and son Spencer, both work at the company, as does Madison’s husband, Nico Caprez. Madison, who was paid $1.2m last year, works particularly closely with her father: she is part of a group of executives who travel with him to help him prepare for speaking engagements. They’re known as “The Band”.

What’s striking about the recent cyberattacks on European fridges – which France has blamed on Iran – is how easy they were to carry out, says Nicola Twilley in The Atlantic. It’s essential that retailers know produce has remained at a certain temperature and can be alerted immediately if anything goes wrong. That requires a very basic internet link, which most people don’t bother to secure – either leaving the factory default password, or using a simple alternative. Now that almost anyone can task a tireless AI agent with trying all the possible password combinations, hacking such systems is a piece of cake.

It’s the largest double bed in commercial aviation, says Owen Walker in the FT, which is being launched by Singapore Airlines next year as part of a $1.6bn revamp of its cabins. Measuring 6ft8in in length and 5ft wide, the first class bed is a fraction larger than a standard UK double and can be made up by cabin crew with a duvet, a choice of pillows and a mattress topper from a German luxury bedding specialist. The refurb will also see business class getting fancier wines, while those in economy are being treated to more room for “knees and shins”.