Donald Trump claimed in his state dinner speech at the White House last night that King Charles agrees with him that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. The US president also called the UK a “mighty kingdom” and said his mother had “had a crush” on the young prince Charles. Earlier, the King received 12 standing ovations for his address to Congress, in which he praised the “indispensable partnership” between the two nations and joked about America being founded “250 years ago, or as we say in the United Kingdom, just the other day”. The United Arab Emirates will leave the OPEC oil cartel on Friday after 60 years of membership to have greater flexibility to pump more oil. The shock loss of the UAE, OPEC’s third-largest oil producer, will weaken the group’s ability to control the oil market amid the biggest supply crisis in history. Visitors to London Zoo will soon be able to watch live veterinary procedures inside a new state-of-the-art animal hospital, thanks to an anonymous £20m donation. The viewing gallery will show everything from penguin health checks to ultrasounds on pregnant aardvarks and dolphin post-mortems.

Something is very wrong with America’s moral compass, says Graeme Wood in The Atlantic. On a New York Times podcast last week, a progressive journalist called Jia Tolentino and the popular socialist streamer Hasan Piker declared that it’s fine – laudable, even – to shoplift from Whole Foods because, in Piker’s words, “they steal quite a bit more from their own workers”. Same with listening to pirated music or sneaking around the paywalls of magazines and newspapers. They were more circumspect about violence against people, but only just. When asked if they endorse murdering health insurance company executives – a reference to the cold-blooded killing of UnitedHealthcare chief Brian Thompson in 2024 – they “giggled their way” to a no, while emphasising that those companies are guilty of “social murder”.

These people aren’t just run-of-the-mill internet whack jobs, says Melanie Phillips in The Times. Tolentino writes for The New Yorker; Piker has a huge online following and prominent Democratic candidates in the midterms are desperate for his endorsement. This, despite his long history of monstrous remarks: claiming that America “deserved” 9/11, for example, and calling for the murder of landlords who don’t rent out their properties (“let the streets soak in their f***ing red capitalist blood”). Part of this is the education system, which has “imploded into anti-West propaganda and the implicit approval of political violence”. But it’s also because ideology has replaced morality. “The rich can do no right and the poor no wrong. Stealing is justified if it poses as concern for the oppressed.” This is no laughing matter. The rule of law depends on the consent of the people. If that consent is being eroded, we’re in “serious trouble”.

🎓🎙️ The host of the podcast, Nadja Spiegelman, proposed a new word for shoplifting, says Rob Henderson in The Wall Street Journal: “microlooting”. It’s yet another example of the educated classes using fancy language to rebrand disreputable behaviour. Lazing off at work is “acting your wage”, saying no means “setting boundaries”, infidelity is “ethical nonmonogamy”, listening to a friend vent is “emotional labour”. This guff is designed to be a status signifier. When people use phrases like “epistemic violence”, what they are really saying is: “I was educated at an expensive college.”

Middle-class families across America are increasingly hiring what was once the preserve of the ultra-rich, says Nancy Walecki in The Atlantic: a house manager. It’s essentially a “chief of staff for the home” – not just a nanny or cleaner, but someone who oversees the household’s basic functioning. Tasks range from doing the laundry and dishes to prepping meals, returning parcels, hanging pictures, taking the car to its MOT, arranging and then being at home to meet the plumber, and noticing that your children have outgrown their shoes and ordering new pairs.

What’s ludicrous about the guys who win marathons, says Dave Pell on Substack, is that they are “basically sprinting for two hours”. To get a sense of just what they’re capable of, a British company created a huge (mercifully spongy) treadmill set at the roughly 13 miles an hour pace top athletes compete at, and asked amateurs at running events to give it a go. The aptly named “Tumbleator” invariably annihilated runner after runner, even though they only had to survive 200 metres. Sabastian Sawe and co sustain it for 26 miles. Watch more tumbling here.

Bullets might not be flying in Britain, but make no mistake, says Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian: “we are at war”. If interstate conflict means attacks against a country’s political leadership, critical infrastructure, essentials such as food or fuel supplies, civilian population and armed forces, Britain is being attacked on the first four, “without a shot being fired”. Russian-generated political disinformation floods social media. Four “nationally significant” cyber-attacks are recorded each week. Russia’s submarines freely survey the undersea cables which carry most of our internet traffic. Counter-terrorism police are investigating whether the recent spate of arson attacks on synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses and Iranians living in Britain were sponsored by Tehran – a “thugs-for-hire tactic” plucked from the Russian playbook.

The idea that Britain is already under hybrid attack is “commonplace” in defence circles. Around 10 months ago the strategic defence review made it clear that if, when you imagine Britain at war, you think of conflicts like Iraq or Afghanistan, “you’re out of date”. The next war will be uncomfortably closer to home, fought from necessity not choice and be less about serving as the US’s “willing poodle”. Yet politicians are all but ignoring the threat. Despite seeing the damage that cheap, mass-produced drones can do in Ukraine, Britain still isn’t properly prepared for a drone “flying through the window of a strategically important building”. We lack the stockpiled food supplies or analogue backups required to ride out a major cyber-attack or serious act of sabotage. Preparing for this new type of conflict isn’t just about buying tanks and fighter jets. It’s about “shoring up the public realm to cope in a crisis”.

“Old-timey hands-on jobs” are coming back into fashion, says Suzanne Kapner in The Wall Street Journal. The number of tailors working in the US dropped by 30% in the decade to 2024 and most of those still working are now approaching retirement, so demand for the job has started to outstrip supply. Big retailers and fashion colleges are setting up training schemes to lure in the next generation who, terrified of what AI will do to their job prospects, are taking the bait. New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology’s alterations and tailoring programme received more than 190 applications for 15 spots.

Seeing an ashtray in an aeroplane loo doesn’t necessarily mean the aircraft hails from a time when passengers puffed away at 30,000ft, says Hannah Sampson in The Washington Post. It’s actually still a legal requirement. Even though smoking on planes has been banned for decades, ashtrays are mandatory as a layer of protection against scofflaws. The thinking is that some people are going to sneak into the loo for a crafty fag anyway, so better that they use a fireproof ashtray rather than flicking the butt into a bin stuffed with flammable tissue paper.

It’s the surreal German pop star horsegiirL, says Michael Cragg in The Guardian, a “half-human, half-horse” – or, at least, a woman in a horse mask – who has “polarised the dance music community” with her up-tempo beats and weird vibe. Much derided by the “dance bros” who have long dominated the scene, the 26-year-old sometimes known as Stella Stallion has drawn a loyal fanbase – who call themselves “farmies” – and spent much of the 2025 Brit awards getting stuck in with Danny Dyer. Her forthcoming debut album, Nature is Healing, is apparently about grass.