The Metropolitan Police have urged other potential victims of Russell Brand to come forward after it emerged that the 51-year-old is under investigation for two further rape allegations. The comedian was found guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault at Southwark Crown Court yesterday, with the judge telling him he faces a “significant custodial term” when he is sentenced on Monday. Trillions of dollars have been wiped off the value of major US tech firms amid fears that the Democrats’ midterm triumph could threaten the AI boom. The S&P 500 fell 4.4% yesterday, its worst day since Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April 2025, while the Nasdaq tumbled 5.5%. This morning the sell-off spread to Europe and Asia. Ancient warriors appear to have enjoyed getting high. Archaeologists from Bern have discovered hundreds of cannabis seeds in a vast burial mound in Siberia, as well as two astonishingly well-preserved braids of human hair dating back to 800BC which contained chemical traces of the drug.

After hammering the Republicans in the midterms, says The Wall Street Journal, the question now is what lesson the Democrats will take from their historic triumph. What they should take from it is that voters wanted to rebuke Donald Trump for his failure to deliver lower prices, his moronic tariffs and his weakness for “crony cashing in”. Crucially, none of that is an endorsement for the Democratic Party itself, which won just 29% approval in the most recent NBC poll, far less than the 38% approval for the Republican Party. Voters also weren’t embracing a Democratic policy agenda because “the party didn’t offer one”. Winning candidates simply chanted “Trump” like an incantation and watched the votes roll in. That’s not a “mandate” for anything.

The big risk for Democrats now is the growing internal division between the moderates who lead the party and the progressives who want to usurp them, says Sam Freedman on Substack. No fewer than five of the new Senate intake ran on an “explicit pledge” not to support leader Chuck Schumer. Israel remains an “extraordinarily toxic” issue, as shown by the brouhaha over Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed refusing to condemn what one New York Times columnist described as “the most nakedly anti-Semitic political ad in modern US political history”. Looking ahead to 2028, Schumer and other party elders will be desperate to prevent a presidential candidate from the Democratic Socialists of America bloc going up against more centrist options, such as outgoing California Governor Gavin Newsom or hotly tipped Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff. Because if someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does throw her hat in the ring, it could make the rancorous primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in 2016 look like a “polite disagreement”.

To The Telegraph:

I was on a crowded Jubilee line Tube train with a friend when the middle-aged woman sitting next to me put her mobile call on loudspeaker. We were all forced to listen as she chatted, until my friend leant forward and said directly into her phone: “Come back to bed, darling.” Everyone erupted into laughter and she hurriedly hung up.

Dawn Parry
Abingdon, Oxfordshire

Tatler has released its always-entertaining “Little Black Book” for 2026, listing society’s “young, hot and seriously eligible”. And in among the usual heirs, scions, dauphins and nepo babies are a handful of legitimate high-fliers, including Amy Hunt, the 24-year-old European champion sprinter and Cambridge English graduate; Henry Pollock, 21, the 6ft 2in England rugby sensation; and The Knowledge’s very own social media guru Esme Hewitt, 28, who says she loves a spicy margarita and wouldn’t be seen dead in Clapham. To see the top ten, click here.

Andy Burnham “doesn’t like to be rushed”, says Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman. He always stops for a chat with members of the public while his aides wait nearby, “anxiously looking at their watches”. As mayor of Greater Manchester, he was famous for letting meetings run over – it became known as “Andy time”. Last month’s budget should be seen in the same context. The PM and Chancellor John Healey agreed very soon after taking office that their first fiscal event would be “small and stable”. The idea was, and is, for that to be followed by a “Ten-Year Plan” laid out before Christmas, with the money then allocated at next year’s spending review. Some in his party worry that a mid-term government with a huge majority should be “doing things, not just consulting and talking about them”. But No 10 remains relaxed. “This is ‘Andy time’ now.”

Conservatives have mocked Burnham for focusing on small-fry issues like antisocial behaviour on trains and excessive parking charges, says Annabel Denham in The Telegraph. Who cares about such piffling matters when the national debt has soared past £3trn? But people experience politics through their everyday lives, not the big-picture pontifications of newspaper columnists. Post-budget research from pollster More in Common shows that voters liked Burnham’s small interventions. Yes, he’ll eventually have to prove that he can accomplish big things, but Westminster obsessives underestimate “how much goodwill can be purchased by doing the little ones first”. And yes, Burnham’s popularity may turn out to be a “passing fad”. But my suspicion is that beneath his “affable everyman facade” lies a more coherent and ambitious political project than his opponents care to admit. The conservatives dismissing him as “all style and no substance” do so at their peril.

The Art Fund, a national charity that promotes going to see art, claimed this week that going to a museum or gallery is as important for our physical and mental wellbeing as doing exercise or being in nature. They’ve even come up with an entirely arbitrary RDA (“recommended dose of art”) of 60 minutes a month. What nonsense, says Emma Brockes in The Guardian. The transformative power of art is self-evident. Boiling life down to a series of self-optimising items on an endless, dreary to-do list robs it of everything that makes it worth living.

Western media lost interest in the results of the Israeli election after they failed to humiliate Benjamin Netanyahu. This is a pity, says Charles Moore in The Spectator, not least because the ensuing negotiations rather show up the claim that Israel is an apartheid state. Can you name any other country in the world where the supposed victims of apartheid hold the balance of power in the parliament, as do the 19 members of Arab parties in the Knesset?

It’s the winning entry in this year’s World Chocolate Masters, says Virginia Mayo in AP News: an octopus-like creation crafted by Italian chocolatier Tommaso Grollero. Other top efforts at the two-day event in Antwerp, Belgium, last month included a green praying mantis climbing over a honeycomb-like structure, a bird sitting on top of an ornate South Korean vase, a Japanese boy climbing out of a video game controller, and an elf with giant horns and a white chocolate blindfold. To see them all, click here.