Peter Mandelson has been released on bail after his arrest yesterday on suspicion of misconduct in public office. The former ambassador to the US was questioned by detectives as part of the Metropolitan Police’s criminal investigation into claims he leaked market-sensitive government documents to Jeffrey Epstein during his time as business secretary. Donald Trump’s new global tariffs have come into effect at a temporarily reduced rate of 10%, rather than the 15% announced at the weekend, to replace the “Liberation Day” levies ruled unlawful by the US Supreme Court. The delayed application of the higher rate could “offer a window” for governments and businesses to negotiate exemptions, says the FT. A baby boy has become the first child in Britain to be born using a womb transplanted from a dead donor. Grace Bell, 32, who was born without a viable uterus, received the donor womb in a 10-hour operation in 2024, before undergoing IVF treatment and giving birth to baby Hugo in London just before Christmas last year.

Vladimir Putin was sure that Donald Trump’s return to the White House would play out to Russia’s advantage in the Ukraine war, says Le Monde. The Kremlin believed a “peace agreement” would be rapidly secured, with Washington’s co-operation, resolving what it calls the “root causes” of the conflict. Encouraged by Trump’s conciliatory tone, the Russians kept pushing a maximalist stance, demanding territorial gains far beyond what they had won on the battlefield, a veto on Kyiv’s accession to Nato and a ban on Western peacekeeping troops. Now, with peace talks going nowhere, Putin’s bet on Trump isn’t looking so clever. Russia is stuck in a war of attrition, suffering devastating human losses for scant territorial gains, with a “permanently weakened” economy trapped in a doom loop of stagflation.

It’s not just the war, says Hanna Notte in The New York Times. Efforts to normalise US-Russia relations haven’t progressed – direct flights haven’t returned and there’s still no American ambassador in Moscow. The “red-carpet fanfare” of the leaders’ one-off summit in Anchorage, Alaska last August has not turned into actual diplomatic respect. When the US bombed Iran in June, Trump rebuffed Putin’s offer to mediate and didn’t bother inviting him to the later summit in Egypt to celebrate the shaky ceasefire in Gaza (“embarrassingly, Putin had to postpone his own Russia-Arab gathering”). Trump has ostentatiously trodden on Putin’s toes In “Russia’s backyard”, playing peace broker between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and he has wantonly menaced Kremlin dependents like Venezuela, Iran and Cuba. He has also sanctioned Russian oil vessels, seized a Russian tanker and pressed India to stop buying Russian crude. Apart from a little “backslapping bonhomie” in Alaska, “the Trump White House has not been good for Russia”.

Corrupt Russian commanders are charging soldiers up to £30,000 to avoid the front lines in Ukraine, says Verity Bowman in The Daily Telegraph. Those who refuse are “reset”, a grisly euphemism for being sent on operations that are effectively kamikaze missions. There are also widespread reports of commanders stealing crucial equipment – drones, electronics and other weapons – and forcing soldiers to “donate” part of their pay in order to use them.

Don’t take your daily cup of coffee for granted, says Anne Ewbank in Popular Science. In 1511, authorities in Mecca banned the black stuff on the basis that it “intoxicated the mind”, shutting cafes, burning beans and beating drinkers. Sultan Murad IV later did the same in Istanbul – he was said to walk the streets personally decapitating anyone defying the ban. King Gustav III of Sweden outlawed the beverage until a medical trial could be conducted on twin prisoners: one drinking coffee every day, the other forbidden. (Both outlived him.) And in 18th century Prussia, Frederick the Great created a royal coffee monopoly and rooted out smuggled imports with a special force of expert coffee sniffers – the fearsome Kaffeeschnüffler.

Beneath the individual dramas that have dogged the Labour government lies something “more depressing”, says Camilla Cavendish in the FT: a “casualness” about standards, coupled with a highly unattractive self-righteousness. Take compulsive CV-exaggerator Rachel Reeves, who complains she’s been “underestimated” all her life. Please. She went to Oxford. John Major left school at 16. When Angela Rayner was busted underpaying stamp duty to the tune of £40,000, she blamed “bad advice” and supporters claimed her “difficult background” was some sort of mitigation. Just imagine what she’d have said about a Tory caught in a similar tax dodge. The idea that Labour have the moral high ground purely by virtue of their party label leads to only one place – “a Reform UK government”.

Keir Starmer claims he was “unaware” that Labour Together – the think tank through which Morgan McSweeney ran Starmer’s leadership campaign – failed to declare £730,000 in political donations and then tried to smear the journalists who exposed it. Starmer may not have known the extent of Peter Mandelson’s closeness to Jeffrey Epstein, or that his spin doctor Matthew Doyle maintained a close friendship with a different sex offender. But he did nominate Tom Watson for a peerage after Watson had pushed a baseless conspiracy about a Westminster paedophile ring, causing the police to waste millions of pounds and hound innocent men including war hero Lord Edwin Bramall. Ditto those “spuriously nasty” attack ads claiming Rishi Sunak didn’t think convicted paedophiles should go to prison. When Starmer is booted out, Labour members would be wise to remember how outraged voters feel by being lectured by those like Rayner who show no shame. As George Orwell put it, people who consider themselves enlightened “seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility”.

Whatever the weather, everyone should be “house burping”, says Amber Raiken in The Independent. The idea, based on the German practice of “lüften” or “airing out”, involves opening all the windows in your home – even in the dead of winter – to let fresh air in and the old stuff out. Just 10 to 15 minutes of this a day is thought to help reduce mould, contaminants and built-up carbon dioxide. The best times to do it are first thing in the morning and after a shower, cooking a meal or when you’ve had guests.

If European leaders don’t like being pushed around by bigger powers, says Martin Sandbu in the FT, they have options. A European think tank has identified 41 critical “chokepoints” in trade for China, where Beijing depends on the EU for more than 80% of its imports, and 67 such dependencies for the US. These range from insulin and other essential pharmaceuticals to farm machinery, extreme ultraviolet lithography (essential for making the most powerful chips), special turbines for data centres and even US supplies of uranium. In a tougher geopolitical era, “Europe has more cards than it thinks”.

It’s 87-year-old Londoner Helga Sands, who is possibly “the oldest biohacker in the business”, says Samuel Lovett in The Sunday Times. The retired banker takes about 70 supplements a day, washes her hair with sheep shampoo and sleeps on a silver-threaded bed sheet. She regularly has her blood infused with ozone (to maximise oxygen metabolism) and injects herself with “exosomes” derived from stem cells taken from pregnant women (to help skin restoration). Next month she’s flying to Panama to have a £300,000 “rejuvenation” cocktail that is illegal here. “You might like the idea of dying and going to heaven,” says the grandmother of three. “But I have no interest.”