EU leaders are meeting in Brussels today to try to agree a deal to seize €210bn of frozen Russian assets for Kyiv’s war effort. “We have a simple choice,” says Poland’s Donald Tusk. “Money today, or blood tomorrow.” Washington is warning against the move, while Vladimir Putin lashed out yesterday, calling Europe’s leaders “little pigs”. Boys as young as 11 will be sent on anti-misogyny courses at school as part of the government’s long-awaited strategy to stamp out violence against women and girls. The teacher-led programmes will challenge “deep-rooted misogynist influences” and cover image-based abuse, peer pressure, online harassment and the difference between pornography and real relationships. New DNA evidence shows that a Roman-era skeleton found in Sussex and thought to have been the earliest known black Briton was actually a white woman from Eastbourne. Beachy Head Woman was first thought to have originated in sub-Saharan Africa, then possibly Cyprus, and now, thanks to new genetic testing techniques, England’s very own south coast.

It’s generally a waste of time complaining about Donald Trump’s “petty, hollow, squalid” personality, says Bret Stephens in The New York Times. But occasionally the point bears stressing. Just look at his reaction to the tragic death of the film director and liberal political activist Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, allegedly at the hands of their troubled son. Within hours, America’s “ogre in chief” was on social media blaming the tragedy on Reiner, specifically the “anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME”. This, in case it needs saying, is despicable. The idea that “politics is meant to end at the graveside” isn’t just some twee social nicety, it’s a “foundational taboo” of civilisation.

The harm caused is subtle: this nasty post won’t move markets or shift the tectonic plates of geopolitics. It’s worse than that. It degrades our manners. And unlike, say, foolishly imposed tariffs or hastily cut aid funding, debased manners are not easily reversed. As Edmund Burke put it, “manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarise or refine us”. It is through manners, he said, that laws are upheld or corrupted. Today, in every grotesque social media post; every North Korea-style cabinet meeting devoted to presidential adulation; every fawning reference to the “peace” he’s supposedly bringing to the world; every classless dig at his predecessor; every shady deal his family strikes to enrich itself; every White House gathering of the broligarchy; and in every foreign leader who learns to abase himself to avoid some capricious tariff or other punishment, our manners are being radically “barbarised”. It’s not clear we will ever get them back.

🙄🇺🇸 Trump’s latest aesthetic addition to the White House is a series of plaques beneath the portraits along his “Presidential Walk of Fame”, says Mike Allen in Axios. The descriptions, many of which the president apparently wrote himself, include “Sleepy Joe Biden, who was, by far, the worst President in American history” and “Barack Hussein Obama… one of the most divisive political figures in American history”. Bill Clinton’s entry notes that his wife Hillary “lost the Presidency to President Donald J Trump!” Ronald Reagan is described as “a fan of President Donald J Trump long before President Trump’s Historic run for the White House”.

Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, has given a surprisingly candid series of interviews to Vanity Fair reporter Chris Whipple. She said she had tried and failed to stop the president’s push to punish his enemies, and described the teetotal 79-year-old as having “an alcoholic’s personality”. She claimed JD Vance was a “conspiracy theorist” who backed Trump for “political” rather then principled reasons; and called Elon Musk an “odd, odd duck” and an “avowed” ketamine user. Wiles, who claims the remarks were taken out of context, has been Trump’s most important aide since his return to the White House: at a rally last week he dubbed her “Susie Trump”.

For reasons scientists still struggle to explain, says Elizabeth Preston in Scientific American, certain reptiles have “temperature-dependent sex determination”. The hotter the nest of a green sea turtle, for example, the more their eggs skew female; the warmer it is for a crocodile, the more male hatchlings are produced. These creatures have survived the planet’s climatic ups and downs for hundreds of millions of years, but now that Earth’s thermostat has gone somewhat “haywire”, scientists are predicting nearly single-sex generations of alligators by the year 2100. We’re on for a “reptile sexpocalypse”.

Around the world this year, says Martin Gurri in The Free Press, Generation Z has been revolting. Youngsters from Bangladesh to Bulgaria, Madagascar to Morocco have “run wild in the streets”, toppling governments and fomenting revolution. These kids, born in a “maddening, disorientating virtuality” – plugged into the online realm from childhood via smartphones and tablets – experience ordinary reality as “exasperating friction”. It’s not that they don’t have legitimate, specific grievances. In many cases they very much do. But what has been striking about this wave of rebellion – united worldwide under the goofy flag of the Japanese cartoon pirate Monkey D Luffy – is the “generational” nature of the struggle. “The virginal young, according to themselves, have been summoned to bury the decaying corpse of the past.”

Perhaps more remarkable is how little they’ve achieved. Take Nepal, where the supposedly “Maoist” ruling clique were openly “addicted to the good life”, lavishing public money on their kids. Protests spiralled into riots, and the regime disintegrated. With no government, here was a chance for the Gen Zs to “reshape politics and society according to their principles”. But what were those principles, beyond platitudes about “inclusion”? None, as it turned out. At next year’s elections, the old parties look likely to dominate. It was the same in Madagascar, where demands for “real solutions” (never specified) somehow didn’t translate into a new form of government. Instead, after the young revolted, the military “filled the power vacuum”. And protesters in Sofia earlier this month forced the resignation of the Bulgarian prime minister with, again, “no programme for the future”. Gen Z, “lost in cyberspace their whole lives”, must now grapple with “the misery and the madness of inhabiting actual history”. So far, they’re hopeless at it.

The Times has put together some science(ish)-based tips for staying well over the festive season. They include: using a nasal spray, which has been shown to reduce the symptoms and longevity of colds by 20%; drinking bouillon (vegetable broth) when hungover, as recommended by the NHS; sucking a peppermint to increase alertness when you have a cold and feel sluggish; taking vitamin D supplements, which do appear to bolster immunity, rather than vitamin C, which doesn’t; and turmeric for indigestion, though “don’t expect miracles”. And obviously they recommend not overindulging in the first place. Dream on.

They’re “convenience store socks”, says Laura Studarus on BBC Travel, which have become Japan’s coolest souvenir. The standard striped sock – part of the FamilyMart chain’s low-priced “Convenience Wear” range – rose to “cult status” when they became an unexpected hit with expats during Covid. Since then, the £2 staple has topped shopping lists for tourists, sparked challenges on TikTok and even inspired further clothing lines. “They’re kind of iconic,” says one fan. “In the same way carrying around a blue Ikea bag is.”