Hamas’s top political leader has been assassinated in an airstrike in Tehran. Ismail Haniyeh, who ran the terrorist group’s political operations from Doha, was hit by what is thought to have been an Israeli missile shortly after attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president. The strike came hours after Israel said it had killed Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, in Beirut. Huw Edwards has pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children. The offences relate to 41 pictures – including seven in the most serious “category A” classification – shared with the former BBC newsreader over WhatsApp. Goldfish may be able to remember things for nearly a year. Despite the widespread misperception that the fish can retain memories for only a few seconds, a study in Australia found that they were able to remember the escape route from a net 11 months after first finding it.

The truths Reeves should really be telling

Rachel Reeves’s big “there is a hole in my budget” statement on Monday was the subject of much “cynical commentary” before the event, says Stephen Bush in the FT. After all, everyone knew the Conservatives’ spending plans were essentially bunk. But the new government’s audit suggests we really didn’t know the full story. Both of the UK’s “fiscal referees” – the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Office for Budget Responsibility – have tentatively sided with the chancellor on this. The risk for Reeves, with her cuts to infrastructure projects and other public spending, is that she now falls into the same economic doom spiral that plagued the previous Tory government: “sacrificing long-term economic growth to pay for stretched public services”.

While claiming to be honest, “straight-talking Rachel” is in fact perpetuating two massive lies, says Matthew Lynn in The Daily Telegraph. The first is that our economy can be fixed with a tax increase here and a cut there. In reality, government spending is at a record £1.2trn – against that total, the £22bn “black hole” in the budget Reeves says she has discovered is just a “rounding error”. The second is that our welfare state is “even remotely sustainable without major reforms”. We already owe nearly 100% of GDP in debt, triple what we did 20 years ago. Taxes are at a 70-year high. And there remain “vast unfunded liabilities” – the £2.6trn in public sector pensions, the £250bn in student loans that may never be repaid – that no one wants to talk about. If Reeves were really being honest, she’d be telling the public that everything they’ve been told about the country’s ability to afford its public services has been “a deception”.

Robert Jenrick will be hoping his Tory leadership bid goes rather better than his campaign to lead his Cambridge college’s student union, says Patrick Kidd in The Times. He was the only person on the ballot, but managed to lose out to “RON”, or “re-open nominations”. This allowed his opponents to get their act together and put up a candidate – who then beat Jenrick in the rerun.

An unlikely new blockbuster has emerged online, says The Guardian: the new British Airways safety video. The five-minute film, entitled May We Haveth One’s Attention, features BA staff giving instructions to characters inspired by classic British period literature, including a wet-shirted Mr Darcy fitting himself with a life jacket. The elaborate creation has racked up more than half a million views on YouTube; watch it here.

I miss the glory days of the golden arches

News that McDonald’s global sales have slumped by 1% confirms something I’ve suspected for a while, says Alexander Larman in The Spectator: “the lustre has gone off the golden arches”. When I was growing up in the eighties, visiting a Maccy Ds was a treat reserved for rare Sundays and special occasions. And I’d “relish every moment”. The cheeseburger, with the obligatory slice of gherkin and deliciously processed cheese, was always “the perfect mixture of beefy goodness and tangy ketchup”; the fries every bit as good as everyone always said. There was no pretence of it being “remotely healthy”. Rumours circulated about the provenance of the beef, the milk in the milkshake, even whether the chips contained any real potato – but we didn’t care.

Today, fast food dining in Britain is a “very different beast”. It would never even occur to me to visit my local McDonald’s, “a grim, frenetic place where everybody looks both unhappy and unhealthy”. The once-maligned burger has found “countless upmarket outlets to sell it”, at much better quality, and attempts by McDonald’s to win back more discerning punters with fancier fare have all floundered. The company doesn’t understand that what most loyal patrons want is familiarity, decent quality and good value – all, alas, “a thing of the past”. When I asked my eight-year-old daughter whether she wanted to go there for an annual treat, she wrinkled up her nose and said: “I don’t know what’s in the burgers, dad. Can we go to Shake Shack instead?”

The Victoria Line is officially the hottest on the London Underground, says the listings website Ian Visits. Temperatures on the Brixton to Walthamstow Central route averaged 28.27C during the evening rush hour in 2023; the Central Line was in second place, at a positively frigid 26.78C. And of course those averages are spread across the whole year: in August, peak Victoria Line temperatures averaged 31.25C. Something to look forward to. 🥵

It’s Mexican drug lord Ismael Zambada García, who was arrested by US authorities in extraordinary circumstances last week, says The New York Times. The 76-year-old, the “last remaining godfather” of the Sinaloa cartel, was taken into custody alongside a son of his former business partner, El Chapo, in a private plane that landed in Texas. It seems that the son, Joaquín Guzmán López, lured Zambada García down from his mountain hideout for “what he thought would be a friendly meeting”. Guzmán López, who is presumably angling for a plea deal with American prosecutors, then got his henchmen to ambush the septuagenarian, handcuffing him, sticking a bag over his head and muscling him on to the plane.