The UK economy grew by a hefty 0.7% between July and September, the fastest quarterly growth since Labour took office in 2024 and the second fastest in the G7 after the US. The acceleration was driven by sharp increases in computer programming and AI investment, which boosted the dominant services sector. Jensen Huang is fighting for his future at Nvidia after reports emerged of a second affair, this time with the firm’s vice-president of healthcare, Kimberly Powell. The chipmaker’s board is reportedly holding talks to decide whether Huang can continue as CEO; almost $1trn has been wiped off the value of the firm’s shares since the revelations of his first affair emerged two weeks ago. Prosecco has outsold champagne in French supermarkets for the first time. In the year to July, sales of the Italian sparkling wine rose by 10.1% to 25.3 million bottles, while those of champagne fell by 4.6% to 25.2 million bottles.

JD Vance is in no doubt about why the Republicans were routed in last week’s midterms, says Bret Stephens in The New York Times: the Iran war. Appealing as this simple explanation is – especially for those ever eager to scapegoat Israel and the Jews – the truth is that almost every decision Donald Trump has made in the past two years has alienated some part of his 2024 coalition. For the business community it was the “Liberation Day” tariffs. For rural Americans it was the trade war with Canada and ICE raids to deport low-wage labourers. For those who believed Trump’s repeated promises to “drain the swamp”, it was the 747 donated by the Qataris, the wedding after-party for Don Jr bankrolled by a Russian oligarch, and the “preposterous” profits from the Trump family’s shady cryptocurrency schemes.

The Hispanic voters who helped the president over the line in 2024 have seen ICE impose a “reign of terror” on one Hispanic community after another. (The architect of these policies, Stephen Miller, has now been promoted to White House chief of staff.) Security-minded Republicans are appalled by the antics of the “man-child” defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the president’s destructive mistreatment of long-term allies. Small-government Republicans are appalled by America’s $40trn-and-counting national debt and the dismal outcomes of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. And don’t forget the working Americans in whose name Trump promised to govern. When it comes to Iran, he said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation”. This is a record of “political malpractice” unequalled in American history. And until his “self-serving public betrayal” of his boss last week, Vance was “a full partner in every bit of it”.

🤫😬 I worked closely with Stephen Miller when I was in government, says Miles Taylor in The i Paper. He’s “paranoid and fanatical”. We would meet in the White House Situation Room, just so “no one could hear his scheming”. He once showed me a locked drawer in his office and gleefully told me it was full of draft executive orders designed to “test the limits of presidential power” – to see how far the Supreme Court would let Trump go. Even Miller’s friends are worried about how much power he has now. One person who attended his wedding texted to me: “Very few people understand how extreme he is.”

Parents obsessed with tracking their kids don’t know when to stop, says Sarah Zhang in The Atlantic. More than half of college students in the US have their whereabouts constantly available to their mum and dad through GPS tracking apps such as Life360. In a group chat for parents of girls sharing a dorm floor, one mother noticed her daughter was still in her room 10 minutes before a maths test and asked whether someone else’s child could check on her. Within minutes, another mum replied: “My daughter is on her way.”

This summer, says Ephrat Livni in The New York Times, France’s Orléans Fine Arts Museum launched a campaign to track down nearly 400 works looted during World War Two, plastering “Wanted” posters of the lost art around the city and on the internet. Now the first case has been solved. An amateur sleuth in France recognised one of the pilfered paintings when it went up for auction in Switzerland last month. Instead of being sold, The Drinker, by Dutch artist Willem Cornelisz Duyster, will return to Orléans to be hung in a gallery dedicated to the missing works.

I once spent an evening at Jemima Goldsmith’s Cotswolds home, says Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail. It was “effortlessly elegant”, all roaring fires and fabulous company, and she was the “epitome of the high society hostess”. So I was baffled when she later started dating Russell Brand – why would someone as classy as her entertain such a “loathsome little low-rent toad”? She has since revealed shocking claims about his violent, coercive behaviour. The singer Katy Perry married Brand in 2010 but has also since revised her opinion, telling an audience this year her ex “should be in jail”. His second wife Laura, a bestselling craft book author, remains besotted with him. Why did these beautiful, successful, talented women choose this “grubby weirdo with bird’s nest hair and the morals of an alley cat”?

The answer, surely, is that danger is a powerful aphrodisiac, and Brand – never one to conceal his true nature – epitomised the idea that “bad guys get the girl”. In fact, that whole premise – “treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen” – was crystallised in Neil Strauss’s 2005 book The Game, which taught men how to seduce women through grim psychological techniques, and which now feels very much like a precursor to today’s manosphere. The danger of these all-too-prevalent bad boys is that they play the game then flip the narrative before their victim has realised what’s going on. She then ends up blaming herself, wondering how she ever allowed it to happen. Brand’s richly deserved conviction serves as a reminder that the charming narcissists in tight trousers and guyliner are often just as grim as they seem.

Anyone who has ever dreamed of acting out the 2005 comedy Wedding Crashers is in luck, says Bill Meincke in The Hustle. The aptly named “Not a Wedding Crasher” platform connects couples who have last-minute cancellations at their nuptials with strangers willing to pay to attend. The company, which is limited to the US for now, has a whopping 20,000 users – mostly guests, not hosts – with seat prices between $25 and $200. “Some couples,” says co-founder Jeff Besen, “just want people there to bring more energy to the wedding.”

Ukrainian tech entrepreneur Serhii Kashevko has created a “doomsday postcode checker”, says Suha Kidwai in The Independent. The website – which cheerily asks “Would your home survive World War Three?” – gives each location a rating from A to G, from safest to most deadly, based on crucial factors such as proximity to obvious missile targets like MoD sites, the structure of nearby buildings, nearest A&E and, in the event of a nuclear bomb, whether there are any hills between you and the likely blast area. Safest are Northern Ireland and rural Wales, where there’s little worth bombing. Least “doomsday proof”: London. To find out if you’ll survive the apocalypse, click here.

It’s the “world’s loneliest home”, says Jeremy Hart in The Sunday Times, a single house on a bleak and featureless Icelandic island. Built in the 1950s, the isolated property has just been renovated with solar panels and a battery backup system to avoid having to lug increasingly expensive propane tanks across on boats and then up the cliffs using a shonky old crane. Ragnar Thor Jóhannsson, who looks after Elliðaey so it can be used as a hunting lodge during Iceland’s summer months, says the green energy additions will mean the property is “good for the next generation”.