The Week 1563

After 165 days at sea, and a journey of over 8,000 miles braving storms and 30ft waves, two British women have become the first female pair to row across the Pacific. Miriam Payne, 26, and Jess Rowe, 28, set off from Lima in May, and rowed around the clock. The final hours to Cairns in Australia were “brutal”, said Rowe, with strong winds almost forcing them to swim to shore. To finally be there “feels incredible”. They raised more than £80,000 for The Outward Bound Trust. It began in Chesterfield in 2011 as a gentle way to coax older men back into exercise, says The Guardian. Now walking football has become one of the fastest-growing sports in the UK, and over 70 teams are competing at the World Nations Cup…

What happened Gaza’s fragile peace The US vice-president, J.D. Vance, flew to Israel on Tuesday, to try to shore up the Gaza ceasefire deal after a weekend of violence. Ahead of a meeting with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, he said he had “great optimism” that the US-brokered truce will hold, while cautioning that disarming Hamas and rebuilding Gaza would be a “very, very tough task”. On Sunday, violence had broken out in Gaza after Israel accused Hamas militants of carrying out a “coordinated attack” in which two Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers were killed in the southern city of Rafah. In response, Israel paused aid into the Strip and launched air strikes on dozens of Hamas targets; at least 45 people were killed, according to Palestinian officials. Both…

What happened The Government continued to face questions over the collapse of the trial of two British men accused of spying for China between 2021 and 2023. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) abandoned the case last month, citing the failure of Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins to designate China as a threat to national security. No. 10 bowed to pressure last week to publish Collins’s witness statements to prosecutors. The first of these was produced under Rushi Sunak’s government, the later two under Keir Starmer’s. Critics said the later statements, which stressed the need to maintain good relations with Beijing, had doomed the case. The head of MI5 declared that he was “frustrated” by the collapse of the spy trial. China, said Ken McCallum, presented a national security threat…

Controversy of the week The Maccabi ban “Britain seems to have rustled up a novel way to deal with Jew hatred,” said Brendan O’Neill in The Spectator: “just hide away the Jews.” Last week, authorities in Birmingham caused a justified uproar, by announcing that away supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv would not be permitted to attend their Uefa Europa League match against Aston Villa in November, citing “security concerns”. The city’s Safety Advisory Group said it was acting on the advice of West Midlands Police, who had deemed the presence of Israeli fans in the city “high risk”, and said they would struggle to deal with any potential protests arising from the game. So rather than attempting to rein in Israel-hating troublemakers in an increasingly sectarian Birmingham, they have simply…

Club and Penguin, two of Britain’s classic biscuits, have reduced their cocoa content so much that they can no longer be legally described as chocolate. The brands, made by McVitie’s, have been reformulated, and the coating for both has been downgraded to “chocolate flavour”. Club’s famous slogan, “If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our Club,” has been replaced with: “If you like a lot of biscuit in your break, join our Club.” People on dating apps are increasingly being chatted up by AI. “Chatfishing” means using chatbots to craft messages that are witty and seductive – leading to disappointment when the couple meet in real life. One woman complained to The Guardian that she had been “ChatGPT-ed into bed”.…

Graham Linehan, who will face no further action for his social media posts criticising transgender people. The Father Ted co-creator was arrested at Heathrow Airport in September, provoking an uproar among free speech advocates. The Metropolitan Police also said it would no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents, though it will continue to record them. Local heroes, after Sam Fender, aka the “Geordie Springsteen”, won this year’s Mercury Prize, which was held for the first time in Newcastle. Fender saw off the likes of Pulp, Wolf Alice and CMAT to win the award for his third album, People Watching.…