The Week 1548

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Donald Trump and other senior US officials in Washington this week, there were conflicting reports about the progress of negotiations for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza. The US president insisted that the talks between Israel and Hamas were “going very well”, whereas Qatar, which is mediating the talks, said key differences still needed to be ironed out. The draft deal would include the release of 28 hostages, ten of whom are still alive, in return for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and the expansion of UN aid operations. In a blow for Netanyahu, the IDF reportedly took the unprecedented step last week of refusing to carry out a plan to confine up to 600,000 people in a new “humanitarian city” in Gaza.…

The Bayeux Tapestry is to return to England for the first time in well over 900 years, as part of a loan agreement struck by Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron. Under the deal, an update to one that was agreed in 2018 but never implemented, the 70-metre long tapestry depicting the Norman invasion and the Battle of Hastings will be swapped for the Lewis chessmen and treasures from Sutton Hoo. It will be displayed at the British Museum from September 2026 to July 2027. A hiker who fell into a icy crevasse in the Swiss Alps was saved by the loyalty of his tiny pet dog. The pair were walking on the Fee Glacier near Zermatt when the man fell through a snow bridge and down the eight-metre-deep crevasse, leaving…

What happened Labour’s pains The Government sought to get back on the front foot in the wake of its climbdown on the welfare bill last week, and a brief financial panic caused by the sight of the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, crying in Parliament. However, the launch of its £500m “Best Start” scheme, offering support to families across England, was overshadowed by criticism from Labour MPs of its plans to reform special educational needs provision (see page 18). Then an Office for Budget Responsibility report warned that the public finances were “vulnerable”, owing in part to the recent U-turns on spending cuts, adding to the pressure on Reeves to raise taxes in the autumn (see page 6). To compound Labour’s woes, the left-wing MP Zarah Sultana announced at the end of…

At least 13 people are believed to have been driven to suicide by the Post Office Horizon scandal, while others suffered mental illness, addiction and marital breakdown, according to the first report of Sir Wyn Williams’s public inquiry, published this week. In it, Williams accuses the Post Office and its software developer Fujitsu of “wholly unacceptable behaviour” towards postmasters – nearly 1,000 of whom were wrongly convicted of theft and other crimes owing to flaws in an accounting system that was known by the organisations to be faulty. Senior managers had chosen to “maintain the fiction” that the system was reliable, said Williams – with “disastrous consequences”. Martin Griffiths (pictured) was one of the postmasters to take his own life. He did so in 2013 after being pursued for £100,000…

Controversy of the week Reeves’s tax dilemma Rachel Reeves’s tears in the Commons last week have not harmed her politically, said Archie Mitchell in The Independent. Quite the opposite, in fact. The panicked response of the financial markets to the very idea of the Chancellor being replaced has left her position looking stronger than ever. Keir Starmer has since effectively bound his fate to hers, insisting that she’ll be in post for years. But while it’s good news on the job-security front, the challenges facing Reeves are more daunting than ever. The forced U-turn over benefit cuts that no doubt added to the Chancellor’s distress have left her with a £5bn hole to fill in her second Budget this autumn. Factor in other commitments and lower-than-expected growth forecasts, and she…

Airline pilots are jeopardising public safety by taking selfies and videos in the cockpit to post on social media, a report has warned. According to Ifalpa, an international pilots’ federation, there have been a number of cases where mobile phones have proved a distraction from flight-deck duties, affecting safety. In one case, a camera became jammed against flight controls, causing the plane to descend rapidly. Milan’s La Scala opera house has felt obliged to tighten up its rules, to combat the growing number of tourists turning up clutching burgers, and dressed in vests, flip-flops and shorts. “We don’t want to tell people what to wear,” said a spokesman, “but we do want them to at least wear something.”…