The Week 1514

What happened Donald Trump’s new administration started to take shape this week as he selected several loyalists to fill key positions. Susie Wiles, his campaign manager, is set to become his White House chief of staff – the first woman in US history to hold that influential post. Former immigration official Tom Homan will become his “border tsar”; Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and army veteran, was picked to be defence secretary; and the Florida senator Marco Rubio, a notable China hawk, is expected to be nominated as secretary of state. With the Republicans closing in on full control of Congress as the final votes were counted, Trump insisted that he’d honour his campaign pledge to carry out a mass deportation of undocumented migrants, come what may. “I will…

What happened Delegates from nearly 200 countries arrived in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku this week for the start of the UN’s Cop29 climate summit. This year’s conference, which will last 11 days, has been dubbed the “finance Cop”: its main objective is to set a new target for the sum that rich nations will transfer to poorer ones to help them shift to green energy and deal with the ravages of climate change. An annual target in the region of $1trn – to come into force by 2035 – is expected to be agreed. On Tuesday, Keir Starmer unveiled an “ambitious” new target of reducing the UK’s carbon emissions by 81% relative to 1990 levels by 2035, without, he said, having to “tell people how to behave”. But the presence of…

The bells of Notre-Dame have rung out in unison across Paris for the first time since the 2019 fire. According to The Times, locals were elated to hear the bells, though Alexandre Gougeon, who is overseeing their installation, admitted that they still need some fine-tuning. “It’s not perfect yet but we will make them perfect,” he said. The bells were coated with lead dust during the fire, but have since been painstakingly cleaned and restored, and three new bells have been added. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has raised £4.48m to prevent a rare Italian Renaissance painting from leaving the country. Fra Angelico’s The Crucifixion, one of the artist’s few surviving small-scale works, was painted in the 1420s, most likely for private devotion. It had been in a British collection…

Controversy of the week Even President Zelensky’s “extraordinary communication skills” must have been stretched when he penned his message to Donald Trump last week, congratulating him on an election result Kyiv had dreaded, said The Guardian. The Ukrainian leader referred to Trump’s commitment to “peace through strength”, and said this was exactly the principle that could bring a just resolution to Ukraine’s war with Russia. But Zelensky knows that Trump will not pursue Joe Biden’s policy of supporting Ukraine as a “cost-effective” means of upholding the international order and degrading Russia’s capabilities. On the contrary, Trump – an “isolationist” with a “strikingly close” relationship with Vladimir Putin – has blamed Zelensky for the war, which he has boasted that he could end “in a day”; and he has implied that…

A proposed law to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults in England and Wales was introduced in the House of Commons this week. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill sets out several requirements for those who would seek help to end their lives. The person must have the mental capacity to make the decision and be deemed to have expressed a clear, settled and informed wish; they must be expected to die within six months; they must make two declarations, each witnessed and signed, that affirms their wish to die. Two doctors must confirm that they are eligible; a High Court judge must hear from at least one of the doctors; and mandatory waiting periods are built-in. If the person is deemed eligible, the bill requires that…

Police were called to help control the traffic at a business park in Hampshire last weekend, when a sale of cookware by the coveted French brand Le Creuset drew vast crowds. One disappointed bargain-hunter complained that by the time she’d got to the front of the five-hour queue, which reportedly snaked for miles, “most things were gone”. Later, the early risers who’d been at the front boasted on TikTok about the bargains they’d snapped up, including a £215 saucepan that was discounted to £99. 40% of British adults think that shoplifting food can sometimes be acceptable if the thief cannot afford to buy food, and 51% think it’s acceptable if the person is starving, according to YouGov. 41% think it is never acceptable.…