The Week 1575

The 14-metre-tall Britton Organ – one of our largest and loudest musical instruments – was played again in public for the first time this week following an eight-year restoration. The organ, which has more than 5,300 pipes, was made in 1956 for Bristol’s Colston Hall (now Bristol Beacon), and by 2018 it needed serious work. The whole thing was dismantled and taken to specialist restorers in Durham, but the organ is back – and on Sunday, Anna Lapwood played it to a sold-out crowd. Sixteen years after he lost both his legs to a Taliban bomb while serving with the Royal Gurkha Rifles in Afghanistan, Hari Budha Magar has climbed to the top of Mount Vinson, the highest peak in Antarctica, at 4,892 metres. It marks the completion of an…

What happened Revolt in Iran “Help is on its way,” Donald Trump told the people of Iran on Tuesday as he urged them to keep protesting and “take over your institutions”. The US president had earlier declared that America was “locked and loaded”, ready to intervene militarily in Iran if the authorities started killing peaceful protesters en masse, and announced 25% tariffs, “effective immediately”, on any nation that did business with Iran. More than 2,500 people, including security personnel, have died in the unrest, according to human rights groups, although many fear the true toll is much higher than that. The demonstrations, which seem to have partially subsided in recent days, began in the bazaars of Tehran on 28 December, fuelled by anger over Iran’s collapsing currency, and spread across…

What happened The Government criminalised the creation of non-consensual deepfake images this week, in response to a growing public outcry about the proliferation online of AI-generated images of semi-naked women and children. Liz Kendall, the Technology Secretary, said that provisions in last year’s Data Act were being brought into force now, so that people who made or requested the “vile” images could be prosecuted. Previously, only sharing such images was illegal. Separately, Ofcom opened an investigation into possible breaches of the Online Safety Act by Elon Musk’s X/Twitter platform, which hosts the Grok AI chatbot. In recent weeks, Grok has been used to generate thousands of images of women and children in bikinis. Keir Starmer said Grok and X’s actions were “disgusting” and “shameful”; Musk called the Government “fascist” and…

Controversy of the week American empire “Gerardus Mercator may have a lot to answer for,” said Gideon Rachman in the FT. The world map devised by the 16th century cartographer, and still widely used today, greatly magnifies the polar regions. The “deceptively enormous size” of Greenland on such maps seems to have whetted Donald Trump’s appetite. “I love maps,” he once said. “And I always said, ‘Look at the size of this, it’s massive, and that should be part of the United States.’” Trump’s lust for Greenland is also consistent with his deepest instincts, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. “A desire to dominate … is perhaps the essence of Trump’s character.” He believes that wealth and power are “zero-sum contests”, and that control of natural resources will dictate who…

So many people are taking drugs to suppress their appetites that supermarkets are introducing lines to cater for them. Morrisons has a “small and balanced” range, designed for those who inject drugs such as Wegovy, while Ocado now sells an “extra-lean” 100g steak. Greggs, meanwhile, says it is bringing in smaller portions and more proteindense options. Clinics and therapists say they are seeing a growing number of people who suffer from what they’ve termed “longevity fixation syndrome”. It describes an all-consuming obsession with living longer (or even for ever). Doctors say new technologies have raised the possibility of ultra-long lives – and in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, big business is now cashing in.…

London, as the number of homicides in the capital fell to its lowest level for over a decade, and its lowest per capita level ever. Sir Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said the figures served as a reproof to those who “promote narratives that suit them” about crime in London. However, his critics noted that while killings are down, knife crime and theft are up. David Bowie fans, who will soon be able to tour his childhood home in Bromley, south London. The terraced house, where Bowie lived between the ages of eight and 20, has been acquired by the Heritage of London Trust, which now plans to redecorate it to make it look as it did when the musician lived there. Adolescence, the Netflix drama, which continued…