The Week 1531

“On the battlefield, Ukraine has more than once turned looming catastrophe into partial success against Russia,” said The Economist. It may now have “pulled off a similar feat in the diplomatic realm”. Following talks with US representatives in Saudi Arabia this week, it agreed in principle to an American proposal for a 30-day ceasefire. The commitment to stop fighting – provided Russia follows suit – prompted Washington to announce that it was restoring the flow of military aid and intelligence to Kyiv. It had abruptly cut off that supply last week in the wake of the Oval Office row between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky. The agreement has relieved some of the pressure on Ukraine and switched the focus to the Russians, who have been invited to agree to the…

Utrecht’s “fish doorbell” – an underwater webcam designed to help migrating fish get through a lock in the Dutch city – has reopened for the season. Since 2021, people have been invited to monitor the webcam for signs of perch, roach or bream. If they see one, they can alert the lock-keeper to open it and let the fish pass. The cam attracted 2.7 million hits last year, though most users never spot a fish. “It doesn’t stop me from waiting in optimism,” said one. “The day will come.” A cat who wanders around Plymouth searching for strokes and sunny spots in schools, churches, pubs, shops and strangers’ homes, has become a viral sensation. Mischief has a home of his own in the city centre, but he has always loved…

“Lost in the chaos of recent weeks is a tantalising prospect,” said Joseph C. Sternberg in The Wall Street Journal: “Europe may finally be in earnest about rearmament.” The evidence for this isn’t the “grandiose promises” politicians have been making about defence spending: we’ve heard all that before. Rather, it’s the signs of credible thinking about how to fund it. This started last month, when Keir Starmer promised to cut Britain’s foreign aid budget to boost defence spending. Germany’s “soon-to-bechancellor” Friedrich Merz then struck a deal to rip up his country’s strict borrowing rules to allow an extra €400bn to be spent on defence (see page 14). And in Brussels last week, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, capped it all by unveiling an €800bn plan to…

Ever since Putin invaded Ukraine three years ago, one idea has been floated repeatedly, said Alexander Kolyandr in The Spectator: appropriating the $300bn or so in Russian sovereign assets that are frozen in the West, and using the money to help Kyiv. The plan has the support of the US and UK, but has stalled owing to the reluctance of countries such as France, Germany and Belgium – where the “lion’s share” of the assets are held – to back it. Instead, the West has settled for “half measures”: last year, the G7 agreed to use interest from the assets to provide $50bn in financial aid to Kyiv; the first $3.1bn was sent in January. But recent events in Washington have revived calls to go further, said Philip Gordon in…

Remember when Labour used to “howl down any attempt at welfare reform”, said Daniel Hannan in the Daily Mail – claiming it was “evidence that the Tories wanted to murder the poor?” Oh, how times change. With the economy flatlining and the Chancellor’s fiscal headroom all but wiped out, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is reportedly planning £6bn in cuts. There can be no fairer target for savings than our bloated social security bill, in particular sickness benefits. “No fewer than 2.8 million people say they are too ill to work”, up 600,000 since the pandemic – incentivised by “a welfare system that makes incapacity and disability payments more attractive than unemployment benefit”. By 2030 this will be “a £100bna-year crisis”, said Fraser Nelson in The Times. If Keir…

Four in ten British adults have not read or listened to a book in the past year, a YouGov survey has found. The polling also revealed various splits in reading habits: more women (66%) have read a book in the past year than men (53%); and Labour voters (70%) are more likely to have read one than Lib Dem voters (64%), Tory voters (63%) and Reform UK voters (51%). Overall, 19% of respondents reported reading one to four books in the past year; 6% had read more than 50. Gender-critical campaigners have accused St John’s Ambulance of “erasing women” by offering advice on how to perform CPR on “a person with breasts”. Its website notes that “people with breasts are statistically less likely to receive bystander CPR than men”.…