Better call the cones hotline. #c4news

Would be interesting to know

Interesting man Desmond Morris. #RIP #c4news

Oh. Gutted. Baroness Barran. Just for a moment, Major Major... #c4news

Hezbollah is militia that targets civilians in Israel, a political party with cabinet members, is an Iran-backed group with support among the Shia community, it's also a movement, a frame of mind. Can you bomb that out of someone? #c4news
Another excellent report Paraic O'Brien

Oh. My. God.

Jay Bhattacharya has truly decimated opportunities for early career scientists; I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize just how bad.

What a catastrophic failure of leadership.

This thread is truly one of the scariest things I’ve seen in a long time. Jay is dismantling US science 😢

#NotInMyName #c4news

'Did you say it in public?'
'Blah, blah, blah...'
#c4news
That's a 'No' then.

Yeah, it was one of those 'too clever' appointments.

Yeah, I agree.

If it's accepted Starmer wasn't told that Mandelson had failed vetting, then why should he ask any more questions?
#c4news
It's fair enough to question the appointment in the first place, but the rest of this has no basis it seems to me.

Probability of a White Christmas Across Europe

Source: brilliantmaps.com/white-chr...

Yeah, for sure

Nathalie Baye obituary: celebrated French actress Actress who sparkled in arthouse before a late Hollywood debut as Leonardo DiCaprio’s mother in Catch Me If You Can, dies aged 77

Great actress. Some brilliant films, particularly in early 80s.
(£) www.thetimes.com/article//art...

Nuclear weapons may be the sane choice for the world’s maddest regime For North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, the lesson from Iran shows that if your goal is survival the more dangerous the arsenal the better

Kims are often caricatured as madmen. But if you accept that the regime’s only long-term goal is survival, then acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them is the sanest thing they have ever done.
(£) www.thetimes.com/world/asia/a...
By @dicklp.bsky.social

Suppressed and ‘spied on’ under Orban — now the press can taste freedom The Hungarian media has been turned on its head with the election victory of Peter Magyar, but not everyone is happy

Orban backers bought up 80% of outlets to eulogise the government and demonise its opponents, and where the independent press was snubbed, harassed and allegedly spied on.
(£) www.thetimes.com/world/europe...
Regime which VPOTUS Dmitry Medvedev Vance so enthusiastically supported.

How blood, luck and smart property deals turned the US into a big country Clement Knox in The Scramble for America shows how a scrappy band of 13 colonies fought and bought its way to superpower size

Such folie de grandeur is not a Trumpian aberration but a longstanding American habit. The US has long treated geography as something between a suggestion and a shopping list.
(£) www.thetimes.com/culture/book...
By @pratinavanil.bsky.social

Text: In 1798, George Bass and Matthew Flinders made the first circumnavigation of Tasmania, and when they rounded the island’s rugged, windswept northwest cape they encountered winds so fierce they named it Cape Grim. Those winds were no freak event — the nearest landmass directly west of Cape Grim is Argentina, so the winds that batter the cape are the so-called Roaring Forties, which sweep for thousands of miles over the Southern Ocean uninterrupted by land. Cape Grim also has some of the cleanest air on Earth. In the early 1970s,the Australian scientist Graeme Pearman began measuring CO₂ levels above a wheat crop near Cape Grim and his results revealed something unexpected. The CO₂ concentrations there almost exactly mirrored the CO₂ levels in the northern hemisphere, in Hawaii, where Charles Keeling was making the longest-running record of CO₂ levels in the pristine air near the top of Mauna Loa. At the time it seemed baffling that two very different locations in the world should have such similar readings, and Pearman thought his readings must be wrong. But when he had aircraft observations made of the air across a whole year, they proved his CO₂ readings were correct.

Text: The results were momentous — CO₂ levels were rising across the world. As a result, a permanent CO₂ observation post was established at Cape Grim, where the air was continually sampled. And both the Cape Grim and Hawaii readings continue to show the relentless increase. In 1976 the CO₂ concentration was just below 330 parts per million (ppm) but now it is nearing 430ppm, a significant jump that has driven world temperatures higher. It is not only CO₂ that Cape Grim has monitored. The station has also measured chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), gases that have helped to thin the ozone layer over the Antarctic. Levels of CFCs rose in the late 1970s and 1980s, which led to the Montreal Protocol, the international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals. The monitoring of CFCs carried on, and in the 2010s Cape Grim revealed a resurgence of CFCs as a result of illegal emissions in China.

Grim case of carbon dioxide emissions
(£) www.thetimes.com/comment/regi...

Text: Disparaging Farage Sir, Nigel Farage (interview, Apr 18) said, perhaps tongue in cheek but disparagingly, “if you want a government full of social workers, fine”. Of course, no one would argue that parliament should be drawn from any single profession. But it is not clear why social work should be singled out as a less desirable route into public life. Social workers make high-stakes decisions every day in conditions of uncertainty, balancing care and control, individual rights and public protection, autonomy and risk. They must account for those decisions transparently, with limited resources and under intense scrutiny. They engage with people whose lives are directly shaped by government policy. If anything, a parliament with more people who understand how policy operates in practice, and who are trained to navigate ethical complexity, would be better equipped. David Wilkins Professor of social work, Cardiff University

Letter in Times today in defence of social workers

Text: Sir, Your leading article (Apr 18) is based on the premise that Lord Mandelson had “failed” his security vetting. This is not the case. The only person in this instance who could determine whether or not Mandelson was granted security clearance was the permanent secretary of the Foreign Office. Prior to making such a determination his job would be to review all the available evidence and to decide if the granting of a security clearance was an unacceptable risk to national security. It is manifestly not the job of the vetting system to judge whether or not an individual’s past behaviour is acceptable or not, or whether it raises political or reputational risks. On this basis, it appears the permanent secretary — the only person in a position to take such a view — decided the relevant risks could be managed and that a security clearance could be granted. Robert Wright Member, Security Vetting Appeals Panel, 2009-2017; Nantwich, Cheshire

Letter in Times today

What does the future hold for the thawing Arctic? Two experts unpack how trends in climate and geopolitics might unfold to shape the far north.

Book review 📚 What does the future hold for the thawing Arctic?

go.nature.com/4vzyA73

‘How different things are now’: Some of Ireland’s oldest people on what life was like over the last 100 years ‘Isn’t it marvellous for people to be able to read about their grandparents?’ Three ‘centenarians ambassadors’ recall what they have seen

Lovely recollections here:
www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026... #1926Census

OK that's pretty cool but wait till you hear about cars

City are going to do it I think. Been looking that way for a few weeks now and more and more so. #c4news

A rum situation where it is the legal profession which has held firm, whilst the political and justice systems have simply given way.

But you can't pardon a disbarment.

I polled a very Spurs-supporter heavy friends WhatsApp group on this - avoid drop but Arsenal champs v go down but Arsenal choke. Option 1 won by around two thirds.

Good summary by Alex Thomson in Jerusalem. Trump has tried violent & abusive language, to compliment the Iranians, to threaten what looked like genocide and today to threaten a war crime. None has worked. #c4news

The art of getting nowhere?

Whoever lies behind them, these fire bombings are appalling. #c4news