The Week 1553

The founder of Britain’s biggest toy chain is transferring all his family’s shares in it to an employee trust. As a result, staff at The Entertainer will have a say in how the firm is run, and earn John Lewis-style profit-related bonuses. Gary Grant, 66, and his wife Catherine will be paid for their shares via future profits. Staff could get their first bonus after Christmas. Informed by the Grants’ Christian beliefs, The Entertainer gives 10% of profits to charity, and closes its shops on Sundays. A 96-year-old RAF veteran has become the oldest contestant to appear on Countdown. Donald Elsom, who left school at 14, served in the RAF in Malaya in the early 1950s. He then worked as a police dog handler, and as a butcher. Last year,…

What happened The Alaska summit Days before his planned “one on one” meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, Donald Trump warned that any ceasefire deal might involve “some swapping of territories”. The US president said that he’d “try to get back” some of Ukraine’s “oceanfront property”; but he rebuked President Zelensky for insisting that Ukrainians “will not gift their land to the occupier”. Zelensky also stressed that if Russia was granted territory in the east, it would use it as a “springboard” for a new offensive. At Putin’s behest, Zelensky was set to be excluded from the talks, which the White House framed as a “listening exercise”; but Trump said he’d telephone him after the meeting. In a joint statement, European leaders, who had called for Zelensky to…

What happened After a fraught ten-hour meeting, Israel’s security cabinet last week approved plans for an expanded military offensive in Gaza. The aim of this is to take control of densely populated Gaza City, which is home to around a third of the Strip’s two million residents. Senior figures in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), including chief of staff Eyal Zamir, had resisted the move, arguing that it would overstretch already exhausted forces and further endanger the lives of the 20 or so surviving Israeli hostages in the enclave. The plan drew international condemnation, including from Keir Starmer, who said it would “only bring more bloodshed”. Germany, Israel’s second-largest military supplier after the US, has halted the export of any equipment that could be used in Gaza (see page 7),…

Controversy of the week Mass arrests in London A poet. A knight of the realm. Descendants of Holocaust survivors, and former government advisers. One by one, said the Daily Mirror’s Fleet Street Fox, they and over 500 others were arrested in Parliament Square on Saturday, in one of the largest mass arrests in modern British history. Their crime? Holding up handwritten placards reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” The Government had proscribed the group as a terrorist organisation in July, after its members allegedly caused more than £7m of damage at RAF Brize Norton, in protest at what they called a “genocide” in Gaza. In so doing, said Fraser Myers on Spiked, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper didn’t just target Palestine Action, but also criminalised public expression of support…

Police in Wrexham have denied telling a local shopkeeper that he could not refer to shoplifters as “scum bags”. Rob Davies says that after a series of thefts at his vintage shop, he put up a sign advising: that “due to scum bags shoplifting, please ask for assistance to open cabinets”. He claims a police officer, acting on a complaint, told him it was offensive, but admitted no one actually told him to take it down. Anxious parents can now invest in trainers that enable them to track their children. Aimed at four- to eight-year-olds, the shoes have a hidden compartment in their soles designed to fit an AirTag device. Skechers say Find My Skechers is to help users find lost trainers, but the advert also says it brings parents…

War of the Worlds, the latest film adaptation of H.G. Wells’s 1898 novel, which rose to the top of Amazon Prime’s streaming chart, despite being panned as the worst film of the year. Starring Ice Cube, it scores 3% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics said it relentlessly promotes Amazon, and is not even “stupid fun”. Marks & Spencer, which finally resumed its click and collect service, nearly four months after its operations were paralysed by cyberattackers. Four people aged 17 to 20 were arrested last month in connection with the attack. Zealous policing, after a criminal investigation was opened into the case of a woman in southern Germany who stands accused of stealing 15 cents-worth of rainwater from a butt in her neighbour’s garden. She had apparently snuck out in the…