The Week 1538

What happened Trump’s peace deal Two days after Donald Trump accused him of stringing him along in peace negotiations, President Putin proposed another temporary ceasefire in Ukraine. It would run from 8 to 10 May, to coincide with Russia’s Victory Day celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany. Kyiv, which accused Moscow of violating a similar truce over Easter, said the Kremlin was stalling for time and called for an immediate ceasefire lasting “at least 30 days”. Following a three-hour meeting between Putin and the US special envoy Steve Witkoff last Friday, Trump had suggested that Russia and Ukraine were “very close to a deal”. But the next day, after a one-on-one meeting with President Zelensky at Pope Francis’s funeral in Rome, he condemned Russia’s continuing attacks on Ukrainian civilians and…

What happened The former central banker Mark Carney led his Liberal Party to a fourth consecutive election victory, less than two months after succeeding Justin Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister. It marks a remarkable turnaround for the Liberals. In January, they were trailing the Conservatives by 25 points in the polls. But in a campaign dominated by Donald Trump’s trade war and his threats to make Canada the US’s 51st state, they closed that gap and, in Monday’s election, they won 169 seats, 25 more than Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. The result leaves the Liberals just short of an absolute majority. Carney, 60, had presented himself as the man to save Canada from Trump.“America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country,” he said in his victory speech. “That will…

A tree that was thought to have become extinct two million years ago is now growing well in a garden in Worcestershire. The Wollemi pine, which is related to the monkey puzzle, was rediscovered by hikers in Australia in 1994, after which cuttings and saplings were sold around the world. One was bought by Pamela and Alistair Thompson, who planted it in their garden in the Malvern Hills. Fifteen years on, the tree is 13ft tall, and this month, it bore fruit for the first time. A woman who posed as a boy in order to join the Magic Circle has been readmitted – 34 years after her ruse was discovered by its all-male members and she was ejected from the society. In her 20s, Sophie Lloyd disguised herself as…

Controversy of the week Trump’s first 100 days Donald Trump wasn’t kidding when he promised “the most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency in American history”, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. Since his 20 January inauguration, Trump has passed an avalanche of executive orders (139 and counting) designed to dismantle traditional constraints on presidential power, and to advance his agenda: threatening law firms, universities and media owners into compliance; authorising Elon Musk’s Doge to “cripple” the federal bureaucracy; firing the heads of 18 federal watchdogs; “disappearing” innocent migrant workers; and deporting foreign students who have written anti-Israel articles. It’s “less a new administration”, said Andrew Sullivan in The Times, and more a “vengeful monarchy”. The “trappings of a republic remain”, but they are increasingly mere “facades”. And for…

A growing number of people are taking advantage of working from home to secretly hold down two or more full-time jobs at once – a practice known as “polygamous working”. Online, people trade tips on how to get away with it, reports The Times, and it seems to be rife at local councils. When the National Fraud Initiative conducted a pilot study of London boroughs, it identified 23 cases over a few months that had cost about £500,000 in overpaid salaries. The magazine Social Work News reports that a social worker who had taken jobs with two councils was caught when, during a video call with colleagues in Hampshire, an unmuted mic picked up them saying: “Hi, you are through to Southend Children’s Services.”…

Safety warnings, after a Chinese student who climbed Japan’s Mount Fuji out of its official climbing season had to be rescued twice. On Tuesday, he was plucked off the peak by a helicopter because he’d lost his crampons and couldn’t get down. Days later, he went back to retrieve his phone and other belongings – and had to be rescued again, after suffering altitude sickness. M&S, which continued to reel from the impact of a crippling cyberattack over Easter that has forced it to suspend online orders, and also disrupted its deliveries to Ocado. In a report last year, the retailer had warned that the shift to home-working had left it more vulnerable to cyberattacks (see page 35). Decorum, after many of the thousands of people who queued for hours…