When the American broadcaster Tucker Carlson warned Donald Trump of disaster if he went to war with Iran, he claims that Trump replied: “In the end, we all die anyway, so it doesn’t matter.” Such words uttered by a man with his finger on the nuclear button would be disturbing at any time. They are all the more troubling following his threat, made at the UN, to “annihilate” the country. Another bluff? As ever with President Trump, the question is whether there is method in the madness, or just madness.
The reports that Trump has told aides he is prepared to escalate the war after the midterm elections in November, resuming the bombing. For now, he has shown an entirely rational desire to keep Iran off the front pages before Americans vote. Iran, on the other hand, seems to want to hurt Trump by keeping gasoline prices high before the elections. The incident at RAF Fairford fits with that interpretation – if Iran is shown to be the “foreign actor” behind it.
So, if Iran turmoil causes the Republicans to lose badly in November – opening the way for another impeachment – Trump may wish to punish the regime in Tehran. Carlson, a Maga icon, got an inkling what that might mean when he spoke to Trump in February, days before the war began. The two men were alone in the Oval Office and we have only Carlson’s account, given to NPR in a highly revealing interview last week (which is worth a read).
What we know about Ranulph Fiennes care home row
Once described as “the world’s greatest living explorer”, Sir Ranulph Fiennes disappeared from public view in 2024.
Members of his family allege they have not been allowed to visit him.
Who is Ranulph Fiennes?
- Ranulph Fiennes, 82, is a famed explorer, known for his Transglobe Expedition.
- He is related to actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes.
- In September this year, his relatives raised the alarm that they had not been allowed to visit him.
- Fiennes disappeared from public in 2024 after opening up about his Parkinson’s diagnosis.
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Allegations of a family rift
In September, published its first story airing concerns from friends who alleged Fiennes’ wife, Louise Millington-Cotes, was not allowing anyone else to see him.
The newspaper reported allegations that Fiennes had been moved around multiple care homes under false names.
Campaign to free him
The explorer’s stepson, Alex Millington-Cotes, has said he is desperate to visit Fiennes again, and told the BBC he wants power of attorney removed from his mother.
“He’s not an isolated type of person, and so to see him isolated now is very painful,” he said.
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King urged to help
- Concerned friends reportedly wrote to King Charles, an old friend of Fiennes’, but the Palace was also unable to get through to him.
- Alex Millington-Cotes has launched a fundraiser to “locate and safeguard” the explorer.
Louise Millington-Cotes has not responded to the allegations
When you could buy gene-edited bananas that don’t go brown
Step aside banana bread, scientists at a start-up in Norwich have created bananas that keep their colour in your fruit bowl for longer before turning brown.
The flashy new fruit can even stay yellow for up to 24 hours after peeling.
Everything you need to know
- Tropic Biosciences has developed gene-edited bananas which can last longer.
The start-up used the CRISPR-Cas9 process to tweak three genes which make bananas turn brown.
It means the fruit does not produce the polyphenol oxidase enzyme responsible for pesky fruit-bowl browning.
The bananas have marketing approval from the environment secretary but must pass the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) checks before they can go on sale.
Why is this significant?
According to Gilad Gershon, the CEO of Tropic, the edited bananas can resist browning by an extra day or two. He said this would “open up a lot of value in reducing waste”.
It is not known how long it could take for the FSA to approve the bananas for safe sale in the UK. If they make it through, they will need to be labelled as “gene edited”.
How long will the warm weather last for?
Tuesday is set to be warm and sunny, with a brief spike in temperatures, but later in the week, the mercury will struggle to get beyond 20°C.
Warmer than average
On Tuesday, temperatures are set to hit 26°C in London and parts of the South East, continuing into a muggy night.
Met Office meteorologist Clare Nasir forecasts:”A breezy day, but also a warm one… temperatures today will be well above average for this time of year, particularly for England and Wales.”
Fresher end to the week
- Nasir warned there is a risk of “some intense bursts of rain” followed by showers on Wednesday.
- The Met Office forecast that the weather will turn “a little fresher from Thursday with showers or longer spells of rain at times, mainly in the west”.
- As the week goes on, temperatures are set to drop, with very few areas expected to reach 20°C or above.
Snooker champion Graeme Dott jailed for child sex abuse
Former snooker world champion Graeme Dott has been found guilty of sexually abusing two primary school-age children.
In August, he was found guilty of two counts of lewd, indecent and libidinous behaviour and on Tuesday he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
What you need to know
The High Court in Edinburgh heard how Dott subjected a girl and a boy to multiple incidents of abuse, with the girl targeted between 1993 and 1996 and the boy between 2006 and 2010.
The jury heard Dott exposed himself in front of both children, touched them inappropriately and kissed them.
What did the victims say?
- One of Dott’s victims, now in her 40s, told the court Dott had sexually abused her on multiple occasions.
- The second victim, now in his late 20s, also said he was sexually abused on multiple occasions.
- Lord Harrower, the judge, told Dott he had “robbed the complainers of a significant part of their childhood”.
- He added the behaviour bore “the hallmarks of grooming”.
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Men feel happier than women about how they look, study finds
Researchers at the BI Norwegian Business School also found men overestimated their IQ, while British people generally rated themselves less attractive than other nationalities.
What did the study find?
- Men consistently gave themselves higher ratings for physical attractiveness than women.
- Participants scored themselves between 0 and 100.
- On average, men scored 6-8 per cent higher than women.
- How attractive the participants were considered by other people was not part of the study.
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A closer look at the study
The study also found that men and women with higher IQs tended to rate themselves as less attractive.
Britons generally rated themselves less attractive than their American, Australian, Canadian and South African counterparts. Researchers suggested this could be a symptom of British manners, with more emphasis on “modesty or understatement”.
What does this mean?
Professor Adrian Furnham, who led the study, noted men often overestimate their IQ, while women typically underestimate it.
He said the similar gap in attractiveness self-ratings could be another indication of “male hubris versus female humility”. He added that more intelligent people could be “more honest”.
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How the UK could rejoin the EU, step by step
Labour grandees have urged Andy Burnham to start preparing to reverse Brexit – but high hurdles would have to be overcome.
Why is it coming up now?
Sadiq Khan said he wants Britain to return to the customs union “almost straight away” and provision in the next Labour manifesto to reverse Brexit without a referendum.
However, experts are sceptical. Polls indicate a narrow majority of Britons support the idea of rejoining, but it may require more support before we could rejoin.
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What the process could look like
Experts warned it could also take five to 10 years to get back in.
Here’s how rejoining might look:
- A second vote is not technically necessary but leading experts think a referendum would likely be needed to provide a stable mandate to start negotiations with the EU.
- If the UK applied to rejoin, the EU would need to ensure the applicant met the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria.
- If talks then began, there would be a series of big issues to resolve.
- The EU could demand that Britain use the Euro and become part of the Schengen Area.
The expert analysis
Experts disagree on the likelihood the UK could be allowed to opt-out of either the Schengen Area or the Euro. Dr Thomas Sampson, economist and Brexit expert at LSE, suggested it is possible the EU would be willing to let Britain rejoin under the same deal.
But others suggested the EU would want to lock the UK into the Euro to “make it harder for [us] to ever leave”.
- The European Commission would need to approve any deal for the UK to rejoin. A majority of MEPs in the European Parliament would also have to vote in favour and all the bloc’s member states.
- Professor Catherine Barnard, an expert in EU law at the University of Cambridge, thinks negotiations and ratification could take as long as a decade.
- If talks did not start until after a Labour general election victory in 2029, it could be 2040 before Britain was back in the bloc.
Watch more from The i Paper
New treatment for ultra-rare ‘second skeleton’ disorder
Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) is a “devastating, irreversible” genetic condition.
What is FOP?
- According to the charity FOP Friends, there are around 70 known people with FOP in the UK.
It is one of the rarest diseases in the world, affecting around one in a million people.
FOP is a genetic condition which leads to the body creating extra bones in locations where they should not form, including inside muscles, tendons and ligaments.
What is the treatment?
A new “disease modifying” treatment has been shown to reduce new bone growth by more than 90 per cent, reduce flare-ups and potentially offer hope for new surgical options in the future.
The drug garetosmab is an antibody that blocks a protein called activin A, which has been found to be critical in the development of new abnormal growth development in people with FOP.
63 adults were involved in the trial, which saw a massive reduction in flare-ups in the groups which received the treatment.
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Writing in , the authors said they expect the drug to enable “long term preservation of mobility and function”.
Chris Bedford-Gay, FOP Friends founder, said the community “has desperately waited for a way to stop FOP in its tracks”. He added this “is the moment a life-changing treatment comes that bit closer”.
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The former Fox News host said he warned that attacking Iran would see the US kicked out of the Gulf, the collapse of the “American Empire” and Trump’s legacy and party destroyed. America would also be responsible for permanent civil war in Iran. “Yes, you’re right,” Trump is supposed to have replied, before making his strange remarks about death. Carlson was appalled. “I was shocked by that because it’s nihilism, and that’s the last thing any leader should display… Like, ‘I’m just proceeding with the knowledge that blackness awaits.’ Boy, that is not a healthy worldview, and it’s an unacceptable worldview for a man with decision-making power.”
Carlson argues that Trump was bounced into war by Israel, serving Israel’s interests, not America’s. “He was pushed by a foreign country to do this. It is the most profoundly destructive single decision a president has made in our history. I feel sorry for him. I’m not angry at him personally… I have pity.”
Asked to confirm or deny Carlson’s recollections, the White House pointed NPR to a Trump social media post calling Carlson and other critics “stupid people”.
Nevertheless, as the war reached a stalemate, in April, Trump notoriously told the regime in Iran: “Your civilisation will die tonight.” Carlson – perhaps remembering his Oval Office conversation – views that as a threat to carry out a nuclear strike. Trump should have been removed under the provisions of the 25th Amendment, he said, because using nuclear weapons could escalate to exchanges that might endanger the whole of humanity. “He should have been bundled up and taken out. That’s a crime. There’s no greater crime than that.”
At the time, Trump’s threat was more plausibly read as a promise of massive conventional bombing, especially as he also said it would be “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day” in Iran. But there is less ambiguity about the message he delivered at the UN General Assembly last week.
Trump said he had “a big decision” to make about what to do if he failed to make a deal with Iran. “Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”
Iran now has even greater motive to go as fast as possible to make the nuclear weapon Trump accuses them of wanting. The main reason for attacking Iran was, ostensibly, to halt its (literal) underground nuclear programme. But talks on this issue have been postponed to be part of some hypothetical, future grand bargain. Several rounds of discussions between the US and Iran have instead focused on opening the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil flowed unimpeded before the war began.
Iran’s long coastline gives it a chokehold over the global economy, but it hadn’t tried to use it in decades (not since the 1980s, when it mined Gulf waters). If Trump steps up the bombing after November’s elections, Tehran can be expected once again to try to close the Strait. And it will resume the attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. A worldwide economic recession could result.
For the moment, we are in another period of stalemate. Trump is using economic sanctions against Iran. He has ordered American warships to stop Iran from exporting its oil through the Strait. Meanwhile, the US military – acting on Trump’s orders – has had some success in escorting tankers through.
The Emirati state of Abu Dhabi has provided tankers to shuttle up and down the Strait – hugging the coast of Oman – to ships waiting just outside the danger zone. Costs are high, as much as $58m for a tanker laden with two million barrels of crude, according to one analyst.
The Saudis have also diverted a large part of their oil production out through a pipeline to the Red Sea. So, global oil supplies have proved surprisingly robust. The outcome on the markets is that crude oil is only just over $100 a barrel – and has not reached the stratospheric $150 a barrel that some predicted.
But gas prices for Americans buying at the pumps are still 50 per cent higher than before the war started. The says eight out of 10 Americans believe the war has raised the cost of living for them. For an “America First” president, this is more than just an embarrassment – it is a very personal, psychologically painful, defeat.
Once again, then, we are talking about Trump’s psyche. How will he react to a humiliating defeat in the midterms? Will he simply walk away from the Iran mess? He has dismissed the war as “small potatoes”, a verbal shrug of the shoulders that might point to such an ignominious exit. Or will the war grind on, Trump’s successor left to extricate the United States from the Persian Gulf?
Trump wants talks with Iran after the midterms, no doubt believing – despite evidence to the contrary so far – that he can work his magic as a dealmaker. But the Iranians are digging in about what will be on the agenda. They want concessions from the United States that will be hard for Trump to sell back home as anything other than a capitulation. No doubt Trump feels he must change the calculations being made in Tehran.
Hence the warnings of Armageddon. These are a mirror image of Vladimir Putin’s repeated threats to use nuclear weapons over Ukraine. We must hope that the more we hear about nuclear weapons from these two leaders, the less likely it is they would actually use them. Trump’s bluster is captured by the Taco meme: Trump always chickens out. There’s a lot riding on it this time.