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An alleged Chinese spy with close links to Prince Andrew and a network of British politicians has been banned from the UK. The unnamed businessman, who was invited to the Duke of York’s birthday party in 2021, was authorised to act on the royal’s behalf to seek investors in China. MI5 now says he was gathering intelligence for the Chinese Communist Party. Emmanuel Macron has named the centrist François Bayrou as France’s next prime minister. The 73-year-old political veteran – a long-time ally of the president – will become Macron’s sixth prime minister since 2017, after Michel Barnier was ousted in a no-confidence vote last week. Snorers and their long-suffering bedfellows may finally get a good night’s sleep thanks to a tongue implant that gently zaps them when it detects the unwelcome sound. Patients being treated for sleep apnoea at University College London Hospital are being offered the new app-controlled gizmo, which works by stimulating something called the hypoglossal nerve.

Asma al-Assad is still British. Why isn’t Shamima Begum?

The fall of Bashar al-Assad has rekindled the case of Shamima Begum, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times. Begum, you’ll remember, is the former Bethnal Green schoolgirl who travelled to Syria a decade ago, aged 15, having been radicalised and recruited to marry an Islamic State fighter. The two friends she went with were dead within a year; she lost three children to starvation. And when a journalist found her in a refugee camp in 2019, she was summarily stripped of her British citizenship on “national security” grounds. Though he has since reversed course, Keir Starmer initially opposed that decision – a stance Kemi Badenoch brought up in the Commons this week “with glee”. So the two leaders tried to score points off each other over who believed more strongly that “a groomed and trafficked girl should die in the desert”.

Which part of “she was 15” do they not understand? Can they not grasp the concept of radicalisation? And if she doesn’t deserve her British passport, then why hasn’t Asma al-Assad, Bashar’s British-born wife, been stripped of hers? Begum at least has the defence of naivety; when Mrs Assad upped sticks for Damascus, she was an investment banker with a place to do an MBA at Harvard. Begum should be allowed home and, if necessary, face trial. Same for Mrs Assad; same for anyone. Citizenship isn’t something that can be revoked by politicians seeking headlines, and the rule of law applies even to those who flout it. “A confident nation does not behave like this.”

Roger Moore’s first film as 007 was very nearly his last, says Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. When the then 45-year-old was shooting the boat chase in Live and Let Die in 1973, he had a nasty collision with a corrugated iron shed. Moore emerged with a fractured tooth, “not stirred but distinctly shaken” – so much so that he’d soiled his trousers. “Which is not very James Bond.” Had he broken a limb or really mangled his smile, the film might never have been finished.

Kemi Badenoch’s daily schedule looks rather different now she’s Tory leader, say Katy Balls and Michael Gove in The Spectator. But one thing hasn’t changed: she never breaks for lunch. “What’s a lunch break?” she asks. “Lunch is for wimps. I have food brought in and I work and eat at the same time. There’s no time.” Sometimes she’ll get a steak, but never a sandwich. “I don’t think sandwiches are a real food, it’s what you have for breakfast.” And soggy bread is always a no-no. “I will not touch bread if it’s moist.”

Let’s hear it for Gen Z

There’s something strange happening on the London Underground, says Jemima Lewis in The Daily Telegraph. People are reading books. There they are, holding paperbacks instead of phones, “hands raised and drawn together in that nearly forgotten posture of almost-prayer”. What’s weirder is that they’re mostly youngsters, with “undercuts and piercings and tiny beanie hats perched on the back of their heads like woolly yarmulkes”. My 17-year-old says I’m not imagining it. “People my age are starting to realise that phones are scrambling our brains,” he informs me. “So we’re trying to do things that will make us cleverer.” Believe it or not, Gen Z are now the biggest readers of fiction in the UK, buying an estimated 61 million books a year.

It’s not the first time I’ve been struck by the “uncanny good sense” of my son’s generation. Sure, they have their troubled factions: the radicalised boys who worship Andrew Tate, the teenagers who refuse to go to school. But, perhaps because they’re growing up in dangerous times, their “predominant concern seems to be acquiring wisdom”. They drink less than us oldies, have less casual sex, do more exercise and go to bed earlier – the UK’s average bedtime has moved forward by 20 minutes over the past four years, largely at their instigation. And unlike “histrionic millennials”, the younger cohort don’t seem to “revere personal identity or victimhood” – they’re too busy self-improving for all that. The world they will inherit is scary. It seems they’re trying to make themselves fit to save it, “one quiet, sensible move at a time”.

Consultant Tom Whitwell has released his always enjoyable annual list of “52 things I learnt this year”. Highlights include: Milwaukee airport’s “Recombobulation Area”; the Chinese government’s register of “haunted apartments”; the 300% rise of films with colons in their title; and the fact that old photos of sporting events often have a blue haze because everyone in the stadiums was smoking. See the rest here.

Elon Musk has become the first person in history to be worth $400bn, says Bloomberg. His wealth has risen by $155bn this year, thanks to a post-election rally in Tesla stock and a new share deal that increased the valuation of SpaceX. He is now worth $439.2bn, almost double that of the world’s next richest man, Jeff Bezos.

It’s Fortnum & Mason’s “ultimate panettone”, a 10kg behemoth that costs a whopping £395. Exotic variations of the Italian festive bread are becoming increasingly popular, says The Guardian. Morrisons offers a “passionfruit martini” version, Tesco has a tiramisu special, and Waitrose’s “limoncello fizz” variety is the supermarket’s fastest-selling seasonal bakery product. It’s unclear where panettone got its name: one story is that a Milanese baker called Toni created “pan de Toni” to woo a beautiful woman who walked past his bakery; another is that it was created for the Duke of Milan’s holiday feast after chefs burned the original cake.