Russia has failed to push back Ukrainian troops in its Kursk region, despite an influx of reinforcements over the weekend. More than 76,000 civilians have been evacuated from the area because of the incursion into Russian territory, which began last Tuesday; President Zelensky said on Saturday that “pressure on the aggressor” was the way to “restore justice”. Wildfires in Greece are spreading towards Athens, with thousands of nearby residents told to leave their homes. Forty fires have broken out in the country since Saturday, with some flames leaping as high as 25 metres. The Paris Olympics ended last night with a stunt-filled closing ceremony, in which Tom Cruise descended from the Stade de France roof to collect the Olympic flag and begin its journey to 2028 host city Los Angeles. Team GB finished with 65 medals, their second-highest tally at a Games on foreign soil.

Don’t give the hooligans too much credit

The sight of massive crowds gathering on the streets last week to counter planned anti-immigration protests was “immensely moving”, says Janet Daley in The Sunday Telegraph: a “happy ending” after a grim few days. But I always felt the description of the original violence as “far right” to be inaccurate. These “numbskulls” had no genuine political aims or ideology. It was just “mindless, nihilistic thuggery”, fuelled by epic levels of booze and carried out by the types of people who get banned from football stadiums because of their “unquenchable delight in physical aggression”. Social media played its part, as did the “wickedly irresponsible insinuations” from the likes of Nigel Farage. But ascribing any sort of political motives to these jumped-up hooligans gives them far too much credit.

Another myth is the theory, popular on the right, of “two-tier policing”: the idea that the authorities come down harder on angry white guys than on migrants and their causes. Why, the two-tier lot ask, were the pro-Palestinian marchers not punished in the same way as the anti-Muslim mobs? Simple: “because the pro-Palestine gatherings were not riots”. Also, anyone claiming the police are somehow persecuting white people should consider the “absurd tenderness” with which officers treat all those (invariably white) Just Stop Oil activists. Yes, what we saw last week was “very ugly”. But there’s a reason Britain has got through it: because, as those of us who come from elsewhere will tell you, this is a country of “overwhelmingly decent, fair-minded, tolerant people”.

The plane crash in Brazil on Friday that killed all 62 people onboard was a reminder of just how rare such incidents have become. A recent study found that the fatality rate in aviation fell to 1 per 13.7 million passenger boardings between 2018 and 2022, down from 1 per 7.9 million in the decade or so before that. From 1968 to 1977, it was 1 per 350,000 boardings.

The online gaming site Lofi and Games has a new game called Tents. It’s simple: each tent must be placed adjacent to a tree, and the number of tents in each column and row must match the numbers at the edges of the grid. Try it for yourself here.

Leave Britain’s poor wallabies in peace

Someone recently spotted a presumably escaped wallaby “mooching around” a golf course in Nottinghamshire, says Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. You might have thought eco charities would be excited. “Oh wow! A wallaby? Brilliant. They’re so cute!” Dream on. Instead, Nottingham Wildlife Trust has sniffily warned that these kangaroo-lite marsupials pose a threat to our “native UK wildlife”. What wildlife exactly, seven miles from Nottingham city centre, they didn’t specify. Mice? Rabbits? Or is this corner of the East Midlands “festooned with mammalian exotica – herds of wild yaks, ferocious sun bears and shy pangolin”?

Unfortunately, all our wildlife charities approach nature in a way that would appeal to the British National Party: “If it’s foreign, kick it out. Or shoot it.” The RSPB is desperate to “do in” all those wonderful parakeets in London and the south of England – “they come over here, taking our British nests, and so on”. The poor mink is pursued relentlessly, even though the evidence that it eats water vole is “thin on the ground”; the wild boar of the Forest of Dean are just about the only creatures in that neck of the woods, “aside from some of the humans”, not afforded protection from being shot. The main reason this annoys me, besides all the needless killing, is the “delusion of our biodiversity lobby”. We once felt that all animals were “ours to do what we like with”. Charities insist we no longer subscribe to that thinking, “but of course we do”. All that’s changed is the criteria: the new “bible” is biodiversity, so any animal that isn’t in its rightful place “gets done away with, sharpish”. It’s a principle “every bit as arrogant and indeed cruel” as the one of old.

F Scott Fitzgerald was never sure about the title for The Great Gatsby, says Mental Floss. He asked his publisher just weeks before the publication date what the delay would be for renaming it Under the Red, White and Blue, and also considered names including Trimalchio in West Egg, Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires, and The High-Bouncing Lover. In the same vein, Pride and Prejudice was almost First Impressions; the working title of Dracula was The Dead Un-Dead; and Catch-22 was initially Catch-18, and then Catch-11.

To The Times:

The best advice I was given as a head teacher about appropriate dress (“Appropriate office wear looks more M&S than S&M”, Aug 6) was from a brilliant safeguarding consultant: “I do not want to see up it, down it or through it.” That seems to cover all eventualities!

Sarah Helm, London E1

It’s Jack Karlson, a petty criminal in Australia whose reaction to being arrested outside a restaurant in 1991 went viral years later and made him an unlikely online sensation. “Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest,” Karlson, who died last week aged 82, declared in his theatrical, well-spoken voice. “What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?” As Brisbane police officers tried to manhandle him into a car, he provided a running commentary for onlookers. “Have a look at the headlock here,” he cried. “See that chap over... get your hand off my penis!” The incident surfaced online in 2009 and quickly became one of the country’s best-loved memes. Watch the video here.