White House envoy Steve Witkoff has arrived in Moscow for further talks with Vladimir Putin about a Ukraine peace deal. Donald Trump responded to Russia’s Wednesday night strikes on Kyiv by writing on social media: “Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP!” Yvette Cooper is considering a “one in, one out” youth mobility scheme with the EU, says The Times, which would allow thousands of young Britons to work and study across the continent. Government sources says the proposal has allayed the Home Secretary’s fear that an uncapped cross-border deal would push up net migration figures. Medieval experts are embroiled in a fierce dispute over the number of male genitalia in the Bayeux tapestry. Six years ago, Oxford professor George Garnett totted up 93 (mostly equine) penises across the stitched account of the Norman conquest. But Christopher Monk says he has now found an additional, “anatomically fulsome” appendage dangling beneath the tunic of a running man. Decide for yourself below.

Is Yemen becoming another “forever war”?

It hasn’t gained much attention with everything else going on, says WJ Hennigan in The New York Times, but America is increasingly getting bogged down in yet another “forever war” in the Middle East. This time the goal is to stop Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels from disrupting Red Sea shipping. The costs of the operation are already “exorbitant”, with $250m worth of munitions dropped on Houthi targets in the first month alone. Despite its enormous firepower – there are now two aircraft carriers “parked” off Yemen’s coast – the US still hasn’t established air dominance. The Houthis have shot down six $30m reaper drones, and the Americans are having to launch $2m anti-missile interceptors to take out drones that cost a few thousand dollars apiece. By next month, the overall tally is expected to reach a whopping $2bn.

And for what? The only way to restore regular maritime activity in the Red Sea is to drive the Houthis from power. Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US have spent more than a decade trying to do this, taking turns “pummelling” the terror group with airstrikes, all to no effect. Yemeni forces are now reportedly planning a ground invasion of Houthi-controlled areas, but any US effort to support them would surely spiral into the sort of “wide, prolonged conflict” that Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to avoid. Like every other US president in the global war on terrorism, Trump has fallen for the belief that America’s overwhelming military superiority will usher in a “swift and decisive conclusion”. At some point he’ll almost certainly be confronted with the same “no-win decision” that bedevilled his predecessors: “retreat or escalate”.

I covered Pope Francis for all 12 years of his papacy, says Jason Horowitz in The New York Times, and he was one “savvy political operator”. On the papal plane, he was easy-going and fun, “better at glad-handing the news media than all of the presidential candidates and presidents I had covered”. When conservative cardinals seeking to erode his authority wrote him an official letter of dubia (Latin for “doubt”) asking him to clear up some supposed confusion, he “simply refused to respond”. When I asked him about rumours that some of the cardinals were considering a formal break from the church, he was unmoved. “I pray there are no schisms,” he replied. “But I’m not scared.” It was “the papal equivalent of dusting off his shoulders with disdain”.

Rich Americans have a new status symbol, says Kristen Bateman in Town & Country: “the dumb house”. Rather than having all the latest “smart” features – automated fixtures, complex lighting systems, remote-controlled appliances – they want a home with as little excess technology as possible. Popular features include manual doorbells, framed family photographs rather than digital displays, and light switches that “look like old-fashioned brass toggles”. The trend is partly driven by concerns about screen time, and partly an awareness that smart gadgets are forever requiring “frequent, irksome updates”. But it’s also because everyone knows deep down that all these gizmos are a bit low-rent. As one designer puts it: “There’s nothing luxurious about technology any more.”

The return of Cameron’s shoeless guru

You probably don’t remember Steve Hilton, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times. Bald chap, worked for David Cameron, liked to pad around No 10 in his socks. Almost certainly the inspiration for fellow blue-sky thinker Stewart Pearson in The Thick of It (sample line: “I like the plasmic nature of your data modelling”). And, seemingly, quite mad. “I was unfortunate enough to spend some time in Steve’s thought wigwam,” a coalition staffer said in 2016. “It was not a pretty place.” Well, after being exiled by Cameron for supporting Brexit, Hilton wound up as an anti-woke Fox News presenter, and he is now running to be the Republican governor of California. It has, in other words, been quite the journey. “Particularly if you do it in your socks.”

But it’s worth remembering that while Hilton is remembered in Britain today as a “hippy Dominic Cummings”, at the time he was hailed as a “maverick” and a “genius”. It was he who persuaded Cameron to embrace environmentalism (“Vote Blue, Go Green”), and who pushed the “Big Society” theory that swathes of the state could be replaced by voluntary groups and social enterprises. What he was trying to do was pursue traditional right-wing aims through the sort of “youthful radicalism” that had previously been the preserve of the left. Which, when you think about it, actually sounds rather sensible. So I’m “faintly grateful” that he’s running for office in California, not here. Because when I look at Reform UK, none of whom could even wear trainers “without looking like they were recovering from a foot operation”, he seems like “exactly what they’re missing”.

The latest way to get your celebrity gossip fix is by delving into juicy lawsuits, says Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic. The TikTok account “I’m Not a Lawyer But” recently made a seven-minute video painstakingly unpacking Drake’s 81-page defamation complaint against Universal Music Group. Another content creator, Markos Bitsakakis, has had millions of views for his 12-instalment series ploughing through the legal documents in actor Blake Lively’s dispute with former co-star Justin Baldoni. The whole thing is like a kind of “lawyerly ASMR”.

Scientists warned that the Trump administration’s cuts to science funding would cause a “brain drain”, say Laurie Udesky and Jack Leeming in Nature. It’s already begun. On the Nature Careers global science jobs platform, American scientists submitted 32% more applications for posts abroad in the first quarter of this year than during the same period in 2024. In March, the number of people browsing jobs abroad was up 68% compared to a year earlier.

It’s a British artist’s tongue-in-cheek version of a new colour that can supposedly only be seen by having laser pulses fired into your retina, says David Batty in The Guardian. Optical boffins at the University of California claim their unique hue, “olo”, cannot be seen by the naked eye. But Stuart Semple says his blue-green equivalent – created by mixing pigments and adding fluorescent optical brighteners – is basically the same. He has called his version “yolo”, and is selling 150ml jars for £10,000 – “or £29.99 if you state you are an artist”. Pre-order one here.