The search for Mike Lynch resumed this morning, after his superyacht sank yesterday off the coast of Sicily. The British tech tycoon is one of six people – including Morgan Stanley boss Jonathan Bloomer – who are still missing after a freak tornado capsized the ship. In a bizarre coincidence, Lynch’s co-defendant in a recent US fraud trial, Stephen Chamberlain, was hit by a car and killed while out running in Cambridgeshire on Saturday. Britons travelling to Europe next summer will have to pay €7 for a visa waiver, similar to the US Esta. All non-EU passport holders will also have their fingerprints registered and their pictures taken on arrival, which will be checked at each subsequent visit. The first coins featuring King Charles III are entering circulation this week – three million £1 pieces also depicting a pair of bees. Royal Mint director Rebecca Morgan said the new currency (pictured) would create a “buzz of excitement”. 🙄🐝

Starmer’s right: teachers deserve a pay rise

The raft of pay deals the new Labour government is striking with public sector workers is not a sign that Keir Starmer is secretly a hard lefty, says Kamal Ahmed in The Daily Telegraph, or that he’s setting us on the path to a “stagnant, socialist state”. In fact, I think he’s absolutely right. To understand why, it’s worth remembering that when George Osborne was trying to bring down the deficit created in part by Gordon Brown’s massive borrowing and money printing after the 2007 financial crash, one of his main levers was cutting public sector pay. It worked: productivity in the public sector rose as departments worked out how to do more with less. Between 2010 and 2019, after adjusting for inflation, pay for nurses fell by 7%, for doctors by 10% and for teachers 13%.

The trouble is, we need these people. In the private sector, their pay would naturally have risen, even if there had been no productivity gains, simply to “maintain attractiveness”. It’s the same here: if a teacher can be paid more as a private tutor to the rich, or even working in Pret-a-Manger, then a lot of them will. The UK has a shortage of teachers, a shortage of nurses, and a shortage of train drivers. We can’t solve it without offering better pay. The interesting thing is what happens next. If a generous offer has been made to the rail unions, for example, why are they still threatening further strikes? “Why aren’t the trains running on time?” Starmer can now demand a far better service for the public, and he has no excuse if he doesn’t get it.

Creative hobbies are more beneficial for life satisfaction than having a job, says BBC News. Wellbeing boffins at Anglia Ruskin crunched data from a major national survey and found that those who regularly participated in crafty activities reported higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction, and a “stronger sense that life was worthwhile”. Lead researcher Dr Helen Keyes says these effects showed up “even after we accounted for things like employment status and level of deprivation”. Time to dig out the old Airfix kit.

Imran Khan has applied to be the next chancellor of Oxford University, according to his aides, despite being locked up in a Pakistani prison cell. The country’s former prime minister, who says his imprisonment is politically motivated, has a decent claim: he is already an honorary fellow of Keble College, where he studied PPE in the 1970s, and later captained the university cricket team.

The Kremlin-friendly dictator who could end the war in Ukraine

Strange as it sounds, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko could be the key to ending the Ukraine war, says Owen Matthews in The Spectator. In a “surprising intervention” this weekend, the long-time Putin ally told Russian state TV that “Nazis don’t exist on the territory of Ukraine” – a direct contradiction of the Kremlin’s party line – and called for peace talks to resume. “Neither the Ukrainian people, nor the Russians, nor the Belarusians” need the war, he said, adding that only the West wants it to continue. Why has Lukashenko, who allowed Belarus to be used as a launchpad for the 2022 invasion, suddenly decided to “reinvent himself as a peacenik”?

It makes sense for Lukashenko to worry that Ukraine’s recent incursion into Kursk could lead to a major Russian escalation, possibly even full-scale war with Nato, putting his country “directly in the firing line”. But what’s most striking is the “peculiar logic” of his argument for ending the conflict. By saying that it’s only the West that wants it to continue, Lukashenko is offering “a potential ladder down which the Kremlin can climb without losing face”. Of course, Lukashenko’s new narrative that “Ukraine has now been (somehow) de-Nazified” and that continuing the war only serves the West is “false and absurd”. The path to war is always paved with such lies. But the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu suggested building your enemy a golden bridge across which he can retreat. “Could that bridge to peace be constructed of useful falsehoods, too?”

What is it about Harry and Meghan, asks Air Mail, that makes those who work for them quit in droves? Last week the couple’s most recent chief of staff, Josh Kettle, left the job after just three months, days before they embarked on a high-profile mock-royal tour of Colombia. Kettle is the ninth employee to have deserted the Sussexes in the past three years, and the 18th if you include their time at the Palace.

Last month a Norwegian league football match was abandoned when fans lobbed tennis balls and fish cakes on to the pitch in protest against the use of VAR video replay technology in refereeing decisions. It’s part of a long tradition of pitch-side projectiles, says The Guardian: pairs of underpants during Reading v Wrexham in 1999; a pig’s head during Barcelona v Real Madrid in 2002; a car door during New Zealand v Chile in 1998; and, in a 1965 league match between Brentford and Millwall, a live hand grenade.

It’s Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, which could blow up at any moment. The Swiss army spent years dumping old munitions into the nation’s lakes – often failing to remove the fuses. Since the government realised the rather obvious risk of having lakes full of live bombs, they have offered £45,000 in prize money for the best idea to get them out. It’s going to be a big job: there are 3,300 tonnes of munitions in Lucerne alone, and another 4,500 tonnes in the waters of Neuchatel, which the Swiss air force used for bombing practice until 2021.