UK inflation has fallen to its lowest level in almost two and a half years. Consumer prices grew at an annual rate of 3.4% in February, down from 4% in January, meaning Britain is on track to hit the Bank of England’s 2% target next month. E-cigarettes have been linked to an increased risk of cancer, says The Times. In the first major study of its kind, scientists at University College London found that vape users suffer similar changes to the DNA in their cheek cells as smokers who go on to develop lung cancer. An ordering mix-up has left a tiny Orkney island with more Easter eggs than people. Sinclair General Stores on Sanday bought 80 cases rather than 80 individual eggs, resulting in a stash of 720 chocolate treats for the 500-strong population. 🐣😳

Trump will hurt Europe – but so will Biden

European leaders are fretting about how a Donald Trump victory in November would affect trade, says Christopher Dembik in Le Monde. The US is the eurozone’s largest customer: exports reached €450bn last year, more than double the €200bn sent to China. If Trump is re-elected, he plans to impose a massive 10% tariff on all imports. And given his beliefs on trade – he thinks America is “losing” if it buys more goods from a country than it sells to them – it’s a “safe bet” he’ll take a long hard look at the large trade surplus between Europe and the US. But if the EU thinks a second Joe Biden term would offer anything “radically different”, they’re mistaken.

Yes, the Democratic president is “more compatible with European interests and values”, and his style is certainly “more polished”. But he and Trump, along with their respective parties, ultimately share the same goal: making America’s economy self-sufficient, to reduce China’s economic clout. To do that, they need to encourage American companies to relocate their supply chains either to the US or to friendly neighbouring countries like Mexico. The two men take different approaches on this: Biden favours subsidies for American businesses; Trump “swears by tariffs”. But Europeans need to realise that the effect is the same for them: either way, they’re “collateral victims” of America’s “strategic economic nationalism”.

Sri Lanka’s leading astrologers have been at loggerheads over the best date to celebrate the new year, says The Guardian. Stargazers are hugely influential in the south Asian nation: they are consulted on everything from marriages to business deals, and the government employs 42 seers to advise on “auspicious dates”. This group recently became divided over when to mark the traditional Sinhala and Tamil new year, with one dissenter warning that the date eventually chosen, 13 April, would lead to “disaster”. Soothsaying can be a fraught business in Sri Lanka: nearly 10 years ago, former president Mahinda Rajapaksa called a snap election based on the advice of his personal astrologer. He lost.

When Alfred Hitchcock made his 1960 film Psycho, says Patrick Kidd in The Times, he had a run-in with America’s censorship board over the famous Janet Leigh shower scene (pictured). Three of the five censors thought they could see a nipple, while two didn’t. Hitchcock apologised, told them he would remove it, and then “sent back exactly the same cut”. The original three censors were satisfied, thinking the nipple had been removed – but the other two now said they could see it. The censors watched the scene for a week, going back and forth, before finally agreeing that the movie was “safe to release”.

Sorry guinea pigs, you’ve got to go

“Spare a thought for guinea pigs,” says Celia Walden in The Daily Telegraph. On Sunday, it was revealed that the tiny, furry rodents were to be “made extinct, eradicated, surgically excised from our lives” – or at least our lexicons. According to a new “inclusive language” guide issued by Lloyds Bank to its 57,000 employees, any mention of the “seismically cute fluff balls” poses a threat to our collective mental health, invoking as they do images of cruel lab experiments. It would not, the guidance advised, be “inclusive of vegan colleagues”. As a woman – and therefore also deemed “offensive” by my very existence – “I feel the guinea pigs’ pain”. And they are not alone.

Also on the blacklist is “headless chicken” (because poor chickens), along with “sold down the river” (connected to historical US slavery) and “penetration testing”. The latter is a cybersecurity term, but for those unable to perform a “three-second Google search”, the Lloyds “inclusion team” worries it may “conjure up an unwarranted and intrusive bodily image”. Right-ho. The goal here, clearly, is to stress the danger of words with “strong negative associations” and encourage us to imagine a “new world without pain, hardship or loss”. But here’s the thing: the “woke generations” this stuff appeals to are “statistically the least happy in history”. Even in their “vacuum-sealed bliss bubbles”, they are more anxious, depressed, work-shy and dysfunction-prone than any other. Because, of course, humans need the bad as well as the good. This kind of “negativity washing” isn’t just moronic, it’s “overwhelmingly counter-productive”.

American politics is undergoing a “racial realignment”, says John Burn-Murdoch in the FT. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by almost 50 points among non-white voters; today, polls suggest that gap has narrowed to just 12 points. This is partly because the Republicans are no longer seen as “the party of wealthy country club elites”. But it also reflects the fact that non-white Americans have long held more conservative views than their voting patterns would suggest. So it’s not so much “natural Democrats” moving right, but “natural Republicans realising they’ve been voting for the wrong party”.

It’s a “dirty soda”, says Eater. The concoction – a fizzy drink mixed with coffee creamer and flavoured syrups – was first devised in Utah as a sweet treat for teetotal Mormons, who also abstain from caffeine and hot beverages. The drink went mainstream in 2022 thanks to TikTok, and is now drunk by millions of Americans each day – Swig, a dirty soda chain, opened its 50th outpost in the US last year. Fans now tend to mix and match different sodas and syrups, but the original recipe featured Diet Coke poured over ice, then spiked with a shot of coconut syrup, lime juice, and “half-and-half” (cream and milk).