The Week 1561

A vaccine for a virus that can kill elephants in 24 hours has been developed by a team of researchers. Endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV) is one of the most serious threats to Asian elephants, which are endangered. Dormant in nearly all adults, it was first recorded in the 1980s and has since killed dozens of the animals in the wild and in captivity. Now, the team, partly based at Chester Zoo, says its vaccine has proved effective in a six-year trial, and is ready for wider use. Two large-scale Hogarth paintings that have hardly been seen for decades can now be visited by the public. The artist painted the giant murals, depicting two Biblical stories – The Pool of Bethesda and The Good Samaritan – free of charge on the walls…

What happened The Manchester attack Police stepped up patrols in areas with large Jewish populations last week, following an attack on a synagogue in Manchester that left two victims dead and three more seriously injured. It occurred in Crumpsall, an outer suburb of the city, as people gathered at the Heaton Park synagogue to mark Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. A man in a fake suicide belt – later identified as Jihad al-Shamie, a British citizen of Syrian descent – rammed his car into a guard at the gates before attacking congregants with a knife. Police shot him dead as he tried to force his way into the building. Keir Starmer said he would do everything in his power to guarantee the security of Britain’s Jewish…

What happened In her speech at the Conservative Party conference, Kemi Badenoch made a pitch to win back voters tempted by Reform UK’s anti-immigration agenda. Among other things, she said her government would deport 150,000 migrants a year, via a US-style “removals force”, and withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). However, the speech was largely focused on the economy. Badenoch pledged £47bn in spending cuts, and said that under a new “golden rule”, half such savings would be used to reduce the deficit. She also promised to scrap stamp duty on primary residences in England and Northern Ireland. The shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick – who used his speech to attack “activist judges” – was heavily criticised for comments he’d made after a recent trip…

Controversy of the week The right to protest “In Britain, protest is no longer a right,” said Owen Jones in The Guardian. That’s the implication of the Government’s stringent new proposals, announced in the wake of the heinous synagogue attack in Manchester, to place limits on lawful demonstrations. Under the plans, police forces will be able to dictate the length and location of repeated protests; the Home Office is also reportedly looking at introducing outright bans on protests that risk intimidating minorities. Let’s be clear: Labour is directly targeting the ongoing pro-Palestinian demonstrations against the “erasure of Gaza”. Keir Starmer said that this week’s protests should be called off, claiming that it was “un-British” to hold them after the Manchester attack. But these gatherings are a legitimate expression of outrage…

The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool has sparked a controversy by including two paintings of Admiral Lord Nelson in its “queer relationships” collection. The works depict Nelson as he lay mortally wounded on HMS Victory, when he is said to have uttered the famous final words:”Kiss me, Hardy.” The story goes that his friend Captain Hardy then kissed him on his hand and his forehead. The Walker Gallery acknowledges that Nelson had relationships with women (notably with Emma Hamilton), but it argues that his intimate friendship with Hardy – whether or not it was sexual – reflects the kinds of close relationships that often developed between men on long voyages, and is “emblematic of the hidden queer history of life at sea”.…

Jaguar Land Rover, which restarted production at its engine factory in Wolverhampton, five weeks after the cyberattack that crippled its operations. The firm told suppliers that it hoped to resume operations at its plant in Solihull by the end of the week. Taylor Swift, whose latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, broke her own sales records in the UK, despite middling reviews (see page 24). The album shifted 304,000 copies in the first three days it was on sale, more than her last studio album, 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, sold in its first week (270,000). Dr Fred Ramsdell, a US scientist, who came back from an offgrid hiking trip with his wife Laura in Montana to find that he had won the Nobel Prize for medicine. He got…