5 things we learned this week

1 Paris is swarming with rats. The French capital has more than two for every resident and is among the most rat-infested cities in the world. And what are they doing about it? Rien. A city councillor in charge of pest control stepped in to block a proposed cull, arguing that the rubbish-eating rodents were our ‘partners’ because they ‘dispose’ of waste.

2 Tony Blair was a superstitious politician. Whenever he did Prime Minister’s Questions, says his former director of communications Alastair Campbell on The Rest Is Politics podcast, Mr Blair carried a ‘little red ribbon’ in his pocket, and wore the same shoes. ‘He polished them every Wednesday morning for

the entire time he was Prime Minister.’

3 Siestas may become common in northern Europe, due to global warming. A construction union in Germany is campaigning for ‘longer lunch breaks so workers can avoid the hottest part of the day’, says news website Wired, and a garden centre in the Netherlands has already adopted the practice. The downside is that two-hour midday breaks mean work stretches into the evening: around 30 per cent of Spaniards work until 7pm, and 10 per cent work until 9pm.

4 Donald Trump wishes his daughter Ivanka, left, had married American football superstar Tom Brady. When Jared Kushner asked him for Ivanka’s hand in marriage, the former US President apparently said his ‘good friend’ Brady had been trying to take Ivanka out, and joked that he’d rather have the multi-Super Bowl champion as a son-in-law. He later told businessman Robert Kraft that ‘Jared is half the size of Tom Brady’s forearm’. And in the White House, officials said they heard Mr Trump complaining: ‘I could have had Tom Brady. Instead, I got Jared Kushner.’

5 There may be a monster under the sea. Scientists have found a series

of neat lines of holes on the ocean floor off the coast of Portugal – and they can’t work out what’s causing them, says The New York Times. ‘The holes look human made,’ says the US Government’s Ocean Exploration project, ‘but the little piles of sediment around them suggest

they were excavated by… something.’ Theories include a submarine, aliens, or a ‘deep-sea creature that buries itself under the sand’.

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