Another one ☀️

Teapot Tuesday. Another bank holiday, another easy title for The Teapot. Here’s one to kick the week off; last week in Japan, a university student was rescued from Mount Fuji - for the second time. His first rescue was due to losing his crampon (big spiky shoe attachment for walking on ice and snow) as it meant he couldn’t then find his way down.

So was his second attempt a courageous effort to conquer a mental barrier that had broken him before? Nope. He left his phone up there and went back just four days later to try and get it - altitude sickness, rescued again.

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Airtel Africa (AAF), Trainline (TRN), Card factory (CARD), TBC Bank Group (TBCG).

Notable US earnings this week: Palantir Technologies (PLTR), Uber (UBER), Walt Disney Company (DIS), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

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PROJECT WATCH

🔬 Aviva submit £1bn plans for cancer research centre in Sutton. Read more

🔌 N-Sea wins cable repair work for offshore wind in the Irish Sea. Read more

🏗️ £2bn estate rebuild signed by Birmingham Council. Read more

ECONOMY & FINANCE

Hack to the future, retail edition
Britain’s retail giants have found themselves rudely awoken by some particularly unwelcome visitors — hackers. Marks & Spencer is still licking its wounds after a major cyberattack left it unable to process online orders since 25 April.

Meanwhile, Co-op has confirmed that cybercriminals have sauntered off with customer data like names, birth dates, and contact details — all the light identity-theft fodder. And apparently, Harrods didn’t escape unscathed either. There's no evidence these cyberattacks are linked, but they’ve arrived like buses — all at once, and unfortunately for these businesses, right after pay day!

Marks & Spencer, responsible for feeding half the nation’s impulse cravings, has lost a cool £700 million in stock market value since the attack. That’s enough to fund about 350 million Percy Pigs. The high street stalwart has pulled job ads, suffered product shortages, and is missing those crucial seasonal sales while Britain bakes in record May heat - summer dresses are in-store only.

The culprit behind M&S’s woes? "Scattered Spider" — which, despite sounding like a retro indie band at Glastonbury, is actually a not-so-charming ransomware collective. Supposedly, they encrypted M&S’s servers into an oversized, unusable trifle.

House prices take a stutter
House prices dipped 0.6% in April, with buyers pulling a sharp U-turn after dashing to beat the latest stamp duty switcheroo. Nationwide figures show the average price tag on a UK home now stands at £270,752, down from £271,316 in March—still 3.4% pricier than a year ago.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ October Budget shuffled the deck on stamp duty, lowering thresholds so now buyers cough up tax on properties over £125k, not £250k. First-time buyers aren't entirely spared either—they’re now slapped with the levy on homes above £300k (previously £425k).

Still, there are glimmers of hope glinting between the clouds, mortgage rates below 4% have returned—at least if you’ve a deposit the size of a small nation-state. And the Bank of England is eyeing up multiple interest rate cuts this year.

POLITICS

Mercy, money, and moral mayhem
The Assisted Dying Bill is back in the House with all the emotional wallop of a Shakespearean tragedy and just as many monologues. An official impact assessment predicts around 4,000 assisted deaths annually by 2039—less than 1% of all UK deaths, but enough to stir ethical storms. Supporters, like MP Kim Leadbeater, frame the bill as a dignified choice; opponents, including Baroness Grey-Thompson, fear it’s a slippery slope where financial pressure whispers louder than compassion.

The numbers raise eyebrows: NHS savings could hit £59.6 million a year, but not before a pricey set-up—over £10 million in staffing and £11 million in training. With each death demanding six professionals and days of deliberation costing £2,000 a pop, it’s hardly a fast track. Still, as the debate rages, the question remains: are we talking mercy or money—or both?

Farage, flashlights, and a flickering future
This week, Reform UK powered up the political grid, bagging two mayoral seats and flipping 10 councils faster than a dodgy fuse box. With Farage on the warpath there’s talk of installing a “DOGE” (Department of Government Efficiency) in every county. Reform’s cost-cutting crusade takes aim at climate programmes, diversity roles, and anyone Zooming in from their kitchen table. The Tories are sweating like a toaster in Thailand, Kemi Badenoch warned of Farage’s PM potential and Wes Streeting called it a “realignment”.

Ministers are fretting after Iberian outages; the UK’s emergency plans are apparently “robust”, though details are dimmer than a 1-watt bulb. And with Tony Blair warning that ditching fossil fuels is a fool’s errand, the UK's energy future feels less like a transition and more like a tug-of-war in the dark.

ACROSS THE POND

US economy shrinks - but not all bad news?
The US economy has taken a tumble in the first quarter of 2025. Contracting by an annualised 0.3%, it seems the Trump-induced trade turmoil has sent panic stricken companies rushing to import goods, faster than you can say “tariff trauma”. The sweet science of economics has gone Rocky Balboa - the one where Rocky missed the uppercut and punched himself on the nose.

This shrinkage witnessed in GDP is the first since 2022, a stark contrast to the spirited 2.4% rise in the previous quarter. It’s largely down to a 41% surge in imports, as businesses tried to sidestep tariffs like a particularly robust pothole. Economists suggest it’s the trade deficit slugging down GDP, not underlying trends – which adds up if your supply was due to take a price hike.

Morgan Stanley’s chaps argue that the uptick in imports actually serves as a booster for inventories and investment, inevitably nudging up consumer spending (demand hasn’t gone anywhere, business just stocked up), even if GDP simply isn’t feeling the love.

So the logic stacks up economically - but not if you visit Trump’s Truth Social account. He posted that the contraction had nothing to do with tariffs and that it was actually just Joe Biden’s fault.

Farewell Mr. Buffet
Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, is officially hanging up his investing hat, closing a remarkable chapter that turned Berkshire Hathaway into a financial powerhouse and made him a global symbol of patient, principled investing.

His track record? Nearly unmatched—unless, of course, you include US senators. Yes, while Buffett built his empire on fundamentals and discipline, it seems a lot of U.S. senators have the knack to outperform him… all perfectly legitimate, and those especially well-timed trades are all purely coincidental (definitely no insider trading as alleged).

TECH

Phoenix, photosynthesis & phantasmal planners
A doughnut in space? No, it’s not Homer Simpson’s fever dream but Atmos Space Cargo’s Phoenix spacecraft, a round little marvel that just completed its maiden test flight. After being rerouted from the Indian Ocean to Brazil, Phoenix still managed to gather precious flight data—albeit through cloud cover thicker than a Cornish fog. It’s all paving the way for a second Phoenix launch next year.

Staying with space, Elon Musk has officially transformed his Texas rocket playground into a city—Starbase. With streets named “Memes” and bronze busts of Musk popping up like crypto scams, the newly crowned city (populated mostly by SpaceX staff) now has taxing powers and, soon perhaps, the authority to block beach access during launches. Truly a planning committee from the final frontier.

Leaves, levitation & lunar labours
On Earth—but thinking far beyond it—scientists have created an artificial leaf that drinks in sunlight and spits out liquid fuel from CO₂, just like your garden geranium if it had a PhD. This mini marvel, no bigger than a postage stamp, uses perovskite and copper in a dazzling dance of molecular mimicry, promising greener fuel for our more polluting pleasures.

Not to be leafed out, China’s trio of astronauts touched down after 183 days in orbit on the Tiangong space station, where they set a world record with a nine-hour spacewalk and played lunar Jenga with bricks made of Moon-dust mimic.

Back on Earth, China tested a maglev Hyperloop that aims to connect megacities at jet speeds. The goal? Beijing to Shanghai in 90 minutes: brew one in Beijing, and still sip it warm in Shanghai.

WORLD

Pharaoh flips and Parisian propaganda
Forget Rosetta – the real decoding drama just played out in Paris, where the 3,300-year-old obelisk at Place de la Concorde has been spilling divine tea. Ramesses II, it turns out, was not just Egypt’s answer to a press officer with delusions of grandeur but also a dab hand at 3D cryptography.

Egyptologist Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier deciphered seven secret messages hidden on the obelisk’s western side – apparently the pharaoh’s gilded PR campaign declaring himself a god-chosen king, ideal for impressing Nile-bound tourists with good eyesight. These messages were meant for elite Egyptian eyeballs only, visible from one very specific angle – a kind of ancient Instagram filter for the aristocracy.

And just when you thought hieroglyphs couldn’t get trickier, they reveal different meanings depending on the direction you read them. Forward: divine ruler. Backwards: eternal life. Sideways? Probably “Don’t forget to like and subscribe”. Call it sacred spin, or simply the world’s first rotating billboard.

Buddhas, bailouts, and bidding wars
Over in Hong Kong, the line between relics and rights is being drawn with fine-tipped irony. Just as four pro-democracy lawmakers – including the indefatigable Claudia “Auntie Mo” – were released from prison after years behind bars, the territory’s authorities arrested the family of activist Anna Kwok for allegedly helping her financially from afar. Freeing some and shackling others – it’s a political hokey-cokey no one asked for.

And if moral gymnastics were a sport, Sotheby’s would be going for gold this week. They're auctioning a hoard of jewels once buried with what are believed to be the remains of the Buddha – a move critics say is less enlightenment, more entitlement.

Originally dug up by British estate manager Willie Peppé in 1898, these gems are now making the leap from sacred stupa to salesroom. The Peppé family insists this is about “fair transfer”, but many Buddhists see it as cultural pawnshop politics, not reverence.

There’s still tea in the pot...
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Cuppa Chat: Cheat Sheet

🚇🛑 TfL cracks down on fare dodgers costing £130m yearly, aiming to reduce fare evasion to 1.5% by 2030. Over 500 officers employed to tackle offenders, with fines set at £100.

🖋️🚫 A famous early 2000s anti-piracy campaign, which compared pirating films to stealing cars, reportedly used a pirated font.

🚀💥 A half-tonne Soviet rocket fragment is expected to crash back to Earth around 10 May, after 53 years in orbit. The capsule, originally intended for Venus, poses minimal risk due to its small size and ocean coverage.

🏝️🔒 Donald Trump plans to reopen Alcatraz to house America's "most ruthless criminals," aiming for it to serve as a symbol of law and order. The former prison, closed since 1963, was famed for its inescapable island fortress.