Financial Times Sunday No.14 – News by Basilisk

Results for A levels (and GCSEs) were published in the UK last week.

Russia has recently reported several drone attacks on Moscow, which it blames on Ukraine.

The veteran broadcaster died on 16 August aged 88. This month we also lost Mike Holmans, who compiled crosswords for the FT under the pseudonym Chalmie since 2014.

A new Covid variant, BA.2.86, is currently doing the rounds.

Is there a topical reference here? If there is, it has passed me by. (Edit: perhaps a reference to the recent comeback of 90s pop group S Club – see comment #1 below)

The West African former French colony has recently been subject to a 27a by a military junta.

Last Sunday, England lost to Spain in the final of the Fifa Women’s World Cup.

Since April, members of the University and College Union have been refusing to mark exam papers as “action short of strike” in an ongoing pay and working conditions dispute.

See 18a for the topical reference. The anagram indicator “supply” here is the adverbial form of supple.

Global average sea surface temperatures recently hit a record high of 20.96 C.

Protests are ongoing in Israel over dissatisfaction with the country’s recent direction under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Lee Anderson has been MP for Ashfield in Derbyshire since 2019. To describe him as having “robust views” seems something of an understatement.

Just a few days after the first residents boarded the Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge for asylum seekers, they had to be removed after legionella bacteria were found in the water supply. An ecossaise is a lively country dance (the sort of thing you’d see them doing in ball scenes in Jane Austen adaptations).

“Undocumented migrants” is a more neutral phrase to describe people arriving in the UK on small boats than the alternatives used by the likes of 1d.

A former Mar a Lago employee of Donald Trump recently retracted what they admitted to be a false testimony. Trump is now facing 91 felony charges across four criminal cases.

Elon Musk, owner of X formerly known as Twitter, recently said he will remove the function to block users for non-paying accounts.

It was recently revealed that allies of Trump in the DoD had their phones wiped when they left office, deleting evidence relating to the 6 January attack on the Capitol.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie film has topped $1 billion in box office ticket sales, making it the highest-grossing film of 2023.

I’m stumped by the relevance of 4 here – anyone? (Edit: perhaps two definitions? – “affected” and “must”, which can both mean “got to” in different senses.)