Image of the week: Rail record
You know what it’s like: you’re waiting ages for a train and then 25 come along at once.
Behold the 1,910m and 2,900 tonne mega-train, comprising 25 separate four-carriage electric Capricorn trains or 100 carriages in total, which this week set the record for the world’s longest passenger train by making a 25km journey along Switzerland’s Albula Line.
It was all an effort by Swiss operator Rhaetian Railway to celebrate its 175th anniversary and raise post-pandemic awareness that this is a nice part of the world – the viaduct-blessed railway, a feat of Swiss engineering completed in 1904, is a Unesco World Heritage site.
Some seven drivers and 21 technicians were required to operate it safely, and even then there were just 150 passengers allowed on board, making the odds of having a carriage to yourself blissfully high.
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The winding Alpine trip, watched by spectators lining the route, broke a record previously set by Belgium’s national rail operator in 1991. Your move, Iarnród Éireann.
In numbers: Swiping right
16%
Percentage share price gain for Tinder and Hinge parent company Match Group on Tuesday as its quarterly earnings beat expectations – a welcome boost after a torrid year.
$810 million
Revenues secured by the dating app group in the three months to the end of September, up 1 per cent year-on-year. Well, you have to start somewhere.
11.1 million
Paying users of Tinder, up 7 per cent. But the app, which is in the market for a chief executive, is among those that could be exposed to the expected downturn in discretionary spending.
[ Rishi Sunak: Ambitious pragmatist returns to take Tory leadershipOpens in new window ]
Getting to know: Amber de Botton
UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has a new director of communications: Amber de Botton, the now departing head of UK news at ITV News.
De Botton will be travelling the increasingly well-worn path from journalism to politics, leaving what ITV political editor Robert Peston called “a huge hole” at ITV News, in the hope that the move goes somewhat better than that of her former colleague Allegra Stratton, who left ITV and journalism in 2018 for various government communications roles. Alas, for her, this ended in newsworthy tears in December 2021 after she was seen laughing during a mock press conference about Boris Johnson’s Partygate scandal in a video leaked to ... ITV News.
Sunak, who received a police fine for his walk-on role in Partygate, clearly hasn’t held De Botton’s newsdesk role against her. She, meanwhile, will presumably be aspiring to follow that old yet often disregarded spin doctor mantra: never become the story.
The list: Musk’s Twitter reign so far
Starting as he no doubt means to go on, the first full week of Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter has been eventful. Here are just some of the things he’s been doing.
1 Firing people: The world’s richest man began his reign by firing chief executive Parag Agrawal and other top executives, later dissolving the board to become Twitter’s sole director, then sacking vast swathes of its workforce on Friday.
[ Why free speech is more complicated than Elon Musk makes outOpens in new window ]
2 Not assuring advertisers: Shortly before the deal was completed, Musk posted an open letter to advertisers saying Twitter aspired to be the most respected advertising platform in the world and wouldn’t become a “free-for-all hellscape”. The company’s head of ad sales resigned the next day.
3 Blue-tick obsessing: After a strange attempt to use author Stephen King as a one-man focus group, Musk said he planned to charge $8 a month (adjusted internationally for purchasing power parity) to users in exchange for various platform privileges via Twitter’s blue tick (which is actually white). But it is not clear if these will include the original function of the tick: identity verification.
4 Spreading conspiracy theories: In a reply to Hillary Clinton, Elon Musk shared a baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi. He later deleted the tweet - but it’s unlikely to have helped his cause with advertisers fast abandoning the platform.
5 Tweeting: Just constant tweeting. “Twitter speaks to the inner masochist in all of us”, read one that rang truer than average.
