Ex-chief medical officer says it is possible she may not have made a public warning over risks

The former chief medical officer for England claimed she had a “strong recollection” of advising the public not to pick up objects they found near the scene of the novichok attack on the Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal , despite there being no record of her making such a statement.

Dame Sally Davies, who was speaking at the inquiry into the Salisbury poisonings in Wiltshire, said she had a recurrent nightmare that a child would find a discarded container of the nerve agent.

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This traditional period of inner turmoil is often accompanied by weight gain, cosmetic treatments, ill-advised purchases and new hobbies. But is it becoming a thing of the past?

Name: The midlife crisis.

Age: So it generally happens between the ages of 40 and 60.

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The lovable bear’s latest adventure, which stars Olivia Colman and Antonio Banderas, alongside the regular cast scored highly at the box office despite tepid reviews

Paddington in Peru, the third film in the hit Paddington series adapted from the books by Michael Bond, has scored the highest opening weekend box office for a British film since No Time to Die, the most recent Bond movie.

Studiocanal, the studio behind all three Paddington films, reports that it took £9.65m at the UK box office over the first three days of its release since Friday, playing to an estimated audience of 1.2m people in 732 cinemas. By contrast No Time to Die, released in 2021 during the pandemic, recorded £21m on its opening three days , after showing in a higher number of venues (772).

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Collapsed cryptocurrency company says $1.8bn was ‘fraudulently transferred’ to Binance and its executives

The collapsed cryptocurrency company FTX is suing Binance and its former CEO Changpeng Zhao, alleging that $1.8bn was “fraudulently transferred” by FTX management to Binance and its executives.

The lawsuit relates to Binance’s sale of its stake in Sam Bankman-Fried ’s FTX, which it acquired in 2019 but then negotiated to sell back to FTX in July 2021.

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• Van Nistelrooy was No 2 to Ten Hag then interim manager
• Amorim meets United executives at training ground

Ruud van Nistelrooy has left his role as assistant coach after the arrival of Rúben Amorim at Manchester United. The Dutchman oversaw three wins and a draw during a spell in interim charge after the sacking of Erik ten Hag but will not be part of the new era at Old Trafford.

Van Nistelrooy, a former United striker, returned to the club in the summer to work under Ten Hag, having left Old Trafford 18 years ago. He had suggested a willingness to stay on under Amorim and see out the remaining 18 months of his deal. United also confirmed the exit of his fellow coaches René Hake, Jelle ten Rouwelaar and Pieter Morel.

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State’s holding in former Royal Bank of Scotland down to 11.4%, without need for Jeremy Hunt’s planned £3bn sale

Sometime around spring next year, HM Treasury should finally sell its last share in NatWest, or the Royal Bank of Scotland, as it was. The process will only have taken 17 years. If that feels like an age, it is a shorter timespan than seemed likely only 12 months ago.

At the end of the last year, the government’s stake – 84.9% after the two-stage nationalisation by the last Labour administration in 2008-09 – was still 38%. Now it is down to 11.4% after the latest “directed buy-back”, in which the bank bought shares from the Treasury for cancellation – in this case £1bn-worth.

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Confirmation follows progress at talks over government support for switch to less polluting technology

The owners of British Steel are to keep the blast furnaces at its Scunthorpe site running past Christmas amid talks over government support for a switch to less polluting technology.

The government is thought to be considering aid for British Steel at the same level or even higher than the £500m pledged to Tata Steel, which closed its two blast furnaces in Port Talbot in September . However, no decisions on the shape of a package have been made.

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• Shortstop held by police over incident on Sunday
• Player facing separate charges over sexual abuse claims

Police in the Dominican Republic have arrested Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Wander Franco after an altercation involving firearms.

ESPN reported that authorities held Franco and an unnamed woman for questioning on Monday after an incident in the parking lot of an apartment complex on Sunday “in which guns were drawn.”

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The answer to today’s Inca-nundrum

Earlier today I set you a puzzle about a ‘khipu’, the Incan method of recording numbers with knots on string that features in Paddington in Peru. Here it is again with the answer.

Incans used khipus to record dates, taxes and measurements, among other things. Knowledge of how khipus represented numbers was lost after the Spanish conquest, until a high school maths teacher in Brooklyn worked it out in 1912. Today’s puzzle asked you you to repeat his decipherment.

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