Weekend Dispatch #24

Hello, and welcome to the Weekend Dispatch — your guide to life on the frontier.

Inside: Nutella, fentanyl and a Sunday exclusive.

Let’s get to it.

Now that he’s been cast out of royal life, the man formerly known as “Prince Andrew” is retreating to his family’s private estate in Sandringham, Norfolk.

There, he’ll be joined by his collection of 72 cuddly toys — and anyone willing to pay him a visit.

At the time of writing, tickets to tour the £60 million estate are on sale for £25.

Alternatively, if you’d rather not pay for the privilege, the Sandringham parkrun sets off at 9am every Saturday.

If you’re planning to go, do get in touch.

Next week, Zohran Mamdani will likely become New York City’s next mayor — and America's political circus has already moved on. The focus is now on what the result means for next year’s Midterms.

One place still caught in the election cycle, however, is Roosevelt Avenue in Queens — home to the city’s red-light district. 

Claudia Steenard reported from there earlier this week. You can read her piece here.

In true Halloween spirit, a number of readers wrote in to say how enchanted they were by Marianne Eloise’s report on Cornwall’s new coven of witches.

Here’s Charles P:

“After reading the article, I realised my grandmother on my father's side was, in fact, a witch. She was a Highlander from the Black Isle. She lived with us in Edinburgh. On Saturday mornings, my father would give us money to go to the cinema to watch cartoons because Granny used to hold seances in the front room. She told fortunes. I asked her to tell me mine. She read my palms and told me I would live a long and happy life. So far, so good!”

Shout-out to Takuya Higashimoto, a 38-year-old man from Japan who managed to exploit a food delivery app loophole to bag more than 1,000 free meals.

It’s all kicking off in the world of nuts.

Turkish dealers are locked in a stand-off with Ferrero — the Italian giant behind Nutella — after a poor hazelnut harvest sent prices soaring.

Ferrero, which consumes a quarter of global hazelnut production, is refusing to pay the inflated rates, so Turkish traders are stockpiling nuts, betting the company will cave.

We don’t often cover business news at Dispatch. But rest assured, we’ll keep you posted on this one.

This week, Dispatch was shown evidence that OpenAI has been testing out a new “Playful mode” — aka horny mode — on paying ChatGPT users who opt in.

So, yep. Get ready for that.

In other AI news this week, we learned that:

• An American school’s AI security system mistook a student’s empty Doritos bag for a gun, prompting an armed police response.
• More than a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide every week.
• Fake priests in Brazil have been selling AI-generated prayers — for $10 a pop.
• A Chinese creator has gone viral for mimicking “AI slop”.
• And 5% of American newspaper articles are now AI-written.

On Tuesday, it emerged that — alongside the convicted Ethiopian sex offender accidentally released last week — five other inmates were also wrongly freed from the same prison in Essex.

As readers of Dispatch’s report from inside Britain’s jails will know, this sort of thing isn’t exactly shocking.

What might surprise you, though, is the scale.

According to government figures published in July, 262 prisoners were released in error in the 12 months to March 2025 — up 128% from the previous year.

It was billed as the meeting that would reshape the global order — and, to some extent, Trump’s talks with Xi Jinping this week did raise hopes of de-escalation.

But buried beneath the headlines was one overlooked detail: Trump agreed to ease fentanyl-related tariffs on China, praising Beijing’s supposed crackdown on the illicit labs behind America’s opioid crisis.

The question is whether it’s too little, too late.

A family of far deadlier synthetic opioids — nitazenes — has already begun sweeping through Europe and the US. Dispatch was one of the first outlets to warn about their rise in the UK.

You can read that investigation here.

If you’re the sort of person who buys Christmas presents early, you could do worse than snap up a copy of Up the Youth Club by Emma Warren.

It charts the shifting story of youth clubs in Britain and Northern Ireland — from Victorian factory workers’ clubs to the music-filled hubs of more recent decades.

It's well worth your time.

Sports latest:

Yesterday, the Nuclear Fall-Out Races returned to Essex.

Next week, the League of Legends World Championship will conclude in Chengdu, China.

Don't worry, we'll be back in your inbox soon with more Dispatch-centred present ideas.

Keep some space on your list.