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Digital asset ETFs experienced heavy selling pressure last week as Bitcoin (BTC-USD) briefly dipped near $75K amid rising macro uncertainty and bond market stress.
From May 18 to May 22, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $1.26B in net outflows, according to
WOULD you believe me if I told you that you could bag yourself a break for £1 just by doing your regular grocery shopping at Sainsbury’s or by filling up with petrol at BP – no strings attached?
You may roll your eyes at the term ‘loyalty scheme’, but you’re going to want to hear me out on this one, as Avios will make your Boots Advantage Card seem utterly pathetic.
And I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but what you think you know about Avios or air miles is completely wrong. You won’t need to hop on a single flight to earn points here.
In fact, I’m so confident about this scheme that if you follow my advice below for one year and don’t end up with enough points for a free flight or holiday, I’ll eat my hat (…that I bought with my points).
So, pay close attention. Here’s everything you need to know.
It is essentially a rewards currency, some may call it an air-mile points scheme, although it’s so much more than that.
Avios is linked to the IAG (International Airlines Group) loyalty scheme, meaning you can earn and (most importantly) spend with British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Vueling and LEVEL, as well as partner airlines Qatar Airways, Finnair, and Loganair.
It’s a very common mistake, however, to think that you can only earn Avios on direct spend with these airlines, by booking flights, for example.
IAG Loyalty allows you to collect a generous number of points on over 2,000 brands, including major names like Deliveroo, Domino’s Pizza and Just Eat – and that’s only if you want a takeaway.
Clothing retail brands include River Island, H&M and Sports Direct, while department stores include Debenhams, John Lewis and Marks and Spencer, and wellness brands include Superdrug, Boots and Holland & Barrett.
You can earn points (Avios) on every penny you spend with these brands.
I won’t name every brand right now, but you can find the list here on the Avios website – chances are if it’s a well known name, it’ll be on there.
I was sceptical too, but rest assured you won’t have to pain-stakingly collect points for 10 years to reap the benefits.
A few months ago I gained 2,500 Avios simply by renewing my car insurance with Compare the Market – another brand on IAG Loyalty’s books.
I’ll explain what the number of points equates to below, but, in rough terms, that’s about a quarter of the points you’d need to pay for a one-way flight to Amsterdam.
If you’re serious about it, you can earn mega points quickly and easily (more on that below too).
The most popular way to spend Avios is on “reward” flights with the IAG and Oneworld airlines. The big players will tell you that this gets you the most for your money, but you can also redeem your points against holiday packages (flights and hotel), as well as hotels, car hire and cases of wine.
There’s also the Avios shop which sells everything from perfumes and lotions to Apple products and coffee machines; plus you can convert Avios to Nectar points and spend in Sainsbury’s, Argos or Habitat; or feast at Pizza Express.
That’s why Avios is nothing like your Boots card – you’re not tied to one product or brand.
It varies from retailer to retailer with many brands offering special deals throughout the year – keep your eyes peeled at Christmas time and in January.
But to give you some perspective, last month I earned 1,790 Avios, just through my regular, everyday shopping: I get 19 points for my train to work (booked through Uber), I earned 136 points for buying some protein powder and 14 points for some new socks from ASOS.
No, I’m not a big spender. I’m a frugal 33-year-old that’s currently living with her parents, in the process of buying her first home, meaning my key expenses are my commute to work, petrol for my car and the odd meal out with pals.
I – properly – started my Avios journey almost exactly two years ago and I now have 99,420 Avios.
Just shy of enough to fly me to the furthest-away destination possible, Sydney, Australia, and all the way back again.
But that is by following a few simple rules carved out at the end of this piece.
If you’re just looking for flights then 10,000 points can get you a one-way ticket to short haul destinations like Paris, Copenhagen or Munich, while 27,500 can get you to the far-flung cities of Chicago, Dubai and Toronto.
Sydney is of course the priciest spot, costing a minimum of 55,000 Avios each way.
The above figures are all based on travelling in an economy seat at off-peak times, although you can splash your points on premium economy flights and even business class, or use points to upgrade if you’ve already booked your flight.
Head for Points has a useful table on which destinations your points will get you to.
There is one thing you need to know, though.
You may have noticed that my opening sentence to this piece read: “bag a break for £1”. That is because you will have to pay a flat-fee, essentially a nominal charge that covers taxes, carrier charges and a fixed Avios amount.
For short-haul flights like Paris, this is just £1, but for destinations like Chicago this is £60 and this price increases if you decide to fly in an upper cabin or further afield.
Points work differently on holidays and products, however, and you can pay partly in points and partly in cash – the split is entirely up to you. If, for example, I were to buy a fancy Dyson hairdryer worth £400, I could pay £200 in cash and the rest can be paid with 33,670 Avios.
This requires several minutes of faffing to set yourself up and link your cards and accounts, but once you’re done that’s everything sorted for good.
Sign up for free to Avios here, or if you are already a member of the free British Airways Club you can sign in that way – or you can sign in via Iberia Club or Aer Club if you’d prefer.
Those who like to shop on their phones should download the Avios app.
What comes next is the MOST important step. In general, every time you do any online shopping, you should check if you can earn points at that retailer by clicking on the ‘collect’ button on the Avios site or on the app.
Then select that retailer and the ‘shop now’ button. This will register your visit and then you can shop as normal and earn those points.
If you use Uber, link your account to your Avios account (Avios has a guide on this); if you buy your petrol at BP, link your Avios account to your BPme account; and if you shop at Sainsbury’s, link your Nectar account to your Avios account… you get the drift by now.
If you have the ability to do so, get yourself a British Airways American Express credit card.
You don’t necessarily need one to earn Avios but simply using the Amex for the majority of your spending is the easiest way to accumulate points. Just remember to pay it off in full at the end of the month.
I have just two rules for earning big: Always(!) check if you can earn Avios before making any purchase (literally, any purchase) and only buy what you were going to in the first place – no willy-nilly spending, please.
Of course there are other airline loyalty schemes, I just don’t know enough about those yet.
Watch this space though…
Plenty has happened over the past seven days, including a nervy win for England’s women’s cricket team, some season-defining football matches and more Fifa World Cup build-up.
About 21% of quizzers got full marks in last week’s edition. Will you make the grade this week?
After more quizzes? Go to our dedicated Football Quizzes and Sports Quizzes pages and sign up for notifications to get the latest quizzes sent straight to your device.
There was a time when various developments from this past week – such as the Israeli government spending hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting ultra-nationalist marches, a sanctioned settler leading army-escorted livestock raids on a Palestinian village, and the Israeli finance minister calling for the full military occupation and settlement of Gaza while speaking at once-dismantled occupied West Bank settlements – would have been met with outcry or debate in some corners of Israeli society.
This week, however, they have become routine, as United Nations experts describe Israeli policy as “ethnically cleansing the West Bank through daily attacks resulting in killing, injury, and harassment of women and children, and the widespread destruction of Palestinian homes, farmland and livelihoods”.
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Against that backdrop, this past week brought intense and coordinated settler attacks on villages near Ramallah, continued Israeli strikes on civilians in Gaza, new evictions and demolitions in occupied East Jerusalem, and US-Hamas diplomatic talks in Cairo that showed some glimmers of progress – while falling well short of what either side has demanded.
Across the Gaza Strip, Israeli air strikes, gunfire and drone attacks continued throughout the week as the humanitarian crisis worsened.
On April 14, a strike on a police vehicle on al-Nafaq Street in Gaza City killed four people, including three-year-old Yahya al-Malahi, whose father said his family had been leaving a relative’s wedding. A strike on the Shati refugee camp later the same day killed at least five more.
On April 16, brothers Abdelmalek and Abdel Sattar al-Attar were killed in Beit Lahiya in an area that witnesses said fell outside the zone under Israeli military control along the so-called “yellow line”. On April 17, brothers Mahmoud and Eid Abu Warda were shot dead by a drone while trying to get water in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood; a drone separately struck a water desalination facility in the same area, killing one more. The following day, two civilian contractors delivering water on behalf of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) were shot dead by Israeli troops in northern Gaza.
Since the October ceasefire, 777 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and at least 2,193 injured, as of April 20. Since October 7, 2023, the cumulative death toll stands at 72,553 – a figure revised upwards this week after the Gaza Ministry of Health certified an additional 196 deaths.
Meanwhile, aid access into Gaza remains severely constrained. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), United Nations and partner aid inflows declined by 37 percent between the first and second three-month periods following the ceasefire. Bakeries have scaled back production due to dwindling flour and fuel, with Palestinians reporting hours-long queues for bread.
Board of Peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov told an Egyptian news channel this week that Israeli restrictions at border crossings remain “the primary obstacle” preventing sufficient aid from reaching Gaza.
On the diplomatic front, direct US-Hamas talks in Cairo this week focused on implementing phase-one commitments before any discussion of disarmament. No official agreement has been reached.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, meanwhile, called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order the military to “immediately prepare for the full occupation of the Gaza Strip” and establish Israeli settlements there if Hamas refuses to disarm entirely. Smotrich made the declaration while attending a ceremony commemorating the re-establishment of the illegal settlement of Sa-Nur, which had previously been dismantled by Israel in 2005 along with settlements in Gaza and several others in the northern West Bank.
The week’s most sustained violence in the West Bank took place across a cluster of villages northeast of Ramallah – Khirbet Abu Falah, al-Mughayyir and Turmus Aya – where three new illegal Jewish outposts have been established in the past two months, all on privately owned Palestinian land in Area B, which is supposed to be under limited administrative control of the Palestinian Authority. One such outpost was built on land from which the Abu Najjeh community – itself already forcibly displaced from Ein Samiya in the summer of 2023 – was recently violently expelled from.
On April 18, settlers launched simultaneous coordinated attacks on all three villages, according to local activists. In Turmus Aya, settlers arriving in more than a dozen vehicles burned a home and a car, with a military force near the outpost refusing to intervene, according to local activists. In Khirbet Abu Falah, dozens of settlers gathered at a newly established outpost before descending on Palestinian homes; soldiers subsequently raided the village themselves, according to locals. In al-Mughayyir, soldiers stopped two small children playing in the street, pushing them to the ground. They drove away before settlers on a government-supplied quad bike attacked a Palestinian driver on the nearby road.
The following morning, settlers raided a sheep pen in al-Mughayyir and stole 70 sheep. When residents pursued them, settlers fired live ammunition, activists said. Israeli military and police then escorted the Or Nachman outpost’s founder, Amishav Malt, back into the village, where he led a raid that he claimed was to recover stolen sheep – a tactic local activists say is routinely used to justify further theft. One Palestinian resident was beaten unconscious by police, according to local activists. Soldiers then enabled Neria Ben Pazi – the founder of another local illegal outpost who is internationally sanctioned by Australia, Belgium, France and Britain – to steal sheep from a restrained Palestinian resident. At least 20 military vehicles subsequently laid siege to the village entrance.
Beyond these villages, settler attacks on shepherds, farmers and residents were documented across numerous communities, including olive trees cut down in Yatma near Nablus, and the theft of livestock and crops in Jifna and several communities in Masafer Yatta. Settlers erected a barbed wire fence on the path that children from Umm al-Khair use to reach their school, blocking their safe access ever since.
On April 16, Israeli forces staged a raid on Beit Duqqu, northwest of Jerusalem, during which they shot dead 17-year-old Mohammed Rayan. Soldiers prevented ambulances from treating him, instead removing his body – denying his family proper Muslim burial rites. Four others were shot with live fire. On April 18, Israeli forces killed Mohammed Suwaiti, 25, in Khirbet Salama, southwest of Hebron, claiming he was approaching the illegal settlement of Negohot.
According to the latest OCHA humanitarian situation report, in 2026, more than 2,500 Palestinians have been displaced by demolitions, settler attacks, and evictions – including more than 1,100 children. Settler attacks now account for 75 percent of all displacement recorded this year, with March recording the highest monthly settler injury toll since documentation began in 2006.
Al Jazeera has reached out to the Israeli military for comment on the incidents reported on this week, but has yet to receive a reply.
In occupied East Jerusalem, demolitions and evictions continued at an elevated pace. Israeli authorities demolished the home of 80-year-old cancer patient Abu Kamel Dweik in Silwan’s al-Bustan neighbourhood, at least the eighth demolition in the area this month.
According to OCHA, since January 2026, at least 86 Palestinian-owned structures have been demolished in East Jerusalem, displacing more than 250 people, with roughly half demolished by their owners to avoid additional fines.
In addition to further home demolitions in al-Bustan expected shortly, the extended Basha family – six households comprising 12 people, most over 60, who have lived in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter for nearly a century – now face court-ordered eviction by April 26.
The week also saw reports from Israeli media that the Netanyahu government is allocating approximately 1.2 million shekels ($400,000) to expand the ultra-nationalist Jerusalem Day marches across the country next month – yearly events marked by vulgar, racist slogans and violent attacks on Palestinian neighbourhoods.
With such funding, the marches are being expanded to several mixed Jewish-Arab cities including Lydd (Lod), where Jerusalem Day clashes in 2021 escalated into days of violence. That the state is now directly subsidising such events reflects the broader influence of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose reach over police operations has itself become the subject of a rare legal challenge.
Israel’s High Court this week ordered Ben-Gvir to reach an agreement with the attorney general to curb his political interference in police work, after his repeated alleged violations of a prior agreement not to do so. Critics say his tenure has radicalised the police’s approach toward Palestinians – a charge given weight by documented incidents of police facilitating settler attacks and, in some cases, participating directly in violence against Palestinian residents.
A NEW airport has opened on the world’s largest island giving travellers direct access to an area dubbed the “Riviera of the North”.
The new hub is expected to boost tourism in one of the Arctic’s most remote regions.
Visitors can now travel by air to Qaqortoq in Greenland to visit an area famous for kayaking and whale-watching.
Anne Nivika Grødem, director of Visit Greenland, said: “South Greenland offers a rare combination of powerful nature and a living culture shaped over generations.
“Improved access allows us to welcome visitors with greater intention – encouraging travel with curiosity [and offering] more meaningful experiences for our guests.”
Greenland’s prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen travelled on the new airport’s first flight.
While more than 30,000 passengers disembark from cruise ships at Qaqortoq every year, less than 2,000 tourists on average stay overnight each year.
Before the opening of the airport, travellers looking to visit Qaqortoq would have to travel two days on a ferry or arrive by helicopter.
The town is 300 miles from the capital, Nuuk.
Air Greenland is to operate two daily 75-minute direct flights between Nuuk and Qaqortoq year-round.
This is expected to rise 17 weekly services in summer, while Icelandair plans to run four weekly summer flights to and from Keflavík, starting from June 2.
In recent years, Greenland has been working to boost visitor numbers.
Earlier this year US President Donald Trump’s threats to invade Greenland resulted in a 46% increase in foreign guests – most of them Americans.
Brian Williams, the veteran former anchor for NBC News and MSNBC, is joining Netflix where he will host a weekly podcast.
Netflix announced Thursday that “We’re Back! With Brian Williams” will debut later this year. The format will feature Williams in extended interviews with pop culture figures and newsmakers in a casual setting.
“With scientists predicting that every American will have a podcast by 2030, I thought it was time to get in the game,” Williams said in a statement.
Williams – long a stalwart of traditional TV news – will be the biggest name from that arena to join a major video streaming platform.
Williams has been off TV since he departed MSNBC (now MS NOW) in 2021. He the anchor of the nightly program “The 11th Hour” and handled major breaking news coverage for the network.
Before joining MSNBC in 2015, Williams spent 10 years as anchor of “NBC Nightly News.” He left the broadcast after being suspended for making false statements about his experiences covering the Iraq war.
Williams tested the streaming waters when he anchored extended coverage of the presidential election in 2024 on Amazon Prime Video. While Amazon was said to be pleased with the program, which earned an Emmy, but the company has made no further commitment to live news programming.
“We’re Back!” will likely emphasize the playful side of Williams, who once hosted “Saturday Night Live” during his NBC years. He occasionally told colleagues he harbored a desire to become a late night talk show host or a forum where he could work in a more conversational style.
“After 40 years in the news business whee an in-depth interview gets four minutes of airtime at best, I just want to have interesting conversations with creative, funny, smart, talented and consequential people – like the shows we all grew up watching and listening to,” he said. “Netflix is the perfect home.”
jonathan Wald, a veteran TV news executive who worked with Williams at NBC and MSNBC, will be the executive producer for “We’re Back!”
Netflix has moved aggressively into the podcast business. Sports columnist Bill Simmons, who helped popularize the format, recently moved his podcasts to the platform in January as part of a deal with Spotify. Currently Netflix is carrying 51 video podcasts.
