‘The end of reading is here’

Rose Horowitch at The Atlantic

“Americans, once members of a proudly literate society, read much less than they used to,” says Rose Horowitch. Even “demographics that traditionally read the most — retirees, women and college graduates — have seen a collapse,” and the “books that people do read are simpler than they used to be.” People “are losing the higher-order abilities of comprehension.” America “isn’t illiterate. It’s postliterate.” The “people who make a living from words are not the only ones who lose out in a postliterate age.”

Read more

‘A tax too far: Don’t punish immigrants sending money to family’

Marcos Cruz at The Hill

Immigrants “want to know how to safely transfer money to relatives” overseas, as these remittances “create a massive flow of capital out of wealthy nations and into lower- and middle-income countries,” says Marcos Cruz. This year, a “new 1% excise tax was added on money sent abroad,” and “although a 1% tax appears small when expressed as a decimal, its implications are strategic.” By “taxing remittances and lowering incomes,” Washington “will have worsened the root cause of the immigration problem.”

Read more

‘The US had the biggest opportunity in the history of American soccer. They wasted it.’

Alexander Abnos at The Guardian

What do people think “about what the U.S. produced on Monday night during their 4-1 defeat against Belgium?” says Alexander Abnos. What “inspiration was there to be found in the team’s disjointed moves forward, of the missed defensive assignments, of the lack of poise the team played with?” Millions “were tuning in on Monday night for their first U.S. men’s national team experience,” and “their first impression was a side that was not up to the task.”

Read more

‘Stop mourning the old NATO. Build the new one.’

Galip Dalay at Time

This “must be the moment Europe stops mourning the alliance it once knew and begins building the one it actually needs,” says Galip Dalay. Europe should “strengthen the collective weight of European NATO members, not the European Union members or EU as an institution alone, within the alliance.” Europe “needs a continent-wide security architecture” and an “honest reckoning with an uncomfortable truth: any post-American security framework cannot simply replicate the existing NATO-centric order.”

Read more

For many Americans, an auto loan is a sizable chunk of their monthly budget. Refinancing can be one way to get that payment to go down. This is particularly true lately, as auto loan refinance rates have been falling at a faster pace than rates for original auto loans, making the potential savings that much more notable.

“Drivers who refinanced in the first quarter of 2026 saw a 2.24 percentage point interest rate decrease on average from their original loan, compared with a 0.47 point decrease two years earlier,” said Experian, per The Wall Street Journal. In terms of real dollars saved per month, “buyers with high payments found that refinancing drove their costs down by an average of $81 a month in the first quarter,” said the outlet.

Here is what to know about how auto loan refinancing works and how to determine whether the payoff is actually there.

How does auto loan refinancing work?

When you refinance your auto loan, you effectively take out a new loan with its own interest rate and terms. This loan replaces your existing auto loan. Upon approval, the new lender pays off your existing loan and then assumes the remaining balance.

Ideally, the new loan will offer more favorable terms than your existing loan, such as a better interest rate or lower monthly payments. You will go through the loan application process again for a refinance loan, and the terms will hinge largely on your credit profile.

What are the benefits of auto loan refinancing?

As mentioned, refinancing your auto loan could result in paying a lower interest rate. Maybe your credit has improved since you initially applied, and you have since consistently made on-time payments on your loan. Or, “you might have accepted a higher rate at a dealership than you could have qualified for elsewhere, and you now want to reduce that rate through refinancing,” said NerdWallet. An improved interest rate environment could also open up more competitive rates.

Refinancing may additionally allow you to pay off your loan sooner, which in turn could save you in total interest charges over the life of the loan. You could also refinance to lower your monthly payments, which will come in handy if you are struggling to repay your car loan. Just keep in mind that “while extending your loan term can lower your monthly payments, it will take longer to pay off your car, which could result in higher overall interest costs,” said PNC Insights, PNC Bank’s personal finance blog.

When should you think twice before refinancing?

A baseline to evaluate when deciding whether to refinance your auto loan is whether or not it will save you money. But even if it will, there are still downsides to consider, and in certain situations, it may not be worth pursuing.

In some cases, “financing fees outweigh the benefits,” such as if you have to pay a hefty prepayment penalty to your existing lender alongside origination or application fees, said Credit Karma. Applying for a new loan also has an impact on your credit, which you may want to avoid if you are planning to apply for other new credit soon, like a mortgage on a home purchase.

It is lastly important to evaluate the value of the car itself. “Refinancing to extend your term or taking cash out of your equity could leave you owing more than what your car is worth, referred to as being upside-down on your loan,” said NerdWallet. In this case, “if you decide to sell or trade in your car, you would have to pay the lender the difference.”

What happened

An ICE agent fatally shot a Houston man in his car early Tuesday during a “targeted enforcement operation,” the agency said in a statement. “From information we are receiving,” Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, “refused to follow multiple verbal commands and weaponized his vehicle,” causing the agent to fire “in self-defense.” Local officials and civil rights groups demanded that ICE release all video footage as part of an independent investigation.

Who said what

Araujo’s family said the father of three was a construction worker who had been in the U.S. for 35 years and was in the process of getting his work permit. In most of the 20 recent cases where immigration agents have shot people in their cars, The New York Times said, officials said it was justified “because the vehicles had been ‘weaponized’ and the agents’ lives were in danger.”

ICE’s account of Araujo’s killing “echoed many of the statements the agency quickly issued in other shootings,” The Washington Post said. But in the killings of Renee Good in Minneapolis, 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas and “several” other instances, video evidence established that “the officers were not in danger and, in some cases, acted as the aggressors.”

What next?

ICE said the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General is investigating Araujo’s shooting.

What happened

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen Tuesday announced she will run for president in 2027, hours after an appeals court cut short her five-year ban on seeking public office.

The court upheld the 2025 embezzlement conviction that prompted the ban, handing Le Pen a three-year prison sentence for her National Rally party’s misuse of $3.2 million in European Union funds. But the judges suspended two years of her sentence and said she could serve the third wearing an electronic monitor.

Who said what

Tuesday’s “stunning turnaround” in Le Pen’s fortunes makes her the “front-runner” to replace term-limited President Emmanuel Macron, The New York Times said. But running with a criminal conviction is a “remarkable political gamble,” the BBC said.

“As recently as last week,” Politico said, Le Pen “said she would not run for president if wearing an ankle monitor and would cede the role” to 30-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella, who is “slightly more popular” with voters. But Le Pen also announced she was appealing the ruling to France’s highest court, a process that “will suspend her requirement to wear an electronic bracelet” until a decision arrives, likely in January, The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

If the high court upholds Tuesday’s ruling, the Journal said, “Le Pen would be required to wear the bracelet” while campaigning, limiting her movement before April’s election.

What happened

President Donald Trump arrived in Turkey Tuesday for a two-day NATO summit, and “within hours of landing” he “revived a host of grievances” against America’s closest allies, Politico said. Trump criticized Europe for not helping with his Iran war and threatened to pull U.S. troops from NATO countries if he didn’t gain control of Greenland. His “sour mood” tempered hopes for a “low-key,” constructive summit focused on collective defense.

Who said what

Greenland “should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark,” Trump said during a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Being refused control of the semiautonomous island is “what hurt my relationship with NATO.” Denmark’s prime minister and other European leaders once more firmly rejected Trump’s demand, but he returned to the idea this morning. “Greenland is very important to the United States,” he said. “We need it for protection of the world.”

NATO “sought to demonstrate that its European members were heeding Trump’s ​calls to spend more on their own defense,” Reuters said. “Announcing billions in arms deals” was “an attempt to appease the mercurial U.S. leader,” The Associated Press said.

What next?

Trump “surprised NATO leaders” by launching airstrikes on Iran Tuesday night, soon after a dinner hosted by Erdogan, the AP said. This morning he told reporters that the ceasefire with Tehran was “over.” Talks can continue, he said, “but I think they’re wasting their time.”

Sunset strolls by the sea, snorkelling and picnics on the beach: it’s hard to beat an island holiday. Europe is dotted with picture-perfect isles that lie waiting to be explored. From a tiny island nestled within a Tuscan archipelago, to a quiet Greek haven at the southern tip of the Peloponnese, these are our favourites.

One of Tuscany’s most tranquil islands

The Tuscan island of Giglio hit the news in 2012 when a cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, ran aground here and capsized, with the loss of 32 lives. Today, it is hard to imagine that such a tragedy should have struck this beautiful, “laid-back” place, says Elizabeth Heath in Travel + Leisure. An hour by ferry from Porto Santo Stefano, on the Monte Argentario peninsula, the island has a “completely away-from-it-all feel”. The main town, Giglio Porto, is “colourful” and charming, and there are some good, if occasionally steep, hiking trails (Giglio is five miles long), with views to the larger island of Elba, 30 miles to the north. Hire a boat to reach hidden coves – perfect spots to “swim, snorkel or picnic” – and be sure to look up the island’s summer theatre season and its festivals of opera, film and wine. The stylish La Guardia hotel has rooms from £280 a night.

A beloved, less-visited Greek island

I grew up in Greece and have visited many of its islands – but “none has captured my heart quite like Kythira”, says Alexis Conran in The Times. Sitting alone, off the southeastern tip of the Peloponnese peninsula, it is quite big, and offers plenty to see and do; but with no international airport nearby, it never feels too busy. On a recent trip, I stayed in a “beautiful” villa run by Kythera Houses, near the central village of Potamos, which has a great farmers’ market on Sundays. There’s an attractive beach, Kaladi, not far away, but my favourite of the island’s beaches is Limnionas. The drive to it, passing the massive caves of the Agia Sofia, is “dramatic”, but the beach sits in a protected cove, and has lovely “clear”, calm waters. Eat if you can at Platanos, a “lovely” traditional taverna in the nearby village of Mylopotamos.

An arty stay in the heart of Sardinia

In the Costa Smeralda, Sardinia has one of the Med’s most glamorous tourist destinations, but the island’s interior is a world apart from its glitz, says Emma J. Page in House & Garden – “deeply agricultural” and steeped in tradition. Set next to the “rugged” Supramonte mountains, Su Gologone makes a great base. This family-run hotel has a huge collection of folk art, and offers a diverse range of art classes and outdoor activities. Ancient choral songs are sometimes performed during the communal feasts served in its terraced gardens, and there are wonderful artisans’ studios to visit in nearby villages. Also unmissable are the street murals in Orgosolo. Dating back to the 1970s, they address social and political themes, and lend this former bandit town an “edgy air”.

The Blytonesque charm of St Martin’s

Of the five inhabited Scilly Isles, none is more enchanting than St Martin’s, says Paul Miles in The Telegraph. Situated in the north of the archipelago, it is a “Famous Five” sort of place that has barely changed since the 1950s. Home to just 140 people, it lacks the “upmarket” shops and holiday lets of Tresco (more popular with “well-heeled” tourists). But it has seductive beaches of “almost-white” sand, lovely walking paths, and with the island’s mild climate, it “feels like a garden”, peppered with exotic species such as “tall” echiums and blue-and-white agapanthus. It’s worth hiring a kayak to visit the uninhabited islands nearby, and dropping in at the community observatory, with its two telescopes: on clear nights, the skies here are “tar-black” and full of stars.

A lonely cottage on a Cornish island

Fifteen minutes by boat from Cornwall’s southeast coast, Looe Island is a great place to connect with “the wilder world”, says Carol Donaldson in The Guardian. Managed by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, the 22-acre island welcomes day-trippers, but also has two places to stay – a bell tent sleeping two, and a “cosy” one-bedroom cottage that was home, long ago, to a “pipe-smoking, fist-fighting” smuggler called Black Joan and her brother, Finn. There’s also a tiny museum and a house where the island’s wardens live. I rented the cottage for three nights, and spent my time reading and wandering the island’s woods and meadows. I also swam in a “little-visited” cove, and watched local seals frolic on the rocky shore.

If you are after a good cry, these films will have you reaching for the tissues. From stories of survival and life-changing decisions to heartbreak and hope, here are some of the best tragic tales brought to the big screen.

Titanic (1997)

Director James Cameron became “king of the world” in the 1990s with this “wildly over-the-top weepie romance” between Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) on the so-called unsinkable ship, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.

Our heroine is “not suited for life in the gilded cage”, said The Hollywood Reporter, and finds herself saved by Jack, “whose joy for life and eagerness for living it to the fullest soon revitalise the young Rose”. Their love is not only tested by class boundaries, but with the “horrible outcome” of the voyage.

If the story was “made of showbiz and hype”, said Roger Ebert, “well – so was the Titanic”. The 194-minute, $200 million (£151 million) epic was “flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted and spellbinding”.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

Frank Capra’s Christmas classic is repeatedly voted Britain’s favourite festive film for a reason. It is an “uplifting story of family, love and hope”, said the BBC. It’s “also the story of one man’s struggle with life’s knockbacks”. George Bailey, played by James Stewart, is brought back from the brink of suicide with the help of an angel, Clarence, played by Henry Travers.

George is shown how “worthwhile his life has been and what treasures, largely intangible, he does possess”, said Bert Briller in Variety, when the film first came out in 1946. This recounting of his life is “just about flawless in its tender and natural treatment”.

Atonement (2007)

Another romance set during a tragic historical period, “Atonement”, reflects on how a single error “destroys all possibility of happiness in three lives”, said Roger Ebert. Based on Ian McEwan’s book of the same name, the film begins with a “breathless celebration of pure heedless joy”, as heiress Cecilia (Keira Knightley) falls in love with the housekeeper’s son, Robbie (James McAvoy), on an English country estate.

But the actions of Cecilia’s younger sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan) and then the couple’s separation during the Second World War force us to “think deeply about what betrayal and atonement might really entail”.

The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

In this “truish story set in 1980s San Francisco”, Will Smith’s Chris Gardner is a “newly single dad juggling bankruptcy, childcare, and high hopes of an internship” at a stockbrokers for no pay, said Tim Robey in The Telegraph. Smith is “sublime and moving” in this “tailor-made, sweetly serio-comic, Julia-Roberts-in-‘Erin-Brockovich’ Oscar vehicle”.

Chris and his son Christopher Jr. (played by Smith’s own son Jaden) navigate poverty, eviction and homelessness, but the hope portrayed in the movie is enough to “turn even the strongest of viewers into a puddle of tears”, said Harper’s Bazaar.

Graveyard of the Fireflies (1988)

Isao Takahata’s animation about two orphaned siblings in Japan during the Second World War is “one of the greatest films to have ever been made about children in wartime”, said Robbie Collin in The Telegraph. Made at Studio Ghibli, it has a “quiet but devastating power that breaks every heart it finds”.

The film creates “magical moments of natural beauty and childish delight” that only make the tragedy of Seita and his little sister Setsuko “even more harrowing”, said Steve Rose in The Guardian. It’s a “war story as wrenching as any live-action movie”.

Never Let Me Go (2005)

On the surface, the three main characters – played by Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley – are embroiled in a love triangle, but “this romantic drama tells an entirely more complicated story than you might expect”, said Entertainment Weekly. Based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s “devastating dystopian novel”, the film “dives into heavy themes of mortality and ethics with striking clarity”.

The characters are “expertly acted” and played “with such conviction” that “we get caught up in their doomed romance”, said The Hollywood Reporter.

Hotel Rwanda (2004)

The first mainstream film to approach the subject of Rwanda’s genocide, “Hotel Rwanda” focused on the story of hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (played by Don Cheadle), who sheltered more than 1,200 people.

Turning such a “brutal and heart-wrenching subject” into “entertainment” has its risks, said the BBC at the time. But director Terry George’s decision to choose the “One Man Who Made A Difference” angle, as seen in “Schindler’s List”, gave “filmmakers the freedom to inject suspense, humour and romance – all the stuff that an audience actually wants to see – into otherwise sombre material”. Cheadle offers a “thrilling portrait of ordinary heroism, a performance that’s matched only by the magnificent Sophie Okonedo as his wife Tatiana”.

Sophie’s Choice (1982)

Meryl Streep delivers a performance “of such measured intensity” that encapsulates the “tragic, voluptuous” heroine of William Styron’s novel “Sophie’s Choice”, that “the results are by turns exhilarating and heartbreaking”, said Janet Maslin in The New York Times when the film first came out.

Sophie, a Polish immigrant, is forced to make an unconscionable decision which will have life-changing and haunting consequences. It’s not a flawless film, but it is a “unified and deeply affecting one” that “casts a powerful, uninterrupted spell”, thanks largely to Streep’s “bravura performance”.

Dancer in the Dark (2000)

A “dreadfully sad musical”, said Vogue, “Dancer in the Dark" is “painfully bleak, but very beautiful”. Björk stars as Selma, an immigrant mother losing her vision while trying to provide for her son.

Director Lars von Trier “pushes the limits of modern film-making”, said the BBC, combining the “extreme styles” of “hand-held documentary melodrama” and an “all-singing, all-dancing Hollywood musical shot in vibrant Technicolor-style”. There are “many moving and heartfelt scenes, if you can cope with the burst of a song or two”.

The Notebook (2004)

A romance that “transcends obstacles, space, and time”, said Marie Claire, “The Notebook” follows the romance between Allie (Rachel McAdams) and Noah (Ryan Gosling) from “youthful intoxication to old age”, said Vogue.

Switching from scenes showcasing the “urgency of young romance” to the tragedy of an older Allie “disappearing into the shadows of Alzheimer’s”, it’s a “sentimental fantasy”, said Roger Ebert.

The story builds a relationship that will make you “root for the pair to beat the odds against them”, said Stephen Holden in The New York Times.

The endless will-he-won’t-he drama surrounding Prince Harry’s visit to the UK could be the final straw for hopes of reconciling with the royal family, said The Sun’s Clemmie Moodie.

“Following weeks of frenetic speculation concerning Harry’s possible rapprochement with his estranged father”, hours before he was due to land in the UK on Monday the Duke of Sussex said he had accepted an invitation to stay at Buckingham Palace. Minutes later royal sources counter-briefed, clarifying that Harry had not formally accepted the invite in time, and that the offer had since been withdrawn.

“It’s all just so terribly ‘EastEnders’ with Received Pronunciation”, and a world away from the late Queen Elizabeth II’s famous motto: “never complain, never explain”.

What did the commentators say?

“It has taken quite some time for the King to lose patience with his younger son” but it seems he has “finally had enough”, said The Telegraph’s royal editor Hannah Furness. Charles, “whose parenting has hitherto been criticised for being too indulgent, has drawn a boundary for his 41-year-old son in a sharp lesson to be learnt publicly”, namely that “Buckingham Palace is not available on lastminute.com”.

Debate has raged over whether the briefing debacle, which comes on top of an ongoing row over security, was a genuine case of miscommunication, or an attempt by Harry to try to “bounce” his father into reversing his decision, said the Daily Mail’s royal editor, Rebecca English. A third possibility is that “the furious prince simply doesn’t care any more and wants to cause his family maximum embarrassment”.

Either way, Harry’s long-planned trip to Britain is “once again mired in the same smorgasbord of chaos, confusion, claim and counter-claim that has characterised all of his dealings with Buckingham Palace in recent years”.

“As if he needed another reminder, Prince Harry has just learnt once again that the House of Windsor will always win,” said The Express’ deputy royal editor Rebecca Russell. The “real tragedy” is that the Duke of Sussex “has spent years fighting for control of his narrative, yet he remains completely blind to how he is being outplayed”. The institution “has marched on without him; it does not collapse under the weight of his attacks”.

What next?

Both fans of the Sussexes and royal traditionalists had been “united in their desire for meaningful reconciliation” after “arguably the most fractious time in royal history”, said Moodie in The Sun.

“And yet, here we are again”; all the good work the royals do has been “dismantled by behind-the-scenes bickering and now a very public comeuppance”. Charles has “given his petulant son a chance here, and if Harry blows it, he might not get another”.

A rekindling of brotherly love between Prince Harry and Prince William “seems even less likely”, said BBC royal correspondent Sean Coughlan. “They remain on very different trajectories, with William's life heading remorselessly to the point where he will take to the throne.”

“The only thing more riling than a referee’s interference in a sports event is a politician’s,” said Sally Jenkins in The Atlantic. The red card issued against US star striker Folarin Balogun for “stepping on an opponent’s ankle” during the World Cup match against Bosnia-Herzegovina, was a “terrible call”. But Fifa’s regulations “couldn’t be clearer”: a red card means “automatic suspension for the next game”.

Instead, the tournament organisers “magically lifted” the 25-year-old’s suspension in time for the host team’s last-16 clash against Belgium on Monday, after a phone call by Donald Trump to “his good friend Gianni Infantino, the president of Fifa”.

The US president later thanked Fifa for “doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice”. The world governing body has given “such a feeble procedural explanation” for the reversal that the “entire sporting globe” is “incensed over the garbage-y scent of an inside job”.

A ‘balanced measure’

“Reviewing the legal consequences of red cards in football is nothing new in the modern game,” Mohammad al-Kamali, chair of Fifa’s disciplinary committee, said in a statement. The red card was “not overturned”; its effects were suspended “based on an explicit provision of the applicable regulations” in what he called a “balanced measure”.

Fifa’s disciplinary code allows the judicial body to decide to “fully or partially suspend the implementation of a disciplinary measure”, opting instead for a probation, said The Independent’s senior sports writer Kieran Jackson. Balogun has essentially received a “suspended sentence”, active for one year.

There is a “high-profile precedent”: Cristiano Ronaldo was banned for three games after his red card against the Republic of Ireland in November’s qualifiers. The Portugal captain had the latter two bans “suspended” too. But Fifa was “widely condemned for that decision”, too, which came a week after Ronaldo, who plays in the Saudi Pro League, visited the White House with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Still, no one can claim Trump “fails to advocate for American interests with a doggedness that borders on obsession”, said Nicole Russell in USA Today. I’m not surprised he made the call, nor should anyone be – this is just “Trump being Trump”: a World Cup red card was “never going to be the exception”. But Infantino “could have said no”.

‘Crossed a red line’

Critics say this latest episode is “symptomatic of deeper problems at Infantino’s Fifa”, said the Financial Times’ sports editor Josh Noble. They argue its decision-making is “increasingly designed to further political and commercial goals”.

European governing body Uefa said the decision to suspend Balogun’s ban “crossed a red line”. Sorry, but “we crossed that line a few moral galaxies ago”, said The Guardian’s Marina Hyde. Maybe when Infantino was “butching it out in the photocall at Trump’s Gaza Peace Summit For Ghoulishly Rapacious Businessmen”, certainly when he “inaugurated the auto-satirical Fifa peace prize and awarded it to Trump” just a few months before the war on Iran.

Even former Fifa president Sepp Blatter (who somehow managed to be cleared of corruption charges on appeal last year) is thundering that “red cards are not overturned by political phone calls”. Blatter suggesting Infantino is corrupt? “If irony could kill, we could be looking at a bloodbath”.

The US’s exit from the tournament “allows this rotten case to be quickly brushed under the rug”, said The i Paper’s chief football writer Daniel Storey. But it has “slipped a viper into the tent of football’s governance and started a civil war between Fifa and Uefa”, and all for the host nation to lose 4-1 to a “barely functional Belgium team”. During this tournament, the US national team had gained fresh admiration from supporters and new levels of interest from a “football-sceptic population”, but now that “reputation has been torched”.

The US-UK relationship is being tested again by two high-profile legal cases in which American military personnel were tried by US authorities over alleged offences that took place on British soil.

What were the cases?

Four women and a 16-year-old girl accused US airman Hannes Marschalek of indecent exposure in 2022, while he was stationed at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, the largest US airbase in the UK, said The Guardian.

Cambridgeshire police initiated the investigation, but the case was turned over to American forces three weeks later. Court martial documents show that in July 2022, Marschalek texted two friends to say he “definitely just flashed a couple ladies walking from the train. LOL.”

Marschalek accepted a plea bargain and was dismissed from the air force by a military judge and sentenced to two months in a correctional facility at Lakenheath. However, in April this year a US military appeal court dismissed the guilty verdict on the grounds that prosecutors had charged him under the wrong offence. He remains on the sex-offender registry in the US, but had he been “prosecuted in the English criminal courts, Marschalek would have faced up to two years in jail”.

In December 2023, Sarah Steele accused Jacob Wulfson, a US air force captain also based at Lakenheath, of drugging, assaulting and strangling her after meeting via a dating app. Steele, a University of Cambridge academic, claimed that the subsequent court martial heard testimony about “how many people he’d killed, supposedly to get him a lower sentence for committing a serious violent crime against me”, said the BBC.

Wulfson was convicted of strangulation, dismissed from the military and given “six months’ detention”, but was cleared of sexual assault by an “all-male panel” of air force officers.

How does a court martial work?

A court martial is a legal proceeding undertaken by the military to try personnel accused of wrongdoing within a military context. In the US, the trials are governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which in addition to criminal offences, includes some perceived moral transgressions such as infidelity.

The US military justice system has a “distinct legal framework and is separate from British civilian courts”, said ITV News. There are also significant deviations from US civilian law, said law professor Joshua Kastenberg on The Conversation. Judges are “uniformed officers” who are “subject to the chain of command”. A court martial also only needs a two-thirds majority to establish guilt, instead of unanimity, with a jury panel “made up of military personnel who outrank the accused service member and are picked to serve by senior commanding officers”.

Why weren’t the cases tried in the UK?

American forces in the UK are governed by the 1951 Nato Status of Forces Agreement, which was incorporated into British law in the Visiting Forces Act 1952. As well as outlining visa exemptions and the right to bear arms, this “obscure” agreement allows the US government to prosecute overseas military personnel under certain conditions, said The Guardian. Traditionally, this has covered offences committed while on duty, or against a member of the US military or their dependents.

Outside those criteria, the British police have jurisdiction. However, in practice, the “process is ambiguous”. In the cases involving Marschalek and Wulfson, local British police handed control over to the US. The US military is claiming a “much wider jurisdiction – and British police and prosecutors are allowing them to do it”.

This week, Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy told the Commons officials were “working across government to establish the full facts” of the two cases, said the East Anglian Daily Times.

The prime minister’s spokesperson said that Wulfson’s was “clearly a deeply distressing case”. It was “very concerning that a case like this never reached the CPS” and was “heard in front of an all-male panel” of US air force officers.

A US air force spokesperson said it is “dedicated to working transparently with our British partners to ensure the fair administration of justice”.

“What can there possibly be left in the Sedaris backstory that the writer hasn’t already mined?” asked Emma Brockes in The Guardian. The American humourist has written nine volumes of essays over his decades-long career, which leaves you wondering whether he’s “suffering from a problem that comes to all writers in the end” – a “dearth of usable material”.

But his latest collection reveals that he hasn’t run out of ideas yet. While reading Sedaris is a “glitchier experience” than it once was, his “tone still charms, even as it advances to a state of crankiness that makes him look like a gay Larry David”.

In the 28 pieces that make up “The Land and its People”, Sedaris sticks to his tried-and-tested formula of harvesting from “everyday experiences with his husband, Hugh, his siblings and his friends”. The book is peppered with “laugh-out-loud moments”, like his experience of a No Kings protest against Trump in which he finds himself “baffled by his fellow protesters’ lack of focus”. But there are also sections that “an editor could have put a red line through”, where he veers into an “occasionally too rote adoption of the grumpy-old-man trope”.

Inevitably some of the essays “have more going for them, and more in them, than others”, said Roddy Doyle in The New York Times. Is it as funny as his earlier books? “We’re very lucky to have both.” Sedaris has grown older and the “world seems weirder”. That’s why I love reading his work: “for him, being alive has always been strange and atrocious, contradictory, unfair and hilarious”. Now approaching 70, he “examines ageing with the same vigour, curiosity and grim glee” that brought his other books to life.

It is when he reflects on the “minutiae of everyday life” that his writing “really shines”, said Buzz Magazine. Whether he’s “documenting a humdrum car journey” or “arguing in bad French with an AI assistant on Duolingo”, Sedaris remains a “masterful storyteller” who is “always outrageous and highly entertaining company”.

Sometimes “ill-tempered and frequently hilarious”, he brings readers with him on a “touchingly honest journey through life’s peaks and troughs”, and continues to “mine gold from both the mundane and absurd”.

The matriarch of one of Thailand’s richest families has finally dropped a lawsuit against her son just days before it was scheduled to come to court. Chiranuj Bhirombhakdi was suing her son under the 1908 “ungrateful child law”, claiming his actions had caused material and reputational damage to the family.

In May, Siranudh “Psi” Scott, heir to the Singha beer dynasty, caused a “firestorm of controversy” when he made allegations that he had been sexually abused by his older brother and a babysitter, said The Japan Times.

Thailand is not the only country to have a law demanding filial support, with similar legislation in existence and in development across the continent.

Allegations ‘stunned’ the public

Psi’s allegations “sparked a crisis” in the Bhirombhakdi family, owners of the Singha beer company and one of the wealthiest families in Thailand, said the South China Morning Post. He had “stunned” the public two months ago after claiming he was sexually abused by his older brother, Sunit. Despite “strenuously” denying the allegations, Sunit was removed from executive roles at Singha’s parent company, Boon Rawd Brewery, soon after the allegations were made.

“Matriarch” Chiranuj Bhirombhakdi said that her decision to withdraw legal action was an act of “opening the door to dialogue about everything that has happened and to discuss how we should move forward”. “As a mother, it deeply pains me that I have had to rely on the court process. This is never something any mother would wish for,’’ she said in a statement last week.

Psi reportedly first told other family members of the alleged abuse about three years ago, but “accepted financial compensation from them to keep quiet”, said the Taipei Times. However, after his mother sued him this year over a property dispute, he decided to speak out.

Some experts believe that this case “marks an unprecedented shift in Thailand”, providing an opportunity for Thais to discuss sexual abuse cases more openly. Patinya Kuantrakul, scion of one of Thailand’s best-known golf courses, and influencer Taylor Srirat, have since shared their own personal experiences.

‘More on the way’

This “bitter” legal case was centred around a “century-old law reinforcing traditional values of obedience and hierarchy”, said The Telegraph. Known as the “ungrateful child law”, the 1908 legislation is used to “protect parents from neglectful children”, enabling them to withdraw gifts or financial donations if their children are deemed “ungrateful, physically abusive, neglectful in old age, or responsible for serious reputational harm”.

The “closest English translation would be ‘ingratitude’”, said Jiraporn Laocharoenwong, an anthropology professor at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. But the Thai term “carries a much stronger moral meaning”.

Cases invoking the law “rarely reach the public eye”, often resolved via court-mediated negotiations. An exception to that rule came in 2021, when an elderly couple in Bangkok sued their son and his wife, after they were told to leave the family home. Ruling in the parents’ favour, the judge also ordered other properties that had previously been transferred to their son to be returned to the older couple .

Some of Asia’s biggest countries have similar laws, and “more are on the way”, said Asia editor Richard Lloyd Parry in The Times. China, Singapore and Taiwan all place “varying legal obligations on children under civil or criminal law”. Officials in the Philippines are considering pushing for a Parents Welfare Act, which would punish neglectful offspring with 10 years in prison”. Malaysia is also considering introducing a law that would “oblige children to care for their ageing parents”.

At their core, such laws “codify an assumption that was common in most pre-modern societies”: whatever joy they bring to their parents’ lives, “children are a form of investment”, delivering “returns” as financial support when they start work, and as “physical care when their parents become feeble in body”. Yet, as the Singha beer dynasty case demonstrates, such statutes and penalties may be “crude tools for dealing with the fraught emotional dynamics of families”.

After more than four years of war between Russia and Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a rare admission that the conflict has caused his country a problem. In this case, it is a significant fuel shortage driven by Ukrainian drone strikes that is exacerbating economic strain across Russia, and the issue may not be abated any time soon.

‘Certain deficit’

Putin has very rarely acknowledged that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to challenges. But his country is now facing a “certain deficit” of fuel, the Russian president said in an interview with state television. Russians are “well aware that problems for ⁠drivers and for businesses persist,” Putin also told his senior officials of the petroleum industry, according to Al Jazeera. “Unfortunately, there are still queues at petrol stations too.”

The shortage largely stems from Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. Russia must “reduce to a minimum the impact of terrorist attacks on our civilian targets and infrastructure,” Putin told his senior officials. Ukraine has “stepped up attacks on Russian energy facilities in recent months, hitting Russia’s crude oil,” said Al Jazeera. The attacks have led to significant fuel deficits. The “amount of crude oil Russia processed into fuel in June was down 25% from a year ago, to 3.95 million barrels per day — the lowest level in over two decades,” said Gary Peach, an oil markets analyst at Energy Intelligence, to The Associated Press.

While Ukraine has been utilizing drones for a while, what makes the current onslaught different is that Ukraine has “clearly scaled up the quantity of their drones and the quality of their drones,” Christina Harward, an expert at the Institute for the Study of War, said to Deutsche Welle. Ukraine has “improved the range of their drones and, for the past couple of months, they’ve also been undertaking an effort to identify and destroy Russian air defense systems.”

‘The situation is not very good’

The fuel shortages have led to social and financial unrest in many parts of Russia. The “lines are growing at Russian gas stations — and so is the frustration and uncertainty” as the deficits drag on and oil prices go up, said the AP. “I think the situation is not very good,” one motorist waiting in line told the outlet. Numerous cities have rationed fuel, with “hourslong queues of cars snaking beside roads.”

These struggles have been highlighted across social media, with one post reportedly showing farmers “struggling to afford fuel for harvest, while another describes a farmer having to drive his combine harvester to a regular gas station after he was not allowed to fill a can,” said Reuters. Some Russian drivers have also started to “crowdsource maps and trade tips about which stations have fuel and shorter lines,” and “online searches for ‘how to siphon fuel’ rose to more than ⁠9,300” in June from just 697 a month earlier.

And it doesn’t appear the crisis is going anywhere, as “half of Russia’s 83 regions are now reporting shortages,” said the Center for European Policy Analysis. For now, Russia has “enough fuel for the army, key industries, and agriculture — but everywhere else the choice is between paying more and waiting longer.” A Gallup survey found that “60% of Russians interviewed between March and May said their local economic conditions are getting worse.”

Google’s alliance with the film studio A24 shows how AI companies are “deepening their influence in Hollywood,” said John Semley in Wired. The tech giant’s artificial intelligence lab, DeepMind, last month announced a $75 million “research partnership” with A24, the indie studio behind critically acclaimed films such as Moonlight, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and this year’s horror megahit Backrooms. The studio says it will lean on Google’s AI expertise “to learn, iterate, and build” new tools “and workflows.” But it’s one in a “line of controversial marriages between Silicon Valley and Hollywood” that has made viewers and craftspeople uneasy. Nearly 1,000 actors, agents, and parents last week signed an open letter protesting a new clause in Hasbro’s contracts with child actors on the animated kids’ series Peppa Pig that asks them to hand over rights to their voices for AI cloning. Fans of A24, which has a reputation as a bastion for “serious artists,” are also worried that the tie-up with Google will introduce more “AI slop.”

Film lovers shouldn’t be concerned, said Brian Welk in IndieWire. This is not an “IP deal nor a data-training deal,” like the Lionsgate partnership with Runway or Disney’s stake in OpenAI. It’s a logical attempt by A24 to understand how these new tools can “support filmmakers when they are designed from the start to serve creative vision.”

AI on its own hasn’t produced anything “people would pay to see,” said Charles Pulliam-Moore in The Verge. Rather, human artists are starting to test how they “can leverage the technology in compelling ways.” Dear Upstairs Neighbors, an animated film written and directed by Pixar veteran Connie Qin He, was originally conceived on paper using acrylics. But Google AI brought it to life and further enhanced it “with stylized assets” that turned out to be very successful. AI is everywhere in Hollywood, said Jake Kanter in Deadline, you just don’t know it. It’s being used surreptitiously “to smooth rough edges, alter dialogue, and polish visual effects,” akin to cosmetic surgery. Producers are “terrified of audience and industry backlash.” But if the technology “is genuinely helping creatives make better movies,” then audiences should be educated about how it’s used.

The fact is that Hollywood doesn’t yet have a grip on its feelings about AI, said Aaron Pruner in CNET. Some industry legends like Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino “look down” on the technology. Others like Martin Scorsese are embracing it. There are “very real concerns that AI will make” many Hollywood careers obsolete, and that “stress is palpable.” But not everyone has given up hope that “strong and unique storytelling” can still “cut through the slop.” Better to “get familiar with the tools,” because “AI is obviously here to stay.”

Christopher Donahue was “one of the military’s superstars,” said Max Boot in The Washington Post. The four-star general led Delta Force, the Army’s top special-ops unit, commanded the 18th Airborne Corps, and rose to Army commander in Europe and Africa. Revered by soldiers and fellow officers, he fought ISIS in Iraq and Syria and helped Ukraine beat back the Russians. “Without a doubt,” he’s the Army’s “most experienced warfighter,” said retired Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli. But Donahue, 56, was forced last month into early retirement by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, making him the “latest casualty of the secretary’s insidious purge of the senior ranks.” Hegseth has removed at least two dozen respected admirals and generals and blocked promotions for dozens more, disproportionately targeting women and Black officers. Senior commanders can be relieved for cause, but “what’s unnerving” about these ousters is the lack of any “public explanation.”

Some of Hegseth’s “animus” toward Donahue may stem from the 2021 fall of Kabul, said Aaron MacLean in The Free Press. As 82nd Airborne commander, Donahue was the last U.S. soldier out of Afghanistan, and Hegseth has decreed that heads should roll for our chaotic departure. But blaming Donahue, who arrived to help impose order only after scenes of desperate Afghans swarming military cargo planes “shocked the world,” is “like blaming the fire department for starting the fire.” Canning Donahue defies Hegseth’s own metrics, said Mike Nelson in The Dispatch. He claims to want to rid the Army of “woke” distractions and focus on “lethality,” but is instead removing the battle-hardened commanders who have “the vision, skills, and excellence he claims are a priority.” Perhaps these warfighters are “a threat to his frail ego.”

Hegseth’s critics see an unsettling “agenda” at work, said Michael R. Gordon and Lara Seligman in The Wall Street Journal: “squeezing out officers with valor and command experience for less accomplished political loyalists.” The campaign “has unsettled military officers up and down the ranks who fear retaliation for expressing the wrong political opinion.” All Americans should be alarmed, said David French in The New York Times. The Trump administration is pushing the military to the breaking point with its failed war against Iran, potential war crimes in the Caribbean, and purge of officers. The institution can hold because its commitment to integrity, while not perfect, runs deep. But it “cannot hold forever.”

So it isn’t just a New York thing, said Eliza Collins in The Wall Street Journal. Last week in Colorado, Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), defeated 15-term incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, 68, in a Democratic primary to represent the deep-blue Denver area. The win by Kiros, who most recently worked as a barista while studying for a Ph.D., is “the latest advance for a socialist groundswell that is forcing a reckoning for Democrats.” DSA candidates swept primary races in New York City last month, and insurgent leftists are now eyeing wins in the upcoming Michigan Senate primary, where progressive Abdul El-Sayed leads the polls, and the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. The Democratic establishment fears this Tea Party–like rebellion could cost them the midterms, because DSA policies—rent freezes, abolishing ICE, ending U.S. aid to Israel—could repel moderates in November. For now, centrist Democrats are talking tough, said Andrew Howard in Politico. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has downplayed the significance of “a handful of primaries,” while 15 moderate House Democrats and candidates signed a letter reaffirming their commitment to “growth, competition, and broad prosperity.’” But in private they’re “freaking out” that “the Left’s winning streak is potentially just starting.”

Republicans can’t believe their luck, said Jonah Goldberg in The Dispatch. They’ve long caricatured Democrats as anti-American communists. But in a truly “crazy” figure like Darializa Avila Chevalier, one of the New York DSA-ers now headed to Congress, they’ve been gifted that “caricature made flesh.” Avila Chevalier has denounced relationships between minority men and “ugly [white] colonizer women”; attended a pro-Hamas rally the day after Palestinian terrorists massacred Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023; and wants to abolish prisons, preferring to send murderers back to their “community.” Kiros is similarly extreme: She refuses to describe last year’s deadly firebomb attack on pro-Israel protesters in Boulder, Colo., as antisemitic. To call the DSA a “hate group” is not hyperbole, said Noah Rothman in National Review. And while its venom is right now focused on Jews—or “Zionists,” in members’ preferred euphemism—ultimately “what it hates is America.”

Focusing on the DSA misses what’s really going on with Democrats, said Nia-Malika Henderson in Bloomberg. Yes, the party’s voters are “fed up” with its graying leaders, whom they blame for not blocking Trump’s second-term agenda. But that doesn’t mean they want “socialism.” Voters’ overriding hunger is for young, authentic “anti-candidates” willing to fight Trump head-on. In progressive areas like New York City, that translates to wins for the DSA. But in deep-red Texas, voters rejected a progressive and chose young moderate James Talarico as their Senate candidate. The DSA’s rise shows Democrats need to embrace a “bolder, less cautious approach” to politics, not necessarily “move further left.”

Voters aren’t electing socialists because they dislike President Trump, said Harold Meyerson in Prospect. They’re electing socialists because working Americans are being ground down by the cost of gas, housing, and health care, and because they’re tired of watching the “Barons of Silicon Valley” game politics to expand their fortunes and lower their tax bills. Democrats shouldn’t embrace every radical policy of every DSA firebrand. But you’d think a party that’s been fretting for a decade about how to win back the votes of working people would recognize the DSA’s rise as a sign of what needs to happen for Democrats to “return to power and hold it.”

What happened

Overturning a 91-year precedent, the Supreme Court last week handed President Trump sweeping authority to control previously independent agencies—all except the Federal Reserve. In Trump v. Slaughter, the six conservative justices ruled that Trump was empowered to fire Rebecca Slaughter, a federal trade commissioner, last year because her views didn’t align with the White House’s agenda. The decision guts the precedent set by the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor decision, which held that Congress could limit the president’s ability to remove certain federal agency officials without cause. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that because the FTC “unquestionably exercises executive power,” it “must therefore be controlled by the chief executive.” In a scathing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the ruling gave the president “power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”

In a separate case, though, the court made the Federal Reserve exempt from that new presidential power. Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices in Trump v. Cook to rule that Trump overreached when he tried to fire Lisa Cook, a Fed governor, after accusing her of mortgage fraud. Roberts wrote that the Fed was different from other federal agencies because it was “uniquely structured” to maintain independence, and that the president must present legitimate cause before removing a Fed governor. Trump said he would begin that process “immediately” so he could proceed with ousting Cook. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, meanwhile, was skeptical of the Fed carve-out. “The court’s holding is in serious tension with Trump v. Slaughter,” she wrote in her dissent. “Might history sanction other exceptions too?”

What the columnists said

The Roberts court just took a “wrecking ball” to the separation of powers with Slaughter, said Alexis Romero in Slate. Now not just the FTC but dozens of other federal agencies designed by Congress to be insulated from partisan politics are “fully under Trump’s thumb.” You can bet a newly empowered Trump “will begin to make Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre look like a normal weekday.” He’s now free to retaliate against any agency leader who dares to investigate him for a violation of the law, refuses to attack his political rivals, or pushes back against attempts to manipulate elections. “This is the world the Supreme Court has created.”

The ruling “invites presidential abuse,” said Victoria Nourse in The Economist. Trump can now pressure leaders at the SEC or the National Labor Relations Board to ignore wrongdoing by his cronies. He can lean on the National Transportation Safety Board or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to waive safety requirements for his friends’ companies. At the Federal Election Commission, he could replace commissioners with “loyalists who deny that he lost the 2020 election.” He may not even need to fire people: Just “the threat may be enough.”

Yet it “may be premature” to declare the death of agencies’ independence, said Ilya Somin in Reason. That’s because Slaughter and Cook, as Barrett noted, appear completely incompatible. Sure, “central bank independence is a long-standing tradition,” but “the same is true of many other independent agencies.” More exceptions could follow. The two rulings are at odds because Slaughter “is good law and good policy,” said National Review in an editorial, and Cook is a mess. “If the president controls the executive branch, and doesn’t control the Fed, then what is the Fed?” It’s not a legislature and it’s not a court. “The Constitution doesn’t mention a fourth branch. But now we have one.”

It’s no surprise Roberts and Kavanaugh are willing to shield the Fed but not the other agencies, said Elie Mystal in The Nation. They “didn’t feel like crashing the global economy and tanking their 401(k)s.” Most federal agencies are there to protect the little guy the justices don’t care about: The FTC goes to bat for consumers, the NLRB for employees. The Fed, though, “protects the monetary policy that capitalists rely on to make their billions.”

The conservative justices are unruffled by this obvious double standard, said Zack Beauchamp in Vox. They consistently rule that their “own policy preferences are constitutionally mandated” while those they disagree with get extra scrutiny. The result is that the president has “an electoral dictatorship” in areas where the justices agree with him. Everywhere else, “the court sets policy.”

What happened

The Supreme Court last week struck down President Trump’s attempt to radically curtail birthright citizenship, a policy pursued by Trump for more than a decade, but greenlit other major elements of his hard-line immigration agenda. In a 6-3 vote, the court ruled against an executive order signed by Trump on the first day of his second term, which declared that future children born in the U.S. to undocumented migrants and most visa holders would not be considered citizens. Conservative justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberals in declaring that the order violates the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, which grants citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the order was constitutional but violated federal law. In a 91-page dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said the 14th Amendment was intended only to grant equal rights to freed slaves; Justice Samuel Alito called the ruling a “mistake that will seriously affect the country’s future.”

Days earlier, the court ruled the administration could strip Temporary Protected Status from more than 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians, setting the stage for mass deportations. That status lets migrants live and work in the U.S. if their home countries are deemed unsafe due to war or natural disasters. The administration tried to end TPS for both groups last year, drawing lawsuits that argued it had not followed proper procedures and was motivated by racial animus. In a 6-3 vote, the conservative majority said the TPS statute bars courts from reviewing the administration’s actions; on the discrimination issue, Alito wrote there was “insufficient” reason to believe Trump—who has said Haitian migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the U.S.—was driven by racism.

The ruling sowed panic among Haitians and Syrians in the U.S. Many people deported to gang-violence-wracked Haiti “are going to needlessly die,” said Geoff Pipoly, an attorney for the Haitian plaintiffs. Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine urged the Trump administration to reconsider, saying his state would lose valuable workers in manufacturing and especially health care. White House aide Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration crackdown, dismissed such concerns, saying if he had “a loved one in the hospital” he’d want “a licensed American nurse, not the illegal alien from Haiti.”

What the editorials said

The birthright decision was “a welcome, necessary defeat” for Trump, said the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. But the court “could have reached no other logical result.” The 14th Amendment is crystal clear: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” are U.S. citizens. But that win “doesn’t ease the human tragedy” of the TPS decision, which will allow a president driven by “seething racial bigotry” to uproot people who’ve worked and raised families here—forcing them back to places the State Department deems unsafe.

We oppose ejecting immigrants “who have put down roots and contribute to the country,” said The Wall Street Journal. But this was “an open and shut case.” The TPS law Congress passed in 1990 says there will be “no judicial review” of the administration’s determination of whether a country’s citizens qualify for the program, even if there are “procedural errors.” Justices’ job is “to interpret the law as written, not to impose their policy preferences.”

What the columnists said

Haitian communities “from Florida to Ohio” are bracing for what comes next, said Maria Sacchetti and Lauren Kaori Gurley in The Washington Post. Distraught immigrants “began making plans to sell or rent their homes, secure bank accounts, and figure out thorny issues like child-custody arrangements.” Factory and nursing-home owners steeled for the loss of key workers, and longtime residents reeled at the thought of being forced back to “conflict-ridden homelands they barely know.” It’s “the sickest and most evil thing somebody could do,” said Harlaine, a 38-year-old Florida nurse who left Haiti at age 7.

It’s also rank racism, said Adam Serwer in The Atlantic, and it’s astounding Alito would claim otherwise. Administration officials “have made no secret of their desire to purge the United States of nonwhite immigrants.” In her forceful dissent, Justice Elena Kagan cited Trump’s own words: that immigrants have “bad genes,” that Haitians “all have AIDS” and eat household pets, that America doesn’t take in enough “people from Norway and Sweden.” All this damning evidence was presented to the court, “yet the right-wing majority shrugged it off.”

While he’s faced the occasional setback, Trump is “winning the immigration wars,” said Adrian Carrasquillo in The Bulwark. In a second ruling last week, the court ruled that the administration can block asylum applications from outside the U.S., further limiting the ways people fleeing violence and repression can enter the country. And now it has “license to take away in an instant” the legal status of 1.3 million people living under TPS, all of whom “followed the rules to get here.”

The birthright decision was “a relief,” said Mark Joseph Stern in Slate. But the fact that the ruling was 5-4 and not 9-0 is “nothing short of stunning.” To judge Trump’s order unconstitutional “is the only remotely plausible reading of the 14th Amendment and its historical record.” Yet four justices ruled otherwise. That “shocking development” should “upend all expectations that this court can be trusted” to protect “the most basic constitutional guarantees.” If Trump came within a single vote of rolling back a constitutional amendment, then “everything is on the table.”

‘When law enforcement takes on immigration, our safety is the cost’

Amy L. Solomon at USA Today

The White House is “using federal money and incentives to push state and local agencies more deeply into immigration enforcement,” says Amy L. Solomon. The “question is not whether immigration laws should be enforced, but whether federal dollars are now driving police, sheriffs, prosecutors and other justice agencies toward a mission that could pull them away from their core responsibilities: preventing crime, solving serious cases, protecting victims and maintaining public trust.” This is a “distortion of mission.”

Read more

‘Lessons from the Graham Platner disaster’

Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times

Graham Platner’s Senate campaign has “become a shameful catastrophe,” says Michelle Goldberg. What’s “left — besides finding a Democrat to run in his place — is figuring out what, if anything, can be learned.” Platner’s campaign “represented an electoral insurgency against the Democratic Party; now, there are going to be furious recriminations against those who launched it.” Democrats “went out on a limb for him, and he had every reason to know it was going to be sawed off.”

Read more

‘Sam Altman offers a Trojan Horse to American taxpayers’

Gautam Mukunda at Bloomberg

Sam Altman believes “giving the government a 5% stake in the company he runs, OpenAI, is the best way to ensure that Americans shared in the promised bounty from artificial intelligence,” says Gautam Mukunda. But the White House “should organize a group trip to see Christopher Nolan’s new movie ‘The Odyssey,’ whose opening act is the most famous gift in Western literature: a giant wooden horse, wheeled through the gates of Troy.” The “lesson translates. Beware of CEOs bearing gifts.”

Read more

‘Is the FCC’s investigation having a chilling effect on “The View”?’

Tom Jones at the Poynter Institute

Maybe “intimidation and threats work after all — even when it comes to important topics like a free press,” says Tom Jones. “Whether or not the show qualifies as a news program, the FCC investigation appears to have had a chilling effect on ‘The View,’” even as “newscasts, news interviews, news documentaries and on-the-spot news coverage are exempt from the equal-time rule.” But the “bar for having a political candidate on the show is high.”

Read more

Anti-abortion politics helped make the modern GOP. Activists supplied energy and votes to the conservative movement for nearly a half-century after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973. That energy has dissipated a bit in recent years, but justices may have handed the right a new rallying cause: birthright citizenship.

‘A new bloody shirt’

The Supreme Court’s narrow ruling last week upholding birthright citizenship “just handed right-wingers a new bloody shirt to wave in every single political campaign,” Georgetown University’s Aderson Francois said to The Atlantic. The topic “will become the new Roe v. Wade” for Republican politicians trying to appeal to anti-immigration voters who want to keep the American-born children of migrants from automatically becoming citizens. The issue will be more salient because the court voted 5-4 in the case. Conservative activists “now know they are only one vote away from eliminating birthright citizenship by judicial fiat,” said The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer.

“The conservative legal movement is far better equipped today” than the antiabortion movement was in 1973, Rachel Bovard of the Conservative Partnership Institute said at First Things. The right overturned Roe through “decades of activism, thought leadership, strategic litigation and judicial appointments.” That model “should now be aimed” at birthright citizenship and must “act as a litmus test for every future conservative nominee.” Granting unquestioned citizenship to the children of migrants “incentivizes illegal entry, rewards birth tourism and erodes the meaning of citizenship for generations to come.”

The debate about birthright citizenship is “about to get worse,” Jonah Goldberg said at The Dispatch. We have seen this story before. Rather than settling the issue, Roe v. Wade failed to spare the country an “ugly debate over abortion.” The same will be true of citizenship. The court has “more than likely turbocharged” the debate over immigration.

‘Just getting started’

Justices actually gave the country a “reverse Roe v. Wade” in the birthright case, Thomas G. Moukawsher said at Newsweek. The court in Roe created a “privacy right to abortion that was previously unknown” while in the citizenship ruling it refused to “take away a birth-based citizenship right that was universally known.” The Trump administration’s attempt to overturn that right via executive order “contradicted a bedrock assumption about who was an American” that a majority of the court could not abide.

The conservative movement “turned Roe into its jurisprudential white whale,” said Jay Willis at Balls and Strikes. The right “spent five decades organizing around the goal of someday killing” that ruling, and did so in 2022 even though the legal arguments had not really changed. The only difference across 50 years was that conservatives “at last marshaled the five votes they needed to do it.” The crusade against birthright citizenship is “just getting started.”

Republican voters are “sounding more and more” like President Donald Trump on the issue, said Sarah Longwell at The Bulwark. Birthright citizenship is going to be a policy touchstone for any “GOP presidential aspirant in 2028 and beyond.”

What happened

Two bombs exploded Tuesday morning near the Damascus hotel where French President Emmanuel Macron is staying during his historic stopover in Syria. Macron, who arrived in Damascus last night, is the first major Western leader to visit the country since Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in 2024.

At least 18 people were wounded in the explosions, including four police officers, Syria’s Interior Ministry said. But Macron had already left the Four Seasons, Reuters said, and the “blasts were not audible from the presidential motorcade” as he headed toward his meeting with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa.

Who said what

The explosions “are a blow for al-Sharaa,” who has “pushed to assert full control and bring stability in war-torn Syria” after his Islamist-led insurgency toppled Assad, The Associated Press said. Macron “played a major role in pushing Europe and the United States to drop most sanctions on Syria” after al-Sharaa took over, and he is “scheduled to sign memorandums of understanding” as the “battered country tries to lure investors to help it rebuild after 14 years of war.”

“I have come to express France’s commitment to the Syrian people,” Macron said on social media. “Together, let us open a new chapter of stability and peace.”

What next?

France said Macron “intended to stick to his planned schedule for the day” before heading to Turkey for a NATO summit, Reuters said.

What happened

A man in Rochester, New York, Monday sued the Department of Homeland Security and ICE after two agents tracked him down last month to deliver a “warning notice” over an email he sent in January. In it, David Streever called acting ICE Director Todd Lyons a “monstrous human being” who “will never know peace” due to his “shame” over “protecting the obvious execution” of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., accuses DHS of violating Streever’s First Amendment rights and requests that the court prohibit similar investigations into lawful criticism of government officials.

Who said what

The Homeland Security Investigations agents who tried to confront Streever at home, then at his New York City hotel when he returned from Finland two days later, warned that the email to Lyons may have constituted an illegal threat. The same HSI agents issued a “similar warning the same day to a poll worker in Syracuse,” Paigelynne Gonyea, over a January Instagram post about the ICE agent who killed Good, The New York Times said. After Gonyea went public, The Washington Post said, “she heard from six other people around the country — including Streever — who say they also received similar visits from federal agents in recent months.”

What next?

“Any allegation DHS and its components are attempting to ‘squash’ free speech is categorically FALSE,” DHS said in a statement Monday. But “anyone who assaults or threatens our law enforcement officers will face the consequences.”

What happened

Maine and national Democrats and a growing number of high-profile progressive Graham Platner endorsers Monday called for the Democratic Senate nominee to drop out of the race to unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R) due to a rape accusation from a former girlfriend.

“Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically false,” Platner said in a video after Politico published the allegation. “Regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting but mindful of the political reality it will inflict, we’re taking the time to reflect on the best path forward.”

Who said what

Maine resident Jenny Racicot told Politico that Platner, whom she had dated on and off, came over drunk and uninvited one night in 2021 and forced her into unwanted sex. She provided corroborative evidence. “He violated multiple layers of consent that night,” she told CNN Monday night.

Platner “has long been controversial,” The Associated Press said, but the “sexual allegation sparked a flight away from the candidate.” The “three biggest Democratic groups trying to flip the Senate” all “dropped their nominee in a must-win race,” Politico said, and support from “key outside groups” also “immediately dried up.”

What next?

If Platner withdraws from the race by next Monday, the state Democratic Party can still replace him up to July 27. Top Maine Democratic Party officials have discussed a “pop-up convention” or a “statewide caucus” to pick Platner’s potential replacement, but have “ruled out having the state party’s committee” make the choice, The New York Times said.

“For centuries, the Cerne Abbas Giant has been hard to miss,” said the BBC. The 55-foot chalk outline of a “naked, club-wielding man” cut into a hillside in the Dorset countryside is “one of the UK’s most instantly recognisable historic landmarks”.

Following recent fundraising efforts, the National Trust purchased the land surrounding the figure to help preserve it for future generations. Its origins are unknown but scientific analysis of sediments published in 2021 revealed the giant was probably first cut in the late Saxon period, between 700 and 1100 AD. Every eight to 10 years, volunteers visit the hillside to restore the figure by packing fresh white chalk into his outline.

Britain is “seared” with chalk figures like this one, said Dr Matthew Green in The Telegraph. From “fantastical beasts” to “beguiling symbols”, the “unsettling and beautiful” shapes are “cut into the bedrock of chalky hills”. In the “absence of detailed written evidence”, their roots remain a mystery.

Among the most “striking” is the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire. Best seen from the car park above Dragon Hill, it’s “more of a spectral echo of a horse than a horse”: the chalky outline doesn’t have hooves, its mouth looks like a beak, and it has a “ghastly, ghostly eye”.

Archaeology has dated the horse’s creation to 3,000 years ago in “the late Bronze Age” which is an “extraordinary survival”, said Jon Woolcott in The Guardian. “Generation after generation” have cared for it, “somehow keeping it bound to its wind-blown hill”.

Just over the border in Wiltshire, the rolling green hills are peppered with eight other chalk horses. Following the Ridgeway trail, you can walk to the Alton Barnes White Horse which is carved into Milk Hill, and another gleaming white horse cut into Cherhill Down near Oldbury Castle.

Drive for around two-and-a-half hours into East Sussex and on a “steep scarp of the South Downs” you’ll find the Long Man of Wilmington trekking over the hill, a “stave clasped in each hand”. Possibly Anglo-Saxon in origin, the “mysterious” carving has “fascinated” artists and writers for hundreds of years. Like the 40 or so other chalk figures that mark the British landscape, “their appearance enlivens walks and invites conjecture” to this day.

Nigel Farage has said he will resign as an MP to fight a by-election in his constituency of Clacton that he says will be a “chance to stick two fingers up to the establishment”.

Farage's decision comes amid a row over his finances, after The Sunday Times reported he had not declared benefits, including staff and security, received from his long-time adviser George Cottrell.

Known as “Posh George”, the 32-year-old “babyfaced British aristocrat and former US federal inmate”, holds no official role in Reform UK, but he has been “Farage’s closest adviser for more than a decade and travels with him in Westminster and around the country”, said The Sunday Times. Farage denies that the benefits he received from Cottrell required registration under the rules governing MPs.

“In a party with little fondness for strictures, Reform UK insiders maintain that there is one rule,” said UnHerd’s Rob Lownie. “Don’t ask what Posh George does.”

‘Family soap empire’

George Swinfen Cottrell was born into the heart of the British establishment.

His father, Mark Cottrell, went to school with Prince Andrew. His mother, the Honourable Fiona Watson, daughter of Rupert Watson, 3rd Baron Manton and heir to a “family soap empire”, is a former girlfriend of King Charles. His uncle is Alexander Fermor-Hesketh, 3rd Baron Hesketh, a hereditary peer, former Conservative chief whip and treasurer, and later Ukip politician.

Having been expelled from school due to a reported gambling addiction, Cottrell became a “fixer-cum-financier to the ultra-rich in Mayfair”, said The Times. According to a 2017 Telegraph profile, he worked in offshore banking before being made Ukip’s head of fundraising in 2015 at the age of just 22.

Inner circle member but no official position

Just to be clear, said The Independent's political editor David Maddox, Cottrell is “not some fringe figure or mere acquaintance in Farage’s political life” but “one of the tightest members of the Reform leader’s inner circle”.

He was by Farage's side on the day of the Brexit referendum in June 2016, but only a month later was arrested in the US as he and Farage prepared to fly back to the UK after the Republican National Convention. Caught agreeing to launder drug money in an undercover FBI sting operation, Cottrell faced 20 years in jail, but he struck a plea deal in which he admitted guilt to a wire fraud charge and served just eight months.

In the years since, he dated reality TV star Georgia Toffolo and moved to Montenegro. It was here that he became a key player in Tether.bet, an online cryptocurrency bookmaker and casino, part-owned by Christopher Harborne, the billionaire who gave Farage a £5 million gift in early 2024. He also co-authored a book “How to Launder Money”.

And he has remained close to Farage and the various iterations of the political party that eventually became Reform UK.

He “holds no official position” and “is not employed by the party”, yet he has become one of Farage’s “closest political confidants”, said Politics UK. Farage has previously described Cottrell as being “like a son”, with him calling Nigel “daddy“.

‘As fatal as Mandelson was for Starmer’

Until the Sunday Times expose, we knew little about the exact relationship between Farage and Cottrell, said George Wright on the BBC. Now, “the aristocrat is at the centre of the latest controversy” surrounding the Reform UK leader’s murky personal finances.

The Sunday Times says Cottrell provided Farage with a series of benefits in kind, including security, made up of elite former soldiers and drivers, staff to “transform” his social media presence, and accommodation, including the use of a five-storey house near Buckingham Palace.

Farage is now facing scrutiny for failing to declare any of this when he became an MP, except for £9,523.60 – the estimated costs of flights for him and a staff member to travel to a conference in Belgium.

Opinions are split over how much this could harm Farage in the long-term, but “with Reform on the slide and other questions” about his personal finances, Cottrell’s “presence in his inner circle could prove as fatal as Mandelson was for Starmer and Pincher was for Johnson”, said Maddox.

As Iran’s religious, political and military elite turned out to say farewell to the country’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, one figure was conspicuously absent.

Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father as the de facto head of the Islamic Republic, has not been seen in public since the joint US-Israeli air strikes that killed many of his close family members and decapitated the regime on the first day of the war.

Khamenei, who is said to have been seriously injured in the attack, is believed to be in hiding due to Israeli threats to his life, but his absence has “raised questions about who is really running the country, and allowed extraordinary open divisions to fester”, said Farnaz Fassihi in The New York Times.

What did the commentators say?

For 36 years, “the question of who ultimately ruled Iran had one answer”, said Joshua Keating for Vox. While the country has an elected president and legislature, “whenever the US confronted Iran, American policymakers knew it was Khamenei who would make the final decision.”

But now “they’re no longer so sure”. With the sheer number of senior figures who have been killed over the past four months, “there’s something of a power vacuum in Tehran right now”.

In the void left by the killing of a supreme leader “who exerted absolute power over all important decisions”, the conservatives have “split” and generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have “consolidated power, effectively running the country”, said Fassihi.

With the power of the new supreme leader greatly diminished, and various factions and facets of the state jockeying for influence, the question now is just who is actually in charge of the Iranian system.

“The system is in control of the system,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East program at Chatham House, told Vox. “I know we all want to think that there’s one individual that has power or authority. There’s no one commander in chief. It is a system that is commanding collectively for the time being.”

If the week-long funeral for Ali Khamenei represents a “calculated projection of strength by a regime determined to demonstrate continuity and resilience despite an extraordinary crisis”, it has done little to quell questions “over the country’s political succession”, said France24.

What next?

Amid the jostling for power, Khamenei’s funeral is undoubtedly a “big moment”, said BBC diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams: a “grand reminder that the old guard has given way to the new. And with the new faces comes a new approach with its own implications.”

The new leadership is not made up of ageing ideologues who emerged in opposition to the Shah and subsequently the US, “but of generally post-revolutionary leaders ruthlessly focussed on preserving the state and willing to act more decisively than their predecessors”, said Vali Nasr, professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“A whole new generation has taken over. They have a very clear agenda. They managed the war and now they’re going to manage the peace as well.”

New medicine can be found even in the iciest of locations. During an expedition to Antarctica, scientists discovered a species of sea squirt that may promise a new cancer treatment. The marine organism contains bacteria capable of producing a toxin that could eventually become a widely available drug. However, research still needs to be done on the species and bacteria before it can be tested on humans.

The dive

The cancer-fighting sea squirt, also called an ascidian, was first discovered 20 years ago and identified as a potential cancer therapy. The bacterium in the organism, Candidatus Synoicihabitans palmerolidicus, can “produce the metabolite palmerolide A, which kills melanoma cells without causing too much harm to healthy human cells,” said Discover.

Scientists have now conducted a second expedition to Antarctica to “better understand the compound and explore whether it could someday contribute to new therapies for patients battling melanoma,” said a news release by the University of South Florida. “Our expedition focused on determining where the ascidian’s melanoma-killing bacterium occurs and how widespread it is,” Sam Afoullouss, a postdoctoral researcher who participated in the dive, said in the release. “We also wanted to understand how it lives inside the organism and how that connects to the compounds linked to melanoma research.”

Sea squirts are “sac-like marine invertebrates that tend to live on sloped sea beds,” said the BBC. The ascidians found in Antarctica have “evolved over millions of years to cope with the harsh conditions there, producing chemical defenses that can deter predators and disease.” The discovered species was found at “depths between 60 and 80 feet, often along sloped or vertical seafloor surfaces where water currents are strong,” said the release. These “currents help deliver nutrients that sustain the organisms.” Such conditions allow for the organisms to be highly specialized.

The test

The researchers tested the sea squirt’s bacteria on melanoma cells in mice. “The good news is it didn’t kill the mice,” Bill Baker, a chemistry professor at the University of South Florida who led the first expedition and advised the second one, said to The Guardian. “It did kill their cancer, so we know it has the physiological properties to act like a drug.” The scientists are also analyzing the “quantity and distribution of palmerolide A, the bacterium, and the molecular target of palmerolide A,” Baker said to Discover. “These analyses will help us determine, for example, whether the ascidian and bacterium are working in concert, whether the bacterium is detrimental to the ascidian, or one of several other potential relationships between the two.”

Most FDA-approved drugs originated in nature, and Antarctica could be a rich source of new possibilities. While the sea squirt shows promise, the “pathway to producing a safe and effective anti-melanoma drug, with approval for use in humans, is long,” said The Guardian. It would “require a succession of strictly regulated and ever-expanding trials even after a drug was formulated.” Still, the knowledge gained from this expedition “could significantly advance the timeline.”

When you make a purchase using links on our site, The Week may earn a commission. All reviews are written independently by our editorial team.

It is unseasonably warm in some parts of the world, and the indoors beckons as many of us try to escape the heat. A few of this month’s new books will make the perfect companion for some cool summer reading. July’s releases include the highly anticipated conclusion of Colson Whitehead’s trilogy and an author’s first foray into romantasy.

‘How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance and the Race to Save Our Words’ by Sophia Smith Galer

Nonfiction fans will find journalist Sophia Smith Galer’s “erudite exploration” of what she dubs ‘systemic linguicide’ fascinating, said Publishers Weekly. The number of languages that have ever existed is “placed at between 31,000 and 140,000,” but at most “only 4,000 will remain by the 22nd century, about half of the current total.”

Moreover, many of them “will not have died natural deaths” but will have been “killed off.” Smith Galer “weaves together heart-wrenching accounts” of those who have “suffered linguicide.” The collection of personal accounts creates a “spirited reconsideration of language as a natural resource that must be protected.” (July 7, $33, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘Dominion’ by Jean Kwok

Jean Kwok, who is best known for “contemporary family dramas” like “Girl in Translation” and “Searching for Sylvie Lee,” “swerves into romantasy with this Chinese mythology-infused epic,” said The New York Times. “Dominion” is the first book in a planned trilogy that follows Rubi Morningtail, a refugee who lost her memory after a demonic attack.

Kwok’s romantasy debut has been described as “‘Fourth Wing’ meets ‘The Hunger Games,’” Jezebel said. The story is a cornucopia of genre favorites: “romance, action, magic, politics, a broody hero, a heroine coming into her own and a fierce mythical companion animal.” (July 14, $32, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘Cool Machine’ by Colson Whitehead

The highly anticipated conclusion of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Colson Whitehead’s “Harlem Trilogy” arrives this summer. Following 2021’s “Harlem Shuffle” and 2023’s “Crook Manifesto,” readers with an “appetite for Whitehead’s noir fiction and stylishly exuberant storytelling” are rewarded with an “atmospheric, stylish finale,” said The Independent. Whitehead brings 1980s New York to “vivid, unforgettable life.” (July 21, $30, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘Dad, Love, Me: A Memoir’ by Matthew Quick

In this “deeply personal” memoir, South Carolina novelist Matthew Quick, author of “The Silver Linings Playbook,” reflects on his public success and “private struggles with depression, addiction and the lingering wounds of a fraught relationship with his father,” said Southern Living. As his father’s dementia progresses, Quick “confronts his past and races to find healing and reconciliation before it’s too late.” (July 21, $30, Simon and Schuster, Amazon)

‘Fishbone Cinderella’ by Elizabeth Lim

Young adult fiction author Elizabeth Lim makes her adult debut with a “historical fantasy inspired by the Chinese version of Cinderella,” in which magical fish bones replace a fairy godmother, said Literary Hub. The “multigenerational tale” takes place across two timelines: 1940s occupied Hong Kong and 1960s San Francisco.

The story follows a Chinese girl who “only manages to escape the Japanese soldiers during the Sino-Japanese War by turning invisible” and, in turn, learns of a family curse that could be related to her newfound magic, said Book Riot. (July 28, $30, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

Round Hill, Va.

This 1950 dairy barn with a stone silo on 3 acres in the Stoneleigh community, about an hour from Washington, D.C., has been converted into a five-bedroom modern farmhouse.

The barn’s original wood structure forms vaulted ceilings over wood floors, a living room with a fireplace, and a mezzanine loft. The kitchen has soapstone counters and a walk-in pantry. Outside are a one-bedroom carriage house, run-in shed, and garage. $2,999,990. Nancy Bossard, Long & Foster McLean/Luxury Portfolio International, (703) 431-2940

Sonoma, Calif.

Dos Palmas, a barn restored in 2007, makes use of the original post-and-beam frame, which contrasts with steel, marble, brass, and walnut. The three-bedroom includes a loft with a fireplace, a modern kitchen, and a connected silo with a spiral staircase.

The nearly 3-acre lot features a guest house, pool, bocce court, and olive and fruit trees. Sonoma’s main plaza is about a 10-minute drive. $5,250,000. Erin Lail, Coldwell Banker Brokers of the Valley, (707) 333-5596

Glen Ellen, Calif.

This Australia-inspired farmhouse with a corrugated metal roof and a cupola is on more than 5 acres about 50 miles northeast of San Francisco. Anchoring the home is a vaulted, wood-paneled great room with a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace; a lower level has a catering kitchen and a theater.

Sonoma Creek crosses the property, which also includes a two-bedroom cottage, a garage, and a tower with a studio and gym. $4,400,000. Wendy Storch, Sotheby’s International Realty—San Francisco Brokerage, (415) 519-6091

Kent, Conn.

On 11 acres in Litchfield County, this circa-1800 Greek Revival farmhouse is in a historic downtown along the Housatonic River. The renovated four-bedroom has a black-and-white diamond floor entry, a living room with built-ins, a wood-paneled dining room, and a chef’s kitchen with a Wolf range, a farmhouse sink, and quartz counters.

The property includes a covered porch, lawns, woods, a saltwater pool, and a barn from 1862. $2,595,000. Jeffrey Phillips, William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty, (917) 284-8276

Minneapolis

In leafy Lowry Hill near the Lake of the Isles, this 2020 modern farmhouse has five bedrooms. The stylish contemporary includes oak herringbone floors, rustic wood beams, a kitchen with two islands and a teal walk-in pantry, arched doorways, hand-plastered walls, and a gym connected to the primary suite.

A lower level has a rec room and a sauna, and sliders open to a pool, spa, and lounge area. $4,500,000. Sheri Fine, Edina Realty/Luxury Portfolio International, (612) 720-2442

Upper Jay, N.Y.

In the Adirondacks near the Sentinel Range Wilderness Area, this updated 1880 four-bedroom is across from the Ausable River. The kitchen includes new flooring, a wood-paneled wall, exposed brick, open shelving, and an apron sink, while the living room has roofline windows and a woodstove.

The three-quarter-acre lot has a wraparound porch, a roomy yard, and a firepit area. Lake Placid’s dining and shops are about 20 minutes away. $539,000. Brenda Goulette, Engel & Völkers Lake Placid, (518) 637-1748

‘The Invite’

Directed by Olivia Wilde (R)

★★★

Olivia Wilde’s new comedy drama is “the kind of smart, well-crafted film for adults we are constantly complaining we don’t get enough of,” said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. Wilde, in her third directorial offering, co-stars as a stay-at-home-mom who, to the consternation of her failed musician husband, Joe, has invited the freewheeling couple upstairs to dinner. With Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penelope Cruz filling out the cast, the charged get-together soon turns into “a night that Edward Albee would approve of,” except that this evening hits peak tension when the guests extend a surprise invitation to join them for a night of group sex.

Perhaps because it’s an adaptation of a 2016 Spanish play that has spawned overseas film versions, The Invite is “an American film that feels vaguely international,” said Matt Zoller Seitz in RogerEbert.com. Though the first half is overdirected to the point of being “irritating,” the showy camerawork fades away as the actors take over, creating a second half that’s “the best work Wilde has yet done as a director.” While all four actors excel, “it’s Rogen who’s the revelation,” said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. “His line readings fill out Joe’s backstory brilliantly, a guy who was always used to being rejected, somehow landed a girl way out of his league 20 years ago, and now is miserable that she doesn’t really want him anymore.” In this movie, relationships change because people change. “To me, that feels true.”

‘Minions & Monsters’

Directed by Pierre Coffin (PG)

★★★

Though they’re “one of the more enduring creations of 21st-century cinema,” the Minions “still get no respect,” said Scott Roxborough in The Hollywood Reporter. Maybe, though, this seventh film in the Despicable Me franchise will finally end a 16-year awards shutout, because it’s a love letter to cinema that argues, between its mile-a-minute gags, that the highest-grossing animated franchise of all time deserves a place in Hollywood’s canon. Minions & Monsters is “very much a film of two halves,” said Drew Taylor in The Wrap. In the first, a quick history tour revisits how bad Minions have been in their quest to find villains to serve, until one group lands in 1920s Hollywood and stumbles into stardom. A flurry of homages to Buster Keaton and other legends follows, until talkies arrive and put the gibberish-spouting Minions out of work.

The second half offers more-conventional Minion action, yet it “builds to an open-hearted tribute to the power of the communal moviegoing experience.” When two of the Minions start work on creating a monster movie using real monsters, this outing “does rather lose momentum,” said Guy Lodge in Variety. But as the film speeds toward a standard save-the-world climax, the latest Minions serves up the usual mayhem “with gusto and a delirious cartoon grin.” It’s “a clear peak for the series: a Minions movie with an actual idea at its core beyond general cheerful chaos.”

Who opposes data centers?

Most Americans. A recent Gallup poll found that 71% of voters, including 75% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans, don’t want a data center built in their area. Hostility to these artificial intelligence facilities is “the most bipartisan issue since beer,” Milwaukee-based comedian Charlie Berens said at a recent rally against a 700,000-square-foot Meta facility in Port Washington, Wis. Opponents of these warehouse-like complexes, which are filled with energy-hungry computer servers, are racking wins. At least 75 projects worth about $130 billion were blocked or canceled in the first three months of 2026. After a 247,000-square-foot data center was proposed in Monterey Park, Calif., voters there last month overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure permanently banning such projects. Theirs is the first U.S. city with such a prohibition, but at least 67 other towns have temporary bans. Politicians who support data centers are paying the price at the polls: Stuart Adams, president of Utah’s state senate, and two local commissioners lost their GOP primaries last week after helping to approve a 62-square-mile facility in northwestern Utah. “Everybody who touched the data center went down,” said Brenna Williams, an anti-data-center campaigner. “People just wanted to send a message.”

Why do people want to block these projects?

For some, it’s the vast amount of water and energy they use. Water is used to cool servers, which can get dangerously hot, and a large facility can guzzle up to 5 million gallons a day—about as much as a town of 50,000 people. In areas already struggling with drought, such as Utah, many residents fear the needs of data centers will be put before their own. Data centers also strain power grids. The nation’s more than 4,000 data centers now consume 6% of all U.S. electricity, up from 4% two years ago, and a single large-scale facility can use about 1 gigawatt of electricity, enough to power 750,000 homes. With data centers being built faster than new power sources are coming online, utility bills are rising fast. In states with a high concentration of data centers, such as Virginia, electricity prices have spiked 267% in five years. There are other concerns: the pollution pumped out by on-site generators, the constant hum of cooling systems, and the sheer size and ugliness of the buildings. Opposition to data centers is “rooted in the one thing that has always united Americans,” said Megan Mullin, a professor of public policy at UCLA: “Our deep affinity for where we live.”

What do AI firms say?

They argue that fears around water and energy use are overblown, and that data centers are a net gain for communities. The build-out of 3,000 planned facilities is expected to create 4.7 million temporary construction-related jobs, according to a Meta-backed policy group. It also projects that some 700,000 permanent jobs will be created to operate and manage those facilities. To reduce the environmental impact of their centers, firms including Microsoft and OpenAI have pledged to slash water use, and microchip makers such as Nvidia are designing more energy-efficient processors. But opposition to data centers is likely to remain intense.

Why is that?

Because that opposition is motivated in part by hostility to artificial intelligence. A June survey by consultancy Milltown Partners found only 8% of data center opponents actually live near a facility, and that 63% have a negative view of AI. That suggests data centers are a stand-in for anger at Big Tech and AI, which some industry leaders have warned could result in mass unemployment and—in a worst-case scenario—humanity’s extinction. The opposition “isn’t happening in a vacuum,” said Milltown’s Tom Brookes. “The AI transformation is arriving at a time when Americans already feel angry, insecure, and pessimistic.” In some cases, that anger is turning into violence. In April, an unknown attacker fired 13 shots into the home of an Indianapolis councilman who’d voted in favor of an AI facility, and left a note that read “No Data Centers.”

How are lawmakers responding to the backlash?

Some want a pause in construction. New York’s Democratic-led state legislature in May passed a one-year moratorium on new data centers; it has yet to be signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul. In April, Maine’s Democratic Gov. Janet Mills vetoed similar legislation. The populist right is also pushing back on data centers, despite President Trump issuing an executive order last year to speed their construction. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill in May barring utilities from shifting data center costs to ordinary ratepayers. And red-tape averse Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last month issued sweeping data center regulation recommendations for the state legislature to pass in its next session, including mandating “closed loop” cooling systems that reuse water and requiring new facilities to contribute to the state’s electricity supply.

Is a halt on construction likely?

No, because too many officials want a slice of the money being poured into the buildout; six Big Tech companies will spend an estimated $1 trillion on data centers in 2027. Few politicians on either the Left or Right have backed calls for a pause or a ban; more are pushing measures they claim will reduce the impact of data center development. Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger is set to sign a tax on data center energy usage, capped at $600 million a year, while Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine recently paused tax breaks for AI facilities after a government report found they cost the state nearly $1.6 billion in lost revenue last year. But those measures won’t stop protests by anti-data-center campaigners, who are demanding a meaningful crackdown on the industry. “I’m frustrated,” said Annette Singh of Hilliard, Ohio, who says a huge new Amazon data center has ruined her once peaceful neighborhood. “I want better politicians.”

Americans use air conditioning just about everywhere. Europeans, for the most part, do not. But a deadly summer heat wave that threatens to become the new climate normal has sparked a fierce debate about whether it is time for the continent to finally cool down.

The dispute has grown “especially heated” in recent weeks, said Yahoo News. “Millions” of visiting World Cup fans have kept cool in “American bars, restaurants, hotels and even stadiums” while their neighbors back home suffered Europe’s “worst-ever heat wave” without much relief. Just 20% of European homes have AC, mostly because northern Europe “rarely got hot enough to justify” the technology until recently, and electricity is “way more expensive” than in the United States. The air conditioning divide also “reflects deep cultural differences” highlighted by the warming climate.

‘Vast amounts of suffering’

Americans and Europeans have “very different ideas about physical suffering and sacrifice,” said Thomas Chatterton Williams at The Atlantic. Americans are “scandalized” by European reluctance to cool down, but Europeans are “much more willing” to see discomfort as “part of life.” The result is “far too much air conditioning on one side” of the Atlantic Ocean and “not remotely enough on the other.”

Air conditioning can “save your life” but also “drain your bank account and accelerate the apocalypse,” said Jonn Elledge at The New World. Running AC “adds to your carbon emissions,” especially if you are using “cheap portable air conditioning units” that people tend to panic-buy during a heat wave. The flip side is that most British homes overheat during the summer, with terrible effects on “health, productivity, hydration levels.” The electricity bills to cool your home will be high, but death or extreme discomfort is “also likely to impact your household finances.”

Europe’s resistance to air conditioning is “driving it insane,” Noah Smith said at his Substack, Noahpinion. The lack of AC is causing “vast amounts of suffering” and death as “punishing, brutal heat waves” become more frequent. The continent’s elites are reluctant to adopt air conditioning, partly from fears that doing so would “change European culture in strange and unacceptable ways.” But climate change is causing a “rise in preventable death” on the continent. If you think U.S. gun culture is a problem, “you should think that heat in Europe is an even bigger emergency.”

‘Frivolous sideshow’

Adding more air conditioning to Europe’s grid could create a “vicious cycle,” said Deutsche Welle. The electricity to power those devices is substantially “generated by polluting, planet-warming fossil fuels.” That “only makes the problem worse.”

The debate may seem like a “frivolous sideshow,” but it actually reflects Europe’s inability to make “quick, effective, wholesale transformation even in the face of vital threats,” said Rym Momtaz at Carnegie Europe. The climate emergency has been coming for decades, and the continent’s governments are not ready. “Why trust them to manage defense if they can’t properly manage a heat wave?”

Even with the many streaming-induced changes to the film industry’s operations, July remains a month for blockbusters. This July will include an intriguing mix of madcap comedies, sweeping action epics and independent fare hoping to get as many viewers into theaters — or in front of their televisions — as possible.

‘Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass’

Gail (Zoey Deutch) is so shocked when her fiance, Tom (Michael Cassidy), uses his half-joking “celebrity sex pass” — an exception to marriage vows if the opportunity arises to sleep with your most-lusted-after famous person — that she decides to even the score by traveling to Los Angeles and convincing actor Jon Hamm to go to bed with her. Featuring a “tone that’s broad, antic, overemphatic and a bit wacked,” director David Wain (“Wet Hot American Summer”) brings us a film “so aggressive in its meta absurdity that it makes an episode of ‘Seinfeld’ look like Ingmar Bergman,” said Owen Gleiberman at Variety. (in theaters July 10)

‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’

After a year of protests and war for Iran, the timing for an adaptation of Azar Nafisi’s celebrated 2003 memoir is exquisite. Golshifteh Farahahi (“Invasion”) stars as Nafisi in Israeli director Eran Riklis’ film that follows her from her sacking as an English professor at the University of Tehran following the 1979 revolution to her emigration to the United States in 1997.

The book gets its title from the secret book club Nafisi conducted in her home for her students, including Sanaz (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) and Mahshid (Bahar Beihaghi), after her dismissal. The film’s “message about the humane power of literature” makes it a “work of art rather than an exercise in sloganeering,” said Arash Azizi at The Atlantic. (in theaters July 10)

‘The Odyssey’

There may be no more bankable director working in Hollywood today than Christopher Nolan (“The Dark Knight”). He has succeeded at everything from science fiction (“Interstellar”) to war (“Dunkirk”).

In “The Odyssey,” Nolan tackles Homer’s epic story of Odysseus (Matt Damon), the king of Ithaca, and his journey home to his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), following the Trojan War. An extraordinary cast includes Zendaya as the goddess Athena and Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, the king of Sparta. Nolan “has been circling this kind of scale for much of his career, but ‘The Odyssey’ marks a new technical milestone even for him,” said Rodrigo Perez at The Playlist. (in theaters July 17)

‘The Dink’

Sports comedies like “Dodgeball” don’t always get the critical love they deserve. In “The Dink,” director Josh Greenbaum (“Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar”) looks to capture the zeitgeist with a big-hearted satire of the pickleball phenomenon.

Jake Johnson stars as Dusty Boyd, an over-the-hill tennis pro slumming it as a children’s tennis teacher at his father Chuck’s (Ed Harris) country club, where pickleball is squeezing out tennis. When an injury forces Dustin to try pickleball, he meets Candace (Mary Steenburgen) and reevaluates his kneejerk loathing of the sport. It has “all the hallmarks of a typical sports redemption story,” said Ryan O’Rourke and Maggie Lovitt at Collider. (July 24 on Apple TV+)

‘A Sad and Beautiful World’

Nino (Hasan Akil) and Yasmina (Mounia Akl), who were born on the same day in a Beirut hospital, are childhood friends who rediscover each other as young adults and fall in love against the backdrop of Lebanese political turmoil and violence. The country’s tragic 21st-century travails provide much of the fodder for the couple’s drama in director Cyril Aris’ moving film, including whether to stay or emigrate, with touches of magical realism and whimsy providing levity. A movie that “combines exuberant comedy with soft-hearted drama,” it “builds its entire thesis on the idea that there is still reason for hope,” said Matthew Joseph Jenner at International Cinephile Society. (in theaters July 24)

Historically unpopular and facing potentially catastrophic midterm elections in November, President Donald Trump has thrown an electoral hand grenade into the campaign calendar. “For the first time ever, the Republican Party will hold a midterm convention” in Dallas, Texas, Sept. 9-10 — a “rally like none other,” said Trump on Truth Social last week. And as the president tries to consolidate GOP strength ahead of a make-or-break election, Democrats see signs of desperation and political opportunities.

What did the commentators say?

Party officials have been “planning the logistics of the event for months,” after Trump became “enamored with the idea of a splashy midterm convention last year,” said The New York Times. Given that the party in power has “historically lost ground in midterm elections, Republicans see a convention so close to election day as “offering the party a large platform to make the case to stay in power.” Democrats had “briefly considered” holding their own midterm convention, but ultimately “decided against such a pricey event.”

The “Trumpapalooza” gathering will offer Republicans a “chance to highlight all the wonderful things this president has done,” said Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters to Fox News. GOP officials also hope the convention will “energize MAGA voters who don’t always vote when Trump isn’t on the ballot,” said the outlet. Despite being “designed to showcase Republican achievements,” however, the planned convention is “likely to have detractors, even among party officials,” said Al Jazeera. Critics fear the event could “draw resources away from key battlegrounds in the final stretch of the race,” and will “shine a spotlight on Trump himself at a moment when his poll numbers are drooping.”

Although the convention “comes at a politically vulnerable time” for Republicans, its “location in Texas is also significant,” said Time. “No further proof is needed” that the GOP is “freaking the f*** out” over their midterms standing, said Texas State Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez (D) on X. While Texas has “not elected a Democrat statewide in decades,” Democratic State Rep. James Talarico is currently neck and neck with Attorney General Ken Paxton for outgoing Sen. John Cornyn’s (R) U.S. Senate seat, and has become “one of his party’s top fundraisers,” said the Times.

Whether GOP officials “appreciate it or not,” there are “two main problems they should probably keep in mind,” said MS NOW. First, “holding a national convention is extremely expensive.” Second, and “just as important,” is the fact that the goal of a national convention is “nationalizing an election cycle.” Given how unpopular Trump is, the GOP should be “going out of its way to localize the midterms,” rather than the opposite.

What next?

It is likely that “many Democratic officials are looking forward” to Trump’s event, said MS NOW. The convention will “give the minority party an opportunity to do what it wants to do anyway: connect Republican candidates and officeholders to Trump.”

While much of the event’s programming remains under wraps, officials have begun to “fill in some of the details,” said The Dallas Morning News. The convention will “blend elements of a traditional political convention” with a “Trump-centered program designed to energize Republican voters.” The event will also “include delegates from across the country,” but it will feature “no official party business.” Organizers have also not clarified “whether members of the public will be able to attend” or how ticketing might work.

Trump’s scheduled convention will also be “clashing with a pair of NFL matchups that will kick off the 2026 season,” forcing both events to “potentially compete for viewership,” said Forbes. In the past, NFL kickoff games have been rescheduled to avoid overlap with political conventions during presidential election years. It is “not immediately clear if the same will happen to this year’s season opener.”

If you were to die with a mortgage balance remaining, mortgage protection insurance — also known as mortgage life insurance — would ensure it got paid off. That way, your loved ones could continue to live in your home without worrying about continuing to make payments.

This might sound like a good arrangement, especially considering how big an investment a home is and how much of a family’s budget monthly mortgage payments can comprise. But is mortgage protection insurance really necessary, and is it actually the best way to achieve that peace of mind?

What is mortgage protection insurance?

Mortgage protection insurance (MPI) is a type of life insurance, often offered by mortgage lenders and insurance companies, that ensures any balance remaining on your mortgage is paid off in the event that you pass away. “Some mortgage protection insurance policies also offer payment protection for a limited time if you lose your job or experience a disability during the term, although that is not necessarily standard with all policies,” said Yahoo Finance.

This is different from a typical life insurance policy where a death benefit is paid out to your beneficiaries. Instead, with mortgage protection insurance, the payout goes directly to the mortgage lender. Note that MPI typically will “only cover the principal and interest portion of a mortgage payment,” meaning “other fees like HOA dues, property taxes and homeowners’ insurance would still be your responsibility,” said Bankrate.

Should you get mortgage protection insurance?

Mortgage life insurance is by no means necessary; it is entirely optional. But if you are looking for peace of mind, “most MPI policies are issued on a “guaranteed acceptance” basis, which “can be advantageous if you have a health condition,” as there is no health exam required to qualify, said Bankrate.

Even so, “mortgage protection life insurance policies are generally ill-advised,” said Investopedia. For starters, MPI serves a very limited purpose, and the money a policy pays out will go to the mortgage lender, not your beneficiaries. Premiums can also be steep and are “often much higher than term life insurance,” said NerdWallet.

Further, those premiums stay the same over time, even as the payout decreases as you pay down your mortgage. Particularly if your mortgage is “nearly paid off or you paid for the home with sale proceeds from another home, paying for an MPI policy might not make the most financial sense,” said Bankrate.

How does mortgage protection insurance compare to life insurance?

If you are worried about protecting loved ones from mortgage payments in the event of your death, a “term life insurance policy typically provides more bang for your buck,” said NerdWallet. For one, life insurance is “more flexible than MPI because the money goes directly to your beneficiaries” as opposed to your mortgage, allowing your beneficiaries to use the money as needed, said U.S. News & World Report.

Additionally, while the value of MPI declines over time as you pay down your mortgage, the “death benefit on a standard term policy remains the same,” said Experian. That said, mortgage protection insurance does not require a medical exam to qualify for coverage, while life insurance does.

‘Telling time is a complicated business’

Nishant Sahdev at The Wall Street Journal

Modern economies “depend on everyone not only knowing the correct time but agreeing to it,” says Nishant Sahdev. About 450 atomic clocks are “continuously compared and averaged into a single international standard known as Coordinated Universal Time,” a “surprisingly thin thread on which much of the global economy depends.” A “difference of a fraction of a second can cause a breakdown,” and the “private sector could move faster by treating precise time as an essential service that needs protection.”

Read more

‘“Dignity” is a poor excuse for blocking press access to state executions’

Austin Sarat at The Hill

Indiana law says that the press has “no right to be present when the state carries out executions,” and the state “defends its limitations on access to executions by advancing the dignity argument,” says Austin Sarat. But there is “something odd about using the word ‘dignity’ to describe what happens when the state kills one of its citizens, and about allowing the state that seeks to do that deed to speak for a condemned person.”

Read more

‘The Founding Father you’ve probably never heard of’

Abdallah Fayyad at The Boston Globe

Americans “all know the broad strokes of the story of America’s founding,” says Abdallah Fayyad. But “despite the well-documented record of the American Revolution, one of the Founders — arguably one of the most influential — has been almost lost to history.” James Wilson was a Scottish immigrant who “quickly became one of the most learned and successful men of his time, advocating for radical ideas about democracy and political equality,” and he “helped shape America’s founding principles.”

Read more

‘S.F.’s recovery is missing one of the hardest things to bring back’

Allison Arieff at the San Francisco Chronicle

Everyone “thinks that San Francisco was perfect the day they arrived,” but many “can’t help but be nostalgic for a time when the arts felt core to the identity of the city,” says Allison Arieff. San Francisco “may be flush with private capital, but the culture of tech is largely one of metrics and results; few in this community seem inclined to support something with a hard-to-measure return on investment,” and “federal funding has, of course, all but dried up.”

Read more

What happened

FIFA Sunday lifted U.S. striker Folarin Balogun’s one-game suspension from a red card he drew during last week’s 2-0 World Cup win over Bosnia-Herzegovina. The unusual decision means that Balogun, the top U.S. scorer in this tournament, can play in today’s knockout round-of-16 match against Belgium. Shortly after FIFA announced its decision, news organizations reported that President Donald Trump had called FIFA President Gianni Infantino following the match and asked him to review Balogun’s suspension. “Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” Trump said on social media Sunday.

Who said what

Balogun’s red card was one of the World Cup’s “most controversial and consequential decisions,” The Associated Press said. But FIFA’s “extraordinary” decision to reverse it was the “first time since 1962 that a red card during a World Cup did not result in a suspension.” It is “highly unusual for a head of state to intervene in a soccer disciplinary matter with FIFA’s top official,” The Washington Post said. FIFA “insists that the decision was an independent one made by its 18-person disciplinary committee,” Politico said, though it didn’t say if there was a vote.

What next?

Belgium’s soccer federation said it was “astonished” by FIFA’s apparent violation of its own rules and was “investigating all potential options” to “protect the fundamental principles of fair play in our sport.”

What happened

President Donald Trump’s Domestic Policy Council late Saturday issued a report criticizing the leadership of the Smithsonian Institution, and especially the National Museum of American History, for allegedly painting an insufficiently positive and “patriotic” view of the U.S. and its founding.

The Smithsonian leaders “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying and worthy of our great republic,” the report said.

Who said what

The Smithsonian “has long been regarded as independent of the executive branch,” The New York Times said, but Trump has tried to exert control over the world’s largest museum institution for more than a year. The report “comes in the midst of Trump’s aggressive campaign to overhaul some of Washington’s most sacred cultural and historic institutions,” The Associated Press said, and it indicates he “may be preparing to install his own team.”

Lonnie Bunch, the Smithsonian’s first Black leader, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday he was motivated by the “notion of being a more perfect union, not the perfect union,” and by the “responsibility to continue to make those aspirations available, accessible, meaningful to a whole range of people.”

What next?

“For more than 180 years, the Smithsonian has served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship, and we remain committed to doing so,” a Smithsonian spokesperson said in a statement.

What happened

Slain Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral procession began advancing through the streets of Tehran this morning after Sunday’s prayers at the capital’s sprawling Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla complex. Three of Khamenei’s sons appeared publicly Sunday for the first time since their father and other family members were killed in the opening U.S.-Israeli strikes of the Iran war, but Mojtaba Khamenei, the son who succeeded him as supreme leader, has still not made any public appearances.

Who said what

The funeral procession route was “packed to capacity” with black-clad mourners “hoping to gain a glimpse of the passing cortège,” CNN said. Some mourners said they were disappointed at the absence of Mojtaba Khamenei, whose face was reportedly “disfigured” and “one or ​both legs” significantly injured in U.S.-Israeli strikes, Reuters said. He is believed to be in hiding “due to the dangers of Israeli threats to his life,” Al Jazeera said.

The “increasingly” common “threats from mourners to avenge Khamenei’s death” included chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and signs calling for the “killing of both U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” The Associated Press said. As the poet Mohammad Rasouli asked why “the biggest bastard in the world” was “still alive” to cheering mourners at the Mosalla complex, Trump was boasting he “wiped out” Iran’s military during “a speech at the same time across the world” to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.

What next?

After a 12-hour procession through Tehran, Khamenei’s body will be transported to Qom, then to important Shiite shrines in the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala, and finally to Thursday’s burial in his hometown of Mashhad.

All eyes will be on Donald Trump as Nato leaders gather in Ankara this week following his administration's warning that allies must step up defence spending “immediately” or face consequences.

Last year’s summit was hailed as a “breakthrough” after members committed to spending 5% of GDP on defence – 3.5% on core requirements and 1.5% on broader security needs – by 2035, said Elsa Ohlen on CNBC.

This year’s gathering is “expected to move the debate from pledges to implementation” on “questions about procurement, industrial capacity, support for Ukraine and the political architecture of what the Trump administration has called ‘Nato 3.0’”.

“This is really the Nato summit where Nato goes from burden sharing to burden shifting,” Ulrike Franke, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the channel.

What did the commentators say?

Nato is “both stronger than it was 18 months ago, when Trump returned as US president, and a lot weaker”, said the Financial Times. It is in “better shape” largely thanks to pressure from Trump to get non-US members to spend more “investing in readiness and rearmament”, and as Europeans take on “more command roles even as the US military remains professional and fully engaged”.

At the same time, the alliance is “much weaker because confidence that the Trump administration would stand by its allies if they are attacked has cratered”. The US, under the unpredictable president, also seems “to lack the discipline to come up with a burden-shifting plan”.

That is why this week’s summit in Turkey has been described as “one of the most consequential” in years, said Radio Free Europe’s Washington correspondent Alex Raufoglu. As the US seeks a “more balanced transatlantic partnership”, it is looking for clear signs that “this relationship is becoming more equal – not only financially, but strategically”.

The “expected focus is on industrial outputs”, but the allied “will to fight back to back is no less important than material defence readiness”, said Visegrad Insight editor Wojciech Przybylski. “Russia knows it better than most” and so this week’s summit will “test the political resolve – whether Western leaders can still project unified purpose and unambiguous strategic intent”.

What next?

Some, such as Poland, the Nordic and Baltic countries, “are doing more than others”, Matt Whitaker, the US ambassador to Nato, said ahead of the summit. “But many others are lagging behind” their pledge to up defence spending by 2035.

The Telegraph reported that Trump is “thought to be planning to reward or punish countries based on their defence spending”. Those with higher spending are likely to be moved “up the queue for the purchase of US weapons and mean they are invited for more face-to-face meetings with the president”.

This “threatens to put the US president on a collision course with Britain”, after Keir Starmer failed to secure a fully funded defence investment plan ahead of the start of the summit on Tuesday.

The UK is now ranked 12th among Nato members in terms of spending per GDP, having been third a decade ago. The outgoing PM is expected to “face down a rebuke” from Trump “in one of his final acts in office this week”, said The Times.

Sky’s £1.6 billion acquisition of ITV is yet another sign of the “seismic consolidation” taking place between media companies trying to compete with the major streaming platforms, said Deadline.

“This is a defining moment for British media,” Sky CEO Dana Strong said on Sky News. We are combining “two of the UK’s most loved and trusted brands” and committing to “remain a public service broadcaster at the heart of British life”.

But with its public service broadcast contract set to expire in 2034, and no guarantee this will continue, ITV’s deal could change the complexion of British commercial broadcasting.

‘Territory of hypotheticals’

Sky, and its US owners Comcast, will now have access to the 21 million households reached by ITV, as well as a greater share of advertising spend at a time when broadcasters are “facing an uncertain future”, said the Financial Times. Of the £1.6 billion acquisition, around £1.2 billion will be paid up front in cash, and Sky will pay an additional £200 million subject to advertising targets being hit in 2027.

ITV’s “thriving production arm”, ITV Studios, will not be part of the Sky deal, said Deadline. It will become its own publicly listed company and “benefit from the transaction” by acquiring Sky’s Love Productions, the studio that produces “The Great British Bake Off”, in a £200 million side-deal. ITV Studios will also receive £2.1 billion in additional funding from Sky, meaning there will be “certainty” that “hit series” such as “Love Island” and “Coronation Street” won’t move behind a paywall.

However, there are concerns whether ITV Studios will win as much business from ITV. It has “consistently landed a significant number of total commissions” in recent years, “much to the chagrin of independent players”. But in the hands of Sky and its “swashbuckling growth” mindset, deconsolidation may have made the landscape a “more level playing field” for rival studios.

Sky and ITV are required by law to continue free-to-air service until at least 2034. Sky will also have to commission a proportion of programmes made outside London, and honour the contract for ITN’s news bulletins for ITV until 2031.

This status does bring some benefits. As a public service broadcaster, Sky could also bid for “‘listed’ crown jewel tournaments” – shown on free-to-air channels – such as the Olympics and the Grand National, said Katie Razzall on the BBC. Sky is also guaranteed a “prominent position” on TV home screens, and in an “ever more competitive world, prominence matters”. But in eight years’ time, the “media landscape may look very different”.

‘Last stand’ against streamers

This long-rumoured deal unites the UK’s two largest commercial broadcasters in an attempt to “bulk up” against the streaming giants, said the FT. The British media industry has experienced a “period of radical change” in the last 20 years, and companies such as YouTube and Netflix pose an “existential threat”.

The agreement also “raises politically sensitive questions” about the American ownership of a major British broadcaster, said The Hollywood Reporter. ITV is a “key part of the country’s cultural landscape”, with obligations to provide national and regional content for the UK.

The deal, which is not likely to be completed until next year, will “inevitably face close scrutiny” from industry regulators, said Forbes. Given its scale, questions around “competition, advertising concentration and media plurality are entirely appropriate”.

But whatever the outcome of the final approvals, the “direction of travel” for the media space is becoming “increasingly clear”. No longer will there be a binary “broadcast versus streaming” battle, but a series of “connected ecosystems that combine premium content, intelligent data and measurable commercial outcomes”. In future, successful media organisations will not just have the largest audiences, but build mutually beneficial, “strategic alliances and partnerships”.

But this deal looks “less like a monopoly and more like a last stand”, said The Drum. For years, the British media market maintained a “stable” competition between its three biggest players: BBC, ITV and Channel 4. But with the arrival of “better-capitalised” generalist streamers like Netflix, YouTube and Disney+, not only was the structure disrupted between the old broadcasters, suddenly “they weren’t even one of the three” leaders. This deal represents a “belated acknowledgement” that there should have been “shared strategy, shared technology platforms” and “shared deal-making many years ago”.

As the scorching weather returns, the best way to cool down is with an ice cream by the sea. The UK’s coastal towns are peppered with parlours serving everything from rich, creamy gelato, to refreshing sorbets and conefuls of quirky flavours. Here are some of our favourite spots.

Joe’s Ice Cream, Mumbles, Swansea

This century-old family run parlour in Mumbles is a “local cult”, said Felicity Cloake in The Times. It also has branches in Cardiff and Llanelli. There are rules: “always order the vanilla” which is “churned fresh every day” and has a “distinctly savoury edge”. You’ll also find huge sundaes here, and a knickerbocker glory that present owner Adrian Hughes thinks is “far too big for one person. Believe me, it’s not.”

joes-icecream.com

Jannetta’s Gelateria, St Andrews, Fife

“If you’ve ever visited St Andrews in winter, you’ll appreciate just how good Jannetta’s gelato must be to have stuck it out in South Street for the past 118 years,” said Cloake in The Times. When it comes to choice you’ll be hard pressed to find better: the parlour serves 54 different flavours that make use of locally sourced ingredients like Fife tayberries and Dundee marmalade. Expect long queues when it’s hot but the samples on offer while you wait “sweeten the deal”.

jannettas.co.uk

Hive, Aberaeron, Wales

Master ice cream makers Kevin and Mateuz make their “legendary” honey ice cream at Hive, said Portia Jones on Wales Online. The “distinctive, creamy” confection is “hands down my favourite ice cream” in the country. “One scoop, and you’ll see why it has a cult following.” Located right by the picturesque harbour in Aberaeron (with branches in Cardigan and Saundersfoot), it’s a great place for a sunny afternoon stroll.

thehiveaberaeron.com

Rossi’s Ices, Weymouth, Dorset

“Forget your standard vanilla”, said Judy Cogan in The i Paper. At Rossi’s, the Figliolini family “let the natural taste of the cooked milk shine”. They’ve been scooping here since 1937 and certainly know a thing or two about how to make and serve ice cream properly. Expect everything from banana splits and chocolate sundaes to affogato and ice cream sodas.

rossisweymouth.com

Moomaid of Zennor, St Ives, Cornwall

Milk is supplied by the cows at the on-site family farm to the parlour at this charming spot in St Ives, said Cogan in The i Paper. In keeping with its Cornish location, every scoop of ice cream is “topped with a dollop of clotted cream”. Flavours are creative but not “heinously quirky”: things like orange and mascarpone or almond and cherry ripple. “Watch out for circling seagulls”.

moomaidofzennor.com

Karl Marx famously described religion as the opium of the people. Now, a study has shown that going to church has a similar effect on the body to morphine. Researchers from Oxford Brookes University asked 265 people in the UK and Brazil how close they felt to other worshippers before and after 24 religious events – ranging from Catholic and Baptist services to Afro-Brazilian rituals. The participants were also given a standard pain-threshold test to help assess the activation of the brain’s “mu-opioid” system, the neural pathway responsible for the body’s response to pain, reward and addiction. Its receptors can be activated by external opioids such as morphine, but also natural ones – the endorphins produced by the brain to relieve pain and stress. The results showed that, after the ritual, the participants felt more connected to one another, and more able to tolerate pain. This doesn’t mean that sermons are sedating people, said the team. Instead, these events may have developed to nurture feelings of closeness in large groups in much the same way as social grooming does between pairs of apes.

The earliest-known plague victims

When four Stone Age cemeteries were excavated in Siberia in the 1980s and 1990s, archaeologists were puzzled by the number of children among the dead; at some of the sites, two-thirds of the bodies were under 15 years old. Now, thanks to new DNA sequencing techniques, the mystery has been solved: the children were victims of the world’s earliest-known plague outbreak. An international team of scientists analysed pulp from the teeth of the hunter-gatherers buried near Lake Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world, and found DNA from a previously unknown strain of the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, in nearly 40% of the individuals – a higher proportion than found in some medieval plague pits. Radiocarbon dating shows that many of them died within a very short time span; in several cases parents and children were buried together. The evidence suggests the plague struck twice, the first time 5,500 years ago. This “flies in the face” of the long-standing assumption that the plague only took hold after the advent of agriculture and the formation of densely populated settlements, said lead author Dr Ruairidh Macleod, of the University of Oxford. The theory is that individuals became infected by a strain that was particularly lethal to the young through close contact with marmots (rodents that are known reservoirs of the plague), perhaps while butchering them. It would then have spread through the community.

The impact of the HPV jab

Girls vaccinated against HPV when they are 12 or 13 have a close to zero chance of dying from cervical cancer before the age of 30, a study has found. The researchers, from Queen Mary University of London, used official data to assess the impact of the HPV vaccine on cervical cancer survival. They found that deaths have fallen sharply since the jab became routine in 2008. No women aged 20-24 died from cervical cancer between 2020 and 2024; without the jabs, 23 deaths would have been expected, says the report in The Lancet. “It’s incredible to think that a single jab can almost eliminate a particular type of cancer,” said lead researcher Professor Peter Sasieni. He warned, however, that vaccination rates are falling and, without “concerted efforts” to increase uptake, deaths could start to rise.

Loss of smell can be devastating

People may not think of anosmia – the loss of the sense of smell – as a serious condition, but it can have a similar effect on a person’s sense of well-being as having a stroke. A team from the University of East Anglia looked at studies on the emotional and psychological impacts of stroke, diabetes, Parkinson’s, kidney failure and heart disease, and compared them with findings on people with anosmia and ageusia (the loss of the sense of taste). It turned out that those with taste and smell conditions had experienced a sharp reduction in well-being that often rivalled that of the patients in the other groups. Typically, they no longer found pleasure in food, had difficulty socialising, and were more anxious about their safety (as, for instance, they could no longer smell gas). They had high rates of social withdrawal and 20% were depressed.

A spider’s spring-loaded trap

A newly discovered species of spider has been observed weaving a spring-loaded snare, which it uses to catch an ant that is usually too aggressive for arachnids to prey on. The ballista spider spends its days lurking in webs on the undersides of leaves in the rainforests of north Queensland, Australia. When night falls, it lowers itself from its web and fixes a tight line of silk to a leaf below, to act as an anchor. Then it returns to its web, leaving a tension line behind it, repeating the process until it has built a cone-shaped scaffold. Finally, it wraps the cone in a thinner silk and returns to its web. Soon the ants arrive, in attack mode. One bites into the cone, which is sticky. Its jaws become glued to it, and as it wriggles, the cone detaches, catapulting the whole thing – ant and all – into the spider’s web at force, and the spider can then safely eat it.

As the trap only targets these ants, the researchers, from Macquarie University, suspect that the spiders lace the silk with a particular pheromone that both attracts and angers exclusively this species. They also suspect that the spiders pick off the green tree ants quietly, one by one, to avoid triggering an alarm that might cause thousands of aggressive ants to descend on the scene.

New drug for diabetes

The first drug that has been found to delay the onset of type 1 diabetes is to become available on the NHS in England and Wales. In patients with type 1 diabetes, the immune system starts attacking the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. As a result, the patient has to take insulin, via injections or a pump. Teplizumab – a form of immunotherapy – binds to immune cells to slow their attack and so delays the need to take insulin by two to three years. However, to work it must be given to people when they are in stage 2 of the condition – when their immune cells are attacking, but they have no symptoms yet. That being the case, people will only know they need it if they are offered a blood test because they have a family history of diabetes, take part in a screening study, or have a blood test for some other reason that raises a red flag with their GP.

There may be a few sore heads and impeccably timed phone-calls to bosses in England this morning, after last night’s win over Mexico in the World Cup, but any football fans must be thankful they don’t live in Germany where workers will have to report to a doctor in person, to get a sick note on the first day they are ill, under sweeping new reforms.

The government is “tired of its workers calling in sick”, said the Deep Dive, but unions and family doctors are opposed to the new law.

What is Germany doing?

“The number of sick days is too high,” said Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, announcing the plan. The government is “creating a set of tools that will enable those involved, both employees and companies, to correct this,” he added.

The “tough” new rules are “aimed at boosting Germany’s stagnating economy”, wrote Hans van Leeuwen, international economics editor of The Telegraph.

Although they will be “welcomed” by employers, they have “angered” the country’s “powerful trade unions”. The services sector union, Verdi, accused Merz of creating a “culture of distrust of employees”.

Doctors also have “opposed” the new system because they believe the new requirements will “swamp” GP surgeries with “unnecessary appointments”.

What are sickness policies like elsewhere?

In the Netherlands, employers are generally obliged to pay employees on sick leave 70% of their wages for up to two years. If that amount is less than minimum wage, then the employer must boost this to the minimum wage for the first year. Norway is even more generous: it provides up to a year of income replacement at 100% of salary (subject to an earnings cap).

Although the US is one of the richest countries in the world, there is no nationwide entitlement to paid sick leave in the US, so access depends largely on state laws, local ordinances and employer policies. This means coverage varies considerably. Only 14 of the 50 states have paid sick leave mandates in place, which means sick workers are often forced to rely on health insurance pay-outs to cover their wages.

In the UK employees who earn over £125 a week and are off sick for four or more days in a row, are entitled to £123.25 per week of statutory sick pay for up to 28 weeks. This equates to around 15% of the average UK weekly wage. Employees need to give their employer proof if they’re ill for more than seven days. Many employers have a sick pay policy which is more generous.

How many sick days do people take?

In 2025, 149 million working days were lost to sickness or injury in Britain – an average of more than four days per worker. On average, Americans take roughly one to three days of sick leave per year.

In Germany, workers take about three weeks, or 15 working days, of sick leave per year. This is lower than in France, but higher than Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and Italy.

The Toyota Rav4 was the world’s bestselling car last year, said Car Magazine. This sixth-generation version of the family SUV is available only as a plug-in hybrid in the UK, with “more range, tech and attitude”.

The 2.5-litre PHEV gets up to 305bhp in all-wheel drive form and can do 0-62mph in 5.8secs, while the new 272bhp front-wheel drive version takes 7.5secs. Electric range is “top-of-the-class” at 85 and 83 miles respectively.

With nearly twice the range of the previous Rav4 PHEV, the new model is good value and remains relatively refined, said Top Gear Magazine. It’s not that exciting to drive, but the soft set-up makes for a comfortable ride.

There’s a fair amount of body roll through corners, but it “never feels ungainly”. Pitch and dive is “well controlled”, the steering is light and pretty direct and there’s “decent feel” to the brake pedal.

Inside, the Rav4 is “more rugged” than plush, but the hard plastics “feel durable rather than cheap”, said What Car? reviewers.

There’s a clear 12.3-inch driver’s display, but opt for Excel trim or above and you get a head-up display with speed projected onto the windscreen, plus a “punchy” JBL speaker system. The 12.9-inch infotainment touchscreen is “a big improvement”, and there’s plenty of space and storage options.

The ancient Moa Eggshell Cave in New Zealand contains the remains of several extinct animal species lost approximately a million years ago. This finding sheds light on an understudied period of ecological history and hints at more environmental factors that could have driven the extinction of species over time.

Birds of a feather

Scientists discovered the fossils of 12 ancient bird species and four frog species in the Moa Eggshell Cave, according to a study published in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology. Of the fossils found in the cave, “about 33-50% of species went extinct during the million years before humans arrived,” said a statement about the study. These extinctions were likely “driven by relatively rapid climate shifts and cataclysmic volcanic eruptions.” Some of the notable species found include a “now-extinct ancestor of the takahe (a flightless swamphen native to New Zealand) and an ancient pigeon species closely related to Australia’s bronzewing pigeons, which were not around in the million years before humans arrived,” said The Economic Times.

The most surprising discovery was a parrot species called the Strigops insulaborealis, which is an ancient relative of the kakapo, the “only flightless parrot in the world, the heaviest parrot alive and critically endangered,” said The Economic Times. As of 2026, there are “only 235 known kakapo in existence, and all of them are on islands free of predators.” This is a “newly recognized avifauna for New Zealand, one that was replaced by the one humans encountered a million years later,” Trevor Worthy, the lead author of the study, said in the statement. “This remarkable find suggests our ancient forests were once home to a diverse group of birds that did not survive the next million years.”

Between a rock and a hard place

The findings fill in a period of New Zealand’s evolutionary history that was largely unknown. Researchers “know a lot about its really ancient past (circa 18 million years ago) and its more recent past (around 10,00 years ago), but the bit in the middle is less well understood,” said the BBC.

The fossils were found “trapped between two layers of volcanic ash,” said Earth.com. The older ash layer “fell during the Ngaroma eruption about 1.55 million years ago,” while the younger layer “came from the Kidnappers eruption right around 1 million years ago.” Having the two layers clearly defined in time gave the team “something rare: a fossil deposit with a firm age, pinned between two natural clocks.”

These discoveries also change the way researchers consider extinction. “For decades, the extinction of New Zealand’s birds was viewed primarily through the lens of human arrival 750 years ago,” Worthy said in the statement. But this study “proves that natural forces like super-volcanoes and dramatic climate shifts were already sculpting the unique identity of our wildlife over a million years ago.” This “isn’t a missing chapter in New Zealand’s ancient history,” study coauthor Paul Scofield said in the statement. “It’s a missing volume.”

A “durian tsunami” has crashed the price of the notoriously smelly tropical fruit, with some sellers in Singapore giving them away completely free, said the BBC.

The glut is the result of a “decade-long boom” during which Malaysian farmers “flocked to durian farming to cash in on growing Chinese demand”.

‘Turpentine and rotten onions’

Beloved by large parts of Asia, the prickly fruit is known for its distinctive smell that has been compared to “sewage, turpentine and rotten onions”, said The Times. The novelist Anthony Burgess famously described his durian experience as like “eating strawberry blancmange in an unspeakably foul public lavatory”.

Due to this pungent smell, the fruit is “commonly banned” on public transport and in hotels in southeast Asia. But the global durian trade has gone from strength to strength; last year it was worth £5.5 billion, with 90% of exports going to China where a “newly affluent middle class is discovering a taste for the exotic”.

Prized varieties like the Musang King – known as the “Hermès of durians” – have proved particularly popular, as Chinese consumers become more “selective and sophisticated”. A single durian can sell for “up to 200 yuan (£21.50), and they are often presented on special occasions as luxurious gifts”.

To help meet this “insatiable appetite”, freight trains have been kitted out with “specially refrigerated cars” which allow durians to travel all the way from Thailand and Vietnam to China “with their flavour unimpaired”.

Tumbling prices

But now a “bumper harvest” has caused durian prices to “tumble”, said The Star. “It feels like a rare chance to enjoy a Musang King without paying a bomb”, said engineer Kelvin Tan, who travelled the 46 miles from Kuala Lumpur to Raub in Malaysia to enjoy the lower prices.

Customers are “swarming fruit stalls” to pick up bargains, said the BBC. A lot of the durian trees planted in the last decade to meet soaring demand from China are “now starting to bear fruit”, Lu Yuee Thing, owner of several durian farms near Raub, told the publication.

Some farmers, however, had been “grappling with poor harvests” due to uneven rainfall across the country when the glut arrived. While “durian lovers feast”, some growers of the tropical fruit in Malaysia are “chagrined”.

Malaysia’s Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority has stepped in to support the industry and help “manage surplus durian supply as the season begins to ramp up”, said Asiafruit. As well as preparing 142 cold rooms for preserving the extra stock, the authority has been buying durians from farmers at a base price to protect their incomes.

For fans of the pungent fruit, however, prices will “remain low until August” before “gradually recovering”, said The Star.

Until then, shops are taking “creative measures” to shift their extra stock, said the BBC. Viral videos have emerged of customers leaving a stall in Malaysia’s Pahang state with all-you-can-fit sacks filled “beyond the brim” with the spiky green fruit.