India's air strikes on Pakistan yesterday, two weeks after militants' deadly attack on tourists in Kashmir, have further heightened tensions over a region that has been a focal point of clashes between the two nations for almost 80 years.

Who controls Kashmir?
India controls a little over half of the region, while roughly a third is administered by Pakistan. The remaining 15% – the desolate northeastern region of Aksai Chin – is controlled by China. Delhi and Islamabad both claim rightful ownership over the entirety of Kashmir.

How did the dispute begin?
After the 1947 partition, when Britain's former Indian colony was split into the independent states of Pakistan and India, the then ruler of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, ceded control to India in exchange for security guarantees. The region was then attacked by militants from Pakistan, sparking the First Kashmir War, which lasted for two years and resulted in a de facto division of Kashmir between India and Pakistan, called the Line of Control. The line was meant as a stopgap, "pending a more permanent political settlement", said The New York Times.

Were there more wars over Kashmir?
With no long-standing political resolution, there have been two further brief but bloody conflicts over the region, the Second Indo-Pakistani War in 1965 and the Kargil War in 1999. India and Pakistan also went to war in 1971 over the independence of Bangladesh, a conflict that led to talks in which the Line of Control in Kashmir was made permanent.

What's happened more recently?
Although there have been no further wars in Kashmir, the area has been blighted by small-scale insurgencies and terror attacks. In 2019, Delhi stripped Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status, as part of a wider security clampdown that attracted criticism from human rights groups.

This week's strikes by India represent the "most significant military actions in recent years", said India Today. Islamabad has called the attacks a "blatant act of war", leaving the prospect of further conflict in Kashmir on a knife-edge.

David Attenborough is going to be "Britain’s busiest 99-year-old", said The i Paper. As he marks his birthday today with the cinematic release of his new film "Ocean", the nation's most revered natural-history presenter is "drawing on his long life experience" to make "an emotional plea" to "halt the destruction" of our seas.

'Passion' and 'distinctive voice'
Born in west London in 1926, Attenborough "was hooked on the natural world from an early age", said Smithsonian Magazine. He studied zoology and geology at the University of Cambridge, then served two years in the Royal Navy before joining the BBC in the 1950s, first as a trainee producer and then as a presenter – despite a boss declaring "his teeth too big for TV".

Over the next 70 years, Attenborough "attained icon status for his intrepid, TV-savvy adventures", showing viewers every corner of the natural world in more than 100 TV series that have brought nature "into the living rooms of billions". His "passion and deep knowledge", and his "distinctive, often-mimicked voice", have inspired generations of wildlife lovers. 

'More radical shift'
"People often become more conservative as they get older, but Attenborough's taken a more radical shift during his 90s," said Chas Newkey-Burden in The Spectator. The nonagenarian has spoken increasingly about climate change, urging world leaders at Cop26, for example, to reduce emissions. "Having spent a lifetime showing us nature in all its glory, he has joined the struggle to protect it."

Attenborough built his career at the BBC but, at streaming platforms including Disney+, he has found not only "a bigger budget" and a whopping global reach but also freedom from the British broadcaster's impartiality guidelines, said The i Paper. No longer forbidden from endorsing campaigns or advocating for changes to public policy, he "can be more direct in urging specific intergovernmental action to tackle issues like climate change".

"Ocean" is "very different" to his previous work, Toby Nowlan, one of the directors of the feature-length documentary, told Sky News. With "extraordinary" urgency, Attenborough delivers the "biggest message he's ever told": that "if we save the ocean, we save our world".

London's hottest new venue welcomed its first guests with an "extravagant bang" last Friday as Natalie Palamides took to the stage with her one-woman show, "Weer", said Mark Monahan in The Telegraph. Soho Theatre Walthamstow turns out to be "quite a place".

The eagerly awaited offshoot of the "Dean Street institution" was built in 1930 as a "colossal" cinema and over the last six years has been painstakingly transformed into a 960-seat theatre. With "Alhambra-inspired trimmings" and a "capacious" foyer complete with two bars, "what's not to like"?

First aired at Edinburgh Fringe (where it won best show in 2024), Palamides' "outrageously entertaining" production follows Mark and Christina, a tumultuous couple on the verge of a break-up after three years together. Palamides plays both lovers simultaneously by splitting her costume down the middle. It's a "clownish trope as old as the hills" but the material is "bracingly and brilliantly 21st century.

The "cavernous" auditorium is transformed with a "riot" of props spanning from "life-sized stags" to swirling car headlights, said Will Noble on Londonist. "Tear-inducingly funny and at times jaw-droppingly shocking", this show, running until Saturday, is "exquisite".

Palamides is a "terrifically talented physical storyteller", said Bruce Dessau in London's The Standard. Whether the couple are "squabbling over car keys" or "snogging" in the shower, it's "easy to forget that there is only one person on stage". A "silly, seductive, slapstick joy", "Weer" is a "spectacular" choice "to open a spectacular location".

The world is a powder keg waiting to explode
Allister Heath in The Telegraph
On the 80th anniversary of VE Day, I see "eerie parallels to the 1930s", with "rogue actors" sparking "interlinked conflicts" that "risk joining up into one hideous global war", writes Allister Heath. It's a "miracle" that, until the invasion of Ukraine, generations of Westerners had been spared "missile attacks, invasion" or nuclear "hell". The peace we enjoyed was "an accident of history", not, as "hubristic" elites assumed, an "inevitable ascent" from "superstition to reason".

Assisted dying: the price is far too high
Sonia Sodha in The New European
A new Children's Commission report on young people's views of assisted dying is "filled with nuance, compassion and a level of sophisticated understanding that we simply haven't seen from MPs championing the assisted dying bill" through Parliament. The proposed legislation can be "interpreted far more widely" than planned and leaves room for people to be "pressured" into taking their own lives. Why can teenagers "so clearly" see what the bill's parliamentary supporters "apparently cannot"?

The arts are being crippled by conformity
Josephine Bartosch in The Critic
Artists are traditionally portrayed as "rebels", but "today's creative class" is "more like a guild of nervous bureaucrats", writes Josephine Bartosch. A recent survey found that 84% of artists "don't feel free to express their politics". A culture of "ideological policing" is gatekeeping content from public view. Once, the arts were "a space for dangerous thinking" and artists were "society's conscience, not its compliance officers". If they're now "too afraid to speak freely, who will"?