Tim Curry was a patron saint for the kooky. From his breakout starring role in 1975’s cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Curry brought his bulbous eyes and madcap energy to every performance. Intensely private about his personal life, he built a following on the strength of his oddball characters, including the zany butler in 1985’s Clue, the evil clown Pennywise in 1990’s It, and King Arthur—a Tony-nominated turn—in 2005’s Broadway hit Spamalot. In acting roles, “I would choose risky over anything,” Curry said last year. “That’s the best way to be.”

Born in northwest England to a Methodist chaplain, Timothy James Curry was blessed with “a mischief-maker’s good looks, a casual athletic grace, and a supple and resonant voice,” said The New York Times. Acting was his obvious calling, and after graduating from the University of Birmingham, he quickly found parts in regional theater. But it was the “campy sci-fi romp” The Rocky Horror Show that made him a star, said Rolling Stone. Originating the cross-dressing Dr. Frank-N-Furter on the London stage in 1973, Curry reprised his role in the U.S. production in Los Angeles and then in the film. While the movie version “famously bombed” at first, it became “a midnight-movie sensation,” packing cinemas with costumed fans singing along, and it is still regularly screened today.

Curry “spent the rest of his acting career gleefully refusing to be pinned down,” said IndieWire. He schemed with onscreen sister Carol Burnett in 1982’s Annie, embodied the devil in 1985’s Legend, and sailed alongside Kermit and Miss Piggy as Long John Silver in 1996’s Muppet Treasure Island. Though a 2012 stroke left him wheelchair-bound and without the use of one arm, he played the narrator in Fox’s 2016 TV remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and remained active as a voice-over artist until the end of his life, recording the audiobook of his memoir last year. “I have loved and been loved,” he said, “and I hope you have, too."

There was far more to Dolly Parton than met the eye, and there was a whole lot that met the eye. Clad in towering blonde wigs, with sparkling, skintight outfits accentuating a bust that launched a thousand late-show quips, she combined showbiz glamour with garish excess. “A rhinestone shines just as good as a diamond,” she often said. But behind the glitz was profound talent, as well as a grit and generosity that made her one of country music’s biggest stars and a beloved international icon. Rising from Appalachian poverty, Parton wrote thousands of songs, including classics such as “Jolene” and “Coat of Many Colors.” She recorded 25 No. 1 country hits and won 10 Grammys. She starred in movies such as 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias. And she was a shrewd businesswoman who blazed a trail through a male-dominated industry, amassing a fortune estimated at $450 million and giving millions to charity. She was also a quip machine with a bracing wit, who poked fun at herself while making clear she was not to be underestimated. “I’m not offended by all of the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb,” she said. “And I also know I’m not blonde.”

Raised in eastern Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, Parton had a “dirt poor” upbringing that “shaped every aspect of her life and career,” said The Times (U.K.). Her father was an illiterate sharecropper whose 12 children shared a one-room cabin with no running water or electricity. A musical prodigy “steeped in Appalachian mountain and bluegrass music,” she wrote her first song by age 6. Encouraged by a songwriting uncle, she appeared on local radio and cut her first record by the age of 11. The day after graduating from high school, she boarded a bus to Nashville “with a suitcase of songs,” said the Associated Press. She signed a deal with Monument Records and in 1966 released her first country hit, “Dumb Blonde,” a plucky takedown of female stereotypes. That same year, she married Carl Dean, an asphalt contractor she met in a laundromat; he avoided the limelight entirely and they stayed together until his death in 2025. In 1967, she scored a break when she was tapped by Porter Wagoner to be a regular on his TV show. The pair recorded numerous duets as Parton continued to pursue a solo career, gradually shifting “her country warble to a more polished, pop-leaning style.

In the early ’70s, Parton “started to eclipse” Wagoner with a run of No. 1 country singles, said The New York Times. She left his show in 1974, writing “I Will Always Love You”—a smash for Whitney Houston decades later—as a parting “expression of gratitude,” though it didn’t prevent him from suing her. Soon Parton was the reigning queen of Nashville, the Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 1975 and 1976. In the years that followed, she “continued her ascendance on the charts” with pop crossover hits like “Heartbreaker” and “Here You Come Again.”

Already a talk-show favorite for her easy banter and “outrageous style,” Parton “secured her status as a superstar” with 9 to 5, said The Wall Street Journal. Her performance as a secretary battling a lecherous boss alongside Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda made her a household name, while the catchy, clever theme song she wrote topped both the pop and country charts. “Islands in the Stream,” a 1983 duet with Kenny Rogers, proved “another pop smash”; three years later, she opened Dollywood, a theme park near her birthplace. With features including a replica of her childhood home, it became one of Tennessee’s top tourist attractions and a key source of jobs and revenue for the region.

As the hits dried up in the 2000s, Parton turned toward the music of her youth, said Rolling Stone, recording bluegrass and gospel songs. She remained an “unstoppable force with a flurry of world tours, studio albums, film projects, corporate partnerships, and books.” A major philanthropist, she endowed college scholarships, raised money for disaster victims, and gave $1 million to help fund research that led to Moderna’s Covid vaccine. Her Imagination Library has distributed more than 300 million free books to young children worldwide. For all her accomplishments, Parton said being a songwriter was “the guts and the root of the whole thing,” and how she’d like to be remembered. “You’re putting something in the world that wasn’t there yesterday,” she said, “and which you hope people are still going to be singing after you’ve gone.”

The outcome of Michigan’s high-stakes Senate race may come down to a streamer from California, said Alexei Koseff in The Washington Post. Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed is facing a campaign crisis after his friend and political ally Hasan Piker—a progressive influencer with millions of followers—suggested in a livestream that if Jewish Americans continue to support Israel, “eventually someone is going to come around and take action—not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.” Republican opponent Mike Rogers immediately played up El-Sayed’s ties to his fellow Muslim Piker, calling the streamer his “running mate.” El-Sayed attempted to mend bridges with Michigan’s Jewish community but refused to disavow Piker outright. “If you want to make this race about a streamer in California,” he said, “I just think you’re missing the boat.”

“It shouldn’t have taken this long for prominent Democrats to confront their party’s antisemitism problem,” said David M. Drucker in Bloomberg. Piker has been “spouting antisemitic and antiIsrael nonsense since at least last year”—even as El-Sayed brought him on the campaign trail. Some liberal activists see Piker as the Democrats’ version of Joe Rogan, helping them reach voters under 30, but his incendiary rhetoric risks Democrats’ “historically strong bond” with Jewish voters. Some Democrats are complaining that Republicans aren’t required to denounce right-wing influencers like the racist and Islamophobic Laura Loomer, said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. True enough. But as “an avatar” of the insurgent left, Piker has made it clear he wants to purge all Zionists who believe in a Jewish homeland from Democratic ranks. Even though I’m critical of Israel’s policies, “it’s easy for me to see why Piker’s rise panics some Jews.

Like it or not, El-Sayed’s alliance with Piker “is one of the important questions at stake in the election,” said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. Piker is not only virulently anti-Israel; he’s a self-described Marxist who has expressed admiration for Mao Zedong and once said America deserved 9/11. El-Sayed has said “he intends to use his victory as a platform” to move the Democratic Party to the left. His victory in November could “throw open the doors of the party to a strain of militant politics that many Jews justifiably consider dangerous.” Given that the alternative—the Republican Rogers—is an adamant Trump supporter, Michigan Democrats face “a grim choice."

“Whatever phantasmagorical thing a Real American might be, there has never been one realer” than Dolly Parton, said Kathryn Schulz in The New Yorker. A self-made millionaire who was born in a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains, the beloved singer-songwriter and philanthropist, who died Aug. 25 at 80, “embodied our national ideal of authenticity.” She was even authentic in her embrace of artifice—“the wigs, the eyelashes, the boob jobs”—quipping, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.” Then there was her music. She connected with Americans of all ages, races, and classes with songs of “hope, home, and hardscrabble happiness,” whether recalling a jacket her mother stitched from rags on “Coat of Many Colors” or mourning a romance on “I Will Always Love You.” Parton was often called the Queen of Country Music, but there was nothing monarchical about her. She was “democratic to her bones, of the people and by the people and for the people, the duly elected President of the United States of Americans.”

Parton was “the one person who could unite a deeply divided country,” said Zachary B. Wolf in CNN.com. She embraced her LGBTQ fans and penned the feminist anthem “9 to 5” but wouldn’t call herself a feminist, preferring “woman in business.” She dismissed herself as a Jezebel but openly discussed her Christian faith. Her mourners ranged from President Trump, who lowered flags to half-staff in her honor, to the Democratic Socialists of America, who declared her a working-class hero. She maintained “professional political agnosticism,” always deflecting with a “plain-spoken Dollyism” that entertained all sides. No one was surprised when she was ranked the most popular public figure in April, with a net favorability of plus 65, 51 points ahead of her closest competitor, former president Barack Obama.

Her death hits harder coming “when that other faux-blond 80-year-old” is “spreading chaos,” said Jackie Calmes in the Los Angeles Times. “Both Dolly and Donald are American originals.” She was “a fairy-tale version of the American dream,” while Trump is an entitled rich kid—another all-American archetype. Her philanthropy “was real and global”; his charitable foundation “was fraudulent and forced to shut down.” Parton represented an America where people “find connections in agreement,” not division, said Christian Schneider in National Review. Those seeking “to make America great again” should strive to do so “in Dolly’s vision.” In death, she pulled off one last remarkable feat: “getting the entire country to agree on something.” The nationwide grief wasn’t performative. “It was recognition that something genuinely irreplaceable had left the room.”

What are Flock cameras?

They’re shoebox-size automated license plate readers that capture still images of passing cars. Typically mounted on poles about 10 feet high, they’re powered by solar panels and linked to cellular networks. Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley founded the company in 2017 because he was fed up with theft in Atlanta, his hometown. The company initially leased cameras to homeowners associations, and by 2020, police departments started buying subscriptions. There are now more than 120,000 Flock cameras in the U.S., deployed by some 7,000 law enforcement agencies. But the backlash has grown just as quickly. Cities are canceling contracts, lawmakers from both parties are drawing up restrictions, and vigilantes have been vandalizing the cameras so they can’t snap pictures. “It’s mass surveillance,” says Cris van Pelt, creator of the police log tracking site HaveIBeenFlocked.com. “It has a huge potential for abuse and very, very little oversight.”

What happens to the images?

The surveillance photos can be uploaded to a vast, searchable database. When a previously flagged or wanted vehicle—which Flock’s AI software can identify by license plate, make, model, color, and even dents and bumper stickers—passes by a camera, local law enforcement receives an alert. Flock Safety says its equipment has assisted in 20% of cleared cases in the jurisdictions that use it, and helped locate more than 10,000 missing people. Providence, R.I., officials said Flock was “instrumental” in locating within hours a masked gunman who killed two people at Brown University last year. And one police chief in Washington state said that since installing Flock, his city of Lakewood has experienced a rare 15-month stretch without a homicide.

What do critics say?

People across the political spectrum—both Tucker Carlson and Bernie Sanders have bashed Flock—argue that its system violates the Fourth Amendment. Will Freeman, an anti-Flock activist, called it a “warrantless surveillance dragnet” in a lawsuit filed in May against the city of Boulder. So far, the courts have disagreed, saying there’s no expectation of privacy on public roads. Immigration activists are concerned about data sharing with ICE or Customs and Border Protection. They note that while Flock Safety has no federal contracts, local police could choose to share information with the feds. Meanwhile, the system isn’t perfect, and its errors can lead to harrowing consequences. When a Flock camera misread a “7” as a “2” on a car in Toledo, falsely matching a stolen car, the vehicle’s owner, Brandon Upchurch, was stopped at gunpoint, mauled by a police dog, and jailed for hours before being released. “I’m traumatized for real,” said Upchurch, who is Black. “If we would have sneezed wrong, it would have ended bad.”

Have police abused the system?

Dozens of law enforcement officers have been charged with or accused of using Flock for unauthorized tracking, mostly to stalk their current or former romantic partners. A Georgia police chief looked up the tags of his girlfriend and her teenage daughter 600 times to track their movements; he was arrested and died of apparent suicide. One woman, a sheriff’s deputy in Wisconsin who requested anonymity, told The Washington Post that her ex, a colleague, searched her license plate over a dozen times a day. “I didn’t leave my house for a week,” she said. One Florida officer, fired after an internal-affairs investigation discovered he’d made 192 inappropriate Flock searches, said, “Pretty much everybody abuses that computer system.” An advocacy group in Joplin, Mo., requested audit logs from the city police department and found that 85% of Flock searches had a one-word justification—like “suspicious” or “drugs”—and that fewer than 3% of searches had a case number.

What does the public think?

Flock appears to be hugely unpopular. Vigilantes have covered the cameras in trash bags, splattered them with paint, and even sawed them down. Freeman, the Boulder-based activist, has launched the app DeFlock, where users can map camera locations; more than 350,000 people have downloaded the app. Flock’s business is still growing, but the backlash has led more than 50 jurisdictions to cut ties with the firm this year. In July alone, 21 groups, including the Los Angeles Police Department, stooped using Flock or began the process of doing so. Local governments and Congress are drafting legislation to regulate the cameras’ use. In the Senate, Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has opened an investigation into how Flock uses its data. In the House, Keith Self (R-Texas) introduced a bill to require federal agencies to get a warrant before accessing any similar data. “This is not a Left issue, not a Right issue,” Self said. “It is a personal issue.”

How has Flock responded?

Langley points out that the cameras don’t do facial recognition and the customer, not Flock, owns the images. “Think about the tooling that we ask local law enforcement to use,” he says. “We give them a weapon, a gun, a taser, yet we’re afraid to give them a camera that reads a license plate on a public road?” As for misuse, the company says, Flock’s records of search logs allow departments to identify which cops abuse their power. Still, the recent bad press spurred the firm to implement changes it says make it harder to use the system for anything other than legitimate crime-solving. Case codes to justify a search, previously optional, will be mandatory, and the audit log will be upgraded so that Flock can detect abnormal search patterns and block those users. The default time for storing images before deletion, currently 30 days, will drop to a week. Yet the DeFlock activists aren’t placated. “No guardrails,” the group said in response to the new guidelines. “No regulations. No ‘only if they really need to’ pinkie promises. [The cameras] are coming down.”

When President Trump launched the Iran war in February, he declared that his “little excursion” would be over in “four to five weeks.” More than six months later, the war is still raging— and Trump “is losing,” said Ishaan Tharoor in The New Yorker. None of his initial goals have been achieved: the toppling of the Islamist regime, the seizure of Iran’s nuclear program, the dismantling of its ballistic missile program. The Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil export route that was open to international trade before the war, is now largely shuttered and partly controlled by Iran. Meanwhile, the U.S. has spent more than $37.5 billion on combat operations, “burned through inventories of precision-guided and air-defense munitions,” and seen at least 18 service members killed and more than 750 wounded by Iranian drone and missile strikes. Angered by high gas prices—now averaging $4 a gallon, up from $2.75 pre-war— only about 30% of voters approve of the president’s handling of the conflict. But Trump seems happy with his performance, said Peter Baker in The New York Times. Two weeks ago, he posted an AI-generated image of himself backed by an aircraft carrier, warplanes, American flags, and a sign reading “Mission Accomplished 2026."

Trump has been in denial for months, said Chas Danner in New York. Days before starting the war, he asked his then director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard if his plan for overthrowing the regime would work. According to a new Wall Street Journal report, she warned him that assassinating Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would usher in a more extreme regime, that Tehran would close the strait, and that Iran would hit U.S. partners across the region, weakening our standing with allies. Trump ignored her, “and all of those things happened.” America’s generals are still sending distress signals, said Fred Kaplan in Slate. In a “remarkable” document leaked to The Washington Post, four-star commanders around the world told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that they wouldn’t be able to “perform their tasks” if, say, China invaded Taiwan or Russia attacked the Baltics, because the Iran war has gobbled up “so many of their planes, ships, and other weapons systems."

Yet Trump now has the upper hand in Iran, said Noah Rothman in National Review. The U.S. Navy has been quietly shepherding more oil tankers through the strait, while its blockade of Iranian ports is making “life inside Iran intolerable.” Supermarkets are running out of rice and cooking oil. Iranians are “hoarding gasoline,” and medical services are “breaking down.” Those “dire conditions” could reignite mass protests—and force the regime to cry uncle. That’s why Trump “must keep up the current economic war,” said Abe Greenwald in Commentary. He’s spent six months flip-flopping on whether to escalate or look for a negotiated “exit.” It’s time to prioritize an “American victory,” even though that means “enduring the inevitable rise in oil prices.”

Good luck selling that to voters, said Joshua Green and Nancy Cook in Bloomberg. With Trump’s approval rating at 33%, GOP strategists are panicking that the “unpopular conflict” will cost the party dearly in the midterms: 69% of undecided voters say they’ll back candidates who want to end U.S. involvement in Iran. But no swift end is in sight, said Daniel DePetris in the Chicago Tribune. Trump’s ego likely won’t let him extinguish “a fire of his own making.” The Iranians, meanwhile, have a simple goal: “Survive.” Tehran may be weaker militarily, but “at least it knows what it wants.”

What happened

The Pentagon was thrown into turmoil last month after Army Secretary Dan Driscoll handed in his resignation, warning President Trump on his way out that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s purging of senior officers and resistance to technological change was doing serious damage to the military. Driscoll has clashed repeatedly with Hegseth, who has pursued a vendetta against “woke” values and has in recent months fired or driven out several highly respected top commanders for reasons he has not articulated. They include Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, fired in April, and Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, the top Army commander in Europe, who was pushed out in July. George’s and Driscoll’s departures leave the Army with no Senate-confirmed civilian or military leader amid the ongoing war with Iran. Hegseth has also blocked the promotions of dozens of lower-level officers, many of whom were Black or female or had ties to George or Donahue. Driscoll reportedly warned Trump that Hegseth’s purge was creating chaos, hurting morale, and harming efforts to modernize the military. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) urged Trump to fire Hegseth, saying he was more focused on “culture wars” than on “the vital work of our national defense.

Driscoll’s departure came just days after four top military commanders warned Hegseth that the Iran war was compromising military readiness elsewhere in the world. In a highly classified assessment, the four-star commanders registered their disapproval of a plan to keep more than 50,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East through September, and many into 2027, The Washington Post reported. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell called the Post’s story “inaccurate” and “a betrayal of the force,” perpetuated by critics who hate Trump and Hegseth “more than they love America.”

What the columnists said

Driscoll’s departure “couldn’t come at a worse time,” said Brynn Tannehill in The New Republic. In Ukraine, we’re witnessing “a revolution in military technology and fundamentally how we think about war.” But rather than “lean into the future” of drones and artificial intelligence, as Driscoll was attempting to do, Hegseth canceled an elite counter-drone unit that “had been championed by the generals he sacked.” He’s putting his energies instead into building his ideal macho “warfighter” military, with no flab, transgender troops, female flag officers, or “Black men with shaving chits.”

He’s also focused on his own self-promotion, said Ewan Palmer in The Daily Beast. Another Washington Post report revealed that Hegseth had secretly “hired a team of MAGA influencers” who routinely laud him on social media and assail his critics. They include Kurt Schlichter, a retired colonel with more than 620,000 X followers, and Thomas Anderson, who touts Hegseth to his 323,000 X followers under his pen name CynicalPublius. The Pentagon, which had not disclosed that the influencers were on the payroll, “has not revealed what their roles are.”

Hegseth’s officer purge “is without precedent,” said Greg Jaffe in The New York Times. On his watch the number of four-star Army generals has been cut from 10 to five, and he’s fired or blocked the promotions of more than 80 generals and admirals. The dismissals don’t appear to be related to job performance but instead seem part of an effort to build a leadership “aligned with his political and ideological views.” One officer who’d led combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan reportedly had his promotion pulled because a unit he took over had a mentorship group for female paratroopers.

Driscoll’s departure “puts the Pentagon even more firmly under the control of Hegseth and his MAGA agenda,” said Nancy A. Youssef in The Atlantic. Driscoll, an Army veteran and close friend of Vice President JD Vance with the ear of the White House, sometimes “served as a counterweight to Hegseth’s impulses.” The prospect that he’ll be replaced by a Hegseth ally—potentially Pentagon spokesman Parnell—is further “raising fears inside the Army.”

Making a former Fox News host secretary of defense “was always a huge gamble,” said Tom Nichols, also in The Atlantic. “And now the price of that gamble is evident.” It’s not just Hegseth’s purge and his installation of loyalists; his “tenure has been disastrous on multiple scores.” He was reportedly the sole senior administration official to back Trump’s plan to attack Iran. Hegseth raided “assets from other theaters” to support that foolish war, leaving the U.S. and its allies exposed to threats from China and Russia, who are watching closely as we lose “to a third-rate power in the Middle East.” We will all pay the “price for his incompetence.”

Prince Alois of Liechtenstein is expected to veto an initiative passed by the country’s parliament that would legalise abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Situated between Switzerland and Austria, Liechtenstein – the majority of whose roughly 42,000 citizens identify as Roman Catholic – has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. The tiny Alpine principality is also “one of the few places on earth where a royal family still reigns with real political power”, said The Australian Women’s Weekly. Unlike other European monarchies, the constitution allows the ruling prince to dismiss governments, appoint judges, call referendums and veto legislation.

‘Protection of life’

Liechtenstein last held a referendum on legalising abortion in 2011, when the proposal was rejected by 52% of voters. Under current laws, abortion is allowed only in limited circumstances, including when a woman’s life is at risk, or if pregnancy involves a girl under the age of 14 (the age of consent) and/or is the result of rape. A woman who undergoes a termination outside those exemptions can be jailed for up to a year, with abortion providers liable for up to three years in prison.

Last week Liechtenstein’s parliament, the 25-seat Landtag, narrowly backed a citizens’ initiative which would legalise abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, by 13 votes to 12. It would also lift the country’s ban on providing information about abortions and bring them under health insurance cover. MPs rejected another proposal to put the matter to a public vote, despite a public opinion survey, the Lie Barometer, showing that a majority would vote in favour of it.

The initiative is unlikely to become law, however, after Prince Alois, who serves as regent for his father Prince Hans-Adam II, indicated to the Liechtensteiner Vaterland newspaper earlier this year he would veto any legislation of this kind, citing “the central legal interest of the protection of life”.

Currently, women in Liechtenstein must travel abroad if they wish to have an abortion, although since 2015 they have been able to do so without facing a penalty.

Liechtenstein has also not had a maternity ward for several years, “meaning that women must travel abroad to give birth”, said Vatican News. Benno Elbs, the archbishop of Vaduz, stressed the importance of a support system in which “saying yes to life becomes possible”. “A society that protects life must also be a society that does not abandon people in difficulty,” he told the publication.

‘Broader consolidation of power’

The last time the abortion debate was put to a public vote, the royal family threatened to use its power of veto if the result did not go in their favour. Such a step “would have plunged our nation into a severe crisis”, said Gabriella Alvarez-Hummel, a campaigner from Liechtenstein focusing on reproductive rights, in The Guardian. More than a decade on, “speaking out in favour of legalising abortion is regarded as speaking out against the monarchy”.

In August, Prince Alois announced a change to royal succession rules to allow women to ascend the throne on equal terms with men, breaking with three centuries of dynastic tradition. “This means that in future the first-born child, regardless of sex, will become heir to the throne and later princess or prince of Liechtenstein”, the House of Liechtenstein said in a statement.

The move was “hailed as overdue progress” but it also “masked a much broader consolidation of power”, said the Financial Times. Internal documents seen by the FT show that in a closed-door session of family members over the summer “Europe’s wealthiest ruling dynasty had quietly approved an overhaul that strengthens the authority of a prince who already wields extraordinary power”, while at the same time “reducing some of the rights and checks exercised by his relatives in the Princely House of Liechtenstein”.

Checks on Prince Alois were already “quite limited”, Wouter Veenendaal, professor of kingdom affairs at Leiden University, told the newspaper. The powers he now wields “would be unthinkable in Europe’s larger constitutional monarchies”.

College sports were once a bastion of amateur athletics. No more. Players get paid, openly, going to teams that can offer them the biggest paycheck. The lines between college and pro sports have grown fuzzy, and some marginal pro players are even attempting to return to class to keep their careers alive. A fierce backlash has ensued.

LSU: ‘Enraged every stakeholder’

It was once a settled fact that “players who had moved on to pro sports from college could not return to college,” said The Associated Press. Louisiana State University (LSU) is testing that notion, enrolling two athletes, Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris, who “spent time in NFL training camps this summer.”

Neither player was on LSU’s roster for Saturday’s season-opening 51-10 victory over Clemson because the Southeastern Conference (SEC) asked a court to “force LSU into following the conference’s rules banning pro athletes.” A judge ruled the duo should be allowed to play under brand-new NCAA rules that allow a fifth year of college eligibility, and the league is appealing. The players are currently in limbo, said the AP. It’s “embarrassing where we are with college football,” Clemson Coach Dabo Swinney said to reporters, per the AP.

First-year LSU Coach Lane Kiffin has “enraged nearly every stakeholder in the sport” with his attempt to bring the pros back to college, said The Wall Street Journal. His recruitment of Wright and Harris sparked “all of college sports’ major conferences” — including the Big Ten, Big 12 and the Atlantic Coast Conference — to quickly adopt policies banning the return of players who attempt to go pro. Athletes who “sign professional contracts” should not “be permitted to return to college competition,” the SEC said in a statement, per the Journal.

Kiffin is pushing to let the athletes regain their eligibility to play at the college level. “They’re either gonna play for you, or they’re gonna play somewhere else around the country,” he said at a press conference.

LSU is not the only organization recruiting former pros. The NCAA has been ordered by courts to “allow professional basketball players to return to college basketball,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said at USA Today. Filling college rosters with “older adults and former professionals” will have the consequence of squeezing younger athletes out of college athletics. The NCAA is backing the “Protect College Sports Act,” which would codify college eligibility standards into federal law.

Amateurism: ‘Fundamentally dishonest’

The LSU saga is highlighting “college sports’ identity crisis,” Jason Lloyd said at The Athletic. University athletes “weren’t paid, they weren’t represented by agents, they couldn’t profit from endorsements” until the last few years. Such amateurism was “fundamentally dishonest” given the billions of dollars generated by college sports. Direct payments and endorsements are now allowed, a recent change. But colleges refuse to call the newly paid athletes “employees.” Doing so would give the players “legal rights, obligations and bargaining power” universities want to avoid. The question that must be answered: “What, exactly, is a college athlete in 2026?”

While the legal battle proceeds, LSU is playing without Wright and Harris — and playing well. Kiffin’s football team led Clemson 31-3 at halftime of Saturday’s game. “Imagine,” Kiffin said to ESPN at halftime, “if we had pro players.” The SEC is not amused. The league on Tuesday scheduled a vote of its college presidents to decide “whether to expel the Tigers from the league,” said ESPN.

‘America’s 911 system is dangerously out of date’

Rebecca Neusteter at Time

Many Americans “may be surprised to learn a sobering truth: The 911 professionals who answer the phone are often unable to automatically pinpoint a caller’s precise location and cannot always rely on callers themselves,” says Rebecca Neusteter. The U.S. “has let our 911 emergency response system languish for decades, failing to make the necessary investments to bring it into the digital age.” Updating “911 technology should be a national priority, and Congress must provide sufficient funding.”

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‘The Trump administration is claiming success in drug strikes. Not so fast.’

Daniel DePetris at the Chicago Tribune

“Cartels in Mexico and gangs in Ecuador are now considered to be in the same league as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State — this, despite the fact that cartels have no political ideology and are predominantly concerned with making money,” says Daniel DePetris. But “boat strikes don’t seem to be doing much of anything to reduce the flow of drugs.” By “waging an actual war on drugs, the powers that be in Washington are confusing tactical accomplishments with strategic ones.”

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‘It’s time for America’s workers to take their power back’

Fred Redmond at Newsweek

This “Labor Day, it is important to remember that everyone in this country deserves a fair shot at the American dream: a good job with decent wages to support a family and the chance to one day retire,” says Fred Redmond. Families are “stressing over every expense,” and for “Black workers and other workers of color, that dream is moving further out of reach.” Unions “fight for economic justice and for racial justice,” and “those fights are not separate.”

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‘Sexual strangulation is derailing a generation of girls’

Debra Soh at The Globe and Mail

What was “once considered aggravated assault is now an accepted part of modern dating,” says Debra Soh. Sexual choking “has become so normalized” that “both sexes believe the practice is benign, which is a myth that pornography, social media and sex educators promote.” But “there is no safe way to partake in choking, because it doesn’t require much pressure on a person’s neck for unwanted side effects to happen, including memory loss, headaches, stroke and brain damage.”

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Ukraine has spent years using its drone arsenal to great effect, both in its wartime front with Russian forces and in penetrating deep into Russian territory for daring aerial attacks on fuel and commercial infrastructure. Now, Ukraine has a new target: Russian airports and Moscow’s commercial air travel industry.

“Every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer and everyone who still uses Russia’s key airports” should know “Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a statement last week. Although Ukrainian drones have filled Russia’s skies before, Zelenskyy’s implied threat to commercial air routes suggests the war for aerial supremacy in the region has taken a new and potentially even more dangerous turn.

Why focus on commercial air travel?

Zelenskyy’s warning comes as part of Ukraine’s “effort to disrupt Russia’s economy” and “pressure Moscow to end the war,” said The Wall Street Journal. Ukraine has “vowed to avoid targeting airliners and civilian deaths.” Instead, it intends to “scale up so-called Operation Carpet,” which circulates drones “near Russian airports, forcing air-traffic control to pause takeoffs and landings.”

The strategy is “no longer simply a repetition of isolated, sporadic emergency alerts” that have shuttered Russian airways in the past, said Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Southern Command, to the Journal. Ukraine intends to “transition to constant pressure aimed at paralyzing civilian air traffic” for eastern Russia.

The problem for Russia is “not that Ukraine has to shoot down an airliner,” said industry news site Live and Let’s Fly. “Quite the opposite.” Ukrainian drones merely need to “create enough uncertainty” for authorities to close airports or until “airlines or insurers decide the risk is no longer worthwhile.” The tactic is a “useful tool of war.”

Trying to shutter an airport permanently “would be difficult,” as a “sustained attack would become predictable and easier for air-defense systems to halt,” said The Guardian. But “periodic closures of Russian airports on a semi-regular basis” are achievable by “relying on an element of surprise,” said Royal United Services Institute aviation analyst Justin Bronk to the outlet.

Ukraine has also “urged the U.N.’s aviation agency” to “ask its members ‌to fully ban operations in Russian airspace,” said Reuters. The International Civil Aviation Organization itself has observed “heightened risks of civil aircraft being targeted or caught in crossfire,” said the group in a statement this week. Though the airline industry can “reroute flights and maintain operations during conflicts,” that type of “operational ​flexibility does not address the ​fundamental security threat.”

What are Russia’s options?

Russian President Vladimir Putin “vowed that Russia would keep pummeling Ukraine” at a press conference last week where he “dismissed” Zelenskyy’s threat to Russian airspace, said The Washington Post. “If this has been voiced, it amounts to nothing less than a call for state terrorism,” said Putin. “And I would point out that they are asking us to resume negotiations and requesting face-to-face meetings. One does not negotiate with terrorists.”

Although Ukraine’s airspace has been closed to commercial travel for several years, Russia has “refused to close the country’s airspace for civil aviation, despite the escalating war,” said the Journal. While American and European operators have pulled back from Russian sorties, their absence “has proven a boon” to operators from Asia and the Middle East, thereby “offsetting the risk of operating in skies regularly penetrated by Ukrainian drones.”

Russia’s military is “focusing on striking manufacturing and storage sites around Kyiv and energy and port operations in Odessa,” said former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Bryen on Substack. While it is “uncertain whether Zelenskyy’s warning will change the current pattern of attacks and retaliations,” it is also “hard to see” how Ukraine can “keep launching hundreds of drones (sometimes as many as a thousand)” nightly into Russia. It could simply be, said Bryen, that Zelenskyy is “saying more than he can do.”

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Help realize your favorite coffee lover’s barista dreams with a gift that will elevate their at-home java game. Each one of these items, including a versatile milk frother, quality coffee bean grinder and buzzy candy, can be used for making a cup of coffee in the morning or entertaining a crowd ready to get caffeinated.

Fellow Atmos electric vacuum coffee canister

Using fresh coffee beans is one of the “most important parts of making a good cup,” said Wired. Storing them in a vacuum-sealed canister keeps the beans at their peak, preserving the “delicate and rich flavors you get from fresh-roast coffee.” The electric version of Atmos’ coffee canister is easy to use — just push a button — and can also hold spices, nuts and loose-leaf tea. ($80, Amazon)

Instant Pot MagicFroth milk frother

They’ll never need to leave the house for a latte again — unless they want to. The MagicFroth is “highly customizable” and able to make “well-structured” hot, warm and cold foam in three different textures, said Food & Wine. It has a spout designed for precise pouring and can also be used to make non-coffee drinks like hot chocolate and matcha. ($45, Amazon)

Lardera Wilfa Uniform grinder

In order to get the highest-quality cup of joe at home, you have to start with a good burr coffee bean grinder like this one. Its 58mm steel flat burrs ensure precision and uniformity, with 41 settings to choose from for cold brew, pour-over, drip, French press, AeroPress and espresso. The stylish grinder is easy to use — put your beans in, push a button and it shuts off when the beans are “pulverized” — and “sits discreetly” on a countertop “without getting in the way,” said The Verge. ($299, Lardera)

Kinto Sepia amber mug

Coffee tastes better when served in a fun, retro glass. Kinto’s “dainty” glass mugs have a vintage feel and are as “attractive as they are useful,” said Food & Wine. The heat-resistant amber glasses are “durable” and can hold 11 ounces of liquid. They also look “lovely” when displayed on a table or have sunlight streaming through them. ($30, Amazon)

Monin coffee syrup variety pack

Spice up their coffee routine with this selection of five delicious flavored syrups. The pack includes caramel, amaretto, hazelnut, vanilla and Irish cream, along with recipes. Each bottle can flavor up to 15 drinks, from lattes and iced coffees to espresso martinis and milkshakes. ($10, World Market)

Ovalware cold brew coffee maker

The “sleek” design of this “solid” cold brew coffee maker and pitcher adds to its appeal, said Serious Eats. The lid’s “tight seal” keeps the flavor in, with the cold brew tasting the same on day one all the way through day seven (if it doesn’t get consumed sooner). The base and other components came apart “easily” for cleanup, and the borosilicate glass pitcher is dishwasher-safe. ($41, Amazon)

Uncommon Goods blind taste test coffee kit

Help take their knowledge of coffee to the next level. This blind taste taste kit will guide them through distinguishing different bodies and flavors in five mystery single-origin roasted coffees. The kit also includes a flavor wheel, rating sheet, cups and an envelope they’ll open at the end of their tasting experience, explaining each coffee’s origin and flavor profile. ($58, Uncommon Goods)

SugarBean Coffee Bean Brulée

Think crunchy, crackly and like nothing else. Coffee Bean Brulée is a candy made of Arabica coffee beans enveloped in caramelized sugar, which shatters when chewed or crumbled up as an ice cream topping or coffee garnish. There are three caffeine strengths to choose from — Single Shot, Double Shot and Triple Shot, for the biggest buzz — and several different flavors, like cardamom, cacao nib and coconut. ($8.50, SugarBean)

This week’s midterm GOP convention in Dallas will be a “rally like none other” and a “truly Historic Event,” President Donald Trump said on Truth Social in June when he first announced his unexpected plans for an off-season conservative confab. Despite Trump’s enthusiasm, not everyone in the GOP is making the trek to Texas — especially during a brutal campaign cycle that has pushed many battleground Republicans into an electoral crouch.

What did the commentators say?

Republicans are “privately questioning” whether Trump’s midterm convention “strikes the right tone amid the electorate’s tightening budgets,” all while “diverting candidates from their districts just weeks out from Election Day,” said CNN. The “overarching fear,” though, is that an event “once dubbed ‘Trumpapalooza’” will end up being “far more about promoting the president than the candidates who are actually on the ballot.”

Republicans are staring down a “bleak political environment” in which Trump’s approval is at a “record low,” said The New York Times. GOP candidates in battleground races may therefore be “keeping their distance” from Trump’s Dallas rally, “choosing to stay home and campaign instead.” Republicans face “growing hesitation” about associating themselves with the “polarizing president so close to the election,” said Politico. “More than 70 GOP candidates and members” polled by the outlet revealed that “most either do not plan to attend or are still weighing whether to go.”

“I can’t control what the president’s going to say at the convention,” Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who faces a “tough campaign to keep his central Michigan seat,” said to Politico. “But I can control where I’m at, what I’m doing.”

Still, party officials see the convention as their “best opportunity to rally voters behind Trump’s agenda,” said Reuters, even as some “remain skeptical” that the event can “meaningfully shift voter sentiment.” For organizers, the convention is “expected to serve a familiar purpose as a fundraising and networking hub for candidates and donors.” Many will feel “obliged ​to attend” in order to “court donors and raise their profiles through media appearances,” said RNC member Oscar Brock to the outlet.

Although traditionally “major party conventions” orient themselves around a “specific item of business” such as “formally nominating” candidates, the Dallas convention has “no such line items,” said The New Republic. Steep attendance costs reflect that the event has been “billed as a big Republican party” for which House members are asked to pay a “minimum of $25,000 to get in the door with a guest,” with “better packages” fetching “closer to $100,000.” The event also features multiple “corporate sponsors” whose funds are “being dumped into a nonprofit that does not have to disclose its donors.”

Given the peculiar funding and “poor planning,” many GOP campaign strategists are “seething” that the convention is “little more than a fundraiser for an unnecessary Trump production,” said Puck. And then “there are the optics” of an event scheduled days after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “Imperfect timing, perhaps,” for officials to be “photographed carousing in elephant hats with the party’s wealthy elite.”

Compounding those optics concerns is the convention being scheduled for the “same nights as the first two games of the NFL season,” said CNN. Primetime speakers, presumably the GOP’s heaviest-hitting figures, will be forced to compete with the “most-watched sport in the country.”

What next?

The convention is scheduled to last two days, said Texas Republican consultant Brendan Steinhauser to The Hill. “Not two weeks.” The short time frame won’t be “taking away from anything else,” and so long as the event is a “net positive financially” and makes use of the time to “deliver a message,” then “it’s a good thing.”

What happened

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday said he was “deeply shocked” by the far-right Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) victory in the weekend’s state elections in Saxony-Anhalt. AfD won a 43.8% plurality, according to exit polls, but fell three seats short of the majority needed to form a government. No far-right party has governed a state or major city in Germany since the Nazi era, and the AfD’s win in the small eastern state was the biggest challenge yet to the “firewall” that Merz’s Christian Democrats and other mainstream parties have erected against political extremism.

Who said what

“This is the worst election defeat the CDU has suffered in years, even decades,” Merz told reporters. “Of course, there will have to be consequences,” but “giving up is not an option for me.” The “embattled leader,” saddled with “sagging poll numbers” and a stagnant economy, “faces an uphill battle to save his government,” The Wall Street Journal said. “Impatience with Merz is now turning to panic” in his party, with many officials “pushing him to shift the government’s political course” and a “minority” seeking to lift the party’s “ban on cooperating with the AfD at the state level.”

What next?

AfD leaders said they will try to poach CDU lawmakers to gain the crucial three seats in Saxony-Anhalt or partner with the far-left BSW party, which shares the AfD’s anti-immigrant and pro-Russia views.

What happened

A man armed with two handguns and a Taser charged toward Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dr. Amy Acton on Sunday as she addressed a crowd at the Canfield Fair, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said. The man, Patrick Havas, knocked down at least two elderly people but was stopped before he reached Acton and did not draw his weapons, police said.

Who said what

The apparent attack attempt came as the “unofficial start of the campaign sprint” kicked off on Labor Day weekend, Reuters said, and President Donald Trump’s “deep unpopularity is imperiling Republican chances” of keeping control of Congress and state offices. Acton’s “closer-than-expected race” against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy “has become extraordinarily toxic,” The Washington Post said. Ohio politicians from both parties condemned Sunday’s political violence, which a Ramaswamy spokesperson called “completely unacceptable.”

What next?

Havas, 38, was booked in the Mahoning County ​Jail for disorderly conduct and two counts of assault. Even before the Labor Day kickoff, this year’s “campaigns already have been combative, busy and expensive,” The Associated Press said, and “they are expected to get even more so” as “voters tune in ahead of the Nov. 3 general election.”

What happened

Canada on Tuesday morning imposed steep tariffs on about $20 billion of U.S. imports, aiming to match President Donald Trump’s recent 50% tariffs dollar for dollar. The hundreds of U.S. products slapped with the tariffs, ranging from 15% to 50%, include steel, aluminum, cheese, clothing, appliances and farm equipment. Trump has been “trying to humiliate Canada economically” since trade talks broke down in acrimony last month, The New York Times said, but Prime Minister Mark Carney has his “insulted and angry nation solidly behind him.”

Who said what

Carney’s new retaliatory tariffs cover goods worth “roughly 6%” of U.S. exports to Canada last year, so they’re “unlikely to dent U.S. growth overall,” The Associated Press said. But “Canada has already gone beyond tariffs in other ways,” slashing U.S. alcohol sales with provincial bans and boycotting other goods, while Canadians “sharply cut travel” to the U.S.

The “spat with Canada” is the “latest evidence” that Trump “remains as committed as ever to his disruptive strategy of trade brinkmanship,” the Times said, despite “nearly two years of blistering court defeats, vicious international disputes and mounting domestic blowback” over rising prices and severed trade relationships.

What next?

Trump over the weekend suggested ending all trade with Canada and on Monday night threatened to block sales of Canadian Bombardier aircraft inside the U.S. Carney has “become symbolic of resistance,” Canadian historian Robert Bothwell told the AP. So Trump will try to “make an example” of him and Canada to “theoretically terrify everybody else while in fact showing them that they need to remove themselves even further from the United States.”

Founded in 1440 by King Henry VI, Eton College is a “rarefied bubble of educational privilege” that will have taught the country’s next two kings, said The Telegraph. Prince George will this week follow his father, uncle and 20 British prime ministers by attending the £21,891-per-term boarding school west of London.

Speaking in 2000, Prince William said that he “really enjoyed being able to go about Eton as just another student”, although in his autobiography published in 2023 Prince Harry was critical of his time at the school.

George will be exposed to the same “idiosyncrasies” of the institution, but changing times present new challenges for the young prince.

‘Own language and traditions’

Prince George will be one of “250 apprehensive first years” arriving at the school for their first term, said The Telegraph. In the first few days, George and his classmates will settle into their accommodation and begin learning “Eton’s peculiar geography” and the typical “rhythm of the day”. School days begin with a 10-minute morning chapel service, followed by around seven lessons, and at least two hours of “intense sport”, as well as “EW (extra work)”, Eton’s name for homework.

“Eton has its own language and its own traditions,” said The Sunday Times. Each house has a “dame”, Eton’s version of a matron, who will “regularly pop in for a chat with George and the other F-Blockers”, or first years. He will also be assigned an “‘uncle’” and a “timelord” from among the older boys in his house. The former will explain the intricacies of Eton’s uniform – a “black morning suit with pinstripe trousers” – and mastering the “front studs, back studs and detachable collars”. The latter will help him arrange his schedule and extra-curricular activities, which might include “22-inch calibre rifle shooting on the school range” or “auditioning for a play”.

“The school has so many unique names and phrases that there is an ‘Eton Glossary’ on its website,” said the Daily Express. George will be expected to learn and use the terms “pop” (senior prefects), “dry bobs” (those who play cricket instead of rowing in the summer) and “beaks” (teachers). On day one, new pupils are quizzed on these “unique phrases of the school”, as well as the colours of each of its 25 houses.

Even though Eton is close to Forest Lodge, the Waleses’ eight-bedroom Windsor home, George will be a full boarder, said Hello! This means he will go home “every two or three weeks”, although he will enjoy a room to himself, as “there are no shared rooms at Eton”.

‘Challenge’ for security

For George, going to Eton will be a chance to “find his first tribe away from home”, said The Telegraph. But being a future king does not entitle you to “become a BNOC (big name on campus)” at Eton. “No one cares who your parents are, because almost everybody’s parents are someone.”

However, the young royal differs from his peers in having “greater protection than any heir in modern times”, said The i Paper. The Prince and Princess of Wales have fought for a “tighter approach” to media access than William and Harry experienced at Eton. They were part of a “gentleman’s agreement”, in which photos were traded to the press from a select number of events in exchange for leaving them alone.

While media coverage of the royals has “undergone a sea change since the 90s”, Prince George still faces a “bigger threat” to his privacy and security than his predecessors. The “rise of phone cameras, Meta glasses and other smart spectacles” are a “challenge” for the 24-strong security team at the school. Eton’s facilities are “dotted around the town”, meaning George is likely to encounter tourists who are not subject to the same rules and regulations as the media. “Take a close look at pictures of Prince George released ahead of his first day at Eton. They may be the last we see of him for some time.”

Donald Trump suggested last week that the US might reconsider its tacit support for British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands in retaliation for the UK’s failure to support him in the Iran war. The US president implied that he would not support the UK in a territorial dispute with Argentina.

Soon after, in a televised address, Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, said he would reopen the country’s claim to the islands it calls las Malvinas, declaring that the geopolitical “winds of change” would favour Buenos Aires. He proposed a “handover” of the islands akin to the transfer of Hong Kong to China, dismissing Britain as a country “in decline”.

What did the commentators say?

During the Falklands War in 1982, Margaret Thatcher had “the solid backing of the special relationship, and her ideological soulmate, Ronald Reagan, in the White House”, said Robert Tait, The Guardian’s US political correspondent. But Andy Burnham “must contend with the chill wind emanating from the menacing and destabilising presence of Trump”.

The US president’s “vindictive mindset” is to Milei’s advantage and “was almost entirely the trigger” for his address; the Argentinian president is trying to counter his own “falling political popularity”. Indeed, the same factor “may have played a key role” in the military junta’s decision to invade the Falklands in 1982.

But there’s no suggestion that Argentina would “dream of repeating” that “disastrous” decision, which led to the death of 907 sailors and soldiers, said The Economist. Milei “appears uncompromising” but, in truth, he knows forcing any change in status for the Falklands is a “tall order”. In a 2013 referendum with a turnout of more than 90%, all but three of 1,517 islanders voted to remain a British Overseas Territory .

Milei claims “this territory is ours”, but he wants to reach a “consensus solution” over the future status of the islands, similar to Britain’s agreement with China to cede control of Hong Kong. There are “risks to stirring up fresh confrontation”: Britain could block the sale of weapons containing British parts to Argentina, or influence how the International Monetary Fund “deals with” Milei’s struggling government. Milei may simply be trying to “shore up the more conservative parts of his base” ahead of elections next year. “Amping up his rhetoric” is less a show of strength than a reflection of Milei’s weakening domestic position.

In the event of a conflict, even a deployment of “two destroyers and three or four frigates” would be a “stretch” for the Royal Navy, said Lewis Page in The Telegraph. However, the UK’s aircraft carrier capability would be “completely dominant against Argentina”. Their forces are “even more run down than ours”.

While the UK could not sustain an aircraft carrier presence “indefinitely”, we could “dominate the skies over the Falklands for long enough to mount a campaign there”. And, unlike in 1982, the Falklands are “at least somewhat garrisoned”, which would be a “serious problem for a renewed Argentinian invasion”.

What next?

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said British support for the Falkland Islanders’ right to determine their own future was “unwavering”.

However, as part of a “furious backlash” to the UK’s plans to sanction Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Israel is now calling for sanctions on Britain over the Falklands, said The Independent. Far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir described the islands as “Argentine territory under occupation”. Yair Netanyahu, the son of the Israeli prime minister, took aim at what he called Britain’s “hypocrisy and hostility towards Israel”, saying Israel would only “stop recognising the Malvinas” once Britain stops “recognising Palestine”.

Plans for large-scale oil production around the Falklands “raise the economic stakes”, said Al Jazeera. Milei declared that the Sea Lion deep-sea oil project, a joint UK-Israel operation due to begin production in 2028, was a “clear and present danger” to Argentinian interests. Argentina has threatened to file criminal charges against Israeli energy company Navitas Petroleum and its executives, claiming they have violated Argentinian law by holding UK-issued exploration and exploitation licences.

Sweden’s “second city”, Gothenburg, is less crowded than Stockholm and, thanks to the “icy, clean water surrounding the coast” is known for its excellent seafood, said Arielle Domb in The Independent.

Located on the country’s southwest coast, at the mouth of the River Göta, the city has been a “crucial” destination for the fish and shellfish trade since the 18th century. Its daily indoor fish market, Feskekörka, is still open today. Housed within a building that resembles a church with “pointed Gothic arch windows”, you’ll discover “vibrant fish stalls” selling everything from lobsters and crayfish to whole salmon. A two-day seafood festival “celebrating west coast ingredients” takes place every September, this year from 18 to 19.

Gothenburg is “brimming” with trendy restaurants and coffee shops. Bar Bulot is a lovely spot for natural wines and seafood dishes like “delicate halibut ceviche with thin slices of melon” or “oyster with a tangy tapioca mignonette”. For a really “exquisite” meal try Champagnebaren, where you can feast on “edible flower-decorated dishes that look like paintings”. And if you feel like a cocktail after dinner, head to the “stylish” bars Bruno or Unity Jazz, both “around the corner”.

If the city has one “must-see district” it has to be Haga, said Alicia Miller in National Geographic. Grab some salty liquorice at Lakritsroten to munch while you explore the “cobbled streets and cute boutiques”, and stop to browse in the antiques shops.

There is “nothing more Swedish” than fika – slowing down for the country’s cherished “coffee-and-cake ritual”. If you want to “feel like a local” go to “sip artisanal coffee” at da Matteo on the central shopping street of Magasinsgatan before buying a sourdough cinnamon bun from Alvar & Ivar to “nibble in Slottsskogen park”.

To “get to grips” with the city’s history, consider spending an afternoon at the Museum of Gothenburg which is “primely placed in the 18th-century former Swedish East India Company headquarters, on the banks of Stora Hamnkanalen” (Great Harbour Canal).

Perhaps best of all, Gothenburg is within easy reach of a “beguiling” archipelago, said Lizzie Frainier in The Times. Vrångö, the southernmost inhabited island, is just a 30-minute ferry ride from Saltholmen port. With fewer than 400 residents, it’s home to two “ruggedly beautiful” nature reserves, each with its own hiking trail. There is only one hotel on the island – Kajkanten Vrångö – where traditional boat houses have been transformed into pared-back “self-catering” accommodation that look out over the water. Order a seafood hamper from nearby Fiskeboa to enjoy the “sweetest langoustines you will ever taste”.

Everyone wants to go to space, but at what cost? Companies that have been hoping to colonize the cosmos are not addressing the potential environmental and atmospheric impacts of that expansion. This phenomenon is known as starwashing, and it is likely only going to become more common.

Taking space

Starwashing, a spin on greenwashing, is when space companies “sell space exploration narratives by appealing to a desire to expand humankind beyond Earth” while “downplaying or omitting the negative repercussions for Earth and the space environment,” Marissa E. Yingling, an associate professor of social work at the University of Louisville who first popularized the term, said at The Conversation. These companies “appeal to your sense of cosmic wonder” as well as to an “interest in learning about life’s origins, Earth’s place in the universe or the desire for humans to explore places beyond our planet.”

The problem is that starwashing “takes attention away from actually solving the problems that are here on Earth,” Gregers Andersen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern Denmark, said to Grist. For example, Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos, “envisions building space habitats that could house billions as a solution to environmental catastrophes on Earth” and “outlined a vision for moving industry off Earth, most immediately to the moon,” said Yingling. SpaceX’s founder, Elon Musk, has expressed interest in creating human settlements on Mars. But “even if having a fraction of the human population live and work in space one day far in the future were possible, it would not fix pressing environmental crises such as wildfires or climate change in the near term.”

Another source of potential harm is the proliferation of data centers. AI usage has increased the need for these centers, which have very high water requirements. Bezos and Musk “both have companies that build and rely on resource-intensive data centers based on land” and have “espoused plans to construct solar-powered orbital data centers,” said Yingling. They “frame these plans as environmentally beneficial because an orbital data center wouldn’t require the same amount of water or electricity as a data center on Earth.” Yet “orbital data centers, made up of satellite clusters, would add to an already-crowded space environment.” They can also “threaten Earth-based astronomy” and “pollute Earth’s orbit with debris.”

Room for improvement

Unfortunately, putting things in space takes a substantial environmental toll. Spaceflight “leads to a globally averaged depletion of the ozone layer and contributes to global warming,” said a study published in the journal Earth’s Future. “Nearly 88% of the ozone loss comes from nitrogen oxides released by objects reentering the atmosphere.”

Aside from ozone depletion, “space expansion has other environmental effects,” said Grist. These include the “loss of dark sky as satellites reflect sunlight and damage to wildlife habitats around launch sites,” in addition to the “enormous greenhouse gas emissions involved in building and launching satellites.”

If a “rocket, satellite network or lunar mining project is supposed to benefit everyone, companies should have to provide transparent accounting for emissions, land use, debris risks and impacts on communities,” said The Cool Down. There should also be “tougher oversight before new launch facilities, satellite fleets or data-center projects move forward.”

The prevalence of starwashing does not mean that all extraterrestrial endeavors should be scorned, said The Cool Down. “Methane-detecting satellites have uncovered leaks from oil and gas operations in recent years that dramatically exceeded what had been reported,” said Grist, and “astronauts have been shocked by how fragile and delicate Earth’s atmosphere looks from space,” turning a “surprising number of them into climate advocates.”

John Healey has said Britain’s economy is finally “turning a corner” as he set out his mission to “make Great Britain growth Britain” again.

In his first major speech as chancellor, Healey sought to reassure the markets by pledging to stick to Labour’s tax and spend fiscal rules, while trying to present a more optimistic view of Britain’s economic prospects. But only days ago a global bond sell-off saw UK yields hit their highest level since the 2008 financial crash, further increasing the cost of borrowing for the UK government.

But Healey “begins with a credibility problem that is not entirely of his own making”, said Simon French in The Sunday Times. He is the eighth chancellor in 10 years, so many businesses, households and investors are “fatigued and sceptical” about yet another new vision for growth.

What did the commentators say?

“A glance at the news could easily reinforce the gloomy impression” that the UK economy is in dire straits, but some key indicators are “telling a more cheerful story – one of growth”, said James Moore in The i Paper.

There is a “surprising level of optimism” among businesses in the services and manufacturing sectors, with overall GDP growth expected to beat Bank of England forecasts for the third quarter, boosted by warm weather and the men’s football World Cup. The data shows “that UK plc is more resilient than anyone really expected in the face of the strong headwinds that it is battling against”.

There are tentative signs that “consumer confidence has also improved”, said Delphine Strauss in the Financial Times. Private new car registrations are up by almost a fifth compared to last summer, while earlier figures from the Bank of England show growth in consumer credit.

UK recruiters also saw hiring pick up in August for the first time in four years. It adds to “evidence that the UK’s weak jobs market was stabilising and business and consumer confidence were improving – albeit from a low base – before a renewed rise in gas prices and sovereign bond yields that again threatens to hold back the economy”.

Most members of the public who describe the economy as broken “put its condition down to poor political priorities rather than to other reasons, such as global shocks, immigration or failings on the part of individual citizens (such as not working hard enough)”, said Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman.

Andy Burnham and his chancellor are constrained by costly rising debt – interest on debt costs more than the defence, Home Office and justice departments combined – rigid fiscal rules, and Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise the three main taxes. But they need to find a way to pay for their ambitious policy platform “that commands the confidence of markets – and a public more and more convinced that the economy is broken by design”.

What next?

While the underlying numbers look positive, were the Bank of England to raise interest rates later this month, or Healey to announce tax rises in the Budget at the end of October, things could turn sour very quickly.

For now, the chancellor is trying to strike a more upbeat tone than his predecessor. After the equivalent speech in the last two years since Labour returned to power, the public has been “left with a clear message of tough times, and significant tax rises ahead”, said the BBC’s economics editor Faisal Islam. Today was different.

The chancellor is “trying to nurture some fragile early signs that confidence is returning” but “the burning question is how to fill multi-billion gaps in public finance plans before the Budget, in a way that minimises the economic impact.

“While vibes are important, policy matters more.”

A “touchstone of British factual television”, will come to an end this September, said Radio Times. Two 90-minute episodes of one of the world’s longest-running documentaries will air on ITV in an “epic and moving end to a television landmark”.

Based on a Jesuit maxim – “give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man” – 14 seven-year-olds from a variety of backgrounds were interviewed in 1964 about their thoughts and aspirations for the future. But the tenth and final iteration will see a return of many cast members, who have mixed views on the show’s practices.

‘Glimpse of the country’s future’

This “groundbreaking ITV documentary series” has been described as the “Bayeux tapestry of television”, said The Guardian. Over the last six decades, the children’s progress has been “creating a snapshot of Britain’s social history”.

But this instalment will have some “noticeable differences”. Michael Apted, the researcher who found and selected the participants, and interviewed them for each episode, died in 2021. Director Asif Kapadia, who was chosen to replace Apted for his acclaimed Ayrton Senna, Diego Maradona and Amy Winehouse films, has since called this documentary the “most beautiful thing I’ve ever made”.

Two of the subjects have died. Lynn Johnson, who became a librarian in east London, was the first, in 2013. Nick Hitchon, a Yorkshire farmer’s son who became a nuclear scientist, approached the programme wanting to record a final message after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died in 2023, just “hours” after his final “heartbreaking” interview.

The documentary was originally intended as a “one-off” for the current affairs show “World in Action”, said The Times. But it intrigued audiences as it “promised the viewer a glimpse of the country’s future”.

The cast’s lives continue to diverge. Tony Walker, a “cheeky-chappy kid” from Bethnal Green, east London, dreamt of becoming a jockey, but turned to cab driving, while Andrew Brackfield claimed to read the Financial Times aged seven, successfully predicted he would attend Cambridge, and is a retired partner of Linklaters. But in a “villain-free series”, Bruce Balden’s “fundamental goodness still shines”. In the first episode he said we should “give most of our money to poor people”, and by “28 Up” was “teaching maths to immigrants in the East End and in 35 Up was teaching in Bangladesh”.

‘Outrageous’ inequality

Over this time period, we have seen the participants “grow up, marry, separate, have careers, suffer illness and depression”, said The Independent.

Cast members have also accused Apted of “pursuing an agenda and have been intermittently unhappy at how they were portrayed”. Throughout you can see a “reluctance to continue to appear on screen warring with a sense of duty – a generational one, perhaps – not to disrupt a historic enterprise”.

Many of the cast stepped back for one or several episodes. One of a “trio of prep-school toffs”, Charles Furnaux left after 21 and became a BBC producer, while Liverpudlian teacher Peter Davies dropped out for three instalments after being “monstered by the right-wing press for calling Margaret Thatcher’s government ‘an incompetent, uncaring bloody shower’”.

Considering the aims and scope of the project, it is “outrageous” that only four girls were chosen alongside 10 boys, cast member Jackie Bassett told The Mirror. Bassett, alongside two friends from the same “working-class east London” primary school, and “solo upper-class Suzy” were the only female representatives on the show.

Bassett famously challenged Apted on camera for “asking the women about marriage and children rather than anything else”. She would later “point blank refuse to speak about certain topics”. “I was not going to talk about something that would affect my family, my children – so I basically just told him no”, said Bassett. “He didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.”

Artificial intelligence could cause a global economic downturn, the Bank of England’s governor has warned.

Andrew Bailey is the latest in a “throng of figures” to highlight the risks posed by the most advanced versions of AI technology, said The Guardian.

What did he say?

Bailey said “frontier” AI models were “showing increasingly sophisticated autonomy and problem-solving abilities, as well as threat capabilities”.

In a two-page letter sent to international finance ministers and central bank governors, Bailey said the advanced models risk destabilising the “highly interconnected” global financial system through cyber-disruption that “can spread across jurisdictions”.

The central bank officially raised concerns about AI in July, listing the threats of a potential stock market bubble, worsened cybersecurity vulnerabilities and AI companies’ increasingly complex and opaque debt.

How would AI cause a bubble?

The inflated valuations of companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Nvidia have led to warnings that the companies are in a stock market “bubble”. This is a “significant run-up in stock prices without a corresponding increase in the value of the businesses they represent”, said The Motley Fool.

Usually, this is driven by “highly optimistic market behaviour”, said Investopedia. Then, when investors’ confidence starts to wane as they realise their hopes are not panning out, they all begin to sell off, sending stock prices tumbling and causing an abrupt contraction in the market.

The “core problem” in the markets is always debt, said Andrew Neill in the Daily Mail. But suddenly there’s “a big new kid on the block in the credit markets” in the form of America’s AI “hyperscalers”, which are “investing several trillion dollars to roll out their transformative technology” on “borrowed money”.

They’re borrowing from private credit markets, an “expensive, unregulated, opaque source of debt”. This means “voracious governments” are competing with the AI giants for credit, “pushing up the cost of borrowing”. But if AI share prices “came tumbling down” they’d bring the “whole stock-market caboodle with them” because the “continuing surge” in share prices is “overwhelmingly AI-driven”.

So what can be done?

Bailey said the sector should prioritise “appropriate steps to support safe and responsible model release and deployment on a global basis”.

But he warned that “recent developments” have “highlighted” that “many jurisdictions do not have the protocols in place to manage the development, release, and deployment of advanced frontier AI models, heightening risks for the financial sector and beyond”.

Shandy is “poised for a resurgence”, said Jane Denton on This Is Money. The thirst-quenching mix of lager and lemonade has become an “unlikely” drink of choice for 20-somethings who are seeking out lower alcohol content tipples that “don’t compromise on taste”.

Originating in 1850s England as “shandygaff” – a mixture of beer and ginger ale – the popular drink had dropped the “gaff” by the end of the 19th century and swapped in lemonade for a citrussy twist. Shandy “started going out of fashion” in the 1990s, Jane Peyton, founder of the School of Booze, told the publication but it is now “undergoing a revival”.

Ocado sales of shandy have climbed by 40% year-on-year, said Rachel Dixon in The Guardian, and the drink is popping up in supermarkets everywhere. Made with just two ingredients, it’s “easy to make at home” and “shouldn’t get you too sloshed”. Use a “chilled glass”, pour in classic or cloudy lemonade up to the halfway point, then “slowly add the beer”.

For a fruity twist, try mixing lager with pink grapefruit soda or pale ale with lime soda. And for a sweeter tipple you can blend lager with cola to create a sweeter, amber-brown coloured cocktail that’s known as diesel in Germany. “Yes, it’s a thing”.

If you’d rather buy your shandy ready to drink, try Pillars Radler, said Melissa Cole in The Telegraph. Packaged in a “suitably nostalgic” stubby bottle with a “charming” yellow label, it blends “quality” lager with orange zest and lemon juice for a touch of “refreshing acidity”.

Other options to keep an eye out for include LoFi’s Raspberry Radler which feels like “inhaling a slightly jammy slice of summer”, and Shandy Shack Ginger Beer Shandy which perfectly balances the “bready malt” of the pale ale with “decently spicy ginger pop”. It’s a “belter”.

A key question when budgeting is how much of your income you should be stashing away in savings. But when you start to get into the numbers, it’s not uncommon to find there is a gap between how much it is recommended you save and how much you can actually save after all of your expenses.

This reality, intensified by persistent inflation, is why the 60/30/10 budgeting method has been rising in popularity. The ratios offer a little more room for expenses by putting a little less toward savings than the longstanding gold standard, the 50/30/20 budget.

What is the 60/30/10 budgeting method?

The 60/30/10 budgeting method breaks down your monthly income into three categories: 60% of your income will go toward essential expenses (think housing, food and transportation), 30% will go toward discretionary expenses (like going out to eat and streaming services) and the remaining 10% goes into savings or toward paying down high-interest debt.

This budgeting framework differs from the go-to 50/30/20 budget in one major way, which is how much it allocates to savings. With the 50/30/20 rule, you put only 50% toward essential expenses, instead allocating 20% to savings and debt pay-off.

How does it stack up against the classic 50/30/20 budget?

The truth is, “many individuals may find that 50% of their income just isn’t enough to cover all necessary expenses,” said Kiplinger. For people feeling strapped by steep costs, the 60/30/10 budget can offer a more forgiving framework to follow.

Some experts worry, however, that the reduced rate of savings and debt pay-off could end up hampering long-term financial progress. Setting aside 10% instead of 20% can translate to “slower progress on savings and debt repayment, which may leave you carrying high-interest balances longer,” said NerdWallet. It may also make it challenging to, say, save enough for retirement or a down payment on a home.

The reallocation from savings to essentials could sidestep addressing root problems, too. For example, if “high rent is driving costs, downsizing or relocating might be a better solution than raising your ‘needs’ to 60%,” said NerdWallet.

How can you determine the right budgeting ratio for you?

Ultimately, the “exact ratios someone should use are flexible and many people find that they need to shape it to their needs,” said Stephen Kates, a certified financial planner and the principal financial analyst for Annuity.org, to U.S. News & World Report.

The 60/30/10 budget may work well for “young adults who have higher ‘startup’ costs like a first apartment, buying a car, moving to a new city for a job, student loan repayments, etc.” said NerdWallet. On the other hand, “older individuals may want to prioritize savings over spending, leading them to trim down the 30% allocation on discretionary spending and save more for retirement,” said Kiplinger.

Whichever ratio you land on, keep in mind that it does not have to be a permanent choice. As your financial situation evolves, so, too, should your saving habits.

There are a lot of myths and misconceptions when it comes to bankruptcy. But it is also a process that an increasing amount of Americans are facing.

Filings at the end of March this year “were up almost 12% from a year earlier,” said NPR. This suggests that a “growing number of Americans have reached the point where the pressure of their debt has overcome the stigma of bankruptcy.” While it’s still a last resort option, it can also be a lifeline back to financial solvency.

What is bankruptcy?

Bankruptcy is a legal process that people can go through when they are unable to pay back their debt on their own. Obtaining it requires filing a petition with the courts requesting relief.

The exact form this relief will take depends upon what type of bankruptcy you qualify for. Chapter 7 bankruptcy “can discharge eligible debts entirely, but requires the filer to forfeit nonexempt assets and property,” whereas with Chapter 13 bankruptcy, you “won’t have to forfeit any property, but you’ll need to set up a repayment plan to pay back creditors,” said LendingTree.

Why do people file for bankruptcy?

In short: relief. As soon as you file for bankruptcy, an “automatic stay takes effect, temporarily halting creditors from pursuing collection actions against you, including lawsuits, foreclosure and wage garnishment,” said Investopedia. And while it is generally a last resort, if you have “exhausted all other alternatives, bankruptcy may be the only way to get the financial relief you’re seeking,” potentially even offering a “fresh financial start” after you do the requisite work, said Experian.

However, it is worth noting that bankruptcy is not a guaranteed fix. Not everyone who files will qualify. Further, “certain debts, like child support and unpaid taxes, are ineligible for discharge through bankruptcy,” said Investopedia, which means it might not be the right solution for every situation.

What are the consequences of bankruptcy?

The financial reboot that bankruptcy can offer does not necessarily come easy. For one, bankruptcy has the potential to do major damage to your credit score, remaining on your credit report for up to 10 years. “It can take several years to rebuild your credit history,” said Experian, and in the meantime, you might have limited access to borrowing opportunities, such as a mortgage, credit card or car loan. If you are approved, you will likely pay a steeper interest rate.

Bankruptcy can also result in you losing some of your assets. For instance, under Chapter 7, if you “have a lot of home equity and your home isn’t protected from sale, your trustee might choose to sell it,” said LendingTree.

As such, before you go down this path, it is worth considering some bankruptcy alternatives. Depending on your situation, a debt management plan, debt consolidation or simply negotiating directly with creditors may be a better option.

When you get married, you might assume your taxes are now a joint venture. But that does not necessarily have to be the case.

Filing jointly tends to be the more popular option among married couples, both because it’s easier and because it can offer more tax benefits, potentially resulting in a lower tax bill. For some spouses, however, filing separately may be the preferable choice.

What is the difference between married filing separately vs. jointly?

Married couples have two filing status options come tax time: married filing separately and married filing jointly. When couples file jointly, they submit just one tax return that combines “income, deductions and credits with a spouse’s, all on one tax return with the same tax rate,” said Fidelity. Meanwhile, married filing separately means that you each file your own return, keeping your income, deductions and credits, and thus tax liabilities, separate on two different tax returns.

This choice has consequences beyond whether or not you can work together on your return. It also affects your effective tax rate and your eligibility for tax deductions and credits, which in turn determines how much you pay and get back at tax time.

When can it make sense to file separately?

While married filing jointly will generally result in the lower tax bill, “filing separately might be advantageous in situations where one spouse has significant deductible expenses or concerns about joint liability, as it allows for more individualized tax treatment,” said Chase. More specifically, couples may consider married filing separately in the following situations:

One of you has high medical bills. “If one spouse’s out-of-pocket medical expenses exceed 7.5% of their individual adjusted gross income (AGI), but don’t exceed 7.5% of their joint AGI, they might be able to lower their taxes by filing separately and taking the medical deduction,” said Intuit TurboTax.

Either you or your spouse has student loan debt. “If you’re on a student loan income-driven repayment plan, filing separately could reduce your bill since it would be based on your income alone, instead of your spouse’s income and yours combined,” said Fidelity.

There are tax liabilities or other issues. “If you don’t want to be liable for your spouse’s taxes and suspect that they are hiding income or claiming deductions or credits falsely, then filing separately is probably the best option,” said Investopedia. If you sign a joint return, you are assuming responsibility.

Another factor worth evaluating is your incomes and how combining them (or keeping them separate) influences your total tax bill. For instance, “dual-income households with similarly large paychecks could be pushed into a higher tax bracket than if they filed separately,” said CNBC Select.

When is married filing jointly a better choice?

The reason filing jointly is typically more advantageous is because “joint filers usually have higher income thresholds for certain taxes and deductions,” which “means they can earn a higher income and still qualify for certain tax breaks,” said Intuit TurboTax. They can also “more easily qualify for various tax credits,” including the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child and Dependent Care Credit.

The laws of your state are also worth weighing. If you live in a community property state, where all assets earned during marriage are considered jointly owned, “couples filing separately there each have to report half of the income both spouses earned, which could nullify most of the advantages of filing separately,” said NerdWallet.

Two seemingly unrelated incidents more than a year apart have sparked some of the biggest youth protests in Vietnam in a generation.

‘Tree of Justice’

Eighteen-year-old student Do Ngoc Phuong Thuy, known as Mina, was killed in Hanoi in May last year when the motorbike she was travelling on with her father was hit by a car. Tragic as the incident was, few expected it to lead to “an eruption of Gen Z outrage and creativity” that thrust Memorial Tree 55 on Nguyen Huy Tu Street “into the local zeitgeist”, said The New York Times.

The subsequent investigation yielded little information except that the driver had the initials N.S.C. and was born in 1961. This led to social media speculation that former National Assembly deputy Nguyen Sy Cuong was the car driver responsible. Some felt “the incident had been swept under the rug due to the influence of powerful figures”, said the BBC.

But by August 2026 the car crash and Mina’s death had “almost faded from public memory” and “may have stayed that way if hadn’t been for the heavy-handed decision of Vietnam’s minister for culture, Lam Thi Phuong Than, to all but ban a new album by rap artist ‘MCK’”, said academic Nils Mallock on The Conversation. “This censorship against the most popular rap singer among Gen Z drew scrutiny to the culture minister – and from there attention moved to her husband, Nguyen Sy Cuong.”

Within days, millions of young people voiced their outrage online and Tree 55, renamed the “Tree of Justice”, had become ground zero in a growing campaign against a perceived government cover-up.

Government reaction

“Pressurised by more than a year’s worth of growing suspicion and a rush of online attention, the issue had become too big to ignore,” said the BBC.

On the evening of 17 August, state broadcaster Vietnam Television (VTV) aired an official statement from authorities confirming Nguyen Sy Cuong’s involvement in the incident, adding that because he had “sincerely confessed and actively and fully remedied the consequences of his actions”, the victim’s family had submitted a petition to exempt him from prosecution.

In the one-party state, the official acknowledgment of responsibility was “an extraordinary concession to public pressure”, said The New York Times. Warning against “opportunists exploiting the incident on social media”, the TV report “reflected the government’s deep concerns about an unexpected youth movement pushing for accountability at a time when officials are focused on economic growth”.

The Vietnamese authorities are also mindful of the wave of Gen Z protests that “toppled leaders in Nepal, challenged authorities in Indonesia, and continue to rattle the power structure in India”.

Mina’s father Do Viet Hung, who survived the crash, appeared in the VTV broadcast, saying the “family was satisfied with the investigation’s findings”, said the BBC, and asked people “not to be drawn into the influence of reactionary elements”.

A senior police official also said in the report that some people were “leveraging the incident to stoke dissent”. The Ministry of Public Security had “uncovered highly dangerous plots and intentions by hostile forces, reactionaries and bad actors to incite unrest and cause disorder”.

Home to the world’s largest Japanese diaspora, as well as sizeable Korean and Chinese communities, the Brazilian megacity of São Paulo is one of the best places outside Asia to enjoy Asian food, said Austin Bush in Travel + Leisure.

In the thriving Japanese district of Liberdade, where street lamps resemble torii gates, beloved old izakaya (Japanese pubs) rub shoulders with stalls selling Japanese-Brazilian street food such as hot rolls – breaded, deep-fried sushi.

The nearby district of Bom Retiro has a similar concentration of Korean bars and restaurants. And, in recent years, a new culinary wave has emerged, as chefs create bold fusion dishes or, more subtly, adapt Japanese recipes to uniquely Brazilian produce, from Amazon river fish to jambu, a tongue-tingling herb. Among the finest exponents of these trends are the “highly acclaimed” Kotori, Aizomê, Kanoe and Goya Zushi – restaurants as exciting and distinctive as any in the city.

A Croatian island without the crowds

Croatia’s best-known islands (Hvar, Korčula and so on) lie in its far south, but there are plenty of others, many of which are beautiful but much less touristy. Among them is Dugi Otok, said Mark Palmer in The Times – a verdant, 26-mile-long sliver of limestone that lies an easy ferry ride from the fascinating harbour town of Zadar.

Take a boat tour of the nearby Kornati National Park, an “otherworldly” wilderness of stark, arid islands criss-crossed with ancient stone walls. And be sure to spend some time in Zadar itself (I can recommend the Hotel Bastion), an elegant place with some lovely museums and architectural “treasures”, including impressive Roman remains.

A week-long walk in the eastern Alps

An “epic” 466-mile hiking path, the Alpe-Adria-Trail runs from Austria, via Slovenia, to Italy’s Adriatic coast. For anyone wanting to see the magnificent Alpine landscapes through which it passes, however, there’s an easier option, said Paul Bloomfield in The Telegraph: the Alpe-Adria Circular. This 83-mile circuit passes through all three countries, offering an intriguing sample of their overlapping cultures, and is usually done in a week (Walks Worldwide has a self-guided eight-day package, with luggage transfers, from £895).

Most walkers start in the Austrian town of Villach, from which the path winds through wildflower meadows and beechwoods to “chocolate-box” Alpine pastures, “teal-emerald” lakes and photogenic hamlets such as Borgo Lussari in Italy. The highest point is the 6,043ft summit of the Schwarzkogel, with spectacular views of the Julian Alps – including Triglav, the triple-peaked mountain that adorns the Slovenian flag.

A remote town of some 900 souls beside Hudson Bay in Canada, Churchill is known as the “polar bear capital of the world”. Every autumn, as the bay freezes, hundreds of these bears gather around it before heading out across the ice, and thousands of tourists come to see them. But Churchill also hosts another annual wildlife spectacle, said Oliver Smith in the Financial Times – one that attracts fewer visitors but is equally worth seeing.

Each summer, thousands of beluga whales migrate to the mouth of the Churchill River, to feed on small fish and nurse their young. These pale cetaceans, which grow up to 18ft long, look from a distance like countless “white-topped waves” in the river (which is more than a mile wide here), and visitors can safely kayak and paddleboard among them.

Churchill is inaccessible by road, so I flew there in a prop plane from Winnipeg, admiring the “vastness” below, where sunlight danced on rivers, and the forest gradually gave way to tundra. (You can also travel by train – a two-day journey.)

The “wind-harassed” town sits in pancake-flat surroundings studded with “landmarks of rust and ruin” – the wrecks of a cargo plane and a steamship, the remains of an old rocket research facility, and so on. I stayed at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, where lay visitors mingle with research scientists.

My six-day Belugas for the Bold itinerary included shared accommodation, guided nature walks, lectures on ecology and indigenous culture, and water activities. The town’s museum has beautiful indigenous artefacts, and on walks you will see lovely flora and might spot polar bears.

But most wondrous is the chance to see the belugas. Apparently, they are sometimes “mischievous” enough to tip paddlers into the water, but I felt a great sense of peace among them. So low to the water, I could “almost sense the stroke and whip of each flipper”, and every time a curious whale surfaced, I felt a “jolt of surprise, as though aquarium glass were fracturing”.

The trip costs from £2,075, excluding flights (churchillscience.ca).

Syria is on the verge of an “economic revolution”, said Ksenia Svetlova in Haaretz. Its interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former al-Qa’eda militant who led the rebel offensive that overthrew dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, has been struggling to rebuild a nation devastated by almost 14 years of civil war.

One of his biggest coups last year was to persuade the Trump administration to lift the strict economic sanctions imposed on Syria in 2019. But the country was still on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation first made in 1979 in response to Damascus’ support for Iran and its harbouring of Palestinian terrorist groups. So, like Iran, it remained cut off from the international banking system, and large-scale reconstruction proved impossible.

But that all changed last week at the stroke of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s pen. Now, at long last, the flow of “dollars, dinars and dirhams” to Syria can begin in earnest. Saudi Arabia has promised to build desalination plants and two airports, and invest in telecommunications projects worth more than $1 billion. Other countries are keen to follow suit. “If everything goes according to plan, Syria will soon become one vast construction site.”

‘Limited progress’

The rehabilitation of Syria into the world order has happened at “remarkable speed”, said Ilan Berman in The Washington Post. And there’s an obvious logic to it. By removing Damascus from its terrorism list, the US has pulled it towards the West and away from Iran and Russia’s orbit. Yet there are dangers to being so hasty: Washington is “basing its bet more on hope than hard evidence”. For all their promises of liberalisation, Sharaa and his government haven’t fully moved on from the past. Jihadist ideology is prevalent in school curriculums, and there has been no more than “limited progress” in removing 5,000 foreign fighters – extremists loyal to the current regime – from the new Syrian army.

Sharaa also won a significant victory last week in his quest to centralise power, said Smadar Perry on Ynet: he has managed to disband the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led militia founded in 2015 to fight Islamic State and create a secular, democratic and federalised Syria. At its height, it controlled at least a quarter of the country, including its major oil fields. Its commander, Mazloum Abdi, has now agreed to let his troops be incorporated into the national army, in what he calls “a genuine transition from battlefields to the fields of construction”. But the truth of it is that Sharaa forced his hand by seizing swathes of the SDF’s territory in a lightning offensive in January. Folding the SDF into the army is going to be a hard ask: and though the president has promised to make Kurdish a national language and to protect Kurdish rights, many Kurds still don’t trust him.

Victor’s justice

Sharaa’s government has also been busy bringing members of the Assad regime to justice, said Chris Doyle in Arab News. In August, nine of its most senior figures, including Assad himself, were sentenced to death for war crimes – verdicts that gave rise to an “outpouring of joy”. However, only Atef Najib, Assad’s cousin, a security chief infamous for his brutality, is likely to face execution, the rest having been tried in absentia.

Nor is this exactly a victory for the rule of law: the accused can hardly be said to have received a fair trial; and no corresponding action has been taken against the perpetrators of last year’s massacres of over 1,400 Alawites, the minority sect to which the Assad family belongs. There’s a strong smell of victor’s justice about it all.

Still, progress is undoubtedly being made and “the psychological importance of the removal of sanctions should not be underestimated”, said The National. We have room to hope that the barriers now being torn down in Syria will be replaced “with bridges, roads and tunnels en route to a more stable, secure and prosperous future”.

“Now is the twilight of Donald Trump’s supremacy,” said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. The US is “still the richest and most heavily armed nation on Earth”, and the president – indulged by a “supine” Congress – still has far-reaching powers. Nevertheless, with more than two years of his second term still to run, Trump looks “thwarted and impotent”.

‘Deranged demands’

History will record that the disastrous war against Iran was a “turning point”. But evidence of his policy failures can be seen all around the world. Canada, citing unreasonable last-minute demands from US negotiators, has promised all-out trade war. The Ukraine conflict is as bloody as ever, despite Trump’s promise to end it. Europe, horrified by his indulgence of Vladimir Putin and his “deranged demands” for Greenland, has turned away. In the Middle East, America’s allies are furious that they’re bearing the brunt of Iran’s attacks. And at home, fuel prices are rising, and electoral disaster is looming: November’s midterms are set to flip the House of Representatives, and maybe the Senate too, against the Republicans.

In a matter of months, Trump has “burned through decades of accumulated goodwill” across the democratic world, said Daniel Hannan in The Sunday Telegraph. “He has created a sense that it is better to be America’s enemy than its friend, for it buys its enemies and sells its friends.” Never once has Trump spoken about Putin in the way he talks about Canadians, Danes, South Koreans and other partners.

‘Erratic behaviour’

A couple of years ago, it would have seemed impossible, said The Spectator. Now it’s quite normal for Washington, in its dealings with its allies, to threaten economic coercion, the withdrawal of military support, and even outright annexation. When Russia behaves like this, it is sanctioned. But in the case of the US, we sit back and do nothing.

There are still some who believe that “Trump’s erratic behaviour is part of a cunning plan to discombobulate opponents and get his way”, said Sam Freedman on Substack. The truth, as his lack of success makes clear, is simpler: “this guy is in obvious cognitive decline, ill-informed, and doesn’t know what he’s doing”.

Worse may be to come, said The Economist. Many would be delighted if “a fuming, friendless Mr Trump, so weakened by his own blunders and by plunging approval ratings” were to retreat to the White House to “tinker with plans for his ballroom”. Alas, that is not in his character. He’ll be less a “lame duck”, and more an ageing “silverback gorilla” – lashing out ever more viciously at anyone within his reach. “Now that his dominance is threatened, the world will find him more disruptive than ever.”

This is a moist and moreish cake to have at any tea party, said Jennifer Rinkoff. With a scrumptious mascarpone buttercream, you’ll be tempted to make it every weekend.

Ingredients (makes 1)

• 175g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
• 175g caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 175g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp strong espresso, cooled
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp milk

For the syrup and topping:

• 2 tbsp strong espresso, hot
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 250g mascarpone cheese, at room temperature
• 150ml double cream
• 50g icing sugar, sifted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• cocoa (unsweetened chocolate) powder, sifted, for dusting

Method

• Preheat the oven to 160C fan/180C/350F/gas mark 4 and grease and line a 900g (2lb) loaf tin with baking parchment.
• In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well but being careful not to over-mix. Fold in the flour and baking powder. Stir through the cooled espresso, vanilla extract and milk until smooth.
• Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
• While the cake is still in the tin and warm from the oven, make a syrup by mixing the hot espresso with the sugar until the sugar dissolves. Poke small holes in the loaf with a skewer and spoon over the syrup. Leave to cool completely.
• In a bowl, whisk the mascarpone, cream, icing sugar and vanilla extract until thick and spreadable (don’t over-whisk or it may split). Spread the mascarpone topping generously over the cooled loaf using a small spatula.
• Dust with cocoa powder for a lovely finish. Chill for 1-2 hours to set before slicing, and store any leftovers in the refrigerator.
• Tip: this cake can be frozen for up to three months. The frosting and cake can both be frozen but it’s best to freeze them separately, or the finished cake can be frozen if sliced first.

Taken from ‘The Jewish Bakery: over 100 Family Recipes from east London’s oldest Jewish bakery’ by Jennifer Rinkoff.

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Every now and again, a single news story exposes what is “going wrong in modern Britain”, said The Telegraph. The head-on crash that killed two policemen and five joyriders in Middlesbrough in August, and its aftermath, is the latest.

This is “a community beset by brazen criminality”. The five young men were linked to organised crime and had 37 convictions between them. And the horrific crash has been followed by a series of gang-related incidents and acts of destruction. A house was rammed by a car and a man stabbed in suspected tit-for-tat attacks. At a memorial for one of the men, cars were smashed into each other in a field and set alight. In a separate incident, a seven-year-old and her aunt died in an arson attack. Last week, 200 officers from the National Crime Agency and other forces were drafted in to calm tensions.

‘Feral underclass’

“Almost all of the recent crimes have taken place in just one postcode,” said Felix Pope on UnHerd: TS6, a collection of deprived estates in southeast Middlesbrough with what one local politician calls “a feral underclass”. Residents speak of balaclava-clad young men on electric bikes and scooters terrorising the community. One local told The Yorkshire Post: “TS6 has gone mad.”

All this in a town that “once brimmed with pride”, said Ross Clark in The Sun. “Middlesbrough was once ‘Ironopolis’, one of the biggest producers of pig iron in the world.” Teesside shipyards turned out trawlers by the dozen. But after heavy industry went into a long and deep decline in the 1980s, Middlesbrough never recovered. The steelworks closed in 2015; the town is now one of the most deprived places in England – a place where the last two generations of many families have never known paid employment.

Successive governments should have done more to help these people, said Simon Heffer in The Telegraph. Instead, “the white working class has been pushed aside to stew on welfare benefits or in low-esteem jobs” – abandoned by a state whose first duty is to protect them. “No wonder so many of them feel no connection with it.”

‘Potential powder kegs’

Cleveland Police, the local force, is also a victim of neglect, said Leigh Jones in The Independent. Its area now has the highest crime rate outside central London. Yet it is one of the smallest forces in the country, and has been gutted by years of austerity. Had its budget kept up with inflation, it would be at £246 million this financial year; instead, it is just £196 million.

Yet this force is not an outlier, said Dominic Adler on UnHerd. Across the country, cash-strapped local constabularies are sitting on “potential powder kegs”, but these forces don’t have the resources to deal with even “modest” manifestations of organised crime, such as county-line drug gangs. Look beyond the police, and the whole criminal justice system – prisons, the courts and probation service – is poorly run, and often in crisis. Middlesbrough’s plight is the sign of a “full-spectrum failure, from nose to tail”.

America’s midterm elections are looming, and are expected to turn on voters’ frustration with the rising cost of living. Hardly the moment, then, for a damaging trade war with Canada, said Rex Huppke in USA Today.

Yet following an acrimonious breakdown of trade talks between the two nations, Donald Trump last week slapped 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian goods, including down jackets, wine, dairy products and hockey sticks. He later threatened to double tariffs on vehicles and car parts, posting on social media: “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, who accused US negotiators of effectively declaring war on his country by introducing a raft of unacceptable last-minute demands, promised to retaliate with dollar-for-dollar counter-tariffs, starting on 8 September.

Economic pain

Carney isn’t bluffing, said Zeeshan Aleem on MS Now. Canada relies more on exporting goods to the US than the other way round, so its economy is set to lose most from any trade war, but Carney has staked his reputation on standing up to Trump. He reckons Canadians will have more tolerance for economic pain resulting from a trade war they’ll blame on Trump “than Americans will have for rising prices”.

The polls certainly suggest as much, said Andrew Day in The American Conservative. Only a third of Canadians have a favourable view of the US today, down from 54% in 2024; 76% back Carney’s stance. For someone so adept at promoting nationalism at home, Trump has a “curious blindspot” about the impact of stirring such passions abroad.

‘Personal fixation’

He can’t help himself, said Zack Beauchamp on Vox. After all his “jokes” about absorbing Canada as the 51st state, Trump has now signed an order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” to spite the Canadians. The US and Canada have a long history of trade disagreements over issues such as dairy and lumber, but these rows have never blown up into a trade war, “for the simple reason that they simply aren’t that large as a percentage of GDP”.

There don’t appear to be any political, ideological or business interests egging on Trump to get into a fight with Canada. The desire to “vassalise” and control America’s northern neighbour is just the president’s “personal fixation” – one so important to him that he’s apparently willing to pursue it, even at the cost of jeopardising his party’s Senate majority.

‘Gloria Steinem’s final essay’

Gloria Steinem at The New Yorker

Opposition “will always come from people whose power rests on the group they were born into” rather “than on what they do as individuals,” says Gloria Steinem. “Saying that I am a feminist has always meant that I believe in the social, economic and political equality of all males and females of all races and groups.” For “some, it remains a mystery why women need a movement to distinguish our efforts toward equality. For me, it seems quite obvious.”

Read more

‘America needs its boys to play football’

Ben Sasse at The Wall Street Journal

Football is “back, and America’s boys need to play it and be shaped by it,” says Ben Sasse. While “controversy surrounds the embarrassingly blurry line between college football and the National Football League, our culture needs to take a moment to commend and steward the glorious tradition of high school football.” Americans “need young men full of energy, ambition and growing self-mastery,” and football is a “character-forming institution.” Football “creates the conditions for less, rather than more, violence.”

Read more

‘Debt, a new challenge for democracies’

Le Monde editorial board

In the “United States, Europe and Japan, investors now demand higher returns to lend to governments,” which “reveals mounting concerns over the accumulation of public deficits and the sheer volume that governments must now raise on financial markets,” says the Le Monde editorial board. Returning to “fiscal fundamentals has been painful just as funding needs have reached new highs.” The “current increase in rates acts like a vise, reducing governments’ ability to fund new priorities while making past commitments more expensive.”

Read more

‘Will those in prison help save the arts from AI?’

Mark Osler at The Minnesota Star Tribune

While on the “outside AI is increasingly doing our writing, creating our images and subverting creativity, on the inside of a prison none of that is happening — and the results can be stunning,” says Mark Osler. What is “new isn’t the existence of remarkable talent in prison,” but the “decay of the creative world outside the prison walls.” The U.S. “needs to invest in the arts within prisons and encourage more interaction across those walls.”

Read more

The American military is often lauded as the fiercest fighting force in the world, but there are gathering signs that something is off-kilter. Morale problems aboard rust-coated Navy ships, a purge of top officers in the Army, and a shortage of munitions in the Middle East have contributed to a growing sense of alarm. And critics, including some Republicans, are pointing the finger at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

What did the commentators say?

The Pentagon is in “turmoil,” said Axios, riven by internal ideological disputes while fighting a war with Iran. The secretary’s “firings and feuds” have left the Army “rudderless,” said The New York Times. The service has been without a permanent leader since Hegseth dismissed Gen. Randy George in April “without explanation.” Internal disputes reportedly led to this week’s resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who had been seen as a possible Hegseth successor.

The war, meanwhile, is “piling pressure on budgets across the military,” said The Guardian, with the Navy forced to dip into its payroll budget to “cover the costs of combat.” The conflict is also taking a visible toll on the service: The rust-covered and morale-sapped USS Abraham Lincoln this week “shocked” observers who encountered it at a Thai port after 286 days at sea, said CNN.

The various crises have led senior commanders to warn Hegseth the war is “unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere,” said The Washington Post. Hegseth is nonetheless “escalating the strain” on U.S. forces by “quietly extending troop deployments” in the Middle East, said The Wall Street Journal. The Pentagon is “giving up presence in other regions” like the Pacific in order to devote those resources to Iran, the Hudson Institute’s Bryan Clark told the outlet. The Navy, in particular, is “officially stretched beyond its limits,” Mackenzie Eaglen and Nicholas Carl said at The National Interest.

Hegseth’s “purges” of top officers has “created a dangerous leadership vacuum” that is “jeopardizing national security,” Max Boot said at The Washington Post. The secretary’s focus appears to be “publicly performing pushups” and eliminating diversity programs in the military, Jeff McCausland said at MS NOW.Hegseth still having his job is a sign that President Donald Trump “simply likes the way” the secretary is performing despite the growing criticisms, Shane Croucher said at Newsweek.

What next?

A growing number of Republicans in Congress are “sick” of Hegseth, said The New Republic. Trump should “find a new leader at the Pentagon,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said this week on X. Hegseth “has not been a very good leader in many ways,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said on CNN.

Trump disagrees. Hegseth is “doing a fantastic job,” Trump told reporters this week. But polls show that Hegseth is “possibly the most unpopular” member of the president’s cabinet, said CNN. His problems — and the challenges faced by the military — “are getting harder to ignore.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been deporting thousands of people to their home countries, but many are also being sent to “third countries,” nations the deportee is not originally from. This often leaves the deported person stranded in a place where they do not speak the language or understand the customs.

Mexico

While thousands of Mexican migrants have been deported to Mexico, the country has also been far and away the one with the greatest number of third-country deportations. About 20,000 people without Mexican heritage have been deported to Mexico during the second Trump administration, according to Refugees International’s Third Country Deportation Watch (TCDW).

These deported people are also racing against the clock, as the Mexican government “gives third-country citizens just 10 days to remain in the country, with its overstretched asylum system the only option for most,” said the Washington Office on Latin America. As it stands, at least “1,100 deported people per month in Mexico are citizens of other Latin American nations.”

Guatemala

Though the third country agreement between the U.S. and Guatemala wasn’t renegotiated until July 2025, ICE has been ramping up deportations significantly since then. Several thousand people have since been sent to Guatemala, including 2,284 Mexicans deported to the country from the U.S. between April and August 2026, according to the TCDW.

This marked a notable change for Mexican deportees, given that before the deal with Guatemala, most Mexicans deported from the U.S. were “sent almost exclusively back to their country by air and land,” said The Associated Press. But these migrants are “part of a ‘transit stopover’ before being taken to Mexico as part of an ‘arrangement’ with the Mexican government,” said Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo.

Panama

About 360 non-Panamanians have been deported from the U.S. to Panama, according to the TCDW. The nation has been a third-country destination during almost all of the second Trump administration. In one instance, a group of refugees “were put on U.S. military planes,” said Human Rights Watch. They didn’t know their destination and “realized they were in Panama only after landing.”

Another notable story came just one month after President Donald Trump returned to power, when “hundreds of asylum-seekers were sent to Panama instead of being allowed to present claims in the United States,” said the American Immigration Council. They were eventually “released by the Panamanian government and told they had 30 days to leave the country.”

Costa Rica

Costa Rica is another large Central American third-country destination where about 331 people have been deported from the United States, the TCDW said. Costa Rica agreed to take on these people because the country “seeks a closer alliance with Donald Trump’s government, which has been securing cooperation from other Central American countries in accepting deportees from other nations who have been detained by U.S. immigration agents,” said The Guardian.

Human rights observers are concerned that “some of the people being deported to Costa Rica may be asylum-seekers who were never given a fair chance to present their cases in the United States,” said Refugees International.

El Salvador

About 250 people without El Salvadorian heritage have been sent to the country from the U.S., according to the TCDW. Flights to El Salvador are relatively new, as ICE transfers to the nation only began in July 2026.

This number may seem minimal, and it is generally true that third-country deportations only “represent a small share of U.S. removals,” said the Migration Policy Institute. When it comes to the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, though, “fear may be their main function.”

Honduras

While Mexican immigrants are being sent to Guatemala, many others are also being sent to Honduras; about 170 non-Hondurans have been deported to the country, according to the TCDW. A transfer deal between the U.S. and Honduras has been in place since October 2025.

Officials have said that “one of the objectives of the deportations, which have not been formally announced by the U.S. government, is to deter illegal immigration from Mexico by sending some of its citizens further south and farther away from the U.S.-Mexico border,” said CBS News in a report on deportations to Honduras and Guatemala. This comes as Mexico has “voiced its opposition to the deportation of Mexican citizens to other countries.”

Uzbekistan

While most countries in this list are in Central America, one nation thousands of miles away also makes a surprising appearance: Uzbekistan. Over 130 people have been deported to the Central Asian nation as a third country, according to the TCDW.

Many of the deportees to Uzbekistan are from neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. There have been concerns about how these deportees are being treated in Uzbekistan, particularly “given that human rights organizations have documented a consistent pattern of harassment, restrictions and reprisals against activists and rights defenders” in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, said the Global Detention Project, which could create “risks for those being returned.”

Ghana

Over 100 people living in the U.S. without Ghanaian heritage have been deported to Ghana, according to the TCDW. But unlike some other nations on this list, legal action has actually been taken against Ghana, with an “international coalition of human rights lawyers and advocates” suing the country, said The Associated Press.

The lawsuit accuses Ghana of not allowing these people to stay in the country, instead “forcing deportees from the U.S. back to the home countries they had fled in violation of their rights,” said the AP. Many of these people were allegedly “flown from Ghana to their home countries within hours or days of arriving.”

What happened

Fox News on Thursday said it had parted ways with financial journalist Maria Bartiromo, effective immediately, thanking her for “her work over the last 12 1/2 years.” She last appeared on air Aug. 9. Asked about reports that Bartiromo was fired for leaking confidential news coverage plans to the White House, a Fox News spokesperson told reporters only that the move was a “business decision.”

Who said what

After joining Fox Business in 2014, following a long career at CNBC, Bartiromo became “one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies at the network,” CNN said. She was fired, Status reported, because she “effectively betrayed” Fox by telling the White House that network bosses had instructed staff to “steer clear of giving credence to Trump’s delusional claims” in an “unhinged” July primetime speech on election security. Bartiromo “wanted to pursue a story related to China and 2020 election voting conspiracies,” Puck’s Dylan Byers reported, and when executives told her no, she “took a screenshot of the guidance and sent it to senior White House officials.”

What next?

Fox Business rebranded Bartiromo’s namesake programs and took down her contributor pages. “Her fans, of which there are many, will not be happy,” Trump said in an online post. “Social media lit up with speculation that Bartiromo might be in line to become White House press secretary,” CNN said. But asked about that possibility yesterday, Vice President JD Vance said, “No, I don’t think so.”

What happened

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Thursday canceled all House business for the final two weeks of September, leaving just four days for voting and other legislative activity before the Nov. 3 midterms. That’s a reversal from just days ago. “Republicans are here to work,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “We are going to work all the way through September.”

Who said what

Johnson’s decision to shrink the calendar “comes as candidates agitate to get back on the campaign trail,” Politico said. It also “severely” curtails “what had been a full legislative calendar for September,” though “GOP leaders continue to struggle to maintain control of the House floor.”

The government is now funded through December. But among other consequences, the canceled workdays are “threatening to delay a bipartisan push to crack down on sexual misconduct in Congress,” Axios said. The reforms are “something that everybody wants,” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (N.M.), the top Democrat on a task force set up to address the issue, told Axios.

What next?

After the House wraps up its next four-day workweek on Sept. 17, lawmakers “will return again for a lame duck session on Nov. 9,” kicking off five final weeks of scheduled “legislative business before the end of the 119th Congress,” said ABC News.

What happened

The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday ruled unanimously that congressional maps redrawn by the Republican-led state legislature can’t be used in the November elections, likely thwarting a GOP effort to unseat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D). Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) “incorrectly” dismissed a “legal, sufficient and timely” referendum petition on the redistricting submitted in December, the court said in its opinion, so the new districts “did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters” in November.

In another “notable victory for Democrats,” The Associated Press said, the Maryland Supreme Court also agreed to let voters decide whether the Democratic-controlled state legislature can redraw congressional districts for the 2028 election, in a bid to defenestrate Rep. Andy Harris (R).

Who said what

President Donald Trump’s “quest for a midterm election advantage triggered an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle,” the AP said. Thursday’s rulings were among “only a few nationally to go against Republicans.”

The Missouri Supreme Court’s “surprising decision creates an unprecedented set of electoral circumstances,” because last month’s primaries “took place under the new lines,” Politico said. For “months, Missouri Republicans had signaled their intention” to stall “as long as possible while implementing the new maps,” and Hoskins waited until the day of the primaries to “declare the referendum insufficient.” The court’s “unprecedented decision” thrusts Missouri “into a full‑fledged constitutional crisis,” Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) said in a statement. She vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What next?

The Missouri court “did not specify how candidates would be determined for a general election,” The New York Times said. “Redistricting opponents had suggested that candidates who won their primaries” could “remain the nominees in the same-numbered districts.”

When it comes to weekend breaks, a good location is essential. It doesn’t matter whether the hotel is perfect – if the surroundings leave something to be desired, you’ll find yourself longing to get home. Luckily, Woodstock is charming. Just eight miles from Oxford on the eastern edge of the Cotswolds, the pretty market town is lined with traditional stone cottages, old pubs and bakeries.

On a quiet road close to the centre lies The Feathers. Tucked amid 17th-century townhouses, it looks fairly unassuming. But when you step through the doors, it’s clear that this is a swanky spot. Local property developer Daniel Ede bought the hotel in 2023 before carrying out a multi-million-pound revamp. Fast-forward to today and the hotel has an air of confidence: a collection of awards are proudly displayed on a chest in the reception area.

Why stay here?

The location is outstanding. We went for a short walk before dinner and stumbled upon the grounds of Blenheim Palace, where families lounge with picnics on the grassy slopes overlooking the lake.

Back at the hotel, the calming interiors encourage proper rest and relaxation. Our generously sized room – the Goldcrest Suite – had been carefully renovated with plush grey carpets, gilded mirrors and an enormous (and very comfy) king-size bed framed by flowing white drapes.

The layout felt a little unusual – a mini-sofa and TV were tucked awkwardly behind a semi-dividing wall, and the freestanding bathtub is in the main room, although you can pull across a golden chinoiserie-style folding screen for privacy. (There’s also a separate bathroom, with a shower, stocked with Urban Apothecary fig-scented toiletries.) This is likely due to the nature of the rambling Grade II listed building: the total of 23 suites and rooms vary in shape and size.

Thoughtful touches were everywhere, from the carefully selected tapestries adorning the walls to the tasty snacks laid out for our arrival including slices of lemon drizzle cake. Efforts have clearly been made to preserve the building’s historic details like the stone fireplace, while rooms have been updated with modern touches.

Eating and drinking

The Nest is a fun spot for dinner. Glowing wicker lamps sit atop marble tables in the bustling wood-panelled restaurant. Staff are attentive and knowledgeable but unobtrusive, and the cocktails are excellent. The menu changes with the seasons: we enjoyed a goat’s curd and parmesan tart bursting with sweet, juicy Isle of Wight tomatoes and flaky pan-roasted hake served with a decadent vadouvan curry sauce, tiger prawns and fennel shavings. Be sure to order a side of the crispy potatoes and the zingy herb salad. The Cotswolds sourdough rolls with whipped butter were a nice touch, too. If you’re looking for something more casual, head to The Aviary bar and outdoor terrace for pizzas and small plates.

Breakfast is served at The Nest. There’s a selection of fresh juices, pastries and muffins, alongside heartier classics like the full English, or smoked salmon sourdough crumpets.

Things to do

You won’t find a gym, spa or pool at The Feathers, but there’s plenty to do nearby. Keen walkers can set out on foot into the grounds of Blenheim Palace to soak up the stunning scenery. Afterwards, head back into Woodstock for ice cream at Alfonso Gelataria on the high street.

Oxford is a short drive away; consider a day trip to the historic city to wander through the colleges, go punting along the River Cherwell, or while away an afternoon in one of the many pubs or cafes.

The verdict

The Feathers ticks a lot of boxes for a weekend break. It was a cool, calming refuge when we visited during one of the many summer heatwaves, but come autumn it will be cosy and inviting. This is the type of place you leave feeling exactly as you should: well-rested, refreshed and relaxed.

Irenie was a guest of The Feathers, feathers.co.uk

“We hate the French! We fight wars against the French! Did all those men die in vain on the fields of Agincourt?” What would Edmund Blackadder think to see Emmanuel Macron and King Charles cosying up in front of the Bayeux Tapestry?

The tapestry, as Andy Burnham said at its unveiling at the British Museum this week “shows a new leader emerging from a northern territory, travelling to the south of England in search of the crown. Something clearly that couldn’t happen today.”

Macron has now become the first EU leader to visit Burnham at No. 10. This week of renewed bonhomie between the British and the French comes as Donald Trump’s America “is threatening to leave Europe to fend for itself”, said The Economist. So that might be one reason why France is “being so nice to Britain”.

What did the commentators say?

Another reason for this French “love-bombing”, as The Economist put it, is that “it costs France very little and buys it so much”, said the UK’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost in The Telegraph.

Much of the British establishment loves this kind of thing and it does so “because it sees diplomacy primarily as a matter of personal relationships and symbolism”. But that belief “generates the besetting sin of British diplomacy: the wish to be liked rather than respected” and sadly “nowhere is that truer than with France”.

But “in these fractured times, the enduring appeal of this 11th-century artefact speaks of a need for a national story”, said The Guardian. The Bayeux Tapestry is a “devastatingly human saga” and, with war raging in Europe, “this medieval masterpiece is a reminder of conflict’s brutality, human suffering and the importance of collaboration between countries”.

Indeed Macron himself “played an instrumental role over nearly a decade in pushing for the tapestry loan”, said France24, and it “is viewed as another step towards healing the rancour of the Brexit years”.

On a political level there is “no shortage of common ground” between Burnham and Macron, said Le Monde, “particularly regarding their policies on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East”. The French president praised Burnham's recent trip to Kyiv, but also highlighted that, while Paris and London “collaborate in vital areas such as defence, nuclear energy, space or artificial intelligence”, they “do not always agree on everything”.

What Macron “seems to be saying is that despite Brexit, despite Donald Trump, or perhaps because of both, France and Britain need to stick together now”, said The Economist.

A new Charles De Gaulle biopic “not only evokes nostalgia for an age of unimaginable bravery” but “also speaks to modern worries about national sovereignty, dependence and democratic values”. The film “carries another message too”: that “the dark forces of nationalism can be beaten”. With Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage on the rise, the new-found affection from Macron could signify that “this battle is yet another that Britain and France are in together”.

But “what did the love-in between Andy Burnham and Emmanuel Macron actually achieve?” said The Sun. “For a start, don’t expect the small boats to stop any time soon” as it remains in “France’s interest to let migrants set sail and wait for British border forces to rescue them – especially as we pay £1 billion for the privilege”. And Burnham was “gushing over France’s role in another terrible idea: helping him achieve closer ties to the EU”.

What next?

“To move forward on all these issues and put the entente amicale to the test,” said Le Monde. A French-British summit is due to take place later this year, Burnham confirmed, but he did not give a date.

A senior aide to Nigel Farage and Reform UK’s head of policy have both stood down after they were filmed appearing to plot ways to avoid electoral laws on foreign donations.

Undercover investigative journalists posed as a potential Reform supporter and his wealthy American father, who paid for £32,500 of polling commissioned by Reform and which benefited the party. The polling “was not attributed to Reform, and was reported in The Telegraph and The Times without those newspapers knowing that it was commissioned by the party and paid for by the US donor”, said The Guardian. The benefit in kind was then also not reported to the Electoral Commission.

But Farage told LBC the polls in question were commissioned by an independent third party. He added: “Whilst the poll benefited Reform, it wasn’t commissioned by Reform. It had nothing to do with Reform. It was an independent third party that did it. So that’s nothing. That’s nothing. Polls are funded by overseas people every single week. Every single week.”

What was revealed?

In a meeting over oysters and wine in his Clacton constituency, Farage “met with the undercover team in late July after the three polls had been published and paid for”, said Channel 4 News, who aired the investigation by a group of journalists called Verbatim. The Reform leader believed them to be “William” and his father. Farage said the polling was “amazing” and provided “bang for buck,” adding: “It worked. Boom.”

The Channel 4 report also showed Dan Jukes, a senior adviser to Farage, suggesting a way to get around electoral law to secure a foreign donation of £500,000 for the party. Channel 4 said James Orr, Reform’s head of policy, also suggested to the undercover reporter that perhaps his father could pay for opinion polling to aid Reform’s campaigning.

Farage told LBC a “couple of our contractors have said things that shouldn’t have been said” and had been “removed this morning”. But added: “The party has broken no laws, the party has not taken any dodgy money or anything like that whatsoever.”

Is it illegal?

Electoral law says that to be a permissible donor to a UK political party you must be a UK registered voter, or a company registered in the UK. Not disclosing funding such as the ones for the polls would be illegal and accepting this kind of foreign funding would also be illegal.

An Electoral Commission spokesperson said: “The law requires political parties to report all permissible donations they accept with a value over £11,180 and all impermissible donations over £500. Information about any potential attempt to evade the controls on donations is for the police to consider.”

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have reported Reform to the Metropolitan Police and the force said it would assess the matter and any information provided to it.

Reform has denied any wrongdoing and said it had “been the target of a hoax perpetuated by foreign funded climate change activists”. Verbatim was founded by journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting.

What could the fallout be?

Farage “appears to be trying to distance himself [from] Jukes and Orr, with his comments to LBC”, said the BBC. But Jukes “is widely seen as Farage’s closest aide, who is often at his side, and is judged to have an innate sense of his boss’ instincts”. Equally “Orr, a Cambridge academic who has stepped down [as] the party’s head of policy, could also be considered to be in Farage’s inner circle”.

Reform UK chairman Lee Anderson told Sky News there was “no chance” of Jukes and Orr returning to the party. But this “appeared to be contradicted”, said the BBC, by Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice, who told Radio 4’s “Today” programme minutes later that “it’s not actually, in the nicest possible way, for any individual to make that determination” as the investigation continues.

In 2024, before the US presidential election, young Africans were asked whether they expected their countries to fare better under Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

Across a range of measures, most respondents to the African Youth Survey believed Biden to be the better bet: 42-44%, compared with 23-24% choosing Trump. But in the most recent edition of the survey, nearly two-thirds of the near-5,000 18- to 24-year-old participants said they would benefit from the Trump administration, according to Foreign Policy. That’s despite the president’s foreign aid cuts, dismantling of development programs and “disparaging remarks about the continent”.

“This generation has worked out what much of the Western commentariat still refuses to,” said Ivor Ichikowitz, the survey’s founder. “Diplomacy is about what you can get from the man in the Oval Office, not whether you like him.”

‘Strikes a chord’

Trump has never made a presidential visit to Africa. He has “seldom been polite about the continent”, said The Economist in 2018, “allegedly dismissing Nigerians as hut-dwellers and African states as ‘shitholes’”. Yet “he is more popular in Africa than in any other region”.

Even before Trump entered politics, there was a “large affinity towards him” in Nigeria, the most populous African nation, said The Guardian in 2020. His image as a “bombastic, straight-talking, self-made billionaire made his books a hit” in the country. Portraits of Trump, sometimes depicted in traditional clothing or in the military uniform of Nigerian dictators, are common. His image “strikes a chord”.

“Judging by our own president, it isn’t entirely surprising that a septuagenarian economic nationalist with a born-again vice-president, minimal respect for rule of law and archaic views about women is popular in Nigeria,” said Sa’eed Husaini, a political analyst in Lagos.

Nigerians have a “unique attachment to America”, wrote Africa expert Ebenezer Obadare on the Council on Foreign Relations. Whether in an “individualism that sometimes borders on outright sedition, or a risk-taking that often verges on self-immolation”, Nigerians see in the US an “admirable analogue of their own buccaneering spirit”.

Make Africa Great Again?

In 2025, 79% of Nigerians said they had confidence in Trump “to do the right thing regarding world affairs”, according to a Global Attitudes Survey by the Pew Research Center. That’s 21% higher than the same survey showed in 2017.

Many see Trump as the only president to defend Nigerian Christians; his administration claims they are being persecuted by Islamist groups.

The US went on to strike northern Nigeria, where Islamic State has a foothold, on Christmas Day in 2025, before beginning joint counterterrorism operations with the government this year. In the 2026 Global Attitudes Survey, confidence in him among Nigerian Christians had risen by six percentage points since 2025.

But more broadly, African Christians share commonality with American evangelicals and Trump, said the Council on Foreign Relations: a feeling of “being simultaneously persecuted by secular authority and pressured by a cultural momentum”, particularly with regard to sexuality and gender.

There is “overall African evangelical love for Trump”; he’s viewed as a “defender of family values” and a “symbol of masculinity in an age menaced by a rampant effeminacy”.

Trump’s business acumen is also admired among those who aspire to wealth, said Tendai Marima in Foreign Policy.

The so-called manosphere also has a strong influence in Africa, and Trump is seen as a “positive role model because of his values of manhood”. In South Africa, there is also strong support for Trump among the anti-migrant movement.

“As an African, what resonates with me most about the America First message is not that Africa should become America, but that African countries should also put their own citizens first,” said Freeman Bhengu, a member of anti-migrant group Operation Dudula.

In the Sahel, many see Trump as “ideologically close to their own military governments”, and their “nationalist-sovereign” rhetoric, said Lisa Tschörner, an international affairs researcher. Those countries perceive the US withdrawal of aid as “amounting to non-interference”.

According to the African Youth Survey, 26% of young Africans believe the US aid cuts could actually have a “positive impact”, despite experts’ concerns. As Ichikowitz said, some young Africans associate the withdrawal of aid with the “possibility of greater self-reliance and government accountability”.

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