Disputing credit card charges may be the new way to stick it to corporations. More consumers are engaging in friendly fraud, disputing real charges or purchases in order to get their money back. The trend reflects a distrust in corporations as well as overall economic instability.

‘Expensive, onerous process’

Friendly fraud involves the use of charge-backs, which are “when a customer goes to their bank, as opposed to the merchant, to dispute a charge,” said NerdWallet. “When the customer requests their money back, the bank contacts the business’s payment processor.”

Then the “bank verifies whether the charge-back request is legitimate” and reverses the charge if it is, said NerdWallet. Most incorrect charge-backs tend to be honest mistakes as a “cardholder identifies a purchase on their transaction statement as fraudulent and disputes it,” when in reality, “they or someone else in their household may have made the purchase,” said Mastercard.

Transaction disputes have also “traditionally been used to address certain types of crimes committed against consumers,” like if “someone steals your wallet and goes on a shopping spree, or if you put a deposit on a wedding venue that goes out of business before the big day,” said Bloomberg. The credit card issuer “claws the funds back from the offending merchant’s bank, on top of a charge-back penalty fee,” which is an “expensive, onerous process” that “incentivizes merchants to be honest transactors and resolve issues with customers before charge-backs are filed.”

‘Existential threat’

What was once an accidental error or a way to stop theft is now sometimes a tool to obtain free merchandise. Friendly fraud is a “costly form of charge-back abuse in which consumers dispute legitimate credit card transactions to recover their money while keeping the purchased goods or services,” said the technology publication Tekedia. Though the phenomenon is not new, it is becoming more common. There were “158 million transaction disputes in 2025, an increase of 29% from 2021, significantly outpacing general growth in card transactions,” said Bloomberg.

The trend takes an economic toll. The “volume of disputes has become so cumbersome that more retailers are farming out the whole process of investigating and defending against fraud claims to third-party vendors that specialize in helping them hold on to more of consumers’ money,” said Bloomberg. Increased levels of chargebacks can also affect prices. “Large retailers fold the cost of lost revenue, lost product and lost labor that fraudulent charge-backs create into the prices everyone pays.” But “for small merchants those losses quickly become an existential threat to their ability to continue operating.”

‘Retaliate against retailers’

The rise of friendly fraud is directly tied to growing distrust of companies and corporations. Friendly fraud is a “way to retaliate against retailers over poor customer service, delayed deliveries, strict return policies or dissatisfaction with purchases,” said Tekedia. People may not even be aware they are committing fraud, as many small value disputes are approved quickly and without much investigation. There are “people that feel like, oh, this is just sticking it to the man, so to speak,” Jim Mortensen, a strategic adviser in the fraud and anti-money-laundering practice at the research firm Datos Insights, said to Bloomberg.

Economic circumstances also contribute to the rise of stealing and fraud. “One thing in the last two to three years has been that the cost of living in most developed markets has put quite a significant squeeze on consumers, particularly younger consumers on lower income,” a senior research analyst at Juniper Research who focuses on digital payments told Bloomberg. While engaging in friendly fraud sounds intriguing, it is “unethical and, in some jurisdictions, may constitute fraud,” said Tekedia. “Repeated abuse can result in account closures, damaged relationships with financial institutions and even legal consequences.”

Almost three in 10 Britons now use AI chatbots to get health advice. And UK medical-policy experts are concerned that this could create confusion, undermine trust in GPs and other healthcare workers, and make it more difficult to take an informed decision about your health.

The warning, from The Academy of Medical Sciences, comes as Open AI rolls out ChatGPT Health in the US. It allows users to “securely connect” their medical records and wellness apps to “ground conversations” in their own health information, so that the bot can “take a more active role” in their health.

ChatGPT Health is not yet available in the UK but, with more than 300 million people worldwide regularly directing their health-related questions to ChatGPT, it could swiftly become a “democratising force in healthcare”, Tanzeem Choudhury, a health-innovation expert at New York’s Cornell University told CBS News. But there are definite risks and trade-offs. “Used well,” an AI tool such as this can “help direct people to trusted sources”, said Yvonne Doyle, a fellow of The Academy of Medical Sciences and former medical director of Public Health England. But it can also mislead “convincingly”.

‘Zero awareness of fallibility’

People have been using the internet to answer their questions for decades, but the “danger” with an AI chatbot is that it responds with “fluent, emotionally convincing paragraphs” and “remembers context”, making it “sound more ‘human’ than many humans”, said Celina Cartoto and Anthony Kelly on RTE. Yet it has “zero awareness of its own fallibility”, always providing an answer, “even when one doesn’t exist”. People need to remember that, though it “speaks like a doctor, listens like a therapist and remembers like a friend”, it is actually “none of them”.

We know that all AI chatbots can “hallucinate” and provide “misleading, inaccurate or even dangerous” information, said CBS News. Open AI has been careful to state that ChatGPT Health is designed to support, not replace doctors, but it has not responded to questions about whether it is “equipped to recognise when to advise a user to seek help from a medical professional”. It seems that “onus is on the user”.

Even before the rollout of the Health feature, there were indications that users could become dangerously reliant on ChatGPT for medical advice. Last month, a 55-year-old US pastor sued OpenAI, claiming its bot “brought him to the brink of death”, by “repeatedly and insistently” misdiagnosing his symptoms of near-fatal pulmonary embolism, said the BBC. An OpenAI spokesperson told CBS News that “ChatGPT is not a doctor and should never be a substitute for medical care, diagnosis or treatment”.

AI can be a “useful educational tool” for health information, said Leana Wen, an emergency doctor in the US, and a clinical associate professor at George Washington University, told CNN. It can “explain medical terminology” and “compare treatment options at a high level”, helping “people prepare questions” for their doctor and be “more engaged” in their care. But “it has important limitations” and “should not replace clinical judgement” by a medically qualified human.

Privacy concerns

There is also the question of privacy. How risky is it to share so much of your individual medical information with an AI tool, such as ChatGPT Health? Open AI has said that Health has “enhanced privacy” and encryption, and that conversations used in the Health tab won’t flow into non-Health chats. But it’s no accident that Health has not yet been rolled out in the UK, or the EU, where data protection and digital privacy laws are stricter than in the US.

“If you are providing data directly to a technology company that is not providing any healthcare services, then it is buyer beware,” Bradley Malin, a biomedical informatics expert, told Time. OpenAI says it will protect your data but “what exactly does that mean”?

It all comes down to whether or not “you trust OpenAI to keep to its word”, Robert Wachter, a medic who has written extensively about AI and healthcare, told the magazine. OpenAI does have “really strong corporate interest in not screwing this up”. Its brand is “dependent” on the user “feeling comfortable” in sharing their information, and any sort of data breach would end that trust.

The end of doctors?

The increasing use of AI programmes for health queries is becoming “existentially threatening” for medics, Jonathan Chen, a doctor at Stanford University Medical Center, told The New York Times. What is our purpose going to be now? Should we “get out of the way and let a computer take over”?

Not for a while yet, Lee Schwamm, associate dean for digital strategy and transformation at Yale School of Medicine, told the paper. And that’s because chatbots can’t yet think critically enough about the health information people are providing – and more importantly, not providing – them with. AI is “really good at matching patterns and making predictions”. But it can only do so “based on the data that it is given about the patient. It has no way to extract” what may be crucial further information itself.

Besides, patients still need a human connection. If you’re going to be told you have a serious health issue, or even how much longer you have to live, “you want to look someone in the eye”.

Who would be an investor in South Korea right now? “Despair and frustration” spread again on Wednesday as the chip-heavy Kospi index “cratered” during another “hectic session” that triggered a second successive official circuit-breaker, reported Bloomberg.

The catalyst was disappointing earnings from local semiconductor giant SK Hynix but, given “already jittery sentiment” around the AI boom, it could almost have been anything. The oncebooming Kospi has now lost more than 33% of its value in a month.

‘Demand destruction’

“The chips are down,” said Bryce Elder in the FT – especially in the red-hot memory sector. Some have pinned the “chip dip”, which has also hit Wall Street with force, on the IPO of Chinese challenger CXMT; others on reports that a stateowned Chinese company is beginning mass production of “immersion deep-ultra lithography machines” – advanced chip manufacturing tools over which the West (especially the Dutch giant ASML) currently enjoys a monopoly. Still, the more obvious concern is “demand destruction”, in what has always been a volatile and highly cyclical sector. Voracious demand from America’s big AI hyperscalers has sent chip prices sky-high. “All that’s needed to wreck 2027 sales expectations is for this cycle to turn from virtuous to vicious. Plus ça change…”

Could China do for chips what it has already done for cars? That’s the fear on the Nasdaq, said Eliot Brown in The Wall Street Journal. As Elon Musk recently told The Economist, Chinese manufacturers are “closer than most people realise to solving the lithography problem”. Chinese companies have been restricted from buying the cutting-edge machines – which is why they are “a step behind the US in advanced chipmaking”.

‘Nvidia - the central bank of the AI economy’

Yet what’s particularly concerning about the plummeting shares of chipmakers, said DealBook in The New York Times, is that the rout coincides with a broader crisis of confidence on Wall Street about AI-related corporate debt and “circular” financial arrangements. That was rammed home when it emerged that chip giant Nvidia – increasingly “the central bank of the AI economy” – is brokering a $250bn guarantee for OpenAI’s immense Ohio campus. “Throughout history, almost every generational infrastructure leap has relied on hardware titans to co-sign their buyers’ credit.”

But this has also led to devastating “debt crashes”. The chief winner of the current turmoil is Apple, said the FT. It has reclaimed its crown as the world’s most valuable company, with a $5trn valuation, because it is seen as a relative “haven”. The same is true of the FTSE 100, which has hit an all-time high as an “anti-tech” index. Swings and roundabouts.

Have we already lost control of AI, asked Danny Fortson in The Sunday Times. On 11 July, an entirely new kind of hacking attack was launched at Hugging Face, an online platform that houses a library of AI code and datasets. The attack, which clearly used AI agents, “advanced at frightening speed and scale”, executing tens of thousands of actions so as to break into the company’s system.

‘Considerable skill and persistence’

Hugging Face managed to neutralise it, and alerted the authorities. Days later, the company behind the attack “raised its hand”: OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, admitted that one of its tests had gone badly wrong. OpenAI had set up a “sandbox” – a supposedly safe area of its network, entirely disconnected from the internet – and ordered two cutting-edge AI models to perform a series of cybersecurity tests. The models decided to break out of the sandbox, escape onto the internet and hack into the place they knew they would find the answers: Hugging Face’s servers.

Media outlets described the AI as “going rogue”, said Jamie Bartlett in The Observer. But, in fact, these models merely single-mindedly performed the task they’d been given. The models reasoned that the most effective strategy was to cheat, and they did so with “considerable skill and persistence”. This is nothing new. Leading models have deceived users, attempted blackmail, and even tried to copy themselves in order to complete their tasks.

‘The genie is out of the bottle’

Some sceptical observers have suggested that this story might be a publicity stunt: that it benefits OpenAI to suggest that its products have stunning powers. But the truth is that these companies really don’t know how to build AI systems safely – and yet they “continue to rush ahead building ever-more powerful models”. It was fortunate that Hugging Face, a New York tech firm valued at $4.5bn, had a highly proficient cybersecurity team, said The Economist. “Things might have turned out much worse for a less well-resourced outfit.”

This is not necessarily a doomsday scenario, said John Thickstun in The Guardian. AI is very good at hacking; but such powers can also be used to make IT systems more secure. Ironically, Hugging Face had to rely on a free Chinese AI model to thwart this attack – because OpenAI and US rivals jealously guard their own. At any rate, “the genie is out of the bottle”, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent: we must learn how to manage AI. Every technology developed by mankind has been double-edged, and AI is no different. “A radically different world is not necessarily anything to be frightened of – but, even if it were, it’s coming at us anyway.”

China is not beating the U.S. in the artificial intelligence race, at least not yet. But the country’s AI products are cheaper and good enough that a number of American AI users are shifting away from homegrown products. Enter a Silicon Valley panic. The U.S. government may take action, and a new Chinese model — Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 — may be the trip wire.

‘Something good enough’

Kimi K3 can “allegedly beat some of the best systems built by U.S. companies at a fraction of the cost,” said The Verge. It is the latest in a series of cheap Chinese-made “open-weight” AI models that “anyone can download, inspect, modify and run on their own infrastructure,” said Microsoft. This presents a different approach from closed-source “proprietary platforms” like Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT; the Chinese method challenges the conventional wisdom that “leading-edge AI requires heavy spending on data centers and the advanced chips” used by U.S. companies, said CNN.

The Chinese open-weight models are “increasingly almost as good as closed systems made by leading U.S. companies,” which is why a “growing number of Americans” are moving to the Chinese systems, said The Associated Press. Kimi K3 “just seems snappier” than Anthropic’s Claude Fable chatbot, Mozilla chief technology officer Raffi Krikorian said to the outlet. Other Chinese open-weight models lack the “overall, full-range capabilities” of the products made by American companies, said the AP. But AI users “just don’t need” expensive U.S.-made AI products, technology executive Curt Meinhold told the outlet. “We need something good enough.”

‘Full AI communism’

Some American AI executives are “sounding the alarm” about the rise of open-weight models, said The Wall Street Journal. The Chinese models represent “full AI communism,” in which governments provide artificial intelligence as “digital public infrastructure” rather than a “market product,” OpenAI’s Dean Ball said on X. The White House may soon decide to “create large amounts of regulatory risk around the use of open-weight Chinese models” as a result.

Others disagree. Restricting access to open-weight models “wouldn’t stop their proliferation — but would weaken U.S. startups” that use the technology, a coalition of 200 smaller tech companies argued last week in a letter to administration officials, per Politico. Regulation would be “great for Anthropic. We’re all going to have to spend money on Anthropic,” Suhail Doshi, the founder of AI infrastructure startup Particle, said to the outlet.

The White House is “showing signs it could ban cutting-edge Chinese AI models,” said Axios. Administration officials last year considered an executive order mandating that U.S. firms could “only host Chinese models if they could guarantee security and take liability if it were breached.” The ascendance of Kimi K3 is “reigniting” those old regulatory efforts. An example: The White House this week banned Chinese-made “humanoid and quadruped robots” to “protect the U.S. AI build-out,” said Reuters.

Three British superhero actors have spoken out against the proposed merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery and urged the culture secretary to block the deal.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Benedict Wong, both of whom appear in Marvel’s “Doctor Strange” films, and Alan Cumming, who played Nightcrawler in the “X-Men series”, have written in The Guardian warning the Paramount-Warner Bros. tie-up “threatens to inflict immense harm on the British public”.

The $110 billion (£83 billion) deal is being led by Paramount CEO David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder and close ally of Donald Trump. It would create one of the world’s most powerful media empires, bringing together HBO, CNN, TNT Sports, Channel 5, Paramount+, as well as the DC Universe, Harry Potter, “Game of Thrones” and “The Lord of the Rings” franchises.

‘Minded to intervene’

Among a host of issues, Cumberbatch, Cumming and Wong cite concerns over the livelihoods of British film and TV crews, independent film financing, and the consolidation of news publications. “The UK is being threatened by a media merger that would harm our workers, our culture and the public – but we can stop it,” they say.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said she is “minded to intervene” in the deal on public interest grounds. “I am conscious that the proposed acquisition is global in nature. In reaching this decision, my focus has been, and will remain, on the UK public interest and the range of services available to UK audiences,” she said in a letter to the current and proposed owners of Warner Bros. Discovery.

While Paramount has said it remains “confident that our proposed transaction does not pose any media plurality issues”, were the UK government to issue a public interest intervention notice it would trigger further scrutiny from media regulator Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority.

Depending on her decision, Nandy “could end up upsetting or possibly ingratiating virtually all the major US studios, streamers and tech giants”, not to mention the Trump administration, which is strongly backing the deal, said Deadline. This makes her “one of the most consequential culture secretaries in recent memory… in America that is.”

‘Bad for everyone’ except billionaires

The call for the British government to intervene comes after 12 American states, led by California, sued to try to block the merger, warning it would raise prices, shrink the number of films made and fall foul of strict anti-trust laws.

Last week a US district judge temporarily paused the merger to consider the lawsuit. This prompted Paramount to agree not to close the deal until June 2027 or five days after the court issues a ruling on the case, whichever is earlier.

For Paramount, the delay “may prove costly”, said The Hollywood Reporter. The merger agreement says Warner’s shareholders are owed roughly $650 million per quarter, or $6.9 million per day, if the deal is not completed by 30 September.

More than 1,000 leading industry professionals from US film and TV signed an open letter in April warning of the impact of “media consolidation” that prioritises “the interests of a small group of powerful stakeholders over the broader public good”.

Mark Ruffalo, one of the actors leading the campaign against the merger, said it “will mean less films, less TV, less creativity, less of everything from the people who make the decisions. This merger is bad for everyone except the billionaire class.”

President Donald Trump has long flirted with dispatching federal forces to polling sites as part of a broader and oftentimes martial emphasis on election security. Now, with the 2026 midterms just months away and Democrats looking increasingly likely to make major (perhaps even chamber-flipping) gains in November, party figures are starting to take Trump’s threats seriously. As blue state attorneys general coordinate with one another and Senate Democrats convene high-level strategy sessions, is the party ready to face the White House’s increasingly brazen electoral saber-rattling?

‘War room’ preparations

In July, a “group of powerful” Democratic lawmakers “rehearsed for some of their darkest fears” about the midterm elections,” said MS NOW. Among those concerns: “disinformation triggering voter-roll purges,” soldiers “deployed to polling places” during open voting hours, and the “machinery of a free election seizing up in real time.” The session was “part of a broader effort” by the party to “prepare for anything ahead of November.”

Democrats are “ramping up” their efforts, said The New York Times. At a meeting in May attended by “staff members from the offices of every Democratic attorney general” and “about a dozen Democratic secretaries of state,” party officials “held tabletop exercises” to prepare for “hypothetical scenarios in the November midterm elections.”

The “sad reality” necessitating these “war rooms” is that the federal government, once a trusted election partner, is now “our biggest concern,” said Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown to the Times. It “doesn’t matter” what the White House “tries to throw at us,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in a recent Senate speech. Planning sessions like these “ensure we’ll be ready to respond.” Democratic senators have also introduced legislation to “limit the potential for armed military personnel or federal law enforcement at election polling places,” said CBS News.

After Trump “declined to rule out” sending National Guard troops or DHS agents to polling sites on election day, a coalition of Democratic district attorneys calling itself the Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach also warned the White House that “any federal agents sent to polling places within their jurisdictions will be prosecuted,” said Politico. But it’s “unclear” whether that would include “working with local law enforcement to block federal agents from visiting polling places,” and what, if any, “potential consequences would be for the election” should prosecutors find evidence of “mass voter intimidation” by federal agents.

‘Unprecedented’ electoral environment

Although attorneys general and secretaries of state often work closely together in a particular state, they “rarely work” with corresponding figures from another, said the Times. Given Trump’s threats, Democratic figures say “creating a national network of these two offices is necessary.”

The “most realistic threats” from the Trump administration “create confusion, trigger litigation, delay certification or further undermine public confidence," said Ari Mittleman, the executive director of the nonpartisan Keep Our Republic election group, to Newsweek. Though such officials remain “confident in the professionalism” of the local officials tasked with overseeing the electoral mechanics of the midterm race, the “current environment is unprecedented,” said the outlet. “The guardrails are real,” said Mittleman. But they “depend on courts acting promptly, officials following the law and political leaders refusing to promote” election lies.

If the “gossip in publishing circles” has any merit, novelist Rachel Cusk has turned her eye to Natalie Portman for her latest book, said Leaf Arbuthnot in The Telegraph. The actor isn’t named in “Life of M”. But the similarities between the character “M” and Portman are “so glaring they become hard to ignore” – and the portrayal is far from complimentary.

An unflattering portrait

“Life of M”, which is published next month, is about a film star who allows an unnamed writer to chronicle her life. There are “certainly points of correspondence” between Portman and M in the novel, said John Self in The Times. M “played a ballerina” in a movie and is a “model for a major brand”; Portman starred in “Black Swan” and her face is splashed across billboards as the long-time ambassador for Miss Dior.

Cusk’s character was also a child actor whose first film included sexual scenes that “originally included several scenes in which the child was shown wanting or inviting sexual interaction with the central male character”. Portman’s debut in “Leon” in 1994 saw her mother step in to insist scenes with her daughter and an older co-star were removed from the film.

Cusk has remained “tight-lipped” on the rumours. It’s “handy” to generate a buzz ahead of publication and the novelist has never been shy about putting “whoever she likes into her books”. Her divorce memoir “Aftermath” explored the breakdown of her marriage to her ex-husband in vivid detail, while her “bracingly honest” book about parenting, “A Life’s Work”, was widely criticised for her unflinching portrayal of motherhood. “It has reached the stage, in fact, where an effective modern curse might be ‘May you appear in a Rachel Cusk book’”.

Portman and Cusk both live in Paris, and move in similar circles. The actor is (or was) a fan of Cusk and even interviewed the writer, picking two of her novels to discuss in her Instagram book club. But “no one in her right mind who understood Rachel Cusk’s work would allow her to write about her”, said Valerie Stivers on UnHerd. Cusk excels at “reducing the human to the mathematical product of cold existential forces” – appearing in one of her books is “never going to be flattering”.

“As literary assassinations go, Cusk’s of M is sly and subtle, but it is lethal nonetheless,” said Arbuthnot in The Telegraph. Cusk stresses M is pretty, “humble” and “gracious”, but the “unsettling argument” she carefully builds is that “M is engaged in a constant effort to seem like a believable person”. What is “cruel” about the character is the “impregnable fort of isolation she believes the actress lives within”.

A ‘delicate balancing act’

Cusk is just the latest in a “long line of writers” to cause upset by basing their characters on real people, said Self in The Times. Philip Roth was a “master” at it, first casting a “thinly disguised avatar of his wife”, Claire Bloom, in his 1990 novel “Deception”, before he “twisted the knife”, with another caricature of Bloom, this time as a self-loathing antisemitic Jewish actor in “I Married a Communist”. And Nora Ephron famously wrote about her divorce from the journalist Carl Bernstein in her novel, “Heartburn”, which features a food writer who is seven months pregnant when she discovers her husband’s affair.

Non-writers assume we novelists insert real-life people into our books out of “spite”, said Amanda Craig in The i Paper, but a novel is “what it says on the tin – a work with made-up characters and situations”. My “long-ago ex-boyfriend”, the literary critic David Sexton, thought he had been “unflatteringly depicted” in my novel “A Vicious Circle” and “threatened to sue”. I might use a line of dialogue I’ve heard “uttered by a real-life person” but most writers I know “go through agonies” to make their characters who might “have their roots in reality as remote as possible from the original”.

Creating characters inspired by real people is a “delicate balancing act”, said Marshall Fine on BookTrib. Novelists run the risk of “being accused of writing a roman à clef, in which only the names have been changed to protect the guilty”. The “trick” is to find ways of using real people in creative ways to “inspire characters who are products of your imagination”.

While there is no legal requirement to seek permission from the real person who inspires a work of fiction, the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain advises that it is “good practice” to inform subjects of creative writing projects in advance, to get their “blessing” to reduce the risk of future legal action, and to remove any “identifying information”.

For now, Cusk hasn’t addressed the rumours about “Life of M”, and unless the actor speaks out to “correct the record, the truth will never be known – nor can it really matter”, said Stivers on UnHerd. “If the result of the two women’s friendship is a very strong Cusk book indeed, everyone should be happy – including, if her art-appreciation is real, Natalie Portman.”

While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may be at the center of numerous controversies, one of the most recent has gone international: The agency has agreed to a five-year contract with Canadian tech conglomerate Thomson Reuters to obtain information on alleged “voter fraud” and “immigration fraud.” Many are wary of the two parties working together.

‘Screening and vetting of individuals’

While Thomson Reuters is best known for its eponymous news agency Reuters, its data broker division has deals with several U.S. government organizations. The latest ICE contract, valued at $25 million per year, directs Thomson Reuters to assist with the “screening and vetting of individuals and entities for immigration, criminal and national security risks,” according to the contract document in the Federal Register. Thomson Reuters will also assist with identifying “violations of U.S. immigration and customs laws.”

The contract means ICE will now have access to the company’s “databases of personal data — which includes peoples’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, social media posts and geolocation information,” said 404 Media. By signing the document, Thomson Reuters will be “able to let ICE continuously monitor millions of people and entities of interest.” Other data sources that feed into Thomson Reuters’ program include “credit header data, which is the personal information someone provides to a financial institution to open a credit card, like their address.”

The document also says ICE has a large need to identify “unaccompanied minors,” which will help “support the presidential mandate of the identification of voter fraud, immigration fraud and national security.” But the contract “does not explain why ICE would need to identify unaccompanied minors, which is typically the remit of the Department of Health and Human Services” or how the data “would be used to combat voter fraud or immigration fraud,” said Wired.

‘My blood ran cold’

There has been significant opposition to Thomson Reuters’ partnering with ICE, including in Canada where the company is based. At least one politician, Canadian New Democratic Party Leader Avi Lewis, has urged Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to block the deal. “My blood ran cold when I read about this development,” Lewis said to The Guardian. “Complicity between Canadian corporations and ICE should absolutely be illegal.”

ICE has been working with Thomson Reuters since at least 2015. But the new contract is the first to state that the “software will be used to support the Trump administration’s objectives of addressing supposed ‘voter fraud,’” said The Guardian. The company itself has denied any wrongdoing; recent media reporting “reflects misunderstandings about how our products are governed and safeguarded,” Thomson Reuters said in a statement. Its products are “provided under strict contractual terms, subject to applicable law and governed by strong safeguards.”

It seems some within the company do not agree with this assessment. Prior to the contract being signed, 200 Thomson Reuters employees wrote a letter asking the company not to renew its agreement with ICE. “We have experienced our neighbors, friends and family members undergoing arrests and detention, intimidation and harassment, and public violence,” said the letter obtained by The New York Times. “We question if our investigative products and services are being used in accordance with our mission and values, as well as in accordance with the law and our nation’s constitution.”

“No remnants of Nazi influence remain” at Salzburger Vorstadt 15, the building in the Austrian town of Braunau where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, said The New York Times. The former guesthouse has now been remodelled into a police station, in an estimated £15 million renovation that concludes a “years-long effort” to prevent the site from becoming “an attraction for Nazi sympathisers”.

‘Neutralise’ history

The Austrian government acquired Salzburger Vorstadt 15 from its previous private ownership in 2016. It then remained empty while a commission decided the future of the building, forcing the town to decide whether to “confront or erase this past”, said Katja Hoyer in The Telegraph.

Ultimately, it decided it wanted to “neutralise” history by choosing a new purpose for the building to ensure it would “neither be demolished nor become a memorial”.

As a police station, the building will be seen as a place of “democracy, the rule of law, security, freedom and human dignity”, said Gerhard Karner, the Austrian interior minister. “Our police is the opposite of the darkest times of our history,” he said at the opening ceremony. However, he added, “memory will not disappear”.

While there will be no information plaque at the site, a memorial stone remains at the front of the building. The stone, taken from Austria’s largest Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen, bears the inscription: “For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again fascism. The millions of dead remind us.”

‘Concerns on several levels’

Over the years, Braunau residents have become “fed up” with “extremists and drunken revellers” who “posed for pictures” outside the building with the “straight-armed Hitler salute” or laid “roses and wreaths” to mark the dictator’s birthday, said The Guardian.

But choosing what to do with the site was no easy task. Turning it into a museum of Nazi atrocities could “continue to draw right-wing extremists” but demolishing the building would “obfuscate an important chapter of local history”.

It was felt that a police station would “discourage Hitler admirers” from visiting the site, commission member Oliver Rathkolb told Deutsche Welle.

However, in a 2023 poll only 6% of respondents were in support of the police station idea, possibly due to concerns over the role of the Gestapo secret police as “one of the regime’s principal instruments of terror”. Salzburger Vorstadt 15 should have become “a place dedicated to peace, freedom, democracy and tolerance”, said local resident Eveline Doll. Turning it into a police station “raises concerns on several levels”.

But Florian Kotanko, chair of the Contemporary History Society of Braunau, rejected such comparisons. “We live in a democratic state governed by the rule of law” and, so long as officers are “held accountable”, there is “no reason for fundamental distrust of the police”, he said.

Since the US and Israel first attacked Iran on 28 February, President Trump “has claimed more than 30 times that Operation Epic Fury has been successful, is over, or almost is”, said Robin Wright in The New Yorker. None of these predictions have been borne out; “some have bordered on delusional”.

Tehran on the attack

The latest ceasefire, agreed in June, has “functionally collapsed”. In the past fortnight, the US has launched nightly air strikes, renewed the blockade of Iranian ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, and reimposed sanctions. Iran has attacked US and other targets in Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. Three US service personnel were killed last week by a strike on an airbase in Jordan; nearly 100 more have been injured in the latest attacks.

Trump has tried three strategies so far: regime change, a longer campaign of relentless bombardment, and diplomacy. None have worked. In Washington, “there is a growing sense of despair” about the direction of the war.

Iran’s leaders feared that the Memorandum of Understanding agreed in June was just a temporary retreat, said Vali Nasr in the FT – to relieve pressure on the world economy and allow US forces to rearm. There was, in fact, “plenty of evidence to support their suspicions”. More US military assets began to arrive in the area, and the deal’s provisions – on coordinating the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran, on the need for a ceasefire in Lebanon – were ignored. Tehran’s aim now, in going on the attack, is to show that the US cannot dictate events, and that Iran can withstand whatever military and economic pain is inflicted on it.

Deep trouble

Some strategists think the new US plan could work, said Mark Urban in The Sunday Times. Its forces are battering Iran’s coast – military installations, bridges, airports, port facilities – to neutralise the Iranian military’s hold on the strait. At the same time, choking off oil exports will plunge the country into deep economic crisis – albeit in months, not weeks.

In the meantime, the collateral damage to the region is escalating, said Ahmed Al Omran in the FT. Kuwait, which is bearing the brunt of Iran’s current attacks, has endured 1,400 missile and drone strikes. Its airport and its oil infrastructure have been attacked, along with the energy grid and the desalination plants that supply 90% of Kuwait’s water. Oil exports have dropped to 20% of pre-war levels.

The US is in deep trouble, and there’s no easy way out, said Will Walldorf in Foreign Policy – short of accepting Iran’s authority over the Strait of Hormuz and its right to enrich uranium. “But that’s the unfortunate consequence of losing a war that should never have [been] started in the first place.”

Superstar is a word that is overused these days, said Oliver Holt in the Daily Mail; but if ever a man was worthy of it, it was Kevin Keegan. Back in the 1970s, the footballer – who died this week aged 75 – was a “riot of colour” in a grey world; and for a few years, said The Times, England’s hopes of becoming a great footballing nation again seemed to rest entirely on his “poodle perm”.

As England captain, his success in elevating the team above mediocrity was only fleeting, but his impact crossed cultural boundaries. Not only was he charismatic and open-hearted, he was one of the first players to fully market his brand, deploying “his ready smile and dimpled chin with charm and professionalism”. He was ubiquitous on cereal boxes; he was a face of Brut on TV, splashing it “all over”; he even released a handful of singles.

Fighting spirit

Keegan wasn’t the first “celebrity footballer”, said Jim White in The Daily Telegraph: George Best had been that a decade earlier. But “King Kev” or “Special K”, as he was known, was not like Best. A clean-cut family man, he had neither Best’s destructive streak nor his natural brilliance. Having grown up “football-mad” in South Yorkshire, the son of a miner, Keegan had trained tirelessly to become a great, and disprove the selectors who’d told him that, with his slight and small frame (he was five foot seven), he’d do better as a jockey.

His energy, tenacity and fighting spirit, which won him the nickname “Mighty Mouse” – and led him into a notorious on-pitch brawl in 1974 – became evident to the wider public in 1976, on the multi-sport TV show “Superstars”. In the cycle event, Keegan fell off his bike and landed very painfully. He was bloodied and bruised, yet he insisted on taking part in the re-run, which he then won. The public adored him for it.

King Kev

On the pitch, he had first achieved stardom at Liverpool in the early 1970s, said The Guardian. He moved to Hamburg in 1977 – where he twice won the Ballon d’Or – and ended his playing career at Newcastle, from 1982, where he achieved the status of a demigod by helping to return the Magpies to the First Division. When he retired – flying off the pitch in a helicopter after a testimonial – fans wept.

Eight years later, he was back as manager. The club was facing relegation to the third tier; under his helm, it was promoted and became one of the most thrilling in the Premier League. And though his final stint at Newcastle was less successful, the fans still loved him. In January, after he revealed that he had terminal cancer, they unfurled a huge banner at St James’ Park reading: “Long Live King Kev – The Messiah”.

For much of its duration, the 23rd edition of the men’s World Cup was “dominated by the exploits of star players”, said Oliver Kay on The Athletic. Yet for all that Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé and Jude Bellingham excelled, none could carry his side to glory. Instead, the tournament was deservedly won by the team with the strongest “collective” identity: Spain.

United front

Spain don’t lack for outstanding players, of course – whether their captain Rodri, winner of the Fifa Golden Ball award, or their 19-year-old winger Lamine Yamal – but they are about as far from being a collection of individuals as it’s possible for a football team to be. “That word ‘team’ overrides everything else.”

This was starkly illustrated by Sunday’s final, which ended with Spain beating Argentina 1-0 courtesy of Ferran Torres’s extra-time goal. While Argentina, a side over-reliant on the “genius” of Messi, displayed a “paucity of attacking ambition”, Spain were their usual calm, intelligent, methodical selves. And in footballing terms, it was no contest: Spain dominated possession, and created many chances, while Argentina didn’t manage a single shot in normal time – the first time this has ever happened in a World Cup final.

‘Question everything

Spanish football is underpinned by the philosophy of el entendimiento del juego, which translates as “understanding of the game”, said Tom Allnutt in The Sunday Times. It’s an approach that prizes “decision-making on the field” as much as technical skill. To get them to learn to “think for themselves”, coaches encourage players to “question everything”. They favour drills which require players to “make multiple decisions at speed” – the classic example being the rondo, or “Spain’s piggy in the middle”.

The system particularly excels at producing “ball-playing midfielders” – the likes of Xavi and Iniesta in a previous generation, Rodri and Fabián Ruiz in the current one. Known as pivotes (“pivots”) or volantes (“steering wheels”), such players are often physically slight, but rely on body shape – and quick wits – to keep hold of the ball. As one Premier League scout who works in Spain has observed: “In Spain, players happily give the ball to a marked player... English players are much less comfortable” doing so.

If England ever want to win the World Cup again, then they must strive to do things the Spanish way, said Jason Burt in The Daily Telegraph. “Get the ball, keep the ball, love the ball, move the ball.” That is what the best teams – especially teams in international football – do. “It is not complicated, but it requires a re-education.” Thomas Tuchel – for all his talk of remodelling England – didn’t ultimately deviate from the old flawed system. It’s something he “got wrong and should admit”.

Spring forward, fall back — that old rule of thumb for resetting clocks at the start and end of daylight saving time may soon be a relic of the past, as the House of Representatives last week overwhelmingly supported a bill to make the time change permanent. And President Donald Trump has expressed his support. After all, people like later sunlight hours. But keeping the clock on summer hours could have negative ramifications.

‘Hidden consequences’

Americans are “tired of the biannual time change,” and making daylight saving time permanent is a “commonsense reform that will improve everyday life for millions,” bill sponsor Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) said in a statement, per The Hill. Trump agrees. Passing the bill would be a “very nice WIN for the Republican Party,” he said on Truth Social. But there would be “hidden consequences” to year-round daylight saving, said Axios. Under the reset the “sun won't rise until 8 or 9 a.m. in the winter,” leaving “millions of children” and commuters to start their days “in the dark.”

There would probably be health consequences too. Morning sunlight is “key to maintaining our circadian rhythms” and “overall health,” said The Washington Post. “Circadian misalignment” can cause lost sleep, which in turn is connected to “obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mood disorders” and other health challenges. Americans “would be misaligned all year long,” Vanderbilt University’s Beth Malow said to the paper.

The change would disrupt the daily prayer practices of Orthodox Jews, said NPR. Some prayers “can only be said communally” and are often performed “every morning before heading out for work or school.” The change would be a problem for a “synagogue that has had a morning prayer service for 100 years” if it cannot muster enough of the congregation to “show up at the prayer time close to 9 o'clock because they have jobs,” Rabbi A.D. Motzen, national director of government affairs for Agudath Israel of America, said to the outlet. “Some Muslim prayers and religious observances” would also be affected, said Axios.

Airlines “could take up to two years” to adjust their “complex scheduling” to permanent daylight saving, said CBS News. The shift could affect “crew and aircraft positioning” as well as “domestic and international connectivity,” trade group Airlines for America said in a statement. Trucking and railroad companies that are “also timetable dependent” would face challenges as well, said CBS.

‘Abandoned prematurely’

Congress authorized permanent daylight saving in 1973 to save energy during the oil crisis, said The Independent. The project was “abandoned prematurely” amid concerns about “children and criticisms from the construction and agricultural industries.”

Permanent standard time might be a healthier alternative, said Yahoo News. Stanford University researchers determined that sticking to the regular clock all year would result in “300,000 fewer strokes and 2.6 million fewer people with obesity.” People need “more morning light and less evening light” to have a balanced day, Stanford University’s Jamie Zeitzer said to the outlet.

Film fans are embarking on “epic journeys of their own” to see Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” in one of the “few surviving” Imax 70mm cinemas, said The Guardian.

That’s because it’s the first feature film to be shot entirely on 1570 film – “named for the width of the film stock (70mm) and the 15 perforations on each frame”. It’s “the highest-resolution film format in existence”, so it makes sense for fans to watch the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s masterpiece in his “preferred format”, right?

‘Very exclusive’

But getting your hands on “summer’s hottest ticket” is far from easy, said Mashable. Fans are spending “hundreds of dollars”, travelling thousands of miles, and even planning pregnancies around seeing Nolan’s film in Imax 70mm cinemas: the only format that lets you watch “The Odyssey” with the “fullest image possible”.

Those who opt for other cinemas, with formats like the standard 70mm, or 35mm, will have a “sizeable chunk” of the frame cut off. So some of the “sheer vastness of the landscapes that Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema are capturing” will be lost.

Most cinemas shifted to digital around a decade ago and there are just 41 worldwide that are able to show Imax 1570 film, eight of which are in California. The UK is home to three of them: two in London and one in Manchester. No theatres in Asia, Africa or South America can screen Nolan’s film in his intended format, making it a “very exclusive – and very Western – affair”.

I thought the “buzz” around “The Odyssey” being shot on Imax 1570 cameras was “clever marketing hype”, said Charles Pulliam-Moore on The Verge. But to “get a true sense of the story Nolan is telling” you really do need to watch it in an Imax. Many of the scenes are “perfectly fine” in the 35mm format; however, those that feature the film’s “gargantuan monsters” take on a “different gravity” when displayed in the Imax 70mm’s 1.43:1 ratio.

Nolan has made a film that is “immersive” in a way most modern features aren’t. But the higher ticket price coupled with the fact that the “vast majority” of people will never get to watch his film in the way he intended it has prompted accusations that the director is “anti-art and contributing to the culture of obsessive format purism”.

‘Far more fiddly and expensive’

Shooting on 1570 cameras is no easy task as they’re “notoriously heavy, loud and require frequent reloading”, said The Guardian. During “The Odyssey” shoot the film stock had to be changed “every three minutes” and Nolan worked closely with Imax to create a “soundproofing ‘blimp’ to house the 180kg camera to make it quiet enough for him to record dialogue on 1570 for the first time”. Projecting the finished film is also “far more fiddly and expensive” as a highly trained projectionist needs to be present for the entire screening.

But Nolan’s popularity has risen alongside 1570’s “mini comeback”. The number of cinemas able to project these films has risen from 30 to 41 since the release of “Oppenheimer” in 2023. And it’s not just Nolan who has helped spark interest in the format: several other big-name directors have followed suit including Denis Villeneuve who shot “Dune: Part Three” on Imax cameras.

“There’s certainly more demand,” Imax CEO Richard Gelfond told Variety. But adding more 70mm screens isn’t that simple as new Imax film projectors haven’t been made in “about 50 years”. Sources at Imax said many of the parts needed to build them “simply no longer exist”.

Even if Imax does “magically” figure out a way to manufacture more 70mm projectors, there aren’t many cinemas where they could be installed as “exhibitors aren’t building enough auditoriums that are capable of housing its towering 1.43:1 screens because of high construction costs”.

The company remains one of the movie industry’s few “reliable bright spots”, with attendances having “languished” since the pandemic, said Rebecca Rubin in Variety. Buyers have been “circling” and in May it was reportedly in the “early stages of exploring a sale”. For now, Imax is in an “enviable position”.

Graham Platner’s political implosion has forced Maine Democrats into a monthlong dash to replace the disgraced oysterman-cum-political-upstart and challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November. Senate hopefuls have been courting supporters ahead of a July 25 nominating convention. But rushed deadlines, unexpected tragedies and residual frustrations over Platner’s failed campaign have put Democrats in a bind. As of now, no candidate has emerged as a clear frontrunner, and some national party figures are keeping their distance from an electorate still raw after Platner’s downfall.

‘Stakes couldn’t be higher’

Democrats hope to “turn the page from the former standard-bearer” without “abandoning his supporters,” said Roll Call. Progressives who had been buoyed by Platner’s “populist message” are “hoping to maintain their momentum.” The “snap” replacement race is “off to a hectic and dramatic start,” said CNN. Maine Democrats are “scrambling to create a highly unorthodox process” in which candidates have rushed to “collect enough signatures to qualify for the convention and assemble slates of delegates to vote for them.”

Moreover, what was “expected to be an intense two-week primary campaign” has instead “effectively been reduced to one week,” after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot Colombian immigrant Joan Sebastian Guerrero in the town of Biddeford, said The Boston Globe. Candidates have spent time “in and around Biddeford with the community” in recent days, “expressing outrage at the latest death of an individual at ICE’s hands.” But without a front-runner, and most of the candidates in broad agreement on many issues, the “clarity and contrasts that campaigns tend to reveal” are missing for Democrats at a “time when they would be most helpful.”

It’s encouraging how many candidates are “running on Platner's progressive platform of transformational change,” said NPR, paraphrasing Maine’s state Senate president, Democrat Mattie Daughtry. But voters may be “turned off” by the process. Meanwhile, the “stakes couldn't be higher” for the party, with Senate control on the line, said the outlet. “No clear front-runner has emerged” from the existing pack of candidates, and it’s unclear whether "one candidate can capitalize” on Platner’s political momentum.

Many of the Democrats’ Senate hopefuls “share something in common,” said NBC. They “all made unsuccessful bids for higher office this year.” For voters, though, “I don’t think it matters,” said party strategist Mike Nellis to the outlet — unless it’s a “perennial loser candidate that’s been running for, like, 1,000 years, which none of these candidates are.”

‘Process for Maine and Mainers’

Faced with the “nearly hopeless position” of rapidly finding a new candidate, the Maine Democratic Party has nevertheless “shown a finesse I never imagined possible,” said Steve Collins at Centralmaine.com. The hyper-compressed campaign schedule and upcoming convention are “not a simple solution or one that will make everyone happy.” But “that was never possible.”

Absent throughout much of this process has been Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). He has been given a “clear message from his party’s voters, candidates and local leaders” in “all-important” Maine,” said The New York Times: “Stay away.” Many of the declared candidates have “signaled interest in replacing Schumer as leader after the midterms.” This is a “process for Maine and Mainers,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, one of the candidates, to the Times.

This is the summer of “cerebral pursuits” in France, with “a big rise” in the sale of “holiday workbooks”, said The Times. With their “cahiers de vacances” – an adult spin-off from school revision guides – grown-ups are “brushing up on” algebra, history and grammar on the beach.

All grown up

Holiday workbooks were originally designed to help schoolchildren to keep up with their studies over the long summer break. But the new adult versions are a real hit: you only have scan bookshop shelves to see “the scale of the phenomenon”, said Aleteia. French adults are using the workbooks not only to “evoke childhood summers” but as an entertaining way to learn something new during the summer holidays.

Last year, over 650,000 holiday workbooks were sold – double the year before – and publishers are reporting even bigger sales this summer, said The Times. Among the most popular ones are “Les Maths en Vacances”, which has readers practising geometry by folding their beach towels, and “Énigmes de l’Histoire” which focuses on historical puzzles, such as the “mysterious fate of Louis XVII”, who disappeared after his parents were beheaded during the French Revolution. “Passeport Adultes Anglais” is all about improving your English – with a “notably challenging” section on making British “herb jelly”. There are also logical reasoning challenges, and police-investigation workbooks with “puzzles to solve” in a “Cluedo”-style format, said Instant.

‘Need to disconnect’

Adults want to buy these books because they allow them to “learn a lot while having fun”, Didier Ferat of workbook publisher Solar told Aleteia. The format is not “intimidating” and you can work through a book “alone or with others”, Carole Strang of leading workbook publisher Éditions Nathan told Instant. There’s a sense of nostalgia at play, too: everyone knows these workbooks from their schooldays. They are associated with a “pretty strong memories” of childhood “summers and holidays”.

They are also physical and “concrete”, allowing you to “move beyond the digital world”, said Ferat. There’s a new “appreciation” for offline activity. The “need to disconnect” from our mobile devices has people shifting to entertainment that requires “a pencil in the hand”.

The desire to disconnect with a nostalgic activity explains the associated boom in “kidult” colouring and sticker books, and an increasing passion for puzzles and crosswords. Dictionary publisher Robert has launched a new series of themed giant crossword books this summer. At a time when the “world of books is suffering”, Robert’s Charles Bimbenet told Instant, “this enthusiasm is welcome”.

Many had written off Marine Le Pen, said Katya Adler on BBC News. They thought the de facto leader of the far-right National Rally (RN) had run out of political road after being convicted in March 2025 of helping to embezzle more than €4 million in EU parliamentary funds, which the RN diverted to pay for its own staff.

And since her punishments include a five-year ban from holding office, it seemed likely that her charismatic 30-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardella, would have to take her place in the 2027 presidential election.

But Le Pen has a habit of defying the odds. And so it proved last week, when the Court of Appeal confirmed her conviction, but reduced her period of ineligibility to 15 months, allowing her to compete next April.

‘Risky gamble’

There was one large caveat, however: she would have to wear an ankle tag for 12 months as part of her three-year jail sentence, two of which are suspended. This made some doubt that she’d run. But just six hours after the ruling, Le Pen “came out swinging”. In a TV interview, she said yes, she would run for president, and no, she wouldn’t have to wear a tag, at least not until the Court of Cassation has ruled on her final appeal. Ever defiant, she has styled herself as “a phoenix rising from the ashes”.

Barring Le Pen from standing would have had “devastating consequences” for French democracy, said Jean-Éric Schoettl in Le Figaro (Paris). True, she has been convicted of wrongdoing, but even so, it should be left to the French people to decide whether they want her as president or not.

The judgment was a tightrope act, said Olivier Beaud in Le Monde (Paris). By reducing Le Pen’s sentence and letting her stand, the court has freed the judiciary from accusations of political meddling. But at the same time – and this is the really important point – it has upheld her conviction for a grave criminal offence.

Le Pen is not out of the woods by any stretch, said Julien Lécuyer in La Voix du Nord (Lille). Her “risky gamble” could backfire. The Court of Cassation has now said that it will rule on her case at some point before the election. If it upholds last week’s verdict, Le Pen could, in theory, be forced to wear an ankle tag on the campaign trail. Such physical proof of her criminality would be a godsend to her rivals.

Wingman Bardella

The RN is currently well ahead in the polls, said The Economist (London), but its path to the Élysée Palace faces pitfalls beyond the legal saga. One is the potential for infighting. Until his mentor’s sudden reprieve, the highly popular Bardella had assumed he was going to be the RN’s presidential candidate. So he has been pushing his own vision of the path the RN should follow, a path which differs from Le Pen’s. Being a more business-friendly politician, he balks at her plan to reduce the pension age for some workers to 60. Such differences will “inevitably strain” their relationship in the coming months, for all that Le Pen insists they are united.

Yet the truth is she cannot win without him, said Clea Caulcutt on Politico (Brussels). In what was “either a stroke of genius or a sign of desperation”, she had him constantly at her side last week. She was “all smiles” at the RN rally in La Flèche; he was “more stone-faced”, as if “adjusting to his new role as wingman”.

Le Pen’s candidacy sheds light on the “true nature” of the RN, said Le Monde. It’s a family concern. A Le Pen has stood in all but one election since 1972, the year her late father Jean-Marie founded what was then called the National Front. And the family retains its tight grip: Le Pen’s niece is her comms director; her brother-in-law is her main adviser.

The only thing different about the party today is Le Pen’s double conviction, which exposes the rot at the heart of it. So much for the RN’s old slogan “Clean hands and head held high”; so much for Le Pen’s 2013 proposal to give lifetime bans to politicians guilty of embezzlement. The RN poses a “serious threat” to France, and its opponents must wake up before it’s too late.

“I’m sorry. but I’m unable to speak.”

Surrounded by concerned medics and supporters in Delhi, 59-year-old Sonam Wangchuk entered the 20th day of his hunger strike, scarcely able to move unaided.

Usually in the headlines for his climate activism, Wangchuk is “adding momentum” to youth-led protests on behalf of Indian students, said The New York Times. Instigated by the “joke” organisation the Cockroach Janta Party, the protest began after India cancelled its national medical college entrance exams following the questions being leaked. They demand “the reform of a soul-destroying education system”, said The Guardian as well as the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.

‘Severe starvation’

Wangchuk is “one of India’s best-known public figures outside mainstream politics”, said The Independent. A mechanical engineer from Ladakh – a mountainous region in the Himalayas – he has dedicated decades to educational reform and creating sustainable technologies for mountain communities.

The most famous of his innovations is the “ice stupa”, which acts like an “artificial glacier” that stores water from the winter and is then used during the farming season in the spring. In 2018 he received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, “often described as Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize”. His involvement in this movement has “transformed” a student-led protest into a “national issue, attracting politicians, academics, activists and public figures from across India”.

In his 20 days on hunger strike, Wangchuk has lost close to 9kg “from a body that was spare and lean to begin with”, said The Guardian. Doctors have warned that at this stage of “severe starvation” his body is breaking down fat and muscle, leaving him in a state of “extreme weakness, impaired brain function and electrolyte imbalance”. He is unable to walk to the bathroom 30 metres away without support and “speaks little to conserve energy”. But as crowds chant his name, he still appears “alert” and “calm”.

However, the weather is becoming a “defining feature of the protest”. As temperatures reach 37C, sweat “pours down” the faces of those in attendance, leaving clothes “drenched” and supporters “hot and bothered”. “A useless fan by his mattress does nothing to relieve the suffocating humidity.” Concern for his condition is “mounting”.

‘Defiant yet humorous’

More than 1,800 public figures have signed a statement urging Wangchuk to stop his strike, which he has “firmly rebuffed”, said India Today.

As a “first step” to potentially stopping his hunger strike, Wangchuk is demanding “accountability for the failures” of the education department, including reports that some students had taken their lives after the exam cancellation. He and his supporters have also demanded the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who has called the CJP protestors “the B-team of disruptive elements”. Organisers say they have received no formal response from Narendra Modi’s government.

A petition has been filed in the high court that would seek to “take him to a government hospital and force-feed him”, should his condition worsen, said the BBC. The document said the government was treating Wangchuk “like a hardcore criminal, terrorist or traitor to the nation” and was not concerned for his safety. On Thursday, the government responded by informing the Delhi High Court that it would “intervene if his health deteriorated”, said the outlet.

Wangchuk is continuing to strike a “defiant yet humorous note” despite his deteriorating health, said The Times of India. Addressing supporters, he said he would “stay alive by any means until July 20 so that I can march to Parliament with all of you” the date when the next parliamentary session begins. “If our march isn't successful by July 20, I'll come back as a ghost!”

Across the country, people have been up in arms about the increasing ubiquity of AI data centers, but now a proposal to build a massive AI plant just steps from the Nashville Zoo has brought the subject of animal rights into the fray. As people in Nashville propose ways to stop the data center’s construction, the affected zoo animals could present a new wave of backlash against artificial intelligence.

‘Disrupt the environmental conditions’

The proposed data center, built by the Atlanta firm DC BLOX, would be located about 50 yards from the boundary of the Nashville Zoo, officials told NBC News, or just half a football field away. The zoo is “vehemently opposed to having a data center so close to animals” because the “noise could disturb its residents,” Nashville Zoo President and CEO Rick Schwartz said to NBC.

For many, the “focus of the brewing anger is how it might affect the zoo’s most endangered or prized species,” said The New York Times. Much of the concern involves the facility’s clouded leopards, a threatened species that represents one of the “crown jewels of the zoo’s conservation program.” The clouded leopard breeding enclosure would be “about 320 feet from the proposed data center’s property line.”

Officials are “particularly concerned about the potential effect of light and noise from the data center, given that animals are more sensitive than humans,” Dr. Heather Schwartz, who oversees animal health at the Nashville Zoo, told the Times. The noise could “disrupt the environmental conditions critical not only for the clouded leopard breeding program but for the more than 3,000 animals that call the zoo home,” said CNN. The facility has launched a petition to stop the data center, which currently has over 500,000 signatures.

Demanding stronger regulations

Some are worried that a data center near the Nashville Zoo could spark a larger trend, and these data centers “can have real consequences for animals,” said animal news platform The Animal Reader. Such locations near populated areas have “cooling equipment, backup generators and bright security lighting” that “can disturb wildlife, especially nocturnal animals such as bats, owls and insects,” especially in areas with large animal populations.

This has made the zoo a new focus of the political fight against data centers. After the plan was announced, an “unprecedented crowd” showed up to Nashville’s planning commission meeting as “hundreds of residents turned out to oppose data centers,” said The Tennessean. Numerous speakers “urged city leaders to slow the industry’s expansion, adopt stronger regulations and stop a proposed South Nashville data center project next to the zoo that critics say is far larger than originally disclosed.”

The fight is the “latest example of data centers getting pushback in communities nationwide, as neighbors say they don’t want to live near them or object more broadly to the direction of the tech and AI industries,” said NBC. But even amid a “bipartisan push for regulation, as well as lawsuits and opposition to tax breaks,” DC BLOX is not backing down. “We look forward to working with local officials, community members and the Nashville Zoo to minimize local impacts and to assure that there will be no health risks to residents or animals,” the company told NBC.

Florida has executed the oldest prisoner in its history, the latest in a spate of capital punishments against elderly death-row inmates.

Dennis Sochor was 74 when he was pronounced dead on Tuesday. He was convicted of killing Patricia Gifford in 1982, hours after meeting the 18-year-old at a party. The US Supreme Court rejected his final appeal without comment, said The Guardian.

Sochor is the second of three Florida inmates over the age of 70 to be executed within five weeks. The executions have drawn attention to the ageing death-row population in the US, as well as Florida’s status as the foremost death penalty state.

A spate of executions

Florida, known as the Sunshine State, is considered “a mecca for senior citizens”, said The Hill. But it has shown “no compunction about carrying out executions of elderly death-row inmates”.

In October last year, Florida executed 72-year-old Samuel Lee Smithers for the 1996 killings of two women. He was the oldest person to be executed in the state since the US reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Last month, Dusty Ray Spencer, just a week younger than Sochor, died by lethal injection. The 74-year-old had been convicted of stabbing his wife to death in 1992.

Florida is also preparing to execute its first octogenarian later this month. Dominick Anthony Occhicone, who killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986, turns 81 next month, after his scheduled execution. If his execution goes ahead, he’ll be the second-oldest known inmate put to death in modern US history, after 83-year-old Walter Leroy Moody Jr. in 2018.

Florida has carried out 10 executions this year, more than all other US states combined. Unlike many states, in Florida the state governor has “practically sole discretion” when it comes to deciding whether, and when, the death penalty is applied, said The Associated Press. About half of its 242 death-row inmates have “exhausted their appeals” and could see their death warrant issued at any time. Three of them, not including Occhione, are over 80.

A rapid acceleration

Donald Trump is one of the death penalty’s “most outspoken champions, making it a cornerstone” of his agenda, said The New York Times. And “nowhere has the president’s vision been pursued more relentlessly than in Florida”, thanks to the “unusual concentration of power” in the office of Republican governor Ron DeSantis. In 2025, a record 19 of the 47 executions that took place in the US were in Florida: more than under any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 after a four-year nationwide moratorium.

DeSantis has “offered little public explanation” for this acceleration, after “years of relative inactivity”. The governor “makes execution decisions behind closed doors”, so there is “no way to know what criteria” he uses. “He could be deciding who is next to die by throwing darts at a list of names,” said Maria DeLiberato, attorney with the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, “or spinning a roulette wheel.”

But Florida isn’t the only state “killing the old and infirm”, said The Hill. Death rows across the US are “filled with old people”. And more are being executed than in the past. The average age of inmates executed in the US has increased from 36 in 1977 to 52.3 in 2024, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The ageing population also creates new challenges for the penal system, with inmates who have spent decades on death row “sometimes developing medical conditions that can complicate efforts to execute them”, said the AP. Occhicone, the 80-year-old facing execution later this month, has multiple health problems and “needs help getting in and out of the shower”.

Some question “the humanity of administering capital punishment” to prisoners who might soon die naturally. For others, it shows how “lengthy appeals” and reviews designed to prevent an innocent person being executed “can also delay justice”.

If you have ever avoided giving criticism or expressing boundaries in the workplace, you may have been “bubble wrapping.” The phenomenon, in which people cushion their words or actions to protect others’ feelings, is most common among women. And this avoidance of confrontation may be inadvertently hindering upward mobility in the office.

Gendered habit

While anyone can partake in “bubble wrapping,” women are most likely to do it. Women are “often socialized to be ‘the nice one,’ ‘the helpful one’ or the person who keeps everyone together at work,” said Mukti Joy, a leadership coach and well-being strategist, to Her World. “They start confusing being valued with being easy to approve of.” More than half of women “feel pressure to be likeable at work compared with only 36% of men, and this ‘likeability labor’ means women often feel overly responsible for other people’s comfort at work,” Mandy Lehto, an executive coach and leadership expert, said to Stylist.

Examples of bubble wrapping in the workplace include apologizing unnecessarily, softening the delivery of criticism or expectations, or taking on extra tasks instead of communicating limits. Many women feel pressure to avoid confrontation because they are “far more likely to receive feedback that they’re being ‘bossy’ or ‘too direct’ when they communicate in the same way as male colleagues,” Léonie Kennepohl, a female leadership expert and co-founder of the networking platform and recruiting community Female x Finance, said to Forbes. Bubble wrapping “often comes from a good place,” but it “can make communication less effective and is arguably worse than being known as ‘bossy.’”

Harder job

This pressure to be agreeable can hinder career growth. Bubble wrapping “makes women appear less confident in leadership positions,” said Forbes. “The focus feels like it shifts from making the right business decision to protecting everyone else’s feelings,” Kennepohl said. It can “present as a person not having leadership qualities.” Bubble wrapping also “deprives people of the very feedback and challenges they need to become more resilient, capable and successful,” said Forbes.

Women often “become the colleague others vent to, the one who smooths over conflicts, explains someone’s intentions or makes sure everyone else feels comfortable,” said Her World. These added burdens often make jobs more taxing. This emotional labor has “real value because it helps build trust, psychological safety and stronger workplace relationships.” It becomes problematic “when it’s expected from the same people every time.”

Need for courage

Wanting to be kind does not mean avoiding difficult conversations. “Empathy is essential but so are boundaries,” Elaine Choi, an HR Manager, said to Her World. Practicing “carefrontation” or “being clear, honest and direct while remaining respectful and kind” can facilitate necessary conversations “without carrying everyone else’s emotional reactions on your own.” However, purposely putting yourself in uncomfortable situations may also be required at times.

It is important to “build self-trust by showing yourself that you value your own experience as much as other people’s,” Lehto said to Stylist. “You’re not being unkind or unprofessional.” A conscious effort to make yourself heard will likely lead to an “adrenaline surge and an internal wobble,” but “stay in tension anyway.” There is “so much coming at us that is trying to make us complacent, or to look the other way or to not sit in the discomfort,” Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, said to Big Think. “We actually need people to feel and to act with courage in their everyday life.”

There have been few global figures in the modern era as consequential as Donald Trump. Powerful as he may be, though, Trump does not exist in isolation.

Instead, he is part of an elite echelon of elected officials with whom he is obliged to interact in the course of global business. After a decade of cutting deals, upending relations and generally maneuvering himself to the center of the world stage, here are some of the ways Trump has talked about — and to — his international peers.

Former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

“President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad.” — April 2018

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

“The future governor of Canada.” — March 2026

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi

“My favorite dictator.” — September 2019

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

“Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!” — October 2019

“He’s a hell of a leader.” — October 2019

“Sometimes you get along with the toughest people, like him.” — July 2026

Chinese President Xi Jinping

“We’ve become friends.” — June 2019

“I don’t want to say friend — I don’t want to act foolish, ‘he was my friend’ — but I got along with him great.” — October 2024

“He’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not.” — October 2024

“A friend.” — May 2026

Former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei

“One of the most evil people in history.” — February 2026

Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni

“A very successful, very successful politician.” — October 2025

“Do people like her? I can’t imagine. I’m shocked by her. I thought she was brave, but I was wrong.” — April 2026

“It’s her who’s unacceptable.” — April 2026

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel

“Stupid.” — Unknown 2020

“That bitch, Merkel.” — Unknown 2020

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel’s “Warrior Prime Minister.” — June 2026

“Crazy.” — June 2026

“He has no f**king judgement.” — June 2026

Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador

“Juan Trump.” — July 2019

Russian President Vladimir Putin

A “competitor” who is “not an enemy.” — July 2018

“Great guy” and a “terrific person.” — June 2019

A “genius” who is “pretty savvy.” — February 2022

“Absolutely CRAZY!” — May 2025

“I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin.” — May 2025

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte

A “great leader.” — July 2026

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer

“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.” — March 2026

Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

“He’s two-faced.” — December 2019

“It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” — December 2024

North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un

“This maniac sitting here.” — September 2015

“Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.” — September 2017

“Obviously a madman.” — September 2017

“I think you will have a tremendous future with your country, a great leader.” — February 2019

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

“His reputation is absolutely sterling.” — September 2019

“Dictator without elections” who “better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.” — February 2025

“I’ve empowered you to be a tough guy, and I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States.” — February 2025

A “difficult character.” — July 2026

“President Putin.” — July 2026

Until the 1980s, Old Masters – paintings typically completed before 1850 – “ruled the art world”, said The Economist. But collectors began to see the “centuries-spanning” category as “too old-timey”, instead turning to more modern and Impressionist art in the following decades.

Now, experts are not only witnessing unforeseen rises in sales, but also dramatic changes in the attitudes of collectors and artists alike.

‘Untrammelled by tradition’

Old Masters have had “new life breathed into them”, said The Economist. In 2025, global sales of the paintings reached “$1.2 billion [£895 million], 30% higher than a year earlier”. And it’s younger buyers who are “showing more enthusiasm”.

This year at Sotheby’s, one of the world’s largest auction houses, “around 16% of bidders in Old Masters sales” were “under the age of 40, nearly triple the share from five years ago”.

Several changes have occurred in the last 50 years. For instance, the contemporary art market has shown “signs of volatility”, causing collectors to turn to Old Masters which are more “stable and significantly less expensive”. There is also an element of “scarcity” that makes them more attractive, as higher numbers of the older paintings enter museum collections with each passing year.

However portraits and figurative art are “in vogue” because they are, ultimately, “Instagrammable”. People are drawn to what appears to be a “simpler life (if you ignore the revolutions, plagues and awful dentistry of past eras)”. And they are so used to seeing pictures of people online that observers are “primed to connect to painted ones”.

There’s also “new money in Old Masters,” said Margaret Carrigan on Artnet. There was a longstanding belief that “newly minted millionaires and billionaires could be lured” to the art market via modern, “tech-flavoured” offerings, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), but the “pop of the NFT bubble” has seemed to disprove that.

Yet sales suggest they are “still in the game”. During London’s Classics Week, Sotheby’s and Christie’s brought in £76.7 million, a “respectable 9.4% rise on the same auctions last year”. Buyers are now more likely to collect “cross-category”, and there is a “hunger” for works that “feel contemporary, regardless of age”.

“Amid rapid, destabilising technological change, visualising the creation of a new world and meditating on our inescapable mortality seem pretty apropos.”

Works by “household-name” artists such as Canaletto, Michelangelo and Rembrandt, have always been popular, said Emma Crichton-Miller in the Financial Times. What’s more surprising is the “surge in value for images by lesser-known artists”. A new generation of collectors, “untrammelled by tradition” have a new set of criteria: there is a “striking” pattern that desirable paintings are portraits, that can be “admired with little contextual knowledge beyond our shared human nature”. Once seen as the “backwater for scholarly private collectors” this new trend has “encouraged works not seen for decades out into the marketplace”. When auctions come around, “expect surprises”.

‘Embraced’ by artists

In the past, lesser-known artists would imitate bigger names – in effect “art historical name-dropping” to improve the “gravity and market confidence” of their works, said J. Cabelle Ahn on Artnet. Cynics would call evoking Old Masters styles as a form of “reference-baiting”. But one of the main reasons for this “trans-historical escalation” is “technological unease”. Not only do artists fear being eclipsed by AI, but there is a movement to explore “foundational concepts like meaning and originality in the endless sea of information”.

Not only is figurative painting “back in a big way” for collectors, but it is being “embraced” by large numbers of emerging artists “keen to demonstrate their skills”, said Chloe Stead in the Financial Times. This could be guided by materials, and neglected older techniques appearing “new”. Oil paint became popular in the Netherlands in the 12th century, even now, for artists seeking to create realistic images, there is “no better alternative”.

There may be “some merit” to the idea that current “geopolitical and financial instability” has “spooked” collectors to return to what they know, and that artists are capitalising on this movement. But it is worth remembering that “Renaissance art was intended to be accessible and easily readable”. Perhaps this reversion of style by young artists is not influenced by a “retrograde nostalgia”, but by a “desire to connect to audiences outside the confines of the art world”.

At 7.20pm last Friday, after months of increasingly feverish speculation, the jumbo screens outside Madison Square Garden flashed the news: “JUST&T MARRIED”, and the nearby Empire State Building erupted in “something blue” sparkles, said Evan Moffitt in The Observer. Taylor Swift, Miss Americana, had tied the knot with her football-star boyfriend Travis Kelce at a ceremony described as the US’ royal wedding.

In advance of the event, several blocks around Penn Station had been blocked off to cars and pedestrians. The 1,000 guests – who included Tom Hanks, Gigi Hadid, Hugh Grant, Graham Norton, Lena Dunham and Steven Spielberg – rolled up in blacked-out SUVs. Most alighted in specially erected tent tunnels and, to the disappointment of the crowds of Swifties waiting in the 40°C heat, there were no sightings of the happy couple.

Private affair

It’s quite a feat to host a major event in a 22,000-capacity arena in the middle of New York City, on the 4th of July weekend, and keep it entirely private, said Megan Agnew in The Times. Swift’s publicists released a few details: the ceremony was officiated by Adam Sandler; bride and groom wore white Dior.

Beyond that, fans had only leaks and speculation to go on: the Garden had been transformed into “an enchanted garden”, with fake wisteria and white roses and acres of peach fabric; the vibe was “Alice in Wonderland meets The Wizard of Oz”; Paul McCartney and Stevie Nicks performed. The cost was estimated at $20 million.

Social media backlash

With an eye on the optics, Swift let it be known that they’d given $26 million to charities – but that didn’t stop the backlash, said Ryan Zickgraf on UnHerd. On social media, even some fans railed against the gaudy excesses of the event, while rumours that leftover cake had been distributed outside it led to Marie Antoinette jibes.

New York used to welcome billionaires, but rising prices and spiralling rents have fuelled intense resentment about the rich who just get richer. Swift is especially vulnerable to this, because she became a billionaire while presenting herself as “your awkward friend, writing in her diary”. That “parasocial magic becomes harder to sustain once the relatable girl with a guitar is visibly living like a Medici”.

Even though the United States and Iran are embroiled in war, a new lawsuit against the Trump administration is claiming that the two countries’ governments actually began working together last year — and jeopardized Iranian asylum seekers’ lives in the process. The White House has dismissed these claims, but those who filed the lawsuit are not backing down.

‘Confidential information’

The issue first arose in 2025 when the Trump administration “adopted a policy of providing” the Iranian government with “confidential information from the immigration files of Iranians seeking asylum in the United States,” according to the lawsuit filed by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund (IALDF). Many of the asylum seekers whose information is allegedly being shared are people who “seek refuge in the United States because of the grave dangers they face in Iran,” such as pro-democracy activists and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Disclosing the confidential information of these asylum seekers “violates federal regulations requiring confidentiality, endangers their family members and acquaintances who may still be residing in Iran, and puts those who are subject to removal to Iran at risk of persecution,” the IALDF said in a statement. The lawsuit is requesting that the court “order the U.S. government to stop sharing asylum-applicant information with the government of Iran.”

The allegations are based on accounts from “detainees who had been called into meetings with Iranian officials who seemed to already possess details from their U.S. immigration files,” Michael Kirkpatrick, a lawyer representing the Iranian fund, told The New York Times. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has denied any wrongdoing. DHS “provides illegal aliens the opportunity to contact their consular post and facilitates consular access to detained individuals, in accordance with applicable laws, regulations and agency policy,“ the department said in a statement.

‘Prohibit the government from sharing information’

The U.S. government is “allowed to work with government officials of foreign countries to coordinate deportation logistics,” said The Associated Press. But federal regulations generally “prohibit the government from sharing information that could reveal that the individual getting deported applied for asylum.” Congress “made these confidentiality protections mandatory precisely because lives depend on them, and no agency and no administration, of either party, may set them aside,” Ali Rahnama, the interim executive director of the IALDF, told the AP.

And while some may think that the conflict raging in the Middle East would have slowed the information sharing, the lawsuit “alleges that the Trump administration has continued to share confidential information during the current war between the U.S. and Iran,” said ABC News. Though the “in-person meetings reportedly stopped before the war began on Feb. 28,” the lawsuit claims the government continued to “mail or hand deliver document packages” to the Iranian Interests Section, which oversees the nation’s diplomatic duties in the U.S.

Some asylum-seeker data sharing may always occur, such as information on travel documents. What is “different here, though, is they are revealing information from the asylum applications, and that is a very specific category of information that is kept confidential,” Kirkpatrick said to NPR. The U.S. government “shouldn’t even reveal information from which one could infer that somebody had sought asylum.”

Disney is fighting back against President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission. The company bowed to government pressure last year when it briefly suspended ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. But now the FCC is taking aim at ABC programs and broadcast licenses. The network and its parent company are defending what they say are “bedrock First Amendment principles.”

‘War against the media’

The White House has mounted a “multifront war against the media” since Trump’s return to office last year, said The New York Times. That war includes FCC scrutiny of TV programs that have raised the president’s ire. The agency is currently investigating whether ABC’s “The View” violated federal rules requiring broadcasters to “give equal time to political candidates from both parties” when it interviewed Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico in February. That rule has been applied to entertainment programming. News shows have long been largely exempt, however, and the FCC ruled in 2002 that “The View” belongs in the latter category. “Nothing about ‘The View’ that the law cares about has changed” since that decision, the company said this week in an official filing, per the Times.

The network’s response to the FCC was “fiery,” said The Wrap. The Trump administration has “trained its attention on daytime and late-night television” programs that are “perceived as unfriendly to the current administration,” ABC said, per the outlet. But the First Amendment “does not permit the government to sit in an editor’s chair” nor to “grade speech by its viewpoint and decide who is a ‘real’ journalist and what is ‘real’ news.”

The FCC has received an “unprecedented 77,611 comments” from the public regarding the investigation, said TV Tech. ABC in June asked viewers for their support in its “free-speech fight” against the government, said CNN. The FCC “wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show,” the network said in one advertisement, per CNN.

‘More legal leverage’

Disney’s “aggressive defense” of “The View” is a “notable departure” from its previous acquiescence to the president, said Axios. In addition to its quickly rescinded suspension of Kimmel, the network in 2024 paid $16 million to settle a Trump lawsuit filed over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ comments about E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault defamation case. ABC has “more legal leverage now” that the administration’s attempts to punish media companies have run into a series of adverse court rulings.

Other challenges remain. A group of “prominent conservative organizations” has petitioned the FCC to deny license renewals for eight local stations owned and operated by ABC, said The Guardian. The network “cozies up to the Communist Chinese Party and airbrushes over religious and ethnic cleansing,” the Center for American Rights said in a filing with the agency, per the outlet. There is “no clear timeline” to resolve that case.

Nasa has launched a spacecraft to catch a falling telescope, an unprecedented mission that could pave the way for similar future rescues.

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory telescope, known simply as Swift and launched in 2004, detects some of the most powerful explosions in the Universe. Its name comes from its ability to point at a new target in the solar system in a matter of minutes, compared to other space telescopes such as Hubble, which can take up to two days to focus on a target.

Because of its success spotting distant gamma-ray bursts, Swift’s mission has been repeatedly extended. But now it is sinking faster than expected due to recent solar storms and is at risk of crashing back to Earth in a matter of months unless something is done to change its orbit.

‘Mind-bogglingly short’ turnaround

To carry out the mission Nasa has turned to Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies. Swift has no engines of its own and was not built with docking hardware, so Katalyst engineered a “custom capture mechanism” that will use three guided robotic arms “to latch onto a structural feature without disturbing Swift’s instruments”, said Astronomy.

Having successfully launched last week, Katalyst’s Link spacecraft is now carrying out a series of navigation and propulsion systems checks before approaching Swift. It will survey the telescope to determine the best point of contact, and eventually capture and lift the observatory, which is about the size of a small car, back into its correct altitude.

The capture itself will be “especially tricky because Swift was never meant to be touched again once it reached orbit”. Katalyst CEO Ghonhee Lee told Aerospace America that it has been made even more complicated because “nobody took a picture of the backside of Swift before it launched”.

Katalyst was awarded the contract only last September, a “mind-bogglingly short” turnaround time, said Space. If it succeeds in saving Swift, the company will have done something unprecedented: “reboosting an ailing space telescope using a spacecraft developed in less than a year to rescue a target that was meant to be left in space on its own forever”.

‘A spacecraft worth saving’

At a cost of $30 million, the mission to save “a nearly 22-year-old space telescope, well past its prime” seems, “on paper” at least, not great value for money, said Space. But “Swift, it turns out, is still worth it, according to Nasa”.

“We didn’t want to set the precedent that anything that comes out of orbit has to be boosted, because it is part of our space ecosystem to have things deorbit frequently,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, Nasa’s astrophysics division director, in June. But Swift is “not just any spacecraft” and has a unique ability to “quickly pivot across the night sky to find things that go boom in the night”.

“In short,” said BBC science correspondent Pallab Ghosh, “there is nothing like Swift, and Nasa deemed that it was a spacecraft worth saving.”

Such an “ambitious” mission “has never been carried out before” and “a lot will have to go right if it is to succeed”. If it does, however, “attention will turn to whether the next rescue mission could be to save the even more famous Hubble Space Telescope”.

For the first time since consolidating power to rule the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas will disband its Government Emergency Committee that has coordinated day-to-day life across the territory, according to the Palestinian militant group. This clears a path for the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), known as a technocratic committee, to assume control as part of President Donald Trump and his Board of Peace’s plan for the beleaguered region. But by playing coy about next steps, Hamas has given observers and critics plenty of reasons to be suspicious about this latest development.

‘Caretaker framework’

The governmental dissolution “marks a significant political shift” by Hamas, said Al Jazeera. But while the militant group has “repeatedly said it is prepared to step aside from day-to-day governance” of Gaza, the “question of its disarmament remains unresolved.”

The decision to dismantle the governing authority was made to “remove any pretexts for the occupation, which continues its aggression and war of extermination,” said Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem to AFP, per Le Monde. Hamas seeks the “swift entry” of the technocratic committee and “affirms its readiness to hand over governmental responsibilities to the committee to ensure its success.” The committee, in turn, is “fully prepared to assume its national responsibilities as soon as the necessary resources and capabilities are available,” said NCAG Chief Commissioner Ali Shaath on X.

For Hamas, the move is designed to transform the group’s “existing governing structure” into a “caretaker framework,” said The Times of Israel. Hamas officials claim that “technical and professional staff” will “remain in place” after the governmental dissolution to “maintain continuity in service to civilians in Gaza,” said The Jerusalem Post.

Unsurprisingly, Israel has rejected that characterization. The dissolution of a Hamas government wherein “all of the Hamas members stay in their positions” is a “spin that has no significance,” said one Israeli official to The Associated Press.

‘Actions, not promises’

Any assessment of Hamas’ plan will be “guided by actions, not promises, to meet the critical needs of the people of Gaza,” said the Trump-led Board of Peace on X. The “core principle” of eventually turning over full control of Gaza to the technocratic committee “remains one authority, one law and one weapon,” which in turn means “consolidation of all weapons under the control of the NCAG as provided for in the Comprehensive Gaza Peace Plan and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803.”

The change “does not concern its military wing,” about which mediators are “still negotiating,” said Haaretz. Israel, meanwhile, is “not allowing members of the technocratic committee, who are currently in Cairo, to enter the territory.” Israel has “ruled out allowing Hamas to rule” the embattled Gaza Strip following the yearslong war between the two groups, said Al Jazeera. Israel “also rejected a direct takeover” by the Palestinian Authority, which controls the occupied West Bank, “at this stage.”

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

‘Certain deficit’

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

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

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

‘The situation is not very good’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Family soap empire’

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

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

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

Inner circle member but no official position

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

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

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

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

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

‘As fatal as Mandelson was for Starmer’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Territory of hypotheticals’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Last stand’ against streamers

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

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

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

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

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

Spain’s socialist PM is “clinging to a punctured life raft”, said Josep Ramoneda in Ara (Barcelona). Pedro Sánchez’s reputation had already taken a battering from the corruption cases brought against his wife and brother. Now the jailing of his former right-hand man for embezzlement and bribery leaves him more “compromised” than ever.

José Luis Ábalos, who was Spain’s transport minister between 2018 and 2021, was last week handed a 24-year sentence for rigging public contracts for face masks and other medical supplies during the Covid-19 pandemic. His reward for doing so was €10,000 a month, a flat for his mistress and various other kickbacks. The PM has not himself been implicated in the Ábalos case – or in any of the others for that matter – but it all leaves a bad smell and there’s growing pressure on him to resign. Yet Sánchez stubbornly insists he will remain in post until next year’s elections.

The buck stops

Sánchez’s claim he had no idea what Ábalos was up to is downright outrageous, said Neus Tomàs in El Diario (Madrid). Ábalos and his aide Koldo García, who has also been jailed for his role in the scandal, used to sit at the heart of Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). So the PM’s excuse that they were just rogue actors won’t wash: he bears responsibility for crimes committed under his watch.

And don’t forget, Sánchez came to power in 2018 by condemning the then-PM, Mariano Rajoy, for the corruption exposed in the ranks of Rajoy’s People’s Party (PP), and winning a vote of no-confidence against him, said La Razón (Madrid). So he clearly has to resign.

The greatest irony is that the man who delivered the most scathing speech ahead of the vote on the conservative People Party’s corrupt ways was Ábalos himself, said Bruno Pardo Porto on ABC (Madrid). That he has now received the longest jail sentence ever given to a modern Spanish minister shows just what a sham the PSOE’s pledge to clean up Spanish democracy actually has been.

Comeback king

There’s still a slim chance Sánchez could survive, said Jason Horowitz in The New York Times. He has an uncanny ability to outrun scandals – hence his nickname: “the greyhound”. And he was offered an unlikely lifeline last month when a judge ordered his wife, Begoña Gómez, to hand in her passport and stand trial for influence-peddling linked to her job at a university in Madrid.

In his 84-page ruling, the judge likened the government to an “absolutist regime”, opining that the last similar case of such magnitude was in the early 19th century during the reign of Ferdinand VII. This has made it easy for Sánchez’s supporters to dismiss the trial as a “deeply flawed hit job by an obsessed judge”. And that it was the right-wing group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands) that filed the cases against his wife and his brother David (who allegedly leveraged his connections to land a job in a city council) adds support to that narrative.

Sánchez is no stranger to epic comebacks, said Irene Lozano in El País (Madrid), so don’t write him off yet. His PSOE rivals removed him as leader in 2016: two years later he had become PM. The fact that he has presided over one of the EU’s faster-growing economies may come to his rescue this time.

Fresh scandal

I’m not so sure, said Guy Hedgecoe on Politico (Brussels). His party is already languishing behind the PP in the polls, and there’s another scandal brewing that could well see him off. It involves his mentor and “ideological soul mate”, the former socialist PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who is accused of influence-peddling in connection with the €53 million bailout of the airline Plus Ultra. Prosecutors say he received up to €2 million for pushing the package through.

Sánchez still maintains Zapatero is innocent, but has yet to explain why the bailout of a firm that only has four planes should have been so generous, said The Economist. This kind of behaviour is the reason anti-democratic sentiment is on the rise, and the situation is worsening. “The sooner the country holds an election, the better.”

Taylor Swift’s rumoured wedding celebrations kicked off last night at a star-studded New York event with a guest list of around 100 people, ahead of a much larger celebration today which could involve up to 1,000 guests.

Swift marrying NFL star Travis Kelce is “shaping up to be the biggest in showbiz history”, said The Sun, with “secret ‘military’ plans” to make sure it all runs smoothly.

‘Military-grade organisation’

Guests will be “ushered into the venue through an underground car park so they can get in and out without being seen”.

Madison Square Garden has “discreet entrances, a windowless roof and well-practised security arrangements”, so the public and paparazzi, “including drones”, can be “kept at bay”, said The Times.

Keeping their “nuptials almost completely secret” is a “feat” that will have required “military-grade organisation” and probably a “fair amount of legal paperwork”.

But some believe Madison Square Garden could be a red herring to distract attention from the wedding’s real venue. An MSG wedding is seen by some as “too tacky” for the “singer who writes about lakes, countryside, and enchanting fairytales”, said the New York Post. “You cannot convince me” that Taylor Swift isn’t getting married in a chateau in the French countryside, or “maybe even on the coast in Rhode Island”, a fan said on TikTok. But not MSG. “How stupid do you guys think we are.”

Dogs and drones

The logistics of planning a wedding for a celebrity “sound a lot like warfare”, said The Wall Street Journal. Former Navy Seals are “stationed at the door”, German shepherd dogs are “sniffing the perimeter”, radio frequency jammers will be “scrambling the Wi-Fi signal” and drones that “shoot down spying drones” are “locked and loaded”.

“Keeping things under wraps can involve multiple security teams, inner and outer circles of trust” and possibly “fake names and fake venues”. Sometimes guests “won’t know their final destination until they arrive”. They park their car and get put in a shuttle bus to the true location.

Hospitality staff “coming to a secret celebrity wedding site usually have to surrender their mobile and travel in a blacked-out vehicle”, said The Times. Guards are often “very attractive ex-military men in beautiful suits”, said Larry Walshe, a celebrity event designer. For anyone who goes “against the wishes” of the hosts and breaks an NDA, the punishment is that they are “de-friended”.

There’s not just the media and fans to consider. The city the wedding is planned for “might be plunged into a tailspin of resentment” by the prospect of being “invaded” by A-list celebrities and an “entourage” of designers, caterers, security staff and guests, said The Telegraph. Protest posters appeared in Palermo on the eve of Dua Lipa’s wedding to Callum Turner and in Venice last year during the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.

And “rogue family members” can be “just as distressing” as fans, paparazzi and locals, said the WSJ. Michelle Rago, a luxury events specialist who has planned weddings for the likes of Brooklyn Beckham, said at one event a serious concern was preventing an ex-wife from crashing the party.

Xenophobia has enveloped South Africa for years, and now a rising tide of anti-migrant views is flooding the country. Amid growing protests, a slew of anti-immigration groups have called for all undocumented migrants to leave South Africa by the end of June. Though there’s no stated plan for what happens after this date, many in the country are concerned.

‘All of them are now under threat’

South Africa is a melting pot of culture, with “Zimbabweans trained as doctors but driving Ubers, Ethiopians running bustling restaurants and Congolese selling colorful wax print fabrics,” said NPR. “All of them are now under threat” as a result of continued pressure from anti-migrant groups. For several months, “anti-immigrant protesters, many brandishing sticks, have been marching through the streets.” Many of them chant “Mabahambe,” a Zulu phrase meaning “they must go.”

The protests have also “sparked attacks against foreigners” throughout South Africa, said The Associated Press. As the violence and attacks continue, several of the most notable anti-immigration groups have “set what they are calling a June 30 deadline for people in the country illegally to leave and the government to take action” against undocumented migrants. The largest of these groups, March for March, is led by a former radio host from the city of Durban.

The June 30 deadline appears to be an arbitrary date, and most of the anti-immigration organizers have “not specified what will happen when it passes,” said NPR. Some of the groups have said they will go on a “national shutdown,” but what this would entail is unclear. As the deadline arrives, some nations have “begun repatriating citizens while criticizing South Africa for what they call a climate of xenophobia,” said the AP.

‘South Africa has long attracted migrants’

The flash point of xenophobia is largely because of the country’s large number of immigrants. As “one of Africa’s richer countries, South Africa has long attracted migrants from elsewhere in Africa seeking a better life,” said the AP. But they still remain a small portion of the total country: South Africa’s most recent census figures from 2022 show there were “2.4 million foreign nationals who had immigrated out of South Africa’s population of 62 million — less than 4% of the population.”

The protestors’ main complaint is that South Africa is “overrun with illegal immigrants who take jobs away from South Africans, ‌use up scarce public services and are responsible for high crime rates,” said Reuters. However, data disputes these claims. For one, every migrant job creates approximately two jobs for native South Africans, according to a 2018 World Bank report. Undocumented migrants are also “highly unlikely to try to use public hospitals or schools, for which they must register, for fear of being found out,” Anthony Kaziboni, a senior researcher at ​the University of Johannesburg’s Center for Social Development in Africa, told Reuters.

Nonetheless, the “current protests are already causing socioeconomic damage,” said Deutsche Welle. And some fear more violence is coming. “They asked me, ‘When are you going to leave the country?’” Kaunga Nyirenda, a Malawian gardener in Johannesburg, said to CNN of the threats he received. “‘If you don’t leave now, you are going to leave in a coffin, because we don’t need anyone after 30th of June.’”

The heatwave that’s broken records across the continent could change how we travel this summer as we face a new normal of sizzling temperatures.

The impact of extreme temperatures on “tourism-reliant” countries could be “huge,” Alejandro Saez Reale, a specialist in heatwaves and their impact at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, told National Geographic.

The parts of the Mediterranean that have recently experienced prolonged heatwaves, with temperatures exceeding 40C, may become less attractive. Areas that are increasingly affected by wildfires, drought or water shortages could also be hit.

Temperate spots

Travellers might increasingly seek more comfortable temperatures rather than the hottest destinations. They might also place greater value on where weather is more steady and therefore less likely to disrupt their holiday.

This could lead to a rise in the “coolcation” – a term that “neatly summarises” the “emerging trend” for European tourists “seeking out more temperate spots”. A study by the European Travel Commission in 2025 found 81% of Europeans were adjusting their travel habits due to the changing climate, with 15% actively seeking out cooler climates and 14% avoiding destinations prone to extreme heat.

Sustainable holidays, which boast features such as eco-certified accommodation, lower-carbon transport, and activities that support conservation, are also expected to rise in popularity. Forests, lakes, and cooler mountain environments could become more sought after.

Low-lying tropical islands threatened by sea-level rise and coastal erosion, and ski resorts at lower elevations, where shorter and less reliable snow seasons reduce winter tourism, could face a decline in bookings. Resorts are investing “heavily” in artificial snowmaking but the cost is “being passed on to skiers themselves”, said The Independent.

There is also a growing interest in “last-chance tourism”, or visiting places that are changing rapidly due to climate change, such as glaciers or coral reefs, said National Geographic. Ironically, this trend can increase the pressure on the very fragile environments that visitors are so enamoured by.

Finland, Norway, Poland and Iceland are recording double-digit growth in inbound visitors but this doesn’t mean the patterns have shifted entirely: last year, France and Spain were still the most visited countries in the world, with 102 million and 96.8 million visitors respectively, according to UN Tourism. So the “growth rate may have slowed”, but the number of visitors to these warmer countries “is not dropping”.

The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) said feedback from its members suggests that, “on the whole, people are continuing to travel much as they always have, enjoying Mediterranean destinations during the summer months”, so the “increased interest in slightly cooler destinations remains the exception rather than the norm”.

Ballooning costs

Flying is “one of the hardest activities to clean up” because “technological solutions and efforts to keep disasters from spiralling” mean the cost of a flight is “likely to balloon” if it includes a charge for “making planes greener or sucking carbon pollution back out of the atmosphere”, said Ajit Niranjan, The Guardian’s Europe environment correspondent.

Journeys could become trickier during the hottest months because heatwaves, storms, flooding and wildfires are expected to cause more delays and cancellations for flights, trains, ferries and even road travel. This means that travellers may increasingly avoid the peak summer months in very hot regions, and choose to visit during spring or autumn instead, spreading tourism more evenly throughout the year.

However, this might not mean they escape the issue because heatwaves are “spreading across the calendar”, said National Geographic. In May 2022, Spain endured a heatwave of “extraordinary intensity”, the following year in France, “severe heat” extended into September, and this year, much of the southwestern US was “hit by a March heatwave” with temperatures as high as 43C.

Giorgia Meloni is suffering from a “splitting political headache”, said Hannah Roberts on Politico (Brussels). Italy’s first female PM has enjoyed remarkable success since her election in October 2022. She has kept her Brothers of Italy party dominant in the polls; she has held together her coalition formed with two other right-wing parties – Lega (the League) led by Matteo Salvini, and Forza Italia (the party created by Silvio Berlusconi). Come September, she will be Italy’s longest-serving post-war leader. And she’s achieved all this by skilfully “pushing Italy’s post-fascist Right towards the political mainstream”.

This month, though, a figure has emerged who threatens to undo it all and drag the Right back the other way. Roberto Vannacci, a highly decorated retired general, formally launched a new hard-right, fiercely anti-immigrant party, National Future, in Rome last week.

It is rapidly gaining support: it already has 100,000 registered members; boasts eight MPs after a string of defections from the League and Forza Italia; and is polling at over 5%. Meloni’s headache is whether to keep him at arm’s length or bring him into her political orbit. So far she’s picked the first option, but if Vannacci’s popularity keeps rising in the run-up to next year’s general election, she may have to reconsider.

‘Incandescent’ and ‘disturbing’

Since the fall of Mussolini, Italy has produced a long line of populists, said Antonio Preiti on Linkiesta (Milan). But none has been “more incandescent, more aggressive, more disturbing” than Vannacci, nicknamed “Il Generale” by his legion of fans and hailed as a modern-day Julius Caesar by his colleagues.

The Afghanistan and Iraq War veteran’s controversial demand for “remigration” – the forced deportation of immigrants to their countries of origin – should come as no surprise. This is the man, after all, who made a name for himself in 2023 with his outlandish book “The World Upside Down”, in which he hit out at the “dictatorship of minorities”; claimed that black immigrants could never be Italian; and derided gay people as “not normal”.

That made him hugely popular, and prompted Salvini, the deputy PM, to ask him to join his Lega party to help revive its fortunes. But that gamble “backfired in a spectacular fashion”, said Nick Squires in The Daily Telegraph. Elected as an MEP for the League in 2024, he proved not a “pliant acolyte” but a thorn in its side. His new party is now wooing Salvini’s supporters.

‘Extremist passions’

The old soldier may have learnt to “move shrewdly” in politics, said Stefano Folli in La Repubblica (Rome), and he sure knows how to grab people’s attention. But can he keep up the momentum? Doubtful, said Lisa Di Giuseppe in Domani (Rome). He’s been conspicuously short on economic and foreign policy ideas, for a start. At his party’s inaugural congress this month, the 57-year-old gave little indication of strategy “beyond resentment, revenge and remigration”.

Vannacci is a man known for “extremist passions masquerading as common sense”, said David Allegranti in Quotidiano Nazionale (Bologna). Such policies as he has are designed to lure disgruntled right-wingers: plans to build more jails and to pay mothers to stay at home to free up jobs that “men can’t find”. His pitch at the conference was abundantly clear. “We represent the rejects and the scum, and we are proud of it,” he told party delegates.

Meloni must “behave like a statesman”, erect a “cordon sanitaire” around National Future, and ostracise this “latest adventurer” in Italian politics, said Mario Lavia on Linkiesta. It may result in her losing office to the centre-left, but for the good of the nation she needs to do it. Vannacci is no Mussolini, it’s true, but given half a chance he’ll corrode democracy with his pro-Russia and anti-EU rhetoric.

But would that isolation strategy actually work, asked Roberto Gressi in Corriere della Sera (Rome). It certainly hasn’t in the case of the National Rally in France or the AfD in Germany, both now trending in the polls. Sad to say there’s no easy way to slay the populist far-right crocodile.

Iran has become a “lose-lose issue” for Donald Trump, which is alienating his entire political base, said Zeeshan Aleem on MS Now. When he attacked Iran, he infuriated the isolationist wing of his coalition, who believed his promise that he’d start “no new wars”. Now, his scramble to end the conflict “is alienating the hawkish sector of his party”, who believe it amounts to a humiliating surrender.

One Republican senator described the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Trump last week as “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades”. Texas senator Ted Cruz said Trump must be getting “very poor advice”. Critics are particularly outraged by the potential creation of a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran. Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen called the provision a “disaster”, likening it to offering the “Marshall Plan to rebuild Germany while the Nazis were still in power”.

Vance under fire

Furious as they are, many Republican hawks are still reluctant to criticise Trump directly, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. So they’re turning their fire instead on the vice-president, J.D. Vance. “Trump effectively won the war and at the 11th hour Vance is negotiating his way to a loss,” raged one unnamed congressman to a Washington correspondent.

The president has done nothing to discourage such talk. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” he said, half-jokingly, of the peace deal. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming J.D.” The irony, said Jim Geraghty in The Washington Post, is that Vance opposed starting this war. Now it has fallen to him to sell the peace deal and serve as the fall guy when it goes sour. “You almost have to feel sorry for Vance. Almost.”

Face of peace

“Playing the part of Trump’s surrender monkey” will hurt Vance’s image in the short term, said Jonathan V. Last on The Bulwark, but few Republican voters are likely to remember any of this stuff in two years’ time if petrol prices are back to normal and Iran hasn’t tested a nuclear device. Vance will just be the guy who helped bring an unpopular war to an end.

He has certainly been happy to serve as the face of this peace agreement, said Adam Cancryn on CNN. He asked to play a leading role in the talks, rather than being pushed into it. Vance may get the blame if the deal blows up, but he has no doubt concluded that if the two sides return to an intractable conflict, his hopes of becoming president are probably scuppered in any case.

“There’s arguably been no greater fall from grace in the modern political era than that of Sir Jeffrey Donaldson,” said John Manley in The Irish News. The former Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader was once regarded as the “nice man” of unionism. He was always polite in media appearances, and wore a fish badge on his lapel as a symbol of his Christian faith. But it’s now clear that this virtuous demeanour was “a mask that hid serious crimes”.

This week, he was convicted of abusing two girls over a period of more than 20 years. The jury found him guilty of raping one victim when she was seven or eight, and carrying out multiple other indecent assaults. It concluded that his wife of 39 years, Eleanor Donaldson, had enabled his crimes by failing to act when red flags were raised or when she witnessed abuse herself. She was deemed unfit to stand trial on medical grounds.

‘Sinful nature’

Donaldson’s journey to the top had been a long one, said Mario Ledwith in The Times. Born in 1962, he began his political career working for the MP Enoch Powell and was first elected to Stormont when he was 22. It was around that time, the court heard, that his depravity towards children began.

Years later he wrote a letter to one of his victims, expressing regret for causing her “hurt, pain and distress” and asking forgiveness for his “sinful nature”; he apologised in person to the other victim at a meeting organised by a Christian group in 1997. In court, Donaldson claimed that those apologies referenced not abuse, but unrelated matters.

Closure at last

Even as a victim of sexual abuse myself, I never picked up on Donaldson’s dark side during my time as a politician, said Máiría Cahill in The Irish Times. “He duped everyone.” We can only wonder at the hypocrisy of the man and the sense of entitlement that led him, despite his secret crimes, to seek “such public roles and prominence”.

We should be grateful to the two women for breaking their silence and revealing the truth about Donaldson, said Gail Walker in the Belfast Telegraph. He is scheduled to be sentenced in September, and the judge has warned him to expect a lengthy jail term. Let’s hope that this late arrival of justice brings his victims “some form of closure”.

Reports of President Donald Trump’s total capture of the Republican Party may be premature. Faced with plummeting popularity and whack-a-mole crises, the president has clashed with some of the most powerful members of his own coalition: Senate Republicans.

Whether this conservative revolt becomes a logjam for the White House remains to be seen. As Republicans face midterm headwinds to keep their congressional majorities, is the nascent push for senatorial independence for real, or will Republicans once more adopt the MAGA party line?

‘Relationship appears to be fraying’

Trump has “enjoyed unbending loyalty” from GOP lawmakers for years, said NPR. But the “strength of that relationship appears to be fraying,” particularly as some “departing members feel more uninhibited to push back” and others begin to imagine a post-Trump Washington.

Senators whom Trump had “written off, alienated or even helped defeat” are now opting to support “Senate traditions over his political demands,” said Axios. And the president’s decision this week to cancel the planned signing of bipartisan housing legislation “further inflamed weeks of tumult” that have marked an “increasingly bitter relationship between” him and high-profile Republican senators, said The New York Times. While “lawmakers from both parties were shocked by the president’s decision,” many of them saw Trump’s canceled signing as an effort to “undermine the efforts of his own party to protect its congressional majorities” before the midterms.

Trump’s push for harsh voting restrictions, which he demanded as a prerequisite before signing the housing bill, is “colliding with a newly defiant Republican Senate” and sets up a “multifront battle” ahead of the midterms, said The Wall Street Journal. GOP lawmakers “have been deferential to the president to a point,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R - Texas), to the outlet. But that deference “doesn’t seem to have done any good.” Simply having endorsed Trump’s point of view in the past “doesn’t mean he’s going to support you,” added Cornyn, whose own reelection bid was scuttled by a Trump-backed challenger.

During a closed-door lunch on Wednesday, which Republican senators hoped would “clear the air” between them and Trump, the president instead “vented his frustrations with the senators for more than an hour, leaving them no closer to detente,” said Politico. Trump “said something negative about me,” in an attempt to “bully me from asking a question that I think the American people need to know,” said outgoing Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy to the outlet, after reports of an intense argument between him and the president during the meeting. “I’m not going to be bullied.”

Sacrificing principles at the ‘altar of Trump’

Senate Republicans that same day “proved yet again that their spines are made of pudding,” said The New Republic, after both Cassidy and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul bowed to White House pressure and flipped previous votes to kill a resolution limiting Trump’s Iran war powers. The waffling shows conservative lawmakers who “claim to have principles” will “gladly sacrifice them at the altar of Trump.”

It is unclear whether the vote will be “enough to appease Trump,” said The Associated Press. But blocking efforts to restrict the president’s war powers “was a clear signal” to Trump from senators who “still want to placate him.”

“Grand Theft Auto” fans have reacted with “shock and relief” after the announcement that “GTA 6” pre-orders are now open, “all but confirming that the game won’t get delayed once more”, said IGN.

Thirteen years after the release of “Grand Theft Auto 5”, the sequel is finally set to launch on 19 November 2026. It is expected to be one of the biggest releases in entertainment history and is projected to generate $7.6 billion (£5.67 billion) in revenue in its first two months alone.

But the journey has been far from smooth. Fans have now “waited two console generations for a new ‘GTA’”, while developer Rockstar “continually pushed back its next blockbuster’s launch – again, and again”.

Quest for perfection

“GTA 6” was announced in February 2022 and originally scheduled to hit shelves in late 2025, but this was pushed back first to May 2026, then to the current release date, 19 November.

The most recent delay, according to Strauss Zelnick, CEO of game publishers Take-Two Interactive, was due to “limited circumstances where more time was required to polish a title and make sure that it was spectacular”.

For avid fans of the franchise, the reaction to the delay was one of “resignation, frustration, déjà vu”, said the BBC at the time. Rockstar is a “notoriously perfectionist” developer: “Red Dead Redemption 2”, its most recent major release, “is still widely considered a benchmark for open-world video games due to its depth and obsessive attention to detail”.

Alongside broader industry-wide shifts that have made game development “more expensive, more complex”, Rockstar also has to contend with its own hype, with each success “raising ever-higher expectations” for future games.

Speaking in May at the TD Cowen 54th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Zelnick stressed that “Grand Theft Auto” titles have never pushed for yearly releases. “What has driven the gap is the amount of time it takes to do something that is as good as it can possibly be for that intellectual property.”

Union-busting

The long wait and repeated delays may also be connected to with Rockstar’s decision to fire more than 30 staff who were trying to unionise, sparking a legal action against the developer.

The employees, the majority of whom were based at the gaming giant’s Edinburgh HQ, were dismissed in October 2025 for what the company called “gross misconduct”, claiming staff had discussed confidential information, including specific game features from upcoming titles, in a public forum.

The sacked workers dispute this, saying they were part of a secure union-focused Discord channel that existed to allow members to discuss unionising the company and improving working conditions. They also claim they were subject to blacklisting, a “practice in which information about workers engaged in union activity is compiled to facilitate discrimination”, said The Register.

The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain called it “the most ruthless act of union busting in the history of the games industry”. The case was raised at Prime Minister’s Questions in December, and Keir Starmer said ministers would investigate the allegations, describing the situation as “deeply concerning”.

This month, Rockstar lost a legal battle “which means fired unionised workers can continue to bring blacklisting claims against the influential games studio”, said Novara Media. The final employment tribunal trial is set to conclude in mid-October, just a month before “GTA 6” is released.

For years, philosophy graduates have been the “butt of jokes about unemployable degrees”, said Thibault Spirlet in Business Insider. Now, they can earn six-figure salaries as the “world’s most powerful AI companies” try to “shape how machines think and behave”.

High-profile philosophers are already “embedded” in top AI firms. Amanda Askell is resident philosopher at Anthropic, and Iason Gabriel and Henry Shevlin work at Google DeepMind. OpenAI’s Sam Altman also claimed that the company employed “hundreds of moral philosophers” when designing rules for ChatGPT. But there is rising suspicion that there are ulterior motives at play.

‘Arc of redemption’

“Unemployed coders take note,” said The Economist: “there seems to be no shortage of work for philosophers of AI.” There are “thorny problems” in the developing field – “a philosopher’s favourite sort”.

Some “ancient” philosophical considerations are at the core of the contemporary tech industry. The idea of “Socratic ignorance” – that wisdom is an individual realising the extent of what they do not know – is a major principle in AI development used to avoid “sycophancy”.

Deliberating whether a system should follow deontological aims (“strict rules” against “lying, coercion and treating people as a means rather than an end”), or consequentialist ones (which weigh “costs against benefits”) is also a common dilemma for developers.

Philosophy is key to safety practices, too. Implementing the concept of “AI constitutionalism” – where legally or morally authoritative texts are used as a base of “scaffolding” to direct the system – aims to prevent “ominous behaviour” from the models.

Anthropic revealed earlier this year that its Claude constitution included sources as “diverse as Immanuel Kant, Apple’s terms of service and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. This has been nicknamed the company’s “soul doc”.

A rise in demand for philosophers has also coincided with a decline in admissions for computer science students, said Lance Eliot in Forbes. Arguably, computer science has become a “dead-end endeavour”, creating “automation that replaces the humans who made it all possible”. AI programming once held the “promise of big bucks and a stellar career”. This may just be a minor “course correction”, as no doubt degrees that directly relate to AI will remain important, but nonetheless, philosophy is experiencing an “amazing arc of redemption”.

But influence goes both ways and is “not limited to Silicon Valley”, said Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly on Observer. Philosophy is impacting tech, but the demands of the AI industry are reshaping the “long-standing” landscape of philosophical thought. Academia is “rapidly adapting” as foundational questions regarding consciousness, morality, minds and computation have taken on a “new urgency”.

Suspicion and ‘ethics-washing’

The two disciplines of computer science and philosophy have “never been quite as entangled” nor as “fraught” as they are now, said Lila Shroff in The Atlantic. In a fundamental sense, the “careful thought” of philosophy is “at odds with the frenetic pace of AI”. In turn, some experts are concerned that “misaligned incentives” will encourage a “rush of low-quality work”.

There is a “degree of suspicion” in the academic world about philosophers migrating to AI firms, said Joel Khalili in Wired. The whole industry poses significant ethical risks. These programmes could be used to “develop new weapons of mass destruction, undermine democracy, or entrench existing social iniquities”.

But the greatest fear is of “ethics-washing”. Hiring philosophers to train systems not only demonstrates to the public that these models are so advanced that they warrant the attention of “serious people”, but also shows that companies are “outwardly performing a commitment to AI safety”.

In a broader sense, there are growing fears that philosophical research is becoming an “extension of the marketing function” of labs. And even if philosophers are given “free rein” in tech companies, ultimately, they are “accountable to investors and shareholders”. Essentially, “if a for-profit AI company signs your pay cheque, might that compromise your research?”

Gone are the days of working a grueling nine-to-five. Employees have started microshifting, a practice that involves completing duties in short, productive bursts. This allows workers to make their own schedules and save time for other obligations and hobbies.

Flexibility in the workplace has become increasingly common and sometimes even expected of hybrid and remote jobs. There may also be some benefits for business in allowing workers a freer schedule.

‘A little bit of autonomy’

Approximately 65% of workers are interested in microshifting, according to an analysis by Owl Labs. The practice, though not labeled at the time, took off during the pandemic at the height of remote work. Covid-19’s “work-from-home requirement demonstrated that employees can work successfully from anywhere, without a boss watching over them all of the time,” said The Wall Street Journal. Now, “flexibility increasingly means giving employees more control over when they work, not just where.”

Microshifting is most common in “industries where flexible work arrangements are already common, such as IT, financial services and professional and technical services,” said the Journal. People with “caregiving responsibilities at home — for children or other relatives — are more likely to try microshifting than noncaregivers.”

Over time, management and leadership have become more “adept at giving a little bit of autonomy,” Kevin Rockmann, a professor of management at George Mason University’s Costello College of Business, said to The Associated Press. Employees have also gained the “motivation and almost the license to ask for this.”

‘It’s good to take breaks’

Microshifting can have benefits for both employers and employees. Breaking the workday into shorter chunks allows employees to “squeeze in some personal business as well,” giving them “more time to relax and enjoy” days off “rather than spend them running errands,” said Moneywise. As a result, they work when they are “most focused and productive,” and “companies get the most” out of time with them. More than half of employees (59%) “schedule personal appointments during typical work hours, and 38% take up to an hour each day for personal time,” said the analysis by Owl Labs.

“From a creativity standpoint, it’s good to take breaks,” Rockmann said to the AP. “When you stop thinking about a task is when your best ideas come to you.” Microshifting can also improve relationships, allowing more time with friends and family, all while reducing burnout. “Taking walks or attending a child’s school function can be reinvigorating for people who get drained from sitting at a desk or looking at a computer screen,” said the AP.

‘Tremendous amount of discipline’

Microshifting also has its risks. A lack of a clear schedule “can gradually weaken our ability to commit to longer stretches of uninterrupted work,” Aytekin Tank, the founder and CEO of Jotform, said at Forbes. It could also lead to a less collaborative work environment. Employees “have to be more aware of the preferred work hours of colleagues,” and if their microshifts don’t coincide, it “can lead to periods of inactivity that might ultimately slow things down,” said Moneywise.

Without structure, employees may also “fall behind on deadlines and actually wind up working round-the-clock,” said the Journal. Microshifting “requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline,” said Moneywise. If someone is “not a motivated worker (or are someone who is easily distracted), getting things done in those work blocks could be challenging.”

More than 1,000 schools across England and Wales are closing or finishing the day early this week to protect students against extreme heat.

Teachers and pupils are struggling to cope in school buildings never designed for sky-high temperatures fuelled by global warming.

Twelve school days a year could be lost

With the UK experiencing increasingly extreme weather, temperatures in schools have become a “major concern”, said The i Paper.

Modelling by the Met Office and University College London for the Department for Education published last year found some schools may already have one or two days a year when indoor temperatures hit 35C and learning becomes “very difficult”.

But “without the implementation of any adaptation measures, students could potentially lose up to 12 days of learning per year on average, as a result of generally warmer temperatures and not just from extreme heat”.

There is evidence that children struggle to sleep at night when temperatures remain above 20C. So government guidance warns teachers and school leaders to look out for the symptoms of “heat stress”, including discomfort, irritability and signs of dehydration.

“The kids can’t cope,” said Nottingham junior school teacher Radhika Sanghani in The Independent. “One of the kids didn’t sleep well because of the heat, so he was falling asleep at his desk, literally dozing. They’re only seven to nine years old. It’s a lot to expect them to study in that heat. They’re tired, they’re red-faced, they’re finding it all horrendous.”

Extreme heat is already forcing schools to postpone sports days and cancel trips, while some primaries are having to resort to “hot play”, where children are kept indoors because it is simply too hot to go outside.

Air conditioning ‘only real solution’

The problem is that most schools are not built to cope with temperatures that regularly hit 35C.

“Many schools don’t have any ventilation systems other than opening and closing windows,” said Tim Fulford, a teacher and National Education Union health and safety representative. In some of the newer Blair-era private finance initiative (PFI) schools “you can’t even do that”.

Last month, a landmark report from the government’s Climate Change Committee warned the UK is “built for a climate that no longer exists today and will be increasingly distant in years to come”.

Among its many recommendations was a call for air conditioning to be installed in all schools within 25 years.

This is the “only real solution”, said Sanghani, “but they’re never going to fit out all schools with AC. The cost would be astronomical.”

In the meantime, the CCC has said exams should be held at cooler times of the year. It cited research that showed taking a test on a 32C day reduces a pupil’s chance of passing by around 10% compared with a 22C day.

The UK Health Security Agency has gone further, advising that schools should “consider rearranging school start, finish and play times to avoid teaching during very hot conditions”. This happens in countries like France, which have longer summer holidays and have earlier start and finish times on very hot days.

“That would still be an inconvenience for parents to have to find childcare solutions, but it’s the best solution I can think of,” said Sanghani. “I’d personally be very happy to start the teaching day earlier when it’s cooler and head home by the time it gets unbearable.”

As rabid fans pack stadiums for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, some of the tournament’s most contentious issues are not about what the players say or do but what they wear. Several countries have put themselves in the crosshairs of political debates regarding their team jerseys, and in some cases FIFA has been forced to intervene.

Colombia

Colombia’s iconic yellow soccer kit became “embroiled in the country’s bitterly disputed presidential election, sparking debate over whether the yellow shirt should be used at political rallies,” said The Associated Press. Abelardo de la Espriella, the right-wing presidential candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump, turned the Colombian jersey “into his campaign’s official attire,” said The New York Times, with thousands of de la Espriella’s supporters donning the athletic wear.

Sen. Iván Cepeda, de la Espriella’s leftist opponent, “slammed his rival’s choice of apparel, accusing him of stealing a national symbol,” said the AP. But despite Cepeda’s anger, the sea of yellow jerseys seemingly propelled de la Espriella over the finish line, as he appeared to narrowly defeat Cepeda in the June 21 election, becoming Colombia’s president-elect.

Egypt

Egypt is playing in the World Cup with a major change to their uniforms, as their jerseys are “not bearing the stars commemorating their seven Africa Cup of Nations victories, following a reminder from FIFA,” said ESPN. The Egyptian national team typically wears jerseys emblazoned with the stars to “recognize each of their continental triumphs,” but such a display is not allowed by FIFA.

FIFA’s being involved in the stars’ removal marks a shift from normal procedure. Typically, the “accompanying of stars to commemorate historical honors on kits is at the discretion of national teams themselves, with different national federations opting to interpret the guidelines in different ways,” said ESPN. But for the World Cup, FIFA told the Egyptian team that stars may only appear on jerseys to “commemorate victories in the competition itself.”

Haiti

Haiti’s 2026 World Cup outing marked the team’s first appearance in the tournament in 52 years. Though the team was eliminated early, the jerseys generated plenty of buzz. The team was forced to alter their jersey design after FIFA “deemed certain elements to be too political in nature,” said The Guardian. FIFA’s issue was with the “shirt’s right hip, which depicted silhouettes inspired by the Battle of Vertières and the Haitian Revolution.” One of these silhouettes represented Haitian revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

Many supporters were angry that FIFA forced Haiti to adopt the change. FIFA’s decision is part of an “effort to discredit the Haitian Revolution,” and the “mere implication of Dessalines, standing alongside his fellow revolutionaries, was enough to elicit a backlash,” Julia Gaffield, a history professor at William & Mary College, said at The Conversation. Despite FIFA’s decision, the jersey has “become a fan favorite” and is still sold on the manufacturer’s website.

Mexico

Mexico is one of the three co-hosts at this year’s World Cup, but even hosts can spark drama. The nation’s iconic green jersey “brings back the Aztec calendar design that was popular in the 1990s,” said The Associated Press, but the manner in which the jerseys were made sparked an uproar among some indigenous Mexican artists.

The jerseys were “embroidered by hand by 150 Nahua women high in the mountains of central Mexico, in a tiny town called Naupan,” said The New York Times, but activists have accused the manufacturers of “exploiting the Nahua women while profiting off their image.” There are “murky details behind the Adidas collaboration with the artisans of Naupan,” Luz Valdez, a Mexican activist and influencer, said in a translated TikTok video. The artists were reportedly “not even allowed to use their traditional sewing method.”

Back in 2001, his plan to start a rocket company seemed so misguided, his friends urged him to abandon it.

Last Friday, Elon Musk listed SpaceX on the Nasdaq at an initial valuation of $1.77 trillion. The largest flotation in history, it blasted Musk into the stratosphere as the world’s first trillionaire.

Eye-popping valuation

What makes the flotation doubly extraordinary, said Boris Johnson in The Mail on Sunday, is that it amounted to a punt, a gamble on one man’s vision for the future. In a nutshell, Musk plans to use the $86 billion capital injection to build thousands of huge, fully reusable Starship rockets, which will slash the cost of sending mass into space. These will be used to launch data centres into orbit, so that they can tap into the energy of the Sun to power our ever-growing use of AI, along with thousands more Starlink satellites, to bring reliable internet access to the three billion people who still do not have it.

With the revenue this generates, Musk will build a city on Mars. How exactly this will “butter our parsnips” on Earth, we still do not know; but what a thrilling prospect this is for humankind.

On paper, the flotation makes little sense, said John Rapley on UnHerd. SpaceX has never generated a profit; its eye-popping valuation is based on a price-to-sales ratio of 92 to one – way above the 3.6 to one average in the S&P 500. That the IPO succeeded was due in large part to excitable forecasts by investment banks who stood to make vast sums from it; but it is also the case that many investors have faith in Musk’s ability to make science fiction a reality.

A move to Mars?

His plans are hugely ambitious, said The Economist. They depend on Starship, which is already late; and tech that doesn’t even exist yet. But Musk has defied sceptics before: people said he’d never be able to land rockets for reuse; now his firm does it twice a week. And 10,000 of his Starlink satellites are already beaming internet access to 12 million people – as well as to various arms of the US government.

Of course, some people will hate the idea of doing anything that adds to Musk’s wealth and power, said Will Dunn in The New Statesman. Others, who do not object to his hard-right political interventions, may worry that his commercial vision is crackpot: cities on distant planets sounds exciting, but you have to wonder how many people will want to move from Earth – which has “terrific amenities including a magnetic field and an atmosphere” – to the toxic deserts of Mars.

But most of us will be giving Musk money, like it or not. SpaceX and Tesla are now such a huge presence in the market, there will hardly be a retirement or savings fund that is not invested in them.

“Those who saw the video will not easily forget it,” said Rory Carroll in The Guardian. It showed an assailant sat astride his victim on a street in north Belfast, stabbing him in the face and neck, while shouting in Arabic.

Passers-by intervened to help Stephen Ogilvie, who was badly hurt during the attack last Monday; he lost an eye and suffered other injuries. And “the judicial system was fast”: less than two days later, Hadi Alodid, 30, a Sudanese refugee, was charged with attempted murder.

But long before that, said George Odling in The Times, the footage had spread around the world. Tommy Robinson, who was in Moscow, shared it with his two million followers on X/Twitter barely an hour after the attack, saying it showed an “invader trying to behead a man”. Elon Musk called on people to protest. Anti-immigrant activists in Northern Ireland were quick to latch on, posting meeting points for mass protests, and disseminating “hit lists” of migrants' homes and hostels.

Before nightfall the following day, protesters had closed arterial routes around Belfast, said The Economist. Petrol bombs were then thrown at police; a bus and police vehicles were set on fire; 12 officers were injured. But foreigners were the real targets. Doors were kicked in, cars and homes torched. Ugandan care workers, Indian IT professionals and a Middle Eastern supermarket were attacked, said Sky News. A family with a young child had to be evacuated in an armoured police car as their home went up in flames. In Glengormley, a mob targeted a hotel that housed asylum seekers.

‘Migration back door’

The violence was “disgusting”, said The Times, but the “clichéd condemnation” that followed failed to acknowledge the root cause: immigration. “The general perception is that legal and illegal immigration is out of control, that Britain is a soft touch”, and that millions are being spent on refugees who can pose a real danger to UK citizens. The issue now poses an “explosive” threat to “national stability”.

This case also exposes another huge hole in our borders, said David Frost in The Daily Telegraph. Alodid had travelled to Northern Ireland via Paris and Dublin. It's unclear how he was able to fly to the Republic, without a visa; but once there, because of the Common Travel Area, he was able to enter Northern Ireland without passing through immigration controls. When anyone from any country who can get into Ireland can get into the UK, “we have a migration back door”.

It is “asinine” to accept the far-right claim that these riots were an expression of serious concerns about immigration, said Séamas O'Reilly in The New Statesman. An alleged crime by a single Sudanese man in no way explains or justifies rioters “carrying out a pogrom against every migrant or non-white person” they can find. We would never see attacks on white British people as a legitimate response to murders committed by white Britons. For those of us who always find such justifications dubious, it's revealing to see them deployed in Northern Ireland, “where immigration barely exists”. Only 3% of its population belong to an ethnic minority. Net international migration, from 2001 to 2023, reached just 62,000 people in a country of two million; there are currently about 2,400 refugees.

Disturbing new politics

In fact, the “chilling thing” is how familiar last week's riots felt, said Michael Magee in The Independent. “I wish I could say that this is not the Belfast I grew up in, but loyalist mobs rampaging through the city is nothing new to us.” Most, if not all, of the rioting took place in unionist areas; instead of contested parade routes or flag disputes, the “orchestrated violence” was directed at a new enemy: immigrants and asylum seekers.

The awful thing is that “immigration riots work”, said Max Jeffery in The Spectator. The Roma whose homes were burned in Ballymena in County Antrim last year have not returned. The asylum seekers and immigrants attacked last week will likely move away.

We are seeing a disturbing new politics in Britain, said Jason Okundaye in The Guardian, stoked by the smartphone and social media. The public is now consistently fed a stream of shocking, graphic images – such as the footage of a dying Henry Nowak, or of Stephen Ogilvie being attacked – which previously would have been seen only by investigators or in a courtroom. Politicians of the hard-right exploit these to foment rage and disorder, pushing a narrative of a UK invaded by third-world criminals.

Yet it would be wrong to blame everything on social media, said Janice Turner in The Times. It's hard to ignore the many “vicious, unprovoked” crimes committed by refugees, particularly those fleeing extreme violence – in, for instance, Sudan or Afghanistan. Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, noted last week that refugee rights can conflict with “national security”. Britain needs to grasp this issue, “or get used to riots”.

The internet is awash with jokes about the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which is now riddled with algae.

The Trump administration spent more than $14 million (£10.5 million) draining the pool and painting the bottom “American flag blue” in time for the 250th anniversary of US independence. The president had described the reflecting pool – the scene of Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech – as “filthy” and “dirty”, and promised to transform it into something “beautiful”. Instead, residual algae has “proliferated” in warm weather, said The Guardian, turning the pond “Wicked” green.

Something positive that can be said about the pool’s algal bloom is that it’s harmless. But toxic algae blooms are a worldwide phenomenon that can harm humans and devastate marine life. And as the climate crisis warms the water, the problem is growing.

‘Underwater phantom’

“Algal blooms are a rapid, explosive growth of algae,” said pharmacology researcher Ian Musgrave on The Conversation. Blue-green algae, known as cyanobacteria, naturally occur in inland waters, estuaries and the sea. They often contain multiple species, some of which produce toxins. The “bewildering variety” can cause many effects in humans, from nausea and skin irritation to increased asthma symptoms and even liver failure. Those that don’t produce toxins can “suffocate fish” by damaging the gills and reducing oxygen.

For a year now, a toxic algal bloom in South Australia has had “devastating effects” on wildlife. “At my local beach, walks were a sad parade of dead sea life,” said Musgrave.

Since last March, algae have “flared at hotspots” along the coastline, causing “stinging eyes, coughing, rashes, headaches and breathing difficulties” among surfers, said ABC. One swimmer was hospitalised with severe gastroenteritis. “It was like razor blades in my gut,” he said. “I was rolling around on the floor in the emergency room, coughing and spewing blood.”

Along the “jagged coastline”, it has become “an underwater phantom”, and researchers are “not entirely sure why”, said The New York Times. Beachgoers are “horrified by the dead animals washing ashore”. Since February last year, a crowdsourced platform has recorded more than 100,000 instances of dead sea life. “It was literally just like an underwater bushfire,” said a recreational fisherman.

Recent citizen science data suggests the bloom affected nearly 8,000 square miles. Last October, state agency scientists estimated the algae had impacted about a third of South Australia’s coasts. The psychological effect is enormous: in a survey of South Australians last July, nearly 70% said “they were repeatedly thinking about the bloom”, said researcher Brianna Le Busque, from Adelaide University. Some compared seeing the washed-up marine life to “the death of a loved one”.

‘Visible from space’

Harmful algal blooms stalk shores far beyond Australia. In Southern California last year an “unprecedented, multi-toxin event” killed hundreds of seabirds, sea lions and dolphins, said the Public Policy Institute of California.

Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, the UK’s largest freshwater lake, has also been blighted by blue-green algae for years. This “majestic landscape of water and sky”, the inspiration for Seamus Heaney’s prize-winning poetry, is “choking on recurring toxic algal blooms”, said The Guardian.

The algae feed on high levels of nutrients in the water, mainly from agriculture (farm run-off, fertiliser and livestock waste), as well as “inadequate wastewater treatment”. Global warming has also increased the temperature of the lough, encouraging the abundant blooms. Last year, there were 243 detections of cyanobacteria growths, according to Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs: a record.

In some places, the green sludge – “so widespread it is visible from space”, said The Guardian – forms “patterns and swirls redolent of Gustav Klimt”. But far from picturesque, the blooms “coat the surface, kill wildlife, unleash stenches and make the lake all but unusable”. The impact on wildlife and tourism is “incalculable”.

“Lough Neagh is dying in front of our eyes,” said Claire Hanna, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. “Images of fish and eels gasping for life on the surface are not just shocking – they are a stark warning of total ecological collapse.”

Two Ukrainian men have been found guilty of plotting arson attacks last year on property relating to Keir Starmer.

The trial of Roman Lavrynovych, 22, Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, and a third man was “strange”, said the BBC, “mainly because the true author of the drama was never revealed”.

But as more details of the case come to light it has revealed a shadowy network of online provocation and misinformation allegedly orchestrated from Russia that constitutes what the PM called “an attack on democracy” itself.

El Money

During the six-week trial at the Old Bailey, jurors heard that the fires at Starmer’s former family home and other related targets were ordered by a Russian-speaking handler on the encrypted messaging app Telegram. Going by the pseudonym “El Money”, he directed Lavrynovych to carry out the attacks in exchange for promises of payment in cryptocurrency.

A Financial Times investigation “based on Telegram archives, cryptocurrency wallets, court evidence and interviews with Western officials” established that El Money was “located in Russia and was closely aligned with NoName057(16), a pro-Kremlin hacktivist group that the US has called a Russian ‘state-sanctioned project’”.

But the Russian embassy told the BBC: “We reject any attempt to associate Russia or its foreign ministry with unlawful activities.” It said that Russia poses “no threat to the United Kingdom or its people and harbours no aggressive intentions towards Britain”.

Now the BBC has identified evidence suggesting that El Money, or EL as he was known on Telegram, “is a young Russian diplomat, schooled in information warfare by spies and propagandists, who is close to the highest levels of power in Moscow”. The broadcaster named him as 23-year-old Evgeny Lyukshin, the son of a senior official.

It concluded that the arson attack was “just one part of an extensive campaign of sabotage, provocation and lies leading all the way to the Russian state”.

Part of this misinformation campaign included a “conspiracy theory falsely claiming that the arsonists were male prostitutes seeking revenge” on the PM, said The i Paper. Research by The i Paper and the Center for Countering Digital Hate charted the false “rent boy” rumour, which first emerged online less than 15 minutes after Lavrynovych was arrested and before it was made public by the police. The rumour spread from a “handful of small X accounts, through a network of far right activists and conspiracy theorists, into Russian media outlets and widespread online circulation”.

The accounts where the claim originated did not appear to be directly part of Russian disinformation networks. But Melanie Smith, from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said Russian propagandists continually “monitor the online ecosystem” – particularly the far right in Europe – “trying to figure out which narratives are circulating and which ones of those work to their advantage”.

Russia’s war against the West

While not proven in court, the alleged involvement of Russia “points to a series of incidents in recent years, which, though piecemeal and hard to prove, lay bare how Russia’s intelligence services have moved towards a new kind of attack on the West”, said The Guardian.

“Dozens of people” have been detained across Europe – in Britain, Lithuania, France and Estonia – “accused of being foot soldiers in a new front of Russia’s war against the West”. This “war” includes Moscow-backed campaigns of “sabotage, arson and disinformation against the continent”.

Russian nationalist cyber groups like NoName, linked by the FT to last year’s London arson attacks, “have sought to recruit proxies online to further the Kremlin’s geopolitical interests, as well as foment disorder across Europe by amplifying far-right and anti-migrant messages”.

Britain, in particular, has become a “soft target” for Russian and other state propaganda because of a failure to educate people on how to deal with information warfare. This leaves it “extraordinarily vulnerable”, security expert Fiona Hill told a recent parliamentary committee.

“As it becomes harder to convince Russians that their own country is on the up, Vladimir Putin is instead presenting the West as not just hostile but in crisis”, said historian Mark Galeotti in The i Paper. The Kremlin “eagerly mines the news for stories it can spin, shade and downright misrepresent to advance these lines”, and Starmer’s misfiring government is “offering ample opportunities”.

As one staffer at the state-controlled Channel One news operation in Moscow said of the UK government: “There’s a combination of belligerence and incompetence there, a self-righteousness and lack of self-awareness that is just too good to pass up.”

Two years ago, it was brat summer. This year, for summer 2026, everyone is wrapping themselves in a new trend: whimsy. From dopamine-spiking decor to more childlike, bright clothes, adults are romanticizing the smallest aspects of their lives and fully running with a lighthearted outlook.

Bring on the ‘childlike joy’

The word whimsy and the vibe associated with it are “having a moment,” thanks to Gen Z and millennials who have “recast the word to characterize a lifestyle that blends playfulness, spontaneity and being present,” said The New York Times. Searches on Etsy for “whimsical jewelry,” “whimsical decor” and “whimsy-related items” were each up by at least 50% from last year.

Shoppers use whimsy as a “form of everyday escapism, seeking out pieces that feel personal, playful and a little unexpected to make everyday life more extraordinary,” said Dayna Isom Johnson, Etsy’s trend expert, to the Times. The craze puts an “emphasis on offline activities” that parallels a “movement by young people who are leaving behind smartphones and screens,” the outlet said.

Being whimsical is about “bringing levity to life when you can,” said Business Insider. The trend is flooded with lively colors and playful accessories.

Whimsy is “easier to recognize than to translate," said NSS Magazine. It is not “just an aesthetic” but a “different way of inhabiting one’s days.” For those who relish it, being whimsical means “reconnecting with what as children seemed natural: to be amazed, to invent, to celebrate even the smallest things.”

Chasing authenticity

Whimsy devotees see it as a “response to compounding anxieties over a series of stressors, including a challenging economy, multiple wars and a volatile presidency,” said the Times. No one can control “what our leaders are doing,” but you can control “what kind of mug you’re going to choose, what cute outfit you’re going to wear and what beautiful thing you can do in your morning,” podcaster Liz Plank said to the Times.

In the age of the internet, millennials and Gen Z face a more intense flood of information than ever before. Whimsy offers an escape from the more performative aspects of social media, Nassir Ghaemi, a psychiatry professor, said to the Times. These online experiences have been “going on now long enough” that Generation Z and millennials have figured out that a “lot of these online interactions are inauthentic.”

With how swiftly the trend cycle swerves, the whimsical moment may not last. Gen Z, in particular, has “grown up in a context in which almost everything can be turned into merchandise,” said NSS Magazine. Many trends are “intercepted, packaged and resold as a product,” as has happened in the past with viral terms such as “girl math, girl dinner or demure.” All were “born for fun” but became “tools for overconsumption.”

Still, when whimsy is “understood in its purest, most spontaneous and curious sense,” said NSS Magazine, then it can be read as an “attempt to withdraw from the pressure of constant consumption, choosing to live with more freedom.” A whimsical life can be a “small form of everyday resistance.”