'Russia seems fully committed to helping Hamas and Iran'

Putin is helping Hamas to hurt the West

Josh Rogin for The Washington Post

Russian president Vladimir Putin told Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Russia was trying "to help normalize the situation" in the Gaza Strip, says Josh Rogin in The Washington Post. But Moscow is in fact "on the side of Hamas and its patron, Iran". And its "main foreign policy goal" is to "distract" the world from its "atrocities" in Ukraine, while "seizing the opportunity to ramp up its violence" there. A senior Hamas official has praised Russia's assistance, while Russian officials and outlets have "unanimously blamed" the US for the crisis. "Moscow's interest is in stoking it, not solving it," says Rogin.

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Neglecting social care would be folly for Labour

Will Lloyd for The Times

"If we consider pure, staggering misery"then social care is "the worst crisis facing Britain", says Will Lloyd in The Times. Hundreds of thousands of people cannot get out of bed, dress themselves or eat properly without help, but the problem of our "greying population" goes ignored by the public. The British have "no idea" what to do with elderly people, except to "banish" them to "solitude and pain". But social care must be an "urgent priority" for the next Labour government. "The treatment of the elderly in Britain shames our society."

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The Five-Day Office Week Is Dead

Nicholas Bloom for The New York Times

Working from home is here to stay, says Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor Stanford University, in The New York Times. "I can prove it with data." Occupancy rates in offices this month were "shocking": 50% of February 2020 levels. The number has "flatlined" all over the US: blue and red states, coastal and inland. Hybrid working has "killed the return-to-office hype". Working from home has "major benefits" for society, including for the climate and parenting. And "despite the noise some business executives made to the contrary", remote work makes sense financially. "What is profitable in a capitalist economy sticks."

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Half a million of us want to donate our data to British science, but it's languishing unused because of privacy fears

Polly Toynbee for The Guardian

"I delight in messages from UK Biobank," says Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, "the world's most advanced genetic database". Back in 2006, she signed up to this "magnificent project" along with half a million others aged between 40 and 69, and they have "sequenced my genome" and stored samples for future researchers seeking causes and cures. But an "alarming" email tells her her GP has not been sharing vital updates on her health with the biobank – "despite you giving us your permission when you first joined". Even though it is de-identified, this "vital data" is languishing in GPs' computers. Only one in five UK Biobank volunteers have their GP information collected, "despite our wishes". Our data is not for "trivial or suspect use, but for the good of humankind". 

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