What happened
Government bond markets dealt Chancellor Rachel Reeves another blow yesterday, with yields on 30-year UK debt climbing to 5.723%, their highest since 1998. The spike means higher borrowing costs for the government as it prepares to deliver a challenging Autumn Budget. The pound also weakened sharply, sliding by more than 1.5 cents against the US dollar.

Who said what
"These moves are not anything UK-specific," said Carsten Jung of the Institute for Public Policy Research, pointing to similar rises in Germany, the US and France. But even so the jump in borrowing costs is "adding to the pressure on the chancellor ahead of the Budget", said Tom Espiner and Nick Edser on the BBC. The growing sense that the chancellor is being "managed out" is weighing on UK government bonds, said Kathleen Brooks, the research director at trading platform XTB. The chancellor was seen in tears in July, briefly spiking bond yields amid speculation that she might be "replaced with a more spendthrift alternative", said The Guardian.

What next?
With the Budget now expected in mid-November, analysts predict that Reeves may need to raise between £18 billion and £28 billion in additional revenue to maintain her fiscal rules, primarily through tax increases.

What happened
"Father Ted" and "The IT Crowd" writer Graham Linehan was arrested by five armed officers at Heathrow Airport yesterday over posts on X about transgender people. The comedian claimed that he was treated like a "terrorist" after arriving in the UK on a 10-hour flight from Arizona.

Who said what
Writing on his blog, Linehan (pictured above) reposted the tweets in question, originally published in April. One urged people to "call the cops" on trans-identifying individuals and added that "if all else fails, punch him in the balls".

Linehan's arrest prompted an immediate backlash from opposition politicians as well as public figures including J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk. "Every time I think we have reached peak lunacy around the issue of 'trans rights' I am once more shocked," said Suzanne Moore in The Telegraph. There can "no longer be any doubt that free speech is under life-support in Britain", said Andrew Doyle on UnHerd. Legal and regulatory oversight of social media posts in the UK has "become an increasingly contentious political topic", said The Guardian.

What next?
Linehan said he was released on bail under the condition that he must not use X and will face a further interview with police next month.

The 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War has "set off a bitter battle of narratives" between China and Taiwan, according to Reuters.

China has accused Taiwan of "blaspheming" against those who died fighting Japan during the war and tensions have been rising ahead of today's military parade to mark the anniversary of Japan's surrender in Beijing.

Taiwan says Beijing is falsely claiming credit for leading the fighting during the war, and insists that most of the combat was done by the forces of the Republic of China – a term Taiwan still uses as its formal name.

The government in Taipei called on people not to attend the military parade and threatened punishment, including the loss of pension rights for current or former senior defence, intelligence and diplomatic officials who do go along.

But Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for China's Taiwan Affairs Office, has accused Taiwan of "slandering and obliterating" the Communist Party's role as the "backbone" of fighting Japan, and said its claims were an insult to "all the loyal martyrs and heroes, and a shameless betrayal of the entire Chinese nation". She went on to insist that the people of Taiwan "should not, and cannot, be absent from the relevant commemorative activities" and any threats or attempts to dissuade them were nothing but "despicable acts that betray history and the nation".

The war of words comes at a time of even higher tensions between the nations. Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te said the "most valuable lesson" to be learned from conflict was that "unity ensures victory, while aggression inevitably fails".