What happened
A Liberal Democrat proposal requiring the UK government to begin talks on a made-to-measure customs union with the EU squeezed through its first reading after an evenly split vote in the House of Commons. With 100 MPs on each side, Deputy Speaker Caroline Nokes used her casting vote to keep the issue alive “in order to allow for further debate”. Despite this procedural win, the bill stands little chance of becoming law without government backing. It was the first tied Commons division since 2019. Thirteen Labour MPs supported the plan, while most of the party abstained and three members opposed it. Conservative MPs overwhelmingly rejected the bill, joined by members of Reform UK.

Who said what
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey hailed the outcome as a “historic victory”, arguing that the government should drop its resistance and pursue “an ambitious trade deal with the EU”.

In recent months Labour ministers, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, have “become more vocal in their criticism of Brexit”, said Kate Whannel on the BBC. However, Labour’s manifesto ruled out returning to the EU customs union, and Starmer said recently that such a move was “not currently” part of the party’s plans.

What next?
The bill will move to a second reading next month.

What happened
Bonnie Blue could be handed a prison sentence of up to 15 years in Indonesia for allegedly producing pornographic content, violating the country’s strict morality laws. The British former OnlyFans creator, known for attempting sex “challenges” with large numbers of men, was arrested in Bali last week.

Who said what
The police raid was prompted by complaints that she had hired a bus to travel around the island and “film explicit material during ‘schoolies week’”, said The Independent, “a post-high school celebration” for Australian teenagers.

Bonnie Blue, real name Tia Billinger (pictured above), had written on social media: “Hey boys, those that’re going to Schoolies and to those who are barely legal, cannot wait to meet you – and I’m in Bali, so you know exactly what that means.”

Police said she had been caught producing “pornographic videos” with a group of at least 17 Australian and British men aged 19 to 40. Authorities seized “school Bonnie Blue” outfits, cameras, condoms, lubricant and Viagra pills.

What next?
Bonnie Blue and two of the men are due to be questioned further today as officials decide how to proceed with the case.

The ancient funeral tradition of “hanging coffins” in southern China was carried out by ancestors of a minority ethnic group still living in the region today, a new study has found.

The findings “provide valuable insights into the genetic, cultural and historical roots of this burial custom”, according to the authors of the study, which was published in the Nature Communications journal.

For millennia, inhabitants of the modern-day Yunnan and Fujian provinces carried their dead high into the mountains and “pegged” wooden coffins into crevices in “exposed cliffs”, said Live Science. It is thought that they used wooden scaffolding, rope pulleys or man-made trails to ascend the rocky cliffs.

Hanging coffins are “considered auspicious”, wrote a Yuan dynasty chronicler some time between 1279 and 1368. “The higher they are, the more propitious they are for the dead.” Curiously, “those whose coffins fell to the ground were considered more fortunate”.

The new study examined 11 bodies dating back as far as 2,000 years ago and used genome sequencing to confirm them as ancestors of the Bo people, several thousand of whom are still living in Yunnan province.

But the practice of suspending remains in a cliff face can also be found in other cultures. Hanging coffins are one of the burial customs of the Kankanaey people of Sagada, on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. And in Indonesia, shaped coffins known as erong, guarded by carved wooden representations of the dead, were placed in high caves and cliffside niches by the Toraja people up until the 1960s.