What happened
A five-day walkout by resident doctors in England, scheduled to begin next Wednesday, may be paused after government ministers tabled a new proposal. The British Medical Association (BMA) has agreed to present the offer to members in an online survey closing on Monday. The plan centres on a major expansion of specialist training posts and the reimbursement of certain professional expenses, including exam fees. It does not include additional pay, something Health Secretary Wes Streeting refuses to revisit, citing resident doctors’ near 30% pay rise over three years. Competition for specialty roles has intensified, with 30,000 applicants for 10,000 posts this year. The offer promises 4,000 new posts by 2028, with the first 1,000 available next year.

Who said what
Streeting criticised the union’s decision not to suspend the strike while members vote, saying he was “astounded” and calling the situation “one of the most shameful episodes in the long history of the BMA”.

Agreeing to put the offer to a vote by members is itself a “sign that Streeting’s move may prove enough to persuade the BMA to call off next week’s strike”, said Denis Campbell in The Guardian.

What next?
If members deem the offer sufficient to halt industrial action, a full referendum will follow. If not, next week’s strike will proceed as planned.

What happened
The United States has requested that Thailand and Cambodia “cease hostilities immediately” as clashes continued into a third day, with at least 10 deaths and about 500,000 people displaced.

Who said what
A spokesperson for the Thai government said “peace must come with the safety and security of our citizens, full stop”. But Cambodia has accused Thailand of starting “aggressive military attacks” that target civilian institutions and “sacred cultural sites” along the borders.

US President Donald Trump has said he intends to “make a phone call” in order to “stop a war of two very powerful countries, Thailand and Cambodia”. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has urged both sides to “exercise restraint and avoid further escalation” of a conflict that has already resulted in “significant civilian casualties, damage to civilian infrastructure and displacement on both sides”.

What next?
“An all-out war seems highly unlikely as neither side can afford one”, said Sky News. However, “if civilian targets are hit, tensions could very quickly intensify”.

A small, primarily Black community in Memphis is pushing back against tech mogul Elon Musk, claiming a massive facility he built there is overloading an already beleaguered town with dangerous pollutants. While community leaders and residents insist that the data centre is threatening the community’s energy supply and air quality, Musk’s company, xAI, shows no signs of slowing down.

Desperate to keep up with the artificial intelligence race, Musk created xAI to compete with ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular chatbot. To power Grok, xAI’s chatbot, Musk searched for a city in need of investment where he could establish a massive data centre.

He settled on Boxtown in Memphis, a 90% Black working-class neighbourhood first settled by formerly enslaved people in 1863, to construct his supercomputer facility, Colossus, last year.

Colossus, like other AI data centres, requires a massive amount of energy. When it is fully completed it will consume 1.1 gigawatts of power – about “40% of the energy consumption of Memphis on an average summer’s day”, said The Times. The facility’s turbines will also “increase Memphis’s smog by 30-60%”,  said The Tennessee Lookout.

Public outcry from the community has surged over the past year. In July, protesters who were gathered by the student coalition Tigers Against Pollution marched in front of the Shelby County Health Department holding signs that read “Elon XiPloits” and “our lungs / our lives / NOT FOR SALE”. When The Times asked xAI for comment on Memphis residents’ concerns about Colossus’s effects on air quality, Musk’s company gave a terse response: “Legacy media lies.”