What happened
Kemi Badenoch has recorded her strongest polling result since becoming Conservative leader after removing Robert Jenrick from the party amid rumours he was preparing to defect to Reform UK.

Who said what
Polling by More In Common shows Badenoch’s net approval rating has climbed to -11, overtaking Farage’s -13 for the first time in more than a year. Around half of respondents backed her decision to act ahead of Jenrick’s defection, including nearly half of Reform supporters. Jenrick, meanwhile, emerged with weaker personal ratings. Pollsters said many voters viewed defections as motivated by personal ambition rather than principle.

What next?
Despite the good news for Badenoch, “there was bad news for her party”, said Kate Devlin in The Independent, with Reform winning the battle to be seen to represent the “Right” of British politics, on 35% ahead of the Tories on 29%.

Asked last week whether she would rule out a pact in any upcoming election, Badenoch responded: “Reform has been taking a lot of people who could not find work elsewhere”, adding: “The problems are going, we are even more united than we were, because we’re a stronger team.”

What happened
The government has formally approved plans to build a new controversial Chinese super-embassy in London, ahead of Keir Starmer’s visit to the country later this month.

Who said what
Plans for the site – located close to the Tower of London – have been “opposed for various reasons” for years, said Sky News, including “the possibility it would be used as an espionage base, the risk that nearby sensitive financial cabling could be intercepted, and the potential of protests against China being held outside”.

In a joint letter to the home and foreign secretaries, MI5 director general Ken McCallum and GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler said that despite “over 100 years of experience managing national security risks associated with foreign diplomatic premises in London”, it was still “not realistic to expect to be able wholly to eliminate each and every potential risk”.

What next?
Downing Street hopes the decision will unlock new trade deals with Beijing, though the super-embassy still faces a judicial review launched by residents of the site yesterday.  

They say travel broadens your mind but, if you’re travelling into space, it could displace your brain.

Results of new study add to a growing body of evidence that astronauts’ brains change position and shape in space. The brain shifts “upward and backward within the skull”, with sensory and motor regions showing the largest shifts, according to a US study published in PNAS this month. These brain shape changes are “considerable”, can lead to disorientation and loss of balance, and can persist after return to Earth for more than six months.

This evidence of brain deformation “could complicate future efforts to explore the cosmos”, said Futurism.

The researchers examined MRI scans from 26 astronauts who had been in space for varying amounts of time. Those astronauts who went to space for a year “showed the largest changes”, said study co-author Rachael D. Seidler. 

Most of the astronauts’ brain deformation “recovered over six months post-flight” but “some persisted”, the study concluded. The “health and human performance implications” of these findings require “further study to pave the way for safer human space exploration”.

But further research on the long-term effects of space on humans is hamstrung by the small available sample size. Although the number of long-duration human spaceflights has increased significantly over the past 15 years, they are still very rare. 

“In short,” said Futurism, “we’re only beginning to understand how microgravity affects our brains”. More research “could prove invaluable” if we’re thinking of venturing “even deeper into space”.