“It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game,” said Donald Trump at the weekend, as an impasse over diplomatic discussions and disruption in the Strait of Hormuz continue. By letting economic pressure mount, we are “low-keying it” with Iran, Trump told Axios, and “only semi-negotiating with them”.

In response, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that whether “lights out or lights on, Iranians showed they are professional chess players”.

With no end to the war in sight, inflation on the rise, fuel rationing and continued threats of strikes, the vast majority of the Iranian population appear not to be players, but pawns.

‘Extensive’ damage

Speaking openly about politics in Iran still “carries obvious risks”, said Nawal Al-Maghafi in The Guardian. Within Iran there is “no single narrative of the war”, with some believing it has “strengthened national unity”, and others saying it has only “deepened repression”. Nonetheless, the country has been “transformed” by the war and, as the conflict carries on, “so does the struggle to shape the legacy it will leave behind”.

Iran is facing “extensive” damage from US attacks, estimated to be “running in the hundreds of billions of dollars”, said Maziar Motamedi in Al Jazeera. But this plays into “decades-old economic structural issues” and being continually “strained by years of Western sanctions and local mismanagement”. During both world wars, the US and Israel “systematically bombed” ports, bridges, roads and other civilian infrastructure, and the country has a long history of internet shutdowns and a “cash-strapped” government.

Now, inflation has risen to “nearly 90%” in the last month, with food inflation “hitting 134%”, compared to a year earlier. Following two wars in less than a year, conflict with the US is “showing no signs of abating”.

Many Iranians feel “abandoned” by the West, said Roxana Saberi and Fatemeh Jamalpour in The Times. They believe the US and others have “largely stood by during the recent executions and the January massacre”. The crackdown since January has left Iranians with “widespread trauma” that “spans generations and classes”. The “greatest source of trauma” is the “inaction” of the international community, said head of a survivor charity Azadeh Afsahi. “If these Western countries have democracy, how come they don’t care to see that the Iranian people are suffering?”

Opinion is ‘far from uniform’

There is still a “fervour” among those who support the regime, said Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4. In June, the “streets were full” of people for national celebrations, and children fired foam darts at “targets bearing the faces of Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump was by far the most popular face to fire at.” Many are still eager to “express their love of country and their hatred of the enemy”. In many ways, ironically, it “reminds you of the most fired-up Maga supporters in America”.

Yet for others, the “greatest fear” is that “the war will end with the Islamic Republic still in power”, said Kelly J. Shannon on the Atlantic Council. However the conflict ends, the “remnants of the regime” will likely become “further entrenched and even more oppressive”. The massacres after protests in January, and an April order to “speed up executions of political prisoners”, support state television warnings that “any dissidents will be killed”. In the eyes of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian population is the “enemy, and it is willing to use any and all measures to keep them in line”.

Ultimately, “Iranian society is diverse, politically complex, and far from uniform,” said Mahmoud Rasouli on the European Consortium for Political Research. “Citizens hold differing views about domestic reform, foreign relations, economic priorities, and the country’s future.”

Yet this does not translate to political influence. Both Washington and Tehran invoke the interests of the Iranian people, but never do they allow such interests to “directly determine the direction of the conflict”. This creates a “paradox”: the Iranian people are “central” to the language used around the war, but “peripheral” in the “decision-making processes that shape their future”. They are neither “invisible spectators nor the main architects of the conflict”, but the “primary stakeholders in a confrontation largely shaped by others”.

A growing feud between the United States and Brazil has put both nations’ diplomatic corps on high alert, as South America’s largest economy finds itself on the receiving end of a Trumpian diplomatic spat. This month, Washington revoked the visa of Brazilian Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti after Brasilia refused visas for several Trump administration officials whom authorities claimed were planning to denounce the country’s leftist government.

Brazil has said it will not formally accept Trump’s Senate-approved ambassador pick, Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, until after its October election. The country also complained that the United States had named Perez before completing certain diplomatic obligations.

‘Protocol can double as a weapon’

The visa cancellation is the “latest split” between “two governments that have spent the past year oscillating between confrontation and detente,” said The New York Times. But this episode is “very, very unique and severe,” said Brazilian political science professor Carlos Poggio to the outlet. Visa revocations are typically reserved for diplomatic foes, but “Brazil is not a U.S. adversary. It’s actually a major ally.”

“On the surface,” the diplomatic kerfuffle “may seem like tit-for-tat pettiness,” said Puck. “True practitioners of statecraft” understand that “protocol can double as a weapon.” Countries whose diplomatic corps “undergo some of the most rigorous training in the world” are “not naive about the message Washington is sending.”

Voiding Viotti’s visa “is not an isolated incident,” said the office of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a statement to NBC. Rather, it is part of a “deliberate escalation of hostile measures” fueled by “ideological motives that are incompatible with a bilateral partnership that has always been guided by mutual respect.”

Questioning Trump’s ‘confrontational approach’

Some in the Brazilian diplomatic corps have questioned why Trump is “rushing to have an ambassador in Brasilia only months before October’s election,” said The Associated Press — particularly given that the post has been “vacant since Trump returned to the White House” last year. The deepening rift comes as da Silva, a leftist, runs for a fourth term.

His opponent this time is Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, himself a “close Trump ally on the political right” who was convicted of “trying to overturn the results of the last election,” said The Washington Post. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one State Department official decried Washington’s “confrontational approach” to the outlet. “Each time Brasilia portrays itself as standing up to Trump,” said the official, the leftist government’s “standing in the polls only improves.”

“This isn’t just about Brazil,” said Orna Blum, a former senior State Department official who focused on Brazil, to Puck. “It’s part of a pattern.” The Trump administration has aligned itself with “far-right political movements from Germany’s AfD to Marine Le Pen in France, and now with Jair Bolsonaro and his son Flávio in Brazil.” Being seen as “picking sides in another democracy’s elections” under Trump has “cost America credibility with allies around the world.”

Hundreds of thousands of sixth-formers got their A-level results today, but those who plan to continue into higher education face a “ticking timebomb” of higher taxes and debt, said The Guardian.

Students will face trickier financial obstacles and penalties than previous graduates, according to a report from the Intergenerational Foundation.

Higher burden

The cost of paying for a university education has been shifted almost entirely on to current students, found the researchers. The latest student loan package, Plan 5, means young graduates will struggle to save for house deposits or pension contributions, delaying key milestones.

Plan 5 is the repayment system for people who started an undergraduate course or took out an Advanced Learner Loan in England on or after August 2023. It has a lower repayment threshold than previous iterations: for 2026/27, Plan 2’s threshold is £29,385, compared with £25,000 for Plan 5.

The amounts being repaid by today’s graduates in England are more than double those paid under Plan 1, which was in place before 2012, when annual undergraduate tuition fees rose from £3,375 to £9,000. However, Plan 5 has a lower interest rate than Plan 2.

The “burden of student loans has never been higher”, said the author of the report, Toby Whelton. “By stealth” and with “minimal democratic scrutiny”, successive governments have “piled costs on” to young graduates and hoped that “nobody would notice”.

On top of repaying student loans at higher rates than previous generations, today’s graduates face effective tax rates above 50% when their income reaches higher brackets. Meanwhile, they also have to save for retirement while trying to meet these challenging financial demands.

Perfect storm

The report comes as younger generations in the UK already face unique challenges. A perfect storm of economic factors means they have a much harder path to home ownership than that of previous generations. House prices have risen much faster than wages, increasing roughly three to five times faster than average earnings over recent decades.

House deposits have also become harder to build. Where previous generations might have set aside a few months of spare salary, would-be buyers may now need up to years of gross earnings. This has created a renters’ trap: young people need savings to buy a house, but a large proportion of their income goes towards housing while they are trying to save. Meanwhile, the housing shortage has pushed up both prices and rents.

In May, Barratt Redrow, Britain’s largest housebuilder, said a combination of rising interest rates, higher levels of student debt and the squeeze on wages was making it the most challenging time to be a first-time buyer since the financial crisis. This means the “dream of home ownership” is moving “increasingly out of reach for many young people”, said The Guardian.

But Andy Burnham said in July he’s considering giving billions of pounds in tax relief to young people so they can save for a house deposit, according to The Independent. The “major offer” would also include help with rent to buy, said allies.

In her sell-out show at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Amanda Knox tells a joke about her daughter’s favourite game called “Momma goes to Italy” in which she grabs the bars of a jungle gym at their local playground and screams, “Let me out! Let me out!”

Knox’s conviction for the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in 2007, her years spent behind bars in an Italian prison, and her subsequent acquittal 11 years ago, made her famous and infamous around the world.

“Pigeonholed as either a true crime or tragic figure”, her one-woman set “Cartwheel” – named after claims by Italian prosecutors that she had turned cartwheels in a police station shortly after Kercher’s death – is, she said, “me going back to my roots and trying to reclaim who I was before all the bad stuff happened”, said The New York Times.

‘Damned whatever she did’

While it may be a surprise that Knox is trying stand-up at all, it’s “arguably even riskier” to debut such material in Britain, given the “mixed reputation” she has in Kercher’s country of birth, said The New York Times. The 39-year-old mother-of-two’s foray into comedy has “also raised questions about who has the right to tell a story on stage”.

After opening night, the Daily Mail published an article with the headline “Is there anything ‘Foxy Knoxy’ won’t do for attention – or money?” More than 42,000 people have signed a petition calling for the show to be cancelled, and Kercher’s sister Stephanie recently told the BBC she was afraid the event risked “normalising violence against women by making light of such a harrowing event”.

“No one walking out of the theatre could possibly reach that conclusion”, said Tristram Fane Saunders in The Telegraph. If anything, it was “too tasteful”; a “good-faith attempt by a novice performer to use the medium of stand-up comedy to tell her own story inoffensively, to the best of her moderate abilities”.

While some have argued it is a “disgrace that she’s telling it at all – and profiting from it”, classifying “Cartwheel” as comedy may have been her biggest “misstep”, said Brian Logan in The Guardian. Doing so “risks looking insensitive and inaccurately describes the show”, but, “judging by the evidence” and the very public outcry, “Knox would be damned whatever she did”.

‘Source of profound catharsis’

Humour has “always helped people to process terrible events” and “for that reason, great stand-up can sometimes be a source of profound catharsis”, said The Telegraph.

Nowhere is this more true than at the world’s most prestigious performing arts festival, where Fringe comics often draw on dark subjects and distressing personal experiences.

Richard Gadd’s 2019 Festival show about being stalked was turned into the worldwide Netflix phenomenon “Baby Reindeer”, while comedian Edd Hedges’ 2017 Festival debut, “Wonderland”, based on the story of a man who stabbed his mother and her friend 97 times, sparked a hit podcast series.

This year, Australian comedian Frankie McNair has won rave reviews for a set filled with jokes about her own experience of being sexually abused as a child.

“Uproariously funny”, it was a reminder that “there’s no topic inherently off-bounds for comedy”, said The Telegraph: “Knox ought to watch McNair, and take notes.”

Ann Widdecombe, who has died aged 78, enjoyed a level of prominence in public life that was unusual for a politician whose most senior role in government was as a mid-level minister.

That was partly due to her robust opinions on a range of issues, some informed by her Christian faith – which she never shied away from voicing. It also helped that she was instantly recognisable, said The Times, with her pudding-bowl haircut, no-nonsense manner and rasping voice. In a typically forthright appraisal, she said of herself: “I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight and a spinster – what the hell.”

As a politician, her most significant action was arguably sinking Michael Howard’s leadership bid following the party’s defeat in 1997. The pair had feuded at the Home Office, and Widdecombe got her revenge by giving a speech in Parliament in which she tore into her ex-boss’s character and record; her leaked private comment – that there was “something of the night about him” – followed him for years.

Second career

Yet Widdecombe was a kinder, more sensitive person than her uncompromising “carapace” suggested, said The Guardian. This became more apparent when she retired from front-line politics, and embarked on an unexpected second career as a TV personality. On “Strictly Come Dancing”, she gamely allowed herself to be hauled across the dancefloor like a sack of potatoes; she was a runner-up on “Celebrity Big Brother” in 2018; and she appeared in several pantomimes.

The public learnt that “Widdy” had for years acted as a surrogate mother-figure to the children of a local kebab shop owner, said The Daily Telegraph, and that she had spent thousands to get a nephew off drugs. When, in 2009, the Telegraph published its report about MPs’ expenses, she was singled out as one of the “saints” at Westminster, reinforcing the view that whatever else she was, she was not corruptible.

Westminster controversies

Widdecombe was born in 1947. Her father was a civil servant in the Admiralty Office. Although she was Anglican, she was sent to a Catholic boarding school. She read Latin at Birmingham University, and then PPE at Oxford, where she became involved in student politics and had her only boyfriend: Colin Maltby was president of the Oxford Union. On graduating, she worked first for Unilever, and later as a university administrator.

Widdecombe spent years trying to become a Tory MP, applying to scores of constituencies. She stood twice unsuccessfully before finally being elected MP for Maidstone in 1987; she would represent that part of Kent for 23 years. At Westminster, she soon made her mark with the first in a series of aggressive efforts to restrict access to abortion. She also supported capital punishment, and voted against the repeal of Section 28, the law banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools, and civil partnerships. When the Church of England allowed the ordination of women priests, Widdecombe converted to Catholicism.

As prisons minister from 1995, she made waves by seeming to defend the practice of female prisoners being kept in handcuffs during childbirth. In fact, they were only shackled until they went into labour, and after they’d given birth, but the public was not impressed by the distinction and in the media she was dubbed Doris Karloff. Her row with Howard was over his sacking of the director of the Prison Service, Derek Lewis, which she thought unfair. From 1999 to 2001, she was shadow home secretary.

Having insisted that she’d never leave the Tories, she defected to the Brexit Party in 2019 and later joined Reform UK. Since 2010, she had lived in a bungalow at the edge of Dartmoor that she had named Widdecombe’s Rest. She was found dead there in July with serious injuries; police have opened a murder investigation.

With Saudi Arabia ending its funding of LIV Golf after this season, the league is at a crossroads, moving away from its largest controversy while still in need of new financial backing. Now it appears LIV may have found some, announcing last week that it has secured investors to bring it into the 2027 season and beyond. But some major questions about the tour’s future linger.

‘Supporting the path forward’

LIV Golf has an “agreement in place with a lead investor, signed by the investor and approved by the board, to anchor the transaction and play a key role in supporting the path forward for the league’s next era, driven by and for the players,” the tour’s CEO, Scott O’Neil, said in a statement. O’Neil “didn’t identify the investor or how much money will be injected into the league,” said ESPN, though he hopes to “finalize terms in the coming weeks.”

A new backer would mark a significant changing of the guard for LIV Golf, which has been financed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund since its 2022 founding. This partnership has elicited backlash, as the fund is “chaired by Mohammed bin Salman — the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and the man who a U.S. intelligence report named as responsible for approving the operation that led to the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” said CNN. Saudi Arabia has also been accused of widespread human rights abuses.

With bin Salman pulling his funding after 2026, there is “no need to root for LIV’s demise, especially since the moral argument against it — the Saudi backing — is now out of the picture,” said The Athletic. Whoever the new investors are, however, they “won’t remotely approach the fantasy golf funding of Saudi Arabia’s trillion-dollar Public Investment Fund,” meaning the next season of LIV Golf will likely look very different.

‘A talent exodus’

It is a “reality that the Saudi Public Investment Fund invested billions into the league with no return,” and any newer investments “won't stretch as far as the previous financial backing did,” said Bleacher Report. It also remains to be seen how the players themselves will factor into the new-look league, as LIV Golf finds itself looking to bring in fresh golfers for the upcoming season.

LIV Golf “must contend with a talent exodus,” as it has seen “major winners Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed return to the PGA Tour under a program that caps some of their future earning opportunities,” said Sportico. Other big-name golfers “left the league for different reasons.” One of the main question marks is Bryson DeChambeau, the “league’s biggest star” whose expiring contract “looms large over LIV’s future.” Golf industry insiders believe DeChambeau “could command a deal with a total value somewhere between $200 million and $500 million.”

The tour wants to put golfers at the forefront either way, as during the next phase, players “will be majority equity holders in the league,” said Sportico. But “how that structure will play out, especially with the prospect of new investors coming on board, is unclear.” Many are still looking forward to the potential new phase of LIV Golf despite all the current unknowns. If the “league is reduced to a parade of fading 40-somethings who want to play 10 team-centric events a season while bouncing from continent to continent, what’s the harm in that?” said The Athletic. “More golf is better than less golf.”

Harry Potter star Jessie Cave is the latest actor to turn to OnlyFans to supplement her income.

“I’ve earned more, easily, than my entire acting career within one year,” she told The Times. Cave is best known as the Hogwarts student Lavender Brown but has also appeared in shows such as “Trollied” and “Call the Midwife”. She joined the online subscription platform known for its adult content in 2025 after receiving yet another audition rejection.

Posting non-explicit “hair content”, including videos of her brushing and braiding her hair while dressed as an elf, a maid or Lavender Brown, Cave said she made £15,000 on her first day and now has a “loyal bunch” of subscribers. “I do predict more people needing to use other platforms to make money when they’re not being an artist,” she said. “Everyone will be paying for everything.”

It is a “dystopian world view”, said the paper’s deputy culture editor Alice Jones, “where every interaction is monetised and, eventually, frankly, pornified”.

Regaining ‘control’

It is a story increasingly common among “Hollywood’s former middle class”, said Melissa Fleur Afshar on Newsweek. From Jaime Pressly to Shannon Elizabeth, some of the “most recognisable stars from the box-set and cable era” who were losing out on work and slipping off the cultural radar are “now migrating to OnlyFans instead”.

It looks like the “sole promise” of the site is “money and continued attention”, but in an acting industry “reeling from high-profile lawsuits and allegations of exploitation”, OnlyFans actually offers these people “control”.

“For decades, Hollywood operated in a way where actors relied heavily on gatekeepers,” said Estelle Keeber, a visibility expert and PR strategist. Paid subscriber platforms give users “direct access” to an audience “without needing permission from an industry middleman”.

‘Butts for Tour Buses’

It is not just actors. Lily Allen’s OnlyFans side gig in 2024, which netted her $10 (£7) a month per subscriber, “added to the long-running conversation around abysmal streaming payouts” for musicians, said Vice. The singer eventually stopped selling videos and pictures of her feet, saying “it wasn’t that fun”.

“Imagine being an artist and having nearly eight million monthly listeners on Spotify but earning more money from having 1,000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet,” she told The Standard last year.

The financial structure of streaming platforms means artists are increasingly “having to juggle budgets that resemble household accounts, such as vans against fuel, hotels against sofa-surfing and merchandise against storage fees”, said Paul Oliver, a digital innovation lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University, in The Conversation. “One cancelled show can tip a tour from workable to loss-making.”

Kate Nash used OnlyFans to fund the European leg of her 2024 tour after post-Brexit taxes left her in debt and struggling to pay everyone involved, in a campaign she called “Butts for Tour Buses”. Earlier this year, she told the Commons’ Culture Select Committee the only reason it was possible to continue tours “is because I sell pictures of my bum on the internet”.

It has become fashionable of late to declare that the Commonwealth Games no longer matter, and are living on borrowed time. Well, tell that to the good people of Glasgow, said Nik Simon in the Daily Mail. Over 11 days, Scotland’s second city – which stepped in as host after the Australian state of Victoria pulled out in 2023 on grounds of cost – welcomed competitors from 74 nations, who (in the absence of an athletes’ village) were accommodated in hotels across the area.

In return, the 434,000 ticket-holders, plus 200,000 who watched for free at the city’s fan sites, were treated to a spectacular show, said Matthew Henry on BBC Sport. Highlights of the Games, which ended on Sunday, included Scotland’s Josh Kerr storming to victory in the mile race in front of a jubilant home crowd; Wales’ Emma Finucane becoming the first sprint cyclist to win four track gold medals at the same Games; and Jamaica stunning Australia in one of the biggest upsets in netball’s history.

Overall, though, it was the Australians who dominated: spurred on by mining magnate Gina Rinehart’s offer of cash bonuses for podium finishes, the country notched up 171 medals – dwarfing second-placed England’s total of 110.

‘Ozempic’ games

As host city, Glasgow did a sterling job, said Fiona Tomas in The Telegraph: events were “impeccably run”, and the “army of cheery volunteers” kitted out in tartan couldn’t be faulted. But it was hard to escape the feeling that this was the Commonwealth Games “on Ozempic”. As a result of “cost-cutting measures”, only 10 sports were featured, down from 19 in Birmingham four years ago; and with the BBC losing out to TNT Sports on the right to broadcast the Games, TV audiences were miserly.

Worse still, a “deluge of high-profile athletes” – from England’s Keely Hodgkinson to Jamaica’s men’s 100m world champion Oblique Seville – prioritised other competitions and sat out the Games altogether. Attention now turns to the 2030 edition to be held in Ahmedabad, India. They’ll mark the centenary of the Games, and that “might be a good one to end on”.

Stepping stone

I’m not so sure about that, said Rick Broadbent in The Times. The Games may lack the glamour of the Olympics, say, or the World Cup, but that’s the whole point of them. Where else could you watch Idi Amin’s grandson complaining about ill-treatment in the boxing ring, or hear Archie Goodburn, a terminally ill swimmer, being roared on in the pool by a partisan crowd? And it’s a competition, don’t forget, that has long served athletes as a “stepping stone” to greater glories. Of course, it must be financially viable – Glasgow only managed to host the Games so cheaply because Victoria had to pay £190 million in compensation, for pulling out. But assuming that “the price is right”, this is undoubtedly “an event worth saving”.

While promoting his latest blockbuster, filmmaker Christopher Nolan listed scholar Emily Wilson’s translation of “The Odyssey” as one of his influences. Now, Wilson’s scathing critique of Nolan’s cinematic take on the epic poem has gone viral, inspiring additional backlash from critics and academics alike. Amid the heated controversy over one of the year’s biggest films, there may be a silver lining to the discourse.

Why Wilson trashed Nolan’s adaptation

Wilson’s expertise in the classics is undeniable. She is also no stranger to backlash. In 2017, she became the first woman to translate “The Odyssey” from ancient Greek into English, an interpretation “widely celebrated in academia and the literary world” as “comprehensive, modern in sensibilities and faithful” to Homer’s almost 3,000-year-old classic, said The New York Times. Her translation departs from the “masculine framing used by her male predecessors,” a move that has “subjected her to online harassment and misogyny from men and far-right figures.”

Before Nolan’s movie premiered, Wilson was “pumped” to see how the epic played out on the big screen, she said on The New York Times’ The Daily podcast. However, after seeing Nolan’s adaptation, Wilson said she would be “ashamed to have written any part of this script” at The London Review of Books. The film had “nothing convincing to say,” it lacked “psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth,” and the “writing is abysmal,” Wilson added. It was a “family-friendly audiovisual spectacle” comparable to an “elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display.”

Most of the nonwhite actors “play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist,” Wilson said in her LRB review. She has since expressed regret for this “paragraph about the uses of the POC actors — who are all great, but IMO under-utilized,” Wilson wrote on social media. She still thinks the film “largely wastes its strong cast,” but she “framed it badly.”

A debate reminiscent of the golden era of critics

One of the most prominent figures to come to Nolan’s defense against Wilson was Joyce Carol Oates, a retired professor of the humanities and a prolific writer who has won a National Book Award. Wilson’s “tone of dismissal & haughty superiority strike a sour note,” Oates said on X. Instead of “disagreeing with interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner,” Wilson, who has “benefited enormously from Nolan’s film,” speaks in the “crude language of MAGA folks attacking someone with ideas that differ from hers.” Within the world of translators, Wilson’s review “seems all the more surprising since all translations are, presumably, subjective & not equivalent to the original text.” One would expect a translator to be “just a wee bit more thoughtful & respectful of others who are acting in good faith just as (she would claim) she is.”

Wilson used “baffling arguments” to “flay” Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s poem, classicist Theo Nash said at Slate. She criticizes Nolan for deviating from the text, “as if the filmmaker’s choices were not also an act of interpretation.” The close attention that informs her translation is “lacking in her reading of the movie,” and the “idea that Nolan might have something new to say about ‘The Odyssey’ is denied.”

Whether or not you agree with Wilson’s perspective, it’s “always exciting to read a particularly full-throated pan,” said critic Kathryn VanArendonk at Vulture. Even if you don’t believe Wilson did her job as a critic, she has “done her job as a writer,” which is to “be a compelling read who makes her argument unmistakably clear.”

Figuring out “who is punching down here is really interesting,” VanArendonk added. Since Wilson has “academic authority” and is “writing with such vigor,” it is “easy to forget that she has less power” than Nolan, a Hollywood darling. That is also “part of the pleasure of the conversation.” Wilson is not interested in “softening any of it.” Still Nolan’s the one who “walks away unscathed, no question.” Of all the topics we could watch people fight about online, “how someone adapted ‘The Odyssey’ is such a good one.”

“The fact that a drone armed with explosives is here on the grounds of an airport represents a new threat scenario,” said Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt in Leipzig. “We’re talking about a professional hybrid threat situation.”

Dobrindt looked “ashen-faced” as he addressed the media, said Newsweek. Flights were halted after the discovery of a quadcopter armed with explosives in a restricted area near Ukrainian Antonov freight planes. Nato has acknowledged it is aware of the incident.

Security experts and officials are asking a question that was “once unthinkable”: is Germany “de facto at war, or at least engaged in a hybrid war – and with whom?”

Germany becoming ‘primary target’

Leipzig/Halle airport is a Nato and German military logistics hub, and since 2022 has been used by Ukraine to transport military equipment. It is also the base for Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines in Europe, a cargo carrier, and as the drone was found close to a Ukrainian cargo plane, this has “directed suspicion towards Russia”, said The Guardian.

Drone sightings at German airports rose “significantly” in the first half of 2026, said Der Spiegel. According to German Air Navigation Services, 166 drones were spotted at 15 international airports, compared to 101 in the same period last year.

The threat of drone attacks is “becoming increasingly concrete”, said Süddeutsche Zeitung. But bringing them down is notoriously difficult. Drones can be stopped by “jammers, nets, or even by being shot down”, but this is a “delicate task” when they are near residential areas.

Leipzig airport was already equipped with a drone defence system, but a “custom-made” model was seemingly able to bypass it. Germany is becoming the “primary target” in “Russia’s shadow war”, which has the “aim of dissuading it from supporting Ukraine in the short term and weakening it in the long term”.

Germany has “gradually expanded its defensive measures in recent months”, said Euronews. Since October 2025, “under certain conditions”, the federal police have been allowed to shoot down drones. And Dobrindt has called for drones to be “detected, intercepted and, if necessary, shot down more consistently in future”. But the process is complicated, with frequency scanners, cameras and radar systems all required.

Russia trying to ‘sow fear’

“As well as the means and the motive, Moscow does have form” with this kind of attack, said the BBC. Though there is no hard evidence to suggest who is behind it, there is “renewed talk” of hybrid war across Europe. “If Russia was behind this”, its aim was likely to “sow fear”.

The incident raises concerns about foreign interference in upcoming German regional elections, where “far-right politicians have campaigned on fears of escalations with Moscow”, said Politico. Former communist and East German states Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania will hold elections in September. “Pro-Russian sentiment remains strong” and the far-right party AfD “could take power for the first time at the state level”.

When Jason Arday became the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s history in 2023, he was “lionised by the academic world” and became a “poster boy for the university’s diversity drive”, said Gordon Rayner in The Daily Telegraph.

Then only 37, he had defied “almost impossible odds” to get there. Raised on a council estate in south London, he was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. He couldn’t speak until he was 11, and did not read or write until 18. Yet he’d managed to obtain a bachelor’s degree, followed by a PhD, and had gone on to forge a remarkable career in academia. Now, though, the sociology professor – who has tendered since his resignation as a fellow at Jesus College – is “the subject of a bitter row over plagiarism that has pitted his peers against each other”.

Long-standing concerns

His critics note that his PhD thesis contains passages that are strikingly similar to those in other academic papers. His defenders say that these were innocent errors, resulting from a lack of formal supervision when he was doing his PhD, and insufficient support for his complex learning disabilities. They say he cited the sources in question in his bibliography, but failed to do so within the text proper.

Concerns about Arday’s work have circulated in academic circles for several years, said Jennifer Schuessler and Alexandra Alter in The New York Times. But they “exploded into public view” last month, when Nathan Cofnas, a self-defined “race realist” who was sacked from Cambridge in 2024, published a lengthy blogpost about them.

As journalists dug deeper, said Guy Adams in the Daily Mail, other aspects of Arday’s “Hollywood-style life story” were also called into question. For instance, doubts were cast about his claim to have raised £5.5 million for charity, including by running an astonishing 600 miles in six days. He has since said it was actually 12 days, and that the £5.5 million was a collective effort.

Fraught topic

“Academic integrity matters,” said Daniella Maison in The Independent. But Arday was officially cleared of plagiarism some years ago. That he is still being pursued over his PhD, and other achievements that are not even related to his job, suggest that legitimate scrutiny has shifted into something more “punitive”.

Yet leading academics told this paper that the scrutiny was “fair” for a professor at Cambridge, said Lanre Bakare in The Guardian. This is a fraught business, and the stakes are high for all concerned. The university – which appointed Arday at a time when its own track record on race was being scrutinised in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement – is facing questions about its judgement. As for Arday, he could lose his reputation, and his career.

Saudi Arabia last week announced it had joined American forces in conducting air strikes on Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a coalition of Iran-backed militias accused of attacks on both U.S. and Saudi assets in the region. The Saudi attack came in response ⁠to recent drone attacks targeting oil facilities “launched from Iraqi territory and carried out by Iran-aligned terrorist militias,” said the kingdom’s Ministry of Defense in a statement on X.

The latest assault is a “highly dangerous escalation,” said the PMF, per Al Jazeera. Iran’s Foreign Ministry had also condemned the “aggressive attacks” as a violation of Iraq’s “national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The kingdom ‘does not seek escalation’

After spending months “trying not to get dragged into a regional conflict,” Saudi Arabia “appears hemmed in, facing enemies in three directions” between Iran and its proxies in Iraq and Yemen, said CNN. Saudi Arabia’s strategy of “opening the kingdom up to foreign investment” and making it the “regional economic powerhouse” is “now on life support.” At the same time, embroiling itself in a “broader conflict” would be a “risky and potentially costly option” for Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia’s strikes, done “in coordination with U.S. Central Command,” mark the country’s “first announced foray” into the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, said USA Today. But previous reports from Reuters citing “unnamed Western and Iranian officials” indicated that Saudi Arabia had “launched covert strikes on the Islamic Republic” earlier this year already. These most recent attacks stem from the kingdom’s “legitimate right to defend itself and its capabilities,” said the Saudi Defense Ministry in a statement. Riyadh also reserves the “right to respond at the appropriate time and place.”

While Saudi Arabia “does not seek escalation,” the ministry said, it will “respond to any aggression it faces.” Over the weekend, however, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke with President Donald Trump and “expressed concern over his plans for massive new strikes” against Iran, said Axios. Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman expressed similar sentiments at a recent meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance, emphasizing “deescalation with Iran” shortly after the joint U.S.-Saudi strikes, said the outlet.

The PMF in particular has “always been a contentious” issue between Iraq, the U.S., and “other neighboring countries” like Iran, said Al Jazeera. The Iraqi group exists as “part of the country’s security force,” reports “directly to the commander-in-chief who is also the prime minister,” and has “at times struck the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and bases across Iraq at will” while refusing government orders.

‘Unpalatable choice’

Unlike previous clandestine entanglements, Riyadh’s “overt involvement” in regional fighting “marks a new turning point in the conflict,” said The Guardian. “There is a feeling” among Saudi leadership that the Iranians are “doing what they are doing because they feel that the Gulf Arab states won’t move up the escalatory ladder,” said H.A. Hellyer, the Royal United Services Institute’s senior associate fellow in Middle East studies, to the outlet. Riyadh wants to “make it clear that assessment is wrong and that if Tehran thinks the Gulf states are easy prey, they are wrong.”

Should Saudi Arabia come under direct Iranian attack, “it could face an unpalatable choice,” said CNN. Either it must “respond directly in a way that would draw it more deeply into war” or risk emboldening a Tehran “regime that many see as more hardline than before the war.”

Record low levels on Europe’s biggest rivers have had such an impact on shipping, energy and tourism that there are real fears about the long-term economic impact of severe heatwaves on the continent.

This week, Germany’s Low-water Information System recorded extremely low levels at 43% of its measuring stations along the 765-mile Rhine, and at 59% of its measuring stations along the Danube, which runs through 10 countries from Germany to the Black Sea. On Friday, the navigable water depth at Kaub, a key chokepoint on the Rhine for shipments heading to southern Germany and Switzerland, dropped to a record low of 25cm. Extreme weather conditions are “leaving Europe’s waterways parched, triggering a series of compounding crises”, said The Guardian.

‘Feeling the pain’

Both Hungary and Romania have had to take special measures to protect nuclear power plants normally cooled by the Danube: Romania has blown up rocks to redirect water to its last working nuclear reactor; Hungary’s prime minister Péter Magyar has announced that the Paks plant, which supplies around half his country’s electricity, will have to close completely, perhaps for weeks. Warning of “an energy crisis situation”, he posted on X that “coordinated steps and restraint will be needed to avoid more severe consequences.”

“Much of mainland Europe is feeling the pain”, said Euractiv. Austria’s run-of-river hydropower plants are generating 30% less electricity than usual, while high river temperatures forced 11% of France’s nuclear-generating capacity offline in the hottest hours of Tuesday.

But “energy is ⁠not the only loser,” said Reuters. With water levels on the Rhine so low at key points, cargo ships can only carry 20% to 30% of their normal load without risk of grounding, pushing up freight costs as more vessels are needed to ship goods.

Current conditions on the Danube are “a pain for tourism”, said The Wall Street Journal. Last week, 186 passengers had to be rescued when the cruise liner hit a sandbank. Several cruise operators have had to cancel voyages altogether.

The dropping water levels have revealed some more enjoyable surprises, too, with Second World War German battleships, and even the remains of an ancient woolly mammoth, emerging into view.

‘Fingerprint of changing climate’

If the heatwave-related disruption does not abate soon, it could challenge the region’s “already stressed economy”, said the WSJ. A 10-month drought in 2018 wiped nearly 0.4% points off German GDP, according to Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates. “The crucial unknown” right now is how long this drought will last.

“The heat dries the soil, empties the rivers and drives up demand for water all at once. That is the fingerprint of a changing climate,” Hannah Cloke, a professor of meteorology and climate science at the University of Reading, told CNN. It will “keep getting worse as long as we burn fossil fuels”.

Europe is experiencing the fastest warming of any continent, and the consequent heatwaves and drought have “exposed the need to ‌reconsider business practices”, said Reuters. These river disruptions will be “a test of how quickly the region can adapt infrastructure built around 20th-century conditions” to a 21st-century climate where “extreme low water” is more likely to be the norm, said Bloomberg.

Disputing credit card charges may be the new way to stick it to corporations. More consumers are engaging in friendly fraud, disputing real charges or purchases in order to get their money back. The trend reflects a distrust in corporations as well as overall economic instability.

‘Expensive, onerous process’

Friendly fraud involves the use of charge-backs, which are “when a customer goes to their bank, as opposed to the merchant, to dispute a charge,” said NerdWallet. “When the customer requests their money back, the bank contacts the business’s payment processor.”

Then the “bank verifies whether the charge-back request is legitimate” and reverses the charge if it is, said NerdWallet. Most incorrect charge-backs tend to be honest mistakes as a “cardholder identifies a purchase on their transaction statement as fraudulent and disputes it,” when in reality, “they or someone else in their household may have made the purchase,” said Mastercard.

Transaction disputes have also “traditionally been used to address certain types of crimes committed against consumers,” like if “someone steals your wallet and goes on a shopping spree, or if you put a deposit on a wedding venue that goes out of business before the big day,” said Bloomberg. The credit card issuer “claws the funds back from the offending merchant’s bank, on top of a charge-back penalty fee,” which is an “expensive, onerous process” that “incentivizes merchants to be honest transactors and resolve issues with customers before charge-backs are filed.”

‘Existential threat’

What was once an accidental error or a way to stop theft is now sometimes a tool to obtain free merchandise. Friendly fraud is a “costly form of charge-back abuse in which consumers dispute legitimate credit card transactions to recover their money while keeping the purchased goods or services,” said the technology publication Tekedia. Though the phenomenon is not new, it is becoming more common. There were “158 million transaction disputes in 2025, an increase of 29% from 2021, significantly outpacing general growth in card transactions,” said Bloomberg.

The trend takes an economic toll. The “volume of disputes has become so cumbersome that more retailers are farming out the whole process of investigating and defending against fraud claims to third-party vendors that specialize in helping them hold on to more of consumers’ money,” said Bloomberg. Increased levels of chargebacks can also affect prices. “Large retailers fold the cost of lost revenue, lost product and lost labor that fraudulent charge-backs create into the prices everyone pays.” But “for small merchants those losses quickly become an existential threat to their ability to continue operating.”

‘Retaliate against retailers’

The rise of friendly fraud is directly tied to growing distrust of companies and corporations. Friendly fraud is a “way to retaliate against retailers over poor customer service, delayed deliveries, strict return policies or dissatisfaction with purchases,” said Tekedia. People may not even be aware they are committing fraud, as many small value disputes are approved quickly and without much investigation. There are “people that feel like, oh, this is just sticking it to the man, so to speak,” Jim Mortensen, a strategic adviser in the fraud and anti-money-laundering practice at the research firm Datos Insights, said to Bloomberg.

Economic circumstances also contribute to the rise of stealing and fraud. “One thing in the last two to three years has been that the cost of living in most developed markets has put quite a significant squeeze on consumers, particularly younger consumers on lower income,” a senior research analyst at Juniper Research who focuses on digital payments told Bloomberg. While engaging in friendly fraud sounds intriguing, it is “unethical and, in some jurisdictions, may constitute fraud,” said Tekedia. “Repeated abuse can result in account closures, damaged relationships with financial institutions and even legal consequences.”

Almost three in 10 Britons now use AI chatbots to get health advice. And UK medical-policy experts are concerned that this could create confusion, undermine trust in GPs and other healthcare workers, and make it more difficult to take an informed decision about your health.

The warning, from The Academy of Medical Sciences, comes as Open AI rolls out ChatGPT Health in the US. It allows users to “securely connect” their medical records and wellness apps to “ground conversations” in their own health information, so that the bot can “take a more active role” in their health.

ChatGPT Health is not yet available in the UK but, with more than 300 million people worldwide regularly directing their health-related questions to ChatGPT, it could swiftly become a “democratising force in healthcare”, Tanzeem Choudhury, a health-innovation expert at New York’s Cornell University told CBS News. But there are definite risks and trade-offs. “Used well,” an AI tool such as this can “help direct people to trusted sources”, said Yvonne Doyle, a fellow of The Academy of Medical Sciences and former medical director of Public Health England. But it can also mislead “convincingly”.

‘Zero awareness of fallibility’

People have been using the internet to answer their questions for decades, but the “danger” with an AI chatbot is that it responds with “fluent, emotionally convincing paragraphs” and “remembers context”, making it “sound more ‘human’ than many humans”, said Celina Cartoto and Anthony Kelly on RTE. Yet it has “zero awareness of its own fallibility”, always providing an answer, “even when one doesn’t exist”. People need to remember that, though it “speaks like a doctor, listens like a therapist and remembers like a friend”, it is actually “none of them”.

We know that all AI chatbots can “hallucinate” and provide “misleading, inaccurate or even dangerous” information, said CBS News. Open AI has been careful to state that ChatGPT Health is designed to support, not replace doctors, but it has not responded to questions about whether it is “equipped to recognise when to advise a user to seek help from a medical professional”. It seems that “onus is on the user”.

Even before the rollout of the Health feature, there were indications that users could become dangerously reliant on ChatGPT for medical advice. Last month, a 55-year-old US pastor sued OpenAI, claiming its bot “brought him to the brink of death”, by “repeatedly and insistently” misdiagnosing his symptoms of near-fatal pulmonary embolism, said the BBC. An OpenAI spokesperson told CBS News that “ChatGPT is not a doctor and should never be a substitute for medical care, diagnosis or treatment”.

AI can be a “useful educational tool” for health information, said Leana Wen, an emergency doctor in the US, and a clinical associate professor at George Washington University, told CNN. It can “explain medical terminology” and “compare treatment options at a high level”, helping “people prepare questions” for their doctor and be “more engaged” in their care. But “it has important limitations” and “should not replace clinical judgement” by a medically qualified human.

Privacy concerns

There is also the question of privacy. How risky is it to share so much of your individual medical information with an AI tool, such as ChatGPT Health? Open AI has said that Health has “enhanced privacy” and encryption, and that conversations used in the Health tab won’t flow into non-Health chats. But it’s no accident that Health has not yet been rolled out in the UK, or the EU, where data protection and digital privacy laws are stricter than in the US.

“If you are providing data directly to a technology company that is not providing any healthcare services, then it is buyer beware,” Bradley Malin, a biomedical informatics expert, told Time. OpenAI says it will protect your data but “what exactly does that mean”?

It all comes down to whether or not “you trust OpenAI to keep to its word”, Robert Wachter, a medic who has written extensively about AI and healthcare, told the magazine. OpenAI does have “really strong corporate interest in not screwing this up”. Its brand is “dependent” on the user “feeling comfortable” in sharing their information, and any sort of data breach would end that trust.

The end of doctors?

The increasing use of AI programmes for health queries is becoming “existentially threatening” for medics, Jonathan Chen, a doctor at Stanford University Medical Center, told The New York Times. What is our purpose going to be now? Should we “get out of the way and let a computer take over”?

Not for a while yet, Lee Schwamm, associate dean for digital strategy and transformation at Yale School of Medicine, told the paper. And that’s because chatbots can’t yet think critically enough about the health information people are providing – and more importantly, not providing – them with. AI is “really good at matching patterns and making predictions”. But it can only do so “based on the data that it is given about the patient. It has no way to extract” what may be crucial further information itself.

Besides, patients still need a human connection. If you’re going to be told you have a serious health issue, or even how much longer you have to live, “you want to look someone in the eye”.

Who would be an investor in South Korea right now? “Despair and frustration” spread again on Wednesday as the chip-heavy Kospi index “cratered” during another “hectic session” that triggered a second successive official circuit-breaker, reported Bloomberg.

The catalyst was disappointing earnings from local semiconductor giant SK Hynix but, given “already jittery sentiment” around the AI boom, it could almost have been anything. The oncebooming Kospi has now lost more than 33% of its value in a month.

‘Demand destruction’

“The chips are down,” said Bryce Elder in the FT – especially in the red-hot memory sector. Some have pinned the “chip dip”, which has also hit Wall Street with force, on the IPO of Chinese challenger CXMT; others on reports that a stateowned Chinese company is beginning mass production of “immersion deep-ultra lithography machines” – advanced chip manufacturing tools over which the West (especially the Dutch giant ASML) currently enjoys a monopoly. Still, the more obvious concern is “demand destruction”, in what has always been a volatile and highly cyclical sector. Voracious demand from America’s big AI hyperscalers has sent chip prices sky-high. “All that’s needed to wreck 2027 sales expectations is for this cycle to turn from virtuous to vicious. Plus ça change…”

Could China do for chips what it has already done for cars? That’s the fear on the Nasdaq, said Eliot Brown in The Wall Street Journal. As Elon Musk recently told The Economist, Chinese manufacturers are “closer than most people realise to solving the lithography problem”. Chinese companies have been restricted from buying the cutting-edge machines – which is why they are “a step behind the US in advanced chipmaking”.

‘Nvidia - the central bank of the AI economy’

Yet what’s particularly concerning about the plummeting shares of chipmakers, said DealBook in The New York Times, is that the rout coincides with a broader crisis of confidence on Wall Street about AI-related corporate debt and “circular” financial arrangements. That was rammed home when it emerged that chip giant Nvidia – increasingly “the central bank of the AI economy” – is brokering a $250bn guarantee for OpenAI’s immense Ohio campus. “Throughout history, almost every generational infrastructure leap has relied on hardware titans to co-sign their buyers’ credit.”

But this has also led to devastating “debt crashes”. The chief winner of the current turmoil is Apple, said the FT. It has reclaimed its crown as the world’s most valuable company, with a $5trn valuation, because it is seen as a relative “haven”. The same is true of the FTSE 100, which has hit an all-time high as an “anti-tech” index. Swings and roundabouts.

Have we already lost control of AI, asked Danny Fortson in The Sunday Times. On 11 July, an entirely new kind of hacking attack was launched at Hugging Face, an online platform that houses a library of AI code and datasets. The attack, which clearly used AI agents, “advanced at frightening speed and scale”, executing tens of thousands of actions so as to break into the company’s system.

‘Considerable skill and persistence’

Hugging Face managed to neutralise it, and alerted the authorities. Days later, the company behind the attack “raised its hand”: OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, admitted that one of its tests had gone badly wrong. OpenAI had set up a “sandbox” – a supposedly safe area of its network, entirely disconnected from the internet – and ordered two cutting-edge AI models to perform a series of cybersecurity tests. The models decided to break out of the sandbox, escape onto the internet and hack into the place they knew they would find the answers: Hugging Face’s servers.

Media outlets described the AI as “going rogue”, said Jamie Bartlett in The Observer. But, in fact, these models merely single-mindedly performed the task they’d been given. The models reasoned that the most effective strategy was to cheat, and they did so with “considerable skill and persistence”. This is nothing new. Leading models have deceived users, attempted blackmail, and even tried to copy themselves in order to complete their tasks.

‘The genie is out of the bottle’

Some sceptical observers have suggested that this story might be a publicity stunt: that it benefits OpenAI to suggest that its products have stunning powers. But the truth is that these companies really don’t know how to build AI systems safely – and yet they “continue to rush ahead building ever-more powerful models”. It was fortunate that Hugging Face, a New York tech firm valued at $4.5bn, had a highly proficient cybersecurity team, said The Economist. “Things might have turned out much worse for a less well-resourced outfit.”

This is not necessarily a doomsday scenario, said John Thickstun in The Guardian. AI is very good at hacking; but such powers can also be used to make IT systems more secure. Ironically, Hugging Face had to rely on a free Chinese AI model to thwart this attack – because OpenAI and US rivals jealously guard their own. At any rate, “the genie is out of the bottle”, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent: we must learn how to manage AI. Every technology developed by mankind has been double-edged, and AI is no different. “A radically different world is not necessarily anything to be frightened of – but, even if it were, it’s coming at us anyway.”

China is not beating the U.S. in the artificial intelligence race, at least not yet. But the country’s AI products are cheaper and good enough that a number of American AI users are shifting away from homegrown products. Enter a Silicon Valley panic. The U.S. government may take action, and a new Chinese model — Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 — may be the trip wire.

‘Something good enough’

Kimi K3 can “allegedly beat some of the best systems built by U.S. companies at a fraction of the cost,” said The Verge. It is the latest in a series of cheap Chinese-made “open-weight” AI models that “anyone can download, inspect, modify and run on their own infrastructure,” said Microsoft. This presents a different approach from closed-source “proprietary platforms” like Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT; the Chinese method challenges the conventional wisdom that “leading-edge AI requires heavy spending on data centers and the advanced chips” used by U.S. companies, said CNN.

The Chinese open-weight models are “increasingly almost as good as closed systems made by leading U.S. companies,” which is why a “growing number of Americans” are moving to the Chinese systems, said The Associated Press. Kimi K3 “just seems snappier” than Anthropic’s Claude Fable chatbot, Mozilla chief technology officer Raffi Krikorian said to the outlet. Other Chinese open-weight models lack the “overall, full-range capabilities” of the products made by American companies, said the AP. But AI users “just don’t need” expensive U.S.-made AI products, technology executive Curt Meinhold told the outlet. “We need something good enough.”

‘Full AI communism’

Some American AI executives are “sounding the alarm” about the rise of open-weight models, said The Wall Street Journal. The Chinese models represent “full AI communism,” in which governments provide artificial intelligence as “digital public infrastructure” rather than a “market product,” OpenAI’s Dean Ball said on X. The White House may soon decide to “create large amounts of regulatory risk around the use of open-weight Chinese models” as a result.

Others disagree. Restricting access to open-weight models “wouldn’t stop their proliferation — but would weaken U.S. startups” that use the technology, a coalition of 200 smaller tech companies argued last week in a letter to administration officials, per Politico. Regulation would be “great for Anthropic. We’re all going to have to spend money on Anthropic,” Suhail Doshi, the founder of AI infrastructure startup Particle, said to the outlet.

The White House is “showing signs it could ban cutting-edge Chinese AI models,” said Axios. Administration officials last year considered an executive order mandating that U.S. firms could “only host Chinese models if they could guarantee security and take liability if it were breached.” The ascendance of Kimi K3 is “reigniting” those old regulatory efforts. An example: The White House this week banned Chinese-made “humanoid and quadruped robots” to “protect the U.S. AI build-out,” said Reuters.

Three British superhero actors have spoken out against the proposed merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery and urged the culture secretary to block the deal.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Benedict Wong, both of whom appear in Marvel’s “Doctor Strange” films, and Alan Cumming, who played Nightcrawler in the “X-Men series”, have written in The Guardian warning the Paramount-Warner Bros. tie-up “threatens to inflict immense harm on the British public”.

The $110 billion (£83 billion) deal is being led by Paramount CEO David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder and close ally of Donald Trump. It would create one of the world’s most powerful media empires, bringing together HBO, CNN, TNT Sports, Channel 5, Paramount+, as well as the DC Universe, Harry Potter, “Game of Thrones” and “The Lord of the Rings” franchises.

‘Minded to intervene’

Among a host of issues, Cumberbatch, Cumming and Wong cite concerns over the livelihoods of British film and TV crews, independent film financing, and the consolidation of news publications. “The UK is being threatened by a media merger that would harm our workers, our culture and the public – but we can stop it,” they say.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said she is “minded to intervene” in the deal on public interest grounds. “I am conscious that the proposed acquisition is global in nature. In reaching this decision, my focus has been, and will remain, on the UK public interest and the range of services available to UK audiences,” she said in a letter to the current and proposed owners of Warner Bros. Discovery.

While Paramount has said it remains “confident that our proposed transaction does not pose any media plurality issues”, were the UK government to issue a public interest intervention notice it would trigger further scrutiny from media regulator Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority.

Depending on her decision, Nandy “could end up upsetting or possibly ingratiating virtually all the major US studios, streamers and tech giants”, not to mention the Trump administration, which is strongly backing the deal, said Deadline. This makes her “one of the most consequential culture secretaries in recent memory… in America that is.”

‘Bad for everyone’ except billionaires

The call for the British government to intervene comes after 12 American states, led by California, sued to try to block the merger, warning it would raise prices, shrink the number of films made and fall foul of strict anti-trust laws.

Last week a US district judge temporarily paused the merger to consider the lawsuit. This prompted Paramount to agree not to close the deal until June 2027 or five days after the court issues a ruling on the case, whichever is earlier.

For Paramount, the delay “may prove costly”, said The Hollywood Reporter. The merger agreement says Warner’s shareholders are owed roughly $650 million per quarter, or $6.9 million per day, if the deal is not completed by 30 September.

More than 1,000 leading industry professionals from US film and TV signed an open letter in April warning of the impact of “media consolidation” that prioritises “the interests of a small group of powerful stakeholders over the broader public good”.

Mark Ruffalo, one of the actors leading the campaign against the merger, said it “will mean less films, less TV, less creativity, less of everything from the people who make the decisions. This merger is bad for everyone except the billionaire class.”

If the “gossip in publishing circles” has any merit, novelist Rachel Cusk has turned her eye to Natalie Portman for her latest book, said Leaf Arbuthnot in The Telegraph. The actor isn’t named in “Life of M”. But the similarities between the character “M” and Portman are “so glaring they become hard to ignore” – and the portrayal is far from complimentary.

An unflattering portrait

“Life of M”, which is published next month, is about a film star who allows an unnamed writer to chronicle her life. There are “certainly points of correspondence” between Portman and M in the novel, said John Self in The Times. M “played a ballerina” in a movie and is a “model for a major brand”; Portman starred in “Black Swan” and her face is splashed across billboards as the long-time ambassador for Miss Dior.

Cusk’s character was also a child actor whose first film included sexual scenes that “originally included several scenes in which the child was shown wanting or inviting sexual interaction with the central male character”. Portman’s debut in “Leon” in 1994 saw her mother step in to insist scenes with her daughter and an older co-star were removed from the film.

Cusk has remained “tight-lipped” on the rumours. It’s “handy” to generate a buzz ahead of publication and the novelist has never been shy about putting “whoever she likes into her books”. Her divorce memoir “Aftermath” explored the breakdown of her marriage to her ex-husband in vivid detail, while her “bracingly honest” book about parenting, “A Life’s Work”, was widely criticised for her unflinching portrayal of motherhood. “It has reached the stage, in fact, where an effective modern curse might be ‘May you appear in a Rachel Cusk book’”.

Portman and Cusk both live in Paris, and move in similar circles. The actor is (or was) a fan of Cusk and even interviewed the writer, picking two of her novels to discuss in her Instagram book club. But “no one in her right mind who understood Rachel Cusk’s work would allow her to write about her”, said Valerie Stivers on UnHerd. Cusk excels at “reducing the human to the mathematical product of cold existential forces” – appearing in one of her books is “never going to be flattering”.

“As literary assassinations go, Cusk’s of M is sly and subtle, but it is lethal nonetheless,” said Arbuthnot in The Telegraph. Cusk stresses M is pretty, “humble” and “gracious”, but the “unsettling argument” she carefully builds is that “M is engaged in a constant effort to seem like a believable person”. What is “cruel” about the character is the “impregnable fort of isolation she believes the actress lives within”.

A ‘delicate balancing act’

Cusk is just the latest in a “long line of writers” to cause upset by basing their characters on real people, said Self in The Times. Philip Roth was a “master” at it, first casting a “thinly disguised avatar of his wife”, Claire Bloom, in his 1990 novel “Deception”, before he “twisted the knife”, with another caricature of Bloom, this time as a self-loathing antisemitic Jewish actor in “I Married a Communist”. And Nora Ephron famously wrote about her divorce from the journalist Carl Bernstein in her novel, “Heartburn”, which features a food writer who is seven months pregnant when she discovers her husband’s affair.

Non-writers assume we novelists insert real-life people into our books out of “spite”, said Amanda Craig in The i Paper, but a novel is “what it says on the tin – a work with made-up characters and situations”. My “long-ago ex-boyfriend”, the literary critic David Sexton, thought he had been “unflatteringly depicted” in my novel “A Vicious Circle” and “threatened to sue”. I might use a line of dialogue I’ve heard “uttered by a real-life person” but most writers I know “go through agonies” to make their characters who might “have their roots in reality as remote as possible from the original”.

Creating characters inspired by real people is a “delicate balancing act”, said Marshall Fine on BookTrib. Novelists run the risk of “being accused of writing a roman à clef, in which only the names have been changed to protect the guilty”. The “trick” is to find ways of using real people in creative ways to “inspire characters who are products of your imagination”.

While there is no legal requirement to seek permission from the real person who inspires a work of fiction, the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain advises that it is “good practice” to inform subjects of creative writing projects in advance, to get their “blessing” to reduce the risk of future legal action, and to remove any “identifying information”.

For now, Cusk hasn’t addressed the rumours about “Life of M”, and unless the actor speaks out to “correct the record, the truth will never be known – nor can it really matter”, said Stivers on UnHerd. “If the result of the two women’s friendship is a very strong Cusk book indeed, everyone should be happy – including, if her art-appreciation is real, Natalie Portman.”

“No remnants of Nazi influence remain” at Salzburger Vorstadt 15, the building in the Austrian town of Braunau where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, said The New York Times. The former guesthouse has now been remodelled into a police station, in an estimated £15 million renovation that concludes a “years-long effort” to prevent the site from becoming “an attraction for Nazi sympathisers”.

‘Neutralise’ history

The Austrian government acquired Salzburger Vorstadt 15 from its previous private ownership in 2016. It then remained empty while a commission decided the future of the building, forcing the town to decide whether to “confront or erase this past”, said Katja Hoyer in The Telegraph.

Ultimately, it decided it wanted to “neutralise” history by choosing a new purpose for the building to ensure it would “neither be demolished nor become a memorial”.

As a police station, the building will be seen as a place of “democracy, the rule of law, security, freedom and human dignity”, said Gerhard Karner, the Austrian interior minister. “Our police is the opposite of the darkest times of our history,” he said at the opening ceremony. However, he added, “memory will not disappear”.

While there will be no information plaque at the site, a memorial stone remains at the front of the building. The stone, taken from Austria’s largest Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen, bears the inscription: “For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again fascism. The millions of dead remind us.”

‘Concerns on several levels’

Over the years, Braunau residents have become “fed up” with “extremists and drunken revellers” who “posed for pictures” outside the building with the “straight-armed Hitler salute” or laid “roses and wreaths” to mark the dictator’s birthday, said The Guardian.

But choosing what to do with the site was no easy task. Turning it into a museum of Nazi atrocities could “continue to draw right-wing extremists” but demolishing the building would “obfuscate an important chapter of local history”.

It was felt that a police station would “discourage Hitler admirers” from visiting the site, commission member Oliver Rathkolb told Deutsche Welle.

However, in a 2023 poll only 6% of respondents were in support of the police station idea, possibly due to concerns over the role of the Gestapo secret police as “one of the regime’s principal instruments of terror”. Salzburger Vorstadt 15 should have become “a place dedicated to peace, freedom, democracy and tolerance”, said local resident Eveline Doll. Turning it into a police station “raises concerns on several levels”.

But Florian Kotanko, chair of the Contemporary History Society of Braunau, rejected such comparisons. “We live in a democratic state governed by the rule of law” and, so long as officers are “held accountable”, there is “no reason for fundamental distrust of the police”, he said.

Since the US and Israel first attacked Iran on 28 February, President Trump “has claimed more than 30 times that Operation Epic Fury has been successful, is over, or almost is”, said Robin Wright in The New Yorker. None of these predictions have been borne out; “some have bordered on delusional”.

Tehran on the attack

The latest ceasefire, agreed in June, has “functionally collapsed”. In the past fortnight, the US has launched nightly air strikes, renewed the blockade of Iranian ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, and reimposed sanctions. Iran has attacked US and other targets in Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. Three US service personnel were killed last week by a strike on an airbase in Jordan; nearly 100 more have been injured in the latest attacks.

Trump has tried three strategies so far: regime change, a longer campaign of relentless bombardment, and diplomacy. None have worked. In Washington, “there is a growing sense of despair” about the direction of the war.

Iran’s leaders feared that the Memorandum of Understanding agreed in June was just a temporary retreat, said Vali Nasr in the FT – to relieve pressure on the world economy and allow US forces to rearm. There was, in fact, “plenty of evidence to support their suspicions”. More US military assets began to arrive in the area, and the deal’s provisions – on coordinating the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran, on the need for a ceasefire in Lebanon – were ignored. Tehran’s aim now, in going on the attack, is to show that the US cannot dictate events, and that Iran can withstand whatever military and economic pain is inflicted on it.

Deep trouble

Some strategists think the new US plan could work, said Mark Urban in The Sunday Times. Its forces are battering Iran’s coast – military installations, bridges, airports, port facilities – to neutralise the Iranian military’s hold on the strait. At the same time, choking off oil exports will plunge the country into deep economic crisis – albeit in months, not weeks.

In the meantime, the collateral damage to the region is escalating, said Ahmed Al Omran in the FT. Kuwait, which is bearing the brunt of Iran’s current attacks, has endured 1,400 missile and drone strikes. Its airport and its oil infrastructure have been attacked, along with the energy grid and the desalination plants that supply 90% of Kuwait’s water. Oil exports have dropped to 20% of pre-war levels.

The US is in deep trouble, and there’s no easy way out, said Will Walldorf in Foreign Policy – short of accepting Iran’s authority over the Strait of Hormuz and its right to enrich uranium. “But that’s the unfortunate consequence of losing a war that should never have [been] started in the first place.”

Superstar is a word that is overused these days, said Oliver Holt in the Daily Mail; but if ever a man was worthy of it, it was Kevin Keegan. Back in the 1970s, the footballer – who died this week aged 75 – was a “riot of colour” in a grey world; and for a few years, said The Times, England’s hopes of becoming a great footballing nation again seemed to rest entirely on his “poodle perm”.

As England captain, his success in elevating the team above mediocrity was only fleeting, but his impact crossed cultural boundaries. Not only was he charismatic and open-hearted, he was one of the first players to fully market his brand, deploying “his ready smile and dimpled chin with charm and professionalism”. He was ubiquitous on cereal boxes; he was a face of Brut on TV, splashing it “all over”; he even released a handful of singles.

Fighting spirit

Keegan wasn’t the first “celebrity footballer”, said Jim White in The Daily Telegraph: George Best had been that a decade earlier. But “King Kev” or “Special K”, as he was known, was not like Best. A clean-cut family man, he had neither Best’s destructive streak nor his natural brilliance. Having grown up “football-mad” in South Yorkshire, the son of a miner, Keegan had trained tirelessly to become a great, and disprove the selectors who’d told him that, with his slight and small frame (he was five foot seven), he’d do better as a jockey.

His energy, tenacity and fighting spirit, which won him the nickname “Mighty Mouse” – and led him into a notorious on-pitch brawl in 1974 – became evident to the wider public in 1976, on the multi-sport TV show “Superstars”. In the cycle event, Keegan fell off his bike and landed very painfully. He was bloodied and bruised, yet he insisted on taking part in the re-run, which he then won. The public adored him for it.

King Kev

On the pitch, he had first achieved stardom at Liverpool in the early 1970s, said The Guardian. He moved to Hamburg in 1977 – where he twice won the Ballon d’Or – and ended his playing career at Newcastle, from 1982, where he achieved the status of a demigod by helping to return the Magpies to the First Division. When he retired – flying off the pitch in a helicopter after a testimonial – fans wept.

Eight years later, he was back as manager. The club was facing relegation to the third tier; under his helm, it was promoted and became one of the most thrilling in the Premier League. And though his final stint at Newcastle was less successful, the fans still loved him. In January, after he revealed that he had terminal cancer, they unfurled a huge banner at St James’ Park reading: “Long Live King Kev – The Messiah”.

For much of its duration, the 23rd edition of the men’s World Cup was “dominated by the exploits of star players”, said Oliver Kay on The Athletic. Yet for all that Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé and Jude Bellingham excelled, none could carry his side to glory. Instead, the tournament was deservedly won by the team with the strongest “collective” identity: Spain.

United front

Spain don’t lack for outstanding players, of course – whether their captain Rodri, winner of the Fifa Golden Ball award, or their 19-year-old winger Lamine Yamal – but they are about as far from being a collection of individuals as it’s possible for a football team to be. “That word ‘team’ overrides everything else.”

This was starkly illustrated by Sunday’s final, which ended with Spain beating Argentina 1-0 courtesy of Ferran Torres’s extra-time goal. While Argentina, a side over-reliant on the “genius” of Messi, displayed a “paucity of attacking ambition”, Spain were their usual calm, intelligent, methodical selves. And in footballing terms, it was no contest: Spain dominated possession, and created many chances, while Argentina didn’t manage a single shot in normal time – the first time this has ever happened in a World Cup final.

‘Question everything

Spanish football is underpinned by the philosophy of el entendimiento del juego, which translates as “understanding of the game”, said Tom Allnutt in The Sunday Times. It’s an approach that prizes “decision-making on the field” as much as technical skill. To get them to learn to “think for themselves”, coaches encourage players to “question everything”. They favour drills which require players to “make multiple decisions at speed” – the classic example being the rondo, or “Spain’s piggy in the middle”.

The system particularly excels at producing “ball-playing midfielders” – the likes of Xavi and Iniesta in a previous generation, Rodri and Fabián Ruiz in the current one. Known as pivotes (“pivots”) or volantes (“steering wheels”), such players are often physically slight, but rely on body shape – and quick wits – to keep hold of the ball. As one Premier League scout who works in Spain has observed: “In Spain, players happily give the ball to a marked player... English players are much less comfortable” doing so.

If England ever want to win the World Cup again, then they must strive to do things the Spanish way, said Jason Burt in The Daily Telegraph. “Get the ball, keep the ball, love the ball, move the ball.” That is what the best teams – especially teams in international football – do. “It is not complicated, but it requires a re-education.” Thomas Tuchel – for all his talk of remodelling England – didn’t ultimately deviate from the old flawed system. It’s something he “got wrong and should admit”.

Spring forward, fall back — that old rule of thumb for resetting clocks at the start and end of daylight saving time may soon be a relic of the past, as the House of Representatives last week overwhelmingly supported a bill to make the time change permanent. And President Donald Trump has expressed his support. After all, people like later sunlight hours. But keeping the clock on summer hours could have negative ramifications.

‘Hidden consequences’

Americans are “tired of the biannual time change,” and making daylight saving time permanent is a “commonsense reform that will improve everyday life for millions,” bill sponsor Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) said in a statement, per The Hill. Trump agrees. Passing the bill would be a “very nice WIN for the Republican Party,” he said on Truth Social. But there would be “hidden consequences” to year-round daylight saving, said Axios. Under the reset the “sun won't rise until 8 or 9 a.m. in the winter,” leaving “millions of children” and commuters to start their days “in the dark.”

There would probably be health consequences too. Morning sunlight is “key to maintaining our circadian rhythms” and “overall health,” said The Washington Post. “Circadian misalignment” can cause lost sleep, which in turn is connected to “obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mood disorders” and other health challenges. Americans “would be misaligned all year long,” Vanderbilt University’s Beth Malow said to the paper.

The change would disrupt the daily prayer practices of Orthodox Jews, said NPR. Some prayers “can only be said communally” and are often performed “every morning before heading out for work or school.” The change would be a problem for a “synagogue that has had a morning prayer service for 100 years” if it cannot muster enough of the congregation to “show up at the prayer time close to 9 o'clock because they have jobs,” Rabbi A.D. Motzen, national director of government affairs for Agudath Israel of America, said to the outlet. “Some Muslim prayers and religious observances” would also be affected, said Axios.

Airlines “could take up to two years” to adjust their “complex scheduling” to permanent daylight saving, said CBS News. The shift could affect “crew and aircraft positioning” as well as “domestic and international connectivity,” trade group Airlines for America said in a statement. Trucking and railroad companies that are “also timetable dependent” would face challenges as well, said CBS.

‘Abandoned prematurely’

Congress authorized permanent daylight saving in 1973 to save energy during the oil crisis, said The Independent. The project was “abandoned prematurely” amid concerns about “children and criticisms from the construction and agricultural industries.”

Permanent standard time might be a healthier alternative, said Yahoo News. Stanford University researchers determined that sticking to the regular clock all year would result in “300,000 fewer strokes and 2.6 million fewer people with obesity.” People need “more morning light and less evening light” to have a balanced day, Stanford University’s Jamie Zeitzer said to the outlet.

As Andy Burnham steps into his new post at No. 10. Downing Street, his family has inevitably been brought into the limelight alongside him.

Throughout his political career, Burnham has spoken openly about his upbringing and parents, but has been “generally private about his wife and children”, said Kasia Delgado in The i Paper. He has preferred to allow them to “get on with their lives away from the spotlight” – but his latest career move has made this less likely.

‘Active but not showy’

Burnham met his Dutch-born wife, Marie-France van Heel, in 1989 when both were undergraduates at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. They began dating, but took a break when Marie-France “asked him for permission to appear on Cilla Black’s ‘Blind Date’”, said Isaac Bickerstaff in Tatler. She and Burnham married in 2000.

Van Heel, known as Frankie by friends and family, has built up an “illustrious” career as a “marketing maven” and currently sits on the board of directors of Be.EV, a company that “masterminds public charging points for electric vehicles”.

Described by those close to her as “very gentle” and “highly intelligent”, she is “rarely seen in public” but joined Burnham this week at Buckingham Palace for his official swearing-in as prime minister.

In 2010, her sister Claire died of breast cancer, and Van Heel subsequently discovered that she “carried the gene” for the disease, said Jon Craig on Sky News. She decided to have a double mastectomy as a result, and is a donor to Cancer Research UK, “often participating in the charity’s Race for Life”. “Politically active, but not in a public or showy way”, she also sits on the board of Plan International, a charity that supports children around the world.

She and Burnham have three adult children. Jimmy, 26, studied Caribbean and Latin American history at University College London and currently works as an International Policy Officer for the Royal College of Nursing, said The i Paper. Rosie, 24, is a “sales manager at Jägermeister”, and 21-year-old Annie attends Cardiff University, following in her father’s footsteps by pursuing a degree in English literature.

The PM has a close relationship with his children, with whom he shares a love for music. Burnham has mentioned how “his son got him into bands The Strokes and Big Thief”, and regularly attends festivals and concerts with his children.

‘Protective of each other’

Before his move to Downing Street, Burnham lived close to his mother and father in Greater Manchester. Parents Roy and Eileen met while working in Liverpool but raised their three sons in Culcheth, a village near Warrington, Cheshire.

John, the oldest brother, has been chair of the Council of the Sixth Form Colleges Association for the last decade. Youngest brother Nick, born four years after Andy, also went into education, and is currently the principal of Cardinal Newman College in Preston, Lancashire. The brothers are said to be close and “protective of each other”, said Delgado. The “tight” family will “bring him back down to earth” if he gets “too Westminster”.

Their father now suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and lives in a care home. But although he is “unaware” of his son’s new position, he has had a lasting influence on his work, said Aine Fox and David Hughes in The Independent. A lifelong Labour supporter, Roy Burnham felt particularly strongly about a “change in the voting system to proportional representation”, a system his son now publicly supports. “It’s a family achievement,” Burnham said of his elevation to No. 10, in an interview with The Times. “Although he doesn’t know it, it still makes me feel that we’ve kind of done something together.”

Film fans are embarking on “epic journeys of their own” to see Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” in one of the “few surviving” Imax 70mm cinemas, said The Guardian.

That’s because it’s the first feature film to be shot entirely on 1570 film – “named for the width of the film stock (70mm) and the 15 perforations on each frame”. It’s “the highest-resolution film format in existence”, so it makes sense for fans to watch the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s masterpiece in his “preferred format”, right?

‘Very exclusive’

But getting your hands on “summer’s hottest ticket” is far from easy, said Mashable. Fans are spending “hundreds of dollars”, travelling thousands of miles, and even planning pregnancies around seeing Nolan’s film in Imax 70mm cinemas: the only format that lets you watch “The Odyssey” with the “fullest image possible”.

Those who opt for other cinemas, with formats like the standard 70mm, or 35mm, will have a “sizeable chunk” of the frame cut off. So some of the “sheer vastness of the landscapes that Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema are capturing” will be lost.

Most cinemas shifted to digital around a decade ago and there are just 41 worldwide that are able to show Imax 1570 film, eight of which are in California. The UK is home to three of them: two in London and one in Manchester. No theatres in Asia, Africa or South America can screen Nolan’s film in his intended format, making it a “very exclusive – and very Western – affair”.

I thought the “buzz” around “The Odyssey” being shot on Imax 1570 cameras was “clever marketing hype”, said Charles Pulliam-Moore on The Verge. But to “get a true sense of the story Nolan is telling” you really do need to watch it in an Imax. Many of the scenes are “perfectly fine” in the 35mm format; however, those that feature the film’s “gargantuan monsters” take on a “different gravity” when displayed in the Imax 70mm’s 1.43:1 ratio.

Nolan has made a film that is “immersive” in a way most modern features aren’t. But the higher ticket price coupled with the fact that the “vast majority” of people will never get to watch his film in the way he intended it has prompted accusations that the director is “anti-art and contributing to the culture of obsessive format purism”.

‘Far more fiddly and expensive’

Shooting on 1570 cameras is no easy task as they’re “notoriously heavy, loud and require frequent reloading”, said The Guardian. During “The Odyssey” shoot the film stock had to be changed “every three minutes” and Nolan worked closely with Imax to create a “soundproofing ‘blimp’ to house the 180kg camera to make it quiet enough for him to record dialogue on 1570 for the first time”. Projecting the finished film is also “far more fiddly and expensive” as a highly trained projectionist needs to be present for the entire screening.

But Nolan’s popularity has risen alongside 1570’s “mini comeback”. The number of cinemas able to project these films has risen from 30 to 41 since the release of “Oppenheimer” in 2023. And it’s not just Nolan who has helped spark interest in the format: several other big-name directors have followed suit including Denis Villeneuve who shot “Dune: Part Three” on Imax cameras.

“There’s certainly more demand,” Imax CEO Richard Gelfond told Variety. But adding more 70mm screens isn’t that simple as new Imax film projectors haven’t been made in “about 50 years”. Sources at Imax said many of the parts needed to build them “simply no longer exist”.

Even if Imax does “magically” figure out a way to manufacture more 70mm projectors, there aren’t many cinemas where they could be installed as “exhibitors aren’t building enough auditoriums that are capable of housing its towering 1.43:1 screens because of high construction costs”.

The company remains one of the movie industry’s few “reliable bright spots”, with attendances having “languished” since the pandemic, said Rebecca Rubin in Variety. Buyers have been “circling” and in May it was reportedly in the “early stages of exploring a sale”. For now, Imax is in an “enviable position”.

This is the summer of “cerebral pursuits” in France, with “a big rise” in the sale of “holiday workbooks”, said The Times. With their “cahiers de vacances” – an adult spin-off from school revision guides – grown-ups are “brushing up on” algebra, history and grammar on the beach.

All grown up

Holiday workbooks were originally designed to help schoolchildren to keep up with their studies over the long summer break. But the new adult versions are a real hit: you only have scan bookshop shelves to see “the scale of the phenomenon”, said Aleteia. French adults are using the workbooks not only to “evoke childhood summers” but as an entertaining way to learn something new during the summer holidays.

Last year, over 650,000 holiday workbooks were sold – double the year before – and publishers are reporting even bigger sales this summer, said The Times. Among the most popular ones are “Les Maths en Vacances”, which has readers practising geometry by folding their beach towels, and “Énigmes de l’Histoire” which focuses on historical puzzles, such as the “mysterious fate of Louis XVII”, who disappeared after his parents were beheaded during the French Revolution. “Passeport Adultes Anglais” is all about improving your English – with a “notably challenging” section on making British “herb jelly”. There are also logical reasoning challenges, and police-investigation workbooks with “puzzles to solve” in a “Cluedo”-style format, said Instant.

‘Need to disconnect’

Adults want to buy these books because they allow them to “learn a lot while having fun”, Didier Ferat of workbook publisher Solar told Aleteia. The format is not “intimidating” and you can work through a book “alone or with others”, Carole Strang of leading workbook publisher Éditions Nathan told Instant. There’s a sense of nostalgia at play, too: everyone knows these workbooks from their schooldays. They are associated with a “pretty strong memories” of childhood “summers and holidays”.

They are also physical and “concrete”, allowing you to “move beyond the digital world”, said Ferat. There’s a new “appreciation” for offline activity. The “need to disconnect” from our mobile devices has people shifting to entertainment that requires “a pencil in the hand”.

The desire to disconnect with a nostalgic activity explains the associated boom in “kidult” colouring and sticker books, and an increasing passion for puzzles and crosswords. Dictionary publisher Robert has launched a new series of themed giant crossword books this summer. At a time when the “world of books is suffering”, Robert’s Charles Bimbenet told Instant, “this enthusiasm is welcome”.

Many had written off Marine Le Pen, said Katya Adler on BBC News. They thought the de facto leader of the far-right National Rally (RN) had run out of political road after being convicted in March 2025 of helping to embezzle more than €4 million in EU parliamentary funds, which the RN diverted to pay for its own staff.

And since her punishments include a five-year ban from holding office, it seemed likely that her charismatic 30-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardella, would have to take her place in the 2027 presidential election.

But Le Pen has a habit of defying the odds. And so it proved last week, when the Court of Appeal confirmed her conviction, but reduced her period of ineligibility to 15 months, allowing her to compete next April.

‘Risky gamble’

There was one large caveat, however: she would have to wear an ankle tag for 12 months as part of her three-year jail sentence, two of which are suspended. This made some doubt that she’d run. But just six hours after the ruling, Le Pen “came out swinging”. In a TV interview, she said yes, she would run for president, and no, she wouldn’t have to wear a tag, at least not until the Court of Cassation has ruled on her final appeal. Ever defiant, she has styled herself as “a phoenix rising from the ashes”.

Barring Le Pen from standing would have had “devastating consequences” for French democracy, said Jean-Éric Schoettl in Le Figaro (Paris). True, she has been convicted of wrongdoing, but even so, it should be left to the French people to decide whether they want her as president or not.

The judgment was a tightrope act, said Olivier Beaud in Le Monde (Paris). By reducing Le Pen’s sentence and letting her stand, the court has freed the judiciary from accusations of political meddling. But at the same time – and this is the really important point – it has upheld her conviction for a grave criminal offence.

Le Pen is not out of the woods by any stretch, said Julien Lécuyer in La Voix du Nord (Lille). Her “risky gamble” could backfire. The Court of Cassation has now said that it will rule on her case at some point before the election. If it upholds last week’s verdict, Le Pen could, in theory, be forced to wear an ankle tag on the campaign trail. Such physical proof of her criminality would be a godsend to her rivals.

Wingman Bardella

The RN is currently well ahead in the polls, said The Economist (London), but its path to the Élysée Palace faces pitfalls beyond the legal saga. One is the potential for infighting. Until his mentor’s sudden reprieve, the highly popular Bardella had assumed he was going to be the RN’s presidential candidate. So he has been pushing his own vision of the path the RN should follow, a path which differs from Le Pen’s. Being a more business-friendly politician, he balks at her plan to reduce the pension age for some workers to 60. Such differences will “inevitably strain” their relationship in the coming months, for all that Le Pen insists they are united.

Yet the truth is she cannot win without him, said Clea Caulcutt on Politico (Brussels). In what was “either a stroke of genius or a sign of desperation”, she had him constantly at her side last week. She was “all smiles” at the RN rally in La Flèche; he was “more stone-faced”, as if “adjusting to his new role as wingman”.

Le Pen’s candidacy sheds light on the “true nature” of the RN, said Le Monde. It’s a family concern. A Le Pen has stood in all but one election since 1972, the year her late father Jean-Marie founded what was then called the National Front. And the family retains its tight grip: Le Pen’s niece is her comms director; her brother-in-law is her main adviser.

The only thing different about the party today is Le Pen’s double conviction, which exposes the rot at the heart of it. So much for the RN’s old slogan “Clean hands and head held high”; so much for Le Pen’s 2013 proposal to give lifetime bans to politicians guilty of embezzlement. The RN poses a “serious threat” to France, and its opponents must wake up before it’s too late.

“I’m sorry. but I’m unable to speak.”

Surrounded by concerned medics and supporters in Delhi, 59-year-old Sonam Wangchuk entered the 20th day of his hunger strike, scarcely able to move unaided.

Usually in the headlines for his climate activism, Wangchuk is “adding momentum” to youth-led protests on behalf of Indian students, said The New York Times. Instigated by the “joke” organisation the Cockroach Janta Party, the protest began after India cancelled its national medical college entrance exams following the questions being leaked. They demand “the reform of a soul-destroying education system”, said The Guardian as well as the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.

‘Severe starvation’

Wangchuk is “one of India’s best-known public figures outside mainstream politics”, said The Independent. A mechanical engineer from Ladakh – a mountainous region in the Himalayas – he has dedicated decades to educational reform and creating sustainable technologies for mountain communities.

The most famous of his innovations is the “ice stupa”, which acts like an “artificial glacier” that stores water from the winter and is then used during the farming season in the spring. In 2018 he received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, “often described as Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize”. His involvement in this movement has “transformed” a student-led protest into a “national issue, attracting politicians, academics, activists and public figures from across India”.

In his 20 days on hunger strike, Wangchuk has lost close to 9kg “from a body that was spare and lean to begin with”, said The Guardian. Doctors have warned that at this stage of “severe starvation” his body is breaking down fat and muscle, leaving him in a state of “extreme weakness, impaired brain function and electrolyte imbalance”. He is unable to walk to the bathroom 30 metres away without support and “speaks little to conserve energy”. But as crowds chant his name, he still appears “alert” and “calm”.

However, the weather is becoming a “defining feature of the protest”. As temperatures reach 37C, sweat “pours down” the faces of those in attendance, leaving clothes “drenched” and supporters “hot and bothered”. “A useless fan by his mattress does nothing to relieve the suffocating humidity.” Concern for his condition is “mounting”.

‘Defiant yet humorous’

More than 1,800 public figures have signed a statement urging Wangchuk to stop his strike, which he has “firmly rebuffed”, said India Today.

As a “first step” to potentially stopping his hunger strike, Wangchuk is demanding “accountability for the failures” of the education department, including reports that some students had taken their lives after the exam cancellation. He and his supporters have also demanded the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who has called the CJP protestors “the B-team of disruptive elements”. Organisers say they have received no formal response from Narendra Modi’s government.

A petition has been filed in the high court that would seek to “take him to a government hospital and force-feed him”, should his condition worsen, said the BBC. The document said the government was treating Wangchuk “like a hardcore criminal, terrorist or traitor to the nation” and was not concerned for his safety. On Thursday, the government responded by informing the Delhi High Court that it would “intervene if his health deteriorated”, said the outlet.

Wangchuk is continuing to strike a “defiant yet humorous note” despite his deteriorating health, said The Times of India. Addressing supporters, he said he would “stay alive by any means until July 20 so that I can march to Parliament with all of you” the date when the next parliamentary session begins. “If our march isn't successful by July 20, I'll come back as a ghost!”

Across the country, people have been up in arms about the increasing ubiquity of AI data centers, but now a proposal to build a massive AI plant just steps from the Nashville Zoo has brought the subject of animal rights into the fray. As people in Nashville propose ways to stop the data center’s construction, the affected zoo animals could present a new wave of backlash against artificial intelligence.

‘Disrupt the environmental conditions’

The proposed data center, built by the Atlanta firm DC BLOX, would be located about 50 yards from the boundary of the Nashville Zoo, officials told NBC News, or just half a football field away. The zoo is “vehemently opposed to having a data center so close to animals” because the “noise could disturb its residents,” Nashville Zoo President and CEO Rick Schwartz said to NBC.

For many, the “focus of the brewing anger is how it might affect the zoo’s most endangered or prized species,” said The New York Times. Much of the concern involves the facility’s clouded leopards, a threatened species that represents one of the “crown jewels of the zoo’s conservation program.” The clouded leopard breeding enclosure would be “about 320 feet from the proposed data center’s property line.”

Officials are “particularly concerned about the potential effect of light and noise from the data center, given that animals are more sensitive than humans,” Dr. Heather Schwartz, who oversees animal health at the Nashville Zoo, told the Times. The noise could “disrupt the environmental conditions critical not only for the clouded leopard breeding program but for the more than 3,000 animals that call the zoo home,” said CNN. The facility has launched a petition to stop the data center, which currently has over 500,000 signatures.

Demanding stronger regulations

Some are worried that a data center near the Nashville Zoo could spark a larger trend, and these data centers “can have real consequences for animals,” said animal news platform The Animal Reader. Such locations near populated areas have “cooling equipment, backup generators and bright security lighting” that “can disturb wildlife, especially nocturnal animals such as bats, owls and insects,” especially in areas with large animal populations.

This has made the zoo a new focus of the political fight against data centers. After the plan was announced, an “unprecedented crowd” showed up to Nashville’s planning commission meeting as “hundreds of residents turned out to oppose data centers,” said The Tennessean. Numerous speakers “urged city leaders to slow the industry’s expansion, adopt stronger regulations and stop a proposed South Nashville data center project next to the zoo that critics say is far larger than originally disclosed.”

The fight is the “latest example of data centers getting pushback in communities nationwide, as neighbors say they don’t want to live near them or object more broadly to the direction of the tech and AI industries,” said NBC. But even amid a “bipartisan push for regulation, as well as lawsuits and opposition to tax breaks,” DC BLOX is not backing down. “We look forward to working with local officials, community members and the Nashville Zoo to minimize local impacts and to assure that there will be no health risks to residents or animals,” the company told NBC.

Florida has executed the oldest prisoner in its history, the latest in a spate of capital punishments against elderly death-row inmates.

Dennis Sochor was 74 when he was pronounced dead on Tuesday. He was convicted of killing Patricia Gifford in 1982, hours after meeting the 18-year-old at a party. The US Supreme Court rejected his final appeal without comment, said The Guardian.

Sochor is the second of three Florida inmates over the age of 70 to be executed within five weeks. The executions have drawn attention to the ageing death-row population in the US, as well as Florida’s status as the foremost death penalty state.

A spate of executions

Florida, known as the Sunshine State, is considered “a mecca for senior citizens”, said The Hill. But it has shown “no compunction about carrying out executions of elderly death-row inmates”.

In October last year, Florida executed 72-year-old Samuel Lee Smithers for the 1996 killings of two women. He was the oldest person to be executed in the state since the US reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Last month, Dusty Ray Spencer, just a week younger than Sochor, died by lethal injection. The 74-year-old had been convicted of stabbing his wife to death in 1992.

Florida is also preparing to execute its first octogenarian later this month. Dominick Anthony Occhicone, who killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986, turns 81 next month, after his scheduled execution. If his execution goes ahead, he’ll be the second-oldest known inmate put to death in modern US history, after 83-year-old Walter Leroy Moody Jr. in 2018.

Florida has carried out 10 executions this year, more than all other US states combined. Unlike many states, in Florida the state governor has “practically sole discretion” when it comes to deciding whether, and when, the death penalty is applied, said The Associated Press. About half of its 242 death-row inmates have “exhausted their appeals” and could see their death warrant issued at any time. Three of them, not including Occhione, are over 80.

A rapid acceleration

Donald Trump is one of the death penalty’s “most outspoken champions, making it a cornerstone” of his agenda, said The New York Times. And “nowhere has the president’s vision been pursued more relentlessly than in Florida”, thanks to the “unusual concentration of power” in the office of Republican governor Ron DeSantis. In 2025, a record 19 of the 47 executions that took place in the US were in Florida: more than under any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 after a four-year nationwide moratorium.

DeSantis has “offered little public explanation” for this acceleration, after “years of relative inactivity”. The governor “makes execution decisions behind closed doors”, so there is “no way to know what criteria” he uses. “He could be deciding who is next to die by throwing darts at a list of names,” said Maria DeLiberato, attorney with the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, “or spinning a roulette wheel.”

But Florida isn’t the only state “killing the old and infirm”, said The Hill. Death rows across the US are “filled with old people”. And more are being executed than in the past. The average age of inmates executed in the US has increased from 36 in 1977 to 52.3 in 2024, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The ageing population also creates new challenges for the penal system, with inmates who have spent decades on death row “sometimes developing medical conditions that can complicate efforts to execute them”, said the AP. Occhicone, the 80-year-old facing execution later this month, has multiple health problems and “needs help getting in and out of the shower”.

Some question “the humanity of administering capital punishment” to prisoners who might soon die naturally. For others, it shows how “lengthy appeals” and reviews designed to prevent an innocent person being executed “can also delay justice”.

If you have ever avoided giving criticism or expressing boundaries in the workplace, you may have been “bubble wrapping.” The phenomenon, in which people cushion their words or actions to protect others’ feelings, is most common among women. And this avoidance of confrontation may be inadvertently hindering upward mobility in the office.

Gendered habit

While anyone can partake in “bubble wrapping,” women are most likely to do it. Women are “often socialized to be ‘the nice one,’ ‘the helpful one’ or the person who keeps everyone together at work,” said Mukti Joy, a leadership coach and well-being strategist, to Her World. “They start confusing being valued with being easy to approve of.” More than half of women “feel pressure to be likeable at work compared with only 36% of men, and this ‘likeability labor’ means women often feel overly responsible for other people’s comfort at work,” Mandy Lehto, an executive coach and leadership expert, said to Stylist.

Examples of bubble wrapping in the workplace include apologizing unnecessarily, softening the delivery of criticism or expectations, or taking on extra tasks instead of communicating limits. Many women feel pressure to avoid confrontation because they are “far more likely to receive feedback that they’re being ‘bossy’ or ‘too direct’ when they communicate in the same way as male colleagues,” Léonie Kennepohl, a female leadership expert and co-founder of the networking platform and recruiting community Female x Finance, said to Forbes. Bubble wrapping “often comes from a good place,” but it “can make communication less effective and is arguably worse than being known as ‘bossy.’”

Harder job

This pressure to be agreeable can hinder career growth. Bubble wrapping “makes women appear less confident in leadership positions,” said Forbes. “The focus feels like it shifts from making the right business decision to protecting everyone else’s feelings,” Kennepohl said. It can “present as a person not having leadership qualities.” Bubble wrapping also “deprives people of the very feedback and challenges they need to become more resilient, capable and successful,” said Forbes.

Women often “become the colleague others vent to, the one who smooths over conflicts, explains someone’s intentions or makes sure everyone else feels comfortable,” said Her World. These added burdens often make jobs more taxing. This emotional labor has “real value because it helps build trust, psychological safety and stronger workplace relationships.” It becomes problematic “when it’s expected from the same people every time.”

Need for courage

Wanting to be kind does not mean avoiding difficult conversations. “Empathy is essential but so are boundaries,” Elaine Choi, an HR Manager, said to Her World. Practicing “carefrontation” or “being clear, honest and direct while remaining respectful and kind” can facilitate necessary conversations “without carrying everyone else’s emotional reactions on your own.” However, purposely putting yourself in uncomfortable situations may also be required at times.

It is important to “build self-trust by showing yourself that you value your own experience as much as other people’s,” Lehto said to Stylist. “You’re not being unkind or unprofessional.” A conscious effort to make yourself heard will likely lead to an “adrenaline surge and an internal wobble,” but “stay in tension anyway.” There is “so much coming at us that is trying to make us complacent, or to look the other way or to not sit in the discomfort,” Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code, said to Big Think. “We actually need people to feel and to act with courage in their everyday life.”

There have been few global figures in the modern era as consequential as Donald Trump. Powerful as he may be, though, Trump does not exist in isolation.

Instead, he is part of an elite echelon of elected officials with whom he is obliged to interact in the course of global business. After a decade of cutting deals, upending relations and generally maneuvering himself to the center of the world stage, here are some of the ways Trump has talked about — and to — his international peers.

Former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

“President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad.” — April 2018

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

“The future governor of Canada.” — March 2026

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi

“My favorite dictator.” — September 2019

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

“Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!” — October 2019

“He’s a hell of a leader.” — October 2019

“Sometimes you get along with the toughest people, like him.” — July 2026

Chinese President Xi Jinping

“We’ve become friends.” — June 2019

“I don’t want to say friend — I don’t want to act foolish, ‘he was my friend’ — but I got along with him great.” — October 2024

“He’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not.” — October 2024

“A friend.” — May 2026

Former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei

“One of the most evil people in history.” — February 2026

Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni

“A very successful, very successful politician.” — October 2025

“Do people like her? I can’t imagine. I’m shocked by her. I thought she was brave, but I was wrong.” — April 2026

“It’s her who’s unacceptable.” — April 2026

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel

“Stupid.” — Unknown 2020

“That bitch, Merkel.” — Unknown 2020

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel’s “Warrior Prime Minister.” — June 2026

“Crazy.” — June 2026

“He has no f**king judgement.” — June 2026

Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador

“Juan Trump.” — July 2019

Russian President Vladimir Putin

A “competitor” who is “not an enemy.” — July 2018

“Great guy” and a “terrific person.” — June 2019

A “genius” who is “pretty savvy.” — February 2022

“Absolutely CRAZY!” — May 2025

“I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin.” — May 2025

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte

A “great leader.” — July 2026

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer

“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.” — March 2026

Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

“He’s two-faced.” — December 2019

“It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” — December 2024

North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un

“This maniac sitting here.” — September 2015

“Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.” — September 2017

“Obviously a madman.” — September 2017

“I think you will have a tremendous future with your country, a great leader.” — February 2019

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

“His reputation is absolutely sterling.” — September 2019

“Dictator without elections” who “better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.” — February 2025

“I’ve empowered you to be a tough guy, and I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States.” — February 2025

A “difficult character.” — July 2026

“President Putin.” — July 2026

Until the 1980s, Old Masters – paintings typically completed before 1850 – “ruled the art world”, said The Economist. But collectors began to see the “centuries-spanning” category as “too old-timey”, instead turning to more modern and Impressionist art in the following decades.

Now, experts are not only witnessing unforeseen rises in sales, but also dramatic changes in the attitudes of collectors and artists alike.

‘Untrammelled by tradition’

Old Masters have had “new life breathed into them”, said The Economist. In 2025, global sales of the paintings reached “$1.2 billion [£895 million], 30% higher than a year earlier”. And it’s younger buyers who are “showing more enthusiasm”.

This year at Sotheby’s, one of the world’s largest auction houses, “around 16% of bidders in Old Masters sales” were “under the age of 40, nearly triple the share from five years ago”.

Several changes have occurred in the last 50 years. For instance, the contemporary art market has shown “signs of volatility”, causing collectors to turn to Old Masters which are more “stable and significantly less expensive”. There is also an element of “scarcity” that makes them more attractive, as higher numbers of the older paintings enter museum collections with each passing year.

However portraits and figurative art are “in vogue” because they are, ultimately, “Instagrammable”. People are drawn to what appears to be a “simpler life (if you ignore the revolutions, plagues and awful dentistry of past eras)”. And they are so used to seeing pictures of people online that observers are “primed to connect to painted ones”.

There’s also “new money in Old Masters,” said Margaret Carrigan on Artnet. There was a longstanding belief that “newly minted millionaires and billionaires could be lured” to the art market via modern, “tech-flavoured” offerings, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), but the “pop of the NFT bubble” has seemed to disprove that.

Yet sales suggest they are “still in the game”. During London’s Classics Week, Sotheby’s and Christie’s brought in £76.7 million, a “respectable 9.4% rise on the same auctions last year”. Buyers are now more likely to collect “cross-category”, and there is a “hunger” for works that “feel contemporary, regardless of age”.

“Amid rapid, destabilising technological change, visualising the creation of a new world and meditating on our inescapable mortality seem pretty apropos.”

Works by “household-name” artists such as Canaletto, Michelangelo and Rembrandt, have always been popular, said Emma Crichton-Miller in the Financial Times. What’s more surprising is the “surge in value for images by lesser-known artists”. A new generation of collectors, “untrammelled by tradition” have a new set of criteria: there is a “striking” pattern that desirable paintings are portraits, that can be “admired with little contextual knowledge beyond our shared human nature”. Once seen as the “backwater for scholarly private collectors” this new trend has “encouraged works not seen for decades out into the marketplace”. When auctions come around, “expect surprises”.

‘Embraced’ by artists

In the past, lesser-known artists would imitate bigger names – in effect “art historical name-dropping” to improve the “gravity and market confidence” of their works, said J. Cabelle Ahn on Artnet. Cynics would call evoking Old Masters styles as a form of “reference-baiting”. But one of the main reasons for this “trans-historical escalation” is “technological unease”. Not only do artists fear being eclipsed by AI, but there is a movement to explore “foundational concepts like meaning and originality in the endless sea of information”.

Not only is figurative painting “back in a big way” for collectors, but it is being “embraced” by large numbers of emerging artists “keen to demonstrate their skills”, said Chloe Stead in the Financial Times. This could be guided by materials, and neglected older techniques appearing “new”. Oil paint became popular in the Netherlands in the 12th century, even now, for artists seeking to create realistic images, there is “no better alternative”.

There may be “some merit” to the idea that current “geopolitical and financial instability” has “spooked” collectors to return to what they know, and that artists are capitalising on this movement. But it is worth remembering that “Renaissance art was intended to be accessible and easily readable”. Perhaps this reversion of style by young artists is not influenced by a “retrograde nostalgia”, but by a “desire to connect to audiences outside the confines of the art world”.

At 7.20pm last Friday, after months of increasingly feverish speculation, the jumbo screens outside Madison Square Garden flashed the news: “JUST&T MARRIED”, and the nearby Empire State Building erupted in “something blue” sparkles, said Evan Moffitt in The Observer. Taylor Swift, Miss Americana, had tied the knot with her football-star boyfriend Travis Kelce at a ceremony described as the US’ royal wedding.

In advance of the event, several blocks around Penn Station had been blocked off to cars and pedestrians. The 1,000 guests – who included Tom Hanks, Gigi Hadid, Hugh Grant, Graham Norton, Lena Dunham and Steven Spielberg – rolled up in blacked-out SUVs. Most alighted in specially erected tent tunnels and, to the disappointment of the crowds of Swifties waiting in the 40°C heat, there were no sightings of the happy couple.

Private affair

It’s quite a feat to host a major event in a 22,000-capacity arena in the middle of New York City, on the 4th of July weekend, and keep it entirely private, said Megan Agnew in The Times. Swift’s publicists released a few details: the ceremony was officiated by Adam Sandler; bride and groom wore white Dior.

Beyond that, fans had only leaks and speculation to go on: the Garden had been transformed into “an enchanted garden”, with fake wisteria and white roses and acres of peach fabric; the vibe was “Alice in Wonderland meets The Wizard of Oz”; Paul McCartney and Stevie Nicks performed. The cost was estimated at $20 million.

Social media backlash

With an eye on the optics, Swift let it be known that they’d given $26 million to charities – but that didn’t stop the backlash, said Ryan Zickgraf on UnHerd. On social media, even some fans railed against the gaudy excesses of the event, while rumours that leftover cake had been distributed outside it led to Marie Antoinette jibes.

New York used to welcome billionaires, but rising prices and spiralling rents have fuelled intense resentment about the rich who just get richer. Swift is especially vulnerable to this, because she became a billionaire while presenting herself as “your awkward friend, writing in her diary”. That “parasocial magic becomes harder to sustain once the relatable girl with a guitar is visibly living like a Medici”.

Even though the United States and Iran are embroiled in war, a new lawsuit against the Trump administration is claiming that the two countries’ governments actually began working together last year — and jeopardized Iranian asylum seekers’ lives in the process. The White House has dismissed these claims, but those who filed the lawsuit are not backing down.

‘Confidential information’

The issue first arose in 2025 when the Trump administration “adopted a policy of providing” the Iranian government with “confidential information from the immigration files of Iranians seeking asylum in the United States,” according to the lawsuit filed by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund (IALDF). Many of the asylum seekers whose information is allegedly being shared are people who “seek refuge in the United States because of the grave dangers they face in Iran,” such as pro-democracy activists and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Disclosing the confidential information of these asylum seekers “violates federal regulations requiring confidentiality, endangers their family members and acquaintances who may still be residing in Iran, and puts those who are subject to removal to Iran at risk of persecution,” the IALDF said in a statement. The lawsuit is requesting that the court “order the U.S. government to stop sharing asylum-applicant information with the government of Iran.”

The allegations are based on accounts from “detainees who had been called into meetings with Iranian officials who seemed to already possess details from their U.S. immigration files,” Michael Kirkpatrick, a lawyer representing the Iranian fund, told The New York Times. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has denied any wrongdoing. DHS “provides illegal aliens the opportunity to contact their consular post and facilitates consular access to detained individuals, in accordance with applicable laws, regulations and agency policy,“ the department said in a statement.

‘Prohibit the government from sharing information’

The U.S. government is “allowed to work with government officials of foreign countries to coordinate deportation logistics,” said The Associated Press. But federal regulations generally “prohibit the government from sharing information that could reveal that the individual getting deported applied for asylum.” Congress “made these confidentiality protections mandatory precisely because lives depend on them, and no agency and no administration, of either party, may set them aside,” Ali Rahnama, the interim executive director of the IALDF, told the AP.

And while some may think that the conflict raging in the Middle East would have slowed the information sharing, the lawsuit “alleges that the Trump administration has continued to share confidential information during the current war between the U.S. and Iran,” said ABC News. Though the “in-person meetings reportedly stopped before the war began on Feb. 28,” the lawsuit claims the government continued to “mail or hand deliver document packages” to the Iranian Interests Section, which oversees the nation’s diplomatic duties in the U.S.

Some asylum-seeker data sharing may always occur, such as information on travel documents. What is “different here, though, is they are revealing information from the asylum applications, and that is a very specific category of information that is kept confidential,” Kirkpatrick said to NPR. The U.S. government “shouldn’t even reveal information from which one could infer that somebody had sought asylum.”

Penelope Keith, who has died aged 86, became one of the most famous faces in Britain in the 1970s, owing to her roles in two of the most beloved TV comedies of their era.

In “The Good Life”, she was Margo Leadbetter, the haughty, bossy social climber who lives next door to Tom and Barbara Good (Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal).Elegantly dressed and immaculately coiffed, Margo is horrified when the Goods decide to become self-sufficient and turn their suburban garden into a smallholding. “This sort of thing simply does not go on in Surbiton,” she says, at the sight of their new pigsty. Yet Margo and her more easygoing husband Jerry (Paul Eddington) remain on good terms with their often hapless neighbours.

TV stardom

Margo had been conceived as a supporting role, but her brilliantly delivered putdowns – “Don’t bleed in the sink Jerry, I’ve just cleaned it” – became one of the show’s great highlights, said Gareth Roberts in The Daily Telegraph; and it was Keith’s genius to make Margot a fully rounded personality – a crashing snob, brittle and without humour, but also pragmatic, kindly and sometimes vulnerable.

In “The Good Life”, she was one member of an impressive ensemble cast (of which Kendal is now the only survivor); from 1979, she had the lead role in “To the Manor Born”, as the aristocratic Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, who – following the death of her husband – is forced to sell her ancestral seat, and move into its gatehouse. She initially despises the estate’s new owner, self-made supermarket tycoon Richard DeVere (Peter Bowles), but gradually warms to him. In the series finale in 1981, the pair get married. It was an even bigger hit than “The Good Life”, attracting up to 24 million viewers.

In 1977, Keith sent up her onscreen persona when she appeared, attempting to descend a grand staircase clad in a turban and a long gown, on Morecambe and Wise’s Christmas special. In later life, she was a regular guest on tribute shows to the comedians.

Stage-trained perfectionist

People tended to assume that Keith was herself from a smart background, which she found gratifying. As she put it, she always hoped that audiences would “believe that it’s me up there”. In fact, she grew up in fairly straitened circumstances. Her father, an Army major, walked out soon after her birth in 1940; her mother found work at a hotel in Clacton-on- Sea, running children’s events.

Penny, as she was known, was sent to a convent boarding school aged six. She had always known she wanted to act, and at 16 she enrolled at the Webber Douglas drama school. After a period in rep, she spent three years at the RSC in the early 1960s. In a production of “Julius Caesar”, she was on stage in a background role when Mark Antony asks his countrymen to lend him their ears. Peter Hall was not amused when Keith’s voice was heard crying out: “’Ere you are then, ’ave an ear! ’Ave one of mine!”

In 1974, she starred (with Kendal) in the West End premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s “The Norman Conquests” as the uptight Sarah. It was this that led to her being cast in “The Good Life”, which ran for four series from 1975. From the 1990s, Keith focused mainly on stage work, with roles in everything from “The Importance of Being Earnest” to Rattigan’s “The Deep Blue Sea”. A perfectionist at work, she did not suffer fools, but she loved the theatre, and was notably supportive of young actors.

In 2014, she was made a dame for her services to the arts and her charity work. At home, she said she was happiest in her garden, tending to her runner beans. She married Rodney Timson, a police officer, in 1978. He survives her, with the two sons they adopted a decade later.

Count Binface had been “looking forward to a relaxing journey back to his home planet of Sigma IX” when Nigel Farage “dropped the “political bombshell” of his resignation as MP for Clacton-on-Sea, said The Guardian.

Britain’s “hottest new political property” said he was “left with no choice but to perform a swift intergalactic handbrake turn” and enter the by-election race. With the main parties all vowing to boycott the contest, the 5,900-year-old leader of the Recyclons could well be Farage’s only challenger.

‘Unity candidate’

Count Binface is the alter ego of Jon Harvey, a 46-year-old comedy writer whose credits include “The Thick of It” and “Have I Got News for You”. He first entered politics in 2017 as Lord Buckethead but, following a copyright claim over the character, re-emerged in 2019 as Count Binface.

Since then, he’s taken on prominent politicians at the ballot box, running against Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham. He “earned plaudits” for winning more votes than the far-right Britain First candidate in the 2024 London mayoral election, said The Guardian, although he still lost his deposit.

The “satirical figure” is best known for his “rubbish-can-shaped helmet” and “absurd campaign promises”, said Al Jazeera. His manifestos have included pledges to cut the cost of the 99 ice cream with a Flake to 99p, abolish the House of Lords and rename London Bridge “Phoebe Waller-Bridge”. He has also previously promised to “bring back Ceefax”, “nationalise Adele” and “conscript anyone who plays loud music without headphones on public transport”.

For the Clacton election, Binface said he will “be a unity candidate”, pledging to “build at least one affordable house”. He said his main appeal this time round is that he’s “not Nigel Farage”.

‘Electoral shock’

Harvey has been “inundated” with emails and messages from Binface activists “offering to knock on doors and deliver leaflets on his behalf”, said The Guardian. His campaign “could yet emerge as an electoral shock” comparable to when Hartlepool United’s mascot, H’Angus the Monkey, was elected as mayor of the northern town.

Indeed, odds on him winning have been “tumbling”. Oddschecker, which provides betting odds from some of the UK’s most popular bookmakers, said odds on the parody candidate winning had been slashed from 5/1 to 7/2.

For the man, “or rather the alien”, the “question of whether he might even win is one that he is reluctant to countenance”. He said: “It’s earliest days yet and there is a long old road to go, but if in the unlikely event that the humans of Clacton prefer me to old Nige, then I will do my very best to represent them.”

If he does win, on some sort of “Boaty McBoatface”-style jokey protest vote, he “would have to remove that striking silver headpiece”, said The Independent. MPs can’t wear headgear when they are addressing the House of Commons, and there’s also “ye olde restriction” that also bans them from wearing suits of armour in the chamber, which “rules out his intergalactic threads too”.

Nasa has launched a spacecraft to catch a falling telescope, an unprecedented mission that could pave the way for similar future rescues.

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory telescope, known simply as Swift and launched in 2004, detects some of the most powerful explosions in the Universe. Its name comes from its ability to point at a new target in the solar system in a matter of minutes, compared to other space telescopes such as Hubble, which can take up to two days to focus on a target.

Because of its success spotting distant gamma-ray bursts, Swift’s mission has been repeatedly extended. But now it is sinking faster than expected due to recent solar storms and is at risk of crashing back to Earth in a matter of months unless something is done to change its orbit.

‘Mind-bogglingly short’ turnaround

To carry out the mission Nasa has turned to Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies. Swift has no engines of its own and was not built with docking hardware, so Katalyst engineered a “custom capture mechanism” that will use three guided robotic arms “to latch onto a structural feature without disturbing Swift’s instruments”, said Astronomy.

Having successfully launched last week, Katalyst’s Link spacecraft is now carrying out a series of navigation and propulsion systems checks before approaching Swift. It will survey the telescope to determine the best point of contact, and eventually capture and lift the observatory, which is about the size of a small car, back into its correct altitude.

The capture itself will be “especially tricky because Swift was never meant to be touched again once it reached orbit”. Katalyst CEO Ghonhee Lee told Aerospace America that it has been made even more complicated because “nobody took a picture of the backside of Swift before it launched”.

Katalyst was awarded the contract only last September, a “mind-bogglingly short” turnaround time, said Space. If it succeeds in saving Swift, the company will have done something unprecedented: “reboosting an ailing space telescope using a spacecraft developed in less than a year to rescue a target that was meant to be left in space on its own forever”.

‘A spacecraft worth saving’

At a cost of $30 million, the mission to save “a nearly 22-year-old space telescope, well past its prime” seems, “on paper” at least, not great value for money, said Space. But “Swift, it turns out, is still worth it, according to Nasa”.

“We didn’t want to set the precedent that anything that comes out of orbit has to be boosted, because it is part of our space ecosystem to have things deorbit frequently,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, Nasa’s astrophysics division director, in June. But Swift is “not just any spacecraft” and has a unique ability to “quickly pivot across the night sky to find things that go boom in the night”.

“In short,” said BBC science correspondent Pallab Ghosh, “there is nothing like Swift, and Nasa deemed that it was a spacecraft worth saving.”

Such an “ambitious” mission “has never been carried out before” and “a lot will have to go right if it is to succeed”. If it does, however, “attention will turn to whether the next rescue mission could be to save the even more famous Hubble Space Telescope”.

For the first time since consolidating power to rule the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas will disband its Government Emergency Committee that has coordinated day-to-day life across the territory, according to the Palestinian militant group. This clears a path for the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), known as a technocratic committee, to assume control as part of President Donald Trump and his Board of Peace’s plan for the beleaguered region. But by playing coy about next steps, Hamas has given observers and critics plenty of reasons to be suspicious about this latest development.

‘Caretaker framework’

The governmental dissolution “marks a significant political shift” by Hamas, said Al Jazeera. But while the militant group has “repeatedly said it is prepared to step aside from day-to-day governance” of Gaza, the “question of its disarmament remains unresolved.”

The decision to dismantle the governing authority was made to “remove any pretexts for the occupation, which continues its aggression and war of extermination,” said Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem to AFP, per Le Monde. Hamas seeks the “swift entry” of the technocratic committee and “affirms its readiness to hand over governmental responsibilities to the committee to ensure its success.” The committee, in turn, is “fully prepared to assume its national responsibilities as soon as the necessary resources and capabilities are available,” said NCAG Chief Commissioner Ali Shaath on X.

For Hamas, the move is designed to transform the group’s “existing governing structure” into a “caretaker framework,” said The Times of Israel. Hamas officials claim that “technical and professional staff” will “remain in place” after the governmental dissolution to “maintain continuity in service to civilians in Gaza,” said The Jerusalem Post.

Unsurprisingly, Israel has rejected that characterization. The dissolution of a Hamas government wherein “all of the Hamas members stay in their positions” is a “spin that has no significance,” said one Israeli official to The Associated Press.

‘Actions, not promises’

Any assessment of Hamas’ plan will be “guided by actions, not promises, to meet the critical needs of the people of Gaza,” said the Trump-led Board of Peace on X. The “core principle” of eventually turning over full control of Gaza to the technocratic committee “remains one authority, one law and one weapon,” which in turn means “consolidation of all weapons under the control of the NCAG as provided for in the Comprehensive Gaza Peace Plan and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803.”

The change “does not concern its military wing,” about which mediators are “still negotiating,” said Haaretz. Israel, meanwhile, is “not allowing members of the technocratic committee, who are currently in Cairo, to enter the territory.” Israel has “ruled out allowing Hamas to rule” the embattled Gaza Strip following the yearslong war between the two groups, said Al Jazeera. Israel “also rejected a direct takeover” by the Palestinian Authority, which controls the occupied West Bank, “at this stage.”

After more than four years of war between Russia and Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a rare admission that the conflict has caused his country a problem. In this case, it is a significant fuel shortage driven by Ukrainian drone strikes that is exacerbating economic strain across Russia, and the issue may not be abated any time soon.

‘Certain deficit’

Putin has very rarely acknowledged that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to challenges. But his country is now facing a “certain deficit” of fuel, the Russian president said in an interview with state television. Russians are “well aware that problems for ⁠drivers and for businesses persist,” Putin also told his senior officials of the petroleum industry, according to Al Jazeera. “Unfortunately, there are still queues at petrol stations too.”

The shortage largely stems from Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. Russia must “reduce to a minimum the impact of terrorist attacks on our civilian targets and infrastructure,” Putin told his senior officials. Ukraine has “stepped up attacks on Russian energy facilities in recent months, hitting Russia’s crude oil,” said Al Jazeera. The attacks have led to significant fuel deficits. The “amount of crude oil Russia processed into fuel in June was down 25% from a year ago, to 3.95 million barrels per day — the lowest level in over two decades,” said Gary Peach, an oil markets analyst at Energy Intelligence, to The Associated Press.

While Ukraine has been utilizing drones for a while, what makes the current onslaught different is that Ukraine has “clearly scaled up the quantity of their drones and the quality of their drones,” Christina Harward, an expert at the Institute for the Study of War, said to Deutsche Welle. Ukraine has “improved the range of their drones and, for the past couple of months, they’ve also been undertaking an effort to identify and destroy Russian air defense systems.”

‘The situation is not very good’

The fuel shortages have led to social and financial unrest in many parts of Russia. The “lines are growing at Russian gas stations — and so is the frustration and uncertainty” as the deficits drag on and oil prices go up, said the AP. “I think the situation is not very good,” one motorist waiting in line told the outlet. Numerous cities have rationed fuel, with “hourslong queues of cars snaking beside roads.”

These struggles have been highlighted across social media, with one post reportedly showing farmers “struggling to afford fuel for harvest, while another describes a farmer having to drive his combine harvester to a regular gas station after he was not allowed to fill a can,” said Reuters. Some Russian drivers have also started to “crowdsource maps and trade tips about which stations have fuel and shorter lines,” and “online searches for ‘how to siphon fuel’ rose to more than ⁠9,300” in June from just 697 a month earlier.

And it doesn’t appear the crisis is going anywhere, as “half of Russia’s 83 regions are now reporting shortages,” said the Center for European Policy Analysis. For now, Russia has “enough fuel for the army, key industries, and agriculture — but everywhere else the choice is between paying more and waiting longer.” A Gallup survey found that “60% of Russians interviewed between March and May said their local economic conditions are getting worse.”

Nigel Farage has said he will resign as an MP to fight a by-election in his constituency of Clacton that he says will be a “chance to stick two fingers up to the establishment”.

Farage's decision comes amid a row over his finances, after The Sunday Times reported he had not declared benefits, including staff and security, received from his long-time adviser George Cottrell.

Known as “Posh George”, the 32-year-old “babyfaced British aristocrat and former US federal inmate”, holds no official role in Reform UK, but he has been “Farage’s closest adviser for more than a decade and travels with him in Westminster and around the country”, said The Sunday Times. Farage denies that the benefits he received from Cottrell required registration under the rules governing MPs.

“In a party with little fondness for strictures, Reform UK insiders maintain that there is one rule,” said UnHerd’s Rob Lownie. “Don’t ask what Posh George does.”

‘Family soap empire’

George Swinfen Cottrell was born into the heart of the British establishment.

His father, Mark Cottrell, went to school with Prince Andrew. His mother, the Honourable Fiona Watson, daughter of Rupert Watson, 3rd Baron Manton and heir to a “family soap empire”, is a former girlfriend of King Charles. His uncle is Alexander Fermor-Hesketh, 3rd Baron Hesketh, a hereditary peer, former Conservative chief whip and treasurer, and later Ukip politician.

Having been expelled from school due to a reported gambling addiction, Cottrell became a “fixer-cum-financier to the ultra-rich in Mayfair”, said The Times. According to a 2017 Telegraph profile, he worked in offshore banking before being made Ukip’s head of fundraising in 2015 at the age of just 22.

Inner circle member but no official position

Just to be clear, said The Independent's political editor David Maddox, Cottrell is “not some fringe figure or mere acquaintance in Farage’s political life” but “one of the tightest members of the Reform leader’s inner circle”.

He was by Farage's side on the day of the Brexit referendum in June 2016, but only a month later was arrested in the US as he and Farage prepared to fly back to the UK after the Republican National Convention. Caught agreeing to launder drug money in an undercover FBI sting operation, Cottrell faced 20 years in jail, but he struck a plea deal in which he admitted guilt to a wire fraud charge and served just eight months.

In the years since, he dated reality TV star Georgia Toffolo and moved to Montenegro. It was here that he became a key player in Tether.bet, an online cryptocurrency bookmaker and casino, part-owned by Christopher Harborne, the billionaire who gave Farage a £5 million gift in early 2024. He also co-authored a book “How to Launder Money”.

And he has remained close to Farage and the various iterations of the political party that eventually became Reform UK.

He “holds no official position” and “is not employed by the party”, yet he has become one of Farage’s “closest political confidants”, said Politics UK. Farage has previously described Cottrell as being “like a son”, with him calling Nigel “daddy“.

‘As fatal as Mandelson was for Starmer’

Until the Sunday Times expose, we knew little about the exact relationship between Farage and Cottrell, said George Wright on the BBC. Now, “the aristocrat is at the centre of the latest controversy” surrounding the Reform UK leader’s murky personal finances.

The Sunday Times says Cottrell provided Farage with a series of benefits in kind, including security, made up of elite former soldiers and drivers, staff to “transform” his social media presence, and accommodation, including the use of a five-storey house near Buckingham Palace.

Farage is now facing scrutiny for failing to declare any of this when he became an MP, except for £9,523.60 – the estimated costs of flights for him and a staff member to travel to a conference in Belgium.

Opinions are split over how much this could harm Farage in the long-term, but “with Reform on the slide and other questions” about his personal finances, Cottrell’s “presence in his inner circle could prove as fatal as Mandelson was for Starmer and Pincher was for Johnson”, said Maddox.

Sky’s £1.6 billion acquisition of ITV is yet another sign of the “seismic consolidation” taking place between media companies trying to compete with the major streaming platforms, said Deadline.

“This is a defining moment for British media,” Sky CEO Dana Strong said on Sky News. We are combining “two of the UK’s most loved and trusted brands” and committing to “remain a public service broadcaster at the heart of British life”.

But with its public service broadcast contract set to expire in 2034, and no guarantee this will continue, ITV’s deal could change the complexion of British commercial broadcasting.

‘Territory of hypotheticals’

Sky, and its US owners Comcast, will now have access to the 21 million households reached by ITV, as well as a greater share of advertising spend at a time when broadcasters are “facing an uncertain future”, said the Financial Times. Of the £1.6 billion acquisition, around £1.2 billion will be paid up front in cash, and Sky will pay an additional £200 million subject to advertising targets being hit in 2027.

ITV’s “thriving production arm”, ITV Studios, will not be part of the Sky deal, said Deadline. It will become its own publicly listed company and “benefit from the transaction” by acquiring Sky’s Love Productions, the studio that produces “The Great British Bake Off”, in a £200 million side-deal. ITV Studios will also receive £2.1 billion in additional funding from Sky, meaning there will be “certainty” that “hit series” such as “Love Island” and “Coronation Street” won’t move behind a paywall.

However, there are concerns whether ITV Studios will win as much business from ITV. It has “consistently landed a significant number of total commissions” in recent years, “much to the chagrin of independent players”. But in the hands of Sky and its “swashbuckling growth” mindset, deconsolidation may have made the landscape a “more level playing field” for rival studios.

Sky and ITV are required by law to continue free-to-air service until at least 2034. Sky will also have to commission a proportion of programmes made outside London, and honour the contract for ITN’s news bulletins for ITV until 2031.

This status does bring some benefits. As a public service broadcaster, Sky could also bid for “‘listed’ crown jewel tournaments” – shown on free-to-air channels – such as the Olympics and the Grand National, said Katie Razzall on the BBC. Sky is also guaranteed a “prominent position” on TV home screens, and in an “ever more competitive world, prominence matters”. But in eight years’ time, the “media landscape may look very different”.

‘Last stand’ against streamers

This long-rumoured deal unites the UK’s two largest commercial broadcasters in an attempt to “bulk up” against the streaming giants, said the FT. The British media industry has experienced a “period of radical change” in the last 20 years, and companies such as YouTube and Netflix pose an “existential threat”.

The agreement also “raises politically sensitive questions” about the American ownership of a major British broadcaster, said The Hollywood Reporter. ITV is a “key part of the country’s cultural landscape”, with obligations to provide national and regional content for the UK.

The deal, which is not likely to be completed until next year, will “inevitably face close scrutiny” from industry regulators, said Forbes. Given its scale, questions around “competition, advertising concentration and media plurality are entirely appropriate”.

But whatever the outcome of the final approvals, the “direction of travel” for the media space is becoming “increasingly clear”. No longer will there be a binary “broadcast versus streaming” battle, but a series of “connected ecosystems that combine premium content, intelligent data and measurable commercial outcomes”. In future, successful media organisations will not just have the largest audiences, but build mutually beneficial, “strategic alliances and partnerships”.

But this deal looks “less like a monopoly and more like a last stand”, said The Drum. For years, the British media market maintained a “stable” competition between its three biggest players: BBC, ITV and Channel 4. But with the arrival of “better-capitalised” generalist streamers like Netflix, YouTube and Disney+, not only was the structure disrupted between the old broadcasters, suddenly “they weren’t even one of the three” leaders. This deal represents a “belated acknowledgement” that there should have been “shared strategy, shared technology platforms” and “shared deal-making many years ago”.

Spain’s socialist PM is “clinging to a punctured life raft”, said Josep Ramoneda in Ara (Barcelona). Pedro Sánchez’s reputation had already taken a battering from the corruption cases brought against his wife and brother. Now the jailing of his former right-hand man for embezzlement and bribery leaves him more “compromised” than ever.

José Luis Ábalos, who was Spain’s transport minister between 2018 and 2021, was last week handed a 24-year sentence for rigging public contracts for face masks and other medical supplies during the Covid-19 pandemic. His reward for doing so was €10,000 a month, a flat for his mistress and various other kickbacks. The PM has not himself been implicated in the Ábalos case – or in any of the others for that matter – but it all leaves a bad smell and there’s growing pressure on him to resign. Yet Sánchez stubbornly insists he will remain in post until next year’s elections.

The buck stops

Sánchez’s claim he had no idea what Ábalos was up to is downright outrageous, said Neus Tomàs in El Diario (Madrid). Ábalos and his aide Koldo García, who has also been jailed for his role in the scandal, used to sit at the heart of Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). So the PM’s excuse that they were just rogue actors won’t wash: he bears responsibility for crimes committed under his watch.

And don’t forget, Sánchez came to power in 2018 by condemning the then-PM, Mariano Rajoy, for the corruption exposed in the ranks of Rajoy’s People’s Party (PP), and winning a vote of no-confidence against him, said La Razón (Madrid). So he clearly has to resign.

The greatest irony is that the man who delivered the most scathing speech ahead of the vote on the conservative People Party’s corrupt ways was Ábalos himself, said Bruno Pardo Porto on ABC (Madrid). That he has now received the longest jail sentence ever given to a modern Spanish minister shows just what a sham the PSOE’s pledge to clean up Spanish democracy actually has been.

Comeback king

There’s still a slim chance Sánchez could survive, said Jason Horowitz in The New York Times. He has an uncanny ability to outrun scandals – hence his nickname: “the greyhound”. And he was offered an unlikely lifeline last month when a judge ordered his wife, Begoña Gómez, to hand in her passport and stand trial for influence-peddling linked to her job at a university in Madrid.

In his 84-page ruling, the judge likened the government to an “absolutist regime”, opining that the last similar case of such magnitude was in the early 19th century during the reign of Ferdinand VII. This has made it easy for Sánchez’s supporters to dismiss the trial as a “deeply flawed hit job by an obsessed judge”. And that it was the right-wing group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands) that filed the cases against his wife and his brother David (who allegedly leveraged his connections to land a job in a city council) adds support to that narrative.

Sánchez is no stranger to epic comebacks, said Irene Lozano in El País (Madrid), so don’t write him off yet. His PSOE rivals removed him as leader in 2016: two years later he had become PM. The fact that he has presided over one of the EU’s faster-growing economies may come to his rescue this time.

Fresh scandal

I’m not so sure, said Guy Hedgecoe on Politico (Brussels). His party is already languishing behind the PP in the polls, and there’s another scandal brewing that could well see him off. It involves his mentor and “ideological soul mate”, the former socialist PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who is accused of influence-peddling in connection with the €53 million bailout of the airline Plus Ultra. Prosecutors say he received up to €2 million for pushing the package through.

Sánchez still maintains Zapatero is innocent, but has yet to explain why the bailout of a firm that only has four planes should have been so generous, said The Economist. This kind of behaviour is the reason anti-democratic sentiment is on the rise, and the situation is worsening. “The sooner the country holds an election, the better.”

The career of Ben Stokes has been littered with “extraordinary scenes”, said Ali Martin in The Guardian – and there was a final one last Sunday, on his penultimate day as an England cricketer. At 3.27pm on the fourth day of the third Test against New Zealand, Stokes was “about to start the 11th over of another marathon spell”, when a “ripple of applause” broke out around Trent Bridge.

That morning, the England captain had told his teammates that he’d be retiring from internationals at the end of the Test – and the news had just been made public. Now that the crowd were “in on the secret”, they rose as one to roar their “champion all-rounder” as he hurtled towards the crease. “And then it happened.” Stokes’s delivery found the edge of Zak Foulkes’s bat, and “flew low into the hands of Harry Brook at second slip”.

Final flourish

With his 252nd Test wicket, Stokes had provided one last “I was there moment”, to go with “countless others” throughout his career. As his teammate Joe Root said later: “It was the most Ben Stokes thing you will ever see.”

Later that same day, Stokes “added a final, frantic flourish” to the Bazball era, by promoting himself to open England’s fourth innings, said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. With his team needing 373 in just under four sessions, he charged down the pitch to his first ball, attempted to reverse sweep his second, and smacked his sixth for six. But his somewhat “reckless” cameo was short-lived – he departed after hitting 30 from 20 balls – and after that England’s hopes faded. They were bowled out the next day for 212, giving New Zealand a 2-1 victory in the series – England’s first defeat in a home three-match series for 14 years.

Magic of Headingley

“The numbers brook no argument,” said Mike Atherton in The Times. Stokes is one of only two all-rounders in history – the other being South Africa’s Jacques Kallis – to have finished his Test career with more than 250 wickets and 7,000 runs. Yet his significance as a cricketer goes beyond statistics. He will be remembered chiefly for his unique ability to shape games – and entire teams – through the sheer force of his personality.

From his match-winning innings in the 2019 World Cup final to the way he galvanised a previously bedraggled England when he first took over as captain, his achievements have been nothing short of remarkable, said Scyld Berry in The Daily Telegraph.

Yet his “legacy will always be” that magical day at Headingley in the 2019 Ashes, when he secured one of England’s most improbable victories by sharing an unbeaten stand of 76 for the final wicket with his “faithful partner Jack Leach”, who contributed just one run. The moment when Stokes “smote” Pat Cummins to the boundary to secure the victory – and then roared, celebrated and hugged his partner – might just be “the moment that gave more people joy than any other in the history of this sport”.

Taylor Swift’s rumoured wedding celebrations kicked off last night at a star-studded New York event with a guest list of around 100 people, ahead of a much larger celebration today which could involve up to 1,000 guests.

Swift marrying NFL star Travis Kelce is “shaping up to be the biggest in showbiz history”, said The Sun, with “secret ‘military’ plans” to make sure it all runs smoothly.

‘Military-grade organisation’

Guests will be “ushered into the venue through an underground car park so they can get in and out without being seen”.

Madison Square Garden has “discreet entrances, a windowless roof and well-practised security arrangements”, so the public and paparazzi, “including drones”, can be “kept at bay”, said The Times.

Keeping their “nuptials almost completely secret” is a “feat” that will have required “military-grade organisation” and probably a “fair amount of legal paperwork”.

But some believe Madison Square Garden could be a red herring to distract attention from the wedding’s real venue. An MSG wedding is seen by some as “too tacky” for the “singer who writes about lakes, countryside, and enchanting fairytales”, said the New York Post. “You cannot convince me” that Taylor Swift isn’t getting married in a chateau in the French countryside, or “maybe even on the coast in Rhode Island”, a fan said on TikTok. But not MSG. “How stupid do you guys think we are.”

Dogs and drones

The logistics of planning a wedding for a celebrity “sound a lot like warfare”, said The Wall Street Journal. Former Navy Seals are “stationed at the door”, German shepherd dogs are “sniffing the perimeter”, radio frequency jammers will be “scrambling the Wi-Fi signal” and drones that “shoot down spying drones” are “locked and loaded”.

“Keeping things under wraps can involve multiple security teams, inner and outer circles of trust” and possibly “fake names and fake venues”. Sometimes guests “won’t know their final destination until they arrive”. They park their car and get put in a shuttle bus to the true location.

Hospitality staff “coming to a secret celebrity wedding site usually have to surrender their mobile and travel in a blacked-out vehicle”, said The Times. Guards are often “very attractive ex-military men in beautiful suits”, said Larry Walshe, a celebrity event designer. For anyone who goes “against the wishes” of the hosts and breaks an NDA, the punishment is that they are “de-friended”.

There’s not just the media and fans to consider. The city the wedding is planned for “might be plunged into a tailspin of resentment” by the prospect of being “invaded” by A-list celebrities and an “entourage” of designers, caterers, security staff and guests, said The Telegraph. Protest posters appeared in Palermo on the eve of Dua Lipa’s wedding to Callum Turner and in Venice last year during the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.

And “rogue family members” can be “just as distressing” as fans, paparazzi and locals, said the WSJ. Michelle Rago, a luxury events specialist who has planned weddings for the likes of Brooklyn Beckham, said at one event a serious concern was preventing an ex-wife from crashing the party.

Thomas Tuchel has said that his England men’s football team will follow Gareth Southgate’s penalty shoot-out blueprint at the World Cup. “We are prepared. We have a process, the players have a process,” Tuchel said.

As part of an overhaul of the England team, Southgate decided on his penalty takers “well in advance based on the training, and he strove publicly to take full accountability to take any blame away from his players”, said the BBC.

With the knockout rounds of this summer’s tournament under way, the “spectre” of the penalty shoot-out “hovers over every match”, said CBC. Many in the game are now turning to studies into the psychology, mathematics and history of penalties to try to gain an edge.

England’s ghosts

“Penalty kick studies” have helped the world’s top teams “win more shoot-outs”, said Science News Explores. The psychological pattern that “stands out” is that “as the stakes go up, the chances of scoring go down”. Players are more likely to score from a penalty during a game than in a shoot-out; penalty kicks tend to be less successful towards the end of tournaments; and during shoot-outs, players are most likely to score if a goal means victory – and least likely if failure means defeat.

The received wisdom is that England are poor at taking penalties. Spain and the Netherlands actually have the worst record, losing four World Cup shoot-outs in all. England (with Italy and France) have lost three, only winning their first with a 4-3 victory over Colombia in 2018, when Southgate was in charge.

A 2023 study that reviewed more than 1,700 penalty kicks found that players from England “scored as often as did the players from other nations”.

This finding was backed up by researchers at Bournemouth University who performed a penalty kick experiment with 130 players from English university and regional teams. Each player took five penalties after being divided into three groups. The researchers reminded one group about England’s poor shoot-out history. That group scored fewer goals than the group that didn’t hear that message and also fewer than the groups that were reminded of the past – but were also told that it proved nothing about English players.

Loving the maths

Mathematics can also come into play. After she scored the decisive spot-kick against Sweden at Euro 2025, the England defender Lucy Bronze explained her method. “I watched the goalkeeper, and every single penalty she dived quite early,” she told the BBC. “Statistically it’s risky for the keeper to stand still… So yeah, I love maths.”

According to recent analysis by Opta of the 292 penalties taken in shoot-outs at World Cups from 1982-2022, 14% were aimed low and to the left as the player looks at the goal, and just over 85% of those penalties were converted.

To guarantee scoring in a World Cup shoot-out, the findings suggest aiming anywhere in the top third of the goal. Of the 39 penalties hit high and on target, none has been saved. But this method requires more precision and nerve because it increases the risk of hitting the post or crossbar, or missing the goal completely. The least successful penalties are those that are aimed at medium height at the centre of the goal, the stats suggest.

Delving deeper still, a 2018 study by InStat of more than 100,000 penalty kicks around the world concluded that accuracy should be prioritised over power, and that the penalty taker’s run-up should be more than five steps and at a medium pace. When taking a penalty it’s also advantageous to look at the goalkeeper, not the ball.

A report published in the Journal of Sports Sciences also found the perfect order for a team’s penalty takers in a shoot-out: the five most successful penalty takers should go in reverse order.

Germany’s penalty record at major tournaments had become the “stuff of legend”, said The Guardian. They had won six consecutive shoot-outs in all competitions and their players had scored their last 15 World Cup shoot-out penalties before their shock defeat by Paraguay on Monday. Three Germans missing in one shoot-out proves that anything can happen in this dramatic sporting lottery.

Xenophobia has enveloped South Africa for years, and now a rising tide of anti-migrant views is flooding the country. Amid growing protests, a slew of anti-immigration groups have called for all undocumented migrants to leave South Africa by the end of June. Though there’s no stated plan for what happens after this date, many in the country are concerned.

‘All of them are now under threat’

South Africa is a melting pot of culture, with “Zimbabweans trained as doctors but driving Ubers, Ethiopians running bustling restaurants and Congolese selling colorful wax print fabrics,” said NPR. “All of them are now under threat” as a result of continued pressure from anti-migrant groups. For several months, “anti-immigrant protesters, many brandishing sticks, have been marching through the streets.” Many of them chant “Mabahambe,” a Zulu phrase meaning “they must go.”

The protests have also “sparked attacks against foreigners” throughout South Africa, said The Associated Press. As the violence and attacks continue, several of the most notable anti-immigration groups have “set what they are calling a June 30 deadline for people in the country illegally to leave and the government to take action” against undocumented migrants. The largest of these groups, March for March, is led by a former radio host from the city of Durban.

The June 30 deadline appears to be an arbitrary date, and most of the anti-immigration organizers have “not specified what will happen when it passes,” said NPR. Some of the groups have said they will go on a “national shutdown,” but what this would entail is unclear. As the deadline arrives, some nations have “begun repatriating citizens while criticizing South Africa for what they call a climate of xenophobia,” said the AP.

‘South Africa has long attracted migrants’

The flash point of xenophobia is largely because of the country’s large number of immigrants. As “one of Africa’s richer countries, South Africa has long attracted migrants from elsewhere in Africa seeking a better life,” said the AP. But they still remain a small portion of the total country: South Africa’s most recent census figures from 2022 show there were “2.4 million foreign nationals who had immigrated out of South Africa’s population of 62 million — less than 4% of the population.”

The protestors’ main complaint is that South Africa is “overrun with illegal immigrants who take jobs away from South Africans, ‌use up scarce public services and are responsible for high crime rates,” said Reuters. However, data disputes these claims. For one, every migrant job creates approximately two jobs for native South Africans, according to a 2018 World Bank report. Undocumented migrants are also “highly unlikely to try to use public hospitals or schools, for which they must register, for fear of being found out,” Anthony Kaziboni, a senior researcher at ​the University of Johannesburg’s Center for Social Development in Africa, told Reuters.

Nonetheless, the “current protests are already causing socioeconomic damage,” said Deutsche Welle. And some fear more violence is coming. “They asked me, ‘When are you going to leave the country?’” Kaunga Nyirenda, a Malawian gardener in Johannesburg, said to CNN of the threats he received. “‘If you don’t leave now, you are going to leave in a coffin, because we don’t need anyone after 30th of June.’”

The heatwave that’s broken records across the continent could change how we travel this summer as we face a new normal of sizzling temperatures.

The impact of extreme temperatures on “tourism-reliant” countries could be “huge,” Alejandro Saez Reale, a specialist in heatwaves and their impact at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, told National Geographic.

The parts of the Mediterranean that have recently experienced prolonged heatwaves, with temperatures exceeding 40C, may become less attractive. Areas that are increasingly affected by wildfires, drought or water shortages could also be hit.

Temperate spots

Travellers might increasingly seek more comfortable temperatures rather than the hottest destinations. They might also place greater value on where weather is more steady and therefore less likely to disrupt their holiday.

This could lead to a rise in the “coolcation” – a term that “neatly summarises” the “emerging trend” for European tourists “seeking out more temperate spots”. A study by the European Travel Commission in 2025 found 81% of Europeans were adjusting their travel habits due to the changing climate, with 15% actively seeking out cooler climates and 14% avoiding destinations prone to extreme heat.

Sustainable holidays, which boast features such as eco-certified accommodation, lower-carbon transport, and activities that support conservation, are also expected to rise in popularity. Forests, lakes, and cooler mountain environments could become more sought after.

Low-lying tropical islands threatened by sea-level rise and coastal erosion, and ski resorts at lower elevations, where shorter and less reliable snow seasons reduce winter tourism, could face a decline in bookings. Resorts are investing “heavily” in artificial snowmaking but the cost is “being passed on to skiers themselves”, said The Independent.

There is also a growing interest in “last-chance tourism”, or visiting places that are changing rapidly due to climate change, such as glaciers or coral reefs, said National Geographic. Ironically, this trend can increase the pressure on the very fragile environments that visitors are so enamoured by.

Finland, Norway, Poland and Iceland are recording double-digit growth in inbound visitors but this doesn’t mean the patterns have shifted entirely: last year, France and Spain were still the most visited countries in the world, with 102 million and 96.8 million visitors respectively, according to UN Tourism. So the “growth rate may have slowed”, but the number of visitors to these warmer countries “is not dropping”.

The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) said feedback from its members suggests that, “on the whole, people are continuing to travel much as they always have, enjoying Mediterranean destinations during the summer months”, so the “increased interest in slightly cooler destinations remains the exception rather than the norm”.

Ballooning costs

Flying is “one of the hardest activities to clean up” because “technological solutions and efforts to keep disasters from spiralling” mean the cost of a flight is “likely to balloon” if it includes a charge for “making planes greener or sucking carbon pollution back out of the atmosphere”, said Ajit Niranjan, The Guardian’s Europe environment correspondent.

Journeys could become trickier during the hottest months because heatwaves, storms, flooding and wildfires are expected to cause more delays and cancellations for flights, trains, ferries and even road travel. This means that travellers may increasingly avoid the peak summer months in very hot regions, and choose to visit during spring or autumn instead, spreading tourism more evenly throughout the year.

However, this might not mean they escape the issue because heatwaves are “spreading across the calendar”, said National Geographic. In May 2022, Spain endured a heatwave of “extraordinary intensity”, the following year in France, “severe heat” extended into September, and this year, much of the southwestern US was “hit by a March heatwave” with temperatures as high as 43C.