Health Secretary Steve Barclay has backed the introduction of "Martha's rule" in English hospitals, giving patients and their families the right to a second medical opinion. It's named after Martha Mills, a 13-year-old who died after doctors didn't transfer her to intensive care despite warnings from her parents. Joe Biden's son Hunter has been charged with illegally buying and possessing a gun after falsely declaring he wasn't a drug user in 2018. The 53-year-old former crack cocaine addict could receive a prison sentence if convicted. This year's damp summer has a silver lining: UK butterfly numbers have hit their highest in four years. A group of 95,000 volunteer observers counted 1.5 million butterflies between 14 July and 6 August, a 34% increase on 2022. |
Bond undercover in Dr No. Glamorous, but not much use in Westminster. MGM Studios/Getty |
Should we be alarmed by Westminster's spy drama? |
News that a Tory researcher was arrested in March for allegedly spying for China has prompted hysteria in Westminster, says Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics. China hawk Iain Duncan Smith has hyperbolically talked of a "hostile act" at the heart of government. But we shouldn't be "too pious" about the allegations. It is quite literally the job of intelligence agencies to recruit people in foreign governments. China's spymasters have "well over 100,000 paid professionals working for them" – of course some of them are operating in London. And it goes without saying that Britain's spooks are no doubt trying to do exactly the same thing in Beijing. |
It's also important to understand that there are different types of intelligence agent. The first is what's known as an "influence agent", whose job it is to "change people's opinions and views". Given what we know of the supposed Chinese agent (who strongly denies the allegations), the authorities probably believe he's in this camp. The second category is someone who, as in the movies, tries to gather information that the target doesn't want them knowing. But exciting as this sort of work may seem, it isn't much use in parliament. Why? Because "there is very little classified information that MPs get their hands on". Even when I was chairman of the parliamentary defence select committee, I didn't have any top-secret intel that a foreign spy could access. It's just "not a very good way of targeting people". |
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Britain's top stars from the fashion and arts world descended on London's Theatre Royal Drury Lane last night for the "biggest sartorial event of the season", says the BBC. The second annual Vogue World – held in London this year as an answer to the Met Gala – drew everyone from Stormzy to Andrew Lloyd Webber and a pregnant Sienna Miller, to kick off London Fashion Week, which starts today. See more striking red carpet looks here. |
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When George Osborne was making the case for austerity in the 2010s, says Georgina Sturge in her new book, Bad Data, the then chancellor insisted he was following the latest economic research: namely, a finding by two Harvard economists that when a country's debt-to-GDP ratio goes above 90%, its economy shrinks. Yet when an American graduate student later checked the study's numbers, he found a monumental error: the academics had meant to add together 20 rows of data but had only done 15. Once the numbers from those five additional countries were included, the 90% figure was plain wrong. But by that point it was too late: "the 90% threshold was a cornerstone of economic policy". |
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Nice work if you can get it |
USA Today is hiring for two exceedingly plum jobs: a Taylor Swift reporter and a Beyoncé reporter. Both pay up to $100,000 a year and require successful applicants to travel internationally as they report on the doings of their designated pop megastar. If you fancy a punt – and have at least five years of journalism experience – apply here for Taylor and here for Beyoncé. |
A 1920s flapper girl in The Great Gatsby (1949). Paramount Pictures/Getty |
The modern world was made in the 1920s |
We are used to thinking of the 1960s as the "golden, transformative decade of modern society and culture", says James Marriott in The Times, with its pop music, television, miniskirts and sexual revolution. But in reality, a "longer and deeper shadow" is cast by the modernist turn of the 1920s. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer makes a version of this argument, showing the protagonist investigating quantum mechanics while also reading TS Eliot, listening to atonal music, examining cubist art and discussing the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. The suggestion is that in the realms of "culture, physics and the mind", old structures were breaking apart into something "strange, fragmented and new". |
Our democracy, in which all adult men and women can vote, dates to 1928. It was the rise of radio that made the 1920s, not the 1960s, the "first era of mass media", giving the public general access not just to the words but the voices of their politicians – the start of superficial "personality politics". The decade saw the first newspaper grumblings about the "Americanisation of British culture" and the start of people regularly smiling in photographs. The first "shockingly short skirts" were worn not by Mary Quant models but by Jazz Age flappers. We miss all this because it is hidden behind the great cataclysm of the Second World War; there's an "illusory sense" that history began afresh in the conflict's aftermath. But perhaps as both the war and the 1960s fade from living memory, we'll get a better perspective. "The modern world is older than we think." |
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The Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset isn't usually thought of as one of the "world's great museums", says The New York Times. Its collection of around 300 armoured vehicles attracts only a few hundred thousand visitors a year. Yet there is one place "where it not only ranks among the world's largest museums, but surpasses them": YouTube, where the Tank Museum has over 550,000 subscribers. That's more than New York's Museum of Modern Art (520,000), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (381,000) or the Louvre (106,000). Clips include "intensely detailed discussions on tank history", and newsier items on how armoured vehicles are being used in Ukraine. Watch for yourself here. |
Americans are buying so many laxatives that it is causing nationwide shortages, says The Wall Street Journal. Searches for the drugs on Amazon have more than tripled in the past year, and manufacturers of popular fibre supplements have reported double-digit sales growth. Bowel specialists say the post-Covid surge in travel, together with hybrid work schedules, are "disrupting routines and mealtimes"; and that people are using the medication as a "budget Ozempic" to feel skinnier. |
It's the world's first confirmed dog-fox hybrid. The unique creature, which died this year, was found in the Brazilian wilderness in 2021, but vets couldn't figure out exactly what it was. A new genetic study has found that its mother was a pampas fox and its father was a dog of unknown breed. Carers say it barked like a dog but ate live rodents, and had a temperament halfway between a fox's wariness and a dog's docility. |
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"By the time you're 80 years old, you've learned everything. You only have to remember it." American comedian George Burns |
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