Labour will treat people-smugglers like terrorists, Keir Starmer has told The Times in an interview about his immigration plans. The leader of the opposition also says he will axe the Rwanda plan and strike a deal with the EU on turning back asylum seekers, even if it means accepting quotas of migrants from the bloc. A Russian pilot fired two missiles at an RAF surveillance plane over the Black Sea last September, according to BBC News. Moscow previously described the incident, which didn't result in any damage, as a "technical malfunction", but sources say the pilot thought his commanders had given him permission to fire. A "ufologist" has presented alleged alien corpses to Mexico's congress. Jaime Maussan, who has a long history of debunked claims, opened two wooden crates in front of lawmakers; inside were small figures (pictured) that he says had been preserved in a Peruvian mine for 1,000 years. 👽🤔 |
Press Office of Mexican Parliament/Anadolu Agency/Getty |
"You take your summit where you can get it." Vladimir Smirnov/AFP/Getty |
The growing nuclear threat to the West |
Owing to the small matter of an arrest warrant from the International Court of Justice, says Le Monde, Vladimir Putin was unable to attend the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) meeting in Johannesburg last month, or the G20 summit in New Delhi last week. Instead, the Russian president has had to make do with a tête-à -tête with North Korea's Kim Jong-un, in a remote cosmodrome in Russia's far east. In his hour of need, the "master of Moscow" has turned to a country best summed up as an arsenal housed in a barracks governed by a dictatorship. "You take your summit where you can get it." |
This megalomaniac meet-up makes sense in practical terms: North Korea needs food aid, foreign currency and technological advice; Russia wants guns and ammo. But seeking help from the hermit kingdom is still a sign of Putin's desperation. The reliability of Pyongyang's munitions is "questionable": the bombardment of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong in 2010 was memorable for the high failure rate of North Korean shells. What the meeting demonstrates is the return of a "violently anti-Western axis", armed to the teeth with nukes. Putin's visit to Iran in 2022, just as the Islamist state relaunched its nuclear programme, was already a "foray by Moscow beyond the international consensus" on non-proliferation. Normalising North Korea's military adventurism has "sounded a new alarm". With the world fragmenting as a result of the Ukraine war, the fight against nuclear proliferation is fast becoming a "collateral victim". |
🤤🦀 The two tyrants took the opportunity to dine in style, says Nicola Smith in The Daily Telegraph. Their rich meal started with Kamchatka crab dumplings, White Amur fish soup and a sorbet made from the berries of sea buckthorn, a deciduous shrub. The main course was a choice of sturgeon or an entrecôte of marbled beef, followed by a calorific dessert of red bilberries with pine nuts and condensed milk. It was all washed down with red and white wines from the Divnomorskoe manor in southern Russia. |
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Italy has released a new postage stamp in honour of Queen Elizabeth II. "How beautiful!" writes one person on X (formerly Twitter). "Thank you Italy! 🇮🇹🇬🇧". "The UK has done that for years," points out another. "We even dedicated bank notes to her." |
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When Nicola Sturgeon resigned as Scotland's first minister in March, says Lindsay Paterson in The New Statesman, many commentators thought it would kill the campaign for Scottish independence. Certainly, the SNP is in a bad way under Sturgeon's successor, Humza Yousaf: Labour could gain "several dozen seats" from the party at next year's general election. "But the SNP is not the independence movement." Polls show that support for secession remains strong – an average of 3.3 percentage points higher than the 44.7% achieved in the 2014 referendum. |
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Westerners have longer lie-ins at the weekend than people in Asia, says New Scientist. Researchers at the National University of Singapore analysed a year's worth of sleep tracker data from volunteers in 35 countries. They found that people everywhere slept more at the weekend, but that it varied hugely from country to country. Finns slept the longest, getting up on average 26.5 minutes later than they did on weekdays, while Indians slept in the least, rising just 3.4 minutes later. Brits came somewhere in the middle, allowing themselves a bonus 15.9 minutes of weekend shut-eye. |
Starmer in his days as DPP: a "meticulous evaluation of evidence". Lewis Whyld/Getty |
Starmer knows we're sick of big ideas |
One common criticism of Keir Starmer is that he lacks ambition, says Rafael Behr in The Guardian. Where are the big ideas? The bold policies needed to restore the country's fortunes? The usual rejoinder – why drag attention away from the Tories when they're constantly imploding? – is a good one. But there's another, more important factor: ordinary voters are tired of grand political promises. After Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, they're deeply sceptical of "anything that looks like an undeliverable promise and anyone who claims to have quick-fix solutions". This "monumental disaffection", seen on the ground by Labour and Tory candidates alike, is resistant to the "visionary stump speeches" Starmer's critics so desperately want him to make.
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The best way to understand the Labour leader is to look at his five years as Director of Public Prosecutions. Given how many "fissile issues" come across a DPP's desk, what's noticeable is the absence of scandal. The Tories have desperately tried to conjure one up, involving Jimmy Savile, but to no avail. Starmer "crossed a minefield unscathed". And the reason he managed that is because, as he explained in 2013, he always prioritised the "evidence test" – what were the chances of securing a conviction? – over public or political pressure to act. In other words, "prosecute when you know you can win and not just because people are demanding that something be done". Politics is a different beast: leaders rarely get time for "meticulous evaluation of evidence". But for a country exhausted by political chaos, Starmer's softly-softly approach "appears to be working". |
Edward Miller/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty |
People today don't appreciate quite how dirty London used to be, back when everything was covered in coal-fire soot, says Jay Owens in The Guardian. During the restoration of Downing Street in 1954 (pictured), workers discovered that beneath the "familiar dark facade" of the building was yellow brick. "The shock was considered too much for the country to take and the newly clean building was painted black to maintain its previous, familiar appearance." |
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The US government is investing $22m in new "smart textiles", says Interesting Engineering – clever fabrics that can record "audio, video and geolocation data". The programme tasked with clothing America's spies so they become walking surveillance machines is called SMART ePANTS – or "smarty pants". Geeks 🙄 |
It's a newly discovered rove beetle that grows an entire fake termite on its back to fool real termites into giving it food. Discovered in Australia, Austrospirachtha carrijoi has evolved an enlarged abdomen in the shape of its unwitting patron, complete with individual body segments, antennae and legs. Because termites are blind and therefore rely entirely on touch, says Science.org, they are fooled by the "puppet" into dropping food into the beetle's mouth. It must be one of nature's "craziest forms of mimicry". |
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"The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces." American humourist Will Rogers |
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