Hundreds of flood warnings are in place across England, following a week of heavy rainfall in the wake of Storm Henk. More than a thousand homes have been flooded across the country, and a major incident was declared in Nottinghamshire after the River Trent burst its banks. In London, a party boat on the Thames sank overnight. Rishi Sunak says he intends to call the next general election "in the second half of this year", dampening speculation about a May ballot. Keir Starmer accused the prime minister of "squatting in Downing Street". Royal Mail is issuing a special set of stamps celebrating the Spice Girls as they mark their 30th anniversary. The pop group said they could never have dreamed of this when they first formed in 1994, adding: "That's Girl Power!" If you really, really want to get your hands on a set, pre-order here. |
Starmer with his wife Victoria in 2020. Justin Setterfield/Getty |
Can we trust a Starmer promise? |
Keir Starmer's pitch to British voters is simple, says Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph: years of Tory psychodrama, broken promises and failed policies have "damaged faith in politics". As an antidote to all this, his Labour Party offers "calm, credibility and a remedy to the 'age of insecurity'". No more of that "Tory chopping and changing"; no more broken promises. And of course, Starmer deserves to be "heard with an open mind – and judged on his record". The problem is, his record is one of indecision, U-turns and big ideas "which fall apart quite regularly".
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The opposition leader's "signature economic policy", announced two years ago, was to follow America and the EU in embarking on a "huge state spending programme" to support green tech. With great fanfare, Labour said it was "committed to a climate investment pledge worth £28bn a year until 2030". But this promise, once an "article of economic faith", has since been postponed to a time "when Labour's 'fiscal rules' allow" – which is to say, "never". Other key pledges are also being "taken outside and shot": the nationalisation of utilities, the scrapping of tuition fees, the abolition of Universal Credit. These were all among the "10 pledges" Starmer published during his leadership campaign. Today, they have been deleted from his website. People used to complain about Boris Johnson's "odd relationship with the truth". Those tempted to take a Starmer economic promise to the bank have been given a "taste of what to expect". |
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Russian photographer Alexey Kljatov specialises in macro shots of real snowflakes. The pictures above were all taken on the balcony of his home in Moscow using an LED light to illuminate their beautiful, and entirely unique, shapes. See more of his images here. |
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One under-examined aspect of Britain's woeful housing market is the "Stalinist" state of new-builds, says Matthew Brooker in Bloomberg. Ugly, poor-quality homes are churned out by a small group of big companies that dominate the market. Just 5% are commissioned by the actual owners, a proportion far lower than in the rest of Europe. In Germany, where 51% of new properties are "self-commissioned", you can go to a website and pick from among 2,400 house designs and 350 construction companies that will build "to your specification". |
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Costco has found a new hit with online shoppers, says NBC: gold bars. The retail giant sold more than $100m worth of the 1oz ingots in three months at the end of last year. The precious metal blocks (pictured), which currently go for a little over $2,000 each, typically sell out within a few hours of going on sale on the company's website. Sales are limited to two per customer – and there are no refunds. |
Students celebrating graduation in Nanjing: where are the Americans? Yang Bo/China News Service/Visual China Group/Getty |
Our growing failure to understand China |
Despite the "ever-present refrain" about China's strategic threat to America, says Rory Truex in The Washington Post, we are "running critically low" on China expertise. Our education system is generating nowhere near enough US citizens with Chinese language skills, "meaningful lived experiences" in the country, or deep knowledge about it. Enrolments in college Mandarin courses dropped 20% between 2016 and 2020, and the number of American students going to Chinese universities has plummeted. It's partly the fault of Beijing: the draconian zero-Covid laws of recent years, along with the perception that foreign citizens could be arbitrarily arrested, have scared people away. |
But the new Cold War climate in the US "has not helped matters". American scholars researching China risk being investigated by the government. Confucius Institutes, which provided Chinese-language education on US campuses, have largely been shuttered because of their ties to Beijing. Government funding for foreign language studies has fallen from $110m in 2010 to $72m in 2022 – with just $10m of that covering languages from the whole of East Asia. There is far more "linguistic and cultural fluency" with America in China: learning English to some level is compulsory, and about 300,000 students head to US universities every year. At Princeton, where I work, the "vast majority" of PhD candidates for Chinese politics are Chinese themselves, and very few are American. To compete with Beijing, "we must do more than invest in weapons and semiconductors. We must invest in understanding." |
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This week's Storm Henk is the eighth named storm in three months, says the BBC. The Met Office has been naming storms since 2015, and since 2019 the Dutch weather agency, KNMI, has been chipping in its own monikers. Storms Henk and Babet were named after people who popped into the KNMI headquarters and put their names forward. Gerrit was named after a veteran weather presenter who recently retired from the Dutch national broadcaster after 25 years. |
It's an "AI key", says The Verge, which Microsoft is introducing to its keyboards. The button – the first change to the Windows keyboard since 1994 – will allow users to access Copilot, Microsoft's AI tool. Powered by ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Copilot helps users with tasks like searching the internet, writing emails and creating images. |
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"It is better to be a has-been than a never-was."
British historian C Northcote Parkinson |
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