| Michael Gove, the communities secretary, has published a new definition of "extremism", in a bid to stop Islamist and right-wing groups receiving government funding and meeting with senior officials. Gove says a list of organisations banned under the new guidance will be published in the next few weeks. The US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill that could result in TikTok being banned in America. The legislation, which Joe Biden has said he will sign if it gets through the Senate, gives the video platform's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, six months to sell its controlling stake, or face a nationwide ban. Glastonbury has announced its "worst ever" line-up, according to some fans, with Coldplay set to headline for a record fifth time, and Dua Lipa and SZA closing the other two nights on the Pyramid Stage. Mercifully, Shania Twain is booked for the Sunday teatime "legend" slot. See the full line-up here. | | SZA. Christopher Polk/Variety/Getty |
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| The Pope should pipe down | The Vatican "prides itself on having the oldest professional diplomatic service in the world", says Matthias Rüb in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Under Pope Francis, these diplomats must be working overtime. In an interview last weekend, he called on Ukraine to raise a "white flag" and negotiate with Russia – a remark his spokesman tried to spin as a call for "courageous negotiations". This wasn't a "blip". The Argentine pontiff has accused Nato of "yapping at the gates of Russia" by expanding into eastern Europe, and thus being complicit in Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He has told the Israeli president that one should not "repay terror with terror", and, in a private meeting, decried the "genocide" in Gaza. In each case, anxious cardinals and press officers later tried to row back their boss's words. | This "amateurish dissonance" fatally undermines any possibility that the Vatican could act as a mediator between warring parties. Perhaps Pope Francis's geopolitical views should be expected, given he comes from Latin America, where the "reflex" to brand the West as imperialist "still predominates". But his conviction that war is "always a defeat" erases "centuries of theological understanding". Sophisticated Christian arguments for the possibility of "just war" began as early as the fourth century, with Augustine. By arguing that "the victim of an arbitrary attack should give in before things get worse", the Pope is putting the law of the jungle above the rule of law. | | | | In a bid to recruit new blood, GCHQ has become the first British intelligence agency to advertise for spies on LinkedIn. The nation's eavesdroppers have posted a puzzle (above) on the networking platform, in a nod to the organisation's code-breaking history. Hidden in the image (larger version here) are 13 "elements" that represent letters of the alphabet – the puzzle solver needs to assemble these letters to reveal a hidden message. For the solution, click here. |
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| | | Donald Trump stunned Washington's China hawks this week when he appeared to argue against banning TikTok, says Axios, even though cracking down on the social media app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, was his idea in the first place. "If you get rid of TikTok," said the former president, "Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don't want Facebook, who cheated in the last election, doing better." Another possible explanation is that Trump, who desperately needs money for his campaign and legal battles, has recently struck up a friendship with the billionaire Jeff Yass, who just so happens to own a $15bn stake in… ByteDance. | | | | | | Vogue has picked its favourite looks from this year's awards season. They include Greta Lee in an "icy silk" Loewe dress; Dua Lipa in a "slinky custom Courrèges" dress with a metallic fringe; Celine Song in a custom-made Loewe skirt suit; Ayo Edebiri in a cream shirt tucked into "trompe l'oeil leather jeans" from Bottega Veneta; Carey Mulligan in a replica 1950s Balenciaga gown; and Jennifer Lawrence in a vintage 1990s Givenchy dress – "can't say more sustainable than that". | | | | Enjoying The Knowledge? Click below to share | | |
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| | | | No tax please, we're British: plantation owner George Hibbert, painted by Thomas Lawrence |
| How non-doms shaped modern Britain | Jeremy Hunt's decision to scrap the non-dom tax regime has largely been seen "through the prism of Westminster politics", says Simon Nixon on Substack. What few people realise is just how much these arcane rules "made modern Britain". The tax status has its origins in 1799, during the Napoleonic Wars, when colonial plantation owners successfully convinced the government that its first-ever income tax shouldn't apply to money earned and kept abroad. It was only in the 1980s and 1990s, when the City of London "roared back to life", that non-dom status really came into its own. Britain became a "magnet" for newly minted oligarchs in Russia, central Asia and elsewhere, who could keep their riches abroad "without being troubled by the UK taxman". | It wasn't just the oligarchs, though. The non-dom rules also turned London into a tax haven for all the bankers and other professionals serving their needs: the lawyers, the PR advisers, the architects, the interior designers, the restaurateurs, the hoteliers, the private jet providers. Between 2001 and 2018, almost 500,000 people claimed the status; in the richest parts of London, as many as 12% of residents were non-doms. This shift gave huge prominence to financial services. In most economies, financial services are merely a "cost of doing business"; in Britain, in part thanks to these generous tax rules, they became "the core of the national economic model". Scrapping the non-dom regime probably won't lead to the much-feared "exodus" of wealthy foreigners: when tougher rules were introduced in 2017, only about 2% of non-doms left. But if Britain is turning away from its old economic model, it does beg the question: "What will replace it?" | | | | Fýri Resort in Hemsedal, Norway. Ski Safari |
| | Climate change is making it impossible to guarantee snow in many ski resorts, says Bloomberg – except for those in the far north, like Scandinavia, where "business is now booming". The peaks aren't jagged, and the villages aren't quite as picturesque as in Switzerland or Italy, but with a weak Swedish currency, and day passes costing around £40, more and more skiers are making the journey. And with around a quarter of Alpine resorts already shut for the season – Austria, for example, had its warmest winter ever – for determined skiers, the snowy Nordics may be something of a "last resort". |
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| | | To The Times: | William Hague's piece ("Death of local papers threatens democracy") reminded me of that old chestnut: Dickens first serialised A Tale of Two Cities in the Bicester Times and the Worcester Times. | Edmund Buck Cwmyoy, Monmouthshire | | | | | | | | It's junction 10 on the M25, which is undergoing a scheduled daytime closure for the first time since the London Orbital opened in 1986. As part of a £317m project to build a new interchange with the A3, the motorway will be closed between junctions 10 and 11 from 9pm tomorrow to 6am on Monday. The project involves expanding both roads from three lanes to four, as well as environmental improvements including two underpasses for toads, and a "green bridge" for wildlife and pedestrians. There will be four more weekend closures before September, and the aim is to complete work by summer 2025. | | | | "Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret." Ambrose Bierce |
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