| Rishi Sunak has backed the development of new gas-fired power plants, calling it a necessary "insurance policy" for times when there is not enough wind or sun for renewables. Gas accounts for 40% of the UK's annual electricity on average, says the FT, but much more on still days. Haiti's prime minister has resigned after armed gangs demanding his removal plunged the country into anarchy. Ariel Henry, who has been in office on a supposedly temporary basis since the 2021 assassination of president Jovenel Moïse, was abroad when the fighting broke out two weeks ago and has been unable to return. Stargazers across Britain could have a chance of spotting a comet larger than Mount Everest over the next few weeks. The icy body, better known as "the Devil Comet" because of the horn-shaped haze that sometimes surrounds it, passes through the inner solar system every 71 years. 😈☄️ | | |  | Trump with his first wife, Ivana, in 1988. Paul Natkin/Getty |
| Trump's tawdry history of bigotry and racism | Donald Trump "married two immigrants, had a mother who was an immigrant, is descended (like most Americans) from immigrants and employs immigrants", says Timothy O'Brien in Bloomberg. But he's tapping into America's "tawdry history" of nativism, because "bigotry and racism offer some of the essential glue that binds his coalition together". Trump announced his first presidential bid in 2015 by invoking the spectre of rapists, criminals and drug dealers swarming across the Mexican border into the US. Twice last year he said immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country", despite rebukes that this "echoed imagery and language that Adolf Hitler deployed" in Mein Kampf. Trump says he's never read Mein Kampf – but his first wife did say "he once kept a volume of Hitler's speeches by his Trump Tower bedside". | The former president has also "routinely and unapologetically" retweeted white nationalists, and been reluctant to distance himself from white supremacists, such as the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Joe Biden is trying, however imperfectly, to solve America's southern border crisis via bipartisan negotiations with Congress. Trump simply says: "I will seal the border. I will stop this invasion." The truth is he can't – "Congress is ultimately the linchpin in immigration reform, not the White House". But solutions aren't the point. The point is using fear and racism to smooth his "path to power". | | | | Saudi Arabia's latest effort to attract more foreign visitors is to convert an oil rig in the Persian Gulf into a tourist attraction, with three hotels, an underwater restaurant and a rollercoaster snaking around a gas flare. A computer-generated promo video for THE RIG (above) also shows go-karts, zip-wires, a concert arena and scuba divers exploring barnacle-crusted scaffolding. It sounds lovely, says Juliet Samuel in The Times, as long as you can stomach the storms, 40-degree summer heat, and "oil, chemicals and sewage" from nearby industry and shipping. |
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| | | Low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) have become an object of fierce controversy, particularly on the right. But a government report into the road-blocking schemes has concluded that they are in fact "popular and effective", says The Guardian. In polls conducted inside four sample LTNs – in London, Birmingham, Wigan and York – "twice as many local people supported them as opposed them". And contrary to claims that LTNs simply displace traffic to other streets rather than easing overall congestion, the Department for Transport review found that the "available evidence" suggests they work as intended. | | | | |  | Getty |
| For the first time since 1992, vinyl records have returned to Britain's "basket of goods" used to calculate inflation, says Sky News. It reflects years of steadily rising sales – in 2023, 5.9 million records were sold in the UK, the highest level since 1990. Other items added to the basket by the Office for National Statistics this year include air fryers and gluten-free bread; products that have been removed include popcorn, draught stout and hand sanitiser. | | | | | | Enjoying The Knowledge? Click below to share | | |
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| | |  | Macron with Scholz last year. Sean Gallup/Getty |
| Falling out over Ukraine | It's no secret that France's Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Olaf Scholz have "very different personalities", says Stefan Meister in Le Monde. But they are also finding it increasingly difficult to establish a professional working relationship, "and the things that separate them take a more personal tone every day". There is "growing irritation" in Berlin at Macron's eagerness to make grand declarations – particularly about the war in Ukraine – and "position himself as Europe's leader". Meanwhile, Paris moans about Scholz's "hesitations and delays", and his "cold feet" about sending Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv. Naturally the Germans find this hard to swallow: they are the second-largest supplier of arms to Ukraine after the US, with France a distant 14th. | What's clear is that Germany and France are "drawing two completely different conclusions" from the war. Scholz believes his main ally in the conflict is the US, not France or other European nations, in large part because he thinks Europe is "simply not up to the task" of defending itself. Major investments like the €100bn in "special funds" to boost the German military are geared specifically around maintaining the US presence in Europe. Macron, meanwhile, is telling anyone who will listen that "Europe must acquire greater sovereignty in defence matters". In short, "Germany doesn't want to take the reins", and France "is incapable of doing so". | | |  | Princess Margaret in 1965: time for a vodka pick-me-up? Les Lee/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty |
| | | The whimsical website vole.wtf has developed a "celeb clock" that shows what famous types are – or were – up to at specific times of day, according to their publicised daily schedules. At 12.30pm, for example, Charles Dickens was writing in his study, Eric Cantona is "at the seaside feeling invincible", and Princess Margaret was "heading downstairs for a vodka pick-me-up". See what celebs are up to right now, here. |
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| | | In the 1990s, American army engineers seriously considered the production of a weapon that, once activated, would have made thousands of people homosexual, says Le Point: the "gay bomb". The idea, dreamt up at the cutting-edge Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, was to release an aphrodisiac so powerful that enemy troops would be overcome by an irresistible desire to go to bed with one another. A document titled "Harassing, Annoying, and 'Bad Guy' Identifying Chemicals" reveals that scientists requested $7.5m to develop the weapon, though, perhaps sadly, it never saw the light of day. Still, "never has the slogan 'make love, not war' been so apt". | | | | | | | | It's England's largest rhododendron bush, sometimes known as "shrubzilla", which has flowered a month earlier than expected after the country experienced the hottest February on record. The bushy behemoth, planted 120 years ago in the grounds of the South Lodge hotel in Horsham, West Sussex, measures at least 30ft high and 40ft wide – big enough to conceal a double-decker bus. | | | | | "Fish, to taste good, must swim at least three times: in water, in butter and in wine."
Polish proverb |
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