| Donald Trump has been cleared to run for president, after the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot exclude him from the ballot. The nation's top judges unanimously rejected attempts by Colorado and others to invoke a Civil War-era law prohibiting "insurrectionists" from holding office. The decision comes as a major boost to Trump's campaign at the start of "Super Tuesday" today, when Republicans in 15 states will vote for their preferred presidential candidate. France has become the first country in the world to enshrine the right to abortion in its constitution. French lawmakers voted 780-72 to make abortion a "guaranteed freedom", meaning future governments won't be able to drastically modify existing laws that provide state funding for abortion up to 14 weeks in to pregnancy. The wet shirt worn by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is going up for sale. The sodden smock, below, which helped establish Firth as a Hollywood heartthrob, is expected to fetch around £10,000 at an auction of more than 60 costumes. | | | |  | Agricultural workers plant rice seedlings in India's Rishi Valley. Universal Images Group/Getty |
| Water wars are now a very real danger | The world is running out of water, says George Monbiot in The Guardian. To meet the growing global demand for food, irrigation needs to "increase by 146% by the middle of this century". The problem is that our water usage is already maxed out – we've pumped so much of it out of the ground that we've "changed the Earth's spin". The dry parts of the world are becoming drier, with the southwestern US in its 24th year of drought. And shrinking lakes and rivers mean that freshwater species are becoming extinct at "roughly five times the rate" of land-based ones. | This could have huge political repercussions. The Indus river, for example, is "shared by three nuclear powers", India, Pakistan and China, the first two of which have rapidly rising water needs. Even in "the most optimistic climate scenario", the glaciers that feed this demand are expected to shrink by almost half before 2100. India and Pakistan's dispute around the Kashmir region is already driven in part by "water competition"; as that water dries up, "something much worse" could break out. Ultimately, those of us in the world's richer half, who get to choose what we eat, need to minimise our "water footprint": peas, for example, are highly water efficient; beef is the opposite. This is a "massive neglected issue" that could be fatal to "peace and prosperity on a habitable planet". It's time we stopped ignoring it. | | | | Night skies across the UK lit up last weekend during a "spectacular surprise display" of the Northern Lights, says the BBC. On Sunday evening, a solar storm triggered a "sudden spike" in the activity which causes the aerial phenomenon, with a vivid array of colours visible as far south as Cornwall. Borealis boffins say there is a greater chance of seeing the aurora over the next few years because of a cyclical increase in the number of sunspots – "massive fields of magnetic pressure on the surface of the Sun". |
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| | | If you ever wondered whether Donald Trump's White House team was on drugs, says Rolling Stone, "the answer was, in some cases, yes". According to a report by the Defence Department's inspector general, controlled drugs were freely available to aides across the administration, via the White House Medical Unit. One former official said the Trump White House was "awash with speed"'; another said it was "like the Wild West", with easy access to powerful stimulants like modafinil – used by military pilots "to stay alert during long missions" – and anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax. As one former staffer puts it: "You try working for him and not chasing pills with alcohol." | | | | TikTok's latest obsession involves dousing yourself in scent before you hit the hay, says The Evening Standard. There are myriad videos of "Gen Zs spritzing themselves before turning in for the night" and the search term "perfumes for bedtime" has racked up over 120 million views. It's great that TikTokers are "romanticising their night-time routines", but it's nothing new. "The most famous bedtime perfume advocate was Marilyn Monroe, who famously revealed that she wore nothing but Chanel N°5 Eau de Parfum to bed." | | | | | | Enjoying The Knowledge? Click below to share | | |
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| My Question Time dilemma: how to define an Islamist | In the Question Time green room last week, says Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph, Baroness Warsi and I were arguing even before we went live. She demanded I define an Islamist: "Admit it, you can't, can you?" "Leave it for the cameras," I bellowed back. "I know perfectly well what it is." I walked dramatically out of the room, turned a corner, and phoned a friend: "What's an Islamist?" I know the answer, of course, but I was looking for a definition that "wouldn't get me arrested or my head cut off". Welcome to Britain's multiculturalism debate. "We conduct it behind nervous smiles." | My mild view – that culture is more than "exotic cooking and colourful weddings", and that some cultures are liable to clash – is so "unusual and distasteful to the intelligentsia" that when I voice it, I not only feel lonely but possibly insane. "Did I dream the 7-7 bombings? That teacher driven into hiding because he showed a cartoon?" Yet somehow the official consensus remains that "multiculturalism works great" but is occasionally undermined by isolated extremists, who can come from any quarter. This was the essence of Rishi Sunak's "strange, vacuous statement" after George Galloway's by-election win last week. The PM highlighted an endorsement Galloway received from the former BNP leader Nick Griffin, but made no mention of all those Rochdale residents who voted for him. To illustrate this on Question Time, I offered viewers a carefully worded provocation: "Were I to call Jesus a fraud," I said, "I'd get a few angry letters. If I said something analogous about Islam, I'd get threats of violence." | | | | | | When I travel abroad, says Flora Gill in the I newspaper, "I always try to visit a McDonald's". Don't dismiss me as some "uncultured simpleton": branches of the fast food giant are a fascinating reflection of the tastes of the country they're in. Japanese McDonald's serves the "Ebi Burger", which is "filled with whole shrimp"; in Hindu-dominated India, there are no beef dishes, so instead I tried the vegetarian McSpicy Paneer. In Belgium, I ate a McKrocket, "where the patty was deep fried ragout paired with a mustardy sauce", and in China, I had a side of porridge-like congee with my morning McMuffin. |
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| | | The Middle Ages wasn't all "violence, superstition and ignorance", says The Economist. There were leaps and bounds in economic and social progress across the spectrum. Between 1300 and the completion of the 72-storey Shard in 2010, the height of London's skyline doubled. But in the three centuries between 1000 and 1300, it quintupled. Between the 1300s and the late 16th century, violent deaths declined by more than two thirds. And thanks to the advent of the printing press in the 1400s, between 1000 and 1600, the number of words written and printed in England went from roughly a million a year to around 100 billion. | | | | | | It's an artist's impression of a brand new luxury island being built off the coast of Saudi Arabia. Set to open by the end of the year, Sindalah will boast a marina for yachts, high-end hotels and ritzy shops. It's part of the kingdom's plan to build a "Red Sea hub" on its northwestern shore, including a 180-kilometre linear city encased in mirrored glass known as The Line. The plans have been dismissed by some critics as a "fantasy", says The Times, but at Sindalah, which has been built in less than a year, they will soon be able to see the first fruits for themselves. | | | | | "When I read about the lives of celebrities in our newspapers, I sometimes wish we had a Freedom From Information Act."
English critic Theodore Dalrymple |
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