UK - The UK’s consumer price index was 3.6 percent higher in June than the same month last year – significantly above the Bank of England’s 2 percent inflation target. The broader retail price index rose even more, by 4.4 percent. Unemployment is also up, hitting 4.7 percent during the three months to May, a four-year high. And last week’s double dose of downbeat data came against a backdrop of broader economic weakness, with GDP having shrunk in both April and May. It’s now screamingly obvious that Labour’s crude Keynesianism – “pump priming” the economy by upping state borrowing and spending – isn’t working. Worse than that, this Government’s actions are pushing Britain towards a budgetary crisis every bit as serious as that in 1976, when the UK was forced to go “cap in hand” to the International Monetary Fund for a bail-out. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s higher tax rates have been hammering economic activity, causing tax revenues to fall. Yet Labour’s leadership, driven by ideological fervour and fearing the party’s increasingly strident far left, keeps pushing spending up regardless.

UK - For all that Palestine Action’s criminal campaign of thuggery and intimidation is directed at the state of Israel, and specifically its ability to defend itself, it’s not Israel that needs to worry about Saturday’s events. Israel can take care of itself, but can the UK? Because these protests portend nothing good for Britain. Recall that Palestine Action is not merely anti-Israel. This is an organisation that openly, proudly targets British companies for vandalism and destruction. That uses criminal conduct to terrorise British business owners into changing their commercial relationships. An organisation whose activists have breached a British military base and damaged RAF planes. And not insignificant numbers of Britons have assembled in UK cities in solidarity with that organisation. This is not a well country. The last time we found ourselves in this level of economic decline and political dysfunction, in the 1970s, we were called the Sick Man of Europe. But this is a different kind of sickness. It’s a spiritual sickness, a new British disease.

GERMANY - Banning the nation’s second-largest political party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), has become a matter of constant conversation. Yet, a prominent academic has warned that there could be serious consequences for breaking the democratic system. Germany’s AfD was declared a “right-wing extremist” organisation by the outgoing leftist government earlier this year, triggering a legal challenge. Meanwhile, some German states have moved to ban AfD members from serving as police officers or becoming civil servants. Far from being a niche or fringe party, the faction now serves as the official parliamentary opposition and recently polled in first place nationwide. “A ban that would eliminate all votes for the AfD and thus lead to [a left-wing] parliamentary majority” would be a “sure path to civil war”.

CHINA - Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared his country’s support for the “national sovereignty and dignity” of Iran after meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi on Wednesday. Wang promised Araghchi that China would “continue to support Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty and dignity, resisting power politics and bullying, defending its legitimate rights and interests through political negotiation, and adhering to the principle of good-neighborliness and friendship to continuously improve and develop relations with its neighboring countries.”

UK - Children will be taught that “worrying and feeling down” are not mental-health conditions in a bid to curb Britain’s spiralling worklessness crisis. Teachers have been told they must avoid encouraging pupils to self-diagnose “normal feelings” as problems such as anxiety and depression. The radical change, in new guidance issued to schools, comes amid escalating concern over the number of young people being signed off sick. Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, told The Telegraph: “For too many children today, their understanding of how to manage their mood and regulate their emotions is coming from social media, rather than their parents, teachers or trained professionals. Our new RSHE [relationships, sex and health education] curriculum will equip children to develop grit and resilience from the get-go, helping them understand that feeling a little down or anxious for a while is normal and nothing to worry about."

UK - The UK Government is urging households to stock up on basic supplies in case of emergencies such as flooding, fire or power cuts. Alongside practical items such as bottled water, a wind-up torch, a first aid kit and a portable power bank, the advice includes keeping some cash at home to provide essential backup if card payments or banking apps stop working. Simon Phillips, managing director at No1 Currency, said: “Most of us take card and contactless payments for granted, and the technology is great – right up until the moment it stops working. As a rule of thumb, you should have enough cash to cover essential spending for two to three days. For smaller households, this might be around £100, while larger households or those living in rural areas might prefer to keep up to £300 at home. Cash at home should be kept securely. Yet research from security site Safe.co.uk found that more than two-thirds (67 percent) of people keep valuables, including cash, in storage that is not locked.

UK - There are scandals, there are conspiracies, and then there is the great Afghan cover-up. It is the ultimate in betrayals, a heinous abuse of power by a self-righteous caste blinded by its own stupidity, an explosive concoction of every pathology, every lie, every error, every cross-party ideological perversion that has brought down our great nation. The country I thought I knew, characterised by a love of fair play, free expression and accountability, is no more. Labour and Tories alike, with a small number of exceptions, believe that they have the right, the duty even, to wield the abominations that are super-injunctions to control information and conceal their blunders. Like Platonic philosopher-kings, they are convinced they know better what is good for us, that their untruths are somehow noble. Watergate was nothing in comparison, a small, parochial contretemps. The Afghan data breach is the scandal to end all scandals, the encapsulation of all that is wrong about Britain, the logical end-point of the implosion of our democracy.

UK - As few as one in 16 Afghans identified in a data breach had genuine claims for asylum, defence sources have said, raising fresh questions about how many claimants who were not genuine might have slipped through the net. More than 100,000 people were trying to get to Britain in 2022 on the grounds that they had fought alongside or helped British forces, or were related to someone who had, before the Allied withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Multiple sources have told The Telegraph that the “vast majority” of them had no right to come to the UK because they had no connection to the Armed Forces. The disclosure that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) believed that only a tiny proportion of those claiming asylum were genuine helps to explain why the Home Office raised concerns on national security grounds about the scheme to bring them to the UK.

USA - The fake hit pieces by the Murdoch Family tabloids never seem to stop. As Cristina Laila reported earlier, The Wall Street Journal published a hit piece on President Trump on Thursday night involving Jeffrey Epstein. President Trump responded to the disgusting hit piece moments ago on Truth Social. President Trump: The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch, personally, were warned directly by President Donald J Trump that the supposed letter they printed by President Trump to Epstein was a FAKE and, if they print it, they will be sued. Mr Murdoch stated that he would take care of it but, obviously, did not have the power to do so. The Editor of The Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker, was told directly by Karoline Leavitt, and by President Trump, that the letter was a FAKE, but Emma Tucker didn’t want to hear that. Instead, they are going with a false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway. President Trump will be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Mr Murdoch, shortly.

UK - Sent home from school for celebrating her own culture, what was the poor girl supposed to wear – a sari? A burka? A grass skirt? For me, however, the real mystery is this: if this girl wasn’t supposed to wear an outfit celebrating her own country’s culture, what should she have worn instead? After all, the event was supposed to foster “inclusion”. Refusing to let her join in the dressing-up, therefore, would have constituted “exclusion”. And that wouldn’t have been fair, would it? But in that case, what else could she have worn? An outfit celebrating some other country’s culture? Say, a sari? A grass skirt? A burka? I hardly think so. Because that would have constituted “cultural appropriation”.