A-level grades have hit record highs – with almost one in 10 awarded an A* – despite being expected to drop to pre-pandemic levels. Grades published this morning for more than 300,000 teenagers showed 27.8% were marked at A or A*, up from 25.4% in 2019. Two years of rail strikes could be nearing an end after the government offered train drivers a 15% pay rise. Bosses at the Aslef union have hailed the “no strings” deal, which will see average salaries rise from £60,000 to nearly £70,000. The Altar Stone at the heart of Stonehenge appears to be Scottish, not Welsh as previously thought. New analysis of the six-tonne megalith found that it was somehow transported at least 466 miles to Salisbury Plain, from the very north-east corner of Scotland.

Afghan women: “ghosts in their own land”

It has now been almost three years since US forces left Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban, says Luc de Barochez in Le Point, and no other government in history has abolished women’s rights “in such a comprehensive and systematic way”. Under the pretext of “Islamic” morality, girls older than 12 are forbidden from attending school. Women are banned from “most public sector jobs, universities, the media, parks, public baths, gyms, and dance halls”. They are required to cover themselves “from head to toe” in public spaces and to be accompanied everywhere by a male chaperone. Male doctors aren’t even allowed to examine female patients – there is now not a single hospital in the country that treats breast cancer.

This is not just discrimination. It is, to use the words of a 2023 UN report, “sexist apartheid”. Unsurprisingly, the draconian legislation is leading to an increase in all sorts of other human rights violations: forced marriages, including child marriages; domestic violence; and so on. Those brave enough to complain to the police when their husbands beat them are told that they “probably deserved it”. Rebelling against Islamist rule itself can lead to “imprisonment, corporal punishment and even the death penalty”. Dozens of women have been flogged in public over the past year; stoning has just been reintroduced. For too long, Western leaders have turned a blind eye to all this – the peace deal the US agreed with the Taliban in 2020 didn’t even mention women’s rights. But enough’s enough. It is unconscionable that in 2024, “some 20 million Afghan women are forced to live as ghosts in their own land”.

Trees effectively “hold their breath” when wildfire smoke is in the air, says Yahoo News. Nearly all land plants have pores on their leaves called stomata, which inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. A team of scientists happened to be studying these pores on pine trees in Colorado when the research site was swamped by wildfire smoke – and the trees responded by closing their stomata. This could be because the smoke physically prevented their pores from opening. But it could also be that the leaves reacted to the first signs of harmful air particles with the arboreal equivalent of shutting the windows.

Liz Truss’s dogged attempt to restore her reputation took a blow at an event in Suffolk yesterday, when a large banner unfurled behind her bearing a picture of a lettuce and the caption “I crashed the economy”. The stunt, by activist group Led By Donkeys, was a nod to the Daily Star’s infamous quest to see if Truss could last longer in No 10 than a drooping iceberg lettuce (she couldn’t). The former PM didn’t appear to like the joke, telling her host “that’s not funny”, before removing the microphone from her leaf-coloured dress and walking off stage. Watch the full video here.

This US election will probably be X’s last

The late chef Anthony Bourdain used to talk about “Failing Restaurant Syndrome”, says Dave Lee in Bloomberg. As the clientele starts to change and staff morale drops, the owner flails around looking for a quick fix to reverse the “already irreversible trend toward insolvency”. Whatever the equivalent is for social media networks, Elon Musk’s X “utterly reeks of it”. The much-hyped “conversation” he had with Donald Trump on Monday was supposed to demonstrate the platform’s political relevance. Instead, after 40 minutes of technical problems, the two men just “rambled into the night”, enlightening precisely no one. It was a perfect reflection of the “dire state” X is in.

Advertising revenue has “fallen off a cliff”. Commercial deals have collapsed; regulators are threatening “catastrophic” fines. Musk’s promise to rid the network of bots has failed, along with his pledge to make X a banking app. A year after telling unhappy advertisers to stay off the platform – “Go fuck yourself,” as he put it – he is suing them for doing just that. The problem is that X has become a “single-issue network”: it is now the home of the culture wars, and nothing else. Back when it was Twitter, users talked about not just politics but also TV, movies, music, books, and much else besides. Thanks to Musk’s determination to amplify right-wing – and far-right – voices, the platform has become unpalatable to too many of its users. That’s why this presidential election will probably be X’s last. As Bourdain said of his own failing restaurant: “Our food, while charming to some, was unappealing to most.”

Matchbooks are having an unlikely renaissance, says The Wall Street Journal. Match collecting is gaining popularity with younger generations across the US, prompting bars, restaurants, hotels and shops to bring out their own branded boxes. TikTok users are documenting their hunts for the pocket-sized treasures, swapping tips on where to find the best designs and even trading their favourites. On craft website Etsy, searches for matchbooks and matchboxes have risen 92% in recent months; when designer Kate Spade released a match-inspired wallet in 2023, it sold out three times.

If you want to mow your lawn properly, says Popular Science, here are a few basic tips. Try not to cut the grass height down by more than a third in one session, and avoid mowing during the hottest part of the day – late afternoon or early evening is best. Change your mowing pattern each time, as always doing it in the same direction leads to uneven growth. Leave grass clippings on the lawn – they decompose quickly, acting as natural fertiliser. And if you can be bothered, sharpen your mower blades once a season: a dull blade creates “jagged edges that stress the grass”.

It’s a tent pitched on a perilous promontory in Snowdonia, says The Times. Wild camping is technically illegal in the Welsh national park, and this specific outcrop overlooking the Llanberis Pass used to be a well-kept secret among a select group of guerrilla campers. But when mountaineer Steve Bowater recently posted photos of his overnight stay, he was inundated with requests for its location. He warned amateurs against trying to find the scenic spot, saying the wind exposure and steep 1,000ft drops on three sides made the experience a tad “spicy”.