Joe Biden has pledged his “ironclad” support for Israel’s security, amid fears Iran is preparing to attack the Jewish state in retaliation for a strike on its consulate in Damascus earlier this month. US officials told Bloomberg that Tehran was planning “major missile or drone strikes” in the coming days, with one saying it was “a matter of when, not if”. The first oral treatment to prevent both chronic and episodic migraines has been approved for use on the NHS. Atogepant, a once-a-day pill, was shown in clinical trials to reduce the number of sufferers’ “migraine days” by at least 50%. A trio of dazzling frescoes, untouched since the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79, has been uncovered in a dining room in Pompeii, says BBC News. Archaeologists say the artworks, which depict characters from Greek mythology including Helen of Troy and Apollo, are among the finest to be found in the city’s ruins.

Cheer up, America – you’re less divided than you think

Here’s a “wild thought”, say Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen in Axios: what if we Americans have been deceived into thinking we’re “more divided, more dysfunctional and more defeated” than we really are? The topics that cause the most outrage are almost always driven by fringe views. No, most Christians aren’t white nationalist whack jobs who see Donald Trump as a “God-like figure”. Most Republicans don’t want to ban all abortions starting at conception; most Democrats don’t want to allow them right up until birth. Most college professors aren’t trying to “silence conservatives”, and most students aren’t raging anti-Semites who run around campus chanting “From the river to the sea”.

The reason this “fringe nonsense” plays such an oversized role in American culture – and beyond – is because the way people get their news has changed. Society has shattered, like shards of glass, into different “information bubbles” based on age, politics, professions and passions. Inside these bubbles it can be hard to work out what’s really true, making them the perfect breeding ground for “edge-case outrages”. Social media plays a big part. The likes of X and Facebook are powered by the people with the biggest followings, who tend to be “the most provocative, partisan or pugilistic”. Americans feeling gloomy about the state of their country should just think of all the people they meet day-to-day. How many are “decent, normal” folk – the kind who do volunteer work, love their family, look out for their neighbours? It’s most of them, right? Well, that’s “normal America”. That’s “real America”.

Decaf coffee has long been the subject of “derision and jokes”, says Bloomberg, but it’s finally becoming cool. In the US, one of the most prestigious filter coffee competitions has been won by a caffeine-free brew for the first time: a Colombian number with “notes of eucalyptus and strawberry”. The decaf market as a whole is predicted to grow from $19.5bn in 2022 to more than $28.6bn by the end of the decade. Industry experts put the trend down to consumers being more health-conscious, echoing the rise of alcohol-free drinks and vegan food. As one Chicago roaster puts it: “People want their drugs without their drugs.”

You might have thought travelling across America by train would be better for the environment than flying, says The New York Times. Not so. Going by Amtrak from New York to Emeryville, California equates to emissions of about 1,000lbs of CO2 per passenger, compared with 840lbs for a nonstop flight from New York to San Francisco. It’s because much of the route relies on decades-old diesel trains, and during the “longer, winding” sections emissions “go through the roof”.

Give this “Thatcherite success story” a break

Angela Rayner, the Labour deputy leader and probably the incoming “second most-powerful politician in the country”, had a “dysfunctional, impoverished childhood”, says Alice Thomson in The Times. Her father was abusive; her illiterate mother “would buy Immac hair removal cream thinking it was toothpaste”. Rayner left school with no qualifications and became a single mum at 16. But she was also a “Thatcherite success story”, buying her own council house by 27. In a new biography, the Tory peer Michael Ashcroft claims she dodged capital gains tax of £1,500 when she sold the property, by labelling the house her “principal residence” while actually living with her then husband somewhere else.

Who knows what the truth is. If Rayner wants a moral victory, she should donate £1,500 to a children’s charity. But she is clearly not someone “obsessed with making money”. She has few luxuries aside from sparkly shoes and a breast enhancement – bought, in her words, “because my boobs looked like two boiled eggs in socks”. The Tories making a big deal of this affair will merely turn attention to their own side’s flexible relationship with HMRC: the former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, for example, “forgot to pay capital gains tax worth £3.7m”. They are also in danger of “stoking up class warfare”, encouraging Labour to lean into kneejerk policies like charging VAT on private schools. This is the last thing the country needs right now.

🎂🤨 Whatever the truth about her house, Rayner can’t complain that she is being unfairly targeted, says Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday. In recent years, Labour have become masters at “leveraging the trivial into major issues of public probity”, savaging the Tories for Boris and Carrie Johnson’s expensive No 10 wallpaper; for Rishi Sunak’s £180 coffee mug; and for enjoying “a slice of birthday cake” during lockdown. Through all this, Rayner was the party’s main “attack dog”.

Though other online platforms take up more column inches, YouTube must be “the most consequential technology in America”, says Shira Ovide in The Washington Post. Americans spend more time watching YouTube on TV sets than “any streaming service including Netflix”. More people tune into songs on YouTube than on Spotify, the radio or any other audio service. Among adults, it’s more popular than all the social media apps. “The most widely used app among teens isn’t TikTok. It’s YouTube again by a mile.”

📺 To see our favourite TV shows this week – on Netflix, YouTube or anywhere else – click here.

They’re chunks of gold that smugglers moulded into the shape of machine parts and painted silver, in a bid to fool customs inspectors. Hong Kong authorities seized 146kg of the camouflaged commodity, worth roughly $10.7m, from the cargo of a plane, in the city’s biggest-ever smuggling bust. Officials say the smugglers were probably trying to evade the tariffs required to move the precious metal legally.