Russia has charged four men with terrorism following the attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday in which at least 137 people were killed. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack at Crocus City Hall, releasing a graphic video showing gunmen firing at the crowd inside. The UK government is expected to accuse China of stealing the personal details of 40 million voters by hacking the Electoral Commission in 2021. Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden will also announce that Britain is considering retaliatory sanctions against officials in Beijing. A “one-in-a-million” white magpie has been spotted in Pembrokeshire, says BBC News. The curious corvid is “leucistic”, meaning it lacks pigment in its feathers. Terry Wright, the amateur photographer who spotted the blanched bird (below), said he felt like “the luckiest man alive”.

China’s “dementor” president has ruined Hong Kong

“So farewell, Hong Kong,” says Simon Tisdall in The Observer. This “vibrant, pulsating city-state”, which blossomed under British rule into one of the world’s leading financial, business, cultural and tourism hubs, has finally “been brought to heel” by Xi Jinping, China’s “dementor” president. Last Wednesday, the territory’s puppet legislature unanimously passed a set of chilling new security measures that effectively abolish the right of residents to “think, speak and act freely”. The legislation supplements the “notorious” laws passed in 2020, which have already been used to silence Beijing’s critics. Earlier this month, 12 people were sentenced to up to seven years in jail for their part in the 2019 pro-democracy protests; Jimmy Lai, former publisher of the now-suppressed Apple Daily newspaper, is on trial for allegedly colluding with “foreign forces”. Hong Kong is being destroyed. “Browbeaten, abused, silenced.”

Beijing dismisses complaints about all this as reflective of a “colonial mentality”. But for most Hongkongers, life under British colonial rule was preferable to Xi Jinping’s “unsmiling jackboot regime”. Singapore has already supplanted Hong Kong as Asia’s “business destination of choice”. Foreign companies are leaving, worried about “state control of information flows”; investment is drying up, with the stock market losing “nearly half its value in three years”. Censorship has also led to a “brain drain” of young professionals, with around 150,000 citizens heading to Britain alone. It’s shameful that we’ve allowed this “flawed but totemic success story” to be crushed by “the new emperor of Beijing”. Xi has made it clear that Taiwan is next. “The West cannot afford to fail again.”

Much is said about the “tabloid persecution” of the royals, says Helen Rumbelow in The Times. The past few weeks have shown how out of date that thinking is. “Who needs paparazzi when there are a billion citizen hacks ready to take pictures with their phones?” Who needs front-page exposés when you’ve got TikTok truthers? The “contract” between the public and the royals has changed. It used to be simple: we pay for them, and in exchange we get to see them at various public functions. But that’s no longer enough. “The appetite now is not to see but to know.” People used to say the royals were “trapped in a gilded zoo”. Today, they’re more like “lab rats”.

Entries in the London Camera Exchange’s photographer of the year award include shots of a fighty fox taking on an eagle in rural Spain; a Cavalier King Charles spaniel leaping over a stick; a decaying fishing boat on Loch Linnhe near Fort William; and the Sycamore Gap tree during the northern lights, a week before it was chopped down. See more here.

“It’s an Englishman’s inviolable right to be silly”

Since The Guardian revealed the membership list of the Garrick Club last week, says Charlotte Ivers in The Sunday Times, there have been “days of frothing and fulminating by the righteous”. Never mind that everybody knows the place “doesn’t let birds join”, or that half the members proudly list the London gentlemen’s club in their Who’s Who entry anyway. No, this was the “outrage of the week”. What nonsense. Does anyone truly believe that letting a few fancy women join the fancy men for a whisky would “improve a single thing about our country”? I certainly don’t. “Like an inverse Groucho Marx, I have no interest in being a member of a club that doesn’t want me.” But I find myself firmly hoping that “what members the place still has at the end of this gendergeddon” stick to their guns.

Yes, the Garrick is a bit silly. “But it’s an Englishman’s inviolable right to be silly on his own time.” So much of the joy of living in Britain comes from our “incredibly high tolerance for private madnesses and pointless traditions”. The danger is that, “spurred on by our joyless Puritan friends across the Atlantic”, we have an increasing tendency to “sand down the rough edges” of our silliest ancient institutions. No more Latin in the courtroom; no more “high table” at a Cambridge college; “demands for the arrival of boobs in the Garrick”. Each seemingly reasonable, but each chipping away at the “variety and eccentricity” of the nation. “Come on, boys. Hold the line. Do it for Britain.”

Needle Drop is a simple but addictive online game: each day it plays a new song, and you have to guess which film it’s from. You get four guesses and a clue after each incorrect effort. Give it a go here.

It’s Jasmin Paris, a British runner who has become the first woman to complete one of the world’s toughest ultramarathons. The Barkley Marathons race in Tennessee’s Frozen Head State Park covers 100 miles, with 60,000ft of climb and descent, says BBC News – “about twice the height of Mount Everest”. Since 1989, when the race began in its current format, only 20 people have finished within the 60-hour cut-off. Paris, a 40-year-old mother of two, made it with just 99 seconds to spare.