Hezbollah has vowed to “punish” Israel for the attack in Lebanon yesterday, in which thousands of the terror group’s pagers exploded simultaneously, killing at least 12 people and injuring thousands more. Israeli operatives are thought to have intercepted a shipment of the devices and fitted them with tiny bombs; the detonation was reportedly intended to be the opening move in an “all-out” offensive, but was brought forward over fears Hezbollah had caught wind of the plan. Tens of millions of teenagers will have their Instagram accounts changed as part of an overhaul to improve safety and mental health. In the next two months, all users between 13 and 17 in the UK, US, Canada and Australia will be migrated to private “teen accounts”, which have parental controls as well as content and messaging restrictions. A rare partial lunar eclipse of a supermoon delighted stargazers across the world last night. The rare phenomenon occurs when the moon is partially covered in Earth’s shadow while at the closest point to our planet in its orbit.

Come on Keir, you can afford your own clothes

If this were a plotline in The Thick of It, says Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail, “Malcolm Tucker would be having an aneurism”. Just hours after it emerged that Keir Starmer had failed to declare on time that his wife Victoria received more than £5,000 worth of clothes paid for by Labour donor Lord Alli, Victoria sat on the front row at London Fashion Week “dressed head-to-toe in swanky clobber”. It doesn’t matter that this particular clobber had been loaned to her by a designer. At a time when your husband has just taken away the winter fuel allowance for millions of low-income pensioners – and is about to unleash “a punishment beating of a Budget” – swanning around in “thousands of pounds of borrowed clothes” just isn’t a good look. “No wonder she’s been dubbed Lady Victoria Sponger.”

For the PM to have accepted these donations – and the £18,400 Alli gave him for clothes and glasses – really is “indefensible”, says John Rentoul in The Independent. It’s particularly bad because Starmer has always prided himself on being “morally superior” to Boris Johnson, who infamously accepted donations to redecorate the Downing Street flat. The fact that Alli has been given a No 10 pass, which he reportedly used to organise a garden party to thank other Labour donors, makes things even worse. Besides, Starmer can easily afford to pay for his and his wife’s clothes – as PM, he earns £166,000 a year and gets free accommodation and travel. And while it’s true that, as he says, “all MPs get gifts”, they don’t all accept them. “Nor should they.” If the PM has any sense, he’ll “pay it all back”.

💰🤨 Starmer has received more than £100,000 worth of freebies since becoming Labour leader, says The Guardian, more than any other major party leader in recent times. Rishi Sunak declared no personal hospitality whatsoever, apart from honorary membership of the Carlton Club worth £2,595. And all Jeremy Corbyn accepted during his five years as Labour leader were two sets of Glastonbury tickets, worth about £450 each. 

Much of what people supposedly “know” about Christianity is actually rather hard to find in the original Bible, says The Economist. There was no apple in Eden, for example – that confusion appears to have stemmed from a translator’s pun, as the Latin words for “apple” and “evil” are almost identical. The depiction of hell as a “fiery place of torture” is pretty much entirely absent from the New Testament. And the word “daily” in the Lord’s prayer is “pure bunkum” – there’s definitely a Greek word before “bread”, but no one has a clue what it means.

It’s astonishing how quickly social media can change your life, says Jeremiah Johnson on Substack. You may remember Haliey Welch, aka the “Hawk Tuah girl”, who went viral in June for a vox pop in which she gave a funny – and very rude – answer to a question about sex (watch it here). At the time, the 21-year-old worked for minimum wage at a Tennessee factory and didn’t even have an Instagram account. Three months later, she has 2.5 million Instagram followers, sells tons of merchandise and makes paid public appearances around the world. She has even landed a podcast – with the unimprovable title Talk Tuah – which appears to have “actual celebrities coming on as guests”. It’s possibly the “greatest-influencer-from-nothing” story there is.

Forget the Scandis – we should copy the Swiss

American progressives often look to Scandinavia as the template for their “socialist paradise”, says Ruchir Sharma in Foreign Affairs. Really, they should be aping the Swiss. Compared to the likes of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Switzerland has a larger economy ($700bn), a higher average income and twice the average family wealth. Yet it provides the same level of welfare benefits, with lower taxes and a more streamlined government: public spending accounts for just 35% of GDP, versus 55% in Sweden. And like all those perky Scandi nations, it’s one of the world’s happiest countries, typically finishing in the top five in the OECD’s Better Life Index. Switzerland, in short, is one of the few places in the developed world where “capitalism still works”.

The obvious question is why. One reason is that Switzerland’s economy, like its federal political system, is efficiently decentralised. Small companies account for two-thirds of jobs, and many of the country’s most iconic exports are produced in the provinces: Swiss Army knives from Schwyz, watches from Bern, cheese from Fribourg. Just one in six workers are employed by the government, half the Scandi average. And Switzerland ranks second, after Japan, in the “sophistication” of its exports – it thrives in “every major sector other than oil”. The world has long ascribed all this success to its status as a tax haven. But when the government opened its banks to more scrutiny in 2015, “the economy did not miss a beat”. Forget the Danes and the Swedes. The “Swiss model” is where it’s at.

To The Times:

While gratified to learn that Apple’s new AirPods will soon double as “clinical-grade” hearing aids, I would just like to point out that my Bluetooth-enabled, clinical-grade hearing aids double as earphones and have done so for a number of years.

Adrian Delso
Blandford Forum, Dorset

It’s a queen conch, an endangered species taking part in Florida’s new “speed dating for shellfish” programme, says The Guardian. Soaring sea temperatures have made the luckless gastropods lethargic and infertile, so scientists have launched a mollusc matchmaking service by removing them from their nearshore habitats and relocating them to deeper, cooler waters “where a plethora of potential new partners awaits”. “Nearshore conch are destined for a life of celibacy,” says lead researcher Gabriel Delgado, “and we’re trying to fix that.”