UK inflation has risen for the first time this year, creeping back above the Bank of England’s 2% target rate to 2.2%. The increase was less than economists had expected, however, raising the chances of further interest rate cuts later this year. Russia has declared a state of emergency in a second region, as Ukrainian troops press ahead with their counteroffensive. Despite Vladimir Putin’s vow to “drive out the enemy”, Kyiv claims its forces have now seized control of 74 settlements and prompted the evacuation of over 200,000 residents. A beaver baby boom is in full swing across Britain. Until projects to reintroduce the species began 20 years ago, there had been no beavers living in the wild for 400 years. As of this summer, which saw numerous litters of newborn kits, there are an estimated 1,500 in Scotland and between 600 and 800 in England.

Don’t write off Trump just yet

We conservatives can grumble all we like about the media’s “coronation” of Kamala Harris, says Gerard Baker in The Wall Street Journal. But we can’t ignore the “giant Republican problem” either: Donald J Trump. I watched the former president’s much-hyped press conference last week, and about a third of his remarks fell into three categories: “false, obtuse or lunatic”. He warned that Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, was “heavy into the transgender world”, conjuring up an image of a “slightly pudgy 60-year-old Minnesotan showing up for affairs of state in a tutu”. He thinks Joe Biden will return to the Democratic ticket, and claims pictures of the crowds at Harris’s rallies have been enhanced by artificial intelligence. It’s maddening. Unless Trump can shift the narrative, he’s going to lose again.

Not so fast, says Janan Ganesh in the FT. For all the “Democratic giddiness” and “Republican moping”, this race is still totally up in the air. Hillary Clinton led Trump at this stage in 2016 by a much larger margin than Harris does today. His oddities are all “priced-in”, whereas Harris remains “ill-defined and only half-tested”. And so much can change – Americans were already pessimistic about the economy, for example, and now unemployment numbers suggest there may be a recession. After all, it’s been only a month since the assassination attempt on Trump. When did you last talk about it? When did you last see that supposedly election-defining photo of Trump raising his fist? It’s an important reminder of the “transience and tenuousness of almost all political moments”.

😤🎶 Trump has been in a “foul mood” since Biden left the race, says The New York Times. He has repeatedly called Harris a “bitch” in private. He had an aide fire off a series of angry texts to one of his party’s biggest donors, Miriam Adelson, about her funding organisation. And he is furious that journalists cast doubt on a story he told about a helicopter trip ending in a near-crash. When asked to produce the flight records he claimed he had, the former president “responded mockingly, repeating the request in a sing-song voice”.

The Guardian has collected 10 of the best one-liners from the Edinburgh fringe. They include:

“I failed RE. Couldn’t believe it when I found out. I was like: “Oh Jason Christ!” (Jack Skipper)

“My desire to spontaneously sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight is always just a whim away.” (Olaf Falafel)

“My aunty is Indian, German and a terrible human being. She’s the curry wurst.” (Raul Kohli)

To groan at the others, click here.

Some Olympic champions get a lot more than a medal, says The Wall Street Journal. Along with $350,000 in prize money from the Filipino government, double gold medal-winning gymnast Carlos Yulo has been offered a “lifetime supply” of food and drink, free haircuts, a house, and even complimentary colonoscopies. South Korean champions are exempted from compulsory military service; in Poland, winners get “an investment-grade diamond”. Kazakh judo champion Yeldos Smetov has been given a Lexus, a new driveway outside his house and a “herd of 100 thoroughbred horses”.

Restaurants are losing the human touch

When I started reviewing restaurants 12 years ago, says Pete Wells in The New York Times, I thought of them as among “the few places left where our experiences were completely human”. We might walk around with speakers in our ears, and buy books and toothpaste online. “But when we went out to eat, we were people again.” No app or device could drink rosé for us, or chew lamb chops, or “flirt, fight and make up”. And from the moment we walked in, there were people there, showing us to our tables, offering drinks, clearing plates and all the rest of it. Being at a restaurant wasn’t passive. “We had to participate.”

Today, many of the little “routines of dining” happen on a screen. Reservations are online; few new restaurants bother installing a phone. At fast-food spots we order and pay on a giant screen. Even in some proper restaurants patrons add their names to a waiting list on a screen and scan a QR code to read the menu on their phone. “Restaurants are turning into vending machines with chairs.” Yet we customers still want human interactions – tiny pop-up restaurants and micro-bakeries are going gangbusters, precisely because we get the chance to meet the person who baked our croissant or whatever. Without that personal element, “the meal may be faster and cheaper, but it leaves us feeling a little empty”.

In May 1970, on an icy patch of land near the border with Norway, the Soviet Union began an unusual scientific project: to dig a really, really deep hole. The result, Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3, extends down a whopping 12,262 metres, making it the deepest manmade hole anywhere on Earth. The project yielded a few fairly dull-sounding scientific discoveries – the granite went deeper than expected, apparently – before drilling ended in 1995 due to a lack of funding.

Couples having a row should try taking a five-second break to help defuse the tension, says The Guardian. Psychologists at the University of St Andrews studied 81 sets of piqued partners and found that taking even the briefest pause during an argument can act as a “firebreak” that prevents the quarrel from escalating. “It sounds obvious but this is the first time anyone has experimentally demonstrated a reduction in aggression following enforced breaks,” said one of the study’s authors. Plus, she added, “it’s cheaper than couples therapy”.

It’s a cotton candy burrito, America’s latest horrifying stadium snack, says the New York Post. Unveiled by the Arizona Cardinals NFL team earlier this week, the tooth-rotting fare consists of various sweets, including marshmallows, Skittles and gummy bears, wrapped in thick layers of ice cream and candy floss. It will be served at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale for the rest of the season, alongside other coronary-inducing concoctions such as “Flaming Hot Cheetos chicken tenders”: chicken smothered in nacho cheese and topped with crushed up crisps.