Keir Starmer has pledged “the biggest reimagining of our NHS since its birth”, after a damning official report found “ballooning” costs, rising waiting times, and delays in cancer care. The PM says the health service won’t receive any new funding unless it agrees to reforms, and that three big shifts are necessary: from hospital to community care, analogue to digital, and treating sickness to preventing it. Two astronauts conducted the first-ever privately funded spacewalk this morning. Billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman and mission specialist Sarah Gillis were each outside their Space X capsule, Crew Dragon, for 12 minutes. “From here,” said Isaacman, “Earth sure looks like a perfect world.” Just 27% of 18- to 24-year-olds own a corkscrew, compared to 81% of over-65s, according to a new survey. It’s a reflection of Gen Z’s abstemiousness, says The Guardian: some 28% of young people today say they haven’t had a drink in the past year, up from 18% in 2011.

Europe could become a third world continent

The European Union has just been given “the electroshock it badly needs”, says Emmanuel Berretta in Le Point. In a “scathing” report on European competitiveness, former European Central Bank head Mario Draghi has laid bare the existential challenge facing the bloc. He notes that the GDP gap between the EU and the US has widened from 15% in 2002 to 30% in 2023, and that because of population declines some two million workers a year will be leaving the labour market by 2042. Key to Europe’s problems, Draghi says, is the lack of investment and innovation, particularly in tech: in the past 50 years, Europe hasn’t created a single company currently valued at more than €100bn, whereas the US has produced six worth more than €1trn. Short of a sea change in investment and “enhanced co-operation” between member states, the report warns, Europe faces the “slow agony” of economic decline.

For this “poster boy for the European technocrat class” to talk in such terms is unprecedented, says Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator. And he’s dead right. France’s GDP per capita is somewhere between that of Idaho and Arkansas, the 48th and 49th most prosperous US states; Germany’s is a touch behind Oklahoma’s. Voters aren’t blind to this decline in living standards; that’s one reason why so many have turned away from mainstream political parties. Draghi has various proposals to address the sclerosis: overhauling EU governance, boosting AI investment, and so on. But this will be “easier said than done”, as France and Germany are already in “desperate economic trouble” and facing mass discontent over immigration. Unless they can pull their finger out, “Europe will continue its transformation from a first world to a third world continent”.

Of all the living Republicans who have been on a presidential ticket, says Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times, just two – Sarah Palin and JD Vance – are publicly backing Donald Trump. Mike Pence, Trump’s two-time running mate and vice president, has said he “cannot in good conscience” endorse his former boss. George W Bush and his father’s vice president, Dan Quayle, are keeping schtum. Mitt Romney, the party’s nominee in 2012, and his running mate Paul Ryan say they won’t vote for Trump. And Dick Cheney, Bush Jr’s vice president, has gone one further, saying he’ll vote for Kamala Harris.

Britain’s submarine defence is stretched worryingly thin, says The Economist. In the 1970s, the navy’s four nuclear-armed subs – one of which is at sea at all times – went on patrol underwater for up to 56 days at a time. Today, with the ageing vessels often in dock for maintenance, it’s much longer: in 2021, HMS Victorious spent a whopping 207 days roaming the oceans; last year, another of the four subs was at sea for 195 days. Comparable American patrols “average 77 days and have never exceeded 140”.

Why there hasn’t been another 9/11

After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year, says John Mueller in Foreign Affairs, FBI Director Christopher Wray grimly warned that terrorism threats against the US had risen to a whole new level. Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell chipped in, declaring that there was a “serious” risk of an attack “in the months ahead”. So far those fears haven’t materialised – and, in truth, we shouldn’t be surprised. After 9/11, the entire US intelligence community was convinced another attack was imminent: reporters were briefed in 2002 that there might be “up to 5,000” trained al-Qaeda operatives inside the US already. But after a few years of “intensive sleuthing”, the FBI found “no al-Qaeda cells at all”. In fact, the terror group never managed to carry out another major strike on US territory.

Granted, al-Qaeda and its “quasi-successor” ISIS did inspire some would-be jihadis in the US. In the two decades after 9/11, around 125 plots by homegrown Islamist extremists were either carried out or disrupted by the authorities. But these resulted in the deaths of only around 100 people in total, an average of five a year. For context, “more than 300 Americans die every year from drowning in bathtubs”. So the next time you hear officials sounding the alarm bell over some vague terrorist threat – be it over Israel, or jihadis being smuggled in across the southern border, or whatever else – it’s worth taking the claim with a pinch of salt. America’s security apparatus is pretty damn good at keeping the country safe. Whatever threat there is, it’s probably “manageable”.

The latest TikTok trend is “Britishcore”, says The Guardian. The term first emerged at the turn of the decade, to describe “ramshackle symbols of British life” such as dilapidated pubs, but now content creators are using it for wry takes on British culture. In one video, the American DJ the Dare films himself in Paddington Station while Ewan McGregor’s opening monologue in Trainspotting (pictured) plays in the background; in another, a US cinema worker lip-synchs to a clip of Gemma Collins from The Only Way is Essex. According to TikTok, there have been double-digit rises this year in posts using the hashtags #ukcomedy, #ukfashion and #uktravel.

You may be reducing the life of items in your fridge simply by keeping them on the wrong shelf, says The Daily Telegraph. Cooked food, including sliced meats and leftovers, should go on the top shelf. The middle shelves are for dairy, including cheese, yoghurt and, if the space is tall enough, milk. The bottom shelf (the coldest part) is where fish and raw meat should go, and the drawers below are for fruit and veg, ideally kept separately. The door, where it’s warmest, is for your least sensitive items, like cordials, condiments, and, for maximum ease of access, wine.

It’s a new statue of Queen Elizabeth in Northern Ireland, which has been criticised for looking “nothing like” the late monarch, says Sky News. Anto Brennan’s bronze artwork, unveiled last week in Antrim Castle Gardens, has been described by locals as “ridiculous”, “blooming awful” and “more of an insult than a tribute”. Deputy mayor Paul Dunlop has very diplomatically said that while “everyone has their own opinion” about the work, “it is what the sculpture represents that is important”.