News Round-Up

• “Iran threatens protesters with the death penalty in bid to curb nationwide unrest as Starmer and European leaders condemn deadly crackdown” – Iran has threatened protesters with the death penalty as unrest spreads, reports the Mail.
• “Iran’s supreme leader places security services on highest state of alert as protests continue” – Iran’s Supreme Leader has placed the country’s security services on their highest state of alert as protests threaten to topple the regime, says the Telegraph.
• “Will Ayatollah Khamenei step down? Most potent protests yet put him on brink” – Trump has threatened Iran’s Supreme Leader with military strikes and some observers expect the country’s mullahs to make Ayatollah Khamenei a scapegoat for economic ruin, according to the Times.
• “Iran’s supreme leader tells Trump: It is you who will be overthrown” – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has told Donald Trump it’s him who’ll be overthrown as protests continue, reveals the Times.
• “The key signs the Islamic Republic is about to fall” – After 47 years, Iranian protesters believe the regime could finally meet its end, writes Roland Oliphant in the Telegraph.
• “The BBC’s meagre coverage of the Iran protests has been disgraceful” – The broadcaster’s treatment of uprisings in Tehran is out of kilter with its intense focus on the Israel-Gaza conflict, argues Nicole Lampert in the Telegraph.
• “Trump sick of ‘tiresome’ Putin” – Donald Trump is becoming increasingly impatient with Vladimir Putin over stalled Ukraine peace talks, says the Telegraph.
• “Shminternational Shmaw” – International law does little, if anything, to constrain territorial power politics and it was ever thus, argues David McGrogan in the News from Uncibal.
• “Disrupt the world, deport the world – the ‘Donroe doctrine’ is about immigration” – Team Trump is pursuing an immigration-first ‘Donroe doctrine’, claims Freddy Gray in the Spectator.
• “Trump’s realpolitik surpasses the fiction of international law” – The lesson of Trump’s Venezuelan adventure is that the US will secure resources by force if needed, writes Sir Michael Ellis in the Telegraph.
• “Starmer and Reeves are using Britain as one big focus group. They are not fit to govern” – Labour’s leaders are running Britain like a giant focus group, argues Tom Harris in the Telegraph.
• “‘You’ve killed off any glimmer of hope’: the pub landlord’s letter shaming Rachel Reeves” – In the Telegraph, Publican Luke Honeychurch writes to Rachel Reeves pointing out that the measures in her two Budgets are killing Britain’s pubs.
• “Beer tax means pubs have lost 50pc of sales to supermarkets, says Wetherspoons boss” – Pubs have lost half their beer sales to supermarkets because “perverse” taxes have driven up the price of a pint, Sir Tim Martin tells the Telegraph.
• “Michael Gove: Cut jury trials and another lamp of liberty will fade” – Michael Gove in the Times warns that cutting jury trials will weaken a bulwark of British liberty.
• “Labour’s next rebellion” – Labour MPs have started getting restless about Bridget Phillipson’s plans to cut SEND spending, notes James Heale in the Spectator. Is another U-turn on the horizon?
• “Continuing to deny women female-only spaces is all politics” – In the Times, Sonia Sodha argues the reason Bridget Phillipson is dragging her feet over publishing the EHRC’s updated guidance on access to single sex spaces is because she doesn’t want to queer her pitch in the forthcoming Labour leadership election.
• “Police are giving in to Islamists” – Robert Jenrick in the Telegraph says the police are increasingly taking the knee to Islamic extremism.
• “Tony Blair’s sister-in-law sparks outrage after describing October 7th as ‘legendary’” – Sir Tony Blair’s sister-in-law has sparked outrage after footage emerged of her describing October 7th as a “legendary day” for Muslims, reports the Mail.
• “Britain and France are two different nations ruined by the same big state ideology” – Macron and Starmer were both elected because of their opponents’ weaknesses, not thanks to their own vision or popularity, says Robert Tombs in the Telegraph.
• “Is Cambridge’s state school diversity obsession over?” – Cambridge’s commitment to broadening access is fading as student quality plummets, according to Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “Lords entitled to scupper assisted dying bill, says Tory peer” – Lord True, the Tory leader in the Lords, says the Upper House is entitled to block an “obviously defective” assisted-dying bill, reports the Telegraph.
• “‘UK now faces even bigger crisis than 1970s – we risk being doomed’” – Britain faces a worse economic crisis than it did in the 1970s, says John Longworth in the Express.
• “Germany’s HateAid: Portrait of a ‘Trusted Flagger’” – The role assigned to ‘trusted flaggers’ under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) has been a target for criticism from Republican lawmakers in Washington – rightly, says John Rosenthal in the European Conservative.
• “The modified mRNA influenza vaccine trial – part 1” – On their Trust the Evidence Substack, Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson take a deep dive into the mRNA influenza vaccine trial.
• “Petition: Cancel the clinical trial into puberty blockers & safeguard vulnerable children” – Sign the UK Parliament petition calling for the puberty blockers trial to be cancelled.
• “Eat like grandma again – America reclaims its food pyramid” – Lara Dodsworth welcomes the new US dietary guidelines on her Free Mind Substack.
• “The UK Covid Inquiry: Propaganda to protect the ‘pandemic’ narrative” – The UK Covid Inquiry’s Module 2 report is propaganda designed to protect the pandemic narrative, argues Gary L. Sidley.
• “Car-hating Labour must stop the nonsense. Britain’s roads are among the world’s safest” – Fatal accidents are now so low that every further reduction will come at steadily increasing cost, writes David Frost in the Telegraph.
• “Drug-driving causes more road deaths than alcohol” – Drugs are now a bigger factor in road deaths than alcohol, official figures show. So why the crackdown on drunk driving? asks the Telegraph.
• “How wasted wind is pushing up electricity bills in the UK” – Britain’s creaking grid has paid wind farms to switch off as electricity bills have risen, says the Times.
• “Africa’s 1,300-mile pipeline rejects climate dogma and foreign control” – Africa’s 1,300-mile fuel pipeline is a route out of energy poverty, says Vijay Jayaraj in Climate Change Dispatch.
• “Professor Emeritus criticises letting people choose whether to buy an EV” – In WUWT? Eric Worrall highlights a recent screed by Professor Emeritus John K White arguing that people shouldn’t be given any choice about whether to buy EVs or not.
• “Is it all over for Stonewall?” – Stonewall is nearing bankruptcy after donors have walked away, according to Andrew Doyle on his Substack.
• “No sex please, we’re Gen Z” – Gen Z’s sex slump is linked to anxiety, economics and a fertility crisis, says Mary Wakefield in the Spectator.
• “Foetal femicide has arrived in Britain” – Last summer, the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi introduced a clause to the Crime and Policing Bill that will decriminalise abortion up the moment of birth. This clause should be vigorously opposed, argues John Power in the Spectator.
• “Jimmy Wales: defending Wikipedia in wake of Musk’s ‘woke’ attack” – In an interview in the Times, Jimmy Wales defends Wikipedia against claims of bias as it turns 25.
• “Woke woman says she feels guilty about attending memorial for ICE shooting victim because her ‘white tears are not helpful’” – A woke woman says she felt guilty attending the memorial for the woman shot dead by an ICE agent in Minneapolis because her “white tears are not helpful”, reports the Mail.
• “Starmer’s X crackdown is no joke” – Labour has issued its most serious threat yet to social-media giant X – whose owner, Elon Musk, has become this rudderless government’s go-to bogeyman, writes Tom Slater in the Spectator.
• “Why banning X would be harder than Labour imagines” – Starmer faces a potential backlash if he tries to ban Musk’s social network, according to the Telegraph.
• “What’s likely to happen is Keir Starmer will announce a ban on X, start to implement it and then do a U-turn, because that’s the way he rolls” – Watch me on GB News predicting what Sir Keir Starmer is likely to do about X.

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