News Round-Up

• “UK border chief quits after failing to curb number of migrant Channel crossings” – Martin Hewitt has stepped down as Border Security Commander after failing to slow small-boat arrivals over his 18 months in the job, reports the Mail.
• “Starmer’s next decision could hand Farage the keys to No 10” – Keir Starmer is reportedly mulling a U-turn on tightening Indefinite Leave to Remain rules – a move that could hand Nigel Farage the next election, says James Frayne the Telegraph.
• “Baroness Harman criticises Rayner for ‘negative’ immigration intervention” – Harriet Harman has called out Angela Rayner for branding immigration proposals “un-British” without putting forward any better ideas, reports Sky News.
• “Kemi accuses Starmer of ‘sucking up’ to Muslims in public prayers row” – Kemi Badenoch has accused Keir Starmer of pandering to Muslims after he told her to sack a senior Tory over comments on the Trafalgar Square prayer row, says the Mail.
• “Tories are right about mass Muslim prayer” – Islamic leader Dr Taj Hargey has backed the Conservatives and Nigel Farage, saying the Trafalgar Square prayer event was divisive, reports the Telegraph.
• “Nick Timothy isn’t the bad guy in the row over mass Muslim prayer” – In the Spectator, Brendan O’Neill backs Nick Timothy’s description of public mass Muslim prayer as an act of domination rather than private worship.
• “Public prayer isn’t just a matter of devotion, for Islamists it’s about domination” – A large number of Muslim men praying together in Trafalgar Square has an element of political intent, writes Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
• “Eid brings 30,000 Muslims to Birmingham park” – Up to 30,000 Muslims have packed Birmingham’s Small Heath Park for massive Eid prayers to close out Ramadan, reports the Mail.
• “Iran has unified Britain’s Muslims so effectively even Arab countries are worried” – A shared hostility towards Israel and the West is helping to repair the relationship between Sunni and Shia communities, writes Rakib Ehsan in the Telegraph.
• “The glaring flaw in Keir Starmer’s ‘cohesion plan’” – Keir Starmer’s new cohesion strategy makes the mistake of treating Muslim identity as fixed and separate, warns Mary Wakefield in the Spectator.
• “Salman Rushdie says he is tired of being ‘free speech Barbie’ after 2022 attack” – Salman Rushdie says he’s fed up with being turned into a “free speech Barbie” after surviving an assassination attempt that left him blind in his right eye, according to the Guardian.
• “Britain borrows £7 billion more than expected” – The UK has run up £7 billion more debt than forecast, driven by higher spending and the rising cost of servicing its ever-increasing debt, reports the Telegraph.
• “If Ed Miliband is Labour’s answer, then truly we are doomed” – Ed Miliband seems to be positioning himself for another shot at the top despite being an abject failure before, writes Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
• “The latest Guardian attack on Nigel Farage is desperate stuff” – In the Spectator, Douglas Murray reacts to the Guardian trawling through Nigel Farage’s Cameo videos for dirt.
• “Cofnas, Cambridge and academic freedom” – Truly provocative ideas are still unwelcome in our universities, says Freddie Attenborough in the Critic.
• “Education is being perverted into a vehicle for the new barbarism” – Education has been deliberately twisted into a tool of malice and cultural destruction, warns Peter Mullen in the Conservative Woman.
• “Army could replace Land Rover with German ‘Shadow Wolf’” – The British Army is looking at a German-designed replacement for the long-serving Land Rover, reports the Sun.
• “Airlines prepare to cancel flights to cope with jet fuel shortages” – Airlines are already lining up flight cancellations as jet fuel supplies tighten because of the ongoing Middle East war, says the Irish Sun.
• “Wrestling champion publicly hanged in Iran” – Iran has carried out the public execution of a teenage member of its national wrestling team, according to Fox News.
• “Trump considers invading Kharg Island” – Donald Trump has marine units on standby and is reportedly mulling a strike on a major Iranian oil island to force the Strait of Hormuz to open, says the Irish Times.
• “French sailor’s fitness app bungle exposes location of aircraft carrier” – A French sailor has accidentally given away the position of an aircraft carrier by uploading a workout track from his smartwatch, reports Newsweek.
• “Anthony Albanese’s mosque heckling is a humiliation” – Anthony Albanese’s experience at the Lakemba mosque was a humiliating reminder that in trying to please everyone, you please no one, says Terry Barnes in the Spectator.
• “Putin sends childless Russian women to psychologists” – Russian officials have started referring women who choose not to have children to psychologists in a bid to reverse the country’s population slide, according to Newsweek.
• “Better NHS care at Oxford hospital might have saved 58 babies, BBC finds” – Fifty-eight babies at an NHS maternity unit might have survived with better care, reveals a BBC investigation.
• “Dietician who bluffed her way into senior NHS job is struck off” – A senior NHS dietician has been struck off after colleagues discovered she didn’t know where the intestines were, what a gallbladder did or how to calculate BMI, says the Mail.
• “Decriminalising late abortions isn’t progressive” – Lifting criminal penalties for late-term self-induced abortions has opened the door to serious ethical risks, warns Madeline Grant in the Spectator.
• “Will the Covid Inquiry teach us anything?” – In the Spectator, Isabel Hardman asks what’s the point of a long, costly Covid inquiry that won’t improve the NHS for the next pandemic.
• “CDC data reveals extremely low efficacy for this year’s flu vaccine as the experts fail again” – This season’s flu shot has barely dented the main circulating strain, writes Ian Miller on his Unmasked Substack.
• “Paul Ehrlich RIP” – Doomsday prophet Paul Ehrlich has died at 93, capping a career of hilariously wrong predictions, writes Mike Dombroski on CliScep.
• “More solar panel madness that Ed wants you to pay for” – Ed Miliband has doubled down on plug-in solar gimmicks and renewables auctions instead of fixing the real energy crisis, says Paul Homewood in the Conservative Woman.
• “Labour says wind and solar must cover half a million acres of English farmland” – Labour admits that half a million acres of prime English farmland will have to be sacrificed to wind and solar to hit Net Zero by 2050, according to Climate Change Dispatch.
• “Any cause, as long as it’s stupid” – A serial climate vandal has copped a £750 fine for yet another pink-paint stunt on Norwich City Hall, writes Jit on CliScep.
• “No, climate change is not meaningfully slowing Earth’s rotation” – Alarmist claims that climate change has stretched Earth’s days by 1.33 milliseconds per century are wildly overhyped, says Anthony Watts in Climate Realism.
• “Electric car registrations in US plunge 41% as gas-powered vehicles gain traction” – US electric vehicle registrations have crashed 41% after federal subsidies vanished, with makers pivoting hard back to petrol and hybrids, reports the Legal Insurrection.
• “Hospital removes ‘unsettling’ Union flags” – Staff at a Bristol hospital have quietly taken down Union flags that were put up without approval because they found them unsettling, says GB News.
• “Ratty McRatface” – The Bank of England’s decision to swap historical figures for wildlife on banknotes is peak twee political correctness, writes Dr David McGrogan on his News from Uncibal Substack.
• “Australian Prime Minister Albanese went to a Sydney mosque for Eid prayers to stand against Islamophobia, only to end up being threatened, with everyone screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ at him” – One of dozens of tweets documenting the humiliation of the Australian Prime Minister when he made the mistake of attending Eid prayers in Sydney.

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