7 September - The Knowledge

In the headlines

Boris Johnson has announced a 1.25% increase in national insurance contributions as part of his plan to overhaul social care. The £12bn-a-year levy breaks with the 2019 Conservative manifesto, says Christopher Hope in the Telegraph. “The rumblings of an all-out Tory rebellion are growing louder.” Priti Patel is threatening to withhold a £54m payment to France after a record number of migrants arrived in the UK yesterday. Paris is “going to have to get its act together if it wants to see the cash”, the Home Secretary told MPs. Germany’s only naked football team played their first match in front of spectators yesterday, wearing nothing but their boots and socks, and drew 8-8. It was “a spectacle of high balls and flying tackles”, says The Times.

Inside politics

Jacob Rees-Mogg has posted a picture of his six lookalike children on Instagram. The Tory MP was celebrating his youngest child’s first day at Hill House, a £15,000-a-year prep school in Knightsbridge. The Leader of the House of Commons has five boys and one girl: Peter Theodore Alphege (13), Mary Anne Charlotte Emma (12), Thomas Wentworth Somerset Dunstan (11), Anselm Charles Fitzwilliam (9), Alfred Wulfric Leyson Pius (5) and Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher (4).

Tomorrow’s world

Nasa’s Perseverance rover has collected the first sample of Mars rock intended for return to Earth. “With the whirr of a drill, a robotic geologist some 244 million miles away just made history,” says Maya Wei-Haas in National Geographic. The finger-size cylinder of rock will be brought home by a future mission.

On the way out

Wallets, which are being rendered useless by mobile phones, says The Guardian. Half of us will use our phones, rather than banknotes or cards, to pay for things by 2025, predicts eMarketer. What’s more, driving licences, train tickets and even loyalty cards have all gone digital.

Quoted

Quoted 07-09

“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”

Henry Ford

Snapshot answer

It’s a chandelier made from empty Covid vaccine vials by a nurse in Boulder County, Colorado, who wanted to bring light to “such a dark and challenging year”. She says it’s a tribute to her fellow healthcare workers.

Gone viral

“The slow bicep stroke, the longing stare, the kiss of the arm and subsequent hug as they laugh together” – Hollywood stars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain’s performance on the red carpet at the Venice film festival sent the internet into meltdown, says Georgia Aspinall in Grazia. Despite their sizzling sexual chemistry, both are married to other people – Chastain, 44, to an Italian count, and Isaac, 42, to a Danish film director, who happened to be watching in the wings. The clip has been watched 9.8 million times on Twitter, with one tweet concluding: “We are starved for on screen sexual tension.”