The US Air Force has removed all its B-1 bombers from RAF Fairford, the air base in Gloucestershire where a suspected terrorist plot was foiled last week. The Pentagon confirmed that the 12 American bombers stationed there had returned to the US, following reports of a possible new Iran-backed plot to attack the base. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is taking Thames Valley Police to court over his arrest in connection with Jeffrey Epstein. The former prince has lodged a judicial review challenging whether the search warrants that allowed detectives to raid his homes in Norfolk and Windsor earlier this year were lawful. Some 60% of secondary schools using technology to restrict pupils’ smartphone use have reported improved GCSE results, according to data from more than 5,000 pupils at state and independent schools across England. Institutions using Blackout, an app that disables distracting smartphone functions during the school day, also reported calmer classrooms and more face-to-face interaction among students.

Sometimes, says Robert Colvile in The Sunday Times, “you just want to scream”. After the Iran conflict kicked off back in February, all anyone in the energy industry could talk about was the risk that Donald Trump would try to bring down fuel prices by hoarding America’s oil. Every other country in the West went “hell for leather” to secure supplies and build up a stockpile. But not Britain. Instead, Ed Miliband and then his successor as energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, have argued that the Iran crisis proves we need to go “further and faster” on renewables. Now, sure enough, the cost of diesel has passed £2 a litre for the first time in Britain’s history, and Trump – desperate to bring down US prices ahead of the midterms – has threatened to ban exports of the fuel from the US. The Labour government’s response: “Crisis? What crisis?”

Most people don’t understand what a “catastrophe” this could be, says Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. A huge chunk of our economy, including farm machinery, construction equipment and long-distance lorries, runs on diesel. We import 55% of our supplies – up from 15% a couple of decades ago, before Westminster’s obsession with the green agenda led to the closure of five of our nine refineries. More than a third of that comes from the US. And whereas Germany, France and Italy have around 900 days’ worth of supplies stored up between them, we have 42. “That’s it.” The G7 has appeased Trump by agreeing to release 100 million barrels from its stockpiles. But the impact on prices will probably be very limited, and when Trump notices he’ll doubtless start “banging the drum again” for an export ban. The government’s “rendezvous with reality” is coming.

😬⏰ Even the 42-day figure might be overstating it, says Ed Conway on Substack. Around a fifth of Britain’s oil stockpile isn’t actually in Britain – it’s either offshore or in overseas stocks. It’s “probably obtainable”. But no one knows how long it will take to get it.

There’s no love lost between Kemi Badenoch and the man she beat to become the Tory leader, says George Parker in the FT. In an interview ahead of the Conservative party conference in Birmingham this week, she said one of her main motivations to stand for the leadership was to stop the party “falling into the wrong hands”. Asked who she meant, her reply was instant: “Robert Jenrick, definitely.”

Across the rich world, older folks are up to no good, says The Economist. Drug and alcohol use has surged – in America, cannabis use among the elderly has risen sharply, while in Spain the share of those aged 55-64 who have used cocaine in the past year has risen eightfold in 15 years. And a stiff rise in casual, often condomless, sex has led to rates of gonorrhoea among Americans over 55 swelling more than sixfold since 2010. Barbie, a resident at a retirement home in South Carolina, says moving in was like “starting college all over again”.

As expected, says Dave Rich on Substack, the Green Party passed a motion at its conference yesterday declaring Zionism to be “racism” and calling for the state of Israel to be replaced by a single state of Palestine, if necessary by means of “armed struggle”. It’s worth noting how extreme that is. This policy puts the Greens at odds with the UN, the EU and all of Britain’s allies. It is even more extreme than the Palestinian Authority, which last year signed a memorandum of understanding committing to a two-state solution based on 1967 borders. Instead, the Greens have chosen to align themselves with Hamas’s view that Israel should be completely eliminated, “from the river to the sea”, by force if need be. What happens next will determine whether this is merely “another step into the anti-Semitic mire” or a wake-up call.

At the heart of the motion is the idea that “Zionism is racism”. But “Zionism” doesn’t signal support for any particular Israeli government or set of policies. It is nothing other than the ancient idea that Jews are a people with an ancestral homeland, to which they have, for 2,000 years, longed to return. The idea that Zionism is racism was promoted in the 1970s by the Soviet Union, which systematically persecuted Jews, and by Britain’s National Front in the 1980s. Unlike the NF, the Greens have five MPs in parliament and 1,300 councillors. And political campaigns targeting “Zionism” usually end up in a “witch-hunt of Jews”. Greens who opposed the motion have only themselves to blame. Despite warnings that denouncing Israel with accusations of “genocide” and “apartheid” would fuel anti-Semitism, they chose to “ride the tiger” that is now consuming their party.

Despite the shots of contestants in The Celebrity Traitors luxuriating in grand, tartan-blanketed bedrooms, say Jimmy Grant and Alex Nelson in The Sun, they are in fact driven 40 minutes each evening to the £60-a-night Courtyard by Marriott hotel at Inverness airport. Mobile devices are confiscated and even TV remotes are forbidden (to prevent internet access through smart TVs), though celebs can log in to their Netflix and Amazon accounts to while away the evenings. Room service is ordered by shoving a laminate under the door. Phone calls to family are monitored by security guards, who also oversee cigarette breaks and prevent corridor creeping.

So-called “free-range” parenting is all the rage in New York, says Rachel Louise Ensign in The Wall Street Journal. The Yard, a junkyard playground which surged in popularity after being featured in Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, banishes parents altogether, while their children wield hammers, play with saws, climb ladders and push each other around in second-hand wheelchairs. The adult staff (“playworkers”) who supervise the after-school sessions, which cost $700 for a week, are trained to only intervene if they have to. Families sign a waiver, but accidents happen: a few kids have broken bones and last year a tall structure had to be closed after a child fell off it.

It’s an “inside-out” vertical grand piano, says David Sanderson in The Times, designed by British concert pianist Sarah Nicolls to allow her to strum and pluck the strings directly, and to allow the audience to see what she’s up to. The design copies the relatively rare 200-year-old “Giraffe” piano, which had a long, upright “neck” but a tendency to topple over because heavy iron was needed to hold the strings tight. Using carbon fibre, Nicolls – and what she describes as a “village” of structural engineers, material specialists and piano technicians – has produced an 8ft-tall prototype that weighs just 60kg, which she hopes to begin selling next year.