NATO leaders will gather for a two-day summit in Ankara this afternoon amid continuing pressure from Donald Trump to increase defence spending. Members are expected to announce a €70bn military aid package for Ukraine, most of which consists of existing commitments, along with tens of billions in new arms contracts. “It’s not about keeping anyone happy, it is about delivering,” Secretary General Mark Rutte said last week. “And what Donald Trump expects, of course, is delivery.” More than 100,000 people with ADHD are being paid disability benefits without any requirement to look for work, an increase of 40% since Labour came to power. The surge is being driven by increasing numbers of young people receiving the benefit, with more than half of claimants aged between 16 and 24. Bumblebees show “emotion-like” responses to different tastes, suggesting they have a richer mental world than previously thought. Scientists in Sydney found that the insects reacted to a sugary meal with a movement likened to lip-licking, while bitter or salty liquids led to head shaking and mouth wiping.

This week’s NATO summit in Ankara looks set to be something of a disaster for Volodymyr Zelensky, says Owen Matthews in The Telegraph. Reports suggest he will linger on the sidelines, not taking part in the “main summit” and not giving one of his trademark “barnstorming” speeches. The Ukrainian president’s main purpose will be a plea not for weaponry but for cash, which is in short supply but desperately needed to close out the war and bolster his country’s devastated economy. Unfortunately, goodwill from governments that once stood as Kyiv’s closest allies is also in short supply, resulting in a “looming funding crisis” for Ukraine.

Slovakia’s prime minister says his country “will not pay for Ukraine’s military expenses”, and that he’ll refuse to support any plans to commit large-scale financial and military aid at the summit. The Czech Republic’s PM has ruled out support for a €90bn EU loan to Ukraine and blocked the export of Czech light aircraft to Kyiv, while Péter Magyar, Hungary’s pro-EU successor to Viktor Orbán, has ruled out arming his neighbour. Poland, increasingly threatened by Russia and angered by Zelensky’s recent honouring of Ukrainian partisans who fought alongside the Nazis in World War Two, is now out for itself. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has urged his defence and foreign ministers to “be careful” with any declarations of further financial support for Kyiv and to concentrate on funding Warsaw’s own military expenses, saying “Poland bears the main burden of defending the border”. Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to troll Nato, recently calling it “ridiculous for the US to continue along this one-sided path”. The alliance’s unity is fracturing, “and with it the support that Zelensky needs”.

For months, Donald Trump has been asking friends and aides whether his successor should be JD Vance or Marco Rubio, says Marc Caputo in Axios. “That parlour game is now on hold.” The vice president’s recent performances in TV interviews, in the polls (his rating sits at 62% among Republicans, compared to Rubio’s 51%) and on the “global chessboard”, helping to broker the memorandum of understanding with Iran, have made him look like Trump’s “undisputed political heir”. “POTUS isn’t asking ‘JD or Marco?’ any more”, says one insider. “He’s now saying, ‘JD looks great, right?’”

The Observer covered Taylor Swift’s wedding on Friday with an enjoyable short news item in the sport section. “NFL star Travis Kelce married his long-term girlfriend on Friday afternoon at Madison Square Garden,” the piece read. “The 36-year-old Kansas City Chiefs tight end had been dating his fiancée for three years.”

Visitors to Glasgow Cathedral a couple of weeks ago would have encountered a troubling sight, says Neil Mackay in The Herald: about 60 men, dressed head to toe in black, marching in formation outside the building. In case the obvious visual homage to Mussolini’s blackshirts was too subtle, they also laid a wreath inscribed with the words “il fine giustifica i mezzi”, Italian for “the end justifies the means”, and an apology to “our fallen”. A near-identical parade followed outside Holyrood days later. On X, users responded to a post promoting the demonstration with Nazi-coded imagery – including a lightning flash, an eagle and a raised hand – a picture of the British fascist Oswald Mosley and comments such as: “Hurrah for the blackshirts”.

This abhorrent display should be a wake-up call for us Scots. For too long we told ourselves this couldn’t happen here – that Scotland floated above such things, and that fascist thugs on the streets were a purely English affliction. With men marching through our cities in barely-veiled tribute to the authors of the darkest crimes of the 20th century, that comforting myth is dead. What’s behind this ugly trend isn’t clear. The rhetoric of parties like Restore Britain and Reform UK has plainly played its part. But so have the failed policies of mainstream politicians over the past 20 years, which have “created the conditions for fascism to fester”. And we citizens are to blame, too. We “took our eye off the ball” as extremism grew, first online, then into our media and our politics. Enough’s enough. When it comes to men in black shirts, you either speak out against it or “one day you wake up and find they’ve taken away your right to speak”.

Last week’s Summer of Ludd festival in New York’s East Village harnessed Gen Z’s “rage against big tech”, says Vittoria Elliott in Wired. The week-long Luddite festival, which was advertised through posters rather than online and which banned all phones and recording, offered a series of talks and activities ranging from “how to flirt and date offline” to learning how to mend things, “fight against data centres”, ditch Spotify and live without Google. One speaker, who works for a dumbphone company and hosts “phone-free meet-ups” at his Brooklyn home, even announced plans for his “platformless” run for president.

Women have made “extraordinary gains” in the workplace in the past few decades, says The Economist. Now that trend is stalling. Women’s share of executive positions in listed American companies fell for the first time in 2023 after nearly 20 years of uninterrupted growth. In 2025 women secured 38% of new board seats at S&P 500 firms, down from 42% the previous year, and across the OECD, the share of women in full-time work fell from 78.1% in 2023 to 76.8% in 2024 – a small dip, but the first decline since records began.

It’s the iconic headquarters of American basket company Longaberger, says Kylie McDowell in The Spaces, which has gone on the market for $8.5m. Completed in 1997, the seven-storey 180,000 sq ft building in Ohio was created as an exact but hugely scaled-up replica of the company’s signature Medium Market Basket, and has since become one of America’s most recognisable pieces of corporate architecture. Inside is a central atrium overlooked by glass lifts and a cherry timber staircase, as well as a media room, gym facilities and 580 parking spaces. Click here for the listing.