The UK government has approved the development of a controversial new gas field in the North Sea. Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh says Jackdaw will go into production before Christmas, boosting Britain’s energy supplies this winter and helping to protect jobs and energy security over the long term. She says a decision on the similarly contentious Rosebank oilfield will be made “in due course”. Inflation and government borrowing have surged to their highest level so far this year, just a week before Chancellor John Healey’s first budget. The Office for National Statistics says inflation rose more than expected to 3.5% in September, up from 3.1% in August, while government borrowing hit £24.5bn in the month, £1.9bn higher than forecast. Losing weight in your fifties could make your heart just as healthy as if you had never put on the pounds in the first place, a new study suggests. Researchers from UCL found that overweight women and men who had lost at least 5% of their body weight in their fifties had a similar level of heart health as those who maintained a healthy weight all along.

The riots across France on 17 October may well come to symbolise the “final collapse of Macronism”, says Solenn de Royer in Le Monde. Elected on the promise of “horizontal governance” that would restore trust between leaders and citizens and improve social mobility, Emmanuel Macron has spent most of his presidency “out of step with the people”. After the Gilets Jaunes crisis, he listened to protesters’ grievances but did little about them. He promised referendums that never came, bypassed the unions, and lost his parliamentary majority by refusing to share power. Faced with a weekend marked by yet more street violence, he once again offered “nothing concrete” to quell the unrest, instead addressing the nation with a combination of incomprehension and powerlessness that carried a “funereal air”.

These riots are bigger than just one “supposedly reformist” president, says Bret Stephens in The New York Times. They are scenes from a country “unglued”. France’s youth unemployment is about 20%, almost three times the rate in Germany. Employers are discouraged from hiring by statutory social costs higher than anywhere else in Europe. The last time the World Bank published its “ease of doing business” rankings, in 2020, France came 32nd, just ahead of Turkey and Azerbaijan. A succession of prime ministers have tried to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, to bring it more in line with the EU average and address the “crushing fiscal burden” of the country’s bloated pension system. No dice. American liberals often used to tout France as a model of what life should be like in the US: universal health care, strong worker protections, lower economic growth but “lots of joie de vivre”. Not any more.

🇫🇷💪 The one clear winner from all this, ahead of next year’s pivotal presidential election, is far-right leader Marine Le Pen, says Paul Taylor in The Guardian. While France has a long revolutionary tradition, the present anarchy is the work not of earnest schoolchildren or “working-class warriors” but masked ultra-left nihilists and opportunistic looters. Le Pen, “looking presidential”, issued a stern message: millions of French people are furious about “anarchic immigration” and in six months they can vote for “restored authority and security”.

A Russian-made satellite has been tracked creeping up to within three miles of a US-made satellite that provides imagery to the Ukrainian military, says Jackie Wattles on CNN. It’s unclear why Kosmos 2612 performed the manoeuvre on Friday – described by one expert as going “bumper to bumper” – but it was consistent with so-called “rendezvous and proximity” operations, when two spacecraft are brought together. While satellite docking happens all the time in space, this could be the first time “one spacecraft approached another without permission”.

Lime has had to warn people off jousting on its e-bikes, says Ruth Comerford on BBC News, after footage of two riders dressed as knights charging at each other with lances went viral over the weekend. Hundreds of people gathered on London Fields in east London to watch artist Jack Carden and actor “Camtholomew the First” attempt to knock each other off the bright-green bikes. “While we appreciate the medieval spirit,” a Lime spokesperson said, “Lime bikes are designed for getting around the city, not for jousting.”

In June this year, says William Hague in The Times, little noticed during the conflict in the Gulf, something significant happened in the western Pacific: China announced a “special maritime traffic law enforcement operation” close to Taiwan. For four days, Chinese ships radioed all commercial ships in the area, demanding details of their origins, destinations and crews. Protests from Taipei against this blatant interference in lawful maritime activity fell on deaf ears. This is just the latest example of Beijing probing and testing ways to hem in the island nation, which have previously included flying planes across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, simulating blockades, expanding naval patrols and conducting influence campaigns. One day, with no warning, these methods could be turned into a full-scale blockade of an island Beijing is “determined to repossess”.

Xi Jinping, who is desperate to “complete the work of Mao” and re-unite Taiwan with mainland China, will be alert to the fact that he may never have a better window for action than between now and when Donald Trump leaves office at the start of 2029. This is not just because Trump has repeatedly declared himself unwilling to come to Taiwan’s aid. Even if he changes his mind, he has wasted a huge proportion – “half to two thirds in some cases” – of America’s most sophisticated precision weapons in an unnecessary war against Iran. And in the chaos that’s likely to arise after the midterm elections, political dysfunction in Washington could create ideal conditions for Xi to pounce. Not through violent invasion, probably, but by suddenly tightening restrictions around Taiwan into a stranglehold the US will be unwilling to break with war. Given the island nation produces 90% of the world’s leading-edge semiconductors, any such stand-off could have an economic impact “greater than the global financial crisis or Covid”. It may be time to start preparing for “the crisis for which we’re not ready”.

Diamonds were once a prized possession, says Sean Thomas in The Telegraph. Today, they’re for “casual Tuesday drinks”. This shift from luxury to commodity is largely the result of a small Chinese county called Zhecheng, which has become the “synthetic diamond capital of the world”, cranking out a total of 12 million carats (around 2.4 million tonnes) a year. Chinese mass production means wholesale prices of lab-grown stones – which are indistinguishable from the real deal, even under most microscopes – have fallen 96% since 2018. For consumers, cheapness beats prestige: almost half of American engagement rings now contain a lab stone.

No 10 hopes AI can “transform the machinery of the state” on the cheap, saving billions, says Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. But so far the technology is not so much streamlining public service delivery as “gumming it up”. Since the widespread adoption of ChatGPT and other AI chatbots, governments around the world have seen “unusual surges” in complaints, requests and responses to regulatory and official bodies. It’s the same in the courts, where people using AI to draft claims have helped drive up employment tribunal cases in England, Scotland and Wales over the past year by a whopping 39%.

It’s a mast being removed from a sunken US warship in the Thames estuary, says Lewis Adams on BBC News, which is thought to contain enough unexploded bombs to level the nearby coastal town of Sheerness and send a tidal wave through London. The SS Richard Montgomery sank in 1944 carrying an estimated 1,400 tonnes of munitions, including 2,000 cluster bombs and 300 so-called “blockbuster bombs” weighing 900kg apiece. The removal of the ship’s three masts, to prevent them collapsing and triggering an explosion, was finished ahead of schedule and under the forecast budget of £9.5m.