Energy bills for households in Britain are set to rise to the highest level in three years from October. Energy regulator Ofgem is increasing its price cap by 4%, raising the average household bill by £60, to £1,723 a year. The Trump administration has paused all visa applications as it cracks down on foreigners who could become a financial burden for the government. The US State Department said the halt in processing would allow for a global training initiative at all American embassies and consulates to ensure officers are “fully equipped” to evaluate every visa applicant and root out those likely to become a “public charge”. Dolly Parton has died from cancer aged 80. The country music icon, whose many hits include I Will Always Love You, Jolene, and 9 to 5, rose from abject poverty in Appalachia to global stardom, with countless celebrity tributes praising her talent and one-of-a-kind personality. American flags will be lowered across the country for a week in her memory.

Dolly Parton was “steeped in the ethic of self-reliance”, says George Will in The Washington Post. The fourth of 12 children, she was raised in such poverty in East Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains that the doctor who delivered her was paid in cornmeal. Her illiterate father would measure her feet with sticks which he then took to town to buy shoes that did not fit, and when she once jumped barefoot over a fence and sliced her foot open on the blade of a plough, there was no talk of hospital. Her older brothers held her down, while her mother poured kerosene into the wound, packed it in cornmeal, then “sewed it up with a quilting needle”.

Her Appalachian steeliness served her well as she started out in Nashville’s music industry – hardly a “lagoon of advanced thinking” on women’s emancipation. In 1974, she was just 28 when Elvis Presley expressed interest in recording her country hit I Will Always Love You. But when his management insisted on half the rights, she refused. Parton had the last laugh when Whitney Houston’s 1992 version became a global No 1 hit, earning Parton, who retained the copyright, some $10m. Perennially cinched into tight sequined gowns, with mountainous wigs and make-up “seemingly applied with a trowel”, she joked that “it costs a lot of money to look this cheap”. But even as she achieved global stardom, she never forgot her humble origins. Her father’s illiteracy inspired her to establish the Imagination Library in 1995, which sends free books – more than 318 million so far – to children every month until they are five, when they receive: Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come! “Here I Come!” could have been the epigraph to this resoundingly well-lived life.

On social media, it’s never been more lucrative to “flaunt your divorcée credentials”, says Callie Ahlgrim in Business Insider. Since one so-called “divorce influencer” first posted about her heartbreak nine years ago, she’s racked up more than 1.4 million followers, published a viral memoir called Eat, Pray, #FML, started a podcast, and now organises meet-and-greet trips with fans across the world. Another who posts “life-after-divorce” content rakes in six-figures in brand deals. It’s part of divorce’s pop-culture “rebrand”, which has seen it reframed, particularly for women, as a moment of “liberation and merriment”.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, has positioned herself as “the first lady of the Pentagon”, says Elisabeth Bumiller in The New York Times. She preps her husband for appearances, interviews potential new staff, and brainstorms ideas for Defence Department videos he – “and sometimes she” – stars in. In May, she worked out with sailors and marines on the deck of the USS Boxer while wearing a sweat-drenched T-shirt that said “This Is War”. And when the US temporarily stopped sharing military intelligence with Ukraine, she attended a highly sensitive meeting with British defence chiefs, who apparently spoke in “general terms” until they could arrange a smaller meeting without her.

On Monday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced “Operation Economic Outcast” against Iran and any country foolish enough to do business with it, promising to sever “every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime”. The timing is astute, says The Wall Street Journal. Last week, Iran’s central bank governor said the US naval blockade has driven Iran’s oil exports to zero, and on Sunday the Iranian rial plummeted past two million to the dollar – a record low. With inflation running at 88% year-on-year, even parliamentary speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has admitted that if people are hungry and trade is blocked, “we will not endure”. Increasing the pressure now will almost certainly give the US the upper hand.

The risk is that America’s threats end up being “more bark than bite”, says The Economist. The conflict has strengthened Tehran’s cruel military hardliners, who couldn’t care less about economic hardship for ordinary Iranians. And Tehran has been under US sanctions ever since the revolution in 1979. In the decades since, it has built “labyrinthine networks for trade and finance” that will be hard for America to police. What’s more, delivering what Bessent calls an “economic D-Day” requires America to pick a hell of a fight with China, which scoops up around 90% of Iranian crude exports. Beijing has already warned that the proposed sanctions risk damaging global growth and financial stability and has vowed to protect its “legitimate rights and interests”. The Trump administration may be reluctant to press too hard, for fear of retaliation, or undermining the president’s outreach to Beijing. America’s plan to choke the Iranian economy is a worthy attempt to avoid another round of fighting. Whether it will be enough remains to be seen.

🇮🇷🪦 The rumour buzzing around Tehran this morning is that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has died, says Arash Azizi in The Atlantic. In the six months since he was anointed – after being badly maimed during the US/Israeli airstrikes that killed his father – not a single video or photo has emerged, and fewer than five people are known to have seen him in person. Two weeks ago, a clerical appeal went out asking Iranians to sacrifice sheep and pray for Mojtaba’s health. And since the start of this month, the thin trickle of communications from his office has fallen entirely silent.

At the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, says Graydon Carter in Air Mail, nothing is too much trouble. When one guest just had to have an authentic tarte tropézienne – which is not on the Hotel du Cap menu – the hotel chartered a helicopter and sent a staff member some 60 miles down the coast to St Tropez to fetch one. “There was a tropézienne on the customer’s table by the time coffee was served.” The tart was €5. The helicopter was €2,000. “The diner’s bill reflected all of this. But he was happy.”

In 1978, says Max Hastings in The Times, Kingsley Amis edited The New Oxford Book of Light Verse, in which he included some shamefully vulgar limericks, such as “An Argentine gaucho named Bruno/ Declared ‘there is one thing I do know/ A woman is fine/ And a boy is divine/ But a llama is numero uno’”. I suggested to an Oxford grandee that these days, Oxford University Press would never publish such deplorable stuff. “Absolutely not,” she said, “because it’s cruel to animals.”

It’s a birds’ nest, says Pesala Bandara in PetaPixel, which is being kept in a secret location to protect it from twitchers. “AU”, a male Montagu’s harrier – Britain’s rarest bird of prey – has successfully bred with two females, producing six chicks across two nests. It’s a huge boon for bird-lovers after the species was put on a “red list” of at-risk birds in 2021, and no evidence of successful breeding between 2020 and 2024. “AU is truly awesome,” says Mark Thomas, species lead at the RSPB. “He is single-handedly propping up this species.”