The UK government borrowed £99.8bn in the six months to September, the highest figure since records began in 1993, apart from the same period at the height of the pandemic in 2020. The figures have increased expectations that Rachel Reeves will be forced to raise taxes in the forthcoming budget to fill a fiscal hole estimated to be between £20bn and £30bn. A revolutionary bionic chip has enabled blind patients to read and recognise faces again. The ultra-thin implant, which is inserted under the retina and links to a video-camera fitted on augmented-reality glasses, was trialled on dozens of patients suffering from age-related macular degeneration, with more than 80% seeing major improvements. White House workmen have begun tearing down the East Wing to start construction on Donald Trump’s new $250m ballroom. An excavator has been ripping into the façade and smashing the windows, despite the US president insisting the work “wouldn’t interfere with the current building”.

The best template for Gaza peacemakers

Peace in the Middle East is already looking shaky, says Marc Champion in Bloomberg. Hamas have been executing Palestinian rivals and trying to reassert control; the IDF is refusing to reopen the Rafah crossing and continued to launch strikes in Gaza over the weekend. If they want peace to hold, authorities should look to one of the “most successful peacekeeping operations on record”: Kosovo in 1999. When Nato was leading a 78-day bombing mission in Serbia to force its president to halt his campaign of violence and terror against Kosovo, a “Kosovo Force” (Kfor) was deploying to nearby Macedonia and preparing for combat. Tony Blair was insistent that as soon as a ceasefire was agreed, Nato boots should be on the ground, “not as peacekeepers but peacemakers”. Two days after the bombing stopped, Kfor special forces crossed the border.

The operation’s main success came from the fact that it was UN-authorised rather than UN-led, which meant it could be manned by soldiers from countries trusted by those being policed. The planned force in Gaza will sensibly follow suit, comprising troops from Egypt, Azerbaijan, Indonesia and other Muslim nations. But it also needs to be big enough and tough enough, with “robust rules of engagement” – Kfor was armed to the teeth and lethal, “the very antithesis of UN Blue Helmets”. Speed is also crucial. While Trump’s bulldozer dealmaking approach meant it wasn’t possible to “flood the security vacuum” immediately, that should be done as soon as possible, ideally beginning in Rafah. Kfor was far from perfect. But the aftermath of the ceasefire would have been vastly worse had 50,000 troops not stormed the small nation and insisted on peace.

If you’re ever struggling to understand what your kids or younger colleagues are saying, the Lifehacker website has created an extremely helpful glossary of slang popular with Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) and Gen Alpha (born after 2012). Examples include “boombayah” (having sex), “glaze” (to overly praise someone in the hope of getting something), “fax, no printer” (telling the truth) and “fuhuhluhtoogan” (a nonsense word used so people will ask what it means but never receive an answer). To find out if you’re a “based chad who has aura or a delulu chud in danger of being mogged”, click here.

The Spitting Image caricature of Margaret Thatcher – a dominatrix who smashed through life’s obstacles like some “latter-day Boudica” – is way off the mark, says Matthew Parris in The Times. The Tory leader, who would have turned 100 last week, was in fact strikingly “careful”. She hated it when senior colleagues argued with her – often shouting at them – but she listened, and sometimes changed course as a result. In the early days, this innate caution was even visible in the way she walked: “small, hurried steps like a partridge conscious of pursuit but reluctant to do anything so undignified as fly”.

Gen Z and the “largest wave of revolt in human history”

What most people don’t realise about “entitled, lazy and apathetic” Gen Z, says Christian Caryl in Foreign Policy, is that they’ve spent the past couple of years taking to the streets across Asia, Africa and Latin America, fomenting revolution and “dethroning entrenched rulers”. A week ago, the president of Madagascar was ousted and replaced by a military government after weeks of youth-led protests. He joins the recently toppled leaders of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and similar Gen Z upheavals in Indonesia, the Philippines, Kenya, Morocco, Nepal, Peru, Ecuador and others. All in, the countries affected are home to around 790 million people – almost 10% of the global population, making this the “largest wave of revolt in human history”.

Of course, Gen Z is not a monolith, and the sparks for these protests vary: in Ecuador it was cuts in diesel subsidies; in Morocco it was the state spending billions on a football stadium; in Nepal it was the government trying to ban social media to stop online coverage of the lavish lifestyles of Kathmandu’s “Nepo kids”. But in all cases, a main driver of protest has been twentysomethings who see their own opportunities for advancement blocked by greedy elites. And the movements have specifically drawn inspiration from one another, using the same symbols (the distinctive Jolly Roger of Japanese anime pirate Monkey D Luffy), and the same methods, such as the social media platform Discord, which is mostly unknown by older generations but widely used by gamers. And unlike in the Arab Spring, the governments targeted by Gen Zs are almost all democracies, not autocracies. Americans and Europeans have “little cause for complacency”.

🇲🇬🔐 Madagascar’s deposed president must have wished General Désiré Philippe Ramakavelo were still in charge of the armed forces, says Brian Klaas on Substack. When a political crisis threatened to erupt into mass violence back in the 1990s, Ramakavelo simply kidnapped the political leaders, locked them in a hotel room in the capital and told them they could only leave once they’d agreed on a solution. Which, eventually, they did. The Hotel Panorama is still in operation today, “ranked 73rd out of 79 hotels in Antananarivo on TripAdvisor”.

Congratulations, says Dan Neil in The Wall Street Journal: “you’ve lived long enough to see the age of flying cars”. So-called “eVTOLs” (electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles) are now free to fly in unrestricted airspace. I learned to fly one called the Pivotal BlackFly and it was easy. Training takes place in a virtual-reality simulator, and the controls involve nothing more complicated than a few simple toggles and a joystick. And anyone can give it a go: the oldest certified BlackFly pilot is 88.

In 1991, shortly after the plans for Operation Desert Storm were stolen from the back of a British civil servant’s Volvo, I received a phone call, said Ian Hislop last week at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. It was the admiral in charge of the D-notice committee, who are tasked with making sure state secrets aren’t leaked by the press. He said to me sternly: “Is that Ian Hislop?” I said it was, and he said: “You know these plans for Desert Storm?” I said yes. And he said: “You haven’t got ‘em, old boy, have you?”

It’s Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister, says Justin McCurry in The Guardian. The 64-year-old’s elevation to the top job is particularly remarkable in a country that “consistently ranks poorly” in global gender equality comparisons, especially in politics and business. She is straight in at the deep end, having been elected in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and with Donald Trump arriving in Tokyo for a hotly anticipated two-day visit next week. But investors are happy: Japanese stocks hit a record high as the so-called “Takaichi trade” signalled optimism over her policies.