Older teenagers in the UK will face an overnight social media curfew from next spring, though it will not be mandatory. Apps such as Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat will be restricted by default from midnight to 6am for 16-to-17-year-olds, but users will be able to override the curfew easily by changing their account settings. Donald Trump has threatened to strike Iran’s bridges and power stations unless Tehran agrees to return to peace talks. Earlier, the US president reversed his threat of a 20% toll on all cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz but resumed the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. A 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil has sold at auction for a record $50.1m. Known as Gus and discovered in South Dakota in 2021, the skeleton is about 60% complete and stands at 12ft tall and 38ft long. The winning bidder has not yet been disclosed.

After the French Revolution, says Wolfgang Münchau in UnHerd, the French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand said the Bourbons had “learnt nothing and forgotten nothing”. The same is true of the Western establishment’s response to the populist right. Donald Trump’s election win in 2024 should have made it clear that “lawfare” – using legal processes to weaken political opponents – doesn’t work. Yet still they do it. France tried to bar Marine Le Pen from running in next year’s presidential election. Romania’s authorities banned far-right leader Călin Georgescu from taking part in elections. Germany’s ruling CDU wants to do the same with the AfD’s Björn Höcke. In the Netherlands, they targeted Geert Wilders.

The latest, of course, is Nigel Farage. The media, which has seized on stories of the Reform UK leader’s alleged financial impropriety, is out for blood – or, as the Germans call it, “chasing a pig through the village”. Sometimes this works: journalists defenestrated both Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer by persuading gullible backbenchers to ditch the leader who won them a landslide victory. But I doubt the campaign against Farage will work. Unlike Johnson and Starmer, he is in full control of his party. And his voters don’t care about “politically constructed criminal cases or donations”, they care about the things that affect their everyday lives. As for the supposed humiliation of taking on Count Binface, how do you think Reform voters feel about the main parties uniting to support a joke candidate? Farage survived cancer and a plane crash – I’m sure he can cope with a few gags from a jobbing comedy writer. Britain’s political establishment should try addressing the country’s underlying problems, not “rooting for a man with a bin for a face”.

Both The Times and the FT are reporting that, while nothing is settled, Shabana Mahmood has replaced Ed Miliband as the frontrunner to be Andy Burnham’s chancellor, says Andrew McDonald in Politico. Louise Haigh, the pink-haired former transport secretary, is reportedly a shoo-in to take on the influential role of chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. One man definitely not in line for a government job is backbencher Neil Coyle, the only Labour MP not to nominate Burnham as Labour leader. He says he instead backed Catherine West because Labour are overdue a female leader, adding: “there was no room left to crawl into Andy Burnham’s backside”.

Baby boomers, not Gen Zs, are the generation cutting back most on booze, says Madeleine Speed in the FT. Just 71% of those aged 62 to 80 had a drink in the past six months, according to new research, down two percentage points from three years ago. Meanwhile 74% of Gen Zs said they’d consumed alcohol in the same period, up from 66%, as the young finally wake up and begin closing the gap with the total adult population drinking rate of 76%. According to drinks market research boss Marten Lodewijks: “The narrative that Gen Z is the generation of moderation is now conclusively debunked.”

I’ve always hated the Germans, says Julie Burchill in The Spectator. All that oompah-music and excessive pig consumption and horribly flatulent language. When I was forced to learn German at school I began a highly successful career as a truant. Later, aged 17, I was stuck in an old-fashioned train with no doors connecting the carriages when a gang of German backpackers got in. After bearing their parping chatter for a while, I did something I’ve never considered before or since: pulled the emergency cord and jumped out in the middle of nowhere. I can never forget the immortal line in Frasier when a notoriously icy character starts learning German. “Wow, just when you thought she couldn’t get any cuddlier!”

It didn’t help that for much of my life Britain has been on the receiving end of interminable lectures from our guttural cousins. We were the Sick Man of Europe while they smarmed about like wunderkinder, workers of an actual Economic Miracle. The fact that we, a tiny nation with a giant empire, broke ourselves financially in a bid to defeat the Nazi menace for some reason never came up. So imagine my surprise, after a lifetime of loathing “the Krauts”, to find myself coming over all giddy for England football manager Thomas Tuchel. Gone are the creepily smart suits and fashionable theories of Gareth Southgate. Tuchel has made it clear he doesn’t see it as his role to comment on social issues; he wants to win and he isn’t interested in being a wimp about it. After last week’s victory over Norway he was openly disappointed – “sloppy, lot of technical mistakes, not fast enough. We were lucky.” I can’t believe I’m saying this, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt us to try to be a little more, well, German?

The Pembroke Club, due to open later this year in a former prime ministerial residence overlooking Buckingham Palace Garden, is an “exercise in scale”, says The Economist. Funded by the Oman Investment Authority, the venue will include several restaurants and “lounges”, and a late-night bar with a £1m sound system and a DJ booth carved from Italian marble. The owners placed an ad in Country Life for a Butter Sommelier with an “encyclopaedic knowledge of toast”. Membership costs £3,250 a year, or £60,000 for life. The club says it has already sold 10 life memberships, which come with a “life loo” – exclusive access to one of the 55 lavatories.

In the first half of this year, says Ben Marlow in The Telegraph, Europe bought nearly 10 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas from Russia’s Yamal LNG. That’s a 16% increase on the same period last year, and the highest level ever, boosting the Kremlin’s war coffers by some £5bn. These transfers are set to stop when a full ban on Russian LNG comes into force in 2027. But how shameful, and hypocritical, that until it does the continent is engaging in a “last-ditch scramble to stock up on as much Russian gas as it can”.

It’s Kelci Bowers, says Julia Richardson in The Times, a former junior Lioness who has caused a minor controversy by posting a picture of herself in an Argentina shirt ahead of tonight’s World Cup semi-final. The 22-year-old defender, who plays for Bournemouth, is going out with Argentine centre back Marcos Senesi. Bowers says she is being asked by “every single person” which side she will be supporting when football’s most famous international rivalry kicks off again tonight. The answer is a cop out: “I’m going to be cheering on for my partner. And I’m going to be wishing England the best game… we’ll just see.” 🙄