Donald Trump has agreed to “coordinate” security guarantees for Ukraine with European leaders, following landmark talks with Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House yesterday, says the FT, but stopped short of a “full-throated commitment” of American military support. The US president also pledged to arrange a summit between Zelensky and Vladimir Putin in the coming weeks, though the Kremlin is yet to confirm that Putin would attend. Hamas says it accepts a proposal for a 60-day Gaza ceasefire deal negotiated by Egypt and Qatar, that would include the release of around half the 20 living Israeli hostages as part of a phased end to the war. Israel is yet to respond, though Benjamin Netanyahu has previously rejected “part deals”, saying the war can only end when all the hostages are returned. Fat jabs are coming for pets. Veterinary versions of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro have proven effective in helping overfed cats resist that second bowl of Whiskas, and trials are now being extended to dogs. Porky pooches will have the drugs administered via implants, rather than injections.

How India funds Putin’s war machine

Here’s how “India-Russia oil mathematics” works, says White House trade counsellor Peter Navarro in the FT: American consumers buy Indian goods; India uses those dollars to buy discounted Russian crude oil, which is then refined and resold around the world by Indian profiteers; and Russia pockets hard currency to fund its war machine in Ukraine. It’s big business – India’s politically connected energy titans are exporting more than a million and a half barrels of refined petroleum products a day, bolstering Vladimir Putin’s war chest while US and European taxpayers spend untold billions defending Nato’s eastern flank. Joe Biden looked the other way on this “geopolitical madness”, but not Donald Trump. His new tariff rate of 50% is intended to “hit India where it hurts”. If the country wants to be treated as a “strategic partner” of the US, “it needs to start acting like one”.

India won’t abandon Russia, says Sumit Ganguly in Foreign Policy. For starters, some 60% of India’s military kit is of Soviet or Russian origin (and unlike Western partners, Moscow imposes few constraints). Delhi has tried to diversify its arsenal, but couldn’t terminate arms arrangements with Moscow without seriously endangering its security. There would also be a strategic cost: Delhi is wary of the growing closeness between Moscow and Beijing, its “long-term arch-rival”. Indian officials fear any frostiness with Russia could contribute to greater warmth between Russia and China. And then there’s the long history of “mostly cooperative” relations between the two countries, including the Soviet Union reliably vetoing UN resolutions that favoured Pakistan in Kashmir. With Trump’s “mercurial policy choices” bolstering Indian suspicions about American reliability, Delhi may decide that “turning toward Russia provides it with a safe harbour”.

A study of San Francisco’s transport services has found that not only are people happy to use driverless taxis, says Sean Thomas in The Spectator, they are willing to pay 50% more and wait considerably longer, versus one with a human driver. And it makes sense: driverless taxis are proven to be safer, and there’s no chance of the driver being drunk, checking his phone, getting into a scrap with a cyclist or starting a conversation. Plus, with no one else in the car, you can “change your clothes, crepitate loudly, get it on with your sexy co-passenger” or just lie there, drooling and drunk. “No one is going to judge you.”

James Lovell, the American astronaut who commanded the Apollo 13 moon mission – shepherding the spacecraft back to Earth after an oxygen tank exploded, and uttering the immortal line: “Houston, we have a problem” – died earlier this month. His adventures left him with a remarkable perspective, says Basil Hero in a letter to The Washington Post. When Lovell finally splashed down in the Pacific Ocean and opened the hatch, feeling the “rush of the fresh, moist air” after days in the barren, icy vastness of space, produced a lasting epiphany. “Earth,” he said, “is paradise.” It led him to a powerful thought: “We don’t go to heaven when we die, we go to heaven when we’re born.”

Should the government be censoring what we see online?

British users of the social media platform X got a shock last month, says Toby Young in The Washington Post, when they saw a message explaining that “local laws” required certain posts to be restricted. According to the UK’s new Online Safety Act, social media giants must protect users from “harm” – a term the legislators didn’t bother to define – or face a penalty of up to £18m or 10% of annual turnover, whichever is higher. Naturally, social media firms are erring on the side of caution: blocked content so far includes reporting on the rape gangs scandal; footage of a man being arrested at an anti-immigration protest in Leeds; and posts from a thread about Richard the Lionheart. Wikipedia has mounted a legal challenge, and the right-wing American social media network gab.com has blocked British users altogether, citing “yet another demand from the UK’s speech police”, and adding: “we refuse to comply with this tyranny”.

Of course freedom of speech matters, but so does our right not to be “abused, harassed, groomed and warped”, says Celia Walden in The Daily Telegraph. The Online Safety Act is about ensuring that children and adults – primarily women – are protected from the worst excesses of the online sphere, including extreme pornography and content that encourages suicide. It’s about holding unscrupulous tech firms to account, and belatedly trying to make up for our own shocking failure in exposing younger generations to “unregulated torrents” of online bile and filth. Think of Molly Russell, the teenager who took her life after getting lost in what her father called “streams of life-sucking content”. Of course we need to regulate this stuff. Do you know anyone who would mount a serious defence of extreme sexual violence, sextortion or “cyber-flashing”? Or who truly believes it’s every child’s right to access “how-to” suicide videos? “I don’t.”

Britain’s solar panels have already generated more power this year than they did in the whole of 2024, say Clara Murray and Rachel Millard in the FT. Thanks to ultra-rapid installation and a clement summer, as of Saturday, some 14.08 terawatt hours of electricity had been produced by solar, a third higher than at this time last year, and enough to power 5.2m homes for a year, or the London Underground for a decade.

Reports of starvation from occupied Gaza are shaking the American public’s “unconditional support for Israel”, says Christopher Caldwell in UnHerd: 53% now hold a negative view of the Jewish state, according to a recent Pew survey. Among those who vote for the Democratic party (which typically wins 70% of Jewish American voters), support has cratered from 36% to just 8%. And while the US used to head the list of countries in Israel’s corner, today, that list contains just three nations: only in Kenya, Nigeria and India do those with a positive view of Israel outnumber critics.

It’s “Grem”, says Amanda Hess in The New York Times, a new AI-powered toy for children. Made by the tech company Curio, the $99 plushie plaything contains an AI-connected voice box designed to chat away to kids as young as three, while transcribing every conversation and sending a readout to mum and dad. The idea, says Curio, is to give parents a break by entertaining screen-addicted sprogs without sticking them in front of a screen. Which feels a bit like “unleashing a mongoose into the playroom to kill all the snakes you put in there”.