Britain’s leaders have shown “corrosive complacency” towards defence, putting the country “in peril”, a former NATO secretary-general has warned. Lord George Robertson, who served as defence secretary under Tony Blair, says there is a gap between Keir Starmer’s rhetoric and action on defence, adding: “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.” Donald Trump has deleted an AI-generated picture he posted of himself as Jesus Christ during an extraordinary spat with the pope, after widespread condemnation from some of his biggest supporters, including Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni. The US president, who claimed he thought the image showed him “as a doctor”, called Pope Leo XIV “terrible” and “weak” after the American-born Bishop of Rome condemned the Iran war as inhumane. A number of much-anticipated new books will be released in paperback first, reversing publishers’ traditional, and more profitable, hardback-first strategy. The swap is a response to readers’ increasing antipathy towards bulky tomes: one survey found that 46% of people hardly ever or never opt for a hardback.

Viktor Orbán’s resounding failure in Hungary extends well beyond the borders of “Europe’s laboratory for illiberalism”, says Le Monde. Sharing in the defeat are allies and admirers ranging from France’s Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally, to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, toward which the outgoing government in Budapest has long displayed “unwavering servility”. The blow will be felt even more directly by the Trump administration, which made “every effort” to save a flailing prime minister whose campaign had been reduced to blaming Ukraine, quite madly, for all of Hungary’s ills. US Vice President JD Vance – “no stranger to electoral interference” – travelled to Budapest just days before the vote, and Donald Trump on Saturday made “grandiose promises of economic support”. In both cases, “Hungarian voters were unmoved”.

Humiliation aside, this really matters to America. The national security strategy published by the White House in December 2025 could not have been clearer: Washington was counting on right-wing Trump loyalists like Orbán to “correct” Europe’s course, praising the “growing influence of patriotic European parties”. The new reactionary movement at work on both sides of the Atlantic must now contend with the “sharp halt” of that growth, and the rejection of one of its leading figures. Orbán’s defeat proves not only that, despite all the MAGA gloating and liberal handwringing, the tide of national populist parties is not “inescapable”. It also shows something important to those thinking of voting for such parties: over 16 years in Hungary, national populism produced “massive inflation, rampant corruption and a string of poor EU rankings in per capita wealth”. In other words, it’s not just illiberal, it doesn’t deliver the goods. And who wants that?

🇭🇺😇 Those imagining that Hungarians have just voted in their answer to Barack Obama should curb their enthusiasm, says Michael Mosbacher in The Daily Telegraph. Yes, incomer Péter Magyar will shift the country’s stance on Europe and Russia, but domestically he’s no bleeding heart. His socially conservative party, Tisza, won its landslide promising to increase financial incentives for having children, cut taxes, double the defence budget and admit fewer migrants than Orbán did. “On effectively every issue he sits firmly on the right of European politics.”

Many were surprised that the US negotiations with Iran were led by JD Vance, an outspoken foreign policy dove who reportedly advised Donald Trump against the war. But Trump and Tehran both wanted the vice president, “for different reasons”, says Karim Sadjadpour in The Atlantic. The Iranians view him as less sympathetic to Israel than other US officials, and “highly motivated” to resolve the conflict quickly given his presidential ambitions. Meanwhile Trump thinks his veep can serve as a firewall for the unpopularity of the war. If a deal “doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance,” the president recently joked. “If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.”

Wales’s “precious” Cambrian mountains narrowly missed out on national park status in the 1950s, says Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. Now, thanks to the lifting of the ban on new onshore wind plants, they’re going to pay for it. Plans have been submitted for more than 100 “gigantic” turbines in the area, some up to 230 metres high – “50% taller than any yet seen in England and Wales” – along with the entire infrastructure of roads, repair facilities and storage warehouses needed to service them. Renewables are important, of course. But to locate these “hilltop industrial estates” in the wildest landscape south of the Scottish highlands is nothing short of “obscene”.

One striking element of the Iran war is just how quickly the world has forgotten the people affected most, says Janice Turner in The Times: ordinary Iranians. The ceasefire sure as hell isn’t in effect in Iran itself. The judiciary, not content with a reported 657 hangings already this year, is expediting death penalties for thousands held since the January uprising, including doctors who treated the wounded. The Basij militia are policing the streets – arbitrarily firing into apartments heard to utter dissident slogans – and recruiting boys as young as 12. As one TV address put it: “Do you want your son to become a man?”

Those in the West cheering Donald Trump’s failure to overthrow the regime should remember what a “monstrous death cult” this is. One that gunned down as many as 40,000 peaceful protesters in January, picking off families on rooftops with sniper rifles and storming hospitals to execute survivors. One that “targets women’s eyes and genitals”, and rapes virgin girls before executing them to (supposedly) prevent them from going to heaven. It is because of these atrocities – the stacks of body bags with girls’ “long black hair tumbling out” – that the Iranian diaspora has cheered on Trump’s attacks. Yet the rest of the world seems “uniquely quiet” about their plight. Just four months on from the January protests – the death toll from which was several times bigger than the infamous Srebrenica massacre in 1995 – and Spain has already returned its ambassador to Tehran. Britain still refuses to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The West has let down the Iranian people too many times during their 47 years under brutal theocratic rule. We cannot do it again.

Japan really is the “land of the train”, say Matthew Bornholt and Benedict Springbett in Works in Progress. Some 28% of passenger miles in Japan are travelled by rail, compared to just 10% in France and 0.25% in the US. The country’s largest carrier, JR East, carries four times as many passengers as the whole British railway system, even though it serves about 10 million fewer people, and competes with eight other companies. And it’s good business: Japan’s railway system receives far less public subsidy than its European and American equivalents, and turns a large operating profit to boot.

Social media loves depicting London as a dystopian hell hole with no-go areas for non-Islamists and police who arrest you for saying “God Save the King”. Not only is this rubbish, says Sam Leith in The Spectator, it’s also part of a coordinated disinformation campaign. New data published by City Hall and the National Cyber Security Centre shows that “London in decline” posts are up 200% in the past two years – and that they’re coming not from disgruntled commuters in Clapham, but from “Sri Lankan-based troll-farms, Vietnamese Facebook networks, and Nigerian bot webs mimicking UK media”. As we Londoners can attest, you shouldn’t believe everything you read on Facebook.

It’s “Henry’s Castle”, says Federica Bedendo on BBC News, a mysterious 14th-century limestone rubble barn on a grassy knoll in the Lake District, which has just been granted Grade II* listing. The elite status – which only applies to 5.8% of listed buildings, such as Battersea Power Station and the London Coliseum – was granted after advice from Historic England, which pointed to its unusual oak roof and lack of an obvious purpose. “Henry’s Castle is one of those rare buildings that raises more questions than it answers,” said Sarah Charlesworth from Historic England. “This mystery is part of what makes it so compelling.”