German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called his party’s worst-ever regional election defeat a “disaster” but vowed to remain in post, after the CDU failed to achieve the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament in yesterday’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election. The far-right AfD more than doubled its share of the vote, with 38.5%, but is unlikely to govern because other parties refuse to work with it. Specialist courts to handle cases of rape and other sexual offences will be introduced across England and Wales over the next two years. Each crown court will get at least one courtroom dedicated to such cases, with private entrances and waiting rooms provided, as well as facilities to allow victims to pre-record evidence and observe sentencing remotely. Donald Trump plans to convert his proposed Triumphal Arch in Washington into a “top grade military complex”, complete with drone and ammunition storage and customised sniper facilities. The US president said the changes to the 250ft structure came at the “strong request” of the American military and that there would be “no facility like this anywhere in the world”.

It’s hard to know precisely why Earl Spencer has “tossed a grenade” into the royal family, says Jenni Russell in The Times. His incendiary claims – that King Charles was “giddily elated” when telling him of his sister Princess Diana’s death in 1997, and said later “we’ll forget her soon enough” – are obviously an attempt to savage the King’s reputation. Spencer insists he is just telling the truth, but why wait 29 years to do so? And how truthful is it? An “impeccable source” who was with Charles that day tells me the allegations are “wildly improbable”; that the King was in “total shock, bereft and sad”, and deeply worried about the children. “They were at the forefront of everything.”

Just look at Charles’s public actions. With protocols unclear because of Diana’s lack of royal status, it was he who insisted on taking a royal aircraft to Paris to bring her body home. He travelled with her “distraught” sisters, and all three prayed at her hospital bedside before her coffin was carried out, “covered in the Royal Standard”. The truth is that Spencer is “not a reliable reporter”. He presents himself as Diana’s fierce champion, but he rejected her request, post-divorce, to rent a house on his estate behind his gates, saying there would be too much police and press activity. The summer she died, he had refused to allow her and her sons to holiday at Althorp. My suspicion, looking at this vindictive memoir, is that his “rage” is fuelled by his own displaced guilt: “he blames the royals for failing Diana as he consistently did too”. Let’s hope people “see through the bluster”.

Nigel Farage’s electoral message – “life is crap, vote for us” – is a strange one, says Janan Ganesh in the FT, especially for a man who built his career on “studied bonhomie”. One factor is probably just that the 62-year-old is growing morose with age. Another is that a movement of remarkably “bleak people” has grown around him: more Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters approve of King Charles, for example, than do Reform voters.

The Toyota Hilux is such a popular mode of transport among the world’s guerillas and rebel militias, says Charlie Parker in The Times, that defence analysts have taken to tracking sales to predict where conflict will break out. The powerful pick-up truck – sometimes called the “AK-47 of the vehicle world” – is ultra-sturdy (Top Gear famously failed to destroy one), designed for dirt roads and desert dunes, and has a large, open flat-bed at the back, perfect for heavy machine guns and rocket launchers. “Most analysts watch missiles to predict the next war,” says defence specialist AJ Signal. “I track Toyota shipping manifests.”

British businesses are groaning under the weight of government regulation, says Camilla Cavendish in the FT. And thanks to the “relentless creep of the compliance state”, the burden is only growing, infecting even the most mundane aspects of life: a visit to the dentist, a call to the bank, even a spot of weekend volunteering, all now bring “burgeoning forms and disclaimers”. In just the past fortnight the government has announced a tourist tax on hotels; a pledge to force employers to sit down with workers and give a detailed explanation for refusing WFH requests; and an extension to the Equality Act to make public bodies weigh the effect of their decisions on “class”. You never know what the last straw will be, but you get the feeling it can’t be far off.

Small landlords are quitting London at the fastest rate in a decade, unable to face the liabilities, cost and complexity of the Renters’ Rights Act. Under the new “Making Tax Digital” scheme, the self-employed are “mired in the hell of having to buy accounting software” and file quarterly tax returns. Unsurprisingly, three quarters have missed the deadline to register. This includes community groups that don’t pay tax, even allotments, which are being forced to buy the software by a government department that won’t grant exemptions or answer the phone. Beyond the merely fiddly and annoying rules are those that do active harm. This summer, a report into policing found officers are having to work with “totally inadequate” systems, with a “tick-box culture” eroding professional discretion. We need to radically simplify our rule book. The problem is that in our age of “hyperactive and performative” politics, ministers and officials seem to think their core job is to keep up an “incessant flow of rules”.

Singapore has launched a novel scheme to promote literacy, says Kathleen Magramo in CNN World: paying its citizens to read. Those who log their reading minutes on a specific government website can collect “virtual coins” – 15 minutes reading earns you 20 coins – which then translate into small payments. The five-year scheme isn’t likely to make anyone rich: to get just one Singaporean dollar takes some 12.5 hours of reading. But officials are hoping that the “gamification” strategy, and a sense of public participation, will help restore a habit fast being replaced by “brain rot-inducing doomscrolling”.

Our interest in the ability of mind-altering substances to treat mental health problems has roots in the dark ages, says Katherine Harvey in Aeon. Medieval melancholiacs might have been advised to eat ostrich liver or to “look at an onyx intently” before placing it in your mouth, whereupon “the oppression of your mind will cease”. It was thought that holding and looking at the gemstone beryl, or placing a sapphire in one’s mouth, could calm anger. Oregano, fennel and saffron were widely believed to provoke joy, with one Welsh recipe warning against eating too much saffron lest you “die of happiness”.

It’s the spanking new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, says Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times, a sprawling “billion-dollar behemoth” built to house the art collection of George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson. The 300,000 sq ft facility, which naturally includes two state-of-the-art cinemas, has a whole gallery devoted to Star Wars, featuring, among other mementos, Luke Skywalker’s X-34 Landspeeder and a yellow Naboo N-1 Starfighter, alongside works by Frida Kahlo and Norman Rockwell, manga art, and exhibitions based on “folksy themes” like motherhood and love.