The UK economy shrank by 0.1% in May, contracting for the second month in a row. The Office for National Statistics says the fall, which surprised analysts, was mainly driven by a drop in manufacturing and “very weak” retail sales. GPs will be told to stop issuing millions of sick notes and instead send patients to job coaches or the gym, in a pilot scheme to help get people back to work. GP surgeries in the trial will receive funding to co-ordinate with so-called “social prescribing workers”, who refer patients to non-traditional treatments such as gym memberships and gardening classes. The original Hermès Birkin bag has been bought for €8.6m, becoming the most valuable handbag ever sold at auction. The nine bidders for the luxury accessory (pictured), designed for Anglo-French actress Jane Birkin in 1985, were rumoured to include Kim Kardashian and the rapper Drake, but sold to a private collector in Japan via telephone.

The anti-America axis is a paper tiger

China, Russia and Iran have long been drawn together by their shared anti-Americanism, says Leon Aron in The Atlantic. All three benefit from embarrassing the West in Ukraine and the Middle East, and from widening the divisions between Washington and Europe. So Beijing’s response after Israel’s attack on Iran was instructive. Rather than forcefully sticking up for its supposed ally – by rushing over air defence equipment, say, or demanding an emergency session of the UN Security Council – the Chinese proceeded cautiously, refraining from an outright condemnation of Israel’s actions. The reason is simple: Tehran’s relationship with Beijing is “wildly asymmetric”.

China buys about 90% of Iran’s oil, and supplies materials essential to their weapons development programme. But its economy is around 40 times larger – Iranian oil accounts for just 10% of China’s supplies – and it does far more business with the US and Europe. So while Beijing is happy to support Tehran making mischief with the West in calmer times, it’s much less willing to do so when global stability is at risk. All this should give Vladimir Putin pause for thought. There’s a similar, albeit less lop-sided asymmetry between China and Russia, which is hugely reliant on its neighbour for both oil sales and military supplies. Given Beijing’s indifference to Iran’s fate, can the Kremlin really be confident that China will bail them out if things go south in Ukraine? The strength of the China-Russia-Iran “axis” was always overblown. Whereas Western democracies have traditionally shared a common worldview, these authoritarian regimes have little in common beyond their hatred for the West. And that can “bind an alliance together only so much”.

🛢️💥 Iran’s dependency on the Chinese has also taken one of its last remaining bargaining chips off the table, says Jesse Marks in Foreign Policy: its threat to block the Strait of Hormuz. Some 50% of China’s oil passes through the waterway, and Xi Jinping has spent years bolstering trade and diplomatic ties with the Gulf Arabs. Doing anything to upend all that is a complete non-starter.

Even Angela Rayner’s enemies “acknowledge her people skills”, says Tim Shipman in The Spectator. Those drinking on the Commons terrace in early March were stunned to see her on a “teasing FaceTime call” with Nigel Farage, joshing over which party would win the Runcorn by-election (Reform by six votes). The Reform UK leader gets her appeal: “At least she’s real,” he says. “None of the rest of them are. She is who she is.”

Pistachios are “having a moment”, says Bloomberg. First, there was the viral “Dubai chocolate” – a bar stuffed with gooey pistachio cream – which was swiftly imitated by countless chocolatiers across the world. Now, the chartreuse-coloured nuts are everywhere: social media, restaurant menus, pastries, espressos, pastas and more. In the past year or so, Google searches for the term “pistachio” have more than doubled, “pistachio latte” is up 128% and “pistachio chocolate” a whopping 8,942%.

Britain has learned nothing since 7/7

Seventeen months after the 2005 terrorist attacks in London, says Allison Pearson in The Daily Telegraph, Tony Blair gave an “impressively hard-hitting” speech on cultural assimilation. Calling on Muslims to integrate into British society, the Labour PM warned that British values – “belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance” – must take precedence over cultural traditions or faith. He promised a crackdown on extremist imams spouting hatred of the West, and insisted on a “shared common language” and an “allegiance to the rule of law”. Blair was right to speak out: integration makes it harder for Islamists to spread their hate.

For all the talk of the terror threat from the far-right, Islamists have killed more than 40 people in Britain since 7/7, whereas far-right extremists have killed three. Around three-quarters of the suspects on MI5’s terror watchlist are jihadists – around 43,000 in total, or one in every 100 Muslims in the UK. A former counter-terrorism bigwig tells me the Islamist threat has “grown inexorably” in the past two decades. He says the reason there aren’t more attacks is not just because of improved monitoring, but also because the Islamists are “getting what they want”: their religion is “enshrined” outside the confines of UK law; their community leaders have the police “under control”. Enough’s enough. Until we stop this “craven appeasement of our worst enemy”, another attack is surely “inevitable”.

💣🤷 I read a long BBC report about 7/7 this week, says Rod Liddle in The Spectator, and remained “entirely unclear” about who exactly was responsible. The piece said “bombs were detonated” as though the bombs – “anxious to fulfil their purpose in life” – had blown themselves up. Nowhere was it mentioned who had brought the bombs down from Yorkshire or why, nor was there any mention of the words “Islam” or “Islamist”, nor the names of the murderers. Mind you, a day later there was a wonderful piece explaining how the bombings had changed the lives of British Muslims. Apparently it’s made them “less trustful of the white community”.

Hangin’ man is an online variant of the classic gallows letter-guessing game hangman, with the adrenalising boost of a five-minute countdown. It has hints and definitions, bonus points for quick wins, and the ability to skip particularly tricky words at the cost of a five-second penalty. “It’s not about perfection,” explains the website, it’s finding the balance between “speed and accuracy” that makes the game “oddly satisfying and endlessly replayable”. Try for yourself here.

My mother, who is 83, lies about her age, says Kate Reardon in Times Luxury. She has always been beautiful and young-looking, so whenever she used to tell anyone her real age they would “gasp in gratifying bewilderment”. But nowadays people aren’t as surprised, so she has started “edging up”. She has already tried saying she’s 90, but this only elicits a patronising “aren’t you doing well”. She’s now experimenting with 95, and will “no doubt soon be claiming to be 100”.

It’s Ruoming Pang, says The Wall Street Journal, a top engineer in Apple’s AI division, who has been given a $200m contract by Mark Zuckerberg to work for the new “superintelligence” team at Meta. Apple didn’t try to match the offer, which will roll out over a several-year period, as it far exceeds pay for other executives at the company (apart from CEO Tim Cook). Meta has been on an epic AI hiring spree in recent weeks, successfully luring specialist engineers from the likes of OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic with similarly ludicrous pay packages. Nice work if you can get it.