Iran has rejected an American proposal to end the war and issued its own list of demands, including the payment of reparations, guarantees over Tehran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, and the end of hostilities against “all resistance groups”, in an apparent reference to Israel’s fight with Hezbollah. Donald Trump says Tehran’s leaders are afraid to admit they are negotiating because they fear being “killed by their own people”. A jury in Los Angeles has found Meta and YouTube liable for intentionally building addictive social media platforms that harmed a young user’s mental health. The landmark ruling, which awarded the unnamed plaintiff $6m in damages, came a day after a court in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375m in civil penalties for misleading users about the safety of its platforms for children. HBO has released the first trailer for its new Harry Potter series, which will premiere this Christmas. The two-minute teaser is packed with iconic motifs from JK Rowling’s books, including quidditch, the Gryffindor common room and the Hogwarts Express. Click here to watch.

People are rightly worried about what will happen if Donald Trump’s war in Iran drags on, says Niall Ferguson in The Free Press. Further attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure could easily cause a major global recession, and serious strikes on desalination plants would make the region effectively uninhabitable overnight. But what few understand is that, in important ways, the damage is already done. Drone strikes have shut Qatar’s Ras Laffan plant, which produces nearly 20% of the world’s liquified natural gas, and repairs could take five years. Thanks to the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf states have cut their oil output by 10% of the global total. Even if the strait were reopened tomorrow, it could take months for that production to come back online. This oil shock has already happened; we’re just waiting for it to hit.

Some places are already feeling the pain, says Sam Freedman on Substack. Bangladesh is facing temporary blackouts; Pakistan’s fuel prices are up 20%; Egypt is restricting opening hours and encouraging WFH; parts of Kenya are running out of fuel. And global crises like this always create “ongoing aftershocks” that cause further problems down the line. The 2008 financial crisis raised energy and food prices in north Africa and the Middle East, helping kickstart the Arab Spring, which led to hugely destructive civil wars and a big rise in migration to Europe, boosting the radical right. A new round of prolonged energy shortages and higher food prices now could have similar consequences, or worse. Another migrant wave could hand major victories to the far right – Jordan Bardella is already favourite in next year’s French presidential elections – further destabilising Europe. And who knows what else.

🤖⚡️ One underpriced victim in all this is AI, says Bruno Maçães in The New Statesman. Gulf sovereign wealth funds have pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into energy-intensive data centres and Silicon Valley funds. “That capital is now in question.” And Taiwan’s TSMC, which makes 90% of all advanced chips, consumes more energy than the population of Sri Lanka – energy that’s about to get extremely expensive, even for AI.

Having Donald Trump’s mobile number has become “the ultimate status symbol” in Washington, says Max Tani in Semafor. Since the war in Iran began, the US president has done more than 30 off-the-cuff phone interviews with journalists. One reporter says the only “guaranteed” way to get him is to call at night when he can’t sleep; others say he tends to be in a good mood after playing golf or posting on Truth Social. At some news organisations, so many people have his number that they have a sort of rota system to ensure they don’t overuse it.

The Australian YouTube team How Ridiculous have racked up almost 700,000 views for a highly enjoyable video testing how many rubber bands it takes to destroy various items. They include a paint tin (98 bands), a mirror (150), a printer (340) and a big bottle of Coke (which is nigh-on invincible, so they stopped after 6,386). To watch the full video – and others, including such classics as How Many Giant Balloons Stops an Arrow? and Giant Axe vs 10 Fire Extinguishers – click here.

How can anything “quiet” prompt such fierce controversy, asks Celia Walden in The Daily Telegraph. Ahead of yesterday’s enthronement of Sarah Mullally, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the palace briefed the papers that Prince William’s commitment to the Church was “sometimes quieter than people expect”. This was meant to quell years of speculation about the lukewarm nature of his faith, but instead did the opposite. Right-wing broadcaster Calvin Robinson declared that now was “not the time” for quiet faith; the usual suspects on X argued that Christianity is being kept on the down-low while other religions are allowed to grow louder, literally so in the case of the Muslim prayer event in Trafalgar Square earlier this month.

It’s true that we have become “cowardly” about our established religion, but I don’t believe for a second that this is William bowing to wokery. More likely, it’s the man who will one day become Supreme Governor of the Church of England being “disarmingly honest” about his spiritual evolution. (“I’m not going to use the word ‘journey’, which should be banned unless a physical ticket is involved.”) Many Britons are in exactly the same place. Bible sales are at their highest since the 1990s, up 19% in 2025, seemingly driven by mildly “Christian-curious” Gen-Zs. Besides, ask any non-believer what they find most off-putting about religion and they’ll say the same thing: the tendency to shove it down your throat. Faith is a delicate, personal thing. What many of us want – and what William exemplifies – is to be allowed to worship on our own terms. “Not everything has to be loud to be of value.”

Wood-feeding cockroaches have a bizarre ritual to signify that they are going to pair up and raise baby cockroaches together, says Arl Daniel on NPR: they eat each other’s wings. The black bugs were spotted munching on their amours’ appendages after burrowing into rotting wood in the forest in Okinawa, Japan. So-called “pair bonding” is relatively common in mammals and birds, and has been spotted in fish, but this is the first time it has been recorded in an invertebrate. “Even though they’ve got tiny brains,” says study co-author Nate Lo, from the University of Sydney, “they can develop quite human-like characteristics.”

Newspapers – and occasionally lunchtime newsletters – like to remind people that Greens leader Zack Polanski used to claim he could enlarge women’s breasts through hypnotherapy. But it’s no laughing matter for his party, says Noah Hoffman in The Sun. When pollsters More in Common recently asked voters whether they would consider backing the Greens, 33% said they would. When they told the respondents about Polanski’s boob-boosting claims, that figure more than halved to 16%.

It’s Matt Brittin, the BBC’s next director general, says Daniel Thomas in the FT. The 57-year-old previously worked at Google for 20 years, most recently as president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and will succeed Tim Davie, who resigned last year over misleading editing of a Donald Trump speech in a Panorama documentary. Brittin’s appointment has been criticised because of his lack of editorial experience, but he does at least know how to navigate choppy waters: he represented Cambridge three times in the Boat Race and was a member of the British Olympic rowing team in 1988.