The NHS will begin vaccinating babies against chickenpox next year, in the biggest expansion of childhood immunisation for a decade. Protection against “varicella” will be added to the measles, mumps and rubella injection to form a new MMRV jab, which will be offered to more than half a million children each year. The US has begun implementing tariffs on small packages, meaning goods worth less than $800 entering the US, which were previously exempt, will now be taxed. UK firms face Britain’s relatively modest 10% rate, says the FT, but postal services in harder-hit countries like Germany and Singapore have suspended shipping to the US altogether. The secret to a long life is to think badly of old people, according to a study that tracked nearly 800 adults for 15 years. Those who viewed pensioners as “doddering, not dazzling” lived longer than those with a rosy view of later life, which psychologists put down to the fact that those with negative stereotypes of the old tend to pursue youthful habits, including frequent exercise and socialising.

“Reader, she married him”

It’s been a long road for Taylor Swift, says Lara Brown in The Daily Telegraph, but it seems she’s “finally found her happily ever after”. Following a series of tortured relationships – and eleven highly profitable studio albums to accompany them – the pop titan is finally settling down: on Tuesday night, she revealed on Instagram that Travis Kelce, her “all-American NFL sweetheart” had popped the question in his Kansas garden. The engagement marks the culmination of an extraordinary run of good form – her recent Eras tour generated more than $2bn in ticket sales alone, the highest earning concert series in history. All that was missing from her otherwise-unimprovable life was, in her words, “somebody really, really great who’s right for me”.

But one can’t help wondering: is this the end of the road? “The girl got the guy.” That doesn’t leave her much to write about. Her songs are not about real love, they are about breakups – about the “idea of love and the pain of its pursuit”. There was something reassuring about a girl that pretty, that rich and that successful, who could’t find Mr Right either. Swifties parsed every line of every song for hidden clues about the deepest secrets of her romantic life. All that’s over now. Their heroine has “found her Mr Darcy”. Does the reader care much what happens to Elizabeth Bennet after she accepts his proposal? We are happy when Anne Elliot persuades Captain Wentworth to take her back in Persuasion. Our interest wanes once she becomes a sailor’s wife. “Living happily ever after doesn’t make good copy.” Millions must now reckon with the end of Swift’s lifelong Romance novel. “Reader, she married him.”

Some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful investors and executives are backing a political action committee to fund “pro-AI” candidates in the 2026 midterms and quash public debate over the risks of artificial intelligence destroying humanity, says The Washington Post. The new super PAC – founded this month and modestly titled “Leading the Future” – has already raised more than $100m, which will also be spent opposing candidates perceived to be “slowing down AI development” by calling for more robust regulation. Backers include the president of ChatGPT-maker Open AI Greg Brockman and the billionaire investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The founders say they were inspired by the success of a similar PAC – Fairshake – which funnelled more than $130m into congressional races last year to secure “favourable regulations” for cryptocurrency.

Young Europeans are being lured to Australia for mining jobs, mostly inspired by TikTok, says Nick Heubeck in Bloomberg. Advocates of the “fly in fly out” lifestyle advertise a few weeks working long days in a remote location before flying back to Perth for time off. “Day-in-the-life” videos rack up hundreds of thousands of views showing the twentysomethings at work as well as the mining camps they stay in – some have golf courses, grilled steak on the menu and stellar sunsets. Last year, Australia issued 1,414 visa renewals to foreigners with mining jobs, up from fewer than 500 a year earlier.

The new masters of the universe

It would be hard to exaggerate what is at stake in this “anxious and uncertain historical moment”, says Jacob Howland in UnHerd. In Europe and the Anglosphere, ideological polarisation is “fomenting political violence”; popular anger at governing elites everywhere is coming to a boil. Meanwhile, tech multibillionaires are behaving like “masters of the universe on a gambling spree in a cosmic casino”. That’s no overstatement. In 2025, companies and private investors will spend more than $600 billion developing ever-more-powerful AI, which has already begun to eliminate jobs across multiple industries. Everyone agrees it will “profoundly change our lives”, but no one can say exactly how. Some predict AI will somehow introduce an era of unprecedented “human flourishing”. Others, including highly knowledgeable computer scientists, warn that it may “kill all the people”.

What we’ve learned from recent decades on the internet and social media is not encouraging. Advanced, highly monetised digital technology has created rampant “depression, psychosis, cognitive impairment, societal atomisation, political polarisation, enhanced surveillance and censorship”. Today’s tech oligarchs have as much say over our collective human fate as any world leader, and they know it. Peter Thiel recently recalled a conversation in which Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, argued over whether “making us an interplanetary species” or “building superhuman AI” was “the most important project in the world”. Some would argue the most important project in the world might be curing cancer, ending poverty or reversing political polarisation. Superhuman AI and the quest to colonise space are expressions of a techno-politics that aims “not to mend the world, but simply to leave it behind”.

The Dutch filmmaker Frans Hofmeester recorded a video of his daughter Lotte almost every week from when she was born until she was 20 years old. Now, he’s turned the footage into a rather life-affirming 5-minute time lapse charting her growing up from infancy to adulthood. Watch the whole thing here.

Britain has long been the world’s most devoted tea importer, says Rhys Blakely in The Times. Now, it’s beginning to produce its own. Jo Harper had been banging on about growing tea for years when his wife said to him a decade ago: “Either do it or stop talking about it.” So he ordered 1,000 seeds online and planted them. Today, Harper tends 10,000 plants on the 14-acre “Dartmoor Estate Tea plantation” in Devon, which last year produced 20kg of award-winning tea. Although that output “barely registers” compared to the vast estates of Assam or Kenya, “the quality is startling”.

They’re multicoloured, glow-in-the-dark succulents, says Sascha Pare in Live Science, which Chinese scientists injected with vibrant “afterglow” phosphor particles which absorb, and then gradually release, sunlight. The luminescent plants can shine for up to two hours, some as brightly as a small night lamp, paving the way for “plant-based lighting” to eventually illuminate indoor and outdoor spaces. “Imagine glowing trees replacing streetlights,” says lead researcher Shuting Liu. It’s “almost magical”.