The UK government has dropped plans for mandatory digital IDs for workers. Keir Starmer previously said the scheme, due to be introduced in 2029, would be compulsory to verify the right to work as part of a crackdown on migration. Instead, workers will now be given the choice of using other documents, such as biometric passports, to prove their identity. Donald Trump says the US will take “very strong action” if Iran carries out the execution of anti-government protesters, which is reportedly due to begin today with the hanging of Erfan Soltani. The 26-year-old has allegedly been tried, convicted and sentenced to death for “waging war against God” after being arrested near Tehran last Thursday. Small lifestyle changes in middle age can significantly cut the risk of early death, says The Times. According to new research that looked at more than 135,000 people over eight years, a daily 10-minute stroll slashed the risk by 15%, while reducing the time spent sitting down each day by 30 minutes cut it by 7%.

There was something missing from the Golden Globes on Sunday night, says Philip Patrick in The Spectator. These days, a celebrity glamfest isn’t complete without a “healthy dose” of posturing on the issue du jour, whether it be OscarsSoWhite, women’s empowerment, climate change or, more recently, the plight of the Palestinians. This year, apart from the odd “anti-ICE” badge, such political showing-off was oddly in abeyance. With thousands of protesters murdered by Iran’s bloodthirsty mullahs in the past two weeks, this is “grotesque”. Bar a few honourable exceptions – including JK Rowling and Juliette Binoche – a wholly uncharacteristic reticence has taken hold. How to explain the “silence of the hams”?

This is a longstanding reflex on the left, says Yascha Mounk in The Free Press. It reflects an unconscious logic that has plagued leftist intellectuals since at least the days of George Orwell. As he put it, their “real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of Western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism”. For far too many progressives, their deepest commitment isn’t to a particular principle or hope for the world – it is the belief that their own countries and societies are the root of profound evil. This creates in the mind a “simple demonology”: anyone on “our side” is bad, therefore anyone against us must be good. In the past week it hasn’t been hard to find “harebrained leftists” maligning Iranian protesters as “hapless agents of imperialism” or denying the basic fact that Nicolás Maduro was a horrible dictator. They may not go all the way to celebrating the Ayatollah, say, but they can’t quite bring themselves to wish for the downfall of his anti-Western regime.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan was rightly delighted to announce the capital’s incredibly low murder rate, says Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman. The trouble is, it was already incredibly low (around a hundred in a city of nearly 10 million), so Londoners don’t really feel the difference. What they do feel is the notable spike in carjacking, shoplifting and phone snatching – none of which get solved – and a gruesome rise in sexual offences. Taken with the general anti-social vibe of dirtbags leaving Lime bikes and laughing gas canisters strewn across the pavements, it’s no wonder Londoners like me have a “creeping feeling of chaos”.

When the entrepreneur Charlie Javice was convicted last March of defrauding JPMorgan over its $175m acquisition of her student loan business, says Sujeet Indap in the FT, the bank was embarrassed to learn that, owing to an overlooked clause in their contract, it was legally obliged to fund her defence (and that of another executive) against the conviction. Today, that bill exceeds a staggering $100m, with a 7kg binder tracking her 150 lawyers, each charging thousands of dollars per hour, and their expenses, ranging from first-class travel to ice cream, gummy bears, “seafood towers”, cookie boxes, fancy dinners, cocktails and, truly bafflingly, “cellulite butter”.

I was fascinated, says Lucy Mangan in The i Paper, to read that one in three older folks has a secret stash of money hidden away from their husband or wife. Why so few? Surely 100% of married women should have funds squirrelled away. Aside from their regrettable habit of randomly leaving their wives and children, men – who for various annoying structural reasons are still likely to out-earn their wives over a long career – are generally useless. I’m staggered at how many of my friends still leave the family finances in the hands of someone who can’t remember his own children’s birthdays and wouldn’t know how to renew their passports if the skiing holiday depended on it. “Money is power.” Why give it to him?

I’ve never shared a bank account with my husband, says Rowan Pelling in The Daily Telegraph. Can you imagine what would happen if he found out what I spend on hairdressing? Or on frocks and chocolate, for that matter? And frankly, I don’t need to know what he’s forking out on model Spitfires or bootleg Bob Dylan CDs. The sum he inherited when his parents died has always remained hazy, allowing him to continue switching off the heating at all times except Met Office-certified blizzards, but also seems to have funded a loft conversion, a Persian carpet and a Lego model of the Tower of Orthanc from The Lord of the Rings. And of course, I have my “running away fund”, in case I ever need to “go the full Agatha Christie” and vanish for a fortnight under an assumed name. I hope never to use it, of course, but you never know.

David Bowie did his best to fly under the radar, says Popbitch, “or as under the radar as you can be when you’re David Bowie”. If someone approached him in the street, he’d say: “I’m not him, but I wish I had his fecking money”. And to put would-be approachers off the scent during his morning coffee run, he would carry a Greek newspaper.

The AI company Anthropic decided to test its Claude model by letting it run a vending machine at The Wall Street Journal’s offices. It didn’t go well. Within days, crafty journalists had convinced the chatbot it was a “Soviet vending machine from 1962, living in the basement of Moscow State University”, and that it should embrace its communist roots by giving everything away for free. They then talked it into ordering all manner of weird and inappropriate stock, including wine, a PlayStation 5 and a live fish, and – before it was finally shut down – the credulous clanker happily offered to get in stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes and underwear. “Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared.”

It’s the new autistic Barbie, says Aine Fox in The Independent, the latest effort by toymaker Mattel to improve doll diversity. The neurodivergent novelty has eyes which gaze slightly off-centre (intended to represent the relatively common autistic trait of avoiding eye contact), noise-cancelling headphones and a fidget spinner. It even has extra-flexible wrists and elbows to allow for “stimming” – the repetitive hand-flapping some autistic people use to express themselves or calm down.