India’s prime minister Narendra Modi is in London to sign a trade deal today designed to boost UK exports to India by 60% by 2040. The agreement means tariffs on more than 90% of British products arriving in India, including whisky and cosmetics, will be slashed, and should eventually benefit the UK economy by £4.8bn a year. Donald Trump was told during a routine White House briefing in May that he and other high-profile individuals are named in the Epstein files, according to the Wall Street Journal. Although the report noted that this didn’t necessarily imply wrongdoing, and that the files contain “hundreds of other names”, a White House spokesman nevertheless called it “fake news”. Walking 7,000 steps a day is enough to boost brainpower and protect against a range of diseases, including cancer, dementia and heart disease, according to a new study of more than 160,000 adults. The finding debunks the 10,000-a-day figure which has stuck around since a marketing campaign for a Japanese pedometer in the 1960s.

The downside of being ruled by ageing men

One of the most destabilising forces in the world today is the “advanced age of those who run it”, says Janan Ganesh in the FT. The numbers are stunning: Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi are all in their seventies. So are the heads of Turkey, South Africa, Israel, Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia. More than half the world’s population – and much of its land area and military might – are in the hands of men who are older than Ronald Reagan was when he was elected at “what seemed a dicey 69”. The problem isn’t their health – the leaders listed above are all “robust and lucid”. The risk is that they find themselves in a rush to secure a legacy before their time runs out.

The unification of mainland China with Taiwan would be a “defining achievement” for Xi. So, for Putin, would “avenging the loss of Russia’s prestige” after the Cold War. Even Trump’s eagerness to settle the conflict in Ukraine – “however invidious the details” – and to remake global trade, whatever the economic cost, suggests an “old man in a hurry”. One downside of such old leaders, especially in autocracies, is the risk of chaos when they’re finally replaced – the Arab spring happened in part because a cohort of north African leaders had “grown old together”. The other risk is that these leaders won’t have decades of retirement in which to suffer the “legal and reputational penalties” of any real disasters. Something of this logic applies to voters, too: age, which we tend to think makes people more cautious, often emboldens them. It was primarily the old, remember, who brought us Brexit and Trump. Who would have thought that as the world’s median age increased, voters would turn more anti-establishment?

Every year since 1997, says Paul Morland on the Radical podcast, there has been “significantly more” immigration into the British Isles than there was during the entire millennium and a half between the Anglo-Saxon arrival in the 7th century and World War Two. “Every single year.”

This year’s trendiest holiday is a “reading retreat”, says Sarah Wood González in Elle. Teranka hotel on Formentera, which has a carefully curated library at its centre, is hosting a series of “literary salons” this summer, including discussions between writers and readers. Page Break hosts reading retreats in New York City and upstate boutique hotels, where itineraries include “book-themed tasting menus” and out-loud group reading sessions, and Reese Witherspoon’s franchise, “Reese’s Book Club”, has announced a partnership with Under Canvas hotels and the Hyatt hotel group to put on “luxury glamping holidays” with the authors of the club’s monthly reads.

The truth about Israel and “genocide”

It sounds harsh, says Bret Stephens in The New York Times, but there is a “glaring dissonance” in the charge of Israeli genocide in Gaza. Namely: if the Israeli government is truly genocidal – if it is malevolently committed to the “annihilation of Gazans” – why hasn’t it been more methodical and more deadly? Why not, out of a population of two million, hundreds of thousands dead, rather than the nearly 60,000 that Hamas cites? Israel could easily have “bombed without prior notice”, instead of routinely warning Gazans to evacuate target areas. It could have bombed without putting its own soldiers – hundreds of whom have died in combat – at risk. And it could have done all this with impeccable diplomatic cover: Donald Trump openly envisages all Gazans leaving the territory. In other words, if Israel is committing genocide, “why isn’t the death count higher”?

Because Israel is “manifestly not committing genocide” – a legally specific term that is defined by the UN convention on genocide as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” It does not mean simply “too many civilian deaths” – a heartbreaking fact of all wars, “including the one in Gaza”. It means seeking to exterminate a people for no other reason than that they belong to that category, like the Nazis and their partners killing Jews because they were Jews, or the Hutus slaughtering the Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide because they were Tutsi. The war in Gaza should be brought to an end in a way that ensures it is never repeated. To call it genocide contributes nothing to that aim, and dilutes a word “we cannot afford to cheapen”.

🇮🇱 🇵🇸 What’s unfolding in Gaza is “senseless and therefore monstrous”, says Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times. Israel can’t “defeat Hamas”, because Hamas is an idea – terrorist networks are replacing dead Hamas fighters “at a rate of five to one”. The devastation has radicalised swathes of the Arab world that were poised to accept Israel and modernity, and resurrected the spectre of jihad after a decade of “incremental but indisputable” decline for violent fanaticism. It’s exactly what Hamas wanted, and it’s why, as more and more Israelis and Western governments understand, “Netanyahu must be stopped”.

On a recent trip to Washington to attend a leadership conference for young women, I met the next generation of “MAGA girlies”, says Lily Isaacs in UnHerd. It was a sea of “voluminous blowdries and meticulous makeup” – each one was dressed as though she was about to meet a senator, “or marry one”. They were mostly under 21, fresh-faced and ambitious, interning for members of Congress or conservative magazines. One who regularly visits the Oval Office said she’d learnt how to be noticed: “I make sure I look good. Really good.” And curiously, they identify as “first-wave feminists” – not looking for equality, but a way to “make peace”. For these ladies, the pursuit of love doesn’t conflict with ambition, nor is faith at odds with intelligence.

Eleventh-generation Austrian glassmaker Maximilian Riedel has a mission, says Tessa Allingham in The Daily Telegraph: “to rid the world of champagne flutes”. Some 70% of our perception of flavour comes from aroma, he says, meaning the more open shape of a traditional white wine glass allows sparkling wines to be appreciated fully. Riedel is not alone. Sommelier Sandia Chang says they should be “outlawed”, while restaurateur Heath Ball ditched “hundreds of flutes” when he took over The Angel pub in Highgate, London last year. “With flutes, you fill then glass then two sips later it’s all over,” he says. “Where’s the fun in that?”

It’s Kevin Gaskell, says Will Humphries in The Times, who has become the oldest person to row the Pacific Ocean. The 66-year-old British businessman lost more than a stone and a half in a month while preparing for the “gruelling” 2,800-nautical-mile journey from Monterey in California to the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The five-man crew, which included his 34-year-old son, managed the feat in 32 days, six hours and 51 minutes – smashing the previous record of 51 days. It’s not his first major accomplishment: he’s part of the fastest five-man crew to row the Atlantic (35 days), has walked to the North and South Poles and has climbed some of the world’s highest mountains.