Mass evacuations have been ordered on the Nepal-Tibet border amid fears that an overflowing lake could cause a second flood that may be more devastating than Wednesday’s. Chinese authorities, who had paused rescue operations owing to the concern, say rescuers have now resumed work. The death toll has passed 500. Chancellor John Healey will shelve his own target of spending 3% of Britain’s GDP on defence by 2030 when he presents his first budget in October. Government insiders told the FT that, despite having resigned as defence secretary in June over what he said was insufficient ambition for military spending under Keir Starmer, Healey will delay any decision on raising the defence budget until next year. King Harald V of Norway has died aged 89. Europe’s oldest monarch – descended from kings of England, Denmark and Sweden, as well as Norway – Harald ruled for 35 years, during which he was a popular, modernising figure. He was also a stellar sailor, competing at several Olympic Games and winning the 1987 world championships.

People have a dangerous habit of only taking warning signs seriously after a catastrophe, says Jen Easterly in The New York Times. Before the Challenger space shuttle explosion in 1986, Nasa contractors warned that cold weather could compromise the shuttle’s O-rings. Before the 2008 financial crisis, evidence of dodgy mortgages and dangerous leverage “accumulated in plain sight”. In the weeks before 9/11, information poured into CIA headquarters, including the so-called “Phoenix Memo”, flagging an inordinate number of “people of interest” at Arizona flight schools. There was intelligence that two al-Qaeda operatives had entered the US, and numerous classified reports pointed to an imminent plot. The systems were “blinking red”, as CIA director George Tenet said afterwards, but nobody truly believed an attack was possible. The 9/11 commission called it a “failure of imagination”. And it’s happening today with artificial intelligence.

In recent weeks, some of the world’s most advanced AI systems took actions their creators did not intend. In one case, an Anthropic AI agent tried to plant malicious code in open-source software, using fake identities to trick a human into launching it. Separately, a swarm of OpenAI agents penetrated a code library called Hugging Face, executing more than 17,000 autonomous actions before finally being contained. It took a week for OpenAI to realise its agents were responsible. With AI capabilities advancing at extraordinary speed, and often behaving in ways its creators can’t anticipate, we can’t afford to wait for disaster – an autonomous cyberattack that disrupts access to power or water, say, or a model that helps terrorists build a bioweapon – and only then set up a commission to find out what went wrong and why we didn’t act sooner. The systems are blinking red, right now.

Britain’s critics love to point out that even America’s poorest state, Mississippi, is “richer” than the UK, says Oli Dugmore in The New Statesman. But the measure used – GDP per capita – doesn’t tell you anything you really want to know. If you look at GDP per hour worked, the picture changes completely – Americans are about as productive as other Westerners, but Europeans, including Britons, spend efficiency savings on leisure, while Americans put in more hours at work. And in Mississippi, men die 12 years younger, on average, than they do in the UK, while infant mortality is more than twice as high. “Now, tell me, who is the richer?”

This summer, we officially reached “peak bum”, says Charlie Gowans-Eglinton in The Times. Topless sunbathing has been swapped for “nearly bottomless” sunbathing, with women opting for as little fabric to their bikini bottoms as possible. It’s a charge led by Gen Z but adopted by women of all ages. Kylie Minogue, 58, recently posted pictures in a tiny yellow bikini, while 61-year-old Liz Hurley has been swimming off a boat in a miniscule white one. A friend who has just returned from Spain says she didn’t see a single woman of any age wearing bottoms that offered anything close to “full coverage”.

Donald Trump is “single-handedly destroying global conservatism”, says Daniel Hannan in The Telegraph. Take Icelanders – “among the wealthiest, happiest and freest people in the world” – who are holding a referendum on Saturday on whether they should start talks to join the European Union. Why would a country with one of the oldest parliamentary traditions on the planet; full access to EU markets; and a per capita GDP well above Europe’s be seriously considering the constrains and chaos of rule from Brussels? Well, Iceland has no army – its security rests on NATO and a 1951 bilateral defence pact with the US. Trump’s clumsy grab for nearby Greenland made Icelanders nervous, and elite Europhiles, much to the chagrin of Iceland’s conservative opposition, seized their chance.

This is not the first time Trump has “harmed the electoral prospects of the traditional right”. Denmark’s conservative bloc was rising high in the polls until the debacle over Greenland (which is under Danish sovereignty). The ruling Social Democrat party held an immediate poll, Danes rallied to the flag and the left was re-elected. In Canada, prior to Trump’s annexation threats, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives were 20 points ahead. But the whole “51st State schtick” incensed Canadians, who rallied to Mark Carney instead. In Australia, a tight election last year turned into a Labor landslide after it became a referendum on alignment with Trump. It’s easy to see the frustration: never once has Trump treated Vladimir Putin, say, with the disdain he expresses for Canadians, Norwegians, South Koreans, or any of the other countries that stood shoulder to shoulder with the US through its many conflicts. Across Western liberal democracies, he has created the sense that it is “better to be America’s enemy than its friend”.

Somerset’s Strawberry Line has been crowned Britain’s favourite path, says Bea Swallow on BBC News. The walkway, which has won a public vote organised by walking charity The Ramblers, follows the 20-mile route of a disused railway line between Witham Junction and Yatton via Shepton Mallet, Wells and Cheddar. In second place was the Lake District’s four-mile-long Buttermere Circular Path, and in third was the tidal Holy Island Causeway off the coast of Northumberland, which requires walkers to set off roughly two hours before low tide to make it there and back before the water gets too high. To see the rest, click here.

If you walk around all day with one of those annoyingly giant water bottles, says Sumathi Reddy in The Wall Street Journal, you can ditch it. Most people who get obsessed by hitting their recommended three litres a day forget that this is total fluid intake. Roughly 20% of our fluids come directly from food, and plenty more comes from tea, coffee (no, it doesn’t dehydrate you), milk and the like, meaning you only need a few glasses of water a day. The best way to tell is by looking at the colour of your urine, which shouldn’t be too dark or too clear, but a light straw colour.

It’s a foot-launched glider, says Larisa Brown in The Times, which could allow paratroopers to fly covertly into hostile territory without the need for a helicopter. Designed by the British start-up Blakcro, the rucksack-sized kit can be assembled in under eight minutes and launched using the power of running and wind alone, meaning pilots can take off covertly from anywhere. Once launched, the titanium glider can travel up to 200 miles on its own power and accommodates body armour, night vision equipment and weapon mounts. The Royal Marines and the Parachute Regiment are planning to trial it in the coming months.