Andy Burnham has called an emergency Cobra meeting in response to Britain’s extreme heat, which has caused wildfires and plunged three-quarters of England and all of Wales into drought. Southern Water has warned that more than 165,000 people in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight face water shortages unless rare “non-essential” use restrictions are introduced. A former US marine who was imprisoned in Russia has been released by Moscow on humanitarian grounds after claims he was close to death. Robert Gilman, 32, who was arrested after allegedly kicking a police officer on a train in 2022, returned to the US last night after a conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. “We appreciate this decision,” Trump wrote on social media, “and the fact that Russia asked for no one in return.” The UK will experience its fullest solar eclipse since 1999 – and the best until 2081 – this evening. Its peak, which will see up to 96% of the sun covered by the moon, is expected between 6.58pm and 7.15pm, depending on your location.

I don’t want to minimise what Odysseus went through, says Frank Bruni in The New York Times. Scylla, the Cyclops, the “suboptimal bedding and plumbing” in the Trojan horse. “It’s a lot.” But at least ancient Greece didn’t share the modern world’s insistence on taking anything deemed a big cultural event and “inflating it until it bursts”. Which is to say, if I see one more word about Christopher Nolan’s uber-hyped new movie adaptation of The Odyssey, I’m going to “hurl myself into the nearest Charybdis”. There have been think pieces about every aspect of the story: family, faith, duty, defiance, loyalty, treachery, courage, cowardice. Forbes promised “three key lessons for leaders”. The food magazine Bon Appétit even looked into the historical accuracy of Circe’s entrails stew.

On the one hand, I’m delighted by any film – or musician, or sporting event – with an appeal broad enough to bring together our increasingly fragmented society. The football World Cup did something similar. But the digital age has a frustrating habit of “turning excitement to exhaustion”. The same happened with Taylor Swift’s Eras tour – the magic of it evaporated a bit with “every new exegesis on its significance”. Likewise the Super Bowl, which now has to have at least a dozen subplots and serve as some sort of mirror to society. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed the Nolan movie. “I’ve spent three hours in much, much worse ways.” But trying to navigate through – or indeed avoid – the oceans of material it has spawned is an odyssey in itself. One that, like the man himself, I would rather do without.

Liberals are aghast at Nigel Farage’s proposal to deport all of Britain’s foreign prisoners, says Stephen Daisley in The Spectator. How, they ask, would Britain convince other countries to take these bad apples back? Easy: sanction them. We have all sorts of ways of doing this: withdrawing development aid, taxing remittances, curtailing migration by their nationals. Many in the governing class will “recoil in horror” at the idea of actually using Britain’s soft power rather than just talking about it. But if mainstream politicians don’t grasp the perils of “speaking as though the British are international doormats”, they’re in for a rude awakening at the ballot box.

Last month, says Harry Bullmore in The Independent, the 27-year-old Brit Aimee Cringle was named the “fittest woman on Earth” at the CrossFit Games. Across five days and 20 fitness-testing events, she showed proficiency in the pool, smashed a 20-loop bike race, ran 500 metres in just over one minute and 20 seconds, squatted a barbell weighing more than 135kg, completed an obstacle course while walking on her hands and won a 7.2km trail race containing countless aggressive climbs. It’s the result of a gruelling training regime that sees her spend up to six hours a day in the gym, taking only Sundays off.

This summer will go down in history as the first time Britain’s national debt topped £3trn, says Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. It’s a “mind-boggling” number, the equivalent of £105,000 for every household and up tenfold since the start of the century. It took British governments 300 years to rack up their first trillion in debt, just 10 years to accumulate another trillion and only six years to add a third. Some of the “big ticket” spending was unavoidable, in particular during the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. But profligate governments of all political stripes have senselessly added to this debt mountain by increasing public spending much faster than our sluggish economic growth. “Now we’re all paying the price.”

Merely paying the interest on our vast debts will cost £110bn this financial year. That works out at some £300m a day, the fourth biggest item of government spending after welfare, health and education. And whereas you can alter other areas of public spending, there’s nothing you can do about debt charges – if you don’t pay them, you end up in “catastrophic default”. The bond markets already force us to pay higher interest rates on 10-year borrowing than any other G7 nation. While the likes of France, Italy and the US have much bigger national debts, we lack the economic “comfort blanket” of the euro or the dollar. All of which means our finances sit on a “powder keg”. One wrong move from the Treasury – fiddling with the fiscal rules, ramping up growth-destroying taxes – and “the wrath of the bond markets will come crashing down on our heads”. Let’s hope Andy Burnham and Chancellor John Healey know what they’re doing.

Ordering in rather than eating out is a pandemic habit that has firmly stuck, says The Economist. In the US last year, almost three of every four restaurant meals were consumed off-site. This year, the global online food-delivery market is projected to reach a whopping $473bn, roughly twice its pre-pandemic size, while visits to restaurants remain 15% below pre-Covid levels. To their credit, many restaurateurs remain optimistic. “The dull roar of conversation in a dimly lit dining room, the clink of glass,” says the California Restaurant Association boss. “That is something people will always enjoy.”

John Humphrys had a nasty knack for unsettling interviewees off air, says Giles Coren in The Times. Many years ago, my ex-girlfriend started seeing the late Rod Liddle. And, incredibly, the first I heard of it was when I went on the Today programme to talk about restaurant prices. About four seconds before we went live, as the producer counted us in, Humphrys said: “By the way, Giles, what’s this I hear about Rod Liddle and your girlfriend, ooh, sorry… And here to talk about the problem is the Times restaurant critic, Giles Coren.”

It’s a jumping spider, says Alexandra Alter in The New York Times, which has taken social media by storm. The miniature arachnids, which can cost up to $100, can be seen in viral videos tilting their heads to one side quizzically, curling up in their tiny web hammocks and watching mini toy TV sets while eating live worms. Often owners give them cutesy names such as Bambi, Juniper or Pumpkin, and they’ve managed to convert even the most phobic of people: one 34-year-old who was previously “terrified” of spiders now has a business flogging them.