The UK economy will grow by more than expected this year, according to the IMF, which has forecast an expansion of 1.3%, up from the previous estimate of 1%. The UN body praised Britain for its fiscal consolidation, but warned that higher energy prices and interest rates would hit growth next year, and advised the UK to avoid unfunded giveaways. Screen time in classrooms should be slashed to tackle a “crisis” in pupils’ physical and developmental health, ministers have been warned. In an open letter, 150 leading clinicians said the explosion in the use of screens in schools during the pandemic had “never been rolled back”, and that children are now being diagnosed “earlier and more severely” with issues including speech and eyesight problems. Women are more likely than men to be told by doctors that their symptoms are “all in their head”, a new study has found. Researchers from the universities of Cambridge and East Anglia who studied 6,600 patients with autoimmune diseases found that women were 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed with psychological issues, such as anxiety or stress, rather than physical ailments.

Donald Trump has “dropped all pretence” over Ukraine, says Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic. After yet another “long, friendly” call with Vladimir Putin on Friday, the US president lifted sanctions on the import of Russian diesel, threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Kyiv unless it refrained from targeting Russian refineries, and called on Volodymyr Zelensky to leave office. He says he wants to lower fuel prices for Americans – with the midterms only weeks away, he is desperate to convince voters it’s Ukraine, not his “war of choice” in Iran, driving prices up. But Russia’s diesel exports are too small to have a significant effect, and it’s surely too late to reshape the midterms narrative. More likely is that this is a “Hail Mary” attempt to force Kyiv to surrender, in order to seal the lucrative business deals the Russians have been discussing with US negotiators and other Trump acolytes.

The problem for Zelensky, says Edward Luce in the FT, is that he is a constant reminder of Trump’s “dealmaking impotence”. The US president promised to end the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office. But that would have required Ukraine’s capitulation, which Zelensky was obviously unwilling to provide. Trump’s insistence that Kyiv hold elections is basically a non-starter – you can’t have people queuing up at the ballot box when another nation is occupying a fifth of your territory and “randomly targeting” the rest. Ironically, Trump’s anger is boosting Zelensky’s domestic popularity – the same “Trump bump” that has helped sway elections in Canada, Australia, Denmark and arguably the Vatican. So the Ukrainian president will likely stay in place. And if the Republicans lose in the midterms, as the polls suggest, it looks like it’ll be Zelensky that gets the blame. “The iron law of Trump is that nothing is ever his fault.”

Europe’s in-tray looks ever more daunting, says The Economist: a winter with the lowest gas reserves since 2022; fiscal catastrophe in France; Ukraine being “battered” by Russia. And what little resolve the continent has to deal with all this will be further stalled by the forthcoming “marathon of voting” that will see over half of all EU citizens elect new national leaders by the end of 2027. One election-bound politician after another will plead with fellow leaders that they cannot possibly make contentious compromises while campaigning, meaning almost every awkward decision at EU level will be met with: “wait until after the election”.

Bionic and the Wires are an English artistic duo who connect bionic arms to fungi and plants and use their bio-electrical signals to “play” an instrument, says The Browser. The video above, which has racked up more than 620,000 views in two weeks, is of a blusher mushroom playing the synth in Snake Woodlands in Derbyshire. Click here to give it a listen.

Late last year, says Jenni Russell in The Times, it was clear that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood had “grasped the issue” of the so-called “Boriswave”. Some 2.2 million of the migrants welcomed to the UK under Boris Johnson, many of them dependants, would start qualifying for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) from January 2026, giving them full access to our welfare system. Aware of the unaffordable fiscal cost of this, Mahmood proposed radical reforms. The standard time to qualify for ILR would be raised from five years to 10, but an “individual’s contribution” could alter that: a high earner might be able to settle in three; volunteering would cut the wait; claiming benefits would extend it; criminal convictions would prevent it. These reforms were “brave, right and in the national interest”.

Almost a year on, Labour appears to be in a “disastrous stealthy retreat”. Angela Rayner called the proposed reforms “un-British”. Dozens of other MPs on the left of the party appealed to new PM Andy Burnham, arguing that applying new rules to those already in the UK is “unfair”. Many MPs are demanding that care workers be exempt, demonstrating either “ignorance or indifference” to the fact that granting ILR will not secure care workers’ jobs but “allow them to walk away from them”. And while the party stalls, the early Boriswave migrants have been settling at a rate of almost 5,000 people a week since the start of the year. The irony of Labour arguing for “consultations and fairness” is that nobody consulted the electorate about this mass migration in the first place. Allowing those who may be burdens to stay is profoundly unfair to those already here, “who cannot afford more dependants foisted on them”.

Tom Cruise’s latest film, Digger, is shaping up to be one of the biggest flops of all time, says Rebecca Rubin in Variety. The environmental satire has made just $35m worldwide in its opening two weeks at cinemas, and distributors Warner Bros expect it to take in only $50m in total – some $250m short of its claimed break-even point. Reviews were so bad that the studio launched a social media campaign encouraging moviegoers to “decide for yourself”. Looks like they’ve done exactly that.

The new school year has only just begun, says Callum Borchers in The Wall Street Journal, but “the race is already on” across American colleges for next summer’s $50,000 internships. Top finance firms such as Citadel and Jane Street kick off the hunt early to allow for multiple rounds of interviews, including on-site “superdays” where evaluators gauge whether candidates are as impressive in person as they seemed on screen (and when unable to access AI). Some of their recruiters even attend collegiate chess and poker tournaments to scout people who are “uncannily good at playing the odds”. The very top programmes have acceptance rates of less than 1%.

It might just be the plane of pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 during an attempted round-the-world flight, says Oliver Holmes in The Guardian. A team of US researchers is heading to the uninhabited Kiribati atoll of Nikumaroro, about halfway between Australia and Hawaii, to investigate whether the submerged object spotted in satellite pictures in 2020 is Earhart’s Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. The expedition is expected to arrive today and will spend several days searching for the mysterious object. Other (possibly jealous) Earhart sleuths aren’t convinced: they reckon it’s just a fallen tree.