Whatever the right-wing press may say, most economists agree that Rachel Reeves isn’t heading towards an IMF bailout

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International confidence in the UK government’s economic policies had evaporated. Growth was stalling, inflation was galloping, and Labour – back in power after a reckless Conservative administration had gambled on tax cuts – was in deep trouble.

It was 1976, when James Callaghan’s government was forced to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund for an emergency loan. Fast forward almost half a century and some economists are drawing obvious parallels.

Internal letter also calls on UN member states to suspend arms sales, saying ‘criticising Israel is not enough’

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Hundreds of employees of the United Nations’ leading human rights agency have backed an internal letter telling its leadership to declare Israel’s offensive in Gaza a genocide and to call on UN member states to suspend arms sales to Israel.

The 1,100-word letter, signed by about a quarter of the 2,000 staff of the Geneva- and New York-based Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), says the Israeli offensive in Gaza meets the legal threshold of genocide and that this means “arms sales, transfers and related logistical or financial support to Israeli authorities” constitutes a clear breach of international law by all those involved.

Susan Monarez was reportedly fired by Robert F Kennedy Jr but her lawyers say only Trump himself can remove her

The Trump administration is facing rare bipartisan pushback for firing the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), amid turmoil at the US’ top infectious disease agency that prompted dozens of staff to walk out of its headquarters in protest on Thursday.

The White House has said Susan Monarez, who was confirmed as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just a month ago, was fired as she was “not aligned with the president’s agenda” – only for Monarez to refuse to depart. The official’s lawyers have said that, as a Senate-confirmed appointee, only Donald Trump himself can remove her.

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(Island Records)
​The controversy-courting star is in perfect alignment with producer Jack Antonoff, on detailed and utterly delightful tracks that make her previous hit album seem rudimentary in comparison

In June, Sabrina Carpenter announced her seventh album, Man’s Best Friend; its artwork depicts Carpenter on her hands and knees, an unseen man grasping a handful of her hair. It instantly caused an uproar online – most notably among Carpenter’s young fans, who weren’t on Tumblr in 2015, or weren’t aware of the way the Sun newspaper wrote about Madonna every day of the 1990s and 2000s, and therefore didn’t realise that discourse around whether pop stars should or shouldn’t be allowed to sexualise themselves is older than pop music itself, and almost always inane.

Anyone hitting play on Man’s Best Friend in search of another barrel-full of ragebait might be alarmed, not because it is particularly provocative, but because it is strangely old-fashioned. Carpenter is fond of blue turns of phrase (“Gave me his whole heart and I gave him head”), and the wordiness of her lyrics is indicative of someone who grew up in an era of constant stimulus. But Man’s Best Friend makes it clear that she regards pop music as a craft as much as it is an art.