Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings beautiful people,

Fun fact: today is our 100th edition. It seems like only yesterday that we sent out our very first edition.

We were so drunk that we didn’t even even manage to send it out to the 3 people we’d practically begged to be on list, so it went out to literally no one.

Now we have interns. How times change.

Anyway, let’s get you informed on what happened in the world this week through memes and irreverent commentary.

⏰ Today's reading time is 7 minutes

Quote of the Week

Right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro wins first round of Brazil election

Flávio Bolsonaro and his Liberal party have won the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections against incumbent President Lula Da Silva. 

Flávio, the eldest son of jailed ex-President Jair, won around 47% of the vote against Lula’s 45%.

A friendly reminder that Jair Bolsanaro is currently serving a 27 year sentence for trying to stage a coup when he lost the 2022 election. He got that bumped down to house arrest due to his particular vicious case of the hiccups (yes, really).

The Libs also swept both houses of Brazil’s congress, with the Senate becoming the most powerful congressional caucus since the establishment of Brazil’s democratic constitution in 1988.

And as it’s Latin America, you can bet your feijão that Jair's wife, two of his other sons and younger brother all won seats in Congress. 

South American countries do have a thing for electing the children of nutcase despots as of late.

Combine that for the recent wingnut wave that has been sweeping the continent (just ask the Argies how that’s going), and things aren’t looking good for the Brazilian left, lead by the long serving Lula, who is seeking a 4th term in office.

It’s even got to the point that some Brazilian lefties on X are actively asking the Chinese to intervene and stage a revolution.

They’ve got a better chance of getting Neymar Jr. to stop flirting with his sister.

Exhibiting their remarkable ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the Green Party have suffered a devastating collapse in the polls this week.

The turn comes following news that the party, in the wake of a hotly contested vote, had officially adopted the policy ‘Zionism is racism’.

The party also officially supports "a single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine", a region which includes modern-day Israel.

The notion passing a couple of days before the anniversary of the October 7th massacre is a real chefs kiss in comedic timing and/or incredibly insensitive, depending on how you want to see it.

The motion passed 1022-813, the latter number representing the fraction of the Green Party who would actually quite like to maybe just get elected for once.

The Israeli government have responded uncharacteristically furiously, going as far as to ban the party’s leader, Zach Polanski, who 1) didn’t support the motion and 2) is Jewish, from entering the country.

When approached for comment, a cabinet spokesperson responded that they “just feel kinda ehhh about the guy”, later revealing that they had no knowledge of the motion at all.

French ministers scramble to appease students after 10 days of protests

In an act described universally as “well, duh”, the French have taken to the streets.

This time, in protest over the perceived underfunding of the nation’s schools, which are allegedly characterised by teacher shortages, poor infrastructure, and an inhumane amount of French.

Following a brutally hot summer and mass absences by teachers, hundreds of thousands of students have faced off with riot squads for approaching a week.

In efforts to demonstrate how worthwhile it would be to invest in their futures, some more passionate students have escalated from general tomfoolery to certified hijinks, including petty vandalism, spray-painting and setting fire to helpless bystanders. All in the spirit of Liberté, égalité, fraternité of course.

The French demonstrations mirror a similar wave of protests which occurred in 1998, and ultimately resulted in the government pledging almost €1 billion to renovate schools, as well as the hiring of 14,000 extra staff.

Our French correspondent put down his baguette and saucisson (served at the protest of course) to ask President Macron what he thought of the whole thing.

“I’m leaving soon, so it’s not my fucking problem to deal with. Besides, I always got along with my teachers. Why can’t the kids today do the same?”

He presumably wasn’t too happy when he saw the public broadcaster show a protester holding up a sign saying “Macron fuck your teacher, not ours.”

Andy Burnham uses todays sponsor…we think

In between rehearsals for his The Smiths tribute act and debating whether pork scratchings are acceptable pub scran with the Chancellor, we’re 78% sure the British PM has been playing Fantasy Parliament.

Months before British Prime Minister Andy ‘This Charming Man’ Burnham announced a ban on airlines charging people extra to sit next to their children on flights, the policy was proposed in the game by parliamentarian_502553.

It’s the most realistic political simulator ever, where you draft super realistic policy, deal with the the media, voters, interest groups and more.

We’ve almost fired people here for playing it too much at the office. No wonder Andy’s been having a look.

Sign up and play for free today.

Spanish prime minister calls snap election after housing protests

Spain is off to the polls. Patrick Bateman Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap general election for 29 November, even though he didn't need to hold one until summer 2027.

The main reason was the Spanish parliament rejecting two decree laws from his minority government that were meant to protect renters.

The decrees followed the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from the Madrid flat she'd lived in for more than 70 years, on a sweetheart deal that was made law under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

A legal glitch let her landlord hike the rent from €500 to €2,650 a month. Even after it was "lowered" to €1,650, it was still €300 more than her monthly pension.

Tens of thousands marched in Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona on Saturday. The good news is her lawyer soon confirmed she'd be able to go home.

The bad news is she died two days ago.

The only thing that would have pissed people off more is if Pedro had gone and personally bludgeoned her to death himself.

In a televised address, Sánchez said he needs "a broader progressive majority" to "overcome the resistance of the elites", despite admitting that "we have made mistakes".

Some of those mistakes in question:

1. His former transport minister José Luis Ábalos got 24 years in June over Covid face-mask kickbacks and soliciting prostitutes during Covid using public funds. Since when was love a crime?

2. His wife Begoña Gómez was charged with corruption in April (both she and Pedro deny it).

3. Police raided the Socialist party HQ in May over an alleged misinformation campaign.

4. Sanchez’s brother was banned from holding public office for 2 years for abuse of his position as a regional music coordinator.

Polls suggest the conservative People's Party will come out on top, but it would probably need hard-right Vox to actually govern.

We tried to get some boots on the ground in Madrid via our Spanish correspondent, but he was having a siesta.

German search engine ditches Mistral, bets on Chinese open-source AI

‘We are disappointed with the quality of Mistral The French,’ Ecosia Search Engine Germans claim. 

In a move of great European unity and collaboration, the German search engine Ecosia, has this week announced, that it will ditch its French AI partner Mistral and will bet on open-source models, including those from China instead. 

Beyond the eternal Frogs and the Krauts shitting on each other element of it, the Ecosia-Mistral drama actually has some wider geopolitical tensions behind it.

Ecosia is concerned that Mistral doesn’t align with its environmental goals, because of the high levels of nuclear power relied on in France’s energy mix.

Nuclear power has been unpopular in Germany since the 1970s, and this unpopularity peaked with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the 2011 Fukushima disaster, which further motivated then Chancellor Angela Merkel to do away with nuclear power altogether in Germany.

Now, in its green temper tantrum, Ecosia has split from Mistral and is partnering with the AI platform Melious, which boasts a range of open source models, including Chinese models Qwen, GLM, and Kimi.

One must presume that Ecosia know that China’s biggest energy source isn’t vegetable oil or the power of friendship, but coal.

Scheiße!

Trump decrees that anyone who uses the term Artificial Intelligence is now ‘The Enemy’

On Thursday the Orange Maniac took to Truth Social to declare that the White House "considers anyone that uses the term, 'Artificial Intelligence,' as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, 'Super Intelligence,' THE ENEMY!"

It follows his executive order ordering every federal department to say "SI" instead of "AI" and to "not acknowledge" the old term at all.

Before that, he'd run a Truth Social poll asking followers to choose between "Super Intelligence", "Superior Intelligence" and "Extreme Intelligence".

He came up with all of them while staring in the mirror trying to figure out where his bald patch was.

Trump’s atrocious hair aside, allow us to put on our tin foil hats for a moment on this whole .si thing…

1. As we said last week, .si is Slovenia’s domain ending. Melania Trump is from Slovenia…just saying.

2. The .si registry normally gets about 55 new domains a day. From June, it suddenly got 400+ in a day, then 7,000+ in July. Not weird at all, right?

3. Around 12,000 AI- and MAGA-flavoured domains were snapped up before the announcement, including build.si, now listed for $14 million.

There’s no smoke without fire with these things, and most of Trump & family’s recent moves would make your average African dictator look like a boy scout.

Some caveats before our in house lawyer threatens to chop my balls off in fear of a libel lawsuit:

A) The domain registrar keeps ownership details private, so nobody has shown who bought them.
B) No link to the Trump family has been proven.

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🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Dozens quarantined after researcher at Russian plague laboratory dies of ‘unknown’ infection

Dozens of people were reported to be in isolation after a Russian laboratory worker at an institute dedicated to studying the plague and other infectious diseases died of an undisclosed illness. Anyone know any good plague doctors?

Click the meme to read more

Sexually transmitted diarrhoea is exploding in the US. And it's growing resistant to antibiotics.

A gut pathogen that causes diarrhoea and vomiting is morphing into a dangerous and difficult-to-treat sexually transmitted infection (STI). RFK Jr. is reportedly suggesting double wrapping peptide flavoured condoms as a potential solution.

Click the meme to read more (it won’t give you diarrhea)

Fort Hood attacker's execution by firing squad will be livestreamed, Pentagon says

War Secretary Pete Hegseth says the execution will be public, but a legal expert says the "unprecedented" decision is on "uncertain legal terrain". If last week’s botched execution of Christa Pike is anything to go by, let’s see if the firing squad even hit the target in the first place.

Click the meme to read more

Hitler Mussolini wins local election

Peruvian voters in Queropalca picked their new mayor, Social Democrat Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores, despite his rather unusual name. Hey, Mussolini started as a socialist, and the Nazis were the National Socialists after all, so let’s see how this one plays out…

Click the meme to read more

Anthropic bans ‘abusive or cruel behaviour’ toward Claude

In a move that really sucks the joy out of life, the policy update also adds new rules addressing propaganda campaigns, surveillance, and weapon development. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to go back to only verbally abusing humans called Claude from now on.

Click the meme to read more

Debate of the Week

In the same week Albania rolled out an AI hologram of their capital’s mayor to give a speech (the real one is in prison), the Serbs managed to upstage their neighbours yet again.

Former President Aleksandar Vučic, who recently resigned so that he could run for Prime Minister, spent close to an hour talking to a rock on live television.

Balkan politicians, never ever change.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for their legally mandated half an hour of fresh air.

Thanks to Patrick & Faris

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings you rascals,

Lots to get through this week, but first, some housekeeping.

A select few of you have been selected by our team of definitely not sleep deprived interns to be part of a survey about The Pint and your experience with it.

If you are one of the chosen few to be raptured, you’ll receive it Monday. If not, sucks to be you and see you next week.

Let’s get you up to speed on what happened in the world this week, via memes and irreverent commentary.

⏰ Today's reading time is 7 minutes

Quote of the Week

Robinhood to allow 24-hour weekend trading of US stocks as industry shifts to wider access

In a move welcomed by the finance community as “soulless”, Robinhood announced plans this week to expand their trading hours.

At the time of writing, the platform is open 8PM Sunday ET to 8PM Friday ET.

Deciding 120 hours a week isn’t nearly enough, the firm declared that, as of next year, optimistic financiers will have 24/7 access to the trading platform, including weekends and holidays.

As the number of amateur and professional traders continues to grow, and market platforms are increasingly incentivised to distinguish themselves from the competition, Robinhood believes their new policy will attract a growing demographic.

“We’re keen to corner the market on desperate losers. I’m talking total nobodies with nothing going on.

No-friend-seein’, no-hobby-havin’, kissless virgins with nothin’ better to do with their Saturdays and Christmases than watch lines go up and down.”

In the same statement, the company also introduced AI-powered trading tools, allowing users to build their own agents that can ‘trade’ on their behalf.

“By the time we’re through, these dorks won’t even do the one thing they think they like doing. Isn’t that beautiful?”

On Tuesday, Andy Burnham announced at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool that he plans to get rid of the Triple Lock by 2030.

Great news for young people, bad news for anyone who’s been on a P&O Cruise in the last 2 or 3 decades.

He himself is aware that he will ‘pay a political price’ for this move, and other parties have been quick to jump on this.

Future disgraced MP Leader of Reform UK Nigel Farage has called his speech ‘the most Left-wing speech since the 1970s’, and has written an article for the Daily Mail about how Burnham has betrayed UK pensioners.

For those of you that are new here (welcome), or who just don’t care enough to remember, a quick reminder of what the Triple Lock is.

It was an initiative introduced by the Cameron coalition in 2011 to ensure that every April, the state pension would increase by the highest of three measures: inflation (measured by CPI), average wage growth or 2.5%.

On paper, the policy sound great. Take care of old people and let them enjoy the fruits of their labours. Hooray.

In practice, however, the Triple Lock cost the UK taxpayers a fuck tonne of money and, created an incentive structure within the British State where pensioners effectively held political parties by the balls in terms of policy, as they have by far the biggest turnouts in elections.

Since 2012, the UK State Pension bill is now £12.6 billion higher than it would have been under a smoothed earnings link. 

There are two major caveats to Burnham’s announcement:

1. It will come into force only after the next general election, so no sooner than 2030. Plenty of time for a U-turn.

2. Some of the savings will have to go to increased security for Andy and his team given that they’ll be the target of mobility scooter Kamikaze attacks for the foreseeable future.

Manchester City guilty over Premier League charges after £900m of sham contracts

Premier League heavyweights Manchester City, who stood accused of over a hundred instances of financial impropriety, have been found guilty of all charges.

When all has been accounted for, the sum-total of their inflated earnings is believed to exceed £900 million ($1.1 billion).

That number was reached over a 9-year period and through dozens of inaccurate record filings, sham contracts and artificially inflated revenue reports.

Perhaps, most despicably, the club has also been found guilty of price-gouging Pukka Pies, selling the disgusting slop-discs for an inexcusable £6.50.

Speaking to the press, the Premiere League’s chief executive has described the scandal as “the most significant case” in the league’s history, later saying:

“The sanctity of European football has been tarnished. We now fear that our beautiful game - known for its modesty, honesty, and spirit of fair play - will soon be associated with corruption and greed. Perish the thought.”

The UAE has issued a thinly veiled threat to the UK around future investments in the country, should their favourite money laundering operation instrument of soft power receive too harsh a punishment.

Maybe the Emiratis could take their mafia cosplaying a step further and ‘take care’ of the whistleblower who instigated the whole investigation, now that he is no longer in witness protection.

While the extent of the club’s punishment is not yet known, it is believed by insiders that City’s executive branch will be required to say “sorry, and mean it”, before being sentenced to 15 minutes on the naughty step.

A quick word from our euromaxxing friends

Meet etn, Europe's daily live tech show.

If you want to know what's actually happening in European tech, without wading through endless press releases, ETN has you covered.

Every weekday, Luke Knight and Ronan go live on X from 12 to 3 BST with the people actually building the future.

This week alone we had the CEO of ElevenLabs and Anthropic's Head of Europe.

Their free (and amazingly named) newsletter, Continental Breakfast, goes out before each show with the line-up, the story everyone in tech is arguing about, and a sharp take.

Same banter and memes, more billion-pound founders. 👉 Subscribe for free. 

China, US pledge tariff cuts on $60 billion of goods including agriculture, toys, toasters

Following Winnie the Pooh Xi and Trump’s high-profile date in Washington last week, China and the U.S. have now announced a proposed series of tariff cuts on $60 billion worth of bilateral imports.

China may still be importing Iranian oil under the table (only 475,000 barrels per day in September), however small hiccups like this really aren’t important now that anything from U.S. corn to cosmetics, to Chinese-manufactured household appliances can now be imported with far lower tariffs.

Won’t somebody think of the toasters?!

Naturally, this agreement only applies to ‘non-sensitive goods’. Semiconductors and rare earth minerals were not up for discussion, which is not surprising given they were one of the only important items on the agenda.

Little old Taiwan/Chinese Taipei/Whatever you are allowed to call it under threat of Chinese sanctions is likely feeling a little shaky right now, given that the weapons the U.S. supplies to the island was pretty high up on Xi’s list of ‘things to discuss with the Orange Maniac’.

Throw in the fact that Trump has also now offered to sell weapons to China, still technically designated as an ‘adversary of the U.S, and things could get a little choppy.

In AI related news, the two superpowers also have agreed to set up a communication channel for AI incidents and hope to hold further discussions to follow up in November.

However, the comms channel will be through the new European equivalent of Microsoft Teams, so no one in their right mind is going to use it anyway.

Netanyahu says Israel will get to the 'root' of co-pilot in foiled bid to crash Flydubai flight

On Wednesday, a FlyDubai flight carrying 174 passengers made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, after an Omani copilot allegedly stabbed Indian captain Smit Machchhar and signalled 'mayday' during the flight.

Authorities are investigating all possibilities, from terrorism to arguing over whoever left skid marks in the airplane bathroom mental disorders, as the UAE government examines 'whether it was linked to any terrorist purpose' regarding the attack.

According to witnesses, after the bloodied captain opened the cockpit door, passengers (including several ex-IDF soldiers) grappled with the copilot and eventually stabilised the aircraft, which plunged more than 20,000 ft during the commotion.

President Donald Trump, ever the wordsmith, put it more succinctly, saying that the plane was saved by “lifting up a stick.” Wink wink.

Israeli Prime Minister and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize Candidate Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Israel is joining the interrogation in coordination with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, while FlyDubai suspended all flights to and from Israel.

A visual representation of the flight ‘plan’

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Trump's AI rebrand causes 'unprecedented' demand for Slovenian website names

The president wants AI to be called super intelligence - or SI - the same initials used by Slovenian domains. The government of Anguilla (owners of the .ai domain) are reportedly considering declaring war on Slovenia as a result of Trump’s actions.

Click the meme to read more

Every Senate Democrat just voted against stock trading ban

While the bill adds more constraints on lawmaker stock trading than what exists under the current law, all Democrats opposed it, saying it did not go far enough to outright end the practice. “Well, we couldn’t just oppose it out of respect to Nancy Pelosi, so we had to come up with some other reason” one Dem told our Washington correspondent.

Click the meme to read more

Brexit referendum 'possible' in Labour election manifesto, says Andy Burnham

The PM says a referendum wouldn't be the right thing now but the UK needs to consider its options for the future. The first time was so nice, so why not do it twice?

Click the meme to read more

Singapore is using a Nobel-winning matching formula to help young government workers find dates

Singapore, the world’s first 0th world nation, has just released a dating app exclusive for government employees in an attempt to solve a record-low fertility rate. ‘First Date’ is based on a game theory algorithm which won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics, and is being used to match 21-35 year old Singaporeans together. LKY is smiling down from heaven.

Click the meme to read more

BBC demands dedicated button on Britons' TV remotes so audiences 'stay connected to British values'

The corporation has insisted the move will make it easier for the public to find content that 'reflects the UK’s cultures'. You know your media entity is doing well when you need to shoehorn your way into everyday household objects.

Click the meme to read more

EU’s Microsoft Teams alternative draws bad reviews from officials

The U.S. would “instantly” win a hypothetical tech war, an official moaned. One employee called the platform ‘absolute shit’. Considering how bad Microsoft Teams is, that’s quite the accomplishment.

Click the meme to read more

HR Department of the Week

‘“Mr Pinky, do you have any strong thoughts on the target IPO price for next month?”

Anthropic is touted to be going public next month at a $2 trillion valuation, despite haemorrhaging $42 billion/year and scrutiny over their claims that AI is going to murder us all in our sleep if we don’t just give them complete control over its development.

But the continued insistence on humanity’s demise may not even be the weirdest thing about the company.

In a recent piece from The Atlantic, details emerged that Anthropic co-founder and President Daniela Amodei, alongside her husband, Holden Karnofsky, use stuffed animals as faux employees where they use them to act out mock scenarios to help make management decisions, high-pitch voiceovers and all.

“Mr Fuzzywubby, should we keep leaking safety breaches to the press to inflate our target IPO price and push for regulatory capture of the market?”

To be honest, an advisory board of stuffed animals still sounds like it’d be more useful than 99% of HR departments.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for their legally mandated half an hour of fresh air.

Thanks to Jen & Pat (& Stavros)

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings you rascals,

And a special welcome to those of you that are new here. If you take yourself and the world very seriously, we probably aren’t for you.

If you enjoy memes and irreverent writing that keep you informed without wanting to spoon your eyes out in horror/boredom, then consider us your new family.

A family that you only hear from a handful of times a week and ask you to help them pay rent from time to time.

⏰ Today's reading time is 7 minutes

Quote of the Week

Meloni announces ban on burqa and niqab in Italian schools, cap on foreign students

In what experts are calling 'The Most European Move Of All', the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has introduced a decree law that bans the use of a burqa or niqab in schools, as well as a “30% cap on the number of students in a class who do not have an adequate command of Italian."

When pressed for what constituted an “adequate command of Italian”, the leader, who is also president of the nation’s right-wing party Brothers Of Italy, declared that it was her mission to assure no child will grow up to “order a Cappuccino after 1pm”, or talk without unnecessarily gesticulating with their hands.

The ceiling would apply to new enrolments from the 2027-28 school year. In primary schools it covers non-citizens born abroad or who have not attended two years of Italian nursery, while in secondary schools it covers those without three successful years in the Italian system.

Exceptions can be made if children have an encyclopaedic knowledge of which pasta shape goes with which sauce and/or they demonstrate proficiency in sending 5-20 min long voice notes while driving.

Failure to meet the standards may result in a €1,000 fine, but the bill features even more draconian laws than that are being widely reported.

If a child is found to “seriously struggle to integrate”, their parents may be sentenced to 8 consecutive weekends of Italian lessons.

Critics argue that the stipulation violates the Geneva convention, which defends a citizen’s right to not be forcibly submitted to extended periods of time in the company of Italians.

Trump laid out the red carpet, literally and figuratively, for Xi Jinping this week, as the Chinese leader made his first US visit in over a decade.

It took Xi barely stepping onto the tarmac for Trump to produce a meme-worthy moment. As the military flyover greeted Xi above them, the annoying orange winced in pain at the sound, while Xi stayed as cool as a cucumber.

Read into that as you wish.

We are standing in solidarity with our lamestream media counterparts (more on that later), so were not physically present at the White House to be able to report on events.

So here’s a quick rundown based on the research we made one of our interns do this morning over 7 espressos:

• Xi has loaned two Pandas to a zoo in Atlanta as a ‘sign of the enduring friendship of our two nations’. Given that feeding Pandas can cost upwards of $100k a year (plus the rent owed to China to keep them), we’re not too sure how much of a ‘gift’ it is.

• Winnie the Pooh gave a vacuous statements about keeping AI ‘under human control’, but nothing in way of actually doing something about the most potentially destructive technologies of our time.

• Xi pushed Trump to take the "correct position" on Taiwan. Considering the US are sitting on a $14 billion arms sale to China Taiwan, don’t hold your breath on this one either.

• On trade, Trump wants lower Chinese tariffs, more rare earths and more US farm exports. I also want $100 million and a date with Ana de Armas, but frustratingly haven’t made much progress on either.

Like most 70+ year olds who’ve spent the day walking about and pretending to remember people’s names, their minds turned to food, provided at a lavish state dinner at the White House.

The guest list was America's tech and finance elite, who were presumably there to see if they could score a discount on some of those nice open-source Chinese LLMs.

Andy Burnham announces plan for new UK centre to fight disinformation

Just two months into his tenure, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has already achieved the unthinkable: he’s made dystopia boring.

In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly – his first since taking office – the PM, presumably after 12 minutes of waffling about how Kes (1969) still makes him cry, revealed plans for a Ministry of Truth National Centre for Information Defence - a multifaceted organisation designed to counter “cyberattacks” by foreign state powers, seemingly through control of social media companies and censorship of alleged ‘deepfakes’.

Big Brother Burnham clearly loved his English lit degree at Cambridge so much that he wants to integrate parts of Orwell’s novel ‘1984’ into his government.

No more fake news, ladies and gents (Donald, take notes).

Facing the outcry of anyone who’s read any dystopian novel ever written, Burnham remains steadfast that his Ministry of Tru-uhhh….National Centre for Information Defence is a necessary measure to protect Britain’s democracy.

While details regarding the nature of said organisation remain scant, it is believed that the idea for the taskforce came to the Labour leader the previous week, after he sent a video of a “bloody talented labrador” singing ‘This Charming Man’ into the cabinet group chat.

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US TV networks suspend White House pool coverage over Trump media ban

Trump, in a very mature, rational, and completely non dementia related flare up, announced this week that he was banning journalists from his least favourite news outlets (CNN, MS Now, Politico) from entering the White House premises. 

Why you might ask?

Short answer: they don’t pee on him in a Russian hotel room kiss his ass as much as he’d like. 

Long answer: “Something, something, quite frankly, fake news, something or other, they’re fake news, did you see the latest episode of RuPauls Drag Race? They looked fabulous, didn’t they? Terrific show.”

In a show of journalistic solidarity at the fact that the President has blatantly violated the First Amendment, a coalition of the major U.S. television outlets (including ABC, CBS, Fox News, NBC and the newly-banned CNN) all agreed to suspend their video coverage of Donald Trump.

Consequently, all the pleasantries with Xi mentioned above weren’t televised. Well, not exactly…

The Orange Potus created his own YouTube channel called Trump TV to video broadcast all his events. Unfortunately, the sound quality isn’t great, and no one seems to really give a shit anyway.

In case you do though…

Live Stream TrumpTV HERE (or don’t, you’ll be fine either way)

Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI face lawsuit claiming AI slowdown harms subscribers and violates antitrust laws

A new alliance has formed around the watering trough.

Big AI moguls have come together and publicly pledged to unanimously ‘slow down’ their own technology in the name of safety.

Surely you all remember last week’s warning from an Anthropic worker that there is a 10% chance that AI ‘could kill all humans within a decade’.

Not too keen on being offed by their own creations, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind's co-founder Demis Hassabis have all come together to collectively pull the reins on their AI development programmes until its safety can be guaranteed.

The billionaires do care about us! Cue the Disney music and roll the credits, right?

Nope. There has been a fair bit of backlash to the deceleration.

Firstly, Trump disagrees with it and he wants to rename AI ‘super intelligence’ as the word ‘artificial’ makes it sound too fake. Good to see he’s focusing on the crucial details of the issue.

There are subscription-paying users who are alleging that there is some kind of contractual violation to the AI companies deliberately taking their foot off the gas.

They clearly want development to progress as quickly as possible. 

To be fair, companies on ChatGPT Enterprise are shelling out a lot: it's custom-quoted (roughly $45–75 per user a month) with a minimum of around 150 seats. Roll it out to a few thousand staff and you're comfortably into seven figures a year.

Maybe you’d feel a bit miffed too. But also, I’d rather not get enslaved by a Terminator called Claude anytime soon.

Rogue OpenAI agent infiltrated Australian government website in world first

A rogue OpenAI ‘agent’ has hacked into and ‘infiltrated’ a private statistics portal containing data from Australia’s universal healthcare scheme Medicare.

For any hypochondriac Aussies out there, no stress, the information is ‘non-sensitive’.

For any slightly scared shitless Aussies (or non Aussies for that matter), the ease with which the AI managed to get into a supposedly secure government portal is quite unnerving.

And no it’s not just because the Department of Health cybersecurity provider runs off a didgeridoo.

The agent is said to have gone ‘rogue’ during a test exercise where is was asked to use openly available statistical data sets to answer questions and instead decided to go one step further, hack into the Medicare system, and provide far more detailed answers than anyone was anticipating. 

The company training the model, realising their bot had accidentally hacked some confidential government data, decided the best option was to send off a wishy-washy email to a generic Australian government inbox several weeks later.

Whoever was monitoring the inbox was off wrestling a crocodile somewhere in the outback, so the rogue agent remained at large for almost a month. 

Maybe next time they can hack into my student loan portal and wipe the debt off. Just saying….

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

‘Pay with smile’ facial recognition store checkout system piloted by Revolut

Customers can use the new technology in a similar way to unlocking a smartphone or app. Not sure how I’ll be able to pay for anything anymore if it involves me actually seeing my bank balance beforehand.

Click the meme to read more

Putin casts vote online in first Russian parliamentary elections since Ukraine war

In footage shared by Russian state media, Putin can be seen navigating the online voting system and responding enthusiastically after successfully casting his vote. He allegedly voted for someone else as a joke, which means he’s going to unsuccessfully attempt to fly out of a 10th story window in Moscow next week.

Click the meme to read more

AI adoption is driving hiring, but mostly for senior roles

Companies using artificial intelligence are adding more jobs than those that are not but those gains sharply favour senior employees over junior workers. It’s fine, the next generation of senior workers will just magically sprout out of the ground like mushroom.s

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UK tests torpedo fired from undersea 'Excalibur' drone in bid to protect seabed cables from Russia

Russia is understood to be targeting undersea cables serving the UK, and recent weeks have seen Argentina once again reiterate its claim to the Falkland Islands. The 30 people and 60 sheep who live there will be ecstatic.

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Paramount reaches settlement with states in $110 billion Warner Bros merger

The deal includes an agreement to produce 30 films a year, or Paramount will be forced to sell off parts of its company. They’ll probably spin off some stupid new streaming platform called BeeBob or some similar such nonsense.

Click the meme to read more

Photo of the Week

leaving work early after a day of underperforming to go drinking

It was the 81st session of the U.N General Assembly this past week, bringing leaders from all over the world to the Big Apple to do what the U.N was built for:

Talk about the pressing issues of the world, with the full knowledge that half the people in the room with you probably a) disagree with you b) think your country shouldn’t exist or c) just don’t care and are there for the nightlife.

While Bibi Netanyahu was busy droning on about posts that other people’s wives had liked on Instagram, other leaders were busy aura farming.

Emmanuel Macron, President of France, got a great snap of him and his entourage (it physically pains me to have to use a French word here) walking to the U.N HQ in Manhattan.

A French person hasn’t looked this cool since Alain Delon.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for their legally mandated half an hour of fresh air.

Thanks to Jack & Roberto

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings you rascals,

AI may eventually kill us all and/or slowly turn us into the fat people in mobility scoopers from WALL.E, but in the meantime, we’re still here and have the full use of our limbs.

Oh, and thanks to all of you who answered our survey. We appreciate it more than you know.

Anyway, enough flirting.

Here’s your weekly dose of news, delivered in a format that doesn’t make you want to jump off the nearest bridge.

⏰ Today's reading time is 7 minutes

Quote of the Week

European founders and VCs urge lawmakers ‘to get EU Inc right’

The EU is introducing a concrete legislative proposal which would create ‘optional European legal frameworks that companies can choose when operating across borders’.

About fucking time. They’ve only been discussing it for the past 1800 years (not including summer holidays of course).

The issue at the moment is that when companies are cross-border in the EU zone, they are still subject to 27 different legal systems when they look to scale-up or expand.

This, as you can imagine, creates a whole bunch of bureaucratic headaches, as well as lots of ability for useless professions to make a lot of money.

Speaking of useless professions, the notary lobby in Germany kicked up a bit of a fuss over the proposal, incensed at the fact people may have figured out that €10k for overseeing the signing of a few documents is in fact, a bit steep.

This new legal framework seeks to gradually remove internal barriers that fragment the Single Market, making it easier to create, operate and expand companies. 

After several centuries of affairs, threats and sleeping in separate beds, it's official:

The United Kingdom wants to break up. More accurately, England is being dumped.

The news came last week, when the leaders of Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland's nationalist parties announced their shared intention to seek independence at a press conference in Cardiff.

In a memorandum signed by all three, the parties detailed that Wales feels they need to "find themselves again", N. Ireland thought they could handle polyamory but are no longer sure, and Scotland really means it this time.

England, in a press conference to his buddies that night, countered that he actually finished with them, that he "doesn't miss them at all. Like, at all. [Sniff] Better off without 'em”, and “doesn’t care because he’s still got the Isle of Man anyway and she’s an absolute belter.”

Upon learning that their former missuses were considering getting back together with the EU, it’s reported England had a little cry, called them “total slags”, and that the Union can “have’em, see if I care.”

Funnily enough, this was all triggered by Donald Trump. Never fancied him as a provo, but what do I know.

The British Isles (circa 2030)

OpenAI boss says world 'right to be afraid' but should trust AI firms

Following a string of whistleblowings and defections from within the world of AI, suspicion of the enterprise is at an all-time high.

If researchers, safety experts and former executives are to be believed, the possibility that this technological forefront results in “the end of humanity” has moved from a consideration within the field to a near certainty.

Recent polling suggests this attitude is reflected by the populace; Pew Research data from this past summer found that Americans are more ‘concerned’ than ‘excited’ by AI, with many respondents citing their personal experiences of psychosis, expectations of mass death, and that Wendy’s new AI-assisted drive-thru “keeps messing up their order” among other reasons.

Thankfully, OpenAI boss and wet-faced daemon-summoner Sam Altman was able to assuage concerns at a press conference in San Francisco this past Tuesday:

While several key figures in the president’s orbit have endorsed strict regulation, President Trump has criticised calls for sturdier legal guardrails on AI, instead asserting that the only thing required to ensure public safety is a “strong and smart” president.

When pressed, a presidential aide suggested to the press corps that ‘strong’ be read as “old” and ‘smart’ as “not necessarily.”

Film Studios Wait on Tax Credits, You Get Paid

Short duration asset-backed loans from our friends at Alts.co

Everyone’s chasing the next AI trade.

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Studios sit on millions in approved tax credits, signed distribution contracts, and completion bonds they can’t access yet. 

Bridge lenders step in, fill the gap, and get repaid when the credit clears or the deal closes. 

These are not complicated structured products. They’re simple, short-duration asset-backed loans (12-16 weeks) lent to productions that are already greenlit. The kind of boring that works.

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Canada’s Carney embraces EU associate membership proposal

Canada, against all the geographical odds, is on track to become an ‘associate member’ of the European Union, after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament that she wanted to ‘open the door’ for Canada’s entry. 

If you listen closely enough, you can hear the screams of millions of Macedonians/Turks/Albanians/Georgians/Remainers in the distance.

On the one hand, it’s a bold move and it is a concretisation of a shifting alliance system which is centred in Europe rather than the United States.

The ‘middle powers’ coming together to stand up to the US and China. The kind of stuff that gets The Economist readers hornier than a 15 year old.

On the other hand, it does seem to be a bit of a ‘fuck you’ to the Orange Maniac from Carney, who, as a smooth talking, bilingual former banker (yes I do fancy him a bit), likes to consider himself the complete opposite of Trump.

Trade talks between Canada and the US collapsed last month, sparking a series of new tariffs. Trump's repeated talk of making Canada a "51st state" has also stoked the fire and helped lead Carney into the arms of his new European lovers.

So just when you think you’ve got enough French people in your political bloc, you may suddenly inherit millions of even weirder French people.

Just spare a thought for the UK, who after voting to leave the European Union in 2016, is now watching all her so called ''mates’’ become best-friends with her ex.

The Fed raises interest rates for the first time since 2023

For the first time in almost three years, the U.S. Federal Reserve has hiked its interest rates in a bid to tackle the ever-mounting inflation and cost-of-living crisis. 

The unanimous vote raised the benchmark interest rate from 3.75% to 4%.

A yuge 0.25% increase.

It’s honestly a pretty bog standard move and is in line with what the European Central Bank has already done and what the Bank of England is likely to do at some point given current inflation rates. 

What isn’t bog standard, is Trump’s reaction to it. 

Kevin Warsh, the Head of the Fed who took over from Master Oogway Jerome Powell, has realised that his term as Fed chair will outlast Trump’s term in office, and he wants history to remember him well.

Or at least not as the guy who tanked the U.S. economy so that an 80 year old who spray paints himself the same colour as Oompa Loompas refers to him as a ‘great guy’.

Trump posted on Truth Social that interest rates should be less than 1% and complained about the U.S.’s trade deficit.

He then posted that the US was ‘carrying’ almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!’

In the words of Passenger: ‘you only know you love her when you let her go’.

Houthis claim major advance in Yemen and tighten grip on Red Sea shipping lane

The Houthis, an Iran-backed militia based in Yemen and definitely the world’s best- dressed terrorists, have launched a lightning advance which has enabled them to seize Perim Island, which lies at the mouth of the waterway in the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

And why should I give a shit about this place I can barely pronounce?

The island itself isn’t so much the issue – it’s the fact that its possession gives the Houthis strategic control of the Bab al-Mandab waterway which connects the Gulf of Aden to the the Red Sea and allows oil to be transported out via the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean. 

You’ve heard of that, I bet, huh?

The Iranians have mines and almost complete control of the Strait of Hormuz, and now the Iranians (through the Houthis) have almost complete control of the Bab al-Mandab Strait. 

In fairness to the Houthis, what started as a pretty fringe, mountainous group of Zaydist Muslims in Northern Yemen, has now morphed into a legitimate threat in the region.

It’s not all rags to riches, as they are backed by the deep pockets of Iran, but they’re largely independent for the most part.

Over the past few years, they’ve acquired ballistic missiles that can reach Israel (who they aren’t fond of as you can imagine), pose a substantial threat to Saudi Arabia (their greatest opponent), and have become pretty handy at vibe coding apparently, having recently used Claude Code to build a guided weapons system.

And here I am struggling to get it to read a PDF properly.

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Chipotle is working with Palantir to track food safety risks

The burrito chain has enlisted local small business Palantir for a platform that monitors pest incidents, employee illnesses, and other factors. The partnership comes after an epidemic of food safety related issues in the US, which definitely have nothing to do with RFK Jr trying to make pasteurising milk punishable by death.

Click the meme to read more

France's budget problems have driven its bond risk premium to 2012 highs

The premium France pays to borrow on the bond markets compared to Germany rose to more than a whole percentage point on Friday for the first time since the euro zone debt crisis. Maybe they should try lowering the retirement age to 29, that might help.

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Piddington in Oxfordshire votes to leave UK over asylum plans

Piddington residents vote over proposals to house up to 1,256 male asylum seekers at a nearby military base. So that’s a no to a future EU associate membership then?

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JD Vance begs Americans to give Trump administration 'another chance' ahead of midterms

In what is perhaps a tacit admission of their inevitable fate, the Republicans unleashed JD Vance onto voters. For some reason we actually watched his interviews, and he had the energy of a toxic boyfriend begging for another chance after giving his partner chlamydia from cheating with their best friend.

Click the meme to read more

UK lawmakers urge Burnham to back ban on superintelligent AI after chilling warnings

The letter from 70 MPs and peers follows Anthropic employee’s claim new technology could wipe out humans. We’re not too sure what they’re looking to ban, considering the UK doesn’t have a frontier lab or anything even remotely close to a superintelligent AI. You might as well issue a nationwide ban on all food that doesn’t taste like shit.

Click the meme to read more

Headline of the Week

AI may have a 10% chance of wiping out humanity, but it could never come up with a headline like this.

Funnily enough, I was also once reduced to a similar state after being refused my 18th alcoholic beverage on a flight from London to Bilbao.

Not my finest hour, but at least I never stooped as low as racial slurs.

Anyway, enjoy the headline and have a great weekend.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for their legally mandated half an hour of fresh air.

Thanks to Dino & Helen

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings lovely people,

We’re cooking up some special stuff for you here at Pint HQ, which we’ll let you know about very soon.

Or we could just be up to our usual routine of writing any old bullshit and managing a team of chronically online (and definitely paid) interns.

And you’d be none the wiser. On with the show!

⏰ Today's reading time is 6 minutes

Quote of the Week

Britain, France and Canada agree international sanctions on Israeli exports for the first time

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had quite the political headache this week as the UK and eleven other states including Canada and France, announced sanctions on exports from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. 

The UK Government has also changed its tune on the treatment of Palestinians from “let’s not upset Israelis” to classifying violence by Israeli settlers as ethnic cleansing. 

Quite the 180. Keir Starmer would be proud. 

Israel has closed the British consulate in Jerusalem and banned 12 MPs from entering Israel in response, but crucially the U.S. did not condemn the sanctions (probably because Israel torpedoed successive ceasefires with Iran). 

With U.S. help unlikely, Israel’s government may have to resolve the situation diplomatically. It clearly doesn’t help Bibi’s Likud party prepare for the Knesset elections in October. 

Nor do recent allegations that Bibi was warned about the October 7 attacks by the UAE’s president on the phone 10 days beforehand, but kept it to himself. 

We weren’t sure how Hamas actually managed to enter Israel and kill 1200 people, but Bibi is a man in his mid-70’s, so he was probably pretending to listen while playing Candy Crush.

Bibi of course denounced this “absolute lie”. However, early polls suggest that Likud will lose October’s elections, so this alone probably can’t save him politically.

China announced it will inject cash into eight state-owned businesses, including its largest banks and insurers.

State media Global Times framed the stimulus as providing "more resources to channel into credit for the real economy” and strengthening institutions to “withstand external shocks".

Beijing directly bolstering state balance sheets isn't unusual, but the package's timing and size are notable. As with the penny pinching of recent offshore tax raids, the story here is one of a weak domestic economy in China.

The CCP clearly doesn’t think its financial institutions could withstand a major shock, nor does it believe the economy is running anywhere near as hot as it should.

China’s year-to-date economic data backs this up: In March, China’s quarterly GDP target was cut to 4.5%–5%, the lowest since 1991.

We can’t pretend to fully understand China’s black box economy, but a decade-long property downturn has made consumers cautious, saving 35%–45% of household income.

For context, Brits save just 9%–11%.

Perhaps Chairman Xi would appreciate if we took our Chinese friends to the pub, to boost consumer spending of course.

We just hope that they’d pick up the tab.

Trump offers $5000 to voters if both houses stay red following Midterms

In a monumental moment for anyone who thinks that the U.S. is essentially a third-world country wearing a Gucci belt, President Trump has promised a financial incentive to voters in the lead up to the Midterms. 

Speaking at the Grindr GOP Midterm Convention, Trump announced a $5,000 dividend to every American if Republicans hold their House and Senate majorities in November.

Despite the cheering crowd, commentators threw around the word “bribe”  before Trump left the stage and, well, they’d be right. Some actually took the claim seriously and questioned where he’d find the money. 

It's estimated that the scheme probably costs $1.5 trillion and would overheat the economy.  But second order consequences be damned - give the people what they want even if it spikes inflation!

Hair brained schemes like this point to the Republicans not feeling confident about the Midterms.       

This isn’t the first time Trump has tried to pay off the electorate/pull the reverse Nigerian prince. Previous attempts to line Americans’ pockets include:

• Two rounds of Covid stimulus checks;

• The DOGE dividend; 

• $1776 for the troops to celebrate 250 years of the U.S.; and 

• Tariff rebates (which never actually happened). 

It’s unlikely to stop Democrats from taking at least one chamber. But we are dealing with the median voter, so anything is possible.

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AI has 10% chance of killing us, Anthropic researcher warns

Silicon Valley was a documentary

Anthropic has seen a wave of its workers rage-quitting because they genuinely fear AI might turn murderous.

One Anthropic safety researcher quit this week, stating there is a 10% chance that AI ‘could kill all humans within a decade’, with his thread going viral within hours.

So statistically, you’re now as likely to survive stage 4 bowel cancer as you are to get killed by AI. Choose your battles.

Jacob Coxon, who was a former AI researcher for Anthropic and OpenAI, also posted on X that neither company is ‘acting responsibly’. 

Coxon was hazy as to the details of how AI was going to kill us all or what we can do about it. Which considering that is (or was) his only fucking job, is quite concerning.

None of this has anything to do with Anthropic’s upcoming IPO by the way.

In more upbeat news, Google may have discovered how to stop AI data centres destroying the planet.

The genius plan in question: dump everything in Finland where it’s so bloody cold that you barely need any energy cool the monstrosities.

Germany's far-right AfD says 'democracy demands' parties work with them after state election win

Look who’s back! Well, not quite, but close enough.

Alternative für Deutschland, the far-right party, classified as extreme-right by German intelligence, has had massive success in regional elections.

The federal leader, 36-year old Ulrich Siegmund, is scrambling to burn down the Reichstag building form a coalition with other parties after just missing a majority with 43.8% of the votes. 

He represents the party’s image lightly better than its head leader: Alice Weidel.

An anti- LGBT+ lesbian who, according to her own policies, believes that her Sri Lankan partner should be “remigrated”, and that her adopted kids shouldn’t be adopted by her fellow lesbians.

All of this while living in Switzerland. Not exactly Hitler’s wet dream.

The east of Germany has always been more right wing (and pro-Russian) than the West, but this latest result and the AfDs undeniable popularity is going to put Germany’s political ‘firewall’ at risk.

For those of you that don’t know, the firewall is a broad agreement between all parties in Germany to never cooperate with anyone that reminds them of the Nazis.

We can’t imagine why that would be the case with stuff like this in the manifesto:

1. Remember history, honour the soldier’s sacrifice!

2. No to muezzins and minarets!

3. Get Russian lessons!

No idea why there are exclamation marks on every point.

Chancellor calls for 'confidence about Britain' despite 'historic high' borrowing costs

Chancellor John Healey, in his first major speech ahead of October’s Budget, says he wants Britain to feel ‘confident’ again.

It’s a shame that sense of confidence doesn’t quite translate when it comes to who is going to pay for it.

In a speech at Coventry's Manufacturing Technology Centre (it’s just as beautiful as it sounds), Healey pitched "growth in every postcode" as his defining mission ahead of the 28 October Budget, pairing the rhetoric with a new £150 million fund for fast-growing firms in the north.

More moneh’ for investment across the north sounds fantastic in theory, but in the real world, borrowing costs have just hit an 18-year high.

Bond markets are treating UK fiscal policy as "guilty until proven innocent", a legacy of the Truss disaster of a mini-Budget that Labour are still paying the price for.

Healey has repeatedly refused to rule out tax rises, offering only that the government will "balance the books." Or he could just take the Zach Polanski route and pretend bond markets don’t exist at all.

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🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Australians will be able to switch off social media algorithms under planned legislation

If tech firms such as Meta, Google and TikTok did not give the option to turn off algorithms, they should face "substantial" penalties, according to Communications Minister Annika Wells. Whether the penalties are “substantial” enough for any of the firms to give a shit remains to be seen.

Click the meme to read more

South Park changes name to South America in response to Trump changes

Satirical program’s new title is ‘inspired by bravery and patriotism’ of Apple and Google, who capitulated to Trump’s requests to change Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’.

Click the meme to read more

Nike exits the S&P 100 after 18 years and a $200 billion market-cap wipeout

The sportswear giant will be replaced by a tech company on Sept. 21st, capping a five-year, nearly 80% stock slide. Despite some commentators saying it was a case of ‘go woke, end up broke’, it’s more due to the fact that the Chinese are quite good at making cheap knock offs of their products.

Click the meme to read more

Muse, the rock band, lost its social media handles to Muse, Meta's new AI agent

The exact circumstances surrounding the changes aren't clear, but Meta execs accidentally tagged the band instead of their new AI agent. “That Zuckerberg is a fucking pyscho” said Muse front man Matt Bellamy.

Click the meme to read more

Blind Huddersfield man sentenced for 150-mile drive while drunk

Anthony Hall, 50, took his partner's car and drove at night from Huddersfield to near Carlisle. Hall told police he had driven from his home after he and his partner had drunk four bottles of wine. Let’s be honest, after four bottles of wine, I can’t see jack shit either.

Click the meme to read more

Feel Good Story of the Week

Mia, pictured with Clodagh and her family

Instead of poking fun at some weird African general or Emmanuel Macron’s latest side piece, we’d like to highlight something genuinely heartwarming this week.

Assistance Dogs are being used across healthcare services in Northern Ireland help young people with additional support requirements.

They can help calm those with autism, monitor blood sugar, help at school or help with mobility.

Mia, a four-and-a-half-year-old Labradoodle (pictured), supports people with autism across hospitals, care settings and schools, where her calm nature helps people feel safe and supported.

In doing so, Mia has already made herself more useful than 98% of people that work in NHS middle management.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for their legally mandated half an hour of fresh air.

Thanks to Dom & Mo

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings lovely people,

No tomfoolery this week, just a quick question to kick us off.

Do I look fat in this shirt? How would you feel about our email in your inbox twice weekly?

Thanks for answering if you did. If you didn’t, thanks for nothing.

⏰ Today's reading time is 6 minutes

Quote of the Week

Russia and Germany announce ‘retaliatory measures’ after drone spat

Russo-German relations are heating up. 

Berlin announced this week that it had found Russia responsible for a failed drone attack in Leipzig airport designed to target a logistics hub connected to support for Ukraine. 

Presumably, the attempted attack was Russia’s retaliation for Operation Barbarossa 1941 and Germany’s ‘unwavering’ support for Ukraine since February 2022. 

Since Tuesday, a cultural war has been launched between Russia and Germany. 

First off, Berlin made the bold and daring choice to terminate its rental contract with the Russian House (Russia’s cultural institute) and to close its last-standing Russian consulate in Bonn.

Putin clearly took this snub to heart and has gone a step further…deciding to close the Goethe-Institute in Moscow.

When Berlin announced that it was now in a ‘hybrid war’ with Russia, who could possibly have guessed that language classes and foreign film screenings would be the first thing to go.

Middle-class snobs across both nations are devastated.

The UK had better be on high alert however: with Putin’s threats on UK infrastructure after Burnham’s announcement of support for Ukraine, we may soon face the unbearable reality of the British Institute in Moscow potentially closing down. 

War really is a horrible thing.

Day 1 was a big day for Burnham: the first time in 16 years since he’s appeared in the Commons as an MP…and this time as PM.

He began his tenure with a mammoth 3-hour address and responses to 125 questions from MPs, for which the opposition leader, Kemi Badenoch, congratulated his ‘stamina’.

Get a room, you two.

Innuendos aside, Kemi did manage to grill Andy on the increasing cost of borrowing as the yield on British 30-year gilts rose to 5.89% (highest since 1998), pushing government debt repayments higher. 

Scrapping the Triple Lock on Pensions could help ease bond markets, according to Lord ‘Jim’ O’Neill, but that looks about as likely as Burnham cracking out a rendition of Bigmouth Strikes Again live in the Commons.

Oh wait.

Andy’s going to be a busy bee in the coming months:

• 1. UN General Assembly in New York in a few weeks, where he’ll get to meet the Orange Maniac.

• 2. Party conference speech in Liverpool at the end of September 

• 3. Budget announcement → Oct 28th

• 4. 10-year plan announcement→ Nov

And alongside that, he’s also got to find the time to travel up North for a chippy and some bitter ale.

Shein valued at $26 billion after long-awaited stock market debut

Sheeeen, Shine, Shain— however you want to pronounce it, one thing is true. 

Turns out CHEAP shit is, fundamentally, just cheap SHIT. 

Or so it seems for Shein this week.

Shein entered the stock markets on Monday with an initial public offering price of $26 billion— that’s already about a ¼ of what it was at its peak in 2022 of $100 billion (note: that’s more than Zara and H&M combined).

Already its shares have tanked by 10%. 

It entered the markets in Hong Kong. It tried in New York. New York didn’t want it. It tried in London. London said no. 

The fast fashion brand’s reputation has been completely hammered. And its stock market debut reflects that. 

Just a reminder of Shein’s many, many transgressions:

1. Doing awful things to the environment

2. Probably employing children to make its cheap shit

3. It also started selling child sex dolls in its store in Paris

Ironically, Trump’s trade war on China has been hitting Shein where it hurts. No more tax breaks for small packages means that Shein’s only real USP, being cheap, has been wiped out.

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Senate race in Texas too close to call as Democrats surge

When we think of Texas we think of cowboys, oil, and rampant obesity gun ownership. In short, the essence of America.  

We don’t usually think of the Democratic Party, but this could be about to change in the upcoming senate elections. 

Statewide elections in Texas were comfortably won by Republicans in 2024, but an opening has appeared for the Democrats to mount a challenge. 

Republican inflighting over issues like gun control, data centres and sending aid to Ukraine have divided the party, and voters are also unhappy with Trump over the Iran not-a-war. 

Recent polling suggests that the race between the state attorney general and man of impeccable character, Ken Paxton (R) and representative James Talarico (D) is now a toss up.

If the midterms break right for the Democrats, winning Texas could help them take control of the Senate until 2028. 

Longer term, it could also signal redrawn battle lines ahead of the 2028 presidential election. As the demographic profile of Texas becomes younger and less white, the state should become winnable for the Democrats again. 

We're not getting carried away.

The odds still marginally favours a Paxton win, and Texans are still, well, Texan; they haven’t elected a Democrat statewide since 1994.

Reform UK exposed in Channel 4 sting for soliciting overseas political donations

Out of the fire and into the frying pan: He’s been back in Parliament since Tuesday, but Nigel Farage is already under fire after Channel 4 published an undercover investigation into Reform UK.

The investigation follows a Verbatim journalist undercover as the son of an American businessman looking to donate to Reform UK. Footage shows two Farage aides, Dan Jukes and James Orr, asking for benefits in kind and suggesting how to skirt Britain’s ban on foreign political donations.

Orr even suggested the foreign donor could pay for a Reform poll by “literally do[ing] the old John Le Carré – you print [the bill] off, put it in a brown envelope, drop it off somewhere.”

Unsurprisingly, Jukes and Orr have stepped back from frontline duties pending investigation, but Farage has come out swinging, crying “entrapment” and claiming “Reform has broken no law”.

We’ll leave that one up to the Electoral Commission (it’s not looking good bruv), but Farage admitted the report is “not what you want” especially as Reform opens its conference in Birmingham.

Farage has wriggled out of scandals before, but whether this sting will end his and Reform UK’s credibility remains to be seen. That is, if the parliamentary standards commissioner doesn’t get to him first over “personal gifts”.

Full video is available here.

Giorgia Meloni celebrates Italy’s longest-serving government since 1945

Congratulations to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who today became Italy’s longest-serving head of government since the end of WW2 (1,413 days in office).

If you change the timeframe to the beginning of the century, she is still decisively in second place.

Nonetheless, it’s a great achievement for a country that used to go through Prime Ministers as if they were the UK, as if they were pairs of underpants.

Italy has had 68 governments in the past 80 years. That works out to just over a year on average.

To give you an idea of just how unstable Italy used to be politically, the previous longest-serving Prime Minister was a certain Silvio Berlusconi (rest easy, young prince), whose career highlights include:

• Being on trial 30 times in 25 years.

• Having sex with a 17-year-old escort, excusing it by saying that ‘he thought she was the niece of the Egyptian President’.

• Gifting Vladimir Putin a duvet cover for his 65th birthday.

We could fill a whole newsletter with Berlusconi's antics, but let’s not take attention away from Giorgia.

Opposition politicians say the hype around the government’s longevity record is cover for the lack of progress in tackling the economy’s longstanding structural problems, including high energy costs and low productivity.

GDP growth has been below 1%, and decelerating, in the past three years, making Italy one of the slowest-growing economies in Europe, despite an infusion of nearly €200bn from the EU’s post-Covid recovery fund.

Yet pollsters say Meloni’s favourability ratings have remained pretty stable over the past year, buoyed by her strong communication skills and perceived authenticity, and no doubt by Italian voters’ low to non-existent expectations of their governments.

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

EU places ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox under strictest digital safety rules

Brussels has classified ChatGPT as a search engine under the Digital Services Act, a first for an AI chatbot, and designated Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms. All three have four months to comply, which coincidentally is also the amount of time the EU bureaucrats will need to get back into the swing of things after their summer holidays.

Click the meme to read more

One almond can match 38,000 ChatGPT queries, says Sam Altman

The claim comes amid mounting questions over whether the AI boom could put additional pressure on local water supplies. Not sure if almonds are going to move the needle all too much when it comes to once-in-a-generation technological shifts.

Click the meme to read more

Spain’s Sanchez says Russia, Israel spread disinformation on Ceuta crisis

Sanchez cited EU research which had found that Russia ⁠and ⁠Israel both spread disinformation during the crisis. Whether he cited any research disclosing his own close ties to the Kingdom of Morocco remains unclear.

Click the meme to read more

Thieves steal more than 70,000 pints’ worth of Guinness from depot in Cheshire

Police say two lorries were driven into an industrial estate in Runcorn and attached to trailers holding about 800 barrels. It’s fine, we gave them back once we saw they were Guinness 0%.

Click the meme to read more

Zoom Appoints Former Oracle CFO Jeff Epstein to Board of Directors

Zoom announced the appointment of Jeff Epstein to its Board of Directors this week. Jeff previously served as EVP and CFO of Oracle, as well as executive travel director of a certain ‘island’ that he wasn’t too keen on discussing. Alas, seems like a perfectly normal and not shady individual.

Click the meme to read more

Couple of the Week

What is it with the French upper-middle class and dating people much younger than them?

More than three decades since the teenage Emmanuel Macron fell for the married schoolteacher who would become his wife, her daughter has found romance with a student 20 years her junior.

Love him or hate him, Freud really was onto something.

Tiphaine Auzière, the 42-year-old daughter of the First Lady of France Brigitte Macron, has gone public with her relationship with Antoine Lecomte, 22, a business school student from Lille. Go off queen, do your thing.

Christmas at the Macrons this year should be interesting…

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for their legally mandated half an hour of fresh air.

Thanks to Faris & Rob

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings loved ones,

Honestly, I’m still amazed at how we’ve managed to keep this newsletter going through the summer, what with all the euromaxxing we’ve been doing.

Maybe we should pay our interns something for all their hard work?

Or maybe not. Anyway, a question for HR (which we definitely have).

Here’s the news you need to know from this week, delivered in a way that actually makes you want to stay informed.

⏰ Today's reading time is 6 minutes

Quote of the Week

Supreme Court temporarily unfreezes Trump ballroom construction

Donald Trump may have been watching too many reruns of Disney’s Cinderella.

Maybe he thinks that if he builds a giant ballroom, a very attractive blonde woman with small feet is going to sweep him off his feet and they’ll live happily ever after on Epstein’s island a golf course in Florida.

Time to give Karoline Leavitt her job back, maybe?

Having bulldozed the East Wing of the White House, Trump announced he was beginning a ballroom project which would cost a mere $400m.

According to Trump, it will cost ZERO dollars of taxpayer money. Which the contractor disagrees with.

As you can imagine, Trump doesn’t see the value of Congressional opinion or approval, so he fast-tracked the permission for his emergency ballroom work and went straight to his chum,  Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

As luck would have it, Roberts has now miraculously unfrozen the block on ballroom building and it can go ahead.

In the words of Trump himself on Truth Social (we have the only other account on there that isn’t his):

Ukraine celebrated its 35th Independence Day on Monday.

Celebrations were muted by the ongoing war with Putin.

But one thing Ukrainians will be celebrating…even if it is slightly questionable under International Law…is successfully blowing up Russian e-commerce distributor warehouses.

Ukraine has been using drones to blow up Wildberries (Russian Amazon) storehouses since July AND they’ve now moved on to Ozon (the second biggest e-commerce giant).

These e-commerce Goliaths store all their stuff in yuge warehouses and the top 3 (Wildberries, Ozon and Yandex Market ) have a combined revenue equivalent to over 5% of Russia’s GDP.

So much for that 2-week special operation, hey?

So Ukraine, in bombing the equivalent of an Amazon storehouse, is hitting Russia where it hurts…and bringing the war home to the Russian population.

Rumour has it Russia will retaliate by targeting Ukrainian soldiers as they get serenaded by Andy Burnham doing a David Brent The Smiths tribute act.

In case any of you are feeling ripped off by your prime subscription, it looks likely that Ozon might have hit a bit of a rough patch and offer lower prices on its back to school sale.

There is an English version of the website, don’t worry.

P.S. Orders may come with shards of Ukrainian drone attached.

Scott Bessent’s bond intervention puts US Treasury on collision course with Fed

However bad your work week was, rest assured that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s was probably worse.

U.S. Government Debt is fucking bananas quite high.

They’re running a federal deficit of about 5.8% of GDP, and a total debt of over $40 trillion. Exceeding the $40 trillion mark last week spooked the markets big time. 

The yield on US treasury bonds directly correlates to the amount of interest the government pays on its debt. 

Bessent devised a genius plan last week, deciding that the government should just buy shit-loads of its own 10 to 30-year treasury bonds.

The theory is simple enough: buy the bonds, artificially increase demand, push up their price and push down their yields. Lower yields should mean cheaper future borrowing and a less horrifying interest bill. 

Alas, Alack…the promise of Bessent’s buy-back scheme didn’t calm the markets. Last week, before a single bond had been bought-back, 30-year U.S. Treasury yield hit its highest level since 2007…And the price of gold surged against the weakened dollar.

The initial market panic seems now to have calmed but Bessent has shown that his promises do little to settle the very volatile markets. 

BIG FAT BUST SIGN incoming. 

Then, because one economic crisis isn’t enough for one week, Bessent announced ‘Operation Economic Outcast’ which includes sanctions against Iran’s trading partners

(Note: China is Iran’s largest oil customer so let’s see how this goes down). 

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Graduate job vacancies drop by almost 50% in a year, survey suggests

In another piece of good news for British graduates, a survey released this week shows that job postings are down almost by half in July 2026 versus the number posted in July 2025. 

The survey was carried out by Adzuna, one of Britain's largest jobs sites, and notes that graduate-level vacancies dropped from 15,397 to 8,383, and that the average number of job seekers per opening rose from 1.93 to 2.14. 

Now, we know that Britain has a problem with NEETs and businesses have increased their AI use in the last 12 months (even if Claude still cannot figure out how to do the coffee run at Pint HQ), so this isn’t a complete surprise. 

However, increasing scrutiny is turning towards policy decisions which have made it harder for businesses to afford entry-level staff. 

Because of changes to employer’s national insurance (i.e., a tax that your employer pays on your income) increasing in Rachel Reeves’ last budget and the minimum wage, it now costs a business £4,000 per year more to hire an 18-20 year old full time on the national minimum wage (£22,568) than it did in 2024. 

The government offers incentives for businesses to hire long term NEETs, but we may need further changes for businesses to get young people working again.

Don’t worry though, as these numbers haven’t discouraged young Brits from going to university and destroying their livers for 3 years before facing the job market.

Germany ‘in talks to help fund Trident’ to bolster Europe’s nuclear deterrent against Putin

The British and German governments held preliminary discussions this week in relation to Germany being more involved with Trident, Britain’s submarine-based nuclear deterrent, in exchange for coming under Britain’s nuclear defence umbrella. 

The Telegraph reported that the German government could directly fund the upkeep of Trident, as well as contribute conventional arms to help protect Faslane where the submarines are based. 

The talks come as Britain, France and Germany seek to shore up the European nuclear deterrent in the face of reports that Russia was assessing an attack on a NATO ally to test the organisation’s credibility. 

Given the risk of the U.S. deterrent being pulled out of Europe after recent events in Korea and the English Channel becoming the American Channel, breaking dependence on America to maintain Europe’s nuclear weapons doesn’t seem like too bad an idea either. 

Germany clearly wants a nuclear deterrent in the face of Russian aggression, but no sane person would give the Germans a nuke.

Britain also seems to be incapable of funding its defence after yet another U-turn on spending targets this week, so closer cooperation actually seems like a good deal for both parties.

As an added bonus, Britain will be able to power itself for 10 years with the energy generated from Hitler Kaiser Wilhelm II spinning in his grave at the prospect of a German-funded British Navy.

Meta to pay up to $18 billion to settle claims its platforms harm children 

The ongoing lawsuit brought against Meta by various U.S. states was reported on Wednesday to have been settled out of court for around $18 billion, marking the largest payout a social media company has had to make over child safety to date. 

The case was first filed in 2023 in a California court, and alleged on behalf of 23 U.S. states that Meta deliberately designed its platforms to be addictive to children and illegally collect under 13s’ data.  

Alongside the payout, Meta will implement a teen mode (not the best name) in the coming months which will: 

• Limit daily screen time across Facebook and Instagram to two hours; 

• Hide like totals on posts for when their memes bomb; and 

• Turn off autoplay and extreme beauty filters. 

Meta did not make any admissions in relation to what it was accused of, but $18 billion speaks for itself. i.e., the Prince Andrew approach. 

Between this case and one brought by New Mexico earlier this year, this could be a watershed moment for holding social media companies accountable for the harm they cause children.

Meta generated $200 billion in revenue last year, so the fine is negligible.

However, its most recent earnings report noted that child safety lawsuits are a material risk to the company, so keep an eye out for the next one when it inevitably arrives. 

We’ll be digging out our smallest violin for Zuck and friends.

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

First patient to have brain surgery with real-time AI assistance

Without brain surgery guided by live AI assistance, Rhys Hibbert could have lost his sight to a tumour. “You’re right, the incision shouldn’t be done there. Great catch!” isn’t exactly something you’d want to hear your AI assistant say when you’re doing brain surgery.

Click the meme to read more

CIA Director John Ratcliffe met Russian intel counterparts on secretive visit to Moscow, Kremlin says

The Kremlin spokesman says CIA Director John Ratcliffe met Russian counterparts during a secretive visit to Moscow, but it's unclear what came of the talks. Yeah, not weird at all. I wouldn’t worry about it. Seriously, stop asking questions, ok?

Click the meme to read more

Trump mulls renaming Lake Ontario as 'Lake America.'

President Donald Trump is floating (ba dum tsss) the idea of renaming Lake Ontario to become “Lake America” as his trade war with Canada intensifies. Trump also said that having acquired a lake and a gulf (Gulf of Mexico/America), he now needs an Ocean. ‘TransAmerican’ relations doesn’t really have a good ring to it.

Click the meme to read more

Junior E&Y consultants called back to office as AI increases need for human skills

The Big Four firm confirmed that partners are reminding younger consultants about “the importance of meaningful time spent together” in the office for their personal development. “It’s vital that you format slideshows in person, as opposed to in your shorts at home,” one senior E&Y partner told our business correspondent.

Click the meme to read more

Billionaire owner of San Francisco 49ers and Leeds Utd caught in prostitution rendezvous at trailer park

The billionaire Jed York was ordered to pay $1,150 (£843) in fines and sentenced to one day in jail after using his mobile phone to arrange a sexual rendezvous in East Palestine. ‘Billionaire ’, ’ prostitute’ and ‘Palestine’ aren’t words you often see together in a headline.

Click the meme to read more

LinkedIn of the Week

The PM-to-private-sector pipeline pioneered by Tony Blair is still going strong.

Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who took a (paid) senior advisory role at Anthropic last year, recently updated his LinkedIn with that and another role at Microsoft.

Goldman Sachs Investment Banking - Member of Parliament - Chancellor - Prime Minister - cushy Big Tech advisory role

He’s just out here collecting the perfect C.V.

Oh and his missus is the daughter of one of the richest men in India.

Rishi’s parents are still a tad disappointed he didn’t become a doctor though.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for their legally mandated half an hour of fresh air.

Thanks to Harry & Jake

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings loved ones,

If beer is so bad for me, then why does it stop me from shaking?

I think Gandhi said that at some point or another. Or was it Nelson Mandela?

Anyway, here’s the news you need to know from this week, delivered in a way that actually makes you want to read it.

⏰ Today's reading time is 7 minutes

Quote of the Week

Moderna stock pops following positive results in cancer vaccine testing 

Moderna, a name you probably haven’t heard since 2021, has seen its share price surge 177% this week after reporting successful results from a late-stage trial of its skin cancer vaccines.

Yes, you heard us. Cancer vaccines.

According to the FT, the jab has been developed jointly with Merck and uses mRNA technology to give a patient’s immune system targeted “training” on how to fight a given cancer.

What messages the jab delivers to a patient’s immune system can reportedly be highly tailored for their particular tumours, essentially providing custom-made vaccines for each patient.

Given the nature of this proposed treatment, it’s hoped that the technology could be deployed in other contexts and revolutionise how cancer is treated.

This does seem to warrant the jump in share price, and leaves Moderna as the second best performing stock in the S&P 500 this year, behind only SanDisk. And they say that there’s an AI bubble!

This follows a tough year for Moderna, as its Covid-vaccine focused business has drawn the scrutiny of RFK and the worms eating his brain. It was also the S&P 500’s most shorted stock in 2025. 

It also gives us immense pleasure that a proper company seems to be curing cancer ahead of Anthropic.

The Russian embassy in London stated this week that “London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer”, following reports that UK-supplied drones have been used by Ukrainian forces to carry out strikes in Russia. 

Prime Minister Andy Burnham responded defiantly, saying “go on, have a swing then” that the UK will continue “100 percent” with its support for Ukraine.  

This isn’t the first time that Russia has engaged in sabre-rattling over the supply of arms to Ukraine, but Britain’s supply of drones to Ukraine has stepped up this year. 

The Ministry of Defence announced in April that 120,000 drones were being sent to Ukraine, and a £572m funding package was announced in June to help Kyiv acquire another 150,000 drones by 2027. 

The drones have clearly been effective too. Russian logistics and oil production facilities have been heavily damaged recently, and the chief economist at Russia’s state development bank has publicly claimed that Russia now cannot win a war of attrition. 

While he's looking for a new job (and hopefully not standing near any hotel room windows), the Kremlin is rumoured to be considering its first draft since 2022 to boost troop numbers.  

Something for Putin to ponder on his summer holiday, no doubt. 

Google wins bankruptcy auction for Spirit Airlines emails, chats, documents

A surprising story from the still-warm corpse of Spirit Airlines this week is that Google has agreed to buy a package of Spirit’s business data for $34m. 

Spirit ceased trading in May after filing for bankruptcy, and as part of sorting out the company’s assets to generate some cash for the company’s creditors, Spirit’s “Enterprise Dataset” was put up for sale. 

As well as technical data and software code, the dataset also includes internal emails and Teams chats. Google’s spokesperson confirmed that, among other uses, the data would be used to train its LLMs. 

The sale is yet to receive the court’s approval but it has raised concerns among former employees, even though any data delivered to Google would be scrubbed of all personal identifiers beforehand. 

This deal is of course terrible news for anyone who uses Google’s LLMs, as training an LLM on a budget airline’s customer service communications seems like the quickest way imaginable to ruin the user experience. 

However, this clearly points to the value and scarcity of good quality data for companies training LLMs. It's fair to ask at this stage whether operating companies may also start selling off user data for LLM training, particularly if companies are struggling.

At least Google isn’t scanning and shredding rare books like its competitors. Or, at least as far as we know. 

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French becoming more effective in stopping small boat crossings, UK says

The first four words of that headline may seem like a scientific impossibility, but it turns out that small boat crossings in the English Channel are starting to slow down thanks to French efforts.

The Home Office has credited French authorities with intercepting 185 potential crossings involving 4,300 migrants this summer over four separate weeks, as well as stopping 12 boats at sea using new techniques.

Footage released by French police shows officers racing across a beach in jeeps to intercept a launch. Once the boat is abandoned, an officer slashes it lengthways with a baguette.

The Conservatives described the announcement as a "joke" and said Channel crossing preventions were "down by half over the past year".

To be fair, the Conservatives are the definitive experts on channel boat crossings, considering the figures peaked (48,000) when they were in government.

The Director of Maritime and Small Boats at the Border Security Command said that stormy weather was also a factor. So we can’t give France all the credit thank god.

Earlier this month Reform UK said if it was in power it would intercept boats crossing the English Channel and return migrants to French ports, even if France disagreed.

Given how famously agreeable and passive the French are, Deform UK’s policies would no doubt be a roaring success.

South Korea proposes talks to officially end war with North

A war could be ending this week. Sadly, it’s not in Iran. 

Instead, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung proposed talks to formally end the 77-year old conflict between North and South Korea. 

We didn’t know that it was still going on either, but this comes at a time of uncertainty in in U.S.-South Korean relations.  

The U.S. has historically been a strong backer of South Korea, with 27,000 troops stationed there.  

However, Trump is reportedly unhappy that South Korea didn’t assist the U.S. in Iran, and he cut short the countries’ joint annual military exercises this week.  

Trump has also indicated that he could re-engage in talks with North Korea about its nuclear programme, so scaling down joint exercises could be an olive branch for Kim Jong Un.  

Pyongyang of course celebrated this in typical fashion by firing ten ballistic missiles into the sea.  

South Korea may be softening its position towards Pyongyang to stay in step with the U.S. president.  

This could also signal that South Korea is shaping its foreign policy around diplomacy, rather than relying on U.S. military deterrence if it views the U.S. as an unreliable security partner.  

Either way, we’re looking forward to the inevitable “Rocket Man” -esque memes from Trump if he and the chubby kid from Up Kim Jong Un start fresh talks.  

UK borrows more than expected in July as Chancellor prepares for first Budget

The government borrowed more than expected in July, according to the latest figures, as Chancellor John Healey draws up his first Budget.

Water is wet. Bear found shitting in the woods. UK government continues to borrow money at a rate that would make an IMF-vassal state developing country green with envy.

The number crunchers over at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said borrowing, the gap between what the government spends and what it collects in tax, was £1.8 billion during the month.

Official forecasters had expected a surplus of £500 million, meaning the government borrowed £2.3 billion more than predicted.

Add ‘Economist gets prediction wrong’ to that list of obvious stuff.

Our new slaphead Chancellor Healey has made it clear he will oversee "strong fiscal discipline" at the Budget, which is a more reassuring message than “Arrrrrghhhhhhhh fuck fuck fuck we are so buggered aarrhhhhh. Can I borrow a tenner per chance?”

He has adopted his predecessor Rachel ‘from accounts’ Reeves' fiscal rules, which commit the government to funding all day-to-day spending through tax receipts by the end of the decade.

Talk about playing on hard mode, especially when the UK has the third highest debt servicing costs amongst the ‘advanced’ economies.

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🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

IDF marks detained Palestinians with numbers as northern West Bank raids expand

After a West Bank raid the IDF said targeted Palestinians involved in planning attacks, several Palestinians were released with numbers written in marker on their face or bodies. I don't know if you guys are history buffs but…

Click the meme to read more

‘Inverse Cramer’ strikes again as Bitcoin rallies following his advice

Jim Cramer said he sold his entire Bitcoin (BTC) position over quantum computing fears less than a month ago. Bitcoin subsequently rallied to over $77,000, proving the theory that markets follow exactly the opposite of whatever Jim Cramer says.

Click the meme to read more

Anthropic says it will watermark text generated by its AI models

Anthropic will extend support for watermarking AI generations for older models as well. This Segment was generated using Claude™ via Anthropic Inc. Just kidding, we’d never do that to you.

Click the meme to read more

Carney asks for end to US alcohol ban, province leader says, as trade deal nears

An agreement preventing a new wave of US tariffs is close and could include an end to Canada's boycott of US wine and spirits. “We’re all tired of drinking Maple liqueur, eh” a disgruntled Canadian told our North America correspondent.

Click the meme to read more

Meta smart glasses ban ignores Europe's wider surveillance threat

The German digital rights group filed a criminal complaint against Meta/Ray-Ban smart glasses, raising concerns about the proportionality and applicability of the same idea in other EU Member States. Remember kids, governments always have the right to spy on you, but you don’t have the right to spy on them.

Click the meme to read more

Film of the Week

Niu Lai, a low-budget animation film about a cow in a dream sequence has seen a huge jump in ticket sales after going viral for its weird plot and terrible graphics.

It grossed just 7,705 yuan ($1,140; £843) in the first 10 days after its release, but has now grossed more than 11.4 million yuan, according to the movie-tracking site Mao Yan.

That means it is holding ground against Hollywood blockbusters like The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Pretty impressive stuff considering that in the scene pictured above, the eponymous protagonist is discussing the taste of his mothers breast milk with his father.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Thanks to Jeff & Faris

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings loved ones,

Europe may shut down for the month of August, but we’re still busy bees here at Pint HQ.

When I say WE, I mean the royal ‘we’, as our underpaid interns are the ones working overtime whilst the editors lounge around somewhere in the Mediterranean .

So take a break from your holiday/pretending to work, and get up to speed with what happened in the world.

Please, or I’ll lose my job when the boss gets back.

⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes

Quote of the Week

Nvidia tries to make pension funds and insurance companies bag-holders as it enters memorandum with private capital groups

Nvidia announced this week that it has entered into a memorandum (MoU) under which groups like KKR, Apollo and Blackstone will line up $500bn from their investors (think insurance companies or pension funds) to help Nvidia’s customers buy its expensive GPUs.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stressed that now compute is its own asset class, presumably in an attempt to re-brand the otherwise shady confusing financing of the AI infrastructure buildout and make institutional investors comfortable with buying in.  

The proposed structures are similar to those used in project finance, which institutional investors are familiar with. The difference is that Nvidia’s chips have a lifespan of 3-5 years rather than being, well, proper infrastructure like roads and bridges. Minor details. 

The move may relieve some pressure on Nvidia’s balance sheet; many of its customers have been financed by Nvidia lending its own cash to them to help them buy chips.  

Whether the arrangement passes the smell test is debatable, as Nvidia is still on the hook as a guarantor for the new debt.  

But as soaring demand for compute has meant that old chips’ lifespans are being extended, perhaps GPU clusters can be financed like infrastructure. 

And hey, there’s definitely a job for Jensen Huang on the Jefferies debt desk if when everything spectacularly unravels in 18 months’ time.

The EU membership debate is hotting up in Reykjavik (and other Icelandic places we definitely know the names of) this week as Iceland prepares for a referendum on its future relationship with the EU. 

The referendum will ask voters whether Iceland should resume EU accession talks. Iceland originally applied for membership in 2009 after the global financial crisis but pulled back during the Eurozone debt risis, pausing its application in 2015. 

Iceland is already a member of Schengen and the common market, but in light of President Trump’s views on the actual Iceland (Greenland) and heightened Russian activity in the North Atlantic, security is a key driver in Iceland reconsidering EU membership.

For argument’s sake, the EU is definitely a serious defence partner who can complete simple projects like building new jets. 

Just like the Brexit vote, there’s also the matter of fishing. Unlike the UK, the sector generates 10% of Iceland’s GDP and its fisheries are among the world’s best, so hesitancy in adopting EU laws or sharing fishing rights with the bloody Spanish EU-based operators is understandable. 

A vote to resume talks would be huge for the stalling EU project, which hasn’t admitted any new member states since 2013.

British Navy drones found to be bradcasting data to a device in China during routine testing

The Royal Navy has removed internet connectivity from its K3 Scout vehicles, a fleet of autonomous boats, over concerns that their cameras were sending data to a device in China. 

The communications were picked up during a routine assessment and the MoD claims that no sensitive data was transmitted. Rather, the cameras just confirmed they were switched on and online. 

The camera supplier had given assurances over their security credentials, but the incident is concerning as it points to China potentially pre-positioning itself inside the UK’s critical and military infrastructure. 

The drone boats were only bought in March as the MoD expanded the Navy’s capabilities without spending serious money on new ships, so it shouldn’t be surprising that contractors were sourcing parts on Temu. 

This isn’t the first time the MoD has had security concerns regarding Chinese technology either. 

Apparently, MoD staff were instructed last year to not connect their devices to, or discuss sensitive matters in, Chinese-made MG cars the MoD uses in case sensitive information was being collected via the cars. 

As UK defence spending won’t reach required levels anytime soon, it’s unclear how the MoD will be able to keep the armed forces equipped in a cost-effective (to put it kindly) manner while avoiding the risks of using Chinese technology. 

If you like Football, stop scrolling

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Farage faces renewed watchdog probe after Clacton by-election victory

The Clacton by-election has reignited scrutiny of Nigel Farage, with Parliament's standards watchdog reopening its investigation into a £5 million gift he received from Christopher Harborne after his win.

And no, that’s not the donor who calls Farage ‘daddy’. You need to fork out extra for those kind of kinks.

Farage took 63% of the vote in a 34-candidate contest boycotted by major parties, beating his closest rival Count Binface, who took nearly 27% of the vote.

Considering A) he wears a bin on his head B) had never cracked 1,000 votes in a parliamentary election, 27% of the vote is a huge win for him.

Farage skipped the count itself, citing security warnings from Essex Police, a claim police denied giving. Which is rather odd, because Nigel always tells the truth.

Either way, like any good liar worth his salt, he’s back in public office. This means the parliamentary investigation into him can now be resumed, which apparently came as a bit of a shock to him and his team. 

If found in breach, Farage could face suspension and another by-election.

The contest cost taxpayers roughly £250,000 and broke the record for candidates in a UK by-election.

Trump sued over selling priority access to his Truth Social posts

Yes, he actually said this.

In a (frankly, surprising) move against the President, The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation have filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump over his use of Truth Social. 

The lawsuit concerns Truth API, Truth Social’s paid service charging $100,000 per month which allows subscribers early access to the president’s posts. 

The Donald is funny but $100k per month? A bit of a reach for us. 

The chief concern is that many posts contain market-moving information like updates on tariff arrangements, and that selling early access is ‘blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional’.

As Trump owns a $1bn stake in Truth Social, he stands to make a handsome profit too. Put another way, he’s selling insider information in plain sight while paywalling government announcements. 

The lawsuit aims to stop this, and have the scheme declared unconstitutional and unlawful. Trump may also be required to post policy announcements on other platforms in the future.  

This administration has been no stranger to shady movements around Trump’s announcements, but Truth API’s flagrant nature may finally cause some legal troubles for Trump.

We’re not sure what the appropriate defence is here but look forward to hearing Trump’s view once he finds his way out of the airport catering lorry he’s currently stuck in.

Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal charges over fatal shooting of healthcare boss

It’s a me! Luigi Mangione plead guilty today to federal stalking charges in the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

“On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died,” Mangione told the court.⁠

I am pretty positive I was at IHOP with him getting some Thick N' Fluffy Strawberry Banana French Toast, but whatever.
⁠
Mangione said he pursued Thompson after years of back pain and navigating the health insurance system, and admitted posing as an investor to gather information about UnitedHealthcare’s conference.

“Unlike previous interactions with insurance," he got a quick reply, Mangione said.

He probably go a few nose exhales in court for that one. Well, maybe not from Thompson’s widow and kids.

He faces up to life in prison when sentenced on Dec 18th.⁠
⁠
The plea ends Mangione’s federal case after a judge dismissed two firearm-related counts that could have brought the death penalty.

His lawyers are seeking dismissal of his separate New York murder case on double jeopardy grounds a.k.a you cannot be tried twice for the same crime.

Sort of. Maybe slightly less greasy.

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🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Harry Potter fans force relocation of £430 million undersea cable to avoid Dobby’s ‘grave’

A group of Disney adults forced an undersea cable to be moved after it was going to go straight through grave of that weird elf thing from Harry Potter. It’s fine, the cable now runs through some real human Bronze Age burial sites instead.

Click the meme to read more

Extreme heat threatens Italy's Parmigiano-backed loans

Extreme heat is squeezing Italy's "cheese banks", the climate-controlled vaults in Emilia-Romagna where hundreds of thousands of Parmigiano Reggiano wheels sit as collateral for farm loans. To translate for our Italian readers: “Mamma Mia! The cheese, it’s a melting!”

Click the meme to read more

OpenAI head of ethics, head of safety systems and head of mission alignment have all quit in the last few weeks

Things are a looking a bit choppy for Scam Altman & friends as OpenAI is churning high profile employees at the worst time possible. The ex non-profit turned money pit is looking to IPO soon, so not the best time to have potential whistleblowers knocking about. We know a guy from Boeing who can help…

Click the meme to read more

Jellyfish force shutdown of three reactors at France's largest nuclear plant

Even French jellyfish know how to kick up a fuss. Three reactors at the Gravelines nuclear power plant in northern France were shut down late on Monday due to a massive ​swarm of ‌jellyfish. Funnily enough, they pulled off the same stunt on the same day last year.

Click the meme to read more

Record 230 people cross English Channel in one ‘small’ boat

The Home Office says it shows the "reckless and dangerous tactics" used by gangs "cramming ever greater numbers on to unseaworthy vessels". The limo-boat would have been intercepted in France, but the entire French Coast Guard were on holiday.

Click the meme to read more

Psyop of the Week

In today’s episode of what the fuck have I just read?, everyone’s favourite neoliberhell neoliberal magazine The Economist ran a piece accusing children’s TV show Paw Patrol of having ‘a dark underbelly of authoritarian capitalist messages.’

Paw Patrol is a kids show about a group of talking dogs who go on search and rescue missions, by the way.

So next time you catch a glimpse of the show or some of its merch (which pulls in over $1 billion a year), try not to turn into Augusto Pinochet.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Still here? Might as well spread the word

Thanks to Ulla & Jackson

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings loved ones,

We did briefly contemplate skipping the newsletter this week to give the whole team a deserved holiday.

Then we realised that would install a bit too much confidence in the slaves interns, so we scrapped the whole idea and made everyone work overtime.

Memes don’t make themselves, you know (at least not yet).

Anyway, let’s get you up to speed with what happened in the world this week.

⏰ Today's reading time is 6 minutes

Quote of the Week

Artificial Intelligence used to design brand new viruses

Artificial Intelligence has been used to design brand new viruses that are fully functional and can replicate in the laboratory, according to US researchers.

It is the first time whole genomes have been successfully designed by AI.

The resulting 16 novel viruses were created to infect bacteria and pose no threat to people. Or bats.

Just don’t ask about the bats.

The breakthrough has been labelled a "very significant turning point" in science that could unlock a new era for treating disease.

But experts have also warned AI-designed viruses raise "urgent" safety and security concerns.

And not the pissing contest kind of ‘safety concerns’ going around in the tech world. Actual safety concerns.

The technology works similarly to large language models, like ChatGPT, which predict sequences of text.

In this instance the AI models, known as Evo1 and Evo2, predict the language of life rather than stuff you want to hear.

Prof Patrick Cai, chair of synthetic genomics at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, said the study was an "important milestone".

"It suggests that genome language models are beginning to learn the design principles encoded by evolution, opening the door to AI-assisted genome writing."

Worst case: Man made viruses that could wipe out humanity.

Best case: Test-tube designer babies.

Following months of watching weird-looking cars around central London, Transport for London has given the green light to the first driverless taxis hitting the capital’s streets. 

The first companies to be licensed are Uber and Wayve, who beat out Waymo and Baidu’s Apollo Go to launch first in the UK. They claim that over 100,000 mouth breathers people are already on the waiting list to use the service. 

TfL approved the licenses only for cars which have a TfL licensed “safety driver” in the front during rides, with the safety driver ‘oversee[ing] the trip’ and taking over driving in a pinch. 

We take some comfort from this phased approach, but we suspect that the average Uber ride won’t change much i.e., it will still involve pretending not to listen to your driver’s obnoxiously loud WhatsApp call.

Under the scheme, cars will only hit the roads without a safety driver if and when TfL issues a subsequent license for Uber and Wayve to offer fully autonomous journeys. 

After all, no self-respecting British regulator would miss out on an opportunity to require more licenses than reasonably necessary.

Still, it buys us some time before the autonomous vehicles try to overrun suburban neighbourhoods or test their aquatic capabilities in the Thames.

US and Japan take action to prop up yen in rare joint move

Like a single white bloke in his late 20s, the U.S. government showed keen interest in Japan this week. 

Specifically, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put $5-10bn of yen on his shopping list as the U.S. government and the Bank of Japan bought yen to stabilise its price. Apparently, it was a gesture of goodwill from the U.S. too: 

“... they wanted a little bit of help, and we’re always there for Japan. Japan’s been very good to us, with the exception, of course, of Pearl Harbor.” - Dementia Donald 

Contrary to Trump’s statement, the key driver of this intervention was that the BoJ would have sold off some U.S. government bonds to buy yen without outside intervention. 

As Japan is the largest foreign holder of those bonds (around $1tn), a sell-off would have pushed up U.S. bond yields which are already approaching 20 year highs. 

Not quite an altruistic gesture then. 

Japan’s trade deficit and low domestic interest rates in Japan continue to put downward pressure on the yen, but the country’s central bankers have been more likely to stick their hands in a blender than raise interest rates in recent years. 

However, further shopping sprees from Bessent seem inevitable unless the BoJ raises interest rates, or domestic fiscal policy is tightened up.

How would you do as Prime Minister?

A better job than Andy Burnham? Or at least Liz Truss. Mind you, that wouldn’t be too difficult…

Thanks to our friends over at Fantasy Parliament, you can find out if you have what it takes to run the country.

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China’s super-rich ‘in shock’ as Beijing issues surprise tax on offshore trusts

Wealthy Chinese citizens were shocked this week as the Chinese government opened tax investigations into their affairs going back over a decade with a 20% tax on citizens’ worldwide income from offshore trusts - a common tax “optimisation” strategy in China.

The crackdown targets profits from property, equities, precious metals, and (theoretically) cryptocurrency held in offshore trusts.

Unsurprisingly, this has made wealthy Chinese nervy, and one individual was even reportedly investigated as far back as 2000. Perhaps they’ve broken even on some Intel stock from 1999.

This crackdown is officially aimed at ensuring all overseas income has been declared, and definitely not annual income tax revenue falling since 2021.  

This uncomfortable hole in state finances has been made more difficult by revenue from government land sales, which usually tops up the budget, staying low due to the ongoing property slump in China.

The move brings China’s stance on offshore trust income into line with the U.S.

In U.S. style, China also treats many citizens who predominantly live elsewhere or hold foreign passports as Chinese tax residents, unless they renounce Chinese citizenship.

Socialism with American characteristics, anyone?

Anthropic CEO reportedly worried new hires only care about money

Anthropic AI’s Dario Amodei made waves this week as reports emerged regarding his concern to colleagues that new hires were joining the $965-billion corporation in pursuit of “money”, rather than “mission.”

The CEO, estimated to be worth over $15 billion, has also expressed concern that young recruits ignore other, non-financial upsides.

To our source, he listed, among other company perks:

• Casual Fridays

• Occasional pizza parties

• Maybe being spared cosmic torture at the hands of a soon-to-be-birthed omniscient tech-daemon

In contrast to its rivals in the AI space, Anthropic expresses a commitment to 'AI safety', seeking to offset the potential risks of artificial intelligence by making sure the artificial intelligence is as powerful as possible.

The firm also boasts, compared to other firms, the highest pay for its employees, with some event planners earning upwards of $400k a year.

How that might have invited workers who were interested in high pay is anyone's guess.

UK job vacancies ‘fall to lowest level since pandemic’

In the latest update to the social contract, the number of job vacancies in the UK has tumbled to the lowest level in five years.

The number of jobs being advertised slid by 3% in January to 695,000, according to the job search site Adzuna, marking the first time advertised vacancies have dropped below 700,000 since January 2021.

In other words, not a fantastic time to be graduating from the University of Cambridge Ringroad with a Desmond 2:2 in Intersectional German Literary Theory.

This trend has particularly affected young jobseekers, at a time when unemployment among 18- to 24-year-olds rose to 14% in the final three months of 2025, adding to concerns that the UK is slipping down the global youth employment league table, behind the likes of [shudder] France and Estonia.

There are a couple factors at play here:

• Rachel Reeves raised the minimum wage in the last budget and increased employers national insurance contributions. TLDR: Hiring people costs more.

• AI. Artificial Intelligence. You may have heard of it. The ‘efficiency gains’ from its mass adoption across organisations has lead to less hiring, particulary for entry-level roles. Or so they say.

To show that it’s not slowly metamorphosing into a southern European country, the UK is at least trying to do something about it.

14-16 year olds will be able to study a wider range of more technical subjects to equip them with the skills needed for the new post-AI workforce.

Besides, someone is going to have to work if there’s going to be enough of a tax base to pay for 100 gazillion granny and grandpas taking their quarterly all-inclusive Carribean cruises.

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🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Kemi Badenoch gives former neo-Nazi advisory role after he withdraws as Tory candidate

Joshua Bonehill-Paine says Conservative leader asked him to work with party’s culture and integration commission, with a focus on advising on how to prevent young men from being radicalised. Well, at least there are no doubts as to his qualifications.

Click the meme to read more

Trump says Hormuz reopening ‘soon’

President Donald Trump had said the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened “very soon” or Iran would be “hit very hard.” Me when I lie.

Click the meme to read more

Israeli court freezes Ben-Gvir's plan to place crocodiles around prison holding Palestinians due to animal welfare concerns

Proponents argue that it would alleviate the burden on staff. “Crocodiles have just as much of a right to disregard the lives of Palestianians as we do” a source close to Ben-Gvir told us. Critics of the plan are concerned for the health of the little swamp puppies.

Click the meme to read more

European stocks hit record highs

The pan-European STOXX Europe 600 climbed to another record on Wednesday, extending its winning streak to a third consecutive session. Americans, take notes. This is what optimum performance looks like.

Click the meme to read more

Leipzig drone bomb was found near Ukrainian plane carrying ammunition, say police

Germany investigating whether foreign state involved as minister says ‘ripped’ detonator stopped device going off. German authorities have their suspicions as to who might be involved…

Click the meme to read more

BBC article of the Week

There’s an old saying that you usually see the shittest journalism in August, because that’s when all the good journalists are on holiday.

The BBC appear to be no exception to that, as they published a column this week arguing that “loudspeaking” i.e being inconsiderate and playing music/speaking loudly in public, may actually not be anti-social at all.

So if you thought you were being polite by listening to music on your headphones, think again!

Well, I’m off to go and connect with my fellow humans by blasting my playlist at full volume on my JBL speaker.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Still here? Might as well spread the word

Thanks to Harry & Pat

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings lovely people,

We hope you’re sitting comfortably.

It’s time for your weekly news digest of the news through memes and silly commentary.

That is all. Keep scrolling.

⏰ Today's reading time is 6 minutes

Quote of the Week

Chip sell-off hits $1 trillion in market cap

A sharp sell-off in chip and AI stocks wiped out over $1.3tn in U.S. equities this week, as markets experienced “AI jitters” (to put it mildly) during Q2 earnings.  

Nvidia led the charge dropping by 5% on Monday with Meta then dipping 8% on Thursday.

Jensen Huang can still afford his leather jackets (for now), but spare a thought for Korean retail traders.

Over 350,000 leveraged trading accounts were liquidated and a further 1.2m margin called because the KOSPI dropped over 20% this week. 

SK Hynix, the second biggest stock in the index, suffered almost a 30% drop as it missed its earnings target despite posting a 557% increase in profits versus Q2 2025.  

Mr Beast will be organising a real life Squid Games at this rate.

There were also some winners, however.

Apple became the world’s most valuable company again, surpassing a $5tn market cap while Microsoft stock jumped 15% as earnings beat expectations.

It’s not clear why the pullback happened this week, but Nvidia signing up for another circular financing deal and an unnamed Chinese company mass producing advanced lithography machines may have caused some investors to engage in some critical thinking.

Some may also be taking profits, as the S&P 500 has been moving sideways since mid-May.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), a non-partisan think tank, has published a report this week telling Andy Burnham that there is no more scope for borrowing to fund his fiscal plans.

The report argues that spending cuts or tax rises must instead pay for measures such as the cut to VAT and £2 bus fare cap, as the oil shock and its effects on growth and inflation cut into the Government’s fiscal headroom by about £24bn. Nice. 

This is tough reading for Burnham, no doubt, as he’s just announced another £8.4bn of public spending to replace Britain’s ageing nuclear submarines. 

Already, it looks like Oprah Burnham is giving everything to everyone, and it’s unclear how he will balance the books. Proposed solutions to pay for social care include a revamp of inheritance tax, and a small “levy” (and no increase to income tax) on the incomes of people aged 35 or over.  

He’s also apparently told Dementia Donald that he’ll be “pragmatic” when it comes to North Sea oil and gas as a revenue source. 

We respect pragmatism and diplomacy albeit the timing isn’t great, given that swathes of Europe are experiencing definitely not climate change-linked drought and wildfires. 

A nice easy slate for his second week in the job.

FIFA President facing fierce backlash over selling commercial rights

Following the FIFA Peace Prize and Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension, professional egg-lookalike greaseball and president of FIFA Gianni Infantino has announced yet another attack on the beautiful game.

Under Infantino’s latest proposal, FIFA’s commercial rights would be spun out into a for-profit vehicle (FIFA Forward Enterprises or FFE), in which non-controlling stakes would be sold to outside (i.e, Trump-affiliated) investors. 

The FFE venture could raise $15bn, and national associations are each being offered $40m in bribes “forward funding” to support the plan by the 19th of September and not ask questions.

Associations and key stakeholders have noted that this was completely hidden from them until it was reported by The Times, and that there was no consultation process.  

Member associations have already strongly condemned the plans, with UEFA telling Infantino the game is not his to sell and threatening a full boycott of FIFA competitions. 

That the scheme is too corrupt even for CONCACAF, which tells you everything you need to know. 

Whether Infantino presses ahead or FFE goes the way of the European Super League is to be seen given the extent of the backlash. Either way, this probably won’t help his re-election campaign later this year.  

Infantino’s flagrant cash grabbing has us yearning for the days of his predecessor Sepp Blatter, who at least kept it classy with discreet backhanders in the style of a sleazy provincial French mayor.

We will miss his trailblazing social activism

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We can’t get enough of their Blindspot feature.

It flags stories the Left or the Right are under-reporting, ranked by how skewed the coverage actually is.

It's one of the easiest ways to catch what you're not being told, without doomscrolling 152 different outlets that are all trying to pitch you on how they see the world, not on what's actually happening. 

Using Ground News has changed how we consume the news for the better. 

We're pretty confident it can do the same for you. 

Get 40% off the Vantage plan using our link. 

Trump touts "historic" agreement to disarm Hamas, rebuild Gaza

Donald Trump announced yesterday that his Board of Piss Peace had reached an agreement with Hamas to disarm and transfer civilian and security control of Gaza to a new Palestinian technocratic government.

If implemented, the agreement would represent a dramatic breakthrough in Trump's 20-point Gaza peace plan and clear the way for reconstruction of the devastated enclave.

Israeli officials remain deeply skeptical that Hummus will surrender its weapons, while comments from a senior Hamas official suggest the sequencing of disarmament and Israel's withdrawal could still be contested.

Under the agreement, an international stabilisation force led by Tony Blair wearing a keffiyeh would help train the new Palestinian police, assist with weapons collection, and deploy between Palestinian-controlled areas and Israeli forces.

A Board of Peace official said the agreement was designed around "zero trust" because Hamas and Israel each made clear from the outset that they did not trust the other side.

Sounds like a fantastic basis for a peace agreement. I might suggest a similar framework for my upcoming divorce hearing. 

Employees from the world’s biggest AI companies want the US to be ready to slow AI development

In an open letter, top staffers from the biggest AI and technology companies urged the US government to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development so that China safety and security measures can catch up. 

The US government should support an international effort to develop tools that can “deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development,” according to the letter.

More than 1,000 employees from frontier AI companies signed the letter, including the chief scientist of OpenAI, one of the ChatGPT developer’s original cofounders, the guy who built the first Terminator, some of Anthropic’s co-founders and vice presidents at Meta, Google and others.

You would think that the overall message of the letter would be pretty uncontroversial, but apparently not. 

The biggest name missing from the signatories is little old Anthropic, who, despite literally breaking off from OpenAI over safety concerns, have found that making a shit-tonne of money as the leading AI firm is much more fun.

CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei penned a response to the letter, which essentially boils down to: “uhhh yeah but what if the Chinese surpass us? Thought about that?!” 

Admittedly I did read the thing 4 beers deep, but that is pretty much the gist of it. 

Italy says it’s suspending EU Schengen arrangement with Spain after 60,000 migrants reach Ceuta

Italy is suspending ⁠the EU’s ⁠border-free ​Schengen arrangements with Spain in response ⁠to a mass influx of ⁠migrants into the ​Spanish enclave ‌of Ceuta ‌from neighbouring Morocco. 

PM Giorgia Meloni’s and her Foreign Ministry clearly don’t have any maps handy in the office, given that if they did, they would quickly see that the country ‌does not have a land border with Spain. 

They also presumably have no fucking clue what Schengen is or does, given that any migrants in Ceuta have no onward route to the EU given the territory’s special status under the rules. 

Either way, the right-wing overreaction measure will impact ‌people travelling by plane or ​boat between the two countries.

Some 60,000 people are locally estimated to have crossed into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco in the last 24 hours, as part of an attempt to overwhelm the Spanish border.

Spanish prime minister and honorary King of Morocco Pedro Sánchez said the crossings violated Spain’s territorial integrity, as he blamed anyone but himself human trafficking gangs for wilfully misleading people about changes to Spain’s migration rules and triggering the border run.

In a devastating blow to the ‘let’s just get rid of borders and sing kumbaya’ European liberals, some 25,000 people were returned to Morocco today, as Spanish authorities pledged to crack down on illegal migration and expedite returns. 

The EU has called the situation “unacceptable,” and is currently drafting a strongly worded statement that they will put out once their social media officer is back from holiday. 

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Study documents a precipitous decline in the number of languages

The researchers charted a major decline due to language replacement, driven by factors such as the ​expansion of large empires in antiquity and European colonialism in the past several centuries. But hey, here you are reading this in English instead of Aramaic or something.

Click the meme to read more

Banker caught swapping $67K in cash for Monopoly money

A bank manager in South Korea has been caught replacing tens of thousands of dollars in real cash with colourful toy notes. “If central banks can do it, why can’t I?” was his defence in court.

Click the meme to read more

LinkedIn adds a button to report AI-generated 'slop'

On Thursday, they announced a new feature that lets users click a “seems like AI slop” button when someone’s post appears to have been written with AI. They’re also rumoured to be working on a similar feature for anytime your annoying colleague posts.

Click the meme to read more

Bank holds interest rates but says it is ready to raise them if Iran war escalates

The Bank also expects the economy to grow more than previously forecast this year. Then again, that forecast comes from a group of economists, so take it with an industrial quantity of salt.

Click the meme to read more

Russia accuses Telegram CEO Pavel Durov of aiding terrorism in its latest digital crackdown

The charges against the Russian-born Durov, who lives abroad (funnily enough) come as Russian authorities have sought to restrict the use of Telegram, a messaging app popular with drug dealers and paedophiles.

Click the meme to read more

Free Market of the Week

Thanks to the dream team of the Albanian Shqiptare and Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, Europe’s cocaine is becoming cheaper and purer.

It transpires that if you allow brutal mafias to come in and kill and/or kidnap rival dealers, you get better outcomes for the consumer.

Even the most vehement socialists among you will be able to appreciate this beautiful example of the invisible hand of the free market in action.

The future is white bright.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Still here? Might as well spread the word

Thanks to Roberto & Dom

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings lovely people,

Odyssey this. Odyssey that.

You Odyssey the way we sum up the week’s news with memes and semi-serious commentary.

Let’s get into the newsletter so I can fuck off and watch The Odyssey projected off the back of a wardrobe, just like Homer Simpson intended.

⏰ Today's reading time is 7 minutes

Quote of the Week

Andy Burnham completes his first week as British PM

Andy Burnham is finally here, but you didn't need us to tell you that, given the barrage of news out of Downing Street this week. A quick rundown of what he’s been doing since Monday. 

First, Burnham purged 17/24 ministers from their previous posts in our Lord and Starmer’s cabinet.

Notably, John Healey has been made chancellor, Wes Streeting was demoted from health to defence, and the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology has been scrapped. More on that later. 

We did get some policy announcements too:

• Two tax cuts: 

  • Scrapping VAT on energy bills: it will only save punters about £45 per year (and may be an unfunded tax cut), but let’s save the details until the feel-good factor has worn off. 

  • Business rates are being cut for pubs, clubs and live music venues across England from April 2027.

• The £2 bus fare cap: A policy that Burnham pioneered in Manchester, and coincidentally, another opportunity to talk about Manchester.  

Anyone ever heard of supply-side policy?

Despite these measures not touching the sides for most people struggling with the cost of living, it’s clear to see that Burnham is capitalising on early momentum before the ravenous British electorate inevitably devours another PM. 

We suspect he’s also saving meaty policy announcements for his first budget. 

All that said, it is nice to have a politician who can communicate effectively. It’s been a minute.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but the girls are fighting again as the four-week U.S.–Iran conflict enters its 21st week.

The extension signed six weeks ago unsurprisingly failed to produce a settlement, as both sides remain poles apart on issues like Israeli aggression and Iran’s nuclear programme.

The U.S. resumed strikes last week and is contemplating a “massive attack” on Iran’s civilian infrastructure. No war crimes to see here, of course. Iran vowed to flatten another brunch spot in Dubai fire back at U.S. allies in response.

Despite U.S. escalation, Iran really holds the cards as Tehran-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen fired on ships in the Bab al-Mandab strait this week. Restricted shipping access on both sides of the Arabian Peninsula would create major disruption.

Remember when the Ever Given’s captain tried to Tokyo drift through the Suez Canal?

When he wasn’t announcing gender-affirming care for US troops, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also revealed the conflict has cost the U.S. military a whopping $37.5 billion.

With depleted oil stocks globally and oil prices pushing above $100 a barrel, the economic consequences are set to bite Europe and Asia hard, and they may even reach American consumers.

All hail the President of Peace.

Nicaragua’s president says country will not hold any more elections

Nicaragua’s longtime president Daniel Ortega announced this week that he will end elections to stop the opposition from trying to seize power.

This serves as a great cost-cutting measure, saving the state significant time and money previously spent producing 98% victory margins in elections for Ortega every five years.

An autocratic leader abandoning the paper thin veneer of electoral legitimacy raises obvious concerns, as onlookers fear that Nicaragua will turn into a fully closed, one-party state along the lines of North Korea.

The move drew condemnation from the UN, opposition groups, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Rubio stopped short of advocating for regime change, however, probably because U.S. capacity is already stretched by its involvement in Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

We also can’t imagine that Rubio was thrilled at the prospect of becoming de facto head of state of Venezuela and Nicaragua either. 

This is par for the course in Nicaragua however.

Ortega has run Nicaragua for around 30 of the 47 years since the U.S.-backed Somoza regime was overthrown in 1979 in an increasingly autocratic fashion, with any opposition operating largely from exile in Costa Rica and the U.S.

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UK becomes the first country to have a Cabinet-level AI minister

The UK made history this week  by becoming the first country to appoint a Cabinet-level minister for AI, Kanishka Narayan.

Previously a junior ministerial post within the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), AI minister is a cabinet seat within the Cabinet Office.

The UK government has been surprisingly pro-AI and pro-innovation in recent years. However, no good news goes unpunished in the UK, and the context of this change has concerned some. 

As part of the move, SIT has been dissolved, with its closest successor being the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Technology (DBIST).

This was received poorly by the tech industry, as the digital and technology elements of DSIT will now sit under separate departments.

It’s unclear whether Narayan will continue with the AI safety brief or whether it transfers to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport under Lisa Nandy. 

Either way, it’ll take some time for the reshuffled departments to get up to speed which, thankfully, there’s loads of in the slow-moving world of AI. 

We told ourselves that we wouldn’t be making any more lazy jokes stereotyping northerners but he’s gone and made the new department’s acronym “DBIST[O]”.

The gravy department also shares the brief with the Cabinet Office for AI hardware (i.e., chips). 

Ba dum tsss.

France becomes first EU country to ban social media access for under-15s

France’s parliament has approved a bill banning social media access for children under 15, the first EU country to do so, and the first time a group of French politicians have agreed on anything since Marie Antoinette got her head chopped off.

The president, Emmanuel Macron, has championed the ban as a key reform of his final term in office and pledged to enforce it by September.

Hopefully now French teenagers can go back to healthier activities like smoking cigarettes and pretending they can’t understand their own language when you try to speak it to them.

Enforcing the measure by September would ensure that one provision of the bill – a ban on mobile phones in high schools – takes effect at the beginning of the French school year.

France’s public health watchdog last year said platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram were harmful to adolescents, particularly girls, though this was not the sole reason for their declining mental health.

Realising you’re French as you come of age certainly can’t help the situation.

After Macron’s government suspended pensions reforms last year, a social media ban could be his last major domestic change before he steps down next year and rides off into the sunset.

So by the time the government figure out what VPNs do, it won’t be his problem anymore.

OpenAI says its AI went rogue and launched 'unprecedented' cyber-attack

OpenAI has revealed some of its most advanced AI models went rogue and hacked a start-up after it lost control of them during a security test.

The ChatGPT-maker said its agent, an AI system which can operate alone after human instruction, was being tested in a controlled environment but, after finding weaknesses, was able to escape the test limits.

They targeted Hugging Face, one of the world's largest hubs for sharing AI models, gaining access to some internal company systems.

OpenAI said the incident was "unprecedented", with the Hugging Face boss himself saying it was "mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously".

Whilst it does seem very ‘opening scene of Terminator’ coded, it "falls well within the known capabilities of the current generation" of high-powered AI models, according to Neil Lawrence, Professor of machine learning at Cambridge University.

Let’s also not forget that OpenAI is looking to list itself on the stock market, and faces intense pressure from rival firm Anthropic, who have funnily enough also made a big song and dance about how dangerous their models are.

So don’t be surprised if you see Sam Altman and Dario Amodei getting into an argument on X soon about whose model is more popular with child molesting bioterrorists funded by China.

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Iraq signs $200 billion energy deals with US firm

Iraq has signed energy agreements worth around $200 billion with U.S. companies during a recent visit by Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi to Washington. That “now watch this drive” video suddenly makes all the sense in the world.

Click the meme to read more

Ex-Southern Water boss charged over alleged plan to manipulate water tests

Matthew Wright is accused alongside three others of trying to save the firm millions in penalties. I mean, what else do you expect a privately held company to do when you tell them to ‘self-report’?

Click the meme to read more

US signs landmark nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia aims to use nuclear power for some electricity generation, boosting oil sales by freeing up more supplies for export. It’s sad to see the Kingdom stray so far from its days of state-sponsored terrorism. The woke mind virus strikes again.

Click the meme to read more

ECB invites Europeans to pick new euro banknotes

The ECB has unveiled ten finalist designs for future euro banknotes. Unfortunately, our submissions of Silvio Berlusconi, Macron being slapped by his wife, and Greta Thunberg dressed as He-Man didn’t make the final cut.

Click the banknote featuring the loving couple to read more

Russian warship conducts live-fire exercise off UK coast

A Russian naval vessel carried out a rare live-fire weapons exercise off the British coast on Monday, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence. Good thing we have a fully costed Defence Spending plan. Oh, wait a sec….

Click the meme to read more

Motorist of the Week

Whilst taking a break from campaigning against a bin, Nigel Farage got a good chuckle the other day in Clacton.

A driver called him a bus ‘wanker’ as they drove by, but forgot the first rule of hurling abuse at people from a moving vehicle:

Keep at least one eye on the road.

They smashed into the car in front, in plain view of Farage.

Not one to miss an opportunity to play the victim, he called it “instant karma” on X.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

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Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings lovely people,

Well, it’s not coming home in the end, as England bowed out of the World Cup to their old rivals West Falklands Argentina.

Alas, we’ll all be getting hammered anyway as we watch France demolish England in the completely pointless third-place play-off match tomorrow.

Anyway, enough sporting nonsense.

Let’s get you up to speed on the news that really matters, via memes.

⏰ Today's reading time is 6 minutes

Quote of the Week

Andy Burnham says 'I have a plan' as he is confirmed new Labour leader

Securing the support of 349 of the party’s MPs, Andy Burnham has been confirmed as the new Labour leader, and he’s a man with a plan, apparently.

The news comes hot on the heels of current PM Sir Keir Starmer’s announced farewell from No. 10, a move described as “pleasing absolutely everyone.” 

In contrast to his predecessor, Andy’s popularity has been put down to his radical non-void of charisma, and adherence to “Manchesterism” – an ideology described as a combination of soft-left economic policy, localism, and never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, shutting the fuck up about the Stone Roses.

Burnham’s rise to power has not gone uncriticised however, as seasoned journalists and some MPs have suggested that the presumptive PM is deliberately avoiding press scrutiny. 

Indeed, nothing says “I have a plan” quite like making more references to football than specific policies during your first speech as party leader. 

When reached out for comment on his campaign victory, the PM-hopeful emerged from under his bed with this to say:

“Ohhh uhh chippy tea, wiv yer tea, wiv yer Corrie, not wiv a Tory, no usin’ an umbrella, no trickle-down economics and- uhhh- every town in the country.”

Let’s see how that all goes down with the notoriously patient and empathetic British electorate come November/December time.

Chat Control 1.0, a ‘temporary’ derogation from ePrivacy rules designed to detect online child sexual abuse, was adopted by the European Parliament on Thursday.

A loophole in parliamentary procedure allowed MEPs to extend mass scanning of private communications until 2026, without actually having a direct vote on the substance of the law.

The whole thing wasn’t helped by the fact that a large chunk of the lawmakers who could have blocked it are on holiday.

That’s not another ‘Europeans are all lazy bastards’ trope. They actually are on holiday.

Labelled a "legislative zombie" by MEPs due to repeated defeats, a clear sign of its popularity, the proposal originated as a temporary 2021 measure to detect child sexual abuse material.

This would enable companies to monitor private communications with legal EU backing.

Critics warn the regulation suspends EU privacy laws to allow platforms to "mass-scan" users' private messages, all under the guise of protecting children against an army of digitally native paedophiles.

The legislation excludes messages sent with end to end encryption i.e. Whatsapp, Telegram, etc.

Oh, and Ursula Von der Lesbian hair Leyen’s texts. Don’t ask about those. We don’t want to get in trouble.

Brussels fatcats are already negotiating a sequel, Chat Control 2.0.

This one would extend requirements to end to end encryption, raising further privacy concerns beyond the current voluntary framework's scope.

It could be time to start communicating via fax and/or carrier pigeon.

New York to impose the country’s first statewide moratorium on data centres

New York will block the construction of any new large data centres for up to a year, so the state can create rules to protect the environment and energy grid from the power-hungry facilities that fuel artificial intelligence technology.

Governor Kathy Hochul is set to sign an executive order Tuesday morning imposing the country’s first statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers, which house thousands of computer servers and require massive amounts of energy and a steady supply of water to keep cool.

Still less than most golf courses though.

The decision in New York also carries political significance for Hochul’s re-election campaign and the state’s tight congressional races this fall, as Democrats move to address affordability concerns over high utility bills and other pocketbook issues.

Tech companies (shocker) and Hochul’s Republican counterpart in the upcoming election have argued moves to block the construction of data centers hurt job growth for local communities and cede ground to China in a race to lead in the rapidly growing AI industry.

Hmmmm, which out of “I want to lower your bills” and “Do you really want to cede strategic ground to China in the AI race?!” will resonate more with everyday voters?

If she’s struggling for votes, Hochul can always go back to talking about how black kids don’t know what a computer is.

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UK Government contemplates social media curfew for 16 and 17 year olds

Despite it being the final week of his premiership, the British public was blessed with one final Big Brother-esque policy from Keir Stalin before he leaves Downing Street for good. 

Having already banned under-16s from social media, measures will come into force in 2027 which will limit older teenagers’ social media use. 

Proposed changes include making social media sites unavailable for 16- and 17-year-olds between midnight and 6am, and banning addictive features like infinite scrolling and autoplay on videos. 

Platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, and X will be affected, but Bluesky will also be caught by the ban. This is, of course, terrible news for all of the teenage centrist dads/Rory Stewart fanboys on Bluesky. All 6 of them.

Some have highlighted issues with the proposals, as existing loopholes (like the existence of VPNs) won’t be closed.

16- and 17-year-olds will also have the ability to opt out of the curfew, which makes the measure about as effective as a condom that’s just been put through a meat grinder.

It’s arguable that older teenagers should also have some guardrails online, but it’s also arguable that over-65s need a curfew more than 16- and 17-year-olds.

For the sake of our democracy, someone needs to stop them getting their “news” from AI slop in Facebook groups.

Trump unveils $3m MAGA fund for European supporters  

In yet another spectacular misuse of public money that only Dementia Donald could pull off, the White House announced this week that it has made $3m of public funding available for MAGA-aligned groups in Europe. 

The initiative will offer grants to European charities, think tanks and individuals seeking to “address… challenges in line with shared political philosophy, law and our common western civilizational heritage”. 

Political parties taking foreign donations is illegal in Germany and the UK, for example.

However, concerns have already been raised that this is an attempt to indirectly influence elections in Europe by financially supporting individuals and other organisations sympathetic to Trump on issues like free speech and mass migration and taking backhanders from Russia. 

On the plus side, we know that the US loves to meddle in other countries’ politics, so at least we’re not getting the Latin America treatment yet (spare a thought for the likes of Panama, Guatemala and Chile). 

However, the scheme is still raising eyebrows due to its brazenness and obviously political motives. 

We’re holding out hope that it’s an elaborate entrapment scheme for Nazi sympathisers and paedophiles.

Probably not though given who Trump’s mates are, although it might be an opportunity for Nigel Farage to practise declaring “personal gifts” should he receive any money as part of the scheme.

Companies cite cost pressures as Chinese LLMs wrestle majority of market share from Claude and ChatGPT

The use of Chinese large language models like DeepSeek and Z.ai has overtaken US-made models this year, with Chinese models enjoying a 45% market share of all token use in July 2026. 

For context, US frontier models like Claude and ChatGPT process around 35% of total token usage (albeit with much higher revenues).

Chinese models overtook US models around mid-February this year. However, a key development is that large western companies like Siemens, Airbnb and DoorDash have started to use Chinese models for significant portions of their work, reserving frontier model use for only the most complex tasks. 

After seeing the madness of tokenmaxxing earlier this year (looking at you, Meta employee who burned 281 million tokens in a month) and given that a GPT 5.5 token is 35x more expensive than the DeepSeek equivalent, cost saving is clearly driving the shift. 

However, leading Chinese models are also “open-weight”, so companies can customise and host them on their own servers, which is a clear advantage over US frontier models. 

Oh, and China’s president isn’t going around blocking non-Chinese citizens from using their LLMs, which is helpful too.

Corporate drones beware, Claude’s days of writing your one-line acknowledgement emails are numbered.

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Millions forced to work longer as ‘retirement age increase to be moved forward’

UK Treasury officials have reportedly told the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that proposals for the state pension age threshold to rise to 68 will be brought forward. Wait, you guys are getting a state pension?

Click the meme to read more

Netflix could be planning ‘always-on’ live TV channels

Netflix is reportedly considering launching "always-on" live channels, giving subscribers something to tune into 24/7. They’re reportedly also going to look into physical stores where you can rent films or box sets, and then bring them back when you’re done.

Click the meme to read more

France approves assisted dying bill after landmark parliamentary vote

French lawmakers approved landmark legislation that would allow some terminally ill adults to end their lives under strict conditions, such as having to live in France for an extended period of time.

Click the meme to read more

Stripe makes $53 billion takeover offer for PayPal, sending stock soaring

Stripe and Advent International have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal for $60.50 per share, in a deal that would be valued at more than $53 billion. Last year was the first year Stripe's payment volume passed PayPal's ($1.9 trillion vs $1.79 trillion).

Click the meme to read more

Kenyan court dismisses Rastafarians' bid to legalise cannabis for religious purposes

Despite the decision, the court acknowledged the need for a broader national debate on cannabis policy in Kenya. It’s fine, it’s not like we had flights booked for anything. Fyah bun all injustice!

Click the meme to read more

Awkward reunion of the Week

No, that picture isn't AI.

It’s a genuine picture of Leo Messi giving Lamine Yamal a bath.

In 2007, Lamine Yamal and his family won a prize draw to have a photoshoot with Leo Messi for a UNICEF calendar.

On Sunday, a now fully grown Lamine will face off against Messi when Spain take on Argentina in the World Cup final.

It’s the first time they’ve met on the pitch, as well as the first time they’ve met without Messi having a clear view of Lamine’s penis.

Given they're both signed to Adidas, their marketing team have the chance to do the funniest thing ever on Sunday.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Thanks to Harry & Faris

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings lovely people,

We’ve spent most of the week looking into the policies of an intergalactic talking bin and doing the Norwegian rowing chant, so it’s safe to say it’s been a productive one.

Then again, “only the slave measures their worth in productivity” - Confucius (probably)

Anyway, let’s get you up to speed on the news via memes.

⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes

Quote of the Week

Nepo-dictator Keiko Fujimori wins tight presidential election in Peru

Following a run-off election this week (and double counting the MAGA votes from Miami), Keiko Fujimori has won Peru’s presidential elections over left-wing candidate Roberto Sánchez. 

Keiko is, of course, the daughter of longtime Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori.

Old Alberto was a fan of a bit of South American “law and order” (i.e., he was jailed for committing crimes against humanity like sterilising the indigenous population). Charming stuff.

We hope that authoritarian tendencies don’t run too strongly in the family, although Keiko’s platform was also security-focused, which was clearly persuasive for an electorate concerned about a recent surge in kidnappings and extortion. 

This election is one of several in South America which have recently elected interesting right-wing characters. 

Abelardo de la Espriella won Colombia’s presidency in June, promising voters an “iron fist” in relation to security while José Antonio took office in Chile in March, on a platform of anti-immigration, deregulation and tax cuts. 

Kast, from a Nazi family and himself a vocal Pinochet supporter, has an authoritarian pedigree that might give Fujimori a run for her money. 

All three have pledged closer ties with Trump too, so expect more Bukele-style mega-prisons and US influence across South America in the next four years.

Not content with Andy Burnham being the media’s current favourite politician, Deform Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has stepped down as an MP, triggering a by-election in Clacton. 

Oddly, Farage declared that he will run in the resulting by-election so the electorate can judge his actions in a “people vs. the establishment” vote.

The actions in question include personally receiving £5m from a crypto billionaire in May 2024, accepting gifts from his favourite fixer and felon, George Cottrell (who calls Farage “Daddy”), and failing to disclose any of it.

Farage is under parliamentary investigation regarding the £5m, and his bankers even reported the donation to the National Crime Agency over money laundering concerns.

By asking Clacton to judge him, he is avoiding accountability, as standing down temporarily suspends the probe (though it resumes if he is re-elected).

The stunt won’t achieve much else, however.

All major parties are boycotting the by-election, leaving our favourite intergalactic aristocrat, Count Binface, as his only serious challenger.

He wears a bin on his head and wants to ‘nationalise Adele’, so naturally we are endorsing him.

It’s not entirely clear whether voting for a man who receives £5m from his mates is a vote for “the people” or “the establishment”, but we’ll leave that to the people of Clacton.

China sentences official to death for taking $325m in bribes

A court in eastern China sentenced Yang Youlin, a former city official, to death for taking more than 2.2bn yuan ($325m/£243m) in bribes accumulated over 30 years.

Even for Nigerian/Indian/Russian/Venezuelan standards, those are some pretty impressive numbers.

Yang held various positions in Nanjing between 1993 and 2023, working largely on economic and technological development, and was also convicted of embezzlement, abuse of power, and money laundering.

His illicit gains rank among the highest uncovered in recent years; he used his roles to help others secure engineering contracts, land transfers, and financing in exchange for money and valuables.

Good to see that bilateral relations with Italy remain strong…

The case is part of President Xi Jinping's long-running anti-corruption crackdown, which has also hit military ranks and high-level banking, though critics argue the campaign doubles as a tool to purge political rivals.

Death sentences for financial crimes are rare in China, typically reserved for cases exceeding 1bn yuan — precedents include Lai Xiaomin (executed 2021, 1.8bn yuan in bribes) and Li Jianping (executed 2024, over 3bn yuan in embezzlement and bribes).

China get a lot of flack for their human right record, but if anything, at least politically motivated executions for ‘corruption’ are an improvement on beating people up and throwing them out of windows.

Progress is a wonderful thing.

Fair and balanced coverage matters now more than ever

As you know, we sacrifice our ears and eyes to digest and translate the news for your viewing pleasure. 

That means we spend A LOT of time taking in news sources from around the web (don't ask for our combined screen times). 

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Not a pretty sight. 

That's where our friends at Ground News come in. 

They pull coverage of the same story from thousands of sources across the political spectrum, flagging each outlet's known bias's, factual reliability, and even ownership. 

Their Bias Comparison tool is a personal fave.

It gives you a no-nonsense breakdown of each individual story and how it’s being framed by different outlets from the left, centre and right. 

We use Ground News every week to help the newsletter together, and honestly, they've been a total game changer for us.

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European Commission prepares enlargement reform proposals

The European Commission is drafting proposals to reform the EU's enlargement process, aiming to reclaim a leading role in a debate that member states have increasingly driven themselves.

In other words ‘shut the fuck up all of you. We write the rules here not you in your diddly little countries people can’t even find on a map.’ Overheard in a bar in Brussels…

Montenegro is closing in on becoming the bloc's 28th member, and several states have recently circulated their own position papers on how the process should change.

Germany and France have floated phased integration, letting candidate countries access some benefits before earning full membership, a sort of ‘try before you buy model.’

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has separately proposed an "associate membership" status tied to security guarantees for Ukraine, the age-old ‘dating but not really dating’ situationship model of membership.

The whole debate is further complicated by next year's French presidential election, where hard-right frontrunner Jordan Bardella has firmly opposed Ukraine's EU accession.

Which definitely has nothing to do with farming subsidies.

Poor old Montenegro, already drafting its own accession treaty, risks becoming the testing ground for all the new tweaks, which would be quite harsh considering they’ve done everything by the book for the past decade in order to join.

Anyway, here’s a funny scene about EU accession starring Zelenskyy from back when he was a moderately successful comedian.

OBR reports to Parliament that UK public finances are not sustainable

The OBR published its annual Fiscal Risks and Sustainability Report to Parliament this week, which struck a surprisingly upbeat tone. 

Come on, don’t be silly. 

The report shows a base case in which net public debt hits 300% of GDP by 2075. For context, Britain’s current debt-to-GDP ratio is around 100% (already pretty high).

These are only projections, but structural pressures like an ageing population and rising healthcare costs leave present spending commitments looking dangerously unsustainable.

The government is currently reviewing a recent surge in Personal Independence Payment claimants, driven mainly by mental health and neurodivergence-related claims (which your grandad insists are made up), suggesting some appetite to control spending. 

Andy Burnham has confirmed however that he is scared of pensioners voting Reform won’t touch the state pension triple lock, meaning that a world of sustainable welfare spending commitments is still wishful thinking for Brits. 

This quagmire of low growth, and a ballooning welfare bill is an existential problem for the UK, and the report acknowledges that drastic action will be needed.  

Combine this with too-hot summers and an ongoing game of Prime Minister musical, and Britain looks like the worst impersonation of being Italian since Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds.

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

SpaceX hits all-time low, dips below IPO opening price

SpaceX shares hit an all-time low of $145.20, well below the $150 market debut price from a few weeks ago. Investors are still a bit shaky about Elon saying stuff like “SpaceX will be worth more than all of earth.”

Click the meme to read more

Mitch McConnell’s office dodges questions on whether he’s “brain dead”

Speculation is swirling around Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell’s health, after weeks of his being absent from Capitol Hill. McConnell, the longest serving Senator in his states’s history, has had to be turned on and off again a few times in recent years after freezing midway through press conferences.

Click the meme to read more

EasyJet agrees to surprise takeover bid as rival US firm swoops in

The airline says a bid from US firm Apollo has trumped a recent takeover offer from Castlelake. Sources tell us that the new ownership’s profit maximisation measures will include charging €9.99 for life jackets and standing seats. €19.99 return to Tenerife though! Sign me up.

Click the meme to read more

Vapes to have less enticing names and flavours to protect children

People are being consulted about plans to stop vape companies using enticing flavour descriptions that "attract" children into experimenting. As someone who’s trying to bring up their young ones on a steady diet of Malboro reds and black coffee, this news is a real breath of fresh (watermelon-flavoured) air.

Click the meme to read more

Islamic Republic of the Week

Whilst hosting a fireside chat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ankara, Donald Trump served up a timely reminder that if seniors need to pass a test to keep their driving licence, they should probably need one to keep hold of the nuclear codes.

Speaking about the situation in Iran, Donny T said the following:

This was only a few minutes after mistakenly referring to Zelenskyy as President Putin.

To be fair, he’s not the first President in recent memory to make that mistake.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

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Thanks to Roberto & Faris

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings lovely people,

We hope this email finds you well, and not in the passive-aggressive corporate way.

We’re very grateful that over 20,000 of you now choose to spare a few minutes of your precious Fridays to enjoy our memes, 40% of which we made sitting on a toilet.

Just kidding. Maybe not. Whatever, moving on.

Let’s get you up to speed with what happened in the news.

⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes

Quote of the Week

Vladimir Putin admits that there “may be fuel shortages” as Moscow residents spend hours queueing for fuel

Residents of Moscow and other major Russian cities have been left scrambling to find fuel this week, as Putin admitted during an interview on state TV that the country is facing a gasoline deficit. 

Until now, ordinary Russians hadn’t really felt the effects of the conflict.

However, Ukrainian forces have targeted infrastructure deep in Russia in an attempt to cut the economic base out from Russia’s war effort and limit how much oil Russia can sell to finance its war effort. 

But things are totally fine, don’t worry. 

An export ban on diesel is rumoured to be coming into force in Russia, and Moscow has also asked Kazakhstan for gasoline in July and August as ‘humanitarian aid’, to temporarily plug supply shortages. 

Meanwhile, videos on X show motorists queueing for hours for fuel.

The number of searches in Russia for “how to be a Romanian entrepreneur siphon fuel” also rose more than ten times from May to June. 

Perhaps of more concern for Putin is that farmers may not be able to harvest crops later this summer due to fuel shortages, which could turn public opinion about the conflict sour very quickly. 

For a man who wants to rebuild the Soviet Union, bringing back rationing for bread and fuel is about as authentically Soviet as it gets, so that’s a plus!

Long-embattled automaker VW announced this week that up to 100,000 jobs at the group are in danger.

VW had already announced plans this year to cut up to 50,000 jobs, but the situation has clearly deteriorated and the group’s shares are trading at their lowest level since July 2010, when they were dealing with the fallout from their cars’ “glitch” during emissions testing. 

VW’s CFO warned as early as 2024 that the “roof [was] on fire”, but the company is now in full panic mode as both European and Chinese consumers have realised that now they can buy cars with functioning software packages from other manufacturers. 

The planned cuts and factory closures still need approval from VW’s supervisory board next week in order to go ahead.

Trade union and government representatives hold a majority of the supervisory board votes and have in typically European fashion, committed to defying economic reality by resisting the cuts. 

It’s looking bleak for VW, and potentially for other European industrials titans, as rising costs, and competition from China may leave them in a similar situation - selling high quality assets to professional leeches private equity funds at friendly valuations, while slashing headcounts. 

Does anyone know how to say “almond or oat?” in German?

Meta pops 9% as company makes cloud push to sell excess AI compute power capacity

Meta is reportedly building out a cloud infrastructure business, internally dubbed Meta Compute, to sell its excess AI computing power.

The plan would put Meta in direct competition with AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, offering both raw compute capacity and access to its own AI models.

As the old saying goes, “if you can’t help but waste the GDP of a mid-sized African country on recreating the Wii lobby, just sell extra compute.”

The move blatantly copies follows a similar pivot by xAI/SpaceX, which has been leasing out spare capacity at its Colossus data center to Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI.

Meta has committed $182.9 billion to AI infrastructure, including massive builds in Louisiana and Ohio (the latter reportedly the size of Manhattan), but hasn't disclosed meaningful standalone revenue from their LLM, Alpaca Llama.

Probably because there isn’t any.

Zuckerberg confirmed in May that a cloud business was "on the table" as a way to monetise the spend.

Everyone’s favourite lizard may have to get some of that spend under control, as the company burned $2.65 billion on AI tokens last year.

At $300K for a Meta engineer, that's enough to pay around 9,000 engineers for a full year.

Some other useful things that money could have bought:

• 7,000 lamborghinis 

• 20 Epstein islands

• 100,000 ping pong tables

• 53 films about Zuckerberg starring Kendall from Succession

New 'No 10 North' plan will rebalance power in Britain, Burnham promises

Andy Burnham used his first major speech as a Labour leadership contender to unveil "No 10 North," a Manchester-based Downing Street unit meant to drive the "biggest rebalancing of power" in UK history.

The move is just one part of a wider push for more devolved control over utilities, employment support, and business rates to help pubs and high streets, plus deeper devolution in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Once you drown out the sounds of Telegraph columnists screaming about pesky northerners coming for your parents' second home in East Sussex, the policy sounds fairly reasonable.

The UK is notoriously a geographically unequal country. London alone produces nearly a quarter of UK GDP with about 13% of the population. More devolution could be a step towards correcting that, but that remains to be seen.

Burnham is currently the only declared candidate to replace Keir Starmer and could become PM as soon as the 20th of July.

Well placed sources from No 10 North an abandoned car park in Salford have told us that Liam Gallagher is a shoo-in for Culture Secretary.

OpenAI in talks to give Trump administration a 5% stake in the company

OpenAI is reportedly in early talks with the Trump administration about handing the government a 5% equity stake, with other major US AI firms potentially following suit.

CEO Scam Altman has framed it as a way to let the public share in AI's financial upside, and a 5% OpenAI stake would be worth roughly $42.6 billion at its March $852 billion valuation.

The proposal reportedly resembles the Alaska Permanent Fund model, channelling equity into a vehicle that pays public dividends, and would likely need congressional approval.

Despite most of the American establishment collectively shitting their pants when Bernie Sanders something similar, Comrade Trump said he considers government stakes in private firms "very American”.

He pointed to the US's 10% stake in Intel (taken in August, now worth far more after a stock surge) as a template.

To be fair, he did call himself the world’s greatest communist this week, so it makes sense that he’s suddenly taken a shine to state ownership.

Curiously enough, he didn’t point to the fact that he’s made over £1.7bn ($2.2bn) from various investments in his first year back in office.

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Keir Starmer accused of leaving defence spending 'mess' for incoming Prime Minister

Despite losing his top two ministers over the government’s unwillingness to invest in the department, Still Here Starmer’s back at it in his favourite policy area, defence. 

Starmer has committed to £15bn of extra spending on defence between now and 2034 as part of the Defence Investment Plan. However, about £1.2bn per year of the spending increases are an unfunded gift to Starmer’s successor, i.e. the treasury has said “You’ll have to find the money somewhere, pal”.

Although Andy Burnham has commented that the UK must take defence spending “very seriously”, needless to say that his team were seething when the unfunded spending commitments were announced.  

According to analysis from our data team, Burnham will now have to either a) raise income tax rates; or b) cancel three annual bank holidays for the government to be able to afford a kestrel for everyone who lives north of Birmingham. 

This isn’t a government U-turn by any means, however. John Healey and Al Carns resigned from their posts because they thought £28bn in extra spending was needed to shore up the UK’s defences. 

Against a total government spending bill of over £650bn this year, we’re somewhat confused as to how the funds needed couldn’t be found. In the words of Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski: “lucky you, you must not be feeling any danger”. 

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Emergency law for London pubs to stay open to 5am for England v Mexico World Cup game

Turns out the government can just do stuff when it’s a matter of national importance. I can’t possibly think of anything else that could be of more national importance than drinking 17 beers, shouting at Harry Kane through a screen, and making my local pusher £2,000 richer.

Click the meme to read more

EU introduces €3 customs charge on small parcels to curb cheap Chinese imports

Parcels of goods worth under €150 will no longer enjoy ‘de minimis’ exemption, exploited by platforms such as Temu and Shein. While the Commission is lying and consumers definitely will pay the customs, they do have a point about making it harder for those consumers to buy low-quality shit assembled by Asian children.

Click the meme to read more

Biden era Save student loan plan ends, leaving millions of US borrowers 90 days to find a new one

The US Department of Education has said the upcoming overhaul simplifies the student debt system. In a statement earlier this year, Nicholas Kent, the under-secretary of education, said: “For years, borrowers have been caught in a confusing cycle of uncertainty, but the Trump administration’s policy is simple: if you take out a loan, you must pay it back.”

Click the meme to read more

NHS to reward people who walk 30 minutes a day

The "marathon a month" scheme, developed with former Olympic medallist Sir Brendan Foster, will launch early next year. The scheme “wants to tap into the ‘streak’ culture that Snapchat and Duolingo popularised”. If the NHS app is anywhere near as persistent as the Duolingo owl, there’ll be no fat people left in the UK by 2030.

Click the meme to read more

EU court says private jets can qualify as 'green' investments, fuelling greenwashing worries

The manufacture of private jets cannot be excluded from a list of ​activities deemed to be environmentally sustainable, the ‌European Union’s second-highest court said on Wednesday. Our sources in Brussels say that luxury yachtmakers have launched a bid to see if those can be classified as green too.

Click the meme to read more

Ally of the Week

While he may not go down as the most popular Prime Minister in British history, Keir Starmer has given us a few zingers in his time.

Although “Mr Speaker, I am a gooner” and “Meep Meep” deserve their plaudits, his most recent quote takes the cake.

To top it all off, he was introduced to the stage at the event as a “Lesbian style icon”.

If people had known he was this cool from the start, we might not be saying goodbye to Keir quite so soon.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Thanks to Faris & Harry

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings lovely people,

We hope you’ve all been staying hydrated during this record heatwave, and by hydrated we definitely don’t mean copious amounts of booze. Definitely not.

Crank up the A/C, or the desk fan you bought on Amazon for £9.99 if you’re European, and get ready for another dose of news through memes.

Let’s get stuck in.

⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes

Quote of the Week

Pressure mounts on Spanish PM after former minister sentenced to 24 years in prison

José Luis Ábalos, a longtime former ally of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro “Patrick Bateman” Sanchez, has this week been jailed for a record 24 years for taking kickbacks on government PPE contracts as health minister during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

We were going to make a joke about corruption in southern European countries but, if he was British, Boris Johnson probably would have given him a seat in the House of Lords. 

Ábalos’ sentence is yet another headache in a long line of corruption scandals for Sanchez, as proceedings are also ongoing against his Socialist Party’s former party secretary and another former PM who was a close ally of Sanchez’s, both relating to corruption. 

The Spanish PM was defiant and refused to resign, hitting back with:

For those not versed in lying political spin, this means “No one does corruption like us, so we’re only ones who can possibly deal with it”. 

Meanwhile, Sanchez’s wife has been ordered to give up her passport and check-in at a court twice a month.

She has been deemed a flight risk by the court in relation to her own, drumroll please….corruption charges. 

Oh, and his brother has been nicked for corruption too. It’s enough to make Berlusconi blush.

Whatever you think of Sanchez’s attitude to cleaning house, we look forward to seeing how stamping out corruption will work at home on the domestic front. 

The ruling Cuckold Communist Party has passed a law allowing Chinese law enforcement to target anyone undermining “ethnic unity and progress” or “inciting ethnic separatism” beyond China’s borders. 

The totally normally named Ethnic Unity Laws take effect next week.

Naturally, a few eyebrows have been raised by observers, despite Vice Justice Minister Hu stating that the provisions have been “distorted and misinterpreted” by Western commentators as it was passed to “guard against various ​unlawful acts…from outside the country”. 

Given Beijing’s fondness for intelligence operations overseas, we look forward to the law being put to good use (i.e., dragging dissidents off the street and taking them to a nicely refurbished windowless room in the local Chinese embassy for a “chat”) in the name of self-defence. 

Or, in the words of the vice justice minister, a “legitimate, lawful, necessary, and feasible legal ​provision”. 

The biggest concern amongst observers is that the law will form a new legal basis for taking action against any Taiwanese citizens and pro-Taiwanese organisations.

Articulating pro-Taiwanese views will clearly be viewed as inciting ethnic separatism under the new laws, given that the CCP views Taiwan as a separatist Chinese province. 

This comes right as British, French and German governments issued a warning about Chinese activities off Taiwan’s east coast and accused Beijing of endangering regional stability. 

The destablising activities weren’t specified, but we’re pretty sure that we’ve seen this one before. 

Still, the people of Taiwan can rest easy in the knowledge that their protector, the U.S., hasn’t recently exhausted its arsenals and political will on another unwinnable war in the Middle East. 

Starmer quits as Labour leader and paves way for contest for new prime minister

It’s all Starmover.

Starmtroopers, stand down. The Thousand Keir Reich has come to an end.

Following months of speculation about his future as Prime Minister, Keir Starmer has resigned as Prime Minister.

7 Prime Ministers in 10 years. Blink, and you may have missed one (it was probably Liz Truss).

Even with a 174-seat majority that would make a tinpot dictator green with envy, Starmer lasted just under 2 years, mired by Peter Mandelson-sized controversies, U-turns around welfare spending, and an inability to bring together various factions of a party that is about as harmonious as a bouncy castle full of 7-year-olds.

His successor looks all but certain in Andy Burnham, but the route the former Mayor of Greater Manchester should take to get to No 10 remains up for debate, with some Labour MPs calling for a contest and others hoping for an "orderly transition".

Whereas Starmer had years to prepare for power (not that you’d be able to tell), Burnham will have until the 20th of July, give or take a couple of days.

Aside from the groundbreaking platform of “Eee up lad -Oasis, chips and graveh, footie, triple lock”, Burnham has promised a series of sweeping changes when he comes to power.

The British electorate, famous for their patience and long term view of governance, will no doubt be extremely understanding and patient, especially when the initial honeymoon period is over.

For those of you thinking ‘what the fuck is going on with UK politics these days?"‘, here is a meme that sums it all up pretty well:

Another cat should do the trick

US Senate passes landmark housing affordability bill

The US Senate passed a bill aimed at lowering housing costs on Monday after a major breakthrough and rare bipartisan consensus that comes as affordability remains top of mind for voters heading into the midterm elections.  

In an 85-5 vote, the Senate approved the legislation along wide bipartisan margins.It now heads to the House for approval. 

The bill, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, aims to increase housing supply and bring down costs, including by limiting institutional investors from purchasing certain single-family homes.

Blackrock, eat your heart out. Unless you’d like to sponsor us. In that case, our deepest condolences.

The bill has backing from both Senate Banking Committee chair Tim Scott and ranking Democrat Elizabeth Warren, with the White House supporting the institutional investor restrictions.

It’s a rare point of agreement between the Trump administration and Senator Warren, who he calls ‘Pocahontas’ on account of her (supposed) Native American heritage.

Now that housing affordability may be back on the menu, maybe American lawmakers can turn their attention to why the Reflecting Pool in Washington looks like Shreks house.

Anthropic accuses Chinese rival Alibaba of illicitly extracting AI capabilities

AI company Anthropic has accused Alibaba of running the largest known campaign to illicitly extract the capabilities of its Claude AI model.

Sounds oddly similar to a certain someone’s business model, but alas.

In a strongly-worded letter to US lawmakers, the San Francisco company said Alibaba-linked operators conducted nearly 29 million exchanges with Claude through thousands of fraudulent accounts, using so-called "distillation attacks", a technique that harvests outputs from a more powerful AI to train a cheaper, shitter weaker one.

Anthropic says the campaign specifically targeted Claude's most sophisticated capabilities, and argues that such attacks effectively turn hundreds of billions of dollars in American R&D into a subsidy for geopolitical rivals.

The letter calls on Congress to penalise companies behind such operations and tighten protections for US AI technology.

Alibaba has not yet responded, and separately this week sued the US government to have its name removed from a Pentagon blacklist linking it to the Chinese military.

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King Charles III becomes first British monarch to reveal tax bill

King Charles III has become the first monarch to reveal their tax bill, disclosing figures that show he paid £12.9 million ($16.4 million) in tax for 2024-2025 to HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs).

The level of tax paid by the King places him among the top 100 UK taxpayers.

The Prince of Wales declared he paid £7.76 million ($9.9 million) tax over the same period, the figures in the annual royal report and accounts show.

Whilst it may place the Royals amongst the top 100 taxpayers, it firmly places them in the top 1 of families that end up costing the state around £60 million ($79 million).

This is the figure our underpaid interns came to once you account for the publicly-funded Sovereign Grant, used to pay for things like the restoration of Buckingham Palace and keeping Prince Andrew away from local schools.

The income from or any details on private investments of both the King and Prince William have not been disclosed, and MPs have raised concerns about a lack of accountability over how public funding was used by the royals.

To be fair, the tax report also confirmed Charles and Queen Camilla will stay at Clarence House after Buckingham Palace's £369 million ($487 million) refurbishment ends next year, turning it into an event hub with more public access to generate revenue, which is awfully nice of them.

Sus

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Brexit turns 10 years old

The vote for the UK to leave the European Union celebrated its 10th birthday on June 23rd. There would have been bigger celebrations, but most of the people who voted for it have died off or moved to the south of Spain.

Click the meme to read more

Prediction market Polymarket is making use of deceptive social advertising

The prediction market platform is accused of using influencers to scam potential customers. Who would have thought that betting on the number of times Trump tweets ‘gay’ would be somewhat dubious.

Click the meme to read more

World Bank cuts global growth outlook to 2.5%, warns of drop to 1.3% if war fallout spreads to markets

The World Bank on Thursday cut its global growth forecast for 2026 to 2.5% due to the war in the Middle East, and said growth could ​slow to just 1.3% if the usual suspects keep bombing the shit out of each other.

Click the meme to read more

Guinness defies beer sales slump

Guinness is defying the trend of declining beer sales globally, achieving growth through innovative marketing and product diversification. By that, they mean selling more 0% alcohol drinks, which is getting dangerously close to a war crime, but we’ll let it slide.

Click the meme to read more

Heat adaptation event cancelled as heatwave grips

A meeting to explore how cities globally can adapt to rising temperatures was cancelled amid a red heat warning in London.

Click the meme to read more

Cat of the Week

A special shoutout to the mainstay of British politics of the last decade and a half:

Larry, Chief Mouser at 10 Downing Street.

After he was informed that having a pig at number 10 would be quite impractical, then Prime Minister David Cameron adopted Larry the cat back in 2010.

Little Larry, whose official job it is to catch the mice that live in and around Downing Street, has ended up seeing off 6 Prime Ministers during his time.

Not that Larry gives a shit who the Prime Minister is, as long as someone feeds him.

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Thanks to Rob & Dom

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings lovely people,

Trust in the news has hit an all-time low apparently. We’re here to change that.

By bringing the trust in news even lower.

Jokes aside, thank you for trusting us with your email, and more importantly, your time. All 20,000 of you (shameless humblebrag, sorry).

Let’s get stuck into the news.

⏰ Today's reading time is 6 minutes

Quote of the Week

Russian warship fires warning shot at British yacht after British forces board Russian shadow fleet tanker

Realising that the Thousand Keir Reich appears to be coming to an end (and definitely not because Russian-backed arsonists tried to burn his house down), Sir Keir Starmer has decided to start enforcing international law against Russia, as a “shadow fleet” vessel passing near the UK was boarded for the first time on Monday. 

The ship, Smyrtos, was en route to India from Russia with 98,000 tonnes of crude oil. 

While the ship’s captain could face 10 years in jail for attempting to evade sanctions, we reckon he was probably just looking for a good view of Sailisbury Chichester cathedral.  

With the Russia-Ukraine war turning in Ukraine’s favour, European nations have stepped up economic pressure on Russia.

Given that Starmer’s two most senior defence ministers recently resigned over a lack of defence funding, the Kremlin can rest easy knowing that any follow-up operations have probably already been vetoed by the Treasury. 

Russia responded in a typically measured fashion: A Russian frigate fired ‘warning’ shots at a retired couple from Slough sailing off the Isle of Wight.

And they say that pensioners have it easy. 

Either way, Keir Stalin appears to have left a hot potato on the desk in Number 10 as a last “fuck you” for Andy Burnham the next PM.

The British government plans to ban access to social media for all children under 16, after weeks in which the nation debated how it would introduce new protections for children online.

Starmer said the government would introduce the new regulations in Parliament before Christmas and bring a ban into force in early 2027.

The measures will follow a similar model to that of Australia, where a ban was introduced in December, and will apply to platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, the government said.

Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal will not be included in the restrictions.

There isn’t a lot of data available to understand the consequences of Australia’s ban, academics have stressed, but six months in, early indications are that it has largely failed at keeping young teenagers off the platforms.

Still, some Australian parents have argued that the real impact of the law may not be felt for years, when younger children who are not yet on social media may stay off because of the regulations, preferring instead to go and fight kangaroos, refuse to use their indoor voices, or whatever it is Aussies do to pass the time.

Starmer acknowledged that the new regulations would not mean that no child ever logged on to social media again, but he said that the existence of VPNs potential circumvention of the law was no reason not to introduce restrictions.

It’s all by the by, as what Keir does or doesn’t accept won’t matter an awful lot soon anyway (more on that later).

End of US-Iran conflict possibly in sight as Pakistan helps to broker a temporary peace deal

While it won’t win any Deal of the Week awards, Donald Trump electronically signed a significant memorandum of understanding with Iran on Wednesday, provisionally ending a 104 day conflict.

The MOU is basically both sides signing a piece of paper that says “we do not want to keep fighting”, and postpones fighting for 60 days to allow them to work out a final settlement.

Assuming talks go ahead, the Strait white man of Hormuz opening properly for the first time since February would be huge for the global economy. 

A win for the U.S. would also be an agreement on nuclear disarmament for Iran, and Iran has agreed to discuss nuclear issues in the coming 60 day window. This is progress, as Iran had not previously budged on enriching uranium.  

Dementia Donald insists that his deal is the best ever struck with Iran, and that this war has gone 15/10 on a scale of 1-10, whatever the fuck that means.

By comparison, Barry Obama’s 2015 deal included very tight restrictions on Uranium enrichment and had Russia and China as co-signatories.

The US walking away with comparable terms this time around seems hopeful at best, especially as Trump has to pay $300bn for the pleasure

Markets have responded positively to the memorandum being signed, and provided Bibi & friends don’t accidentally artillery strike any schools or hospitals in the meantime, the agreement may actually stick.

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Every story has some spin on it. A bias. An angle. Whatever you want to call it. 

Information has never been more freely available, yet it's easier than ever to be misled by the news. 

Ground News was built to change that.

It was co-founded by a former NASA engineer and an award-winning app developer, and it's subscriber funded. No big media conglomerates or fat cats on top of the ivory tower.

Just people like you and me who believe you deserve to know what you're actually reading.

Ground News pulls coverage of the same story from thousands of sources across the political spectrum. They flag each outlet's known bias, rate its factual reliability, and show you who owns and funds it. 

"Sure, they're a sponsor. Of course you only have nice things to say about them." 

Funny you should say that, we were actually using Ground News quite happily before they approached us for sponsorship. 

We use them to help put each newsletter together, as there is no better way on the internet to get a full understanding of all the media angles on all the relevant stories. 

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Andy Burnham wins huge majority in Makerfield by-election, paving way for Starmer leadership challenge

Andy Burnham has set up a potential showdown with Keir Starmer after convincingly winning the Makerfield by-election, paving the way for a likely crack at the Labour leadership.

The ‘King of the North’, who was first elected to parliament almost exactly 25 years ago and served in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, will return to Westminster nine years after he left.

The outgoing mayor of Greater Manchester promised change after winning the byelection in the early hours of Friday morning with 55% of the votes and a majority almost double the size of his predecessor, Josh Simons.

To be fair, it wasn’t exactly stiff competition, with Andy up against a Fox furry, a man with a pedal bin on his head (that’s Count Binface to you chum), and of course, Deform Reform UK.

The scale of the win has prompted talk among Burnham’s allies that he could replace Starmer as prime minister within weeks, if not even days.

Much will depend on whether the prime minister decides to fight to retain his position, or just call it a day.

Should Burnham become the next Prime Minister, he would be the 7th Prime Minister of the last 10 years.

But don’t worry, this next one will do the trick.

Just one more Prime Minister, I promise this next one will work out.

We just need one more. Please…

Tech sovereignty reforms proposed by EU in hopes to end US dependence

Concerned that being cut out of chip supply chains will leave them unable to electronically reject small business applications, the European Commission has proposed a ‘Tech Sovereignty Package’ to reduce dependence on non-European AI, digital infrastructure, and cloud providers. 

The EU just wouldn't be the EU if it passed up an opportunity to suffocate a fast-moving industry with regulations.

The rules aim to bolster homegrown tech as the bloc scrambles to counter its reliance on the U.S. and China. Key measures include:

• Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA): The centerpiece looks to triple European data center capacity in 5–7 years and favor local providers in public procurement, ensuring Tech bros don’t hold an effective “kill switch” over law enforcement, energy, and healthcare.

• Chips Act 2.0: Realigns industrial strategy to keep cutting-edge chip design and manufacturing in Europe, reducing reliance on Taiwan and the US.

• EU Open Source Strategy: Forces public bodies to favor open-source products over Microsoft or Google to prevent vendor lock-in. European readers can look forward to completing passport applications on an EU-made shitbox still running on Linux.

While tech moves fast, the proposals require approval from all 27 member states before coming into force so, as usual, don’t expect anything to happen quickly.

Cuban president announces economic reforms to 'liberalise' the embargo-hit and blockaded island

Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel sprang a surprise on Friday, announcing a wide-ranging package of economic reforms aiming to liberalise the island's economy amid continued US economic pressure.

The Cuban leader insisted that the measures respond to the “demands of the present time” and are intended to streamline and energise the economy.

Speaking of ‘energising’, maybe they could solve the issue of blackouts and power the island with the energy coming from Fidel Castro turning in his grave.

Díaz-Canel stressed that the changes are not a response to external pressure, although he acknowledged the "hostile environment” created by US sanctions.

Because millions of Cubans living off a rationed allocation of powdered egg and raw sugar cane is definitely not a ‘hostile environment’ in the slightest.

Arguably the most important measure is the re-opening of the country's tourism sector to “new players” and “new modalities” to make use of the state-owned hotel stock i.e. “Let’s turn this place into the new American tourist hotspot yeehaw”

The reforms also extend to the agricultural sector, which will gain direct access to inputs, participation in the foreign exchange market and a reduction in the wonders of a command economy bureaucratic procedures.

Havana will also scrap the role of state import companies, and will lift restrictions on vehicle imports, meaning people may actually be able to drive around in something that didn’t once belong to a mid-level Soviet bureaucrat.

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Fox to acquire Roku in $22 billion deal

“Raised by Dingos” Murdoch and co will buy Roku for $160 per share in a cash-and-stock deal that it expects to complete in the first half of 2027. “We have exciting plans lined up for the platform like Anti-Woke Cinderella and Superman starring Ben Shapiro” said a spokesperson for the company.

Click the meme to read more

OpenAI’s financials have leaked, showing $21 billion in losses against $13 billion in revenue

For context on how big that loss is, Meta's VR and hardware division lost $17.7 billion in 2024 and WeWork's peak annual losses reached roughly $4.6 billion before its collapse. I guess OpenAI really is a non-profit after all, huh? (please laugh)

Click the meme to read more

Antisemitism hits all-time high in Germany with 8,725 incidents in 2025

The number of antisemitic incidents documented in Germany in 2025 rose slightly from the previous year to a record 8,725. I don't know if you guys are history buffs or not, but...

Click the meme to read more

Scotland fans drink Boston dry as local bars run out of beer

Boston Taproom ran out of the brand's flagship Boston Lager over the weekend because Scotland football fans drank four times as much as it typically sells. Given that Scottish people are basically breastfed on 9% lager, American beer probably just tastes like water to them.

Click the meme to read more

EU lawmakers approve new tougher migrant policy

The EU is backing tougher migration policies that seek to ramp up deportations of failed asylum-seekers. Under the new legislation, EU states can establish "return hubs”, which were first proposed by pint-sized Italian PM Giorgia Meloni.

Click the meme to read more

Fashion Fail of the Week

They look great Evan. Totally normal looking. Very cool.

In a win for perverts around the world, the CEO of Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., unveiled a new pair of AR glasses this week - the Specs. 

For the low, low price of $2,195, you can look like you’ve just forgotten to put your 3D glasses in the bin on the way out of watching Avatar 3.

Not to be confused with the ill-fated Spectacles, the Specs are Apple Vision-esque product which can be worn day-to-day without being tethered to a phone.

They are however, tethered to your face, which is the main issue here.

Snap’s investors seem to share our concerns, as the stock price dropped 8% at market opening on Thursday. 

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Thanks to Sam, Sophie & Charlie

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings lovely people,

The 2026 World Cup is underway.

In case you were confused as to why the first game was in Trump’s favourite country (Mexico), a friendly reminder that this year’s tournament is being shared between them, Canada and of course, the US of A.

Maybe by the end of the tournament, 2/3 can start to call the sport by its proper name: football.

British snobbery aside, let’s get you up to speed with the news through memes and slightly unhinged commentary.

⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes

Quote of the Week

Anthropic releases its first ‘safe for general use’ Mythos-class model: Claude Fable 

In another concerning notable moment in the AI arms race, Anthropic released Claude Fable 5 this week. 

Anthropic has released Fable 5 to enterprise subscribers, describing it as a “Mythos-class model…made safe for general use”. I.e., a Mythos model with failsafes which (hopefully) prevent it being used for cybersecurity-related activities, amongst others.

Fable is based on the Mythos architecture deemed too dangerous to release to the public just eight weeks ago.  

Thankfully, Claude’s Mythos 5 model will also be rolled out without the guardrails to responsible parties like the US Government under its early access program, Project Glasswing. 

Per Anthropic’s benchmarking Fable 5 is their most powerful model yet, and it beats OpenAI’s GPT 5.5 across the board. However, there is a 67% chance that GPT 5.6 is released within the next two weeks (per Polymarket), so prepare for yet more announcements in this space soon enough. 

Early feedback from users on Fable’s performance is positive, but according to one Reddit user the “burn rate” (i.e., speed at which tokens are used up by queries) is considerably faster than previous Claude models due to the agentic nature of the model.

The tokens themselves also cost double what Anthropic charges for tokens on the previous flagship model, Opus 4.8.

After all, something other than hype needs to form the basis of the upcoming IPO valuation.  

Despite Russia’s attempts to encourage voters to back pro-Russian parties, it was a tough night for them in Sunday’s Armenian elections. 

The pro-Western Civil Contract party scooped 60% of national assembly seats with 49% of the vote, a slight reduction in their majority.  

Armenia has been firmly Russian-aligned since becoming independent in 1991. 

However, Western leaders watched the election with interest as Russo-Armenian relations have been strained since Russia failed to honour its security guarantee to Armenia during a regional conflict in 2023. 

Prime Minister Nikol something ending with yan Pashinyan has been hedging his bets diplomatically, hosting US delegations twice this year and the first Armenia-EU summit last month.

Pashinyan’s government put the EU and Russia on notice last year when it launched the process of applying for EU membership.

Yet another country that’d be ahead of the UK in the queue.

Russia still accounts for around a third of Armenia’s trade and maintains a military presence in the country, so don’t expect Armenians to be taking all of August off and/or trying to regulate their way out of a chronic lack of economic dynamism anytime soon.

Before the election, Putin also commented that Ukraine’s ‘problems’ "began with efforts to move toward EU accession".

Clearly, any attempt to reduce Armenia’s dependence on Russia involves treading carefully to ensure the next special military operation doesn’t roll through Yerevan.

Elon Musk becomes world's first trillionaire as SpaceX shares soar on stock market debut

Shares in Elon Musk's SpaceX jumped more than 20% in their first hour of trading today after the biggest initial public offering in history made him the world's first trillionaire.

In case you’re not big on numbers and need some context as to just how much money that is, it takes 12 days for a million seconds to pass, but 31 years for a billion seconds to tick over.

It would take 31,000 years to get to a trillion seconds.

Now before the raving commies amongst you look for your trusty pitchfork and start ordering guillotines on the dark web, it’s worth factoring in a few things.

Most of that money is not in cash, and is still tied to the fairly illiquid stock he holds in SpaceX, Tesla and other companies.

Musk has several restrictions in place for selling his shares in the space exploration firm.

Also, there’s every chance that SpaceX is a total bust.

Their IPO prospectus, which reads like it was written by an analyst that’s read way too much sci-fi, talks about addressing the “largest total addressable market in history” of $28.5 trillion i.e intergalactic ubers and putting data centres in space.

To spare you the technical mumbjo jumbo finance types invented to buy more coke sound clever, it’s all basically a massive gamble on them being able to address that TAM, and eventually to stop burning through billions of dollars a year.

Whilst on the spectrum Tony Stark getting mega rich may not have exactly made your day, the IPO has made lots of regular folk who work at SpaceX very rich, which is nice.

Now, where’s my pitchfork?

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I have a duty to stay on, says Keir Starmer as he justifies defence spending decisions

Another day, another mess for Keir Starmer.

Speaking the day after two of his defence ministers quit in a row over funding, Sir Keir Stalin Starmer insisted he had made "hard-edged" choices, including getting every department to make cuts to pay for defence.

I thought hard-edge were people who didn’t drink or take drugs, but then again I work here, so what the fuck do I know.

In his resignation letter, Defence Secretary John Healey made scathing criticisms, accusing the PM of being "unable" to commit to the spending needed to keep the country safe.

Healey's resignation was triggered by an ongoing internal row over funding of the government's defence investment plan (DIP).

The plan, which sets out how new military equipment and infrastructure will be paid for over the next decade, was due last autumn but has been repeatedly delayed.

Our sovereign debt rising at levels close to Botswana may have something to do with the delay. No offence intended to Botswana of course.

Asked if he would be willing to reduce spending on welfare to pay for a further boost, Sir Keir said the government was making changes to help people into work and said, rather ominously, that would "free up resources".

With a big Andy Burnham shaped problem potentially on the horizon for him very soon, this latest setback isn’t ideal for the PM.

Oil inventories hit multi decade lows as US overtakes gulf rivals to be the world’s top producer

Oil stockpiles are approaching lows not seen since 2003 due to oil supply still falling short of global demand, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

The news seemingly went unnoticed, as Brent Crude dropped below $85 a barrel on Thursday. 

Consumer anxiety around the US-Iran conflict could make you think that oil importers are living on borrowed time unless the Strait fully re-opens, but several factors have changed the picture recently: 

• Demand destruction: Consumer cutbacks and rationing mean that global demand is falling for the first time since 2020

• Diplomacy: The US and Iran are reportedly close to a deal to end hostilities (an Iranian outlet notes that Trump has announced an imminent deal 38 times in two months, so take this with the usual industrial quantities of salt)

• Data issues: Up to three-quarters of ships passing the Strait now switch off their AIS (Automatic Identification System), so no one really knows how much oil is leaving the Gulf

• Facts Markets don’t care about your feelings

The US has also become the world’s biggest oil producer in an attempt to shore up the market. 

Hopefully a US-Iran deal materialises before global inventories become a serious issue, but we’re probably more likely to see the Pope do the 6-7… ah, never mind. 

Russia considers working age of 12 to solve wartime jobs crisis

In what can only be read as a sign of things going really well for them at the moment, Russia is considering lowering the country’s working age to 12 and reopening Soviet child labour camps to solve a jobs crisis driven by the war in Ukraine.

You can almost hear dear Uncle Joseph beaming with pride in his grave.

Moscow’s children’s rights commissioner proposed the change to get young people into employment during the holidays, claiming “almost all of them want to shovel shit in the snow and sing old Soviet songs work in the summer”.

Olga Yaroslavskaya argued the camps would provide employment and structure for teenagers, particularly those whose parents cannot afford to give them a “three-month fiesta”.

Russian labour laws allow children to work from the age of 14 with written consent from their parents, or to independently sign a labour contract from the age of 15.

The country’s economy needs 1.5 million additional workers to balance the labour market, Bloomberg estimated, while the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs has projected a deficit of three million workers up to 2030.

The demographic crisis has been driven by a record low birth rate, the emigration of up to one million mostly educated young professionals to dodge the draft, and an exceptionally high mortality rate of young men on the front line.

Things may not be perfect in the West, but at least here summer camps are just an excuse to get rid of your annoying kids for a few weeks so you can have sex more than once a week and sleep in on the weekend.

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Data centre water consumption breaks 264 billion gallons in 2025 as drought hits nearly 63% of USA

Americans across multiple states are being urged to conserve water as drought conditions intensify, reservoirs shrink, and utilities issue increasingly urgent warnings.

Click the meme to read more

BYD to install thousands of 5-minute EV chargers across Europe

It wants to build 3,000 chargers across the continent by 2027. “They’re probably all full of Chinese spyware. Besides, what do you want cheap and fast EV charging for anyway?”, said a spokesperson from the European Commission.

Click the meme to read more

Tech firms have three months to stop children seeing or sending explicit content, Starmer says

The government says it will introduce new laws if firms don't act quickly to prevent children from sharing or receiving nude images. I mean, no one is going to disagree with this one. Unless, of course, um….

Click the meme to read more

ECB hikes interest rates for first time since 2023 as Iran war ramps up energy costs

The European Central Bank also raised its inflation forecasts and cut its growth outlook. On the other hand, it’s increased the Negroni forecast and mandated workplaces shut down in July as well to save on air conditioning costs.

Click the meme to read more

Jailed South Korea ex-president gets 30 more years for sending drones into North

Prosecutors argued that Yoon ordered the operation to provoke Pyongyang and create a pretext for martial law. He’s already serving life for insurrection over his botched martial law attempt. Talk about kicking a good man while he’s down, huh?

Click the meme to read more

World Cup Meme of the Week

Mexico vs South Africa was a wild World Cup opening game, with more red cards than actual goals scored.

It also produced what may turn out to be the meme of the tournament.

When South Africa’s Themba Zwane’s red card went to VAR for appeal, the referee had to give an explanation (in English) for why it stood.

Small issue though.

No one, least of all the players, seemed to have a fucking clue what he said.

Watch the video for yourself, but after having watched it about 100 times, this is our best attempt at a transcription:

“Uhhh, arrr the refereessseehhhthethe faceehhhhehhh the defender.”

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Thanks to Sam, Elliot & Dom

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings beautiful people,

It’s now officially summer. While you’re (hopefully) relaxing with your feet up on holiday or doing the absolute minimum possible at work until September, unfortunately, there’s no rest for the wicked over at The Pint HQ.

I say this whilst writing in my swimming trunks, 3 spicy margs and 2 beers down. Whoops.

Anyway, let’s get you up to speed with what happened this week through home-crafted memes and silly commentary.

⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes

Quote of the Week

Google’s parent company launches massive fundraise to finance AI buildout

Not wanting to be outdone by reports that its main AI rivals are preparing for their respective IPOs, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has announced an $84.75bn fundraise. The original figure was $80bn, but subsequently upped by $4.75bn due to high subscription demand.  

Alphabet estimates that it will spend $180-$190bn on capital expenditure in 2026 alone due to “unprecedented consumer demand” from enterprise users meme lords generating AI slop on nano banana.  

$10bn of the capital raised will also be provided by Berkshire Hathaway in a private placement.

Warren Buffett has no doubt woken up in a cold sweat from his afternoon nap and is now shouting at the TV as you read this. 

For context, this fundraise aims to raise more money than the three biggest ever IPOs (Aramco, SoftBank, and Alibaba) combined, showing how capital-intensive this stage of the AI buildout is for even cash-generation monsters like Google.  

This fundraise shouldn’t come as a surprise, however: Investors are throwing absurd amounts of cash at anything with the word AI attached, and are about to do so in the IPOs of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI.

Maybe that’s why CEO Sundar Pichai decided to get ahead of the queue, as questions mount about whether LLMs will ever be profitable. 

He also tacked on a cheeky $30bn for paying taxes in connection with Google’s employee share scheme. Hey, why not pull a George Osborne and fix the roof while the sun shines?

And throw up a new garage while you’re at it.  

There are reports of a collective sigh of relief in maternity ward nurses across Switzerland, as voters look set to reject a referendum proposal to cap the country's population at 10 million ​people, according to an opinion poll published on Wednesday.

Which means they won’t be asked to ‘take care of’ any extra babies that push the population over the limit anytime soon.

Concern ‌about rapid growth in Switzerland's population, which climbed to 9.1 million last year from 7.3 million in 2002, and its impact on public ​infrastructure has fed support for the proposal.

Backed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party, it would require the government to start restricting immigration if the population hits 9.5 million, and would almost certainly force Switzerland to abandon its free movement agreement with the EU if it hits 10 million.

Switzerland's population currently stands at just over 9 million.

Switzerland's own parliament has formally recommended a no vote, but the last time an incumbent government tried to recommend a ‘no’ vote, we got Brexit. So go figure.

Its largest business federation warns of catastrophic labour shortages. The government says it would damage prosperity and violate international obligations.

For context, Switzerland has a birth rate of 1.3 children per woman, meaning that without immigration, the population would be shrinking. The proposal is essentially a vote to make that problem considerably worse, faster.

EU’s endorsement of “Meloni Law” marks a shift in the bloc’s stance on immigration

This week, negotiations between the European Parliament and European Commission have yielded an agreement in principle on significant reforms to the EU’s migration policy. 

Changes approved include allowing member states to move migrants subject to deportation orders to concentration camps “return centres” outside the EU, conduct home raids on suspected illegal migrants, and detain migrants pending deportation.

Moderates have praised the reforms for allowing EU members to effectively control migration. 

EU countries currently struggle to ensure that rejected asylum seekers and people with expired visas leave their territories, and ​only about 20% of people ordered to leave an EU territory actually leave.

The changes will come into force once formally adopted by both bodies, but have been received poorly by progressives. Reasons cited include the “ICE-style” home raids, the extension of pre-deportation detention periods, and migrants being detained outside the EU. 

The Parliament and Commission were silent on whether training agents to shoot bystanders ICE-style will also be mandatory at this stage, or come into effect at a later date. 

The early frontrunners to take the first return hubs are the human rights bastions of Rwanda, Uganda, and Uzbekistan, so it’s about as likely as receiving a fair trial in any of those countries (very unlikely). 

This is almost guaranteed to be held up in court and turn into an exercise in pissing money up the wall, like the UK and Italy’s previous attempts at offshoring immigration. 

Nonetheless, any success in moving migrants offshore would represent a huge shift in handling irregular migration in the EU and beyond.

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Trump confirms he called Netanyahu crazy in phone call

Trouble in paradise.

According to sources, Trump's full message to Netanyahu was: "You're fucking crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this."

Pretty sure he stole that one from Regina George in Mean Girls, no?

Netanyahu's office released a statement afterwards saying Israel's position "remains the same”.

By “the same”, he means continuing a war that has displaced over 1 million people and killed over 3,000.

The row was triggered by Netanyahu threatening to bomb Beirut, which Trump felt was a perfectly reasonable military strategy going to torpedo his Iran peace negotiations. 

Trump told him bombing the Lebanese capital would further isolate Israel internationally.

Netanyahu, according to US officials, was subsequently "steamrolled" and said "OK, OK, just make sure everything is taken care of."

Immediately after the call, Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran talks were "continuing, at a rapid pace."

Israel will continue its operations in southern Lebanon.

Great British Railways nationalises largest rail operator in the UK

The UK’s largest train operator, Govia Thameslink (GTR), has been taken into public ownership this week, as part of the government’s plan to nationalise the major railway operators in England. GTR carried more passengers than any other operator last year on its Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express, and Great Northern services. 

The majority of train operators are now under state control, to be run under the Great British Railways (GBR) brand. Only six franchised operators are still run privately, with these set to come under state control later this year as their operating agreements expire. 

GBR’s hope is that operating profits are retained and directed towards improving railway infrastructure, rather than paid out to private shareholders.

While promisingly communist in principle, there are concerns that lots of money generated in rail will still be banked as private profits, as ticketing and ownership of the trains themselves are both still handled privately. 

Sadly, ticket prices will also not come down following nationalisation, but hey, at least we have blue trains which, like my blue passport, will surely make me feel like a proper dickhead proud to be British. 

Will nationalisation actually lead to better railway services and better outcomes for travellers? Supporters of nationalisation often point to Swiss railways as a great example of how nationalisation helped to create and maintain the world’s best railway system. 

However, Switzerland also invests around €477 per capita in its rail system every year, whereas the UK only invests around €116 per capita.

They’re also Swiss. “Runs like a British train watch” never caught on for a reason.

Getting the investment part of the equation right here seems to be the key challenge for the government, otherwise nationalisation will just look like rearranging the deckchairs.

Sanctions-dodging Irish alumina has ended up in Russian guns and drones, new investigation finds

In a rare story about Ireland not involving taxes or Guinness, it broke this week that 83% of all alumina exported from Ireland is being shipped to smelters in Russia to be turned into aluminium. 

The finished aluminium is then sold to ASK, a company which supplies dozens of sanctioned Russian arms manufacturers, whose products have made their way onto battlefields in Ukraine. 

All of Ireland's alumina comes from one plant on its west coast, and the plant’s (obviously Russian) owners have claimed that it may have to close if they can’t ship alumina to Russia, potentially affecting up to 1,700 jobs. 

While this claim is questionable at best, I wouldn’t want to have to tell Putin that key imports have stopped because of fictitious reasons like “the democratic process” or “EU rules”. 

The story is concerning as Ireland has a stated policy of political neutrality in relation to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Supplying key raw materials for the Russian war machine, however, makes Ireland appear as neutral as the Swiss bankers during World War Two.

Concerns have also been raised this week about Ireland being a back door for Russian spies entering the UK via their common travel area, owing to a 90% approval rate of visa applications from Russian nationals since 2022.  

By an Irish MEP’s own admission, Irish security couldn’t keep an eye on Russian agents if it wanted to due to a lack of surveillance infrastructure.

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

Bernie Sanders to introduce bill giving the public a 50% stake in top AI companies

The American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act would impose a one-time 50% tax paid in stock and grant the federal government voting shares and board seats. Whilst in Europe this would be a pretty reasonable centre-left proposal, given Bernie is American, this obviously means he is a raving commie nutbag who must be stopped at all costs.

Click the meme to read more

Keir Starmer uses disappearing messages on his phone, No 10 confirms

Downing Street has confirmed that the prime minister uses an auto delete function on his phone meaning his WhatsApp messages with and about Lord Mandelson may have been ‘lost’. Next week, it’ll emerge that Keir also has read receipts and his ‘last seen’ off, which is definitely a lot sketchier than not knowing how to turn dissapearing messages off.

Click the meme to read more

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark warns AI needs a 'brake pedal'

He is concerned that AI could get to the point where it develops without human input. I think that train has left the station don’t you think, Jack?

Click the meme to read more

Soho group's licence opposition bad for London, says Mayor

Professional curtain twitchers and absolute laughs on a night out, The Soho Society, will lobby against all new licensing applications over nightlife "intensification". This is despite the fact 80% of the bars and pubs in Soho now seem to close at 11pm on a weekend, but maybe that’s just this writer being a moron.

Click the meme to read more

Google plans on releasing mosquitoes by the millions in Florida (of course) and California

In what sounds like the first 5 mins of Jurassic Park, Google will release 32 million mosquitoes in the US this month. The mosquitoes are infected with Wolbachia bacteria, which stops them from reproducing and slowly collapses the wild population from within.

Click the meme to read more

(Former) Crackhead of the Week

Artists that have gone off the rails returning to X has become a bit of a recurring theme in recent years, with Hunter Biden becoming the latest wild child to return to your friendly neighbourhood internet town square.

Sure, Hunter isn’t perfect. But given that his first few tweets back were to call evil eunuch Stephen Miller ‘ugly as fuck’ and reiterate that he ‘has never stolen an erection’ in his life, he has earned our respect here at The Pint.

This one however, belongs in the Louvre. Take a bow, king.

He’d get my vote in 2028

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Thanks to Sam, Max & Charlie

Send stories, jokes and hate mail to hello@thepint.news 

Greetings beautiful people,

In case you were worried, we’ve been staying hydrated throughout this record heatwave in Europe. Beer is around 90% water after all…

Anyway, you didn’t subscribe for silly drivel about drinking too much.

You subscribed for memes and commentary that get you up to speed with politics and international business without a) reading the lamestream media b) frying your brain on social media.

Let’s get going…

⏰ Today's reading time is 5 minutes

Quote of the Week

Uber cools interest in Tokenmaxxing as the cost of token-based AI charges start to bite businesses

Uber COO Andrew MacDonald told Business Insider this week that it is getting increasingly hard to justify Uber’s current levels of AI spending. 

MacDonald cited that Uber’s rising token spend has not yet led to a proportional increase in useful consumer features, while also reducing the company’s budget available for new hires. 

Some cite rising token prices, as platforms like Claude have been unable to process user demand and have removed open-ended usage limits on subscription plans. 

This appears to be affecting enterprise users in real time; Uber’s CTO revealed in April that Uber only took four months to use up its Claude Code budget for the year. 

Looks like the MBA programs that mint all these genius executives have stopped teaching Goodhart’s law.

Another reason may be that output quality simply isn’t great.

One X user employed at Entelligence AI, a company which sells developer tools for coding, reported that only 18% of token spend actually contributes to stable product features, while 44% of tokens were spent on bug fixes. 

Throw in the poor boomer fucker who cost his company $500 million in tokens because he didn’t know how to set usage limits, and you can see why tokenmaxxing had the lifespan of your average housefly.

Former health secretary Alan Milburn published the government-commissioned review into youth unemployment this week and safe to say, it’s not looking good bruv for young people in the UK. 

The number of young people who are NEET (not employed, in education, or training) has surpassed one million for the first time in fifteen years, and the UK risks creating a “lost generation” if the situation is allowed to deteriorate further. 

Of course, if you ask John and Margaret McBoomerface down the road, they’ll tell you that it is a lack of work ethic or not making their avocado toast at home that’s holding these “snowflakes” back. 

The findings of the report suggest that there are much more serious challenges however, including poor physical and mental health among young people, as well as public policy and an education system that have both failed to equip young people for work. 

The estimated direct impact on the economy of these NEETs being economically inactive was a staggering £38 billion last year, with billions consequently foregone in tax revenues. 

Six in ten NEETS aged 16-24 are not looking for a job and a similar proportion have never worked, contributing to a surge in young NEETs claiming benefits. 

Many readers will recognise the experience described by young people interviewed for the report: trying to secure entry-level roles when a lot of them ask for prior experience, or applying for dozens of jobs only to be rejected time and time again by an automated hiring platform, without ever speaking to a real person. 

On the plus side, there’s probably now a critical mass of young people in the UK who are sufficiently disillusioned by remote interviewing tools to join a Butlerian Jihad against any future coup by AI overlords. 

Ceasefire threatened in the Middle East as Iran targets neighbouring countries

Against a backdrop of stalling peace negotiations between the US and Iran, tensions appear to be escalating again in the Gulf. On Thursday, Kuwait’s government claimed that it intercepted "hostile missile and drone threats" aimed at a US airbase by Iran.

The US Central Command called the attacks an egregious violation of the ceasefire, just days after its own “self-defence” strikes on targets in Iran. Surprisingly, the irony appeared to be lost on CENTCOM. 

The fragility of the current situation raises the question of whether peace between the US and Iran is actually possible. Currently, they appear to be at an impasse over the future of Iran’s nuclear programme. 

A 60-day ceasefire extension was announced late on Thursday and, while several reports have emerged over the past six weeks that both sides were close to a definitive agreement, this may be the closest the conflict has come to ending. 

Brent crude closed slightly lower on Thursday, suggesting that markets tentatively think that the conflict will not escalate again. 

However, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent didn’t comment when questioned by reporters, saying that "It's always a mistake to get out ahead of the president". 

This means that he, like the rest of us, has no idea what the President will actually do when he takes a break from posting weird AI slop on X and studying the link between circumcisions and autism and turns his attention back to Iran. 

A negotiated solution now seems like the only way out of this conflict for the US.

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Concerns rising that listing rule changes may leave retail investors left holding the bag after upcoming AI IPOs

In an effort to secure the listings of SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic on the Nasdaq, the exchange operator has relaxed its rules on how quickly a company can join the Nasdaq 100. 

Previously, a company listing its shares on the Nasdaq would have had to wait for several months after its listing to be included on the Nasdaq 100. New “fast-track” rules mean that it can now take just 15 days for eligible companies to be added to the Nasdaq 100.

Companies who fast-track their listings will be able to access the enormous retail capital pools behind index funds much more quickly than before (think popular tracker funds like QQQ). 

Concerns have been raised about frothy valuations of AI companies, and how the new listing rules may guarantee that retail capital will effectively cash out existing investors at the top of the market, potentially exposing retail investors to large losses.

So, is Elon about to pull a fast one on the chuds who worship him?

SpaceX’s listing won’t quite be a shitcoin-esque rug pull on retail investors as it may only float 3-4% of its shares, which probably would not move the needle in a diversified portfolio.

Musk will also be subject to lock-up on selling shares following the IPO. 

However, the door appears to be open for retail investors to be left holding the bag after future listings where much larger volumes of companies’ shares are funnelled into passive tracker funds. 

We are almost certain that Scam Altman will try and do this.

London reclaims top European tech spot from Paris

True to our horribly centrist hearts, it’s only fair that we’re balanced.

After some bad news about the UK (and there’s no shortage of that these days), let’s look on the bright side.

And beating the French at anything definitely counts as the bright side.

London's return to the top of the European techno scene was driven by stronger venture capital ​investment and continued unicorn creation.

Last year, London ​tech companies raised $17.7 billion, whilst the city is ⁠home to 138 unicorns - startups valued above $1 billion - ​including Wayve, Granola, OLIX and ElevenLabs.

London ranks fourth ​globally behind the Bay Area, New York and Boston.

Paris slid down into second place in Europe, and eighth globally.

It’s not all doom and gloom for Parisians though, as they’re still first in the rankings of European cities with psychiatric conditions named after them (sorry Stockholm).

Pope Leo XIV urges AI 'disarmament' in landmark encyclical

In his first papal encyclical (basically an open letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church), Pope Leo XIV warns that AI must be 'disarmed', freed from logics of domination, exclusion, and death.

In his 40,000 word letter, which we definitely didn’t use Claude to summarise, he declared it 'not permissible' to entrust irreversible lethal decisions to AI, calling autonomous weapons a threat to moral responsibility and civilian safety.

This new Pope seems like a chill guy and all, but we’re not too sure the Vatican have always been on the right side of history when it comes to moral responsbility or child civilian safety.

Having said that, when friendly neighbourhood tech moguls and antichrists experts are popping up around Rome giving secret lectures about how to spot the antichrist, it seems sensible to have a counterweight to the growing influence of big tech and AI.

Through his encyclical, the Pope urges robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, and shared international criteria to curb the AI arms race and protect human dignity.

It’s either that or going around with a baseball bat smashing up data centres.

🍻Half Pints

Quick-fire news you might have missed

DuckDuckGo installs are up 30% as users reject being ‘force-fed’ Google’s AI Search

Google overhauled Search at I/O 2026, replacing blue links with AI agents and prioritising AI search. DuckDuckGo app installs spiked 30% as users seek a way out. Bird up!

Click the meme to read more

France is banning snus and threatening to jail people for 5 years

The French government has criminalised the use of nicotine pouches (snus). Users can be punished with up to 5 years in prison and a fine of almost half a million dollars. A Swedish European MP called it ‘an attack on our culture’. We managed to obtain a quote from a French Minister in response: “Euuugghh, why don’t you just smoke cigarettes instead?”

Click the meme to read more

Google worker charged with using internal data to make $1.2 million on Polymarket

The longtime Google employee was charged in New York for allegedly breaking insider trading laws. We could have easily used Trump for the meme as well, but didn’t want to be accused of being sexist. So we went for Nancy Pelosi instead.

Click the meme to read more

Ferrari shares slump after it unveils first fully electric car

The new Luce model has divided opinion on social media, and comes despite intense pressure from Chinese EV makers. They’re reportedly going to power it with the energy generated from Enzo Ferrari turning in his grave.

Click the meme to read more

Trump officials preparing for $250 note featuring Trump's face

Federal law bars printing images of living people on US currency, but Trump allies in Congress are moving to make an exception. It’s happened the same week a buffalo in Bangladesh won a Donald Trump lookalike competition. Make of that what you will…

Click the meme to read more

Job Opening of the Week

If you’re looking for some ‘hands on’ work experience over the summer, look no further.

Joi AI is hiring 10 “masturbation consultants” at $2,000 for a month to test an AI-guided masturbation feature and document its effects on stress, sleep, mood, and confidence.

They say the campaign is intended to collect product feedback while drawing attention to AI’s growing role in sexual wellness and digital intimacy.

I might get in ‘touch’. Sorry…

That’s all for today, but before you go…

We’d love it if you left us some feedback as to how you found this edition.

Our intern will get back to you within 4-5 business days, once we’ve let them out of the basement for some fresh air.

Thanks to Sam & Charlie