America’s best diplomats might be its mayors


Johannes Kongsnes Natland, 19, was arrested in Huddersfield with two guns and live ammunition
A teenage hitman who travelled from Norway to the UK with the intention of carrying out a murder on behalf of an Iran-backed international crime gang has been jailed for 20 years.
Johannes Kongsnes Natland, 19, a talented footballer, had agreed to shoot an unknown target in return for €25,000 (£21,500).
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© Photograph: Metropolitan Police/Reuters

© Photograph: Metropolitan Police/Reuters

© Photograph: Metropolitan Police/Reuters
Four police officers woke and arrested Will Fraser, a 15-year-old Reform U.K. activist, at his Walsall home. More than two months later, police still have not clearly explained the exact reason for the arrest, but The Telegraph found that it stems from a few Facebook posts. For example, Fraser criticized a Tory member of the Wolverhampton City Council for wearing casual clothes at meetings, then later remarked that he was glad the councilor was "not looking like a rent boy." Officers took Fraser to the station, questioned him, took his DNA and fingerprints, seized his phone and laptop, and released him on bail while banning him from council meetings. His lawyers and free speech groups say the arrest was an overreaction that threatens free speech, while the councilor in question claims the posts felt like targeted harassment.
The post Brickbat: Penalty for Posting appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Bumblebees, puffins, barn owls and hedgehogs will feature on the Bank of England's next series of banknotes, replacing Winston Churchill and other British historic figures after they were deemed "elitist and divisive".
The post Bees, Puffins and Owls to Replace Churchill on New Banknotes appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
When CofE bishops in London read in a Left-wing rag that anti-small boat activists were attending church, they immediately released a statement. Where are all the statements about Left-wing activists, wonders Julian Mann.
The post Are People Who Are Concerned About Illegal Immigration Welcome in the Church of England? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

In this story for Dispatch, Lotte Brundle reports on a surprising trend: young women in the UK are pursuing careers in the death care industry. In a time of high unemployment, funeral home apprenticeships offer an alternative to university, where students accumulate significant debt. While the pay is low and the industry needs to do a better job building awareness that the trajectory exists, the young women who speak to Brundle find the work meaningful and rewarding.
Her inspiration to become an undertaker arrived, as many teenage epiphanies now do, via TikTok. Emily was 15 and had been considering becoming a teacher or journalist when she came across an American woman documenting life inside her own funeral home. “I’d never considered it as a career,” she says. “I didn’t know anyone who was an undertaker, but I just thought how interesting it was.”
Two hours later, she was still scrolling through the woman’s profile, engrossed. Running her own funeral home became Emily’s dream.
During the early 1860s, reports of violent robberies known as garrottings filled British newspapers. Victims were said to be attacked from behind, choked into unconsciousness, and robbed before their assailants vanished into the darkness. As sensational accounts multiplied, fear spread far beyond the actual crime scenes. Respectable citizens grew afraid to walk alone at night, politicians demanded action, and newspapers warned that London was facing a new and terrifying criminal menace.


More than a century before Albert Einstein revolutionized physics with his theory of general relativity, and nearly two centuries before astronomers accepted the existence of black holes, an English clergyman and scientist named John Michell proposed a startling idea. In 1783, Michell suggested that some stars might possess such immense gravity that even light could not escape from them. These invisible objects, which he called "dark stars," bear a remarkable resemblance to what we now know as black holes.

Visualisation of a black hole. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman
Azan Awais top-scored for Pakistan with 46 runs, while Saud Shakeel made 16.
The post Pakistan all out for 110, England take command at Lord’s Test appeared first on BOL News.
For Pakistan, Mohammad Abbas was the standout bowler, taking four wickets.
The post England’s first innings ends at 290 as Pakistan begin batting appeared first on BOL News.
Nearly two centuries ago, a strange hill rose above the flat landscape of London's East End. It stood high enough to appear on maps, serve as a landmark for travellers, and offer sweeping views across the city. Unlike most hills, Whitechapel Mount, as this hill was called, was almost certainly man-made. Yet, nobody is entirely sure how it came to be.
Was it a giant rubbish heap? A burial mound from one of London's deadly plague outbreaks? A remnant of Civil War fortifications? Or was it created from debris left behind by the Great Fire of London?
The answers remain uncertain, making Whitechapel Mount one of the most curious lost landmarks in the history of London.

Illustration of the Whitechapel Mount as it appeared on Illustrated London News, 28 April 1862. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
In 1905, a little-known journalist named Edgar Wallace was determined to make his first novel impossible to ignore. The book was The Four Just Men, a thriller about a group of vigilantes who take justice into their own hands when the law proves inadequate. The novel would eventually become one of Wallace's most famous works and launch a long-running series. Yet its initial publication is remembered less for its literary success than for one of the most spectacular marketing disasters in publishing history.

Credit: ZVAB
In a small village on the outskirts of London stands a barn so vast and magnificent that it has often been likened to a church. Its soaring timber arches rise high overhead, and its cavernous interior inspires the same sense of wonder that one expects to feel inside a medieval cathedral.
This is Harmondsworth Barn, and it was built more than six centuries ago to store grain harvested from the surrounding fields. Today it is widely regarded as one of the finest and best-preserved medieval barns in Europe, a masterpiece of timber construction that demonstrates the wealth, ambition, and engineering skill of medieval England. The poet and architectural campaigner John Betjeman was so impressed by the building that he famously described it as "the Cathedral of Middlesex."

Credit: slocumjoseph
In the frigid waters of the Canadian Arctic, nearly 100 meters beneath the surface, lies a ship seemingly untouched by time. Despite the passage of more than a century, she is more or less intact, except for a gaping hole in her starboard side. Two of her masts still rise from the seabed.
The ship is Breadalbane, the world’s northernmost known shipwreck, and also one of the best-preserved wooden ships ever found in the sea. She lies approximately 1,000 km south of the North Pole.

The Breadalbane and Phoenix beset in ice. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
When Britain entered the Second World War in September 1939, military planners understood that thousands of Allied servicemen would inevitably fall into enemy hands. Traditionally, prisoners of war were expected simply to endure captivity until the conflict ended. But this time, the British military establishment began to develop a very different philosophy.
To coordinate rescue and escape efforts, Britain established MI9, a secret department dedicated to helping Allied servicemen evade capture and escape from occupied Europe. At its head was the determined Norman Crockatt, a brigadier who transformed escape from a private ambition into an official duty.

Highly detailed map printed on silk were supplied to Allied PoW to help them escape. Credit: Wikimedia Commons