The suggestion that people from ethnic minority backgrounds are regularly promoted beyond their qualifications or are being given some form of advantage is contradicted by the evidence. DEI may have narrowed some gaps, but it has not reversed the fortunes of white Britons as its critics suggest. And it has not had the scale of positive impact that its supporters had hoped for.
In May 2025, ten people affiliated with Eksmo, Russia’s publishing behemoth, were detained in Moscow. Three of them, Pavel Ivanov, Dmitry Protopopov and Artyom Vakhlyaev, were charged with ‘organising activities of an extremist organisation’. Their crime was distributing LGBT-themed books (such as Pioneer Summer, a bestselling novel in which two teenagers exchange a few tentative kisses). Placed under house arrest, the accused faced up to twelve years in prison. Their hearings concluded this month; all three were given suspended four-year prison sentences.
Saramago Cafe Bar at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (Kay Roxby / Alamy)
The entire contents of the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow were auctioned off by a commercial asset sales company on 30 July. In the days leading up to the sale, it was promoted in the Herald as an exciting opportunity to ‘purchase a major piece’ of Glasgow’s ‘creative heritage’. But the heritage of a civic arts centre belongs to the community it serves.
Trump’s most shocking move to influence the Honduran electorate was to pardon the former president Juan Orlando Hernández, serving a 45-year prison sentence for trafficking cocaine to the US. JOH is the patriarch of the National Party, and his release helped lift its candidate, Nasry Asfura, from third in the polls, sealing the fate of the progressive Libre party which had ruled for four years. It was unclear if JOH would return to Honduras, where he still faces criminal charges. But on 26 July he landed at Palmerola Airport in a private jet, welcomed by the new president of the National Congress, Tomás Zambrano, and hundreds of supporters.
Unlike peace agreements – which require negotiation, compromise and (ostensibly) long-term commitment – ceasefires are by definition temporary, partial and immediate. But they also construe violence narrowly and reinforce imbalances of power. They are as much a way to govern a population as a road to peace.
It has been a bad few weeks for Fifa and its president, Gianni Infantino, and therefore a good few weeks for football. More and worse has happened since the World Cup than even Fifa’s most fatalistic observers would have thought possible.
Firefighters attend a wildfire between Saumos and Le Porge, Gironde, France, 23 July 2026 (MAXPPP / Guillaume Bonnaud / Alamy)
In the last week of July a guest in our house, an hour’s drive from Bordeaux, was called away to a fire emergency in the Gironde, where things were rapidly getting out of control. A firefighter attached to the French military, he had just lost two colleagues in the civilian service in a fire near the airport: their fire engine was trapped in a stand of blazing pine trees. Within days, it looked as if the western suburbs of Bordeaux were under threat, but by early August the situation in the Gironde was relatively stable, even if the destruction was immense and the prospect of further fires still looms.