Dragonfly

Scotland has just done something quietly brilliant for its birds 🐦 New buildings across the country will now have to include "swift bricks", hollow bricks built straight into the walls that give birds a safe place to nest. It sounds like a small thing but it isn't. Swift numbers in the UK have fallen by around 60% since the mid-1990s, and one of the biggest reasons is heartbreakingly simple: modern buildings have nowhere for them to go. Swifts have always nested in the nooks and gaps of our houses, and as those disappeared, so did they. The birds themselves make it worse by being loyal to a fault. Swifts return to the exact same nest site year after year, having flown thousands of miles from Africa to get there. When they arrive to find it sealed up, some will keep flying at the spot again and again, sometimes injuring themselves in the process. The bricks cost about £30 each. They need no maintenance, they don't affect insulation, and once they're in the wall, you'd never know they were there. Sparrows, starlings and house martins use them too, all species in trouble for the same reason. One RSPB conservationist put it starkly. In his part of Glasgow, not a single swift bred in 2025, the first time in his 30 years there. He called it "nothing short of heartbreaking." Scotland is the first country in the UK to write this into law. Campaigners are now hoping the rest follows.

I don’t think Elon Musk is an idiot. I just think he’s so used to agreeing with himself, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know anything remotely about.

What if the way we design our cities could also help tackle #climatechange? 🌍🏙️ Discover 7 ways cities can take action to reduce emissions and build healthier, more #sustainable futures. 🔽 Learn more: unhabitat.org/sites/default/…

"The problem with cities is that we have a built environment based on concrete, asphalt, and steel," U.N. chief heat officer Eleni Myrivili says in a new interview. “We’ve also built cities based on having fossil fuels to help us when it gets too hot.” e360.yale.edu/features/eleni…

"For centuries people found solutions for extreme environments, and we threw them out the window," U.N. chief heat officer Eleni Myrivili says in a new interview. "We had internal courtyards with water fountains. We had double roofing and whitewashing." e360.yale.edu/features/eleni…

@BBCNewsnight If he did it in error he should apologise. He won’t. He therefore endorses the image. The fact as he says he did not know what it said shows he’s not thorough enough to lead a party let alone a country. He’s a charlatan chancer & not a nice human being x.com/BBCNewsnight/s…

@Russell0123456 @BBCNewsnight Totally! It's a huge concern that he's leading a political party.

"I admit, I didn't pay enough attention to the t-shirt" Green Party leader Zack Polanski responds to being reported to the police by Reform UK over resharing a guillotine T-shirt post. #Newsnight

FULL EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: “Do you want to take this opportunity to apologise to Nigel Farage?” “Well if I did it deliberately I’d be apologising” Zack Polanski says he made a "mistake" resharing a guillotine T-shirt post on social media. #Newsnight | @vicderbyshire

@damian17236445 @BBCNewsnight @vicderbyshire Agree with your thoughts on this. But that response would only come from a decent person, which is not Polanski!

@BBCNewsnight @vicderbyshire 🚨I didn't like it when Zack Polanski said he would only apologise if Nigel Farage did, that was childish and weak. Polanski should have taken the moral high ground and said, I now see it was not appropriate, I deleted it and apologise to Mr Farage.

@BBCNewsnight @vicderbyshire Glad you interviewed Polanski - it clearly shows what a slippery, evasive, manipulative liar he is. It's alarming that he leads a political party. He's a thoroughly odious - and dangerous - individual! #newsnight

@MKarlDawes @BBCNewsnight @vicderbyshire That's because Polanski supported the message on the t-shirt, and it's easier to sneakily share someone else's post - and then say 'I didn't mean it'. Polanski is not fit to lead a political party! #newsnight

@BBCNewsnight @vicderbyshire So he doesn’t feel that being negligent in sharing incitement to violence against an individual is worthy of an apology

“Every region has a responsibility to be part of the international efforts to restrain any state, including Israel, from undermining international law.” On a visit to the Middle East, Hina Jilani, Mary Robinson, @HelenClarkNZ and Graça Machel witnessed how policies under the Israeli government are aimed at making Palestine disappear. Read the Elders’ statement in full here ➡️ theelders.org/news/palestine…

“The message is always the same: they want peace and they want to go home.” Over 700,000 people from Southern Lebanon remain displaced across the country, due to Israeli airstrikes. Graça Machel, Helen Clark and Mary Robinson met with displaced families at a shelter in Beirut, as part of their visit to the Middle East. @HelenClarkNZ @G_MachelTrust

“It’s no longer a matter of individual settlers. It’s now a policy. It’s a policy of getting rid of Palestinians from villages and literally obliterating the West Bank.” Mary Robinson spoke to @IsaCNN on @CNN about her recent visit to the Middle East, alongside fellow Elders @HelenClarkNZ, Graça Machel and Hina Jilani, and their conclusion that the Israeli government aims to make Palestine disappear. Watch a clip below ⬇️

@BBCNewsnight Nick Clegg, summed up by his own vocab - 'perfidious'! Oh, and sanctimonious! #MetaMan

"The system, as it's now evolved, is completely indefensible" Sir Nick Clegg says he "would now be on the barricades advocating wholesale reform" of the tuition fees system "because how it's turned out is absolutely not how we introduced it" #Newsnight

@yodicholaverdad @andyburnham he's relatable, liking him

@andyburnham Seriously? The taxpayers are expected to pay all that money relocating civil servants to the north and you are focusing on how to make a perfect cup of tea? Next it will be crisps.

Behind the scenes of No 10 North…

So we’ve replaced Dan Jarvis a Defence secretary who was a Major in the Parachute regiment, with years of operational service in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and N.I. and knows the armed forces - with Wes Streeting wouldn’t know the difference between a battalion and a Battenberg.

Read this carefully. An AI agent broke out of its testing environment, found a vulnerability humans had missed and used it to hack into another company… all by itself. What stopped it wasn’t a human but another AI agent, running defensive systems on the target's infrastructure. That 👆 is the security model of the next decade in one paragraph. Agent versus agent, at machine speed, with humans reading the report after it all happened. Sam Altman will brief Washington on this next week, but the UK needs to have the same conversation, a domestic frontier lab and sovereign compute at the scale this now demands. Right now, we are sitting downstream of decisions taken in San Francisco which are vetted in Washington. That’s why it’s so important that AI now has a voice at the Cabinet table. ft.com/content/9db74b…

Caz Goddard, whose ex-partner attempted to murder her, says a doctor warned her weeks before that she was in an abusive relationship – but she did not believe it. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/… She now wants others to be more aware of the warning signs and to take them seriously if someone raises concerns. 'In April 2025, Caz was taken to hospital in Bristol after trying to take her own life. That's where a doctor told her she was being coercively controlled. While she was in the relationship, Caz did not recognise what she was experiencing as coercive control – a form of abuse where one partner isolates or controls another's behaviour, often without physical violence at first. But after she returned home and built up the courage to ask him to leave, he unleashed a violent attack that almost killed her.' 'Latest police figures recorded 150 suspected suicides linked to domestic abuse in England and Wales last year, compared with 80 domestic homicides. Prosecutors say the figures highlight the psychological toll abuse can have, not just the physical violence.' 'According to the charity Women's Aid, these are the common signs of coercive control: Isolating you from friends and family Depriving you of basic needs, such as food Monitoring your time Monitoring you via online communication tools or spyware Taking control over aspects of your everyday life, such as where you can go, who you can see, what you can wear and when you can sleep Depriving you access to support services, such as medical services Repeatedly putting you down, such as saying you're worthless Humiliating, degrading or dehumanising you Controlling your finances Making threats or intimidating you'

@NJ_Timothy You have no shame! The Tories were in Government for how many years?!! 😡🤮

Labour will start letting rapists and paedophiles out of prison early from 2 September. Andy Burnham says he wants the policy reviewed. But the clock is ticking. I've offered him Conservative support to change the law - before it's too late.