| | | | Behind the paywall today:
🇸🇦 The biggest loser of the Iran war
🤑 How much Silicon Valley nerds are paying to get a girlfriend
🛫 The “catapulter” upending US military planning
🪞 Why plastic surgeons are tired of seeing “AI face”
💀 How well do you know your animal skulls?
🕺 A dancing Japanese salaryman | |
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| | | Organisations across the world are scrambling to fix two critical cyber-security flaws affecting around 70% of the internet. The vulnerability within the PHP programming language was discovered using AI tools and exposes millions of websites and users to potential hacking. Several governments, businesses and universities have shut down their sites as they race to fix the issue. The Kremlin has agreed “in principle” to resume trilateral talks with Ukraine and the US in November but said new peace proposals lack “substance”, after Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg yesterday. The US special envoy is facing sharp criticism at home after praising the Russian president as a “humanitarian” for releasing an American prisoner detained on bogus charges. Blackpool, Milton Keynes, Sheffield and Wrexham have been shortlisted to become the UK’s next City of Culture. The winning city will be announced in May and awarded £10m to deliver a year of cultural events and activities in 2029, drawing on its “local strengths and stories”. | | | | 🎁 Share The Knowledge, earn rewards 🎁 | Simply copy and paste your unique referral link (below) and send it to others. If they click it and sign up, that’s one referral for you. Two referrals earns you a free month of a paid subscription to The Knowledge. Five referrals earns you three months. And so on. | Your link: https://www.theknowledge.com/subscribe?ref=iT3HYGktiV |
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| | |  | Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh: a grown-up approach. Dan Kitwood/Getty |
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| A victory for common sense in the North Sea | Credit where it’s due, says Ross Clark in The Spectator. The government’s announcement that the development of the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea can go ahead is a “victory for common sense”. The case for it is overwhelming: the gas, which could start flowing within months, will be fed directly into the UK grid, reducing our dependency on expensive imports from America, Qatar and Algeria. More importantly, Jackdaw will reduce gas-related CO2 emissions. The liquefied natural gas (LNG) we currently import from the likes of Qatar is ludicrously energy-intensive to produce and transport, not least because you have to chill the fuel to -160C and then “regasify” it at the UK end. | What’s incredible, says Nils Pratley in The Guardian, is that it’s taken Labour this long to recognise the obvious benefits of Jackdaw. The real “bizarreness” of the government’s previous approach was that, even as it touted the virtues of “clean homegrown energy” like wind, solar and nuclear, it pursued a policy that maximised imports when it came to oil and gas. This hare-brained attempt to appease the emotional demands of the party’s base created a mad situation in which the roughly 23 million UK homes with gas boilers found themselves burning fuel from the shale fields of Texas, when lower-polluting supplies were available off Aberdeen. This was transparently foolish even to the likes of Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB union, who pointed out that it was a bit rich for the UK to claim “climate leadership” when it was simply off-shoring emissions. The Jackdaw decision is a welcome step towards a grown-up approach to energy security. | | | | | | Advertisement | | How much is enough? | Selling a business can be life-changing, but planning for life after an exit is just as important as preparing for the sale itself. In this article, Weatherbys Private Bank’s Head of Entrepreneurs, Nick Gornall, explores why founders should define what “enough” looks like before a deal completes. | From understanding core wealth and reviewing ownership structures, to managing family expectations and finding purpose beyond the business, Nick shares practical insights gained from decades of advising entrepreneurs through successful exits. Read more about our specialist private banking support for entrepreneurs: Weatherbys Private Bank for Entrepreneurs. | Weatherbys Bank Ltd is registered at Sanders Road Wellingborough Northamptonshire NN8 4BX. Registered Number: 2943300. Weatherbys Bank Limited is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Financial Services Register number: 204571. Weatherbys Private Bank, Weatherbys Racing Bank and Weatherbys Business Bank are trading names of Weatherbys Bank Limited. |
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| | | | | | First prize in the 52nd annual Nikon Small World photomicrography competition – which honours the most remarkable photos taken through a microscope – went to student Ole Bielfeldt, for his experimental image of ink droplets suspended inside an inkjet printer as it prints. Other top-placed entries include a jumping spider dusted with pollen; neurons firing in an “expanded” mouse brain; the tip of a ballpoint pen; a cross-section of a closed daisy; a parasitoid wasp emerging from a butterfly chrysalis; a tardigrade moulting and laying an egg in its old skin; recrystallised oestrogen; and Pilobolus fungi on sheep dung. To see more, click here. |
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| | | | | | | | | The free edition ends here, but there’s so much more to enjoy – not least the story behind the glorious video above. And have we mentioned the price? It’s laughably low: £4 a month (that’s one quid a week – actually a little less if we’re being pedantic) or an even better-value £40 for the whole first year. An entire year of The Knowledge. For £40. | |
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