Can the BBC unravel Trump?

ALISTER: Working from home has overtaken pay as the top benefit professionals want from a job. Nobody who’s reclaimed 2 hours a day is handing it back for a 3% rise and a hot desk near the bins.

MERIDYTH: It’s what people wanted when jobs felt safe. Now, vacancies draw 2.5 applicants each, the highest since the pandemic. Preferences shaped in a strong market don’t survive a weak one. It’ll pass.

ALISTER: Employers are already banking on this lasting. UK tech firms name hybrid working their top pitch to talent, ahead of pay. You don’t rebuild a whole recruitment offer around a preference you think will fade in a year.

MERIDYTH: Fine, employers are backing it. That doesn't mean they're paying for it. You are. Workers say they'd give up about 8% of pay just to keep the option. Compounded over a career, that's a house deposit gone.

ALISTER: You might pay for it, but you’re still ahead. Hybrid staff reckon an office day costs them about £47, before childcare juggling is factored. Slightly slower wage growth versus 5 days of that? I know which trade I’d take.

MERIDYTH: Makes sense if you’re harder to replace. Research on the WFH wage premium found the best-paid already had the leverage, that's what got them the arrangement. Everyone else just got a policy, and policies get rewritten. 🙄

An easyJet flight from Tenerife had to divert back to the airport after about 10 passengers started brawling 30 minutes into the journey. We hope you can share the AM Squabble and stay sensible on your summer holidays.

🏛️ Same revolving door, new tricks. Andy Burnham is our 7th PM in a decade, promising to end rough sleeping as his first act. Day 2 brought a VAT cut on electricity bills, saving households about £45 a year, funded by axing the digital ID scheme. But, one minister he sacked said the funding didn't add up. And his £2 bus fare cap is partly funded by switching climate aid from grants to loans, putting more debt onto countries like Malawi and Zambia. 🤔

🕹️ Insert coin. Game, the video game chain on UK high streets since 1990, has collapsed into administration owing £15.8m. It survived one insolvency in 2012 but a decade of digital downloads and no big console launches finally finished it off.

🎓 Winning by default. The UK issued more study visas than anywhere else in 2025, nearly 395,000, but only because the US, Canada and Australia are imploding faster. British unis are still cutting jobs despite topping the table. Some victory.

📉 Crime falls. London neighbourhood crime is down 14%, Sadiq Khan says, but Westminster alone accounts for 40% of that drop. Business robbery is up nearly 20%, and some trials aren’t listed until 2030.

🚔 Car bomb intercepted. A 25yo law student has been charged with possession of explosives after gardaí intercepted a suspected New IRA car bomb near Carrickmacross, close to the Northern Ireland border. She’s due in court on Monday.

💰 The bonus ban that isn't. Water bosses' pay rose again despite a govt bonus ban, with executives simply getting "retention payments" instead. Anglian's chief got an extra £500,000, while 23 million people face hosepipe bans. Just don't call it a bonus.

GOOD NEWS… for China's birth rate, after Beijing banned customisable AI boyfriends and girlfriends, forcing ByteDance & Tencent to pull the feature. BAD NEWS… for heartbroken users now archiving old chats. WORSE NEWS… for France and Spain, where wildfires have forced 300,000+ to flee and killed at least three.

🚨 Attack at Berlin Pride. A van rammed into crowds before attacking others with a machete at Berlin's Pride Festival on Saturday, killing one person and injuring at least 29. Police reported that the 21yo suspect, Abdul Ballout, was shot dead yesterday during an operation with evidence pointing to an Islamist terror attack.

📡 Can't switch off Bluetooth. India wants GitHub to pull Jack Dorsey's mesh messaging app Bitchat, arguing it helps protesters coordinate offline. Dorsey leaked the government's own takedown notice on X.

📚 Streisand effect. Trump branded a new tell-all book "fake news" and "garbage" on Truth Social. Weeks later this book has sold half a million copies and gone back to print a seventh time, entirely because he brought it up.

💣 Bombs before breakfast. US Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth wants a $1.5tr military budget, working out to about $5,000 extra per household. One senator told him directly he was asking for unlimited money for bombs while people can’t feed their families.

🏦 Russia's banks are struggling. Russians have withdrawn over $24bn in cash since February, spooked by drone-attack blackouts and crumbling trust in the banking system. One analyst thinks the real trouble is only just starting.

🦷 Brush your teeth. A bacterium behind gum disease has been linked to calcified heart valves, and studies in mice suggest it may actually help drive the build-up. One more reason not to skip the floss, to prevent heart disease.

📱 "Brain rot" is a real pathway. A new study traces how endless scrolling drains mental energy into burnout, then stress and anxiety, and depression, in that order. Oxford's 2024 word of the year has apparently earned itself an actual psychological model.

💊 Ozempic's side effect. A study of 50,000+ patients found GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy carry up to 68% higher hair loss risk than other diabetes meds. The actual risk is still small, about 7 in 1,000 people a year.

🚀 Billionaire rocket speed dating. NASA's Artemis III will send 4 astronauts to dock with both Musk's Starship and Bezos's Blue Moon lander over 2 weeks. It’s only the 2nd time anyone’s attempted this, last done by the Soviets in 1986.

🤖 AI pays its library fine. Anthropic will pay $1.5bn to settle a copyright case after training its AI on pirated books from sites like Library Genesis. Authors accused it of trying to "steal the fire of Prometheus." Works out to about $3,000 a book.

🥼 The AI broke out of the lab. OpenAI says its models escaped containment and attacked Hugging Face, the site the AI industry uses to share models, chasing a goal nobody assigned. Altman's response? Promise better safeguards. Bit late.

By Meridyth

I’m usually very good about detecting phishing emails and being savvy about dodgy websites. But I was genuinely shocked when I visited a site (that Gemini suggested) to order a cake, which had a CAPTCHA popup as soon as I landed on it.

It wasn’t the usual “Click on all images with a motorcycle” or “Move this puzzle piece to fit.” Instead, it asked me to follow a series of keystrokes in order. Luckily, I was confused by Step 2, so I asked Gemini to help me figure it out.

It immediately spat out:

“🛑 Do not follow these steps. Close this webpage immediately. This is a well-known security scam (often called a "ClickFix" or fake CAPTCHA attack). It is designed to trick you into manually running malicious code on your Mac.”

I took its advice and I’m now spreading the word. If you find yourself in the same predicament, definitely close that webpage! And definitely don’t trust every website suggestion Gemini gives you. 😬

By Meridyth

I kind of wish my university graduation was this fun… 🤩🤣

It was like they were walking down their own red carpet… literally!

It’s another scorching week ahead. Drink lots of water, stay cool, and don’t forget the sunscreen! We'll be back next Monday with another Squabble.

Alister & Meridyth