The Pakistan Telecommunications Limited (PTCL) announced on Saturday that cuts to submarine internet cables in Saudi waters may impact internet services in the country during peak hours.
In a statement shared on X, the telecom giant said the submarine cable cuts near Saudi capital Jeddah had impacted the partial bandwidth capacity SMW4 (South Asia-Middle East-West Asia) and IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe) networks.
“Internet users in Pakistan may experience some service degradation during peak hours,” the PTCL statement read. “Our international partners are working on priority to resolve the issue while our local teams are actively arranging alternative bandwidth to minimise the impact.”
The Ministry of Information Technology has not issued any statement on the development yet.
This is not the first time that damage to undersea internet cables has affected services in Pakistan.
Internet users across Pakistan complained of slow internet and hindered access to services throughout 2024. On January 3 this year, PTCL said teams were “diligently” working to resolve the matter of disruptions faced by users after a fault in the AAE-1 subsea internet cable connecting Pakistan slowed down the network speed in the country.
On January 16, PTCL announced that internet services were “now fully operational” after the complete restoration of the Asia-Africa-Europe-1 (AAE-1) undersea internet cable.
Shein’s UK arm has been accused of transferring the “vast bulk of income” to its Singaporean parent in order to cut its British tax bill.
The company, which had been considering a £50bn float on the London Stock Exchange but is expected to list in Hong Kong, paid just £9.6m in corporation tax despite taking £2bn in sales last year.
The payment is equivalent to 25% of the £38.2m in pre-tax profits it made in the UK in 2024, according to accounts filed at Companies House, in line with the UK corporation tax rate.
However, campaigners said the bill was low relative to Shein’s £2bn sales because about 84% or £1.72bn of the sales figure is transferred to its parent group’s Roadget Business Pte Ltd in Singapore as a “purchasing” cost.
“Very little surplus is left in the UK to be subject to corporate income tax,” Paul Monaghan, the chief executive of the Fair Tax Foundation, said.
Referring to tactics adopted by Amazon, Apple and Microsoft to transfer earnings to low-tax countries which met heavy criticism more than decade ago, Monaghan said: “This feels like a new wild west for tax. The fast-fashion industry now is reminiscent of the worst excesses of big tech’s anti-tax measures in previous decades.
“Questions need to be asked as to how much of the economic value that Shein Distribution UK Ltd generates from its UK sales are actually being booked as profit in the UK and are subject to corporate income tax, and how much is being booked as profit in the tax haven Singapore.
“The UK accounts reveal substantial related party transactions with its immediate parent in Singapore, which transfer the vast bulk of income back to Singapore as a ‘purchasing cost’, leaving relatively little surplus in the UK to be taxed.
“Singapore not only operates a lower headline corporate income tax rate than the UK, 25% versus 17%, but also offers special incentives to attract corporates to establish there and these can see profits taxed at rates as low as 5%, and we know from previous Shein disclosures that Roadget Business Pte Ltd avails themselves of these.”
Accounts for the Singapore operation reveal it paid tax at an average rate of corporation tax of 9.4% in the three years from 2021 to the end of 2023, according to the Fair Tax Foundation.
A spokesperson for Shein said the allegations were “preposterously wrong and collapse under the most basic scrutiny”.
“As is standard in international commerce, our UK business purchases products for resale from our principal at prices consistent with prevailing market conditions and arm’s length principles, just as any independent third party would,” the spokesperson said.
“This approach ensures that our transactions are fair, reasonable, and in line with global practices. These are among the most fundamental and widely accepted practices in global commerce, something these campaigners should already understand.
“That we operate in a low-margin, high-volume industry should be obvious to anyone who has done even minimal research on our sector.
“Shein complies with the relevant laws and regulations of each market we operate in. We pay all relevant taxes in UK, where applicable.”
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The ultimate owner of Shein’s Singapore business is based in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven.
The spokesperson for Shein said: “This is a standard, widely used corporate structure across industries.”
The concerns about Shein’s low rate of corporation tax payments in the UK add to worries about its use of the de minimis rule, which allows overseas sellers to send goods valued at £135 or less direct to British shoppers without paying any customs duty.
Monaghan estimates that Shein would have paid as much as £200m of customs duty on importing its goods to the UK if it had not used the tax break.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is reviewing the rule amid mounting fears that China’s retailers and manufacturers are dumping goods in the UK after the US in May revoked its own de minimis exception for Chinese-made goods, under which parcels with a value of less than $800 (£600) shipped to individuals were exempt from import tax. This week, the US also scrapped the tax break for items from all countries later this month.
The EU said in February it would phase out its exemption on customs duties for low-value parcels.
It emerged this week that £3bn worth of these parcels from China made up 51% of all the small parcels shipped to the UK from around the world last year.
That was up from 35% in 2023-24, according to HM Revenue and Customs figures obtained by the BBC via a freedom of information request.
On August 15, Afghan activists around the world marked four years since the Taliban retook Kabul. In Washington, a virtual protest brought together human rights defenders, exiled activists, and diaspora leaders. Their message was urgent but bleak: Afghanistan is slipping into silence, not just under Taliban repression, but in the corridors of global power where its plight has been relegated to the margins.
“Gender apartheid is one of the top strategic tools,” said Elika Eftikhari, executive director of the Washington-based human rights group JINA Alliance told the virtual protest. She stressed that the case for labelling Afghanistan a gender apartheid state does not need to be built—“it already exists on its face since the Taliban has codified it into the law and the Constitution, legal system, and governing documents.”
That reality has defined Afghan life since 2021. Girls barred from classrooms, women erased from public spaces, and harsh punishments justified under a narrow interpretation of Islamic law. Yet while activists chanted at the virtual protest in multiple cities across the US, “Taliban are terrorists,” Washington largely looked elsewhere. The US news cycles that day were consumed by coverage of former President Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Ukraine. Four years after Kabul fell, America seems to have moved on.
The contrast could not have been sharper. Afghanistan, once a centerpiece of US foreign and military policy, has steadily faded from America’s political imagination.
A vanishing priority
After the September 11 attacks, Afghanistan commanded Washington’s undivided attention for two decades. Trillions of dollars were spent, and more than 2,400 American soldiers died there. Yet four years after the Taliban’s return, Afghanistan is a footnote in congressional debates, a sporadic talking point in think tanks, and a rarity in mainstream US media.
“Nothing in Afghanistan aligns with the [current] administration’s focus on commercial diplomacy,” said Dr Asfandyar Mir, Senior Fellow for South Asia at the Stimson Centre. “Unlike the new Syrian regime, the Taliban record is poorer and the regime has no advocates among US allies. Consequently, the status quo will persist. The implication is that Afghanistan will be, at best, the region’s problem and the US will focus on its narrow counterterrorism interests,” he told the T-Magazine in a written reply to questions on the subject.
Mir added that “even under President Biden, interest in Afghanistan only lingered out of fear of collapse on the administration’s watch, given the disastrous 2021 withdrawal that damaged the Biden administration politically.” The difference now, he said, is stark: “The current administration operates without the shadow of the Afghanistan withdrawal. It is more vigilant on counterterrorism and willing to act globally, including in South Asia.”
In other words, Afghanistan matters only in so far as it might incubate terrorist threats. Human rights, governance, and development, the very pillars US officials once invoked to justify their mission, have been effectively abandoned.
The silence of Washington
A recent Brookings Institution article, “The Second Trump Administration Turns a Blind Eye to Afghanistan” (May 2025), bluntly concluded that Aghanistan has “effectively disappeared from US political and media attention since the chaotic 2021 withdrawal.”
The author, Madiha Afzal, argued that the retreat is not only rhetorical. “With deep cuts to humanitarian aid, reduced refugee protections, and little appetite for human rights advocacy, millions of Afghans face worsening hunger, instability, and repression,” says the analytical piece.
As Madiha Afzal notes, “Human rights will no longer be a focus of US foreign policy,” a chilling admission given the scale of suffering for Afghan women and girls. Engagement persists only in fragments: limited counterterrorism cooperation and the quiet reversal of bounties on certain Taliban figures.
For Afghan activists in exile, this selective engagement is both infuriating and devastating. While Russia and Iran are accused of backing the Taliban, the US response is muted. At rallies in American cities, protestors condemned Moscow’s role, but their demands barely registered in Washington’s policy circles.
The virtual protest, titled Global Anti-Taliban Demonstration, issued a resolution shared with T-Magazine urging the US government and the international community to designate Russia as a “terror sponsor,” recognise the Taliban’s system as “gender apartheid,” bring Taliban leaders to justice, protect Afghan refugees, back the people’s resistance, and restore democracy in Afghanistan.
Sadiq Amini, an Afghan human rights activist and organiser of the protest, told T-Magazine in a written response that they welcome the Trump administration’s disengagement with the Taliban. “We are very happy about the Trump administration’s disengagement with the Taliban terrorists in charge of Afghanistan. People of Afghanistan appreciate it. This policy shift will help the people of Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban terrorists through people’s uprising.”
Competing priorities: Iran at the centre
If Afghanistan has fallen off Washington’s radar, Iran has moved to the centre of its counterterrorism map. At a Hudson Institute event on August 19, Dr Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, sketched out the Trump administration’s strategy.
“Iran is front and centre in everything we do in the region because they remain the greatest state sponsor of terrorism,” Gorka declared. “I’ve been telling my colleagues since January the 20th you need to understand one thing, when the president looks at the region he does not slice it down into cylinders of accidents… that one metric, that one prism is Iran.”
Outlining early achievements, Gorka boasted: “We have liberated 72 US citizens in less than seven months, the Biden administration did 80 in four years, we have killed 272 Jihadis since January, excluding the Houthis.”
As he mapped threats from the Middle East to Africa, Afghanistan barely merited mention. Groups like IS-K, which have carried out deadly attacks in Kabul and beyond, were eclipsed by Washington’s singular obsession with Tehran.
A fractured narrative
The silence in Washington around Afghanistan reflects more than shifting priorities. Experts say it reveals how Washington processes legacy of failures. The withdrawal in August 2021, labelled as chaotic, deadly, and humiliating in the public debates, scarred the US politics. Both Democrats and Republicans prefer to look away, avoiding a reminder of America’s longest war and the collapse that followed.
That avoidance has consequences. By treating Afghanistan as a closed chapter, Washington obscures the ongoing realities: Taliban rule has normaliesd gender apartheid, the humanitarian crisis has deepened with aid cuts, and terrorist groups continue to exploit instability.
The activists who rallied on August 15 are trying to force attention back. For them, the stakes are existential. Women’s education, civic freedom, and Afghanistan’s fragile pluralism are vanishing before the world’s eyes. Yet their chants echo in a vacuum, drowned out by geopolitical rivalries elsewhere.
What comes next?
Some analysts warn that Washington’s neglect could backfire. IS-K’s reach has already extended into Pakistan and Central Asia, while Taliban infighting risks destabilising the region. Meanwhile, Russia, China, and Iran are quietly expanding influence in Kabul, filling the void left by Western retreat.
Yet for now, the US is unlikely to re-engage beyond targeted strikes or intelligence-sharing. Humanitarian aid has squeezed, and refugee programmes face tightening restrictions. The shift is clear: Afghanistan is no longer America’s priority, but it may well remain its unfinished business.
As Afzal at Brookings cautions, ignoring Afghanistan does not make its crises disappear. The country is again becoming a testing ground, not for US democracy-building, but for the limits of Washington’s attention span.
Afghan activists say right now Afghanistan’s tragedy is twofold. At home, the Taliban have institutionalised repression to the point that gender apartheid is woven into law. Abroad, the nation has been abandoned by the very power that once claimed to liberate it.
“Gender apartheid,” as Eftikhari put it, “is one of the top strategic tools” of Taliban rule. And yet, for the global community, it is not even a strategic concern. For the women and girls who have lost their futures, for activists silenced or exiled, and for ordinary Afghans caught between poverty and repression, the silence of Washington may feel like the betrayal.
Nilofar Mughal is a Washington-based journalist, formerly affiliated with the Voice of America
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the author
New Zealand head coach Allan Bunting has named a strong side as the Black Ferns look to sew up top seeding for the quarter-finals. For the second match running, young stars Jorga Miller and Braxton Sorensen-McGee move positions, with Miller switching back to open-side flanker and her teammate heading to the wing after shinning at full-back last week. It’s a luxury the Black Ferns seem able to handle.
Still no Aoife Wafer for the Irish, with the reigning Six Nations Player of the Championship not yet deemed fit enough. Good news for the women in green in the form of co-captain Sam Monaghan who does start despite being forced off early on last weekend. Can the Irish repeat last year’s magical WXV1 victory over the Black Ferns?
Kick-off: 14:45 BST, Sunday, 7 September
Venue: Brighton & Hove Albion Stadium, Brighton and Hove
If you have a ticket already, make sure you read local England international Emily Robinson’s top tips for a great time in her hometown.
How to watch: Head here to get a last-minute ticket.
Or check out our Global Guide to the TV options in your area.
New Zealand team:
New Zealand’s key player: It may sound a little crazy to pick a player who only made her Black Ferns debut in May but Jorga Miller has made such an impact on this team and this RWC that no one will bat an eyelid. The 21-year-old former sevens specialist made three line breaks and broke 11 tackles inside the first 21 minutes v Spain. Not bad.
Ireland team:
Ireland’s key player: Grace Moore was outstanding against Spain, two tries just reward for her all-action performance. That was from number eight but now Moore gets the chance to impress as an open-side flanker.
Recent head-to-heads:
WXV1 2024: IRE 29-27 NZL
What New Zealand said:
New Zealand head coach Allan Bunting:
“We’ve had a few good weeks together now and all our ladies have had good game time and we put a strong team out there that we believe can do the job.
“We’ve got a pretty experienced group now. Most of these ladies have been at a World Cup and Olympics, so they enjoy their crowds and enjoy the attention. Quite a few families are going to be over this week too, so it’s going to be a special moment.”
New Zealand co-captain Kennedy Tukuafu:
“The team’s firing. We’ve all come here understanding the purpose and all striving towards the same goal, so selection’s tough. We all rally around each other. We’ve got the support we need in this environment and we’ve also got our systems back home.
“We like to rejuvenate a lot on this team, because our training’s really tough, so we make sure our bodies are prepared for the next training. We’ve had lots of girls go to the beach, go to the pier. We have a few shoppers in the team, lots of foodies. Everyone goes out and finds nice spots and puts it in the chat, then we all go and have a look.”
What Ireland said:
Ireland head coach Scott Bemand:
“From the very beginning there’s been a plan in place around Aoife (Wafer) and her return. Everything is tracking well – she’s back training well and going strong. She’s desperate to be involved this weekend, and while we could have considered picking her, we decided her best opportunity is to go hard in training next week and see where that takes us.”
Ireland full-back Stacey Flood:
“New Zealand are known for their running game – the girls are great at it, both in sevens and 15s. Its’s about seeing what they’re good at and hoping we can counteract it, but for us the main thing is focusing on ourselves. We want to implement our own style of play, just like we have in the last two games. We will stick to what we are good at and what we know. They are world-class contenders and we respect that, but at the end of the day it comes down to us.”
Fifth staging of the Porsche Football Cup – eight teams from Europe will compete against each other at the high-class U-15 tournament on 6 and 7 September. At the official opening in the Porsche Museum on Friday evening, the drawing of the two groups was conducted by the Brand Ambassador and football World Cup winner Sami Khedira together with Dr. Sebastian Rudolph, Vice President Communications, Sustainability and Politics.
The preliminary group matches at the fifth Porsche Football Cup have been drawn. In an eagerly awaited derby, the junior teams belonging to the local VfB Stuttgart and Stuttgarter Kickers clubs will open the tournament at VfB Stuttgart’s training grounds on Saturday at 10 am. Title-holders Barcelona will start their campaign simultaneously. Their opponent is last year’s runner-up Borussia Mönchengladbach.
The official welcome in the Porsche Museum was undertaken by Dr. Sebastian Rudolph. In a talk with Sami Khedira and the VfB legend Timo Hildebrand, the former players gave some exciting insights into life as a professional footballer. “We’re looking forward to watching some great football and to cheering you all on,” said Khedira. He gave the young footballers something to think about along their journeys saying, “A different kind of football is played in the north than in the south. Use the tournament therefore to get into contact with others.”
Sami Khedira
The highlight of the evening was the subsequent drawing of the groups which the players followed with huge interest. Alternating, Rudolph and Khedira pulled the teams and group allocation “out of the hat”. “A team is yet to successfully defend the title,” said Dr. Sebastian Rudolph. “And a Stuttgart derby right at the start promises just as much tension as the pros.”
The young players had the chance to get into contact with each other when enjoying the evening meal. A private tour around the museum then rounded off the evening.
What’s next
The tournament’s Group A consists of the two local VfB Stuttgart and Stuttgarter Kickers teams plus title-holders Barcelona and last year’s beaten finalists Borussia Mönchengladbach. Group B will see Red Bull Football Academy Salzburg, VfL Wolfsburg, Erzgebirge Aue and Bayern Munich take each other on for a place in the semifinals.
Defending champions FC Barcelona
The first and second placed teams in each group will meet in the semifinals on Sunday morning (7 September). Group results will also determine who plays who in the play-offs for the lower placings. The highlight is the final plus victory ceremony in the Robert Schlienz Stadium. Kick-off is at 1.45 pm. Awaiting fans off the pitch are refreshment stalls and any number of activities they can try their hands at. Visitors – admission is free of charge – can display their own footballing skills and compete against each other on the goal target wall and at table football. Porsche partner clubs will also invite people to have a go at other sports. The Porsche Basketball Academy – the elite academy at the local MHP RIESEN Ludwigsburg club – will present a variety of basketball activities. The Bietigheim-Bissingen Steelers will organise an ice-hockey shooting practice session. VfB Stuttgart’s mascot Fritzle will also be cheering on the junior teams over the weekend and will be available for fans to have their photos taken with him.
CSR initiative – teams playing for a good cause
The “Talents Hand in Hand” CSR initiative marked the start of the tournament week. The participating teams absolved a practice session together with the charitable so-called “Bunt kickt gut” initiative, with football World Cup winner Sami Khedira already watching from the sidelines. Its aim is to bring together children, youths and adults belonging to differing cultural and social heritages via an intercultural street football league. A guided tour to the Porsche Museum gave the 25 children from the initiave a better understanding of the Porsche brand.
The young footballers can also contribute to the social good by scoring lots of goals within the “Goals for Charity” fundraiser. The sports car manufacturer will donate 400 euro for each goal scored to the “Stiftung OlympiaNachwuchs Baden-Württemberg”. The foundation is committed to the sustained support of up-and-coming sportsmen and women and accompanies young athletes on their paths to the Olympic Games.
Live on SPORT1 and in Porsche Newsroom
In collaboration with the SPORT1 television channel, the junior competition will be televised live with a German commentary. On Saturday, 6 September, six group matches on Pitch 1 will be shown on sport1.de from 10 o’clock onwards and streamed on SPORT1’s YouTube channel. On Sunday, 7 September, a semifinal, the third and fifth place play-offs will be broadcast as will the final in the Robert Schlienz Stadium at 1.45 pm – also in sport1.de and on SPORT1’s YouTube channel. The final will also be screened in linear television in SPORT1. The channel’s so-called “Doppelpass” pundit show on Sunday will transmit live from the Porsche Football Cup.
Extensive coverage will also be available here in the Porsche Newsroom at www.porschefußballcup.de (German only). In addition to the latest news, there will also be images and videos plus the tournament schedule and results on the tournament’s web site.
Schedule, Saturday 6 September
10:00 Group A VfB Stuttgart – Stuttgarter Kickers (Pitch 1) 10:00 Group A Borussia Mönchengladbach – Barcelona (PSV Stadium) 11:00 Group B Red Bull Football Academy Salzburg – VfL Wolfsburg (Pitch 1) 11:00 Group B Erzgebirge Aue – Bayern Munich (PSV Stadium)
13:00 Group A VfB Stuttgart – Borussia Mönchengladbach (Pitch 1) 13:00 Group A Stuttgarter Kickers – Barcelona (PSV Stadium) 14:00 Group B Red Bull Football Academy Salzburg – Erzgebirge Aue (Pitch 1) 14:00 Group B VfL Wolfsburg – Bayern Munich (PSV Stadium)
15:45 Group A Barcelona – VfB Stuttgart (Pitch 1) 15:45 Group A Stuttgarter Kickers – Borussia Mönchengladbach (PSV Stadium) 16:45 Group B Bayern Munich – Red Bull Football Academy Salzburg (Pitch 1) 16:45 Group B VfL Wolfsburg – Erzgebirge Aue (PSV Stadium)
“Turbo for Talents” – the Porsche Youth Development Programme
Porsche takes its societal responsibility seriously and invests specifically in the future via the Porsche Youth Development Programme. Under the motto “Turbo for Talents”, Porsche commits itself to helping youngsters in a variety of sports. In football, there are partnerships with Stuttgarter Kickers, the Red Bull Football Academy, Borussia Mönchengladbach, VfB Stuttgart and Erzgebirge Aue. In the sport of ice-hockey, Porsche helps foster juniors at the Bietigheim Steelers club. In basketball, Porsche lends its name to the Ludwigsburg Porsche Basketball Academy (BBA) – the elite training centre for the MHP RIESEN Ludwigsburg club. The commitment is not just about supporting high-quality sports coaching but also developing young people socially and personally. Through its “Talents Hand in Hand” initiative, Porsche, together with its partner clubs and social institutions, also conveys values like tolerance, passion and respect to young people. It also promotes the embracing of topics like inclusion, environmental awareness and health. The famous patron of the Youth Development Programme is the football World Cup winner Sami Khedira. Information about the highly diverse programme can be found at www.turbofürtalente.de.
Porsche Football Cup
All information on Porsche Football Cup can be found here (German only).
When the chief executive of the Financial Times suggested at a media conference this summer that rival publishers might consider a “Nato for news” alliance to strengthen negotiations with artificial intelligence companies there was a ripple of chuckles from attendees.
Yet Jon Slade’s revelation that his website had seen a “pretty sudden and sustained” decline of 25% to 30% in traffic to its articles from readers arriving via internet search engines quickly made clear the serious nature of the threat the AI revolution poses.
Queries typed into sites such as Google, which accounts for more than 90% of the search market, have been central to online journalism since its inception, with news providers optimising headlines and content to ensure a top ranking and revenue-raising clicks.
But now Google’s AI Overviews, which sit at the top of the results page and summarise responses and often negate the need to follow links to content, as well as its recently launched AI Mode tab that answers queries in a chatbot format, have prompted fears of a “Google zero” future where traffic referrals dry up.
“This is the single biggest change to search I have seen in decades,” says one senior editorial tech executive. “Google has always felt like it would always be there for publishers. Now the one constant in digital publishing is undergoing a transformation that may completely change the landscape.”
Last week, the owner of the Daily Mail revealed in its submission to the Competition and Markets Authority’s consultation on Google’s search services that AI Overviews have fuelled a drop in click-through traffic to its sites by as much as 89%.
DMG Media and other leading news organisations, including Guardian Media Group and the magazine trade body the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA), have urged the competition watchdog to make Google more transparent and provide traffic statistics from AI Overview and AI Mode to publishers as part of its investigation into the tech firm’s search dominance.
Publishers – already under financial pressure from soaring costs, falling advertising revenues, the decline of print and the wider trend of readers turning away from news – argue that they are effectively being forced by Google to either accept deals, including on how content is used in AI Overview and AI Mode, or “drop out of all search results”, according to several sources.
On top of the threat to funding, there are concerns about AI’s impact on accuracy. While Google has improved the quality of its overviews since earlier iterations advised users to eat rocks and add glue to pizza, problems with “hallucinations” – where AI presents incorrect or fabricated information as fact – remain, as do issues with in-built bias, when a computer rather than a human decides how to summarise sources.
Google Discover has replaced search as the main source of traffic click-throughs to content. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
In January, Apple promised to update an AI feature that issued untrue summaries of BBC news alerts, stamped with the corporation’s logo, on its latest iPhones; alerts incorrectly claimed that the man accused of killing a US insurance boss had shot himself and that tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.
In a blogpost last month, Liz Reid, Google’s head of search, said the introduction of AI in search was “driving more queries and quality clicks”.
“This data is in contrast to third-party reports that inaccurately suggest dramatic declines in aggregate traffic,” she said. “[These reports] are often based on flawed methodologies, isolated examples, or traffic changes that occurred prior to the rollout of AI features in search.”
However, she also said that while overall traffic to all websites is “relatively stable” she admitted that the “vast” web means that user trends are shifting traffic to different sites “resulting in decreased traffic to some sites and increased traffic to others”.
In recent years, Google Discover, which feeds users articles and videos tailored to them based on their past online activity, has replaced search as the main source of click-throughs to content.
However, David Buttle, founder of the consultancy DJB Strategies, says the service, which is also tied to publishers’ overall search deals, does not deliver the quality traffic that most publishers need to drive their long-term strategies.
“Google Discover is of zero product importance to Google at all,” he says. “It allows Google to funnel more traffic to publishers as traffic from search declines … Publishers have no choice but to agree or lose their organic search. It also tends to reward clickbaity type content. It pulls in the opposite direction to the kind of relationship publishers want.”
Meanwhile, publishers are fighting a wider battle with AI companies seeking to plunder their content to train their large language models.
The creative industry is intensively lobbying the government to ensure that proposed legislation does not allow AI firms to use copyright-protected work without permission, a move that would stop the “value being scraped” out of the £125bn sector.
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The Make It Fair campaign in February focused on the threat to the creative industries from generative AI. Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Rex
Some publishers have struck bilateral licensing deals with AI companies – such as the FT, the German media group Axel Springer, the Guardian and the Nordic publisher Schibsted with the ChatGPT maker OpenAI – while others such as the BBC have taken action against AI companies alleging copyright theft.
“It is a two-pronged attack on publishers, a sort of pincer movement,” says Chris Duncan, a former News UK and Bauer Media senior executive who now runs a media consultancy, Seedelta. “Content is disappearing into AI products without serious remuneration, while AI summaries are being integrated into products so there is no need to click through, effectively taking money from both ends. It is an existential crisis.”
While publishers are pursuing action on multiple fronts – from dealmaking and legal action to regulatory lobbying – they are also implementing AI tools into newsrooms and creating their own query-answering tools. The Washington Post and the FT have launched their own AI-powered chatbots, Climate Answers and Ask FT, that source results only from their own content.
Christoph Zimmer, chief product officer at Germany’s Der Spiegel, says that while its traffic is currently stable he expects referrals from all platforms to decline.
“This is a continuation of a longstanding trend,” he says. “However, this affects brands that have not focused on building direct relationships and subscriptions in recent years even more strongly. Instead, they have relied on reach on platforms and sometimes generic content.
“What has always been true remains true – a focus on quality and distinct content, and having a human in charge rather than just in the loop.”
One publishing industry executive says the battle to strike deals to help train AI models to aggregate and summarise stories is rapidly being superseded by advances that are seeing models interpret live news.
“The first focus has been on licensing deals for training AI, to ‘speak English’, but that is becoming less important over time,” says the executive. “It is becoming about delivering the news, and for that you need accurate live sources. That is a potentially really lucrative market which publishers are thinking about negotiating next.”
Saj Merali, chief executive of the PPA, says a fair balance needs to be struck between a tech-driven change in consumers’ digital habits and the fair value of trusted news.
“What doesn’t seem to be at the heart of this is what consumers need,” she says. “AI needs trustworthy content. There is a shift in how consumers want to see information, but they have to have faith in what they are reading.
“The industry has been very resilient through quite major digital and technological changes, but it is really important we make sure there is a route to sustain models. At the moment the AI and tech community are showing no signs of supporting publisher revenue.”
After a year of musical chairs in the fashion industry, September is poised to be one of its biggest show months ever, with debut collections from 15 creative directors.
Rather than waiting for the catwalk, over the past 10 days brands including Chanel and Dior have given themselves a head start at the Venice film festival, using its starry red carpets and even gondolas to soft launch looks from their newly installed designers.
Unlike the Oscars, which is one night of intense red-carpet scrutiny, or the Cannes film festival, which comes with strict rules, the focus at Venice is very much on notable art house films.
With the pressure off, it allows designers, stylists and their Hollywood clients the opportunity to have a bit more fun. Amanda Seyfried even borrowed the same Versace look from Julia Roberts. A triumph for sustainability or a marketing stunt? Either way, it was front-page news.
Jonathan Anderson, who took over at Dior in June, teased more than a dozen looks on actors including Greta Lee and Alba Rohrwacher before his womenswear debut in Paris next month. Lee wore a deconstructed minidress that riffed on the brand’s signature bar jacket, while Rohrwacher wore a navy gown with a padded bustle.
Broken English star Tilda Swinton. Photograph: Gisela Schober/Getty Images
Meanwhile, Tilda Swinton hinted at what we can expect from Matthieu Blazy, the French-Belgian designer who recently landed the top job at Chanel, when she stepped off a water taxi wearing loosely cut white trousers and a short-sleeved blouse featuring tiny shimmering interlocking CC buttons.
Henrik Lischke, the senior fashion features editor at Grazia, likens this new preview strategy to the press tour of the Barbie film in 2023. “That proved that the more hype you create, the more attention you get. These fashion brands are giving us a glimpse of what to expect,” he said. “It gets people excited long before a look even hits the catwalk.”
It can also catapult relatively unknown names into the spotlight. In April, when it was announced Dario Vitale would be taking over from Donatella Versace, he was a designer only industry insiders were familiar with. But this week he was the talk of the lido, thanks to that sneak peek via Roberts and Seyfried.
Pop stars such as Taylor Swift are known for planting Easter eggs, hidden clues about future projects for fans to decipher. Paparazzi shots of actors on set are used as unofficial teasers. And now it appears fashion designers are embracing the art of the promotional sneak peek too.
Timothée Chalamet gives a subtle nod to Bob Dylan’s style in Haider Ackermann’s first collection for Tom Ford. Photograph: Daniel Cole/Reuters
Fashion’s new soft launch was first embraced by the actor Timothée Chalamet, who wore Haider Ackermann’s first outfit for Tom Ford to the Golden Globes, two months before the designer’s debut show. He also wore Sarah Burton’s first menswear look for Givenchy, a butter-yellow suit, to the Oscars days before her inaugural Paris show. Vicky Krieps and Julianne Moore have also worn previews of Louise Trotter’s Bottega Veneta.
But similar to how on-set images have been blamed for ruining movie magic, could these early teasers backfire? Some online users have accused Versace of becoming boring, while others say Anderson’s purposefully chaotic pieces for Dior do not exactly scream Hollywood glamour.
Amy Odell, a fashion commentator and author of Gwyneth: The Biography, says while designers will be aware of early criticism, it is important to remember “not every look is for everybody”. As for disclosing too much, Odell is not worried. “I don’t think a whole lot is given away by one or two looks at a film festival – I view it as a nice teaser of what’s to come, an amuse bouche versus a big spoiler.”
Best looks
When the Hollywood stylist Elizabeth Saltzman posted a photo of Julia Roberts in a striped shirt, straight jeans and blazer from Versace on her Instagram account, Seyfried gushed: “Please let me wear the same outfit.” Two days later, Saltzman granted her wish, thanking Roberts for her “generosity and sustainability. Sharing is caring!” as she posted a photo of Seyfried in the same look, albeit with different shoes. Roberts wore black pumps; Seyfried chose strappy sandals.
The internet was quick to chime in, placing photos of the stars side by side and debating who wore it best. Some are even calling it the most memorable look of the festival. But while it has cemented the idea of the BJT (blazer, jeans, top) as a form of modern power dressing (see the front row and the “girl boss” portrait era), it wasn’t the festival’s greatest red carpet hit. Here are three looks I would have borrowed instead.
Ayo Edebiri in Chanel
Ayo Edebiri at the After the Hunt photocall. The actor’s outfit echoes Chanel’s spring 1999 collection. Photograph: Stéphane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images
For her Venice debut, rather than going for a classic red carpet dress, Ayo Edebiri chose a white two-piece from Chanel. It hints at the direction Blazy wants to take the house. He was the designer who masterminded Bottega Veneta’s trompe l’œil pieces, including flannel shirts and jeans that were made from leather. Edebiri’s look riffs on Chanel’s spring 1999 collection, which featured asymmetrical jackets and cuffed trousers. It instantly feels more relatable than a tulle gown, although who but a Hollywood star can realistically wear an all-white look without the fear of spilling their lunch down themselves.
Jacob Elordi in Bottega Veneta
Frankenstein star Jacob Elordi’s white ensemble marks an end to method dressing. Photograph: Daniele Venturelli/WireImage
OK, so Jacob Elordi in an all-white look from Bottega Veneta isn’t exactly novel, but hey, it’s not a suit, which for a man on the red carpet is kind of a big deal. It also marks an end to method dressing, a painful red carpet trend where actors felt the need to reference their characters. Although, given that Elordi will next be seen in Emerald Fennell’s sexy adaptation of Wuthering Heights, I am now thinking those sideburns and that billowing shirt are in fact quite Heathcliff.
Greta Lee in Dior
Greta Lee, star of Late Fame, wears a palette-cleansing outfit with too-serious stilettos on the red carpet. Photograph: Aldara Zarraoa/Getty Images
During Anderson’s tenure at Loewe, Lee starred in numerous campaigns for the brand and was a regular on the front row. Now the Irish designer has hot-footed it to Dior, it seems Lee has followed. The Past Lives star has worn almost exclusively Dior throughout her stint at Venice. This look is Anderson’s take on the label’s new look – the silhouette that emerged during Christian Dior’s debut in 1947. For anyone bored with stunt dressing, it is a nice palette cleanser. I would have liked a more playful shoe – after all, Anderson created those broken egg Loewe heels and viral pigeon bag – but maybe the witty accessories will come during his official hard launch at Paris fashion week next month.
It is hard to imagine anyone less like the slovenly, has-been MI5 agent Jackson Lamb than his creator, Mick Herron. “He must come deep out of my subconscious,” the 62-year-old thriller writer jokes, sipping mineral water at a rooftop bar in his home city of Oxford, a world away from London’s Aldersgate where his bestselling Slough House series is set. In a “blue shirt, white tee” (fans will get the reference), he is softly spoken with a hint of a Geordie accent. Herron is often described as the heir to John le Carré and “the best spy novelist of his generation”, according to the New Yorker. Unlike le Carré, he’s not, and never has been, a spy. Mysteriously, though, Wikipedia has given him “an entirely fictitious” birthday. “I got cards. I got a cake,” he says.
For the uninitiated, the novels and award-winning TV series follow a bunch of misfit spooks exiled to Slough House from MI5 for various mishaps and misdemeanours, so far away from the shiny HQ in Regent’s Park that it may as well be in Slough. The joke is that these hapless underdogs (nicknamed “slow horses”), under the grubby reins of Lamb, always triumph over the slicker agents and “the Dogs” at the Park.
“In its bare headlines, it’s not that promising is it?” Herron says modestly. “A bunch of people who aren’t very good at their jobs and don’t like each other, forced to work in an office. I mean, why would you want to read it?” It’s great fun, for starters. In a genre dominated by sinister psychological dramas and slick spin-offs, Herron’s mix of high jeopardy, low comedy and political satire might be described as a breath of fresh air, if the air in Slough House was not fetid with farts and frustration. Will Smith, co-writer of The Thick of It and Veep, was the ideal person to bring Herron’s world to the screen: Lamb is MI5’s Malcom Tucker, only dirtier. A cold war wreck, held together by booze, fags and loyalty to his “joes”, Lamb is one of the great characters of contemporary fiction.Like a modern-day Falstaff or Fagin, he is now part of the public imagination, thanks to an affectionate portrayal by Gary Oldman alongside a regally icy Kristin Scott Thomas as MI5 chief Diana Taverner in the TV show.
This autumn, Oldman and co return with season five, based on the fifth Slough House novel, London Rules. On the back of its success, Apple TV+ will also launch an adaptation of Herron’s lesser-known 2003 debut Down Cemetery Road, with Emma Thompson as Oxford private detective Zoë Boehm. And this week, the author publishes the ninth in the Slough House series, Clown Town.
The new novel is inspired by the true story of an IRA informant and murderer, codenamed Stakeknife, real name Freddie Scappaticci. “An appalling human being”, Herron says, who was given protection by the British intelligence services in the 70s and 80s, in one of “the most morally dubious operations that the intelligence services had been involved in”, as one senior civil servant told him. Perfect Herron material. Players in the Slough House novels tread the murky line between protecting the nation and the interests of GCHQ. Stakeknife died “peacefully in his bed” in 2023 after Herron was well under way with Clown Town. The author didn’t stick too closely to historical events. “It hampers the imagination,” he says. “Also, I’m quite lazy when it comes to research.”
Clown Town opens with a leftwing government finding its feet, a PM with a penchant for designer specs and “who happens to be a lawyer”, says Herron. There might be a new broom at No 10, but the dark corners of the British establishment are as grimy as ever. “I’m writing about how power corrupts,” he says. “It’s hardly an original observation, but it doesn’t matter who’s in power. Things are going to go wrong, either wilfully or by cock-up. I’m more prone towards the cock-up view of history than I am conspiracy, but that doesn’t alter the effect.”
Herron may not have any experience of working for the intelligence service, but he has done his time in an office. “In many ways, I’m writing more about office life than about spies,” he says. “The intelligence service is essentially a big office. They’ll have a kitchen with fridges. The same things are going to happen as in any other office. I imagine,” he adds. James Bond it is not.
Getting Herron to admit his books have been a runaway hit is like trying to persuade Lamb to take a shower. “Failure is always more interesting to me than success,” he maintains. “It would be stupid to deny that I am now successful, but I was that far away from being a failure,” he says, holding his thumb and forefinger together. “It could all have gone very differently. I was very lucky.”
His is one of the great success stories of recent publishing history: an inspiration to slow horses everywhere. On his walk to the office of the legal journal where he worked as a subeditor for many years, he would pass an unhappy-looking building on Aldersgate Street. “I didn’t know I was going to write a book, let alone a series of books about it,” he says, of what would become Slough House. “I’ve been ‘living’ there ever since.” It is the very building on the TV show. “They went the extra mile there. They could have shown any building; they didn’t.” On the train back to Oxford each evening he would mull over his ideas so that by the time he got home, he knew exactly where he was going. “I had an hour of work in me,” he says, which averaged 360 words a day.
After trying his hand at poetry and literary fiction, he turned to crime with his Zoë Boehm series. On 7 July 2005 he was waiting on the platform at Paddington when the bomb exploded at Edgware Road, one tube stop away. “You don’t have to know anything about politics to be a victim of political terror, to have bombs go off around you,” he says. “That made me realise I could write about events like that without necessarily understanding how they would come about.” So he changed tack and started writing espionage novels.
Herron with Gary Oldman on the Slow Horses set. Photograph: Jack English/Apple
Slow Horses was published in 2010. But he couldn’t find a UK publisher for its sequel, Dead Lions, a couple of years later. “What even is this?” one publisher asked, unable to work out if it was a thriller or a comedy. “The books didn’t sell at first,” Herron says mildly now. “It didn’t surprise me. I wasn’t wailing and gnashing my teeth or anything. I was just getting on with my life.”
An editor at John Murray happened to pick up Slow Horses at Liverpool Street station and decided to back it. The first two novels were republished in 2015. The following year, Herron took a four-month sabbatical to try writing fiction full time. By 11am of the first morning he knew he could do it and on his return to the office he handed in his notice.
But it was in 2016 that things really took off. “It was Brexit,” the author says definitively. “The country’s misfortune was my good luck.” His post-referendum novel London Rules was published in 2018. Suddenly, his populist floppy-haired, bicycle-riding MP, Peter Judd, seemed all too familiar. The echoes between PJ and BJ were impossible to ignore. Herron was at Balliol College, Oxford at the same time as Boris Johnson, not part of the Bullingdon set. “PJ was just my sort of rightwing bogeyman figure,” he says now. “Public-school educated, a sense of entitlement, self-obsession, complete disregard for ethics or morality or integrity.” He looks over the rooftops and their old college. “I mean, Boris Johnson fits that,” he says. “But so do many other politicians.”
Just as le Carré’s novels resonated with the disillusionment and failure of the 70s, Herron captured the anger and frustration felt by many across the country. By the time the TV series launched in 2022, he was in full control of his material. “I’m more popular now, but I don’t feel that I’ve disconnected from the characters because of that,” he says. “When I sit down to write, I still feel like exactly the same person I’ve always been.”
Growing up in Newcastle upon Tyne, the fourth child in a Catholic family of six, Herron describes his childhood as a happy one. His father was an optician, his mother a nursery school teacher who taught him to read before he started school. He read obsessively, preferring a fictional world to reality. “There was nothing wrong with the real world,” he says, “but I’d certainly rather have read a story than been at school.”
The cast of Slow Horses. Photograph: Jack English/PR
In 1979 he sat down with his parents to watch the TV serialisation of le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He was hooked. The next day he borrowed a copy from his local library. He watched the BBC’s 1982 adaptation of Smiley’s People on a tiny portable black-and-white TV in a student house in Oxford. It is almost too neat a twist that Oldman played Smiley in the 2011 film.
“He was exactly the right novelist to be writing his books at that time,” Herron says of le Carré. “He saw the Berlin Wall going up. That was a gift to all of us. Brexit doesn’t compare,” he says, brushing off any parallels with his own historical moment.
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Le Carré’s fingerprints are all over Slough House: the bookish ex-MI5 top brass David Cartwright is surely a homage to David Cornwell (le Carré’s real name). Rereading Smiley’s People, Herron was delighted to spot a foul-mouthed taxi driver called J Lamb, lurking in his subconscious all those years.
Lamb was born, Herron says, out of “an unfiltered love of language”. He is the only character into whose mind the author doesn’t venture. To know if he means the outrageous things he says would be to “render the character useless”, Herron says. “Either he’s an absolutely despicable human being or he’s just pretending.” Some readers assumed he was a mouthpiece for Herron’s own views and sent him vile letters in support. Jumping between the different characters’ perspectives – Lamb’s faithful secretary Catherine Standish and tech geek Roddy Ho are his favourites – makes the reader work harder and is against all the rules of creative writing, the author points out. “And I love doing things that are against the rules.”
One of which is killing off your core characters, even one of the good guys such as Min Harper. He wants the reader to have a sense that “nobody’s safe”. But it isn’t just for shocks. “It was about grief,” he says. His father died a few years before he started writing the series, but the decision was mainly a literary one. “I thought: I’ve got these people now. If I kill one of them, how are the others going to feel?”
During lockdown Herron moved in with his partner Jo Howard (a publishing headhunter) and now writes in his old flat. His commute is a 10-minute walk and he aims for between 500 and 600 words a day. Like Zadie Smith and Jonathan Franzen, he doesn’t have a smartphone and there’s no wifi. “We hang out and fax each other,” he shoots back. More unusually, he reads throughout the day. “I can go straight from the laptop to the sofa,” he says. “I’m a reader before I’m a writer. Reading words keeps my brain alert.”
He doesn’t have to worry about money like he used to, and he gets to meet other writers, “which is great fun”. But for the most part, he leads a quiet life with Howard and their two cats (if he were a spy the cats would be his soft spots). Howard is his first reader, but he never discusses a book until it’s finished. She is a keen walker, and can tell when he hits a tricky point in a novel by his pace. “I’m a plodder,” he says of his writing.
At the moment he is working on a non-Slow Horses novel. “It’s about spies,” he reveals, helpfully. “I like writing genre stuff,” he says. “I like having that structure. I like knowing that a book is going to have an actual ending rather than just stop.”
He was surprised to discover how much he enjoyed being part of the writers’ room for the TV series. “I never felt particularly collaborative even when I was in an office.” He will miss showrunner Smith, who recently announced that season five would be his last.
Herron even had a couple of cameo appearances. You would be forgiven for not spotting him and Howard in the first episode, coming out of Lamb’s favourite Chinese restaurant. In season four, they are leaving a hotel. He got to hail a taxi, he says, repeating the action now. They each had their own trailers. Could he ever have imagined such a scenario? “There was never a moment in my previous life where I thought this was possible,” he says.
Seasons five and six are in the can (the latter based on two novels, Joe Country and Slough House). Filming of season seven, adapting Bad Actors, is due to begin this month, which leaves only Clown Town to be adapted. Does he have an endgame in sight?
“There’s an awareness that there should be an endgame.” But there’s no danger he’s putting his horses out to grass for a while yet. He was tempted to blow up Slough House at the end of the first novel, to close with Lamb and Standish, the only survivors, running away on a ferry. “That didn’t happen,” he deadpans. “It would have been a good ending, actually. But my life would be very different.”
