Iran came under fire from US forces for the third night in a row last night and responded with what the UAE called a “brazen” attack on two Emirati-flagged tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump, who formally notified Congress last week that military action against Iran would resume, called the US the “guardian” of the waterway and said America would start charging vessels a toll worth 20% of their cargo for safe passage. Ann Widdecombe’s killing is now being treated as politically motivated, despite police initially suggesting politics hadn’t been a factor in the attack on the Reform UK spokeswoman. Nigel Farage has accepted Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s offer of a personal meeting with the Home Office unit responsible for the security of high-profile politicians. The cost of launching cargo into space is falling faster than shipping costs did during the 19th-century steamship revolution. Cambridge researchers predict that launch costs could fall by more than 90% by 2040, paving the way for a space economy producing food, fuel and infrastructure in orbit.

Andy Burnham is still “yet to trip over the Downing Street cat”, says Annabel Denham in The Telegraph, and already the right-leaning media are writing his political obituary. He’ll be battered by events, we’re told, deserted by Labour’s backbenchers and out of office by Christmas. Well, maybe. But it’s also possible he gets lucky. Another easing of the Iran conflict could bring down energy prices and enable the Bank of England to cut interest rates. Legal immigration is already plummeting, small boat crossings are “significantly down” and Pedro Sánchez’s mass regularisation scheme could make Spain a more attractive destination for migrants than “tired old Britain”.

More worrying for the right is that Burnham has the political nous to take advantage of any lucky breaks he gets. He is affable and empathetic; he can work a room and deliver a joke. Crucially, he grasps the fact that modern politics is mostly just “vibes” – people still underestimate the damage Keir Starmer did to himself with that gloomy Rose Garden speech after winning in 2024. Unlike many of his Labour colleagues, Burnham understands that you don’t win back Reform voters by insulting them. Plus, the PM-in-waiting is a pragmatist. Whereas the right continues to tear itself apart – the Conservatives making hay over the Nigel Farage donations story, Reform telling voters it wants to “destroy” the Tories – Burnham would almost certainly make deals with the Greens or the Lib Dems if needed. This is all speculation, of course, and one should never underestimate the left’s ability to “shoot itself in the foot and any other available limbs”. But conservatives comforting themselves with the assumption that Burnham is just “Starmer with a different wardrobe” need to get a grip.

The Ebola epidemic in Congo is getting out of control, says The Economist. Earlier this month, authorities admitted that the outbreak had reached two new provinces and will likely soon spread to Sudan. Only 30% of new cases are contacts of already known patients, suggesting most are spreading the virus “far from view”, making crucial tracing and isolation almost impossible. Unless the response improves dramatically, the current outbreak is on course to be as bad as the one that killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa a decade ago.

Whittle is an online game where you have to remove a letter from two words to make new words, until there is nothing left. You can combine the two words by removing a space, and – frustratingly – it doesn’t tell you if the removals you have chosen will leave you at a dead end. Give it a go here.

The US-Iran memorandum of understanding was “dead on arrival”, says John Bolton in The Wall Street Journal. And the reason is obvious: Iran doesn’t have a government in any coherent sense. Thanks to the extraordinary success of the US-Israeli military effort, the country has no authoritative decision maker. The strikes fully decapitated every significant centre of power. The civilian leadership is in tatters, the clerics are in a state of internal discord. Even the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is no longer one cohesive unit: its longstanding defensive strategy to decentralise authority was activated at the outset of war, leaving nobody in command.

What Iran is left with – disparate heads of authority with various kinds of clout and vulnerability competing for power – has enormous implications for America’s ability to negotiate a deal. One faction can be sitting down with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff while another is, literally, plotting to assassinate Donald Trump. The polite civilian officials running the negotiations are actually among the weakest surviving actors. President Masoud Pezeshkian is a functionary who was hastily elected as a “safe pair of hands” after his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi, once touted as a possible successor to the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, died in a helicopter crash in 2024. His position is so tenuous he is rumoured to have been physically attacked during Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s funeral. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is almost completely disconnected from domestic politics and is among the last to know what the IRGC is doing. And these sweet-talking diplomats have no weapons. If any one part of the IRGC decides it wants to bomb an American base or Saudi oil refinery, there is nobody, in Iran at least, who can stop them.

US senator Lindsey Graham, who died on Saturday aged 71, often made light of the fact that he never married, says Richard Fontaine in The Atlantic. He noted that given his predecessor in South Carolina, Strom Thurmond, had wed a 22-year-old while in his 60s, his own wife probably hadn’t been born yet. In a meeting with Bhutanese king Singye Wangchuk, who married four sisters, he began: “Your majesty, I understand you have four wives. You’re going to have to tell me your secret, because I can’t even seem to find one.” And when running for president in 2015, he sought the vote of the Mitt Romney faithful. “We tried tall, good-lookin’, smart, nice, great family,” Graham told them. “Vote for me. We’re not going down that road again!”

A daily weight-loss pill launched privately in the UK last week is expected to attract more than seven million users within a year, says Eleanor Hayward in The Times. Around two million Britons are already taking injections of Wegovy or Mounjaro, but the new £3-a-day tablet – which is made by Novo Nordisk and contains semaglutide, the active ingredient in the jabs – is half the price and doesn’t involve needles. Chemists are reporting record demand: Simple Online Pharmacy says orders have more than doubled every day since launch; Superdrug has seen “new patient growth of over 1,000%”.

It’s an artist’s impression of an array of space mirrors, says Hiroko Tabuchi in The New York Times, which has been approved for launch by US regulators. The idea is to use the giant reflector to direct sunlight back to Earth after dark, potentially powering solar farms, providing emergency light for rescue workers or even illuminating city streets. The company, Reflect Orbital, is planning to launch its Eärendil-1 test satellite – which is the size of a mini-fridge and designed to unfold in space – into low Earth orbit later this year, but hopes eventually to launch as many as 50,000 massive mirrors.