Iran says it will cease its strikes on Israel after the two sides traded attacks for the first time since a ceasefire was signed in April. The Israeli military said it had struck Iranian military targets after Tehran launched a barrage of missiles at northern Israel on Sunday night in retaliation for an earlier Israeli strike targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon. The White House is considering buying the Chagos Islands from Mauritius if Keir Starmer presses ahead with his plan to cede sovereignty of the territory. In an effort to retain control of Diego Garcia, the UK-US military base used by US bombers during the Iran war, American officials have drafted a proposal to strike their own deal with the Mauritian government. An influx of common octopuses off southwest England has seen scientists record the largest “bloom” since 1950. In December, Cornwall Wildlife Trust estimated there were 230,000 off Devon and Cornwall thanks to a succession of unusually warm years helping the cephalopods flourish.

The most precious Western value isn’t liberty or patriotism, says Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times. “It is truth.” Take JD Vance, Elon Musk, Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe, Donald Trump and the rest of the “grifters” using the tragic murder of Henry Nowak to make their nasty, politicised argument that Britain is “finished”, “broken” or a “hellhole” and that crime is rampant because of uncontrolled migration. Even those of us who agree about the dangers of open border policies and Islamic extremism know this is deranged: violent crime has halved over the past 20 years; NHS admissions for stabbing are at their lowest since records began. In JD Vance’s beloved America, of course, 44,447 died from gun violence in 2024 alone. But why let facts get in the way of stoking a good race war?

The reason these distortions find so many willing dupes is not, as some claim, because the West is full of racists. It is because of the assault on truth that long predates this current crop of digitally distorted ethno-nationalists: the woke ideology that equated feelings with facts, put racial sensitivities above the protection of young girls and promoted all the rest of that “pseudo-scientific gibberish” we wasted so much time arguing about. It’s crucial to understand how these two versions of unreality – woke ideology and ethno-nationalism – feed off each other in a “grotesque algorithmic waltz”. Each side has learnt that by making ever more incendiary claims they will trigger their most hyper-engaged opponents into a viral spat, leaving the middle ground a kind of “political no man’s land”. The answer is for those who care more about reality than virality – Kemi Badenoch, Tony Blair – to make common cause. The real fight isn’t left vs right, but truth against lies.

After Rosamund Pike berated a theatregoer for texting during the emotional finale of a West End performance, The Times asked its critics for their own examples of bad audience behaviour. They included a group sharing a Chinese takeaway in the theatre, a couple having sex on the dance floor during a “mid-tempo number” at the Secret Garden Party festival, and someone bringing their butler for the interval picnic at Glyndebourne (“de trop”, apparently). Perhaps best of all: the composer Simon Rattle once pointedly restarted a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic because a phone had gone off, only to discover it belonged to someone in the orchestra.

Have you heard the latest shocking revelations from the Peter Mandelson saga, asks Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. That the cabinet minister Darren Jones messaged Mandelson to say he was “so sorry” he had been sacked as ambassador to the US? Or that Keir Starmer communicated with ministers via WhatsApp, with the auto-delete function turned on? What an outrage! What a disgraceful failure of public accountability! That, at least, has been the hysterical conclusion of the Westminster commentariat: “When our leaders press send, we have the right to receive.” It’s nonsense. Ministers need to have “private zones” where they can argue and settle matters freely. Ambassadors abroad must feel comfortable passing their honest judgements, in total confidence, to officials back home. “Will any British ambassador dare do so now?”

This is a case of “inquiry-itis gone mad”. The true extent of Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein probably merited a “minor Whitehall investigation”. Instead No 10 bowed to pressure and released a “barrage” of top-level government correspondence, titillating the gossip columnists but serving zero public interest. It’s becoming something of a theme: the incompetence of the British government being matched “only by the gloating with which it investigates every mishap”. Millions of pounds that should long ago have been given to victims of the Windrush, Grenfell and Post Office scandals are instead “filling the pockets” of lawyers and officials. The Covid inquiry – an exercise that some other European countries completed in months – still rumbles on, at a cost of more than £200m. What an “inexcusable” waste of time and money.

The flavour combo of the summer is “fricy”, says Lucy Knight in The Guardian: a mixture of “fruity” and “spicy”. At London’s Mango Twist café, you can get a “Volcano” slushie made up of mango and chilli and a “Mangonero” fruit salad covered in chamoy and tamarind. Sales of Waitrose’s spicy mango condiment Mango Amba are up 30% in the past year, while “fricy sauce” purchases at the hot sauce retailer Hot-Headz! have rocketed in the past six months, with pineapple and mango among the most popular. “It’s a silly word,” says one food editor, correctly. “But it is translating into sales.”

With birth rates in steady decline, politicians around the world are trying all sorts of ways to encourage childless women to take the plunge, says Dan Cheslett in The Critic. This is absurd. Far better to target those who have already been mad enough to have children, and who would love to have more if it weren’t so cripplingly expensive. Make it as easy, and financially viable, as possible for these “implausible breeders” to get to work – a generous housing scheme, say – and the birth rate will sort itself out in no time.

It’s Harriet Sperling, says Stephanie Bridger-Linning in Tatler, a paediatric nurse and single mother who just married Queen Elizabeth II’s “favourite grandson”, Peter Phillips. The pair are said to have met at a hockey match – Sperling’s teenage daughter plays on the same team as Phillips’s two girls – and they were soon spotted “stepping out together” at the Badminton Horse trials and later at the Beaufort Polo Club, where their romance was confirmed by “loved-up embraces and PDA”. The Royal Family turned out in full to the ceremony at a small church in Gloucestershire, with the exception of Harry and Meghan, who weren’t invited.