The UK is bracing for scorching temperatures today as a rare red warning for extreme heat comes into force across London and parts of south England and Wales. Hundreds of schools across the country have closed and commuters have been told to expect disruption as temperatures are predicted to climb as high as 38C. Senior minister Darren Jones has ruled out standing in a Labour leadership contest saying: “Andy Burnham is going to be the next prime minister”. After meeting with the former Manchester mayor – who is planning to remove Rachel Reeves as chancellor – Jones said he was reassured by Burnham’s economic plans. Former defence minister Al Carns says he remains “pretty serious” about contesting the leadership. All London boroughs will be covered by police drones after a pilot scheme in Islington showed the technology helps to reduce crime. Drones were dispatched to incidents across the north London borough to provide intelligence and live information and to track suspects, and will be rolled out across the capital by June 2027.

Incredibly, says Marina Hyde in The Guardian, Andy Burnham didn’t even wait to become prime minister before arranging that “ludicrous photo” of him standing in Westminster Hall, backdropped by hundreds of fawning Labour MPs, “like Dorothy surrounded by the munchkins”. Even more “bogglingly”, Burnham’s team are out there simpering that Keir Starmer’s prompt departure means Andy is “not going to be close to being ready”. Aww. It will be fascinating to see how long Burnham tries to keep up the idea that he’s “just a relatable guy this event has happened to” and not, as is obviously the case, the only reason any of this is happening. And the theatricality is off the charts. On Monday, Burnham swaggered on to a train at Manchester Piccadilly wearing his Northern Mayor costume – dark jeans and t-shirt – then changed into his Prime Minister costume in the train loo.

It seems the next occupant of No 10 will command a whopping majority in the House of Commons thanks to a mere 25,000 votes and a general feeling that “he has nice eyelashes”, says Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail. After being sworn in as an MP, he emerged “jubilant” from the chamber, hands outstretched in a “triumphantly Messianic” pose, ready to “bask in the adoration of his fawning fans” who believe they have found their saviour, their “true heir to Blair”. No more dull, hesitant, nasal Keir; “gruff, hairy-limbed action-man Andy” is here to sweep them off their feet and “deliver them to new heights of political ecstasy”. The question now is whether he can harness his huge popularity into something concrete and, perhaps more importantly, not let it go to his head. “The higher the pedestal, the further there is to fall.”

Ten years ago today, says Larry Elliott in The Guardian, I was the only columnist at The Guardian who welcomed the dawn of Brexit. A decade on, “I stand by what I said”. Economically, Europe remains in a long, steady decline. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the US has grown 87% to the EU’s measly 13.5%. And any “serious repair” job to the British economy requires a freedom of manoeuvre that EU membership made impossible. If Andy Burnham really wants to reverse what he calls “40 years of neoliberalism”, it will require curbs on the free movement of capital, goods and people – “all expressly forbidden by single-market rules”.

The latest viral food trend is ice cream dipped in butter, says Ilena Peng in Bloomberg. It was started by a New York pastry chef, who plunged a 99-style ice cream into melted Norman Isigny Ste Mère butter and sprinkled it with sea salt. The limited run treat did so well that it earnt a permanent place on the menu – the shop sells upwards of 1,000 a week – and generated an “army of high-end copycats”. The day after one ice cream shop in San Diego posted their version on TikTok, says the owner, they experienced their “busiest day ever”.

Donald Trump has never liked Volodymyr Zelensky, says Edward Luce in the FT. He’s never forgiven the Ukrainian president for declining to dig up dirt on Joe Biden during Trump’s first term. Besides, Trump likes to hang out with winners and has long considered Kyiv the natural loser of Russia’s vicious war. Having failed to get Zelensky to sign a disgracefully one-sided mineral rights deal, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called him “this little f***er” and the “special needs child” of Europe. But the one thing Zelensky has shown, on the battlefield and in global affairs, is that he does not have any difficulty learning. And today, the Trump administration is changing its tune.

At the G7 summit last week, says Sam Skove in Foreign Policy, Trump referred to Russia as the “offensive” party – a striking shift from the start of his term, when he actively sought to extract such language from international statements – and signed an “unwaveringly” pro-Ukraine statement, praising Kyiv’s “resilience” and “new momentum”, and promising more Western arms to see them through next winter. Speaking afterwards, Emmanuel Macron noted a “real change” in Trump’s attitude to Zelensky. And it’s not just the US president. Last month, Trump’s ultra-hawkish secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said Ukraine had the “strongest military in Europe” and pointed to Russia’s high casualty rate – “five times as many soldiers a month” as the Ukrainians. Last Thursday, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth echoed that sentiment: “Ukrainians are holding their lines even in the face of sustained Russian assaults.” One thing that has turned the tide in Washington is Kyiv’s success in striking high-profile targets deep inside Russia. These vivid displays of might have obliterated perceptions of Russian invulnerability and replaced them with “dramatic scenes of smoking wreckage in Moscow and St Petersburg”.

Every year, says Chuqin Jiang in The Wall Street Journal, millions of Chinese schoolchildren take the make-or-break Gaokao university entrance exam that many regard as the “world’s hardest”. To ensure minimum disruption, police enforce rolling traffic closures and halt construction projects within earshot of exam halls. The test is seriously tricky. Do you know how giant clams can serve as proxies revealing environmental changes? Or how to calculate the maximum value of |b|, given vectors a and b satisfy |a - b| = 2 and a = (2, 0)? To try your hand at a selection of this year’s questions, click here.

Elon Musk is experiencing history’s “biggest ever loss of personal wealth”, says Chris Price in The Telegraph. Thanks to a dramatic fall in the value of his rocket firm SpaceX since its IPO last week, the former trillionaire’s riches have fallen by over $350bn – more than the entire personal wealth of the world’s next-richest person, Google founder Larry Page – to somewhere around $950bn.

It’s “Hot Podium Guy”, says Katie Glass in The Times, the Downing Street sound technician who has become a familiar, and much lusted after, face as he prepares the No 10 lectern. Real name Tobias Gough, the 42-year-old has set up for the resignation speeches of Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, as well as Rishi Sunak’s first oration, each time “sending social media spiralling”. After assisting Keir Starmer’s departure, one poster noted he’d “been in the gym since the last time this happened”. Another joked that he’s the only Downing Street staff member “whose approval rating is still rising”.