Andy Burnham stormed to victory in yesterday’s Makerfield by-election, paving the way for a leadership challenge against Keir Starmer. Having secured 55% of the vote, beating the Reform UK candidate by more than 9,000 votes, Burnham hailed his victory as a “turning point” in British politics and warned Labour colleagues that this is a “final chance to change”. Planned peace talks between the US and Iran in Switzerland today were cancelled after Hezbollah killed four Israeli soldiers, provoking a wave of retaliatory Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon. JD Vance lashed out against the Israeli government’s criticism of Donald Trump’s Iran deal, reminding Benjamin Netanyahu that the US president is the “only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time”. Britain is gearing up for its second heatwave in three weeks as temperatures are predicted to climb above 30C today, rising to 34C by early next week. The scorching temperatures will be highest across the east and south of the country.

In a few weeks, says Robert Shrimsley in the FT, when we look back at the “short, unhappy premiership of Keir Starmer”, there will be no shortage of explanations for why it all went wrong. There was the early unforced error on winter fuel payments, the timidity of the 2024 manifesto, the “lack of any obvious political touch, clear programme or serious interest in economics”, the dithering, the shoddy hiring choices and, to be fair, a pretty “lousy economic inheritance”. It’s a long enough list to confound any leader, but beneath so many of Starmer’s failures lies a central one. The prime minister was never able to convince voters, or even his own MPs, that he offered hope.

Starmer’s trademark gloominess began in opposition. Trying to make Labour “as small a target as possible” for his opponents to attack, he erased any opportunity for optimism. It’s worth remembering that even in ousting a hugely unpopular Conservative government, Starmer only mustered 33.7% in a low-turnout election, and celebrated with a “doomy speech” in the Downing Street garden. But voters “are drawn to optimism”. Even those who didn’t vote for Tony Blair remember the excitement when he was elected. David Cameron and Boris Johnson both “benefited from a sunny side”. They seemed at ease with people and demonstrated belief in themselves and the country. Many are baffled by the popularity of the “ideologically vague political loner” Andy Burnham. But he has a genial public persona and “visibly likes the people he aspires to lead”, like the blokey, upbeat, “merrie England” cavalier Nigel Farage. It’ll take more than a sunny disposition to fix the country, but as Starmer has shown, without one you haven’t a chance.

As Keir Starmer faces an insurgent Andy Burnham, says Noa Hoffman in The Spectator, another leadership battle is raging on the left. The Green Party is currently riven with infighting over, inevitably, “Palestine and racial politics”. Zack Polanski and his officials are trying to be seen to be dealing with rampant anti-Semitism among Green councillors, candidates and members. But elements within the party, led by deputy leader Mothin Ali, are preparing to present a report later this month complaining that Polanski’s crackdown targets members of the “global majority” (people who aren’t white) and Muslims. Even Polanski, it seems, is not pure enough for some.

In November 1965, helicopter pilot Major Bruce Crandall was tasked with ferrying American soldiers into Vietnam’s remote Ia Drang Valley at the start of the first serious battle between US forces and the North Vietnamese Army, says The Times. The first four flights went off without a hitch, but on the fifth trip, Crandall, who died last month aged 93, came under heavy fire. Official orders were to abort, but Crandall wasn’t having it. He and a friend flew ammunition into the so-called “valley of death”, and carried injured solders out, 22 times over 14 hours, changing helicopters three times and saving 70 lives.

On Saturday in the Afghan city of Herat, men fanned out and began taking women, says Shabnam Nasimi in The Independent. They were under orders from the Taliban’s “ministry for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” to snatch any woman violating the group’s mandatory dress code. When the people of Herat gathered peacefully to demand their daughters back, “the Taliban answered with live ammunition”. We should be responding to such repression with “every lawful instrument we have”. Instead, diplomats are sketching out new channels to the very regime ordering these abductions: relief pipelines, talks at the EU and more aid being pumped into the country without strict conditions.

Britain certainly has a lot to answer for when it comes to foreign aid ending up in the wrong hands, says William Yarwood in The Critic. More than £28bn of taxpayers’ money ended up in the pockets of terrorists, hostile states and organised crime groups between 2015 and 2021. This is not just a few “rogue payments slipping through the cracks” but a systemic issue – one which Rory Stewart came up against during his time as a minister in the Department for International Development. Told he didn’t have the authority to block funding for areas in Syria that he knew had been taken over by jihadis, he was then repeatedly knocked back when he badgered those who supposedly did. After it emerged that the funds had ended up in the pockets of al-Qaeda affiliates, Stewart was lambasted and told to end the funding. Half measures and promises of “tightening due diligence” are not good enough. “Not a single penny from British taxpayers should be ending up in the bank accounts of bad guys.”

After Pope Leo XIV issued an encyclical calling for AI to be “disarmed”, a 34-year-old software engineer in North Carolina spotted an ingenious way to get out of using AI at work, says Sarah Needleman in Business Insider: she has secured a “religious exemption”. Erin Maus is a Unitarian Universalist, a pluralistic religion that’s rooted in the inherent worth of every person. In April, she argued that AI didn’t align with her religious beliefs; in May, her employer, a tech entertainment company, granted her accommodation under a US law which bans discrimination based on religious belief.

In Boston, where Scotland’s football team played its first World Cup match, a number of bars and pubs have run entirely out of beer, says Marc Fortier in NBC Boston, thanks to the epic efforts of the “Tartan Army” of travelling fans. “We’ve been here for over 30 years,” says Noelle Somers of Hennessy’s Bar, “and we’ve never seen anything like it.”

It’s the world’s ugliest shark, says Leah Renz in The Sun, which has been caught on camera in the deep ocean for the first time. The goblin shark was recorded in the Tonga Trench, the world’s second-deepest point, in the Pacific two years ago. Culum Brown, from Macquarie University in Sydney, describes the species as “like something out of a horror movie”, adding that “not even their mother would love their faces”. The ancient creatures are thought to be virtually unchanged since 125 million years ago, roughly when flowers first evolved on land.