Two Israeli diplomats – a couple named Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim – have been shot dead outside the Jewish Museum in Washington DC. Police say the 30-year-old suspect, Elias Rodriguez, shouted “Free Palestine” while in custody. Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered enhanced security at Israeli diplomatic missions worldwide. A High Court judge has temporarily blocked Keir Starmer’s controversial deal to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which was due to be signed today. At 2:25am, Mr Justice Goose granted a stay of the deal in a case brought against the Foreign Office by two Chagossian women who want to remain British. Seagulls are more brazen in gangs. Belgian boffins found that the winged thugs are far likelier to dive-bomb humans to nab their chips when surrounded by their “beady-eyed buddies”, says the Daily Star. “Greedy flockers.”

Should the Tories bring back Boris?

The most strident criticism of Keir Starmer’s “reset” deal with the EU this week came from a leader of the Conservative Party, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times. Unfortunately for the Conservative Party, “it wasn’t the leader they currently have”. Instead, it came from Boris Johnson, who described Starmer as the “orange ball-chewing manacled gimp of Brussels” – a vivid reference, assuming he “doesn’t have more direct experiences of such things”, to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Kemi Badenoch “dutifully” spoke out against the deal, standing alongside Priti Patel (“who is apparently the shadow foreign secretary”) and Victoria Atkins (“not sure, but you can google her as easily as I can”). Nobody took much notice. “Had she said the gimp thing she’d have sounded deranged.”

The problem for Badenoch and the Conservatives is that the public aren’t even cross with them any more; they’re indifferent. When previous Tory leaders were floundering – a YouGov poll this week had the party in fourth place, on 16%, behind the Liberal Democrats – it was because voters didn’t like what was on offer. Badenoch has “no meaningful offering at all”. Everything the party does now is a response to Reform UK; to be “like Reform but a little less so”. If they continue down that path, they’ll end up with a relationship like the Lib Dems have with Labour. “A home mainly for the squeamish. A natural party of junior coalition.” A new leader wouldn’t change that dynamic, not even Johnson, “with his orange balls”. The party would be much better off clearly setting itself against Reform, on issues like tax, exports, business, moderation, and so on. “Then, and only then, can they tackle the gimp.”

🐶♻️ The other parties would love it if the Tories brought back the so-called “Big Dog”, says Bagehot in The Economist. Labour would delight in reminding voters of the mess the country was in when Johnson ran it. Reformers could rail against the man whose loose immigration policies allowed 1.3 million people into the country in a single year. And the Lib Dems credit Johnson’s incompetence for their success in southern England. At one recent dinner, a new Lib Dem MP was seen charging towards the former PM, saying: “I wanted to thank you for all the help.”

European diplomats used an AI chatbot modelled on Keir Starmer to help them during the recent UK-EU “reset” talks, says Joe Barnes in The Daily Telegraph. Officials linked to the Spanish and Slovenian governments used the “digital clone” – which had been trained on the PM’s public statements – to test his potential responses to last-minute demands for concessions on fishing rights and a youth mobility scheme. Versions of the Nostrada.ai chatbot are now being developed to help Europeans navigate Donald Trump’s administration.

The website What The Hell Are Ppl Doing? shows a live estimate of what the human race is up to at this very moment: half a billion sleeping, 1.3 billion with their families, around two billion at work, seven million shagging, and so on. See what everyone else is doing by clicking here.

No one’s buying what Netanyahu is selling

It seems the White House finally sees Benjamin Netanyahu for what he is, says Mairav Zonszein in The New York Times: a “weak Israeli leader with seemingly little or nothing to offer” besides a knack for political survival. A few months ago, Israel was making historic gains: crushing Hezbollah in Lebanon, crippling Iran and helping end the Assad regime in Syria. Today, “Netanyahu is increasingly in a corner”. The UK, France and Canada openly condemn him; a majority of Israelis want the war over; and on every issue that matters to Israel – a new Iran nuclear deal, the new Syrian government, negotiating with Hamas and the Houthis – President Trump is simply ignoring him. What Netanyahu is selling – a zero-sum victory over Hamas – “no longer has any buyers”.

For all that, says Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator, many in Jerusalem feel that the way Israel is now seen by the rest of the world is “not only short-sighted but morally confounding”. Its latest assault on Gaza, launched with the specific aim of eliminating Hamas’s military infrastructure and securing the return of hostages, comes after months of “inconclusive ceasefires, failed negotiations and mounting frustration”. The January truce left the terror group’s leadership intact, hostages still underground and humanitarian aid channels in the hands of the very barbarians who started the war. It didn’t deliver peace, just a pause that allowed Hamas to regroup. “This time, Israel appears resolved not to make the same mistake.” As so often in history, the Jewish state is “walking a tightrope between strategic necessity and moral scrutiny”. What Israel’s defenders remember, that others all too often forget, is that Hamas, not Israel, is the principal architect of this war, “and the primary obstacle to its end”.

If you’ve been having too many sleepful nights, it may be worth reading AI 2027, a speculative account of how artificial intelligence will change the world in the next two years (and slightly beyond), written by a group of expert AI researchers and forecasters. The results – mass unemployment, a global arms race, vast wealth in the hands of a vanishing minority, and (spoiler alert) the extinction of humanity via an AI-deployed biological weapon by the end of the decade – make for a bracing read. Best enjoyed with a stiff drink and a cigarette.

US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem came a cropper when she was asked to define “habeas corpus” at a Senate hearing this week, claiming it was what gave the president a constitutional right “to remove people from the country”. Perhaps she learned her law from Tony Hancock, says Charlotte Alt in The Times. In an episode of his show where the comedian is serving as the foreman of a jury, he cries out: “Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?”

It’s the jury-rigged device that saved the Apollo 13 astronauts, the architect of which has died aged 95. When an oxygen tank exploded two days into the 1970 mission, says Emily Langer in The Washington Post, the three-man crew sought refuge in the lunar module. Knowing the air filter would work for only two people, Ed Smylie and his fellow NASA engineers back in Houston speedily built a workaround using only the materials they knew were on board – plastic bags, duct tape – before radioing instructions to the astronauts. The DIY fix worked a treat, and the crew safely made it back to Earth.