Keir Starmer has apologised for believing Peter Mandelson’s “lies” about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, but rejected the growing calls from Labour backbenchers to resign. The prime minister is under pressure to sack his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, over Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US, and was yesterday forced to pass responsibility for releasing documents relating to the appointment to a cross-party parliamentary committee, rather than controlling the process via No 10. A jury has acquitted six Palestine Action activists of aggravated burglary after they mounted a raid on an Israeli defence company’s Bristol factory in 2024, destroying more than £1m worth of military equipment and leaving a police officer with a fractured spine. The jury failed to reach verdicts on other counts, including criminal damage, violent disorder and assault occasioning grievous bodily harm. Autism could be more equally prevalent among women and men than previously thought. According to a new Swedish study of more than 2.7 million people, boys were four times likelier to be diagnosed in childhood, but diagnosis rates were almost the same by the age of 20.

The Epstein files have prompted much excitable talk of Peter Mandelson’s (latest) implosion and what it means for Keir Starmer, says Marina Hyde in The Guardian. “Can we refocus?” Far more significant is the fact that there was a network of incredibly famous and powerful men helping a known ex-con “wave away” his underage sex crimes. Richard Branson, Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon, Mandelson, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – all offered the convicted sex offender strategic advice, media training or “chummy solidarity”. Chomsky, everyone’s favourite liberal academic, sneered at “the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women”. Branson told Epstein in 2013 he would “love” to see him, “as long as you bring your harem!” The question is not just what this means for our politicians and monarchy. It’s what it means for women and girls to see that so many of the richest and most powerful men alive are totally indifferent to their exploitation. “Or worse.”

Spending two days rifling through the files, I saw the “grand façade” presented by these powerful men peel away, says Helen Rumbelow in The Times. Laid bare in their everyday exchanges was the belief that they, the men, are “somebodies”, free to share misogynistic banter and intellectual advice, while women and girls are “nobodies”, there for sex (if young) or arranging sex (if older). In their register, women are “pussies, bitches and whores”, and their suffering is either erotic or irrelevant. There are pictures of girls’ “disembodied” limbs, depositions of young girls talking of being raped, and fragments of victims’ testimony: “Forced. Injured. Damaged. Bleeding.” In one text exchange, Epstein compares himself to Schrödinger’s cat: “both male deplorable and an elite at the same time until someone opens the box”. He thought the two couldn’t coexist, but he himself was proof that they could. Now, “women can finally open the box”.

An online debate has erupted over the merits of listing “olive oil” as an interest on your CV, says Joanna Sommer in Inside Hook. It began with an anecdote on X by the finance account @90daysliquidity about an applicant for a banking job who did exactly that. “It’s been hours and I cannot stop thinking about it,” read the post, which has racked up 10 million views. “There will not be an interview.” The deluge of resulting memes and replies range from the defensive (“why can’t olive oil be an interest?”) to the obsessed: “I’m going to hire them for something, anything. I need to know what they know about the finer points of olive oil.” See more here.

In a sign of the times, says Allison Lax in the New York Post, the Super Bowl this weekend will for the first time feature an advert almost entirely made by AI. The 30-second spot, slots for which cost around $8m, is for the vodka firm Svedka, and features two sexy robots dancing in front of a group of human partygoers before trying to drink vodka and short-circuiting. The American brand’s owner, Sazerac, says it’s about how we should step away from technology and enjoy being together as people. “Our message,” says chief marketing officer Sara Saunders, “is ultimately pro-human.”

Russia’s shadow fleet is huge, says Matt Russell in The Observer. Made up of about 1,400 tankers, it moves up to $80bn worth of sanctioned oil around the world each year, helping fund up to 40% of Moscow’s war in Ukraine. It also carries out widespread sabotage through the snipping of critical undersea cables. In a bid to slash Russia’s oil revenues, France, Germany, Estonia and other Nato countries have physically intercepted ships from the fleet, while the US and India have just signed a deal which will see Indian imports of Russian oil fall by 1.5 million barrels a day. So why has Britain done nothing?

Despite lofty promises from Defence Secretary John Healey that the UK will start intercepting ghost tankers – more than 100 of which are thought to have passed through the English Channel this year already – we have not detained or seized a single one since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The Ministry of Defence cites practical hurdles as a barrier: where to store seized tankers, the high costs of doing so, the risk of retaliatory sabotage. But these excuses “don’t really stack up”. Limited action can have a strong deterrent effect, as the US has shown with its recent seizures of sanctioned Venezuelan vessels. And even temporary seizures, such as France’s recent interception of the sanctioned tanker Boracay, can disrupt the fleet and cost Russia money. Britain has led the way on sanctions legislation. But on Russia’s ships, it has so far “failed to keep its promise”.

Something very dangerous is happening today, says Tom Nichols in The Atlantic: New START – the US-Russia agreement capping the number of “strategic” nuclear weapons each side can have at 1,550 – is expiring. The Russians said they want to extend the agreement, but Donald Trump claimed he wanted a “better” treaty that would include China. This was probably a “poison pill” designed to stop renewal negotiations – unfortunately, the US president is surrounded by people who oppose international treaties and who therefore view arms control agreements as “a sign of weakness”. So starting today, “the two largest nuclear powers will be free to begin a new arms race”.

Not all of us were taken in by Jeffrey Epstein’s lies, says Tina Brown on Substack. In 2010, two years after the late financier’s conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, the PR supremo Peggy Siegal invited me to a dinner Epstein was throwing for the then Prince Andrew, with guests including Woody Allen (who famously left his wife for his adopted step-daughter) and Charlie Rose (a prominent news anchor later caught up in #MeToo). “What the fuck is this, Peggy?” I screamed. “The paedophile’s ball?”

It’s a Toyota Prius, says Laurence Sleator in The Times, which Auto Express has named as the most transformative car of the modern era. The motoring magazine acknowledges that when the hybrid hatchback launched in 1997 it was “incredibly slow” and “terminally unsexy”, but argues that it forced electric car technology into the mainstream. Other views on the Prius – long a favourite among eco-conscious (and occasionally smug) celebrities such as Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio – are, of course, available. “It’s shit,” says Jeremy Clarkson. “It started the rot which now means all cars are just annoying appliances.”