Speaking at the G7 summit in France, Donald Trump said the deal between the US and Iran is “all signed” and that the Strait of Hormuz will be “completely opened” by Friday. White House officials said full details of the agreement will be released in the next two days, though JD Vance warned that a “number of issues” still need to be addressed during the 60-day negotiation period. Keir Starmer has vowed to “choke off” Vladimir Putin’s war effort by imposing sanctions on more than 600 ships in Russia’s shadow fleet, and announced a £210m deal to support Ukrainian energy production. It emerged yesterday that a Russian online sabotage network was behind last year’s series of arson attacks on properties and a car linked to Starmer. Researchers at Kew Gardens in southwest London have photographed every one of their 7.4 million plant and fungi samples to create a digital archive of their 300-year-old collection. Kew is inviting researchers from around the world to use AI to sift through the archive to help with scientific discoveries.

It should go without saying, says Le Monde, that people can’t be reduced to their nationality and nor should they be conflated with the politics of their homeland. Sadly, in our social media-addled era, these basic facts need restating. Take the cancellation of Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, whose invitation to the Marseille International Film Festival caused a dozen filmmakers to threaten to withdraw their movies if he remained involved, because they wanted to “act against a colonial and genocidal reality”. The “intellectual laziness” is stunning. Lapid, 51, is an Israeli dissident who lives in exile in France and is himself a fierce critic of Benjamin Netanyahu, whose policies he has called “genocidal”. His latest film is a scathing critique of the moral decline of Israeli society and its indifference to Palestinian lives. Those boycotting him are cowards (most have remained anonymous) and fools, who prefer empty gestures to basic thought.

It’s not just Lapid, says Sharon Waxman in The New York Times. Israeli creatives of all kinds – musicians, comics, authors – are feeling “ostracised from the global stage”. At Cannes last month, no Israeli films played. Actors got the impression that declaring their views on Gaza was the “price of admission”. In Tel Aviv, I met countless artists who hate Netanyahu but who find themselves nevertheless being shunned by former creative and business partners. This year, the Jerusalem International Writers Festival attracted just eight foreign writers. Less than 10 years ago, Israeli movies and TV shows like Fauda – a spy thriller set in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – could be huge global hits. Today, not so much. “We used to be the belle of the ball,” says comedy writer Roy Iddan, “now we’re the girl with dubious morals you take behind the bleachers.”

Scrolling back through the past few years of political chat on WhatsApp is a “surprisingly swift task”, says Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman: “virtually nothing remains”. In recent weeks, MPs from the lowliest backbencher to the Prime Minister have turned on “disappearing messages”. It’s taken a while: the risks of WhatsApp have been clear since the Covid inquiry unearthed “useless fuckpigs” as Dominic Cummings’s insult of choice for elected leaders. Today, it’s the Mandelson files. MPs and ministers know they’re not technically meant to use WhatsApp for official business. “They also know their jobs would be impossible without it.”

As of yesterday, says Devi Sridhar in The Guardian, we can confidently say that the hantavirus outbreak has been contained. “This is a public health success story worth celebrating.” The Spanish government deserve credit for stepping up and allowing the ship to dock near Tenerife, where an organised disembarkation of passengers immediately reduced the likelihood of wider spread. The WHO then quickly issued technical guidance to the 23 countries with passengers on board, setting out standardised protocols for isolation and monitoring. This meant that governments around the globe with different healthcare systems all acted in a coordinated way, preventing a worldwide outbreak.

Later this week, says Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail, Andy Burnham is likely to clinch victory in the Makerfield by-election, clearing the way for the Manchester mayor’s latest attempt to “snatch the keys to No 10”. This isn’t the result of some newfound Burnham brilliance, but rather of the surprising rise of Restore Britain. Rupert Lowe’s party is on track to secure around 8% of the vote on Thursday, diverting as much as a fifth of Reform UK’s share and making it almost impossible for Nigel Farage’s candidate, Robert Kenyon, to win. This is dispiriting. Lowe is “vain, self-serving and arrogant” and his party is packed with “nasty secrets”.

Restore and Reform have plenty in common, but their leaders are not the same. Lowe’s language on immigration is much more incendiary, and boosted on social media by Elon Musk. Farage refused to allow Tommy Robinson to join his party; Lowe recently said the far-right rabble-rouser would be welcome. A number of those campaigning for Restore in Makerfield recently consorted with neo-Nazis at a summit of white supremacists in Portugal that called for a white-only Europe. Restore activist Lucy White interviewed white supremacist Jared Taylor at the event, describing him as “a true legend”. Another Restore backer, Steve Laws, has been described as an “ethnic-cleansing extremist” and advocated for the mass deportation of British Jews. Lowe may not share the “highly obnoxious” views of these people. But the mere fact that he’s willing to associate with them should be enough to make those planning to vote Restore think again.

👉🤪 It’s worth noting the irony of all this, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times. What Restore is now doing to Reform – drawing support away from its right flank – is almost exactly what Reform did to the Conservatives. Farage’s recent recruits defected from the Tories because their party’s hierarchy considered them too extreme (“or just plain lightweight”); Lowe’s schism with Reform came after a spat with Farage about whether to embrace Musk and Robinson. Lowe is now attacking Reform for its weakness on immigration, just as Reform has done to the Tories. It all brings to mind old phrases about “reaping” and “sowing”.

England captain Ben Stokes is hardly the first international cricketer to go out on the town when he shouldn’t have, says Tim Wigmore in The Telegraph. The West Indies batsman Garfield Sobers recalled a Test in 1973 where he went drinking until 9am, then “got a cold shower, walked up to Lord’s, got my pads on and walked out as the umpires called play”. He hit 150 not out. During the 2007/08 Ashes tour in Australia, Andrew Flintoff went for a drinking session with Ian Botham. He turned up to a training session at 10am the next morning so drunk that the coaches were worried he’d injure himself trying to catch the ball.

It’s an artist’s impression of Saudi Arabia’s new National Tennis Centre, says Tamara Prenn in the Daily Mail, which bears “a striking resemblance” to the All England Club in Wimbledon. The complex in Qiddiya City – a proposed entertainment, sport and culture hub under construction 30 miles from Riyadh – will not only be clad in a grass-like material, in an echo of the Boston ivy that covers much of Centre Court. It will also share the London tournament’s iconic green and purple colour scheme. In what is presumably a giant coincidence, the 15,000-seat arena was designed by the same firm behind the retractable roof at Wimbledon.