Donald Trump says the US-Iran ceasefire is “over” after the US military launched a wave of airstrikes on Iran last night in retaliation for “unwarranted” attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran responded with strikes on American military facilities in the region. “I don’t want to deal with them any more,” Trump said. “They’re scum.” Nigel Farage’s attempt to shore up his political future by re-winning his Clacton seat in a by-election appears to have been scuppered, after all the main political parties refused to field candidates. In a defiant speech yesterday, Farage said he would stand down as an MP to fight a “people versus the establishment” by-election and show “two fingers” to his critics. Prince Harry is “hacked orf”, says the Daily Star, after he and six other claimants lost their £50m High Court privacy case against the publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday yesterday. He called the verdict, which dismissed all the claims over a lack of concrete proof, “a complete and obvious whitewash”.

Nigel Farage clearly thought his decision to resign as an MP and force a by-election in Clacton was a “masterstroke”, says Simon Heffer in UnHerd. By winning the contest handsomely, as polls suggest he will do, he could “draw a line” under allegations concerning his £5m gift from a cryptocurrency billionaire and the largesse he reportedly received from “Posh George” Cottrell, a convicted fraudster. Instead, the three main parties have said they won’t stand against him, so his “great victory” may just be over Count Binface. And if the parliamentary standards investigation then forces another by-election – one which, this time, the other parties will contest – his exhausted supporters may feel less inclined to show up at the poll booth.

The “undisguised relish” that has greeted Farage’s resignation is striking, says Patrick Maguire on Substack. We have, it seems, ended up where “polite opinion always wanted to be”: the Reform leader is a grifter and a loser and a joke. What people miss is that Farage isn’t just trying to dominate the summer’s news coverage. He is trying to “break out of the existing political culture” and fashion his own – one not led by the mainstream media. We saw this in Makerfield, when his team ran an almost entirely digital campaign. We have seen it with Reform announcing some of their “meatiest” fiscal policies – on tax breaks for tradesmen, on overtime – on social media rather than at press conferences. And we saw it yesterday, when the party streamed Farage’s announcement from their own studio and pushed the text out on his Substack. This was a “conscious decision” not to play the traditional Westminster game, chasing sympathetic coverage from the usual suspects. As far as Farage is concerned, “all the right people are laughing” today. And they’re “creating the space for a new school of politics”.

People say Andy Burnham’s popularity will decline the moment he takes over at No 10, says The Telegraph. In fact, it’s already happening. A recent YouGov poll suggests the PM-in-waiting’s net favourability rating has fallen to –11, down from +9 towards the end of April.

My Retro TVs is a wonderful throwback – on a pleasingly shonky-looking website – that is constantly playing old TV channels from past decades going right back to the black-and-white 1950s. Pick a decade, then a year, and enjoy. Have a watch here.

It’s such a shame to see the US lose miserably in the World Cup, says Marina Hyde in The Guardian, especially after their president “cheated for them” by pressing FIFA president Gianni Infantino to rescind a red card for an American striker. But general disgust at America’s cheating, and jubilation when the co-hosts were subsequently dumped out of the tournament by Belgium, has at least brought the world together. The last time this many people cheered on the Belgian resistance it was 1914 and the Germans had just crossed the Meuse. Still, we shouldn’t be surprised. FIFA has long been a festering cesspit of corruption. As for Trump, his cheating at golf is legendary: caddies at Winged Foot in New York, where he is a member, are so used to seeing the president kick his ball back onto the fairway they call him “Pele”.

It’s amazing, says Edward Luce in the FT: Trump loves gold, but everything he touches turns to something else. Call it the “anti-Midas touch”. The World Cup was proving a far bigger success than anyone expected, until the president became the first leader to intervene publicly in his team’s favour since 1934 host Benito Mussolini. At least fascist Italy went on to win the cup. What’s striking is just how much Trump and his “sports doppelgänger” Infantino have in common. They both agree that the US president deserves the Nobel Peace Prize (when Infantino’s lobbying failed to impress the Nobel committee, he awarded Trump the inaugural “Fifa Peace Prize” instead). Like Trump, Infantino flies around on a jet given to him by 2022 World Cup hosts Qatar. They both love Saudi Arabia and Moscow. And they both understand in their bones something their detractors often forget: people forgive nearly anything if you keep them entertained.

There’s something fishy going on with the AI giants, says The Wall Street Journal. Subscribers to the top tier of Anthropic’s Claude model, which costs around $200 a month, can use “tokens” of computing power that cost the firm $8,000. OpenAI’s comparable ChatGPT Pro 20x plan, which also costs $200 a month, offers tokens worth $14,000. These firms are also fighting to become the AI-of-choice for new start-ups that they hope might become big customers, in some cases offering millions of dollars’ worth of free services. It’s not buying them much loyalty. Says one founder: “I’m always going to pick the one for which I have free credits.”

People talk about the green energy transition as if it’s a fight between “green ideologues in government” pushing renewables and hard-nosed capitalists sticking with fossil fuels, says David Fickling in Bloomberg. It’s actually “precisely the opposite”. The share of private investment in oil, gas and coal is now at 28%, compared to 53% from the public sector. And carbon-based power is being kept “artificially cheap” by government handouts – taxpayers look set to spend about $1.1trn on oil and gas subsidies this year, almost as much as the $1.19trn spent by public and private investors.

It’s a toxic pufferfish, says Kaya Burgess in The Times, which has migrated in large numbers to the Mediterranean, prompting warnings in tourist hotspots that swimmers could be at risk of nasty bites. Known formally as Lagocephalus sceleratus, the silver-cheeked toadfish has a “powerful, beak-like” jaw capable of biting through a finger and causing heavy bleeding. Greek authorities have begun installing floating barriers to create fenced-off swimming areas for bathers, and are offering fishermen who catch the gnarly creature a reward worth £4.46 a kilo.