US president made fun of Republican frontrunner’s legal woes while critics of his handling of Gaza war protested outside

Joe Biden has shown no mercy to Donald Trump with a series of barbed jokes about his election rival, telling a gathering of Washington’s political and media elites: “I’m a grown man running against a six-year-old.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner on Saturday night provided the ideal platform for Biden to continue a recent run of taking the fight to Trump with more aggressive rhetoric, cutting humour and personal insults.

Thanks to the watchdog’s liberal pre-election advice, drawling condescension will pass as impartiality

‘Tonight I’ll be asking the most important question of all – who was St George and why do we celebrate him?” Supposing a UK channel wanted to prove that politicians make such abysmal current affairs presenters that there is nothing for regulators to worry about, it could hardly do better than hire Jacob Rees-Mogg.

After a year presenting State of the Nation on GB News , its presenter comes across, oddly on a station that increasingly betrays some interest in professional standards, as fully as unendurable as he was in the days when, as a cabinet minister, he’d leave crested notes on civil service work stations. “Sorry you were out when I visited. I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon. With every good wish, Rt Hon Jacob Rees-Mogg MP.”

It’s a huge leap from playing a bent copper in Line of Duty to starring in the musical Guys & Dolls, but if anyone can make a role work, it’s actor Daniel Mays

In 2017, the British character actor Daniel Mays was nominated for a Bafta. His one-episode turn in the police procedural Line of Duty , described as “visceral”, “outstanding” and “stomach-clenchingly tense”, had impressed his peers. The nomination was a turning point in his career, but it was also a bust: he didn’t win and he was so nervous during the award ceremony that he couldn’t enjoy the evening. “You’re sort of anxious that if they say your name you’ve got to get up in front of the great and good of your entire industry and be coherent .” After the ceremony, a party kicked off in someone’s hotel room. “Adeel Akhtar was there,” Mays recalls. “Anna Friel was in the room.” Feeling a vibe, he left to buy cigarettes and got stuck in a goods lift. By the time he re-emerged, everyone had disappeared. “It was not the way I’d wanted the evening to pan out.” He tuts. “I may have had something to drink.”

Mays is talking over lunch at an almost empty members’ club in central London, in the wake of being nominated for another award, the Olivier, following a year-long stint in a very popular production of Guys & Dolls , at the Bridge Theatre. The nomination has him reliving concerns about getting up on stage: What does he say? How long should he talk for? That second question was answered at a lunch put on for nominees. “They said, ‘Listen, if you win, you’ve got 40 seconds – that’s it. And if you go over 40 seconds, we’ll play you off with the band.’” He winces at the thought of his waffling being slowly drowned out by music, then relaxes slightly. “I recognise now that just being nominated – I know this is a thing people say – is an amazing achievement. I’m just going to try to enjoy it.”

Coroner condemns ‘inhumane’ imprisonment for public protection sentences that have no end date for release

A senior coroner has condemned the “inhumane” and “indefensible” treatment of a man who killed himself 17 years into an indefinite prison sentence. Tom Osborne, the senior coroner for Milton Keynes, said Scott Rider had given up all hope of release before he took his own life at HMP Woodhill in June 2022.

He had been serving an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence after being convicted of grievous bodily harm in 2005. The sentence had a minimum term of 23 months but no end date.

The Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times foreign correspondent provides fascinating insights into surviving his job and his 2019 diagnosis with an aggressive form of brain cancer in this inspiring journal of self-discovery

In the searing heat in Delhi in July 2019, the New York Times foreign correspondent Rod Nordland went for a morning jog across the city. It was more than 48C (120F), and the monsoon rains had arrived the previous day.

The Pulitzer prize-winning war reporter collapsed during the run, with a witness describing him reeling in circles, arms raised, before falling to the ground with a seizure. He had been struck down by an undiagnosed malignant brain tumour. Within days, Nordland had been flown back to the US by the New York Times and was being treated at the Weill Cornell medical center in New York, one of the best hospitals in the world.

Thursday’s local elections are a chance for Keir Starmer to show his party’s breadth of support – not least in the embattled PM’s North Yorkshire

It’s looking pretty positive for Labour’s David Skaith as he campaigns up and down quiet residential streets in York, a stone’s throw from the city’s ancient walls. “I would rather poke my eyes out with a sharp stick than vote Tory,” says Sandra Barton, a former city council worker, as she emerges from her terrace house to signal support.

Skaith, who runs a clothes shop in the city, is Labour’s candidate in Thursday’s election for the post of the first-ever elected mayor of York and North Yorkshire.

I took on a pseudoscientist because misinformation about history too often goes unchallenged

It’s important to start strong. That’s true of a lot of things in life, but doubly so when you’re an archaeologist starting off a conversation with Graham Hancock, the famed pseudoarchaeology author, in a venue such as the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

For the last decade, scholars and experts have dealt with misinformation and pseudoscience either by trying to ignore it in order not to amplify it or by debunking it once it has spread far enough. But recent misinformation research highlights the importance of prebunking rather than debunking . An audience primed with real facts is armed to understand the issues with pseudoscientific narratives.

Starmer wants to make Tory policy on the economy a central theme of its election campaign … without mentioning Brexit

Now, let me get this straight. We have a fissiparous, Brexit-supporting government, many of whose MPs are stepping down, convinced that their party is heading for its wilderness years. Correspondingly, we have a Labour opposition that is riding high in the polls, led by Keir Starmer, who – unlike his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn – played a noble part in the remain campaign and argued passionately for a second referendum .

Proponents of a second referendum hoped that the country would acknowledge its historic mistake, and return to the European Union it should never have left. I was one of them. We failed.

Public disapproval mounts for South Dakota governor and vice-presidential hopeful whose book contains gruesome account

Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, saw polling numbers plummet after the Guardian revealed that she writes in a new book about the day she shot dead a hunting dog and an un-castrated goat, a revelation that ignited a political storm .

Announcing what it called its “Noem Puppy Murder Poll Findings”, New River Strategies, a Democratic firm, said 81% of Americans disapproved of Noem’s decision to shoot Cricket, a 14-month-old wire-haired pointer who Noem says ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbour’s chickens, thereby earning a trip to a gravel pit to die.