Israeli forces have killed Hamas’s third in command, the US has confirmed. Marwan Issa, who is thought to have helped plan the October 7 attack, is believed to be the highest-ranking Hamas member killed since the start of the war. Separately, aid groups have warned that over a million Palestinians – around half of Gaza’s population – are at imminent risk of famine. A Labour government will be as economically radical as Margaret Thatcher, Rachel Reeves will tell business leaders in a speech today. The shadow chancellor will say the UK stands at an “inflection point” similar to the 1970s, and promise a decade of “national renewal”. Aaron Taylor-Johnson has been offered the role of James Bond, according to The Sun. Sources say the 33-year-old Kick-Ass star (below) will sign the contract to take over from Daniel Craig this week.

America’s unsung hero

During the January 6 insurrection, says Jonathan Last in The Bulwark, the Secret Service escorted Mike Pence down to a secure underground area of the Capitol, where an armoured limousine was waiting. The lead agent asked the vice president to get in the car, but Pence politely refused. He knew that if he left under their protection, he would have “no control over his freedom of movement” – and this might prevent him from formally counting the Electoral College votes to certify Joe Biden’s election win. It’s amazing how much this act of heroism has been forgotten. When “democracy was on the line”, and an armed mob came to murder him, Pence “answered the call”.

All of which is why his announcement on Friday that he won’t endorse Donald Trump should have received more attention. Never before has a vice president said that the president he served under is unfit for office. Can you imagine the hysteria if Kamala Harris did the same to Biden? Yet Pence’s decision has been all but ignored by the media – the New York Times has mentioned it just twice, almost in passing. And it’s not just Pence. Trump has also been formally disavowed by his former military chief, his secretary of defence, his national security advisor, and his chief of staff. “These are not hysterical Resistance Libs” – they’re serious Republicans who worked with him, up close, and think he poses “a clear and present danger to liberal democracy”. If the media were doing its job properly, this would be the context for “every single story” about Trump from now until the election.

With the general election now just a few months away, says Sarah Vine in The Mail on Sunday, have the options for British voters “ever been more depressing”? The Tories are a mess, and the Labour leadership is “about as appealing as a congealed fried egg”. Reform UK’s Richard Tice is “irritating, smug and divisive”. The Lib Dems are “opportunistic vultures waiting in the wings to pick over the carcass of Tory unpopularity”. Where do ordinary voters go? People who aren’t “frothing at the mouth about foreigners” but who wouldn’t mind a bit more control over our borders; who love the NHS but accept it needs reform; who believe in freedom of expression but don’t want it used to silence others. “Where do we go, who do we vote for?” At the moment, “there just isn’t anybody”.

With French diners increasingly foregoing the traditional verre du vin, restaurants are serving up an unlikely alternative, says The Times: cold tea. Parisian company Grands Jardins supplies its teas to around 50 upmarket establishments, in 75cl wine bottles with labels designed to make them look like Burgundy. Only the corks are different – they’re made of glass – and prices range from €17.50 to €24.90. As one Parisian sommelier puts it: “We wanted to ensure that whether you drink wine or not, you participate in the same experience.” Santé!

It’s time to make the fanatics fork out

The young woman in a Mulberry backpack who repeatedly slashed a painting of Lord Balfour at Trinity College, Cambridge 10 days ago has not been identified, says Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times. But the organisation which claimed responsibility for the attack – Palestine Action – boasted that they’d “ruined a 1914 painting by Philip Alexius de László”, whose works can sell for tens of thousands of pounds. They’ve promised to keep up these antics until “British complicity with the colonisation of Palestine ends”. Or, in other words, until the British government “agrees Israel should cease to exist”. In the meantime, back in reality, “who should pay for the repair of the portrait”?

The bill will almost certainly fall to Trinity College, or its insurer. But really, it should be Palestine Action, or, even better, its “Mulberry-toting slasher-in-residence”. It’s the same with Gail Bradbrook, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, who destroyed a pane of security glass at the Department of Transport that cost £27,500 to replace. And what about the £37m it cost to police two Extinction Rebellion protests in 2019, or the pro-Palestine protesters who have so far cost the government £20m, eroding the Met’s ability to offer a normal police service? There’s a precedent: football clubs contribute to the cost of policing their fans on matchdays. It should be the same with these mass protests. Why should the rest of us pay for these people to disrupt our lives in a futile attempt to bend the government to their will? It’s time to “make the fanatics fork out”.

Mark Zuckerberg has confessed that he loves Latin because the ancient language is “very much like coding or math”. He’s dead right, says Harry Mount in the Oldie. The mental tricks needed to make sense of all those conjugations and declensions are much the same as those required to make sense of trigonometry or quadrilateral equations. If you can understand the difference between the gerund and the gerundive – “let alone the diabolical ablative absolute” – then “setting up a multibillion-dollar internet business is easy-peasy”.

It’s an artist’s impression of a gourmet restaurant dangling from a balloon in space, says Bloomberg. SpaceVIP, a luxury space travel company, has unveiled plans to send deep-pocketed gourmands into the stratosphere for a six-hour, $500,000 trip, during which they will be served the ultimate “dinner with a view”. The menu will be designed by wacky Danish chef Rasmus Munk, from the Michelin-starred Alchemist restaurant in Copenhagen, who says he wants the dishes to be as innovative as the journey itself. Test flights for the experience, which will be limited to six diners, begin next month.