Donald Trump has authorised sanctions against the International Criminal Court, specifically aimed at anyone involved in what he calls the “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”. The US president’s executive order puts financial and visa restrictions on individuals, and their families, who assist ICC investigations of American citizens or allies. Ed Miliband has dropped his opposition to building a third runway at Heathrow Airport, despite threatening to resign over the proposed expansion in 2009 and voting against it in 2018. The energy secretary has said that he will “abide by collective responsibility”. A 300-year-old violin could become the most expensive musical instrument ever sold when it goes up for auction in New York today. The Joachim-Ma (pictured), made by Antonio Stradivari in 1714, is expected to fetch up to $18m, surpassing the current record of $15.9m. If you fancy a cheeky bid, there’s still time to register here.

The behind-the-scenes battle in No 10

Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister’s chief of staff, does not immediately display the “demeanour of a disruptor”, says Michael Gove in The Spectator. But beneath those sober blue suits are “the scars of a streetfighter” who obliterated Corbynism and handed Starmer a majority big enough to “remake Britain”. McSweeney learnt his political craft fighting the hard-left in Lambeth and the far-right in Dagenham, and he owes some of his insurgent style to his upbringing in Ireland. His parents were activists in Fine Gael, the party inspired by IRA mastermind Michael Collins. In many ways, McSweeney is Collins’s “spiritual successor”: ruthless in identifying the real enemy, conscious of how internal rivalries threaten success – and a realist “scornful of soft-headedness”.

Since winning No 10 for his boss, McSweeney has been disappointed: Labour has “returned to its cosy comfort zone”. “Metropolitan indulgence” has allowed Ed Miliband to pursue an energy policy which is “applauded by NGOs” but hated by working people and industry. Similar sentimentality has allowed the “Blob” to unwind education reforms, letting failing schools off the hook. And Starmer appointed as attorney general an “even more zealous human rights ideologue” than himself, Richard Hermer KC, who has set about correcting the behaviour of elected ministers, whose “grubby ascent to office through actual contact with voters” sits ill with his devotion to “legal purity”. Whether imposing arms embargoes on Israel, ceding sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, or “lecturing his colleagues on the defects of ‘populist’ democracy”, Hermer entrenches establishment thinking over insurgent instincts wherever he can. All that makes space for another insurgent party, which is now topping polls – Reform UK. Unless McSweeney can bring Starmer back round, wipeout awaits.

👨‍⚖️🪓 Starmer values his friends outside politics more than anyone in Westminster, says Patrick Maguire in The Times, and “Hermer is one of them”. He was Starmer’s junior in countless cases “before the very courts that now drive ministers mad”, and the relationship has endured. But does that mean the PM would never sack him? Not a bit of it. The lesson about Starmer is that he is capable of moving “hard and fast” when the political reality changes. Just ask Sue Gray, Jeremy Corbyn, or “countless others who learnt the hard way”.

During an interview with Peter Mandelson, I asked him about his longstanding links to Jeffrey Epstein, says George Parker in the FT. “I regret ever meeting him or being introduced to him by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell,” replied the man about to become Britain’s ambassador to Washington. “I regret even more the hurt he caused to many young women.” An icy chill descended. “I’m not going to go into this,” Mandelson continued. “It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off. OK?”

Emilia Pérez, a musical “fever dream” about a trans drug dealer from Mexico, has received a bumper 13 Oscar nominations this year, says The Economist, more than all but three movies in the Academy Awards’ 96-year history. But it’s a film “loved by Hollywood and hated by everyone else”. It is the lowest-rated Best Picture nominee since 1935 on IMDb, earning a measly 5.6 out of ten. On Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates critic and audience opinions, the public approval rating is just 17%. The nine other Best Picture nominees score between 75% and 99%.

The Trump aesthetic: Utah curls and body-hugging dresses

Every president brings a certain “aesthetic” to office, says Carolina Miranda in The Washington Post, which sets the look and tone of their administration. John F Kennedy embodied “Ivy League preppiness and good manners”; Ronald Reagan channelled “old Hollywood with a dash of cowboy cool”. Donald Trump’s aesthetic marries “a longing for the past” with the “histrionics of professional wrestling”. The New York penthouse he built for himself is a “pocket Versailles”, complete with Corinthian pilasters, golden chandeliers, ceiling murals and a huge statue of Eros and Psyche. His “big-shouldered, dubiously tailored ensembles” are straight out of the 1980s, while his “garish pancake makeup and architectural hairdo” are meant to cultivate a “cartoonish virility” that makes Hulk Hogan look demure.

Just as important are the looks of the crowd around him. In Trump world, “men are men and women are women”. Guys who work for him wear white shirts, red ties, dark suits and have neat hair. The women are expected to be “hyper-feminine”: body-hugging dresses, Utah curls and the “Mar-a-Lago face” – makeup-caked, angular cheek-boned, full-lipped and Botoxed to the hairline. All this might seem superficial, but it matters. Vladimir Putin telegraphs his strongman vibes with topless horseback photos; El Salvador’s Bitcoin-rich president Nayib Bukele dresses like a tech bro. The appeal of the MAGA aesthetic is that it unites the motley alliance of people that put Trump in office: Christian nationalists, the manosphere, alt-righters and assorted nostalgists who want to “return the United States to some imagined past”.

Fans of the wildly popular New York Times game Connections (shamelessly ripped off from the BBC’s Only Connect) should give Stacked a try. The aim is to find groups of words that have something in common. Each group is assigned a colour, and each colour includes a certain number of words – red has one word, yellow two, green three etc. Give it a go here.

If Donald Trump wants to buy Greenland, says Peter Conradi in Air Mail, then he’ll have to ask London first. In 1917, US president Woodrow Wilson bought what were then the Danish West Indies (now the US Virgin Islands) from the Danish government for $25m and tried to have Greenland thrown into the deal. Copenhagen refused, but Britain, which owned Canada at the time, heard about it and demanded the right of first refusal if the icy island were ever sold, since it lay only a few miles from the Canadian coast. The British government is “unlikely to take advantage of the 1917 agreement”, but nice to know it’s there.

It’s a “long black”, says El Hunt in The Guardian, the new go-to order for coffee snobs at those fancy cafes where baristas “carefully weigh out your grounds on tiny hypersensitive scales”. It’s basically the same as a traditional americano – a shot or two of espresso with hot water – but with less water. (Some also insist that the espresso goes in second, on top of the water, rather than vice versa, for some reason.) I got a barista to set up a taste test, and I have to say “I’m sold”. After trying the long black, the americano feels “weak and watery”.