On Monday, with just days to go before crucial elections that could lose Donald Trump’s party control of Congress, Democrats dropped a bombshell.
It was a 53-page report describing in exhaustive detail Trump’s links to the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Titled: “The case against Donald Trump in the Epstein files”, the dossier was released by Democrats with just over a week until the US midterm elections.
Why Jimmy Carr thinks comedy should be taught in school
Stand up comedian Jimmy Carr has said comedy should be taught in schools.
Here is everything we know.
Comedy is a ‘teachable skill’
54-year-old Carr is known for hosting 8 Out Of 10 Cats and as well as performing his own stand-up comedy shows.
Carr said he thinks no one is born funny and that comedy is a “teachable skill” that can help young people find their “authentic voice”.
Comedy is a ‘valuable skill’
Speaking on the podcast, he said: “I think comedy should be taught in schools, well drama more generally, but comedy specifically.
“It is a teachable skill. Is it an innate ability? Are you born funny? I don’t think so.
He added: “You will write down and order your thoughts. You’ll learn to communicate them and you will speak in your own authentic voice.
“It’s a valuable skill to learn.”
Everything you need to know about Israel’s election
Today, Israel is due to hold its first elections since the 7 October Hamas attacks in 2023.
What you need to know
Many Israelis have described the upcoming election as the most important one in their country’s history.
Polls show current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trailing in the race behind his main challenger, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot.
However, it may take weeks or months before it’s clear who will be designated the winner.
More about the key players
Netanyahu has led Israel for 19 of the last 30 years at the head of a far-right coalition. He is currently on trial for corruption, so losing power could risk jail time for him.
Gadi Eisenkot is the former head of the Israeli military. He’s positioned himself as the opposite of Netanyahu, naming his party Yashar, or “Honesty”.
What are the polls saying?
Netanyahu in decline
Most polls show Netanyahu’s Likud and his current coalition parters losing their majority.
Anti-Netanyahu majority
Polls also show a clear anti-Netanyahu majority, but opposition seats are divided.
Palestine parties
Palestinian politicians have indicated they might support a minority government to unseat Netanyahu.
Voters disenfranchised
In the occupied West Bank, more than 500,000 Israeli settlers can vote.
In occupied East Jerusalem more than 230,000 Israelis with voting rights live among 350,000 Palestinians who cannot vote.
Two million Palestinians in Gaza, who live under Israeli military occupation, according to the international court of justice, also have no vote.
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What the result could mean
Neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot supports the establishment of a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future. Their most significant differences concern democratic institutions, the West Bank and Israel’s relationship with the rest of the world.
- Netanyahu has governed with ultra-Orthodox parties that support settlement expansion in the West Bank. Eisenkot presents himself as a more pragmatic alternative. He has also taken a tougher position against violence by Israeli settlers.
The key detail Spotify is asking family plan users to prove
Spotify has outlined a new verification process for family plan users to prove they live in the same household.
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The process
What has changed?
Spotify will now ask family plan users to verify their address using a QR code.
How will it work?
The plan manager opens the QR code which needs to be scanned. All users on the plan need to be in the same place to scan.
What if you don’t?
If verification isn’t completed in seven days, the member can’t join a different Family or Duo plan for 12 months.
As part of our ongoing efforts to improve the quality and value of Premium we implement measures to ensure appropriate use of Spotify accounts. This includes reviewing Household Plans to ensure they are used only by primary account holders and those living at the same address, as stated in our terms and conditions.
a spotify spokesperson told sky news
The key takeaways from Russell Brand trial so far
Comedian and actor Russell Brand stands accused of rape, sexual assault and indecent assault. He denies all seven charges and has pleaded not guilty.
What we heard yesterday
- The jury heard from prosecution witnesses, including Brand’s former personal assistant, Helen Berger.
The first witness of the day was the sister of one of the alleged victims who said Brand raped her in the toilets of a Soho bar in 2004.
The manager of another alleged victim told the court that two of Brand’s male associates “both sat and watched and laughed” during the alleged sexual assault.
Berger told the court the comedian’s bad behaviour was “on another level” and she had seen “women being mistreated”.
What else did Berger say?
Berger also told the court that “peacock” Brand found random women online to satisfy his “insane sexual appetite”, but sex often made him depressed.
- “Though I’ve worked with a lot of celebrities before and seen a lot of people normalising bad behaviour, this was on another level,” she said on Monday.
The trial so far
Previously, the trial heard from alleged victims of Brand, with six female complainants making allegations spanning from 1999 to 2009.
One alleged the comedian groped her with a “maniacal grin”, before dragging her into a toilet to rape her. Another alleged he had raped her anally while she “begged” him to stop.
Women warned against using AI for cancer information
The Eve Appeal, a gynaecological cancer charity, has urged women not to use artificial intelligence (AI) platforms which offer “unreliable” information about common symptoms.
- The charity said that an AI tool “missed” a common red flag symptom of ovarian cancer – persistent bloating which is not improving with changes to diet.
- The popular tool also failed to reveal that vulval cancer could be behind another symptom.
- And the AI platform also gave incorrect information about cervical cancer screening, the charity said.
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Soaring inquiries in recent years
The charity has made its own AI tool, Ask Eve Assist, to ensure people were getting “trusted information” instead of an “online wild west”.
Athena Lamnisos, chief executive of the charity, warned: “The mistakes made by online AI platforms could be fatal.”
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The six Brexit options from rejoin to customs union
Explore what could be on the cards as Andy Burnham has put getting closer to the European Union at the heart of his premiership.
A future with Europe
At Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool last month, the Prime Minister said Brexit had done “more harm than good”.
Over the weekend, he opened the door to a future deal with Europe reintroducing freedom of movement.
Here are the main options which are likely to be on the table.
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What the options could look like
1. Reverse Brexit fully
The most radical option is to rejoin the EU. Burnham said he would like to see this “in my lifetime”.
2. Rejoin customs union
This allows goods to move freely within the union which would cut much of the bureaucracy created by Brexit.
3. Rejoin single market
It would improve the UK’s access to the EU market. But, it comes with major trade-offs.
What else is on the table?
4. Swiss-style model
Switzerland is not in the EU but has frictionless access to the single market via a web of bilateral agreements.
5. Bespoke UK-EU deal
Burnham could try to secure a tailor-made agreement rather than opting for other ‘off the shelf’ models.
6. A second referendum
On Monday, Burnham said that he would not reintroduce freedom of movement without a referendum.
But the document also represents something else that should cause grave worry to the President: a warning shot that the Epstein story is about to get a lot worse for him.
If Democrats retake the US House of Representatives as is expected, they have made clear that they intend to keep pressing Trump on his links to Epstein.
They want to know about what the report calls the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) “desperate attempt to cover it up” by failing to release files about the two men.
Control of the House will give Democrats the majority on powerful committees like the Oversight Committee, giving them subpoena power.
In a statement to The i Paper, Representative Suhas Subramanyam, who sits on the committee, said they would absolutely target Trump and his administration.
He said: “Unlike House Republicans, we will use the full subpoena power of Congress to get justice for the survivors and transparency for the American people.”
His thoughts were echoed by Representative Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, who told Bloomberg this week that Epstein was “going to be one of our top priorities”.
Epstein is so toxic for the President that Democrats have done their best to make this election a referendum on the late financier as much as the cost of living and the Iran war.
According to a recent analysis by CNN, a staggering 160 Epstein-related adverts have run in the 2026 midterm elections at a cost of $35 million (£26m), including in US Senate races.
Back in the 2024 presidential election, just three Epstein-related adverts ran at a cost of $470,000 (£353,000), and they were all in local races.
This time around, Ken Paxton, the troubled Republican Senate candidate in Texas, was accused by Democrats of an “Epstein-style deal to let a paeodphile walk free”.
In Mississippi, Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith has faced a brutal attack advert featuring a disillusioned Trump voter who is angry over her vote not to release the Epstein files.
Even the family of the late Virginia Giuffre, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’s accuser, appeared in an attack ad aimed at a Republican Representative in Colorado.
In the commercial, Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts said that Jeff Crank “covered up Epstein’s crimes to protect Donald Trump”.
“He has no business being in Congress,” Roberts says.
The Epstein story has created a new phrase that is haunting the President: the “Epstein Class”, a global elite he once railed against but which he is now seen as being part of by many voters who are tired of his corruption and failure to bring down grocery prices.
The Democrats’ report – which the White House has strongly refuted – does not provide much new information about Trump and Epstein, who knew each other for more than a decade in the 90s and 2000s. It features new claims to the committee from one woman who had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in 1993. Beatrice Keul, a model and beauty pageant contestant, alleges that she was raped by Trump in a hotel suite in Manhattan when she was 24.
The White House denied the allegations in the report, saying “none of these allegations are true” and that Trump had been “fully exonerated of anything related to Epstein”. It added in a statement: “This ‘report’ is nothing more than a desperate attempt by crazed Democrats to distract Americans from the surging Republican momentum driven by President Trump’s historic achievements.”
Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing related to the sex offender, saying that he fell out with Epstein.
But it’s a striking compilation of stories which, when presented together, makes for uneasy reading for the President.
There are pages of questions to which Democrats are likely to seek answers if they retake one of the chambers of Congress, such as why did the DoJ abruptly declare in July 2025 that nobody else would be charged over the Epstein case?
Why was Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for trafficking children to Epstein, transferred to a low-security prison amid speculation Trump was going to pardon her?
The report states: “These questions have a straightforward answer: the Trump administration took these actions because Donald Trump is personally implicated in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.”
The DoJ could be “deliberately covering up further evidence that directly implicates Trump in Epstein’s crimes of sex trafficking and abuse of female minors”, the report suggests.
Trump, who denies any wrongdoing, faces another potential embarrassment if Democrats succeed in passing a second version of the law that led to the release of more than three million Epstein files.
Dubbed the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, the bill would force the DoJ to release the rest of the files so the public could see what, if anything, the President has been hiding.
That will ensure the President’s final two years in office could be consumed by more speculation about his friendship with a dead paedophile.
That may give Epstein’s survivors something they have sought for decades now: a proper sense of accountability.
In a statement to The i Paper, Spencer Kuvin, a Florida lawyer who represents several Epstein survivors, said: “It is our hope that if the Democrats retake the House that they can work together with the Republicans who have continued to support the victims and change the Epstein Transparency Act.
“Also, it is our hope that the Democrats continue to push for a full disclosure of information and prosecution of co-conspirators.”