Jon Stewart on White House correspondents’ dinner: ‘We can’t even pull off a dinner that shouldn’t have existed in the first place’

Late-night hosts responded to the White House correspondents’ dinner shooting and Donald and Melania Trump’s attempts to blame political violence on Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes.Jon Stewart resumed his Monday night chair at the Daily Show less than two days after the shocking attack at the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night, which resulted in the arrest of one man and, thankfully, no injuries. “It was supposed to be an evening of fun and merriment until, like most things in America, it was interrupted by gunfire,” Stewart said. “This is why we can’t have nice things. And to be perfectly frank, it’s not even a nice thing

Antiquities dealer who exposed thefts at British Museum dies aged 61

The academic turned antiquities dealer who exposed the theft of hundreds of artefacts from the British Museum has died aged 61.Dr Ittai Gradel, from Denmark, alerted the British Museum and the police after he was able to buy dozens of museum artefacts on eBay over the course of several years.Gradel died of renal cancer days after receiving a rarely presented medal from the museum in recognition of what its director called his “very significant contribution”, according to the BBC.A police investigation is still ongoing, more than three years after the museum reported the thefts to Scotland Yard after pressure from Gradel. Before his death in a Danish hospice, Gradel – who would have been a key witness in any trial – told the BBC it was “a bit annoying” he wouldn’t live to see the resolution of the case

‘Protected for another century’: experts lift 15-tonne foremast from HMS Victory

There is only one correct way to extricate a 15-tonne wrought iron mast from one of the world’s most famous and beloved warships – very slowly, and with extreme care.Which is precisely how a 30-strong team led by shipwrights and riggers set about their task on Monday night into Tuesday morning when they lifted the foremast from HMS Victory as part of a £42m conservation project.A 750-tonne crane removed the 23-metre mast from the ship in an operation requiring power to lift the wrought iron structure but also a great deal of delicacy to make sure the fabric of the vessel was not harmed.In the coming days, as long as the wind does not get up, two more masts – the mizzen and bowsprit – will also be craned off Nelson’s 18th-century flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar and laid on a Portsmouth dockside ready for conservation work to begin.At daybreak on Tuesday, Patrizia Pierazzo, the deputy project director, hailed it as a “great start”

Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest review – painfully earnest tale of trauma and transition

Kae Tempest’s new novel is dedicated to “you”, the reader. It also comes with a plea: “Be gentle though.” But to whom or what should we be gentle? The book or the writer? Having Spent Life Seeking is Tempest’s second novel, arriving a decade after his first and following a period of considerable personal change, including gender transition. Perhaps inevitably, it is a book full of struggle and soul-searching. It is also painfully earnest: an enervating read with an exhausting intensity that neither relents nor resolves

The Primitives: ‘A reviewer said that Crash would finish the band. Then it was in Dumb and Dumber’

The Primitives formed in the summer of 1984 with a singer called Keiron, who brought me in to write songs. When he left, we pinned up an advert in Coventry library and Tracy, who I’d actually met before on a Youth Opportunity Programme, answered. At that point, we sounded more like the Birthday Party or the Gun Club, so I wrote three new songs – Through the Flowers, Across My Shoulder and Crash – to test a more pop direction. Crash was simple and noisy, with a basic guitar line that became the “Na na na” hook.It was in our live set, but we dropped it quite quickly

‘I wanted alcohol to take me to a place where I was not’: comedian John Robins on the moment he realised he had a drinking problem

For most of his life, John Robins assumed he got more out of alcohol than it took from him. Now he knows it was the other way round ‘I picked up the bottle of wine and drank straight out of it. I was seven’ Read an exclusive extract from his new memoirThe Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more