MP’s wife and daughter describe Yvette Cooper’s decision as ‘insulting’ and ‘adding salt on to an open wound’

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The family of murdered MP Sir David Amess have criticised an “insulting” rejection by the home secretary of their calls for a public inquiry into his death, accusing the government of “adding salt on an open wound”.

The home secretary said in a letter to Julia and Katie Amess that it was “hard to see how an inquiry would be able to go beyond” terrorist killer Ali Harbi Ali’s trial and the recently published Prevent learning review.

The three-time MVP has a strong case to win his fourth award. But that is to ignore the brilliance – and freshness – of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

On Sunday afternoon, two of the best teams in the NBA’s Western Conference faced off on national television. When it was over, the Oklahoma City Thunder had routed the Denver Nuggets 127-103, pulling away in the fourth quarter thanks to a barrage from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who had 40 points on the day. But because it was the NBA, the game was less about the teams and more about the stars at the center of the action – who just so happen to be the league’s top two MVP candidates.

Denver’s Nikola Jokić has been named NBA MVP three times in the past four years. That’s rarefied air. Only three men – Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird – have won the award three times in a row. And only a small number of guys, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and LeBron James, have won it three out of four years. The year Jokić didn’t win it during his streak, he lost a close vote to Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid in an especially heated contest that included accusations of racism.

The student activist was detained by Ice agents despite being a permanent US resident with a green card

• Trump calls arrest of Palestinian activist ‘first of many to come’
• Outrage after Ice detains Palestinian student activist

Secretary of state Marco Rubio has announced that USAid will cancel the majority of its programs, while the rest will be folded into the state department.

Writing on X, Rubio said:

After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID.

The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.

Theatre503, London
Playwright Ruth D’Silva explores cruelty and control but also kindness in a knotty drama focusing on a mother-daughter relationship

‘Don’t play with your food,” Bernadette tells her daughter, Agatha. Wash your face, she demands. Don’t swear, she says with a tut. When Agatha hurts herself, Bernadette applies the plaster.

It’s an innocuous scenario except Agatha – newly promoted at work, boyfriend in tow – is old enough to have her own children (she’s about to start trying) and has only returned home because her dad is in hospital. She falls back into familiar routines with her mum but from the start Ruth D’Silva’s play explores complicated acts of parental control as well as kindness, the tables frequently turning. Bernadette’s cruelty comes in flashes, her withering tone towards Agatha at odds with how she talks to her framed Jesus. After the interval, the daughter is warning her mother that she’ll be putting her down for a nap.

At Theatre503, London, until 15 March

Comedian Angie Belcher offers country’s first such workshops in Bristol to help people process trauma

Survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA) are taking courses in standup comedy to help process their trauma, in the first such scheme in the UK.

The comedian Angie Belcher, the first person to get standup comedy prescribed on the NHS through her project, Comedy on Referral, ran the two-day programme in Bristol last week.