Keir Starmer pledged to “take back control of our borders” this morning as he unveiled new measures to cut migration. Proposed changes include harder English language tests, raising the bar for “skilled worker” visas and doubling the time migrants must spend in the UK before qualifying for permanent residency from five years to 10. Global markets have risen after the US and China agreed to slash tariffs for 90 days in a major de-escalation of their trade war. The US will cut levies on Chinese imports to 30%, while China will lower its tariffs on American goods to 10% – a 115-percentage point drop by both nations. Weight-loss jabs could nearly halve the risk of obesity-related cancers. A study tracking 6,400 patients over an average of eight years showed that drugs like Ozempic reduced the risk of 13 weight-linked cancers by more than 40%, making the jabs better at cancer prevention than weight-loss surgery.

It’s time the West reined in Israel

Why does the world look away from the atrocities in Gaza, asks Matthew Parris in The Times. Is it because we’re bored of the story? Because we can’t stomach the destruction, the famine, the blood? Right now, two million human beings are facing starvation at the hands of Britain’s close ally, Israel. These “wretched people” have been herded into one corner of the territory then another, starved of food and aid as the missiles and bombs rain down. Now Israel is promising a new offensive that will doubtless yield new atrocities. Yet this “hell on earth” has almost completely dropped out of the headlines, and our government continues to supply the Israelis with military kit and intelligence. What further savagery must be inflicted before we Western allies say “enough” and mean it?

This is in Israel’s interests, too. The Jewish state has always been able to rely on outside help and sympathy, and rightly so – “the Holocaust is, as it always should be, on the Western world’s conscience”. But the victimhood on which that support depends is “haemorrhaging away”. If they’re not careful, the Israelis may one day wake up to find themselves counted alongside “a dozen other nasty Middle Eastern countries” – just another “vaguely unsavoury regime”. Many will think this is too stark a picture of moral certainty; that the realities are more blurred. And it’s true: I don’t know how the horror of October 7 could have been answered other than with counterattack, or at what point “the line of proportionality was crossed”. But if, through blurring the picture, we lose sight of a “monstrous and counterproductive blunder”, then I’m afraid we are being “blinded by nuance”.