Keir Starmer has told his cabinet he will fight on. Around 80 Labour MPs have publicly called on the prime minister to stand down and more than 90 have come out to back him. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper were reportedly among those privately urging Starmer to set an orderly timetable for his departure, but no cabinet members directly challenged the PM at Downing Street this morning. Zack Polanski has admitted to living on a London houseboat and probably failing to pay the correct council tax, despite previously claiming the canal craft wasn’t his primary home. The Green Party leader apologised for the “unintentional mistake” and said he had now “taken steps” to pay any tax he may be found to owe. A hearing aid that solves the “cocktail party problem” of not being able to pick out a single voice in a noisy room has shown what US researchers described as “unbelievable” results in early trials. The devices monitor brain activity to detect which conversation the wearer is trying to follow, then amplify that voice while quietening the others.

As Keir Starmer hangs on in Downing Street, says Janan Ganesh in the FT, he can at least console himself that he is not the only leader hated by the electorate. Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor, is “terminally unpopular”; so too Emmanuel Macron. Donald Trump was disliked even before he sent his bombers into Iran. Their predecessors were no more popular: think of Rishi Sunak, Olaf Scholz, Joe Biden. Each of the last four US presidents has had an average approval rating under 50%. Is it really possible that all these leaders, in all these countries, are useless? “What bad luck voters are having.” The real issue, surely, is public expectations. In rich and established democracies, “what people want from life goes up until no conceivable government can provide it”.

I’ve spent much of my life telling people governing is hard, says William Hague in The Times, but Starmer makes it look “almost impossible”. It’s not. Look at Canada and Australia, which have political systems similar to ours and are currently governed by the main centre-left party. Mark Carney has revitalised Canada’s liberals, winning three recent by-elections and earning personal approval ratings of 54%. Australian PM Anthony Albanese won re-election with a record majority last year and still polls well ahead of the opposition. It helps that both men are competent chief executives – they don’t appoint scandal-prone ambassadors or fire top civil servants to save their own skins. But more important, they govern from the centre: tax breaks to incentivise growth; continued fossil fuel production while boosting renewables; tough immigration policies. Neither leader is perfect and their administrations won’t last forever. But they have realised that “small changes are insufficient”, and voters are rewarding them for it. Labour MPs, take note.

TACO, meaning “Trump always chickens out”, has been a solid guideline for traders throughout his second term, says Lee Ying Shan on CNBC. Today, they’re guided by a new acronym, to reflect growing scepticism that the US president will be able to achieve his key war aims in Iran. It’s NACHO, or “Not A Chance Hormuz Opens”.

The Newby-McMahon Building in Wichita Falls, Texas, is known as the “world’s littlest skyscraper”, says Messy Nessy. Standing at roughly 480 inches tall (around 40ft), the tiddly tower is the result of a 1920s swindle, in which oil rig maker JD McMahon declared he was building a high rise to accommodate the newly-rich oil town’s fast-growing population, and invited faraway investors to get in on the ground floor. They didn’t get much further: everyone assumed the blueprints indicated the tower would be 480ft tall, but they really showed inches, as McMahon successfully argued in court.

When Donald Trump travels to Beijing this week, says Gideon Rachman in the FT, he will need all his trademark bravado to “obscure the weakness of his position”. To paraphrase the US president, it is Xi Jinping who “has the cards”: a near monopoly on rare earths and other critical minerals; AI champions that have defied US semiconductor restrictions and remain mere months behind their American rivals; and a trade surplus that keeps hitting ever-greater heights. Trump, by contrast, is unpopular at home; had to drop his tariff war on the Chinese after they restricted rare earth access; and has failed to wrap up the war in Iran and open the Strait of Hormuz. With the US president desperate to score “wins”, the question is simply what wins the Chinese can extract in return.

One of the most widely shared viral memes in China is the “American kill line”, says Yanzhong Huang in The New York Times: a term borrowed from video games for when a severely weakened character is a single blow from death. It has become the prevailing Chinese metaphor for life in America, where millions live one lost job or one expensive illness away from ruin. It’s a powerful message. Students who once dreamed of Harvard are scared off by stories of rampant crime. A taxi driver in Beijing recently vented to me about life in China, then added: “Still, better than falling below the kill line in America.” It isn’t true, of course. The vibrant US economy remains 50% bigger than China’s; violent crime is at historic lows; Washington still commands the globe. But the more Chinese hawks believe in American ruin, the likelier they are to make dangerous mistakes, and blow up the “world’s most consequential relationship”.

🇨🇳🫠 Big parts of China’s economy are an absolute mess, says Brian Spegele in The Wall Street Journal. A colossal property bust has destroyed “trillions of dollars in wealth”, consumer confidence has been gutted and the job market has grown “bleak”. Xi is steering hundreds of billions of dollars into his dream of AI self-sufficiency, while outside the vacant factories that used to employ actual workers, “for rent” signs riffle in the wind. For all the talk of growth, the Chinese economy is smaller than many economists predicted it would be by now when Xi took over.

Not all old wives’ tales are nonsense, says Peta Bee in The Times. An apple a day can lower cholesterol, ginger really does relieve nausea, and chicken soup is a stellar choice when you have lurgy because of its hydrating, anti-inflammatory qualities. Joints do tend to ache more in cold and damp weather, because of changes in barometric pressure and the fact that people move less on inclement days. And using cold wet teabags as a quick fix compress for puffy tired eyes is recommended by the experts at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. To see others, click here.

No one in Donald Trump’s administration is having more fun than Marco Rubio, says Matt Viser in The Atlantic. The Secretary of State recently travelled to the Vatican to smooth things over with Trump’s latest nemesis, Pope Leo XIV, and has been pictured enthusiastically DJing at a family wedding. At a White House press conference, he took to answering questions with rap lyrics – calling Iran’s leaders “insane in the brain” – and cracking jokes with reporters (“My DJ name? You’re not ready for my DJ name”). The buzz in Washington: he “sure looks like he’s running” for president in 2028.

It’s a lorry that managed to get stuck in the very potholes it was sent to fix, says Lily Shanagher in The Daily Telegraph. Workers from Stabilised Pavements, which had been sent to repair a country road “riddled with almighty craters” near Walton in Somerset, were forced to abandon their vehicle after a large hole in the surface effectively swallowed its front wheel, wedging it at a 45-degree angle. The trapped truck has now become “a tourist attraction for bemused villagers”.