Keir Starmer has blamed the small boats crisis on Brexit, dubbing migrant dinghies “Farage boats”. The PM says he will look at how British courts are interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights to tackle the issue. It follows an unusually impassioned speech from the PM at the Labour conference yesterday, says Politico, which has put him back on more “stable footing” with his party. The US government has shut down for the first time in nearly seven years after Republicans and Democrats failed to strike an agreement on funding it into the new fiscal year. The closure is expected to result in the furlough of around 750,000 workers, while essential employees, such as active-duty military personnel, will continue working without pay until a deal is reached. Biologists have used human skin cells to create eggs capable of being fertilised by sperm. The breakthrough, which builds on the technique used to clone Dolly the sheep, could one day allow infertile women or two gay men to have children to whom they are genetically related.

Why this Gaza deal offers hope

Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan is, of course, “a long shot at best”, says Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. This isn’t a “border dispute between Swedes and Norwegians”; it’s the “most vicious and deadly two years of fighting” between Jews and Palestinians in the entire history of their conflict. But there are reasons to be hopeful. War is changing: Israelis, Arabs and Iranians alike are terrified of a future in which killer robots can be cheaply shipped anywhere in the world and remotely activated, as the Ukrainians have done in Russia. Also, for all Benjamin Netanyahu’s bluster about “finishing the job”, if Hamas don’t accept the deal, what does that look like? Permanent IDF occupation of Gaza and permanent insurgency is no solution. Now Trump’s deal is on the table, it’s hard for Netanyahu or Hamas to reject it.

Perhaps most importantly, although there will be malevolents on all sides trying to derail peace, those now in power across the region stand to benefit. The reason for this is Israel’s bombing of Iran and defeat of Hezbollah. These two acts have allowed a new government to begin rebuilding Syria; empowered Lebanon’s most effective rulers in decades; made space for Iraq’s democratically elected government; and begun new conversations in Tehran about the wisdom of spending billions supporting losers like Hamas and remaining global pariahs. If you’re a betting person, history suggests the smart money is on haters ruining peace. If you’re a hoping person, “hope this time will be different”.

🇮🇱🤨 Netanyahu told Trump he agrees to this plan, but I’ll believe it when I hear him “saying it in Hebrew to his own people”. It’s the first rule of Middle East reporting: what people tell you in private is irrelevant. All that matters is what they say in public to their own people in their own language. “In Washington, officials lie in public and tell the truth in private. In the Middle East, officials lie in private and tell the truth in public.”

Labour diehards are thrilled that Keir Starmer has decided to take the fight to Reform UK, calling Nigel Farage’s immigration policies “racist”, says Ben Walker in The New Statesman. As one activist muttered: “Fucking finally.” But party apparatchiks hoping this will turn around Labour’s ailing fortunes may be disappointed: polling repeatedly shows that Farage’s migration policies are the most in line with public sentiment, miles ahead of Labour’s. Calling the average voter racist might not juice Labour’s polling in quite the way its true believers are hoping.

In the word game Strikethrough, players must delete letters from a longer word to create 10 shorter words without rearranging the order of the letters. The long word “Patchier”, for example, could produce “patch”, “pace”, “pier”, “ate” and so on. To give it a go, click here.

Mahmood’s plan to beat Reform

One of the biggest challenges Shabana Mahmood faces as home secretary is the astonishing rise of “ethnonationalism”, says Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. This is the “blood-and-soil politics” of those who claim Rishi Sunak, born and raised in England, can never be English – a charge not levelled at his US-born, Brussels-raised, white-skinned predecessor Boris Johnson – or that being Muslim is “fundamentally incompatible” with living a properly “British” life. Clearly, some British-born voters are “struggling to find their feet” in a multi-ethnic nation, feeling alienated from places they used to know and “socially segregated” from new arrivals. And at the Labour conference this week, Mahmood introduced a potential solution: “a new politics of belonging”.

Under her plans, migrants will have to wait 10 years rather than five to seek indefinite leave to remain and will face a “good citizen” test – fluent English, a clean criminal record, evidence of working and paying taxes, and a willingness to undertake volunteer work. Of course, this “virtuous, civic-minded” definition of Britishness is a far cry from how most actual Britons live. But the policy wrestles the debate back on to ground that has previously been neglected: integration. It recognises that the process of ensuring people who weren’t born in Britain can belong here “requires effort on both sides” and that the “tribal human need” to be part of a community should be harnessed to unite rather than divide us. For Britain to become a genuinely “open, tolerant, generous” nation, integration must be shown to work. While the right is busy harping on about a “country at war with itself”, Mahmood, the English-born daughter of Pakistani-born parents, is telling a “more honest and uplifting national story”.

Charlotte Chopin, 102, has been teaching yoga in the French village of Léré for the past 40 years, says Danielle Friedman in The New York Times. The spry centenarian didn’t try the Indian stretching practice until she was 50, and only took up teaching a decade later for something to do. She has appeared on the French version of Britain’s Got Talent, executing a dozen perfect asanas at the age of 99. And she has caught the eye of India’s yoga-mad PM Narendra Modi, who last year awarded her India’s Padma Shri civil honour for “defying age-limiting norms” and promoting yoga. Namaste.

Slippers, socks and bare feet are becoming part of the office dress code, says Amelia Hill in The Guardian. Inspired by the Silicon Valley trend for “footwear-free floors”, British companies are trialling “no-shoes policies”, in the hope of improving focus and morale. Natalie James, CEO of skincare brand helloSKIN, says she has seen an “increase in calmness” since she introduced a sock-only policy – socks must be clean, with no holes, and shoes go back on in kitchens and loos – while another top boss says going unshod helps her “run around and move faster”. “Honestly,” says tech CEO Andy Hague, “people stop noticing after a day or two.”

It’s Tilly Norwood, says Leo Barraclough in Variety, an “AI actress” who wants to be “the next Scarlett Johansson”. The fake film star has attracted the attention of several talent agents, creator Eline Van der Velden told a panel at the Zurich Film Festival, adding that studios are “quietly moving forward” with AI projects. “When we first launched Tilly, people were like, ‘What’s that?’”, she says. “Now, we’re going to be announcing which agency is going to be representing her in the next few months.”