Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that if Hamas does not return more Israeli hostages by noon on Saturday, he will cancel the ceasefire and resume “intense fighting” in Gaza. On a visit to the White House yesterday, Jordan’s King Abdullah refused to endorse Donald Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians during the rebuilding of Gaza, pointing to alternative plans from Egypt and other Arab countries that would allow Gazans to stay put. Around a dozen MPs who previously backed the assisted dying bill have told The Times they are reconsidering, after its architect said she was dropping a requirement for a High Court judge to sign off individual decisions. Kim Leadbeater says a panel of experts would be a more robust safeguard; critics say the change would make terminally ill people more vulnerable. A rare deep-sea anglerfish has been filmed at the ocean’s surface for the first time. The black seadevil – usually found at depths of between 200 and 2,000 metres – was unexpectedly spotted swimming in the shallows off the Canary Islands.

Germany’s “make-or-break moment”

Angst is spreading across the Bundesrepublik, says Lee Hockstader in The Washington Post. Ahead of Germany’s federal elections next weekend, there’s a general sense of “national decline and dysfunction”. The economy has flatlined for five years, and there’s rising anger over a decade-long surge in migration and the “drumbeat of Islamist terrorist attacks”. Russia’s war in Ukraine has sent both energy prices and security concerns soaring. Nearly every positive stereotype about Germany no longer applies: trains are reliably unreliable; internet connections are patchy; workers call in sick twice as often as other Europeans. Some government agencies still use fax machines. It’s no surprise, then, that people are losing faith in establishment politicians and shifting towards the likes of the far-right AfD. With everything so bleak, this feels like a “make-or-break moment”.

What’s striking, says Marina Kormbaki in Der Spiegel, is that despite this litany of problems, the election campaign has focused almost exclusively on just one issue: immigration. In their first televised head-to-head debate on Sunday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his likely replacement, Friedrich Merz of the centre-right CDU, said “woefully little about the state of the country”. They barely touched on how President Trump’s proposed trade war will impact Germany, largely ignored the sweeping changes AI will bring to the economy and pushed aside the topic of climate change. It’s understandable why migration has dominated debate – many are feeling “unsettled” by the influx of outsiders. But what people long for at times of such upheaval is “the feeling that politicians understand them and their everyday needs”. The frontrunners evidently do not.