The Bank of England has cut interest rates from 4.75% to 4.5%, the lowest level since June 2023. The bank also halved its growth forecast for the UK economy in 2025, from 1.5% to 0.75%, and predicted that inflation will rise to 3.7% later in the year – almost twice the government’s 2% target. The White House has walked back the most controversial parts of Donald Trump’s proposal to “take over” the Gaza Strip, which has been widely condemned as a violation of international law. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified that the idea was to relocate Gazans “temporarily” while reconstruction took place, and that the US had no plans to put “boots on the ground”. Jackson Pollock’s paintings may be full of “camouflaged images”, including drunken monkeys, a hatchet-wielding soldier, a Picasso-style rooster and the outline of Lauren Bacall (pictured). A team of researchers exploring the artist’s bipolar disorder have discovered dozens of hidden figures in his drip paintings, although they don’t know whether it was intentional.

Is there a case for Trump’s “Gaz-a-Lago” plan?

Donald Trump’s plan to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” has one minor defect, says Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic: it’s a non-starter for pretty much everyone required to make it work. Still smarting from failed forays into Iraq and Afghanistan, most Americans would balk at getting involved in one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. Trump says Jordan and Egypt could house the displaced Gazans, but both regimes would “rather swallow glass” than absorb a desperate population dotted with Islamist terrorists. And while many Gazans would gladly seek a new life elsewhere if offered the chance, many others would not. Forcing them out would constitute ethnic cleansing.

Yet as flawed as Trump’s “Gaz-a-Lago” proposal is, “it does identify a real problem”. Everyone claims to care about Gaza, but in the decades since Israel withdrew its troops and settlements, the international community has participated in a “perverse cycle”: shovel aid money in; watch that money get snatched by Hamas to bankroll its messianic war against Israel’s existence; tut as the terror group’s constant rocket attacks produce ever-more hawkish Israeli governments; send more aid to “rebuild Gaza” every time those governments retaliate; then act appalled when the cycle repeats. With “significant revisions”, Trump’s proposal contains a semblance of a workable solution. Temporarily housing Gazans elsewhere while the devastated territory is rebuilt “under the watchful eyes of America and its allies” would provide the Gazan people with much-deserved relief, while also depriving Hamas of its source of power and income. The Gazan people could then return to a home “no longer hostage to either Hamas or Israeli blockade”. It’s a long shot, but it’s a hell of a lot better than “rerunning the old playbook and expecting a different result”.