The Israeli parliament has voted to ban the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and declare it a terror group. The organisation, one of the largest providers of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, will be forbidden from operating in Israel and the occupied territories under its control. Israel has objected to UNRWA for decades, and claims 19 of its workers took part in the 7 October attacks last year. The government is expected to announce a 4% increase to NHS funding in tomorrow’s budget, a boost Health Secretary Wes Streeting admits will only be enough to “arrest the decline” of the beleaguered health service. The minimum wage is also expected to rise by more than 6%, from £11.44 an hour for over-21s to £12.12. A musical manuscript bequeathed to a New York library has been revealed as a lost waltz by Frédéric Chopin, 175 years after the Polish composer’s death. Listen to the rediscovered tune, performed by pianist Lang Lang, here.

The real danger of a second Trump presidency

If Donald Trump is so dangerous, why weren’t the consequences of his first term much worse? That’s a question Democrats have “floundered in answering”, says Ezra Klein on The Ezra Klein Show. But it’s obvious: when Trump was president, he was surrounded by people who stopped him doing anything really stupid. Two of the generals he hired, James Mattis and John Kelly, made a pact never to be overseas at the same time for that very reason. In 2019, a senior national security official told CNN: “Everyone at this point ignores what the president says and just does their job.” Good thing too. In private, Trump “repeatedly proposed firing Patriot missiles at suspected drug labs in Mexico”. He mused about launching nuclear weapons and often spoke about pulling out of Nato. When protesters took to the streets over George Floyd’s murder in 2020, he said he wanted to deploy soldiers to “shoot them in the legs”.

If Trump wins again, there’ll be no one to stop him following through with these crackpot ideas. Nearly 20,000 CVs have already been vetted to root out anyone who might stand up to him. His running mate, JD Vance, has openly said that had he been in Mike Pence’s shoes in 2020, he wouldn’t have certified Joe Biden’s election victory. It’s not just government officials who would be more craven second time round. Republican leaders in Congress will depend on Trump’s patronage. The conservative-majority Supreme Court has already given him immunity from prosecution for official presidential actions. Even the less radical members of his family – his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner – have been usurped by die-hards Don Jr and Lara Trump. That’s the real danger of another Trump presidency: he’ll be entirely surrounded by “yes men and enablers”.

Chris Patten’s successor as the chancellor of Oxford University will be announced next month, says Henry Mance in the FT. Restrictions on the application process have been relaxed, so there are some pretty unlikely candidates in the running to oversee one of the world’s foremost academic institutions: one’s a Zumba teacher; another lists among their achievements the fact that they managed to live in France “for many years”. The winner will probably be either William Hague or Peter Mandelson: every Oxford chancellor since 1759 has been a former politician. And if the losers need any consolation, well, “there’s always Cambridge”.

In my two decades as a beauty writer, 80% of the tips, tricks and trends I’ve tried have been “utter tripe”, says Anita Bhagwandas in The Guardian. But there are a few hacks I swear by. The best way to stop your makeup getting all over your clothes is to spray them with hairspray. To get good perfume on the cheap, see if there’s a body mist or hair perfume version: Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle body mist is almost a third of the price of the real thing. And I heartily recommend setting aside a weekly “beauty admin hour” – mine is on Monday evenings – to blitz everything in one go: hair removal, exfoliation, face mask and the rest. Read the other tips here.

Neither Israel nor Iran want all-out war

Israel’s salvo of missiles on Saturday “was the most significant attack on Iran by any country since the 1980s”, says Arash Azizi in The Atlantic. More than 100 aircraft took part, taking out air defences in Syria and Iraq to clear a flight path before hitting 20 Iranian military sites. The operation, named “Days of Repentance”, was in retaliation for Iran’s own missile attack on Israel earlier this month – which was itself in response to Israel’s military campaign against its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah. For Tehran, years of waging a shadow war against Israel have “finally brought the violence home”.

Yet it’s striking how much worse this could have been. Only a handful of Iranian army officers were killed, in large part because Israel used intermediaries to warn Tehran about the attacks the day before. The strikes didn’t hit the regime’s oil and gas refineries, or target its political or military leaders – all of which would have been cause for further escalation. This is yet more proof that, contrary to the hawkish view, all-out war between Israel and Iran isn’t necessarily “inevitable”. The hardliners clamouring for the Jewish state’s destruction aren’t as politically powerful as they once were. And Iran’s economy is struggling because of its isolation from international markets: the US dollar currently trades at a historic high of 680,000 Iranian rials. As even the speaker of Iran’s parliament put it: “our economy is not doing as well as our missiles”. And that’s not a problem “you can solve by fighting Israel”.

Germany has a surprising source of income, says Katja Hoyer in The Spectator: dogs. The country’s municipal governments raised €421m in taxes from dog owners last year, a figure that has risen 41% over the past decade. Each authority sets its own fees for ownership. Keeping a hund in Berlin sets you back €120 a year, with additional pooches costing another €180. In Stuttgart, the more dangerous the breed, the higher the levy: the annual charge for a bull terrier or American Staffordshire terrier is a whopping €612.

It’s a tiny home made from an old wind turbine, says Fast Company. Designed by Dutch architects Superuse Studios, the 387 sq ft gaff is the refurbished nacelle, or control box, of a turbine that stood on the Austrian Gols wind farm for 20 years. The prototype property doesn’t have much natural light – the only source is the glass door – but it has all the basic necessities: a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living area with a table and a sofa bed. For more pictures, click here.