Humza Yousaf has resigned as Scotland’s first minister, after his decision to end the SNP’s power-sharing deal with the Greens last week left him facing two separate confidence votes at Holyrood. The Scottish parliament now has 28 days to choose a replacement. People with anxiety or depression could lose access to sickness benefits under a planned overhaul of the welfare system. Work and pensions secretary Mel Stride says the changes to personal independence payments, which will affect how millions of people receive disability benefits, will be “the biggest welfare reforms in a generation”. Collagen creams, detox teas and vitamin shots are an expensive waste of money, according to Which? The consumer group found that these and other wellness products over-promise and under-deliver on purported health benefits: most vitamin shots cost as much per litre as Moët & Chandon, for example, even though their main ingredient is fruit juice.

Netanyahu has a choice: Rafah or Riyadh

Benjamin Netanyahu has a “single giant choice” to make, says Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. “What do you want more – Rafah or Riyadh?” Israeli forces are poised to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah in a hopeless attempt to “eliminate” Hamas. After the horrors of October 7, the desire for revenge is understandable. “But revenge is not a strategy.” Rafah is now home to more than a million refugees from northern Gaza. If Israel mounts a full-scale invasion – against the public wishes of Joe Biden – it will create “another spasm of mass civilian losses”, and likely lead to the same kind of permanent insurgency that America had to deal with in Iraq. US officials even tell me it could provoke Biden to “consider restricting certain arms sales” to the Jewish state.

There is another way. If Israel holds back, it can forgo becoming a “global pariah”, and instead establish a network of Arab allies to help it counter Iran. There are “glimmers of hope” already: discussions of Arab peacekeeping troops replacing the IDF in Gaza; a mooted diplomatic deal which would see Israel and Saudi Arabia establish relations, in exchange for US security guarantees for Riyadh and Israel’s commitment to an eventual two-state solution. America is “close to finalising the terms” of this deal with Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman – but no Arab country can be seen allying with Israel if the occupation of Gaza becomes permanent. This shouldn’t be a hard decision for Netanyahu. Riyadh is in Israel’s long-term interests. Rafah is a “dead end”.

Rishi Sunak insists that the Rwanda scheme is all about deterring migrants from trying to cross the Channel, says Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. Really, though, the whole thing is just a “cynical distraction” from how many people are arriving in the country by legal means. Net immigration to the UK was 672,000 last year – vastly more than then 30,000 or so who arrived on small boats, and more than the population of any British city bar London and Birmingham. “Yet most voters don’t realise it.” When a think tank recently asked the public how many migrants they thought had entered Britain last year, the average guess was just 70,000. If people ever find out the truth, “they might get quite cross”.

🇷🇼 Will the Tories’ Rwanda plan work? Click here to read our explainer

The shortlist for the 2024 Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year competition has been announced. Nominated snaps include tins of tomatoes arranged on a checked tablecloth; a man clambering out of a wine-making tank after pressing some grapes; figurines arranged on marshmallow to make it look like snow; munching pilgrims at a Hindu festival in northern India; and a cake topped with figs and syrup. See all the contenders here.

They’ll miss us ghastly tourists when we’re gone

There is a certain “fractiousness” in the sunnier parts of Europe, says Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. I first noticed it when I saw a photo of a “snarling, snaggletoothed, pink-haired Spanish harridan” in Tenerife, brandishing a placard that read: “Tourists go home.” Last year I took the family there, and now wish I had followed the rabid woman’s advice. “It’s an absolutely awful, seething place, almost as bad as Dubai.” The locals are “even more obnoxious than Greeks”, and we spent the whole time either with food poisoning or “knowingly contracting it”. Yet apparently it is we tourists who are the problem. What would old snaggletooth prefer? To go back to “catching the occasional sardine and herding goats for a living”? Tourism is the Canary Islands’ lifeblood: “they have nothing else whatsoever”.

This “vacuous opposition to tourism” is spreading, largely among a leftish younger generation who don’t understand how bad things were before we northern Europeans arrived with our “unbelievably vast amounts of money”. In Venice, locals “hate the Brits, Germans, Russkis and Yanks who come to gaze at their stinking canals” so much that they’ve introduced an entry fee for the city. It’s so self-defeating: all Venice has is “people who misguidedly wish to spend 100 quid on an ice cream while looking at some pleasant architecture”. But there is a tranche of the population in all developed countries that “resents almost everything” – like the Extinction Rebellion kids, who wish to tear down the economic system that provides them with “security, pointless degrees in resentment studies, cocaine and skinny lattes”. They will miss it when it’s gone.

Tim Bentinck, the actor best known as David in The Archers, tends not to use his hereditary title, the Earl of Portland, says the My Time Capsule podcast. He learned his lesson when, as a young Viscount Woodstock, he took his wife back to their honeymoon hotel in Brighton. Having booked a suite as “Lord Woodstock”, he turned up and announced “the name’s Woodstock”, then waited for the bootlicking to begin. “Ah yes,” said the receptionist. “Lloyd Woodstock.” He never flaunted his title again.

It’s a Lego octopus that spilled into the sea from a shipping container almost three decades ago, says The Guardian. The figurine flotsam, which was recently unearthed by a 13-year-old boy on the Cornish beach of Marazion, was one of nearly five million pieces that tipped overboard when a storm hit a cargo ship off Land’s End in 1997. The lost Lego included 352,000 pairs of flippers, 97,500 scuba tanks and 92,400 swords. But there were only 4,200 octopuses, so for brick-based beachcombers the synthetic cephalopods have become the “holy grail”.