China has vowed to “fight to the end” after Donald Trump threatened an additional levy of 50% on Chinese goods unless Beijing withdraws its 34% retaliatory tariffs on American imports. Asian and European stock markets partially rebounded this morning following days of sharp declines. A baby girl has become the first child in the UK to be born to a mother with a donated womb. Grace Davidson received her sister’s uterus in Britain’s first successful womb transplant in 2023, and safely gave birth to baby Amy at the end of February. Owning a dog or a cat boosts wellbeing as much as having a husband or wife. According to a study of more than 2,500 British households, furry friends increase life satisfaction by three to four points on a scale from one to seven, and bring a psychological boost akin to receiving an extra £70,000 in annual income.

Will Palestinians end up on the “scrapheap of history”?

I went to a charity event to raise humanitarian funds for Gaza the other week, says Max Hastings in Bloomberg. It was the usual business: music, poetry, signing cheques for much-needed refugee tents. But something struck me looking around that evening: we “felt like losers”. I saw several friends there, all staunch supporters of “noble minority causes” from Amazonian rainforests to famine relief. It was the same sort of well-meaning crowd that would have turned out for Spain’s Republicans when they were fighting Franco’s fascists in the 1936-39 civil war. The Republicans ended up on the “scrapheap of history”. Increasingly, I fear the Palestinians will do the same.

Most of the world remains “appalled” by Israel’s actions in Gaza. More than 40 Palestinians, many of them children, have died for every Israeli murdered in the sickening October 7 atrocity. But nobody is willing to do anything about it, including neighbouring Arab nations. Donald Trump has effectively licensed Benjamin Netanyahu to do as he wishes, and Israeli hardliners are asserting “ever more vigorously” the case for a “Greater Israel”, stretching from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. I feel deep pity for the Palestinians, having seen their tragedy up close on my visits to the region. But the way they “cling to their lost heritage” reminds me of the Native Americans in the late 19th century. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, over the coming decades, the Palestinian people become a global diaspora, ironically “echoing the tragedy of the Jews for almost two millennia”.