In the headlines

UK inflation fell sharply to 3% in January, its lowest level in almost a year, further boosting hopes of an interest rate cut next month. The drop, from December's 3.4% figure, was driven by slowing price rises in airfares, petrol and food. Reform UK has pledged to keep the Office for Budget Responsibility and preserve the independence of the Bank of England in a bid to boost its financial credibility. On his first day as the party's new "shadow chancellor", Robert Jenrick criticised the OBR for overestimating the economic benefits of migration and the BoE for its handling of inflation, but said the two bodies would be retained and reformed. London's pedicab drivers will be banned from blaring out music and ripping off tourists under a clampdown by Transport for London. The rickshaw riders will need a licence to operate, and prices will be capped at £5 for the base fare and £1 per minute after that.

Comment

Smotrich with a map showing part of the West Bank. Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty

Israel's "de facto annexation" of the West Bank

There's no shortage of volatility in the Middle East, says Shira Efron in Foreign Affairs, but the next front to explode may be one largely ignored by Western policymakers: the West Bank. Since the October 7 massacre in 2023, the Israeli government has used the cover of its assault on Gaza to mount a "de facto annexation drive" in the Palestinian Authority-controlled territory. It has sharply accelerated the approval of Jewish settlements, with twice as many in 2025 alone as in 2019 and 2020 combined. It has tried to confer legitimacy on unauthorised Israeli outposts by rebranding them as "security farms". And Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet has just approved an "extraordinary" new set of measures, including easing limits on land sales to settlers and assuming control over how land is used in two areas officially under Palestinian Authority rule.

The aim of all this, as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said, is to "kill the idea of a Palestinian state". It's true that Smotrich is a far-right extremist whose views don't necessarily reflect those of the government as a whole. But as was the case with the Gaza war, Netanyahu's political survival depends on nationalists who share Smotrich's zeal for annexation. All this is already leading to more violence: in 2024 and 2025, Israeli settlers committed an unprecedented number of arson attacks, acts of vandalism and physical assaults, all with the tacit approval of their government. Last month, for the first time ever, Israel recorded more Jewish acts of terror against West Bank Palestinians than Palestinian acts of terror against Jews both there and inside Israel proper. We shouldn't lose focus on rebuilding Gaza. But the West Bank is on "the brink of outright crisis".

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Gone viral

To mark the beginning of Lunar New Year, China has unveiled a "new generation of robots", says Shivali Best in the Daily Mail. During the country's state-organised Spring Festival Gala – the biggest TV event of the year – around 25 humanoids punched, kicked and back-flipped as they performed martial arts, parkour and breakdancing. Made by Unitree, which plans to build as many as 20,000 of the automatons this year, the bots also vaulted over obstacles and ran at up to 9mph in what Beijing officials called a demonstration of "precision, power, and perfect balance". Probably nothing to worry about.

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