Investors are seeing the “lucrative land” on Britain’s golf courses as increasingly “ripe for redevelopment”, said The Times. With one in five golf clubs estimated to be “financially vulnerable”, pressure is increasing on club owners to abandon their fairways and sell to developers.

How much land do golf courses take up?
There are roughly 1,800 golf courses in Britain – more than a quarter of all golf courses in Europe. In England, they occupy about 2% of the land: an area more than twice the size of Greater Manchester.

Given the shortage of affordable homes, there is now a “furious debate” between “fairway and driveway”, said the BBC. The “area occupied by a single golfer” on a London course “could provide a home for around 380 people”, said architect Russell Curtis in his “Golf Belt” report.

What are the pros and cons?
Courses are typically “large, low-density sites” on the outskirts of towns, said The Times. This makes them attractive to developers and councils seeking space for new homes. Some London courses “are very close to public transport”, Curtis told the BBC. It “seems reasonable that at least some of those should be turned into housing”.

But the picture varies. In Wales, most courses sit in rural or out-of-town locations, making them less attractive development prospects. They can also be valuable havens for biodiversity, providing “tree cover, habitats for wildlife, pollinator-friendly environments”, Gavin Anderson, from England Golf, told the BBC .

What does it mean for golf?
More land sales seem likely when “rising maintenance, insurance and staffing costs” are leaving many golf clubs “struggling”, said The Times. Sixty courses have closed in the past decade, and nearly 20% of remaining clubs are financially at risk, according to Custodian Golf.

However, membership of English golf clubs, particularly council-run ones, is rising – from 730,602 in 2024 to 750,07, with junior membership growing by 34%. Supporters say this reflects efforts to make golf more inclusive, which mass sell-offs would only undermine.

“All the private rich clubs, they’re going to still be about,” Chris D’Araujo, who is campaigning to save council-owned Enderby Golf Course, told the BBC. Redevelopment is taking golf “away from the masses”.

The FBI and a US Congressional committee are investigating 10 cases of missing or dead scientists and staff who worked at nuclear or space technology laboratories.

“The similar circumstances of some of the disappearances”, and the sensitive or secret nature of the research, have fuelled speculation about “co-ordinated foul play or foreign espionage”, said The Hill. Theories have “swirled” on social media about possible efforts to “harm” US nuclear or space programmes, said CBS News.

‘Sinister connection’
William Neil McCasland, a retired US air force general and aerospace defence director, went missing from his home in Albuquerque on 27 February. Investigators soon learned of other aerospace and nuclear officials and researchers who had gone missing or died in mysterious circumstances. These included a nuclear physicist who was fatally shot outside his Massachusetts home, an aerospace engineer who went missing during a hike in Los Angeles, and two scientists, working on nuclear fusion and astrophysics, who were murdered in their homes.

The FBI confirmed that it is “spearheading the effort to look for connections” between the 10 cases, and the Republican-led House Oversight Committee said it will examine “questions about a possible sinister connection”.

“I hope it’s random, but we’re going to know in the next week and a half,” Donald Trump told reporters. It is “pretty serious stuff”, but “hopefully a coincidence”.

‘No train of logic’
It is probably not the stuff of “a spy-thriller plot” but “something more personal and tragic”, said CBS News.

It “seems quite unlikely that” my husband was abducted “to extract very dated secrets”, McCasland’s wife wrote online, noting that he retired from the air force 12 years ago. And there is “no train of logic” connecting Nasa scientist Michael David Hicks, who died in 2023, to other deaths, his daughter Julia told CNN. “I can’t help but laugh about it but, at the same time, it’s getting serious.”

The cases are “scattered across several years at different, and only loosely affiliated, organisations”, said Joseph Rodgers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If all of the scientists were working on one project or weapons system, then I’d be more suspicious.” A former US Department of Energy official was more succinct: “People do just die.”

A woman in Tehran’s Valiasr Square walks past symbolic belongings laid out in tribute to the schoolgirls from Minab who were killed in a US airstrike. A missile hit Shajareh Tayyebeh school in the southern Iranian city on the first day of the Iran war, killing at least 170 people.

AFP / Getty Images

West Sussex: Iron Latch Cottage, Selsey
Charming Grade II, 17th century thatched cottage by Selsey Beach. 3 beds (1 en suite), shower, kitchen/dining room, recep, office, summer house, garden. £550,000; Hamptons.

Devon: Wytch Green, Hawkchurch
A characterful Grade II cottage dating back to c.1800. 3 beds, family bath, kitchen, recep, study, 1-bed annexe, garden, parking. £540,000; Symonds & Sampson.

Wiltshire: Pitts Cottage, Chitterne
Handsome cottage set in well-tended mature gardens in a popular Wylye Valley village. 3 beds (1 en suite), shower, kitchen/dining room, recep, garden, parking. £435,000; Cooper and Tanner.

Devon: Gardeners Cottage, Drewsteignton
A picturesque and beautifully renovated Grade II thatched cottage, located within Dartmoor National Park. 1 bed, 2 baths, kitchen/dining room, recep, garden, parking. £500,000; By Design.

Shabana Mahmood’s expletive was shocking. But not for the reason you think
Zoe Williams in The Guardian
When a heckler shouted that the Home Secretary was “‘out-Reforming Reform’ and confecting a ‘theatre of cruelty’ with her new immigration policy ideas”, she told him to “f**k right off”, writes Zoe Williams. “Once completely out of bounds”, a politician swearing “lands differently now”. But Shabana Mahmood “has restored its power to shock” – not because of the words she used, but the way they exposed “her contempt for the values of her own party”.

Western European Elites’ Hungary Hypocrisy
Ben Sixsmith in The American Conservative
I find it “difficult to stomach” the “whoops” coming from “Europe’s halls of power” at “the end of Viktor Orbán’s premiership”, writes Ben Sixsmith. Yes, Hungary’s democracy was tainted by Orbán’s “blatant gerrymandering and corruption”, but successive European governments “have completely ignored the popular will on matters as existential as mass migration”. And, while Orbán repressed opposition voices, “Britain has led the way” on “curbing free speech”. It’s time for “Western European leaders” to “look in a mirror”.

Russell Brand is everything that is wrong with the world
Alexander Larman in The Spectator
“There are few stranger public careers” than that of “former ‘comedian’ turned Maga cheerleader-in-chief” Russell Brand, writes Alexander Larman. He denies the sexual assault allegations against him but “goes on podcasts to talk about his past misdeeds with uncomfortably gloating salaciousness”. It’s such a shameless display of “rampant egomania” and “ostentatious self-healing”. Brand combines “the narcissism of the lesser members of the royal family” with the “truth-shredding egomania of Donald Trump” and “the vacuousness” of our “selfie-obsessed age”.