You finally got a raise at work. Now you feel a little more comfortable ordering in a few times a week, and you are not thinking twice if you need to opt for an Uber over taking the bus. Your quality of life may have improved, but when you look at your bank account, the numbers are more or less the same — even though your salary went up.

This phenomenon is what is known as lifestyle creep, and it’s not uncommon for it to occur when you start bringing in more money, whether due to a pay increase, a bonus or a new job. While there is a case to be made for leveling up as your career does, doing so in lockstep with your income can leave you right back where you started financially.

What is lifestyle creep, and why is it a problem?

Lifestyle creep, sometimes called lifestyle inflation, “occurs when your spending gradually increases as your income rises,” said U.S. News & World Report. Basically, what happens is those two figures move up in tandem, squeezing out the opportunity that a higher income should provide to save and invest more.

What makes it so insidious is that “it happens little by little, so you may not even realize it,” said Investopedia. In other words, “it sneaks (or creeps) up on you.” The small shifts you are making in your lifestyle, whether that be splurging on slightly nicer clothes or making your weekly latte a daily occurrence, can have big impacts. Unfortunately, “lifestyle creep can deplete your savings and prevent you from achieving long-term financial goals.”

What are the warning signs of lifestyle creep?

Improving your lifestyle and overall quality of life is not inherently a problem. To “some degree, lifestyle creep is expected,” said U.S. News & World Report. There are signs, however, that you may have taken it too far.

One sure sign that “your lifestyle may be creeping up too much can be that you begin saving and investing less and less,” said Fidelity. Another tip-off is that you have started accumulating debt, perhaps carrying a credit card balance.

You may also notice your attitude toward budgeting and tracking your spending has changed. For instance, maybe “you have stopped following your budget because you assume you’re earning enough not to have to worry about spending,” or you now “feel as if you can afford to buy whatever you want and no longer stick to previous limits,” said SoFi.

How can you avoid lifestyle creep?

To avoid falling into the trap of lifestyle creep, follow these three steps.

Make a budget. “Give all income a job to do,” said SoFi. Before you start spending, put a portion into savings and invest another amount, making sure to reserve enough to cover essentials. Anything that remains, you can allocate toward fun splurges or upgrades.

Track your spending. Often, lifestyle creep is not an intentional choice but an accrual of small shifts in spending. To make sure that does not happen, keep tabs on where your money is going. Budgeting apps make this easy to do.

Set goals. A new pair of shoes may feel nice, but reaching a financial goal, whether that is finally buying a house or being able to retire early, will arguably feel even better. “One key to avoiding lifestyle creep is to set long-term financial goals and keep your eye on the prize,” said SoFi.

While cooler fall days may be on the horizon, many students returning to school are still dealing with scorching end-of-summer temperatures. As climate change exacerbates the heat, experts say the negative effects of sizzling classrooms are here to stay, especially in school districts that may not have the resources to combat hotter weather.

How do hot classrooms affect students?

Students can often “struggle to learn in hot, stuffy classrooms,” as “air quality, temperature and ventilation” can affect how people “think, focus and perform,” said Time. These factors are aggravated in poorer school districts, where a lack of air conditioning “can impair cognitive function, while excessive heat diverts the body’s energy from learning, slows reaction time and weakens attention.” Average temperatures of 80 degrees to 90 degrees Fahrenheit and above are “known to exacerbate student absenteeism and disciplinary referrals.”

While heat has always been an issue in underfunded classrooms, it “doesn’t just affect places like Phoenix, which is well-known for its scorching temperatures that don’t always drop by much in the evenings,” Allison Poulos and Jennifer Vanos, a pair of health solutions and sustainability professors at Arizona State University, said at The Conversation. A number of cities, even in the northern U.S., are “oppressively hot when the new school year begins in August or September — and they are only getting warmer.”

Many schools have also “moved the start of the academic year earlier into the summer over the last several years,” said Poulos and Vanos, exposing kids to peak heat waves. But these schools “lack the infrastructure — from inadequate air conditioning to fields and play areas that are not shaded — to cope with high temperatures.” In 2025, 156 school districts nationwide saw an average of 30 more school days over 80 degrees Fahrenheit than they did in 1970, according to a study from the Center for Climate Integrity.

How are schools fighting the heat?

Many school districts are working to combat issues with HVAC systems directly amid concerns from parents. The superintendent of the Tulsa School District in Oklahoma “visited several schools and found the buildings she entered were cool but acknowledged that some sites are struggling with their air conditioning systems,” KOTV-DT Tulsa said. For schools that don’t yet have air conditioning, teachers are being asked to “close classroom doors once students are inside and shut blinds to help retain cool air.”

Conditions were even worse during summer school classes. In Boston, classrooms averaged 100 degrees Fahrenheit over several days in June, which parents “say forced teachers in nonair-conditioned buildings to turn off lights and spritz students with water to keep them cool,” said The Boston Globe. Once that heat wave broke, temperatures still “remained stubbornly high in some schools.” The problems continued even after the dog days of summer passed. Toward the end of August, students in a Northern Colorado district “spent the first three school days of the year leaving class two hours early” due to heat, said CBS News.

Experts say modern HVAC systems should “offer schools a way to deliver reliable heating and cooling while reducing exposure to volatile fossil fuel costs,” said Time. Using “energy tax credits and a mechanism known as Elective Pay, public school districts can receive direct financial support to invest in these improvements,” turning “what was once out of reach into a practical, near-term option.” School districts in Indiana, Virginia, Wisconsin and more are already implementing these new systems.

Meta has agreed to an $18 billion (£13.3 billion) settlement in the US to resolve claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed children.

The social media giant was accused of knowingly and deliberately designing features to get children addicted to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, with commentators describing it as the industry’s “tobacco moment”, said Sky News.

What happened?

Meta has agreed to make a number of changes to the way Instagram and Facebook operate for its youngest users, while denying any wrongdoing. The settlement “came as a surprise”, said BBC technology editor Zoe Kleinman. “I was expecting weeks of courtroom drama.”

What will change?

The ruling could “fundamentally change the social media experience for young people in the US”, said The Guardian. The “biggest alteration” is that Meta must now “make many of its safety limitations the default setting” for accounts created by teenagers, a “pivot from its previous opt-in approach to child safety”.

The new safety barriers include a two-hour time limit on Instagram and Facebook for known teen users (direct messaging will not count towards the daily use limit). Meta agreed to limit teen accounts to only one hour a day if other platforms bring in similar time restrictions.

Notifications will be muted between midnight and 6am and between 8am and 3pm on school days. ‘Likes’ will be hidden on posts from teenagers. Meta will also enhance measures ‌to prevent children from accessing age-restricted content.

Identification or facial recognition verification systems will be used to make sure teenagers aren’t using regular Instagram accounts. But collecting identifying data poses significant privacy risks, said David Greene, legal counsel at digital privacy firm Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The case was brought by 29 US states and was based on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which is nearly 30 years old. “I would be surprised,” said Kleinman, “if these measures remain within the confines of the US for very long, as other countries will almost certainly be keen to adopt them too.”

What does it mean for social media?

The hearing was labelled as social media’s “tobacco moment”, in reference to the trials tobacco firms faced in the 1990s. A “flurry of state lawsuits” forced tobacco companies to stop sponsoring sport and advertising on public transport, banned adverts that “targeted the youth and prevented cigarette companies from putting cartoons on their packets”, said James Titcomb in The Telegraph.

Other social media companies, including YouTube, TikTok’s parent ByteDance, Snap Inc. and Discord, are facing thousands of lawsuits brought by states, school districts and individuals. The litigants claim the companies intentionally designed their platforms to keep young users hooked. The lawsuits come as politicians are considering stricter rules aimed at protecting young users.

If other tech giants follow Meta’s lead, then social media “might indeed start to look more like tobacco: still a regular part of life, but heavily regulated and restricted, and widely understood to be bad for you”.

GB News went live on 13 June 2021, the first news channel start-up in the UK since Sky News in 1989. Broadcast free on most platforms, it promised to serve audiences on the right who felt ignored by traditional media with a news agenda not governed by liberal metropolitan values and assumptions: it calls itself “the people’s channel”.

GB News had a rocky start. Chair and star presenter Andrew Neil stepped back after just two weeks on air; he later complained of a lack of professionalism and “nutty” politics. It has firmly established itself since then.

In December 2025, GB News announced that it had become the UK’s biggest news channel, by daily average viewers. In 2025 it had over 80,000 viewers between 6am and 2am, narrowly overtaking BBC News’ figures. It still trails BBC and Sky in terms of weekly audience reach, with 2.1 million; the other channels have perhaps twice that. But its higher average viewership suggests it is watched consistently by a smaller and more loyal audience.

Why is the channel’s rise significant?

Its content is not just culturally conservative: it is tilted specifically, and vociferously, towards Reform UK and the right-wing of the Conservative Party. Many of its presenters are politicians. Nigel Farage presents an evening prime-time show three nights a week, while other contributors from Reform include Lee Anderson, Richard Tice, Matt Goodwin and Darren Grimes; from the Tory right there are, among others, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Miriam Cates and Esther McVey. Michelle Dewberry, who has her own evening show, is a former Brexit Party candidate. (One former Labour MP, Gloria del Piero, serves as a presenter.)

The channel has come under fire from journalists for breaching the impartiality rules that apply to news broadcasters. Ex-Sky News editor Adam Boulton called for the channel to be stripped of its broadcasting licence.

What does GB News coverage look like?

Its content is focused strongly on populist-right themes: culture wars and “anti-woke” subjects; climate scepticism; and, most of all, illegal migration. Typically, a GB News evening show will begin with a few minutes of the presenter’s own firmly expressed views. Next, there will be four or five segments of news tilted heavily towards the channel’s favoured talking points. Then a panel of guests will discuss the issues. There’s usually a panel of two: say, Reform’s Zia Yusuf offset by one less-well-known liberal, such as Matthew Stadlen or Benjamin Butterworth, in order to provide a semblance of balance. This person is frequently shouted down by the presenter and the other panellist. Critics describe such guests as the “token leftie” or the “chew toy”.

Is this against impartiality rules?

The Broadcasting Code, a list of rules established by the communications regulator Ofcom, covers both TV and radio broadcasters: all news coverage by broadcasting companies, whether across their main channels, or elsewhere, must be presented “with due impartiality”. Ofcom stresses it doesn’t mean an equal division of time has to be given to every view or every argument represented, only that there must be a level of impartiality “adequate or appropriate” to the subject and nature of the programme.

What does this mean in practice?

In the last decade, Ofcom has permitted greater flexibility in the interpretation of its rules, allowing broadcasters to provide more partisan coverage through presenters and guests, with fewer challenging voices. The boundaries were first tested by radio stations, with LBC and TalkRadio featuring more political presenters, including politicians. GB News and Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV followed suit.

In June, the former chair of Ofcom, the Tory peer Michael Grade, gave some idea of the thinking, saying that sometimes “a sentence in a script” would be enough to comply with impartiality rules. He defended GB News, which he said represented a “majority agenda”, adding that critics just disliked perspectives outside a “liberal, Islington consensus”. Ofcom distanced itself from these views.

However, a High Court ruling from February 2025 also allowed some latitude. It found that “news programmes” must remain impartial at all times, and opinion and fact must be clearly separated, but for “current affairs programmes” – in this case, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s show – broadcasters should be given more flexibility.

Is this a matter for concern?

It opens up the possibility of a much more nakedly partisan and less factually rigorous broadcast media – along the lines of Fox News in the US, from which GB News drew inspiration. Ofcom’s investigation of an interview with Donald Trump conducted by the presenter Bev Turner may be a test case. In the interview, in November 2025, Trump claimed climate change was “a hoax”, parts of London operated under sharia law, and that the capital had no-go areas for police, none of which Turner challenged. She also told Trump it took “real backbone” to “drop so many truth bombs”. Ofcom is now looking at breaches of “due impartiality” and “material misleadingness” rules.

What do its defenders say?

To its critics, GB News is “Reform TV” – a partial, irresponsible outlet that is pushing the news agenda towards the anti-immigrant right. To its defenders, it has taken a vital step in wrenching the news out of the hands of its self-appointed liberal controllers in the mainstream media, and is providing reporting on issues that really do matter to people. A major documentary on grooming gangs in 2023 by Charlie Peters, for instance, helped to refocus attention on continuing police and local authority failures. GB News has also investigated issues such as the abuse of visas. The channel’s critics, argued Simon Evans in The Critic, “just don’t like the plebs having a show that looks them ... square in the eye”.

Who is funding GB News?

The main backers of GB News’ parent company All Perspectives, as listed on its website, are Sir Paul Marshall and the private investment firm Legatum Ventures. Nigel Farage is also a shareholder. Marshall earned the bulk of his estimated £870-950 million fortune from his fund-management company, Marshall Wace. He has long been involved in politics, having migrated from supporting the Liberal Democrats to the Conservatives via support for Brexit. He co-founded the political news website UnHerd, and bought The Spectator in 2024. Marshall has said that he hopes his media outlets will fight “progressivism”.

In 2023, he established the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) with the conservative culture warrior, psychologist Jordan Peterson. Legatum, a Dubai-based fund founded in 2006 by the New Zealand billionaire Christopher Chandler, is also a backer of ARC.

GB News has lost investors £131 million since launch, although it is moving closer to breaking even. Its latest figures, for the year to May 2025, showed revenue had grown to £26 million. Its losses were still high, at £22 million, but the annual report stated that there was “no reason to believe” its investors’ support “might vary to a significant degree”.

Speculation is rife with just a couple of months to go until the first Autumn Budget for new Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Chancellor John Healey.

“It’s an unusual high-stakes moment,” said Coutts, as Burnham has only just returned to Parliament as an MP and Healey is “fresh to the chancellorship, succeeding Rachel Reeves”. The Budget will be delivered to Parliament on 28 October.

It will come at a time when public finances are “expected to be gloomier than forecast at Rachel Reeves’ spring statement”, said The Guardian, when the Iran war had only just started.

Burnham has already announced a “handful of cost of living measures”, said Which?, which include a £2 cap on bus fares, the removal of VAT from electricity bills and a business rates tax cut for pubs and clubs.

There are plenty of clues on further cost of living support but no certainty yet on what will be announced. Healey has said, however, he wants to move “power and money out of Westminster, and into every postcode around Britain”.

Here is how the Autumn Budget could impact your finances.

Tax threshold tinkering

Burnham has committed to keep Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise income tax rates. But during the Makerfield by-election campaign he did hint at “revising the personal tax allowance”, said Which?, to amend when people’s earnings move into different tax bands.

Wealth taxes

Former chancellor Reeves unveiled a mansion tax in her final budget, which Healey is expected to “push ahead with”, said The Sun.

Other wealth taxes are still “much discussed”, said BDO, but there are fears that a straightforward wealth tax would lead to the wealthy leaving the UK. Other taxes on wealth, such as raising the capital gains tax rate, “might prove better at raising revenue”.

Property tax changes

Burnham has previously described the UK's property tax system as “outdated”, said Fidelity, and has “expressed support” for a land value tax to replace stamp duty and council tax. However, he did say during the summer that there were “no immediate plans” to abolish either one.

Social care strategy

One “bold idea”, said The Independent, is to scrap inheritance tax and replace it with a social care levy. But tax moves to fund a social care overhaul “may simply be delayed until a future budget”, added BDO, as Baroness Casey’s independent commission on adult social care is not due to report until summer 2027.

Pensions

Get set for “another period of speculation on pensions”, said Saxo.

The previous two Labour budgets had all kinds of speculation about limits being cut, such as pension tax relief, “leading to withdrawals and investors pulling money out of portfolios”.

Healey is “broadly expected”, said The Sun, to continue with plans to add pensions to estates for inheritance tax from April 2027.

Burnham has already committed to keeping the state pension triple lock but there is “persistent speculation about cutting the tax-free pension lump sum”, said WealthR. Trimming pension tax relief “could also be on the radar”.

The trial of a Libyan man linked to the 1988 Lockerbie bombing has been postponed at the 11th hour after new evidence emerged just days before jury selection was due to begin in Washington.

Two hundred and fifty-nine passengers and crew, as well as 11 people on the ground, were killed when Pan Am flight 103, from London to New York, exploded over Lockerbie, southwest Scotland, on 21 December 1988. It remains the UK’s worst ever terrorist attack.

Who was behind the bombing?

The bombing was “one of the largest and most complex acts of international terrorism ever investigated” by the FBI. “Solving the case required unprecedented international cooperation.”

Painstaking analysis of 319 tons of wreckage and thousands of pieces of evidence from a crime scene covering 845 square miles, along with thousands of interviews in 16 countries, eventually led investigators to two Libyan intelligence operatives.

In 1991 the UK and US governments charged Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah with the murders, which were believed to be retaliation for a series of confrontations between the US and Libya in the 1980s. A decade later Megrahi was found guilty at a trial held in a Scottish court specially built on a former US army base in the Netherlands and jailed for life. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer and returned to Tripoli to a “hero’s welcome” before dying in 2012. Fhimah was acquitted at the trial and returned to Libya.

In 2003, the Libyan government formally “accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials” and agreed to pay nearly $3 billion to the victims’ families. “It never admitted Megrahi’s guilt directly”, though, said STV News, and “questions over the evidence, competing theories about who ultimately ordered the attack, and the involvement of only one convicted individual for an operation understood to have required a state intelligence apparatus have all persisted for decades”.

Then in December 2020, 32 years to the day after the bombing, the US charged Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi as a “third conspirator”. He was taken into custody in the US two years later and has awaited trial ever since.

Why has his trial been postponed?

US prosecutors alleged the Libyan and Tunisian dual national, now in his mid-seventies, was a long-time bomb maker for Libya’s External Security Organisation, and built and primed the explosive device placed in a radio cassette player hidden inside a suitcase on flight 103.

The trial of Al-Marimi, the first person to face justice for the bombing in a US court, was due to start in May 2025 but was delayed after his lawyers said they needed more time to work through more than 400,000 files of evidence.

Judge Dabney Friedrich ruled earlier this month that an alleged 2012 confession given to a Libyan investigator could be used as evidence at the trial that was finally due to begin this week. But the trial was again pushed back, this time to early next year, after “newly discovered evidence” previously unknown to the defence and prosecutors emerged on Friday.

The fact that Friedrich “would have been extremely reluctant to allow an 11th hour postponement after months of preparation and marathon pre-trial legal battles” underlines “the potential importance of the new evidence”, said the BBC.

For the families of those killed in the attack, the trial “represents something rare in this case: a chance for evidence gathered over nearly four decades to finally be tested, cross-examined and argued over in open court, in front of a jury asked to reach a verdict”, said STV News. This would provide some closure even though a conviction “would not, on its own, resolve the wider questions that have followed the case for decades about who else was involved in ordering and directing the operation”.

Since the Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants last month, terminating employment authorization for beneficiaries, South Florida has been bracing for impact. The sudden loss of TPS for so many Haitian employees who reside in the region has hit its economy hard.

What is happening in Florida?

As a result of the end of TPS for Haitian immigrants, “some home-care agencies have shut down,” said The Wall Street Journal. Nursing homes in South Florida are “scrambling to fill vacant positions,” and restaurants are “scaling back operating hours.”

Few industries have been left untouched. Hotels, retailers, airport contractors and small businesses are also struggling with staffing shortages. No other U.S. state has “more Haitian TPS holders than Florida,” said the Journal. Of the “roughly 350,000 Haitian TPS holders” in the US, almost half live in the state. Around 93,000 of them are part of the state’s workforce, according to an analysis by three immigrant-rights groups — FWD.us, Haitian Bridge Alliance and UndocuBlack Network.

The changes have affected both Haitian workers and “South Florida’s tourism industry,” said the Miami Herald. About 52,000 Haitian TPS holders were part of the workforce in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, according to Phillip Connor, a research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Migration and Development, per the Herald. Of those, a “significant number worked in tourism-related jobs.”

The Department of Homeland Security has for decades “granted TPS designations for foreign-born people who can’t return to their home countries because of “unsafe conditions such as armed conflict or natural disasters,” said the Journal. When Trump returned to office, his administration moved to “terminate TPS status for 13 countries, including Haiti,” arguing that prior administrations had “misused the program by repeatedly extending its protections.” In June, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump could end TPS status for both Haitian and Syrian nationals. There are “significantly fewer Syrian TPS holders in the U.S. than Haitian ones.”

Critics of TPS argue that people with the status “make up a fraction of the overall labor force — a loss the economy can absorb,” and that any difficulties in replacing them could “have the benefit of raising wages.” Their departure creates “real opportunities for less-educated, American-born workers,” Steven Camarota, the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, said to the Journal.

Who is feeling the impact?

Employers and deportees aren’t the only ones feeling the impact. Businesses are “terminating employees with lots of experience,” Wendi Walsh, the secretary-treasurer of the South Florida hospitality workers’ union Unite Here Local 355, said to the Herald. That will “put pressure on the workers left behind.”

The local economy will “miss the workers’ income too,” said the Herald. Haitians on TPS in South Florida provided “$1.5 billion in annual economic contributions, $174 million in annual federal and payroll taxes, and $176 million in annual state and local taxes,” according to estimates by the Princeton research fellow.

In South Florida and elsewhere across the nation, many “de-documented” immigrants are “taking refuge in a growing underground economy,” where transactions are “in cash and remain off the books,” said the Sun Sentinel. Some are “going mobile to quietly deliver services that once yielded paychecks.” Others rely on friends and family to go grocery shopping, “fearing they’ll be arrested by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

Many of them are “scared the government will deport them to Haiti” when they know they “cannot survive” there, Margarette Nerette, a vice president at the Florida branch of the Service Employees International Union, which represents healthcare workers, said to the Sun Sentinel. They have “kids who go to school” but don’t seek medical care or go shopping. They don’t know “what to do to survive the crisis the government has put them in.”

If you have ever looked into how to make a budget, you’ll quickly find the calculations typically hinge on how much money you earn each month. But what if you don’t know how much you will make next month, let alone six months from now?

This kind of income uncertainty can create a wrinkle in the budgeting process for gig workers, seasonal employees, freelancers and commission-based workers. However, that does not mean they should skip budgeting altogether. Rather, those with irregular or unpredictable incomes just have to approach the budgeting process a bit differently than those with steady paychecks.

1. Plan around your worst month — not your best

If your income is high one month and low the next, you may think the best way to approach that from a budgeting perspective is to work based on the average amount you’re earning. But it’s actually “way better to start low than to start with an average,” said Ramsey Solutions, a personal finance blog. “If you budget low, you can always go up from there,” whereas if you end up “overestimating and then having to scale back later, that can put you in a real tight spot.” So find the month in which you earned the least, then build from there.

2. Make sure every dollar you earn has a purpose

When figuring out how to budget with irregular income, “one of the most effective strategies is the zero-sum budget,” said Discover. With this budgeting method, you assign every dollar that hits your bank account a specific purpose, whether that is covering groceries, contributing to your retirement account or paying off student loans.

You can use the lowest-income figure that you determined in the prior step to set a baseline for assigning purposes. Using that amount, figure out how you will put every last dollar of your income to use. Then, if there is some extra one month, you can top off your savings.

3. Create a buffer with savings

An emergency fund becomes especially important if you do not have the reliability of a regular paycheck. If one month goes off the rails — maybe you lose your most important client or have a health issue — then your savings account is what will see you through. To keep steadily building up that balance, a “good strategy is to put at least a portion of every paycheck you get into savings,” said NerdWallet. And if you aren’t “making enough to do that, you may need to branch out.”

4. Remember to plan ahead for taxes

Many people who do not earn a paycheck from a traditional employer are responsible for paying their own taxes, rather than having them automatically deducted from their paycheck. The impact can be surprising, adding another element of unpredictability. But planning can help lessen the blow. “A good rule of thumb for commissioned and self-employed people is to set aside 25% to 33% of every payment for federal and state taxes,” stashing that in a separate account reserved exclusively for quarterly estimated tax payments, said U.S. News & World Report.

CIA director John Ratcliffe made a surprise, unannounced trip to Moscow on Tuesday, the first time America’s spy chief has visited Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The Kremlin said Ratcliffe held talks with Russian intelligence officials but did ‌not meet President Putin. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did tell reporters that Putin had been briefed on ​the outcome of Ratcliffe's talks.

While the visit has yet to be officially confirmed by the CIA, White House or Pentagon, reports of the “semi-secret mission” were “ringing all sorts of alarm bells in Westminster”, said Politico. “Next to nothing is known” about the trip but “analysts fear escalations against Baltic countries, or other Nato members”.

What happened?

CBS News first reported that Ratcliffe had travelled to Moscow on Tuesday “for meetings”.

A US Air Force Boeing C-17A Globemaster III transport plane was spotted at a Moscow airport, along with a US diplomatic motorcade. Flight tracking data confirmed a large US military aircraft travelled from Washington to Russia via Latvia on Tuesday, departing later that day.

The US reportedly told Ukraine that a senior delegation would be travelling to Moscow and asked it to suspend strikes until the delegation’s departure, according to CBS.

What was the point?

In-person talks between high-level American and Russian officials are incredibly rare. And amid such secrecy “it was not immediately clear what the trip’s purpose is and whether any other senior US officials were part of the US delegation”, said The Washington Post.

John Foreman, a former British military attaché to Moscow, told BBC Radio 4’s “PM” news programme that the visit could be focused on “escalation management” given speculation that Russia could have been involved in recent drone activity in Germany. “The Americans don’t normally send such a high ranking official to Moscow unannounced at short notice unless something is up.”

The visit could also have been concerned with the release of US detainees being held in Russia, Foreman said. The CIA was involved in the 2024 prisoner exchange deal that saw Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich released, while Ratcliffe played a role in the release of Russian-American ballet dancer Ksenia Karelina last year after she was jailed in Russia for allegedly supporting Ukraine.

Was it to stop an escalation by Russia?

With US-mediated peace talks between Russia and Ukraine remaining “mostly stalled, with the sides still far apart on core issues”, Ratcliffe’s visit comes as recent US intelligence assessments suggest that Vladimir Putin’s “risk calculus may be shifting”, said CBS News. The Russian leader appears “increasingly willing to authorise provocative actions against Nato members – including hybrid operations and other deniable measures short of conventional military action – in order to test the resolve of the alliance and the Trump administration”.

When tackling something challenging, coming up with a plan is often a good first step. That is certainly the case when it comes to paying down debt, especially when your balance is already overwhelming and still ballooning thanks to interest.

Debt management plans, which are created and administered by credit counseling agencies, aim to give you a roadmap toward getting debt-free. They can also streamline the number of monthly payments you have to worry about and potentially lower the interest rate and fees you are paying, smoothing the path even further.

What’s a debt management plan?

A debt management plan is a strategy for paying off certain types of debts, specifically unsecured debts like personal loans and credit cards. Offered by credit counseling agencies, a debt management plan “lumps your debt payments into a single payment with a reduced interest rate,” which in turn “gives you a structured path to pay off the debt over three to five years,” said NerdWallet.

Once you meet with a credit counselor to create a plan and decide to enroll, the counselor will reach out to each of your creditors, informing them of the plan and potentially negotiating the debt owed, asking them to waive fees or reduce interest. You will then make a payment each month to the credit counseling agency, which will in turn pay your creditors on your behalf. Typically, you’ll owe a one-time fee for the plan’s set-up as well as recurring monthly fees.

What are the pros and cons?

The most obvious benefit of a debt management plan: It can help you pay down your debt. “Your counselor works with you to develop a livable budget that makes room for debt payment and savings,” and they may also “negotiate with creditors to secure lower interest rates, enabling you to pay off your debts faster,” said Experian. Further, with a debt management plan, you will need to worry about just one monthly payment to the credit counseling agency.

There are trade-offs, however. “With a debt management plan, you typically must close any open credit accounts,” and “you usually can’t open new accounts until you’ve repaid your debt,” said Discover. You may initially see your credit score drop due to these closures “but not as drastically as it would with a bankruptcy or debt settlement,” which a debt management plan will help you avoid, said Experian.

And remember: This help does not come free — or fast. You will typically owe a fee for the service. In addition, the “plans often take several years to complete, and not everyone can stay the course,” said The New York Times.

When can a debt management plan be the right solution?

“People who have stable income but who find themselves juggling payments for several high-rate credit cards are generally good candidates,” said the Times. To see a debt management plan through, you need to be able to make the payments each month, as missing just one can lead to the plan’s cancellation. But with a plan, you will at least be making these payments under the structure and guidance of a professional (and hopefully with a lower rate).

Keep in mind that these plans only work for certain types of debt. It “may not be as beneficial if your largest debts are secured, such as an auto or home loan, since these can't be included,” or “if several creditors refuse to participate in the plan and reduce interest costs or fees,” said Experian.

The Trump administration has found another way to put pressure on American universities. This time it’s using the Defense Department.

The Pentagon has ordered a slew of universities to audit their relationships with foreign academic organizations, mostly in China. While some of these universities are pushing back against allegations of wrongdoing, the Pentagon is holding steady.

What is the Pentagon asking for?

The Defense Department is asking for 30 universities to “initiate immediate and comprehensive reviews of their academic, financial and research collaborations with foreign entities of concern,” according to an order released by the agency. The universities have been given until Aug. 31 to “complete a comprehensive audit of all identified foreign collaborations, assess the exposure of sensitive or export-controlled research and implement strict mitigation plans, including the termination of problematic partnerships.”

The Defense Department did not identify which universities it was targeting, but The Guardian later published a full list of the 30 schools. Some of the most prominent include Ivy League institutions Cornell University and Harvard University, as well as prestigious schools like Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University and New York University. Numerous state schools, including the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Minnesota and three branches of the University of California system are also listed.

If these universities do not complete these audits, they may not “maintain eligibility for future federal research funding,” said the Pentagon. The order is largely targeted at university research relationships with Chinese institutions and is the “latest effort to clamp down on alleged Chinese influence in the U.S., including in higher education,” said Time. The Trump administration has “argued that China exploits U.S.-funded research to obtain sensitive technology and intellectual property.”

The list of foreign institutions reportedly tied to U.S. universities was released by the Pentagon in July. The majority of these institutions, 88 out of 130, are in “mainland China, while the remaining institutions are in Russia and Iran,” said Time. While some of these Chinese facilities “have more explicit ties to the military, others are prominent civilian institutions with extensive international research partnerships.” Institutional links to the government are common in China given that “Chinese Communist Party structures are embedded throughout the country’s universities.”

What have the various responses been?

While some are supportive of the efforts to weed out Chinese influence among American universities, others fear that the allegations are unfounded. “We don’t appreciate the implication that we are not good partners on research security, given that we helped create this list and given that we’ve always partnered with the federal government when there have been national security concerns,” Sarah Spreitzer, the vice president at the American Council on Education, said to The Associated Press.

China is also pushing back against the Pentagon’s assertions. Beijing opposes the “overstretching of the concept of national security and the politicization or instrumentalization of normal scientific, educational and academic exchanges,” a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

Republicans leading the audit charge are standing firm. “Research partnerships and collaboration with Chinese entities linked to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese army present undeniable national security risks,” Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said in a statement.

North Korea has been hailed as “the world’s most surprising economic success story” by the leading US financial daily, The Wall Street Journal.

Despite being tightly controlled, technologically backward, and subject to crippling Western trade embargoes, the country has recorded year-on-year GDP growth of more than 3%, of which many advanced economies could only dream. Their unlikely success story has been “aided by arms sales and troop deployments to Russia” to fuel the Ukraine war, support from China, and “the ability to flout international sanctions to import more energy, components and materials”.

What has changed?

Five years after making a rare admission that the nation’s economic policies were falling short, in February Kim Jong Un addressed the Workers’ Party Congress to celebrate a turnaround, declaring “everything has fundamentally changed”. But while the supreme leader may have triumphantly taken credit for the boom, in reality “he has Russia and China to thank”, said Forbes.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, North Korea has earned an estimated $14 billion providing military support to the Kremlin, and hundreds of millions in trade and foreign aid from China. North Korea’s “emergence as a modern-day pirate state on the back of its lucrative cryptocurrency theft operations” has also helped, Shreyas Reddy of Korea Risk Group, told the Financial Times.

The effect of this influx on the so-called hermit kingdom has been sudden and startling. The regime has used some of the windfall to modernise Pyongyang with new brightly lit shopping districts filled with luxury and high-tech goods, and high-rise apartments blocks. Cars, once a rarity, are increasingly common and frequently electric, and can even be hailed with ride-sharing apps.

Outside the capital, the regime’s ambitious “20x10” regional development initiative aims to build new factories, housing and public infrastructure in 20 counties each year over a 10-year period.

All of this is an “incredible accomplishment for a country that is this poor”, regional expert Stephan Haggard told the WSJ.

Can it last?

Due to a lack of reliable data and the regime’s complete control of the media, accurately assessing what is happening on the ground in North Korea is notoriously difficult, said WioNews. But “a closer look beneath the headlines reveals a more complicated picture than either Western critics” or the Pyongyang regime acknowledge.

While the growth over the last three years appears genuine, said the Financial Times, North Korea’s “economic resurgence fell short of a genuine transformation” in that it “was mostly being driven by participation in Russia’s war in Ukraine”.

Peter Ward of the Sejong Institute in Seoul said North Korea was in the throes of a “Russian sugar high” fuelling a slew of “shovel-ready, exciting-looking projects that will catch the eye of the leader, but aren’t necessarily sustainable”.

Ultimately, said Asia Business Daily, the racks of luxury goods and the Pyongyang construction boom are “merely an optical illusion”, in that they are enjoyed “almost exclusively by the leadership and a privileged class in Pyongyang”.

North Korea remains incredibly poor. Out of its 27 million citizens, 17 million are still believed to live in extreme poverty, and the UN estimates that more than 40% of the population are undernourished. Analysts are sceptical that Kim can turn the short-term gains brought about by the war in Ukraine into sustainable long-term growth. “Knowing the North Koreans, they probably haven’t fixed the roof while the sun is shining,” said Ward.

A government minister has urged social media companies to “step up” and remove “content that celebrates dangerous driving”, after recent fatal collisions caused by young people driving on the wrong side of the road.

Seven people died in the early hours of Saturday morning when a Volkswagen Passat, containing five young men, sped the wrong way down the A66 near Middlesbrough and crashed into a police armed response vehicle. Last weekend, five teenagers were killed when their BMW, heading the wrong way down the M9 near Dublin, hit another car head-on, seriously injuring three women and a child.

“What makes this reckless behaviour even more appalling is that, in some cases, it is being done for social media likes,” said Justin Kelly, head of the Irish police force.

How big a problem is it?

One of the young men killed in the Passat seems to have previously shared TikTok videos of himself in a car chase with the police. And other social media accounts linked to the car’s passengers “appeared to show men in balaclavas on motorbikes and previous police chases set to rap music,” said The Times. Hundreds of videos “shot in the UK” are being “posted online to encourage young drivers to act recklessly for kudos”, according to the paper’s social media analysis.

The crash in Ireland has drawn attention to the activities of the “Lucky Dip” gang, whose members steal cars for thrills and upload footage of their joyriding “for validation and popularity”, said The Telegraph. Irish authorities have warned that they, and groups like them, are “trying to outdo each other” with videos of ever more dangerous driving.

Why are they doing it?

For excitement and for admiration from their peers. Showing off with risk-taking behaviour is nothing new, Mary Aiken, a professor of forensic cyberpsychology at the University of East London, told The Guardian, but social media “is psychologically immersive and could amplify a predisposition to taking risks and ignoring consequences”.

While they are driving, she said, they are “simultaneously filming and capturing content for posting later or live streaming. They have one foot in the real world and one foot in cyberspace. They’re thinking about the likes; they’re thinking about kudos.”

Is TikTok to blame?

The “macabre” video trend “has astonished and outraged” Ireland, and prompted debate not only about policing and criminal justice but also about social media regulation, said The Guardian.

UK defence minister Luke Pollard this morning warned social media companies that they have a decision to make. “They’ve argued against regulations, saying they can police themselves. Well, this is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate it.” The government can use powers in the Online Safety Act to compel them to take this content down but, if they took steps not to allow “their algorithm to share this type of content” to begin with, then “I think we’d be in a better place”.

Ireland’s media regulator said it has asked TikTok for a “full account” of what measures it has taken over risky and reckless driving content on its platform. TikTok has said it monitors content, and removes videos and accounts that break its rules.

TikTok has declined an invitation to appear before an Irish parliament’s media committee, partly because it was the only social-media company to be asked to do so. “We all know” it’s those boys who “are responsible for what happened”, said Alan Kelly, chair of the media committee, but the platform they used was TikTok. And we “want to have assurances, not only that they’ll be reactive and take down such content, but that also they’ll proactively make sure that it doesn’t go up. Because they have the AI tools to prevent this from happening, and they need to show that they’re going to do that.”

In the summer of 1976, there was a record-breaking heatwave, inflation and youth unemployment were worryingly high, a Labour prime minister had recently resigned – and a new subculture known as “punk” was spreading rapidly among the young.

Its seed was the Sex Pistols, a band formed only the previous winter, who wouldn’t release their first single, “Anarchy in the UK”, until 26 November. But their early gigs inspired the formation of The Clash, The Damned, Buzzcocks and many other punk bands.

Plenty of adults were appalled, but punk had a powerful influence on fashion, filmmaking and graphic design as well as rock music – well beyond punk itself. Members of the tiny audiences at two shows the Pistols played that summer – in Manchester in June and July – went on to found The Fall, Joy Division, The Smiths, Simply Red and the Creation and Factory record labels.

What even is a punk?

In Shakespeare’s time, the word meant a prostitute. In American-English it became a put-down for an inept youngster and/or petty criminal, as in 1971’s “Dirty Harry”: “Well, do ya, punk?” At around the same time, US music critics were starting to use the term “punk rock” for the amateurish, shouty garage rock bands that appeared in the 1960s. It was also applied to various New York acts – the Ramones, the New York Dolls, Richard Hell – who experimented with outlandish outfits, back-to-basics songwriting, and themes of teenage alienation. But “punk rock” didn’t become a media phenomenon until it crossed the Atlantic.

Why did it take off in Britain?

Britain, at the time, had a hyperactive music press and an entertainment industry with an appetite for eccentricity and theatricality. As American record companies had long understood, these made London an ideal launchpad for pop-culture trends. (The Ramones, who drew crowds of about 150 in New York, were astonished to find themselves in front of thousands of people when they played in Camden Town in July 1976.) The Sex Pistols crystalised punk into an easily imitated package, striking every pop musician who encountered them as “shock troops from the future”, as one critic put it. “It just blew all the other rubbish away,” said Joe Strummer, who joined The Clash after seeing the Pistols play in April. They were the hottest band in London by March 1976, and by 2 December they were household names in the UK.

How did they manage that?

John Lydon (aka “Johnny Rotten”), Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock were bolshy, in their late teens or early 20s, and from deprived backgrounds. (Jones, the guitarist, was functionally illiterate until his 40s.) Lydon, the singer, was smart, gobby and gleefully provocative, which endeared him to the band’s manager, Malcolm McLaren, a fashion designer who’d briefly managed the New York Dolls. Armed with a look provided by McLaren and his then-girlfriend, Vivienne Westwood – ripped clothes, safety pins, bondage gear, spiky, dyed hair – they swiftly outraged respectable opinion. People had used rude words on television before, but never in such uncouth tones as Lydon and Jones in a regional ITV interview on 1 December 1976. The next morning they were on the front page of every newspaper (“The FILTH and the FURY!” splashed the Daily Mirror).

Was that really groundbreaking?

The Pistols’ cartoon-yob image was an important part of their confrontational, anti-establishment appeal: spitting, pogoing, fighting and vandalism were rife at punk gigs. Their raw, confrontational attitude and do-it-yourself musicianship were a reaction against expensively produced “progressive” outfits such as Pink Floyd, “hippies” and over-dressed stadium rockers such as Elton John. “Up to that point, we’d all been singing about bowling along California highways,” one Northern Irish rocker recalled of punk’s impact.

Many found it intensely liberating: female-fronted bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Slits and X-Ray Spex got a leg-up from the movement. Jamie Reid’s iconic cut-out designs for the Sex Pistols’ record covers, with their “ransom note” lettering, inspired countless posters and fanzines, helping to democratise graphic design. Vivienne Westwood became one of the UK’s leading fashion designers.

How authentic was punk really?

McLaren, who’d been to art school, liked to say that the Pistols were “my sculpture, my painting, my little artful dodgers” – an artwork inspired by the French situationists, who aimed to shock people out of their complacency with unexpected spectacles. Lydon rejected this furiously, but McLaren certainly did mould the band. He chose their name (probably), selected band members and planned their media stunts; and they did record their only album, “Never Mind the Bollocks”, in a state-of-the-art studio with a producer who’d played keyboards on The Beatles’ “White Album”. While The Clash later made it big in America, sales figures for 1976 suggest that punk was largely a hipster and media preoccupation. No punk single made the year’s UK top 50; Abba, Rod Stewart and Demis Roussos dominated the album charts.

What became of the first punks?

The Sex Pistols reached new heights of controversy by releasing “God Save the Queen” (“She ain’t no human bein’”) during the Silver Jubilee in 1977, then broke up in chaotic circumstances the following January. The Clash’s original line-up soldiered on until 1982, by which time punk rock had mutated into post-punk and new wave. Countless noisy American guitar bands with an outsider ethos have been inspired by punk, and more purist scenes still exist across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. More importantly, whenever someone with no training or credentials picks up a guitar, a brush or a pen, the spirit of punk lives on.

If you need cash and happen to own your home, the equity you have built up there can be a good place to look for it. There are a variety of ways you can tap into those funds, one of which is a cash-out refinance.

This particular option has become “increasingly popular” in recent years. “These loans are up 13% year-over-year and are expected to account for more than 40% of all mortgage refinancings in 2026,” said The Wall Street Journal, citing the Federal Housing Finance Agency. But just because cash-out refinancing is growing in popularity does not mean it’s always a good idea or the right fit for everyone.

What is a cash-out refinance?

Cash-out refinancing lets “homeowners convert part of their home equity into cash by replacing their current mortgage with a larger one,” with the “difference between the two loans paid out in cash,” said Investopedia. This distinguishes it from a typical refinance, where the new loan is for an equal amount, leaving no leftover funds.

Typically, lenders set an 80% loan-to-value (LTV) ratio, which means “you can borrow up to 80% of your home’s value — minus your outstanding mortgage balance,” said LendingTree. There are often not many restrictions on how you can use the funds, whether that is home repairs or renovations, debt consolidation or a major cost, like college tuition. Keep in mind that this is a secured loan, with your home serving as collateral. It is also necessary to meet eligibility requirements to qualify.

What are the pros and cons of cash-out refinancing?

A cash-out refinance gives you access to cash, typically at a lower interest rate compared to options like credit cards or unsecured loans. Plus, if your financial profile and credit have improved since you took out your original mortgage, you could qualify for better terms.

A better rate is not a guarantee, however. If interest rates have “risen since your original mortgage, you’ll pay more on the new loan even with a credit score of 740 or higher,” said Bankrate. And “since the new mortgage is larger, that higher rate applies to more debt.” The larger balance will also often mean higher monthly payments, with your home on the line if you cannot make them. In addition, you can usually expect to pay closing costs and fees when you refinance.

When can a cash-out refinance make sense?

A big part of the decision comes down to the numbers. You will want to figure out whether you even have enough home equity to qualify — lenders will likely require at least 20% — and how much closing costs and fees will cut into the loan amount you receive. It’s also vital to consider whether the new monthly payment is feasible for your budget.

Your plan for the funds is a deciding factor as well. While some uses, like “funding a renovation that adds resale value or paying off high-interest debt,” can make sense, “if you’re covering a vacation, a car or other discretionary spending, you’re trading long-term home equity for short-term spending, and the math rarely works in your favor,” said Bankrate.

With the Trump administration pushing back against a swath of DEI-related federal grants, some research related to major diseases, including Alzheimer’s, is being caught in the crossfire. The most recent round of grant axing resulted in two major universities losing millions in funding related to studying brain disease, and experts say it could put them at a large disadvantage.

What research is being impacted?

In 2025, the U.S. awarded 52% fewer grants related to Alzheimer’s research than in 2024, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the number of grants falling from 369 to 177. The figure appears to be on track through 2026 as well, especially given the most recent cuts.

The newest funding slashes involve grant cancellations for “brain health and Alzheimer’s disease research at two leading research institutions, Emory University and the University of Pittsburgh,” said The Guardian. At least “three grants were canceled between the two institutions,” representing $15 million in funds that would’ve been used to study “how discrimination” — or racism — “affects long-term brain health.”

The topics “we’re measuring are scientifically valid concepts,” Andrea Rosso, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, told The Guardian. Black people are two times more likely to develop dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. And while these studies “don’t actually measure structural racism,” they do “use that as a framing for why one population is at such high risk.”

The DEI-related funding cuts are also coming alongside additional efforts by the White House to overhaul how grants are awarded. Under newly proposed rules by the Trump administration, any “multiyear grant could be terminated at any point,” and the government “would not be allowed to fund any DEI-related activities or projects or groups that ‘deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans,’” said The Boston Globe.

What does this mean for Alzheimer’s patients?

Many are worried that cutting Alzheimer’s research under the guise of the anti-DEI movement could negatively impact patients, specifically those who are Black. One canceled grant at the University of Pittsburgh “studied how Alzheimer’s disease risk was affected in people who live in divested, predominantly African American neighborhoods,” said The Guardian. The research tracked “socially driven Alzheimer’s disease risk factors by collecting surveys, brain imaging and blood samples.” Another grant at Emory University that was slashed by the White House “studied the impact of racial discrimination on the white matter of the brain, in part surveying participants’ self-reported incidences of discrimination.”

Behind all of these killed studies are “people waiting for answers, for therapies, for relief, for hope,” said a pain researcher at Mass General Brigham, per the Globe. This comes as the Trump administration has “been open about wanting a smaller NIH,” said Vox, and originally “proposed cutting the agency’s budget for 2026 by 40%.”

Some researchers say they are considering taking their studies offshore if things do not change. “While I hope to improve the lives of the American people with my research, if I am not able to pursue this aspiration in the U.S., I would rather continue to do so outside of the country,” one Ph.D. student said in comments about the cuts, per the Globe.

The current state of affairs “demonstrates a lack of understanding of our outcomes versus our exposures,” Ann Cohen, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, said to The Guardian. “That’s epidemiology 101.”

Every cancer has its individual mutations, and scientists have long harboured hopes of developing treatments that can be tailored specifically for each individual patient. And now early results from a final-stage trial of personalised cancer vaccines has the research world holding its breath.

US pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Merck have been testing a personalised mRNA vaccine on melanoma patients who had had surgery for their skin cancer. This week, the firms announced that, combined with an established immunotherapy drug, the vaccine had significantly increased the length of time the patients remained cancer-free. This is “a major success in a new field of cancer treatment” that has sent both companies’ shares “surging”, said Reuters.

The results mark “a landmark moment” for the treatment of melanoma, one of the deadliest types of skin cancer, said the study’s principal investigator Georgina Long, medical director of the non-profit Melanoma Institute Australia. This is also “a pivotal moment” for cancer research, said Moderna’s chief executive, Stéphane Bancel.

How does the vaccine work?

It’s made using mRNA technology – as, famously, were some Covid-19 vaccines. But, while the Covid vaccines were created as a standard formulation for everyone, this time it’s created individually for each patient.

To do that, researchers sequence the DNA of each patient’s tumour (by analysing samples after it’s been removed) and identify its unique mutations. They then “encode selected targets into strands of mRNA”, producing a vaccine designed to teach the recipient’s immune system “to recognise and attack any tumour cells that remain”, said The Times. The result is “a personalised anti-cancer jab” specific to the patient’s tumour, said the BBC.

What do we know about the results?

Very little. The phase 3 trial involved 1,137 high-risk patients with melanoma, who were randomly assigned to receive either the vaccine and the immunotherapy drug Keytruda, or just Keytruda, for about a year.

In a similar smaller trial in 2022, Moderna reported that participants who received the vaccine and Keytruda were 44% less likely to develop new tumours or die within three years, compared to those who only received Keytruda.

Moderna has said that these new trial results “demonstrate statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements” in survival times for the vaccine group, and that there had been “no new safety concerns”. But we don’t know exactly how much the vaccine increased survival times.

The results have not been publicly released or peer-reviewed. More findings from the trial will be presented at a medical conference in October.

What could this mean?

“I think it’s fair to call this a breakthrough,” said Marco Gerlinger of the Barts Cancer Institute. These results have “much wider implications” than just for melanoma treatment, he told The Times. They are “proof of principle that personalised cancer vaccines work”,

The hope is that this personalised vaccine “will work for many other types of cancer”, said New Scientist. Moderna and Merck are already trialling similar personalised mRNA vaccines for types of bladder, kidney and lung cancer. BioNTech, “the other big mRNA company”, is also testing personalised cancer vaccines in human trials. Several of these early-stage trials have produced “promising results”.

If successful, these vaccines could prevent nearly 50,000 deaths in the US alone, Yale University estimated last year. “The positive hit here leads us ⁠into truly this next phase in immunotherapy,” Karen Knudsen of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy told Reuters. “This is an auspicious start – this is where things begin.”

What are the caveats?

Moderna and Merck have only released an interim analysis, not the full trial data. And experts “emphasise caution” until the dataset has been peer-reviewed, said the BBC.

The announcement gave Moderna’s shares “their biggest one-day jump on record”, said The Times, while Merck also rallied. But market moves are “imperfect indicators of real-world significance”, said the Financial Times. It’s “not quite the surprise clinical breakthrough” that the jump might imply. It’s “a big deal for Moderna” but, without all data, it’s “difficult to assess the magnitude, durability, and commercial relevance of benefit”.

Investors will be watching for the “next important steps”: “detailed clinical results, regulatory progress, and evidence that the technology works across other cancers”, a financial markets analyst told Sky News. Even then, they know that manufacturing personalised vaccines at scale is “expensive and complex”. One Reuters report suggested that each vaccine could cost about £147,000.

When taking out student loans, most borrowers are aware of two options: federal student loans and private loans. But amid new limits on federal loans for graduate students in particular, the availability of a third option — state-backed student loans — is becoming increasingly widespread.

While technically “states have had their own student loan offerings for decades,” a number of them have “recently moved to expand their loan offerings in anticipation of the added restrictions on federal borrowing,” said CNBC. These loans do not necessarily offer the same protections as federal loans. Still, they may be an alternative to private loans worth considering.

What are state student loan programs?

State student loan programs are offered by select states as opposed to the federal government or a private lender, and they are often overseen by a state’s department of postsecondary education. As of July, “at least 16 states offer state-run loan programs for students pursuing a postsecondary degree or credential,” said the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan organization that serves the legislators and staff of all 50 states.

In general, state-backed loan programs “have similar requirements and benefits to federal loans: low, fixed interest rates and flexible repayment plans,” said SoFi. Specifics, however, vary by state, among other factors. For instance, “interest rates on state education loans vary by state, and can also depend on the degree program and borrower qualifications, such as income and credit score,” said CNBC. Eligibility requirements and borrowing limits can also vary.

How do state student loans compare to federal loans?

It’s “important that borrowers understand state student loan programs are excluded from federal relief options and protections,” Tiara Moultrie, a fellow at The Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, said to CNBC. This includes federal repayment plan options like income-driven repayment and Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), though some states do offer their own alternatives.

Further, while interest rates can be comparable to federal loans, they can also be a good bit higher. Interest rates on “some state student loans can exceed 10%,” according to a July analysis by The Century Foundation, whereas the “U.S. Department of Education’s Direct Unsubsidized Loans for graduate and professional students currently come with a flat interest rate of 8.07%,” said CNBC. But the opposite can also be true: “The interest rate for a borrower with a co-signer and a 10-year repayment term, for instance, is 6%” in Minnesota’s SELF Grad Loan program, said The New York Times.

Another major difference is in the qualification process. Federal direct subsidized loans do not have credit score requirements, but state loans may. Debt-to-income ratio and financial history could also be taken into consideration.

Who can use state loan programs?

State residency may or may not be a factor in eligibility, depending on the specific program. For example, “Minnesota’s program is open to students who are either residents of the state or out-of-state students attending a participating in-state college or university,” while “Connecticut’s program is available to Connecticut residents, or residents of seven other states (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont) who are attending an eligible Connecticut institution,” said the Times. Additionally, approval usually takes into consideration factors like “credit score, annual income, credit history, debt-to-income ratio and whether a borrower is attending a qualifying institution,” said The Century Foundation.

A new generation of drugs could transform the lives of people with narcolepsy and offer hope of future treatments for ADHD and depression.

Orexins help regulate wakefulness, as well as attention, motivation and the brain’s reward system. This month, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first orexin agonist treatment for narcolepsy. Oveporexton (sold as Orzeyful) is designed to target the cause of the chronic sleep disorder, rather than treat the symptoms with stimulants.

But “the excitement is not just about narcolepsy”, said The Economist. Inspired by the success of drugs that mimic glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), developed to treat diabetes and later used for weight-loss in medication such as Ozempic, drugmakers are “betting” that orexins could “follow a similar path”, potentially leading to treatments for conditions that “burden hundreds of millions” of people.

What are orexins?

They are two peptides (chains of amino acids that act as messengers in the brain) that are involved in the body’s sleep-wake system. Specifically, they are neuropeptides. They act as neurotransmitters, or chemicals, that carry messages between neurons. They are involved with reward and motivation.

Named after the Greek word orexis (appetite), orexins were discovered in 1998 by two teams working independently in the US. The discovery turned “the long march to develop a new kind of sleeping pill into a sprint”, said The Guardian.

But their “true role emerged” in 1999, said The Economist. People with narcolepsy were found to lack the specialised neurons that produce orexins, causing “abnormally low levels”. That means the brain “loses the ability to control when the body sleeps”, said Time.

How do they work?

In 2011, researchers at Takeda, a Japanese pharmaceutical company, found a chemical compound that could block the orexin receptor, and so promote sleep. Orexin antagonists were developed as a treatment for insomnia, differing from conventional sleeping pills that induce sedation.

But “the bigger prize may lie not in blocking orexin’s signal, but restoring it”, said The Economist. The results of Takeda’s trials of oveporexton, published last year in The New England Journal of Medicine, “created a stir”. Volunteers were able to stay awake 12.5 to 25 minutes longer with the drug (depending on the dose) than without it.

The drug “activates the orexin pathway” and “restores the brain’s ability to remain alert”, said Time. Volunteers also had fewer episodes of cataplexy, or loss of muscle control, as well as other symptoms such as hallucinations and irregular sleep. There were “no serious adverse events related to treatment”, said the Smithsonian magazine.

“It’s really a complete revolution,” Emmanuel Mignot, a sleep-medicine professor who led Takeda’s final studies, told The Wall Street Journal. “The first time patients take it, it’s like the light switch.” One 19-year-old trial participant said: “It was the first time I felt somewhat alive in the last 10 years.” “It’s the best thing that has ever happened to me,” he told Nature.

What might the future hold?

In the US and Western Europe, narcolepsy affects about one in 2,000 people, but there is no cure. Existing drugs – “decades-old stimulants and sedatives” – only manage symptoms, said The Wall Street Journal. Oveporexton and its competitors are “designed to treat the disease as a whole”. Morgan Stanley estimates that orexin-based medicines for narcolepsy and other sleep disorders could generate $16 billion a year by 2035, according to SF Globe.

Takeda is testing orexin-targeting drugs for sleep apnea and chronic daytime sleepiness. Alkermes, an Irish biotech company, is testing an orexin drug for ADHD in adults. And this year Eli Lilly (of Mounjaro fame) bought Centessa, a biotech firm with an orexin agonist in trials, in a deal potentially worth up to $7.8 billion. New research has also revealed “the essential role of orexin neurons” in motivation, said BioTechniques.

The twice-daily oral drug Orzeyful could be “a boon for the roughly 120,000 people in the United States with narcolepsy type 1”, said the Smithsonian. But its success also “opens the door to the use of orexin-mimicking drugs for other conditions associated with low levels of the chemical”, such as ADHD and depression. “Orzeyful is just the beginning,” said Andy Plump, Takeda’s president of research and development.

It is “the most sought-after weapon in the world”, said CNN. But the US-made Patriot interceptor, capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, is “the focus of a global supply crunch”, caused by “liberal use in the Gulf”, often just to counter Iranian drone attacks. Ukraine, which is being “savaged” by Russia’s “near-nightly surge” of ballistic-missile attacks, has “pretty much run out”.

What makes Patriot so special?

Patriot (Phased Array Tracking Radar for Intercept on Target) is a mobile surface-to-air missile defence system, and “considered one of the most advanced” in “the US arsenal”, said The Independent. Nineteen other countries buy and operate the system, and its interceptors protect cities and military bases across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Combined with other defences, Patriot has this year intercepted more than 90% of Iran’s missiles and drones, according to the US Congressional Research Service. It is also “the only weapon capable of shooting down Russian ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine”, said the Financial Times.

Countering tactical ballistic missiles is “not a simple or cheap activity”, said The Guardian. To intercept them, a defensive system “needs to be remarkably sophisticated”, and building it involves “a huge amount of research and development”. Most Nato nations “have been happy for Washington to invest over decades to make the Patriot up to the job”.

The US “tightly guards the technical blueprints required to manufacture it”, said The Telegraph. So far, only Germany and Japan are licensed to make their own. Donald Trump has talked of letting Ukraine produce them but seems lately to have backtracked; Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “desperate for the technology”.

What is the stockpile situation?

Even before the US attack on Iran, Western allies “were nervous about depleting their own stocks by giving Patriot missiles to Ukraine”, said The Guardian. But the Iran war has now “created an acute global shortage”.

The US and its Gulf allies fired 943 rounds of Patriot batteries in the first 96 hours of the conflict, according to the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For context, US manufacturer Lockheed Martin only makes 620 interceptors a year.

Ukraine’s Patriot supplies been exhausted, said The Guardian. Ballistic-missile intercepts “have gone from more than 70% to none”; Russia now strikes “with impunity”. In one recent bombardment of Kyiv, Ukraine’s defences failed to intercept a single missile; 17 people were killed.

The situation is “so acute” that Kyiv has stopped disclosing the number of missiles Russia fires, to “avoid revealing how many it fails to intercept”, and “preserve public morale", said the Financial Times. Zelenskyy has “pleaded with” the US and European countries “to share more” of their stockpile with Ukraine. But such is the current depleted state of those stockpiles, they could take “months or years to be replenished”.

What does it mean for the world?

Almost all the countries that operate the Patriot system are “reliant on US production and supply chains, meaning any shortage in the US effectively becomes a global shortage”, said The Telegraph.

And such a shortage raises “urgent” questions about whether the US and its allies can “keep up in a new arms race with Russia, Iran, China and North Korea”. With those nations “ramping up production” of ballistic missiles, “the defence side is falling behind”.

The US, Germany and Japan can produce about 840 Patriot interceptors a year, said The Guardian. Russia produces about 750 Iskander ballistic missiles a year and “is looking to increase” that total. It can often take two to three interceptors – or more – to defeat an incoming missile. “And Iran has many more missiles in storage.”

Some analysts see America’s “ongoing strikes and conclude that stockpile concerns are overblown”, said the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “That is the wrong inference.” US-led forces can keep striking Iran because their stocks of bombs are “plentiful”. But “the strategic constraint” is the number of interceptors that “hold enemy launchers” at bay and “keep bases alive”. Bombs “let you keep fighting the war you are in”; interceptors decide if you can “afford to fight the next one”. The war in Iran is “creating a strategic illusion”: bombing continues but US readiness for a “larger, second-theatre conflict quietly bleeds out”.

From girl math to loud budgeting, social media has gone through its fair share of financial trends. The latest one, however, may have some staying power.

Known as moneymaxxing, this new fad focuses on making the most of, well, your money. “While the tactics can vary, the underlying goal is simple: Make sure every dollar is doing as much as it reasonably can, so you’re able to put your money where it really matters,” said Northwestern Mutual. Here’s what to know.

What is moneymaxxing?

In short, moneymaxxing “encourages people to maximize their budgets by trimming recurring expenses, redeeming rewards points — a related trend known as ‘pointsmaxxing’ — and stashing extra cash in a high‑yield savings account,” said CNBC. Other actions aligned with the movement might include evaluating how you are allocating your money and setting clear financial goals.

Admittedly, the concepts that moneymaxxing espouses are not really new, though social media has given it a fresh spin and name. “It’s kind of like the FIRE movement — financial independence, retire early — but gamified. It makes saving feel like something you can do without going the normal route,” said certified public accountant and financial planner Felicia Greenwald to Parade.

Why is moneymaxxing getting popular right now?

The rise of moneymaxxing may have something to do with the financial reality many Americans are currently facing. “Largely because of rising costs, young adults are having a hard time making it on their own,” said CNBC, with many still relying on their parents and viewing financial independence as a far-off prospect.

Moneymaxxing “helps close these gaps by encouraging people to pay more attention to their finances,” said Northwestern Mutual. From there, they can start to make more meaningful, intentional decisions, whether that means focusing on paying off debt, building an emergency fund or saving enough for a rental deposit.

The social aspect of the trend can also be motivating. “When those numbers are real, and people are talking about real figures, it’s easy for people to understand and not feel so alone in their own financial struggles,” said Greenwald.

How can you start moneymaxxing?

Moneymaxxing is a trend — but it can also be a smart way to maximize the funds you have, making the most of your financial situation no matter what it looks like. A great first step into moneymaxxing is to get a handle on how much money you have going in compared to how much is going out, and where specifically that money is going. You can then use that information to identify what is and isn’t working as efficiently as it could be.

The next step is to determine your financial priorities. “Whether the objective is to reduce debt or build a savings cushion, having a clear milestone can help you stay motivated,” said Jack Howard, the head of money wellness and behavioral finance expert at Ally Bank, to CNBC.

Finally, there is the task of figuring out how to actually achieve your financial aspirations. You might consider breaking down intimidatingly lofty goals — like building an emergency fund with six months of expenses — into smaller, more manageable chunks, like aiming to set aside a small amount each month. Financial tools can also help offload some of the work, whether that is choosing a budgeting app to help you stay on track or using automation to ensure consistent transfers to savings.

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has fired the starting gun on the next presidential election, and it’s shaping up to be the country’s closest and most consequential political contest in decades.

The left-wing leader, commonly known as Lula, has launched his campaign for a historic fourth term, vowing not to let the “shameless” right wing return to power. His chief rival will be Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting a coup after losing office in 2022.

But the “two-man race” between Lula and Bolsonaro has “increasingly become a three-way fight” involving Donald Trump, said The Wall Street Journal. Lula has accused the US president of trying to interfere in the October election on behalf of Bolsonaro, while “tit-for-tat visa disputes and US tariffs” have plunged US-Brazilian relations to “their lowest point in years”.

Who are the main contenders?

Lula, whose first two terms spanned 2003 to 2011 and was elected again in 2023, is seeking re-election for the centre-left Workers’ Party. If the 80-year-old wins, Brazil would be the only left-wing major economy left in South America. Flávio Bolsonaro, a 45-year-old senator, “is running as the political heir to his father”, said The Wall Street Journal. There are several other conservative and right-wing candidates but all are currently polling in the single digits.

If no one wins more than 50% of the votes on 4 October, the two frontrunners will progress to a second-round runoff on 25 October. A BTG Pactual/Nexus ​poll reported this week by Reuters suggests that a runoff would see Lula receive 47%, with Bolsonaro on 44%.

What is the likely outcome?

Lula’s approval ratings are high: certainly at “levels at which incumbents can expect to win”, said The Economist. And Bolsonaro’s campaign “took a mighty blow in May”, when leaked recordings revealed he had asked for money from a “disgraced banker at the heart of Brazil’s largest-ever bank fraud”.

But “there could still be an upset”: Lula is “seen as weak” on corruption and crime – both top voter concerns. He also spent 19 months in prison for corruption himself before his conviction was overturned on a technicality in 2021. “Many voters have never forgiven him.”

It’s possible that disillusioned voters, “unenthusiastic” about either Lula or Bolsonaro, could boost the prospects of the currently low-polling Renan Santos, leader of the Missão party. A former entrepreneur, the “firebrand outsider”, who “models himself” on Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, criticises both Bolsonaro and Lula in “slick videos posted to millions of followers”.

What is Trump up to?

Trump has already interfered in several Latin American elections since he returned to the White House, said The Economist. And “right-wing lookalikes” have won the past seven. Experts say the Brazilian vote will “serve as a test case of how far Trump and an increasingly co-ordinated global right are willing to go to reshape Latin America’s political landscape”, said The Wall Street Journal.

The US president has recently “turned up the heat on Brazil”, said The Guardian. He has proscribed Brazil’s two biggest criminal groups as terrorist organisations, a move that some observers fear could be laying the groundwork for “a US military intervention”. Trump has also revoked the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington, after Brasilia withheld approval of Trump’s own ambassadorial nominee, and denied entry to several US diplomats it accused of planning to meddle in the election.

“This reflects a dangerous convergence between Washington’s long-standing interventionist instincts in Latin America” and “the interests of Brazil’s far right”, said Brazilian journalist Raphael Tsavkko Garcia on Al Jazeera.

Sticking to your budget can be hard enough without inflation. But when prices on everything from gas to groceries are steadily creeping upward, sticking to your plans for spending can feel like a losing battle.

When your money is not stretching as far as it used to, creating a budget — and sticking to it — becomes more important than ever. And while you may not be able to push the price of gas back under $3 a gallon, there are still steps you can take to better stay on track financially amid inflation.

1. Get a handle on your current spending habits

Sure, inflation can play a role in you going over budget. But whether or not you would like to admit it, your own spending habits matter just as much. “If you haven’t already, track your purchases for a month,” then “consider whether increased expenses are due to inflation, habit creep or a little of both,” said NerdWallet.

Equipped with this information, you can make informed adjustments accordingly. Maybe you see an area where you tend to overspend, and you can commit to cutting back there. For example, perhaps you’re underestimating the actual cost of groceries each month; in this case, you could allocate more to that line item and away from others, or you might instead look for ways to get creative with meal planning and work with less.

2. Reevaluate debt

Paying down debt should not fall to the wayside entirely, even when your budget feels tight. The longer you stretch out repayment, the more you may pay in interest and the more time you will have that burden hanging over your head. You can, however, explore ways to make your debt payments take up a smaller chunk of your budget.

Taking advantage of options like a credit card balance transfer or debt consolidation loan could allow you to repay your loan at a lower interest rate. So could refinancing, a possibility for both student loans and mortgages. Just make sure you understand the drawbacks, alongside the benefits, before committing.

3. Take advantage of automation

Budgeting admittedly takes work. But using budgeting apps and automated features can help offload some of it. Not only can automation “simplify saving money and paying bills” through options like automated bill pay and automatic account transfers, but “money that goes automatically into your savings also means it’s not sitting elsewhere — like in your checking account, where you’re more likely to spend it,” said Bankrate.

Especially when prices are uncertain and trending upward, a bit of cushion in your savings can come in handy. “If possible, keep a few hundred dollars extra in your spending plan to account for costs that are higher than expected,” said NerdWallet. “That way, you can handle it when factors outside of your control put you over budget.”

4. Check in regularly

Even if you employ some tools to handle tasks automatically, your finances should never become a set-it-and-forget-it situation. That is especially true when economic conditions are shifting rapidly. A “budget loses a great deal of its value if you don’t check to see if you're sticking to it,” said TD Bank.

Plan check-ins at a regular cadence, perhaps monthly, and use that time to “review all your spending and savings to see if you're hitting your targets,” said TD Bank. If you are not, this is the time to make changes proactively — rather than reactively.

The USS Abraham Lincoln has been at sea for over 260 days, marking a record deployment for a modern aircraft carrier. And there are now allegations of grim conditions aboard the 5,600-person vessel. Things on the ship reportedly got so bad that multiple sailors attempted to jump overboard rather than remain on the carrier. But the Defense Department is denying these reports, even as it moves to replace the ship.

What are conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln like?

There have been widespread reports of “deteriorating living conditions and worsening mental health during the ship’s record-breaking deployment,” said CNN. Many of these reports have indicated a dearth of basic supplies and food on the ship, which has been deployed since November 2025, starting on a path for the South China Sea before being rerouted to the Middle East at the outbreak of the Iran war. There have also been accounts of limited toiletries and moldy showers.

The USS Abraham Lincoln has seen “water contamination, plumbing issues, deck safety concerns, and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages en route to the ship to be lost in transit for months,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a letter. These issues, particularly regarding mental health, are corroborated by family members of the ship’s sailors, who met with officials in a “combative face-to-face confrontation” where they “expressed concerns directly to Navy leaders about the well-being and safety of their loved ones,” said MS NOW.

As the poor conditions continue, at least two sailors tried to jump overboard in an attempt to die by suicide, according to two military news outlets, the Military Times and Stars and Stripes. In one of the incidents, a sailor “on watch saw a shipmate preparing to go overboard, and he intervened,” said the Times. And in the other, sailors were informed of the attempted jump “during a ship-wide announcement,” said Stars and Stripes. In a separate third incident, a sailor actually did go overboard while “wearing a life vest and was not injured,” said CNN.

What is the Pentagon doing?

The Pentagon has denied all accusations of poor conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln. “We ​make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide ​them at every single moment,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters. Reports of problems on the ship are “completely misrepresented.” The White House is also standing behind the Pentagon’s assessment. The Trump administration is committed to ensuring ships are “equipped ​with the resources necessary to counter any threat” to the U.S., White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told Reuters.

As the controversy grows, reports have confirmed that the military is planning to “replace the USS Abraham Lincoln with the USS George Washington as part of a scheduled Middle East deployment,” said The Wall Street Journal, with the Washington currently on its way to the region. However, President Donald Trump seems to think the replacement is unnecessary. It was “not nearly long enough,” he told reporters of the ship’s stationing.

As the USS Abraham Lincoln prepares to be replaced, Democrats are still pressing for answers about what happened. “These reports warrant immediate attention, but they also raise a broader question: whether the Navy can sustain the operational tempo now being demanded of its carrier force,” said Blumenthal in his letter, “particularly as this administration repeatedly commits U.S. forces to conflicts of its own choosing and increasingly relies on aircraft carriers to sustain those operations.”

China has been the world’s biggest polluter since 2006, but in recent years, it has emerged as a clean energy superpower. Huge swathes of China – from the mountain plateaus of Tibet, where the sun shines brighter in the thin air, to the coast off Qingdao – are now covered by solar panels and wind farms.

It is the first country in the world to have installed more than a million megawatts (MW) of solar power – almost double Europe and America’s combined solar capacity, generating enough electricity to power the entire EU.

In May 2025, it installed solar panels at a rate of up to 100 a second. It’s also betting big on wind: a surge in turbine installations means that its wind capacity is now well over three times higher than that of its nearest competitor, the US.

What explains this shift?

With a population of 1.4 billion and accounting for around a quarter of global manufacturing, China is the world’s largest consumer of energy. Beijing regards its reliance on Middle Eastern oil and gas as a dangerous vulnerability: about 70% of its oil is imported, much of it passing through the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca. China’s rise as a manufacturer was built on coal, but its leaders have also long been concerned about pollution and climate change. Green energy is seen as a solution to all these problems.

Is China a green economy?

In some ways, yes. Analysts believe that China’s emissions may have already peaked. But Beijing isn’t just betting on renewable electricity. It continues to build coal-fired power plants at an eyewatering rate: 85 are due to open this year alone, and it’s building 36 nuclear reactors. China’s National Energy Administration installed over 500 gigawatts (GW) of new power capacity in 2025; the UK grid’s total capacity is around 70 GW.

As a result, China is sometimes described as the world’s first “electrostate”. It is electrifying everything from industry to cars. And the role of green electricity is growing. Coal, which accounted for about 80% of electricity in 2000, provided just 55% in 2025, while wind and solar rose to around 20% from practically nothing over that period. Beijing sees green tech as a source of energy security, future prosperity and influence abroad.

How has it built up this industry?

The Made in China 2025 industrial plan, launched in 2015, identified it as a core strategic sector, concentrating on the “new three” industries – solar, batteries and electric vehicles, moving away from lower-value sectors such as textiles and cheap electronics. China also moved to dominate supply chains for the raw materials: cobalt, nickel, graphite, rare-earth metals. Local governments offered cheap land, subsidised electricity, and state-backed credit to manufacturers.

Much of the groundwork had been done before. Chinese researchers studied in Europe and North America, where all these technologies were pioneered; Western companies sold equipment and production lines. Since then, China has left its rivals in the dust.

What effect has this had?

China now controls 90% of the world’s solar manufacturing, more than 70% of wind turbines, 80% of battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles. This is leading to plummeting costs across the world: solar panel prices have fallen by some 90% in the past decade (though installation costs have fallen more modestly). The solar boom means that panels are now a ubiquitous sight on rooftops in Pakistan, India and across Africa, providing low-cost energy for millions of people.

In March, driven by the Iran war, exports of Chinese solar panels hit a record 68 GW-worth, double the previous month, with demand especially strong in Southeast Asia and Africa. Chinese wind turbines are now 30%-50% cheaper than those made in the US or Europe.

What are the downsides to this?

The UK, like much of the West, has been wiped out as a producer of solar panels and batteries; China has cornered the market. Europe still has a wind turbine industry – there is a major Siemens Gamesa factory in Hull – but they rely heavily on crucial Chinese components, such as high-strength magnets.

There are ethical concerns about Chinese green tech supply chains: over 50% of polysilicon, a key raw material used in solar panels, is produced in Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims have been subjected to forced labour.

There are also national security concerns about China’s chokehold over a crucial sector: theoretically power units could contain kill-switches or data-harvesting features. Against this has to be set the benefits to the world of cheap tech, subsidised by the Chinese state – providing power that is cheaper, cleaner and less vulnerable to supply shocks or price jumps than oil and gas.

Will the boom continue?

Despite its apparent successes, China’s solar industry is currently in the midst of a major downturn: all five of the major Chinese players in this sector posted losses for the last quarter, totalling seven billion yuan (£770 million). This is partly because of a production glut driving prices down, but also because exporting Chinese panels is becoming more difficult: the US Uighur Forced Labour Prevention Act bans the import of goods made with materials sourced from Xinjiang; India has imposed new tariffs; and the rollout of solar energy has slowed in Europe, owing to grid connection limits.

China’s renewable sector, like the UK’s but on a larger scale, also faces storage and connection problems, because renewables are intermittent and often far from population centres.

But the direction of travel is clear. According to the International Energy Agency, solar will become the biggest single electricity source in the early 2030s, with wind power second in line. And China will be at the forefront of that transformation.

Engineers vs. lawyers

In his book “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future”, Dan Wang argues that China is an “engineering state”, run by leaders with technical backgrounds, while the US is a “lawyerly society”, driven by a legal mindset.

China’s technocratic, top-down culture allows it to quickly build megaprojects, construct vast numbers of homes, and make long-term plans to dominate certain sectors of manufacturing. The rights-based mindset of the US, by contrast, often leads to gridlock, slower infrastructure development, and an obsession with process rather than output.

There are great human costs to treating China’s society as a big engineering exercise, the most famous example being the one-child policy. Economically, it also often leads to inefficiencies and overproduction. The state is often not an effective allocator of capital; in recent years, driven by government subsidies and centralised production goals, supply has massively outpaced demand in the real estate and green tech sectors.

On the other hand, the US free market system is arguably too fixated on short-term profits and efficiencies; while fast-changing political priorities – and President Trump’s dislike of renewables – mean that it has surrendered leadership in solar and wind.

“From humble origins”, Notting Hill Carnival has grown to be the riotous explosion of colour we know today, a “cultural landmark” in the heart of London, said The Voice.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of what has become a “massive celebration” of Caribbean culture, “artistic expression, music, design, business and much more” for millions of people.

What is it?

The second largest carnival in the world, which takes place over the August bank holiday weekend, offers a wide range of music including “steelpan, calypso, soca, reggae, dancehall” and more, said Travel Noire. Food is also a “major part of the carnival experience”, and visitors can expect to sample everything from Guyanese pepper pot to Trinidadian roti.

But the event also stretches back “through several connected histories”, and it is these that continue to endure as carnival enters its sixth decade.

What’s the history?

Many Caribbean carnivals across the world trace their roots back to “rebellion against enslavement”, said Secret London. Enslaved people would don costumes and cover themselves with “paint, mud or oil, as an act of defiance against their oppressors”. This tradition is still seen in the parade today, on carnival Sunday.

A similar defiance in the face of tragedy was part of the birth of Notting Hill Carnival. The event began as a response to the “brutal, racially motivated murder” of Antiguan carpenter Kelso Cochrane in 1959, said Sky History. The 32-year-old was fatally stabbed in nearby Paddington, a consequence of the “febrile” atmosphere arising from racial tensions during the Windrush era.

That year, Trinidadian-born activist and journalist Claudia Jones organised an indoor carnival to “push back against the racism the community faced since the 1958 race riots” and “celebrate Caribbean culture”. When it moved outdoors in 1966, it became what is now known as Notting Hill Carnival.

What’s happening this year?

To mark the event’s 60th year, community leaders have “clubbed together to kick the party off”, said London’s The Standard. A “host of talks and panels” will be on offer, alongside dedicated walks through west London to “learn about what the carnival really means”.

But amid financial pressures and “scrutiny like never before”, the future of Notting Hill Carnival remains uncertain, said The Guardian in 2025. That year’s event was only saved by a last-minute “cash injection” of £1 million by the local council. It continues to be a “political lightning rod”, said The Times, and what happens “to the carnival depends on what happens at the carnival”. Policing challenges, the use of facial recognition and a debate over the location have all plagued the event in recent years.

What is “not up for debate” is the carnival’s “underlying importance” to the community. Its preservation for future generations is seen as one of the most “vital” ways to emphasise Caribbean identity – “and a British Caribbean identity, too”.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine, mFLUSIVA. The approval comes despite growing vaccine skepticism, especially toward mRNA vaccines following Covid-19. But research shows that this new vaccine can produce a stronger immune response and be produced more quickly than the traditional flu vaccine.

How does the mRNA vaccine differ from the traditional shot?

The approval of mFLUSIVA “demonstrates the continued strength and versatility of our mRNA platform,” Stephane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO, said in a release. The vaccine was shown to be almost 27% more effective against the flu than the standard flu shot. The FDA has authorized mFLUSIVA for adults over the age of 50 after “documented superiority in effectiveness to normal dose flu vaccines,” particularly “for those with underlying diseases,” Jesse Goodman, the FDA’s former top vaccine regulator, said to The Washington Post.

A move toward mRNA vaccines can create a more effective and faster flu shot. Traditional vaccines are “typically generated in chicken eggs” and are “what we call an inactivated flu vaccine,” Hanover Matz, an immunologist at WashU Medicine in St. Louis and the coauthor of a June study comparing the mRNA vaccine to the traditional flu vaccine, said to Science News. Pieces of the virus “are used to teach your immune system how to fight flu,” and “because the virus is raised in chicken eggs, it takes a long time to generate that vaccine.” This method also requires policymakers to “determine what the most likely strains of the flu virus are going to be for the fall season in the Northern Hemisphere,” and they “need to start that production well before the fall to get the vaccine doses ready.” If “there’s a mismatch in strains, there’s really no way they can go back and update the vaccine and change it.”

By contrast, the mRNA vaccine “contains three RNAs, which each encode the hemagglutinin protein of one of two influenza A strains and one influenza B strain,” said IFL Science. The genetic information “instructs the body to produce a fragment of a virus that then sets off the body’s immune response,” said The New York Times. Because the virus does not have to be produced in eggs, mRNA vaccines can be produced much faster and can be adjusted to “rapidly emerging new flu strains, a capacity we have not had before,” Georges C. Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association, said to the Times.

What is the future of the mRNA vaccine?

Despite the benefits of the mRNA vaccine, it was not an easy route to approval. The mRNA technology, famously used in Covid-19 vaccines, has been the subject of widespread anti-vaccine misinformation campaigns. The FDA “refused to even review Moderna’s application for approval earlier this year but quickly reversed course after a public outcry,” said the Times. In addition, the approval of mFLUSIVA is “likely to face pushback,” especially from some allies of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “who have expressed skepticism over mRNA-based coronavirus shots,” said the Post.

Those in favor of cite the FDA’s approval as a step in the right direction. The FDA is “signaling openness” to mRNA vaccines, Jeanne Marrazzo, the chief executive officer of the Infectious Disease Society of America, said to NPR. It “could set us up not only for improved response to a bad flu season but also to an improved response to any biological threats.” The flu “remains a significant public health challenge,” Bancel said in the release, and “mFLUSIVA provides an important new option for America’s seniors.”

A wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is gathering pace across Africa, driven by political opportunism and rising anti-Western sentiment, and fuelled by US far-right groups.

Last week 71 men were arrested in Senegal and charged with “unnatural acts”, said the public prosecutor’s office, under a strict new law that has doubled the maximum prison sentence for same-sex relations to 10 years. It also criminalised the “promotion” of homosexuality, including any public representation or financial support.

Senegal has criminalised same-sex sexual activity since 1966, but hostility towards LGBTQ+ people has “intensified in recent years”, said Human Rights Watch. Since the new law came into force in March, more than 100 people have been charged, including “local celebrities”, said AfricaNews. Senegal is one of several African countries to have introduced or intensified its anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in recent years. Activists say LGBTQ+ people are being “scapegoated by politicians”.

What’s the background?

In 2023, Uganda hosted the first African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty. Many argue this forum has “influenced anti-LGBTQ+ laws” across Africa, said The Guardian. The annual gatherings have been endorsed by Family Watch International, a US-based Christian campaign group that “opposes abortion” and sex education.

Later that year, Uganda introduced “one of the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ laws”, said Africa News with Agence France-Presse. It included life imprisonment for same-sex sex, and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”, which includes same-sex sex while HIV-positive, or with minors. Uganda “set the tone”, and other countries “followed suit”.

Since then, three neighbouring former French colonies – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – have all tightened restrictions on same-sex relations, after being taken over by military juntas in a series of coups. In December 2024, Mali criminalised same-sex relations for the first time. Burkina Faso followed last September, introducing prison terms of up to five years. In February, Niger criminalised same-sex sexual activity for the first time, with same-sex marriage punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Today, 33 of Africa’s 54 countries criminalise LGBTQ+ people “in some form”, said Human Dignity Trust: more than any other region. In some countries, including Somalia and Mauritania, the punishment is death.

What’s the latest?

In Senegal, which borders Mali, MPs unsuccessfully sought to increase jail terms and penalties for “acts against nature” in 2022 and 2024. But in March this year, after a “wave of arrests over alleged same‑sex relationships”, parliament passed the new law by an “overwhelming majority”, said the BBC. Dismissing international criticism, the government said the legislation “reflected the views of Senegalese people”. But funding from US conservative movements may have helped “precipitate” the law, French-Senegalese expert Marame Kane told The Guardian.

In June, Ghana’s parliament voted to pass “one ‌of Africa’s most draconian anti-LGBTQ bills”, said openDemocracy. Same-sex relations were already criminalised, but this latest version of the bill (introduced in 2021) would impose prison terms for “promoting” same-sex relations. If signed into law, it would make identifying as LGBTQ+ “punishable by up to three years in prison”.

Days later, Ghana hosted this year’s family values conference, attended by “members of far-right and Christian groups in the Global North”. The conference produced a new African Charter on Family Sovereignty and Values, which encouraged governments to “withdraw from international treaties or funding agreements that promote ‘the LGBT agenda’, abortion and sex education”. Critics warned the charter could “entrench anti-LGBTQ laws across the continent”. Despite protests, lawmakers from 18 of the 20 countries represented voted to approve it.

What’s driving the shift?

The “shift toward more restrictive laws” is being “encouraged by conservative figures” in the US and Europe, said Reuters. It has “gained new momentum since Donald Trump returned to the White House”. Some conference attendees said they “saw an opportunity to promote their agendas under Trump”.

Ugandan people are also “very highly homophobic”, Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire told Africa News. Politicians “want something that is going to put them in their good books”.

LGBTQ+ people are “scapegoats”, one activist told Africa News, used to “deflect attention from thorny subjects” or rising discontent. They are also viewed as a “symbol of Western dominance in Africa”, said Ivorian anthropologist Stephane Ballet Djedje. The new anti-LGBTQ+ laws are linked to rising anti-Western sentiment across former colonies, particularly where military juntas have seized power. In Burkina Faso, the law was “framed as boosting its sovereignty in opposition to the West”, said The Guardian.

“Proponents of so-called African ‘family values’ have long portrayed the issue as a religious and moral concern,” said openDemocracy. But they are “increasingly recasting it as part of Africa’s fight against neo-colonialism”.

While hundreds of thousands of people rely on the U.S. government’s Head Start program for low-income children, major cut proposals by the Trump administration have families worried about what it could mean for their kids. Even as there has been some bipartisan pushback to the slashes, aspects of children’s lives from school to home to doctor’s offices could be affected.

Why is the government slashing Head Start?

The plan for the funding cuts is overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which runs Head Start. The goal of the cuts is “removing unnecessary bureaucracy, strengthening nutrition and physical health, trusting parents and local communities, and opening Head Start to hundreds of thousands more children,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement.

The proposed cuts would constitute nearly a complete retooling of Head Start, which was launched in 1965 as the nation’s primary child antipoverty program, providing education, health and nutritional assistance. The agency’s changes would “remove most of Head Start’s 133 pages of federal requirements for math and literacy curricula, class sizes, medical screenings and home visits,” said The New York Times. Even a “requirement that children brush their teeth after meals would end.”

What effect will this have?

Many are concerned that the cuts would have a disastrous impact on the 1,600 Head Start providers who fight childhood poverty. Head Start “ensures children receive healthcare, developmental screenings, nutritious meals, disability services, highly qualified teachers and strong partnerships with families,” Joel Ryan, the director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, said to the Times. HHS’ proposal “would weaken those protections for hundreds of thousands of children.”

Part of the plan involves reducing the cap on federal money that can go to Head Start’s administrative costs from 15% to 5%. Trump administration officials hope this will “free up funding to serve as many as 268,000 more children,” said The Washington Post. It would also give states a “wide leeway to craft the program to their liking.” But some are concerned that stripping away Head Start’s nationwide criteria and shrinking the cap would have a largely negative effect.

“It wouldn’t be Head Start anymore,” Jen Bailey, who operates several Head Start programs in Madison, Wisconsin, said to the Post. Head Start could become a “shell of a program” without national standards, Bailey added. Even some Republicans appear worried. “Just walking away and turning a blind eye toward it, I don’t think that’d be a good idea,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said to USA Today. The program helps “a lot, a lot, a lot of kids.” And “a lot of times we can make it better, but there are ways we can make it worse too,” Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) told the outlet.

“At first glance, these proposed changes might not seem so terrible, but as you dig deeper into it, what we will find is that there really are a lot of changes that will impact what is the heart of Head Start,” Yvette Sanchez Fuentes, the senior vice president at nonprofit Start Early, told The 19th. The current standards aren’t only the federal regulations. They “really are the foundation for how we ensure that programs across the country are supporting children, families and communities in the way that they want best.”

Having a good listing agent can mean the difference between a frustrating home-selling process with disappointing results and one that is easy and lands the best possible offer. But how do you figure out which realtor will do a solid job representing you in the transaction? While there is never a guarantee that a relationship will be smooth sailing, there are a number of factors you can evaluate in your search to help you find the right fit. Here is how to know you have found the best realtor for the job.

They have the right qualifications and experience.

Step one when choosing a real estate agent is ensuring they are actively licensed in your state. Search for them in a real estate licensing database and also reference your state’s licensing division, noting “when the license was issued and if there are any temporary suspensions or complaints on file,” said HomeLight, a real estate matching service.

Experience also matters. “Ask potential listing agents how long they’ve been selling real estate and how many houses they’ve sold recently,” said NerdWallet. “If someone hasn’t closed a deal in several months, that’s a reason for concern.” Ideally, they will also be familiar with your particular area and housing market.

They answer your questions clearly and are professional.

Personality and communication style are worth weighing when choosing a realtor, as this will be a working relationship. “I see so many consumers get stuck with an agent who looked good on paper but was awful to deal with,” said Wendy Gilch, a fellow at the Consumer Policy Center, to The New York Times.

The best way to evaluate prospective agents is to interview at least a few of them. See whether they will clearly address your questions and assess their demeanor when they do so. Recommendations and reviews from trusted sources and former clients can also be helpful here.

They have a plan for pricing and marketing your home.

An experienced listing agent should have a solid handle on comparable homes in the area (often referred to as “comps”) and an informed explanation for their suggested list price for your home. “If they can’t have a full discussion about pricing and comparables, that’s a red flag,” said Gilch to the Times.

In addition, a “good real estate agent will have a robust plan to promote your listing to find the right pool of buyers,” whether that is through open houses, professional photography or specific staging recommendations, said NerdWallet. It’s important that you feel aligned on the approach and confident it will deliver.

They have a fair rate and transparent contract terms.

Before signing anything, make sure you understand what your realtor will charge for their services and what exactly is included. “A full-service real estate agent will provide a high level of offerings that go toward giving you a great selling experience and boosting exposure to your home,” said HomeLight.

And remember: “Agent compensation is fully negotiable and not set by law,” said the National Association of Realtors. You should not feel pressured or like you cannot push back.

Nearly 30 years to the day since the fatal shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur, and Duane “Keffe D” Davis is standing trial for one of America’s most notorious unsolved murders.

At the core of the case is a self-published memoir by Davis, in which he claimed to be “one of the only living eyewitnesses” to the rapper’s killing.

It means, rather unusually, “he’s the defendant but he’s also the all-star witness,” said CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson.

What is in the book?

“Compton Street Legend”, published in 2019, opens in Las Vegas on the night of 7 September 1996, with a step-by-step account of the plan to confront Shakur and Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight in retaliation for an earlier fight.

Davis writes how he secured a gun, jumped into a Cadillac with three others and drove around before spotting the pair at a junction.

“No words exchanged, the time for talking had passed, the shit was about to go down!” he wrote. Shakur was hit multiple times in the shooting that followed, and died from his wounds six days later.

At first, the book “drew little attention outside of online circles devoted to hip-hop lore and true crime”, said Julia Jacobs in The New York Times. But a detective with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department quietly began to build a case around it, and in 2023 excerpts from it convinced a grand jury to indict Davis on one count of murder, which Davis denies.

How will it be used at trial?

Given there is no murder weapon, getaway vehicle or surveillance video of the shooting, the prosecution’s case is “largely built on the defendant’s own words”, including his book, as well as podcast and documentary interviews and statements made to police, said CNN’s Eric Levenson.

Authorities accuse Davis of orchestrating the killing, without actually being the one who pulled the trigger, although he denies involvement. The prosecution team has painted him as a “shot caller” in the gang rivalry of the East and West coasts that climaxed in the shooting of Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. six months later. They say passages in the book are a confession made public in the mistaken belief he had immunity.

What does Davis say?

Davis, who has pleaded not guilty, claims that his prior statements about the night in question were false and merely an attempt to sell books.

“Not a confession to a priest, not a confession to a police officer, but rather to promote a book, to sell a product”, one of his lawyers said at a hearing last month.

His defence team unsuccessfully fought to block the use of the book during the trial, arguing that it was fictionalised and written with a co-author, making it impossible to know which parts Davis wrote.

It means the jury will face an “unusual dynamic”, said Levenson: “prosecutors are set to argue the accused murderer is credible and trustworthy, while defence attorneys will deride their client as a liar and fraud”.

The trial, which is taking place not far from the location of the shooting, is expected to take several weeks.

Alleged drug kingpin Daniel Kinahan is back on home soil in Ireland after being extradited from Dubai, marking “the end of a global game of cat and mouse with European, US and Gulf authorities”, said The Guardian.

Ten years after “escaping assassination and fleeing into exile”, the alleged head of Ireland’s biggest organised crime syndicate landed in Dublin on Sunday. “But it is not the homecoming he wanted.”

Met at the airport by a massive security operation, the 49-year-old was immediately taken to the Criminal Courts of Justice to face a charge of directing organised crime, then whisked away to the high-security Portlaoise Prison.

Who is Daniel Kinahan?

The son of Christy “the Dapper Don” Kinahan, a convicted drug trafficker, he allegedly took over from his father as leader of the Kinahan Cartel, a crime ring that is said to control about a third of Europe’s cocaine supply. He has been charged with directing the activities of a criminal organisation from 18 October 2015 to 6 April 2017, which he has denied.

The married father of five is also the founder of the boxing management company MTK Global, although the organisation, which ceased operation in 2022, has insisted it had cut ties with Kinahan.

He is said to have fled to Spain and then Dubai after an attempt on his life at the Regency Hotel in Dublin in 2016. “Six men, some disguised as police and one wearing a dress and a wig, entered the hotel” and opened fire at a boxing weigh-in, said The Washington Post. Kinahan escaped, but his associate, David Byrne, was shot dead, sparking a feud between the Kinahans and the rival Hutch gang.

How did he end up back in Ireland?

In April 2022, following pressure from the Irish authorities, the Kinahan Organised Crime Group was sanctioned by the US, which compared the group to “Mexico’s Los Zetas, Japan’s yakuza and Russia’s ‘Thieves In Law’”. A $5 million (£3.7 million) reward was also offered for tips leading to the arrest of Kinahan, his father or brother.

From then on, “it was always a case of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ the man labelled by Europol as one of the bosses of Europe’s ‘super cartel’ would be getting a one-way ticket home”, said Paul Williams in the Irish Independent.

Kinahan’s presence in the UAE over the past decade had “become a source of international embarrassment” for the Gulf state, especially when his 2017 wedding at the luxury Burj Al Arab was tweeted by heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury.

The breakthrough came in 2024, when Ireland managed to negotiate an extradition treaty with the UAE. Kinahan was arrested in April this year, and has remained in custody, clearing the way for his forced return to Ireland over the weekend on an Irish government jet.

When will he face trial?

In his brief court appearance on Sunday, Kinahan “cut a dejected but polite figure” as he addressed the three judges from the dock, said The Irish Independent. He will remain on remand in Portlaoise Prison until his trial, in a block cleared especially for him, spending up to 20 hours a day in his cell.

How long Kinahan stays there “has not been decided”, said The Irish Times. If he chooses to fight the case and wins at trial next year, “he would be released immediately”. If convicted, he faces “somewhere between 20 and 30 years in prison”. However, “nothing is proven against him at this point”, so “he is an innocent man in the eyes of the law.”

The message is clear that you should be saving for retirement. What may be less clear: what, exactly, you are saving for. There are the obvious costs most retirees can predict, such as continued basic life expenses, or some they will even look forward to, like the expense of additional travel and time spent on hobbies.

Then there are costs that retirees often end up overlooking when they are meting out their retirement account balance. These can inevitably end up complicating what seemed like a smart retirement plan. Here are some of the most common hidden costs to look out for.

1. Out-of-pocket healthcare costs

Most retirees are aware that healthcare costs are a reality of aging. What can fly under their radar, however, is just how rapidly healthcare costs can rise and how much they may have to pay out of pocket.

“Once you retire, you’ll still be responsible for premiums, deductibles, copays and services that Medicare doesn’t fully cover, like dental, vision and hearing,” said GOBankingRates. Not to mention “long-term care or extended rehabilitation after a surgery or illness.”

A surprising or devastating health event can easily throw a wrench into things. “Without insurance and depending on the severity, unexpected medical costs can range from $20,000 for a two-night hospital stay to $100,000 or more for longer stays and critical conditions,” said certified financial planner Jeffrey Stouffer to Kiplinger.

2. Taxes

When you are working, taxes are often automatically deducted from your paycheck, which means you do not have to think about them when budgeting. That is not the case in retirement. Nor do you get to skip out on taxes in your golden years because you are no longer bringing in a regular paycheck.

The reality is, “distributions from traditional individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and 401(k)s are taxed as ordinary income,” and “depending on your combined income, up to 85% of your Social Security benefits may be taxable,” said Citizens Bank. You may also end up owing taxes on any income from investments or pensions, not to mention property taxes if you own your home.

3. Rising insurance premiums

Even if you have a line item in your budget for home and auto insurance, that may soon become obsolete as premiums continue to go up. “While overall inflation has hovered between 2% and 3% in recent years, home insurance rates surged by 11% in 2023 and 11.4% in 2024, according to a July 2025 LendingTree analysis,” said AARP. Further, “federal data shows motor vehicle insurance premiums have risen at double or triple the overall inflation rate for most of 2025.” Retirees may therefore end up paying a lot more than they initially expected over time.

4. Inflation

While you may hear a lot about inflation on the news, “retirees routinely cite inflation as one of the most surprising ongoing costs in retirement,” said Kiplinger. It can creep into just about everything, from groceries to utilities to housing. “Even at a moderate historical average of around 3% per year, the cost of essentials” can “more than double over a 25-year retirement,” said Citizens Bank.

If one company has its way, animal allergies could soon be a thing of the past. A biotech laboratory has developed gene-edited dogs that do not contain the allergy-causing proteins found in most pups, which the lab says marks a breakthrough in the pet industry. But it could still be a long time before dogs like these become available on a wide scale.

How were these dogs created?

Bailey and Alfie are two beagles who were specifically bred with a “targeted genetic knockout” of Can f 1, the major allergy-causing protein in dogs, according to research published in The CRISPR Journal. The canines were born in September 2024 and “have shown healthy growth and development,” Kindred Companion Sciences, the company behind the research, said in a press release.

The idea of allergy-friendly dogs is not new, and breeds like poodles are often recommended for their hypoallergenic coats. But these dogs “still produce allergy-causing proteins that end up in their saliva, hair and dander, so they can still make people sniffly,” said The Associated Press. In the case of Bailey and Alfie, scientists at Kindred used the DNA-altering technology CRISPR to eliminate the Can f 1 protein entirely. Tests of the two dogs thus “showed no detectable protein compared to samples from nonedited dogs,” said Wired.

The use of genetic editing to create completely hypoallergenic dogs marks a significant shift in the field. Previously, efforts to “reduce dog allergen exposure have focused on downstream mitigation, including selection of so-called ‘hypoallergenic’ breeds and household hygiene measures,” said The CRISPR Journal. But scientists have started looking into new approaches, as tests measuring Can f 1 have “found that breeds marketed as hypoallergenic do not yield consistently lower environmental exposure.”

How will this affect the pet industry?

Experts believe it could open the door to a new wave of adoptable pets. Gene editing “can, and should, be applied to solving legitimate problems that humanity has,” Fyodor Urnov, a gene editing expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said to Wired. “Dogs are a human’s best friend, now potentially more so because of one tiny gene edit.”

Questions remain as to the viability of the genetic changes. For one, Can f 1 “isn’t the only protein in dogs that can trigger allergic reactions — there are also so-called minor allergens,” said New Scientist. There are also concerns about the long-term health of these dogs, although “so far, both dogs appear normal and healthy.” Researchers overall maintain that this option could be groundbreaking for people with pet allergies, which is about 10% to 20% of the world’s population, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

“The feeling right now is sort of a mix of relief and awe and gratitude that it worked,” geneticist Matt Walker, the founder of Kindred, said to the AP. “It feels just amazing to get to have a dog.” For others, the jury is still out. “It opens the door to a lot more people being able to own pets,” New York University bioethicist Arthur Caplan told the AP. But on the “negative side, it may discourage people from trying to use strays and unwanted animals that are not engineered to be allergy-free.”

Parts of Europe will receive a brief respite from searing summer heat this week with the first solar eclipse in nearly three decades.

According to Nasa, on Wednesday parts of Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia, Spain and a small corner of Portugal will be plunged into darkness as the Moon briefly passes directly between the Earth and the Sun, the first time this has happened on the continent since 1999.

What about the UK?

A total solar eclipse occurs at a specific location on Earth on average once every 366 years, and the British Isles are currently in “no-man’s land”, with the next one not visible from the UK until 2090, said Space.

This time around, most of the country will experience a partial eclipse where around 90% of the Sun’s rays will be blocked by the transit of the Moon. “First contact”, when the Moon first covers the disc of the Sun, will begin shortly after 6pm, reaching its “maximum”, when most of the Sun is covered, at 7.05pm in Scotland, 7.10 in Manchester and Liverpool, and 7.12pm in London, Bristol and Cardiff. Some parts of Cornwall will have a 95% blackout, rising to 97.7% in the south-west of Ireland.

For the rest of the country, enough of the Sun will be covered to make a “noticeable difference in the temperature and light levels” but “unlike with a total eclipse, the sky will not become dark – it will feel more like a cloudy day or close to dusk or dawn”, said Royal Museums Greenwich, home to the Royal Observatory.

“As always with astronomy, we’re at the mercy of the weather”, meaning “there’s always the possibility that clouds could obscure part or all of the eclipse”.

How should you view it?

Even with a partial eclipse, because the Sun is so bright it is still “extremely dangerous” to look at it without taking safety precautions, said the Royal Astronomical Society, otherwise it could cause permanent damage to your eyes or even blindness.

“Never look directly at the Sun without appropriate solar viewing equipment. Certified eclipse glasses, specially designed solar filters for telescopes and binoculars, or indirect methods such as pinhole projectors are all safe ways to observe the event”, said RAS President Professor Jim Wild.

If using eclipse glasses “make sure they work”, said Sky News, “as bogus retailers capitalise when an eclipse is due and you may be duped into buying a counterfeit pair”.

The American Astronomical Society advises trying them on indoors first. You should not be able to see anything through them, except very bright lights which should appear very faint. Even in regular sunlight outdoors you should only be able to see a slight reflection of the Sun off a shiny surface. Looking at the Sun for a second you should see a sharp-edged disk that is comfortably bright.

Wednesday is set to be an extra special evening for astronomy lovers, with the partial eclipse followed by the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower a few hours later.

Anything else to know about it?

Octopus Energy is asking customers to delay using washing machines, dishwashers and other plug-in devices between 6pm and 8pm on Wednesday.

The eclipse “will send solar generation plunging just as electricity demand begins to rise as millions of people return home from work”, said The Telegraph.

While there is no suggesting that the eclipse could trigger outages, Octopus said it was encouraging people to use less energy to negate the need for carbon-emitting gas power.

You have worked your whole life to save up enough to retire. And now you have — but you are afraid to spend those hard-earned savings.

Being frugal in retirement may seem like a good thing. You are most likely living on a fixed budget with no more paychecks flowing in. For many retirees, however, concerns about outlasting their savings leave them limiting themselves unnecessarily.

Why do people tend to underspend in retirement?

For many retirees, the “biggest hurdle is psychological rather than financial,” said U.S. News & World Report. “Many retirees have spent decades living below their means, making thoughtful financial decisions and consistently saving for the future,” which means that “by retirement, those behaviors have become second nature.” It can be hard for these retirees to suddenly change their money mindset and pivot to spending the retirement savings they worked so hard to accumulate.

Fear is another component. “According to a recent survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, more than three in four retirees agree they can afford to spend freely — but nearly half say they still underspend out of fear they’ll run out of money,” said Charles Schwab.

Then there is the very real puzzle of figuring out an appropriate amount to spend. After all, it is impossible to know how long you will live or how well your investments will perform.

What are the risks of underspending in retirement?

The risk of overspending in retirement is obvious; the risk of underspending may be less so. But “according to financial advisors, it ultimately amounts to something similar: not living as fulfilling a life as one could have,” said CNBC. “It represents a life not lived, the vacations you didn’t take because you were afraid you were going to run out of money,” said certified financial planner Marianela Collado to the outlet.

Sure, you can ultimately pass on what remains to your heirs or to a charity or another organization of your choosing. But by playing it safe and never tapping into what you worked so hard to accrue, you never get to reap the rewards of all that labor.

How can you figure out a safe rate of spending in retirement?

Admittedly, the “‘right’ withdrawal rate is far from settled science, in that you’re trying to figure out how much to extract under uncertain market conditions and an unknowable time horizon,” said Morningstar. Instead of trying to come up with a hard-and-fast withdrawal rule that will last throughout your retirement, think of it as something you can continually reassess as your circumstances shift.

Known as “flexible withdrawal strategies,” these “ebb and flow with a portfolio’s balance,” said Morningstar. Such strategies may allow you to withdraw more of your portfolio during your own lifetime “rather than leave behind big balances after death.” Maybe you slow down your spending after a big year of travel, for example, or a market downturn. As long as you allow yourself to ramp it up when things are going well and you have golden years you want to live to the fullest.

The UN is preparing to choose a new secretary general for the first time in a decade as six candidates vie to succeed António Guterres of Portugal.

But the winner faces a huge challenge, with a host of geopolitical crises and the very status of the body itself in question.

Who is in the running?

Calls for a “madame secretary general” have been growing “louder”. So the next appointment will “test whether the UN is committed to breaking glass ceilings” by appointing a woman to the post for the first time, said the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

The candidates include Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile; Maria Fernanda Espinosa, former foreign minister of Ecuador; Rebeca Grynspan, former vice president of Costa Rica; and Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, former foreign minister of Guyana and permanent representative to the UN.

Several female candidates were overlooked in 2016, when Guterres was elected to serve the first of his two terms. “If I am polite, I would say the world was not prepared for it,” said Bachelet in April. “Is it prepared now? I hope so,” adding that appointing a woman as secretary general would be “a good signal”.

Among the men in contention is Rafael Grossi, the Argentinian diplomat who is director general of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Macky Sall, a former prime minister and president of Senegal.

The successful candidate will be chosen by the UN General Assembly following the recommendation of the Security Council, whose permanent members are the UK, China, France, Russia and the US.

Those nations “have the future of the world body in their hands”, said Agence France-Presse. Observers say “it is difficult to pick a favourite” because the world’s major powers are “divided on the outcome”, but Grossi has been “repeatedly mentioned”.

What does the secretary general do?

The secretary general is the chief administrative officer and public face of the UN. The role is “equal parts diplomat and advocate, civil servant and CEO”, according to the UN itself.

They oversee several important UN bodies, including the Security Council, which is charged with maintaining peace and security. However, unlike a prime minister or president, the secretary general does not have the power to make laws or command countries. The role is more about persuasion, diplomacy and authority rather than objective political or military power.

What will be in their in-tray?

Gaza and Ukraine will be high in the pile but they’ll have a “tough task” because the “relevance, power and financial capability” of the UN is “under an increasingly harsh spotlight”, said Deutsche Welle.

“Simply put,” said Politico, the UN is “an increasingly irrelevant global institution”, because the United States, “its most powerful member”, is “abandoning and defunding” many parts of its “sprawling structure”.

The Security Council itself “barely functions” because of the “rivalries” between the US, China and Russia, all of whom have the power of veto. “Even as a venue for international gatherings”, the UN is “fading” because leaders would “rather meet and make deals” at the G20.

Updated guidance on single-sex public spaces came into force across most of the UK on Wednesday, despite opposition from trans-rights groups and many MPs.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s new code of practice says people must use facilities such as toilets and changing rooms according to their biological sex. It was updated following the Supreme Court judgment last April, which ruled that the terms “man”, “woman” and “sex” under the 2010 Equality Act referred to biological sex, rather than gender identity.

The equality watchdog says trans people should use either gender-neutral facilities or those that match their biological sex, a move welcomed by groups campaigning for sex-based rights. But critics say the code is difficult to implement, unworkable in practice and could lead to discrimination against trans people.

Where does the guidance apply?

It’s the EHRC’s services, public functions and associations code of practice that has been updated. That applies to organisations such as cafes, leisure centres, gyms and hairdressers, as well as public toilets, local sports clubs with at least 25 members, hospital wards, domestic violence shelters and rape-crisis shelters. It covers England, Scotland and Wales. (Northern Ireland uses different equality legislation, and is still considering the impact of the Supreme Court ruling.)

The code “does not impose legal obligations”, nor is it a “statement of the law”, said lawyers at Pinsent Mason. But it can be “used in evidence in legal proceedings”, so organisations are likely to treat it as “the most reliable guide for managing legal risk”. It is also “important to bear in mind” that the employment code, which guides workplaces, has not changed.

How will it be implemented?

Nearly 13,000 toilets and more than 5,000 changing rooms might need to be “revamped”, said Sky News. At least 18,000 signs may need changing. The building work could cost more than £14 million per year, an analysis by the Press Association suggests. Cleaning the new facilities could also cost public sector bodies, such as councils, more than £20 million. Both estimates “may be too low”, said Sky News.

Many organisations have already made changes they say are in line with the code. But some, such as Lambeth Council in London (run by Green Party councillors), say they might refuse to implement the guidance if advised that it’s lawful to do so.

What does it mean for trans people?

Organisations might be able to exclude trans people from single-sex spaces if they decide someone could “object” to their presence. If they allow trans women into women-only spaces, those will no longer legally qualify as women-only spaces under the Equality Act.

The code says that where it is “proportionate” for spaces to remain single sex, such as a rape crisis centre, then only those of the same biological sex should use them. But it would be “very unlikely to be proportionate to put a trans person in a position where there is no service that they are allowed to use”.

The code also notes that forcing a trans person to use services related to biological sex could amount to discrimination. It suggests gender-neutral “third spaces”, such as unisex lockable cubicles, should be provided where possible, said The Guardian.

What has been the reaction?

The guidance is “unworkable” and could “lead to widespread harm for trans people and those who don’t conform to gender stereotypes”, said a spokesperson for the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance. It also “puts businesses and charities in the crossfire of endless litigation”.

Critics question how organisations could visually identify biological sex. Legal action on how the code is implemented is likely, both from those who “think the guidance itself is wrong” and from gender-critical groups who “will want to challenge any organisations” they believe aren’t complying, said the BBC.

There are also criticisms about the delay in publication of the guidance. The draft was sent to the equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson, last September for approval.

After an amendment was made in June, 135 MPs, 69 from Labour, signed a motion calling for it to be scrapped, “primarily because of worries about its impact on transgender people”, said The Guardian. Those MPs are “increasingly doubtful” that the guidance is "workable in the real world”.

Labour MP Kevin McKenna, "questioned whether trans patients in hospitals could really be cared for in gender-neutral side rooms, given these are scarce and often needed for clinical reasons”. He said he feared the unsafe and impractical guidance “may not survive contact with reality”, and “will not make life any safer” for anyone.

However, Maya Forstater, from the sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, said: “The law is clear and the code is practical, giving many examples that apply to everyday services.”

Winning a scholarship can help make covering the cost of college much more manageable. And unlike student loans, which you have to pay back, scholarships are money that is gifted to you free and clear — well, almost.

In some cases, you may have to pay taxes on that scholarship money. So, what are those cases? The problem with that question is “answering it often seems to require a Ph.D.,” with confusion abounding among both parents and students, said The Wall Street Journal. Figuring it out in advance, however, is key to minimizing tax impacts or at the very least being aware of them.

When do taxes not apply to scholarships?

Perhaps it is first easier to understand when you do not owe taxes on scholarship funds. “A general rule is that your college scholarship is tax-free when it is used to pay for ‘qualified education expenses,’” said Kiplinger. These are the costs that are “typically limited to items required for all students to attend a particular institution” — think “tuition, fees, books and supplies.”

The student, as well as the school, must also meet certain requirements for the scholarship money to be tax-free. Specifically, the student must be a “candidate for a degree at an educational institution that has regular faculty, regular curriculum and a regularly enrolled population of students in attendance,” said H&R Block.

When do you owe taxes on scholarships?

If you use your scholarship funds for costs beyond what is absolutely required for all students in attendance at the program, then income taxes will generally apply. So, for instance, “if a student uses scholarship dollars to buy a computer that’s not required, those funds are likely taxable,” said the Journal. The same goes for “funds used to pay for room, board, most travel and optional expenses,” as well as any “money the student receives for other services, such as office work,” alongside “stipends for living expenses.”

Additionally, for your scholarship to be tax-free, the amount cannot exceed your qualified education expenses. “If your scholarship exceeds the amount of your qualified education expenses, you may need to report the excess amount on your tax return,” said Kiplinger.

How should you report a taxable scholarship?

If your scholarship is indeed taxable, you will need to report that to the federal government. The process for doing so is the same as it is for any other income.

You will report the taxable scholarship amount using either Form 1040, Form 1040A or Form 1040E Z on the line labeled “Wages, salaries, tips.” If “no W-2, Wage and Tax Statement was received, also enter ‘SCH’ by the taxable amount,” said H&R Block.

With back-to-school season in full swing across parts of the U.S., many American families are feeling an extra pain in their wallets from buying school supplies. The cost of these supplies ebbs and flows over the years, but economists say 2026 is an especially difficult year for buying new pencils or glue sticks — and families may not feel relief in the near future.

How much have school supply costs increased?

The “price of a typical school supply list has increased 7.7% over the past year, with some essentials seeing much larger jumps,” according to an analysis from progressive think tanks The Century Foundation and Groundwork Collaborative. The highest spikes were seen among lunch boxes, which had a 26.8% year-to-year jump; notebooks, up 23%; index cards, up 22%; and notebook paper, up 20%. In total, families will pay about $175 more on school items in 2026, the think tanks said.

The spike in school supplies isn’t entirely new. The average “school supply list costs about 34% more than it did 10 years ago,“ which “works out to roughly 3 to 4% per year over the last decade,” said WWL-TV. In addition, “today’s supply lists often go well beyond the basics, with requests for disinfectant wipes, paper towels, copy paper and, in some cases, electronics like Chromebooks or laptops.” These requirements can “leave families with fewer opportunities to save.”

Combined with the rising cost of food, the average U.S. household will spend about $4,000 this year between school supplies and school lunches, the think tanks said. At least 45% of parents “plan to take on debt to pay for back-to-school shopping this year,” according to a Credit Karma survey, while half of American parents are “cutting back on other expenses to make room for back-to-school shopping,” said Deloitte.

Why have school supplies become so expensive?

Many are pointing to the economic policies of the Trump administration as a cause. The White House’s tariffs “on a range of imports have driven up the price of binders, pencils and other school supplies,” said CBS News. Many school supplies, including pens, markers and notebooks, are “manufactured overseas, making them subject to higher tariffs.” Newell Brands, the makers of supplies including Sharpie, Paper Mate and Elmer’s glue, announced they’d be implementing price increases to offset the tariffs.

Beyond the tariffs, other “school supply companies also blame higher energy costs due to the Iran war for having to raise their prices,” said CBS. ACCO, the parent brand of Mead and Trapper Keeper, has said that “higher oil prices stemming from the conflict have driven up the company’s costs and led to price hikes for consumers.” With all of these global issues, parents at home “don’t have a lot of wiggle room on the matter,” Julie Margetta Morgan, the president of The Century Foundation, said to The 19th.

Many parents are “searching their local back-to-school fairs for supplies, or seeking out backpack giveaways and school supply distributions” to lessen the burden, and others are “working more over the summer to cover increased costs,” said The 19th. Still, not all parents are feeling the relief. Content creator Victoria Albano posted a recent reel on Instagram showing a $230 Target bill for her incoming first grader’s school supplies. “I was up all night trying to figure out what to buy and what not to buy,” Albano told The 19th. “I’m not struggling, but I’m not where I want to be.”

The next major fight between Israel and Palestine might be fought not on the ground, but rather below it. Israel is currently attempting to seize the land around archaeological sites throughout the West Bank, the largest of which has an ancient history going back three millennia. But Palestinian officials believe Israel is claiming these areas illegally, and they are revving up for a political battle.

Why is Israel going after these sites?

Israel is “undertaking a major drive to develop and expand archaeological sites in the occupied West Bank” because officials believe it is “incumbent upon Jewish citizens to connect to their history and heritage,” said The Forward. There are several locations that Israel is working on developing, with two being the most prominent: Sebastia, a small village near the West Bank city of Nablus, and Jericho, another West Bank city that is home to the ancient Hasmonean Palaces.

Sebastia is “one of the most layered archaeological sites in the Middle East” and is now a “flashpoint in a fight between Israeli and Palestinian authorities over land, heritage and narrative,” said CNN. The town’s history “goes back at least 3,000 years” to when it was the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Israel. The archaeological site “lies in Area C of the West Bank, under full Israeli civil and security control according to the Oslo Accords,” while the town itself is in “Area B, under mixed Palestinian-Israeli jurisdiction.”

In Jericho, Israeli officials want to control the Hasmonean Palaces site because they claim it is under “deliberate and systematic destruction by the Palestinian Authority,” which Israel says has “targeted it and other sites in a bid to erase evidence of Jewish ties to the land,” Israel Ganz, the head of the West Bank’s Yesha Council, told The Forward. To try and control these sites, as well as others, Israel’s parliament has proposed a bill to create a new Israeli body in the West Bank, which would “have the power to conduct excavations, declare sites, expropriate lands and more,” said Haaretz.

What has the Palestinian response been?

The Israeli bill, as well as Israel’s overall push near the sites, has “drawn criticism from Palestinians and Israeli rights groups who say it is tantamount to annexation of occupied land and would expand Jewish settlements,” said Reuters. Israel’s actions are “intended to expand control in these areas, deep inside Palestinian territories,” Hani Al-Hayek, the Palestinian Authority’s tourism minister, said to the outlet.

Palestinian officials are taking action to stop Israel’s movement in the region. At their urging, UNESCO recently designated Sebastia a full “World Heritage site, hoping it will prevent Israel extending ​its control at the ancient village,” said Reuters. Some Israelis seem to agree that their government is being overzealous. The digs are “another way of weaponizing. That is, you attach more importance to a certain kind of heritage and less importance to other kinds of heritage,” Rafi Greenberg, an archaeology professor in Israel, told CBS News.

The Israeli government, however, remains steadfast. “The area is Israeli territory. It belongs to the Jewish people,” Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu told CNN. No matter the end result, this archaeological debate will be a “test case to a battle not just over the past but about the present and the future of the territory and the people who live near its historic stones.”

“To Do. Buy Japanese Yen (JPY) $5-10 bil,” read a note written by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a cabinet meeting on Friday. By Monday, he had confirmed on X that the US had participated in “coordinated foreign exchange actions” with the Japanese government to counter “disorderly yen movements”.

In recent weeks, the yen sank to a 40-year low against the dollar, the latest milestone in Japan’s economic decline. However, having traded at ¥163 to the dollar on Thursday, the yen has strengthened to ¥155 to the dollar since the intervention.

Donald Trump claimed the joint move would be “good for the world economy”. But some analysts believe the intervention will best serve America’s interests.

Why is the yen so weak?

Japan, the world’s fourth biggest economy, has “long struggled with a weak yen”, said CNN. After suffering recession and “chronic deflation” in the 1990s, Japan has kept interest rates much lower than other developed economies. In April, the Bank of Japan increased its rate to 1% – the highest since 1995 – while the US rate usually lies between 3.5% and 3.75%. While such low rates hope to stimulate consumer spending, they also are much less attractive to international investors.

Global events such as the Iran war have also impacted Japan’s import-heavy economy. The country is “resource-poor”, said The Japan Times, with around “95% of its oil imports” coming from the Middle East before the recent conflict began. While a weak yen is beneficial for Japan’s exporters and the tourism industry, energy and fuel inflation have hit the country’s population hard.

Other issues such as a “decades-long slide in its working-age population”, substantial government debt and low productivity have also hampered economic growth, said the BBC.

What’s in it for Trump?

The president called the move a “signal of friendship” between the two nations. The US is “always there for Japan”, a country that has been “very good to us, with the exception, of course, of Pearl Harbor”.

But the US also stands to benefit. The Japanese government has been buying up yen, thereby “raising the value of their currency”, said The Guardian. But to pay for this, Japan has been selling off US government bonds, which are kept by many countries as a “store of national wealth”. If, however, these bonds are sold quickly and in large quantities, it can lead to a rise in the interest rate the US pays on its debt, thus making it more expensive for the US to borrow money.

Another factor behind the intervention could be that Trump sees Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi as an “ideological ally”. In October, the US bought “billions of Argentinian pesos to help prop up the country’s finances” just weeks before midterm elections for President Javier Milei, another ally of Trump’s. Takaichi’s defence agenda – she is planning to double spending to 2% of GDP over the next five years – has been “broadly welcomed” by the Trump administration.

Is this a sign of things to come?

Both US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama have announced they would not hesitate to participate in further joint interventions.

In April, the Bank of Japan took action to boost the yen, said CNN, but it proved to be only a “temporary success”. Analysts are “less optimistic” that this latest intervention could “fundamentally alter the broader course of the yen’s weakening”.

Within Japan, there is concern that Takaichi’s spending plans will put further pressure on the currency. A two-year cut in sales tax on food and soft drinks from 8% to 1% is an attempt to ease cost-of-living pressures, and the PM has promised to invest hundreds of billions as part of a pro-growth agenda that led to her election. However, the policies could instead “strain public finances and rattle markets”, said the Financial Times.

It’s widely assumed that eight hours is the perfect amount of sleep but a new study found the “sweet spot” is a little less than that, said sleep specialist Dr Allie Hare in The Telegraph.

Getting it right matters because new research, published in Nature, found that “falling short, or exceeding” the “precise window” discovered by the research, is “linked with poorer brain, heart and immune health”.

What did the research say?

People who got between six hours 24 minutes and seven hours 48 minutes of sleep a night were found to have better functioning immune systems, brains and hearts, according to researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

This ideal amount of sleep was associated with less ageing, as measured by organ-specific biological clocks. Duration alone doesn’t cause organs to age faster or slower, but the findings do suggest that insufficient or excessive sleep may be “markers of poorer overall health across the body”.

Is it different for men and women?

There is also a gender factor because women “seem to do better with a little longer”, Marie-Pierre St-Onge, a professor at Columbia University, told The Washington Post. They need “15, 20 minutes” more sleep, which reflects the “slightly longer” sleep duration reported by the “general population”, which “tends to be slightly longer in women than men”.

Previous research found that sleep is “largely linked to ageing and the pathological burden of the brain”, said Junhao Wen, an assistant professor at Columbia and lead author of the study. But the new research "goes further” and shows that “too little and too much sleep” are “associated with faster ageing in nearly every organ”.

Should we all be getting seven hours?

There are a number of conflicting theories about how much sleep we need. According to individual needs theories, there is no single ideal amount of sleep, because genetics, age, health, activity level and even life circumstances influence how much sleep someone needs. Adaptive or evolutionary theories hold that the correct amount of sleep varies depending on factors such as season, workload, stress, illness and safety.

But we “might be overthinking it”, said Emma Beddington in The Guardian. Sleep is “important and fascinating for science to explore, but surely, for the rest of us”, it’s “best left mysterious”.

There’s “so little we can do” to reach the “ideal” amount of unconsciousness, so “knowing precisely how bad that is for us is unhelpful”.

Summertime heat can bring sky-high electric bills, which may have you searching for new savings opportunities. Solutions can range from the low-cost option of increasing the temperature by a few degrees to the high-cost solution of installing an entirely new cooling system. A middle-of-the-road option that may be worth exploring? Upgrading to a smart thermostat.

These devices make it easy to set your system on your schedule, so you are not running it unnecessarily when you are at the office or away on vacation. Some are even more advanced, automatically detecting your absence and switching to a more energy-friendly mode. While these shifts can cut down on usage and increase efficiency, calculating the actual electric bill savings you will see is not necessarily clear-cut.

How can a smart thermostat save you money?

The potentially cost-saving feature most smart thermostats offer is an app that you can use to easily set a schedule for the heating and cooling of your home. “Technically, you can do this with any thermostat, but smart thermostats make it especially easy with their eco modes and suggestions, which means the average user typically starts saving more money when they adopt a smart thermostat,” said CNET. The app can also display your energy usage habits, which can help you course correct going forward.

Some more advanced smart thermostats take things a step further. They figure out when “nobody is home, most commonly with motion or occupancy sensors, or by checking the location of your phone,” and then they flip to an “energy-saving model” if no one is around, said Consumer Reports.

What is the average savings a smart thermostat offers?

Compared to the savings some smart thermostat manufacturers claim, “independent research tends to paint a more conservative picture,” said CBS News. Many studies show “average savings closer to 10% to 15%.”

The savings rate you see will depend on a variety of factors. In general, the “largest savings are often seen by homeowners who previously left their thermostat at the same temperature around the clock,” said CBS News. If you were already scheduling your thermostat, you may not see as big a difference. Same goes for if you are home most of the time, or if you live somewhere with more moderate temperatures.

When can installing a smart thermostat make sense?

Whether a smart thermostat “makes financial sense for your budget depends largely on your current habits, your HVAC system and how long you expect to stay in your home,” said CBS News. Consider how much you are currently adjusting your home’s temperature based on your occupancy and how often you are there; switching modes during absences is the main way smart thermostats offer savings.

Some HVAC systems, such as “an older HVAC system without a C-wire” and “electric baseboard radiators,” tend not to work with smart thermostats, said Consumer Reports. Systems like “modern variable-speed air conditioners, and especially heat pumps,” may become less efficient with a smart thermostat, since they are “designed to work better and more efficiently when they run constantly at a fixed temperature.”

Lastly, it is important to account for the cost of the thermostat itself, which runs from “around $100 for the cheapest models to more than $350 for top models with all the bells and whistles,” said CNET. You will also need to pay for installation. Still, with the average savings most smart thermostats offer, you can expect to offset those costs “within a year or two.”

Like all technology, video games have evolved over the years and for the most part, those advancements have been welcomed. But Sony’s recent announcement that it will cease producing physical video games has rattled fans, particularly those who rely on selling and buying used games. The move could be a major setback for the global second-hand gaming market, estimated at nearly $7 billion.

Why is Sony ending physical discs?

The quintessential game disc is “going away, at least on PlayStation,” Kotaku said. Sony, the company behind the iconic console, is set to end production of physical discs for all first-party and third-party PlayStation games in January 2028. Games released before 2028 will “continue to have physical versions, but everything that comes after will be digital-only.”

The majority of all new games are sold digitally, but “many fans still prefer to own their games on discs,” said Kotaku. The end of discs doesn’t “necessarily preclude Sony and other companies from still selling game boxes in brick-and-mortar stores.” They would just have to “download codes inside, similar to this fall’s Grand Theft Auto 6.” But it’s unclear if the PS6 will “even have a disc drive, either built into the console or as an optional external attachment.” Sony has not confirmed the console's features yet; many have “assumed it would be backwards compatible with the current generation of games,” including the physical disc versions.

Sony was “clear as to why it’s making the change,” said The Verge. Sundowning physical media is a “natural direction” for the company to “adapt to consumer trends,” as the “general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs,” Sony said in its announcement. The transition will enable Sony to “align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”

The company’s financials “prove it, too,” said The Verge. In the fourth quarter of the 2025 fiscal year, the “full game software digital download ratio” of games on PS4 and PS5 was 85%, Sony said.

How will second-hand gaming be affected?

One of the biggest losers due to Sony’s controversial decision to abandon physical discs is the second-hand game market. The market for used games will “keep shrinking and eventually disappear,” Kazunori Ito, the director of equity research at Morningstar, said to CNBC.

If this is the future of gaming, then “brick-and-mortar game retail is doomed,” even though, historically, at least one-third of games have been sold as used, Michael Pachter, the managing director of strategic planning at Wedbush Securities, said to CNBC. This is an “extremely anti-consumer decision” that has no “legitimate justification and communicates a disdain for players,” Michael Futter, the cofounder of video game industry consultancy F-Squared, told the outlet.

Even comedian Trevor Noah weighed in on PlayStation’s news. For a lot of gamers, physical discs are the “only way they could afford to play games because they could get them secondhand,” he said on X. You could also “give games to your younger siblings, which is a great way to introduce them to the games you were playing.”

Games preservation group DoesItPlay is planning an “economic and gameplay blackout” for the week of Aug. 23. The “PSBlackout” calls for players to keep their PlayStations powered off the whole week. “No logins, no play sessions, no purchases on any of Sony’s platforms,” said the announcement on X. However, the “efficacy of these player-organized boycotts” is “dubious at best,” said PC Mag.

In the past, companies have undone controversial choices after experiencing heavy backlash, but analysts believe it “remains unlikely that Sony will U-turn on this,” said IGN. “I sympathize with physical media fans,” but Sony “will not reverse this decision," Serkan Toto, the CEO of Japanese game industry consultancy firm Kantan Games, said to the outlet. They knew what the “online reaction would look like,” and now they “wait for this storm to pass.”

Sony has more than “120 million active PlayStation users,” Toto added. Even if “500,000 cancel in protest,” that would be just “1% of that business gone,” which is “of course not enough for Sony to start rethinking.” Digital is “just too lucrative.”

Labour looks set to pass its first test with voters since Andy Burnham took over as prime minister, with the party’s candidate the favourite to succeed him as Manchester mayor in today’s by-election

The race to replace Burnham has been somewhat “overshadowed by events in Westminster” over the past week. But the region’s two million voters go to the polls today to take part in “the biggest by-election in British political history”, said The Guardian.

Who’s running?

Bev Craig, current leader of Manchester City Council, is standing for Labour against Reform UK councillor for Baguley, Sian Niamh Astley, in what has been a heated contest between the two parties.

Other names throwing their hat into the ring include Altrincham councillor Geraldine Coggins, representing the Green Party, Bowdon councillor Phil Eckersley for the Conservatives, and Didsbury West Liberal Democrat councillor Richard Kilpatrick. Marlon West is standing for Restore Britain, with former mayoral candidate Marcus Farmer running as an independent.

How does the vote work?

UK mayoral elections use a system known as supplementary voting that gives voters the option to choose their first- and second-choice candidate.

If any candidate secures more than 50% of the first-choice votes, they will automatically be elected mayor. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, the contest moves to a second round between the two candidates who received the most first-choice votes. All other candidates are eliminated, and ballot papers are counted again factoring in second-choice votes.

What do the polls say?

When Burnham declared his intention to return to Westminster, “the prospect of Labour losing control of Greater Manchester was used as an argument to keep him in post”, said Dan Haygarth in The Independent. After the mayoral by-election was announced, some bookmakers even made Reform the early favourite, but polls suggest that Labour will retain the mayoralty with “relative ease”, leaving Reform and the Greens to battle it out for second place.

YouGov polling from 17 July had Craig on 38% to Astley’s 24%, with Coggins in third on 17%. But in a second-round run-off, the Labour candidate would trounce Reform’s 62% to 38%

With both the Greens and Reform offering radical alternatives to a deeply unpopular Starmer government, this election could have been “a mighty close battle and very difficult for Labour to hold on”, Jon Tonge, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool, said in The Independent. But now voters are less likely to be “looking for an alternative to Labour; they’re prepared to support Labour, for now at least, across Greater Manchester”.

What’s at stake?

The winner of Thursday's race will take control of the biggest mayoral authority outside London, with a £3 billion budget and wide-ranging powers across housing, health, policing and transport. But the race also has deep implications far beyond Manchester.

Professor Rob Ford, of the University of Manchester, said in The Guardian that the real mark of success would be whether Labour was able to push back the Green tide in Manchester and close the gap in Reform-leaning areas such as Wigan and Bolton.

Whatever the result, Greater Manchester will be “very close to the heart of power given the location of Number 10 North”, Professor Andrew Russell, from the University of Liverpool, said on the BBC. “Not for the first time of late, all eyes will certainly be on the city.”

A mathematician has somewhat unceremoniously announced that he has disproven an almost 90-year-old problem — with the help of Anthropic’s artificial intelligence model. The announcement sent waves through social media and the inner circles of mathematics, as the latest in a series of AI-driven mathematical achievements that shook the field and called future math into question.

What math problem did AI tackle?

The Jacobian conjecture is “false,” Harvard University mathematician and Anthropic employee Levent Alpoge said on X, thanking his “close friend Akhil for asking about it” and his “other close friend Fable” for “working during the World Cup final.” Attached was a mathematical formula, a counterexample to the decades-old problem. Despite the fact the problem “bedeviled highly accomplished mathematicians for almost 90 years,” the conjecture “proved no obstacle” for Anthropic’s “latest frontier AI model,” said Mashable.

A conjecture is an “idea that some mathematicians believe is true,” but nobody has been “able to prove or disprove,” said mathematician Melissa Lee at The Conversation. This algebraic geometry theory suggests that a “certain type of mathematical function would also work in reverse” and was “formally set out” by Ott-Heinrich Keller in 1939, said New Scientist. It was one of 18 “fiendishly difficult problems for mathematicians to tackle in the 21st century,” according to a list curated by mathematician Stephen Smale in 1998.

The AI-generated counterexample that Alpoge shared online is the “latest in a series of AI-driven mathematical breakthroughs,” said Fortune. The technology’s “progress (or assault)” on unsolved mathematics has “compounded rapidly since mid-2025,” when models first solved “five of six problems” at the International Mathematical Olympiad.

After that, OpenAI’s model disproved an “80-year-old Erdos conjecture on combinatorial geometry” in May. In June, more than a dozen researchers from 15 universities published a declaration on AI and mathematics, urging their colleagues to “set guardrails around transparency, attribution and peer review” before AI “reshapes what mathematical knowledge even means,” Fortune added. Mathematicians, “relegated to the role of shepherd,” are left to watch AI “close these questions one-by-one, reaching places where the human mind can’t follow.” The mathematicians’ reaction is a “now familiar mixture of dread and amazement.”

What does this mean for the future of math?

The significance of the AI’s discovery varies depending on whom you ask. The counterexample did not “cause me to update my priors about what AI can and can’t do," professor and mathematician Andrew Blumberg said to Mashable. This is “exactly the kind of thing I would expect AI to be able to do.”

The counterexample to the Jacobian conjecture is still a significant achievement for AI in mathematics, Blumberg said, but there’s a difference between providing proof of a mathematical problem and showing a singular counterexample that disproves it. In other words, the counterexample “tells us essentially nothing.” Just that there are a lot of polynomials (a math equation that has numbers and letters representing variables). It’s “hard for people to check them all, but it’s not hard for machines.”

Among other “recent AI-assisted breakthroughs,” the Jacobian conjecture counterexample stands out for being “remarkably simple,” Lee said at The Conversation. The difficulty in finding the solution seems to have “lain not in an intricate construction or a lengthy proof” but rather in finding a good way of “navigating an enormous search space of possible polynomial mappings to find one with the right properties.” AI, this suggests, may “prove to be just as valuable for discovering unexpected mathematical objects as it is for constructing proofs.” What this means for the “future of mathematics and human mathematicians” remains to be seen.

For some, the recent developments with AI foreshadow a future of “increasingly capable AI models that will solve ever more complex problems,” said New Scientist. AI can “already produce master’s degrees in mathematics,” mathematician Ivan Fesenko at Westlake University in China said to the outlet. In a year, it will produce “Ph.D. degrees in mathematics.” Then the question arises, “do we really need so many mathematicians around if AI can do such things so nicely?”

Picking up the phone and realizing a debt collector is on the other end is a stomach-dropping experience. It is also a conversation that can have numerous potential implications, which is why it’s essential to know ahead of time how to navigate the call when the time comes.

Unfortunately, these conversations are becoming more prevalent amid soaring credit card bills and unpaid medical debt. “Lawsuits filed by debt collectors over unpaid credit card bills and other outstanding balances have surged to their highest levels in years,” said the Pew Charitable Trusts, per The Wall Street Journal. Here is how to prepare.

You have a right to know the facts.

Believe it or not, “many sold debts have errors about the amount owed or even who owes it,” said NerdWallet. So, as soon as you hear from a debt collector, first verify all of the details to ensure they are accurate.

When a debt collector contacts you, they are legally required to provide you with certain information about the debt within five days. But do not just take their word for it — you should also “gather your own records, including information on the original creditor and your history of payments,” said NerdWallet.

You should be cautious about what you share.

Watch what you say when speaking with debt collectors, as it could work against you later. For instance, avoid offering personal financial information, including your bank account number or details on your assets, as this “might be used to collect from you through a wage garnishment, bank levy or property lien if the creditor or collector gets a judgment against you,” said Nolo.

Similarly, avoid making any promises regarding the debt. “Your acknowledgment of the obligation might revive the statute of limitations” or the length of time the creditor has to take legal action to collect the debt, said Nolo.

You should absolutely keep detailed records.

As you navigate communicating with debt collectors, make note of what is said and who you talk to, as well as the date and time of the call. This is important because it “will help you determine who’s calling you from where and what debt each collector calls about,” said Nolo. You can also “track how often a particular collector calls and document inconsistencies in what collectors say to you from one call to the next.” You will be glad to have this info in case you need to file a complaint or you end up in court.

You can tell a debt collector to stop contacting you.

While working with a debt collector can help you resolve your debt, if it feels overwhelming or you have any hesitations, you have the right to ask them to stop contacting you. You can draft a letter saying as much using one of the forms on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) website, and the debt collector is obligated to comply. Just keep in mind that if the debt is yours, “stopping communication with a debt collector doesn’t make the debt go away,” said the CFPB.

You have protection against certain types of communications.

Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, debt collectors cannot harass or threaten you. Prohibited behavior ranges from “repeatedly calling you at any time, day or night or before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m.” to using “any false, deceptive or misleading representation,” said Experian. If you think a debt collector may have violated your rights, be sure to submit a complaint with the CFPB.

As tens of thousands of people continue to be evacuated from parts of southern France ravaged by wildfires, firefighters are facing a new threat never seen before in the region in the form of “fire clouds”.

Described by Nasa as the “fire-breathing dragon of clouds”, pyrocumulonimbus formations are the result of extreme heatwaves and can lead to wildfires.

Sophie Brocas, the prefect of the Gironde in Bordeaux at the epicentre of recent blazes, told Le Monde the “incredible, unprecedented, unknown phenomenon” meant we are “entering a new dimension” when it comes to fighting the effects of global warming.

How are they formed?

Pyrocumulonimbus or cumulonimbus flammagenitus – more commonly known as fire clouds – are created by intense heat from the Earth’s surface. This is usually caused by volcanic eruptions or large wildfires where temperatures can reach as high as 800C.

The rapidly rising plume of air cools and forms fire clouds, which, when combined with enough moisture and strong updrafts, can develop into so-called “fire storms”. These produce downdrafts that spread burning embers and dry lightning that starts new fires; and they can even form dangerous fire tornadoes.

The result is so intense, they effectively create their own internal weather systems.

Are they getting more common?

Fire clouds have become increasingly common in the US, Canada and Australia, where the 2019-20 “black summer” bushfires killed at least 33 people and destroyed more than 11 million hectares (27.2 million acres) of bush, forest and parks.

Fire officials in New South Wales reported that embers from the fire storm were landing 18 miles ahead of the front, three times more than the usual distance, said the BBC. But until now, there have been no documented cases in France or northern Europe.

Given pyrocumulonimbus are more likely in extreme weather conditions such as high temperatures, strong winds and little moisture, scientists have warned climate change is likely to increase the chance of them forming.

How can they be stopped?

With the advent of devastating fire clouds, French authorities have “reached a point of ‘operational impossibility’ that requires us to accept the need for strategic retreat”, Lieutenant Colonel Eric Brocardi, spokesman for the National Firefighters Federation of France, told Agence France-Presse.

These fires are convective, which is a problem because they create their own winds “that constantly shift direction, unlike a standard fire that spreads in a conical pattern”. This makes the movement of the blaze “completely unpredictable” as it spreads outwards and becomes impossible to fight head-on.

“It’s a David-versus-Goliath scenario: the idea is that, at some point, we’ll find a weak spot and strike there”, said Brocardi.

“Salvation will come either from the sky – in the form of rain, though it would need to pour heavily for three days – or by finding a way to steer the fire towards a place where it will die out on its own. The sea, for example.”

We’ll be seeing huge numbers of colourful migrants in the UK this summer – in what is widely predicted to be the largest arrival of painted-lady butterflies for 17 years.

“We are in the midst of a miracle”, said wildlife writer Simon Barnes in The Observer. Last time there was a painted-lady spike, in 2019, they were seen in their hundreds of thousands. Clouds of the butterflies have already been spotted, as Butterfly Conservation’s annual Big Butterfly Count – the world’s largest citizen-science insect count – gets under way. Large numbers have been recorded along the east coast into northern England and, at Hickling national nature reserve, close to the Norfolk coast, 253 of them have been seen feeding on one patch of brambles.

What are painted ladies?

Formally known as Vanessa cardui, they are medium-sized orange butterflies with black markings and, on their forewing tips, white spots on a black background. Every year, in a spectacular long-distance migration, they fly from the desert fringes of North Africa, the Middle East and central Asia to mainland Europe and then Britain and Ireland. Then in September, they fly south again, completing a 9,000-mile round trip and one of the world’s longest insect journeys. “They can move from egg to adult in less than six weeks,” said Barnes in The Observer, so it might take “three or four” generations to reach the UK.

In an average year, the number of painted-lady arrivals in the UK hovers around 15,000, although, some years, hardly any reach our shores. But butterfly experts are confidently predicting such a surge in numbers this year that we’re in for “a once-in-a-decade ‘painted lady summer’”, said The Guardian.

Why are numbers spiking?

It’s down to a combination of “favourable early spring conditions in southern Europe”, the recent heatwaves and “benign southerly winds”, said The Guardian. Sightings have been increasing for several weeks but “there’s been a big recent immigration” in the past week, Dan Hoare of Butterfly Conservation told the paper. Painted ladies “grow extremely fast, feed easily and fly really well” and, after breeding particularly successfully during heatwaves in France and Spain, they have benefited from “favourable winds to get them across the Channel”.

The last time this happened, in 2019, more than 420,000 painted ladies were recorded in the UK. But that most recent summer spike pales in comparison to the record year of 2009, when more than two million painted ladies arrived in the UK over a two-day period in May. Over the course of that summer, there were a “barely credible” billion British painted ladies, said Barnes in The Observer.

What about wider butterfly numbers?

In marked contrast to the excitement about the “painted-lady summer”, butterfly numbers in the UK have long been decreasing, according to Butterfly Conservation. Sightings hit record lows in 2024, although there was “improvement” in 2025. Climate change, habitat loss, pollution and plant pesticides have contributed to a picture where more than three-quarters of butterfly species are in decline.

Warnings about the “fragility of nature in the 21st century” are the “naturalist’s lot”, said Barnes in The Observer. But the “awe and disbelief” that will no doubt greet this year’s painted-lady numbers are “symbols of hope”. The bumper success of that butterfly’s 9,000-mile intercontinental journey is a reminder that “if you give nature even the fragment of a chance, it’s always avidly seized”. If the “right decisions” are made, at local, national and international levels, British butterfly “recovery is still possible”.