In his first speech as prime minister in waiting, Andy Burnham promised he would achieve “good growth in every postcode” and spearhead the “biggest rebalancing of power” in political history.

Keir Starmer announced his own “devolution revolution” in 2024, but Burnham aims to move even more influence away from Westminster towards other regions of the UK to drive more balanced economic growth.

His speech at the People’s ­History Museum in Manchester was “­important in shedding light on a Burnham Britain”, said The Times. As he was championing a “devolution first” attitude, the support of his audience was “not in doubt”. But the “viability of his proposals was”.

How is the UK already devolved?

Manchester has benefited from some of the “most extensive” powers devolved to English cities, said the BBC. It has significant control over local transport, housing and strategic planning decisions.

Northern Ireland and the Welsh Senedd have similar autonomy over health, education and housing policies among others, with the latter also managing local government. In Scotland, Holyrood controls health, education, local government, environment, justice and policing. It can set most income tax rates and has some control over welfare policy, too.

What has Burnham proposed?

Burnham said he would create a “No 10. North”, a new prime minister’s office based in Manchester and acting as the “nerve centre of a rewired Britain”. It would support regional powers in delivering a nationwide agenda of reindustrialisation, regeneration and reform of essential services.

Local authorities would be offered greater control over key utilities such as water, energy and transport. Burnham’s advisers have also “floated ideas” about allowing local authorities to introduce local income tax, and to set and retain business rates to mirror policies in Denmark, Sweden and Canada, said Matthew Brooker on Bloomberg.

The dispersal of power has already begun. The MP for Makerfield has appointed Caroline Simpson as his deputy chief of staff to lead No. 10 North should he become prime minister, said The Guardian. Previously described as Burnham’s “right-hand woman”, the career civil servant has overseen Greater Manchester’s £3 billion-a-year budget since 2024.

What is the aim?

The UK is one of the most centralised economies among developed countries, said Brooker. In 2023, the share of UK tax revenue generated at a subnational level – essentially by regions below the central government – was less than 5%, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This is compared with 14% for France, 24% for Spain and nearly a third for Germany. “Regions tend to do better when they raise more of their own revenue.”

If Burnham’s devolution policies prove successful, the “big prize” would be a rise in nationwide GDP, said Bloomberg. If the rest of the UK came even halfway to matching London’s productivity levels, the economy would be “at least 4% larger”, according to PwC analysis from 2019.

There has been no indication how Burnham will split his time between London and Manchester, but the decision felt “more significant than the relocation of staff”, said the BBC’s chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman. With a tailored agenda, it could signify a “wider shake-up of the machinery of government is in the offing”.

“Rethinking and reshaping No. 10 is long overdue,” said the Institute for Government. But Burnham’s plans for No. 10 North will only succeed if “he knows – and spells out in public – what a split operation is for”.

Wimbledon fortnight is underway with a record prize pot of £64.2 million, but this has done little to assuage the sport’s “increasingly mutinous” players, said The Observer.

Tennis is “having a moment”. It's jettisoned its “gentlemanly image” to become a “global cultural phenomenon”, but this also means its stars want a “bigger slice of the pie”.

What are the protests about?

The players want a larger ratio of revenue to acknowledge their contribution towards the financial successes of the tournaments, with “more money trickling down the draws”, said the BBC.

Specifically, they are calling for the prize pots of the four Grand Slam tournaments to be increased to 16% of each one's revenues, rising to 22% by 2030. Wimbledon’s new prize money is equal to 14.4% of its revenues,

They’re also concerned about welfare issues, including how much the Grand Slams contribute to pension, healthcare and maternity pots, and they want better consultation on questions such as scheduling, late-night finishes and prolonged tournaments.

Several star names had planned to limit their contractual media commitments to a “symbolic” 15 minutes per match day during the first week of the tournament, said The Independent. The 15 minutes referred to the prize money and the fact they were getting less than 15% of the overall tournament revenue.

But leading players will return to normal media duties following what they describe as “constructive meetings” with the All England Club. Though they have warned that the “underlying matters remain unresolved”.

Why is it so controversial?

Wimbledon announced a 20% increase in prize money, taking the “total sum of the pot” to £64.2 million only a couple of weeks ago, said the BBC. The All England Club has said it was “surprised and disappointed” by the threat of players’ action, and the broadcaster's pundit Andrew Castle said the players were being “tone deaf”.

Some of the game’s biggest names, including last year's Wimbledon winner Jannik Sinner, have threatened boycotts. Others include Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka, the women's world number-one, but with career winnings of $65m and $49m respectively, plus “lucrative” sponsorship deals, they would be “just fine if the money remained the same”, said The Observer.

But it can be a “slog” for lower-ranked players, whose winnings must fund their coaches and travel in a sport that “spans continents”, leaving them “barely breaking even”. “We don’t do it for ourselves,” said Sabalenka, “we do it for the rest of the players who are suffering to even hire a coach.”

What next?

The players welcomed Wimbledon’s “commitment to return with specific proposals” addressing their concerns, while promising to “carefully evaluate the proposals once received”. In return, the players said they will provide Wimbledon with further information it has requested.

Wimbledon argues that the players’ representatives underestimate the costs of running tournaments and staging important warm-up events.

Walkers tend to drift leftwards

Humans instinctively move anticlockwise, a study has found. “If you simply ask someone to start walking, whether they are wandering around a museum, a supermarket, or even an empty room, it is surprisingly likely that they will drift [in that direction],” said lead author Dr Iñaki Echeverría Huarte, of the University of Navarra in Spain.

The researchers first noticed the bias when investigating social distancing during Covid: in 32 of the 33 experiments, people ambling around enclosed spaces were more likely than not to do so in an anticlockwise direction. Suspecting that it might be a cultural phenomenon, they asked scientists in Japan to repeat the experiments. The results were the same. Further work revealed that humans veer left regardless of whether they are right- or left-handed, alone or with others, male or female, young or old.

The team can’t explain this but hypothesise that biomechanics play a role. “None of us is perfectly symmetrical and the way each person’s brain gathers sensory information and coordinates it with the muscles seems to tip them gently to one side,” Dr Echeverría Huarte told The Guardian.

A step closer to a cure for lupus

An experimental treatment that resets the immune system has offered hope of a cure for lupus – a condition that affects about 50,000 people in the UK. In patients with the autoimmune condition, faulty B cells attack healthy tissue and organs, leading to symptoms including painful joints, skin rashes, extreme fatigue, and organ damage. Anti-inflammatory drugs can help control these, but they do not work for everyone. Now, though, patients taking part in a small trial of a new therapy have gone into remission.

Doctors at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and UCL removed T cells (white blood cells that destroy infected cells) from six people with severe lupus that wasn’t responding to treatment. The cells were then modified, to make them hunt down the rogue B cells, before being infused back into the patients.

Within three months, all six were in remission, and five were still in remission 12 months later, suggesting their immune system had been reset. One of them, Katie Tinkler, from Surrey, had previously been in such pain, she’d struggled even to pick up a tea cup. Since the trial, she has been skiing, and she now hopes to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. “If these results are confirmed in larger studies, the prospect of a cure for lupus may no longer be out of reach,” said lead researcher Professor Karl Peggs.

Rare sighting of the ugliest shark

With its soft flabby body, pointy head and retractable jaw that shoots out to snatch prey, the goblin shark is “arguably the ugliest shark on the planet”, one ecologist told The Guardian. It is also one of the most mysterious: the sharks, which live in the deep oceans, have rarely been seen alive, other than when accidentally hauled in by fishing vessels. Now, though, they have been observed for the first time in their natural habitat.

In 2019, a male thought to be more than 50 years old was spotted in the South Central Pacific at a depth of 1,200m. Five years later, and thousands of miles away, another goblin was filmed at a depth of 2,000 metres in the southwestern Pacific. More than 50 days of filming yielded only about 20 seconds of footage, “which is testament to how elusive this species is”, said co-author Professor Alan Jamieson. “It’s a classic case of a deep-sea animal that has very low abundance, but an absolutely massive geographical range.”

Making sperm magnetic

Scientists have developed magnetic sperm – a breakthrough that could lead to a less invasive, more natural alternative to IVF. When a man has a low sperm count, or sperm that swim poorly, couples often turn to IVF, in which the sperm and egg are combined in a dish in the lab; this involves various invasive procedures, and it is not always successful, partly because of the environment in which the sperm and egg meet, says The New Scientist.

To address this, researchers in Spain incubated sperm with nanoparticles made from iron oxide and polystyrene; about 30 stuck to each one, making the sperm magnetic. They also showed that they could steer these sperm with magnets. Their hope is that, in future, they’ll be able to use magnets to draw such sperm through a woman’s body to the fallopian tubes, where they’d fertilise the waiting egg under natural conditions.

Western Europe is experiencing a heat wave that has caused over 50 deaths in France alone. These unprecedented high temperatures, which can affect human, animal and plant health, as well as several industries, are due to a weather phenomenon known as an omega block.

What is an omega block?

An omega block is reminiscent of the shape of the Greek letter Ω, with a “bulge of warmer, settled high pressure held between two cooler low-pressure systems,” said Reuters. The high-pressure warmth is essentially “blocked” by the low-pressure systems surrounding it. As a result, “hot, still air gets lodged over the same area,” and “conditions become hot and dry.” The high pressure also “suppresses cloud formation, resulting in clear, sunny skies that allow temperatures to climb.” Omega blocks usually last between three ​and ten days, but can go on for longer.

With the current omega block, a “surge of hot, dry air from North Africa has become trapped in the atmosphere over parts of Europe,” said Time. France “recorded its hottest day since records began nearly 80 years ago, when temperatures peaked” at 111.74 Fahrenheit in the “southwestern town of Pissos,” said CBC. In Paris this week, temperatures hit a June record of 105.62 F.

The U.K., Spain, Germany, Italy and several other countries are also experiencing temperatures much hotter than normal. Across most of Western Europe, June is “warming faster than any other month,” said an analysis by World Weather Attribution (WWA). “Extreme heat is already reaching the limits of our societies’ ability to cope.”

How will heat affect the future?

Scientists have “not yet agreed upon how climate change is affecting the frequency of blocking events,” said Reuters. But the “consensus is ⁠clear that climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of heat waves.”

Climate change is responsible for driving up temperatures all over the world, but “particularly in Europe,” said the BBC. Europe is the “fastest warming continent, heating up twice as fast as the global average.” The current heat wave is also the “most severe and widespread” to have “ever affected this large a region” on the continent, said Theodore Keeping, an extreme weather research associate at Imperial College London who worked on the WWA analysis, to The Guardian.

Extreme heat, especially when mixed with high humidity, poses “risks for public health and infrastructure, as well as transport, energy and water supply,” said Time. Many industries, including tourism, have also been affected. During the recent heat wave, the “Eiffel Tower and the Louvre announced early closing times, and the Changing of the Guard outside Buckingham Palace was scaled back, without the usual ceremony of soldiers in scarlet tunics and heavy bearskin hats,” said CBC.

When it comes to health, everyone can be affected by heat, but certain groups are more at risk for heat-related illness, including babies, children and older adults. “Heat exposure and dehydration during pregnancy have also been linked to complications including premature birth, low birthweight and an increased risk of stillbirth,” said Time. Experts recommend remaining inside with the curtains closed during the hottest parts of the day and staying hydrated.

A “dark money lobbying network” bankrolled by a major donor to Reform UK has been associated with “open advocates of far-right remigration”, said Byline Times.

Aerospace tycoon Richard Smith “owns 55 Tufton Street, the Westminster townhouse that houses a cluster of opaquely funded right-wing lobby groups”. One of these, the New Culture Forum, has platformed speakers who call for “mass deportations of ethnic minority British citizens”.

“A lot of the people who have come here legally, especially over the last 30 years, and those who have been born here, they don’t belong here,” Restore Britain campaign director Charlie Downes told the forum’s podcast, “Deprogrammed”, in August 2025.

As seen in the Makerfield by-election, Reform UK is being challenged on its right by Restore, which has advocated for “reverse mass migration”. Once a fringe, far-right concept, remigration is gaining traction not only in Britain but across the world.

What is remigration?

In general terms, it describes the process of an immigrant voluntarily returning to their country of origin, said Al Jazeera. However, in a far-right context, remigration has been appropriated as a “method of ethnic cleansing”, where “all non-white people are forcibly removed from traditionally white countries”.

The idea can be traced back to Nazi Germany of the 1930s, but it was revived by French novelist Renaud Camus’ “widely debunked” 2011 book “Le Grand Remplacement”, which advocated the Great Replacement theory.

Fifteen years later, the meaning of remigration can be “elusive”, said The Economist. The term is now “less a set of policies and more a catch-all term for a vision of Europe with its ethnic and cultural identity rid of what they call ‘Afro-Arab replacement migration’”. Proponents hope to capitalise on voters who feel “uneasy at the rapid scale of demographic change they witness around them”.

Is it becoming mainstream?

Social media is both driving and reflecting the rise in messaging around remigration policies. The idea gained “mainstream visibility” last year, said the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate. During 2025, there were 952,000 mentions of the term by 303,000 unique authors on social media – more than double the year before.

Support is also becoming more visible beyond online forums. In May, more than 500 activists and influencers congregated in Portugal for Remigration Summit 2026. “VIP guests” included former US Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino and Jared Taylor, editor of white supremacist magazine American Renaissance, said Politico.

“Several thousand” anti-immigration protesters took to the streets of Rome in mid-June in support of a citizens’ initiative bill named “Remigration and Reconquest”, said Deutsche Welle. The bill, which gathered the 50,000 signatures required for discussion in parliament, includes proposals to offer foreigners financial incentives to agree to what it calls voluntary repatriation, while incentivising Italian families to have more children.

Who is pushing for it?

Many European parties have outlined their support for remigration in their election manifestos, said the Centre for the Study of Organised Hate. These include the Austrian Freedom Party, Alternative for Germany, and Dutch parties Forum for Democracy and Conservative Liberals.

Others who have expressed interest in remigration include Flemish Interest in Belgium, Lega in Italy, Vox in Spain, Alternative for Sweden, the Finns Party in Finland, and Reconquête (Reconquest) in France.

But it has also found favour in the Trump administration. In November, the official X account for the Department of Homeland Security posted that “the stakes have never been higher, and the goal has never been more clear: Remigration now”.

Does it have support in the UK?

“Millions will have to go,” said Rupert Lowe at the official launch of Restore Britain in February. The party’s manifesto promises that a legally resident foreign national in the UK who is “unable to speak English, lives in social housing, claims benefits, refuses to work, fails to integrate, commits crime or actively hates our way of life” would be deported under a Restore government.

But whether the concept has widespread appeal with the electorate is more doubtful. A YouGov poll in August last year found that 45% of Britons approved of “an immigration scenario whereby no more new migrants were admitted, and large numbers of recent migrants were required to leave”.

However, questioned on the specifics, respondents varied wildly; while 90% of those in favour supported the deportation of asylum seekers coming via small boat crossings, only 26% supported the removal of skilled migrant workers and even fewer supported expelling healthcare workers or foreign nationals who had taken British citizenship.

“You can kill children in this country,” said doctor and grieving father Jack Hawkins in The Times last year. “As long as you do it in an NHS institution, you can go back to work the next day.”

His words are felt all the more keenly now, after an official review has found that hundreds of mothers and babies died or suffered potentially avoidable harm because of “long-standing and deeply embedded systemic failures” at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. On publication of the Ockenden Report yesterday, Hawkins, whose daughter Harriet died just before birth at Nottingham City Hospital in 2016, said its findings “must be treated with the utmost seriousness”.

What does the Ockenden Report say?

As she conducted her review of the NHS trust’s maternity and neonatal services, senior midwife Donna Ockenden heard from 2,500 families and more than 800 current and former members of staff. “She found that more than 500 babies and mothers might have avoided death or serious injury if their care had not been so abysmally inadequate”, said Poppy Koronka, health correspondent at The Times.

Ockenden uncovered a “toxic” and “bullying” environment, in which women were subjected to cruelty and brutality, while misgivings about their baby’s safety were ignored. Maternity wards were dominated by a “small minority of powerful leaders who had been allowed on ‘infect‘ the unit” and bully patients and staff. She described labouring mothers-to-be being “coerced” into inductions or interventions or told to stay at home “potentially longer than it was safe to do so”.

Nearly 30 pages of the 400-page report describe Harriet Hawkins’ case because, Ockenden said, her parents’ experience bore so many “hallmarks” of the way other families were consistently “cruelly” treated. An external review in 2018, commissioned after Jack and Sarah Hawkins challenged the hospital’s internal review, found that doctors and midwives had missed 13 opportunities to save Harriet’s life.

Ockenden also found evidence of “recurring examples of failure to protect the dignity” of women and children who had died. Bodies, including that of Harriet Hawkins, were allowed to decompose badly or were “disposed of as clinical waste”. One mother was told that her premature baby, who had died in 2020, was a boy but, five months later, received post-mortem results showing her child was actually a girl. The mother had “already buried the baby as a boy in a blue coffin”, said the report, and “given the baby a boy’s name, which she had tattooed on her body”.

How could this happen?

There was rarely a single issue or a particular failing, concluded the report. Instead there were multiple factors, including failure to monitor unwell babies, incorrect analyses of foetal heart monitoring, poor training, a lack of oversight, poor escalation procedures and a failure to recognise when a baby was in distress during labour.

Pregnant and labouring women repeatedly described feeling unheard, inadequately informed and unsupported, particularly when they were reporting reduced foetal movements or other medical complications. The Trust’s board and leaders were aware of failing maternity services for more than a decade but “sidelined or ignored” them, regarding the issues as “too difficult” or “of insufficient priority” to address.

The Trust’s chair and CEO have now issued an open letter, addressed to “the people and communities of Nottinghamshire”, in which they apologise “unreservedly to the women and families who have suffered harm, loss, trauma or distress while receiving care in our services”.

What can be done?

Ockenden has called for a series of “immediate and essential” measures to “directly address the failings” her team has identified, including urgent improvements to risk management and monitoring, plus strengthening of escalation protocols, communication and safe transfer of care.

She also recommended strengthening neonatal care with better training on spotting the signs of serious illness, and improving post-death care and bereavement processes.

Health Secretary James Murray has apologised on behalf of the NHS and said “no options are off the table” in terms of next steps. He did indicate, however, that the government might wait until the end of the year to develop any action plan. Ockenden has urged ministers to act sooner, saying: “How much more harm may happen in this country? We don’t have the luxury of six months.”

Andy Burnham is preparing his bid for No. 10 after returning to Parliament as a Labour MP.

Burnham is “widely considered a frontrunner”, said The Independent, but now that Keir Starmer has announced his resignation, there are still a couple more weeks for other leadership candidates to throw their hats in the ring.

Some voters, though, are “terrified”, said The Sun, at what a perceived “hard-left Burnham government will do to their bank balances”.

Tax

Labour’s manifesto promise not to increase the rates of income tax, VAT or employee national insurance contributions “will stay”, said The Times, but Burnham has suggested he would raise the £12,570 tax-free personal income allowance for workers.

The former Greater Manchester mayor told the BBC’s Question Time that the personal allowance had been a topic raised “on so many doorsteps” and that, as a result, he would be willing to “have a proper look at this” to develop policy.

Inheritance tax changes “could also be a possibility”, said MoneyWeek, highlighting that, as health secretary in 2009, Burnham suggested a flat 10% charge applied to all estates, “with the money being used to fund social care for all”.

And, in a move that will “terrify middle England”, said The Sun, he has floated reintroducing the “hated” 50p top rate of tax.

Property taxes

Burnham has also “shown enthusiasm for taxing wealth more heavily”, said IFA Magazine.

Writing for The Guardian in 2010, Burnham proposed a land value tax on the market rental value of land. He argued this would “allow for the abolition of stamp duty”.

Such a move would “discourage land hoarding and encourage productive development”, said Tembo Money, but it could raise “legitimate concerns about fairness” for “asset-rich, income-poor homeowners” who might find it difficult to meet higher annual bills.

Mortgages

The credibility of Burnham in the markets, said Sky News, “will matter most for our borrowing costs”.

Burnham has sought to reassure bond investors that he will stick to the government’s existing fiscal rules. But if doubts were to emerge in markets, “mortgage borrowers could be among those to feel the consequences”, said the Financial Times.

Any massive spending plans outlined by Burnham could “trigger a bond market meltdown”, said The Sun, which would push fixed mortgage rates up.

Pensions

In good news for pensioners, Burnham has “reaffirmed the government’s commitment to the triple lock”, said Morningstar, despite “intense scrutiny” of the policy.

But he could use changes to pension tax relief or reductions in the pension tax-free lump sum as a “means of targeting wealth, and raising revenue, without deploying headline wealth taxes”.

The importance of the chancellor 

The “choice of chancellor” will also influence how bond markets react, said The Independent. Currently, Rachel Reeves is seen “as stable, consistent and predictable – all things the market likes”.

A chancellor with a “reputation for fiscal discipline” might “reassure markets”, said MoneyWeek, but a “less disciplined” candidate “could have the opposite effect”.

Credit is a decisive factor in your financial life. The three-digit number influences everything, from whether you are approved for a loan to whether you can rent an apartment or even get hired for some jobs.

With the stakes that high, it’s important to be clear-eyed about what does and does not influence your credit score. The problem: There are a number of credit-related myths floating around that commonly trip people up. Here are some big ones to watch out for.

Myth #1: It boosts your score to carry a balance.

“Nearly 6 in 10 cardholders (59%) say carrying a small balance on their cards will improve their score,” said LendingTree, based on a recent survey it conducted. But this is broadly not true. “In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true.” Carrying a balance from month to month will not only lead you to pay interest on that amount, but it can also drive up your credit utilization rate, which, when high, negatively impacts your credit score.

Myth #2: Checking your credit score can lower it.

When you check your credit score — a good financial habit to have, actually — it does not affect your score. The misunderstanding here is likely due to a lack of clarity around soft credit pulls and hard credit pulls. “Checking your credit score is considered a ‘soft pull,’ which doesn’t affect your credit score,” said CNBC Select. Instead, it is “actions, such as applying for a credit card,” that involve a hard pull, which is what “temporarily dings your credit score.”

Myth #3: Closing an account will improve your score.

Paying off an account in full and then closing it, or doing the same for an account you no longer use, may seem like good credit hygiene. But in actuality, it can have the opposite effect on your score. That is because when you do so, “your score may take a hit if your credit utilization ratio drops,” said Bankrate. Additionally, the “length of your credit history may change, which could also negatively affect your score,” especially if the account you closed was one of your older ones.

Myth #4: Your income affects your credit score.

When lenders are reviewing your application for a credit card or a loan, they will likely take into consideration your income, as that influences your ability to repay the amount borrowed. Your income does not, however, have a bearing on your credit score. Put simply, “your salary and income are considered measurements of your capacity to pay bills, not your potential credit risk,” said CNBC Select.

Factors that do influence your score include your payment history, credit utilization rate, length of credit history, mix of account types and applications for new credit.

Another prime minister resigning from office adds to the “unprecedented instability in the modern history” of Britain, said an editorial in Le Monde.

Following his announcement on Monday, Starmer will still “seek to make his final mark on the world stage as a lame-duck prime minister”, said Politico. But a planned EU-UK summit on 22 July has been postponed amid indecision over Britain’s intentions regarding the continent.

With Starmer’s imminent departure, and many of the policies of his likely successor Andy Burnham as yet unknown, Britain’s instability is having tangible consequences on the world stage.

How was Starmer viewed?

“God save the king and this desolate land of the United Kingdom,” said Antonello Guerrera in La Repubblica. Since Starmer was elected in 2024, he has appeared a “robotic and insipid leader” on the domestic front. He has “always been a Hamlet: paralysed by indecision, doubt, and sunk by tragic ineptitude”. And on Monday, “the curtain fell”.

But, aside from being “humiliated” by Donald Trump on social media, many world leaders thanked Starmer for his service, including his “staunch ally” Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his “comrade” Emmanuel Macron, and Giorgia Meloni. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, paid tribute, saying: “It can take many leaders years to grow into the statesman you became in just two years.”

“Pragmatic, cool and rational”, Starmer embodied a strain of “anti-politics” and could get the job done without a fuss, said Enrico Franceschini in La Republicca. But these qualities were eroded by a “lack of charisma, the inability to communicate, and the limited political vision of a prime minister animated by good intentions but unable to implement them”.

Where did it go wrong?

“Beleaguered” Starmer’s tenure was “troubled” from the outset, said Euronews. From failing to declare gifts in the first few months of his premiership, to appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, to numerous policy U-turns on “welfare reform, introducing digital IDs and scrapping winter fuel payments”: his time in office was “littered with controversy”.

Starmer was also “undone by economic stagnation” and “underspending on defence”, said Quentin Letts in The Washington Post. But perhaps the reason he stayed in power so long was that there was “no obvious answer” as to who could replace him.

Fundamentally, Starmer “broke his promise of stability” and “orchestrated constant changes of strategy”, said Claudi Pérez in El País. In his defence, he inherited a “poisoned chalice” of “stagnant” growth, but overall, like “bad tennis players”, he made “too many unforced errors”.

Is Britain an isolated case?

Since Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016, No. 10 has become a “hot seat”, said Deutsche Welle. Whoever succeeds Starmer will be the seventh leader in that period, and will be “grappling with profound political, economic, and social problems”.

Before Starmer, according to Der Spiegel, the UK had “gambler” David Cameron, someone who tried to “pick up the pieces” in Theresa May, the “scandals”-ridden Boris Johnson, a “zigzag” six-week tenure from Liz Truss, and a leader of “negative momentum” in Rishi Sunak. Downing Street has become a “transit station”.

But the rest of Europe is equally fractured, said Pérez in El País. Since the financial crisis in 2008, there has been a “collapse” of centrist parties in Europe. France has had seven prime ministers in the past eight years, and in Germany, Friedrich Merz’s popularity is “plummeting” and the “grand coalition is falling apart”. Further afield, the US’ “politics are a mess”.

Is the future brighter with Burnham?

The “charismatic” Burnham is a “rising star”, with “decades of experience in national and regional politics”, said DW. And he is perhaps the “last hope to counter the rising right-wing populists of Reform UK”.

The new MP for Makerfield provides a “glimmer of hope” for the UK, said Pérez in El País, not least because he is in favour of “resetting the relationship with the EU”. That is the “greatest reform this country needs”. It has been “plagued by a nauseating post-imperial nostalgia, an epidemic of fear, and a mediocre political class that has been hitting rock bottom for almost 20 years”.

Burnham “may well prove a more skilled rider”, said The Washington Post. But each of the last six prime ministers “arrived promising to be the exception to the merry-go-round of predecessors and unquenchable voter rage”. And he “won’t have much time to figure it out”.

Andy Burnham appears to be heading to No. 10 unopposed after Keir Starmer resigned on Monday and his main leadership rival rowed in behind him.

With the new PM set to be in place by the time Parliament returns from summer recess at the start of September, attention is already turning to who the key players could be in a Burnham government, and what their appointment says for its likely direction.

Ed Miliband

The energy secretary and former Labour leader has long coveted the role of chancellor and had been widely seen as the frontrunner to replace Rachel Reeves. He has been a “key champion of Burnham with the parliamentary party and shares the same desire for Labour to enact more radical change, from tax overhaul to public control of utilities”, said The Guardian.

Yet Miliband’s opposition to further North Sea oil and gas licences and strict adherence to net zero commitments, even as energy bills have rocketed, has made him increasingly unpopular with the trade unions and wider public.

Burnham “may have cooled on the idea” of appointing Miliband to the Treasury, said The i Paper, but expect him to get another big position in government even if he misses out on his dream job.

Wes Streeting

Another name being touted as a potential chancellor is one-time PM leadership rival Wes Streeting. The former health secretary, who resigned from Cabinet last month, has withdrawn from the leadership contest and decided to back Burnham, saying on X that the new MP for Makerfield is “committed to building an inclusive party that draws on the best of our political traditions”.

One of Labour’s best communicators, with a compelling personal story, but hailing from the right of the party, his appointment as chancellor or to another top Cabinet job could “align the competing wings of the party” and “show – or at least give the impression – that Labour is more united than voters think”, said Mauricio Alencar, politics and economics reporter for City A.M.

Louise Haigh

The former transport secretary was forced to quit just months after Labour took office in 2024 over a prior fraud conviction, but has now emerged as a “crucial power broker” on the backbenches for the party’s “soft left”, said BBC chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman.

She was “at the heart of the huge rebellion which scuppered the government’s welfare cuts in 2025”, led Burnham’s Makerfield by-election campaign, and is “in line for a big cabinet job”.

Miatta Fahnbulleh

The MP for Peckham has been one of Burnham’s most vocal supporters in Parliament. A former civil servant who ran the left-wing New Economics Foundation think tank, Fahnbulleh resigned as a junior minister for communities in the aftermath of the May local elections.

Hailing from the Labour left, she has “thrown her weight behind a number of highly controversial economic policies including imposing a wealth tax, nationalising several public companies across water and transport, rolling out further green financing and taxing other streams of income more”, said Alencar. Understood to be helping Burnham work on policy, she is a “rising star” in the party and has even been touted as a dark-horse bet for chancellor, in what would be a “radical break from Starmer’s premiership”.

Anneliese Midgley

Relatively unknown outside Labour circles, Midgley was elected MP for Knowsley, near Makerfield, only in 2024 but has been an “influential force in the Labour movement for much longer than that”, said Zeffman. She worked for both Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn in opposition and before that at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and Unite.

She is seen as a “plausible candidate” for chief whip or even political secretary in Downing Street, “not a job usually held by an elected politician”.

The pound fell and government borrowing costs rose after Keir Starmer’s resignation announcement this morning. As Andy Burnham moves closer to power, there is concern in the financial markets that the government will soon start tinkering with its current strict fiscal rules on borrowing and spending.

What are the fiscal rules?

First introduced by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997, and now in their 10th iteration, the fiscal rules are restrictions set by the government to constrain its own decisions on taxes and spending. They are intended to act as a check on politicians seeking to borrow more in the short term, leaving future generations to deal with the consequences. And they also signal to investors and taxpayers a commitment to responsible management of public finances.

Rachel Reeves set out this Labour government’s iteration of the fiscal rules in October 2024. There are three main rules: that the current government budget should be in balance or in surplus by 2029-30; that national debt should be lower as a share of the economy in 2029-30 than in 2028-9, and that some welfare spending must be subject to a (fairly loose) cap.

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility effectively marks the Treasury’s spreadsheets to see if these fiscal rules are being met. The government is currently on track to do so.

What are the issues with fiscal rules?

While clear fiscal rules can burnish a Chancellor’s credibility and reassure the financial sector, they must be possible to meet – or the markets will punish the government, as Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss found out to their cost.

Chancellors setting reasonable rules can still “be prone to wishful thinking,” said Sean O’Grady in The Independent, permitting themselves huge deficits to be balanced in future years by “unspecified cuts in public spending”. Or they can “lock themselves into a fiscal straitjacket” like Reeves did with her party’s “commitment not to raise income tax, VAT and national insurance contributions”.

The whole approach to a fiscal policy based around “pass-fail” rules needs a “rethink”, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies in February. The “fixation” with “creating ‘headroom’” against rigid rules leads to “dysfunctional” policy-making, and “aggressive ‘gaming’ of rolling targets”. A more nuanced monitoring framework of “fiscal traffic lights” could “reduce the incentive for governments to contort policy in pursuit of a particular ‘headroom‘ number”, and allow for the delivery of “more sustainable public finances”.

What might Andy Burnham do?

During his by-election campaign, Burnham committed to Reeves’ current fiscal rules, after previous suggestions he’d made about changing them caused a bond market wobble. But, with No. 10 now in his sights, there are signs that he could try to give himself more leeway.

He has been “taking advice” from former Bank of England economist Andy Haldane and former Goldman Sachs chair Jim O’Neill, said Bloomberg. Both have been calling for looser fiscal rules for some time. O’Neill has called the constraints “petty and arbitrary”, and Haldane has said the case for changing them is “overwhelming”.

Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary who masterminded Burnham’s Makerfield campaign, has also been vocal in her criticism of Britain’s fiscal framework. In an essay she wrote for a political journal last week, she called for the Treasury’s debt target to “have a longer horizon of about 10 years”, which “would potentially create more room for investment without formally abandoning the rubric”, said Bloomberg.

How the market reacts to any change in fiscal rules would “depend as much on timing and presentation as substance” – and on “the person Burnham appoints as Chancellor”. Reeves is expected to depart with Keir Starmer, and financial markets are waiting to see if she is replaced by someone from the “soft left” of the party, like Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, or from the right, such as former health secretary Wes Streeting.

“In reality, any set of fiscal rules is only really an expression of what investors are prepared to put up with in return for lending Britain money at an affordable rate of interest,” said The Independent’s O’Grady. Financial markets remain both “the unseen authors” and “the ultimate watchdogs” of fiscal rules. And “they have sharp teeth”.

Under the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire agreed last October, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) withdrew to a demarcation line known as the “yellow line”, and retained control of some 53% of Gaza. Nearly all of Gaza’s two million residents are living in Hamas-controlled areas, where the militant group has tightened its grip: since the turn of the year, it has extended its control over security, tax revenue and government services.

In the meantime, Israeli forces have pushed the yellow line steadily into Hamas-controlled areas. PM Benjamin Netanyahu recently confirmed that Israeli forces now control about 60% of Gaza, and that he hopes to increase that to 70% (though Israel officially denies that it wants to occupy the strip permanently).

In at least one place, Israel has moved the yellow line to intersect with Salah al-Din Road, Gaza’s main north-south artery.

What were the terms of the ceasefire?

In theory, Israel and Hamas stopped fighting on 10 October. Under Phase One of the deal, Hamas agreed to return the last 20 hostages it had taken during its attack on Israel in October 2023, while Israel agreed to release 1,950 Palestinian prisoners, mostly Gazans. Israel also allowed aid delivery to resume.

Under the second phase of the deal, announced by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in January, military control was to be handed over to an International Stabilisation Force, and civilian affairs to a Palestinian-led technocratic administration. The IDF was meant to withdraw further; Hamas was meant to disarm; and international funds were to be provided for Gaza’s rebuilding.

Why has progress stalled?

Israel refused to withdraw before Hamas disarmed, arguing that it would leave a security vacuum that a technocratic administration or international force could not fill. It also complains that the remains of dead hostages have not been returned. The Palestinians, and Arab mediators, regard this as a violation of the ceasefire deal. And though the intensity of fighting in Gaza – at least 70,000 Palestinians were killed in the two years to October – has slowed greatly since the ceasefire took effect, it has not stopped. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 900 Palestinians have been killed there since October 2025; a substantial proportion of these deaths occurred near the yellow line. Five Israeli soldiers have also been killed in Gaza.

How are conditions in Gaza?

The vast majority of Gaza’s occupants – about 1.7 million – are still living in tents or makeshift accommodation, according to the UN. Overcrowded campsites are afflicted by raw sewage and pests such as rats and weasels.

The World Health Organisation says there have been reports of some 111,500 cases of disease or infestation due to external parasites this year. About 728,000 school-aged children have been out of formal education for almost three years. Only about half of hospitals are even partially functional. Thousands of patients needing medical treatment have been evacuated to more than 30 countries, including through the Rafah Border Crossing into Egypt, which reopened in February.

Meanwhile, aid agencies continue to have trouble making humanitarian deliveries to Gaza; they were halted last week following Iranian attacks on Israel. Food shortages continue, and one in five families are eating only once a day, the UN says.

Is any rebuilding taking place?

Ahead of the ceasefire, Donald Trump and his aides talked of turning Gaza into a gleaming hub for trade, tourism and tech. The “Board of Peace” unveiled by Trump in September was supposed to oversee the reconstruction, which the UN estimates could cost more than $70 billion. But so far, no contracts to clear the rubble and start rebuilding have been awarded, while the Board of Peace is struggling with funding shortfalls.

Meanwhile, Israel is razing buildings on its side of the yellow line (it says it is taking down uninhabitable buildings, and destroying structures that could pose a threat to Israel and the IDF).

How strong is Hamas now?

During the war, Hamas lost roughly 10,000 fighters, most of its political top echelon, and nearly the entire military command council that planned the massacres of 7 October 2023. Prior to the war, however, it had run Gaza since 2007 – and it has used the truce to rebuild. It immediately launched a crackdown on rival gangs that had taken control in parts of Gaza City and Rafah.

By February, it had largely reasserted control over the population: traders say Hamas fighters routinely extort fees and taxes from them. Israeli intelligence assessments now suggest that Hamas has rebuilt some of its infrastructure, including sections of its underground tunnel network and command-and-control systems.

Are there any signs of diplomatic progress?

Talks designed to push the ceasefire plan forward began in Cairo last week. According to a draft text, Hamas would hand its weapons over to an agreed Palestinian authority, in return for Israel announcing a timetable for its departure from Gaza. However, these proposals have not been accepted by the US or Israel, which has reportedly drawn up plans for a new round of attacks on Gaza, to begin when the war with Iran ends.

What other challenges are there?

The US is distracted by the Iran conflict. Netanyahu is seeking re-election by late October, and is unlikely to view an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as politically expedient; ministers in his coalition have long talked of overseeing the “voluntary migration” of Gazans from the enclave. Gazans are very concerned that Israel now controls much of their territory, including around 60% of its fertile agricultural land, the majority of its water wells, and some of its wastewater facilities.

The government is pressing ahead with an AI tool used to check the ages of migrant children despite warnings from its own advisers that it is “hideously inaccurate”, said The Independent.

The Home Office announced last month that facial age estimation (FAE) technology would be used by immigration officers from 2027 to “crack down on fake claims by small boat arrivals posing as children”, but two reports have identified serious problems with it.

How does FAE work?

AI-powered FAE tools have been used to prevent children from accessing age-restricted goods and services, including cigarettes, alcohol and adult-only online content.

Now, the “hardening politics around asylum” has opened a new market with “far higher stakes” – using AI to determine whether undocumented migrants are under or over 18, said Lighthouse Reports, in collaboration with The Independent and Wired.

A photograph is fed into an AI system and goes through several layers of analysis, each picking up “increasingly subtle patterns”, said Oli Buckley, a cybersecurity professor at Loughborough University, on The Conversation.

The system, which is “trained on millions of photographs of people whose ages are already known”, has learned to associate patterns in a face with likely age ranges. It studies skin texture, the depth of lines around the eyes, bone structure and the distribution of soft tissue, before delivering a “probability distribution”, which is closer to “most likely between 17 and 21” than “this person is 18.”

All of this matters because at the UK border, deciding whether someone is 17 or 19 is a very “consequential judgment”. If you “get it wrong one way”, a “vulnerable child” loses legal protections they’re “entitled to”, but “if it’s wrong in the other direction”, then an adult “enters a system designed for minors”.

What are the issues?

The technology misclassified more than a third of 16-year-olds as adults and in some tests it was shown to give the wrong assessment in 70% of cases, according to an audit by Lighthouse Reports.

A separate, leaked report, which the Home Office tried to withhold, found the technology is least accurate when trying to assess migrants from countries such as Eritrea and Sudan, which have the highest number of small boat migrants arriving in the UK. This has led to accusations that the technology has “baked-in racial bias”, said The Independent.

The report also warned that “error rates are particularly high for female child migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa”. Estimations were out by 4.6 years on average – “meaning a 14-year-old girl could be predicted to be an adult”. The AI tool could also be less accurate for people with visible ageing caused by “stress of travel”.

Will it still be used?

The Home Office said it has “rigorous processes in place to verify an individual’s age” and the “groundbreaking assistive tool is designed as an additional source of information for immigration officers, and does not replace or overrule human judgment”.

But Anna Bacciarelli, senior researcher on technology, rights and investigations at Human Rights Watch, told Lighthouse Reports that this was of little reassurance because of the “well-established phenomenon” of automation bias, where people tend to trust a computer’s decision over their own judgment.

The UK’s use of the technology sets a “dangerous precedent”, she said, and “other countries at entry points across Europe are likely to follow suit”. As a result, “use of this inaccurate and invasive technology could become widespread”.

“Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” said Donald Trump on social media after he announced the signing of an interim peace deal with Iran on Sunday. Under the agreement – which Iran acknowledged included a 60-day negotiating period for a final deal – the president said that following retrieval of mines, there would be a “toll free opening” of the Strait of Hormuz.

But many of the finer details remain “unclear”, said The Guardian. There are questions over the “exact timing of the reopening of the maritime route, who will oversee safe passage and whether any conditions will be applied”.

Financial markets have welcomed the announcement, but further volatility could yet hit people’s pockets.

Have oil prices changed?

The price of oil fell to about $83 (£62) per barrel following Sunday’s announcement, its “lowest since the early days of the war”. Then on Tuesday it dipped below $80. In February, before the first missiles struck Iran, each barrel cost around $73. The price peaked at around $120 at the height of the conflict.

Prices are expected to fall in the wake of a prolonged ceasefire, and there are “real grounds for optimism”, said Politico. Damage to oil-specific infrastructure has been “limited”, meaning it could take “as little as six weeks to resume outflows”.

“So that’s the energy crisis sorted, right?” Not so fast.” A combination of damage to wider infrastructure and the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz has meant roughly 12 million fewer barrels of oil have been produced each day. And they “won’t magically reappear on the market even if the pact holds”.

Will this continue?

The “first big test” of the deal will be whether shipping companies will have enough “confidence” to return the use of the strait to pre-war levels, said The New York Times. If successful, this will free the 250 tankers and 330 cargo ships trapped in the Gulf, according to the BBC, and transport oil around the world. Oil and gas producers in the Gulf nations would then need to re-establish “wells, refineries and other infrastructure”.

Even if all of that were to materialise, European and Asian countries who have historically depended on oil from the region “will face a long wait”. Processing oil takes considerable time. “It is unlikely that the prices of gasoline, diesel and other fuels will return to pre-war levels anytime soon.”

What about inflation?

Despite air fares “surging” and fuel costs “tipping higher”, UK inflation remained at 2.8% in May, said The Independent. This was a “surprise” to economists, who had widely predicted a rise to 3% and “perhaps even beyond” due in part to the war in Iran.

Remaining at this level could imply that the “cost-of-living squeeze will not play out as badly as had been anticipated” earlier this year, even if the “Iran war sent energy costs spiralling”. However, prices are set to rise again later in 2026, leaving savers to make sure their investments are earning an interest rate “well above the rate of inflation”.

What does this mean for consumers?

Food prices in the UK look to be rising more slowly. Should the Strait of Hormuz open freely, fertiliser, which has “soared in costs” and put pressure on farmers, could fall substantially, said the BBC. Jet fuel has already seen a “small fall in price”, with Northwest Europe jet fuel trading at $1,033 (£780) per tonne, compared with $831 pre-conflict and around $1,840 at its peak.

How will businesses be affected?

Beneath the “encouraging headlines” about inflation control, there is a “hidden crisis for businesses”, said The Telegraph. The Iran war triggered one of the largest energy shocks in history, meaning businesses were “swallowing soaring costs to spare shoppers”.

“Input rises” for producers climbed by “8.7% year on year in May”, larger than the 7.9% in April and the highest in more than three years. On the bright side, this means the economy may avoid a dreaded “wage-price spiral”, but conversely lower margins could lead to increased pressure on the employment market.

The upcoming release of the UK’s first weight-loss pill, Wegovy, has been described as “game-changing” by a leading pharmacy provider.

“We’ve already seen record demand ahead of the expected launch”, said James O’Loan, chief executive of Chemist4U. With the majority of people expressing interest in the new obesity treatment not being previous users of weight-loss injections, this indicated that the new pill “could widen access to millions of people across the country”.

How does it work?

Made by Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, the pill is an oral version of weight-loss medicine Wegovy, containing the same active ingredient, semaglutide.

Where GLP-1 injections “pass directly into the bloodstream, the pill has to first be absorbed through the stomach”. This is possible through “scientific innovation, creating a way of encapsulating semaglutide and shielding it from stomach acid”, said The Telegraph’s health and medical journalist David Cox.

As with injections, the Wegovy pill “mimics the effects of a gut hormone called GLP-1, released after eating, which regulates appetite and signals a feeling of fullness”.

The pill is taken daily, compared to the weekly injection, and comes in different doses which can be steadily increased each month.

How effective is it?

Early tests suggest it has a similar effect to injectable Wegovy. After 64 weeks, adults taking the pill lost an average of 14% to 17% of body weight, with about one in three people losing 20% or more.

Regulatory guidelines from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency state that only people classified as clinically obese, with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of more than 30, or those who are overweight (BMI of 27-30) with at least one weight-related health condition such as high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes, will be eligible to receive the drug.

How much will it cost?

To start with, it will be available in the UK only on prescription privately and not free on the NHS. While exact prices are yet to be set, Robert Bradshaw, a superintendent pharmacist at Oxford Online Pharmacy, told The Telegraph he expects the Wegovy pill to “come in roughly at the same price as the injections”.

“I suspect the pill will be priced somewhere around about £80 to start with, progressing to £130 [for the intermediate dose], and maybe £160 for the top dose.”

With other drug companies developing their own weight-loss pills, however, “competition could also drive down the costs of treatment, as first-generation drugs, or those that offer slightly poorer top-line results, command lower prices”, said The Economist. Some government-funded health systems are likely to make “population-scale deals in the coming years, which could broaden access” further.

Are there any side-effects?

“These are similar whatever the version and related to levels of the drugs in the blood rather than how they are administered,” said Dr Mark Porter in The Times. Common side effects include “nausea and vomiting (slightly more common with the pill version), diarrhoea and/or constipation and abdominal discomfort, but these generally settle once people get used to the medicine”.

The much rarer but more serious side-effects “such as gallbladder problems (stones), inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis) and visual problems (optic neuropathy) probably remain the same as with injectables”.

But with the latest NHS statistics suggesting 66% of all people over 16 in England are overweight, and with obesity rates “continuing to spiral”, doctors are “optimistic that the emergence of GLP-1 tablets can serve as a major boost to public health”, said The Telegraph.

And globally, if generic semaglutide were made available to everyone with obesity and diabetes, it could save between 2.1 million and 3.1 million lives a year, according to one model, said The Economist.

Artificial intelligence has become part of our daily lives, and many younger users are turning to it for help with managing their money.

Research by Fidelity International found that more than a third of 18- to 34-year-olds use AI when making investment choices.

AI tools are useful for “opening access”, said MoneyWeek, for those who may not understand investing or just want to check financial information. But there are limits on “how good AI is at giving advice”.

Analysis by consumer watchdog Which? found that AI tools can “make mistakes, misread information and even give risky advice”. That means relying on it too much “could prove costly”.

Seek basic financial education

Many people “feel shame” about their lack of money knowledge, said Moneybox’s director of personal finance Brian Byrnes in The Independent. AI can help “remove this barrier” and assist with “translating and explaining complex finance jargon into plain English” without any judgement.

AI can also be useful for “getting a better understanding of financial topics”, said NerdWallet, such as basic information on budgeting, estate planning or insurance.

Don’t rely on AI for tailored financial advice

Despite the access to information, said Byrnes, you should “never rely on these tools for actionable financial or tax advice”.

Analysis by Which? found that AI tools can come up with “glaring errors”, such as getting the ISA allowance wrong, and they may provide “incomplete advice”.

More importantly, AI tools aren’t regulated to give advice, and won’t know your goals, your tax position, your time horizon or how you actually feel about risk. Crucially, “it can’t take responsibility if the guidance is wrong”, unlike a regulated financial adviser, said MoneyWeek.

Double-check information

AI tools can “sound confident even when they’re wrong”, said MoneyHelper, so you should always check information against “trusted sources”.

It is best to view AI as a “well-meaning but sloppy assistant”, said Fidelity International: “eager to please you but potentially happy to take shortcuts”.

Don’t give away sensitive information

There are also data and privacy risks with AI, as your information may be stored, and personal data could be misused, said MoneyHelper. As a result, it is wise to “keep anything sensitive to yourself”, including account details.

You wouldn’t hand over credit card details to a stranger, said Byrnes in The Independent, so “take the same approach when you are thinking about your personal financial information online”.

Another major data centre has been given the green light in the UK, further cementing the country’s status as Europe’s AI front-runner. The government has approved a data centre on a huge green-belt site in Slough, Berkshire, despite claims it could derail the project to build Heathrow’s third runway.

The company had appealed after the council refused to rule on the project, which it said would sit in “one of the most fragile and vulnerable parts of the green belt around London”. Since coming to power, Labour has “repeatedly bypassed local authorities to support data centre developments”, said The Telegraph. Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, said that there was a “continuing and unprecedented demand” for such projects.

How many data centres are there in the UK?

The UK is at the forefront of Europe’s data centre roll-out; it hosts 523 out of the continent’s 2,269 data centres as of last year, said Euronews. It is “striking” that China (home to 449 centres), “despite its strength as a technology and innovation power”, ranks behind the UK, as well as Germany (529 centres).

However, all three are dwarfed by the US, which last year boasted 5,427 data centres. The only other countries with more than 300 centres are Canada, France and Australia.

What’s the latest?

A multibillion-pound AI data centre in Wales was jeopardised by “ministerial dithering”, said The Telegraph. British data centre company Era4 said it had secured permission and financing for the project at the former Liberty Steel works in Newport, but that the “project had faced months of delays” because Kanishka Narayan, the AI minister, “failed to push through permission for it to access power from a nearby battery plant”.

Era4 said the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology had given “no indication of when a decision would be made or that the project would be approved”. Tom Humphreys, Era4’s chief executive, said the company was looking at sites in Europe as an alternative.

Other tech companies have also “complained of a struggle to build AI infrastructure in Britain”, said the paper. OpenAI recently announced it was pausing work on a data centre in the north of England due to high energy costs.

What’s planned for the future?

The number of data centres in the UK is set to increase by almost a fifth over the next five years, said the BBC last year, when there were already an estimated 477. Work on the biggest, a £10 billion data centre near Newcastle for US wealth management firm Blackstone Group, is due to begin in 2031. It will involve “10 giant buildings” covering more than half a million square metres – “the size of several large shopping centres”.

The majority will be built in London and neighbouring counties, despite “concerns about the huge amount of energy and water” they’ll consume, as well as the “potential knock-on effect” on domestic energy bills.

How much environmental impact do they have?

Officials recently admitted that Britain’s data centre boom could “draw 40% more electricity than thought a few months ago”, said The Times. More than 100 data centres are seeking grid connections for 50 gigawatts of electricity capacity – “more than the whole of Britain’s peak demand on a typical day”. MPs are calling for a “national conversation on the environmental impacts”.

“The previous projections were already unfathomable,” said Oliver Hayes, head of policy and campaigns at environmental charity Global Action Plan. Adding 40% on top is absurd.”

There are also concerns about the burning of fossil fuels to meet power demand, potentially jeopardising climate goals. There has been a “marked shift over the past year in willingness of UK developers – and authorities – to consider using fossil fuels to power the UK’s AI ambitions”, said The Guardian. More than 100 new UK data centres plan to burn gas, said “some potentially doing so permanently”.

With many in the Trump administration pushing an anti-vaccine agenda, declining measles vaccination rates have forced scientists to reinvigorate the hunt for a drug that could fight the virus. While the FDA has not approved any measles drugs yet, researchers seem hopeful that a breakthrough is on the horizon.

Why are researchers revamping the measles drug search?

For a long time, the quest to create a measles drug was essentially dormant, as the virus “had been kept at bay in the United States for more than two decades thanks to a remarkably effective vaccine,” said The New York Times. But in 2025, amid anti-vaccine sentiment from the White House, a “series of outbreaks popped up in unvaccinated communities across the country,” marking the worst year for measles in the U.S. since 1991.

The outbreak led to a “‘very crowded’ hunt for new measles therapeutics that could prevent or treat infections,” said the Times. Currently, if an unvaccinated individual contracts the measles, doctors can “offer ways to manage symptoms, which often include fever, fatigue, cough and a hallmark blotchy rash,” said Science News. But they “can’t fight off the virus itself.”

How far away is an approved measles drug?

There have been several breakthroughs from various scientific groups, and many feel that FDA approval of a measles drug is imminent. At least one antiviral drug, GHP-88310, was recently shown to “help treat measles, croup and other related viral diseases that cause contagious and life-threatening respiratory infections,” said The Independent. The drug is the “most promising inhibitor” of this virus family that causes measles “we have encountered in years of research,” Carolin Lieber, a senior postdoctoral fellow at Georgia State University’s Center for Translational Antiviral Research, said in a statement.

GHP-88310, which is taken orally, could “offer a much-needed option to treat measles in the midst of increasing endemic transmission in the U.S. and throughout the world due to vaccine hesitancy,” said Drug Discovery News. The drug could provide an alternative to the typical measles defense mechanism, ring vaccination, in which “direct and social contacts around an infected person are vaccinated.” But with “increasing vaccine hesitancy in some population groups, ring vaccination is no longer a viable option in some communities.”

The success of the drug doesn’t necessarily mean it will become ubiquitous as a measles treatment, partially due to people’s feelings about the disease. “One of the biggest misunderstandings about measles is that it’s ‘not that bad,’” Kathryn Hastie, a structural virologist at San Diego’s La Jolla Institute for Immunology, said to Science News. The virus instead can “cause a range of complications that can severely impact people’s lives, including pneumonia and blindness.”

Another company, Saravir, is developing its own measles antibody treatment. The medication could be a “potential multi-billion dollar market opportunity,” Dr. Ronald Moss, Saravir’s CEO, told the Times. Moss estimates there are 44 million people in the U.S. and EU who are “uniquely vulnerable to measles,” and if even a small portion of that group is exposed, it’s a “pretty big population that we would want to protect.” Still, the antibody treatment and other measles drugs could be cost-prohibitive. If the “drug makes it through trials,” said the Times, Saravir “expects the infusions to cost roughly $2,500.”

Under-16s in the UK will be banned from social media under radical new plans set out by the prime minister today.

In a televised speech in Downing Street, Keir Starmer said he was “calling time on a system that’s failing our kids”. And while this was not a “cost-free decision”, governing “is always about choices, and it’s clear to me that a full ban is the right choice”.

Polling by YouGov suggests broad public support for the decision, with 77% of parents backing a ban. But parents were also split on whether a ban would work, with 45% of those surveyed saying it would be effective and 46% disagreeing.

How will it work?

The UK ban will cover the most popular social media platforms, including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), but not encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal.

The government says it will “go further than any other country”, with its policy also including blocks on live-streaming and stranger communication for under-16s. Gaming sites will be impacted and the government is also looking at overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for 16- to 18-year-olds. A minimum age of 18 will be enforced on “romantic companion” AI chatbots, designed to simulate sexual relationships or roleplay with users.

As ever the devil will be in the detail. The government has said new restrictions will be enforced through “highly effective age assurance” systems, including facial age estimation using digital cameras. The media regulator Ofcom “will conduct a rapid study on what is effective age assurance for verifying whether someone is over 16”, said the government’s official announcement.

The PM said he hopes to pass the necessary legislation by Christmas, with the ban coming into effect in spring 2027.

Will it work?

The government has been accused of rushing out plans for a social media ban “without considering the knock-on effects it would have on surveillance, privacy and young people’s wellbeing”, said OpenDemocracy.

Privacy and technology experts, as well as those working with children, have warned that the plans “could lead to a surveillance creep and data breaches”. They could also cut young people “off from social media’s potential benefits, such as giving LGBTQIA+ youth a chance to access communities”.

Social media companies have argued the ban could push children into unregulated parts of the internet and on to less safe sites and platforms. But Mark Dowey, whose son Murray died after being blackmailed on Instagram, told BBC Breakfast: “If that’s the best they’ve got then I think they’re in trouble. I think they’re basically acknowledging they don’t have a reasonable position here.”

Did it work in Australia?

The “key question” is whether it will actually work, said The Times. More than 70% of parents in Australia, which last year became the first country in the world to introduce a social media ban for under-16s, told the internet regulator their children were still on these platforms, a recent survey found. But supporters argue that the “problems there are about weak enforcement, not the model itself”.

Despite the decidedly mixed results of Australia’s prohibition experiment “the politics are broader: this is a culture-change moment, and a line in the sand from governments saying to tech companies: we make the rules”.

While countries fight for victory on FIFA World Cup fields in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, an unforeseen competitor is lurking on the sidelines: climate change. Increased heat and humidity could make playing long games outdoors a serious health hazard.

How does heat affect the tournament?

Climate change is “boosting the likelihood of performance-impairing heat during most scheduled World Cup matches (97 of 104),” said an analysis by Climate Central. Among those matches, “nearly half (49) have at least a 50% likelihood of experiencing heat that can impair performance,” and in “26 of those matches, climate change increases the likelihood by at least 10 percentage points.”

It is “pretty safe to say climate change is going to have a mark on this World Cup,” and it is “not just going to be hotter, but it’s also going to increase the humidity as well,” Kaitlyn Trudeau, a senior research associate of climate science for Climate Central, said to the Los Angeles Times. Several World Cup locations are expected to exceed 78 degrees Fahrenheit with no internal cooling systems.

Intense exertion in high levels of heat and humidity could have dire health effects. In these conditions, the “body’s normal cooling system begins to struggle,” said Reuters. “Humidity is a ​particular concern, since sweat cools the body only when it evaporates.” In addition, “75% of all the energy that we utilize during exercise gets converted to ​heat,” Chris Minson, a physiology professor and co-director of the Exercise and Environmental Physiology Labs at the University of ⁠Oregon, said to Reuters. “Only about 25% goes to actually doing the exercise.” Excessive sweating because of heat “could lead to dehydration, cramps and increased fatigue,” said Al Jazeera.

How will future World Cups be affected?

As climate change is only expected to get worse over time, there have been “discussions on moving the start of the tournament from June to March or October after 2030,” said the Los Angeles Times. For now, “early kickoffs, cooling breaks, air-conditioned stadiums and regular weather-related delays will necessarily become common features of the tournament.”

High temperatures and humidity are “likely to slow games down,” Ryan Calsbeek, a biological sciences professor at Dartmouth College, said to Reuters. “When athletes have to perform for a very long time, they’re just not going to be able to balance the explosive power of their fast-twitch efforts with the more aerobic long-term efforts of a 90-plus-minute game.”

Not only will the World Cup be affected by climate change, but it will also make climate change worse. FIFA “seems intent on fueling the fire,” said an analysis by the New Weather Institute. It is estimated that the North American World Cup “will be responsible for at least 9.0 million tons of carbon dioxide.” The increased number of participating teams, as well as the expanded geographic area of the tournament, means more people are traveling around and polluting. “Unlike in parts of Europe or Asia, there is a notable absence of low-carbon alternatives such as high-speed rail networks connecting major host cities.”

While the East Wing is being transformed into a ballroom, a less permanent, octagonal structure has appeared on the South Lawn of the White House.

It is the stage for an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event this weekend, which is supposed to be part of the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the US. But the “only milestone that actually falls on 14 June is Donald Trump’s 80th birthday”, said Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, a US politics expert from Sciences Po university in Paris, on The Conversation. There were also suggestions that France adjusted the G7 schedule to avoid a clash, said Politico.

UFC – the “world’s leader in professional mixed martial arts”, which is led by Dana White, a close friend of the president – has become the “de facto sport of Maga”, said Esquire. Bringing the UFC to the White House “isn’t just Trump flexing whatever power he thinks he has, but overwhelming it”. It is “true UFC style”.

What is UFC Freedom 250?

The event will take place in a 26-metre-high octagonal cage – nicknamed “The Claw” – that has been constructed on the South Lawn at the White House. Though Trump promised there would be a crowd of 20,000 to 25,000, only around 4,500 will be there. Around 1,000 tickets will be distributed at the president’s discretion. Thousands more spectators will be able to watch the fights from the Ellipse, 52 acres of parkland south of the White House.

And Trump has hinted that the arena might not be temporary. “Many don’t know that in Paris, France, the Eiffel Tower… was supposed to be taken down immediately after the World’s Fair, and then they said, ‘You know, we sorta like it, let’s leave it up a little bit longer’”, he said. Since the UFC structure is “quite attractive”, “maybe we’ll never, ever take it down”.

The highlight on the Freedom 250 card is the bout between two-time interim UFC lightweight champion Justin Gaethje and the UFC lightweight champion Ilia Topuria, said The Times. There is also a “highly anticipated” bantamweight fight between Aiemann Zahabi and Sean O’Malley, alongside five other fights. No women fighters feature.

Who is Dana White?

White – the UFC CEO and president – has run the organisation for more than a quarter of a century. But the prospect of an event at the White House marks his “career capstone”, said Time.

He has managed to turn a sport “so savage” that it “wasn’t even carried on pay-per-view in many places” into a company that was bought for $4 billion (£2.9 billion) in 2016, reportedly earning White “some $360 million” (£269 million). UFC was bought by Endeavor in 2021.

Last year, Paramount, fresh from a merger with Skydance and owned by David Ellison, another close friend of Trump, bought the UFC’s media rights for $7.7 billion (£5.2 billion) over seven years.

How close are White and Trump?

At first glance, White, a “Connecticut-born amateur boxer-turned-businessman, and Trump, a New York real-estate mogul-turned-TV personality-turned-president, seem like an odd pairing”, said The Times. “But their friendship has spanned decades.”

The UFC has effectively “functioned as the sporting arm of the Maga movement”, said CBC. Fighters and the organisation itself have “pledged incredible support” to the president, and Trump has reciprocated and become a “ringside fixture at fights”.

Has it faced any difficulties?

The list of celebrities who have declined invitations to Sunday’s event at the White House is “lengthening”, said The Times. Adam Sandler, Jared Leto and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson are all believed to have turned down offers to attend.

And two people from Virginia have filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the event. They claim the octagon was “authorised without congressional approval or environmental review”, said CNN. The UFC is also selling VIP packages for “between $1 million and $1.5 million” (£746,000 and £1.1 million) and the individuals claim White and Trump are using the opportunity for financial gain.

Has it been popular?

There is one way the “majestic” arena could be improved to get “maximum use”, said Marina Hyde in The Guardian. The various “hardmen” among Trump’s appointees “should be made to fight each other in the White House octagon”. Since he has been able to make them walk around in shoes that don’t fit, “he can surely order the likes of Hegseth and Vance to fight – or at least wrestle – in his Craposseum”.

The president could even learn something from this episode, said Bhumika Tharoor in The Atlantic. “Martial arts are practised”, “studied” and “rooted in humility”. At their core, there is “deep respect for one’s opponents, with the understanding that ego is an impediment to winning”. “Serious fighters understand the rules of the bout; they respect their opponents; they fight to win – and then they accept the outcome”.

High oil prices mean drivers of petrol cars are now spending more to run their vehicle than those who have gone electric.

Analysis by The Electric Car Scheme showed the annual cost of fuelling the typical petrol car has risen to £1,353 in 2026. This is compared with £592 for an electric vehicle (EV) driver charging at home.

The firm identified 9 June as Electric Car Day 2026, marking when the average petrol driver has spent “the equivalent on fuel” as an EV driver does running their vehicle for the whole year.

It comes as the Iran conflict has “significantly disrupted the production and transportation of energy across the Middle East”, pushing up fuel prices such as petrol, said the BBC.

The sale of new petrol and diesel cars is to be banned in the UK in 2030, amid a push towards EVs. But as well as running costs, it is also important to look at the “total cost of ownership”, said CarWow, when weighing up a petrol car against an EV.

Upfront car costs

One of the “big sticking points” with EVs compared with “polluting petrol and diesel engines” is the higher upfront costs, , said The Guardian.

However, most private buyers of new cars tend to pay on a lease or personal contract plan, said Top Gear, or through salary sacrifice.

Prices of EVs have also come down thanks to the taxpayer-backed electric car grant, said This Is Money, and zero-emission vehicle targets, which has “intensified pressure on manufacturers and their dealers to provide more discounting”.

Running costs of electric car vs. petrol

Running an EV is “extremely cheap” compared with a petrol-driven car, said Which?, especially if you can charge it at home.

Electric cars can travel up to 300 miles on one charge depending on the weather. But it is important to keep track of your journeys as public charging is “much more expensive” and you could end up spending more per mile than with a petrol car.

There are some downsides, as the higher value of EVs can mean “higher insurance premiums”, said MoneySavingExpert. Drivers also have to take repairs into account, and these “can cost more” if a specialist mechanic is required.

Drivers will still have to pay for car tax, servicing and MOTs with an EV, plus the government is planning to introduce pay-per-mile charges from April 2028 as a replacement for shrinking fuel duty revenues.

This will “narrow the gap” between electric and petrol cars when it comes to how much drivers spend on fuel, said Auto Express.

What is the verdict?

At the moment, the “choice is clearer than you might think”, said Regit. If you don’t have a home charger, a petrol car will “likely save you money and a lot of hassle”.

But if you can charge at home, leasing an EV can be the “cleverest way to drive a new vehicle”, avoid the worst of depreciation and keep your monthly running costs down.

Another element of aviation is causing trouble for the air travel industry, and this time it’s the airplanes themselves. The companies that manufacture aircraft engines are increasingly coming under fire for alleged price gouging, which airlines say is making it harder to afford new planes. Combined with increased demand from travelers, airlines have found themselves between a rock and a hard place.

Why are aircraft engines becoming more expensive?

Aircraft engines have “emerged as an acute flashpoint for the industry, both in terms of their performance and lack of availability,” said Bloomberg. Many airplane manufacturers also increasingly rely on “less than a handful of manufacturers, creating quasi-monopolies and dependencies.” These companies are then able to drive up the price of building the engines.

Manufacturers are also turning toward a trend in energy-efficient engines, but this comes with its own problems. Continuing shortages of the “industry’s most fuel-efficient aircraft engines have sent their market values soaring,” said the Financial Times. The constraints of building these types of engines have “become one of the biggest concerns for the industry as manufacturers have struggled to keep up with booming demand for Airbus and Boeing planes.”

These factors mean that engines have become one of the most expensive elements of building new airplanes. A pair of jet engines now represents up to 80% of the total market value of a new plane, according to aviation finance company Avolon. It represents a marked change from two decades ago, when the engines would have only “accounted for 20% to 30% of an aircraft’s value,” said the Financial Times.

The continuing spike in value means the price to lease new engines has increased significantly over the past few years. In January 2025, it cost $400,000 to lease two engines from manufacturer Pratt & Whitney; in comparison, leasing an A320neo plane itself cost just $306,000, according to data from aviation consultancy Cirium cited by the Financial Times. The supply chain failures “across the industry from manufacturers cost airlines at least $11 billion in 2025,” said Bloomberg, a trend that could continue through the remainder of 2026.

How are airlines reacting?

Many airline executives are angry at the inflated cost of plane engines. Most say they are “being forced to remove engines and take them for maintenance into crowded shops earlier than expected, which is driving up costs and sucking up the fuel savings they were supposed to get from the engines,” said CNBC. The increased costs represent a “paradox: Engine makers dazzled carriers with more fuel-efficient options for new planes from Boeing and Airbus,” but now “production shortfalls and disappointing reliability with those engines are becoming costly problems.”

So far, most engines “have not reached the reliability that airlines need, though there have been improvements,” said CNBC. As airplanes “push the limits, it sometimes comes at the cost of reliability, and what we all are seeing is that those engines have to go into unscheduled maintenance far more frequently than prior engine generations,” Alexis von Hoensbroech, the CEO of Canadian carrier WestJet, told CNBC. A “lot of the fuel savings are in fact eaten up by unplanned maintenance costs.”

A needle-free universal vaccine may soon be on the horizon. Scientists have successfully run the first trial, which showed the vaccine can safely elicit an immune response to several viruses. But more research is needed before it’s approved for widespread use, so larger trials are now planned.

How was the vaccine developed?

This universal vaccine is the first human-tested inoculation to have its active component designed by computer simulations, according to a study published in the Journal of Infection. The vaccine has an AI-created “super-antigen,” a “protein that mimics shared features across multiple coronaviruses, rather than targeting a single specific strain, which can trigger the body’s immune system to fight a broad array of pathogens with those base characteristics,” said Euronews. Researchers “used all the available genetic sequence data for Sarbeco coronaviruses,” which are “zoonotic viruses that primarily circulate in bats and can jump to humans or other mammals.” They then “applied machine learning to create the super-antigen.”

“Viruses like influenza, coronaviruses and the Ebola group are evolving continuously, and by the time vaccines are rolled out, they may be poorly matched,” Saul Faust, a professor at the University of Southampton and the study’s chief investigator, said in a news release. But this “new class of universal vaccines are future-proofed,” as they “not only protect against many variants simultaneously but potentially against related viruses that haven’t yet emerged.” The universal vaccine can therefore curb outbreaks and even prevent future pandemics.

The vaccine is also needle-free. It’s administered through a microfluidic jet, which “uses a high-pressure, hair-thin stream of liquid to push vaccine blueprints directly into skin cells,” said Sky News. Without needles, it has greater “global applicability by reducing volume requirements, eliminating sharps waste and improving uptake in settings where needle-based administration is a barrier,” said Euronews. And it also doesn’t have to be kept as cold as traditional vaccines, making it “well-suited for use in low- and middle-income countries and in rapid-response scenarios.”

Is it effective on humans?

The vaccine has already shown promise in humans. The first clinical trial was conducted with 39 volunteers, and it was “well-tolerated at all four doses with no significant safety concerns elicited,” said the study. It also “triggered immune responses in the volunteers not only to SARS-CoV-2 and SARS but to related bat viruses that could potentially jump from animals to humans and cause future pandemics,” said the release.

However, the “magnitude of the response was limited and did not increase predictably with higher doses,” though this is likely influenced by prior Covid-19 exposure and vaccination history among participants, said the study. A larger Phase 2 trial will “next assess the vaccine’s ability to induce immune responses in a wider and more diverse population and confirm that it generates strong, broadly protective immune responses,” said the release.

The clinical trial proves the success of a whole new way to create vaccines. The use of AI “could protect against future emerging virus threats” and reduce the “need for frequent reformulation, which is a fundamental limitation of current vaccines,” said the release.

The old vaccine development system was like a “dog chasing its tail,” study lead Jonathan Heeney, a researcher from the University of Cambridge’s Lab of Viral Zoonotics, said in the release. “We can escape the constant cycle of chasing the virus variants circulating in humans and updating the vaccines to try to catch up.”

Millions of people in Britain risk falling off a financial cliff edge when they retire. The Pensions Commission warned last month that at least 15 million people are not saving enough for post-work life – and now new research has found that fewer than one in ten of us will be able to afford a “comfortable” retirement.

How bad is the problem?

A “minimum retirement lifestyle” now costs £13,900 a year for a single person or £22,500 for a couple, according to the latest calculations by the Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Social Policy for trade body Pensions UK. A “moderate” lifestyle costs £32,700 or £45,400, and a “comfortable” lifestyle costs £45,400 or £62,700.

Given that the state pension is roughly £12,550 a year, about 82% of the current working population are putting aside enough to be able to reach the minimum retirement lifestyle. But only 23% will reach the moderate, and a tiny 9% will enjoy a comfortable one. “That is out of step with what people expect for their future,” said Zoe Alexander of Pensions UK.

There is also a significant gender difference in private pension savings, often due to women working fewer hours and earning less. Women aged 55 to 59 have a median pension wealth 48% lower than men of the same age, according to Office for National Statistics figures published by the Department for Work & Pensions.

And even those who have saved a fair whack are leaving themselves short by electing to access their private pensions at the “earliest possible opportunity”, said The Pensions Commission. People in their mid-50s often raid their pension pots to spend the money on a car, a holiday or home renovations. This will obviously reduce their pension income when they come to retire.

Why aren’t we better prepared?

It seems many of us have got a bad case of “present bias”: retirement is decades away but current expenses are immediate, so we prioritise today’s bills, housing costs, childcare or debt payments over distant future needs.

In addition to the people who could save for retirement but don't, there are those who just can’t. For some, “it is simply impossible to save any more” because “you can’t save money you don’t have”, Matt Padley from the Loughborough University research team, told The Telegraph.

The growth of the gig economy is playing a part here. Historically, pension schemes were designed around long-term employment, leaving freelancers, contractors and the self-employed to make their own arrangements. Automatic workplace pension enrolment became mandatory in 2018 but often excludes gig workers or those on part-time wages. Just 4% of self-employed workers are saving for retirement, according to The Pensions Commission, with even lower levels of saving among the younger self-employed.

Pension planning can also seem daunting, with a complicated array of investment choices, tax rules, contribution rates, annuities, drawdown options, and changing regulations to navigate. Many people don’t understand the system or feel overwhelmed when they try to find out.

People don’t fail to prepare for retirement because they consciously choose poverty in old age but because the benefits are distant, the choices are complex, and the system often requires active, knowledgeable effort.

What can be done to improve things?

The scale of the problem has led to calls for the government to raise the legal minimum employers must put into staff pensions under automatic enrolment. The statutory minimum workplace pension contribution is 8%, with 5% coming from the employee, and 3% from the employer. Pensions UK is encouraging people “to speak to their employers” to see if they can “support them to save above the minimum” by also increasing the rate of “their matching pension contributions”.

The Pensions Commission will be making its recommendations early next year. But it has already flagged that, to address the pensions gender gap, there would need to be reforms to pensions policy and the labour market, including improving access to childcare, an issue which disproportionately impacts mothers’ ability to work and save more.

More broadly, policies that address general affordability issues would help households where failure to save for retirement is driven not by choice but by financial necessity. Policies that improve wages, reduce excessive debt burdens or lower living costs could indirectly improve participation in both workplace and private pension schemes.

Last June, the UK government published a national security strategy that “raised the spectre of war on the home front”, said Sky News’ security and defence editor Deborah Haynes. But 12 months on, “it has yet to issue public guidance on how to ready the whole of society for potential war” on our doorstep.

What is ‘civil defence’?

It is the system of organised, non-military measures a society puts into place to protect civilians during large-scale emergencies, including war or natural disasters. The aim is to reduce loss of life, minimise damage, and ensure local communities are equipped to cope, should disaster strike.

During the Cold War, a restricted-access Government War Book laid out an array of civil defence measures to prepare the nation for the run-up to a war, and those plans were regularly rehearsed. In the late 1970s, the government produced “Protect and Survive” leaflets containing advice on how to protect yourself during a nuclear attack; originally only distributed to emergency planners, an amended version was eventually published in 1980 after pressure from journalists – to the public’s mixed alarm and ridicule.

Now, “as Europe rearms against Russia”, civil defence readiness has “become just as important as the ability to draft recruits or churn out weapons”, said Rozina Sabur, The Telegraph’s national security editor. But, compared with efforts being made by many of its European counterparts, Britain is lagging behind, and risks “sleepwalking into potential disaster”.

What planning and organisation exists? 

Britain’s Cold War civil defence plans extended to “every part of UK society”, from central government to parish councils and village schools, said Sky News’ Haynes. And what would need to be done to implement measures such as “freeing up space in hospitals and rationing food and fuel” were well understood by all involved.

But since the Cold War ended, successive prime ministers have shied away from the cost of “maintaining structures, organisations, volunteers and supplies” to “endure a war of national survival”, seeing them as “no longer justified”. Emergency planning pivoted to focus on natural disasters, including floods and heatwaves, or “unconventional threats like terrorism and cyberattacks”.

We no longer have enough specialist engineers to respond to a conventional Russian attack on our energy and telecoms sectors, said Sabur in the Telegraph. Our air defences are “stretched”, our “network of Second World War dugouts has fallen largely into disrepair”, and we disbanded our volunteer Civil Defence Corps in 1968.

Is anything being done now?

The Cabinet Office has established a Home Defence Programme to “rapidly build the UK’s preparedness for any potential escalation to conflict”, a government spokesman told Sky News. “Protecting national security is our first duty and we are constantly hardening and sharpening our approach.”

In April, George Robertson, the former Nato secretary general who authored Britain’s national security strategy, said there is a case for the UK adopting the “Swedish model” and creating mandatory civil defence roles for UK adults. In Sweden, “total defence duty” requires all adults aged 16 to 70 to participate in the country’s defence in the event of war, or threat of war.

Developed after 9/11 and during the Iraq War, Prevent is the first of four pillars of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy for England, Scotland and Wales (together, they make up the “four Ps”: Prevent, Pursue, Protect, Prepare).

It has three main objectives: tackling the ideological causes of terrorism, intervening early to stop people becoming radicalised, and enabling those who have engaged with terrorism to “disengage and rehabilitate”. Prevent is, in theory, not about getting people “into trouble”, but about helping those “susceptible to radicalisation” with early intervention.

Even so, the programme has faced repeated criticisms, from a range of perspectives: both that it stigmatises Muslims, and is too soft on them; that it chills free speech; and that, ultimately, it fails to prevent terrorism.

How has it failed to prevent terrorism?

It has failed to stop a series of high-profile terror incidents. Ahmed Hassan detonated a bomb in Parsons Green in 2017 after Prevent officials had discussed his case for more than a year, and almost closed it days before the attack. Usman Khan, responsible for the 2019 Fishmongers’ Hall attack, was monitored by Prevent officials, while Ali Harbi Ali, who murdered David Amess MP in 2021, was later found to have manipulated Prevent through “disguised compliance”. Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, had been referred to Prevent three times, but his case was closed each time. The suspect in the Golders Green stabbings in April was referred to Prevent in 2020, but his case was shelved that year.

At the same time, there have been notorious cases of “false positives”, such as a 10-year-old Muslim boy referred in 2015 after writing at school that he lived in a “terrorist house”; he meant “terraced house”.

How does Prevent work?

Anyone can make a Prevent referral, to police or a local authority. In 2024-25, there were 8,778 referrals, an all-time high; in the past the figure has been closer to 6,000. The median age of a referral was 16; 36% were aged 11 to 15.

Until 2011, Prevent was aimed specifically at Islamist extremism. Today, there are 15 other categories of concern, the most common being extreme right-wing ideology (20% of 2024-25 referrals), compared to 9% in the Islamist category; but also including left-wing, environmental and incel extremism (“involuntary celibates” driven by misogyny).

Once a referral is received, police evaluate whether the individual is at real risk of radicalisation. If so, their case goes before a multi-agency panel (called a Channel), chaired by the local authority and attended by social services, education and mental-health professionals, who agree on a support package. In 2024/25, only 17% were adopted as a Channel case. Taking part is voluntary – those referred, or their parents, must give their consent.

Why is it so controversial?

By definition, it involves keeping tabs on people, mostly young people, who haven’t committed crimes: gathering detailed and often personal intelligence on them, sharing it with different agencies and retaining it for years or even decades. Campaigners argue Prevent violates the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”; it operates in what is designated, in rather Orwellian terms, as a “pre-criminal space”.

Controversy often centres on the so-called Prevent duty. Since 2015, schools, hospitals, prisons and police have had a statutory duty to identify and refer those showing signs of potential radicalisation. The National Union of Teachers voted against it in 2016, arguing it created “suspicion in the classroom”. That Prevent has been largely focused on one religious minority makes the issues more acute.

Is that criticism justified?

For many years, particularly during the peak of Islamic State influence, the great majority of Prevent referrals targeted Muslims: in 2015-16, for instance, 65% related to concerns about Islamist extremism. In 2015, the former senior Met officer Dal Babu said that many Muslims were suspicious of the scheme and saw it as a tool for spying on them; that it had become a “toxic brand”. The Muslim Council of Great Britain said that year that some parents were “training their children” not to discuss their beliefs at school.

However, in recent years, referrals for extreme right-wing terrorism have frequently equalled or surpassed those for Islamist extremism. This itself, however, has proved controversial.

Why is that controversial?

The 2023 independent review of Prevent, conducted by William Shawcross, concluded that it suffered from a “culture of timidity”, due to fear of upsetting Muslims, and neglected Islamist extremism relative to the threat level it posed to the UK: 80% of police counter-terrorism investigations focused on Islamist terror, but such cases accounted for only 22% of Prevent referrals.

What do Prevent’s defenders say?

In counter-terrorism, successes – attacks prevented – are inherently hard to prove. However, the Channel programme gives bespoke support to about 500 people every year, and officials claim that it has successfully helped more than 6,400 people to disengage from extremism since 2015. Prevent’s budget is limited: £38.7 million in 2025-26, barely 3% of the national £3 billion counter-terrorism spend; and down to a reported £25 million this year.

With regards to Muslim “mistrust”, last year’s Prevent review by David Anderson KC found that 80% of British Muslims supported Prevent, and that many of its practitioners are Muslim. However, Anderson found that it was facing a structural problem. It was set up to deal with people driven by ideologies. Yet more than half of those referred to Prevent in the past year were found not to have one. The Home Affairs Committee said last month that the programme was becoming “saturated” with such cases.

The changing landscape of extremism

When Prevent was set up in 2006, the threat it was built to address was relatively contained: young men drawn towards al-Qaida-inspired Islamism via mosques, prisons and radical preachers. While Islamist and extreme right-wing threats haven’t gone away, new forms of extremism have emerged, nurtured by social media, gaming platforms and online forums, and communicated via influencers, memes, coded messaging and AI-generated content. These new forms of extremism are a murky blend of conspiracy theories, nihilism, identity-based narratives and a fascination with violence.

Of the 2024-25 Prevent referrals, 56% (4,917) were for individuals with “no identified ideology” – the largest single category; 5% (469) were due to concerns regarding “fascination with extreme violence or mass casualty attacks”, not accompanied by an ideology. That “fascination with extreme violence” category was created in response to cases such as Axel Rudakubana’s: his lack of a clear ideology had led to Prevent dismissing his case three times. Mental health and neurodiversity also seem to be a factor: a third of Prevent referrals had mental-health conditions, and 14% had been diagnosed with autism, compared to 1% of the UK population.

With many Americans opposing the construction of giant AI data centers in their neighborhoods, some tech companies are proposing an unconventional solution: attaching mini data centers directly to people’s houses. At least one major startup backed by Nvidia is looking into the prospect, though it will likely be controversial.

How would these mini data centers work?

People typically associate data centers with big buildings churning out massive quantities of AI datasets. But the home version would be a “unit about the size of an air conditioner, mounted in the side yard,” said Scientific American. It could perform “artificial intelligence tasks, drawing power from your home’s energy supply” and theoretically “earning you discounted electricity and internet in exchange.”

Most of the attention has been focused on Span, an electrical panel startup that recently began manufacturing these types of units in partnership with Nvidia. The company said its mini data centers would be “less of a financial burden on residents” and “have a potentially lower ecological footprint than warehouse data centers,” said Fortune. Span’s units are also quiet, thereby “mitigating the problem of noise pollution that has drawn the ire of residents of areas with nearby warehouse data centers.”

Industry experts hope the home models like those proposed by Span could help alleviate the financial and energy constraints created by large buildings; a typical AI data center “consumes as much electricity as 100,000 households,” according to the International Energy Agency. Instead of “building a single large data center that requires its own substation upgrade or on-site gas turbines,” the AI “spreads compute across thousands of homes that are already connected to the grid,” said Scientific American.

What has the reaction been?

Creating more energy-friendly data centers is a “cool idea on paper, but it’s almost completely unproven in real-world use,” said Fast Company. And even if the home data centers took off, the “main point of resistance” is the fact that these centers “will result in higher electric bills for everyone in the area,” even if they are at people’s homes. Whether it’s a “new central data center or a distributed data center,” the “risk of higher costs — perhaps because of transformers and other infrastructure running hotter and degrading more quickly — could arguably be the same.”

Politically, gathering power from existing homes “may be easier than talking a city council into issuing a permit for a data center,” said Fast Company. But all of this is moot if tech companies are unable to perform the “tangled math of coordinating thousands of tiny residential energy resources to fuel the energy beast that data centers are,” said The Arizona Republic. While “distributed power generation has been around for years,” it has never “been harnessed at the scale needed for feeding data centers.”

Officials with Span remain optimistic that the home-based products will work. “There is certainly opportunity, as Span can provide homeowners with access to innovative technology and potential income generation that can help offset monthly energy costs,” a spokesperson for the company told Inc. “On a larger scale, if the technology proves out, it might also keep local infrastructure from being overburdened, which could keep land open for other uses, such as building homes.”

When is a ceasefire not a ceasefire?

Agreements have been announced in recent months “to great fanfare” in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, said PBS News, yet fighting continues. So the term “ceasefire” is “rapidly losing its meaning”.

What is happening?

Israeli forces have captured more territory in Gaza, contravening the US-brokered truce with Hamas in October, and at least 900 Palestinians have died in strikes, according to the strip’s ministry of health. Israel has also been increasingly bombarding Lebanon and making deeper incursions across the border, while Hezbollah has kept up rocket fire into northern Israel. The US and Iran have also continued to trade fire since the agreement in April, as they try to reach a permanent truce.

Advantages of an imperfect ceasefire

Ceasefires “often seem to be just smoke and mirrors that precede another round of fighting”, but “even when they don’t hold, they still have value”, said academics Avishay Ben-Sasson-Gordis and Simon Frankel Pratt on Foreign Policy.

They can “establish new bargaining baselines that, over multiple iterations, can become a ladder to a more permanent peace agreement”. The Northern Ireland peace process was primarily driven by two ceasefires in 1994, which ultimately paved the way for the decisive Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Even a partial decrease in fighting can save lives, reduce injuries and limit the destruction of infrastructure and homes. A ceasefire that cuts violence by 50% is often preferable for many than no ceasefire at all.

Truces can also help with humanitarian access because aid organisations can deliver food, medicine, fuel and other supplies to affected populations. Civilians may be able to evacuate dangerous areas. Even brief pauses in fighting can enable exchanges of detainees, recovery of bodies, or arrangements for missing persons. Meanwhile, observers can assess conditions on the ground.

What are the disadvantages?

Sceptics argue that imperfect ceasefires allow forces to regroup militarily. They can be exploited for propaganda, or they may create a false impression that a conflict is being resolved.

So “cynics begin to see ceasefires as jokes from the start, while the naive fall into a cycle of optimism and despair”, said Ben-Sasson-Gordis and Frankel Pratt. Diplomacy “starts to look false and pointless”.

An imperfect ceasefire can create long-term problems if policymakers do not have a clear objective. After the first Gulf War in 1991, the US stumbled into a “decade-long trap of its own making”, said academics Daniel Chardell and Samuel Helfont on Foreign Affairs.

Washington “crafted a cease-fire agreement” with Iraq that led to ongoing tensions, repeated military confrontations and a long-term containment strategy rather than a durable peace. Subsequent US presidents were unwilling to accept Saddam Hussein remaining in power or fully commit to removing him.

The US enforced no-fly zones, sanctions, military patrols and repeated air strikes, effectively becoming a policeman. Meanwhile, international support eroded and frustration grew in Washington. Ultimately, the ceasefire became a stepping stone to the larger war in 2003.

With Russian and Ukrainian forces seemingly locked in stalemate on the ground, the war has increasingly become an aerial one with both sides turning to drones and “smart” missiles to try to gain an advantage.

What does that look like?

Over the past four years Ukraine has pioneered the use of both offensive and defensive drones. They have changed the face of war and helped narrow the advantage enjoyed by Russia when it comes to weapons and personnel.

These unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, “hit Russian targets every day” and have played “a huge role in Ukraine’s recent improvement in fortunes, together with other innovations in the country’s drone war”, said the Financial Times.

At the same time, Ukraine has built an “increasingly sophisticated, layered air defence system”, said the BBC’s defence correspondent Jonathan Beale. Kyiv is now able to successfully intercept the vast majority of Russian long-range drones and missiles before they can hit their targets. “Embracing innovation and technology is giving Ukraine an advantage”, with “software that tracks every glide bomb, missile and drone launched by Russia” being “at the heart” of its air defences.

While the “intensity” of air attacks “continues to increase”, Russian military expert Nikolai Mitrokhine told Le Monde, both sides are using different tactics. Russia carries out occasional but massive strikes to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences. It “sometimes fires nearly 1,000 drones a day – as was the case on 24 March – while Ukraine launches almost nightly attacks, between 250 and 400 drones”.

What weapons do they have?

Ukraine has been producing long- and medium-range FP-1 and FP-2 drones – known as “Drakosha” or “little dragons” – at scale and at speed at a cost of about €50,000 each. It has been “pouring resources” into “middle strikes” that target Russian air defences and military logistics as far as 180km (112 miles) behind the front line, said Reuters. These strikes cannot “turn the tide against Russia” alone, but are “having an additional impact by facilitating longer-range drone strikes that are damaging Russian oil infrastructure”.

And while Ukraine still relies on expensive US-made Patriot missiles to take down Russian ballistic missiles, cheap interceptor drones, such as the P1-SUN, are proving most effective in defending Ukraine’s cities from aerial attack. They are 3D-printed and cost just $1,000 (£750); more than 1,000 are produced every day by Ukraine.

They can, however, do little to stop Russian glide bombs. These are Soviet-era munitions fitted with cheap guidance kits that turn so-called “dumb” bombs into precision weapons. They can be launched from well inside Russian airspace and there is no reliable way to stop them. “For three years, they have been one of the most destructive weapons” used by Kremlin forces to level entire city blocks from Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia to Kherson, said The Telegraph.

Ukraine hit back last week, unveiling its first domestically produced glide bomb, named the Vyrivniuvach, or “Equaliser”.

How might this change the war?

The Equaliser is “one of the most significant additions to Ukraine’s home-grown arsenal since the war began”. It “could potentially accelerate the pace at which Russian forces are pushed back”, said Keir Giles, from the Chatham House think tank.

More generally, Ukraine’s long-range capabilities are “significantly changing the situation and, more broadly, the world’s perception of Russia’s war,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last month.

“Fast-improving” Ukrainian drone capabilities are “hurting the invaders’ logistics behind the battlefield, and pounding oil infrastructure and military targets deeper inside Russia,” said The Wall Street Journal. “Having gained a tactical and technological edge” in the air, this summer will test whether Ukraine “can turn that slender advantage into a strategic turning point”.

Hampshire’s police and crime commissioner has called for a review of religious exemptions on the carrying of knives in public after the fatal stabbing of Henry Nowak last December.

Vickrum Digwa was jailed for life on Monday for stabbing the 18-year-old Nowak five times with what the judge called a “large Sikh dagger”. The prosecution told the jury that while Digwa was entitled to wear a small kirpan, a ceremonial sword or dagger worn by initiated Sikhs, under his clothing around his neck, he also chose to carry the much larger knife that was used to stab Nowak.

The law makes it illegal to carry most knives in public without a “good reason”, said the UK government. It is “illegal to use any knife or weapon in a threatening way”.

Are kirpans exempt from UK knife laws?

A template letter from The Council of Sikhs in Law that provides information for employers says the kirpan is “a ceremonial blade, carried by initiated Sikhs as one of the five articles of faith”. Worn by Amritdhari, or baptised Sikhs, it holds “a deep religious and symbolic significance for Sikhs, representing the duty to protect the oppressed and uphold justice”.

The Criminal Justice Act 1988 sets out “an exception in terms of carrying bladed articles in public places for particular religious and ceremonial reasons”, said Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds in response to Nowak’s death. The government has “been tightening up the law” in terms of buying knives online and by banning “things like terrible zombie knives”. But “the judge actually said that the minute that this perpetrator removed the blade from the sheath, you can forget any sense of there being some sort of exception to the law”.

What other uses are permitted?

As well as citing “religious reasons”, the law allows exemptions “as part of any national costume”, such as a sgian dubh, a small ornamental knife worn with Highland dress.

Matt Easton, an antique dealer and sword expert who consults with police and lawyers to navigate the law, said that under the so-called “samurai sword ban” only curved swords with blades over 50cm from hilt to point (measured in a straight line) are prohibited. Blunt blades or curved swords for the purposes of historical re-enactment or filmmaking or for sports such as fencing or martial arts are allowed (usually with proof of participation such as insurance document or club membership card). Curved swords “traditionally made by hand and/or with a hand operated machine” are also exempt as are antiques over 100 years old and most “vintage” swords made before 1954.

When else can you carry knives?

The law also states it is a defence for a person charged with carrying an illegal knife to prove that they had “good reason or lawful authority” for having the article with them in a public place. This can include travelling directly to and from a legitimate bushcraft course or woodland activity where a fixed blade is required, or for “use at work” covering farmers, conservation workers and other professions where a knife is an essential tool.

A 2019 court judgment, Garry v. Crown Prosecution Service, established that the offence of carrying an offensive weapon in a public place “imposes a strict liability burden on defendants to prove they have a reasonable excuse for carrying the weapon”, said the Magistrates’ Association. The court was also asked to consider whether any alternative non-offensive tools could be used to carry out the same work function and “whether there is a temporal connection between the time the defendant was found in possession of the weapon and their attendance at work”.

Colombian mercenary troops trained on United Arab Emirates (UAE) bases participated in atrocities committed by the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group during the ongoing Sudanese civil war, according to reports from the nonprofits Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Conflict Insights Group last month. Global Security Services Group, an “Abu Dhabi-based security company,” hired “hundreds of Colombian private military contractors” who allegedly aided the RSF’s assault on the North Darfur capital of El Fasher, where rebels “took over the city and committed widespread killings and rape,” said Human Rights Watch. The UAE has denied the reports, as rights groups call for further investigations and action.

What links the UAE with Colombian mercenaries?

HRW’s report is the latest evidence that the United Arab Emirates is “financially and militarily aiding the Rapid Support Forces” that have been “widely accused of committing atrocities amounting to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide,” said The Associated Press. The report alleges “hundreds” of Colombian mercenaries were “trained by Emirati nationals at a military base” more than a hundred miles outside the capital of Abu Dhabi. They were then given further training “at another facility in Abu Dhabi, before being deployed to Sudan to fight alongside the RSF.”

The UAE has “long denied supporting the RSF,” said the BBC. The Conflict Insights Group’s report is the “first research where we can prove UAE involvement with certainty,” said the group’s Director Justin Lynch to the outlet. The investigation, which used “data obtained from tracking the mobile phones of the Colombian fighters,” makes public “what governments have long known. There is a direct link between Abu Dhabi and the RSF.”

The deployment of Colombian mercenaries is part of a “broader pattern” for Abu Dhabi, said Human Rights Watch researcher Joey Shea in an interview with Democracy Now!. The UAE has been “intervening in neighboring conflicts for over a decade” to “project its political and economic influence abroad.”

What is the broader context?

The beleaguered Sudanese government is “protecting Africa from external plots” by “confronting foreign interference” in the ongoing civil war, said Foreign Minister Mohieldin Salem to Al Jazeera in February. Sudan’s conflict “involves a large number of mercenaries and significant external intervention through funding and advanced weaponry.”

Last year, journalists investigated a captured convoy of weaponry intended for RSF forces featuring arms “manufactured in Bulgaria and bought by an Emirati company,” said France 24. Before their confiscation by allies of the Sudanese government, the weapons had passed through an eastern Libyan zone “controlled by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an ally of the UAE.”

Researchers have also found “clear evidence that sophisticated Chinese-made guided bombs and howitzers have been used in Sudan,” said Amnesty International. The presence of Chinese munitions adds to a “growing body of evidence showing extensive UAE support to the RSF, in violation of international law,” said Brian Castner, the head of crisis research at Amnesty International.

Will there be consequences?

“Evidence collected” by humanitarian groups shows “UAE-supported mercenaries from Colombia in and around El Fasher as the town fell,” said the nonprofit Refugees International. The reports suggest the UAE backed “enhanced drone capabilities that helped the RSF to carry out deadly attacks on civilians.” The organization has since called for “immediate accountability” by strengthening existing embargos and treaties, asking that “prominent companies and organizations like the NBA, Disney and Warner Bros.” stop their business with the UAE “until it has ended its armed support for the RSF.”

This week, Britain’s Sky News ended its participation in a joint TV news venture with the UAE. Network executives have grown “increasingly concerned about the editorial position Sky News Arabia has taken on news in the region,” said The Guardian. Coverage of reported atrocities committed by the RSF was “accused of whitewashing genocide.” The network “produced a report claiming the security and humanitarian situation had stabilized” in El Fasher and filed stories “suggesting there was no evidence on the ground supporting satellite imagery and testimony from survivors of the atrocities.”

Sky will cede “full strategic and operational control” of the network to its Emirati partner, International Media Investments, said Middle East Eye. IMI, which will temporarily be allowed to continue using Sky News branding, is owned by Emirati Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Two controversial US political commentators accused of spreading anti-Israeli rhetoric have been barred from entering the UK.

Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker had been due to appear at the SXSW London culture and tech festival this week, but had their visas revoked by the Home Office on the grounds that their presence “may not be conducive to the public good”.

Who are they?

Turkish-American Cenk Uygur hosts the left-wing “The Young Turks” political talk show. Launched in 2002 as a satellite radio programme, since 2005 it has been hosted on YouTube, with episodes livestreamed every weekday to an audience of more than six million followers.

Uygur has repeatedly framed Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide”, “barbaric” and “savage” and accused Israel of using Jews as “human shields”. In 2024, he briefly campaigned to become the Democrat nominee in the 2024 US presidential election.

His nephew, Hasan Piker, runs his own stream, watched by more than 30,000 people each day. SXSW organisers described the 34-year-old as “redefining what political commentary looks like in the digital age”, but he has “faced a backlash over some of his comments”, said The Guardian, including reportedly saying in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11”.

He has stood by his characterisation of Hamas as “1,000 times better” than Israel, and his claim that he “would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time”, arguing he is not antisemitic but anti-Israel.

Why have they been banned?

According to The Times, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood decided to ban the pair “due to fears they could fuel antisemitism”.

Home Office decisions to refuse or cancel an electronic travel authorisation, which allows foreign nationals visa-free travel to the UK for up to six months, are “based on an assessment of the potential risk an individual may pose to UK society”.

In April, Mahmood launched a taskforce to identify extremists who were planning to come to the UK, so she could ban them before they travel. In May, 11 “far-right agitators” were barred from entering the UK to join Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally in London. Islamist hate preachers have also been prohibited from entering the country, as has US rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, due to his history of antisemitic remarks.

In the case of Uygur it was judged his presence would risk exacerbating antisemitism due to his rhetoric since the 7 October Hamas attacks in 2023, which “has included repeating classic antisemitic tropes”, such as the claim that Israel controls America, said The Times.

What has their reaction been?

In a series of posts on X, Uygur said he has been banned from the UK “for criticising Israel”, related in part to his claim that “Israel controls the American government through donations to 94% of Congress”.

“Are we free any more? This is oppression of Western citizens by our own governments on behalf of a different country!” he added.

Replying to Uygur, Piker said the UK has revoked his visa “all at the behest of Israel”. “The West is betraying ‘liberal values’ for a genocidal fascist foreign government. Soon we will all become Israel.”

Was a ban the right move?

Left-wing outlet Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar, who was due to chair a discussion with Piker at SXSW, said that the decision was evidence of an “authoritarian turn motivated by Labour’s fear of being called antisemitic, and fear of being called out for their position on the genocidal war on Gaza”.

“You don’t foster community cohesion by having the government ban people from speaking,” she said.

“We can argue about who should be allowed into the United Kingdom, and where the line between offensive opinion and public danger should fall,” said broadcaster Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator. But while “we can disagree on individual cases”, there “must be a distinction between protecting open argument and importing those whose public role is to turn conspiracy into cash”.

Investigators have raided the headquarters of Spain’s governing party as part of a probe into the alleged misuse of party funds, the latest in a “blizzard of corruption scandals” to hit the reign of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, said Politico.

“Scandal after scandal” involving political allies and relatives of Sánchez have left him “on the ropes”, said the outlet.

What are the scandals? 

An investigating judge has accused the former PM, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, of leading a criminal network that used his influence to arrange a €53 million Covid-era government bailout for the Spanish Plus Ultra airline. He is accused of receiving a total of €2.6 million from the network, and has been charged with criminal organisation, influence peddling and falsifying documents.

Zapatero, who denies the charges, is a close ally of Sánchez, who was in government when the airline was bailed out, so the scandal has embroiled the current PM.

Sánchez’s number three, Santos Cerdán, and another party figure, José Luis Ábalos, have been caught up in a public contract kickback scheme. To make it worse, evidence also emerged that Ábalos paid prostitutes. Both men deny involvement in the kickback scheme.

In a separate case last autumn, the attorney general, Álvaro García Ortiz, a government selection, was found guilty of revealing secrets.

And a party operative, Leire Díez, has been accused of being paid to “carry out a campaign of misinformation” with the intention of “impeding” the legal cases connected to the party, said the BBC. She has also denied any wrongdoing.

What about his family?

Last month, Sánchez’s wife Begoña Gómez was charged with embezzlement, influence peddling, corruption in business dealings and misappropriation of funds. She denies the charges and Sánchez has described this case as an “obscene farce”.

His brother, David, is on trial along with 10 other defendants, in an unrelated case, on charges of influence-peddling in his appointment to a musical director post in 2017. He denies the charges.

What does this mean for Spain?

Sánchez originally came to power on an anti-corruption ticket in 2018, after a corruption scandal brought down the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy. Although Sánchez has not been directly implicated in any of the investigations, questions over whether he knew about, tolerated, or benefited politically from the alleged actions of those around him are particularly damaging to his standing.

The tensions between the government and opposition parties on the matter are creating even deeper polarisation. With allegations that party operatives tried to undermine police officers or judicial investigations, broader questions are being raised about institutional independence and public trust in the courts, police and political parties.

Crucially, it is “increasingly awkward” for Sánchez’s allies to “stick with him” as the “scale” of the alleged corruption “comes into focus”, said Politico. Although officially Spain does not have to hold elections until next August, the prime minister “may be forced to move earlier”.

Meanwhile, he has dismissed the allegations as a right-wing plot to undermine his coalition, but the opposition conservative People’s Party said the government “stinks” of corruption.

Andy Burnham will today outline plans for a major redistribution of political power away from Whitehall as he prepares for an expected move into Downing Street. In his first major address since returning to Westminster via the Makerfield by-election, Burnham is set to argue that stronger local decision-making is essential to boosting economic prosperity across the UK.

The former Greater Manchester mayor is expected to propose transferring additional responsibilities and funding to regional authorities, potentially including greater control over some tax revenues.

In his address today, Burnham is expected to say that his government will deliver “good growth in every postcode” and “lift Britain back up to where it should be”. Burnham’s 10-year plan to raise living standards is nothing short of “radical”, said The Independent.

What does Andy Burnham stand for?

As “King of the North”, Burnham has based his pitch for the Labour leadership – and therefore for Downing Street – around what he calls “Manchesterism”. This involves “devolving power from Westminster, reducing Treasury control over public spending and promoting growth by increasing public spending on infrastructure”, said The Times’ policy editor Oliver Wright. He has also been “explicit about his desire to take key public services such as energy, water and rail back into public ownership”.

Burnham’s overriding “theme” is that the nation has been “on the wrong path since the 1980s”, and it is this “four-decade slide into decline that he is vowing to overturn”, said The Telegraph’s Ben Riley-Smith. His solution may lie in “an expensive wish list of economic interventions – re-nationalisation, re-industrialisation, lower rents and more council homes”.

Under a Burnham premiership “big spending cuts seem unlikely”, said the Financial Times. But “that leaves tax rises”. He has already floated the idea of putting up taxes on the rich and hiking levies on assets and wealth.

When “Burnham becomes PM, the lurch leftwards will give the country the kind of collective G-force you only get on a rocket”, said The Sun’s political editor-at-large Harry Cole.

But the “run-up to the Makerfield by-election has been characterised by clearly right-leaning policy positions from the Burnham camp”, said Novara Media’s Harriet Williamson. Ten days ago, Burnham said Britain needs to make “greater use” of immigration detention centres, “something rights groups have long warned comes with a high human and financial cost”.

“On the fiscal rules, the bond markets, rejoining the EU and benefits for migrants, he has shifted or softened his stance,” said The Telegraph’s political editor Tony Diver. This has “left supporters confused about his exact position within Labour’s broad spectrum of beliefs”.

Aides of Burnham told Politico they are “concerned about how radical he can be” and “if he strays too far from Labour’s 2024 manifesto, opponents will likely call for an election on the basis he has no mandate with the public”.

Even compared to metropolitan mayors, a PM runs “a much bigger machine, and there is nobody to beg for money (instead others beg you for it)”, said The Economist. They must also “convincingly argue” for “policies that make some people worse off” against “fierce opposition”. While “less wooden, more charming” than Keir Starmer, like him Burnham “has sometimes shied away from contentious measures”. In truth, he “has not really been tested for the top job”.

How did he get into politics?

Burnham was born on 7 January 1970, in Aintree, Liverpool, and, one of three brothers, he grew up in Culcheth, near Warrington, between Manchester and Liverpool (he is a lifelong Everton supporter). His father, Kenneth, was a telephone engineer; his mother, Eileen, was a receptionist. A sporty child, he went to St Aelred’s, a Catholic secondary school in Newton-le-Willows, before studying English at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he met his Dutch-born wife, Marie-France van Heel, with whom he has three children.

After a spell working for trade magazines including Tank World, in 1994 he took a job as a researcher for the MP Tessa Jowell, later the culture secretary. In 2001, he was elected as the MP for Leigh, Greater Manchester. He served as a junior minister in the Blair government, and as culture secretary and health secretary under Gordon Brown.

After being heckled at the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, he became a campaigner for the victims’ families. In 2010, he stood for the Labour leadership but was beaten into fourth place by Ed Miliband; and in 2015, he came second to Jeremy Corbyn.

Could Manchesterism go nationalwide?

Some argue that the term is so loosely defined as almost to be meaningless: that it is mostly about “vibes”, and falls far short of a policy agenda that could be translated to the national stage. Burnham is politically something of a shape-shifter; there is, allies admit, “a lot of thinking still to be done”.

We don’t know exactly what it would mean to bring transport, energy and water into “public control”, but nationalisation would certainly be vastly expensive. Burnham’s team have studied revenue-raising options, including the equalisation of capital gains tax with income tax, and higher taxes on landlords. He has also previously called for sweeping constitutional reforms, including the abolition of the House of Lords and the introduction of a more proportional voting system.

Would Burnham spook investors?

Burnham’s thumping victory in Makerfield “came and went without the bond market rout that Rachel Reeves’s backers had warned about”, said Heather Stewart in The Guardian. Gilt yields moved up, “but only modestly”. The relative calm was partly because a Burnham win “was already priced in”, and partly because “he took out the insurance policy” of loudly promising to stick by Reeves’s fiscal rules. His timing was also lucky: recent better-than expected inflation figures had eased market concerns about the impact of the Iran war. And since markets “are no fans of uncertainty”, the prospect of a coronation, rather than a drawn-out contest, appeals.

Still, from now on, “Burnham’s every pronouncement – and that of whoever he picks as chancellor – will be watched intently”. Reeves’s rules give scope for extra borrowing to invest, which might allow key utilities to be nationalised. But if a Burnham government cannot show “it can make ends meet” on day-to-day spending, expect trouble.

Experts are warning of trouble ahead as the annual number of babies being born in England and Wales has fallen to the lowest level since 1977.

The consequences of the trend are already being felt and some have accused politicians of ignoring a “crisis”.

How many babies are being born?

According to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 585,396 babies were born last year, down from 594,677 in 2024. This means that in 2025, the number of babies born “fell to the lowest level in almost half a century”, which “continues the long-term trend of falling births going back over the past decade”, said Greg Ceely, ONS head of population health monitoring.

The average age of mothers and fathers has been steadily increasing since the 1960s, when the contraceptive pill was introduced. Parents were older than ever before: on average women were 31 when their child was born, and fathers were 34. In 1975, the average ages were 26 for mothers and 30 for fathers. In that year, nearly one-third of babies were born to parents who were not married, compared to almost half last year.

Why are numbers falling?

There is no single cause. The trend is mostly a mix of economic, social and cultural factors. The costs of housing and the instability of the housing market are making starting a family seem riskier. Also, the UK has some of the highest childcare costs in Europe, relative to wages, so even middle-income couples often find that one parent’s salary would mostly disappear into childcare.

People are having children later because they’re staying in education longer, or focusing on their career, or wanting to travel and enjoy years of independence before settling down. When people delay into their 30s, they often end up having fewer children than originally planned. Cultural changes mean that remaining child-free is more accepted than in the past when there was a stigma.

Is this a crisis?

The total fertility rate, which means the average number of children women are expected to have according to statistical trends, has fallen to 1.39 for England and Wales, the lowest ever recorded. For a country’s population to remain stable over time without relying on mass migration, the fertility rate needs to be around 2.1. The data will “fuel political anxieties” about the “plummeting birth rate”, said Eleanor Hayward, health editor for The Times.

A persistently low birth rate can create long-term demographic problems, because an ageing population means there are more retirees and fewer workers supporting pensions, healthcare, social care, and taxes needed for public services. A shrinking population means that more jobs will go unfilled and economic dynamism will reduce.

Other consequences are “already being felt”, said The Guardian. Some schools are being forced to close, businesses such as soft-play centres and childminders are struggling, and midwifery courses are facing challenges because students must attend a minimum number of births.

Meanwhile, people are also living longer: life expectancy has been rising since the late 18th century, and fertility has been declining since the late 19th century, aside from a short rebound in the middle of the 20th century.

But “Westminster dwellers” don’t always “take an interest in this crisis”, which “often seems to be the problem that cannot be named” for politicians who don’t want to appear “anti-feminist” or “overly interfering in people’s personal lives”, said Politics Home.

Is alarm around the issue justified? “I don’t think so,” the cognitive and evolutionary anthropologist, Paula Sheppard, told New Scientist. There are nearly nine billion people on Earth, so “we’re not going to go extinct any time soon”.

The Court of Appeal is to review the sentences given to three teenage boys convicted of the rape of two girls in Hampshire. The judge’s original decision had prompted a public outcry and a rare intervention from the prime minister.

The boys, two of whom were 15 and one 14 at the time of sentencing, were given youth rehabilitation orders and walked free from court despite having 10 rape convictions between them. The judge said he wanted to “avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily” and support their reintegration into society.

But former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said the sentences were “unduly lenient” while Keir Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, said “there are questions about the sentence”. The case has highlighted the discretionary power the judiciary holds.

How much leeway do judges have?

Legislation sets maximum, and sometimes minimum, sentences for criminal offences based on the type, seriousness and circumstances of the crime. “But the law is written in a way that gives judges and magistrates considerable discretion when it comes to sentencing,” said the Sentencing Council for England and Wales.

Sentencing guidelines set by the Council help identify what type and length of sentence should be imposed to make sure a consistent approach is taken across all courts and crimes.

By law, judges and magistrates must sentence according to the guidelines, “unless it would be unjust to do so”, said the Council. However, they have the “discretion to depart from sentencing guidelines if they think it would be in the interest of justice to do so, given all the circumstances of a particular case”.

When deciding on a sentence, the judge or magistrate will consider things like “your age, if you have a criminal record, if you pleaded guilty or not guilty”, said Gov.uk. While they must follow sentencing guidelines, “they may also look at decisions made by the Court of Appeal in previous cases – this is called ‘case law’”.

“Judges never publicly comment on cases they oversee because to do so would potentially undermine the words they have used in court,” said the BBC, “but they always have to show in court the reasons why they have sentenced a defendant the way they did”.

How is it different for young offenders?

“While the seriousness of the offence will be the starting point,” said the Sentencing Council, when sentencing children or those aged under 18 at the date of the finding of guilt, the approach should be “individualistic and focused on the child or young person, as opposed to offence focused”.

There is an emphasis on rehabilitation “where possible”. The court should also “consider the effect the sentence is likely to have on the child or young person (both positive and negative) as well as any underlying factors contributing to the offending behaviour”.

Both domestic and international laws dictate that a custodial sentence should always be a “measure of last resort” for children and young people. Statute provides that a custodial sentence “may only be imposed when the offence is so serious that no other sanction is appropriate”.

Can a sentence be reconsidered?

The unduly lenient sentence scheme allows any member of the public to refer a sentence to the attorney general. The government’s top legal adviser then asks prosecutors to “advise whether it is in line with expectations, taking into account the discretion that judges have, or completely at odds with what would have happened in comparable cases”, said the BBC.

If the attorney general decides the sentence was “out of line, he will refer it to the Court of Appeal where three senior judges will look at what happened in a public hearing and rule on whether the sentence was right or unduly lenient”.

The right to appeal against a sentence “remains restricted to serious crimes tried in the crown court, such as murder, manslaughter, robbery, rape, stalking and most child sexual abuse offences”, excluding “hundreds of other offences, including some sexual crimes, causing death by careless driving and burglary”, said The Guardian.

The law was changed in April to extend the 28-day limit to submit a formal request for a review after an offender is sentenced to six months. It followed a campaign by relatives of murder victims who argued they were not aware of the scheme or had missed the deadline.

Nearly six years to the day after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked racial protests across the United States, something similar is happening across the pond. The death of a Congolese man in Dublin led people throughout the Irish capital to take to the streets, in what many are calling the country’s own George Floyd-like reckoning.

What happened?

The protests began over an incident on May 15, when Yves Sakila was detained by “several security guards who suspected him of shoplifting at Arnotts, Ireland’s oldest and largest department store, in the heart of Dublin” after he “allegedly stole a bottle of perfume,” said The Associated Press. Sakila, a 35-year-old native of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was seen on video “struggling and crying out in distress as he was held down by several men for nearly five minutes.”

At least two of the guards “held his face to the ground and at one point one of ​them appeared to kneel on his head or neck for a few seconds,” said Reuters. Police eventually arrived on scene, and Sakila was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Sakila’s death was seen by many as reminiscent of the murder of George Floyd, who died in 2020 “after being arrested by police outside a shop in Minnesota, prompting widespread protests under the Black Lives Matter banner,” said The Times.

How has Ireland reacted?

The incident has caused anger and protests in Ireland, with many demonstrators calling for racial justice. Following Sakila’s death, at least “several hundred people attended a rally” in Dublin organized by Black Coalition Ireland, said The Irish Times. The protesters are demanding “proper transparent investigation into his death,” Black Coalition Ireland spokeswoman Cllr Yemi Adenuga told The Irish Times, as well as “racial training for all gardaí,” referring to Ireland’s national police force.

The protesters additionally called for an “end to the ‘demonizing rhetoric’ used by politicians or would-be politicians against ethnic communities and equal treatment for all communities, not just on paper but in practice,” said The Irish Times. The Democratic Republic of the Congo “remains steadfastly committed to establishing the full truth” of Sakila’s death, the country’s foreign affairs ministry said in a translated post on X. Irish government officials are also getting involved, with Ebun Joseph, Ireland’s Special Rapporteur on Racism and Racial Equality, calling for an investigation.

The footage of Sakila’s death has “caused profound distress, fear and outrage across many communities, particularly among Black and minority ethnic communities who already experience heightened anxiety regarding racial profiling, excessive force, unequal treatment and over-policing in public spaces,” Joseph said in a statement, per Irish broadcaster RTÉ. His death raises “urgent and serious questions which require comprehensive examination.” Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin, the country’s prime minister, has also called for an investigation.

The incident will likely cause tensions to grow in a country that “continues to grapple with increasing political tension around immigration, following anti-immigrant protests and riots that erupted in Dublin in 2023,” said The Grio. Many are continuing to push for changes. “We call this a George Floyd moment,” David ​Kaliba, a former high school classmate of Sakila, said to Reuters. “I can’t believe ​it happened in America in 2020 and happened in Ireland in 2026.”

On 28 April, the UAE, which produces about 4% of the world’s oil, thanked the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) for “five decades of cooperation”, then resigned.

Opec is an intergovernmental group that imposes production quotas on members to keep oil prices “fair and stable”, it says; economists see it as a classic example of a cartel, a group that collaborates to reduce competition and raise prices.

Why did the UAE leave Opec?

The UAE is thought to have left because it wants to increase production, against the wishes of Saudi Arabia, Opec’s de facto leader, but it had also recently been attacked by another member, Iran. In theory, the UAE could now export more oil, lowering the commodity’s soaring price. But thanks to the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz (through which over half of the UAE’s oil and all of its gas usually passes), and the chaotic state of the peace negotiations between the US and Iran, energy markets barely moved. Some analysts, however, called it “the beginning of the end of Opec”.

Why was Opec created?

From the 1930s until the 1970s, a group of seven Anglo-American companies known as the “Seven Sisters” – the ancestors of today’s BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell – dominated the world oil market. They had secured long-term concessions across the Middle East, as well as in Venezuela and Indonesia, which meant they controlled over 80% of world supplies.

Producer nations were initially given only modest payments in return. After the Second World War, oil-producing countries increasingly chafed under the Seven Sisters’ grip, often demanding a larger share of revenues. In 1951, Iran nationalised its oilfields, which was reversed by a US- and British-orchestrated coup.

Around the same time, Saudi Arabia negotiated a 50:50 revenue-sharing deal with Aramco, the (then) US-owned Saudi oil company; this model soon spread. Even so, the Seven Sisters retained control over prices and production, as well as refining and distribution. Opec was created in response.

How did it come into existence?

In early 1959, in response to growing Soviet oil production, the Seven Sisters cut prices by 10%, infuriating the oil ministers of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, who started making plans that year in Cairo. In September 1960, shortly after another price cut, Opec was founded in Baghdad by Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, in an effort to reshape the system in the producers’ interests.

The first international organisation led by what was then called the Third World, Opec worked incrementally at first, driving “participation agreements”, which gradually transferred ownership of oil companies to host governments. But it also expanded its membership: Qatar, Libya, Indonesia, Algeria and Abu Dhabi (the largest emirate) joined in the 1960s; Nigeria joined in 1971. By 1973, when an oil crisis shook the world, Opec controlled more than half of global oil production.

What happened in 1973?

In October, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and his Arab allies – enraged by US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War against Syria and Egypt, and Israel’s continuing occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank – convinced Opec to hike the price of oil from around $3.01 to $5.12 per barrel; the Arab nations also imposed an oil embargo on the US and other nations that backed Israel.

By early 1974, the price had risen above $12 per barrel – a 300% increase. Although the embargo only lasted until March 1974, it triggered a two-year global economic crisis, creating oil shortages and spiralling inflation, and bringing the West’s postwar boom to an end, with all manner of long-term consequences.

The long tail of the 1973 oil crisis

It’s hard to overstate the effects of the 1973 crisis and the “stagflation” that ensued, which exposed the great vulnerability of Western nations, raised unemployment sharply and accelerated deindustrialisation. It has been plausibly linked to everything from a great shift in the world financial order to the invention of punk rock.

In the UK, it speeded up the development of North Sea oil and gas fields (discovered in 1965), and the adoption of natural gas for home heating; France pivoted sharply to nuclear power. Energy conservation only became a priority as a result of the crisis.

In the US, it permanently changed the car industry, opening up the market for lighter, more fuel-efficient – often Japanese – vehicles. This, in the long run, helped make the Toyota Corolla the bestselling car of all time.

There were also unanticipated consequences in Saudi Arabia, where the monarchy used the great oil wealth created to promote a puritanical, fundamentalist version of Islam. (Among the beneficiaries of the ensuing construction boom around holy sites were the bin Laden family.) This was partly to counter the spread of left-wing ideas in the Arab world, though King Faisal, a pious man, was said to be sincerely horrified by “the spiritual dangers of easy affluence”.

Did the strategy work?

The embargo’s main objective was to pressure the US into making Israel leave the Palestinian territories it had occupied in 1967. This didn’t happen, but Opec kept prices high through the 1970s: the decade saw one of the largest transfers of wealth in history, as “petrodollar” infusions from industrialised nations to nationalised oil firms allowed Opec members to fund massive infrastructure projects, build up their militaries, and establish welfare states.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 also kept prices up. At the same time, rich countries took steps to become less dependent on oil; while soaring prices encouraged new exploration, from Alaska to the North Sea, and the Soviet Union became a major producer.

What effects did this have?

The resulting “oil glut” in the 1980s meant that Opec’s power drained away. Opec decreased oil production quotas to stabilise prices, but members failed to comply, producing above their limits; while non-Opec producers pumped out more to fill the gap. Saudi Arabia, frustrated and losing market share, opened the spigots in 1986, crashing the oil price. In the years after, quotas were largely restored – but Opec’s ability to affect world prices was relatively limited, and poorer members often chafed at the restrictions.

What is the situation today?

US shale fracking technology meant that, in 2018, it overtook Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s largest producer. Partly in response to these changes, Opec+ had been formed in 2016. A looser group that includes big producers such as Russia and Mexico, it controls about 40% of the world’s output; but the complex, diversified global system limits its power, while smaller Opec members complain that policy is decided by the “Big Two”, Saudi Arabia and Russia. This was one reason why Qatar left Opec in 2019, damaging the image of a unified Middle Eastern bloc; Angola and Ecuador have also left.

The UAE’s departure is on a different scale: it was the cartel’s third-largest producer. The immediate effects are limited by the Iran crisis. But without its “swing” capacity to increase production fast, Opec’s ability to act as a “global central bank for oil” is diminished.

For months, the Trump administration has increased pressure on Cuba through harsher sanctions, a crippling oil blockade and threats to “take” the island.

Now Washington has sharply escalated tensions by indicting the 94-year-old former Cuban president, Raúl Castro (brother of Fidel). The US Justice Department said the charges relate to the 1996 downing of two unarmed civilian planes by the Cuban military, when Raúl was armed forces minister. The incident, which killed four people, triggered one of the worst crises in US-Cuban relations since the Cold War.

Following the US capture and ousting of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro following a similar indictment, which deprived the Cuban Communist Party of a key ally, many fear the indictment suggests Donald Trump’s desire for regime change in Havana is intensifying.

Who is Raúl Castro?

Alongside Fidel, Raúl helped lead the guerrilla war that toppled the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, and launched the Cuban communist revolution.

As Fidel’s defence minister for decades, Raúl built a “powerful base within the military and Cuban state”, said Reuters. He also helped defeat the US-organised Bay of Pigs invasion. After Fidel became ill in 2006, Raúl stepped in as acting president before formally taking over in 2008. Although he resigned as president in 2018 and leader of the Communist Party in 2021, he is widely considered one of the most powerful men in the country, and one of the fathers of the revolution.

He retains the official title of “army general” and holds “significant influence” over the Communist Party and armed forces. The current president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, is “widely seen as relying on ​Castro’s guidance for major decisions”.

What happened to the planes in 1996?

After the collapse of its main financial supporter, the Soviet Union, Cuba suffered an “extreme economic emergency” of blackouts, and shortages of food and fuel, said BBC News Mundo – much like today. Thousands fled to Florida on rafts. A Miami-based group of Cuban exiles, Brothers to the Rescue, tried to help the migrants, and dropped anti-regime leaflets over the island. Havana “began denouncing the air incursions”, branding the group “terrorists”.

In 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two of the group’s planes, killing all four men on board – three of whom were US citizens. The attack sparked “strong international condemnation”, including against Raúl, and the US “significantly tightened” sanctions. Most organisations say the planes were in international airspace, although Cuba has always insisted otherwise. Many analysts believe Fidel was trying to “prevent a possible rapprochement with the US”, which could “spur political and economic reforms” that would “jeopardise his absolute power”. The case still “retains enormous symbolic and political weight” for Cubans, on and off the island.

What is the significance of the indictments?

Families of the four pilots who were killed “cheered the indictments, which they had been demanding for three decades”, said NBC News. It is a “politically powerful decision”; Florida’s large, politically active population of Cuban émigrés exert “outsized leverage” on US presidents, particularly Trump. Miami’s members of Congress would have the White House “do the same to Castro” as it did to Maduro, said The Miami Herald.

And the decision to unseal the indictments on 20 May “carries particular significance”, said The New York Times. On the same date in 1902, the US formally ended its years-long military occupation of the former Spanish colony. Many in the US still celebrate it as Cuban independence day. But for others, said Michael Bustamante, director of Cuban American studies at the University of Miami, the Trump administration is “hearkening back to this moment when the US did treat Cuba as its backyard”.

Will it lead to war between the US and Cuba?

This indictment could “doom any lingering chance of a deal to avoid armed conflict”, said CNN’s Havana Bureau Chief Patrick Oppmann. Trump claims Cuba is “desperate” to make a deal, but “he said the same about Venezuela and Iran”.

The charges have “fired up” the anti-Castro Cuban exile community in Miami. Many hope Fidel’s revolution is “crumbling”, with Trump’s oil blockade pushing the island “closer to the brink”. They are arguing “against any accommodation with Havana”. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American and “staunch foe of the Castros”, said the leadership “needs to go”.

The charges “lay the groundwork for a possible military operation by the US to extradite him”. But unlike in Venezuela, where Maduro’s military “quickly fell in line with Trump’s demands”, Cubans are “likely to react far more belligerently”. There is “little chance” that Raúl will be going anywhere, “much less a Miami courtroom”. Díaz-Canel has said US action would trigger a “blood bath”; the regime “may choose to go down fighting”. After all, in Cuba, every official speech “ends with the cry of ‘Fatherland or death!’”

The rate of inflation slowed in April despite concerns about the impact of the Iran war and oil shortages on household bills, but this dip may be only temporary.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) was 2.8% in April, down from 3.3% in March. The lower energy price cap introduced in April “helped soften the sharp rise in fuel costs since the start of the Iran war”, said The Guardian.

But the fall is expected to be “short-lived”, said CNBC, as the “economic implications of the Iran war materialise”.

It comes as the government announced that fuel duty will be frozen for a further four months until January 2027. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has laid out extra measures for low-income households to help mitigate the worst of the cost-of-living crisis.

What is inflation?

Inflation measures the changing price of goods and services. It is based on the CPI, which tracks a basket of goods, such as food, energy bills and transport costs, monitored by the ONS.

To see inflation in action, said MoneyHelper, “think about what you could buy with £1 over the past few decades”. A higher inflation rate means you can buy “less this year than you could last year for the same amount of money”.

At 2.8%, the inflation figure is above the Bank of England’s target of 2%, but is “well below” the 11.1% figure reached in October 2022, said the BBC.

Will inflation ever come down?

The latest drop in the rate of inflation was “more substantial than anticipated”, said The Independent, but the ongoing Middle East conflict “could soon reverse this progress”.

The reduction in the energy price cap in April was a “key driver” in the latest figures, said Financial Reporter, but “rising global energy costs” are likely to feed through into a higher Ofgem price cap from 1 July, which would push inflation higher.

It comes as Iran’s continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz means “more than half” of the normal oil supply is not getting through. Unless “something changes”, said Kiplinger, this means gas, fuel and food prices will “start rising in the future”. This can push up the rate of inflation.

Oil markets have been “heavily disrupted due to the Iran war”, said MoneyWeek. The commodity is used in the manufacturing of “a significant portion” of everyday items such as plastic, crayons, shoes, backpacks, iPhones, pillows and much more.

This “simple answer” to the question of whether inflation will come down, said Big Issue, is “probably never” and “almost certainly not by very much”.

Inflation still means prices are rising. The rate would have to be negative for prices to actually fall – known as deflation. This can “actually be a quite a bad thing”, as it means the economy is stagnant. In the past, this has been used as “political cover for austerity”.

The Bank of England has the power to “lift or lower interest rates”, said the BBC, to change how households and businesses use their money and control inflation.

But many of the “current pressures” on inflation are coming from outside the UK, meaning the cost of living is “widely expected to rise from here”.

The “vulnerability” of the civilian energy infrastructure was exposed this week when a drone strike on the United Arab Emirates cut off power to a nuclear reactor, said Bloomberg.

It’s the first time a fully operating nuclear power plant has had to rely on back-up generators because of a military attack, but reactors in Ukraine and Iran have also been threatened by recent conflicts.

Why would a nuclear site be targeted?

A country might target a nuclear power plant to cripple an enemy’s power grid, or to force a surrender through the psychological terror of threatening a radiological disaster. An attack on such facilities could also be used to delay a nation’s ability to enrich nuclear material.

Alternatively, armies may attack, or occupy, a nuclear plant to seize control of a strategic geographic corridor or to prevent defending forces from using the area.

What does international law say?

Under the Geneva Conventions, civilian structures, including nuclear power plants, “are protected against attack”, but the treaties also state that they can be hit “for such time as they are military objectives”. This is a “loophole” that “aggressor states” have “interpreted widely”, said Dan Sabbagh, The Guardian’s defence and security editor.

Attacking a nuclear power plant also breaks legal resolutions passed by the UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors.

What would happen if a site were hit?

An attack on a nuclear site would not necessarily lead to a mushroom cloud or an immediate release of radiation because modern plants are built with multiple safety systems that can shut down reactors and contain damage.

But the reactor’s core could continue to heat up after a strike. This could lead to a build up of hydrogen gas, which could cause further explosions and damage. If the reactor began to degrade, radioactive material could be released and that can remain in the environment for years or even decades. It could potentially spread across borders and enter water systems or settle into the soil.

There are other consequences. Attacks on nuclear installations “risk undermining the emerging nuclear renaissance” in Western economies as an alternative to fossil fuels, said Bloomberg. Politicians and the public are “highly sensitive to radiation emergencies”, so an incident in one country “tends to dampen enthusiasm” for nuclear power elsewhere.

An attack on a nuclear plant would also be a hugely symbolic moment. Although conventional power plants have been “repeatedly bombed” by Russia during the Ukraine war, said Sabbagh, Kyiv’s three functioning nuclear plants have “remained relatively unscathed” because Moscow regarded a direct attack on them to be “taboo”.

Britain’s hospitals, schools and homes will need to be fitted with air conditioning to deal with expected rises in global heating, the government’s climate advisers have said.

With temperatures forecast to exceed 40C in all parts of the UK by 2050, a major report from the Climate Change Committee has warned the country is “built for a climate that no longer exists today and will be increasingly distant in years to come”.

What’s in the report?

Julia King, chair of the CCC’s adaptation subcommittee, said that, of the many climate threats laid out in the report, “extreme heat is certainly the most deadly” and requires the “need to see cooling rolled out at scale”.

“Sometimes this will mean shading, but sometimes it will mean air conditioning. And either way, we’ve got to get serious about protecting our most vulnerable people in hospitals, in care homes, and in schools.”

The CCC recommends air conditioning be installed in all care homes and hospitals within the next 10 years, and in all schools within 25 years. Exams should be set at cooler times of year, to stop students struggling to think in the heat.

The government should also set a maximum temperature for working indoors and outdoors, it said, following countries like Spain. There, the maximum legal working temperature indoors is 27C for sedentary work and 25C for light physical work.

Failure to take the necessary steps to stop people overheating could cause deaths from heat-related illnesses to rise to 10,000 a year by 2050, the committee warned.

Anything else?

As well as the risk from more intense heatwaves, the CCC found droughts are likely to become much more frequent. Last year the Environment Agency warned that England is on track for a daily shortfall in public water supplies of five billion litres by 2055 – equivalent to more than a third of current daily usage.

“We’re facing a potential world where you could turn on the tap and nothing would come out,” said King.

Global warming will also lead to more erratic rainfall and flash flooding. Seven million UK properties are currently at risk of flooding; if nothing is done, this could rise by 40% by 2050, the CCC said. Sea levels will also rise, threatening coastal areas that would no longer be protected by natural flood defences. Higher temperatures would also put domestic food production under threat.

How much would the changes cost?

“Adapting to a changing climate comes at a price,” said the BBC. The CCC estimates its recommendations would cost roughly £11 billion per year, split between the public and private sectors.

But every £1 spent would yield about £5 in benefits, the committee claims, and “the UK invests 50 times this amount every year” already, “some of it on infrastructure that exacerbates the climate crisis or vulnerability to it”, said The Guardian. “It’s very good value compared to the cost of the impacts of the climate that we’re already seeing,” said King.

There could also be a political cost to inaction. Sam Alvis, from the left-leaning think tank IPPR, told The Times that if the government did not step up efforts to adapt to hotter temperatures, it risked “stoking support” for populist politicians.

“When increasingly severe and frequent climate impacts strike, populists are quick to exploit public anger over a lack of preparation, using it to advance their own agenda and weaken support for climate action more broadly.”

Wes Streeting has dropped the “bombshell” that he’d like Britain to “one day” rejoin the European Union, said The Times.

The former health secretary and Labour leadership hopeful has “put the Europe question firmly back on the political agenda”. However, the process of reversing Brexit and rejoining the EU would be far from straightforward.

Is it possible?

Yes. Although no country has ever left the EU and then rejoined, it is possible. If the UK decided to seek membership again, it would need to apply through the framework set out in Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union.

However, the UK would need the support of all member states to “open and conclude accession talks”, and the UK’s “historical reluctance to integrate fully with the EU” could remain a “concern to the bloc”, according to the Institute for Government.

What would the process be? 

First, the UK would submit an application to the Council of the European Union. All existing EU member states would then need to agree unanimously to begin accession talks with London. At this stage, member states could decide to impose stricter eligibility criteria.

If the UK cleared that hurdle, it would enter negotiations over alignment with the EU’s legal and regulatory framework across a wide range of policy areas, including trade, fisheries, immigration and borders, environmental standards, and competition law.

Britain’s application would ultimately need unanimous approval from the Council of the EU, as well as the backing of a majority in the European Parliament. Realistically, the entire process would likely take several years at a minimum. Even relatively straightforward accessions can take close to a decade.

What would the UK have to agree to?

Although the UK previously enjoyed favourable terms within the EU, those concessions might not be available if it sought to rejoin. For example, the opt-out that kept Britain outside the Schengen border-free travel zone would probably not apply a second time.

Rejoining could also involve a commitment to adopt the euro. In addition, Britain would return without the 1984 rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher, which refunded roughly 66% of the UK’s net contribution to the EU budget. In 2020, the UK’s net contribution stood at £12.6 billion; any future contribution would likely be significantly higher.

Knut Abraham, a senior MP from Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union party, told The Times that, from a regulatory standpoint, the UK should have a relatively straightforward path back into the bloc because its laws remain largely aligned with Brussels. “I don’t foresee that many complications,” he said.

However, a senior European foreign ministry official predicted a less straightforward process: “I think we would welcome the UK with open arms – just not on their terms.”

Chinese president Xi Jinping told Donald Trump last week that he hoped the US and China could avoid the “Thucydides trap”. He was referring to an ancient Greek theory of war that has become a staple of geopolitical commentary in recent years. But what was he implying – and what do classical battles have to do with current US-China relations?

What is the Thucydides trap?

It’s the theory that, when a rising power threatens to displace an established power, the result is often war.

It is named after Athenian general and historian Thucydides, whose account of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens 2,430 years ago included the observation that “the growth of power of Athens, and the fear that this instilled in Sparta, made war inevitable”.

The implication is that, if an established superpower “manages the rising power badly”, it can feel “obliged to go to war when that’s not necessarily the only option”, said David M. Pritchard, an associate professor of Greek history at the University of Queensland, on The Conversation.

The Thucydides quote was re-popularised in the 2010s by US political scientist Graham Allison. He identified 16 moments in the past 500 years when a rising power threatened to dominate a major ruling power, and pointed out that 12 of them resulted in war.

How does it apply today?

In 2026, the established superpower is the United States, and the rising power is China. There is tension between the two over trade and tariffs, and over China’s claims to sovereignty over Taiwan. Analysts believe there’s a danger of both sides misinterpreting each other’s actions. The US may see Beijing’s expansion as aggressive and a challenge to US influence, while China may see US alliances and military presence in Southeast Asia as attempts at containment.

So, according to the Thucydides trap, if Washington insists on a policy of confrontation with Beijing, war will be the likely outcome. Xi’s remarks were “an entirely unsubtle warning, and even a threat”, said Aaron MacLean on The Free Press. He was not voicing a “friendly expression of a shared desire for peace”; he was making it clear that, to avoid conflict, the US must “radically change” its “attitudes and actions”, and “accommodate” itself “to a Chinese-led world order”.

Is it historically accurate?

“Many scholars of ancient Greece take issue with the way the term is used today,” said Pritchard on The Conversation. The word “trap” implies Sparta “made a mistake in 431BC and could’ve handled things better”. But Sparta “had good reason to fear the rising Athenians”, who were “stripping allies off Sparta left, right and centre”. It was pressure from their remaining allies that pushed the Spartans to act against Athens. And, although it took them 27 years, they won.

Nonetheless, there are lessons to be learned from the Peloponnesian War. It “may be foolish” for an established superpower to “check the rise of an emerging one”; although Sparta managed to do so, it came “at a terrible cost”. Decades of war wiped out much of its fighting population and forced it to depend on unreliable allies, triggering its eventual decline. If it had found a way to accommodate Athens and its ambitions, Sparta could have continued as a superpower “well into the fourth century”.

The UAE has denied Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that he made a secret trip to the Gulf state during the Iran war to meet the president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

With The Wall Street Journal reporting that the UAE has carried out its own strikes on Iran, there is a renewed focus on the Abraham Accords – the peace and cooperation agreements between Israel and several of its Arab neighbours.

What are the Accords?

The Abraham Accords are a series of agreements between Israel, UAE and Bahrain, normalising Israel’s relations with several Arab nations. The initial accords, which were mediated by the US, were signed on 15 September 2020. Three months later, Sudan and Morocco joined the pact.

States such as the UAE and Bahrain saw the Accords as strategically useful but large parts of Arab public opinion remain strongly pro-Palestinian and opposed to closer relations with Israel. The Gaza war widened this divide and then the Iran war created a sense that the region was being dragged into instability through Israeli-Iranian confrontation.

So Arab governments face a growing dilemma because maintaining ties with Israel and the US risks a domestic backlash but breaking ties could damage security and economic interests.

Tehran’s “narrative” became that it could target “at will” the countries that had signed the Abraham Accords with Israel, said The Jerusalem Post. This reinforced fears in Saudi Arabia in particular that overt alignment with Israel could make the kingdom a direct target.

How might they be updated?

The original vision of the Accords – of a rapidly expanding regional bloc openly aligned with Israel and integrated economically across the Middle East – has become a significantly weaker prospect. So future agreements could involve cooler normalisation, selective security cooperation, quieter diplomacy and a slower expansion.

The power of China has also encouraged the players to think about an update. Beijing has “spent the better part of two decades cultivating Middle Eastern influence”, with infrastructure finance, arms sales and “diplomatic mediation”, said US conservative think tank the Hudson Institute. But an “expanded and strengthened” Accords would create a “competing network rooted in shared security interests and American sponsorship”.

What would it look like?

The Accords have “demonstrated resilience” despite the “turbulence” of the past two and a half years, including “growing criticism of Israel in parts of the Arab world”, said Roy Binyamini, a former National Security Council official, on Ynet.

But the US and its Accords partners could outline a “vision for regional stability, economic growth, interfaith tolerance and the containment of extremist influences”.

Meanwhile, Israel could “leverage its experience” to help regional partners in “strengthening civilian defence systems, including air defence capabilities and protection of critical infrastructure”.

After years of combined effort, an international coalition has come up with a new proposed name for one of the reproductive disorders affecting millions worldwide. Women’s reproductive health has long been a blind spot in the medical industry, but the group hopes that renaming polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) will help illuminate a better path forward in treating it.

Why the push to change the name PCOS?

For decades, millions of patients with symptoms like “irregular periods, pelvic pain, excess body hair and acne” have been diagnosed with PCOS, said The New York Times. Getting a diagnosis can be difficult, and those who do encounter stigma and imperfect treatment options along the way. An international consortium of doctors and researchers concluded that the condition’s name was part of the problem. Many PCOS patients “don’t have ovarian cysts at all,” but they often have “widespread hormonal and metabolic dysfunction.”

After more than a decade of “vigorous debate” over the need for a different name that more precisely describes the syndrome, a gathering of 56 organizations debuted the result: polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS, said Stat News. It was introduced in a policy paper published in The Lancet and presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Prague.

Since the previous name of the illness didn’t accurately describe the condition, it contributed to “delayed diagnosis, fragmented care and stigma, while curtailing research and policy framing,” the consortium members said in the paper. The change was based on input from dozens of organizations and experts, as well as feedback from more than 14,000 patients.

The new name “moves away from the incorrect focus on cysts” to recognizing this as a “much broader condition,” said lead study author Helena Teede, the director of Melbourne’s Monash Center for Health Research and Implementation, to The Guardian. The effects of PMOS on the body are “virtually all endocrine — hormonal.” Patients instigated a name change because they knew “how much they have suffered because of the name, and they were really passionate.” The efforts were “unprecedented,” and nobody has “put this much effort into a name change ever.”

In the policy paper, the authors lay out a plan for the World Health Organization and the International Classification of Diseases to adopt the new name over the next three years, potentially making it the international standard by 2028.

How will the name change affect treatment?

The researchers hope the name change will “transform how patients understand the condition” and “how doctors treat it,” said the Times. When a condition affects one organ, everything from research funding to education to clinical guidelines is “all in that box,” Teede said to the outlet. “And in this condition, it was in the wrong box.”

The change could also have “immediate implications for some patients,” prompting doctors to “recommend more screening for metabolic and cardiovascular problems,” said the Times. Renaming it should “redirect” professionals “into thinking about this as a long-term chronic condition and not just a period problem,” Basma Faris, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said to the outlet.

Funding for studying the disorder and treatments will no longer be limited to sources focused on ovarian health, Teede said to Time. Despite affecting “170 million reproductive-age women” and creating a “health and economic burden” that is “huge,” the illness hasn’t had much investment in research. Getting it categorized differently means “we get more evidence on how to treat it.”

Women’s health is “notoriously underfunded,” Christina Boots, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said to CNN. Recognizing that it “spans not just reproductive issues, but mental health and metabolic health as well,” may help “enhance the number of dollars and the number of studies that are to understand it and treat it.”

About 5 million to 6 million American women have PMOS, according to the Endocrine Society and the CDC. It affects up to 12% of American women of reproductive age. Despite how common it is, the condition “remains misunderstood and underresearched,” said The Cut, and the World Health Organization estimates that nearly 70% of women who suffer from it have never been diagnosed. Even though the “diagnostic criteria have not changed,” experts hope that a new, more accurate name will “help more people get a diagnosis sooner.”

From Meghan Trainor and Zayn to the Pussycat Dolls, artists are canceling their concert tours because of unsold tickets. This so-called blue dot fever — taking its name from the blue dots that represent available seats in a performance venue’s seating chart — reflects a lack of affordability and the reduced power of nostalgia.

Why are seats not selling?

There are “signs that consumer tolerance for high prices is breaking and a correction is taking place,” said The Times. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the average ticket price “increased from $96.17 in 2019 to $106.07 in 2022, marking the first time it had crossed the $100 threshold,” said Pollstar. The price of concert tickets peaked in 2024 at $135.92. In 2025, the price “dropped 2.4% to $132.62, but it’s still more than either 2022 or 2023.”

Directly after the pandemic, there was “such pent-up demand that it was really easy to tour and everybody was making a lot of money,” said J.R. Lind, a senior writer at Pollstar, to The Times. Now, there’s a “little bit of coming back to earth.” With “inflation and rising fuel costs,” affordability is “going to start affecting concerts.”

“Sky-high ticket prices” are happening because of “three key factors,” said Rolling Stone. “Supply and demand, as reflected in the controversial practice of dynamic pricing, rampant scalping, and one dominant company, Live Nation, controlling every source of revenue, including beer, food, parking and Ticketmaster service fees.”

In addition, touring costs have become high. The national average for regular gas is at $4.56 a gallon, with California at $6.17. Diesel fuel averages $7.49 a gallon in California, which is “critical for the trucks that move staging, lighting and equipment between cities,” said the San Francisco Chronicle. “Those costs can quickly change the math for tours that depend on long-haul logistics.”

Are there cultural implications?

Along with the ticket prices, the cultural capital for many artists is dwindling. Artists are “getting booked into rooms too big for where they sit today,” Nathan Green, the CEO and co-founder of New Level Radio, said to Newsweek. Older artists banking on nostalgia are struggling most: Zayn, formerly a member of boy band One Direction, and the Pussycat Dolls, a girl group that was big in the early aughts, both recently canceled their U.S. tours.

In 2024, the “British band Oasis sold out its first North American tour since 2008 within an hour,” and “Coldplay, Hilary Duff and My Chemical Romance are among artists who have seen huge demand for live concerts despite the height of their popularity being two decades ago,” said Newsweek. Still, banking on old glory no longer works for everyone.

“Blue dot fever” disproportionately affects smaller or older artists. “Mega-stars and must-see tours continue to sell, while some arena and stadium runs find that streaming popularity, nostalgia or social media buzz does not always translate into thousands of $100-plus seats,” said the San Francisco Chronicle.

The problem could be helped by downsizing. “If the business goes back to booking artists into rooms they can fill, even if it means smaller venues and more nights, the show looks like a show again,” said Green. “The empty seats are a sign to every fan that the hype was bigger than the act.”

King Charles has laid out the government’s legislative agenda for the next year, even as speculation mounts that Keir Starmer will not be around to lead it.

Buckingham Palace had taken the extraordinary step of privately asking Downing Street if the ceremonial state opening of Parliament should proceed at all, given the political crisis engulfing the prime minister.

“Traditionally a moment for governmental clarity”, the King’s Speech was today delivered “amidst profound political uncertainty – a stark contrast to its original intent as a boost for Keir Starmer following recent electoral setbacks”, said Jonathan Bunn in The Independent.

What was announced?

The King today announced a package of 37 bills for the 2026-27 parliamentary session, building on the previous session that had delivered key Labour manifesto pledges such as the Renters’ Rights Act and the Employment Rights Act.

The new measures include a bill to lay the ground to adopt European regulations, bringing the UK into closer alignment with the EU, and another to allow the government to fully nationalise British Steel. Both of these formed the centrepiece of Starmer’s “reset” speech on Monday.

There will also be a Clean Water Bill to merge the functions of the existing regulators, including Ofwat, in an attempt to end the current “fragmented oversight” of pollution in our rivers. There will be measures to streamline the process for approving new nuclear energy projects. And the long-awaited Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill will end the leasehold flat system in England and Wales, and cap annual ground rents.

The King set out plans for a voluntary digital ID scheme, an overhaul of special educational needs provision in England, a tightening of the asylum system, a scaling-back of jury trials and restrictions on foreign political donations. There will be legislation to enable peerages to be removed, and to lower the voting age to 16.

What was missing?

There was no second attempt to reform the welfare system. The first attempt, which included eligibility restrictions for some health-related benefits, resulted in a backbench revolt, and an embarrassing U-turn for the government last year. The decision not to try again “may be welcomed” by those MPs who forced the backdown but “is likely to be held up” by others “as a sign of the prime minister’s growing inability to drive an agenda through government”, said the BBC's chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman.

Also absent was any legislation about the Chagos Islands or any move to resurrect the assisted dying bill that failed to become law in the last parliamentary session.

What if Starmer goes?

The legislation crafted by Starmer and set out today “is already in danger of being overtaken by events, as many Labour MPs attempt to force the prime minister from office”, said the Financial Times. This put the monarch in the “unusual and awkward position of putting forward an agenda” that could be “left potentially obsolete by political turmoil”.

No one expects the King’s Speech to be voted down – that would effectively be a vote of no confidence in the government. But, were the PM to resign or be forced out, the legislative programme of a new leader could diverge significantly from the one announced today.

“Key groups” of Labour MPs are already “setting out alternative policy agendas that are mostly more radical than Starmer’s”, said the FT. The broad Labour Growth Group, allied to Wes Streeting, has a manifesto for supply-side reform that aims “to use tax and regulation to incentivise work over returns from owning assets”. Mainstream, a group broadly supportive of Andy Burnham, stresses greater public control over key industries, and the soft-left Tribune group, also allied to Andy Burnham, is calling for “an overhaul of the government’s fiscal rules to allow more public investment in infrastructure”.

Older people are becoming increasingly vulnerable to scams, and the latest target appears to be inheritance tax.

From April 2027, pensions are to be used in inheritance calculations, but criminals are attempting to “exploit people’s concerns” by inventing fake scams claiming a person’s retirement savings can be invested abroad instead, said The Guardian.

The impact of scams is “often emotional as well as financial”, said Age UK. In terms of the financial cost, research by VirginMedia 02 found that over-65s falling victim to such fraud lose £831 on average.

Scammers are often “emotionally manipulating” their victims, said StopThinkFraud, before they steal money or personal data. But you can protect yourself or encourage your family members to be careful by “staying vigilant and always taking a moment to stop, think and check” the source of the information.

‘Grandparent’ scams

One of the “most common scams”, said The Mirror, is where criminals pose as a grandchild or close relative. In instances like these, the scammer claims to have a new number and says they are in trouble, all in the “hope of being sent money”.

A major red flag is that scammers often request to be paid “through gift cards or wire transfers” so victims “have no way to ever recover their money”, said the National Council on Aging. This scam is seen as particularly effective “because it exploits people’s emotions”.

Authorised push payment fraud

Victims can “lose their life savings in a matter of seconds” from authorised push payment (APP) fraud, said Age UK.

This involves scammers pretending to be the police, a government department or your bank and “tricking people into transferring money” to an account under their control.

This type of scam is “more attractive” to criminals because they can “quickly take the money and run”, said FICO.

Romance scams

Romance scams involve fraudsters setting up a fake profile to steal money. Scammers lure in their victims with the promise of a genuine relationship, gaining trust before requesting funds.

Victims aged between 75 and 84 lost £9,054 on average in 2024 from romance scams, said Lloyds Bank, 52% more than all other age groups.

Scammers often target older people, said the Daily Express, who are seen as “less tech savvy and more likely to be keen to forge a new relationship”.

Modelling scams

A “new twist on a well-known scam”, said the BBC, is fake modelling agencies aimed at older people who may be searching for opportunities in retirement, or to branch out with a side hustle.

These “phoney modelling agencies” have been taking cash from “desperate” young people for years, and scammers have “found a new target” – older people.

AI scams

National Trading Standards has warned of a “new and advanced” phone scam that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to clone voices, said Which?.

It appears to be targeting older people, using the “ruse of a ‘lifestyle survey’ cold call”. The survey responses given are used to create “AI-generated voice clones” to then start direct debits “without your knowledge”.

How to protect yourself from scams

Scams can often be “sophisticated” and therefore “difficult to spot”, said the Financial Conduct Authority. But there are “warning signs” to look out for.

You can protect yourself by “treating all unexpected calls, emails and text messages with caution”, and check the FCA register online to see if a firm asking about financial products is regulated.

If you think you have been scammed, “act quickly to help limit the damage”, said MoneyHelper. Contact your bank or card provider “immediately” using their official phone number, and stop any further payments “straight away”.

Those who are targeted can also highlight the matter to Report Fraud.