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.

Keir Starmer swept to power in July 2024 promising “change”, “national renewal” and a “return of politics to public service”. Less than two years later, his premiership is hanging by a thread as more and more of his own MPs and ministers break cover and call for him to go. At least 81 Labour MPs have so far called for the PM to step down and bring his troubled premiership to an untimely end.

Here are five moments that have brought Starmer to the brink.

Winter fuel U-turn

Labour’s honeymoon was short-lived, with the Stockport riots and “Freebie-gate” dominating its first few months in power. But it was the early decision to introduce means-testing to winter fuel payments for older people that proved particularly toxic with voters still unsure about what Starmer and his party stood for.

Long advocated by the Treasury but opposed by successive chancellors for over a decade, it was “one of Labour’s first acts in power and helped ensure voter disillusionment set in early”, said The Times. Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and the wider government have never really recovered.

To make matters worse, rather than quickly reverse course, No. 10 doubled down, for months insisting the move was necessary to get the public finances under control. Only after MPs reported it was coming up again and again on the doorstep and was the first, and only, thing people could cite about Labour’s time in office did Starmer finally decide to U-turn.

National insurance rises

In her first Budget in the autumn of 2024, Reeves was accused of breaking a key election manifesto pledge not to increase taxes on working people. Increasing the employers’ rate of NI was meant to raise £24 billion in a bid to balance the books, but the Office for Budget Responsibility said that the move would lead to job losses, a squeeze on pay and lower growth. While technically not a breach of its tax promise to voters, it increased the financial strain on small businesses and left a sour taste in the mouths of many voters who felt they had been deceived.

Welfare U-turn

While Starmer’s most “serious failing was the absence of rigorous preparation for government”, looking back, the “critical moment” in his premiership was last summer’s U-turn on welfare spending, said The Independent’s political editor, John Rentoul.

While many agreed the welfare budget needed reforming, Reeves’ proposed £5 billion in disability cuts angered many Labour MPs while simultaneously failing to address the structural problems of the benefits system. Facing an embarrassing Commons defeat, the government U-turned again. Not only did this make Starmer look weak and in thrall to his backbenchers, it also forced Reeves to find more taxes to raise in her second Budget, after her first had already unravelled.

While other U-turns and errors were “embarrassing”, the “failure to hold the line on restraining disability spending was fundamental”, said Rentoul. “That was when Starmer’s government lost its way.”

The Mandelson affair

If a series of policy missteps and U-turns conveyed a sense of uncertainty about what Labour in government was actually for, the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, despite his known links to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, raised direct questions about Starmer’s judgement.

After Mandelson’s sacking in September 2025 following new emails revealing the true nature of his relationship with Epstein, the decision to push Mandelson’s appointment through despite widespread concerns within the civil service saw Starmer’s government “embroiled in Britain’s worst political scandal of this century”, said The Economist.

If Starmer “had a purpose, it was stopping things like this”. Presenting himself as a “politician of process rather than conviction” he sought to differentiate himself from recent predecessors such as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. The Mandelson affair “reveals that process comes a distant second to political convenience”.

Local elections

All of this came to a head in last week’s local and devolved elections. With Starmer’s personal approval rating tanking and Labour squeezed by Reform UK to the right and the Greens on the left, the party lost scores of seats and councils, as well as control of Wales for the first time in a century.

While the campaign was meant to be about local issues, the elections were in many ways a “referendum” on Starmer and his government, Jonathan Tonge, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool, told Al Jazeera. Canvassers reported the PM’s popularity coming up again and again on the doorstep.

After months managing to keep his Cabinet and wider party onside and rivals at bay, the aftermath of these elections was always seen as the moment of maximum danger for Starmer – and so it has proved. He has, for now, vowed to fight on, but his time in No. 10 may be entering its final chapter.

Restrictions on high-risk uses of artificial intelligence in the EU will be delayed by more than a year under a deal struck by its legislators.

The deal “marks a notable rollback” in the bloc’s “digital rulebook after years of Brussels proudly marketing itself as the world’s tech cop”, said The Register.

What is changing?

The EU’s AI Act came into force in August 2024 after “years of talks”. But as part of a “phased rollout”, the rules governing high-risk uses were only “set to kick in this August”, said Politico.

Instead, the bloc has “hit the regulatory equivalent of ‘snooze for 16 months’”, said The Register. “The headline change pushes back enforcement of rules covering systems” in areas such as biometrics, critical infrastructure, education, employment, migration, and border control until December 2027.

For products like lifts and toys, compliance deadlines for their AI systems are “stretching” further – to August 2028. Meanwhile, smaller companies get “more breathing room”. The EU hopes it will “avoid duplication between sectoral and AI rules”, it said in a press release.

EU officials insist the delay is “about timing, not watering down the law”. They claim the rules are “moving faster than the standards needed to support them” and that companies currently “lack the guidance and technical tools required for compliance”.

Is this a win for Big Tech?

The change of heart is a “big win” for tech firms and industry groups that have been lobbying the EU to “soften” the AI Act, said The Register. As recently as last week, bosses from companies including ASML, Airbus, Ericsson, Nokia, SAP, Siemens and Mistral AI “publicly warned that Europe risked over-regulating itself out of the global AI race”.

The new deal, which marks the “first significant rollback” of rules in the digital sphere, came after the EU faced pressure from the US over its tech laws. There were also “warnings” from its own industry and governments that “strict restrictions had put the bloc at a disadvantage in a global AI race”, said Politico.

“Only a couple of countries around the world” followed the EU’s lead on restrictions, so the bloc “faced criticism” for “cracking down on AI too early”, despite “civil society” saying that “rules are needed to protect people from the potential harms of the emerging technology”.

Arba Kokalari, a Swedish MEP on the internal market committee, insisted that the EU is “not weakening any safety rules”, but rather “clarifying the rules for companies in Europe”.

What is staying the same?

Some aspects of the AI Act will keep to their original schedule. Bans on unacceptable-risk AI have applied since February 2025, according to the European Commission. The transparency obligations under Article 50, including disclosure for chatbot interactions, will come into force from 2 August.

The European Parliament and Council also agreed to ban AI systems that create child sexual abuse material or that depict identifiable people in sexually explicit content without consent. Companies have until the end of this year to comply.

Palantir Technologies Inc., a Miami-based company that specialises in data integration and analysis, is seldom out of the news. This is partly because it works in controversial sectors: its biggest client is the US military, and its software is used in conflicts from Israel to Ukraine. Clients also include the CIA and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice); it was involved in Elon Musk’s short-lived Department of Government Efficiency.

It has also expanded into healthcare: in Britain, its contracts include a £330 million deal with NHS England, as well as a £240.6 million deal with the Ministry of Defence.

But its notoriety is in part because of its eccentric CEO, Alex Karp. Palantir recently posted on X/ Twitter a manifesto penned by Karp, which, among other things, declared that “Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defence of the nation”; called for universal conscription; encouraged the development of AI weapons; and condemned the West’s “vacant and hollow pluralism”. One MP called it “the ramblings of a supervillain”.

Where did Palantir come from?

Founded in 2003 by a group of tech moguls headed by Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and a libertarian political activist, Palantir was named after the “seeing stones” in “The Lord of the Rings”. (Thiel is a J.R.R. Tolkien fan.) Originally, it applied PayPal’s fraud detection system – which successfully identified fraudulent activity on eBay – to US national security; early funding came from In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm that funds projects for the CIA.

Palantir’s technology was taken up by the US defence establishment under President Obama – it is rumoured that it was involved in the assassination of Osama Bin Laden – and it helped the US and UK governments with contact tracing and vaccine distribution during the Covid pandemic. It now helps the Trump administration track undocumented immigrants, and provides Israel’s military with “intelligence and surveillance services”. Palantir currently has a market capitalisation of some $350 billion.

What does it actually do?

One former employee likened Palantir’s work to “really extravagant plumbing with data”. Most big companies and government agencies have a lot of information they can’t easily use because it’s stored in a hodgepodge of different systems and databases.

Palantir’s core products – “Foundry”, primarily for civilian use, and “Gotham”, for military and law enforcement – sit on top of those different systems and pull all the data together in an interface that’s easy to use (little coding is required). A big selling point is that Palantir doesn’t itself access or exploit the data, which stays with the customer; it just makes it easier to analyse. This is useful for all sorts of unobjectionable things, such as Covid testing and tracing. But it also allows Ice to collect large amounts of information to investigate individuals – and it helps the US military to plan bombing campaigns.

What is its military role?

Palantir is the leading contractor for Project Maven, the US military’s (and Nato’s) targeting system. Maven draws together a mass of data from drones, satellites, signals and other sources to flag potential targets; it presents findings to human analysts in one clear user interface; and can relay their decisions to appropriate weapons systems.

According to a new book, “Project Maven” by Katrina Manson, the entire “kill chain”, from target identification to target destruction, consists of four clicks. Maven allows hundreds of targets to be hit per day; and adding in AI tools to help interpret data means that number is capable of rising into the thousands.

Similar Palantir technology is used in Ukraine, and since 7 October 2023, it has worked closely with the Israel Defence Forces, whose AI-assisted systems use algorithms to identify and assassinate suspected Hamas agents.

What are the implications of this technology?

Speeding up the steps between identifying a target and destroying it is fundamental to modern warfare, so it is immensely valuable. In Ukraine, Palantir’s tools have helped to fuse battlefield intelligence, track and destroy drones, even document war crimes.

But such systems are not infallible, and accelerating the kill chain also minimises the role of human judgement: Maven was used to wrongly identify a primary school in Minab, Iran (in a building used years before by the Revolutionary Guard Corps), as a military target. US missiles killed some 168 people, mostly young girls.

Where does the NHS come into all this?

Palantir has been involved in the NHS’s data-handling since 2020, during Covid. In 2023, it won a contract to develop the Federated Data Platform, designed to streamline tangled datasets across the NHS and help clear hospital backlogs. In some hospitals, for example, scheduling operations may require staff to consult separate systems for waiting lists, theatre bookings, staff rotas and equipment orders.

But many critics dislike the idea of a US spy-tech firm, with links to the US and Israeli militaries, potentially gaining access to sensitive health data. Others question its value for money.

How worried should we be?

Palantir has become “a cultural shorthand for dystopian surveillance”, says Wired magazine. It is a cause célèbre on the British Left that has been taken up by the Greens’ Zack Polanski. Arguably, though, it is just a data analytics company with a militarised culture designed in part to give it a mystique: the company’s slogan is “We build software that dominates”; it uses military and intelligence jargon instead of more standard office terms. (Its data consultants are known as “forward deployment software engineers” or “deltas”.)

But not least because of its close links to a US administration that is an unreliable ally at best, many policymakers in Western Europe are now reconsidering the wisdom of using Palantir’s services.

Who is Alex Karp?

Karp, 58, the son of a Jewish doctor and an African-American artist from Philadelphia, was a left-wing student activist; he studied in Frankfurt under the socialist philosopher Jürgen Habermas and has no background in computing. He had become friends with Peter Thiel at Stanford Law School, and in 2003 helped co-found Palantir.

Karp has always been outspoken about the company’s values – Palantir has long refused to work with Chinese or Russian companies – but these have moved markedly to the right over the years, and today he often rails against “woke” thinking, describing it as “pagan”. Karp is a fan of martial arts and pistol shooting, and has a retinue of bodyguards drawn from Norwegian special forces, apparently because they are able to keep up with his obsessive cross-country skiing. His net worth is estimated at over $15 billion.

Palantir’s “manifesto”, like Karp’s recent book “The Technological Republic”, seemed to argue for a merger between Silicon Valley and a nationalistic, militarised US state; but it also railed, idiosyncratically, against the iPhone and the “post-war neutering of Germany and Japan”. It was seen by some as an attempt to curry favour with the Trump White House, which has turned on tech firms deemed unsupportive, such as Anthropic.

Airlines cut 13,000 flights globally in May as jet fuel prices soared due to the conflict in the Middle East.

In the future, these “spiralling” fuel costs could “spell the end of budget flights”, wrote Cathy Adams, news features editor, travel, in The Times.

Why are prices up?

Airfares have risen 24% year on year, according to the consultancy group Teneo. The price of jet fuel, usually the second-largest element of airlines’ costs after crew, is rising. In the week ending 1 May, the price of a barrel of jet fuel had risen 101% year on year to $181 (£133), according to the International Air Transport Association’s Jet Fuel Monitor.

These hikes are then passed on to travellers. Prices on some routes, such as London to Hong Kong and Singapore, have tripled since the start of 2026. Carriers including Air France-KLM, Virgin Atlantic and Emirates are adding fuel surcharges.

Other airlines are warning of price rises once their current hedge arrangement – which allows them to buy fuel at a fixed price – expires.

Are higher prices here to stay?

For the time being, yes. Even once the Strait of Hormuz is reopened to allow the free flow of crude oil and refined jet fuel, it will take a “minimum of three months for lower fuel costs to work their way through the supply chain”, Bryan Terry, the managing director at Alton Aviation Consultancy and former director of industry fuel services at the IATA, told Adams.

“Even then, airlines will try to hold higher fares in place as long as they can to recoup the costs and losses they’ve absorbed since the conflict began”, so passengers should “start thinking of elevated airfares as the new normal for the foreseeable future”.

There are other factors expected to push prices up in the longer term. Aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus are struggling with production delays and engine shortages, which means fewer available seats overall.

Major carriers have signed “historic contracts” with pilot unions and ground crews over the past two years, and some of the cost of the wage increases is passed on to passengers, said Fly Fairly.

Finally, EU climate laws mean prices will be 13 to 14 times higher in 2030 than in 2019, claimed Airlines for Europe.

How can I find cheaper flights?

In the “near term” there are “bargains to be had” as airlines “battle to fill their planes” for a summer season during which travellers are “nervous to commit to overseas holidays”, said Adams.

The “very thin silver lining” is that as airfares go up, the cost of extras such as baggage and seat selection “typically goes down”.

As usual, airlines and agents continue to advise passengers to “book sooner rather than later” to “lock in a good deal”. Meanwhile, “whether we’ve seen the last of the £9.99 flight to Spain remains to be seen”.

One of the world’s biggest and most prestigious art events has opened mired in political controversy, resignations and boycotts over the ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East.

The 61st edition of the Venice Biennale, which takes place every two years, began on Tuesday “under grey clouds and rain showers”, reflecting an atmosphere dominated by “political tension, parties and protest”, said Lanre Bakare in The Guardian.

What’s the cause?

The festival had been thrown into turmoil even before it formally opened. Last week, the entire five-person biennale jury resigned over the decision to allow Russia to participate – they previously stated they would not give awards to artists from countries whose leaders were facing charges of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Russia did not show in the past two editions because of the outcry over its war in Ukraine, but was allowed to reopen its pavilion this year in what The New York Times called a “soft-power opportunity” for the Kremlin.

The Biennale argued it is “an open institution” that “rejects any form of exclusion or censorship of art”, but its decision sparked outrage from the Italian government – with Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli boycotting the opening – and the European Commission, which has threatened to terminate or suspend its €2 million (£1.73 million) grant for the exhibition.

Why the change in stance?

In letters seen by the Financial Times, the commission warned Russia’s participation would violate a ban on “providing services” to the Kremlin, as the pavilion is owned by Vladimir Putin’s government.

“By not respecting EU sanctions, Biennale has called into question its obligation to ensure respect of EU values,” the Commission’s agency for culture wrote.

With the threat of further protests and boycotts ahead of the public opening on Saturday, organisers finally bowed to pressure and agreed to close the Russian pavilion to the public.

Tetyana Berezhna, a Ukrainian culture minister, told The Guardian that not opening Russia's pavilion to the public was a “meaningful step” but that the country’s “symbolic presence” was still powerful.

“Cultural platforms shape global perception,” she said. “They define what is considered acceptable and whose voices are amplified. In this context, every form of representation matters.”

What about Israel?

There have also been protests aimed at Israel’s entry. It shuttered its pavilion in 2024 amid growing condemnation of its occupation of Gaza, with the building guarded by military personnel.

This year it is back, but “if anything, Israel’s presence has proved even more divisive” than Russia’s, said The Telegraph’s chief art critic Alastair Sooke.

Last autumn, an activist collective, Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA), organised a letter demanding the exclusion of Israel that was signed by almost 220 artists, curators and “art workers” involved in this year’s show. It has invited people to stand “in solidarity” against what it calls a “genocidal state” perpetrating “Zionist atrocities” in Palestine and plans to protest the participation of Israel this Friday.

Although it did not name specific names, the jury’s decision not to award artists from countries whose leaders are facing charges by the ICC includes Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Vladimir Putin.

The Israeli foreign ministry responded to the statement, saying: “The political jury has transformed the Biennale from an open artistic space of free, boundless ideas into a spectacle of false, anti-Israeli political indoctrination.”

“For some, the jury’s resignation was predictable”, said Sooke, yet “for those on the other side of the debate, excluding any country from the Biennale smacks of censorship”.

“Their decision discriminated against me on a racial basis,” said the Romanian-born Israeli sculptor Belu-Simion Fainaru, who’s representing Israel. “I’m an artist and have equal rights, and I can’t be judged by belonging to a country or a race. I should just be judged on the quality and message of my art.”

Sooke said arguments over whether or not artists should be accountable for the actions of their state or country have highlighted “the creakiness of the Biennale’s national pavilion system”, one that seems outdated and “stymied by geopolitics, given the cosmopolitan nature of contemporary art”.

Pressure is growing to give people living together more rights so that they share the same benefits as married couples.

The makeup of UK households has changed over the past decade, with the latest data from the Office for National Statistics showing the number of cohabiting-couple families in 2025 was 3.5 million, up from 3.2 million in 2024. This makes up 17% of households. In contrast, married couples accounted for 65.3% of families in 2025, or 13 million, down from 66% in 2015.

This trajectory is “intensifying pressure”, said Forsters Law, for “long-awaited” reform of laws for unmarried couples who live together.

The government has promised to consult on changes, but for now, many couples appear unaware of the risks from remaining outside of marriage’s legal framework.

What rights do couples have?

Common-law marriage may be recognised in some countries, said solicitors Bell Lamb & Joynson, but it is “a myth in the UK”.

Cohabiting couples do not have many rights around finances, property or children, which can be an issue if a relationship breaks down or a partner passes away.

If an unmarried couple splits up, there are no automatic rights to each other’s property, assets or income, apart from property that is jointly owned and child maintenance.

What happens to property?

Unlike a married couple, a cohabiting partner has no rights to claim a percentage of their partner’s assets or property, regardless of how long they have lived together or if they have children together. Unless it is a joint ownership.

It may be worth owning a property as ”tenants in common” with a deed of trust, said MoneySavingExpert, if it is “more complicated than a simple 50/50 split”.

But you have far fewer rights if the property is solely owned by your partner in the event of a split.

Are there Inheritance rights?

Very few. Unless assets are jointly owned or an individual applies to the courts, they will not inherit anything from a partner, unlike married spouses or those in a civil partnership.

A valid will, outlining beneficiaries, can provide reassurances that money or assets such as property can be passed on.

Those who inherit assets from their partner will benefit, but under current law, married couples enjoy far more protection and allowances. For example, spouses can pass assets to each other tax-free, but for those not married, anything worth above £325,000 in a deceased person’s estate could face an inheritance tax charge.

The lack of rights for unmarried couples might seem “harsh”, said law firm Slater and Gordon, but marriage provides a “certain degree of clarity” and comes with the “benefits and liability of a contract”.

However, “marriage isn’t the only type of legal contract”, and a cohabitation agreement or a declaration of trust can also provide some legal protection.

Can pensions be passed on?

Not in the majority of cases, which makes them a particularly “big risk area” for unmarried couples, said The Times.

Most schemes will automatically pay out to a spouse, but there are “no guarantees” for cohabiting partners. In some cases, payments for long-term partners will be allowed, and is worth investigating to see whether certain documentation needs to be completed in advance, such as an expression of wish form.

Restore Britain received its latest high-profile endorsement last week when former Chelsea captain John Terry replied “100% yes” to an Instagram post by party founder Rupert Lowe wanting to “ban foreigners from claiming benefits”, “remove migrants who are incapable of financially supporting themselves” and “put our own people first”.

Lowe, the Great Yarmouth MP, set up Restore Britain last year as what he called a “political movement” after he was suspended by Reform UK. It was then formally launched as a political party in February. Despite being just a few months old, the party is polling at 4%, according to YouGov.

It might have been “conceived as a pressure group”, said LBC, but Lowe has since “stepped up his ambitions and appears willing to challenge his old party for the space on the right”.

What are its policies?

Curbing immigration is a key Restore policy. Its official website says: “Mass immigration has been a disaster for Britain. It has left us poorer, less safe, and less culturally and socially cohesive.”

It plans to “reverse mass immigration” by deporting all illegal migrants and introducing a “red list” of countries that “face far stricter security checks, limited visa categories, and higher barriers to entry”. Restore would use tents, not hotels, to house “so-called asylum seekers” before abolishing the asylum system altogether. It would end benefits for those on indefinite leave to remain, “deport rape gang collaborators” and foreign criminals, and end election campaigning in foreign languages.

On tax and benefits, it promises to “reward the nation’s grafters” by scrapping IR35 for freelancers, abolishing inheritance tax, establishing the lowest corporation tax in Europe, and getting “able-bodied Britons on benefits back to work”.

It proposes a “Britain First energy security strategy”, which would mean repealing net zero goals, requiring developers to fund local infrastructure before building housing, ending hosepipe bans for good and automating the London Tube.

Restore wants to scrap foreign aid, rearm Britain by spending more on defence and end diversity and inclusivity programmes within the Armed Forces.

It would “defund the rotten BBC”, “strengthen the teaching of our Christian heritage” within national curriculum history modules, ban the burqa, restrict halal and kosher slaughter, and repeal the Online Safety Act.

Perhaps most controversially, Restore would hold a binding referendum on restoring the death penalty in a bid to “make Britain safe again”.

What impact could it have on Reform UK?

While it shares many of the same policies as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, Lowe’s party has sought to present itself as the true voice of the right.

Despite lacking the name recognition of a leader like Farage, Restore has successfully used social media to amplify its anti-immigration rhetoric. Helped in no small part by the backing of X owner Elon Musk, Lowe is now one of the most followed UK politicians on social media.

By adopting a decentralised structure, effectively serving as an umbrella for local far-right political partners, Restore hopes to show up the top-down approach of Reform. Other far-right figures such as former EDL leader Tommy Robinson and former Reform deputy leader Ben Habib have also rallied behind the new party.

Such a force “could cost Reform a number of seats – and potentially even power, in a wafer-thin general election result – by splitting support among those drawn to hard-right anti-immigration populism”, said The Guardian.

Is it just a flash in the pan?

For now, Restore remains “really very small fry”, Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University, told Politics Home. “They’re gnats, not mosquitoes” at the moment, but the party’s impact will be determined in large part by how Farage reacts. “On the one hand, it’s always helpful for Farage to be able to point to outfits on his right that he can differentiate himself from and suggest that because they’re more extreme than he is, he’s therefore not far right and actually quite mainstream”.

But political parties can be encouraged to talk about policies promoted by parties further to the fringes, which runs the risk of Farage “moving too far out of the kind of what is sometimes called the zone of acceptability, as far as most voters are concerned”.

The case of a woman denied sterilisation by the NHS has brought the procedure, and the alleged double standards that hamper access to it, back into the spotlight.

Leah Spasova, a psychologist from Oxford, spent 10 years trying to access the procedure, but her funding request was turned down over “concerns regarding potential regret and cost-effectiveness”, said the BBC. As the same NHS body regularly funds vasectomies without using potential regret as grounds for rejection, Spasova complained to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

Last Friday, the ombudsman ruled that a policy citing the “risk of regret” as grounds to refuse funding was “unfair” to women.

What did the ombudsman say?

The Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care Board’s approach was “unfair, inconsistent, and based on subjective reasoning”, the ombudsman ruled. And Spasova’s case “is not an isolated one”.

A committee responsible for recommendations across six integrated care boards in the southeast reviewed the female sterilisation policy after Spasova’s complaint. It recommended that regret or the availability of other contraception should no longer be used as grounds for refusal, and that all patients who meet the critiera can access female sterilisation.

“Rejecting my application for sterilisation on the basis of regret means they were taking on liability for my feelings,” said Spasova. Policies like this are “damaging for women’s healthcare” and “absolutely discriminatory”.

How does female sterilisation work?

Sterilisation is a procedure that blocks, seals or cuts the fallopian tubes, to prevent eggs from reaching the uterus. Also known as tubal ligation (“getting your tubes tied”), it’s usually performed under general anaesthetic via keyhole surgery, with about a week of recovery. Although complex procedures do exist to reverse it, they typically have a success rate of between 50-70% and aren’t usually available on the NHS.

Female sterilisation is the most common contraceptive method used worldwide, according to the UN. In 2019, nearly 24% of women using contraception relied on sterilisation – but it’s far more prevalent in Asia and Latin America than Europe.

A 2022 analysis of Dutch women puts the rate of regret at about 10.5%, compared with 5.1% of men who regret vasectomies. But the rate of regret is nearly twice as high among women under the age of 30: about 20%. NHS clinical guidance says sterilisation should be available for women, with counselling to address the risk of regret.

Is it available on the NHS?

Sterilisation for both men and women is organised by local integrated care boards (ICBs), as part of NHS contraception services. Most ICBs routinely fund both male and female procedures, subject to certain criteria being met, but some told The i Paper that “vasectomy is encouraged or preferred over female sterilisation”. Others “go one step further and restrict funding for female sterilisation”, said the paper. In those areas, women have to submit an individual funding request for approval.

In 2024-2025, the NHS carried out nearly 11,000 sterilisations: a year-on-year increase of 2%. But the long-term trend is downward: a 22% decrease in a decade. In contrast, the number of vasectomies performed in 2024-25 was 16% higher than in 2023-24.

What are the barriers to access?

Critics argue that the stricter eligibility criteria for women seeking sterilisation “amount to unequal treatment compared with men seeking vasectomies”, said The Guardian. But others say “tighter controls reflect legitimate medical concerns”, including the risks associated with a more invasive procedure.

Patients seeking sterilisation have been “told they are too young”, said Charlotte Glynn of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. “There is a real problem with women not being trusted to make decisions about their own bodies,” she said. It is “a form of medical misogyny”, especially when many women "struggle with the side-effects of contraceptive pills”.

Many women are told they “might change their mind” or are asked what their partners think about their decision, Annabel Sowemimo, a consultant in sexual and reproductive health, told The i Paper. Tubal ligation also costs more than vasectomies as it requires “multiple members of staff and time in theatre”. This is compounded by the “obscene” waiting times for gynaecology treatment, she said. Life-threatening conditions are prioritised, while patients waiting for sterilisation are advised to use contraceptives instead.

Labour has dominated Welsh politics for a century; since devolution in 1999, it has always been the largest party in Wales’s national assembly, known since 2020 as the Senedd Cymru, the Welsh Parliament.

But the polls suggest that Labour will drop to third place in the Senedd elections on 7 May, and that Plaid Cymru will emerge as the largest party, if it can beat Reform UK. According to the FT’s poll tracker, Plaid is projected to get around 29% of the vote – giving it more than 30 seats in the new, enlarged 96-seat Senedd (up from 13 out of 60). Reform is projected to get around 26% and Labour 16%. If this is right, Rhun ap Iorwerth, the party’s leader and the Member of the Senedd (MS) for Ynys Môn (Anglesey), will become first minister, in a minority or coalition government.

The direction of travel was suggested by the Caerphilly Senedd by-election last October. In that former Labour stronghold, Plaid’s candidate Lindsay Whittle, who had previously unsuccessfully contested 13 elections, won 47.4% of the vote. Reform took 36%, while Labour collapsed to 11%.

Why is Plaid set to eclipse Labour?

The party was founded a century ago and has long had a solid base of support among the country’s Welsh speakers – around 800,000 of its population of 3.2 million people. But support now seems to be surging. In Senedd elections, in which Plaid has generally won around 20% of the vote, it is well placed to capitalise on Labour’s difficulties. The most important factor in this is the poor state of Welsh public services (under the devolution settlement, Cardiff controls health and social care, education, transport, environment and local government).

The NHS is particularly problematic. Despite recent improvements, 543,000 patients are on NHS waiting lists in Wales – about one in six – compared with one in ten in England. Welsh schools are sliding down the international league tables. When the Conservatives were in power in Westminster, some of this could be blamed on them; but with an unpopular Labour government in London, Welsh Labour can no longer blame England for its struggles.

Is this to do with Welsh identity?

Welsh identity is a powerful force: according to Office for National Statistics census figures from 2021, 55.2% of people in Wales identify as “Welsh only”, while 8.1% feel both Welsh and British, and just 18.5% identify as British only.

But this does not appear to be growing more pronounced. Rather, according to Jac Larner of Cardiff University, what has happened is that voters have split into a progressive, Welsh-identifying bloc, and a conservative, British-identifying one. Plaid has wrested leadership of the progressive bloc from Labour, while Reform has taken leadership of the conservative bloc from the Tories.

What are Plaid’s policies?

Among its headline pledges are universal childcare, increasing child benefit by £10 per week, more out-of-hours GPs, and rent controls. But given how devolution works – about 80% of Welsh government spending comes from the UK government via the block grant, calculated using the Barnett Formula – many of its plans involve asking Westminster for more money and more powers.

Plaid Cymru is, for instance, seeking £4 billion that it believes Wales is owed in transport funding (because it hasn’t benefitted from HS2). It wants control over the Crown Estate, which owns coastal areas, to be devolved so it can create wind farms and green jobs. Welsh Labour has also sought these, and has not been granted them.

What about independence?

The second article of Plaid Cymru’s constitution says: “As the National Party of Wales, the Party’s aims shall be: to secure independence for Wales in Europe.” However, Rhun ap Iorwerth says, if elected, he will not legislate for an independence referendum in his first term; he did not even mention the “i” word in his conference speech in February.

This is pragmatic. A recent poll carried out for the BBC found support for Welsh independence at 32%, with 52% against and 16% uncertain. According to the Wales Office, the annual net fiscal deficit – between tax raised and spending on public services – is around £21.5 billion, or just under £7,000 per person in Wales. “There is an odd dynamic at play,” says the BBC’s Gareth Lewis: “the Welsh pro-indy parties tend to be talking about it less than those who are against it.” But Plaid will aim to build up to a referendum – as the SNP did. And, if elected, it will establish a National Commission to lay the groundwork for a future White Paper on Welsh independence.

How is Reform UK faring in Wales?

Reform has seen a much more rapid expansion in its support than Plaid Cymru: it won just 1.6% of the vote in the 2021 Senedd election, and most polls now show it in the mid-20s or in some cases even level-pegging with Plaid.

Reform’s support is particularly strong in the formerly industrial South Wales Valleys, and, as in England, it is drawing a mixture of former Conservative voters and disillusioned traditional Labour supporters. It aims to scrap Wales’s net zero carbon targets, and the 20mph speed limits imposed by Labour – a totemic issue for many. Its leader Dan Thomas regards independence as a “huge risk”. A big electoral issue for him is whether left-leaning voters vote tactically to “stop Reform” – as they did in Caerphilly. And even if Reform becomes the largest party, Plaid, Labour and the Greens have all ruled out entering into a coalition with it.

How important will this vote be?

According to Ipsos, 52% of Welsh voters may still change their mind before 7 May. But if Plaid Cymru does win, it will be an important symbolic moment, not just in Wales. It seems likely that, after the elections, for the first time, all three First Ministers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will want their nations to leave the UK, posing a major challenge to Westminster.

Trials of the British Army’s Ajax armoured vehicles are set to resume, despite major delays amid concern for soldiers’ safety. Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard announced in Parliament that “strict new controls” for the vehicles, long thought to be the future of Britain’s combat strategy, will be put in place.

The Ajax fleet is “expensive, noisy and eight years late”, said Deborah Haynes, security and defence editor at Sky News. Costing nearly £10 million each, and weighing more than 40 tonnes, they are “as heavy as a Russian tank and potentially vulnerable to cheap Russian drones”.

How did we get here?

In 2014, defence firm General Dynamics received a contract to produce 589 armoured vehicles, comprising 245 Ajax (for intelligence and reconnaissance), 93 Ares (armoured personnel carriers), 50 Apollo (repair vehicles), 112 Athena (command and control variants), 51 Argus (engineer reconnaissance variants) and 38 Atlas (recovery vehicles). The vehicles are assembled in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, and had created jobs for around 700 people.

At one stage, it was suggested that the Ajax could be introduced into service by 2017, though requests to include 1,318 additional requirements set that date back. Ajax trials during 2019-20 were temporarily halted after soldiers complained that excessive vibrations were causing hearing loss. The Ajax has also been the subject of three significant and several smaller reviews since 2021.

What caused the most recent delay?

The trial was paused last year, after around 30 soldiers fell ill during exercise Titan Storm on Salisbury Plain in November last year. The soldiers reportedly emerged from the vehicles “vomiting”, with “weakness in their legs”, or “shaking so violently that they could not control their bodies”, sources told The Times. All affected soldiers have since returned to service. This exercise occurred just three weeks after Pollard had declared the vehicle had reached initial operating capability.

There was “no single causal mechanism” which resulted in the symptoms experienced by the soldiers during Titan Storm, said Pollard in Parliament this week. The report conducted by the Army Safety Investigation Team found that they were caused by “technical issues” such as “incorrect track tension and loose or missing engine deck bolts”. Exposure to cold was also thought to have played a part.

What changes will be made?

Though Pollard agreed that “the experience for our soldiers using Ajax has not been good enough”, he announced a “phased” approach to restarting the acceptance of the vehicles. None of the 23 vehicles used during Titan Storm will take part in the next trial phase.

The “troubled” tanks will feature improved air filtration, crew compartment heating and the electrical power generation systems in the second phase of the operation, said Larisa Brown, defence editor at The Times. Some officers will also be given “separate responsibilities for operating and maintaining the vehicles”.

What has the reaction been?

“I for one applaud the decision of the MoD ministers to move forward with Ajax”, said Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, former assistant director of Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance for the British Army and commander of the 1st Royal Tank Regiment, in The Telegraph. “Frankly, much of what has been written has been ill-informed, outdated, or simply wide of the mark”. What we should have learned from the Ukraine war is that armoured shock action, provided by the presence of Ajax, “remains decisive”.

Pollard and the government “have done the unforgivable in any military doctrine – they have reinforced failure”, said Sam Kiley in The Independent. They “did not seize the moment” after Titan Storm last year to “dump” the project entirely. If the vehicles’ crew “needs special earphones and head protection to get in it”, what hope is there that infantry on deployment will want to “get into a roaring target that will scramble their brains as badly as a near miss from a mortar?” The answer is “nil.”

“There’s nothing obviously wrong” with the Ajax vehicles; , said Urban in The Times. “It was a smoother ride than my Chieftain tank back in the 1980s”. But, of course, “you’d expect a Tesla to be more impressive than a 50-year-old Ford Cortina, particularly given the money spent”.

There are many ways to put money away, but are you better off sticking with savings or placing funds in your pension?

Putting money into savings or pensions, said Flagstone, “helps grow your wealth for the long term”. And while pensions provide “generous tax breaks”, said MoneySuperMarket, they aren’t as “flexible” as savings accounts. So how do you decide which is “best for your nest egg”?

Pros and cons of pensions

You can get a pension through your workplace or set up your own self-invested personal pension to manage the pot yourself.

Pensions have “valuable tax advantages”, said PensionBee, including tax relief on money you put in as well as employer contributions on workplace schemes, but the money can’t be accessed until you are 55 – and this is rising to 57 in 2028.

Once you hit the minimum age, 25% of your pension savings can be taken tax-free, said MoneyHelper, which you are “free to spend or save in any way you like”.

Up to £60,000 can be put into a pension each year, said GoCompare, and the money is invested in the stock market so there is “no limit to how much your pension investments can grow”, depending on the performance of financial markets.

Additionally, earnings in your pension are tax-free and you only pay tax once you start making withdrawals.

The earlier you start “the more your fund can grow”, said Flagstone, but as with all investing, “you can lose your money”.

Should you stick with savings?

Relying on a pension, said GoCompare, means you won’t have “easy access to money in the short-term”.

In contrast, you could put money into a savings account to set funds aside for “the future, for emergencies or to buy expensive purchases like a new car or a holiday”, said Citizens Advice, plus you will earn interest on your money.

Savers can choose from easy access, regular saver or fixed accounts. Many let you “access your cash whenever you like”, said MoneySavingExpert, but some versions such as notice accounts or fixed rates may have restrictions.

There is also a personal savings allowance of £1,000 for basic rate taxpayers and £500 for those on the higher rate.

Unlike pensions, said MoneySuperMarket, savings accounts have “no age-related restrictions” plus interest can be earned tax-free through a cash ISA, which makes them an “appealing option for many savers”.

Up to £20,000 can currently be placed into a cash ISA and also into a stocks and shares ISA. An ISA can be beneficial, said LV=, for those with “shorter- to medium-term goals”, or “people who value flexibility and access to their savings”.

Many savers have benefited from high interest rates in recent years, said MoneyWeek, but if your savings are outside an ISA and above the savings allowance, your returns can easily be “eroded away further by tax and inflation”.

Benefits of both pensions and savings

Pensions will provide a “much higher return” than cash savings, but you won’t have access to it in the short-term and there is tax on withdrawals, unlike taking money from an ISA. The “real answer” is that you can have both.

The “ideal approach”, said GoCompare, is to “take advantage” of the benefits of both pensions and savings.

You could combine the tax relief and employer contributions that you get with a pension with the “flexibility and accessibility” of savings and tax-free withdrawals from an ISA to build a “balanced financial future”.

A mysterious new pro-Iran terror group has been linked to a series of recent attacks on Jewish communities and US financial institutions in the UK and Europe.

The only “catch”, said CNN, is that it “may be a mirage”.

Who are they and what have they claimed?

Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI), the Arabic name meaning “The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right(eous)”, first appeared online shortly after the US and Israel launched their war on Iran at the end of February.

On 9 March, HAYI posted on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that “military operations” against US and Israeli interests around the world had begun. Two weeks later, a Telegram channel claiming to represent the group made an unsubstantiated claim of responsibility for an arson attack on four Jewish ambulances in Golders Green, north London.

It then posted videos of four other arson attacks in Belgium, Greece and the Netherlands, as well as threatening a further attack against the Bank of America building in Paris, before the channel was deleted.

Who is behind the group?

Examining the group’s digital footprint, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism found “no known references, neither online nor offline, to HAYI prior to 9 March”.

The Netherlands-based think tank highlighted “suspicious dissemination patterns” that were seemingly coordinated with the pro-Iranian online ecosystem. This raises the question “whether HAYI is a genuine terrorist group or merely serves as a façade for Iranian hybrid operations that enable plausible deniability”.

“This group is an Iranian creation,” Phillip Smyth, an analyst on the counterterrorism advisory board for Homeland Security Today, told The i Paper. “The scope of their actions, branding, and Iran’s own messages all demonstrate a clear link.”

For Western security experts, HAYI is “either a construct aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or an opportunistic network operating within the broader pro-Iranian online ecosystem”, said Radio Free Europe.

Do the attacks follow a pattern?

UK security officials have previously warned of a “rise in ‘gig-economy’ Iranian spies offered cash for operations across Europe”, and have been “actively investigating Iran’s use of social media platforms” to create “sleeper cells with the potential to carry out violent attacks”, said The i Paper.

The spate of arson attacks since the start of the war in Iran are “similar in nature to Russia’s so-called hybrid operations in Europe”, in which people have been recruited online “to carry out sabotage attacks”, said CNN. These are often perpetrated “by non-Russian nationals for small amounts of money and without full knowledge of who the operations serve”.

The series of “low-intensity” incidents involving Jewish and US targets have so far carried “limited material damage but strong symbolic impact, disseminated and amplified through channels linked to the pro-Iranian ecosystem”, said Decode 39.

These “operational and propaganda dynamics point to a possible hybrid model of terrorism in Europe: simple actions, local perpetrators and maximum ambiguity”.

The River Wye is at the centre of what lawyers are billing as the biggest environmental pollution case brought in the UK.

One of the country’s largest chicken producers and a water company appeared in the High Court on Monday, accused of polluting the Welsh river. It’s claimed that sewage spills and the spreading of chicken manure on farmers’ fields as fertiliser are responsible for the green algae choking the waterway.

More than 4,500 locals are taking part in the “landmark case” against Avara Foods and Welsh Water, said the BBC. Both companies deny responsibility, calling the claims “misconceived” and “misguided”. Leigh Day, the law firm bringing the action, said the court action is the “last avenue for justice”.

What has happened to the River Wye?

The Wye “used to be full of wild salmon”, said climate lawyer Chris Hilson on The Conversation. “Today it is full of algae.”

In 2020, conservation groups noticed the “once crystal-clear waters” had turned into a “pea soup”, said The Observer. They suspected chicken manure from local poultry farms was “sullying the water”.

The “tens of millions” of chickens in the area, thought to be about a quarter of the UK’s entire poultry population, create a “manure mountain” of “hundreds of thousands of tonnes”, said The Times. Until recently, manure from the Wye’s chicken sheds was spread as fertiliser on nearby arable fields. The legal claim alleges that, during periods of rain, nitrogen and phosphorus in the manure washed off the soil into waterways where, combined with sewage spills, it caused algae growth, robbing the water of oxygen and suffocating fish.

What’s the aim of the lawsuit?

Many of the chicken farms in the Wye area supply a Hereford processing plant belonging to poultry provider Avara Foods. Although it was arable farmers who spread the manure, the locals bringing the suit believe Avara and its subsidiary, Freemans of Newent Ltd, should be held responsible for the river pollution, and are seeking “substantial damages”.

The suit also names Welsh Water, claiming the Wye was polluted by its sewage spills and by its “sludge”, a by-product of sewage treatment, also being spread on farmers’ fields as fertilisers.

The group bringing the claim is also demanding action to clean up the river. This isn’t “what this river should look like and feel like and smell like”, Justine Evans, lead claimant and wildlife filmmaker, told the BBC. “There’s been systemic failure going on” and we need to “make polluters pay”.

What’s the defence?

Avara Foods claims its operations aren’t causing the pollution. It told its poultry suppliers in 2023 to stop spreading manure on their land, after the Environment Agency downgraded the Wye‘s health status to “unfavourable/declining”. It can’t be held responsible, it says, for arable farmers using chicken manure as crop fertiliser.

“We believe that this legal claim is based on a misunderstanding, as no manure is stored or spread on poultry-only farms that supply Avara Foods,” the company said. “Individual farmers are responsible for how nutrients are used in their arable operations. Avara is not involved in any arable operations and has no control over this activity.”

Welsh Water said it had invested £70 million over the past five years to improve its infrastructure on the Wye, and had reached “real improvements in water quality”. It intends “to defend this case robustly”.

What is the significance of the case?

Legal action against river polluters isn’t new but “there has never been a UK case with this many claimants”, said Hilson on The Conversation. “A large range of people suing can add legitimacy to a court case, making it harder to ignore.” It’s also a “strategic” lawsuit: not just about getting compensation but also about drawing attention “to the plight of some of the UK’s most cherished waterways” and securing “policy change to clear them up”.

The case now unfolding in court is “as much a detective story involving determined amateur sleuths and citizen scientists as a conventional legal battle”, said The Observer. And, at its heart, lies the question: “who almost killed the river Wye?”

The government is finalising plans to allow airlines to consolidate flight schedules, in a bid to stave off a summer of travel disruption caused by a shortage of jet fuel.

With the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz restricting global jet fuel supplies, and demand sending prices soaring, there is significant concern that shortages could cause last-minute cancellation of flights in the busy holiday season.

How bad is the shortage?

Refineries in the Middle East usually supply around 75% of Europe’s jet fuel, but production is “basically now almost zero”, Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency said last Thursday. The week before, he’d warned that the continent had “maybe six weeks of jet fuel left”, if supplies remain blocked.

European countries are trying to replace supplies from the Gulf with imports from the US and Nigeria but, if they cannot do so in sufficient quantity, energy experts predict shortages at some airports, resulting in flight cancellations. The European Commission has said there is “no evidence of fuel shortages” in the EU, but has acknowledged there could be supply issues “in the near future”.

Many airlines had already secured much of their summer-season jet fuel before the Iran conflict doubled the market price. But others are now having to take emergency measures to counter spiralling fuel costs. “Airlines normally run at a single-digit operating margin and spend anywhere from 20 to 40% of revenues on fuel,” so rising fuel prices can quickly push them “into operating losses,” Alex Irving, a senior European transport analyst at financial-research firm Bernstein, told CNBC. German carrier Lufthansa, Scandinavian SAS, and Dutch airline KLM have already announced they are cancelling thousands of short-haul flights over the summer.

What is the UK government doing?

The British government is trying to get ahead of any peak-season flight disruption by giving airlines “rare freedoms to change flight schedules” well in advance, said The Times.

The plan is to temporarily relax laws that require airlines to operate part-full flights from UK airports or risk losing their lucrative take-off and landing slots. Doing this allows airline to consolidate flight schedules now, “before any potential fuel shortages”, minimising disruption and last-minute cancellations in the summer. Of course, it “may mean fewer available flight options than normal” but those flights are “less likely to be cancelled”.

On Friday, the Department for Transport said it was “working closely with the aviation industry to monitor risks and minimise disruption” and there was “no current need for passengers to change their travel plans”.

When will the threat to air travel end?

Even if the US and Iran were to reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz today, “the die is cast for summer travel”, because it will take months to resume jet fuel supplies, said CNN. “It’s going to take until at least July,” Matt Smith, an energy analyst for commodity platform Kpler told the broadcaster. “And even that may be optimistic at this point.”

Should US/Iran hostilities restart or the Strait of Hormuz remain completely blocked to shipping through the summer, then the landscape completely changes, said Politico. In this “worst-case scenario”, there would be outright fuel rationing, and many, many more flights would be cancelled.

The Chernobyl disaster occurred when technicians at the power station, near Pripyat in the north of Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, ran a test on reactor number four to simulate shutting it down during an electricity blackout. A combination of reactor design flaws and technician errors meant that it overheated, leading to a power surge, triggering an explosion.

The reactor's 192 tonnes of uranium fuel partially melted, destroying the reactor core. Graphite blocks inside caught fire, and the resulting explosion blew the reactor's 1,000-tonne concrete and steel lid into the air, then destroyed much of the turbine hall. Radioactive material spewed into the environment: iodine, strontium, caesium and some plutonium.

The World Nuclear Association says the disaster was caused by a “flawed” reactor design and lax safety – both consequences of “Cold War isolation”.

How did the authorities respond?

About 1,000 emergency workers and power station staff, largely untrained and poorly protected, were brought in during the first days of the accident to put out the fire. Soviet officials initially remained in denial; unable to comprehend the gravity of the situation and desperate to contain the bad publicity. But in early May, with the reactor fire still burning, and high radiation levels detected across Europe, the authorities moved to drastic action. A 30km exclusion zone was imposed. Bags of sand were dropped onto the reactor from the open doors of helicopters (analysts now think this did more harm than good).

When the fire finally stopped, men climbed onto the roof to clear radioactive debris. Many suffered from acute radiation sickness as a result. In total, at least 600,000 clear-up personnel (“liquidators”) from all over the Soviet Union were involved in the clean-up. During 1986, a huge concrete “sarcophagus” structure was built to confine the radioactive materials at the explosion site. This was largely successful; estimates suggest that at least 80% of the original radioactive material remains inside the reactor. (In 2017 a new structure was completed at a cost of £1.3 billion.)

What were the immediate effects?

The official death toll is just 31; two workers at the plant were killed that day. But in 2005, a UN report suggested a total of 4,000 people would eventually die because of radiation exposure. According to UN reports, 134 people, mostly plant workers and emergency workers, received a confirmed diagnosis of Acute Radiation Sickness.

Radiation destroys cell walls and other key molecular structures within the body. Symptoms can begin within one or two hours and may last for several months; they include vomiting, diarrhoea, headache, fever, dizziness, hair loss, and blood in vomit and stools.

The human cost of the disaster was documented by Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian journalist, who interviewed some 500 eyewitnesses for her 1997 book “Chernobyl Prayer”. One of the most harrowing stories concerns a woman who stayed at the bedside of her dying husband, a firefighter. She described watching his body decay, his skin crack, boils develop. When she touched him – against doctors' orders – his skin came away in her hands.

And the wider effects?

Chernobyl is one of only two nuclear accidents rated at the maximum severity on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan. The longer-term effects have been mind-boggling in scale. Some 350,000 people had to be evacuated; about 500 hectares of forest turned red and died; roughly 15 million hectares of land were contaminated.

At least 5% of the reactor's radioactive fuel is estimated to have been carried into the air over Ukraine, Belarus and Russia – and the rest of Europe. Over 20% of Belarus's land was affected. Radioactive clouds spread, causing panic as far away as Germany and Britain; millions of litres of milk were dumped; livestock was destroyed or banned from sale. Around 5,000 thyroid cancers have been linked to iodine contamination of milk supplies by the accident, 15 of them fatal.

Chernobyl is often described as the most expensive disaster in history, with an estimated cost of $180 billion (£133 billion) for Ukraine alone. By 2003, about 3.3 million Ukrainians were receiving benefits as Chernobyl “victims”.

What is in Chernobyl now?

The Chernobyl exclusion zone encompasses the 2,600 sq km area within the 30km radius. It is under military control, and public access is restricted to prevent contamination. Today, the zone is one of the most radioactively contaminated areas on Earth; the reactor is still smouldering. It draws significant scientific interest for the high levels of radiation exposure in the environment – and, until the war, was popular with disaster tourists. Due to the lack of human activity, it has become a thriving nature sanctuary, with some of the highest biodiversity and thickest forests in all Ukraine. European bison, golden eagles, lynx and elk inhabit the area.

How did the disaster affect nuclear policy?

It kickstarted a global push for stricter nuclear regulation. Governments were nervous because similar reactors were in use around the world. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN-affiliated agency, was tasked with improving international safety standards for reactor designs, and with coordinating long-term radiation monitoring. The agency does not have the power to enforce these rules, but the disaster motivated many countries to comply with regulations.

Politically, the effects were also very significant. Chernobyl destroyed public trust and exposed systemic failures within the USSR, particularly in Ukraine. Mikhail Gorbachev maintained the accident was a more important factor in the fall of the Soviet Union than his programmes of liberal reform. Oddly enough, at least one of Chernobyl's other reactors remained in use until 2000.

When you are already scrolling on your phone, your credit card information is saved and shipping is free, it can be a little too easy to click ‘buy.’ Even if that purchase is small, these shopping slip-ups can quickly add up. Over time, they may push your well-laid financial plans off track.

Such incongruence between actions and intentions can also bring about feelings of guilt. According to a study by Liquid Web, “14% of shoppers have bought something within one minute of seeing an ad, and 85% regret an impulsive online purchase,” said Investopedia.

So how can you keep your focus on the big picture, instead of falling for the short-term high of shopping? Friction maxxing may be the answer.

What is friction maxxing?

In essence, friction maxxing refers to the practice of adding friction, or some degree of difficulty or inconvenience, to a task. The practice can apply in practically any area — it may look like “cooking from scratch instead of ordering a delivery, finding your way using road signs instead of just plugging in the [GPS] or reading a book rather than half-listening to the audio version of it,” said The Guardian.

The point is not to make your life harder, but rather to cause you to slow down and be more intentional about your time and choices. When it comes to finances, that might mean deleting your saved payment information from your favorite shopping sites, so you are forced to pause for a moment, get up and get your physical credit card; during this time, you could reevaluate whether the purchase really aligns with your broader financial goals.

How can adding friction help you spend less?

When spending “feels easy, it grows quickly,” so the idea is that by “adding small inconveniences, known as ‘friction,’” it “gives your brain a moment to assess whether a purchase is worth it,” said Empeople Credit Union. During this pause, you gain a little bit of space to more deliberately weigh your decision to purchase, and you may ultimately decide against it.

Course-correcting these seemingly small decisions can add up. While “each decision may add only a few dollars to a receipt,” when it reoccurs “over weeks and months, these minor deviations can total hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year,” said Yahoo Finance.

You can also introduce friction around your exposure to spending opportunities. After all, if you do not even know an item exists, you cannot feel tempted to buy it. After committing to “block social media and shopping apps from 5 to 9 p.m. on weekdays,” one finance writer reported cutting their spending “by $300 compared with the previous month,” which they then put into their family’s “sinking funds, rather than let it slip away toward impulse purchases,” said NerdWallet.

What are some easy ways to add friction to your financial life?

If you are intrigued by the idea of financial friction maxxing, there are some easy ways to institute it:

• Delete saved payment information
• Turn off one-click purchasing
• Get rid of shopping apps
• Cut back on time spent scrolling and on social media
• Institute a waiting period, such as 24 hours or even a week, before making a purchase

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

“Rising maintenance, insurance and staffing costs” and “fluctuating” membership numbers have left many golf clubs “struggling to remain viable”, while the land they occupy, often on the edge of towns, is in “acute demand” for housing.

How much land do golf courses take up?

There are roughly 1,800 golf courses in Britain – accounting for over a quarter of the golf courses in Europe. In England alone, they occupy an estimated 270,000 hectares (667,000 acres): an area more than twice the size of Greater Manchester, and around 2% of the country’s total land area.

There is regional density: in Woking, Surrey, more than 10% of the land is taken up by golf courses; in St Andrews, Fife, there are 10 courses, and the London borough of Enfield has seven.

Given the amount of land golf courses occupy and the shortage of affordable homes, there is now a “furious debate” between “fairway and driveway”, said the BBC. The golf courses in Greater London, for example, cover an area the size of the entire borough of Brent, and the “area occupied by a single golfer could provide a home for around 380 people”, said architect Russell Curtis in his “Golf Belt” report.

What are the pros and cons?

“Courses are typically large, low-density sites” on the outskirts of towns, said The Times. Such well located pieces of land are naturally attractive to developers and councils trying to find space for new homes. A number of London courses “are very close to public transport”, Curtis told the BBC, so it “seems reasonable that at least some of those should be turned into housing”.

But it’s not an even picture. In Wales, for example, most courses sit in out‑of‑town or rural locations, and their lack of access makes them less attractive development prospects. Those opposed to this kind of development also point out that golf courses can be valuable havens for biodiversity. “Many courses provide tree cover, habitats for wildlife, pollinator‑friendly environments,” Gavin Anderson, from England Golf, told the BBC. They offer “opportunities for ecological improvement that can exceed what is possible on developed land or open fields”.

What does it mean for golf?

Golf clubs are enjoying mixed fortunes. Sixty have been forced to close in the past decade, said The Golf Business, and the Custodian Golf consultancy estimates that nearly 20% of those still operating are financially at risk.

And yet, membership of English golf clubs, particularly council-owned ones, is on the up – rising from 730,602 in 2024 to 750,071 in 2025, with junior membership growing by more than 34%. The sport’s supporters say this is down to efforts to make golf more inclusive, which would be undermined by mass sell-offs.

Developers buying up golf courses are going to take away the sport’s accessibility, Chris D’Araujo, who is campaigning to save Enderby Golf Course in Leicestershire from redevelopment, told the BBC. “All the private rich clubs, they’re going to still be about, but you are making it less affordable, and taking it away from the masses.”

The Department of Justice is throwing hot charcoal on the meatpacking industry’s grill, as the agency has reportedly opened an antitrust investigation that could have wide-ranging implications for the beef market. The probe, which comes following repeated pressure from President Donald Trump, is happening as beef prices continue to rise, causing consumers to have a negative view of the economy.

What is the investigation about?

The DOJ is looking into whether “large meatpackers that supply American consumers engaged in criminal anticompetitive conduct,” according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the investigation. The probe is “looking at all of the major companies that sell beef in the U.S.” Four companies currently control 85% of the country’s beef market share: the U.S.-based Cargill and Tyson Foods, and the Brazilian-owned JBS and National Beef.

The crux of the investigation is whether these companies “reached illegal agreements over how they purchase cattle from ranchers,” said Bloomberg. The Justice Department reportedly believes beef companies could be doing this to cut costs, as “beef processors have been losing money for the last 20 months as they pay producers higher prices for cattle.” The investigation appeared to come at Trump’s behest. The president said in November 2025 he would “order the Justice Department to investigate the meatpacking industry for alleged collusion,” said Axios.

Other food companies, like McDonald’s, have also accused “big beef packers of collusion and price-gouging,” said The Guardian. As of now, the probe remains a noncriminal investigation. None of the companies or their employees “have been accused of any wrongdoing and probes don’t always lead to charges or lawsuits being filed,” said Bloomberg. JBS “isn’t aware of any criminal investigation” and “operates in a highly regulated industry and is committed to complying with all applicable regulations,” a spokesperson for the company told the Journal. Cargill, Tyson Foods and National Beef haven’t commented.

What is the bigger picture?

Questions about the beef industry aren’t new, as ranchers have “long complained about anticompetitive conduct by the four companies,” said Bloomberg. Evidence of consolidation within the beef industry is “reflected in sharply increased spreads between cattle prices and wholesale beef prices,” said a U.S. Department of Agriculture report from 2024, with “stronger evidence of market power in the meatpacking industry.”

But a criminal investigation perhaps beginning “raises the stakes considerably for the companies and their executives, who face the prospect of steep fines and prison time,” said Bloomberg. A prior investigation “into alleged price-fixing during the Covid-19 pandemic closed without action.” The current high beef prices are “driven mostly by structural factors,” Dennis Follmer, the chief investment officer at Montis Financial, told Axios. Consumers “shouldn’t expect near-term relief.”

The prospect of Trump becoming directly involved due to rising prices remains on the table, as the president’s approval rating on the cost of living has been consistently falling throughout 2026. When Trump called for the DOJ to investigate meatpackers in November 2025, the average price of ground beef was $6.54 per pound, up 91 cents year-to-year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It has continued rising since then and is currently $6.70 per pound.

Prosecutors in El Salvador have opened a mass trial of 486 alleged members of the infamous MS-13 gang on charges ranging from homicide and femicide to extortion and arms trafficking.

They have been accused of more than 47,000 crimes between 2012 and 2022, including an estimated 29,000 homicides. These trials encapsulate President Nayib Bukele’s “iron-fist approach” to fighting organised crime, said The Associated Press, in a country that has been in a state of emergency for four years.

But mass trials have been criticised by human rights organisations, including a group of UN experts who claim they “undermine the exercise of the right to defence and the presumption of innocence of detainees”. Many are held in custody for years before their trial, facing blanket rulings from unknown judges.

What is MS-13?

The MS stands for Mara Salvatrucha, thought to be a combination of “Mara” (“gang”), “Salva” (a shortening of Salvador) and “trucha” (“which translates roughly into street smarts”), said the BBC. “The 13 represents the position of M in the alphabet.”

The gang was formed “on the street corners of Los Angeles” in the 1980s by Salvadoran immigrants who had fled civil war, said Sky News. It only spread to Central America when the members were deported from the US.

Donald Trump designated the group a terrorist organisation last year and made “deportation agreements” with El Salvador to “exchange prisoners affiliated with the gang and others”.

The main aim of the mass trial is to target the “ranfla” – the “highest echelon” – of the gang, said The Times. Alongside its rival gang, Barrio 18, MS-13 at one stage controlled up to 80% of El Salvadoran territory through “extortion, drug dealing, contract killings and arms trafficking”. Prosecutors allege that the gang’s attempts to gain complete control amounted to a “parallel state, undermining national sovereignty”.

“Over three decades” Bukele’s government estimates the gangs have killed around 200,000 people, including many listed as disappeared.

Has a trial like this happened before?

The first “collective” trial of this magnitude took place in March 2025, said AP. At its conclusion, 52 members of Barrio 18 were convicted, with one individual sentenced to 245 years in prison.

In November, a similar trial found 45 members of a rival faction, Barrio 18 Sureños, guilty of several crimes and “handed down a 397-year prison sentence to one leader”.

What is the criticism?

Bukele’s “crackdown has drawn sharp criticism from human rights organisations”, said The Times. There is significant risk that, given the limited evidence specific to individuals, mass trials risk convicting innocent people.

Human Rights Watch estimated that El Salvador’s prison population has reached 118,000, “more than double the country’s capacity”. Set against “significantly worsening already poor prison conditions”, nearly 2% of the country’s entire population was incarcerated, “among the highest rates in the world”.

More than 500 people have already died in state custody under Bukele, and there have been reports of torture, said Agence France-Presse. Bukele has also acknowledged that “at least 8,000 innocent people” have been arrested under the crackdown, and have since been released, said AP.

Who is behind this?

President Bukele’s stance on criminal gangs has “made him the most popular elected head of state in the world”, said The Times. According to official figures released by his government, the rate of homicides fell from 7.8 per 100,000 people in 2022 to 1.3 last year, said Reuters.

Trump is a close ally. He said he had “the best relationship” with Bukele after the El Salvador president’s visit to the White House in 2025, said The Telegraph, despite previously accusing Bukele of sending MS-13 gang members to the US. Trump also signed a deal with Bukele last year, paying El Salvador between $6 million (£4.5 million) and $15 million (£11.3 million) to hold deportees in its prisons – “seemingly with little due process”.

What will happen next?

At the beginning of the trial, the judge stated that armed groups had disturbed “the peace of the Salvadoran population and the security of the state” for decades, and would be tried “with the full force of the law”.

Of the defendants, 413 of them are being held at the Terrorism Confinement Center (“Cecot”) in Tecoluca, and will watch proceedings on a screen. Cecot, a maximum-security prison built by Bukele in 2023, has “become a symbol of his controversial security policies”, said AP. The other 73 remain at large and will be tried in absentia.

Prosecutors say they have “overwhelming evidence” and will seek the maximum permitted sentence, said The Times. The trial could last up to six months.

“A little blue pill is creating a stir in Hollywood,” said Dipa Kamdar, senior lecturer in pharmacy practice at Kingston University, London, on The Conversation. “And no, it’s not Viagra.”

For several years now, celebrities have been singing the praises of propranolol, a beta-blocker originally designed for heart conditions which also helps with anxiety. Kristen Bell, Rachel Sennott and Natasha Rothwell have all mentioned taking the pill at red-carpet events over the past year. Four years ago, Khloé Kardashian admitted she borrows her mother’s medication to calm her nerves, while Robert Downey Jr started his 2024 Golden Globe acceptance speech by saying he had just taken a beta-blocker “so this will be a breeze”.

These A-lister endorsements have led, in part, to a surge in prescriptions, especially among young women and girls, with propranolol now the “go-to pill for dealing with all sorts of stressful situations, from public speaking to first dates”, said The Wall Street Journal.

How does it work?

The beta-blocker was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1967 for the treatment of heart problems including high blood pressure, arrhythmia (irregular heart rate) and angina. But it soon became clear the drug also reduced physical responses to anxiety, such as high heart rate, sweating, nausea and trembling hands. And while other medications prescribed for anxiety, like certain anti-depressants, can take weeks to work, propranolol can take effect within an hour.

Unlike drugs like Xanax or Valium, which “act directly on the brain and can leave people feeling sedated, foggy, or zoned out”, propranolol doesn’t address anxiety’s “underlying roots” but “blocks its physical symptoms” by slowing down the heart rate and lowering blood pressure, said The Boston Globe.

“It’s a beta-blocker, not a bravery booster”, said Kamdar. “It won’t fix your fear of public speaking or make you smoother on a first date – though it might stop your hands from shaking while you try.”

How widely is it used?

In the US, overall prescriptions are up 28% from 2020, while NHS England figures show an increase of 37.6% over the past decade, according to data seen by The Observer. The biggest rise in the UK has been among girls aged between 12 and 17 – up from 618,813 prescriptions in 2015 to more than 1.1 million in 2025. The second highest increase in use – at 81.7% – is among women aged 18 to 23.

The increasing popularity of beta-blockers among young women and girls “points to a generation that has grown up with the pressures of social media and an epidemic of gender-based violence, as well as the isolating effects of Covid”, said the outlet.

As well as its speed and availability, its appeal may also lie in the fact that, unlike other mental health medication, “culturally” propranolol is “portrayed lightly – as if it’s nothing more than a breath mint”, said The Boston Globe.

Are there any risks?

Compared to Xanax or Valium, propranolol is a non-addictive and low-risk medication. However, “it’s not without risks or side-effects”, said Kamdar on The Conversation. Because propranolol works to reduce blood pressure and heart rate, common side-effects include dizziness, fatigue, cold hands and feet, and vivid dreams. “More serious risks – though rare – include heart failure, breathing difficulties and allergic reactions”.

In the UK, where propranolol is licensed to treat anxiety, its effects have been “more scrutinised”, said the WSJ. The General Pharmaceutical Council has highlighted the risk of overdose following the death of a 17-year-old girl in 2023, who died after taking propranolol along with other pain-relief medication. The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence anxiety-management guidelines recommend cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness and antidepressants as initial treatments.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is “close” to securing a $10 billion (£7.4 billion) fundraising deal from investors for his AI lab, codenamed Project Prometheus, said the Financial Times. The deal would make the company, which aims to explore how AI systems can be applied across physical industries, “one of the best-financed early-stage start-ups globally”, and marks the first time Bezos has served in an operational role since stepping down as chief executive of Amazon in 2021.

Project Prometheus will propel Bezos into the ranks of the AI titans heading firms with multi-billion-dollar valuations, such as Anthropic, OpenAI and Palantir. With the industry elite divided by ongoing legal feuds and conflicting political ideologies, the personalities of the individual CEOs look set to shape the course of AI as much as the technology itself. Here are the five names to watch.

Sam Altman

The OpenAI CEO is more and more becoming the “protagonist” of our times, said Lily Isaacs in The Observer. As with Faust, Victor Frankenstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, we are beginning to “share the uneasy feeling that enlightenment carries within it the seeds of catastrophe”.

Launched by OpenAI in November 2022, ChatGPT is the chatbot that has “redefined the standards of artificial intelligence”, said Forbes. As the company nears a possible value of more than $1 trillion (£740 billion), “one of the biggest so-called risk factors” to the company is “Altman himself”, said Dave Lee in Bloomberg. Altman was fired by the board in November 2023, only to be reinstated days later.

Reading the year-and-a-half-long investigation by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz in The New Yorker, the “overriding impression” of Altman is that he is a “borderline sociopath”, said Jeremy Kahn in Fortune. The piece raises questions on whether Altman “actually cares about AI safety” or whether his rhetoric is simply a “convenient pose” to win over funders and regulators.

Dario Amodei

“We should not deny that the disruption is going to happen” as AI use increases, Anthropic CEO Amodei told John Thornhill in the FT, but AI can only “diffuse at the speed of trust”. Trust, however, said Thornhill, is “in short supply”. “As the current frontrunner of the AI pack, Amodei is certain to come under increasingly fierce scrutiny.”

It is clear that he “wants to position himself as one of the good guys in the AI debate”, but that “grates with many Silicon Valley critics”, who argue that “his principles align with Anthropic’s commercial interests”. Amodei founded Anthropic – the creators of Claude – in 2021 alongside six other former OpenAI employees, including his sister Daniela, who is president. The company has recently raised $30 billion (£22.2 billion) at a $380 billion (£281.3 billion) valuation and is reportedly “heading for a giant stock market flotation later this year”.

Central to Amodei’s brand of Anthropic is that it is “fundamentally safer than that of its rivals”, said The Wall Street Journal. Indeed, that was one of the main reasons Amodei left OpenAI, citing “concerns about safety”. In recent months, he has also “compared the legal battle between Altman and Elon Musk to the fight between Hitler and Stalin”, as well as calling a $25 million (£18.5 million) donation by OpenAI President Greg Brockman to pro-Trump super PAC (independent expenditure-only political action committee) Maga Inc. “evil”.

Jensen Huang

Although the head of Nvidia may not be driving the AI revolution directly, his company is facilitating it, acting as the “hardware backbone” of the movement, said Business Insider. Huang’s “chip empire” is effectively “powering the generative AI boom”.

He founded the company in 1993, and has served as CEO ever since. Under his leadership, Nvidia – whose projected revenue opportunity for its artificial intelligence chips could reach $1 trillion (£740 billion) or more by the end of 2027 – has expanded partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud to accelerate AI development. Nvidia’s hardware and software “now sit at the centre of nearly every major foundation-model program”, said Business Insider.

AI is “gonna create more jobs in the end”, Huang said during a recent panel at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, reported Fortune. “There’ll be more people working at the end of this industrial revolution than at the beginning of it.” He has previously commented that negative commentary surrounding AI is “extremely hurtful”, said Inc.

Huang is not without his quirks, having banned one-on-one meetings with staff who report directly to him, on the grounds they would “clog up his work schedule and slow him down”, said Fortune.

Alex Karp

Fewer people will have heard of the co-founder of Palantir, but to some he is the “scariest CEO in the world”, said Steve Rose in The Guardian.

The company recently released a 22-point “manifesto” summarising Karp’s recent book, “The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West”. In it, he extols the need for “hard power”, argues the inevitability of “AI weapons” and calls for the reversal of the “postwar neutering of Germany and Japan”. MPs have since called this a “parody of a ‘RoboCop’ film” and the “ramblings of a supervillain”. Arguably, what it does show is that “Karp views himself as not simply the head of a software company, but a pundit with important insights into the future of civilisation”, said Aisha Down and Robert Booth in The Guardian.

The company is “at the heart of many of the world’s pressing issues”, said The Guardian. Palantir has “multibillion-dollar contracts” with the US Army and Ice, as well as partnerships with the Israeli military and the Ministry of Defence, said Al Jazeera.

Some NHS staff are “refusing to work” on the health service’s Federated Data Platform, which is provided by Palantir, due to the company’s “role in US defence and immigration enforcement”, said the FT. Ministers are exploring the possibility of a “break clause” in the company’s seven-year £330 million NHS contract, signed in 2023.

Elon Musk

The founder of xAI and Grok, such is the strength of Musk’s conviction in AI, that he believes it will put “immortality within human reach”, said Fortune.

But the “rapid rise” of his tech company xAI’s has “raised concerns”, said Harry Booth in Time. There were accusations of pollution from the Colossus data centres’ temporary gas turbines, and the now-infamous update to Grok “praised Adolf Hitler as a ‘decisive leader’ and began creating graphic rape narratives”.

French prosecutors summoned Musk for a voluntary interview on Monday, which he did not attend, over “alleged abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction” by his AI chatbot Grok, as well as the “creation of sexual deepfakes”, said France 24. This is part of an ongoing probe first opened in 2025, with the company’s offices raided by the Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit in February.

Musk is also locked in a legal feud with Altman – with whom he cofounded OpenAI – accusing Altman of deceiving him into donating $38 million (£28 million) towards the company with the promise that it would remain a non-profit, said Business Insider.

Keir Starmer is to address the Commons this afternoon over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US, after it emerged that the Labour grandee was approved by the Foreign Office despite failing internal vetting.

Following an internal fact-finding review, No. 10 are said to be “confident it will show he was kept in the dark over the details of the process until Tuesday night and therefore did not mislead Parliament”, said The i Paper.

What happened?

Mandelson, a Labour veteran, has been a central figure in the party since the 1980s. He played a key role in New Labour and the 1997 landslide election victory, was MP for Hartlepool and held ministerial positions but was twice forced to resign.

Keir Starmer appointed Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador in Washington in December 2024, but he was sacked last September, after Downing Street said new information about the extent of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein had emerged.

But it’s since transpired that in January 2025 he had failed a “developed” security vetting carried out by UK Security Vetting (UKSV), a division of the Cabinet Office. The decision to overrule the UKSV was made by the Foreign Office without Downing Street’s knowledge, according to reports.

Civil servants at the Foreign Office were able to override security warnings by deploying a rarely used, high-level authority to grant clearance despite a recommendation to deny it. According to The Guardian, they acted on the understanding that the prime minister wanted the appointment to proceed.

Did Starmer know?

The so-called Mandelson files released so far show that Starmer was warned of the reputational dangers of the appointment, but there was no mention in any documents that Mandelson did not pass the security vetting process. More files are yet to be released.

At least two senior civil servants knew several weeks ago that Mandelson had failed security vetting for his US ambassador role, according to Sky News. A Cabinet Office spokesperson said that they didn’t pass the information to Starmer because they were waiting for legal checks on what information could be released.

Starmer said he was “absolutely furious” that he wasn’t made aware that Mandelson had failed the security vetting and described the situation as “completely unacceptable”. He insisted that he would have reversed the appointment had he known. Beth Rigby, Sky News’ political editor, said that although the PM is “normally not one to show emotion”, he was “near apoplectic”.

Who else knew?

The Foreign Office’s top civil servant, Olly Robbins, was “one of the few people who knew the true outcome of the vetting process”, said The Telegraph. He discovered this in January 2025 but decided to override the recommendation not to approve the peer for the US ambassador role, although he is thought to have “harboured private concerns about the appointment”. Robbins was sacked on Thursday after the revelations became public, and is said to be considering taking legal action.

As the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy had to formally give approval for Mandelson, to be given the go-ahead, but did so against his own wishes and was apparently unaware of the failed vetting, said the broadsheet. Allies of the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said she did not find out until the story broke on Thursday, two days after the PM found out.

The UK has rapidly decarbonised its energy sector, with emissions falling by about 54% since 1990. Fossil fuels supply only around a third of our electricity, but when it comes to the total energy mix – including heating, transport etc – we still rely heavily on oil and gas: they accounted for 74% of the total in 2024 (36.5% oil; 37.5% gas). And the nation is producing less of both than it once did.

In 1999, when production peaked on the UK Continental Shelf, Britain was a net exporter of oil, and was self-sufficient in gas. Today, only about 50% of UK oil comes from domestic sources; some 30% of the UK’s natural gas also comes from domestic sources. Whereas, of the imports: 76% of imported gas comes from Norway, 17% from the US, in the form of LNG, and 2% from the Persian Gulf.

Is there much oil and gas left?

The UK Continental Shelf (largely in the North Sea, but also in the Irish Sea) is a mature basin: over the past 60 years, its most accessible oil and gas – about 47.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) – has been extracted. Domestic production of oil and gas fell by 76% and 73% respectively between 2000 and 2024. Today there are over 280 active oil and gas fields, but 180 of these are expected to cease production by 2030. Estimates vary as to how much is left.

According to the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, there’s an estimated 2.3 billion BOE of recoverable oil and gas in the North Sea – enough to cover a sixth of the UK’s projected needs until its net-zero target date of 2050. Offshore Energies UK, an industry group, estimates there are around 7.5 billion BOE of oil. The North Sea Transition Authority, the industry regulator, is more cautious: it thinks the North Sea is home to 2.9 billion BOE of “proven and probable reserves” of oil and gas, with an extra 10.8 billion that may or may not be accessible.

How easily could it be recovered?

“Easy oil is over,” says Dr Mark Ireland, a geologist at Newcastle University. “What remains are smaller, sometimes more remote, and often more technically challenging or expensive resources and reserves.”

New exploration competes for investment with more accessible sources of hydrocarbons abroad, so the North Sea’s future depends on relatively high oil and gas prices, tax levels that aren’t too high and investor confidence. At present, a headline 78% tax rate and high costs mean British oil fields need global prices at nearly $40 (£29) a barrel just to break even, more than twice the threshold for Norway.

There are undeveloped fields, where oil or gas are confirmed but not yet produced. Furthest along is Jackdaw gas field, which could be connected to the UK within months; but that and Rosebank have not been approved.

Could more drilling lower prices?

Probably not. Oil and gas prices are set on international markets; and given the North Sea’s relatively small reserves, drilling there would not impact global prices. Nigel Topping, chair of the Climate Change Committee, says the best way to bring down bills is by “making clean electricity cheaper and reducing demand for oil and gas – not doubling down on declining resources”. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero wants to get Britain off “the roller-coaster of fossil fuel prices and onto homegrown power that we control”.

But might it be useful in other ways?

Yes. Advocates of further exploration point out that it would improve energy security: gas is pumped straight into the UK’s energy system, which insulates the nation from energy shocks, and potentially from price spikes such as the present one. Crucially, they point out, companies licensed to extract North Sea oil and gas would pay billions in tax – money that could be used, for instance, to lower domestic energy bills. (The industry has paid between £4.5 billion and £9 billion in annual tax in recent years.)

Domestic production is good for the balance of payments, too: the UK spent £36 billion on oil and gas imports in 2024, money lost to the British economy. And jobs are at stake. In the past decade, the North Sea workforce has shrunk from 450,000 to 160,000; the hope that jobs would be created in renewable energy to replace them has not yet been borne out.

Wouldn’t more drilling undermine our climate policies?

On the face of it, yes. Over the Jackdaw field’s lifetime, if you include both “operational” and “downstream” emissions (those caused by burning the gas), it will generate the equivalent of 35.8 million tonnes of carbon – nearly Scotland’s total emissions per year.

On the other hand, realistically, Britain is going to need a lot of oil and gas even if it does reach net zero by 2050, for domestic heating, transport – and to back up intermittent wind and solar. Shell, which owns Jackdaw, argues that “the UK will consume this gas, wherever it is produced” – and imported LNG from the US and Qatar is about a fifth more carbon intensive. Thus, arguably, domestic production can help reduce overall emissions.

So what should we do?

Opinion is divided. Reform UK, the Conservatives and most recently the SNP have all backed further drilling in the North Sea. Even Tara Singh, CEO of RenewableUK, the trade association for renewable power, has argued that the UK should continue, and even increase, North Sea gas production for energy security during the transition to net zero, to reduce imports. But Labour's 2024 election manifesto explicitly ruled out issuing new oil and gas exploration licences, although it does allow “tiebacks” for existing fields. (The Lib Dems and the Greens are also opposed.) The Energy Secretary Ed Miliband argues that Britain should show “climate leadership”, and that if it were to allow more licences and more drilling, it would undermine efforts to slow global warming and to move to low-carbon energy sources.

More than a quarter of women under 25 hold a negative view of men, according to a recent poll for The New Statesman, revealing what the magazine calls a “new radicalism”. This is seen as a challenge to the “prevailing narrative” that it is radicalised young men who are driving the so-called gender wars.

A “growing army” of female influencers broadly referred to as the femosphere is “urging” women to adopt a more cynical mindset when it comes to the opposite sex, “ditch their romantic delusions” and “be more aggressive in the dating game”, said Sarah Ditum in The Times.

What is the femosphere?

The term comes from the concept of the manosphere – a loose, online-based community of social media accounts, forums, blogs and podcasts that promote a view of “traditional masculinity”, with men in a dominant role and women subservient. “United in a belief that men are victims in a society that is designed for the benefit of women”, many of these spaces are “overflowing with rage”, said James Bloodworth in The Times.

The femosphere is a reaction to this with a message that “men are inherently selfish” and “only interested in one thing”, said Ditum. Manosphere terminology is gender-flipped: instead of “taking the red pill” (embracing the belief that society does not value men), the “pink-pill philosophy” encourages women to break with the egalitarian conventions of liberal feminism and see men as the “problem sex”.

What does that mean in practice?

Femosphere philosophy urges women to avoid casual relationships with men and to “adopt a more emotionally distant, calculated approach” to dating, said NBC News. Some of its content “frames” relationships as something to “win,” and advises followers to be “selective, guarded, and, at times, intentionally aloof”.

Mirroring the “pick-up artists” of the manosphere – those who offer manipulative strategies to persuade women to engage in sexual relationships – the femosphere has its “female dating strategists”, said The Guardian. Among them are the so-called “dark feminine” influencers who “encourage women to find men to support them financially” by cynically deploying behaviours associated with traditional femininity.

The appeal is understandable, feminist theorist Dr Sophie Lewis told the newspaper. The promise of liberal feminism that women could “have it all” has left many “saddled with both productive and reproductive labour”. The femosphere offers liberation from the “double shift”.

Is it a bad thing?

Femosphere influencers claim the movement is about “empowerment” of women rather than hatred of men, said NBC News. They see themselves as “pushing back against dating norms that have historically disadvantaged women” with a mindset that “encourages self-worth, boundaries, and higher standards in relationships”. But critics say it risks “turning dating into a transactional or manipulative experience”, where “authenticity” takes a “back seat to strategy”.

The “overarching belief” of the femosphere is the same as that of the manosphere, said The Guardian: “life is about survival of the fittest”. Men “will always hurt women and that will never change”, so “strategies are needed to conquer the opposite gender”.

Premium Bonds are one of the nation’s most-loved savings products, but falling prize rates mean savers could be better off putting their money elsewhere.

Government-backed National Savings & Investments has offered Premium Bonds since 1956, as a way to keep savings safe, with the “added thrill of a monthly cash prize draw”, said GoCompare.

But its prize rate dropped this month from 3.6% to 3.3%, cutting the chances of winning.

What are Premium Bonds?

Premium Bonds are a government-backed savings account. But rather than earning a guaranteed return in interest, savers are entered into a monthly prize draw with the chance to win a sum ranging from £25 to £1 million in cash.

The prize fund rate is the benchmark used by National Savings & Investments to set the number of prizes to be given away each month. The figure represents the rate of return for a bondholder with average luck. Some holders will earn a lot, some nothing.

But the odds of winning are so low that if everyone with £1,000 in Premium Bonds were lined up, “you’d need to walk past 60% of the line until you hit the first £25 winner”, said MoneySavingExpert,.

Pro: Safe, tax-free savings

Money in NS&I accounts is lent to the government, making it secure with Treasury-backed benefits. Money with other regulated financial institutions, such as banks, is protected under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) if a provider goes bust for up to £85,000.

As the maximum investment in Premium Bonds is £50,000, the protection level is the same as if you had an equal amount in a savings account.

Those who do strike lucky in the monthly draw can take the winnings tax-free, which could be a good way to safeguard savings from the taxman if you have used up all ISA and personal savings allowances.

Con: Low odds, won't beat inflation

The main allure of Premium Bonds is the chance to win up to £1 million, but even discounting the maximum, many of those with money in accounts will never win anything.

With the reduction in the prize rate, the odds of winning anything are 23,000 to one. The luck of the draw means a saver could win big, but they could also walk away with nothing at all.

Relying on luck and not fixed interest, over time and without a win, Premium Bonds savings may lose purchasing power as inflation rises. The poor odds of winning make it unlikely to beat such rises.

Pro: Easy withdrawal

They do offer the chance, no matter how small, of a holder becoming a millionaire, and savers get the monthly thrill of a prize draw. Plus there are no time limits, and money is free to be withdrawn at any time.

Con: Low returns

But Premium Bonds are “not the most lucrative choice” based on the return, said Fidelity. This is especially the case compared with top savings accounts, which may have suffered cuts in recent months, but still pay regular interest at more than 4%.

In contrast to Premium Bonds, savings accounts provide an “agreed rate of return”, said The Independent, plus savers may “attract higher long-term returns” by investing.

The £100k tax trap “might sound like a champagne problem” to some, said Becky Wilding in The Independent, but “those affected feel unfairly targeted”.

The affected are a growing number: Brits earning six-figure salaries are expected to exceed two million for the first time in the 2026/27 tax year, pulling tens of thousands more workers into a 60% tax rate.

What is the £100k tax trap?

In the UK, most people receive a personal allowance (tax-free income) of £12,570, but professionals earning between £100,000 and £125,140 lose that, creating a 60% effective tax rate. For graduates repaying student loans, the news is even worse: the tax rate can rise to 71% or higher.

The effect is also punishing for parents of young children because they lose tax-free childcare and free hours. The loss of their entitlement to 30 hours per week of free childcare can carry an annual cost of £9,600 per child.

Is it a big problem?

It means that it pays more to earn £99,999 than it does to earn £144,500, and “by any measure, this is farcical”, said The Telegraph’s investment editor James Baxter-Derrington. And “before you reach for your tiniest violin”, consider the overall impact, regardless of what you earn.

A nation that “tells people ambition doesn’t pay will soon run out of ambitious people”. And as they are the ones tending to earn the higher amounts of money – money that is taxed and spent in the economy – we will all be poorer should we lose them.

Above £125,140, the rate “falls back” to 47%, and a system where “rates rise and then fall” as income goes up is “indefensible”, said the Tax Policy Associates’ Dan Neidle in the Financial Times.

It is “one of the UK tax system’s most notorious quirks”, said Michael Healy on LBC, and it’s led to “distorted behaviour”. Four in five people earning £90,000- £125,000 have “actively taken steps” to earn below the £100,000 threshold. The arrangement can make small pay rises feel disappointing because you keep much less of them, and it affects bonuses and overtime decisions.

What can be done?

The government should “reform” thresholds and introduce a dedicated UK Equities Investment Scheme to provide income tax relief on UK-listed shares held in ISAs. It would mean that higher-rate taxpayers could “receive relief” of up to £8,000 annually, said Healy.

On childcare, the Centre for British Progress think-tank has suggested replacing the £100,000 cliff edge with a new 3% tax on income over £100,000 for each child receiving support. This means the cliff edge “disappears” and the “confiscatory jump” is “replaced by a smooth phaseout”, said the FT. Those just above £100,000 will hardly feel the effect, while higher earners “face a clear, proportionate trade-off”.

For taxpayers themselves, there is a fairly straightforward solution that’s “(legal!) and financially savvy”, said The Independent. You can increase your pension contributions to a level where your remaining taxable income is below £100,000, sacrifice salary for other employee benefits, such as additional days of leave, or make Gift Aid donations.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has proposed to increase defence spending by less than £10 billion over the next four years, despite the Armed Forces highlighting a £28 billion funding gap in the same period, and warning that Britain’s “national security and safety is in peril”, said The Times.

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, a former Nato secretary-general, accused the Treasury in a speech on Tuesday of “vandalism” for inaction on defence. Leader of the 2025 Strategic Defence Review, Robertson said that for the UK “building deterrence will not be quick or cheap”. He added that “the public need to face that uncomfortable fact or suffer the consequences of not being safe in a very turbulent world.”

With a fragile ceasefire in the Middle East and continued conflict in Ukraine, many fear that the government’s pledges to defence will prove difficult to fulfil.

What has the government pledged?

Minister of State for the Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard stated in the House that the government was undertaking the “largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War”, in response to Lord Robertson’s claims, but this is a “low bar”, said Ben Chu on BBC News. Defence spending has been on an “almost constant downward path since the fall of the Berlin Wall”.

The UK government currently spends 2.4% of GDP on defence, and Keir Starmer has committed to hitting 2.5% from April next year. This will then rise to 3% “at some point during the next parliament”, said The Times, though some critics think that the UK “should be hitting the 3% target now”.

More broadly, in June last year the government also committed to a Nato-wide agreement to spend 5% of GDP on national security. This figure will be split into 3.5% on “core defence” and 1.5% on “resilience and security” by 2035.

What state are the Armed Forces in?

In 1990, at the end of the Cold War, the Army had “153,000 regular soldiers in its ranks”, said the BBC. Now, it has less than half that number, just 73,790, according to the Ministry of Defence.

When it comes to recruitment, “Britain is at serious risk of being left behind” as other countries look to bolster their ranks, said Cahal Milmo and Jane Merrick in The i Paper. European neighbours Germany, Finland, Poland and France are “forging ahead with rearmament schemes” and programmes to increase numbers applying to their armed forces.

In the year to September 2025, the number of applications to the British Army Regular Forces (108,020) decreased by 36.6% compared to the previous year (170,380), according to the MoD.

In terms of equipment, in 1990, the Royal Navy had 13 destroyers and 35 frigates, which has since dropped to six and 11 respectively, said the BBC. Similarly, in 1990 the RAF had 300 combat jets. Though the current 137 Eurofighter Typhoons and minimum 37 Joint Strike Fighter F-35 Lightning IIs are “technically superior”, they are fewer in number. The use in combat of unmanned drones, which did not exist in 1990, is rising, and these also form part of the UK’s military aircraft.

How have recent ventures fared?

The “sad state” of the Armed Forces was illustrated by the delay in the deployment of HMS Dragon to the Middle East, said Richard Norton-Taylor in The Guardian. Even after the delay, the destroyer “needed further repairs almost as soon as it arrived”. It is the Navy’s “lone destroyer available to help protect British interests” in the Middle East, as the Navy’s “largest and most expensive” ships, the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales – which “cost more than £6 billion” – were unavailable.

On land, ministers are facing “scrapping” the Ajax armoured vehicle programme, due to health concerns for its operators. Its issues are “so serious that vibration and noise have made soldiers training on it sick, with some suffering hearing loss”. More than £6 billion has been spent on the project, and it is “already eight years late”.

The government is also “under increasing pressure” to deliver its “long-delayed” Defence Investment Plan, said The i Paper. This promises to “overhaul Britain’s military capabilities with about £300 billion of investment over a decade”, said the outlet. Though expected to have been released last October, due to concerns over the MoD funding gap, it is not expected “until June at the earliest”.

What needs to be done?

The war in the Middle East should be a “wake-up call” for the UK to recognise its “vulnerabilities”, said George Robertson in Prospect. “There are many.” Public attention is mostly focused on the tangibles – such as planes, tanks and ships – but they are the “baubles on the Christmas tree”. “We need to focus on the tree itself” by addressing “crises in logistics, engineering, cyber, ammunition, training and medical resources”.

“In the early 2020s, interest in GLP-1 weight loss drugs exploded,” said CNN. Now, “a new buzzword is taking over”: peptides.

Once a niche interest among powerlifters and bodybuilders, the injectable substances have flooded the online wellness sphere. Social media is awash with people raving about their effect on everything from weight loss to concentration. Athletes and wellness influencers hail peptides as a way to speed muscle recovery and slow ageing. Demand is surging and authorities are “starting to take notice”.

What are peptides?

Short chains of amino acids (small proteins) produced by our bodies to help regulate hormones, reduce inflammation and repair tissue. Synthetic versions are manufactured to mimic, or even enhance, those naturally occurring proteins.

Peptides are the P in GLP-1s (the class of weight-loss drugs that includes Ozempic and Wegovy). Plenty of long-established drugs, such as insulin, are peptide-based – but “grey-market injectable peptides” are “unregulated, experimental compounds”, said The Guardian. Some are “bootleg versions of approved drugs”, sold for “a fraction of their market price” online.

Unregulated peptides have “exploded onto the wellbeing market” since weight-loss drugs “became mainstream”, said the BBC. “The success of regulated GLP-1 drugs has ‘normalised’ using a needle, lowering the psychological barrier to self-injection,” said Dr Mike Mrozinski, a GP.

“The GLP-1s put it on the map,” Evan Miller, CEO of Gameday Men’s Health, told CNN. “And then people were like, ‘Well, what’s next?’”

Are they legal?

They are in “a legal and regulatory middle zone” known as the grey market, said the BBC. Many popular peptides aren’t considered medicines in the UK, so they’re unregulated by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. As they’re not approved for human use, they aren’t subject to quality controls.

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bars pharmacies from compounding peptides, but they can be bought from manufacturers in China, which export them under the label “for research purposes only”, or “not for human consumption” – a legal loophole. In practice, they are “packaged, dosed and marketed in ways that clearly anticipate human use”, said three public health experts from Australia on The Conversation. This creates “a parallel market”, outside clinical oversight and regulation.

According to US customs data, imports of hormone and peptide compounds from China reached $328 million in the first three quarters of 2025, up from $164 million in the same period the previous year, said The New York Times.

Are they safe?

Many peptides and cosmetic injectables are sold with claims that they can accelerate skin repair, improve wrinkles and even reverse aspects of ageing. But high-quality human evidence is limited. Most claims are based on “a handful of laboratory studies”, usually on animals, said the public health experts on The Conversation.

The FDA warns that they pose “serious safety risks” because of potential impurities, including the risk of allergic reactions. Recent analysis by Texas testing lab Finnrick of some products suggests that 8% could be contaminated. Bacterial endotoxins can do a “serious number on you”, Adam Taylor, anatomy professor at Lancaster University, told the BBC.

Using peptides is “unfounded and reckless”, Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told The New York Times. Last year, two women were hospitalised after injecting unknown peptides at a Las Vegas anti-ageing festival.

They lack “reliable safety data and quality control”, said The Guardian. According to Taylor, users are “converting themselves into the guinea pigs or the lab rats”.

Who’s taking peptides?

Precise numbers are impossible to discern, but wellness influencers, bio-hackers and Silicon Valley tech bros are among those publicly endorsing the practice.

Unregulated peptides have “flooded some corners of the tech scene” in the US, said The New York Times. They’re showing up in “hacker houses, start-up offices and even ‘peptide raves’”. Tech podcaster and self-proclaimed “gym bro” Jayden Clark posted on X that “the elites all have a Chinese peptide dealer”. The term “Chinese peptides” has become a meme.

US podcaster Joe Rogan claims peptides BPC-157 and TB-500, a combination known as the “Wolverine stack” after the Marvel superhero, help with injury recovery. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, says he is “a big fan of peptides”. In 2024, RFK Jr said on X that he would end the FDA’s “aggressive suppression” of peptides.

The price of crude oil could rise to $150 a barrel under a US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Jorge Montepeque, managing director of oil traders Onyx Capital Group, said prices “should be $140, $150” if the naval blockade goes ahead, said The Telegraph.

The US blockade was due to begin at 3pm today UK time. Writing on social media, Donald Trump said that the US was going to start “BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz” and will “interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran”.

How will it work?

Under Trump’s plan, instead of having navy ships escort commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, US forces will board and potentially seize any vessels that pay Iran’s toll, a move that would effectively close the strait off entirely.

The US Central Command said that its forces would not impede the freedom of vessels travelling to and from non-Iranian ports. It also pledged that it would release additional information to commercial mariners.

The president warned that “any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL”, but “at some point” an agreement on free passage would be reached. He said that other countries would be involved in blockading the strait, but did not specify which. Keir Starmer said the UK would not join the blockade.

What will the effect be?

The consequences for the global economy could be serious. There’s “little clarity” about how the US navy will take control of the strait without “reigniting” the conflict with Iran and “causing another shockwave” in the money markets, said Michael Evans in The Times.

The blockade “might risk worsening a war-driven global energy crisis”, said The Washington Post. Although Iran would “potentially suffer the most economically”, it may also “come as a blow to the rest of the world”, particularly nations in Asia, which “rely heavily” on oil and gas from the Gulf.

So the president is “once again playing loose with the fortunes of financial markets and the global economy as he struggles to find a way out of the war”, said Australia’s ABC News.

As for Trump, the plan “reflects his hope” that he can repeat the “model of his intervention” in Venezuela, said the Financial Times. There, the US “seized” the then president Nicolás Maduro in a military operation after a naval blockade of the Latin American nation.

“You saw what we did with Venezuela,” Trump told Fox News. “It’ll be something very similar to that, but at a higher level.”

What did experts say?

Initially, Trump’s plan will only affect the small number of vessels that are still navigating the waterway, shipping expert Lars Jensen told the BBC. If the US does blockade the strait, it will “halt a very tiny trickle” of vessels and “in the greater scheme of things, it doesn’t really change anything”.

But three legal experts in the US said the blockade could violate maritime law. One of them suggested the blockade, which will be enforced militarily, would violate the current ceasefire agreement.

The blockade is a good “counterpoint” to Iran’s closure of the strait, Dennis Ross, the former senior US diplomat and Middle East negotiator, said on X. It puts “greater pressure on Iran” and “great pressure on China to pressure Iran”.

But Vali Nasr, a former US official and a professor at Johns Hopkins University, told the Financial Times that the plan will be “fine by the Iranians” because it “prolongs the chokehold on the global economy”.

Tehran might respond by shutting down the Bab el-Mandeb, a chokepoint off the coast of Yemen, said Nasr, and “then the US will have to deal with that”.

Airlines are feeling the strain of swelling oil prices resulting from the Iran war and closure of the Strait of Hormuz. To deal with higher operating costs, many companies are making changes that shift the burden to consumers, including higher baggage fees, more fuel surcharges and canceled routes.

How are higher gas costs affecting airlines?

Airlines and their customers across the U.S. are being impacted but especially those based in four major hubs: Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and New York City. In these locations, the average price for a gallon of jet fuel is currently $4.25, according to the aviation trade association Airlines for America. On Feb. 27, the day before the war in Iran started, the average price was only $2.50. Airlines are also “facing an increase in the amount of fuel their aircraft use because of extra miles required to avoid flying over the conflict zone,” said The Guardian.

Fuel is already an expensive cost for aviators and is “generally airlines’ largest expense after labor,” said Quartz. Airlines are feeling the pressure as a result. If prices were to stay at their current level, it would mean an “extra $11 billion in annual expense just for jet fuel,” said United CEO Scott Kirby in a memo to employees. For “perspective, in United’s best year ever, we made less than $5 billion.”

How are airlines adapting?

Many are adding “extra fees and surcharges onto already rising ticket prices” to “recoup costs as the war in Iran causes fuel costs to surge,” said The New York Times. Luggage is one common area where airlines are bumping up the price. Delta and Southwest announced they would “start charging $10 more to check a bag on U.S. domestic flights,” days after United and JetBlue said the same.

The company with the most notable baggage changes may be American. The airline said it would “raise the fee by $10 each for the first and the second checked bag for travelers booking domestic and short-haul international flights,” said The Detroit News. The company also “increased the cost of a third checked bag by $50 to $200” for fliers and additionally announced an upcoming $5 increase on checked bags for passengers flying economy.

Some airlines are also including pricing for the fuel itself. Canada’s second-largest airline, WestJet, announced it would “add fuel surcharges of up to 60 Canadian dollars, or about $43, to some flights,” said the Times. Air Canada unveiled surcharges of 50 Canadian dollars to certain warm-weather destinations. For passengers, the decisions from airlines resulted in “rising fares and fees, fewer flight options and difficult decisions about whether a trip is worth the cost,” said The Associated Press.

Airlines are also cutting the number of places they go. Several Asian airlines have stated they would “cut flights to mitigate fuel shortages and mounting costs,” said Business Insider. Ryanair, Europe’s largest carrier, is also “considering reducing routes,” while Lufthansa could ground up to 40 planes. Air New Zealand will “cut about 5% of its flights, or about 1,100, at the start of May,” and in the U.S., United and Delta are both cutting routes.

As the world creeps toward peak travel season, industry leaders are taking notice of the fuel shortages. ACI Europe, an association representing airports in the European Union, notes these shortages could “hit within three weeks, disrupting summer travel and ‘significantly’ harming the European economy,” said CNBC. For people who still want to fly, experts say “flexibility and careful planning can help offset these costs,” said the AP, and “fare-tracking sites can alert travelers to price changes.”

In 2022, Shan Hanes, the chief executive of the Heartland Tri-State Bank in Kansas, met a friendly investment adviser from Australia on WhatsApp. The adviser persuaded Hanes to invest a few thousand dollars in an online cryptocurrency-trading platform, which generated impressive returns. Hanes ended up investing all his own money, $60,000 from his daughter's college fund, $40,000 from his local church and $47 million from the bank he ran.

The “adviser” was, it transpired, not in Australia but most likely in Asia; the “trading platform” was fake; and Hanes had become the highest-profile US victim of a practice known in Chinese as sha zhu pan, a “pig-butchering scam”. Some money was recovered, but investors lost $9 million, the bank collapsed, and Hanes was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

How do the scams work?

“Long cons” have been around for ever, but these – in which the scammers invest a lot of time in building a relationship with the victim, a process they liken to fattening a pig for slaughter – have distinctive features.

Scammers actively seek out victims on social media: pig-butchering originated on regional Chinese dating sites around 10 years ago, but it has since spread to platforms such as Telegram, WhatsApp and LinkedIn. They create trusting relationships with their victims, sometimes of a romantic nature; one former scammer told The Economist she’d been trained to target people who were “rich but not good-looking”.

They rely heavily on crypto, which is easy to launder and difficult to recover. These and other online scams are increasingly run out of Chinese-linked “scam hubs” or “fraud factories” in Southeast Asia.

How did such operations develop?

Gambling – illegal on mainland China – is one of the main revenue streams for domestic and foreign-based Chinese mafias. Casinos and online gambling hubs for Chinese-speakers, based in Cambodia and Myanmar, were one of their main enterprises until 2019, when Cambodia tightened its regulations; Covid lockdowns then emptied the casinos. The criminal syndicates refitted their properties as centres where teams of workers – often trafficked and coerced – run online scams at scale.

Chinese citizens were their original targets, followed by Chinese communities around the world. But they soon expanded to other nationalities, which also meant expanding their trafficking activities. In the four years from January 2020, at least $75 billion was taken in crypto scams; estimates suggest the industry generates over $500 billion a year, comparable to the global drugs trade.

Why do they traffic people?

Many of the gangs’ voluntary workers went home during Covid; not enough locals had the necessary language and computer skills, and recruiting people into cybercrime isn't always easy. The scammers’ solution was to lure people – typically young graduates from developing countries – to cities such as Bangkok with fake offers of legitimate employment, then drive them to compounds in Myanmar, Cambodia or Laos, and put them to work under threats of torture, organ harvesting and sexual slavery.

A UN report this February found that there is a workforce of at least 300,000 people from 66 countries, about 75% of them in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia. Many live in vast compounds, like self-contained towns – some over 500 acres in size, heavily fortified, with armed guards. It's unlikely that all the workers are coerced, but many of them certainly are; some families have had to pay ransoms in cryptocurrency to get them out.

What are the nations doing about it?

Weak local governance, along with easy access to China, is the reason the gangs set up shop in the Mekong region in the first place. Myanmar's military junta doesn’t control the whole territory; much of it is controlled by insurgent groups and warlords; while Cambodian politics has been dominated by one family since the 1980s. Transparency International ranks both governments among the most corrupt in the world. Analysts calculate that Cambodia’s scam hubs generate earnings worth about 60% of the nation's GDP. According to the US Treasury Department, the Huione Group, a financial conglomerate with ties to Cambodia’s ruling Hun family, has provided the gangs with financial and practical services. Like Latin American “narco-states” before them, these countries are well on the way to becoming “scam states”.

Is there international pressure to close them down?

Influenced partly by stories like the kidnapping of the actor Wang Xing, and even a popular film about scam hubs, “No More Bets”, China has launched an aggressive crackdown. There have been heavily publicised rescues of coerced workers in the Mekong countries; under Chinese pressure, local law enforcement has dismantled notorious scam hubs like the KK Park complex in Myawaddy, Myanmar, thought to have been run by Macau-based triads. Thai forces shelled several other hubs during a border conflict with Cambodia last year. China has arrested hundreds of thousands of people over scams, and in January it executed 11 members of the “Ming family” crime group, who had been extradited from Myanmar.

Is the situation improving?

Experts worry that police raids on compounds in Cambodia and Myanmar are largely for show: the bosses are often tipped off in advance. In any case, they have globalised their operations, popping up as far afield as Peru and the Philippines. Police even closed down an operation targeting Chinese citizens on the Isle of Man in 2024. But developments in AI may mean that the scammers are getting less reliant on human trafficking for language skills. One report on AI-assisted scams found that they rose by 450% in 2024-25 compared with 2023-24. The scammers now often use “deepfakes” of increasingly good quality to groom their victims.

President Donald Trump loves raging against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, regularly chiding the military partnership for alleged financial delinquencies while at the same time boosting the interests of NATO’s primary antagonist, Russia. Now, as the U.S.’s war on Iran continues, NATO’s ostensible neutrality in that conflict has prompted him to renew his threat of leaving the organization altogether. Trump often tries to dictate reality by presidential fiat, but the legal process for leaving NATO is largely out of his hands and in Congress.’ The result is a Trump who’s more constrained on paper but not without a toolbox of other, less absolute options.

Why can’t Trump just leave NATO?

Trump has often threatened to leave the military alliance, but he has his own Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to thank for the legal inability to do so. In 2023, Congress enacted what “appears to be the first statute prohibiting the president from unilaterally withdrawing from a treaty (specifically, the North Atlantic Treaty),” said the government’s Congressional Research Service in a February 2026 report. This “might be understood as a rejection” of the position that presidents possess “exclusive power over treaty withdrawal.”

The bill ensures presidents cannot exit NATO “without rigorous debate and consideration by the U.S. Congress with the input of the American people,” said co-sponsor Rubio in a statement on Senator Tim Kaine’s site; Kaine (D-Va.) was the amendment’s other sponsor. Before this, any member nation could exit the treaty one year after notifying the U.S., which would then “inform the governments of the other parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation,” said the NATO charter.

Per the bill, a bipartisan effort for which Rubio partnered with Kaine and others from across the aisle, a president may only exit NATO “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, provided that two-thirds of the senators present concur or pursuant to an Act of Congress.” This is a virtual impossibility, given the Democrats’ current holdings in the upper chamber.

The 2023 effort was “spurred by worries that Trump, if he returned to power, might try to quit the alliance,” said The Washington Post. Fast forward three years, and Trump “insists he would be able to do it anyway,” said Deutsche Welle.

What can he do then?

While it’s possible a constitutional challenge to Rubio’s 2023 bill would “likely favor the power of a president,” there are still “plenty of ways” Trump could “kneecap” the treaty “without leaving” or complying with the congressional restrictions, said DW. Even without an “official exit,” Trump’s “increasingly hostile stance toward the alliance may leave it weakened,” said CBS News.

If other member nations “can’t trust” that the U.S. will honor the treaty’s Article 5 mutual defense pact, then the alliance is “already broken in the way that matters most,” said political scientist Ian Bremmer on X. As soon as the group’s mutual defense pact is “questioned,” NATO “loses its potency” as a Russian deterrent, said Politico. Trump has, in that respect, “turned doubting NATO into official policy.”

The president is also “considering a plan to punish” some NATO member nations he deemed “unhelpful” during the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, said The Wall Street Journal. This would involve relocating some of the 84,000 American troops stationed in Europe and deploying them to “countries that were more supportive,” including Greece, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.

Trump could also withdraw American military assets entirely and shut off funding for NATO operations. Or if he wants to be “very dramatic,” he might even “decide not to staff the position of Supreme Allied Commander Europe,” a post traditionally reserved for American officers, said DW.

The president could “just downgrade our participation,” said Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon official who oversaw Europe and NATO policy, to Politico. He could skip summits, and the secretary of defense “won’t go to defense ministerials.”

With the “language” of its 2023 bill, Congress has “prevented” a “total” and “formal withdrawal from NATO,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) to Politico. But the U.S. could “still be in NATO” with a president grasping “many different levers” so that the country’s impact would nevertheless be “diminished significantly.”

The countdown has begun to the introduction of new rules on how pensions are treated after someone dies.

In the “biggest shake-up of inheritance rules in a generation”, said The Telegraph, the value of a pension will, from April 2027, form part of someone’s estate after they die.

This could mean an inheritance tax bill for one in five households, said The Times, so “the countdown is on to protect their family wealth”.

What is the pensions death tax?

Putting money into a pension has traditionally been “one of the most tax-efficient ways to pass wealth on to loved ones”, said Rest Less. But any unused money in the pot from next year will fall into the scope of inheritance tax, “potentially reducing the amount families receive when someone dies”.

The proposals were announced in the October 2024 Budget by Chancellor Rachel Reeves. They aim to address concerns, said Dentons, that pensions were “increasingly being used as vehicles for inheritance planning, rather than for their primary purpose of providing retirement income”.

Who will be affected?

Inheritance tax is paid on the value of an estate above £325,000. Additionally, there is a £175,000 allowance for your main residence.

The tax “isn’t going to be an issue for most people”, said Royal London, but you may be affected if you own your own home and the value of your pension is added due to the potential total amounts.

The changes will still affect “most individuals” who have unused pension benefits when they die, said Tax Adviser. This means pensions can no longer be relied on as an “efficient means of passing” on wealth such as to your children. This could apply to millions who were previously free of it.

Inheritance tax receipts have already been rising due to “years of property price growth, asset inflation and frozen tax thresholds”, said The Times, so including pensions “will accelerate the trend”.

Beyond the potential charge, “of greatest concern”, said Wedlake Bell, is that payment of inheritance tax on pension assets will remain six months from the end of the month when the deceased died and interest on unpaid inheritance tax is currently running at 7.75%. The government has rejected calls to give bereaved families more time to pay.

Many families could face paying interest, said MoneyWeek, “due to administrative jams” involved in finding pension information and getting the right valuations.

How to prepare for the changes

If you are retired “it might make sense” to prioritise taking money from your pension before other assets, said Grovely Financial, especially if your goal is “inheritance tax mitigation”.

Another option, said MoneyWeek, is to “give away money while you are alive” so you can watch your loved ones enjoy it.

Up to £3,000 per tax year can be given as a financial gift, and tax-free gifts can be made to your children worth up to £5,000 for a wedding or civil partnership or £2,500 for a grandchild or great-grandchild.

Any money given outside of the gifting allowances is tax-free as long as you live for seven years after transfer. Gifting allowances can be used to pass cash on to loved ones, or alternatively, for extra net income.

Alternatively, there are life insurance policies that pay out to cover the cost of inheritance tax. They work in a similar way to other life insurance products: you pay premiums while you are alive “and there will be a payout when you die”, said The Independent.

A British computer scientist who pioneered a forerunner of cryptocurrencies has denied reports that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.

An investigation by The New York Times used biographical details and writing style comparisons to make the case that Adam Back was the cryptocurrency’s enigmatic founder.

Who is Adam Back?

Back, a 55-year-old computer scientist from London, “has long been seen as a potential candidate to be Nakamoto”, said The Times. “A pioneer of early digital asset research in the 1990s”, he “has a long-standing background in cryptography, the techniques used to secure and verify digital information”. This includes developing Hashcash, “a proof-of-work system that later influenced Bitcoin” and was referenced by Nakamoto in his Bitcoin “white paper”.

Back dismissed The New York Times’ use of writing analyses to link him to the elusive Nakamoto as “a combination of coincidence and similar phrases from people with similar experience and interests”. In reference to the claim that he disappeared from Bitcoin message boards when “Satoshi” was at his busiest, Back insisted that he “did a lot of yakking” on the forums at the time. “I’m not Satoshi,” he said.

Why is Nakamoto’s identity a secret?

Since Bitcoin launched in 2008, Nakamoto has chosen to stay anonymous. All their communication was written under their pseudonym and no verifiable personal details have ever been released or revealed. Since 2011, they have given no public statements at all, their seeming disappearance giving them a “cult-like status among crypto enthusiasts”, said The Times.

This anonymity was very on-brand for Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency was designed to have no central authority; if the identity of a real person were known they could become a leader or figurehead, which might contradict the founding principle of decentralisation. There is a security element, too: Nakamoto is thought to own $78 billion worth of bitcoin, so remaining anonymous lessens the risk of extortion or kidnapping.

It’s also possible that the mysterious founder is not one person, but rather a team of developers or cryptographers. Either way, the years of speculation have added to Bitcoin’s profile and acted as a useful indirect marketing tool.

Has anyone else been suggested?

In 2014, Newsweek identified a Japanese-American systems engineer called Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto as the creator of Bitcoin. He disputed this, and the claim has “largely been debunked”, said the BBC.

The following year, Wired suggested Nakamoto could be a pseudonym for Australian computer scientist Craig Wright. Unlike Back and Dorian Nakamoto, Wright went public to assert he was indeed Nakamoto, until a UK High Court judge ruled he was not the Bitcoin founder and barred him from continuing to claim he was.

In 2024, an HBO documentary claimed that Canadian crypto expert Peter Todd was the real Nakamoto, a suggestion he described as “ludicrous”.

The United States under President Donald Trump is, for the time being, the brightest star in a growing network of ultra-nationalist governments hoping to reshape the global order in their authoritarian mold. While MAGA America is the powerhouse, it’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Hungary that has been the backbone of the worldwide lurch rightward. Yet as Hungarians prepare to vote on April 12, Orbán and his Fidesz party seem headed for an electoral upset that could send shock waves across hard-right spheres.

Government ‘revered by authoritarians everywhere’

A “pro-Kremlin, anti-EU strongman” who has spent nearly two decades “building a template for Christian nationalist rule,” Orbán is now the “cornerstone of President Trump’s vision for Europe,” Axios said. In the 16 years since he was first elected, Orbán forged a “state apparatus — courts, media, election administration — loyal to his party” and has “never lost under the system he built.”

As the “center of the Trump administration’s shifting policy toward Europe,” Orbán’s Hungary “firmly” aligned itself with “far-right parties and immigration restrictionists in countries such as France and Germany,” said Al Jazeera. While this has “mired relationships in Europe,” it has also been a “source of inspiration for the U.S.”

“Whatever Hungary decides will resonate throughout Europe,” said Argentine President Javier Milei, a South American nationalist, during his address at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest. Orbán is a “beacon” for those who “refuse to accept that the West’s destiny is one of managed decline.”

CPAC-Hungary, where Milei spoke, has become an “important calendar event for Euro-Atlantic hard-right networking,” said Balkan Insight. The event hosted “667 foreign guests from 51 countries” who heard from “prominent European political figures” such as far-right Dutch PVV leader Geert Wilders and Alice Weidel of Germany’s ultra-nationalist AfD. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while initially scheduled to appear in person, instead sent a “warm message of support” in pretaped remarks played on the conference’s first day, Cleveland Jewish News said.

Orbán is “revered by authoritarians everywhere,” said Salon. But as a “path-breaking autocrat” who has demonstrated a “new soft fascism,” his potential loss is making many of those same authoritarians “nervous.”

Effects that would ‘reverberate well beyond Hungary’

Should Orbán’s government fall, the “dreams” of his authoritarian admirers in the MAGA movement “might be shattered” as well, said Vox. As a “close Russian ally,” Orbán’s loss would be a “considerable boon to the Ukrainian war effort — and a significant blow to the Kremlin.” Cumulatively, then, Hungary’s elections are “not just like any other vote,” and could end up as “one of the most significant elections of the entire year, and perhaps even the decade.”

An Orbán loss would prompt authoritarian allies to ask “what it could mean for them,” said Salon. “After all,” his “anti-democratic” domestic policies were designed to “not only prevent a defeat from happening” but to “keep people from ever wanting it to happen.” Such a defeat would “reverberate well beyond Hungary,” calling into question the “durability of a political system” marked by “hardline nationalism and an erosion of democratic checks” and “touted as a blueprint for reshaping Western democracy” by many conservatives, said Reuters.

“I am here for a simple reason,” Vice President JD Vance said at a pro-Orbán rally in Budapest this week: “I admire what you are fighting for.” But Vance’s visit may have ultimately done “more harm for Orbán than good,” The Guardian said. By asserting that the Trump administration would work with any eventual Hungarian elected leader, the vice president seemingly undercut Orbán’s campaign promise that “he — and his connections — were the only means of keeping Hungary safe in a volatile world.”

For some observers, Vance’s visit is unlikely to change the electoral calculus in Hungary, where “domestic issues such as the ⁠cost of living dominate the election,” said Reuters. No matter what happens in Hungary’s immediate future, Orbán’s global footprint will surely be felt for years to come.

Donald Trump’s threats to wipe out a civilisation and Israel’s alleged use of white phosphorus in Lebanon have once again shone a spotlight on the rules of war.

“Collective punishment on a population and the targeting of protected civilian infrastructure are prohibited under international law,” legal experts told ABC News of Trump’s threats, while his promises to take the country’s oil, “which could amount to pillaging” is also “barred under the law”.

In Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said it was able to verify that Israel was again using the “notorious weapon”, “reigniting accusations that it is breaking the laws of war”, said The Guardian.

When asked whether his threats constituted a war crime, Donald Trump answered, “You know the war crime? The war crime is allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon”.

So what constitutes a ‘war crime’?

War crimes are “violations of international humanitarian law” that, unlike genocide and crimes against humanity, “always take place in the context of an armed conflict, whether international or not”, said the United Nations.

These include cases of murder, torture, pillage, intentionally directing attacks against civilians and non-combatants such as humanitarian aid workers, as well as the deliberate targeting of religious and educational buildings, hospitals and, in some cases, vital infrastructure such as power stations and key transport links.

The use of weapons banned by international conventions, such as chemical weapons or cluster munitions, can also be considered a war crime.

What are the major conventions and treaties?

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols introduced in subsequent decades are international treaties that serve as the “most important rules limiting the barbarity of war”, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Ratified by all 196 UN member states, in times of war they protect non-combatants, such as civilians, medics, aid workers, and those who can no longer fight, including the wounded, sick or prisoners of war.

There are also additional conventions banning the use of biological weapons (1972), certain conventional weapons (1980), chemical weapons (1993), anti-personnel mines (1997), and cluster munitions (2008).

What happens if someone breaks the rules?

The International Criminal Court (ICC), established under the Rome Statute in 2002, “investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression”.

“Champions of the court say it deters would-be war criminals, bolsters the rule of law, and offers justice to victims of atrocities,” said the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think tank. Yet it has, since inception, also “faced criticism from many parties” and has been fundamentally weakened by the refusal of several major powers to join.

As well as the US, Russia and China, non-signatories include India, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Sudan, Syria, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Recent arrest warrants for national leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have “generated mixed reactions from Washington and raised questions over the future of the court”, said the CFR.

As “no formal ICC jurisdiction applies” to countries that have not signed up to the ICC, the “more immediate legal framework” remains the Geneva conventions of 1949 onwards, said The Guardian.

The Conventions and their Protocols contain stringent rules to deal with those who commit what are known as “grave breaches”, who must be pursued and tried or extradited, whatever their nationality.

The key point here, said Professor Andrew Clapham in OpionioJuris, is that the rules for offences deemed war crimes under the Geneva code apply to “everyone irrespective of whether their state has ratified the ICC Statute, and they can be tried in multiple states around the world, irrespective of whether those states are parties to the ICC Statute”.

“The idea that anyone can avoid accountability for grave breaches by sticking to non-ICC states for one’s trips is fallacious when that person is alleged to have committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.”

Donald Trump has repeated his threat to pull the US out of Nato, after Britain and other allies refused to send warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Dismissing the alliance as a “paper tiger”, he told The Telegraph’s Washington correspondent that the idea of removing America from the defence treaty had now gone “beyond reconsideration”.

“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine,” Trump said. “And we would always have been there for them”. But, in an apparent misunderstanding of the limits of the alliance, the US president believes that, in the Iran conflict, “they weren’t there for us”.

What would it mean for Nato?

Nato, formed by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949 by 12 founding countries, does not have its own army. Instead, member states pledged to provide collective defence and security. The US is Nato’s largest single military power, as well as funding 62% of its spending, so American withdrawal would dramatically weaken the alliance. Without Washington’s military might behind it, Article 5 – the treaty clause that states that an armed attack against one or more members will be considered an attack against all – would lose credibility .

Trump’s recent threats will further encourage Canada and the European member states in their efforts to rely less on the US for security – a shift that is a boon to their own domestic defence industries.

What would leaving Nato mean for the US?

The US would save money, both by ending its contribution to Nato spending and by no longer maintaining a presence in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. But it would also lose access to many military bases around the world, meaning the US Navy would have to “operate closer to America’s shores”, and US bombers would no longer be able to “reach targets halfway around the world”, said Modern Diplomacy. More broadly, the shift away from US global leadership would accelerate, with America increasingly divorced from an international framework.

Buyers for US arms could also dry up, as America’s former allies seek to re-arm elsewhere. The US spends more on its own military than any other country but that wouldn’t be enough to keep all its arms manufacturers afloat. Without crucial foreign sales, hundreds of thousands of US jobs would be at risk.

What would the process actually look like?

Leaving Nato wouldn’t be easy for the US because a 2024 law prohibits the president from doing so without the approval of a two-thirds Senate majority or an act of Congress. Even if all Republicans in the Senate voted for it, Trump would still need at least 14 Democrats to join them, and it’s unlikely he would even get unanimity from Republicans: Thom Tillis, Republican co-chair of the Senate NATO Observer Group, has already warned that leaving Nato would be an “enormous, enormous risk”.

Given the political obstacles, most Nato observers don’t think Trump will try to withdraw, “despite his obvious displeasure at alliance leaders”, said The Times. But he could use an executive order to suspend US participation, and eke that suspension out while legal challenges are mounted.

But, even without leaving, Trump could still “cause irreparable damage” to the alliance, said UnHerd. He could ignore an Article 5 request, withhold intelligence from Nato partners, cancel weapons deliveries, and limit the export of security-related technologies.

Americans may be unwittingly giving hackers an easy path to access their houses. Cybersecurity experts, including FBI cybercrime analysts, are warning about residential proxy networks found on many off-brand electronics. These networks often allow hackers to hide in plain sight.

What are residential proxy networks?

These software systems are “designed to route other people’s internet traffic through a user’s device,” said Cyber Magazine. The networks operate largely like “forged return addresses on envelopes — someone else’s internet traffic is rerouted through your connection,” said officials at Comcast’s Threat Research Lab to Cyber. As the networks engage with users, they “quietly launder illegitimate activity” while making it appear that your device is the “initiator of that traffic.”

Residential proxy networks can make their way onto a variety of home devices, as “TV streaming devices, digital picture frames, smartphones, tablets and routers are used to route traffic,” said the FBI. Many people who own such devices do not “realize their internet connection could be used by someone else without their permission.” The devices can sometimes gain internet access when the “owner of the device provides consent” unintentionally; other times, the owner “does not provide consent and is unaware their IP address is being used.”

Some of these devices “ship with residential proxy software preinstalled on them,” which can “happen with certain low-cost video streaming systems,” said The Wall Street Journal. In other cases, people might “download the code to their smartphones” without realizing it. And since the networks make it appear like illegal activity is coming from an innocent person’s home, there’s a “chance that law enforcement could come knocking at your door.”

How can people protect themselves?

The FBI has a list of tips to help people stay safe, urging Americans to “avoid TV streaming devices that claim to provide free sports, TV shows and movies,” as these “may contain malware or backdoors that hijack your internet network and can lead to identity theft,” said the agency. The agency also recommended people be wary of downloading free VPNs and clicking on pop-ups, which can “initiate malware installation on your device.”

In the midst of these continued cyberattacks, some ordinary Americans are fighting back. Benjamin Brundage, a senior at the Rochester Institute of Technology, began an investigation in 2025 as a “growing network of hacked devices was launching the biggest cyberattacks ever seen on the internet” via a Chinese company called Ipidea, said the Journal. Using cat memes to “lighten the mood” while speaking to hackers, Brundage was able to find out significant information about the attackers, and law enforcement eventually “took action against the network.”

Brundage “identified 11 of the largest residential proxy companies, including Ipidea, that were vulnerable” to hackers, said the Journal. Other companies also assisted law enforcement in the investigation. Google “took legal action” against Ipidea to “take down domains used to control devices and proxy traffic through them,” said the tech company in a press release. While there are still “significant challenges for network defenders to detect and block malicious activities,” officials believe the action taken against Ipidea has reduced the “available pool of devices for the proxy operators by millions.”

The EU’s longest-serving current head of government has turned his country from a liberal democracy into something quite different. Orbán has been variously described as a populist strongman, an authoritarian capitalist, a “soft autocrat” and a “21st-century dictator”.

He himself announced in 2014 that he was building an “illiberal state”, parting from “Western European dogmas” and learning from Turkey, Russia and China. By then his Fidesz party had already rewritten Hungary’s constitution, modified its electoral system, and packed the courts and other institutions with party loyalists. Orbán's Hungary is seen as an inspiration to the populist Right across Europe and in the US, particularly to Donald Trump.

What is Orbán’s background?

Born in 1963, in a village some 35 miles west of Budapest where his father worked on a collective farm, he went on to study law in Budapest, and political philosophy at Oxford, on a scholarship. A former member of the Young Communists, he became a fierce critic of communist rule, co-founding Fidesz – originally a liberal centre-left youth movement – which demanded free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

In 1998, he led Fidesz to electoral victory, becoming Europe's youngest prime minister. A year later, Hungary joined Nato. By then, Orbán had already set about transforming Fidesz into a conservative nationalist party; but in 2002, he lost his re-election campaign to a Socialist coalition. According to his biographer, he resolved to return to power and change “the rules of the game” so that he’d never lose again.

How did he do that?

Fidesz was elected in 2010 with 53% of the vote, but quirks of seat distribution gave it a two-thirds majority – giving Orbán, as PM, considerable power to reshape the country. Ahead of the 2014 election, Fidesz passed a new electoral law that cut the number of seats from 386 to 199; districts were redrawn behind closed doors to favour Fidesz's rural strongholds. Voting rights were granted to ethnic Hungarians living in neighbouring countries, who voted over 95% for Fidesz.

He quickly muzzled the free press. In 2010, a new law created a media council with the power to levy heavy fines on outlets for “unbalanced” anti-government reporting. The biggest opposition newspaper, Népszabadság, was bought then shuttered in 2016 by a company linked to one of the PM's allies; TV and radio stations and websites also came under the control of friendly oligarchs. It’s estimated that today, Fidesz directly or indirectly controls 80% to 90% of the media.

Did Hungarians approve of this?

To a large extent, yes. Elections are free, if not fair, in the sense that opposition politicians are allowed to run, and ballots are counted correctly. And Fidesz has won three more general elections since 2010, never gaining less than 49% of the vote. Orbán has tried to unite the nation against perceived enemies, external and internal: refugees, particularly during the 2015 migrant crisis; the EU, with its “oppressive”, “imperial” system; gay people; “globalists” such as George Soros, the Hungarian-born US financier who has funded liberal causes across the world (and who paid for Orbán’s Oxford scholarship); and, more recently, Ukraine.

Orbán portrays Hungary as a “Christian democracy” under continual, existential threat – a canny policy in a country with a long history of foreign domination at the hands of Ottomans, Habsburgs and Soviets. Fidesz ideology is based on the pillars of “God, Nation and Family”: LGBTQ+ rights have been curtailed, and pro-natal tax breaks have been given to incentivise women to have children.

How are his relations with the EU?

Orbán's flouting of democratic norms has meant constant conflict with Brussels. In 2022, the EU parliament passed a symbolic resolution declaring Hungary to be a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy”. Brussels has frozen billions of euros in EU funding, and has launched legal challenges against laws passed by Fidesz; but has so far stopped short of invoking the “nuclear option” of suspending its voting rights in the European Council. Orbán has continually sought to hobble EU action against Russia, a close ally that provides nuclear technology, and low-priced oil and gas to Hungary.

In February, Orbán used veto powers to block a €90 billion EU aid package to Ukraine, which he blames for disrupting oil supplies, and also claims to view as a military threat. He said this month that Hungarians should “fear the EU more than Russia”.

Why is his rule under threat now?

In the elections on 12 April, Orbán faces a challenge from Tisza, the centre-right opposition party led by Péter Magyar, formerly of Fidesz.

The “Orbán model” relied on delivering rising living standards in return for political dominance; but the economy has stagnated and living standards have declined. Magyar’s politics are not dissimilar to Orbán's, but he paints the PM’s rule as corrupt and “feudalistic” – with some justification. Hungary is often described as a kleptocracy. A circle of oligarchs tied to Orbán dominates the economy and lucrative public contracts. Orbán’s son-in-law is one of Hungary's richest men. A recent scandal concerns György Matolcsy, the former national bank chief, who spent €210 million renovating the bank, and had a deluxe bathroom made for himself, complete with a golden toilet brush. The golden toilet brush has become a symbol of Orbán’s elite.

Will Orbán lose?

Tisza is leading by at least 10 percentage points in independent polls, probably enough to offset Fidesz’s structural advantages. However, while Orbán and Fidesz retain control of much of the media and the machinery of state, the outcome, and the PM’s willingness to accept defeat, are far from certain.

It’s no secret that artificial intelligence can sometimes offer less-than-stellar guidance. But AI might give people this bad wisdom for a sobering reason: to flatter, according to a new study. In some cases, AI may only reinforce people’s preconceived notions, but the words it generates can be outright harmful.

What did the study find?

The “sycophantic (flattering, people-pleasing, affirming) behavior” of AI chatbots can pose risks as people “increasingly seek advice about interpersonal dilemmas,” said the study published in the journal Science. In an analysis of 11 leading large language models, including AI bots from Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, chatbot responses to users were “nearly 50% more sycophantic than humans’, even when users engaged in unethical, illegal” behaviors.

The problem is not just that these chatbots “dispense inappropriate advice but that people trust and prefer AI more when the chatbots are justifying their convictions,” said The Associated Press. In one example, when OpenAI’s ChatGPT was asked if littering in a park was acceptable if no garbage can was available, the bot “blamed the park for not having trash cans, not the questioning litterer who was ‘commendable’ for even looking for one.”

This example may seem trivial, but AI’s general tendency to “flatter and excessively confirm users’ opinions can lead to wrong decisions, harm relationships and reinforce harmful beliefs while decreasing the willingness to take responsibility or resolve conflicts,” said The Jerusalem Post. The proneness toward sycophancy is a “technological flaw already tied to some high-profile cases of delusional and suicidal behavior in vulnerable populations,” said the AP.

Why is AI sycophancy such a problem?

Many experts worry that this AI advice “will worsen people’s social skills and ability to navigate uncomfortable situations,” Myra Cheng, the study’s lead author and a computer science PhD candidate, said to the Stanford Report. If this behavior by AI is not corrected, some users may “lose the skills to deal with difficult social situations” and could also pose larger safety risks.

“Users are aware that models behave in sycophantic and flattering ways,” Dan Jurafsky, the study’s senior author and a Stanford University linguistics professor, told the Stanford Report. What many people are “not aware of, and what surprised us, is that sycophancy is making them more self-centered, more morally dogmatic.” This type of interaction with AI is a “safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.” All of this is also happening as AI use becomes more prevalent, especially among teenagers.

At least 33% of teens “use AI companions for social interaction and relationships, including conversation practice, emotional support, role-playing, friendship or romantic interactions,” according to a study from Common Sense Media. Another 33% of teens choose to “discuss important or serious matters with AI companions instead of real people.” Experts say when using AI you should avoid asking for advice on crucially important topics. “I think that you should not use AI as a substitute for people for these kinds of things,” Cheng told the Stanford Report. “That’s the best thing to do for now.”

Bereaved families could be in line for thousand of pounds of compensation from National Savings & Investments (NS&I) after the government-backed bank admitted failing to trace accounts of dead customers.

A “catastrophic operations failure”, said The Telegraph, meant money belonging to 37,500 dead savers has been withheld from their families.

NS&I has said claims with a total value of up to £476 million in customer deposits “may have been affected”.

The savings organisation’s chief executive Dax Harkins has stepped down following the scandal, and has been replaced by former HMRC boss Jim Harra.

What has gone wrong at NS&I?

NS&I has been accused of “short-changing bereaved families” after losing track of investments, delaying payouts, and withholding prizes for its popular Premium Bonds, said ThisIsMoney.

Some families, said The Guardian, had resorted to paying lawyers to “recover their money”. NS&I has apologised and said its search process “failed to identify” all products when handling bereavement claims, which it said has now been fixed.

It’s not the first bit of “negative publicity” for NS&I, said Sky News, after the bank’s £3 billion digital transformation project was criticised by MPs for exposing “the taxpayer to additional risk”.

Who is affected by the missing payments?

Pensions minister Torsten Bell told MPs that around three-quarters of the cases relate to the period between 2008 and 2025.

NS&I has said up to 37,500 bereavement claims may have been affected, adding that it received 211,800 new bereavement claims and repaid £4 billion last year.

How much are people owed from NS&I?

The cases cover accounts worth an estimated £476 million, according to NS&I, which “works out at roughly £12,693 on average per person”, said ThisIsMoney.

The government has indicated families should have their funds returned, including interest and compensation.

How can bereaved families claim?

The government has confirmed “impacted customers” will be remunerated, said Metro, but “exact details” haven’t been announced yet.

NS&I has confirmed it will ensure savers’ estates are “appropriately compensated” and will reveal more details in May. It has also hired 100 more staff members to contact those affected.

You “don’t need to do anything” if you have recently made a claim or have an ongoing one, said NS&I, as it will be responsible for contacting beneficiaries.

This also means those affected won’t need to use a claims management company or solicitor, said MoneyWeek, “to be reunited with their money”.

The “silver lining”, said The Guardian, is that the money is 100% safe as NS&I is government-backed. So the main issue is “marrying it up with the owner, not the security of funds”.