The government is preparing to extend Palantir’s controversial NHS contract despite growing concerns over its software’s performance and widespread reluctance across hospitals to use it.

MPs, medics and campaigners have urged Health Secretary Yvette Cooper to trigger an early “break clause” in February, said the Financial Times. But ministers reviewing the £330 million deal to deploy the US tech giant’s flagship AI system have concluded that removing Palantir would be “too disruptive”.

What is Palantir’s contract with the NHS?

In 2023, NHS England awarded a Palantir-led consortium a contract to link datasets across hospitals and trusts. The result, the Federated Data Platform (FDP), is powered by Palantir’s Foundry software and loaned out to NHS teams to build applications, coordinate patient records, schedule procedures and reduce waiting lists.

The deal was controversial from the off due to Palantir’s work with US immigration enforcement and the Israeli military. Officials privately warned Wes Streeting, then health secretary, last year that Palantir’s reputation would deter NHS trusts from using its software, said The Guardian in February. Accusations that the procurement process was rigged also deepened after it emerged that Palantir had hired Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm ahead of the successful bid.

In June, the Commons Health and Social Care Committee recommended that the contract not be extended. “People don’t trust Palantir, its benefits are contested and other tools could deliver the same or similar advantages,” said committee member and Labour MP Ben Coleman in The Guardian.

Has its software helped the NHS?

The NHS and government claims of benefits are fiercely contested. Many doctors say the FDP is less effective than existing technology; some senior NHS leaders called it “slow and clunky”, said Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin in the London Review of Books.

Active usage is far lower than official claims suggest. NHS England said that, as of June this year, 139 NHS trusts were “live” on Palantir’s software. But 52 of them “did not use a single FDP app”, said the LRB, citing a Department of Health and Social Care official.

NHS England claims Palantir’s patient discharge tool was responsible for a 15% decrease in delayed discharges. But the Health Foundation think tank reported that hospitals using the tool saw “no noticeable improvement” compared with those that didn’t, said The BMJ.

Palantir has claimed it is helping to deliver “99,000 more NHS operations”, but digital rights advocacy group Foxglove says that nearly a third of NHS trusts using Palantir’s theatre scheduling tool performed fewer procedures after it was deployed.

In July, the Office for Statistics Regulation said that NHS England lacked sufficient evidence for its claims that the FDP was directly responsible for performance improvements.

What might happen next?

The National Audit Office, the independent public spending watchdog, is reviewing the rollout and costs of the FDP, and will publish a report this winter. NHS England also commissioned Imperial College London to evaluate clinical outcomes, with that final report due in 2029.

The government’s review of Palantir’s contract is still under way, but Cooper told MPs she wanted to use the NHS “to develop UK sovereign AI”. The government is planning to put the FDP contract out to tender, said The BMJ. That would force Palantir to “rebid against UK-based competitors”.

Health officials have been “sounding out a handful of British companies to bid to run the FDP”, said the FT. Rivals “insist they are ready to take over the contract”, but Palantir’s defenders claim switching to “an untested alternative” would be “a significant gamble”.

Thousands of European troops are to take part in military exercises in Poland in the first deployment of the so-called “coalition of the willing”.

The brainchild of Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, the 35-nation group was established in March 2025 “to strengthen support for Ukraine and put economic and diplomatic pressure on Russia”, said the Ministry of Defence.

Who is participating?

Around 2,800 military personnel from 10 European nations – Belgium, Estonia, Germany, France, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK – make up the Multinational Force-Ukraine (MNF-U), the military component of the coalition. They will take part in the war-game rehearsal, named Exercise Koalicja (the Polish word meaning coalition), in Poland this week. Turkey will separately test preparedness for mine-clearing operations in the Black Sea.

About 300 British personnel are taking part, with RAF Typhoons simulating how they would reassure commercial air travel once Ukraine’s skies reopen.

Anglo-French led, with an HQ rotating between London and Paris, the MNF-U “is not a peacekeeping or a ceasefire-monitoring force, nor is it connected to Nato”, said the MoD.

It has so far secured military commitments from 24 nations. The US will not be part of the mission, nor will the MNF-U rely on US weapons or technology such as Elon Musk’s Starlink, an official told The Times on condition of anonymity.

What will they be doing?

The two-week military exercise will test the ability of this new alliance to deploy in Ukraine once the fighting between Kyiv and Russia comes to an end.

French General Armel Dirou, who will co-lead the exercise alongside Britain’s Lieutenant General Tom Bateman, called it “a key milestone” that “will serve as a concrete demonstration of the MNF-U’s ability to be deployed as soon as hostilities have ended”, said France 24.

Aspects to be tested include coordination arrangements, rehearsing the movement of personnel, equipment and supplies, and assessing whether the different components can integrate and operate effectively as one multinational force.

What will the force look like?

The MNF-U is “not designed for offensive operations”, said Bateman. “Its purpose is to provide reassurance and support the regeneration of Ukraine’s armed forces, strengthening their ability to deter and, if necessary, defend against future Russian aggression.”

Russia has already voiced opposition to foreign troops being stationed in Ukraine and, last year, President Vladimir Putin said they would be “legitimate targets”.

Western officials have “declined to spell out the rules of engagement if any international troops were to be attacked in Ukraine”, though “they say the force would be able to defend itself”, said the BBC.

“This isn’t a hypothetical plan, it’s a real force, ready to help Ukraine once the fighting stops,” said Defence Secretary Wes Streeting.

Last month, new US sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) began to take effect. All US-linked companies that provide services to the court face penalties; it has had to find European alternatives to US software, and end its relationship with insurance company Axa, which does business in the US.

The latest measures were announced on 9 October, but sanctions had already been imposed by the US on ICC officials: in Donald Trump’s first term (in response to an ICC probe into the actions of US soldiers in Afghanistan); and in 2025, after the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, over suspected war crimes in Gaza. The US regards this as an overextension of its authority. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the ICC a “rogue court”, and said that if US allies did not rein it in, America would “continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC, brick by brick”.

What exactly is the ICC?

It’s not part of the UN, though it was created by the Statute of Rome, at the UN General Assembly there in 1998. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda provided blueprints for the ICC.

Describing itself as the “court of last resort”, the ICC, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, exercises its power only when states are “unwilling or unable” to investigate serious crimes against international law. The Rome Statute lists crimes it can prosecute: genocide; crimes against humanity; war crimes; crimes of aggression; and offences against its own legal processes (i.e. perjury or contempt).

There are 125 member states, but many others do not recognise its authority. More than 40, including China and India, never signed the treaty. Dozens of others, such as the US, Israel and Russia, signed the treaty but never ratified it.

What is its jurisdiction?

Usually, it can only exert authority over citizens of its member states or when a crime has been committed on member-state soil. For instance, although Russia is not an ICC state party, Vladimir Putin has been indicted for crimes committed in Ukraine, which has accepted the jurisdiction of the court since 2014. Palestine followed in 2015, allowing warrants to be served on Israeli ministers.

Although the ICC respects the primacy of member states’ courts, it can step in if it deems they are failing. But it has no police or army: signatory states are obliged to enforce its rulings; and since the world’s three most militarily powerful nations are not members, this limits its powers.

Why is it criticised?

For many reasons. Its proceedings are slow: since its first case in 2006, there have been only 34 cases before the court, and 15 convictions. These have been disproportionately focused on less powerful countries. The first ICC investigation against a citizen from outside the African continent did not take place until 2016; and the court continues to struggle with its image as the enforcer of “white man’s justice”. The US human rights lawyer Reed Brody complained in 2024 that it had “never indicted a Western official”, preferring to focus on “powerless outcasts, or opponents of the West such as Vladimir Putin”.

However, on the occasions when it has indicted Western allies, or investigated crimes potentially committed by Western nations, it is criticised for having a “globalist” left-wing agenda.

Why did the US never sign up?

President Clinton signed the treaty, but did not submit it to the Senate for ratification. Given the global deployment of US troops and the frequency of its use of force, the fear was that the ICC would make US officials and soldiers vulnerable, and would reduce its freedom of military action. The US has long rejected the ICC’s claim to jurisdiction over its citizens when they are in the territory of treaty states. President George W. Bush signed into law the American Service-Members’ Protection Act in 2002, declaring that it would take “all means necessary” to protect US military personnel and officials from ICC jurisdiction.

However, until recently the US has selectively supported investigations, for instance into war crimes in Darfur and during the Syrian civil war, and – under President Biden – into Russian atrocities in Ukraine.

Why is Trump so opposed to the ICC?

It is part of his wider war on multilateral institutions, which has seen the US withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and the WHO. The latest sanctions, however, seem to have had a particular trigger: they came hours after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to one of the ICC’s former judges. South African judge Navi Pillay, currently at the UN’s International Court of Justice in The Hague, was awarded the prize for lifelong contributions to international justice. The prize, said the Norwegian Nobel Committee, was a “message to those who are attacking, undermin[ing] ... the international rules-based system”.

Where does this leave the ICC?

Sanctions mean officials cannot enter the US, or use US-affiliated credit cards or use Microsoft platforms. Staff say that the sanctions have not hindered the court’s work, but this seems improbable. The EU, whose states are heavily committed to the ICC, has given clear support, saying that US attacks on the court and its officials are “simply not acceptable”.

The EU last month awarded the court the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, commending its “important work in upholding international law and justice”. The campaign against it is likely to “further cement the reputation of the United States as an unhinged, domineering hegemon”, argues Stewart Patrick of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But opposition to the ICC is practically a consensus position on the US Right.

As American tech firms pile billions into AI products, their Chinese counterparts are experiencing what some analysts have long warned might be coming: a bubble that pops, with both enormous sums and international clout at risk. What does China’s bursting AI bubble mean for this burgeoning industry, and what could happen next?

Why is China’s AI economy unique?

China’s artificial intelligence boom has “crashed,” said Reuters, as “lofty valuations collapse under worries about AI demand” and limits on Chinese exports. In addition to “tanking” China’s STAR50 index of AI and semiconductor leaders plus “vaporizing some $480 billion in market value” over the past several months, the bursting bubble is an “ill omen for wobbly world markets.” Beijing’s efforts at “encouraging its savers into stocks to fund the AI boom” are also vulnerable.

China’s “AI exuberance” may “already have come and gone,” said the Financial Times. The shift in part stems from differences between American and Chinese AI industries. Western firms have “focused on charging for access” to their proprietary AI models, while Chinese labs are “more comfortable giving away the model and charging for access to processing power.” China’s “‘open-weight’ models” have led to “intense price competition” on both sides of the Pacific, raising questions about whether revenue can “support the level of investment required to develop ever more powerful models.” Sliding Chinese tech stocks reflect a “repricing of crowded AI trades, weak domestic demand and the lack of stimulus,” said Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis Corporate & Investment Bank, to CNN.

What does this mean for world markets?

Wall Street is funding America’s AI build-out “in real time,” said NPR, and China’s bubble collapse raises the question of whether the U.S. might be “close behind.” China’s stock dive “offers a cautionary tale,” as insiders warn an “abrupt collapse of the debt-fueled AI boom” could have deleterious effects worldwide, said CNN. For now, “strict controls” limiting foreign investment into Chinese markets mean the current stock slip is “unlikely to trigger significant spillovers into global markets.”

“The only thing I worry about is that people will forget Hong Kong,” Joshua Wong wrote from prison, in letters seen by The Guardian, after being given a further 10-year sentence for foreign collusion.

The pro-democracy activist, now 30, has been imprisoned since 2020 and was due to be released in January. But his second conviction under Beijing’s national security law – which “has been used to quash dissidence and lock up journalists”, said The Telegraph – has put paid to that prospect.

Wong wrote of his fears that, “amid competition and struggles between great powers”, people will “forget the countless ordinary, unknown people in different places who have paid a price for their beliefs”.

What happened to Wong?

Wong is the only activist to have been prosecuted twice under the controversial law, which Beijing imposed on the territory in 2019 following “huge and often violent pro-democracy protests” that “convulsed the international financial hub”, said CNN.

In his ruling, High Court judge William Tam said Wong had used an underground network and sought to “draw the attention of foreign countries” to bolster the cause.

The conviction represents more than another prison sentence for a prominent activist. It illustrates the increasingly difficult environment facing organised political opposition in Hong Kong.

What challenges lie ahead?

Since the national security law came into effect in 2020, “civil groups have disbanded, and some independent media outlets have been shut down”, said CNN, while “most pro-democracy figures are either in jail or in exile overseas”. The legal environment now creates significant risks for those seeking to organise within Hong Kong.

It remains to be seen whether the pro-democracy movement can preserve its networks, identity and international connections without the visible street mobilisation that once defined it.

What will happen next?

The Wong verdict is another setback for the pro-democracy movement and highlights just how dramatically Hong Kong’s political environment has changed since the mass demonstrations of 2014 and 2019.

Large-scale protests on that scale are unlikely to return in the foreseeable future. Activism may increasingly shift overseas, but this brings its own challenges. Divisions within the diaspora, declining international attention and concerns about transnational pressure on activists and their families could all hamper efforts to sustain the movement.

There could also be a generational shift, as younger Hongkongers develop a different understanding of political participation in light of the perceived personal and professional risks.

But activism is not necessarily limited to elections and demonstrations. It can also involve preserving collective memory, cultural identity, historical narratives and freedom of expression.

So while the future of activism in Hong Kong looks increasingly difficult, it is not necessarily hopeless. The city’s democratic aspirations will not disappear simply because its political organisations have been dismantled.

Hackers are targeting the technology controlling supermarket fridges and freezers across Europe, causing disruption, ruining millions of euros worth of food, and raising serious concerns about how prepared the UK is for a similar assault.

What has happened?

Supermarkets in several countries have been hit by cyberattacks that hit their refrigerated and frozen food storage units. In Belgium, Ireland and Sweden, an IT incident left cold storage units malfunctioning after attackers exploited security flaws in their internet-connected controllers.

Hackers can access the controls of digital refrigeration systems and turn their temperatures up very high, turning an everyday piece of supermarket equipment into a tool for disruption.

The attacks began last month, when hundreds of French supermarkets were left with “spoiled food” and overheated equipment, causing damage costing millions of euros, said Al Jazeera. It is a “very cold war”.

How vulnerable is the UK?

Some British supermarket fridges have also been affected, although the incidents are thought to be “isolated and not widespread” at this stage, said The i Paper.

Richard Horne, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, confirmed there had been a “couple of instances” in which cold food storage units in the UK had been exploited by hackers.

The threat extends beyond supermarkets, however. Disruption has been identified across the wider food supply chain, with the full impact still unclear. Meat processing firms in the UK were hit by cyberattacks and the NCSC is working to understand the extent of the problem and identify vulnerable technology.

Meanwhile, Horne warned that the UK’s underlying technology infrastructure “has not been invested in to the extent it needs to be”. Many organisations continue to rely on ageing systems that have reached the end of their useful lives or have not been properly updated. This leaves “a whole load of vulnerabilities” that artificial intelligence, in the hands of hostile actors, can help identify and exploit with ease.

The NCSC has also warned that AI-powered malware could be used to attack critical national infrastructure in Britain within the next two years, including airports, hospitals and power stations.

The risks are not limited to businesses. Increasing numbers of household appliances are connected to the internet, including fridges, freezers, smart thermostats, central heating systems, locks and televisions. We should “get used to the chaos and confusion”, said The Independent, because “hits on networks and services that affect our everyday life are coming for us in due course”.

What can be done about it?

For the companies and organisations affected, the simplest fix is to patch their software systems. According to the Belgian refrigerator group Sabcobel, the impact of Monday’s hack could have been far worse if they had not started patching fridges after the 12 October attack in France.

In the UK retailers are “currently working with the NCSC to ensure their fridges and freezers are secure as possible against potential attacks”, said Graham Wynn, from the British Retail Consortium.

The UK is considering spending £450 million a year to give students from the EU discounted university fees, said The Guardian. But it wants access to the bloc’s “Made in Europe” protectionist industrial scheme in return.

What is ‘Made in Europe’?

The European Commission’s proposed Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) is designed to help stimulate demand for European-made clean technologies, while reducing reliance on producers from abroad, most notably China but also the US.

Covering strategic sectors such as steel, aluminium and cement, electric vehicles, batteries, solar and ⁠wind power, hydrogen technology and nuclear energy, the law aims to use the €2 trillion of member states’ public procurement to shore up struggling domestic industries and push into newer growing sectors. Supporters of the scheme say rivals such as the US, China, and India already have similar rules in place and this would merely bring the EU in line with much of the rest of the world.

“If we do nothing, then it’s quite clear that very soon, 100% of clean tech technology will be ⁠produced in China,” said Stéphane Séjourné, an EC executive vice president, in March. “It’s quite possible that our cement, steel industries will be offshored completely in the next few years.”

Will it work?

The problem is that “EU governments disagree over where Europe ends”, said Euronews. France has been pushing for a strict EU approach while Germany wants a more open model, allowing products made “with” Europe, provided those countries grant European companies equivalent access in return.

Last month, Germany and France reached a compromise that would allow suppliers from non-EU members like the UK, Norway and Switzerland to qualify for “European origin” status.

This is “causing deep concern among other allied carmaking nations” such as Japan, South Korea and Turkey, which will still be shut out from the scheme, said Deutsche Welle. Excluding Turkey, which has enjoyed seamless access to the EU market since the mid-1990s, would also harm European car production rather than strengthen competitiveness against China, said Ayhan Zeytinoglu, from the Turkish think tank the Economic Development Foundation.

Will the UK be able to join?

The “Made in Europe” scheme has become a major obstacle to the UK’s long-hoped-for Brexit “reset” with the EU. Wrangling over rules affecting British businesses has twice delayed a UK–EU summit, which is finally due to take place on 20 November.

Andy Burnham said in September that he would make the case for Britain to be considered a “trusted partner” under the scheme, warning that excluding the UK could damage the British car industry.

The UK and EU have already agreed a draft deal on removing post-Brexit checks from food and agriculture exports. Burnham’s government now hopes the promise to subsidise EU students could be enough to win over EU negotiators in the “Made in Europe” talks.

“We are willing to give the Europeans what they want on fees, but we will have to get something significant in return,” a source told The Guardian. “The biggest prize we are pushing for right now is access to Made in Europe, so there is a deal to be done there.”

US voters head to the polls today for midterm elections billed as a referendum on Donald Trump, even though the president’s name will not appear on a single ballot.

Up for grabs are all 435 seats in the lower house of Congress – the House of Representatives, where the Democrats expect to secure a majority – as well as 35 out of the 100 seats in the Senate, where the competition is predicted to be far closer.

Democrats would need to win four of seven Senate races deemed to be a “toss-up” by independent elections analyst The Cook Political Report to give them control of Congress, and with it “the power to limit Trump’s ambitions, reject his judicial nominations and investigate his administration”, said the BBC. Here are the races to watch:

Michigan

Probably the most hard-fought and vitriolic Senate race in this election cycle. Republicans have tried to paint Democrat candidate Abdul El-Sayed as a socialist and an Islamic extremist with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Polls have remained neck-and-neck but a late shock endorsement for Republican challenger Mike Rogers by Haley Stevens, who lost the Democratic primary to El-Sayed, could have a decisive impact. Crucially, this is one of the few toss-up Senate seats currently held by the Democrats, and winning it back would be a boost to Republican hopes of clinging on to a majority in Congress.

Alaska

Democrat candidate Mary Peltola, the first Indigenous Alaskan to be elected to the House of Representatives, has campaigned for the Senate on a platform of “fish, family, freedom” to come within touching distance of flipping the Republican seat.

While Alaska’s ranked-choice system has historically made it harder for pollsters to predict the winner, the election campaign has also been marred by controversy and accusations of dirty tricks with the appearance of two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. One is the incumbent Republican senator, the other a retired teacher with no prior political experience, sparking claims he had been induced to run by the senator’s opponents in the hopes of confusing voters.

Texas

The Lone Star state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly 40 years, but polls show rising star James Talarico is in with a fighting chance. At more than half a billion dollars and counting, it is the most expensive Senate race in US history, with Republican challenger and arch-Trump loyalist Attorney General Ken Paxton trying to paint his opponent – who once suggested God was non-binary – as far-left on culture issues. But Talarico, a 37-year-old former teacher who studied to be a Christian minister, has nonetheless managed to cut through with voters in the traditionally deep-red Republican stronghold.

Kansas

Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, but rising farming and fuel costs linked to Trump’s war in Iran, as well as the impact of the president’s immigration crackdown on rural businesses, means the state is unexpectedly up for grabs. The Democrats have also benefited from picking charismatic Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton as their candidate in a state with a large evangelical and mainline Protestant population. The latest polls show him narrowly ahead of incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall in what would be a hugely symbolic gain for the Democrats.

Investors withdrew $3.6 billion (£2.7 billion) of assets from the cryptocurrency exchange Binance when it reopened for business after what is thought to be the biggest financial theft in history.

Hackers stole around $6.3 billion on Thursday, though Binance claims to have “replenished” around 90% of that into customer accounts.

It took “no more than 30 minutes” to move the “eye-watering” sum, said the Financial Times. The funds may prove “impossible to recover”, said CoinDesk, renewing the “debate over the safeguards exchanges need to prevent a security breach from becoming a financial catastrophe”.

How did it happen?

Crypto exchanges like Binance, which has more than 300 million registered users worldwide, are especially “tempting targets” for hackers, said The Wall Street Journal. While traditional stock exchanges don’t hold the securities of their investors, and only facilitate trades, crypto exchanges often store their customers’ cryptocurrencies. Hackers can therefore directly access customers’ funds from the exchanges’ crypto wallets.

Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said on X that the security breach could have originated via a “compromised” laptop belonging to one of the company’s engineers. However, this would not have been a “single ‘one-click’ action”, but a “more complex attack process”.

Who was behind it?

Crypto analysis firm TRM and other researchers have attributed the attack to a North Korean hacking unit TraderTraitor, based on “robust on and off-chain intelligence”. This has yet to be confirmed.

“If North Korea is proven to be the culprit, it would be little surprise to US law enforcement officials and private experts,” said CNN. TraderTraitor has been “behind many of the largest crypto hacks in recent memory”, said WSJ, including the previous record theft of $1.5 billion last year from Bybit, another major cryptocurrency exchange.

What will happen next?

Binance said on X it has frozen more than $3 billion (£2.2 billion) – around half – of the stolen crypto and promised to cover all money lost in the hack from existing funds.

Freezing the crypto means the hackers “cannot move, transfer or cash out” their takings, essentially “trapping the tokens inside the wallet before hackers can convert them into other cryptocurrencies or launder them”, said WSJ.

Recovering the losses may prove more problematic. This requires a “separate legal process” involving court orders or a seizure warrant, Ari Redbord, from TRM, told CNBC. Recovering Bitcoin in particular – which accounts for around a quarter of the haul – is “more challenging because they have no issuer that can directly freeze the assets”, said Eric Jardine, from Chainalysis. “There is no standard recovery timeline. A technical freeze may happen quickly, while returning funds can take months or years.”

The triple lock is a guarantee on pensioner incomes, and was introduced by the coalition government in 2011 to address high levels of old-age poverty: it was actually a Liberal Democrat manifesto policy and a key demand during coalition talks.

The aim was to halt the atrophy of the state pension. For the 30 years before that, pensions had been tied mostly to inflation, and had fallen relative to wages. The triple lock ensures that each year the payout rises by whichever of three figures is the highest: inflation (based on the CPI measure); the average increase in wages; or 2.5%.

The idea was to increase pensions fast in real terms, whatever the economic conditions, and it has worked. The charity Age UK says the triple lock has “rebuilt the value of the state pension”, and helped “improve the living standards of some of our poorest pensioners”. The state pension increased by 10.1% in 2023, 8.5% in 2024, 4.1% in 2025, and 4.8% in 2026.

How much does it cost?

Spending on pensions is now £16 billion a year higher than it would have been without the triple lock, calculates the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). This takes the total spent on the state pension in 2026-27 to £154 billion. It is by far the UK’s largest benefit, “similar in magnitude to the combined annual budgets of the Ministry of Defence and Department for Education”.

The government spends 4.9% of national income on state pension outlays: up from 4.3% in 2010 and 3.6% 20 years ago. What really worries fiscal experts though, is future projections. The government’s economics watchdog, the OBR, estimates that the triple lock has already cost “around three times more than initial expectations”, because of economic volatility.

But it is impossible to put even a ballpark figure on it long term, given the vagaries of inflation and earnings growth. By 2050, retaining the triple lock could cost “anywhere between £5 billion and £40 billion” a year. “At some point”, says the IFS, a government will have to move “towards a more predictable and less costly way of uprating the state pension”.

Why has this not been done?

The huge popularity of the triple lock, in an electorate tilted towards an elderly demographic, made it politically untouchable as the big “boomer” generation passed into retirement. The upshot, argues The Economist, is that “Britain became a dictatorship of the pensionariat”. State support for working-age groups has been squeezed, while support for the elderly has been protected. When Margaret Thatcher left office in 1990, 40% of pensioners were in poverty, after housing costs. Today, only around 15% of pensioners are in poverty (post-housing), compared with 19% of working-age adults.

So is the pension generous now?

Not on the face of it, no. At around £12,500 a year, the current “new state pension” is the lowest in the G7 – and is impossible to live on without additional private provision or benefits.

In 2024, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association calculated that a single person needs £14,400 annually as a “minimum”, £31,300 for a “moderate” lifestyle and £43,100 to be “comfortable”. Pensioners who receive only the state pension and top-ups (about 13% of the total) are very poorly off. This is why the triple lock is supported by the Labour Left, and by unions such as Unite.

However, the international comparison isn’t quite fair: income from occupational and personal pensions is a relatively important part of pensioner income in the UK, unlike in many other countries where state provision is higher.

But will private pensions hold up?

The IFS Pensions Review in 2023 found that work pension schemes had become less generous, and many private sector employees were not saving enough to fill the gap. The situation has been improved by pension “auto-enrollment”, introduced, like the triple lock, by George Osborne. Unless they opt out, all workers over 22 earning more than a set salary (currently £10,000) are enrolled into a company scheme that saves 8% of their income: 3% paid by the employer, 4% by the employee and 1% in tax relief.

A British worker on a median wage might amass a £400,000 pot after 35 years: enough at today’s rates for a £25,000 annuity. This state-subsidised system will do more of the heavy lifting as the years pass and might, in time, serve as a “replacement for the actual state pension”, says Merryn Somerset Webb on Bloomberg. But the costs to the Treasury are large: tax relief on individual contributions grew from £33 billion in 2011-12, to £84 billion last year.

What is Andy Burnham’s plan for the triple lock?

Starting from 2030, a re-elected Burnham government would not entirely abolish the triple lock, but would “adjust” it to a “double lock” – by removing the automatic annual link with average earnings, which in recent years has been highly volatile. The PM’s plan is to use the “significant savings” generated to help fund the creation of a new National Care Service, free at the point of use.

Could this cause him problems?

Burnham admits that he could “pay a political price” for the proposed reforms, but says “someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off”. All the main opposition parties are committed to keeping the triple lock. Reform UK’s Nigel Farage accused the PM of “launching an offensive against our elderly”. And even those who would happily cut the triple lock might disagree with Burnham’s intention to divert the savings to social care, as opposed to reducing UK state spending, or using it in a way that benefits Britain’s youth, instead of the elderly.

Heated debate will continue. The state pension remains a very emotionally charged topic: recent years have seen fights in Italy’s parliament and riots in France over the issue. In the meantime, next year’s pension rise will be 3.9%, equating to an increase of around £500 a year.

Chancellor John Healey delivered the Autumn Budget this week, promising “breathing space now and fresh hope for the future”. In his first fiscal update, Healey said it would be a “Budget for the worker, the sole trader, the parent at the school gate”.

But for some groups it was not good news, with income tax thresholds remaining frozen, ultimately “scooping more money out of pay packets”, said the BBC.

The Budget was a “raft of fiddly measures”, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies, “but very little that will move the dial on growth”.

Plus, while cost of living support will be welcomed, the update did nothing to “make the wealthiest pay fair taxes on their income from assets, nor a fair tax on the extraordinary profits banks have been making”, said Tax Justice UK.

Energy bill support 

Healey extended the VAT cut on energy bills until July 2027, which is expected to take around £50 off the annual Ofgem price cap next April.

Standing charges on gas bills will be abolished next year. In reality, the standing charge will be added to the unit rate of gas instead so “lower users are expected to benefit from lower bills, but those with above average consumption are likely to pay more”, said MoneySavingExpert.

Around 20 million homes on council tax bands A to D will be eligible for a Household Energy Payment of £100 to help pay their energy bills.

Minimum wage boost

Both the national minimum wage and the national living wage will rise by 3.9% in April. The national living wage, which applies to people aged 21 and over, will rise from £12.71 to £13.21. The national minimum wage, for workers aged 18 to 20, will go from £10.85 to £11.27.

Labour had previously pledged to increase the younger rate faster than the adult one, but this “marks a slowdown in wage rises for the youth”, said LBC, and does nothing to “narrow the minimum wage gap between older and younger workers”.

Fuel duty freeze

There was some good news for motorists amid high petrol prices as fuel duty will be frozen for the 16th year in a row.

It will be a “mild sigh of relief”, said the RAC, but drivers will be hoping for an easing of international conflicts if pump prices are to truly come down in “a meaningful way”.

Savings

Healey scrapped plans to lower the cash ISA allowance to £12,000. But he announced that the rates of tax on income from property and savings will rise by two further percentage points from April 2027 to 24%, 44% and 49% depending on your tax band.

The cash ISA U-turn will “delight” savers, said Moneyfacts’ Rachel Springall, but the higher taxes mean utilising any allowances to shelter savings from tax is “vital”.

But landlords will be “particularly disappointed”, said Savills. The higher tax on rental income “runs the risk of further restricting rental supply” and piling “upward pressure on rents”.

Your First Home

The chancellor confirmed that a new housing support scheme called Your First Home will launch next spring. It provides an equity loan from the government to support a 2.5% deposit on a new-build purchase for first-time buyers. There will be household income caps and local property price caps.

A new First Time Buyer Isa will be launched to replace the Lifetime Isa. In a “notable change” from earlier proposals, said The Independent, the government bonus of 25% will now be worked out on the final total balance rather than payments into the Isa. This ensures savers “don’t miss out” on any boosts to their savings “through interest or capital growth”.

In another “huge change”, said The Sun, Healey announced that the Lifetime Isa withdrawal penalty will be scrapped if savers are buying a home above the £450,000 limit. Buyers will at least get back what they contributed.

A London councillor resigned from Reform UK after footage emerged of him saying King Charles was a “traitorous” secret Muslim and should be beheaded.

Bromley councillor Dean Miller’s baseless remarks, recorded as part of ITV News’ undercover investigation into Reform, were only the latest airing of an increasingly widespread conspiracy theory that the British monarch, and head of the Church of England, is operating as a stealth Muslim who intends to dismantle the country’s Christian identity from within.

When did the rumours start?

Claims that King Charles had secretly converted to Islam have been circulating for decades. Their origin is hard to trace but many people point to a claim made in a book published in 1996, called “The Riddle and the Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville”, In it, author Giles Milton quoted the Grand Mufti of Cyprus saying that the then Prince of Wales had become a Muslim on a recent visit to Turkey.

This “revelation” caused a huge stir in the British press – at a time when Prince Charles was already deeply unpopular with the public after his divorce and admission of adultery. Buckingham Palace broke its normal convention of not commenting on press speculation to dismiss the book’s claims as “nonsense”.

Why have they gained traction?

The King has often “praised classical Islam and noted some of its moral and cultural strengths”, said vicar Marcus Walker in The Critic. To claim that this means he is a Muslim is almost the “dictionary definition of deranged”. But that has not stopped the theory “increasingly being made across social media”, and, to my shock, at “polite dinner parties and on the fringes of academic conferences”.

The rumours also feed into other conspiracy theories about the supposed Islamification of Britain, and especially London. Earlier this year, on Piers Morgan’s YouTube show, Rudi Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and personal lawyer to Donald Trump, said Britian is going to be “a Muslim country in 10 years” and “Charles III might be the Muslim monarch”.

What is the King’s history with Islam?

Charles is known to have studied the Qur’an and, in 2013, he had six months of private Arabic lessons. In the 1990s, said Walker in The Critic, he was reported to have “mused on whether”, once he became King, “he should be known as ‘Defender of Faith’, rather than of ‘the Faith’”.

He has long demonstrated a devout Anglicanism but, said Middle East Eye, he is also interested in theological scholarship that argues that “all the great religions share universal truths”. In speeches, he has praised Islam for its integrated view of the universe, nature and spirituality, and said that West is in debt to the scholars of Islam.

Last week, during a state banquet for Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq at Windsor Castle, the King quoted a hadith, a saying of the prophet Muhammad, in Arabic. A clip of his recitation has since gone viral on social media, adding more fuel to the far-right conspiracy that he is a Muslim hiding in plain sight.

With many American tech companies looking to expand their footholds across the world, a large number have planted their flags in Aragon, a diverse region of northeast Spain. While Aragon is one of Spain’s least-populated areas, its tech boom is quickly becoming consequential.

Why Aragon?

Many U.S. conglomerates are moving there because of Aragon’s sparsity. The area is a “Big Tech company’s dream,” as “vast, uninterrupted stretches of the region are empty,” said Bloomberg.

Aragon’s capital, Zaragoza, is Spain’s fourth most populous city, but beyond that the “landscape opens out into broad countryside where most municipalities have fewer than 26 residents per square mile,” said Bloomberg. This large territory has made Aragon one of the “fastest-growing data center hubs, with investments announced by Amazon, Microsoft and others surpassing $94.4 billion.”

Amazon is one of the biggest investors and “promises to spend almost $40 billion to build multiple vast complexes — one alone as large as 600 American football fields,” said NPR. Amazon and others like it believe Aragon “could serve as a model for a European Union seeking to triple its data center capacity within seven years and narrow the AI infrastructure gap with the U.S. and China,” said Reuters. Unlike other areas in Spain, Aragon’s government is also largely friendly to data centers.

What does this mean for the region?

Many officials “speak boldly of the jobs and long-term prosperity that await once Aragon becomes ‘the Virginia of Europe,’” said Bloomberg, referring to Loudoun County, Virginia, which has the world’s highest concentration of data centers. The Aragon government “expects data centers to create tens of thousands of jobs and says local companies are already feeling the positive impact.”

Still, questions about long-term viability remain. Due to fears about the AI bubble bursting, some investors have “cast doubt on the billions of dollars that tech companies are pouring into infrastructure upgrades and partnerships with AI startups,” said The Wall Street Journal. The rapid buildup of tech has also “left many in Aragon feeling excluded from decisions that will profoundly impact their region and lives,” said NPR.

“We are going to open the window and see nothing,” said Silvia Baselga, who lives near a data center construction site, to NPR. It’s “going to be like living beside a prison.”

The first shipment of Venezuelan oil has arrived in the US, under the terms of Donald Trump’s opaque and highly controversial deal with the South American nation.

The president claimed that, “the biggest oil deal in the history of the world” with Venezuela’s Washington-backed interim government would bring the US “BILLIONS of Barrels”. But many Venezuelans see it as an illegal surrender of natural resources to enrich a select few, at the behest of a colonial US. Trump further fanned these fears by suggesting that “someday soon” Venezuela might “become a prosperous 51st state”.

What do we know about the deal?

In August, the US announced a partnership agreement with North American Blue Energy Partners (Nabep), a private firm registered in the Bahamas and run by the Venezuelan billionaire Alejandro Betancourt López. The full text of the deal has since become “one of the most sought-after secrets in Washington”, said ProPublica.

Caracas has given Nabep control of 17 oil fields, and the Trump administration has taken a 35% stake in the firm. The deal allows the US government to purchase its first million barrels of Nabep’s crude oil, with no mark-up, for $30 (£23) a barrel, or less than a third of current market prices, sources told The Washington Post. The US then sells the oil to refineries run by Exxon Mobil and Venezuelan-owned Citgo Petroleum.

“The agreement has raised eyebrows to say the least,” said the BBC. Nabep is “little known” outside Venezuela and Betancourt has been under investigation in five different countries, mainly for corruption and money laundering. The 46-year-old oil baron has never been charged with a criminal offence, and denies any wrongdoing.

What’s in it for Trump?

Oil prices have skyrocketed across the US since the outbreak of war with Iran, while Trump’s approval ratings have fallen to record lows ahead of the midterm elections next week. This first shipment “gives Trump a chance to tout access to cheaper crude as ​evidence his policies are delivering economic benefits”, said Reuters. US petrol and diesel prices “will soon come plummeting down”, he wrote on social media – “JUST WATCH!”

Trump’s words show “the extent to which the White House is seeking to leverage its influence” over Venezuela for its own “political benefit”, said The Washington Post. But oil experts say the deal is “not expected to have a significant impact” on prices at US pumps. US refiners are already operating at maximum capacity, leaving them little room to scale up, and thick, heavy Venezuelan crude is particularly difficult to refine.

What’s in it for Venezuela?

Venezuela’s Trump-backed interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has insisted that Caracas retains sovereignty over its massive oil reserves. “The benefits” of this oil deal are “endless”, she said, bringing in revenues of more than $209 billion (£154 billion) and turning Venezuela into “an energy powerhouse”.

But the deal has “provoked outrage” across Venezuela’s political spectrum, said The Guardian. One prominent opposition figure called it “a massive land grab” by a “rapacious, mafioso” US.

The global incidence of dementia is increasing at a much faster rate than previously known, according to new research. Cases could double by the middle of the century, with millions of people potentially at risk as the world’s population ages.

What did the study find?

An estimated 11.3 million people were diagnosed with dementia in 2023. That figure is expected to jump to 24.7 million diagnoses in 2050, according to research published in the journal JAMA Neurology. The estimate, a 118.5% increase, is based on “data from 38,418 people across 22 population-based studies spanning 18 countries and territories on six continents,” said the researchers at Australia’s University of New South Wales (UNSW). Overall, the rate of dementia diagnosis is 9.7 new cases per 1,000 people.

Dementia incidence is “higher among women than men and substantially higher in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries,” said UNSW. This marks a change from prior research, as a large part of what’s known about dementia has “historically come from high-income countries, despite some of the greatest future increases being expected in lower-resource settings.”

What can be done?

The results of the study “highlight the growing need for dementia prevention, diagnosis and care as populations age,” said USA Today, especially as dementia “already affects more than 57 million people worldwide.” Dementia is “not a future problem.” It’s an “accelerating epidemic crisis that demands immediate attention,” said Dr. Liron Sinvani, the director of research and innovation at the Northwell Institute for Healthy Aging, to HealthDay.

There’s some good news on the research front. For the “first time, we can compare dementia incidence across a geographically diverse group of populations using the same statistical approach, giving us a clearer picture of where and among whom new cases are occurring,” said lead study author Dr. Ashleigh Vella. Understanding risk factors among different groups will be “critical” in developing a prevention and care response to “populations facing the greatest future risk.”

The link between depression and disrupted daily rhythms has long been recognised. But research has now suggested there is a whole new subtype of depression – “circadian depression” – caused by “people’s body clocks being out of whack”, said New Scientist.

It affects an estimated one in four people with severe depression, according to a large-scale population and genetics study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. But treatment with standard antidepressants like SSRIs seems to be less effective, and causes more side effects.

What is ‘circadian depression’?

It is “characterised by disrupted sleep, low energy and reduced physical activity during the day”, said Nature. It appears to be linked to dysregulation in the body’s internal clock and seems to affect women more than men. Depressive symptoms tend to start at an earlier age than with other forms of depression, and, although seasonality can aggravate them, it doesn’t necessarily trigger them, like seasonal affective disorder does.

The study researchers asked 11,380 people with severe depression to fill out surveys about changes in their symptoms and sleep patterns. Nearly a quarter (23%) met at least three of the researchers’ six proposed criteria for circadian depression. This was “not a formal diagnosis”, said The New York Times, but evidence of a “suggested subtype”. The criteria are: waking up feeling “very tired” regardless of sleep duration; identifying as a “night owl”; going to sleep later than most people; sleeping longer when most depressed; sleeping in on non-working days, and experiencing strong seasonal changes in sleep, mood, appetite or energy.

Moreover, analysis of participants’ saliva indicated that those who fell into the proposed subtype had genetic variants linked to a higher risk of developing ADHD, bipolar disorder, anxiety, a high body-mass index and insulin resistance. This indicates that circadian depression is “not just depression with bad sleep, but actually there is an underlying biology that is quite distinct from other forms of depression”, the study’s lead author, Emiliana Tonini of the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre, told the press.

How might it be treated?

What’s “critical” about this circadian type of depression is “its poor response to the standard therapies”, study co-author Ian Hickie, a psychiatrist at the Brain and Mind Centre told The Guardian. Those affected could benefit instead from treatments, such as melatonin or light therapy, that specifically target the body’s circadian rhythms .

The coordination of your body clock “underpins your mood, your metabolism, your concentration, your sleep-wake cycle and many other key factors”, said Hickie. You can help reset your body clock by exposing yourself to daylight in the morning and maintaining the rhythm and regularity of your sleep-wake cycle, while avoiding artificial light, large meals and exercise once it gets dark.

“Light is the most powerful signal for keeping our circadian rhythms in sync with the outside world,” Sophie Bostock, founder of The Sleep Scientist, told The Independent. “It helps us feel alert during the day and supports the timing of sleep at night.” In the autumn, after the clocks go back and mornings are dark, try to find an opportunity to get outside during working hours. “Even on a cloudy winter day, outdoor light is usually much brighter than indoor lighting.”

What are the caveats to the study?

Circadian depression is “a plausible” condition, said US chronotherapeutics expert Michael Terman. But the study findings don’t establish a new diagnosis, or prove that circadian depression will respond to different types of treatment, he told The New York Times.

A “significant limitation” of the study, acknowledged by its authors, was that the participants “self-reported their sleep-wake cycles”. It’s not clear whether “they did so accurately”. They were also mostly of European ancestry, which “may limit generalisability”. Further, more diverse studies are “needed to replicate our findings”, the researchers said.

The study also didn’t consider the impact of menopause, which is “predominantly one of the things that women describe as causing sleep disturbance”, Australian psychiatry professor Jayashri Kulkarn told The Guardian. But managing to tie “certain types of depression to a specific genetic profile” will be “important for onward treatment”.

Leading scientists have called on the government to cancel cuts to the UK’s science budget that could force the closure of the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, home to the world’s third largest telescope.

The Lovell Telescope – the brainchild of Bernard Lovell, the British physicist who worked on the government’s secret radar programme during the Second World War – became operational in the 1950s.

Since then it has offered up scientific breakthroughs beyond its creator’s “wildest dreams”, said A.S. Ganesh in The Hindu. "From quasars to black holes, and pulsars to gravitational lenses”, the Jodrell Bank Observatory has “played a crucial part in our better understanding of the universe”.

Why is the observatory under threat?

In July, UK Research and Innovation, the government’s non-departmental public body responsible for science funding, announced that Jodrell Bank would not be prioritised for further investment after its existing agreement ends in March 2028.

UKRI said it had to channel investment towards projects that deliver “the greatest long-term impact”. The agency has an annual budget of nearly £10 billion, but the government wants to make “substantial savings after cost overruns as a result of soaring electricity and staff costs at UK facilities”, said The Guardian.

Under the current arrangement, Jodrell Bank receives around £2.8 million per year. If it cannot secure further funding, it will have to cease scientific observations from April 2028. As well as risking the loss of 28 jobs at the site, closure would also affect nearly 3,000 scientists who use its observations in their research, said the BBC.

The scientific community’s reaction?

Scotland’s astronomer royal, Professor Catherine Heymans, spoke for many in the community when calling the decision “a real act of national self-harm”.

Last week, leading scientists including physicist Brian Cox, professor at the University of Manchester, which hosts Jodrell Bank Observatory, warned Chancellor John Healey that the threat to the UK’s largest telescope is “just the tip of the iceberg”, said The i Paper.

In an open letter, they argued that planned funding cuts of up to 30% for the wider particle physics, astronomy and nuclear sector will “cause lasting and possibly irreparable damage to the UK’s scientific capabilities”.

Will the government intervene?

The government has said it is “exploring” long-term options for Jodrell Bank. Earlier this month, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the House of Commons that he had recently met staff at the University of Manchester to explore potential solutions. Scientific decisions must be “made on the basis of the science”, he told MPs, “but that still doesn’t mean there isn’t a future for Jodrell Bank as an asset”.

Andy Burnham has also pledged to find a way to save the telescope. Attention now turns to Wednesday’s Budget to see if Healey will pull a surprise announcement out his red briefcase to secure the facility’s future.

Oxford Street has been a “key thoroughfare” in London since the capital was called Londinium, said The Times. “Where the Romans used chariots or animal-drawn carts, modern Britain filled Oxford Street with double-decker buses, black cabs and e-bikes. Until now.”

From today, after “2,000 years of traffic”, a half-mile stretch of the “nation’s high street” will be pedestrianised. The hotly contested measure has been championed by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, but had been opposed by the local council.

What are the new rules?

Now all ordinary cars, buses, taxis, private vehicles, (e-)bikes, scooters and pedicabs will be banned between Selfridges and Ikea by Great Portland Street. Bus routes will be diverted to neighbouring streets, such as Wigmore Street, Henrietta Place and Cavendish Place.

Emergency vehicles will continue to have access at all times, and essential services for business will have designated overnight hours.

Oxford Street will become more like Times Square in New York, or the shopping streets of “La Rambla in Barcelona or Strøget in Copenhagen”, said the Financial Times. This change is certainly “welcome”, as the area has gone through a “bleak period” since the pandemic. Vehicle-free streets suit the modern and “changing nature of retail”, which emphasises marketing, displays and brands over transactions.

How did it happen?

The development comes after “years of proposals, abandoned schemes and political wrangling”, said London’s The Standard. Though there has been a debate “stretching back to the early 1960s”, the idea was first formally promised in Sadiq Khan’s election manifesto for London Mayor in 2016.

There was a consultation a year later, but plans were then abandoned after the Conservative-led Westminster City Council – which controls the area – withdrew its support. Pedestrianisation was “revived” in 2024, as part of Khan’s “wider transformation” of the area.

Why has it been controversial?

This “thorny issue” has “foxed mayoral administrations for years”, said the BBC. To circumvent the council’s rulings, Khan created a development corporation, a mayoral body that could take control of the area and assume planning powers from the council. Doing this in a semi-residential area was “unprecedented”. A development corporation been used only twice before – at brownfield sites developed for the Olympic Park in east London and Old Oak Common in west London.

However, it could only be permitted if it had the approval of central government. After Labour’s landslide election victory in 2024, Angela Rayner, the housing, communities and local government secretary, granted approval for the plan, which would have been “unlikely” in previous years.

Critics called the decision “anti-democratic”, said The Telegraph. Local residents are concerned that rerouting buses will cause congestion, and larger footfalls won’t be matched with adequate police resources or security.

For Khan, who has prioritised clean air throughout his tenure. this is a “political victory”, said The Guardian. The scale and importance of Oxford Street, with its millions of foreign tourists each year, will mean the £150 million scheme will be of “interest to city planners around the world”.

Is there more to come?

This is “only the first stage of a much bigger redevelopment”, said The Standard. Authorities will monitor and collect data over the Christmas period and begin developments in the spring for an “eventual permanent redesign” of Oxford Street.

By the start of next summer, visitors should see “more than 50 new trees, two new public squares and better signage”, said The Independent. “More than 100 new seats, dining tables and new lighting are also to be installed.”

In Brazil’s tightly contested presidential election, another contender is back in the spotlight: the outsized role social media plays in its politics.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva accused Meta of using “biased algorithms and AI restrictions“ to favour opposition candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, said The Associated Press. The son of the far-right former president, Jair, won 47% in the first round of the election compared with 45% for the incumbent.

Lula filed a complaint against the US tech company, claiming it had subjected his campaign to “unjustified reductions in reach”. It claimed Meta had artificially inflated accounts and adverts associated with Bolsonaro, a key ally of Donald Trump.

Meta denies wrongdoing, but ahead of the run-off on Sunday, “questions have festered over whether the digital arena has been a level playing field”, said Al Jazeera.

What is Brazil’s social media footprint?

Brazil is one of the world’s biggest markets for social media. The South American nation boasts about 180 million users, said Statista: more than three-quarters of the population. “Brazil is a power machine on the internet,” actress Fernanda Torres told Variety. “We’re heavy, heavy users.”

And with social media “eclipsing traditional advertising”, political ad spending on Meta’s sites has “grown at a breakneck pace”, said Al Jazeera. But critics warn this shift has “put political hopefuls at the mercy of Big Tech corporations and their biases”.

Left-wing actors in Brazil still “lag significantly behind the far right when it comes to digital communication”, said anthropologist Leticia Cesarino. The logic that underpins the attention economy is “structurally beneficial to the kind of alarmistic, simplistic, affect-laden far-right discourse”.

What are the allegations against Meta?

Google and TikTok are not allowing political advertising, which left Meta’s services as “the only large-scale channels for paid digital campaigning”, said The Guardian.

Meta temporarily disabled ads on Lula’s official campaign Facebook page. He was also briefly unable to boost his Instagram posts, while Bolsonaro could. Lula’s lawyers included this in “evidence” that Meta was “actively trying to interfere” in Bolsonaro’s favour.

Ekō, a digital advocacy non-profit coalition, published a report alleging that Meta had favoured Bolsonaro’s campaign. UN rights experts said reports of restrictions on Meta platforms were concerning. “Information, including from Meta employees, suggests that accounts linked to one side of the presidential race were disproportionately curtailed,” the experts said, without specifying which side.

What is Meta’s defence?

Meta called Lula’s allegations “false and unfounded”, said The Guardian, saying there had been “technical incidents” that affected campaigns from “different parts of the political spectrum”. But Meta’s own semi-independent oversight board said it was “concerned by recurring enforcement failures in Meta’s election integrity efforts”, citing Brazil’s election, where there had been an “over-enforcement of Meta’s fraud policies” against Lula.

Brazil’s top electoral court ruled that Meta could not “reduce the distribution of political contact, restrict searches or remove posts in a way that creates an imbalance”, said The Associated Press. Meta says it has complied with the court order to treat both election campaigns equally.

“We apply the same rules to all candidates, parties and political viewpoints in Brazil,” Meta told The Guardian. “We do not suppress content to harm one side or give preferential treatment to any side.”

The government is to reform the scheme that provides financial support for those injured or bereaved by unusually severe reactions to Covid-19 vaccines, following recommendations by the chair of the Covid inquiry.

What is the scheme?

The government’s vaccine damage payment scheme is designed to provide a one-off, tax-free sum of £120,000 to those who can prove they became severely disabled as a result of taking a vaccine for a number of diseases, including Covid-19.

“Disablement is worked out as a percentage, and ‘severe disablement’ means at least 60% disabled,” said the government guide. “This could be a mental or physical disablement and will be based on medical evidence from the doctors or hospitals involved in your treatment.” Those with a family member who died as a result of their injuries can apply for a bereavement support payment.

However, while more than 24,000 people have filed “Covid-related claims” with the vaccine damage payment scheme, only a little over 1% have received a pay-out so far, said the BBC. Most of the successful claims have related to the AstraZeneca vaccine.

What are the problems?

Critics say that the 60% disability threshold excludes many people who suffer a substantial, persistent condition that affects their ability to work, care for their family or lead a normal life.

For example, nurse Marie-Claire Hoyle developed transverse myelitis, a paralysing inflammation of the spinal cord that “left her in agonising pain and unable to use her limbs fully”, after taking part in the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine trial, said The Telegraph. However, she was denied access to compensation because her condition had improved over time and she has since regained most of her lost function.

Claimants have also complained that the system is difficult to navigate, that lengthy backlogs are delaying decisions, and that pay-outs do not adequately reflect the impact of their condition.

What has the Covid inquiry recommended?

In her fourth report, the chair of the Covid inquiry, Baroness Hallett, called for “urgent” reform of the scheme, saying that it’s “not sufficiently supportive”.

She recommended that the government increase the payment at least in line with inflation, then reassess it annually. The report also suggested the government introduce graduated payment levels that reflect the degree of injury, rather than treating all qualifying cases over the 60% disablement threshold the same.

“We are carefully considering the Covid-19 inquiry’s recommendations on reforming the scheme and will respond shortly,” said the Department of Health and Social Care.

Hackers in France recently set their sights on an unusual target: supermarkets. After hundreds of French grocers had their refrigerators hacked and taken offline, many are worried that attacks like these could become commonplace, including in the U.S.

How do hackers go after supermarkets?

In the case of the French hacking, criminals “remotely connected to refrigeration equipment” and “switched on defrost cycles that led to the loss of large quantities of fresh and frozen goods,” said CNN. Most grocery store fridges are connected to online controllers, allowing “maintenance firms to adjust the temperature remotely,” but this also makes the fridges vulnerable to hackers who can disable certain settings.

This isn’t the first instance of a widespread supermarket hack. In 2025, United Natural Foods, which supplies frozen foods to grocers in the U.S. and Canada, said it “discovered a cyberattack that forced it to take its systems offline,” said Al Jazeera. Also last year, conglomerate Ahold Delhaize USA, which owns grocery chains like Food Lion and Stop & Shop, was the “victim of a cyberattack that disrupted operations at more than 2,000 stores.” And British chain Marks & Spencer suffered a 2025 hacking that reportedly cost it $397 million.

How can this be prevented?

Most experts say consumers don’t have to be worried, for now. But it’s a different story for businesses. “Smart appliances connected to the internet will always be vulnerable as hackers seize on security lapses to log in to the systems remotely and trigger malicious features,” cybersecurity analyst Steven Lachance told Al Jazeera. These attacks also highlight “vulnerabilities in global food supplies that can be quickly and dangerously exploited,” said CNET.

To protect businesses, experts typically “recommend changing default passwords, enabling two-factor authentication where ⁠available and regularly ​installing software updates,” said Reuters. The “simplest rule is often the most ​effective: The fewer connected devices you have, the fewer potential entry points exist for attackers.”

Despite precautions, hackings of this nature still remain the “next frontier for sabotage attacks,” Muhammad Yahya Patel, the virtual chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm Huntress, said to Bloomberg. Technology has now been “weaponized against food retail infrastructure,” and the “immediate financial consequences are significant and visible.”

Social care was an “afterthought” during the Covid-19 pandemic, and government failures allowed the virus to “spread like wildfire” through care homes.

Those are some of the damning findings in the latest report by the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, chaired by Baroness Hallett. It focused on the “devastating” impact of the virus on adult social care in the UK. More than 43,000 people in care homes were recorded to have died with Covid between March 2020 and July 2022. Last year, a senior civil servant told the inquiry it amounted to “generational slaughter”.

Social care was an ‘afterthought’

All four UK governments initially focused on protecting hospitals. Adult social care “appeared to be something of an afterthought”, said the report. The “mantra of ‘protecting the NHS’ sometimes came at the expense of the users and providers of care”.

These failures “created environments in care settings in which the virus could spread like wildfire”.

Hancock’s ‘protective ring’ was false

Matt Hancock, then the health secretary, claimed ministers had “tried to throw a protective ring” around care homes “right from the start” of the pandemic. That claim was “unfounded”, said the inquiry. “Quite the opposite was true.”

“Unfounded is an understatement,” said Sky News. At the start of the pandemic, about 25,000 patients were discharged from hospitals into care homes – most without being tested for Covid – to “free up beds”. They and care home staff then received insufficient protection and guidance, “with devastating consequences”, said the inquiry.

The policy was later ruled unlawful by the High Court. Jean Adamson, speaking on behalf of bereaved families, called Hancock’s claim a “cruel lie”, said Sky News. Hancock isn’t commenting on the report.

Visiting restrictions did ‘immense’ harm

Elderly residents’ suffering was “compounded by draconian visiting restrictions”, said The Times. These caused “incalculable harm”, leaving people to die “abandoned and alone”, without “the comfort or support of their loved ones”, the report said.

Strict visiting limits were necessary at the start of the pandemic to protect people, but the “balance of harms” shifted; they increasingly did more harm than good, Hallett said.

The “profound isolation and sense of abandonment” caused by keeping them in place resulted in “immense emotional harm” to residents. Many whose loved ones died without them now remain “wracked with guilt that they do not deserve to carry”.

‘Desperate measures’ for protective equipment

Unsurprisingly, difficulties getting hold of personal protective equipment (PPE) were “a key theme of this report”, said the BBC.

Hospitals were “prioritised for supplies”, leaving care workers resorting to “some very desperate measures”. There were cases of workers “using festival waterproof ponchos, painters’ overalls and bin bags as makeshift PPE”.

Supply problems were a global issue, the report acknowledged, but better planning would have helped. The lack of PPE for care home staff was “wholly unacceptable”.

Social care was already ‘a concern’

A 2016 simulation exercise testing the UK’s response to a pandemic found the social care sector was a “particular concern”.

But when Covid-19 emerged, recommendations had “not been completed”, said the inquiry, leaving ministers to make decisions “without the information they needed”.

Millions of unpaid, “undervalued” carers were “heavily relied upon” without adequate support. The scale of death and suffering they witnessed was “unlike anything they had seen before”, said the report.

Israeli police have arrested 10 suspects in the occupied West Bank following attacks by Jewish settlers over the weekend in which a US journalist and European diplomats were among those injured.

Masked settlers beat Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine as she covered an olive harvest in the Palestinian village of Abu Falah. The following day, settlers attacked diplomats from Belgium, France and Poland, as well as representatives of the Catholic Church, in the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh.

Why is the harvest so significant for Palestinians?

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, between 80,000 and 100,000 Palestinian families depend on the olive sector for at least part of their income. Every autumn, thousands of families harvest olives that have sustained communities for generations. To many olive-growing communities, the harvest represents not just livelihoods, but cultural identity, family heritage and attachment to the land.

The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture estimates that olive oil production will reach approximately 21,000 tonnes this year, around a quarter of which would be surplus to domestic need and could be exported, said Palestinian News Network. But that yield is reliant on farmers being able to access and harvest their groves.

Settler attacks during this year’s olive harvest season have already surpassed the total for 2025. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has documented 199 olive-harvest-related settler attacks in the West Bank this season. These incidents resulted in one death, 124 injuries and damage to more than 2,500 trees and saplings.

Why is the season vulnerable to violence?

These attacks in the West Bank “are not new”, said Al Jazeera. Every year, “Israeli settlers and hardline groups use the olive harvest period to assert control over valuable agricultural lands”, including by “stealing crops, or building illegal settlement outposts and roads on private Palestinian property”.

This annual ritual of “assaulting farmers, burning or uprooting trees and stealing crops”, is “making it increasingly dangerous for Palestinians to reach and remain on their own land”, Ahmed Najar, a Palestinian political analyst and playwright, told the outlet.

The attacks are also designed to “deter international campaigners from accompanying Palestinian farmers, standing with them against settler violence and documenting the atrocities being committed”, he said. “The objective is not only to dispossess Palestinians, but to ensure that their dispossession happens without witnesses.”

What is being done?

The EU has condemned Israeli settler attacks, with a spokesperson for its diplomatic service saying it expects “full accountability as well as effective measures to prevent continued acts of violence and violent harassment against Palestinians, including during the ongoing olive harvest season”.

The Israeli military has condemned Saturday’s attack on the EU diplomats and said it has opened an investigation into the incident. However, “despite the international condemnation”, the office of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has “questioned the video evidence and testimony” from what it calls “alleged” attacks, said the BBC.

The government is going to announce more “everyday fixes” to ease financial pressures for Britons and show that it can “rectify some of life’s little nuisances without needing to bust the budget”, said Politico.

Andy Burnham promised in his first cabinet meeting that there are “things that can be done, big and small” to help with the cost of living. He is now “lining up” more “feel-good announcements”, including today’s “crackdown on public transport ‘headphone dodgers’”.

What policies has the government announced?

Burnham has been busy making minor policy tweaks since he came into power. In July, he removed VAT from electricity bills and capped single bus fares across England at £2 from January. A month later, he announced restrictions on high-street vape and betting shops, revoking the Gambling Act’s “aim to permit” rule to make it easier for councils to refuse them.

Since then, Burnham’s team have brought forward a ban on auto-renewed subscriptions, planned to tackle misleading sale prices from retailers, and are introducing price displays for fuel on Google Maps.

New rules have also been introduced for air travel. In a post on X, Burnham announced airlines will be required to seat children under 14 next to an accompanying adult without any additional charge. Passengers will also be able to fix any name errors on their booking for free. To reduce the “stress” of flying, the government will make it easier for airlines to ban “disruptive” flyers flagged by other carriers.

Today, under a new “share the carriage, not the noise” campaign, the government announced that councils will be able to issue £100 fixed penalties to bus passengers if they play loud music, litter or vape while travelling. “Headphone dodgers” who refuse to turn down the volume on trains face penalties of up to £1,000.

Will the measures be effective?

With the Budget nine days away, the prime minister wants to “assure weary voters that the government has their backs” without making “too much of a dent in the chancellor’s spreadsheet”, said Politico.

This Budget will already be “difficult”, said The Guardian. Inflation and “soaring” borrowing costs, exacerbated by the Iran war among other factors, have “blown a £12 billion hole in the public finances”, which could force John Healey to consider tax rises and “spending cuts to fund plans to ease the cost of living”.

Some government special advisers “admitted they had some qualms about the drumbeat of small interventions”, with one unnamed source telling The Guardian “we risk looking twee”. The smaller fixes “might not, on their own, amount to very much”, said the paper, but Downing Street hopes that added together they can “make a difference and show the government is trying”.

Could more be in the pipeline?

Consumer campaigner Martin Lewis has launched the apolitical Small Ideas Initiative, designed to fix “life potholes” by informing government policy. Lewis has invested £175,000 of his own money in the project, and will ask the public for “simple, inexpensive and broadly uncontroversial changes that could make Britain work a little better”, said The Times.

With the help of the public and a “broad political panel”, he will present a shortlist of ideas to the government and local authorities, and campaign to get the proposals adopted.

The consensus is that Israel’s forthcoming election is one of the most consequential in the country’s 78-year history, and a defining moment for its political identity. It is the first since the 7 October attacks three years ago; and the first time voters have had a chance to pass judgement on the government’s failure to prevent that catastrophe, and on Israel’s prosecution of its subsequent wars on Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

It could herald a reset in relations between Israel and its international allies, many of whom have been critical of Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government, particularly over Gaza. Above all, the election could herald the political demise of Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving PM, who has led the nation for all but 18 months since 2009.

What is the current make-up of Israel’s parliament?

The ruling party needs a majority of at least 61 seats out of 120 in the Knesset. Because of its proportional representation system – voters cast one vote for a national party-list – even the largest parties rarely win more than 35 seats, and Israel has always had coalition governments. At present, Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud has 32 seats. To govern, it relies on two ultra-orthodox Haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism (with 18 seats together), the ultra-nationalist Religious Zionist and Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) parties (with 13 seats between them), and the centre-right New Hope party (with four seats).

The government is widely regarded as the most extreme Israel has ever had. The main opposition bloc – ranging from the remnants of the once-mighty Labor Party to secular, liberal Yesh Atid to the centre-right Yisrael Beiteinu – has more than 40 seats, but has refused to govern with Netanyahu since 2019, partly because he was the defendant in three corruption cases. Hadash-Ta’al and Ra’am, representing the 20% of Israel’s population that is Arab, have ten seats.

And how likely is Netanyahu to lose?

The emergence of Gadi Eisenkot, a former general, and his newly formed centre-right Yashar party, has consolidated the anti-Netanyahu opposition. He is seen as the PM’s principal rival, and could replace him. However, according to most opinion polls, the election is too close to call. The Economist’s poll tracker suggests that Likud and Yashar are neck-and-neck, on 22 seats each; that Netanyahu’s coalition will fall short of the 61 seats needed for a majority; but that Eisenkot’s coalition is likely to fall short too.

What are Eisenkot’s credentials?

A former IDF chief of staff, Eisenkot served in Netanyahu’s war cabinet until June 2024, when he resigned with a scathing criticism of the PM’s revanchist strategy in Gaza. He launched his party, Yashar (meaning “straight” or “honest”) just over a year later; since then, it has steadily risen in the polls. Although without Netanyahu’s charisma, Eisenkot, the son of Jewish immigrants from Morocco, is widely regarded by voters as a man of integrity. His son, Gal Meir, was killed in Gaza in December 2023, during an operation to recover the bodies of two Israeli hostages.

Netanyahu’s allies have sought, somewhat unconvincingly, to cast him as too left-wing and squeamish to protect Israel’s security. In fact, as a general, he pioneered Israel’s “Dahiya doctrine”, named after Hezbollah’s stronghold in south Beirut, which calls for the overwhelming use of force against civilian infrastructure in areas from which attacks are launched; he also categorically opposes the creation of a Palestinian state.

Are there other contenders?

Conceivably, there is Naftali Bennett, who served as PM in 2021-22 but could not keep his diverse coalition together. Another right-winger, and a former Netanyahu aide, he has merged his party with that of the centrist Yair Lapid, another former PM, under the banner “Yachad” (“Together”); but their party lags well behind leaders Yashar and Likud in the polls. Bennett also rejects a two-state solution. Lapid accepts it in theory, but thinks that it is not realistic for the foreseeable future.

How about the Arab parties?

They are on course to win at least ten seats in the Knesset. However, Eisenkot has ruled out a coalition with the Arab parties, only one of which (the conservative-Islamist Ra’am) has ever agreed to join an Israeli government (briefly in 2021). Their very participation has been the subject of controversy: on 2 October, Israel’s supreme court overturned a ban on them running in the contest at all. The ban had been imposed by the central elections committee, a political body dominated by Netanyahu allies, on the basis that the parties supported armed struggle against Israel.

So what would the opposition do differently?

In many respects, not much: the Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal has described Israeli politics as “50 shades of right-wing”. However, an Eisenkot coalition would establish a commission of inquiry into the 7 October attacks. It would seek to end the exemption of Haredi men from military service, an agreement dating back to 1948 that has become very controversial. It would roll back many of the judicial reforms introduced by Netanyahu, designed to give more control over the judiciary. It would also crack down on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank – though it would retain settlements authorised in Israeli law. And it would try to reset troubled relations with Israel’s allies.

And if Netanyahu wins again?

It would mean more of the same. Many liberal Israelis fear that a new Netanyahu coalition, again likely backed by the far-right, would take the state in an increasingly autocratic direction: comparisons to Hungary and Turkey are often made. For the first time in Israeli history, emigration has begun to outpace immigration: in the period 2023–26, more than 200,000 Israelis left the country.

Most people think of testosterone as “the defining male hormone”, said biochemist Daniel Kelly on The Conversation. But women also produce it and levels decline with age.

Women have long used testosterone therapy to improve libido and energy. Now, many are turning to it to manage other menopause-related symptoms, such as brain fog and mood swings.

But concerns are growing that the hormone treatment’s surge in popularity on social media is fuelling demand that vastly outstrips evidence for its long-term safety and efficacy.

How widespread is this new use?

Only four countries – Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the UK – have authorised a testosterone cream for women, but mostly only to treat low libido. The UK approved the female-formulated testosterone cream AndroFeme in 2025, but the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) still needs to appraise it for cost effectiveness; it isn’t yet available on the NHS.

Still, there has been a “very sharp increase” in testosterone referrals to the NHS in Wales for post-menopausal women, a consultant told the BBC. Women there are “posing as men” to buy products from online pharmacies because of difficulties getting NHS prescriptions, she said. In England, NHS prescriptions for testosterone gel to women rose roughly tenfold between 2015 and 2022, said The Pharmaceutical Journal.

The issue is “receiving attention from regulators”, said Kelly on The Conversation. In September, the US Food and Drug Administration held a landmark public workshop on testosterone therapy, “examining evidence gaps and the need for future drug development”.

Does it work?

Most studies have focused on testosterone’s effect on low libido. But preliminary evidence indicates it could help with “a wide range of menopause symptoms, from mood changes to muscle loss”, said New Scientist.

A study published last year involving 510 women at a specialist menopause clinic in the UK found that, after four months on testosterone gel, there were improvements in mood, cognitive symptoms and libido. These findings “do not prove that the testosterone treatment caused these changes”, said Kelly. Testosterone is usually prescribed alongside oestrogen and sometimes progesterone in standard hormone replacement therapy. A study in Wales is currently trying to discover if “anecdotal reports of improved cognition and energy could be scientifically backed”, said the BBC.

More than 30 trials studying testosterone use for various health conditions in women are under way or planned in the US, said Reuters. “We do not have any evidence in women that it will improve muscle mass or bone density or mood or well-being or really any other metric,” said Stephanie Faubion, director of Mayo Clinic’s Center for Women’s Health and medical director of The ​Menopause Society. “What testosterone is being touted for in the lay public and on social media is not really what we have data for.”

Placebo-controlled trials have also not conclusively proven that testosterone alleviates brain fog, mood, bone density or fatigue, endocrinology professor Susan Davis told LiveScience.

What are the concerns?

Most testosterone treatments are not formulated and dosed for female patients. So in the UK, a “workaround” has been to measure out a tenth of a sachet of men’s testosterone gel by eye, said Kelly. That’s “a less precise way to deliver a hormone for which the therapeutic dose is so small”. Too much testosterone can increase the likelihood of unwanted side effects, such as voice deepening or rapid growth of facial and body hair.

“When you persistently have very high testosterone levels, you can get undesirable permanent side effects,” menopause specialist Michelle Olver told the BBC. “Nobody wants to have baldness, deepening of the voice or enlargement of the clitoris.”

The potential impacts of extra testosterone on cardiovascular health and breast cancer risk are “poorly understood”, said LiveScience. There is little evidence or data on the long-term safety for women. Yet online, they are “being bombarded with a tsunami of information providing them with the most sky-high expectations imaginable”, said gynaecology professor Nanette Santoro.

Speculation is rife about how Chancellor John Healey will attempt to balance the books in his first Autumn Budget.

Healey will deliver the Budget on 28 October and with Labour pledging not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance and to keep the triple lock until April 2030, “targeted measures” on wealth, investments, pensions and property are “the most likely revenue-raising options”, said Rathbones.

The Treasury is facing pressures of “rocketing government borrowing”, said The Sun, driving fears of “painful tax hikes”.

1. Don’t act too early

Nothing has been confirmed, but there are rumours of changes to capital gains tax rates and pensions tax.

The “general consensus”, said Saga, is that it is unwise to make decisions based on “Budget rumour and speculation”.

It is worth reviewing transactions that are “already in the pipeline” and reassessing your tax position “if changes are ultimately announced in the Budget”.

There is an “annual rumour”, said Trustnet, that the amount that can be taken tax-free from a pension at retirement will be cut. But “acting early has risks” as reinvesting a withdrawn lump sum can breach HMRC’s recycling rules and lead to penalties.

2. Make use of existing tax allowances

We already know that the cash ISA allowance is being reduced to £12,000 for under-65s from April 2027.

ISAs remain one of the “most valuable tax shelters”, said Hargreaves Lansdown, so it is worth making use of the current full £20,000 allowance.

Married couples and civil partners have “additional flexibility” as they can move assets to each other without any tax liability and can “maximise two sets of tax-free allowances” including on capital gains tax exemptions.

3. Boost your pension contributions

A “limited number of taxes” could rise in the Budget, said The i Paper, due to manifesto pledges on income tax, VAT and national insurance, plus Prime Minister Andy Burnham has “ruled out” changes to stamp duty and council tax.

But income tax thresholds remain frozen and the chancellor could even reduce these for additional rate taxpayers. The impact of frozen thresholds could “continue to hit hard”, said FT Adviser.

It is therefore “worth seeing” if higher earners can increase their pension contributions to help “cut their income tax bill”.

4. Focus on what you can control

There is plenty of speculation about what will be announced in the Budget, said Coutts, but while “headlines come and go, your financial goals are likely to be longer term”.

Focusing on objectives is important, and it is also worth reviewing finances to “highlight opportunities that already exist, rather than speculating on changes that may never happen”.

5. Plan for what you know

There are changes announced in the previous Budget that you can prepare for such as the reduced cash ISA allowance from April 2027 and the inclusion of pensions for inheritance tax calculations.

These are changes “we already know about”, said The i Paper, so it is something “that people can plan for”.

This week’s deadly attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Saudi Arabia’s airports and energy facilities have renewed focus on the Iran-backed militia’s growing strength, as well as its potential to disrupt global oil supplies.

Saudi Arabia has now launched “a major offensive” to support the Yemeni government forces who are trying to drive the militia out of the territory they’ve gained over the past 12 years, said CNN. But the rebels “have so far held their ground”.

How did they gain power?

Formally named Ansar Allah (“helpers of God”), the Houthis emerged in the 1990s as an armed political and religious group championing Yemen’s Zaidi Shia minority. Initially fighting for more autonomy in their northern homeland, they took a lead role in mass anti-government protests when civil war broke out in 2014. They captured the capital, Sanaa, and forced the internationally-recognised government to retreat to Aden in the south.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia intervened in the civil war, insisting that Iran was supporting the Houthis, and led a nine-country coalition in a years-long effort to restore the Yemeni government. The coalition’s bombing campaign led to “one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises” and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, said The New York Times. But the Houthis survived, “cementing their power” over northern and central Yemen.

A UN-brokered truce in 2022 led to peace talks but these broke down after Israel launched its campaign against Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza.

How have they grown so powerful?

A 2024 report to the UN Security Council concluded that support and training from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps had helped the Houthis transform from “a localised armed group” to “a powerful military organisation”. Their forces had grown to an estimated 350,000 fighters – up from just 30,000 in 2015. The Houthis had also been forcibly recruiting large numbers of children and Ethiopian migrants, using them as human shields, spies and for dangerous mine-planting.

While Iran is believed still to supply expertise, as well as “cutting-edge components like guidance systems”, the Houthis can now “manufacture much of their weaponry domestically”, said The Associated Press. They have “little aerial and naval power” but have been “increasingly turning to drones”, said Middle East Eye. These are very effective against pro-government forces, which lack “effective air defences”, global security consultant Wolf-Christian Paes told the news organisation.

How much of Yemen is under Houthi control?

The Houthis control between a quarter and a third of Yemen, but that portion is home to around three-quarters of the population. The militia “rules over its impoverished territory with an iron fist”, said The New York Times. The Houthis are the de-factor regime in northern and western Yemen, while the Yemeni government “controls much of the rest of the country”, said Al Jazeera. The Houthis have recently grown more powerful, “consolidating control over major cities and pushing to seize others”, said CNN. In September, they seized control of key locations along the Red Sea coast, giving them leverage over the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which is vital to global shipping.

“Half of the story is Iranian support,” international affairs professor and Yemen specialist Thomas Juneau told AP. The other half is “the weakness of their adversaries”. The anti-Houthi forces are “deeply divided” in the loyalty either to Saudi-backed government troops or to UAE-supported southern separatists, while Yemen’s recognised government remains “fragmented”, disunited and corrupt. The Houthis “have systematically been able to exploit that”.

“Netanyahu knew” – that was the verdict of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as it reported allegations that Benjamin Netanyahu was warned about the 7 October attacks.

A string of claims that Arab officials warned the longtime Israeli PM that a violent attack was coming have put him on the defensive less than 30 days before the nation’s crucial elections. Netanyahu has said the reports are an “absolute lie” and threatened to sue the paper.

What are the claims?

The claims “began to trickle out” last month in a book by two Israeli journalists called “Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment”, said The Washington Post. It details an encrypted call reportedly made by the Emirati president, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, also known as MBZ, less than two weeks before 7 October 2023, to warn Netanyahu about a planned attack. Netanyahu did not pass on the warnings to his security aides, according to the authors, Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval.

The PM was also warned of an impending attack by Egypt’s intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, according to The Wall Street Journal. Kamel allegedly phoned Netanyahu just days before 7 October, adding to warnings from the previous month, when he is said to have flown to Israel to inform security officials in person that Hamas was planning a major assault, claimed the paper.

“We know that Egypt’s chief of intelligence flew to Israel on 26 September and warned Israel of a… Hamas attack,” Ahron Bregman, an Israeli security analyst and senior teaching fellow at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera. “We also know that similar messages came from MBZ.”

How might they affect the election?

According to polling, events surrounding the attacks and “questions over responsibility for security failures that preceded them” are “important issues” for voters in the parliamentary elections to be held later this month, said the outlet.

But the polls have “held relatively steady in recent weeks”, said The Washington Post. Jonathan Rynhold, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv, said Netanyahu’s loyal base and Israel’s mainly right-leaning electorate may not move their votes to the “centrist bloc led by Eisenkot without a ‘clear smoking gun’”.

Naftali Bennett, the leader of the Beyachad (Together) alliance, said that if the allegations were proven true, Netanyahu “cannot continue to serve in his position for another minute”, while the former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, who leads Netanyahu’s Likud party in the polls by the “slenderest of margins”, said, “Netanyahu received dozens of warnings for 7 October and ignored them all. He is unfit.”

Many of Netanyahu’s electoral rivals, including Eisenkot, have promised to immediately establish an independent commission of inquiry if elected.

What does Netanyahu say?

Netanyahu has strongly denied ever receiving any warning of an attack. The Israeli PM said the report that he was warned by bin Zayed was an “absolute lie” and denied he even spoke to the Emirati leader at that time.

The Israeli PM has tried to “shift the blame” for not being warned of the attack to the former head of Israel’s internal security service, Ronen Bar, said Al Jazeera. Bar announced last month that he would sue the prime minister, a “longtime political nemesis”, for defamation over the claims.

We may be about to call time on the leap second, which for decades has kept Coordinated Universal Time (the global standard underpinning timekeeping systems) in sync with the Earth's daily rotation.

The International Bureau of Weights and Measures is convening its governing body for its General Conference in Versailles this week, as it does every four to six years. The timekeepers had already voted in 2022 to phase out the leap second by 2035. “But now there is a spanner – or spinner – in the works,” said the Financial Times. Earth has been rotating unusually rapidly for a decade, meaning that before 2035, there’s a chance we’d need the first-ever negative leap second – in other words, deleting a second. Scientists say this unprecedented step could “create mayhem in the digital time-stamped continuum”. The guardians of time are therefore considering an urgent draft resolution to fast-track the phase-out of the leap second.

How do we measure time?

“For millennia, a day has been defined as one full rotation of the Earth,” said physics and astronomy professor Vahe Peroomian on The Conversation. Ancient Egyptians were the first known civilisation to divide day and night into twelve parts each, establishing the 24-hour day.

Dividing hours into 60 minutes, and minutes into 60 seconds, harks back to ancient Mesopotamian numerical systems, which were based on the concept of 60. Greek astronomers like Claudius Ptolemy adopted the system while measuring the motions of planets, dividing degrees into 60 units. These subdivisions were adopted worldwide for timekeeping, dividing each hour into 60 minutes, and a minute into 60 seconds.

But it took many centuries before devices, such as 17th-century pendulum clocks and 20th-century quartz watches, “became accurate enough” to measure seconds, said BBC Future.

What’s the problem with astronomical timekeeping?

The speed of the Earth’s rotation can fluctuate, so defining a second as a fraction of a solar day is imprecise. In 1967, the General Conference on Weights and Measures adopted a new definition of a second based on the cesium-133 atom, which oscillates at “a remarkably steady rate”, said Peroomian. One second was defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations. Atomic clocks use cesium-133 to give us Coordinated Universal Time (UTC): the super-precise global standard used by telecoms, computer networks, international businesses and power grids.

So what are leap seconds?

Atomic clocks run at a fixed rate but – apart from right now – Earth’s rotation has been gradually slowing, primarily due to the Moon’s gravitational pull. To keep UTC in sync with Earth’s rotations, timekeepers invented “the leap second” in 1972. This “interloper” allows the two systems of time – astronomical and UTC – to “run in parallel”, said the Financial Times. Once the lag reaches a certain point, a leap second is inserted to “yank them back in alignment”. At irregular intervals, 27 leap seconds have been added to global clocks since 1972 – the last in 2016.

Why are they being phased out?

Leap seconds have become “increasingly difficult to deal with in the computer age”, said ABC News. They can disrupt computer operating systems, which assume a day is always 86,400 seconds long, resulting in glitches and outages. But the prospect of the first negative leap second poses an even greater risk. “Many computer programmes assume all leap seconds are positive”, Setnam Shemar, the UK’s principal timekeeping scientist, told the FT. Removing a second could “result in a major technology failure in telecommunications or electricity grid networks or satellite navigation systems”.

This week, the world’s timekeepers will vote on introducing a “leap hour” instead. This could take “a millennium or more” to accumulate and, by then, life may be so different, there may be no need to adjust the lag at all. All this change “would be a practical win for tech overlords, digital gatekeepers and official clock-watchers” but it could be “something of a cultural loss for our stargazing species, detaching human timekeeping from its ancient, astronomical roots”.

The UK government’s “one in, one out” deal with France, which was supposed to help deter small boat arrivals, has been scrapped, turning the spotlight back on the contentious issue.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the pilot scheme had “not been without its challenges” and admitted the “numbers are still relatively small”. About “1,500 people have been removed to France since the scheme began just over a year ago”, said the BBC. Mahmood estimated the deal had cost about £56,000 for every person sent back to France. “More than 40,000” migrants arrived in Britain in small boats while the deal was in place, said The Guardian.

As of early October, 19,451 people have been recorded crossing the Channel to the UK in small boats this year, 43% fewer than this time last year, but the arrivals remain a hot political topic.

What happens when they arrive?

Entering the UK without a visa or valid entry clearance is an offence under British law, carrying a potential prison sentence.

People who arrive in the UK on small boats without prior clearance are intercepted, detained for processing, and then usually enter the asylum system.

Initially, Border Force personnel or the coastguard picks up the boats at sea or meets them when they land on UK shores.

Where are they taken?

Officials take all arrivals by coach to a processing centre, the main one being the former military base at Manston in Kent. There they undergo a temperature check and are searched. Photographs and fingerprints are taken for basic identity checks.

Some are granted immigration bail. They are released and transferred to short-term Home Office accommodation, but those thought to pose a significant risk of harm, or who did not claim asylum, may be transferred to an immigration removal centre. Around 4% of all arrivals between 2018 and 2025 were returned to another country, according to the Migration Observatory.

New arrivals are placed in what the Home Office calls “initial accommodation”. Then they are moved to longer term “dispersal accommodation” – flats or houses of multiple occupation, often in areas such as the North West of England, where housing is cheaper – until an asylum decision has been made. But when this is not available, “contingency accommodation” is used, which is generally hotels.

Children who arrive in Dover on small boats without any family members are known as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. They are initially given temporary homes in reception and safe care centres by Kent County Council, as that is the county they have arrived in. The National Transfer Scheme was introduced in 2016 to encourage all local authorities across the UK to care for UASCs.

What rules apply?

When asylum seekers have been processed, if they are judged to be “destitute”, as most are, they are eligible for accommodation and subsistence while their claims are being assessed. They cannot choose where they live and they must sleep at their designated accommodation every night.

Most are not allowed to work. While their claims are being evaluated they are given a modest weekly allowance – around £49 a week if their accommodation is self-catered or £9.95 if meals are provided. Most temporary migrants are not eligible for mainstream welfare benefits.

At present, England’s adult care system is “one of the most threadbare in the developed world”, according to Thea Stein of the Nuffield Trust, which has analysed the arrangements of 11 comparable nations and regions. England is an “outlier” in that eligibility for any public funding at all is strictly means-tested.

The most generous system is in Denmark, where the state pays 100% of care costs, with no means test. Those in residential care do get billed for bed and board, but means-tested housing benefit is available.

Australia has a similar system, also funded by general taxation. In most cases, bed and board have to be paid for, but there are a series of daily spending caps on different elements, such as food and hotel costs.

Japan, with the oldest population in the world, introduced a tax on all over-40s in 2000, ring-fenced for care. Everyone who needs it is given a monthly care allowance. They contribute 10%-30% of costs, depending on income; total contributions are capped.

A similar insurance system operates in Germany, but with no cap. Individuals usually pay half of costs. Unusually, adult children can (in rare cases) be liable to pay for parents’ care if the parents run out of money.

The social care system is fragmented, severely underfunded, and creates stark disparities – particularly in England.

Adult social care covers a large range of services given to the frail and disabled, with the two main categories being long-term support for working-age adults with disabilities, and care for older people, which cost roughly similar amounts. In England in 2024-25, total spending in the area rose to £34.5 billion, a 4% real-terms increase on the year before. Growing costs are driven in part by a fast-ageing society. In 1972 there were around 7.5 million people aged 65 or over in the UK, about 13% of the population. In 2022, there were around 12.7 million (or 19%).

Publicly funded social care is provided by local authorities, and mainly outsourced to private providers. Growing expenditure puts local authorities under severe strain; adult social care now accounts for around 20% of English local authorities’ total spending. In addition, the system is seen as unfair and dysfunctional, placing a heavy burden on the NHS and on carers, paid and unpaid.

Why is the system thought to be unfair?

While “healthcare needs” – cancer, say – are theoretically met in full by the NHS, those with “social care needs” – trouble with eating, washing, mobility etc. – who have even fairly modest means have to pay for care themselves (although the dividing line between the two categories is often unclear). With health, the costs are shared across society; with care, the unlucky ones can face catastrophically large bills. The Department of Health and Social Care estimates that around a third of all over-65s in England need social care of some kind, and that about one in seven individuals over the age of 65 will face lifetime care costs exceeding £100,000.

How exactly does the system work?

First, the local council will conduct a needs assessment. Then there is a means test. In England and Northern Ireland, in most cases only people with assets worth less than £23,250 get any state support (income such as pensions is included in the calculation). Below that, there is a sliding scale: those with £14,250 or less receive full funding. The value of a home is ignored for at-home care but usually included if the person has to move into residential care, unless a spouse continues living there.

Care at home costs perhaps £20-£35 per hour, though the fees can be much higher. Residential care, for self-funders, costs on average £1,460 per week for the basics, according to healthcare data provider LaingBuisson. In many parts of the country it is higher than that.

In Wales, weekly care payments are capped, and the residential care thresholds are higher. In Scotland the system is more generous still: personal care at home is free for those who need it. Residential care is means-tested, though both the upper threshold (£36,750) and lower one (£22,750) are higher, and care costs, as opposed to accommodation and food costs, are met by the local authority.

What is Andy Burnham’s plan?

The PM said in his conference speech last week that Labour would create a “National Care Service” for England, along NHS lines: free at the point of use, funded from general taxation, “where everyone contributes and everyone is covered”.

The service will not be created until the next parliament, and the full plan won’t even be unveiled until Louise Casey has published her report next year, but we know it will follow the Scottish approach: offering free personal care at home, with those in residential care paying for “bed and board” costs only. Though much more generous – and more expensive – than the English system, this could still leave people very exposed to high costs. Average costs for bed and board alone often reach £1,300 a week.

How could such people be protected?

That would require either a full, wall-to-wall National Care Service, with residential care free at the point of use and funded by tax (which Burnham has not proposed); or a payment cap. This is a financial limit on how much an individual has to pay for their own personal care over their lifetime. The Dilnot Commission in 2011 suggested that no one should have to contribute more than £35,000 (over £50,000 in today’s money) towards care over their lifetime, nor more than £10,000 per year for bed and board.

How much would all this cost?

It’s hard to say. In 2023, the Health Foundation estimated that a comprehensive NHS-style system for England would cost an extra £18.5 billion per year; while a Scotland-style system would cost £7.5 billion; and a cap on care costs, £4 billion. Burnham announced that the pension triple lock would be replaced after the next election. But the authoritative Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that this would not meet the costs of social care. Labour argues that there would be some savings from a decent care system: it would take pressure off the NHS, freeing up perhaps £2 billion a year in the long term, according to the King’s Fund think-tank. But it added that such figures should be treated with caution.

Why hasn’t it been fixed before?

Many governments have tried: there have been three major commissions and dozens of official inquiries since 1997. But politically, it is very difficult, partly because the costs of the current system only fall on a small number of people, so it is not widely regarded as an important issue, while the solutions are unpopular.

In 2010, Burnham, then the health secretary, outlined plans for a National Care Service funded from a £20,000 levy on estates at death. This was branded a “death tax”, and Labour lost the election. At the 2017 election, Theresa May’s Conservative manifesto proposed raising the means-testing threshold from £23,250 to £100,000, but recovering more costs from estates. This “dementia tax”, as it was dubbed, contributed to May’s disastrous campaign. Burnham aims to get “cross-party consensus”.

The execution by firing squad of former US Army major Nidal Hasan will be livestreamed for the public to watch, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said.

This will make it the first public execution in the US since 1936, and the prospect has already been described as “medieval”.

Who is he and what did he do?

Hasan, a former US Army psychiatrist from Virginia, fatally shot 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in November 2009, injuring another 32. The attack took place in a crowded medical building where soldiers were waiting for check-ups and vaccines. It was the deadliest ever non-combat attack on an American military base.

He admitted in court that he was the gunman, and said that he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He apologised for “any mistakes” but was convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder.

Why is it being livestreamed?

Hegseth signalled that the execution would be livestreamed as a deterrent for the sort of crime Hasan committed. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” he said.

The US government is sending “a very clear message”, said Sky News US correspondent David Blevins. Deborah Denno, a death penalty expert and law professor at Fordham University, New York, told The Associated Press that livestreaming an execution could make the process “much more transparent”, and inform the public about all that capital punishment entails. Those are benefits that she said would be useful at a time when Christa Pike’s botched execution has raised fresh questions about the manner by which criminals are put to death.

What’s the reaction been?

The Republican senator Thom Tillis said the plan is “beyond disgusting”. Chris Murphy, a Democrat senator, told CNN that public executions are “medieval” and mimic Islamic State killings. “That’s what America has become? That’s pretty extraordinary.”

Livestreaming “will not educate”, it will “terrorise”, and is “beneath the dignity that we owe to anyone”, even those who commit a “horrific” crime such as Hasan’s, Austin Sarat, a legal expert in the death penalty at Amherst College, Massachusetts, told The iPaper.

The decision to livestream the execution is “unprecedented in the modern era” and “on uncertain legal terrain”, John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death, told the BBC.

The livestream may face a legal challenge because federal regulations forbid the “visual or audio recording” of an execution without a specific judicial order.

When the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature was revealed today, “all eyes in the literary world” were firmly fixed on Stockholm, said Deutsche Welle.

But the announcement of 76-year-old Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson as this year’s laureate marked the end of a lengthy, secretive selection process that began more than a year ago. And the world’s most prestigious literary award has, according to Euronews, “generated more controversies” than any of the other Nobel Prizes.

Who chooses the Nobel Prize laureates in literature?

Awards are chosen by the Swedish Academy, founded in 1786 by King Gustav III. The 18 members, known as “De Aderton” (The Eighteen), are currently made up of “distinguished Swedish writers, linguists, literary scholars, historians, and a prominent jurist”, according to the Nobel Prize website. They have tenure for life.

How do nominations work?

In September last year, the Academy’s “Nobel Committee” sent out hundreds of invitation forms to individuals and organisations eligible to submit nominations. These include literature and linguistics professors at universities, previous Nobel laureates in literature, and the heads of writers’ associations in various countries. The committee can also add names, such as past laureates. The list “can reach 200 names per year”, Gisele Sapiro, research director and Nobel Prize expert, told DW.

Those who don’t receive an invitation but are still qualified to submit nominations can do so – but no one can nominate themselves. That said, “there’s a tradition of writers lobbying for the prize by giving talks in Gothenburg or Stockholm and then flirting with Academy members over drinks”, said the Financial Times.

The Committee screens submissions after the January deadline and, over the next few months, “whittles down the nominations” to five candidates. The 18 then read and assess the work over the summer, confer in September, and vote in early October. The winner must receive more than half the votes. He or she takes home 12 million Swedish kronor (about £910,000), as well as a “lifetime of laurels”, said LitHub. But the public – and nominees – don’t learn which authors made the shortlist until 50 years later. Some authors are considered year after year, but never win.

What are they looking for?

In his will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the prize should go to the writer of the “most outstanding work in an idealistic direction”. The Academy “spent decades puzzling over what ‘ideal’ meant”, said the FT, before “quietly dropping the criterion”.

Last year, the prize went to Hungarian modernist László Krasznahorkai, for his “compelling and visionary oeuvre that in the midst of apocalyptic terror reaffirms the power of art”. The prize is given to a writer’s body of work, rather than one book.

According to Sapiro, the Academy is looking for ambitious, influential literature that has spawned a new literary movement. The work must also be “universal, being able to transcend its own culture”, she told DW. Translations are key: most laureates are translated into English, French and German – “these three languages are the most important”. It’s also a “major advantage” if nominees have already won other prestigious literary awards, she said, such as the International Man Booker Prize.

So far, only 33 out of 122 laureates have come from outside Europe. Only about 15% of winners have been women, but since 2018, the prize has alternated between a man and a woman. Genre doesn’t seem to matter: in 2016, Bob Dylan won the prize for his song lyrics.

Why is it so controversial?

Possibly the most controversial winner was Peter Handke in 2019. The Austrian writer was a “known denier of the Bosnian genocide”, as well as a “close supporter” of former Serbian president Slobodan Milošević, said Euronews. Hundreds protested, and several countries either condemned the award or boycotted the ceremony. Even Bob Dylan’s fans were “baffled” by his selection.

“The prize is ritually mocked,” said the FT’s Simon Kuper. Because achievement in literature is more subjective than in the sciences, the decision “reliably angers critics”. There is also a “comic discrepancy between the weight of the prize and the parochialism of the judges”. Some of the 18 are “obscure even in Sweden”. They have also awarded eight Nobels to Sweden: more than Asia, Africa or Latin America have each received.

But the prize still “shapes the global canon – even if the globe can push back”. Dylan’s award may have been “ridiculed”, but it “sparked a global debate on what constitutes literature”. The prize can also “turbocharge sales”, which benefits small presses that publish literature in translation. It also gets authors’ names trending on social media, far beyond their countries. In a world where reading is “in decline”, the prize matters more than ever.

Increasing numbers of workers are opting out of their workplace pensions to save money, but there are risks to be aware of.

All employees are automatically enrolled into workplace pension schemes if they are over the age of 22. But a “growing number” of Gen Z and millennials are choosing to opt out, “due to cost-of-living pressures”, said BBC News.

However, the over-60s are “consistently the highest rate of any age group” opting out, said Fidelity International, but this “may not be the right decision and could cost them dearly”.

Why people are opting out of workplace pensions

Saving for retirement is, of course, sensible but with a “cost-of-living crunch and compressed real wage growth ”younger workers are “prioritising having money in their pockets now”, said Investors’ Chronicle.

Some over-60s may also feel they have enough for retirement or have a health issue that reduces life expectancy, said Fidelity, so their priorities “may understandably change”.

How to opt out of your pension scheme

If you wish to opt out of your pension scheme, your employer will tell you the scheme you are enrolled in. To leave, you will need to contact the provider directly.

Businesses “must not actively encourage their staff to opt out”, said the Pensions Regulator, so it must be your own decision.

You can opt out within a month of being added to your employer’s scheme, and you will get back any contributions. Once you have been enrolled for a month, any contributions will usually stay in your pension fund until you retire.

Other options include reducing the level of your contributions, although there is a minimum of 5% of pay for employees and 3% for employers.

The benefits of opting out

The “main benefit” of opting out, said Legal & General, is getting your hands on extra cash. This can be useful if you have “new financial commitments, or changed your spending priorities”.

But while it can seem an “easy way” to pocket more money each month, said TPT Retirement Solutions, it can have a “surprisingly large impact” on the plans you have for your golden years.

The drawbacks of opting out

Opting out of a workplace pension is like giving up “free money”, said Armstrong Watson, as you lose employer contributions and government tax relief.

It is easy to underestimate the impact of “even a few years of missing pension contributions” though, said The Times, especially when you are young.

Your retirement is more likely to be comfortable “if you can save over the longest time possible”, said MoneyHelper.

You will miss out on potential investment growth if you opt out from your pension, which can slow down your savings, said Legal & General, which means “you might end up having to fill the gap by working for longer, later on in life”.

Opting out isn’t a “one-time decision” though, said LV, and you can usually rejoin your company’s workplace scheme. But this can be a “lengthy process” so you will miss out on any benefits and investment growth in the meantime.

Donald Trump has said the US is looking “very strongly” at a suspected case of plague after the death of a researcher at a remote Siberian lab.

Darya Shipilova, 28, who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, died on 2 October two days after falling ill following reported exposure to pneumonic plague bacteria. Russia’s public health agency, Rospotrebnadzor, said that her diagnosis was “pneumonia of unknown aetiology”, meaning they cannot confirm what caused it or where it came from.

“I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus”, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters yesterday.

What do we know so far?

It is still unclear exactly how Shipilova became unwell. Local media outlet Lyudi Baikala suggested she may have been infected after accidentally breaking a test tube containing pneumonic plague bacteria on 25 September, although this has not been confirmed by Russian authorities. Rospotrebnadzor has said that expanded tests of samples from the patient had found no microorganisms associated with her work. Other reports suggest she contracted the disease on a field trip to a region where plague occurs naturally among wild rodents.

The uncertainty has been compounded by conflicting messages from local politicians and relative silence from Moscow. Alexey Tsydenov, governor of the neighbouring Buryatia region, initially wrote on social media that she had died of plague, before editing his post to add the qualifier “possibly”.

While Rospotrebnadzor has described the “sanitary and epidemiological” situation in the area as stable, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on Monday that several hospitals in Irkutsk had been placed under quarantine. Lyudi Baikala has reported that nearly 200 contacts of Shipilova have been placed under observation.

How dangerous is pneumonic plague?

Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, and pneumonic plague is the most virulent form of the disease, with an incubation period as short as 24 hours. The World Health Organization has said pneumonic plague is especially contagious because it “can trigger severe epidemics through person-to-person transmission via respiratory particles”.

Symptoms include severe respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath and coughing, often with blood-tainted mucus. Common antibiotics can effectively combat the disease provided they are administered early enough. If left untreated, it can prove fatal within 18 to 24 hours.

This makes any outbreak “potentially very dangerous”, said The Times, but “it is important to distinguish the severity of the disease for an individual person, especially if untreated, from its ability to spread quickly”.

Could it be related to biological warfare?

Some US politicians have suggested the incident could be connected to military research into biological warfare. “I remember hearing from anti-Ukraine voices about their so-called bio labs,” Republican congressman Don Bacon, a senior member of the House armed services committee, wrote on social media. “But in reality it is Russia with the bio labs.”

Dr Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator from 2022 to 2023, told NBC News that if this is an isolated case and no one else dies “it will probably end there”, adding that if there were “biological weapons programmes in these labs, that would be much more concerning to me,” and that “much more” information and transparency was needed from Russian authorities.

Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme that it was “possible” that the lab in question might have been studying the pathogen’s potential as a bio-weapon. “Because this is Russia people’s thoughts are running to that”, he said, but added that medical research was still the “more likely” explanation.

“Authorities seek to drive us out of our places of study through budget cuts, the closure of places, dilapidated buildings, selection, or repression, let’s not let them: let’s block and retake the universities and high schools!”, wrote the Student Union and the High School Trade Union in a statement last week.

What started as a “spontaneous blockade” of a high school in a Paris suburb in mid-September, has now led to the closure of up to 500 schools across the country, said Le Monde. Since protests began, more than 5,000 people have been arrested, “85% of them minors”, said the same paper, with the education minister confirming that 24 schools had either been “burned or ransacked”, and millions of euros of damage caused.

Ever since the student demonstrations of May 1968 and, more recently, the gilets jaunes protests in 2018, “every government has run scared of angry French youth”, said Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield on the BBC. With no sign of slowing down, and presidential elections coming up, the protests will “send shivers” down the French government’s spine.

Why has this happened?

A major cause of the protest has been a lack of central government funding for the education system. On Thursday, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu outlined a modest 1.7% rise in education spending to €65.53 billion (£55.7 billion) in a draft of the 2027 budget, said The Telegraph. However, this is below the rate of inflation, and excludes teacher pensions. Traditionally, education has been the “largest item in the French budget”, but this year, debt-servicing costs are expected to reach €74.5 billion (£63.1 billion), according to the draft.

Another “main complaint” is a shortage of teachers and support staff in schools, said Time Magazine. In the year 2024/25, nearly 10% of teaching hours in public secondary education went untaught, according to data from the education ministry. The majority of that (7.5%) was due to a failure to find substitute teachers, and 2.3% because of complete school closures.

Students have had to navigate “overcrowded classes of up to 40 children in crumbling buildings”, said The Guardian. “Ceilings partially collapsing during class, leaks, cockroaches and buildings in disrepair” are fairly common experiences.

Many have also found the online system designed for university applications – “Parcoursup”, the equivalent of UCAS – “opaque and difficult”, and in urgent need of reform. Discontent this year has also been exacerbated by “unbearable temperatures in classrooms during heatwaves in May and June”.

How has the government responded?

The government has “strongly condemned the violence and responded forcefully”, said The New York Times. On Friday, France’s justice minister Gérald Darmanin said on X that he would pursue a “firm” criminal response, and hold parents of minors civilly liable “wherever possible”.

But the government has also tried to “placate” the rapidly spreading protests, and has “acknowledged some of the students’ grievances”, said the NYT. Education minister Édouard Geffray announced on Thursday that the government would scrap plans to increase some higher education registration fees, an idea floated just hours before in the proposed 2027 budget. Ahead of meeting unions for talks on Friday, Geffray said he would introduce a new platform, where students could voice their thoughts for education reform, which would then be included in a “national report”, said Time.

Geffray also told broadcaster France 2 on Thursday evening that the protests, which were “legitimate at the outset”, had been “taken hostage by ultra-left groups”, said Le Monde. Lecornu’s team had directly blamed La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, or LFI) and “its ultra-left proxies” for the violence. LFI, led by presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has strongly denied the claim, though supported the students’ right to protest. However, party member and mayor of Paris suburb Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko, had said that “violence can sometimes be legitimate”.

What could be the effect of the protests?

Talks between student representatives and Geffray “failed to produce the concrete measures they were seeking”, said The Wall Street Journal. Student unions have called for a third day of nationwide protest on Tuesday, joined by several teachers’ unions. The General Confederation of Labour, one of France’s largest unions, also “threw its support behind the demonstrations, raising the prospect of the unrest broadening beyond schools and universities”.

We cannot forget that French presidential elections are “only months away”, said the BBC. These protests, like many youth movements, are “unpredictable and shapeless”, and have “no clear structure” that would allow for negotiation. Because of this, they will have Emmanuel Macron in “cold sweats”.

One person who stands to gain is Mélenchon, who “stands a good chance of making it to the second round of the presidential elections”. Polls show he has “massive” support – around 40% – among 18- to 24-year-olds. He still lies behind Marine Le Pen in popularity, but given the current unrest, France is in “unstable territory”, and the “young people’s protests of recent days will indeed have been a harbinger” for the election’s results.

The government spent £329.1 billion on benefits in the financial year 2025-26 – equivalent to 10.7% of GDP, and about £4,700 per person in Britain. It amounts to roughly a quarter of all government spending, and dwarfs the totals spent on the NHS (about £257 billion), education (about £126 billion) and defence (about £62 billion).

The welfare bill increased by about £18.8 billion in the last financial year; by 2030-31, it is expected to rise to £408.6 billion. This projected increase is fuelling calls from across the political spectrum to rein in welfare spending, particularly on disability and incapacity benefits; many also argue that increases in pension spending are unsustainable.

Who actually receives this money?

More than 24 million people claimed some form of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefit in August last year. Of these, 13.4 million were pensioners: of the entire welfare budget, about 55% goes to pensioners.

The state pension cost an estimated £146 billion in 2025-26; and another £31 billion or so went on pension credit, housing benefit for pensioners, the winter fuel allowance, and so on. In total, the UK spent £145 billion on benefits for working-age people and children – including incapacity and disability benefits (£77 billion); housing benefit (£37 billion); and child benefit (£13 billion).

Last August, about ten million recipients were of working age; and 860,000 were children receiving disability living allowance. Around a third of working-age benefit claimants are in employment of some kind (for example, low-paid workers get in-work top-up via universal credit). The latest figures show 1.6 million people who are fit for work are claiming an unemployment benefit; the cost, spread across different benefits, is some £1.4 billion.

Why is the bill rising?

In no small part, because of pensions. Since the “triple lock” was introduced by the coalition government in 2011, pensions have been guaranteed to increase by whichever is highest: inflation, average wage growth or 2.5%. This has led to sharp rises in the state pension in recent years, when inflation and wage growth have run high (pensions rose by 10.1% in 2023, 8.5% in 2024, 4.1% in 2025, and 4.8% in 2026).

But pensions are by no means the only factor. Benefits are also rising because more people are claiming disability and incapacity benefits. In 2010, Britain spent about £45 billion on such benefits; by 2025, this had risen to £77 billion.

Which benefits are these?

By the middle of this year, more than 4.5 million people in England and Wales were claiming at least one of an overlapping patchwork of incapacity and disability benefits, up from fewer than three million in 2020.

The fastest growing is the Personal Independence Payment (Pip): cash payments to cover the extra costs of being disabled – a payment that has gradually replaced the older Disability Living Allowance and Incapacity Benefit. By July, 4.1 million people were claiming a Pip in England and Wales, up 7% from last year’s 3.83 million; in 2019 there were two million. More than two million now receive health-related benefits under a separate universal credit regime.

So are people getting sicker?

Some experts point to worsening public health since the 2008 financial crisis, citing factors such as growing obesity, long hospital waiting times, the cost-of-living crisis and other social causes. But critics of the system argue that the rise in disability and incapacity claimants owes more to broadening definitions of disability – and especially to an increase in people claiming benefits for mental health conditions. In 2002, 25% of disability benefit recipients claimed primarily for a mental health condition (or a learning or neurodevelopmental condition); by 2025, this had risen to 45%. About one in seven working-age Britons now report having a long-term mental or behavioural disorder (up 50% in a decade).

How can this be explained?

Again, by most measures there has in fact been a recent increase in mental ill-health in Britain, particularly since the pandemic. Most European countries have seen similar trends; but most have not seen this translate into higher health benefit claims. Another possible explanation is the collapse in face-to-face assessments for Pip claims (down from 80% pre-pandemic to less than 15% in July 2026), which may make it harder to weed out bogus claimants – some of whom are coached by AI bots or so-called “sickfluencers” on social media. A further explanation may lie in the design of the welfare system itself, which encourages people to seek generous long-term sickness benefits.

How so?

If you’re unemployed, you don’t get much from the state. Unemployment benefit under universal credit is £339 per month if you’re under 25, £425 if you’re over 25. Add in housing benefit, and it reaches around £12,000 per year. However, if you have a long-term disability or a health condition, you get extra payments (at least £217 a month more). If you are categorised in the higher form of sickness benefits, the overall figure rises to over £17,000, according to Centre for Social Justice figures. Add in Pip, and it reaches an average of £24,000, just below the full-time minimum wage. Add in child benefit for one child, and you are paid over £27,000 – closer to the national average wage.

Obviously, the system gives powerful incentives for people to claim sickness, physical or mental; and, unlike with unemployment benefit, it brings with it little or no pressure to seek a job. There are currently around 1,000 new Pip claims submitted every day in the UK; about 34% are successful.

Is the welfare bill sustainable?

It is often said to be “spiralling”, but the overall bill has remained pretty stable as a proportion of the UK’s national income. Welfare spending amounted to just under 11% of GDP in the last financial year – up from 10.4% in 1996-97, but lower than the peak of 12.4% in 2009-10. In fact, total non-pensioner benefits have hovered between 4% and 5% for more than 40 years.

International comparisons are difficult, but the UK’s welfare bill is by most measures right in the middle of the OECD developed nations – it spends far less as a share of GDP than, say, France or Italy, and far more than the US or South Korea. Despite recent increases, the state pension is relatively ungenerous, though Britons do have good private pensions.

Spending on disability and incapacity benefits is growing fast: it is set to hit 2.1% of GDP in 2028 (almost double the share two decades earlier). The Timms Review into the Pip system is due soon; but an interim report has already deemed it “unfit for purpose”. Welfare Minister Pat McFadden said this week that Labour would make benefits reform a “moral crusade”.

However, reform is difficult: it is perceived as an attack on society’s most vulnerable. When Keir Starmer tried to tighten the assessment criteria for Pip, with a bill in June 2025 designed to save £5 billion per year, a threatened rebellion by 126 Labour MPs forced him to back down.

Energy prices are expected to rise sharply in January, with a typical UK annual bill forecast to jump by 16% – amounting to £276 – impacting millions of households at the coldest time of the year.

Successive UK governments have launched a series of schemes to support bill payers in recent years, and now Andy Burnham is under pressure to go further still. The prime minister and Chancellor John Healey must come up with a fresh package of measures to curb rising energy costs, an anonymous Labour MP told The Guardian. “Without it, the vibes will end.”

Here are some of the options at the PM’s disposal – although all come with a cost.

GB Grid

Burnham is proposing a publicly owned body that would bring electricity distribution under greater public control and ownership. The government-backed GB Grid would work with the private sector and power networks to increase competition, drive down costs and speed up delivery of much-needed new infrastructure.

However, its £4 billion funding represents “a fraction of the £70 billion investment expected over the next five years” by the networks themselves, so its “level of ‘control’ is likely to be limited, too”, said The Guardian.

More direct financial support

Another option is for the government to target direct financial support at households struggling the most by expanding or temporarily increasing schemes such as the Warm Home Discount. Around 5.5 million low-income households benefited from the scheme last year.

But “virtually everybody agrees it is inadequate for the bills on the way”, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. Existing help “misses swathes of households who would fall within a better definition of ‘vulnerable’”, including those with “high energy needs for health reasons”.

Industry body Energy UK told the BBC that on top of those receiving the Warm Home Discount, another 2.5 million customers need help with high bills linked to a medical condition or energy-inefficient home.

Cut taxes

The government has already removed VAT from domestic electricity bills between October and March. This will save households “an average of £45 per year” and offer them some “breathing space”, said the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Further tax cuts could further reduce energy bills, but the Treasury would have to find the money to pay for these from elsewhere.

Use less energy

The government could increase schemes offering improved insulation, heat efficiency and the replacement of old heating systems. Unlike a blanket subsidy, the benefit can continue after wholesale prices fall, reducing household energy bills over the longer term. The government’s £15 billion Warm Homes Plan has already set out to upgrade up to five million homes by 2030.

These are potentially more durable approaches than repeated emergency payments, although, once again, funding would need to be found from elsewhere.

An energy guarantee

An affordable energy guarantee would provide a portion of cheaper energy to all households. It would be designed to cover a typical household’s basic energy use, with higher levels of usage being charged at the market rate.

The UK government’s Energy Price Guarantee capped typical household energy bills at £2,500 a year starting in October 2022, but this ended in 2023.

The New Economics Foundation think tank is among a group of campaigners urging the government to bring in a national energy guarantee.

The government has unveiled a new housing support scheme to boost the property market.

Your First Home aims to “combat malaise” among housebuilders, said The Times, and “get young people on the housing ladder”.

Similar to later versions of the popular but now defunct Help to Buy scheme, it will only be available to first-time buyers.

But the “devil will be in the detail” that is coming in next month’s Budget, said Property Week, especially to “avoid claims of unfairness” for those who have already put money aside in the government’s Lifetime Isa.

What does Your First Home involve?

Under the Your First Home scheme first-time buyers will be able to purchase a new-build property with a 2.5% deposit backed by a 20% government equity loan, which could “save hundreds of pounds per month compared to a 95% mortgage”, said the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The deposit “eliminates one of the biggest challenges facing would-be homeowners”, said The Guardian, as many first-time buyers can find it hard to save while also covering other costs such as rent, household bills and, in some cases, childcare.

How will it work?

Full details will be revealed in the Budget, but the government has said first-time buyers will be able to purchase a new-build with a low deposit and an equity loan from developers signed up to the scheme.

The government-backed equity loan will be interest-free at the start and with a 2.5% deposit, the upfront costs “should work out considerably cheaper” than a larger loan-to-value mortgage, said The Sun. There will be a local property price cap and a household income cap “to stop wealthier buyers taking advantage of the scheme”.

The terms haven’t been confirmed, but the equity loan will be repayable, “meaning further costs down the line”, said The Independent.

There has been some criticism of the scheme, though. Will Bainbridge, founder of property investment firm Hawthorn Capital, told Money Age it is “irresponsible policymaking dressed up as aspiration”.

He cited the government’s own evaluation of Help to Buy, which estimated that new-build homes attracted a 5.5% premium, with properties purchased through the scheme carrying a further 0.9% over comparable new-builds.

Your First Home vs. Help to Buy

Commentators are describing Your First Home as a revived version of Help to Buy.

Later versions of Help to Buy had “a lot of similarities” to what we know so far about Your First Home, said The Guardian, including an equity loan, new-builds and price caps.

But the “ongoing row” about soaring student loan debts means there will be extra pressure to be “very clear” about how the equity loan interest will work.

Savers can also put up to £4,000 per year in a Lifetime Isa each year to save towards a property deposit, backed by a 25% government bonus.

Any scheme that "penalises those savers”, said Property Week, “would risk widespread criticism”.

Argentina is subjecting the Falklands to “economic warfare”, the leader of the British overseas territory’s government has said.

As the country ramps up political pressure on its claim of sovereignty over the territory, restrictions are making life more difficult for the residents of the remote Atlantic islands, Andrea Clausen told the Financial Times. And at the centre of the power struggle with Britain is the Falklands’ first oil project: Sea Lion, a joint UK-Israeli venture.

What is life like on the islands?

The Falklands are home to about 3,500 people, most of whom live in the capital, Stanley, with the remainder spread across the sprawling archipelago roughly half the size of Wales. “People are always amazed by the scale when they visit,” one resident told the Metro.

Leaving the islands “isn’t simple – or cheap”. There are two 18-hour direct flights a week to the UK, on a military plane, or one commercial flight a week to Chile. A monthly flight from a small city in southern Argentina is considered a domestic flight by Buenos Aires, although not by the Falklands’ authorities.

Because of the limited connections, imported goods can cost more than double their price in the UK. There’s currently only one shipping link, to Uruguay, which sometimes leads to shortages of cheese and other food staples, said the FT. Most international suppliers “refuse to serve Falklands’ businesses” out of fear of angering Argentina. Officials are preparing a second shipping link to Chile, scheduled to open between November and December. But some islanders worry that Buenos Aires “could try to disrupt those efforts”.

What resources do the Falklands have?

There is a “huge capital programme” underway to boost the islands’ infrastructure, said resident Traighana Smith in The Independent, including a new power station and port, and “a hydrocarbon industry is also on the horizon”.

There are “vast energy reserves” just 136 miles north of the islands, said The Telegraph. Surveys suggest the Sea Lion oilfield contains up to 1.7 billion barrels of oil: “larger than anything remaining in British North Sea waters”.

Two oil companies, Britain’s Rockhopper Exploration and Israel’s Navitas Petroleum, are due to begin a joint project extracting from the oilfield within two years. The $2.2 billion venture, the Falklands’ first commercial oil project, aims to produce 50,000 barrels per day. It could be “economically transformative for the islands”, said the FT. It could “triple GDP” and reduce dependence on the inconsistent fishing industry.

“We never want to rely on handouts from the UK,” said Stirling Harcus, a director at the islands’ Chamber of Commerce. “We’re already a growing self-sufficient economy, but oil would supercharge that process.”

What is Argentina doing?

At the start of September, President Javier Milei announced restrictions on companies involved in oil extraction, along with additional military funding. His new sanctions regime “appears to target both oil and fishing”, said the FT, which is responsible for more than half of the islands’ GDP.

And on Monday, Milei warned that his government would request an emergency order to stop development of the Sea Lion oilfield if drilling is not halted within two weeks. If the “illegitimate exploitation” does not stop, his statement said, Argentina will ask the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, a Hamburg-based maritime court, to order a temporary halt to the project. Argentinian officials argue the project is “an inflection point”, said the FT, because it violates a UN resolution banning “unilateral” changes to the status quo on the islands.

“Time will tell” if Milei follows through on his threats, said Smith in The Independent. But in the meantime, the Falklands will “continue to grow its industries and care for its people”.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has confirmed a new “safe and legal” route to Britain for groups including Palestinian refugees, and women and girls from Afghanistan.

As she announced the re-opening of the UK Resettlement Scheme, two years after it was effectively suspended, Mahmood also signalled that she was prepared to water down some of her more stringent planned migration reforms in response to a Labour backlash. She told the Labour party conference the government was seeking “a position that balances fairness for those who came here legally, and fairness to British citizens across this country”.

What are the current legal routes?

“Safe and legal routes” are “authorised immigration arrangements” which allow a person to “move to another country for humanitarian reasons”, said a House of Commons Library briefing. In the UK, those consist of the UK Resettlement Scheme, Community Sponsorship and the Mandate Scheme, all of which cater for vulnerable refugees referred by the United Nations Refugee Agency. In 2024, the UK Resettlement Scheme closed to new referrals, effectively shutting it off as a legal route.

The Mandate Scheme resettles refugees who have a close family member in the UK who is willing to accommodate them. Community Sponsorship allows groups of local citizens, charities, and faith organisations to directly welcome, house, and support resettled refugee families. These schemes have been “operating at very limited capacity in recent years”, said the briefing.

Over the past five years, the UK has created specific “humanitarian pathways” for people from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. Since 2020, these bespoke schemes account for the vast majority of those who have arrived in the UK through safe and legal routes. Almost half of the 575,000 arrivals have been Ukrainians, followed by Hong Kong citizens (186,000). Another 62,000 people came to the UK through the refugee family reunion route, and 38,000 came through three resettlement schemes for Afghan citizens who had assisted British forces.

What is the new legal migration route?

Under the reopened resettlement scheme, the government expects about one in four arrivals to be Afghan women and girls or Palestinian refugees. A Home Office briefing says admissions will initially be capped and are expected to “number in the hundreds at first, but this will grow into the low thousands as levels of illegal migration fall”.

Those eligible will be identified in partnership with the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Refugee Assistance Project. All candidates will undergo security and criminality checks before they travel to the UK.

New arrivals will be placed on a five-year path to permanent settlement in the UK. “This is, by design, more generous than those who arrive by small boat or other illegal means”, the Home Office said, and intended to “disincentivise illegal routes”.

Mahmood had announced plans to increase the timeline for permanent residence for legal migrants from five years to up to 15 years. The changes would apply retrospectively to migrants who arrived in Britain after 2021. But she has now signalled a rethink after Angela Rayner and up to 100 Labour MPs petitioned Mahmood to exclude around 185,000 foreign-born care workers from the stricter rules.

Will the new scheme be effective?

“The government deserves credit for creating new safe and legal routes that will help refugees reach the UK without risking their lives”, Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst at the Refugee Council, told The Guardian. Such routes are “essential to undermining people-smugglers’ business model, but they only work if they operate at scale”, which means “thousands of places, not hundreds”.

However, said the newspaper, the scheme “is likely to attract criticism from the right, especially as women and girls and people with disabilities are the most likely to be dependent on the welfare state”.

Owners of high-value homes will be hit with a new mansion tax from April 2028 but there are already fears that it could affect more homeowners than expected.

The High Value Council Tax Surcharge, to give it its official name, was presented by former chancellor Rachel Reeves in her 2025 Autumn Budget as a way to “make the council tax system fairer”, said MoneyWeek.

The Treasury says that under the current system, the average band D charge for a typical family home across England is £2,280. That is £250 more per year than for a £10 million property in Mayfair, based on the band H charge in the City of Westminster. The government says that “this surcharge will change that”. Here is what you need to know.

What is the mansion tax?

The levy targets wealth “tied up in property”, while positioning it as “a tool to support public finances”, said property specialists Benham & Reeves.

Under the proposals, properties worth above £2 million will be placed into bands based on their value. Owners of homes worth between £2 million and £2.5 million will pay £2,500 extra council tax per year, rising to £3,500 for homes worth between £2.5 million and £3.5 million, and it will be £5,000 for homes worth £3.5 million to £5 million. Properties worth more than £5 million will incur a charge of £7,500. Charges will increase in line with the consumer prices index inflation rate each year from 2029-30.

How will homes be valued?

Over the next two years, the Valuation Office, an executive agency of HM Revenue & Customs, will be conducting a “targeted valuation exercise” to identify the properties that will be affected, said MoneyWeek. It will use professional valuers and industry-standard automated valuation models to assess sales data and property attributes such as the size, sale price and age of properties.

Information gaps may “pose a problem”, said Transparency International; the price paid for properties is in many cases “incomplete or missing” and in some cases it may be unclear who owns the property.

Homeowners who disagree with the valuation may face a “long and expensive appeals process”, said north London estate agency Maunder Taylor. The Treasury has also indicated there may be exemptions, such as for individuals who bought or inherited their home but who now have a lower income.

How many people will have to pay it?

The high threshold to be eligible for mansion tax means the “vast majority” of homeowners and buyers “won’t be impacted”, said law firm Setfords. Estimates from the Office for Budget Responsibility suggest around 165,000 households will be impacted under the current scope.

But there have been reports that the tax threshold could be lowered to £1.5 million. This would affect another 160,000 homes, said Tax Policy Associates. Such a “controversial move” would “hammer” swathes of homeowners in the capital, said London’s The Standard. The Telegraph estimates that lowering the threshhold would make one in four homes in the capital eligible for mansion tax.

How will it tax impact the housing market?

Properties in London and the South East of England will “bear most of the brunt” of the mansion tax, said the HomeOwners Alliance. It is “unlikely to have a marked impact” on the overall property market, said financial advisers CMS Wealth, but it could push down prices around the mansion tax thresholds. Those looking to avoid the tax may think about downsizing, although stamp duty costs “may make this option prohibitive”.

The three-and-a-half-year inquiry into alleged war crimes carried out by members of the SAS in Afghanistan will be further delayed after the Ministry of Defence produced nearly 100 million new files as evidence.

The MoD has apologised to the inquiry’s chair, Lord Justice Charles Haddon-Cave, for “delays in failing to explain why it unexpectedly revealed a further 97 million new documents”, said BFBS Forces News. The government department did later concede that only “around 1,200 might be relevant”.

But Haddon-Cave said the “somewhat casual way” the inquiry was informed about the documents “did not give cause for confidence”.

With mounting costs and the latest delays, the outcome of the inquiry could still be years away. A spokesperson for the MoD said the government is “fully committed to the Afghanistan inquiry”.

What has the inquiry heard so far?

The inquiry was launched in 2023 after claims that British special forces personnel had “executed captives in Afghanistan and destroyed evidence of wrongdoing”, said The Telegraph. The allegations were that “80 or more unarmed Afghans, including children and detainees, were executed by soldiers” between 2010 and 2013. It is expected that around 150 SAS soldiers who served in Afghanistan will be called to give evidence.

Several senior UK military personnel have told the inquiry that the SAS “carried out extra judicial killings of Afghan civilians”, said the BBC. Concerns were also raised about the secrecy measures used by the SAS and that previous investigations into the allegations had “ended prematurely”.

At closed hearings reported in January last year, several senior officers spoke of their fears “that the regiment, fresh from aggressive, high-tempo operations in Iraq, was being driven by kill counts”, said the BBC. One told the inquiry that the SAS had a “golden pass allowing them to get away with murder”. In emails seen by the inquiry, the officer said the presentation of operational killings in official reports was “quite incredible”, and described the SAS and murder as “regular bedfellows”.

Why has it been delayed?

Proceedings were already behind schedule. Haddon-Cave said an interim report would be published within 18 months (at the end of 2024), but lawyers had accepted publishing in 2028 would be more likely.

Now, more than 97 million files relating to the period 2010-2013, which had previously been discounted by the MoD as being outside the scope of the investigation, have been brought to Haddon-Cave’s attention. This discovery is “troubling and regrettable, and if not rapidly addressed and managed has the capacity to delay the important work of this inquiry”, he said.

Speaking for the Afghan families, Edward Craven KC told the inquiry that due to the number of files to trawl through, “there may be a tension between the imperative of thoroughness and the imperative of timeliness”.

What has the reaction been?

Former SAS personnel have argued that the inquiry is a “witch hunt”, said The Telegraph. Ed Butler, who was an SAS brigadier in Afghanistan, said soldiers had been pursued “through the prism of human rights laws, as opposed to the law of armed conflict and the rules of engagement from the Geneva Convention”, which is “totally inappropriate”.

Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, a former sergeant-major in the SAS, told The Times that the unit’s “principles form the backdrop of every special forces unit in the Western world”.

The inquiry, which has yet to publish any findings, has already racked up costs of £58 million in the three years from its launch to March 2026, according to a Freedom of Information request by the BBC. The MoD revealed that 74 of its staff were currently spending “more than 50% of their time” working on the inquiry.

But public inquiries are “rarely quick or cheap”, said the BBC. For example, the Bloody Sunday inquiry, which found that the killing of 13 protesters in Northern Ireland by British soldiers in 1972 was “unjustified”, took “12 years to complete and cost more than £190 million”.

The building projects envisaged by the tech industry are on a truly staggering scale. In 2025, Morgan Stanley estimated that $2.9 trillion would be spent on AI data centres worldwide between that year and 2028; McKinsey projects $5.2 trillion spending on AI by 2030. Specialised “hyperscale” data centres are already springing up across the developed world.

As little as a year ago, many politicians were keen to attract such large investments. But in the US, public opinion has swung sharply against data centres. A recent Gallup poll suggests that they’re now facing more opposition than nuclear power stations: seven in ten Americans don’t want them in their area. Scepticism is rising in Britain, too.

Aren’t they everywhere already?

Regular data centres – warehouses where racks of computers store emails and photos, stream media, process credit card transactions and generally keep the internet running – have been a standard sight on the peripheries of large towns since the 1990s. Nearly a quarter of the world’s internet traffic reportedly passes through northern Virginia; London is largely served by two hubs in the Docklands and Slough.

There are more than 520 data centres in the UK – but some 100 more are planned, the majority designed to handle AI workloads, as use by business and consumers surges. Google’s new centre in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, sits on a 33-acre site. A £10 billion AI facility on the 130-acre site of a former power station is being built in Blyth, Northumberland. These are dwarfed by some in the US. Meta’s Hyperion centre in Louisiana, for example, will cover 4,000 acres, and is expected to use at least twice as much electricity as the entire city of New Orleans.

Why do people object to them?

The US seems to be experiencing a wide, bipartisan “AI revolt”, based on a series of linked factors. People don’t want huge, ugly, ominously humming industrial infrastructure in their backyard. They object to the massive water and electricity consumption (which, in some cases, has led to higher utility bills), and to the pollution: most rely on diesel back-up generators.

Opposition is fed by a deep distrust of corporate power, embodied by tech billionaires, and by a sense that ordinary people will gain little from AI; industry leaders tend to reinforce this message, often saying that their tech will lead to massive job losses and, quite possibly, the extinction of humanity. Once their construction is complete, data centres also provide surprisingly few jobs.

Why are they so big?

AI depends as much on brute-force computing power – raw “compute”, as it’s known – as it does on clever software. Massive groups of specialised computer chips must sit very close together to work at top speed. They use “parallel processing”: speeding things up by tackling lots of small mathematical tasks simultaneously, rather than one by one. Every metre between two chips adds a nanosecond to the processing time, so the idea is to pack as many as possible closely together. The chips are power-hungry (a ChatGPT AI query consumes about ten times as much energy as a normal Google search) and also generate a lot of heat, which requires cooling systems.

How much water do they use?

UN researchers report that data centres used around 4.5 trillion litres last year – enough to meet the basic needs of some 600 million people – and they expect that figure to double. In Britain, clear figures are hard to come by: data centres are not required to report how much water they use. But consumption varies widely, depending on design. Older centres use evaporative cooling systems. In Slough, one data centre has an abstraction licence for 1.7 million litres of water a day. A US expert has likened such facilities to “a giant soda straw sucking water” out of a basin.

Newer centres tend to have closed-loop cooling systems, recycling the same water, so their consumption is relatively negligible; or air-cooling systems, like Google’s in Waltham Cross, which use even less. A recent study found that data centres account for just 0.2% of all non-household drinking-water consumption in England.

What about energy?

That is a more intractable problem. AI computing, and its cooling systems, are unavoidably energy-intensive. According to UN figures, data centres across the world used more electricity than France did last year; and they’re projected to use more than Japan by 2030, with AI accounting for more than a third of that.

Some of the biggest companies are trying to limit their carbon output: Microsoft and Google are investing in nuclear power, and hyperscale projects are gravitating to cold, clean energy-heavy countries such as Finland. The UK’s National Energy System Operator estimated that data centres consumed 5.0 TWh of electricity in 2023 – equivalent to 2% of the total, or that of 1.8 million households. Today, the figure is 6%, and rising fast.

Where is all this leading?

Data centres are a campaign issue in November’s US midterm elections. Even Republican Texas has called a moratorium on new facilities; Donald Trump, however, has told Americans they’ll end up “backwards and poor”, and let China win the AI race, if they don’t accept data centres.

In the UK, there have been protests against new centres from Leeds to Devon to Slough. But the Government, aiming to create growth and make Britain an AI power with a “sovereign AI ecosystem”, is actively pushing the development of data centres, in particular in “AI growth zones” such as Culham in Oxfordshire, Teesside and South Wales. It treats centres as “critical national infrastructure”, allowing local planners to be overruled. As for the economic effects of the vast AI investment boom now contorting the global economy, they have yet to be discerned.

Britain is on course for a hung parliament with no party securing an overall majority in the next general election, according to a YouGov MRP poll that predicts how constituencies would vote.

Labour would be the biggest party with 241 seats, 85 short of an outright majority; the Conservatives would be on 130, trailed by Reform on 123. With the Liberal Democrats at 71 and the Green Party on nine, it is likely to mean a scramble to form a coalition.

Benjamin Disraeli famously said in 1852, “England does not love coalitions”, but the country may have to put any deep-seated scepticism to one side in the near future. Here are some of the most likely coalitions.

Labour-Liberal Democrat

According to the YouGov results, a Labour and Lib Dem combination would still not be enough to reach the 326-seat bar for a majority in the House of Commons.

Andy Burnham has not commented directly on the prospect of a future coalition, but Ed Davey, when approached, did not rule it out completely. Asked if he would form a coalition with Labour, the Lib Dem leader said he did not deal in “hypotheticals”. Insiders in the PM's team told The Times that Burnham’s support of electoral reform, a long-held Lib Dem cause, could provide the perfect olive branch to Davey’s party.

A Labour-Lib Dem coalition was widely expected following the 2010 general election, but its prospects were felled by a series of issues, including a lack of faith in the then Labour leader Gordon Brown.

Conservative-Liberal Democrat

Unlike his neutral response to a Lab-Lib coalition, Davey has dismissed suggestions his party could do a deal with the Conservatives. “We’ve got a moral responsibility to stop Nigel Farage – and indeed stop Kemi Badenoch giving the keys to No. 10 to Nigel Farage – I think there could be that sort of coalition on the right and we've got to stop that,” he told the BBC.

“Mention of a coalition often sparks fear into the heart of a Lib Dem because of how the last one ended,” said Politico. In 2010, the parties formed the UK’s first coalition government since 1945. The cabinet was made up of 16 Conservatives and five from Nick Clegg's party. But after five years as junior partner, the Lib Dems crashed from 57 Westminster seats to just eight in the next election.

Conservative-Reform

Reform’s projected total of 123 seats is a dramatic reversal for the party, which was forecast to win 311 last September. At the end of last year, Farage said the Conservatives would be finished. He denied he would form an electoral pact after the Financial Times reported he told donors he thought an agreement was inevitable. “I would never do a deal with a party that I do not trust,” he said. “No deals, just a reverse takeover.”

Kemi Badenoch has rejected calls to “unite the right” and ruled out entering a coalition with Reform. Speaking to GB News, she said “problematic people” have joined Farage’s party, adding: “How can we join with them?”

Even if the two right-wing leaders changed their minds, a Tory-Reform pact would manage only 253 MPs according to the poll – 73 short of the 326 majority line.

“If uniting the right has never been more important since we entered the era of five-party politics, it has also never been more difficult,” said Lord Ashcroft, a right-wing political donor and pollster. An electoral alliance between Reform and the Conservatives “would be doomed to fail, and the Conservatives have much more to lose from trying”.

Progressive alliance (Lab-Lib-Green-SNP)

If Labour were to team up with the Lib Dems and the Greens, which would amount to 321 seats, Burnham would still need backing from others to get over the line.

With the nationalist parties, the SNP or Plaid Cymru, in the mix, then a range of “coalition of the left” options are open to build a majority, Patrick English, YouGov elections chief, said in The Times.

“Nobody goes into politics, whatever party, to close a school,” said Una O’Halloran, leader of Islington council.

“There’s a generation that are not going to be having children, or maybe just having one child, and that’s really sad. You need children in the city.”

The number of pupils in the capital is falling, as birth rates decline, and costs for housing and childcare services increase. But as London’s population continues to rise, experts fear an unbalanced and unsustainable future for the city.

How bad is it?

Due to falling numbers, more than 90 schools have either closed or merged over the past five years, said a new report by London Councils. And the problem is “intensifying”. In Hackney, primary school numbers are down 15% since the pandemic, and projected to dip another 14% between 2024-25 and 2029-30. Islington is set for the “sharpest decline in the country” at 22%.

In the past five years across the UK, nine of the 10 fastest-shrinking local authorities for primary school children were in London, according to The Education Policy Institute. Eight were in inner London.

It is not just primary schools. Secondary school numbers, which have been “rising until 2026, will start to fall next year”, said Chris Smyth in the Financial Times.

But London’s population is rising, according to London Assembly Economy, Culture and Skills Committee (LAECSC) data, quoted in Bloomberg. In the decade up to 2023, the population increased by more than 500,000, yet the number of residents under 10 fell by 99,100.

And since 2018, 100 of London’s 2,500 schools – 4% – have closed, mostly in inner London. If this trend continues, the report warned, the capital could become a “childless city”.

Why is this happening?

Many experts think unaffordable housing and childcare are the principal causes of this decline. LAECSC data showed that the typical London home costs 11.1 times the average salary, compared with 7.7 times across England. Rents are also “60% higher than for England as a whole”, and nursery costs for a child under two in inner London are “34% higher than the English average”.

The birth rate in London also “continues its steady downward march”, said The Telegraph, revealing “an ageing city at the sharp end of Britain’s baby bust”. Many fertility rates in London hovered just above 1.0 births per woman in 2024, where 2.1 is needed to maintain a population. Some experts believe that “big jumps” in the minimum wage and National Insurance have left the childcare sector “reeling”, squeezing resources for parents and prospective parents.

Is London alone?

London’s falling numbers are “mirrored across cities in Europe and the US”, said Hugo Cox in the Financial Times. Primary school enrolment in Paris has “fallen by a quarter” in the last 10 years, while the same group in New York fell almost 20% in the decade to autumn 2024. In Barcelona, preschool entry – “the main entry point into the school system” – was 16% lower in 2024 than in 2016.

As in London, much of the decline is blamed on falling birth rates and rising housing costs. Also, in these cities a “growing use of homes for short-term rentals and housebuilding strategies geared away from families are fanning the demographic imbalance”. In other words, families are being forced out for financial reasons.

But these “divergent lines are not inevitable”. In Vienna, authorities provide family-sized homes, often through “large-scale subsidised or municipal housing”. Copenhagen, aided by high immigration, also implements “strong childcare and parental leave policies”. Both cities “buck the trend of falling child numbers”.

What will the consequences be?

“Change can create uncertainty and anxiety for children, families and staff,” said the foreword of the London Councils report. “While changes to school organisation are often discussed in terms of pupil numbers and finances, their human impact is equally important.” Closures can create a “genuine sense of loss, reflecting the deep connections between schools and the communities they serve”.

Councils are still hedging their bets, said Smyth in the FT. They are holding onto empty buildings in case of a revival. Hackney “planned for a pupil boom more than a decade ago”, only to be met with a decline. “It does not want to make the opposite mistake now.”

The Trump administration notified Congress this week of plans to admit up to 17,500 refugees into the United States during the coming fiscal year. Notably, the vast majority of those refugees will be white South Africans, for whom this White House and President Donald Trump have become reliable international patrons.

By focusing almost exclusively on Afrikaners, the white South African ethnic group responsible for that country’s former system of apartheid, Trump and his allies have dramatically reshaped the U.S. refugee program as a whole. And this change, critics argue, is at the material expense of other at-risk communities worldwide.

How has Trump helped resettle white South Africans?

The White House has predominantly portrayed Afrikaners seeking to resettle in the U.S. as “victims of racial oppression in postapartheid South Africa,” said CBS News. The group faces “seizure of agricultural property without compensation,” laws designed to “dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education and business,” and “hateful rhetoric fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored minorities,” said the State Department in its notification to Congress, per the outlet. The South African government has “consistently denied” persecuting the primarily Dutch-descended community.

Resettling the thousands of South African refugees is “expected to cost approximately $500 million,” said CNN. The push comes after Trump “increased the refugee cap for South Africans” in May, more than doubling it “from a limit of 7,500.” The U.S. refugee resettlement program had “historically enjoyed strong bipartisan support” for welcoming “tens of thousands of refugees from countries around the world to new lives in America,” said The Associated Press. “Instead,” Trump has “transformed it into a vehicle to resettle white South Africans" in the U.S.

Why are critics concerned?

By focusing solely on South Africa at the expense of other refugee communities, the Trump administration is “stranding people fleeing persecution without the safety they’ve been promised after years of waiting,” said the immigration advocacy group HIAS in a statement. The White House is “diminishing and distorting” the U.S.' refugee programs “in service of its political whims,” said Naomi Steinberg, the HIAS vice president of refugee and immigration policy and advocacy, in the same release.

After Trump “slashed the number of refugees approved every year” during his first term, said the AP, the Biden administration “built the system back up.” Then Trump “immediately” suspended it when he returned to office, “stranding people around the world who had been slated to come to the U.S.”

A refugee program that “centers one group and sidelines all others” is an “abdication of our global ⁠humanitarian leadership ​and an abandonment of thousands of vulnerable ​families,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president and CEO of refugee advocacy group Global Refuge, in a statement.

What else has Trump done for white South Africans?

One week before notifying Congress of its new, almost exclusively Afrikaner refugee resettlement plan, the Trump administration announced it would “revoke U.S. visas or reject visa applications” from foreign nationals “responsible for discrimination against whites and other minority groups in South Africa,” said the AP. Trump had cited disparate instances of violence and various discrete local policies as “evidence of a larger antiwhite stance” in the country. In addition to encouraging Afrikaner resettlement in the United States, Trump last year “froze most foreign assistance to South Africa,” said Al Jazeera.

The prime minister announced military support to Saudi Arabia in a bid to avoid further disruption to global energy supplies, which could have a knock-on effect on the cost of living at home.

He made the decision ahead of his first meeting with Donald Trump in New York, as a statement from the Ministry of Defence said an RAF Voyager air-to-air refuelling aircraft is to be deployed to bolster Saudi “defensive activity in support of the legitimate government of Yemen”.

Why is the UK getting involved?

The conflict between Iranian-backed Houthis and Yemen’s Saudi-backed government has reignited in recent weeks, with the rebels aiming missile and drone attacks at Saudi Arabia itself, including on the capital Riyadh over the weekend. Having seized the strategically vital port city of Mokha in Yemen earlier this month, they have also declared a blockade on Saudi shipping in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which around 12% of global trade passes.

Last week The Associated Press reported that Saudi was running low on missile interceptors and had “turned to regional and Western allies for assistance”. With the US’ missile stockpile depleted by its war against Iran, France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt were asked to step in with air-defence assistance to help defend against missile attacks by the Houthis and other Iran-backed groups.

UK Defence Minister Luke Pollard told Sky News that the UK was stepping up “for national security reasons in support of our own national security”, but Andy Burnham alluded to another reason closer to home.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait has been used increasingly as an alternative route for oil exports, bypassing disruption in the ⁠Strait of Hormuz. Any blockade would drive up global energy prices even further.

“On cost-of-living pressures and acting to secure the interests of Britain and the wider region … we need to keep those pathways open,” said the PM.

Could the UK get dragged into a wider conflict?

The use of the RAF Voyager, normally based in Cyprus, is expected to start within days and will be time-limited. The initial agreement is believed to be for a matter of weeks, but Burnham said it will be kept under review.

It is understood to be focused on defensive capabilities, “but could include shooting down drones, which is considered a defensive measure”, said The Independent.

The support builds on the UK’s existing military contribution to Saudi Arabia’s air defence, including the deployment of air defence equipment and UK personnel helping to protect against missile and drone attacks.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, Burnham chose to focus less on ongoing tensions in the Middle East and instead target Russian disinformation and the threat posed by AI.

On the Iran war he told reporters, “the message is that we want to see an end to the conflict as quickly as possible and we stand ready to play our part”.