Andy Burnham began his premiership in dramatic style last night, with a brutal purge of ministers loyal to his predecessor in a cabinet reshuffle far more wide-ranging than many expected.

Today the new PM welcomes the first meeting of his top team, “spanning the mainstream wings of the party, including key Northern allies and ministers who fell out with Starmer”, said Politico’s UK political correspondent, Sam Blewett.

Who took the top jobs?

Burnham aside, the biggest winner following the toppling of Keir Starmer is the new Chancellor, John Healey. A surprise pick, the veteran MP – who quit as defence secretary last month in a row over funding – first held a Treasury brief under Tony Blair back in the early 2000s. Hailing from the centre of the party, he is seen as a safe pair of hands who, it is hoped, will not spook the markets like some other names who had been tipped to replace Rachel Reeves.

Chief among these was former Labour leader and net zero champion, Ed Miliband, who has instead been appointed foreign secretary. He replaces Yvette Cooper, who moves to the health department in what is technically a demotion. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is one of the few Starmer-era ministers to keep her job, along with Pat McFadden at the Department for Work and Pensions, and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.

And what about the rest?

Burnham loyalists make up much of the rest of the cabinet, with his right-hand woman and key enforcer Louise Haigh becoming chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, first secretary of state and Cabinet Office minister, tasked with making government run effectively.

Anneliese Midgley, one of the key figures in Burnham’s leadership campaign, has become chief whip, while Miatta Fahnbulleh, another close ally of the PM who has been advising him on policy, takes over from Miliband as energy secretary.

Rounding off a long evening of Westminster psychodrama, former deputy PM Angela Rayner returned to her old job as housing and communities secretary, while one-time leadership contender Wes Streeting becomes secretary of state for defence.

What does the line-up say about Burnham’s plans?

Downing Street has insisted Burnham and Healey have the “same outlook” when it comes to the major issues that the new PM wants to tackle, including re-industrialisation, devolution and the cost of living. While his appointment signals that the new government will prioritise defence spending – perhaps through the issuing of so-called “war bonds” – many see Healey as more of a blank slate than the likes of Miliband or Mahmood, suggesting economic policy could ultimately emanate from No. 10, rather than next door.

In his first speech as PM, Burnham vowed to end rough sleeping, raise the income tax personal allowance, cut VAT on electricity bills and reform social care. Now it’s up to Healey to find the cash and flexibility, within strict fiscal rules, to make these and other ambitions happen.

The elevation of Miliband to the Foreign Office suggests Burnham also wishes to break from Starmer when it comes to international relations, to “focus relentlessly on the domestic”, said Blewett. Having a “big figure from Labour’s left in charge of the foreign brief could help smooth that ride”.

If there is one thing we learnt from yesterday’s appointments it is that Burnham has a “much stronger theory of power – a view about how he wants to use the office and what he wants to prioritise – than his recent predecessors”, said journalist Sam Freedman in his Comment is Freed newsletter.

Unlike Starmer, whose government “looked buffeted by events and U-turns” from day one, Burnham “has indicated not just that he has priorities but that he is willing to make the institutional changes required to make them happen”.

More young people will be able to vote in the next general election but many of them won’t be able to smoke on the way home – Keir Starmer’s reign has signalled drastic changes in the lives of British teenagers.

While rights and participation have been expanded by lowering the voting age to 16, young people are also facing increased protection and regulation, with limits being imposed on tobacco and social media use.

Smoking

Children aged 17 or younger face a lifelong ban on buying cigarettes after the Tobacco and Vapes Bill became law in April.

Now anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 cannot legally buy tobacco products in the UK. The new law also strengthens restrictions around vaping products aimed at children.

“The world-leading legislation means today’s children will never legally be sold cigarettes, breaking the cycle of addiction and disadvantage that has persisted for decades,” said the government.

But pushback has come from conservatives and from members of the tobacco industry. Nigel Farage told The Telegraph in March that if Reform ever comes into power, the law would be scrapped.

Voting and consultations

The government will reduce the minimum voting age to 16. The registration age will be moved to 14, to help make sure that young people can be fully registered and have the opportunity to vote even if an election falls on or shortly after their 16th birthday.

Young people “represent the future of our country”, said the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. “Decisions the government makes now” will “affect young people today” and “have an enduring impact on their entire lives”, so it’s “only right and fair” that younger people can vote.

For those supporting the change, the move is seen as a massive expansion of civic education, primarily in schools. But as Harriet Andrews, a campaigner for young people’s democratic engagement, told the Institute for Government in May: “Provision is really quite patchy and it’s a real lottery.”

As well as their direct involvement in voting, teenagers have been consulted in other ways. The recent online safety proposals were accompanied by consultation responses from young people themselves, reflecting a broader trend towards involving young people in decisions that affect them.

Social media

The government announced in June that it will ban under-16s from accessing a range of platforms, including TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram. The government hopes to “pass regulation before Christmas”, said former PM Keir Starmer, with the ban coming into force in spring 2027.

Older teenagers will face an overnight social media curfew, meaning apps such as Instagram, TikTok and YouTube will be unavailable by default to 16- and 17-year-olds between midnight and 6am.

The moves follow “growing pressure from campaigners to make the online world safer for young people”, said the BBC. They’re “part of an international trend of governments restricting who can access social media”.

Everything else

There is still, though, no real consensus on the age of maturity into adulthood in the UK. British teens turning 16 can have sex if they want, unless it’s with someone in a position of “trust and responsibility” like a teacher. But they can’t watch other people having sex in pornographic films until 18.

They can’t drive on public roads until they are 17 and can’t drink alcohol until they reach 18. Since 2023, teens have to be 18 to be married or enter into a civil partnership.

Teens can start enlisting in the military when they are 15, but are not able to engage in combat until 18. And in education English pupils must stay in school or training until the age of 18. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, they can give up learning at 16.

“Confused? How do you think teens feel?” said Rosa Prince on Bloomberg. And with all of the changes from Starmer’s government “it’s getting worse”.

Things are very difficult in Cuba. Since February, the country’s power grid has suffered three nationwide blackouts: there is currently electricity for two hours a day at most in Havana, and less in rural areas. Mains water works roughly every other day. The average monthly wage, in real terms, is under US$20. Food production has fallen drastically; shortages are common. Petrol is prohibitively expensive. Cuba’s once-impressive healthcare and education systems are in tatters.

Tourism – the island’s main economic lifeline – was down 58% in the first five months of 2026 compared with the year before. Long-haul flights there have stopped because they can’t refuel. Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever and chikungunya have staged a comeback, and the UN reported last month that child mortality has risen sharply. An estimated fifth of the population has left since 2021.

Why is this happening?

Cubans have endured decades of mismanagement from their own communist government, along with economic warfare from the US – but the past few years have been particularly harsh. Cuba invested heavily in tourism and underinvested in healthcare during the 2010s, only to see both sectors heavily impacted by the Covid pandemic. Miguel Díaz-Canel, who in 2021 became the nation’s first leader not from the Castro family since 1959, ordered a crackdown that year on the largest wave of protests seen for decades.

But the main cause of the present trouble is a US oil blockade, which began in January – the biggest such action since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Trump at the same time issued an executive order designating Cuba a national security threat – and called on Cuba’s leaders to “make a deal before it is too late”.

Why does the US think Cuba is a national security threat?

It didn’t offer specific reasons beyond Cuba’s alliances with Russia and China, along with claims that it “destabilises the region through migration and violence”. Cuba’s communist regime has historically been a bugbear for the US, particularly for Republicans. And Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants, favours regime change.

But the timing suggests that the decision to tighten the screws was inspired by the successful US action against Venezuela on 3 January – and, more broadly, by Trump’s desire to assert US primacy in the western hemisphere. In March, the president told reporters he believed he’d have “the honour of taking Cuba... I think I can do anything I want with it.”

What’s Venezuela’s role in this?

Venezuela became Cuba’s main regional ally in 1999, when Hugo Chávez’s left-wing government began supplying Fidel Castro with cheap oil. The alliance continued under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, and until this year, 75% of its oil imports came from Venezuela and Mexico. But after seizing Maduro in January, killing 32 Cuban security personnel in the process, the US made Venezuela cut off Cuban oil supplies; Mexico did the same under the threat of tariffs. The island requires around 100,000 barrels of oil per day for its power stations and infrastructure to function; since January, episodic shipments have only given short-term relief.

It now seems that the Trump administration is looking for a similar outcome to Venezuela: sources told The Wall Street Journal they were aiming for regime change by the end of 2026.

What are the US demands?

They haven’t shared them in public, though the Cuban government confirmed in March that talks were taking place. Trump’s previous actions suggest that his definition of regime change is flexible. In Venezuela, the US left Maduro’s government in place under the control of his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez; the country was forced to open up its oil and mining to US investors, but not to democratise. In the case of Iran, similarly, Trump has shown himself willing to treat a change of personnel at the top as regime change. The Cuban leadership may feel they have some wiggle room; in June it announced a package of 176 free-market reforms in an effort to placate the US. But there are big obstacles to a political settlement on both sides.

Why might a deal be difficult?

A law from 1996 prohibits the US from recognising any Cuban government that includes Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother, who is still, aged 95, a major figure in Cuban politics. Florida’s Cuban-American community, a key part of Trump’s voter coalition, would also object to any deal that did not mean the end of the regime. The US might settle for custody of Castro, who was indicted this May by a Florida grand jury for his part in shooting down two planes belonging to a Cuban exile group in 1996.

But the Cubans are unlikely to agree to that, and there is no plausible opposition party or Delcy Rodríguez-like figure to deal with – though Raúl Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, a reputed playboy who’s close to the Cuban military’s wealthy holding company, is said to have been auditioning for the role.

What if there’s no deal?

An American invasion looks unlikely: Trump is clearly wary of that level of commitment, and has his hands full trying to extricate himself from his “excursion” in Iran. Cuba’s military isn’t the fighting force it used to be, but the country has been resisting US pressure since 1962, and it’s difficult to see the Cuban elite colluding – as some of Venezuela’s did – with a theatrical special-forces raid on Raúl Castro or Díaz-Canel. Castro’s age may be the best hope for a solution, but Cuba has been a one-party state for generations, and with the Trump administration on the opposite side, any transition is likely to be messy.

From the point of view of ordinary Cubans, however, something has to give. “Living like this is agony,” Meyboll Font, a 51-year-old Havana resident, told Agence France-Presse last week.

You could have sworn you did not spend that much, but once again, you get to the end of the month, and the numbers in your bank account are not quite adding up. So, what gives? There is one easy way to get to the bottom of this mystery: expense tracking. By taking note of every time you spend throughout the month, you can more easily see where you might be overspending and where you might be able to cut back.

What are the benefits of tracking your spending?

Tracking your spending is effectively an exercise in attention. When you get into the nitty-gritty of your day-to-day expenditures, you can quickly start to see where exactly your money is going and identify patterns in your spending.

That noticing is only the first step, however — “pairing action with that attention is what really makes a difference,” said Nerdwallet. With increased awareness, perhaps you can figure out what is causing you to veer off budget each month and then make adjustments there. Or, maybe you will spot spending you did not even totally realize was happening, such as on subscriptions or other recurring purchases. Once you cut those out, you free up room in your budget to put towards building your emergency savings account, paying off debt or inching closer to your long-term financial goals.

Ultimately, “not only is tracking spending fundamental to understanding where your money is going, but it also ensures that your spending truly aligns with your goals and priorities,” said Daniel E. Milks, certified financial planner and co-founder of Fiduciary Organization, to Fortera Credit Union.

Is expense tracking the same thing as budgeting?

Expense tracking and budgeting certainly can go hand in hand, but they are not one and the same. Tracking your spending simply refers to the act of “monitoring where your money goes,” whereas “budgeting is more of a proactive approach to managing your money,” said Chase.

You can think of expense tracking as an information-gathering step, with the data you gather there informing the budget you create and adhere to.

How can you track your spending?

There are a number of ways that you can go about tracking your spending. The best option will be whichever feels easiest to you.

A “notebook or printed tracker,” for instance, can be “good for people who remember better by writing things down,” while a spreadsheet can work well for those who “like totals, categories and monthly comparisons,” said MoneyFit, a nonprofit financial education and counseling organization.

There are also a variety of budgeting apps and tools available. “For those who prefer the convenience of automation, linking checking and savings accounts to a budgeting app can often simplify the process,” said Milks to Fortera Credit Union.

Demand for air conditioners is soaring after the Met Office said that weather that was once considered extreme is becoming the “new normal”.

Chinese manufacturer Gree, one of the world’s biggest air-conditioner makers, told the BBC that it had seen “noticeably stronger demand this summer”.

“Many of our customers are first-time buyers,” Gree said in a statement. “The increasingly frequent and prolonged summer heatwaves have clearly changed consumer attitudes.”

What are the main types?

Air conditioners don’t actually make cold air. They move heat from inside a room to outside.

Portable air conditioners are convenient because you can move them from room to room. You can also take them with you when you move house.

Wall-mounted split systems can be used in one room or in an open-plan area. An indoor unit is connected by refrigerant pipes to an outdoor condenser.

A multi-split system can work in several rooms without ductwork because one outdoor unit serves several indoor units. Ducted central air conditioning units cool the whole home. They are rare in the UK but more common in countries such as the US.

Which are suitable for different homes?

Portables are good for renters and homes where permanent installation isn’t allowed. If you’re planning to use it in a bedroom on a sweaty night, noise levels are important because some portable air conditioners can be loud enough to make it difficult to sleep. But some have dedicated sleep modes that reduce fan speed and operating noise.

If you regularly struggle with hot bedrooms or work from home in summer, a split system is quieter, cheaper to run and much more effective. Many split systems are also air-source heat pumps, meaning they can provide highly efficient heating in winter as well as cooling in summer, which can improve their overall value.

Air conditioners with higher British Thermal Unit ratings are better suited to larger spaces, while lower rated models are best for smaller rooms.

How much do they cost to install and run?

The costs depend on the type of air conditioner, the size of your home and how often you use it.

Portable air conditioners come with no installation fee but buying one will still set you back between £250 and £700. They typically cost 20–50p per hour to run.

A single-split wall-mounted system in one room will cost between £1,500 and £3,000 to be installed and can cost up to 40p per hour to run. A multi-split system set up in as many as five rooms will cost £3,000–£7,000 for installation and cost between 20p and 80p per hour to use.

A ducted system over your whole home is a rare approach in the UK. It would cost between £8,000 and £20,000 to have set up. The running costs vary widely.

Japan is to open its first centralised intelligence agency since the Second World War in the face of increased security threats posed by China, Russia and North Korea.

With pacifism enshrined in its post-war constitution and culture, Japan has for decades had to rely on co-operation with US military intelligence support. Now Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has described the reforms as a “first step” towards strengthening the country’s independent espionage capabilities.

How will it work?

Legislation that passed the upper house of Japan’s National Diet in May creates two new bodies: a National Intelligence Council, which acts as the government’s command centre for intelligence gathering and analysis, and a National Intelligence Bureau, which is responsible for operations.

Japanese leaders have “privately approached partners such as the US, Australia and Germany in recent months for advice on technology, staffing and priorities,” said The New York Times.

The idea is that the two new bodies will improve Japan’s intelligence abilities “by strengthening coordination, reducing interagency barriers and ensuring that intelligence products better meet policymakers’ requirements”, defence expert Sanshiro Hosaka told Al Jazeera.

To allay public concern that intelligence gathering could be used for political advantage, supplementary resolutions have been passed “to ensure personal information and privacy are not unnecessarily infringed”, said Japan’s national broadcaster NHK. The amendments also specify that the government “should not gather information in a way that undermines political neutrality”.

Why now?

Japan’s intelligence system has “long been fragmented, with defence officials, diplomats, the police and others collecting and analysing information without sharing intelligence across departments”, said the NYT. “That has left the country especially vulnerable to espionage and foreign interference.”

To make matters worse, Japan also lacks an anti-espionage law, which has made it relatively easy for foreign intelligence activities to go unpunished. “Japan has had enough of being a ‘spy paradise’,” said Philip Shetler-Jones and Masashi Umehara from the Royal United Services Institute think tank.

The Trump administration’s repudiation of long-standing allies has revealed the dangers of over-reliance on US intelligence sharing. With the reform of its intelligence system, Japan’s approach to security is “becoming more self-reliant and autonomous”.

How are Russia and China operating in Japan?

Russian and Chinese operations within Japan have increased in recent years. In 2024, cybersecurity research group Citizen Lab exposed a so-called “paperwall” of Beijing-run websites disguised as Japanese-language news sources to spread pro-China disinformation.

The Russian military, meanwhile, has taken advantage of lax espionage laws to establish a secretive intelligence unit in Tokyo known as the 20th Directorate. “Posing as diplomats or businesspeople, its officers work to buy or steal battlefield technology and smuggle it into Russia”, said The New York Times. The NYT cited Ukrainian government estimates that 90% of Russian missiles and drones used in Ukraine contain Japanese components.

President Donald Trump may continue his rhetoric against Greenland, but a different Arctic land 1,200 miles away, Svalbard, faces similar pressure from other countries. With increasing influence from China and Russia, the Norwegian territory could end up playing an outsize role in global affairs.

What’s happening in Svalbard?

The island is subject to a 1920 treaty that allows people from 49 nations to live and work there without a visa, largely for scientific research. Svalbard has since become the “planet’s leading hub of Arctic science and a rare site of international cooperation,” but this also collides with “increasingly fractured international relations and countries’ quest for influence in the fast-warming Arctic,” said CNN.

China and Russia have been working in Svalbard and established research stations that “provide a gateway to Arctic influence,” said CNN. Due to its abundant natural resources, Svalbard has become a “pawn on Russia’s chessboard,” said France24. And Russia hopes that controlling more of Svalbard will allow it to dominate the nearby Bear Gap, one of the “key maritime routes through which Russian naval vessels and submarines can move from their Arctic bases into the North Atlantic,” said Al Jazeera.

China’s hold on Svalbard is not as strong as Russia’s, but it still maintains a presence. In the nation’s 2018 strategy outline for the Arctic, China “called itself a ‘near-Arctic state’ and repeatedly referred to Svalbard,” said CNN. The country also has “plans for a ‘polar silk road,’ an infrastructure and shipping corridor across the top of the world.” China also has several research stations in Svalbard, including a major testing station on Spitsbergen, Svalbard’s only permanently populated area.

What’s next for Svalbard?

Some are worried that Svalbard’s use by other countries will embolden authoritarianism, as Russia and China will “likely work toward common ends in the development of future Arctic governance,” said The Arctic Institute. Norway’s response “may determine if Svalbard maintains its status as an international research hub or becomes defined by its importance in global trade and military security.” Norway also has its own plan to “mine a huge stretch of Arctic seabed around Svalbard and beyond for critical minerals.”

When it comes to war, the 1920 treaty “prohibits the construction of military bases and fortifications” on Svalbard. However, the article in the treaty that prohibits this is only one sentence and states Svalbard cannot be “used for ‘warlike purposes,’ leaving much room for interpretation,” said The Arctic Institute. Russia has recently been using Svalbard as a “gray zone” for military testing, and the “utilization of these methods is becoming more concentrated on Svalbard as the Arctic Circle captures evermore geopolitical attention.”

Norway seems to be pushing back against Chinese and Russian provocation. In 2022, the government “changed voting rules to prevent non-Norwegians from voting” in Longyearbyen, the capital of Svalbard, said CNN.

And some of the pushback has also been symbolic. This year, two granite Chinese lions were removed from the research station on Spitsbergen. There’s “no Chinese research station on Svalbard,” said Eivind Vad Petersson, the state secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to CNN. There’s a “Norwegian research station with Chinese tenants. That’s a distinction with a difference.”

Data from more than 747,000 participants has been made available to scientists and doctors, creating an unparalleled genomic and electronic health record database “powering next-generation discoveries” in so-called “precision medicine”, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US medical research agency, has announced.

What is it?

Precision medicine, as defined by the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute, is an “innovative approach that uses information about an individual’s genomic, environmental and lifestyle information to guide decisions related to their medical management”.

Generally considered analogous to “personalised medicine” or “individualised medicine”, its goal is “to provide a more precise approach for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease”.

What are the obstacles?

In theory, “therapies targeted to a person’s genetic make-up should be more effective and have fewer side effects”, said the BBC’s David Cox. But in practice, personalised medicine has in the past proved “erratic and expensive”. Another problem has long been that it “requires people to trust governments and companies with their genomic data, while the regulatory environment around medicines is ill-equipped to cope with therapies that are designed for just one person”.

That is the “paradox at the heart of precision medicine,” said NIH director Jay Bhattacharya. “To tailor treatments to individuals, you actually need very large populations to uncover the patterns that connect genetics, lifestyle, and the environment to health outcomes.”

What conditions could benefit from it?

NIH’s All of Us data has already fuelled more than 1,400 peer-reviewed publications across the US and around the world. Recent related breakthroughs range from a first-of-its-kind clinical genetic test predicting inherited risk of heart disease to the development of a low-cost prostate cancer risk model.

In a small-scale trial in California, people with early-stage dementia were given bespoke treatment plans targeting their personal nutritional deficiencies, ongoing infections and environmental exposures, which saw their symptoms improve.

A new “groundbreaking” genomic test could see millions of women with breast cancer spared debilitating chemotherapy, following the results of a trial that could “transform healthcare guidelines worldwide”, said The Guardian.

And in April, The New York Times reported on the story of KJ Muldoon, born in 2024 with an incredibly rare enzyme deficiency. In the space of just six months, a team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine designed a personalised therapy that was able to correct the single misspelled letter in his DNA using gene-editing technology. It was perhaps the “most important medical story of the decade”, said the paper.

AI modelling has also made analysis of huge datasets cheaper and more efficient. A recent study in the Annals of Medicine and Surgery suggests this is already having an impact on a range of critical specialities, including cardiology, infectious diseases, and oncology where machine learning models are able to analyse new sets of biomarkers so enabling “ultra-targeted therapies that strike tumour-specific mutations with remarkable precision”.

Even in psychiatry, AI is increasingly being used to predict treatment resistance for antidepressants well in advance. “This is the future of tailored, bespoke medicine,” said Forbes.

People dealing with record summer heat waves across the United States and Europe aren’t getting much of a respite when the sun goes down. Climate change is causing temperatures to stay high at night, and climate scientists and health experts say hotter evenings may lead to social and medical consequences.

Why are hotter nights a problem?

Intense heat at night is “raising the risk of heat exhaustion and heat stroke even higher, especially for people without access to air conditioning,” said NPR. In cases where the temperature after sundown doesn’t drop below 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, people are “not getting the opportunity for recovery overnight, as we’ve historically seen,” Ashley Ward, the director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute, told NPR.

It is largely the fault of climate change that no nighttime recovery is occurring, as “each summer we are seeing more heat waves similar to the current one and also more hot nights,” said NPR. The “number of nights where the temperature never falls below 70 degrees Fahrenheit is increasing everywhere in the U.S. except the Northern Great Plains,” according to 2023’s Fifth National Climate Assessment. In fact, the extent of the continental U.S. “experiencing hot summer nights is growing at a faster rate than the extent experiencing hot summer days.”

Many people also find sleeping in hot weather difficult, which could further contribute to negative health effects. A June heat wave in the United Kingdom resulted in nearly 65% of people saying they “struggled to sleep,” according to a YouGov survey, while about half said they lost at least three hours of sleep per night. When this happens, the “implications are significant: a drop in work performance, an increase in accidents, lower school test scores” and a “decline in mental health,” Dr. Laurence Wainwright from the U.K.’s University of Oxford told The Guardian.

The type of residence in which people sleep can also make a difference. In Philadelphia, hotter nights are becoming “more dangerous than the days, particularly for older people who live alone in brick rowhouses in the city,” said The Philadelphia Inquirer. Without cooler temperatures, these rowhouses “can become ‘brick ovens’” at night and lead to heat-related deaths. Philadelphia’s dense neighborhoods can also be “several degrees warmer than other areas even within the city,” further exacerbating the problem.

What can be done about this?

With the continually changing climate, nights will likely remain hot, especially during summer. A 2022 Lancet Planetary Health study “projected that heat-related deaths could rise sixfold by the end of the century, largely because of warmer nights, unless planet-warming pollution is significantly curbed,” said The Sacramento Bee. Heat currently “kills more Americans in an average year than any other weather hazard.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 10-year range from 2014 to 2024 recorded an average of about 250 heat-related deaths annually.

Experts say there are warning signs you can look out for to prevent overheating, whether during the day or night. “In its early stages, heat-related injury can be subtle, so it can be fatigue, increased thirst, nausea, vomiting sometimes and oftentimes muscle cramps, which is a symptom of dehydration,” the Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Bryan Baskin said to AccuWeather. People “often think that only those out working in the environment, athletes, people who are outside all the time are at risk, and it’s really not true.”

When the 2028 Summer Olympics kick off in Los Angeles, a Russian team could be among the competitors for the first time in more than a decade. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has lifted its suspension of Russia’s Olympic organization, which had been in place since 2016. Many are angry at the prospect of Russia rejoining the international competition, especially amid its ongoing war with Ukraine.

What was the IOC’s decision?

The IOC “provisionally lifted the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee that had been in effect” since October 2023, the group said in a statement, because it wanted to “ensure a fair opportunity for participation” by Russian athletes. The suspension is also being lifted because Russia is “no longer trying to claim regional sports organizations on Ukrainian soil” as part of the Russian Olympic Committee, said The Athletic. Russia must also abide by anti-doping measures since the country “systemically organized a doping program to pump up their athletes” during the 2014 Winter Games.

But there is also a “lack of confidence in the global sporting community relating to the return of Russian athletes to international competition,” the IOC acknowledged. As a result, the “decision in relation to the display of the Russian flag, anthem, colors or any identifications for the Olympic Games at the appropriate time” will be made in the future, said the IOC, as will any decisions on potentially hosting international events in Russia. Russian officials will also still not be invited to Olympic events.

Olympic officials have stated that they no longer want to punish Russian athletes for their country’s decision to invade Ukraine. “We wanted to ensure all athletes have the possibility to compete at the Olympic Games and not be held responsible for their government’s actions,” IOC President Kirsty Coventry said during a press conference. “But we’ve also been very clear that we do not condone any violence and war around the world.”

What does this mean for the 2028 Olympics?

The IOC’s decision represents a “significant step for bringing Russian athletes, who have struggled with their country’s pariah status on the world stage, back into the international fold after several years,” said The New York Times. The choice to potentially reintroduce Russia to the Olympics will be a “highly controversial decision by the IOC and one likely to be condemned by European countries in particular,” said the BBC.

But “many within the IOC were also mindful of the current geopolitical landscape, and accusations of double standards if the sanction against Russia was maintained, while other countries that have launched military action against other nations escape punishment,” said the BBC. Others say that Russia’s ban should only have ended when the country pulls out of Ukraine, and that allowing it in the 2028 Olympics “risks emboldening President Vladimir Putin and handing him a propaganda win.”

So while the IOC’s decision does mean Russia “could compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics,” said Politico, Russian participation in the games will not come without backlash, including from Ukraine. The IOC’s choice “sends a deeply concerning signal to the international community,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on X. “We also call on international sports federations to maintain the existing restrictions on representatives of the aggressor state, in line with their commitment to protecting the integrity and values of international sport.”

The series of heatwaves “afflicting” Europe this summer have been the “worst ever”, said The Guardian. Cities have become practically “unliveable” and higher temperatures are “further exacerbating” socioeconomic and economic divisions.

The unfortunate consequences of the current heat for many in the UK are “disturbed sleep and sticky days in the home office”. But around the world, high temperatures often exacerbate gender inequality, and women, particularly in low-income families, are “at the sharp end”.

Why are women more affected?

Women are more at risk of health complications during a heatwave for two main reasons, Dr Nighat Arif, an NHS GP who specialises in women’s health, told the BBC. First, women respond differently to men in the heat – they sweat less and start sweating at a higher temperature. These thresholds make it harder to “quickly shed heat” and fewer visible indications mean women can find it hard to judge how much their “bodies are under burden”.

The second reason is hormone regulation. Levels of oestrogen and progesterone shift “most substantially” during the menstrual cycle, perimenopause, menopause, pregnancy and while breastfeeding. This can knock the brain’s temperature regulation systems “out of kilter”, said Dr Arif.

Periods may feel more uncomfortable, while hot flushes and night sweats are more likely for perimenopausal and menopausal women. A recent study published by The Lancet suggested that heat stress may “increase the likelihood of adverse outcomes for the mother and child, particularly in higher-risk pregnancies”, said the BBC.

How does this present itself socially?

“How people experience heat is often gendered” and “socially and culturally determined”, said researchers Febe De Geest and Sergio Jarillo on The Conversation. In domestic settings, particularly across Africa, Asia and Oceania, women are forced to spend more time indoors in “poorly ventilated homes”, acting as primary caregivers. In Bangladesh, Cambodia and Nepal, heatwaves have also been linked to increases in child marriages: “struggling families force unions on their daughters to ease financial stress and reduce household costs”.

In workplace settings, research shows that women are sometimes required to wear more clothing for religious reasons and tend to receive “inadequate sanitation”. So they are likely to drink less to “avoid using unhygienic toilet facilities, leading to dehydration and further health problems”. These factors are not “trivial inconveniences; they compound heat exposure in ways that shape how women experience hot weather”.

Even in countries typically associated with better provisions for the heat, there is a “seasonal upswing in violence associated with hot weather”, said The Guardian. This could be due to the “temperature-aggression theory”, where hot weather increases “discomfort, frustration, impulsivity, and aggression, all of which make violence more likely”, or could be linked to greater alcohol consumption, which in turn “increases the opportunities for interpersonal conflicts and subsequent violence”.

Depressingly, it only takes “fairly small shifts” in temperature to increase the likelihood of domestic violence, particularly for the most vulnerable, said the European University Institute. A 1C rise in daily temperature is associated with “approximately a 2.7% increase in domestic violence reports”.

And in disadvantaged areas the effect is “much more intense”, due to more crowded living arrangements, lower cooling capacity and lower access to outdoor spaces. “Each degree of additional temperature is associated with up to a 50% larger relative increase in domestic violence incidents compared to richer areas.”

What can be done?

In practical terms, during periods of extreme heat it is important that women drink “least six to eight cups of non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated, transparent-liquid drinks” to help with temperature regulation, Dr Anisha Patel told ITV. Above all, women should continue to take prescribed medication as normal, including HRT or other drugs designed to help with the menopause.

Across the world, women are “already adapting creatively, and often without institutional support” to improve their situation, said De Geest and Jarillo on The Conversation. In Ahmedabad, India, women have painted their roofs white and used “coconut husks and paper waste” to make the structures cooler, and in Jakarta women have “established shaded communal areas that function as informal cooling centres”.

Policymakers need to realise that women suffer on many fronts, not just in biology but across “culture, power and intersections of class, caste and migratory status”. Their suffering is “largely invisible” to those heading climate responses.

Making sure women can cope with the heat is “not a woman’s problem”, Dr Arif told the BBC. “This is a societal problem. If we get it right for women, we get it right for everyone.”

The Thistle, which opened as a three-year pilot in Calton in Glasgow in January 2025, allows people to take drugs under the supervision of NHS staff.

Upon arrival, users receive a needle, spoon, swabs and advice on injecting technique – an infrared vein scanner is used to help people locate safe injection sites. There are eight mirrored booths, where they can inject their own drugs – mostly cocaine, heroin or both (“snowballing”). Staff check they haven’t overdosed.

Users, for whom the facility offers an alternative to unsafe, unsanitary public spaces, can then move to a recovery area equipped with comfortable chairs. After that, they can visit the lounge area, which has a kitchen, TV and board games, as well as showers and laundry facilities. Here nurses, mental health workers and other staff offer support, from treating wounds to referrals for rehabilitation or housing services.

Why was The Thistle opened?

The first drug consumption room (DCR) opened in Bern, Switzerland, in 1986. Now, there are more than 100 operating worldwide, mostly in western Europe, Canada and Australia. Such rooms are designed to prevent overdose deaths and the spread of needle-borne diseases; to help connect “hard to reach” users with services that might help them; and to reduce public nuisance (discarded needles, crime, and so on).

Calton, a deprived area of Glasgow’s East End, has a high concentration of homeless drug users. The Thistle was first proposed in 2016 in response to a major HIV outbreak among drug users. By 2018, Scotland had Europe’s highest drug death rate per capita. It still does today, while Glasgow’s rate is more than double the national average.

How is the facility legal?

The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 makes not just possession of drugs but the supply of drugs paraphernalia an offence; and, though this is a grey area, the occupiers of buildings where drugs are used may also be liable. Holyrood was supportive of The Thistle, but drug laws are reserved to the UK Parliament, and the Home Office was opposed. After a decade of wrangling between Holyrood and Westminster followed, Scotland’s Lord Advocate cleared the way, by issuing a statement that it is not in the public interest to prosecute individuals inside the facility for possession of drugs.

How many people use it?

So far, some 752 individuals have used the service, almost 80% of them male. In its first year, The Thistle made more than 600 referrals to health and social services, and delivered 13,000 care interventions. Seven in ten injections at The Thistle are of cocaine – linked to 52% of Glasgow’s drug-related deaths in 2024.

Demand for the service has risen sharply: monthly visits climbed from 336 in January 2025 to 1,533 in May 2026 – a 356% increase. Overdose figures there rose in tandem: in May 2026, staff responded to 19 overdoses, usually by administering oxygen or the drug naloxone. Yet after more than 13,600 injections, and 186 emergencies, no one has died in the facility (a man died outside in March, in circumstances not yet explained).

So it helps prevent drug deaths?

While a detailed evaluation is ongoing, Scotland’s policing inspectorate has already credited the facility with a “small but significant” reduction in local drug deaths. The research suggests DCRs are effective in this respect. According to the most recent studies, no death has ever been recorded inside one, though tens of thousands of overdoses have occurred. Sydney’s DCR alone has overseen more than 1.35 million injections and responded to over 12,000 overdoses without a single fatality in 25 years. By comparison, one study found that outside DCRs around one in 15 overdoses were fatal, rising to one in eight with heroin.

Advocates stress, however, that The Thistle is “not a silver bullet” for citywide and national issues. Drug deaths in Scotland actually rose in 2025. Public Health Scotland identified an influx in nitazenes, a synthetic opioid much more potent than heroin, as a likely factor.

What do critics of The Thistle say?

DCRs are a “harm reduction” strategy. Opponents argue that they sustain addiction at the expense of rehabilitation. “We have to take out addiction as a norm,” says Dr Carlton Brick of the University of the West of Scotland. “If all we can do is intervene to keep them alive when they overdose, I think that is a problem.” The Thistle is also relatively expensive, with annual running costs of £2.3 million; it spent £5,000 on two needle bins. Critics argue this money could be better spent promoting recovery.

In 2025, its costs worked out at more than £4,000 per person – approaching the £6,000 starting price of a standard 28-day private rehabilitation. The Thistle is also unpopular among some local residents, who argue that it attracts drug users and anti-social behaviour. In its first four months, 175 complaints were made about needles left near the facility, although the council said drug litter found at local hotspots actually fell by 79% between May and November.

Will more DCRs be rolled out?

While the Home Office says it will consider “any evidence” the pilot produces, it has shown little appetite for supporting DCRs. Its longstanding position is that it opposes them, owing to concerns that they break the Misuse of Drugs Act, pose ethical quandaries for medical staff, and could create a “honeypot effect”, attracting drug users to a particular area. Even The Thistle’s fate is itself unclear, and will depend on an independent evaluation, which will continue until late 2029.

In 2024, the last year for which figures have been released, England and Wales recorded their highest rate of drug-related deaths since records began: 63 per million. The EU average is around 25. Scotland’s is still exceptionally high, at 191 per million. The next highest in Europe is Estonia, at 135 per million; the USA’s is around 230.

The time it takes for a property to sell has hit a record high, and there are plenty of reasons for delays.

A mix of “buyer financial uncertainty and a shortage of conveyancing firms”, means it now takes “longer than at any time in at least a decade” to sell a property, said The Times.

Figures from property data firm TwentyCi show that it takes an average of 211 days – or 6.9 months – between a property being listed for sale and new owners moving in.

Meanwhile, almost half of homes listed on property portals over the past three years have failed to sell, according to Zoopla.

Unrealistic pricing

The “biggest sticking point” is pricing, said Zoopla. “Overambitious and unrealistic” values are the “biggest reason homes remain unsold”.

In many of these cases, the appropriate course of action is to lower the asking price, as this is often “the only way to attract a buyer”.

Reduced demand

Sellers are also suffering from a lack of demand, amid concerns about geopolitical tensions, while “political uncertainty is emerging as another headwind for the market”, said the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

High mortgage rates are also impacting buyer budgets, and leading to hesitation.

Competition

Data from property website Rightmove shows the number of homes for sale is at its highest level since 2015.

This makes it a “buyers’ market”, said MoneyWeek, so sellers need to be “more flexible on pricing to attract interest amid high levels of competition”.

Poor first impressions

Lower levels of demand and high supply make it more important that your home is accurately priced and attractive to sellers.

Think about “first impressions”, said the HomeOwners Alliance, such as the state of your garden and whether your wheelie bins are on show.

Buyers may struggle to look beyond the wear and tear inside your house, so you may need “enhancements or staging to help it sell”.

Additionally, while buyers expect to do “some work to a house” they buy, it could be worth your while sorting out problems such as damp, subsidence, or anything that could be flagged in a survey, before listing, rather than “waiting for a buyer to find out”.

Market conditions

There may be market conditions outside your control such as high mortgage rates and economic uncertainty. These can “shape how confident buyers feel and how quickly properties move”, said the Guild of Property Professionals. This may mean sellers have to “adapt their expectations and strategies accordingly”.

Many sellers don’t realise how much “seasonality matters”, said Lynch Brother Homes, with January, February and March producing the “quickest average time to sell”, while late November to Christmas is typically the “deadest period”.

The wrong estate agent

Not all estate agents are “created equal”, said agency brand Tucker Gardner. Factors such as “dark, blurry photos or a minimal description” on online listings may mean potential buyers “simply scroll past to the next property”.

So, if you aren’t getting viewings and your agent seems to have put your property “on the back burner”, it might be time for a change.

Sara Duterte, vice president of the Philippines, has appeared in court to face impeachment proceedings in a trial that has brought long-standing political tensions to a head.

The 48-year-old daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte is accused of corruption, bribery, misappropriating millions in government funds and threatening to have the current president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, assassinated.

Duterte, who in 2024 became the first Philippine leader to face impeachment proceedings, denies the charges, calling them political harassment. The trial, which began on Monday, is the culmination of the fallout and feud between the Marcos and Duterte families, the country’s most powerful political dynasties.

Who are the Duterte and Marcos families?

Rodrigo Duterte ruled the Philippines with an iron fist from 2016 to 2022. In the 2022 election, Sara was the running mate of presidential candidate Marcos Jr, son of the dictator who ruled for 20 years before being deposed in 1986.

The two younger scions were “unstoppable”, said the BBC. The so-called “Tiger of the North” and “Eagle of the South” – in reference to the families’ geographical origins – were “seen as a dream team” and won a landslide. In the end, however, “there was not enough power to share between them”.

Cracks appeared when Marcos’ allies in the Senate began investigating Duterte for alleged misuse of government funds. The pair also disagreed on their approach to Beijing; Marcos ordered the navy to “stand up to China” in the South China Sea, said Al Jazeera, in “sharp contrast” to pro-China Duterte. This trial shifts the “power struggle” to “a new battleground”, said the BBC, which will now “play out on livestreams for the entire nation”.

What is the case against Duterte?

In October 2024, Duterte said “her relationship with Marcos had become so ‘toxic’ that she sometimes imagined beheading him”, said Al Jazeera. She also “threatened to dig up the remains of Marcos’ father” and “dump them in the sea”. In November, Duterte claimed during a “profanity-laced” livestream that she had told someone: “If I get killed, go kill BBM” (Marcos’ nickname is Bongbong so he’s commonly referred to as BBM) and his wife.

His supporters filed an impeachment complaint based on this livestream, and the alleged misuse of funds. But last year that case was “derailed for procedural reasons”, said Foreign Policy. Marcos’ supporters then refiled the case, leading to a new trial.

What is the significance of the trial?

Prosecutors see the case as “a test of accountability ‌and public trust”; the defence denounces it as “a politically driven bid” to unseat an elected official, said Reuters. The outcome could “shape the 2028 presidential race”, in which Duterte has announced she intends to run. Marcos cannot run as Philippine law permits presidents only a single term, but his family and coalition “expect to remain powerful”, said Al Jazeera.

There are “fears of widespread protests” and political turmoil that would “impact the Philippines’ economic growth” should Duterte – the current frontrunner – be convicted and barred from standing in 2028.

But “conviction will be difficult”, said Foreign Policy. Two-thirds of the chamber, 16 senators, must support impeachment. Of the 24 sitting senators, 14 are “Duterte allies”. However, “those allies are coming under pressure”, with two arrested on corruption charges and one “on the run from an ICC warrant”. More pro-Duterte senators may “come under fire in what looks like political pressure tactics”.

A parasite capable of causing extreme diarrhea has been found in 18 states, with a particularly large outbreak in Michigan. Though the source of the infections has yet to be identified, experts recommend taking precautions with fresh produce and practicing good hygiene to reduce the risk of contracting the disease.

What is cyclosporiasis?

Cyclosporiasis is a form of food poisoning that comes from the parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis. It can cause “watery, and sometimes explosive, diarrhea and other stomach problems,” as well as a low-grade fever in some cases, said the Cleveland Clinic. Symptoms can start any time between two and 14 days after consuming contaminated food or water. The parasite is more common in tropical countries, but in mid-June, 145 cases were reported in the U.S.

“People became sick after eating food in the United States and did not report any travel during the 14 days before they got sick,” said the CDC. Those infected ranged from ages 5 to 86 years old, and though there have been hospitalizations, there have yet to be any deaths from the condition.

There has been growing concern about cyclosporiasis because Michigan, “which typically identifies about 50 cases of cyclosporiasis in a year, has reported at least 170 cases” in under two weeks, said CNN. There is “currently no evidence of a single, multistate Cyclospora outbreak linking all cases,” said the CDC. Instead, researchers are “working to identify various potential clusters and sources of illness in multiple states.” Though Michigan has had the most cases, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin have also had reported infections.

Investigators have yet to pinpoint the cause of the current outbreak, but the most likely culprits are “cilantro, basil, plants that grow and that you might put in a salad or use as a garnish,” or “strawberries, blueberries, melons, things that grow in fields,” David Freeman, a professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said to CNN.

What can be done?

Taking precautions is key to preventing illness. Cooked food is safer than fresh produce, as heat can kill the parasite. Washing produce can also help reduce the chance of ingesting the parasite. “Thoroughly washing hands and kitchen counters, as well as cutting surfaces, is important too,” but “bleach doesn’t kill the parasite,” said CNN. “Handwashing with soap and water and a follow-up with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer are safer bets.”

If you contract cyclosporiasis, antibiotics can help clear the infection. If not treated, “symptoms may last for a month or longer” and increase the “risk of severe dehydration and other complications,” said the Cleveland Clinic. “With proper diagnosis and treatment, most people feel better after a week or two,” but you “may still have occasional bouts of diarrhea for up to a month.”

The US-UK relationship is being tested again by two high-profile legal cases in which American military personnel were tried by US authorities over alleged offences that took place on British soil.

What were the cases?

Four women and a 16-year-old girl accused US airman Hannes Marschalek of indecent exposure in 2022, while he was stationed at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, the largest US airbase in the UK, said The Guardian.

Cambridgeshire police initiated the investigation, but the case was turned over to American forces three weeks later. Court martial documents show that in July 2022, Marschalek texted two friends to say he “definitely just flashed a couple ladies walking from the train. LOL.”

Marschalek accepted a plea bargain and was dismissed from the air force by a military judge and sentenced to two months in a correctional facility at Lakenheath. However, in April this year a US military appeal court dismissed the guilty verdict on the grounds that prosecutors had charged him under the wrong offence. He remains on the sex-offender registry in the US, but had he been “prosecuted in the English criminal courts, Marschalek would have faced up to two years in jail”.

In December 2023, Sarah Steele accused Jacob Wulfson, a US air force captain also based at Lakenheath, of drugging, assaulting and strangling her after meeting via a dating app. Steele, a University of Cambridge academic, claimed that the subsequent court martial heard testimony about “how many people he’d killed, supposedly to get him a lower sentence for committing a serious violent crime against me”, said the BBC.

Wulfson was convicted of strangulation, dismissed from the military and given “six months’ detention”, but was cleared of sexual assault by an “all-male panel” of air force officers.

How does a court martial work?

A court martial is a legal proceeding undertaken by the military to try personnel accused of wrongdoing within a military context. In the US, the trials are governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which in addition to criminal offences, includes some perceived moral transgressions such as infidelity.

The US military justice system has a “distinct legal framework and is separate from British civilian courts”, said ITV News. There are also significant deviations from US civilian law, said law professor Joshua Kastenberg on The Conversation. Judges are “uniformed officers” who are “subject to the chain of command”. A court martial also only needs a two-thirds majority to establish guilt, instead of unanimity, with a jury panel “made up of military personnel who outrank the accused service member and are picked to serve by senior commanding officers”.

Why weren’t the cases tried in the UK?

American forces in the UK are governed by the 1951 Nato Status of Forces Agreement, which was incorporated into British law in the Visiting Forces Act 1952. As well as outlining visa exemptions and the right to bear arms, this “obscure” agreement allows the US government to prosecute overseas military personnel under certain conditions, said The Guardian. Traditionally, this has covered offences committed while on duty, or against a member of the US military or their dependents.

Outside those criteria, the British police have jurisdiction. However, in practice, the “process is ambiguous”. In the cases involving Marschalek and Wulfson, local British police handed control over to the US. The US military is claiming a “much wider jurisdiction – and British police and prosecutors are allowing them to do it”.

This week, Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy told the Commons officials were “working across government to establish the full facts” of the two cases, said the East Anglian Daily Times.

The prime minister’s spokesperson said that Wulfson’s was “clearly a deeply distressing case”. It was “very concerning that a case like this never reached the CPS” and was “heard in front of an all-male panel” of US air force officers.

A US air force spokesperson said it is “dedicated to working transparently with our British partners to ensure the fair administration of justice”.

A “political row” about football’s “drinking culture” is now “in full swing”, said Politico, after Andy Burnham said a ban on football fans drinking alcohol in the stands is “wrong”.

The prime-minister-in-waiting is considering lifting the ban but the current PM is standing by it.

What are the laws in the UK?

After a period of serious football hooliganism in the early 1980s, the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc.) Act 1985 was passed. It banned the consumption of alcohol while watching a football game from seats or anywhere else within sight of the pitch, meaning spectators had to stay on the concourse or in another area where they couldn’t see the playing surface.

Critics say that this curious law means that fans end up drinking more quickly during half-time because they have only around 15 minutes before returning to the stands. This encourages increasing consumption rather than moderating it, it has been argued.

Other sports are more relaxed: you can drink alcohol in your seat at rugby union, rugby league, cricket, horse racing, tennis, darts and other events. A particular oddity is that when a football stadium hosts a concert or rugby tie instead of a football match, fans can often sit in exactly the same seat with a pint in their hand.

What about other countries?

In Scotland, the rules are even stricter than in England. Generally, alcohol cannot be sold or consumed anywhere in the stadium, with limited exceptions in hospitality areas.

In many other countries in Europe, including Germany and the Netherlands, football fans can drink in their seats but rules are often tightened for derby matches and other fixtures that are deemed high risk.

What might Burnham change? 

Burnham said over the weekend that there was “something wrong” with a ban on football fans drinking in view of the pitch, while rugby fans are allowed to booze away. The prime-minister-in-waiting hinted that he might overturn the ban, but the current PM, Keir Starmer, has “pushed back”, said Politico.

“Police chiefs have warned against the relaxing rules of drinking in the stands, and we think that’s sensible to follow,” a spokesperson for Starmer said this week.

“Fans who go to matches in football league can drink before the game, in the concourse during half time and can stay late after the match or head to the pub, so there’s plenty of chances to get a drink,” they added.

Data suggests that football crowds are far less violent than in the 1980s, so there has been increasing debate about whether the law is still justified. The ban has been reviewed by parliamentary committees, football authorities and supporter groups, but the restriction remains in force in England and Wales. A fan-led review of football governance in 2021 called for the law to be re-examined.

Currently, cocaine use is a growing issue at matches, where fans with “glazed eyes” and “queues” for “cubicles at half-time” are commonplace, said Goal. Use of the class-A drug had been described by police as “excessive” and a “bigger factor in violence at matches than alcohol”.

Karl Marx famously described religion as the opium of the people. Now, a study has shown that going to church has a similar effect on the body to morphine. Researchers from Oxford Brookes University asked 265 people in the UK and Brazil how close they felt to other worshippers before and after 24 religious events – ranging from Catholic and Baptist services to Afro-Brazilian rituals. The participants were also given a standard pain-threshold test to help assess the activation of the brain’s “mu-opioid” system, the neural pathway responsible for the body’s response to pain, reward and addiction. Its receptors can be activated by external opioids such as morphine, but also natural ones – the endorphins produced by the brain to relieve pain and stress. The results showed that, after the ritual, the participants felt more connected to one another, and more able to tolerate pain. This doesn’t mean that sermons are sedating people, said the team. Instead, these events may have developed to nurture feelings of closeness in large groups in much the same way as social grooming does between pairs of apes.

The earliest-known plague victims

When four Stone Age cemeteries were excavated in Siberia in the 1980s and 1990s, archaeologists were puzzled by the number of children among the dead; at some of the sites, two-thirds of the bodies were under 15 years old. Now, thanks to new DNA sequencing techniques, the mystery has been solved: the children were victims of the world’s earliest-known plague outbreak. An international team of scientists analysed pulp from the teeth of the hunter-gatherers buried near Lake Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world, and found DNA from a previously unknown strain of the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, in nearly 40% of the individuals – a higher proportion than found in some medieval plague pits. Radiocarbon dating shows that many of them died within a very short time span; in several cases parents and children were buried together. The evidence suggests the plague struck twice, the first time 5,500 years ago. This “flies in the face” of the long-standing assumption that the plague only took hold after the advent of agriculture and the formation of densely populated settlements, said lead author Dr Ruairidh Macleod, of the University of Oxford. The theory is that individuals became infected by a strain that was particularly lethal to the young through close contact with marmots (rodents that are known reservoirs of the plague), perhaps while butchering them. It would then have spread through the community.

The impact of the HPV jab

Girls vaccinated against HPV when they are 12 or 13 have a close to zero chance of dying from cervical cancer before the age of 30, a study has found. The researchers, from Queen Mary University of London, used official data to assess the impact of the HPV vaccine on cervical cancer survival. They found that deaths have fallen sharply since the jab became routine in 2008. No women aged 20-24 died from cervical cancer between 2020 and 2024; without the jabs, 23 deaths would have been expected, says the report in The Lancet. “It’s incredible to think that a single jab can almost eliminate a particular type of cancer,” said lead researcher Professor Peter Sasieni. He warned, however, that vaccination rates are falling and, without “concerted efforts” to increase uptake, deaths could start to rise.

Loss of smell can be devastating

People may not think of anosmia – the loss of the sense of smell – as a serious condition, but it can have a similar effect on a person’s sense of well-being as having a stroke. A team from the University of East Anglia looked at studies on the emotional and psychological impacts of stroke, diabetes, Parkinson’s, kidney failure and heart disease, and compared them with findings on people with anosmia and ageusia (the loss of the sense of taste). It turned out that those with taste and smell conditions had experienced a sharp reduction in well-being that often rivalled that of the patients in the other groups. Typically, they no longer found pleasure in food, had difficulty socialising, and were more anxious about their safety (as, for instance, they could no longer smell gas). They had high rates of social withdrawal and 20% were depressed.

A spider’s spring-loaded trap

A newly discovered species of spider has been observed weaving a spring-loaded snare, which it uses to catch an ant that is usually too aggressive for arachnids to prey on. The ballista spider spends its days lurking in webs on the undersides of leaves in the rainforests of north Queensland, Australia. When night falls, it lowers itself from its web and fixes a tight line of silk to a leaf below, to act as an anchor. Then it returns to its web, leaving a tension line behind it, repeating the process until it has built a cone-shaped scaffold. Finally, it wraps the cone in a thinner silk and returns to its web. Soon the ants arrive, in attack mode. One bites into the cone, which is sticky. Its jaws become glued to it, and as it wriggles, the cone detaches, catapulting the whole thing – ant and all – into the spider’s web at force, and the spider can then safely eat it.

As the trap only targets these ants, the researchers, from Macquarie University, suspect that the spiders lace the silk with a particular pheromone that both attracts and angers exclusively this species. They also suspect that the spiders pick off the green tree ants quietly, one by one, to avoid triggering an alarm that might cause thousands of aggressive ants to descend on the scene.

New drug for diabetes

The first drug that has been found to delay the onset of type 1 diabetes is to become available on the NHS in England and Wales. In patients with type 1 diabetes, the immune system starts attacking the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. As a result, the patient has to take insulin, via injections or a pump. Teplizumab – a form of immunotherapy – binds to immune cells to slow their attack and so delays the need to take insulin by two to three years. However, to work it must be given to people when they are in stage 2 of the condition – when their immune cells are attacking, but they have no symptoms yet. That being the case, people will only know they need it if they are offered a blood test because they have a family history of diabetes, take part in a screening study, or have a blood test for some other reason that raises a red flag with their GP.

There may be a few sore heads and impeccably timed phone-calls to bosses in England this morning, after last night’s win over Mexico in the World Cup, but any football fans must be thankful they don’t live in Germany where workers will have to report to a doctor in person, to get a sick note on the first day they are ill, under sweeping new reforms.

The government is “tired of its workers calling in sick”, said the Deep Dive, but unions and family doctors are opposed to the new law.

What is Germany doing?

“The number of sick days is too high,” said Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, announcing the plan. The government is “creating a set of tools that will enable those involved, both employees and companies, to correct this,” he added.

The “tough” new rules are “aimed at boosting Germany’s stagnating economy”, wrote Hans van Leeuwen, international economics editor of The Telegraph.

Although they will be “welcomed” by employers, they have “angered” the country’s “powerful trade unions”. The services sector union, Verdi, accused Merz of creating a “culture of distrust of employees”.

Doctors also have “opposed” the new system because they believe the new requirements will “swamp” GP surgeries with “unnecessary appointments”.

What are sickness policies like elsewhere?

In the Netherlands, employers are generally obliged to pay employees on sick leave 70% of their wages for up to two years. If that amount is less than minimum wage, then the employer must boost this to the minimum wage for the first year. Norway is even more generous: it provides up to a year of income replacement at 100% of salary (subject to an earnings cap).

Although the US is one of the richest countries in the world, there is no nationwide entitlement to paid sick leave in the US, so access depends largely on state laws, local ordinances and employer policies. This means coverage varies considerably. Only 14 of the 50 states have paid sick leave mandates in place, which means sick workers are often forced to rely on health insurance pay-outs to cover their wages.

In the UK employees who earn over £125 a week and are off sick for four or more days in a row, are entitled to £123.25 per week of statutory sick pay for up to 28 weeks. This equates to around 15% of the average UK weekly wage. Employees need to give their employer proof if they’re ill for more than seven days. Many employers have a sick pay policy which is more generous.

How many sick days do people take?

In 2025, 149 million working days were lost to sickness or injury in Britain – an average of more than four days per worker. On average, Americans take roughly one to three days of sick leave per year.

In Germany, workers take about three weeks, or 15 working days, of sick leave per year. This is lower than in France, but higher than Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and Italy.

By July 1776, Great Britain and its 13 colonies on North America’s eastern seaboard had been at war for more than a year; they would remain so until 1783.

Although long revered as an “American scripture”, the Declaration of Independence actually “began its life as a press release”, with a limited, pragmatic purpose, writes the historian Michael D. Hattem. The Second Continental Congress, a committee of delegates from 13 of the colonies convened in Philadelphia, wanted a formal document to justify their rebellion to the world, and to secure foreign military alliances.

At the time, some thought it less important than Congress’ decision on 2 July to vote for independence. John Adams, later the second US president, wrote to his wife that 2 July, not 4 July, should be celebrated as a great anniversary, “solemnised with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more”.

What does the document say?

That the 13 colonies declare themselves free from British colonial rule, to administer themselves as the “united States of America” (a phrase coined earlier that year). The Declaration’s famous preamble asserts: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It then outlines Americans’ grievances against Britain and King George III. Complaining that the states have informed “our British brethren” of these grievances, to no avail, it proclaims that the 13 states therefore have no choice but to sever “all political connection” with Britain.

How had the two sides come to be at war?

Relations had deteriorated sharply since Britain’s victory over France in the Seven Years’ War in 1763. Defending the American frontier from France and its Native American allies had brought Britain to near-bankruptcy. The colonies, with a fast-growing population of some two million, paid virtually no taxes to the home country, while heavily taxed Britain paid for their defence. King George III and his ministers looked to raise revenues; Parliament passed a series of taxes, including the Stamp Act (1765) and Townshend Acts (1767). They believed Parliament had full authority to do so.

The colonists thought such laws had no legitimacy because they lacked representation in Parliament, and fiercely resisted, launching boycotts and protests. Tensions built, and exploded during the Boston Massacre (1770) and the Boston Tea Party (1773).

In response, Britain imposed the punitive Coercive Acts (1774), closing Boston Harbour and stripping Massachusetts of self-governance. Violence escalated, and in April 1775 war broke out, with the Battles of Lexington and Concord – dubbed by Ralph Waldo Emerson “the shot heard round the world”.

Was independence inevitable?

At the start of the war, most on the American side envisaged it not as a war of independence, but as a temporary defence of what they saw as their legal rights as British citizens. In July 1775, Congress sent the Olive Branch Petition, a direct plea to King George III, which explicitly denied wanting independence. The king refused to look at it, and issued the Proclamation of Rebellion, declaring the colonists traitors and hiring 30,000 German mercenaries to help crush them.

In January 1776 in Philadelphia, the English radical Thomas Paine published “Common Sense”, a pamphlet arguing that America should demand outright independence. It sold in large numbers, and proved very influential. George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army, declared it “unanswerable”. The colonists also realised that they needed help from foreign powers, notably France, and wouldn’t get it if they remained loyal British subjects.

How was the Declaration of Independence written?

After the independence resolution was proposed, in June 1776, Congress appointed the Committee of Five (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman) to draft the Declaration. It was first written by Jefferson, largely by candlelight, over a period of 17 days. The other four made minor changes; it was then edited by Congress. The revised text was approved on 4 July, and most of the 56 Founding Fathers who signed it did so on 2 August.

What role did the Declaration play at the time?

In Philadelphia, it was printed by John Dunlap (today, 26 of these “Dunlap Broadsides” are believed to exist); and on 6 July, it was reproduced in the Pennsylvania Evening Post. This triggered an extraordinary public response: public readings were accompanied by cheering and cannon fire, as well as the destruction of royal symbols such as the king’s coats of arms; in New York, it was read to troops serving in Washington’s army, who tore down a lead statue of George III on horseback and melted it into musket balls.

The first anniversary celebrations took place in 1777. Massachusetts was the first state to make 4 July an official day of celebration, in 1781.

What is its legacy?

The Declaration of Independence is one of the most important documents in human history. It inspired the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man, which Jefferson helped draft. Dozens of independence declarations from Venezuela (1811) to Vietnam (1945) echo or directly copy its language. Abraham Lincoln thought it expressed the true principles of the United States, and referred in his 1863 Gettysburg Address to “a nation conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. Martin Luther King Jr, in his “I Have a Dream” speech, called it a “promissory note” – and demanded that Americans “cash this cheque”.

Thomas Jefferson: tainted hero

John Adams said of the Declaration of Independence that there was “not an idea in it but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before”. Jefferson himself said it did not aim at “originality of principle or sentiment”; rather, it was “an expression of the American mind”.

Although the exact influences remain a subject for scholarly discussion, the most obvious sources for it included Paine’s “Common Sense”, George Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and England’s 1689 Bill of Rights. Jefferson also adapted John Locke’s argument that individuals have inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and property” – substituting “the pursuit of happiness” – and Locke’s notion that government is based on a social contract, which, when broken, authorises rebellion.

Jefferson, America’s third president, has long been both a national hero and a contested figure, because he was a scion of Virginia’s planter class who owned more than 610 slaves and fathered children with one of them, Sally Hemings. (“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” asked Dr Johnson in his pamphlet “Taxation no Tyranny”.) The Declaration also complains of British alliances with “the merciless Indian Savages”.

“Hailed as a political genius by some”, Morgan McSweeney was seen as a “Machiavellian puppeteer manipulating a compliant” Keir Starmer on his journey from Labour Party leader in 2020 to prime minister in 2024, said Patrick Cockburn in The i Paper.

Yet in his first interviews since appearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee in April, two months after quitting as Starmer’s chief of staff, McSweeney claimed the party failed to prepare adequately for office, and that one of the hardest tasks in opposition was trying to “persuade people that we could win”.

Emerging from the shadows to speak to the Financial Times and the BBC, McSweeney is presumably trying to “establish a public profile in his post-political life”, said Ian Dunt in The i Paper. “His way of achieving this is to admit to rudimentary errors in political operations as if they were startling insights available only to those with the requisite experience.”

What did he say?

McSweeney was “surprisingly candid” with the BBC’s Nick Robinson on his “Political Thinking” podcast about the Labour Party’s failure to lay the groundwork for government while in opposition, said Ethan Croft in The New Statesman.

“We didn’t prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to,” said McSweeney, and the party didn’t grasp that it was in a “very different era” to when it was last in office. “We didn’t have enough conversations at the top of the party about what that meant, how to prepare for it, what that meant for the state.”

What mistakes were made?

McSweeney believes the “first self-inflicted wound” of the Starmer government was the Treasury’s decision to cut winter fuel payments for “10 million better-off pensioners”, said the FT. This was then “compounded” by the donations scandal involving McSweeney and the Labour Together think tank, and the first budget, which prioritised long-term financial reforms over immediate help for the electorate who voted them into power.

The former chief-of-staff admitted that the government should have been “laser focused on the cost of living from day one”. Voters were “really angry with the state of the country. They thought we promised change and we got distracted.”

Labour quickly lost popular support. Its approval ratings fell from 37.5% in July 2024 to 23.3% in June 2025 – the steepest drop for any government in its first year since 1983, said Shea Ferguson on UnHerd.

Ultimately, it was his role in the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US that forced McSweeney to resign. McSweeney had recommended Mandelson for the role, and admitted that “I failed in my job and failed in my duty”. But he denied it was his fault that Mandelson was offered the position. “I hope that one day Mandelson recognises the damage he has done to a Labour government that carried the hopes of millions of people.”

What can Andy Burnham learn?

McSweeney believes Labour MPs were motivated to oust Starmer because they concluded he could not win the next election, “not because they want to scratch some ideological itch”, said the FT. The former adviser also welcomed the idea of Burnham as Starmer’s successor, and approves of the plan to split No. 10 between London and Manchester.

If McSweeney can “serve any function” now, said Dunt, it is to “provide a moral warning to Andy Burnham’s team”. When Labour was elected in 2024, McSweeney and Starmer had a “historic responsibility” to dispel populism and show that mainstream politics could operate effectively. They had spent years attacking Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak for “governing like drunken clowns in a restaurant kitchen”.

But in office, Labour had “no project, no set of beliefs, no plan for what they wanted to do”, and crucially failed to deliver “quick change” to earn the electorate’s trust. Barring a substantial shock, Burnham will become the next prime minister, and he “must not make the same mistake”.

Pope Leo XIV has excommunicated members of a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics after they consecrated bishops without Vatican approval.

The pontiff warned the Society of St Pius X (known as the SSPX) on Tuesday that its plans to consecrate four new bishops would be a “sin of extreme gravity”. After the consecrations went ahead on Wednesday, “the Vatican responded aggressively”, going “above and beyond the minimal sanctions foreseen by the church’s canon law”, said The Associated Press.

Six bishops and hundreds of priests belonging to the society have been excommunicated. The Pope also warned the estimated 600,000 Catholics who attend its services that the order is no longer sanctioned to carry out sacraments like confession and marriage.

What is the Society of St Pius X?

Founded in 1970 by French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the SSPX is a traditionalist group that purports to practise a “pure” form of Catholicism, untainted by modernising or secular influences. It rejects much of the so-called Vatican II reforms of the 1960s, “which revolutionised the church’s relations with other Christians, Jews and people of other faiths and allowed Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular”, said AP. The order continues to adhere to the Latin Mass and uses pre-Vatican II liturgy in its services.

According to SSPX figures, it has 751 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities. It has a presence in 77 countries, with the largest being in France and the US.

Throughout its history, the society has had a rocky relationship with the Vatican. In 1988 Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without the approval of Pope John Paul II. The Vatican ruled that this was illicit and stated that those directly involved had incurred excommunication.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI rescinded the excommunications of the surviving bishops as a gesture towards reconciliation. However, despite years of talks aimed at bringing the society back into full communion with the Church, the society’s official status has remained unresolved.

What has it done now?

On 1 July, the SSPX consecrated four new bishops at its international seminary in Écône, Switzerland, the location of the 1988 consecrations that caused the previous schism. Creating new bishops without papal approval is regarded as a “schismatic act” in canon law.

However, an SSPX priest told the more than 16,000 worshippers who gathered for the illicit consecration Mass that, since Vatican II, “the authorities of the church have been animated by a spirit that is contrary to that of the faith”, said National Catholic Reporter. Therefore, the consecration of bishops “entirely faithful to her holy tradition” was justified as “a sacred duty toward the holy church”.

Can they be reconciled? 

Since becoming Pope in May last year, Leo XIV “has reached out especially to the conservative and traditionalist wing of the church that was in many ways alienated during the Pope Francis pontificate”, said AP.

However, last month he told a reporter that, “while division among Christians is always a painful matter”, the society could not remain in good standing if it rejected “certain fundamental elements of the Church”, said Vatican News. “If that is the choice they make, I am sorry, but we must move forward.”

The group “is ignoring the doctrinal elephant in the room”, said Eric Sammons, editor of traditionalist Catholic magazine Crisis: being in communion with the Pope is “an essential part of what it means to be Catholic”. Complaints about the Church’s “lackadaisical enforcement of Catholic teaching”, however well-founded, cannot be taken seriously from “a group that itself violates a foundational principle of Catholic doctrine”.

Tenants are being urged to be careful when looking at new properties amid a rise in rental fraud.

Data from Report Fraud shows the annual cost of rental fraud in England, Wales and Northern Ireland “more than doubled” between 2021 and 2025 from £7.2 million to £14.5 million.

Fraudsters are primarily operating through websites such as Gumtree and Facebook, and using “common tactics” to catch people out, said PropertyWire. This includes demanding upfront payments of £50 to £100 to demonstrate interest before fake viewings, and requesting holding deposits ranging from £800 to £1,500 to “supposedly secure properties”.

Common rental scams

Fraudulent landlords typically use non-mainstream channels, to pretend to advertise a property which may actually exist, “but they do not have the right to let it”, said the National Residential Landlords Association.

A victim may be convinced to part with a deposit or rent upfront, and the fraudster then “promptly disappears with the money”.

A “common version” involves a fake landlord posting on dedicated Facebook rental groups or Gumtree, offering a cheap place to rent, said The Guardian. They will ask you to pay a deposit, but the property will be “strangely unavailable” if you ask to view it.

The scam can be “entirely dismantled” by asking to see the property first, said NoLettingGo.

A “clever” and “difficult-to-spot scam” involves a prospective tenant signing a contract stating that if references are not acceptable, then the deposit sum will be returned – minus a fee for reference checks. While this “sounds reasonable”, references are deemed unsatisfactory and prospective renters get back only a “fraction of what you initially paid”.

Scammers may also pretend to be a landlord or lettings agent and charge tenants for applying to rent a property or to ensure it is taken off the market. However, it is “illegal for landlords or agents to charge tenants for applying to rent a property, viewing a property, or administration costs”, said The Negotiator.

In other cases, a scammer will lease a property, “rent it out as if they owned it” and disappear after taking a deposit and upfront rents, said the National Fraud Helpline. Some tenants may even move in, and it may be weeks “before they find out it was a con”.

How to spot a rental scam

Tenants should watch out for “common warning signs,” said PropertyWire, such as payment requests via personal bank transfers, payment apps, gift cards, or cryptocurrency.

Look out for “lower rent than other listings nearby”, said Generation Rent, and if “something seems too good to be true, it probably is”.

A “simple Google Images search”, said SpareRoom, may reveal that the property isn't even for rent, or that the photos were of a completely different property. The "golden rule” is not to hand over any money until you’ve seen it in real life, and use your common sense.

Renters can also check on a landlord and whether a property belongs to them by purchasing property information from the Land Registry or through Rent Profile.

“Equipping our forces, defending our future” – that’s the government’s core promise in its long-delayed defence investment plan.

The “game-changing” plan, finally published by the Ministry of Defence, will “strengthen our Armed Forces on land, at sea and in the air”, said Keir Starmer. The £15 billion of extra spending will provide “cutting-edge capabilities” to deter “evolving threats and keep the British people safe”.

But in among the rhetoric, there is concern over how much of a gamble the move to a “hybrid Navy” – with a greater focus on drone warfare – might turn out to be.

What is a ‘hybrid Navy’?

The Royal Navy will move to a “hybrid” approach after the UK cancelled the planned purchase of expensive Type 83 destroyers in favour of “at least six” common combat vessels, which are earmarked to act as a “control hub” for a fleet of aerial, surface and underwater drones.

So “rather than concentrating capability in a small number of large, expensive ships”, the “hybrid Navy” will “mix crewed and uncrewed capabilities” and be “more suited to the pace and nature of modern warfare”, said the Ministry of Defence. This shift is among those that’s “likely to make the most waves”, said Breaking Defense.

With a hybrid Navy, “we’re absolutely taking both feet off the ground and leaping into the unknown”, retired Royal Navy commodore Steve Prest told BFBS Forces News. It’s “hugely risky” because “a lot of the technologies” haven’t been “put together in this way previously”, nor has it been proved they can “deliver this overall capability” in the way it is now required.

The hybrid approach is “being sold as a radical departure in British defence policy”, said Edward Stringer, a retired RAF officer, on The New Statesman, but the Royal Navy “has been here before”. As far back as the 1860s, HMS Warrior was a “hybrid ship” and the era “gave rise to its own hybrids” – vessels “with a steam engine, but with masts and sails just in case” and an “old-fashioned gun deck and trainable turrets”.

What’s happening in the air?

For the Royal Air Force, the government announced a “new, national Collaborative Combat Air programme”. This would involve the development of “new autonomous fighter jets which will fly alongside crewed jets, to defend the UK’s skies”. It’s hoped this will begin by 2030.

Funds will be spent on a collaborative project with Italy and Japan to build the next generation of RAF stealth jets, but more than 30 Wildcat and Chinook helicopters will be axed. Storm Shadow cruise missiles will also be phased out.

Although some £790 million will go to protect the UK and its overseas bases from enemy missiles and drones, this is “a fraction of the sums of money that experts say would be required for a credible air defence system, like Israel’s Iron Dome”, said Sky News.

What about drones?

More than £5 billion is being invested in a “drone transformation” of the Armed Forces, which is “driven by lessons from Ukraine”, said the MoD. The UK military will be given inexpensive attack drones, which were hailed by a commander in the Ukrainian army as their “saviour” in the country’s war against Russia, said the BBC.

There will also be uncrewed ground vehicles, plus new armoured vehicles, with AI-enabled digital targeting. The plan states that these developments will increase “lethality” by a factor of 10.

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

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

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

How is the UK already devolved?

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

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

What has Burnham proposed?

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

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

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

What is the aim?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are the protests about?

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

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

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

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

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

Why is it so controversial?

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

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

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

What next?

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

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

Walkers tend to drift leftwards

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

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

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

A step closer to a cure for lupus

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

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

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

Rare sighting of the ugliest shark

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

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

Making sperm magnetic

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

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

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

What is an omega block?

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

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

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

How will heat affect the future?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is remigration?

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

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

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

Is it becoming mainstream?

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

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

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

Who is pushing for it?

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

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

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

Does it have support in the UK?

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

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

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

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

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

What does the Ockenden Report say?

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

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

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

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

How could this happen?

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

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

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

What can be done?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tax

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

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

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

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

Property taxes

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

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

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

Mortgages

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

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

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

Pensions

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

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

The importance of the chancellor 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Myth #4: Your income affects your credit score.

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

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

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

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

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

How was Starmer viewed?

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

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

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

Where did it go wrong?

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

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

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

Is Britain an isolated case?

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

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

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

Is the future brighter with Burnham?

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Miliband

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

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

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

Wes Streeting

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

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

Louise Haigh

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

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

Miatta Fahnbulleh

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

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

Anneliese Midgley

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

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

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

What are the fiscal rules?

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

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

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

What are the issues with fiscal rules?

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

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

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

What might Andy Burnham do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What were the terms of the ceasefire?

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

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

Why has progress stalled?

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

How are conditions in Gaza?

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

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

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

Is any rebuilding taking place?

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

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

How strong is Hamas now?

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

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

Are there any signs of diplomatic progress?

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

What other challenges are there?

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

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

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

How does FAE work?

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

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

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

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

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

What are the issues?

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

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

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

Will it still be used?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have oil prices changed?

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

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

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

Will this continue?

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

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

What about inflation?

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

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

What does this mean for consumers?

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

How will businesses be affected?

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

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

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

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

How does it work?

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

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

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

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

How effective is it?

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

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

How much will it cost?

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

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

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

Are there any side-effects?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seek basic financial education

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

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

Don’t rely on AI for tailored financial advice

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

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

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

Double-check information

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

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

Don’t give away sensitive information

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

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

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

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

How many data centres are there in the UK?

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

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

What’s the latest?

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

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

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

What’s planned for the future?

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

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

How much environmental impact do they have?

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

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

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

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

Why are researchers revamping the measles drug search?

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

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

How far away is an approved measles drug?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How will it work?

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

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

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

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

Will it work?

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

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

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

Did it work in Australia?

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

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

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

How does heat affect the tournament?

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

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

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

How will future World Cups be affected?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is UFC Freedom 250?

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

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

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

Who is Dana White?

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

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

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

How close are White and Trump?

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

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

Has it faced any difficulties?

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

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

Has it been popular?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Upfront car costs

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

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

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

Running costs of electric car vs. petrol

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

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

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

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

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

What is the verdict?

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

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

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

Why are aircraft engines becoming more expensive?

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

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

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

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

How are airlines reacting?

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

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

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

How was the vaccine developed?

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

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

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

Is it effective on humans?

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

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

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

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

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

How bad is the problem?

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

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

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

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

Why aren’t we better prepared?

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

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

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

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

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

What can be done to improve things?

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

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

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

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

What is ‘civil defence’?

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

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

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

What planning and organisation exists? 

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

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

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

Is anything being done now?

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

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