Hospital wards are becoming “unbelievably dangerous” during heatwaves, said Helen Morgan, the Lib Dems’ health spokesperson, with temperatures of up to 41.8C.

“Almost all” hospitals have seen temperatures exceed the recommended NHS maximum of 28C during the recent heatwaves, said The Times, citing figures obtained by the Lib Dems under the Freedom of Information Act. On average hospitals recorded a maximum temperature of 31.9C in July.

How are staff and patients coping?

Put bluntly, they’re not. Nursing staff are “collapsing” on shift in the extreme heat and patients are “suffering” in facilities “not fit for humans”, said the Royal College of Nursing. Staff say they are “dripping with sweat from head to toe”, and one collapsed from dehydration after working a long shift on a ward with no ventilation.

Ambulance workers have described the difficult and “vile” conditions they have had to work in during heatwaves, said the Unison union. One ambulance worker told the union they “have one uniform whether it’s minus 10 or 30 degrees” and during heatwaves “you’re sweating even when you’re just driving”. Doing CPR in the heat is “ten times harder”, they said. “I could have cried during my last shift.”

A “surge” of patients have been “brought in for heat-related conditions”, said the BBC. July was the busiest ever month for A&E units in England and 2.5 million people attended A&E during the month’s two heatwaves, according to NHS data.

The number of patients enduring 12-hour waits in A&E was a third higher than this time last year. GP and doctor appointments and 999 calls in England were both up by around 10% compared with last summer.

According to the UK Health Security Agency, nearly 3,000 patients died in May and June from complications such as heart attacks and strokes linked to the extreme weather.

What issues have there been with equipment?

Hospitals have reported problems with equipment, including scanners and IT systems, and “difficult working conditions” for staff, particularly at “some of the older sites”, said the BBC. MRI scans, blood tests and surgery have all been delayed.

What problems are there with NHS buildings?

Very few hospitals or GP surgeries are equipped with either air conditioning or adequate ventilation. Air conditioning is prioritised for critical spaces such as operating theatres “due to capital and running costs”, said The Times.

Several hospitals have declared critical incidents this summer because ageing NHS buildings, many of which were built in the Victorian era, are “not equipped to cope”.

Tim Lane, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, said that “across the NHS, surgical teams are struggling to deliver high-quality care in ageing hospital buildings” and in “an infrastructure struggling to cope with continuing heatwaves”.

An “additional burden” is placed on the NHS “during periods of extreme heat”, said Health Secretary Yvette Cooper. “I have made clear that we must start planning for summer pressures in the NHS in the same way we do for winter.” NHS England said it must “adapt its sites and services to cope with the impacts of severe weather”.

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

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

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

What explains this shift?

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

Is China a green economy?

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

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

How has it built up this industry?

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

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

What effect has this had?

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

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

What are the downsides to this?

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

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

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

Will the boom continue?

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

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

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

Engineers vs. lawyers

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is it?

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

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

What’s the history?

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

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

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

What’s happening this year?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s the background?

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

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

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

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

What’s the latest?

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

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

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

What’s driving the shift?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is in the book?

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

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

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

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

How will it be used at trial?

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

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

What does Davis say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who is Daniel Kinahan?

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

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

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

How did he end up back in Ireland?

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

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

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

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

When will he face trial?

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

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

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

How were these dogs created?

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

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

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

How will this affect the pet industry?

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

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

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

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

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

What about the UK?

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

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

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

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

How should you view it?

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

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

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

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

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

Anything else to know about it?

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

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

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

At least 6,000 seafarers are stuck on board at least 400 tankers and cargo ships, according to the UN’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO). Many of the ships have been stranded in the Persian Gulf since the US-Israel war with Iran erupted in late February.

“It’s as if we are trapped in a pond,” Shafiqul Islam, captain of a ship carrying some 37,000 tonnes of fertiliser bound for South Africa, told the BBC in June. “There’s only one way out”: via the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which some 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas – as well as crucial commodities including fertiliser, aluminium and helium – once flowed from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq and Iran to global markets.

Before the war, more than 130 ships a day transited the strait, which is 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. Iran declared the waterway closed and launched missiles and drones at vessels trying to sail through, grinding traffic to a halt. At one point, up to 20,000 mariners and 2,000 ships were stuck in the Gulf, with only a few vessels squeezing through each day.

How were they able to get out?

India, China, Pakistan and other nations negotiated with Iran for safe passage for their flagged vessels, and some tanker operators paid Iran up to $2 million for transit rights for individual ships. The logjam in the Gulf eased in June after Washington and Tehran struck a preliminary peace deal, after which about 30 ships a day were able to exit the strait. But that number dropped back to single digits earlier this month when the war restarted.

For the trapped sailors – mainly from India and the Philippines, as well as from nations including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Syria and Ukraine – the fear of death or injury is a constant. “Everyone is just exhausted,” said captain Hassan Khan, “both physically and mentally.” While trapped on ships often loaded with explosive substances, the crews have watched missiles and drones streak overhead, and at least 17 mariners have been killed in Iranian and US strikes.

Raman Kapoor, a tanker captain who had ten days left on his tour when the war erupted, watched helplessly in March as a nearby tanker exploded after being hit by an unmanned craft. One sailor died. “Everyone was so scared,” Kapoor said. “We are just seafarers. We are not trained for any war.”

What is life like on board?

Long, monotonous and very hot (daytime temperatures are usually above 40°C in July). While the crews work to ensure their ships remain seaworthy, and films and ping-pong serve as distractions, staving off boredom and depression is a struggle. “We do our best to keep [up] morale,” Abhijit Chopra, the captain of a tanker that had been stuck for more than 120 days, told Bloomberg. “But there is definitely a sense of strain and uncertainty.”

To entertain themselves and add some diversity to onboard meals, some crews are catching and cooking fish. Calls home are a boon, but infrequent, because satellite phone time is limited and expensive. To protect sailors’ mental health, captains encourage crews to do everything together and to never leave anyone alone – even when they dine or relax. Sailors report that access to knives and other sharp objects is more tightly controlled than normal, to prevent people from harming themselves or others. Meanwhile, food, water and medicine on many vessels are running low.

Is anything being done about that?

Boats from nearby ports are delivering supplies, but prices keep going up. One Korean sailor told the BBC that it feels like suppliers “are trying to take advantage of the situation and make excessive profits”. The engineer of one ship said the cost of 180 tonnes of water has spiked from about $2,000 to $11,000. Fees for “bottom cleaners”, removing biofouling – barnacles, mussels, algae – from ships’ hulls have shot up, too. Scammers are also taking advantage, claiming to belong to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, they’ve tricked shipping firms into sending hefty payments to their cryptocurrency wallets in exchange for safe passage.

Has there been any formal evacuation attempt?

A short-lived one. While a ceasefire was in effect in late June, the IMO began ushering ships through the strait’s southern and northern corridors – avoiding the central lanes where Iran had laid mines. Some 115 ships and 2,500 sailors made it out, but the US-backed initiative was scrapped within days after Iran attacked a tanker that was not taking part in the evacuation off Oman’s coast.

Some sailors have taken matters into their own hands. Stuck at an Iranian port, Santosh Kumar borrowed nearly $7,000 to pay an agent to drive him some 600 miles to Armenia, where he boarded a flight to Dubai and then on to his native India. “My family just wanted me home alive,” he said.

But such escapes have become increasingly difficult: some Gulf Arab states have restricted short-term shore passes for sailors over security concerns. Many merchant sailors are now wondering if the profession has become too dangerous, because the Iran war is only the latest crisis to hit the shipping industry.

What have been the other crises?

Mariners were stranded at sea during the pandemic, and drone attacks on vessels in the Black Sea have become routine since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen – who attacked more than 100 vessels during the war in Gaza – last month declared an embargo of Saudi Arabian shipping in the Red Sea, putting more commercial vessels in the line of fire. Merchant seamen seem increasingly wary of going to sea: companies have struggled to secure replacement crews to relieve sailors in the Gulf whose contracts have expired, despite offering substantial bonuses. The war, said Arsenio Dominguez, the IMO’s secretary-general, has heightened the feeling among seafarers that they are “invisible, that they are not valued.”

A hidden workforce

Seafarers move 90% of global trade ($16.5 trillion worth of goods annually), yet they are largely invisible to the public. There are an estimated 2.6 million seafarers currently serving aboard 85,000 merchant vessels worldwide, according to the Seafarer Workforce Report 2026, published by the shipping association Bimco and the International Chamber of Shipping. More than half of all merchant mariners are provided by the “big five”: the Philippines, India, China, the Russian Federation and Indonesia; Poland, Romania and Ukraine are also important “supplier” nations. About a million are officers, and 1.5 million are ratings.

As ships have got bigger, and docks more automated, the number of sailors required per tonne of cargo has reduced drastically. Pay has become globalised, with most packages for able seamen around $1,200-$1,500 per month (the International Transport Workers’ Federation minimum basic wage is $690 per month). Around 24,500 UK merchant mariners were at sea in 2025; a collapse from the 1970s, when there were nearly 90,000 British sailors. This was driven by British-owned vessels shifting to foreign registries (known as “flagging out”) and the rise of recruitment from Asia and eastern Europe.

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

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

Who is in the running?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does the secretary general do?

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

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

What will be in their in-tray?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where does the guidance apply?

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

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

How will it be implemented?

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

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

What does it mean for trans people?

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

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

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

What has been the reaction?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is Israel going after these sites?

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

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

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

What has the Palestinian response been?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is the yen so weak?

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

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

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

What’s in it for Trump?

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

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

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

Is this a sign of things to come?

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

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

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

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

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

What did the research say?

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

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

Is it different for men and women?

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

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

Should we all be getting seven hours?

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

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

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

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

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

Who’s running?

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

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

How does the vote work?

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

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

What do the polls say?

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

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

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

What’s at stake?

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

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

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

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

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

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

How are they formed?

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

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

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

Are they getting more common?

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

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

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

How can they be stopped?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are painted ladies?

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

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

Why are numbers spiking?

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

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

What about wider butterfly numbers?

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

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

US dominance of the AI landscape is receding with the release of Kimi K3, the newest model developed by a Chinese start-up called Moonshot AI.

Kimi K3 is as “powerful as the most advanced AI systems” from the US, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, while being “cheaper to run”, said The Telegraph. It is available for people to freely download and is an “open-weight model”. This allows developers to download it, modify it and run it on their own servers for free, “positioning it for easier adoption and a wider market globally”, said CNN.

How good is K3?

K3 was “beating” Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 model and OpenAI’s 5.5 in most coding and “general AI agent benchmarks”, according to results released by Beijing-based start-up Moonshot. This was while costing “about a third of Anthropic’s Opus 4.8”, said the Financial Times. But K3 was “falling short” of Anthropic’s Fable model.

Unlike the “closed” and “proprietary” American systems, K3’s “open nature” allows global users to “modify the system for advanced reasoning and complex software development”, said the BBC. It will be the world’s first open source model in the “three-trillion-parameter class”. A parameter refers to “learned values within a machine learning model that determine how it maps input data into outputs”, said IBM.

The release of K3 had an “immediate” market reaction, said The New York Times. The Nasdaq dropped around 1%, with investors selling shares in US companies like Intel and Nvidia, who make computer chips to power AI.

How have Anthropic and OpenAI reacted?

Anthropic and OpenAI have accused Chinese companies of “improperly harvesting data” from their systems to “accelerate” their own competing models’ development. However, after years of “operating under export controls” and “tight computing constraints”, China’s advances “cannot be explained by distillation alone”. There is “real innovation going on”, said Graham Webster, a Stanford University professor.

The “steady stream” of Chinese open-source AI models, including K3, that “rivals” the performance of “costly systems from Silicon Valley” have become the “preferred choice” for developers, said the NYT. President Trump has “repeatedly framed maintaining America’s “lead” in the “defining technological race of our time” as a “strategic imperative for preserving the country’s economic and national security”. These technological developments have “underscored the geopolitical stakes of the US-China contest for leadership”.

What does this mean for US dominance in AI?

Xi Jinping released a statement saying AI development should not be a “solo performance by a single country” but instead a “symphony of international cooperation”. He said China was “ready to work with all parties to seize the opportunities of AI development”.

US AI leaders and policy makers had taken “comfort” from “estimates that China remained six to 12 months behind”, even with Chinese open-weight models “gaining momentum”, said Axios. However, the release of Kimi K3 suggests that “cushion may have collapsed far faster than expected”. With the “entire game changed”, this could “trigger some code red for some”, said AI analyst Kim Isenberg.

American labs are “hardly out of ammunition” with OpenAI and Anthropic “racing ahead” to build newer systems like GPT-6 and Claude Opus 5. But even if the US “pulls ahead” again, China has shown it can “close the gap quickly”.

A shrinking pool of ultra-wealthy donors increasingly bankroll Britain’s political parties. Should we be worried?

Why is this issue in the news?

The short answer is because of Reform UK. In December 2025 the Electoral Commission, the statutory body that regulates elections and political finance, reported that Reform had received £9 million from the Thai-based crypto investor Christopher Harborne – the largest donation to a political party ever made by a living person in the UK. (Harborne also gave £5 million, said to be a personal gift, to Nigel Farage in 2024.)

The latest figures show that just under £25 million was donated to UK political parties in the first quarter of 2026: £9.9 million to Reform, £6 million to the Conservatives, £4 million to Labour and £3 million to the Lib Dems. Of the money given to Reform, £7 million of it came from Harborne and one other donor, Ben Delo, the Hong Kong-based founder of a crypto exchange. This is, increasingly, a theme of all political funding. In 2015, donations of £1 million or more from individuals and companies accounted for 1% of all private political donations. By 2024, such high-value donations made up fully 35% of the total.

Why is this happening?

Voluntary donations fuel party politics in the UK. State funding is limited to relatively small amounts given to opposition parties. Parties need money to pay their staff, conduct research, advertise and fight elections. The steady decline of membership – the Tories had around three million members in the 1950s, and now have around 130,000 – has seen fees replaced by donations.

Big donations are not limited to Reform: members of the Sainsbury family have given tens of millions to the Conservatives and Labour, including a £10 million bequest to the Tories in 2022, the largest donation in UK history. Yet the past decade has seen the rise of a new generation of mega-donors, less well known, often residing abroad. At the same time, overall spending has grown, aided by the Tories’ controversial decision to raise the electoral spending cap by 80% in 2023. The total spent by all parties at the 2001 election was £27 million; at the 2024 election, it was nearly £69 million.

What does the law say about political spending?

For election campaigns, spending limits are set for each national party (calculated at £54,010 per constituency contested) and for each local candidate (from £11,390). There is, however, no general limit on political donations. Since 2000, donations over £11,180 (previously £7,500) must be reported to the Electoral Commission. However, loopholes abound. For instance, Frank Hester and his company The Phoenix Partnership donated £15 million to the Conservatives before the 2024 election (63% of the party’s campaign spending) but broke it up into smaller amounts to avoid scrutiny.

Donors have to be “permissible”, meaning they’re an individual who is on the electoral register (this includes overseas voters), or a UK-registered company, union or other body. Those who are not UK voters can get round the ban by giving money via UK subsidiaries, or by using so-called unincorporated associations.

Why is this a matter for concern?

Money affects electoral outcomes. Arguably, Reform could not have established itself as a major party without generous funding for it and its predecessor, the Brexit Party. And by and large, parties do not get something for nothing. Political scientists often divide donors into three (overlapping) groups: “ideologues”, motivated by a cause; “investors”, who give money to those they think will represent their interests; and “intimates”, who enjoy the access it gives to lawmakers and the associated prestige. The dangers of this are well-rehearsed. But as donations grow more narrow and concentrated among the super-rich, the fear is that parties are ever-more vulnerable to donor pressure. It is no coincidence, critics say, that two-thirds of Reform’s money comes from crypto businessmen, and that the party is calling for a regulatory “Big Bang 2” to turn the UK into a “crypto hub”.

But the problem spreads wider than that. Transparency International UK has assessed that £42 million given to political parties since 2001 came from donors either alleged, or proven, to be involved in fraud, corruption or money-laundering.

Is there an alternative to the current system?

Many nations cap not what parties can spend but what donors can give. Australia has a $50,000 annual donation cap; Canada limits individuals to around $1,750 per year; France caps them at $7,500. In each case, however, the state makes up the shortfall – per voter, France spends over ten times as much as the UK on political parties – and in Britain such state funding is unpopular; most taxpayers reject the principle that they should fund parties they disagree with.

At the other end of the spectrum from France is the US, where the Supreme Court has scrapped all donation and spending limits on freedom of speech grounds. The cost of US elections, and the influence of the very rich, has since rocketed.

Are there any plans to limit donations?

Labour’s 2024 manifesto promised to “protect democracy by strengthening the rules around donations”. Philip Rycroft’s independent review into foreign financial interference recommended, among other things, an annual £100,000 cap on political donations from British voters living abroad; a suspension of crypto donations; and tighter “Know Your Donor” checks. In March, these were added as amendments to the Representation of the People Bill, which was due to come to the Commons for its third reading last week.

The bill’s progress was abruptly delayed, because of backbench amendments aimed at capping domestic political donations. The Labour MP Stella Creasy proposed a universal annual cap of £100,000 on individual donations. (This would have stripped Reform of around 85% of its funding.) Both Reform and trade unions – whose block donations to Labour could have been affected – objected. The delay will allow Andy Burnham’s government to reshape the legislation.

When President Donald Trump announced he was gifted a new luxury Boeing 747-8 from Qatar to use as an interim Air Force One, many national security analysts were worried about risks potentially inherent to the plane. Now that Trump has started using the vehicle, it seems some of those concerns have been borne out, with even Trump himself insinuating that the plane may have security lapses.

What makes Trump’s new plane different?

The plane was designed to be used only during Trump’s presidency. It is built on the body of a Boeing jumbo jet, but there are some significant differences from prior Air Force Ones. The biggest change is that it appears to almost uniquely suit Trump’s taste, complete with a new color scheme after the plane was “repainted in dark navy blue, deep red and gold,” said CBS News.

In keeping with Trump’s affinity for gold and luxury, the plane’s interior features “cognac leather seats” with lie-flat capabilities alongside tray tables made of “mahogany with silver trim,” CNN reported. To communicate with the outside world, the plane serves as an “airborne command post equipped with a new communications system that enables resilient, secure connectivity to respond to global events without disruption,” said L3 Harris Technologies, the contractor used by the U.S. Air Force to upgrade the plane.

What are the security issues?

For all the talk of the gilded plane, there is no shortage of worries about how secure it is. The new model “lacks the same defensive countermeasures that were security features of the old model, including its advanced antimissile capabilities,” sources told The New York Times. At least two Air Force officials were “surprised to see Trump fly on the new jet overseas, where there are greater security risks.”

The plane was gifted by Qatar, a nation that Trump “used to accuse of supporting terrorism,” said MS NOW. But since receiving the jet, the White House has “cozied up to Qatar to a remarkable degree, even unilaterally extending a NATO-like security guarantee to the nation.” That has not changed the fact that the plane “may ​not be as ⁠secure as the baby blue Air Force One that preceded it,” said Reuters.

The White House originally shot back at these insinuations, sending subpoenas to the reporters at The New York Times who wrote about the plane; these were later withdrawn. Trump has since “acknowledged that the Boeing jet given to him by Qatar cannot match the defensive armor of a true presidential aircraft,” said The Guardian, telling reporters he will go back to using the original plane while the new one is “grounded and ‘maxed out’ with the protections it was never built with.” Republicans in Congress have blocked efforts to halt further work on the vehicle.

During a recent overseas trip to Turkey, Trump initially flew aboard the plane but “switched to an older, more heavily defended aircraft for the return leg amid rising tensions with Iran, reportedly on the advice of the Secret Service,” said The Guardian. Despite the security concerns, as well as ethics controversies over accepting the $400 million jet, it is “perfectly safe for the president’s travels but will receive additional upgrades and enhancements in the fall, which will take approximately one month to complete,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

“Ticks are small, and you might not notice when they bite,” but their bites have the potential to “dramatically harm” your health, said Amanda Roome, co-director of the University of New York’s Tick-Borne Disease Center, on The Conversation. Ticks can carry viruses that “really pack a punch” in terms of “how sick they make you” or even trigger an allergy to red meat. And, in the UK, the number of ticks are on the rise.

What are ticks?

They are small arachnids that feed on the blood of animals, including humans. They tend to live in woodland, heathland or scrubland, climbing to the tips of grass blades or other vegetation and using the sensory organs on their front legs to detect carbon dioxide, body heat and movement from a passing animal host. When they bite, they inject an anaesthetic that prevents you from feeling pain or itchiness as they dig in.

The majority of tick bites don’t cause illness – many ticks don't carry disease-causing pathogens and not all bites from an infected tick cause infection. But the illnesses some of them can cause can be pretty nasty.

The most common is Lyme disease, carried by the castor-bean tick, which can do long-term damage joints, heart and the nervous system. Cases of Lyme disease are spiralling in the US but, in the UK, it’s still pretty rare – although 1,168 cases were recorded last year, a 20% increase from the previous year. But cases could well in increase as the number of ticks in the UK grows.

Some ticks can also carry a type of encephalitis, with symptoms that range from a mild flu-like illness to a stiff neck, brain inflammation and loss of consciousness. These ticks have been detected in a small number of areas in England but very, very few cases of tick-borne encephalitis have been diagnosed. The UKHSA classes the risk to the general population as “very low”.

In the US, other tick-borne illnesses, including Heartland virus disease, Powassan virus disease, babesiosis and anaplasmosis, have been causing concern. They can all cause “serious health problems” and in, “severe cases”, even death, said Roome on The Conversation.

There’s also been much media coverage of a rare allergy that can be triggered by tick bites: Alpha Gal syndrome. Affected people can develop a potentially fatal reaction to red meat, dairy products and some animal-derived medicines and vaccines. There have been more than 110,000 suspected cases in the US and an estimated 5,000 in Australia but hardly any in the UK.

Why are there more ticks?

“Tick populations are expanding geographically because we’re changing the climate,” Vett Lloyd, a tick expert at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, told The Guardian. Our milder winters and warmer summers are boosting ticks’ survival rates, and there are also more mice to act as hosts: ticks “feast on rodents” as well as deer and birds. Reforestation and the expansion of green spaces closer to residential areas also play a role. Ticks – and the pathogens they can carry – “are expanding almost exclusively because of human changes” to the environment.

What can we do?

The best way to prevent infection is to avoid a tick bite “in the first place”, said Roome. If you’re planning a walk away from paths over areas of long grass, make sure you’re wearing socks, sturdy enclosed shoes, long trousers, and a long-sleeved shirt. Choose light-coloured clothing if you can: it can help you spot – and brush off – a tick before it bites. When you get home, check your skin thoroughly for ticks: they tend to lurk in armpits, the groin, behind the knees, around the waistband, the wrists, the back of the neck and the hairline.

If you do get bitten, “try to get the whole tick out”, Charlotte Mao, a US doctor who works with the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, told The Guardian. She recommends using “fine tip tweezers with firm gentle pressure” to grasp the tick at its head and pull it up. “You want to try to not have the mouth parts break off and stay stuck in the skin.” Then you should wash the site of the bite, and your hands, thoroughly with soap and water or rubbing alcohol.

After a tick bite, if you notice a spreading “bullseye” rash at the site of the bite (a common of Lyme disease infection) or symptoms including feeling flu-ey, a facial droop or numbness or tingling in the hands or feet, do seek advice from your GP.

A financial trick that uses credit card debt to make money has returned because of relatively high savings rates.

Financial conditions are now in a “sweet spot” for the strategy known as stoozing, said The Telegraph.

A “successful stoozer”, said MoneySuperMarket, effectively turns credit card debt into a short-term interest-free loan while keeping their actual money in a high-paying savings account.

The difference between the savings interest and any credit card fees is your profit. But while the concept is “relatively simple”, successful stoozing “requires careful organisation and financial discipline”.

What is stoozing?

Stoozing is a way of “manipulating 0% spending credit cards to make money”, said MoneySavingExpert.

The method means you can “maximise interest earnings”, said The Independent, by spending on a 0% interest credit card “while diverting your actual cash into high-yield savings accounts”.

How stoozing works

Stoozing involves taking out a long-term 0% spending credit card and using it for your normal daily spending, while any unspent money from your bank account – such as your wages – goes into a top savings account to earn interest.

You need to make sure you pay off the credit card bill each month. When the 0% deal is about to end, you will need to either “pay off the balance using the money from the savings account or transfer it to a new credit card with a 0% balance transfer”, said Go.Compare. Meanwhile, any interest you earn on the money in the savings account ends up as profit.

Pros and cons of stoozing

The method can be “lucrative”, said MoneySavingExpert, but it will not work if you are “not very financially organised, unsure of how it works, have a poor credit history, don’t have financial self-discipline, or have other credit card, overdraft or loan debt”.

It is a “relatively low-effort” way to earn some extra money and maximise savings interest, said Moneyfacts.

But there are risks. You could be hit with interest charges if you don’t clear the debt, said CompareTheMarket, “undoing all the good work of having your money in a savings account”.

Taking out too much debt can also have a “negative impact” on your credit score, said Money to theMasses, which may make it harder to borrow money for a “legitimate reason” such as if you need a mortgage.

Plus, you may regret “locking away your savings” if you suddenly need the money sooner than expected, as there may be penalties for early withdrawals.

Is stoozing worth it?

Stoozing “only really works”, said uSwitch, when “savings interest rates are high”.

The method can be “worth the hassle”, said Go.Compare, if you have “strong credit” as well as “discipline for timely repayments”. Stoozers also need to be able to invest borrowed funds “profitably”. It is risky if you will struggle to pay the credit card bill or “the returns are too small for the effort involved”.

There are alternatives to stoozing, such as reward or cashback cards that pay “a percentage of your money back or build points to redeem in shops”.

Two of the biggest tech giants are locked in a head-to-head legal battle, with Apple claiming OpenAI stole trade secrets as the AI start-up plans its first hardware devices.

Apple launched the “blockbuster lawsuit” last week, accusing OpenAI and several of its staff – formerly Apple employees – of “stealing secret hardware plans”, said the Financial Times. One of the staff named in the lawsuit is OpenAI’s head of hardware, who was “a top Apple device designer”.

The lawsuit, which doesn’t name OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, amounts to “a spectacular breakdown in the relationship” between two of Silicon Valley’s “biggest names”.

What is the background between the two?

Apple and OpenAI launched a partnership in 2024, working to integrate OpenAI technology into Apple’s voice assistant, Siri. Apple also built ChatGPT into operating systems for iPhones, iPads and Macs.

But tensions began to surface last year when OpenAI bought a hardware start-up co-founded by Jony Ive, the former chief designer at Apple – and the brains behind the iPhone. OpenAI’s $6.4 billion purchase of io Products signalled that it was “foraying into hardware”, said The Guardian.

OpenAI is working with the “design guru” to develop a line of AI devices, including a hand-held gadget similar to a smart speaker, but equipped with a camera. These are “intended to compete with the iPhone and other Apple products”, said Bloomberg. Ive is “helping lead an effort to supplant” the very device he did so much to create. Much of his design team at Apple followed him and now work either at OpenAI or on its hardware products. This “exodus” has “fuelled resentment” at Apple.

The scale of departures is “astounding”, said Business Insider. More than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI, with some being “unusually senior”. Apple is “furious” that it’s losing talent to “a scrappy start-up” that’s “refusing to stay in its lane”. Last month it unveiled its revamped Siri, which used Google’s Gemini AI model rather than OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

What does the lawsuit claim?

“OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” Apple wrote. The suit claims OpenAI “poached Apple employees”, said The Guardian, “coaxing them to hand over confidential material, product designs and other tightly held information”.

It names Tang Yew Tan, OpenAI’s chief hardware officer – and a former vice-president at Apple. In 2024, Tan left Apple to work on Ive’s start-up. After OpenAI purchased io Products, it appointed Tan as its own chief hardware officer. The lawsuit claims Tan took information about Apple suppliers with him.

Apple also alleges that when its employees went for job interviews at OpenAI, Tan “asked them to show up with something unusual”, said The Verge: hardware components they were working on at Apple and unreleased product samples for “show and tell sessions”.

Apple claims another former employee took an Apple laptop when he left for OpenAI, and used an authentication bug to breach the company’s internal network and download “dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files”.

After filing the lawsuit, Apple sent “a barrage” of legal warnings to about 40 of its former employees at OpenAI, looking for evidence, said the FT. These “aggressive tactics” show “just how broad and combative the legal fight could become”.

What does OpenAI say?

OpenAI says it is not aware of “any evidence that the complaint has merit”. “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets,” said a spokesperson. But if the case goes to trial, it could “reveal the secret hardware OpenAI has long teased”, said CNET, perhaps before it is ready to launch.

Apple is seeking damages and a court order that would block OpenAI from possessing or using its trade secrets. Essentially, OpenAI is “a huge threat” to Apple, said Business Insider. It wants to either “directly challenge the iPhone, or completely replace this device as the go-to gadget of the AI era”.

OpenAI is “ridiculously well funded”, so Apple can’t easily acquire it to bring talent back into the fold. It’s also “too ambitious to swat away or subsume easily”. This explains “the intensity (or desperation?)” of Apple’s lawsuit.

The dispute also “underscores just how intertwined Apple and OpenAI have become”, said Bloomberg. “It’s an extraordinarily awkward situation, made all the more remarkable by the web of personal relationships that still connects the two companies.”

Nicaragua will stop holding elections in a bid to prevent foreign-backed interference, the country’s long-standing president Daniel Ortega has announced.

In a speech to commemorate the Sandinista revolution, which overthrew the US-backed Anastasio ⁠Somoza dictatorship in 1979, the 80-year-old strongman leader declared “the days when parties backed by the Yankees and the Somocistas would return to power are over – never again”.

Who is Daniel Ortega?

A key figure in the revolution, Ortega has held office continuously since 2007, having also served as president in the 1980s.

During his nearly two decades in power, his government has transformed Nicaragua into an “authoritarian state”, according to the UN Human Rights Council.

He has cemented control over virtually all branches of government, including the army and judiciary, and crushed political opposition, with hundreds killed and even more imprisoned following mass anti-government protests in 2018. Last year, further constitutional reforms extended presidential terms to six years, made his wife, Rosario Murillo, co-president, and effectively established a one-party system.

Why has he cancelled elections?

The last elections in 2021 were “widely disputed” after Ortega “detained opponents and business leaders and criminalised dissent”, said Reuters. Hundreds of opposition figures were imprisoned in the run-up to the vote, including a number of presidential hopefuls, before being stripped of their citizenship and expelled to the US and Guatemala.

Nicaraguans had been due to go to the polls again next year before Ortega’s recent announcement that “there won’t be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power”.

But analysts and opposition figures say the move has highlighted the Ortegas’ fear of a growing opposition movement taking root.

“Ortega and Murillo are evidently afraid at the idea that the slightest political opening could create the conditions for dissent to manifest and threaten their grip on power,” said Tiziano Breda, a senior analyst at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a non-profit organisation that tracks political violence. “Instead of staging a rigged election, they have opted to eliminate electoral competition altogether.”

What will the international reaction be?

In the wake of the US military raid in January to capture Venezuela’s then-President Nicolás Maduro, the Nicaraguan government announced it would release more political prisoners, “apparently an effort to stave off pressure on itself”, said AP News. “But there has been no follow-up and little transparency on the issue.”

Despite proscribing the Ortega government as a dictatorship, and imposing sanctions on more than 2,350 Nicaraguan officials and their relatives, the Trump administration has remained remarkably quiet on Ortega and the potential for regime change.

There are a “range of explanations” for this, said Politico’s Nahal Toosi, “including that the regime is making smart moves on battling drug trafficking, that it’s benefiting from a lack of natural resources for Trump to covet and that it doesn’t have a slew of migrants in the US”.

“The lesson from Nicaragua is: don’t matter too much, don’t embarrass Washington and don’t become a domestic political issue,” said Juan Gonzalez, a former Latin America aide to Joe Biden. “For an administration that doesn’t care about democracy or human rights, that’s an effective survival strategy for authoritarians.”

When it comes to a major purchase like a car, you likely want to save any money you can. Unfortunately, car-buying deals are not so easy to come by these days.

Though increases in new car prices have slowed since they shot up during the pandemic era, the “average cost of a new car remains historically high,” said Nerdwallet. “At the end of 2025, the average transaction price hit an all-time high of $50,326 according to Kelley Blue Book — and despite recent moderation, prices haven't strayed far from that peak.” And unfortunately, used cars are not that easy on the wallet either lately, especially given rising financing and car insurance costs.

But for many, a set of wheels is a necessity. If you are in the market, here are some ways you can try to trim costs.

1. Do your research

Doing your homework before you set foot in a dealership is essential. Get familiar with car models in the class you are interested in, and see what is well-rated for factors like performance, reliablity and value. Figure out what a fair price is for that vehicle using “online pricing guides, such as Kelley Blue Book, Edmunds or NADA guides, to know what price you should pay,” said Nerdwallet.

2. Get pre-approved

Equally important is getting prepared financially. “Before you start visiting dealerships, get a pre-approved financing offer,” as this will ensure that the “dealer has to offer a better deal if they want to earn your business for this part of the transaction,” said U.S. News & World Report. Be sure to shop around, too, before you settle on any one offer from an auto lender, to ensure you get the best rate.

3. Keep your eye out for incentives

“Check dealership and manufacturer websites for local and national incentives such as cash-back offers, low-rate or even 0 percent financing, and lease deals with low monthly payments, said Consumer Reports. It is not uncommon to find these sorts of offers “among less-popular offerings — such as sedans, small hatchbacks, and front-wheel-drive (as opposed to all-wheel-drive) SUVs,” said the outlet. Certain times of year to buy a car are also better than others if you are after a good deal.

4. Brush up on your negotiation tactics

Whether you are working with a car dealer or a private seller, it never hurts to ask for a better offer. One “good negotiation tip is to focus on the car’s total price,” said TaxAct. “A salesperson will sometimes try to gauge how much of a monthly payment you can afford instead of your total budget, which can lead to you spending more money than you anticipated,” especially once car ownership costs are factored in.

The trump card in a negotiation, however, is being comfortable walking away. “Just showing the willingness to get up and leave is often a powerful enough message to get the dealership staff to take notice and make you a better offer,” said U.S. News & World Report.

5. Stay flexible

Staying open about which car you get and the features it has can go a long way towards getting a better price. For instance, “note which brands have more or fewer cars in stock,” as those with more inventory will typically be more willing to negotiate, said Kiplinger (a sister site of The Week). Also consider the different trims offered in a vehicle, and which features seem like a necessity and which you are fine living without. If you feel like you need certain add-ons but the price is not matching up with your budget, “consider downsizing or shopping among models that aren’t as popular,” said Consumer Reports.

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”.