Politics
What heatwave coverage misses about danger and injustice
UK temperatures this week have hit 34.8℃ – by far the highest ever recorded in May. Whilst this made for an enjoyable bank holiday for some, the way we talk about heatwaves often misses the true extent of the danger and who is most at risk from it. As climate impacts intensify, we remain unprepared for the extreme heat that lies ahead.
Heat warnings
Europe is heating up particularly fast as the climate crisis accelerates. Temperatures here are rising more than twice as quickly as the global average. And whilst the overall temperature increases may look small, they have a massive impact on how often and how severely we experience extreme heat.
A stable climate is now a thing of the past, and this month’s erratic UK weather is an example of how this can play out: May started off warmer than average, experienced a cool period, then launched into the record-obliterating heatwave we are now witnessing.
The impacts of heatwaves across this continent are already devastating, with over 60,000 heat-related deaths estimated in 2024 and severe impacts on our ability to grow food.
Professor Hannah Cloke of the University of Reading explains why the current unseasonable heat is so dangerous to food production:
A prolonged spell of heat and dry weather at this stage of the growing season brings real concern. Many crops are at a critical point of development and sustained high temperatures, combined with a lack of rainfall, can cause stress, reduce yields and in some cases cause irreversible damage.
This can be disastrous for farmers, and filters through to all of us through food shortages and price inflation: climate impacts are already thought to be the biggest driver of rising food bills in the UK.
Extreme heat and injustice
Most of us will have experienced the unpleasant effects of dehydration, exhaustion or irritability when we have been unable to – or have chosen not to – avoid the heat. But for many in the UK, the impacts go far beyond discomfort. Health conditions and disabilities make people significantly more vulnerable.
Both mental and physical health factor here, as psychiatric registrar Dr Amelia Cussans told me:
Extreme heat impacts upon both the body and the mind. People living with mental health conditions often experience worsening symptoms during heatwaves. Many people will also experience a worsening of side effects from their psychiatric medications, which in turn interferes with the body’s ability to regulate temperature.
The effects can be extremely serious, as Dr Cussans explains:
This makes everyday coping much harder. During heat waves, A&Es see a spike in mental health-related admissions. Sadly, there is also a documented rise in suicides.
Whether it’s because your home isn’t built to deal with the heat or you have little choice but to work in sweltering conditions, extreme heat disproportionately harms people with the least access to cool spaces. Hence heatwaves both expose and deepen inequalities in wealth and power.
The global injustice is stark, with the most catastrophic heat impacts hitting the countries least responsible for driving them. For anyone recuperating from heatstroke or disrupted sleep after the bank holiday, it might be especially sobering to imagine how the blistering 50℃ heatwaves across West Africa and the Indian subcontinent must feel.
Connecting the dots
The enormity of the threats posed by heatwaves is not reflected in how we generally talk about them. Media coverage rarely references how much worse they’ll become, how poorly prepared the UK is, nor the inequalities at play. Even where health risks and climate warnings are part of the story, images of happy people flocking to the beach (or of dogs wearing sunglasses) can undermine these messages.
We need a media, and a wider culture, that connects the dots. For as long as we focus on simply reporting – or even enjoying – heatwaves without putting them in the context of climate breakdown, we can only expect them to become even more frequent, even more deadly and even more unfair.
Featured image via Ritesh Shukla/Getty Images
By Abi Perrin
Teaching assistants, residential workers, and other support staff at Ash Field Academy, a Leicester SEND school, completed their third day of strike action on Thursday 14 May. They’re demanding that Discovery Schools Academy Trust (DSAT), which runs the school, reinstates their trade union rep, Tom Barker.
DSAT suspended Barker from Ash Field on 30 October 2025. This was just four working days after the closure of a ballot in which UNISON members voted for strike action over staffing cuts. DSAT linked the suspension to unspecified conduct concerns.
Almost seven months on, DSAT has still produced no evidence to support any allegations against Barker. He remains suspended. Barker had led a successful campaign against DSAT’s attempt to cut around 10% of support staff.
Having completed three strike days, UNISON members have now decided to escalate their industrial action campaign. The union has given notice of further strike dates on (all dates inclusive):
- 3-5 June.
- 15-19 June.
- 6-9 July.
The reinstatement campaign, led by UNISON Leicester City, has received widespread support, including from Zarah Sultana MP and Andrea Egan, UNISON’s general secretary. Campaigners have initiated a TUC petition to demand Tom’s reinstatement.
On 30 April, the first day of strike action, Leicester South MP Shockat Adam attended the picket line. Adam said:
Workers’ rights don’t exist without action to defend them. I stand with those on strike against union busting and was proud to join the picket line in solidarity.
Louise Lewis, a teacher and a member of the national executive of the National Education Union, visited the picket line on Thursday 14 May. Speaking in a personal capacity, Lewis said:
Underfunding and privatisation – including the academy model for schools – have been extremely destructive for school staff, as well as our students, families, and our communities.
Strong trade unions are the most effective defence against attacks on public services. The picket lines I visited at Ash Field were extremely strong. I was proud to have attended.
UNISON members are rightly going to escalate the fight to stand against attacks on their right to organise. Some workers might be afraid of standing up to union-busting employers. This is understandable, but I want to send a message to these workers: you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by joining the pickets.
Like Tom, while serving as a rep in my previous school, I was suspended after standing up for members and challenging management.
What I remember most is the solidarity. NEU members stood together, took strike action in my defence, and closed the school in support. That collective action forced governors to reinstate me, and although I was later dismissed, members continued to stand with me throughout a successful tribunal case.
Only by standing together against injustice can we challenge union-busting employers.
Liz Robinson, UNISON East Midlands regional organiser, said:
Based on the information we have available to us, and the discussions regional officers have had with the trust, we are increasingly certain that this investigation, and Tom’s suspension is related to his Trade Union role.
We understand that the school denies this. If they were to admit that this was motivated by Tom’s Trade Union activities they would be admitting to breaching employment law.
Andrea Egan, UNISON’s general secretary, said:
I stand in full support of Tom Barker who was wrongly suspended by Ash Field Academy in October 2025 following a successful industrial action ballot in opposition to cuts, which Tom played an instrumental role in securing.
If Tom is not reinstated we will have no hesitation in escalating this dispute.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
Global Sumud Flotilla activists are returning home. Many suffered IOF torture, beatings and sexual violence. The Canary spoke with British flotilla activist, Alice Chapman, who was abducted by Zionist Navy forces.
I joined the flotilla in Sicily, in Augusta, and from there we were sailing for about four days before we were intercepted — I think on night five. We were still in international waters, fairly close to Greek waters.
We’d had a warning that day. At that same geographic point, the previous flotilla in September had encountered boats carrying explosives.
From Barcelona to Italy, there’d been a lot of surveillance drones — presumably Israeli, though you can’t really tell. When we reached that position, a message came through:
Watch out — from here on, drones are unlikely to be surveillance drones anymore.
Everyone needed to be really alert on night watches. Then it was far worse than we’d anticipated.
Messages weren’t coming in about drones dropping explosives — they were coming in from people saying the IOF were boarding boats. We had Signal, radio, and livestream cameras on our vessels.
The livestreams went first, then the radios. After that, Signal was all we had.
Flotilla volunteers victim to Israel’s illegal interception
Our boat received warnings for about an hour and a half before we were intercepted. It was around midnight when they came aboard. They told us they would shoot if we didn’t comply. It wasn’t quite guns to heads but actions to that effect.
We were ordered to the front of the boat and to kneel with our hands up. Then we were brought back to the cockpit one by one, where we sat in two rows of three facing each other. They pulled the sail down between us so we couldn’t see one another, then took a knife and began slashing through it.
At that point, honestly, my mind went to the worst places. I thought I was going to be killed or that something horrific was happening to my crew on the other side of that sail. Thankfully, it didn’t.
We were then ordered — shoved, really, hands forced behind our backs — on to a speedboat. From the speedboat we were transferred to a massive warship.
Captive on an IOF warship
On the warship we were made to kneel with our hands behind our backs for around 20 minutes, then ordered to remove our extra layers until we were in t-shirts.
What followed was a series of random processes — dragged from one position to another, made to kneel, moved again. We were body searched. It became aggressive. Some people were beaten.
Then we were placed, one by one, into a kind of makeshift prison constructed from shipping containers on the deck.
We stayed there for two days with no food or water. They would pour water on us while we were trying to sleep — which, in some ways, felt more disturbing than outright violence. It was so deliberate, so psychological.
They conducted head counts where we were all made to kneel while they fired rounds — rubber bullets, but rubber bullets can kill. Stun grenades were thrown constantly.
I was woken on the second day to soldiers simply walking in and throwing grenades around the space. They also took people out individually to beat them inside the containers. We couldn’t see it, but we could hear everything. Then those people simply didn’t come back.
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Calling at ‘complicit’ Crete
On day two they told us we were arriving at Crete and would be getting off. We refused until we had proof of life for individuals who had been taken into solitary confinement — six in total, including Saif and Thiago.
The soldiers said they were already on land, and fine. We said we didn’t believe them, and we weren’t leaving until we saw them. Eventually, we held a group discussion among the 180 of us: anyone who wanted to leave could go, anyone who wanted to stay in solidarity with Saif and Thiago could stay. About half left.
Then soldiers told us: “This is your last chance. If you don’t leave now, you come with us to Israel”. We said, fine. That seemed to confuse them, and then the violence began again.
We sat peacefully — we weren’t being violent in any way — [but] they dragged people out one by one, beating them in the containers as they went.
I was the last person, or second to last, remaining. I was too frightened to lift my head to check if anyone was behind me. I thought, if there’s no one left in this room, these soldiers can do absolutely anything and there is no one to bear witness.
They came at me and told me to get up or they’d use force. I didn’t move. They said they would be very violent. I didn’t move. One said he would break my wrist. I still didn’t move. He picked me up and dragged me out, and in the container he punched me a few times. I was okay.
Aftermath of Zionist violence
We were then taken out and made to lie on the floor again. Many people were being beaten. I saw several whose trousers had been pulled down.
Then we were transferred to a Greek coast guard vessel and taken to Crete — dumped on a scrubland on the coast with no idea where we were. When we arrived, we realised Saïf and Thiago weren’t there.
Everyone just went to pieces. It was like a zombie apocalypse. People were covered in blood, starving, severely dehydrated, standing on this strange scrubland with no infrastructure. No phones, no money, no food, no water, and barely any clothes. What clothes we had were soaking wet.
Three buses eventually arrived: one medical, the others for us. We waited four or five hours before any left — even the medical bus, despite the fact that people had broken ribs, broken necks, and fractured skulls.
The Greek [authorities] spent all their time on bureaucracy, rather than treating it as the emergency it was. It became clear they were entirely complicit [and] following Israeli orders. Collecting us without question.
We spent about a week in Crete after that. It was a strange week — a lot of trauma, a lot to process. The local Palestine solidarity community was incredible. We were all staying in a squat in Heraklion and I felt such a sense of belonging. People came together and were so kind. It was exactly where I needed to be.
Focus on Palestinians’ suffering
At the end of the day, this is about the Palestinian people. What’s happened in the last couple of weeks has really highlighted the West’s double standards.
The way they respond when Palestinian people are abused, as opposed to when people from their own countries are abused. Not that there has been a massive response from Western governments — they’ve done next to nothing — but people are finally paying attention because Western people have been subject to Israeli torture.
This is what Palestinians have been going through for decades, but they do not have another country to go to. They do not have families to go back to. They do not have a passport to get them out of those situations. They do not have another government to, supposedly, hold to account.
They are stuck there for their whole lives, with absolutely nothing to fall back on. That is what needs to be changed. That is what needs support. The world needs to wake up to the fact that this is happening every single day to thousands of people no different from you or I.
Featured image via Global Sumud Flotilla
Jack Osbourne has jumped to the defence of a new project recreating his later father Ozzy’s likeness using AI.
Last week, Jack and the rest of the Osbourne family announced plans to create a digital avatar based on the Black Sabbath frontman’s image in collaboration with tech companies Hyperreal and Proto Hologram.
Appearing at the advertising industry event Licensing Expo alongside his mum Sharon and sister Kelly, he enthused: “It’s kind of scary how it’s really very accurate. He will exist digitally as himself for as long as we have computers.”
Jack continued: “Technology has come such a long way to where it’s almost drag and drop. You could shoot a template for a commercial [and] literally prompt what you want Digital Ozzy to do in that commercial and you just drop it in. It’s that simple now.”
Sharon also noted that the family plan to take the digital avatar “all around the world”, allowing fans to have the opportunity to “talk to him and he will talk back”.
Meanwhile, Hyperreal also told Billboard last week these avatars would be popping up on interactive, life-size touchscreen devices at venues across both sides of the Atlantic.
However, with AI being such a contentious issue across creative industries, these announcements were met with criticism from some, which Jack addressed in a YouTube live-stream.
“It’s going to be so tasteful what we’re doing,” the former I’m A Celebrity campmate insisted (as reported by The Guardian). “It’s not gonna be fucking lame.”
He added: “This isn’t just like hooking up an image of my dad to ChatGPT. This is some high-level technology that we’re gonna be working with, and it’s gonna feel very real, and it’s kind of wild how it will be utilised.”
This isn’t the first time that digital recreations of Ozzy’s likeness have ruffled feathers, though.
Shortly after Ozzy’s death last year, Sir Rod Stewart raised eyebrows when he made use of an AI video in one of his live shows, depicting the rocker in heaven meeting Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Tupac Shakur, Freddie Mercury and Tina Turner, among others.
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Is there anything worse than a pan whose non-stick fails you after a few short years? Or buying a brand new pan and realising it’s not compatible with your hob?
As someone who’s experienced both, let me tell you: it’s not a situation you want to find yourself in.
As a kitchen essential, a great frying pan can make the difference between food that you want to feast on with your eyes as much as your mouth, and an undercooked, soggy mess.
Too many times have I spent upwards of £100 on a new frying pan only for it to get scratched by the whisper of a utensil.
And I’m sick of it! If you’re anything like me, you’ll want a pan that is not only efficient to cook with, but enhances the flavour of your food, and is easy to wipe clean or chuck in the dishwasher.
Whether you’re looking to upgrade your culinary prowess, or simply want a new pan to add to your collection, I’ve found the best frying pans available on the market right now.
What to consider when buying a frying pan
- Hob: Not all pans are compatible with induction hobs, so you’ll need to check before buying
- Material: Different materials cook, well, differently. Stainless steel pans heat up more evenly than ceramic or non-stick, and can reach higher temperatures, making them more suitable for searing. But, similar to cast iron pans, require treating to make sure they’re non-stick.
Ceramic pans are non-stick, which makes them great for cooking eggs. - Size: You might want to buy a mixture of sizes for every purpose.
- Dishwasher-friendly: Some pans can be cleaned in the dishwasher, but most must be cleaned by hand. Make sure you check this before you buy a pan if you have a preference, and also before you chuck it in the machine.
Difference between non-stick, ceramic, stainless steel, and cast iron pans
Traditional non-stick
- Very easy to use, releases food
- Versatile
- Often cheaper than ceramic, stainless steel or cast iron pans
- Some brands use toxic chemicals in the coating, which when damaged can seep into your food. Research each brand before buying to avoid
- Scratched with metal utensils.
Ceramic
- Easy to clean
- Fewer chemicals than traditional non-stick
- Can use on high heats, heats up quickly
- Versatile
- Eco-friendly
- Hand wash only
- Might not be as durable as stainless steel pans.
Stainless steel
- Don’t contain chemicals like traditional non-stick
- Heats up quickly and evenly
- Durable, they often last for life
- Can be non-stick (but require treating)
- Lighter than cast iron
- Dishwasher-safe
- Takes work to figure out how much heat and fat is needed to make it non-stick.
Cast iron
- Retains heat well
- Non-stick when seasoned
- Heavy
- Needs to be seasoned to prevent rust and make it non-stick
How I chose the best frying pans
As someone who cooks every day, I’m always thinking about how well my frying pan is performing. I tested several of the frying pans on this list, thinking about what they were best for cooking, how much maintenance they required, how non-stick they were compared with what they claimed to be, their size, whether they were dishwasher friendly and whether they were induction hub friendly.
Those I didn’t test myself, I crowdsourced from friends, family, and colleagues. I also read through thousands of reviews to see which were the best rated against the above criteria.
The best frying pans to buy in 2026
Best ceramic coated stainless steel pan
For the best of both worlds, Hexclad pans blend stainless steel with ceramic coating for pans that can be used on a high heat and don’t require treating. Designed in collab with Gordon Ramsay himself, this frying pan can just as easily sear as it can be wiped down. As if by magic, its handle won’t heat up, while the body can withstand up to 480 degrees in the oven. Even better, it can be popped in the dishwasher when you’re done, and you won’t even need to treat it!
Type: Stainless steel pan with ceramic coating
Size: 30cm
Induction friendly: Yes
Dishwasher friendly: Yes
Best for every day use
If you’re anything like me, you’ll be suspicious of anything that comes across your Instagram feed. And I’ll admit, this all singing, all dancing pan does sound too good to be true, but after two years of using it I can confirm it’s my go-to for everyday cooking. Thanks to the ceramic coating, it’s supremely non-stick. After a couple of years there’s a slight decrease in it’s non-stickiness, but nothing that means I can’t cook eggs. As well as coming in a range of gorgeous colours, it has a ton of practical accessories like a lid, a spatula that slots onto that little nub on the handle, and a steaming basket for everything from pasta to making a set custard.
Type: Aluminium pan with non-stick ceramic coating
Size: 26.7cm
Induction friendly: Yes
Dishwasher friendly: No
Best budget non-stick
My grandma swears by Tefal for cooking on the hob, and every time I’ve ever wanted a pan she’s bought me this one. It comes in at just £10, and is as non-stick as they come. While it scratches more easily than my Our Place one, the fact it’s such a budget option means I’ll always come back to it when I need a replacement.
Type: Teflon non-stick
Size: 24.8cm
Induction friendly: Yes
Dishwasher friendly: No
Best enamel-coated cast iron
If you’ve ever held a Le Creuset pot, you’ll have an idea of how study this pan is. Designed for sautéing, the cast iron base doesn’t require much heat to get things going, and it’ll sear everything from a hunk of protein to delicate greens perfectly. Although it has an enamel coating, it still needs to be seasoned, but eventually it will build up a non-stick resistance. That wooden handle will also make your life much easier by not burning your hands while you toss away.
Type: Enamel-coated cast iron
Size: 28cm
Induction friendly: Yes
Dishwasher friendly: No
With over 1,000 five-star reviews, it’s clear why this pan is such a fan favourite. It’s forged, which means the base is intended to be extremely scratch-resistant, and will last longer than other pans. You’ll even get a 25-year guarantee to prove it. It can go in oven up to 260 degrees, making it ideal for broiling or grilling, but is also induction hob and dishwasher-friendly. Check all our boxes, why don’t you?
Type: Non-stick
Size: 22cm
Induction friendly: Yes
Dishwasher friendly: Yes
Best titanium pan
By some miracle, Our Place has found a way to make a titanium pan non-stick without toxic chemicals. Its NoCo nonstick interior is free from lead, PFAS, PFTE, and PFOA, and its titanium surface is 300 times more durable than stainless steel. Not only is it suitable for every kind of hob, but it can hold its own in up to 535 degree heat. To prove its excellence, Our Place is offering a lifetime guarantee on this pan. Yep, even after you put it in the dishwasher.
Type: Non-stick
Size: 31.6cm
Induction friendly: Yes
Dishwasher friendly: Yes
Best small non-stick pan
When you’re cooking for one, it seems pointless to dirty a whole pan. When it’s dishwasher-safe, though, it’s another matter entirely. Perfectly sized for eggs or meals for one, this pan promises to be flake-free and five times more durable than regular non-stick pans. Thanks to the forged aluminium base, it heats up quickly and evenly, and it’s so non-stick you don’t need much oil or butter to start a meal off. Even more impressive is the fact it comes with a lifetime warranty, especially when it costs just £30 to begin with.
Type: Non-stick
Size: 20cm
Induction friendly: Yes
Dishwasher friendly: Yes
As we humans struggle to fall asleep and wrestle with withering lawns in the heatwave, it’s important to remember that our animals are struggling in the same blistering temperatures.
Sometimes, the RSPCA said, overheating can lead to potentially “fatal” heatstroke in dogs, whose risk of heatstroke rises at temperatures over 20°C.
Some of the symptoms of overheating and heatstroke can show up in your dog’s mouth first, they added.
Signs of heatstroke that can show in your dog’s mouth
1) Panting
Dogs pant more often the hotter they are, as that’s their primary cooling mechanism.
Dogs Trust said that heavy panting and/or changes to your dog’s breathing can be a sign of heatstroke.
2) Red, pink, or purple gums
Yes, sometimes, this is a dental issue. But the RSPCA added that if it’s “coupled with panting and heavy breathing, red gums can occur when a dog is overheating”.
And the Blue Cross listed “purple gums or red skin” in their list of heatstroke symptoms for dogs.
Dogs Trust, meanwhile, said you should look out for bright pink or red gums or lips.
3) Sticky, heavy drooling and/or dribbling
Per the RSPCA, a dog that’s drooling more than usual and/or has thicker and stickier drool than you’re used to, this can be another sign of heatstroke.
The Blue Cross also said a dog with heatstroke may start dribbling.
4) Vomiting
The Blue Cross, RSPCA, and Dogs Trust all list this as a symptom of overheating and possible heatstroke.
The RSPCA added that heatstroke can also cause diarrhoea; if this is bloody, that can be a sign that heatstroke is more severe.
5) Noisy breathing
Dogs that begin breathing more quickly or heavily than usual could be facing heatstroke, the RSPCA said. Noisy breathing can also be a sign, especially among flat-faced breeds like pugs and French bulldogs.
What are the other symptoms of heatstroke in dogs?
- A dry nose,
- Infrequent urination,
- A higher than usual heart rate,
- Shaking and shivering due to muscle spasms,
- Seizures, especially in epileptic dogs,
- Collapse,
- Confusion or disorientation,
- Tiredness,
- Sunken eyes,
- Weakness,
- Red skin,
- Being wobbly on their feet.
What if I think my dog might have heatstroke?
The RSPCA stressed that owners should “cool first, transport second”. In other words, it’s important to get your dog’s temperature down before you take them to a vet.
Remove them from their hot environment and stop any exercise, the charity added. Move them into existing shade, or create some temporary shade if none is available.
Pour water on their body but not their head, focusing on their stomach, neck, and thighs. “Submerge their body in cool water if available (such as a paddling pool or stream, as long as the water temperature is cooler than the dog),” the RSPCA added, but don’t do this with an unconscious, sick, or older dog.
Take them to the vet once they’ve cooled down, ensuring the vehicle you’re bringing them in is cool, well-ventilated, and has easy access to water. Open your windows and/or use the air conditioning.
Stay calm, the RSPCA continued, and ring ahead to let the vet know about the urgency of the situation.
By 2024, Alzheimer’s Society said that they expect the number of people with dementia in the UK to rise to 1.4 million.
We still don’t fully understand how conditions like Alzheimer’s develop. But researchers think that up to 45% of dementia cases are “potentially preventable” by addressing 14 lifestyle factors.
These include more obvious choices, like not smoking and staying active. And a new paper published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health had suggested that another, simpler step – cooking, even as little as once a week – could significantly reduce dementia risk, too.
Cooking once a week appeared to reduce risk by as much as 67%
In this research, which involved 10,978 over-65s, the study authors compared people’s self-reported cooking rates and skill levels to their dementia incidence over time.
They tracked them for six years.
Compared to cooking less than once a week, cooking once a week was linked to a 23% lower dementia risk among men and 27% for women.
For those who weren’t experienced cooks, making a homemade meal once a week was associated with a 67% lower likelihood.
People who cooked at least five times a week saw the best results, however. And those who were highly competent in the kitchen also saw benefits, though these didn’t seem to rise with cooking frequency.
These findings seemed to hold true after accounting for other factors we know can affect dementia risk, like income level and education.
“Creating an environment where people can cook meals when they are older may be important for the prevention of dementia,” the study authors concluded.
Expertise might lower dementia risk
A birdwatching study found that those who were really, really skilled at the hobby saw lower dementia risk than less-skilled peers. “High-level expertise in a complex hobby can provide a protective ‘cognitive reserve’ as we age,” the authors wrote.
However, speaking to the Science Media Centre, Dr Susan Kohlhaas, an Executive Director of Research and Partnerships at Alzheimer’s Research UK, stressed that this was an observational study that couldn’t prove causation.
She added, “People who cook regularly may also have healthier diets, be more physically active, and be in better overall health, all of which are linked to better brain health. It’s also possible the reverse is true: people with early memory and thinking problems might lose the ability or motivation to cook, leading them to cook less often”.
She also noted that though the study lasted six years, participants only reported their cooking habits once.
She continued that while this study may not be conclusive, “there is good evidence that keeping active, eating well, and staying socially connected can help support brain health”.
Iran has slammed a new wave of US strikes in the besieged nation’s south. Meanwhile Donald Trump has demanded various countries normalise relations with Israel as a condition of ending his failed war. Yet several expert voices have said that the US has already lost the war, with Trump in no position to make demands.
Middle East Eye reported:
Iran’s foreign ministry accused the US of violating ceasefire agreement after Washington carried out strikes south of the country.
The ministry said:
Undoubtedly, the Islamic Republic of Iran will not leave any act of mischief unanswered and will not hesitate in defending the country’s integrity.
Drop Site News reported that Iranian sailors and fishermen were killed:
IRGC-linked Fars News reported explosions in Bandar Abbas and similar sounds near Sirik and Jask a few hours… https://t.co/gUl45sMQrh pic.twitter.com/b8yMO4IDEF
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) May 26, 2026
NEW: Iranian sailors and fishermen were killed today after U.S. forces struck vessels near Bandar Abbas, according to reports and images circulating on social media.
US-Israel attacked Iran first on 28 February without provocation. Iran was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
The US has achieved none of its original war aims. Iran predictably closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil channel, once attacked – creating a global energy crisis. Far from being defeated, Iran has said the war will continue until “the enemy’s inevitable and permanent humiliation, disgrace, regret, and surrender”. Trump came to power on an anti-war ‘America First’ ticket. He now faces worldwide humiliation.
It is widely felt that Trump is groping for an off-ramp from his own war. Drop Site‘s Murtaza Hussein posted on X:
If Trump continues the war he will have to deal with an escalating global economic crisis with no clear victory or exit strategy. If he ends it however he will have to deal with backlash from the ruthless Israel Lobby that will continue inflicting political harm on him for the…
— Murtaza Hussain (@MazMHussain) May 26, 2026
Iran holds the cards amid Trump’s desperation
Meanwhile, Middle East Eye editor David Hearst wrote that Iran “holds all the cards”:
however tortuous the path, and even if this deal fails and Trump decides to attack Iran for a third time, it is brutally clear that the US has just lost another war in the Middle East – its sixth in 25 years.
Iran has all the cards, chiefly the Strait of Hormuz, but also the deterrence its drones and missiles have achieved over its Gulf neighbours – and other cards still it has yet to play, like the closure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the mouth of the Red Sea. Trump has none.
Yet Trump has continued to make improbable demands more suited to a man who is winning. For example, he has insisted that a number of Middle East states sign the Abraham Accords. The Accords bind signatories into normalising relations with Israel.
Trump said:
After all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords.
Those Countries discussed are Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates (already a Member!), Qatar, Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain (already a Member!).
Pakistan, which is acting as peace broker between the US and Iran, has rejected the idea entirely. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said, referring to Israel:
How will you sit down with those people whose word cannot be trusted.
We have a very clear stance that this is not acceptable to us.
Trump seems to be oscillating between desperation and brazen posturing. The self-proclaimed ‘master of the deal’ seems to be completely incapable of finding such a thing. That is one thing on a reality TV boardroom. It is quite another when it is the lives of Iranian civilians are reduced to bargaining chips in Trump’s failed imperial adventure.
Featured image via Getty/Andrew Harnik
By Joe Glenton
Politics
Former UK cyber-security chief slams Farage’s ‘Russian hacker’ claim as “entirely without merit”
Nigel Farage’s desperate claim that a Russian hacker leaked his financial records to the Guardian is “without any merit”, according to Ciaran Martin, the founding chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
Over the weekend of 23 May, Farage told the Mail that Reform-employed ‘counter-espionage experts’ found “sophisticated hallmarks” of “hostile state actors” behind the alleged data-security breach.
Farage is begging us not to look at the donation
The ‘Russian hack’ gambit was the Reform leader’s latest attempt at a distraction from his undeclared £5m ‘gift’ from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. Farage originally claimed the gift was for ‘security’ before changing his tune, calling the money a ‘reward’ for his hard work campaigning for Brexit.
Whatever the purpose, Farage purchased, in cash, a £1.4m house mere months after Harborne’s kind gesture. In the same month he also put in applications to redevelop another Kent property. Likewise, later that year, Farage’s partner Laure Ferrari splashed £885,000 up front on a Clacton property.
Apparently, this was too much corruption even for the UK political establishment. The parliamentary standards commissioner has confirmed that they’re investigating Farage for a potential breach of the members’ code of conduct. Fingers crossed, this could even end up triggering a by-election in Clacton-on-Sea.
Understandably, given the potentially massive ramifications, Reform’s usually limelight-loving leader has been ducking interviews left, right, and centre. And then, of course, there’s his claim that he only started talking about the dodgy £5m because of a Russian hack.
‘The sophisticated hallmarks of a nation state actor’
On 23 May, Farage stated that counter-espionage experts in the employ of his party had uncovered signs that Moscow-linked hackers used spear phishing techniques to access his bank accounts, phone, and email. In the Mail, a Reform source claimed the alleged incident:
bore all the sophisticated hallmarks of a nation state actor using destabilisation techniques in the run-up to this month’s local elections.
You heard it straight from the horse’s mouth, folks. The Russians are using every tool at their disposal to stop Reform from taking control of Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council. If only Putin had known that he could just wait for the far-right party to take itself out.
According to Farage, just four people were even aware of the £5m gift. However, as the Canary’s Willem Moore reported, no one actually cares how the financial records leaked. Instead, people are very concerned with the fact that the far-right stooge has failed to provide any evidence for this alleged hack.
‘He’s not produced a shred of evidence’
Now, ex-NCSC chief Ciaran Martin has come forward to state that Farage’s wild claims would have massive repercussions for the UK’s policies regarding Russia. If, that is, any of the story were actually true. Martin explained that:
An aspiring prime minister has essentially claimed that Russia has launched an unprecedentedly aggressive intervention – a malicious intervention – in British politics, and he’s not produced a shred of evidence to support that claim.
He’s made a serious foreign policy and national security allegation which if true would have massive implications for British policy towards Russia.
It is a very, very serious thing to allege. It would be a national security issue. If it is true, the government should be in emergency session in COBR [Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms] right now considering their response to the most serious Russian intervention in internal British affairs for years.
On the contrary, the Guardian reported its understanding that Farage hasn’t even bothered to ask for the NCSC’s help with his scary (and definitely 100% real) Russian hacker yet.
Russians ‘don’t leave a little flag’
Martin was also quick to call out the outlandish nature of Reform’s claim to have employed ‘counter-espionage experts’. Likewise, he also questioned how exactly they arrived at the conclusion that ‘Moscow did it’. Martin explained that the Russians “don’t leave a little flag on a device”:
To take one phone and say my phone, email and bank account has been hacked, and it’s got the imprint of the Russian state, that’s a hell of a technical leap to do that on the basis of a single device analysis. […]
You need detailed technical evidence, some of which is sometimes not even available to the private sector. That is why for an accusation of this magnitude the only right port of call is the British security services, and in this case, specifically the National Cyber Security Centre in GCHQ [Government Communications Headquarters].
Martin didn’t want to rule out the possibility of a hack completely. That’s probably fair, given that (like the rest of the country) he hasn’t seen any of Reform’s evidence yet. However, he was unequivocal on the point that Farage – if he is telling the truth – is making a pig’s ear of the incident:
What he has described would not just be hacking by Russia, but what we call a hack-and-leak operation, which is a different thing.
It is way more serious because it violates international norms, and it’s a direct intervention aimed at destabilising our democracy and our politics in a way that spying isn’t. […]
An aspiring prime minister should treat it with the utmost seriousness and cooperate fully with the National Cyber Security Centre and any other relevant authority; otherwise you should not make these accusations, because they’re way too serious to just be bandied around.
Lying, incompetent, or both?
So, let’s run through things, just to sum it up. Farage claimed that Russian agents hacked his accounts to leak his financial details to the Guardian. His party’s supposed counter-espionage experts, if they exist, are apparently working at a level beyond the private sector’s actual capabilities.
In spite of public pressure, the Reform leader has provided no evidence to back up his story. It’s a massive allegation against Russia, which could have lasting effects on UK foreign policy towards the Putin administration.
However, Farage is utterly failing to treat the incident with the magnitude it deserves – he hasn’t even gone to the government agency specifically set up to handle matters of national cyber-security.
That leaves us with a simple question: is Farage lying, incompetent, or both? Personally, the Canary’s money is on ‘both’. And this is the tosser who wants to be the next prime minister? You’re having a laugh.
Featured image via Getty/Toby Melville
Peter Murrell, the ex-husband of former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon, is set to spend a long time in prison. The former Scottish National Party chief executive (between 2001 and 2023) has pleaded guilty to embezzling over £400,000 from SNP campaign funds.
Concerns had first been raised about the SNP’s finances in October 2020 by pro-independence blogger Stuart Campbell. He had noticed that nearly £670,000 raised between 2017 and 2019 to campaign for a second independence referendum (IndyRef2) did not seem to be showing up in the SNP’s public accounts. It hadn’t been used to push for IndyRef2, so where had it gone?
In March 2021, in what is perhaps the most shameful and telling episode of the whole affair, SNP higher-ups denied three SNP officials on the party’s finance and audit committee in-depth access to the party’s accounts – an aversion to scrutiny all too typical of the SNP’s senior figures. The trio promptly resigned as a matter of principle. At a National Executive Committee meeting at the time, Sturgeon claimed that the party’s finances had never been healthier. She warned that anyone thinking of going public with concerns would be damaging the SNP.
An official complaint was then made to Police Scotland, which launched an investigation in 2021. Five years on, we now have an answer to the mystery of the missing funds. The first minister’s hubby had, to borrow Boris Johnson’s famous words, spaffed it up the wall.
It really does take a heart of stone to read Police Scotland’s 126-page indictment without laughing. We learn that Murrell wasn’t driven to nicking from the Nats by gambling debts or a drugs-and-hookers habit. No, it seems he just really liked high-end shopping. He is Imelda Marcos in tartan trews.
The big-ticket items include a Jaguar SUV for £81,000 and a luxury Niemann and Bischoff Smove 7.4e campervan, which set Murrell back £124,550. Even he seemingly realised the campervan looked a bit suspicious so, despite claiming it was to be used for campaigning, he stored it at his mother’s house in Fife. As you do.
Armed with a John Lewis catalogue and various SNP credit cards, Murrell also spent £3,232 on a Jura Giga 5 Cromo coffee machine, £2,618 on two Feuilles pepper and salt grinders, £1,990 on eight umbrellas, £1,475 on a Beatles special-edition fountain pen and rollerball, £550 on a 1:30-scale model of an Airbus helicopter… the list goes on and on. Such was the ostentatious nature of Murrell’s spending, his and Sturgeon’s famously ‘modest’ home in Glasgow must have looked like the interior of Harrods. There’s probably an exotic species or two hidden away in Nicola’s loft.
Questions (and eyebrows) are now being raised as to how Sturgeon could have been unaware that something was amiss. Her house would have been brimful with designer goods, a brand new Jag was parked outside, and a top-of-range campervan sat on her mother-in-law’s driveway. One might reasonably ask Sturgeon how she thought Murrell was funding such an outlay? Fortnum and Mason loyalty points? Scratch cards? Or perhaps it involved the never-spent campaign pot that independence campaigners and SNP members had been concerned about since 2020?
Sturgeon, who was cleared of wrongdoing by the police in 2024, has insisted this week that she had been ‘misled just as others were’. She has pointed to her husband’s £107,000 salary as her reason for thinking his spending was normal. It’s true Murrell’s earnings might explain away the two-and-a-half-grand salt-and-pepper cellars and the Helly Hanson vest sets, but a £81,000 Jag and a £125,000 campervan? As others have noted, she is guilty at the very least of being remarkably incurious.
As are other members of the SNP’s ruling clique. This includes current first minister John Swinney, a trusted adviser to Sturgeon and one of Murrell’s closest friends. Indeed, it was Swinney, during his first stint as SNP leader in 2001, who made Murrell the SNP’s chief executive. Like Sturgeon, Swinney has spoken of his shock and sense of betrayal. And, of course, he says he suspected nothing.
The whiff coming off the SNP leadership right now wouldn’t be quite so strong if this were an isolated scandal. If it could be limited to the actions of Sturgeon’s sneaky shopaholic husband. But the rot goes deeper. Since it won power in 2007 and then a Holyrood majority in 2011, the SNP has turned Scotland into what feels like a one-party state. It has governed – first under the late Alex Salmond (2007-2014) and then especially Nicola Sturgeon (2014-2023) – as a small, arrogant clique of technocrats, aided and abetted by a state-funded NGO-cracy and a civil service so pliant and submissive, it might as well have been integrated into the SNP itself.
Little wonder that SNP leadership has increasingly acted as a law unto itself, hiding and shielding itself from public accountability. We saw this during the Alex Salmond scandal a few years ago. The former SNP leader was investigated by Sturgeon’s government in 2018, following allegations of sexual assault against him. From the start, he claimed it was a politically motivated conspiracy to remove him as a threat to Sturgeon’s leadership. While these claims were unsubstantiated, a subsequent judicial review in 2019 ruled that the investigation was ‘unlawful’, ‘procedurally unfair’ and ‘tainted with apparent bias’ – the investigating officer had even had prior contact with Salmond’s accusers. Salmond was acquitted of all charges at a 2020 criminal trial.
In some ways, it was what happened afterwards that was most damning of the SNP. During a Holyrood inquiry into the Salmond affair, the government refused to hand over all the documentation related to the case, redacted Salmond’s evidence to the inquiry, and restricted what Sturgeon could be questioned about by MSPs. As then Scottish Labour leader Jackie Baillie put it at the time, ‘We are seeing that there is something rotten at the heart of the SNP, and it is poisoning our democratic institutions’.
The Salmond scandal exposed the malign traits of the SNP leadership. Its aversion to scrutiny, its defiance of accountability, and its overweening commitment to its own self-preservation. These were on show once more during Scotland’s public inquiry into the SNP’s handling of the Covid pandemic. It emerged that Sturgeon and others systematically deleted their WhatsApp messages as part of a concerted, civil service-backed effort seemingly to avoid being held to account at any future inquiry. In a telling moment, senior civil servant Ken Thomson warned his colleagues that their chat ‘is discoverable under [freedom of information]’ and wanted them to ‘know where the “clear chat” button is’. He boasted to colleagues that ‘plausible deniability are my middle names’.
The Murrell embezzlement scandal might only involve one member of the SNP, albeit an incredibly powerful one. But it’s difficult not to think of it as part of the same increasingly rotten SNP culture – of ‘plausible deniability’, accountability-dodging and an almost pathological lack of curiosity when it comes to the failings of its own. A party that has long been more committed to maintaining its grip on power and furthering its own leading individuals’ interests than in representing the interests of Scottish citizens.
Peter Murrell may no longer be able to spend campaigners’ hard-earned on designer bread bins and manicure sets, but there is still a powerful stench emanating from this decadent party. The reckoning the SNP deserves cannot come soon enough.
Tim Black is associate editor of spiked.
The Department for Transport this month delivered yet more humiliating news on the HS2 railway, the high-speed rail project that first broke ground in 2011. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander explained to the House of Commons that completion of the line, now reduced to a single route between London and Birmingham, can cost between £87.7bn and £102.7bn, against an original 2012 estimate of around £33bn.
The first trains are announced not to run until, at the earliest, 2036, and full operation has fallen somewhere between 2040 and 2043, with no confirmation given that deadlines may not change further. In the interests of saving money, the high-speed trains will be slower, at only 320km/h, rather than the originally promised 360km/h.
As previous Canary coverage of Britain’s outsourcing state has set out, the temptation is to read this as a story about incompetence. To do so presumes good intentions frustrated by bad management, when the truth is that this outcome was written into the structure of the project from the beginning through the infrastructure contracts themselves.
The contract model
The story of HS2 has been one of continuous failure, and a key demonstration of the incapacity of the modern British state to execute large-scale infrastructure under the immense weight of its immobile bureaucratic machinery. Contrary to endless ministerial briefings about complex engineering challenges, Britain has not forgotten how to build railways.
As Mark Wild – the chief executive of HS2 Ltd brought in to reset the project – set out in his assessment to the Transport Secretary, the contracts operate on a ‘cost-plus’ basis, whereby contractors were paid whatever they spent with little penalty for overshooting. The Institution of Civil Engineers described the resulting arrangement as an “imbalance of power” tilted toward the construction firms. The Guardian‘s financial editor put it more plainly, noting that the companies:
rang rings around the department and its arm’s-length body.
Almost the entire long-term downside risk sat with HS2 Ltd, the public body, rather than with the firms responsible for delivery.
The consequences naturally followed from that design. Freed from the risk of their own overruns, contractors chased short-term construction schedules and juggled multiple contracts at once, in tandem with engineering problems and unforeseen difficulties that were billed back to the public. Concrete was poured and tunnels were dug before planning consent would be secured and blueprints finalised, forcing mid-construction redesign to adhere to local regulations, halting work and leaving expensive plant and labour idle.
There was, in short, no party to the contract with both the power and the reason to keep costs down. The public had the reason but not the power; the contractors had the power but not the reason.
The State as a conduit
HS2 is only the largest example of a much broader pattern. It is the clearest available illustration of a model that has governed British infrastructure since the 1990s, under which an asset-deprived state exists to funnel public funds into the hands of private capital for the continuation of fickle-profit margins, thereby absorbing risks and reaping the rewards.
Where the state nationalises, the form of nationalisation is such that it rarely means the public taking command of an asset and running it in the public interest. Rather, it means the public takes the liabilities, debts and long-term risks, while day-to-day operations, and the profit that flows from them, remains contracted to private firms.
The same logic recurs across the public sector. The railways, even after nominal return to public ownership, still run on private operators, private maintenance firms and rolling stock leased from private financiers, with the state underwriting the structure and absorbing the losses. The PFI deals struck under New Labour saddled the NHS with decades of repayments for hospitals, which it will end up paying several times over, long after the firms that built them banked the return. However the arrangement is dressed up, from one part of the public realm to the next, it works to the same end: sparing private firms the consequences of their own failures and socialising the costs to the people that fund them.
Allegations of outright fraud now hang over the HS2 supply chain. HS2 Ltd has referred a subcontractor to HMRC over claims that workers were misclassified and inflated rates charged. But the fraud, real as it may be, is the smaller scandal. The larger one is entirely legal, and describes a state that has stripped itself of the capacity to be the prime mover of the economy, contracting its capacity to build to the private sector at a price it cannot negotiate.
More workable models exist
Workable models have been shown to exist. France’s maîtrise d’ouvrage tradition keeps the public legally in command of its own projects and Italy’s contratto di rete binds multiple firms into a single transparent framework with shared risks and obligations. The barrier has never been knowing how to do this differently; it is that too many powerful people have grown comfortable with it being done badly.
The same financial logic that made HS2 a vehicle for private extraction and criminal enterprise is hardwired into the basic operation of the state. Any government that seriously proposed a plan to claw back public control over money, to build through capable public bodies rather than rent that capacity back from the market, would be met by a run on the pound, a spike in gilt yields and a familiar invocation of the spectre of Liz Truss.
The country deserves a full accounting of where the money has gone. That means a thorough investigation into the nature of HS2 contracts, the naming and holding to account of the politicians and contractors responsible, and an argument the political class has so far refused to have – namely, the wholesale overhaul of UK public contract law toward a system that is fair, transparent and flexible.
Featured image via Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Picturesque County Durham market town with riverside walks
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