The Government-backed scheme, dubbed “Great British Summer Savings”, launches on Thursday, June 25 and promises lower prices on everything from theme park tickets and children’s meals to family cinema trips.

Major attractions, including Alton Towers, Legoland and Peppa Pig World, are among those taking part, while restaurant giants including McDonald’s, Wetherspoons and Nando’s are also passing on savings to customers.

Which attractions are offering discounts?

Some of Britain’s best-known family attractions have already cut prices.

Merlin Entertainments, which owns attractions including Alton Towers and Legoland, has introduced “summer VAT savings” on tickets.

Advance tickets for both parks now start from £29.75, down from £34.

Longleat Safari Park has also reduced prices, with a family of four now able to buy advance tickets for £122.30, representing a saving of £17.50.

Cinema tickets are getting cheaper too

Families planning a trip to the cinema this summer could also see savings.

Major chains including Odeon, Vue and Cineworld have signed up to the scheme.

Odeon says a family ticket for two adults and two children will fall from £32 to £28.50 while the discount is in place.

Children’s meals slashed at major restaurant chains

The VAT cut is also being passed on by some of Britain’s biggest restaurant and pub groups.

Among those taking part are:

• McDonald’s
• Wetherspoons
• Nando’s
• Greene King pubs

Nando’s has reduced the price of its children’s “Nandino” meals from £6.95 to £6.08.

At Wetherspoons, a children’s meal costing £5.75 has fallen to £5.03.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s says a typical Happy Meal will cost £2.99, representing a reduction of around 27%.

Who qualifies?

The scheme applies across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and runs until September 1.

There is no legal requirement for businesses to participate, meaning discounts may vary between venues and locations.

Not every ticket qualifies, either.

Season passes and annual passes are generally excluded, meaning popular Merlin annual passes are not included in the savings programme.

Why is the Government doing this?

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the package as part of measures designed to ease pressure on household finances.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said many families have found everyday treats increasingly difficult to afford.

He said trips to the seaside, attractions and family days out should not feel out of reach for ordinary households.

The Treasury estimates the package will cost around £300 million. Alongside discounted attractions and meals, the initiative will also provide free bus travel for children aged five to 15 in England during August, potentially delivering further savings for families.

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How much could families save?

The exact savings depend on where families choose to visit.

However, households combining discounted attraction tickets, cheaper children’s meals and reduced cinema prices could save tens of pounds over a single day out.

For families planning multiple outings during the six-week summer holiday, the savings could quickly add up.

With millions preparing for the school break, the scheme offers a rare piece of good news for parents looking to keep children entertained without breaking the bank.

Will you be making the most of the cut? Tell us in the comments below.

While they do not enter the competition just yet, Manchester City will be aiming to retain their title with the extra incentive of having nobody with more League Cup wins.

They have won the competition nine times, one short of Liverpool’s record 10 titles. Manchester United have six wins, and Chelsea and Aston Villa have five.

The transfer window is stepping up a gear as Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Tottenham all work on completing huge deals in what is set to a huge summer. The Gunners are closing in on the signing of Morgan Rogers in a deal worth at least £80million, and continue to be linked with an audacious swap deal for Julian Alvarez. A fee has been agreed for wonderkid Jeremy Monga, and remain interested in Ayyoub Bouaddi, Bradley Barcola, Eli Junior Kroupi, Christos Tzolis and Andria Bartishvili.

NEW YORK (AP) — Humans and great apes have been giggling in similar ways since branching off the evolutionary tree, a new study suggests.

How do we know this? Researchers tickled 13 captive apes — including gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos — and recorded the results. The new research reexamined those decades-old recordings and compared them with the newly captured giggles of four young children while they were being tickled and playing at home.

It turns out that the chuckles of humans and great apes follow similar rhythms, with regular timing between their laughs, a uniting thread that likely reflects their ties to a common ancestor, researchers said.

“In a way, we are very similar to other great apes because we’ve been laughing in a similar way for 15 million years,” said study author Chiara De Gregorio, a primatologist at the University of Warwick in England.

Laughter communicates a playful, happy feeling without using words. Many animals can laugh too, but the giggles don’t follow human patterns as closely. When researchers tickle rats, for example, they respond with ultrasonic squeaks.

Scientists trying to uncover how laughter evolved have picked apart animals’ facial expressions, but less work has been done on how laughs sound. And compared with apes, human laughter has become faster and more complex. For one, our laughs sound different based on context — from a polite chuckle among colleagues to a full-bodied guffaw with close friends.

“We are like the masters of laughter, I would say,” said De Gregorio, whose findings were published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology.

These giggles evolved to best suit animals’ different social lives, said Brittany Florkiewicz, who studies animal communication at Lyon College and had no role in the new research. She said the study’s findings make sense, and point to a need for more investigation.

Florkiewicz said she’d like to hear comparable recordings of other animals with playful facial expressions, like dogs, horses and cats. That could tell us more about how laughter evolved, so we can “understand what makes us uniquely human, but also what is similar between humans and other animals.”

Studying the origins of laughter may seem corny, but it’s one aspect of human communication that can help us understand others — including how we learned to speak. Because sounds don’t fossilize, scientists are using the evidence we do have to trace things back, one chuckle at a time.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Parts of the UK will stop seeing the sunshine and start experiencing thunder, lightning and rain

This week has seen some crazy temperatures with highs of almost 40C across the UK. While some parts of the UK, like London, are still seeing sunshine, other areas are now experiencing thunder and lightning. But why is it that we experience thunderstorms after hot weather?

According to the BBC, “thunderstorms start inside a cloud when it’s high up in the atmosphere where the air is cooler than the air below it. Bits of ice move up and down and bump into each other inside the cloud. This builds up an electric charge.

“If the charge builds up enough it can suddenly flow as a huge current of electricity – either between the cloud and the ground, or between different clouds. We see this as a really big spark and it’s what we call lightning.”

When lightning flashes, it heats the air around it to about 10,000C – almost twice as hot as the surface of the Sun. The air gets hot so quickly that it expands with a bang, creating a huge vibration in the air. That vibration is what we hear as thunder.

You may think that thunder and lightning happen at the same time. But it does not. In fact, because light travels around a million times faster than sound, you will always see lightning before you hear thunder.

Why does thunder and lightning happen after a heatwave?

The experts explain that thunderstorms begin with warm air. This often happens after a long spell of hot weather, such as a heatwave, when the Sun has heated both the ground and the air above it.

As the warm air rises through the atmosphere, it cools and condenses into tiny water droplets. These droplets start moving in the cloud, and if the atmosphere is cold, they will start rising even further up into the atmosphere.

When the atmosphere is unstable, thunderstorm clouds, known as cumulonimbus clouds, develop. Cumulonimbus clouds are the only type of cloud capable of producing thunder, lightning and hail.

Met Office thunderstorm tips

The Met Office has forecast thunderstorms across parts of the UK, bringing thunder, lightning and heavy rainfall. In response, experts are urging people to take precautionary measures to protect both themselves and their property from potential damage and disruption.

It advises:

• Check if your property is at risk. If you are at risk, prepare a flood plan and prepare an emergency flood kit
• Check the flood advice in your area to know when and where flooding will happen
• Charge mobile phone devices
• Park your car outside the flood zone
• Prepare a flood kit to help you cope in the event of flooding to your home and business
• Store valuables up high, including electrical devices, important documents and furniture
• Turn off gas water and electricity supplies
• It is safer not to drive in thunderstorms but if you must drive you can do this more safely by slowing down, using main roads and dipped headlights, giving yourself more time to react on slippery surfaces and keeping a bigger gap between vehicles
• Prepare for powercuts
• Protect your property and your neighbour’s too by checking for loose items outside your home and if you can, secure them. Items you should think about include bins, plant pots, garden furniture (bring inside or secure in place) , trampolines (turn upside down or secure with tent pegs) and sheds (ensure doors are locked).

The Met Office warns: “Don’t go outside to repair any damage during the storm.”

For more tips on how to stay safe during a thunderstorm, visit the Met Office website.

Cardiff City, Wrexham and Swansea City are in the hat for the Carabao Cup first round with the draw to be made on Thursday.

The Reds will be in the Northern Section of the draw, while the Bluebirds and Swans will be in the Southern side of the bracket.

Kevin Nolan will be joined by Luke Chambers for the draw, hosted by Sky Sports’ Dharmesh Sheth, with 70 clubs from the English Football League to be drawn regionally. Ties are to be played over the weekend of August 7.

The first round provides a chance for Championship, League One and Two sides to pit their wits against each other before the Premier League big guns enter in the second and third round, respectively.

Where the competition ranks in terms of importance to the three Welsh sides remains to be seen as the FA Cup proves to be more profitable financially.

For all three sides, their league aspirations will hinge on how serious they take the competition with Wrexham and Swansea eyeing promotion to the Premier League, Cardiff, meanwhile, are back in the Championship after earning promotion from League One at the first time of asking.

Carabao Cup ball numbers (selected):

Wrexham – 33 (Northern Section)

Cardiff – 8 (Southern Section)

Swansea City – 30 (Southern Section)

The draw will take place at 4.30pm today (Thursday) and Wales Online will bring you all the latest from the Carabao Cup draw…

Jamie Oliver’s ice cream can be prepared in just five minutes

Many of us in the UK are enduring the scorching heatwave which has seen temperatures hit naerly 37C in parts of the country.

With this in mind, lots of us may be in search of some much-needed ways to cool off from the heat. This may leave us turning to our freezers for some chilled snacks, with ice cream being a firm go-to for warmer weather.

Luckily, if you are in desperate need of some frozen food, Jamie Oliver has an easy to make ‘no-churn’ ice cream recipe, which only requires three ingredients – all of which are commonly found in our cupboards. On his website, Jamie writes: “You’ll only need three ingredients, minimal equipment and five minutes of prep time.”

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To make the ice cream you will need double cream, condensed milk and some chocolate. Jamie recommends using Mint Aero bars “for a mint-choc-chip vibe” or a bag of Maltesers. However, he says you can swap in any chocolate bar you like to “make it your own”.

How to make Jamie Oliver’s ‘No-Churn’ Ice Cream

Ingredients

• One 397g tin of condensed milk

• Two 90g Mint Aero bars or one 175g bag of Maltesers, plus extra to serve

Method

Start by placing the cream in a large bowl and whisk until until soft peaks form. The condensed milk can then be folded in, before also adding in the pieces of chocolate.

Jamie writes: “Bash up the chocolate into different sizes – small bits, big bits and dusty bits, for variety – and fold most of it into the ice-cream mixture, keeping a small handful to one side for later.”

A freeze-proof container, or a small loaf tin, can then be lined with a sheet of baking paper. The mixture can then be poured in, and some of the remaining chocolate from earlier can be sprinkled over the top.

He then recommends freezing the mixture for at least four hours – or until it is set. Jamie writes: “Once you’re ready to serve, move from the freezer to the fridge (around 1 hour before you want to eat it), and gently thaw.”

The ice cream can then be turned out onto a board. You should remove the baking paper before slicing the ice cream into serving portions. Jamie also adds: “Bash up and sprinkle over a little extra chocolate to decorate, if you like.”

The recipe is designed to serve 12, however Jamie says it can easily be halved or doubled, depending on your needs. He writes: “Just find yourself an appropriately sized freezer container and you’re good to go.”

The chef also advises that any leftover ice cream will keep in the freezer for up to eight weeks.

Eddie Hearn has signed Ian Machado Garry to the Matchroom Talent Agency, as a second UFC fighter joins the boxing promoter’s new venture.

Earlier this year, the mixed-martial-arts world was gripped by news that Hearn had signed UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall, and in Machado Garry, Matchroom has acquired the UFC’s No 1 welterweight contender.

Machado Garry, 28, also joins England rugby-union player Henry Pollock in signing with Hearn, who is not signing these athletes to the Matchroom boxing promotion, of course, but rather a new talent agency.

Still, Aspinall’s signing proved controversial given Hearn’s bitter feud with UFC president and CEO Dana White, who kickstarted Zuffa Boxing earlier this year and even acquired Conor Benn, whom Hearn had supported through his entire boxing career – including a two-year saga in which the British fighter failed two drug tests.

Aspinall has had his own frustrations with the UFC in recent months, too, taking exception to comments made by White after Aspinall fought Ciryl Gane to a no-contest in October; the Manchester heavyweight could not continue after suffering several eye pokes, but White suggested that Aspinall had chosen not to keep fighting, although the injuries eventually led to double eye surgery.

Machado Garry’s signing is the second major piece of news involving the Irishman this week, after it was announced that he will challenge pound-for-pound No 1 Islam Makhachev in August. The Russian will defend the UFC welterweight title against Machado Garry in Philadelphia, in the main event of UFC 330.

“I have a lot respect for Matchroom,” Machado Garry said. “Signing with their talent agency isn’t just a step outside of the Octagon, it’s an extension of the same mission: be undeniable everywhere. This is about building a legacy, and this is just the beginning.

“Matchroom was built by a family that turned a vision into an empire, and that’s exactly the kind of legacy I love. My team is my family too; it’s how I operate, it’s how I win. Together we can continue to be disruptive and change the game.”

Hearn added: “Ian Machado Garry is on the cusp of greatness, and I truly believe he is the one of the next big superstars in combat sport.

“Since signing UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall, we have been inundated with MMA athletes asking us to represent them. But we handpicked Ian because he was someone who we really wanted to work with – and someone we truly believe in.

“He is a phenomenal talent. He is one of the most charismatic and skilful fighters in the sport today. And on August 15 he will win the UFC welterweight championship.

“Beating Islam Makhachev will give Ian that superstar status he deserves and will make him one of the key figures in MMA.”

Hearn, 46, has been critical of UFC fighter pay in recent months, particularly since beginning to work with Aspinall, 33. The promoter even labelled Aspinall’s contract a “disgrace” in one interview.

The hospital is one of those that was built using Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC)

Redevelopment ambitions that will see Hinchingbrooke Hospital replaced with a brand-new hospital are continuing to move at pace.

The existing hospital site, which has played an important role in the lives of people across Peterborough since it opened in 1983, will be redeveloped to accommodate a new, state-of-the-art facility.

Deborah Lee, Senior Responsible Officer for the Hinchingbrooke Hospital Redevelopment Programme, said: “Hinchingbrooke Hospital has been at the heart of local life for more than 40 years, and this is a once-in-a-generation chance to build a hospital fit for the decades ahead.”

Hinchingbrooke is one of seven hospitals across England set to be rebuilt due to Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC). The scheme forms part of the national New Hospital Programme, with the new hospital expected to open by the end of 2032.

The redevelopment will create a modern, digitally enabled hospital built to the latest NHS standards, including single rooms for every inpatient. Key services, including a full Emergency Department and maternity care, will remain on site.

While core elements of the programme are confirmed, local people and hospital users are being asked to share their views via a public engagement campaign on how the new hospital should look, feel and operate.

“Some things are settled…” Ms Lee said, “but a great deal is still genuinely open, and that is where local people come in.”

The public engagement is open from now until August 16, 2026, with multiple ways to take part, such as online surveys, in-person sessions, focus groups and community pop-up events. The online survey can be found here.

The three pups are part of plans to maintain the species, with only 1000 to 10,000 individuals remaining in the wild.

A trio of endangered lemurs have perched up at Blair Drummond Safari Park as the local attraction helps ensure the animals stay safe for years to come.

The adorable black-and-white ruffed lemur pups have been named Domino, Zero and Ebony in a nod to their striking black-and-white markings, and were born to experienced parents Cali and Páraic.

Cali has now given birth to 11 pups during her time at the Stirling park, with the latest arrivals part of conservation efforts to protect the species, with only 1000 to 10,000 individuals remaining in the wild.

The pups are staying close to their mum for now, with visitors able to see them climbing around in their indoor habitat.

As their confidence grows, they will join the other occupants of the park’s Lemur Land section and then move on to other conservation-led collections to continue the global breeding programme designed to protect the species long-term.

Native to Madagascar, black-and-white ruffed lemurs are among the world’s most threatened primates.

Famous for their striking markings and powerful voices – the second loudest of any primate after howler monkeys – their calls can travel long distances through the forest canopy.

But the lemurs have faced threats, particularly from the illegal pet trade and also the impact of widespread habitat loss caused by deforestation for agriculture, logging and mining.

As a result, the species has been pushed to the brink in securing its long-term future.

Blair Drummond now plays an active role as part of the European Endangered Species Breeding Programme (EEP) for this species, helping to build a healthy ‘insurance population’ in zoos across Europe.

The new arrivals are the fourth litter born at the park, with several of their older siblings now living in other leading zoological collections across the UK.

Lemur Land team leader, Lesley Grant, said: “It’s always incredibly special to welcome new arrivals but knowing just how vulnerable this species is, makes these births even more meaningful.

“Cali is a brilliant mum, and it’s fantastic to see the pups doing so well.

“Every birth is an important step in helping to secure the future of these amazing animals.”