The village also developed into an important Roman town

The Romans had a stronghold in Cambridgeshire, but they also held occupied parts right on the county border. In neighbouring Essex, they also had a strong military presence. Particularly in the charming village of Great Chesterford, which borders Duxford, there used to be an important military Roman fort.

The fort is thought to be one of the earliest military sites in Roman Britain. It’s believed to date back to 43 AD during the campaign season of Aulus Plautius or later around the time of the Boudiccan revolt in 60 to 61 AD.

During its time, the fort would have been strategically important due to its position along an ancient trackway overseeing the Cam Valley, but also being positioned between two Roman roads.

Following excavations and aerial photographs being taken, the fort was discovered to measure around 36 acres. The first evidence that was found to link it back to the Roman times was a bronze trumpet mouthpiece, discovered in 1923.

The Roman military prominence was confirmed between 1948 and 1949 when a rescue operation during gravel quarrying discovered a military ditch. As well as having a Roman fort, Great Chesterford was a Roman town. The town featured a temple, defensive walls and extensive metalworking and trading activities.

Great Chesterford has much more on offer alongside its important Roman history. Visit Essex describes the area as a “quintessential English village with charming cottages”. Visitors can enjoy peaceful walks along Icknfield Way, an ancient pathway with beautiful views of the River Cam.

Great Chesterford is also a great commuter village, as people can easily access Cambridge and London by train, and the M11 is close by. There are also buses to easily get to Saffron Walden.

With the village being so close to London, houses are quite pricey. The average price of houses in Great Chesterford range between £520,000 and £605,000.

Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris, recently revealed that she had undergone nine rounds of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to treat severe depression.

In the interview, Jackson said that although she felt the treatment “was working”, she said getting “shocked once a month for the rest of my life” wasn’t feasible for her.

ECT involves inducing a seizure by applying electricity to the head under general anaesthetic. Each series of ECT involves between six and 12 treatments over a period of two to four weeks.

ECT is primarily used for depression, but is also given to people diagnosed with schizophrenia, catatonia (a condition where people exhibit abnormal movements and behaviour) and bipolar disorder. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends that ECT is only used in extreme circumstances such as when a patient is suicidal and when other treatments have failed.

Some people think that ECT was abandoned long ago, but 2012 data estimated it was given to at least a million people annually, including about 2,500 in England according to 2019 estimates. Recipients are predominantly women and older people.

ECT has been controversial since it was first introduced in 1938, and remains debated today.

Does ECT work?

The gold standard for assessing a treatment’s effectiveness are randomised controlled trials. These directly compare a treatment against a placebo. In ECT studies, one group receives ECT, while the placebo group are given “sham ECT”, where they’re put under general anaesthesia but the electricity is withheld.

There have only been 11 placebo-controlled studies of ECT for depression. A review I co-authored in 2019 assessed the quality of those 11 studies. My colleagues and I found that all 11 were very small, were flawed in various ways and failed to comply with today’s methodological standards

Four of the 11 studies found ECT significantly superior to sham ECT at the end of treatment. Five found no difference between real ECT and sham ECT. Two studies found that psychiatrists reported a difference but patients did not. There was no robust evidence of effectiveness beyond the day of the last treatment – so there was no evidence of any long-term benefit of ECT.

Surprisingly, the most recent of these studies was in 1985. There have been none for 40 years. So, the honest answer to the question “does it work?” is, nearly 90 years after the first ECT, we really don’t know.

Some studies claim to show ECT performs better than other depression treatments, but a 2017 review of studies since 2009 found that in most of these studies the ECT group was also on antidepressants – making it hard to interpret the results. Most of these studies (87%) also had no follow-up data.

A 2023 study found that ECT is less effective than ketamine, which is also used for severe cases of depression, in the short-term – though the study did not provide any follow-up data for either treatment.

Like all ECT studies for depression since 1985, there was no placebo group so it was not possible to tell whether either treatment actually worked at all.

Some ECT proponents argue that it’s impossible to conduct ECT placebo studies because it’s unethical to withhold a treatment from vulnerable patients. However I argue that this positions them outside of evidence-based medicine, as the point of placebo studies is to discover whether a treatment does actually work.

Is ECT safe?

The American Psychiatric Association acknowledges that some people may experience memory problems that last months, years or permanently, after undergoing ECT.

A 2003 review also found that in a sample of 703 patients, persistent or permanent memory loss was reported by between 29% and 55% of patients.

A 2020 review of 16 studies found that in 15 of these papers, participants described memory problems after receiving ECT. This included complete erasure of some aspects of their memory, including events and experiences that happened before or immediately after having ECT.

Some participants also described not being able to remember specific life events, such as a child’s birthday or a loved one’s death. For others, memory loss was even more extensive – with one participant saying “the past 25 years are missing”. For most participants of these studies, the memory loss was considered permanent.

A 2023 report by the World Health Organization and the United Nations has stated that people offered ECT should be told of the potential short- and long-term risks it comes with – including memory loss and brain damage.

The largest ever international survey, of over 1,000 ECT recipients and family members, was recently conducted by three ECT recipients and three clinical psychologists, including myself. Our findings have been published in a series of research articles.

We found that while ECT helped some people, most respondents reported ECT either made no difference to mood or quality of life, or made matters worse.

Between 61% and 84% of ECT patients reported experiencing some form of memory loss, which lasted at least three years for most of them.

More than half of participants reported experiencing other side-effects from ECT, including emotional numbing, relationship problems and loss of independence.

Most believed the problems for which they had been given ECT were primarily caused by childhood adversities or recent stressors. But most were never asked about those issues before being prescribed ECT. If these issues had been identified and addressed through other forms of treatment (such as trauma therapy or cognitive behavioural therapy), ECT might not have been necessary.

Around 59% of participants said the information given to them about ECT’s efficacy and safety was “inadequate” – with only 17% being told about long-term memory loss.

We also found that women receive ECT more often than men and suffer greater adverse effects.

There are a range of effective alternatives to ECT and medication, whether someone is mildly depressed, severely depressed or suicidal, including cognitive behaviour therapy, trauma therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, mindfulness and family therapy.

No one treatment works for everyone. The important ingredients seem to be establishing a relationship in which the patient feels genuinely cared about, and then determining and addressing, one way or another, what is depressing them.

Clearly some people report that ECT helped them – and some are willing to accept side-effects such as memory loss if it means alleviating their symptoms. However, many patients also feel ECT did not help them.

The five nuns are named on an indictment containing 108 charges of alleged historic child abuse at Nazareth House

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A further hearing has been scheduled in the case of five nuns facing historic abuse charges involving a number of children.

Marie Docherty, 84, Mary Broderick, 84, Margaret McLafferty, 68, Kathleen McLean, 77, and Mary Doyle, 81, are named on an indictment which contains 108 charges.

The charges span 17 years with offences alleged to have taken place mainly at Nazareth House locations in Aberdeen and Bonnyrigg, Midlothian, between 1965 and 1982.

Among the allegations, the indictment details claims that Docherty forced a boy to eat spoiled food, beat him with a wooden stick, made him stand wearing soiled bedding, and locked him in a room.

A separate charge alleges that Docherty pressed a hot iron onto a teenage girl’s hand, repeatedly struck her on her head and body, and forced her to lie in bed.

Docherty is also alleged to have withheld food from another girl, causing her to faint, while soap was reportedly forced into the same girl’s mouth, making her vomit. The indictment further alleges that her head was then pushed into the vomit and she was made to consume it.

Further charges allege that Docherty, Broderick, and Doyle compelled certain children to kiss a corpse.

Additional allegations within the indictment include children being punched, struck, kicked, force-fed, and made to stand in soiled bedding or clothing, amongst other serious claims.

A preliminary hearing was held at the High Court in Glasgow on Monday before Lord Renucci, who has set a further preliminary hearing for January 22 2027. A provisional eight-week trial has been scheduled to begin on 30 March 2027 in Glasgow.

The accused have previously entered pleas of not guilty.

Vast crowds steamed through Rome last September, to witness the historic canonization of the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint, 15-year-old Carlo Acutis.

Thousands of young people flocked to Vatican City to pay tribute to the British-Italian computer enthusiast, who used the internet to spread the word of Catholicism.

One year on, the canonization can be seen as a symbolic event, both of a church transitioning into a digital era and one that seeks to provide new role models for the young.

At the helm of this transition is Pope Leo XIV, who has has received rock star welcomes from large crowds of young people worldwide since his election in May 2025.

“At 70, Pope Leo is obviously not himself a young man,” Ruth Gledhill, assistant editor of Catholic international paper The Table, told The Independent.

“Yet he has an air of youthful vigour around him, he is sporty and fit. He also seems genuinely bereft of any ego.”

Earlier this month, tickets to see the US-born Pope in the 80,000-seat Stade de France near Paris in September sold out in less than an hour.

Among them was 21-year-old Allan, who had 10 members of his family on hand trying to secure a ticket online. It was much the same kind of approach many music fans take when trying to get into hugely popular festivals like Glastonbury.

“[It was] like it was Beyonce,” he told Le Parisien of the challenge in securing a spot at the forthcoming event.

And last August, Pope Leo brought a youth jubilee to a close by holding a mass for more than one million people. Dubbed the “Catholic Woodstock” by Italian media, the Vatican said it drew young attendees from 146 different countries.

Pope Leo is regarded both as a product and a driver of the growing interest in Catholicism among young people, a candidate who was perfectly suited to the role of being a youth-facing pontiff as the amount of interest grew.

“For the first time we have a pope who personally used social media before being elected to the Chair of Peter,” says Alessandro Gisotti, deputy director of Vatican Media. “This is a major development in the Church’s communication.”

The Pope’s understanding of the importance of digital communications is “particularly appealing to younger generations, who see in Leo XIV a pope who is in tune with their way of communicating”, he adds.

Leo is also seen by many as having a common, down-to-earth approach that might appeal to the young.

In May, he went viral for using the “6-7” gesture while riding the popemobile in Madrid, and he appears to share many of the same interests of ordinary Catholics around the world, from apps to sports.

Christopher Lamb, CNN’s Vatican correspondent, writes in American Hope: “He’s a pope who understands the online world: he plays Wordle with his brother (and uses a different starter word each day), communicates with WhatsApp, and was even spotted using the Duolingo language app in the early hours of the morning.

“His love of sports, particularly baseball, helps him connect with people, whether he’s holding a tennis racquet with Jannik Sinner or sporting the cap of his beloved Chicago White Sox.

“When passing in his popemobile he was even heard shouting, ‘They lost!’ in response to someone who’d yelled, ‘Go Cubs!’, the White Sox rivals.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — House lawmakers return to Washington on Monday with a short to-do list after five weeks back in their home districts. The first order of business is likely a vote on a stopgap spending bill designed to keep the federal government fully funded through early December, removing the possibility of a shutdown before the midterm elections.

With election season getting underway, votes are also expected on measures designed to amplify the GOP’s messaging strategy going into November, most notably a resolution condemning socialism. Republicans are trying to tie the Democratic Party in general to the democratic socialist candidates who have succeeded this year in running for office.

Another item that could make its way onto the agenda is a Senate-passed bill that imposes sanctions on key segments of the Russian economy and allows President Donald Trump to impose steep tariffs on goods imported from countries that buy the vast majority of Russian oil and gas. The effort led by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham aims to deprive Russian President Vladimir Putin of revenue used to finance the war against Ukraine.

The bill passed 86-11 in the Senate. House passage would send the bill to Trump’s desk for his signature. However, some key House Democrats oppose the bill. The bill grants Trump sweeping new tariff authorities that some lawmakers fear could be used to punish allies rather than foes.

A vote on the bill is not scheduled this week, but proponents are working to have it taken up before lawmakers leave Washington to focus solely on their reelection campaigns.

The return to Washington also brings a renewed focus on improper behavior by lawmakers as the House will have its first chance to act on a recommendation from the House Ethics Committee to censure Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., for engaging in persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct toward two young female aides in his congressional office.

Edwards implores colleagues to reject censure vote

Edwards has disputed the committee’s conclusion that he failed to adhere to the spirit of the rules prohibiting sexual harassment and unwanted advances to House staffers. He points to the committee’s conclusion that found no evidence he “engaged in sexual activity or explicitly propositioned any individual under his employ.”

Edwards said he was not asking lawmakers to approve of every gift, compliment or social interaction, but to distinguish between conduct that someone might find unconventional and conduct that actually establishes sexual harassment.

Lawmakers are anxious to avoid the possibility of a shutdown as voters weigh their options going into November. The funding bill passed by a 90-6 vote in the Senate, showing that lawmakers from both political parties want to avoid a repeat of the two historic shutdowns that occurred this past year.

A’ja Wilson and Kelsey Plum will miss the FIBA Women’s World Cup for health reasons and will be replaced by Washington teammates Kiki Iriafen and Sonia Citron, USA Basketball announced Monday.

Wilson, the four-time WNBA MVP, has shouldered quite a workload in the first part of the season for the Las Vegas Aces and needed a break to rest and get ready for the playoffs. She was voted the most outstanding player of the 2024 Paris Olympics and the 2022 World Cup. She will be sorely missed by the United States.

Plum has been dealing with a calf injury for most of the WNBA season and it still hasn’t 100% healed. She was a catalyst in the Paris Games gold-medal contest against France and sparked the Americans to the one-point victory.

Iriafen and Citron were both part of U.S. camps this past winter. Iriafen played on the American team that went to Puerto Rico and won the World Cup qualifier. Citron had to miss that tournament because of an injury, so she’ll be making her national team debut in Germany.

The Americans have won every World Cup since finishing with the bronze medal in 2006. That World Cup saw American star Lisa Leslie pull out at the last minute because of a car accident that her uncle was in. Without her, the U.S. fell to Russia in the semifinals.

Without the two veteran players, the U.S. will rely even more heavily on its youth movement. Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers will make their World Cup. The young stars will be joined by Olympic medalists Breanna Stewart, Napheesa Collier, Chelsea Gray, Jackie Young and Kahleah Copper.

Rhyne Howard and Aliyah Boston will also be making their World Cup debuts to round out the team.

The U.S. opens against China on Friday. The Chinese team has a huge front line with 7-foot-3 Zhang Ziyu, 6-10 Han Xu and 6-7 Li Yueru. The two teams played for the World Cup title in 2022 in Australia.

___

AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

Commander Claire Smart, who is in charge of the policing operation, said organisers have “stepped forward” across the event, including better crowd management, after City Hall gave an extra £4.6 million to double the number of stewards and improve the use of CCTV cameras along the parade’s route.

The video gaming centre could replace a betting shop

A new video gaming centre could stay open until 11pm every day if plans are approved. Johnson Falaiye has submitted plans to Peterborough City Council to change the former Ladbrokes in Midgate, Peterborough into a new gaming centre.

If approved, the centre is proposed to be open for 13 hours a day from 10am until 11pm daily. The applicant said: “The proposed business would operate as an indoor leisure use, focused on video gaming and simulation-style gaming.

“The use would not involve betting, gambling, casino activity, prize gaming or adult gaming machines. The premises would be managed and supervised by staff during opening hours.”

The centre could be named Racecraft Sim, and the applicant plans to display the centre’s signage with a “halo illuminated appearance”.

The premises is situated in Peterborough city centre. Mr Falaiye said a new video games centre would “make productive use of an existing commercial unit and would maintain an active frontage on Midgate”.

It would also “avoid vacancy, support economic activity and provide a supervised indoor recreational use in a sustainable city centre location”. The applicant doesn’t feel the plans will cause any “unacceptable harm” to neighbours.

The 11pm closing time is a “principal amenity consideration”. However it’s considered “reasonable in a city centre location”.

The proposals are also not thought to result in harm to public safety or highway safety. The change of use for the building doesn’t require any changes to a public highway.

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If you want to improve yourself, your health or your lifestyle, you need to do it to the “maxx” – according to social media, at least.

If you want to better your appearance, you need to try “looksmaxxing”. If you want to fix your diet and look after your gut, you should be “fibremaxxing”. And if you want to improve your social skills and be more charming, you really ought to be “personality-maxxing”.

But all of this maxxing might not actually be a good way to motivate yourself into healthier habits. In fact, it may have the opposite effect – and may even cause stress.

The language of “maxxing” has roots in the gaming concept of “min-maxing”, in which players strategically maximise desirable attributes while minimising less useful ones to create the most effective in-game character. The concept then made it’s way to the mainstream, most notably through “looksmaxxing”: making focused, and sometimes extreme, efforts to maximise physical attractiveness.

The suffix has since been adapted in multiple health and wellbeing spaces. If there is an aspect of life that could be improved, it can probably be maxxed.

The “maxxing” trend encapsulates our increasingly intense optimisation culture, in which we systematically seek to improve different aspects of our thinking, feeling and functioning. This pursuit is often aided by commercial products and services that promise to produce the “best version” of ourselves.

But there’s an interesting conundrum that arises from the terminology itself. Maxxing implies there is a maximum – a point at which you have reached the peak, or perhaps even “won.”

But health, wellbeing, social relationships and lifestyle habits aren’t really something we complete. They’re continuing and fluctuating processes. Things happen outside our control, our lives and circumstances change – and we change with them.

This makes maxxing something of a double-edged sword. It can make healthy behaviour engaging, provide a sense of identity and encourage people to connect with others pursuing similar goals.

But if self-improvement turns into constant self-surveillance, self-criticism and the pursuit of an idealised “optimal” self, it may come with psychological costs.

When social media constantly reminds us there’s another metric to optimise, healthy self-improvement risks fuelling self-criticism and anxiety around our bodies, health and self-image. Examples of this have already been seen in “looksmaxing spaces” – online communities in which people can connect and exchange advice on improving appearance.

Social media use, particularly engaging with content or communities which glorify fit and idealised bodies, has also been associated with greater risk of experiencing muscle dysmorphia (a preoccupation with muscle and physique) and orthorexia (an obsessive preoccupation with healthy eating). Constantly focusing on how to maximise ourselves may inadvertently cause us to become more focused on what is wrong with us.

Moderation-maxxing

So perhaps we need to start moderation-maxxing instead?

This doesn’t mean you should stop caring about health or abandon your goals. Rather, it’s about recognising the mindset motivating your aim for improvement.

If a maxxing trend encourages awareness of healthy behaviour, that can be genuinely useful. But if pursuing one optimal health behaviour begins to compromise your psychological wellbeing or social connections, it’s worth checking in with yourself and exploring the motivations behind your efforts.

For example, positive motivations for trying to improve your personal appearance could be a desire to boost your self-esteem or feel more open to connecting with those around you. But if the reason you’re being drawn to improve your appearance comes from a place of in inedequacy and constant comparison to others, then this motivation may leave you at risk of developing restrictive or harmful behaviours.

This is where ideas such as self-compassion and mindful awareness become particularly important. Self-compassion involves having kindness of yourself, recognising common humanity, reducing self-judgement and practising mindfulness (a focus on living in the present moment).

Rather than ignoring our difficulties or giving up on improvement, self-compassion allows us to recognise imperfection and change as part of being human. It also means speaking to ourselves without excessive judgement and trying not to over-identify with the idealised version of health we see on social media.

And, importantly, accepting ourselves doesn’t mean that we have to stop growing. We can want to improve while still appreciating who we are now – and not constantly feel stressed to maximise every component of our lives.

“Maxxing” is just a new and catchy repackaging of a much older impulse towards health and self-improvement. While it can be a fun trend to engage with, just remember that optimisation is never supposed to become the purpose of life. After all, there’s little point in building a character with all the highest stats if you stop enjoying the game.

By ELEANOR HARDING, EDUCATION EDITOR

Published: 00:01 BST, 31 August 2026 | Updated: 12:49 BST, 31 August 2026