The Moon in Libra opposes Saturn, bringing clarity and vision to the day before you. It will be easy to make otherwise tricky choices.

Aries, Taurus and Gemini, it is important to set some clear boundaries today. Whether it’s with friends,family or yourself, assess accordingly.

Take this opportunity to confront something important you have been putting off. There truly is no time like the present.

Ahead, you’ll find all star signs’ horoscopes for today: Sunday August 16, 2026.

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Aries

March 21 to April 20

The Moon in Libra opposes stoic Saturn in Aries across your relationship axis, bringing the question of boundaries to mind. There’s a chance that in some connections seem too fierce and in others too weak, and the issue today is how to get the balance right. Honest conversation can help break down defences or enable you to be firmer than you have been.

Head here for everything you need to know about being an Aries

Taurus

April 21 to May 21

You’ll find that that rest is every bit as important as productivity. Feeling tired? Just remember, it’s impossible to pour from an empty pot. Hidden issues or emotional situations may be taking their toll on you, and if you’ve been under stress this is something you’ll need to acknowledge. Try to simplify your schedule, be good to yourself and take time to recharge.

Head here for everything you need to know about being a Taurus

Gemini

May 22 to June 21

It helps to be realistic about friendships and long-term goals. You’ll realise that not everyone in your network belongs in your close circle, and today’s Moon-Saturn line-up can help weed out some of the people who were never quite on side. Instead choose those who cheer you on regardless. Creating something totally unique? Do it from the heart, not for the applause.

Head here for everything you need to know about being a Gemini

Cancer

June 22 to July 23

The Moon in Libra and your home zone opposes Saturn in your sector of ambition, so it helps to get the balance between achieving your goals and laying foundations that allow you to flourish over the long-term. Too much hard work can burn you out, while too little planning can mean you won’t accomplish anything. Getting it right allows for maximum productivity.

Head here for everything you need to know about being a Cancer

Leo

July 24 to August 23

It’s a day when you’ll find it very easy to negotiate and get what you want, but before you commit to anything, welcome other perspectives and opinions. A far-reaching opportunity could be perfect over long-term and you’ll find it by staying open and being flexible. It’s wise to test any inspired ideas against the timeless wisdom that comes your own experience.

Head here for everything you need to know about being a Leo

Virgo

August 24 to September 23

Feel an urge to invest in your image? It may seem a no-brainer. If you’re opting for a makeover think about where you need to make the biggest and best impression, then budget accordingly. Even greater could be the desire to spend on anything that truly makes a difference. You’ll want your money to work hard for you, and with planning it can happen.

Head here for everything you need to know about being a Virgo

Libra

September 24 to October 23

Someone may be more demanding than is good for you, and today’s Moon-Saturn opposition between your needs and others’ could be a call to be firmer. If you feel they are making unfair demands and aren’t respecting the fact that you have your own plans and priorities, it’s time to speak up. You can be tactful, but you do need to strengthen personal boundaries too.

Head here for everything you need to know about being a Libra

Scorpio

October 24 to November 22

You may be a lot busier than usual, with no break in sight, which is why today’s Moon-Saturn link can be a reminder to relax and recharge. It’s also a chance to take stock and consider your goals and priorities and what you hope to achieve. Take your focus off the outside world and connect with your deeper thoughts and feelings. You’ll soon know what to do for the best.

Head here for everything you need to know about being a Scorpio

Sagittarius

November 23 to December 21

Feel conflicted about committing to something that is deeply important to you or going on an outing with your friends or social circle. You may want to spend some time on a hobby you’re mastering or to finish a creative project. Perhaps a budding romance is calling your name? Focus on what brings you most joy but let your friends know you haven’t forgotten them.

Head here for everything you need to know about being a Sagittarius

Capricorn

December 22 to January 21

You may find yourself in the spotlight. The Moon in Libra suggests you’ll be charming, diplomatic and suitably impressive, especially if you have important meetings, need to give a presentation or hold a key conversation. Still, issues at home can intrude into your thoughts. Handle those domestic responsibilities first thing, and you’ll get so much more done today

Head here for everything you need to know about being a Capricorn

Aquarius

January 22 to February 19

You may have your heart set on a plan or project that is vitally important to you, but before you get stuck in, the cosmos encourages you to take a step back and get a fresh perspective. You might even want to go off on a trip or short break before you get started. Do this and your ideas may be even more profound and wide ranging than usual and will have an impact.

Head here for everything you need to know about being an Aquarius

Pisces

February 20 to March 20

Keen to get a money-making plan off the ground. You might also want to do it by yourself. However, today’s Moon-Saturn tie suggests getting others involved, especially if they have a lot of experience. Learn from them, adapt their ideas and then you’ll have a better chance of success. It’s also a chance to reflect on your true value and treat yourself with more kindness.

Head here for everything you need to know about being a Pisces

Your daily Metro.co.uk horoscope is here every morning, seven days a week (yes, including weekends!). To check your forecast, head to our dedicated horoscopes page.

Head here for this week’s tarot horoscope reading, and see what the cards have in store for you!

Check out the tarot horoscope reading for the month of August here.

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Roopie Gill’s family call it her ‘Peggy Mitchell moment’, a reference to the iconic EastEnders scene when the formidable landlady of the Queen Vic faced down interlopers and told them: ‘Get outta my pub.’

Roopie, 57, is no brash Peggy Mitchell (by demeanour she is the polar opposite) and this is a respectable post office not a pub, but still.

She tells me of the afternoon, a little over a year ago, when she walked to the back of the Birmingham convenience store her father opened 50 years ago, to the post office counter which has been at the heart of the place, physically and emotionally, for five decades.

She still couldn’t set foot behind the counter – barred after being wrongly convicted of theft – but she politely asked for a meeting with those who had taken her position.

None of this was their fault, but she had to address it, she explains. ‘I sat them down, I opened my laptop and I showed them footage from the Post Office enquiry – footage that proved I was innocent,’ she recalls.

‘I said that, firstly, if anyone ever called me a thief again, or warned customers to check their change, I would sue for slander. Oh and that, secondly, I would be taking the post office back over.’

Jaws dropped, by all accounts. There is nothing triumphalist about the retelling of this pivotal moment, but Roopie admits it was ‘the best moment I’d had for a long time’.

There have been so many tragic stories to emerge from the Post Office scandal, but Roopie’s is among the most shocking.

Not only did this proud sub-postmistress attempt to take her own life when she was accused (erroneously) of stealing £38,000, she lost her home, her husband (Raju, also implicated, died in terrible circumstances during the process) and her good name.

Pictured: Roppie’s parents Balbir Kaur Kailey (left) and Nirmal Singh Kailey (right)

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ITV turned the plight of the Post Office victims into an award-winning drama, starring Toby Jones as Sir Alan Bates – a former subpostmaster and a leading campaigner for victims of the British Post Office scandal

Her ordeal lasted for 15 years, and it’s only when you are standing in the family shop, in the suburb of Handsworth, that you can appreciate how that must have felt. The geography of this place means that there was never any escape from the shame and humiliation.

‘I continued to work there, trying to keep the place going, able to hear the customers whispering about ‘thieves’. 

‘And every day I’d look straight at that post office counter, knowing I couldn’t even step inside. Also I lived here. After my husband and I lost our house – there were bailiffs, repossession orders, all that – I had nowhere else to go.’

That her father died in 2017, after his family had been publicly shamed but before anyone was aware that they had all been the victims of one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history, is a tragedy that can never be rectified.

‘It’s my biggest regret that Dad died thinking our family name had been tarnished,’ she says.

Last year, exonerated, her conviction quashed, Roopie took the unprecedented step of asking for her sub-postmistress position back – becoming the first (and only, she believes) Post Office victim to return to work in this way. 

Some, even within the family thought she was ‘mad’, after everything the Post Office had done. ‘But I needed to do it for my dad. This place was his baby. This is his legacy.’

This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of Nirmal Singh Kailey and his family opening Wattville Road convenience store and post office, and the bunting is up in the shop window to mark the celebration. It is very much a community event.

Even the post box outside has been freshly painted, the Queen’s cypher picked out in gold (‘It’s not standard, but we wanted it to be special,’ says Roopie). 

Actually, the post box is celebrating a birthday, too. Roopie remembers it being installed just before the shop opened in 1976. She was seven, only just able to reach up to post a letter.

What a piece of social history this now-cavernous shop represents. Nirmal Kailey was a highly educated man when he came over from India in 1956. 

He was working in the sorting office when a colleague told him that he was wasted there, and should be running his own post office. 

‘We think he was the first Asian man outside London to run a post office. It wasn’t done at the time – it was seen as an Asian man doing a white man’s job,’ says Roopie.

‘As the postmaster, he was at the heart of everything. In those days a lot of people in the community couldn’t speak English so Dad would translate letters for them.’

Former Post Office sub-postmasters are seen here celebrating outside London’s High Court after 42 of the victims of the IT scandal were cleared in April 2021

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The plight of the sub-postmasters was widely brought to the attention of the British public following the release of ITV’s Mr Bates Vs. The Post Office

Roopie had worked in the shop as a child, helping to stack shelves, but it wasn’t until 2005, when her father wanted to step down as sub-postmaster, that she stepped up. 

Her husband Raju – father of her children, who are now 33 and 30 – was already working in the shop, and they made a good team running the post office.

Until, several years later, circa 2008, things started to go awry. The books, she started to notice, weren’t quite right. ‘It started small. We’d be £200 down, then £300. I couldn’t understand it.’

All over the country, we now know, other sub-postmasters were running into problems with the fancy Horizon IT system which was designed to make things so much easier than ledgers or basic spreadsheets.

‘One of those affected was the next post office over to us,’ Roopie says today. ‘But we had no idea.’

Frustrated and embarrassed, she kept the bookkeeping issues from her dad, thinking ‘things would work themselves out’.

When the figures started to climb and panic set in, she called the special helpline the Post Office had in place for sub-postmasters.

‘And they didn’t want to know. They said, ‘It’s up to you to sort this out, make it right.”

By the time the books were showing a shortfall running into the thousands, Roopie and her husband were dipping into their savings to ‘plug the gap’, then using money earmarked for the mortgage.

Faced with mounting losses, they were also blaming each other. ‘I knew it wasn’t me taking the money, but we started wondering if the other one could be doing it. 

‘I honestly couldn’t see how it could be my husband. There was no sign, no flash car. I couldn’t see that he was sending money back to his parents in India.’

She is appalled now that she was actively looking for evidence of her poor husband’s guilt. 

‘You think, “Is there another woman?” You do all of that type of thing.’ Of course, he had done nothing wrong either.

The day the auditors from the Post Office turned up, in 2009, was a particular low. 

The place was locked down. Roopie sat with her head in her hands, aware that if the missing money could not be found, she could face prison.

‘I remember my dad arriving. He didn’t say much but he was devastated. Utterly devastated. He didn’t believe it of me, but there was money missing . . . no one had answers.’

Desperate measures were taken to meet the shortfall. Her parents sold a property. Family heirlooms, including jewellery, were pawned. Money from her daughter’s university grant was used to ‘try to get us out of the hole’. The car went. They defaulted on their mortgage, and in time their house would be repossessed.

Her husband – ‘a good man, someone everyone loved’ – buckled under the strain. 

‘He’d never been a big drinker but he started drinking. It got to the point where he was drinking from first thing in the morning.’

It was actually Roopie who cracked first, the weekend before a meeting she had been summoned to with Post Office bosses. She recalls deciding the only way out was to take her life. She took an overdose, but woke up, then tried again with more pills.

‘I was in my car. I remember driving and just pulling over. I woke up with the police there. I was so devastated that I’d failed. My mum was utterly distraught.’

Then her husband passed away. ‘I was actually at my mum’s. I’d taken the kids there. The police came round and said he’d been drinking heavily and he’d got outside and fallen, wasn’t able to get up. He died from hypothermia because he’d been outside all night.’ He was 38.

Even at this point, as her world was collapsing in on her, Roopie’s was a private family tragedy. But it was about to become very public. I ask if she can remember where, in the family shop, she was, on the day in 2010, when the police came to arrest her. Of course she can.

‘I was in the crisp and biscuit aisle. I’ll never forget that. There was a uniformed police officer, and someone from the Post Office was there, too. I took them into a stock room and they asked if I had anything sharp on me. 

‘Then they marched me out, in front of all the customers. I’m not a crier, so I didn’t cry, but I just remember feeling physically sick. Then they put me in the cell. Take your shoes off. You see it on TV, but you never imagine it will be you.’

ITV turned the plight of the Post Office victims into an award-winning drama,starring Toby Jones as Sir Alan 

A single mother by now, Roopie was advised to plead guilty if she wanted to avoid a custodial sentence. ‘I had no choice,’ she says.

‘If I wanted to get home to my children, I had to say I’d done what I knew I had not done.’

Her parents were in court to see Roopie found guilty of theft and false accounting. 

She was given a two-year suspended sentence and ordered to do community service.

While her parents never believed her to be guilty, some of her siblings couldn’t be so sure. There have been agonising family fallouts. ‘You have no idea how much pain something like this can cause.’

The years after her conviction are almost too difficult to recall. 

‘I tried to hide away. But mum would say, ‘Come in, just stack shelves, sweep the floor.’

‘I’d try to hide even on the shop floor. I didn’t want to see anyone. I couldn’t face customers.’

Even when she was off-duty, she says, ‘the trauma was still there’ because of shared kitchen facilities with the new post office staff.

It sounds like living with the enemy. ‘It was. There was very much a ‘them’ and ‘us’ situation. It got to the point where my dad hated to come in the shop at all if they were there. He hated to see it.’ 

She points out that none of this was the fault of the new staff.

Roopie’s mum passed away in 2011; her dad six years later. By then, Roopie had become close to Mani, the man who is now her partner. He had known the family for years, and was delivering sandwiches to the store. 

As Roopie opened up to him, he could see that ‘none of it made sense’. 

‘She’s a very private person, but I could see she was drowning,’ he says.

The business was also in trouble, and Mani offered to help. He put some money into the shop and began working there. He now works as a counter clerk in the post office, too.

It wasn’t until she heard the journalist Nick Wallis on the radio talking about ‘something to do with the Post Office’ that Roopie had the first inkling that it would be possible to rebuild her reputation, as well as her business. She was simply floored to discover that she wasn’t alone.

In time, it would be established that faulty Horizon accounting software had created phantom cash shortfalls, leading to around 3,500 sub-postmasters accused of theft. 

More than 900 were prosecuted, 236 were imprisoned. The scandal has been linked to at least 13 suicides.

The big social shift – ‘when customers started to come up to me and say ‘Gosh, we are so sorry’ – was after the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office in 2024.

In December that year came the formal court letter exonerating her of all wrongdoing. ‘She never cries, but she did on that day,’ says Mani. ‘She sobbed and sobbed.’

How quickly did she decide she wanted her position in the post office back? ‘Not immediately, but once the idea took hold, I knew I had to put the wheels in motion,’ she says. 

One of the first things she did when she walked back in, with her head held high, was to put her dad’s photograph back on the wall, where it remains.

A happy ending? Well, no. She has not yet received a single penny of compensation for her ordeal. Meanwhile, no one has been punished for the Post Office scandal.

‘I do believe heads should roll,’ says Roopie quietly. ‘And they haven’t.’ 

She has displayed extraordinary dignity, summed up by the fact that senior Post Office executives from London were invited to the celebrations this weekend. She says this is what ‘community service’ – the version her father believed in – means.

‘You have to build bridges, not smash them down,’ she says. ‘I learned that from my father. I learned everything from him.’

By GLEN OWEN and DAVID SHIPLEY

Published: 22:06 BST, 15 August 2026 | Updated: 00:33 BST, 16 August 2026

Senior retired members of the Armed Forces have united to call for a ‘comprehensive’ new law to remove the threat of prosecution hanging over veterans.

The Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill aims to establish a Legacy Commission to investigate killings during battles with Republicans and Loyalists as far back as 1969, tied to the promise of a package of protections for veterans.

While theoretically terrorists could also be investigated, the lack of records on their side means that the new system would disproportionately target British veterans.

Labour’s former veterans minister Al Carns quit in June after warning the Bill was ‘unfit for purpose’ and failed veterans.

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Brigadier General David Maddan, ex-SAS Commanding Officer Aldwin Wight, former SAS Regimental Sergeant Major George Simm and Dr Robert Parr, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford‘s Changing Character of War Centre and ex-member of both 22 SAS and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, are all calling for the Government to scrap the Bill and introduce a new Military Operations Act to govern ‘the conduct of military operations at home and overseas’.

Brigadier General Maddan told The Mail on Sunday that ‘the threat of endless legal investigations and potential prosecutions has damaged the confidence of the Special Forces to act boldly in situations of extreme risk’. 

The Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill aims to establish a Legacy Commission to investigate killings during battles with Republicans and Loyalists as far back as 1969, tied to the promise of a package of protections for veterans (pictured: Belfast, 1981)

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Labour’s former veterans minister Al Carns (pictured last month) quit in June after warning the Bill was ‘unfit for purpose’ and failed veterans 

Heroes: The famous SAS bage of the Special Air Service Regiment

He added: ‘The prevailing atmosphere of the threat from the lawyer behind is corrosive to military effectiveness.

‘Those on operations today… feel unsupported by the Government. The Special Forces are the point of the spear of UK defence capability but the spear is being blunted by a corrupted legal framework.’

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Mr Wight said that in the event of ‘a second Iranian embassy siege’, the officers in command would be reluctant to act without a legal waiver because ‘there is actually no framework and that means any terrorist group which wants to use lawfare against us will’.

They are calling for a new law which defines exactly what soldiers can and can’t do when fighting overseas or in the UK.

The Northern Ireland Office said there will be a ‘substantial package of amendments to bolster protections’ for veterans, and ‘suggestions that they will be dragged through the courts are simply wrong’.

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The Blues last week slumped to a home opening day defeat to Ballymena United, but the boos turned to cheers as their fans enjoyed the derby bragging rights against Glentoran this week

Manager David Healy punched the air with delight after Linfield got back on track with a 2-1 win over Big Two rivals Glentoran at bouncing Windsor Park – but then took a swipe at a small section of supporters who vented abuse only seven days earlier.

The Blues last week slumped to a home opening day defeat to Ballymena United, but those boos turned to cheers as their fans enjoyed the derby bragging rights.

Goals from defender Darragh Leahy and long-serving Kirk Millar helped Healy’s men to their first points of the new Boyle Sports Premiership campaign.

Jordan Stewart pulled one back for the Glens in added time, before he was dismissed, shown a straight red card for an elbowing offence on Leahy.

Yes, it was an eventful week, but one that ended well for Healy.

“I was pleased with the result and pleased for the players and the staff,” said the former Northern Ireland international striker. “It’s been a tough week; it’s been a long week.

“There was a lot said after last week’s result. There was a lot of noise in and around the stadium last week.

“What I had to endure personally; what the players had to endure and what my staff had to endure was nothing short of disgraceful.

“The abuse was from the terraces and from social media platforms.

“There was absolutely no need, for the level, the tone and the hatred that was vented in the last week. I won’t accept it.”

Following last weekend’s horror showing, Healy made only one alteration to his starting line-up, handing defender Dean McCullough a starting shirt in place of Ryan Nolan.

Devine suffered a massive blow prior to kick-off with the news that talisman striker Pat Hoban was out with injury. He was replaced by ex-Linfield player Jordan Stewart.

The away fans were howling for a penalty kick after only three minutes when Leahy’s attempted pass back to goalkeeper Chris Johns fell short, but as striker Jordan Jenkins intercepted, he took a dive, which didn’t impress referee Shane Andrews.

But the home supporters erupted on 18 minutes with that Leahy opener.

Adam Frizzell whipped in an in-swinging corner kick from the right and the former Dundalk got up above James Singleton and Ross Clarke to power home a close-range header.

The Blues struck again with 13 minutes remaining.

Frizzell found the dangerous Offord, whose blistering shot was saved by Crellin, but the ball broke to Millar, he rammed home a beauty, off the underside of the crossbar.

Glentoran grabbed a consolation in added time when Stewart converted after Ross Clarke had headed down an Aaron McEneff free kick.

“It was really poor for us, we didn’t play with the intensity that a Big Two game requires,” said,” Glentoran manager Declan Devine.

“We were careless with the ball and careless without the ball. We were too open in many aspects of our game.

“I know we are down five or six players, but when you build a squad like we have, we should have been better. We didn’t have the cohesion and the physicality required.”

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IRONMAN announced the decision in conjunction with Leeds City Council and following guidance from the UK Health Security Agency’s Environmental Hazards Team. Recent hot weather across the UK has triggered a significant bloom of blue-green algae in Waterloo Lake, raising concerns about potential health risks for participants.

Testing carried out at the venue confirmed algae levels were well above the threshold considered safe for open-water swimming, leaving organisers with no option but to cancel both Saturday’s swim practice session and the swim leg of Sunday’s race.

While acknowledging athletes’ disappointment, race organisers stressed that participant safety remains the top priority and reassured competitors that the event will still go ahead.

As a result of the change, the race will be held as a bike-run event. Athletes will complete a 112-mile bike ride followed by a 26.2-mile marathon run. The event will start from transition with a rolling time-trial bike start beginning at 7am on Sunday.

IRONMAN said competitors will receive further details about the revised race format and start procedures via email ahead of race day.

Organisers remain committed to delivering what they described as “an epic day of racing in Leeds” despite the last-minute changes.

The full Ironman was held in Bolton for many years before the triathlon was shortened to Ironman 70.3 and is for some, seen as a training exercise for the full gruelling challenge.

Bolton Ironman will be back next summer.

Are you taking part in Ironman this weekend. Let us know in the comments.

Every day on Criminal Record we will be bringing you a round-up of the biggest crime stories of the day.

If you love to read about crime in Scotland – this is the place to be every day.

Here’s what has been making the news across the country on Friday.

Coffee connoisseur Peter Murrell offered barista classes in jail

Coffee connoisseur Peter Murrell has been given access to barista classes in his cushy jail after embezzling more than £400k in SNP cash.

The disgraced former party chief executive – who splashed thousands in stolen money on luxury bean machines for the home he shared with Nicola Sturgeon – can now learn to make the perfect cup at HMP Dumfries.

The 61-year-old was sentenced to five years at the nick in June after he admitted to a series of fraudulent acts over a 12-year period.

The Record can now reveal that an an official list of activities available to inmates at his prison, rumoured to be the easiest place to serve time, shows Barista Skill courses are among Life Skills lessons on offer.

READ MORE: Coffee connoisseur Peter Murrell offered barista classes in cushy jail after stealing SNP cash

Peter Murrell’s prison dinner menu

Peter Murrell may have gone from luxury living to life behind bars – but his dinner menu at HMP Dumfries certainly doesn’t look like stereotypical prison grub.

Curry and fajitas nights, pizza, pies and burgers are all up for grabs and at weekends, a slap-up fry-up is on the cards.

The official prison menu offering a full breakfast with all the trimmings including sausages, black pudding, potato scones, beans, eggs and rolls. The menu also provides vegetarian alternatives.

And those with a sweet tooth can get stuck in to banoffee pie, ice cream, apple crumble, doughnuts and biscuits.

Documents obtained by the Record from the Scottish Prison Service set out the different choices available to prisoners at HMP Dumfries across the week.

READ MORE: Peter Murrell’s prison dinner menu boasts curry nights and weekend fry-ups

Homes evacuated by armed cops in Aberdeen

Residents have been evacuated from their homes in Aberdeen after a van was involved in a “hit-and-run” with several vehicles.

Armed cops raced to Invercauld Road at 2am on Saturday, August 15.

A van smashed into a set of parked vehicles and made off. Officers searched the area and attended a flat on the street.

Due to a man causing a disturbance within a property, specialist officers, including negotiators, were drafted in.

Residents in neighbouring flats were evacuated as a precaution.

A 38-year-old man has been arrested in connection. Nobody was injured and residents have since been able to return to their homes.

READ MORE: Homes evacuated by armed cops in Aberdeen after van hit-and-run as man arrested

Cops urged to block Loyalist terrorists from entering Scotland

Loyalist terrorists fuelling racist disorder in Scotland should be barred from entering the country, campaigners have demanded.

The Daily Record revealed this week how UVF-linked bank robber Mark Sinclair and sectarian killer pal Glen Kane have become major anti-immigration voices via Sinclair’s ‘freedomdad’ YouTube channel.

The pair have been spotted at extremist protests in Glasgow and anti-racist groups say they are part of a growing network of far-right groups in Scotland linked to Loyalist terror groups in Northern Ireland.

Now calls have been made for Sinclair, Kane and other activists linked to Loyalist terror to be banned from taking the ferry from Belfast to Scotland.

Trade union activist John McDermott – who has been involved in attempts to oppose the rise in far-right extremism – urged police to stop them at the ferry terminals into Scotland if it is evident they are hell bent on trouble.

READ MORE: Cops urged to block Loyalist terrorists fuelling racist disorder from entering Scotland

Mum who vanished off face of earth shared 153 calls with man on day or murder

A mum who vanished off the face of the earth made 153 calls with a man on the day of her murder.

Almost a decade ago, Patricia Henry‘s daughter bravely made a public plea for help in finding her missing mum.

At the time, Patricia hadn’t been seen for more than six months having moved from her home in Paisley to make a new life in Girvan on the Ayrshire coast.

Her then 18 year-old daughter Alannah McGrory made the moving appeal on behalf of Police Scotland in late May 2018 as detectives grew increasingly concerned for her mum’s safety.

The 46-year-old, known as Patti, hadn’t been heard of since November and fears were growing for her safety.

As the search was stepped up a ‘person of interest’ soon emerged.

The male in question was her downstairs neighbour George Metcalff, who was more than 20 years her senior. On the surface he seemed a decent helpful individual and they had become close over the years.

The pair sent 54 texts and made 143 calls to each other between November 1 and November 13, 2017 – the day police believe she was murdered.

READ MORE: Mum who vanished off face of earth shared 153 calls with man on day or murder

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Hawaii is bracing for what could be its first direct hit from a hurricane since 1992, as category one storm Lala churns off its coast.

Packing 75mph (120km/h) winds, Lala gained hurricane strength on Saturday. In a worst-case scenario, it could dump up to 25in (63cm) of rain on Big Island and produce a 3ft storm surge.

A hurricane warning is in effect for Big Island, while Maui County, Oahu, Kauai and Niihau are under a tropical storm warnings. Officials have told residents to prepare for “life-threatening” conditions, including floods and mudslides.

The storm is expected to either make landfall or pass close to the southern tip of Big Island on Saturday, before continuing west.

The last time a hurricane made landfall on Hawaii’s Big Island was 155 years ago, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Over the weekend, Lala will continue moving westwards, and may weaken into a tropical storm, with the centre passing just below Hawaii’s other islands.

Tyson Foods is shutting down or selling three beef facilities as an ongoing domestic cattle shortage continues to squeeze profit margins, the company announced.

The meat producer said it would end operations at its Joslin, Illinois, beef plant and its Eagle Mountain, Utah, case-ready facility. It is also seeking a buyer for its beef plant in Pasco, Washington.

The consolidation follows a $138 million operating loss in Tyson’s beef unit, as reported in its latest earnings update. Company executives noted that earlier cost-cutting measures — including the closure of a major processing plant in Lexington, Nebraska, last fall that displaced over 3,000 workers — proved insufficient to offset rising costs, according to Food Dive.

“I’m really heartbroken right now,” Marydel Lewis, who worked at the plant, told KSL. “We thought we were going to get a bonus because it’s our five-year anniversary.”

Instead, she and other employees learned they were out of jobs in October.

“It’s hard to take in,” Lewis told the outlet. “It’s like, is it true?”

High wholesale costs have driven retail beef prices to record levels, peaking at an average of $9.64 per pound in April, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

That price pressure has curbed demand. Total U.S. meat department sales dropped 2.3 percent in June, according to data from research firm Circana, as inflation-weary shoppers reduced purchases.

Tight cattle supplies will likely persist, Tyson officials said in their announcement, making plant consolidations necessary to protect overall processing capacity.

The Illinois shutdown alone is expected to result in roughly 2,500 union job losses, federal officials representing the state said in a news release, while more than 7000 employees will lose jobs at the Utah plant.

“Today’s news is devastating for the 2,500 skilled union workers impacted by the closure of the Tyson plant in Joslin, especially at a time when American families are struggling with the rising cost of living. In the coming weeks, we remain committed to supporting our union members during this transition and working with Tyson to ensure that they have access to resources that support their return to work,” Illinois Democrat Senator Tammy Duckworth said.

To absorb capacity from the affected sites, Tyson plans to shift production across its remaining network. The company will reinstate a second shift at its facility in Amarillo, Texas, where it had previously laid off about 1,760 workers during a consolidation effort late last year.

Moving forward, Tyson expects to anchor its primary beef processing operations in three central U.S. locations: Amarillo, Texas; Holcomb, Kansas; and Dakota City, Nebraska.

U.S. cattle inventories have dropped to multi-decade lows due to lingering economic pressures and climate challenges that have left ranchers hesitant to rebuild herds, according to the USDA.

Supply concerns have been further complicated by a resurgence of the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating pest that has limited live cattle imports from Mexico. In an earnings call, Tyson CEO Donnie King noted that recent federal trade adjustments along the southern border will not fully offset current domestic supply deficits.

Meat processing competitors are facing similar pressures across the sector. Earlier this year, global meatpacking rival JBS announced the closure of two facilities and named a new chief executive after posting a $102 million second-quarter net loss attributed to elevated live cattle costs.

When Mark Hughes, the former Manchester United and Wales manager, lost his 38-year-old son, an inquest found the cause was sudden adult death syndrome, or Sads.

He had appeared healthy. There was no obvious disease. For a family, that combination is almost impossible to make sense of. How can someone die from a heart condition when even a post-mortem might find nothing wrong with their heart?

The answer starts with something easy to forget: the heart isn’t just a pump; it’s also an electrical organ. Every heartbeat begins with a signal that ripples through the heart in a precise sequence, telling each chamber when to contract. In Sads, the fault often lies in that electrical system, not in the heart’s physical structure.

If the signal becomes unstable, an abnormal rhythm – an arrhythmia – can develop. Most are harmless. But some that start in the heart’s lower chambers, the ventricles, can be fatal. During ventricular fibrillation, electrical activity turns chaotic and the heart quivers instead of pumping. Blood stops reaching the brain, causing the person to lose consciousness.

Without CPR and a shock from a defibrillator, they can die within minutes. This is a cardiac arrest.

It’s worth being clear that a cardiac arrest isn’t the same as a heart attack, even though the terms get used interchangeably. A heart attack happens when a blocked artery starves part of the heart muscle of blood. A cardiac arrest happens when the heart suddenly stops pumping blood around the body.

A heart attack can cause a cardiac arrest, but the two are not the same thing. In Sads, it’s usually the electrical rhythm that’s suspected, not a blockage.

That electrical fault is also why Sads is so hard to investigate. A post-mortem is good at finding structural problems – a blocked artery, damaged muscle, an enlarged heart. But an electrical disturbance often leaves nothing behind to find.

Once someone has died, the activity that once controlled their heartbeat is simply gone, so a pathologist can examine a heart that looks entirely normal, even though it was fatally malfunctioning minutes earlier.

Sads is a sudden, unexplained death from cardiac arrest. It kills around 500 people in the UK every year.

Some cases trace back to inherited conditions affecting the microscopic channels that move electrically charged particles in and out of heart cells – the machinery behind every heartbeat.

Conditions linked to Sads include long QT syndrome, Brugada syndrome and catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia. The names are a mouthful, but they share one trait: they can destabilise the heart’s rhythm without leaving any structural trace.

This is where genetics can succeed where a conventional post-mortem can’t. DNA retained after an unexplained death can be tested for variants linked to inherited heart disease, an approach sometimes called a molecular autopsy. A genetic variant turns up in as many as 13% of Sads cases.

Finding a cause isn’t only about explaining a death. It can protect the people left behind.

Warning signs, when they exist, are easy to miss. Some people have exercised, worked and lived entirely normally right up until their cardiac arrest. Others had symptoms without realising what they meant: unexplained fainting, especially during exercise, or recurrent palpitations and dizziness. Fainting caused by a rhythm disturbance can even be mistaken for a seizure.

Genetic component

Family history matters just as much. An unexplained sudden death in a parent, sibling or child – particularly at a young age – can point to an inherited condition, since many of the disorders behind Sads run in families. That doesn’t mean everyone with palpitations or dizziness has a dangerous heart problem; those symptoms are common and usually harmless. But fainting during exercise, or symptoms alongside a family history of premature sudden death, are worth having checked.

Investigating a single death doesn’t necessarily stop with the person who died. Because several of the conditions linked to Sads are inherited, close relatives can be offered tests at a specialist heart clinic. These might include an ECG to check the heart’s electrical activity, an ultrasound scan to look at its structure, exercise testing, monitoring the heart’s rhythm and, in some families, genetic testing.

This approach works. A study of 304 families affected by sudden cardiac death found an inherited cardiac disease in 47% of families overall, with 11% of relatives screened receiving a definite diagnosis. Where the original death was classified as Sads specifically, investigation still turned up an inherited condition in around one in five families.

A more recent study following 686 relatives found that most diagnoses made over ten years of follow-up came in the first five – a reminder of why timely investigation matters.

Finding someone at risk before symptoms appear can be lifesaving. Treatment depends on the condition and might include medication, advice about exercise or avoiding certain drugs. People at the highest risk may be offered an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator – a device that constantly monitors the heartbeat and can deliver an electrical shock to restore a normal rhythm if necessary.

There’s some confusion even in the name. Media reports often say “sudden adult death syndrome”, but in cardiology the preferred term is sudden arrhythmic death syndrome, because it describes what doctors suspect has happened: a fatal abnormal heart rhythm with no obvious physical or drug-related cause. Either way, Sads isn’t simply a label for a death nobody can explain. It reflects the limits of what a standard post-mortem can tell us about a heart whose electrical system may have stopped working normally only minutes earlier.

Those limits are shrinking. Combining expert post-mortems, genetic analysis and investigation of surviving relatives can sometimes uncover the hidden disorder behind a death like this. It won’t undo a family’s loss. But it can change what happens next. And finding out why one apparently healthy person died may reveal that others in their family carry the same hidden risk, in time to do something about it before it’s too late.

Berkshire Hathaway is increasing the size of its stake in Google’s parent company and beefing up its holdings in homebuilders, according to the conglomerate’s latest snapshot of its investment portfolio.

The Omaha, Nebraska-based company also continued to pare its stake in financial companies and a number of other stocks in the April-June quarter, according to a regulatory filing filed late Friday.

CEO Greg Abel, who took over from Warren Buffett at the start of the year, agreed in June to make a $10 billion stock investment in Alphabet, expanding on the stake that Berkshire started to build last fall.

In the second quarter, Berkshire picked up roughly 48.1 million shares in Alphabet, bringing its total shares in the tech giant to roughly 106 million. That stake was valued at about $37.76 billion as of June 30, according to the filing. As recently as the end of December, Berkshire held only 17.8 million Alphabet shares worth $5.6 billion.

Alphabet has said it plans to raise $80 billion to pay for the computing infrastructure needed to power its AI offerings.

Beyond tech, Berkshire continued to boost its investments in the U.S. homebuilding sector. Its stake in homebuilder Lennar increased nearly 30% in the second quarter. Berkshire also established a small new stake in D.R. Horton that was worth $580,504 at the end of June.

In July, Berkshire completed a $6.8 billion acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison.

Berkshire also sharply increased its shares in Delta Air Lines and Macy’s in the second quarter. The stakes were worth about $5.37 billion and $173 million, respectively, as of June 30.

Berkshire also pruned its investment portfolio in the second quarter, reducing its stake in several companies relative to where they stood in the first quarter, including supermarket operator Kroger, steel manufacturer Nucor and dialysis giant DaVita.

The company also dumped all its holdings — 632,890 shares — in beverage company Constellation Brands.

Berkshire also pared its shares in several financial companies. Its stakes in Bank of America and Ally Financial declined by around 6% and 6.9%, respectively, and it slashed its shares in Capital One Financial by 58%.

Many investors have followed Berkshire’s portfolio closely over the years because they liked to copy Buffett’s moves. He remains the company’s chairman and largest shareholder.