In recent days, there has been a dispute between the US and Iran over the issue of UN nuclear inspectors visiting sites in the country.

On Monday, following talks in Switzerland with Iran’s chief negotiator, US Vice-President JD Vance said Iran had “agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back into their country”.

The next day, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said there had been “no detailed discussions” and that Iran had no plans to grant IAEA inspectors access to nuclear facilities which were bombed by the US during a 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025.

US President Donald Trump then dismissed Iran’s “protestations and false statements to the contrary”, saying the country had “fully and completely agreed” to inspections.

“There’s a war or words here. Some say ‘yes’, the others say ‘no’,” the IAEA’s chief said on Wednesday. “I can understand political statements. They are part of the reality.

“But the fundamental thing… is that there has been a memorandum of understanding signed by both presidents,” he added. “[It] says explicitly that the nuclear activities that are going to be carried out, with regards to nuclear material, facilities, will be supervised by the IAEA, in bold letters. This is going to happen.”

Grossi said the inspections would take place in collaboration and co-operation with the Iranian government. “Whether this happens the day after tomorrow, or in one week, or in 10 days, it’s important but not essential.”

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi appeared to push back at the comments.

He wrote on X that access to Iran’s damaged nuclear facilities and its nuclear materials would only be addressed within the framework of a final agreement with the US and after practical steps had been taken to lift all sanctions.

“Media noise cannot be used to impose facts on the ground,” he added.

Under the 14-point memorandum of understanding, the US and Iran have committed to negotiating a final deal within 60 days.

It says they have “agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpiled enriched material, pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon… with the minimum methodology to be down-blending on site under the supervision of the IAEA”.

The IAEA said in a recent report, external that its inspectors were allowed to visit Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant earlier this month, but that they were still not given access to the sensitive nuclear facilities that were bombed last June.

The watchdog said that meant it could not provide any information on the current size, composition or whereabouts of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, or whether Iran had suspended all enrichment activities. Much of the stockpile is believed to be inside underground tunnels at the Isfahan site.

Enriched uranium can be used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear weapons.

Before the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran on 28 February, the IAEA reported that Iran had 440kg (970 lbs) of uranium that was enriched up to 60% purity, which is near weapons grade. That would theoretically be enough, if enriched to 90%, for as many as 10 bombs.

Iran insists its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful and that it would never seek to develop or acquire nuclear weapons.

Under a 2015 deal with the US and five other world powers, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities and allow continuous and robust monitoring by the IAEA’s inspectors in return for relief from crippling economic sanctions.

However, Trump abandoned the agreement during his first term in 2018, saying it did too little to stop a pathway to a bomb, and reinstated US sanctions.

Iran retaliated by increasingly breaching the restrictions of the deal, particularly those relating to uranium enrichment.

There are few films this year as ambitious as director Julian Schnabel’s In the Hand of Dante. Combining manuscript mystery, gangster thriller and spiritual odyssey, the film moves between medieval Italy and the 21st-century criminal underworld in pursuit of questions about creativity, faith, power and redemption.

This film is a big, gutsy gamble. Casting a heavily costumed Martin Scorsese in an acting role with overwrought philosophical dialogue was always going to be a risk. Your enjoyment of it will hinge on your ability to tolerate its tonal dissonance. At various points it functions as a black comedy, an earnest exploration of art and its creation, a spiritual romance and a gangster thriller. Schnabel appears determined to make all four at once.

Adapted from Nick Tosches’ cult novel, of the same name, Schnabel’s sprawling literary crime drama attempts to bridge centuries and genres. At the centre of the story lies a discovered manuscript of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, passed through the hands of collectors, academics and gangsters.

High culture and organised crime

Oscar Isaac occupies two time lines here: playing both novelist Nick Tosches in 2001 and Dante himself in medieval Italy. The manuscript takes on mythical significance, drawing characters towards it with varying mixtures of greed, reverence and curiosity.

The first act of the film is the strongest. The 2001 storyline unfolds as an absorbing literary detective story, with intriguing questions surrounding the manuscript’s authenticity. The process of its authentication becomes a suspenseful investigation, while the criminal interests circling the document create a constant sense of danger.

Schnabel stages this material in stark black and white, giving the film a hallucinatory quality. His approach suits the film’s unlikely mixture of scholarship and extreme violence, where discussions about literature and cultural inheritance plunge into the brutal world of organised crime.

The collision between high culture and organised crime is frequently fascinating, even if the abrupt shifts in tone occasionally produce a sense of whiplash. At times, though, the juxtaposition veers close to parody. Earnest reflections on art, redemption and spiritual longing are delivered by an array of heavily costumed Hollywood stars (John Malkovich, Scorsese, Isaac) before the film abruptly returns to gangsters, shoot-outs and criminal conspiracy. This contrast – which sits at the heart of Schnabel’s vision – is intriguing, but it does not always convince.

The cast embraces the film’s unusual ambitions. Isaac brings conviction to both roles, navigating the demands of a dual performance without reducing either character to a simple reflection of the other. The medieval scenes chart Dante’s artistic and spiritual development, while the 2001 narrative allows Isaac to play a man caught between intellectual fascination and dangerous circumstances.

Gerard Butler’s Louie is a character who embodies many of the film’s contradictions. Violent, philosophical and frequently darkly comic, Louie can feel closer to a cartoon than a fully rounded character. Butler nevertheless commits fully to the role, embracing its extremes without a hint of self-consciousness.

The result is bizarre, often absurd and consistently memorable. Elsewhere, familiar faces drift through the story, including Al Pacino, Jason Momoa and Gal Gadot. Their appearances contribute to the sense that Schnabel has assembled a cinematic fever dream rather than a conventional ensemble drama.

Alongside the manuscript mystery runs Dante’s own journey. These medieval sequences trace his artistic and spiritual awakening, charting the experiences that would shape one of the most influential works in Western literature.

Schnabel approaches this material with obvious reverence. Medieval Italy is rendered as a landscape of imagination and symbolism. The film’s treatment of female characters (Gal Gadot’s Beatrice and Giulietta, and Sabrina Impaccatore’s Susanna Pelice) is similarly symbolic. They function as sources of inspiration, temptation or spiritual guidance rather than fully realised people.

As the story progresses, philosophical reflection displaces the momentum established in the opening hour. The manuscript mystery recedes into the background as the characters drift in and out of focus and scenes unfold according to what feels like dream logic rather than dramatic progression. What begins as a gripping literary thriller evolves into something increasingly abstract and elusive.

That tension defines In the Hand of Dante. Schnabel reaches for something vast, attempting to connect artistic creation, spiritual longing and criminal violence within a single work. While the scale of that ambition gives the film its character, it also explains why parts of it may feel frustratingly out of reach.

At a time when so much cinema feels carefully calibrated and thoroughly familiar, there is something refreshing about a film willing to embrace risk on this scale. In The Hand of Dante is messy, eccentric and frequently bewildering. It is also inventive, visually striking and impossible to confuse with anything else released this year.

Like the manuscript that drives its plot, In The Hand of Dante attracts both admiration and scepticism. Mysterious, unwieldy and often captivating, it refuses easy categorisation. The question of whether Schnabel has made a great film here is open to debate. Some viewers will find it profound and others will find it ridiculous. Both responses feel entirely reasonable. He has certainly made one that nobody else would have attempted.

Barcelona opted against signing Marcus Rashford on a permanent deal despite the Man United star impressing in Spain

Sections of the Spanish media have been left unimpressed with Anthony Gordon’s performance for England on Tuesday night against Ghana. The former Newcastle man’s underwhelming showing could leave Barcelona questioning their decision to sign Gordon rather than Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford.

Gordon came in for criticism from the press for the second match running following England’s tepid draw with Ghana. After the exhilarating 4-2 victory over Croatia, Thomas Tuchel’s squad were brought back down to earth as they were held to a goalless deadlock in Boston.

Despite dominating possession, England carved out very little against a resolute Ghana outfit, though qualification for the last-32 looks all but certain. One of the most compelling storylines heading into the tournament has been the battle for the left-wing position between Gordon and Rashford.

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The former recently completed a £69.3million switch to Barcelona from Newcastle, while the latter has seen his hopes of securing a permanent deal at the Nou Camp dashed, leaving his future uncertain. However, with Gordon’s performances found wanting, it’s entirely possible Barcelona could reconsider their stance on Rashford if they wished.

Rashford, 28, concluded a highly profitable season-long loan at Barcelona, where he won La Liga while contributing 14 goals and 14 assists. However, the Catalan club’s decision leaves Rashford at something of a loose end as he prepares to return to United once World Cup 2026 concludes.

Tottenham have expressed interest in the forward with The i Paper revealing the north London outfit are eager to strike a deal for Rashford. Yet it’s tough to see any club offering the £40m fee that United values the striker at.

A staggering weekly salary of around £325,000 is also a major obstacle, although he did accept a reduced wage when joining Barca last summer.

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Despite a lacklustre showing against Croatia, Gordon was handed another start by Tuchel, with Rashford once again consigned to the substitutes’ bench. After failing to make any real impression, Gordon made way for Bukayo Saka on 65 minutes, while Rashford had to bide his time until the 83rd minute before entering the action, replacing Noni Madueke.

Spanish media didn’t hold back when assessing Gordon, with La Vanguardia describing his display as “lacklustre.” The Barcelona publication said: “As against Croatia, the winger failed to make a significant impact on the game. Although he was more involved in the play, he was imprecise in some of his dribbling, and his assists, while more purposeful, were wasted by his teammates.”

AS’s evaluation of Gordon featured both commendation and critique, stating he was “excellent defensively but lacklustre in attack.”

Madrid-based Las Razon highlighted how Ghana “shut down the flanks” with full-backs Marvin Senaya and Gideon Mensah “effectively marking Gordon and Madueke.” ABC suggested Gordon “lacked the necessary finesse” to penetrate the Ghana backline and labelled his second-half shot, which was easily saved, “tame.”

Given Gordon’s limited influence thus far, Rashford could well take his place in England’s starting line-up for their group decider against Panama on Saturday. Victory for the Three Lions will likely see them top Group L and guarantee a more straightforward path, theoretically, in the knockout phase.

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Six people responsible for the murder of Joanne Penney who was shot at point blank range have been sentenced to life imprisonment. The 40-year-old died after the bullet penetrated her heart and left lung and lodged itself in the rear of her chest. She was pronounced dead at a property in Llys Illtyd, Talbot Green, at around 6.10pm on March 9 last year.

Marcus Huntley, 21, pleaded guilty to murdering Ms Penney and being the person who pulled the trigger. Jordan Mills-Smith, 34, Joshua Gordon, 28, Kristina Ginova, 22, and Melissa Quailey-Dashper, 40, were found guilty of Joanne Penney’s murder. Convicted murderer Renaldo Baptiste, 39, was also found guilty or murder, having arranged the murder of Ms Penney from his prison cell.

He was convicted of murdering a man in Leicester and was serving a sentence of life in prison with a minimum term of 25 years when he orchestrated the shooting of Ms Penney. Day one of the sentencing hearing on Monday saw the prosecution detail each defendants’ involvement in the murder. You can read more about that here.

The court heard the background to the killing was a “clash of rival organised crime groups”, one headed by defendant Joshua Gordon, of the “Rico OCG”.

The court was also told the expansion of Gordon’s activities into South Wales, specifically Talbot Green, was “not taken well” by a rival group of drug dealers, lead by Daniel Joseph, known as “Jimmy”.

Prosecutor Jonathan Rees KC said during the original trial: “On two occasions in the lead-up to the murder on March 9, 2025, Jimmy and his men had confronted, and humiliated, members of the ‘Rico’ group when they were in the Talbot Green area.”

In the days following, the court heard Huntley, Gordon and Baptiste discussed obtaining a firearm and ammunition to “send a message” to their rivals.

The court heard that on the day of the murder Quailey-Dashper knocked on the front door of 10 Llys Illtyd.

Mr Rees said: “The trigger may have been pulled by Marcus Huntley, but the prosecution’s case is that each of Joshua Gordon, Marcus Huntley, Jordan Mills-Smith, Melissa Quailey-Dashper, Kristina Ginova are jointly responsible for her murder.

“They each played their part in the death of Joanna Penney – knowing that they were acting to bring about, or assisting/encouraging others to bring about, at least really serious injury to another person.”

Mr Justice Fordham gave the following sentences to each of the six murderers:

• Marcus Huntley was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 27 years
• Renaldo Baptiste was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 42 years
• Joshua Gordon was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 32 years
• Jordan Mills-Smith was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 27 years
• Melissa Quailey-Dashper was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 14 years
• Kristina Ginova was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 12 years

Most of the defendants appeared emotionless as they were led down to the cells. However, Huntley was seen to briefly wipe his face with his hand after he learnt his fate and Ginova stifled tears and wiped her eyes as she was led away.

Following the hearing, Detective Chief Inspector Lianne Rees of South Wales Police read a statement on behalf of the family, outside the court steps.

In their statement, the family said losing Joanne has “left an irreplaceable gap in our family, and the pain of losing her is something we will carry with us every day”

Speaking on behalf of South Wales Police, DCI Rees said the case “lays bare the devastating consequences of organised crime”, adding: “Let this sentence serve as a stark warning — if you bring violence, drugs and firearms into South Wales, we will relentlessly pursue you, dismantle your networks, and ensure you face the full consequences of your actions.”

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Wall Street was poised to open with modest gains Wednesday following a global sell-off in big technology stocks a day earlier.

Futures for the S&P 500 inched up 0.1% before the opening bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were flat. Nasdaq futures were up 0.3%.

Some of the companies hit hardest by selling Tuesday took back some of those losses before the market opened.

Chipmaker Micron, which tumbled more than 13% on Tuesday, gained 3.2% overnight. Marvell Technology rose 1.5% in premarket after skidding 9.4% a day earlier.

This week’s selling has largely targeted companies that have seen their values surge amid the frenzy over artificial intelligence technology. Their pricey stock values give them more influence over the broader market’s direction.

Outside of the AI selloff, shares of Google parent company Alphabet inched higher overnight after it was announced that it would replace Verizon on the Dow Jones Industrial average Monday. Alphabet will become the fifth Magnificent 7 company to join the index.

Take-Two Interactive jumped 3% after announcing early Wednesday that its Rockstar Games would begin taking pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI, the latest of its blockbuster game series, on Thursday at midnight.

Oil prices fell again, continuing to edge closer to where they were before the Iran war started in late February. More ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz while U.S.-Iran talks on a permanent end to the Iran war continued to make progress.

Still, while vessel crossings in the strait increased in recent days, they remained well below prewar levels, they noted.

Brent crude, the international standard, fell $1.59 to $75.21 a barrel. It has been trading below $80 in recent days but is still elevated compared with the approximately $70 per barrel in late February before the war began.

Benchmark U.S. crude fell $1.67 to $71.54 a barrel. It was around $67 a barrel before the war.

Early Wednesday, President Donald Trump said the Justice Department will investigate oil companies for price gouging

Bond yields have remained higher as inflation concerns grew amid global energy shocks. The yield on the 10-year Treasury settled at 4.48% early Wednesday.

The Federal Reserve has signaled that it could raise interest rates at least once before the end of the year. Wall Street sees an 85% chance that the central bank will raise its benchmark interest rate this year, according to date from CME Group. That’s compared to 60% a week earlier.

The potential for higher interest rates can stifle future spending and hurt prices for investments.

Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, Britain’s FTSE 100 was unchanged, while Germany’s DAX fell 1.1% and France’s CAC 40 ticked up 0.2%.

In Asia, South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index was up 3.3% to 8,471.02, recovering from its 10% decline on Tuesday. Shares of memory chipmaker SK Hynix, one of the country’s most valuable stocks, climbed 1%. Samsung Electronics jumped 9.8%, after Tuesday’s 12.3% plummet.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 lost 0.9% to 69,174.97 after falling 3.6% on Tuesday.

Taiwan’s Taiex, which is also heavily influenced by tech shares, fell 2.2%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was 0.3% higher at 23,412.18. The Shanghai Composite index was up 0.1% to 4,110.81. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.2% to 8,808.40.

The big falls in tech shares were an “illustration of rising volatility” in these stocks, said James Reilly, senior markets economist at Capital Economics. “This is particularly true in Korea where domestic retail buyers are taking on an increasing role,” he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is headed to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet with Republican senators who have grown increasingly frustrated with his efforts to divert their agenda.

Trump, who will attend a closed-door Senate GOP luncheon for the first time in more than a year, has pressured senators for months to focus on his proof-of-citizenship voting bill even though it doesn’t have the votes to pass. At the same time, he has blocked them from confirming one of his own nominees, asked them to fund parts of his White House ballroom project despite opposition and forced them to defend his Iran war even as they question the strategy and endgame.

Trump has also helped whittle down his own support in the Senate after endorsing primary challengers to two GOP incumbents who were previously reliable votes for his agenda — Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy. Both men lost their primaries and have since become more critical of the president.

Still, senators said ahead of the meeting that they hope to focus on unity, not disagreements.

“If we’re going to win the midterm elections, we need to get on the same page,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn said Tuesday ahead of the meeting. “We’re not on the same page now, and that I think is dangerous.”

It was uncertain, though, if Trump’s visit could smooth differences with the Republican majority — or if GOP senators who have been increasingly vocal about their frustration will voice their concerns directly.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said a lot of his complaints with the administration have already been communicated. He said he hopes this meeting will be “conciliatory.”

“That would be a big win for us tomorrow,” Tillis said on Tuesday.

Trump pushes Thune on SAVE America Act

Adding to the tension is Trump’s increasingly distant relationship with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. While Thune remains popular in his conference and cordial with the president, he has spent much of his time lately telling Trump what he doesn’t want to hear.

Thune said Tuesday that while Trump and some in their conference want to see the voting bill pass, “it’s just not realistic.”

Trump has been pushing the Senate to eliminate the filibuster and pass the legislation, known as the SAVE America Act, which would create strict new requirements for voters to prove citizenship and show voter ID at the polls. He has also demanded that they add a ban on mail-in ballots to the bill as well as unrelated provisions to block sex reassignment surgeries on some minors and prevent people born as men from playing in women’s sports.

“John is a leader and hopefully he can get the votes,” Trump said Tuesday on a trip to Pennsylvania, putting new pressure on Thune.

Thune devoted weeks of floor time to the voting bill earlier this year and has said he supports it. But he has repeatedly said there aren’t enough votes to scrap the filibuster that triggers a 60-vote threshold to pass most bills in the 53-47 Senate. And Democrats are uniformly opposed to the bill.

“Those are just hard realities,” Thune said. “And I think people at some point have to come to grips with that.“

Thune said he hopes the meeting is about “sitting down as a family” and figuring out their agenda in the remaining time before the election.

Some GOP senators back Trump on SAVE Act

Thune said he found out Trump was coming to the luncheon from Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who had extended the invitation without telling him — an unusual move that could signal some frustration within the ranks. Scott, a close Trump ally, leads the Senate Republican lunch every Wednesday.

Scott, who ran against Thune for leader two years ago, said Trump responded “on the spot” to his invitation and said he would come.

“He’s going to be very positive,” Scott said. “There’s a lot that we can brag about that we’ve accomplished, and he wants to figure out how we can win November and continue to fulfill his agenda.”

On Monday, Scott sent a letter to his Republican colleagues arguing that the Senate should be taking votes every week on some version of the SAVE America Act and other GOP priorities that Democrats oppose.

“We need to show voters that we are listening to them and will fight for their priorities whether any Democrats vote with us or not,” Scott wrote.

Also needling Thune on the bill is Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican who has amassed a large following on X with daily posts about how they should kill the filibuster and pass the bill. Several Republican senators, including Cornyn, confronted Lee at a closed-door lunch last week about his advocacy, which they said is dividing the party and creating unrealistic expectations.

Lee has also echoed Trump’s claims that Republicans can’t win elections unless the bill passes, despite the party’s sweeping victories in 2024. Trump has continued to falsely claim that the 2020 election he lost was stolen.

“The push to pass the SAVE America Act is not a ‘fantasy,’” Lee posted over the weekend. “It’s a plan to avoid a nightmare — one that’s coming soon unless we act.”

Thune said Tuesday that it’s Lee’s prerogative to post on social media, but “at the end of the day, I have a different reality. And sometimes the alternative universe that is X doesn’t reflect the facts on the ground.”

Frustration over Iran, intelligence job could also be topics

Trump could be faced with questions about his announcement on social media last week that he was delaying Jay Clayton’s nomination to become national intelligence director. Republican leaders had hoped to quickly confirm Clayton and circumvent Trump’s unpopular interim pick Bill Pulte, who has no known experience in the field.

In the same social media post, Trump said he wouldn’t sign a renewal of a key surveillance law unless Senate Republicans attach the SAVE America Act. That hardline approach has some support in the House, where a group of 25 Republicans has vowed to oppose all legislation until the voting bill moves forward.

Republicans could also use the luncheon to push Trump on the war in Iran and the agreement with Iran to end it. Most lawmakers still have not been briefed about the deal.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said there are a lot of questions about the Iran agreement, but added that Trump may not be able to talk publicly about the ongoing negotiations.

“We’re there to listen” and to try and ensure that the rest of Trump’s term is successful, Rounds said. But that means “we’ve got to come out with a united team.”

___

Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.

What if protecting your brain from dementia was as simple as wiggling your little fingers a few seconds each day? That’s the promise behind “pinky time”, a viral TikTok trend that claims a simple finger exercise can lower your risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

Videos promoting this supposed brain-health hack have attracted millions of views, with some suggesting that difficulty performing the movement could be a warning sign of cognitive decline. By arranging the fingers into a specific pattern and moving the pinkies up and down, proponents argue you are giving your brain a quick workout that keeps it sharp.

It’s easy to see why the idea has gained attention. A free, effortless daily habit that protects against one of the most feared conditions of ageing is an appealing prospect. But while the trend draws loosely on real neuroscience, the conclusions being made are far more ambitious than the evidence allows.

Doing something fiddly and new with your fingers, such as learning new chords on a guitar, takes real concentration. Your brain has to plan each movement, hold back the wrong ones, and constantly adjust based on what you are seeing and what your fingers are feeling.

That’s a surprising amount of mental work for such a small physical task, and it may help explain why hands-on hobbies such as learning a musical instrument or knitting are associated with sharper memory and better brain function.

For years, scientists have used finger-tapping tasks, where people repeatedly tap a finger or follow a simple rhythm, to study how movement, attention and the ageing brain are connected. However, these tasks are used as research tools and should not be confused with scientific tests for dementia or memory loss.

There’s another idea behind this: the brain can rewire itself in response to what we ask it to do, building new connections as we learn. So when you learn a new finger movement, you’re encouraging your brain to strengthen and reorganise neural connections involved in that task.

In this sense, pinky time fits into a broader category of activities that challenge the brain through novelty and coordination. From juggling to dancing or learning a new language, these sorts of tasks may help keep the brain resilient as we age.

Performing unfamiliar movements can feel mentally demanding, but it does not mean it can diagnose cognitive decline or protect against it. Many factors influence how well someone performs a finger coordination task, including mobility, flexibility, previous injuries and practice. A healthy person may struggle with this movement task, while someone with cognitive impairment may perform it with ease.

Looking for easy fixes

The popularity of pinky time highlights that people are increasingly looking for simple ways to monitor and protect their brain health. Unfortunately, detecting the earliest stages of cognitive decline is considerably more complex.

Doctors and researchers use carefully developed tests that measure many aspects of cognition, including memory, attention, language and “executive functioning” (the planning, organising and self-control skills we use to perform daily tasks).

There is currently no evidence that struggling with this particular finger movement predicts early memory or thinking problems, and no strong evidence that practising it can prevent cognitive decline.

Research on various hand and finger exercises has reported modest benefits in people who already have some cognitive difficulties. But there isn’t much evidence yet, and it’s not clear whether the benefits are big enough to help protect against dementia.

Another limitation is that the brain benefits most from activities that remain difficult. As a task becomes familiar, it requires less attention and cognitive effort. A movement that feels difficult today may become largely automatic after repeated practice, reducing its value as a brain workout.

What is known to work

Unfortunately, there’s no single trick to keeping your brain sharp as you age. What does seem to matter is much broader – staying active, looking after your heart, getting enough sleep and keeping up your social life. There’s also growing evidence that something as simple as sorting out your hearing or eyesight can help too, because it makes it easier to stay socially and mentally switched on.

A healthy diet, particularly one resembling the Mediterranean diet, has also been linked to better brain health. Lifelong learning, whether through education, hobbies, languages, music or other mentally stimulating activities, also seems to help.

Pinky time as a coordination challenge may be fun and harmless. But its viral promise oversimplifies a much more complex picture. When it comes to protecting our brains, the evidence still favours the less glamorous fundamentals: exercise, sleep, healthy diet, social connection, good sensory health and lifelong learning.

England is sweltering under an red heat health alert and could see its hottest June day on record. In North America, football fans and players are suffering, with a quarter of this summer’s World Cup matches forecast to be played in dangerous heat.

The public know to expect this in advance because the science of forecasting has become remarkably powerful. Scientists can run a million versions of the future before it arrives. But seeing the future in data is not the same as being ready for it. The gap between knowing and doing is not a gap in our technical capability. It is a gap in human imagination.

In September 2024, Storm Boris brought severe flooding across central Europe. Forecasts gave authorities time to act. Thousands of people were evacuated. The science helped people see into the future.

Three years earlier, in July 2021, forecasts for rivers in western Germany were predicting serious flooding several days ahead. Yet some people did not receive warnings. Others did not understand what the warnings meant. And some simply could not imagine that the flood would be worse than anything they had ever seen before. Villages were torn apart and 190 people died.

What happened differently? I was part of a team of researchers who spoke to people who had lived through the floods in the Ahr valley in Germany. One person said: “It was clear that a lot of rain was coming. I lacked the imagination of what that means.” People may possess information and still be unable to see the danger they are in. Previous experience can help people picture a flood, but often only up to the scale of their prior experience. As the climate changes further, the future has no template.

Making possibilities visible

Between 2015 and 2018, Cape Town in South Africa experienced a severe drought. Reservoir levels fell sharply. The city began to approach what became known as day zero: the point at which household taps would be turned on, and no water would come.

Research showed that this situation was made worse by inequality as much as climate change. Rich residents filled swimming pools while their poorer neighbours were left without running water to drink. But the crisis rose in prominence because of the way it was discussed. The idea of day zero turned an abstract risk into a timed countdown, making visible the possibility of an otherwise invisible but devastating future. Cape Town needed better water infrastructure, but the crisis did not become real until its residents created better imagination infrastructure.

Imagination infrastructure provides the building blocks of society’s shared understanding. To understand how the natural world will affect us, we need stories, forecasts, maps, conversations and shared spaces that allow us to rehearse a future in our minds before it arrives. A flood warning is a piece of imagination infrastructure. So is a photograph of water rushing through a familiar street, which can make an approaching danger suddenly real in a way that an abstract warning cannot.

The science will tell us what is likely to happen. The harder question is whether that knowledge reaches people in a form they can feel and act on.

Not only that, but imagination infrastructure can improve physical infrastructure. This is not an either/or trade-off. We cannot replace flood barriers and pumping stations with storytelling. We also need strong public institutions and political decisions that take future risk seriously. But physical infrastructure begins with a collective act of imagination. Before we build a flood barrier or redesign a street, we have to picture why that change matters.

Futures we can already see

The science of climate forecasting has already given us a range of possible futures: worlds with 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial temperatures, 2°C, 3°C and beyond over the coming decades. Those numbers can often seem too abstract to grasp, or the timescales feel too far off to care about.

The challenge for science is not just to forecast the conditions that are ahead. It is to imagine the kind of society we want to be in the future, as conditions like this week’s heatwave in the UK grow more common.

The good news is that we don’t have to look very far to see ideas being put into action. Just a few steps from where I live and work in Reading, we have modern hydroelectric turbines on the River Thames generating renewable electricity. Electric buses carry passengers swiftly around the town. And the Reading School Streets programme (an initiative that ensures roads outside ten schools are closed to most vehicles during school arrival and departure times) brings cleaner air and safer surroundings to children and families on the daily trip to the school gates. These ideas all stem from someone deciding to imagine a different future and making that a reality.

When science predicts heatwaves or floods next week, or extreme conditions decades in the future, those futures are real. To avoid walking headlong into disasters we can already see, and to build different futures for ourselves, we need to learn to imagine and feel them too.

WASHINGTON (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte will check in face-to-face with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, visiting the volatile U.S. leader two weeks before the annual summit of the military alliance at a time when the Pentagon is reviewing the size of the U.S. military footprint in Europe.

Trump has long been critical of NATO, arguing the U.S. carries more than its fair share of military spending. But his grievances have been louder since the Iran war as he fumed over some member countries ignoring his call to help him restart oil trade through the shuttered Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has renewed his threats to leave the 77-year-old military alliance, raising the stakes ahead of the NATO leaders’ summit in Turkey next month. But Rutte, who has become known as a Trump whisperer for his ability to charm the president, is expected to use Wednesday’s White House meeting to try to appease him.

The visit comes after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week lashed out at allies during a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels. He announced a six-month Pentagon review of American forces in Europe.

Hegseth echoed some of Trump’s critiques, faulting European allies for not letting the U.S. use bases in Europe to attack Iran. NATO allies were not consulted about the war before the U.S. launched it with Israel on Feb. 28, and some have been openly critical of Trump’s strategy.

Trump has claimed NATO allies were not there for the U.S. and suggested leaving the alliance, which was founded in 1949 to counter the Cold War threat posed to European security by the Soviet Union. At the heart of their treaty is a mutual defense agreement in which an attack on one is considered an attack on all. The only time it has been invoked was in 2001, to support the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The Pentagon’s warning that it will reduce its military presence in Europe to focus on threats elsewhere was the latest upheaval for the 32-member alliance since Trump returned to office.

The Republican leader stunned European allies last year when he threatened to annex Greenland, a semiautonomous island that is part of ally Denmark.

A chief part of Rutte’s mission these days is keeping the U.S. in NATO, and he’s proven himself deft in the past at subduing Trump’s frustrations.

Rutte frequently flatters the president, crediting him with getting NATO members to increase their defense spending. Trump last year pressured leaders to agree to invest 5% of their GDP annually on defense by 2035.

On Tuesday evening, Rutte appeared for an interview on Fox News Channel, of which Trump is known to be a dedicated viewer.

Rutte repeatedly praised Trump, emphasizing he is the leader of the NATO alliance and said of his efforts in Iran: “I’m completely behind him on this.”

He said that Trump’s frustrations over the use of bases in Europe involved a few “isolated cases.”

The lengths to which Rutte is willing to praise Trump have at times raised eyebrows, such as when he referred to the president as “daddy” during the alliance’s summit last year.

He then sent him a fawning text message that employed one of Trump’s favorite flourishes, capitalizing random words. “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,” Rutte said.

Trump shared the private message on social media for the world to see.

He did it again in January, blasting out another Rutte message that closed with: “Can’t wait to see you. Yours, Mark.”

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Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.

The Environment Agency has been on the River Ouse monitoring elevated ammonia levels.

It comes as Yorkshire Water said it identified the pollution in its raw water supply and shut down its water treatment works to protect water quality.

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As reported by The Press, some residents of Easingwold, Tollerton and surrounding areas with no or low water pressure overnight on Tuesday, June 22 and yesterday.

In an update at 11.03pm last night the company said some customers in Easingwold, Tollerton and surrounding areas “may still be experiencing low water pressure while we continue to respond” to the incident.

Ammonia is a sharp‑smelling chemical found in sewage and fertilisers which, at high levels in the river, can damage fish and other wildlife.

A spokesperson for the Environment Agency said: “Our officers have been on site monitoring elevated ammonia levels in the River Ouse and working hard to identify the source of the pollution.

“We are investigating the incident and will not hesitate to take enforcement action if appropriate.”

The spokesperson added that its officers have been monitoring various locations on the River Ouse, including upstream of Beningbrough.

Environmental incidents can be reported to the Environment Agency via its hotline 0800 807060.