Looking for 10 things to do in London? Luckily, there’s lots to do in this city for cheap in 2026! At least… there is now.

Metro has teamed up with Time Out to bring you the best deals across the capital.

Every Friday, 10 new deals will drop, available in the Metro newspaper, on Metro, and on our socials. You’ll also find them in our weekly London newsletter, The Slice, in your inbox every Wednesday.

Treat yourself to some good, old fashioned luxury by indulgimg in brunch with champagne at Sette, Knightsbridge. Manhattan glamour, but minus thehelft price tag, with a generous 43% off.

Or, enjoy 25% off at the world’s best bowling alley, and while you’re there tuck into pizza and drinks. An evening of fun guaranteeed.

If you fancing honing a different skill, indulge in a trendy BYOB pasta making class. Tune into your inner chef and make a delcious dish, without breaking the bank.

It’s all here and more in these 10 incredible offers, discounts and deals.

Things to do in London this week

Enjoy three courses at Skylon on the South Bank for £28

Dinner on the South Bank can feel like a splurge, but Skylon’s set menu serves up style without the hefty price tag. Now £28 (down from £35), the three-course line-up features starters like smoked salmon or courgette with cashew mousse, comforting mains and desserts such as sticky toffee pudding – all enjoyed with sweeping Thames views from the Royal Festival Hall. Perfect for pre-theatre, date night or a chic riverside stop-off.

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43% off weekend brunch and Champagne at Sette Restaurant Knightsbridge

Sette brings a slice of Manhattan glamour to Knightsbridge, serving polished Italian dishes with a confident New York edge. Tucked inside the Bvlgari Hotel but operating entirely on its own terms, the dining room feels discreet, stylish and quietly indulgent. This offer makes it the perfect excuse to linger over two or three courses, raise a glass of Ruinart and enjoy Italian comfort cooking in one of London’s most elegant settings, all at a generous discount.

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Get three courses and glass of Champagne at Dear Jackie, Broadwick Soho for £38

Broadwick Soho arrived with serious flair in 2023 and has been serving up a hit of West End glamour, that feels both indulgent and effortlessly cool ever since. Tucked inside the hotel, Dear Jackie is its seductive Italian dining room, all Murano glow, red silk walls and plush booths that could tell a few stories. The menu leans into refined Italian comfort with superior pasta and reimagined classics, making it an ideal spot to settle in for dinner. With this exclusive Time Out offer, you can sink into Soho’s newest slice of dolce vita decadence for less with a three courses set meun and a glass of Champagne (worth £22). The perfect pre-theatre treat or the start of a night that might run on far longer than planned.

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Three sharing courses and a cocktail at Gouqi by Tong Chee Hwee for £35

Chef Tong returns to London’s dining scene at Gouqi, bringing his acclaimed expertise from Singapore, Malaysia, and Hakkasan. Enjoy top-tier dining for just £35 per person (down from £45) , featuring a Supreme royal dim sum platter, Taiwanese three-cup chicken pot, or Claypot silken egg tofu with seasonal vegetables and steamed jasmine rice. Experience elevated Chinese cuisine that delights!

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Get 25% off bowling, pizza and drink at the world’s best bowling alley*

Experience bowling like never before at Vintners Lanes, Greenwich’s newest boutique hotspot, where industrial-chic design meets vintage charm. Recently crowned Best in the World at the 40th Annual Bowling Centre Architecture and Design Awards, this six-lane stunner serves up more than just strikes. With this exclusive offer, score 25% off a game of bowling, a fresh pizza, and your choice of pint, glass of wine, spirit and mixer or soft drink. Just fancy the lanes? You can grab a bowling session on its own from just £8.95 — the perfect reason to gather your mates and bowl the night away.

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60% off the ultimate BYOB pasta making class at Ann’s Smart School of Cookery

If your idea of pasta-making is tearing open a packet, it might be time to level up. Ann’s Smart School of Cookery has been running for nearly two decades, teaching thousands of Londoners (and beyond) how to turn out restaurant-worthy dishes in a laid-back, hands-on setting. For this class, you’ll be guided by professional chefs through an Italian-inspired menu: fluffy focaccia with balsamic dip, fresh spinach and ricotta cannelloni in a proper tomato sauce, and a creamy asparagus risotto with rocket. You’ll cook, taste and pick up kitchen tips you’ll actually use back home. Whether you fancy showing off to mates at your next dinner party or just want to sharpen your skills, this is a delicious way to spend an autumn afternoon.

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Enjoy a Tapas Fiesta menu to share at Salt Yard Goodge Street for £30

Savour Spanish-Italian fusion with a mouthwatering small-plate feast at Salt Yard for just £30 per person. Enjoy dishes like padron peppers, poached chorizo picante, and truffle arancino, all crafted by Head Chef Panajot Prifti, plus cinnamon-dipped churros to finish. Don’t miss this unbeatable dining experience!

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Enjoy over 50% off a spring clean with Housekeep

A sparkling home without the effort. Housekeep connects you with highly rated cleaners trusted for millions of cleans and a near-perfect 4.9-star average. Book a one, two or three-hour clean and tailor it to suit your space. Add extras like indoor windows, laundry or ironing, and leave notes so your cleaner knows exactly what you need. Everything is arranged in minutes through the app or website. Right now you can take 50% off house cleans from £22.45, making it an easy way to reset your space and enjoy that just-cleaned feeling at home.

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Unwind with a five-star luxury experience for two at The Spa at Athenaeum Hotel

Do you feel that? It’s the feeling of a long-awaited self-care day on the horizon! Invite a friend or partner to escape the hustle and bustle of central London and share a five-star luxury experience at Mayfair’s Athenaeum Hotel Spa. Spend a relaxing hour in the wet area, sauna, steam rooms and hot tub, then take your pick from a facial and body wrap treatment or massage. All this with a glass of bubbly for 40% off – you’ll find it hard to say no.

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Get the ultimate BYOB pottery experience from just £23 at Token Studio

Unleash your creativity at Token Studio with a fun 90-minute session! Try your hand at the potter’s wheel, create miniature pottery, or learn hand-building techniques. Prefer design? Opt for pottery painting and customize a mug, plate, or bowl. Plus, bring your favourite drinks to enjoy while you craft!

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed cases linked to the hantavirus-hit cruise ship have risen

Global health officials have said the number of hantavirus cases linked to a cruise ship have risen, with more cases ‘possible’.

The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday (May 7) there are now five confirmed cases of hantavirus in the outbreak linked to the Dutch-flagged cruise ship, MV Hondius – up from two confirmed cases on May 4.

A total of eight cases of the virus have been reported, with five cases confirmed and three suspected, Tedros Ghebreyesus told reporters.

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He added that it is ‘possible’ that more cases may be confirmed due to the long incubation period of the virus, which can be ‘up to six weeks’.

He said: “WHO is aware of reports of other people with symptoms who may have had contact with one of the passengers. In each case, we are in close contact with the relevant authorities.

“Given the incubation period of the Andes virus, which can be up to six weeks, it’s possible that more cases may be reported.”

The strain involved in the outbreak is called the Andes virus – the only known hantavirus strain capable of spreading between humans. It is most likely to be transmitted between household members, intimate partners and people providing medical care, Dr Ghebreyesus said.

Three passengers have died amid the outbreak, while four others have been medically evacuated from the ship for treatment. Two British passengers who were medically evacuated from the ship are improving, global health officials have said.

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, director of the department of epidemic and pandemic threat management at the WHO said two patients, including one Brit, remain in hospital in the Netherlands, while a British passenger is in intensive care in South Africa.

She told a WHO press briefing: “And I am very happy to say the patient in South Africa is doing better, and the two patients in the Netherlands we hear are stable. So that is actually very good news.”

Is hantavirus the ‘new Covid pandemic’?

The WHO said in a previous update that there was growing evidence of limited human-to-human transmission among close contacts on board MV Hondius, which is rare for hantaviruses.

Hantaviruses are usually spread by rodents, particularly rats. People can become infected with direct contact with rodent urine, saliva or droppings.

But unlike more contagious viruses like Covid-19 and flu, which spread more easily, hantavirus is rarely infectious

In an update on Thursday, Dr Van Kerkhove stressed it was not the start of a pandemic, saying: “This is not coronavirus. This is a very different virus. We know this virus, hantaviruses have been around for quite a while…But I want to be unequivocal here – this is not SARS-CoV-2; this is not the start of a Covid pandemic.”

The WHO’s Abdirahman Sheikh Mahamud described the outbreak is ‘a cluster in a confined space with close contact’.

He said: “We don’t anticipate a large epidemic with experience our member states have and the actions they have taken. We believe that this will not lead to subsequent chain of transmission.”

While experts stress the infection is ‘serious’, the virus is typically only spread with close and sustained contact.

As Prof Ellen Brooks Pollock, Professor in Infectious Disease Modelling, University of Bristol, explained: “Clusters of Hantavirus usually involve a limited number of people, but as we’ve seen, infection is serious.

“Where person-to-person transmission has been documented, it is usually with sustained and close contact, so the risk to the general population is low.

“However, symptoms can take weeks to appear, so it’s important that the individuals that have returned to the UK refrain from close contact with others for a period of weeks.”

Emergency services flooded the area on Thursday morning

A baby has died following an incident at a home in south Manchester. A large emergency services presence was reported on Platt Lane in Fallowfield on Thursday morning (May 7).

The air ambulance was seen landing nearby. Neighbours reported seeing ambulances and police cars at the scene, close to the junction with Yew Tree Road.

One person said she saw a paramedic run out of a property with a baby. “It was terrifying,” she said. “Very scary.”

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Another neighbour said: “There was a lot of police and two ambulances. I heard one of them mention a child.”

Detectives and forensic crime scene investigation (CSI) officers were seen as an investigation began.

“I didn’t see or hear anything until a police officer knocked on my door,” a neighbour told the Manchester Evening News.

“There was one in uniform and one in plain clothes. The one in plain clothes just said there had been an incident and asked if I’d heard anything. He didn’t say any more.”

The Manchester Evening News understands a baby died at the scene. It is not yet known if the child’s death is being treated as suspicious.

The North West Ambulance Service confirmed paramedics attended an incident at a private address, but declined to give further details.

If you’re of the opinion that Thursday is not the new Friday and you’d rather skip after-work drinks for a cosy night in, Netflix has helpfully compiled its weekly top TV shows to show you what you should be watching.

From Sex Education’s Asa Butterfield in a harrowing cult thriller to Kate Hudson ending up in charge of a basketball team, here are the streaming platform’s top five shows causing a stir right now.

5. Running Point: Season 2 – 6,700,000 views

Season two of Running Point is proving just as popular as the first, with Kate Hudson back as Isla Gordon, still trying to prove she’s the right person to run the LA Waves basketball outfit.

This time, it’s less about settling in and more about holding everything together as her brother Cam reappears, stirring up trouble behind the scenes.

Light-hearted and a bit kooky, this season so far has been pretty well received over on Rotten Tomatoes with a 90% rating, and that popularity continues on Netflix, with 6,700,000 views.

4. If Wishes Could Kill – 7,500,000 views

Netflix’s first Korean young adult horror series follows a mysterious app that promises to grant wishes — then starts a countdown to death. As a group of teens becomes entangled, they must break the deadly chain to survive.

With only eight episodes ranging mostly from 35-45 minutes, this will be a quick binge that might leave you up late at night…but it does have 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, so the lack of sleep might be worth it.

3. Unchosen: Season 1 – 8,800,000 views

Unchosen gives the BAFTA-winning Molly Windsor plenty to get her teeth into as Rosie, a young woman who drifts into a tight-knit group that quickly stops feeling quite so friendly and a little more stifling.

Inspired by the real cults that exist in the UK, Unchosen will ‘send shivers down your spine’ and received a 4-star review from Metro’s Sabrina Barr.

This might be your next must-watch, especially as the thriller has come out in the same release window Netflix used for Baby Reindeer and Adolescence. And they didn’t do too badly, did they?

Perhaps a second week in the charts is just the beginning for this series.

2. Should I Marry A Murderer? – 10,600,000 views

While the answer to this question may seem fairly straightforward, this limited series is less so.

With twists and turns galore, this documentary series follows a fiancée turned key witness who reveals how she stayed engaged to a man accused of murder while gathering evidence against him.

It has a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes — although it has only just been released, so maybe you need to try it yourself to see if this is one you should stream.

1. Man on Fire – 11,000,000 views

It’s safe to say that the refashioned Man on Fire has been a hit, as the seven-parter has already racked up 11 million views in its first four days on the streamer.

Both the TV show and film are based on A.J. Quinnell’s 1980 novel of the same name. The show has swapped out Denzel Washington as the fearsome yet fragile bodyguard John Creasy for The Watchmen’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen ll. 

So far, the show has amassed a 62 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is an uptick from the original film at 39 per cent, with critics praising Abdul-Mateen’s performance.

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A Colorado man pleaded guilty to state charges including murder on Thursday for a fatal 2025 firebombing attack on a group of Jewish marchers.

The June attack in Boulder targeted a group of elderly activists advocating on behalf of Israeli hostages in Gaza, ultimately leaving one dead and a dozen people injured.

“Guilty,” Mohamed Soliman reportedly told a state court through an Arabic interpreter.

Soliman, 46, still faces federal charges related to the attack, in which he used a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to ambush the marchers. Originally from Egypt, Soliman disguised himself as a gardener and shouted “Free Palestine!” during the attack.

He faces life in prison without parole.

About a month after the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, died of injuries she sustained in the firebombing.

Soliman has pleaded not guilty to federal hate crime charges against him.

The 46-year-old came to the U.S. with his family from Kuwait in 2022 and applied for asylum, though federal officials say he was living in the U.S. illegally at the time of the attack.

After his arrest, Soliman told police he had planned the attack for a year and would do it again if could, according to federal officials. He also allegedly told police he wanted to “to kill all Zionist people.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated with new information.

In a statement, the NIO said: “We welcome the clarity provided today by the Supreme Court, which has confirmed that the ICRIR is fully equipped to deliver human rights-compliant investigations, and reaffirms the Government’s position on the interpretation and application of Article 2 of the Windsor Framework.

Netflix’s The Crown actor Ben Miles has landed a role in an upcoming series on ITV

The Crown’s Ben Miles is to star in ITV‘s “suspenseful” new space thriller about a woman who vanishes during a lunar mission.

The actor, who played British Royal Air Force officer Peter Townsend in the royal drama, joins Adolescence star Ashley Walters in six-part series First Woman.

Ashley plays Ben Reith, who wakes up one morning to discover his wife Claire (Andrea Riseborough) has disappeared. It marks the beginning of an international news story “because Claire is an astronaut crewing the UK’s first moonbase and she’s disappeared into the long lunar night”, according to the broadcaster‘s synopsis.

It adds: “Claire is the first woman to set foot on the moon.

“A biologist taking part in a groundbreaking research project, her disappearance throws suspicion on her fellow astronauts and China’s rival base.

“With hundreds of thousands of miles between them, can Ben uncover the truth behind his wife’s disappearance?”

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The cast also includes Pride and Prejudice star Jennifer Ehle and Alex Hassell, who will soon be seen reprising the role of Rupert Campbell-Black in the second series of steamy Disney+ hit Rivals.

Ben, who is also known for conspiracy thriller The Capture, is joining the cast of First Woman alongside The Tower’s Jimmy Akingbola, Fra Fee from Unchosen, You’s Kathryn Gallagher, Nautilus’ Shazad Latif and Neuromancer’s Christian Ochoa Lavernia.

Sharing the cast update on Instagram, ITV teased: “A groundbreaking project. A missing biologist. A mystery that reaches across the stars.”

Polly Hill, ITV’s director of drama, said the series would take viewers on “an incredible journey”, adding: “I wanted ITV to make this the moment I read it.

“The team that has come on board on and off screen is incredible, and a testament to the wonderful and original scripts.”

When the series was announced, creator Lydia Yeoman said: “Set in the exciting (and as-yet-unexplored) world of private space travel, First Woman is a thriller unlike anything else we’ve seen.

“This is the story of a marriage put through the ultimate test. It’s rare that you get given the opportunity to tell a story with such ambition and scope, and we’re eternally grateful to Polly at ITV and Alcon for allowing us to do that.”

A CPR trainer suffered a real heart attack while demonstrating the signs of a cardiac arrest in Canada.

Karl Arps and his students had the fright of their lives when the 72-year-old first aid instructor went into a cardiac arrest during a training session.

Arps was showing his students how to spot the symptoms of one when he suffered a medical emergency in March.

He ended up being rushed to the hospital for an emergency triple bypass surgery following the incident.

Students said they first thought he was pretending before realising it was real.

Arps was feeling dizzy in the moments before the attack, while hearing his students around him saying he didn’t look well.

Next time he came around was in the back of an ambulance.

He told As It Happens: ‘From what I was told, they did everything like we told them to do in CPR class.

‘Thank you does not seem enough. They saved my life, period.’

The students jumped into action when Arp’s hands curled outward, his face contorted and he started to snore, Logan Lehrer, a firefighter learning first aid at the Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, said.

Another instructor tried to wake up Arps before realising he wasn’t fooling around.

He told CBC: ‘That’s immediately when we started responding to the situation.’

Lehrer alerted the emergency services, while five other students performed CPR and used a defibrillator on the 72-year-old.

Arps said after his bypass surgery that he is lucky to be alive as many heart attack cases he has been involved with end up passing away even after successful CPR.

He CBC: ‘I’ve been in practice for a quarter of a century, and I can count the number of CPR saves that I’ve had on one hand.

‘[Sometimes] we get a pulse back in the ambulance or on scene, but the person ends up passing away two or three days later in the hospital.’

An ambulance chief, Nick Romenesko, said the students’ early recognition and the immediate actions ‘directly contributed to Mr Arp’s positive outcome.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

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Until recently, AI’s role in research felt like having a useful assistant. It could summarise a paper, clean up a dataset or draft an abstract. Researchers were still in charge of the thinking.

That changed in late 2025 when cutting-edge “frontier” AI models became capable of reasoning and planning reliably by themselves. A key feature of these models is “tool calling” – the ability to interact with external tools in order to act on the world, not just describe it.

This marks the rise of agentic AI: systems that do not just respond to instructions but can independently plan, execute and iterate. In science as in other fields, chatbots have become coworkers that can autonomously complete real work, end to end.

An example of this is Tokyo-based Sakana AI’s The AI Scientist. Unveiled in mid-2025 and now in its second iteration, the Japanese tech company bills this as “the first comprehensive system for fully automatic scientific discovery”.

The AI Scientist scans existing literature, generates hypotheses, writes and executes code, analyses results and produces a full research paper – largely without human involvement. It reasons, fails and revises, just as a junior scientist would.

The proof? An AI Scientist academic paper describing “a pipeline for automating the entire scientific process end to end” was accepted by the International Conference on Learning Representations and published in the scientific journal Nature in March 2026, following peer review.

This represents something genuinely new: an autonomous AI system passing a milder version of the Turing test by demonstrating scientific quality, if not (yet) machine intelligence.

Other significant achievements include Singapore-based startup Analemma carrying out a live demonstration of its Fully Automated Research System (Fars) in February. It produced 166 complete machine-learning research papers in roughly 417 hours for around US$1,100 (£810). That’s one academic paper every 2.5 hours at a cost that would sustain a research assistant for a couple of weeks.

And Google Cloud AI Research recently unveiled PaperOrchestra, which takes a researcher’s raw experimental logs and rough notes and converts them into a submission-ready manuscript, with figures and verified citations. In blind evaluations by 11 AI researchers, it easily outperformed existing autonomous systems in this area.

Having spent two decades researching disruptive technological innovations, I believe a significant threshold has been crossed. While there is a way to go before AI systems match the very best human-produced work, the era of fully automated research has arrived.

Implications for academia

The arrival of autonomous research systems lands on an academic system under severe strain in many countries. Over the last decade, the number of papers submitted to academic journals has grown much faster than the pool of qualified peer reviewers, leading to suggestions that the science publication system is being “overwhelmed”.

If systems like Fars can produce thousands of papers per year, the publication infrastructure of science faces a volume it was never designed to handle. Some academic reviews have already been identified as using AI-generated content. As submission numbers continue to rise, this may alter the role of a published academic paper as a definitive signal of the quality and skills of human researchers.

An optimistic take is that AI may shift academia away from its strong reliance on quantity-based metrics, in favour of how influential or innovative publications are. This is a reform critics of the current system have long called for.

Less optimistically, as AI research scales up, an academic system designed for coherent, methodologically defensible contributions may inflate the proportion of incremental, rather than radically novel, scientific contributions. Both the quality and originality of research could suffer as a result.

Science has always needed its heretics to advance. Italian astronomer Galileo, the “father of modern science”, was forced to recant his defence of heliocentrism before the Catholic Church’s Inquisition. Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis died in a psychiatric institution having failed to convince his colleagues that handwashing could save lives.

Yet historically, the ability of scientific institutions to encourage radical approaches has also been a mainstaple of how science has progressed. To sustain this, AI systems will need to be trained to maximise novelty and transformation, rather than plausibility and incremental progress.

AI’s impact on creative industries

The transformative effects of this new breeed of AI extend well beyond scientific research. A striking example is The Epstein Files. This fully AI-generated podcast reached number one the UK Apple Podcasts and Spotify charts in early 2026, drawing 700,000 downloads in its first week.

Music is further along and more conflicted. By mid-2025, the fully AI-generated band The Velvet Sundown had amassed over a million monthly Spotify listeners. In 2026, the platform was forced to introduce artist-protection features after AI tracks began displacing human music on popular playlists, while Deezer, facing roughly 50,000 AI-generated uploads daily, began excluding them from curated lists.

Ownership remains the elephant in the room. US courts have ruled that AI-generated works cannot be copyrighted, since human authorship remains a legal requirement. AI can produce at industrial scale, but no one can own the output legally.

This matters far beyond intellectual property law. In creative industries, it threatens the royalty streams, licensing deals and catalogue valuations on which artists, labels and publishers have built their entire business models for generations.

In science, meanwhile, it is destabilising the entire incentive architecture, which rests on the foundational assumption that knowledge is both generated and owned by humans. When that assumption dissolves, so does much of the institutional logic that has governed how we produce, reward and trust expertise.

The question, across all these fields, is no longer whether AI can produce the work. Rather, it is whether sufficient thought has gone into what we will gain and lose when it does.