The UK will call on 95,000 retirees in a drill to help prepare for war next year as the army has fallen to its smallest size in over 200 years

Around 95,000 retirees are set to get the call up to help the UK prepare for war, according to the Armed Forces minister.

Louise Sandher-Jones revealed that a major drill to mobilise an army of veterans is being planned to take place next year.

She said a “strategic reserve” of 95,000 retired troops will be called into action “on a scale we haven’t seen for a long time”.

The plan comes as fears regarding conflict with Russia increase as Moscow have already threatened British factories over building drones for Ukraine.

The scheme emerges as the government’s cost-cutting on the military is facing scrutiny after it was reported that John Healey, the Chancellor, would fail to commit to spending 3 per cent of gross domestic product on defence by 2030.

The Telegraph reports that the details of the drill are still being finalised but it will test the ability of veterans to be called on and equipped in an emergency.

Ms Sandher-Jones said on Monday: “The strategic reserve is a real commitment for those that are in it and they will be exercised as part of our exercise programme next year where we will go through measures to call out, use, equip and all the rest of the procedures we’d have to go through to use the strategic reserve properly.”

She added that the network of former troops would have a crucial role in defending the country, despite it being “a lot less used in my lifetime”.

She continued: “When I left the Army and found out I was in the strategic reserve, I just filed it away and never thought about it again. We are definitely no longer in that space.”

The Government revealed that it had forgotten much of the network of retired soldiers and officers from the Army, RAF and Navy, so the drill will serve as a test.

Under current law all former regular and reserve officers retain recall liability for life.

The Ministry of Defence are also legally obliged to maintain contact with former military staff in the first six years after they leave full-time service.

This group of former military staff differs from the reserve forces, which is made up from people who volunteer part-time to serve in the military.

There are currently around 32,000 active reservists.

In January it was announced that the age military veterans could be mobilised would rise from 55 to 65.

The current rules also state that retired soldiers can be called upon in the event of “national danger, great emergency or attack in the UK”.

However, a new bill will change this to mean retired soldiers can also be called on for “war-like preparations”.

The changes come as the Army has decreased to its smallest size in over 200 years, with around 71,000 full-time, fully-trained troops ready to deploy to the front line.

Government officials have also stated that Britain does not have an “effective system of tracking and engaging” those that recently left the military and also don’t “know where most” of the reservists are.

Last week the MoD announced that more people had joined the full-time forces than had left it for an entire year for the first time since 2021, however these gains are still small with the Army having only increased by 170 personnel.

Escrick Park Estate is progressing plans for Heronby on land west of Escrick, with proposals also expected to include schools, a health centre, country park and other community facilities.

An early masterplan for the development was prepared as part of the former Selby Local Plan process in 2021.

Heronby Illustrative Plan September 2026 For Media

However, that process stalled and was subsequently halted after North Yorkshire Council took over responsibility for planning in the area following local government reorganisation in 2023.

Escrick Park Estate has now confirmed it is working towards submitting an outline planning application for the development.

As part of that process, an Environmental Impact Assessment scoping request has been submitted to North Yorkshire Council.

The request is not itself a planning application. Instead, it asks council officers to determine what environmental issues will need to be examined in an Environmental Statement accompanying a future application.

The developers say the proposals are being revived in response to North Yorkshire’s shortage of planned new housing.

Beilby Forbes Adam, of Escrick Park Estate, said the estate had remained committed to the project despite the previous local plan process ending.

“Two years later we are moving closer to being ready to submit an outline application,” he said.

“But before we do we want to hear what the potential future residents of Heronby would like to see there.”

Mr Forbes Adam said the consultation was open to all ages but the team particularly wanted younger people to get involved, referring to those struggling to find homes of their own as “Generation Limbo”.

“The housing crisis means too many young people can’t find a home of their own and are struggling to get on and lead their own lives,” he added.

“We want to hear from ‘Generation Limbo’.”

Selby councillor, Steve Shaw-Wright, said there was a lot of support for the proposal among councillors in the former Selby district when the plans were first discussed.

“It would, if you like, mop up all the developments that were planned for the Selby area at the time.

“Instead of having bits and bobs of development in each village causing uproar, you would have this large development that would be like a new village with a school, a medical centre and everything else you need.

“It just seemed to be a sensible solution to the long-term housing issues that we’ve got in Selby.”

But Councillor John Cattanach, who represents the Cawood and Escrick division, including the site of the proposed development, is opposed to the plans, which have been criticised as potentially marking the ‘death of villages’ in North Yorkshire.

He said: “Since the inception, I’ve spoken out against it completely and utterly — it’s complete madness.

“It’s the size of the development and where it is, and the fact that all these people would go on to the A19.”

A public exhibition is planned in Escrick later this year, while initial proposals and a feedback form are available on the Heronby website.

The 27-year-old accused faces charges of arson with intent to endanger life, burglary as well as four drug offences, including possessing magic mushrooms

A man told police he had sawn his way into his neighbour’s flat and set fire to it “in retaliation for a complaint of harassment,” a court has heard.

Appearing in the dock of Newtownards Magistrates Court on Monday, 27-year-old Jack McClure was charged with six offences alleged to have been committed on Sunday September 6.

McClure, with an address at Balloo Walk in Bangor, was charged with arson with intent to endanger life, burglary with intent to steal as well as four drug offences, including possessing magic mushrooms, herbal cannabis, pregabalin and diazepam.

The court heard that emergency services, including the police and the Fire and Rescue Service, were called to a fire at the flat around 5.30am.

Giving evidence, a police officer told the court the fire had caused extensive damage to each of the rooms and that after the fire was extinguished, it was estimated the flat had been on fire for about an hour before emergency crews were called.

Police were still at the scene when McClure asked to go into his flat to retrieve property but he was arrested when officers noted that his hands were covered in soot.

A search of his property uncovered the drugs as well as a saw, and the court heard that when he was interviewed, McClure admitted using the saw to cut the front door to gain access.

Once inside the flat he “trashed it,” and having pulled the mattress from a bed, McClure set it on fire.

The officer told the court McClure admitted the incident was “in retaliation for a complaint of harassment.”

Objecting to bail, the constable emphasised a risk to the public in that McClure had admitted setting fire to a flat within a multi-occupancy building, and one which has adjoining properties.

There were fears of further offences being committed, she told the court, adding that McClure “has no suitable bail address.”

Defence counsel Conan Rea submitted that McClure could be granted bail, subject to an address approved by the police, and further that additional bail conditions could be imposed to address police concerns.

District Judge Amanda Brady refused bail, however, given what she said were the risks to the public and the risk of further offending.

McClure was remanded in custody, and the case adjourned to the end of the month.

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Hazel sits in my office for our first appointment. The 16-year-old adjusts her red glasses, her brown eyes looking intently at me.

Then she starts to talk: about her ‘anxiety and depression’, her ‘emotional dysregulation’, the ‘trauma’ from growing up with parents who are ‘codependent’, the stress she feels having to ‘mask’ just to get through the day.

Sometimes she feels so frustrated with her family she feels she’s going to have a ‘full-on panic attack’ at the dinner table, she tells me.

Then there’s Violet, a 17-year-old with a messy blonde ponytail. ‘I guess I should tell you about my OCD,’ she sighs, just after walking through my door. ‘And my PMDD [premenstrual dysphoric disorder, causing debilitating emotional and physical symptoms before a period], and my ADHD,’ before adding wearily: ‘And my depression.’

I am a psychiatrist who specialises in helping teenage girls, young women and their parents at my own private practice in New York.

Since I began my medical training just over two decades ago, I’ve noticed a big change in the patients I see, something that’s also being reflected in the UK.

Once, people used to dread being told that there was something ‘wrong’ with them. But today, young women announce their diagnoses almost before telling me their names.

Cascades of medical problems and psychiatric buzzwords tumble out of my young patients’ mouths – but no matter how much they talk, with each acronym I often feel like I know less and less about them.

All these girls tell me about psychiatric symptoms and conditions I know how to treat. I can use medication; I can teach ‘coping’ strategies. But all of this will only help up to a point.

Because part of the problem is in the very language – ‘therapy speak’ – these girls are using to describe themselves and the world around them.

Indeed, this generation of teenage girls is soaked in therapy speak, and use it constantly.

As well as being entirely au fait with psychiatric diagnoses, they talk about ‘trauma’ and their ‘issues’. They know if they have ‘attachment difficulties’ or their ‘inner critic’ is too loud.

Of course, being mindful of one’s mental health and that of others can be a positive thing. But what my colleagues and I are seeing is something rather different. The rise of ‘therapy speak’ has landed us in a very strange place – where many girls define themselves not by their favourite music or by their hobbies, but by their psychiatric profiles.

Not only this, but they are also pathologising normal feelings associated with growing up – low self-esteem, sadness, worry, distractibility – into full-blown mental health conditions, such as depression, OCD and ADHD. Young women I meet are truly convinced that they must have something ‘wrong’ with them, that they are ‘a bit broken’.

This can have profoundly negative consequences.

The main psychological task of adolescence is forming your identity – who you are.

And although identifying with a mental illness can encourage someone to seek help, and the use of therapy speak can increase understanding, it has also been shown to have an ‘engulfing’ effect, obliterating other aspects of identity and making someone worse.

For example, a 2025 study in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology found that those who hold anxiety disorders as central to their sense of self believe they are less capable than others with the same symptoms who don’t label themselves with a disorder.

Meanwhile, research from 2014 in the publication Behaviour Research and Therapy found people with depression have been shown to feel more hopeless and pessimistic if they think of their symptoms as a medical condition, especially if they believe it’s caused by a ‘chemical imbalance’, rather than, say, an understandable life event, such as your parents splitting up or having problems at school. The language teenagers use feeds into this. If a single night’s missed sleep is described as causing ‘dysregulation’, for example, or not being allowed to go out late is ‘traumatising’, it can lead to a disconnect.

How would one cope with actual trauma – a death, for example, or serious illness – when you use the word on such a regular basis that it loses its real meaning?

What’s more, ‘therapy speak’ is exhibiting itself at a critical developmental period, in adolescence when one’s identity is taking hold in the brain.

The words a girl uses during this time – whether ‘crazy’, ‘toxic’ or ‘ADHD’ – play a big role in shaping what she will view as the enduring truth of who she is.

At this time, the teenage brain is laying down myelin, a sheath around frequently used neurons (nerve cells in the brain) to make the pathways through which they communicate thousands of times more efficient. Neurons receiving less traffic are pruned away.

It means if you keep thinking something at this age, such as you are ‘crazy’, it’s likely to stick for a while.

Another contributory factor is that the adolescent frontal lobe – the part of the brain which controls planning and problem solving, among other things – isn’t yet fully formed, meaning teenagers lack self-regulation. Compared to adults, teenagers also have more neurons and fewer myelin pathways.

This means teenage brains are highly active but not integrated – and so the rational, ‘thinking’ parts of the brain cannot yet ‘talk’ to the deeper regions that are busy freaking out.

But why are girls in particular so prone to therapy speak?

Girls develop brain cells earlier than boys in the areas where language and social experiences are integrated: they tend more often to acknowledge what others are saying and to build on it, generating intimacy through consensus.

Styles of speech can travel quickly between young women – even resulting in teenage girls prioritising social intimacy with others: taught to overpathologise human feelings – thanks to therapy speak – they are losing the ability to name and tolerate their own real emotions.

Gen Z prioritise their ‘mental health’, and believe it is something they should ‘achieve’. But somehow normalcy seems more elusive than ever: the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health now estimates around 20 per cent of eight to 16-year-olds have a formal mental health diagnosis. We, in psychiatry, are partly to blame, thanks to becoming over-reliant on diagnosing through an official ticklist of external symptoms, rather than seeing people on a continuum reflecting the broad spectrum of human feeling.

Dr Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell is a US psychiatrist who specialises in helping teenage girls, young women and their parents at her own private practice in New York

And yes, mental health awareness initiatives which started in the 1990s helped de-stigmatise mental illness – but they also injected psychiatric language into the mainstream without much context. All this contributed to today’s therapy culture.

Teenage girls – under more pressure than ever before; to be empowered, to succeed, and to simultaneously post an enviable bikini selfie on social media – are the all-too-willing consumers of this therapy culture.

In a society which often shames or commodifies them, teenage girls have found that any emotional pain or hurt is only considered valid if it’s presented as a disease.

Basically, ‘you can’t ignore me if I have a medical diagnosis’.

But while a diagnosis can bring power and attention to a young woman’s pain, it also allows her to avoid the reality of her true feelings.

I saw this in my patient, Violet, with her alphabet soup of diagnoses. Like so many young women I treat these days, who either receive multiple labels from doctors elsewhere or identify them independently off the internet and apply them to themselves, by the time Violet got to me, her labels had grown quite sticky.

But psychiatric conditions are not as clear-cut as medical illnesses. We have no brain scans or blood tests to diagnose them, and most professionals would agree they are complex – products of the interaction between biology, psychology and culture.

If I had immediately confirmed Violet’s diagnoses and followed evidence-based practice for treating them, she would have needed a cocktail of medications. This would have included a high-dose antidepressant for her OCD and a medicine for ADHD, likely a stimulant, which could make her anxiety symptoms worse and might affect her sleep, which would, in turn, worsen her psychiatric issues across the board.

I don’t like to medicate teenagers for sleep, but if she’s helped by the stimulant, one could argue, why not just treat the sleep, too?

Contraceptives would also probably help with the PMDD. And that’s just the meds.

In addition, her diagnoses would also need a range of therapies. But where could Violet find the time for this?

It became apparent to me that Violet’s diagnoses had become something therapists call ‘transitional objects’. When a young child transitions from the safety of home into the outside world, they often rely on a concrete symbol of their loved ones – a teddy bear on the first day of preschool, for example – before their brains can keep this comfort inside.

In adolescence, a psychiatric diagnosis can function like a transitional object. When a teenager clings to a diagnosis, she’s sometimes moving from a childhood where she knew who she was to an adult world where she is not sure who she can be. The diagnosis is a signal to this new world: Take care of me.

After months of sessions, and one confrontation where I told her I didn’t think she was depressed, which ended in her tearfully walking out, Violet confessed her real feelings: her insecurities about her parents’ at-times upsetting attitudes towards her, and her problems with feeling socially awkward around friends. Common teenage feelings, in other words. Not medical diagnoses.

When we as medical professionals or caregivers allow girls to believe they are ‘sick’ and ‘crazy’ when they may not be, we impede their progress.

Adapted from Girlhood, Translated by Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell (Simon & Schuster, £22), to be published on Thursday. © Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell 2026. To order a copy for £19.80 (offer valid until September 20; UK P&P free on orders over £25), go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.

The father of four was killed after an incident at Doran’s Bend on the Mountain Circuit last month

The organisers of the Manx Grand Prix have responded to accusations of ‘hollow promises’ in the wake of the death of a rider this year.

Father of four Sam Naughton was killed after an incident at Doran’s Bend on the Mountain Circuit at the Isle of Man event this year.

His close friend Mark Raine took to social media to hit out at the lack of support and follow-up care offered by race organisers.

Raine claims that since the tragic accident on August 19, ‘we’ve heard absolutely nothing from the organiser: no follow up, no offer of help. Just…. nothing. The promises are hollow’.

The organisers of the Manx Grand Prix, ACU Events Ltd have responded to accusations.

“ACU Events Ltd is aware of and understands the concerns that have been expressed,” said a statement.

“The welfare of competitors, teams and their families is something that is taken seriously, both during an event and following an incident, including through the allocation of a dedicated Welfare Liaison.

“Given the personal nature of the concerns raised, it would not be appropriate to discuss or provide public comment on individual circumstances.

“The Race Organiser will continue to make direct contact with those concerned, and to offer support through the appropriate channels established.”

Raine shared a lengthy update on social media, explaining how he was the person left to share the devastating news to Naughton’s family and friends.

“I am not invested in the event and I give not a s””t about whether or not it goes ahead next year,” he said.

“My best friend Sam was killed during practice for the 2026 MGP on the 19th August and since then we’ve heard absolutely nothing from the organizer: no follow up, no offer of help. Just…. nothing. The promises are hollow.

“Since the organiser informed us of Sam’s death we, as Sam’s closest family and friends have had none of the help that is promised in the welfare briefing.

“I’ve been to the welfare briefing and you’re promised a slick organised procedure and help from the moment a problem is recognised.

“I was left with the heartbreaking task of informing close family and friends. No support of any kind was offered at any point. The only help we had was arranging for our van to access the paddock to pick up Sam’s family. No planning. No Compassion.

“Have a think about that when your laying down your £££ for your entries.

“As a privateer entry, you’re not valued: all you are is background music to the organisers and you’re there to cover the entry fees for the big names.”

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The latest episode of the long-running documentary series airs at 8pm on Tuesday evening and will include footage of Redcar’s volunteer lifeboat crew responding after two walkers became cut off by the tide.

The incident saw lifeboat volunteers called into action as the pair found themselves stranded on a rapidly diminishing strip of beach, highlighting the dangers posed by the area’s fast-moving tides and the lifesaving work carried out by RNLI crews across the North East.

(Image: ANDY WATSON)

Ahead of the broadcast, Redcar RNLI encouraged local supporters to tune in and watch the rescue unfold.

In a social media post, the station said: “Look out for RNLI Redcar on this week’s ‘Saving Lives at Sea’ – they will be appearing on BBC Two at 8pm on Tuesday evening.

“It’s a chance to see your local lifeboat crew in action saving lives and keeping people safe.”

The appearance offers viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the dedication and professionalism of Redcar’s volunteer crew, whose members regularly respond to emergencies along the Teesside coastline.

One of the RNLI Redcar crew members appearing in Saving Lives at Sea. (Image: ANDY_WATSON)

The programme follows lifeboat stations and rescue teams from around the UK as they deal with real-life emergencies at sea and along the coast, using footage captured during incidents.

Elsewhere in Tuesday’s episode, Devon crews respond after a surfer is paralysed by a wave.

Plus, South Wales volunteers search for two paddleboarders swept more than a mile offshore.

Viewers will also see a Hayling Island crew race to free a fisherman trapped in mud, while a Porthcawl dog owner raises the alarm after the tide carries away her pet.

For North East viewers, the spotlight will be on Redcar’s RNLI volunteers as they bring two stranded walkers to safety.

One viewer took to the comments to write: “Big shout out to them!”

Another wrote that they would “try to catch that episode”. “I’ll be watching,” insisted another.

‘Saving Lives at Sea’ airs on BBC Two at 8pm on Tuesday, September 8.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman view “Practical Magic” very differently today than they did when they made it 28 years ago.

In 1998, the film received mixed reviews and had a modest box office performance. It has since become a cult favorite, embraced by a new generation who found the romantic comedy through social media clips. The two Oscar winners are returning to their roles of witchy sisters Sally and Gillian Owens in “Practical Magic 2,” in theaters on Sept. 10, giving them a chance to reckon with the original’s rocky reception and its unlikely second life.

Both films trace their roots to Alice Hoffman’s novels: “Practical Magic,” published in 1995, inspired the original film, while her 2021 novel “The Book of Magic” expands the Owens family’s story and provides inspiration for the sequel.

‘Maybe it needed to marinate’

Bullock recalls a promotional push for the original film that became memorable — for the wrong reasons.

“I had so much trauma from the press junket from the first one because it was brutal,” Bullock recalls. “We were not well-received because we were ‘too much,’ ‘too witchy,’ ‘too many women,’ ‘too many tones.’ I’m like, ‘Have you lived a day in a life as a woman?’ ”

“We didn’t stumble, but it stumbled, but it didn’t really stumble. Maybe it needed to marinate a little bit. We were marinating,” said Bullock. “But here we are, and how lucky are we that we’re still here to be able to go reap the benefits and the rewards of our work?”

The movie eventually found the audience it had missed in theaters, and Bullock said she realized there had been a reappraisal about six years ago.

“I was still harboring so much shame,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, the things that were said, I’m sorry, we thought we were doing something nice.’ And turns out we did. It was just 28 and change years too early.”

Reclaiming the witch

Part of that second life, Bullock believes, reflects a broader change in the way people have come to view the word “witch.”

“A witch has always been a negative connotation. It was presented that way. The word is being taken back, and there’s ownership of it from the community saying, ‘I’m a witch and I’m proud,’ ” Bullock said.

For Kidman, the film’s resurgence became personal.

“People started just coming into my life who would go, ‘You want to know what my favorite film of yours is? ‘Practical Magic.’ And suddenly I was like, ‘What? Wow, OK,’ ” she said.

When it came time to make the sequel, Bullock sat down with her children and their friends to watch the original.

“I wanted fresh eyes,” she said. “Because we were embarking on the new chapter, the new baby witches coming in. I wanted to understand it from a point of view I didn’t have. I wanted to see what they had to say.”

Building the magic again

As producers, Bullock and Kidman also faced the practical realities of mounting a legacy sequel on a budget. Among the challenges was recreating one of the original film’s most recognizable elements: the Owens house.

The production rebuilt the house on a London back lot as a full structure, rather than the temporary exterior shell used for the original film.

“It was an incredibly tough fiscal time. We were hedging the dollar,” Bullock said. “We’re not a big superhero film, so you don’t get the luxury of a big price tag.”

Kidman added: “And we also knew the responsibility of bringing it in on a certain price because then you go, ‘OK, we can breathe a bit,’ ” she said. “I think when a budget blows out, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, the stress.’ And we don’t need any more stress in our lives. It’s stressful enough.”

A new generation of witches

The sequel continues the story of the younger generation of Owens women, with Joey King and Maisie Williams playing Kylie and Antonia Owens, the daughters of Sally.

“I really appreciate that it’s like a passing of the baton. I think it’s beautiful,” King said. “It just felt like we were stepping into their world and doing this with them, and it’s a real gift and honor to be considered the people who are taking the batons.”

Producer Denise Di Novi, who also produced the original and cast King in her first leading role in 2010’s “Ramona and Beezus,” said the new characters could carry the story forward.

“We would love to make a third one, and I think there’s so much more to do with Kylie and Antonia,” she said. “At the end of the movie, spoiler alert, but you kind of feel like the Sally and Gillian characters are kind of the elder aunts, you know, and Kylie and Antonia are the ones launching off into the world as witches.”

Williams is also hoping to expand on the younger Owens women’s story: “We’re so there for it. There’s so much more of ‘Book of Magic’ that we didn’t get to explore,” she said.

Natalie Harp, the White House staffer who has attracted attention for her extreme devotion to President Donald Trump, was reportedly around the Republican over the weekend at his golf club in New Jersey as he fired off countless unusual social media posts, such as an apparently AI-generated cartoon of himself attacking Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and multiple threats to rename New Mexico.

Harp was photographed by journalists on Friday boarding the presidential helicopter around the same time as Trump as it headed to Bedminster National Golf Club. She later appeared in a photo shared on Sunday from pro-Trump media personality Michael Solakiewicz. In the image, she appears to be typing on a tablet behing the president as he dines at Bedminster.

The Independent has contacted the White House for confirmation on Harp’s whereabouts and whether she was involved in the posts.

Harp, a former anchor on the right-wing One America News Network, has been dubbed the “human printer” because she frequently prints out hard copies of various messages and social media posts for the president.

The president is also known to dictate posts out loud to Harp, who often manages his day-to-day social media output,The Independent has previously reported.

That said, the president’s signature late-night posting sprees areoften his own doing, a former White House and campaign staffer from Trump’s first term once told The Independent.

Others have described using Harp, who is known to work just outside the Oval Office, as a conduit to get messages onto the president’s social media feed and in front of the American people.

Homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, the architect of much of the president’s hard-line immigration policies, is reportedly among them.

Miller has used Harp’s closeness with the president “at least a couple” of times to get ideas before Trump, a source told Zeteo.

After Miller reportedly showed videos to Harp, they soon appeared on the president’s Truth Social page, the source said.

“I wanted the president to post something about crypto, so I [asked Natalie], and it worked,” another unnamed source told the outlet.

The president’s golf weekend may be over, but his eye-catching posts have continued.

On Monday, he fired off a post showing a map where the United States covered all of continental North America and Greenland.

Flights to and from Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta resumed early Tuesday after ash from a volcanic eruption forced a two-day closure that halted nearly 3,000 flights.

Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and Halim Perdanakusuma Airport serving Jakarta, Husein Sastranegara Airport in West Java’s Bandung city and two smaller airports in Banten province reopened just after midnight, Transportation Minister Dudy Purwagandhi said.

Three other airports remained closed until 10 a.m., including Radin Inten II Airport in Lampung on the southern tip of Sumatra island, despite improving conditions at some facilities. Atung Bungsu Airport in Pagar Alam in South Sumatra province had resumed normal operations Monday morning.

“We are taking a conservative approach because wind direction is highly dynamic,” Purwagandhi said in a statement. “We want to ensure that volcanic ash has moved away from airports around Anak Krakatau.”

Although tests at several airports showed no traces of volcanic ash, the extended closures would allow time for inspecting and cleaning surfaces and equipment like runways, taxiways and aircraft that may have been exposed to volcanic ash, Purwagandhi said.

The continuous eruption of Anak Krakatau with lava fountains and loud booms ended Sunday but the volcanic island remained active Tuesday morning.

The airport closures Sunday and Monday disrupted nearly 2,961 flights, including 622 international services, and affected about 341,000 passengers.

The government also authorized schools in areas affected by volcanic ash to shift temporarily to online learning to reduce students’ exposure to ash.

Anak Krakatau is a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Indonesia’s main islands of Java and Sumatra. Its name means “child of Krakatau,” and the volcano is the offspring of the infamous Krakatau, whose monumental 1883 eruption triggered a period of global cooling.

An eruption of Anak Krakatau in 2018 caused a tsunami that killed at least 430 people in Sumatra and Java. Researchers believe volcanic activity triggered an underwater landslide and caused a large chunk of Anak Krakatau’s southwest slope to collapse and displace a large volume of water.

The volcano remained at Indonesia’s second-highest alert level since July, and authorities advised residents, tourists and fishermen to stay at least 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from the active crater.

Indonesia has more than 120 active volcanoes and frequently experiences eruptions due to its location along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” the ring of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where most global seismic activity occurs.

It is part of the owner’s plan to save £250 million

Three popular Cambridgeshire restaurants are set to close for good this week. Cambridgeshire ’s Brewers Fayre and Beefeater locations are soon set to shut their doors.

The news comes after the chain’s announcement that all of its sites across the country will close for good. Brewers Fayre restaurants across the country will shut on September 7, followed by 106 Beefeater sites on September 10.

The company confirmed that both its Beefeater and Brewers Fayre portfolios would be wound down entirely, placing 3,800 jobs at risk, reports MyLondon. The closures are part of owner Whitbread’s major restructuring plan to save £250 million – which involves closing down its remaining Beefeater and Brewers Fayre sites.

Three Cambridgeshire Beefeater and Brewers Fayre restaurants are set to close. These are:

• The Brampton Hut Brewers Fayre;
• The Hampton Brewers Fayre;
• The Granary Beefeater.

Brewers Fayre is known for its affordable meals, casual, family dining and traditional pub classics. These include food like burgers, Sunday roasts, fish and chips, and breakfast.

Beefeater is known for serving classic pub grub such as grilled steaks, fish and chips and burgers. It has been serving up family favourites since 1974.