PLANS for a new hub by Premier Inn hotel are underway and it’s set to be the largest one in the UK to date.

Whitbread, the owner of Premier Inn, has just received planning permission to build the hotel, which will be located at 5 Strand in London.

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The 693-room hotel will be a couple of doors down from Charing Cross Station and within sight of Nelson’s Column and Trafalgar Square.

There is currently a partially demolished office block on the site, which is located opposite the Co-Op on the Strand.

The new Premier Inn isn’t the first hotel development to be proposed on the site – it was previously earmarked for a 200-room Park Hyatt Hotel, with a rooftop bar and restaurant.

Instead, it will now become home to the latest London property under Whitbread’s hub by Premier Inn brand.

hub by Premier Inn is a hotel concept from the company that offers stylish, compact rooms in central locations in London and Edinburgh.

It was launched in 2013 and the first hotel opened in Covent Garden in 2014.

The brand has since grown to 18 hotels across London and Edinburgh.

Other hub by Premier Inn hotels in London are located in Camden, Bank, Clerkenwell, Goodge Street, Kings Cross, Marylebone, Paddington, Shoreditch, Soho, Brick Lane, Tower Bridge, West Brompton, Westmister Abbey, and St James’s Park.

Rooms are designed to be comfortable, convenient, and consistent with Premier Inn, but in a smaller package. 

They include a touchscreen control panel for lighting and temperature, 40″ smart TVs, high-powered showers, and beds.

Some rooms have windows, but some are window-free.

The new 16,000 sqm development will feature 13 floors including ground floor space fronting onto the Strand and Northumberland Street.

Mark Anderson, managing director for property and international for Whitbread, said: “Hub by Premier Inn was launched a decade ago in St Martin’s Lane, a few hundred metres from 5 Strand. 

“The brand has blossomed into a network of 18 popular hub hotels in Central London and Edinburgh and has become a proven model for bringing our affordable bedrooms into the most central, vibrant, and connected locations for our guests.

“5 Strand is an excellent example of how we think the hub by Premier Inn brand can evolve in Central London. It also shows how we can use Whitbread’s strong balance sheet to acquire the best positioned, most accessible, and high-demand locations in the capital to grow our brands.

“With planning permission now secured we will move quickly to begin construction of the new hotel and deliver a true flagship location for our guests.”

Whitbread recently announced plans for a 207-room hub by Premier Inn property within a “under-utilised” car parking space under The Brunswick Centre in London’s Bloomsbury.

The group said the hotel’s rooms, reception and communal guest areas will feature “cutting edge lighting technology which provides a natural spectrum of light following the human circadian rhythm”.

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While humans typically speak at a rate of four syllables per second when conversing with each other, dogs can only produce about two vocalizations per second. The EEG results also revealed that dogs’ brains are more attuned to slower speech rhythms.

This may explain why people naturally slow their speech to about three syllables per second when talking to dogs.

The researchers suggest that this slower, more rhythmic “dog voice” aligns better with the way a dog’s brain processes sound, leading to improved understanding.

Interestingly, the study indicates that dogs don’t process syllables the same way humans do. Instead, they seem to focus on differences at the word level.

To examine which elements of “dog voice” aid comprehension, the researchers tested commands with and without clear words or original intonation (variations in pitch and intensity). Their findings show that both the words and intonation are crucial for dogs to grasp the commands.

So, there you have it—a scientific explanation for why slowing down and using a singsong voice can make it easier for your dog to understand you.

A POPULAR cinema chain is set to shutter three sites for good in just days – and more will follow.

Film fans were devastated to hear their local movie theatres were waving goodbye permanently on October 6.

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 It comes as Cineworld made the tough decision to axe their branches in Glasgow, Bedford, and Swindon.

Meanwhile, other locations in Bedford, Loughborough, and Yate are also set to close in a matter of weeks.

The sites will shut for good on these exact dates:

• Glasgow Parkhead (closing October 6)
• Bedford (closing October 6)
• Swindon Regent Circus (closing October 6)
• Loughborough (closing October 13)
• Yate (closing October 13)

It forms part of a major restructuring plan to help the company survive mid troubling times.

A judge recently gave the green light for £16million to be pumped into Cineworld’s four companies which form the business.

The cash came from the business’s parent company, with an extra £35million to also be made available.

Its four companies. Cine-UK Ltd, Cineworld Cinemas Ltd, Cineworld Cinema Properties Ltd and Cineworld Estates Ltd, will also negotiate leases for each of their 101 sites across the UK.

It comes as the chain is also said to be renegotiating rent agreements for around 50 of its sites.

But, 25 cinemas are set to be unscathed by the restructuring plans and will remain open for the foreseeable future.

A spokesperson for the chain said the plan would enable the business for “the long-term and ensure a sustainable future for Cineworld in the UK.”

However, news of the five closures has devasted locals in the affected areas.

One cinema-goer in Glasgow Parkhead, where Cineworld is set to close on October 6, described the move as “brutal”.

While another said: “I’ve got so many childhood memories of Parkhead Cineworld! Such a major loss.”

It comes after the huge cinema chain revealed it expects to come out of bankruptcy protection in July, after receiving backing from lenders.

The chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US last year due to giant debts and loss of revenue.

Meanwhile, another UK cinema chain has fallen into administration and will close multiple sites immediately.

Empire Cinemas operates 14 locations across the country with 129 screens.

A total of six sites will close with immediate effect, including two under the Tivoli brand.

Plus, major cinema chain Odeon has also been forced to shut down several branches.

The movie giant is bringing the curtain down on five of its cinemas forever.

Let’s go back to basics, briefly, shall we? Rugby is a game based on bashing your opponent out of the way.

If there is something you can never accept about a sport that demands physical dominance, then tiddlywinks, chess or beach volleyball may be for you.

OK, now we have re-established that, next consider the difficulty of framing that fight for dominance within a system monitored by the painstaking, meticulous, evidence-based and yet often very nuanced fields of doctors and lawyers.

This is the system in which the Leicester Tigers coach Michael Cheika operates – and has been doing for more than 20 years – and this week it delivered him a one-match ban, with another suspended, for a row he had with a doctor at Exeter Chiefs.

The lawyers went to and fro on deciding how rude Cheika may or not have been, while also trying to untangle how the independent match doctor and Leicester’s own team doctor had dealt with the final fraught minutes of their Premiership match at Sandy Park.

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We can all review the ins and outs, because the Rugby Football Union, who oversee discipline using independent panels, always publishes a summary. It was rushed out this time, in case Cheika wishes to appeal before the ban kicks in this weekend.

So you can judge for yourself, albeit in the cold light of day, what happened when Cheika hastened to the medical room and had the conversation with the doctor.

My feeling already is the best use of this case is to view it in the context of what the game is trying to do. Whether or not we think Cheika did or didn’t behave appropriately, it must reflect back on the circumstances all involved were subject to, which is the increasing use of technology aimed at preventing professional rugby players sustaining brain injuries.

It is useful to rewatch the relevant section of the match. With 10 minutes left, and Leicester trailing 14-10, their England lock Ollie Chessum clashed heads with a teammate, Solomone Kata, and they both fell to the ground. Chessum appeared to show a “criteria-1” sign of possible brain injury as he lay flat out, and the independent doctor later decided he should have been substituted with no head injury assessment (HIA), as regulations demand. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead Chessum did receive an HIA, and went back on – indeed he caught the line-out that led to Leicester’s winning try and a success for Cheika in his Leicester debut.

Alongside all this, Kata did not go off the field for examination, and about a minute later bashed into an opposing player. He was given a red card for dangerous play but even if he hadn’t, he would have been permanently removed because of what he had done to his head. Again, the initial decision was later determined by the independent doctor to have been an error.

Now, you might say the pitchside spotter with a tablet who keeps an eye out for signs of concussion, and the independent doctor each “had one job”, and clearly it did not go well. But in real time, when these incidents are occurring, we surely need to cut some slack. We must believe these medically-trained people do not want to put anyone at risk, and the same goes for coaches and players.

Within the Cheika judgement there is a mention of faulty Wi-Fi. This then flicks us back to Sale Sharks v Harlequins, when Tom Curry was sent back on to the field because the doctor had not seen the video of the England flanker apparently losing consciousness. Such a return absolutely should not happen, but it did, until Curry was correctly substituted 20 minutes later.

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All HIAs are reviewed by an independent firm, Alligin, and a failure of technology was blamed. i was assured this week that the monitoring equipment would be double- and triple-checked at Sale’s next match.

Then look at Harlequins v Newcastle last week, and another case of tech versus rugby reality. Newcastle centre Sammy Arnold was having a stormer until the 13th minute when he was called off for a 12-minute head injury assessment. No, he appeared to be attempting to tell the referee, I haven’t had a head knock.

Referee Luke Pearce, who is under strict instruction that any player whose mouthguard pings an alert of a “head-acceleration event”, to use the correct term, to the medics, insisted Arnold leave the field. It turned out the player had the mouthguard in his sock, not his mouth. Newcastle lost their 7-0 lead and eventually the match, although their coach Steve Diamond said the absence did not alter the result.

i asked the Premiership about this, too, and in initial discussion it appears a head-acceleration event might still register on the mouthguard, even if it was in a sock. This did fly in the face, if that’s the right expression, of the match video showing Arnold kicking the ball down the field just before he was called off.

But further investigation is warranted, and we might also ask if it’s right for World Rugby to have pegged the use of mouthguards to the availability to a player of the HIA process. There could also be a check on whether all the independent match doctors are fully versed in the cut and thrust of a rugby game.

To enquire after these matters is not to hang anyone out to dry, but to understand whether the measures against brain injury are working.

After Bill Clinton’s first official meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, he turned to an aide and said: “Who is the fucking superpower here?”

Four US presidents later, nobody would think of posing that question about Israel’s pugilistic prime minister. Netanyahu long ago established what military analysts call “escalation dominance” over whoever sits in the Oval Office — none more so than Joe Biden.

No president more than Biden has wanted to disentangle from the Middle East. Yet none, in the wake of Israel’s latest ground incursion into Lebanon and the spectre of a full-blown war with Iran, is likelier to be defined by the region than him.

“Netanyahu knows how to play the Washington game better than most US politicians,” says Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, now columnist for the Haaretz newspaper. “And he has been running rings around Biden.”

Even by Netanyahu’s standards, however, the current situation has a House of Cards quality to it. With just a month to go before the US presidential election, what happens in the Middle East could change the outcome on November 5.

On Tuesday Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for the Israel Defense Forces’ killing of Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, Iran’s largest proxy ally in the region.

Though no Israeli was killed, a number of Iranian rockets made it through Israel’s famed Iron Dome missile defence system. One landed close to an F-35 air base in the Negev desert; another narrowly missed the headquarters of the Israeli spy agency Mossad in Tel Aviv.

In contrast to Israel’s last exchange of salvos with Iran in April, this time Biden officials did not publicly urge restraint on Netanyahu. This is in spite of the fact that an escalation between Iran and Israel could lead to spiralling oil prices, which would instantly depress US consumer sentiment just as voters are going to the polls.

Netanyahu is riding high. He won’t want to do anything to help Harris’s election prospects

On Thursday, Biden admitted he was in discussion with Netanyahu about an Israeli strike on Iran’s oilfields. Iran has in the past signalled that it would retaliate to any such strike with attacks on oil infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The Brent price of oil has already risen from $70 a barrel on Monday to $78 by Friday. A new round of strikes could send it hurtling towards $100.

Asked about such a prospect, all Biden could do was interrupt himself. “I think that would be a little . . . anyway,” he replied. What Biden may have stopped himself from adding is that such an escalation could badly damage Kamala Harris’s chances of beating Donald Trump next month.

Yet it is Netanyahu, not Biden, who will decide what happens next. Recent history shows that Israel’s prime minister is unlikely to pay heed to whatever restraint Biden is urging on him in private.

“Netanyahu is riding high,” says Marwan al-Muasher, Jordan’s former foreign minister, now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He won’t want to do anything to help Harris’s election prospects.”

On Monday, Israel will commemorate the first anniversary of the slaughter of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas terrorists.

In the wake of that massacre, Netanyahu’s political prospects were all but written off. Israeli intelligence’s failure to pick up the warning signs of a planned Hamas operation and Netanyahu’s diversion of IDF forces from Gaza to the West Bank amounted to Israel’s biggest strategic blunder since Egypt’s Yom Kippur attack on Israel in 1973.

Yet somehow Netanyahu — the Houdini of Israeli politics — has managed to survive and even prosper. The latest Israeli polls show that his Likud party would be the largest if a snap election were held now. A large majority of Israelis are opposed to a two-state solution with Palestinians, which Biden has insisted must be Israel’s end goal. Netanyahu has consistently refused to specify the “day after” political settlement for the Gaza war that Biden has been urging on him.

“We thought Netanyahu had used up his nine lives,” says Paul Salem, vice-president at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, speaking from Lebanon. “It turns out he had several more lives in his back pocket.”

Biden is not the only US figure that Netanyahu has outwitted. In March, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, and the most senior elected Jewish-American in US history, called for fresh Israeli elections and new leadership. “Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.

We thought Netanyahu had used up his nine lives. It turns out he had several more lives in his back pocket

Two weeks later, Israel widened the war by striking an Iranian diplomatic complex in Damascus, killing 16 people including several senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That led to the first round of direct salvos between Iran and Israel. It also marked the start of Netanyahu’s political revival. In July, Netanyahu gave an address to the joint houses of Congress in Washington. He received 52 standing ovations. Schumer was among those applauding.

But nothing has done more to boost Netanyahu’s latest resurrection than his pivot from Gaza to Lebanon over the past month. Mossad’s success in detonating thousands of Hizbollah handheld pagers and walkie-talkies changed the narrative.

Though the operation claimed dozens of Lebanese lives — as have Israeli air strikes on Beirut over the past fortnight — its technical virtuosity restored pride to the badly damaged morale of Israel’s intelligence agencies.

Yet again, Netanyahu also wrongfooted the Biden administration. On countless occasions over the past year, Netanyahu has appeared to agree to one thing with Washington and done the opposite in practice. Whether it is wranglings over the terms of a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release, or the more recent attempt at a 21-day ceasefire with Hizbollah, each time Biden is left looking impotent. “The Biden administration seems to be saying, ‘We’re suffering from a bit of autumn damp,’ ” says Pinkas. “No, this isn’t seasonal damp, it’s Netanyahu urinating all over you.”

What happens in the coming days could be fateful for the future of both the Middle East and US politics. At some point Israel will strike back at Iran. The question is whether the Israeli retaliation will qualify as an “escalate to de-escalate” move — as Israel characterised its assault on Hizbollah — or if it will be a full-blown escalation that could trigger a spiralling conflict with Iran.

The chances of an Israeli attempt to topple the Iranian regime cannot be fully discounted. Netanyahu earlier this week sent a message to what he called the “Persian” people in which he said: “When Iran is finally free and — that moment will come a lot sooner than people think — everything will be different. Our two ancient peoples, the Jewish people and the Persian people, will finally be at peace.”

Last weekend, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and his former point person on the Middle East, urged the US to back an Israeli attempt at regime change in Iran. “Iran is now fully exposed,” Kushner wrote on social media. “Failing to take full advantage of this opportunity to neutralize the threat is irresponsible.”

But even a more modest Israeli action would entail risks. Jeffrey Feltman, a former regional envoy for Biden, and who led the US State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in Barack Obama’s administration, says that everything points to further Netanyahu surprises in the coming weeks. “All the indicators are aligning — Israel’s tactical and strategic objectives, Israeli public opinion and Netanyahu’s political survival,” says Feltman.

Tactically, Israel’s strikes on Hizbollah and incursion into southern Lebanon showed the Israeli public that Netanyahu was taking action to enable the roughly 60,000 displaced Israelis to return to their homes in northern Israel.

Strategically, Israel’s operations are rebalancing forces in the wider region by decimating Hizbollah’s leadership and putting Iran on the back foot. This new phase in the post-October 7 war is wildly popular with Israeli public opinion. Finally, the direction of events is saving Netanyahu’s political skin. While he remains prime minister, Netanyahu can avoid a series of criminal charges that are in abeyance. “This is Netanyahu’s get-out-of-jail-free card,” says Feltman.

Among Democrats in Washington, there is rising anguish about Biden’s failure to rein in Netanyahu and what this could mean for Harris’s prospects in a tight election.

He came to office promising to disentangle America from quagmires in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Like Obama, whose second term ended up being consumed by the war against Isis, he had hoped that his administration would be defined by the pivot to the China challenge in the Indo-Pacific. Biden now risks leaving office with the Middle East on fire and US forces beefed up in the region with 40,000 US troops stationed there, as well as two aircraft carriers. The Middle East could also jeopardise his entire legacy by opening the door to a return of Trump. Yet it is hard to find anyone who believes that Biden will change his act now.

“Nobody can satisfactorily explain to me why Biden has been so passive,” says al-Muasher.

In addition to helping Israel eliminate Hamas, Biden had two aims after October 7. The first was to ensure a day-after plan for the governance of Gaza that would pave the way for a two-state solution. The second was to stop a widening of the war to the region.

The first is all but dead. It is not just Israeli public opinion but the Palestinians as well who have lost faith in the idea of an independent state alongside Israel. The second goal is on the brink of failure, too. And if the turbulence of the last month extends until the election, the chances that Biden’s presidency ends in failure will also rise.