Irish The leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have pledged to work together to end the United Kingdom.

For the first time ever, the first ministers of all three countries are the leaders of nationalist parties.

SNP leader John Swinney and his Welsh counterpart Rhun ap Iorwerth, the leader of Plaid Cymru, both want independence for their countries.

In Northern Irleland, Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill wants Ireland to be reuinted.

All three of them met in Cardiff on Monday to sign a “memorandum of understanding” setting out their aims.

It said: “For people watching across these islands – for people watching around the world – there could be no clearer sign that Westminster’s time is coming to an end.”

So how likely are they to see their political wishes come true?

Unlike in Wales and Ireland, the question of whether Scotland should leave the United Kingdom has already been put to the people.

In 2014, Scots voted by 55% to 45% to remain part of the UK in a fiercely-contested referendum.

It took place because the then prime minister, David Cameron, agreed to temporarily transfer the power to organise such a referendum from Westminster to the Scottish Parliament.

At the time, the then SNP leader and Scottish first minister, Alex Salmond, described it as a “once in a generation” event.

Since then however, successive SNP leaders have demanded a second referendum, and every time it has been refused by the PM of the day.

Opinion polls continue to show that the people of Scotland are evenly split on whether their country should be independent.

Speaking in cardiff, John Swinney said it was “crystal clear” that there should be a referendum during the current Holyrood term, which ends in 2031.

However, there appears to be little appetite in Scotland for a re-run of the 2014 vote in the near future, meaning the prospect of independence is likely off the table for the next decade at least.

Last May, voters in Wales elected a Plaid Cymru government for the first time in the devolution era, which began in 1999.

Indeed, it was the first time in over a century that Wales had rejected the Labour Party.

Although Plaid Cymru are committed to Welsh independence, the most recent opinion poll showed that just 32% of the country would currently vote to leave the UK, compared to 68% who are happy with the status quo.

However, the same poll, by Survation, showed that independence has majority support among Welsh under-45s.

That suggests that while a referendum on the subject is not on the agenda right now, it could be at some point in the future.

In the meantime, Plaid Cymru is committee to demanding more powers be devolved from Westminster to the Welsh Assembly.

Rhun ap Iorwerth said: “While Wales and Scotland are on different constitutional journeys, we both share a commitment to strong, accountable devolved government, and to a relationship between the governments of these islands built on trust and mutual respect.

“We share a belief that our people should decide their own future, and that the union isn’t working fairly for either nation.”

The question of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland becoming one unified country for the first time in more than a century was thrown into sharp focus at the weekend by none other than Donald Trump.

Speaking during a visit to Ireland, the US president said he “would love to see” it happen, adding: “It’s going to happen eventually.”

His comments sparked an angry backlash from many of Trump’s supporters, including Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.

However, they were welcomed by supporters of reunification, including Michelle O’Neill.

She said: “I think the comments from the president of the United States very much reflect the fact that the unity debate is very much alive, and people are engaged in it, not just at home, but obviously now internationally as well.

“I think that tells us where we’re at with where the thinking is around: what is the big prize here for our people? And the big prize here is unification.

“It is the end of partition and it is that new beginning in a new Ireland.”

However, just as in Scotland and Wales, there is little prospect of Irish unity any time soon.

Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended the Troubles in 1998, a so-called “border poll” can only happen if the Northern Ireland Secretary believes there is majority support for one.

But the most recent opinion poll, in May, showed that support for Northern Ireland remaining in the UK stands at 58% to 42% in favour.

While it is doubtlessly significant that the largest parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all nationalist, it does not necessarily follow that the break up of the United Kingdom is inevitable.

The gathering in Cardiff of Swinney, ap Iorwerth and O’Neill, and their memorandum of understanding, was a good PR stunt, but is unlikely to shift the constitutional debate in any of their countries.

While Scotland’s first minister declaration that Andy Burnham will be the last prime minister of the UK was a neat soundbite, there is a vanishingly small chance of it actually becoming true.

Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

Though not all of our dementia risk is within our control, a standing commission from The Lancet has found that up to 45% of our likelihood of developing the condition is down to “potentially modifiable” lifestyle choices.

These include more obvious habits, like not smoking and controlling blood pressure. But some less expected variables – such as protecting your hearing and staying socially connected – matter too.

According to a new paper published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, meanwhile, two habits in midlife might significantly lower your odds of cognitive decline (sometimes seen as a precursor to dementia) in older age.

In this research, scientists assessed the heart health of 402 middle-aged and older adults using the American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple 7 measurements.

These include eating habits, body mass index (BMI), smoking status, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and blood sugar.

Sleep has since been added to this list, now called Life’s Essential 8. But because this wasn’t included when the study began, researchers didn’t measure it in this study.

Study after study has found an association between brain and heart health. So, the researchers wanted to look at how each component of the Simple 7 list corresponded to cognitive decline risk.

After years of follow-up, physical activity and blood sugar levels seemed to have the strongest influence on participants’ rates of cognitive decline.

Hispanic adults in this US-based study saw greater benefits from higher levels of physical activity, while white non-Hispanic adults seemed to reap greater rewards from well-controlled blood sugar.

Hispanic adults are at greater risk of dementia in the US.

Dr Janette Vazquez, the study’s lead author, said: “Our findings suggest that engaging in any level of physical activity and potentially maintaining optimal fasting blood glucose levels in midlife are associated with a significantly slower rate of cognitive decline in late life”.

But she added that more research is needed: “The longitudinal exploration of cardiovascular health throughout life, rather than assessing it at a single time point, could also provide further insight into the trajectory phenotypes contributing to cognitive decline by ethnicity”.

British sprinter Amy Hunt has added her voice to the ongoing debate surrounding Sydney Sweeney’s controversial new ad campaign.

On Sunday, the four-time European champion and Olympic silver medallist took part in the Ultimate Championship in Budapest, where she finished in fourth place.

“Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like,” she told the BBC after completing the race, referring to competitor Melissa Jefferson-Wooden’s winning time.

Amy added: “Muscles, hard work, blood, sweat, tears. This is a beautiful evening.”

Euphoria star Sydney first sparked backlash last week when she unveiled a new ad for the sports betting brand Novig.

Posing nude in various sporting settings, save for various items like American footballs, basketballs and protective equipment, the Emmy nominee remarked: “Novig is just sports. So, they wanted to show… just sports.”

Sydney has since faced a wave of criticism, including from numerous female athletes who have accused her of “sexualising” women’s sports.

In response to the ad, swimmer and Olympic gold medallist Ariarne Titmus wrote on Instagram: “How do we live in a world where monetising a woman’s body and sexualising women’s sport is still a thing?”

Meanwhile, world champion boxer Skye Nicolson said “these companies need to do better” and “stop sexualising women in sport”.

While Sydney has not yet commented publicly on the backlash, she did appear to be referencing it in a series of Instagram story posts on Sunday night,.

The US actor posted a string of nude photo-shoots which leading sports figures, including Serena Williams, Caroline Wozniacki, Megan Rapinoe, Rob Gronkowski, Karl-Anthony Towns and Jason Kelce, had taken part in over the years.

HuffPost UK has contacted Sydney Sweeney and Novig for comment.

This isn’t the first time Sydney has landed herself in hot water over an advert.

Last year, she faced widespread criticism over a very different ad campaign, when it was suggested that a promo video for American Eagle she’d appeared in had mirrored the language of white supremacists and eugenicists.

Sydney later said she had been left “surprised by the reaction” to the advert, after spending months mostly swerving questions about the media storm, while the fashion brand insisted their ad had been “about the jeans” and nothing more.

“We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their American Eagle jeans with confidence, their way,” they said in a statement. “Great jeans look good on everyone.”

It’s becoming increasingly common for people to use ChatGPT and other AI chatbots like Gemini, Copilot and Claude in their everyday lives. A recent survey from Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center found that half of Americans now utilise these technologies.

“By any measure, the adoption and use of LLMs [large language models] is astounding,” Lee Rainie, director of Elon’s Imagining the Digital Future Center, said in a university news release. “I am especially struck by the ways these tools are being woven into people’s social lives.”

And while these tools can be useful when it comes to, say, helping you write an email or brainstorming questions for a doctor’s appointment, it’s wise to be cautious about how much information you share with them.

A recent study from the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI helps explain why. Researchers analysed the privacy policies of six of the top U.S. AI chat system developers (OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Amazon’s Nova, Meta’s MetaAI and Microsoft’s Copilot) and found that all of them appear to use customer conversations to “train and improve their models by default” and “some retain this data indefinitely”.

People underestimate how much of what they share with an AI chatbot can be “stored, analysed, and potentially reused,” cybersecurity expert George Kamide, co-host of the technology podcast Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks, told HuffPost.

“Many LLMs are trained or fine-tuned using user inputs, which means conversations can contribute – directly or indirectly – to the model’s future behaviour,” he continued.

“If those interactions contain personal identifiers, sensitive data, or confidential information, they could become part of a dataset that’s beyond the user’s control. Ultimately, data is the greatest value that AI companies can extract from us.”

Below, experts explain the types of information you should think twice about sharing with an AI chatbot:

Personally identifiable information, known as PII, is any type of data that can be used to identify an individual, including your full name, home address, phone number, and government ID numbers like social security, passport or driver license.

Sharing these details with a chatbot “introduces the risk that this data could be logged or processed in ways that expose you to identity theft, phishing or data brokerage activities,” explained information security expert George Al-Koura, who co-hosts Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks. So it’s best avoided.

Know that any files you upload along with your prompts could also be used for training the model. So if you’re using ChatGPT to help fine-tune your resume, for example, you should remove any of this identifying information from the document beforehand to be safe.

People often feel more comfortable divulging intimate information in a ChatGPT conversation than they would with, say, a Google search because the AI chatbot allows for a back-and-forth dialogue that feels more human in nature.

“This can give a false sense of security leading to a greater willingness to provide personal information via a chatbot than to a static search engine,” Ashley Casovan, the managing director of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) AI Governance Center, told HuffPost.

Sensitive details you share about your thoughts, behaviours, mental state or relationships in these conversations are not legally protected and could potentially be used as evidence in court.

“The number of people who are using LLM-based chatbots as therapists, life coaches, and even as some form of an intimate ‘partner’ is already alarming,” Kamide said.

A 2024 poll found that one in six adults turn to AI chatbots at least once a month for health information and advice, according to health policy organisation KFF.

Doing so can be helpful in navigating health issues, but there are privacy risks involved (not to mention concerns about accuracy, too). Unlike doctors, most of the mainstream chatbots are not bound by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, Dr. Ravi Parikh, director of the Human-Algorithm Collaboration Lab at Emory University, told The New York Times.

Avoid sharing any personal medical details – including your health care records – with an AI chatbot. If you’re going to enter health-related data in the conversation, be sure to remove identifying information from your prompts.

If you’re thinking about using an AI chatbot to get a leg up at work, tread lightly. Don’t input internal business data or reports, client data, source code or anything protected by a non-disclosure agreement, Al-Koura advised.

“Many AI chat platforms operate on shared infrastructure, and despite strong security postures, your input may still be logged for ‘model improvement,’” he said. “A single prompt containing sensitive data could constitute a regulatory or contractual breach.”

Your paystubs, banking and investment account information, and credit card details should not be shared with an AI chatbot, the University of Kentucky Information Technology Services advises.

“While AI can offer general financial advice, it’s safer to consult a financial advisor for personal matters to avoid the risk of hacking or data misuse,” a post on the university’s website reads.

Same goes for your tax returns and other income-related documents.

“If these documents are exposed, they can be used for blackmail, fraud or tailored social engineering attacks against you or your family,” financial writer Adam Hayes warned in an Investopedia article.

It may not be possible to put the toothpaste back in the tube, so to speak. But you can still try to mitigate some of the potential harm.

According to Kamide: Once your data is fed into the chatbot’s training data, “you can’t really get it back”. Still, he suggested deleting the chat history “to stop exfiltration of data, should anyone compromise your account.”

Then take some time to think about what information you are (and are not) comfortable sharing with an AI chatbot going forward. Start treating AI conversations as “semi-public spaces rather than private diaries,” Al-Koura recommended.

“Be deliberate and minimalist in what you share. Before sending a message, ask yourself, ‘Would I be comfortable seeing this on a shared family group chat or company Slack channel?’” Al-Koura said.

You can also adjust the privacy settings of any AI chatbots you interact with to reduce (but not eliminate) some of the privacy risks – things like disabling your chat history or opting out of having your conversations used for model training.

“Different tools will allow for different configurations of what data it will ‘remember,’” Casovan said. “Based on your individual comfort and use, exploring these different options will allow you to calibrate based on your comfort level or organisational direction.”

“However, having a good understanding of how these systems work, how the data is stored, who has access, how it is transferred and under what circumstances, will allow you to make more informed decisions on how you can leverage these tools for your benefit, while still being comfortable with the information that you are sharing,” she continued.

When writing your prompts, Al-Koura recommended using pseudonyms and more general language to avoid disclosing too much personal or confidential information. For example, you might use “a client in health care” rather than “a patient at St. Mary’s Hospital” to “preserve context while protecting identity,” he suggested.

But the onus shouldn’t just be on the users of course. AI developers and policymakers should improve protections for personal data via “comprehensive federal privacy regulation, affirmative opt-in for model training, and filtering personal information from chat inputs by default,” researchers from The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI said.

Kamide called this a “defining moment for digital ethics.”

“The more these systems can mimic human communication styles, the easier it is to forget they are still just data processors, not confidants or friends,” he said.

“If we can cultivate a culture where people stay curious, cautious and privacy-aware – while technologists build responsibly and transparently – we can unlock AI’s full potential without sacrificing trust. In short, we need guardrails in order to innovate responsibly.

The original version of this story was published on HuffPost at an earlier date.

Nigel Farage is more unpopular with voters than ever, according to a new poll.

The YouGov survey found that 69% of British adults now have an unfavourable view of the Reform UK leader.

It is the highest level recorded by the pollster in the 10 years it has been tracking Farage’s popularity.

Barely a quarter of voters (24%) have a favourable view of the Reform chief, giving him a net favourability rating of minus 45.

By contrast, 46% of people have a favourable view of prime minister Andy Burnham.

With 39% having an unfavourable view of him, that gives the PM a net rating of plus 7 – some 52 points better than Farage.

The Reform leader’s grim numbers come amid the ongoing controversy about financial donations to both him and his party.

Parliament’s standards commissioner is investigating his decision not to declare a personal £5 million “gift” he received from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne shortly before becoming an MP in 2024.

The Metropolitan Police has also launched a criminal investigation after a Channel 4 documentary appeared to show two senior Reform officials trying to solicit money from a foreign donor, against UK electoral law.

A separate YouGov poll last week showed that 73% of voters believe Farage is “sleazy”, with more than half thinking he is “very sleazy”.

Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

Wicked star Cynthia Erivo is set to return to our screens later this year in her new movie Prima Facie.

Based on the one-woman play of the same name, Cynthia takes the lead as a barrister, Tessa, a character originally played by Jodie Comer on both the West End and Broadway, who represents herself in a troubling sexual assault case.

Following its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Sunday night, the movie sparked a range of different opinions – but the British actor’s leading performance has been repeatedly singled out for praise.

Deadline’s review said that Prima Facie once again shows Cynthia as a “fine dramatic actor” who “does what she can with the ambiguity of a role where the legal chairs are suddenly shuffled”, but lamented that “in this more literal film version something may have gotten lost in translation” compared to the critically-lauded source material.

The Hollywood Reporter agreed that the adaptation was a “misfire” and “a near-total muddle”, even if Cynthia “eloquently displays” her character’s complicated feelings at different points in the story.

Meanwhile, The Guardian’s two-star review claimed the “pointless” film adaptation had “flattened” the script of the play. The Oscar nominee was said to have approached “the role with a focused rigour”, even if she “oddly doesn’t have all that much to play”.

A review in The Playlist was similarly critical of the film, hailing Cynthia’s “captivating” and “very, very good” work as Tessa, but concluded that “when even the talents of Erivo can’t overcome” its shortcomings, “the verdict is grim”.

Critic Rendy Jones even went as far as claiming that the Wicked star “carries” her new film, writing: “Cynthia Erivo gives a fantastic performance in Susanna White’s film adaptation, but its focus on the wrong thing saps the potential of what could have been a damning critique of the protection of assault and predators within the court of law.”

More positive was TheWrap’s take, singling out Cynthia’s “layered” and “admirable” performance in the “complex” and “fascinating” film (even if it ultimately conceded that it “doesn’t have the same impact as the play”).

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Cynthia recently opened up about throwing herself into her latest role, admitting there were times she’d feel “sick”, “angry” or “betrayed”.

“It was hard to come away from that sometimes,” she shared.

A cinema release date for Prima Facie is yet to be announced.