16- and 17-year-olds will be given right to vote in all elections as part of changes including easier voter registration
The voting age will be lowered to 16 in the UK by the next general election in a major change of the democratic system.
The government said it was a reform to bring in more fairness for 16- and 17-year-olds, many of whom already work and are able to serve in the military. It brings the whole of the UK voting age to 16. Scotland and Wales have already made the change for Holyrood and Senedd elections.
It would probably be fair to say that last night was another missed opportunity for Norway, a team with so much potential and, on paper, one of the most impressive squads at Euro 2025.
Norway never really looked convincing in the group stage, despite racking up a maximum nine points. They won each match by a one-goal margin and with performances that didn’t match up to the standard you’d expect from a team with the likes of Caroline Graham Hansen, Guro Reiten, Ada Hegerberg and Frida Maanum.
Home Office minister defends Keir Starmer’s decision to remove whip from four MPs and says Labour must ‘act as a team’
The voting age will be lowered to 16 in England and Northern Ireland by the next general election in a major change of the democratic system, Rowena Mason reports.
Reform UK has told Britain’s biggest wind and solar developers it will end their access to a clean energy subsidy scheme if it wins power, PA Media reports. PA says:
Deputy leader Richard Ticehas written to firms giving them “formal notice” that the party would axe deals aimed at offering sustainable generators protection against market volatility.
The Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme sees developers guaranteed a fixed price for electricity – independent of the wholesale price – in the hope of encouraging companies to invest in renewable projects.
Reform are now actively trying to discourage businesses from investing in clean energy in the UK - leaving bills higher for families, threatening hundreds of thousands of good jobs across the country and putting our energy security at risk. They are disgracefully trying to undermine the UK’s national interest.
This Labour government is cutting energy bills for millions of families, schools, and hospitals, and creating good jobs in our industrial heartlands, to put more money in working people’s pockets. Reform are trying to put all of this at risk.
The aim of the letter appears to be to put good, well-paid British jobs in jeopardy, driving away investment in the economy and denying people the opportunity to make a living. Polling shows the public see clean energy as the number one growth sector for the UK.
Arguing against British renewables is arguing for more foreign gas, which will increasingly come from abroad as the North Sea continues its inevitable decline - a geological fact. Gas has cost the UK £140bn over the last few years and is set to remain more expensive than pre-crisis levels in the long term. So building more renewables means energy security and shielding households from volatile international gas markets, which the voting public are keen to see.
On a family holiday in Croatia, I came a cropper after going big on the ice – and lost my cool
Here’s a tip for keeping cool overnight as the world heats up. It’s a tip you shouldn’t take unless you’re more competent than I am in practical matters. While this is a low bar, admittedly, it’s a health warning I need to share.
My mum’s place in Croatia is very old. Its walls are a metre thick. When she wanted a door knocked through one of them, the noise was tremendous. The dust and debris rose in what might have been mistaken for a mushroom cloud. There may have been dynamite involved. Having walls this thick is reassuring – any calamity serious enough to bring them down wouldn’t be worth surviving anyway.
CNN’s Dana Bash avoided referencing President Donald Trump disparaging her network while calling on the Senate to pass a recissions bill to defund NPR and PBS.
Anaemic economic growth, rising inflation, and a worsening outlook in the jobs market. If the inheritance from the Conservatives had been bad, the situation a year in to the new Labour government do not look much better.
The latest figures show unemployment nudged up to 4.7% in May, hitting the highest level in four years, while wage growth slowed for a third consecutive month, and employers cut back on hiring.
Talks over striker continuing with Eintracht Frankfurt
Ekitike understood to favour Liverpool over Newcastle
Liverpool are poised to make a bid for Hugo Ekitike, with the Eintracht Frankfurt striker understood to favour a move to the Premier League champions over Newcastle.
Newcastle and Liverpool have held talks with Frankfurt this week over the France Under-21s international, with the former having a £70m offer rejected and attempting to reach an agreement during further negotiations on Wednesday.
Alexus Grynkewich says Russia will remain a threat even if a peaceful solution to war in Ukraine can be found
Yulia Svyrydenko, 39-year-old economist and former deputy prime minister, has been confirmed the the country’s parliament as the new prime minister of Ukraine, lawmakers Oleksiy Honcharenko and Yaroslav Zheleznyak just reported.
Svyrydenko played a critical role in Kyiv’s negotiations with the US over its access to mineral resources, with Reuters noting that “her nomination sends a signal to Washington that Kyiv is prioritising the relationship.”
Growing profanity use by politicians like Newsom raises questions about coarsening American political discourse and voters' concern for language standards.
In HBO’s five-hour portrait, the chart-dominating singer-songwriter gives unusual insight into his career with support from his A-list friends and collaborators
In 2011, singer-songwriter and pop legend Billy Joel returned a multimillion-dollar advance paid on a memoir to his would-be publisher, HarperCollins. He had apparently co-written an autobiographical book as planned, but ultimately decided that he didn’t want to publish it. “It took working on writing a book to make me realize that I’m not all that interested in talking about the past,” he said at the time, “and that the best expression of my life … has been and remains my music.”
Billy Joel: And So It Goes, a two-part feature documentary premiering this week on HBO, feels like an attempt to stay true to that same basic ethos while not shying away from Joel’s public and private life over the years. The five-hour project tells Joel’s story, but does so by prioritizing his music, in content and in form. “He has 121 songs in his catalog and we used over 110,” said Jessica Levin, who directed the film with Susan Lacy, describing just how many Joel tunes wound up somewhere in the movie. It’s tempting to study the credits and figure out the unlucky 10 that didn’t make the cut, but in effect it’s all here. There are also a few non-Joel compositions in the film, but the vast majority of the music is his, including some adaptations of his melodies into subtle underscore. “It was a goal of ours to use it as score, not just throw it in,” said Levin. “It’s a testament to the depth and breadth of his catalog that we were able to do that.”
Your water bottle could harbour 40,000 times more bacteria than your toilet seat. And that’s just the tip of the dirtberg
Most everyday objects are at least a little bit grimy. They rarely, if ever, make contact with soap or disinfectant – unlike your toilet seat, even though that’s the one that’s often used as a symbol of filth in studies of household cleanliness. Aside from pathogens that can cause disease and illness, “for the most part, we’re dealing with our own bacteria”, says Jason Tetro, microbiologist and author of The Germ Code. This usually isn’t a problem, especially for youngish healthy people – but, Tetro adds, “when they accumulate, even if they are your own, it can lead to things like skin irritability, itchy scalp, cavities [in teeth from bacteria-heavy toothbrushes], that type of thing”.
Does it matter that your reusable shopping bag might be carrying faecal bugs? Or that your watch strap is teeming with lifeforms? Are the studies – usually small, and sometimes conducted by cleaning-product companies – scaremongering or a grave matter of public health? Germ experts come clean.
All England Club offers talks on creating player council
Slams also face legal action from union set up by Djokovic
Wimbledon and the three other grand slam tournaments are willing to make concessions to the players in an attempt to resolve a dispute over prize money, pensions and player representation.
The Guardian has learned that during discussions with representatives of several top-10 world-ranked men and women players at Wimbledon last week, the All England Club offered to hold talks over creating a player council to give athletes a voice in decisions over scheduling, as well as indicating a willingness to contribute to their pension and healthcare provision for the first time.
Forward’s fee eclipses $1.1m paid by Chelsea for Girma
Canadian describes move to Arsenal as ‘an honour’
The first £1m transfer in women’s football has been completed after the Canada forward Olivia Smith concluded her record-breaking move from Liverpool to Arsenal.
The 20-year-old has signed a four-year contract with the European champions and, although the fee is officially undisclosed, multiple sources say it is the game’s first to reach the £1m mark, as revealed by the Guardian a week ago, in a historic moment for the sport. The previous highest was the $1.1m (£890,000) paid by Chelsea for the US centre-back Naomi Girma in January.
Physicians explain how the 5R approach to gut healing addresses the gut-immune connection, potentially reversing chronic diseases by removing triggers and repairing the digestive system.
Government overreach challenges America's founding principles of equality and freedom, echoing concerns from the Declaration of Independence that inspired civil rights leaders.
MP says she does not regret earlier comments that led to year-long suspension from party
The Labour party has said it is looking “incredibly seriously” at an interview in which Diane Abbott said she had no regrets about comments on racism that led to her year-long suspension from the party.
The veteran Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington was disciplined for writing a letter to the Observer in April 2023 arguing that people of colour experienced racism “all their lives” and in a different way to Jewish people, Irish people and Travellers.
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