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.
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.”
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.
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.
Survivor says blaze at mall in eastern city of Kut started after air conditioner unit exploded
A fire has torn through a shopping mall in the eastern Iraqi city of Kut, killing at least 60 people, as desperate people searched for missing relatives.
Officials have launched an investigation into the blaze, the latest in a country where safety regulations are frequently neglected.
Jaguar Land Rover has said it will axe up to 500 management jobs in the UK, after the carmaker reported a plunge in sales linked to Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The British luxury car manufacturer said about 1.5% of its staff in the UK would be affected by the job cuts as part of a voluntary redundancy round for managers. JLR, which is owned by India’s Tata Motors, employs 33,000 people in the UK.
Analysis of bones from two caves shows prehistoric people butchered the same animals in different ways
Nothing turns up the heat in a kitchen quite like debating the best way to chop an onion. Now researchers have found even our prehistoric cousins had distinct preferences when it came to preparing food.
Archaeologists studying animal bones recovered from two caves in northern Israel have found different groups of Neanderthals, living around the same time, butchered the same animals in different ways.
Members vote 51 to 48 in favour of president’s request to slash $9bn in spending already approved by Congress
The US Senate has approved Donald Trump’s plan for billions of dollars in cuts to funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, handing the Republican president another victory as he exerts control over Congress with little opposition.
The Senate voted 51 to 48 in favour of Trump’s request to cut $9bn in spending already approved by Congress.
Diners jump at chance to snuggle with cubs but wildlife experts accuse firm of ‘exploiting wild animals for selfies’
A restaurant in northern China has been criticised by animal welfare groups for offering an unusual item on the menu: lion cub cuddles.
According to a screenshot of a menu circulating on social media, Wanhui – a restaurant in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province – has a four-course set afternoon menu costing 1,192 yuan ($166/£124) that includes playtime with the in-house animals.
Sarina Wiegman’s side must respect opponents who smashed Germany and are a model of tournament consistency
The homeless man lies in the doorway of England’s team hotel every morning and every night. The players pass him as they go to training and pass him again as they come back at the end of the day. His shirt is unbuttoned as he sleeps, dirt-smeared bags perched under his resting arm. The hotel staff barely even notice him any more. Security do not move him on. After all, he’s supposed to be there.
And unless you decided to peer particularly closely, you might not even notice that the homeless man in the doorway of the Dolder Grand hotel in Zurich is not a human being at all but a hyper-realistic sculpture called The Traveler, created by an American artist called Duane Hanson in the 1980s and bought by the Dolder Grand hotel in Zurich in the late 2000s as a symbol of … well, what exactly?
The ‘infamous five’ told to train separately, lack of new signings and a restricted budget – United’s manager is stuck in summer of discontent
The on-off Bryan Mbeumo saga and Liam Delap choosing Chelsea are troubling bellwethers of Manchester United’s predicament a month from the start of the season. So, too, is having half an outfield first team in a bomb squad that skulks in for training in the late afternoon when those not in the same club-decreed quasi-shame have left for the day.
As time ticks towards Arsenal’s opening Premier League Sunday visit and, beyond, to the window’s close on 1 September, Ruben Amorim can hardly be ecstatic at how the summer is progressing. The head coach has added only Matheus Cunha from Wolves, for the forward’s £62.5m release clause, a sizeable chunk of a transfer budget constricted by a looming debt mountain and the need to sell to buy a No 9 and, possibly, finally prise Mbeumo from Brentford.
Future of Life Institute says companies pursuing artificial general intelligence lack credible plans to ensure safety
Artificial intelligence companies are “fundamentally unprepared” for the consequences of creating systems with human-level intellectual performance, according to a leading AI safety group.
The Future of Life Institute (FLI) said none of the firms on its AI safety index scored higher than a D for “existential safety planning”.
The actor is like Bear Grylls with a badge in a macho Yosemite-set detective drama that’s very easy on the eye. It’s not the smartest, but the mountains are lovely
Untamed is a blunt force thriller, set in Yosemite national park in California, starring Eric Bana as a macho special agent who prefers silence to talking and horses to motorised vehicles. It is perfectly serviceable though oddly retro – not just because it scoffs at petrol engines, but because it feels as if it could have been made in the 1990s. Even a crucial smartphone plotline doesn’t come into it until very close to the end, and although park rangers have become a political hot potato in the US, national politics emphatically do not exist here.
That makes Untamed an undemanding watch, but don’t expect much depth. It’s as easy on the eye as it is straightforward. Bana is Kyle Turner, technically not a park ranger, even though he’s dressed like one, but an ISB Special Agent, which gives him extra-special cop powers. Devotees of detective dramas will be shocked to learn that Turner is brusque, rude and has a taste for bourbon that doesn’t have any impact on his professional capacity whatsoever. He is haunted by a family tragedy. His personal relationships are poor. He is, of course, excellent at what he does.
The New Zealand indie band have had a charmed rise – but behind the scenes, their frontperson was dealing with Graves’ disease and depression. Digging deep helped her realise not everything can be fixed
In January 2023, as flash floods hit Auckland, New Zealand, Oakley Creek was destroyed: trees upturned, bridges ripped out and dragged downstream, the riverbankcollapsed. Like many locals, Liz Stokes, songwriter and guitarist in indie four-piece the Beths, had walked there often during the pandemic. “It’s jarring to see this place that’s never going to be the way it was, the way you remembered it,” she says over video in late June.
She catches herself. “I say the creek was destroyed, but the creek did the destroying also. It’s just nature. It was interesting seeing change happen very quickly in real time.”
The New South Wales housing minister, Rose Jackson, has labelled the independent MP Mark Latham a “pig” after allegations he took covert photographs of female colleagues in the upper house and shared them.
The messages, reportedly sent to his former partner Nathalie Matthews and published in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, allegedly included disparaging comments about the female politicians’ appearance.
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