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Excluding capital would be ‘missed opportunity’, says Sadiq Khan, given existing assets and ‘world-class infrastructure’The mayor of London has criticised plans to explore a bid for the north of England to host the Olympics, saying that excluding London would be a “missed opportunity”.Ministers have commissioned an assessment by UK Sport which could inform a bid for the international sporting event in the 2040s. If the campaign were successful, it would be the first time the Olympic Games and Paralympics were hosted in Britain since London 2012. Continue reading...

US president writes ‘vote the bum out’ as congressman faces close race against Trump-endorsed RepublicanWith two days to go before the next big test of Donald Trump’s iron grip over his party, the president went head-to-head on Sunday with his nemesis, Thomas Massie the Kentucky congressman who is in a fight for his political life in Tuesday’s Republican primary.Over an eight-hour period starting in the early hours of Sunday, Trump took to his bully pulpit on Truth Social to taunt Massie, one of very few senior Republicans who has dared to defy him. Massie is the “worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country”, the rant began, followed by a mid-morning exhortation to Kentucky voters to “vote the bum out on Tuesday”. Continue reading...

• OpenAI launched Daybreak, a new cybersecurity platform built on GPT-5.5 and Codex Security, according to an AI news roundup published May 15, 2026. • The platform is designed to help organizations identify threats, generate patches, and verify remediation across code and systems, with access initially limited to “critical cyber defenders.” • The move puts OpenAI into direct competition with Anthropic’s Mythos and reflects growing concern that AI-assisted hacking is shifting from theory to practice.

‘Backward’ photo panned for display of patriarchy, signaling that ‘women’s voices don’t matter in shaping global order’By the time Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Thursday, the bilateral had featured all the expected pomp and pageantry: a meticulously choreographed display of Chinese soldiers, children waving American and Chinese flags, and rows of senior officials and the US’s top business executives.Conspicuously absent at the table, however, were women from either delegation – a stark visual that quickly drew criticism from observers who saw it as an unmistakable display of patriarchal power. Continue reading...

NHS experts and MPs say he ‘told a good story’ as health secretary while kicking the difficult cans down the roadUK politics live – latest updatesWes Streeting’s 22 months in office was characterised by relentless media interviews, newspaper editorials and Department of Health and Social Care press releases. They portrayed a dynamic health secretary who was clearing up the mess he inherited in the NHS, pushing ahead with radical changes and making progress on what matters most to patients – accessing care when they need it.Having initially declared the NHS “broken” – by the Conservatives – it is six months since he first declared that the health service was now, on his watch, “on the road to recovery” – a claim he has made regularly since. He included the gist of it again – a sort of greatest hits collection – in his resignation letter to Keir Starmer at lunchtime on Thursday. Continue reading...

Reform UK leader records video with Essex pastor to support his battle against council banning orderNigel Farage has been criticised for giving his full support to a Christian church leader who preached that homosexuality was an “abomination” and would lead to eternity in hell.The Reform UK leader recorded a video with Stephen Clayden after Colchester council applied for a banning order to limit his street preaching. Continue reading...

French football captain warned against prospect of far-right National Rally party gaining powerThe French football captain, Kylian Mbappé, has angered Marine Le Pen’s far-right party after expressing concerns about it winning next year’s presidential election.Mbappé, 27, who grew up in Paris’s northern suburbs, in a family with Algerian and Cameroonian heritage, told Vanity Fair this week: “I know what it means and what consequences it can have for my country when people like them come to power.” Continue reading...