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Debbie Crosbie receives £3.2m in bonuses after mutual building society’s takeover of Virgin MoneyNationwide building society has nearly doubled the pay packet of its chief executive, Debbie Crosbie, a year after the board pushed through a controversial bonus scheme for its top boss. The mutual, which is owned by its members, released its annual report on Monday, showing Crosbie was handed £3.2m in bonuses – a combination of payouts for annual and longer-term performance – up from £1.1m a year earlier.It pushed her overall pay packet to £4.7m for the year to March 2026, marking an 88% jump on the near-£2.5m she earned for the previous year. Meanwhile, eligible staff within the wider 26,890-strong workforce will see their pay rise by an average of 3.8% from 1 July. “These changes reflect a significant investment in our people, recognising the contribution and commitment of those at the heart of serving our customers and delivering our strategy,” Nationwide said. Crosbie’s £1.2m annual salary was increased a further 2.9% in April this year. Continue reading...

Police and hunters in Utsunomiya, 100km north of the capital, resume their search for animal that is not usually seen so close to TokyoA city in Japan has closed all its 94 primary and secondary schools after a bear was spotted in the municipality for the first time.Officials in Utsunomiya, a city of half a million people about 100km (62 miles) north of Tokyo, took action after a medium-sized black bear – estimated to be about one-metre-long – was seen near a park in the city on Saturday. The bear was spotted again on CCTV running just in front of two startled young men in the city centre, in the early hours of Sunday. Continue reading...

Former Liberal senator initially labelled ruling by parliamentary expenses authority ‘patently ridiculous’, saying visits were necessaryGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastFormer Liberal senator Linda Reynolds has paid back nearly $8,800 in parliamentary expenses after her partner claimed family reunion allowances to visit his son in Melbourne while en route to meet her in Canberra.Reynolds accepted the ruling of the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority (IPEA) but initially disputed their ruling, saying her partner’s visits to his son – her stepson – were necessary after “high profile (and false) 2021 workplace allegations made against me”, seemingly a reference to her long-running court dispute with former staffer Brittany Higgins. Continue reading...

Family were enjoying a waterside barbecue in Bochum before members ended up in jeoparty in riverA cyclist has been praised for having “stepped in decisively” and rescuing four members of a family who nearly drowned in the Ruhr River in Germany during a waterside barbecue that nearly ended in tragedy.The family of eight had set themselves up on the riverbank in the western city of Bochum, the local fire brigade reported, but the gathering took a panicked turn when one woman got too close to the water’s edge and toppled down into the current, police told local media. Continue reading...

Ten people, all of whom were e-scooter riders, were killed in collisions compared with six in 2024Nearly 500 people were seriously injured in collisions involving e-scooters in Great Britain last year, government statistics have shown.The Department for Transport (DfT) said there had been an estimated 1,484 casualties in crashes involving electric scooters, compared with 1,390 in 2024. Continue reading...

Anne Keast-Butler says Russian forces are ‘going backwards on the battlefield’ for first time since late 2022Nearly half a million Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion more than four years ago, according to a new estimate from the head of the British spy agency GCHQ.Anne Keast-Butler, the chief of the electronic intelligence agency, said in her first speech in the job that Russian forces were “going backwards on the battlefield” inside Ukraine for the first time since late 2022. Continue reading...

Barnardo’s says survey shows online abuse and harassment becoming ‘part of background noise of growing up’Nearly one in five girls in the UK receive persistent, unwanted images online, according to a poll by the charity Barnardo’s, which warned that online misogyny was becoming an everyday part of childhood.Its survey of 4,000 young people found that a quarter of girls had been called degrading names online, while one in seven 13- to 15-year-olds had been asked to send a nude photo. Continue reading...