Triple

State pension was ‘built for a different era’, says former PM’s organisation amid pressure on government financesLabour has been urged by Tony Blair’s thinktank to scrap the pensions triple lock amid mounting pressure on government finances.With the Iran war threatening to derail public spending plans, the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) said the “unaffordable” manifesto pledge to maintain the triple lock should be torn up as part of a wider overhaul of the state pension. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Samaritans calls for mandatory training for firefighters amid rise in incidentsSuicide-related callouts to fire and rescue services in England have tripled in the last decade, with Samaritans now calling for mandatory training for firefighters, who they say are struggling to deal with the increase in traumatic incidents.New figures show that fire services in England attended 3,250 suicide callouts in the year ending September 2025, the equivalent to 62 callouts a week. This was up from 997 callouts in 2009-10 when records begin.In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email [email protected] or [email protected]. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org Continue reading...

More than 50% of voters at first AGM under new leadership oppose plans to scrap climate reportingBP’s board has suffered a triple climate rebellion in its first shareholder meeting since appointing new leadership to steer the embattled oil company.More than 50% of shareholders voting at the company’s annual general meeting (AGM) came out against its plans to scrap its existing climate reporting, and its resolution to replace in-person annual shareholder meetings – a lightning rod for climate protest in recent years – with online-only events. Continue reading...

Legal charity argues ‘job lot’ prosecution approach is unjust and primarily targets young black menJoint enterprise cases in England and Wales have soared over the past four decades, according to a report calling for a change in the law so that individuals are held accountable only for their own actions.The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) also found sentences have become harsher under the legal doctrine, which allows for individuals to be convicted of crimes they did not physically carry out if they were present at the scene or held an association with the principal culprit. Continue reading...

Struggling pubs reel from rising business rates, wages and energy bills, with customers at limit of what they will payNick Evans is staring in vain at columns of numbers, trying to make them add up to a profit. He is a co-owner of the Old Crown Coaching Inn in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, a pub and hotel whose rich history is etched into its crooked wooden beams and cosy snugs.Oliver Cromwell stayed here in 1645. A room believed to have been used by the notoriously severe “hanging judge” Lord Jeffreys to condemn rebels now stages happier encounters: it is the honeymoon suite. Continue reading...

BFI and National Portrait Gallery to mark centenary of the film star’s birth with ‘the summer of Marilyn’Though often reduced to a sex symbol frozen in time, or a tragic figure at the centre of several scandals, Marilyn Monroe was something far more subversive, according to two exhibitions that will herald what has been nicknamed “the summer of Marilyn”.To mark the centenary of her birth, Monroe is being celebrated by leading British cultural institutions as a performer of sharp comic intelligence, a canny architect of her own image, and a woman who reshaped the possibilities for female stardom on screen. Continue reading...

California, Nevada and Arizona face record highs, with heat alerts and park trail closures as temperatures spikeStates across the US south-west recorded blistering temperatures at the tail end of winter, with forecasts indicating hotter days are still to come.California, Nevada and Arizona were all under heat warnings on Thursday amid record-breaking temperatures. Continue reading...

Powerful storm chain to affect 200 million in US as it carries blizzard conditions, damaging winds and thunderstormsWinter’s grip has yet to release as an erratic patchwork of severe weather moved across much of the US, dumping heavy snow and making roads impassable in the upper midwest while damaging high winds swept across the Plains.As portions of the mid-south readied for thunderstorms, forecasters said the storms will spread eastward and by Monday threaten a large swath of the eastern US, with mid-Atlantic states and Washington DC at greatest risk for high winds and tornadoes. Continue reading...