More than 40 charities write to Pat McFadden and review head Alan Milburn over fears of stricter eligibility rules

More than 40 of the UK’s leading charities have warned ministers against imposing tougher benefit sanctions or cuts on disabled young people, as the government considers how to encourage more young people into work.

The charities raised concerns that an imminent review of young people and work by Alan Milburn could bring in stricter eligibility rules for keeping disability benefits – or remove them altogether – as part of a wider plan to boost flagging youth job rates.

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With the departures of Pep Guardiola and Rodri it looks like the end of an era at City. Will Enzo Maresca be able to sustain their position as a domestic and continental superpower?

Guardian writers’ predicted position: 2nd (NB: this is not necessarily Jamie Jackson’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)

Last season’s position: 2nd

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Findings highlight importance of sleep health during middle age, particularly for those with lower socioeconomic status

Sleep that is extremely disrupted or that goes on too long could mean a loss of nine months from working life after the age of 50, a study has found.

It also found that women with no sleep disturbances had a longer working life from 50 to 68 than their male equivalents.

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Critics said I was attacking motorists. It’s more important for me that the city’s children are no longer breathing dangerous levels of pollution

• Ulez led to better lung size and function among London children, study finds

When I introduced London’s clean air zone – the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) – more than seven years ago, no city had ever attempted anything quite like it. At the time, the scheme in central London provoked fierce opposition. When I decided to expand it – first in 2021, to inner London, and then again in 2023 to the whole city, making it the biggest clean-air zone in the world – my detractors were louder still. I had, they claimed, declared war on drivers in blind pursuit of a policy that may not even work. All the mainstream political parties, including my own, were opposed. In recent years, though, those critics have gone quiet.

There is now a mountain of evidence to show that the Ulez has slashed air pollution and improved air quality across London, and research published by Imperial College London earlier this year showed that this is already saving lives. Between 2019 (when I first introduced the Ulez) and 2024, estimated deaths associated with air pollution in the capital fell by around 40%. But a new, independent study published by Queen Mary University of London today goes further still, showing how – by helping to clean up the capital’s air – the Ulez is improving the lungs and lives of London’s children.

Sadiq Khan is mayor of London

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Mykhailo Fedorov’s appeal is most direct challenge to Volodymyr Zelenskyy since Russian invasion in 2022

Ukraine’s recently dismissed former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has called for a wartime presidential election in the most direct political challenge to Volodymyr Zelenskyy since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

The politician, whose abrupt sacking last month triggered a wave of protests, said that Ukraine had to “restore a full democratic process even amid a prolonged war” in a video address released online late on Tuesday evening.

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Vanillasludge posted a photo:

Shoes in the Dryer's "Films Where Nothing Happens" (09/26/2025) is a leisurely ~2hr video essay that appreciates the charm of unhurried, understated movies rich in ordinary detail. Shorter video essays covering related topics include Every Frame a Painting's "Ozu in Color" (05/05/2026), The Quiet Frame's "This French Film Made Me a Better Filmmaker!" (12/27/2024), Screen 4's "Exploring Edward Yang and Taiwanese Cinema" (05/18/2022), and Lillian Crawford's "All About Her Mother" (02/22/2025). Incidentally, Rohmer's novel Élisabeth (introduced at LitHub) has recently joined Six Moral Tales (reviewed in 2010) in English translation. See also the Letterboxd lists, "'nothing happens' yeah but the vibes" and "The small intricacies of everyday life."

RAM prices have exploded over the past year, with some DDR5 kits approaching 500% year-over-year increases and a 128GB kit now selling for $3,399, which is more than 10 times its previous low. Tom's Hardware reports: Things improve as you step down the memory capacities and speed tiers, but not as much as we'd like. You're still looking at $392 for a memory kit that was just $72 last year. To reinforce the point, I pulled the latest average price data from PCPartPicker, comparing where we are today (August 2026) to exactly one year ago. This data is somewhat approximate, but it should be broadly accurate. [...] A standard 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5-5600 kit that would have cost you under $200 last summer is now demanding over $1,100. It is a 5x multiplier on a component that used to be a fairly boring and predictable line item in a PC build budget.

If you plan to just wait it out on an older AM4 or LGA1700 motherboard with DDR4, you'd better hope your memory holds out too, because DDR4 isn't safe from the fallout. With DDR5 entirely out of reach for most builders, the resulting scramble for older platforms running DDR4 memory has created a massive knock-on effect, and as a result, DDR4 kits are up anywhere from 120% to nearly 180% across the board. Nowhere near as bad as DDR5 pricing, but it still stings when a kit that was $105 last year is $281 this year.

This phenomenon is by no means exclusive to the US, either. German tech site ComputerBase have also been tracking this global trend, reporting just this week that average RAM prices in Europe have skyrocketed by 345% compared to September 2025. Their data shows the squeeze is bleeding into other components too, with hard drive and SSD prices both climbing over 125% in that same timeframe. In fact, the situation is so severe that hyperscale buyers have reportedly already locked in almost all of the global DRAM production capacity for 2027, handing over advance deposits to guarantee their supply of precious DRAM, which is now among the highest-value commodities in the world by weight; mainstream DRAM chips are worth over half as much per kilogram as solid gold.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nederland is na Duitsland de grootste Europese exporteur van apparatuur die de ontwikkeling en toepassing van kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) mogelijk maakt. Dat meldt kredietverzekeraar Atradius in een nieuw rapport. Ons land is goed voor 7 procent van de wereldwijde export van AI-gerelateerde goederen. De exportwaarde van ruim 80 miljard euro levert wereldwijd een elfde plaats op.

Nederland moet het vooral hebben van chipmachines en zijn logistieke functie. Dankzij ASML is Nederland wereldwijd de grootste exporteur van machines voor de productie van halfgeleiders. Daarnaast heeft Nederland een belangrijke logistieke rol bij de wederuitvoer van onder meer routers en netwerkswitches, schrijft Atradius.

De wereldwijde markt is "sterk geconcentreerd", merkt de kredietverzekeraar op. Zo zijn Aziatische economieën goed voor 65 procent van de AI-gerelateerde export. De vijftien grootste exportlanden vertegenwoordigen daarnaast tot 90 procent van de wereldwijde uitvoer.

Europa afhankelijk van buitenland

Europa blijft daarmee voor veel cruciale onderdelen afhankelijk van een klein aantal landen in Azië en van de Verenigde Staten. "Juist nu AI snel wordt opgeschaald, maakt deze concentratie de keten gevoeliger voor geopolitieke spanningen en handelsverstoringen", stelt econoom Theo Smid van Atradius. "Voor Europa is het daarom cruciaal om de afhankelijkheid waar mogelijk te verkleinen en de eigen positie in cruciale onderdelen van de AI-keten te versterken." Dat kan bijvoorbeeld door meer diversificatie van leveranciers en investeringen in Europese technologische capaciteit, denkt Smid.

Voor de ontwikkeling en toepassing van AI zijn tal van goederen nodig, waaronder grondstoffen, processors, geheugenchips, servers, netwerkapparatuur en machines voor de productie van chips. De wereldwijde export van deze AI-gerelateerde goederen vertegenwoordigde in 2024 een waarde van ruim 2,9 biljoen euro. Dat is ongeveer drie keer zoveel als tien jaar geleden. Nederland staat met een exportwaarde van ruim 80 miljard euro wereldwijd op de elfde plaats.