‘Radical’ report likely to influence party’s platform also proposes abolishing inheritance and capital gains taxes

A thinktank linked to Reform UK has called for the abolition of the state pension and £75bn worth of sweeping tax cuts in a “radical” report likely to influence the party’s platform for the next election.

The Centre for a Better Britain’s (CFABB) report – which also calls for weaker rules for UK banks and Trump-style investment accounts offering £1,000 to newborns – will be formally launched at a private event with City executives on Wednesday.

New report predicts a heavy toll from Nigeria to the US – and comes on top of existing impacts of the climate crisis

More than 450,000 people are projected to die from the additional heat brought by the super El Niño in the next six months, according to estimates by climate scientists.

The toll is on top of the early deaths resulting from temperatures already driven up by the climate crisis. It will strike across the globe, from Indonesia to India, and Nigeria to the US. Many further deaths are expected from the droughts, wildfires and flooding that El Niños bring.

A growing number of men, including singers Shaggy and Harry Styles, are taking up pilates. When I realised I could no longer touch my toes, I decided to try it out

I realised something needed to change when I nearly toppled over trying to tie my shoelaces. I was on a busy high street, with people rushing past holding shopping bags, when I saw my open shoelace spooled on the ground. I bent down to deal with it and felt gravity move against me. Only a quick flail of my arms stopped me from faceplanting. When I raised myself back upright, I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. This can’t be right, I thought.

Bracing my foot on a bin to finally fix my shoelace, it dawned on me. I’d become rusty. My core strength was nonexistent, as was my flexibility. Years behind a desk had taken a toll, not helped by an after-work routine of watching TV or playing video games on the sofa. But after getting home and doing some research (yes, from my sofa), I found a potential remedy: pilates.

The actors co-star in a lightly fictionalised meta-comedy about their real-life bromance – and possible sharing of parents. It’s a tasty little treat

The cheek! The indulgence! The privilege! Did anyone, anywhere in 2026, look up from news of a world in flames and say, what we really need now is a meta-comedy where two actors play gently self-satirising fictional versions of themselves?

They did not, and yet here are Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. They once co-starred in the first season of True Detective, one of TV’s darkest and best crime dramas, but otherwise their personae have them as lifelong besties who are both free spirits, unencumbered by the rules of the fame game – not the sort of chaps who would stop and think about how their self-referential comedy bagatelle might be received. In Brothers, they portray themselves as blokes who don’t stop and think, full stop.

Brothers is on Apple TV

The French artist has stalked people, posed as a hotel maid to get into rooms, and filmed her mother’s last breath. Has she any regrets? Non! As a major UK show opens, she recalls her career highs

I’ve read enough interviews with Sophie Calle to know that the conversation ahead could be tricky. France’s most famous conceptual artist can be a touch evasive. Which is why I’m so surprised by the woman before me, who is friendly and seemingly open, all smiles. She’s wearing big tinted glasses, and behind them I picture her eyes twinkling. Then, 10 minutes in, she tells me she is obsessed with absence. When I ask why, she says: “Why do you live in England? Why are you wearing that sweater? I am not here to do therapy with you.”

She is talking to me from the same Paris apartment she has been living in for almost 50 years. Hanging from the ceiling is a disco ball, and, alongside pictures and books, there are boxes that I imagine are filled with the innermost thoughts and feelings of her subjects. Since the early 1980s, Calle has made a name for herself with art that is at once intimate and detached, morbid and playful, immersing us in the lives of others – and in her own life, too. With a camera and a notebook in hand, she has invited strangers to sleep in her bed, posed as a hotel maid to document the belongings of guests, and called everyone in a lost address book to build a peculiarly tender portrait of its owner. Now, at 72, she is about to open her first big show in the UK for nearly two decades.

The US relationship is stabilising, but how will Europe face up to Russia and China if President Le Pen is in power?

I addressed a group of more than 100 European ambassadors recently on the big challenges facing the continent this year and next. My main point to these senior diplomats was that, perhaps counterintuitively, Europe’s biggest external challenges over the next 12 months will come from Russia and China, rather than the US.

Europe’s relationship with Trump’s America remains difficult. The US president has weakened confidence in Nato, raised new transatlantic trade tensions and introduced uncertainty into everything from US support for Ukraine to his territorial designs on Greenland. Yet paradoxically, and notwithstanding Trump’s latest tariff threats over the EU’s outreach to Canada, the transatlantic relationship is becoming the more stable part of Europe’s external environment. Not stable, but more stable.

Mujtaba Rahman is the managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm

New rice varieties give hope that farmers can overcome the climate emergency and a warmer future that threatens harvests

When schoolchildren in Shiroishi were enlisted to plant rice seedlings in June, Shinto priests blessed the land and asked the deities for a bountiful crop. Judging by the fields behind farmer Haruki Kawasaki, their prayers have been answered.

The 63-year-old is preparing to harvest this year’s crop of hinatamaru, a variety of rice whose plump grains have thrived despite exposure to another hot and dry summer, conditions that typically punish rice yields.

WASHINGTON (ANP) - Nederland beschikt met chipmachinemaker ASML en andere bedrijven over "een hightech-ecosysteem van wereldklasse". Maar de groei wordt geremd door een reeks knelpunten, stelt het Internationaal Monetair Fonds (IMF) in een nieuwe publicatie. Zo is volgens het fonds sprake van tekorten aan geschikt personeel en vakkennis.

De organisatie uit Washington wijst op obstakels die in Nederland spelen. Het overvolle elektriciteitsnet hindert de expansie van bedrijven en jaagt hen op extra kosten. Ook stipt het IMF aan dat snelgroeiende bedrijven in Nederland soms moeite hebben met het vinden van financiering.

Volgens economen van het IMF is het zaak dat Nederland vaart maakt bij de aanpak van grote dossiers als netcongestie en stikstofproblemen die op de vergunningverlening drukken. De plannen om knelpunten aan te pakken zijn er, ziet het fonds. Maar de uitvoering ervan moet wel gebeuren. Een initiatief als Project Beethoven, waarbij miljarden euro's worden gestoken in een sterker ondernemingsklimaat voor de chipsector rond Eindhoven, biedt volgens het IMF "waardevolle lessen over hoe het beleid beter kan worden uitgevoerd".

'Dubbele blootstelling'

Een ander probleem is dat de markt voor hightechbedrijven hier maar beperkt is. "Hoewel Nederland uitblinkt in het genereren van ideeën en jonge bedrijven, hangt het opschalen daarvan af van de toegang tot grotere, geïntegreerde markten." Met beleid op Europees niveau moet het volgens het IMF wel mogelijk zijn om sterkere voorwaarden te scheppen waarin hightechbedrijven kunnen opschalen, bijvoorbeeld door grensoverschrijdende vraag te stimuleren en barrières weg te nemen.

Het IMF wijst ook op het belang van versterking van de weerbaarheid van hightechbedrijven. "Hightechexport is sterk afhankelijk van geïmporteerde halffabricaten, en een groeiend deel daarvan is afkomstig van buiten de EU. Tegelijkertijd is de export geconcentreerd in een handjevol markten, met name Duitsland, de Verenigde Staten en China." Volgens het fonds is deze 'dubbele blootstelling' steeds meer een bron van onzekerheid en kwetsbaarheid door het oplopen van geopolitieke spanningen in de wereld. De IMF-deskundigen pleiten voor meer aandacht voor bijvoorbeeld de spreiding van toeleveringsketens.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Maple Leaf Duck Breast, Farro, Black Mission Figs, Plums, Laura Chenel Goat Cheese, Toasted Hazelnuts, Balsamic Reduction

ajpscs posted a photo:

MOVEMENT in MOTION
EXPOSE MORE
© ajpscs

Als sokken ín je overtrek terecht kunnen komen, waarom komen ze er dan niet meer uit?

Black Diamond Images has added a photo to the pool:

Copyright - All Rights Reserved - Black Diamond Images

Peter Nessling, a keen photographer, visited Raintrees on 29th August 2026. He was kind enough to be my subject to allow me to create this Repeat Subject Panorama.