Author: Lucas Bennett

An Iranian man and a woman have been detained by police after attempting to gain unauthorised entry to HM Naval Base Clyde at Faslane, the home of Britain’s entire nuclear submarine fleet. Police Scotland confirmed the pair — a 34-year-old man and a 31-year-old woman — were arrested at the base near Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute, at around 5pm on Thursday. The nationality of the woman has not been disclosed. Inquiries are described as ongoing. The Royal Navy confirmed the two individuals had made an unsuccessful attempt to enter the site, adding that it would not be offering further comment…

Crossbows could soon be banned from sale in the UK, with existing owners required to obtain a licence under sweeping new proposals put forward by the Government following a series of fatal incidents involving the weapons. The Home Office is consulting on measures that would prohibit the purchase of crossbows outright while creating a registration framework for people who already own one. Anyone wishing to keep their crossbow would need to pass suitability checks as part of the licensing process. The move comes after growing concern that crossbows are too easily obtained, including through online retailers, without any checks or…

Energy markets were rattled and diplomatic tensions sharply escalated after Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas facility this week, prompting Iranian retaliation against an energy complex in Qatar and triggering a fierce warning from US President Donald Trump. Trump took to his Truth Social platform to put Iran on notice, threatening that the United States would “massively blow up” the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field if Iran struck Qatar’s liquefied natural gas infrastructure again — and stated the action could be taken with or without Israeli involvement. The South Pars field is part of the world’s largest natural…

The Bank of England has voted to keep interest rates on hold at 3.75%, putting the brakes on a run of cuts that had been widely anticipated before the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East. The decision, announced at midday on Thursday, marks a significant shift in the outlook for UK borrowing costs. As recently as February, most economists had forecast at least two rate cuts this year, with many expecting the first to come at today’s meeting. The outbreak of the US-Israeli war with Iran has since upended those predictions entirely. Why the Bank Has Paused The primary…

Britain’s meningitis outbreak in Kent has been declared a national incident after cases jumped overnight to 20, with health officials warning the situation remains “explosive” and the death toll could still rise.Five new cases were confirmed in the hours overnight, bringing the total under investigation by the UK Health Security Agency to 20, of which nine have been laboratory confirmed and six identified as the MenB strain. Two young people have already died — a sixth-form student named Juliette from Faversham and a 21-year-old University of Kent student.The UKHSA’s chief executive Dr Susan Hopkins described the outbreak as having the…

Scientists have confirmed what many feared but few wanted to believe: the human body is full of plastic. Not traces. Not theory. Actual fragments of degraded plastic — the same material used in bottles, food packaging and plastic bags — sitting inside the brain, heart, arteries, liver, kidneys, lungs, and even in newborns from the moment they are born. The scale of what researchers have found in recent studies is difficult to take in. A study published in Nature Medicine examined brain tissue taken from people who died in 2016 and again in 2024. The results showed that by 2024,…

Two young people are dead and fifteen more are in hospital after a meningitis outbreak tore through Canterbury in a matter of days — and the strain behind it is one that the vast majority of British university students have no protection against. The victims are a sixth-form pupil at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in Faversham and a student at the University of Kent. Some of those hospitalised are understood to have been placed in an induced coma. ITV Meridian Health officials are now scrambling to contain the damage, but the question being asked by families and doctors alike is…

Half a million additional people could die prematurely every year by 2050 as climbing global temperatures make physical activity increasingly dangerous or impossible, according to a major new study spanning more than 150 countries. The research, published in The Lancet Global Health, tracked data from 156 nations between 2000 and 2022 and found a clear relationship between prolonged periods of extreme heat and declining activity levels across populations. Each extra month where average temperatures exceeded 27.8°C was associated with a 1.5 percentage point increase in physical inactivity globally — a figure that rose to 1.85 points in lower-income nations. Researchers…

An anonymous creator has built a near-million-strong Instagram following using a fake AI-generated military persona aligned with Donald Trump, while quietly directing followers toward paid adult subscription content — in what appears to breach the rules of multiple platforms simultaneously. The account, operating under the name Jessica Foster, presents itself as a glamorous US Army servicewoman with apparent access to senior political figures, including staged images alongside Trump and at what is captioned as a White House peace conference. The profile bio states “america first” and the account has grown to close to one million followers since launching in December…

A ringleader who took part in at least four smash-and-grab burglaries across some of London’s most upmarket streets has been jailed for six years, as a court handed down sentences to seven men behind a wave of raids that stripped high-end stores of more than £100,000 in goods. The offending — carried out across a four-month window in 2025 — stretched from Kensington and Westminster to Marylebone, with the gang targeting jewellers, clothing boutiques, a fine art dealer and a café. In one raid on Edgeware Road, two men with sledgehammers made off with nearly £60,000 in watches and jewellery…