26 m. ago High Wycombe woman, 33, vanishes from home in pyjamas at night as police launch search

Thames Valley Police have launched an urgent search for a 33-year-old High Wycombe woman who has vanished from her home late at night

Events

32 m. ago Australia turn up the heat on England: Ashes third Test, day two – live

Australia all out for 371; England fume over Snicko call Ashes top 100 | Follow on Bluesky | Email MartinThe consensus is that today and tomorrow will be the best days to bat. England need to go huge, because they won’t fancy chasing too many against Nathan Lyon on day five.“As the cliche has it, it’s a crucial first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh hour,” writes Gary Naylor. “Are Australia bringing 871 Test wickets into an already winning team or imbalancing their attack with a couple of rusty bowlers? Are England Bazball zealots or pragmatic pros? Did 2006 happen at all? Feels like the opening credits of an episode of Soap.” Continue reading...

Society

33 m. ago Heating bills warning over 4pm change affecting all households

You can try several things to cut your heating bills

Events

44 m. ago Pension and NI threshold warning as people 'will lose out' over change

Shadow Treasury minister Mark Garnier said there was something to “hate” about it for everyone

Events

48 m. ago Why west Cornwall is the perfect place to mark the winter solstice

With ancient standing stones and modern midwinter festivals, the West Penwith peninsula is a land of magic and mysteryThe light is fading fast as I stand inside Tregeseal stone circle near St Just. The granite stones of the circle are luminous in this sombre landscape, like pale, inquisitive ghosts gathered round to see what we’re up to. Above us, a sea of withered bracken and gorse rises to Carn Kenidjack, the sinister rock outcrop that dominates the naked skyline. At night, this moor is said to be frequented by pixies and demons, and sometimes the devil himself rides out in search of lost souls.Unbothered by any supernatural threat, we are gazing seawards, towards the smudges on the horizon that are the distant Isles of Scilly. The clouds crack open and a flood of golden light falls over the islands. My companion, archaeoastronomer Carolyn Kennett, and I gasp. It is marvellous natural theatre which may have been enjoyed by the people who built this circle 4,000 years ago. Continue...

Politics

76 m. ago Sick couple jailed after leaving baby with fractured skull, broken wrists and brain damage

WARNING, DISTRESSING CONTENT: Craig Neill and Amy Cave have been jailed after a baby was left with life-threatening injuries, having been swung or thrown against a wall

Events

78 m. ago Sir Ian McKellen lends his support as Number One Apple Peeler, as our Winter Appeal passes £2.6M

“Without places like this, I would be starving.” Ian McKellen and Evgeny Lebedev visit a doughty project getting life-saving fresh food from a funded partner of our appeal

Economics

83 m. ago 'I have to live the rest of my life without my son... I just want this change to happen'

Eli Testa was tragically killed after a cross on top of a gravestone fell on him in Rawtenstall

Politics

89 m. ago Golf v woke: Why tonight’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year has the potential to be the most controversial ever

Comment: After the year of his life, the award should go to Rory McIlroy - though it does not make it a scandal if the public decides to crown someone else

Sport

97 m. ago 'At 4am on a Sunday morning, I faced the worst moment of my life'

On Mother’s Day 2021, Natalie Bolton’s husband suddenly collapsed and died at home. In the years since, she has faced grief, PTSD, and the challenge of rebuilding her life.

Politics

1 hour ago How city living is persuading Glaswegian tawny owls to change their hunting habits

In bad news for rats, tawny owls are adapting to life on brightly lit city streets

Politics

1 hour ago Ashes 2025 live score: England face huge first innings deficit as batting fails to fire again

Jofra Archer took the final two Australian wickets in the morning as the hosts were bowled out for 371

Events

2 h. ago DWP update as 256,000 savers set to get higher payments in major pension change

Large numbers of pension scheme members are affected by the historic issue - and an update has been provided to MPs that could be highly significant

Economics

2 h. ago Check your change for four coins with mistakes worth over £1,000

Four UK coins could be worth over £1,100 if you find them in your change

Economics

2 h. ago Asda in major customer update as shake up sees big changes on the shelves

Asda is battling to win back shoppers

Economics

2 h. ago Arab female directors drive change at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah

Arab female film directors are reshaping Arab cinema by telling untold stories and claiming space in a traditionally male-dominated industry

Culture

2 h. ago The shortest day of the year is descending on the Northern Hemisphere. Here's what to know

Sunday marks the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, signaling the start of astronomical winter

Politics

2 h. ago ‘It’s an open invasion’: how millions of quagga mussels changed Lake Geneva for ever

The molluscs are decimating food chains in Switzerland, have devastated the Great Lakes in the US, and this week were spotted in Northern Ireland for the first timeLike cholesterol clogging up an artery, it took just a couple of years for the quagga mussels to infiltrate the 5km (3-mile) highway of pipes under the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne (EPFL). By the time anyone realised what was going on, it was too late. The power of some heat exchangers had dropped by a third, blocked with ground-up shells.The air conditioning faltered, and buildings that should have been less than 24C in the summer heat couldn’t get below 26 to 27C. The invasive mollusc had infiltrated pipes that suck cold water from a depth of 75 metres (250ft) in Lake Geneva to cool buildings. “It’s an open invasion,” says Mathurin Dupanier, utilities operations manager at EPFL.Mathurin Dupanier indicates the water cooling systems that were blocked by the invasive quagga mussels. Photographs: Phoebe We...

Events

2 h. ago ‘Pretty birds and silly moos’: the women behind the Sex Discrimination Act

In the 50 years since equal rights for women were enshrined in UK law, the campaigners have been reduced to caricatures, or forgotten. But their struggle is worth rememberingCelia Brayfield was at her desk in the Femail section of the Daily Mail’s Fleet Street office when an editor called her over. It was July and Wimbledon had started. “He said: ‘We want you to go down and get into the women’s changing rooms and report on lesbian behaviour.’ One didn’t normally swear at that time but I declined. That was the attitude then,” she told me.From the late 1960s until the early 70s, Brayfield was one of a small group of female journalists working on women’s pages in newspapers. “We were dealing with everyday sexism on an unbelievable scale,” she said. “You learned to wear trousers or take the lift because if you took the stairs someone would try to look up your skirt. But then you couldn’t go to a lot of press conference venues in trousers. In the Savoy, for example, women in trousers wer...

Events

2 h. ago When panto goes horribly, painfully wrong: ‘it was the worst chafing of my life’

Panto season is upon us, and for the performers, anything could happen. Actors recall their most excruciating moments – from a panic attack while dressed as a cow, to dripping blood while in flight as Peter PanWhen panto goes wrong, the show must always go on. And there is a lot that could go wrong: malfunctioning pyrotechnics, panic attacks, chafing thighs, broken props, broken bones, bruised egos – and that’s before you get live animals involved. Missed cues and forgotten lines are small potatoes by comparison. So with panto season once again in full swing, we speak to seasoned professionals about the exhausting, error-laden, explosive truth behind the most “magical” season of the year.Adam Buksh played The Genie in Aladdin at Howden Park Centre, Livingston, West Lothian, in 2013 It was halfway through the show when Aladdin got trapped in the cave. Our version was based on the original story, One Thousand and One Nights (not Disney’s), in which Aladdin possesses two magical entiti...

Politics