2 h. ago Government announces roll out of free breakfast clubs across 750 UK schools

It will be rolled out from Tuesday, April 22

Politics

3 h. ago DWP State Pension update – why you could still be waiting for key letter

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been issuing letters to all State Pension recipients in Great Britain, which outline the new payment rates for 2025/26

Politics

4 h. ago Nigel Farage's Reform UK party would win a General Election held now, poll shows

The More in Common polling of over 16,000 voters suggests Labour could lose 246 MPs, including 10 Cabinet ministers, with major losses in the so-called red wall

Politics

4 h. ago Swinney warns against ‘simple solutions’ offered by Reform UK

The Scottish First Minister said Nigel Farage’s party was contributing to the undermining of ‘some of the central values of our society’.

Events

4 h. ago Reform UK candidate backed means testing winter fuel payments despite Nigel Farage calling move ‘vindictive’

Sarah Pochin said winter fuel payments should go to those who need it and not those who don’t

Politics

5 h. ago Fifteen years after Deepwater Horizon, Trump is setting the stage for disaster | Terry Garcia

Cuts to science, environmental and safety agencies are a rejection of hard-won knowledge gained from studying the disaster that occurred 15 years agoLast month, I joined nearly 500 former and current employees of National Geographic, where I was executive vice-president and chief science and exploration officer for 17 years, urging the institution to take a public stance against the Trump administration’s reckless attacks on science. Our letter pointed out that the programs being dismantled are “imperative for the success of our country’s economy and are the foundation of our progress and wellbeing. They make us safer, stronger and more prosperous.” We warned that gutting them is a recipe for disaster.In the face of this danger, none of us can remain silent.Terry Garcia was National Geographic’s executive vice-president and chief science and exploration officer for 17 years. He also served as the assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and deputy administrator of N...

Politics

5 h. ago Overnight: Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark by Dan Richards review – night owls of all feathers

This immersive exploration of how we experience the nocturnal world is beautifully illuminatingAs children, we’re primed by literature to think of the night as a time for adventure as well as rest, but by early middle age, we’ve mostly ringfenced its darkness for sleep (or, for the insomniacs among us, anxieties about sleep’s absence). Author Dan Richards is no exception, and it took a nuit blanche stranded 3,600 metres up a Swiss mountain to reawaken his sense of night-time’s vast and varied potential. Hopelessly lost, he drew comfort from the occasional blips of aircraft in the sky above and from moving lights in the town below: others, too, were out and about, albeit in less of a fix. What could they all be doing?Overnight: Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark details his subsequent investigation into “the who and the how of the nocturnal world”. Its pages, immersive and personal, span encounters with night owls of all feathers, from the heroic (Richards hears tales of ...

Politics

7 h. ago Nigel Slater’s recipes for fettuccine with mussels and dill, and lemon Swiss roll

Combine classic pasta and a favourite old cake for a spring lunch full of bright colours and vivid flavoursMussels, ribbons of pasta, herbs and cream is a perfect marriage for a spring lunch. I sometimes fill a puff-pastry case with such an assembly or present it in a white porcelain dish with a splodge of creamy potato in the retro style of coquille St Jacques. (And when exactly did I last see that on a menu?) The mixture of shellfish and cream is one of my favourite pasta sauces, especially when I take a few minutes to remove the mussels from their shells.Any aniseed-scented herbs work, chervil or tarragon being good dill alternatives, but also fennel fronds. I even used celery the last time I made this, but you can also finely chop a bulb of fennel instead, letting it cook for a few minutes before you add the vermouth or white wine. You could also swap the mussels for clams, if you are the sort of person who doesn’t mind extricating the little chaps from their shells as you eat. ...

Politics

8 h. ago In pictures: Fur flies at annual Corgi Derby at Musselburgh Racecourse

The Corgi Derby was created to celebrate the breed which was the late Queen’s favourite

Politics

8 h. ago Rise of 'Marmite' Nigel Farage is 'good news' for John Swinney ahead of election

Professor John Curtice said the SNP "don't really have to worry" about losing supporters to Nigel Farage - unlike Scottish Labour and the Conservatives.

Politics

8 h. ago Why Reform winning big in the local elections could backfire for Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage needs to win big in the local elections and Runcorn by-election on 1 May to prove it is a potential party of government. But The Independent’s political editor David Maddox explains why victory could ultimately be Farage’s undoing

Politics

9 h. ago The May elections are a perfect opportunity for Nigel Farage to peddle his politics of grievance | Andrew Rawnlsey

An unpopular government and floundering official opposition creates fertile territory for ReformFor his next trick, perhaps Comrade Farage will belt out all the verses of The Red Flag and tell us that his favourite book is The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. Brother Nigel has popped up on the government’s left flank by demanding the immediate nationalisation of the steel industry. He’s also expressed a solidarity with trades unionists hitherto undetected in this longtime admirer of Margaret Thatcher.At an event at a working men’s club in one of the more deprived wards of County Durham, the old fraud even claimed to have a personal affinity with steelworkers because he used to be in the “metals business” himself. This was a disingenuous reference to his time as a trader at the London Metal Exchange, which involved long lunches in the City fuelled with copious quantities of port. Or maybe he was thinking of his gig as a paid “brand ambassador” for a firm that deals in gold bullion. ...

Politics

10 h. ago Red alert for all Gmail users as Google rushes to stop new 'attack'

Google is rushing to roll out protections for worrying new Gmail attack. How to stay safe.

Events

12 h. ago Mary Berry's simple ice cream recipe needs 4 ingredients and no special equipment

Mary Berry's berry ice cream uses just four ingredients and can be made in a few simple steps - and you don't need an ice cream maker either to get the job done

Events

13 h. ago Exposing ‘the illegals’: how KGB’s fake westerners infiltrated the Prague Spring

Kremlin’s most prized spies were sent in to Czechoslovakia to whip up the 1960s reform protests in a move then replicated across the eastern blocDuring the spring of 1968, as revolutionary sentiment began to grow in communist Czechoslovakia, a group of friendly foreigners began arriving in Prague, on flights from Helsinki and East Berlin, or by car from West Germany.Among them were 11 western European men, a Swiss woman named Maria Weber and a Lebanese carpet dealer called Oganes Sarajian. They were all supporters of what would become known as the Prague Spring, an ultimately doomed attempt to build a more liberal and free ­version of socialism and escape from Moscow’s suffocating embrace. Many of the visitors sought to get close to the movement’s leading lights, offering support in the battle to reform communist rule. Continue reading...

Events

16 h. ago Nigel Farage just as likely to be next PM as Keir Starmer, poll finds

The survey, by More in Common, reveals that the Reform UK leader is in joint poll position with Sir Keir Starmer to make it to Downing Street in four years time.

Politics

19 h. ago Miliband hits back at Farage over ‘nonsense and lies’ about net zero

The Energy Secretary said both Reform UK and the Tories were prepared to concoct falsehoods to ‘pursue their ideological agenda.’

Events

23 h. ago Miliband in blistering attack on Farage’s UK net zero ‘nonsense and lies’

The energy secretary has accused Reform UK’s leader of peddling dangerous falsehoods about renewable power• Tories and Reform use the steel crisis to knock clean energy. They’re wrong: it will secure all our futuresEd Miliband has torn into Nigel Farage and the Tories for peddling dangerous “nonsense and lies” by suggesting the UK’s net zero target is responsible for destroying Britain’s businesses, including its steel industry.Cabinet ministers are determined to fight back against the way Reform UK and the Conservatives have unceremoniously lambasted the climate crisis agenda for what they believe are nakedly political reasons before important local elections next month. Continue reading...

Events

24 h. ago Teen girl fighting for life after being knocked down in horror crash on Scots road

Emergency services raced to Haddington Road in Musselburgh after the alarm was raised at around 4.15pm on Friday, April 18.

Events

27 h. ago Voices: Nigel Farage’s party has been in talks with Liz Truss: Why this is a big mistake for Reform

The Reform leader has been tactically astute in his appeal to disillusioned Labour voters – until now, says John Rentoul

Politics