The BBC is axing Football Focus – here’s what it means for sports broadcasting
The BBC has announced the end of one of its longest-running programmes, Football Focus. It’s been a fixture of Saturday lunchtimes since 1974. But the final whistle will blow when this season finishes. The BBC has blamed a decline in audience for the BBC One broadcast as fans now get their pre-match news and views […]
Ukraine’s killer robots show how war is changing
The Droid TW 12.7, made by Devdroid, has been used in many of the attacks involving ground robots in Ukraine. Devdroid, CC BY For the first time, Ukraine has captured a Russian position using only ground robots and aerial drones, reports suggest. In a message posted on social media on April 14, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr […]
Could the Strait of Malacca be the next global flashpoint?
Tanker ships off the coast of Singapore, a key port in the Strait of Malacca. Adwo / Shutterstock While recent global attention has focused on the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively held closed since late February in a move that has disrupted world energy supplies, a quieter but also important development has been […]
Claim check: does your pint of beer really come with a ‘surprising health benefit’?
Face Portraits/Shutterstock.com Beer could come with a “surprising health benefit”, according to a new report from the BBC. This must be pleasing news for beer drinkers everywhere. But what did the new study the BBC report was based on actually say? And does it stand up to scrutiny? The study, published in the Journal of […]
Arandora Star sinking: a lesser known Nazi war crime that spawned generations of conspiracy theories
Just days before the Battle of Britain began in July 1940, more than 800 civilians were killed off the coast of Ireland when a German U-Boat sank a converted five-star cruise ship. The people on board were German, Austrian and Italian internees – deemed enemy aliens by the UK government – who were being deported […]
How freak weather and an old-fashioned grid exacerbate energy insecurity
F01 PHOTO/Shutterstock The Iran crisis is reshaping how the world produces, uses and secures energy. This is no temporary shock. It has become a structural stress test of energy systems, industrial production and government strategy. We’ve seen this in the recent past: household energy bills in 2024 were still about 4% higher than in 2019, […]
Healthy life expectancy falls in the UK – and the decline is worse among women
LittlePigPower/Shutterstock.com Healthy life expectancy in the UK – the years we can expect to live in good health – has fallen by more than two years over the past decade, according to a new Health Foundation analysis. The decline has been larger for women than for men – a finding the report says raises “concerns […]
Shortages, substitutes and uncertainty: the new reality of drugs supplies
Yaroslav Astakhov/Shutterstock.com The reliable supply of drugs is fundamental to any healthcare system, yet shortages remain a persistent problem. Disruptions arise from a range of causes: manufacturing failures, fluctuating demand, regulatory changes and wars. Around 60% of drug shortages are linked to manufacturing bottlenecks, while insufficient reserves of both finished products and raw ingredients continue […]
Headspace: can our brains get full?
Maciej Bledowski/Shutterstock.com My husband was recently describing something that happened on a past holiday. It wasn’t a significant event, but it sounded pleasant. I, however, had no recollection of what he was telling me. He couldn’t quite believe it. We know that “recollections may differ”, but how can it be so different? And why do […]
The Russian resistance no one is talking about
You could be forgiven for thinking everyone in Russia either supports the war in Ukraine or is too scared to do anything about it. A dominant narrative is that Russian civil society is passive, complicit or has been quashed to the point of being neutralised. Some elements of this may be true. Following the full-scale […]