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Inquiry into Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust follows deaths and serious injuries related to maternity care

An NHS trust is being investigated on suspicion of corporate manslaughter after the deaths and severe harm of potentially more than 2,000 babies and women in Nottinghamshire.

Police are reviewing more than 200 alleged failures of maternity care at Nottingham university hospitals (NUH) NHS trust but this figure could rise to about 2,500.

Researchers say people born more recently, particularly women, have lower risk at same age as their grandparents

People born more recently are less likely to have dementia at any given age than earlier generations, research suggests, with the trend more pronounced in women.

According to the World Health Organization, in 2021 there were 57 million people worldwide living with dementia, with women disproportionately affected. However, while the risk of dementia increases with age, experts have long stressed it is not not an inevitability of getting older.

The reproductive health giant is navigating a loss of federal funding and fresh threats from multiple directions

At least 20 Planned Parenthood clinics across seven states have shuttered since the start of 2025 or have announced plans to close soon – closures that come amid immense financial and political turbulence for the reproductive health giant as the United States continues to grapple with the fallout from the end of Roe v Wade.

The Planned Parenthood network, which operates nearly 600 clinics through a web of independent regional affiliates and is overseen by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, is facing a number of threats from the Trump administration. A Guardian analysis has found that Planned Parenthood closures have occurred or are in the works across six affiliates that maintain clinics in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Utah and Vermont.

One pharmacist described scarcity of life-saving Creon as ‘worst stock shortage’ they have dealt with

People with pancreatic cancer are eating only one meal a day because of an acute shortage of a drug that helps them digest their food.

Patients with cystic fibrosis and pancreatitis are also affected by the widespread scarcity of Creon, a form of pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy (PERT).

Frustration and anger mount as Trump administration contemplates new trials and restrictions for Covid vaccines

As the Trump administration contemplates new clinical trials for Covid boosters and moves to restrict Covid vaccines for children and others, parents whose children participated in the clinical trials expressed anger and dismay.

“It’s really devastating to see this evidence base officially ignored and discarded,” said Sophia Bessias, a parent in North Carolina whose two- and four-year-old kids were part of the Pfizer pediatric vaccine trial.

What we want is quick, clever fixes. What we need is quite different: the ability to tolerate intolerable feelings, to sustainably change and grow

When people seek therapy – and I know this, because I too was once a person seeking therapy – we often want strategies, techniques and tools for our toolboxes. We want to be asked questions and to know the answers; we want to ask questions and to be given answers. We believe that these are the things we need to build a better life.

Now that I am a patient in psychoanalysis, and I am a psychodynamic psychotherapist treating patients, I can see why my therapist needed to frustrate this desire, and offer me the opposite. What I wanted was to manage myself out of my emotions rather than feel them, to hack my life rather than live it – and that makes for a shallower existence, not a better one.

Exclusive: Cost-saving for 2024-25 follows pledge by Wes Streeting to cut the amount going to agencies by 30%

Spending on agency staff across the NHS in England dropped by almost £1bn in the last financial year, ministers have said, after a pledge by Wes Streeting to cut the amount going to agencies by 30%.

According to the Department of Health and Social Care, the total spent by trusts on agency staff during 2024-25 was nearly £1bn lower than the previous year.

Sadiq Khan seeking ‘urgent review’ of decision to ban adverts from British Pregnancy Advisory Service

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has stepped in to reverse a ban on adverts on the London transport network calling for abortion to be decriminalised.

It is understood that the mayor is seeking an “urgent review” of a Transport for London (TfL) decision to ban the adverts from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas) charity on the grounds they may bring the Metropolitan police into disrepute.

In today’s newsletter: Reform’s latest policy shift echoes strategies seen in Europe’s far right. Will this approach gain traction in the UK?

Good morning. In 2023, Nigel Farage went on a podcast to decry what he described as a culture of “welfarism” in the UK, insisting it was making millions of people in the country lazy. “‘I’m too fat, I’m too stupid, I’m too lazy, I don’t get out of bed in the morning. I smoke drugs, give me money’,” he said. “‘I don’t need to work, the state will provide for me’ … We cannot afford it.”

Less than two years later, the self-styled free-market crusader seems to be singing a different tune. Last week, he publicly backed the removal of the two-child benefit cap – a move that would lift 350,000 children out of poverty overnight and ease hardship for 700,000 more.

Ukraine | Ukraine has launched a “large-scale” drone attack against Russian military bombers in Siberia, striking more than 40 warplanes thousands of miles from its own territory. On the eve of peace talks, the drone attack on four separate airfields was part of a sharp ramping up of the three-year war.

Israel-Gaza war | More than 30 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire on Sunday as they went to an aid distribution point in Gaza, according to witnesses. Israeli forces were said to have opened fire as Palestinians headed for the aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Poland | The populist-right opposition candidate Karol Nawrocki has won the presidential race in an extremely close contest. A pro-Trump nationalist, Nawrocki beat the pro-European Warsaw mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, in a major blow for Donald Tusk’s coalition government.

Defence | Britain needs to be ready to fight a war in Europe or the Atlantic, a strategic defence review will conclude. But the plan, to be launched on Monday, it is not expected to contain any additional spending commitments.

Health | Exercise can reduce the risk of cancer patients dying by a third, stop tumours coming back and is even more effective than drugs, according to the results of a landmark trial that could transform health guidelines worldwide.

Politicians who are serious about public health can’t ignore the rising toll of illness and death linked to drinking

When the government’s 10-year health plan is published in July, prevention is expected to get a promotion. This won’t be the first time that ministers will have stressed the importance of healthy lifestyles. But nine months after Wes Streeting announced that a shift from treatment to prevention would be one of the principles governing Labour’s stewardship of the NHS, we are just a few weeks away from knowing how the idea will be put into practice, and turned into a narrative for voters.

In recent years, obesity has dominated discussions of the rising burden of chronic illness. But alcohol, too, is expected to feature in sections of the plan dealing with public health. Alcohol-related deaths in the UK reached a record high of 10,473 in 2023, with men more than twice as likely to die as women, and over-55s drinking far more than younger adults. The highest death rates are in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

While a test was quickly developed, weaknesses in the early pandemic response included no plan for nationwide testing and ineffective contact tracing

The Covid inquiry has spent the past three weeks on the UK’s attempts to control the pandemic through test, trace and isolation. Here we look at the key findings from the module and experts’ recommendations for future pandemic preparedness.

Margaret Tubridy, 69, took part in landmark study that reveals the role of exercise in preventing return of disease

• Exercise ‘better than drugs’ after cancer treatment, international trial finds

A landmark study shows exercise can reduce the risk of cancer patients dying by more than a third.

The world’s first randomised clinical trial specifically evaluated if a structured exercise regime after treatment could reduce the risk of recurrence or new cancers in patients.

First clear evidence that structured exercise regime reduces risk of dying by a third, can stop tumours coming back or a new cancer developing

• ‘Now I do weight training’: how exercise helped one patient stay free of cancer

Exercise can reduce the risk of cancer patients dying by a third, stop tumours coming back and is even more effective than drugs, according to the results of a landmark trial that could transform health guidelines worldwide.

For decades, doctors have recommended adopting a healthy lifestyle to lower the risk of developing cancer. But until now there has been little evidence of the impact it could have after diagnosis, with little support for incorporating exercise into patients’ routines.

Industry giant paid for Lord Vaizey’s trip to Switzerland before he tabled amendment to tobacco and vapes bill

A Conservative peer proposed delaying the UK’s proposed ban on heated tobacco, weeks after a leading cigarette company paid for him to visit its research facility in Switzerland.

The tobacco and vapes bill would gradually raise the age at which consumers can buy cigarettes and other tobacco products, making the UK the first major economy to chart a course towards phasing out tobacco altogether.

Begging doctors for tests, I worried that I was missing something and heading for an early death. Would understanding the roots of my health anxiety lead me to a cure?

Throughout my adolescence and into my mid-20s, I spent a lot of time trying to understand my body. I was unwell, that much was certain. The question of exactly what was wrong with me was one to which I applied myself studiously. I had theories, of course. Looking back, these tended to change quite frequently, and yet the fear was always the same: in short, that I was dying, that I had some dreadful and no doubt painful disease that, for all my worrying, I had carelessly allowed to reach the point at which it had become incurable.

This started at university, when I developed a headache that didn’t go away. The pain wasn’t severe, but it was constant – accompanied by a strange feeling of belatedness that told me it had already been going on for some time. How long, exactly, I couldn’t say – weeks, definitely. Maybe it had been years.