US and Canada scramble jets to intercept Russian military planes off Alaska

The US and Canada scrambled fighter jets to identify and intercept four Russian military planes off Alaska, amid growing concern over Moscow’s incursions into Nato airspace.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said it had detected and tracked two Russian Tu-95s and two Su-35s operating in the Alaskan Air Defence Identification Zone. They did not enter US or Canadian sovereign airspace.

NORAD said it responded by mobilising an E-3, four F-16s, and four KC-135 tanker aircraft.

The Alaskan Air Defence Identification Zone is an area of international airspace that requires the ready identification of all aircraft for national security purposes, NORAD said.

The incident follows several Russian incursions into Nato airspace in the past two weeks. Last Friday, three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets violated Estonia’s airspace for 12 minutes before Nato Italian fighter jets escorted them out.

It came after some 20 Russian drones entered Polish airspace on 10 September, prompting Nato jets to shoot some of them down.

Denmark also reported drone activity at several of its airports earlier this week, which it said was likely to have been done by a “professional actor”. Moscow has denied involvement.

Trump ‘promised Arab leaders he would not let Israel annex the West Bank’

US president Donald Trump promised Arab leaders that he would not let Israel annex the occupied West Bank, according to reports.

Several Israeli ministers in prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government have called for the annexation of the West Bank, which Israel has subjected to a military occupation since 1967, in response to the growing global recognition of a Palestinian state.

Arab leaders, angered by Mr Trump’s support for Mr Netanyahu, and Western officials have expressed concerns that the US president could recognise Israeli sovereignty over illegal settlements in the West Bank in retaliation for the UK, Australia, France and others deciding to recognise Palestine.

Mr Trump, however, has privately reassured Arab leaders during a closed-door meeting at the UN this week that he would not allow Mr Netanyahu to annex the West Bank, six people familiar with the matter told Politico.

Sources said Mr Trump and his team presented a white paper outlining a plan to end the war, including the promise against the annexation of the West Bank, which is partly governed by the Palestinian Authority in a tense partnership with occupying Israel.

Mr Trump met with eight Arab and Muslim leaders on Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, but no official statement has been published on their discussions.

Mr Trump said the meeting with “all of the big players except Israel” had been “successful”, adding that the next step will be a meeting with Israeli officials.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he was “pleased” with the results of the “fruitful” meeting, which was also attended by the leaders of Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Mr Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said the US president had presented Arab and Muslim leaders with a 21-point plan for peace in the Middle East.

“We’re hopeful – and I might say even confident – that in the coming days we’ll be able to announce some sort of breakthrough,” he said.

Mr Netanyahu said on Sunday that a Palestinian state “will not happen”, arguing that it would “endanger [Israel’s] existence”.

His allies have pushed him to annex the West Bank, which is home to more than 3 million Palestinians.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Mr Netanyahu had told US secretary of state Mario Rubio last week that he was under pressure by his coalition to annex part of the territory known as Area C, which constitutes 60 per cent of the West Bank.

Is Fred Armisen the most unpredictable man in Hollywood?

Is Fred Armisen being serious? I’m finding it hard to tell. Look at all his work from the past two decades – a startlingly prolific oeuvre that includes a long stint on Saturday Night Live, his own cult sketch series Portlandia, and guest appearances in many of the best modern comedies (30 Rock; Parks and Recreation; Brooklyn Nine-Nine) – and it’s hard to find a moment in which he is not wrapped up in some kind of shtick. I’m reminded of a line from John Mulaney’s post-rehab stand-up set, in which he describes his “star-studded” drug intervention: “Fred Armisen was serious. Do you know how off-putting that is?” Today, though, Armisen seems to be playing it straight – and while I wouldn’t go as far as “off-putting”, I must admit I’m a little bewildered.

The 58-year-old comedian and musician is discussing his new album, 100 Sound Effects – a 101-track record composed entirely of, well, noises, ranging from “Wine Glass Breaking in Sink” to “Tentative Sawing”. I ask, off the bat, why he decided to make it – often a pretty rote interview question, but here, one for which I am desperate to know the answer. “I thought, ‘There are music recordings, and comedy recordings… but what happened to the library version of a record?’” Armisen responds. “Something to access, to use as a tool. An album that’s for utilitarian purposes.”

Comedians including Mary Lynn Rajskub, Tim Heidecker, and Riki Lindhome (who’s also Armisen’s wife) feature fleetingly on the album, and some of the tracks are undoubtedly funny. (Other selections include “Sparsely Attended Show Encore with Someone Shouting ‘Where’s Jim?’”, “Haunted House Piano”, and “Important Film – Italian Woman Yelling Through a Doorway in a Small Italian Town”.) But this is no straightforward comedy album. “I hope the reaction is like, ‘Oh, that’s accurate,’” says Armisen, earnestly. “‘This is an accurate representation of what camping sounds like. This is an accurate representation of what tuning a guitar sounds like.’ And then if it’s taken as a joke, then great.
But really, it’s more like, maybe 10 years from now, if there’s a production that needs, say, the sound of a washer-dryer from 2025, they don’t have to go digging through all kinds of stuff to find it.”

Each answer seems only to raise more questions. A “utilitarian” sound library is all well and good, but why is Fred Armisen, one of the stars of Netflix’s smash hit Wednesday, the person who’s spent a year of his life recording it? Even the fact that he’s now doing interviews for it feels, I remark, rather funny. “‘Funny’ is probably a good word for it,” Armisen replies. “But everything I’ve done in my work and career – Portlandia, [Armisen’s recent HBO series Los Espookys], any of those shows – I had no idea what the reaction was going to be. I pretty much bank on that question mark.”

He’s got a point. In some ways, an inexplicably functional sound-effect album is in fact perfectly in keeping with Armisen’s sensibility – an offbeat comic individualism that defies conventional pigeonholing. For all his excursions into the cultural mainstream, Armisen has never settled down there; he has spent two decades slipping around the American film and TV comedy scene unwrangled, like a greased pig. Jerry Seinfeld once compared Armisen to an “exotic bird”, and I’ve got to admit – it’s an apt description. There’s a certain avian strangeness to Armisen’s demeanour, in the characters he plays and even over video call today; he is friendly and infectiously upbeat, but ever watchful.

Armisen was a child of immigrants – a Venezuelan mother, who worked as a schoolteacher, and a German-Korean father, who worked for tech giant IBM. Growing up principally in New York, he was an obsessive fan of punk music, specifically British bands, such as The Clash or The Damned. (“England really dictated my childhood – and then my adulthood,” he says.) From 1988 to 1996, Armisen was a drummer in the punk band Trenchmouth, and he still performs sporadically to this day.

“There are some things that I miss about being in a band, and some things I don’t,” Armisen says. “I don’t miss that every decision on where to eat is a group decision. Now it seems like nothing, but in the moment, it feels like torture. And that extends into ‘What venue should we play?’ ‘What’s the set going to be?’ All these things.”

“But,” he adds, “I miss the campaign feeling of it. The tours, the venues. And to play drums that frantically for 40 minutes, really loud… I really miss that. It took away a lot of my hearing, but, oh my God, the feeling of sweating. We played loud. And I haven’t felt this since.”

Armisen’s eclectic early screen work – particularly the 1998 short Guide to Music and South by Southwest, in which he interviewed musicians while playing different characters – rapidly earned him a reputation in the comedy world. So in 2002 he was cast in SNL, becoming a regular cast member in 2004. The US variety series has a reputation for being something of a showbiz pressure-cooker – you hear tales of back-stage vomiting, nerve-shredding performance anxiety, or various gripes with longtime showrunner Lorne Michaels. Armisen, on the other hand, revelled in it. During his time on the show, he proved a versatile impressionist, mimicking everyone from Barack Obama to Queen Elizabeth (memorably reimagined as a crude-mouthed cockney).

If there’s one thing that people misunderstand about SNL, says Armisen, it’s that “every cast member has a different experience. For the most part, it’s a joyous experience – the moments you’re on, and the cameras are on… It’s a very heightened existence.”

Armisen seems resolutely optimistic, when we’re talking about the state of the modern comedy scene (he cites Tim Robinson, Matt Berry, and Nathan Fielder as standouts), television production in the streaming era (“In a way, it’s easier now… when I first started, you would have to hope people watched live, now they can just find it all”), or indeed the fraught landscape of modern America. “I try to focus on the positive aspects whenever I can, even if the news can seem frustrating or confusing,” he says, on this last note. “My parents are immigrants. They were welcomed into this country. When I go on tour here, I get to travel all over and meet people, and talking to them gives me a sense of hope and optimism. There is amazing music and art everywhere I go.”

He embarks, unprompted, on a tangent about his deep affection for England. To Brits, Armisen is seemingly most recognisable for his handful of guest appearances on the Andy Samberg-fronted cop sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine. “I guess it’s big over here,” he says. “Everyone keeps mentioning it. Every time it happens, I tell Andy right away. I joke with him that for all the work I’ve done, it’s those quick little 30-second appearances that have paid my way for England.”

Stateside, he is now mostly approached about Netflix’s hit Addams Family adaptation Wednesday, in which he plays the unsettling but endearing Uncle Fester. The runaway success of that show (by some metrics, Netflix’s second-biggest TV series ever) caught him by surprise. “I don’t know how numbers work, how business works,” he says. “But just walking around in real life, so many more people would mention Wednesday to me. And it was a really nice surprise, especially for something so spooky and weird – I see it as sort of countercultural, and odd… for that to be such a hit is the best feeling.”

Armisen’s future includes a Fester spin-off series and a live tour; he remains, as ever, dauntingly in-demand. When I ask him what he wants to do next, he throws a predictably Armisenian curveball. “I want to do something in a foreign language – a language I don’t really speak that well,” he says. “Something like a Finnish TV show – where I have a small role, really embedded, not a stunt, and way later, you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, was that him?’”

It’s a peculiar answer, but also, I suppose, business as usual. As we wrap up, I ask one last question: what sound effect would Armisen choose to sum up his own life?

Ever the practised percussionist, he doesn’t miss a beat. “A Timbale,” he replies. “It’s a sort of Latin American drum. Tito Puente plays it. It has this melodic, high-pitched sound – it always feels like it’s in harmony with everything, but there’s a sense of humour to it. It’s something kind of goofy.” Cue sound effect: “Interviewer Nodding in Agreement”.

‘100 Sound Effects’ by Fred Armisen is released on 26 September, by Drag City

Putin may be a ‘paper tiger’ – but there’s a reason Nato is worried

Is Putin gearing up his war machine to attack Europe once he’s defeated Ukraine? Or is Russia, in fact, as Donald Trump wrote this week, “a paper tiger”? In his strongest-worded condemnation of Putin yet, Trump this week attacked Russia for “fighting aimlessly for three and a half years in a war that should have taken a real military power less than a week to win”. Trump added that “Putin and Russia are in BIG economic trouble” and claimed that Russians are finding it “almost impossible to get gasoline”.

In calling out the Kremlin’s failure to defeat Ukraine – a country with a quarter of Russia’s population and an economy 10 times smaller – Trump has put his finger on what some analysts call “Russophrenia”. This is the paradoxical belief that Russia is collapsing economically and militarily and is about to implode – but simultaneously also represents a deadly strategic threat to the Baltics and Nato. Logically, both cannot be true at the same time.

Trump’s “paper tiger” slur depends, of course, on who you’re comparing Russia to. Obviously, by every basic metric, Russia is colossally outgunned and outmanned by the might of Nato – which has 3.5 million active personnel compared to Russia’s 1.32 million, 22,000 military aircraft to Russia’s 4,800, and more than 2,200 warships versus the Russian navy’s fewer than 800.

But while such crude arithmetic might be relevant to armchair warriors wargaming a full-scale conventional war in Europe, the key to Putin’s military successes in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea and against Ukrainian forces in Donbas in 2014-15 has been his ability to concentrate forces against a much smaller enemy and win quick victories.

It was only in February 2022 that Putin bit off more than he could chew by arrogantly imagining that he would easily be able to punch through Ukrainian defences, occupy Kyiv and quickly install a puppet government. Ukraine’s military proved a match for Russia’s superior forces in 2022, and since then has pushed Moscow’s troops out of more than half the area they briefly occupied at the beginning of the war.

The real measure of a paper tiger, then, isn’t so much the number of men and weapons at your adversary’s disposal but whether there’s true hostile intent and, crucially, if Russia could present a credible threat to Nato. If the recent Zapad 2025 military exercises are anything to go by, the Russian military has become less, not more, threatening as a result of the Ukraine war.

At the Munich Security Conference in July, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky tried to present the quadrennial joint Russian-Belarusian war game as a cover for a possible invasion. “Is this Russian force in Belarus meant to attack Ukraine?” Zelensky asked. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s meant for Poland and the Baltics.” But in the event, the Russian military could spare just 13,000 troops to muster in Belarus for what amounted to little more than an open-air arms fair to which officers from the US (as well as India, China and other allies) were invited as observers.

Instead of showing off new tactics honed on the front lines of Ukraine, where every military tactic has been revolutionised by drone warfare, Russia’s hawkish military blogger community derided Zapad for showcasing outdated tactics such as low-level passes, unguided bombs and parachute drops. According to Mark Galeotti of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, “Moscow is … militarily at full stretch, not in a position to pick new fights.”

Why, then, has Moscow taken to sending unarmed drones hundreds of kilometres into Poland, sending its jets into Estonian airspace and (possibly) buzzing Oslo and Copenhagen airports with drones? It could be an intimidating bluster or a desire to pick a real fight.

The Kremlin’s logic is often opaque, and its signalling is hard to interpret. If Putin is sending a message to Europe and Nato with his provocative incursions, what is it? Most likely, his focus is on Europe’s current debate about what kind of security guarantees the continent is willing to offer Ukraine.

Despite the Kremlin’s repeated insistence that no foreign troops on the ground will be acceptable, least of all from Nato countries, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Sir Keir Starmer continue to speak of a “reassurance force” in Ukraine. With admirable clarity, Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, noted this week that security guarantees meant “a willingness to fight Russia”. One likely explanation for Putin’s sabre-rattling is to focus European minds on how deadly serious Russia is in its opposition to Nato troops in Ukraine.

There’s a crucial distinction to be drawn between Kremlin efforts to subvert and disrupt Europe and having active plans for invasion. Both are threats, and both are aggression – but subversion is a nuisance that can be contained, while the threat of invasion is an existential security hazard.

“Russia poses a direct threat to the European Union,” the EU’s foreign policy chief and former prime minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, suggested in July. “The Kremlin has a long-term plan for long-term aggression … Russia was violating the bloc’s airspace, attacking its pipelines, undersea cables and electricity grids, and recruiting criminals to carry out sabotage.”

However, one unforeseen consequence of Russia’s economic dependency on China in the wake of Western sanctions has been the growing influence of Beijing in restraining Russian belligerence, first and foremost in the areas of tactical nuclear weapons use. Only Russia, China and the US possess low-yield battlefield nukes, and preventing their normalisation as a weapon of war has long been an absolute strategic priority for Beijing.

Unlike all-out strategic thermonuclear war, the use of tactical nuclear strikes could create a potentially winnable conflict. And once that happens, the stakes in China’s own potential confrontation over Taiwan will be raised considerably. From the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – which China has not overtly supported, though it has not formally condemned Russia either – Beijing’s military diplomats have exerted strong pressure on their Russian counterparts to keep tactical nukes firmly off Putin’s decision matrix.

Then, of course, there’s the Russian economy, which has been badly battered by the massive expenditure of the war as well as by sanctions, which have made it more difficult – though by no means impossible – for Russia to sell its oil and gas. Add to that Ukraine’s recent campaign of drone strikes that have hit 16 of Russia’s 38 refineries since the start of August. That left Russian fuel exports approaching their lowest level since 2020 and, as Trump pointed out, caused nationwide shortages of gasoline.

After holding up far better than expected against sanctions and the flight of Western businesses, the Russian economy is now drifting firmly into inflation, deficit and recession. Russia is not suffering as badly as Ukraine’s economy, however, and so far there is no sign of the kind of economic crisis that is likely to trigger a popular backlash against Putin. But neither does Russia have the economic wherewithal to build a military that could credibly launch an attack on Europe.

Finally, there’s the key question of intent. While crass television propagandists regularly talk of nuking Britain and marching to Berlin, these people’s place in the Kremlin’s propaganda ecosystem is precisely to say outrageous things in order to cast Putin himself as sane and sensible.

For all his tendency to lie barefacedly, Putin does signal his political demands very clearly – and at no point has he ever threatened to attack Europe or claimed any Nato member’s land. His beef has always been with what he calls Nato’s interference in Ukraine. Keeping Ukraine under Moscow’s influence has been Putin’s obsession for years, and it was the wellspring of his misbegotten invasion in 2022. But after three and a half years of fighting, Putin has not even been able to defeat Ukraine’s army, even at the cost of over 200,000 killed. If he can’t defeat Kyiv, what likelihood is there of him turning on the most powerful military alliance in the world?

Trump replaces President Biden portrait with image of an autopen

President Donald Trump’s “wall of fame” depicting all 46 people to serve as president along a walkway between the White House residence and the West Wing is complete — with one notable exception.

The White House unveiled the installation this week by releasing several photos of Trump admiring the display as he walked towards the Oval Office.

The photos are housed in gilt frames and are displayed in order of administration, with two images of Trump and two of former President Grover Cleveland, who served as the 22nd and 24th president.

But in between the photos of Trump reflecting his service as both the 45th and 47th president, a picture of the 46th president was nowhere to be found.

In place of a photograph of Trump’s successor-turned-predecessor, former president Joe Biden, there was only a snapshot of an autopen captured in the act of signing Biden’s signature.

The snub of Biden makes good on a pledge Trump made in an interview with The Daily Caller earlier this month when he joked that he would hang a photo of the autopen instead of Biden.

It’s a reference to claims made by Trump and other Republicans, who have accused the ex-president’s staff of making decisions on his behalf and ratifying them with the mechanical device without his knowledge.

Biden and his former aides have denied that anything of the sort took place, with the president telling The New York Times in an interview that he was involved in “every decision” to sign off on certain documents, such as clemency and pardons issued at the end of his term.

Nonetheless, Trump has called the allegations a “tremendous scandal” and claimed that Biden “knew nothing about what he was signing” as he has repeatedly theorized that Biden’s frequent use of the autopen, a commonly used practice among presidents and officials, is directly correlated to his alleged mental decline.

Under a longstanding opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, using an autopen to sign presidential documents is legally binding as long as the president has authorized the signature.

A spokesperson for former president Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Independent.

‘They saw my fear and understood’: Nick Robinson on why Macmillan nurses are vital

Who can you talk to? Who will understand? Who will know what to say?

Your wife or husband, maybe. Your friends. Your doctor. Perhaps all of the above.

And yet when I had cancer I found there were some things I couldn’t or didn’t want to say to them. They were too painful. My emotions were too confused. I didn’t want to burden them with information which might overwhelm them and leave them unsure how to respond.

It was my Macmillan nurse who filled the gap. Knowledgeable and empathetic. Caring, but with a degree of separation. Able to be my champion when I needed one.

The operation meant to remove the tumour in my lung was a triumphant success. The cancer was all removed. Yet, so too was my voice. The laryngeal nerve – which carries the electrical pulses which make your vocal cord vibrate and open and close – had been hit or cut or stunned during the op. The crucial nerve isn’t, I soon discovered, tucked away neatly safe from intruding surgical instruments. It hangs about awkwardly – like a bit of dodgy DIY wiring. Accidents do happen.

When mine happened – when ‘that guy off the telly’ (as I then was) had to be told his vocal cords were damaged and might take many months to recover, if they recovered – it was my Macmillan nurse who saw my fear and watched as I wiped away my tears. It was he who I felt able to tell that I was more scared of losing my voice than my cancer. He listened when I said I needed an explanation from the hospital but I didn’t want to blame anyone or hold them to account.

I knew that he understood. Just as he would have understood if I was struggling to cope with pain or was terrified of the side-effects of the chemo. Luckily I had very little hair to lose. Macmillan nurses are specialists who can offer physical and emotional support, coordinate care and offer information on how to understand your diagnosis, the treatment you face and the ways to manage your symptoms. They can help those who love you and are caring for you. They can act as a point of contact connecting patients with local support groups and services; give advice on practical issues like dealing with your employer, claiming benefits or accessing social care. Their expertise helps people navigate the hazards that can be thrown up on what’s now called your cancer journey.

Why? Well, because they’ve seen it all before. My Macmillan nurse had dealt with people far sicker and much less lucky than me. I could speak to him without worrying what impact my words would have on him or how it made me look.

So it is then, whenever a friend or a colleague tells me they’ve joined the club no one wants to be a member of, I tell them ‘Get yourself a Macmillan nurse if you possibly can’.

It is ten years now since my cancer was treated. Happily it’s not shown any sign of returning. My voice has though – slowly at first but eventually so that I barely need to think about those days when I feared I might never be able to use it to broadcast again.

I asked about my Macmillan nurse a while ago. Oh, I was told, he ended up getting cancer so he had to give up the job. I dearly hope that he had someone as good as I had to look after him.

The Independent is proud to partner with Macmillan Cancer Support for their iconic Coffee Morning fundraiser. For every person who signs up to host a Coffee Morning through this article, The Independent will donate £10, up to £20,000, helping people affected by cancer access the vital support they need. Sign up to host a Coffee Morning for a chance to get creative, bring people together, and make a real difference for people living with cancer, no matter who they are or where they live.

‘They saw my fear and understood’: Nick Robinson on why Macmillan nurses are vital

Who can you talk to? Who will understand? Who will know what to say?

Your wife or husband, maybe. Your friends. Your doctor. Perhaps all of the above.

And yet when I had cancer I found there were some things I couldn’t or didn’t want to say to them. They were too painful. My emotions were too confused. I didn’t want to burden them with information which might overwhelm them and leave them unsure how to respond.

It was my Macmillan nurse who filled the gap. Knowledgeable and empathetic. Caring, but with a degree of separation. Able to be my champion when I needed one.

The operation meant to remove the tumour in my lung was a triumphant success. The cancer was all removed. Yet, so too was my voice. The laryngeal nerve – which carries the electrical pulses which make your vocal cord vibrate and open and close – had been hit or cut or stunned during the op. The crucial nerve isn’t, I soon discovered, tucked away neatly safe from intruding surgical instruments. It hangs about awkwardly – like a bit of dodgy DIY wiring. Accidents do happen.

When mine happened – when ‘that guy off the telly’ (as I then was) had to be told his vocal cords were damaged and might take many months to recover, if they recovered – it was my Macmillan nurse who saw my fear and watched as I wiped away my tears. It was he who I felt able to tell that I was more scared of losing my voice than my cancer. He listened when I said I needed an explanation from the hospital but I didn’t want to blame anyone or hold them to account.

I knew that he understood. Just as he would have understood if I was struggling to cope with pain or was terrified of the side-effects of the chemo. Luckily I had very little hair to lose. Macmillan nurses are specialists who can offer physical and emotional support, coordinate care and offer information on how to understand your diagnosis, the treatment you face and the ways to manage your symptoms. They can help those who love you and are caring for you. They can act as a point of contact connecting patients with local support groups and services; give advice on practical issues like dealing with your employer, claiming benefits or accessing social care. Their expertise helps people navigate the hazards that can be thrown up on what’s now called your cancer journey.

Why? Well, because they’ve seen it all before. My Macmillan nurse had dealt with people far sicker and much less lucky than me. I could speak to him without worrying what impact my words would have on him or how it made me look.

So it is then, whenever a friend or a colleague tells me they’ve joined the club no one wants to be a member of, I tell them ‘Get yourself a Macmillan nurse if you possibly can’.

It is ten years now since my cancer was treated. Happily it’s not shown any sign of returning. My voice has though – slowly at first but eventually so that I barely need to think about those days when I feared I might never be able to use it to broadcast again.

I asked about my Macmillan nurse a while ago. Oh, I was told, he ended up getting cancer so he had to give up the job. I dearly hope that he had someone as good as I had to look after him.

The Independent is proud to partner with Macmillan Cancer Support for their iconic Coffee Morning fundraiser. For every person who signs up to host a Coffee Morning through this article, The Independent will donate £10, up to £20,000, helping people affected by cancer access the vital support they need. Sign up to host a Coffee Morning for a chance to get creative, bring people together, and make a real difference for people living with cancer, no matter who they are or where they live.

Starbucks to close ‘some’ UK stores as part of global restructure

Starbucks is to close an unspecified number of its UK stores following a global review of its coffee shops.

The company confirmed on Thursday that it had launched a consultation over the proposed closure of company-owned UK sites, putting workers at risk.

It did not disclose how many stores would be affected or their locations. Starbucks operates around 520 company-owned stores in the UK, in addition to franchise outlets.

This comes as the group also plans to reduce its North American store portfolio by 1 per cent this year and cut around 900 North American head office jobs.

In a statement, Starbucks said: “As outlined in a letter shared by Brian Niccol [chair and chief executive officer], we have conducted a review of our coffeehouse portfolio in North America and certain stores have been identified for closure where it has not been possible to create the physical environment customers and partners [employees] want, and where there isn’t a path to financial performance.

“In Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA), we have conducted a similar review of our company-operated store portfolio with the goal of ensuring that our stores are correctly located, generating appropriate levels of foot traffic and operating in the right formats.

“While the EMEA business is on track to meet its commitment to open 80 new stores in the UK and 150 across EMEA this financial year, some stores in the UK, Switzerland and Austria will close as a result of this portfolio review.”