Sarkozy guilty of criminal conspiracy in campaign-financing trial

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been found guilty of criminal conspiracy in a case in which he was accused of receiving illegal campaign funds from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Sarkozy, 70, was, however, acquitted on Thursday of the remaining charges laid against him, including receiving stolen goods, embezzlement of public funds, and passive corruption.

Sarkozy, who was president of France from 2007 to 2012, had always denied the charges and dismissed the allegations as politically motivated.

The verdict by a Paris court follows a three-month trial earlier this year that also involved 11 co-defendants, including three former ministers.

Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, 75, who was one of the co-defendants and a key accuser in the case, died on Tuesday in Beirut following a cardiac arrest, his lawyer said.

Takieddine had claimed he had helped deliver up to €5m (£4.4m) in cash from Gaddafi to Sarkozy in 2006 and 2007. In an interview with the French investigative outlet Mediapart in 2016, Takieddine said he had delivered suitcases filled with cash from Tripoli to the French interior ministry under Sarkozy.

He later retracted his statement, then contradicted his retraction, prompting a separate investigation into possible witness tampering. Both Sarkozy and his wife, model and musician Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, were handed preliminary charges of pressuring a witness. That case is pending trial.

Investigators claimed Sarkozy had forged a corrupt pact with the Libyan government in a murky affair that involved Libyan spies, a convicted terrorist and arms dealers.

The accusations can be traced back to 2011, when Gaddafi revealed that the Libyan state had secretly funnelled millions of euros into Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign. Gaddafi was toppled and killed during the Arab spring in 2011, ending his four-decade rule of Libya.

Delivering her judgment on Thursday, the presiding judge, Nathalie Gavarino, found Sarkozy guilty of criminal association in a scheme from 2005 to 2007 to finance his campaign with funds from Libya in exchange for diplomatic favours. He was cleared of all other charges.

Despite facing a string of legal battles since leaving office, and being stripped of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest award, Sarkozy retains some influence behind the scenes in French politics. He and his wife were among the guests invited to the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in December last year.

In February this year, Sarkozy was ordered to wear an electronic tag for a year, a first for a former French president, after being found guilty of corruption and influence peddling. The tag was removed after three months.

In a separate case, Sarkozy was convicted last year of illegal campaign-financing in his failed 2012 re-election bid. He was accused of having spent almost twice the maximum legal amount and was sentenced to a year in prison, of which six months were suspended. Sarkozy has denied the allegations and has appealed the ruling.

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?

Ryder Cup pairings to be announced as McIlroy responds to DeChambeau

The Ryder Cup 2025 is just 24 hours away from starting with the course known as ‘The Beast’ at Bethpage set to challenge both the USA and Europe over three fiercely-contested days of golf.

After ramping up the rivalry by hitting out at Team USA with a dig about “prize money”, Europe’s captain Luke Donald and his counterpart Keegan Bradley will reveal the opening four pairings for the Friday morning foursomes.

One of the decisive factors will be the challenge of suppressing an expected raucous New York crowd, with Collin Morikawa making a plea for “chaos” to swing momentum to the home team.

Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau will both speak on Thursday, having fired shots at each other in the build-up, and could collide on Friday in the latest chapter to a compelling rivalry.

Donald set the tone with his pointed speech at Wednesday’s opening ceremony. “We are defined by a belief that we are playing for something greater than ourselves. It is not about prize money,” he said.

Follow all the build-up to Friday’s first matches, and the pairings announcement below

Suspected ICE sniper’s family expresses anguish over Dallas shooting

As investigators continued to search for answers following a shooting Wednesday at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas that left one detainee dead and two others wounded, the family of 29-year-old suspect Joshua Jahn struggled to process the news.

Reached by phone at her home in a Dallas suburb, shortly after the deadly incident but before authorities had publicly identified Jahn as the suspect, his distraught mother attempted, but was unable, to put her whipsawing emotions into words.

“I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you right now,” Sharon Jahn told The Independent while sobbing openly. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. But I just can’t talk to you now.”

The first shots rang out at around 6:20 a.m., according to authorities. The shooter “fired indiscriminately” at the building, as well as at a transport van in the structure’s sallyport, where the victims were hit, the Department of Homeland Security said.

Jahn’s body was discovered on the roof of a nearby immigration attorney’s office. Police said he died from a self-inflicted gunshot.

Jahn’s 65-year-old father, Andrew, is a retired mechanical engineer. Sharon, also 65 and retired, worked as the administrator of a massage school in Plano. Jahn has two siblings: a 26-year-old sister, Kioko, and a 30-year-old brother, Noah.

Noah Jahn was equally distressed over the shooting Wednesday, telling The Independent that he was not prepared to discuss the situation in any detail. However, it was clear he was just starting to come to grips with what had happened that morning.

“I’m still trying to…” Noah Jahn said haltingly. “I’m back and forth with the police, I’m just…” He then hung up.

Andrew Jahn was unable to be reached.

In an earlier interview, Noah Jahn told NBC News that his brother was not particularly political and “didn’t have strong feelings about ICE, as far as I knew.” Jahn’s voter info shows he was not registered to any particular party.

However, law enforcement officials said unspent shell casings located near the shooter’s remains had “anti-ICE messages” on them. FBI director Kash Patel posted a photo on social media showing what appeared to be a rifle round with the words “ANTI-ICE” scrawled on it.

At the same time, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson emphasized that the situation remained fluid while police investigated.

“Let’s be patient, let’s remain calm, and let’s let our law enforcement partners … do their job,” Johnson said at a press conference. “This is an active investigation. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, and I want to encourage all of you to exercise a little bit of restraint and allow them to do their job.”

Details about the number of victims and their injuries changed numerous times Wednesday, due to conflicting information being released by federal officials.

The names of the victims in Wednesday’s attack have not been released.

Noah Jahn also told NBC that his parents owned a rifle and that his brother was a competent shooter. But, he insisted his brother was “not a marksman, that’s for sure,” expressing disbelief that he could have carried out the killings.

Joshua Jahn did not have a serious criminal history, according to a review of public records. In 2016, he was caught delivering more than a quarter-ounce but less than 5lb of marijuana, a felony to which he later entered a deferred guilty plea. Jahn received five years’ probation, a $500 fine, and was ordered to pay $180 restitution, court filings show.

Last month, at the same Dallas ICE facility, 36-year-old Bratton Dean Wilkinson was charged with making terroristic threats and falsely claiming to have a bomb in his backpack.

Morale among ICE agents has reportedly sunk to an all-time low amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy, which has soured public opinion as the federal crackdown has expanded nationwide.

ICE personnel on official missions are met regularly by jeering crowds of protesters; the federal government is simultaneously trying to recruit some 10,000 new agents in a colossal expansion spurred on by the Trump administration.

To attract applicants, ICE is offering recruits six-figure salaries, five-figure signing bonuses, and student loan forgiveness.

I’ve found the ultimate science-backed health hack – owning a dog

It’s Sunday. A lie-in would be lovely, but my taskmaster makes it clear this is off the table. Despite driving rain, he drags me to the park and orders me to start racking up the miles, barking instructions throughout. After an hour, it’s time to head home, but there is no time to crash on the sofa. Instead, I’m herded straight to the kitchen to refuel, all before most people have opened their eyes.

Oh no, I don’t have a personal trainer – I just own a dog.

The odd thing is, while the extra hours in bed might have felt like a luxury at the time, I do feel better for having been on this wet weather walk.

My actions are also unconsciously aligned with a litany of health hacks promoted by self-optimising podcast hosts – from walking X number of steps per day to keeping a consistent routine to accessing sunlight shortly after waking.

This got me thinking: with so many people spending heavily on supplements and trying to streamline every aspect of their life for improved productivity, is owning a dog the ultimate health hack?

Subjectively speaking, a lot of good in my life can be traced back to my four-year-old cavachon, Archie. Lunchtimes, which might otherwise be spent doomscrolling, are instead filled with a walk in nature, his company is always appreciated while I’m working from home, and I can guarantee he’ll do at least one bizarre thing each day to make me laugh.

However, I am just one person, and as a fitness writer, I’m a fairly active one at that. For this reason, I reached out to Matthew Ahmadi, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Sydney’s School of Health Sciences, to find out if the benefits I had experienced were applicable for all.

Ahmadi led a randomised control trial, published in the BMC Research Notes journal last year, which set out to explore whether placing activity trackers on dogs might motivate owners to move more. And while Covid lockdowns during the testing period skewed results, his team’s wider research uncovered some interesting insights.

Dogs need regular movement to be healthy. So, too, do humans, but we’re more likely to exercise if we’re held accountable. Dogs do just that, and to my mind, this is the foundational benefit to owning a dog: you’re encouraged to move more.

“People who own dogs tend to be a little bit more active than those who do not; when your dog needs to go on a walk, you also have to go on that walk,” says Ahmadi.

“One important factor in this is dog breed. Certain breeds are very active, requiring three walks or 90 minutes of exercise per day, whereas other breeds are, for lack of a better term, couch potatoes. But we know that owning an active dog does help to increase overall activity.”

This is something I’ve both seen and experienced. My fitness tracker usually tells me I’ve covered 10km-plus at the end of each day, with most of this distance accumulating during dog walks. When I pitched this idea for a feature, a colleague also revealed their father’s stratospheric daily step count. His secret? Dog walks and golf.

Family members have also lost a significant amount of weight after adopting dogs, with one shedding over a stone after they started “walking five miles per day and eating a few less crumpets” – more movement leads to greater daily energy expenditure, consistently eating a bit less leads to lower calorie consumption, and the net result may create a calorie deficit, which is helpful if weight management is your goal.

Read more: Professor of physical activity reveals the small daily habit change to make for big health benefits

“We know from previous research that our team has done around total daily steps [found here in the British Journal of Sports Medicine] that just increasing your total activity levels can improve your overall health and go a long way to lowering your risk of cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancers,” Ahmadi says.

Overall health, he adds, encompasses everything from improved longevity and lower risk of disease to increased quality of life. This can be achieved through factors such as improved heart and lung function and better mobility, which come as a consequence of walking, or generally moving, more.

If, in most cases, owning a dog encourages you to move more, and moving more has a plethora of associated health perks, then the list of potential benefits to having a canine companion keeps growing.

Read more: From exercising for fat loss to building muscle in a calorie deficit – doctor of sport science corrects three fitness myths

From a biomechanical point of view, I believe owning a dog can be incredibly positive. The body adheres to the SAID principle, which stands for specific adaptation to imposed demand; put simply, the body adapts to get better at the things we consistently ask it to do.

Paired with a sedentary lifestyle, this mechanism can be detrimental. When we sit down all day, the body adapts to get better at sitting down all day – this includes adaptations such as tightening our hip flexors so we can hold them in that shortened seated position more easily, leading to potential pain, dysfunction and compensation elsewhere in the body.

Regular, varied movement combats this, requiring you to assume many different positions and reminding the body to maintain the mobility needed to access them – you might be familiar with the phrase “motion is lotion”. When you think about bending over to pet your dog, lunging down to pick up their ball or twisting round to call them, these all echo functional movements you will want to be able to do pain-free for as long as possible.

Read more: I have a PhD in strength training – stop using the wrong weights for your workouts with this simple test

As a dog owner, the most obvious subjective statement I can make is that spending time with my dog makes me incredibly happy.

Several studies have linked the dog-human bond with increased release of oxytocin – a hormone linked to bonding and positive emotional states.

“Having that companion by your side can lead to this,” Ahmadi says. “But there’s a social interaction component as well, not only with the pet itself, but also with the other dog owners you meet at the park. So that human interaction also becomes a benefit of having a dog.”

For this reason, owning a dog could not only help improve physical health, but also boost mental health by helping to combat loneliness.

“I tend to liken loneliness to being hungry or thirsty,” says Professor Andrea Wigfield, co-director of the Campaign to End Loneliness and a leading researcher on the topic. “Social interaction is an essential thing, and as a human being, you need people around you.”

She describes the process of preventing or easing loneliness as “creating meaningful relationships” – connections with other people, yourself and spaces around you.

From my experience, regularly chatting to now-familiar fellow dog walkers at the park around the corner from my house, a stroll with Archie ticks at least two of these three boxes.

Read more: The important thing your exercise plan is probably missing – particularly if you’re older

My dog operates like clockwork. He sleeps under my desk while I’m working from home, then nudges my feet when it’s time for his regular walks and feeds.

Even when the clocks go forward and back, he manages to do this with unerring accuracy, temporally speaking. He is like an alarm clock in the morning too, pawing at my door if I dare to attempt a slower start to the day.

I can’t say I don’t grumble when he does this, but it does help me stick to a semi-regular routine, and this has been linked with a series of health benefits.

First and foremost among them is its ability to regulate your circadian rhythm – your in-built body clock, which is wired into pretty much every system in the body. When you have a regular routine, with consistent sleep-wake cycles, these processes are able to sync up and run smoothly, leading to improved sleep, energy levels and general functioning.

Prolific health podcaster and neuroscientist Andrew Huberman is also a big proponent of accessing sunlight early in the day – something an AM dog walk is sure to deliver.

“I consider viewing morning sunlight in the top five of all actions that support mental health, physical health and performance,” he writes.

Perhaps my dog has my best interests at heart when he wakes me up at 6am, or perhaps he is just bored? Either way, it would appear both of us are reaping the rewards from our early starts.

Read more: Do these five things daily for 90 days to see a ‘profound difference’ in your health, fitness and energy levels

On the whole, owning a dog makes you move more – in many cases, significantly so. But what it doesn’t tend to do is increase the amount of more intense physical activity you do each week, Ahmadi says.

“We actually don’t see too much of a change in the intensity levels of people’s movement, and by this I mean the time you spend moving at a moderate-to-vigorous intensity,” he explains. “That’s because, when you go for a walk with your dog, the dog will typically walk for a few minutes then stop and sniff something, or you might throw the ball for your dog at the park, so they are running while you are standing still.”

This, I can relate to – I spend a significant chunk of each dog walk standing next to intriguing tree stumps with standout aromas. But this behaviour also represents a flaw in my argument for dogs acting as a catalyst to better health: it is higher-intensity movement that delivers the most efficient way to experience physical benefits, according to Ahmadi’s University of Sydney colleague Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis.

“Vigorous-intensity physical activity… is by far the most time-efficient form [of activity for achieving various health benefits],” he explains. “It is the ‘physiological language’ the body best understands – the extra effort acts as a signal for the body to make adaptations and improvements in, say, how the heart functions or how the body absorbs and transports oxygen to the muscles.

“For these beneficial health adaptations to happen, the body needs to be pushed regularly, even if it is for a short period of time under one minute.”

If you have the time, pairing the foundational movement provided by dog walks with more intense formal exercise throughout the week provides a potent cocktail for health and fitness gains. Strength training in particular holds added perks for building a strong, robust body.

If you don’t have any extra time available, Ahmadi says there are ways to weave more intense activity into your pre-existing dog walks.

“When you’re walking your dog, either going somewhere hilly or including short bursts of walking at a faster pace can go a long way,” he says. “By doing this, not only are you increasing your total daily steps, but you are also increasing the amount of higher-intensity activity you are doing.

“If your dog needs to go out two or three times per day, and you manage to do a few seconds [of higher-intensity movement] here and there in each of these walks, by the end of the day you might have done eight to 12 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity.”

Read more: Everyone is talking about calisthenics – here’s a 4-week strength training plan (no gym membership required)

There is a decent amount of scientific research to support my hypothesis that owning a dog holds plenty of health perks. A 2008 study published in the American Journal of Public Health surveyed 1,813 US adults, and found that although only 23 per cent of dog owners walked their dogs five or more times per week, “dog owners completed significantly more minutes and sessions of walking and more minutes of total physical activity”.

A 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis in the American Heart Association Journals adds that dog ownership has been associated with “lower blood pressure levels, improved lipid profile, and diminished sympathetic responses to stress”. Given my dog’s propensity for mischief, I couldn’t help raising an eyebrow at that final point.

The review concludes: “Dog ownership is associated with lower risk of death over the long term, which is possibly driven by a reduction in cardiovascular mortality.”

Further 2019 research found that dog walkers walk faster, walk more (an extra 22 minutes or 2,760 steps per day, on average) and have fewer continuous periods of sitting per day than those without a four-legged friend.

Meanwhile, another 2019 study published in the Animals journal reported how positive dog-human interactions have been linked to a surge in oxytocin – “a hormone which has been linked to positive emotional states”.

This rationale prompted running brand ASICS to launch its own global research – Mind’s Best Friend – into the effectiveness of employing man’s best friend as your new fitness coach. The results were so persuasive that the brand promptly enlisted Felix the Samoyed (pictured below) as an ambassador.

ASICS’ survey found that eight in 10 British owners feel less stressed after moving with their dogs, 69 per cent say their dog is their main motivator to move, and as a result, they are 35 per cent more likely to meet recommended physical activity guidelines than non-dog owners.

Read more: If you struggle to stay fit, try adding these nine simple science-backed behaviours into your week

Despite the many apparent health perks available from getting a dog, this article can’t be taken as an open invitation, or recommendation, to do so.

Owning a dog is a considerable commitment, and for some people it will not be the right move – both for them and their prospective pet.

“Owning a dog is an incredibly rewarding and fun experience, but the cost of owning and keeping a dog healthy and happy is a long-term financial commitment,” the Battersea animal charity website states.

This said, there appears to be a strong case to be made for dog walkers leading more active, social lives than the average person. Several mental and physical health benefits may stem from this; increased heart health, better mobility, improved mental health and boosted longevity, to name a few.

So, next time you’re considering trying a trendy new exercise or buying a pricey new piece of fitness equipment that promises the earth, it might be worth taking the dog for a walk first.

Read more: A cardiac nurse says these five daily behaviours can reduce your risk of heart disease

‘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.

Like Emma Watson, I’m ‘humbled’ by failing at basic life things

Who amongst us hasn’t been “humbled” by failing at “basic life things” like… well, driving at the speed limit? I know, I know. It’s irresponsible and risky and negligent and can literally cost lives; and the actor Emma Watson has just been banned from driving for it, but don’t worry too much, for she is truly “humbled”.

The Harry Potter star’s mega-humbling, in fact, comes after she was banned from driving for six months, last July, after being caught driving at 38mph in a 30mph zone in Oxford, where she’s a university student. She also had to shell out £1,044 on a fine. Watson already had nine points on her licence – so it was bye bye, blue Audi.

And in talking about the penalty, she has now said (and I’m only teasing, for there but by the grace of God go all of us who are late for work, etc) the whole experience has been “humbling” and was a realisation that she didn’t “seem able to do some pretty basic life things”. Amen to that, sister.

Watson told the On Purpose podcast host Jay Shetty that the moment news of the ban broke: “I was getting phone calls, like it’s on the BBC. It’s on international, worldwide news. I was like, my shame is everywhere.”

And she appeared to blame the fact that she grew up on film sets while filming the JK Rowling franchise for (and at this bit, you might need to squint) not understanding the meaning of a giant sign with a 30 in it, right there in the centre, at the side of the road, because: “When you work on films, I don’t know if people realise this, but they literally will not insure you to drive yourself to work. I’ve asked so many times. You have to be driven, it’s not a choice.”

I’ll be frank, you lost me there, Emma – you had the dressing room and then you lost it by being A-list – but let’s be generous, because it is hard, sometimes, being a grown-up and doing “basic life things”. It is. And I think we can all relate to Emma’s plight. I can, particularly, as I have ADHD – just like Watson.

And it really, genuinely is tricky to do simple things, sometimes, like opening bills (never do it, can’t stand them), completing a simple task without getting distracted (just opened the door to put the bins out? Why don’t I go upstairs and dye my hair, first) and being on time (five minutes before an appointment is the perfect moment to suddenly decide to empty the cellar).

And when Watson says that she seems “unable to remember” her keys, well, I get it. I really do. I’ll confess: I was once extremely humbled by the most basic of life things: getting dressed. In the early days, post-birth, in a fog of sleep deprivation and “oh my God, I’ve created another human and I have no idea what to do with it”, I left the house without any trousers on.

I was rushing for a GP appointment (and late as usual) and I slammed the door, half-running and half-skipping across the local park, only to slow to a shocking and paralysing halt: because I suddenly realised (thanks to the waft of cold air) that I didn’t have anything on below the waist – only a pair of tights, paired fetchingly with a denim jacket. I wasn’t just humbled, I was humiliated.

I was also pretty damn humbled on a completely different occasion when in those same, first days of newborn, breastfeeding fog, I got to the waiting room of the same GP surgery, pulled off my jumper and realised that I hadn’t put my boob away. It was just hanging there, flapping out of my maternity bra, completely free; like it was waving hello to the entire (packed) room of patients.

Similarly humbled, was I, right after lockdown, when I went to the garage – for I am diligent, I am a grown-up, I know that cars need servicing, they need all sorts of things, like oil and brake fluid and those massive plastic bottles of windscreen washer and those dangly smelly hanging things that make the insides smell like pine – and realised that I had forgotten to get an MOT. For months. Just completely forgotten, because I am (to misquote a meme and embarrass my Gen Alpha children) “Just a baby”.

And it was only thanks to the fact that my car was marked as “SORN” and parked “off road” on a driveway at the time – and I hadn’t driven it for months (because: lockdown) – that I wasn’t guilty of an actual criminal offence.

Still, humbled – like the way I feel every single night, when I walk into the kitchen and see a teetering mountain of dirty plates balanced precariously like an art project; like a Tracey Emin-style vision of the leaning tower of Pisa, except it’s the pizza you and the kids ate two days ago. And I’ve forgotten to put the dishwasher on, again.

I’m humbled when I spend all day at work and dream about getting home, having a bath and crawling into bed, except that I forgot that in a whirlwind of industry this very morning – this very morning that now feels like it was a special experiment in self-sabotage, that “past Victoria” really set out to screw “future Victoria” where it hurts – I stripped the bed of covers and didn’t put them back on again. And now it’s late and I can’t be bothered to change the bed – I am, in fact, physically unable to do it, I am out of energy; unwell – and we all know I’m going to end up sleeping on the bare mattress and duvet anyway.

Humbled, you see – as humbled as the moment that I realised I’d forgotten to buy milk and had to choke down an entire bowl of dry Cheerios for breakfast. And that was this morning. Five minutes ago.

Christ, we’re all humbled, all of the time – we get it, Emma Watson. We really do. We just don’t have a dazzling film career to blame, unfortunately. The rest of us are just a bit crap.

Disabled children facing ‘crisis’ as thousands waiting for wheelchairs

Thousands of children are facing long waits for vital wheelchairs as NHS rejections rise, and the UK’s only charity has been forced to stop taking new patients due to a surge in demand.

Whizz Kids, the UK’s leading charity for specialist wheelchair services, has warned patients are facing a “national crisis” after unprecedented pressure on its services has forced it to close to new referrals for the first time in over three decades.

The charity’s leaders said demand has risen 12.5 per cent year on year because more children are being rejected by the NHS for specialist wheelchairs, which cost on average £4,800, due to cost concerns.

One of those children, Charlie Drinkwater, who has spina bifida and growth hormone deficiency, has been denied a specialist chair by the NHS for the past five years.

Although she is eight years old, she is the size of a two-year-old, and so she needs a specialist chair, which could cost up to £4,500. However, due to budget constraints, the NHS does not provide chairs for under-five-year-olds, according to Whizz Kids. The NHS would only offer her a buggy, despite being eight years old.

Now, having grown out of the first chair provided by the charity, and having again been rejected by the NHS, Charlie’s childhood is on hold while she waits for a new one.

She told The Independent: “I’m excited for my new chair because it’s going to be pink. But it makes me sad when it takes a long time.”

Charlie’s family said, “I had no idea charities like Whizz Kidz even existed until Charlie was born. Without them, Charlie’s independence and quality of life would disappear overnight. They are not a ‘nice to have’ – they are a lifeline.”

Figures for January 2025 to March 2025, seen by The Independent, show 1,676 children waited for more than three months after a referral to NHS wheelchair services. Of those, 875 were assessed as having “high” or “specialist needs”. A further 1,700 patients were rejected by the NHS after they were assessed as “not requiring equipment”.

Whizz Kids told The Independent that an increase in patients being turned away from the NHS had put further strain on its waiting lists, forcing it to turn away new referrals for the first time in 35 years, with more than 1,000 children currently needing wheelchairs.

Sarah Pugh, chief executive for Whizz Kids, said they had to make the “heartbreaking decision” after demand had “skyrocketed in the last few years”.

She said: “Predominantly, the NHS criteria for wheelchairs are small because the budget is small. So, we effectively step up and fill that gap, but now it’s got to a point where we just can’t. The increase in demand for us must correlate to the squeezing of NHS budgets.

“We hear about a lot of kids trapped at home because they can’t get out … We’ve never had to close applications before. It’s a crisis because kids aren’t getting wheelchairs, they’re not able to get on with their childhood, they are losing very critical and very important days of their childhood …This is a national crisis.”

She said the NHS criteria are “very strict” and most children aged under five won’t get given a wheelchair and would instead be given a buggy, meaning children lack independence and the ability to explore the world.

According to a recent survey of its patients, 60 per cent of children reported living in discomfort or pain due to not having a wheelchair or the right wheelchair.

Whizz Kids has now launched an appeal for funding to help it reopen its list and reduce the number of children waiting.

Other charities, such as Variety, which supports disabled children and young people across the UK, said underfunding within NHS wheelchair services was leaving children in “desperate situations”.

Its chief executive, Laurence Guinness, said the news about Whizz Kids was “deeply concerning” but “sadly not surprising” and it too was seeing a surge in applications.

He said: “Chronic underfunding and systemic delays within NHS wheelchair services are leaving children in already impoverished families in desperate situations.”

“When our statutory services fail to provide, the burden shifts to charities and, most distressingly, to the families themselves, who are often already navigating a challenging system to get the support they need. This is a systemic failure, and it is our children who are paying the price.”

A spokesperson for NHS England said: “We know how crucial timely access to a wheelchair is for patients, which is why the NHS offers personal wheelchair budgets for people with a long-term condition to pick a wheelchair that meets their individual needs. We are also working with local healthcare providers to deliver better services that improve access and experiences for wheelchair users.”