Are mini fans the hottest trend of the summer?

Tiny Nineties shades? Woven wicker clutches? Those mildly menacing Labubu charms that glare out from the handle of your bag, clenching their pointy plastic teeth? Forget them. From the fields of Glastonbury to the stands at Royal Ascot to the subterranean inferno of the Central line, there’s one standout accessory that has taken this summer by storm. 

I’m referring, of course, to the humble battery-powered portable fan, the little device that has become ubiquitous over the past month or so, as sweaty Brits try desperately to deal with high temperatures that our infrastructure just wasn’t built to withstand. It’s small enough to stash in a tote as you rush out of the house in the morning, and it emits the sort of weirdly comforting white noise that helps you ascend to another level of zen during your commute.

You’ll see these handy bits of tech in train carriages, at office desks and in pub gardens, as their devotees bask in the temporary respite offered by a slightly cooler blast of air, soothing their tomato-red faces and dispersing some of the perspiration that’s started to take up residence on their upper lip. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the wind machine effect tends to give long hair a bit of a zhush, too, so you can briefly pretend you’re in a Mariah Carey video when you’re in fact standing at a bus stop looking like a wilted houseplant. 

The handheld fan is not a new invention. When I cast my mind back to primary school, I can remember a craze for colourful versions with soft plastic blades made from balloon-like material (they could still cause a bit of pain if you held them too close to your skin, which, being primary school kids, we obviously did; we also spoke into them to “hilariously” make our little voices sound robotic). But the 2025 iteration is a much more sophisticated beast. 

Unlike the ones you might recall from childhood, the miniature fan of the moment tends to have a case around the blades, to prevent your hair or clothes getting tangled up. Some of them are foldable, so you can fit them into the tiniest handbag or pocket. Some can be plugged into your phone’s charging socket. And some have built-in flashlights, in case you want to add an element of disco to your Tube journey. 

Inevitably, they’re available in a whole range of colourways, and if you want to amp up the twee factor, you can invest in a fan with cutesy animal ears and a smiling face emblazoned on the centre of its motor. Pandas, cats, frogs – just name the tiny creature and you’ll be able to find some form of equally tiny ventilation device fashioned in its image. The true tech pioneers, though, seem to be opting for wearable fans that rest on your neck, gently circulating air around your face; the aesthetic is somewhere between off-duty athlete and televangelist shouting into a headset. 

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when the mini-fan became such a summer must-have. But over the past half decade or so, their popularity seems to have grown and grown. New research from Material Focus, the non-profit group that campaigns for better recycling for waste electrical and electronic equipment (a category also known by the slightly unfortunate acronym Weee) has found that British people have bought around 7.1 million mini fans over the last 12 months. Google searches for the products, meanwhile, were up by 16 per cent in May compared to the same period last year. 

And it can hardly be a coincidence that they’ve become increasingly ubiquitous as our summers have got hotter, for longer. The Met Office recently pointed out a “clear upward trend” in the number of days in June with temperatures hitting above 30C, for instance, and also published a study last month revealing that the chances of UK temperatures exceeding 40C are “accelerating at pace”. Our public spaces and transport systems just weren’t made to account for such high temperatures, so it’s no wonder that we’re trying to make the experience of, well, merely existing during summertime slightly less swampy. 

There is a slightly bleak irony, though, in the fact that we’re stuck attempting to deal with our changing climate by… buying into products that aren’t necessarily all that great for the planet. Portable fans fall under the umbrella of “fast tech”, cheap, even novelty devices that are often tough to repair and tend to get chucked in the bin at the end of the season. 

Think of it as the tech world’s equivalent of fast fashion. Material Focus has estimated that around 3.5 million fans have been discarded or forgotten over the past year. And because these products often feature plastics and electronic components, they can be especially difficult to properly recycle. When you take into account that many of the novelty designs are being sold on massive online platforms that are notoriously unfussed about the environmental impact of their supply chain and delivery process, they don’t seem quite so cool.  

It’s all worth bearing in mind when you find your eyes inexorably drawn to the candy-coloured fan with the endearingly cute animal ears during your next unbearably sticky train journey. The tiny novelty fan might be alluring, sure, but do you really need one that matches your outfit when you already have a few knocking around in your junk drawer at home?

Heat warnings issued as Euro 2025 kicks off in Switzerland

Euro 2025 kicks off today in Switzerland, with the tournament braced for a scorching start as England continue their preparations for their opening game against France on Saturday.

The action gets underway later with the first two games from Group A. Unusually, the host nation is not involved in the curtain-raiser, with Iceland and Finland playing in the opening match this afternoon. Switzerland then take on dark horses Norway in Basel, seeking a strong start on home soil.

With Switzerland experiencing a heatwave and heat warnings declared in the country, Uefa have made the decision to relax their rules around fans bringing bottles of water to the stadium for the first couple of days, while players will be allowed cooling breaks if temperatures reach 32C.

The Lionesses arrived in Zurich on Monday and head into the European Championships as the holders, but face a challenging group that includes contenders France, Netherlands and debutants Wales. Follow all the latest news and build-up to Euro 2025 below

How the Pink Floyd reunion topped a miraculous Live 8 line-up

Live Aid lied to us. It would be 20 years from that legendary transatlantic charity knees-up before an all-star Bob Geldof production would rock all over the world.

That happening – minus Status Quo themselves, who had opened Live Aid in 1985 with an iconic “Rockin’ All Over the World” but had other commitments this time – would be its follow-up, Live 8: a global cavalcade of major A-list concerts staged 20 years ago this week in Philadelphia, Edinburgh, Berlin, Moscow, Rome, Ontario, Paris, Johannesburg, Cornwall, Chiba in Japan and the concept’s hub in London’s Hyde Park. The event may not have had the historic significance of its 1985 predecessor, with its table-thumping primetime swearing, its Freddie Mercury and its £100m raised for famine relief. But Live 8’s numbers far surpassed those of Live Aid.

Fifty thousand people watched the London show on screens outside Hyde Park, 150,000 inside the venue. Around a million flocked to the Rocky steps on Benjamin Franklin Parkway for the Philadelphia concert, and – via 182 television networks worldwide – anywhere between 30 million and 2 billion people are estimated to have watched the shows. If the latter figure is anywhere near correct, that means more people saw Peter Doherty, chewing on a lighter and struggling to control a very wobbly military hat, slur his way through T Rex’s “Children of the Revolution” with Elton John than originally watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

The stars, too, were interstellar. Amongst a who’s who of Noughties rock and pop culture, London paid host to short sets by Coldplay, U2, Paul McCartney, The Who, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Robbie Williams, The Killers, REM and – the major event of the day – a re-formed Pink Floyd. In Philadelphia, Stevie Wonder topped a bill featuring Jay-Z, Kanye West and Bon Jovi, while the likes of Muse, The Cure, Pet Shop Boys, Neil Young, Bryan Adams, Green Day, Brian Wilson and Celine Dion graced stages worldwide. A lineup that, according to Bono, Geldof miraculously pulled out of his platinum Rolodex inside two months.

“Geldof only agreed to this six weeks ago,” the U2 frontman told NME backstage on the day – 2 July 2005. “He didn’t want to do Live 8 unless he came up with something original – he found that with the eight cities and the moving from charity to justice.” The clincher was Bono’s suggestion of U2 and Paul McCartney recreating The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for arguably the world’s first show-stopping opening number, right down to the neon bandmen suits and a living 2005 version of the album sleeve. “I sold him the idea of Paul McCartney walking out and going ‘It was 20 years ago today’,” Bono said. “That’s when Geldof stopped telling me to f*** off.”

The justice in question was a fundamental correction of worldwide inequality. Rather than try to raise millions from the public for the poor and starving in Africa – which had proven something of a warlord-enriching sticking plaster in the wake of Live Aid – Live 8 was aiming to make poverty history altogether via a top-down redistribution of global wealth. A mass pressure protest hoping to shake the very top of the economic tree, the shows were timed to coincide with the G8 summit being held at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland in the hope of pressuring the world leaders present to cancel third world debts and increase aid budgets to the neediest regions.

Before Live 8 even began, signs were good that the UK’s Labour government, at least, might be listening. “The fact that you’ve seen Gordon Brown come out of the G8 financial meeting two weeks ago … and say ‘OK, 18 countries, debt wiped, we’re looking towards 37 countries’, that’s fantastic,” said co-organiser Midge Ure. “I don’t think anything like this has ever happened before, where the public have stood up and said, ‘This isn’t right, let’s change it’.”

Meanwhile, though Bono’s Sgt Pepper cover idea didn’t come off and only the horn section wore the suits, U2 and Macca’s collaboration on “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” launched a day of much onstage memory-making. The likes of Brad Pitt, David Beckham, Ricky Gervais, Bill Gates and Kofi Annan introduced a quickfire array of major-league sets, including collaborations such as Elton and Doherty (the latter actually dressed in homage to Charlotte Rampling’s performance in The Night Porter), Mariah Carey and an African Children’s Choir, McCartney and George Michael doing “Drive My Car” and Coldplay playing “Bitter Sweet Symphony” with Richard Ashcroft, who arrived – naturally for an astral traveller such as himself – waving his shoes above his head.

The most hot-ticket collaboration, though, was between Pink Floyd and itself. It had been 24 years since the revered prog band’s classic 1970s lineup of David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright had played together, the domineering Waters having left acrimoniously in 1985 and since sued the remaining band over rights to the name. “We needed some massive moment that visualised what we were trying to do,” Geldof recently told The Telegraph, “that people could come together despite whatever enmity there was, for a reason that was over and above that enmity.”

Having read Mason was wavering over the possibility of a reunion if “it was something like Live Aid”, Geldof (who had previously starred in Pink Floyd’s The Wall film) refused to take no for an answer and jumped on a train to Gilmour’s home to convince him to reunite the band. “He said, ‘I’m not going to do it.’ And I said, ‘I don’t accept that’,” Geldof said. “Then Roger called me, and … said, ‘Well, give me his number’. Hello. I’m giving Roger Waters David Gilmore’s number. That’s mad.” Waters himself sealed the deal. “My mobile rang and it was ‘Hi, this is Roger… how about it?’,” Gilmour told Classic Rock in 2022. “It was… surprising.”

Hatchets buried, the band even considered inviting their reclusive Sixties singer Syd Barrett to rejoin for the event. “That did not appear feasible,” Waters said. “Each time that someone utters the words ‘Pink Floyd’ he becomes restless.” According to Waters, rehearsals were “like putting on an old shoe”, but they weren’t entirely harmonious. “The rehearsals convinced me it wasn’t something I wanted to be doing a lot of,” Gilmour said.

Nonetheless, their four-song set, including “Money”, “Wish You Were Here” and “Comfortably Numb”, was the undoubted highlight of the London show, with Waters declaring from the stage, “It’s actually quite emotional, standing up here with these three guys after all these years, standing to be counted with the rest of you.” Geldof found the set “exceptionally beautiful, the way they played. Just for that moment, they were prepared to put whatever personal animosities [aside]… They understood whatever personal things, they were petty in the face of what they were trying to achieve, what they had achieved as a band, or what they did that night. It was immense.”

In the wake of the gig, Pink Floyd were reportedly offered $150m to tour, but Waters claimed, “I’m not in the mood.” Waters has since described the reunion as “terrific fun. It was good to have that chance to let bygones be bygones, if only for a few days.” And Gilmour agreed. “The Live 8 thing was great, but it was closure,” he said. “It was like sleeping with your ex-wife. There’s no future for Pink Floyd.”

Meanwhile, Ure told the press cameras that Live 8 was a far easier event to run than Live Aid. “It’s all working very well,” he said. “Twenty years ago, we had no technology. We had a mobile phone that could call round the corner that weighed a ton. You couldn’t do international calls, everything was done by Telex. Trying to organise a concert in Philadelphia and London simultaneously was a nightmare.” But the scene backstage was still a tornado of A-list chaos and pop star encounters. “It was kind of mayhem,” Robin Campbell of UB40 tells The Independent today. “We had a dressing room that wasn’t far from Madonna’s, and she was not being very friendly with autographs and stuff. I remember people trying to get autographs or photos with her, and she just wasn’t having it. But mostly the atmosphere was pretty buzzing. I remember taking a picture with Randy Jackson and ended up really getting on with him. Paul McCartney was there… he was side stage when we were on, watching the show.”

Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell recalls randomly running into R&B goddess and perennial Christmas loner Mariah Carey. “I met her very briefly and she seemed really nice,” he says. “I was just checking to see if there was any makeup on her dog or not. And Snoop Dogg was on after us. I remember [him] giving me some respect as I came off stage. That fulfilled many of my dreams.”

The potential for backstage faux pas was widespread. “I was talking to somebody and [someone] came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder, and went ‘All right, how you going?’” Campbell remembers. “I just went, ‘OK’ and carried on talking to the person I was talking to. My wife was standing there just looking aghast at me – ‘Do you realise what you just did? You just cold-shouldered George Michael’.”

Opening the Philadelphia show – which they now believe was down to a clerical error, their name drifting from the bottom of one list on an organisational whiteboard to the top of another – Kaiser Chiefs weren’t immune. After their barnstorming set and a congratulatory fist-bump from presenter Will Smith, singer Ricky Wilson found himself at the side of the stage with Fergie from The Black Eyed Peas asking for a swig from his champagne bottle before she went on.

“I said, ‘A lot of people say that my girlfriend…’ – not now, at the time – ‘that my girlfriend looks a lot like you’,” he says. “And she said, ‘That’s a nice thing to say’. And I just shook my head and said: ‘Nah, it’s not.’ She looked very confused, and then was ushered onto the stage. So if you see footage and she’s looking a bit like she’s been insulted, that was probably why. She’s a very beautiful woman, I don’t know why I replied that.”

Geldof himself was overwhelmed by the event. “Everything that rock’n’roll was ever meant to be is happening now,” he told the press run. “Everything I thought it was when I was a kid, in this moment it’s all made real.” Other performers weren’t quite so enamoured. “What I remember mostly is looking at a load of plates of lobster going off in the sun while I was looking at the backdrop of a starving African child,” says UB40 drummer Jimmy Brown. And while no acts were paid for their performances, in Philadelphia they were given a goodie bag containing Bertolucci watches, Gibson guitars and Hugo Boss suits with a combined value of around $12,000. “The first thing, we got out of our people carrier and I had to sign a Corvette,” says Wilson, “which to this day is probably the most expensive thing I’ve signed.”

As with Live Aid, once the final strains of an all-star, Macca-hugging “Hey Jude” had faded, many questions were raised over how much good Live 8 had achieved. Just days after the shows, the G8 leaders announced a pledge to double the level of aid to poor nations to $50bn by 2010, with half of the money going to Africa, and a total of 36 countries saw their debts cancelled to a total of $130bn. This action saw the proportions of children completing primary school rise significantly, to the benefit of 50 million students, and the number of women dying in childbirth fall. But some G8 countries were slow in honouring their aid pledges and, according to Oxfam, the $50bn promise fell $20bn short. By 2015, following the global economic crisis, loans to African countries had tripled, and today the reduction of foreign aid – or even its complete eradication if Reform UK gets its way – has entered mainstream political discourse, with the UK’s budget set to drop for a second time in 2027.

With poverty still very much in the present, and rising, some Live 8 performers are understandably disillusioned. “Make Poverty History was a great conceit, but it clearly hasn’t worked,” says Borrell. “My take on all of that is capitalism wins, regardless of whatever intentions people may have.” He cites Razorlight’s work with Friends of the Earth to promote the Climate Change Act of 2008, only to find Labour now announcing a new Heathrow runway and putting economic growth ahead of environmental concerns. “That’s one example among millions of the fact that every-last-cent capitalism just seems to win out and seems to be in control.”

Still, Live 8 made a small but significant dent in global inequality. But speaking at the launch of the recent Live Aid musical Just for One Day, Geldof declared it unlikely that another such global musical union could happen in the same way. “Unfortunately, social media seems to be a sort of isolating type [of] medium,” he said. “When you had just essentially two stations in the UK, everyone saw the same thing… But the problem is, do people have the bandwidth? They’re so exhausted with the horror of Gaza and the terror of Ukraine and the American political situation that it’s hard to draw attention to those who, through no fault of their own, are dying right now.” The enormo-gig method may have run its course: the Geldofs of the digital age will have to find new, pan-media ways of rocking, and feeding, the world.

Dalai Lama gives important update about his succession ahead of 90th birthday

The Dalai Lama has said that the institution he embodies will continue after his death and that his Gaden Phodrang trust has the sole authority to recognise his future reincarnation.

The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader has previously questioned whether there should be another Dalai Lama after him, with the process to name his successor likely to be bitterly contested between the Chinese government and Tibetans in exile.

In a long-awaited statement issued to a gathering of the Tibetan government-in-exile on Wednesday, the 14th Dalai Lama said he had long believed that the future of his role should be decided by the Tibetan people themselves.

In a statement on Wednesday, he said: “In particular, I have received messages through various channels from Tibetans in Tibet making the same appeal (that the institution of the Dalai Lama continue). In accordance with all these requests, I am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue.”

The Dalai Lama will turn 90 on 6 July and the most senior figures in Tibetan Buddhism have gathered in Dharamshala in India for a three-day religious conference building up to Sunday. He met with 11 senior Buddhist monks on Wednesday morning before his video statement on his reincarnation was made public.

The Dalai Lama said: “The process by which a future Dalai Lama is to be recognised has been clearly established in the 24 September 2011 statement which states that responsibility for doing so will rest exclusively with members of the Gaden Phodrang Trust, the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.”

He added: “They should consult the various heads of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions and the reliable oath-bound Dharma Protectors who are linked inseparably to the lineage of the Dalai Lamas. They should accordingly carry out the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past tradition. I hereby reiterate that the Gaden Phodrang Trust has sole authority to recognise the future reincarnation; no one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter.”

The Dalai Lama has repeatedly said his successor will be born outside China and urged followers to reject any candidate appointed by Beijing. The Chinese government says it is the sole body with the authority to name a successor.

Beijing has not officially responded to the Dalai Lama’s statement, but in the run-up to Wednesday, the Chinese media have been accusing him for trying to “manipulate” the reincarnation process. The Communist Party-run Global Times wrote: “At its core, his intention remains the same – to deny the traditional religious rituals and historical conventions that have governed the Dalai Lama reincarnation system for centuries, and to manipulate the reincarnation process for his own purposes.”

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Djokovic praises ‘miracle pills’ for helping him after mid-match turn

Novak Djokovic admitted to feeling his ‘absolute worst’ on court until the doctor’s ‘miracle pills’ restored eased a stomach issue and helped him fight past Alexandre Muller in four sets.

The first round clash was delicately poised at one set each when Djokovic asked for the doctor following the third game of the third set.

Muller had just taken a 2-1 lead with the set on serve when Djokovic explained an issue he was having in his stomach. The Serb attempted to stretch out his stomach muscles and ease some slight swelling when he was given the tablets by the medical professional.

It took a while for them to kick in but once they did Djokovic flew through the rest of the set, and quickly swept through the fourth to clinch a 6-1 6-7 6-2 6-2 victory and a place in the second round.

Speaking on court following his win, the seven-time Wimbledon champion explained the niggle he felt and praised his opponent for ‘the battle’.

“It’s great to be back in Wimbledon and obviously I have to say that first and acknowledge the sacredness of this court,” Djokovic began.

“This tournament has always meant a lot to me and to many other players, it’s a childhood dream so I never take stepping out on this court for granted. I enjoyed myself, obviously a bit less in the second set but I went from feeling my absolute best for a set and a half to my absolute worst for about 45 minutes, whether it was a stomach bug, I don’t know what it is.

“I struggled with that but the energy kicked back after some doctor’s miracle pills and I managed to finish the match on a good note.”

The Serb was asked whether he thought about retiring from the match when the stomach bug was at its worst but claimed that wasn’t an option.

He added: “I honestly wasn’t thinking about that [retiring from the match] or taking that as an option. I knew that something is off with the stomach so hopefully when that came down the energy will come back – and that’s what happened.

“Credit to Alex [Muller} for playing some really good tennis. He fought in the second set and deserves a round of applause for the battle.”

In the next round Djokovic will take on Great Britain’s Dan Evans who defeated fellow Brit Jay Clarke on Tuesday and he is excited for the opportunity to potential win an eighth Wimbledon title.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I had a chance. I think I always have a chance and have earned my right to feel that I can go all the way to the title,” Djokovic revealed.

“I’ve always enjoyed myself playing on this court, except when I’ve played Alcaraz the last couple of years, apart from that it was great.

“It is just the beginning of the tournament. There are many fantastic players in the draw. I look forward it, I always felt grass is the surface where I play my best tennis so why not do it again?”

How to host a Macmillan Coffee Morning like you’ve never seen before

What comes to mind when you think of a fundraising coffee morning? Soggy digestives, weak tea and sitting in a school hall having forced fun? Think again.

Macmillan Cancer Support are celebrating 35 years of the iconic Coffee Morning fundraiser, and we’re here to help you give your next Coffee Morning a glow-up. Behind the fun, Coffee Mornings help raise vital funds for people facing one of the toughest challenges of their lives.

Almost one in two people in the UK will get cancer in their lifetime, and no two experiences are the same. Where you live, who you are, or whether you have another health condition can all affect the care you receive – and that’s not fair. Macmillan is working to change that, doing whatever it takes to make sure everyone gets the best possible care, whoever and wherever they are.

So while tasty treats and fundraising fun of course get to stay, we’re leveling up the atmosphere with fresh ideas to keep everyone entertained.

Want to be a Coffee Morning Host?

Best of all, these new ways of raising vital funds don’t have to be expensive. In fact, they might even save you a bit of time, wardrobe space and money. Here’s how to host a Macmillan Coffee Morning like you’ve never seen before…

Organise a ‘style swap shop’

Clear out your wardrobe, raise money and bring your community together all at the same time by organising a ‘style swap shop’ – with all your finest, unworn or unwanted clothes and accessories.

Pack up the majestic hats you bought for a wedding but only wore once, the satin gloves that make you feel like Audrey Hepburn but don’t go with anything you own, or maybe that lace vintage dress your aunty wore to Glastonbury in the 70s, which now lives in an unexplored drawer in your bedroom.

Fill up a bag with your best cast-offs and get your friends, family and neighbours to do the same. Everyone pays £5 entry to the ‘style swap shop’ and then you all get to browse through each other’s preloved treasures – grabbing what takes your fancy.

One person’s hand-me-down is another person’s new look – so elbows at the ready! Want to raise extra cash? Add a £1-£2 price tag on each item that’s been donated.

Strut your stuff at a cake walk

We know that staying healthy and being physically active can reduce the risk of cancer, so why not combine the classic Coffee Morning with a walk around the block? Creative costumes, silly hats and streamers at the ready as we leave behind the school hall and instead take our cakes and cookies for a little jaunt to stretch our legs.

Up the fun, and the stakes, by upgrading from a cake walk to a cake race – the bigger and messier the dessert, the better!  And get the kids involved in the baking and racing too.

Or if you want to keep it indoors, turn your catwalk into a cake walk and give your best strut with your favourite pudding in hand. It’s giving egg and spoon race, jelly wobbling on a plate and doubling over with laughter as you sashay along clutching a platter filled with your finest roulade.

Dance away the morning at a sober rave

Why sit or stand when you can dance? Sober raves are all the rage – and ideal for a morning of fun with friends, family and neighbours. There’s no hangover, no late night and the kids can join in too – so, no need for a babysitter.

Grab your glow sticks for a Coffee Morning like no other, and you can still eat cake and have a brew or a cold drink. It’s a club night where nobody has to worry about the morning-after-the-night-before! You can host it in any hall, all you need is music and a disco ball.

You might feel silly at first, but soon you’ll be grinning with joy as dancing is proven to release endorphins (natural painkillers and mood boosters) as well as reducing stress and keeping you fit. Now, who does a good Big fish, little fish, cardboard box?

Run an Is it cake? competition

If you haven’t seen the Netflix hit Is it cake? – an American game show-style cooking competition, you’re missing a treat. Contestants compete to both identify and recreate their best version of everyday items – in cake form.

That could be fire hoses made from vanilla sponge and icing, kitchen utensils that cut open to reveal red velvet cake, replica designer handbags that are actually edible, and even other food items such as burgers, which are of course, cake.

Up the baking ante by running your own cake lookalike competition inspired by the show. The best thing about it is that even if your cake looks like a pair of stinky old sports shoes, it’ll still taste great!

Whether you’re swapping styles, raving sober or sculpting a sponge handbag, every slice of fun helps Macmillan Cancer Support do whatever it takes to help everyone living with cancer.

Signing up to host your own Macmillan Coffee Morning this year couldn’t be easier! Find out more today on the Macmillan website

Macmillan Cancer Support, registered charity in England and Wales (261017), Scotland (SC039907) and the Isle of Man (604). Also operating in Northern Ireland.

Trump says he will ‘take a look’ at deporting Musk as feud escalates

Donald Trump said he would “take a look” at deporting Elon Musk after his former ally renewed criticism of the tax and spending megabill on which the president has bet his legislative agenda.

As he departed the White House on Tuesday to visit an immigration detention facility in Florida, the president was asked if the Tesla billionaire – a naturalized American citizen originally from South Africa – could be forced out in retaliation for his attacks on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act under debate in the Senate.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “We’ll have to take a look.”

Trump also hinted he might turn the quasi-agency once run by Musk, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), on his former friend.

“We might have to put Doge on Elon,” he said. “You know what Doge is? Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon.”

Musk spent the first few months of the president’s second term as an unpaid special government employee leading what was initially described as a cost-cutting effort that spiraled into operating more as a roving band of ideological enforcers who at one point fed the country’s entire foreign aid apparatus — the U.S. Agency for International Development — into what Musk called a “wood chipper” in a span of days.

Doge’s efforts led to the agency largely shutting down, and Musk left the White House in May after being denied a request to remain in that unpaid status for longer.

Since returning to the private sector, Musk has become a vocal critic of the partisan spending package Trump has touted as a vehicle to fund his anti-immigrant agenda and other GOP priorities without making use of the regular appropriations process that would ordinarily require buy-in from Democrats, particularly in the Senate.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has been lashing out on X (Twitter), the social media platform he owns, to amplify critics of the massive spending bill and threaten to support electoral challenges against lawmakers who vote for the legislation on account of the bill’s negative impact on America’s national debt.

Trump has claimed that Musk’s opposition to the bill is driven solely by pique over the administration’s efforts to eliminate tax incentives intended to promote sales of electric vehicles such as the ones sold by Tesla.

Echoing a post on Truth Social in which he claimed Musk receives “more subsidy than any human being in history” and suggested that the centibillionaire “would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa” without federal support, Trump repeated his claim that Musk is motivated by his own financial needs rather than concerns about debt and threatened once more to punish his former ally financially.

“He’s upset that he’s losing his EV mandate… he’s very upset about things,” Trump said. “But you know, he could lose a lot more than that. I should tell you, right? Elon can lose a lot more than that,” he said.

For his part, Musk has declined to respond directly to the president’s threats thus far. But in reply to a post on X highlighting the video of the president threatening deportation, he suggested that he could do so in the future.

“So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now,” he said.

Three former hospital bosses arrested in Lucy Letby investigation

Three senior staff who worked at the hospital where Lucy Letby murdered seven babies and attempted to murder seven others have been arrested by police on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.

Letby, 35, was a nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital (CoCH) when she targeted babies on its neonatal unit between June 2015 and June 2016. She is now serving 15 whole life prison sentences.

This week, three members of the senior leadership team who were at the hospital during the same period were arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter, Cheshire Constabulary said on Tuesday.

The arrests come as part of an investigation into corporate manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter at the hospital. The three ex-staff members were arrested on Monday and have all since been bailed pending further inquiries.

Letby attacked her victims by various means while working at the hospital. One method was injecting air into baby’s bloodstream that caused an air embolism and blocked the blood supply, leading to sudden and unexpected collapses.

Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, senior investigating officer for Operation Duet, said the investigation initially looked into corporate manslaughter, with the focus on senior leadership and their decision-making in response to the increased levels of deaths at the hospital

In March, he said, it was widened to look at potential gross negligence manslaughter, with attention turning on potential “grossly negligent action or inaction of individuals”.

He said: “As part of our ongoing enquiries, on Monday 30 June three individuals who were part of the senior leadership team at the CoCH in 2015-2016, were arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.

“All three have subsequently been bailed pending further enquiries.

“Both the corporate manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter elements of the investigation are continuing and there are no set timescales for these.”

The force’s review of the care of some 4,000 babies admitted to hospital while Letby was working as a neonatal nurse remains ongoing.

In 2023, at Manchester Crown Court, a jury found Letby guilty of seven murders and seven attempted murders. Last year, at a retrial, the former nurse was found guilty of a further attempted murder charge, having made two attempts to kill one child.

A whole-life order in place means Letby will spend the rest of her life in prison with no minimum term or chance of early release.

Last year, a Thirlwall Inquiry was started to look into how Letby was able to commit her crimes, with evidence heard from former co-workers of Letby at the hospital, as well as senior management.

A report will be published as part of the inquiry next year.

Meanwhile, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, is considering evidence presented by Letby’s legal team from an international panel of medics.

The legal team claims that poor medical care and natural causes were to blame for the babies collapsing at the neonatal unit.

Speaking today, Letby’s barrister, Mark McDonald, reiterated calls for a full public inquiry into alleged “failings” at the hospital. “What is needed is a proper and full public inquiry into the failings of the neonatal and paediatric medical care unit at the Countess of Chester hospital,” he said.

Lawyers for the families of Letby’s victims, however, have dismissed the findings, calling them a “rehash” of the defence case heard at trial.

Following the announcement on the arrests, Det Supt Hughes added: “It is important to note that this does not impact on the convictions of Lucy Letby for multiple offences of murder and attempted murder.”