Full details of government plans to be published this morning with reforms partly driven by move to contain soaring costs One of the most memorable moments of the 2010 general election came when David Cameron was confronted by a parent and activist who accused the Tory leader of being opposed to disabled children being included in mainstream schools. Cameron insisted that he was not opposed to inclusion, but that he wanted to stop the closure of special needs. Sixteen years later, Keir Starmer is now actively promoting inclusion. In his Times article, Starmer says: [The current Send] system that works for nobody. It forces parents into a grinding, adversarial fight to get “one size fits all” support. It encourages private equity vultures to rip off the taxpayer by charging up to five times more for a precious special school place. Meanwhile, for so many children it simply writes off their potential. Insisting, against all evidence, that they could not thrive in a supported and inclusive mainstream school. We should be crystal clear on this last point: inclusion works. Not for every kid – of course some children need extra support in a specialist institution. That’s why today we are investing in 60,000 extra specialist places. The government is proposing a major set of reforms, with more funding and support provided upfront through mainstream schools– as already happens in Scotland and Wales. To enable this change, the government will provide about £1bn per year to mainstream schools and local authorities to deliver more support and specialist services. This is a reasonably significant change, considering that extra Send funding for mainstream schools and local authority support services currently totals about £5bn per year. The government will be hoping that more upfront support and early intervention saves them money by reducing the need for expensive support currently provided through education, health and careplans (EHCPs). Reform will be a long and complicated process. If mainstream schools are to play a bigger role, how can we be sure they make decisions in a consistent and fair way? A new funding system will be needed to ensure resources are targeted across schools to where they are needed. There will need to be a plan to upskill and expand the workforce to ensure mainstream schools can play an expanded role. The government will need to manage the transition carefully to ensure minimal disruption to existing support for pupils. More focus on outcomes will also be needed to improve quality. Continue reading...

Joint ventures on defence, green energy and telecoms suggest how country could join bloc in stages rather than wait for full status When the first Ukrainian-designed drone to be made in a German factory rolled off the production line last month, Volodymyr Zelenskyy knew it marked a turning point for the economy. With drone-making joint ventures also well advanced in Finland and Denmark, war-torn Ukraine has shown how its businesses can adapt and break out of their bomb-threatened domestic confines, becoming more integrated into the EU’s industrial network with each passing day. Continue reading...

South-western France could hit 25C, while a powerful Nor’easter is forecast to bring blizzards to Boston Europe live – latest updates An early taste of spring is on the way for millions across northern and western Europe this week. Temperatures could climb close to a near record-breaking 20C (68F) in parts of Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, with south-western France approaching 25C on Wednesday. The warmth is being driven by a highly amplified synoptic pattern, featuring a region of low pressure over the Atlantic and strong high pressure over central Europe. The setup will allow exceptionally mild air to spread across much of the continent, with temperatures in some places rising to 10-15C above the seasonal average. Continue reading...

Finance campaigner marches on to set and tells Tory leader her policy to cut interest rates will only help top earners Kemi Badenoch has faced what could be described as the stuff of nightmares for a UK politician being interviewed about a personal finance policy: being ambushed and contradicted live on air by Martin Lewis. As the Conservative leader was being interviewed on ITV about her party’s plans to cut interest rates for some student loans, Lewis, the campaigner and finance expert, marched on to the set to announce that he completely disagreed. Continue reading...

The latest in our series of writers on their most important comfort films is a celebration of Nicolas Cage’s finest action moment It’s easy to poke fun at Nicolas Cage. Between the meltdown memes, dodgy hairdos and his more taxman-friendly choices of roles, he has frequently made himself a target for ridicule among the masses. Fresh off an Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas, the actor’s decision to follow up with three action films must have seemed baffling at the time. The gambit paid off, though. Consisting of The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off, this unofficial “trilogy” of blockbusters would showcase the fundamental unknowability of Nicolas Cage. Continue reading...

New Art UK chair Ben Terrett appointed as charity marks 10 years of building online database From a bronze Rodin sculpture of the naked Eve outside a Nando’s in Harlow to more than 6,000 artworks by JMW Turner, to a crumpled-up piece of A4 paper owned by Manchester Art Gallery, the UK’s public art collection is a wonderful and varied thing. It is huge, as demonstrated by the charity Art UK, which has announced it has reached a million artworks on its database and appointed a new chair who said: “We’ve only scratched the surface.” Continue reading...

A huge vaccination drive has been launched after the country’s first outbreak in years of the paralysing disease. But the battle to wipe out the virus is struggling elsewhere, so how can it be eradicated? As a seven-year-old boy is treated for polio at a hospital in Malawi, the country has launched a major vaccination campaign to stem an outbreak of the disease. The effort in Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries and badly hit by the aid cuts, has seen an astonishing 1.3 million children already vaccinated against the disease in just four days after emergency supplies were airlifted in by the World Health Organization (WHO) just over a week ago. Continue reading...

Thursday’s stakes could not be higher. We know Labour has failed and Farage’s Reform is poisonous. I want to win Gorton and Denton as a fresh start Hannah Spencer is the Green party candidate in this week’s Gorton and Denton byelection I didn’t grow up planning to be a politician. I’m a tradesperson from Manchester. I left school at 16 and have been a plumber ever since. Last week, I also qualified as a plasterer, with a distinction. So until now, I’ve spent my working life fixing homes. But after years of watching things fall apart, I’m done waiting for someone else to change things. It’s time to turn my hand to fixing whole communities – and join our Green MPs determined to repair our broken politics. Gorton and Denton deserves an MP rooted in this community – someone who works here, understands this place and genuinely cares. After thousands of doorstep conversations, it’s clear people are done with Labour. This byelection is now a straight fight between the Green party and Reform UK. Labour knows it, and Reform’s candidate, Matthew Goodwin, knows it too. Continue reading...

Arousal may be spontaneous, or arise in response to sensory stimulation, memory, fantasy or emotional connection. Here’s how to understand the differences What turns you on? Depending on the person, the answer to that question will vary wildly. But what is really going on under the, ahem, hood when we start to get in the mood? The first scientists to really take the physiology of sex seriously – or at least break the taboos around talking about it – were William Masters and Virginia Johnson, sexologists who began their studies in the 1950s (and got married in 1971). “They came up with what’s known as the four-stage model, which was that the body gets aroused, you hit a plateau, you have an orgasm, you go back down to baseline,” says Dr Angela Wright, a GP and clinical sexologist based in Yorkshire. Continue reading...

With the Games dominating screens, Dougie Wallace instead took his camera to Scotland’s ski areas of Glenshee, Cairngorm Mountain, Glencoe and Nevis Range, where a thaw, a band of rain, or a gust can change everything When the snow comes, the car parks fill. Word spreads quickly, a good week, a belter of snow, and by mid-morning the access roads are tight with hatchbacks, hire skis and cautious optimism. In Scotland, the difference between a strong season and a poor one can be a weather front drifting 10 miles too far north. A thaw, a gust, a band of rain, and everything changes. The project was partly inspired by the approach of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics and the idea of what they might look like if staged in Scotland. It was not about shiny podiums, more an exercise in imagining how weather, people and place might shape a very different kind of Games. Cold air, small talk, a few quiet minutes before the ride, Glencoe. Continue reading...

New version of the sci-fi day-on-repeat sees a perplexed duo repeatedly battle monstrous plants but leaves you feeling as bored as the protagonist appears The second film adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s 2004 eponymous novel, this new one is considerably inferior to Edge of Tomorrow from 2014, Tom Cruise’s own Groundhog D1ay with mechs. It’s not a question of budget or aesthetics – simply a gaping hole of engaging characterisation and inner spark that makes this time loop a grinding chore, rather than a thrilling jailbreak from eternal recurrence. Directors Ken’ichirô Akimoto and Yukinori Nakamura do, to be fair, switch things up. Instead of the original story’s extraterrestrial “Mimics”, they concoct an entirely new big bad: a dormant alien flower, nattily named Darol, that one day begins spitting out what look like killer nasturtiums. The protagonists have been swapped: the point of view in this version is Rita (voiced by Ai Mikami), the female badass working for the United Defense Force that surveys the colossal plant. Exposure to its quartz spores are what forces her to live her imperfect day over and over. Continue reading...

Two uncannily similar men switch places in an existential farce that playfully explores the precarity of working life In Isabel Waidner’s previous novel, 2023’s Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, a working-class writer wins a literary prize. As the trophy takes the form of an elusive UFO, Corey Fah – an outsider unfamiliar with the baffling inner workings of the system – is unable to collect or even confirm the award. Waidner has said that the novel was partly inspired by the experience of winning the Goldsmiths prize for their previous work Sterling Karat Gold, and by the ephemeral nature of success, with its “unfamiliar contexts of social power and opportunity”. In Waidner-world the surreal is always lurking, gleefully waiting to trip the reader up. As If uses the acting profession and its inherent themes of performance and doubleness to explore the precarity of work. A Waiting for Godot transported to the housing estates and grotty sublets of Clerkenwell, London, the book opens with a gnomic Vladimir/Estragon-type exchange between two startlingly similar strangers in a flat. They are both in their late 40s, very tall, dark-haired, a mirror image of each other – “my unremarkable eyes, they were looking back at me”, Aubrey Lewis, who is subletting the flat, notices with some alarm. “Were we ever to be seen together, I thought, we would reflect badly on each other.” The other man, dressed in “a novelty T-shirt, the less said of it the better, and pyjama bottoms”, had “walked in through the door as if he owned the place”. He introduces himself as Lindsey Korine and announces he is cold. Rifling, with Pinteresque fuss and deliberation, among the “historic arrangement” of heavy coats left by the previous subtenant, he assumes a new guise for his next role in the narrative. Continue reading...

Dollar slumps and gold rises as authorities say they will halt levies linked to emergency powers but give no word on refunds Business live – latest updates Donald Trump’s administration has said it will stop collecting tariffs the supreme court ruled were illegal as they were imposed using emergency powers, as investors attempted to digest the US president’s latest volley of replacement levies. The US dollar slumped 0.4% against a basket of other currencies on Monday after the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency said it would deactivate all tariff codes associated with International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) related orders as of Tuesday at midnight (5am UK time). Continue reading...

European foreign policy chief says ‘there is not going to be progress’ on sanctions package today Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski has sharply criticised Hungary for blocking the 20th package of sanctions, saying it was “shocking” that with their history of fighting against Soviet aggression in the 20th century, the leaders in Budapest choose to attack Ukraine for domestic gains. “I would have expected a much greater feeling of solidarity from Hungary for Ukraine. Instead, with the help of state propaganda and private but controlled by the government media, the ruling party managed to create a climate of hostility towards the victim of aggression, and … now is trying to exploit that in the general election,” he said. Continue reading...

Motorway stretch plays music as a safety feature but those close to it say ‘intrusive’ noise is constant and distressing Residents of one of India’s most upmarket neighbourhoods say the country’s first “musical road” has turned their daily lives into a nightmare soundtrack. A stretch of Mumbai’s recently opened Coastal Road seafront expressway has been engineered to play the pulsating Oscar-winning tune Jai Ho from the movie Slumdog Millionaire when vehicles drive on it at lower speeds. Continue reading...

George Russell has been purring in a balanced car in pre-season while Aston Martin are still hunting for power The big four – Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren – have been at pains throughout testing to claim they are not the top dog, in something of an inverse Mexican standoff, each decrying their own strengths. Undeniably, however, Mercedes emerge from the three pre-season tests looking strong. Continue reading...

Jack Hughes lost his front teeth in men’s ice hockey final against Canada before scoring overtime winner If the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics opening ceremony was a love letter to Italian heritage, the final day was a thunderous operatic finale, a crescendo of clashing sticks, soaring amplitude and the bittersweet tears of legends taking their final bows. As the sun dipped behind the peaks of the Dolomites for the last time this fortnight, the Olympic flame did not just flicker out – it was passed from the high-fashion streets of Milan to the ancient stones of Verona. The final day’s headline act was the men’s ice hockey final which the weight of a 46-year ghost. Pitting the United States against Canada, the contest fell exactly on the anniversary of the 1980 Miracle on Ice. There was no need for a miracle this time, just the surgical precision of Jack Hughes. After Matt Boldy opened the scoring in the first period, the game transformed into a goaltending masterclass by Connor Hellebuyck, who turned aside 40 Canadian shots in normal time. Continue reading...

After their poorest pair of tournament performances in years, Steve Borthwick’s project is inevitably under scrutiny The band on the stadium concourse were playing a familiar tune in the immediate aftermath of England’s latest debacle on Saturday. “Zombie! Zombie!” the vocalist sang, ostensibly in tribute to Ireland’s record 42-21 victory at Twickenham. Alternatively he might just have been riffing on the horribly listless, blank-eyed performance that ended England’s Six Nations title hopes for another year. “In your he-ad, in your he-ad…” The old Cranberries anthem, synonymous with Ireland’s 2023 World Cup campaign in France, will be heard a few more times over the next month if Andy Farrell’s team maintain their revitalised excellence and no-nonsense physical intent. For England’s players, though, the past two weekends have been truly grim, a return to the bad old days they had dared to hope were over. Continue reading...

Objectification, hate, rape threats: the politicians debating online abuse mean well, but to truly understand, they need to see what I see If you’re anything like my parents, you probably wouldn’t even understand most of the content that floods my social media, no matter how hard I try to avoid it. Here’s a recent example from Instagram: “Do y’all females ever tell ur homegirls ‘Sis chill you letting too many dudes hit?’” Essentially, that means: “Women – do you ever tell your girlfriends that they’re whores and need to stop letting so many guys fuck them?” The reel, posted by a 19-year-old man, appeared on my Instagram feed without me wanting to see it, or ever interacting with any other similar content. The comments that followed were pure misogyny. “Women see body count as a leaderboard and they try to outdo each other,” was one of them. Translation: all women are competitively promiscuous. The writer is an anonymous teenage web user In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Revisiting the Troubles in 1990s Belfast, Sapling is the result of intensive research in the city. And winning the Women’s prize, says Duncan, ‘is the maddest thing that’s ever happened to me’ It took Georgina Duncan a few seconds to realise that Indhu Rubasingham, when announcing the winner of the Women’s prize for playwriting last week, was talking about her drama, Sapling. The 30-year-old recalls the moment: “The first sentence I heard her say, I was like, ‘That could be any of the plays.’ Then I was like, ‘Holy shit! This is the maddest thing that’s ever happened to me.’” The news still hasn’t fully sunk in, but anyone who has read Sapling will not be surprised by Duncan’s victory. Set in Belfast in the 1990s, the play follows 16-year-old Gerry, whose older brother Connor was murdered 10 years earlier by another child. “Someone described it as being about the scar tissue behind grief, which I thought was so eloquent,” Duncan says. The play was born out of her own fear of loss: “Grief is something we all experience in our lives. And it frightens me.” Continue reading...

There is often not much elite competition but purity elevates what were once derided as ‘useless’ sports It was the Olympics of politics and penises, of JD Vance being jeered and of Ukrainian bobsledders being banned from the competition, of a convicted criminal beating the teammate she was guilty of defrauding, of Lindsey Vonn crashing out 12 seconds into the race and of Ilia Malinin making one mistake too many, of the internet became momentarily obsessed with slow‑motion videos of a Canadian stroking a curling stone with the tip of his finger, and it was the Olympics where the Norwegian ski‑jump team refused to dignify questions about whether or not they were injecting acid into their genitals. Like I said right at the beginning, Pierre de Coubertin never wanted a Winter Olympics. If that line sounds a little familiar it might be because you read it here a fortnight or so ago. “The great inferiority of these snow sports is that they are completely useless,” Coubertin wrote, “with no useful application whatsoever.” But it’s true, too, that over time he changed his mind. And by the end of the International Olympic Committee’s very first Olympic “winter sports week” at Chamonix in 1924 he gave a speech in which he told his audience that “winter sports are among the purest”. Continue reading...

Rio Ngumoha lifts Liverpool, the tussle to be Harry Kane’s England deputy and Chelsea self-destruct Tottenham weren’t quite as dreadful as they were in losing 4-1 to Arsenal in November, but they were still extremely so, devoid of wit, energy, solidity, creativity, quality, and everything else one would hope to see in a football team. Make no mistake, they are in serious danger of going down and, assessing their fixtures, it is not easy to see where they might win enough points to stay up – all the more so given the form of West Ham and Nottingham Forest who are both playing well. Spurs, on the other hand, haven’t won a league game in 2026 and look like they’ve forgotten how –­ partly, it must be said, because of an awful injury list. So, where does Igor Tudor go from here? It may well be that his only option is to pick both Dominic Solanke and Randal Kolo Muani, get balls into the box, and hope they can make enough of them to save him – which might not be The Tottenham WayTM, but is a lot better than relegation. Daniel Harris Continue reading...

Men tend to burn more energy at rest, but other factors also carry weight ‘Generally speaking, yes,” says Bethan Crouse, a performance nutritionist from Loughborough University, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all rule. Humans burn calories to fuel everything from movement to sleeping. For the general adult population aged from about 19 to 64, guidance puts daily energy needs at about 2,000 calories for women and 2,500 for men (the requirements are very different in children and adolescents, and tend to fall with age: they decline between 65 and 74, and drop again after 75). But averages hide a lot of variation. One of the main reasons men typically need more calories is that they usually have a higher resting (or basal) metabolic rate, meaning they burn more energy at rest. This is largely explained by differences in body composition – on average, men have more lean muscle mass, while women tend to have a higher proportion of body fat – and muscle burns more calories than fat. Continue reading...

A rumour on social media brought dozens of fortune seekers to a field on the outskirts of mining town Springs In a township 30 miles east of Johannesburg, a mechanical digger filled in holes in the dark brown earth, bringing to an end a brief but intense gold rush that saw dozens of fortune seekers descend on what was once a cattle field. Less than two weeks ago, a rumour spread like wildfire on social media: someone had found gold while digging a hole for a fence post in a field on the edge of Gugulethu, an informal settlement of dirt roads and metal shacks on the outskirts of mining town Springs. Continue reading...

I’ve been without a hob in my new kitchen for three months after an emergency engineer was forced to disconnect it When Wickes installed my new kitchen, I noticed an odd, worsening smell that I put down to the ongoing works. It was nearly two months later that I realised it was gas. My supplier dispatched an emergency engineer, who discovered a leak in the newly fitted hob and categorised it as an immediate danger. The gas supply to the hob was disconnected and Wickes sent a replacement, but no one came to install it. Continue reading...