It is vital that those at risk are diagnosed early to prevent long-term organ damage, the charity says.
Type 2 diabetes can sometimes be put into remission by eating a healthy diet and keeping slim without needing to rely on glucose-lowering medications.
The researchers say newer obesity treatments – such as GLP-1 jabs and pills – might help, alongside healthy eating advice.
About 90% of the six million people in the UK living with diabetes have the type 2 form of the disease rather than type 1, or insulin-dependent, diabetes.
Risk increases with age and older adults still make up the largest proportion of new diagnoses.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has dismissed the country’s army commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi.
It comes just days after the removal of popular Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov – a move that triggered street protests across the country.
Initial rumours that the end of Fedorov’s tenure was related to a conflict between him and Syrskyi were soon confirmed.
Fedorov, 35, has been widely praised for energising the ministry and transforming the armed forces, as well as leading a drive against corruption. Syrskyi, 60, is seen by many in Ukraine as a Soviet-school commander reluctant to implement radical changes in the army.
He was replaced by Mykhailo Drapatyi, 43, who is a popular, battle-hardened general.
“I will work responsibly, with full focus, and with respect for the people who are defending our country today,” Drapatyi said on Facebook.
He also thanked Syrskyi “for his consistent work to strengthen the Ukrainian army,” adding: “I grew up in it.”
In a video post on social media late on Tuesday, Zelensky thanked Syrskyi for his military campaigns, including his role in successfully defending the capital Kyiv during the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Zelensky also revealed that earlier in the day, he met Fedorov and offered him a “worthy position in power”, but did not say whether the offer had been accepted.
Fedorov was last week replaced by Yevhenii Khmara, a former top official at Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU).
“All decisions will be formalised tomorrow,” Zelensky added in his post.
Separate research from charity Christians Against Poverty found about 35% of adults in the UK worry about their finances every day.
As the VAT announcement will save households about £45 a year, “the fear of juggling budgets that simply don’t balance remains”, says Juliette Flachm, Acting Head of Policy and Public Affair.
“With incomes failing to keep pace with the high cost of essentials, many of the people we see are left facing impossible decisions.”
JRF’s chief economist Chris Belfield said: “Andy Burnham starts his time as prime minister at a time when the cost-of-living crisis has never been more widely felt.
“Government policy can work. We need greater intervention to control rental prices, make energy affordable and improve the adequacy of Universal Credit so everyone can afford the essentials.”
A government spokesperson said: “We’re determined to turn the tide on poverty after years of rising hardship. Our recent statistics show that effort is beginning to make a difference – household incomes have risen 5% in real terms, food bank usage has fallen, and food insecurity is down.
“Work is underway to tackle the cost-of-living pressures through measures such as increasing the National Minimum Wage, removing the two-child limit, implementing the first ever sustained above inflation increase to Universal Credit, and launching the £1bn Crisis and Resilience Fund which will act as a genuine safety net for those in financial crisis.”
The figures come from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s poverty tracker, which surveys about 4,000 people from households in the lowest 40% of incomes.
The charity noted that food inflation averaged 4.1% between May 2025 and May 2026, compared to 3.6% for overall inflation, which has greater impact on lower-income households because they spend more of their income on food.
But it also noted that the number of poorer households that couldn’t afford to keep their homes warm has fallen by half a million in two years, after the government reduced average household energy bills by about £150 a year through changes to green levies and support like the warm homes discount.
More than two-fifths (44%) of people consider themselves to be collectors, with Gen Z adults particularly likely to have a collection on the go, a survey suggests.
Men are more likely to be collectors than women, at 55% compared with 33%, according to NFU Mutual.
Books, jewellery, watches and vinyl records are among the items that people said they collect, with some also saying they collect cryptocurrency, the research found.
Seven in 10 (71%) Gen Z adults (born after 1996) and more than half (51%) of Millennials (born from 1981 to 1996) said they collected items highlighted in the survey, making them more likely to do so than the 35% of Gen X (born from 1965 to 1980) and 29% of Baby Boomers (born from 1946 to 1964) surveyed.
Some people are also buying items hoping they will pay off in the longer term as an investment.
Nearly one in 10 (9%) people surveyed said they had bought jewellery in the past year that they considered primarily as an investment and 5% had bought art primarily for this reason.
Furniture, books, vinyl records, precious metals, fine wines, musical instruments, and movie, sports or pop culture memorabilia were also among the items some people said they had bought in the past year primarily as an investment.
The value of collections can go down as well as up.
Younger generations may also feel the benefits of some people’s passions for collecting.
More than a fifth (21%) of people said they had bought jewellery with the intention of passing it down as a family heirloom.
Many people surveyed had also inherited items, with 27% having inherited jewellery, 15% having inherited books, 13% having inherited watches, 12% having inherited furniture and 9% having inherited antiques or collectables.
Meanwhile, 2% had inherited fine wines or spirits and 2% had inherited movie memorabilia.
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NFU Mutual commissioned OnePoll to survey 2,000 people across the UK in April.
Dawn Blazier, head of bespoke home insurance at NFU Mutual, said: “We truly are a nation of collectors, and our latest survey data suggests that this will remain the case as Gen Z and Millennials continue to build their collections.
“While we might expect people to collect jewellery and watches, the fact that a sizeable proportion of the UK public is actively collecting cryptocurrency and vinyl is certainly a sign of the times.
“It’s also interesting that many ordinary people have recently bought items ranging from jewellery to furniture primarily as an investment, perhaps indicating that something which was once thought of as a preserve of the elite is slowly becoming more mainstream.
“With so many of us collecting and investing in items for the future, it’s more important than ever that people avoid underinsurance by making sure their contents are properly valued and listed on their insurance, particularly where collections or individual items have increased in value.
“Insurance needs to be able to cover the cost of replacing an item if the worst happens, and so I’d urge all the collectors to take a minute to make sure they’re adequately protected.”
Only about one in seven homes across the UK has consistently increased in value annually since June 2022, according to new estimates from property website Zoopla.
The analysis scrutinised individual home valuations, tracking their performance from June 2021 through to June 2026.
Zoopla specifically focused on comparing a property’s value in June of each year against the same month in the preceding year, for example, checking if a home’s value in June 2022 surpassed its June 2021 valuation.
This detailed examination revealed that just 14 per cent of UK homes – a figure representing over four million properties – had experienced an annual increase in value each June from 2022 to 2026.
Just just 14 per cent of UK homes experienced an annual increase in value each June from 2022 to 2026 (Alamy/PA)
While consistent year-on-year growth for individual properties remains uncommon, Zoopla’s broader house price index offers a different perspective.
It indicates that the average UK home value has risen by 15.3 per cent over the past five years, equating to an average increase of £36,100 per property.
The impact of mortgage rate increases
Zoopla said that rises in mortgage rates, affecting borrowers’ costs, will have had an impact over the five-year period.
Richard Donnell, executive director at Zoopla, said: “Housing markets across Northern Ireland, the North and Scotland have seen homeowners keep building equity in their home because the local housing market was less exposed to the affordability pressures that higher mortgage rates bring.
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“For homeowners, this analysis highlights why you cannot rely on national or regional averages when assessing what your home is worth.
“Trends vary by property type and at a hyper local level.
“Understanding whether your local area has consistently built equity or flatlined is essential information, if you want to understand what you can afford to buy next or you are actively planning your next move.”
Aneisha Beveridge, research director at Connells Group, said: “The UK’s housing market has become increasingly fragmented over the last five years.
“The strongest performance has generally come from more affordable markets across the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where lower price points have helped insulate buyers from higher mortgage rates and supported continued demand.
“At the same time, the pandemic sparked a surge in demand for larger homes in commutable areas outside London, driving strong price growth across much of the south between 2020 and 2022.
“However, as mortgage rates rose and stamp duty incentives were withdrawn, that momentum faded and price growth in many of these markets has since come under pressure.
“Despite these headwinds, our research shows the middle market is still moving.
“Most buyers and sellers are driven by life events rather than short-term house price movements, and for homeowners who typically move every 10 to 12 years, modest annual price falls rarely affect their ability to transact.
“The challenge comes when weak price growth persists for many years.”
The UK’s housing market ‘has become increasingly fragmented over the last five years’, Aneisha Beveridge, research director at Connells Group, said (John Giles/PA)
Charlotte Harrison, chief executive officer of home financing at Skipton Building Society, said: “Consistent house price growth can help homeowners build equity, but equity alone doesn’t guarantee people can move.
“Our latest Skipton Group home affordability index found the gap between buying affordability and living affordability is the widest it’s been this decade.
“For many households, the challenge is no longer whether their home has risen in value, but whether they can afford the higher ongoing costs of their next property.”
She added: “While sustained house price growth can be positive for existing homeowners, improving access to homeownership remains critical if future generations are to share in those benefits too.”
Nathan Emerson, CEO at property professionals’ body Propertymark, said: “Many purchasers are factoring in the long-term cost of homeownership rather than focusing solely on securing a property quickly.
“At the same time, sellers who price their homes realistically continue to attract strong interest, demonstrating that demand remains resilient where expectations align with current market conditions.”
What the data says
Here are the percentages of homes in regions or nations estimated by Zoopla to have increased in value annually each month of June, covering June 2022 to June 2026 inclusive:
Zoopla also identified “top performers” in regions or nations, where property values are particularly likely to have increased each year.
Here are the locations, followed by the percentage of homes estimated to have consistently increased in value annually in each month of June between June 2022 and June 2026 inclusive:
New documents reveal the FBI blocked Customs and Border Protection from questioning former President of EcoHealth Alliance Peter Daszak, a researcher linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and gain-of-function research. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and GOP lawmakers criticize the Biden administration’s actions regarding the COVID-19 origins investigation.
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Newly released messages among the authors of a widely cited paper regarding the origins of COVID-19 privately raised doubts that the virus originated from bats, as their paper stated.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Tuesday released the internal Slack messages exchanged among the authors of “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” — Kristian Andersen, Robert Garry, Eddie Holmes and Andrew Rambaut.
“The idea that it came from lab is implausible and yet privately they’re saying the opposite is this level of dishonesty I think needs to be exposed,” Paul told Fox News. “These are people who get large, multimillion-dollar grants from our country, and we shouldn’t be giving money to people who lied to us.”
The paper was published in Nature Medicine in March 2020, and was widely cited by public health officials and the media as the scientific authority for ruling out a laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2. However, the released messages appear to show that its authors were less certain than their public conclusions suggested.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Tuesday released the internal Slack messages exchanged among the authors of “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.”(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc, File)
Some raised concerns that the virus originated in a lab.
Andersen assigned a 30% probability to a lab origin while Holmes gave an estimate of 20%, though he later revised that to 10%. Either way, both figures contrast with the paper’s public assertion that the virus had not been manipulated.
“The part I’m really struggling with is that at the end of the day, we really don’t have any hard evidence one way or the other — and especially given some of the recent evidence, we also can’t rule out that somebody actually put it in there,” Andersen wrote on June 11, 2020, according to the documents. “That’s obviously not to say that somebody did, but we can’t rule it out. Our paper was pretty strong in saying ‘there’s no way,’ but I have less confidence in that statement at this stage.”
The P4 laboratory, center, on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The lab has been at the center of alleged theories that COVID-19 was engineered in a lab.(Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images, File)
The documents also reveal internal debates over the furin cleavage site, the genetic feature at the heart of the lab-leak question. At one point, Andersen told colleagues that “some smoking(ish) guns” had emerged that made him “not comfortable,” and that he had “less confidence… at this stage,” a news release from Paul’s office states.
In addition, the authors coordinated with the U.S. intelligence community and National Institutes of Health (NIH) leadership as they were publicly defending their conclusions. Another topic of discussion among the authors was Ralph Baric, a prominent coronavirus researcher.
While they acknowledged his expertise, their internal messages revealed a highly contentious relationship with him, characterized by professional rivalry and suspicions that he actively tried to undermine them.
Officials with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were allegedly prepared to question and search Peter Daszak, inset, upon his return to the U.S. from the World Health Organization’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, before the FBI intervened and asked agents to stand down, according to documents released Monday by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.(Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Getty Images, File)
They also suspected Baric was the anonymous leaker, whom they dubbed “Deep Throat,” who shared confidential peer-review information with a journalist. The leak suggested that the authors initially suspected a lab origin before changing their minds.
A World Health Organization (WHO) scientific advisory group released a report last year on the origins of COVID-19, concluding that the deadly pandemic was caused by “zoonotic spillover,” either directly from bats or through an intermediate host.
On Monday, Paul released documents that revealed U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents were preparing to question British zoologist Peter Daszak upon his return to the United States from the World Health Organization’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, before the FBI intervened and asked agents to stand down.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the U.S. response to the pandemic, is slated to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the origins of the virus this month following a subpoena issued by Paul, the committee chairperson.
Three in four Americans don’t have enough wealth to weather financial setbacks and achieve major life milestones, according to a recent report from The Aspen Institute, a nonprofit think tank.
About 34.5 million U.S. households fall short of what the group terms its “essential wealth” benchmark, which The Aspen Institute defines as having six weeks of take-home pay in savings combined with a high enough net worth to achieve both homeownership and retirement security.
“The fact that most households fall short of that, we think, is a signal for a lot of the financial frustrations, the financial nihilism that we’re seeing nowadays,” said Steven Brown, director of insights and evidence for the Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program. “People feel like they can’t get ahead, and that they don’t have enough.”
The widespread lack of financial resiliency may help explain why many Americans remain pessimistic about their financial futures despite signs of economic strength. Unemployment remains low and stocks have surged on AI-driven gains, yet half of adults say the American dream is no longer attainable, according to a recent CBS News poll.
Homeownership feels out of reach for many, with about nine in 10 adults under 40 saying it’s harder for them to purchase a home than it was for their parents’ generation, according to a June Pew Research survey.
Focusing on wealth rather than income provides a clearer picture of what Americans can — or cannot — achieve financially, Aspen said. Liquid savings can help a household weather a short-term setback, while owning a home or other assets provides long-term investments that can aid in achieving goals like paying for a child’s education or retirement.
“Wealth is not just a material thing,” Brown said. “It gives you this peace of mind, agency, the ability to make decisions and choices.”
How much wealth do I need to thrive?
As part of its research, Aspen also examined how much a typical household would need across different age groups to meet the “essential wealth” threshold. The findings show — unsurprisingly — that the amount of money required increases with age.
People under 40 who meet the threshold for essential wealth have enough money to afford a down payment on an entry-level home, Aspen said. The figures for people who are 40 to 49 and 50 to 64 are based on median incomes, and could be higher or lower depending on a household’s income.
Brown emphasized that the thresholds are a ballpark estimate of what people might need, and that they could change depending on income, location and other variables.
“A household in California may need a higher number. A household in West Virginia or Mississippi may need a lower number, and so these can vary by place,” he said.
So where do Americans actually stand? Across all age groups, Americans are failing to meet the threshold to achieve lasting financial security. Twenty-nine percent of those aged 65 and older meet the essential wealth criteria, the highest level of any group.
Liverpool boss Andoni Iraola wants midfielder Alexis Mac Allister and goalkeeper Alisson to remain at the club.
Argentina international Mac Allister has two years left on the five-year contract he signed at Liverpool when he joined the Reds in 2023.
The 27-year-old has yet to begin talks over a new deal, which has prompted speculation he could leave Anfield this summer.
However, Iraola told a news conference in Chicago at the beginning of Liverpool‘s pre-season tour of the United States that he wants to hang on to the player.
“I think Alexis has been one of the best players at the club for the last few years, and he has had a very good World Cup, so it is normal that other clubs want our best players,” Iraola said.
“It always happens in other markets. But I want to keep my good players. I’m looking forward more to signing new players rather than losing the ones we have here.”
Alisson has a year left on his contract at Anfield and has been linked with a move to Juventus, but Iraola is keen to bank on the 33-year-old Brazilian’s experience in the forthcoming season.
“I’m very happy with the situation we have right now in the goalkeeping area,” explained the Reds boss.
“Alisson is someone also in a changing room that has lost some references in terms of experience, I think he’s someone that definitely will help us in this process of adaptation of the new signings, of the new players, the young players.
“We need the references like Virgil [van Dijk], like Alisson, like Joe Gomez, players that have been here for a long time.”
Iraola acknowledged he has one eye on bringing in defensive reinforcements during the summer transfer window, particularly at right-back given Conor Bradley is “months” away from playing.
The Northern Ireland international sustained a knee injury in January and will not be available for the start of the season.
“At the end, if you have a fully fit, healthy Conor Bradley, we are very happy, ready to go and we would not be asking ourselves these questions,” explained the Spaniard.
“I think it’s a situation that is tricky, because we trust Conor in the long term, we know we want him to be our right-back but right now he is still, I would say, a little bit far from returning.
“So, with the centre-back, with the right-back situation, in terms of defensive depth, we are, I think, very thin right now so I think it’s a solution that we are trying to find, yes.”
The wreckage from a Pan Am plane crash in the ocean 74 years ago that helped lead to requirements for the passenger safety briefings on every flight today has been found off the coast of Puerto Rico.
The talks flight attendants deliver about how to inflate a life vest or find the exits on a plane that are routine today were developed after 52 people perished aboard Pan Am’s Clipper Endeavor because they didn’t get off the plane before it sank. Explorers used an autonomous sonar drone to find the fuselage and tail of the DC-4 last month under 2,000 feet of water.
The 12 passengers and five crew members who survived the crash on Good Friday in 1952 told investigators that everyone survived the plane’s hard landing on the water, but then panic set in and many passengers were reluctant to venture out into the waves as they struggled to find life vests and the crew had a hard time pulling the rafts out. The plane sank within minutes.
“This one became a catalyst, and it helped drive safety steps forward of better flotation equipment and the preflight briefings,” said aviation safety expert John Cox. “So this is one steppingstone along the path to what we today enjoy as aviation safety. It was a rallying cry at the time.”
This crash first caught the attention of Russ Matthews in 2019 when he saw a blurb about a luggage tag from the flight washing ashore in Florida. He said the historical significance of the Clipper Endeavor prompted him to dig deeper.
That led to years of digging through the Pan Am Airlines and Coast Guard archives looking for clues about the location of the plane’s watery grave. Reports from the Civil Aeronautics Board, which was the predecessor to the Federal Aviation Administration, also helped.
But the key to finding the wreckage was found in records in Puerto Rico from a hearing that was held on the crash, and a map estimating the location of the crash that was done by Air Force pilots who witnessed the crash because they just happened to be in the area on a training flight.
Bad weather disrupted a previous attempt to locate the wreck in 2024 with a towed sonar array that was also documented by the Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown” show. But Matthews said he and the volunteers who work with his Air/Sea Heritage Foundation dreamed of making a second attempt to find it before next year’s 75th anniversary of the crash with one of these newer advanced drones that were originally developed for military uses like finding undersea mines.
Tony Romeo, who is CEO of the undersea exploration firm Deep Sea Vision, had been talking with Matthews for a while about the possibility of helping try to find this plane if one of his ships was ever in the area, and then in April one just happened to be passing right by Puerto Rico between two other jobs while carrying an advanced underwater drone with the right sensors to be able to find it.
“There we were, and everything kind of came together at the moment: good weather, the right team, and the right equipment and ship. So we took a shot at it,” Romeo said.
Deep Sea Vision previously led an unsuccessful six-month search to find Amelia Earhart’s plane, but Romeo had a special interest in this case because his father was a mechanic and pilot for Pan Am airlines. In fact, the drone they used in the search already had a Pan Am sticker on the side.
All the research Matthews’ group had done, combined with weather data from the time of the crash, was synthesized to create a map of the most likely location and a search area of 10 square nautical miles. The drone actually found the wreckage on its first pass over that area, although the explorers didn’t know that until it returned to the surface with its images.
The Discovery Channel’s Josh Gates and his crew were again along for this latest search to capture the moment the plane showed up on images from the drone after they were downloaded. The search will be featured in a special episode of the show this fall, but a few highlights released Tuesday show the moment everyone in the control room realized what they had found. Shouts of “Oh God!” and “That’s a plane!” erupted when the image loaded on screen.
“To have a front-row seat to an expedition like this as it’s unfolding is tremendous, and so I feel really lucky that we were able to be a part of it,” Gates said.
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