One of the UK’s largest and most visited attractions, Chester Zoo, is leading a nationwide push to change how weather forecasts are displayed on popular apps - warning that misleading rain icons could be costing some venues up to £137,000 in a single day.

Three months ago, the bus company extended its 600 service between Carlisle and Cockermouth to continue on to Whitehaven, and the half-hourly service has proved so popular with the public that last Friday, 6 March, it reached the milestone of carrying its 10,000th passenger. This has been made possible by financial support from Cumberland Council through its Cumberland Go initiative.

New TUC analysis reveals millions of women will start to benefit from new workers’ rights measures from next month. Women will disproportionately benefit from removal of statutory sick pay earnings threshold in April and from rights to guaranteed hours next year. Just over half of workers on zero-hours contracts are women.

People’s perceptions of their job security in the past month reached the lowest level since August last year, according to the latest data from YouGov and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr). The measure currently sits in negative territory at 92.6, down 1.1 since January.

The TUC has called for a stronger worker voice on the boards of pension megafunds, as the government looks to scale up schemes and improve governance standards. In a new report launched at the TUC’s Pension Conference today, the union body looks at the vital role member representation plays in pension funds around the world. Pensions Minister Torsten Bell MP is also due to address the conference.

Pub bells across the UK will ring out early this evening at 6pm – and each night over the next six days – as part of a new campaign by Greene King and Macmillan Cancer Support to raise awareness of the one in six men in the UK who will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.

The government’s latest Spring Statement failed to include the package of support for pubs that the licensing trade hoped for and indeed in many quarters was expecting. In an interim statement in January 2026, eligible pubs and live music venues received 15% business rates relief for 2026/27, followed by a real-terms freeze for two further years.

If Sigmund Freud was the man who tried to convince the world that everything comes down to sex Alfred Adler was the one who politely cleared his throat and said, “I’m not so sure about that.” I was always suspicious of Freud’s preoccupation with exploring dreams, encouraging his ‘patients’ to relate theirs, and finding them a source of deep meaning.

Yorkshire leaders, businesses, farmers, food producers, and many more are working with citizens from across the UK to shape a new government Food Strategy. York & North Yorkshire was the second of the What Works Here Inquiries and involved representatives from across the region's food system coordinated by Deliciously Yorkshire. The Inquiries are being led by the Citizen Advisory Council (CAC), a group of citizens from across the UK, who are working with government to understand the way food works in York & North Yorkshire, the challenges for many families in affording healthy, local produce and how national government could help.

Long-distance train operator CrossCountry yesterday welcomed passengers onboard its first refurbished Voyager train - marking a major milestone in a £75 million investment to upgrade long-distance travel across Britain.

A study to encourage more Black men to get checked for prostate cancer, led by a University of Sunderland researcher, has received a funding boost of almost half a million pounds to continue its work on a larger scale.

Cut Short, an award-winning documentary addressing youth knife crime through lived experience, will be released free online on 27 February 2026, alongside a bespoke teaching and facilitation package for schools and youth-facing organisations across the UK.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, was arrested on the morning of his 66th birthday earlier this week. The Met Police had been investigating claims that his royal protection officers had been ‘turning a blind eye’ during visits to Epstein’s Island. What a way to celebrate another trip around the sun!

Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) has submitted a robust response to the government’s consultation on how best to manage the future of the UK’s gas sector. The consultation looks at how to best ensure the UK’s energy security and the gas it needs for decades to come as supply and demand across the energy mix evolves, within a period of geopolitical and economic uncertainty.

Lettings experts from Linley & Simpson, Yorkshire, give advice for landlords and renters when it comes to the right to request pets Today, 20th February 2026, marks National Love Your Pet Day – a dedicated day to show some extra love and shower our furry friends with treats.

A grieving Yorkshire family, who tragically lost their husband and father to suicide, are rowing the Atlantic in his memory. Robert Ash, from Harrogate, died by suicide in September 2023, leaving his wife Charlotte and their three grown-up children, Camilla, James and Henry. The Ashes are embarking on this epic challenge, despite having no rowing experience at all.

You’ve barely packed away the last of the fairy lights and wrestled with the glut of bloated January bills, and just as you come up for air, half term. Really, so soon?! BACP counsellor Margaret Ward-Martin, founder of The Grace Project, looks at how to make the most of the half-term ‘break’ for both parents and children.

Those words, spoken decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis, are chilling not because they recount a distant danger, but because they remind us how thin the margin for survival once was. For those of us old enough to have lived through 1962, the fear was immediate, tangible, and inescapable. Radios stayed on in the home. Harold Macmillan the Prime Minister, looked very grave - and very old - on the television. There was only one topic of conversation.

The Epstein files were recently released to the public, and revealed that those closely connected to the convicted child sex offender were disturbingly close positions of power. In the immediate fallout Peter Mandelson has been forced to resign.

I listened to Kemi Badenoch on the Today programme this morning, and I was appalled. It's not just Kemi Badenoch; it's the system. What on earth is the matter with politicians when their central focus seems to be the destruction of their opponents? What's wrong with governing the country? Why not give it a go? You never know; it might just work out well.

Governments are constantly tempted to push flexible working because it allows them to support a popular social change without having to pay for it themselves. The new, stronger “right to request” flexible working in the Employment Rights Act will be much harder for managers to resist, and even dealing with such requests will impose costs on companies. While private businesses may be able to control some of these costs, the widespread strengthening of flexible working rights is likely to damage productivity, slow growth, and undermine wages and employment. This will be all the more true if unions or workplace rules stop wages adjusting, for example to reflect whether particular jobs can in practice be done remotely. This is likely to be a particular problem in the public sector, reinforcing its existing poor productivity record.

AVA: The Vending & Automated Retail Association has welcomed the government’s announcement of the UK deposit return scheme, officially named 'Exchange for Change'. The AVA has played a significant role in the scheme’s creation, ensuring the full representation of the needs of vending and automated retail operators.

When news broke recently of two Chinese spies who were caught but then allowed to walk away on legal grounds, followed by MI5’s warning that a proposed super-embassy could conceal a nest of intelligence operatives, it felt like an echo from another age. Espionage had slipped back into public view.