Did the World Just Gain Hundreds of Millions of Alzheimer's Patients? A new definition of Alzheimer's includes people without symptoms. Experts are fiercely divided over whether that makes sense--and whether the new drugs really help. Many have heralded a golden age of Alzheimer's research, excited by the promise of new amyloid-targeting antibodies. Yet a large meta-study of such antibodies concluded that they probably result in "little to no difference" in the decline of memory and of cognitive ability. This July, some ten thousand people descended on London for the Alzheimer's Association International Conference. Another three thousand of us joined virtually. I'm an anthropologist, accustomed to conferences where croissants at coffee breaks count as a luxury. This one opened with six trumpeters dressed as Buckingham Palace guards, followed by dancers who discoed, vogued, and high-kicked through the history of British pop. After the first day's sessions, participants dispersed to parties; at one, singers in sequins belted out covers while someone played an illuminated, transparent violin. One night, the London Eye was lit purple to honor the people in attendance. The mood matched the spectacle. Joanne Pike, the Alzheimer's Association's president and C.E.O., announced that recent advances had brought the campaign against the disease to a "pivotal moment." Maria Carrillo, its chief science officer, hailed a groundswell of progress. That optimism followed decades of disappointment. Between 1974 and 2020, the U.S. government spent roughly twenty billion dollars on Alzheimer's research without seeing the approval of a single treatment designed to act on the disease's underlying biology, let alone stop or reverse its course. Today, Alzheimer's afflicts roughly one in nine Americans over sixty-five and, along with related dementias, has been estimated to cost the economy about three-quarters of a trillion dollars a year. In surveys, it ranks with cancer as the disease people fear most. It typically starts by robbing patients of recent memories--conversations they just had, where they put important objects--before corroding the basic functions of adult independence, from paying bills to managing medications. Eventually, it leaves patients unable to speak, move, swallow, or recognize close relatives.

'What tech is doing now is what religion has always wanted' Jeanette Winterson at home in east London. 'What tech is doing now is what religion has always wanted' Jeanette Winterson at home in east London. 'There is no inevitable dystopia': Jeanette Winterson on AI and the future of humanity The author believes we are at a turning point as a species - and even in the shadow of big tech it's up to us how we want to proceed'I am a storyteller by trade," writes Jeanette Winterson on the first page of her 2021 book 12 Bytes, an idiosyncratic and thought-provoking series of essays in which she considered just how artificial intelligence might change everything about our lives. "And I know everything we do is a fiction until it's a fact: the dream of flying, the dream of space travel, the dream of speaking to someone instantly, across time and space, the dream of not dying - or of returning." She had already been thinking about our possible futures for at least 15 years - her 2007 novel, The Stone Gods, for instance, imagined a post-climate catastrophe world populated by robots and humans who never age, while 12 Bytes was preceded by Frankisstein: A Love Story, which alternates a recreation of the summer Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein with a trans doctor's travels among present-day cryogenecists and AI-enabled robots. When we meet, Winterson is just back from China, where, she tells me, her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a fictionalised account of her childhood, has sold more than a million copies in the past six years; more than 200,000 mostly young women tried to come to see her speak. She thinks this is because, in a world of long work hours and looming AI-engendered precarity, this fictionalised account of her own escape from an entrapped childhood gives readers permission to imagine a different future for themselves. She has since written 13 novels for adults, as well as nonfiction, short stories, children's books and screenplays. Now she wants to persuade the production company Goalhanger to give her a podcast. "I want to do one called The Rest is Human," she says, sitting at a bare wooden table in her home, a Georgian set of rooms above a shop - which she also owns - in Spitalfields, east London. "To see what we retain for ourselves in this absolute scramble to outsource everything we thought we were." Winterson: 'We've got a market that doesn't really know what education is for.' Because we are, she argues, at a turning point in our story as a species. Until the Industrial Revolution, change was all about "Mother Nature and the slow process of becoming", but then we "massively intervened.

Members of the Save Brick Lane campaign protested against the construction of an AI datacentre in the east London neighbourhood in June. Members of the Save Brick Lane campaign protested against the construction of an AI datacentre in the east London neighbourhood in June. The UK's policy on datacentres and AI was developed without any meetings with environmental groups, an investigation has found. The nonprofit organisation Spotlight on Corruption said a "considerable revolving door" shaped the government's development of "AI growth zones", a central plank of the former prime minister Keir Starmer's AI and economic policy, with 38 ministers, senior civil servants and special advisers hired to positions in AI companies between July 2024 and September 2026. Meanwhile, even as top officials left government for jobs at OpenAI and Anthropic, government departments largely failed to engage meaningfully with stakeholders outside the technology industry.

Two new outposts of the London institution make a vibrant case for handmade craft in an age of A.I. slop. The Storehouse, designed by the architectural firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is a coolly contemporary solution to the puzzle of an inordinate collection: warehouse meets . In the past eighteen months, Britain's venerable Victoria & Albert Museum has added two new outposts. The nation's most important repository of applied and decorative arts, it possesses far more than its custodians can (or would want to) put on permanent display at its long-standing location, in South Kensington. For decades, hundreds of thousands of its objects were available only to scholars and curators.

'I wasn't thinking straight' says five jobs civil servant Image caption, Kashim Chowdhury wears dark sunglasses, a hat, hoody and gloves as he arrives at court. His face is largely obscured. A civil servant accused of fraudulently juggling multiple public sector jobs has told the court he wasn't thinking straight when he allegedly misled future bosses about his employment status. Kashim Chowdhury said he was in a panic when he applied for a job at the Department of Health (DHSC), failing to declare he was already working at the Department for the Environment (Defra). The prosecution said he already had three full-time jobs at the time, including roles at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and East London NHS Trust.

Airport drop-off charges are to be reviewed by the government following sharp price increases in recent years. Prices at major UK airports have risen by a third since the summer of 2025 on average, according to one analysis, with Gatwick and Stansted drop-off charges found to be the most expensive, jumping from £7 to £10. Such charges at Edinburgh Airport have risen from £6 to £8.50, while fees at Bournemouth increased from £5 to £8, the same price as Leeds Bradford and London City. The Department for Transport confirmed it had committed to a review, saying it was vital to ensure travel remains accessible and that passengers are treated fairly. The government added it hoped airports would exercise restraint on rises, particularly where there are limited public transport alternatives.

A civil servant is accused of earning almost £350,000 by juggling five full-time public sector roles - using sick notes and working from home to cope with the workload. Kashim Chowdhury allegedly held multiple government jobs between February 2020 and September 2023, earning £350,000 overall. The jury at Southwark Crown Court has been told he wore white make-up during a video call with his boss to try to look ill, but the make-up began peeling off his skin. Chowdury, a 55-year-old from east London, is on trial accused of nine counts of fraud, which he denies. He denies acting dishonestly or intending to make a dishonest gain. The jury was told that Chowdhury got jobs by making ''false representations'' about his employment status whilst applying.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. It is 01:00 on a Thursday and we are in the back of an unmarked police car on the hunt for vehicle thieves in east London. A call comes in over the radio about a stolen Ford Transit van. Within 25 minutes officers have found it, chased it down and arrested a suspect. Officers tell us the night has been successful, with further arrests made, yet across the UK a car is stolen every four minutes.

Narayan will argue the UK needs to build more of its own AI infrastructure. Narayan will argue the UK needs to build more of its own AI infrastructure. Companies building the most advanced AI systems must increase safety efforts, the UK's AI minister will say, as he announces a strengthening of Britain's cyber defences. Kanishka Narayan will call on companies developing frontier AI to do more to make sure it is safe. He will say Britain cannot rely entirely on technology companies to police their own models and will argue the UK needs to build more of its own AI infrastructure. Narayan's speech in west London will be the first since Andy Burnham made AI a cabinet-level brief.

Bestselling author and former politician Jeffrey Archer has died at the age of 86. Archer sold more than 300 million books in his five-decade writing career, including the Clifton Chronicles and Kane and Abel, and often set the novels in his home town of Wellington, Somerset. In a statement, Archer's publisher HarperCollins said the author died suddenly and peacefully at home on Monday between writing sessions. The former Conservative MP was jailed for perjury in 2001 after being found guilty of lying and cheating in his 1987 libel case against the Daily Star. Archer was born in north London on 15 April 1940 but would quickly move to Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, where his family bought a house from John Cleese's mother.