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In his stern letter to South Cambridgeshire district council, the housing secretary, Steve Reed, criticised the decline in “key housing-related services including rent collection, reletting times and tenant satisfaction with repairs” during its trial of a four-day working week. The independent report he refers to is a dense 104-page document packed with tables, graphs and

More than 100 business and charity leaders have called on ministers to “lead the country’s transition toward a shorter working week”, after the local government secretary criticised a council for shifting to a four-day work pattern. Steve Reed wrote to South Cambridgeshire district council, the first English council to trial a four-day week, raising concerns

A tiny spider thought to have vanished for ever from the UK has been rediscovered on a remote area of a nature reserve accessible only by boat. The Aulonia albimana , a member of the wolf spider family with orange legs, was found on the Isle of Wight in a spot grazed by a flock

Extremists are exploiting political violence on online platforms to recruit new people to their causes and amplify the use of violence for political goals, according to a new report that monitored social platforms after recent attacks. Researchers at New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights tracked social media feeds for several months

National guard troops sent to the nation’s capital will reportedly remain there through at least February. The order was set to lapse at the end of November but was extended by Pete Hegseth, who leads the US Department of Defense. As of Wednesday, there are nearly 2,400 national guard troops in Washington DC, according to

Microsoft blew off concerns of overspending on AI on Wednesday, reporting elevated earnings even as it faced an outage of its cloud computing service, Azure, and its office software suite, 365. The strong earnings report comes a day after a deal with OpenAI pushed the value of tech giant to more than $4tn. After its

Summary Thanks for reading the US politics live blog. We’re pausing the blog for now, and here is a look back at our top stories: The US government shutdown hit its 29th day, with no indication Democrats and Republicans were close to an agreement to restart funding. Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, called Trump

Meta reported mixed financial results for the third quarter of 2025. The company brought in record quarterly revenue but reported a major tax bill that dampened earnings per share, the company announced on Wednesday. The financial results come as Meta ends a multibillion-dollar hiring spree focused on artificial intelligence talent. The tech giant earned $51.24bn

Harry Farley, political correspondent, and Sam Francis, political reporter Sir Keir Starmer has dismissed calls for an investigation into Chancellor Rachel Reeves after she apologised for breaking housing rules when renting out her family home. In a letter to the prime minister, Reeves admitted she did not obtain a "selective" rental licence required to rent

Homeowners plagued by damp urge government to fix 'botched' insulation Zoe Conway and James Stewart BBC Bushra Rashid from Fishwick says that 2013 insulation work has damaged her health and her property Homeowners who say that botched insulation under government schemes left them living in mouldy conditions are calling for an investigation into the problem