Stella Rimington, first female MI5 chief, dies aged 90
Her family said in a statement that she died 'surrounded by her beloved family and dogs and determinedly held on to the life she loved until her last breath'.
More details soon …
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
30 minutes ago
- The Sun
Aldi is selling a £4 garden gadget that you will need 12 months of the year – and it's £18 cheaper than Screwfix
THERE'S a handy tool that should be in every gardening shed across the country. Whether the sun is beating down on a summer's day or the crisp autumn air has returned, you will thank yourself for picking up this gadget. With this buy, you can elevate the look of your plants, making them neater while boosting growth. According to the product description, you can "spruce up your outdoor space with this Ratchet Pruner". The gardening gadget will hit the Aldi Specialbuy section on Sunday, August 10. And shoppers will be able to pick it up for the low price of just £3.99. Product details According to manufacturers, this item is "suitable for branches up to a maximum diameter of two centimetres". With a coated blade, these pruners are easy to clean, making them the ideal garden tool. You can choose from green, pink, or yellow. Bargain price Spear & Jackson Anvil Ratchet Secateurs are listed for £21.99 from Screwfix. These highly rated pruners boast similar features, including the coated blade. The tool also has a finger guard for guaranteed safe use. 'I was quoted £10,000 for a garden renovation but did it MYSELF for £1,000 using ChatGPT to show my kids what single mums can do' And while you may be tempted to hang up your gardening gloves at the end of the summer, there is no off season with this hobby. According to experts, its best to prune your plants during the dormant season. Light routine pruning should be carried out throughout the year for the best results. However, pros recommend pruning in late winter or early spring, before new growth emerges. This allows plants time to recover quickly, directing their energy into producing new growth. More on gardening One homeowner turned their garden into a Bridgerton paradise with a charity shop find. B&M has also slashed the price of its viral rattan sofa in a huge garden sale. Plus, the £1 Tesco buy that can protect your plants in the rainy weather. And a £3 B&M ornament adds splash of colour to eyesore walls and makes your garden look bigger. A B&M garden buy slashed in summer sale, it will brighten the outside of your home and enhance curb appeal.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Heckmondike campaigners call for an end to 'careful littering'
A campaign to highlight the impact of "careful littering" will be trialled in a West Yorkshire to Keep Britain Tidy, "careful littering" involves people leaving disposable cups, newspapers and other items placed on benches or walls, rather than throwing them on the charity has chosen to focus on the issue in Heckmondwike as part of its efforts to tackle the Lonsdale, a volunteer with Keep Hecky Tidy, said: "Getting rid of litter brings back a sense of pride, if there is litter everywhere it shows that people do not care but if we can make the town look better it attracts people here." Ms Lonsdale, 60, has been volunteering with the group for the past four years and regularly takes part in litter picks in the town."I think it is great that we are the catalyst for something that is going to go nationwide," she said."It absolutely frustrates me when there is litter, it is just pure laziness."Some of the things we have found you really do not want to know about."According to Keep Britain Tidy, one in four people in Heckmondwike admit to "careful littering".The organisation's work in the town will help to shape its litter reduction efforts across the UK, a spokesperson said. The campaign will see new signs placed across the town and litter picking events held in partnership with schools and businesses.A series of images showing living statues leaving coffee cups, sandwich wrappers and newspapers have also been commissioned by the organisation to highlight the issue."This is about the kind of littering that everybody will see but many do not even think of as littering, like a coffee cup placed on a step," said Helen Bingham, from Keep Britain Tidy."They are not mindlessly throwing but it is still littering, it makes a place look unloved and uncared for."It increases fear of crime and it impacts economic growth because people do not want to invest in somewhere that looks like no one cares."She said the organisation would monitor attitudes to the campaign in the town in order to "develop a blueprint and shift the dial on littering". Campaigners said education was key to tackling the Gautry, founder of Keep Hecky Tidy, said volunteers often saw cans "popped on top" of walls."They get blown off, it is really important people understand it is all littering, whether you are throwing it or leaving it somewhere", she said. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Seals are thriving — but are there too many of them?
'There is no creature born … which more resembles a human baby in its ways and its cries than a baby grey seal,' the British ecologist Frank Fraser Darling once said. The subtitle of Alix Morris's thoughtful book about the return of the seal to North America holds that these are the sea's most charismatic creatures, and that insistence does feel like a bit of a stretch, given the competition. Yet clearly Morris is enamoured by their 'liquid eyes,' their 'doglike faces' and their bodies like 'blubbery bananas'. Perhaps this is why a seemingly innocuous creature has ignited furious debate over what our relationship to the natural world should be. There are also charming stories in her book's opening chapters of seals who have touched human lives. There is Hoover, who learnt to mimic the New England accent of the man who adopted him — 'Get outta there!' — and Andre, who would migrate hundreds of miles up the east coast each spring to the harbour of the man who first took him in. It is all too usual in environmental journalism to read about devastating declines, but the seal is a story bucking that trend. By the mid-20th century grey seals and Atlantic harbour seals (what we know in the UK as the common seal) had been almost eradicated from US waters, pushed to the brink by bounty hunters, acting to protect commercial fish stocks. • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List Yet now they are thriving: there are 61,000 harbour seals off the east coast of the United States, and 28,000 greys. The grey seal population on Sable Island — 95 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia — has risen from a few thousand animals in the 1960s to 400,000 today. Such narratives give a tantalising glimpse of nature's capacity to heal, if only we would let it. In A Year with the Seals we learn about the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the groundbreaking US legislation that turned around the fortunes not just of seals but of certain whales as well. We spend time with the women of the Marine Mammals of Maine, a group dedicated to the rehabilitation of seals, rescuing them from fishing nets and botched shark attacks and enthusiastic beachgoers in search of a selfie with a pup. I am forever impressed, despite our deserved reputation as a cruel, destructive species, by this capacity to attend to the needs of other creatures in ways that are unparalleled in any other animal. But the book really hits its stride, and broadens its message, when it begins to tackle the complexities of conservation. It isn't hard to feel compassion for a species on the verge of extinction because, almost by definition, there aren't enough of them to cause any bother. It is when conservation measures have some success that conflicts with people arise. An animal's resurgence can feel like an invasion to those who have grown up without them, even if their numbers are still a long way off from their historic population. I have spent a long time researching wolves, whose rapid return to Europe has caused no end of conflict, but even a creature as apparently benign as a seal has its passionate detractors. There are the commercial fishermen who see seals as competition, and sport fishermen who repeatedly lose their catch before they can reel them in. There is an enlightening section set outside Seattle, where the Puyallup tribe believes seals and sea lions are endangering salmon stocks. • The Sunday Times Bestsellers List — the latest UK book charts Most powerful is the rise in fatal attacks by great white sharks, attributed to an explosion in seal numbers along the coast, luring in the sharks that hunt them. 'No sharks or seals are worth a young man's life,' one local resident said in a town hall meeting in 2018, held after a surfer's death off the coast of Massachusetts. It is a brave biologist who would argue otherwise. Morris asks: what is the right amount of any species? The natural amount? Removing conservation measures from an animal that has successfully rebounded risks plunging it 'into a continuous loop of depletion, conservation and recovery', and yet allowing their numbers to keep on climbing means adapting our lifestyles to make space for them — not something that we are particularly good at. Ultimately, wildlife conflicts are 'a manifestation of deep-rooted social conflicts': urban versus rural, hunters versus conservationists, those who work the land versus the tourists who visit for some notion of the wild. The seal is a 'particularly convenient scapegoat' for such underlying tensions. In the end the answer to Morris's question of how much is enough isn't really about the species at all, but humans and what sort of relationship we want to have with the natural world. In short, it's complicated. Maybe that's an unsatisfactory conclusion, but I am still surprised how often those working in conservation fail to appreciate that others with skin in the game have opinions that deserve to be heard. A Year with the Seals is a useful, all too rare account by a writer who has made the time to listen. Adam Weymouth is the author of Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe (Hutchinson Heinemann) A Year with the Seals by Alix Morris (Ithaka £18.99 pp304). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members.
