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If human beings were to detect extraterrestrial (ET) intelligence tomorrow, what would happen? How would the world’s most existentially significant discovery be handled, and by whom? What agreements are in place, and are they ratified? How would information about an alien discovery be disseminated across the world? And if we were to receive a signal from interstellar space, would we send one back? Such questions, while philosophically compelling, are not the domain of serious...

Despite sanctions on the Russians, the gin palace market is booming. Siân Boyle sets sail with the broker who floats the boats of the super-rich…ANGUS Cook is in need of a rabbi. Mercury, the 50m superyacht he brokers, is departing from Venice imminently for a week’s cruise to Croatia. His client, who’s chartering the boat for a group holiday, is an observant Orthodox Jew. Cook needs to find not only a holy man to...

Would you visit Egypt for the first time without seeing the Pyramids, or Paris without visiting the Eiffel Tower? Of course not — and nor would I be visiting Peru without seeing its headline act, Machu Picchu, the enigmatic Lost City built high in the Andean mountains. But with LATAM Airlines having just launched direct flights from London Heathrow to the capital, Lima — from just £740 return — I’m keen to explore what else the country offers...

Bentley rides, grand pianos and a live-in 24/7 therapist in your penthouse suite who will also return home with you: Siân Boyle checks in to the world’s most exclusive mental health and addiction clinic. ON the early morning flight from London City to Zurich, business class is home to the usual pinstriped executives, dosing up on caffeine and poring over spreadsheets. But today there’s an anomalous passenger among them: a woman in Converse trainers carrying an old...

Increasing numbers of people are dipping into their savings or taking out loans to cover the cost of medical care, ranging from hip replacements to cataract removal to therapy for mental health problems. WHEN 11-year-old Holly Evans gets home from school each day, she falls apart. “She has panic attacks, meltdowns and then sobs her heart out”, says her mother, Beverley Evans. Holly has anxiety and OCD behaviours, and her family are desperately worried. “She ...

As a growing number of people report defective new build homes, Alexandra Druzhinin, 49, tells i how her property purchase ruined her life. She lives in a new build flat in north London with her daughter, where she has been financially trapped for five years. "I paid almost a million pounds for my new build property, and every day I wake into a nightmare. When my husband and I separated, we sold the family...

Over 60 per cent of heterosexual divorces are initiated by women, according to data from the Office for National Statistics, with unreasonable behaviour the most common reason. Rebecca Jane, a Relate therapist, specialises in helping women decide whether it’s best to remain in or leave their relationships. Jane says her female clients who’ve concluded divorce is the only option are often tired of doing the emotional heavy lifting: “They’ve outgrown their partners and their husbands, because the emotional ...

'Where’s Dorries?' is a special edition of Where’s Wally? in which, instead of looking for a red-and-white bobble hat, the search is on for a true blue Tory with a white-blonde bob. The former culture secretary Nadine Dorries is perennially Awol from her constituency of Mid Bedfordshire, and her constituents have now reached their wits’ ends. Dorries announced her resignation as an MP 58 days ago, tweeting that she was standing down “with immediate effect”…

It’s one of the most visceral mental health conditions: a tight chest, veins shot with dread and a feeling in the stomach more akin to a hornets’ nest than butterflies. Despite these physical sensations, we frequently think about anxiety only in psychological terms, while little attention is paid to what we’re putting into our bodies which could exacerbate anxiety. We’re all aware that too much caffeine and sugar can cause the jitters. But did you know that...

Our report last week on tramplings in the countryside encouraged more ramblers to come forward. The response to the piece has been overwhelming,” says Ruth Livingstone of the Killer Cows campaign group, which has received dozens of reports since last weekend’s Sunday Times Magazine cover story. “I’ve given up counting,” she says. “Some of the reports are contemporary but some detail attacks from years ago because people have now discovered there’s someone to...

A fellow ocean explorer recalls a warning he gave to the British adventurer during a similar dive together two years ago. It was meant to have been a joyous reunion with loved ones, a swollen-with-pride kind of day, a time for the passengers to show off photographs of their trip to the site of the world’s most famous shipwreck and share tales of adventures on the high seas. Instead the Polar Prince — the mothership for OceanGate’s ill-fated expedition to the Titanic..

The last thing Teresa Holmes could remember when she woke up was walking in the West Yorkshire countryside with Michael, 57, her husband of 34 years, on one of their regular lunchtime rambles. After being airlifted to hospital where she had been unconscious for a week, she awoke to white lights, antiseptic smells and bleeping machines. Michael was nowhere to be seen. Her daughters and the doctors had to tell her that she was now...

Samantha Lee has been called a murderer, a disgrace and told she should be locked up indefinitely. “Had you done the right thing,” one online message reads, “Sarah would still be alive.” This is the public backlash against Lee, 29, a former Metropolitan Police constable who, in March 2021, was sent to investigate a report of indecent exposure at a branch of McDonald’s in Kent. It later emerged that...

When Pacha, Ibiza’s super-club renowned for its decadent dance parties, held its opening night for the new season last month, thousands of ravers queued to pay homage to the latest superstar DJ and partied till dawn. But as someone who’s been to Ibiza a dozen times, I’m witnessing how shifting sands are transforming this Balearic island — and the biggest change is in San Antonio, the bay town on the north-west. For decades, its notorious...

The year was 2010, the last vestige of time in which, when the beat dropped in the club, there would be thousands of hands in the air simultaneously cutting through the laser lights instead of holding up little glowing bars to film it. Swedish House Mafia, the superstar DJ trio comprising Steve Angello, Axwell and Sebastian Ingrosso, had taken over the world with their euphoric Eurodance bangers, and those who’d managed to get into their residency night at...

Speeding through the Aegean Sea, flanked by the splendid rolling mountains of the Bodrum Peninsula, the glassy blue surface transforms into torrents of white foam. Suddenly it’s up, up and away — no longer cruising through the water but into the sky, rising to 3,000ft above the white sand bays of the Turkish Riviera while soaring serenely in a sea plane. What a way to take in Bodrum...

Vegas, baby, Vegas!’ That’s Vince Vaughn’s legendary line in Swingers while en route to the city where he’ll double down on blackjack and chasing women. Because that’s what Las Vegas is all about, isn’t it? Vegas is for roulette drama, neon dreams up in smoke and too many whiskey chasers. It’s for cruising down the Strip at 6am in a gold limousine. It’s for gorging on an Octuple Bypass burger at the Heart Attack Grill...

Sequestered among wildflower meadows in Cheshire is Delamere, a private rehabilitation clinic whose guests are most commonly treated for drug and alcohol addiction. But lately the admissions team has noticed an increased number of calls from parents who are, in the words of one staff member, “concerned about how little sleep their son or daughter is getting because they’re scrolling through TikTok until the early hours...

Last summer, the grand opening of the newest outlet in London's Westfield shopping centre was quite an event. Hundreds of people applauded the cutting of an orange ribbon and a queue of shoppers snaked around the block. An orange double-decker bus toured London promoting the latest, orange-liveried addition to the sprawling temple of consumerism in Shepherd's Bush.

A heady mix of contradictions is going on here in the Cayman Islands. Offshore diving and offshore banking. Dazzling sunsets and financial assets. Delicious shellfish and dubious shell companies. Tucked in the westernmost corner of the Caribbean, I wonder what the Caymans, one of the world’s most notorious tax havens, offers civilians like me as I ruefully pay £30 for a ten-minute taxi ride and almost as much for a glass of wine. It’s expensive

The school bell won't ring for at least an hour on this dark, bitterly cold morning in North West London. But in the darkened rooms of Newman Catholic College, an all-boys' secondary school in Brent, a chink of light shows the way to the bustling canteen. It's 7.40am and already a group of boys — bleary-eyed and sporting identical Nike rucksacks — are crowding around the hatch where cereals and hot bagels have been laid out.

On the night flight from Atlanta to Detroit, I meet a woman who embodies many of the complexities of America’s abortion debate. Sitting next to me on the two-hour journey north from the steamy bayous of Georgia to the industrial city on the Canadian border is Keysha, 24. Exhausted and burdened by bags and baby gear, she accepts my offer to help change her eight-week-old baby’s clothes during the flight...

Weaving through crowds to the hypnotic timbre of ceremonial drumming, brightly-coloured Chinese lion dancers descended on Glasgow last month to mark the ancient Chinese 'Moon Festival'. Celebrating the autumn harvest, when the full moon is brightest, Glasgow's Lord Provost Jacqueline McLaren welcomed guest of honour Hou Danna, China's Acting Consul General in Edinburgh...

With its imposing red brick houses, neat gardens and red postbox, Baskerville Road in the borough of Wandsworth is a classic example of family residences in the more affluent areas of London. But something is amiss. Just outside a house on the corner, which happens to be the former home of World War I-era prime minister David Lloyd George, is a new piece of infrastructure that would seem...

Andrew Tate is regularly seen online posing with beautiful women, mountains of cash and a fleet of supercars. It's a lifestyle that earned him millions of followers on social media. But this cigar-smoking, gun-toting, champagne-quaffing kickboxer from Luton is most notorious for his violent and abhorrent views on women, rape and manhood, and he stands accused of inflicting his malign influence...

Rampton Secure Hospital is home to the most dangerous and disturbed people in the country. Former patients include 'Britain's most violent prisoner' Charles Bronson, the Soham murderer Ian Huntley and 'Crossbow Cannibal' Stephen Griffiths. Its current inmates are equally chilling — among them child serial killer Beverley Allitt and Odessa Carey, who decapitated her mother with knives and scissors and carried her head around...

Night-time in the forest and I’m surrounded by the squawks, rattles and chirrups of the jungle. My heart is pumping as my torchlight scans the mass of foliage, then the beam descends on the red and purple sheen of the strawberry poison-dart frog. So toxic are its skin secretions that it could kill a human — yet here it is, just a yard away. This adventure is made all the more thrilling because…

During his infamous BBC Newsnight interview in November 2019, Prince Andrew revealed his thoughts on how he might try to salvage the remnants of his reputation. Following the exposure of his friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and allegations that he had sex with Virginia Giuffre when she was a 17-year-old sex trafficking victim (which he vehemently denies)...

The last things I remember are the bright overhead bulbs of the basement bar, the booming music and the confidence of the men who’d just joined our group, one with his arm around my shoulders — and his hand hovering very close to my drink. It was 2009 and I was a 19-year-old fresher at Nottingham University. A few moments later, not long after sipping some of my second drink...

Life in Britain may be full of energy worries, soaring bills and the petrol pumps running dry — and even fears of a new winter of discontent. But in Port Hercule, Monaco's gorgeous natural harbour on the Cote d'Azur, it's clear that in some places things are as rosy as the chilled Whispering Angel wine that pours from magnum-sized bottles. I'm at the Monaco Yacht Show, the largest and most…

Most people’s idea of a pre-party loosener is a glass of something chilled and fizzy. Not so for Lady Amanda Feilding who, back in the day, once drilled a hole in her head an hour before hitting the town. Then aged 27, she filmed herself using a dentist’s drill to sink through three layers of bone to her brain — which she said was ‘soft like a pudding’ — in an attempt to increase blood flow in...

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the city of Wuhan is a desolate place. The now infamous ‘wet market’, once a bustling centre of people and exotic live animals for human consumption, is boarded up, its stalls shuttered and razor wire entangled in discarded fishing nets. This is the supposed ‘Ground Zero’ of the coronavirus pandemic, the place where the first cases of Covid-19 were...

Belgrave Square is one of the grandest addresses in the world, featuring the lavish, white-stucco London residences of dukes, ambassadors and oligarchs. Today, one of its £42 million, Grade I-listed palaces is undergoing intensive building work. Amid soaring ceilings painted in Baroque frescoes and walls shimmering with gold leaf, chandeliers are being fitted, a luxurious swimming pool is being dug into...

Welcome to my world: a bedroom that's roughly the size of a double garage - with a bed, a desk, a TV and a couple of chairs - and fetchingly decorated in shades of brown and orange. The hotel entrance is locked at all times, I can't leave my room unless it's an emergency, and I'm forbidden from even opening the window. No wonder someone has thought to provide a contact for The Samaritans among...

For most people a four-star hotel is a holiday treat or a business trip necessity. But what if you're confined to your room 24/7, apart from ten-minute 'breaks' with a security guard in tow? I am armed with a 'key worker' letter (as a journalist on an assignment in the public interest) should anyone enquire as to the purpose of my trip. But at no point during outbound and inbound journeys — via Paris...

New Year's Eve at St Thomas' Hospital in London is always gruelling. Booze-fuelled accidents, injuries and domestic incidents test staff physically, mentally and emotionally. For those on duty as 2020 waned, it was a particular challenge — and not just because of Covid-19, which was already filling intensive care unit (ICU) beds. Matthew Lee, a recently qualified junior doctor, had been drafted in to help...

As a wildly successful TV show, it has provided a burst of escapism and glamour to millions of Britons denied a holiday abroad this summer. In each shamefully addictive 44-minute episode of Below Deck, the young, attractive and often sleep-deprived crew of a magnificent superyacht scrub, squabble and sometimes sleep together as they struggle to win the approval of the vessel's endlessly pampered guests...

As relations between the West and China plummet to new depths, we can at least take comfort from the fact that many of our leading academic institutions are still enjoying a healthy collaboration with their Chinese equivalents. Or can we? At times of conflict, the very word ‘collaboration’ has unfortunate connotations. An investigation has found China’s ‘collaboration’ with British universities…

Last week, 16 of our 30 residents had tested positive for coronavirus, so I'm not sleeping well at the moment. Yesterday we lost Richard, a bright resident with a great sense of humour who deteriorated suddenly. He was our fourth coronavirus death since the outbreak began…. My alarm goes off at 5.45am and I arrive at Newfield at 6.50am. I'm told to keep a close eye on two residents, David and Edna…

Shoppers have been secretly filmed by big stores to try to make them spend more. Tesco, Boots, Sainsbury's and Co-op all commissioned SBXL, a little-known behavioural analysis agency, to record customers in their aisles. SBXL boasts it can use the footage to 'manipulate' the emotions and behaviour of shoppers - and raise takings. The firm, which has also worked with L'Oreal, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Danone...

Tucked away in a corner of rural South Wales is a stone cottage with a well-tended vegetable garden, children's toys on the patio and a pile of logs for a wood-burning stove. It is home to a 29-year-old woman -a well-regarded member of the local community -and her son, aged two. She travels daily along single-track roads to her office job in the nearby market town. Her social life centres on the village pub...

At first glance, there was no witness to the grisly murder of Christine Sullivan, who was stabbed to death alongside a friend, Jenna Pellegrini, at her home in rural New Hampshire in the U.S. last year. But as detectives searched the secluded colonial-style home and its tree-lined garden, they came to realise that a big clue was staring them in the face. For on the kitchen worktop was an Amazon Echo…

A Facebook user has told of her distress as the site bombards her with adverts aimed at new parents six months after she gave birth to a stillborn daughter. Anna England Kerr, 30, says she has been targeted relentlessly even though she has tried to change her social media settings to avoid upsetting content - and even contacted Facebook directly. Days after her baby Clara's stillbirth, Miss England Kerr…

The disturbing scale of the personal data harvested and traded by multinationals can be revealed today. Health details, children's voice recordings and copies of passports can be at risk when customers tick an online consent box. Analysis by the Mail found that Marriott International, Facebook, Asda, Paypal, BT and Tesco engaged in hidden data harvesting and sharing. Giant firms can use personal…

On the first day of my new job as a hotel waitress — before I have a chance to polish a glass or proffer a canapé — I’m primed in detail about how to enter the building. Not via the front foyer, but circuitously through a ‘secret staff entrance’. It is imperative I memorise the route, I’m told by the briskly efficient restaurant manager, who steers me through it, via an obscure door by a KFC outlet in...

An investigation found that shop-bought food is widely tainted with potentially dangerous particles that float in the air. It had been thought the risk to health was largely limited to eating fish from oceans polluted with plastic. But the leading scientist who oversaw our investigation said microplastics had become 'part of the air we breathe' MPs said the laboratory findings - from the first UK...

Ruthless exploitation of cabin crew by Ryanair is exposed today by an undercover investigation. The budget airline's stewards are being made to work unpaid for as many as five hours in a day, an undercover reporter found after spending last month as a trainee. Under brutal conditions, they earn money only when in the air, as well as commission on in-flight sales. It means the many hours on the ground...

You’re out on your lunch break, hurrying along the street to get a sandwich. In your peripheral vision looms a man sitting huddled, begging and dirty on the pavement. What do you do? Do you avert your eyes, dip in for some change or greet them with a polite apology? I am usually one of the glazed pedestrians who shuffle past and mentally block out the few seconds it takes to pass him or her, and I know...

Days and counting. Are little Jack’s Transformers all wrapped and ready to go? Are you excited about the look on Emily’s face when she opens her Barbie Dream House play set? Or are you of the new and growing band of parents who this Christmas said: ‘Sod it, my child is a child and not a gender stereotype’?

It was 3am, and I was queuing for the toilet at a house party in Nottingham. Suddenly, from the floor above, there was a commotion, and down the stairs descended two distressed men carrying a woman having a seizure. The look on her face was something I’ll never forget: contorted, eyes rolling and silently screaming, while her body was simultaneously rigid and convulsing. It was like her brain was on fire…