Dotted among Cornwall’s beautiful beaches and rural villages are a series of squat, unremarkable buildings. They are landing stations for numerous undersea data and communications cables connecting Britain with the US, Europe, Asia and Africa.
Decades after their construction, the buildings – including one in the former surf village of Skewjack – have become a potential target for the Kremlin’s sabotage efforts and work is under way to increase security around the landing stations.
That work has been lent new urgency by Russia’s threats of retaliation over the use of British-made drones by Ukrainian forces.
Nick Kyrgios banned from tennis after positive cocaine test
Nick Kyrgios has been provisionally suspended from tennis after testing positive for cocaine.
The Australian submitted a sample during the Mallorca Open on 22 June that was later found to contain benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine.
What you need to know
- Kyrgios has been provisionally suspended since 4 August.
- The International Tennis Integrity Agency said Kyrgios could appeal against the provisional suspension “but has not done so to date”.
- In a post on Instagram, Kyrgios said he made “a huge mistake” and takes “full responsibility” for it.
What the suspension means
Kyrgios cannot play, coach at or attend Grand Slams or any events sanctioned by the men’s and women’s tennis tours.
The 31-year-old has played just four singles matches this season, having struggled with injuries. He last played in the men’s doubles at Wimbledon, where he lost in the first round.
Years of injuries take toll
My body hasn’t been able to do what my mind expects it to do. Coming to terms with being near the end of my career has been harder than I ever imagined. None of that excuses what I did.”
said in a written statement
How worried should you be about UK salmonella outbreak
One person has died and more than 200 have fallen ill amid a UK-wide salmonella outbreak, with health officials linking the cases to the consumption of imported eggs.
Source being investigated
The patients affected appear to have eaten the contaminated eggs in restaurants and cafes, not at home. Those affected include babies and people as old as 90.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has ruled out UK-produced eggs or poultry as the source and said the evidence suggests imported eggs are responsible.
Where have the cases been?
Most cases have been in England, including 47 in London and 38 in Yorkshire and the Humber. There have been six cases in Scotland, one in Wales and another in Northern Ireland.
Officials have found that all of the cases are linked to a single strain of salmonella.
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How worried should you be?
- More than a third of those affected have needed hospital care – however, most people get better without treatment.
- Salmonella generally causes a mild illness, though vulnerable people may experience severe illness.
- There are simple steps to prevent the spread of salmonella, including washing your hands after using the bathroom and before handling food.
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What are the symptoms?
- Hannah Charles, the UKHSA’s lead epidemiologist for gastrointestinal infections said: “Symptoms of a salmonella infection include diarrhoea, stomach cramps and sometimes vomiting and fever.
- “Anyone who is concerned about symptoms should contact their GP or out-of-hours service in the first instance.”
- To prevent the spread, she advised: “Wash your hands thoroughly after using the bathroom and before preparing and handling food, cook food thoroughly.
- “If you have any symptoms, avoid handling food for others where possible.”.
The mispronounced words Britons struggle with the most
The most commonly mangled words in the UK have been revealed in a new survey, as well as our attitudes surrounding pronunciation.
Here is everything you need to know.
What you need to know
OnePoll has conducted a survey on the most commonly mispronounced words in the UK.
The research was commissioned by Czech car manufacturer Skoda to highlight the fact that many Britons pronounce the brand’s name wrong – “S-co-der” instead of the correct “Sh-co-da”.
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Mispronounced words – and the correct pronunciations
- 1Acai: Ah-sigh-ee
- 2Segue: Segway
- 3Charcuterie: Shar-koo-tuh-ree
- 4Quinoa: Keen-wa
Mispronounced words – and the correct pronunciations
- 5 Gnocchi: Nyock-kee
- 6 Worcestershire: Wus-ter-sher
- 7 Chipotle: Chi-poht-lay
A closer look at the survey
The survey also revealed how Britons feel about mispronounced words.
- 85 per cent of respondents had someone correct them after a mispronunciation, with 25 per cent feeling embarrassed afterwards.
- 27 per cent admitted they continued using the wrong pronunciation anyway.
- 52 per cent thought it shows respect for language, while 38 per cent thought it made them appear more knowledgeable.
- 34 per cent thought it made them seem more professional.
- 38 per cent said that the way someone pronounces words could affect the impression they have of them.
Ikea is set to launch its own second-hand selling site later this year, which will allow shoppers signed up to its membership to buy and sell pre-owned Ikea items locally.
Already trialled in other countries
The scheme follows trials of online second-hand marketplaces in Spain and Norway.
It also comes five years after the world’s biggest furniture retailer began buying and selling used Ikea items in some of its UK stores.
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Perks for users
- On the Spanish version, selling is made easier with price suggestions given by Ikea and pre-filled product descriptions.
- Ikea also offers sellers 15 per cent extra on the price of the item if they agree to be paid with an Ikea gift card.
- A similar system to Vinted of paying a 5 per cent “protection fee” is being implemented in Spain from January next year to fund various costs related to the sale.
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How some prostate cancers ‘can be diagnosed without biopsy’
Researchers at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) have found MRI scans can be used to detect cancer in some men with a high degree of certainty.
What the research found
- Men may not need to have a biopsy to diagnose prostate cancer.
- Radiologists looked at scan results combined with the patient’s age and their prostate-specific antigen (PSA) score.
- Of the 69 patients deemed to be “99 per cent certain” they had a tumour via their MRI scan, all of them had cancer confirmed through biopsy.
- Researchers said this indicates certain men may not need to have invasive biopsies.
What does this mean?
UCLH consultant radiologist Alex Kirkham said the research indicates prostate cancer could join the list of cancers which can be diagnosed with a scan alone.
Consultant urologist and professor of interventional oncology Mark Emberton said it is particularly important as prostate cancer incidence is only set to rise.
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Th expert reaction
Avoiding unnecessary biopsies is an important goal in cancer care, because they can be painful, invasive and can cause infections… Using MRI alone to diagnose these cancers could make the process much safer and easier for men, and less costly for the NHS.
Dr Matthew Hobbs, director of research at Cancer UK
Why better sleep could keep people working for longer
Researchers in Finland examined data from people aged between 50 and 68 to look at the correlation between sleeping habits and the ability to continue working.
The story in numbers
13 years, five months
Regularly disturbed sleep was linked to leaving the workforce months early.
People who reported no disturbances had a working life expectancy of 13 years and five months.
Six years, five months
The shortest working life expectancy was found among men in routine jobs with low levels of education who slept for more than nine hours a night.
They had an average of six years and five months left in work after the age of 50.
What does this tell us?
Researchers said the findings, published in the journal , suggest healthy sleep (under seven hours but undisturbed) may help people keep working as they age.
“To promote older adults’ participation in working life, supporting sleep of recommended length and good quality may be required,” they added.
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How the UK’s child ADHD diagnosis rates compare to the rest of the world
The former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners has said she would “ban the label ADHD” and that it should be treated as a “social construct” instead of a neurodevelopmental condition.
What is the situation?
Speaking to ahead of the Channel 4 documentary The Great ADHD Myth?, Dr Iona Heath criticised overdiagnosis and argued there is no scientific evidence that those diagnosed have neurological differences.
Earlier this year, then-health secretary Wes Streeting said there was an “overdiagnosis” problem and launched a review.
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What does the UK data reveal?
- and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) put the UK rate of childhood ADHD at 5 per cent, and 3 to 4 per cent for adults.
- One study found ADHD diagnoses increased in the UK from 2000 to 2018.
- By 2018, the highest rates were in boys aged 10 to 16 – 3.5 per cent had been diagnosed. Back in 2000, this number was 1.4 per cent.
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How we compare with other countries
In the US, 11.4 per cent of children aged three to 17 years old were diagnosed with ADHD in 2024. In Europe, a 2023 French study indicated 3.68 per cent of children (800,000) have ADHD compared with 5.5 per cent of adults (1.4 million).
Meanwhile, in Spain, estimates of ADHD prevalence in children range from 5.5 per cent to 6.8 per cent.
A closer look at the review
The ongoing Government review is led by Professor Peter Fonagy, national clinical adviser on children’s mental health.
An interim report, published in March this year, identified rising diagnosis rates as an issue alongside people with ADHD and autism failing to get the support they need.
The final report is set to focus on how to make more support available that is “less dependent on diagnostic thresholds” and “more responsive to functional need”.
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The Russian Embassy to the UK said the British Government’s actions would “inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer”.
“The deeper its involvement in the conflict,” the statement added, “the higher the price it will pay.”
Security sources say that since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been attempting to raise the cost of supporting Kyiv and undermine public support across Europe for intervention in the Ukraine war.
A key method has been sabotage across a range of military and civilian targets, including inflicting costly damage on undersea cables.
‘Most vulnerable part of the system’
So far, that damage has mainly been inflicted at sea using ships, including a Russian “shadow fleet” tanker that dragged its anchor along the seabed between Finland and Estonia for almost 60 miles in December 2024.
But a parliamentary report warned that the stations where the cables reach land “may be the most vulnerable part of the system”. While the locations of military cables are a carefully guarded secret, civilian cables are operated by private companies and the buildings housing them are not concealed.
Widemouth Bay is one of the most-used landing points for transatlantic cables, while Google’s Grace Hopper data cable was photographed being laid beneath Crooklets Beach in Bude in 2021. Several cables converge at the site of a historic RAF base at Skewjack, about two miles inland from Porthcurno.
A report published by the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) last September said security risks were intensified by the fact that many landing stations house multiple cables, with Bude alone housing nine.
“Physical security across sites varies – some could be rendered inoperable by sabotage,” the report said. “The terrestrial links between the subsea cable, the landing station and the data centres can also be sabotaged with unsophisticated tools.”
The JCNSS warned that a trend towards critical amounts of data being concentrated in new high-capacity cables would create “a small set of high-value targets”, and that onward connections from landing stations to data centres create “worrying levels of concentration”.
While the report said that the risk of “severe disruption” was low, because of the high number of cables reaching Britain and the ability to reroute data, “we can no longer rule out the possibility of UK infrastructure being targeted in a crisis”.
A ‘point of failure’
Dr Sidharth Kaushal, a senior association fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), said that while no damage to UK undersea cables had yet been detected, Russia had been “clearly mapping” cables and conducting surveillance.
In April, then defence secretary John Healey said that three Russian submarines had conducted a “covert” spying operation over cables and pipelines north of the UK and that any attempt to sabotage them would “have serious consequences”. The Russian Government denied the allegations.
Dr Kaushal said that at sea, there was a “lot of redundancy” in cable networks because of accidental breakages caused by natural phenomena and human error, but landing stations presented “more of a point of failure”.
He added: “A lot of the landing points for cables which cross the Atlantic converge within the UK. Cornwall is an area of particularly dense concentration.”
It could be more difficult for Russia to deploy saboteurs on land in Britain than using ships at sea, Dr Kaushal said, but such actions could be used to “send a message”.
Increasing reliance on undersea cables
Katja Bego, a senior research fellow at Chatham House and the author of the upcoming book Deep Connections: The Hidden Battles to Control Subsea Cables, said the UK was particularly vulnerable to cable sabotage as an island nation.
“They are also becoming more important as infrastructure for our economy, our society,” she told The i Paper. “Also for the military, having access to reliable connectivity, internet and data exchange is critical.”
While Bego said interference with a small number of cables could be mitigated by rerouting traffic, disrupting a large number at the same time would be “very serious and quite catastrophic”.
The challenge for securing land-based infrastructure, she said, was that it was designed without deliberate sabotage in mind, meaning large numbers of cables were laid close together for practicality and cost reasons.
“That’s not ideal if you want to have something that’s distributed for resilience against things going wrong,” Bego added.
The Government set up an Undersea Infrastructure Security (UIS) Oversight Board to co-ordinate security improvements following the JCNSS report last year.
It said security assessments had been carried out at landing stations, and that private operators were being asked to develop emergency repair plans and avoid the “clustering of high-value targets”.
The Government said: “The security and resilience of the UK’s subsea cable network is a national priority, and our international connectivity is highly resilient.
“Alongside Nato and Joint Expeditionary Force allies we’re also ensuring hostile actors cannot operate undetected near UK or Nato waters. We’re deploying new technologies, coordinating patrols, and leading initiatives like Nordic Warden alongside Nato’s Baltic Sentry mission to track and counter undersea threats.
“Working with industry partners and international allies we will ensure these critical assets are protected against evolving threats.”