CARDIGAN BAY – The crew is poised. A sailor in deep blue overalls is glued to a radar, continually scanning the seas around a cavernous Royal Navy warship. Next to her, two young men hold binoculars to the ship’s windows. Clamber down two ladders, and three dozen crew members are staring at feeds of information from powerful sensors, on glowing, brightly coloured screens.
Then they spot it; a drone on the horizon. And it’s coming in fast.
As militaries around the world race to adapt to drone warfare, The i Paper was granted rare access to join the crew on board HMS for a week of exercises off the coast of Wales. A Type 45 destroyer, HMS specialises in air defence, and is capable of creating a protective bubble over an area of land or sea.
A man’s body has been recovered, with two others still unaccounted for, after a fishing vessel went missing off the Outer Hebrides.
Everything we know so far
HM Coastguard have said they were made aware of the missing ship, which was sailing off Port Ness on the Isle of Lewis, at around 9.20pm on Tuesday.
- Police Scotland were notified at about 11.35pm. The force said three men were aboard.
- The body of one man has been recovered. The man’s family have been made aware and are being supported by officers.
Search under way
A Coastguard aeroplane, two helicopters, six rescue teams, two RNLI lifeboats, a local vessel and Police Scotland are involved in the search, which is being carried out amid a yellow weather warning for high winds in the region.
3 min read
7 min read
Rules, London’s oldest restaurant, given to National Trust
The home of Rules, London’s oldest restaurant which has been there since 1798, has been donated to the National Trust.
The charity said the donation of the £11m site by J-P Mayhew, its owner of 40 years, would secure the future of a building where “kings dined and writers and politicians plotted”.
The freehold acquisition included visitor books, menus, caricatures, photographs, stained glass and signs. Annual rent from the restaurant business will also go into conservation work.
4 min read
5 min read
Famous diners
Rules is no stranger to celebrity, having welcomed figures from and – who would rendezvous with his mistresses there – to and over the past two centuries.
The restaurant, located at 34-35 Maiden Lane in Covent Garden, central London, has outlasted empires and overcome challenges including the Blitz during the Second World War as well as plans for a dual carriageway.
A long future ahead
This place is an outstanding piece of living history… it has defied the odds to be standing here today, doors still open and treacle sponge still on the menu. Mr Mayhew’s extraordinary generosity, and the care he has poured into Rules over many decades, mean this beloved place has a future measured not in years but generations.
Hilary McGrady, director-general of the National Trust
New dinosaur species discovered from ‘overlooked’ fossil
A new species of dinosaur has been identified from an “overlooked” fossil which was found on the Isle of Wight more than 100 years ago, researchers have said.
The history of the fossil
The fossil, which was a piece of the back of a skull, was originally found at the foot of a cliff on the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight by amateur palaeontologist Reginald Walter Tooley. It was procured by the Natural History Museum in 1924.
Dr Cassius Morrison of University College London said it was a “real mystery” why the fossil had been overlooked.
A megaraptoran
The new dinosaur, named Invictibellatrix amberina (with the former meaning “unconquered female warrior”), has and is about the size of a large tiger.
It is part of a group of agile, two-legged carnivores called . These were closely related to tyrannosaurus but had more slender heads and used their claws to attack prey rather than their jaws.
2 min read
4 min read
A mysterious species
- Megaraptors are seen as the most mysterious of the large carnivorous dinosaurs, with few fossils found.
- Until this discovery, no megaraptorans had been found in Europe.
- Researchers suggest invictibellatrix would have been three to four meters long and just over a metre and a half tall.
- They also speculate it would likely have had feathers and 10-20cm long claws.
- Its diet is thought to have consisted of small dinosaurs, lizards and mammals.
Pope Leo diagnosed with lung cancer after surgery
Pope Leo XIV has been diagnosed with cancer following a “successful” operation to remove the lower lobe of his right lung, the Vatican has announced.
A common type of lung cancer
Doctors confirmed the diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma, a common type of lung cancer, after pre-planned surgery at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital. Dr Luigi Carbone and Professor Stefano Margaritora said cancer had been suspected by pre-operative tests.
7 min read
4 min read
What else do we know?
- The surgery lasted around 90 minutes and had no complications.
- Pope Leo had a “peaceful night” in hospital, where he is expected to remain for about a week.
- The 71-year-old pontiff cancelled all public events until 20 October to give him time to recover.
Hope for quick recovery
- The Vatican did not give more details of the operation, but Margaritora is an expert in robotic surgical techniques and Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery (Vats).
- Using small incisions by endoscopic instruments equipped with a high-definition camera, Vats reduces surgical trauma and can result in faster recovery.
7 min read
Reactions from religious leaders and supporters
Archbishop Richard Moth, leader of the Catholics in England and Wales, said: “I have sent a message on behalf of all in the Catholic Church in England and Wales, assuring him [the Pope] of our prayers.”
- Large crowds gathered outside the hospital to wait for the Pope before his surgery. One well-wisher, Carla, told the BBC she was “taken aback” by the news, adding: “It turns out he’s vulnerable too.”
The shocking human cost of UK’s killer kitchens revealed
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspectors found hundreds of breaches of health and safety law at more than 160 firms, with workers exposed to “billowing” silica dust, and issued an immediate ban to 50 firms.
What is silicosis?
The threat posed by the man-made stone comes from so-called “dry cutting” whereby particles are emitted in a fine dust as slabs are cut.
Engineered stone often contains as much as 95 per cent silica quartz – far higher than natural stone such as granite (about 30 per cent).
When engineered quartz dust is inhaled, it lodges in the lungs, triggering an aggressive immune response from the body.
Over time, scar tissue forms and spreads, slowly killing the lung. Many sufferers of silicosis remain asymptomatic until it is too late.
Hundreds of breaches
Unannounced visits by the HSE to workshops producing kitchen counters made from in-demand quartz have revealed hundreds of breaches of regulations designed to protect workers from inhaling toxic dust responsible for silicosis, an incurable and often fatal lung condition.
4 min read
Cases of deadly lung disease could reach 1,000
Almost 60 stonemasons in the UK have so far been diagnosed with silicosis, with many falling ill or dying in their 20s, 30s and 40s.
Doctors believe the true number of silicosis cases is much higher and could reach as many as 1,000 people in a workforce of 7,000.
4 min read
2 min read
The verdict from the HSE
Safety bosses said the inspection regime had revealed a “very mixed picture” of safety standards in the kitchen worktop industry.
Harvey Wild, HSE’s head of operations, said: “Where we’re finding things that are wrong, there isn’t just one thing wrong – there’s multiple things wrong. We’re taking a very strong enforcement line and people are getting multiple notices.”
3 min read
Families forced to spend thousands on travel for sick kids
Children’s health specialists have recommended extra funding to help families get to hospitals for treatment, after one family spent £12,000 travelling to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Travel costs burden families
Experts from the hospital, which sees around 81,500 children and young people a year, are calling for funding to cover travel costs for all children with serious illnesses.
Laura Grimwade, whose 12-year-old son Woody has a rare autoimmune disease, estimates her family will have spent £15,000 travelling to and from Plymouth to hospitals in London by the time he is 18.
She said a fund would make “such a difference”.
Scheme should be extended, say doctors
- The Government has already committed £10m of travel funding to families of children with cancer.
- Doctors say this is a good start but other families should not miss out.
4 min read
‘Heartbreaking’ shot wins Wildlife Photographer of the Year
The winner has been crowned for the Natural History Museum’s annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, ahead of an exhibition of the photos opening to the public later in the week.
The title went to Federico Veronesi, from Italy, for his image, “The Aftermath”, showing an elephant lifting the body of her dead calf. The chair of the judging panel described it as an emotional “gut punch” and “heartbreakingly poignant”.
An elephant-themed image also triumphed in the ‘Animals in their Environment’ category with James Lewin’s shot, one of five British photographers to win a category.
Telling animals’ stories
The winning entry from Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year featured a dung beetle pushing its cargo, which judges praised for revealing “an entire story”.
Loren Elliott from the USA won the Photojournalist Story award with a shot of a coyote walking above the Bay of San Francisco.
How to be more grateful for daily life in five easy steps
The world feels like a difficult place at the moment, and it can feel very hard sometimes to find things to be thankful for; when we are overwhelmed, we have less capacity to notice and reflect on the good things. Yet, ironically, proactively cultivating gratitude is one of the things that can actually help us feel less stressed.
NHS GP dR RADHA
The science
Research has shown that feeling or expressing thanks can actually alter our brain.
- The balance of neurotransmitters change; more serotonin and dopamine (feel good chemicals) are produced.
- This can be long lasting if we make gratitude a regular habit.
- We also get a decrease in our cortisol (stress hormone) levels which helps lower anxiety.
- Being grateful can strengthen the nerve pathways which triggers positive emotion.
How can we build gratitude?
Change your words
Instead of seeing something as a problem, try to see the opportunities within it.
Our brains are very receptive and what we read or write can alter our emotional system.
Express it
This will not only make you feel good, but you will also get a positive response from others.
How can we build gratitude?
Notice more
Throughout your day, try to notice all the things that are going well; has someone opened a door for you, or smiled?
The basics
By being thankful for the small things every day, we are far more likely to be and stay healthy so that we can enjoy them.
What to do
Gratitude can lead to feelings of optimism, lower our blood pressure, and improve sleep quality.
- Write down what potential good aspects there are to the things you don’t feel like doing, or even what could be worse about it.
- Spend a few minutes writing down three things that you are looking forward to that day, or the good things that have happened to you that day.
- Say thank you to yourself for the things you have achieved, or managed to get through and changed that day.
The training programme, Exercise Sharpshooter, teaches them shoot down drones and simulated missiles – tasks these sailors may well face in reality.
Russia has this week been accused of sinking a merchant ship off the coast of Europe, using drones to take out the vessel. In the Red Sea, Houthi militants have been firing drones at commercial vessels since 2024, killing several sailors, with the Navy deployed to take them out.
This wargame forces the crew to respond day and night to unexpected attacks from the air or the sea, testing their weapons – and their wits – for an assault that could unfold within minutes.
The first few seconds: Detection
Often, a threat will first be spotted in the ship’s operations room, a secret site nestled deep in the underbelly of the vessel. Almost pitch black, it hums with the sound of air conditioning and chatter. Inside, 40 analysts sit in rows, each looking at three screens showing the ship’s location and other objects nearby, their supervisors hovering nearby.
The crew spend eight hours here at a time, wearing flame-retardant overalls, headsets and white leather gloves to protect their skin in case of explosions.
This room is the brains of the ship, bringing together feeds of information from radar detections to human intelligence to help the sailors detect the oncoming threat. From the vessel off the coast of Wales, its radars can detect threats as far as Paris, monitoring hundreds of drones or missiles simultaneously, and launching weapons to take them out.
“We’ll have different stations around the ops room, and they’ll be looking out at different ranges on their radar,” said Dan, a fighter controller who manages the fighter jets working with the ship to respond to threats. “As soon as they see something at various different ranges, they’ll then report that through, and we’ll then work through trying to figure out what it is, what it’s doing, and what we can do about it.”
After a missile or drone has been spotted, the crew will work to identify it, looking at its speed, size, location and imprint on the electromagnetic spectrum, gathering around a monitor to discuss it. At the same time, they must protect themselves, with a tannoy going off to alert the crew to an incoming threat so they can cover their heads and arms with protective gear.
45 seconds onwards: Select a response
Once they can confidently determine the threat, the team can pull together options for a response. Lieutenant Commander David Ferguson, who spent six weeks on board HMS as it tackled Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea in 2024, said his crew had responded in as little as 45 seconds.
HMS , one of the Navy’s most powerful warships, has six different types of weapon and hosts a Wildcat helicopter, itself capable of launching its own missiles. The ship’s biggest gun, the 45 Naval Gun, can fire 25 rounds per minute – each bullet larger than those fired by a tank.
It is the crew’s job to match these capabilities to the threat in hand – as quickly as possible. To do this, they will start with the furthest capability, aiming to shoot the target down from as far away as possible, moving through its defences until it reaches close range.
“We call it layered defence,” says Dan, standing in the operations room in his overalls. “We’ll push that boundary out as much as we can. Fighter jets are a really good way because we can send them far away really fast, we can then send them back to resupply without using our own weapons on board.
“We can then use things like our helicopter, and our missiles that can then fire much further away. And then as we work through, we’ve got the [large] guns, all the way down to machine guns, which are a really close last defence.”
The time it takes to respond to an attack can vary dramatically. “Sometimes they can be sort of split-second decisions,” said Dan. “Sometimes they can be over minutes and hours as we get different intelligence and feeds and detection ranges. It really depends. That’s part of the art, I guess.”
When a decision has been made, the operations team radio up to the team in the Bridge, the command centre of the ship, to move the ship into the right position to fire. The 7,500-tonne warship turns, the body of the ship tilting and the horizon appearing to slant outside the window, before it levels out again. It is enough to turn your stomach.
The ship’s semi-automated Phalanx gun fires for a few seconds at a time, creating an ear-splitting drilling sound which echoes around every corner of the ship, usually alternated with the sharp pop of a machine gun from the deck outside. But the most visceral of all is main 45 gun, mounted on the front of the ship, and creates a boom so powerful it rattles the ceiling panels.
The Royal Navy frequently works with allies including the US and France, and if other friendly warships are nearby, decisions will be made in connection with them. This helps them avoid doubling up – or hitting one another.
“It’s all about that coordination. That battle space management is another one of the roles that we’ll be doing to make sure we both employ them effectively, but also safely,” said Dan, who frequently talks to allies over his headset.
If needed, an armed helicopter can lift off from the ship in under 15 minutes. Once in the air, they fly in the direction of the target, locate it on their cameras and sensors, and wait for approval from the ships’ operations room to fire or monitor.
“We bring the ability for the ship to extend its camera range, its radar range, and its weapons, so they can then focus on another area of warfare,” said Arnie, a 26-year-old flight observer who manages navigation, weapons and sensors while his partner flies the helicopter. “We’re just an extension arm of the ship, and able to do more.”
Jets, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles are increasingly facing threats from jamming, where an enemy interferes with GPS signals or ground communications so they lose navigation. But these Wildcat pilots can “operate in any environment”, using maps, radars or the drift and speed of the aircraft to work out where they are. Even in a rapidly changing battlefield, “there’s lots of old-fashioned methods, which still are relevant today”.
First few hours: Raise it
Navy warships have the authority to act autonomously, without approval from headquarters from land, but updates about attacks will be fed back to a team of officials on land.
If the attack is serious or unexpected, these updates can reach the First Sea Lord, the Navy’s chief, the Chief of the Defence staff – the head of the entire military – and even the Prime Minister. Special and military advisers within the Naval staff and military of defence would help top officials to formulate a wider response.
In the most serious case, the UK could convene a meeting of Nato, the western military alliance of 32 countries committed to protecting one another in case of attack, which can devise a collective response, ranging from a sternly worded warning to a full-scale military deployment.
While I am on board, HMS deals with more than a dozen simulated attacks, successfully passing the exercise to allow it to deploy on operations in real life. With threats from Russia and Yemen’s Houthi militants only growing, the stakes have never been higher.