Britain’s longest river is at risk of running dry, posing a serious threat to wildlife and potentially reducing the availability of drinking water.
The majority of England and all of Wales are currently in drought. While some rain is forecast for this week, it won’t be enough to impact reservoir and river levels significantly.
Now the Environment Agency (EA) and Natural Resources Wales (NRW) warn that levels in the River Severn are running worryingly low, and have applied for permission to take action to conserve supply.
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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What you need to know as Tupac Shakur murder trial begins
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, allegedly orchestrated the killing of the rapper back in 1996.
It is the first time anyone has gone on trial in connection with the infamous drive-by shooting.
Everything we know so far
- Prosecutors allege that Davis did not fire the gun himself, but did mastermind the killing.
- He is a former gang leader and uncle of the man long suspected of shooting Tupac.
- Davis has pleaded not guilty and denies the allegations.
- The trial is expected to last up to six weeks and may feature testimony from one of the other passengers of the car.
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What happened on the night
There were witnesses to the murder who could put together a timeline of events, though police have never arrested a suspected killer.
- On 7 September, 1996, Tupac went to watch a Mike Tyson boxing match on the Las Vegas strip.
- He and Marion “Suge” Knight, the head of his record label, got into a fight with Orlando Anderson, Duane Davis’s nephew and a suspected member of the South Side Compton Crips gang.
- Leaving the match with Suge, Tupac was shot four times in a drive-by shooting from the back of a white Cadillac.
- Six days later, on 13 September, he died in hospital. He was 25 years old.
What have the lawyers said?
Prosecutor Binu Palal told the jury: “Let’s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew.”
Meanwhile, Davis’s attorneys questioned “what facts do they have after 30 years?” and labelled the allegations “fiction”.
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Wetherspoons bans playing music or taking calls on speaker
JD Wetherspoon founder and CEO Sir Tim Martin said “we are kindly asking phone users to pipe down” while in his pubs.
It joins widespread calls for measures to tackle antisocial phone use in public.
What you need to know
The pub chain said it had taken the decision across all of its 792 sites “following complaints from customers, who are being driven nuts by other people’s videos and amplified phone conversations”.
It requested that customers “switch their phones to silent” or “use earphones” rather than disturb others.
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The fight-back against noise
- The Liberal Democrats have previously called for fines of up to £1,000 for “headphone dodgers” who play music out loud on buses and trains.
- A YouGov poll published in 2025 suggested 62 per cent of people would back the move.
- In London, Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan rolled out a campaign last year encouraging people to use headphones when playing music on the city’s transport network.
More than 27 million people across the country are under hosepipe bans, and some water companies may have to go further. Southern Water applied for a drought order to allow it to restrict some businesses’ water use and a decision is expected in the coming weeks.
All of the water companies that draw from the River Severn – Severn Trent Water, South Staffordshire Water, Bristol Water and Hafren Dyfrdwy – do not have hosepipe bans in place.
Watchdogs want River Severn’s water levels to fall
The River Severn runs from the Cambrian Mountains in Wales to the Bristol Channel.
Its water levels are managed using the Llyn Clywedog reservoir in Wales. However, the amount of water in the reservoir has been decreasing steadily and is now below 50 per cent.
If the levels continue to fall at the current rate, then the regulators wouldn’t be able to manage the Severn, meaning parts of the waterway could dry out.
This would be devastating for wildlife, including migratory fish, and could in turn impact the drinking water supply, as roughly six million people rely on the river for their supply.
The watchdogs proposed a series of measures to conserve supply, including allowing the river to fall below a level normally considered acceptable. Without this measure, the reservoir feeding the river risks running out of water, which means parts of the Severn could dry out.
The strategy is to allow the river to flow at low levels for a longer period of time than to allow it to dry out completely.
If the drought order is allowed, water companies will also be forced to reduce the amount of drinking water they take from the River Severn by five per cent.
An Environment Agency spokesperson said it was “exceptionally concerned” about the drought’s impact on the River Severn.
“We need to see significant and sustained rainfall for this drought to end. This drought order, if made, will stop the Clywedog reservoir from being completely exhausted and will prevent sections of Britain’s longest river from drying out.
“We still expect water companies to follow their drought plans and encourage an earlier use of temporary use bans to protect public water supplies and preserve the environment.”
A ‘desperate condition’
Mark Lloyd, CEO of the Rivers Trust charity, said allowing river levels to fall low will still leave it in a “desperate condition”.
Low river levels cause temperatures to rise and oxygen levels to fall, creating dangerous conditions for fish and invertebrates and have a knock-on impact on wider ecosystems. Rivers are also more vulnerable to pollution and toxic algal blooms in these conditions.
“It just means everything silently and invisibly declines in abundance,” said Lloyd, describing it as a “slow, invisible death of the ecosystem”.
A Severn Trent spokesperson said it was “working with” the EA, adding that rivers made up around a third of its water supply, the rest coming from reservoirs and boreholes.
“While we have seen the occasional localised rain shower, we are still recovering after the prolonged hot and dry summer that’s seen less than 5 per cent rainfall than expected, so we continue to encourage customers to help protect supplies and environment by using water mindfully,” they added.
Decision expected on Southern Water restrictions
Drought orders are rare emergency legal powers granted by the Government to water companies or regulators during exceptionally dry weather.
The application marks the third drought order request submitted this year.
Southern Water made two such applications in July. One was for permission to impose some restrictions on businesses such as car washes and swimming pools.
In a separate application, it asked for permission to take more water from the River Test than would usually be permitted, which it said would help protect the tap water supply for around 165,000 people in Hampshire.
A consultation period for the applications closed last week and a decision is expected from Environment Secretary Angela Eagle before the end of August.
Environmental groups and locals submitted objections to Southern Water’s proposals in the consultation.
“It is deeply inequitable that the burden of this crisis falls, as it always does, on the people least responsible for it. Residents did not decide to defer investment. They did not extract dividends while the infrastructure deteriorated,” said Paul Harvey, leader of Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council.
Nick Measham, CEO of campaign group Wildfish, said the River Test was home to endangered species, including Atlantic salmon, and Southern Water’s plans would have a serious impact.
Both said hosepipe bans should have been introduced earlier.
“It’s crazy that we still have car washes operating, for instance. That’s a completely non-essential use, but that seems to be something that’s only done when things get really desperate,” said Lloyd. “It feels really as if the environment is the last thing on the list.”