Across the country, schools are scrambling to catch up students in math as post-pandemic test scores reveal the depth of missing skills

For seven seasons, a beeping robot called H.E.L.P.eR. (aka Helper) was ride-or-die for Team Venture.

Williams boss James Vowles has raised doubt about Logan Sargeant’s spot at the team for next year after the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday. While Alex Albon enjoyed a prosperous year at Williams with 27 points, rookie driver Sargeant claimed just one point in 22 races – and even that was only following Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc’s disqualification in Austin. Sargeant failed to qualify higher than Albon in 22 attempts and, suspiciously, he is the only driver on the grid whose spot for 2024 is yet to be confirmed. Vowles, when asked after Sargeant finished 16th in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, insisted there was no update as to whether the American would keep his seat. “Whatever happens, Logan has been part of the Williams academy for many years and will always remain a part of our academy,” Vowles said. “He is a quick driver but if we step away from that – if you look at the last five races on how he has improved and is stepping forward. “You can see signs that what he is doing is what he needs to earn the seat, but we aren’t in a position to confirm that. We’re proud of the steps he has made this season.” Felipe Drugovich and Mick Schumacher are among the names who’ve been linked with Sargeant’s seat. Williams finished an impressive seventh in the constructors’ standings – their best finish since 2017 – in ex-Mercedes strategist Vowles’ first season in charge. Albon signed a multi-year deal at Williams last year, though has been linked with a return to Red Bull. Read More F1 2023 season report card: Red Bull flourish but what about Mercedes and Ferrari? Toto Wolff sees ‘Mount Everest’ ahead as Mercedes seek to end Red Bull’s domination When does the 2024 F1 season start?

Surveillance footage shows McKenzie being attacked after leaving the house and attempting to run away from the dogs

Blame it on the four-week parade of runway shows that make up Fashion Month (and take up my brain space) or the eternal lack of space in my suitcase (no matter how big), but on my last work trip to Paris, I found myself without a flat pair of shoes in sight. It’s not unusual for me to be in heels most days, especially when I’m working, but after 10 days of wearing booties even for just a morning boulangerie run, I vowed to invest in a good pair of white sneakers for future travels. I wanted the kind of sneakers that look equally at home at the airport as at a market appointment-turned-dinner, and with every silhouette from dresses to skirts and jeans.

Chief among the pesky drawbacks of pet ownership is the reality that there is pet

Louisiana Republicans have refused to add exceptions for rape and incest to one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country after the US Supreme Court revoked a constitutional right to abortion access. The state’s anti-abortion Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards opposed the exclusion, but he signed the state’s anti-abortion law last year despite pleas from abortion rights advocates to veto the measure. This year, state Rep Delisha Boyd introduced a bill that would amend the law to add exceptions for pregnancies from rape or incest, but lawmakers on a state House committee voted down the proposal, effectively killing it for the remainder of the legislative session. On 10 May, the committee struck down the bill after hearing testimony from rape survivors and abortion rights advocates who shared their experience and urged lawmakers to support survivors. Lawmakers voted 10-5 on party lines to keep exemptions from rape or incest out of Louisiana’s anti-abortion law. Lawmakers also heard from anti-abortion activists and John Raymond, a former Survivor contestant and pastor accused of taping students’ mouths shut and hanging another student by his ankles. Mr Raymond, who has pleaded not guilty to the allegations, told the committee that women will “clamor to put old boyfriends behind bars in order to dispense with the inconvenience of giving birth” if the state allows rape survivors to access abortion care. In this year’s legislative session, lawmakers are considering a package of bills aimed at loosening the state’s near-total ban on legal abortion care, but most of the proposals have been shelved. During the committee hearing, Ms Boyd revealed that she was born after her mother was sexually assaulted when she was 15 years old. “My mother never recovered,” she said. “No one looked after my mother. No one looked out for me.” Republican state Rep Tony Bacala said he opposed the legislation by pointing to Ms Boyd, who was born from rape, as a good person. In a statement, the governor said he was “deeply disappointed” by the vote. “The committee’s decision to prevent this important bill from being debated by the full House is both unfortunate and contrary to the position of a vast majority of Louisianans, who support these exceptions,” he added. “I simply do not understand how we as a state can tell any victim that she must be forced by law to carry her rapist’s baby to term, regardless of the impact on her own physical or mental health, the wishes of her parents, or the medical judgment of her physician,” said the anti-abortion Democratic governor, who signed the law that bans nearly all abortions, without exceptions, last year, despite pleas from abortion rights advocates to veto the bill. “As I have said before, rape and incest exceptions protect crime victims,” he added. Roughly 3 million women in the US have experienced rape-related pregnancy during their lifetime, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Louisiana also had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation, disproportionately impacting Black women, according to the state’s Department of Health. Louisiana is among more than a dozen states, mostly in the South, that have effectively outlawed or severely restricted access to abortion care in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision last year to reverse the half-century precedent for abortion access affirmed by Roe v Wade. The state also is central to a closely watched case that could determine the future of a widely used abortion drug used in more than half of all abortions in the US. The legal case over the federal government’s approval of mifepristone will return to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on 17 May, the next step in one of the biggest abortion rights cases after the fall of Roe. The Supreme Court’s decision on 21 April maintains the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug after a federal judge in Texas struck it down in a ruling that would have profound and potentially dangerous consequences for millions of Americans if allowed to go into effect. A three-judge panel at the federal appeals court in Louisiana will hear arguments in the case next week. Read More Alabama Republicans would charge abortion patients with murder under proposed legislation A Texas man sued his ex-wife’s friends for allegedly helping her with an abortion. Now they’re suing him McConnell opposes Alabama Republican's blockade of military nominees over Pentagon abortion policy

What would we do without movies? It's honestly not worth thinking about. A good movie

BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing has been “fantastic” for disability representation, says Jonnie Peacock MBE – the show’s first amputee contestant. The sprinter and paralympian, who was partnered with professional dancer Oti Mabuse in 2017, helped pave the way for celebrities with disabilities, including presenters Rose Ayling-Ellis and JJ Chalmers. The new 2023 series sees cyclist and swimmer Jody Cundy – who, like Peacock, had his right leg amputated just below the knee – compete with Jowita PrzystaÅ‚, who lifted the glitterball trophy last year with Hamza Yassin. “For me, going on Strictly was important to attempt to break people’s perceptions and make them realise the reason that I would be a bad dancer would absolutely not be my leg,” says the 30-year-old. “My leg is actually one of my strong suits! “Rhythm,” he laughs, “That was more the problem.” Peacock – who became a household name after smashing the world record and claiming gold in the 100m T44 final at London 2012 Paralympic Games – said by appearing on the popular dancing show, he was “trying to get people to understand that we look at someone and we instantly judge what they’re able to do, and put them in a box”. The World Health Organisation estimates that 16% of the world’s population is disabled. “But when you look at your TV – especially 20 years ago – it [looked like] 0.1%, and the same with race and gender,” notes Peacock. “Now people are starting to realise that we want our world to be reality, and we want our [TV] world to encompass what it actually looks like. “It’s not just Strictly, pretty much all of the reality TV shows have disabled contestants in [now]. It’s so important. It’s a way to show that we are an individual, and that we have something to give.” Peacock was recently made an ASICS ambassador (“It’s really cool to be working with a brand who actually care about a lot of the things I care about – that it’s so much more than sport,” he says). And after a difficult summer on the track, he’s looking ahead to the indoor winter para season and the Paris Paralympics next summer. “I felt the worst I’ve felt in years, as soon as I got past 50 or 60 metres [during Paris Para Athletics World Championships in July],” says the sprinter, who later discovered he had hamstring tendinopathy. “I’d kind of lost the love of the event. Even though I love training, I didn’t enjoy competing too much. Even though I love doing it, it was bringing me a lot of misery.” As well as injury niggles, he’s been having issues with the alignment of his prosthetic blade. For para athletes, this technical side of the sport adds additional complication. “I used to love that, but there was a couple of years where I just felt off balance and didn’t realise why,” he says. “We had to play with so many different settings… that was the moment where I was constantly [thinking], ‘I wish I had a foot there where it should be, I wish I didn’t have to worry about setting this up and could just go for it’.” Peacock was five when he almost died from meningitis and his right leg had to be amputated – a time he has few memories of (“I have one flashback in the back of the car being rushed to hospital, with my Power Rangers duvet wrapped around me”). Growing up, he had several bone revision surgeries – “because once you’ve had an amputation, the bone will carry on growing,” explains Peacock. Now though, he’s showing no signs of slowing down, even though sprinter careers are notoriously short. For the next Paralympics, “It’s gold or nothing – Felix [Streng of Germany] has got it now [after Tokyo 2020], but my plan is to hopefully make him the shortest Paraylmpian champion ever.” After being so dominant in the 100m for so long (he’s a two-time Paralympic gold medalist, two-time world champion, and two-time European Championship gold medalist), what keeps him motivated to win? “It’s probably greed,” he laughs, “It’s just never enough, you just want more, it’s an addictive feeling. It’s like you’re just constantly chasing to try be a better athlete – a better version of you.” And with age has come a better understanding of how his own happiness and mental health is tied to his physical health. “I don’t exercise for a period of time, I can get a little bit almost, not depressed, but edging on that, just not happy, very lethargic,” he reveals. Youth comes with a blissful naivety about health, he says. Before, “I never really realised that every time I exercised, I felt better afterwards. Now [my body] is more sensitive. I don’t feel fantastic 24/7, creaks and aches start to appear, grogginess, fatigue…” These days, when he’s not feeling his best, he’ll start a day with a 15-minute indoor bike session at home, where he lives with para athlete girlfriend Sally Brown. “I hate it, I literally hate it!” he laughs. “I want to sit on the sofa and watch TV [instead]. I feel atrocious for 10 minutes afterwards, but then I bounce up so high for the rest of the day, I’m so happy. “The closest thing that affects my mental health is my [physical] health. If I eat like crap, if I sleep like crap, if I don’t exercise, I will be in a bad mental health space. If I exercise, even just a little bit, if I eat well, if I sleep well, I don’t feel like that. It’s understanding there’s a cause and effect relationship to a lot of things.” He swears by the feel-good endorphins of a freezing cold shower everyday. “My friend told me about Wim Hof [the Dutch endurance athlete known as The Iceman] six or seven years ago. I hate hot showers now, to the point where I was in a hotel once and had to get the engineer to come up because the shower didn’t go cold [enough].” Peacock says he tries to remember that “life is a game” and “a gift”. He continues: “We waste it because we take it too seriously. And we’ve been forced to take it too seriously by the outside world – we’ve been given pressures, we’ve been given expectation, and you end up allowing the stress to enclose you and take you away from that childhood mentality of just going out and having fun. “When you’re dead, you’re not going to be sitting there going, ‘Oh, I wish I’d kept my boss a bit happier’.” Jonnie Peacock is sponsored by ASICS. To find out more visit asics.com. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live What you need to know about depression during menopause – as Carol Vorderman opens up Autumn pests to look out for and how to get rid of them in your home and garden How can I tell if my child has ADHD?

Citigroup Inc. has hired Barrett Frankel from Barclays Plc as co-head of consumer investment banking in North America,

Best Buy is not letting Amazon Prime Day have all the deals glory this month.

BBQ season is almost upon us, which means it’s time to fire up the grill, whip up your marinades and get skewering. With these showstopper main dishes from Maldon Salt, you’ll never put on a boring BBQ again. For the chicken lovers, pack it full of flavour over a griddle, and serve with charred veggies, rosemary and lemon. Tender lamb chops are a great addition to a dinner party, paired with the flavours of parsley and garlic to give an underlying depth of spice to the dish. Lastly, the charred BBQ sweetcorn with smoked salt, harissa and coriander butter is perfect for vegetarians and meat-eaters alike. Smoky chargrilled chicken with veg and rosemary This chargrilled chicken recipe which is cooked over a griddle or BBQ is packed full of flavour. The marinating process helps pack in flavour and moisture to the meat. Smoked Maldon Salt is the perfect seasoning for this delicious dish. Ingredients: 2 chicken legs, skin on 4 chicken thighs, skin and bone on 2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for grilling 2 garlic cloves, crushed 1 tsp ground cumin 1 tsp smoked paprika ½ tsp ground cinnamon ½ tsp sumac 1 lemon, zested and then cut into halves 2 baby courgettes, cut into strips lengthways 200g baby peppers 2 red onions, peeled and cut into wedges Rosemary, a few sprigs A pinch of Smoked Maldon Salt To serve: Toasted pitta breads Method: 1. In a bowl mix together the olive oil, garlic, cumin, paprika, cinnamon, sumac and lemon zest. Season well with Maldon Salt and cracked black pepper. Add the chicken legs and thighs to the bowl and mix well, massaging the marinade into the meat to ensure it is evenly coated. Leave to marinade for 2 hours or can be done ahead of this (the day before for example). 2. When you are ready to cook the chicken, heat the BBQ or a griddle pan. When hot, add the chicken, skin side down, and cook for 5 minutes on each side – you want to achieve nice, charred caramelisation to the meat. Once the meat is cooked, remove from the heat and leave covered to rest. Toss the vegetables in a little more oil and then add to the pan. The courgette only needs a couple of minutes each side, but the onions and peppers need a little more – 3 minutes each side, until soft, tender and deliciously golden. Remove and set aside. 3. Finally add the lemon halves to the griddle pan and allow them to char slightly on the hot pan. Garnish the chicken and vegetables with rosemary, squeeze over the warm charred lemon and season with a final pinch of Maldon Salt and some cracked black pepper. Serve alongside warm, toasted pitta bread. Lamb chops with parsley aioli The tender lamb chop is a great addition to a dinner party, paired with the flavours of parsley and garlic to give an underlying depth of spice to the dish. Sprinkle with Maldon Salt to really enhance the succulent taste of the lamb. Ingredients: 24 small ribs of lamb 3 tbsp Maldon Salt 3 tbsp parsley, chopped 2 garlic cloves 3-4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil Method: 1. Remove the lamb chops from the fridge, cover them lightly with oil and leave them to rest at room temperature. 2. Wash, dry and peel the parsley, chop it a finely before placing it on the mortar. Crush it together with Maldon Salt and garlic until it forms a paste. Cover and set aside. 3. Heat the grill, greasing the griddle with olive oil. Lightly grease the chops with extra virgin olive oil once the barbecue is hot. Cook them for 4 minutes on each side at 180C. Season them with Maldon Salt when they have just cooked and serve them hot with the parsley aioli you made. Charred BBQ sweetcorn with smoked salt, harissa and coriander butter Ingredients: 200g unsalted butter, softened 2 tbsp harissa Small handful of coriander finely chopped Pinch Maldon smoked salt 5 corn on the cob Method: 1. In a small bowl prepare the flavoured butter by mixing together the softened butter, harissa, chopped coriander and smoked Maldon salt. 2. Heat up the BBQ or alternatively you can use a griddle pan. Use a pastry brush to cover the corn with the butter and then place them onto the BBQ and cook for 4-5 minutes on each side until the corn is bright yellow and cooked, with charred areas. 3. Once the corn is cooked, brush with a little extra of the butter and a final sprinkling of Maldon smoked salt – serve straight away. Recipes from maldonsalt.com Read More 7 TikTok food hacks that actually work Saltie Girl in Mayfair will make you happy as a clam – as long as you can afford it These recipes will keep you hydrated on hot days Three tomato salad recipes that aren’t boring Try one of these pasta recipes this British Tomato Fortnight Uncorked: How do I keep my wine cool at a picnic?