Morning.

It’s Monday 14th September: Reform has received a fairly enormous £72m, Britain and America are teaming up on fusion power and MPs have rejected a fresh attempt to legalise assisted dying.

Kettle on.

📅 On this day: In 1752, Britain woke up to the 14th September having gone to bed on the 2nd. The country had finally adopted the Gregorian calendar, requiring 11 days to be skipped to bring it into line with much of Europe.

Reform UK has received £72m from two donors, comfortably smashing the record for individual political donations in Britain. Crypto investors Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne each gave the party £36m, making each donation the largest ever given to a British political party.

Political donation rules are already under scrutiny. The Elections Bill is being debated in the House of Lords, while MPs, unions and others are pushing the government to introduce a cap on how much one person can give. There is currently no general cap on individual political donations in the UK, provided the donor is legally allowed to donate.

Whatever happens to those rules in future, £72m gives Reform an enormous war chest for campaigning, staff, advertising and preparing for the next general election. British politics has rarely had quite this much riding on two bank transfers.

The UK and US are joining forces on nuclear fusion, including using artificial intelligence and supercomputers to help develop the technology. Fusion is the process that powers the Sun. Rather than splitting atoms, as today's nuclear power stations do, it combines them and releases enormous amounts of energy. Scientists have been trying for decades to turn that into a practical source of low-carbon electricity.

Today's agreements will see British and American researchers cooperate on AI, computing and regulation. The government estimates Britain's fusion industry could support more than 10,000 jobs by 2030. That doesn't mean a fusion power station is about to appear down the road. Making the technology commercially viable remains a huge scientific and engineering challenge. But Britain is already a significant player in fusion research, and the deal is intended to help turn decades of experiments into something that might eventually plug into the grid.

MPs have voted against a fresh attempt to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales. The proposed law would have allowed some terminally ill adults who had the mental capacity to make the decision to receive assistance to end their lives, subject to safeguards. MPs rejected it by 286 votes to 270 on Friday.

It's the latest turn in a long parliamentary debate. A previous assisted-dying bill made it through the Commons before becoming stuck in the House of Lords, where members proposed more than 1,200 amendments.

Supporters argue that terminally ill adults should be able to choose how and when they die. Opponents have raised concerns about coercion, safeguards and the potential consequences for vulnerable people. Friday's vote means this version of the law goes no further. Supporters have promised to continue campaigning, but another full attempt is unlikely in the immediate future.

A cancelled train is about to become slightly less of a logistical treasure hunt. From 20 September, passengers whose services are cancelled will have an automatic right to use another operator without paying extra.

Generally, you'll be able to take a suitable service within two hours either side of your original train, including one run by a rival operator. Similar arrangements have sometimes been introduced during disruption before, but the new system makes that flexibility automatic.

It won't make your original train turn up, admittedly. But at least the railway will be slightly less likely to punish you financially for noticing that it hasn't.

The leaders of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Féin are meeting in Cardiff today to push for greater rights to hold votes on the future of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

John Swinney, Rhun ap Iorwerth and Michelle O'Neill also lead their respective devolved governments, but today's meeting is taking place in their roles as party leaders. They're expected to sign an agreement supporting each nation's right to pursue constitutional change.

That doesn't give them the power to hold referendums. But it is an unusual show of cooperation between the UK's three largest nationalist parties. It also comes just after Donald Trump backed a united Ireland, saying he would “love” to see it happen. Under the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland can join the Republic only if people there vote for it in a border poll.

A Russian drone hit a passenger train near Ukraine's border with Poland on Sunday, shortly after another train carrying Boris Johnson and senior European figures had passed through. Nobody on the train that was hit was reported injured. Ukraine's state railway operator said the diplomatic train, which had left the station early, may have been the intended target.

That's possible, but not established. The delegation included former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt and European security advisers alongside Johnson. The strike happened close to Polish territory, making its location particularly sensitive. Poland is a NATO member, meaning an attack on Poland itself could have much wider consequences.

The government has set out the new rules for school dinners in England. Under the updated food standards, schools will no longer be allowed to serve deep-fried foods such as battered fish and fried chicken, while sugary puddings will be restricted and meals will have to include more fruit, vegetables and fibre.

The existing rules are more than a decade old and currently allow schools to serve deep-fried food twice a week. The changes are aimed at improving children's diets and reducing obesity. They won't happen overnight: the new standards are due to take effect from September 2027, giving schools and caterers time to change their menus.

If your credit score suddenly jumps or drops, you may not have become dramatically better or worse with money overnight. Credit-reference agency TransUnion is changing its system, including replacing its current maximum score of 710 with one of 999. The change is being rolled out gradually.

Credit-reference agencies collect information about things such as borrowing and repayment history. Lenders use that underlying information when deciding whether to offer you credit and on what terms. The number you see is mainly a way of helping you understand your credit file. A new TransUnion score doesn't automatically change whether a bank will lend to you.

A former industrial dumping ground near Warrington has become one of Britain's most important homes for one of its rarest breeding waterbirds. Woolston Eyes was used for decades to receive sediment dredged from the Manchester Ship Canal. After restoration work created new pools and reedbeds, black-necked grebes moved in.

The RSPB recorded 35 breeding pairs at the site last year, making it the most important breeding location for the species in the UK.

Not a bad second act for somewhere that spent decades receiving canal sludge.

Have a great day.

See you tomorrow.

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