Morning.

Prison sentences are changing again, the Iran war could make life more expensive here, and Google has renamed a rather large bit of Canada.

Kettle on.

☀️ On this day: England, Wales and Northern Ireland are enjoying the Summer Bank Holiday today. Scotland had its one earlier, on the first Monday in August. The holiday dates back to the Bank Holidays Act 1871, which originally put it on the first Monday of August across the UK before England, Wales and Northern Ireland later moved theirs to late August.

The government has changed its plans for prison sentences again, after criticism that some serious offenders could end up being released earlier than expected.

Under the latest changes, hundreds of people convicted of serious offences will no longer be eligible for earlier release under upcoming reforms designed to ease pressure on overcrowded prisons, the government has announced.

So why was earlier release being considered in the first place? Britain's prisons are extremely full. The reforms change how some sentences work so eligible offenders spend less of their sentence physically in prison, then serve more of it under supervision outside.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham says the government has now gone as far as it safely can in excluding more serious offences. The slightly uncomfortable bit is that ministers are effectively arguing two things at once: some offenders should clearly stay in prison longer, but there isn't enough prison space to simply do that for everyone.

That's the problem behind the policy change. Keeping more people in prison for longer also means finding space for them. Changing who qualifies may make the reforms easier to defend, but it doesn't create any new cells.

After several quieter weeks, the US and Iran have started directly attacking each other again.

American forces struck two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island, near the Strait of Hormuz, on Sunday. A US official said Iranian forces had been preparing to fire rockets carrying sea mines into the strait. Iran then retaliated against US forces in Jordan, with almost all of the incoming missiles reportedly intercepted, according to Reuters.

The location matters. The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow sea route connecting the Persian Gulf with the rest of the world, and normally carries an enormous amount of global oil and gas. Anything threatening shipping there tends to make energy markets nervous rather quickly.

And nervous they are. Brent crude rose more than 2% this morning to above $90 a barrel as the fighting resumed. For Britain, that means this isn't just a distant military story. Higher oil and gas prices can feed through into petrol, energy bills, inflation and eventually interest rates and wages.

One estimate today puts some fairly chunky numbers on that. The Centre for Economics and Business Research reckons the effects of the Iran war could leave the average UK household's real disposable income about £1,100 lower this year and another £1,300 lower next year than it otherwise would have been.

Important caveat: that's a forecast, not a £2,400 bill that's about to arrive through the letterbox. It depends on what happens to energy prices, inflation, wages and the war itself. But it gives a decent idea of why events around one narrow stretch of water thousands of miles away can end up mattering at a British petrol station.

Getting your cholesterol checked could soon involve a trip to the pharmacy rather than the GP.

The NHS in England is preparing to offer free seven-minute finger-prick cholesterol tests at high-street pharmacies, starting at around 100 locations this autumn. The checks are aimed at people aged 40 to 84 who haven't had a blood test in the previous year. A small blood sample is analysed there and then, with the result used to estimate someone's risk of heart and circulatory problems.

Why bother if you feel perfectly fine? Because high cholesterol usually doesn't have symptoms and can increase the risk of heart problems and strokes. Cholesterol is already among the things checked as part of the NHS Health Check.

The idea has already been tested in London, where a pharmacy scheme developed by Barts Health expanded to 70 east London pharmacies earlier this year after an initial pilot. It means another routine health check will soon be available somewhere you probably visit more often than your GP surgery. Possibly while you're already there buying toothpaste.

Some NHS doctors are using AI scribes, software that listens to consultations and automatically turns the conversation into medical notes.

However, it doesn't always hear everything correctly. Patients have reported AI-generated records containing incorrect diagnoses, confused drug names and missing information, with some mistakes spotted by patients rather than clinicians. Perhaps not entirely surprising from a system that probably thinks paracetamol is a Welsh village.

There is an important bit of context here: nobody currently knows whether AI scribes make more or fewer mistakes overall than humans writing notes themselves. In wider research by Healthwatch, 69% of people said they would feel more comfortable with the technology if healthcare professionals clearly committed to checking its output.

England's Children's Commissioner is calling for parents of seriously ill or disabled children to receive 12 weeks of leave at 90% of their normal pay.

At the moment, families can find themselves reducing their hours or leaving work altogether when a child needs lengthy hospital treatment. Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza argues parents shouldn't have to choose between being at their child's bedside and keeping their job.

This isn't a new policy yet. It's a proposal, sometimes called Hugh's Law, being pushed as the government's consultation on employment rights for carers and parents of seriously ill children comes to an end. The Commissioner also wants unpaid carer's leave increased from five to ten days a year, alongside a new form of paid carer's leave.

Rescue teams are still searching for people missing after the devastating floods and landslides along the Nepal-China border last week.

The disaster has destroyed roads and other infrastructure across parts of Nepal and Tibet, leaving large numbers of people unaccounted for. British nationals are among those still missing. The UK has sent a Rapid Deployment Team to Kathmandu to help British nationals and their families, alongside £5 million in humanitarian support for the wider relief effort.

The situation is still moving quickly and figures have varied between authorities and reports, so we won't be giving a precise number of fatalities while the figures remain uncertain and subject to change.

Britain's rarest breeding bird is staging a small comeback, largely thanks to one particularly enthusiastic dad.

A male Montagu's harrier known as AU has raised six chicks with two females this year, helping a species that recently went several years without successfully breeding in Britain. The RSPB says he's currently the only adult male Montagu's harrier known to be breeding in the UK. Two of this year's youngsters have also been fitted with satellite tags for the first time in Britain, allowing conservationists to follow them as they migrate thousands of miles to Africa.

Open Google Maps in America, and you may notice that Lake Ontario has disappeared.

Not physically, which would be a considerably bigger story.

Donald Trump signed an order last week renaming the US portion of the lake "Lake America", and Google has now updated Maps to follow the US government's official naming system.

That means Americans will see Lake America, while Canadians will continue to see Lake Ontario. Users elsewhere are expected to see both names as the change rolls out.

This is slightly awkward because Lake Ontario sits between the US and Canada and has been called Ontario for rather a long time. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pointed out that the name comes from a Wendat word and predates both modern Canada and the United States.

Trump, meanwhile, has suggested the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean could be next.

Google Maps may need a bigger label maker.

That’s all… for now.

Have a great day.

See you tomorrow.