I was Trump’s ambassador. You might not think it, but he always has a plan

Carla Sands began her career as a chiropractor, socialite and actor before succeeding her husband as CEO of investment firm Vintage Capital Group. In 2016, she met presidential candidate Donald Trump and became a fundraiser for his campaign.

Sands, who went on to become Trump’s ambassador to Denmark during his first term, introduced the businessman to movers and shakers, some of whom she says still work for the President today.

“I remember saying to friends, ‘I think this Donald Trump, I think he’s got it’. And people would say to me, you can’t be serious. And I would say, ‘You need to get ready for a Donald Trump presidency,’” Sands recalls.

Shorts – Quick stories

Towie star dies in Majorca in ‘tragic accident’

Jake Hall, 35, was found dead
at his rented villa this morning, having sustained serious head injuries from smashed glass, reports claim.

What we know

The Civil Guard in Palma are investigating Hall’s death, who was on holiday at the time. Police are said to be investigating the theory that he died after “hitting his head against the glass door”.

No arrests have been made but four men and women who were staying at the hotel have been interviewed.

CULTURE

3 min read

TELEVISION

3 min read

Who was Jake Hall?

The model and footballer shot to fame after appearing on the reality show The Only Way is Essex in 2015, quitting in 2024.

He had a child with fellow reality star Missé Beqiri of The Real House Wives of Cheshire in 2017, and was in an on and off relationship with her. He had a second home in Majorca and often spent time there.

WORLD

2 min read

Everything you can
and can’t do in a
polling station

Heading to the polls for the
local elections today? Here’s everything you need to make
sure you’re able to vote, and
some dos and don’ts for when
you get there

What do I need to bring?

You must bring photo ID to vote in England

In Scotland and Wales, you won’t need to show ID to vote.

Polling card

You don’t need to bring this with you, but it might speed up the process.

Pen or pencil

These will be provided though you can bring your own if you wish.

NEWS

4 min read

Who can I bring with me?

Children are allowed into the polling station with you, though they shouldn’t write on your ballot paper. Pets usually have to be left outside, except assistance dogs,

If you are disabled, you can bring someone with you to help you vote as long as they are over 18 – they do not need to be registered to vote. Polling station staff can also help you, and you are allowed to bring your phone into the polling booth as an accessibility aid.

A closer look at the dos and don’ts

Taking selfies

Taking a photo or video in the ballot booth is illegal, as your vote is meant to be secret.

Political discussions

Campaigning isn’t allowed so don’t speak about candidates or wear political slogans.

Drinking

People who have been drinking or are drunk can vote, unless they are disruptive.

Know your rights

You don’t have to vote, so there’s no reason for you to turn up at the polling station if you don’t intend to do so. If you do go, it’s worth knowing that:

• You are entitled to spoil your ballot paper, for example by writing a message in protest . This will be recorded.
• Don’t put your name on your ballot paper – If you do it won’t be counted as it’s meant to be anonymous
• “Tellers” – volunteers on behalf of candidates – will sometimes stand outside polling stations and ask for your polling card number so they can remind people who haven’t voted to do so. You don’t have to give them your information.

TRAVEL

Train passengers warned of ‘major disruption’

Train services across southern England are being disrupted by a fault with a radio system. National Rail Enquiries said the issue relates to how train drivers and signallers communicate.

It warned passengers that services may be delayed by up to 45 minutes or cancelled, and “major disruption is expected until the end of the day”.

The services affected

The affected operators are CrossCountry, Gatwick Express, Great Western Railway, London Overground, Southern, South Western Railway (SWR) and Thameslink.

Exclusive

4 min read

NEWS

3 min read

A closer look at the detail

• The incident was reported shortly before 9am on Thursday.
• SWR warned that services across its entire network “may be cancelled, delayed by up to 90 minutes or revised”.
• The operator advised passengers to consider using buses “while the fault is being investigated”.

TRAVEL

5 min read

news

Amazon delivers its first package by drone

The retailer has become the first in the UK to make a delivery by sky, with a pilot scheme running in Darlington, Country Durham. It hopes to slowly expand the option across the country.

Air drop

From tape measures to chocolate bars

A local farmer let Amazon use his land for test drives, ordering everything he could think of under the designated weight of 5lb (2.2kg) to be delivered.

Exclusive

3 min read

Demand is rising

The certainty is people have never told us they want their stuff slower. This is effectively an autonomous drone that can do what a pilot does in a flight deck. It can do what ground crews do, and it can deliver a package.

David carbon, vice president of amazon prime air

How does it work?

Parcels are dropped from a height of…

12ft

Amazon is using its most advanced drone, the MK30, to deliver in Darlington.

At the moment, it only works for those with gardens or backyards for the parcels to be dropped off.

170,000

The number of successful flights completed so far – but more testing is needed before they are approved for UK-wide use.

Drone delivery is already available in five US states.

news

The key battleground seats to look out for

Reform, the Greens and Plaid Cymru are expected to take hundreds of seats off Labour in the biggest test of public opinion since their landslide victory of 2024.

Threats from all sides

LOCAL POLITICS

Main parties predicted to lose across the country

Wales

Reform is expected to lead with Plaid a close second. This could be Labour’s first loss of the Senedd since 1999.

East of England

The Conservatives could lose Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk to Reform.

West Midlands

Pro-Gaza independents and Reform to take red belt seats around Birmingham.

LIVE

1 min read

Labour losses in London

Reform

The far-right party is tipped to take control of Havering, a Labour seat.

Greens

Labour’s biggest challenger in the capital, it’s going to be close in Hackney, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth, Southwark and Camden.

Other threats

The Conservatives look set to take Wandsworth, while the Lib Dems have their sights on Merton.

In focus: Manchester

All parties will be playing close attention to England’s second city, where the Greens celebrated taking Gorton and Denton from Labour in the recent by-election.

Reform is also expected to do well in outskirt towns, and pro-Gaza independents could take areas with high Muslim populations. If Andy Burnham manages to hang on to any seats, he will strengthen his position as a leadership challenger to Starmer.

news

Two Brits self-isolating after hantavirus outbreak

Three Britons have now left the ship, as one man with symptoms evacuated in the Netherlands and two having flown home before the outbreak was discovered.

Contact tracing effort launched

Two British people who left the MV Hondius and returned to the UK two weeks ago have been told to self-isolate. Their close contacts are being contacted to let them know the risk.

Three people have died so far from the outbreak on the ship.

Explained

3 min read

Who is still on the ship?

About 150 people are still on board the cruise ship, which is now docked in the Canary Islands, including 18 British passengers and four crew members.

They are expected to be flown home by chartered plane once it is confirmed they do not have symptoms. They will also be asked to self-isolate to minimise the risk to the public in the UK.

What is hantavirus?

Hantaviruses are a group of 38 viruses carried by rodents such as rats, mice and voles, most of which can cause disease in humans. Symptoms vary from too mild to be noticed, to severe lung and kidney problems and even death.

It is thought it was brought onto the ship by a Dutch couple who visited a landfill site in Argentina.

Former police officer in stable condition

I’m very pleased he’s now in hospital and receiving the treatment he needs.

PROFESSOR ROBIN MAY, CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFFICER AT UKHSA

Martin Anstee, 56, was evacuated from the ship in the Netherlands yesterday after becoming ill with the virus. He is now in hospital and his condition is being monitored.

Think you know all the signs of heart problems? Some might be myths rather than fact…

These are the beliefs to be wary of, according to Dr Abdul Mozid, a consultant cardiologist at Nuffield Health Leeds Hospital.

‘Getting out of breath is just a sign of getting older’

• While ageing can contribute, breathlessness is also a common early warning sign of heart disease.
• When the heart cannot pump efficiently, fluid can build up in the lungs, making simple activities difficult.
• If it occurs while laying down, or while doing minimal activity, it should never be ignored.

LIFESTYLE

4 min read

‘Sleep has little effect on the heart’

Poor or fragmented sleep increases stress hormone levels, raises blood pressure, disrupts glucose metabolism and promotes inflammation — all of which contribute to cardiovascular disease.

Good-quality sleep is not a luxury; it is a pillar of cardiovascular health alongside diet and exercise.

‘Exercise gives you a healthy heart’

You can ‘out-exercise’ metabolic stress

This is not true. A poor diet high in saturated fats, refined sugars and salt promotes high cholesterol, diabetes and hypertension, regardless of your activity levels.

Analysis

3 min read

Other heart health myths to ignore

Only “bad” cholesterol matters

While HDL cholesterol may be associated with lower risk in some contexts, it does not provide total immunity to heart problems. Managing LDL levels remains crucial as part of your overall health.

It’s just anxiety
Women are more likely to present with less “classic” heart attack symptoms, such as fatigue, nausea, jaw pain or back discomfort. If symptoms are new or persistent, cardiac issues must be considered.

‘Heart disease is an older person problem’

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in women, yet risk is often underestimated. Symptoms may be subtle and attributed to life stage or stress.

Recognising these unique risk enhancers is vital to earlier diagnosis and prevention.

HEALTH

The potential cause of common type of stroke uncovered

Researchers have pinpointed the potential cause of a type of stroke suffered by about 35,000 people in the UK every year.

The discovery could explain why widely used treatments don’t work, and could pave the way for new options.

What does the study say?

• Lacunar strokes – triggered by damage to tiny blood vessels – are caused by the widening of arteries in the brain, researchers say.
• This is unlike ischaemic strokes, which are caused by a blocked blood vessel.
• This could explain why usual treatments, such as anti-platelet drugs, which stop blood clots from forming in the arteries, do not work.
• Lacunar strokes can lead to problems with thinking, memory, movement and dementia.

Divorce Diaries

5 min read

New treatments are needed

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh and the UK Dementia Research Institute tested and tracked 229 people who had a lacunar or mild non-lacunar stroke. Patients with widened arteries were four times more likely to have a lacunar stroke.

This explains why conventional blood-thinners don’t work and highlights the need for new therapies to target the underlying microvascular damage.

Stroke research ‘chronically underfunded’

Stroke research is chronically underfunded, with less than 1% of total UK research funding spent on the condition…Yet these findings illustrate the value of research and the potential it has to change the lives of stroke patients.

MAEVA MAY, STROKE ASSOCIATION

The 65-year-old, who donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to that campaign, says that Trump is a great communicator. “Maybe the best communicator our country has ever had. I mean, Abraham Lincoln wrote some beautiful speeches, but President Trump understands communication in the 21st century. He’s really mastered it.

“Plus, he’s a successful businessman, so he understands how to negotiate, [while] most US presidents are political animals.”

And despite Trump’s attacks on his allies raising eyebrows and pulses around the world, Sands insists there is method to his insults.

When, earlier this year, Trump disparaged the sacrifice of Nato troops who fought with the US in Afghanistan, Sands admits she felt wounded. “I felt bad for the Danish troops who had a higher per capita loss than the US and the UK troops,” she says.

But she adds: “You have to look at President Trump as a macro guy — he’s looking at the whole world. All he knows are the top line numbers.”

Over the weekend, the Pentagon announced that the US would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany over the next year, just days after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the US was being “humiliated” by Iran. Trump warned this was just the beginning.

Sands, who served on Trump’s Transition Finance Committee and Economic Advisory Council in 2016, and took up diplomatic reins as Ambassador to Denmark in 2017, says that Trump “doesn’t know the details, but he does know the big picture that most Nato allies were not standing with us”.

“Think about what he’s dealing with,” she adds. “He’s dealing with our economy, he’s dealing with the inner social issues in the United States, and then he’s dealing with the world… We have to look at the big picture.”

Sands – who was a candidate in the Republican primary in Pennsylvania’s 2022 senate election – says she admires Trump’s capacity to deal with all of this, “because most US presidents, they can get one or two big things done in a year”.

Right now, Trump’s deal-making abilities are being questioned. He had to retreat from threats and offers to buy Greenland from Denmark last year, and his strongarm attempts to resolve the war he launched against Iran in late February have so far come to nothing.

Polls show Trump with his highest-ever disapproval rating, of 62 per cent. When it comes to the war with Iran, 66 per cent of Americans polled say they disapprove.

Even so, unlike former Trump allies and Maga influencers such as Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor-Green, who have condemned the conflict – accusing Trump of going against his promises not to get involved in forever wars – Sands, who now chairs the Foreign Policy Initiative at the Trump-aligned think tank America First Policy Institute, continues to back him.

She says it was Iran, not Trump, that started the war when the Islamic Republic overthrew the monarchy in 1979, and that the President is acting consistently with the man she met a decade ago.

“He’s talked about all the issues he’s dealing with today, for decades. He was talking about Kharg Island in 1988,” she said, referring to Iran’s island oil export hub that Trump threatened to seize by force in March.

The businesswoman, who has served on boards including the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, says Trump is someone who has “watched these issues, who understands the geopolitics of all these issues, and he has a firm grasp on everything”.

Even his social media posts threatening to wipe out the Iranian civilisation fit this brief, according to Sands, who says Trump’s communication style is sometimes intended for a specific audience. “In this case, he’s messaging straight to the despots in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that are literally mowing down citizens of Iran,” she says.

Sands adds that every US President since 1979 has said: “We will not let Iran get a nuclear weapon. We will not let Iran get a nuclear weapon. But they all punted.”

She says she remains optimistic that there are “good people” working on the ground in Iran to create a “good and beneficial government”, pointing to a recent meeting she had with the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Sands also said the failure of the US’s Nato allies to back Trump’s war and get involved would not be forgotten. “Two years ago, I would’ve said ‘Yes, Article Five is ironclad [but] they said no when President Trump asked them to help open the Strait [of Hormuz],’” she said.

When it comes to Denmark, Sands says the European country has never been able to defend Greenland and has never attempted to develop it.

“Greenland languishes like a welfare state on just enough to keep it going, but not enough to develop economically,” she said. “The EU is now really investing a lot more than they ever have into Greenland. Part of that, I think, is to counter President Trump in the United States. But what’s going to happen is Greenland will go independent in this century,” she predicted.

Ultimately, Sands believes, Trump is what the planet needs right now.

“The fact is, the world needs a strong, virtuous US president,” she said. “You could say, ‘Well, Donald Trump’s not virtuous’. His policies are, so I don’t look at the man… We are all flawed, all of us, whether we’re followers or leaders, sinners and saints, but his policies are the best in my country’s history.”