Good morning. Here’s what matters today.

The Milburn report on youth unemployment is getting serious political traction. Over a million young people are now classified as not in education, employment or training, with Milburn projecting that rises to 1.25 million without intervention. What’s made it awkward for the government is the minister Torsten Bell’s admission that Labour’s manifesto pledge on the living wage for over-18s had no timeline attached — which reads as a quiet retreat on one of the few concrete policy responses available. The report is being compared in ambition to Beveridge, which is either inspiring or a measure of how far the government has to go.

On defence spending, the long-awaited Defence Investment Plan still has no publication date, and next Tuesday marks a full year since the Strategic Defence Review that was supposed to necessitate it. The holdup is funding — specifically, how to pay for the £18bn uplift. Whitehall officials are now openly conceding it won’t land next week. For anyone watching UK defence procurement or the fiscal arithmetic around it, this is a meaningful delay.

Russia’s budget overrun on the Ukraine war has been confirmed at $28bn, with the finance ministry having asked cabinet back in February to freeze spending elsewhere to cover the gap. The numbers reinforce the picture of an economy under real strain even as the military machine keeps running.

A Russian drone struck an apartment block in Galaţi, Romania — described as the most serious security incident on Romanian soil since the war began. Two people were injured. NATO and Bucharest have both condemned it as reckless escalation. The Czech president has been pushing the alliance to consider asymmetric responses, including cutting Russia off from global financial systems. Whether that goes anywhere is unclear, but the incident gives that argument more political oxygen.

On Iran, Vance said the US and Iran are “very close” to a deal but “not there yet.” US officials told the BBC separately that a framework for a ceasefire extension had been agreed pending sign-off from Trump and Iranian leadership. The gap between those two characterisations is worth watching — framework agreed is not the same as close to a deal.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral during a test firing Thursday night. It was due to play a role in NASA’s Artemis programme and carry Amazon internet satellites. This is a significant setback for Bezos’s attempt to close the gap with SpaceX, and raises questions about Amazon’s Project Kuiper timeline.

On AI, Ars Technica reports that LLMs continue to assert false statements as true even after being explicitly warned the statements are false — fine-tuning tests show a systematic bias toward confident misrepresentation. Not a product story, but directly relevant to anyone deploying AI in any context where factual accuracy matters.

US non-farm payrolls print today at 13:30 BST.

Sources

BBC News, Guardian, Al Jazeera, Politico, FT, The Economist, Ars Technica, TechCrunch — 2026-05-29