centres

A 100-MILE network of floating walkways could soon debut in one of the UK’s largest cities.

Plans for the £100million project include boat jetties, cycle lanes and new signage.

A proposal to create a 100-mile floating network of pathways in Manchester has now made “significant” progress forward.

The concept – drawn up by CyanLines – was created with the aim “to connect Greater Manchester’s blue and green spaces into a high quality network of walking, wheeling and cycling routes” for residents and visitors.

The cyan-coloured walkways have been designed to snake along either side of the River Irwell, complete with jetties for rowing boats and cycle lanes.

The £100million scheme was first announced in September 2025 and was expected to be developed over the next 10 years.

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Now, the project is now well within the first phase of co-design and agreement – including drawing up an investment case – according to co-founder, Tom Bloxham.

Backed by Manchester City Council, Labour leader Bev Craig also told Manchester Evening News that the plans are making ‘significant’ steps forward.

The project, also supported by the National Trust, is said to bring a host of benefits to the city, including better access to green spaces, more opportunities for businesses and healthier residents.

Four CyanLines pilot loops are currently being ‘proof-tested’ by the public, with more than 15 miles of paths plotted.

These routes include a trail from St Peter’s Square to Whitworth Park and the Irwell & Castlefield Loop.

Pete Swift, CyanLines project co-founder, said: “The routes will be the starting point, or spring board, for a whole plethora of CyanLines projects which will bring new opportunities for nature to thrive and to be enjoyed.”

THE UK is getting hot again, and with the sunny weather what better way to keep yourself cool than by heading to a leisure centre.

And gone are the days where leisure centres just have big pools – there are now many across the UK that boast flumes, water coasters and sunken pirate ships.

What makes them even better? They don’t cost as much to visit as a waterpark.

Here are some of the best leisure centres across the UK:

Coral Reef Waterworld, Berkshire

Coral Reef Waterworld in Bracknell is home to a giant indoor pool with a pirate ship and flumes.

Unlike your usual leisure centre, Coral Reef Waterworld is one of the largest “interactive water worlds in England“.

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Slides include Aqua Splash, which is ideal for smaller children thanks to its gentler water.

Though if you do fancy something that is a little more thrilling, then head to Storm Chaser, which haschoppiery water and rocks riders from side to side.

Then there’s also Poseidon’s Peril, themed around the Greek God of the sea, where you hop into an inflatable, two-person raft and head down into a “super crater” with lots of flashing lights.

Adult tickets cost from £20.55 per person, kids’ tickets cost from £14.55.

LC Swansea

Over in Wales, you could head to the LC Swansea, which is a large indoor pool with a surf simulator and even a water coaster.

In addition to a large pool, families can relax on the lazy river or have a go on the slides.

Or if you want to have a go at something new, there is the Boardrider – a wave machine ideal for those wanting to learn to surf or bodyboard.

There’s also the MasterBlaster water coaster, where you ride on a rubber ring before being splashed into the pool.

There’s also a water-themed Climb and Play area with four storeys of obstacles.

Tickets start at £5.31 per adult or child for a General Splash session, with infant tickets for ages one to three starting at £2.97 each.

Water Meadows Complex, Nottinghamshire

Water Meadows Complex in Mansfield has its own pirate pool, alongside splash pads and flumes.

For little ones, there is the Clock Fun Pool, which is specifically designed for those aged under five.

The Pirate Pool is then suitable for all ages, but if you want more of a thrill there are a few different flumes to enjoy, including the Twister Flume, which stretches 50 metre, s and the Fast Drop Flume, which has a plunging drop.

Twice per hour you can also enjoy waves in the pool.

Tickets cost from £9.95 per person – but you’ll need to sign up to a pay as you go membership to book a session, which is free to do.

Guildford Spectrum, Surrey

In Guildford, you could head to the Guildford Spectrum, which reopens tomorrow after a refurb.

For adrenaline junkies, there are water slides as well as a wave machine.

The slides include Surf, which boasts three lanes and is ideal for competitive families or even siblings.

But little ones can enjoy the splash area with tipping buckets, spinning wheels and water sprayers.

One of the newer features at the attraction is a new inflatable obstacle course.

Tickets cost from £13.13 per adult and £10.50 per child.

Waterfront Leisure Centre, London

If you are in the capital, make sure to visit Waterfront Leisure Centre in Woolwich.

Inside you’ll find a 65 metre snake slide, lazy river and can enjoy ‘Wet and Wild’ sessions.

Toddlers can enjoy the training pool and splash zone as well.

Or for adults who want to chill out, there is also a hot tub.

Tickets cost from £9.70 per adult and £7.05 per child.

The Pavilion, London

Also in London, but this time in Bromley, you could drop into The Pavilion, which boasts a wave machine with a gradual entry pool, ideal for all age groups.

In addition to the large wave pool, there is a toddler splash area with shallow water, ideal for those getting confident in the water.

On some days, there is also a large inflatable obstacle course on the water.

Adult tickets cost from £9.55 per person and kids’ tickets cost from £6.85 per person.

Lagoon Leisure Centre, Scotland

If you are based in Scotland, you can visit the Lagoon Leisure Centre in Paisley.

For small kids, there is even a beach-style walk-in teaching pool.

As for the main pool, every so often a wave machine will be turned on.

You’ll also find a flume at the leisure centre.

Tickets cost from £5.65 per adult and £2.80 per child.

Waves Leisure Pool, Devon

Down in the southern county of Devon, you could drop by Waves Leisure Pool in Torquay, with a wave machine, flume and inflatable obstacle course.

Having grown up nearby, Travel Reporter Cyann Fielding said: “Growing up, my parents would often take me to the Waves Leisure Pool on the English Riviera.

“Set not too far from the beach, it was the ideal day out.

“Every half-an-hour the waves will run and depending where you are in the pool, they range from a gentle bob to waves that throw you up in the air.

“It is heated to 29C year-round and has a sloped entry floor so is ideal for little ones too.

“The waterslide adds some fun, with many twists and turns and for toddlers, there is a splash area with enough to keep them occupied for hours on end.”

Tickets cost from £7.40 per adult and £6.10 per child.

London Aquatics Centre

In Stratford you could head to the London Aquatics Centre and while the venue doesn’t boast flumes, it does have an inflatable course with climbing walls and slides.

You can even opt to do an inflatable disco session with giant floats on the water as well.

These sessions cost from £10.50 per adult and £7.35 per child.

Every morning Marisol Winfrey Herrera’s three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Jo reminds her to turn off the tap while washing her hands and brushing her teeth.

When they leave home, she reminds her mother to keep a bottle of ice with them to offer it to homeless people, who they sometimes find wilting in the Tucson heat. At first, they press the ice-filled bottles on the homeless folks to help them revive, then they offer the water to drink and hydrate. At her daycare, Jo is taught water-saving habits to combat Tucson’s soaring heat.

It is what prompted Herrera to join No Desert Data Center, a residents’ group that opposes two large data centres coming up on either side of Tucson – the $3.6bn project on the city’s southeast edge and a $5bn project on its northwest side in the town of Marana, together known as Project Blue.

The group believes these would consume more water and power than the city set in the Sonoran Desert can afford.

“We are in the middle of a 30-year drought, which is now an extreme drought,” says Lisa Shipek, co-executive director of the Watershed Management Group, a Tucson-based nonprofit.

“Water was a unifying theme in our campaign. The Colorado River cuts are looming, and this project would take water away,” Herrera told Al Jazeera.

Water flows in the Colorado River, which provides much of Tucson’s water through the Central Arizona Project canal system, have dropped by 20 percent since the year 2000 compared with water flows in the 20th century due to climate change, melting snow caps and warmer weather, making water cuts to Tucson imminent as the state could face as much as 77 percent water cuts.

“We say Not One Drop for data centres,” says Herrera, speaking of the campaign’s particularly emotive appeal for residents as water cuts get deeper and temperatures rise, with Tucson recording the warmest weather in 125 years last July and August.

Beale Infrastructure, a San Francisco-based company that is owned by investment management company Blue Owl in New York, had asked the city of Tucson to acquire 290 acres that were outside city limits for Project Blue. That would make it the city’s largest water consumer and among its largest power consumers. Beale did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

But at city council meetings, City Councillor Kevin Dahl began seeing hundreds of residents turn up to express their opposition to the project.

“Not for many issues do we get so much response,” he said. Herrera was among those who went.

Pitting environment against unions

At council meetings, Beale executives proposed that Project Blue could be the economic engine the city needed. It would create a few thousand jobs for construction workers, ironmongers, plumbers and other such workers during the construction of the project and a few hundred after that.

“Sometimes people travel as far as Phoenix for work,” Dahl said about Arizona’s largest city, which is nearly a two-hour drive from Tucson.

The project could bring jobs closer. Beale also expected the project to generate nearly $250m in taxes for the city, county and state in the first 10 years.

This left councillors with a difficult decision to make, weighing the project’s economic benefits against allocating it a share of the city’s increasingly scarce water and power.

Activists also raised concerns about whether Tucson Electric Power (TEP), the power utility, would raise rates for consumers so it could expand capacity to provide power for Project Blue. After raising rates by 10 percent in 2023, TEP proposed a 14 percent rate hike in June 2025 for grid upgrades made in the previous year.

Lee Ziesche, an activist from the Democratic Socialists of America who is campaigning to make TEP a public utility, said Project Blue could “lead to higher temperatures and higher rates” because of the heat island effect of the air conditioners and higher rates for power.

She often hears from residents that a rate hike would make it hard to pay bills or put on air conditioning, even as the number of 100-degree Fahrenheit (37.8 degree-Celsius) days has increased in Tucson, which is among the hottest cities in the United States.

The same concerns of needing ramped-up air conditioning would plague data centres too, experts say.

“The viability of data centres in Arizona will always be subject to climate change and heat risks,” says Kate Gordon, chief executive of California Forward, a think tank that works on a sustainable economy.

“The heat in Arizona makes energy less efficient, and servers heat up, so projects will need higher amounts of water and cooling, which developers have to balance against a possibly lower real estate and labour cost,” she said. “I am always amazed at how climate does not figure in business plans.”

Dahl and Andres Cano, a supervisor in Pima County, in which Tucson is located, had discussions with Beale representatives.

“We thought they would go elsewhere if the city did not acquire the land” for the project, Dahl said. Cano also came away with the same impression.

In August 2025, Tucson councillors voted unanimously not to acquire the land for the project or provide it with water and power. In December, Cano became one of only two supervisors in Pima County to oppose the project, and it was approved for construction in an unincorporated part of the county.

“It will create short-term construction jobs for what will ultimately be a project with few wins,” Cano said. “This pitted the environment and unions, but industry is not for unions. This will have just about 100 jobs when it is done.”

With no access to Tucson’s water supply, Beale decided to cool its servers with air conditioners rather than water and use a closed-loop water system, so it would recycle and reuse water.

But Vivek Bharathan, a spokesperson for the No Desert Data Center, said using air conditioners would increase power usage.

Nearly half of TEP’s power comes from fracking, he says. Data centre demand will only mean “more fracking somewhere else, climate and health consequences all along the way”.

The state’s largest data centre

Even as Project Blue was making its way through a fraught approval process, Beale announced another data centre project in the neighbouring farming town of Marana. It was to be spread over 600 acres (242 hectares), twice the size of Project Blue. The area was spread over two farm plots, one owned by the Mormon church and the other by a family trust of city council member, Herb Kai.

This project, too, is slated to bring thousands of construction jobs to a farming town as well as tax revenues.

But when Jackie McGuire, a mother of three and former Wall Street banker, heard about it, she and other residents launched a campaign to stop the land from being rezoned for a data centre. Residents wanted Marana to stay a farming town.

McGuire, who works as a research analyst, said the data centres’ servers and large air conditioners that would be installed to keep them running would raise the project’s cost and make Marana unbearably hot.

Temperatures rose by up to 2.2F (1.22C) downwind from data centres in the Phoenix area, a study published in May had found.

“The heat generated will be like one to two million space heaters,” McGuire says. “It can go up to 112 degrees [44.4C] here already. The heat island effect could make Marana uninhabitable.”

The Marana data centre will be provided power by TEP and Trico, which announced a 7.23 percent rate hike in January.

McGuire and other residents campaigned to have a referendum on whether the land could be rezoned for a data centre. Their plea was not successful, and the city council approved the rezoning of the land.

But the experience of the campaign had invigorated McGuire, and she decided to run for city council herself. The central issue of her campaign is to bring transparency to the data centre’s functioning.

Even as the campaigns in Pima County and Marana raged on, La Osa, the state’s largest data centre project, took shape in Tucson’s neighbouring Pinal County. The 3,300-acre project by the Vermaland real estate group was expected to house 59 data centres and two of its own natural gas facilities, as well as a utility-scale battery storage system.

But residents worried about noise pollution from protracted project construction and a possible increase in power costs.

“I’m worried about the constituents in that area, about the power bills going up, even though you’re saying that they’re going to pay for it,” Pinal County Supervisor Rich Vitiello said in a board of supervisors meeting on May 27.

In the face of such opposition, a La Osa lawyer spoke at the meeting to say the project had been scaled down and would now house 11 data centres from the 59 planned earlier.

‘A straw to the aquifer’

Sharing limited water has long been an emotive issue in the state, and the looming Colorado River cuts and data centre projects have brought such concerns to a head.

Arizona fought one of the longest-running cases, stretching more than three decades, in the US Supreme Court over the sharing of Colorado River water with California. Eventually, Congress adjudicated to provide California with a greater share of the water, which turbocharged its economic growth.

“No water can flow into Tucson and Phoenix unless California gets its full share,” says Jason Robison, co-director of the Gina Guy Center for Land and Water Law at the University of Wyoming College of Law.  “Arizona has always been in a tough spot.”

It strengthened the state’s long-held tradition of conservation.

“Arizona communities have been preparing for the drought conditions we see today since 1980,” a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Water Resources said in an emailed response.

Authorities have curtailed lawns in Tucson, he said, and educational campaigns of the kind Herrera’s daughter underwent are the norm.

It has meant that groundwater reserves go deep, and homeowners are assured of a water supply before it is given to data centres or farms.

“The use by data centres is low compared to farm use, especially alfalfa and hay,” says Eric Kuhn, retired general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and co-author of Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River.

However, “data centres are not under the same rules to replenish water” as other industries, says Sharon Medgal, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona. “So it adds a straw to the aquifer.”

Arizona’s governor, Katie Hobbs, who is up for re-election in November, has represented to the Bureau of Reclamation that the state is home to essential industry, including semiconductors, space and data centres, and so needs a higher share of water from the Colorado River. Water, as well as its use for data centres, has been an important issue in primary races across the state.

Construction began for Project Blue at the end of April. No Desert Data Centers’ activists arrived just after dawn to protest. Within days, they found subcontractors bringing in water to control dust on site from construction. County authorities cited Beale.

Then Beale began digging wells on site after reportedly receiving permits allowing that from the Arizona Department of Water Resources. This is likely for 31,000 gallons  (more than 117,000 litres) a year, which is just enough for toilets and kitchens and will likely be recycled for reuse after.

“This may not yet be a winning story,” Bharathan, the spokesperson for the No Desert Data Center, said. “But it is a continuing story.”

Deaths of immigrants held in US detention centres have surged during Donald Trump’s second term.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has called for an independent investigation into the severe uptick in deaths in migrant detention centres during President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

In a statement on Friday, Turk expressed concern over the lack of transparency over those deaths, at least 19 of which have occurred so far this year, according to US government statistics.

“Those responsible for violations of the law must be held to account, and the rights of the victims’ families to truth, justice and reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence must be upheld,” the UN rights chief said.

Deaths in immigrant detention centres have surged during Trump’s second term in office, a by-product of what rights groups and immigration lawyers have depicted as systematic neglect, inhumane conditions and abuses.

The Trump administration has sought to rapidly expand the network of immigrant detention centres, some operated by private contractors, as it seeks to carry out the mass deportation of immigrants in the US.

Trump stated in a social media post on Friday that his administration has the “Highest Average Daily Arrest Rate by ICE and CBP, including Total Detention, with Final Orders of Removal, than any other president, by far!”

The reported death of a Georgian man, Mamuka Artmeladze, in a detention facility in Louisiana on June 4 increased the number of fatalities so far this year to 19, compared to 33 last year and 11 in 2024.

“The mortality rate of deaths in ICE custody is at its highest level in over a decade and has more than doubled since Trump’s second term began,” the watchdog group Human Rights Watch wrote in a report on detention deaths earlier this month. “The rate is nearly four times that of the Biden administration and more than two and a half times as high as that of the first Trump administration.”

That report said the 52 people who have died in detention during Trump’s second term ranged in age from 19 to 75 and came from 20 different nationalities.

Turk wrote on Friday that there have been “concerning allegations regarding the use of force” at such facilities and that five of the deaths recorded in 2026 were classified as suicides.

He also expressed concern over the reported use of solitary confinement, which is associated with a heightened risk of suicide and considered a form of torture by the UN after a period of 15 days.

“All these factors exacerbate vulnerability and raise serious concerns as to whether some of these deaths in ICE custody could have been prevented,” he said.

Those trapped in the compounds include Chinese, Philippine, Taiwanese, Malaysian and Brazilian nationals.

More than 5,300 people remain trapped in online scam centres in Myanmar near the Thai border, despite a multinational crackdown in the region last year, a human rights group says.

The Thai-based Civil Society Network for Human Trafficking Victim Assistance (CSNHTV) sent a letter to Thai police urging them to take action. It said many of those trapped were foreign nationals held at four locations inside areas controlled by the Myanmar Democratic Karen Buddhist Army militia.

According to the CSNHTV, an estimated 1,600 people trapped are Chinese nationals, and about 200 are people of Myanmar, along with people from the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brazil, Russia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.

“Many of these compounds have yet to be dismantled or subjected to rescue operations to free all remaining victims,” it said.

“As a result, these syndicates continue to engage in online fraud and human trafficking, causing harm to victims around the world, particularly in the United States and Europe.”

Scam centres in Southeast Asia, including those in Myanmar and Cambodia, run illegal online schemes that are designed to defraud people worldwide.

“Litany of abuse”

The centres grew significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic in the region, and were initially tied to poorly run casinos and online gambling. They have now become a multibillion-dollar industry, according to the United Nations.

A UN report in February said the facilities are mostly staffed by foreign nationals who have been trafficked by criminal gangs and subjected to abuse.

It found instances of “torture and other ill-treatment, sexual abuse and exploitation, forced abortions, food deprivation, solitary confinement, among other grave human rights abuses”.

“The litany of abuse is staggering and at the same time heart-breaking,” UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk said.

“Yet, rather than receiving protection, care and rehabilitation as well as the pathways to justice and redress to which they are entitled, victims too often face disbelief, stigmatisation and even further punishment.”