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Senior IS leader killed by US and Nigerian forces

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:45:09 GMT

AFP via Getty Images

The Nigerian military has increased cooperation with the US in efforts to combat extremist violence (file photo)

Makuochi OkaforWest Africa reporterLagos and Yang Tian

16 May 2026, 07:26 BST

Updated Just now

Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu has confirmed the killing of a senior Islamic State (IS) leader in a joint-operation with the US.

"Our determined Nigerian Armed Forces, working closely with the Armed Forces of the United States, conducted a daring joint operation that dealt a heavy blow to the ranks of the Islamic State," Tinubu said in a statement.

The operation was first announced by US President Donald Trump, who described Abu-Bilal al-Minuki as the "second in command of ISIS globally" and "the most active terrorist in the world".

Al‑Minuki was declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by Washington in 2023.

The killing marks another significant setback for Islamic State group (IS) following the killing of its leader Abu Bakr al‑Baghdadi in 2019.

Tinubu said in a statement that al-Manuki was killed along with "several of his lieutenants", during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.

The Nigerian Military said the "precision operation" was made possible through the "recently formed US-Nigeria partnership and intelligence sharing efforts."

It said al-Minuki had been promoted to "Head of General Directorate of States", making him one of the most senior figures within the global IS hierarchy.

Before that, officials said he oversaw IS-linked operations across the Sahel and West Africa, including attacks targeting civilians and minority communities.

The military also linked al-Minuki to the 2018 Dapchi schoolgirls kidnapping when more than 100 girls from a boarding school in north-eastern Nigeria were taken by militant group Boko Haram.

Nigeria military's spokesperson Samali Uba said he previously helped move fighters to Libya in support of IS operations in North Africa. Before pledging allegiance to IS in 2015, he was described as a senior Boko Haram commander.

Boko Haram began its military campaign to impose Islamic rule in northern Nigeria in 2009.

The group pledged its allegiance to Islamic State after what was believed to be the then-leader Abubakar Shekau posted an audio statement on Boko Haram's X account in 2015.

Its aim has been to establish a "caliphate", a state ruled by a single political and religious leader according to Islamic law, or Sharia.

Trump described al-Minuki's death as a major blow to IS's African and global networks, disrupting funding channels and command structures.

The US president thanked the Nigerian government for their "partnership", adding that Minuki "will no longer terrorize the people of Africa or help plan operations to target Americans".

Nigeria and the US have increased military cooperation as the country ramps up efforts to fight extremist violence.

In April, IS claimed responsibility after gunmen killed at least 29 people at a football pitch in Nigeria's north-eastern Adamawa state.

Last Christmas, US and Nigeria carried out a joint airstrike in Nigeria's Sokoto state targeting IS-linked groups.

Spring warmth set to return with 26C forecast next week

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:40:44 GMT

Getty

Simon King

Lead Weather Presenter

7 hours ago

While recent days have felt like winter for some, things will gradually get warmer, especially later in the week ahead.

After returning to around average of the mid to high teens, temperatures will jump into the low twenties for much of the United Kingdom from mid-week.

For parts of south-east England, it could be as warm as 26C by the end of the week, though there is still some uncertainty this far away.

There will be sunshine at times but showers or longer spells of rain will feature in the week ahead.

BBC Weather Watchers / Acer

The weekend will still be quite changeable with a mixture of sunshine and rain at times

Saturday and Sunday weather

With northerly winds across the UK, the temperature has been around 4-7C below average this week.

Showers, thunderstorms and hail have also featured widely with some questioning what has happened to spring.

Thunderstorms and hail are actually quite common features of the weather this time of year as the extra daylight and warmth helps grow bigger showers that bring hail.

With the wind switching to more of a westerly direction over the weekend, it will start to feel warmer although the weather will continue to be quite mixed.

After a bright start on Saturday, cloud increases from the west with some rain in Northern Ireland and western areas of England and Wales.

By Sunday, temperatures will have risen to around 12-16C. This will be close to the average for the time of year. With lighter winds it should actually start to feel warmer than it has done this week.

Showers will be mostly confined to northern and western areas of the UK with sunny spells elsewhere.

Warmer, southerly winds will develop as the week goes on, raising temperatures into the twenties for most of us.

Heat builds for later in week

Into next week the temperature will continue to rise very gradually as the wind moves round to a south-westerly.

By Tuesday and Wednesday it will have reached at or just above average with 16-20C for most parts of the UK.

While there'll be some sunny spells, the weather will remain quite mixed with showers or longer spells or rain, especially the further north and west you are.

Later in the week the temperature will start to rise even further with 20-26C looking likely across most areas.

The highest temperatures will be most likely around south-east England.

It's possible they may exceed the highest temperatures we've seen so far this year:

UK & England - 26.6C at Kew Gardens on 8 April
Wales - 24.8C at Mona Airfield on 7 April
Scotland - 23.9C at Achnagart 31 April
Northern Ireland - 21.5C at Altnahinch on 25 April

There should also be quite a bit of dry and mostly sunny weather for many parts as an area of high pressure builds in from the south.

There are signs the settled and warmer weather will persist into the bank holiday weekend.

You can stay right up to date with the latest on the BBC Weather app or website.

The engineer missing his shift at Wembley... to play there instead

Sat, 16 May 2026 07:14:16 GMT

Engineer Jay Lovell was set to be working at Wembley on Sunday, but instead he will be playing there in the FA Vase final.

Man killed by 13ft great white shark in Western Australia

Sat, 16 May 2026 07:04:36 GMT

Getty Images

Rottnest Island is popular for its white sand beaches and surf breaks

Olivia Ireland

1 hour ago

A 38-year-old man has been killed by a 13ft (4m) great white shark in Western Australia.

On Saturday, the man was bitten just before 10:00 (03:00 BST) at Horseshoe Reef - north-west of the popular Rottnest Island near the city of Perth, local police said.

Aerial footage showed the man being rushed to shore by boat where paramedics and police performed CPR at the Geordie Bay jetty, local media ABC reported.

"Sadly the man was unable to be revived," a police spokesperson said.

The state's Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development told AFP news agency it received a report the man was bitten by the great white.

The department urged the public to take "additional caution" in waters around the area.

The attack is the first fatal incident in Western Australia since March last year, when a surfer was mauled off a remote beach.

Since records began in 1791, there have been almost 1,300 recorded shark attacks in Australia, with more than 260 of them resulting in death.

Earlier this year in January, four shark attacks were reported along the New South Wales coast over two days.

One of the victims included 12-year-old Nico Antic who jumped from a rock into the Sydney Harbour and was attacked by a suspected bull shark.

He died a week later, with his parents saying in a joint statement they were "heartbroken".

How Doku became key player for treble-chasing Man City

Sat, 16 May 2026 05:58:56 GMT

Jeremy Doku is likely to be a key player as Man City face Chelsea in Saturday's FA Cup final. BBC Sport looks at the winger's rise.

Trump warns Taiwan against declaring independence, hours after summit with China's Xi

Sat, 16 May 2026 05:53:41 GMT

Reuters

China's President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump discussed Taiwan during bilateral talks in Beijing

Ian Aikman

15 May 2026

Updated 2 hours ago

US President Donald Trump has cautioned Taiwan against formally declaring independence from China.

"I'm not looking to have somebody go independent," the US president told Fox News on Friday, at the end of his two-day summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has previously stated that Taiwan does not need to declare formal independence because it already sees itself as a sovereign nation.

The US has long supported Taiwan, including being bound by law to provide it with a means of self-defence, but has frequently had to square this alliance with maintaining a diplomatic relationship with China.

Trump earlier said he had "made no commitment either way" about the self-governing island - which China claims as part of its territory and has not ruled out taking by force.

Washington's established position is that it does not support Taiwanese independence, with continued ties with Beijing being contingent on its acceptance that there is only one Chinese government.

Beijing has been vocal in its dislike of Taiwan's president, who it has previously described as a "troublemaker" and a "destroyer of cross-strait peace".

Many Taiwanese consider themselves to be part of a separate nation - though most are in favour of maintaining the status quo in which Taiwan neither declares independence from China nor unites with it.

In his interview with Fox News, Trump reiterated that US policy on the matter had not changed.

"You know, we're supposed to travel 9,500 miles (15,289km) to fight a war. I'm not looking for that. I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down."

On the flight back to Washington, the US president had told reporters that he and Xi had spoken "a lot" about the island, but said he had declined to discuss whether the US would defend it.

Xi "feels very strongly" about the island and "doesn't want to see a movement for independence", Trump said.

"The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations," Xi warned during the talks, according to Chinese state media, adding: "If mishandled, the two nations could collide or even come into conflict."

Asked if he foresaw a conflict with China over Taiwan, Trump had said: "No, I don't think so. I think we'll be fine. [Xi] doesn't want to see a war."

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BBC asks Trump if China will help open the Strait of Hormuz

China has ramped up military drills around the island in recent years, raising tensions in the region and testing the balance that Washington has struck.

Late last year, the Trump administration announced an $11bn ($8bn) package of weapons to be sold to Taiwan, including advanced rocket launchers and a variety of missiles, which Beijing condemned.

Trump said he would soon decide whether that sale could go ahead, adding that he and Xi had discussed it "in great detail".

He added: "I'm going to say I have to speak to the person that right now is, you know, you know who he is, that's running Taiwan."

The US does not have formal relations with Taiwan, though it maintains substantial unofficial relations. US presidents do not traditionally speak directly to Taiwan's leader, and to do so would be likely to cause significant tensions with Beijing, which considers Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te a separatist.

Taiwan Deputy Foreign Minister Chen Ming-chi said on Saturday that Taiwan would need to clarify the exact meaning of Trump's remarks.

Chen also said that US arms sales to Taiwan are something confirmed under US law.

"Taiwan-US arms sales have always been a cornerstone of regional peace and stability," he added.

A spokesperson for President Lai quoted by Reuters news agency said that American arms sales are part of the "US security commitment" to Taiwan and "serve as a shared deterrent against regional threats".

Trump also told Fox News: "We're not looking to have wars, and if you kept it the way it is, I think China's going to be OK with that. But we're not looking to have somebody say, 'Let's go independent because the United States is backing us.'"

The US has previously provoked anger from China for seeming to soften its stance on independence.

Its State Department dropped a statement from its website reiterating Washington's opposition to Taiwanese independence in February 2025 - something Beijing said "sends a wrong... signal to separatist forces".

US officials in Taiwan said at the time: "We have long stated that we oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side."

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Watch: What did we learn from Trump's visit to China?

Taiwan's Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said his team had been monitoring the US-China summit, and had maintained good communication with the US and other countries "to ensure the stable deepening of Taiwan-US relations and safeguard Taiwan's interests".

He said Taiwan had always been a "guardian of peace and stability" in the region and accused China of escalating risk with its "aggressive military actions and authoritarian oppression".

Would FA Cup win paper over the cracks for Chelsea?

Sat, 16 May 2026 05:38:23 GMT

Chelsea have endured a difficult campaign after the departure of two managers and protests among the fanbase - so what would an FA Cup win do for their season?

Would FA Cup win paper over the cracks for Chelsea?

Sat, 16 May 2026 05:38:23 GMT

Chelsea have endured a difficult campaign after the departure of two managers and protests among the fanbase - so what would an FA Cup win do for their season?

US planning to criminally indict ex-Cuban leader Raúl Castro

Sat, 16 May 2026 01:37:27 GMT

AP via Getty Images

Will Grant

BBC's Mexico, Central America and Cuba correspondent

7 hours ago

The US justice department is reportedly preparing to indict aging Cuban leader Raúl Castro in the coming days over the shooting down of two aircraft three decades ago.

The reported charges, which would need to be approved by a US grand jury, emerged as the director of the CIA travelled to Cuba to meet officials in Havana.

Castro, 94, stepped down as Cuban Communist Party leader in 2021, ending his family's more than half a century in power. He led the country for 15 years, stepping in after his brother, Fidel, resigned.

The potential indictment is the latest move in a US pressure campaign that has included an oil blockade and widespread sanctions.

The charges are said to centre on the 1996 downing of two planes operated by the US activist-humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue.

Unnamed US Department of Justice (DoJ) officials told US media the indictment could come as soon as next Wednesday.

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Watch: Expectant mothers in Cuba struggle under fuel blockade

Asked on Friday about the reported indictment plan, President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One: "I'll let DoJ comment on it."

He added: "But [Cubans] need help, as you know. And you talk about a declining country. They are really a nation, a country in decline."

Trump has issued an oil blockade against Cuba, which has exacerbated fuel shortages. This week the island's energy minister acknowledged that Cuba has, in essence, run out of fuel oil.

Potential charges against Raúl Castro were unclear, but officials said the investigation centred on an attack on two small planes, which happened on 24 February 1996 while Fidel was president and Raúl was armed forces minister.

Four people aboard were killed in the incident.

Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban exile group that searched for rafts carrying migrants from Cuba to the US, had previously dropped anti-Castro leaflets near the Cuban coast.

The Cuban government - including Fidel Castro, who died in 2016 - said Brothers to the Rescue had repeatedly violated Cuban airspace, although the International Civil Aviation Organization found the attack took place over international waters.

AFP via Getty Images

Raúl Castro took over leading Cuba after his brother, Fidel Castro (left).

In March, the attorney general in Florida announced in a news conference that the state was reopening an investigation into Raúl Castro's alleged role in the incident.

Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis praised the possible criminal charges on Friday, calling them "long overdue".

Cuba has not officially commented on the reports of an indictment, but Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez struck a defiant tone on Friday.

"Despite the [US] embargo, sanctions and threats of the use of force, Cuba continues on a path of sovereignty towards its socialist development," he said, according to Reuters news agency.

In order for charges to be filed, prosecutors would have to convince a grand jury, made up of members of the public, that probable cause exists to believe a crime has been committed.

Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche, who leads the US justice department, has declined to confirm reports of an impending indictment.

"If and when there's a time to talk about about that, we will, obviously," Blanche told Fox News.

Trump has said the US wants to change Cuba's communist leadership. He told crowds at a recent rally that the US would be "taking over" the Caribbean island nation, which lies 145km (90 miles) from the US state of Florida.

CIA

CIA Director John Ratcliffe in Havana

On Thursday, CIA director John Ratcliffe met his Cuban counterpart at the interior ministry in Havana. Raúl Rodríguez Castro, grandson of Raúl Castro, was at the meeting.

A CIA official told the BBC's US partner CBS that Washington was prepared to engage on economic and security issues, "but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes".

A Cuban statement said the meeting was an attempt to improve dialogue and that Havana was not a threat to US national security.

It came after American officials renewed an offer of $100m (£74m) of aid to ease the effects of its oil blockade.

Washington has focused more on Cuba in recent months after the US indicted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January then removed him from power in an overnight operation.

Analysts say any similar attempt by US special forces to arrest Castro could meet stiff opposition in Cuba, particularly among government loyalists.

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How destabilising Cuba could backfire disastrously on US

William LeoGrande, professor of Latin American politics at the American University in Washington, told the BBC the potential indictment was "one more element of the pressure campaign" that Trump has kept up since returning to office last year.

But further destabilising the island could backfire on the US, said LeoGrande, who wrote the book Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana.

"If the Cuban economy and social order collapses, it would actually be a disaster for the United States, because it's likely to touch off a mass migration crisis," the professor said.

He said it looks like the US "is sending a warning to Raúl Castro that he should use his influence to get the government to make concessions".

"Or else the US military may be coming for him, just like it came for President Maduro in Venezuela."

Judge declares another mistrial in Harvey Weinstein New York rape case

Sat, 16 May 2026 01:32:47 GMT

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Watch: Jurors react to deadlock after Harvey Weinstein mistrial

Sareen Habeshian and Max Matza

15 May 2026

Updated 7 hours ago

A judge has declared a mistrial in the rape case against Harvey Weinstein, after the jury in New York said it was deadlocked and unable to reach a verdict.

It marks the third time a New York jury has considered the case against the 74-year-old disgraced film mogul, who remains jailed on other charges.

The month-long trial was centred around whether Weinstein raped aspiring actress Jessica Mann more than a decade ago. He was initially convicted, but the verdict was overturned. A judge declared a mistrial after a second trial last year.

Dozens of women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct, including rape, since October 2017. He has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Getty Images

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement that prosecutors are currently determining whether to try again in court.

"While we are disappointed that the proceedings ended with a mistrial, we deeply respect the jury system and sincerely thank all of the jurors for their time and dedication," he said.

He thanked Mann for bringing her allegation against Weinstein, adding: "We will consider our next steps in consultation with Ms Mann, and in consideration of Harvey Weinstein's pending sentencing" in a separate sexual assault case.

"As always, we will continue to prosecute crimes of sexual violence – no matter who the defendant is – in a survivor-centered manner that uplifts their voices in the pursuit of justice."

Lawyers for Weinstein said the outcome shows "how deeply public perception and prejudice surrounding Harvey Weinstein have become embedded in society".

"For some people, regardless of the evidence presented, saying 'not guilty' has become emotionally or socially impossible," they argued.

"The Manhattan District Attorney's Office should stop retrying the same case and focus its time and resources on the actual violent crime, chaos, and public safety issues impacting New Yorkers every day," the statement from his lawyers continued.

The decision on Friday by the majority male jury in Manhattan came on the third day of deliberations.

On Friday morning, the jury passed the judge a note saying they "have concluded that they cannot reach" a unanimous verdict. The judge then ordered them to continue deliberating before later declaring a mistrial, saying it was "quite clear", that they were "hopelessly deadlocked".

"I see no reason to go any further," said Judge Curtis Farber as he thanked and dismissed the jury.

Weinstein, who was seated in a wheelchair during the trial, showed no reaction as court officers wheeled him out of the room after the mistrial was declared.

Speaking to reporters outside the court, one juror said that nine people on the jury wanted to acquit Weinstein, while three wanted to convict him, according to the Associated Press.

Jessica Mann, who has testified about her experience with Weinstein in three separate trials, said in a statement that the mistrial "doesn't in any way detract from the truth I told".

"I chose to testify in three trials because I am telling the truth," she continued, adding: "I deserve justice, which is why I stand up and face unbearable public scrutiny in the name of a greater good."

This marks the third rape prosecution against Weinstein in New York.

An appeals court in 2024 overturned Weinstein's conviction for sex crimes in New York, finding he did not receive a fair trial in 2020 because a judge allowed testimony from women who made allegations against him beyond the charges at hand.

Weinstein was then indicted on new sexual assault charges in the state.

A second trial took place last year, but the judge ordered a new trial after the jury was deadlocked on the rape count.

The first trial was based on the testimony of three women - Mann, former television production assistant Miriam Haley, and model Kaja Sokola. All three accused Weinstein of using his power in the entertainment industry to sexually abuse them.

The second retrial in New York centred on Haley and Mann.

During the third trial, Mann testified that she willingly had some sexual encounters with Weinstein but that he forced her to have unwanted sex in a hotel room in March 2013, despite her repeatedly saying no.

The mogul's defence team maintained that the encounter was consensual.

In total, Weinstein has been accused of sexual misconduct, assault and rape by more than 100 women. While not all reports resulted in criminal charges, his conviction in California means he is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.

The decision by his accusers to come forward, and his subsequent conviction in New York, galvanised the #MeToo movement against sex abuse by powerful men.

Before the allegations against him emerged, Weinstein and his brother Bob were among Hollywood's ultimate power players.

Weinstein co-founded Miramax film studio, whose hits included Shakespeare in Love, which won best picture at the Academy Awards, and Pulp Fiction.

Weinstein has also faced a number of civil lawsuits, including from a group of women who accused him of sexual harassment and rape. The case resulted in a $19m (£14.2m) settlement in 2020.

He has faced declining health in recent years, and in 2024 was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer.

McIlroy recovers as problem solvers flourish at testing US PGA

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:05:30 GMT

Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy drags himself back into contention as Aronimink continues to punish the world's best golfers at the US PGA Championship.

Lebanon says six killed in Israeli strike as US announces ceasefire extension

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:59:07 GMT

EPA

Lebanese army soldiers man a checkpoint in Beirut

Brandon Drenon and Yang Tian

15 May 2026

Updated 8 hours ago

An Israeli air strike on a town in southern Lebanon has killed six people, including three paramedics, according to Lebanon's health ministry. It comes as the US said the two countries had agreed to a 45-day ceasefire.

The health ministry said a fourth paramedic had sustained "critical injuries" after a civil defence centre was attacked in the town of Harouf. The BBC has contacted the Israeli military for comment.

On Friday, the US state department announced Israel and Lebanon had agreed to extend their shaky ceasefire after two days of negotiations in Washington DC.

US President Donald Trump announced the truce on 16 April, but Israel and Hezbollah have continued to exchange fire since then.

On Wednesday, Lebanon's health ministry said Israeli air strikes had killed 22 people, including eight children, across the south.

"We hope these discussions will advance lasting peace between the two countries, full recognition of each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and establishing genuine security along their shared border," said state department spokesman Tommy Pigott.

The state department said it would "reconvene the political track of negotiations" in June.

"In addition, a security track will be launched at the Pentagon on May 29 with military delegations from both countries," Pigott added.

Israel's Ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, said the talks were "frank and constructive".

Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said that he hoped to "mobilise all Arab and international support to bolster our position in the negotiations" with Israel.

There have been almost daily reports of Hezbollah and Israel trading fire across the southern border of Lebanon since the ceasefire began.

Israel has intensified its air and artillery strikes in recent days, particularly in southern Lebanon, saying it was targeting Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure.

Lebanon's health ministry has accused Israel of targeting civilians and paramedics, which Israel denies.

The Israeli military says it is aiming to create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon to thwart future Hezbollah attacks.

In those areas, entire villages have been destroyed in similar tactics deployed by the Israeli military in Gaza. Human rights groups say some cases could amount to war crimes, which Israel denies.

Hezbollah has carried out its own attacks on Israeli troops in Lebanon and northern Israel with rockets and drones.

Southern Lebanon is the heartland of the country's Shia community, from which Hezbollah gets most of its support, and has been under constant Israeli bombardment.

More than one million people, amounting to one in five of the population, have been forced from their homes across Lebanon, most of them from the south, the eastern Bekaa Valley, and the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahieh, areas where Hezbollah holds sway.

The conflict started on 2 March, two days after the US and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran.

Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, and Israel responded with widespread air strikes and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

At least 2,896 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, according to the health ministry.

Israeli authorities say 18 soldiers and four civilians have been killed over the same period.

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BBC asks Trump if China will help open the Strait of Hormuz

I tried the UK's 'saltiest' sandwich - here's what I learned

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:56:15 GMT

Emma Lynch/BBC

James Gallagher takes a break from packed lunches in the name of research

James Gallagher

Health and science correspondent

8 hours ago

I couldn't resist.

This week it was revealed a chicken sandwich is packing as much salt as five McDonald's cheeseburgers - putting it top of a naughty list of more than 500 sandwiches analysed.

The sarnie, sold by bakery chain Gail's, contains 6.88g of salt.

That's more than the UK's recommended daily limit of 6g, or the World Health Organization's 5g cap. So, it's clearly not the healthiest choice.

But succumbing to the siren song of salt, I left my packed lunch at home to give it a whirl and find out what regularly eating too much salt is doing to our health.

I nipped out before the lunchtime rush and my first impression was "it's massive" followed swiftly by "how much?" - £8.90 is one pricey sandwich.

Peeling back the wrapping I'm holding a 1,000 calorie triple decker – three slices of bread with two layers of filling. One is a thick cut of bacon with salad, the other smoked chicken and coleslaw.

Emma Lynch/BBC

A bit of me wanted to hate it, to be overwhelmed by its salt content and find it unpalatable.

But it was fantastic. You certainly know the salt is there - but taste-wise it hit the spot and you realise why salt is added to our food.

I didn't finish it though, but there was no shortage of volunteers back in the newsroom to help me out.

However, this week's latest on salt by the World Health Organization did not make the best lunchtime reading. Director of nutrition, Dr Luz Maria De Regil, said "excess salt consumption remains among the top preventable drivers of death globally" and put the figure at 1.7m deaths a year, external. Gulp.

So as my body absorbs all that salt from one meal, what is it doing to me and why are we all eating so much?

Emma Lynch/BBC

A pile of salt weighing 6.88g next to the triple-decker club sandwich

Chemically, table salt is sodium chloride. The human body needs some sodium to function and you can find the element in nearly every cell of the body.

It's needed for our nerves to communicate with each other and for the body to maintain the right balance of water.

"But the amount we need is actually very, very small in the grand scheme of things," Sonia Pombo, a researcher at Queen Mary University of London and head of research at Action on Salt and & Sugar, tells me, "especially in comparison to the amount of salt we're actually eating."

Action on Salt & Sugar reviewed the salt content of 546 sandwiches in the UK

Too much salt has many effects on the body, but the clearest evidence is on how it impacts blood pressure.

The salt we eat ends up in the bloodstream where it draws in extra water and increases the volume of our blood.

This gives the heart a bigger job of pumping it around the body and it copes by dialling up the blood pressure - a bit like cranking the tap on a garden hose pipe.

The problem with high blood pressure is it's known as "the silent killer". You may not know you have high blood pressure until something goes wrong and that extra pressure ruptures a blood vessel - like a burst pipe – causing a stroke or a heart attack.

Salt also alters the blood vessels themselves to make them stiffer and increase the risk.

But elsewhere in the body excess salt damages the kidneys which filter our blood, leaches calcium out of our bones making them more frail, and has been linked to vascular dementia, stomach cancer and emerging evidence that it alters the immune system, external.

Posh sandwich has more salt than nearly five cheeseburgers

Suddenly my lunch isn't sitting quite so well, but a single sandwich isn't going to kill me.

"Having a one-off, high-salt meal isn't going to impact your long-term health," says Pombo, "because what salt does is it very gradually and silently raises your blood pressure over the course of your lifetime."

I'd like to think I eat a healthy diet most of the time, but the data on how much salt we eat is not reassuring, so I'm probably still taking on more than 6g a day.

The UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey monitors people's urine for 24 hours to work out how much salt we've been eating.

The latest data, from 2019, suggests men are having 9.2g a day and women 7.6g. The difference between the sexes is in part down to men eating more food.

And those numbers have not improved since 2008, external.

Pombo dismisses many of my thoughts on balancing out my salt intake. You can't sweat it all out "unless you're a super athlete" training all the time, or flush it out by drinking plenty of water, she says.

A diet packed with fruit and vegetables, rather than going all in on ultra-processed foods, will contain potassium, which can counteract some of the impact of salt.

"But that doesn't make it OK," Pombo says, "one doesn't cancel out the other."

So if what matters is the salt we're eating every day, where is that coming from?

Salt is mostly already in the foods we eat, rather than something we sprinkle on top (although I retain it is a crime not to put a bit of salt on your fish and chips).

"It's in pretty much everything," says Pombo, and it is not always the foods that taste super-salty. Bread in all its forms features so prominently in the list above because we eat so much of it.

We can all make healthier choices and seek out foods with less salt in them if we're prepared to read the labels. But salt being so prevalent in our food means campaigners think the responsibility for cutting it out has to lie with the people making it.

Small amounts of salt in food can help preserve it by preventing bacteria from growing.

"The rest is all to maintain the cycle of profit," says Prof Francesco Cappuccio, from the University of Warwick, who insists "salt can be taken out" but manufacturers don't want to because it is "so cheap".

"When you go to a pub and you get your salted peanuts on the counter, it's not by chance," he says, "you buy an extra pint later.

"Salt is the flavouring which masks bad food - so you can market terrible food, by just putting a little salt in it."

We asked Gail's about the salt content in its products but the bakery did not respond.

A spokesperson for the Food and Drink Federation said its members' products had "nearly a third less salt" than in 2015 and the industry had made "significant investment in innovation to develop healthier products".

Kate Nicholls, chair of UKHospitality, said: "Hospitality venues invest significantly in nutrition and healthy eating to give customers the best possible choices when going out for a meal.

"The range and choice of food we offer is why customers choose to eat out of home and building healthy choices into that has been a priority."

So am I heading back to the bakery next week for another chicken caesar sarnie? I think that it is, at most, an occasional treat, and I'll be back to packed lunches.

Emma Lynch/BBC

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'They took £20,000 I didn't owe': Parents hit by child maintenance errors

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:44:32 GMT

John Hammond

John Hammond had nearly £20,000 in child maintenance he did not owe taken from his bank

Tammi Walker & Jennifer Meierhans

BBC News Investigations

9 hours ago

Maths teacher John Hammond was a few weeks into his job at a new school, chatting to colleagues in the staff room during lunch break.

He decided to check his banking app to make sure his first month's wages had arrived, but instead discovered £20,000 had been taken by the Child Maintenance Service (CMS).

"I was so shocked that I couldn't stop shaking," he says. "Other teachers could see something was wrong and asked what was the matter."

Hammond's children were 25 and 28, and his child support arrangement had finished more than a decade previously.

"I was convinced that it was a scam," says the 56-year-old from Peterborough.

More than 30 parents have told BBC Your Voice they've experienced miscalculated child maintenance arrears, money wrongly taken from wages or bank accounts and lengthy court battles with the CMS.

As in Hammond's case, the BBC has found many of these reported issues are connected to child support arrangements concluded many years or even decades ago.

The CMS replaced the Child Support Agency (CSA) in 2012. Its job is to ensure a child's living costs are paid when one of their parents does not live with them.

It uses a formula to work out how much a parent should pay. If parents cannot arrange payments privately the CMS can take the money from wages, bank accounts, benefits or pensions.

It also has the power to recover arrears if parents fall behind with payments.

The experiences shared with the BBC mirror concerns about the CMS raised with the government after parents told a House of Lords report money had been taken "inappropriately" when they were "trying to comply".

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which runs the CMS, did not address the experiences of John Hammond and other individual cases, or explain why in some cases money was taken wrongly from bank accounts. It said it tries to arrange voluntary arrears payments and "enforcement measures are only taken if parents continue not to pay".

'Complete shock'

John Hammond believes his ordeal started in September 2002 when he received a letter from the now-defunct CSA which said he owed £947, but it did not intend to collect it at the request of his ex-wife. He believed he no longer owed any child maintenance.

But in 2019 he got a letter from the CMS saying he owed almost £19,000.

"I was in complete shock," says Hammond, who disputed the demand, sending copies of the letters to the CMS.

"You phone up and explain everything," he says. "They tell you they can't access your account or that the computer says something different. It felt like banging your head against a wall."

In correspondence seen by the BBC, the DWP said it was "unable to ascertain why" Hammond was told he owed £19,000.

But while Hammond's challenge was ongoing the CMS obtained interim and final lump sum deduction orders and in December 2020 took £19,269 from his bank account.

Hammond won his appeal a year later and a county court judge ordered the full sum to be returned and awarded him £8,000 in legal costs.

He had spent £14,055 on legal fees and says he remains more than £6,000 out of pocket.

"Even when you're proved right it doesn't feel like justice," Hammond says. "It just feels like you've survived it."

Richard George

Richard George thought he had been scammed when £18,800 disappeared from his bank

Richard George, 63, discovered £18,800 had been taken from his bank by the CMS.

"I won't forget it, how I felt - it triggered in me the most horrendous adrenaline shock," says George, a founder director of a fintech startup company from Devon.

"It's a bit like your last money, everything you've got left, is taken by a scammer. That's what I thought had happened."

George's ordeal dates back to 2016 when an appeal tribunal overturned a CSA decision against him, eﬀectively writing oﬀ more than £16,000 in arrears.

Richard says he believed the case, relating to maintenance for one of his children, had ended, particularly as the CSA had been wound down.

It wasn't until late 2019 that the CMS contacted him unexpectedly and removed £18,800 from his bank account.

George later discovered that CMS correspondence intended for him had been sent to the wrong address for several years, despite letters being returned undelivered and him repeatedly confirming his details by phone.

It took until 2023 for the CMS to accept the arrears should never have been carried over.

"They paid the money back in the end - everything taken since 2019, including the collection fees," George says, "but by then the damage had already been done."

Concerns about the CMS were raised with government in a House of Lords report entitled Reforming the Child Maintenance Service, external in October 2025.

One parent described enforcement as "random, abusive and unregulated".

"It punishes the wrong people and ignores real avoidance," the report stated.

Quarter of decisions changed

In a separate issue to the enforcement errors experienced by John and Richard, the Lords report found the calculation formula the CMS uses to decide how much a parent should pay has been in place for more than two decades and "is neither fair nor transparent".

"We believe it is outdated and does not reflect the structure of modern families," the report said.

The government has committed to conducting a review into the CMS' calculation model and said it was considering the report's recommendations as part of an ongoing review.

The CMS manages 800,000 arrangements for 720,000 paying parents, according to DWP figures , externalfor 2025.

It sets payment arrangements based on a paying parent's income and "assessment accuracy rates are consistently close to 100%", the DWP says.

If parents dispute a decision it can be appealed and an independent tribunal will decide if it should be changed, a DWP spokesperson added.

Parents the BBC spoke to say they do not dispute paying child maintenance, but they do dispute the accuracy of calculations and enforcement action being taken before appeals were resolved.

In 2025 the CMS received 92,700 requests from parents to reconsider a decision and in 21,400 cases the original decision was found to be incorrect or the parent supplied more information which changed the decision. This means almost a quarter of decisions were changed.

The DWP told the BBC it does not publish data for the number of appeals against arrears notices, bank deductions or other enforcement.

'Years of fighting'

Abigail Wood, chief executive at Gingerbread, a charity for single parent families, said it had campaigned for a reform of the CMS as it was "failing parents and children alike".

"We welcome the proposed changes, but the DWP needs to go further and faster to ensure a fair and functional system."

Michelle Counley from the National Association for Child Support Action (NACSA) says if the CMS worked with both parents together "many disputes could be resolved early, before figures are imposed and enforcement kicks in". She called for "serious investment and a joined‑up way of working".

Hammond and George were among parents who told BBC Your Voice they want to see an overhaul of the CMS so mistakes like this don't happen again.

"Getting the money back didn't feel like a victory," says Hammond. "It was simply the end of a long fight to recover money that CMS had no right to take in the first place."

George says although he also got his money back, "it came after years of fighting, and it didn't undo the impact it had on my health, my work or my life."

Additional reporting by Will Dahlgreen.

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The Papers: 'Burnham will push to be next PM' and 'Dosh and Becks'

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:28:34 GMT

9 hours ago

The likelihood of Sir Keir Starmer stepping down and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham fighting to become the next UK prime minister is the focus of this morning's papers. The Daily Telegraph leads with Sir Keir considering "standing down if Burnham wins the Makerfield by-election". According to some ministers loyal to Sir Keir, the PM is keeping "all options" open, the paper reports.

Andy Burnham will reportedly move to become prime minister by autumn, his supporters have told the Guardian. The paper suggests the projected timeline would mean Burnham could address Labour's autumn party conference in Liverpool.

The Daily Mail plays on the famous Battle of Waterloo by headlining with "Starmer facing his own Waterloo". Labour's Burnham has been "given the green light to fight a by-election", which would likely take place on the battle's anniversary of 18 June, the paper says.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has told the i Paper that Burnham is a "strong candidate" for the Makerfield by-election and that she will campaign for him if he is selected. Burnham's allies believe he will "shift his stance on Brexit to avoid alienating voters", the paper reports.

The Times leads on an £18bn defence boost expected to be approved by the UK PM as he prepares to fight for his political survival. Sir Keir's predicted opponent Andy Burnham, who has been approved by Labour to run in the Makerfield by-election, is pictured in the paper while on a jog in Warrington, Cheshire.

The US President has weighed in on the mounting pressure on Sir Keir by saying "it will be tough for him to survive as PM", according to the Independent. Donald Trump warned that unless Sir Keir "is able to deal with immigration and energy policy", he will struggle, the paper says.

The chances of a Labour leadership contest means "parts of the government are at risk of paralysis", ministers have warned, according to the Financial Times. "The business of daily government will have to grind to a halt, and it will just look like limbo," one cabinet minister told the paper.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has vowed to give Labour's Andy Burnham "a very nasty shock" by disrupting his hopes of returning to parliament through the Makerfield by-election, the Daily Express reports. Burnham needs to win the by-election to launch a leadership contest against Sir Keir. Meanwhile, Farage has pledged to "throw everything we can" at the by-election, the paper says.

Sir David Beckham has become Britain's first billionaire sportsman, according to the Daily Mirror. The sports star and wife Victoria's fortune has "doubled to £1.2bn in a year, making them worth twice as much as the King", the paper says.

Similarly, the Daily Star splashes on the Beckhams entering billionaire status with the headline "Dosh and Becks".

And in an exclusive interview with the Sun, a Deal or No Deal contestant tells the paper how he got addicted to cocaine during the filming of the ITV game show.

Supporters of Andy Burnham have told The Guardian, external that the Greater Manchester mayor will push to become Labour's leader by the autumn, so he can address its September conference as prime minister. The paper reports that allies of Burnham believe he can win a leadership election before the summer recess, however sources close to the mayor suggest he favours a longer timeline.

Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph, external claims loyalists who support the prime minister believe Sir Keir Starmer could resign if Burnham wins the Makerfield by-election and is the only leadership challenger. The paper says Sir Keir is much less defiant in private than in public, but fears standing down now could trigger a "free for all" which would result in "chaos".

The i Paper, external suggests Burnham would downplay his support for closer European integration if he became prime minister, to avoid alienating Reform UK voters. And Reform's leader, Nigel Farage, warns readers that if the Greater Manchester mayor believes he can "use local people to waltz in as leader", the by-election will "give him a very nasty shock".

The prime minister, fighting for his political life, is preparing to agree an £18bn increase to defence spending, the Times, external reports. Sir Keir Starmer recently received a letter from Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, saying that UK wouldn't retain its place in the world without higher spending, the article says.

A Labour source tells the Mail, external that Morgan McSweeney, the aide who resigned after his decision to appoint Lord Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US, has told Sir Keir that he must block Burnham's selection as a candidate in the by-election. Burnham would challenge and beat Sir Keir and the UK would have a left-wing government that "nobody voted for and that could bankrupt the country", the article says.

The Sun's , externaleditorial laments that Britain is "doomed to a summer of uncertainty, economic stagnation and paralysis" while "the Prime Minister tries, and almost certainly fails, to shore up his bunker".

Senior civil servants and ministers have warned the Financial Times, external that parts of the government are at risk of paralysis, as any forthcoming leadership battle would overtake a policy agenda. "We will have months where the business of daily government will have to grind to a halt" one unnamed cabinet minister tells the paper.

The Mirror, external is one of several papers to report that Sir David Beckham is Britain's first billionaire sportsman after he and his wife Lady Victoria doubled their fortune in the last year. "Dosh and Becks" is the headline in the Star., external

Eurovision final: Sex, violins and seven other things to look out for

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:04:54 GMT

Getty Images

Jonas Lovv will represent Norway at the contest with his song Ya Ya Ya

Mark Savage

Music correspondentEurovision Song Contest, Vienna

9 hours ago

The Eurovision Song Contest reaches its grand final on Saturday night, with Finland, Greece and Australia among the favourites to win.

The show is taking place in Vienna, which seems to have prompted half of the contestants to throw an operatic riff into their song, whether it needs it or not.

Elsewhere, you can expect death-defying dance moves, sexually suggestive rock anthems and the longest sustained note in Eurovision history.

Here's a guide to (some of) the highlights. You can watch the show live on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 20:00 BST on Saturday.

1) A Greek cinderella story

Getty Images

Eight months ago, Greek singer Akylas was down on his luck.

"I was in Athens, I was working as a waiter, and I quit my job to start singing in the streets," he tells the BBC.

"I had so many people telling me that I was wasting my time. People would bully me in the street [while] I was busking, trying to pay my rent and my bills. I was struggling – so it's crazy that now I'm representing my country at Eurovision."

The 27-year-old is tipped for a top three finish with Ferto, a hyperactive dance anthem that smashes together rave synths, video game sound effects and traditional Greek instruments like the lyra.

Lyrically, Akylas looks back at his childhood during the Greek financial crisis.

"It's about all the parents, who are trying to provide the best for their children, and all the sacrifices that they make, like my parents did," he says.

2) Could Australia win? And why are they at Eurovision in the first place?

Getty Images

Australia has been obsessed with Eurovision since Abba won in 1974. As a gesture of goodwill, they were invited to take part in the contest's 60th anniversary in 2015, as a one-off wildcard entry.

They embraced the show with such enthusiasm they've been invited back every year since – but after crashing out in last year's semi-final, they're determined to win in 2026.

Taking no chances, they've sent actual platinum-selling pop star Delta Goodrem, with a power ballad so polished you can see the whites of her eyes in it.

It's called Eclipse. It has a chorus that would make Celine Dion jealous, and features a baroque piano breakdown before an almighty key change in the final refrain.

After Thursday's semi-final, bookmakers slashed Delta's odds, making her a frontrunner for the trophy.

No-one's quite sure what happens if she wins – but Graham Norton has some gossip.

Speaking on the Wanging On podcast earlier this week, the BBC's Eurovision host said he'd been discussing this very topic with Australian broadcaster, Joel Creasey.

"He was saying that every year Australia make a deal with someone, in case they win, so that someone will host [the contest] for them."

We put the question to Eurovision organisers the EBU, who were non-committal.

"We're currently focussed on the Grand Final of the 70th Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, with 25 incredible songs and artists from across Europe and Australia competing," they said.

"Discussions on the hosting of next year's event will take place, as always, after we have our winner on 16 May."

3) Finland fears for their fiddle

Getty Images

But forget about Australia for a moment. Finland are the current favourites to win, with their tempestuous love song, Liekinheitin.

It's performed by pop star Pete Parkkonen and classical violinist Linda Lampenius – a hook-up that's the Finnish equivalent of Harry Styles doing a duet with Nicola Benedetti.

"Pete's, like, the sexiest man in Finland or something," Linda teases. "He's got all those labels."

But all the focus in the run-up to the final has been on the moment where Linda has to sprint the entire length of the catwalk in high heels, external while clutching her precious violin – a 1781 Gagliano, worth an estimated £500,000.

"I run and jump up and down on a chair, and I'm standing next to a fire. So I'm quite nervous during those three minutes.

"I'm thinking about the violin all the time."

4) Moldova are skipping it

EPA

Not literally, of course – they're delighted to be in the final after two years' absence from the competition.

But their singer, Satoshi, has a very strict routine, 30 seconds before he bursts onto the stage with his gregarious party anthem, Viva, Moldova!

"I simulate rope jumping to get my energy levels up," says the 27-year-old, who's also an amateur boxer.

"I've been doing it so much that one of the guys who hands us our microphones bought a rope and gave it to me."

As the title suggests, Viva, Moldova! is full of pride and patriotism – written to mark the 35th anniversary of independence.

Along the way, it names some of the country's biggest cultural figures, including musician Eugene Doga, author Maria Mirabela, and poet Grigore Vieru, who holds a very special place in Satoshi's heart.

"Grigore wrote a poetry book which is, to this day, one of the main ways for kids to learn the alphabet. That's how I learned the letters, as did many, many kids throughout Moldovan history."

Now he's taken that alphabet and turned it into a certified Eurovision banger. Result.

More on the Eurovision Song Contest 2026:

5) Will Israel face further protests?

Getty Images

Five countries are boycotting Eurovision over Israel's participation, citing the country's actions in Gaza and the death toll of the war.

At Tuesday's semi-final, the country's contestant Noam Bettan faced a mixture of cheers and booing from the audience.

Four protesters were later removed from the arena.

Speaking to the BBC afterwards, Bettan said he had been surprised by the protests.

"I heard there was booing and everything, and there was a moment of, like, a wow effect, you know? A little bit of shock."

At the same time, the singer admitted he'd practised being booed during rehearsals, after Israeli contestants faced similar chants in 2024 and 2025.

Further protests seem likely at Saturday's final - but Israel is nonetheless predicted to do well in the contest.

Bettan delivers his song, a lovestruck ballad called Michelle, with sincerity and passion, nimbly moving into his falsetto over a mix of electronic beats and Middle Eastern instrumentation.

6) Sweden's vanishing vocals

Getty Images

Swedish star Felicia is known for wearing a protective face mask during her performances - which is more to do with body image than a fear of disease.

But during Tuesday's semi-final she suffered a wardrobe malfunction and the mask slipped off. Within 24 hours, she'd lost her voice and was put on strict vocal rest.

"It's a catastrophe for me because I hate being silent!" she posted on social media.

"But I just have to follow the advice I've been given - stay quiet, rest, and drink water."

Luckily, her voice sounded fine during Friday's dress rehearsal; and the singer gave us an insight into the lyrics behind her song, My System, which literally talks about catching an infection… of emotion.

"If I have a bad day, it can about a relationship that has ended, or the struggle I had with the record label I left.

"And if I have an amazing day, it could be like a friend or a crush that I can't stop thinking about."

If she wins, Sweden would become the most successful Eurovision nation of all time – breaking its seven-way tie with Ireland.

"No pressure," Felicia laughs. That would be crazy."

7) Mum's the word

EPA

There's no beating about the bush - the UK's recent track record at Eurovision has been terrible.

We've tried sending chart-topping pop stars like Olly Alexander, and accomplished vocal harmony groups like Remember Monday. But every year, we're left scrambling for points at the bottom of the leader board.

This year's hopeful is Sam Battle – aka Look Mum No Computer - an inventor, YouTuber and museum curator from Ramsgate, who is madder than a box of mad frogs doing Bikram yoga

He wrote his entry - Eins, Zwei, Drei - on a synthesiser he built in his garage, and it has sounds like Fat Les's Vindaloo, as performed by Kraftwerk.

"What we're doing is Marmite - you either love it or hate it - but I think there's a slot open for our sort of thing," he told BBC News earlier this week.

The song certainly stands out in a sea of windswept ballads and crunchy club anthems. And Sam's kooky persona is either going to win people's hearts or crash out spectacularly.

If it comes to that, he'll look on the bright side.

"It's a really good t-shirt - 'Look mum, no points'."

8) Sexual shenanigans

Getty Images

Norwegian star Jonas Lovv was told to censor his performance of the rock song Ya Ya Ya after thrusting his hips one too many times during rehearsals.

Speaking ahead of the semi-finals, Jonas revealed the feedback he'd received from contest organisers.

"Without joking: too sexy," he told reporters.

The head of Norway's Eurovision team confirmed that adjustments were necessary.

"We were told to tone down the sex appeal because it isn't family-friendly enough," Mads Tørklep explained.

Specifically, the production team asked for a reduction in "sexualised movements" and rhythmic gestures.

Now PG-rated, Jonas has becalmed his sinful hips, but still gives a cheeky wink and a little bum waggle to the camera.

9) Bangers, smashes, screams and shushes

Getty Images

Bulgarian singer Dara has the night's best staging on Bangaranga - a nonsensical typhoon of tropical pop, based around a word from Jamaican patois that means "a joyful kind of disorder".

Her performance is a cross between an AA meeting and The Exorcist, as dancers in plastic chairs twitch and shake to the song's ever-changing tempo. I love it to bits.

Romania's Alexandra Căpitănescu has provoked controversy with the lyrics to her song Choke Me. Campaigners have criticised the track for glamourising sexual violence - but Alexandra says it's really about suffocating under the weight of society's expectations.

Sounding like Lady Gaga fronting Evanesence, she performs it while tethered to her guitarists with giant neon ropes.

Ukraine's delicate ballad Ridnym includes a breathtaking 30-second-long high note; while Serbian band Lavina unleash a blood-curdling scream at the end of their metalcore ballad, Kraj Mene.

And we shouldn't forget France – whose singer Monroe is this year's youngest contestant. The 17-year-old's track, Regarde! mixes elements of pop and R&B with a stunning operatic vocal.

"Regarde is all about universal love," she tells the BBC. "It's about taking the busy moments in your life and just saying, 'Shhhh, everything is going to be fine'."

And after a week of covering Eurovision in Vienna, that's exactly the message I needed.

You can tune into the grand final on BBC One, BBC iPlayer, Radio 2 and BBC Sounds from 8pm BST on Saturday night.

There will also be full coverage, including a comprehensive live page, on the BBC News Website.

What is a 'safe death'? Mentally ill woman asks for assisted dying in Canada

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:04:41 GMT

Toronto Star via Getty Images

Nadine Yousif

Senior Canada reporter

9 hours ago

Claire Brosseau has travelled the world doing stand-up comedy and acting in television shows, films and plays. She has also been struggling with debilitating mental illness from a young age, and has been treated by psychiatrists in four major North American cities over three decades.

Brosseau has tried nearly every treatment available to people like herself with bipolar disorder and PTSD, she said, from behavioural therapy and medication to electric shocks to the brain.

Nothing has worked for the 49-year-old Toronto woman, who described herself as "functionally terminal", no longer able to work, leave the house or speak with her loved ones. She is now enrolled in a psychiatric care programme at a local hospital that, she said, is designed to support people with severe and persistent mental illness who have exhausted all treatment options.

"There's nothing left to try, and I'm at the end of my life," she told the BBC.

Brosseau wants to die by medically assisted dying, also known as euthanasia and in Canada, under the acronym MAID. While it is legal in Canada, it is not currently available to those whose sole condition is mental illness.

"I open my eyes every morning and I feel immediate dread and anxiety," Brosseau said, adding: "I want a safe death. I don't want to have to do something horrific."

Canada has been planning to expand the law to people with severe, treatment-resistant mental illness, but has delayed doing so twice - most recently to next year - over concerns the healthcare system is not prepared. Now, Ottawa is weighing whether to move forward at all.

In the meantime, Brosseau said her illness is worsening and she cannot afford to wait any longer. She has asked an Ontario court to exempt her from the current law and grant her access to medically assisted dying.

Polls suggest the majority of Canadians, external support access to medically assisted death. But the issue has been more fraught when discussing patients with mental illness.

Over the past two months, a parliamentary committee tasked with reviewing whether Canada should expand the programme heard from advocates and medical experts who warned against doing so.

Some argue that assisted dying has, in some cases, become a tool to alleviate suffering of disabled Canadians who would be better served by improved access to affordable housing, healthcare and disability supports.

Others argued that mental illnesses are not yet well understood by medicine, making it difficult to determine if a patient is expressing suicidal ideation or is indeed incurable.

Dr Sonu Gaind, a former chief of psychiatry at a major Toronto hospital, told the committee that "none of those issues have been resolved" since Canada decided to pause its expansion to assisted dying.

"Instead, we have even more evidence showing we are not ready to provide MAID for mental illness," he said.

What the committee recommends could ultimately shape the programme's future. Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters last week that he is waiting for their report before deciding on next steps. "I like to take informed positions," he said.

Getty Images

Mark Carney has not weighed in on the assisted dying debate in Canada, saying he will wait for a joint Senate and House committee report to decide

For Brosseau, the refusal to grant assisted death to psychiatric patients is rooted in stigma, with physical illnesses viewed as more legitimate.

"If I get cancer tomorrow, I can refuse treatment and be eligible for MAID," she said. But patients with severe mental illnesses, she argued, aren't granted the same access to what has become a standardised part of Canadian healthcare.

That position is at the core of the legal case brought by Brosseau, which argues that current laws are exclusionary to those with mental illness and therefore unconstitutional.

Canada is one of a handful of countries where assisted dying is legal for both terminally ill patients and those whose death is not "reasonably foreseeable" but who have an irreversible serious illness, disease or disability.

A few, namely the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, allow access to people who are suffering solely from a mental illness.

The Netherlands is in the midst of its own heated public debate on assisted dying, which has spilled into the Canadian committee hearings.

Those seeking assisted death for a mental illness in the Netherlands have to be assessed by a psychiatrist. Data shows that approvals for psychiatric suffering are relatively rare, accounting for about 2% of all deaths by assisted dying in the country. But the overall number of approved cases has risen, from two in 2010 to 219 in 2024.

One Dutch psychiatrist, Dr Jim van Os, told Canadian lawmakers that the increase in cases reflects what he described as a "suicide contagion effect".

"The Dutch experience in my opinion offers a warning for Canada," Os cautioned.

Another Dutch psychiatrist, Dr Sisco Van Veen, countered that assisted dying for psychiatric patients remains rare and that MAID offers "mercy" for those "whose suffering can be immense or unbearable".

In Canada, about 96% of assisted-dying requests in 2024 were granted to people whose death was forseeable - mostly terminal cancer patients. The remaining 4% are patients whose death was not imminent but had a "grievous and irremediable medical condition".

PA Media

Public discourse on assisted dying has been fraught in many countries, including the UK, where lawmakers failed to pass a bill legalising it in April

Canada extended assisted dying to patients who were not terminally ill five years ago, after two people with disabilities mounted a legal battle for access to the programme.

That move has been controversial, and is one of the reasons driving opposition to further expansion.

Advocacy groups have reported cases where assisted dying has been offered to people with disabilities by healthcare or support workers without the patient requesting it themselves.

"We are investing in ending people's lives" rather than in offering them a better quality of life, said Krista Orr, president of disability advocacy group Inclusion Canada,

She, too, testified before the committee, urging lawmakers not only to not expand MAID to people with mental illness but to limit it once again solely to people with a terminal illness.

There has also been criticism of the committee itself. Brosseau, for one, said she is troubled by how the hearings unfolded and who was called to testify. She said she requested to appear multiple times but was refused.

She noted that the co-chairs of the committee - Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski and Conservative Senator Yonah Martin - have both publicly voiced opposition to expanding MAID.

One member, Alberta Senator Kristopher Wells, has publicly accused the review of being "one-sided", telling the Toronto Star newspaper that he does not have confidence in the final report.

In a statement to the BBC, the committee co-chairs acknowledged that Brosseau had asked to testify, but said evidence from professionals and associations was proritised due to "limited time".

Powlowski also defended the committee against accusations of bias, telling the Star that members have "dutifully listened to both sides".

Their report could be presented to parliament as late as October.

Brosseau said she does not have faith in the committee, its report or the federal government, which has yet to respond to her legal challenge.

She rarely leaves her home. Even a trip to the store can trigger extreme stress and panic attacks, she said. But she said she viewed her legal fight as an important one for equal rights.

"I'm not campaigning for death. I'm campaigning to be seen as not a subsection of human," she said.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, information and support can be found at the BBC's Action Line.
In Canada, support can be found at the Suicide Crisis Helpline by dialling 988

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One mentally ill man's fight for assisted dying in Canada

Switzerland to open secret files on Auschwitz 'Angel of Death' Mengele

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:04:33 GMT

Ullstein Bild / Getty

Nazi SS doctor Josef Mengele sent as many as 400,000 people, most of them Jews, to their deaths

Imogen Foulkes

Bern

9 hours ago

The Swiss Federal Intelligence Service has said it will finally open long-sealed files on the notorious Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, but without saying when.

Mengele fled Europe after World War Two, but for years there have been rumours that he spent time in Switzerland, even though an international warrant was out for his arrest.

Historians have repeatedly requested access to the files, but until now the Swiss authorities have refused.

Mengele was a doctor who served in Germany's Waffen SS. He was posted to the Auschwitz extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where he selected those to be sent to the gas chambers – an estimated 1.1 million people died, including about a million Jews.

Known as the Angel of Death, he also selected prisoners, primarily children and twins, for sadistic medical experiments, before sending them to their deaths as well.

After the war Mengele, like many high-ranking Nazis, quickly changed both his uniform, and his name.

With the help of his false identity, he was issued Red Cross travel documents at the Swiss consulate in Genoa in northern Italy, and used them to flee to South America.

The Red Cross intended the documents for thousands of people across Europe who had been displaced or made stateless by the war, but Nazis seeking to escape prosecution also managed to acquire them, something for which the Red Cross has subsequently apologised.

AFP via Getty Images

The International Committee of the Red Cross office in Genoa issued these passports in false names for Nazi war criminals (from L to R) Josef Mengele, Klaus Barbie and Adolf Eichmann

So what is Mengele's connection with Switzerland?

Although he fled Europe in 1949, Mengele had a skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps with his son Rolf in 1956. That information has been known since the 1980s.

Officially, after that, he spent the rest of his life in South America.

But Swiss historian Regula Bochsler always wondered whether Mengele returned again, crucially, after an international warrant for his arrest had been issued in 1959.

Bochsler, while researching Switzerland's possible role as a transit country for fleeing Nazis, discovered that in June 1961 the Austrian intelligence service warned the Swiss that Mengele was travelling under an assumed name, and might be on Swiss territory.

Regula Bochsler

There seems to be evidence Mengele was planning a trip to Europe in 1959. Why did Mrs Mengele rent an apartment in Zurich?"
Regula Bochsler
Swiss historian

Meanwhile, Mengele's wife had rented an apartment in Zurich, and applied for permanent residency.

"There seems to be evidence Mengele was planning a trip to Europe in 1959," the historian told the BBC. "Why did Mrs Mengele rent an apartment in Zurich?"

The apartment was in a modest suburb, and the Mengele family had the wealth for something much fancier. But it was close to the international airport.

Bochsler was able to see Zurich police files which proved that in 1961 the flat was put under surveillance; police even noted Mrs Mengele driving her Volkswagen, accompanied by an unidentified man.

But was it her husband?

Universal History Archive

Mengele (C) is seen here in 1944, with Auschwitz commandant Richard Baer (L) and ex-commandant Rudolf Höss

Arresting a wanted war criminal, as Mengele was in 1961, would have involved Swiss federal police. In 2019 Bochsler applied to the Swiss Federal Archive to see their files too.

She was refused. The files were sealed until 2071 on national security grounds, and for the protection of the extended family.

Bochsler was neither the first nor the last to be turned down. In 2025, fellow historian Gérard Wettstein tried again. He too was refused.

"It seemed ridiculous," he told the BBC. "As long as they are closed until 2071, it fuels conspiracy, everyone says 'they must have something to hide'."

Wettstein challenged the decision by taking the Swiss authorities to court, an expensive process for which he sought crowdfunding. "We raised 18,000 Swiss francs (£17,000; $23,000) in just a few days."

Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images

Mengele is seen here with an unidentified woman in the 1970s in Brazil, where he lived for decades of his life

And that was when the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service finally changed their minds. In a statement this month which suggests full transparency might yet take some time, it said: "The appellant will be granted access to the file, subject to conditions and requirements yet to be defined."

Not everyone is sure the files will reveal much about Mengele himself.

Sacha Zala, president of the Swiss Society for History, is "absolutely sure there is nothing relevant about Mengele", but thinks there may be references to a foreign intelligence service or foreign informants.

The twins of Auschwitz
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By the late 1950s, Israel's Mossad was actively tracking fugitive Nazi war criminals, and Zala suspects they may have been in touch with the Swiss. That would give the Swiss authorities grounds to keep the files sealed, since sensitive information related to foreign intelligence agencies is often redacted.

But is a simple mention of Mossad relating to their well-known hunt for Nazis 70 years ago really so sensitive?

"It shows the stupidity of the declassification process without historical knowledge," Zala believes. "In this way, the administration fueled conspiracy theories."

Other historians, like Jakob Tanner, say the secrecy over the files reveals more about Switzerland than they may ever do about Mengele. "It's a conflict between national security and historical transparency, and the former often prevails in Switzerland."

Historian Gérard Wettstein has successfully challenged a decision to keep the Mengele files under wraps in the Swiss Federal Archive (behind him)

Tanner served on the 1990s Bergier Commission examining neutral Switzerland's relations with Nazi Germany, in particular the role of Swiss banks.

He is very familiar with Swiss sensitivity, and shame, over its role in World War Two, when Jewish refugees were turned away at the border, while Swiss banks kept the money of Jewish families who later died in Nazi concentration camps. "It is a problem for a democratic state that these files are still closed," Tanner argues.

Still, he thinks it is plausible Mengele was in Switzerland in 1961.

Wanted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann had been arrested by Mossad in Argentina in 1960, and there is evidence that other Nazis who fled to South America thought they too were at risk there, and that Europe, where friends and relatives remained, might be safer.

Tanner points out that Walter Rauff, another wanted Nazi war criminal who fled to Chile, spent time in Germany in 1960.

One historian on the Bergier Commission was permitted, briefly, to look at some of the Mengele files in 1999, and concluded that it was impossible to prove or disprove his presence on Swiss territory. But that was just a few lines in a 24-volume report about the entire war. The files were sealed again; the historian died seven years ago.

List of 12,000 Nazis probed for loot in Swiss bank
Crates full of Nazi documents found in Argentine court's basement

Meanwhile, no date for the files' release has been set, and the statement from the Federal Intelligence Service about "conditions and requirements" sounds ominous to Wettstein. "I fear we will get a file that is more black than transparent," he says.

Bochsler also worries the files will be heavily redacted. "I don't trust [the authorities] at all. I fear it will look like the Epstein files. Why have these Mengele files been closed for so long?"

Mengele has been the subject of mystery, rumour and conspiracy for decades.

He was never arrested, let alone convicted for his terrible crimes. When he died in Brazil in 1979, he was buried under a false name.

But rumours continued to swirl. In 1985 his body was exhumed, and finally in 1992 DNA testing confirmed the body was his.

Auschwitz's terrible doctor was dead.

But was he ever in Switzerland? Did the Swiss just not notice him?

Did they turn a blind eye to a potentially embarrassing presence to avoid the unwelcome attention an arrest would have caused? Or, like so much about Mengele, is it all just a rumour?

"Maybe we will never get to the real truth," says Wettstein. "We will never know if he was here or not… but maybe we can have at least a clearer idea."

'We crumbled' - another loss, another unwanted record for leaky Liverpool

Fri, 15 May 2026 22:55:18 GMT

Arne Slot says his Liverpool side "crumbled" during their thumping defeat by Aston Villa, as the pressure on him continues to mount.

Northampton humiliate Bristol 94-33 in record-breaking game

Fri, 15 May 2026 22:05:06 GMT

Northampton scores 14 tries to humiliate Bristol Bears 94-33 at Franklin's Gardens and confirm their semi-final place in a record-breaking game of Prem Rugby.

Celtic & Hearts set for titanic title duel

Fri, 15 May 2026 21:08:54 GMT

A remarkable Scottish Premiership campaign concludes with Hearts and Celtic going head-to-head for the title on Saturday.

British firm vying to build next Red Arrows jets collapses

Fri, 15 May 2026 20:40:05 GMT

The Hawk T1 jet, as used by the Red Arrows, will go out of service in 2030

Joshua Nevett

Political reporter

15 May 2026

A British aerospace company that was developing a replacement for the famous Red Arrows fighter jet has gone into administration, resulting in the loss of about 30 jobs.

Aeralis had pitched itself as the only British firm able to supply a new advanced jet trainer that would be designed and built in the UK.

The firm was hoping the UK government would award it a contract to replace the Hawk jets currently flown by the RAF's Red Arrows before they are due to be retired in 2030.

The administrators said the company had faced "a sustained period of pressure" on its cashflow after "continued delays to the UK Defence Investment Plan, combined with geopolitical factors affecting sources of funding".

A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesperson said: "The fast jet trainer programme is ongoing and no final procurement decisions have been made.

"More broadly, this government is backing British jobs, British industry, and British innovators - since July 2024, we have signed 1,200 major contracts, with 93% of the spend going to UK-based companies."

The BBC has been told the company's main investor Barzan Holdings, the strategic investment and procurement arm of Qatar's Ministry of Defence, withdrew its funding amid the US-Israeli war with Iran.

A potential agreement Aeralis was exploring to make jets for the French government also failed to materialise.

The company filed for administration on Friday.

In a statement, Joanne Milner from administrators Buchler Phillips, said: "Aeralis has developed a highly differentiated proposition within the aerospace and defence sector.

"We hope that the administration process will provide an opportunity to explore routes to preserve and develop that value for stakeholders."

Aeralis chairman Robin Southwell said the decision to go into administration had been taken after "careful consideration of the company's position and the funding challenges it has faced over recent months".

"We will continue to support the joint administrators as they explore viable, sustainable options for the future of the business and engage with interested parties."

In an interview prior to Aeralis going into administration, Southwell told the BBC the delay in the investment plan was making life "very difficult for companies such as ours and others".

He urged the UK government to give "clarity and direction" to the MoD to "allow companies like ours to start generating the jobs, opportunities, ambitions and exports that this country clearly needs".

Last year, the UK government's Strategic Defence Review recommended the Hawks should be replaced by a "cost-effective, advanced trainer jet".

The review suggests that MoD procurement should prioritise British businesses to benefit the UK economy.

The MoD is considering options to replace the Hawk jets.

Aircraft offered by BAE Systems, Leonardo and several other companies are also considered to be contenders to replace the Hawk but no decisions have been made.

The long-awaited investment plan to deliver the review's recommendations has been delayed significantly and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is facing growing pressure to publish it.

This week, Sir Keir told MPs the defence investment plan was being "finalised" as he outlined his government's legislative programme in the King's Speech.

Last month Lord Robertson, the former Labour defence secretary who wrote the Strategic Defence Review, accused Sir Keir's government of showing "corrosive complacency" on defence.

Southwell said Aeralis had been talking to the French government about the possibility of building its jet in the country.

But Aeralis's preference was to design and manufacture parts of its advanced trainer jet at the company's sites across the UK, before assembling the aircraft at Prestwick International Airport in Ayrshire, Scotland.

The company estimates that its programme could have created 4,000 new jobs in the UK and generate £600m in annual exports.

But the aircraft has only been designed digitally at this stage, with the company saying it needed government backing to start production.

Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the RUSI think tank, said the Aeralis option was "purely theoretical, and its only attraction is the promise of UK jobs at some point".

"Its downsides include high programme and development risks, and long realistic timeframes until any serviceable aircraft might be delivered, compared to alternatives that already exist," Bronk said.

He added: "A strong fast jet training pipeline is fundamental to all other UK combat air capabilities, so risk should not be taken with ensuring it is modernised rapidly and with high levels of assurance."

Bronk said jet trainers developed by Leonardo, or Boeing/Saab in partnership with BAE Systems, were "low-risk, high-quality" options that "could be delivered from the late 2020s".

BAE Systems is working with US manufacturer Boeing and Sweden's Saab to develop the T-7 jet into a replacement for the Hawk, and has committed to assembling the aircraft in the UK.

"Our joint approach brings together three leading global defence primes at the heart of UK combat air capability, offering the UK a next-generation, cost‑effective, capable and reliable solution," a BAE Systems spokesperson said.

Leonardo, an Italian company with operations in the UK, told the BBC its M-346 jet was "being assessed as an option for a number of emerging requirements".

"We will work with UK industrial partners to provide a compelling, UK low risk solution to the RAF advanced jet training requirement based on our proven and highly successful International Flying Training System," a Leonardo spokesperson said.

Alleged murder of Aboriginal girl highlights Australia's deep inequalities

Fri, 15 May 2026 20:37:39 GMT

Katy Watson

Australia CorrespondentAlice Springs

15 May 2026

Warning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers: this article contains references to and images of someone who has died. This note has been added to respect cultural beliefs of these readers during mourning.

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Who is Kumanjayi Little Baby and why has her death caused outrage in the outback?

In the past few weeks, flowers, messages and cuddly toys have grown like a creeper on the chain link fence at the entrance of Old Timers town camp in Australia's Northern Territory.

A little girl gets out of a car with her brother and mother to add to the pile, laying a bright pink cuddly toy on the ground - a tribute to Kumanjayi Little Baby, the five-year-old who went missing in April from this Aboriginal community, and whose body was found five days later.

An Aboriginal man was subsequently charged with murdering her.

"The whole community is numb," another mourner says. This is a sentiment felt by much of this small town of fewer than 30,000 people, many of whom joined the search for Kumanjayi Little Baby, as she's now known for cultural reasons, in the days after she disappeared.

"In some ways you could say we've actually seen some of the best of the community in the absolute worst of times," says Asta Hill, the mayor of Alice Springs.

As well as bringing the town together, Kumanjayi Little Baby's death united Australians across the country in grief and outrage.

Condolence motions were passed in parliament, and even Prime Minister Anthony Albanese weighed in, saying "it breaks your heart".

"For the very first time this story brought to the surface how deeply Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people love and care for their children," says Catherine Liddle, CEO of SNAICC, a peak body that represents Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families.

But the circumstances of Kumanjayi Little Baby's alleged murder also laid bare the deep inequalities that still exist in one of the world's wealthiest countries with many asking how this could happen, and prompting authorities to promise a review into the territory's child protection system.

Faced with a painful, often traumatic history of policies that have targeted generations of Aboriginal communities and their children, navigating the aftermath of this tragedy is fraught with sensitivities.

Vigils were held in Alice Springs and across Australia

A beloved little girl

Kumanjayi Little Baby was a Warlpiri girl whose traditional lands are in the northwest of Alice Springs, in the Tanami Desert.

Her mother described her as a "princess" in a statement read out at a vigil held for her at Alice Springs.

She painted a picture of a beloved little girl that felt relatable to parents everywhere. A five-year-old who loved cartoons and computer games. A little sister who liked hanging out with her brother. A young student excited about starting school.

"My heart is broken into a million pieces," her mother wrote to those attending. "I want you to know that I am having trouble knowing how I can repair it and how I can live without my little baby."

This part of Australia is remote - the nearest city is Darwin, a 15-hour drive north. All around it is arid desert.

Aboriginal people make up about 3% of Australia's population. In Alice Springs, that number is closer to 20%. But since colonisation, communities have been kept apart.

The Old Timers town camp, also known as Ilyperenye, where Kumanjayi Little Baby was put to bed by her mother the night she went missing, is a few kilometres south of Alice Springs, one of 16 around the town.

Alice Springs is the third largest town in Australia's Northern Territory

They first sprang up in the 1880s when Aboriginal people were displaced from their traditional lands by European settlers, but were only formalised in the 1970s after their residents asked for proper homes and basic services like electricity and piped water.

For decades prior to 1960 Aboriginal people had also been barred from entering Alice Springs which was predominantly white. There are camps in the north, south, east and west of the town – each with people speaking distinct languages and connected to different remote communities.

The camps are classified as social housing, but are effectively tiny hamlets comprising several homes. They suffer from overcrowding and residents complain of underfunding, leading to poor facilities and bad infrastructure. There are no shops, residents are sometimes left with no electricity on hot days, there is little public transport, limited internet, and roads are often bad with poor street lighting.

Experts say the poverty of the camps is a key contributor to the cases of alcoholism and domestic violence that have been reported there, adding to the pressure on their residents.

"Heavy things happen in this town and as a non-Indigenous Australian I think the colonisation story is still really present," said Nina Lansbury, who attended last week's vigil at the ANZAC Oval in Alice Springs.

Lansbury is an associate professor at the University of Queensland who's been working in Tennant Creek, 500km from Alice, on public health research and housing. She says it's clear that Kumanjayi Little Baby was not living in a house that supported her family, health and safety.

"I have a report from 1978 that I use in my research that's from the Northern Territory that was citing all these same things – coming up to 50 years. It's a big issue, it's 2026 and this is still happening. Let's hope this is a turning point."

Sorry business

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Watch: Why Indigenous Australians don’t use a person’s name once they die

Since Kumanjayi Little Baby was found dead, many in the community here have been in what's known as "sorry business". This is a period of grieving among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that involves cultural practices and ceremonies and can last days, weeks or even months.

Her family has asked that her death is respected during sorry business – and that none of what has happened be politicised.

But already, politicians across the board have been reflecting on how this happened and why a vulnerable little girl and her family weren't sufficiently protected.

Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said Kumanjayi Little Baby was a relative of hers, and broke down in Parliament, pleading for an "honest conversation" about the failures of child protection.

But other leaders point to repeated policy failures - both at a federal level and in the Northern Territory - when it comes to addressing systemic issues facing their communities.

Indigenous Australians are three times as likely to be unemployed compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts; have significantly lower life expectancies; make up 37% of the prison population and are more likely to suffer or perpetrate family violence than non-Indigenous Australians.

"The simple truth is that all governments of all persuasions over generations have not done enough to deal with what are generational challenges," Albanese told parliament this week.

Traumatic past

The Stolen Generation is perhaps the most infamous example of failure – a shameful, decades-long national chapter that lasted until the 1970s, in which tens of thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families as part of policies aimed at assimilation.

In 1997, a landmark report called Bringing Them Home estimated that as many as one in three Indigenous children were taken and placed in institutions and foster care where many suffered abuse and neglect.

A decade later, a federal government initiative known as the Northern Territory Intervention was brought in, to address sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in communities. But after 15 years it was scrapped and the policy was widely seen as a failure.

The most damaging thing to come out of this Intervention was the trauma put upon Aboriginal men, says Liddle.

"Men stopped bathing babies, they stopped helping out because what they heard was if you do those things, you're a paedophile and you're going to get locked up and your children are going to get taken away," she says.

"[There was] fear of even going to authorities for innocent reasons because you're scared that you're going to be told that you've done something wrong," she says.

Last week the Northern Territory Child Protection Minister Robyn Cahill announced that there would be a review into the territory's child protection system, as well as reforms.

"I will not be a minister who abandons yet another generation of Territory kids," Cahill said when the details of the review were announced. "The reality is we have kids in really difficult situations and for a long time people have been paralysed by the fear that they will be accused of [creating another Stolen Generation]. Children deserve to be safe - every single child in our community has a right to expect that."

But Aboriginal organisations have criticised this. In a joint statement from Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory (APONT) and SNAICC, they said that it would "deepen an already devastating crisis, with consequences for generations of Aboriginal Territorians".

They are particularly concerned about weakening what is known as the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle - a framework designed to keep Indigenous children connected to family. If that happens, they said, it would be tantamount to "a race-based attempt to blame Aboriginal families for conditions created by government failure".

Getty Images

Australia's government forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families for decades, as part of an assimilation policy

Aboriginal leaders say there needs to be a holistic approach that will help solve the deep social inequalities in the territory.

"When you look at the prison system in the Northern Territory, it is nearly always 100% Aboriginal children and nearly every single one of those children came out of the child protection system," says Liddle.

Children as young as 10 can be jailed in the Northern Territory after the government there lowered the age of criminal responsibility in 2024. Its justification is that it will ultimately protect children - despite doctors, human rights organisations and Indigenous groups disputing that.

"It's like paving a road - it's like putting down pavers and saying here you are this is going to be your journey and by the way we're going to lock you up at the age of 10 when something goes wrong."

She admits that difficult conversations need to be had - but these should also encompass failures in social policy, housing, the prison system and the justice system.

"Those conversations needed to be led from community because the answers to this sit with community, they don't sit in parliament," argues Liddle. "You have to find out what's actually going on and that will change depending on which community you're sitting in, what state you're sitting in. You also need to ensure that you're investing in the services that we need and investing in the services that were designed by us for us."

There's no denying there are complex social issues that need tackling.

Generations of disenfranchisement - Aboriginal people were, for example, not granted full voting rights until 1984 - have significantly contributed to the vicious cycle of poverty, crime and worse social outcomes for some. In Alice, many sports fields and homes are fenced off to prevent youth-related crime including burglary, assault and alcohol-fuelled anti-social behaviour.

Liddle says while delinquency happens, and is not okay, it means funding is not always targeted in the best way. "There have been a lot of fences go up instead of what we really, really need, and that is the investment into ensuring that people are safe."

For some Alice residents, there needs to be a reframing of how Aboriginal communities are seen - and supported.

"People fall through the cracks and this little girl was beloved by her family and community but obviously lived in poverty and was vulnerable," says vigil attendee Jonathan Hermawan.

But he thinks in talking about what happened to Kumanjayi Little Baby, there's a danger of victimising Aboriginal communities.

"Every system has its failures when you homogenise a group that's very diverse," he says.

"The notion of Aboriginality is like comparing a white person and saying every white person is affected. We are far more diverse than that, we are far more complex than that."

How Rayner, Streeting and Burnham weakened PM in 12 hours of political drama

Fri, 15 May 2026 20:21:08 GMT

PA Media and Reuters

No leadership contest has been launched, but some Labour politicians look to have been making moves towards the top spot

Joe Pike

Political correspondent

15 May 2026

On Wednesday, as Sir Keir Starmer stood in the House of Lords and watched the King read out the government's plan for the coming year, the prime minister's three biggest rivals within Labour were preparing their next moves.

Andy Burnham spent much of the day attempting to persuade MP Josh Simons, once a staunch ally of Sir Keir, to sacrifice his parliamentary career to help save Labour.

Wes Streeting was in Parliament with his closest advisers mulling whether he should quit the cabinet job as health secretary that he had coveted for years.

And that afternoon Angela Rayner slipped into a London hotel suite to secretly pre-record a TV interview about resolving her tax affairs with HMRC.

The following day, across 12 hours of political drama that weakened the prime minister, all three sprung into action.

Rayner's return

The all-important email from HMRC had landed in the inbox of Rayner's tax lawyer Graham Aaronson on Tuesday afternoon.

Relief was the main emotion among the former deputy prime minister's team, "as well as vindication", said an ally.

"The key point was she'd been cleared of either tax dodging or being careless," they added. Rayner did, however, settle £40,000 in unpaid stamp duty.

The timing of HMRC's decision was unexpected but potentially perfect for Rayner. It arrived just as MPs were split on Starmer's future and a leadership contest looked possible.

But Rayner, her allies say, did not want to overshadow the King's speech or undermine the announcement of new legislation she had helped with while a minister.

She did, however, want to make an impact.

Her team decided it was best to do two interviews - one newspaper, one television - and wait until the next morning to publish them.

Soon after the monarch had changed out of his Imperial State Crown and robes, and returned to Buckingham Palace via carriage, Rayner met the Guardian journalist Pippa Crerar in central London. She then sat down with ITV's Paul Brand in a hotel suite nearby.

Both interviews dropped at 06:00 on Thursday morning.

"It was timed to make sure we got it out, and it had a fair wave of attention before other dramas kicked off," said an ally.

Rayner had not warned the prime minister.

What next for Starmer? Five scenarios in Labour leadership crisis
The potential challengers to Keir Starmer
Andy Burnham: 'King of the North' with eyes on the top job

Streeting resigns

As Westminster rushed to read and watch Rayner's interviews, Streeting had still not decided whether he was staying or going.

"He didn't begin the week planning to resign", said a colleague. But his departure had become more inevitable with each passing day.

In a brief face-to-face meeting on Wednesday, Streeting told Sir Keir he had lost confidence in the prime minister's leadership.

Yet the lack of clarity over the now-former health secretary's future had led critics to dub him a "bottler" who had not amassed anywhere near the numbers of MPs to formally launch a challenge against Sir Keir.

Streeting's allies insists that is not true. "I've seen the spreadsheet," one claimed.

Another colleague added: "He'd been calling round MPs and had got the numbers he needed, but through those conversations he'd concluded that any contest would have to enable the broadest set of candidates.

"That meant giving Andy Burnham a chance to state his intention and come back if he wanted."

Team Streeting were also fully aware that without a credible victory he would struggle to command the support of Labour MPs if difficult legislation came to the fore.

Streeting made his final decision on Thursday morning.

"He had a few cabinet ministers and people in Number 10 asking him not to go," said a supporter.

"But he spoke to friends and colleagues in Parliament and made up his mind."

Streeting drafted his resignation letter in his wood-panelled ministerial office in the Palace of Westminster.

He did not take the decision at all lightly, one friend said.

"But once he'd made it, he was certain it was right and honourable. It was done with a heavy heart but with total conviction."

Streeting was with his staff and a few supportive MPs when the letter was emailed to Number 10.

Shortly after at 12:58 BST on Thursday he posted the bombshell news on X.

At that moment, Sir Keir was on the way to meet apprentices in south west London.

Soon after Streeting's announcement, journalists were told the prime minister's visit was cancelled.

Burnham's gamble

Meanwhile, Labour MP Josh Simons' friends and family were asking one important question: "Is it worth it?" Ultimately they decided the answer was yes.

The 32-year-old MP for Makerfield and his wife had spoken to Burnham about the merits of moving aside for the Greater Manchester mayor and peppered him with questions.

Their judgement was less about whether the seat was winnable and more about whether Burnham was capable of becoming prime minister and turning round Labour's fortunes.

"Josh has been radicalised by being a local MP... he saw the implosion in Westminster as a chance for Andy to come home," a friend said.

Burnham lives in the area and his kids went to school locally.

Simons, a father-of-three, is considered furiously bright but resigned as a minister in March during controversy surrounding his pre-parliament management of the think tank Labour Together.

Some speculate Simons could still return to politics, perhaps in a senior policy role in a future Burnham administration.

After agonising over whether to quit, Simons is already campaigning in Makerfield for a Labour by-election victory.

"This is the sort of moment which can change Labour's story" a source close to Simons said. "Given the stakes Josh was not willing to say no."

Simons was at home in Wigan with his family when he posted on social media that he would stand aside as an MP.

Soon after Burnham posted on X that he intended to stand in the subsequent by-election.

Worried about the possible arrival of photographers and camera crews, Simons closed his blinds, ordered a Domino's pizza and went to bed.

As Thursday drew to a close, Streeting and Burnham spoke on the phone.

The tone of the conversation between the potential rivals was said to be warm, with Streeting committing to campaign for Burnham in the Makerfield by-election.

It marked the end of a bizarre and rather unforgettable day in British politics.

Three headline-grabbing interventions by three senior Labour politicians within 12 hours.

Rayner, Streeting and Burnham effectively signalled the start of a leadership contest - even though there is neither a vacancy nor any declared contenders and Sir Keir has said he would fight any challenge.

Yet the prime minister has been weakened in recent days, and many of his colleagues concede his departure may now not be a case of if, but when.

What China critics in Maga movement make of Trump's Beijing trip

Fri, 15 May 2026 19:52:54 GMT

Getty Images

Trump's tone towards President Xi has softened considerably.

Brandon Drenon & Bernd Debusmann Jr

BBC News

15 May 2026

When Donald Trump strode on to a stage at a campaign rally in Indiana in 2016, he made one thing clear: China was America's chief economic antagonist.

"We can't continue to allow China to rape our country," he told a crowd in Fort Wayne. "We have the cards. Don't forget it."

The anti-China rhetoric didn't let up - through a decade of rallies, his 2024 campaign and into his second term.

Trump arrived back at the White House alongside key allies who made China-bashing a calling card: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice-President JD Vance and senior economic counsellor Peter Navarro - all united in accusing Beijing of "ripping off" America, stealing technology at an industrial scale and flooding US streets with fentanyl.

Tariffs soon followed, climbing from 10% in February 2025 to 145% by mid-April's "Liberation Day", as Trump called his launch of import taxes on China and scores of other US trade partners. China struck back, slapping the US with 125% tariffs and blocking rare earth exports. A trade war was under way.

Then came this week's visit to Beijing.

Trump stepped on to a red carpet at the Great Hall of the People to hundreds of flag-waving children and a military band belting out the Star-Spangled Banner.

"It's an honour to be with you," Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping. "It's an honour to be your friend, and the relationship between China and the US is going to be better than ever before."

Trump soon hailed "fantastic trade deals", although no major breakthrough was confirmed. Chipmaker Nvidia was reportedly given a go-ahead to sell semiconductors to 10 Chinese companies and Boeing secured an order for 200 aircraft. Citi was granted an approval to operate a securities business in China.

But amid the pleasantries and softened positions, hardline positions against China reflect the traditionally more hawkish stance of Trump's Republican Party.

Less than a week before the summit, the US state department sanctioned three Chinese firms for providing satellite imagery to Iran to help strike US forces in the Middle East.

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Watch: What did we learn from Trump's visit to China?

And outstanding issues remain - chiefly Taiwan, the self-ruled island viewed by Beijing as a renegade province. Trump delivered few details on the fate of a delayed $14bn arms sale viewed as essential by Democrats and Republican China "hawks" alike.

Ahead of the visit, a bipartisan group of senators sent a letter urging Trump to move ahead with the sale and "formally" notify his Chinese counterpart.

"On Taiwan, he [Xi] feels very strongly. I made no commitment either way," Trump told reporters on Air Force One, adding that he would make a "determination over the next fairly short period" about the arms sale.

Notably, the Chinese read-out of the meeting made Taiwan its central point, arguing that a failure to address the issue could lead to "clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy". The White House read-out made no mention of Taiwan.

The Chinese statement was seen as a threat by some within the broader Make America Great Again movement.

"I am shocked, given how much people wanted to make this into a positive spirit, he [Xi] started with a threat," former Trump strategist Steve Bannon told Politico. "It was so brazen and so blatant, that they made this at the very top."

However, even the most ardent China hawks on Capitol Hill and among Trump's allies stayed largely silent after the trip, offering little reaction to Trump's friendly tone and non-committal statements on Taiwan.

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BBC asks Trump if China will help open the Strait of Hormuz

For China experts in the US, the lack of reaction came as no surprise.

"If you had 50 presidential summits in one month or one year, it still wouldn't change the fact that there are some issues on which the US and China are simply never going to agree," David Firestein, president and CEO of the George HW Bush Foundation for US-China Relations, told the BBC.

"That doesn't mean it's not going to be a successful summit," he added.

Trump's softening rhetoric and tone, Firestein added, could reflect an acknowledgement that the tactics used in the years after his last visit in 2017 have not worked.

"We still have the same problems today with market access, intellectual property rights, subsidies…the list goes on," he said. "None of those problems have been solved after eight years of having these tariffs on the books."

David Sacks, a fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the softening of Trump's tone will likely trickle down to other officials, Republican lawmakers and Trump's wider base.

"Unlike the first Trump administration, and frankly, any other US administration in recent memory, this is much more top down," he said. "I think those in the administration are, mostly, in the role of implementation."

Sacks' comments were echoed by Stephen Orlins, president at the National Committee on US-China Relations.

"When Trump opines, people follow," he said. "And the base follows."

Trump, however, still faces a dilemma with Taiwan.

Pressure will remain - from both sides of the political spectrum - for Trump to formalise the pending $14bn weapons sale ahead of President Xi's planned visit to the White House in September.

"I think that Congress will continue to write letters urging the administration to approve the sales to Taiwan," Sacks said.

Until then, he continued, each time "senior administration officials go before Congress they will continue to be asked about the status of those arms sales to Taiwan".

A decision from the Oval Office, however, is by no means guaranteed.

"A large US arms sale to Taiwan between now and September would potentially imperil that visit," Sacks added. "The $14bn package is actually now a big question."

Teen e-biker jailed for killing gran on zebra crossing

Fri, 15 May 2026 19:33:14 GMT

Handout

Gloria Stephenson was killed while crossing a road in Sunderland in May 2025

Duncan Leatherdale

Newcastle Crown Court

15 May 2026

The family of an elderly woman who was knocked down and killed by a teenager on an electric motorbike have said they are "devastated" after he was sentenced to almost seven years in youth detention.

Billy Stokoe had taken cannabis and was using a mobile phone when he ploughed into Gloria Stephenson on a zebra crossing in Sunderland, then rode away, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

Dashcam footage of the crash showed the balaclava-clad Stokoe being knocked off his bike, then riding away after looking at his 86-year-old victim lying on the crossing.

Stokoe, who was 18 at the time of the May 2025 crash, had admitted causing death by dangerous driving.

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Warning: Contains distressing scenes. Dashcam footage shows the aftermath of the crash and police also filmed the moment Billy Stokoe was arrested

The victim, who was a mother to four daughters and had 13 grandchildren, had a "zest for life", her family said.

Outside court her eldest daughter Julie Francis said the family were "absolutely furious and so disappointed" at the sentence given to Stokoe.

"He killed our mam, he left the scene," she said.

"He tried to hide the evidence and he has shown no remorse."

Francis said they had been hoping Stokoe would be given a long sentence "as a message, because we all know that these bikes are illegal".

Northumbria Police

Billy Stokoe admitted causing death by dangerous driving

Gloria Stephenson had been walking a family dog when she used a zebra crossing in Burdon Road at about 13:00 BST on 16 May, prosecutor Michael Bunch told the court.

While traffic on one side stopped to let her cross, Stokoe drove the off-road electric motorbike, which was not road legal and was in a poor condition, straight into her, making no attempt to stop or swerve, the court heard.

As the teenager fled the crash site, passers-by tried to help but paramedics confirmed she died at the scene.

Stokoe, of Mayo Drive in Sunderland, drove to a friend's house where he ditched the bike and changed his clothes before going home and telling his mother, who took him to the police station, the court heard.

He was found to be three times the driving limit for cannabis and CCTV showed him using a mobile phone for at least half a mile up to the crash, the court heard.

The bike was in a poor condition with the only brake lever being on the left handle, the side he was holding the phone on, Bunch said.

Northumbria Police

Billy Stokoe was seen on CCTV and dashcam footage riding the bike before the crash

Francis earlier told the court her mother, who had been widowed three times and had had a successful career in the NHS, was resilient and courageous, intelligent, confident and ambitious with a "zest for life".

She was "vital and vivacious" until the day Stokoe killed her, she said, and was known as "glamorous Gloria" and had "strong moral principles".

"When you killed our mam, you took a life that was good, that had purpose, that gave more than it took," she told Stokoe.

He drove off and "left our beautiful, clever courageous mam to die at the side of the road like she was a piece of rubbish in the gutter", her daughter said.

"Our righteous anger is overwhelming, compounded by your total lack of remorse," she told Stokoe.

Eight days after killing her mother, "selfish" Stokoe went to Wembley to watch Sunderland play and soon applied for his bail to be amended so he could go abroad on holiday, she said, adding he regularly posted about his activities on social media.

"At a time when we were paralysed by grief, you were just carrying on with your life," she said, adding: "What type of person are you?"

Northumbria Police

Billy Stokoe came off his bike in the crash, but quickly remounted and rode away

In a statement read to the court, another of the daughters said her mother made the "sensible" choice to use the zebra crossing but "did not stand a chance" due to Stokoe's choices.

She said her mother was "fit, active and fiercely independent" and it was "not her time" to die.

"You have no moral compass," she told Stokoe. "I will hate you until my last breath."

Judge Robert Adams said Stokoe had not set out that day to harm anyone but he caused the death of a "much-loved lady" and would "have to live with what he had done for the rest of his life".

Stokoe's family said he had shown remorse and been devastated by the crash, the judge said.

He was sentenced to a total of six years and nine months in youth detention and was banned from driving for eight years, four months and two weeks. He must also pass an extended test.

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Teenager's family 'heartbroken' by meningitis death

Fri, 15 May 2026 19:05:50 GMT

Family photo

Lewis Waters died earlier this week after contracting meningitis

Nathan Briant

South of England

15 May 2026

A teenage boy who died after contracting meningitis has been described as "funny and kind hearted" by his family.

Lewis Waters, a sixth-form pupil at The Henley College in Oxfordshire, died earlier this week.

Posting a tribute on Facebook, his family said they were "devastated" and "words simply can't describe the heartbreak and upset we're going through".

Two pupils, one from Reading Blue Coat School and another from Highdown Secondary School and Sixth Form Centre in Reading, are also being treated for meningitis, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said.

Lewis' dad Sean wrote: "Within a few hours of feeling a bit ill he developed sepsis and was taken from us.

"He fought hard and was really taken care of by the ICU team but they just couldn't save him."

Family photo

Lewis' family said they were "absolutely devastated" by his loss

He said the family were "absolutely devastated" and described Lewis as "funny, sociable, kind hearted".

"He also loved his sisters, friends and family dearly," he added.

The UKHSA announced on Thursday that it had identified a social network that connected Lewis and the other two young people.

What are the symptoms of meningitis and is there a vaccine?

Close contacts linked to all three are being offered antibiotics as a precaution.

A statement from The Henley College said its "thoughts and sincere condolences are with the student's family and friends at this extremely difficult time".

"We are supporting those affected within our college community and are following the advice and guidance given by the UKHSA," it added.

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The Henley College's principal Simon Spearman said the staff and students' thoughts were with the family

The UKHSA said one case had been confirmed as Meningitis B (MenB) and it was awaiting further tests on the other two.

It confirmed the case was not the same strain found in MenB outbreaks earlier this year.

Two months ago, two people died of MenB in Kent, linked to a nightclub in Canterbury, and in April, three young people contracted meningitis in Dorset.

The agency said the risk to the wider public was low.

Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre's head teacher Laura Mathews confirmed it too had shared information with students and parents about signs and symptoms of meningitis.

"Our thoughts are with all those affected," she added.

Pete Thomas, the headmaster of Reading Blue Coat School, said it was "a concerning time for families and the wider community."

He added: "We are deeply saddened by the news of the death of a student at another local school, and our thoughts are with their family, as well as with all those affected during this difficult time."

There are about 300 to 400 cases of meningococcal disease diagnosed in England every year.

It is most common in babies, young children, teenagers and young adults.

Meningitis symptoms can develop suddenly and can include:

A rash that doesn't fade when pressed with a glass
Sudden onset of high fever
Severe and worsening headache
Stiff neck
Vomiting and diarrhoea
Joint and muscle pain
Dislike of bright lights
Very cold hands and feet
Seizures
Confusion/delirium
Extreme sleepiness/difficulty waking

The UKHSA said young people should check they were up to date with vaccinations, including the MenACWY vaccine offered to pupils in Years 9 and 10.

It remains free on the NHS for people until the age of 25 but does not protect against all strains of meningitis.

The UKHSA said other strains, like MenB, can circulate among young people.

Dr Tom Nutt, chief executive of the charity Meningitis Now, urged people "to remain vigilant and aware of the signs and symptoms of the disease".

But he said only infants had been vaccinated against MenB since 2015.

"We believe all teenagers and young adults should be protected by this vaccine on the NHS," he added, external.

"The MenB vaccine is not available to teenagers and young adults on the NHS routine immunisation schedule, but we believe it should be."

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said it had asked the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) for an "updated recommendation" based on the latest evidence on MenB.

"The JCVI is carrying out a review of eligibility for routine MenB vaccination and will provide a further update and advice to the department in due course," they said.

"The UK has a world-leading national immunisation programme which is regularly reviewed and updated to reflect the changing nature of infectious diseases and provide the best protection and outcomes for the public."

What Makerfield thinks of by-election - and if Burnham can win

Fri, 15 May 2026 17:00:34 GMT

EPA

James GregoryPolitical reporter and Rumeana JahangirBBC North West

15 May 2026

The residents of Makerfield are about to find themselves at the epicentre of the political universe as a by-election battle that could decide the next prime minister is set to take place on their doorstep.

The constituency, which is home to around 76,000 voters in the suburbs of Wigan and nearby former mining towns and villages, has not traditionally been a hotbed of political intrigue.

A safe Labour seat since it was created in 1983, it has recently seen Reform UK sweep the board in local council elections, like many other parts of the country.

Reform's rise is one of the factors that has led to pressure on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to resign, with many of his own MPs calling for him to stand down and start a contest for a new Labour leader.

The PM is digging in - and steadfastly refusing to give in to demands to set a timetable for his departure.

Until yesterday, one of the favourites to replace Sir Keir, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, did not have a way to challenge him, as he is not an MP.

Which is where Makerfield comes in.

The area's current MP, Josh Simons, has announced he is standing down to make way for Burnham.

The stakes could not be higher for the mayor, who has made no secret of his desire to be PM, but will face a stiff challenge from Reform in the upcoming by-election, with Nigel Farage promising that his party will "throw everything" at the contest.

Burnham does not have to stand down as mayor to stand in the by-election and will only resign from that position if he wins and becomes an MP again.

But losing the contest would seriously diminish his reputation and could make a Labour leadership contest less likely, in the short term.

What next for Starmer? Five scenarios in Labour leadership crisis
The potential challengers to Keir Starmer
Andy Burnham: 'King of the North' with eyes on the top job

Makerfield, in the north-west of England, has been a safe Labour seat for decades

Burnham has a long track record as a Labour MP and minister. Before becoming Greater Manchester mayor in 2017, he was elected four times as MP for the Leigh constituency.

But many voters in Makerfield, irrespective of the parties they support, who have spoken to the BBC believe he will face a difficult challenge this time round.

One such voter, nursery worker Penelope Nelson, describes herself and her family as "fans" of Burnham.

"He knows what the people want and he stands for that and I think that's great," she said.

She said she would like to think he would win the by-election, but added that she believed "he'll have a fight on his hands".

Stan Crook, who is retired, told BBC Radio Manchester: "This has been a Labour stronghold since I've been voting 45 years ago, but I do think he'll really struggle with this one.

"I think the biggest issue is Labour in general have let the whole country down, not just this [area]. Nobody's got any faith in Keir Starmer... he's not done enough."

He said he was sceptical of Burnham's motives, believing he was standing for election to "feather his own cap - hoping to get into Westminster".

He also criticised the mayor's involvement in plans to introduce a Clean Air Zone scheme during lockdown, even though they were eventually dropped in 2022 and an alternative proposal was signed off by the government.

"I think Reform will take over. They really jumped in here in a massive way."

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What Makerfield thinks of Andy Burnham prompted by-election

But Alan Entwistle, who works as a carpet cleaner, said the policies Burnham had implemented while mayor were "up there"

"He's done brilliantly with the buses and everything else," he said. "He knows what he's doing."

Gabriel Parkinson, who works in the charity sector, said she favoured the Green Party but would vote for Burnham in this by-election as "the choice we have against Reform".

If Burnham succeeds, a Labour leadership contest is likely to follow, potentially leading to a new occupant of Number 10 by the autumn.

Sources have told the BBC that Thursday, 18 June is the likely date the by-election will be held - during the same week that Sir Keir is due to be at a G7 summit in France.

Garbriel Parkinson said she did not agree with Burnham on everything but he was "better than the other alternatives we've been presented with"

Burnham has been given permission by officers on Labour's National Executive Committee to stand in the candidate selection process in the Makerfield by-election.

He will now have to be approved by the local Labour Party in Makerfield.

Burnham was re-elected for a second term as Greater Manchester mayor in May 2021 and a third in May 2024, with 63.4% of the vote - in Wigan, he received 66% of the vote.

Polling expert Sir John Curtice told Politico Labour would have "less than 5% chance" in the Makerfield by-election "if it were anyone other than Andy Burnham" as a candidate.

He added: "If [Burnham] manages to win this, he will certainly be demonstrating his ability to win constituencies you would expect most Labour politicians to lose at the moment."

Outgoing MP Josh Simons told the BBC that he was confident Burnham could win the seat, but admitted there was a "really tough fight" on his hands.

At the general election in 2024, Simons won the seat with 45.2% of the vote, a majority of 5,399. Reform came in second with 31.8% of the vote, with the Conservatives in third, Lib Dems in fourth and Greens in fifth.

The constituency boundaries were changed slightly in that election, but the seat has been Labour-held for decades.

This seat is 29th on Reform's target list and the party needs a swing of just over 6.7% to win it.

There are no precise figures for how the parties performed in Makerfield during the local elections because the ward boundaries do not fully align with the constituency boundaries.

But roughly, Reform pulled in 50% of the vote share, with Labour at 27%, the Greens at 10%, Conservatives at 7% and Lib Dems at 4%.

Reform gained 24 seats on Wigan Council, including in two wards in Ashton-in-Makefield.

Makerfield constituent Helen Raymond admitted to being "quite surprised" by how strongly the Reform vote grew at the local elections.

"But I think that maybe was a reaction to the current Labour leadership rather than giving up on Labour completely so I'm quietly optimistic," she said, pointing to Burnham's involving in the development of Leigh Sport Village and his response to illegal rubbish dumps as evidence he "does care about this area".

Richard Tice, Reform UK's deputy leader, said the party was aiming to "make Burnham history" and would be "throwing everything possible" at ensuring a "seismic" win in this by-election.

Meanwhile the Green Party has said it has started the selection process for its candidate.

The party won February's by-election in Gorton and Denton and made big gains in Manchester in last week's local elections.

But the party has downplayed its prospects in Makerfield.

Former Green leader Caroline Lucas said she hoped the party would not contest the seat in order to give Burnham the best chances of seeing off the challenge from Reform.

"There are times when it's more important to put country before party. This is one of them," she wrote on X.

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The Week: How did Labour get here and where do they go now?

Fri, 15 May 2026 15:49:00 GMT

And who are the potential challengers to Keir Starmer?

Eleven 'far-right agitators' banned from UK ahead of rally, government says

Fri, 15 May 2026 15:48:38 GMT

Reuters

Tommy Robinson has organised the Unite the Kingdom march

Emily Atkinson

BBC News

15 May 2026

Eleven foreign "far-right agitators" have been blocked from entering the country to attend a rally organised by anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, the government has said.

Thousands are expected to join the Unite the Kingdom event on Saturday, while an annual pro-Palestinian demonstration takes place in another part of London.

Sir Keir Starmer said "we're in a fight for the soul of this country" ahead of the protest.

The Metropolitan Police is anticipating one of its busiest days in recent years, and has drafted more than 4,000 officers over fears of clashes if the rival protests coincide.

Home Office blocks anti-Islam influencer from entering UK

In a statement on Friday, Sir Keir said: "We're in a fight for the soul of this country, and the Unite the Kingdom march this weekend is a stark reminder of exactly what we are up against.

"Its organisers are peddling hatred and division, plain and simple. We will block those coming into the UK who seek to incite hatred and violence.

"For anyone who sets out to wreak havoc on our streets, to intimidate or threaten anyone, you can expect to face the full force of the law".

The BBC has approached Unite the Kingdom for comment.

In a post on X on Friday, Robinson - whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon - wrote: "Keir Starmer's regime are the enemy of the British people. Descend on London."

Among the 11 blocked from entering the UK is the US-based, anti-Islam influencer Valentina Gomez, who attended the first Unite the Kingdom march last September.

While that rally began largely peacefully, there were a series of violent confrontations with police and anti-Muslim hate speech incidents.

Protesters are due to march to Parliament Square on Saturday, while the separate pro-Palestine Nakba Day march will end in Waterloo Place.

In addition, tens of thousands of football fans are expected at Wembley Stadium for the FA Cup Final.

The Met said the risks meant it had to impose the "highest degree of control", including the first authorisation of live facial recognition cameras at a demonstration - specifically at the Unite the Kingdom rally.

"We're expecting significant public attendance and intelligence indicates there is likely to be a threat to public safety at this specific protest," the force's head of facial recognition, Lindsey Chiswick, told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme.

"To be clear, we're not deploying this at the protest, we're not deploying in the middle of the march, it's very much on the outskirts."

She added that the use of the technology will also help protect peaceful protesters because it is able "to spot the people there to cause violent harm".

Other measures include deploying drones to identify suspects, putting armoured vehicles on standby, and equipping all officers with riot gear.

Specialist officers are also primed to take swift decisions to arrest and charge hate speech crimes, which may include arrests for chants referring to "intifada" at the pro-Palestinian march.

New guidance, issued by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), also pushes prosecutors to consider whether protest placards, banners and chants viewed on social media may amount to offences of stirring up hatred.

Director of public prosecutions (DPP) Stephen Parkinson said: "This is not about restricting free speech. It is about preventing hate crime and protecting the public, particularly at a time of heightened tensions.

"Where the line into criminality is crossed, we will not hesitate to prosecute."

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Why Democrats are panicking about losing California

Fri, 15 May 2026 15:06:00 GMT

Has America’s largest state become ungovernable?

Eurovision is almost here! But how much do you know about Europe's biggest pop spectacular?

Fri, 15 May 2026 13:57:10 GMT

15 May 2026

Challenge yourself ahead of the grand final - and hopefully avoid nul points.

What information do we collect from this quiz?

Giant new dinosaur identified from fossils in Thailand

Thu, 14 May 2026 17:28:56 GMT

Reuters

The nagatitan lived between 100 and 120 million years ago

Vicky Wong

14 May 2026

A new type of giant long-necked dinosaur has been identified by scientists from remains dug up in Thailand.

The nagatitan, the largest-ever dinosaur found in South-East Asia, weighed 27 tonnes - as much as nine adult Asian elephants - and measured 27m (88ft) in length, longer than a diplodocus. Like that dinosaur, it belonged to the sauropod family of long-necked herbivores.

A team of researchers from the UK and Thailand identified the species from fossils found beside a pond in north-eastern Thailand a decade ago.

They say the discovery sheds light on how changes in ancient climatic conditions allowed gigantic dinosaurs to develop.

The dinosaur's full name is Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, with "naga" referring to a serpent in South-East Asian folklore, "titan" referring to the gods in Greek mythology, and chaiyaphumensis meaning "from Chaiyaphum", the province where the fossils were discovered.

It lived between 100 and 120 million years ago - around 40 million years earlier than the tyrannosaurus rex - and is about twice the size of that creature.

Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, a Thai doctoral student at University College London (UCL), was the lead author of the study which was published in the Scientific Reports journal.

He said the researchers referred to the nagatitan as "the last titan" of Thailand, because the fossils were found in the country's youngest dinosaur-bearing rock formation.

"Younger rocks laid down towards the end of the time of the dinosaurs are unlikely to contain dinosaur remains because the region by then had become a shallow sea. So this may be the last or most recent large sauropod we will find in South-East Asia," he said.

Reuters

Researcher Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul posed with a front leg bone of the nagatitan

Sethapanichsakul, a self-confessed "dinosaur kid", said in a UCL press release that the study also "fulfils a childhood promise of naming a dinosaur".

The nagatitan is the 14th dinosaur to be named in Thailand. Palaeontologist Dr Sita Manitkoon, from Mahasarakham University, said that the country has a high diversity in dinosaur fossils and is "possibly the third most abundant in Asia in terms of dinosaur remains".

The nagatitan roamed Earth when the planet's atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were rising in line with high global temperatures.

The study's co-author, UCL's Prof Paul Upchurch, said the sauropod family of dinosaurs had become quite large at this time, telling National Geographic: "It seems a little odd that sauropods were able to cope with higher temperature conditions", as large bodies retain heat and are harder to cool down.

He told the Reuters news agency that it was "likely that the high temperatures had an impact on the plant fodder that was important to sauropods, which were very large-bodied herbivores".

New bypass named Pork Pie Way in ‘defining moment for Melton Mowbray’

Thu, 14 May 2026 15:51:44 GMT

Pork Pie Way was the "overwhelming" winner of a public vote, the council said

Dan Martin

Leicester political reporter

14 May 2026

Pork Pie Way has been chosen as the name of Melton Mowbray's new bypass after a public vote.

Leicestershire County Council announced the £131m road would be named in honour of the meaty treat, a speciality of the town's butchers, at a ceremony on Thursday.

The council ran a public vote to pick the name and said Pork Pie Way received an "overwhelming" 65% of the 3,975 votes cast.

There has been controversy around the vote after the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said Pork Pie Way was "pig-demeaning", and urged the Reform UK-run council to choose Vegan Pie Way instead.

Council leader Dan Harrison dismissed the charity's suggestion as "nothing more than pie in the sky thinking".

Sections of the 4.4-mile (7.1km) route, around the north and east of the town, are due to open in phases, with it being fully open to traffic by Monday.

Galliford Try/Leicestershire County Council

The road is intended to ease traffic congestion in Melton town centre

Melton Borough Council leader Ronan Browne said: "This is a defining moment for Melton Mowbray.

"The new road and its name reflect both our heritage, our character and our ambition, giving the town the infrastructure it needs to grow while celebrating what makes Melton Mowbray distinctive and special.

"On behalf of Melton Mowbray, I would like to thank all those involved in making this historic moment a reality."

Harrison said the town had been awaiting the road for a long time.

"It is an absolute honour to mark what is a once-in-a-generation moment for our county," he said.

"This scheme stands on decades of work and has been delivered through some of the most challenging years any major project could face.

"From the Covid‑19 pandemic and global supply chain disruption, to severe flooding and international instability, reaching this point is a huge credit to everyone involved in building the road, and I want to congratulate all those who have worked hard to make this a reality.

"Thank you to local people for their patience and understanding along the way. Today marks the completion of a road that will transform how this area functions and grows for future generations."

A two-tier pork pie was baked to mark the occasion

Roads and buses minister Simon Lightwood attended Thursday's ceremony.

He said: "I was absolutely delighted to be in Melton Mowbray today to mark the opening of Pork Pie Way - a name that embraces the history and heritage of the town - which has been backed by nearly £50m in government investment.

"It's a proud moment that puts Melton Mowbray firmly on the map, while creating a road that will support new jobs, homes, and opportunities for years to come."

Peta's vice-president of vegan projects, Dawn Carr said: "Whatever you call it, the road we all need to be on is towards a kinder world.

"Peta is looking to host a vegan pie giveaway in the area to remind Melton Mowbray residents that all animals, pigs, dogs, and humans alike, deserve to be left in peace, not pieces.

"There is no reason to take a life to make a pie."

How people voted

Pork Pie Way - reflecting Melton Mowbray's long-standing national reputation as the home of the famous Melton Mowbray pork pie - 65%
Wolds Way - refers to the nearby Wolds landscape, reflecting the town's rural setting and connections to the countryside - 7%
Lazars Way - refers to nearby Burton Lazars, which takes its name from the medieval Knights of St Lazarus, who had a significant historical presence in the area - 6%
Farrier Way - Farriers trained at the Melton Mowbray Defence Animal Training Regiment - 6%
River Eye Road comes from the River Eye, which runs through Melton Mowbray - 4%
Military Way - reflects Melton Mowbray's strong and long-established links with the armed forces - 4%
Veteran Road - recognises the contribution of veterans and highlights Melton Mowbray's continuing military connections - 3%
Victory Road - recognises Melton Mowbray's historic links to national moments of victory and remembrance - 3%
Wreake Road - taken from the River Wreake, which flows close to Melton Mowbray - 2%

The shortlist of options for the road's name was drawn up after discussions with local politicians, community representatives and council officers.

The council said the new road was the largest highways scheme it had ever undertaken and would provide an alternative route for traffic, particularly HGVs.

It will also cut congestion and pollution in the town centre, officials added.

The final cost of the scheme is nearly twice the original budget of £63.5m.

It has been jointly funded by the council, the government, and developers who plan to build 4,500 homes in the area in the long term.

The council said long-term plans still remained for an extra section of the road to continue around the south of the town, although it said there was no defined timescale for that phase of the project.

As it stands, that southern extension to the road would be funded by contributions from housing developers and would be built when new homes are delivered.

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I became my sister's carer at six - she amazes me every day

Thu, 14 May 2026 05:07:40 GMT

Sarah Lilly

Vicky and Sarah are closer than ever in their 40s

Shannen Headley

West Midlands

14 May 2026

One of Sarah Lilly's earliest memories is pushing her younger sister Vicky's wheelchair aged four. She became her second carer two years later.

Vicky was diagnosed with both quadriplegic and athetoid cerebral palsy at birth, and Sarah, the eldest of four siblings, recalls early life being a "constant battle".

"I remember pushing Vicky and my brothers being pushed by my mum in a double buggy," she says.

"It was all hands on deck."

The condition, caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain during birth, affects all four of Vicky's limbs and the family had to quickly adapt to raise a child with complex needs.

But as they navigated challenges together the sisters forged an unbreakable bond, with Sarah also working at the day centre Vicky attends.

Over the last four decades Sarah has watched her younger sister overcome hurdles most people will not experience in their lifetime.

They include a traumatic experience during lockdown at an independent living facility which led the family to contact police.

But in her 11 years working at Cerebral Palsy Midlands, in Harborne, Sarah has seen Vicky achieve things they initially never thought possible - including gold medals for dancing and a love of karaoke.

"I see an independent woman who is very capable despite having profound disabilities," says Sarah, beaming with pride.

Lilly family

Sarah, who is four years older than Vicky, became a second carer from a young age

Growing up in Birmingham, their parents Allyson and Malcolm Lilly had to navigate inconsistent carers, funding, equipment and therapies.

"My dad spent most of his working life as a boiler operator at Cadbury's in Bournville working shifts to provide for us all," Sarah recalls.

While cerebral palsy is not degenerative, as Vicky ages she experiences increased stiffness, fatigue and secondary health challenges.

She has speech and language impairment but is able to communicate via body language, pointing and communication aids such as books which help her to indicate her thoughts and feelings.

Lilly family

Sarah helped her mother care for Vicky while her father was at work

"When words are difficult, Vicky has a way with her facial expressions, the way she moves around, her independence with her chair - she has a way of letting her feelings known," says Sarah.

It was when Vicky was 18 and leaving special education that the family faced another round of challenges.

"Support dropped off significantly," says Sarah.

"The transition from children's to adult services was extremely difficult, and we found there was very little in place to support young adults with complex needs.

"She went from structured education and support into a situation where she was largely at home with our parents."

Sarah Lilly

Vicky requires physical support and remains fully reliant on her carers

What followed was years of inconsistency with carers who sometimes did not turn up and responsibility fell onto their mother.

The physical challenge of caring for Vicky has left her with chronic pain, rheumatoid arthitis and fibromyalgia.

Despite the damage to her brain, Vicky retains capacity in most areas and is able to make her own decisions with the right support.

In her early 30s, she moved to an assisted living facility to live as independently as possible.

It should have been a fresh start, but it coincided with the national lockdowns of 2020 and Vicky became more isolated than ever.

When her family were able to see her, they immediately saw she had become withdrawn and disengaged. Her physical condition had also declined, with matted hair and poor hygiene.

Vicky was able to communicate to a clinical psychologist that she had been sexually assaulted, and the family called in police.

She has been able to consent to Sarah sharing her harrowing experience.

Sisters' solidarity

"She expressed that it was a very distressing experience, and while she may not communicate verbally in detail, her emotions and reactions made it very clear how it affected her," says Sarah.

Vicky was moved to a new home and the investigation went on for several months but eventually closed due to a lack of evidence.

But in a new supportive environment, Vicky was once again able to thrive.

"She refuses to let it define her," Sarah says.

"When things have gone quite difficult for us I was here the next day and every day after it - solidarity in sisterhood."

Sarah had been working in marketing when she saw an ad for a role at the day centre in Harborne that Vicky loved.

"There was a position that came up and I thought I could make a difference," she says.

"I didn't think I could work in the charity sector because my home life was full of battles but I think I've found my calling here."

Spending several days a week together has had a profound effect on both of their lives.

The sisters see each other several days a week

The team at Cerebral Palsy Midlands run activities including pottery, musical production, virtual gaming and Vicky's favourite - wheelchair dance.

In October, Vicky and her team Freewheelin Dance won gold in the Adult Inclusive Dance Category at the West Oxfordshire Open Inclusive Dance Championships.

They danced to Unstoppable by Sia, a title that perfectly reflects her journey, says Sarah.

Vicky is eyeing up more golds at another competition later this month.

Karaoke on trips to Blackpool are among her other achievements and she hopes to holiday on a cruise ship.

Her family and friends can only watch in wonder at what she will go on to accomplish next as she continues to amaze them daily.

"Vicky has really come out of her shell, doing more activities without me as her sister," says Sarah.

"Getting gold medals, having best friends, going on holidays and doing karaoke - she's a dancing diva queen and I'm so proud with how far she's come.

"She's the light of my life and she will say the same about me."

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Boy, 9, aims to become youngest amputee to complete Three Peaks challenge

Wed, 13 May 2026 10:07:01 GMT

Daniel Thomas

Albie-Junior was just four when he first conquered Yr Wyddfa at his dad's side

Sarah Easedale

BBC Wales

13 May 2026

A nine-year-old boy who became the youngest amputee to climb Wales' highest peak now has his sights set on conquering the Three Peaks challenge.

Albie-Junior Thomas, from Holywell in Flintshire, was born without a fibula in his left leg and had his foot removed at 15-months-old.

Regardless, at the age of four he broke records by scaling Yr Wyddfa, also known as Snowdon.

The youngster now hopes to climb the tallest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales in less than 24 hours to raise money for Holywell Town FC.

Daniel Thomas

Albie-Junior and his dad Daniel are training by climbing up Yr Wyddfa most weekends

He has already climbed each one individually alongside his dad Daniel Thomas and the pair have embarked on an 18-week training programme in preparation for the challenge on 18 August.

"We're training a lot, we go to [Yr Wyddfa] every week and we go to the gym," Albie-Junior said.

Youngest amputee to scale Snowdon wins award
Girl dances again after losing leg in lawnmower accident

The father-son duo has also done a night time ascent of Yr Wyddfa to practise finding their way in the dark.

"We went about [midnight] to see where we were with navigation as that's kind of roughly the time we'll be hitting Snowdon," said Daniel, a fitness trainer.

"Each week we're beating our time as well, to try and just push ourselves."

Albie-Junior says to him his blade is just like a normal foot

The pair will begin the challenge by climbing Ben Nevis in Scotland before being driven to Scafell Pike in Cumbria and then Yr Wyddfa in north Wales.

Each mountain trek will be powered by noodles and Albie-Junior's favourite sour sweets.

The schoolboy said it would be "quite unusual" to become the youngest amputee to complete the challenge and added he was proud of himself for signing up.

Some of his friends have also told him they had been inspired by his achievements.

Albie-Junior added: "One of them went up when they were six and they were really proud of themselves and they were sat there [saying], 'how does he do it when he was four?'"

Daniel Thomas

Albie-Junior and his dad have carried out night time training to test their navigation abilities in the dark

Albie-Junior was born with fibular hemimelia, which meant his leg was 5cm (2ins) shorter than the other and his foot was deformed.

His dad said it was a "massive decision" to amputate but having a prosthetic had never held his son back as he learned to walk on a blade.

"It just felt like a normal foot," said Albie-Junior.

Albie with dad Daniel Thomas, mum Rachel Kyrki, sister Sienna and new baby brother Roman-Lee

However, gruelling downhill sections of mountain hikes can cause discomfort to the skin where the prosthetic attaches and pressure on the knee.

It means Albie-Junior, who wants to become a paralympian in future, will be checked over between each stage and will need crucial rests in between each climb.

His dad said the task felt like a natural progression for his son.

"You just have to go one better, don't you? We've done all three, we're just topping up each time," he said.

A cross-cultural rom-com about an assisted marriage

Mon, 11 May 2026 23:56:38 GMT

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