British

In the mixed doubles competition, Britons Henry Patten and Lloyd Glasspool will both seek to beat some of the sport’s biggest stars after coming through two qualifying matches on Monday.

The US Open mixed doubles was controversially revamped last year to include singles stars in a bid to attract more attention to the format.

Under the new format, the top six pairs with the best combined singles rankings received direct entry into the main draw, with another eight receiving wildcards.

The tournament now takes place over three days in the week before the main draw began, and features a shorter scoring system with only four games required to win a set in matches before the final, no ‘advantage’ scoring and 10-point match tie-breaks instead of a third set throughout.

Both Patten and Glasspool had to come through qualifying with their respective partners on Monday.

Patten, a two-time winner of the men’s doubles competition at Wimbledon, and Czech team-mate Katerina Siniakova defeated Americans Peyton Stearns and Christian Harrison in straight sets in their second qualifying match.

Next, Patten and Siniakova – the respective men’s and women’s world number ones in doubles – will take on 24-time major winner Novak Djokovic and top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka in the first round of the main draw.

After defeating El Salvador’s Marcelo Arevalo and France’s Kristina Mladenovic, Glasspool and New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe will face 23-time Grand Slam singles champion Serena Williams and seven-time major winner Carlos Alcaraz.

Alcaraz will be playing his first match in four months after recovering from a wrist injury, while Williams is making her return to the sport after a four-year absence.

Aug. 24 (UPI) — On his first visit to Ukraine as British Prime Minister Andy Burnham promised Monday to share Anglo-French long-range cruise missile technology with Kyiv in its fight with Russia, saying Britain would stand with Ukraine until there was “a just and lasting peace.”

Burnham said European defense contractor MBDA would be authorized to declassify blueprints for the parts of the Storm Shadow/Scalp missiles that are made by Britain to help Ukraine build its own version of the weapon that Britain has for the past three years been giving to Kyiv.

The Storm Shadow enables Ukrainian forces to hit targets 150 miles inside Russia.

Burnham said Britain would join forces with France to build production plants in Ukraine following a similar pledge of help by President Emmanuel Macron, who also told Zelensky at the weekend that France would supply Kyiv with more anti-missile interceptors in the wake of a series of deadly ballistic missile strikes.

“On Ukraine’s 35th anniversary of independence, the Ukrainian people should be in no doubt: the U.K. is behind you today and for as long as it takes. I am proud of the contribution our country has made to Ukraine and I want the Ukrainian people to hear it directly from me that our support will not waver. After all, Ukraine’s security is our security,” Burnham said in a statement issued Sunday night.

“The friendship between our two countries will long outlast Russia’s illegal war. In both the fight and in the rebuilding to come, we will stand with Ukraine and deliver opportunities for people across both our countries. Russia should be in no doubt of our resolve. We will not back down until there is a just and lasting peace,” said Burnham.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov likened the missile plan to pouring gasoline on relations with Russia and warned Britain over “participating in this war” on Ukraine’s side, saying that the Russian military was actively collecting data to uncover and destroy any missile production sites.

“Britain is methodically and regularly adding fuel to the fire and methodically and regularly plotting to prevent any progress in the peace process,” said Peskov.

Burnham’s high-profile, public backing for Zelensky came as he faces challenges both from nightly Russian ballistic missile strikes and to his authority, amid calls for elections which have been suspended for more than four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

As well joining Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for Independence Day celebrations in Kyiv, Burnham was also scheduled to chair a meeting of the U.K.-France-led Coalition of the Willing for talks on providing more help to Ukraine.

Established in 2025, the focus of the 34 country plus Ukraine partnership is to provide security guarantees in the event a cease-fire agreement is reached, including providing a multinational force to support and monitor it from day 1, though not necessarily in the format of a traditional peace-keeping force.

The stand by Burnham, coincided with a similar pledge from from Brussels, backed up by a multi-billion dollar package of fresh European Union military aid.

“On Ukraine’s Independence Day, we show our unfaltering support. Today, we approved $7.1 billion for the air and missile defense systems, missiles, ammunition and radars that Ukraine urgently needs. Europe stands with you today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a post on X.

The package is in addition to $18.7 billion already approved by the 27-country bloc, $9.7 billion of which has already been provided to Kyiv.

Three men in a boat on the Thames

One of my best UK holidays was the week I spent in June 2013 rowing from Oxford to London with two friends, James and Tom.

We hired the boat from a company called Thames Skiff Hire that mainly caters to people recreating the fictional adventure of the characters in Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. Our boat – Ewen – was a 26ft, 130-year-old mahogany skiff. It came with two pairs of oars, a rudder, a cooking stove, a boat hook, and iron hoops that supported a green canvas roof over the hull.

After an hour’s briefing at a slipway by Donnington Bridge, we were off, piloting the boat 80 or so miles downstream to London. That June was blustery and wet. The first day was deceptively fine, but on the second, we got soaked on the stretch of water between Abingdon and Day’s Lock, and came close to packing it in.

Even with the current helping us, the miles ahead seemed like folly. It’s not generally remembered that Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat ends in disappointment and recrimination as the companions abandon their sodden skiff at The Swan in Pangbourne.

But we kept going. And, over the subsequent days, the weather improved, we got better at rowing and it turned into an extraordinary and memorable adventure.

Looking back, the trip appears to have been packed with incident. We visited lovely riverside pubs, brewed tea on uninhabited midstream islands, and popped into a meditation centre run by an ascetic Hindu sect. We passed Medmenham Abbey, the headquarters of Francis Dashwood’s Hellfire Club; Monkey Island, where the doomed romance in Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier unfolds; and we moored for lunch one day at the luxurious faux-gothic hotel Oakley Court, immortalised as Frank-N-Furter’s castle in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Logistically, the trip was never entirely straightforward. Although the Thames skiff was designed to be slept in, it was not big enough for three and the rules around wild camping made things more complicated. I also remember feeling a certain anxiety when mooring the boat to go to the pub. We had been instructed to hammer iron spikes into the riverbank and fasten the skiff to them. But it always seemed weird to walk away from this precious antique and assume it would be there when we got back.

Negotiating the locks that regulate the water level of the river was also tricky. Someone had to remain in the skiff with a boat hook and keep it from bumping against the sides as the water poured out of the sluices. And, of course, rowing that distance, even with the current, requires a certain stick-to-it-ness.

Paradoxically, the minor hardships of the trip probably made it more relaxing than a holiday whose explicit goal is relaxation. The overall pace was slow and reflective. And even within commuting distance of our own beds, it always felt as if we were very far from the daily grind. There were stretches of extraordinary tranquillity, deep silences, wonderful birdlife; I still remember the flash of a kingfisher in the willows outside Abingdon.

Other river-users took kindly to us and our venerable skiff. One evening, we were invited for drinks onboard a beautiful narrowboat whose owner we met as we were queueing at a lock.

Our final destination was Walton-on-Thames, but by the time we reached it, we were enjoying ourselves so much we pushed on to Hampton Court before turning the boat round and heading back upriver to return the skiff.

It’s a trip I’ve always meant to repeat. I’ve travelled much further, at much greater expense and had nothing like as much fun.
Marcel Theroux

A birthday break in the Trossachs

“Gravelfoyle,” my cycle-mad partner, Gary, replied instantly when asked where he’d like to go for his birthday. Gravelfoyle is the nickname of the village of Aberfoyle – gateway to the Trossachs, about 50 miles north-west of Edinburgh, and even closer to Glasgow – which claims to have “the UK’s finest gravel riding” and the waymarked trails to prove it.

Growing up in Edinburgh, I spent many happy summers camping in the Cairngorms and roving around Perthshire. This instilled a habit of going north rather than west, so I didn’t know Scotland’s first national park, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, as well.

Off we set, bikes strapped to the car, passing Falkirk’s Kelpies, whose steel heads reared up alongside the M9, imposing Stirling Castle and the Mordor-esque Wallace Monument in the distance. The drive was only 75 minutes, but we stopped en route at The Smiddy farm shop in Blair Drummond (close to the safari park my brother and I went to as kids) to pick up cheese and chorizo scotch eggs, “the best thing we sell”, according to the butcher.

I’d booked a snug-looking glamping pod on the Cardross Estate near Port of Menteith, not far from Aberfoyle. Tucked away down a single-track road flanked by farmland, where kites soar overhead, it’s a slick operation, from the easy self-check-in to the trolleys for wheeling stuff from the car park. Inside the curved, wooden pod was a sofa, pull-down double bed, shower and fridge, with picture windows framing fields speckled with cattle and crops rolling towards Ben Lomond. We could have chosen one of the estate’s self-catering cottages or a B&B stay in Cardross House, but the pod felt like the most decadent way to enjoy the outdoors, especially once the fire pit was roaring and fizz was in hand.

Later that day, we embarked on our first ride, the 18.2-mile (29.2km) Lomond View, one of three Gravelfoyle routes plotted for gravel biking, and a wet and muddy affair after recent rain. Afterwards, at Aberfoyle Bike Co (where you can hire bikes if you don’t bring your own), the owner, Liam, was ready with a hose and hot drinks.

The next day, we hiked out of the nearby town of Callander on the 3.5-mile (5.3km) circular Bracklinn Falls hiking route. Crossing the bridge over the thundering waterfall, we pressed on through thick forest before returning to baguettes oozing generous fillings at Mhor Bread. The afternoon’s downpour gave us a great excuse to nest in our cosy pod, read and, in my case, nap – the indulgence!

That evening, the sun sprang loose, and we chinked glasses in the flower-strewn garden of Scottish chef Nick Nairn’s namesake restaurant, Nick’s at Port of Menteith. Swallows and housemartins swooped as we ate fish and chips and seafood linguine.

Over three days, we biked and hiked various routes alongside lochs and through yawning, forest-clad valleys, ate fabulous, locally produced food, and soaked up the nurturing goodness of being immersed in the wilderness of the national park.
Kirsten Henton

At the edge of north Wales

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve passed through Ynys Môn (Anglesey) over the years, but until recently I’d never actually been there. Ghosting through the darkness to catch the night ferry from Holyhead to Dublin, I had no idea what the island looked like until our daughter suggested an outing while we were visiting her at her student digs in Bangor, across the Menai Strait.

That first time, she took us to Newborough Forest, a nature reserve on the south-west coast of the island made up of Corsican pines, sand dunes and a sweep of beach that offers panoramic views of the peaks of Eryri (Snowdonia) across the bay. We spent the afternoon walking over to the small tidal island of Ynys Llanddwyn, with its lighthouse and the ruined remains of Saint Dwynwen’s church. Saint Dwynwen is the Welsh patron saint of lovers, the equivalent of Saint Valentine. It was love at first sight for us, and we hatched a plan to come back for a longer visit.

On that next visit, we rented a cottage with floor-to-ceiling windows that framed the mountains on the road out of Llanfair – or Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch to give it its proper majestic name – well, how could we not? What we discovered on that stay pretty much chimed with what I had read in HV Morton’s book In Search of Wales, published in 1932: “The long roads run through flat, green country, linking quiet, stone-built little market towns together.”

But it’s at the edges that Ynys Môn comes into its own. On the first day, we walked the Wales Coast Path along the cliffs at Rhoscolyn on Ynys Gybi (Holy Island) in the north – an island off an island with dramatic sea arches – and enjoyed a feeling of apartness, of almost floating out to sea.

On another day, we parked up at the beach at Rhosneigr and again followed the signs for the coast path, walking through the marram grass and gorse on the dunes until we found a sheltered cove to go swimming. Then we drove across the island that at one time was called Môn, Mam Cymru (Anglesey, the Mother of Wales) because it was said to grow all the corn needed to feed the country, to Red Wharf Bay and another sweeping beach at the bottom of a single-track lane. There was no corn on the menu at the Boathouse cafe, but we made do with crab meat crumpets and mussels.

Leafing through HV Morton’s book back at the cottage that night, I came across a line that made me rue the fact that I had rattled through this glorious little island on the boat train on so many occasions, simply seeing it as an embarkation point without ever having had the imagination to jump off and spend a bit of time here: “Holyhead is an excellent place for a holiday … you have bathing, fine cliff scenery, and all round you is excellent flat walking country with a supreme view of the whole Snowdon range.”
Andy Pietrasik

North Yorkshire with 42 pals

Twelve years ago, I was sitting in my son Ned’s primary school playground when I said to my friend Vicky, “I’m thinking of taking a few friends up to Yorkshire.”

“I’m in,” she said.

Word got out, and before I knew it 42 of us were heading to lovely Cote Ghyll Mill, on the edge of the pretty village of Osmotherley. It was a youth hostel in those days, before its recent transformation into a B&B. Ned and I made a giant Welcome to Yorkshire banner and Blu-Tacked handwritten names on to the bedroom doors.

None of us realised that week would become our June tradition, until Covid brought it to a halt.

Brilliantly, my mum and dad took charge one day, leading us on a six-mile circular walk from Grosmont through the fairytale hamlet of Beck Hole, a centre for the traditional game of quoits, and back across the North York Moors.

I remember Mum, ever the feeder in our family, opening the boot of their car to reveal her homemade fruit cake alongside a stack of enormous sandwiches they had collected from Danby Bakery. Dad brought a few short thumbsticks (traditional walking sticks) he’d made for the kids from hazel branches. Florence, now 19, still has hers, and Julie, her mum, now uses it to reach an awkward light switch.

Halfway round was Dad’s favourite pub, the Birch Hall Inn, where his drink of choice was always the same: a bitter shandy. The pub doubles as a sweet shop and we came away clutching paper bags of lemon sherbets, cola cubes and pear drops, all bought by the ounce, while Ned carefully chose Barratt’s liquorice sticks for his grandad, as is tradition.

Part of our walk crossed the North Yorkshire Moors Railway line to Whitby, and, after watching a train steaming past us, we all wanted to take a ride. It is a magical way to see the moors. Every carriage told its own story. Couples were more romantic, kids chatted around the tables, and happy heads hung out of the windows to catch the smell of coal and steam. Eleven-year-old Eleanor caught far too much coal dust in her eye and ended up in A&E in Northallerton. Thankfully, she was fine.

In Whitby, Ned’s pals buried him in the sand on Tate Hill beach. Although we brushed him down and emptied his shoes, he still left a little trail of Whitby all the way back to the station and on to the train.

Our trip wouldn’t have been complete without a visit to my own boozer of choice, the Sun Inn, or Spout House, in Bilsdale. Its infamous cricket field, with a dramatic slope where fielders on the boundary can disappear from view, is where my dad and brother played. Spike W, AKA Prince Harry, is also recorded in the score book.

My old primary school friend Audrey is the landlady now. I used to ride her ponies, her dad was the village milkman, and she somehow makes everyone who walks through the door feel as if they’ve come home.

Audrey laid on a domino tournament and the most amazing Yorkshire platter, with cakes worthy of victory at any country show. Competition was fierce, with some local diehard domino players, mainly farmers, joining in. Harriet, aged just six, beat the lot of them. She burst into tears, while her mum, Steph, cried with laughter.

This year, I casually asked Ned, now 21, “Do you think anyone might fancy going back to Yorkshire?”

“Absolutely, Mum,” he replied.

So we’re going back to Cote Ghyll Mill this month.

I’ve dug out the original Welcome to Yorkshire banner and Harriet, now 18, is fiercely ready to defend her domino title.
Jill Mead

A quick dip into Bristol

Travelling by train from Kent to Bristol on one of the hottest days of the year might have been pretty close to madness. In sweltering heat and amid cancellations and delays, I arrived in the city hot, broken and miserable. Less than an hour later, I was gliding through the water at the city’s lido, smugly thanking myself for booking what may be one of the best summer city hotels in the country.

I was in Bristol for the opening of an exhibition – Polly Braden: Against the Tide – at the brilliant Arnolfini arts centre, which seemed the perfect excuse to visit a city that had somehow eluded me. The Arnolfini is a leading hub for the contemporary arts, housed in a 19th-century warehouse on Narrow Quay beside the harbour, a vibrant area packed with restaurants, cafes and bars, as well as some of the city’s leading tourist attractions, including the aquarium and Brunel’s SS Great Britain.

My base was the Lido Townhouse, a six-bedroom hotel in a Georgian building that opened in 2024 in the city’s sought-after Clifton neighbourhood. Each of the rooms has been done out simply but with fabulous taste, featuring colourful throws, sparkling white bedlinen and jauntily tiled bathrooms.

The real attraction is the lido itself, which dates back to Victorian times and has been restored after falling into disrepair. Open year-round, with the water heated to 20-24C, the pool is flanked by old-fashioned changing cabins on one side and a bar and restaurant on the other, with windows and a terrace that look out over the action. Booking directly with the hotel grants you full access to the lido, which is just a few steps across a (very quiet) road in the hotel’s robes and slippers. In 24 hours, I managed to squeeze in three swims, including one at 9.30pm (it closes at 10pm), emerging to sit in my robe at the bar nursing a glass of amaro. Breakfast the next day out on the deck was equally enjoyable, with coffee and a generous plate of Turkish eggs and coffee.

A colleague and I paid £210 for two double rooms and a shared bathroom on the top floor of the hotel, which, with unlimited swims thrown in and 10% off our food bill, seemed like an excellent deal. The harbour is a 25-minute stroll from the hotel along shop-lined Georgian streets, past picturesque College Green and the cathedral. So, though it was a lightning visit, the city showed its best side. A return trip is on the cards.
Max Benato

Most people, when asked what terrorism is, will say that it is the use of violence and terror to create fear among people. This is broadly the dictionary definition. The 2017 Manchester Arena bombing at an Ariana Grande concert, in which 22 people, including many children, were killed, is a clear example.

Yet the legal definition of terrorism in Britain is far broader than this common understanding. Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows even “damage to property” to constitute terrorism when it is carried out for a political, religious, racial or ideological purpose and is intended to influence the government or intimidate the public. Where firearms or explosives are involved, the latter requirement does not apply.

Including politically motivated damage to property within the definition was controversial from the start. When Parliament debated the bill in 1999, animal liberation activists were among the groups MPs had in mind.

Labour MP Alan Simpson warned during the debate that by defining attacks on property as terrorism, “we transform the relationship between civil protest movements and elected Parliaments and the judicial system.”

The criticism did not end with Parliament. The Supreme Court later described Section 1’s definition of terrorism as “very far-reaching”, while David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, called it “remarkably broad – absurdly so in some cases”.

In his 2012 report, Anderson observed:

“The current law allows members of any nationalist or separatist group to be turned into terrorists by virtue of their participation in a lawful armed conflict… however odious the regime which they have attacked.”

In his 2014 Terrorism Report, he warned:

“To render people subject to the terrorism laws whom no sensible person would think of as terrorists risks destroying the trust upon which these special powers depend for their acceptance by the public.”

Yet defining what can count as terrorism is only part of the story. Not every organisation whose conduct falls within that definition is proscribed. That decision rests with the government.

Proscription therefore adds a political choice: Which organisations should be banned, making membership and inviting support for them criminal offences.

For example, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed Kurdish group that has fought the Turkish state for decades, is proscribed in Britain. Its Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is not, because PYD-led forces became Western allies in the fight against ISIS (ISIL).

Britain proscribed Hamas’s military wing in 2001. In 2021, Home Secretary Priti Patel extended that proscription to Hamas in its entirety, including its political wing, declaring the previous distinction between the two “artificial”. Many civilian members of Hamas who had never picked up a gun were now deemed terrorists alongside its fighters.

By collapsing the distinction between Hamas’s military and political wings, Britain legitimised Israel’s portrayal of Hamas’s civilian administration as part of a terrorist apparatus and, with it, the targeting of hospitals and schools as terrorist infrastructure.

The asymmetry is stark. Britain’s terrorism laws can criminalise non-state organisations and those who support them, while state terrorism, including Israel’s, remains outside their reach.

The proscription of Palestine Action brought a different consequence of these laws into focus: Their use against protest in Britain. Palestine Action is a British direct-action group that has targeted arms companies supplying Israel. In July 2025, the government proscribed it under the Terrorism Act 2000.

United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Turk warned that the decision to proscribe Palestine Action “raises serious concerns that counter-terrorism laws are being applied to conduct that is not terrorist”.

The ban has been fiercely contested in the courts. In February 2026, the Divisional Court ruled the proscription unlawful. On June 15, the Court of Appeal reversed that decision and upheld the ban. The court also described Elbit as carrying out a “lawful business”, ignoring its role in supplying the Israeli military during the genocide.

In upholding the ban, Lady Chief Justice Sue Carr drew a contrast with the Suffragettes, saying Palestine Action was not “a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the Suffragettes operating transparently in the open” but “a covert group operating in cells”.

Carr’s characterisation rests on an extraordinarily sanitised version of suffragette history.

In November 1909, a suffragette attacked Winston Churchill with a horse whip. In the same month, suffragettes, armed with a catapult and missiles, attacked Prime Minister H. H. Asquith’s car in Liverpool.

In 1912, Suffragettes attempted to set fire to the Theatre Royal in Dublin during a matinee attended by Asquith. They left a canister of gunpowder close to the stage. Earlier in the day, Mary Leigh had hurled a hatchet towards Asquith.

In 1913, four postmen in Dundee were severely injured by phosphorus chemicals left in post boxes. The following year, Mary Richardson slashed the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery, while bombs were discovered in St Paul’s and churches were burned down.

This history sits uneasily with Carr’s distinction. The Suffragettes themselves engaged in politically motivated attacks on property and people of precisely the kind that Britain’s modern definition of terrorism is broad enough to capture.

The Filton case shows what this can mean in practice. When the Filton 25 attacked an Elbit factory in Bristol, they were remanded in custody for up to 18 months. When six of them went on trial in November 2025, the jury acquitted them of aggravated burglary, the most serious charge, and failed to reach verdicts on criminal damage. No defendant was convicted at that first trial. At a retrial, four were convicted of criminal damage; only one was eventually convicted of grievous bodily harm, without intent.

The jury was not told that guilty verdicts could later lead to the offences being treated as having a “terrorist connection” for sentencing. Justice Jeremy Johnson subsequently made precisely that finding. Johnson had also ruled out defences based on necessity and the need to prevent the greater crime of genocide. In doing so, he usurped the role of the jury.

The consequences of the ban were not confined to those accused of taking direct action against Elbit. Once Palestine Action was proscribed, inviting or expressing support for the group became a terrorism offence.

When the government proscribed Palestine Action, people defied the ban. Nearly 4,000 people have been arrested for holding placards supporting Palestine Action.

The Home Office reported that in the year ending March 2026, there were 3,061 terrorism-related arrests, 2,819 of them linked to suspected support for Palestine Action. The average age of those arrested in connection with Palestine Action was 59, compared with 31 for all other terrorism-related arrests. A majority of the Palestine Action arrests were women.

The profile of Britain’s average “terrorist” changed from a man aged 31 to a woman aged 59.

This is where Britain’s extraordinarily broad definition of terrorism, combined with the government’s power to proscribe organisations, has led. Conduct once understood as protest and political expression can now be prosecuted under terrorism legislation.

As Orwell wrote, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” When the meaning of “terrorism” is stretched far enough, the extraordinary powers attached to that word stretch with it.

Today, my own trial begins. I am accused of inviting support for Hamas. My prosecution is not separate from the story told here. It is where that story leads.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

LONDON — British Prime Minister Andy Burnham exchanged messages with an impostor posing as President Trump’s chief of staff, according to reports published Monday.

A spokesperson for Burnham declined to comment, saying it was policy not to discuss “national security matters.”

Politico cited four unnamed officials in first reporting that Burnham thought he was messaging with Susie Wiles before he became suspicious and cut off communications.

Last year, the U.S. government investigated a series of messages that elected officials, business executives and other prominent figures in the U.S. received messages from someone posing as Wiles.

Soon after those incidents, the State Department warned U.S. diplomats of attempts to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio and possibly other officials using artificial intelligence. The warning followed the discovery that an impostor posing as Rubio had attempted to reach out to at least three foreign ministers, a U.S. senator and a governor.

The FBI had also warned of “malicious actors” misusing AI to impersonate senior U.S. government officials.

Burnham, who became prime minister less than a month ago, has tried to forge good ties with the White House. Trump initially warmed to Burnham’s predecessor, Keir Starmer, before souring on him.

Hunt is not afraid to voice her bold ambitions.

Announcing that she “wants it all” before these championships, Hunt, even in these early stages of her senior career, has demonstrated a propensity to thrive on major stages, and under ever-increasing expectation.

“Four golds was the dream and perhaps dreams do come true,” said Hunt.

“It’s so beyond the bounds of my dreams that I’m just euphoric. I can’t believe it’s happening.

“I think it will sink in later, maybe on the podium. I’m just so proud of myself and the way I’ve handled this week.”

The Briton has already spoken about the big goal: repeating her sweep of the sprint golds at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

Her playlist – she creates one for every major event – is already being built as she begins to visualise how that might feel.

She will be well aware how much work there is to do. So far this year, she ranks 14th-fastest worldwide in the 200m, and 25th in the 100m. Asher-Smith’s British records, at 21.88 and 10.83 seconds respectively, remain untouched since 2019.

The next opportunity for global honours, beyond the inaugural World Ultimate Championships in September, will arrive at next year’s World Championships in Beijing.

And, once the dust has settled on a momentous week, Hunt will set about translating continental domination to glory on the sport’s biggest stages – just as British team-mate Asher-Smith achieved following her European treble in 2018.

“Amy has already won world silver, but she was not a favourite then,” Jackson said.

“Now, it’s a big change. She is a champion and she has to go and take on the best in the world.

“Is it going to be easy? No. But this will fill Amy with confidence. She will be on start lines trusting her ability is great, and I’m hoping that she will go from strength and strength.”

Aug. 14 (UPI) — British Prime Minister Andy Burnham imposed a temporary ban on the sale of disposable barbecues and deployed military personnel on Friday in a battle against widespread wildfires across the country.

Speaking from the hard-hit West Midlands of England, Burnham said the measures were made necessary by continuing waves of hot weather and extreme drought.

“We cannot accept this as the new normal,” he said in a video address while recounting how fires the region “have destroyed homes, forced people to evacuate and left firefighters injured while protecting others.”

Much of England and Wales remains in a deep drought and is facing another period of extreme heat a day after the Met Office reported temperatures reaching 100.6 degrees in London for the fifth-hottest day on record in the nation’s history, the British leader noted.

“Farmers are watching crops fail and firefighters have faced hundreds of wildfires in a matter of weeks,” he said. “This is what climate change looks like here and now.”

The prime minister said the barbeque ban, emergency funding for fire and rescue services and deploying military support were decided during a meeting of COBRA, the government’s emergency response committee, earlier this week.

But, he added, “we also have to tackle the causes of climate change and make Britain more resilient to the extreme weather we’re already experiencing. We shouldn’t just accept this as inevitable and I don’t.”

The British government has already announced plans to support the development of nine new water reservoirs and improve resilience to future droughts, floods and extreme weather, as well as a investment of nearly $135 million million “to strengthen the country’s response to wildfires and extreme weather.”

Thursday’s extreme temperatures meant Britain this year has already seen the most number of days reaching or exceeding 97 degrees (four days) and 98 degrees (three days), as well as equaling 2022 for seeing two days of 100 degrees.

As the weekend began, forecasters predicted a gradual cooling from north to south across the country but with much-needed rainfall remaining scarce.

“A front moving south eastwards across the U.K. on Monday and Tuesday could bring northern areas some rain but amounts of rain in the south will be small at most and the majority will fall over Northern Ireland and Scotland,” Steven Keates of the Met Office said in a release.

“The next meaningful rain forecast for these very dry areas could be towards the end of next week as an area of low pressure influences our weather from the southwest.”

Great British Sewing Bee contestant were left shocked after a huge twist was annouced

Great British Sewing Bee judges announced a huge twist.

During Tuesday’s (August 11) episode of the BBC hit show, the sewing room was transformed for Sports Week with the eight remaining sewers facing a series of challenges designed to test everything from technical precision to their creativity under pressure.

They had to go above and beyond to impress judges Patrick Grant and Esme Young and earn their place in next week’s episode. However, not long into the show, things took an unexpected turn as Patrick revealed a major change to the competition.

Everyone was left stunned when the Savile Row tailor delivered the biggest surprise of the episode and announced that the contestants would no longer be working individually.

Just before they could get stuck into the Transformation Challenge, Sophie told the sewers: “It’s time for the transformation challenge, where you take something that’s been through the mill and give it a new lease of life.”

She then turned to Patrick and asked: “So Patrick, what have you got for them?” Patrick revealed the unusual materials waiting for the contestants.

He said: “Well as you can see, we’ve given you wind surfer sails. We want you to transform these into a two-piece outfit but for the first time in the sewing room, you will be working and being judged in pairs.”

The announcement immediately left the contestants stunned, with everyone gasping at the unexpected twist but Patrick wasn’t finished. “Which, like all classic cup competitions, will be drawn at random,” he added, meaning the sewers had no control over who they would be teaming up with.

Fashion designer Esme then laid down the challenge for the newly formed teams. “We want you to make a cohesive outfit. So, remember teamwork makes the dream work,” she explained.

Rather than being judged solely on their own individual creation, the pairs had to produce two pieces that worked together as a complete outfit – making communication just as important as technical ability.

And the choice of material was certainly not straightforward as they were presented with windsurfing sails. They had to work out how to turn a tough, technical material designed for use on the water into something fashionable and wearable, all while working against the clock.

Adele was paired with Tim, Emma had to work with Heather, Beth worked with Minnie and Rebecca’s with Anna. Despite everyone’s hard work it was Rebecca and Anna who came out on top in first place after impressing the judges with their crisscross trouser suit.

Patrick explained: “We chose this one as our winner because it was so dramatically different from the sail. But the way the whole thing ties together is exemplary.” Meanwhile Esme added: “I think it’s brilliant.”

The Great British Sewing Bee is available to stream on BBC iPlayer

Paddleboarding the Esk in North Yorkshire

It’s early afternoon on an unusually hot and sunny Yorkshire day. I’m standing on my paddleboard on the tidal section of the River Esk, near Whitby’s New Bridge, as cars stream across. The 28-mile-long Esk is special, as it is the only major river in Yorkshire that flows directly into the North Sea.

Ahead of me is a bustling marina, the famous abbey and the West and East piers. The town is full to the brim with visitors in search of the best fish and chips, amusement arcades and tales of Dracula and Captain Cook. Later, in the autumn, goths in their finery will parade the cobbled streets.

Here on the river, however, it is tranquil. A salmon leaps from the water to my right, bubbles rise from the seaweed beneath my board, and to my left, the riverbank absorbs abandoned boats into its grassy knolls. On an evening paddle, you might spot the crews from one of the town’s three main rowing clubs (Whitby Coastal, Friendship or Fisherlads).

You can launch from the slipway at the far end of the marina back car park near Coates Marine. Arriving by train or bus, it’s a few minutes’ walk from the station. Launch about one and a half hours before high tide and head right towards the New Bridge and Ruswarp. Be mindful, this section of the river is tidal and water levels do drop.

After taking in the magnificent view, I turn and paddle towards Ruswarp, a couple of miles inland, passing under the Larpool Viaduct, which carries the 22-mile Cinder Track. Branches of willow trees droop elegantly into the water offering welcome shade. Swans glide past and Highland cattle graze nonchalantly in the fields. A couple hike the path that runs alongside the river.

I first paddled on the Esk with my young sons in 2006. Twenty years later, it still remains a peaceful, hidden gem. We hired kayaks from Ruswarp Pleasure Boats (established 1874) just above the weir, which also rents rowing boats and now paddleboards. For a £5 fee, it offers a private jetty to launch your own craft, which is ideal as access to the river is very limited along this stretch. There is free parking on the roadside here, and with the number 95 bus stop (Arriva) nearby, public transport is an option. Paddle up to Perry’s Plants garden centre at Briggswath just before Sleights and then turn back.

You’ll pass the Waterside restaurant and Whitby Wellbeing’s wild sauna along the way, so family and friends can eat, sweat or dip while you float along, letting the river carry your worries away. Afterwards, nip to Botham’s in Sleights for some Resolution tea and lovely iced lemon buns. I promise, it’ll be a grand paddleboarding day out in Yorkshire.
Jo Moseley is the author of Stand-Up Paddleboarding in Great Britain

Wild camping on the Dart in Devon

On the uplands of Dartmoor, two tributaries – the East Dart and West Dart – join beneath ancient woodland at the well-named hamlet of Dartmeet. They entwine as the River Dart, which flows for 47 miles from open moor into steep wooded valleys and passes peat bogs and tors, oak forest, market towns and rolling pasture before it runs into the sheltered waters of the south Devon coast.

Its upper reaches retain a pristine wildness that feels increasingly rare in southern England. The Dartmoor national park is criss-crossed by some of the cleanest bodies of water in the country, home to salmon, sea trout and otters, while the wooded valleys below are rich remnants of ancient temperate rainforest.

The Dart’s name is thought to derive from an old Celtic word meaning “river where oak trees grow”, and the lower banks are indeed lined with native oak trees, thick with mosses and ferns. It may be one of Britain’s smaller protected landscapes, but Dartmoor feels remarkably untamed. You can cross it on foot in a few days, yet it’s surprisingly easy to lose yourself in the rolling mists, twisting woodlands and miles of open moorland of this ethereal landscape.

It’s that sense of freedom that keeps drawing me back. I love nothing more than stuffing a tent into my rucksack and heading out on foot for a riverside camp, following the Dart and its web of streams and creeks until I find a quiet bend or grassy bank for the night. I fall asleep to the steady rush and rumble of the water and wake up early for a swim in one of its deep, crystal-clear pools before packing up and walking on.

I can roam about like this because Dartmoor is the only place in England where wild camping is legally permitted. In the national park, “backpack”, or wild camping, is allowed for one or two nights in some areas, provided you stay away from roads and settlements and leave no trace of your visit.

Sometimes, I have company on the riverbanks. I’ve huddled in bivouac bags with friends and woken totally covered in sparkling droplets of dew. I’ve camped on the water’s edge and woken in the middle of the night to what sounded like an invading army around my tent. It turned out to be a troop of scouts, arriving spectacularly late at their campsite and gamely pitching flimsy-looking tents by the light of their headlamps. And once, at dusk, I think I glimpsed the sleek head of an otter slipping into the current. But more often than not, once evening falls and I sit by the door of my tent watching the water darken, I have the Dart all to myself.
Sian Lewis

Fishing on the Dove in the Peak District

There’s a trout rising upstream from where I am standing on the bank of the River Dove in Beresford Dale, on the border of Staffordshire and Derbyshire. I mark the spot – just beyond that overhanging tree branch – and rue the fact that it will make casting a fly without getting snagged tricky. I need to get into the river and wade over to the other bank for a clear shot. But it’s a steep drop to the water and the pools look deep in this stretch; deep enough to go over my chest waders. I walk back downstream to a spot where I can safely enter the fast-flowing river, but realise it’s going to be a long wade upstream. Too long and splashy, which will disturb any fish and scatter them. So, I get out again and walk back to where I first spotted the feeding trout. I am caught in indecision, and repeat this pattern several times before giving up on this particular quarry.

The meander at this section of the river has formed a little peninsula, and standing in the middle of it is a fishing hut, where I go to drink a coffee and consider my tactics. This isn’t any old fishing hut, however. This one is a substantial structure, built from stone, with pillars framing the door and with an inscription in Latin, “Piscatoribus Sacrum” (Sacred to all Fishermen).

In the lintel stone is a cypher of intertwined letters: CC and IW, for Charles Cotton, the poet who built this “little fishing house” on his estate in 1674, and Izaak Walton, who wrote The Compleat Angler in 1653. Cotton added “Instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream” to accompany the fifth edition of Walton’s book, considered to be the first technical manual of fly-fishing and one of the most reprinted books in the English language.

The River Dove is the spiritual home of fly-fishing because of Walton and Cotton, and it still holds a mythical place in fishers’ minds. As someone who grew up on the Staffordshire-Derbyshire border, and fished the Dove where it joins the River Trent at Newton Solney in my youth, I was well aware of the river’s special status. But, at that age, I wasn’t about to give myself the extra homework of reading a 17th-century treatise on fishing and nature. Instead, an English teacher who fished furnished me with the only line I needed to know: “you will find it one of the purest crystalline streams you have seen.”

The stretch of the Dove I’m fishing – called the Temple beat after Cotton’s fishing house – races and tumbles through a narrow tree-lined dale hemmed in by limestone crags. Near the bridge above a section known as the Pike Pool, a family is splashing and paddling in the early summer sunshine. There’s a popular 4-mile loop that starts at Hartington village, and the path is too busy with walkers to fish, so I enter the river at the bridge and wade and fish “the vale it winds through like a snake” until I spot the rising trout and stop for my coffee break.

Later that day, I lose all sense of time in the hypnotic flow of catching and releasing a series of small wild brown trout. Just beyond the fishing house, someone has carved a large hole into the base of a dead oak tree, the perfect place to sit and watch dippers skit along the banks and damselflies dance upon the surface. A little further on, a large Hereford cow is drinking from the river, framed by overhanging trees and with a verdant conical hill in the background. The scene strikes me as being a pastoral masterpiece, much like The Compleat Angler.
Andy Pietrasik

A day ticket on the Temple beat can be booked through Fishing Breaks from £65

Sourcing the Severn and Wye in mid-Wales

It will prove to be the best of hikes, and in some ways the worst. I start out early from Eisteddfa Gurig on the A44, hoping to get going while the day is cool. My plan is to visit the sources of two of Britain’s greatest rivers – the Severn and the Wye which, by a fluke of geography, lie a couple of miles apart on a mountain ridge in mid-Wales.

The path leads me up Pumlumon Fawr, a 752-metre (2,467ft) massif with magnificent views to the Irish Sea. The day is scorching hot and the bald sheep-nipped hills look only an inch of topsoil away from becoming a desert. Of the two rivers, the Severn gets the finer start in life. There is a marker post next to a deep, dark pool of water that is being squeezed from the bog. In ancient times, humans worshipped springs, but there are no garlands here, only a few sea shells carried upstream by hikers from the Bristol Channel on the 224-mile (360km) Severn Way.

A short walk downstream brings me into a deep valley where the Severn, already gathering force, bounces through ferny glades. It feels as if someone is caring for this river, determined to give it a good start in life. There is a useful car park further down the valley, but I cut away through the forest to find the origin of its twin, the Wye.

I have hopes of a dip in a mountain pool, but there are misgivings. Arguably the loveliest river in Britain, the Wye has been hitting headlines for a severe decline in water quality. Dead salmon have been found, algal blooms reported. Campaigners, however, have scored a major victory in creating a charter of rights, including the right to flow and be free of pollution. Significant authorities, including Powys and Herefordshire, have adopted it. There is hope.

The first omen is the defunct Nant Iago lead mine, a reminder that human impact on the environment is nothing new. Government statistics show that about 900 miles (1,500km) of our rivers and estuaries are still contaminated by 19th-century mines. I skirt around the old workings and walk up the valley. In the wrinkles of this hillside, the Wye has a moorland birth, a harsh ordeal. No sooner has the clean, bright water started out than it’s being crapped in by sheep and messed about by humans. Any thought of a dip in a pool, or even a sip from the source, is brutally quashed.

The moorland/forested contrast with the Severn is not unplanned: scientists have been controlling and assessing these non-identical twins since a time when flood risks and algal blooms were not issues. Whatever their conclusions, however, our expectations of rivers remain pitifully low. In 17th-century Britain, by contrast, salmon were so plentifully available for people to fish for themselves that there was little market for them.

I carry on down the Wye Valley Walk, a 136-mile route whose leaping salmon logo is looking sadly inappropriate. After a few miles, I turn west up a side stream that has a toxic reddish tint. Only a Martian would take a dip. This has become a grim trudge, but finally, up a side valley, I stumble on deep pools alive with tiny frogs. Spruce and pine have been planted. There are orchids and bog asphodels. Then, a magnificent golden-ringed dragonfly settles next to me. My spirits are restored. Maybe the Wye can bounce back. I set off for nearby Llangurig where there’s a pub, the Bluebell Inn, and a tearoom.
Kevin Rushby

Canoeing the Tay in Perthshire

The Tay is Scotland’s longest river (117 miles) and Britain’s mightiest, discharging more water than the longer Thames and Severn combined. Rising on the slopes of Ben Lui in Argyll, gathering strength from Highland burns before widening through Perthshire and eventually reaching the North Sea at Dundee.

It’s the middle stretch, from Killin to Dunkeld through Highland Perthshire, that I love best. At Killin, we’ve happily lost whole afternoons to picking wild raspberries, skimming stones and climbing trees. My boys climbed their first Munro here, Ben Lawers, when their legs were much shorter. We should have had beautiful loch views from the top, but reached the summit in cloud instead. They loved it.

Further along the banks at Lawers and Kenmore is where my sisters and I head for restorative escapes: alternating freezing loch swims with a hot tub has become our preferred form of therapy.

I’ve often walked by the river, but was curious to see it from a different angle: by canoe. Aberfeldy is a two-hour drive north from Edinburgh, so it’s an early start for me and my son Louis, 15. We’re welcomed at Beyond Adventure with coffee and a briefing, then transferred upriver with two long orange canoes and our instructor, Kevin Meldrum.

Our route begins on the River Lyon just before its confluence with the Tay. In this calm eddy, we get a quick lesson in paddling and turning the boat. Louis is 6ft-plus and I am not, which seemed a recipe for paddling in circles. Kevin keeps us right, and Louis soon learns to calmly counteract any erratic paddling on my side. We meet the Tay over a gentle rapid and begin paddling downstream. We settle into the river’s rhythm, learning to read the current and steer around camouflaged anglers patiently waiting for salmon, and spotting herons standing guard in the shadows.

The banks of the Tay are changing, thanks to the returning beaver population. We don’t spot any (they emerge at dusk), but we do see evidence of stripped bark and felled trees by the river. Paddling into a tree-lined eddy, we admire a carefully constructed beaver lodge.

We pull the canoes ashore on a little island for a picnic lunch, and as we eat our sandwiches, there’s a flash of iridescent turquoise. My first ever sighting of a kingfisher.

It’s great to be on the water with a guide who knows the river so well. At each stretch of rapids, we’re set a route, and navigate each one facing downstream, still smiling. As we return to Aberfeldy, we paddle under General Wade’s Bridge, unchanged since it was built in 1733. We’ve been on the water for three hours, but it feels all too soon when we approach the Beyond Adventure base. Reluctant to leave, we find a deep, peaty pool for a swim.

Heading home, we stop for a pizza (a teenage second lunch) and cold drinks at The Taybank in Dunkeld. Watching the Tay flow past the beer garden, I realise the river looks different to me now. Once you’ve travelled with it, it’s hard not to wonder what’s waiting around the next bend.
Ailsa Sheldon
Beyond Adventure offers half-day discovery canoeing tours from £63 adults, £47.25 children, £199.50 for a family (two adults, two children)

Aug. 8 (UPI) — Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate their homes as a massive wildfire spread through western Canada on Saturday.

The Bald Range fire in British Columbia has doubled in size since it was first reported on Friday, the BBC reported.

Power went out in the district of Summerland, whose 12,000 residents were ordered to evacuate.

Another 8,000 people have been ordered to evacuate in nearby areas, The Independent reported.

The blaze remained uncontrolled as of Saturday.

British Columbia Premier David Eby declared a state of emergency on Saturday.

“Throughout the night and into this morning, first responders, BC Wildfire Service crews, RCMP officers, emergency management teams, and local communities worked tirelessly to keep people safe and fight the fire near Summerland,” he said in a statement on X. “They continue to do everything possible to protect people and communities.”

But, Eby added, “If you’re under an evacuation order, leave now.”

Authorities said there were some 100 wildfires burning across the province.

Authorities warn residents to be prepared to leave their homes as fast-moving wildfires spread across western Canada.

The district of Summerland in British Columbia has issued evacuation orders, as powerful wildfires continue to sweep across western Canada.

A state of emergency was declared early on Saturday morning, with thousands displaced from their homes as the Bald Range wildfire continues to burn out of control.

“Summerland and Faulder and Peachland. Tonight our hearts are heavy as we watch the Bald Range wildfire. The firefighters and first responders are doing an incredible job and my heart is with them, as well as all the evacuees and volunteers,” Amelia Boultbee, a Canadian MP representing Penticton-Summerland, wrote in a social media post on Friday night.

The district is home to about 12,000 people, according to the 2021 census. On Saturday, local officials announced that the area had lost power due to the fire and instructed residents to boil water.

Saturday morning’s evacuation orders affect the Peachland watershed, the Brenda Mines area, Lower Princeton and its downtown core areas, according Emergency Info BC, a provincial government service.

All residents were asked to prepare to leave immediately.

Canada has faced a summer of large wildfires, with blazes tearing across provinces such as Ontario and Quebec.

Scientists have said that climate change has worsened wildfire conditions in recent decades, with areas across the globe experiencing periods of extreme drought and heat.

In recent months, Canada and the United States experienced a record-setting heat dome that helped exacerbate wildfire conditions by drying out vegetation.

To the south of British Columbia, the US state of Washington also experienced large wildfires this month, contributing to poor air quality across the region.

Firefighting teams from countries such as Mexico, Australia, France and New Zealand have all provided support to Canada. About 1,500 firefighters are currently deployed across British Columbia, which has issued 39 evacuation orders and 49 alerts.

British Columbia’s Premier David Eby said earlier this week that the western province has sufficient resources to deal with the fires and has additional firefighters and aircraft at its disposal.

“For those in the area, please keep following updates,” Eby said in a social media post on Friday night. “If asked to evacuate, go immediately. The conditions are changing extremely quickly.”

British regulators on Thursday cleared tech scion David Ellison’s $111-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery — the latest international agency to find the blockbuster combination of TV channels and historic film studios wouldn’t dampen competition.

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority and the government’s culture minister separately reviewed Paramount Skydance’s proposed Warner acquisition, which is facing significant turbulence in the U.S. as California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta leads a coalition of state attorneys general who are battling to try to unravel the mammoth deal.

“The evidence shows that, after the merger, Paramount will continue to face sufficient competition in the various areas it operates in, including the production and distribution of films and TV content, the supply of children’s channels to pay-TV providers and the supply of streaming services,” the authority said in a statement.

Earlier this summer, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy said she was weighing whether to intervene by launching an in-depth investigation into potential harms that could result from the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. combination.

Nandy opted not to issue an “intervention notice” after striking an agreement with Paramount that provides “assurances and legally-binding commitments” that the company would not abuse its market clout.

The authority’s approval was significant because Paramount owns CBS News, children’s channel Nickelodeon and Channel 5, one of the largest over-the-air television broadcasters in the United Kingdom.

Warner Bros. Discovery owns HBO, CNN, Cartoon Network and TNT Sports, which broadcasts the Olympics, Champions League and Premier League soccer matches.

Ellison and his team now have won clearances from 66 antitrust regulators, including the U.S. Department of Justice, and regulators in Australia, Germany, France, Italy, China and Canada, among others. The European Commission also approved the deal last month.

“These clearances recognize that the combination of Paramount and WBD will enhance consumer choice and enable a creative-first company to invest in more projects and bring stories to audiences worldwide,” Paramount said in a statement.

Still, the deal is stalled in the U.S.

Bonta and his fellow Democrat state attorneys general have won early victories in their court battle, and a federal judge this week scheduled a March trial — months later than Paramount had hoped — to determine whether the merger would violate the century-old U.S. Clayton Antitrust Act.

Paramount is facing a June 4 deadline to finalize the deal or pay Warner a $7-billion break-up fee.

Bonta and the 11 other state attorneys general, including from New York, Colorado and Oregon, have alleged the merger of two major film studios would give Paramount-Warner Bros. more than 25% of the wide-release theatrical film market. Their lawsuit contends the combined company would own too many cable TV channels — more than 50, including CNN, TBS, HGTV and Comedy Central.

The Writers Guild of America has separately sued to block the transaction, claiming the combination of two historic studios would reduce opportunities and pay for writers.

Ellison, in a guest essay this week, blamed politics for the U.S. friction. “The issue is whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN,” Ellison wrote in his op-ed in the New York Times.

Bonta, in a recent interview with The Times, denied his lawsuit was motivated by politics, saying it was a “meat-and-potatoes” antitrust case.

More than 5,000 entertainment industry workers, including such high-profile stars as Jane Fonda, Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston and Mark Ruffalo, signed an open letter early this year, calling on Bonta to thwart the merger. The group alleged the transaction would weaken Hollywood with “fewer opportunities for creators, fewer jobs across the production ecosystem, higher costs, and less choice for audiences.”

Britain’s competition authority found the combined company would still encounter competition from Universal Pictures, Disney and Sony Pictures Entertainment and “a range of other smaller studios.”

In addition, the CMA factored in the competition brought by streaming services to traditional forms of movie and TV distribution — one of Paramount’s key arguments.

“Paramount is grateful to the CMA for its constructive engagement and its review of the transaction,” Paramount said in its statement. “These conclusions further demonstrate the misguided and gerrymandered market definitions relied upon by the US state AGs in their antitrust complaint in California.”

The Great British Sewing Bee is currently delighting BBC viewers – but what do we know about judge Esme Young’s life?

The Great British Sewing Bee judge Esme Young has faced her fair share of struggles.

In 2016, Esme replaced May Martin as a judge on the hit BBC competition. She has since delighted BBC viewers alongside Patrick Grant and a number of hosts, including Joe Lycett, Sara Pascoe and Sophie Willan.

Over the years, Esme has established herself as an esteemed British fashion designer. In 1972, she founded a shop in Camden Town called Swanky Modes, alongside fellow designers Judy Dewsbury, Melanie Herberfield and Willie Walters.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Swanky Mode’s clothing appeared in Vogue, Honey and The Face, and was photographed by David Bailey, Nick Knight, and John Swannell.

Since then, Esme has made costumes for many films, including The Beach, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Romeo and Juliet, and Trainspotting. She notably designed the bunny costume worn by Renée Zellweger in the first Bridget Jones movie.

That’s not all, as one of Esme’s most famous designs was the Amorphous Dress worn by Linda Kozlowski in the 1986 movie Crocodile Dundee – a dress that is now in the V&A Collection.

But away from her successful career, Esme has also been through a number of challenges.

Personal struggles

Esme grew up in Bedford with her stay-at-home mum and her dad, who was an RAF pilot. He was a fighter pilot in World War Two.

Speaking with The Telegraph in 2022, Esme opened up about her life in north London, after moving into a one-bedroom flat in 1983.

“I’ve never been able to afford my own home. I’ve lived in social housing since 1983 – in a one-bedroom flat in Islington, north London, rented from the charitable housing trust Peabody,” she explained.

Reflecting on her previous money struggles, Esme told This is Money: “I could not afford to pay rent so I lived in a squat with my brother and friends… We had to pay for our electricity via a meter but otherwise we lived rent-free.”

The designer has previously shared her support for the Macmillan cancer charity, after her mum died of cancer.

“Even though I do not have much money, I give as much as I can to Macmillan Cancer Support. My mother died of cancer and it gave her and all the family lots of support,” she shared.

Hidden condition

In an interview with SheerLuxe, Esme revealed that she was “partially deaf” and therefore only learned to read when she was seven years old.

“My teachers thought I was thick and my father used to describe me as ‘dreamy’ – but, really, I was in my own little world because I couldn’t hear anyone,” she explained.

“I also didn’t learn to read until I was seven because I didn’t know how to make the right sounds. It’s still a bit of a problem today because I have to look at everything visually.”

The Great British Sewing Bee is available to stream on BBC iPlayer

Brits have been warned of disruption at a major UK airport as airlines face the risk of ‘running out of fuel’ in coming days

Thousands of Brits heading on their summer holidays from a major UK airport could face disruption over the coming days due to a fuel shortage.

Gatwick Airport has sent out a jet fuel warning to pilots as the UK’s second-largest airport faces supply issues.

The potential shortage could affect easyJet and British Airways flights from the airport during the peak of the season, as well as other major carriers like Wizz Air, TUI, and Jet2.

The memo sent out by Gatwick warned airlines: “For the attention of all crews: Gatwick has a shortage of fuel for the next two days.

“Please uplift max possible fuel at outstations.”

Another document warned of a “potential disruption to the Gatwick fuel supply”.

An airline source told The Sun: “Pilots will try and take on as much fuel as they can from their foreign destinations to bring back to the UK, but they will be limited by factors such as the maximum take-off weight and the maximum landing weight back at Gatwick.”

The issue is likely to cause “disruption” from Monday, according to the source.

In the event of an airport fuel infrastructure crisis, major short-haul operators like easyJet can partially insulate themselves by carrying extra fuel from inbound European flights to bypass Gatwick’s pumps entirely.

But the airline’s sheer flight volume will still put the operation under strain.

Meanwhile, British Airways and other long-haul flight carriers, which cannot tanker fuel and remain entirely dependent on Gatwick’s local supply to get off the ground, are more culnerable

It is believed that the shortage is not connected to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, but rather to a technical issue at one of Gatwick’s fuel farms.

A spokesperson for Gatwick Airport said: “Following a technical issue impacting fuel supply to the airport, airlines have been advised to monitor fuel availability.

“We are working closely with external suppliers to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and minimise any potential disruption. All airlines are operating as normal.”

The Mirror has contacted easyJet and British Airways for further comment.

Aug. 2 (UPI) — Greek police announced Sunday they have arrested a man in connection with the grisly discovery of a British woman whose body had been stuffed into a suitcase and abandoned in an Athens neighborhood.

The Hellenic Police said a 26-year-old foreign man was identified as a suspect in the case and that he has been charged with manslaughter, robbery and violation of weapons laws.

The victim was identified by police as a 38-year-old British woman whose body was discovered stuffed into a suitcase left in an abandoned building in the neighborhood of Kypseli at on July 18.

Multiple media reports named the victim as Elisabeth-Jane Ross, a resident of Scotland.

Authorities determined she had been dead for eight days before her body was discovered.

They said the suspect confessed to his actions after being interrogated on Thursday, confirming to authorities he placed Ross’ body in a suitcase and transported it to the abandoned site.

The man later used victim’s bank cards to withdraw money from he accounts, police said.

During searches carried out at his home, a replica pistol and a knife were found and seized, accounting for the weapons charge.

Hellenic Police said they worked closely with British and Scottish counterparts in investigating the case.

British Airways flight BA919 was due to land at Heathrow Airport but before it could safely land it encountered an issue mid-air which has been reported as “the most serious ‘near miss’ in the UK in years”

A British Airways plane was “seconds from disaster” after a “serious incident” above London, it has been reported.

On Monday July 6, Flight BA919 from Dusseldorf was due to land at Heathrow Airport but before it could safely land it encountered an issue mid-air. Just before it was due to land the pilot reportedly faced a terrifying moment while the plane was above Canary Wharf.

Sources said the first officer’s error required a physical intervention by the captain as the Airbus A320 was on on route to land at Heathrow Airport.

It is said the jet suffered a stall and the captain had to step in to overide the first officer’s initial input to try and fix the problem.

Experts told The Sun the situation could have resulted in ‘hull loss’, where an aircraft is destroyed or seriously damaged. They added it was “The most serious ‘near miss’ in the UK in years”.

Following the incident the captain is now understood to be on “stress leave”.

The Air Accidents Investigation (AAIB) Branch are investigating the ‘serious incident’. AAIB is an independent agency and is responsible for the investigation of civil aircraft accidents and serious incidents in the UK and its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.

A spokesperson for British Airways said: “We’re assisting the AAIB with its investigation and are legally unable to comment further at this stage.”

THERE’S no doubt that Spanish islands are popular and soon you will be able to fly to one with British Airways for the first time, from the UK’s biggest airport.

BA is launching flights between London Heathrow Airport and Fuerteventura Airport in the Canary Islands from winter 2026.

Starting December 13, the flights will take off twice a week on Thursdays and Sundays.

Thursday departures will leave Heathrow at 7:05am, arriving into Fuerteventura at 11:30am.

The return flight will then leave Fuerteventura at 12:30pm and arrive back at Heathrow at 4:50pm.

Then the Sunday departure will take off at 10:05am from Heathrow and return from Fuerteventura at 3:40pm.

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SO FLY

Our fave beach hols under 5 hours from UK with Caribbean dupes & £2 bottles of wine

The route will replace British Airways‘ Euroflyer route which was planned between London Gatwick Airport and Fuerteventura.

And it will be the first time the airline flies direct to the destination from Heathrow.

Fuerteventura boasts more than 3,000 hours of sunshine every year and compared to the other popular Canary Islands spots such as Tenerife and Lanzarote, it is more affordable.

In fact, Fuerteventura holiday packages can be between 30 per cent and 40 per cent cheaper during peak periods compared to higher-demand spots, like Tenerife.

Fuerteventura is the Canary Islands’ second largest island and when exploring you can head to a number of beaches including Sotavento Beach and Playa de Cofete.

If with the family, there is also Acua Water Park, which boasts a number of waterslides as well as a wave pool and a lazy river.

The island is home to Corralejo Natural Park too, which is ideal for keen hikers wanting to discover the volcanic landscape.

BBC viewers bid farewell to another contestant during the latest episode of The Great British Sewing Bee.

The Great British Sewing Bee is back with the BBC competition officially in full swing.

During Tuesday’s episode of The Great British Sewing Bee (July 28), BBC viewers saw the remaining contestants tackle three challenges to earn their place in next week’s episode.

First, they needed to make three pairs of knickers from an old T-shirt in the Pattern Challenge.

They were then tasked with making a garment from items that were heading to the landfill in the Transformation Challenge.

Finally, the sewers had to make an outfit with an environmental message made to measure their models.

Anna impressed judges Patrick Grant and Esme Young during week three, earning garment of the week.

However, Angie’s time in the competition came to an end, and she was eliminated from progressing further in the show.

As her fellow contestants rushed to give her a hug when her name was announced, one of them praised her for being ‘amazing’ during the competition.

Speaking about her time in the programme, she told the camera: “It’s been so special sharing this love of sewing with other like-minded people. I feel really fortunate.

“You’d think, having spent, you know, day after day sewing and planning sewing, that I’d want a rest. No, I’m going to make a coat, might make some trousers, might make a few more knickers. You know, loads.”

Issuing a four-word remark before leaving, she added: “Not going to stop.”

Next week, the show celebrates the rich fashion and textile traditions of Mexico.

A synopsis reads: “The pattern challenge sees the sewers create a folkloric top, using fabrics created by indigenous communities in Mexico’s Oaxaca region.

“For the transformation, they use a tablecloth to create a garment with an eye-catching structure, before coming up with a made-to-measure outfit inspired by one of the many Mexican festivals found across the country.”

The judges will also be joined by guest judge Erika Alvarez, the renowned fashion designer.

The Great British Sewing Bee continues Tuesday’s on BBC One from 8pm.

TRYING to fill the long school holidays without spending an absolute fortune can seem impossible.

However, the recently launched Great British Summer Savings scheme is offering loads of deals and discounts until September 1 – meaning family days out will cost a lot less at a whole host of attractions across the UK.

The temporary scheme is slashing VAT from 20 per cent to five per cent on family activities, children’s meals in restaurants, children’s tickets for theatres and cinemas and tickets for everyone for soft play, adventure centres, and theme parks.

And along with free local bus travel for kids aged between five and 15 this August, you can easily find an affordable day out.

With nearly 2,000 spots across the UK taking part in the scheme, we’ve found some of the best, with the biggest savings.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach Resort

With wooden rollercoasters and dark water rides, there is something for everyone at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, with an All You Can Ride eTicket costing £29 per person, instead of £60 on the gate.

You can also get an ‘Ultimate Ticket’, which includes Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Sandcastle Waterpark, The Blackpool Tower Eye, Blackpool Tower Dungeon and Madame Tussauds for £56.88, down from £65.

Savings: Up to £124 for a family of four

Zip World (various locations)

Across the eight different Zip World locations, families can now save money including ziplines and underground trampolines.

The biggest savings offered are on Velocity, which is the world’s fastest zip line. Instead of £124, tickets now cost £99 per person.

Savings: Up to £100 for a family of four

The Crystal Maze Experience, London or Manchester

Fans of the Crystal Maze TV show should try out the Crystal Maze Experience where you compete in a number of different challenges across an hour.

Tickets now cost £26.50 per person, instead of £39.50 – although you must get a minimum of three tickets per order, with one being a child (over nine).

Savings: Up to £52 for a family of four

Woodlands Adventure Park, Devon

Spread across 100 acres, Woodlands Family Theme Park is home to water coasters, rides, animals and a giant indoor soft play area.

If you book online in advance, tickets will cost just £20 instead of £29.15 per adult, and £15 instead of £21.45 per child.

Savings: Up to £31.20 per family of four

Spinnaker Tower, Portsmouth

You can capture panoramic views from the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, right to the Isle of Wight.

An all-day adult ticket now costs £12 instead of £19.25, and an all-day child ticket costs £10 instead of £15.50 or a family of four ticket also now costs less – £40 instead of £68.50.

Savings: Up to £28.50 for a family of four

Go Ape (various locations)

Want to make the most of the sunshine? Go Ape has 37 sites across the UK, with up to 15 per cent off.

Tickets cost from £36.95 – prices may vary depending on location, and you need to use the code ‘VATSUMMER’.

Savings: Up to £26.96 for a family of four

Chaos Karts, Manchester

If you want to live out your Mario Kart dreams, then head to Chaos Karts in Manchester.

You can compete in immersive themed races with tickets now costing £21 per person, instead of £27 (though you must get a minimum of three tickets per order, with one being a child).

Savings: Up to £24 for a family of four

Drayton Manor, Staffordshire

Spread across 180 acres, Drayton Manor features four themed lands, including Thomas Land, Vikings, Adventure Cove and Frontier Falls and across these lands visitors can head on rides ideal for smaller children.

Day tickets cost from £39 instead of £45 per person.

Savings: Up to £24 for a family of four

Game of Thrones Studios Tour, Northern Ireland

Game of Thrones fans should head to the studio tour in Linen Mill Studios in Banbridge, Northern Ireland.

Tickets cost £23.50 per adult instead of £29.50, if you use the code ‘SUMMER’. Kids tickets then cost £4.80 each and youth (13 to 15-year-olds) cost £11.20 each.

Savings: Up to £24 for a family of four

Harry Potter Studio Tour, Watford

For Potterheads who haven’t been to the Warner Bros studio tour yet, now is the perfect time with five per cent off tickets.

Instead of £58.50 per adult, you now pay £51.19 and instead of £47 per child, it is now £41.13. The family offer, which used to be £188 per family of four, is now £164.52.

Savings: Up to £23.48 per family of four

Blenheim Palace

There are three different ticket types for Blenheim Palace but if you want the ultimate experience, opt for the palace, park, gardens and adventure play for £44.63 per adult (was £51) and £35.88 per child (was £41).

Alternatively, you could get a family ticket for £144.38, instead of £165.

Savings: Up to £20.62 for a family of four

Waterworld, Stoke-on-Trent

Waterworld is the UK’s number one indoor tropical aqua park with more than 30 rides and attractions, including a huge wave pool and the thrilling Thunderbolt trap-door slide.

Tickets now cost £20 per person over 1.1 metres tall, instead of £26 per person. Kids under 1.1 metres tall, cost £18 now instead of £22.

Savings: Up to £20 for a family of four

RockReef, Bournemouth

Found at the end of Bournemouth Pier, you can head to RockReef with 28 Clip ‘n Climb walls suitable for all ages and PierZip – which is the world’s first pier-to-shore zip wire.

A Clip ‘n Climb session now costs £15 per person, instead of £20.

Savings: Up to £20 for a family of four

Coronation Street Experience, Manchester

Corrie fans should use this summer to head to the world of Coronation Street in Manchester, where you can step onto the famous cobbles.

Guided tour tickets cost £35 instead of £40 per person.

Savings: Up to £20 for a family of four

Alton Towers, Stoke-on-Trent

You can enjoy Alton Towers‘ 40 rides and attractions for less now, as online tickets now cost £34.13 for a day pass instead of £39 (guests under 90cm still visit for free) when bought online in advance (you’d save £135.48 for a family of four compared to the original on the gate tickets).

You can save even more by getting the ‘twice the fun’ ticket that allows you into two theme parks for £34.13 until the last weekend of July, including Alton Towers, Legoland, Chessington World of Adventures and Thorpe Park.

Saving: Up to £19.48 for a family of four

Chessington World of Adventures, Surrey

Just 12 miles from the capital, Chessington World of Adventures is home to more than 40 rides and 1,000 animals.

A day ticket online costs from £34.13, instead of £39 per person (you’d save £127.48 for a family of four compared to the original on the gate tickets).

Savings: Up to £19.48 for a family of four

Legoland, Windsor

Great for little kids and Lego fans alike, online tickets to Legoland now cost from £34.13 for a day pass instead of £39 and guests under 90cm still visit for free (you’d save £135.48 for a family of four compared to the original on the gate tickets).

The park has 11 themed lands, with more than 55 rides as well as live shows.

Saving: Up to £19.48 for a family of four

Thorpe Park, Chertsey

With over 25 rides and attractions including rollercoaster The Smiler, there’s loads to see and do at Thorpe Park, with online tickets instead costing £34.13 for a day pass instead of £39 (you’d save £127.48 for a family of four compared to the original on the gate tickets).

With the day pass, kids under 1.2 metres tall go for free still and all day tickets include a free return visit.

Saving: Up to £19.48 for a family of four

English Heritage properties (various locations)

All English Heritage properties across the country are taking part in the scheme.

This means you can get 12.5 per cent off the ticket price, which is automatically applied at check out.

Savings vary depending on the attraction you are heading to, but for example, if you went to Stonehenge, an adult ticket would cost from £23.65 and a child ticket would cost from £11.82.

This is instead of £27.20 per adult and £17.20 per child.

Saving: Up to £17.86 for a family of four

Paultons Park

Often dubbed the UK’s most affordable theme park, Paultons Park is now even cheaper to visit – and thanks to a new £12million themed world – Valgard: Realm of the Vikings – there could not be a more perfect time to visit.

Tickets were previously £46.75, and now cost from £43.

Savings: Up to £15 for a family of four

Warwick Castle, Warwickshire

History buffs can head to Warwick Castle, which is home to over 1,100 years of history and inside the castle, you will find immersive experiences as well as a bird show.

Online tickets cost £25.38 instead of £29 per person (you’d save £54.44 for a family of four compared to the original on the gate tickets).

Savings: Up to £14.48 for a family of four

Gulliver’s World (all four locations)

Gulliver’s World has four locations across the UK including Milton Keynes, Matlock Bath, Warrington and Rotherham.

Ticket prices vary per park, but you could get half-day tickets for as little as £13.75 per person. Day tickets cost from £22.50 per person, instead of £26 per person.

Savings: Up to £14 for a family of four

London Eye, London

One of London’s landmarks sat on the banks of the River Thames is suitable for all ages and offers great views of the city.

Tickets now cost £25.38 per adult instead of £29, and £22.75 per child, instead of £26.

Savings: Up to £13.74 for a family of four

Splashdown Quaywest, Paignton

Fancy cooling off in all this heat? Then you could head to the largest outdoor waterpark in the UK, with 18 slides.

A day ticket used to cost £31 per adult or £26 per child under the age of nine-years-old but now, day tickets cost £27.15 per adult and £22.75 per child.

Savings: Up to £13.50 for a family of four

Sandcastle Waterpark, Blackpool

Sandcastle Waterpark in Blackpool is the biggest indoor waterpark in the UK, with 18 slides and attractions as well as a spa.

Tickets cost from £22.31 instead of £25.50 per adult or child aged eight to 11 and £13.96 instead of £16.50 per child aged three to seven.

You can also get an ‘Ultimate Ticket’, which includes a range of attractions in the seaside resort.

This includes Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Sandcastle Waterpark, The Blackpool Tower Eye, Blackpool Tower Dungeon and Madame Tussauds for £56.88, down from £65.

Savings: Up to £12.76 for a family of four

Madame Tussauds, London

You can spend the day up close to 150 lifelike wax figures of celebs, royals and historical figures at Madame Tussauds in London.

Instead of £27, you’d now pay £23.63 per adult and instead of £24, you’d pay £21 per child.

Savings: Up to £12.74 for a family of four

Camera Obscura and World of Illusions, Edinburgh

Located across five floors, you can visit Edinburgh‘s oldest visitor attraction with more than 100 interactive exhibits and the attraction even has panoramic rooftop views.

Adult tickets used to cost £24.95 and are now £21.85 per person, while children’s tickets used to cost £17.95 and are now £15.70 per person.

Savings: Up to £12.70 for a family of four

Kew Gardens, London

Sprawled across 326 acres, Kew Gardens features a myriad of different gardens to explore, including indoor gardens and there’s also a giant kids play area.

Tickets cost £21.85 per adult instead of £25, £1.75 per child under 16-years-old and £8.75 for those aged between 16 and 29-years-old.

Savings: Up to £12.60 for a family of four

Rugby Football Union, Twickenham

You could head to the World Rugby Museum in Twickenham, which is home to the world’s most prestigious collection of rugby memorabilia.

Family tickets have been reduced from £80 to £67.50 in the case of two adults and two children.

Savings: Up to £12.50 per family of four

Butlin’s (various locations)

Butlin’s has three resorts in the UK, all of which are taking part in the scheme.

Visitors can get reduced day visits during the school summer holidays, with access to the Splash Waterworld pools, unlimited fairground rides, all live shows on the Skyline Pavillion stage, playgrounds, soft play and paid-for activities.

Day visit tickets now cost £13.60 per child instead of £16 and £20.40 per adult, instead of £24.

Under two’s still go free.

Savings: Up to £12 for a family of four

Eden Project, Cornwall

Down in Cornwall, you could head to the Eden Project where you can explore the world’s largest indoor Rainforest.

Adult tickets cost from £31.06 instead of £35.50 and children’s tickets cost from £10.94, instead of £12.50.

Savings: Up to £12 for a family of four

Frameless, London

For something different, you could head to Frameless, which is the UK’s largest permanent immersive art destination with masterpieces including by Van Gogh and Monet.

Flexible adult tickets cost £31.06 instead of £35.50, and flexible child tickets cost £22.75 instead of £26 each. You can also get a family of four ticket for £19.69 per person, instead of £22.50.

Savings: Up to £11.24 for a family of four

Wake the Tiger, Bristol

You could head to an immersive ‘amazement park’ in Bristol, which meshes theatre with art and an immersive experience to make you feel as if you are in a different world.

Adult tickets cost £21.88 instead of £25 each and children’s tickets cost £17.50 instead of £20.

Savings: Up to £11.24 for a family of four

IWM Duxford

In Cambridge, you could head to IWM Duxford which is Britain’s largest aviation museum.

Adult tickets now cost £25 each instead of £28.60 and children’s tickets cost £10 instead of £11.40 each.

Savings: Up to £10 for a family of four

Flamingo Land, North Yorkshire

With over 40 rides, 140 species of animals and even a holiday park, you won’t be short of things to do at Flamingo Land Resort in North Yorkshire.

Tickets now cost £43.50 instead of £46 per person.

Savings: Up to £10 per family of four

Shrek’s Adventure, London

At Shrek’s Adventure in London, you can walk through an immersive experience with a 4D flying bus ride, mirror maze and 10 live shows.

Instead of £21 per adult, tickets cost £18.38 and for kids, tickets cost £14 instead of £16.

Savings: Up to £9.24 for a family of four

Cadbury World, Birmingham

If you are based in the north then you could head to Cadbury World for the day to find out about the history of the iconic chocolate brand – the self-guided tour features exhibits as well as a 4D cinema experience.

Tickets cost from £15.75 per person, instead of £18.

Savings: Up to £9 for a family of four

The Historic Dockyard Chatham

For Naval history fans, you could head to the Historic Dockyard Chatham and explore the ships, galleries and exhibitions – including Steve Backshall’s Awesome Oceans Family Trail.

Tickets for a family of four cost £70 instead of £79.

Savings: Up to £9 for a family of four

Techniquest, Cardiff

Techniquest is Wales‘ largest science discovery centre, spread across three floors with live shows and lab workshops.

Tickets used to cost £17 per adult and £15 per child, but are now £14.87 and £13.12 respectively.

Savings: Up to £8.02 for a family of four

The Big Sheep, North Devon

The Big Sheep family theme park in Bideford is home to both farm animals and rides, as well as live entertainment for when the weather isn’t great.

Tickets cost £14.95 per person instead of £16.95 and £6 instead of £8 per child under three-foot tall.

Savings: Up to £8 for a family of four

Some 270,000 people have been forced to evacuate parts of Western France and central Spain – while a major incident has been declared in the Cairngorms National Park

British holidaymakers have described running for their lives just yards from a raging wildfire.

The terrifying scenes come as 270,000 people have been forced to flee as blazes continue to rip through parts of Southern Europe. Fire crews on Saturday were braced to drop fire-busting chemicals from a cargo plane in the Gironde region in Western France, where an inferno has been roaring since Wednesday.

And with the wind direction shifting, officials fear the flames are moving dangerously close to the nearby city of Bordeaux. Authorities have ordered people between the fire and the city to evacuate, including from parts of western suburbs and other towns and villages.

The French military have been drafted in to help and the Spanish government has declared a national emergency. Among those caught up was Brit David Morton and his family, who came within 500 yards of the main fire in Cap Ferret peninsula.

He said: “The flames were higher than full-size forest pine trees, so five or six storeys high, and it was clear this was a fire that was out of control at that point. Our phones were all flashing and bleeping; there was a message saying we had to evacuate immediately and drive on the one road out of the [Cap Ferret] peninsula. We literally threw everything into our suitcases and within 15 minutes were in the hire car.”

Zac Morrison, 21, described similarly dramatic scenes. We had the gendarmerie [French military] going door to door – it was something like out of a movie – we had to take everything,” said Zac, from London. “Other people have been sleeping in schools and warehouses and the beaches have had people just waiting for the go ahead – there’s people on the beach here with their suitcases. I’ve heard about houses burning in just an hour, it’s scary but sadly people here are getting used to it.”

Other Brits have moved to different areas in France to continue their hols. Mark Dorey, from Leeds, decided to drive to the Dordogne with his wife and three children after being evacuated from a campsite near Parentis-en-Born. He said: “You wouldn’t believe it, but me and my two boys were watching a Queen tribute act at the campsite bar – straight after a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody someone stopped them to say we were being evacuated at about 10pm.

While the wildfires show no sign of slowing, the Foreign Office last night chose not to impose warings against travel to France or Spain. France’s minister for international partnerships Éléonore Caroit told tourists: “You have entire areas that are fine, you’re seeing similar phenomena in Spain and other countries.

“I’m in Paris and nothing is happening, and most other regions are OK, so do please come to France and do not cancel your travel plans. But wherever you are, please do be advised as to what might be happening.”

In Madrid the fires are in the wider region far outside the city centre – and authorities are battling to stop different fires merging. But the flames have already shut down a facility for US space agency Nasa 37 miles west of the Spanish capital. The city’s regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso said it was the “worst fire in the history of the region.”

Successive heat waves with record-shattering temperatures have turned forests and scrublands into tinderboxes. Fires have burned 130,000 hectares of forest already this year in Spain, an area the size of Rome.

Other European nations are stepping into help, with Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia already providing water-dumping planes and helicopters to the Spanish and French fire fronts.

Things are burning closer to home too, as emergency services continue to battle a blaze in the Cairngorms National Park. The fire has now been declared a major incident, and smoke could be seen 59 miles away in Aberdeen.

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney said it is “essential people avoid the affected areas,” adding: “The wind has changed direction overnight, which means the track of the fire has altered once again and the threat to Nethy Bridge has reduced, for the moment at least. Ground and helicopter resources are being focused on the current path of the fire and new fire breaks constructed.”

July 24 (UPI) — New British Prime Minister Andy Burnham held his first meeting at No. 10 North, his project to have official space in his hometown of Manchester, England, instead of keeping everything official in London.

Burnham, who was once mayor of Greater Manchester, said the new office will get “growth in every corner of the country,” the BBC reported.

The idea is to shift power from Whitehall and Westminster — the center of the British government — to other parts of the country. Manchester is about two hours by train from London.

Burnham told staff that the shift north showed he was rewiring the state.

“No 10 North is going to take that up to the next level. It’s not just a new office — through this place, power is going to flow, energy is going to flow, new ideas are going to come through,” Burnham said.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch called it a “gimmick”, and said it “does not make decision-making any better, it’s just creating another branch of the civil service in a different place.”

“It’s sending a message to everybody here who has come in to No 10 North in its early days that you’ve got the full support of government from the very top — prime minister, chancellor, first secretary of state — that’s a very powerful message that we’re sending today, that the political commitment is there,” Burnham said.

No. 10 North is at Heron House in Manchester temporarily while a new Civil Service Campus just outside of the city is being developed.

Burnham has faced some opposition to the project over costs, but he dismissed it as criticism from London.

Dai Davies, a former head of royal protection, has named Burnham’s Manchester base “Number 10A.”

“Number 10A will have to be strengthened,” he said. “And, of course, there’ll have to be a 24-hour-7 protection. So it’s going to cost us taxpayers millions in terms of technical security, surveillance, cameras,” The Guardian reported.

“Depending on where it is, it may have to have underground detection systems, it probably will have to have a safe room, and Manchester police will have to bear the burden of protection, in the uniform sense, 24-7, I suspect. So the real cost is many millions of pounds,” he said.

Burnham has pledged several progressive reforms, such as capping the cost of public transportation, cutting taxes on home electricity bills and easing the cost of living.

Opening the new Manchester center, Burnham described it as the best day of his life.

“I cannot tell you what a proud moment this is. I think this might be the best day of my life. I’m not joking either. I know you think I am, but I’m not,” Burnham said. “Things are just completely coming full circle here for me, and to be here with you all in the heart of Manchester this Friday morning, at the end of a fairly big week, is just everything to me.”

One standard-setting British period drama can’t be beat — depending on who you ask

It’s never been a better time to be a period drama fan. Between a whole spate of Jane Austen adaptations (a new Sense and Sensibility film and Netflix’s upcoming Pride and Prejudice show), The Other Bennet Sister delighting audiences with its fresh take, to the upcoming second series of the Outlander prequel, it’s an embarrassment of riches.

But for some period drama fans, it’s worth looking back at the masterpiece dramas that led the way. For many, Upstairs, Downstairs is the one to beat. This generational saga about an upper class family and their servants will ring a bell, but it predates Downton Abbey by half a century.

The shows share a similar premise — an upper class family, their domestic staff, and storylines featuring both — and even same overarching time period, so if you haven’t heard of Upstairs, Downstairs, you can know what to reasonably expect.

Viewers are passionate about the one they prefer. Ever since Julian Fellowes’ crown jewel debuted in 2010 and concluded 15 years later, discussions and debates abound over the years.

Some have gone so far as to brand Downton a “rip off”. As one viewer proclaimed on Reddit: “I like Downton Abbey better, but Upstairs, Downstairs is the better show. Julian Fellowes blatantly copied a few things from UD [Upstairs/Downstairs].”

To which another responded: “I’m watching upstairs downstairs right now and I’ve already been like ‘wait that was in DA’. What stood out immediately is the daughter being politically active but then the gay footman who has a relationship with the baron. Alfred and Thomas have very similar timelines right now. Only on episode 6 but seeing SO many similarities”

A third said: “Julian Fellowes ripped off 65% of the UD characters’ names and plots for Downton.”

Yet another period drama enthusiast defended both: “They are very different shows from very different eras (70s vs 2010s). I loved Upstairs/Downstairs when it aired. I love DA. I don’t think a show from 40 years ago should be compared to a modern one.”

Interestingly, BBC rebooted Upstairs, Downstairs in 2010, the same year as Downton Abbey. It received mixed reviews and only lasted two series.

The Guardian was equivocal in its review: “Downton Abbey v Upstairs Downstairs – who won? Downton Abbey, of course.

“Here’s the problem. Downton Abbey completely changed the way we watch period drama. Fellowes brought all the tight, witty scripting of a Hollywood adaptation to an original story, topped off with a gigantic, knowingly camp wink that delighted jaded viewers.”

The reviewer, however, didn’t mention where Downton Abbey stood against the original 1970s masterpiece.

Upstairs, Downstairs (1970-1975) is available to watch on ITVX. The 2010 reboot is playing on U, a free streaming platform.