Wintry weather is forecast to tighten its grip in many parts of the UK this week with sub-zero temperatures plunging even lower than during the heavy snowfall of the past weekend.

Weather forecasters predict the coldest nights of the year so far on Wednesday and Thursday, and temperatures are expected to fall as low as -20 C in some areas.

A series of yellow weather warnings covering the next few days have already become active - with the latest warnng of the danger of ice in parts of northern Wales, as well as areas in central and northern England, until 12:00 GMT on Wednesday.

The cold weather comes after another day of flooding causing havoc in central England but, with no further rainfall expected in flood-hit areas in the coming days, flood waters are likely to begin subsiding.

Travel disruption continued on Tuesday, with flights delayed, roads closed and railways impacted by the poor weather.

People continued to grapple with the impact of the severe flooding that has affected homes and businesses across the Midlands in England and a man had to be rescued from a flooded caravan park in Leicestershire's Barrow upon Soar.

There were 114 flood warnings, meaning flooding is expected, and 205 flood alerts, meaning flooding is possible, in place across England on Tuesday afternoon.

One flood warning and six flood alerts were active in Wales.

Looking ahead, weather forecasters expect the flood waters and warnings to begin to subside, with no significant rain predicted in the areas currently experiencing flooding.

But by then the focus will have switched back to how far temperatures are likely to fall, particularly during the night.

The ice warning covering Tuesday night and Wednesday morning is accompanied by another, also up to 12:00 on Wednesday, which tells people to be aware of the likelihood of snow and ice in Northern Ireland and parts of northern and western Scotland.

A separate yellow warning for snow in some southern counties of England will come into force at 09:00 on Wednesday, and will last until midnight.

The wintry conditions have caused significant disruption across the UK since snow swept many parts of the country at the weekend.

Hundreds of schools were closed in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, including schools in Yorkshire, Merseyside, the Midlands and Aberdeenshire.

Most flights are running again after they were temporarily halted at airports in Liverpool, Bristol, Aberdeen and Manchester – but operators have warned some delays are still likely.

Some major roads were shut because of poor weather conditions, including the A1 in Lincolnshire which was still closed on Tuesday afternoon due to extensive flooding.

Worst since 2021?

Bitter cold is expected in many parts of the UK in the coming days, with the likelihood of sharp overnight frosts.

Temperatures are expected to drop well below freezing on Wednesday and Thursday night, with forecasters expecting many parts of the UK to experience a hard frost and lows of between -3C and -10C.

In places that are still experiencing snow cover, it could be as cold as -14C to -16C on Wednesday night, and on Thursday the Pennines and snow fields of Scotland could register temperatures as low as -16C to -20C.

That would actually be far colder than was experienced at the weekend when a low of -13.3 C was recorded at Loch Glascarnoch in the Highlands.

It is also significantly lower than anything seen last winter when a particularly bitter night in Dalwhinnie in the Highlands saw a mark of -14C being recorded.

The last time the UK had any temperature that below -20C was in February 2021 when Braemar in Aberdeenshire was measured at -23C.

The Duchess of Sussex has said she is "devastated" following the death of her dog, Guy.

In a post on Instagram, Meghan said had "cried too many tears to count" over the dog's passing and thanked him for "so many years of unconditional love".

The duchess said she had adopted the beagle from an animal rescue in Canada in 2015 and that he had been "with me for everything" ever since.

She did not say when the dog had died or its cause of death.

The post was accompanied by a montage of photos and video showing the duchess and her family playing with Guy.

In one, she is seen boiling fruit on a stove to make jam and telling the dog, "We're jamming, Guy". In another her husband, the Duke of Sussex, is seen running along a beach with him.

At the end, Meghan can be heard with one of the couple's children singing: "We love you Guy, yes we do".

The duchess said staff at the shelter from where she had adopted the dog "referred to him as 'the little guy' because he was so small and frail".

"So I named him 'Guy'. And he was the best guy any girl could have asked for," she said.

"He was with me at Suits, when I got engaged, (and then married), when I became a mom….

"He was with me for everything: the quiet, the chaos, the calm, the comfort."

The duchess added that Guy would feature in her upcoming Netflix series, titled With Love, Meghan.

"I hope you'll come to understand why I am so devastated by his loss. I think you may fall a little bit in love too," she said.

"I have cried too many tears to count - the type of tears that make you get in the shower with the absurd hope that the running water on your face will somehow make you not feel them, or pretend they're not there. But they are. And that's okay too.

"Thank you for so many years of unconditional love, my sweet Guy. You filled my life in ways you'll never know."

Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has told BBC's Newsnight that "disinformation" spread by Elon Musk was "endangering" her but that it was "nothing" compared to the experiences of victims of abuse.

The tech billionaire and adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump labelled Phillips a "rape genocide apologist" and said she should be jailed.

Asked if the threat to her own safety had gone up since his social media posts and whether protections were in place for her safety, Phillips replied "yes".

She said the experience had been "very, very, very tiring" but that she was "resigned to the lot in life that you get as a woman who fights violence against women and girls".

She added: "I'm no stranger to people who don't know what they're talking about trying to silence women like me."

Musk's intervention came in response to Phillips rejecting a request for the government to lead a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham - which sparked calls from the Conservatives and Reform UK for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.

Her decision was taken in October but first reported by GB News at the start of the year and then picked up by Musk on his social media platform X.

Phillips defended the government's decision not to hold a national inquiry, arguing that local inquiries, such as one held in Telford, were more effective at leading to change.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has hit back at Donald Trump's threat to use "economic force" to absorb Canada into the US saying there isn't "a snowball's chance in hell" to join the two.

On Tuesday, President-elect Trump reiterated his threat to bring in a 25% tariff on Canadian goods unless the country took steps to increase security on the shared US border.

Trump has in recent weeks repeatedly needled Canada about it becoming the 51st US state.

"You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security," Trump said.

"Canada and the United States, that would really be something," he said at a press conference at his Florida residence of Mar-a Lago.

The ongoing tariff threat comes at a politically challenging time for Canada.

On Monday, an embattled Trudeau announced he was resigning, though he will stay on as prime minister until the governing Liberals elect a new leader, expected sometime by late March.

Canada's parliament has been prorogued - or suspended - until 24 March to allow time for the leadership race.

Economists warn that if Trump follows through on imposing the tariffs after he is inaugurated on 20 January, it would significantly hurt Canada's economy.

Almost C$3.6bn ($2.5bn) worth of goods and services crossed the border daily in 2023, according to Canadian government figures.

The Trudeau government has said it is considering imposing counter-tariffs if Trump follows through on the threat.

The prime minister also said on X that: "Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other's biggest trading and security partner."

On Tuesday, Trump reiterated his concerns he has expressed about drugs crossing the borders of Mexico and Canada into the US.

Like Canada, Mexico faces a 25% tariff threat.

The amount of fentanyl seized at the US-Canada border is significantly lower than at the southern border, according to US data.

Canada has promised to implement a set of sweeping new security measures along the border, including strengthened surveillance and adding a joint "strike force" to target transnational organised crime.

Trump said on Tuesday he was not considering using military force to make Canada part of the United States, but raised concerns about its neighbour's military spending.

"They have a very small military. They rely on our military. It's all fine, but, you know, they got to pay for that. It's very unfair," he said.

Canada has been under pressure to increase its military spending as it continues to fall short of the target set out for Nato members.

Its defence budget currently stands at C$27bn ($19.8bn, £15.5bn), though the Trudeau government has promised that it will boost spending to almost C$50bn by 2030.

On Monday, Doug Ford, the leader of Canada's most populous province Ontario, said Trudeau must spend his remaining weeks in office working with the provinces to address Trump's threat.

"The premiers are leading the country right now," he said.

• What happens next for Canada?
• When will Donald Trump take office as US president?

Ontario has a deep reliance on trade with the US. The province is at the heart of the highly integrated auto industry in Canada, and trade between Ontario and the US totalled more than C$493bn ($350bn) in 2023.

"My message is let's work together, let's build a stronger trade relationship - not weaken it," he said.

The premier warned "we will retaliate hard" if the Trump administration follows through, and highlighted the close economic ties between the two nations, including on energy.

The US relies "on Ontario for their electricity. We keep the lights on to a million and a half homes and businesses in the US", he said.

At a press conference early this week, Ford also pushed back on Trump's 51st state comments.

"I'll make him a counter-offer. How about if we buy Alaska and we throw in Minneapolis and Minnesota at the same time?" Ford said.

Head teachers say they face "difficult choices" over what their schools can afford, as a new report says they could be forced into further cuts next year.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says costs will outpace funding for schools in 2025-26.

Schools say that means they will struggle to fund the government's proposed pay rise for teachers, as well as the support needed for children with special educational needs.

The Department for Education (DfE) said it would work with schools and local authorities to provide a "fair funding system that directs public money to where it is needed".

The IFS estimates that school funding will rise by 2.8% in the 2025-26 financial year. But Wednesday's report warns that costs are likely to rise by 3.6%, leaving schools facing tough choices.

Staff pay usually takes up the majority of a school budget. The government has suggested teachers' pay should go up by 2.8% for the school year beginning September 2025, in line with plans for school spending.

While spending on schools has grown in recent years - redressing previous cuts - the cost of supporting pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) has also increased.

Marlborough St Mary's School in Wiltshire has had to find money from its existing budget to support pupils like six-year-old Thomas, who is waiting for an autism assessment.

His mum, Penny Reader, says Year One pupil Thomas loves everything about space and creatures who live under the sea.

He has one-to-one support at school, but was declined an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) - which sets out a child's legal right to support and additional funding - last year. A tribunal date to appeal that decision has been set for November.

Mrs Reader says it is "utterly insane" that the school does not get additional funding to support Thomas, who would previously hide in the classroom getting distressed and upset.

"He just couldn't cope with the other children," Mrs Reader says. "It was too noisy, too chaotic for him."

Now, Thomas loves being at school and can join in with all of his lessons, she says.

"It's just so reassuring," says Mrs Reader. "It's so lovely to see him thrive.

"Without that, Thomas wouldn't be here. That funding has made such a huge difference."

Head teacher Dan Crossman says the school is in an in-year deficit, spending more money than it has got coming in.

He says he faces a choice between meeting the needs of the children, or balancing the books.

Additional funding to support pupils with Send often takes a long time to materialise, he says.

So, Mr Crossman employs six teaching assistants to meet the needs of children awaiting additional support, such as through an EHCP.

"It means that they are safe. It means that they are happy, and it means that they have the opportunity to learn in a mainstream school," he says.

Mr Crossman says schools face "really hard" decisions, like staff redundancies and cutting counselling services.

The school has received financial support from a private donor to set up a forest school.

But Mr Crossman says such resources should come from "core budgets" rather than private investment.

The IFS says per-pupil spending in mainstream schools rose by about 11% between 2019 and 2024, when adjusted for inflation.

But much of that increase was absorbed by the rising cost of Send provision, meaning the actual increase was only about 5%.

The new analysis comes as the government considers its spending plans for 2026 onwards.

Steve Hitchcock, head teacher of St Peter's Primary School in Devon, and the region's National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) representative, says he has also had to come up with innovative ways to raise more money.

He says sourcing top-up funding is now a "really important part" of his role.

"Just in this last year I've managed to find £20,000 myself, which is just going out to our very generous community," he says.

The "absolutely fantastic" parent-teacher association has also raised £20,000 in the last year through sponsored challenges, film nights and discos at the school.

In the past, this money would go to "cherry-on-top" activities like play equipment. But now, it has to fund basic curriculum resources like buying paper, Mr Hitchcock says.

Staff costs take up 85% of the school's budget. Mr Hitchcock says pay rises are "very important" to recruit and retain staff, and to make sure it's a competitive profession.

The government's recommended 2.8% pay rise for teachers next year is being considered by the independent teacher pay review body.

Education unions have already described the proposal as being disappointingly low, but Mr Hitchcock says he does not know where he will find the extra money, even without any further increases.

"A nearly 3% pay rise is going to mean I have to find £30,000, which just isn't possible," he says.

"We were hoping desperately that this government would have a different approach to funding schools. It's going to be enormously challenging for the whole profession."

Daniel Kebede, National Education Union general secretary, says schools have "no capacity to make savings without cutting educational provision".

Julie McCulloch, from the Association of School and College Leaders, says the financial pressures facing the sector are a "death by a thousand cuts".

"Schools and colleges have been expected to absorb relentless financial pressures over the past 15 years, and they have done an incredible job in minimising the impact on students," she added. "But we cannot go on like this."

The Department for Education said school funding will increase to almost £63.9bn in the next financial year, including £1bn for children and young people with high needs.

A spokesperson said the government is "determined to fix the foundations of the education system".

Additional reporting by Hope Rhodes.

At least 32 people have been confirmed dead after a major earthquake struck China's mountainous Tibet region on Tuesday morning, Chinese state media reported.

The earthquake that hit Tibet's holy Shigatse city around 09:00 local time (01:00 GMT) had a magnitude of 7.1 and a depth of 10 kilometres (six miles), according to data from the US Geological Survey, which also showed a series of aftershocks in the area.

Tremors were also felt in neighbouring Nepal and parts of India.

Earthquakes are common in the region, which lies on a major geological fault line.

Shigatse is considered one of the holiest cities of Tibet. It is the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, a key figure of Tibetan Buddhism whose spiritual authority is second only to the Dalai Lama.

Chinese state media reported the earthquake as having a slightly lesser magnitude of 6.8, causing "obvious" tremors and leading to the collapse of many houses.

Social media posts show collapsing buildings and there have been several strong aftershocks.

"After a major earthquake, there is always a gradual attenuation process," Jiang Haikun, a researcher at the China Earthquake Networks Center, told CCTV.

While another earthquake of around magnitude 5 may still occur, Jiang said, "the likelihood of a larger earthquake is low".

The Chinese air force has launched rescue efforts and drones to the affected area, which sits at the foot of Mount Everest and where temperatures are well below freezing.

Both power and water in the region have been cut off.

While tremors were felt in Nepal, no damage or casualties were reported, a local official in Nepal's Namche region, near Everest, told AFP.

Tibet's earthquake bureau told the BBC on Tuesday that they were unable to provide estimates on casualties as they were still verifying the numbers.

The region, which lies on a major fault line where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collided, is home to frequent seismic activity. In 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake near Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, killed nearly 9,000 people and injured over 20,000.

Thai police have charged a mahout after an elephant in his care gored a Spanish tourist to death last week.

Theerayut Inthaphudkij, 38, was charged with negligence causing death, local authorities said Monday.

The tourist - 22-year-old Blanca Ojanguren García - was bathing the elephant at the Koh Yao Elephant Care Centre in southern Thailand when she was attacked by the animal.

This has renewed concerns over Thailand's booming elephant tourism industry, which animal rights groups have long criticised as unethical and dangerous.

Activists say that elephant bathing is disruptive to natural grooming behaviours and could injure the animals, exposing them to unnecessary stress.

After the attack, experts weighed in to say that the elephant might have been stressed because of the interaction with tourists.

García sustained a head injury - and later died in the hospital - after the elephant, 45-year-old female Phang Somboon, pushed her with its tusk. Her boyfriend, who was travelling with her, witnessed the attack.

There are nearly 3,000 elephants held in tourist attractions across Thailand, according to an estimate by international charity World Animal Protection.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) told the BBC in a statement that "such incidents highlight the dangers to both humans and animals alike."

"Any 'sanctuary' that allows humans to touch, feed, bathe, or closely interact with elephants in any way is no place of refuge for elephants and puts the lives of tourists and animals in critical danger," said Peta senior vice president Jason Baker.

Similar charges of negligence have previously been pressed against mahouts whose elephants killed tourists.

In 2017, an elephant camp owner and a mahout were charged with recklessness causing death and injuries after an elephant killed a Chinese tour guide and injured two tourists in the Thai beach town, Pattaya. In 2013, a 27-year-old elephant had its tusks cut after it attacked and killed a woman.

García, a law and international relations student at Spain's University of Navarra, was living in Taiwan as part of a student exchange programme. She and her boyfriend arrived in Thailand on 26 December 2024.

Spain's foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albares, said the Spanish consulate in Bangkok was assisting García's family.

Additional reporting by Kelly Ng

A secret list of more than 300 people who belonged to a network that called publicly for the legalisation of sex with children has been handed to the BBC.

A small number of those named on the list may still have contact with children through paid work or volunteering, the BBC has discovered.

They were all members of a group called the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE).

The Metropolitan Police had the list for about 20 years from the late 1970s, a BBC Radio 4 podcast team has been told.

Spread across several dozen pages, with a pink cover page added by police in the early 1980s, the typed list contains 316 names - all but a handful men, most with addresses alongside.

Most PIE members were based in the UK - but there are also details of people in other parts of western Europe, Australia and the US.

The BBC has established that a small number of the men are still alive and may currently be in contact with, or have care of, children through paid work or volunteering. The BBC has found no evidence any of them has carried out abuse.

The Met told us it was unable to provide specific information about its historical investigations into the Paedophile Information Exchange - but will still investigate crimes if sufficient evidence exists and alleged perpetrators are still alive.

PIE was formed in 1974 - when the country was going through rapid transformative social change. Its leaders sought to further their cause by attempting to align themselves with feminist, anti-racist and gay rights movements. It was not an illegal organisation and cost £4 a year to join, and to receive its members' magazine.

Over a decade, PIE spokesmen gave interviews to the media arguing that adults and children had a human right to have sex with each other. Four years old, they argued, was an age at which most children could give consent.

However, while PIE's leaders may have been happy to speak publicly, the names of rank-and-file members were very much kept secret.

The list - and dozens of other documents relating to PIE members - were given to the BBC team and journalist Alex Renton, who has written extensively about historical institutional child sexual abuse and presents the BBC podcast, In Dark Corners.

We then searched for the names in media archives, crime reports and death register listings from the past 50 years.

They found records or further information for 45% of the people on the list - with a reasonable degree of certainty - and discovered that half of them had been convicted or cautioned (or had been charged and died before trial) for sexual offences against children. Charges included distributing abuse images, kidnap and rape.

Of the small number of men who may still be in contact with children professionally, none has any criminal conviction that the BBC has been able to find - meaning they could have passed in-depth background checks when applying for jobs.

Those men are part of a wider group of nearly 70 on the list, who the BBC team has identified as having been in work likely to bring them into contact with minors.

Teachers make up half that group - work addresses are typed alongside some of the names on the list. The rest include social workers, sports coaches, youth workers, doctors, clergy, lay preachers and military officers involved in youth activities.

The podcast team tried to contact all those people still alive and working - most of whom are believed to be living in the UK.

One claimed his name was on the list because of PIE's links in the 1970s with a gay youth support group.

A second admitted he had been a member, but only because he had agreed with PIE that the disparity in the age of consent laws was unjust. Men in England and Wales had to be 21 to have sex with other men prior to 1994 - when the legal age was lowered to 18. Six years later it was reduced to 16, in line with straight sex. The man told the BBC he was not and never had been a paedophile.

A third man, currently teaching children in a private school outside of the UK, refused to speak any further after PIE was mentioned to him.

No-one else has so far responded to approaches by the BBC.

The BBC team obtained the PIE list from a former senior social worker - Peter McKelvie - who handed over a shopping bag full of historical documents, letters, internal memos and old newspaper cuttings spanning three decades.

Through his work, Mr McKelvie had started seeing connections between child abusers in the information he collected through his work - but gradually became frustrated about the abilities of police or social services to stop paedophile networks.

The PIE list came into his possession in 1998. Until then, for about 20 years, it had been in the hands of the Metropolitan Police's Obscene Publications Unit, known internally as "The Dirty Squad".

The former officer who handed it over, Dave Flanagan, told the BBC he believed the list may originally have been seized in a police raid in the late 1970s.

The document given to the BBC has scribbled notes in the margins - and Mr Flanagan, a detective constable at the time, says he wrote some of them.

He also attached and dated the pink cover page - as he and colleagues added more up-to-date PIE intelligence during the 1980s.

Police raided plenty of people on the list, he says - but, on its own, it was unusable as information for a search warrant.

"You couldn't go in front of a magistrate and say: 'Look, we believe he's a paedophile. We believe there'll be indecent photographs of children because he's on the PIE list.'"

Legally, being a member of a pro-paedophile group didn't make someone a sex offender.

Police did manage to close in on PIE in the early 1980s - focusing on three senior members who all had links to contact adverts in the members' magazine, Magpie.

The men were prosecuted under a 17th Century law of "conspiracy to corrupt public morals". Two received conditional discharges, while the third was jailed for two years.

Publicly, PIE ceased to exist in 1984.

Dave Flanagan says his team's detective work on the membership list also ground to a halt.

"Information was passed to other police forces and they did what they did with it - we had no control over any of that."

The BBC understands the PIE list was digitised in 1994 by a police team that no longer exists. The National Crime Agency, which was formed in 2013 and whose officers deal with child abuse cases, told us it has "no knowledge of receiving the [digitised] list".

Dave Flanagan kept the original in his briefcase until he retired in 1998, when he handed it to Peter McKelvie.

Mr McKelvie told the BBC that over the past 30 years he had pushed police, a Labour MP and a Conservative government minister to look at PIE members linked to social services and special schools, but without success.

He wrote to the Department of Health in 1993 outlining his concerns. His letter began: "The infiltration of the social work profession by paedophiles appears to be an extensive and serious problem..."

He suggested the formation of a specialist team of social workers and police to track down every member of PIE working in social care. The letter got no response, he says.

The Department for Health and Social Care told the BBC it could not comment on "individual historic cases".

On Monday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said those who cover up or fail to report child sexual abuse could face professional or criminal sanctions under a new offence to be introduced this year.

The proposal was one of 20 recommendations made by Prof Alexis Jay following her seven-year inquiry into child sex abuse, which concluded in 2022. The Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) was set up in response to concerns that some organisations had failed to protect children.

In a statement, Det Supt Nicola Franklin, from the Met's Central Specialist Command, said the force was "committed to tackling" paedophilia, "an abhorrent crime".

"If anyone has information that should be shared with police we would urge them to do so. Despite the passage of time, we will still investigate provided sufficient evidence exists to do so and the perpetrator is still alive."

Reporting team: Alex Renton, Caitlin Smith, Gillian Wheelan

The Duchess of Sussex has said she is "devastated" following the death of her dog, Guy.

In a post on Instagram, Meghan said had "cried too many tears to count" over the dog's passing and thanked him for "so many years of unconditional love".

The duchess said she had adopted the beagle from an animal rescue in Canada in 2015 and that he had been "with me for everything" ever since.

She did not say when the dog had died or its cause of death.

The post was accompanied by a montage of photos and video showing the duchess and her family playing with Guy.

In one, she is seen boiling fruit on a stove to make jam and telling the dog, "We're jamming, Guy". In another her husband, the Duke of Sussex, is seen running along a beach with him.

At the end, Meghan can be heard with one of the couple's children singing: "We love you Guy, yes we do".

The duchess said staff at the shelter from where she had adopted the dog "referred to him as 'the little guy' because he was so small and frail".

"So I named him 'Guy'. And he was the best guy any girl could have asked for," she said.

"He was with me at Suits, when I got engaged, (and then married), when I became a mom….

"He was with me for everything: the quiet, the chaos, the calm, the comfort."

The duchess added that Guy would feature in her upcoming Netflix series, titled With Love, Meghan.

"I hope you'll come to understand why I am so devastated by his loss. I think you may fall a little bit in love too," she said.

"I have cried too many tears to count - the type of tears that make you get in the shower with the absurd hope that the running water on your face will somehow make you not feel them, or pretend they're not there. But they are. And that's okay too.

"Thank you for so many years of unconditional love, my sweet Guy. You filled my life in ways you'll never know."

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman's sister, Ann Altman, has filed a lawsuit alleging that he regularly sexually abused her between 1997 and 2006.

The lawsuit, which was filed on 6 January in a US District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri, alleges that the abuse started when she was three and Mr Altman was 12.

In a joint statement on X, with his mother and two brothers, Mr Altman denied the allegations, saying "all of these claims are utterly untrue."

"Caring for a family member who faces mental health challenges is incredibly difficult," the statement added.

"This situation causes immense pain to our entire family."

In the filing, which has been seen by the BBC, Ms Altman alleged that the abuse, which took place over many years, included rape.

The lawsuit added the last instance of the alleged abuse took place when Mr Altman was an adult but she was still a minor.

The lawsuit requested a jury trial and damages in excess of $75,000 ($60,100).

Ms Altman has previously made similar allegations against her brother on social media platforms such as X.

Mr Altman is one of the technology world's most high profile figures.

In late 2022, OpenAi launched the ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.

Additional reporting by Lily Jamali

Thai police have charged a mahout after an elephant in his care gored a Spanish tourist to death last week.

Theerayut Inthaphudkij, 38, was charged with negligence causing death, local authorities said Monday.

The tourist - 22-year-old Blanca Ojanguren García - was bathing the elephant at the Koh Yao Elephant Care Centre in southern Thailand when she was attacked by the animal.

This has renewed concerns over Thailand's booming elephant tourism industry, which animal rights groups have long criticised as unethical and dangerous.

Activists say that elephant bathing is disruptive to natural grooming behaviours and could injure the animals, exposing them to unnecessary stress.

After the attack, experts weighed in to say that the elephant might have been stressed because of the interaction with tourists.

García sustained a head injury - and later died in the hospital - after the elephant, 45-year-old female Phang Somboon, pushed her with its tusk. Her boyfriend, who was travelling with her, witnessed the attack.

There are nearly 3,000 elephants held in tourist attractions across Thailand, according to an estimate by international charity World Animal Protection.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) told the BBC in a statement that "such incidents highlight the dangers to both humans and animals alike."

"Any 'sanctuary' that allows humans to touch, feed, bathe, or closely interact with elephants in any way is no place of refuge for elephants and puts the lives of tourists and animals in critical danger," said Peta senior vice president Jason Baker.

Similar charges of negligence have previously been pressed against mahouts whose elephants killed tourists.

In 2017, an elephant camp owner and a mahout were charged with recklessness causing death and injuries after an elephant killed a Chinese tour guide and injured two tourists in the Thai beach town, Pattaya. In 2013, a 27-year-old elephant had its tusks cut after it attacked and killed a woman.

García, a law and international relations student at Spain's University of Navarra, was living in Taiwan as part of a student exchange programme. She and her boyfriend arrived in Thailand on 26 December 2024.

Spain's foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albares, said the Spanish consulate in Bangkok was assisting García's family.

Additional reporting by Kelly Ng

The Washington Post announced it will lay off nearly 100 workers, or 4% of its staff, in an attempt to stem growing losses, according to media reports.

The cuts reportedly will affect mainly employees on the business side of the storied US newspaper owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The publication is among many news outlets struggling in the digital age as a growing number of online platforms compete for advertising revenues.

The layoffs, announced on Tuesday, come at a time of turmoil at the company after Mr Bezos broke with tradition and blocked an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the US presidential election in November.

In 2023, the Washington Post reported losses of $77m (£45m) and falling readership on its website. That same year, the newspaper announced it was offering workers voluntary buyouts in a bid to cut headcount by 10%.

Mr Bezos wrote an opinion piece explaining that blocking the endorsement was necessary because of growing public perception that the "media is biased."

Still, the newspaper said 250,000 of its readers canceled their subscriptions in protest.

Since then, several high-profile journalists, including investigative reporter Josh Dawsey, who confirmed on X that he was taking a job at The Wall Street Journal, have also left the newspaper. Managing editor Matea Gold is joining Post competitor The New York Times, the Times confirmed.

The apparent conflict between Bezos and the newspaper's top talent took a turn for the worse on Saturday when Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, said she was resigning from the Washington Post.

That came after the newspaper refused to publish a satirical cartoon that showed Mr Bezos and other tycoons kneeling before a statue of President-elect Donald Trump.

Last month, Mr Bezos announced Amazon would donate $1m to Trump's inauguration fund and make a $1m in-kind contribution. Mr Bezos also described Trump's re-election victory as "an extraordinary political comeback" and dined with him at the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

Screaming Los Angeles residents left their cars behind to flee a fast-moving wildfire as it closed in on a picturesque celebrity enclave, eyewitnesses said, describing scenes straight out of a Hollywood disaster movie.

A windstorm whipped a seemingly typical brush fire into a raging inferno within a matter of hours on Tuesday, sending the blaze racing towards the Pacific Palisades area.

Thirty thousand people were ordered to evacuate as the conflagration surrounded the neighbourhood in the west of the city, exploding rapidly from 10 acres to several thousand in size.

Bordering Malibu, Pacific Palisades is a haven of hillside streets and winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and extending down to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.

But the Pacific Coast Highway, the main route in - or out - quickly became gridlocked, leading many motorists to ditch their vehicles near Sunset Boulevard as the flames drew near.

One resident, Marsha Horowitz, said firefighters told people to get out of their cars as the blaze, fanned by gusts sometimes topping 100mph (160km/h) in the mountains and foothills, approached.

"The fire was right up against the cars," she said.

• Latest updates from the wildfire

Another Pacific Palisades resident told ABC News that she rushed home from her job in Hollywood once she heard about the evacuations.

After abandoning her car, she went home to grab her cat. While running to safety, flaming pieces of palm tree fell on her.

"I'm getting hit with palm leaves on fire, I ran into a car," said the woman, who did not give her name.

"It's terrifying. It's like a horror movie. I'm screaming and crying going down the street."

Some evacuees described seeing homes burn as they fled.

Hollywood actor James Woods was among celebrities forced to flee their properties.

Actor Steve Guttenberg, also a Pacific Palisades resident, urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys inside so the vehicles could be moved to make way for fire trucks.

"This is not a parking lot," Guttenberg told KTLA. "I have friends up there and they can't evacuate."

Bulldozers later cleared abandoned vehicles to open the route for emergency vehicles.

Jennifer Aniston, Bradley Cooper, Tom Hanks, Reese Witherspoon, Adam Sandler and Michael Keaton also have homes in the Pacific Palisades, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

People fled wildfire flames in the nearby Los Angeles suburb of Topanga Canyon, where Ewan McGregor has a home.

One resident named Melanie told KTLA she tried to get out, but the path was engulfed by flames and she was forced back home.

She was trying to take Palisades Drive down to the Pacific Coast Highway and said had to make "a very fast U-turn because there were flames coming down the hill to the road".

"I would have been driving right into the fire," she said. "We're stuck up here. I don't see any flames but I know they're close by."

Residents in Venice Beach, some six miles (10km) away, reported seeing the flames, too.

Kelsey Trainor said ash fell all around as the fire jumped from one side of the road to the other.

"People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming," she told the Associated Press news agency.

"The road was just blocked, like full-on blocked for an hour."

Ellen Delosh-Bacher told the Los Angeles Times how she rushed from downtown Los Angeles to her home, where her 95-year-old mother and their two dogs live.

She, too, hit gridlock at Sunset Boulevard and Palisades Drive.

Ms Delosh-Bacher described fire exploding behind a nearby Starbucks and police rushing down the road shouting to stuck motorists: "Run for your lives!"

She left her car, keys still in the ignition and ran half a mile down to the beach.

"This is like an apocalypse," she said.

Immigration has long been a polarising issue in the West but Canada mostly avoided it - until now. With protests and campaign groups springing up in certain quarters, some argue that this - together with housing shortages and rising rents - contributed to Justin Trudeau's resignation. But could Donald Trump's arrival inflame it further?

At first glance, the single bedroom for rent in Brampton, Ontario looks like a bargain. True, there's barely any floor space, but the asking price is only C$550 (£300) a month in a Toronto suburb where the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom flat is C$2,261. Inspect it more closely, however, and this is actually a small bathroom converted into sleeping quarters. A mattress is jammed up next to the sink, the toilet is nearby.

The ad, originally posted on Facebook Marketplace, has generated hundreds of comments online. "Disgusting," wrote one Reddit user. "Hey 20-somethings, you're looking at your future," says another.

But there are other listings like it - one room for rent, also in Brampton, shows a bed squashed near a staircase in what appears to be a laundry area. Another rental in Scarborough, a district in Ontario, offers a double bed in the corner of a kitchen.

While Canada might have a lot of space, there aren't enough homes and in the past three years, rents across the country have increased by almost 20%, according to property consultancy Urbanation.

In all, some 2.4 million Canadian families are crammed into homes that are too small, in urgent need of major repairs or are seriously unaffordable, a government watchdog report released in December has suggested.

This accommodation shortage has come to a head at the same time that inflation is hitting Canadians hard - and these issues have, in turn, moved another issue high up the agenda in the country: immigration.

For the first time a majority of Canadians, who have long been welcoming to newcomers, are questioning how their cities can manage.

Politics in other Western countries has long been wrapped up in polarised debates surrounding immigration but until recently Canada had mostly avoided that issue, perhaps because of its geography. Now, however, there appears to be a profound shift in attitude.

In 2022, 27% of Canadians said there were too many immigrants coming into the country, according to a survey by data and research firm Environics. By 2024, that number had increased to 58%.

Campaign groups have sprung up too and there have been marches protesting against immigration in Ottawa, Vancouver and Calgary, and elsewhere around the country.

"I would say it was very much taboo, like no one would really talk about it," explains Peter Kratzar, a software engineer and the founder of Cost of Living Canada, a protest group that was formed in 2024. "[But] things have really unfrozen."

Stories like that of the bathroom for rent in Brampton have fuelled this, he suggests: "People might say, like, this is all anecdotal evidence. But the evidence keeps popping up. You see it over and over again."

"People became concerned about how the immigration system was being managed," adds Keith Neuman, executive director at Environics. "And we believe it's the first time the public really thought about the management of the system."

• Who might replace Trudeau as Liberal Party leader?
• Why the Trudeau era has come to an end now
• What happens next for Canada?

Once the golden boy of Canadian politics, prime minister Justin Trudeau, resigned on 6 January during a crucial election year, amid this widespread discontent over immigration levels.

His approval levels before his resignation were just 22% - a far cry from the first year of his premiership, when 65% of voters said they approved of him.

Though immigration is not the main reason for his low approval levels nor his resignation - he cited "having to fight internal battles" - he was accused of acting too late when dealing with rising anxiety over inflation and housing that many blamed, in part, on immigration.

"While immigration may not have been the immediate cause of the resignation, it may have been the icing on the cake," says Professor Jonathan Rose, head of the department of political studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

Under Trudeau's administration, the Canadian government deliberately chose to radically boost the numbers of people coming to the country after the pandemic, believing that boosting quotas for foreign students and temporary workers, in addition to skilled immigrants, would jumpstart the economy.

The population, which was 35 million 10 years ago, now tops 40 million.

Immigration was responsible for the vast majority of that increase - figures from Canada's national statistics agency show that in 2024, more than 90% of population growth came from immigration.

As well as overall migration levels, the number of refugees has risen too. In 2013, there were 10,365 refugee applicants in Canada - by 2023, that number had increased to 143,770.

Voter dissatisfaction with immigration was "more a symptom than a cause" of Trudeau's downfall, argues Prof Rose. "It reflects his perceived inability to read the room in terms of public opinion."

It's unclear who might replace Trudeau from within his own Liberal Party but ahead of the forthcoming election, polls currently favour the Conservative Party, whose leader Pierre Poilievre advocates keeping the number of new arrivals below the number of new homes being built.

Since Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November, Poilievre "has been speaking much more about immigration", claims Prof Rose - "so much that it has become primed in the minds of voters".

Certainly Trump's arrival for a second term is set to pour oil on an already inflamed issue in Canada, regardless of who the new prime minister is.

He won the US election in part on a pledge to carry out mass deportations of undocumented migrants - and since his victory, he has said that he will enlist the military and declare a national emergency to follow through on his promise.

He also announced plans to employ 25% tariffs on Canadian goods unless border security is tightened.

Drones, cameras and policing the border

Canada and the US share the world's longest undefended border. Stretching almost 9,000km (5,592 miles), much of it crosses heavily forested wilderness and is demarcated by "The Slash," a six-metre wide land clearing.

Unlike America's southern border, there are no walls. This has long been a point of pride between Ottawa and Washington - a sign of their close ties.

After Trump first entered office in 2017, the number of asylum claims skyrocketed, with thousands walking across the border to Canada. The number of claims went from just under 24,000 in 2016 to 55,000 a year by 2018, according to the Canadian government. Almost all crossed from New York state into the Canadian province of Quebec.

In 2023, Canada and the US agreed to a tightened border deal that stopped most migrants from crossing the land border from one country to another. Under the agreement, migrants that come into contact with the authorities within 14 days of crossing any part of the border into either the US or Canada must return to whichever country they entered first — in order to declare asylum there.

The deal, reworked by Trudeau and Joe Biden, is based on the idea that both the US and Canada are safe countries for asylum seekers.

This time around, Canada's national police force – the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) – says it began preparing a contingency plan for increased migrant crossings at the border well ahead of Trump being sworn in.

This includes a raft of new technology, from drones and night vision goggles, to surveillance cameras hidden in the forest.

"Worst-case scenario would be people crossing in large numbers everywhere on the territory," RCMP spokesperson Charles Poirier warned in November. "Let's say we had 100 people per day entering across the border, then it's going to be hard because our officers will basically have to cover huge distances in order to arrest everyone."

Now, the national government has committed a further C$1.3bn (£555m) to its border security plan.

'We want our future back!'

Not everyone blames the housing crisis on the recent rise in immigration. It was "30 years in the making" because politicians have failed to build affordable units, argues Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow.

Certainly the country has a long history of welcoming newcomers. "Close to 50% of the population of Canada is first or second generation," explains Mr Neuman. "That means either they came from another country, or one or both of their parents came from another country. In Toronto, Vancouver, that's over 80%."

This makes Canada "a very different place than a place that has a homogeneous population," he argues.

He has been involved in a survey examining attitudes towards newcomers for 40 years. "If you ask Canadians: what's the most important or distinctive thing about Canada, or what makes the country unique? The number one response is 'multiculturalism' or 'diversity'," he says.

Nonetheless, he says the shift in public opinion - and the rise in concerns about immigration - has been "dramatic".

"Now there is not only broader public concern, but much more open discussion," he says. "There are more questions being asked about how is the system working? How come it isn't working?"

At one of the protests in Toronto, a crowd turned out with hand-painted signs, some proclaiming: "We want our future back!" and "End Mass Immigration".

"We do need to put a moratorium on immigration," argues Mr Kratzar, whose group has taken part in some of them. "We need to delay that so wages can catch up on the cost of rents."

Accusations against newcomers are spreading on social media too. Last summer, Natasha White, who describes herself as a resident of Wasaga Beach in Ontario, claimed on TikTok that some newcomers had been digging holes on the beach and defecating in them.

The post generated hundreds of thousands of views and a torrent of anti-foreigner hatred, with many arguing that newcomers should "go home".

Tent cities and full homeless shelters

People I interviewed who work closely with asylum seekers in Canada say that the heightened concerns around the need for more border security is making asylum seekers feel unsettled and afraid.

Abdulla Daoud, executive director at the Refugee Center in Montreal, believes that the vulnerable asylum seekers he works with feel singled out by the focus on migrant numbers since the US election. "They're definitely more anxious," he says. "I think they're coming in and they're feeling, 'Okay, am I going to be welcomed here? Am I in the right place or not?'"

Those hoping to stay in Canada as refugees can't access official immigration settlement services until it has been decided they truly need asylum. This process once took two weeks but it can now take as long as three years.

Tent cities to house newly-arrived refugees and food banks with empty shelves have sprung up in Toronto. The city's homeless shelters are often reported to be full. Last winter, two refugee applicants froze to death after sleeping on Toronto's streets.

Toronto mayor Olivia Chow, an immigrant herself having moved to Canada from Hong Kong at age 13, says: "People are seeing that, even with working two jobs or three jobs, they can't have enough money to pay the rent and feed the kids.

"I understand the hardship of having a life that is not affordable, and the fear of being evicted, absolutely, I get it. But to blame that on the immigration system is unfair."

Trudeau: 'We didn't get the balance quite right'

With frustrations growing, Trudeau announced a major change in October: a 20% reduction in immigration targets over three years. "As we emerged from the pandemic, between addressing labour needs and maintaining population growth, we didn't get the balance quite right," he conceded.

He added that he wanted to give all levels of government time to catch up – to accommodate more people. But, given that he has since resigned, is it enough? And does the Trump presidency and the increasing anti-immigrant sentiment on that side of the border risk spilling further into Canada?

Mr Daoud has his own view. "Unfortunately, I think the Trump presidency had its impact on Canadian politics," he says. "I think a lot of politicians are using this as a way to fear-monger."

Others are less convinced that it will have much of an impact. "Canadians are better than that," says Olivia Chow. "We remember that successive waves of refugees helped create Toronto and Canada."

Politicians wading into the debate around population growth ahead of the next election will be conscious of the fact that half of Canadians are first and second-generation immigrants themselves. "If the Conservatives win the next election, we can expect a reduction in immigration," says Prof Jonathan Rose. But he adds that Poilievre will have to walk "a bit of fine line".

Prof Rose says: "Since immigrant-heavy ridings [constituencies] in Toronto and Vancouver will be important to any electoral victory, he can't be seen as anti-immigration, merely recalibrating it to suit economic and housing policy."

And there are a large number of Canadians, including business leaders and academics, who believe that the country must continue to pursue an assertive growth policy to combat Canada's falling birth rate.

"I really have high hopes for Canadians," adds Lisa Lalande of the Century Initiative, which advocates for policies that would see Canada's population increase to 100 million by 2100. "I actually think we will rise above where we are now.

"I think we're just really concerned about affordability [and] cost of living - not about immigrants themselves. We recognise they're too important to our culture."

Top picture credit: Getty Images

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Captivated by major new releases from Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Billie Eilish, music fans in the UK spent more on recorded music in 2024 than ever before, new figures show.

Streaming subscriptions and vinyl sales shot up, with consumers spending a total of £2.4 bn over the last 12 months.

That overtakes the previous high of £2.2bn, achieved at the peak of CD sales in 2001.

The biggest-selling album of the year was Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department which sold 783,820 copies; while Noah Kahan had the year's biggest single with Stick Season, which generated the equivalent of 1.99 million sales.

The figures came from the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA), which said subscriptions to services like Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music accounted for almost 85% of the money spent on music last year.

The market for vinyl records grew by 10.5%, with 6.7 million discs sold last year, generating £196m.

CD sales remained flat at £126.2m - although the format still sells more than vinyl in terms of units, with 10.5 million albums bought.

The head of ERA, Kim Bayley, called 2024 a "banner year" for music, with sales at more than double the low point of 2013.

"We can now say definitively - music is back," she added in a statement.

However, music industry revenue still lags far behind the 2001 figures in real terms.

Adjusted for inflation, the industry made the equivalent of £4bn in 2001, when Dido's was the year's biggest album, with sales of 1.9 million.

There are also lingering questions over how artists get paid in the streaming economy. According to the Musicians Union, almost half of working musicians in the UK earn less than £14,000 a year.

Elsewhere, ERA said video was the most popular form of home entertainment, with cinephiles and telly addicts spending more than £5bn on streaming services, movie rentals and DVDs.

The biggest-selling title of the year was the comic book movie Deadpool & Wolverine, with sales of 561,917, more than 80% of which were digital.

Video games saw a drop in revenue, from £4.8bn in 2023 to £4.6bn last year.

The figures reflect a year of high-profile flops, with A-list games like Concord, Suicide Squad and Skull & Bones all failing to find an audience.

There was also a huge shift away from boxed physical games, whose sales fell by 35%.

The biggest-selling game of the year was once again EA Sports FC 25 – formerly known as FIFA – which sold 2.9m copies, 80% of them in digital formats.

However, only four of the games in the top 10 were new releases, and two of those were updates to existing franchises.

The power of Nintendo's Switch was also apparent, with half of the top 10 including games comprised of titles that are exclusive to the console.

Head teachers say they face "difficult choices" over what their schools can afford, as a new report says they could be forced into further cuts next year.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says costs will outpace funding for schools in 2025-26.

Schools say that means they will struggle to fund the government's proposed pay rise for teachers, as well as the support needed for children with special educational needs.

The Department for Education (DfE) said it would work with schools and local authorities to provide a "fair funding system that directs public money to where it is needed".

The IFS estimates that school funding will rise by 2.8% in the 2025-26 financial year. But Wednesday's report warns that costs are likely to rise by 3.6%, leaving schools facing tough choices.

Staff pay usually takes up the majority of a school budget. The government has suggested teachers' pay should go up by 2.8% for the school year beginning September 2025, in line with plans for school spending.

While spending on schools has grown in recent years - redressing previous cuts - the cost of supporting pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) has also increased.

Marlborough St Mary's School in Wiltshire has had to find money from its existing budget to support pupils like six-year-old Thomas, who is waiting for an autism assessment.

His mum, Penny Reader, says Year One pupil Thomas loves everything about space and creatures who live under the sea.

He has one-to-one support at school, but was declined an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) - which sets out a child's legal right to support and additional funding - last year. A tribunal date to appeal that decision has been set for November.

Mrs Reader says it is "utterly insane" that the school does not get additional funding to support Thomas, who would previously hide in the classroom getting distressed and upset.

"He just couldn't cope with the other children," Mrs Reader says. "It was too noisy, too chaotic for him."

Now, Thomas loves being at school and can join in with all of his lessons, she says.

"It's just so reassuring," says Mrs Reader. "It's so lovely to see him thrive.

"Without that, Thomas wouldn't be here. That funding has made such a huge difference."

Head teacher Dan Crossman says the school is in an in-year deficit, spending more money than it has got coming in.

He says he faces a choice between meeting the needs of the children, or balancing the books.

Additional funding to support pupils with Send often takes a long time to materialise, he says.

So, Mr Crossman employs six teaching assistants to meet the needs of children awaiting additional support, such as through an EHCP.

"It means that they are safe. It means that they are happy, and it means that they have the opportunity to learn in a mainstream school," he says.

Mr Crossman says schools face "really hard" decisions, like staff redundancies and cutting counselling services.

The school has received financial support from a private donor to set up a forest school.

But Mr Crossman says such resources should come from "core budgets" rather than private investment.

The IFS says per-pupil spending in mainstream schools rose by about 11% between 2019 and 2024, when adjusted for inflation.

But much of that increase was absorbed by the rising cost of Send provision, meaning the actual increase was only about 5%.

The new analysis comes as the government considers its spending plans for 2026 onwards.

Steve Hitchcock, head teacher of St Peter's Primary School in Devon, and the region's National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) representative, says he has also had to come up with innovative ways to raise more money.

He says sourcing top-up funding is now a "really important part" of his role.

"Just in this last year I've managed to find £20,000 myself, which is just going out to our very generous community," he says.

The "absolutely fantastic" parent-teacher association has also raised £20,000 in the last year through sponsored challenges, film nights and discos at the school.

In the past, this money would go to "cherry-on-top" activities like play equipment. But now, it has to fund basic curriculum resources like buying paper, Mr Hitchcock says.

Staff costs take up 85% of the school's budget. Mr Hitchcock says pay rises are "very important" to recruit and retain staff, and to make sure it's a competitive profession.

The government's recommended 2.8% pay rise for teachers next year is being considered by the independent teacher pay review body.

Education unions have already described the proposal as being disappointingly low, but Mr Hitchcock says he does not know where he will find the extra money, even without any further increases.

"A nearly 3% pay rise is going to mean I have to find £30,000, which just isn't possible," he says.

"We were hoping desperately that this government would have a different approach to funding schools. It's going to be enormously challenging for the whole profession."

Daniel Kebede, National Education Union general secretary, says schools have "no capacity to make savings without cutting educational provision".

Julie McCulloch, from the Association of School and College Leaders, says the financial pressures facing the sector are a "death by a thousand cuts".

"Schools and colleges have been expected to absorb relentless financial pressures over the past 15 years, and they have done an incredible job in minimising the impact on students," she added. "But we cannot go on like this."

The Department for Education said school funding will increase to almost £63.9bn in the next financial year, including £1bn for children and young people with high needs.

A spokesperson said the government is "determined to fix the foundations of the education system".

Additional reporting by Hope Rhodes.