Members of the House of Lords have put forward more than 900 proposed changes to the law to deliver assisted dying, ahead of a debate on Friday.

Experts believe the number of amendments, which is understood to be 942, is unprecedented, but opponents say significant alterations are needed to ensure any scheme can operate safely.

The volume of amendments has sparked a letter from 65 supportive peers to their colleagues in the Lords, raising concern about possible delaying tactics.

Those opposing the bill have been urged not to "frustrate" the passage of the legislation, which has already gained the approval of MPs.

The House of Commons passed the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in June, and it passed its first stage in the Lords in September.

The required line-by-line examination of the bill that follows was delayed, following an amendment by Labour's Baroness Berger to allow a committee of peers to scrutinise the legislation further.

Parliament heard officials worked into the early hours of Thursday morning to compile the suggested changes to the bill that flooded in ahead of the next scrutiny stage, known as committee stage, which begins on Friday.

There appear to be seven opponents to the bill who have submitted 579 amendments between them.

According to the parliamentary authorities, while some bills have had more amendments tabled in total at committee stage, it sets a possible record for the number submitted in the first full list of suggested changes.

They say it is almost certainly unprecedented for the committee stage of this type of bill, known as a private member's bill, which has been put forward by backbench Labour MP Kim Leadbeater rather than the government.

Experts including Matthew England, a researcher at the Hansard Society, said the number of amendments "does appear to be a record, at least in the recent past".

Others drew comparisons to the bill to take the UK out of the European Union, which had 820 amendments in total.

'Genuine improvements'

A peer in favour of the legislation told the BBC that the number of amendments "looks like a delaying tactic to me... It's obviously not a coincidence."

Defending the volume of amendments, Baroness Luciana Berger, who opposes assisted dying, told the BBC that evidence to the select committee "strongly refuted any suggestion this bill is either safe or workable".

"This bill is full of holes which vulnerable people will fall through and be harmed if peers don't act to change and amend it," she added.

However, signatories to the letter highlighted how the bill had "already undergone unprecedented scrutiny" and "offers dying people the choice of a safe, dignified end while strengthening protections for the vulnerable".

Former Royal College of Nursing president Baroness Rafferty was among the 65 peers to have signed, and she was joined by scientist and broadcaster Lord Winston, former Labour leader Lord Kinnock and former Whitehall chief Lord O'Donnell.

They urged opponents to focus on refining the bill to find where "genuine improvements can be made, while respecting both the will of the Commons and the overwhelming support of the public".

In response to the letter, a source close to peers who are concerned about the bill said: "This letter is making claims directly contradicted by the evidence provided in the last few weeks at the Lords select committee by the royal colleges, professionals and independent statutory bodies.

"Evidence and facts are vital when crafting good legislation."

The bill is being treated by parties as a matter of conscience, meaning they will not instruct their MPs or peers how to vote.

The bill will become law in England and Wales only if both the House of Commons and House of Lords agree on the final drafting of the legislation - with approval needed before spring next year, when the current session of Parliament ends.

If it does pass into law, the government has four years in which to get an assisted dying service into place, meaning it could be 2029/30 before the first assisted death happens.

The legislation proposes allowing terminally ill adults with fewer than six months to live to apply for an assisted death.

This would be subject to approval by two doctors and a panel featuring a social worker, a senior legal figure and a psychiatrist.

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The Metropolitan Police is investigating "tens" of group-based child sexual abuse cases involving what could be described as grooming gangs, the force's commissioner has said.

An initial data search identified around 9,000 historic cases that might fall under the broad national criteria, but after reviewing 2,200 of them only about 1,200 remained in scope, Sir Mark Rowley told the London Assembly.

The commissioner warned against using "grooming gangs" as a catch-all term because offending includes abuse within families, in institutions, between peers and online.

He said the ethnicities of suspects varied and are "reflective of the diversity we see in the city".

During Thursday's meeting, the police commissioner set out details of a national review of child exploitation cases, which has prompted recent political debate.

Sir Mark said a data search had initially identified about 9,000 historic cases in London that might fall under a national definition of group-based sexual offending, which includes any case with two or more suspects and at least one victim.

He also said that figure had been widely misinterpreted as 9,000 grooming gang cases and had led to "unbalanced reporting".

He said the definition used by the national audit was far broader than the public understanding of grooming gangs and covered intra-familial offending, institutional abuse, peer-on-peer cases and online exploitation.

'Simplistic analysis'

He told the assembly that after reviewing 2,200 of the 9,000 cases, around 1,200 remained in scope and that the number would continue to fall as the work progressed.

The commissioner said that once the initial assessment was complete, the Met expected "maybe 2,000 or 3,000 cases" to be considered for possible reinvestigation, but stressed this would still cover a wide mix of offending types, not solely grooming gangs.

"We do not see the typology reported elsewhere where there have been cases of offending committed by groups of Pakistani men on white British children being the sole or majority case," added Sir Mark.

He also said the Met recorded around 2,000 sexual offences a month, about half of which involved child sexual abuse, and warned that managing current cases alongside historic ones would require extra funding and specialist officers.

"It is important for us to use precise language and consider its impact on victims and public understanding. There is too much ready reach to simplistic analysis which risks misleading communities," he said.

Sir Mark's comments came during a meeting in which London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan was accused of "taking the mickey" out of victims after previously saying there was "no indication of grooming gangs" operating in the capital.

Susan Hall, Conservative group leader, said: "In January, I asked if we had grooming gangs in London. You dismissed my question by pretending you didn't know what I meant."

Sir Sadiq responded by clarifying "what is meant by grooming gangs", according to the national inquiry announced by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in June, and outlined the support provided to victims.

The mayor told the assembly that London had "issues in relation to child sexual exploitation" and "child sexual abuse", but that these cases were different to those seen elsewhere in England.

"I've led efforts to strengthen the protection of children and those exploited by abuse and exploitation," he said.

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Kobi Crolla is not yet 18 months old but he has spent almost all his life in hospital as medics treat him for severe brain damage.

In that time he has suffered countless seizures and endured 17 operations, while his parents have had to give up their jobs to care for him full-time.

Now his mother Kirsty Grandison, 35, is charting their experience on TikTok in a bid to help other parents of sick children in hospital.

"We used to feel like we were the only parent's going through this," she said

"There was no-one online making videos where we could go for advice, so I started making videos to show life in hospital in a bid to help other people."

Her TikTok page has 34,000 followers and receives up to 40 private messages a day.

Kobi was born 10 weeks prematurely at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh on 17 July 2024.

Despite weighing just 3lb 3oz, his parents initially thought he was doing well.

However, that night doctors "came pouring" into his hospital room in Edinburgh as his tiny lung had collapsed and he had stopped breathing.

Then Kirsty, 35, and her partner Daniel Crolla, 38, received the news "that changed everything" - Kobi had had a grade four brain bleed, the most severe kind.

They were told he would not have any quality of life and they should prepare for the worst and call their family to say their goodbyes.

Against all odds, Kobi pulled through and eight "agonising" days later, they finally got their first cuddle with their son, which felt like a "miracle".

But his parents said his "battles kept coming" with Kobi developing meningitis and each day bringing a new fear with blood transfusions, lumbar punctures and scans.

"He was having up to 10 seizures a day. We were always panicked, always so scared for him. We still are," said Kirsty.

Kobi was diagnosed with hydrocephalus that causes a dangerous build-up of fluid on the brain.

The only option was brain surgery, to install a shunt to allow fluid to be drained from the brain - since then, Kobi has endured 16 surgeries.

"That's 16 times we've handed him over, not knowing if he'd come back," Kirsty said.

Both Daniel, a bus driver, and Kirsty, a carer, have given up their jobs to care full-time for their son.

And Kirsty is using her TikTok page - Kobi The Brave - to give followers a glimpse into the reality of life in a sick kids' unit.

She shows where she buys specially-adapted vests to fit around his feeding tube, how to clean his feeding peg, showing them medicines and setting up Kobi's feeding pump and changing his bed.

"I get messages from other parents in neonatal saying my videos are getting them through and how it's making them not give up hope because they have seen how far Kobi has come from my videos and how well he does despite what he's been through," Kirsty said.

"I want to take all these followers on this journey as I know how many it can help."

Kirsty said caring for Kobi was the "greatest privilege in the world" but it was exhausting, relentless and a lonely journey.

She plans to continue documenting Kobi's story in a bid to help other parents know there are other people going through a similar experience.

"We don't remember the last time we felt at ease, content," Kirsty said.

"We used to have little bits of ourselves outside all this - football, the gym. Now, we go days without having a shower. Sometimes, you wish someone would ask, 'But how are you?'"

Kirsty and her two children from a previous relationship live in Prestonpans, East Lothian, with Daniel, who has three children.

They take it in turns to stay in the hospital with Kobi day and night.

"We've grieved the life we thought we'd have with Kobi," Kirsty said.

"It's hard not to feel jealous sometimes. You see people worrying about hand prints on the walls or toys all over the floor. We'd give anything for that kind of normal."

'Flight or fight mode'

Now the family are hoping they can have their "cheeky and determined" Kobi at home with them for Christmas, away from the beeping machines and clinical smells of hospital.

"We will be on edge worrying and thinking what might go wrong," said Daniel

"His head can double in size instantaneously and we have to rush him back to hospital, you see all the veins in his head and it's like a balloon.

"It's very traumatic and we are constantly in a fight or flight mode.

"But when the fear feels overwhelming, his smile pulls us back.

"As a family, we can count on one hand the number of days we've had out together.

"That's all we want - more time, more chances to make memories."

The family are being helped with the hidden costs of hospital life by the Edinburgh Children's Hospital Charity.

Pippa Johnston, deputy chief executive officer at Edinburgh Children's Hospital Charity, said Daniel and Kirsty had shown "so much courage and resilience in the face of such unimaginable hardship and uncertainty".

"While many people will be heading home to be with their loved ones, the sad reality is that many children like Kobi, and their families, will spend the festive season in hospital," she said.

"No-one should feel like they're facing hospital alone, especially at Christmas.

"Alongside our friends in the NHS, we'll be there to bring reassurance, comfort and unexpected moments of joy when they're need most."

This week, the US government shutdown finally ended after a record 43 days, the BBC's director general and head of news resigned, and I'm A Celebrity... announced changes to its bushtucker trials.

But how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world over the past seven days?

Quiz collated by Ben Fell.

Fancy testing your memory? Try last week's quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

Imagine one night, you're scrolling through social media on your phone, and the ads start to look remarkably familiar. They're decked out in your favourite colours, are featuring your favourite music and the wording sounds like phrases you regularly use.

Welcome to the future of advertising, which is already here thanks to AI.

Advertising company Cheil UK, for example, has been working with startup Spotlight on using large language AI models to understand people's online activity, and adapt that content based on what the AI interprets an individual's personality to be.

The technology can then mirror how someone talks in terms of tone, phrase and pace to change the text of an ad accordingly, and insert music and colours to match, say, whether the AI deems someone to be introverted or extroverted, or have specific preferences for loud or calm music, or light or dark colours.

The aim is to show countless different ads to millions of people, all unique to them.

Brands in retail, consumer electronics, packaged goods, automotive, insurance and banking are already using the technology to create AI-enhanced, personality-driven ads to target online shoppers.

The AI is able to read what people post on public platforms - Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and other public forums - as well as someone's search history, and, most importantly, what people enter into ChatGPT.

Then, with what it deduces about an individual's personality, the AI overlays that on top of what advertisers already know about people. For example, what part of the country you live in, what age bracket you're in, whether you have children or not, what your hobbies might be, where you go on holiday and what clothes you like to wear - information brands can already see through platforms like Facebook or Google.

That's why the jeans you've been searching online for magically appear in your inbox as a sponsored ad, or the holiday you've been searching for seems to follow you around the internet.

The difference is now AI can change the content of those ads, based on what it thinks your personality is, thanks to what it's been reading about you. It targets individual people, rather than the demographic segments or personas advertisers would traditionally use.

"The shift is that we are moving away from what was collected data based on gender and age, and readily available information, to now, going more into a deeper emotional, psychological level," says Cheil UK CEO Chris Camacho.

"You've now got AI systems that can go in and explore your entire digital footprint - your entire online persona, from your social media interests to what you've been engaging in.

"That level is far deeper than it was previously, and that's when you start to build a picture understanding that individual, so whether they're happy, whether they're sad, or what personal situation they're going through."

An added bonus for advertisers is that they might not even need a bespoke AI system to personalise their output.

Researchers in the US studied the reactions of consumers who were advertised an iPhone, with tailored text written by ChatGPT based on how high that person scored on a list of four different personality attributes.

The study found the personalised text was more persuasive than ads without personalised text - and people didn't mind that it had been written by AI.

"Right now, AI is really excelling on that targeting piece. Where it's still in nascent stages, is on that personalisation piece, where a brand is actually creating creative copy that matches some element of your psychological profile," explains Jacob Teeny, an assistant professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, who led the AI research.

"It still has some development to go, but all roads point to the fact that this will become the way [digital advertising is done]," he adds.

Personalised AI ads could also provide a solution to the problem of digital advertising 'wastage' - the fact that 15% of what brands spend on digital advertising goes unseen or unnoticed, so it generates no value to their business.

Not everyone is convinced that personalisation is the right way to go.

"Congratulations - your AI just spent a fortune creating an ad only one person will ever see, and they've already forgotten it," says Brighton-based Alex Calder, chief consultant at AI innovation consultancy Jagged Edge, which is part of digital marketing company Anything is Possible.

"The real opportunity lies in using AI to deepen the relevance of powerful, mass-reach ideas, rather than fragmenting into one-to-one micro-ads that no one remembers. Creepy slop that brags about knowing your intimate details is still slop."

Ivan Mato at brand consultancy Elmwood agrees. He is also questioning whether people will accept it, whether regulators will allow it, and whether brands should even want to operate this way.

"There's also the surveillance question. All of it depends on a data economy that many consumers are increasingly uncomfortable with," says London-based Mr Mato.

"AI opens new creative possibilities, but the real strategic question isn't whether brands can personalise everything - it's whether they should, and what they risk losing if they do."

AI-personalised ads could also take a dark turn, Mr Camacho at Cheil UK acknowledges.

"There's going to be the camp that uses AI well and in an ethical manner, and then there's going to be those that use it to persuade, influence, and guide people down paths," he says.

"And that's the bit that I personally find quite scary. When you think about elections and political canvassing, and how the use of AI can influence voting decisions and who is going to be elected next.

But Mr Camacho is committed to staying on the right side of ethics.

"We don't have to use AI to make ads creepy or to influence individuals to do things that are unethical. We're trying to stay on the nicer side of it. We're trying to enhance the connection between brands and individuals, and that's all we've ever tried to do."

Resident doctors in England are going on strike between 14 and 19 November, in their 13th walkout since March 2023.

The doctors' union, the British Medical Association, is in a long-running dispute with the government over pay for the medics, who were formerly known as junior doctors.

The government says resident doctors have received pay rises totaling nearly 30% in the past three years, but the union says the increases don't go far enough.

Who are resident doctors?

Resident doctors make up around half of all doctors in England. As a patient you could come into contact with a resident doctor in any NHS department, including at A&E and in your GP surgery.

Resident doctors are qualified doctors who have completed a medical degree.

Many then enter speciality training in a particular area of medicine and surgery, or train to become a GP.

They used to be known as junior doctors, but in September 2024 the government agreed to change the name of their role to better reflect their expertise.

Full training can take a long time, so although some resident doctors may have only recently finished medical school, others could have more than a decade of practical experience and be responsible for most aspects of care.

How much do resident doctors earn?

During their first foundation year after finishing their medical degree, resident doctors in England earn a basic salary of £38,831. In their second year, this rises to £44,439.

Medics are often expected to work night shifts, weekends and longer hours, for which they receive extra payments.

After eight years or more as a resident doctor, salaries can progress to around £73,000.

During 2023-24, they received a 22% pay increase over two years. From August 2025, they have been given an additional 5.4%.

What are the resident doctors' pay demands?

The BMA has called a series of strikes in England over pay and working conditions since 2023.

It argues that resident doctors' pay is 20% lower in real terms than it was in 2008, even after the August 2025 increase.

The government uses the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure of inflation to calculate public sector pay increases.

However, the BMA says many resident doctors have large student loans and that interest on these is calculated using a different inflation measure called RPI, which is higher.

Using the CPI measure, the government says resident doctors' current pay is fair.

But analysis from the Nuffield Trust think tank suggests pay has fallen 5% since 2008 if CPI is used, compared with nearly 20% with RPI.

What have the government and the BMA said about the dispute?

Health Secretary Wes Streeting says resident doctors have received the largest pay rises of any public sector employees over the last three years, and insists the government won't offer any further increases.

In October the union rejected a fresh offer to cover mandatory exam fees and increase the number of specialist training posts by an extra 2,000 places.

These are roles which many doctors apply for two years after qualification.

In 2025, there were more than 30,000 applicants for 10,000 jobs, although some were foreign doctors.

The BMA argues that said that even after the expansion of places, many resident doctors would be left without a job at a crucial point of their training, and said the pay issue still needed to be addressed.

The union said it had told the government there would be no strikes for the foreseeable future if doctors were offered a multi-year deal "that restores pay over time", and expressed disappointment at the lack of progress.

What happens if I'm ill over the strike?

The strike in England will last from 0700 on Friday 14 July to 0700 on Wednesday 19 July.

The NHS has urged patients to "come forward for care as usual" during the period.

Anyone with a life-threatening emergency should call 999 and attend the emergency department if needed.

For urgent, non life-threatening issues the advice is to use the NHS 111 website or to call the helpline. GP surgeries will be open as normal.

Most planned hospital appointments and procedures should go ahead as scheduled. The NHS says anyone whose appointment is postponed will be contacted in advance.

As happened during previous industrial action, hospitals have been told they should only cancel routine appointments in exceptional circumstances.

The target set this time is for a minimum of 95% of "planned activity" to take place on strike days.

But NHS chiefs accept that the ongoing industrial action has disrupted the care for thousands of patients.

Government analysis shows that 507,000 appointments and operations were cancelled or rescheduled during the previous wave of strikes between July 2023 and February 2024 - which involved some consultants.

The latest strike action takes place as the NHS starts to face additional winter pressures, such as a rising number of flu cases.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not affected by the latest walk-out.

What pay rises have other public sector staff had?

In May 2025, the government announced pay rises for a number of public sector workers, including:

• 4.5% for members of the UK armed forces, with 3.75% for senior military staff
• 4% for other doctors, dentists, and teachers in England, as well as prison officers in England and Wales
• 3.6% for some NHS staff in England, including nurses and midwives
• 3.25% for civil servants

However, because a medical degree can take five or six years to complete - longer than most other degree courses - the BMA argues resident doctors' pay should reflect the fact that they may have more student debt than other graduates.

Resident doctors also have little control on where and when they are asked to work, and that the need to do placements in different parts of the country can be expensive.

No-fault evictions will be outlawed in England from 1 May, the government confirmed, as it set out the timeline for sweeping renters' reforms.

The changes also see the end of fixed-term tenancy contracts, as renters move onto so-called "rolling" agreements, as well as an end to "bidding wars" and clearer rules on having pets.

Landlords have said the reforms would increase the screening of prospective tenants and have spoken of nervousness around what happens when tenancies go wrong.

Housing Secretary Steve Reed said the government was "calling time" on "rogue landlords" by initiating a raft of measures in the Renters' Rights Act.

"We're now on a countdown of just months to that law coming in - so good landlords can get ready and bad landlords should clean up their act," he added.

Shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly said the reforms "will drive landlords from the market, reduce supply and send prices up for tenants".

He said that, "with a start date of May 2026, we are now set for a six-month fire sale with tenants forced out at short notice".

Approximately 4.4m households in England rented from a private landlord between 2021 to 2023. The new rules will affect more than 11 million people.

The Renters' Rights Act - described as the biggest shake-up to renting in England for more than 30 years - was formally approved at the end of October.

While many renters welcomed the introduction of the timeline, some landlords expressed concern about the speed of the changes.

Deadline to implement changes is 'not enough'

Ben Beadle, chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, said the deadline alone to implement the changes is "not enough".

He added: "We have argued consistently that landlords and property businesses need at least six months from the publication of regulations to ensure the sector is properly prepared for the biggest changes it has faced for over 40 years."

From May, properties will be rented on a "periodic" or rolling basis, rather than under a fixed 12 or 24-month contract.

Tenants who want to leave can give two months' notice, which the government says will prevent tenants paying rent for substandard properties.

Landlords will no longer be able to evict tenants for complaining about poor conditions.

More than 11,000 households in England had their homes repossessed by bailiffs following a section 21 eviction in the year to June.

Victoria, 25, had to suspend studying for her degree after she received a section 21 eviction notice in March.

She was living in Durham while studying at the University of Northumbria and believes the eviction was partly due to complaints about the property's condition.

"I ended up having no choice but to move back in with my parents and I was devastated."

'Your safety net can be pulled away on a whim of the landlord'

Kerrie Portman, 27, became homeless after reporting significant mold in her Cambridgeshire flat to environmental health in 2020.

The council placed her in temporary accommodation while the landlord was told to address the issue, but she was still stuck paying rent.

She said: "I think it's outrageous that the landlord continued to charge me full rent... ultimately, he didn't really face any obstacles."

A few weeks after she moved back in, she was given a section 21 notice, making her homeless. She would nap in public bathrooms, sleep on long bus routes and shower at her gym.

"I think it's so ridiculous that your whole safety net and foundation can be pulled away on a whim of the landlord," Kerrie said.

Ten households in Hackney, East London, in houses that are all owned by the same landlord, said they had recently been issued with section 21 notices without reason.

One of the affected tenants, who did not want to give her name, said she was "really panicking".

"We were looking for a place this time last year and it took us three to four months to find one," she said.

The government confirmed that all section 21 notices issued before May will stand, but it said landlords must begin court repossession proceedings by 31 July 2026.

The overhaul of the current system means that, from 1 May, landlords will only be able to evict tenants in certain circumstances: if tenants damage a property, commit antisocial behaviour, or fall significantly behind paying the rent.

'Anti-landlord' legislation

Maureen Treadwell contacted BBC News with concerns about the new law. Her family rent out 10 properties in Hampshire.

"There are draconian fines if you get things wrong, so the whole thing feels anti-landlord," she said.

She raised her fears that, without reforms to the court system making it quicker to evict bad tenants, there will be an exodus of people who want to let their homes.

"Is it worth letting your house and then having a court fight to recover it, or a one-year delay? It's not worth it. So it will end up making the housing crisis worse."

Reed told the BBC he was "working with the Ministry of Justice to look at how we can ensure that there are not undue delays" in situations where a landlord wanted to evict a tenant who was misbehaving.

In addition, landlords will be able to evict tenants if they want to sell or move into the property but not in the first 12 months after a tenancy begins.

The new laws also include banning bidding wars and discrimination of parents and those on benefits, as well as setting out a clearer process for those renting with pets.

Many renters' groups have welcomed the changes. The Renters Reform Coalition - which includes Shelter, Generation Rent and Citizens Advice - says section 21 is "a huge issue".

"It is not the prospect of giving renters these vital rights that is fuelling record homelessness, but the gross injustice of no-fault evictions," said Shelter's Mairi MacRae.

The Renters' Rights Act applies to England. Scotland abolished no-fault evictions in 2017, but Wales and Northern Ireland still have no-fault evictions under something similar to section 21. In 2022, Wales increased the notice period for these to six months.

The Metropolitan Police is investigating "tens" of group-based child sexual abuse cases involving what could be described as grooming gangs, the force's commissioner has said.

An initial data search identified around 9,000 historic cases that might fall under the broad national criteria, but after reviewing 2,200 of them only about 1,200 remained in scope, Sir Mark Rowley told the London Assembly.

The commissioner warned against using "grooming gangs" as a catch-all term because offending includes abuse within families, in institutions, between peers and online.

He said the ethnicities of suspects varied and are "reflective of the diversity we see in the city".

During Thursday's meeting, the police commissioner set out details of a national review of child exploitation cases, which has prompted recent political debate.

Sir Mark said a data search had initially identified about 9,000 historic cases in London that might fall under a national definition of group-based sexual offending, which includes any case with two or more suspects and at least one victim.

He also said that figure had been widely misinterpreted as 9,000 grooming gang cases and had led to "unbalanced reporting".

He said the definition used by the national audit was far broader than the public understanding of grooming gangs and covered intra-familial offending, institutional abuse, peer-on-peer cases and online exploitation.

'Simplistic analysis'

He told the assembly that after reviewing 2,200 of the 9,000 cases, around 1,200 remained in scope and that the number would continue to fall as the work progressed.

The commissioner said that once the initial assessment was complete, the Met expected "maybe 2,000 or 3,000 cases" to be considered for possible reinvestigation, but stressed this would still cover a wide mix of offending types, not solely grooming gangs.

"We do not see the typology reported elsewhere where there have been cases of offending committed by groups of Pakistani men on white British children being the sole or majority case," added Sir Mark.

He also said the Met recorded around 2,000 sexual offences a month, about half of which involved child sexual abuse, and warned that managing current cases alongside historic ones would require extra funding and specialist officers.

"It is important for us to use precise language and consider its impact on victims and public understanding. There is too much ready reach to simplistic analysis which risks misleading communities," he said.

Sir Mark's comments came during a meeting in which London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan was accused of "taking the mickey" out of victims after previously saying there was "no indication of grooming gangs" operating in the capital.

Susan Hall, Conservative group leader, said: "In January, I asked if we had grooming gangs in London. You dismissed my question by pretending you didn't know what I meant."

Sir Sadiq responded by clarifying "what is meant by grooming gangs", according to the national inquiry announced by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in June, and outlined the support provided to victims.

The mayor told the assembly that London had "issues in relation to child sexual exploitation" and "child sexual abuse", but that these cases were different to those seen elsewhere in England.

"I've led efforts to strengthen the protection of children and those exploited by abuse and exploitation," he said.

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EastEnders favourite Pat Evans, formerly Pat Butcher, is to return to the BBC soap for a one-off episode over the Christmas period.

The character, played by Pam St Clement, was beloved by viewers for more than 25 years for her no-nonsense personality and memorable taste in earrings.

Pat died in 2012, but was later seen on-screen again with Dame Barbara Windsor, when she returned as a figment of the dying Peggy's imagination in 2016.

She will now similarly come back, acting alongside Paul Bradley, as Nigel, whose memories take him back to the 90s, as part of a storyline about his dementia next month.

'Coming home'

"I was both surprised and excited to be asked back to tread the streets of Walford once again and to be involved in Nigel's touching dementia storyline," St Clement, 83, said.

"It was lovely to be welcomed back by those with whom I had worked for so long. It was just like coming home."

Pat returns to help Nigel when his dementia symptoms intensify, following an emotional evening at his festive film screening.

St Clement first appeared in EastEnders in 1986 and was at the heart of the drama in Albert Square until her character's death.

EastEnders executive producer Ben Wadey said: "It's an honour and a privilege to welcome Pam St Clement back to EastEnders for a special episode in Nigel's ongoing dementia storyline.

"Pat Evans is one of the most cherished and iconic characters to have graced the streets of Walford, and I know I speak on behalf of everyone when I say what a delight it was to see Pat and Pam back in The Queen Vic, as she helps Nigel in his time of need."

Pat is one of a number of classic characters who have made a return to Walford.

Anita Dobson's Queen Vic landlady Angie Watts made a surprise return to visit her daughter Sharon, as she drifted in and out of consciousness in the show's 40th anniversary episode in February.

Cindy Beale (Michelle Collins) and Zoe Slater (Michelle Ryan) are back in the Square, while Grant Mitchell (Ross Kemp) and Chrissie Watts (Tracy-Ann Oberman) made recent short-term comebacks.

The BBC has apologised to US President Donald Trump for a Panorama episode which spliced parts of a speech together, but rejected his demands for compensation.

The corporation also said it would not show the programme again.

Lawyers for Trump have threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn (£759m) in damages unless the corporation issues a retraction, apologises and compensates him.

The apology comes after a second similarly edited clip, broadcast on Newsnight in 2022, was revealed by the Daily Telegraph.

A BBC spokesperson said: "Lawyers for the BBC have written to President Trump's legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday.

"BBC chair Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter to the White House making clear to President Trump that he and the corporation are sorry for the edit of the president's speech on 6 January 2021, which featured in the programme.

"The BBC has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary Trump: A Second Chance? on any BBC platforms.

"While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim."

An independent review of the Sara Sharif case has identified multiple failings from agencies before her murder in Surrey in 2023, following two years of abuse.

The child safeguarding practice review, published on Thursday, said there were "clearly several points in Sara's life, in particular during the last few months, where different actions could and should have been taken" by the authorities.

"The system failed to keep her safe," it added.

Responding to the report, the Children's Commissioner said the case was a "catalogue of missed opportunities, poor communication and ill-informed assumptions." The education secretary said there had been "the glaring failures" across all agencies.

From before she was even born Surrey Children's Services, Surrey Police and the Family Court knew of the domestic violence in her home.

The review authors said her father and stepmother were "a lethal combination", and that "with hindsight it is clear that they should never have been trusted" with her care.

Here are five of the key failings identified by the review.

Social workers not trusted

Warning: This story contains distressing details

When Sara Sharif's case was first in the family court in the early months of her life, social workers from Surrey County Council wanted her to be removed from her parents for her safety.

But after the initial court hearings the plan changed.

The review found that the "social workers felt very frustrated" by this, saying voices were not heard.

They felt that in court "the views of the children's guardian took precedence". The children's guardian is an expert appointed by the court to "represent the best interests of a child".

The review authors said that where the children's guardian and local authority social workers have differing views, the difference of opinion should be summarised clearly for the judge.

Vital information missing in custody case

When Sara Sharif's father remarried and applied for custody, an inexperienced social worker was asked to produce what is called a Section 7 report.

But the review found the report was missing "vital information and analysis" because the files that Surrey Children's Services held were not "thoroughly reviewed".

By chance the judge who heard the case, Alison Raeside, had sat on the earlier hearings, but she was not reminded of some key facts.

For example, Sara's father Urfan Sharif had a history of "domestic abuse and past violence to the children". He had been told to complete a domestic abuse perpetrators programme before having unsupervised contact, but he had not.

Bruising report rushed

When in March 2023, Sara's school reported to Children's Services that she had a golf ball-sized bruise on her cheek the request for support was graded "Amber".

This meant it should be dealt with within 24 hours. The social worker did not check what information Surrey Police held on the family, and they did not speak to the school to inquire more about Sara's change in demeanour.

She had gone from a bubbly child who loved singing to someone who was "quiet and coy".

Urfan Sharif told the social worker that Sara had "lots of marks because of the machinery she was hooked up to when born prematurely", which was a lie. The outcome was "no social work action".

Five months later Sara was murdered by her father.

Address not updated

The next month Urfan Sharif took his daughter out of school. The review found that she "effectively disappeared from view".

Surrey County Council had a policy of making home visits to children being home-schooled. The Sharif family had recently moved from a small flat in West Byfleet to a house in Woking. The school knew this and had informed the Council who owned both the homes anyway.

The review found that "address on the referral form sent by the school was the new address but the old address remained on the electronic system used by the inclusion team."

It meant that when the home education team went round to check on Sara on 7 August 2023 they went to the old address.

The next day Sara - already tortured, battered and burned - was murdered by Urfan Sharif and her stepmother Beinash Batool.

Racism concerns

Neighbours of the Sharif family did at times hear things that worried them, but the review found that "they were worried about reporting concerns about what they heard within the family's home. They feared being branded as being racist, especially on social media".

Sara started wearing the hijab in 2021 when she was only eight years old, even though her stepmother did not.

The review found that the "school showed appropriate curiosity by talking to Sara and stepmother and accepted the explanation that this was linked to Sara's interest with Pakistani culture following a visit to her paternal grandparents in Pakistan".

In the last months of Sara's life the the hijab hid the bruising and injuries to her face and head.

Two-thirds of women serving full-time in the UK's armed forces reported experiencing sexualised behaviour over the past year, according to a survey.

This included comments about their appearance, harassment, leering and groping.

Women were twice as likely to experience the behaviours as men, the survey said.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD), which commissioned the report, called the findings "wholly unacceptable" and said it had launched a prevention programme to address unacceptable behaviour.

The survey was part of an effort to get to grips with the deeply troubling experiences of many women in the armed forces – who make up about 12% of the force.

In 2021, 19-year-old gunner Jaysley Beck took her own life after being sexually harassed and assaulted. Warrant Officer Michael Webber, 43, had pinned down Beck and tried to kiss her. He was jailed for sexual assault last month.

The survey of more than 90,000 military personnel - including full-time personnel referred to as regulars, and part-time reservists - highlights a wide spectrum of harassment – from verbal to physical.

Sixty-seven percent of female full-time personnel had encountered some kind of sexualised behaviour in the last year – such as inappropriate jokes, pornography, or comments about their appearance. Among male regulars it was 34%.

Of these women, 93% said they believed the behaviour amounted to sexual harassment.

Some 42% of female regulars said they had been stared or leered at. A third said they had been touched in a way that made them feel uncomfortable.

Sexualised behaviour was most common in an open workplace at the military home or training unit.

The MoD said it was addressing what it called inappropriate behaviours by educating recruits about consent, misogyny and harmful online influences.

Minister for Veterans and People, Louise Sandher-Jones, said the survey results were "wholly unacceptable", describing it as a "no holds barred baseline, to fully confront and address the root causes of this issue".

"New standards in transparency and accountability are being set across our Armed Forces," she added.

The survey comes a year after a separate Royal Navy investigation found women in the Submarine Service had suffered misogyny, bullying and other unacceptable behaviours.

The behaviour was seen "amongst all ranks" but was "not pervasive" across the service, the report said, after a two-year long investigation.

A gold pocket watch recovered from the body of one of the richest passengers on the Titanic is expected to fetch £1m at auction.

Isidor Straus and his wife Ida were among the more than 1,500 people who died when the vessel, travelling from Southampton to New York, sank after hitting an iceberg on 14 April 1912.

His body was recovered from the Atlantic days after the disaster and among his possessions was an 18 carat gold Jules Jurgensen pocket watch which will go up for auction on 22 November.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge, of Henry Aldridge & Son in Wiltshire, told BBC Radio Wiltshire: "With the watch, we are retelling Isidor's story. It's a phenomenal piece of memorabilia."

Mr Straus was a Bavarian-born American businessman, politician, and co-owner of Macy's department store in New York.

Mr Aldridge added: "They were a very famous New York couple. Everyone would know them from the end of James Cameron's Titanic movie, when there is an elderly couple hugging as the ship is sinking, that's Isidor and Ida."

On the night of the sinking, it is believed his devoted wife refused a place in a lifeboat as she did not want to leave her husband and said she would rather die by his side. Ida's body was never found.

The pocket watch stopped at 2:20am, the moment the Titanic disappeared beneath the waves.

It is believed to have been a gift from Ida to her husband in 1888 and is engraved with Straus' initials.

It was returned to his family and was passed down through generations before Kenneth Hollister Straus, Isidor's great-grandson, had the movement repaired and restored.

It will be sold alongside a rare letter Ida wrote aboard the liner describing its luxury.

She wrote: "What a ship! So huge and so magnificently appointed. Our rooms are furnished in the best of taste and most luxurious."

The letter is postmarked "TransAtlantic 7" meaning it was franked on board in the Titanic's post office before being taken off with other mail at Queenstown, Ireland.

Both items will be offered by Henry Aldridge & Son in Wiltshire, with the letter estimated to fetch £150,000.

The watch is set to become one of the most expensive Titanic artefacts ever sold.

A gold pocket watch presented to the captain of the Carpathia, the steamship which rescued more than 700 Titanic survivors, sold last year a record-breaking £1.56m.

You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.

A botched net zero scheme which has caused damp issues in thousands of homes was the result of ''serious failings at every level", a UK government official has said.

Last month, the National Audit Office found that 98% of the 23,000 homes that had external wall insulation installed under two separate schemes will result in damp and mould if left unaddressed.

Its damning report also found that hundreds of homeowners' health and safety had been put at immediate risk because the insulation work had not been done correctly.

Appearing before Parliament, Jeremy Pocklington, the most most senior civil servant at Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, said the failures were "unacceptable".

The damage also applies to about a third of homes which had internal insulation installed under the ECO4 scheme and the Great British Insulation Scheme, available to residents in England, Scotland and Wales.

More than three million homes have been insulated under a variety of government schemes over the last 20 years. Billions of pounds of public money have been spent on it.

Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee, Mr Pocklington began his evidence session by saying his thoughts were with the families and households affected.

The chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, said the NAO report findings were the ''worst'' he'd seen in 12 years of chairing the committee and accused the department of negligence.

Mr Pocklington said there had been poor oversight of the ECO4 and the Great British Insulation Scheme by Trustmark, the body responsible for overseeing the quality of the insulation work.

However, he added that the department ''did not oversee these schemes in the way that they should have done''.

Independent MP Rupert Lowe said this amounted to ''systemic failure of a government department''.

Acknowledging this remark, Mr Pocklington, said ''there are serious failings at every level of the system that are systemic'', and that the department "didn't take enough steps to ensure that Trustmark was set up to deliver appropriately".

Mr Pocklington explained that the department had been under pressure after dealing with the Covid pandemic and the effect on energy prices of the war in Ukraine.

Labour MP Clive Betts asked Mr Pocklington whether the department would take responsibility for all of the homeowners that have been ''badly treated'' under all of the government's energy efficiency schemes, not just those carried out since 2022.

Mr Pocklington said the focus was on the two schemes which had taken place since 2022.

Asked by Mr Betts if the government would "stand behind'' affected homeowners, Mr Pocklington said the government's responsibility was ''to ensure that the schemes we put in place operate effectively and that there are appropriate systems of consumer protection in place".

An independent review of the Sara Sharif case has identified multiple failings from agencies before her murder in Surrey in 2023, following two years of abuse.

The child safeguarding practice review, published on Thursday, said there were "clearly several points in Sara's life, in particular during the last few months, where different actions could and should have been taken" by the authorities.

"The system failed to keep her safe," it added.

Responding to the report, the Children's Commissioner said the case was a "catalogue of missed opportunities, poor communication and ill-informed assumptions." The education secretary said there had been "the glaring failures" across all agencies.

From before she was even born Surrey Children's Services, Surrey Police and the Family Court knew of the domestic violence in her home.

The review authors said her father and stepmother were "a lethal combination", and that "with hindsight it is clear that they should never have been trusted" with her care.

Here are five of the key failings identified by the review.

Social workers not trusted

Warning: This story contains distressing details

When Sara Sharif's case was first in the family court in the early months of her life, social workers from Surrey County Council wanted her to be removed from her parents for her safety.

But after the initial court hearings the plan changed.

The review found that the "social workers felt very frustrated" by this, saying voices were not heard.

They felt that in court "the views of the children's guardian took precedence". The children's guardian is an expert appointed by the court to "represent the best interests of a child".

The review authors said that where the children's guardian and local authority social workers have differing views, the difference of opinion should be summarised clearly for the judge.

Vital information missing in custody case

When Sara Sharif's father remarried and applied for custody, an inexperienced social worker was asked to produce what is called a Section 7 report.

But the review found the report was missing "vital information and analysis" because the files that Surrey Children's Services held were not "thoroughly reviewed".

By chance the judge who heard the case, Alison Raeside, had sat on the earlier hearings, but she was not reminded of some key facts.

For example, Sara's father Urfan Sharif had a history of "domestic abuse and past violence to the children". He had been told to complete a domestic abuse perpetrators programme before having unsupervised contact, but he had not.

Bruising report rushed

When in March 2023, Sara's school reported to Children's Services that she had a golf ball-sized bruise on her cheek the request for support was graded "Amber".

This meant it should be dealt with within 24 hours. The social worker did not check what information Surrey Police held on the family, and they did not speak to the school to inquire more about Sara's change in demeanour.

She had gone from a bubbly child who loved singing to someone who was "quiet and coy".

Urfan Sharif told the social worker that Sara had "lots of marks because of the machinery she was hooked up to when born prematurely", which was a lie. The outcome was "no social work action".

Five months later Sara was murdered by her father.

Address not updated

The next month Urfan Sharif took his daughter out of school. The review found that she "effectively disappeared from view".

Surrey County Council had a policy of making home visits to children being home-schooled. The Sharif family had recently moved from a small flat in West Byfleet to a house in Woking. The school knew this and had informed the Council who owned both the homes anyway.

The review found that "address on the referral form sent by the school was the new address but the old address remained on the electronic system used by the inclusion team."

It meant that when the home education team went round to check on Sara on 7 August 2023 they went to the old address.

The next day Sara - already tortured, battered and burned - was murdered by Urfan Sharif and her stepmother Beinash Batool.

Racism concerns

Neighbours of the Sharif family did at times hear things that worried them, but the review found that "they were worried about reporting concerns about what they heard within the family's home. They feared being branded as being racist, especially on social media".

Sara started wearing the hijab in 2021 when she was only eight years old, even though her stepmother did not.

The review found that the "school showed appropriate curiosity by talking to Sara and stepmother and accepted the explanation that this was linked to Sara's interest with Pakistani culture following a visit to her paternal grandparents in Pakistan".

In the last months of Sara's life the the hijab hid the bruising and injuries to her face and head.

The BBC was accused of a misleading edit of Donald Trump's 6 January 2021 speech two years before the Panorama sequence that led to the resignation of the director-general.

The clip aired on Newsnight in 2022, and a guest on the live programme challenged the way it had been cut together, the Daily Telegraph reported.

On Monday the BBC apologised for an "error of judgement" over an edited portion of the same speech that aired last year on Panorama.

The fallout saw the resignations of the BBC's director-general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness, and a legal threat from US President Donald Trump.

Lawyers for Trump have written to the BBC saying he will sue for $1bn (£759m) in damages unless the corporation issues a retraction, apologises and compensates him for the Panorama broadcast.

BBC News has contacted the BBC for comment.

In Trump's speech on 6 January 2021, he said: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."

More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: "And we fight. We fight like hell."

In the Panorama programme, the clip shows him as saying: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."

In the Newsnight programme the edit is a little different.

He is shown as saying: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol. And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country anymore."

Responding to the clip on the same programme, former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who quit a diplomatic post and became a critic of Trump after describing the 6 January riots as an "attempted coup", said the video had "spliced together" Trump's speech.

"That line about 'we fight and fight like hell' is actually later in the speech and yet your video makes it look like those two things came together," he said.

The Telegraph also reported that a whistleblower told the newspaper that a further discussion the following day was also shut down.

Last week, a leaked internal BBC memo claimed Panorama had misled viewers by splicing two parts of Trump's 6 January 2021 speech together, making it appear as though he was explicitly urging people to attack the US Capitol after his election defeat.

The documentary aired days before the US presidential election in November 2024.

Speaking to Fox News, Trump said his 6 January 2021 speech had been "butchered" and the way it was presented had "defrauded" viewers.

If you, like me, have a spoiled, lazy dog that enjoys cheese flavoured treats, the fact that your pet's ancestors were wild predators can seem unfathomable.

But a major new study suggests their physical transformation from wolf to sofa-hogging furball began in the Middle Stone Age, much earlier than we previously thought.

"When you see a Chihuahua - it's a wolf that's been living with humans for so long that it's been modified," says Dr Allowen Evin from the University of Montpellier, a lead researcher on this study.

She and her colleagues discovered that the transformation of our pets championed by the Victorians through selective breeding actually started more than 10,000 years ago.

In a paper published in the journal Science, this international team of researchers focused their attention on prehistoric canine skulls. Over more than a decade, they collected, examined and scanned bones that spanned a period of 50,000 years of dog evolution.

They created digital 3D models of each of the more than 600 skulls they examined - and compared specific features across ancient and modern dogs - and their wild relatives.

This revealed that, nearly 11,000 years ago, just after the last ice age, dog skulls started to change shape. While there were still slender, wolf-like dogs, there were also many with shorter snouts and wider, stockier heads.

Dr Carly Ameen from the University of Exeter, another lead researcher on this project, explained to BBC News that almost half of the diversity we see in modern dog breeds today was already present in dog populations by the middle of the Stone Age.

"It's really surprising," she said. "And it starts to challenge the ideas about whether or not it was the Victorians - and their kennel clubs - that drove this."

Domestication: An ancient mystery

Dogs were the first animals to be domesticated. There is evidence that humans have been living closely with canines for at least 30,000 years. Where and why that close association began remains a puzzle.

This study has revealed some of the earliest physical evidence of dogs transforming into the diverse array of pets, companions and working animals that we know today. And the researchers' digital scans of the skulls that they studied will allow them to answer more questions about the evolutionary driving forces behind domestication.

Some researchers have suggested that humans and wolves came together almost by accident, when wolves moved to the outskirts of hunter-gatherer communities to scavenge for food.

Tamer wolves would get more food, and the humans gradually came to rely on the wolves to clean up remains of messy carcasses and to raise the alarm if a predator came near.

As to why that ultimately changed dogs' physical appearance, Dr Ameen said there were likely to be a number of reasons. She did not rule our ancestors preference for boxy heads and cute, snub noses but she explained: "It's likely to be a combination of interaction with humans, adapting to different environments, adapting to different types food - all contributing to the kind of explosion of variation that we see.

"It's hard to untangle which of those might be the most important one."

For tens of thousands of years, our human story and that of our dogs has been entangled. In another paper in this same edition of the journal Science, a research group led by scientists in China studied ancient DNA from dogs that lived between 9,700 and 870 years ago - at sites across Siberia, the Central Eurasian Steppe, and northwest China.

They concluded that the movement of domestic dogs across that region often coincided with migrations of people - hunter-gatherers, farmers, and pastoralists. So our dogs have travelled alongside us - and been integrated into our societies - for thousands of years.

I can't say that my own stubborn, disobedient terrier provides me with any of the benefits that the first domesticated wolves bestowed on our ancestors. But I can see why, as research suggests, once a dog showed up for some leftovers, there was no going back.

People have been told to leave their accommodation mid holiday after property rentals firm Sonder suddenly went bankrupt.

It comes after Marriott hotels terminated its leasing agreement with Sonder, which is said was "due to Sonder's default".

One customer on Reddit said he couldn't get back in to his room where his belongings were, while others shared pictures of themselves carting luggage through the streets, seeking accommodation elsewhere.

Sonder rooms can longer be booked via the Marriott site and app. Marriott said it was helping people who booked via its own platforms but was advising those who booked via a third party to ask for a refund via their credit card issuer.

"Sonder has faced severe financial constraints arising from, among other things, prolonged challenges in the integration of the company's systems and booking arrangements with Marriott International," Sonder said in a statement on its website.

Seen as a rival to Airbnb, which offers alternatives to traditional hotels, Sonder focussed on premium serviced apartments and lodgings. Founded in Montreal, it operates thousands of rooms in over 40 cities.

"We are devastated to reach a point where a liquidation is the only viable path forward," said Janice Sears, Sonder's interim chief executive.

She added its integration with Marriott was "substantially delayed due to unexpected challenges in aligning our technology frameworks", which she said resulted in significant costs.

She added there was a sharp decline in revenue "arising from Sonder's participation in Marriott's Bonvoy reservation system".

Marriott Bonvoy is a booking and rewards system operated by Marriott.

One man said he had received no communication about his cancelled Sonder reservation, that there was no way to contact the firm online, and said it was "causing significant worry".

Sonder's properties often have no staff and rely on door codes for guest entry. Some people have complained that their codes no longer worked and owners were not immediately available to help them retrieve their belongings.

Many users said the only reason they booked with Sonder was because it seemed reliably "backed" by the well-known Marriott brand - but now felt betrayed.

One user on X said "Marriott has been useless", and wanted to charge him hundreds of dollars a night to rebook him at one of its Courtyard hotels.

Marriott said on its website that it didn't charge customer cards itself for Sonder bookings, but would facilitate refunds by coordinating "with the appropriate parties".

Marriott said it has a portfolio of over 9,700 properties with 30 brands in 143 countries, and that its business model includes operating hotels as well as franchising and licensing hotels, residential properties, timeshares and lodging properties.

Sonder said that it will be seeking insolvency in all the countries in which it operates.

The BBC has asked for comment from Marriott International and Sonder regarding customers' complaints.

You can also get in touch by following this link

Sir Keir Starmer is facing calls from senior ministers to sack whoever was behind briefings to the media that the PM is facing a leadership challenge.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Health Secretary Wes Streeting were both named as potential challengers in the anonymous briefings - now both are calling for whoever was behind them to be found and sacked.

It comes as Sir Keir apologised to Streeting for the episode, which the PM is said to be "incadescent" about.

It has intensified pressure on the prime minister's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, whom some - including senior figures in government - blame for the culture inside No 10.

Speaking to the BBC, Miliband said it's been a "bad couple of days", adding: "We've got to learn the lessons of this episode and say this is not where the focus should be."

He said he was confident the prime minister would want to find who the anonymous briefer was and "get rid of them if he can find out".

"He hates it when things get leaked, he hates it when cabinet colleagues get briefed against.

"People listening to this programme might think 'if he hates it, why can't he stop it'.

"The truth is, sometimes these things do happen. There are noises off and you can never quite know where they are coming from."

Miliband's name has been discussed by some Labour MPs as another possible challenger to the prime minister.

Asked if he would rule out returning as Labour leader, he replied: "Yes."

He added: "I had the best inoculation technique against wanting to be leader of the Labour Party which is that I was leader of the Labour Party, between 2010 and 2015.

"I've got the T-shirt - that chapter's closed."

• Where does bout of mudslinging over leadership leave Starmer's government?
• I have never authorised attacks on ministers, says PM
• Starmer will fight attempts to replace him, allies say

Sir Keir apologised to Streeting in a brief phone call on Wednesday evening, however supporters of the health secretary are said to be irritated that briefing against him has continued.

Streeting has stopped short of explicitly criticising McSweeney – and made a point of praising his role in Labour's general election victory.

But those around the health secretary argue that "this kind of briefing culture followed Keir Starmer from opposition into government".

There are a declining number of advisers who were with Sir Keir in opposition and are still working for him now.

McSweeney is one of them, and the most senior. He has been approached for comment and not replied.

Speaking at Prime Minister's Questions, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Sir Keir had "lost control of his government... and lost the trust of the British people".

She said McSweeney was responsible for the culture in No 10 and asked if the prime minister still had confidence in him.

Sir Keir replied: "Morgan McSweeney, my team and I are absolutely focused on delivering for the country.

"Let me be clear, of course, I've never authorised attacks on cabinet members, I appointed them to their post because they're the best people to carry out their jobs."

He added that "any attack on any member of my cabinet is completely unacceptable" and specifically praised Streeting for doing a "great job".

Speaking after PMQs, the prime minister's press secretary told reporters the briefings against Streeting had come "from outside No 10" and that the prime minister had full confidence in McSweeney.

The spokesperson refused to say whether there was a leak inquiry, but did say leaks would be "dealt with".

An independent review of the Sara Sharif case has identified multiple failings from agencies before her murder in Surrey in 2023, following two years of abuse.

The child safeguarding practice review, published on Thursday, said there were "clearly several points in Sara's life, in particular during the last few months, where different actions could and should have been taken" by the authorities.

"The system failed to keep her safe," it added.

Responding to the report, the Children's Commissioner said the case was a "catalogue of missed opportunities, poor communication and ill-informed assumptions." The education secretary said there had been "the glaring failures" across all agencies.

From before she was even born Surrey Children's Services, Surrey Police and the Family Court knew of the domestic violence in her home.

The review authors said her father and stepmother were "a lethal combination", and that "with hindsight it is clear that they should never have been trusted" with her care.

Here are five of the key failings identified by the review.

Social workers not trusted

Warning: This story contains distressing details

When Sara Sharif's case was first in the family court in the early months of her life, social workers from Surrey County Council wanted her to be removed from her parents for her safety.

But after the initial court hearings the plan changed.

The review found that the "social workers felt very frustrated" by this, saying voices were not heard.

They felt that in court "the views of the children's guardian took precedence". The children's guardian is an expert appointed by the court to "represent the best interests of a child".

The review authors said that where the children's guardian and local authority social workers have differing views, the difference of opinion should be summarised clearly for the judge.

Vital information missing in custody case

When Sara Sharif's father remarried and applied for custody, an inexperienced social worker was asked to produce what is called a Section 7 report.

But the review found the report was missing "vital information and analysis" because the files that Surrey Children's Services held were not "thoroughly reviewed".

By chance the judge who heard the case, Alison Raeside, had sat on the earlier hearings, but she was not reminded of some key facts.

For example, Sara's father Urfan Sharif had a history of "domestic abuse and past violence to the children". He had been told to complete a domestic abuse perpetrators programme before having unsupervised contact, but he had not.

Bruising report rushed

When in March 2023, Sara's school reported to Children's Services that she had a golf ball-sized bruise on her cheek the request for support was graded "Amber".

This meant it should be dealt with within 24 hours. The social worker did not check what information Surrey Police held on the family, and they did not speak to the school to inquire more about Sara's change in demeanour.

She had gone from a bubbly child who loved singing to someone who was "quiet and coy".

Urfan Sharif told the social worker that Sara had "lots of marks because of the machinery she was hooked up to when born prematurely", which was a lie. The outcome was "no social work action".

Five months later Sara was murdered by her father.

Address not updated

The next month Urfan Sharif took his daughter out of school. The review found that she "effectively disappeared from view".

Surrey County Council had a policy of making home visits to children being home-schooled. The Sharif family had recently moved from a small flat in West Byfleet to a house in Woking. The school knew this and had informed the Council who owned both the homes anyway.

The review found that "address on the referral form sent by the school was the new address but the old address remained on the electronic system used by the inclusion team."

It meant that when the home education team went round to check on Sara on 7 August 2023 they went to the old address.

The next day Sara - already tortured, battered and burned - was murdered by Urfan Sharif and her stepmother Beinash Batool.

Racism concerns

Neighbours of the Sharif family did at times hear things that worried them, but the review found that "they were worried about reporting concerns about what they heard within the family's home. They feared being branded as being racist, especially on social media".

Sara started wearing the hijab in 2021 when she was only eight years old, even though her stepmother did not.

The review found that the "school showed appropriate curiosity by talking to Sara and stepmother and accepted the explanation that this was linked to Sara's interest with Pakistani culture following a visit to her paternal grandparents in Pakistan".

In the last months of Sara's life the the hijab hid the bruising and injuries to her face and head.

In a corner of London's Canary Wharf, better known for finance than fireballs, The Hunger Games: On Stage has bought Panem to life in a purpose-built 1,200 seat arena.

The show is an adaptation of Suzanne Collins' bestselling dystopian novels, made into a film franchise starring Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson, in which teenagers are selected to fight to the death in a televised spectacle.

The £26m Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre, with arena-style seating, placing audiences in different "districts", has been built to allow for sweeping visuals, immersive projections and dramatic aerial sequences.

At one point Katniss, played by Mia Carragher, and Peeta, played by Euan Garrett, fly over the stage in a chariot on fire.

While critics, including The Stage, praised the show's ambition and technical wizardry, some expressed reservations about whether the story packed enough of an emotional punch.

A two-star review by the Financial Times said it was visually energetic but lacked "a beating heart".

"There's little emotional impact - we are watching children die and that should hit hard, but it doesn't," Sarah Hemming wrote.

But The Stage's Holly O'Mahony called the show "ambitious and spectacular.

Her four-star review said there is "plenty here to impress fans of the franchise, and the space is used in its entirety."

The Independent's three-star review praised Carragher for her athletic and impressive stage debut.

Alice Saville agreed with The Times that the show has "all the bells, bangs and whistles you'd expect – but it misses the point of her story".

a two-star review by Clive Davis in The Times said the arena looks impressive when you arrive, but once the action starts you realise the show "struggles to fill it with enough spectacle to justify the steep prices".

The cast, including newcomer Carragher, who is the daughter of ex-Liverpool footballer Jamie Carragher, were praised for their performances.

Davis said she is an "energetic central presence" and "Garrett wins our sympathy".

The Guardian's three-star review from Arifa Akbar said the show is "all spectacle above emotion", adding: "You don't feel the dread in Conor McPherson's adaptation, which seems clipped by the pace of events."

But the Telegraph's Claire Alfree called the show a "depressingly bad adaptation" of the young adult books.

Her two-star review said director Matthew Dunster, who has also directed shows including 2:22 - A Ghost Story, failed to "reimagine and revitalise its source material".

The play has kept true to the books, and producer Tristan Baker said it was important to not have any plot changes, but there "are lots of Easter Eggs and some wonderful surprises if you know the world".

Garrett, who plays Peeta, told the BBC it's important for the show "not to be compared" with the books because "it's a reimagining of its own entity".

He added that Collins came to watch a rehearsal recently and "she loved it".

"To have her stamp of approval and blessing was a real honour," he said.

Performances have tightened since previews started in mid-October, when early shows were branded "chaotic" and "messy" by some theatregoers, who reported long queues, delays and visible signs that parts of the venue were not completed.

The show's producer, Oliver Royds, told the BBC there are "always teething issues with shows of this magnitude" and the team "were slightly disappointed we didn't get it right from the very get-go".

"We did mess up on the first night with a few issues," he said, adding those issues have now been rectified, and those affected by the first couple of shows have been invited back.

Talking about the building process, Royds called it a "DIY makeover on steroids" and said 42,000 pieces of steel had to craned into the theatre, with thousands of people coming together to make it happen.

'Needs to be believable'

Carragher, 21, told the BBC that the show is a real technical challenge.

"There are so many parts of the stage that open up," she said.

"If you put something in the wrong place, it affects the next scene. You've got to be thinking ahead of yourself so much."

Garrett added that the emotional intensity of his performance had to run in parallel with technical precision.

"You're in an intense scene, giving everything, but you've still got to remember what needs clipping on or where a prop has to be, and making that seamless and not noticeable is the struggle."

The show is also very physically demanding – there are the non-stop combat sequences, rapid sprints across the stage and tightly timed stunts.

"We've got to be really comfortable with each other and trust that that they're going to move out of the way when you hit them, at the very last minute," Carragher says.

"It needs to be believable because when we do it safe, it doesn't look as good."

A police motorcyclist who crashed into a pensioner while escorting the Duchess of Edinburgh through London has been found not guilty of causing death by careless driving.

Helen Holland, 81, died two weeks after she was hit in the crash on West Cromwell Road, west London, on 10 May 2023.

The Old Bailey was told PC Christopher Harrison, 68, had been riding at between 44mph (70km/h) and 58mph within a 30mph speed limit, on the approach to a red light where Mrs Holland was crossing.

PC Harrison told the Old Bailey he "did not see her in the footway at all on the approach".

The outrider team is allowed to exceed the speed limit, go through red lights and drive on the wrong side of the road, but such driving must be done safely, the court heard.

After the verdict was returned, a person shouted from the public gallery: "You ruined our family with no consequences."

Mr Justice Martin Chamberlain then told PC Harrison he was free to leave.

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A gold pocket watch recovered from the body of one of the richest passengers on the Titanic is expected to fetch £1m at auction.

Isidor Straus and his wife Ida were among the more than 1,500 people who died when the vessel, travelling from Southampton to New York, sank after hitting an iceberg on 14 April 1912.

His body was recovered from the Atlantic days after the disaster and among his possessions was an 18 carat gold Jules Jurgensen pocket watch which will go up for auction on 22 November.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge, of Henry Aldridge & Son in Wiltshire, told BBC Radio Wiltshire: "With the watch, we are retelling Isidor's story. It's a phenomenal piece of memorabilia."

Mr Straus was a Bavarian-born American businessman, politician, and co-owner of Macy's department store in New York.

Mr Aldridge added: "They were a very famous New York couple. Everyone would know them from the end of James Cameron's Titanic movie, when there is an elderly couple hugging as the ship is sinking, that's Isidor and Ida."

On the night of the sinking, it is believed his devoted wife refused a place in a lifeboat as she did not want to leave her husband and said she would rather die by his side. Ida's body was never found.

The pocket watch stopped at 2:20am, the moment the Titanic disappeared beneath the waves.

It is believed to have been a gift from Ida to her husband in 1888 and is engraved with Straus' initials.

It was returned to his family and was passed down through generations before Kenneth Hollister Straus, Isidor's great-grandson, had the movement repaired and restored.

It will be sold alongside a rare letter Ida wrote aboard the liner describing its luxury.

She wrote: "What a ship! So huge and so magnificently appointed. Our rooms are furnished in the best of taste and most luxurious."

The letter is postmarked "TransAtlantic 7" meaning it was franked on board in the Titanic's post office before being taken off with other mail at Queenstown, Ireland.

Both items will be offered by Henry Aldridge & Son in Wiltshire, with the letter estimated to fetch £150,000.

The watch is set to become one of the most expensive Titanic artefacts ever sold.

A gold pocket watch presented to the captain of the Carpathia, the steamship which rescued more than 700 Titanic survivors, sold last year a record-breaking £1.56m.

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A woman who was filmed giving CPR to a man fatally injured in a road crash is calling for photographs and videos of crash sites to be made illegal.

Fiona Ferris was driving home through Newry, in County Down, with her two young children in the car last December when she attempted to help pedestrian Dominic McGrath, who had been knocked down by a bus.

Despite the actions of Ms Ferris and others, the 33-year-old died at the scene.

It was only later that Ms Ferris noticed she had been recorded, with the video sent to Mr McGrath's cousin - only 20 minutes after police told his family he had been killed.

"I've since spoken to Dominic's family and they learned from the police initially," Ms Ferris said.

"But very soon afterwards they received a message saying, 'I'm so sorry to hear about your cousin' and the video attached - of him lying in the street, in the dark, in the rain.

"How that must have felt? I can't even imagine."

Mr McGrath's relatives are still too devastated by what happened to speak publicly, but have said they were shocked and distressed.

Ms Ferris said she could not stop thinking about the video.

"I wondered who else had seen it, I wondered if I had given CPR correctly," she added.

"I was really sad, really angry, a whole flurry of emotions, the helplessness of where this video has gone.

"Once it's gone, it's out of your control, it's shared everywhere."

'Social responsibility'

The mother of two is calling for legislation to make it a criminal offence to record at such scenes.

"Having been in a video in such tragic circumstances, it's beggars belief why people want to do that," she said.

"I'll never understand someone's mentality to do that, but I do think there's a social responsibility for people to stop and think.

"If that was your child, your son, your daughter, your mother, your father and that image was shared, think how that would feel.

"Because I would like to think people would think twice."

Ms Ferris sought help from the Newry-based charity Road Ahead, which supports witnesses and those bereaved or injured after crashes.

Volunteer Tricia O'Neill said it is becoming increasingly common for images to be taken at crash scenes.

"For a person to see a photograph or hear there's a photograph of their loved one, it is so traumatic," she said.

"Any road death is so traumatic and it can take a lifetime to process that, then you add that layer on top of this, of this image that other people have seen of the person they have loved all their lives, how horrific that must be for them.

"They'll never shake that image."

Ms O'Neill said criminalising taking pictures or videos of such sites will help to protect the individuals and their families, "thinking of their loved one's dignity - they can't protect them in death".

"Death is meant to be final, how can a person's dignity be protected when something is up online and people are sharing these images?

"Without that protection of legislation being in place, people won't learn."

'Digital record of trauma'

It is already illegal in other countries, such as Germany, to film at a crash site, particularly if the footage captures victims or interferes with the emergency services.

Campaigners for Caoimhe's Law, based mostly in the north west, believe the practice should be made a criminal offence.

They have spoken to parents, partners and siblings who have shared how they learned of their loved one's death on social media.

A spokesperson said: "This proposed law is not about censorship, it is about decency, dignity and the right to grieve in peace.

"Once images are shared online, they are never truly gone.

"Families are left with a permanent digital record of their trauma, forced to relive their loss again and again whenever that footage resurfaces."

There is already a law in place which makes it an offence to improperly use the public electronic communications network.

Last month, a woman was arrested over the alleged sharing of images of a pedestrian who was knocked down and killed in Newry city centre.

John O'Brien was killed last month after being hit by a lorry.

She has since been released on police bail.

Mr O'Brien's friends and family support the campaign for the change in the law, and a petition has been launched in his name online.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) have appealed to the public on numerous occasions in recent years not to share graphic images from crashes.

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this story, help and support is available over on the BBC Action Line.

Sir Keir Starmer is facing calls from senior ministers to sack whoever was behind briefings to the media that the PM is facing a leadership challenge.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Health Secretary Wes Streeting were both named as potential challengers in the anonymous briefings - now both are calling for whoever was behind them to be found and sacked.

It comes as Sir Keir apologised to Streeting for the episode, which the PM is said to be "incadescent" about.

It has intensified pressure on the prime minister's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, whom some - including senior figures in government - blame for the culture inside No 10.

Speaking to the BBC, Miliband said it's been a "bad couple of days", adding: "We've got to learn the lessons of this episode and say this is not where the focus should be."

He said he was confident the prime minister would want to find who the anonymous briefer was and "get rid of them if he can find out".

"He hates it when things get leaked, he hates it when cabinet colleagues get briefed against.

"People listening to this programme might think 'if he hates it, why can't he stop it'.

"The truth is, sometimes these things do happen. There are noises off and you can never quite know where they are coming from."

Miliband's name has been discussed by some Labour MPs as another possible challenger to the prime minister.

Asked if he would rule out returning as Labour leader, he replied: "Yes."

He added: "I had the best inoculation technique against wanting to be leader of the Labour Party which is that I was leader of the Labour Party, between 2010 and 2015.

"I've got the T-shirt - that chapter's closed."

• Where does bout of mudslinging over leadership leave Starmer's government?
• I have never authorised attacks on ministers, says PM
• Starmer will fight attempts to replace him, allies say

Sir Keir apologised to Streeting in a brief phone call on Wednesday evening, however supporters of the health secretary are said to be irritated that briefing against him has continued.

Streeting has stopped short of explicitly criticising McSweeney – and made a point of praising his role in Labour's general election victory.

But those around the health secretary argue that "this kind of briefing culture followed Keir Starmer from opposition into government".

There are a declining number of advisers who were with Sir Keir in opposition and are still working for him now.

McSweeney is one of them, and the most senior. He has been approached for comment and not replied.

Speaking at Prime Minister's Questions, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Sir Keir had "lost control of his government... and lost the trust of the British people".

She said McSweeney was responsible for the culture in No 10 and asked if the prime minister still had confidence in him.

Sir Keir replied: "Morgan McSweeney, my team and I are absolutely focused on delivering for the country.

"Let me be clear, of course, I've never authorised attacks on cabinet members, I appointed them to their post because they're the best people to carry out their jobs."

He added that "any attack on any member of my cabinet is completely unacceptable" and specifically praised Streeting for doing a "great job".

Speaking after PMQs, the prime minister's press secretary told reporters the briefings against Streeting had come "from outside No 10" and that the prime minister had full confidence in McSweeney.

The spokesperson refused to say whether there was a leak inquiry, but did say leaks would be "dealt with".

A police motorcyclist who crashed into a pensioner while escorting the Duchess of Edinburgh through London has been found not guilty of causing death by careless driving.

Helen Holland, 81, died two weeks after she was hit in the crash on West Cromwell Road, west London, on 10 May 2023.

The Old Bailey was told PC Christopher Harrison, 68, had been riding at between 44mph (70km/h) and 58mph within a 30mph speed limit, on the approach to a red light where Mrs Holland was crossing.

PC Harrison told the Old Bailey he "did not see her in the footway at all on the approach".

The outrider team is allowed to exceed the speed limit, go through red lights and drive on the wrong side of the road, but such driving must be done safely, the court heard.

After the verdict was returned, a person shouted from the public gallery: "You ruined our family with no consequences."

Mr Justice Martin Chamberlain then told PC Harrison he was free to leave.

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A murder investigation has been launched after a 17-year-old girl died and a woman was seriously injured.

An 18-year-old man from Newbridge has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder in connection with the incident in Cefn Fforest, near Blackwood, Caerphilly, at around 07:15 GMT, Gwent Police said.

The girl was pronounced dead at the scene while a 56-year-old woman from Cefn Fforest is currently receiving treatment in hospital.

Armed police went to a property in Wheatley Place on Thursday following reports that two people had sustained serious injuries.

Det Supt Philip O'Connell, said police were not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident following the arrest.

"We understand that reports of this nature can be concerning, and it is likely that residents will see an increased number of officers in the area while we carry out further enquires," he said.

He appealed for anyone with information to contact them.

A Welsh Ambulance Service spokesperson said ambulances were sent to the scene at 07:23 on Thursday, as well as two air ambulance helicopters.

On Thursday afternoon, two police officers were guarding the door of a semi-detached house behind a police cordon.

Crime officers in white paper suits were going in and out of the house taking equipment with them, examining the interior of the home, while a police dog was searching the area to the front of the house.

A large area had been sealed off with police tape in the roads surrounding the house. It was very quiet on the street with few residents moving about.

Two teenage girls approached the officers at the police cordon, one who was crying.

Neighbour Alun Phillips, 77, told the BBC he had been working nights and woke to banging doors this morning.

He said he did not know the people in the house who "kept themselves to themselves".

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Counting castes in India has always been about more than numbers - it is about who gets a share of government benefits and who doesn't.

The country's next national census, scheduled for 2027, will - for the first time in nearly a century - count every caste, a social hierarchy that has long outlived kingdoms, empires and ideologies. The move ends decades of political hesitation and follows pressure from opposition parties and at least three states that have already gone ahead with their own surveys.

A 2011 survey - neither run nor verified by census authorities or released by the government - recorded an astonishing 4.6 million caste names.

A full count of castes promises a sharper picture of who truly benefits from affirmative action and who is left behind. Advocates say it could make welfare spending more targeted and help recalibrate quotas in jobs and education with hard evidence.

Yet in a provocative new book, The Caste Con Census, scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde warns that the exercise may harden the deeply discriminatory caste system, when the need is to dismantle it.

The argument cuts against the prevailing view that better data will produce fairer policy. For Mr Teltumbde, castes are "too pernicious to be managed for any progressive purpose".

"Caste is, at its core, a hierarchy seeking impulse that defies measurement," he writes.

Mr Teltumbde sees the modern caste census as a colonial echo.

British administrators began counting castes in 1871 as a "deliberate response to the post-1857 unity of Indians across caste and religion", turning it into an "effective tool of imperial control". They held six caste censuses between 1871 and 1931 - the last full caste enumeration in India.

Each count, Mr Teltumbde argues, "did not merely record caste, but reified and hardened it".

Independent India, in Mr Teltumbde's reading, preserved the system under the moral banner of social justice, "while effectively evading its core obligation of building the capacities of all people, which is a prerequisite for the success of any genuine social justice policy".

The obsession with counting, he says, bureaucratises inequality. By turning caste into a ledger of entitlements and grievances, the census reduces politics to arithmetic - who gets how much - rather than addressing what Mr Teltumbde calls the "architecture of social injustice".

He sees the demand for a caste census as a push for more reservations - a cause driven by an "upwardly mobile minority", while the majority slips into deprivation and dependence on state aid. Nearly 800 million Indians, he notes, now rely on free rations.

Affirmative action quotas were first reserved for Dalits - formerly known as untouchables - and Adivasis (tribespeople), India's most oppressed groups. But soon, the less disadvantaged "other backward classes" (OBCs) began clamouring for a share of the pie. Politics quickly coalesced around demands for new or bigger caste-based quotas.

Mr Teltumbde's deeper worry is that enumeration legitimises what it measures. Political parties, he warns, will exploit the data to redraw quotas or convert caste resentment into electoral capital.

For Mr Teltumbde, the only rational politics is one of "annihilation of caste", not its management - echoing what BR Ambedkar, the architect of India's constitution, argued when he said that caste cannot be reformed, it "must be destroyed".

But in an India where even its victims "see value in its preservation", that goal feels utopian, the author admits. The looming caste census, Mr Teltumbde argues, will not expose inequality but entrench it.

Many scholars don't quite agree, seeing the census as a necessary tool for achieving social justice.

Sociologist Satish Deshpande and economist Mary E John call the decision not to count castes "one of independent India's biggest mistakes".

Today, they note in a paper, caste has come to be seen as the burden only of India's lower castes - Dalits and Adivasis - who must constantly prove their identity through official labels.

What's needed, they write, is "a fuller, more inclusive picture where everyone must answer the question of their caste". This isn't an "endorsement of an unequal system", they stress, but a recognition that "there is no caste disprivilege without a corresponding privilege accruing to some other caste".

In other words, the lack of reliable caste data obscures both privilege and deprivation.

Sociologist and demographer Sonalde Desai told me that without a fresh caste census, India's affirmative action policies operate "blindly", relying on outdated colonial data.

"If surveys and censuses could shape social reality, we would not need social policies. We could simply start asking questions about domestic violence to shame people into refraining from wife-beating. We have not asked any questions in the census about caste since 1931. Has it eliminated caste equations?" she asks.

Political scientist Sudha Pai, however, broadly agrees with Mr Teltumbde's critique that counting castes can solidify identities and distract from deeper inequalities based on "land, education, power and dignity".

Yet she acknowledges that caste has already been politicised through welfare and electoral strategies, making a caste census inevitable.

"A caste census would be useful if the income levels within each caste group are collected. The government could then use the data collected to identify within each caste the needs of the truly needy and offer them the required benefits and opportunities, such as education and jobs for upward mobility," Dr Pai says.

"This would require moving away from simply using caste as the parameter for redistribution of available resources, to use of both caste and income levels in policymaking."

Dr Pai argues that if done "thoughtfully" - linking caste data to income and educational indicators - it could shift India from a "caste-based to a rights-based welfare system".

Yet, scholars warn that counting castes and interpreting the data will be fraught with challenges.

"It won't be painless. India has changed tremendously in the century since 1931. Castes that were designated as being poor and vulnerable may have moved out of poverty, some new vulnerabilities may have emerged. So if we are to engage in this exercise honestly, it cannot be done without reshuffling the groups that are eligible for benefits," says Professor Desai.

Another challenge lies in data collection - castes have many subgroups, raising questions about the right level of classification. Sub-categorisation aims to divide broader caste groups into smaller ones so the most disadvantaged among them receive a fair share of quotas and benefits.

"Castes are not made of a single layer. There are many subgroups within a single caste. What level of aggregation should be used? How will the respondents in a census respond to this question? This requires substantial experimentation. I do not believe this has yet been done," says Prof Desai.

Mr Teltumbde remains unconvinced. He argues that endless enumeration cannot remedy a system built on hierarchy.

"You will be counting all your life and still not solve the caste problem. So what will be the use of that counting?," he wonders. "I am not against affirmative action, but this is not the way to do it."