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The stories of people facing court proceedings to repossess their homes have been shared with the BBC as mortgage repossessions reach a five-year high.

BBC journalists in the East of England and London attended various county courts as mortgage-holders and renters appeared in front of judges.

They included a couple now £13,000 in arrears on a home they bought, and a woman who faced the repossession of a house she left following a marriage breakdown 15 years earlier.

The BBC also heard landlords were grappling with financial pressures - while the body representing lenders said seeking to repossess a home was "always a last resort".

Mortgage repossessions highest in five years

Data obtained by the BBC's investigations team showed mortgage repossession orders in England and Wales reached 10,853 in 2024-5 - the highest number in five years.

Andrew Goodwin, senior economist at Oxford Economics, said rising unemployment and interest rates had been contributing factors in recent years.

Reporters were sent to courts in Northampton, Peterborough and Norwich in the East, as well as Stratford, Wandsworth and Croydon courts in London to hear cases and the pressures facing mortgage-holders and tenants.

The courts heard matters concerning both mortgage and rental repossessions.

In Croydon, a former management consultant said he and his wife both lost their jobs in 2024, leaving them in mortgage arrears.

The prospect of his son losing his childhood home had hit hard, adding it was "the perfect place for us". They now have until March to pay the arrears.

In Stratford, a tearful woman who had not lived in her property for 15 years after her marriage broke down had the home with £87,000 in mortgage arrears repossessed.

Other stories heard throughout the day included:

• Three homes repossessed in less than an hour at Stratford Magistrates' Court, including one with arrears of £87,672
• A Wandsworth case where a tenant of 30 years faced losing his rental property because the landlord needed to put the rent up
• A 75-year-old man in Peterborough, living in social housing, ended up in nearly £3,000 worth of arrears, telling the court he had been a victim of a scam
• A single mother at Norwich County Court who owed her landlady £5,200 in unpaid rent

Case workers 'overrun'

It was not just those facing the loss of their homes sharing their challenges.

Case workers and solicitors across the courts revealed they were being "overrun" with requests for help.

"When I began my career, up until a few years ago, I would think to myself 'that person won't actually end up homeless'," said Angus King, a housing solicitor from Southwark Law Centre.

"I knew we would find some way to keep them from it, but now that simply isn't the case."

Billy Harding, a Southwark Law Centre housing case worker assisting at Wandsworth County Court on Wednesday, said people were turning up "at crisis point".

Renter loses home as judge rejects 'last chance': BBC reports from repossession courts in England

The BBC found that across England the number of people asking their council for help to prevent becoming homeless was increasing.

Figures from 244 councils that responded to Freedom of Information requests showed three-quarters of them reported a rise.

For 2024/25, Broxbourne in Hertfordshire had the highest rate, where 95 out of 100,000 people were seeking help.

Similarly bailiff repossessions were rising again after a dip during the Covid-19 pandemic.

'I have never done this before,' says landlord

One landlord attending Norwich County Court also told of how anxious she was about coming to court to try to collect £2,200 in unpaid rent.

She told the judge the tenant, a carpenter, had offered to repair the windows of the property in lieu of rent.

"That was OK, but he never got back to me about that," she said.

Speaking on behalf of landlords in a separate court, one solicitor said the landlords also had bills to pay or financial issues themselves and couldn't be expected to subsidise their tenants.

Karina Hutchins, of UK Finance - which represents the banking industry - said seeking to repossess a home is "always a last resort" for lenders.

With additional reporting by Charlotte Rose, Gabriela Pomeroy, Stephen Menon, Jon Ironmonger, Phil Shepka, Matt Precey and Jessica Ure

If you have been affected by this story or would like support then you can find organisations which offer help and information at the BBC Action Line.

Younger Australian teenagers on Instagram, Facebook and Threads are being told their accounts will be shut down ahead of the country's social media ban for under-16s.

Meta, which owns the three brands, said it had begun notifying users it believes to be between 13 and 15 years old by text, email and in-app messages that their accounts would start being deactivated from 4 December.

The ban in Australia comes into force on 10 December. It affects a number of platforms which also include TikTok, YouTube, X and Reddit.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the "world-leading" ban was aimed at "letting kids be kids". Meta and other firms oppose the measure but said they would comply.

Australia's internet regulator has estimated there are 150,000 Facebook users and 350,000 teens on Instagram in the 13-15 age bracket.

From 4 December, children aged below 16 will not be able to create accounts on Meta's social media platforms.

The company said it was asking young users to update their contact details so they could be notified when they became eligible to open an account.

They can download and save their posts, videos and messages before their accounts are shut down.

Meta said that teens who said they were old enough to use Instagram, Facebook and Threads could challenge the restriction by taking a "video selfie" to be used in facial age scans.

They could also provide a driver's licence or other government issued-ID.

All these verification methods were tested by the UK-based Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS) earlier this year, in a report commissioned by the Australian state.

While the ACCS said that all methods had their merits, it added: "We did not find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases, nor did we find solutions that were guaranteed to be effective in all deployments."

Social media platforms which fail to take "reasonable steps" to block under-16s face fines of up to A$50m (£25m).

"While we are working hard to remove all users who we understand to be under the age of 16 by 10 December, compliance with the law will be an ongoing and multi-layered process," Antigone Davis, vice-president and global head of safety at Meta, told Reuters Financial.

Meta wants to see a law where under-16s have to get parental approval before they download a social media app.

The firm told Australia's Seven News: "Teens are resourceful, and may attempt to circumvent age assurance measures to access restricted services."

But it said: "We're committed to meeting our compliance obligations and are taking the necessary steps to comply with the law."

Australia's e-Safety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said the ban was aimed at proctecting teens "from pressures and risks they can be exposed to while logged in to social media accounts".

In a move seemingly to avoid being included in the ban, gaming platform Roblox this week announced that children under 16 would be unable to chat to adult strangers.

Mandatory age checks will be introduced for accounts using chat features, starting in December for Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, then the rest of the globe from January.

• Roblox blocks children from chatting to adult strangers
• Enforcing Australia's social media ban is possible but contains risks, report says

Which firms does Australia's social media ban apply to?

The e-safety commissioner has published a list of which social media platforms will be impacted by the age ban.

They are:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Kick
• Reddit
• Snapchat
• Threads
• TikTok
• X (formerly Twitter)
• YouTube

Platforms not included are:

• Discord
• GitHub
• Google Classroom
• LEGO Play
• Messenger
• Roblox
• Steam and Steam Chat
• WhatsApp
• YouTube Kids

The Labour MP Clive Lewis has offered to give up his seat to allow Andy Burnham to challenge Sir Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership.

There has been ongoing speculation that Greater Manchester Mayor Burnham wants to take on Sir Keir for the top job, but he would need to be an MP to do so.

Lewis told the BBC's Politics Live that he was willing to step down from his Norwich South seat to allow Burnham to return to the Commons and put "country before party, party before personal ambition".

Burnham was contacted for comment. Number 10 declined to comment.

Lewis, who has been an MP for 10 years, said he had spoken to Burnham, and when asked if he would give up his seat for him, he said it was "a question I've asked myself".

He added: "Do you know what? If I'm going to sit here and say country before party, party before personal ambition, then yes, I have to say yes, don't I."

Last week, he said Sir Keir's position as Prime Minister was "untenable" and told Channel 4 News that Burnham should be given the chance to "step up".

Lewis first won his seat in 2015, and last year he increased his majority to more than 13,000.

But if he were to step down, any would-be successor would first need to win a selection contest before a by-election was held.

In September, Burnham said he had "no intention of abandoning Manchester" but did not rule out challenging Sir Keir.

Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.

Google's ultra-private CEO Sundar Pichai is showing me around Googleplex, its California headquarters. A walkway runs along the length of it, passing by a giant dinosaur skeleton, a beach volleyball pitch and dozens of Googlers lunching under the hazy November sun.

But it's a laboratory, hidden away at the back of the campus behind some trees, that he is most excited to show me.

This is where the invention that Google believes is its secret weapon is being developed.

Known as a Tensor Processing Unit (or TPU), it looks like an unassuming little chip but, says Mr Pichai, it will one day power every AI query that goes through Google. This makes it potentially one of the most important objects in the world economy right now.

"AI is the most profound technology humanity [has ever worked] on," he insists. "It has potential for extraordinary benefits - we will have to work through societal disruptions."

But the confusing question lingering over the AI hype is whether it is a bubble at risk of bursting - as, if so, it may well be a spectacular burst akin to the dotcom crash at the start of the century, with consequences for us all.

The Bank of England has already warned of a "sudden correction" in global financial markets, saying "market valuations appear stretched" for tech AI firms. Meanwhile. OpenAI boss Sam Altman has speculated that "there are many parts of AI that I think are kind of bubbly right now".

Asked whether Google would be immune from a potential bubble burst, Mr Pichai said it could weather that potential storm - but for all his starry-eyed excitement around the possibilities of AI, he also issued a warning: "I think no company is going to be immune, including us."

So why, then, is Google investing more than $90bn a year in the AI build-out, a three-fold increase in just four years, at the very moment these suggestions are being discussed?

The big AI surge - and the big risk

The AI surge - of which Google is just one part - is, in cash terms, the biggest market boom the world has seen.

Its numbers are extraordinary - there is $15 trillion of market value at Google and four other tech giants whose headquarters are all within a short drive of one another.

Chipmaker turned AI systems pioneer Nvidia in Santa Clara is now worth more than $5 trillion. A 10-minute drive south, in Cupertino, is Apple HQ, hovering around $4 trillion; while 15 minutes west is $1.9 trillion Meta (previously Facebook). And in the centre of San Francisco, OpenAI was recently valued at $500bn.

The purely financial consequences of this trend are significant enough.

The value of the shares in these companies (and a few others outside Silicon Valley, such as Microsoft in Seattle) have helped cushion the US economy from the impact of trade wars, and kept retirement plans and investments buoyant - and not just in the US.

Yet it comes with a big risk. That is, the incredible dependence of US stock market growth on the performance of a handful of tech giants. The Magnificent 7 - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla - collectively comprise one third of the valuation of America's entire S&P 500.

And that market value is now more highly concentrated in a few firms than it was during the dotcom bubble in 1999, according to the IMF.

Mr Pichai points out that every decade or so come these "inflection points": the personal computer, then the internet in the late 1990s, followed by mobile and cloud. "Now it's clearly the era of Artificial Intelligence."

But as for the big question - is it a bubble?

Mr Pichai argues there are two ways of thinking about it. First, there is "palpably exciting" progress of services that people and companies are using.

But he concedes: "It's also true when we go through these investment cycles, there are moments we overshoot collectively as an industry…

"So I think it's both rational and there are elements of irrationality through a moment like this."

Now, a distinction is emerging in the markets between those businesses that rely on often borrowed money and complicated deals to access the chips that power their AI, and the biggest tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon, which can fund investment in chips and data from their own pockets.

Which brings us to Google's own silicon chips, or their prized TPUs.

'Restricted': inside the silicon chip lab

The lab, where they are tested, is the size of a five-a-side football pitch with a mesh of multi-coloured wires and deep blue blinking lights. Signs all around read: "restricted".

What's striking is the sheer noise - this is down to the cooling systems, which are needed to help control the temperature of the chips, which can get incredibly hot when crunching trillions of calculations.

The TPUs are designed to help power AI machines. And they work differently from other types of chips.

The CPU (central processing unit) is the primary component of a computer - essentially its brain - that performs most of the processing and control functions, while GPUs (graphics processing units) perform more specialised processing, executing many parallel tasks at once - this can include AI.

However Asics (application-specific integrated circuits), are chips custom-built for a specific purpose, for example, a specific AI algorithm. And the TPU is a specialist Google-designed type of Asic.

A core aspect of the AI boom has been the mad dash to amass lots of top-performing chips and put them into data centres (or the physical facilities that store, process and run large amounts of data and software).

Nvidia's boss Jensen Huang once coined the term "AI factories" to describe the massive data centres full of pods and racks of super chips, connected to huge energy and cooling systems.

(Tech bosses such as Mark Zuckerberg have referred to some being the size of Manhattan. The Google TPU lab is somewhat more modest, testing out the technology for deployment elsewhere.)

Stories abound of tech bros begging chip makers for hundreds of thousands of these highly engineered pieces of silicon. Take the recent dinner at Nobu in Palo Alto, where Elon Musk and Larry Ellison, the founder and head of Oracle, tried to woo Nvidia's Jensen Huang, to sell them more of them.

As Mr Ellison put it: "I would describe the dinner as me and Elon begging Jensen for GPUs. Please take our money - no, no take more. You're not taking enough. We need you to take more, please!"

It is precisely the race to access the power of as many as possible of these high performance chips, and to scale them up into massive data centres, that is driving an AI boom - and there's a perception that the only way to win is to keep spending.

The chips race - and the OpenAI storm

The terrace of the Rosewood Sand Hill hotel, a sprawling 16-acre estate near the Santa Cruz mountains that serves crab rolls and $35 signature vodka martinis, is where the big Silicon Valley deal-making gets done. It's close to Stanford University and Meta's HQ, as well as the headquarters of major venture capital firms.

There are whispered rumours about who will be next to announce customised AI chips - Asics - to compete with Google and Nvidia.

Just before I visited, something of a storm was brewing about the investment plans of OpenAI, which Elon Musk co-founded.

The firm, which started as a not-for-profit but has since established a commercial structure, has been the focus of a web of cross-investments involving buying up chips and other computer hardware needed for AI processing.

Few in the industry doubt OpenAI's phenomenal user growth - in particular the popularity of its chatbot, ChatGPT. It has ambitions to design its own custom AI chips, but some have speculated about whether it might need government support to achieve this.

In a podcast episode that aired last month, an OpenAI investor questioned how the company's spending commitments tallied with its revenues, to which co-founder Sam Altman shot back, challenging the revenue figures quoted, and adding: "If you want to sell your shares, I'll find you a buyer. Enough."

He has since shared a lengthy post on X, explaining, among other things, that OpenAI is looking at commitments of about $1.4 trillion over the next eight years and why he believes now is the time to invest in scaling up their technology.

"I do not think the government should be writing insurance policies for AI companies," he said.

But he also said: "What we do think might make sense is governments building (and owning) their own AI infrastructure."

Elsewhere, there have been notable very recent falls in share prices of AI infrastructure companies - Coreweave, a start-up that supplies OpenAI, saw its shares lose 26% of their value earlier this month.

Plus, there have been some reactions in markets for perceived credit risk among other firms. And while most of these tech share prices have generally climbed higher over the course of 2025, there has been a mild dip more generally in the past few days.

ChatGPT versus Gemini 3.0

None of this has dampened the excitement over AI's potential within the industry. Google's consumer AI model, Gemini 3.0, launched to great fanfare earlier this week — this will pitch Google in a direct battle with OpenAI and its still-dominant ChatGPT for the market share.

What we don't yet know is whether it marks an end to the days of chatbots going rogue and recommending glue as a pizza ingredient. So, is the end result of all this fantastic investment is that information is less reliable, I asked Mr Pichai.

"I think if you only construct systems standalone and you only rely on that, [that] would be true," he told me. "Which is why I think we have to make the information ecosystem has to be much richer than just having AI technology being the sole product in it."

But I put it to him that truth matters. His response: "truth matters".

Nor is the other big question facing tech today dampening the enthusiasm around advancing AI's potential. That is: how on Earth to power it?

By 2030, data centres around the world will use about as much electricity as India did in 2023, according to the IMF. Yet this is also an age where energy supply is under pressure by governments committing to climate change targets.

I put this to Google's Mr Pichai, asking if it is coherent to have ambitions to generate 95% of electricity from low-carbon sources by 2030 - as the UK government does - and also be an AI superpower?

"I think it's possible. But I think for every government, including the UK, it's important to figure out how to scale up infrastructure, including energy infrastructure.

"You don't want to constrain an economy based on energy," he adds. "I think that will have consequences."

Lessons from the 2000 dotcom bust

Years ago, as a fledgling reporter I cut my teeth in the 2000 dotcom bubble. It followed a famous speech by Federal Reserve Governor Alan Greenspan about "irrational exuberance".

In that time I interviewed Steve Jobs twice, and a few years later questioned Mr Pichai's predecessor Larry Page, and commentated live on the collapse of WorldOfFruit.com.

Through it all, one lesson became clear: that even in the worst-case scenarios and the toughest of crashes, catastrophe isn't guaranteed for all.

Take Amazon - its share price slumped to $6 and its market capitalisation fell to $4bn during that crash, yet some 25 years on Jeff Bezos and his company are very much going strong. Today Amazon is worth $2.4 trillion.

The same would, inevitably, be true of companies shaken by a potential AI bubble burst.

Plus there is another looming factor that may well explain why so many in Silicon Valley - and beyond - are blind to, or perhaps choosing not to, acknowledge this risk, and pushing on regardless.

That is, the attraction of the glittering prize at the end: achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI).

This is the point at which machines match human intelligence, something many believe is within reach. Or beyond that, reaching artificial super-intelligence (ASI), the point at which machines surpass our intelligence.

But I was also told something else that was thought-provoking by a Silicon Valley figure - that it doesn't matter whether there really is a bubble or if it bursts. Step back and what is going on in the bigger picture is a global battle for AI supremacy, with the US against China taking centre stage.

And while Beijing funds these developments centrally, in the US it is a messy but productive free market free for all, which means trial and error on an epic scale.

For now, the US has superiority in silicon over China - companies like Nvidia with their GPUs and Google with their TPUs can afford to accelerate into the storm.

Others will surely fail, and spectacularly so, affecting markets, consumer sentiment and the world economy. The physical footprint left behind, however, containing sheer computing firepower for the deployment of mass AI technologies, will inevitably shape our economy and could well also shape how we work and learn - and who dominates the world for the rest of the 21st Century.

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The Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has hinted that she is thinking of changing how policing in England and Wales is organised.

She told a conference of police leaders "the structure of our police forces, if is, if we are honest, irrational".

Mahmood said "disparities in performance" meant that policing in England and Wales was a "postcode lottery".

Some police chiefs want the number of forces to be reduced. Currently, there are 43 in England and Wales.

The government is expected to publish a White Paper on the future of policing next month.

The home secretary was talking at a conference of police leaders organised by the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC).

Last week the Home Office announced that the role of Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) would be abolished. Mahmood told delegates on Wednesday the position "had not worked".

She told the conference "I was a reformer at the Ministry of Justice. I will be a reformer at the Home Office too."

Mahmood told the delegates - mostly senior officers and Police and Crime Commissioners: "The structure of our police forces is, if we are honest, irrational.

"We have loaded critical functions like the national police air service and vetting onto local forces, drawing attention away from neighbourhood policing.

"We have 43 forces tackling criminal gangs who cross borders, and the disparities in performance in forces across the country have grown far too wide, giving truth to the old store that policing in this country is a postcode lottery."

She said the government's plans would be laid out in a White Paper due in December, saying she wanted to see "that national policing is world class without distracting local forces from neighbourhood policing".

"The detail will follow," she said. She did not stay behind to answer questions.

Some police chiefs favour a reduction in the number of forces. In July, Gavin Stephens, NPCC chair, said: "A smaller number of police forces, supported by a national policing organisation, would enable us to make decisions far quicker and maximise funding to invest in technology and our workforce."

But some local PCCs have opposed the idea of force mergers. Last week the Policing Minister Sarah Jones said the role would be abolished.

PCCs are elected officials, but elections have often had a limited turnout. The role was created by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2012.

The home secretary said in her speech on Wednesday: "I believe the position of a Police and Crime Commissioner, unfortunately, has not worked.

"Without necessary investment in creating a public profile, too many voters were unaware of the existence of the position, or its occupant."

Police forces are also waiting for the latest funding settlement which is due in early December.

Paul Sanford, Chief Constable of Norfolk Constabulary and Chair of the NPCC Finance Coordination Committee, said: "Policing is in a state of financial distress.

"We are seeing declining financial resilience across all forces."

A prominent French anti-drugs campaigner whose brother was killed by drugs criminals last week, five years after the murder of his elder brother, has vowed to stand up to intimidation and "keep telling the truth about drugs violence".

Amine Kessaci, 22, was writing in Le Monde newspaper a day after the funeral of his younger brother Mehdi, whose murder last week has been described by the government as a turning-point in France's drugs wars.

"Yesterday I lost my brother. Today I speak out," he wrote in his opinion piece.

"[The drugs-traffickers] strike at us in order to break, to tame, to subdue. They want to wipe out any resistance, to break any free spirit, to kill in the egg any embryo of revolt."

Mehdi Kessaci, 20, was shot dead last Wednesday as he parked his car in central Marseille in what appears to have been a warning or punishment aimed at his older brother, Amine, from the city's drugs gangs.

Speaking after a ministerial meeting on drugs crime at the Elysée palace on Tuesday, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said: "We all agreed that this premeditated murder was something totally new. It's clearly a crime of intimidation. It's a new level of violence."

Mehdi was the second Kessaci brother to be killed by drugs criminals. In 2020 the body of Brahim Kessaci, then 22, was found in a burnt-out car.

That murder prompted Amine to launch his association, Conscience, which aims to expose the damage to working-class communities caused by gangs.

Marseille is renowned for worsening drugs wars, and Amine Kessaci recently wrote a book called Marseille Wipe your Tears – Life and Death in a Land of Drugs.

In his Le Monde article, Amine revealed he was recently warned by police to leave Marseille because of threats to his life.

He attended his younger brother's funeral wearing a bullet-proof jacket and under heavy police protection.

"I speak because I have no choice but to fight if I don't want to die. I speak because I know that silence is the refuge of our enemies," he wrote, urging courage from citizens, and action from the government.

Mehdi Kessaci's murder has brought the national spotlight back on a drugs trafficking problem that French experts and ministers agree is reaching almost unmanageable proportions.

According to Senate member Étienne Blanc, author of a recent study, turnover in the drugs trade in France is now €7bn (£6bn) – or 70% of the entire budget of the justice ministry.

He said around 250,000 people drew a living from the trade in France – more than the entire number of police and gendarmes, which is 230,000. According to Le Monde, the country counts 1.1 million users of cocaine.

President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday launched a broadside against such consumers, telling the weekly cabinet meeting that "sometimes it is the city-centre bourgeoisie that is funding the traffickers".

Macron had called a special drugs summit the day before in response to Amine's murder and in order to review progress on a new anti-drugs law that was passed in June.

It sets up a special prosecutor's office dedicated to organised crime - similar to the office that tackles terrorism - which will eventually have 30 specialised magistrates.

Under the law, senior drugs convicts are made to serve their terms in isolation in a specially converted prison where it is hoped it will be harder to continue running operations from behind bars.

According to Laurent Nuñez, there is evidence that the crackdown on drugs crime is having an effect - with the number of homicides in Marseille down from 49 in 2023 to 24 in 2024.

The number of dealing points in the city had halved from 160 to 80, he added.

"The war is not won, but we do have results."

According to the author of a recent book, Narcotraffic, Europe's poison, "France is at the heart of the geopolitics of drugs. With its two major ports of Marseille and Le Havre, it has an ideal geographical position in this Europe of free movement."

Mathieu Verboud said that the growth in world production of cocaine had triggered an "explosion of supply and demand. The market has gone through the roof and so have the profits."

The sheer wealth of drugs organisations meant they had the power to corrupt everyone from dock-workers to local politicians, the author warned, a process he said was already well-advanced in countries like the Netherlands and Belgium.

Several French politicians have said it is time to call in the army to deal with drugs-trafficking and the gangs which hold sway in many high-immigration city estates.

Christian Estrosi, mayor of the southern coastal city of Nice, said: "Narcotrafficking has transformed into narcoterrorism. Its aim now is to terrorise, subjugate and rule.

"We have already successfully deployed the means to fight terrorism. It's time to act with determination against narcoterrorism."

Estrosi was referring to wave of deadly jihadist attacks in the mid 2010s, when France deployed hundreds of soldiers on to the streets of many cities where they continue to patrol.

The owner of a cocktail and karaoke bar where solo drinkers are banned says he is baffled by the furore it has caused on social media as the policy is "for the safety of all guests".

Carl Peters said the no-single-entry policy after 21:00 had been in place since the opening of Alibi in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, in 2022.

He told the BBC it was to "mitigate risk" and "protect his customers" from being "mithered" by solo drinkers.

He posted a reel on Instagram earlier this month about the policy after saying someone had accused him of discrimination. He said he was "astounded" by the ensuing criticism, describing his venue as an "inclusive and safe environment".

The ban got a mixed response from Instagram users with one commenter saying she "always feels safe in Alibi", while another described the policy as "narrow minded", adding if he finishes work late and goes for a drink himself "he has never once mithered anyone and... happy in my own company".

Mr Peters explained there were two reasons why he introduced the policy.

Firstly, if someone on their own has a seizure or an accident with no-one with them "in a late night busy bar environment, it's an absolute nightmare for us to deal with".

He said also "sometimes if you let people in on their own, the reason why they're on their own is that they've got no-one to talk to, so they start mithering other groups".

"So what we do as a venue is we just eliminate that."

He added: "Unless you're with a group and we know who you're with, then you're not coming in."

Mr Peters added he took "pride that his customers feel safe in his venue" so was "astounded" it was now being criticised on social media.

Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.

US President Donald Trump has urged Republicans in Congress to vote to release more files relating to Jeffrey Epstein - a sudden reversal in his position after having previously opposed efforts to make the documents public.

Trump had been facing a potential revolt after a growing number of Republicans signalled they would vote in favour of releasing the files despite his opposition.

While the measure is likely to pass in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, it is far from certain that it would pass in the Republican-controlled Senate.

And even if it does pass in the Senate, it remains unclear when the files could be released and whether they would satisfy ardent campaigners.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on a measure that would compel the justice department to make publicly available "in a searchable and downloadable format" all files pertaining to Epstein within 30 days.

Procedural votes and debates are expected to begin at 10:00EST (15:00GMT) and continue for many hours.

Several victims of Epstein are also expected to spend the day on Capitol Hill, to advocate for the bill's passage and to hold news conferences with reporters.

The releases could, in theory, also include files pertaining to imprisoned Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as people - including government officials - mentioned in the case. It could also include internal justice department documents.

The vote will come just two days after Trump wrote on Truth Social to encourage Republicans to vote for the measure. In the post, he argued that "we have nothing to hide".

The measure is likely to pass. Even before Trump's post, some House Republicans had made clear they were willing to break ranks with the president and House Speaker Mike Johnson to vote in favour.

Should it pass, it still faces an uncertain future in the Senate, which is under no obligation to even pick up the measure.

It remains unclear whether Senate Majority Leader John Thune will do so - but the Republican is under enormous pressure from both sides of the US political spectrum.

He had previously suggested that while he was "not hearing" much desire from fellow Republicans to push for the release of the documents, a successful House vote could change that.

"I just hope John Thune will do the right thing," Kentucky Republican Representative Thomas Massie told ABC News over the weekend.

Another Republican, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, only told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the Senate will "take a look" at the bill if it passes the House.

"We'll see what it says," Barrasso said. "We all want accountability and transparency. But to me, this it not about the truth. It's not about justice."

"This is about an attempt by the Democrats to make President Trump a lame-duck president," he added. "And I'm not going to aid and abet them in their efforts to do that."

Only after the Senate passes the bill would it head to President Trump, who has said he would sign it into law.

Speking to reporters on Monday night, he said Republicans had "nothing to do with Epstein". "It's really a Democrat problem," he claimed. "The Democrats were Epstein's friends, all of them."

Trump went on to argue the Epstein scandal was a "hoax" distracting from "the greatness of what the Republican Party had accomplished over the last period of time".

There are obstacles to the files being released even if Trump signs the bill.

The text of the document that will go before the House, for example, notes that the attorney general could withhold or redact portions of records that contain personal information that "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy".

"Simply letting anything out could reveal a lot of private information that's not relevant or appropriate for public consumption," Jonathan Entin, a constitutional law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, told the BBC.

"There may also be some issues about law enforcement techniques that the justice department might not want to be out there in the public domain," he added.

The proposed House bill also notes that the justice department can hold back any documents that "jeapordise an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution, provided that such withholding is narrowly tailored and temporary".

That could potentially lead to delays, given that President Trump said in his post that he would be calling for an investigation into Epstein's alleged links with prominent Democrats, such as Bill Clinton and Larry Summers "to determine what was going on with them, and him".

"That's a potential hurdle," Prof Entin said. "If, in fact, this is a serious investigation, presumably the prosecutors will not want everything out there while they're sorting out whether they bring charges."

Doing so, he added, "might create some prejudicial publicity about targets of the investigation" that could ultimately lead to intense litigation if any indictments are brought.

For those who have campaigned for the release of the files, anything short of full disclosure is likely to spark further questions and even outrage.

"I believe the country deserves transparency in these files," Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican now in a public row with Trump over the files, told CNN on Sunday.

"I have no idea what's in the files. I can't even guess," Greene added. "But that is the question everyone is asking is - why fight this so hard?"

At least 25 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-run health ministry has said.

Ten people, including a woman and a young girl, were killed when a ministry of religious endowments building in the eastern Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City was hit, according to rescuers.

The Israeli military said it had struck "Hamas terrorist targets" after it said gunmen had opened fire towards an area where its soldiers were operating in the southern city of Khan Younis, in violation of the five-week-old ceasefire agreement.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

The flare-up of violence comes after the UN Security Council passed a resolution that endorsed US President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan to end two years of devastating war.

Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza's Hamas-run Civil Defence agency, told the BBC that Israeli air, drone and artillery strikes hit several locations in Gaza City and Khan Younis shortly after sunset on Wednesday.

The attacks marked a sharp escalation after several days of relative calm, he said.

The Civil Defence reported that the strike in Zeitoun caused severe damage to the religious endowments ministry's building and surrounding structures, and posted a video showing its rescue workers appearing to find two people buried under rubble.

Photos published by the Anadolu news agency meanwhile showed the bodies of three young children reportedly recovered from the scene.

In a separate incident in Gaza City, one person was killed and several others were wounded when a drone struck a group of people at Shejaiya junction on Salah al-Din Street, Gaza's main north-south road, according to Mr Bassal.

He said another person was killed when a tank shell struck a house belonging to the Balboul family in Shejaiya's Mushtaha Street, which is also in eastern Gaza City.

In Khan Younis, three people were killed and a number were wounded in a strike on a group inside a sports club run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), he added.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that "several terrorists opened fire toward the area where IDF soldiers are operating in Khan Younis" earlier on Wednesday.

"This action constitutes a violation of the ceasefire agreement. No IDF injuries were reported," it added. "In response, the IDF began striking Hamas terrorist targets across the Gaza Strip."

Israeli public broadcaster Kan cited a security source as saying the targets of the strikes were the commander of the Zeitoun Battalion of Hamas's military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and the commander of its naval force.

On Monday, the UN Security Council passed a resolution that sought to shore up the fragile ceasefire, which took effect on 10 October.

Member states authorised the creation of a transitional governance body called the Board of Peace, which will be chaired by President Trump, and a temporary International Stabilisation Force (ISF), which will be tasked with ensuring "the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip".

Trump hailed the resolution as "a moment of true historic proportion".

A Hamas statement reiterated that the group would not give up its weapons without a Palestinian state, arguing its fight against Israel was legitimate "resistance".

Israel's ambassador to the UN stressed the importance of disarmament, saying that his country would "not stop or let up" until Hamas no longer presented "a threat".

The Israeli military launched an offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 69,500 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, including 280 during the ceasefire, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Thirty-five people and three institutions have gone on trial in North Macedonia over a devastating fire at a nightclub that killed 63, mainly young, people in March.

"I know about the pain of loved ones, we are all parents," Judge Diana Gruevska-Ilievska told the crowded courtroom, filled with defendants and dozens of victims' relatives. She promised the case would be conducted in a transparent and disciplined manner.

Club Pulse, in the eastern town of Kocani, was packed with young Macedonians attending a concert by a popular hip-hop duo when sparks from pyrotechnic devices set fire to the ceiling.

Prosecutors told the trial that years of failings had turned the club into a death trap.

Three former mayors of Kocani, the nightclub's owner and public licensing officials are among those charged.

They are accused of endangering public safety by allowing an unsafe venue to operate.

The judge warned the court that the trial could last for "five months or five years".

Defence lawyers attempted to delay the start of proceedings due to the charges being merged into a single case. The judge rebuffed them, ruling this did "not violate any rights of the parties".

At the time of the tragedy, authorities said only one proper exit was functioning at the club as the back door had been locked.

Sparks from the pyrotechnics spread quickly on the club's ceiling, which had been made of flammable material.

About 500 people were inside the club at the time, leaving 59 dead and some 200 others injured. Four of the injured died later. Many were unable to escape because of blocked exits.

Outrage after the fire prompted protests in the Macedonian capital Skopje and elsewhere, with victims' families organising local marches in Kocani itself.

Another protest entitled "March of the Angels" took place in Skopje days before the trial began, organised under a Macedonian social media campaign called "Who's Next?".

Prosecutors told the trial that the Kocani disaster was not the result of one person's actions or mistakes - rather it arose out of a series of institutional failures and a lack of responsibility.

None of the defendants had wanted to face up to the danger that had been there for years, according to prosecutor Borche Janev.

Prosecutors allege that licences for the club were issued unlawfully, inspections were not carried out and overcrowding was allowed at the venue.

Another allegation is that there was no permit for the band to set off the pyrotechnic devices that started the fire.

"If we remain silent and lose the truth... we will never have the strength as a society to embark on a path to healing," Janev was quoted by local media as telling the court.

A prominent French anti-drugs campaigner whose brother was killed by drugs criminals last week, five years after the murder of his elder brother, has vowed to stand up to intimidation and "keep telling the truth about drugs violence".

Amine Kessaci, 22, was writing in Le Monde newspaper a day after the funeral of his younger brother Mehdi, whose murder last week has been described by the government as a turning-point in France's drugs wars.

"Yesterday I lost my brother. Today I speak out," he wrote in his opinion piece.

"[The drugs-traffickers] strike at us in order to break, to tame, to subdue. They want to wipe out any resistance, to break any free spirit, to kill in the egg any embryo of revolt."

Mehdi Kessaci, 20, was shot dead last Wednesday as he parked his car in central Marseille in what appears to have been a warning or punishment aimed at his older brother, Amine, from the city's drugs gangs.

Speaking after a ministerial meeting on drugs crime at the Elysée palace on Tuesday, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said: "We all agreed that this premeditated murder was something totally new. It's clearly a crime of intimidation. It's a new level of violence."

Mehdi was the second Kessaci brother to be killed by drugs criminals. In 2020 the body of Brahim Kessaci, then 22, was found in a burnt-out car.

That murder prompted Amine to launch his association, Conscience, which aims to expose the damage to working-class communities caused by gangs.

Marseille is renowned for worsening drugs wars, and Amine Kessaci recently wrote a book called Marseille Wipe your Tears – Life and Death in a Land of Drugs.

In his Le Monde article, Amine revealed he was recently warned by police to leave Marseille because of threats to his life.

He attended his younger brother's funeral wearing a bullet-proof jacket and under heavy police protection.

"I speak because I have no choice but to fight if I don't want to die. I speak because I know that silence is the refuge of our enemies," he wrote, urging courage from citizens, and action from the government.

Mehdi Kessaci's murder has brought the national spotlight back on a drugs trafficking problem that French experts and ministers agree is reaching almost unmanageable proportions.

According to Senate member Étienne Blanc, author of a recent study, turnover in the drugs trade in France is now €7bn (£6bn) – or 70% of the entire budget of the justice ministry.

He said around 250,000 people drew a living from the trade in France – more than the entire number of police and gendarmes, which is 230,000. According to Le Monde, the country counts 1.1 million users of cocaine.

President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday launched a broadside against such consumers, telling the weekly cabinet meeting that "sometimes it is the city-centre bourgeoisie that is funding the traffickers".

Macron had called a special drugs summit the day before in response to Amine's murder and in order to review progress on a new anti-drugs law that was passed in June.

It sets up a special prosecutor's office dedicated to organised crime - similar to the office that tackles terrorism - which will eventually have 30 specialised magistrates.

Under the law, senior drugs convicts are made to serve their terms in isolation in a specially converted prison where it is hoped it will be harder to continue running operations from behind bars.

According to Laurent Nuñez, there is evidence that the crackdown on drugs crime is having an effect - with the number of homicides in Marseille down from 49 in 2023 to 24 in 2024.

The number of dealing points in the city had halved from 160 to 80, he added.

"The war is not won, but we do have results."

According to the author of a recent book, Narcotraffic, Europe's poison, "France is at the heart of the geopolitics of drugs. With its two major ports of Marseille and Le Havre, it has an ideal geographical position in this Europe of free movement."

Mathieu Verboud said that the growth in world production of cocaine had triggered an "explosion of supply and demand. The market has gone through the roof and so have the profits."

The sheer wealth of drugs organisations meant they had the power to corrupt everyone from dock-workers to local politicians, the author warned, a process he said was already well-advanced in countries like the Netherlands and Belgium.

Several French politicians have said it is time to call in the army to deal with drugs-trafficking and the gangs which hold sway in many high-immigration city estates.

Christian Estrosi, mayor of the southern coastal city of Nice, said: "Narcotrafficking has transformed into narcoterrorism. Its aim now is to terrorise, subjugate and rule.

"We have already successfully deployed the means to fight terrorism. It's time to act with determination against narcoterrorism."

Estrosi was referring to wave of deadly jihadist attacks in the mid 2010s, when France deployed hundreds of soldiers on to the streets of many cities where they continue to patrol.