A member of the UK armed forces who died in Ukraine has been named as Lance Corporal George Hooley of the Parachute Regiment.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Defence said the 28-year-old was killed observing Ukrainian forces test "a new defensive capability, away from the front lines".

Paying tribute to the paratrooper in the Commons on Wednesday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: "His life was full of courage and determination.

"He served our country with honour and distinction around the world in the cause of freedom and democracy, including as part of the small number of British personnel in Ukraine."

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Iceland has joined Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and the Netherlands in saying it will boycott the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest.

All five countries have withdrawn after Israel's participation in the competition was officially confirmed last week.

"Participation of Israeli national broadcaster, KAN, in the contest has created disunity among both members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the general public," Icelandic broadcaster RÚV said in a statement.

Iceland had previously indicated it intended to skip the 2026 contest, but wanted to wait until the issue could be discussed by its board of directors on Wednesday.

Sophie Kinsella, the author of the bestselling Shopaholic series of novels, has died aged 55, her family have announced.

The writer, whose real name is Madeleine Sophie Wickham, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2022.

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Next week's strike by resident doctors in England may be averted after ministers offered the British Medical Association a fresh deal.

The doctors' union has agreed to put the offer to members over the coming days - if they support it, the five-day walkout starting on Wednesday 17 December could be called off.

The offer includes a rapid expansion of specialist training posts as well as covering out-of-pocket expenses such as exam fees.

But it does not include any promises of extra pay. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has been adamant he will not negotiate on that, given resident doctors - the new name for junior doctors - have had pay rises of nearly 30% over the past three years.

The deal also includes emergency legislation being introduced so that the NHS can prioritise doctors who have studied and worked in the UK for speciality training posts that resident doctors move into in year three of their training.

This year there was intense competition for these roles with 30,000 applicants going for 10,000 posts. Some of those will have been doctors from abroad who under current rules have to be judged on the same basis as UK doctors.

The number of speciality posts will also increase by 4,000 – with the first 1,000 of those available from next year.

The BMA will now consult resident doctor members in England on whether this offer would be sufficient to call off next week's strike. A survey of members will run online, closing on Monday 15 December.

If members indicate it is enough to call off these strikes, a formal referendum of resident doctors would follow, giving members time to consider the details of the offer and whether to accept it and end the current dispute, the BMA said.

If the survey of members decides it is not enough to call off strikes, they will go ahead as planned next week.

BMA resident doctors committee chairman, Dr Jack Fletcher, said: "This offer is the result of thousands of resident doctors showing that they are prepared to stand up for their profession and its future.

"It should not have taken strike action, but make no mistake: it was strike action that got us this far.

"We have forced the government to recognise the scale of the problems and to respond with measures on training numbers and prioritisation.

"However, this offer does nothing to restore pay for doctors, which remains well within the government's power to do."

Leon has announced it will close several of its restaurants and cut jobs as part of a major restructure of the High Street food chain.

The company has appointed Quantuma as administrators after Leon's original co-founder John Vincent reacquired the company last month from Asda.

The move places the future of the worst performing of its 71 stores at risk, but so far no closures have been confirmed and all stores remain open.

The company employs about 1,000 staff and Leon has not said how many workers will be affected but added it would try to find jobs in the stores that remain open in the first instance.

Mr Vincent said that after an initial review of the company, the "immediate priority" was to close "the most unprofitable restaurants".

"In many cases we have found other brands to replace us, and in others we will be asking the landlords to take the leases back and find better suited operators themselves," he said.

Leon has also developed a programme with Pret A Manger to help staff that cannot take jobs in other Leon outlets, through which affected staff can apply for jobs with the coffee chain.

The company's plan is to work with Quantuma over the coming weeks to discuss the plans with landlords and work out the options for Leon's future.

Mr Vincent said he believed the company had drifted from its core values under EG and Asda's leadership, but he was also sympathetic to the challenges they faced running the "healthier" fast food chain.

"In the last two years, Asda had bigger fish to fry, and Leon was always a business they didn't feel fitted their strategy", he said.

"If you look at the performance of Leon's peers, you will see that everyone is facing challenges – companies are reporting significant losses due to working patterns and increasingly unsustainable taxes."

Asda has previously said selling Leon back to Mr Vincent would allow it to re-focus on its core retail operations, covering everything from its supermarkets to petrol forecourts.

Asda has been contacted for comment.

Leon also blamed its current issues on internal challenges, changing work patterns driven by the Covid pandemic and tax increases – all of which have affected the broader hospitality sector.

Mr Vincent said the government needed to review the tax burden it had placed on the hospitality industry.

"Today for every pound we receive from the customer, around 36p goes to the government in tax, and about 2p ends up in the hands of the company. It's why most players are reporting big losses," he said.

Known for serving its meals in a cardboard box with brown rice and fresh herbs, Leon has said its mission is to prove that its possible to serve fast food that "tastes good but does you good too" .

It opened its first branch in London in 2004, and at the time stood out against the fried chicken, burger and chips menus of its rival fast food chains.

Leon's administration process comes after Pizza Hut's UK operator DC London Pie announced it was closing 68 restaurants and 11 delivery sites in October, making more than 1,200 workers redundant.

Administrators said DC London Pie had been hit by a combination of "challenging trading conditions and increased costs", including "tax-related obligations".

Toffee Crisp and Blue Riband bars can no longer be called chocolate after maker Nestle changed their recipes.

To be described as milk chocolate in the UK a product needs to have at least 20% cocoa solids and 20% milk solids, a level each product fell below once a higher amount of cheaper vegetable fat was used.

Nestle said its reformulations were needed due to higher input costs but were "carefully developed and sensory tested" and there were no plans to alter the recipes of other chocolate products.

As many ingredient costs, such as cocoa and butter, increased food companies have altered recipes to use less of the expensive ingredients, as well as shrinking serving sizes.

A spokesperson for Nestle said the food giant had seen "significant increases in the cost of cocoa over the past years, making it much more expensive to manufacture our products. We continue to be more efficient and absorb increasing costs where possible".

The change to the bars' ingredients was first reported by The Grocer.

Nestle is not alone in recent reformulations.

In October, McVitie's Penguin and Club bars switched to be labelled as as "chocolate flavour" because the amount of cocoa they contain has been reduced after parent company Pladis chose to use cheaper alternatives to the main ingredient in chocolate.

Although cocoa commodity prices have recently eased slightly, a surge in costs over the past three years, driven by poor harvests and droughts, has pushed up the cost of chocolate.

Changing ingredient proportions in food and drink manufacturing due to cost is sometimes called "skimpflation".

It has become more recent years as inflation has increased producers' costs.

Supermarkets were found in 2024 to have reduced the amount of costlier ingredients such as beef and chicken in their ready meals.

Iceland has joined Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and the Netherlands in saying it will boycott the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest.

All five countries have withdrawn after Israel's participation in the competition was officially confirmed last week.

"Participation of Israeli national broadcaster, KAN, in the contest has created disunity among both members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the general public," Icelandic broadcaster RÚV said in a statement.

Iceland had previously indicated it intended to skip the 2026 contest, but wanted to wait until the issue could be discussed by its board of directors on Wednesday.

A federal judge in New York has ruled the US Department of Justice can publicly release grand jury records from Jeffrey Epstein's 2019 sex trafficking case.

US District Judge Richard Berman's ruling reverses his previous decision to keep the material sealed. He cited a new law passed by Congress requiring the justice department to release files about Epstein by the end of next week.

Esptein was charged with sex trafficking in July 2019. He died in a New York prison cell a month later while awaiting trail.

The latest ruling comes a day after another judge made a similar ruling in the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 for her role in facilitating Epstein's abuse.

In his ruling, Judge Berman said the victims have the right to "have their identity and privacy protected", adding that their "safety and privacy are paramount".

The Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law by US President Donald Trump last month. It requires the justice department to release investigative material related to Epstein by 19 December, including unclassified records, documents and communications.

The law also allows the department to withhold files that involve active criminal investigations or raise privacy concerns.

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump's deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles and ordered the troops be returned to the state governor's control.

In June, Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops to the California city in the wake of protests over his administration ramping up immigration raids in Los Angeles.

US District Judge Charles Breyer said the Trump administration had not proven that that the city's protests against immigration justified taking federal control of the state's National Guard.

The Trump administration still has control over 300 troops in Los Angeles six months after they were federalised, Judge Breyer said.

Breyer also denied the Trump administration's argument that the courts should not weigh in on a president taking control of state National Guard troops during an emergency.

"The Founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances," Judge Breyer wrote in his ruling. "Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one."

Judge Breyer said his order would not go into effect until 15 December, giving the Trump administration time to make its expected appeal to a higher court.

The BBC has contacted the White House requesting comment.

This year, Trump has sent National Guard troops to several cities, including Portland, Oregon, and Washington DC, where the deployments have also been contested in courts and. in some cases, blocked by judges.

California Governor Gavin Newsom sued soon after Trump first deployed thousands of troops in June, but a court of appeals sided with the administration, saying the protests in Los Angeles justified Trump's federalisation of the National Guard.

Newsom filed a new legal challenge in November, arguing the protests in the city had largely subsided and therefore the troops were no longer necessary.

In a hearing in the case on Friday, lawyers for the Trump administration said the troops should stay in LA because federal immigration agents there were still being targeted.

But Judge Breyer seemed to question the need for troops to remain in the city months later.

"I think experience teaches us that crises come and crises go," he said, according to the Associated Press.

In his ruling, Judge Breyer said the Trump administration was "effectively creating a national police force made up of state troops" by sending California's National Guard troops to other states as well.

Judge Breyer previously ruled that the way Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles this summer was illegal.

All 50 US states, the District of Columbia, and several territories have their own contingent of National Guard troops.

President Donald Trump's deployment of the National Guard to several US cities has drawn a round of legal challenges by state and local officials.

Trump has argued that his use of the troops is necessary to quell violence in Democratic-controlled cities, crack down on crime and support his deportation initiatives.

Sophie Kinsella, the author of the bestselling Shopaholic series of novels, has died aged 55, her family have announced.

The writer, whose real name is Madeleine Sophie Wickham, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2022.

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Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has urged the prime minister to stand up to Donald Trump, describing the US president's new national security strategy as "deeply alarming".

The document, which was published last week, warns Europe faces "civilisational erasure" and says US policy should prioritise "cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory".

Sir Ed called on the PM to "make it clear to President Trump that any attempts to interfere with our democracy are totally unacceptable".

In response, Sir Keir Starmer avoided criticising the US President, instead saying he would always stand up for Europe's "longstanding values of freedom and democracy".

The US strategy calls for an end to mass migration and criticises European policies on the issue for "creating strife".

It also raises concerns about "censorship of free speech" and "loss of national identities and self-confidence".

"It is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies," the document states.

Trump continued to attack European leaders in an interview with Politico on Tuesday, when he branded them "weak" and said they had failed to control migration or take decisive action to end the war in Ukraine.

The strategy also adopts softer language towards Russia, blaming the EU for blocking US efforts to end the conflict and saying the US must "re-establish strategic stability with Russia".

The Kremlin has welcomed the document, calling it "largely consistent" with Moscow's vision.

Raising the US strategy during Prime Minister's Questions, Sir Ed told the House of Commons: "Quite apart from the irony of President Trump accusing others of trampling on basic principles of democracy, it repeats far-right tropes of civilisational erasure and threatens that the US government will cultivate resistance in Europe.

"No wonder Vladimir Putin has welcomed that strategy. So will the prime minister pick up the phone and make it clear to President Trump that any attempts to interfere with our democracy are totally unacceptable?"

Sir Keir replied: "On the question of Europe and President Trump's comments, what I see is a strong Europe, united behind Ukraine and united behind our longstanding values of freedom and democracy.

"And I will always stand up for those values and those freedoms."

Sir Ed hit back: "I didn't hear about standing up to President Trump."

The PM has sought to build a close relationship with Trump and the government has pointed to a deal on trade as among the positive results of this.

Meanwhile, Downing Street has defended the Labour mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, after he was branded a "disaster" and "incompetent" by Trump.

The US president's latest remarks in his long-running feud with the London mayor came during his Politico interview, where he also claimed Sir Sadiq was elected "because so many people have come in".

On Wednesday, the prime minister's press secretary told reporters Trump's comments were "wrong".

She said the mayor was "doing an excellent job in London", adding: "The prime minister is hugely proud of the mayor of London's record and proud to call him a colleague and a friend."

It comes after Downing Street was forced to deny it was failing to stand up for Sir Sadiq on Tuesday, when a No 10 spokesman declined to criticise the president's attack on the mayor.

Instead the spokesman had said: "The prime minister has a strong relationship with the US president and a strong relationship with the Mayor of London and on both is committed to working together to deliver stronger outcomes for the British people right across the country."

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A couple who had a brief encounter on a late-night train have got engaged on the same service one year later.

Steve Higgs, 56, from Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, set up the surprise proposal to Payal Pandya, from Harrow, London, after a train company got on board with the plans.

He said he first met Ms Pandya, 49, on the 23:09 London Northwestern Railway (LNR) service from Euston towards Milton Keynes in November 2024.

To mark their anniversary the couple boarded the same service and Mr Higgs got down on one knee to ask Ms Pandya to marry him - and wedding plans are now moving full steam ahead.

Mr Higgs contacted LNR to plan the moment to ensure that nothing derailed it.

When the couple were on the train home from a night out in the capital, the conductor made a special announcement hinting at the forthcoming proposal, which gave Mr Higgs the cue to get down on one knee.

Mr Higgs said: "I first met Payal when I offered her my seat after I'd been out for a few drinks with friends.

"I'm always up for chatting with people when I'm travelling and so I struck up a conversation.

"I remember she mentioned she'd just been on a first date where – luckily for me - sparks had failed to fly.

"Although we were only speaking for 20 minutes or so, I knew I wanted to see her again."

Ms Pandya said by the time she had got off the train last year, her fiancé had found her dating profile and sent her a message.

"We set up our first date not too long after and the rest is history," she said.

"We always joke that the 23:09 LNR service marks our 'encounter-versary' – the moment we first met.

"I can't believe Steve asked me to marry him on that same service and managed to get the conductor involved without me knowing!"

The couple said they hope to get married next year.

Jonny Wiseman, LNR's customer experience director, said: "When Steve got in touch with our customer relations team, we knew we had to help with his request for a special announcement.

"Their story is a brilliant example of the way the railway can connect people, not just to where they need to go, but to the people they're travelling with too."

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