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 death of an Oasis fan who fell from height at a concert at Wembley Stadium was a "tragic accident", a pre-inquest review has heard.

Lee Claydon, 45, from Bournemouth and known to his family by his middle name Clive, fell from an upper level at the end of the show on 2 August.

At Barnet Coroner's Court, Det Sgt James Raffin, of the Metropolitan Police, told the hearing it was no longer being treated as a criminal case.

"We do not suspect any third party involvement," he said. "This, from everything we have seen, was a tragic accident."

Mr Claydon had been drinking but a toxicology report revealed "no concerns", the officer told the court.

He said the force had also ruled out the possibility of suicide.

Det Sgt Raffin added: "From a police point of view, I would say our investigation is complete."

The officer said he was aware the family had concerns over the "circumstances on the night" and that he would pass these on to officials at Brent Council.

The father of three was pronounced dead at a Wembley medical centre at 22:38 BST, an initial hearing in September was told.

The preliminary cause of death was given as "multiple bodily injuries".

The fall happened during a run of stadium shows for the rock band's sell-out Live '25 reunion tour - their first since splitting in 2009.

Oasis previously said in a statement: "We are shocked and saddened to hear of the tragic death of a fan at the show."

Mr Claydon's father, Clive, paid a tribute to his son, describing him as a "lovely bloke" and a "hard-working family man".

Senior Coroner Andrew Walker said the full inquest would take place on 26 February.

Weather warnings for snow and ice have been issued across much of the UK.

Here are some tips for coping with low temperatures.

How can I keep my baby warm?

Babies and young children under five are more at risk in cold weather.

While outside, the NHS advises that babies and children should wear several layers of clothes to keep warm, including a hat and mittens to stop heat loss.

In the car, for safety reasons, you should keep thick jumpers and coats to a minimum, so there is not too much padding between your child and the car seat straps.

If necessary, you can lay a blanket on top of your child once they are safely strapped in.

Remove any hats, gloves and extra layers when you come back inside.

NHS guidance says babies do not need hot rooms at night - a room temperature of between 16-20C (61-68F) is ideal. Overheating is one of the potential causes of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

A sleepsuit and either a sleeping bag or a sheet and/or blanket should be fine.

If you're using a sleeping bag and feel like your baby is cold, you should add an extra layer of clothing - but not extra blankets.

If you are using sheets and/or blankets rather than a sleeping bag, you should use lightweight cellular blankets. Avoid thick, fleecy or padded blankets.

How can I avoid winter infections?

Cases of flu and norovirus - the winter vomiting bug - typically rise at this time of year, and Covid is still around too.

When it is cold outside, people tend to spend more time indoors, where it can be easier to catch an infection.

For example, coughs and sneezes in an enclosed space with little or no ventilation (windows closed, doors shut) can quickly spread illnesses from person to person.

Opening windows where possible and practising good hygiene - using and then binning a tissue for coughs and sneezes and washing your hands - can help prevent this.

Those who are eligible for the Covid winter booster jab can get it until 31 January 2026. Some groups can also get a free flu vaccine.

Anyone who does not qualify for an NHS vaccine can pay to have either or both jabs privately from a local pharmacy.

How can I keep my pet safe and warm?

Like humans, animals can be at risk of hypothermia if they become too cold.

Veterinary charity PDSA advises giving dogs and cats extra blankets for their beds over the winter months. Raised beds can keep older dogs away from draughts, while cats may like high-up dens.

The charity also recommends extra playtime for pets to make sure they keep active if they are spending less time outside. Indoor toys can help.

Consider keeping cats inside overnight and provide an indoor litter tray.

A sudden drop in temperature can also have a big impact on outside pets, such as rabbits and guinea pigs. They should be given extra bedding for warmth and, if possible, moved to a more sheltered space or even brought inside.

But you should make sure they have enough indoor space to exercise safely.

Can I walk my dog in cold weather?

Dogs still need walks during cold weather. Usually, their fur will keep them warm.

But the RSPCA advises buying a winter coat or jumper for sick or elderly dogs, or those with thinner fur.

Walk your dog during the day if you can, or consider using LED collars or hi-vis leads if you have to go out in the dark.

Be cautious when letting dogs off the lead in the snow, and supervise them closely as hazards may be hidden. Frozen water may not bear their weight.

If you can, take shorter, more frequent walks rather than one long daily hike.

If your dog gets wet, make sure you dry them off with a towel as soon as you get home and check their paws for salt, grit, dirt or snow.

• How to look after dogs, cats and other animals in cold weather

How can I dry clothes more cheaply?

Drying clothes on radiators is a common practice in the winter.

But it can mean turning on heating in parts of the home you are not using. It may also risk making your home damp, which can cause mould.

One option is to use a dehumidifier, which takes water out of the air. Some have laundry settings and can be run for several hours next to wet clothes on a drying rack.

The financial journalist Martin Lewis has previously pointed out on his BBC podcast that running a dehumidifier is generally "far, far cheaper" than putting on the heating in a room.

What's the best way to de-ice your car?

Many drivers waking up to freezing temperatures have to de-ice their cars.

But motorists are warned not to use boiling water from a kettle - hot water can crack the glass and the water will only freeze again on the screen or on the ground.

Instead, the AA recommends turning on the engine - ensuring the wipers are off to avoid damage - and directing warm air to the windscreen.

You should also turn on your rear windscreen heater, and use air-con if you have it to ensure your windows don't fog up.

The next step is to clear any snow with a soft brush, before using a scraper and liquid de-icer.

• How to drive in snow and icy weather

How can you use plug-in heaters and electric blankets safely?

Portable heaters can be an alternative to switching on your central heating, but they can pose a serious fire hazard if not used carefully.

Firefighters and safety managers from the Electrical Safety First charity say you should place your heater on a flat surface to ensure it will not fall over.

It should be at least 3ft (1m) away from anything flammable. You should not let curtains, clothes, blankets, duvets or armchairs lean against it.

You should not use your heater to dry your washing, or leave it unattended for long periods of time, or overnight.

Experts also warn against plugging heaters into extension leads, as this could cause a fire.

Leaving electric blankets or heated throws on for too long can also be dangerous, so use the timer function.

You should not use any kind of electric blanket at all if any of the heating wires are visible, there is damage to the power cord or control unit, or it gives off a smell when switched on.

Using gas heaters also carries the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, so you should ensure you have a working carbon monoxide alarm in the same room.

A Russian spy ship is on the edge of UK waters north of Scotland and has pointed lasers to distract pilots of surveillance aircraft monitoring its activities, the defence secretary has said.

Speaking at a press conference in Downing Street, John Healey said it was the second time in a year that the Yantar had entered UK waters.

The ship is "designed for gathering intelligence and mapping our undersea cables", Healey told journalists.

"My message to Russia and to Putin is this: we see you. We know what you're doing. And if the Yantar travels south this week, we are ready," he added.

Giving more details on the vessel, Healey said: "It is part of a Russian fleet designed to put and hold our undersea infrastructure and those of our allies at risk.

"It isn't just a naval operation. It's part of a Russian programme driven by what they call the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, or GUGI, and this is designed to have capabilities which can undertake surveillance in peacetime and sabotage in conflict.

"That is why we've been determined, whenever the Yantar comes into British wider waters, we track it, we deter it and we say to Putin we are ready, and we do that alongside allies."

He said this was a demonstration of Britain's capability and "readiness to act".

The defence secretary issued a warning in January about the ship after it was spotted in UK waters.

Serial rapist and former Metropolitan Police officer David Carrick has been found guilty of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl and a former partner.

The 50-year-old, who has already been jailed for life, has been convicted of molesting the girl in the late-1990s and raping the woman during a relationship more than 20 years later.

Jurors at the Old Bailey found him guilty of nine offences.

Carrick, from Stevenage, is already serving a minimum term of 32 years in prison, having admitted 71 offences of sexual violence committed over a 17-year period.

He is due to be sentenced this afternoon. The court has risen for a short break.

Carrick, wearing a suit and tie, shook his head repeatedly in the dock as the verdicts were read out.

The jury found him unanimously guilty of the following offences:

• Five counts of indecent assault against a girl under 16 between April 1989 and August 1990
• Two counts of rape against a woman, once between December 2014 and April 2016 then between January and December 2019
• Sexual assault against the same woman between January and December 2019
• Coercive and controlling behaviour in relation to the same woman between 2016 and 2019

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Action is needed now to reduce ultra-processed food (UPF) in diets worldwide because of their threat to health, say international experts in a global review of research.

They say the way we eat is changing - with a move away from fresh, whole foods to cheap, highly-processed meals - which is increasing our risk of a range of chronic diseases, including obesity and depression.

Writing in The Lancet, the researchers say governments need "to step up" and introduce warnings and higher taxes on UPF products, to help fund access to more nutritious foods.

However some scientists say this review can not prove that UPFs directly cause health harms and more research and trials are needed to show that.

Ultra-processed foods are defined as containing more than five ingredients which you would not find at home in your kitchen cupboard, such as emulsifiers, preservatives, additives, dyes and sweeteners.

Examples of UPFs include sausages, crisps, pastries, biscuits, instant soups, fizzy drinks, ice cream and supermarket bread.

Surveys indicate these industrially-manufactured foods are on the rise in diets around the world, worsening the quality of what we eat with too much sugar and unhealthy fats and a lack of fibre and protein.

This review of evidence on the impact of UPFs on health, carried out by 43 global experts and based on 104 long-term studies, suggests these foods are linked to a greater risk of 12 health conditions.

These include type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, depression and dying prematurely from any cause.

Review author Prof Carlos Monteiro, from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, who set up the Nova classification system for categorising food, said the growing consumption of ultra-processed foods "is reshaping diets worldwide, displacing fresh and minimally processed foods and meals".

"This change in what people eat is fuelled by powerful global corporations who generate huge profits by prioritising ultra-processed products, supported by extensive marketing and political lobbying to stop effective public health policies to support healthy eating," he added.

Co-author Dr Phillip Baker, from the University of Sydney, said the answer was "a strong global public health response - like the coordinated efforts to challenge the tobacco industry".

The review acknowledges a lack of clinical trials showing exactly how UPFs damage health - but says that should not delay action to protect people worldwide from potential health harms.

Some scientists have commented that it is difficult to untangle the effects of UPFs in people's diets from other factors in people's lives, such as lifestyle, behaviour and wealth.

Critics of the Nova classification system say it relies too much on the level of processing in foods, and not on how nutritious that particular food is. For example, wholegrain bread, breakfast cereals, low-fat yoghurts, baby formula milk and fish fingers all count as ultra-processed but have lots of good in them.

Prof Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University, said: "A study like this can find a correlation, but it can't be certain about cause and effect."

He said there was still "room for doubt and for clarification from further research".

"It seems to me likely that at least some UPFs could cause increases in the risk of some chronic diseases. But this certainly doesn't establish that all UPFs increase disease risk."

It is still not clear what it is about ultra-processed foods that could be causing or contributing to diseases.

Prof Jules Griffin, from the University of Aberdeen, said there were some positive sides to food processing, and more research to understand how it influences our health was "urgently needed".

The Food and Drink Federation says UPFs can form part of a balanced diet, like frozen peas and wholemeal bread.

"Companies have been making a series of changes over many years to make the food and drink we all buy healthier, in line with government guidelines," says Kate Halliwell, chief scientific officer at the Food and Drink Federation, which represents industry.

The amount of sugar and salt in products on sale in shops and supermarkets has gone down by a third since 2015, she added.

Current UK government advice on diet is to eat more fruit, vegetables and fibre, and cut back on sugar, fat and salt.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said the government's Budget is unravelling before it has even been delivered, after the chancellor backed away from raising income tax rates.

The government had given strong indications it was planning to increase the tax - which would break an election pledge - but last week government sources said Rachel Reeves had decided against the move after better-than-expected economic forecasts.

During Prime Minister's Questions, Badenoch pressed Sir Keir Starmer over whether the government would "break another promise" instead by freezing income tax thresholds.

The PM refused to rule this out, saying the chancellor would set out her plans in next week's Budget.

Describing the situation as a "shambles", Badenoch accused the government of floating the idea of increasing income tax rates only to "U-turn".

"This is the first Budget to unravel before it's even been delivered," she told the House of Commons.

"The chancellor's cluelessness, I'm afraid, is damaging the economy now."

Badenoch also highlighted comments from the chancellor in her Budget last year, when Reeves said: "I am keeping every single promise on tax that I made in our manifesto", and said she would not extend the freeze on income tax and National Insurance thresholds because this "would hurt working people".

The Tory leader asked the PM to confirm the government would not break this promise and continue the freeze on income tax thresholds.

But Sir Keir dodged the question, only saying the Budget would focus on cutting NHS waiting lists, debt and the cost-of-living.

"What we won't do is inflict austerity on the country as they did. What we won't do is inflict a borrowing spree like [Conservative prime minister] Liz Truss did," he added.

In response, Badenoch said it was "quite clear" the government was planning to freeze thresholds.

"If [the chancellor] breaks such a clear promise, how can the public trust a word that she says next week?"

Reeves will deliver her Budget in the House of Commons on 26 November, and Badenoch will give the immediate response for the opposition.

In Labour's 2024 general election manifesto, the party promised it would "not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax, or VAT".

The freeze on income tax thresholds was introduced under the Conservatives in April 2023 and is due to expire in 2028.

While an extension of the freeze would not break the strict letter of the manifesto promise, it would mean some people's tax bills go up.

This is because more people would be dragged into a higher tax band, or have to pay tax on their income for the first time, if they get a pay rise.

In the months running up to the Budget, ministers had repeatedly given strong indications that income tax rates would go up.

As recently as last week, Reeves had told the BBC sticking to Labour's manifesto commitments would require "deep cuts in capital spending".

In October, Sir Keir had declined to repeat his previous promises not to increase key taxes during Prime Minister's Questions.

However, last Friday it emerged that Reeves had decided not to go ahead with the move, after estimates suggested a gap in the public finances was £10bn smaller than previously thought.

Ahead of every Budget, the chancellor submits their plans to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which then make forecasts on whether the government will spend more money than it raises and whether the economy will grow or shrink.

A proposal to increase income tax rates by 2p, while cutting National Insurance by the same amount, was sent to the OBR as an option earlier this month to be costed, to help fill what was then a £30bn gap in the public finances.

Newer assessments from the OBR appear to have increased the projected strength of wages and tax receipts in the coming years and offset several billion pounds of that gap, taking it closer to £20bn.

Many Labour MPs were also nervous about breaking an election promise, which would have influenced the chancellor's decision.

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Walking around your local supermarket and you'll struggle to find much that's healthy for your finances on the shelves - food price rises are accelerating.

The cost of the weekly shop is, and will continue to be, a worry for millions of people.

Beyond just food, prices of goods and services in general are going up, but the rate of those price rises have slowed.

And that is likely to bring better news for the cost of borrowing, in particular mortgage rates for homeowners and first-time buyers.

Are prices going up or down?

Prices pretty much always rise. Official statistics chart the movement in the cost of hundreds of goods and services in the UK.

It is the rate of increase that is crucial, and that inflation rate is published every month by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

On Wednesday, the ONS said the rate of inflation had fallen to 3.6%, which means prices are rising more slowly than they were and will foster hope that inflation has peaked.

Delve a little further into the data, and there are more details about what is behind the latest trends.

For example, fish, vegetables, chocolate and confectionary were among the products that rose in price, although fruit prices fell slightly.

Recent research by the Bank of England found that people on average are still buying the same amount of food, but paying more for it. That said, they are changing the way they shop.

"Concerns about rising food costs and utility bills still dominate conversations," it said.

"Households continue to change their shopping habits to reduce spending, such as buying more vegetables and reducing meat consumption."

"Staples like bread, meat and potatoes all cost more than they did even a month ago," says Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at investment platform AJ Bell.

But she does point to a silver lining - the dip in the inflation rate means the Bank of England is now more likely to cut interest rates in December.

The Bank uses its benchmark interest rate - which heavily influences the cost of borrowing for households and businesses - to try to bring inflation to its target rate of 2%.

"Inflation remains well above the Band of England's happy place of 2%," says Alice Haine, personal finance analyst at Bestinvest.

But, she says, the latest figures could pave the way for a sixth interest rate cut since August last year.

The prospect of an interest rate cut has seen lenders make changes already. In recent weeks, many major lenders have lowered their rates for people getting a new fixed-rate mortgage or renewing their current one.

"There has been particular emphasis placed on rates for home movers with some of the best rates available for purchases," says David Hollingworth, of mortgage brokers L&C.

Data from the financial information service Moneyfacts shows that the average rate on a new two-year fixed deal has fallen to 4.88%, and is down to 4.93% for the average five-year fixed deal.

Average rates for those only able to put down a deposit of 5% or 10% - often first-time buyers - are now looking lower than they have been at any time in the last two or three years.

Why are lenders cutting rates now?

Inflation is only one factor in lenders' decisions to cut mortgage rates now.

Generally, Christmas is a quiet time for the housing market as potential buyers and sellers concentrate on turkey and trimmings instead.

So, they may be lowering rates in a bid to stimulate custom.

The same cannot be said for savings rates. "Competition has been scarce," says Caitlyn Eastell, from Moneyfacts.

That is compounded by the fact that many of those buyers, sellers and savers have put plans on hold until they find out what happens in the Budget delivered by Chancellor Rachel Reeves on 26 November.

The Budget looms large over the housing market, with talk of taxation on high value properties, as well as over economic activity in general.

Reeves wants to introduce measures to lower the rate of inflation, and help people with the cost of living. However, she also needs to bring in more money or cut government spending to meet her own fiscal rules.

It is a delicate balancing act that will affect individual and family finances, affecting the money people have to spend in the supermarket and the appetite they have to save, as well as buy or sell a home.

A British woman is among five people who have died in a snowstorm in Chilean Patagonia.

Victoria Bond, a public relations consultant from Cornwall, was named by authorities in Chile as among those killed in the tourist hotspot of Torres del Paine National Park, in the south of the country.

Along with Ms Bond, two German and two Mexican citizens died in the snowstorm, according to Jose Antonio Ruiz, the presidential delegate of the Magallanes region of southern Chile. Their bodies were found on Tuesday.

Visit Isles of Scilly chairman Andrew Sells said the organisation was "utterly devastated" by Ms Bond's death.

Visit Isles of Scilly said Ms Bond had headed up its public relations for more than six years and was on a "trip of lifetime" with friends in Argentina and Chile.

She was out hiking when she became trapped in the storm, the organisation said.

Mr Sells said she had "worked tirelessly" in her role to promote the islands, 28 miles off the Cornish coast, and was an "integral part" of the team.

He said: "She was always a joy to work with, and I cannot praise her work too highly. She is an enormous loss to the community."

Euan Rodger, executive vice-chairman of Visit Isles of Scilly, said the organisation was "heartbroken".

"She brought life, energy, and an infectious enthusiasm to every project, making her a true joy to work alongside," he said.

'Leaves a huge hole'

Adrian Jones, who worked with Ms Bond promoting the Roseland Festival in Cornwall, paid tribute to her as "lovable, witty and creative".

"She was a doer... she had ideas and she saw them through," he said.

"She will leave a huge hole in Portscatho... she lived in Newquay but she spent a lot of the time in Portscatho."

He described her as adventurous.

"Unbelievably sad as it may seem, she was doing what she lived life for," he said.

'Intense' snowfall

Chilean officials said the search for victims had ended and the focus was now on repatriating the bodies and liaising with foreign consulates.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric Font paid tribute to search and rescue teams who worked in "intense" snowfall and winds reaching speeds of up to 118mph (190km/h).

He said in a post on X: "To the families, friends, and loved ones of the five individuals of Mexican, German, and British nationalities who tragically lost their lives in the incident that occurred in Torres del Paine, I extend my deepest condolences.

"Know that you have the full support and collaboration of Chilean authorities and institutions during these difficult times."

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: "We are supporting the family of a British woman who has died following an incident in Chile and are in contact with the local authorities."

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Nine people have been killed in Russian strikes on Ukraine overnight, Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

Russia launched more than 470 drones and 47 missiles in the "brazen attack", he wrote in a post on Telegram.

Three districts of Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv, were hit by a massive drone attack which injured more than 30 people, including children. Photos posted online showed buildings and cars ablaze.

Power cuts are affecting a number of regions across the country, Ukraine's energy ministry said.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

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The time it takes to bring shoplifters to justice is "unacceptable" with retailers waiting longer for criminals to face punishment compared with a decade ago, the BBC has learned.

In one case, stores targeted by a thief waited up to 10 months for a shoplifter to be sentenced, despite retail workers piecing together her identity without help from the police.

Chelsea Strange, 33, went on a three-week crime spree stealing £2,000 worth of Jellycat soft toys from four different stores across the south west of England and one in Wales - which she later sold on Vinted.

Figures obtained by the BBC show the average time it takes for a shoplifting case to be dealt with from offence to completion in a magistrates' court in England and Wales has risen by more than 80% in the last 10 years – from 32 days in 2014 to 59 days in 2024.

Trade bodies representing retailers have said many stores have been left frustrated with the way shoplifters are dealt with. They say the time taken reduces shopkeepers' faith in the justice system - making them feel there's no point in reporting crimes.

"The delays in bringing perpetrators to court really does add insult to injury," said Andrew Goodacre, chief executive of the British Independent Retailers Association.

"It is no surprise many small shop owners simply do not bother reporting the crime in the first place. In their minds it makes no difference."

The BBC has looked at a series of shoplifting cases which highlight how shops have been left waiting months for thieves to be brought to justice.

We followed the Jellycat shoplifting case since December 2024, when we reported how a garden centre owner in Bridport, Dorset, had managed to piece together the thief's identity by scouring resale websites, deciphering her car's personalised number plate, and finding her Facebook profile.

Austins department store in Newton Abbot, Devon, was also targeted by Strange on three separate occasions – and staff said they too were able to figure out who she was.

Head of security Tom Hirst described the time taken to deal with shoplifters as "unacceptable" and said the criminal justice system is "too easy on them".

"You're better off shoplifting than going to work, that's my honest view," he added.

"Every time someone comes in and steals something, that cost gets passed on… it puts the price up so we're all paying."

In July, Strange, from Felton, Bristol, was sentenced to a 12-month community order at Newton Abbot Magistrates Court after admitting stealing from five shops across Devon, Somerset, Dorset and South Wales in September and October last year.

She was also ordered to pay nearly £1,800 in compensation.

Strange's defence team said the offences were out of character and would not have taken place if it had not been for her poor mental health.

​​Fiona Malone, who runs a Post Office in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, also told the BBC she had to wait five months for a shoplifter who stole from her store to face sentencing – despite catching the thief red-handed.

The shopkeeper confronted Natalie Lintern after security cameras captured her stealing pre-mixed vodka cans, sandwiches and cake from the store in August last year.

Mrs Malone chased the 36-year-old down the street and got the stolen items back before reporting it to the police.

"The whole criminal justice system is too slow, it's bureaucratic," she told the BBC.

"We need to deal with these people and deal with them quickly and think about alternative punishments to stop them doing it in the first place."

In January, Lintern, from Pembroke, Pembrokeshire, was given a 12-month community order after pleading guilty to stealing from Tenby Post Office and four other stores between April and September 2024.

But the sentence did not stop her from shoplifting again.

Six months later, she was back in court again where she admitted stealing from a service station in May.

She was given six weeks in jail, suspended for 12 months.

"What we're doing as a society, it's not working," said Mrs Malone.

"It's like whatever punishment she got it was almost like 'Oh never mind I'll just go out and do it again'."

The most serious shop thefts can end up being heard at crown court where figures show the average time from the offence to cases being completed has increased from 111 days in 2016 to 128 days in 2024.

Shoplifter Bianca Mirica appeared in crown court after stealing more than £105,000 worth of goods from high street chain Boots between December 2023 and May 2024.

The 20-year-old, from Tottenham, London, was part of a shoplifting gang and would clear shelves of cosmetics and perfumes while another member of her team acted as look-out, according to police.

It took 14 months from her last theft before she was sentenced to 32 months in a young offenders' institution, after pleading guilty to 18 charges of theft.

Shoplifting has increased by 13% in the last year with 529,994 shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales up to June 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

However, the ONS said there are signs that increasing rates of shops thefts being reported are now slowing.

The crime adds an estimated £133 onto the cost of an average UK household's shopping bill each year, according to the Centre for Retail Research.

The government told the BBC it understood the "devastating impact" of shop theft on retailers and it was clear many cases were taking too long to be resolved, adding: "Justice delayed is justice denied."

It said it is backing the courts with record funding and considering recommendations for long term structural reform of the system.

The National Police Chiefs Council said it had strengthened its relationship with retailers and improved information sharing in the last two years - which had resulted in a number of offenders being brought to justice.

Assistant Chief Constable Alex Goss said it planned to bring together police, shops and the security industry to make best use of their resources and "turn the tide on the volume of offending blighting our communities".

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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A Russian spy ship is on the edge of UK waters north of Scotland and has pointed lasers to distract pilots of surveillance aircraft monitoring its activities, the defence secretary has said.

Speaking at a press conference in Downing Street, John Healey said it was the second time in a year that the Yantar had entered UK waters.

The ship is "designed for gathering intelligence and mapping our undersea cables", Healey told journalists.

"My message to Russia and to Putin is this: we see you. We know what you're doing. And if the Yantar travels south this week, we are ready," he added.

Giving more details on the vessel, Healey said: "It is part of a Russian fleet designed to put and hold our undersea infrastructure and those of our allies at risk.

"It isn't just a naval operation. It's part of a Russian programme driven by what they call the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, or GUGI, and this is designed to have capabilities which can undertake surveillance in peacetime and sabotage in conflict.

"That is why we've been determined, whenever the Yantar comes into British wider waters, we track it, we deter it and we say to Putin we are ready, and we do that alongside allies."

He said this was a demonstration of Britain's capability and "readiness to act".

The defence secretary issued a warning in January about the ship after it was spotted in UK waters.

Walking around your local supermarket and you'll struggle to find much that's healthy for your finances on the shelves - food price rises are accelerating.

The cost of the weekly shop is, and will continue to be, a worry for millions of people.

Beyond just food, prices of goods and services in general are going up, but the rate of those price rises have slowed.

And that is likely to bring better news for the cost of borrowing, in particular mortgage rates for homeowners and first-time buyers.

Are prices going up or down?

Prices pretty much always rise. Official statistics chart the movement in the cost of hundreds of goods and services in the UK.

It is the rate of increase that is crucial, and that inflation rate is published every month by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

On Wednesday, the ONS said the rate of inflation had fallen to 3.6%, which means prices are rising more slowly than they were and will foster hope that inflation has peaked.

Delve a little further into the data, and there are more details about what is behind the latest trends.

For example, fish, vegetables, chocolate and confectionary were among the products that rose in price, although fruit prices fell slightly.

Recent research by the Bank of England found that people on average are still buying the same amount of food, but paying more for it. That said, they are changing the way they shop.

"Concerns about rising food costs and utility bills still dominate conversations," it said.

"Households continue to change their shopping habits to reduce spending, such as buying more vegetables and reducing meat consumption."

"Staples like bread, meat and potatoes all cost more than they did even a month ago," says Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at investment platform AJ Bell.

But she does point to a silver lining - the dip in the inflation rate means the Bank of England is now more likely to cut interest rates in December.

The Bank uses its benchmark interest rate - which heavily influences the cost of borrowing for households and businesses - to try to bring inflation to its target rate of 2%.

"Inflation remains well above the Band of England's happy place of 2%," says Alice Haine, personal finance analyst at Bestinvest.

But, she says, the latest figures could pave the way for a sixth interest rate cut since August last year.

The prospect of an interest rate cut has seen lenders make changes already. In recent weeks, many major lenders have lowered their rates for people getting a new fixed-rate mortgage or renewing their current one.

"There has been particular emphasis placed on rates for home movers with some of the best rates available for purchases," says David Hollingworth, of mortgage brokers L&C.

Data from the financial information service Moneyfacts shows that the average rate on a new two-year fixed deal has fallen to 4.88%, and is down to 4.93% for the average five-year fixed deal.

Average rates for those only able to put down a deposit of 5% or 10% - often first-time buyers - are now looking lower than they have been at any time in the last two or three years.

Why are lenders cutting rates now?

Inflation is only one factor in lenders' decisions to cut mortgage rates now.

Generally, Christmas is a quiet time for the housing market as potential buyers and sellers concentrate on turkey and trimmings instead.

So, they may be lowering rates in a bid to stimulate custom.

The same cannot be said for savings rates. "Competition has been scarce," says Caitlyn Eastell, from Moneyfacts.

That is compounded by the fact that many of those buyers, sellers and savers have put plans on hold until they find out what happens in the Budget delivered by Chancellor Rachel Reeves on 26 November.

The Budget looms large over the housing market, with talk of taxation on high value properties, as well as over economic activity in general.

Reeves wants to introduce measures to lower the rate of inflation, and help people with the cost of living. However, she also needs to bring in more money or cut government spending to meet her own fiscal rules.

It is a delicate balancing act that will affect individual and family finances, affecting the money people have to spend in the supermarket and the appetite they have to save, as well as buy or sell a home.

A portrait by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt was sold for $236.4m (£179m) in New York on Tuesday, making it the second most expensive piece ever sold at auction.

Six people took part in a 20-minute bidding battle for the Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer which was painted between 1914 and 1916.

Auction house Sotheby's has not disclosed the buyer's identity.

The portrait was looted by the Nazis and almost destroyed in a fire in World War Two, but was rescued in 1948.

The artwork was returned to Lederer's brother, Erich, a friend and subject of Klimt's contemporary, Egon Schiele. The piece remained in Lederer's possession for most of his life, before he sold it in 1983, according to Sotheby's.

The painting shows Lederer, an heiress and the daughter of one of Klimt's patrons, wearing a white robe and stood in front of a blue tapestry covered in Asian motifs.

The Nazis, who annexed Austria in 1938, looted the Lederer art collection but left family portraits behind, says the National Gallery of Canada.

Estée Lauder heir Leonard A Lauder made it part of his private collection in 1985, where it was displayed in his Fifth Avenue home in New York.

Tuesday's sale shot past expectations, with the painting predicted to sell for $150m before the auction. The second highest sale for a Klimt on record was Lady with a Fan, which sold for $108.8m in 2023 in London.

Several other Klimt works in Lauder's collection were auctioned at the same event, including Flowering Meadow and Forest Slope at Unterach am Attersee, which fetched between $60m and $80m each.

The most expensive artwork ever sold at auction was Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which sold in 2017 for $450.3m.

Tuesday also saw a sculpture of a fully functioning gold toilet by the conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan picking up $12.1m just an hour after the record-breaking Klimt sale.

The 101-kg toilet received just one bid. Sotheby's said that the buyer was a famous American brand.

As the dust settles on a historically jubilant night for Scotland's national men's team, many in the Tartan Army will be planning the holiday of a lifetime.

Hosted by the USA, Mexico and Canada, the 2026 World Cup kicks off on 11 June - the biggest to date with 48 nations taking part.

But the groups will not be determined for another 16 days on 5 December - and we don't yet know where Scotland will be playing.

So what's the best way to plan around the uncertainty?

When to book World Cup travel?

Fans might feel reluctant to commit hundreds of pounds to travel costs at this stage without knowing where they're going.

Barrhead Travel has already released a number of World Cup travel packages, ranging from three nights in New York for £2,659 per person to 11 nights in California for £3,999.

According to Simon Calder, travel correspondent for the Independent, it might be worth booking a transatlantic flight to any host city, then navigating domestic flights when we know more.

"It's never too early to start planning travel to a big sporting event," he told the BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme.

"Sixteen days from now... all of this will be revealed at least at the group stages, at which point prices for flights and accommodation will go stratospheric.

"So you could – and this is my strategy – take a guess on a transatlantic flight now."

Opening stages are in the eastern, central and western regions, and Calder believes there's a 40% chance Scotland will be playing in the east.

American Airlines flights are currently available from Edinburgh to Philadelphia the day before the tournament begins, coming back the day after the group games end, for just over £700.

For the super optimistic, there are JetBlue tickets available from Edinburgh to New York the day before the final, returning the day after, for £750.

Where are the World Cup 2026 host cities?

Western region: Vancouver (Canada), Seattle (Washington state), San Francisco (California), Los Angeles (California)

Central region: Guadalajara (Mexico), Mexico City, Monterrey (Mexico), Houston (Texas), Dallas (Texas), Kansas City (Missouri)

Eastern region: Atlanta (Georgia), Miami (Florida), Toronto (Canada), Boston (Massachusetts), Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), New York New Jersey (New York state)

More than 100 matches will be played across the tournament with the group stages kicking off on Thursday 11 June until Saturday 27 June.

The next rounds start the following day, carrying on until Tuesday 7 July.

After a rest day, the quarter finals begin on Thursday 9 July, the semi-finals begin on Tuesday 14 July.

The final has been set as Sunday 19 July.

What about World Cup 2026 hotels?

Hotels may be another source of anxiety, especially those who noticed during the match that some rooms in Vancouver and Boston were priced at £500 per night.

But Simon Calder says large sporting events do "weird things" to hotel markets, pointing out that during the Paris Olympics last year, he picked up a room for about £50.

"My strategy is to be very relaxed," he said. "All of the host cities have huge amounts of accommodation.

"I think those rates are going to come down, and so I would very happily leave it until a few weeks before, or even a few days beforehand, to get accommodation.

"Anybody who has been to America will know that there's always a small town 30 miles outside with plenty of motels strung out along the highway."

Who has qualified for the World Cup?

As of 18 November 2025, here are the teams who have qualified for the 2026 World Cup:

• Hosts: Canada, Mexico, United States
• Africa: Algeria, Cape Verde, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia
• Asia: Australia, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Uzbekistan
• Europe: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, England, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland
• Oceania: New Zealand
• South America: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay
• North and Central America and the Caribbean: Curacao, Panama, Haiti

The 48 participating teams will be placed into pots based on Fifa rankings. Participants will be drawn into a group of four teams. There will be 12 groups in total.

The teams representing the host counties will be assigned to specific groups in positions A1- Mexico, B1 - Canada and D1 - USA.

How much do tickets cost?

Fifa president Gianni Infantino has promised to "bring the world to the United States of America" - of course, the problem remains for fans to secure a ticket.

A dynamic pricing model is being used for the tournament - meaning prices for high-demand matches could go up significantly during later sales periods.

This system has the potential to benefit Americans while locking out foreign fans.

More than 4.5 million people entered a draw for the chance to buy the first batch at the start of October.

Fifa has not formally revealed a full price list, but they have been listed online by fans who successfully got through the draw and spent hours in digital queues.

General admission tickets are being split into four categories, with those for the first match in the USA costing between $560 (£417) and $2,235 (£1,662).

Tickets for the 2026 final have ranged between $2,030 (£1,510) and $6,000 (£4,462).

The Athletic also reports that Fifa will also implement 15% charges on both the buyer and seller of tickets resold via its official platform.

Fifa did not respond to questions put forward by the BBC.

A random selection draw will take place shortly after the groups are drawn on 5 December, during which fans can apply for specific matches.

Wicked: For Good has received broadly positive reviews from critics - but many are far less spellbound than they were by the first film.

The much-anticipated sequel, released on Friday, sees Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande reprise their roles as Elphaba and Glinda in the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Wicked: For Good is "not quite Wicked: For Great", said Empire's John Nugent in a three-star review.

Total Film's Molly Edwards praised the film as an "absolute triumph", but added it "suffers slightly from thinner source material and weak new songs".

The Wizard of Oz spin-off, adapted from the hugely successful stage musical, is originally based on a 1995 book by Gregory Maguire.

The second film provides fresh origin stories for Dorothy's travel companions in Oz - the Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man.

Wicked: For Good also sees Jeff Goldblum return as the Wizard, alongside Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible and Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero.

The i paper's Francesca Steele said: "It doesn't quite reach the heights of Part One, but this is still a highly entertaining display of what musical theatre can do on screen with top level performances and a true affection for the world-building."

Many critics were less enthusiastic. "There's no magic in this aimless slog of a sequel," said the Independent's Clarisse Loughrey in a two-star review.

"If your complaint about last year's Wicked was that it was so oddly lit that you could barely see what was going on, then fear not – in Wicked: For Good, you won't mind so much, because there's so little to look at."

In a one-star review, the Telegraph's Robbie Collin said: "It doesn't amount to two hours of story – the stage show clips through the same plot in around half the time – and the padding is as obvious as it is exhausting."

He suggested the central pair's friendship "rings false", adding: "What should be piercing, impassioned moments are by turns frivolous and sappy."

However, Kevin Maher of the Times was much more positive, awarding the film four stars.

"They've only gone and done it," he said. "The makers of this musical sequel have delivered a film that surpasses last year's box-office smash in verve, ambition and emotional ache."

Both movies have been directed by Jon M Chu, who was also behind Crazy Rich Asians, In The Heights and Now You See Me 2.

Chu is also set to direct a new big-screen adaptation of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, pencilled in for release in 2027.

Many critics highlighted Grande's performance in Wicked: For Good, with several predicting another supporting actress nomination at the Oscars in March.

Variety's Peter Debruge said the pop star shows "fragility" in her more "nuanced" performance.

"Whereas Grande had a relatively one-dimensional role to play in part one, Glinda now faces a complex evolution," he said.

"Grande has been acting since she was a kid," noted the Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney, "and her quiet moments of introspection, anxiety or sadness show tender depths, as does her loyalty to Elphaba."

But he also praised her co-star. "Make no mistake, Erivo remains a powerhouse, with pipes that shake the heavens and a wellspring of unforced emotional intensity that never runs dry."

"What a performance from Erivo," agreed the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw in a four-star review.

He added the sequel as a whole "keeps the rainbow-coloured dreaminess and the Broadway show tune zinginess from part one".

The stage musical was split into two parts for its film adaptation, but the two movies were filmed in one go.

The first was released last November and grossed more than £750m at the box office worldwide.

It went on to win two Oscars and two Baftas, for costume and production design, as well as the cinematic and box office achievement prize at the Golden Globes.

One problem facing the sequel is that most of Wicked's best-known songs, including Popular and The Wizard and I, appeared in the first film.

It's a problem it shares with the Broadway and West End musical. "On stage, the second act lacks a song as strong as Defying Gravity," Debruge noted.

In his Empire review, Nugent concluded: "The tone is different from that of the first film: less peppy, more glum.

"With the exception of Goldblum - who appears to be acting in his own film, delighting in stuttery drollness - all the characters are much less cheerful than they were last time around, and as a result it's less enjoyable for us to watch."

A 32-year-old man accused of stabbing 10 people on a train has been charged with further offences.

British Transport Police (BTP) said Anthony Williams, of no fixed abode, had been charged with seven other offences, including two counts of attempted murder, as part of a wider investigation.

Mr Williams is already charged with 10 counts of attempted murder in relation to a mass stabbing on a Doncaster to London King's Cross service on the evening of 1 November.

BTP said the further charges relate to incidents which occurred in Peterborough, Stevenage and a train travelling between Hitchin and Biggleswade on 31 October.

Mr Williams is due to appear at Peterborough Magistrates' Court later, charged with the following:

• Attempted murder of a 14-year-old boy at Henry Penn Walk in Peterborough
• Attempted grievous bodily harm of a 28-year-old man at Viersen Platz in Peterborough
• Attempted murder of a 22-year-old man near Pleasure Fair Meadow Road in Peterborough
• Affray and possession of a bladed article in connection to an incident at Ritzy Barbers in Peterborough
• Theft of knives from Asda supermarket in Stevenage
• Common assault of a 31-year-old man onboard a train travelling between Hitchin and Biggleswade

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X to get the latest alerts.

Humans do it, monkeys do it, even polar bears do it. And now researchers have reconstructed the evolutionary origins of kissing.

Their study suggests that the mouth-on-mouth kiss evolved more than 21 million years ago, and was something that the common ancestor of humans and other great apes probably indulged in.

The same research concluded that Neanderthals may have kissed too – and that humans and Neanderthals may even have smooched one another.

The scientists studied kissing because it presents something of an evolutionary puzzle - it has no obvious survival or reproductive benefits, and yet it is something that is seen not just in many human societies, but across the animal kingdom.

By finding evidence of other animals engaging in kissing, scientists were able to construct an "evolutionary family tree" to work out when it was most likely to have evolved.

To ensure that they were comparing the same behaviour across different species, the researchers had to give a very precise - rather unromantic - definition to a "kiss".

In their study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, they defined kissing as non aggressive, directed oral-oral contact "with some movement of lips or mouthparts and no food transfer".

"Humans, chimps, and bonobos all kiss," explained lead researcher Dr Matilda Brindle, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Oxford. From that, she concluded, "it's likely that their most recent common ancestor kissed."

"We think kissing probably evolved around 21.5 million years ago in the large apes."

In this study, scientists found behaviour that matched their scientific definition of kissing in wolves, prairie dogs, polar bears (very sloppy - lots of tongue), and even albatrosses.

They focused on primates - and apes in particular - in order to build an evolutionary picture of the origin of the human kiss.

The same study also concluded that Neanderthals - our closest ancient human relatives that died out around 40,000 years ago - also kissed.

One previous piece of research on Neanderthal DNA also showed that modern humans and Neanderthals shared an oral microbe - a type of bacteria found in our saliva.

"That means that they must have been swapping saliva for hundreds of thousands of years after the two species split," explained Dr Brindle.

While this study pinpointed when kissing evolved it was not able to answer the question of why.

There are already a number of theories - that it arose from grooming behaviour in our ape ancestors or that it might provide an intimate way to assess the health and even the compatibility of a partner.

Dr Brindle hopes that this will open a door to answering that question.

"It's important for us to understand that this is something we share with our non-human relatives," she said.

"We should be studying this behaviour, not just dismissing it as silly because it has romantic connotations in humans."

Both chambers of Congress agreed to order the US justice department to release its files on sex offender financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The House of Representatives overwhelming approved the measure in a 427-1 vote and the Senate unanimously fast-tracked it without a formal vote.

The moves come just days after President Donald Trump reversed his position and urged Congress to vote to disclose the records following public pushback from many of his supporters.

Last week, Trump and his ties to Epstein were thrust back into the headlines after more than 20,000 pages of documents - some mentioning the president - were released. The White House denied any wrongdoing.

Republican Clay Higgins, of Louisiana, was the sole House objector and cited his concern about “innocent people being hurt” with the release of the information.

Trump’s reversal from attacking those on Capitol Hill who wanted the files released to saying there was “nothing to hide” surprised some in Washington.

The Republican congressional leadership was caught off guard after aligning their message with the president for the past few weeks and opposing the release.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had repeatedly called the push to release the Epstein files a "Democrat hoax".

On Tuesday, he voted in support of release.

• What do we know about the Epstein files?
• Why the Epstein case looms large in MAGA world

The measure had been expected to take a few days to reach the US Senate, but after the resounding afternoon vote in the House, the timeline quickly sped up.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer brought up the bill on the floor of the Senate under a procedure called unanimous consent. Because no one objected, there was no debate and no amendments added to the bill.

It will head from the Senate to the president‘s desk, where he is expected to sign it into law.

A congressional vote was not required to release the files - Trump could have ordered the release on his own.

The bill requires Attorney General Pam Bondi to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell no later than 30 days after the law is enacted.

Those materials include internal justice department communications, flight logs and people and entities connected to Epstein.

But the bill also gives Bondi the power to withhold information that would jeopardise any active federal investigation or identifies any victims.

Epstein, a financier, was found dead in his New York prison cell in 2019 in what a coroner ruled was a suicide.

He was being held on charges of sex trafficking, having previously been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008.

During two criminal investigations into Epstein, thousands of documents were gathered, including transcripts of interviews with victims and witnesses.

Trump and Epstein previously socialised in similar circles, but the president said he cut ties with Epstein many years ago, before his 2008 conviction. The president also said he was unaware of Epstein’s criminal activity.

Last week, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee published three email chains, including correspondence between Epstein and Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.

Some of those make mention of Trump, including one email, sent in 2011, in which Epstein wrote to Maxwell: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him.”

The White House said last week that the victim referenced in the email was prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre.

Giuffre, who died in April, has said that she never saw Trump participate in any abuse and there is no implication of any wrongdoing by Trump in the emails.

Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the emails were "selectively leaked" by House Democrats to "liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump".

The push for the release of the investigative files held by the Department of Justice was led by Republican Thomas Massie, a Kentucky congressman who sometimes dissents from his party, and Democrat Ro Khanna, a California congressman, both of whom introduced the legislation.

Massie has faced criticism from Trump for his push to release the files, but has stood firm.

“In 2030, he’s not going to be the president,” Massie said to ABC News over the weekend. He added that fellow Republicans who voted against release "will have voted to protect paedophiles”.

Another Republican who has pushed for the release of the files is House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. She had been a staunch supporter of Trump before the two fell out over the issue, with the president now calling her a "traitor".

At a news conference earlier in the day on Tuesday, Greene said she is speaking up on behalf of Epstein's survivors. She also called out Trump directly.

"Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries and themselves; a patriot is an American that serves the United States of America and Americans like the women standing behind me," Greene said.

She said that row over Epstein has been one of the "most destructive things" to Trump's Make America Great Again movement since his election in 2016.

Survivors of Epstein’s abuse also spoke at the news conference, urging lawmakers to release the files and pushing Trump to do the same.

Epstein survivor Annie Farmer said that keeping the files under wraps amounted to “institutional betrayal”.

“Because these crimes were not properly investigated, so many more girls and women were harmed,” Ms Farmer said.

Warning: This report contains descriptions of rape and sexual violence. Names of victims have been changed and identifying details omitted to protect their privacy and safety.

Enat was at home with her eight-year-old niece when the soldiers came one Sunday morning, she says.

The Ethiopian army was carrying out searches of homes in the Amhara region on 5 January this year, as part of a crackdown on a growing rebellion launched by local militias known as Fano.

Enat says three men, dressed in army uniform, entered her home in South Gondar and began asking questions about her family background and whether Fano fighters had visited the beer hall where she worked.

Enat, 21, said they had.

"How could we lie? How can we hide the truth?" Enat says, noting that Fano - an Amharic word loosely translated as volunteer fighters - is made up of locals.

Things quickly escalated.

After asking questions about her family background, Enat says the soldiers began insulting her, then threatened her niece with a gun when the little girl started crying.

Enat says one of the soldiers then raped her in front of her niece while the others kept guard.

"I begged them not to hurt me. I called on the saints and begged them. But their hearts didn't pity me. They violated me."

Thousands of reports of rape and assault

Enat, who is from the Amhara ethnic group, the second largest in Ethiopia, is among thousands of women believed to have been sexually assaulted and raped since the conflict between the Ethiopian army and Fano started in August 2023.

Sexual violence in the region is largely undocumented, but the BBC has collated data which shows there have been thousands of reports of rape between July 2023 and May 2025, with victims as young as eight and as old as 65.

While restrictions have prevented independent media from entering Amhara to cover the conflict, the BBC team in Nairobi, in neighbouring Kenya, managed to speak to women and doctors in the region, offering a rare insight into the human impact of the crisis.

The conflict began when the government attempted to disband regional military groups, including those in Amhara, which had fought with the army during the 2020-2022 civil war in the next-door region of Tigray.

Fano militias felt betrayed by the move and believed it would leave them vulnerable to attack from Tigray and elsewhere, especially as violence against the Amhara community had intensified, according to rights groups.

In response, Fano launched a rebellion, seizing major towns. They claim to be fighting for regional autonomy and protecting their communities from marginalisation by the Ethiopian government.

The insurgency has resulted in a violent crackdown by the army, which calls Fano "radical ethno-nationalists".

Since the conflict started, both sides have been accused of numerous human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, forced displacement, destruction of property, looting and widespread cases of sexual violence, including rape.

Rights groups, including Amnesty International, say there is evidence the army is disproportionately responsible for the abuses. They also say that Amhara people in other parts of Ethiopia have been deliberately targeted by the security forces and other armed groups.

Before she was attacked, Enat had never had sex and planned to one day marry at her local church in a ceremony conducted in accordance with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's rites, just as other women in her family had done.

Such marriages are among the most revered traditions of the Amhara people, who are predominantly Orthodox Christian, but it requires couples to remain "pure" and not have any sexual contact until marriage.

"Before that day, I had never known a man," she says.

"It would have been better if they had killed me."

'My family found me unconscious'

Tigist, 18, from West Gojjam, also in the Amhara region, worked in her family's small, traditional teahouse before she was attacked.

She describes how, in January 2024, a soldier who was a regular customer groped her. She says she rejected him - an act she believes led to the attack.

Later that evening, as she was returning home from work, she says three soldiers, including the man who groped her, ambushed her in the street and gang-raped her on the pavement.

"My family found me unconscious on the roadside," she recalls. "They carried me to the clinic, where I spent five days."

Since the attack, Tigist says she's been unable to leave her house, paralysed by fear of men and the outside world.

"My fear keeps me from going to work... Whenever I see soldiers or any men I panic and hide myself away."

She ended up retreating from her life and breaking off her engagement. She says she never told her fiance why or what happened.

Overwhelmed by despair, Tigist attempted to take her own life, but her family intervened just in time and saved her. She says that although she has contemplated suicide since then, she has promised her family she will not try to kill herself again.

'It is repulsive to have been born a woman'

The BBC collected data from 43 health facilities in Amhara - roughly 4% of all health facilities in the region - and other medical sources to get a snapshot of what has been happening.

At these facilities, there were 2,697 reports of rape between 18 July 2023 and May 2025. Children under 18 accounted for 45% of cases.

Just over half of the victims tested positive for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), while many were also left pregnant and with severe psychological trauma.

However, many victims of sexual violence never report the crime or seek treatment, fearful of stigma or of learning they may have contracted an STI or become pregnant.

For this reason, a senior health expert, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, says the victims who come to facilities in the Amhara region are only "the tip of the iceberg".

Lemlem is among those who have never reported their rape or sought medical treatment, terrified of learning that she might have a sexually transmitted infection, such as HIV.

The 23-year-old from South Gondar says government soldiers entered her house on 6 January to ask for information, a routine army practice.

She says when she didn't give them what they wanted, one of the soldiers raped her.

"He threatened me, saying: 'If you scream, one bullet is enough for you,'" Lemlem says.

"I wept non-stop for a whole month. I couldn't eat. All I did was cry. I couldn't stand to walk. And I fell gravely ill."

She says the assault has driven her away from church, where she fears she may be the subject of gossip.

"It's repulsive to have been born a woman. If I were a man, they might have beaten me and walked away - they wouldn't have destroyed my life like this," says Lemlem, explaining how the trauma of the attack has made her feel about being female.

Medics the BBC spoke to say there has been a sharp rise in the number of victims of sexual violence that they have been treating since the conflict began.

"They arrive trembling, too intimidated even to speak," one medic says.

Yet those who do come forward are reluctant to name their attackers and rarely seek justice, in part because the conflict has led to a breakdown in law and order. Instead, most who do seek medical assistance come out of fear of pregnancy.

Others seek treatment long after they have been attacked, by which point certain medications for the STIs they have contracted, such as HIV, are no longer effective.

HIV can often be prevented with a treatment called post-exposure prophylaxis, but only if it is administered soon after sex with someone who was infected.

Another medic notes that many victims say they are unable to access treatment promptly due to transport disruption and road blockages caused by the conflict.

A senior medic warns they fear a public health and social crisis could be looming.

Based on information health centres have gathered, they say that they "have identified signs that HIV infections may rise and that mental health and psychological problems could reach catastrophic levels", noting that some victims have attempted suicide.

Figures from Ethiopia's health ministry in 2022 showed that the HIV rate in the region was around 1.1 per 100 people - higher than the national average.

While assaults have been carried out by both sides in the conflict, medical staff report seeing more cases involving Ethiopian army soldiers than Fano militia. A government employee with access to relevant information, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, also said this was the case.

Most incidents of rape were reported in urban areas where the army maintains bases and exerts control, however experts point out that people living in cities have better access to treatment so are more likely to get help and report attacks.

The BBC was unable to interview any victims of assaults by Fano fighters due to limited access to places where the militia are based.

In June 2024, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that the Ethiopian National Defence Force, which includes the army, had perpetrated sexual violence, including against minors, in the Amhara region during the conflict with Fano militia.

The BBC asked Ethiopia's ministry of defence to respond to allegations, but despite months of waiting, we have not received a reply.

Repeated BBC requests for detailed information from regional authorities were also unsuccessful.

A Fano leader, Asres Mare Damtie, told the BBC the group was unaware of any involvement by its fighters, saying no accusations had been made against them and it enforces severe punishment, including death, for offenders.

The BBC has learned that a government-commissioned investigation led by Ethiopia's Bahir Dar University into conflict-related sexual violence against women in Amhara has begun, with findings expected to be released publicly in the coming months.

In 2021, when the army and its allies - which then included Fano - faced similar allegations over their conduct in the Tigray conflict, the government condemned the use of rape but dismissed the claims as "biased and flawed".

To date, no official action has been publicly disclosed against perpetrators.

Amnesty International has raised concerns over what it believes is a persistent pattern of impunity in Ethiopia's army. "There is no meaningful effort to bring perpetrators into justice," says the organisation's regional researcher, Haimanot Ashenafi.

"They're still fighting, they are still out there with no consequences for what they've done… survivors who have gone through this life-changing experience deserve justice."

For Enat, the consequences of her attack have been far-reaching.

A month after the assault, she fled her village to escape the trauma of the attack.

It was then she learned she was pregnant as a result of the rape.

"I started vomiting," she recalls.

She thought of having an abortion, which is legally permitted in Ethiopia up to 12 weeks into pregnancy if a woman is raped, but she was scared.

"I feared God, and I felt for my mother. What would become of her if I died during the abortion?"

She gave birth to a daughter in early September after three days of labour.

Despite what happened to her, Enat considers the baby a "gift from God".

But she is currently living with a relative and is unable to work as she has to look after her daughter. She worries for the future and how she will provide for her child and herself.

"If this is what is considered to be living, then yes, I am living," she adds.

If you, or someone you know, have been affected by the issues raised in this story, details of organisations offering information and support are available at BBC ActionLine.

• This is part of the Global Women series from the BBC World Service, sharing untold and important stories from around the globe

Temperatures have fallen sharply across much of the UK in recent days.

What is the best way to heat your home and keep yourself safe and well during periods of cold weather?

Prioritise your health

Keeping warm over the winter months can help to prevent colds, flu and more serious health problems such as heart attacks, strokes, pneumonia and depression, according to the NHS.

Pensioners, children under the age of five, people with health conditions and those who are pregnant are most at risk.

Wearing multiple layers of clothing - including thick socks and fingerless gloves - can help keep you warm if you are not moving.

Family, friends and neighbours can play their part by ensuring anyone who is more vulnerable is well stocked up with food and necessary medicines, and that they can safely get in and out of their property by keeping any steps or paths clear of snow or ice.

Many charities and councils run free warm hubs in locations such as libraries and other community spaces.

Heat your home efficiently

Check whether there are any quick fixes to make sure you are not wasting energy or heat.

That could include turning off radiators in unused rooms, switching off lights when they are not needed, and not leaving electrical appliances on standby.

Curtains should be open during the day, then drawn at dusk.

Limit heat loss by using draught excluders to block gaps under doors or around windows. You can add metal, plastic or adhesive foam strips to fill any gaps.

You can cover external keyholes and add a flap or brush to your letterbox, or hang a door curtain. You can put a chimney draught excluder inside any unused fireplaces, or make your own by filling a black bag with scrunched up paper.

The Energy Saving Trust points out that internal doors should not be draught-proofed to allow the proper circulation of air throughout a property.

Rugs can cover gaps between floorboards, and warm hard floors.

Experts are divided on whether it is more efficient to keep your heating on permanently at a lower temperature or switch it on and off as required.

Generally, using a thermostat to keep the room temperature between 18C and 21C is ideal for most. However, turning it down even one degree can save money, as can switching off radiators in unoccupied rooms.

Older people and those with health conditions which limit their mobility are not advised to let temperatures drop below 18C in rooms they use regularly.

Your heating system may have a timer function which lets you programme particular temperatures at different times of the day. Some wireless thermostats are connected to the internet and can be turned on remotely.

Turning down your combi boiler's flow temperature can help the system run more efficiently, and save money.

Make sure radiators are not blocked by curtains or furniture. Consider fitting reflector panels to those on external walls.

If you are staying in one room for a long time, you may want to use a portable electric heater instead of turning on your central heating system.

They should be plugged directly into a mains socket, placed on a flat surface, and be at least 3ft (1m) away from anything flammable such as curtains or furniture.

Using gas heaters carries the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, so you should ensure you have a working carbon monoxide alarm in the same room.

You can also use electric blankets or heated throws on a timer function to ensure they don't overheat.

Eat, drink and wash well

Experts argue it is essential to eat and drink properly during periods of cold weather. Keep moving as much as you can between meals.

Age UK recommends at least one hot meal a day such as soup or stew, and regular hot drinks like tea.

Tinned soups, fruit and vegetables can be cheaper than fresh produce.

You may be able to get support from your local food bank, although you might need to be referred first. Local community organisations can often arrange this.

Don't overfill your kettle: only boil what you need. Batch cooking and freezing meal portions can also save money. Microwaves and air fryers can be cheaper to run than gas or electric ovens.

Don't run your dishwasher unless it is full, and choose an eco-setting if you can.

If your energy supplier offers discounts for off-peak use, try to use washing machines and other large appliances during the cheaper period.

Wash clothes at 30C, not 40C.

Limit your shower time to four minutes. Use a timer or make a playlist of four-minute songs.

Get help with your heating bills

If you are struggling financially, then ask your energy supplier for help.

Firms must offer customers affordable payment plans or repayment holidays if necessary. Most also provide hardship grants.

Anyone on a prepayment meter who can't afford to top up can ask for a fuel voucher from their energy provider, or through their council.

Local authorities in England may also be able to provide cost-of-living assistance through the household support fund. You can find your local council here.

Under the Warm Home Discount scheme, anyone on means-tested benefits in Great Britain will get £150 taken off their bills.

About nine million pensioners will also get the Winter Fuel Payment in 2025/2026, worth £200 or £300, after a government U-turn over eligibility.

During an extended period of sub-zero temperatures, cold weather payments are made to eligible households in qualifying postcodes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. There is a separate winter heating payment in Scotland.

The victim of a 38-year miscarriage of justice has claimed he was beaten by police officers and "bullied" into falsely admitting murder, in his first interview since his release.

Peter Sullivan told the BBC he believes he was "stitched up" in 1986 over the killing of Diane Sindall, who was ambushed and beaten to death during a frenzied sexual attack in Birkenhead, Wirral.

Mr Sullivan, who has learning difficulties, had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in May after new DNA tests were carried out.

He now wants an apology from Merseyside Police. The force said while it "regretted" that a "grave miscarriage of justice" had taken place, it maintained its officers acted within the law at the time.

• Who is Peter Sullivan and why was he jailed?

Speaking from an undisclosed location with his face hidden to protect his privacy, Mr Sullivan said he wanted an explanation for why detectives "picked me out".

"I can't forgive them for what they've done to me, because it's going to be there for the rest of my life," he said, adding he had "lost everything" since going to prison.

"I've got to carry that burden until I can get an apology."

For decades Mr Sullivan and his family were haunted by tabloid press nicknames, including 'The Beast of Birkenhead', 'The Mersey Ripper', and 'The Wolfman'.

"The names, they'll always stick with me because I've never been anything like that," he said.

Mr Sullivan said despite moments of near hopelessness, he was always supported by his parents who died years before he could clear his name.

He said: "My mum turned around to me before she died, and said, 'I want you to carry on fighting this case because you've done nothing wrong'."

In one of many painful moments from his time behind bars, Mr Sullivan said he was denied permission to attend his mum's funeral in 2013 because she was buried in the same cemetery as Miss Sindall.

His ordeal began after the semi-naked body of 21-year-old florist Miss Sindall was found with catastrophic injuries in an alley off Borough Road, Birkenhead, on 2 August 1986.

Two weeks later, her partially burned clothing was found on Bidston Hill, a large area of woodland about an hour's walk from the alley.

After a BBC Crimewatch appeal was aired, witnesses came forward claiming to have seen Mr Sullivan in a pub near the murder scene that night, while others reported seeing a man fitting his description near Bidston Hill the following day.

He was arrested on suspicion of murder on 23 September 1986, and was interviewed 22 times over the following four weeks.

For the first seven interviews, he was denied legal advice and found the experience "very daunting".

"They were putting stuff into my mind, then they would send me back to my cell, then I'd come back and say what they wanted, not realising what I was doing at the time," he said.

'They leathered me'

During that period Mr Sullivan claimed he was beaten in his cell on two occasions by police officers.

"They threw a blanket over the top of me and they were hitting me on top of the blanket with the truncheons to try and get me to co-operate with them," he said.

"It really hurt, they were leathering me."

Mr Sullivan also claimed he was told if he did not confess he would be charged with "35 other rapes", and said he was denied food and sleep.

He was not provided with an appropriate adult to help him understand the interrogation, despite police custody records noting he had learning difficulties.

Asked why he would confess to a murder he did not commit, Mr Sullivan said: "All I can say, it was the bullying that forced me to throw my hands in, because I couldn't take it anymore."

Appeal court documents confirm that the first time he "confessed" was not recorded and no solicitor was present. Other interviews were recorded.

In a statement for this article, Merseyside Police said it was previously unaware of the allegations about beatings or threats to charge him with other offences, and said records from the time did not contain details of this. It said guidance on appropriate adults had been strengthened since 1986.

The force accepted that legal advice was initially refused for interviews, adding that officers had feared revealing some parts of the investigation to a solicitor, in case evidence was destroyed. It also said Mr Sullivan was told he did not have to speak to officers unless he wished to do so.

Sarah Myatt, Mr Sullivan's solicitor of more than 20 years, sat alongside him as he spoke to the BBC. "I think, from what he's told me, he just reached breaking point with it," she said.

Mr Sullivan said during one interview he was asked to mark on a map where he had left the clothes on Bidston Hill. When he pointed to the wrong place, he alleges a detective replied: "Come on Peter, you know better than that," before hinting at the "correct" location.

Ms Myatt said on the maps of Bidston Hill, Mr Sullivan had later written "this is all lies".

"I think that's quite poignant," she said.

Merseyside Police said the maps and transcripts, which the BBC has not seen, were all served on the courts. The force said interviewing officers had been "trying to understand the validity of his admissions".

While Mr Sullivan later retracted his confessions, the police and prosecution also relied on bite mark evidence, a now widely discredited field of forensic science.

That case, brought before DNA testing was widely available, was enough to convince a jury at Liverpool Crown Court - and on 5 November 1987 he went from a self-confessed "petty thief" to a convicted murderer.

Recalling the guilty verdicts, Mr Sullivan said: "My sister collapsed in the courtroom and the next minute, that was it.

"I was taken down from the courtroom and I just sat in that cell and cried my eyes out over the crime I hadn't done.

"I knew from then on that this is going to be one hell of a case to try and fight to try and get myself out of this situation."

His sentence carried a minimum term of 16 years before he was eligible to apply for parole - but Mr Sullivan maintained his innocence, lessening his chances of release.

Prison was particularly difficult for someone considered a savage killer and a sex offender. "I've been battered in prisons because of the crime I was in for," he said.

However, he said reporting such violence was not an option because "then you're a grass, and that means then you're going to get a lot worse".

'You're going home'

The end of his nightmare began in 2023, when the Criminal Cases Review Commission - the body set up to check for miscarriages of justice - ordered fresh testing of semen samples found on Miss Sindall's body in 1986.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided not to challenge the DNA results ahead of a fresh appeal - paving the way for Mr Sullivan's freedom.

In May 2025, when the appeal judgement was handed down, Mr Sullivan was listening via video-link from HMP Wakefield, sitting next to his probation officer.

"When they came back in with the verdict that my case had been quashed, [the probation officer] burst into tears first," he said.

"She turned around and said, 'Peter, you're going home'...

"Next minute, bang, all the tears started running down my face and that was it, I went, 'yes, justice has been done'."

The outside world has been a baffling place for a man who went into custody when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and the internet was unheard of.

Speaking of the moment he was driven out of prison, he said: "I was watching the cars go by, and I've never seen so many different cars in my life on that road.

"It was daunting just seeing them all changed and everything."

Since his release, he has sometimes found himself standing in his bedroom waiting for a prison officer to do a roll-call - a difficult habit to shake after nearly 40 years.

Mr Sullivan said he feels "really sorry" for the family of Miss Sindall, who he said are "back at square one" in their fight for justice.

"I've been through the same pain, being in prison, because I've been taken away from my family as well for something I haven't done," he said.

Merseyside Police said due to the "substantial changes" in the law and investigative practices since 1986, there would be "little benefit" in any formal review of how the case was investigated.

It said it referred itself the Independent Office for Police Conduct after the appeal judgement but no misconduct was identified.

The Crown Prosecution Service said while the Court of Appeal accepted the new DNS testing, other grounds of appeal were rejected. Nick Price, its director of legal services, said: "The prosecution case was brought on the basis of all the evidence available to us at the time."

The case of Miss Sindall's murder has been re-opened, although no arrests have been made.

For Mr Sullivan, there remains the wait for compensation, capped by the government at £1.3m for wrongful convictions.

Ms Myatt, who is helping him with his application, said: "There's not a figure that you could say that would be enough for losing 38 years of your life."

Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram, and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.

The UK inflation rate fell to 3.6% in the year to October, the lowest rate for four months.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said prices rose more slowly over the year thanks to gas and electricity prices increasing less than they did this time last year.

The cost of hotels was also a downward driver, the ONS said.

But food prices rose after a dip in September.

The fall means prices are rising more slowly than they were and will foster hope that inflation has peaked, helping to pave the way for lower interest rates.

Inflation was last at 3.6% in June. In the months following that it edged up to 3.8%, before the fall in October.

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Both chambers of Congress agreed to order the US justice department to release its files on sex offender financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The House of Representatives overwhelming approved the measure in a 427-1 vote and the Senate unanimously fast-tracked it without a formal vote.

The moves come just days after President Donald Trump reversed his position and urged Congress to vote to disclose the records following public pushback from many of his supporters.

Last week, Trump and his ties to Epstein were thrust back into the headlines after more than 20,000 pages of documents - some mentioning the president - were released. The White House denied any wrongdoing.

Republican Clay Higgins, of Louisiana, was the sole House objector and cited his concern about “innocent people being hurt” with the release of the information.

Trump’s reversal from attacking those on Capitol Hill who wanted the files released to saying there was “nothing to hide” surprised some in Washington.

The Republican congressional leadership was caught off guard after aligning their message with the president for the past few weeks and opposing the release.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had repeatedly called the push to release the Epstein files a "Democrat hoax".

On Tuesday, he voted in support of release.

• What do we know about the Epstein files?
• Why the Epstein case looms large in MAGA world

The measure had been expected to take a few days to reach the US Senate, but after the resounding afternoon vote in the House, the timeline quickly sped up.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer brought up the bill on the floor of the Senate under a procedure called unanimous consent. Because no one objected, there was no debate and no amendments added to the bill.

It will head from the Senate to the president‘s desk, where he is expected to sign it into law.

A congressional vote was not required to release the files - Trump could have ordered the release on his own.

The bill requires Attorney General Pam Bondi to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell no later than 30 days after the law is enacted.

Those materials include internal justice department communications, flight logs and people and entities connected to Epstein.

But the bill also gives Bondi the power to withhold information that would jeopardise any active federal investigation or identifies any victims.

Epstein, a financier, was found dead in his New York prison cell in 2019 in what a coroner ruled was a suicide.

He was being held on charges of sex trafficking, having previously been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008.

During two criminal investigations into Epstein, thousands of documents were gathered, including transcripts of interviews with victims and witnesses.

Trump and Epstein previously socialised in similar circles, but the president said he cut ties with Epstein many years ago, before his 2008 conviction. The president also said he was unaware of Epstein’s criminal activity.

Last week, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee published three email chains, including correspondence between Epstein and Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.

Some of those make mention of Trump, including one email, sent in 2011, in which Epstein wrote to Maxwell: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him.”

The White House said last week that the victim referenced in the email was prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre.

Giuffre, who died in April, has said that she never saw Trump participate in any abuse and there is no implication of any wrongdoing by Trump in the emails.

Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the emails were "selectively leaked" by House Democrats to "liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump".

The push for the release of the investigative files held by the Department of Justice was led by Republican Thomas Massie, a Kentucky congressman who sometimes dissents from his party, and Democrat Ro Khanna, a California congressman, both of whom introduced the legislation.

Massie has faced criticism from Trump for his push to release the files, but has stood firm.

“In 2030, he’s not going to be the president,” Massie said to ABC News over the weekend. He added that fellow Republicans who voted against release "will have voted to protect paedophiles”.

Another Republican who has pushed for the release of the files is House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. She had been a staunch supporter of Trump before the two fell out over the issue, with the president now calling her a "traitor".

At a news conference earlier in the day on Tuesday, Greene said she is speaking up on behalf of Epstein's survivors. She also called out Trump directly.

"Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries and themselves; a patriot is an American that serves the United States of America and Americans like the women standing behind me," Greene said.

She said that row over Epstein has been one of the "most destructive things" to Trump's Make America Great Again movement since his election in 2016.

Survivors of Epstein’s abuse also spoke at the news conference, urging lawmakers to release the files and pushing Trump to do the same.

Epstein survivor Annie Farmer said that keeping the files under wraps amounted to “institutional betrayal”.

“Because these crimes were not properly investigated, so many more girls and women were harmed,” Ms Farmer said.

When MPs, members of the House of Lords and their staff were warned about the threat from Chinese spies, in one office in Westminster, a quick check began.

Simon Whelband is a Conservative councillor and also works for the Conservative MP Neil O'Brien, who was sanctioned by China in 2021.

Simon went into his LinkedIn messages and there it was. A message from an account in the name of Shirly Shen sent some weeks earlier.

He hadn't responded to the unsolicited message and reported it to Parliament's security services. He was then advised to block the account.

The note comes across as pretty innocuous.

He said: "The message wasn't written in very good English, it was a message to say there was a job opportunity and was I interested, and to get in touch if I was.

"I've worked around Parliament for about 10 years now so I'm kind of used to this.

"But if you were more junior, you don't know what you're looking for.

"You might think it's a genuine offer that's made to you on LinkedIn, they might accept."

Whelband added that he thought it was becoming more common for those working in Parliament to be targeted by China.

"They have realised the way to get to Parliamentarians is through their staff... it's deeply worrying," he said.

And so, for the second time this autumn, Westminster is collectively wrestling with what to do about China.

The growing influence of this vast superpower is one of the two stand out global changes of the last 30 years, alongside the growth of the internet.

Some of the most acute challenges - or threats - from Beijing come when both of these mega-trends of the early 21st Century combine.

Senior figures in government are worried, but express their worry carefully in public. MPs outside of government are much more willing to be blunt.

Tuesday's debate in the Commons on this was an eye opener. The security minister Dan Jarvis was both circumspect in his language, but warm and accepting of the wide range of concerns expressed by MPs of multiple parties.

Among them:

• Concern that buses manufactured in China but driving on British streets might be equipped with a so-called "kill switch" which allows someone in China to press a button and disable the bus – potentially causing chaos

• Worries about vehicles used by the military that are made in China and might be mobile listening devices – to such an extent that military figures have been warned to watch what they are saying when they are on board in case China is listening

• Deep concern about China seeking planning permission for a huge new embassy in central London which critics say will be a spying centre and is located very close to sensitive data cables that serve the City of London

Last month, Parliament was digesting the collapse of a court case involving two men accused of spying for China, one of whom had worked in Westminster. Both men always denied any wrongdoing.

Now it is the warning that all MPs and members of the House of Lords have received from the security service MI5 that they might be Beijing's next target.

It says it has identified two LinkedIn profiles used by Chinese security services to act as "civilian recruitment headhunters", targeting individuals working in British politics to solicit "insider insights".

As Jarvis put it, China "has a low threshold for information it regards as valuable". This is because over time it builds up a wider picture by piecing together the morsels it may extract from a wide range of people.

Labour, since they won the general election, have attempted to warm up the UK's relationship with China.

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been to Beijing, as has the Business Secretary Peter Kyle, who was there in September within days of being appointed to the role. The most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office, Sir Olly Robbins, was there last month in the midst of all those headlines about the collapsed spying trial.

But there has long been a vociferous collection of China hawks in Parliament, who have long worried about what they see as a collective naivety about Beijing.

The question now is whether a moment like this, following MI5's intervention, persuades others to share their outlook.

The government insists its approach to China is "pragmatic": it regards working with Beijing as inevitable but insists it is "clear eyed" about the risks.

Will a growing number of MPs demand a more sceptical outlook?

As one put it, rather colourfully, "you can't reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth".

China is a vast superpower that is at once essential yet awkward, unavoidable yet dangerous.

This the latest case study in those competing interests. There will be more to come.

Adverts by four of Britain's biggest hotel and travel firms have been banned for stating misleading minimum prices for rooms.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld complaints against the Hilton hotel group, Travelodge, Booking.com and Accor over their use of eye-catching so-called "from" prices.

The watchdog found only a small number of rooms actually available to book at the promoted price and concluded the adverts overstated the deals.

It said this was unfair on those looking for good deals or seeking to make informed choices about where to book.

ASA operations manager Emily Henwood said: "Advertised prices must match what's really available. If only a few rooms are actually offered at the price shown, or it only applies to a specific date, then this information must be made clear to avoid misleading people.

"People should be able to trust the prices they see in ads and these rulings show that we will take action if the rules are broken."

The ASA used AI to identify the misleading adverts as part of a wider probe into the availability of advertised hotel prices.

The Hilton hotel group was rebuked over two adverts, one reading "Hampton by Hilton Hamilton Park From £68", and the other advertising stays in Newcastle from £59.

The ASA asked Hilton whether it could back up the claims, with the hotel offering evidence that rooms were bookable at the hotels on the respective dates the adverts were viewed.

But the ASA concluded Hilton had exaggerated the availability of the advertised rooms, leaving potential customers at risk of being misled. It ordered the chain not to publish the adverts again and warned Hilton to ensure any future price claims reflect deals available for "a significant proportion of rooms".

Travelodge had two adverts banned - one offering rooms in Nottingham Riverside "from £25" and the other rooms in Swansea "from £21".

The ASA found that the advertised prices were only available for a single night's stay, warning Travelodge in future to ensure deals are available "across a range of dates".

A Travelodge spokesperson said it recognised the need for clarity and transparency in pricing and is working with Google to ensure its adverts are clear and comply with the ASA's guidelines. It said the relevant advert was removed before the ASA's ruling.

Similar findings were issued against Booking.com and hotel group Accor, while staycation chain Butlins was criticised for changing the deadline of a sale it promoted via email.

Accor told the ASA it believed its adverts were accurate as rooms were available at or below the headline prices in the days following their publication.

Booking.com sent the watchdog a screenshot demonstrating that seven bookings had been made at the prices it advertised.

Spokesperson told the BBC Booking.com accurately displays price and availability at the time advertisements are shown and will work with the ASA "to address any outstanding questions they might have".

The ASA also found Butlin's had breached its code by writing to customers that "The big Butlin's sale ends in four days" and "Time is running out".

The deadline to participate in the sale was eventually extended by two weeks, which the watchdog said was unfair on those who had been put under pressure to book a break before the initial deadline.

It urged the firm to ensure future promotions are fair to consumers. Butlins said no customers were disadvantaged by the extension of the sale window.

The ASA's findings come after the Competition and Markets Authority on Tuesday launched a probe into eight companies over potentially misleading online price claims.