Behind the bar at The King's Head in Pollington, east Yorkshire, Emma Baxter has a problem. She runs the pub in her evenings - but it makes no money.

It is the last remaining pub in the village after another shut down, along with a greengrocer and the post office. She says she can't take a salary from the business.

"I run the pub for the love of it and for the fact I'm a village girl," she says.

"I'm a strong believer in the fact that it's the centre of the community and I said when I bought it I would keep it going.

"But my electricity bill has doubled in the last six months – where is that money going to come from?"

Emma felt so strongly about the tough financial situation facing many pubs that she contacted Your Voice, Your BBC News - an initiative to share the stories that matter to you.

According to the British Beer and Pub Association, the number of pubs in the UK has steadily decreased every year since 2000. Some 15,000 pubs have closed in that time, including 289 last year - the equivalent of six a week.

The average price of a pint is set to increase from £4.80 to £5.01. Budget measures mean that pubs face a loss of 9p on each pint if they continue to charge the same pre-budget prices. This means the price of a pint will need to rise by 21p to £5.01 for pubs to maintain current 12p profit.

The industry faced particular struggles during the Covid pandemic, but Emma believes things have deteriorated in the last two years - and it's left some pubs struggling to stay afloat.

"We saw maybe one price increase a year if we were lucky [during Covid] - sometimes we didn't even see that," she says.

"Now we're seeing three for a year and we've got another one coming. That will be the second one in the last two months. So how much more is this going to happen?"

At the same time as battling rising costs, she is attempting to entice customers in.

"I think everybody's trying their best - but you can't compromise the service and the quality that you give and the environment that you give.

"So you can't turn around at 9pm, turn all the lights off and make people sit around one bulb, you know. That's not what people come out for."

Pubs operate under various business models. There are free houses, which are not owned by a brewery or landlord stipulating where landlords buy their beer from. These are often run by owner-occupiers.

Then there are brewery-owned pubs, which generally only sell beers from that brewery.

And there are firms that own thousands of pubs and are occupied by tenants - often referred to as a "pub co".

Some tenants are also obliged to buy the drinks they sell from the same company. In some cases they are responsible for the upkeep of the building too.

Maurice, a tenant for one such company in Sheffield, tells the BBC he is trying to renegotiate his deal to run the pub. He says he will have to close the establishment if he can't get better terms.

"The prices that we are charged for spirits, beer, is ridiculous. I could actually go to a supermarket and buy about two bottles for what they're charging me for one. But I'm not allowed to because I'm tied," he says.

He also wants to see "pub co" breweries offered more help with the maintenance of their pubs, rather than leaving tenants to chase money for repairs.

Having been in the trade all his working life, he says he got involved with running a pub because of his love for community, but he's struggling to see a bright future.

"At the end of the day, you've got to make money. Financially, we're losing about £1,000 a week at a minimum here. And that's been for about the last couple of months.

"I can't afford to carry that anymore. All my savings are going."

For its part, the UK government says the pub is a central part of Britain's national identity and it is working hard to support the industry.

"We are a pro-business government and we know the vital importance of pubs to local communities and the economy, which is why we are supporting them with business rates relief and a 1p cut to alcohol duty on draught pints."

However, campaigners say that's not enough.

"Bringing down the VAT rate for hospitality would be a massive win," says Paul Crossman, landlord of The Swan, in York.

Paul, who is also chair of the pressure group the Campaign for Pubs, says: "I know the Chancellor of the Exchequer won't like that because there will be a cost attached to it, but surely getting 10% VAT from businesses that are still open is better than asking 20% from businesses that can't sustain that and will close."

There are some positive stories, too. Meg and Patrick have recently taken over the oldest pub in Chesterfield, south Yorkshire, and say their re-opening "couldn't have gone better".

Both former teachers, the couple had a shared dream of running their own pub, eventually saving enough to buy the Ye Royal Oak in the town centre.

They say being a free house pub has been helpful, as they are in control of what they do.

Patrick that the support he's witnessed in the community has given him hope.

"Beer and pubs are such a massive part of the fabric of British life that we think that that's not something that's ever going to go away," he says.

The National Trust has announced plans to cut 6% of its current workforce, about 550 jobs, blaming an inflated pay bill and tax rises introduced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

The heritage and conservation charity said it was under "sustained cost pressures beyond our control".

These include the increase in employers' National Insurance contributions and the National Living Wage rise from April, which the National Trust said had driven up annual wage costs by more than £10m.

The cost-cutting measures are part of a plan to find £26m worth of savings.

A 45-day consultation period with staff began on Thursday and the Trust said they were working with the union Prospect "to minimise compulsory redundancies".

The charity is running a voluntary redundancy scheme, and is expecting that to significantly reduce compulsory redundancies, a spokeswoman said.

The job cuts will affect all staff from management down, and everyone whose job is at risk will be offered a suitable alternative where available, the spokeswoman added.

Following consultations, which will finish in mid-to-late August, the cuts will be made in the autumn.

The Trust currently has about 9,500 employees.

Oasis fans have gone mad for their music again following their reunion, sending the band to number one in the UK album chart.

After the group kicked off their comeback tour last week, their greatest hits compilation Time Flies has gone back to the top spot, followed by 1995 album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? at number two.

Debut album Definitely Maybe, from 1994, is at number four - with only Sabrina Carpenter preventing them from completing a clean sweep of the top three.

News of the chart revival comes as the Britpop heroes prepare for their homecoming with the first of five sold-out nights in Manchester.

• Follow live updates from Oasis' first Manchester show

Oasis have had eight number one albums in total, and last topped the chart when Definitely Maybe went back to the summit last September after the reunion was announced. Time Flies and Morning Glory also went back into the top five at that time.

Three of their songs have also gone into the top 20 singles chart this week, led by Acquiesce, which was originally only a B-side, at number 17. That's followed by Don't Look Back in Anger at 18, and Live Forever at 19.

Noel and Liam Gallagher buried the hatchet to get back on stage for the first time in 16 years in Cardiff a week ago, and received enthusiastic reviews from ticket-holders and critics.

They have now moved on to Manchester's Heaton Park, where about 80,000 people will watch them every night.

They will also play seven nights at Wembley Stadium in London as well as shows in Edinburgh and Dublin, and a world tour.

The success of the brotherly reconciliation has gone some way to eclipsing bad memories of the scramble for tickets, when some fans found that prices more than doubled while they spent hours in a virtual queue.

An attack victim has said he is lucky to be alive after being knocked out by a single punch from a stranger who has now been jailed.

Airline pilot Ross McConnell, 35, was assaulted following a Busted concert at Aberdeen's P&J Live in 2023, leaving him unable to work for several months and with permanent scarring.

He has now spoken out to warn of the dangers of a single punch, saying the "split-second action" can have "absolutely devastating consequences".

Ben Corfield, 40, admitted the assault, and was jailed for a year at Aberdeen Sheriff Court.

Speaking after the sentencing, Mr McConnell said: "Justice has been done today, that guy very nearly killed me.

"I understand that he has had time to reflect on it. I accept his remorse, but ultimately he did what he did.

"Every day I'm reminded that the situation could be much more different."

Mr McConnell and his wife Lisa were both assaulted in the incident on 19 September 2023.

Corfield, from Doncaster in South Yorkshire, admitted punching the pilot to his severe injury and permanent disfigurement.

He also admitted assaulting another man on the same night.

Claire Maclagan, 36, from Dundee, admitted assaulting Lisa McConnell and was sentenced to carry out 187 hours of unpaid work.

Sheriff Morag McLaughlin said she had "wrestled" with her decision, but she had no choice but to impose a custodial sentence on the first-time offender.

She described it as an "extremely serious assault" which could have turned out "significantly worse".

The sheriff told the court "everyone wishes Mr Corfield had just walked away".

Mr McConnell said events on the night unfolded very quickly.

"Out of nowhere this guy comes up to me," he said.

"He just punched me to the left-hand side of my jaw. It caused me to fall backwards. The next thing I remember was waking up in the recovery position on the floor.

"I don't recall saying anything to him, it all happened in the space of seconds. I just thought, what did I do to deserve this? If someone else had been in my position it looks like they would have got the same treatment."

How bad were the injuries?

Mr McConnell was taken to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary where he received stitches to his serious head wound.

He said: "My daughter nearly lost her father, my wife nearly lost her husband, my mother nearly lost her son - all because one guy had a bad night and decided to punch me.

"Just about 30cm from where my head struck was uneven granite cobble. If my head had hit that, I shudder to think. The situation could have been a lot worse. I might not even be here today at worse case."

He was unable to properly return to his job as an airline pilot for nearly four months.

"That really gets you down," he said. "You know I thought 'why me?' A single punch has caused all of this impact for me, the physical impact as well as the financial loss and the mental impact too.

"I sat for days wondering, had I done anything? Was this my fault?"

Maxine Thompson-Curl set up the charity One Punch UK after her 18-year-old son Kristian's death in 2010.

He was punched by a man in a nightclub.

"He had a fractured skull and a catastrophic brain injury," she said. "My life from that moment has never been the same.

"He was in a coma for five days. And then for many months he was trying to get over having a brain injury. But he died nine months later. It was absolutely horrific."

She added: "We know these one-punch assaults happen, but the difficult thing statistically is that it isn't recorded by the police as a one-punch attack it is recorded as an assault.

"I have contact with people from across the country - Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland - and I would say at least twice a week I am hearing from people who are going through this, they get in touch looking for help.

"We know that one punch can ruin two lives. What I would say is - stop, think and walk away. Don't use those fists as weapons. They weren't given to punch, they were given to us to care, to hold each other, not to kill."

Why has Ross told his story?

Assistant Chief Constable Mark Sutherland of Police Scotland said violence of any kind was entirely unacceptable.

"A split-second, ill-informed decision can end someone's life, and leave the perpetrator facing a long jail sentence," he said.

Mr McConnell hopes sharing his story might also make others think twice before lashing out.

"I am one of the lucky ones who survived a one-punch attack," he said.

"There are many other accounts out there where people have lost their lives, become disabled from it.

"If you are really having a bad day, taking a swing at somebody Is not going to make it any better."

US President Donald Trump has said he will send weapons, including Patriot air defence systems, for Ukraine via Nato.

Trump told NBC News that in a new deal, "we're going to be sending Patriots to Nato, and then Nato will distribute that", adding that Nato would pay for the weapons.

His announcement came after Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke of having a "positive dialogue" with Trump on ensuring that arms arrived on time, particularly air defence systems.

Zelensky said he had asked for 10 Patriot systems, after a surge in Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities in the past week.

Speaking in Rome on Thursday, the Ukrainian leader said Germany was ready to pay for two of the Patriots and Norway for one, while other European partners were also prepared to help.

After a phone-call with Russia's Vladimir Putin last week, Trump said he was "not happy" that progress had not been made towards ending the war, and he has since complained that Putin's "very nice" attitude turned out to be meaningless.

During his interview with NBC News, Trump said he would make a "major statement" on Russia on Monday, but did not say what it would be about.

He said "Nato is going to reimburse the full cost" for the weapons sent on to Ukraine. Nato is funded through the contributions of its members, including the US.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Friday that he had urged countries including Germany and Spain to hand over some of their existing Patriot batteries, as they could reach Ukraine faster.

"We have continued to encourage our Nato allies to provide those weapons... since they have them in their stocks, then we can enter into financial agreements... where they can purchase the replacements."

The US defence department halted some shipments of critical weapons last week, raising concerns in Kyiv that its air defences could run low in a matter of months.

Among the armaments reported to have been placed on pause were Patriot interceptor missiles and precision artillery shells.

Then, as Ukraine was pounded by record numbers of drone attacks this week, Trump said more weapons would be sent: "We have to... They're getting hit very hard now."

Zelensky had appealed for the shipments to resume, describing the Patriot systems as "real protectors of life".

On Tuesday night, Ukraine was hit by a record 728 drones, and the Ukrainian president warned that Russia wanted to increase that to 1,000.

June saw the highest monthly civilian casualties in Ukraine in three years, with 232 people killed and more than 1,300 injured, according to the UN.

Since re-entering the White House in January, Trump has pushed to scale back US support for Ukraine.

The US was the biggest source of military aid to Ukraine between the start of 2022 and the end of 2024, giving $69bn (£54.6bn) in that time period, according to German think tank the Kiel Institute.

Trump has also pressed Nato allies to pledge more of their GDP to the security alliance. Last year, all European Nato members pledged to spend 2% of GDP on defence.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The US has been urging the two countries to reach an agreement to end the war.

Rubio told reporters that he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had a "frank" conversation on the sidelines of a meeting in Malaysia on Thursday.

Rubio echoed Trump's "frustration at the lack of progress at peace talks", including "disappointment that there has not been more flexibility on the Russian side to bring about an end to this conflict".

He said the two had shared some new ideas about how the conflict could conclude, which he would take back to Trump.

Rubio declined to elaborate on what Trump said would be a "major" announcement about Russia on Monday.

Two care home residents have died after a car crashed into the building following a police chase in Sunderland, Northumbria Police has said.

The crash happened at about 21:40 BST on Wednesday when a blue BMW hit Highcliffe Care Home in Witherwack, causing structural damage.

The vehicle had been reported stolen from the Fenham area of Newcastle earlier that evening, police said.

A woman in her 90s and another in her 80s died on Thursday, and eight other residents were taken to hospital with injuries. Two people have been arrested.

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Unite says it has suspended Angela Rayner from her membership of the union, amid a deepening row over the long-running bin strikes in Birmingham.

The deputy prime minister has been urging striking bin workers to accept a deal to end the dispute, which has seen mountains of rubbish pile up in the city.

The union said it would also re-examine its relationship with Labour after an emergency motion at its conference in Brighton.

Bin collection workers walked out in January, with an all-out strike going on since March. Unite is a major donor to the Labour Party, and has previously donated to Rayner herself.

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Doctors have warned of an imminent disaster at Gaza's largest functioning hospital because of critical shortage of fuel and a widening Israeli ground offensive in the southern city of Khan Younis.

Nasser Medical Complex was forced to stop admitting patients on Thursday, when witnesses said Israeli troops and tanks advanced into a cemetery 200m (660ft) away and fired towards nearby camps for displaced families. The forces reportedly withdrew on Friday after digging up several areas.

Medical staff and dozens of patients in intensive care remain inside the hospital, where the fuel shortage threatens to shut down life-saving services.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

However, it said on Friday morning that an armoured brigade was operating in Khan Younis to dismantle "terrorist infrastructure sites" and confiscate weapons> It has previously issued evacuation orders for the areas around the hospital.

A witness told the BBC that Israeli tanks accompanied by excavators and bulldozers advanced from the south of the cemetery near Nasser hospital on Thursday.

The tanks fired shells and bullets as they moved into an area, which was previously farmland, and several tents belonging to displaced families were set on fire, the witness said. Video footage shared online showed a plume of dark smoke rising from the area.

The witness added that Israeli quadcopter drones also fired towards tents in the Namsawi Towers and al-Mawasi areas to force residents to evacuate. Another video showed dozens of people running for cover amid as gunfire rang out.

One or two civilians standing near the hospital's gates were reportedly injured by stray bullets.

Medical staff inside Nasser hospital meanwhile sent messages to local journalists expressing their fear. "We are still working in the hospital. The tanks are just metres away. We are closer to death than to life," they wrote.

On Friday morning, locals said the Israeli tanks and troops pulled out of the cemetery and other areas close to the hospital.

Pictures shared online later in the day appeared to show deep trenches dug into the sandy ground, flattened buildings, burnt tents, and crushed vehicles piled on top of each other.

Staff at Nasser hospital said they were assessing if they could resume admitting patients.

On Wednesday, they warned that the hospital was very close to a complete shutdown due to a critical fuel shortage.

They said electricity generators were expected to function for one additional day despite significant efforts to reduce power consumption and restrict electricity to only the most critical departments, including the intensive care and neonatal units.

If the power went out completely, dozens of patients, particularly those dependent of ventilators, would "be in immediate danger and face certain death", the hospital added.

An Israeli military official told Reuters news agency on Thursday that around 160,000 litres of fuel destined for hospitals and other humanitarian facilities had entered Gaza since Wednesday, but that the fuel's distribution around the territory was not the responsibility of the army.

There is a shortage of critical medical supplies, especially those related to trauma care.

During a visit to Nasser hospital last week, the Gaza representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) described it as "one massive trauma ward".

Dr Rik Peeperkorn said in a video that the facility, which normally has a 350-bed capacity, was treating about 700 patients, and that exhausted staff were working 24 hours a day.

The director and doctors reported receiving hundreds of trauma cases over the past four weeks, the majority of them linked to incidents around aid distribution sites, he added.

"There's many boys, young adolescents who are dying or getting the most serious injuries because they try to get some food for their families," he said.

Among them were a 13-year-old boy who was shot in the head and is now tetraplegic, and a 21-year-old man who has a bullet lodged in his neck and is also tetraplegic.

On Friday, 10 people seeking aid were reportedly killed by Israeli military fire near an aid distribution site in the nearby southern city of Rafah. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not commented.

Meanwhile, in northern Gaza, a senior Hamas commander was among eight people who were killed in an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced families in Jabalia, a local source told the BBC.

Iyad Nasr, who led the Jabalia al-Nazla battalion, died alongside his family, including several children, and an aide when two missiles hit a classroom at Halima al-Saadia school, according to the source.

Another Hamas commander, Hassan Marii, and his aide were reportedly killed in a separate air strike on an apartment in al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City.

It comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that a new Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal could be just days away, after concluding his four-day trip to the US.

Before flying back from Washington on Thursday night, he told Newsmax that the proposal would supposedly see Hamas release half of the 20 living hostages it is still holding and just over half of the 30 dead hostages during a 60-day truce.

"So, we'll have 10 living left and about 12 deceased hostages [remaining], but I'll get them out, too. I hope we can complete it in a few days," he added.

However, a Palestinian official told the BBC that the indirect negotiations in Qatar were stalled, with sticking points including aid distribution and Israeli troop withdrawals.

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

At least 57,762 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

A 24-year-old man who died in a stabbing outside a five-star hotel in west London has been named by police as Blue Stevens.

Emergency services were called to the Park Tower Hotel on Seville Street, Knightsbridge, just before 21:30 BST on Wednesday.

Paramedics treated Mr Stevens for knife wounds but he died at the scene, the Metropolitan Police said.

No arrests have been made but officers are working "to establish the circumstances of what happened".

Author Raynor Winn's new book has been delayed because questions about her bestselling work The Salt Path have caused her and her husband "considerable distress", her publisher has said.

Penguin Michael Joseph said the decision to postpone the publication of her fourth book, On Winter Hill, had been made with Winn.

It comes after an investigation by the Observer claimed the writer had misrepresented some of the events in her 2018 book. Winn has called the report "highly misleading" and refuted many of the newspaper's claims.

On Winter Hill, about a solo coast-to-coast walk Winn completed without husband Moth, had been scheduled to be published in October.

"Given recent events, in particular intrusive conjecture around Moth's health condition which has caused considerable distress to Raynor Winn and her family, it is our priority to support the author at this time," Penguin Michael Joseph said in a statement.

"With this in mind, Penguin Michael Joseph, together with the author, have made the decision to delay the publication of On Winter Hill from this October."

A new release date will be announced in due course, the publisher added.

• Raynor Winn hits back at claims she misled readers
• Penguin says it did 'all necessary due diligence' with The Salt Path

On Sunday, the Observer reported Winn had misrepresented the events that led to the couple losing their house and setting off on the 630-mile walk that was depicted in The Salt Path.

The paper's investigation also cast doubt on the nature of her husband's illness. Winn denied the allegations and said she was taking legal advice.

On Wednesday, she posted a more extensive statement, responding in detail to each of the claims made in the Observer's article.

The newspaper said it had spoken to medical experts who were "sceptical" that Moth had corticobasal degeneration (CBD), given his lack of acute symptoms and apparent ability to reverse them via walking.

In response, Winn provided documents that appeared to confirm he had been diagnosed with CBD. One letter suggested Moth may have an "atypical form" of the condition, or perhaps "an even more unusual disorder".

The Observer also said the couple had lost their home after Winn took out a loan to cover money she had been accused of stealing from a previous employer, and not in a bad business deal as Winn described in her book.

In her statement, Winn said the two cases were separate. She stood by her description of how the couple came to lose their home and wrote in detail about an investment in a property portfolio that left the couple liable for large sums of money.

However, in relation to the Observer's accusation that she had defrauded her previous employer of £64,000, Winn acknowledged making "mistakes" earlier in her career, and said it had been a pressured time.

"Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry," she said.

But she added the case had been settled between her and her ex-employer on a "non-admissions basis", and although she was questioned by police, she was not charged.

Winn also said the couple did not have any outstanding debts, and clarified that a house in France that the Observer said they also owned was "an uninhabitable ruin in a bramble patch", which an estate agent had advised was not worth selling.

The Salt Path has sold more than two million copies since its publication in March 2018, and a film adaptation starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs was released earlier this year.

Winn has written two sequels, The Wild Silence and Landlines, which also focus on themes of nature, wild camping, homelessness and walking.

Parliament's standards commissioner has launched an investigation into ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe.

The BBC understands it is for allegedly failing to register hundreds of thousands of pounds raised in donations to fund his independent "Rape Gang Inquiry".

More than £600,000 has been donated to a Crowdfunder started by Lowe in March to support a national inquiry into gang-based sexual exploitation across the UK. So far, Lowe has not declared any of the money on his MPs' register.

Lowe started the project before the PM announced a government-backed national inquiry into grooming gangs last month. He has since said his investigation will continue regardless. Lowe has been approached for comment.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has confirmed they are investigating whether Lowe breached parliamentary rules on declaring donations within the 28-days - as set out in the MPs' Code of Conduct.

Under parliamentary rules, MPs must declare any donation from a single source over £1,500 - or over £300 in earnings or gifts.

Lowe's Crowdfunder includes a statement that donors giving above the parliamentary limit will have their names published in the Commons register.

Most of the £600,000 came in small sums - but records show over a dozen donations exceeded £1,500, none of which have appeared in Lowe's register of financial interests.

Lowe was elected as a Reform UK MP for Great Yarmouth in 2024 but was suspended by the party in March, amid claims of threats towards the party's chairman, Zia Yusuf.

In May, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to press charges over threats he was alleged to have made. Lowe claimed in a BBC Newsnight interview that he had been the victim of a "political assassination attempt".

Not long after his suspension from Reform, Lowe set up his Crowdfunder - accusing ministers of failing victims and saying: "Our gutless political class is too cowardly to even start to process what has truly happened."

Lowe's Rape Gang Inquiry has set up a board, including Conservative MP Esther McVey.

According to the inquiries social media page it has sent "hundreds and hundreds of FOI requests to every local council, police force, NHS trust and more in order to uncover vital information relating to the rape gangs".

Lowe has promised to stream hearings online and insisted his private investigation will continue to push for accountability.

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For Gazans, a 60-day ceasefire being negotiated between Israel and Hamas would be a lifeline.

A window to bring in large quantities of desperately needed food, water and medicine after severe – and at times total - Israeli restrictions on aid deliveries.

But for Israel's defence minister Israel Katz a two-month pause in military operations would create an opportunity to build what he has called a "humanitarian city" in the ruins of the southern city of Rafah to contain almost every single Gazan except those belonging to armed groups.

According to the plan, Palestinians would be security screened before being allowed in and not permitted to leave.

Critics, both domestically and internationally, have condemned the proposal, with human rights groups, academics and lawyers calling it a blueprint for a "concentration camp".

It's unclear to what extent it represents a concrete plan of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government or whether it is a negotiating tactic to put more pressure on Hamas in the talks on a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

In the notable absence of any Israeli plan for Gaza after the war ends, this idea is filling the strategic vacuum.

Katz briefed a group of Israeli reporters that the new camp would initially house about 600,000 Palestinians - and eventually the whole 2.1 million population.

His plan would see the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) securing the site from a distance while international bodies managed the area. Four aid distribution sites would be established in the area, he said.

Katz also restated his desire to encourage Palestinians to "voluntarily emigrate" from the Gaza to other countries.

But it has not gained traction or support among other senior figures in Israel, and according to reports the proposal even triggered a clash between the prime minister and the head of the IDF.

Israeli media say the office of the chief of the general staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, made clear the army was not obligated to forcibly transfer civilians, as the plan would require.

It's claimed Gen Zamir and Netanyahu were involved in an angry exchange during a recent war cabinet meeting.

Tal Schneider, a political correspondent at the centrist Times of Israel, said Zamir would be in a strong position to push back because the government "practically begged him to take the job" six months ago – and Netanyahu strongly endorsed his appointment.

It's not only the top military brass that is opposed to the idea. There is also consternation among rank and file too.

"Any transfer of a civil population is a form of war crime, that's a form of ethnic cleansing, which is also a form of genocide," IDF reservist Yotam Vilk told the BBC at his home in Tel Aviv.

The 28-year-old former officer in the Armored Corps is refusing to serve any longer in the army following 270 days of active combat in Gaza.

He describes himself as a patriot and argues Israel must defend itself but that the current war has no strategy nor end in sight.

Vilk is also part of Soldiers for the Hostages, a group calling for an end of the war to secure the release of the 50 Israelis still being held captive by Hamas in Gaza, up to 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

Meanwhile 16 Israeli experts in international law issued a joint letter on Friday denouncing the plan, which they said would constitute a war crime. The letter urged "all relevant parties to publicly withdraw from the plan, renounce it and refrain from carrying it out".

The plan has unsurprisingly dismayed Palestinians in Gaza.

"We completely reject this proposal, and we reject the displacement of any Palestinian from their land," Sabreen, who had been forced to leave Khan Younis, told the BBC. "We are steadfast and will remain here until our last breath."

Ahmad Al Mghayar from Rafah said: "Freedom is above everything. This is our land, we should be free to move wherever we want. Why are we being pressured like this?"

It's not clear how much support Katz's plan has among the general public, but recent surveys have indicated the majority of Jews in Israel favour the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.

One poll published in the left-wing daily newspaper Haaretz claimed as many as 82 per cent of Jewish Israelis supported such a move.

But there has been curious lack of public support for the proposal among the far-right, including prominent ministers in the coalition Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Both have been vocal proponents of Palestinians leaving Gaza and Jewish settlers returning.

Tal Schneider said both ministers may still be weighing up giving their backing to the proposal for a mass camp.

"Maybe they're waiting to see where the wind blows to see if it's serious. Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are cabinet members and have more access to internal discussions. Maybe they think this is just to put political pressure on Hamas to come to the table."

Outside Israel, the proposal for a new camp for all Gazans has attracted widespread criticism.

In the UK, minister for the Middle East Hamish Falconer posted on social media that he was "appalled" by the plan.

"Palestinian territory must not be reduced," he wrote. "Civilians must be able to return to their communities. We need to move towards a ceasefire deal and open a pathway to lasting peace."

British human rights lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy KC told the BBC the project would force Palestinians into a "concentration camp".

The description, which other critics including academics, NGOs and senior UN officials have used, holds considerable resonance in light of the role of concentration camps in the Holocaust.

Baroness Kennedy said the plan - as well as the latest actions of Israel - has led her to conclude Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

"I was very reluctant to go there, because the threshold has to be very high. There has to be specific intent for genocide. But what we're now seeing is genocidal behaviour," she said.

Israel has vehemently rejected the charge of genocide and says it does not target civilians.

The Israeli foreign ministry also told the BBC that "the notion that Israel is creating concentration camps is deeply offensive and draws parallels with the Nazis". Israel "adheres to the Geneva Convention", it added, referring to the international regulations governing the treatment of civilians in occupied territories.

Aside from grim warnings about what might happen, the prospect of a new camp is having an impact on efforts to end the Gaza war.

Palestinian sources at the ceasefire talks grinding on in the Qatari capital Doha have told the BBC the plan has alarmed the Hamas delegation and has created a new obstacle to a deal.

Additional reporting by Joyce Liu and John Landy

The UK economy shrank unexpectedly in May, according to latest official figures.

The economy shrank by 0.1%, the Office for National Statistics said, the second month in a row it has contracted.

Economists had expected GDP to grow by 0.1%.

The fall in economic output was mainly driven by a drop in production, the ONS said.

Unite says it has suspended Angela Rayner from her membership of the union, amid a deepening row over the long-running bin strikes in Birmingham.

The deputy prime minister has been urging striking bin workers to accept a deal to end the dispute, which has seen mountains of rubbish pile up in the city.

The union said it would also re-examine its relationship with Labour after an emergency motion at its conference in Brighton.

Bin collection workers walked out in January, with an all-out strike going on since March. Unite is a major donor to the Labour Party, and has previously donated to Rayner herself.

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.

Two care home residents have died after a car crashed into the building following a police chase in Sunderland, Northumbria Police has said.

The crash happened at about 21:40 BST on Wednesday when a blue BMW hit Highcliffe Care Home in Witherwack, causing structural damage.

The vehicle had been reported stolen from the Fenham area of Newcastle earlier that evening, police said.

A woman in her 90s and another in her 80s died on Thursday, and eight other residents were taken to hospital with injuries. Two people have been arrested.

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.

Irvine Welsh is pointing up to the second floor of a grey stone building in Leith, the port district of Edinburgh.

As he gets ready to publish a sequel to his 1993 cult novel Trainspotting, the author is showing me the window of the room, with its view over a local park, where he wrote that first book, which later became a hit film starring Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller.

The son of a Leith docker and a waitress - who did a course in electrical engineering, spent time in a punk band and was addicted to heroin as a younger man - Welsh had moved back home to Leith from London and "just started typing". He tells me that before writing Trainspotting he had decided "this is my last chance to do something creative".

Trainspotting follows the lives of a group of heroin-addicted friends in Edinburgh. Violent, often shocking and darkly funny, the book is a picture of the social decay sparked by the decimation of Britain's industrial heartlands. It was Welsh's first novel and sold more than a million copies in the UK alone.

But as he sat typing away, back in the early 90s, he had no idea it would do well. "I just wanted to get it done," he explains. It certainly paid off.

The book and film tapped so successfully into the cultural zeitgeist that more than 30 years on, you can still book an official Trainspotting tour in Leith. But on a blustery Scottish summer's day, I'm getting a bespoke one from the writer himself, touring some of the key haunts that inspired him.

We head to the so-called Banana Flats, the curved building officially called Cables Wynd House that dominates the Leith skyline and where his character Sick Boy (played by Miller in the film) grows up.

We visit the Leith Dockers' Club where Renton (played by McGregor) goes with his mum and dad and where Welsh remembers hanging out "as a kid and sitting there with lemonade and crisps" and "feeling really sort of resentful" while everyone else was getting drunk.

Welsh's latest return to his characters is called Men in Love. He's previously written follow-up books and a prequel about the Trainspotting gang (he clearly can't get enough of them), but this new novel is set immediately after the first one finished, when Renton has run off with the money he and his friends have made from a big drug deal.

This time, Welsh is exploring what happens when young men start to fall in love and have relationships. He was partly motivated to write it, he says, because "we're living in a world that seems to be so full of hate and poison... I think that it's time we focused more on love as a kind of antidote to all that".

But don't expect saccharine stories of romance - this is Welsh, after all. The cheating, lying, manipulative - and at times, horrifying - behaviour of some of his characters is still much in evidence.

The book even has a disclaimer at the end explaining that because the novel is set in the 1980s, many of the characters "express themselves in ways that we now consider offensive and discriminatory".

Welsh says the publishers insisted on it. "They felt we live in such sensitive times that we need to make that point.

"We live in a much more censorious environment," he continues. While he accepts that misogynist terms in the book including "fat lassie" are hurtful and "there's a good reason why we don't say them", he worries that if the state starts to say "you can't talk about this, you can't talk about that, I think we're on a dangerous road".

The Men in Love story spans into the early 90s. It's being published at a time when Britain is indulging in a bit of 90s nostalgia, with Oasis on tour and Pulp's surprise set at Glastonbury getting rave reviews.

Welsh tells me he "never left" that era, but says younger generations also feel a nostalgia for it because "people had lives then".

He pins some of the blame for cultural change on the internet and social media which has become "a controlling rather than an enabling force".

As someone who understands addiction, Welsh hopes we'll be "more judicious" about using social media in future. He points to the way people have "their phones stuck to their face" while they are moving around.

"If we survive the next 50 years, that's going to look as strange in film as people chain smoking cigarettes did back in the 80s."

He also thinks the internet is making us more stupid. "When you get machines thinking for you, your brain just atrophies." He fears we're heading towards "a post-democratic, post-art, post-culture society where we've got artificial intelligence on one side and we've a kind of natural stupidity on the other side, we just become these dumbed down machines that are taking instructions".

Trainspotting's success came in part he says at a time when people were willing to read more challenging, less formulaic books. And as the money rolled in, it gave him the freedom to write.

He's also a DJ and is releasing an album with the Sci-Fi Soul Orchestra to go with his new book. The disco tracks relate to the characters, the storyline and the "emotional landscape" of the novel.

Music is "fundamental" to his writing and he's also "looking for that four-four beat all the time while I'm typing".

He builds a playlist in his head for every character and theme.

Renton's into Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Velvet Underground. Sick Boy also likes Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, New Order, he says.

The aggressive and violent Begbie likes "Rod Stewart and power ballads basically".

The singer recently told The Times that the public should give the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage a chance. I wondered if Irvine Welsh thinks that his Trainspotting characters would support that party if they were growing up now.

He pushes back, telling me the Scottish working classes "still have a radical kind of spirit. They're not really there to be the stooge of some public school idiot".

Although later he adds "people are so desperate that they'll go along with anybody who has that rhetoric of change".

Welsh has always been political and, as we walk around the area where he grew up, he describes how Margaret Thatcher ended centuries of shipbuilding in Leith "at a stroke". Five thousand dockers became none, he says.

Trainspotting also resonated, he thinks, because it "heralded the adjustment to people living in a world without paid work. And now we're all in that position".

His argument is that Britain's class system is changing "because of this massive concentration of wealth towards the wealthy".

The working classes already have no money and now the middle classes are being pulled into more and more debt too and are less able to pass on their assets which makes life increasingly insecure.

"We're all members of the Precariat, basically. We don't know how long we'll have paid work if we do have it, and we just don't know how long this will last because our economy, our society is in a long-form revolutionary transformation."

In my time in Welsh's company, we haven't just toured Leith, I've had an insight into his brain, exploding with opinions on everything from our dystopian future, to why the best music was made in the analogue era and even to what would happen if he were offered a knighthood (it's a no, by the way).

When our time's up, he heads into the bar at the Dockers' Club to see a friend he first met at primary school 60 years ago. His old pal jokes to me that he's a plumber while Welsh is a millionaire author. You can see the affection between them.

Trainspotting may have changed Welsh's life entirely. But he's still plugged into the community that shaped him, and the Leith that he turned so spectacularly into fiction.

Men in Love is published on 24 July 2025

A hosepipe ban which has come into force across Yorkshire is expected to last until winter, the head of the region's water company has said.

More than five million householders have been barred from using hosepipes for activities such as watering the garden, washing the car or filling a paddling pool.

It is the first regional ban in the UK this year and comes after months of extremely hot and dry weather across England, with more high temperatures forecast over the weekend.

Nicola Shaw, chief executive of Yorkshire Water, told BBC 5 Live said: "I expect it to last until the winter as that is when the reservoirs will have recharged."

Yorkshire Water said the region had experienced its driest and warmest spring on record, with only 15cm of rainfall between February and June - less than half of what would be expected in an average year.

The company said the restrictions were needed to protect supplies in the face of more dry weather forecast in the coming weeks.

However, the decision has been criticised by some bill payers who expressed frustration at the number of leaks which appear to go unchecked.

In October, the Environment Agency (EA) reported that 21% of Yorkshire Water's supplies were lost due to leakage, higher than the national average of 19%.

The loss in Yorkshire equates to about 260 million litres every day.

When pushed on this issue, Ms Shaw, who received a bonus of £371,000 on top of her base salary of £585,000 last year, said she accepted the leakage rate was high but said it "was absolutely one of our priorities".

She added: "We have a lot of water mains across Yorkshire but because they're underground they are subject to some of the problems of the stresses and strains of movement of the soil and when it gets really dry they also break more."

"We've been working really hard on this and we've got less leakage from our pipes than we've ever had in Yorkshire.

"We are getting to fix leaks much quicker than we ever have done before."

The ban, which applies to customers across much of Yorkshire, parts of North Lincolnshire and parts of Derbyshire, comes after the Environment Agency declared a drought across the region last month.

Anyone flouting the restriction could be fined up to £1,000.

Ms Shaw, who was said to have turned down a bonus this year ahead of legislation which would have prevented her from receiving it, said businesses were able to continue using hosepipes as normal while restrictions were in place.

"We're asking people to use them for non-essential purposes. Please don't wash your car with a hosepipe, you can absolutely use a bucket.

"Washing your car with a hosepipe will use about a 1,000 litres if you did it for an hour."

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

US singer Chris Brown has arrived at a court in London to enter a plea over two charges relating to an alleged bottle attack at a London nightclub two years ago.

The 36-year-old star is accused of causing actual bodily harm to a music producer during an incident that prosecutors have described as "unprovoked".

He is also charged with having an offensive weapon - namely a tequila bottle.

The two charges were added last month to the original charge of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm (GBH), to which Brown has already pleaded not guilty. The singer will face trial in October 2026.

The singer arrived at Southwark Crown Court for the latest plea hearing shortly before 09:00 BST on Friday.

Prosecutors have previously said the alleged victim, Abraham Diaw, was standing at the bar of Soho's Tape nightclub on 19 February 2023 when Mr Brown struck him several times with a bottle.

The singer was arrested at the five-star Lowry hotel in Salford, Greater Manchester, last month, after returning to the UK to prepare for a European tour.

He was held in custody for almost a week, before being released after agreeing to pay a £5m security fee to the court.

A security fee is a financial guarantee to ensure a defendant returns to court. Mr Brown could be asked to forfeit the money if he breaches bail conditions.

Under those conditions, Mr Brown must live at an address in the UK while awaiting trial, and was ordered to surrender his passport to police.

However, a plan was put in place allowing him to honour his Breezy Bowl XX world tour dates by surrendering his passport but getting it back when he needs to travel to the gigs.

The first date took place in Amsterdam on 8 June, before a string of stadium and arena shows across the UK and Europe.

Mr Brown is one of the biggest stars in US R&B, with two Grammy Awards, and 19 top 10 singles in the UK - including hits like Turn Up The Music, Freaky Friday, With You and Don't Wake Me Up.

His co-defendant Omololu Akinlolu, a 39-year-old American who performs under the name HoodyBaby, also entered a not guilty plea last month to the charge of attempted grievous bodily harm.

After 40 years of armed struggle against the Turkish state, the outlawed Kurdish PKK will hold a ceremony on Friday to mark a symbolic first step in laying down its arms.

The disarmament process will start under tight security in Iraqi Kurdistan and is expected to take all summer.

Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has hailed the move as "totally ripping off and throwing away the bloody shackles that were put on our country's legs".

Some 40,000 people have been killed since the conflict began, and the PKK is listed as a terror group in Turkey, the US, EU and UK. Its disarmament will be felt not just in Turkey but in Iraq, Syria and Iran.

How and where will the PKK disarm?

A small group of PKK members will symbolically lay down their weapons in a ceremony near Suleymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan, before going back to their bases.

For security reasons, the exact location is not being revealed, although it's thought members of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition Dem party will be there, even if other major Turkish political parties will not.

Disarmament will then continue over the coming months at points set up with the involvement of the Turkish, Iraqi and Kurdistan regional governments, BBC Turkish has been told.

In a video, the PKK's long-imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, said it was "a voluntary transition from the phase of armed conflict to the phase of democratic politics and law". He has been in solitary confinement on the small prison island of Imrali, south-west of Istanbul, since he was captured in 1999.

Who are the Kurds?

Who are the PKK and why has the conflict lasted so long?

This is not the first attempt at peace involving Turkey and the PKK, but this is the best hope so far that the armed struggle that began in 1984 will come to an end.

Originally a Marxist group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party took up arms calling for an independent state inside Turkey.

In the 1990s, they called instead for greater autonomy for Kurds, who make up about 20% of the population.

Ocalan announced a ceasefire in 2013, and urged PKK forces to withdraw from Turkey. The 2015 Dolmabahce Agreement was supposed to bring democratic and language rights for Kurds, but the fragile truce collapsed amid devastating violence, especially in the Kurdish-dominated cities of the south-east, including Diyarbakir.

Turkey's air force targeted PKK bases in the mountains of northern Iraq. Several military campaigns have also targeted Kurdish-led forces in Syria.

The government in Ankara ruled out further talks until the PKK laid down its arms. That is now on the verge of happening.

Why has the PKK decided to disband?

In October 2024, a prominent nationalist leader and key Erdogan ally called Devlet Bahceli began a process described by the government as "terror-free Turkey". He urged the PKK's imprisoned leader to call for the dissolution of the outlawed group. It could pave the way for his possible release from Imrali island, he suggested.

The Turkish government launched talks with Ocalan via the pro-Kurdish Dem party, and then in February came his historic appeal for the PKK to disband, read out by two Dem MPs who had just returned from a visit to the prison island.

"All groups must lay their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself," read Ocalan's letter.

The PKK had been formed primarily because "the channels of democratic politics were closed", he said, but Devlet Bahceli and Erdogan's own positive signals had created the right environment.

The PKK followed Ocalan's lead and declared a ceasefire and later declared that it had "completed its historical mission": the Kurdish issue could now "be resolved through democratic politics".

President Erdogan said it was an "opportunity to take a historic step toward tearing down the wall of terror" and met pro-Kurdish politicians in April.

Why is Ocalan so important?

As founder of the PKK, Ocalan continues to be reviled by many Turks, even after 26 years in solitary confinement.

And yet he still plays an important role in the eyes of Kurds.

"I think he really has this authority; he is a main symbol for many Kurds, not all," says Joost Jongerden, a specialist on the 41-year conflict at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Two days before the PKK were due to begin disarmament, Ocalan appeared on video for the first time since he was put on trial more than 20 years ago.

Speaking for seven minutes, he addressed the outlawed group: "I believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons. And I call on you to put this principle into practice."

Ocalan was wearing a branded Lacoste polo shirt, and in an indication of his enduring relevance, the shirt quickly went viral and websites ran out of stock.

What happens next?

After Friday's ceremony, the scene switches to Turkey's parliament in Ankara where a commission will be set up to make decisions on the next steps for the government.

As the summer recess is around the corner, no concrete decisions are expected for several months, when MPs vote on the commission's recommendations and President Erdogan has the final say.

What happens to Abdullah Ocalan is not yet clear. The government says his conditions in jail could be reviewed as the process unfolds, but any chance of release will be left to the latter stages.

What's in this process for Erdogan?

Erdogan's AK Party has begun work on changing the constitution, and there has been speculation that this would mean Erdogan would be able to run for the presidency again when his final term runs out in 2028.

The AKP and pro-Kurdish Dem party deny there is any link between the peace process and reshaping the constitution, but if Erdogan secures Dem support he would have a far greater chance of pushing through changes.

Erdogan is behind in the polls, but his main opposition rival, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, is in jail accused of corruption, which he denies, and more opposition mayors have been arrested as part of a crackdown in the past week.

The UK economy shrank unexpectedly in May, according to latest official figures.

The economy shrank by 0.1%, the Office for National Statistics said, the second month in a row it has contracted.

Economists had expected GDP to grow by 0.1%.

The fall in economic output was mainly driven by a drop in production, the ONS said.

A mystery interstellar object spotted last week by astronomers could be the oldest comet ever seen, according to scientists.

Named 3I/Atlas, it may be three billion years older than our own solar system, suggests the team from Oxford university.

The preliminary findings were presented on Friday at the national meeting of the UK's Royal Astronomical Society in Durham.

"We're all very excited by 3I/Atlas," University of Oxford astronomer Matthew Hopkins told BBC News. He had just finished his PhD studies when the object was discovered.

He says it could be more than seven billion years old, and it may be the most remarkable interstellar visitor yet.

3I/Atlas was first spotted on 1 July 2025 by the ATLAS survey telescope in Chile, when it was about 670 million km from the Sun.

Since then astronomers around the world have been racing to identify its path and discover more details about it.

Mr Hopkins believes it originated in the Milky Way's 'thick disk'. This is a group of ancient stars that orbit above and below the area where the Sun and most stars are located.

The team believe that because 3I/ATLAS probably formed around an old star, it is made up of a lot of water ice.

That means that as it approaches the Sun later this year, the energy from the Sun will heat the object's surface, leading to blazes of vapour and dust.

That could create a glowing tail.

The researchers made their findings using a model developed by Mr Hopkins.

"This is an object from a part of the galaxy we've never seen up close before," said Professor Chris Lintott, co-author of the study.

"We think there's a two-thirds chance this comet is older than the solar system, and that it's been drifting through interstellar space ever since."

Later this year, 3I/ATLAS should be visible from Earth using amateur telescopes.

Before 3I/Atlas soared into view, just two others had been seen. One was called 1I/'Oumuamua, found in 2017 and another called 2I/Borisov, discovered in 2019.

Astronomers globally are currently gearing up to start using a new, very powerful telescope in Chile, called the Vera C Rubin.

When it starts fully surveying the southern night sky later this year, scientists expect that it could discover between 5 and 50 new interstellar objects.

Irvine Welsh is pointing up to the second floor of a grey stone building in Leith, the port district of Edinburgh.

As he gets ready to publish a sequel to his 1993 cult novel Trainspotting, the author is showing me the window of the room, with its view over a local park, where he wrote that first book, which later became a hit film starring Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller.

The son of a Leith docker and a waitress - who did a course in electrical engineering, spent time in a punk band and was addicted to heroin as a younger man - Welsh had moved back home to Leith from London and "just started typing". He tells me that before writing Trainspotting he had decided "this is my last chance to do something creative".

Trainspotting follows the lives of a group of heroin-addicted friends in Edinburgh. Violent, often shocking and darkly funny, the book is a picture of the social decay sparked by the decimation of Britain's industrial heartlands. It was Welsh's first novel and sold more than a million copies in the UK alone.

But as he sat typing away, back in the early 90s, he had no idea it would do well. "I just wanted to get it done," he explains. It certainly paid off.

The book and film tapped so successfully into the cultural zeitgeist that more than 30 years on, you can still book an official Trainspotting tour in Leith. But on a blustery Scottish summer's day, I'm getting a bespoke one from the writer himself, touring some of the key haunts that inspired him.

We head to the so-called Banana Flats, the curved building officially called Cables Wynd House that dominates the Leith skyline and where his character Sick Boy (played by Miller in the film) grows up.

We visit the Leith Dockers' Club where Renton (played by McGregor) goes with his mum and dad and where Welsh remembers hanging out "as a kid and sitting there with lemonade and crisps" and "feeling really sort of resentful" while everyone else was getting drunk.

Welsh's latest return to his characters is called Men in Love. He's previously written follow-up books and a prequel about the Trainspotting gang (he clearly can't get enough of them), but this new novel is set immediately after the first one finished, when Renton has run off with the money he and his friends have made from a big drug deal.

This time, Welsh is exploring what happens when young men start to fall in love and have relationships. He was partly motivated to write it, he says, because "we're living in a world that seems to be so full of hate and poison... I think that it's time we focused more on love as a kind of antidote to all that".

But don't expect saccharine stories of romance - this is Welsh, after all. The cheating, lying, manipulative - and at times, horrifying - behaviour of some of his characters is still much in evidence.

The book even has a disclaimer at the end explaining that because the novel is set in the 1980s, many of the characters "express themselves in ways that we now consider offensive and discriminatory".

Welsh says the publishers insisted on it. "They felt we live in such sensitive times that we need to make that point.

"We live in a much more censorious environment," he continues. While he accepts that misogynist terms in the book including "fat lassie" are hurtful and "there's a good reason why we don't say them", he worries that if the state starts to say "you can't talk about this, you can't talk about that, I think we're on a dangerous road".

The Men in Love story spans into the early 90s. It's being published at a time when Britain is indulging in a bit of 90s nostalgia, with Oasis on tour and Pulp's surprise set at Glastonbury getting rave reviews.

Welsh tells me he "never left" that era, but says younger generations also feel a nostalgia for it because "people had lives then".

He pins some of the blame for cultural change on the internet and social media which has become "a controlling rather than an enabling force".

As someone who understands addiction, Welsh hopes we'll be "more judicious" about using social media in future. He points to the way people have "their phones stuck to their face" while they are moving around.

"If we survive the next 50 years, that's going to look as strange in film as people chain smoking cigarettes did back in the 80s."

He also thinks the internet is making us more stupid. "When you get machines thinking for you, your brain just atrophies." He fears we're heading towards "a post-democratic, post-art, post-culture society where we've got artificial intelligence on one side and we've a kind of natural stupidity on the other side, we just become these dumbed down machines that are taking instructions".

Trainspotting's success came in part he says at a time when people were willing to read more challenging, less formulaic books. And as the money rolled in, it gave him the freedom to write.

He's also a DJ and is releasing an album with the Sci-Fi Soul Orchestra to go with his new book. The disco tracks relate to the characters, the storyline and the "emotional landscape" of the novel.

Music is "fundamental" to his writing and he's also "looking for that four-four beat all the time while I'm typing".

He builds a playlist in his head for every character and theme.

Renton's into Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Velvet Underground. Sick Boy also likes Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, New Order, he says.

The aggressive and violent Begbie likes "Rod Stewart and power ballads basically".

The singer recently told The Times that the public should give the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage a chance. I wondered if Irvine Welsh thinks that his Trainspotting characters would support that party if they were growing up now.

He pushes back, telling me the Scottish working classes "still have a radical kind of spirit. They're not really there to be the stooge of some public school idiot".

Although later he adds "people are so desperate that they'll go along with anybody who has that rhetoric of change".

Welsh has always been political and, as we walk around the area where he grew up, he describes how Margaret Thatcher ended centuries of shipbuilding in Leith "at a stroke". Five thousand dockers became none, he says.

Trainspotting also resonated, he thinks, because it "heralded the adjustment to people living in a world without paid work. And now we're all in that position".

His argument is that Britain's class system is changing "because of this massive concentration of wealth towards the wealthy".

The working classes already have no money and now the middle classes are being pulled into more and more debt too and are less able to pass on their assets which makes life increasingly insecure.

"We're all members of the Precariat, basically. We don't know how long we'll have paid work if we do have it, and we just don't know how long this will last because our economy, our society is in a long-form revolutionary transformation."

In my time in Welsh's company, we haven't just toured Leith, I've had an insight into his brain, exploding with opinions on everything from our dystopian future, to why the best music was made in the analogue era and even to what would happen if he were offered a knighthood (it's a no, by the way).

When our time's up, he heads into the bar at the Dockers' Club to see a friend he first met at primary school 60 years ago. His old pal jokes to me that he's a plumber while Welsh is a millionaire author. You can see the affection between them.

Trainspotting may have changed Welsh's life entirely. But he's still plugged into the community that shaped him, and the Leith that he turned so spectacularly into fiction.

Men in Love is published on 24 July 2025

There will be no immediate changes to cash Individual Savings Accounts (Isas), the BBC understands.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves was widely expected to announce plans to reduce the £20,000 tax-free allowance.

The move was aimed at encouraging more investment in stocks and shares, which the goverment says it will still focus on.

"Our ambition is to ensure people's hard-earned savings are delivering the best returns and driving more investment into the UK economy," a Treasury spokesperson said.

The Treasury is expected to continue to talk to banks, building societies and investment firms about options for reform.

An Isa is a savings or investment product that is treated differently for tax purposes.

Any returns you make from an Isa are tax-free, but there is a limit to how much money you can put in each year.

The current £20,000 annual allowance can be used in one account or spread across multiple Isa products as you wish.

Millions of people are facing restrictions on water use as the UK's first regional hosepipe ban of 2025 comes into force. Despite Yorkshire Water saying it has cut leakage by 15% in recent years, bill payers say they are frustrated at the number of leaks which appear to go unchecked.

"It's literally going out of that hole and straight into a drain," said Neela Patel.

The business owner said water has been pouring along Greasbrough Road, in Rotherham, for two weeks.

"They've put a few cones up but I've not seen much work done so we're not sure what's going on.

"We just want it resolved, they've put a hosepipe ban on and it's just flowing out of there."

Fellow shop owner John Smallwood said everyone in the area had reported it, calling it "ridiculous" to impose restrictions on customers while water was being wasted in this way.

"They came and stopped the traffic, caused a lot of havoc and not been back," he said.

"It's just a tonne of water going down the drain."

The hosepipe ban applies to customers across much of Yorkshire, parts of North Lincolnshire and parts of Derbyshire.

It prohibits the use of a hosepipe for activities such as watering the garden, washing the car or filling a paddling pool. Anyone flouting the restriction could be fined up to £1,000.

Dean Majors, a massage therapist from Skipton, North Yorkshire, said he had reported a leak outside his home on Canal Street at the end of June.

He said water had been pooling outside his house, with some passing down a drain and through an overflow pipe into the nearby canal.

"It just got worse and worse and every time any traffic came through, water just splashed down the overflow."

Mr Majors also reported a leak outside his business, The Backcave, last May, with the residual water so deep that he floated rubber ducks on it.

He said the leak outside his home was fixed on Thursday, joking that the company had remembered his duck stunt.

Carol Lilleker, from Laughton-en-le-Morthen, near Dinnington in South Yorkshire, said water has been leaking from beneath a manhole cover in the village since 27 June.

She said despite several calls to Yorkshire Water it has not been repaired and "thousands of gallons of water" must have been lost.

"We reported it. Our neighbours across the road reported it. The school's reported it. Several other people have reported it," she said.

"We're going to have a hosepipe ban on Friday, which is understandable - we can understand the reasons why that's going to happen - but it's a bit much when thousands and thousands of gallons of water are flowing past our houses and nobody seems to be doing anything."

In West Yorkshire, Kevin Baker said he had noticed a significant leak on Green Hill Road, in Armley, Leeds, six weeks ago.

"They came along, put traffic lights on, dug a hole, scratched their heads and went away and it's been pouring out ever since."

He said having passed it on Thursday he noticed a digger was there and hoped that meant it was finally being dealt with.

Having had a leak at his homes that Yorkshire Water charged him for, he said it was incredibly frustrating.

"It just felt like no action was taken on top of the frustration that they can charge me an exorbitant amount of money for what was a very small leak on my system."

Yorkshire Water said it understood how "frustrating leaks are" for its customers.

"Leakage is the lowest it has ever been in Yorkshire, and it's something that we work on all year round," a spokesperson said.

"We reduced leakage by 15% over the last five years, and will be spending £38m over the next five years to continue bringing the number of leaks down."

It said it had dedicated more resources to reducing leaks and had recruited 100 extra leakage inspectors to "help us find and fix leaks faster".

It said its team fix on average 334 leaks every week and prioritise those losing the most water.

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

When she started in vitro fertilisation (IVF) last November, Kim Mi-ae knew it would be a gruelling test of patience - something she had already endured when she conceived her first child three years ago.

But what shocked her this time around were the "crazy" waits at the fertility clinic.

"When I went in January, it felt like everyone had made a New Year's resolution to have a baby! Even with a reservation, I waited over three hours," says the 36-year-old Seoul resident.

While South Korea continues to struggle with the world's lowest birth rates, fertility clinics are in growing demand - a bright spot in the country's demographic crisis.

Between 2018 and 2022, the number of fertility treatments carried out in the country rose nearly 50% to 200,000. Last year, one in six babies in Seoul were born with the help of fertility treatment.

Underpinning the boom, experts say, is a shift in attitudes about family planning.

"We have a young generation… that is used to being in control of its life," says Sarah Harper CBE, professor in Gerontology at the University of Oxford. That control, she adds, may come in the form of single women freezing their eggs or couples trying IVF when they can't conceive.

"Whereas in previous generations there was a greater acceptance that whether you conceive or not can be a bit haphazard, now we have Korean women saying, 'I want to plan my life.'"

This is good news for South Korea's government, which is trying to lift the country out of a demographic crisis. One in five people in South Korea are now aged 65 or above. As a proportion of the country's total population, there have never been fewer babies.

The country has repeatedly broken its own record for having the world's lowest birth rate: 0.98 babies per woman in 2018, 0.84 in 2020 and 0.72 in 2023. If this trend continues, experts warn the population of 50 million could halve in 60 years.

But recently there is reason for cautious optimism: instead of another record low, South Korea's birth rate rose slightly to 0.75 in 2024 - its first increase in nine years.

"It's a small bump, but still a meaningful one," says Seulki Choi, a professor at the Korea Development Institute's School of Public Policy and Management.

It is too early to tell whether this is the start of a much-needed reversal or just a blip. The country's birth rate remains far below the global average of 2.2. But many like Dr Choi are cautiously optimistic.

"If this trend holds, it could signal a longer-term shift," says Dr Choi. "We need to watch how young people's attitudes toward marriage and parenthood are changing."

A baby bump

For years, having children was the last thing on Park Soo-in's mind. She was mostly busy at work, often only clocking off from her advertising job at 04:00.

"I was in a company with endless overtime, so it wasn't even something I could realistically consider," says the 35-year-old.

Things started to change after she got married two years ago. She landed a new job with better hours - and friends around her started having babies.

"Seeing and interacting with their kids made it feel less overwhelming," she said. "And watching my husband take initiative, doing research on pregnancy and childbirth and showing real effort, gave me confidence that we could do this."

When Ms Park and her husband had trouble conceiving, they looked to fertility treatments. Many others are doing the same, fuelling projections that the burgeoning industry could be worth more than $2bn by 2030.

"This is actually an important signal for policymakers that there are still some women who want to start families but are facing … barriers to doing so," says Jennifer Sciubba, president and CEO of the non-profit Population Reference Bureau in Washington, DC.

"More than anything, this is a sign that people are unable to fulfil their desires to have children."

Difficulty conceiving is just one barrier. At the heart of South Korea's population woes are a raft of social and financial pressures - from patriarchal norms that place most childcare responsibilities on women to long work hours and high education costs - which discourage many young people from having children.

For some, however, those dreams have merely been delayed. More than half of South Koreans say they want kids but can't afford them, according to a UN report. And by the time South Korean women have their first child, their average age is 33.6 - among the highest in the world.

"Looking back, it might have been better to start earlier," says Ms Park. "But realistically… now actually feels like the right time. In my late 20s, I just didn't have the financial capacity to think about marriage or kids."

The same goes for Ms Kim, who spent three years saving up for marriage and another four for a child.

"People spend their youth studying, job hunting, and spending money to prepare for life. And by the time they're ready to settle down, it's often late," she says. "But the later you wait, the harder it gets [to become pregnant], physically and emotionally."

Bumps in the road

For those who opt for IVF, the process of trying to conceive also becomes much more expensive.

"It's hard to say exactly how much IVF costs because it varies so much by person and cycle," says Ms Kim. "It's a huge and unpredictable expense that can really affect your finances."

As part of concerted efforts to boost its birth rate, South Korea's government has expanded its support for fertility treatments. Seoul now subsidises up to 2 million Korean won ($1,460; £1,100) for egg-freezing and 1.1 million won for each IVF treatment.

But even with government subsidies, Ms Kim says she spent more than 2 million won in January for IVF - mostly on out-of-pocket items that subsidies do not cover, such as supplements and additional tests.

And with less than half of IVF cycles ending in success, the costs can stack up quickly.

This has been the case for Jang Sae-ryeon in the southwestern Jeolla province. The 37-year-old started fertility treatment two years ago and has done five IVF cycles, each of which cost her around 1.5 million won.

"I wish things worked out after just one or two tries, but for most people, that's not the case," she says. "Without money, you simply can't move forward. That's the reality. And I think that's the most frustrating part."

Equally challenging, women say, are the workplace pressures they face when they commit to a demanding IVF schedule.

While South Korean companies offer several days of leave for fertility treatment, women say that in reality it is difficult to utilise them. Ms Kim says she underwent IVF for her first child without taking leave at all. Ms Jang, meanwhile, says her colleagues asked her to postpone her treatment.

"It made me feel like IVF and a full-time job just don't mix," says Ms Jang. "So I quit. But once I left, I struggled financially. That led to another cycle of quitting and job-hunting again."

Such financial and cultural pressures may have dampened many South Koreans' dreams of having children, but not Ms Jang's. She still gets teary when she recalls two pregnancies from early in her marriage - both of which ended in miscarriages.

"You know how they say when you have a child, you feel a love that's limitless?" she says. "I think having a child that resembles both of us and creating a family together is one of the greatest forms of happiness a person can feel."

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The UK economy shrank unexpectedly in May, according to latest official figures.

The economy shrank by 0.1%, the Office for National Statistics said, the second month in a row it has contracted.

Economists had expected GDP to grow by 0.1%.

The fall in economic output was mainly driven by a drop in production, the ONS said.

A surgeon banned from working for a private healthcare company, following an investigation into patient safety, continues to work in the NHS, the BBC understands.

Nuffield Health has stopped Marc Lamah from working in their hospitals, but he is still operating on patients for the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust.

An NHS patient left with a twisted bowel following an operation he carried out said he should never work again.

Mr Lamah did not respond to the BBC's request for comment sent via his employer.

In January the BBC revealed concerns had been raised about Mr Lamah's complication rate and that he was no longer practising at Nuffield Health's hospital in Brighton pending an investigation.

A former employee at the hospital told the BBC that internal data showed one third of Mr Lamah's patients had experienced a "moderate harm event", where, for instance, a patient had to be transferred to another hospital or re-admitted, over a 12-month period. The figure should be 5%, the BBC was told.

In a statement to the BBC, Nuffield Health said following an independent investigation, "we can confirm Mr Lamah's practicing privileges with Nuffield Health have been withdrawn.

"His conduct did not meet the standards of medical practice and governance we expect. Patient safety is our top priority, and we hold all consultants to the highest standards."

Mr Lamah continues to operate as a colorectal surgeon at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

The University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, told the BBC it had audited Mr Lamah's NHS data, which showed his outcomes were within the expected national range. The trust added that Nuffield's investigation had found "no concerns with regard to technical abilities, surgical practice or patient safety".

The trust is at the centre of a large police investigation, Operation Bramber, looking into at least 200 cases of alleged medical negligence.

Sussex Police is examining concerns about avoidable harm and cover-ups in the trust's neurosurgery and general surgery departments between 2015 and 2021.

The trust runs seven hospitals across East and West Sussex and is one of the largest organisations within the NHS, providing care to a population of almost two million people.

Sheryl Hunter says she has suffered "five years of hell" after an NHS operation carried out by Mr Lamah. She has to manually excavate her bowels and has needed several emergency admissions.

After suffering from endometriosis for a number of years, in 2019 doctors decided that Ms Hunter, a mother of one, needed an operation to ease her pain.

Mr Lamah decided the best approach was to remove a part of her large intestine, the colon, and connect it to her small intestine.

A few days after she was discharged, said Ms Hunter, "I felt something pop, and this very awful fluid was coming out of me".

She was rushed back to the Royal Sussex where they discovered the joint between the two intestines had torn, and "for 10 days it had been filling up my abdomen with bowel matter."

This is a known complication of this type of surgery, the BBC understands.

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Despite that problem being resolved, Ms Hunter continued to suffer extreme pain for several years, necessitating repeated visits to both her GP and the Royal Sussex hospital.

She said: "I have very little good days. By that, I mean I am curled up in a ball crying.

"When I try to go to the toilet, I scream on the toilet in tears because it is so painful to go, to open up my bowels. I have to manually do that, which means I have to wear gloves.

"The pain is very severe – it's in my stomach, it gets into my spine, down my legs, my arms."

Letters shared with the BBC by Ms Hunter show her GP wrote to Mr Lamah repeatedly requesting he see her again.

In January, 2023 the GP wrote that "we have written to you on multiple occasions to review her and discuss her options".

A few days later Mr Lamah replied to say he had not received any previous letters.

But almost 12 months later, in December 2023, the GP wrote another letter urging Mr Lamah to see her.

Ms Hunter told the BBC he was "begged" by colleagues to see her but "he refused".

Finally, in April 2024, she was seen by another consultant at a different hospital run by the same trust - the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath - when she found out what was causing her pain.

"The main problem is a 180 degree twist on the small bowel causing an internal hernia and twisting the anastomosis [the surgical joint]," said the discharge sheet given to Ms Hunter by the hospital after the procedure.

"When they did the reconnection [of the intestines], they put it on backwards," Sheryl said she was told.

"That [creates] a risk of rupture. If you rupture, it's a two-hour window before death.

"Had I not been manually opening my bowels for five years, they said that would have happened."

The trust said surgical error was only presented as one of a range of possibilities.

The BBC passed the details to an independent medical expert who said the twist "certainly is a consequence of the 2019 operation".

The trust said only a further operation would confirm if Mr Lamah had made an error or whether the twist had occurred naturally.

However, the damage is now more extensive than it would have been had Ms Hunter been treated earlier.

She has been told she will need pelvic reconstruction surgery before she can have another operation to try to fix her intestines. She is on a waiting list for the first procedure and has spoken to Sussex Police about her experience.

Former NHS colleagues have also raised concerns to the BBC about Mr Lamah, but he continues to practise at the Royal Sussex County Hospital.

"I think it's disgusting. That man shouldn't be allowed to touch any other patients," said Ms Hunter.

"I was told Marc Lamah has a terrible bedside manner, but he's a fantastic surgeon.

"Marc Lamar has a terrible bedside manner, and he's a terrible surgeon. He shouldn't be allowed to operate, as far as I'm concerned."

'Robust systems'

In a statement, Prof Katie Urch, chief medical officer for the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, told the BBC: "We can't publicly discuss an individual's care, but we absolutely understand the distress and difficulty anyone living with ongoing complex health issues can face.

"Our clinical teams are dedicated to understanding their patients' needs and providing the highest standard of care.

"Whilst no medical procedure can guarantee a successful outcome, our teams strive for the best possible results every day – and if we ever have cause to think we could have done more for a patient we have robust systems, including the routine use of independent experts, to help us learn and improve."

Follow BBC Sussex on Facebook, on X, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to southeasttoday@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp us on 08081 002250.

The home secretary has said the new "one in, one out" migrant scheme agreed with France on Thursday is "robust" enough to withstand potential legal challenges.

Yvette Cooper said she had been in close contact with European governments which have expressed concerns about the deal, saying that the European Union had been "very supportive and helpful".

She told BBC Breakfast the government had done "a lot of work to make sure that the system is robust to legal challenges", which stymied the previous government's efforts to deport some illegal migrants to Rwanda.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp described the plan to return an expected 50 migrants a week to France as a "gimmick".

Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron signed a deal on Thursday which will see the UK return migrants who arrive in small boats back to France.

The scheme - which will initially run as a pilot - proposes that for each migrant the UK returns, Britain will accept another who has made a legal claim in France, which both countries say will act as a deterrent.

Cooper would not be drawn on how many migrants would be exchanged under the deal, though it is expected the pilot will involve around 50 people a week.

She said the government would "provide updates" on figures as the pilot progressed.

The home secretary said the pilot scheme would be accompanied by a plan to target those working illegally in the UK, which she said was a pull factor driving small boat crossings.

Asked what would happen if a migrant who is returned to France attempts to cross the Channel a second time, she said they would be "returned again" and banned from the UK asylum system.

Philp dismissed the plan as "another gimmick" that will allow the majority of illegal migrants to remain in the UK, and said Labour's pledge to "smash the gangs" had not worked.

He said the Rwanda scheme originally proposed by Boris Johnson would have seen "100% of illegal arrivals being removed" and described Sir Keir's decision to axe the plan as a "catastrophic" mistake.

Cooper said only four migrants had ever been sent to Rwanda and on a voluntary basis, and described the previous government's approach to migration as "chaos".

Since 2018, when figures began to be gathered, more than 170,000 people have arrived in the UK in small boats.

Numbers this year have reached record levels with nearly 20,000 arriving in the first six months of 2025.

On Thursday, Macron said the scheme would have a "deterrent effect" beyond the numbers returned, and suggested Brexit had made it harder for the UK to tackle illegal migration.