The UK government set up a secret Afghan relocation scheme after the personal data of thousands of people was inadvertently leaked, it can be revealed.

A dataset containing the details of nearly 19,000 people who applied to move to the UK following the Taliban takeover of the country was released in error by a British defence official in February 2022.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) learned of the breach in August 2023 when some details were anonymously posted on Facebook.

Nearly 9,000 Afghans have arrived in the UK or are en route via the previously secret scheme, which is estimated to have cost £850m.

The existence of this confidential Afghan Response Route, which was established in April 2024, was kept confidential by an injunction but can now be reported following a High Court ruling on Tuesday.

The MoD declined to say how many have been arrested or killed as a result of the data breach.

Defence secretary John Healey is expected to confirm further details in the House of Commons later on Tuesday.

The unauthorised data breach was committed by an unnamed individual at the MoD. The data related to Afghans who worked with international forces following the 2001 invasion of the country.

As US troops completed their withdrawal in August 2021, the UK government set up Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme, which was designed to rapidly process applications by people who feared reprisals from the Taliban and move them to the UK.

But it emerged on Tuesday that thousands of those who applied for that scheme had sensitive personal data leaked by a British official.

Arap has already been heavily criticised in the years since it was launched, with a 2022 inquiry by the Foreign Affairs Committee finding it was a "disaster" and a "betrayal".

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Some conservative members of Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement have reacted angrily to the president's plans to sell weapons to Nato, arguing it is a betrayal of his promise to end US involvement in foreign wars.

On Monday, Trump said he would send weapons to Ukraine via Nato, while also threatening Russia with more tariffs if a deal to end the war is not reached in 50 days.

Republican Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene, a key Trump ally, and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon are among those who have criticised the decision, with Bannon telling his podcast listeners that Ukraine is a "European war".

The White House has emphasised that Europe will pay for the US-made weapons.

In an interview with the New York Times, Greene - an isolationist member of Congress from Georgia who has been one of the most loyal Trump supporters on Capitol Hill - said the move was at odds with what she had promised voters on the campaign trail.

"It's not just Ukraine; it's all foreign wars in general and a lot of foreign aid," she said. "This is what we campaigned on. This is what I promised also to my district. This is what everybody voted for. And I believe we have to maintain the course."

• I'm 'disappointed but not done' with Putin, Trump tells BBC
• Trump unveils Ukraine weapons plan at White House

Trump sought to emphasise that the weapons would be paid for rather than given as direct aid, saying on Monday: "We're not buying it, but we will manufacture it, and they're going to be paying for it."

But in a rare public disagreement with the president, Greene expressed scepticism that US taxpayers would ultimately avoid bearing any cost and, in a post on social media, criticised "backdoor deals through Nato".

"Without a shadow of a doubt, our tax dollars are being used," she told the New York Times, arguing that indirect costs such as US training missions and contributions to Nato qualify as US involvement.

"I said it on every rally stage: no more money to Ukraine. We want peace. We just want peace for those people," she said. "And guess what? People haven't changed."

'We still hate it'

One former Trump campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to Politico, said Europe's purchase of the weapons "mitigates" the anger from Trump's isolationist supporters.

"But we still hate it," the official said. "This is not our war, and escalation isn't in America's interest."

Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Trump, said on his War Room podcast that "Ukraine is getting so dangerous".

"It's a European war. Let Europe deal with it," he said. "They have the resources. They have the manpower."

"We're about to arm people we have literally no control over," Bannon said of Ukraine. "This is old-fashioned, grinding war in the bloodlands of Europe - and we're being dragged into it."

In a statement quoted by Politico, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said that Trump's MAGA base "aren't panicans like the media".

"They trust in Trump, and they know that this president is restoring peace through strength."

The BBC has contacted the White House for comment.

A White House official who spoke to Politico on the condition of anonymity disagreed that the president's base opposed his moves. They pointed to one recent poll that suggested nearly two-thirds of Trump voters support continuing to send arms to Ukraine.

Officials in the Trump administration have also defended the president's decision, with Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby writing on X that Trump's "America First message is that our alliances have to be fair and equitable".

"This is eminently reasonable but was treated for many years as heresy," he added. "Yet now with the historic Nato commitment we see that it can work."

That recent commitment from Nato leaders to ramp up defence spending to 5% of their economic output was praised by Trump supporters on Monday, who argued that even with the new weapons deal Europe was taking on more responsibility for its defence.

And in an exclusive interview with the BBC on Monday, just hours after he met Nato chief Mark Rutte at the White House, Trump said the alliance was now "paying its own bills".

He affirmed his support for the organisation's common defence principle, and said he was "disappointed but not done" with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

The president said that he had thought a deal to end the war in Ukraine was on the cards with Russia four different times.

The Faroese prime minister says Shetland could boost growth and revitalise island life by following his country in replacing ageing ferries with undersea tunnels.

Shetland Islands Council says it is pushing ahead with plans to build tunnels to four outlying isles in the archipelago including Unst, the most northerly place in the UK.

"I think we have learned in the Faroe Islands that investment in infrastructure is a good investment," Aksel Johannesen told BBC News.

Shetland Islands Council says its multi-million pound project is likely to be funded by borrowing money and paying it back through tolls, potentially providing a new transport model for other Scottish islands.

Critics say politicians in Scotland have wasted years talking about tunnels while the Faroes, nearly 200 miles further out into the Atlantic, have actually built them.

"It is frustrating," says Anne Anderson of salmon producer Scottish Sea Farms, which employs nearly 700 people in Scotland, including just under 300 in Shetland.

The island chain produces a quarter of all Scottish salmon - the UK's most valuable food export with international sales of £844m in 2024.

"Ten years ago Scottish salmon used to have 10 per cent of the global market. Nowadays we're slipping ever closer to five per cent," adds Ms Anderson, who blames that slide, in part, on a lack of investment in public infrastructure .

She agrees that the UK should look to the Faroes for inspiration.

"Identify what works well for them and then just copy and paste and let's get moving," urges Ms Anderson.

They have been building tunnels in the Faroes since the 1960s.

The 18 islands which make up the self-governing nation under the sovereignty of Denmark are connected by 23 tunnels, four of which run below the sea.

More are under construction.

Most dramatic is a 7.1 mile (11.4km) tunnel which connects the island of Streymoy to two sides of a fjord on the island of Eysturoy.

It includes the world's only undersea roundabout.

At its deepest point it is 187m (614ft) below the waves and has halved the driving time between the capital Tórshavn and the second biggest town, Klaksvik.

Speaking in his grass-roofed office looking out over a busy harbour in Tórshavn, Johannesen says tunnels helped to grow the population and the economy of the archipelago, which is home to some 54,000 people, in contrast to Shetland's 23,000.

"It's about ambition," says tunnel builder Andy Sloan, whose company worked on part of the Faroese tunnel project.

He adds the islands have led the world "in connecting an archipelago in the middle of the North Atlantic through blood, sweat and tears – and focus.

"They have delivered a remarkable piece of infrastructure," says Mr Sloan, who is executive vice-president of engineering firm COWI.

It is now advising Shetland Islands Council on the technicalities and financing of tunnels.

The Faroese tunnels were constructed using a technique known as drill and blast – where holes are drilled in rock, explosives are dropped in, and the rubble is then cleared away – which Mr Sloan says could also be used in Scotland.

"Without doubt, Shetland can copy what has been achieved in these islands," he adds.

Prof Erika Anne Hayfield, dean of the Faculty of History and Social Sciences at the University of the Faroe Islands, says the tunnels have delivered significant benefits.

"People can live and thrive in smaller settlements," while still participating fully in island life and commuting to "the central labour market" in Tórshavn, she explains.

"In the long term, in terms of demography, social sustainability, a lot of people on islands believe that it is necessary," adds Prof Hayfield.

But she said the costs of some tunnels had been controversial, with some Faroese arguing that they are being built at the expense of investing in schools and hospitals.

Shetland's main town, Lerwick, may be closer to Tórshavn than it is to Edinburgh – and closer to Copenhagen than London – but advocates of tunnels insist the islands are not a remote backwater but an advanced economy constrained by poor infrastructure.

The archipelago of 100 islands at the confluence of the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean boasts the UK's only spaceport and a thriving fishing industry.

"We land more fish in Shetland than we do in the whole of England, Northern Ireland and Wales," says council leader Emma Macdonald.

"Tunnels could be incredibly transformational," she continues.

Macdonald adds: "We're really excited about the opportunity."

The 20th Century oil and gas boom brought Shetland riches but the islands have since embraced the shift to renewable energy and are home to the UK's most productive onshore wind farm.

"Shetland's really integral to Scotland and to the wider UK," says Macdonald.

The council has authorised a £990,000 feasibility study into building tunnels to four islands – Unst, Yell, Bressay and Whalsay.

It has not yet published an estimated cost for construction.

"Tunnels would really open up this island for businesses," says Elizabeth Johnson, external affairs manager of Saxavord Spaceport on Unst.

She adds that they would "enhance the economic viability of the island".

But with neither the Scottish nor UK governments volunteering to pay for Shetland's tunnels, the Faroese funding model of borrowing paid back by tolls looks likely to be adopted.

"I think people recognise that there is probably a need for tolling and I think people understand that," says Macdonald.

She adds: "They already have to pay to go on the ferries."

At present the council runs ferry services to nine islands, carrying around 750,000 passengers each year on 12 vessels at a cost of £23m per year.

The average age of the fleet is 31.5 years, costs have risen sharply in the past decade, and some routes are struggling to meet demand for vehicle places.

Hebridean and Clyde ferries, off the west of Scotland, run by Scottish government-owned Caledonian MacBrayne, are also ageing and have been beset by problems.

Mr Sloan says tunnels could provide more robust transport links for the west coast as well as the Northern Isles.

"Quite frankly, it can be repeated in Shetland, and not just Shetland, possibly elsewhere in Scotland."

Mr Sloan agrees that tolls are the most feasible funding option.

Tolls were abolished on the Skye Bridge in 2004 after a long-running campaign of non payment, and were scrapped on the Forth and Tay road bridges in 2008.

But Ms Johnson, of the Saxavord Spaceport, reckons Shetlanders would be happy to pay their way.

"I don't think anybody that I've spoken to would be against tolls," she says.

Although there is no organised opposition to tunnels in Shetland some locals do express concern about whether they would change what it means to be an island.

Pat Burns runs the northernmost shop in the British Isles, The Final Checkout on Unst.

She was not convinced about tunnels at first, fearing that they would alter the nature of island life.

"I like the challenges of trying to get from A to B," she explains.

However after years of worrying about bad weather interrupting supplies for her shop and seeing tourists turned away because ferries are full, she has changed her mind.

"I was a wee bit iffy-iffy about it before," she says, "but now I realise that if Unst doesn't get a tunnel, the challenge is going to be too big."

Donald Trump makes a habit of calling reporters out of the blue. The US president seems to prefer an off-the-cuff telephone conversation to a sit-down interview on camera.

On Monday evening it was my turn. And I'll be frank with you - I was asleep when the White House rang.

I'd spent the best part of five days believing there was an outside chance I would get an interview with him, to mark a year since the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania.

My reporting from that shooting had made global headlines and probably caught the president's attention. So I judged that perhaps that connection might be a way of securing a presidential interview - pretty rare things for foreign news organisations in the US.

On Sunday night I was told I was minutes away from the call so my team and I were standing by ready to record, but it didn't come.

By last night, I'd given up on the interview happening and after a long few weeks on the road without a day off, I was exhausted and taking a nap. Then the phone rang.

I blearily answered, and the voice of Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt came over the speaker: "Hi Gary, I'm here with the president, here you go."

I dashed into my living room, scrambling for my digital recorder; the line dropped and I thought I'd lost it. But they came back on the line and I spent almost 20 minutes speaking to Trump about everything from that fateful night in Butler, to his frustrations with Vladimir Putin, to his new-found belief in Nato and to his view of the UK.

Here are my five key takeaways from our surprise conversation.

1. Trump shows a different side, touching on Butler

He was very reflective on a couple of things and he sounded pretty vulnerable talking about the assassination attempt - it's clear he's uncomfortable talking about that.

For a president often seen in public shooting from the hip, and loved by his supporters for doing so, there were moments of reflection and some long pauses before answers that are rarely seen.

When asked if the assassination attempt had changed him, the president conveyed a hint of vulnerability as he said he tries to think about it as little as he can.

"I don't like dwelling on it because if I did, it would be, you know, might be life-changing, I don't want it to have to be that."

Elaborating, he said he liked "the power of positive thinking, or the power of positive non-thinking".

There was also a very long pause when I asked him if he trusted Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Eventually he replied: "I trust almost nobody to be honest with you."

• I'm 'disappointed but not done' with Putin, Trump says

2. No commitment to US deportation numbers

Turning to domestic American politics, I asked whether the president's plan for mass deportations was working - both in terms of speed, and given that some individuals were being swept up who the president perhaps wouldn't want to see deported.

The president insisted his team had done a "great job" at fulfilling his campaign promises, citing the drastic decrease in migrants crossing into the US from southern neighbour Mexico.

Some of Trump's team have expressed frustration that deportations are being carried out too slowly. When I pushed him on the question of how many deportations in this second presidential term would mark a success, Trump refused to give a figure.

"Well I don't put a number on but I want to get the criminals out quickly, and we're doing that, as you know," he said. "We're bringing them to El Salvador, lots of other places."

3. More frustration with Putin

Trump expressed his frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin - capping off a day in which he threatened to hit Moscow's economy with secondary sanctions if a deal over the war in Ukraine was not reached within 50 days.

Having campaigned on a promise to quickly end the war, Trump seemed perplexed that he had not yet managed to strike an agreement with his Russian counterpart to end the years-long conflict.

He again indicated there was a gap between words and actions on Putin's part: "I thought we had a deal done four times and then you go home, and you see, just attacked a nursing home or something in Kyiv. I said: 'What the hell was that all about?'"

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders have long accused Putin of not being serious about ending the war. To them, feelings of doubt will be nothing new.

But, when I asked Trump whether he had finished with the Russian leader, he continued to leave the door open: "I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed in him."

• Trump weapons pledge marks major step forward for Ukraine
• Rosenberg: Russia more relieved than rattled by US threat

4. New tone on Nato

I pointed out to Trump that he once suggested Nato was obsolete, and he replied that he now thought the Western military alliance was "becoming the opposite of that".

He was fresh from hosting Nato chief Mark Rutte - a man he seems to be able to work well with. The pair exchanged warm words in front of the world's cameras, and announced that the US would sell weapons to Nato which would then be passed on to Kyiv.

During our call, Trump indicated that he was shaking off his grudge that his country spent proportionately more on defence than its allies.

"It was very unfair because the United States paid for almost a hundred percent of it, but now they're paying their own bills and I think that's much better," he said, appearing to refer to a pledge last month by Nato members to ramp up defence spending to 5% of each country's economic output.

"We changed Nato a lot," he told me.

5. Respect for Starmer and UK

Trump emphasised his respect for the UK and its prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, with whom he last month signed an agreement to remove some trade barriers. "I really like the prime minister a lot, even though he's a liberal," Trump explained.

Trump emphasised that the relationship between the two countries was just as "special" as many Britons like to believe, adding that he believed the UK would fight alongside the US in a war.

He sounded relaxed over perceived slights against him. Although his state visit to the UK later this year will not entail a speech to Parliament, he was not insistent that lawmakers be recalled. "Let them go and have a good time," he said.

Trump labelled his future host King Charles "a great gentleman". He shrugged off a recent speech that was given to Canada's parliament by the monarch that was seen as an endorsement of Canadian sovereignty in the face of Trump's threats.

He even had a joke. "You have many different names you go by," he said. "England, if you want to cut off a couple of areas. And you go UK, and you have Britain and you have Great Britain. You got more names than any other country in history, I think."

Former Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker has emerged as the BBC's top paid presenter for the eighth year running, the corporation's annual report shows.

Lineker earned between £1,350,000 - £1,354,99 in the last financial year, followed by former Radio 2 breakfast host Zoe Ball on £515,000 - £519,999.

Lineker's salary remained the same as last year's, while Zoe Ball's has dropped from the previous year's £950,000-£954,999, reflecting her departure from the Radio 2 breakfast show to take up a new role fronting Saturday afternoons on the station.

The report comes as the BBC confirmed that several members of staff have been dismissed following a review into the corporation's culture which was published in April.

Samir Shah, chairman of the BBC, acknowledged that over the past year, there had been a "string of revelations" about abuses of power in the workplace.

The comments came following a report on Monday which upheld 45 allegations about TV presenter Gregg Wallace's behaviour on BBC show MasterChef.

Later on Monday, Wallace's co-host John Torode said a separate allegation against him of using racist language had also been upheld, as part of the same inquiry.

Star salaries

As usual, the BBC's annual report does not paint the full picture of what star presenters at the BBC earn.

A huge number are not listed because the corporation does not have to make public the salaries of stars who are paid through its commercial arm BBC Studios or via independent production companies.

• The stars you won't see on the BBC salaries list

Lineker signed off from his final edition of Match of the Day in May after 26 years in the hot seat and officially left the BBC.

He had been due to remain with the BBC to front coverage of the men's FA Cup and the World Cup, but in the end, left the corporation completely after apologising for sharing a social media post that included an illustration considered antisemitic.

His salary is still included in the BBC's latest annual report as he's only just left, but next year he will no longer be included.

Zoe Ball hosted her final Radio 2 breakfast show in December after six years in the slot, and earlier this year took up her new Saturday afternoon role.

Elsewhere, director general Tim Davie's salary has gone up by £20k from last year (£527) to £547k, representing a 3.8% pay rise.

The BBC's licence fee is set by the culture secretary Lisa Nandy.

This year income generated by the licence fee increased from £3.7 to £3.8bn after inflation.

The report stated there was a drop in the number of households paying for the licence fee, from 23,131,000 in 2024 to 22,772,000 in 2025 - a drop of 359,000.

This represents a decline of 1.56%, compared with last year's figure of 1.26%.

That number is holding up fairly well, declining less quickly than might be expected given the competition from streaming services.

The report also revealed 50% of UK adults think the BBC is effective at providing news and current affairs that is impartial, an uptick of 5% on last year's 45% of those surveyed.

A further 63% of UK adults think the BBC is effective at providing news and current affairs is accurate, compared to last year's 59%.

The number of adults using BBC services weekly last year declined slightly from 75% to 74%, though 70% of under 16s use BBC services including TV, iPlayer, radio and online content on a weekly basis.

Of those platforms, iPlayer is the fastest growing platform for long-form content.

The report also showed that 10 out of 10 of Christmas Day top shows were from the BBC - but that includes King's speech which is also broadcast on other channels.

The BBC's annual report comes in the wake of a series of controversies faced by the corporation. As well as Masterchef, they include Glastonbury and the decision to broadcast Bob Vylan's set.

Earlier this year, a documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, was pulled from iPlayer after it emerged its 13-year-old narrator was the son of a Hamas official.

On Monday, a report concluded the documentary breached editorial guidelines on accuracy.

It stated the BBC bears "some responsibility" for "not being sufficiently proactive" in the early stages of the project, and for a "lack of critical oversight of unanswered or partially answered questions" - although the the party with most responsibility for this failure".

The UK government set up a secret Afghan relocation scheme after the personal data of thousands of people was inadvertently leaked, it can be revealed.

A dataset containing the details of nearly 19,000 people who applied to move to the UK following the Taliban takeover of the country was released in error by a British defence official in February 2022.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) learned of the breach in August 2023 when some details were anonymously posted on Facebook.

Nearly 9,000 Afghans have arrived in the UK or are en route via the previously secret scheme, which is estimated to have cost £850m.

The existence of this confidential Afghan Response Route, which was established in April 2024, was kept confidential by an injunction but can now be reported following a High Court ruling on Tuesday.

The MoD declined to say how many have been arrested or killed as a result of the data breach.

Defence secretary John Healey is expected to confirm further details in the House of Commons later on Tuesday.

The unauthorised data breach was committed by an unnamed individual at the MoD. The data related to Afghans who worked with international forces following the 2001 invasion of the country.

As US troops completed their withdrawal in August 2021, the UK government set up Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme, which was designed to rapidly process applications by people who feared reprisals from the Taliban and move them to the UK.

But it emerged on Tuesday that thousands of those who applied for that scheme had sensitive personal data leaked by a British official.

Arap has already been heavily criticised in the years since it was launched, with a 2022 inquiry by the Foreign Affairs Committee finding it was a "disaster" and a "betrayal".

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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More English regions are expected to join the North West and Yorkshire in an official drought on Tuesday after yet another hot and dry spell of weather.

The announcement is likely to come after the National Drought Group – which manages preparations for dry conditions in England – meets on Tuesday morning.

Declaring a drought means that water companies put in place their plans to manage water resources. That can involve hosepipe bans, but not always.

Droughts are driven by natural weather patterns, but climate change and our growing use of water are raising the risks of water shortages, the Environment Agency says.

The National Drought Group is made up of the Environment Agency, government, Met Office, water companies and others.

There are no official droughts in Wales and Northern Ireland at the moment. Scotland does not declare droughts but monitors "water scarcity".

Parts of eastern Scotland are in "moderate" scarcity – the second most extreme category – which means there is "clear" environmental impact.

In England there is no single definition of drought, but it is ultimately caused by a prolonged period of low rainfall, which has knock-on effects for nature, agriculture and water supplies.

England had its driest spring in more than 100 years, followed by three heatwaves in quick succession for some areas in June and July.

That intense warmth has drawn even more moisture out of the soil.

So while it may be raining where you live today, it's unlikely to be enough to bring water levels back to normal across the country.

The Environment Agency (EA) declares droughts in England based on reservoir levels, river flows and how dry the soil is, alongside long-term weather forecasts.

"We certainly expect more regions to enter drought status," said Richard Thompson, deputy director of water resources at the EA, adding that further details would be announced later on Tuesday.

In a "reasonable worst-case scenario" - where regions get 80% of their long-term average rainfall - another five regions across central and southern England could enter drought status by September, joining Yorkshire and the North West, according to the EA.

Current long-term forecasts suggest roughly normal levels of rainfall over the next few months, however.

If further droughts are declared, it does not automatically mean that hosepipe bans will be put in place, but these can often follow.

Some regions, such as parts of Kent and Sussex, have already declared hosepipe bans, but are not in drought status.

The EA warned last month that England's water supplies could face a shortfall of six billion litres a day by 2055 without dramatic action, driven by rising temperatures, population growth and other factors.

Climate change is expected to lead to drier summers on average, while more intense heatwaves mean more water can be lost via evaporation.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC's Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

Savers with cash in low-interest accounts will be blitzed with offers to invest their money instead, under government plans.

Banks will send savers details of stocks and shares investments and there will be an advertising campaign to raise awareness, the Treasury said.

In a series of proposals by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, a scheme that encourages the provision of low-deposit mortgages will also be made permanent.

Reeves is delivering two major speeches on Tuesday, as the government and chancellor aim to rebound from bruising blows on welfare and the winter fuel U-turn.

"We need to double down on our global strengths to put the UK ahead in the global race for financial businesses, creating good skilled jobs in every part of the country and helping savers' money go further," said Reeves, ahead of her Mansion House speech to City leaders.

The Treasury had already shelved any immediate plans to make changes to cash Individual Savings Accounts (Isas).

Savers can put up to £20,000 a year in Isas in savings and investments, to protect the returns from being taxed.

However, there is a plan in the Treasury to encourage people to invest for better returns, which would also boost growth in the UK economy.

But the value of investments can go down as well as up, and savers have tended to be cautious over the risks involved. In the newly-announced Treasury proposals, there is a potential for some of the warnings to be watered down.

The Treasury said there would be a "review of risk warnings on investment products to make sure they help people to accurately judge risk levels".

The move is part of reforms designed to boost financial services in the UK, known as the Leeds Reforms.

However, there may be concern that encouraging letters and messages from banks to encourage investing might be seized upon by fraudsters who could also send fake investment claims to new investors.

Mortgage backstop

In a speech in Leeds, the chancellor said she wanted to boost investment, and also help first-time buyers.

For some time, banks and building have had a backstop from the government to ensure they continue to give low-deposit mortgages to first-time buyers.

The chancellor said that scheme will be made permanent, a promise made in the Labour manifesto.

This comes after the Bank of England announced a looser cap on riskier mortgage lending, which the government says could help 36,000 more people buy a home over its first year.

If you live in north-west England or Yorkshire, you are already in an official state of drought, the Environment Agency says, and people living in other English regions could follow if the dry weather continues.

Those of us in eastern Scotland or parts of Wales are also seeing low water levels, according to water companies there.

Drought can affect different aspects of our lives and the environment. It can make it harder for farmers to grow crops, do harm to nature and mean you have to change how you use water.

So how is your area doing and how close are you to a drought? Here's a look at what's happening around the country, including our rain, rivers and reservoirs.

One of the driest springs on record

There is no single definition of drought or water scarcity - the measure in Scotland - but a long period of low rainfall is needed.

And it rained less than normal across almost all of the UK between March and May, the UK's sixth driest spring since records began in 1836.

So there has been less moisture to top up our rivers, reservoirs and rocks below the ground.

If that lack of rainfall continues for a long time, it can strain the water supplies that serve our homes and businesses.

In June there was slightly more rainfall than average for the UK overall, but with a big difference between east and west.

Parts of Northern Ireland, western Scotland, Wales and south-west England saw wetter conditions than usual. But most of central and eastern England and Scotland saw dry weather continuing.

Long-term forecasts suggest drier than average conditions through much of July and possibly August too.

That would further increase the risk of drought.

Drier rivers for most of the UK

Monitors in rivers show us how they are flowing. At the end of May these river flows were below normal for about three-quarters of monitored sites around the UK.

About one in five experienced "exceptionally low" flows.

Provisional June data doesn't look much better.

River flows at the end of last month were about the same as - or even below - previous drought years of 1976, 2011, 2018 and 2022 for many eastern, central and southern regions, said Lucy Barker, hydrologist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

Exceptionally low reservoirs in north England

Reservoirs are a crucial part of water supplies in northern England, Scotland and Wales.

At the end of May, England's reservoirs were at their lowest combined levels for the time of year in records going back more than 30 years.

Reservoir levels in the North East and North West were exceptionally low - an important factor for drought being declared in Yorkshire and the North West.

The main reason for this is, of course, the lack of rain, but a small number reservoirs can be affected by other factors.

Normally at this time of year, Scottish reservoirs are 85% full. Last week they were at 79%, according to Scottish Water. They are even lower in eastern Scotland.

In Wales, most are around normal, although the reservoirs serving Mid and South Ceredigion in west Wales are below average, Welsh Water said.

Reservoir levels are about average in Northern Ireland, according to NI Water.

A more mixed picture underground

Much of south-east England relies more heavily on groundwater than reservoirs.

Groundwater originates as rainfall and is naturally stored beneath the surface in the pore spaces and fractures in rocks. Rocks that store lots of groundwater are called aquifers.

It accounts for a third of England's water supply, though this is much higher in the south and east.

That is down to the UK's varied geology, which affects how much water can be stored in the ground.

Water can flow more quickly through some rock types than others, sometimes taking years to respond to current conditions.

This is the case for parts of south and east England, which is why these regions are currently closer to normal.

These groundwater stores "respond more slowly to changes in the climate than rivers which is why they provide a useful buffer during periods of drought," said Prof Alan MacDonald of the British Geological Survey.

It is why groundwater droughts in the South generally take a longer time to develop but can be longer-lasting if they do occur.

What are the consequences of the dry weather?

People and nature are already feeling the effects.

"It's quite shocking that we are still only [in early] July," Rachel Hallos, deputy director of the National Farmers' Union, told BBC News.

"It's like it's the end of August when you look at the ground."

With this little rain, farmers have had to get water onto their crops using irrigation.

That has made things more expensive for them and means there is even less water to go around.

There is widespread concern about the months ahead, Mrs Hallos added.

"What am I going to have to harvest? What am I going to have to feed my livestock over winter?"

And then there is the impact on wildlife.

A spokesman from the bird protection charity RSPB said that a big challenge has been making sure enough water is getting to key wetland habitats so that birds have safe places to nest.

"We need to be thinking about making our sites more resilient to climate change, as these periods of prolonged dry weather become the norm."

And it's not just water-loving birds that are having a hard time. Even in our gardens, common visitors like blackbirds can struggle to find worms and insects on our parched lawns, the RSPB says.

Is climate change to blame?

Droughts are complex phenomena, driven by a mix of natural and human causes.

The Met Office expects the UK to experience drier summers on average in future as the world warms, though there has been no clear trend so far.

But rising temperatures can play a more fundamental role by sapping moisture from the soil via evaporation.

"A warmer atmosphere is thirstier for moisture and this can mean water in the soil, rivers and reservoirs are depleted more effectively, leading to more rapidly onsetting droughts, heatwaves and wildfires," said Richard Allan, professor of climate science at the University of Reading.

But there are other factors that determine whether dry conditions lead to water shortages, including how we use water.

As part of plans to address water shortages, the government is planning nine new reservoirs for England by 2050, in addition to one under construction at Havant Thicket in Hampshire.

But the Environment Agency has warned that measures to tackle water leaks and control water demand - potentially including hosepipe bans and more smart meters - may be needed in England too.

Water companies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also said they were taking steps to secure future supplies.

Additional reporting by Dan Wainwright and Christine Jeavans

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Fauja Singh, a British-Indian man believed to be the world's oldest marathon runner, has died after being hit by a car in India at the age of 114.

Police say Singh was crossing a road in the village where he was born in Punjab when an unidentified vehicle hit him. Locals took him to hospital, where he died.

Singh, a global icon, set records by running marathons across multiple age categories, including when he was over 100. He began running at 89 and ran nine full marathons between 2000 and 2013, when he retired.

His running club and charity, Sikhs In The City, said its upcoming events in Ilford, east London, where he had lived since 1992, would be a celebration of his life and achievements.

The hit and run happened on Monday as the centenarian was walking in his birth village, Beas Pind, near Jalandhar.

"A search is under way, and the accused will be caught soon," said Harvinder Singh, a top district police officer.

As news of the death broke, tributes poured in.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him an "exceptional athlete with incredible determination".

Harmander Singh, Fauja Singh's coach at Sikhs In The City, confirmed his death in a statement posted to the running club.

The statement said: "It is with great sadness that we can confirm our icon of humanity and powerhouse of positivity Fauja Singh has passed away in India.

"His running club and charity Sikhs In The City will be devoting all of its events until the Fauja Singh Birthday Challenge on Sunday 29 March 2026 to celebrate his life of success and achievements.

"We will be doubling the efforts to raise funds to building the Fauja Singh Clubhouse on the route in Ilford where he used to train."

When the BBC met Singh in June in Beas Pind, he was agile and active, walking several miles every day.

"I still go for walks around the village to keep my legs strong. A person has to take care of his own body," he said.

A torchbearer for the 2012 London Olympics, Singh clocked several milestones during his running career, including reportedly becoming the first centenarian to complete a full marathon in 2011 in Toronto.

However, his claim of being the world's oldest marathon runner was not recognised by Guinness World Records as he could not show a birth certificate from 1911. The BBC reported at the time that Singh's British passport showed his date of birth as being 1 April 1911, and that he had a letter from the Queen congratulating him on his 100th birthday.

His trainer, Harmander Singh, said that birth certificates were not made in India at the time Singh was born.

Guinness World Records officials said they would have loved "to give him the record", but that they could only "accept official birth documents created in the year of the birth".

As a young boy growing up in Punjab, Singh was teased by people in his village as his legs were weak and he could not walk properly until the age of five.

"But the same boy, once mocked for his weakness, went on to make history," he told BBC Punjabi in June.

Before he turned 40, Singh, a farmer, had lived through the turbulence of both the World Wars and experienced the trauma of Partition.

"In my youth, I didn't even know the word 'marathon' existed," Singh told BBC Punjabi. "I never went to school, nor was I involved in any kind of sports. I was a farmer and spent most of my life in the fields."

He first took to running to cope with grief.

After the death of his wife Gian Kaur in the early 1990s, he moved to London to live with his eldest son Sukhjinder. But during a visit to India, he witnessed his younger son Kuldeep's death in an accident which left him devastated.

Overtaken by grief, Singh would spend hours sitting near the spot where his son had been cremated. Concerned villagers advised his family to take him back to the UK.

Back in Ilford in London, during one of his visits to the gurdwara, Singh met a group of elderly men who would go on runs together. He also met Harmander Singh, who would go on to become his coach.

"Had I not met Harmander Singh, I wouldn't have got into marathon running," he said in June.

Singh made his debut at the London Marathon in 2000, a month shy of turning 89. He participated through a Golden Bond entry - a system where charities pre-purchase a fixed number of spots for a fee. He chose to run for BLISS, a charity that supports premature infants. His tagline: "Oldest running for the youngest! May they live as long as him."

Singh says that before the run, he was told by event officials that he could only wear a patka (headgear worn by many Sikh boys and men) and not a turban.

"I refused to run without my turban. Eventually, the organisers allowed me to run with it, and for me, that's my biggest achievement," he said.

He finished the race in six hours and 54 minutes, marking the beginning of a remarkable journey.

By his third successive appearance at the London marathon, he had shaved off nine minutes from his previous best.

In 2003, at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon, he bettered his timing by an astonishing one hour and five minutes, completing the race in five hours and 40 minutes.

"I don't remember my timings; it is my coach, Harmander Singh, who keeps the record of all my timings. But whatever I have achieved is all because of his training, and I sincerely followed his schedule," Singh said in June.

"In London, he used to make me run uphill, and because of that, I kept on improving," he added. "Almost after every training session in London, I used to go to the gurdwara, where my diet was taken care of. Everyone there motivated me to run long distances."

Singh shot to international fame in 2003 when Adidas signed him for their Nothing Is Impossible advertising campaign which also featured legends such as Muhammad Ali.

In 2005, he was invited by the then Prime Minister of Pakistan to participate in the inaugural Lahore Marathon. A year later, in 2006, he received a special invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to visit Buckingham Palace.

Among the many mementos and certificates displayed at Singh's home in Punjab is a framed photograph of him with the Queen.

He continued to compete in marathons well into his 100s and earned the nickname "Turbaned Tornado". Most of his earnings from endorsements went directly to charitable foundations.

"I was the same Fauja Singh before I entered the world of running - but running gave my life a mission and brought me global recognition," he recalled.

In 2013, he participated in his last long-distance competitive race in Hong Kong, completing a 10km run in one hour, 32 minutes and 28 seconds.

He credited his health and longevity to a simple lifestyle and disciplined diet.

"Eating less, running more, and staying happy - that is the secret behind my longevity. This is my message to everyone," he said in June.

In his final years, Singh divided his time between India, where his younger son lives, and the UK.

When the BBC met him in June, he was hoping to visit London again soon to meet his family and coach.

British MP Preet Kaur Gill shared a photo of herself with him on X, writing: "A truly inspiring man. His discipline, simple living, and deep humility left a lasting mark on me."

Jas Athwal MP said Singh "inspired millions across the world". He wrote on X: "His spirit and legacy of resilience will run on forever."

Additional reporting by Pardeep Sharma

For the first time since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has pledged to make new weapons available to Ukraine.

Under a new deal, the US will sell weapons to Nato members who will then supply them to Kyiv as it battles Russia's invasion.

The president didn't give too many specifics about what he said was "billions of dollars' worth of military equipment". But when asked if the deal included Patriot air defence batteries and interceptor missiles, he replied "it's everything".

One European country has 17 Patriot systems and "a big portion" would soon be on the way to Ukraine, Trump said.

For Ukraine, a huge country that currently operates handful of batteries - perhaps as few as eight - this is a major step forward, giving Kyiv a chance to expand protection against Russian ballistic and cruise missiles.

Sitting beside the president, the Nato Secretary General, Mark Rutte, hinted at a bigger package.

"It's broader than Patriots," he said.

"It will mean that Ukraine can get its hands on really massive numbers of military equipment, both for air defence, but also missiles, ammunition..."

This is a significant moment.

Less than two weeks ago, there was horror in Kyiv at news that the Pentagon had suspended military shipments to Ukraine, including Patriots.

The decision-making surrounding that announcement remains unclear, but on Monday, Trump once again tried to make light if it, saying it had been made in the knowledge that this deal would be struck.

"We were pretty sure this was going to happen, so we did a little bit of a pause," the president said.

Now, thanks to some tortuous negotiations, many of them involving Rutte, the weapons can continue to flow without Washington picking up the tab.

"We're in for a lot of money," the president said, "and we just don't want to do it any more."

The deal is a personal triumph for Rutte, the "Trump whisperer", who has flattered and encouraged the president, in part by helping to secure a member-wide Nato commitment to spend 5% of GDP on defence.

As they sat side by side in the Oval Office, Rutte continued to flatter Trump, calling the latest deal "really big" and saying it was "totally logical" that European members of Nato pay for it.

A number of countries, he said, were lining up to participate, including the UK, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands.

"And this is only the first wave," he said. "There will be more."

In a separate and rather characteristic development, Trump threatened Moscow with a new deadline: if Vladimir Putin doesn't agree to a ceasefire deal in the next 50 days, Russia and its trading partners will be hit with 100% secondary tariffs.

• Trump threatens Russia with tariffs while unveiling new Ukraine weapons plan

It's a novel approach, which Kyiv and members of the US congress have been urging for some time: pressure Russia by targeting countries that continue to buy Russian oil and gas, like China and India.

Trump's move comes as the US Senate continues to work on a bill that would impose much stiffer sanctions.

The president said the Senate bill, which envisages 500% secondary tariffs, could be "very good" but added that it was "sort of meaningless after a while because at a certain point it doesn't matter".

As always, the precise details of the president's threat remain somewhat vague.

But whatever happens in the coming weeks and months, Monday felt like something of a turning point. A US president finally moving away from his perplexing faith in Vladimir Putin, while still giving the Russian leader time to come to the negotiating table.

It's definitely not a return to Joe Biden's pledges to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes," but nor is it quite the neutral stance that has infuriated Ukraine and its western allies.

Trump appears to have guaranteed that the all-important US weapons pipeline to Ukraine will remain open for now – provided others pay for it.

But 50 days will feel like a very long time to Ukrainians, who are on the receiving end of near-nightly drone and missile bombardment.

Nothing Trump has done seems likely to put an immediate stop to this.

Adam Carruthers and Daniel Graham are being sentenced later for cutting down the Sycamore Gap tree on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland. Who are they? And, given they have never admitted causing the destruction that shocked the world, what might have possessed them to do it?

• Live: Pair to be sentenced for felling Sycamore Gap tree

Many people who knew the pair spoke to the BBC, but most requested anonymity.

Among them were neighbours in the quiet street in Carlisle where 39-year-old Daniel Graham grew up. They remember him as an "average kid" before his parents' separation - describing that as an event which "sent him off the rails."

His dad Michael took his own life in 2021, something Graham spoke about while giving evidence in court in relation to his struggles with poor mental health.

He was estranged from many members of his family, with one saying he would "fly off the handle at anything".

For the last decade Graham lived and worked on a patch of land on the outskirts of Kirkandrews-upon-Eden, just outside Carlisle.

He called it Millbeck Stables and ran his company, DM Graham Groundworks, from the site on a secluded lane, nestled among large country homes.

Journalist Kevin Donald described the plot as "a strange little shanty".

"It's got a caravan, horses on the land and pillars at the entrance with lions on the top," he said.

'An odd-bod'

Graham erected a series of buildings, a stable block, horse shelter and storage unit, gaining planning permission for some of them.

He lived on site in a static caravan, largely hidden behind big metal gates which included his initials.

Harold Bowron, chairman of the village's Parish Hall Committee, said Graham was "a man of mystery, a bit of an odd-bod".

"There were these black gates and then a tall fence all round the site with black plastic sheeting so you couldn't see in, but there were lights on all night.

"His lorry is still there. You can see in now because all the plastic has come down."

A planning application for Graham to be allowed to live on the site was rejected in April 2023, five months before the Sycamore Gap tree was cut down.

He had not been paying council tax and among the comments on the application was a claim he had displayed "dominant and oppressive" behaviour.

"When news came out he'd been arrested, we weren't surprised," Mr Bowron said.

"Everyone was saying 'oh yes that strange bloke'."

In court, the jury heard that tree felling was part of Graham's business and he owned three or four chainsaws.

Adam Carruthers helped him with that work, and the court was told the pair were close friends.

Carruthers grew up in Wigton, a market town in Cumbria with a history stretching back to medieval times.

His parents still live there and town councillor Chris Scott described it as a place where families put down roots and stay for generations.

Scott did not know Carruthers personally, but runs a social media site for the town and remembers a "curious silence" when he was arrested.

"People weren't discussing it all, which surprised me because it was such a big story at the time."

A childhood friend of Carruthers said he was "a bit of an outcast" but also the last person he would expect to have been involved in the felling of the tree.

His arrest was "the talk" of their school friendship group.

"Growing up we were the good kids," the friend said. "We couldn't get our heads around it. You would never ever think he would do something like that."

Carruthers went to Nelson Thomlinson School where another fellow pupil described him as a "bit of a loner".

"He always kept to himself and in classes he wouldn't talk. Teachers would try and get him to talk, and fail."

At the time of his arrest in October 2023, Carruthers had recently become a father for the second time and was living in a caravan with his partner at Kirkbride Airfield.

Graham and Carruthers met in 2021 when the latter, who was a mechanic, repaired a Land Rover belonging to Graham's father so it could be used for his funeral.

Graham called Carruthers his "best pal" and paid him to help him on jobs, splitting the cash evenly.

But their friendship splintered as the trial unfolded, with Graham blaming Carruthers who, in turn, said he had no idea who did it.

In the absence of any declared motive, could interactions between the pair hold clues to what drove them to take a chainsaw to one of the most beloved trees in the UK?

After the felling, they exchanged messages talking about the scale of the reporting of the story.

In one voicenote, Daniel Graham exclaimed: "It's gone viral, it is worldwide."

Newcastle University's Bethany Usher, who specialises in crime journalism, is among those who believe the pair were craving attention.

"Social media has completely changed the way we view ourselves, taking video of ourselves doing things is so part of our lived experience," she said.

"What became clear from the trial is that they enjoyed the attention they got worldwide.

"It's like they were saying 'I'm someone, I have got the attention of people', and they forgot that what they were doing was providing evidence for the police.

"The truth is they knew the tree was special, but they were trying to show they counted more."

'Pleasure in grief'

Dr Philip Stone from the University of Lancashire, who studies dark tourism where visitors travel to sites of death, brutality and terror, said the pair may have "enjoyed watching the distress they had caused from such spiteful, wanton ecological vandalism".

"To use the German psychology phrase schadenfreude, some people take a pleasure in other's people's misfortune and getting a sense of perverted pleasure from the response from that.

"It is as though they are thinking 'Yeh, I'm going to get my 15 minutes of fame, but I'm also going to get pleasure in seeing other people's grief'."

Among those hurt by the loss of something both very public and personal was Hayley Graham-Hardy.

She got engaged at the Sycamore Gap tree and, after her wedding, she and her husband Lee posed for their photographs there.

"Strong, resilient always there, the tree symbolised what we wanted our marriage to be," she said.

The couple had hoped there had been more to the felling than Carruthers and Daniel having "a bit of a laugh" and it "stung" to find out that seemed to be their only motive.

"They sent messages to each other about someone not having the 'minerals' to do what they did," she said.

"I'd like to say to them, 'you guys haven't got the minerals to own up to what you did and I hope that sticks with you in prison'."

Follow BBC North East on X and Facebook and BBC Cumbria on X and Facebook and both on Nextdoor and Instagram.

I've reported on many criminal cases, but nothing like Constance Marten and Mark Gordon's. Their trials were extraordinary.

A couple who were twice in the dock over the death of their baby, they appeared to be completely in love and still fiercely united. And yet they had utter contempt for the court process.

They caused chaos across their two trials, which both overran by months. At one point, the Old Bailey's most senior judge accused them of trying to "sabotage" and "manipulate" their retrial. It nearly collapsed a number of times.

Their behaviour - from refusing to turn up to court and claiming to be ill, to sacking countless barristers and Gordon's trousers even being misplaced one day - left His Honour Judge Mark Lucraft KC exasperated on many occasions.

At one point he said two teenagers, who had been in his court the previous week, were "rather better behaved" than Marten, adding: "And they pleaded guilty to murder."

Over the last 18 months I've sat through Marten and Gordon's two criminal trials.

The first, which started in January 2024, resulted in the pair being found guilty of concealing the birth of their baby, Victoria, of perverting the course of justice and child cruelty.

But in late June, the jury in that trial was dismissed, unable to decide on one of the two, more serious charges about Victoria's death.

A second trial began almost nine months later. They have now both been found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence.

Now their case is over, we can report some of the remarkable moments when jurors were not in court. At times what happened across the trials was jaw-dropping.

'Will you stop flirting with me'

Marten and Gordon were highly unusual defendants. They would often talk during proceedings - as if completely unaware they were on trial. They knew their conversations were disruptive, but they didn't seem to care.

One day, while a witness was giving evidence, Marten sent a note to the judge asking: "Could I nip out for a coffee as we're falling asleep?"

The judge said it "doesn't look good" if defendants aren't interested in the evidence. They were, of course, on trial over the death of their baby.

It was obvious from the moment I first saw Marten and Gordon that they were still very much in love. They presented as a couple in court, rather than as co-defendants.

"Will you stop flirting with me," Marten said loudly to Gordon one day after the judge left court.

On her 38th birthday, they had a lingering embrace in the dock. "Where's my present," she playfully asked.

They appeared fixated on each other. "Obsession" was how Gordon described his love for Marten to police, saying he would have done anything for her.

Later, while giving evidence in their retrial, as if reading an open love letter to court, he declared "it was love" between him and his "noble" and "beautiful" wife.

"She was one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life."

Marten and Gordon were often excited to see each other when they were brought up from the cells. Her face would light up when he appeared at the dock door. Sometimes she would blow Gordon kisses.

They were affectionate. They hugged and kissed on the cheek. Sometimes they tenderly stroked each other's hand. When Marten became tearful Gordon put his arm out to comfort her.

During proceedings, sitting with a dock officer between them, Gordon would often try to catch Marten's eye and smile. She would frequently lean towards him, with her chin resting on her hand.

At the end of the day, before being led back to their cells, they'd sometimes say "love you" to each other. It seemed like they looked forward to coming to court, a place they got to spend time together.

But there was a sense of chaos before the couple's first trial began in the early weeks of 2024. Marten and Gordon's legal representation kept changing - a running theme throughout their protracted case.

Some they sacked. Others withdrew. Sometimes they didn't have lawyers at all. It caused unending disruption.

In trials like this, involving serious charges, a defendant would typically have two barristers representing them. Marten got through an extraordinary number.

From her first appearance at the Old Bailey, in March 2023, to the end of the second trial, more than two years later, she had been represented by 14 barristers.

Why had she got through so many?

"Because she thinks she's entitled and doesn't listen to instructions," a source close to one of her former legal teams told the BBC.

Gordon also changed his legal team and ended up representing himself.

It caused significant delays - the couple's first trial overran by about three months, while the second overran by nearly two months.

'She is not running this trial'

Their "antics", as the judge put it, got increasingly worse as the second trial went on and on.

They repeatedly didn't turn up, meaning many court days were lost and jurors were hugely inconvenienced.

Often one of them would say they weren't well enough to come to court, only to be assessed as being medically fit to do so.

"Constance Marten is not running this trial," Judge Lucraft said firmly one day after she refused again to come to court.

Marten spent days complaining about her tooth pain. Court days were lost because of it. On one of those days she was found to be "medically fit" but "refused" to come.

"She is on trial for extremely serious offences and I've bent over backwards," the judge said. "I've given her more latitude than I suspect I ought to in some situations."

"In my view this is a complete sham," he said later referring to Marten's absence. Despite Marten's complaints of tooth pain, she declined treatment.

There were other highly unusual delays.

Marten refused to attend court one day after she had become "very argumentative and abusive to the staff in prison", according to the note from HMP Bronzefield.

The judge expressed his frustration again and again.

"This trial has had so many delays and quite frankly it is an insult to this court and to the jury", he said one day without jurors in the room.

On that particular day, the judge asked for Marten to join on a remote link from prison to explain why she wasn't at court.

She said she had been "lied on" and had asked to see a nurse but none were available.

"I am happy to come to court," she told the judge, "but yesterday at the Old Bailey I was abused for three hours by a guy in the cells next to me, shouting I am a baby killer."

One day Gordon, who normally wore a shirt and tie, turned up in a blue and yellow prison escape suit - used to spot runaway prisoners. On another occasion it emerged his court trousers had gone missing.

The judge, who said he could not be allowed in court in prison wear, remarked: "It would be a great shame to lose any more time through a lack of trousers."

'Don't touch me man'

Marten and Gordon repeatedly ignored the judge's instructions not to speak to each other during breaks in their evidence.

Unusually, he started coming into court before they were brought up from the cells to stop it from happening, with a warning that if they didn't, he would put them in different courtrooms.

One day Marten repeatedly exhaled so loudly during the evidence that the whole courtroom heard.

"Huffing and puffing at the back of the court is not the way these proceedings are done," said the unimpressed judge. Other days she yawned repeatedly.

She complained of feeling tired and said she had never experienced anything like travelling to court and back. "There are women locked in a metal cage in a van."

• The chaotic lives of a couple who killed their baby daughter
• Court papers reveal Marten and Gordon’s failures as parents
• Mark Gordon is a psychopath, says woman he raped when he was 14
• Watch: How police traced Constance Marten and Mark Gordon

Sometimes Marten and Gordon would abruptly blurt things out from the dock when they took issue with the evidence.

They were rude to some of the dock officers: When one tried to separate them after they tried to hug in the dock, Gordon kicked off.

"Don't touch me, man," said an irate Gordon amid the commotion before telling the dock officer to "shut up" when the judge and jury weren't in the room.

During the first trial, Gordon refused to return to the dock unless a dock officer was changed and then demanded to speak to the cell manager.

Sometimes we heard loud arguing in the corridor behind the dock door between Marten and Gordon and dock officers.

'Deliberate attempt to sabotage'

One of the most explosive moments in the couple's retrial happened when Marten was giving evidence. She suddenly blurted out to the jury that her husband had a "violent rape conviction".

We all knew about Gordon's previous conviction. But the jury didn't.

To ensure he received a fair trial, an order preventing the media from reporting Gordon's previous offences was put in place. It was never mentioned in front of the jury.

It was a jaw-dropping moment, which set off an unforeseen chain of events.

"This is plainly a deliberate attempt by the defendant to sabotage the trial," the judge said after the jury was ushered out quickly.

One of the prosecutors, Joel Smith KC, described it as a "deliberate attempt to take a wrecking ball" to the the trial.

Marten claimed Mr Smith had already told the jury about the conviction. He hadn't. She said she had been exhausted and later blamed her "agonising toothache".

"I'm extremely tired and I am irate that this word 'deliberate' keeps being expounded in this courtroom," she said.

From then on it was difficult to keep up with the flurry of twists and turns that followed. Gordon initially wanted the jury discharged in his case.

The judge agreed. He said he had "little choice" and that Gordon would be tried next year. But the case against Marten would continue "alone", he decided during legal discussions.

Gordon then quickly changed his mind. "I can't do another year in prison," he pleaded with the judge. "I really beseech the court to allow this trial to continue," he added.

In the end, the case against Gordon continued. But the couple's behaviour appeared increasingly impulsive.

The number of barristers in court started to dwindle. Marten sacked her lead barrister but kept her junior. Not long after, Gordon's barristers withdrew their services.

He said he had sacked them and then declared that he was representing himself with the help of a solicitor. She also eventually withdrew.

The retrial had entered a whole new dimension.

Unlike at the first trial, when Gordon would often sit looking zoned out with his eyes half shut, now he appeared emboldened.

The problem was he wasn't a trained lawyer. It became hugely complicated. He often went on lengthy rants.

Without the jury in the room he would flip flop between complaining that things were "not fair" to turning the charm on, telling the judge that he was "tolerant", "kind", "patient" and gracious".

Other days he would shout at the judge as he left the courtroom.

He complained that he didn't have the same access as barristers. He wanted a desk, power to make legal applications and Archbold, a criminal law book running to more than 3,000 pages.

He repeatedly asked for more and more time to get his head around the case. It led to huge delays.

"Do you want me to adjourn for three years while you do a law degree?" the judge said to him one day.

At times Gordon appeared overwhelmed. He even pleaded for a royal intervention, describing the monarch as "compassionate and merciful".

"I ask the King in his mercy and those who work for him to help me," he said.

As the weeks went by, the judge warned Gordon a number of times that he might still remove him from the retrial because of the continued delays.

"It's simply him manipulating the system," the judge said on one occasion.

One of the most gripping and unusual moments of the retrial was when Gordon cross-examined Marten.

Normally a barrister would be expected to be forensic, but there was a tenderness in how he asked questions.

"Who was hands on and gentle with the kids?" he asked. "Both of us… especially you," she replied.

"Was the baby always a priority?"

"Absolutely, that's why we did what we did," Marten responded. "Our number one priority was Victoria. We were doing what we were doing for her."

Marten cried when Gordon asked her about their four other children who had been taken into care. "Alright, babes," he said trying to comfort her.

There was a marked change in her demeanour too.

When questioned by her husband she spoke softly, but when she was cross-examined by the prosecution she bristled and became increasingly strident, before cutting short her time on the stand.

'I'm actually happy'

When it came to the moment of the verdicts, the courtroom filled. There was silence. "Would the defendants please stand," the clerk said. They refused.

Guilty of gross negligence manslaughter for Gordon, the jury foreman told the court. Marten shook her head and crossed her arms.

Guilty of the same for her. She looked intensely at her partner. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

"It's a scam," Marten later shouted from the dock.

"It was an unfair trial," Gordon said loudly.

He told a dock officer: "I'm actually happy with the result because I will win the appeal."

He then thanked the court usher. "It's been a pleasure."

Up until the very last moments of their case Marten and Gordon were still disrupting, doing things their way.

A couple who were so fixated on each other, they were unable to grasp what the jury was sure of: that it was their chaotic and dangerous choices that ultimately led to the death of their baby, Victoria.

Additional reporting by Claire Ellison, Levi Jouavel and Daniel Sandford.

Mahmoud Abdul Rahman Ahmed says his son, Abdullah, was "searching for a sip of water" when he took the family's jerrycans on Sunday morning and headed as usual to one of the water distribution points in the urban Nuseirat camp, in central Gaza.

"That area was inhabited by displaced people, others who were exhausted by the war, and those who have seen the worst due to the imposed siege and limitations, and the ongoing aggression," Mahmoud said in an interview with a local journalist working for the BBC.

"The children, Abdullah among them, stood in a queue with empty stomachs, empty jerrycans, and thirsty lips," he added.

"Minutes after the children and thirsty people of the camp gathered, the warplanes bombed those children and the water distribution point, without prior notice."

Graphic video filmed by another local journalist and verified by the BBC showed the immediate aftermath of the Israeli strike on a street in the New Camp area of Nuseirat.

He passes two men carrying young children before coming across a destroyed structure, beneath which dozens of yellow plastic jerrycans are clustered.

Women scream as bystanders pull a man from the rubble, while others try to help another man covered in blood. Other adults and children are seen lying motionless nearby.

Al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat said 10 people, including six children, were killed in the strike, and that 16 others were injured.

Along with Abdullah, they named the children who died as Badr al-Din Qaraman, Siraj Khaled Ibrahim, Ibrahim Ashraf Abu Urayban, Karam Ashraf al-Ghussein and Lana Ashraf al-Ghussein.

When asked about the strike, the Israeli military said it had targeted a Palestinian Islamic Jihad "terrorist" but that "as a result of a technical error with the munition, the munition fell dozens of meters from the target".

The military said it was "aware of the claim regarding casualties in the area as a result" and "regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians", adding: "The incident is under review."

However, Mahmoud claimed that Israel "intended to convey a message: it won't allow people to drink even the drinking water that they crave."

He also lamented that dreams of Abdullah and the other children would never be realised.

"They were looking at reality with the hope of it changing, and of becoming like the other children of the world - practicing their normal role of playing, moving, traveling, eating, drinking, and living in safety," he said.

The UN says water shortages in Gaza are worsening due to the lack of fuel and spare parts for desalination, pumping and sanitation facilities, as well as insecurity and inaccessibility due to Israeli military operations against Hamas and evacuation orders.

As a result, many people are receiving less than the emergency standard of 15 litres per day, amounting to what the UN calls "a human-made drought crisis".

"You see children queuing up, by the side of the road, with yellow jerrycans every single morning, waiting for the daily water truck to come and get their five litres [or] 10 litres, of water used for washing, cleaning, cooking, drinking, etc," Sam Rose, the acting Gaza director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), told the BBC.

"Every death is a tragedy. This one is particularly emblematic, given the circumstances in which it took place. But it's one of many," he added.

Last Thursday, 10 children and three women were killed as they waited for nutritional supplements outside a clinic in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah.

The Israeli military said it had targeted a Hamas "terrorist" nearby and, as with Sunday's incident, that it regretted harming any civilians.

"We focus on these incidents, but of course these weren't the only children killed in Gaza [on Sunday]," Rose said. "Every single day, since the start of the war, on average of classroom full of children have been killed."

The executive director of the UN children's agency (Unicef), Catherine Russell, meanwhile called both incidents "horrific" and demanded that Israeli authorities "urgently review the rules of engagement and ensure full compliance with international humanitarian law".

Later this week, the UN Security Council will convene to discuss the situation of children in Gaza, following a request by the UK.

However, Israel's permanent representative Danny Danon said council members would be "better served to apply pressure on Hamas for prolonging this conflict".

"The children in Gaza are victims of Hamas, not Israel. Hamas is using them as human shields and the UN is silent," he claimed.

Mahmoud said it was Israel which should be pressured to end the war.

"We have no power and no strength. We are victims. We are civilians just like other people in the world, and we don't own any nuclear weapons or arms or anything," he added.

"This war needs to stop, and so does the ongoing massacre happening in the Gaza Strip."

Warning - this story contains details some people may find distressing.

When Glynn Brown was told that his severely disabled adult son, Aaron, may have been assaulted by staff at a psychiatric hospital, he was shocked and suspicious.

He wanted to know exactly what had happened, but could not ask Aaron, who is non-verbal and whom he describes as having the mental age of a two-year-old.

Glynn was told there was no video evidence because CCTV cameras, installed throughout Muckamore Abbey Hospital six months earlier, had never been switched on.

But this was far from the case.

In fact, what police officers found when they visited the hospital in September 2017, triggered the UK's largest adult safeguarding investigation and made the hospital one of the nation's biggest ever crime scenes - according to data released by the police.

Unbeknown to staff, the CCTV cameras had been mistakenly left running for the six months since their installation, according to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

A staggering 300,000 hours of footage was discovered - equivalent to 34 years' worth. It revealed not only the alleged assault on Aaron, but hundreds of other incidents carried out by hospital staff.

However, almost eight years after the discovery, no cases have come to trial and the hospital has not been closed. A separate public inquiry is also yet to report back.

What is more, the patients' families still have not been allowed to see the CCTV footage.

BBC File on 4 Investigates has now obtained descriptions of what the footage shows.

These include accounts of patients facing appalling cruelty and physical abuse, and being ignored while seriously unwell. They describe:

• Vulnerable young adults being punched, kicked, dragged across floors, tipped off furniture and having balls kicked at them
• Possessions being taken away, shoes being dangled from one patient's ears and crisps packets pushed into another's face
• Emotional abuse, including patients with severe learning disabilities being provoked into a reaction and then restrained and placed in seclusion

Families say they have been told they are unable to view the footage to prevent any prejudice of criminal investigations.

"We're left to conjure up these images in our own mind as to what has happened to our loved ones," Glynn told us.

The task of reviewing the footage was originally undertaken by Belfast Health Trust, even though it was responsible for managing Muckamore Abbey.

It watched samples of the footage from eight different cameras, at up to eight times normal speed - an "impossible" task, according to one of the team.

Hearing fresh horrifying details about Aaron's treatment became a regular occurrence for his father.

Every Friday for months, Glynn received a grim phone call from the reviewers, detailing new incidents. He says he lost count at about 200.

"I was told there were videos of him being kicked, punched, trailed across the floor with his genitals exposed," he says.

Eventually, the PSNI seized all the footage themselves and appeared astonished by what they found. After an early police review of the CCTV, officers said in just one of four wards with cameras being investigated, they had identified 1,500 "crimes".

One of the most striking features of the descriptions of footage obtained by the BBC is the scale of staff neglect. Patients are frequently described as being ignored - even when seriously unwell.

According to the descriptions, one was locked in a room for 18 hours on one day, and frequently left without access to a bathroom, despite being incontinent.

Muckamore Abbey is the largest systemic abuse case uncovered in the UK, according to Prof Andrew McDonnell, a clinical psychologist, who advised BBC Panorama on a 2011 investigation into abuse at Winterbourne View, a private hospital near Bristol.

"The sheer volume and scale of it - it dwarfs anything I've ever seen before," he says.

Prof McDonnell says he can't understand why there is such little public awareness of the scandal outside Northern Ireland.

A public inquiry, which sat from 2022 until March 2025, is expected to deliver its final report and recommendations later this year.

However, it has attracted criticism from the families of patients, who do not think that hospital managers have been rigorously cross-examined.

Glynn says it feels like nobody is to blame and nobody will be held culpable.

"We expected a robust interrogation," Glynn says. "We thought we'd find out all the answers to all our questions."

Disappointment has also been expressed that the inquiry did not call any of Northern Ireland's health ministers to give evidence - unlike the Post Office Inquiry where a minister was questioned over his refusal to meet campaigner Sir Alan Bates.

The criticisms are echoed by public health expert Dr Gabriel Scally, who has led a number of reviews into health service failures, including an NHS panel on Winterbourne View.

He agrees that managers have not been sufficiently held to account at the inquiry: "Imagine that the people representing the families and the patients cannot directly ask questions to the witnesses - I find that astounding."

Dr Scally also says the inquiry has been needlessly protracted and has lost its "sense of outrage".

In a statement, the Muckamore Abbey Inquiry expressed disappointment with Dr Scally's comments, ahead of the publication of its report. It said that lawyers for families of patients were able to make an application to the chair to ask witnesses questions directly - but none had been received.

More than 180 witnesses had given evidence, including senior figures, a spokesperson said, and the decision not to call any ministers was the subject of a judicial review which had been dismissed.

Senior officials from Belfast Health Trust told the inquiry they did not have concerns about Muckamore prior to the CCTV footage being found.

But the BBC has learned that three meetings were held between a health watchdog and the Trust over concerns about the hospital in the three years before the discovery.

More than 200 substantiated reports of abuse were also recorded there in 2014, according to inspections by the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority - although these may have included incidents where patients abused staff.

Another parent, Catherine Fox, says she had repeatedly complained about the treatment of her daughter, Alicia, before the CCTV footage was discovered.

She says Alicia was being kept in seclusion - something meant to be used only as a last resort - for hours on end, in a very small room. There was no bathroom and the buzzer to call staff did not work.

"I would say it was a form of torture, and it was also a form of instilling fear, and no-one else will convince me of anything different," she says.

Catherine was so "horrified" she took her complaints to a Stormont health minister, who replied to say her concerns were a matter for the health trust.

Patients' families have formed a group called Action for Muckamore which campaigns for mandatory CCTV installation in places where vulnerable people are cared for - a move supported by PSNI.

The force told the BBC that 122 people have been reported to Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service (PPS). To date, 38 people have been arrested - and some have gone on to plead not guilty. PSNI said it submitted its first file to the PPS more than five years ago.

The PPS said 15 suspects are currently before the courts and that the progress of cases is also the responsibility of the defence and judges.

In a statement to the BBC, the Belfast Health Trust apologised to families and said some staff have been dismissed. It said it would be inappropriate to comment on other specific issues while the inquiry was ongoing - as did the Department of Health in Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile, Aaron is now in supported living and doing "brilliantly", according to Glynn.

His son is able to go on trips every day, he says - especially to the donkey park and his beloved Nando's.

Glynn is still frustrated that nobody yet has been held responsible for the events at Muckamore Abbey, but he carries on campaigning for justice.

"Once the world sees the footage," he says, "there will be a profound understanding of how bad and malign the scandal is."

• You can reach Noel directly and securely through encrypted messaging app Signal on: +44 7809 334720, by email at noel.titheradge@bbc.co.uk or on SecureDrop

Scientists say they can study our bodies as we age in greater detail than ever before, thanks to more than a billion scans of UK volunteers.

The world's biggest human imaging project says it has now hit its target of scanning the brains, hearts and other organs of 100,000 people - the culmination of an ambitious 11-year study.

"Researchers are already starting to use the imaging data, along with other data we have, to identify disease early and then target treatment at an earlier stage," says Prof Naomi Allen, chief scientist at UK Biobank.

The data is made available at low cost to teams around the world to find new ways of preventing common health conditions from heart disease to cancer.

The 100,000th volunteer to be scanned was Steve, who recently retired from a job in sales and now helps out at a charity run by his daughter.

The BBC watched as he entered a full-body MRI scanner in an industrial park outside Reading, and detailed images of brain cells, blood vessels, bones and joints appeared on the screens.

"My mum was diagnosed with early-stage dementia a few years ago and has not been well," he says.

"So with that in mind I want to give more back to research so the next generation can learn from people like me."

The giant medical imaging project has been running for 13 hours a day, seven-days-a-week across four sites in England.

Participants are given a five-hour appointment to be scanned using five different types of MRI, X-ray and ultrasound machines.

The data gathered is anonymised and volunteers like Steve receive no individual feedback unless the radiographers happen to spot a potentially serious health problem.

The project does not allow personal data, such as a volunteer's surname or the precise area where they live, to be published.

What is UK Biobank?

Launched in 2003, UK Biobank is one of the largest collections of biological samples and health data in the world.

In total, half a million people – all middle-aged volunteers – have been asked to complete physical tests, answer regular health and lifestyle questions, and provide DNA and other biological samples.

Their blood, urine and saliva are frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at temperatures of -80C (-112F) in huge refrigerators in Stockport, Greater Manchester.

The imaging part of the project began in 2014, and involves taking detailed scans of 100,000 of those same participants.

All of that group will be invited back to repeat the process every few years to see how their bodies and organs change as they grow older.

By combining those scans with the other data collected by UK Biobank, scientists can test whether early changes to the make-up of the brain or body then lead to diseases or other health problems in later life.

The whole UK Biobank project, which is non-profit making, was set up by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust charity, along with the Department of Health and the Scottish government.

Two decades later it is now reaching maturity.

Over 30 petabytes, or 30,000 terabytes, of anonymised health data is already available to researchers working for universities, charities, governments and the private sector.

Scientists in the UK and the rest of the world can apply for access and most are charged between £3,000 and £9,000 to help cover running costs.

Louise Thomas, professor of metabolic imaging at the University of Westminster, says it is "completely transforming" how she and other researchers do their jobs.

"We thought it was a crazy idea, there was absolutely no way anybody could scan this number of people," she says.

"To analyse these images manually would have taken us thousands of years but now... we can extract all the information automatically, so we can measure everything in the body in a matter of minutes."

Researchers are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) to process the huge amounts of data generated by the project.

Almost 1,700 peer-reviewed papers have been written using all types of Biobank data since work started in 2003, with dozens more now published every week.

The scans and images taken so far have already been used to show that:

• The early onset of 38 common diseases can be predicted by combining MRI scans with other health data and an artificial intelligence (AI) model
• Consumption of just small amounts of alcohol each day can be linked to an increased risk of memory loss and dementia
• A detailed MRI scan can replace surgery to diagnose and monitor a common form of liver disease
• Changes to the structure of the heart may lead to an increased risk of psychiatric disorders including depression

UK Biobank is one of the 10 largest stores of personal health data in the world alongside similar initiatives in Germany, China and the United States, although those projects don't all make their data available to scientists globally in the same way.

The imaging element of the project is also funded by a number of other organisations including the British Heart Foundation, Calico, a subsidiary of Alphabet which also owns Google, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, established by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

While the preliminary report into what caused the loss of Air India Flight 171 last month has provided some answers, it has also prompted a wave of speculation about its cause.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed into a building less than a minute after take-off from the city of Ahmedabad in western India en route to London, killing 241 people on board, along with 19 on the ground. One passenger survived.

Information contained in India's Air Accident Investigation Bureau report, the first official account of what happened, has raised questions about the role of the pilots.

However, experts within the aviation industry claim investigators have been highly selective in what they have chosen to say.

What the report says

Under international protocols, the state leading an air accident investigation is meant to issue a preliminary report within 30 days. The 15-page document published by India's Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) on Saturday fulfils this requirement.

Although the AAIB has been leading the investigation, US interests are also represented, because Boeing, the maker of the aircraft, and GE Aerospace, the engine manufacturer are American.

The report does not set out any conclusions as to the cause of the accident. Nevertheless, it has sparked considerable controversy.

In its account of the accident flight, the AAIB states that two fuel cut-off switches were moved from the 'run' to the 'cut-off' position seconds after take-off.

This deprived the engines of fuel and caused them to lose thrust. Although data from the flight recorder shows the engines were subsequently restarted, it was too late to prevent the crash.

These switches are normally only used to turn the engines on before a flight and off afterwards. They have a locking mechanism, which means they need to be pulled out before being flipped, a system designed to prevent accidental deployment.

The report also states that one pilot asks the other "why did he cutoff", while his colleague "responded that he did not do so".

However, it does not provide any direct transcript of the conversation, which would have been picked up by the cockpit voice recorder (CVR). Nor does it identify which pilot asked the question.

It is worth remembering that preliminary reports are not intended to offer a full picture of what happened or draw firm conclusions. They are meant to be a factual summary of the information obtained in the early stages of what could be a lengthy investigation.

The investigating authority is also under no obligation to make their preliminary reports public.

Missing information

The information released so far has prompted a number of commentators to claim, in the media and online, that the accident was the result of deliberate and intentional action by one of the pilots.

It is a view that has attracted an angry response from the Indian Commercial Pilots' Association, which warned that "invoking such a serious allegation based on incomplete or preliminary information is not only irresponsible – it is deeply insensitive to the individuals and families involved".

• Don't vilify Air India crash crew: Indian pilots' association

It added that "to casually suggest pilot suicide in the absence of verified evidence is a gross violation of ethical reporting".

In a memo to staff, the chief executive of Air India struck a similar note. Campbell Wilson warned against drawing "premature conclusions".

Since the report was issued, the BBC has spoken to a range of people within the industry, including pilots, accident investigators and engineers. While theories as to what actually happened vary widely, the dominant view is that important information is currently missing.

"They've told us stuff they want us to know at the moment, and withheld what they don't want us to know," explained one pilot, who asked not to be identified. "It's not a complete report."

One of the main criticisms is the lack of a transcript from the cockpit voice recorder, which would enable the reported conversation between the pilots about the fuel cut-off switches to be put in context.

Bjorn Fehrm, an aeronautical analyst at consultants Leeham News said this was "totally unacceptable".

"They have all this technical detail. Then you have this reference to dialogue, but it doesn't even tell you who's speaking," he said.

Mr Fehrm was also concerned that there was no reference to what happened in the cockpit between the switches being flipped from run to cut-off, and the first switch being pushed back into position to relight the first engine 10 seconds later.

"It's someone trying to hide something," he said.

An engineering source, meanwhile, said the report was "very selective", and did not have any detailed information about what the engines were doing immediately before the switches were flipped. The document does say that the engine speed began to decrease from take-off values "as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off."

This, they said was important - because flipping the switches to cut-off and back was something a pilot would be trained do to in order to restart an engine that was already losing power.

Tim Atkinson, an aviation consultant and former air accident investigator in the UK said, "it is very disappointing to read a report which does provide a few salient facts, leaves many more questions".

Another element of the report that has caused controversy is a reference to a safety bulletin – known as a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin – published by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2018.

This was used to alert the aviation community that operators of some Boeing 737 models had reported cases in which the fuel cut-off switches had been fitted with the locking feature disengaged - potentially enabling the switch to be flipped by accident.

At the time, the FAA described this as an "airworthiness concern", but said it was "not an unsafe condition" that would require mandatory action via what is known as an Airworthiness Directive.

Operators of a number of different Boeing models fitted with similar switches, including 787s, were advised to carry out simple inspections.

The investigation report says Air India did not carry out those inspections - prompting speculation that the accident could have been caused by faulty switches being flipped by accident.

However, in an internal note seen by the BBC, the FAA has since reiterated its belief that the issue did not compromise safety.

Engineering sources have also pointed out that the report says the throttle control module on the crashed aircraft was replaced on two occasions, most recently two years before the accident. This would have involved replacing the cut-off switches as well.

According to Bjorn Fehrm of Leeham News, the reference to the FAA's advice contained in the report was "totally irrelevant" in the context of the accident.

Nevertheless, India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation has asked the operators of all aircraft covered by the FAA's original bulletin to carry out inspections by 21 July.

For former accident investigator Tim Atkinson, the vagueness of the report may have been deliberate - in order to suggest an explanation for the crash, while avoiding being too explicit.

"The very worst reports are those written to be read 'between the lines', and if that is what we have here, then it does no credit to the investigators," he said.

Meanwhile those seeking firm answers to what happened on Flight 171 may well have to wait.

International protocols stipulate that a final report should be published within a year of the accident. However, in practice, it can take a lot longer than that.

Constance Marten was a disciple of infamous Christian preacher, TB Joshua, who was accused of rape and violence in a BBC News investigation.

Marten spent four months at Joshua's Synagogue Church of All Nations in Nigeria as a teenager.

A fellow disciple, who knew Marten when she was at the church, told the BBC it was "a place of torture" and sexual assault. The BBC has no reason to believe Marten was subjected to any abuse there.

Marten, 38, has been found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter following the death of her baby, Victoria.

Warning: This story contains descriptions of physical and sexual abuse

Now the retrial is over BBC News can report Marten, who comes from an aristocratic family with royal connections, was a disciple at the Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan) from September 2006, when she was aged 19.

She lived at a compound while at Scoan, one of the world's biggest Christian evangelical churches.

The BBC Eye investigation, published last year, found evidence of widespread abuse and torture by Joshua. A televangelist who had an immense global following, Joshua died in 2021.

As part of the investigation, dozens of former members alleged atrocities by Joshua, including rape and forced abortions, spanning almost 20 years.

Marten was taken to Scoan by her mother, Virginie De Selliers, after leaving school. She remained in Lagos, Nigeria, to become a disciple when her mother returned to the UK.

Speaking to the BBC, Angie said she shared a dormitory with Marten while the pair were at the church.

"It's no wonder she just ended up distrusting normal institutions - because clearly, something broke within her at some point," she said.

Joshua had a worldwide following among some evangelical Christians thanks to videos of his "miracles" posted online by the church. After meeting him, people in wheelchairs were seen to walk again, and people with HIV and Aids showed off certificates saying they had been "cured".

However, the BBC Eye investigation revealed those videos had been faked and found how disciples had been discouraged from contacting their families, deprived of sleep, forced to denounce one another, and sometimes physically assaulted by Joshua - a man they called "Daddy".

One woman told the investigation it was her role to recruit teenage female visitors as live-in disciples, because Joshua liked to prey on them, especially virgins. Other interviewees said they were stripped and beaten with electrical cables and horse whips.

Scoan did not respond to allegations in the BBC investigation but has said previous claims were unfounded.

"Making unfounded allegations against Prophet TB Joshua is not a new occurrence… None of the allegations was ever substantiated," it wrote.

Angie, who was a Scoan disciple for 10 years, recalls Marten as being "bright, witty, compassionate, funny, kind, and very independent".

She told the BBC how the church was "a place of torture, psychological abuse, physical abuse, spiritual abuse, and sexual abuse" under Joshua's leadership.

Angie said: "I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone and I feel very sad that she [Marten] was taken there in the first place."

Unlike some Scoan disciples, who remained under Joshua's control for years, Marten was thrown out after a few months and returned to the UK, where she went to Leeds University to study for a degree in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies.

But messages seen by BBC News suggest she was still affected by her experiences in Nigeria years later. In October 2012, she got in touch with Angie via Facebook Messenger.

"I haven't spoken to anyone about what happened at the synagogue," Marten wrote. "All my university friends are secular, and if I told them about what I'd seen in Lagos, they'd think I was lying or mad!"

Marten wrote about how TB Joshua had abruptly thrown her out of the church and explained that, for years, she thought it was her fault. She said she didn't want to acknowledge Joshua was effectively running what she and others felt was a cult at the time.

Marten said she had tried to deal with what she experienced "silently and with a lot of confusion". "It's taken me years to get back to normal," she wrote.

She said it would be a great help "both emotionally and spiritually" to talk to Angie, who replied and later met Marten twice.

In another message, Marten said she couldn't talk about her experiences with her mother, who BBC News understands continued to donate small sums to the church at the time, prior to allegations about Joshua surfacing.

"I honestly think that she needed help back then and that she needs help now," Angie said of Marten. "I feel extremely sad to see what has happened subsequently."

"The story that I see is very different from what you see on the headlines. The story that I see is a young girl who was taken to an awful place, was broken down, doesn't understand what happened to her, and is therefore unable to process what's happening to her now. She really, really needs help."

For Angie it has been difficult to watch how events have unfolded for her former friend. "My heart breaks for her because I don't wish this on anyone - at the same time I wish I could shake her," she added.

Marten's first job after leaving university was as a researcher at the Al Jazeera news channel, where she tried to make a documentary about TB Joshua's megachurch - a project she mentioned in messages sent to Angie in early 2013.

"I really want this film to give an understanding to viewers of how cults work, and the very subtle manipulation that happens, so subtle that you can't even notice it," Marten wrote.

She said Joshua's "hoodwinking of innocent people" must "come into the light".

Bisola Hephzibah Johnson, another former disciple, told the BBC she persuaded Marten not to return to Scoan in 2013 to carry out secret filming for her documentary, saying it would be too dangerous.

She says everyone who spent time at Scoan has been deeply affected by their experiences there. "Some cannot until today co-ordinate their lives," she said.

The last message Angie received from Marten was in September 2014.

Marten and her husband Mark Gordon were found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter on Monday, following the death of their baby daughter, Victoria.

At an earlier trial, which ended last year, they were found guilty of child cruelty, concealing a birth of their daughter and perverting the course of justice.

That trial heard Marten and Gordon, 51, were "arrogant" and "selfish individuals" who were in a toxic relationship.

Their baby had been "neglected and exposed to dangerous conditions", the trial heard.

The BBC approached Constance Marten's mother, Virginie de Selliers, for comment but she did not respond.

Donald Trump has said that he is disappointed but not done with Vladimir Putin, in an exclusive phone call with the BBC.

The US president was pressed on whether he trusts the Russian leader, and replied: "I trust almost no-one."

Trump was speaking hours after he announced plans to send weapons to Ukraine and warned of severe tariffs on Russia if there was no ceasefire deal in 50 days.

In a wide-ranging interview from the Oval Office, the president also endorsed Nato, having once described it as obsolete, and affirmed his support for the organisation's common defence principle.

The president made the phone call, which lasted 20 minutes, to the BBC after conversations about a potential interview to mark one year on since the attempt on his life at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Asked about whether surviving the assassination attempt had changed him, Trump said he liked to think about it as little as possible.

"I don't like to think about if it did change me," Trump said. Dwelling on it, he added, "could be life-changing".

Having just met with Nato chief Mark Rutte at the White House, however, the president spent a significant portion of the interview expanding on his disappointment with the Russian leader.

Trump said that he had thought a deal was on the cards with Russia four different times.

When asked by the BBC if he was done with Putin, the president replied: "I'm disappointed in him, but I'm not done with him. But I'm disappointed in him."

Pressed on how Trump would get Putin to "stop the bloodshed" the US president said: "We're working it, Gary."

"We'll have a great conversation. I'll say: 'That's good, I'll think we're close to getting it done,' and then he'll knock down a building in Kyiv."

The conversation moved onto Nato, which Trump has previously criticised as "obsolete".

Asked if he still thought this was the case, he said: "No. I think Nato is now becoming the opposite of that" because the alliance was "paying their own bills".

He said he still believed in collective defence, because it meant smaller countries could defend themselves against larger ones.

President Trump was also asked about the UK's future in the world and said he thought it was a "great place - you know I own property there".

He spoke about how he was looking forward to an unprecedented second state visit to the UK in September this year.

On what he wanted to achieve during the visit, Trump said: "Have a good time and respect King Charles, because he's a great gentleman."

I've reported on many criminal cases, but nothing like Constance Marten and Mark Gordon's. Their trials were extraordinary.

A couple who were twice in the dock over the death of their baby, they appeared to be completely in love and still fiercely united. And yet they had utter contempt for the court process.

They caused chaos across their two trials, which both overran by months. At one point, the Old Bailey's most senior judge accused them of trying to "sabotage" and "manipulate" their retrial. It nearly collapsed a number of times.

Their behaviour - from refusing to turn up to court and claiming to be ill, to sacking countless barristers and Gordon's trousers even being misplaced one day - left His Honour Judge Mark Lucraft KC exasperated on many occasions.

At one point he said two teenagers, who had been in his court the previous week, were "rather better behaved" than Marten, adding: "And they pleaded guilty to murder."

Over the last 18 months I've sat through Marten and Gordon's two criminal trials.

The first, which started in January 2024, resulted in the pair being found guilty of concealing the birth of their baby, Victoria, of perverting the course of justice and child cruelty.

But in late June, the jury in that trial was dismissed, unable to decide on one of the two, more serious charges about Victoria's death.

A second trial began almost nine months later. They have now both been found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence.

Now their case is over, we can report some of the remarkable moments when jurors were not in court. At times what happened across the trials was jaw-dropping.

'Will you stop flirting with me'

Marten and Gordon were highly unusual defendants. They would often talk during proceedings - as if completely unaware they were on trial. They knew their conversations were disruptive, but they didn't seem to care.

One day, while a witness was giving evidence, Marten sent a note to the judge asking: "Could I nip out for a coffee as we're falling asleep?"

The judge said it "doesn't look good" if defendants aren't interested in the evidence. They were, of course, on trial over the death of their baby.

It was obvious from the moment I first saw Marten and Gordon that they were still very much in love. They presented as a couple in court, rather than as co-defendants.

"Will you stop flirting with me," Marten said loudly to Gordon one day after the judge left court.

On her 38th birthday, they had a lingering embrace in the dock. "Where's my present," she playfully asked.

They appeared fixated on each other. "Obsession" was how Gordon described his love for Marten to police, saying he would have done anything for her.

Later, while giving evidence in their retrial, as if reading an open love letter to court, he declared "it was love" between him and his "noble" and "beautiful" wife.

"She was one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life."

Marten and Gordon were often excited to see each other when they were brought up from the cells. Her face would light up when he appeared at the dock door. Sometimes she would blow Gordon kisses.

They were affectionate. They hugged and kissed on the cheek. Sometimes they tenderly stroked each other's hand. When Marten became tearful Gordon put his arm out to comfort her.

During proceedings, sitting with a dock officer between them, Gordon would often try to catch Marten's eye and smile. She would frequently lean towards him, with her chin resting on her hand.

At the end of the day, before being led back to their cells, they'd sometimes say "love you" to each other. It seemed like they looked forward to coming to court, a place they got to spend time together.

But there was a sense of chaos before the couple's first trial began in the early weeks of 2024. Marten and Gordon's legal representation kept changing - a running theme throughout their protracted case.

Some they sacked. Others withdrew. Sometimes they didn't have lawyers at all. It caused unending disruption.

In trials like this, involving serious charges, a defendant would typically have two barristers representing them. Marten got through an extraordinary number.

From her first appearance at the Old Bailey, in March 2023, to the end of the second trial, more than two years later, she had been represented by 14 barristers.

Why had she got through so many?

"Because she thinks she's entitled and doesn't listen to instructions," a source close to one of her former legal teams told the BBC.

Gordon also changed his legal team and ended up representing himself.

It caused significant delays - the couple's first trial overran by about three months, while the second overran by nearly two months.

'She is not running this trial'

Their "antics", as the judge put it, got increasingly worse as the second trial went on and on.

They repeatedly didn't turn up, meaning many court days were lost and jurors were hugely inconvenienced.

Often one of them would say they weren't well enough to come to court, only to be assessed as being medically fit to do so.

"Constance Marten is not running this trial," Judge Lucraft said firmly one day after she refused again to come to court.

Marten spent days complaining about her tooth pain. Court days were lost because of it. On one of those days she was found to be "medically fit" but "refused" to come.

"She is on trial for extremely serious offences and I've bent over backwards," the judge said. "I've given her more latitude than I suspect I ought to in some situations."

"In my view this is a complete sham," he said later referring to Marten's absence. Despite Marten's complaints of tooth pain, she declined treatment.

There were other highly unusual delays.

Marten refused to attend court one day after she had become "very argumentative and abusive to the staff in prison", according to the note from HMP Bronzefield.

The judge expressed his frustration again and again.

"This trial has had so many delays and quite frankly it is an insult to this court and to the jury", he said one day without jurors in the room.

On that particular day, the judge asked for Marten to join on a remote link from prison to explain why she wasn't at court.

She said she had been "lied on" and had asked to see a nurse but none were available.

"I am happy to come to court," she told the judge, "but yesterday at the Old Bailey I was abused for three hours by a guy in the cells next to me, shouting I am a baby killer."

One day Gordon, who normally wore a shirt and tie, turned up in a blue and yellow prison escape suit - used to spot runaway prisoners. On another occasion it emerged his court trousers had gone missing.

The judge, who said he could not be allowed in court in prison wear, remarked: "It would be a great shame to lose any more time through a lack of trousers."

'Don't touch me man'

Marten and Gordon repeatedly ignored the judge's instructions not to speak to each other during breaks in their evidence.

Unusually, he started coming into court before they were brought up from the cells to stop it from happening, with a warning that if they didn't, he would put them in different courtrooms.

One day Marten repeatedly exhaled so loudly during the evidence that the whole courtroom heard.

"Huffing and puffing at the back of the court is not the way these proceedings are done," said the unimpressed judge. Other days she yawned repeatedly.

She complained of feeling tired and said she had never experienced anything like travelling to court and back. "There are women locked in a metal cage in a van."

• The chaotic lives of a couple who killed their baby daughter
• Court papers reveal Marten and Gordon’s failures as parents
• Mark Gordon is a psychopath, says woman he raped when he was 14
• Watch: How police traced Constance Marten and Mark Gordon

Sometimes Marten and Gordon would abruptly blurt things out from the dock when they took issue with the evidence.

They were rude to some of the dock officers: When one tried to separate them after they tried to hug in the dock, Gordon kicked off.

"Don't touch me, man," said an irate Gordon amid the commotion before telling the dock officer to "shut up" when the judge and jury weren't in the room.

During the first trial, Gordon refused to return to the dock unless a dock officer was changed and then demanded to speak to the cell manager.

Sometimes we heard loud arguing in the corridor behind the dock door between Marten and Gordon and dock officers.

'Deliberate attempt to sabotage'

One of the most explosive moments in the couple's retrial happened when Marten was giving evidence. She suddenly blurted out to the jury that her husband had a "violent rape conviction".

We all knew about Gordon's previous conviction. But the jury didn't.

To ensure he received a fair trial, an order preventing the media from reporting Gordon's previous offences was put in place. It was never mentioned in front of the jury.

It was a jaw-dropping moment, which set off an unforeseen chain of events.

"This is plainly a deliberate attempt by the defendant to sabotage the trial," the judge said after the jury was ushered out quickly.

One of the prosecutors, Joel Smith KC, described it as a "deliberate attempt to take a wrecking ball" to the the trial.

Marten claimed Mr Smith had already told the jury about the conviction. He hadn't. She said she had been exhausted and later blamed her "agonising toothache".

"I'm extremely tired and I am irate that this word 'deliberate' keeps being expounded in this courtroom," she said.

From then on it was difficult to keep up with the flurry of twists and turns that followed. Gordon initially wanted the jury discharged in his case.

The judge agreed. He said he had "little choice" and that Gordon would be tried next year. But the case against Marten would continue "alone", he decided during legal discussions.

Gordon then quickly changed his mind. "I can't do another year in prison," he pleaded with the judge. "I really beseech the court to allow this trial to continue," he added.

In the end, the case against Gordon continued. But the couple's behaviour appeared increasingly impulsive.

The number of barristers in court started to dwindle. Marten sacked her lead barrister but kept her junior. Not long after, Gordon's barristers withdrew their services.

He said he had sacked them and then declared that he was representing himself with the help of a solicitor. She also eventually withdrew.

The retrial had entered a whole new dimension.

Unlike at the first trial, when Gordon would often sit looking zoned out with his eyes half shut, now he appeared emboldened.

The problem was he wasn't a trained lawyer. It became hugely complicated. He often went on lengthy rants.

Without the jury in the room he would flip flop between complaining that things were "not fair" to turning the charm on, telling the judge that he was "tolerant", "kind", "patient" and gracious".

Other days he would shout at the judge as he left the courtroom.

He complained that he didn't have the same access as barristers. He wanted a desk, power to make legal applications and Archbold, a criminal law book running to more than 3,000 pages.

He repeatedly asked for more and more time to get his head around the case. It led to huge delays.

"Do you want me to adjourn for three years while you do a law degree?" the judge said to him one day.

At times Gordon appeared overwhelmed. He even pleaded for a royal intervention, describing the monarch as "compassionate and merciful".

"I ask the King in his mercy and those who work for him to help me," he said.

As the weeks went by, the judge warned Gordon a number of times that he might still remove him from the retrial because of the continued delays.

"It's simply him manipulating the system," the judge said on one occasion.

One of the most gripping and unusual moments of the retrial was when Gordon cross-examined Marten.

Normally a barrister would be expected to be forensic, but there was a tenderness in how he asked questions.

"Who was hands on and gentle with the kids?" he asked. "Both of us… especially you," she replied.

"Was the baby always a priority?"

"Absolutely, that's why we did what we did," Marten responded. "Our number one priority was Victoria. We were doing what we were doing for her."

Marten cried when Gordon asked her about their four other children who had been taken into care. "Alright, babes," he said trying to comfort her.

There was a marked change in her demeanour too.

When questioned by her husband she spoke softly, but when she was cross-examined by the prosecution she bristled and became increasingly strident, before cutting short her time on the stand.

'I'm actually happy'

When it came to the moment of the verdicts, the courtroom filled. There was silence. "Would the defendants please stand," the clerk said. They refused.

Guilty of gross negligence manslaughter for Gordon, the jury foreman told the court. Marten shook her head and crossed her arms.

Guilty of the same for her. She looked intensely at her partner. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

"It's a scam," Marten later shouted from the dock.

"It was an unfair trial," Gordon said loudly.

He told a dock officer: "I'm actually happy with the result because I will win the appeal."

He then thanked the court usher. "It's been a pleasure."

Up until the very last moments of their case Marten and Gordon were still disrupting, doing things their way.

A couple who were so fixated on each other, they were unable to grasp what the jury was sure of: that it was their chaotic and dangerous choices that ultimately led to the death of their baby, Victoria.

Additional reporting by Claire Ellison, Levi Jouavel and Daniel Sandford.

James Canton spent two years sitting beneath an 800-year-old oak tree near his home in Essex, watching acorns fatten and butterflies land on the massive knurled grey trunk. Sometimes he sat in the branches too.

Canton, a lecturer at the University of Essex, recalls how it helped him feel a "sense of connection". "We're happier sat in an oak tree ten foot from the ground, watching blue tits feeding on caterpillars – involved and immersed in that natural world." He went on to write a book called The Oak Papers about that time spent studying the Honywood Oak.

For years, it was easy to forget that we used to be a woodland nation: around 6,000 years ago untouched swathes of oak, hazel, birch and pine blanketed an estimated 75% of the UK. But in recent months the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree next to Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland has put our relationship with trees, and the natural world more widely, back under the spotlight.

Two men are due to be sentenced today for the crime that has been called a "mindless destruction". Canton calls it a "symbolic" moment. The felling of the Sycamore Gap has prompted calls for stricter legal protections for trees, not only to help prevent similar crimes in future but also to help the public appreciate the value of trees at a time when many of our woodlands are in poor health and targets for tree-planting are not being met.

But even if the government were to back calls for greater legal protections, other questions remain - namely, which trees should be afforded greater legal protection? And arguably even more pressingly: should Britain be thinking more broadly about how to save our depleting woodlands - and is legal protection enough or is a fundamental rethink required?

UK's 'odd relationship' with trees

The Sycamore Gap wasn't a particularly ancient tree, nor a native species, but its position gave it a totemic status. Tucked into a fold of the hills in an area of outstanding beauty, the tree was famous around the world. People went there to have picnics, propose marriage, scatter ashes and to seek solace during lockdown.

Experts at Northumbria University say the single tree's "dramatic and photogenic setting made it a culturally significant landmark", and it was often used as a symbol of the surrounding Northumberland region. Local people spoke of their sense of devastation at its loss, while Northumberland National Park Authority received thousands of emails, letters and messages.

And yet despite being a nation of tree lovers, we live in one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth - while we still aren't planting enough trees, despite calls by successive governments. The UK has 13% woodland cover, compared to an average of 38% in Europe, according to Prof Mary Gagen of the University of Swansea.

We've been planting more woodland in recent decades, with woodland creation rates much higher now than they were in the 2010s, yet even they remain off track, according to statistics from Forest Research. The target set by the previous Conservative government was to plant 30,000 hectares a year by 2025 across the UK, in line with the heyday of tree planting in the 1970s.

Statistics show that 20,700 hectares of new woodland was created in the UK between April 2023 and March 2024, a big achievement. However, this fell to 15,700 hectares over the year to March 2025, largely as a result of a drop-off in planting in Scotland. Rates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland went up – though from a low base.

And the woodlands that already exist aren't in great shape. Only 7% of it is in good ecological health, says Prof Gagen.

She is among those who think that this all nods to an "odd relationship" with trees – one of "simultaneously adoring and denuding woodlands".

Andrew Allen of the Woodland Trust warns there could be a knock-on effect: "While money goes into getting new trees in the ground, we continue to spend very little on looking after the trees we already have - and this risks serious consequences."

'Why would a tree older than Stonehenge go unprotected?''

Ancient trees provide a home to hundreds of different bird, insect and mammal species, yet they have no automatic right of protection. This is unlike some other countries, including Italy and Poland, where so-called "heritage" trees have specific legal protections.

Some UK trees are protected through being in a nature reserve or a site of special scientific interest, while Tree Preservation Orders can be made by a local planning authority to protect specific trees or woodland from deliberate damage or destruction.

Yet many fall through the gaps. Only a fifth of our "oldest and most important veteran trees" are in protected areas, says Prof Gagen. Veteran trees are trees that through their own decay act as a habitat for other species, promoting biodiversity.

The Tree Council charity has written a report calling for greater protections for the country's "most important trees", such as at the Sycamore Gap. The outpouring of emotion and anger after the felling of the tree shows how valued these "socially, culturally and environmentally important trees are", says Jess Allan, science and research projects manager at the charity.

On the back of a Heritage Trees Bill, introduced in December 2023 as a private members bill in the House of Lords, the charity is calling for legislation to create a statutory list of the most valuable trees and to impose stricter penalties for damaging them, mirroring the system for listed buildings.

Crucially, this could protect trees that are much-loved and culturally important because of their place in the landscape, as well as protecting ancient trees that are vital in preserving nature.

Jon Stokes, the charity's director of trees, science and research, points out that in Portugal, the maximum fine for destroying a notable tree is €500,000 (£433,000).

He says protecting our "most celebrated trees" is a no-brainer. "There are yew trees in this country that are older than Stonehenge – nobody would ever contemplate not protecting Stonehenge so why would a living thing that's older than Stonehenge not receive some protection?"

He hopes something positive could come out of the felling of the Sycamore Gap: it's made people realise that some of the UK's trees are "truly vital to our culture and heritage and history – and our biodiversity - we should be looking after them better than we are at the moment".

The Tree Council's report is currently being assessed by the government, but there is no date on when any decision will be released.

'You can't stop reckless acts'

There are some who believe legal reforms are not enough. Even the proposed new measures might not have saved the famous sycamore: its felling involved trespass onto land owned by the Northumberland National Park. And a Tree Preservation Order wouldn't have made a difference either, says Sarah Dodd of Tree Law in Barry, Wales, a law firm that specialises in legal issues involving trees.

"Ultimately, you can put all the protection you want on trees, but some people are just going to break the law, you can't stop some people doing some reckless acts," she says.

The bigger question, she says, is how we get people to appreciate the value of trees and therefore not want to fell them. She hopes that giving trees special legal status will raise their profile, and therefore make people recognise their importance.

Mr Stokes, of the Tree Council, says if we are to maximise the biodiversity value of our trees we've got to celebrate and protect the old ones. And we need to build up new trees next to our older ones, so that wildlife can flow "from these ancient bastions into the new woods and hedges and individual trees that we're planting", he says.

A recent report by the Woodland Trust found that the current health of our woods and trees is "concerning", and proposed solutions include more woodland creation, better woodland management, agroforestry (combining agriculture and trees), ancient woodland restoration, and natural flood management, whereby trees are planted to slow down water flow.

Difficult choices ahead

This will not be easy and Prof Gagen of Swansea University says saving the UK's woodlands is a complex problem that demands difficult choices around building.

"Unfortunately, for most people if asked if they'd like more new, cheaper housing or faster transport, or to protect nature, they are going to sacrifice a woodland," she says.

She says there is a need to ensure people are aware of the "true value of nature".

"A single big tree in the right place is providing thousands of pounds worth of carbon store, flood protection, free air conditioning, habitat, wellbeing provision, pollution control and a hundred other benefits, and no one is asked to pay those costs if the tree is felled for development. That needs to change to save UK woodlands."

As for Canton, he stills visits the Honywood Oak near his home, and is involved in projects to turn around the fortunes of the "forgotten forests", areas of ancient woodland that were historically turned into timber plantations and now need to be restored.

He hopes that years from now we will have learned from the loss of the Sycamore Gap tree and others like it, and changed our attitude.

"I'd really like to think that in a generation's time, there will be rights for trees – trees that are over say 100 years old that you cannot do this, and you get much worse punishments than currently exist," he says.

"Hopefully in time we will gradually get there – our society is naturally catching up with our natural emotional connection with the natural world."

Top image credit: Joe Daniel Price via Getty

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The cost of a new electric car will soon be reduced by up to £3,750 after the government introduced grants to encourage drivers to move away from petrol and diesel vehicles.

The discounts will apply to eligible vehicles costing up to £37,000, with the most environmentally friendly vehicles seeing the biggest reductions, the Department for Transport (DfT) said.

Carmakers can apply for funding from Wednesday, with the RAC saying discounted cars should start appearing at dealerships "within weeks".

But some drivers have previously told the BBC that ultimately, the UK needs more charging points to spur people to buy electric vehicles (EVs).

The government has pledged to ban the sale of new fully petrol or diesel cars and vans from 2030.

Under the scheme, discounts will range between £1,500 and £3,750 and buyers will be able to claim a discount at the dealership.

The grants to lower the cost of EVs will be funded through a £650m scheme, and will be available for three years.

There are around 1.3 million electric cars on Britain's roads but currently only around 82,000 public charging points.

At the weekend, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said the government would invest £63m to fund EV charging points.

But it will not arrive soon enough for Carolyn Hammond, 49, from North Devon.

"We would like to invest in an electric car, but we only have "single phase" electricity in our home," she told the BBC. "That means there isn't enough electricity to run the household and charge an electric car."

She says that is the case for her neighbours too. "To upgrade our electricity connection would be £20k plus VAT, then there are more costs when putting in charging points, and buying a car," she said.

"Just makes it, sadly, too pricey."

Alexander said: "This EV grant will not only allow people to keep more of their hard-earned money, it'll help our automotive sector seize one of the biggest opportunities of the 21st century."

But Shadow Transport Secretary Gareth Bacon said: "Labour are forcing families into more expensive electric vehicles before the country is ready," adding that EVs were a "product people demonstrably do not want".

"Labour are putting net zero ahead of common sense and ahead of the family finances," he said.

The government said: "The discount means that zero emission cars are now cheaper to buy and run than ever before, and comes on top of preferential tax rates, delivering real savings for working families."

'I don't regret switching'

Jimmy Kim, a 43-year-old from London, has been weighing up whether or not he can afford to move to electric.

"The financial argument for an EV vehicle compared to a efficient petrol or hybrid vehicle doesn't add up at all," he said.

He added that the long-term cost of EV ownership, "coupled with the fact that cars devaluate after 10 years", mean it "doesn't make any logical sense to buy one in the current economic climate".

But Paul Cole, 38, also from London, said he wouldn't go back to a petrol car.

"I would say having made the switch that it is brilliant and you should do it if you have the infrastructure to do so," he told the BBC.

"We had recently moved house and there was a charging point already in the driveway when we moved in. We had since had solar panels installed as well, so an electric car made perfect sense," he added.

He adds that to save money on the electricity needed to charge the car, he charges the car overnight when electricity is the cheapest.

"We've now had it two years, and we haven't regretted getting it for a moment."

Drivers buying electric cars can get tax breaks if their employer has a company car scheme.

Grants for EVs have previously been available, but were scrapped in 2022 under Conservative leadership.

First started in 2011, the grants were designed to make buying new electric vehicles more affordable by providing a discount of £1,500 for cars under £32,000.

When the scheme ended, the Department for Transport said funding would be "refocussed" towards the main barriers to the electric vehicle transition, such as public charging, and supporting the purchase of electric vans, taxis and motorcycles.

Additional reporting by Your Voice, Your BBC and Connie Bowker.

Scientists say they can study our bodies as we age in greater detail than ever before, thanks to more than a billion scans of UK volunteers.

The world's biggest human imaging project says it has now hit its target of scanning the brains, hearts and other organs of 100,000 people - the culmination of an ambitious 11-year study.

"Researchers are already starting to use the imaging data, along with other data we have, to identify disease early and then target treatment at an earlier stage," says Prof Naomi Allen, chief scientist at UK Biobank.

The data is made available at low cost to teams around the world to find new ways of preventing common health conditions from heart disease to cancer.

The 100,000th volunteer to be scanned was Steve, who recently retired from a job in sales and now helps out at a charity run by his daughter.

The BBC watched as he entered a full-body MRI scanner in an industrial park outside Reading, and detailed images of brain cells, blood vessels, bones and joints appeared on the screens.

"My mum was diagnosed with early-stage dementia a few years ago and has not been well," he says.

"So with that in mind I want to give more back to research so the next generation can learn from people like me."

The giant medical imaging project has been running for 13 hours a day, seven-days-a-week across four sites in England.

Participants are given a five-hour appointment to be scanned using five different types of MRI, X-ray and ultrasound machines.

The data gathered is anonymised and volunteers like Steve receive no individual feedback unless the radiographers happen to spot a potentially serious health problem.

The project does not allow personal data, such as a volunteer's surname or the precise area where they live, to be published.

What is UK Biobank?

Launched in 2003, UK Biobank is one of the largest collections of biological samples and health data in the world.

In total, half a million people – all middle-aged volunteers – have been asked to complete physical tests, answer regular health and lifestyle questions, and provide DNA and other biological samples.

Their blood, urine and saliva are frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at temperatures of -80C (-112F) in huge refrigerators in Stockport, Greater Manchester.

The imaging part of the project began in 2014, and involves taking detailed scans of 100,000 of those same participants.

All of that group will be invited back to repeat the process every few years to see how their bodies and organs change as they grow older.

By combining those scans with the other data collected by UK Biobank, scientists can test whether early changes to the make-up of the brain or body then lead to diseases or other health problems in later life.

The whole UK Biobank project, which is non-profit making, was set up by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust charity, along with the Department of Health and the Scottish government.

Two decades later it is now reaching maturity.

Over 30 petabytes, or 30,000 terabytes, of anonymised health data is already available to researchers working for universities, charities, governments and the private sector.

Scientists in the UK and the rest of the world can apply for access and most are charged between £3,000 and £9,000 to help cover running costs.

Louise Thomas, professor of metabolic imaging at the University of Westminster, says it is "completely transforming" how she and other researchers do their jobs.

"We thought it was a crazy idea, there was absolutely no way anybody could scan this number of people," she says.

"To analyse these images manually would have taken us thousands of years but now... we can extract all the information automatically, so we can measure everything in the body in a matter of minutes."

Researchers are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) to process the huge amounts of data generated by the project.

Almost 1,700 peer-reviewed papers have been written using all types of Biobank data since work started in 2003, with dozens more now published every week.

The scans and images taken so far have already been used to show that:

• The early onset of 38 common diseases can be predicted by combining MRI scans with other health data and an artificial intelligence (AI) model
• Consumption of just small amounts of alcohol each day can be linked to an increased risk of memory loss and dementia
• A detailed MRI scan can replace surgery to diagnose and monitor a common form of liver disease
• Changes to the structure of the heart may lead to an increased risk of psychiatric disorders including depression

UK Biobank is one of the 10 largest stores of personal health data in the world alongside similar initiatives in Germany, China and the United States, although those projects don't all make their data available to scientists globally in the same way.

The imaging element of the project is also funded by a number of other organisations including the British Heart Foundation, Calico, a subsidiary of Alphabet which also owns Google, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, established by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

A new report into antisemitism has laid out a number of recommendations, including that the NHS tackle what it found was a "specific unaddressed issue of antisemitism".

Launched by the Board of Deputies of British Jews in 2024, the report made 10 recommendations after taking evidence from a range of organisations, including the NHS, the arts industry and the police.

Lord John Mann, the government's independent advisor on antisemitism, who led the review with ex-Conservative cabinet minister Dame Penny Mordaunt, said the commission heard "shocking experiences".

He said it was "unacceptable" there had been what he called an "onslaught of antisemitism" in the UK since 7 October.

He added that they hoped the recommendations would provide guidance and action.

About 1,200 people were killed in a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, while 251 others were taken hostage.

The Israeli military launched an ongoing campaign in Gaza in response to the attack. At least 57,823 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

The majority of the recommendations in the report pointed towards antisemitism training in different capacities.

One was the creation of an "Antisemitism Training Qualification" for those who carry out training on what it called "contemporary antisemitism".

It explained that Jewish communal organisations wanted to increase knowledge on anti-Jewish discrimination, which could be done if there was a standard training given by a "credible provider".

On Jewish identity, it said Judaism "should always be seen and understood... as an ethnicity as well as a religion", which the commission said would ensure antisemitism is dealt with appropriately.

The report found many Jewish employees within the NHS felt antisemitism was not being addressed in the workplace, as well as some Jewish patients feeling "uneasy about using the service".

Among its recommendations are that the NHS should hold a summit to tackle the "specific unaddressed issue of antisemitism" within the health service.

It also suggested that antisemitism should be included in all Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) training, which it said would increase the number of people "educated" about it and "confident in tackling it".

"No person should face abuse or discrimination whilst going about their business, whether it is pursuing the career of their choice or accessing public services," Dame Penny said.

On education, the report claimed to have received evidence of some Christian primary school teachers "inadvertently using antisemitic tropes" in subjects such as religious studies.

It said it welcomed an initiative proposed by the Winchester Diocese and the local Jewish community to teach the teachers how to avoid doing so, and recommended that it be evaluated and applied to all faith schools.

The Board of Deputies said that while it believed "everyone should have the right to express their opinions and beliefs", those in a role of "welfare, safety or security... have an additional duty to ensure people feel able to ask for their assistance".

Other recommendations asked that Jewish members of the arts industry and unions be treated equally.

Another key recommendation was on policing and devising a "consistent approach" to dealing with antisemitic crimes.

Board of Deputies president Phil Rosenberg said the report could be "summarised as one of a failure to apply the protections rightly afforded to different vulnerable groups equally to Jewish people in the same positions".

Animals react to sounds being made by plants, new research suggests, opening up the possibility that an invisible ecosystem might exist between them.

In the first ever such evidence, a team at Tel Aviv University found that female moths avoided laying their eggs on tomato plants if they made noises they associated with distress, indicating that they may be unhealthy.

The team was the first to show two years ago that plants scream when they are distressed or unhealthy.

The sounds are outside the range of human hearing, but can be perceived by many insects, bats and some mammals.

"This is the first demonstration ever of an animal responding to sounds produced by a plant," said Prof Yossi Yovel of Tel Aviv University.

"This is speculation at this stage, but it could be that all sorts of animals will make decisions based on the sounds they hear from plants, such as whether to pollinate or hide inside them or eat the plant."

The researchers did a series of carefully controlled experiments to ensure that the moths were responding to the sound and not the appearance of the plants.

They will now investigate the sounds different plants make and whether other species make decisions based on them, such as whether to pollinate or hide inside them or eat the plant.

"You can think that there could be many complicated interactions, and this is the first step," says Prof Yovel.

Another area of investigation is whether plants can pass information to each other through sound and act in response, such as conserving their water in drought conditions, according to Prof Lilach Hadany, also of Tel Aviv University.

"This is an exciting question," she told BBC News.

"If a plant is stressed the organism most concerned about it is other plants and they can respond in many ways."

The researchers stress that plants are not sentient. They sounds are produced through physical effects caused by a change in their local conditions. What today's discovery shows is that these sounds can be useful to other animals, and possibly plants, able to perceive these sounds.

If that is the case, then plants and animals have coevolved the ability to produce and listen to the sounds for their mutual benefit, according to Prof Hadany.

"Plants could evolve to make more sounds or louder ones if they were of benefit to it and the hearing of animals may evolve accordingly so they can take in this huge amount of information.

"This is a vast, unexplored field - an entire world waiting to be discovered."

In the experiment the researchers focused on female moths, which typically lay their eggs on tomato plants so that the larvae can feed on them once hatched.

The assumption was that the moths seek the best possible site to lay their eggs - a healthy plant that can properly nourish the larvae. So, when the plant signals that it is dehydrated and under stress, the question was whether the moths would heed the warning and avoid laying eggs on it?

The answer was that they didn't lay eggs, because of the sound the plants were producing.

The research has been published in the journal eLife.

In the Oval Office on Monday, Donald Trump was talking tough, announcing new US arms shipments to Ukraine paid for by European governments, and threatening new tariffs which, if imposed, would hit Russia's war chest.

But, back in Moscow, how did the stock exchange react? It rose 2.7%.

That's because Russia had been bracing for even tougher sanctions from President Trump.

"Russia and America are moving towards a new round of confrontation over Ukraine," Monday's edition of the tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets had warned.

"Trump's Monday surprise will not be pleasant for our country."

It wasn't "pleasant". But Russia will be relieved, for example, that the secondary tariffs against Russia's trading partners will only kick in 50 days from now.

That gives Moscow plenty of time to come up with counter proposals and delay the implementation of sanctions even further.

Nonetheless, Donald Trump's announcement does represent a tougher approach to Russia.

It also reflects his frustration with Vladimir Putin's reluctance to sign a peace deal.

• Trump weapons pledge marks major step forward for Ukraine

On his return to the White House in January, Donald Trump had made ending Russia's war in Ukraine one of his foreign policy priorities.

For months, Moscow's response was: "Yes, but…"

Yes, Russia said in March, when it welcomed President Trump's proposal for a comprehensive ceasefire. But first, it said Western military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv should end, along with Ukrainian military mobilisation.

Yes, Moscow has been insisting, it wants peace. But the "root causes" of the war must be resolved first. The Kremlin views these very differently to how Ukraine and the West see them. It argues that the war is the result of external threats to Russia's security: from Kyiv, Nato, 'the collective West.'

Yet, in February 2022, it wasn't Ukraine, Nato or the West that invaded Russia. It was Moscow that launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, triggering the largest land war in Europe since World War Two.

For quite some time, the "Yes, but…" approach enabled Moscow to avoid additional US sanctions, while continuing to prosecute the war. Keen to improve bilateral relations with Russia and negotiate a peace deal on Ukraine, the Trump administration prioritised carrots to sticks in its conversations with Russian officials.

Critics of the Kremlin warned that with "Yes, but"… Russia was playing for time. But President Trump hoped he could find a way of persuading Vladimir Putin to do a deal.

The Russian president has appeared in no rush to do so. The Kremlin believes it holds the initiative on the battlefield. It insists it wants peace, but on its terms.

Those terms include an end to Western arms shipments to Ukraine. From Donald Trump's announcement it is clear that is not going to happen.

President Trump claims that he is "not happy" with Vladimir Putin.

But disillusionment is a two-way street. Russia, too, has been falling out of love with America's president. On Monday, Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote:

"[Trump] clearly has delusions of grandeur. And a very big mouth."

The BBC's annual report will be published later, with Gary Lineker and Zoe Ball likely to top the star salaries list for the last time.

The pair have occupied the top two slots on the rankings every year since 2020, but both have recently exited their respective programmes.

Ball left the Radio 2 Breakfast show in December, three quarters of the way through the financial year, while Lineker recently stood down from the BBC sooner than planned after reposting a controversial Instagram reel about Zionism.

Scott Mills has taken over the Radio 2 breakfast show (Ball now hosts Saturday afternoons), while Kelly Cates, Mark Chapman and Gabby Logan are the new faces of Match of the Day. Their new salaries are all expected to appear in full next year.

But there are plenty of other stars who make huge sums of money from the BBC whose names never appear on the list, due to the criteria used to compile it.

As a result, the corporation's salary disclosure is far from a complete picture of what top talent at the BBC earn.

Why are some names missing from the BBC salary list?

The BBC publishes the names and salaries of stars and executives who earn above a certain threshold (currently £178,000) every year.

But while there are many stars the BBC employs directly, the corporation also contracts a large number of production companies, including the corporation's own commercial arm, BBC Studios, to make some of its programmes.

The stars who are subsequently employed by those production companies are not directly employed by the BBC, and therefore not on the salaries list.

Because BBC Studios is a commercial organisation, not underpinned by the licence fee, it is in competition for business with the BBC, streaming services and other broadcasters.

As a result, its salaries aren't included, so that there is a level playing field for it to compete in the commercial market.

To make things more complicated, some shows which air on the BBC are not solely funded by it. Industry, for example, is a co-production with HBO, while the last series of Doctor Who was partly funded by Disney+.

That means it's not necessarily the case that the salaries of big stars associated with these shows are funded exclusively from licence fee money.

Which stars do not appear on the salaries list?

It would be almost impossible to come up with a full, exhaustive list, but here are a few examples of names who are absent, in no particular order.

Rylan Clark is missing, despite hosting a weekly Radio 2 show, covering the Eurovision Song Contest, fronting an Italian travel series with his friend Robert Rinder, and his special one-off interview programmes with Cher and Mariah Carey.

His fellow X Factor graduate Stacey Solomon is also not listed, even though she fronts Sort Your Life Out and appears on her own reality TV series with husband Joe Swash.

Rob Brydon would be included on a more comprehensive list for hosting Would I Lie To You?, as well as his role in Gavin & Stacey's Christmas special, and his new job fronting the corporation's forthcoming competition format Destination X.

His Would I Lie To You? co-star Lee Mack would also be listed if directly employed by the BBC, thanks to his role as team captain, as well as for writing and starring in sitcom Not Going Out.

David Mitchell would also have made the list, not just due to his role as the show's other team captain, but also for BBC work such as his lead acting role in drama Ludwig.

Another popular Friday night panel show, Have I Got News For You would also see team captains Paul Merton and Ian Hislop appear on the list.

On one tetchy exchange on Have I Got News For You in 2019, then-MP Johnny Mercer suggested Hislop earned £20,000 per episode - a figure Hislop did not dispute.

Other stars who do not appear include Alan Carr (Interior Design Masters), Alison Hammond (Florida Unpacked and Alison Hammond's Big Weekend), Jools Holland (Later) and Dannii Minogue (I Kissed A Boy).

Quiz show hosts as a breed are generally nowhere to be seen. Ross Kemp does not appear for Bridge of Lies, nor does Sandi Toksvig for QI.

Victoria Coren-Mitchell does not appear for Only Connect, while Sue Perkins is absent for Chess Masters: The Endgame (she also hosts Radio 4's Just A Minute).

The weekday edition of Pointless would almost certainly land Alexander Armstrong on the list if compiled differently, along with his Pointless Celebrities co-star Richard Osman, who also fronts BBC Two's House of Games.

Romesh Ranganathan hosts a variety of programmes for the BBC, including a weekend Radio 2 show, The Weakest Link and his Misinvestigations series, but is unlisted.

The huge number of high-profile actors who appear in BBC dramas and comedies are missing, too.

These include Sherwood (starring Lesley Manville and David Morrissey) Mr Loverman (Lennie James), Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis), Ludwig (Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin), and The Responder (Martin Freeman).

Other popular BBC dramas and comedies not eligible to appear on the list include The Gold, Rebus, This City Is Ours, Blue Lights, Mrs Brown's Boys, and the Gavin & Stacey Christmas special, written by and starring James Corden and Ruth Jones.

Stars who appear in continuing dramas such as Death in Paradise, Waterloo Road, Casualty, EastEnders and Call The Midwife also do not appear.

Elsewhere, Morning Live presenters Michelle Ackerley and Gethin Jones are absent, as are the stars of Homes Under The Hammer, Bargain Hunt, The Repair Shop and Saturday Kitchen.

There are some other stars who fall into a middle category - those who do appear on the list, but only for some of their BBC work.

For example, Vernon Kay is listed for his weekday Radio 2 show, the most popular radio programme in the country.

But, if he co-hosts an episode of The One Show, his fee for that is not included in his published salary.

Similarly, Lauren Laverne does not have her One Show appearances included, but she appears for hosting Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and her BBC Radio 6 Music show.

The One Show's other presenters, such as Alex Jones, Roman Kemp, Clara Amfo, Angellica Bell, Ronan Keating, Alex Scott and countless others also wouldn't be listed - although some appear for other BBC work.

Elsewhere, presenters such as Clive Myrie, Fiona Bruce, Evan Davis and Amol Rajan are listed for their work on news programmes, but not for the entertainment and documentary formats they also front.

As we reported last year, one name who would potentially be at the very top of a more complete list is Michael McIntyre. He is effectively the corporation's equivalent of ITV's Ant & Dec, hired to front Saturday night shows throughout the year such as The Wheel and his Big Show.

Elsewhere, Bradley Walsh would likely feature for anchoring Gladiators and Blankety Blank, while Graham Norton would appear for commentating on Eurovision and his BBC One chat show.

Claudia Winkleman is another of the corporation's biggest names, as the host of Strictly Come Dancing and The Traitors, arguably the BBC's biggest new hit of recent years. She also filled in for Norton on his chat show this year.

Top Gear may have been rested, but its former lead anchor Paddy McGuinness now fronts a Sunday programme on Radio 2, and also took over from Gregg Wallace as the host of Inside The Factory.

McGuinness's former Top Gear co-star Freddie Flintoff has similarly gone on to front Field Of Dreams following the motoring show's hiatus.

Gregg Wallace may have been sacked, but until his departure he would have appeared on a more comprehensive list for the huge number of MasterChef episodes he fronted, as would his co-star John Torode.

Every big name associated with Strictly is missing, with Tess Daly, Shirley Ballas, Anton Du Beke, Motsi Mabuse and Craig Revel Horwood all unlisted.

The Apprentice has been one of the BBC's biggest hits for two decades, but the star responsible for its success, Lord Sugar, does not have his salary listed. His assistants Baroness Brady and Tim Campbell don't either.

And the BBC's other big business-based show, Dragons' Den, does not list the salaries for its investors Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Sara Davies, Touker Suleyman and Steven Bartlett.

A group of landowners is beginning a judicial review in the High Court to challenge the government's attempts to reform the freehold and leasehold system of property ownership.

Some of the country's wealthy landowners and two charities who own the freehold leases of thousands of properties - predominately flats - argue that legislation brought in by the last Conservative government contravenes their human rights.

They say the measures in a law passed in 2024 are contrary to their right to enjoy private property as enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

But leaseholders are concerned the hearing will hold up reforms, and complain their voices are not represented in court.

The hearing is set to start at the High Court from Tuesday and is expected to last until Friday.

When the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act (LAFRA) was fast-tracked through Parliament before the 2024 general election, the prospect of new laws to "strengthen" rights of leasehold flat and house owners were widely welcomed by leasehold campaigners.

Among other things, the act aimed to simplify extending a lease - the owners' right to live in the dwelling - and buying a freehold. It would also make the process cheaper for leaseholders.

But several freeholders are challenging some aspects of the new laws concerning the price calculations for a lease extension.

In earlier court documents, it was claimed they could lose hundreds of millions of pounds and argue that the changes leave them without adequate compensation.

Some also argue it prevents them from investing in areas where their properties are and could impact the community and their charitable giving.

They also say that changing the way the amounts are calculated between leaseholders and freeholders would transfer the wealth to large landlords who own multiple flats in central London.

But leaseholders fear the legal challenge could hold up reform for years.

There are an estimated 4.5 million owners of leasehold properties in England and Wales. Scotland abolished leasehold in the 1980s, and the leasehold system in Northern Ireland is slightly different.

Phil Jones, 57, bought his two-bedroom leasehold flat in Westcliff-on-Sea 25 years ago. He recently found out that his ground rent doubles every 10 years and is now at £500 per year.

He said his freeholder said the ground rent could be scrapped if Phil paid £60,000, which he couldn't do.

He says this makes his flat unsellable because mortgage companies will not lend on a property with a doubling ground rent clause in its lease.

"Life is on hold," he said. "I'm trapped here. The effect it has on us, it's so unfair."

He questioned how the freeholders can bring such a case when the legislation has already been given Royal Assent, or become law.

"All parties have decided, it's all been passed, it was in the King's Speech, just do it," he said.

The legislation at the centre of the case was introduced when former Conservative minister Michael Gove was housing secretary. The Labour government has promised to go further but Mr Jones worries this will delay changes that could benefit him.

Labour has promised to abolish leasehold altogether by the end of the Parliament and bring in a commonhold model. It also wants to regulate ground rents.

But it still hasn't implemented all of the laws in LAFRA and says a new bill will be introduced later this year.

The government has been cautious about setting out hard deadlines while the legal challenge is pending.

Leasehold groups are also angry that their application to speak on behalf of flat owners was not allowed to be part of the case.

Harry Scoffin, founder of Free Leaseholders, said: "Despite our best efforts to intervene, not a single leaseholder voice will be heard at the High Court. Is this how democracy is supposed to run?

"We urge the government not to cave to this campaign of intimidation by rich vested interests and to press on to end the feudal leasehold system, as they promised in their manifesto."

There are six claimants representing a number of freeholders in the case, including the Cadogan group, a family owned company which has owned land in London for 300 years; the Grosvenor Group, owned by the Duke of Westminster and the John Lyon's Charity.

The charity uses its revenue from property it owns to give grants to organisations that help under privileged children.

It says changes to the laws will have "unintended consequences" that actually benefit wealthy leaseholder landlords who own flats in its property portfolio in St John's Wood, while the charity will lose revenue.

The charity says it backs leasehold reform generally but is asking to be exempt from the changes.

CEO Dr Lynne Guyton said: "This reform pulls the rug out from underneath those who need the most support across the capital.

"Without an exemption, we will lose at least 10% of the charity's income. It will put educational, mental health, art, emotional support and youth programmes all at risk."

The leasehold system dates back to the Middle Ages but the system as we know it came about in the 1920s.

Both the previous Conservative and the current Labour governments have called it "feudal" and vowed to reform it but campaigners say they've waited decades for change.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner told MPs on Monday: "This week the High Court will be hearing challenges to some of the [2024] Act enfranchisement reforms, and we'll be robustly defending those challenges, and we'll await the court's judgement."

The government said it could not comment further on ongoing litigation.

We contacted the other freeholders or their legal representatives for comment but did not get an official response.

Additional reporting by Phil Hendry

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