Parliament will be recalled on Saturday for an emergency debate on the future of British Steel's plant in Scunthorpe.

A government source says it is looking "to take control"' of the company, after its Chinese owner said its blast furnaces are "no longer financially sustainable".

Talks have been taking place this week talks to keep production going at the firm, which employs 2,700 people.

Politicians left Westminster for their Easter break on Tuesday, and were not due to return until 22 April.

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

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

When scrolling through social media, you may have recently seen friends and family appearing in miniature.

It's part of a new trend where people use generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT and Copilot to re-package themselves - literally - as pocket-sized dolls and action figures.

It has taken off online, with brands and influencers dabbling in creating their mini-me.

But some are urging people to steer clear of the seemingly innocent trend, saying fear of missing out shouldn't override concerns about AI's energy and data use.

How does the AI doll generator work?

It may sound complicated, but the process is simple.

People upload a picture of themselves to a tool like ChatGPT, along with written prompts that explain how they want the final picture to look.

These instructions are really important.

They tell the AI tool everything it is meant to generate, from the items a person wants to appear with to the kind of packaging they should be in - which includes mimicking the box and font of popular toys like Barbie.

Many online will then personalise it further with their name, job and clothing choices.

Though it does not always work, and many have also shared some of the amusing mistakes the tools made, where the action dolls look nothing like them.

Like other generative AI tools, image generators are also prone to making things up, and may make assumptions about how someone should look.

And it's not just regular people using it - the trend has been seized upon by a wealth of brands online including beauty company Mario Badescu and even Royal Mail.

What's the appeal?

Trends come and go - but by their very nature can make people feel compelled to take part to avoid missing out.

"Generative AI makes it easier and quicker for people to create and jump on trends," says Jasmine Enberg, principal social media analyst at eMarketer.

She said the technology had made it quicker and easier to make online content, which may have the unexpected effect of quickening the pace at which other social media users get annoyed by it.

But she believe AI-driven trends will become a more regular appearance on our feeds "as the tech becomes a more regular part of our digital lives".

What are the big concerns?

But while its light-hearted nature may have drawn people to it, the trend has drawn criticism from some concerned about its environmental impact.

Professor Gina Neff of Queen Mary University London told the BBC ChatGPT is "burning through energy", and the data centres used to power it consume more electricity in a year than 117 countries.

"We have a joke in my house that every time we create one of these AI memes, it kills a tree," said Lance Ulanoff, US editor of TechRadar, in an article about the trend.

"That's hyperbole, of course, but it's safe to say that AI content generation is not without costs, and perhaps we should be thinking about it and using it differently."

• What is AI and how does it impact the environment?

People have also highlighted concerns copyrighted data may have been used to create the technology which generates images without paying for it.

"ChatGPT Barbie represents a triple threat to our privacy, our culture and our planet," said Ms Neff.

"While the personalisation might feel nice, these systems are putting brands and characters into a blender with no responsibility for the slop that emerges."

And Jo Bromilow, director of social and influencer at PR and creative agency MSL UK, asks: "is a cute, funny result really worth it?"

"If we're going to really use AI properly, we have to set guardrails around how we use it conscientiously," she said.

Testing the AI doll trend

By Zoe Kleinman, BBC technology editor

I started by finding a suggested prompt online - a list of instructions to enter into the AI tool in order for it to generate the image.

You have to upload your own selfie with your prompt and you also have to be very specific about what you want, including a list of which accessories you'd like included and what colour you want the box to be.

When it came to providing my job title, my first attempt was declined because I included BBC News and was told this violated content policy - I think because currently the BBC does not allow ChatGPT to use its output.

Once you do get an image you're likely to want to tweak it further; my first attempt was too cartoon-like.

The following, more realistic version made me look considerably older than I am, then too child-like, and I gave up in the end trying to get it to use my actual eye-colour, which kept defaulting back to blue (mine are a blend of hazel and green).

It took a couple of minutes to generate each version and overall the process was slower than I would have liked, potentially because of its popularity.

It did start to feel like a lot of work for a passing trend, and it isn't perfect - my doll is expanding out far beneath the supposed packaging.

But more importantly, somewhere in a data centre some hot computer servers were toiling away to make Action Figure Zoe.

They almost certainly could have been put to work on worthier causes.

When Omri Miran finally opens his WhatsApp account, he's going to receive a torrent of messages.

Photos of his daughters. Late night musings from his wife, Lishay, as she lies in bed. Snapshots from an Israeli family life that's gone on for 18 painful months without him.

Lishay started sending the messages three weeks after Hamas gunmen violently snatched Omri from their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, on 7 October 2023.

She calls the chat Notes to Omri. She's lost count of the number of messages she's sent.

"My love, there are so many people you'll need to meet when you come back," she wrote at the end of October 2023.

"Amazing people who are helping me. Strangers who have become as close as can be."

Three-and-a-half months later, she posted a message from the couple's eldest daughter.

"Roni just said goodnight to you at the window like every night. She says you don't hear her and she doesn't see you… You're really missing from her life and it's getting harder for her to deal with your absence."

Friday was Omri's birthday. His second in captivity. As he turns 48, somewhere in the tunnels of Gaza, Lishay will be writing again, with tales of two daughters who were still babies when he last saw them.

Released hostages say Omri was seen alive last July. Lishay's belief in her husband's survival seems unshakeable, but this is the toughest time of the year. Not just Omri's birthday, but also the eve of Pesach (Passover), when Jews celebrate the Biblical story of Exodus, in which Moses led their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt.

"You know, Pesach is the holiday of freedom," Lishay says when we meet in a park near Tel Aviv's Hostages Square.

"I don't feel free. I don't think anyone in Israel can feel free."

In the square itself, Omri's birthday was marked on Friday.

The posters calling for his release once listed the hostage's age as 46. Then 47.

Danny, Omri's father, crossed out both, and wrote 48.

Nearby, preparations were well under way for a symbolic Passover Seder, or ritual feast.

A long table was being set, with places for each of the remaining 59 hostages still in Gaza (of whom 24 are believed to be alive).

The square is full of symbols: a mock-up of a Gaza tunnel, tents to represent the Nova music festival where hundreds were killed.

Along with a merchandise stall to support the families and a "virtual reality hostage experience", it's all part of a collective effort to keep the plight of the missing in the public eye and maintain political pressure on the Israeli government.

Lishay and her daughters have yet to return to the house where family life was blown apart in a few traumatic hours, 18 months ago.

But Lishay says she goes back to Nahal Oz from time to time to commune with her husband.

The kibbutz is just 700m from the border with Gaza. It's as close as she can get to Omri.

"I can feel him over there," she says. "I can speak with him."

After a ceasefire came into effect in mid-January, the border was quiet. Lishay allowed herself to hope, even though she knew Omri's age meant that he would not be among the first to be freed.

But the ceasefire ended after just two months. Now the border area - which Israelis call "the Gaza pocket" - echoes once more to the sounds of war, reigniting the deepest fears of all hostage families.

"I was terrified," she says of her most recent trip.

Lishay is careful not to condemn her government, as some hostage families have. But she says that when she realised the war had resumed, she was "really angry".

When Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Hungary's Viktor Orban last week, he posted that the two men had discussed "the Hungarian hostage", a reference to Omri's dual Israel-Hungarian citizenship.

For Lishay, it stung.

"I was really, really hard to see this," she says. "Omri has a name. He's not just a hostage."

In a Passover message delivered on Friday, Netanyahu once again promised the families that hostages would return and Israel's enemies would be defeated.

Recent days have seen talk of another ceasefire deal, but it doesn't feel imminent.

"The last time that it happened," Lishay says, referring to the first ceasefire deal in November 2023, "we waited more than a year for another agreement. So now we are going to wait one year more? They can't survive over there."

For now, it seems her WhatsApp messages to Omri are destined to remain unopened.

But that doesn't stop her looking for the grey ticks to turn blue.

"I know someday it'll happen."

Why has it been like this?

What's going to change?

What can we expect?

Easter egg hunting in the rain?

The resentencing hearing of Menendez brothers can move forward despite opposition from the county's district attorney, a Los Angeles court has ruled.

The brothers' attorneys are attempting to have them resentenced to a lesser term, which could make them immediately eligible for freedom.

Erik and Lyle were convicted of killing their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989, a notorious case that still divides Americans. They are currently serving life in prison without the possibility of parole in California.

Friday's ruling means a pair of high-profile hearings next week to decide whether the convicted killers will be resentenced, will continue.

District Attorney Nathan Hochman has voiced fierce opposition to resentencing the pair, after his predecessor put the process in motion just before the November election.

Rose continues to bloom in major season

McIlroy bounces back after round one drama

While on holiday in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last week, there was only one mission on my mind - getting my hands on the viral "Dubai chocolate" bar.

If you're on TikTok, you will have seen the bar, which combines the flavours of chocolate, pistachio and tahini with filo pastry, and is inspired by the Arab dessert Knafeh.

The original, called Can't Get Knafeh of It, by FIX Chocolatier, has been sold exclusively in the UAE since 2022. It become so popular on social media that it's only on sale for two hours a day and often sells out within minutes.

But now imitations, known by the nickname "Dubai chocolate", have hit UK supermarkets including Waitrose, Lidl and Morrisons, with some supermarkets limiting the number of bars customers are allowed to buy.

Yezen Alani, who co-owns FIX with his wife Sarah Hamouda, told the BBC the global attention Dubai chocolate was getting was "flattering and humbling".

The FIX chocolate bar was first imagined by Hamouda in 2021, who craved the flavours while she was pregnant.

Alani and Hamouda started developing the bar a year later, running the business alongside their corporate jobs.

"Sarah and I were brought up in the UK and we moved to Dubai 10 years ago, so we've got Western and Arab roots.

"We wanted to create flavours that were inspired by that," Alani says.

Part of the appeal of the chocolate is its exclusivity - you can only order it using a food delivery app, rather than walking into a shop or grabbing it at the supermarket.

It costs around £15 per bar and can only be bought during specific hours of the day to ensure the company can fulfil all their orders.

I also saw similar bars sold in many shops in the region, dubbed "Dubai chocolate" and adorned with pictures of pistachios and filo pastry.

Alani says the "copycat" bars are "very frustrating because people are trying knockoffs, which damages our brand".

One of the reasons for the bar's surge in popularity has been social media - with a viral video by TikTok user Maria Vehera from 2023 being cited as one of the main reasons for its rise to prominence.

It shows Vehera trying the Knafeh bar for the first time - along with several others made by the same chocolatier - and has been liked nearly seven million times.

The way the bar looks is made for social media - from the attractive orange and green spots on top of the smooth milk chocolate to the crunch sound it makes when you break off a piece.

Chocolate combined with pistachio isn't new but the real standout element is the crunchy nature of the filling, with the filo pastry adding a texture and thickness to the bar.

Since the Can't Get Knafeh of It bar is only available in one country, other brands have started to sell their versions in the UK, including Swiss chocolate manufacturer Lindt whose Dubai chocolate is being sold for £10 in supermarkets.

Since stocking the bar, Waitrose says they've had to introduce a two-bar limit for customers in order to regulate stock levels.

Another version has also been sold by Home Bargains, while supermarket Lidl has its own version for £4.99 and is also limiting purchase numbers.

One influencer documented how the bar been kept behind tills for this reason.

Having tried the Lindt bar and a couple of other versions being sold in corner shops, there is quite a contrast.

The FIX chocolate is billed as a "dessert bar" and needs to be kept in the fridge, with a short expiry date like many dairy items.

This isn't the case for the others, which have been designed to have a longer shelf life.

You can also see the difference in taste and texture - the original bar is almost double the width of the Lindt bar, which is more aligned to the size and shape of a standard chocolate bar.

When Alani and Hamouda first started out, they employed one person to fulfil around six to seven orders a day.

But since growing in popularity, primarily thanks to TikTok, their business now employs 20 people, who fulfil 500 orders a day.

One big talking point has been the price of the product, which is £15 per bar.

"It's all handmade, every single design is done by hand," Alani says.

"We use premium ingredients and the process is not like making a Cadbury's bar - you've got the baking, moulding the chocolate to the design and with the filling itself, even the pistachios are hand-picked and processed".

Speaking to Arabian Business last year, Hamouda said: "My mother used to make Knafeh, and that's something I wanted to capture my own way.

"Knafeh was the first flavour we perfected. The crunch, the pistachio, it had to be just right," she added.

Despite the product's success, Alani says "it's been a tough journey" as the pair have been working together full time while also raising their two children.

"There's been times where we've wanted to give up, but we said to ourselves 'we'll keep going as long as we can pay the rent' and now we have no regrets as its worked out".

"Every day, as a deaf person, you're reminded of your deafness," says William Mager, writer of new BBC thriller Reunion.

These reminders can range from having to face medical appointments with no available interpreter to being excluded from important decisions about your own life, he says.

"All those things add up over time and generate a sense of injustice," Mager says, adding that artist Christine Sun Kim describes this feeling as "deaf rage".

It is a feeling partly borne out of the frustration and isolation of living in a hearing-centred world.

This rage, alongside a love of 70s thrillers, is what inspired Mager's new drama.

The bilingual thriller features both British Sign Language (BSL), with subtitles, and spoken English. The majority of the cast in Reunion are deaf or use BSL in their roles.

The four-part series, from the producers of Adolescence, tells the story of Daniel Brennan (Matthew Gurney), a deaf man on a journey of revenge after spending a decade in prison.

Mager, a lifelong fan of 70s thrillers, says he wanted to put his own "twist" on films like Get Carter and The Outfit (which feature "intimidating men in cool clothes" on a mission of vengeance) by drawing on the deaf experience as well.

"Reunion starts out like those classic thrillers, but ends up in a very different place," the writer says.

As main character Brennan hunts down a man known only as Monroe, viewers become aware of a painful secret he's been hiding and the struggles he is facing to find justice in a hearing-centred world.

The Guardian called the performances in the show "outstanding" and the switch between signed and spoken language "utterly seamless", while the Independent says Reunion is "in many ways, a groundbreaking show".

Ultimately, Mager says he wanted to touch on issues unique to the deaf community in the programme, as well as providing opportunities for deaf creatives.

'Unfortunately, that's still the reality'

Mager says communication is a central theme of Reunion and the drama shows how each character struggles with it.

One key example is a scene where Brennan's daughter Carly has to pass on painful information to her mother and father that would usually be relayed by professionals, due to a lack of interpreters.

"Unfortunately, that's still the reality today," Mager says, explaining his wife recently experienced this, having to interpret for her mother at a hospital appointment, because an interpreter had not been booked.

Mager says this shows how deaf people often have to rely on someone else voicing them in order to be understood.

"That can be hard for a deaf person to relinquish that control over what they're saying to someone else," he says.

Another thing Mager wanted to draw attention to was literacy rates in deaf children.

A key plot point in Reunion is that Brennan is unable to read or write in English which, coupled with the prison's failure to book interpreters, means he misses important letters from his daughter and does not have his case details fully explained.

"Deaf children often lag behind their hearing counterparts in education, particularly [in] reading and writing," Mager says.

The writer adds that, in his opinion, this is partly due to language deprivation, resulting from deaf children not being given access to the language they're most comfortable with from a young age.

According to Simon Want, from the National Deaf Children's Society, many deaf children face barriers to accessing a good education.

'I hope that door stays open'

Mager says it was a "joy" to see the actors both deaf and hearing bringing his script to life.

On set, deaf first assistant director Sam Arnold worked with hearing first assistant director Alex Szygowski to relay directions to the cast and crew.

And hearing actors Anne-Marie Duff and Lara Peake learned to sign for their roles.

"They're all fantastic. My favourite thing about making Reunion has been to see the genuine enthusiasm and excitement [of] the cast and crew," Mager says.

The writer adds that he hopes the series will "open a door" for deaf creatives both in front of and behind the camera.

"I hope that door stays open long enough for more people to pass through it and find creative and fulfilling careers," he says.

A US judge has ruled the government can deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate arrested last month by immigration officers.

Mr Khalil has been held at a Louisiana detention centre since 8 March, when US immigration officers told him he was being deported for taking part in campus protests against the war in Gaza.

The pro-Palestinian activist is a permanent legal US resident, and has not been charged with a crime. The government is seeking to remove him under a Cold War-era immigration law.

In a letter written from the facility, Mr Khalil has said his "arrest was a direct consequence" of speaking out for Palestine.

The judge said the Trump administration was allowed to move forward with its effort to deport Mr Khalil because the argument that he poses "adverse foreign policy consequences" for the US is "facially reasonable".

The judge gave Khalil's lawyers until 23 April to appeal against his deportation to Algeria or Syria.

"I would like to quote what you said last time that there's nothing that's more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness," Mr Khalil said in court.

"Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process," he said. "This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family."

An XL Bully believed to be the same dog which escaped when marksmen opened fire on it last week has been found and put down, police have said.

Armed police in Sheffield had attempted to shoot the dog on 3 April after it became "aggressive" while officers were investigating reports of a gun being fired at a property in Daniel Hill Street in Hillfoot, but it then fled the scene.

Police said that a dog found on Banks Hill Road at about 13:20 BST on Friday was thought to be the same animal and, on the advice of a vet, due to the nature of its injuries, it was decided it should be put down.

A force spokesperson said: "We have informed the dog's owner and the dog has been disclaimed by her."

The dog's escape last week led to a city-wide hunt, with officers urging people not to approach it, but to call 999 immediately as it had "the ability to show aggression and cause harm".

On Tuesday, South Yorkshire Police said forensic testing of blood at the scene where officers had attempted to shoot the dog had confirmed that it had been injured in the incident.

Ch Supt Jamie Henderson said: "I would like to thank the public for remaining vigilant when this animal was loose."

Five people had been arrested in connection with the initial firearms incident, and two men had since been charged with firearms offences, according to South Yorkshire Police.

Ch Supt Henderson said: "We are continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the reported firearms discharge on 3 April."

Anyone who saw what happened, or who had information which could help the investigation, was asked to contact police.

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

Sign up for our morning newsletter and get BBC News in your inbox.

The price for a cup of coffee in the US is going up as tariffs put the squeeze on local café and bakery owners.

Some US businesses say the queues for a morning latte are already getting shorter as customers tighten their belts and imported beans become more expensive.

Americans spend $100bn (£76bn) a year on coffee, though that might be about to change.

Jorge Prudencio, who runs Bread Bite Bakery in Washington DC, says his Colombia-based coffee distributer just increased prices after the sweeping tariffs went into effect last week.

The vast majority of coffee in the US is imported.

In fact, the US is the world's second-leading importer of coffee, with the majority coming from Brazil and Colombia, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Since 5 April, coffee imports have been affected by the 10% US tariffs against most countries.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Prudencio said his coffee suppliers have told him his next order will carry yet another price hike.

He added that his bakery will "definitely" be increasing prices for customers just to break even.

Asked if he is worried, Mr Prudencio said: "Of course."

The manager of Au Lait café just down the street, Kamal Mortada, said he's been seeing the effect of steadily increasing prices for a while now. Inflation spiked to a 40-year high under former US President Joe Biden.

Before the tariffs kicked in, ground coffee reached the highest ever recorded price in March 2025, and was over a dollar more expensive than the previous year, and $3 above March 2020 prices.

"We have less customers for coffee," Mr Mortada said.

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"Most customers just get plain coffee," instead of adding syrups and milks, he said.

The prices on the menu have gone up by 25% and people are now buying smaller coffees.

Mr Mortada has also changed his own habits as a consumer. Instead of his regular trip to Starbucks, he brews coffee at home.

He said he has seen the price of a cup of coffee go up by at least half a dollar, and is worried prices will rise again.

On the opposite coast in San Francisco, another local coffee shop owner is grappling with what the tariffs will mean for her business.

Jenny Ngo, who runs Telescope Coffee, said she was waiting to hear how much her roaster will hike prices.

The coffee she sells is sourced from Ethiopia and Guatemala, both facing the standard 10% tariff. She also imports her iced coffee cups from China - and said she noticed the prices on those jumped overnight.

"We unfortunately project to raise prices again in order to sustain our business," she said.

Mr Prudencio remains confident that people will still come to his shop and buy coffee. He said it is something people need.

But recent inflation has also affected the price of eggs, crucial to his bakery side of the business.

He said they paid $42 per case when the bakery opened five months ago, but two weeks later it was more than $100 per case.

"Everybody is going through the same thing. We all pay the price."

The price of eggs is a key symbol of the health of the US economy, often an arguing point for politicians.

President Donald Trump has argued he will get the cost of eggs down, blaming rising prices on the Biden administration, which culled millions of egg-laying chickens amid a bird flu outbreak.

But in March, egg prices reached a record high at $6.22 per dozen, according to the Consumer Price Index.

Joel Finkelstein runs Qualia Coffee Roasters, a small business in Washington DC where he mostly sells coffee beans online and at farmers' markets.

The tariffs will represent just the latest in a series of price hikes, he told us.

He said he noticed the price of beans go up significantly after Trump took office and cut funding to USAID, which supported some coffee growers in South America. Now, he's expecting it to go up again.

"We are going to see a decrease in sales," Mr Finklestein said.

Parliament will be recalled on Saturday for an emergency debate on the future of British Steel's plant in Scunthorpe.

A government source says it is looking "to take control"' of the company, after its Chinese owner said its blast furnaces are "no longer financially sustainable".

Talks have been taking place this week talks to keep production going at the firm, which employs 2,700 people.

Politicians left Westminster for their Easter break on Tuesday, and were not due to return until 22 April.

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

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

The UK government is poised to take control of a major British Steel plant in Scunthorpe, which is at risk of imminent closure.

MPs have been called back from their Easter break to pass an emergency law which would keep the Chinese-owned site operating.

What is British Steel and how many people work there?

British Steel's plant in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, employs 2,700 people, about three-quarters of the company's entire workforce.

It is the last plant in the UK capable of producing virgin steel, which is used in major construction projects like new buildings and railways.

Two huge blast furnaces are used to produce the steel, which has fewer imperfections than the recycled steel made elsewhere in the country.

Were the plant to cease producing virgin steel, then the UK would become the only member of the G7 group of leading economies without the ability to make it - a prospect the government views as a risk to the country's long-term economic security.

Who owns British Steel and why is it losing money?

Following a period of financial instability, British Steel was taken over by the government's insolvency service in 2019 and then acquired by Chinese steel-making firm Jingye the following year.

The company says the plant continues to lose £700,000 a day despite £1.2bn of investment. It has begun a 45-day consultation on job cuts.

Jingye says the blast furnaces are no longer sustainable, blaming "highly challenging" market conditions, tariffs and costs associated with transitioning to lower-carbon production techniques.

The blast furnaces generate the extreme heat needed to produce virgin steel and are fuelled by coking coal and iron pellets - but supplies of those raw materials at the Scunthorpe plant are running low.

That adds a time pressure to the British Steel talks because once a blast furnace shuts down, it is a costly and complex process to restart it again.

Last month, the company was accused by one of its customers of failing to order the raw materials needed to keep the site going, a claim which Jingye rejected.

UK steel production has been falling for several decades and the financial pressures facing the industry were heightened in March when the US imposed a 25% tariff on any steel it imports.

Global over-production of steel has created "a glut of steel on the international market", according to a UK government briefing on the industry, which has pushed prices down. British manufacturers also face higher costs, particularly on electricity, than elsewhere.

Could the UK government take control?

The government has ordered MPs to return from their Easter breaks for an unusual weekend sitting in the Commons, as it weighs up options to protect the site.

On Friday, Sir Keir Starmer announced plans to fast-track a law through Parliament which would give the government the power to assume control of some of the site's operations.

That would include the ability to order raw materials to keep the furnaces running and to direct the company's workforce and board.

The government has told the company's UK management to keep the site operational, and the emergency law will ensure that any employees who are sacked by the Chinese owners can be reinstated.

This intervention stops short of nationalisation - when a government takes ownership and control of a company - but Sir Keir said the government would do "everything possible" to "protect" the UK's steel industry.

The prime minister's decision to announce emergency legislation follows tense talks between the government and Jingye earlier this week, which appear to have largely broken down.

The government offered to buy the raw materials needed to keep the furnaces going but Jingye did not agree to that proposal.

Unions have said the situation is on a "cliff-edge", while the Community Union described the lack of supplies needed to keep the furnaces operational as an "extreme emergency".

Linda McCulloch from the Unite union said they would like the government to nationalise the site "to keep steelmaking alive in the UK".

The GMB trade union has raised concerns to the BBC about the way Jingye is operating the plant.

Who else produces steel in the UK?

There are 1,160 businesses in the UK steel industry, directly supporting 40,000 other firms across the country, according to government figures.

Tata Steel at Port Talbot in Wales was once the UK's largest virgin steel producer but it turned off its blast furnace in September 2024, saying it was losing £1.7m a day.

An agreement with the UK government was reached which saw it commit £500m to help the company move to greener forms of steelmaking.

Other steelmakers in the UK include Liberty Steel, Celsa, Marcegaglia and Outokumpu.

Liberty Steel also has a plant in Scunthorpe which is facing closure. More than 120 jobs are at risk, with bosses blaming high energy costs.

In 2023 the UK steel industry contributed £2.3 billion to the UK economy - equivalent to 0.1% of total UK economic output and 1.0% of manufacturing output.

In the same year, the UK produced 5.6 million tonnes of crude steel, or 0.3% of the world's total. In comparison, China produced more than 1,000 million tonnes, 54% of global production.

The EU produced 126 million tonnes of steel in 2023, 7% of the world's total. Compared with EU countries, the UK ranked as the eighth largest steel producer, after Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Austria, Poland and Belgium.

A US judge has ruled the government can deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate arrested last month by immigration officers.

Mr Khalil has been held at a Louisiana detention centre since 8 March, when US immigration officers told him he was being deported for taking part in campus protests against the war in Gaza.

The pro-Palestinian activist is a permanent legal US resident, and has not been charged with a crime. The government is seeking to remove him under a Cold War-era immigration law.

In a letter written from the facility, Mr Khalil has said his "arrest was a direct consequence" of speaking out for Palestine.

The judge said the Trump administration was allowed to move forward with its effort to deport Mr Khalil because the argument that he poses "adverse foreign policy consequences" for the US is "facially reasonable".

The judge gave Khalil's lawyers until 23 April to appeal against his deportation to Algeria or Syria.

"I would like to quote what you said last time that there's nothing that's more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness," Mr Khalil said in court.

"Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process," he said. "This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family."

The US Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a Maryland man, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador's notorious mega-jail.

The Trump administration had conceded that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported by accident, but appealed against a lower court's order to return him to the US.

On Thursday, in a 9-0 ruling, the Supreme Court declined to block the lower court's order.

The judge's order "requires the Government to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent", the justices ruled.

Mr Garcia, now 29, entered the US illegally as a teenager from El Salvador. In 2019 he was arrested with three other men in Maryland and detained by federal immigration authorities.

But an immigration judge granted him protection from deportation on the grounds that he might be at risk of persecution from local gangs in his home country.

He is being held at a maximum security prison in El Salvador known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), along with hundreds of other men the US has deported over the last few months over allegations of criminal and gang activity.

His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, is a US citizen and has called for his release. He was reportedly working as a sheet metal worker when he was detained on 12 March.

On 4 April, Judge Paula Xinis of the Maryland district court had ordered the Trump administration to "facilitate and effectuate" the return of Mr Garcia.

The government has said Mr Garcia was deported on 15 March due to an "administrative error", although they also allege he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which his lawyer denies.

In its emergency appeal to America's highest court, the Trump administration argued the Maryland judge lacked authority to issue the order and that US officials cannot compel El Salvador to return Mr Garcia.

US Solicitor General D John Sauer wrote in his emergency court filing: "The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador, nor can it compel El Salvador to follow a federal judge's bidding."

He added: "The Constitution charges the president, not federal district courts, with the conduct of foreign diplomacy and protecting the nation against foreign terrorists, including by effectuating their removal."

On Monday, the Supreme Court put a temporary hold on the lower court's order while they considered the matter.

Teachers in England have said they would be willing to strike over the government's proposed 2.8% pay rise this year.

The offer was rejected by 93.7% of members of the National Education Union (NEU), England's largest teaching union, who took part in an informal ballot.

And 83.4% indicated they would be willing to strike in the vote, which aimed to gauge teachers' mood.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said "any move towards industrial action by teaching unions would be indefensible".

The vote does not mean teachers are about to strike.

They have to support industrial action in a formal ballot before that can happen, and enough of them have to vote.

A vote on the next steps will take place at the annual conference of the NEU in Harrogate next week.

Any formal ballot would be likely to take place in summer.

The government recommended a 2.8% pay rise for millions of public sector workers, including teachers, at the end of last year.

The NEU wants the government to fund the pay rise so that schools do not have to pay for it through existing budgets. At present, the government expects most schools will have to make "efficiencies" to afford the additional cost.

The NEU also says the pay rise needs to be higher to address a "crisis" in recruiting new teachers and keeping them in the profession.

Rachael Fidler, a school and college trust leader at Dixons Academies Trust, told the BBC that offering some flexible working made "life a little easier" for staff, but pay was an important part of attracting graduates.

"What other job can you say you make a massive difference to the world that you live in?" she asked.

"But we have to be realistic. We have to attract a new generation who can be offered flexible working in other sectors, who can be offered well-paid positions."

Rob Owens, a science teacher at Dixons Croxteth Academy, said the remit of his job had widened since he entered the profession 20 years ago.

"There's increasing demands on teachers now, more than there ever has been," he said.

"That is beyond planning and marking. There's now increasing demand on schools to support the most vulnerable students and families."

The results of the NEU's indicative ballot, which ran from 1 March until Friday, showed:

• 93.7% of members rejected the offer
• 83.4% of members would be willing to strike "to secure a fully funded, significantly higher pay award".

A total of 134,487 teachers voted, representing less than half (47.2%) of eligible members.

NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said the government "must listen to our profession and change course on teacher pay".

"It must recognise the dire state of school funding and invest in education, to give the next generation the best chance possible in life," he said.

Ms Phillipson said: "With school staff, parents and young people working so hard to turn the tide on school attendance, any move towards industrial action by teaching unions would be indefensible.

"Following a 5.5% pay award in a hugely challenging fiscal context, I would urge NEU to put children first."

NEU members went on strike over pay in the first half of 2023, forcing many schools to close on eight days of action.

It caused disruption for parents who had to take days off work or juggle childcare with working from home.

The NEU called off action after the government revised its 2023 offer to 6.5%.

Teachers were then given a 5.5% rise in 2024.

Ms Phillipson said last summer that she wanted to "reset" her department's relationship with the education workforce.

And the Department for Education says school funding is increasing by £3.2bn in the 2025-26 financial year.

But the teaching unions expressed concern when the government offered a 2.8% pay rise in December.

In a letter to Ms Phillipson, Mr Kebede and the leaders of three other unions said they had been clear that the 5.5% rise "must be only the first in a series of fully funded, above-inflation pay increases".

Jack Worth, an education economist at the National Foundation for Educational Research, told the BBC the 2.8% offer seemed "too much for schools" to cover from their budgets, but also "too little" to make teacher pay competitive in the wider labour market.

Additional reporting by Branwen Jeffreys and Hope Rhodes.

Businesses employing disabled people say they are owed hundreds of thousands of pounds by the government, and fear they may have to let staff go.

Under the Access to Work scheme, companies and employees can apply for grants to help support disabled people in the workplace.

But businesses have told the BBC there are backlogs and huge payment delays leaving them out of pocket.

One company told the BBC it is owed nearly £200,000 by the Access to Work scheme and is worried it may have to close.

Another said it had already been forced to shut down in part due to problems with the programme.

Access to Work was highlighted by ministers as a way of boosting the job prospects of disabled people when the government announced multi-billion pound welfare cuts last month.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said they had recently introduced a "streamlined claims process" to make swifter payments to businesses.

The programme can pay individuals with disabilities and the businesses that employ them for the extra costs associated with being in work. It covers a broad range of support, from paying for taxis to powered wheelchairs.

Yateley Industries is a near 90-year-old charity in Hampshire that employs almost 60 people, most of whom have disabilities, in a range of packaging jobs.

It says it is owed £186,000 by the Access to Work scheme.

"It's an existential threat to us," says chief executive, Sheldon McMullan. "If we don't get it, we could potentially close this magical place forever, and that would be a tragedy for the local community and for the government's agenda more broadly."

Yateley Industries is part of a nationwide forum of dozens of supported businesses - companies specialising in employing disabled people.

Mr McMullan says many others are affected by the backlog.

"The annoying thing is that it's money that's been granted to us," he adds. "We have the paperwork saying this is what each person's been awarded, but the claim system is not set up for us to draw down the money effectively."

Businesses say that as well as poor internal processes at the Department for Work and Pensions, there has also been a large increase in the bureaucracy associated with Access to Work in recent months, with many more forms having to be filled in and then posted – not uploaded or emailed – to the DWP.

"Until ministers realise that they've got this wrong, they're in danger of pushing so many disabled people out of the workplace," says Steven McGurk, president of the trade union, Community Union.

"Its very bureaucratic, very difficult to claim - it's the biggest threat to disabled people's employment."

In Newton Abbott in Devon, a cafe that employed people with learning disabilities shut last month. Its founders say new restrictions and problems with Access to Work contributed to the closure.

Sarah Thorp, who set up the No Limits cafe, said the scheme had in recent months started to refuse funding for people who wanted to get some work experience.

The decision came despite the local Job Centre recommending the individuals to the cafe. The change left the business with a shortfall of £800 a week.

"In the last 18 months, we've got 20 people into paid employment, all with disabilities," she says.

"When the issues around work experience changed in the last few months, we had to turn people down because we could not fund the support. It just seems really counter-intuitive when all the rhetoric is around getting disabled adults into work."

When the government unveiled cuts and restrictions to disability benefits last month, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, name-checked the Access to Work scheme as a programme that could help those who will lose out to get a job.

As well as businesses being able to claim, disabled people themselves can apply for help under the scheme.

They are also suffering delays and backlogs; in October, there were 55,000 outstanding applications, according to the DWP.

Some claimants are waiting more than six months to be assessed, with people writing on social media that the delays have resulted in them losing job offers.

The Department for Work and Pensions says it prioritises those who are newly offered a job.

Lucy Earle, 31, is a social media executive for a museum.

She has various disabilities and conditions, including agonising pain in her feet that means she needs to use a wheelchair.

It took six months for her claim to be looked at by Access to Work, and then she was assigned a wheelchair that wasn't suitable and left her upper body in pain.

"The last few weeks, I haven't been into work because I can't manage the pain of either using the wheelchair that isn't built for me, or being on my feet and not going very far."

She credits the Access to Work scheme with helping her stay in employment, but feels they are refusing reasonable requests.

"They're saying that the benefits are being cut so we can push more people into work, but then also Access to Work is having all these problems."

Steve Darling MP, the Lib Dem Work and Pensions spokesperson, says that while the principles behind Access to Work are excellent, "individuals and businesses are often covering significant sums from their own savings while waiting for payments from Access to Work, which risks pushing people into debt, or businesses even closing down. This is unacceptable."

Minister for Social Security and Disability, Sir Stephen Timms, said in February that Access to Work, established in 1994, "was not in a good shape at the moment."

Spending on the programme increased by 41% in 2023/24 to £257.8m.

"What we will need to do…is make some fairly significant reforms to Access to Work, look at whether employers can do more. There is quite a big issue here and the current style of Access to Work is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term," he said.

"We have to come up with something better and more effective, given the current very high level of demand."

In a statement, the Department for Work and Pensions said: "Last month we introduced a new streamlined claims process to ensure outstanding payments are made swiftly to businesses.

"We also continue to work with employers to explore how the Access to Work Plus claims process could be made easier for their employees and so people with high in-work support needs can thrive in employment."

The US Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a Maryland man, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador's notorious mega-jail.

The Trump administration had conceded that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported by accident, but appealed against a lower court's order to return him to the US.

On Thursday, in a 9-0 ruling, the Supreme Court declined to block the lower court's order.

The judge's order "requires the Government to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent", the justices ruled.

Mr Garcia, now 29, entered the US illegally as a teenager from El Salvador. In 2019 he was arrested with three other men in Maryland and detained by federal immigration authorities.

But an immigration judge granted him protection from deportation on the grounds that he might be at risk of persecution from local gangs in his home country.

He is being held at a maximum security prison in El Salvador known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), along with hundreds of other men the US has deported over the last few months over allegations of criminal and gang activity.

His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, is a US citizen and has called for his release. He was reportedly working as a sheet metal worker when he was detained on 12 March.

On 4 April, Judge Paula Xinis of the Maryland district court had ordered the Trump administration to "facilitate and effectuate" the return of Mr Garcia.

The government has said Mr Garcia was deported on 15 March due to an "administrative error", although they also allege he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which his lawyer denies.

In its emergency appeal to America's highest court, the Trump administration argued the Maryland judge lacked authority to issue the order and that US officials cannot compel El Salvador to return Mr Garcia.

US Solicitor General D John Sauer wrote in his emergency court filing: "The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador, nor can it compel El Salvador to follow a federal judge's bidding."

He added: "The Constitution charges the president, not federal district courts, with the conduct of foreign diplomacy and protecting the nation against foreign terrorists, including by effectuating their removal."

On Monday, the Supreme Court put a temporary hold on the lower court's order while they considered the matter.

Sir Elton John says he is "blown away" after scoring the 10th UK number one album of his career.

Who Believes In Angels?, a collaboration with US country star Brandi Carlile, has topped the charts 52 years after the star's first number one.

"It seems quite extraordinary that my career has gone on so long," Sir Elton told the BBC.

"It always feels good to top a chart, no matter where it is. And with this album, I'm especially thrilled because I think it's the finest album I've done for a long time."

Written and recorded over three weeks in late 2023, Who Believes In Angels? has received rave reviews from critics, who have called it "a gutsy, flamboyant tearjerker" and a "late-career high".

But the album had a difficult gestation, which was captured in a warts-and-all documentary posted on YouTube.

Sir Elton was seen slamming down his headphones, shouting at his collaborators, ripping up song lyrics and threatening to quit.

'Bad behaviour moments'

The star was "nervous" and "irritable", partly because he was recovering from a hip replacement, he said, but also because he was working in a new way - writing live in the studio with Carlile, producer Andrew Watt and long-term lyricist Bernie Taupin.

"It was an enormous challenge, getting those four people together," he told the BBC. "And the challenge really was at my feet.

"I was very nervous [because] I wanted the album to stand a certain way, but you can't always guarantee it will.

"I think my nerves and my insecurities and my doubt led to a few bad behaviour moments, which was just about frustrations within myself."

Once they had recorded the opening track, The Rose of Laura Nyro, "everything fell into place", Sir Elton said.

"In two and a half weeks, we recorded 14 songs and finished them."

The album's release was delayed last year after an eye infection left the star with vision difficulties. Last week, he told the Times he could no longer watch his sons playing rugby.

With the album finally released, there has been particular praise for the single Swing For The Fences, which Carlile conceived as rallying call for the LGBTQ community.

"I'm a gay woman, Elton's a gay man and we both have families, and our dreams have come true," she told the NME.

"I was thinking, wouldn't it be cool to write an anthem for young gay kids out there that calls them into a bigger, more elegant, more fabulous life? Just like, 'Go, go! Don't let anything hold you back!'"

"It's a tough time out there for LGBTQ+ people," Sir Elton told BBC News.

"At the moment when Brandi wrote this lyric, she wanted to say, 'Listen, fight for yourself. Be proud of yourself who you are, never be ashamed of who you are, and you will win through.'"

In the UK, the album sold more than 15,000 copies in its first two days and was the week's best-seller on vinyl.

Sir Elton has now drawn level with Abba, Queen, Kylie Minogue and Michael Jackson on the list of artists with the most UK number one albums.

The Beatles and Robbie Williams share the top spot, with 15 number ones apiece.

Elton John's UK number one albums

• Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player (1973)
• Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973)
• Caribou (1974)
• Elton John's Greatest Hits (1974)
• Sleeping With The Past (1989)
• The Very Best Of Elton John (1990)
• Good Morning To The Night (with Pnau) (2012)
• Diamonds (2017)
• The Lockdown Sessions (2021)
• Who Believes In Angels? (2025)

The other new entry in this week's Top 10 came from Cambridge indie band Black Country, New Road, whose third album Forever Howlong debuted at number three.

The band's first release since the departure of frontman Isaac Wood, it trades itchy, off-centre guitar riffs for a more soothing, baroque-pop sound, with lyrics that focus on friendship and camaraderie.

It was the week's biggest-seller in independent record shops, according to the Official Charts Company.

In the singles chart, Alex Warren's Ordinary remained in pole position for a fourth week, with Chappell Roan's Pink Pony Club at number two.

Ed Sheeran had the highest new entry at number three with his comeback single Azizam.

The Persian-flavoured track is the star's 42nd Top 10 hit in the UK - but it's the first time since the start of his career that the lead single from an album has failed to enter the chart number one.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has told the BBC that Gaza has become "hell on earth", as Israel's military assault there continues.

Mirjana Spoljaric's comments come on the same day the UN human rights office warned that Israel's tactics were threatening the viability of Palestinians continuing to live in Gaza at all.

The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions - internationally agreed rules of conduct in war - and normally only speaks confidentially to warring parties when it thinks violations are taking place.

But today Ms Spoljaric said publicly that what was happening in Gaza was an "extreme hollowing out" of international law.

Israeli bombardment has killed 1,542 people since it renewed the war on 18 March, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has also issued evacuation orders that have forced nearly 400,000 people to move. Israel has also imposed a complete blockade on the entry of food, medical supplies and all other goods since 2 March.

Israel insists it always follows international law in Gaza, and has also argued that the particular nature of this conflict, with Hamas fighters hidden among the civilian population, mean collateral damage can sometimes happen.

Israeli ministers insist there is enough food in Gaza and say the bombardment and seizure of territory aims to pressure Hamas into releasing the hostages it is still holding, whom it kidnapped during the 7 October 2023 attack.

Under the fourth Geneva Convention, occupying powers, as Israel is in Gaza, must ensure civilians have food and medicine, and protect hospitals and health workers. The convention also prohibits the forcible transfer of entire populations from occupied territories.

"No state, no party to a conflict... can be exempt from the obligation not to commit war crimes, not to commit genocide, not to commit ethnic cleansing," Ms Spoljaric said.

"These rules apply. They are universal."

Civilians were bearing the brunt of a relentless pursuit of military objectives, she added, being displaced multiple times, and their homes reduced to rubble.

Of 36 recent airstrikes verified by the UN human rights office, all those killed were women and children.

Israel has strenuously denied accusations it is committing genocide or genocidal acts in Gaza.

Israel's military said it was looking into an attack that killed members of one family in the city of Khan Younis and said it had struck 40 "terror targets" across the territory over the past day.

The ICRC's comments are the latest in a chorus of concern coming from the UN and other agencies.

On Friday the UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said the "cumulative impact" of the IDF's conduct meant "the office is seriously concerned that Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group in Gaza".

Israel was continuing to bomb tents in the al-Mawasi area it had told people to go to for their own safety, she added.

On Tuesday the UN secretary general warned that Israel's blockade of Gaza was violating the Geneva Conventions and the territory was becoming a "killing field". On Monday the heads of six UN aid agencies appealed to the world to act to save the people of Gaza, and to uphold basic international law.

The Geneva Conventions are founded on the following principles:

• Medical staff and hospitals in warzones must be protected and allowed to work freely
• Those wounded in battle and no longer fighting are entitled to medical treatment
• Prisoners of war must be treated humanely
• Warring parties are obliged to protect civilians (this includes a prohibition on the targeting of civilian infrastructure such as power and water supplies).

Twenty years ago, in what it called its war on terror, the US suggested that the Geneva Conventions might be outdated in modern warfare, but the ICRC insists they apply in all circumstances.

"It's not transactional," said Ms Spoljaric. "You have to comply with these rules no matter what the other side does."

She appealed for a renewal of the ceasefire, pointing out that during previous pauses in fighting, the ICRC had successfully been able to take Israeli hostages out of Gaza and reunite them with their families.

But she also warned of a growing "dehumanisation" during war, in which the international community was turning away even though it was clear war crimes were being committed.

The Geneva Conventions protecting civilians were created after World War Two, she pointed out, to make sure such dehumanisation never happened again. Diluting or abandoning them sends a dangerous signal that "everything is allowed".

The ICRC believes that sticking with the rules of war can help, eventually, to build a more sustainable peace. Once the fighting stops, the thinking goes, both soldiers and civilians will remember whether those on the other side obeyed international law, or whether they committed atrocities.

But Gaza, Ms Spoljaric believes "will haunt us. It will haunt us for a long time because you cannot undo the suffering… that will last for generations".

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 50,912 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday as Donald Trump urged the Russian president to "get moving" on a ceasefire in Ukraine.

It will be Witkoff's third meeting with Putin this year, during which the US has failed to get Russia to agree to a full ceasefire with Ukraine.

Trump has previously expressed frustration with Putin over the state of talks. On Friday, he wrote on social media: "Russia has to get moving. Too many people ere [sic] DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war."

The meeting comes as the UK and Germany chaired a gathering of Ukraine's allies in Brussels, where 50 nations agreed €21bn (£18.2bn) in military aid for Kyiv.

Before the talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was "no need to expect breakthroughs" as the "process of normalising relations is ongoing".

Before his talks with Putin, Witkoff first met Kirill Dmitriev at the Grand Hotel Europe in St Petersburg where a conference was being held on stainless steel and the Russian market.

Dmitriev, the 49-year-old head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, visited Washington DC last week and was the most senior Russian official to go to the US since the full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier this week, Washington and Moscow went ahead with a prisoner swap.

Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American, was sentenced to 12 years in jail in Russia for donating $51 to a Ukrainian charity when the war began in February 2022.

The Los Angeles resident was freed on Thursday morning and exchanged for Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023.

He was accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russia for manufacturers working with the military.

Two police officers have been banned from serving after breaching honesty and integrity standards over a speeding ticket.

Sgt Harjit Singh, 48, and former PC Samuel Mitchell, 28, from West Mercia Police, were found guilty of gross misconduct and barred following a police conduct hearing on Thursday.

Mitchell had been driving a marked police vehicle above the speed limit in July 2022. He activated a speed camera and was issued with a speeding ticket. He submitted an exemption request form claiming that he had been trying to stop a vehicle that had been involved in an incident.

It was found this was not the case and he had no lawful exemption from speeding and that Sgt Singh had signed the form knowing it contained false information.

The Road Traffic Act exempts emergency vehicles from observing speed limits to lawfully undertake their duties.

Deputy chief constable Rachel Jones said: "We expect our police officers to act honestly and with integrity. These officers, collectively, behaved in a way that was dishonest and abused their position.

"Behaviour like this undermines public confidence in policing, and we make no apology for rooting out individuals who did not meet the standards the public rightly expect."

Both Mitchell and Singh had been based in a response unit at Kidderminster Police Station.

Mitchell resigned from his role in January 2024 but was told at the hearing he would have been dismissed had he not stepped down.

Sgt Singh was dismissed with immediate affect, and both officers were added to the College of Policing Barred List.

The Barred List prevents those added to it from ever working for a UK police service.

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A food wholesaler has been found guilty of fraud by falsely distributing chicken as halal meat and putting unsafe food on the market.

Hamil Miah, 46, from Cardiff, was the owner of Universal Food Wholesale Limited.

Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court heard chicken from Miah's warehouse in Bessemer Road, Cardiff was falsely sold as Halal meat to restaurants and takeaways.

He has been remanded in custody until the sentencing, but judge Vanessa Francis told Miah he could face up to 10 years in prison.

After deliberating for three hours on Friday, a jury found Miah guilty of 10 counts of fraud and food safety offences.

During the two-week trial, the jury heard Miah created a "smokescreen" of companies to mislead investigators, while he was actually running the entire operation himself.

The jury was also told the takeaways and restaurants believed they were dealing with a number of different companies and all believed they were buying halal chicken.

Some of the chicken was bought as halal, but poor hygiene and cross-contamination in the warehouse meant none of it could be truly classified as such.

There were also long periods of time when the warehouse did not receive halal meat from wholesalers, but continued to supply chicken to restaurants and takeaways who believed it was halal.

The sell-by date of some chicken was altered and labels did not have the correct information on them to enable the source of the meat to be properly traced.

Miah claimed he only ran Universal Food Wholesale Ltd, which used pre-processed halal chicken, and said on-site processing was handled by Universal Poultry Ltd, run by his childhood friend Noaf Rahman.

He denied any involvement in day-to-day processing, though Rahman had previously pleaded guilty to multiple food safety offences.

The court heard inspectors from Cardiff council and the Food Standards Agency had made multiple visits to the warehouse and suggested improvements.

There was also covert monitoring of the business, which revealed unrefrigerated chicken deliveries to west Wales and a van dumping waste at a tip before being reloaded with food without being cleaned.

A pre-sentence report was ordered for Miah, with sentencing for both him and Rahman to take place together.

Miah was granted bail, but the judge said she was "not making any promises" regarding sentence, telling him he would need to "get his affairs in order".

Parliament will be recalled on Saturday for an emergency debate on the future of British Steel's plant in Scunthorpe.

A government source says it is looking "to take control"' of the company, after its Chinese owner said its blast furnaces are "no longer financially sustainable".

Talks have been taking place this week talks to keep production going at the firm, which employs 2,700 people.

Politicians left Westminster for their Easter break on Tuesday, and were not due to return until 22 April.

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Michael Gove is among several ex-Conservative ministers to be given a seat in the House of Lords in Rishi Sunak's resignation honours list.

The former housing and education secretary served in the cabinets of four prime ministers before standing down as an MP ahead of last July's general election.

Meanwhile, former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and former Foreign Secretary James Cleverly have been awarded knighthoods.

Now editor of the Spectator magazine, Gove was MP for Surrey Heath for nearly 20 years.

A key ally of Sunak, Gove was appointed his secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities in October 2022, a role he also held under Boris Johnson.

Other cabinet roles he has held include environment secretary, justice secretary and education secretary, when he brought in major changes to exams and the curriculum under David Cameron's coalition government.

A leading figure in the Brexit campaign alongside Johnson, the pair had a fraught relationship.

In 2016 Gove derailed his friend's leadership hopes by running against him. Later, in the dying days of Johnson's premiership he was sacked after urging the PM to resign.

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Ukraine's European allies have pledged €21bn (£18.2bn) in a new tranche of military support for Kyiv in what they described as "a critical year" for the war.

Members of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group met at Nato's headquarters in Brussels to pledge air defences, missiles and other gear as Europe sought to fill the gap left by the changed priorities of the US under Donald Trump.

Boris Pistorius, the German defence secretary, said Berlin would send €11bn in aid over four years. John Healey, his British counterpart, said the pledges would send a strong signal to Moscow.

Europe's defence ministers said they saw no sign of an end to the war, despite Trump's promise of a ceasefire.

Support announced on Friday also includes a £450m package from the UK and Norway to fund radar systems, anti-tank mines, vehicle repairs and hundreds of thousands of drones for Ukraine.

In January, the UK pledged £4.5bn in military aid to Ukraine - which Healey described as the highest contribution of aid to Ukraine this year. The £450m announced on Friday is part of that original figure.

Air defence was a priority at the meeting. Healey said Russian forces had dropped 10,000 glide bombs on Ukraine in the first three months of this year, as well as launching 100 one-way attack drones a day.

At this stage in the war, battlefield casualties on both sides inflicted by drones "way outnumber those inflicted by artillery", the UK defence secretary said.

"In our calculations, 70% to 80% of battlefield casualties are now caused and inflicted by drones," he added.

Defence ministers from 50 nations gathered in Brussels for the 27th gathering of the UDCG.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth joined the meeting remotely, telling allies that America appreciated all the work "you guys" are doing.

Pistorius said it Hegseth's decision was a matter of "schedules" rather than "priorities", and that the "most important fact was that he took part".

Other leaders also joined the meeting remotely, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Kyiv's defence minister Rustem Umerov, who was in Brussels, thanked Europe for "taking over the lead on security assistance" for his country.

He also acknowledged that Hegseth's attendance "means that the US is continuing its security assistance and is beside us".

The three European defence ministers - Healey, Pistorius and Umerov - all accused Russia of dragging its feet over a ceasefire, with the UK's Healey pointing out it had been more than a month since Russia rejected a US-backed peace settlement.

Pistorius noted that Russia was still not interested in peace.

Talks in Europe took place as US envoy Steve Witkoff travelled to Russia, once more, to press the Kremlin to accept a truce.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Witkoff would discuss the Ukraine war, but one should not expect any "breakthroughs".

On the ground in Ukraine, Russia's defence ministry said on Thursday that its forces had captured the village of Zhuravka, in Ukraine's northern border region of Sumy.

Ukrainian officials are yet to confirm this.

Earlier this week, President Zelensky said as many as 67,000 Russian soldiers were positioned north of the border of the Sumy region, in preparation for an attack on the city of Sumy.

Businesses employing disabled people say they are owed hundreds of thousands of pounds by the government, and fear they may have to let staff go.

Under the Access to Work scheme, companies and employees can apply for grants to help support disabled people in the workplace.

But businesses have told the BBC there are backlogs and huge payment delays leaving them out of pocket.

One company told the BBC it is owed nearly £200,000 by the Access to Work scheme and is worried it may have to close.

Another said it had already been forced to shut down in part due to problems with the programme.

Access to Work was highlighted by ministers as a way of boosting the job prospects of disabled people when the government announced multi-billion pound welfare cuts last month.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said they had recently introduced a "streamlined claims process" to make swifter payments to businesses.

The programme can pay individuals with disabilities and the businesses that employ them for the extra costs associated with being in work. It covers a broad range of support, from paying for taxis to powered wheelchairs.

Yateley Industries is a near 90-year-old charity in Hampshire that employs almost 60 people, most of whom have disabilities, in a range of packaging jobs.

It says it is owed £186,000 by the Access to Work scheme.

"It's an existential threat to us," says chief executive, Sheldon McMullan. "If we don't get it, we could potentially close this magical place forever, and that would be a tragedy for the local community and for the government's agenda more broadly."

Yateley Industries is part of a nationwide forum of dozens of supported businesses - companies specialising in employing disabled people.

Mr McMullan says many others are affected by the backlog.

"The annoying thing is that it's money that's been granted to us," he adds. "We have the paperwork saying this is what each person's been awarded, but the claim system is not set up for us to draw down the money effectively."

Businesses say that as well as poor internal processes at the Department for Work and Pensions, there has also been a large increase in the bureaucracy associated with Access to Work in recent months, with many more forms having to be filled in and then posted – not uploaded or emailed – to the DWP.

"Until ministers realise that they've got this wrong, they're in danger of pushing so many disabled people out of the workplace," says Steven McGurk, president of the trade union, Community Union.

"Its very bureaucratic, very difficult to claim - it's the biggest threat to disabled people's employment."

In Newton Abbott in Devon, a cafe that employed people with learning disabilities shut last month. Its founders say new restrictions and problems with Access to Work contributed to the closure.

Sarah Thorp, who set up the No Limits cafe, said the scheme had in recent months started to refuse funding for people who wanted to get some work experience.

The decision came despite the local Job Centre recommending the individuals to the cafe. The change left the business with a shortfall of £800 a week.

"In the last 18 months, we've got 20 people into paid employment, all with disabilities," she says.

"When the issues around work experience changed in the last few months, we had to turn people down because we could not fund the support. It just seems really counter-intuitive when all the rhetoric is around getting disabled adults into work."

When the government unveiled cuts and restrictions to disability benefits last month, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, name-checked the Access to Work scheme as a programme that could help those who will lose out to get a job.

As well as businesses being able to claim, disabled people themselves can apply for help under the scheme.

They are also suffering delays and backlogs; in October, there were 55,000 outstanding applications, according to the DWP.

Some claimants are waiting more than six months to be assessed, with people writing on social media that the delays have resulted in them losing job offers.

The Department for Work and Pensions says it prioritises those who are newly offered a job.

Lucy Earle, 31, is a social media executive for a museum.

She has various disabilities and conditions, including agonising pain in her feet that means she needs to use a wheelchair.

It took six months for her claim to be looked at by Access to Work, and then she was assigned a wheelchair that wasn't suitable and left her upper body in pain.

"The last few weeks, I haven't been into work because I can't manage the pain of either using the wheelchair that isn't built for me, or being on my feet and not going very far."

She credits the Access to Work scheme with helping her stay in employment, but feels they are refusing reasonable requests.

"They're saying that the benefits are being cut so we can push more people into work, but then also Access to Work is having all these problems."

Steve Darling MP, the Lib Dem Work and Pensions spokesperson, says that while the principles behind Access to Work are excellent, "individuals and businesses are often covering significant sums from their own savings while waiting for payments from Access to Work, which risks pushing people into debt, or businesses even closing down. This is unacceptable."

Minister for Social Security and Disability, Sir Stephen Timms, said in February that Access to Work, established in 1994, "was not in a good shape at the moment."

Spending on the programme increased by 41% in 2023/24 to £257.8m.

"What we will need to do…is make some fairly significant reforms to Access to Work, look at whether employers can do more. There is quite a big issue here and the current style of Access to Work is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term," he said.

"We have to come up with something better and more effective, given the current very high level of demand."

In a statement, the Department for Work and Pensions said: "Last month we introduced a new streamlined claims process to ensure outstanding payments are made swiftly to businesses.

"We also continue to work with employers to explore how the Access to Work Plus claims process could be made easier for their employees and so people with high in-work support needs can thrive in employment."

The five Spanish passengers who died in a helicopter crash in the Hudson River were all part of a globetrotting family which had made its mark in the corporate world as well as having close ties to one of Europe's biggest football clubs.

Agustín Escobar and Mercè Camprubí Montal died with their three children, reported to be aged four, five and 11. The pilot of the helicopter also died.

The parents both worked for Siemens and the company sent its condolences, saying: "We are deeply saddened by the tragic helicopter crash in which Agustín Escobar and his family died."

The five were taking a sightseeing ride over New York when the aircraft crashed.

Although the family were based in the Catalan city of Barcelona, Mr Escobar was originally from the industrial town of Puertollano in southern Spain.

He had recently taken up the post of CEO of rail infrastructure at Siemens Mobility, following a two-year stint as president and CEO of the German technology firm in Spain.

Mrs Camprubí Montal, a Barcelona native, also held a senior post at Siemens. She had been a global commercialisation manager with the company for just over three years at the time of her death.

She came from an influential family in the city known for textile manufacturing as well as its association with FC Barcelona, one of the biggest teams in world football.

Her great-grandfather, Agustí Montal Galobart, was president of the football club in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Her grandfather, Agustí Montal Costa, was also president, a tenure fondly remembered by fans for the arrival of the legendary Dutch player Johann Cruyff at the club in 1973.

Last year, Mrs Camprubí Montal's brother, Joan, emerged as a contender to compete for the presidency of FC Barcelona, although in recent weeks his candidacy has faded.

The careers of Mr Escobar and Mrs Camprubí Montal saw them travel extensively.

Recent posts by Mr Escobar on LinkedIn detail trips to the UK and India, and he described himself as being "passionate" about developing high-performing teams to "positively transform people and organisations".

A 27-year career at Siemens had taken him to postings in Latin America and the United States.

Juan Ignacio Díaz, a former colleague at Siemens, described him as "above all, a family man" in comments published by news site El Economista. "He was a loving, fun father, a really great guy."

Emiliano García-Page, president of the Castilla-La Mancha region, of which Mr Escobar was a native, said he was "deeply upset" by news of the deaths. Mr Escobar, he said, had been named a "favourite son" of the region.

According to Mrs Camprubí Montal's CV, she had been at Siemens for 16 years, also with postings in the United States and Latin America, before moving to the company's energy arm in 2018.

"I thrive in collaborative environments where I can leverage my international perspective," she wrote on her LinkedIn profile.