An amber heat health alert remains place for parts of the UK until 1800 on Wednesday, as areas in England and Wales officially entered their fourth heatwave this summer.

Temperatures will rise into the high 20Cs and low 30Cs, with parts of the East Midlands, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire experiencing the hottest weather with a maximum temperature of 33C forecast on Wednesday afternoon.

Wednesday brings “a more complex picture”, the Met Office has said, as high temperatures coincide with a chance of thunderstorms across northern areas.

A yellow weather warning for thunderstorms will be in place for some parts of Scotland between 14:00 and midnight.

The weather warning, issued by the Met Office, covers northern, central and south-east Scotland, where showers are forecast. Conditions could be particularly heavy and thundery.

The downpours could lead to some localised disruption, with road spray and flash flooding leading to difficult conditions.

There are further heavy and thundery showers expected across Scotland and Northern Ireland on Thursday, with an additional yellow weather warning in place from midnight on Wednesday until 22:00 on Thursday.

While Scotland and Northern Ireland will not technically be in a heatwave, due to the three consecutive day rule, temperatures there are still well above the average for the time of year with a forecast of 25C to 29C on Wednesday.

The threshold is 25C for most of the UK, but rises to 28C in London and its surrounding areas, where temperatures are typically higher.

Areas in south-west England, south-west Midlands, north-west England and East Anglia already met the heatwave criteria, by having three consecutive days above a certain temperature.

An amber heat health alert, issued by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Met Office, means the weather’s impacts are likely to be felt across the health service. It is under these circumstances that we can see an increase in risk to health for individuals aged over 65, or those with pre-existing health conditions.

Amber alerts are in place for London, the South East, East of England, West Midlands and East Midlands. A yellow heat health alert is in place for the South West, North East, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber.

Climate change is making heatwaves like those parts of the UK and Europe have experienced this summer more frequent and intense.

Extreme weather events in Europe should be treated as “a health emergency, not just a climate one”, a World Health Organization (WHO) advisory group that looks into the health impacts of climate change said on Wednesday.

Citing a 2023 report, the Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health said that heat-related mortality in Europe has increased by 30% in the past two decades, with more than 100,000 deaths recorded.

There is no current law in the UK for maximum workplace temperatures, although employers have an obligation to keep them at a comfortable level.

Trade union Unite has called for the introduction of a maximum working temperature to be set at 30C and for work to be stopped where temperatures cannot be controlled indoors or when no protection – such as shaded areas – can be provided outdoors.

Overheating can lead to heat exhaustion or heatstroke. Heatstroke is considered to be a medical emergency that requires immediate treatment.

Older adults, young children and people with long-term health conditions are especially at risk.

Highest temperatures of 2025:

• England – 35.8C Faversham, 1July
• Wales – 33.1C Cardiff Bute Park, 12 July
• Scotland – 32.2C Aviemore, 12 July
• Northern Ireland – 30C Magilligan, 12 July

The heat will ease for most on Thursday with some thunderstorms across Scotland and Northern Ireland – but temperatures will rise again on Friday.

Thursday will still be a very warm day for eastern and south-east England, with temperatures reaching 29C. Elsewhere the forecast temperatures will be slightly lower at 24C to 27C.

Friday could be hotter again with temperatures rising back above 30C in south-east England and to mid to high 20s elsewhere across England and Wales.

It then stays very warm into the weekend. While cloudy at times, especially in the mornings over the coming days, there will still be lots of sunshine for most of us.

The lack of any significant rain into next week is another concern, especially for farmers and growers, as well as for those in areas experiencing a drought and hosepipe bans.

England is suffering widespread environmental effects from the shortage of water, which is hitting farms, damaging wildlife and increasing wildfires, the national drought group – which includes the Met Office, regulators, the government and water companies – said.

The group met on Tuesday as Yorkshire, Cumbria and Lancashire, Greater Manchester Merseyside and Cheshire, East Midlands, and the West Midlands experienced drought.

North-east England, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire, East Anglia, Thames, Wessex, Solent and South Downs are currently classed as areas “in prolonged dry weather”, the phase before drought.

Droughts began to occur earlier than expected this summer following a long period of low rainfall and the sixth driest spring since records began in 1836.

Millions of people in England are now under hosepipe bans aimed at limiting water consumption.

Three children have been charged with the murder of a man who was found dead on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.

A 16-year-old girl and two boys, aged 14 and 15, were arrested following an altercation in Leysdown-on-Sea on Sunday night.

Alexander Cashford, 49, from Kent, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

A 12-year-old girl was also arrested in connection with the incident on Tuesday in Basildon, Essex, and remains in custody.

The trio, who are all from London, have been charged with murder by joint venture.

They have been remanded in custody to appear before Medway Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday.

They cannot legally be named due to their age.

Police said Mr Cashford was assaulted following a disturbance involving a small group of people in the Warden Bay Road area, close to Jetty Road, at 19:00 BST on Sunday.

He sustained “multiple injuries” to his body, a police spokesperson added.

A car was seized by officers as part of the investigation.

Kevin McKenna, MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey, previously said he was “deeply saddened and shocked by the tragic incident”.

Kent Police said it was continuing to appeal for any witnesses to come forward.

Anyone who has information or who has CCTV or dashcam footage is urged to contact the force.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated that Gaza ceasefire efforts are now focused on a comprehensive deal to release all the remaining hostages at once.

The plan previously being pushed was for an initial 60-day truce and partial release of living hostages.

Hamas says a delegation of its leaders is in Cairo for “preliminary talks” with Egyptian officials.

Reports say that mediators see a window of opportunity in the coming weeks to try to push a deal through.

After indirect talks between Israel and Hamas broke down last month, Israel announced a controversial plan to widen its military offensive and conquer all the Gaza Strip – including the areas where most of its two million Palestinian residents have sought refuge.

However, Israeli media do not expect the new operation to begin until October – allowing time for military preparations, including a mass call-up of reservists.

Meanwhile, intense Israeli strikes have continued in Gaza, and the Hamas-run health ministry said at least 123 Palestinians have been killed in the past day.

Witnesses say that Israel has stepped up its attacks on Gaza City in particular with air strikes destroying homes.

Footage shows large explosions caused by the strikes and demolitions in the Zaytoun area, to the east of Gaza City.

Early on Wednesday, al-Shifa Hospital said seven members of one family, five of them children, were killed when tents were targeted in Tel al-Hawa, in the south of the city. Al-Ahli Hospital said 10 people were killed in a strike on a house in the Zaytoun area, to the city’s east.

The Israeli army said it had begun new operations in Zaytoun.

Israeli military chief Lt Gen Eyal Zamir also “approved the main framework for the IDF’s operational plan in the Gaza Strip”, a statement released by the army said.

In an interview with the i24News Israeli TV Channel shown on Tuesday, Netanyahu was asked if a partial ceasefire was still possible.

“I think it’s behind us,” he replied. “We tried, we made all kinds of attempts, we went through a lot, but it turned out that they were just misleading us.”

“I want all of them,” he said of the hostages. “The release of all the hostages, both alive and dead – that’s the stage we’re at.”

Palestinian armed groups still hold 50 hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023 that triggered the war. Israel believes that around 20 of them are still alive.

Netanyahu is under mounting domestic pressure to secure their release as well as over his plans to expand the war.

Last week, unnamed Arab officials were quoted as saying that regional mediators, Egypt and Qatar, were preparing a new framework for a deal that would involve releasing all remaining hostages at the same time in return for an end to the war and the withdrawal of Israeli troops.

However, this will be difficult to do in a short time frame as Israel is demanding that Hamas give up control of Gaza as well as its weapons.

This is likely to be why, at a news conference on Tuesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told journalists that Cairo was still “making great efforts” with Qatar and the US – the other mediators – to revive the earlier phased plan.

“The main goal is to return to the original proposal – a 60-day ceasefire – along with the release of some hostages and some Palestinian prisoners, and the flow of humanitarian and medical aid into Gaza without obstacles or conditions,” Abdelatty said.

The Israeli prime minister says Israel’s goals have not changed. He says that the war will end only when all hostages are returned and Hamas surrenders.

Netanyahu has said that, ultimately, Israel must keep open-ended security control over Gaza.

Hamas has long called for a comprehensive deal to exchange the hostages it is holding for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. It also wants a full pull-out of Israeli forces and an end to the war.

It refuses to disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is created.

Speaking to i24News, Netanyahu also reiterated an idea that Palestinians should simply leave the territory through “voluntary” emigration, saying: “They’re not being pushed out, they’ll be allowed to exit.”

He went on: “All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their gates and stop lecturing us.”

Palestinians, human rights groups and many in the international community have warned that any forced displacement of people from Gaza violates international law.

Many Palestinians fear a repeat of what they call the “Nakba” (Catastrophe) when hundreds of thousands fled or were forced from their homes in the fighting that came before and after the state of Israel was created in 1948.

Most Gazans are descendants of those original refugees and themselves hold official refugee status.

UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in Gaza, where Israel has greatly limited the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in.

The UN’s World Food Programme has warned that starvation and malnutrition are at the highest levels in Gaza since the conflict began.

Hamas’s 2023 attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel, with 251 taken into Gaza as hostages.

Israel’s offensive has since killed at least 61,722 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. It says that 235 people including 106 children have also died due to starvation and malnutrition.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has led tributes to Welsh Labour politician Hefin David, who has died suddenly, aged 47.

Mr David had been Member of the Senedd (MS) for Caerphilly since 2016.

Labour leader Sir Keir called him a “powerful voice for the people of Wales” who “dedicated his life to making sure every person and community in Wales had the opportunities and support they deserve”.

Gwent Police said a 47-year-old man was found unresponsive at a property in Nelson, Caerphilly county, on Tuesday evening, and the death was not being treated as suspicious.

First Minister and Welsh Labour leader Eluned Morgan called Mr David an “outstanding politician” who would be “greatly missed”.

His partner was Cynon Valley MS Vikki Howells, the minister for further and higher education in the Welsh Labour government.

Sir Keir said: “The entire Labour movement will join me in grieving the loss of Hefin David.

“He was a powerful voice for the people of Wales and a committed public servant, who dedicated his life to making sure every person and community in Wales had the opportunities and support they deserve.

“As Member of the Senedd for Caerphilly, where he was born and lived, he was incredibly proud of his community.

“Our hearts are with his family and those who knew and loved him at this painful time. May he rest in peace.”

The first minister said: “We are extremely saddened by the sudden death of Hefin. Our thoughts are with his family at this terrible time.

“Hefin was a much-loved member of the Labour family. He served Caerphilly as a councillor and a Member of the Senedd with pride and passion.

“He was an outstanding politician, warm and enthusiastic and a great communicator – especially on behalf of his constituents.

“He will be greatly missed.”

Gwent Police Chief Constable Mark Hobrough said his “thoughts and heartfelt condolences” are with Mr David’s family, friends and colleagues.

“After I joined Gwent Police as the chief superintendent for the area covering Caerphilly, I worked closely with Hefin on many occasions and I found him to be an engaging and thoughtful individual,” he said.

“A dedicated public servant to Caerphilly, his commitment to our communities will be a significant loss.”

Elected to Cardiff Bay in 2016, Mr David was one of the more prominent Labour backbench members and was never afraid to go against the party line.

Popular with politicians from across the political divide and journalists in Cardiff Bay, he made regular, lively contributions to Senedd debates, and was once reprimanded for calling Plaid Cymru councillors in his constituency as “mad as a box of frogs”.

He was also one of five Senedd commissioners, responsible for the day-to-day running of the institution.

The Welsh Parliament’s presiding officer, or speaker, Elin Jones, said the whole Senedd was “devastated by the tragic news of Hefin’s death”.

“Our thoughts go immediately to his partner, our colleague and friend, Vikki Howells MS and to his cherished children and family,” she said.

“Hefin was so full of life and enthusiasm for his constituents and their causes.

“He was a passionate politician, loyal to his party, his country, and constituents.”

Before becoming a full-time politician, Mr David lectured at Cardiff Metropolitan University, teaching human resource management to undergraduates and postgraduates.

Darren Millar, leader of the Welsh Conservative group in Cardiff Bay, said he was “very sad to hear the shocking news of Hefin David’s death”.

“My deepest condolences go to Hefin’s family and friends, and I would also like to extend my condolences to the Welsh Labour Party,” he said.

“He was a man who always stood up for his constituents and was respected on all sides of the Senedd.”

Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said he was “deeply shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of Hefin David”, saying he had “represented his constituency with tireless dedication”.

“He brought passion, energy, and independence of thought to Senedd proceedings and our parliament will be poorer without him,” he said.

“On behalf of Plaid Cymru I send our profound condolences to Hefin’s family and friends at this desperately sad time.”

Welsh Lib Dem leader Jane Dodds said “all of us at the Welsh Liberal Democrats are saddened to hear about the death of Hefin David”.

She said her party was “thinking of his loved ones”, especially his partner Vikki Howells “and his children, his staff members and his community in Caerphilly”.

South Wales East MS Laura Anne Jones, who defected from the Conservatives to Reform UK last month, called Mr David a “genuinely lovely person”.

“Regardless of political differences, we got on well,” she said.

“He always had time for a kind word, a smile or a funny anecdote.”

She said he cared “greatly for his constituents” and “fought hard for what he believed in”, adding that he would be “missed greatly, politically and personally, in the Senedd”.

Zohran Mamdani decided, in his quest to become New York City’s mayor, he would walk the entire length of Manhattan – starting at 7 one Friday evening in early June.

By the time he was done, it was 2:30 a.m.

Video of the feat on social media captures New Yorkers frame by frame giving him thumbs up and embracing him. Several clap for the “next Mayor”. He’s doing it, he tells followers, because New Yorkers deserve a mayor they can see, hear and even yell at.

It takes only a quick scroll through 33-year-old Mamdani’s social media accounts to understand just how different his style is from that of a traditional politician, rejecting typical soundbites for a more unrehearsed feel. After he won the New York Democratic primary on Tuesday, that playbook is getting accolades for its ability to attract a large coalition.

This is a wakeup call for the Democratic Party, said pollster Frank Luntz. The big loser of the night wasn’t his main opponent, former governor Andrew Cuomo, he said, but the US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who represents the Democratic Party establishment.

Grassroots Democrats are demanding “a more ideological, confrontational approach to policy and politics” in the time of President Donald Trump, Mr Luntz said.

Before Tuesday night’s win, Cuomo and several Democrats mocked Mamdani’s platform – including free public buses and city-run grocery stores – as unrealistic. Millions were spent attacking him. But the millennial, left-wing state assemblyman who represents the diverse neighbourhood of Astoria, Queens, clearly connected with social media-age voters who crave his brand of authenticity and accessibility.

Harris Krizmanich, 30, watched the Manhattan journey video three times. He started following the state lawmaker and democratic socialist in January, when Mamdani was polling at 1%. Krizmanich began canvassing for his campaign.

“I was blown away by his personable skills with the way he talks to people and the way he can relate to just the average person and the way he humanises the voters that felt very frustrated with the way things were going,” Mr Krizmanich told the BBC. “It was really inspiring.”

Without Cuomo’s name recognition or wealthy donors, Mamdani relied on introducing himself to voters by flooding social media consistently with positive, even humorous, content that showcased his personality and positions.

Polling indicated he piqued the interest and admiration of Gen Z and disaffected voters, who ultimately contributed to his impressive grassroots ground game.

Nearly 50,000 volunteers helped door-knock, and small donors helped him break fundraising records in the race. He also used traditional settings to his advantage: Mamdani’s viral clip attacking Cuomo’s record and scandals at one of the Democratic debates was viewed over 10 million times on X and over a million more on TikTok.

His identity as an immigrant, unapologetic about his beliefs and faith as a Muslim, was refreshing to those who saw in him their own experiences. The current New York mayor, Eric Adams – far from Mamdani’s biggest fan – said earlier in June: “I don’t agree with his stance on many things, but I respect the fact he’s true to who he is.”

After Mamdani’s win, however, perhaps sensing a greater threat, Adams – who is running for mayor as an independent in November – called him a “snake oil salesman”.

Mamdani is laser focused on cost-of-living issues. He said his conversations with voters often came down to common-sense discussions about leading a dignified life and how city government can help ensure that.

But the results also show Mamdani’s appeal across the wealth divide – he polled worst among lower-income residents, at 38% to Cuomo’s 49%.

At a recent event, Mamdani told the BBC that “there’s a lot of understandable despair and disappointment with so-called leaders within our own party who have shown themselves unable or unwilling to fight Donald Trump”. He included Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams on that list.

“We need a mayor who can look authoritarianism in the eye and not see a reflection of themselves.”

In the wake of Trump’s victory, many left-wing Democrats have argued that the lesson of November’s defeat is not that Americans have moved further right, but that they want a new approach to politics.

Stephanie Taylor, of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told the BBC that she hopes this is finally a wake-up call that the Democratic base is absolutely fed up.

“We’ve seen a Democratic Party establishment that has actively worked to undermine and defeat some of our best and brightest and most charismatic for ideological reasons. Because they didn’t like their anti-corporate stances or anti-war stances or their anti-corruptions stances,” she said.

“Voters want to believe that you’re going to fight for them.”

Mamdani still has to win in the general election in November, and if he prevails, the pressure will be on to prove he can actually deliver on his big promises despite limited experience in government.

Thailand is trying to rein in its free-wheeling marijuana market.

The government has approved new measures, which will soon restrict consumption of the drug to those with a doctor’s prescription – in the hope that this will help regulate an industry some describe as out of control.

The public health minister has also said that consumption of marijuana will be criminalised again, although it’s unclear when that could happen.

Ever since the drug was decriminalised in 2022, there has been a frenzy of investment.

There are now around 11,000 registered cannabis dispensaries in Thailand. In parts of the capital Bangkok it is impossible to escape the lurid green glare of their neon signs and the constant smell of people smoking their products.

In the famous backpacker district of Khao San Road, in the historic royal quarter, there is an entire shopping mall dedicated to selling hallucinogenic flower heads or marijuana accessories.

Derivative products like brownies and gummies are offered openly online – although this is technically illegal – and can be delivered to your door within an hour.

There has been talk of restricting the industry before. The largest party in the government coalition wanted to put cannabis back on the list of proscribed narcotics after it took office in 2023, but its former coalition partner, which had made decriminalisation a signature election policy, blocked this plan.

But the final straw appears to have been pressure from the UK, which has seen a flood of Thai marijuana being smuggled into the country.

It is often young travellers who are lured by drug syndicates in Britain into carrying suitcases filled with it on flights from Thailand.

Last month two young British women were arrested in Georgia and Sri Lanka, with large amounts of marijuana from Thailand. Both now face long prison sentences.

“It’s massively increased over the last couple of years,” says Beki Wright, spokesperson at the National Crime Agency in London (NCA). The NCA says 142 couriers carrying five tonnes were intercepted in 2023. This number shot up to 800 couriers in 2024 carrying 26 tonnes, and that number has continued to rise this year.

“We really want to stop people doing this. Because if you are stopped, in this country or many others, you face life-changing consequences, for something many of them think is low-risk. If you bring illicit drugs into the UK you might get through the first time, but you will eventually be found, and you will most likely go to jail.”

So far this year, 173 people accused of smuggling cannabis – nearly all from Thailand – have gone through the court system in the UK and received sentences totalling 230 years.

The NCA is working together with Thai authorities to try to deter young people from being tempted to smuggle cannabis to Britain. But this has proved difficult, because of the very few regulations that exist in Thailand to control the drug.

“This is a loophole,” says Panthong Loykulnanta, spokesman for the Thai Customs Department.

“The profit is very high, but the penalties here are not high. Most of the time when we catch people at the airport they abandon their luggage. But then there is no punishment. If they insist on checking in the luggage, we can arrest them, but they just pay the fine and try again.”

The legalisation of cannabis in 2022 was supposed to be followed by the passing of a new regulatory framework by the Thai parliament.

But this never happened, partly, says one MP involved in the drafting process, because of obstruction by vested interests with links to the marijuana industry. A new cannabis law was drawn up last year, but it could be two years away from being passed.

The result has been a weed wild west, where almost anything that can make money out of marijuana is tolerated.

There has also been an influx of foreign drug syndicates hiding behind Thai nominees, growing huge quantities of potent marijuana strains in brightly-lit, air-conditioned containers.

This has flooded the market and driven the price down, which is what has attracted the smugglers.

Even if more than half the people carrying marijuana get stopped, they can still make money from what gets through to the UK because of much higher prices there.

“You cannot have a free-for-all, right? This became a bar fight rather than a boxing match,” says Tom Kruesopon, a businessman who was instrumental in legalising marijuana, but now thinks things have now gone too far.

“When there is a weed shop on every corner, when people are smoking as they’re walking down the street, when tourists are getting high on our beaches, other countries being affected by our laws, with people shipping it illegally – these are negatives.”

He argues that the proposed new public health ministry regulations will restrict supply and demand, and restore the industry to what it was always intended to be, focused solely on the medical use of marijuana.

There is plenty of opposition to this notion from cannabis enthusiasts who believe the new rules will do nothing to curb smuggling or unlicensed growers.

They say the measures will wipe out small-scale businesses who are already struggling because of the glut caused by over-production.

Earlier this month, many of these smaller growers descended on the prime minister’s office in Bangkok to deliver a formal complaint to the government, calling for a more sensitively regulated industry, and not just what they believe is a knee-jerk reaction to foreign criticism.

“I totally understand that the government is probably getting yelled at during international meetings,” says Kitty Chopaka, the most vocal advocate for smaller producers.

“Countries saying ‘All your weed is getting smuggled into our country,’ that is quite embarrassing. But right now they are not even enforcing the rules that already exist. If they did, that would probably mitigate a lot of the issues like smuggling, or sale without a licence.”

The collapse in prices forced her earlier this year to close down her cannabis dispensary, one of the first to open three years ago.

Parinya Sangprasert, one of the growers at the protest, argues that the illegal growers are already operating outside the law in Thailand – and will ignore the new regulations as well.

He is emphatic that people cannot come to his farm and just buy 46kg (101 lbs) of marijuana – the quantity typically carried in two suitcases by the “mules” trying to reach the UK.

On his phone he brought up a copy of the official form he has to fill in every time he makes a sale.

“If you want to buy or sell a large amount of cannabis, you need a licence, issued by our government. Every weed shop must obtain this to buy marijuana, and there are records kept of which farm it’s from and who it was sold to.”

In the meantime, Thai customs officers are continuing their efforts to stem the flood of cannabis though their airports.

They are using intelligence gathered on travel patterns to target potential smugglers, and dissuade them from checking in their tainted luggage, and risking harsh jail sentences in their destination countries.

They are increasingly using the requirement for a licence to buy, sell or export quantities of marijuana to prosecute those they intercept, but the punishment is rarely more than a fine.

And the confiscated suitcases, filled with vacuum-sealed packages of dried marijuana heads, with names like “Runtz” and “Zkittlez”, still pile up in backrooms at the airports. There were around 200 in one room the BBC was allowed into, containing between two to three tonnes, taken in just the past month.

Mobile phone blackspots will be eliminated on several major railway lines and train tunnels by 2028, the body which runs Britain’s railway infrastructure has pledged.

Network Rail, which is owned by the government, has signed a deal with two private telecoms firms in a move it claims will see 4G and 5G connectivity boosted on trains and in stations.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said work was set to begin next year and claimed it would “transform” journeys for passengers who have experienced calls cutting out and weak internet connections.

The project is expected to take three years because works can only occur when trains are not running on tracks.

In the first instance, the deal called Project Reach will involve the installation of 1,000km of ultra-fast fibre optic cable along parts of the East Coast Main Line from London King’s Cross to Newcastle, and the West Coast Main Line, which stretches from the capital to Manchester.

Telecoms firm Neos Networks will also install cables along the Great Western Main Line running from London to Cardiff, and the Chiltern Main Line.

The plan is to expand that to more than 5,000km “in the near future”, the Dft said, but an exact year when this would occur has not been revealed.

Another telecoms company Freshwave has been handed the job eliminating blackspots in 57 tunnels covering a total of nearly 50km, including the 4km-long Chipping Sodbury tunnel near Bristol.

It will work with mobile network operators (MNOs) BT, O2 and VodafoneThree on upgrading mobile connectivity in tunnels of 250m and longer on the East Coast, West Coast, and Great Western lines.

Freshwave will also collaborate with the MNOs on new 4G and 5G infrastructure at 12 of the biggest Network Rail stations including Birmingham New Street, Bristol Temple Meads and Edinburgh Waverley.

Network Rail claimed private investment in the project would save taxpayers about £300m as the two telecoms companies are funding it, rather than Network Rail having to renew its existing infrastructure.

Chief financial officer Jeremy Westlake the investment model would “deliver the necessary upgrades to our telecoms infrastructure faster whilst offering significant value-for-money for the taxpayer and stimulating wider economic benefits across the country”.

Bruce Williamson, spokesman for campaign group Rail Future, told the BBC better connectivity for passengers on the railways was “undoubtedly a good thing”.

“There is demand for connectivity. People live on their smart phones and people work on trains,” he added.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said the roll-out would support the government’s “broader goals of economic growth and digital innovation”.

She said the deal was a “game-changer for passengers up and down the country”.

“By boosting connectivity and tackling signal blackspots, we are also ensuring a more reliable and efficient service,” she added.

The world’s oldest boomerang is older than previously thought, casting new light on the ingenuity of humans living at the time.

The tool, which was found in a cave in Poland in 1985, is now thought to be 40,000 years old.

Archaeologists say it was fashioned from a mammoth’s tusk with an astonishing level of skill.

Researchers worked out from its shape that it would have flown when thrown, but would not have come back to the thrower.

It was probably used in hunting, though it might have had cultural or artistic value, perhaps being used in some kind of ritual.

The mammoth ivory boomerang was unearthed in Oblazowa Cave in southern Poland.

It was originally thought to be about 30,000 years old. But new, more reliable radiocarbon dating of human and animal bones found at the site puts the age at between 39,000 and 42,000 years old.

“It’s the oldest boomerang in the world, and the only one in the world made of this shape and this long to be found in Poland,” said Dr Sahra Talamo of the University of Bologna, Italy.

It gives a “remarkable insight” into human behaviour, she said, particularly how Homo sapiens living as long as 42,000 years ago could shape “such a perfect object” with the knowledge it could be used to hunt animals.

The boomerang is exceptionally well preserved, with score marks suggesting it had been polished and carved for use by a right-handed individual.

Boomerangs are generally associated with Aboriginal culture in Australia.

However, rare finds in the historical record outside Australia suggest they were used across different continents.

The oldest known boomerang from Australia dates to about 10,500 years ago, made from wood. But the oldest images of boomerangs in Australia are rock art paintings 20,000 years old, according to National Museum Australia.

A wooden boomerang dating back 7,000 years has been found in Jutland, a peninsula between Denmark and Germany, while fragments of a 2,000-year-old oak boomerang – which does come back – has been found in The Netherlands.

The research by a team of scientists from Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland and the UK is published in the journal PLOS One.

After spending nearly two weeks in a secret bunker somewhere in Iran during his country’s war with Israel, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, might want to use the opportunity of the ceasefire to venture out.

He is believed to be holed up, incommunicado, for the fear of being assassinated by Israel. Even top government officials apparently have had no contact with him.

He would be well advised to be cautious, despite the fragile ceasefire that the US President Donald Trump and the Emir of Qatar brokered. Though President Trump reportedly told Israel not to kill Iran’s supreme leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not rule it out.

When – or indeed if – he does emerge from hiding, he will see a landscape of death and destruction. He will no doubt still appear on state TV claiming victory in the conflict. He will plot to restore his image. But he will face new realities – even a new era.

The war has left the country significantly weakened and him a diminished man.

During the war, Israel quickly took control of much of Iran’s airspace, and attacked its military infrastructure. Top commanders of the Revolutionary Guard and the army were swiftly killed.

The extent of the damage to the military is still unclear and disputed, but the repeated bombings of the army and revolutionary guard bases and installations suggests substantial degradation of Iran’s military power. Militarisation had long consumed a vast amount of the nation’s resources.

Iran’s known nuclear facilities that earned the country nearly two decades of US and international sanctions, with an estimated cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, are now damaged from the air strikes, although the full extent of this has been hard to assess. What was it all for, many are asking.

A vast number of Iranians will singularly hold Ayatollah Khamenei, who first became leader in 1989, responsible for setting Iran on a collision course with Israel and the US that ultimately brought considerable ruin to his country and people.

They will blame him for pursuing the ideological aim of destruction of Israel – something many Iranians don’t support. They will blame him for what they perceive as a folly – his belief that achieving nuclear status would render his regime invincible. Sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy, reducing a top oil exporter to a poor and struggling shadow of its former self.

“It is difficult to estimate how much longer the Iranian regime can survive under such significant strain, but this looks like the beginning of the end,” says Professor Lina Khatib, a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

“Ali Khamenei is likely to become the Islamic Republic’s last ‘Supreme Leader’ in the full sense of the word.”

There have been murmurs of dissent at the top. At the height of the war, one semi-official Iranian news agency reported that some top former regime figures have been urging the country’s more quiet religious scholars based in the holy city of Qom, who are separate to the ayatollah, to intervene and bring about a change in leadership.

“There will be a reckoning,” according to Professor Ali Ansari, the founding director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews.

“It’s quite clear that there are huge disagreements within the leadership, and there’s also huge unhappiness among ordinary people.”

During the last two weeks, many Iranians wrestled with conflicted feelings of the need to defend their country versus their deep hatred of the regime. They rallied for the country, not by coming out to defend the regime, but to look after each other. There have been reports of vast solidarity and closeness.

People in towns and villages outside urban areas opened their doors to those who had fled the bombardments in their cities, shopkeepers undercharged basic goods, neighbours knocked on each other’s doors to ask if they needed anything.

But many people were also aware that Israel was probably looking for a regime change in Iran. A regime change is what many Iranians wish for. They may draw the line on a regime change engineered and imposed by foreign powers, however.

In his nearly 40 years of his rule, Ayatollah Khamenei, one of the world’s longest reigning autocrats, has decimated any opposition in the country. Opposition political leaders are either in jail or have fled the country. Abroad, the opposition figures have been unable to formulate a stance that unites the opposition to the regime.

They have been ineffectual in the establishment of any semblance of an organisation able to take over inside the country if the opportunity arises.

And during the two weeks of war, when the collapse of the regime could have been a possibility, if the war went on relentlessly, many believed the likely scenario for the day after was not the takeover by the opposition, but the descent of the country into chaos and lawlessness.

“It is unlikely that the Iranian regime will be toppled through domestic opposition. The regime remains strong at home and will ramp up domestic oppression to crush dissent,” says Prof Khatib.

Iranians are now fearing further clampdown by the regime. At least six people have been executed in the past two weeks since the start of the war with Israel on charges of spying for Israel. Authorities say they have arrested some 700 people on this charge.

One Iranian woman told BBC Persian what she fears more than the death and destruction of the war is a regime that is wounded and humiliated turning its anger against its own people.

“If the regime is unable to supply basic goods and services, then there will be growing anger and frustration,” says Prof Ansari.

“I see it as a staged process. I don’t see it as something that, necessarily, in a popular sense, will take root until long after the bombing is over.”

Few people in Iran think that the ceasefire brokered on Monday will last – and many believe Israel is not yet finished now that it has total superiority in the sky over Iran.

One thing that seems to have escaped the destruction are Iran’s ballistic missile silos that Israel found hard to locate as they are placed in tunnels under mountains throughout the country.

The Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, said Israel launched its opening attack on Iran knowing that “Iran possessed around 2,500 surface-to-surface missiles”. The missiles that Iran fired caused considerable death and destruction in Israel.

Israel will be concerned about the remaining possible 1,500 still in the hands of the Iranian side.

There is also a serious concern in Tel Aviv, Washington and other Western and regional capitals that Iran may still rush to build a nuclear bomb, something it has continued to deny trying to do.

Although Iran’s nuclear facilities have almost certainly been set back, and possibly rendered useless during the bombings by Israel and the US, Iran said it had moved its stockpile of highly enriched Uranium to a safe secret place.

That stockpile of 60% Uranium, if enriched to 90%, which is a relatively easy step, is enough for about nine bombs, according to experts. Just before the war started, Iran announced that it had built another new secret facility for enrichment that was due to come on stream soon.

The Iranian parliament has voted to sharply reduce its cooperation with the UN’s atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This still requires approval, but if it passes Iran would be one step away from exiting the nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT – as hardliners supporting the supreme leader push for Iran’s breakout to build a bomb.

Ayatollah Khamenei may now be confident that his regime has survived, just. But at the age of 86 and ailing, he also knows that his own days may be numbered, and he may want to ensure continuity of the regime with an orderly transition of power – to another senior cleric or even a council of leadership.

In any case, the remaining top commanders of the Revolutionary Guard who have been loyal to the supreme leader may be seeking to wield power from behind the scenes.

Top image credit: Pacific Press via Getty

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Ticket touts are employing teams of workers to bulk-buy tickets for the UK’s biggest concerts like Oasis and Taylor Swift so they can be resold for profit, a BBC investigation has found.

We uncovered some touts are making “millions” hiring people overseas, known as “ticket pullers”, with one telling an undercover journalist his team bought hundreds of tickets for Swift’s Eras tour last year.

Our reporter, posing as a would-be tout, secretly recorded the boss of a ticket pulling company in Pakistan who said they could set up a team for us and potentially buy hundreds of tickets.

The UK government plans new legislation to crack down on touts but critics argue it does not go far enough.

Shortly after pre-sale, where a limited number of fans could buy Oasis tickets when they went on sale in August, tickets for their UK gigs were being listed on resale websites like StubHub and Viagogo for more than £6,000 – about 40 times the face value of a standing ticket.

We found genuine fans missed out or, in desperation, ended up paying way over the odds as touts have an army of people working for them to buy tickets for the most in-demand events as soon as they go on sale.

Ali, the boss of the ticket pulling company, boasted to our undercover reporter that he’d been successful at securing tickets for popular gigs.

“I think we had 300 Coldplay tickets and then we had Oasis in the same week – we did great,” he told us.

Ali claimed he knew of a UK tout who made more than £500,000 last year doing this and reckons others are “making millions”.

Our research found pullers buy tickets using illegal automated software and multiple identities which could amount to fraud.

Another ticket pulling boss, based in India, told BBC Wales Investigates’ undercover reporter: “If I’m sitting in your country and running my operations in your country, then it is completely illegal.

“We do not participate in illegal things because actually we are outside of the UK.”

A man who worked in the ticketing industry for almost 40 years showed us how he infiltrated a secret online group that claims to have secured thousands of tickets using underhand methods.

Reg Walker said members of the group could generate 100,000 “queue passes” – effectively allowing them to bypass the software that creates an online queue for gigs.

He told the BBC’s The Great Ticket Rip Off programme this was the equivalent of “100,000 people all of a sudden turning up and pushing in front of you in the queue”.

He added: “If you are a ticketing company and an authorised resale company, and someone decides to list hundreds of tickets for a high-demand event… my question would be, where did you get the tickets? There’s no due diligence.”

Fans are usually limited to a handful of tickets when buying from primary platforms such as Ticketmaster.

Touts often list their tickets on resale websites and one former Viagogo employee alleged he had seen some profiles with thousands of tickets for sale.

“They [touts] buy in bulk most of the time in the hope of reselling and making a profit,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t know how they get their hands on them but I know that at some point they would have bought tickets in bulk in serious numbers.

“You’re not allowing a lot of people to get access because you’re hoarding the tickets.”

Viagogo said it refutes this man’s claims, insisting 73% of sellers on its site sold fewer than five tickets each – and other sellers included sports clubs and promoters.

It is not just music concerts targeted by touts as the BBC found evidence of thousands of Premier League football tickets being advertised illegally.

Since 1994 it has been a criminal offence to resell tickets for football matches in the UK unless authorised, with the maximum penalty being a £1,000 fine.

But we found 8,000 tickets being advertised illegally online for more than face value for Arsenal’s Premier League game with Chelsea at the Emirates Stadium on 16 March.

One of those sellers was a semi-professional footballer based in the UK.

Bogdan Stolboushkin has openly advertised tickets for football games totalling more than £60,000 on social media in the past year alone.

He sold our reporter a single ticket at double the face value.

Mr Stolboushkin did not respond to multiple attempts to contact him about these allegations.

Another potentially illegal practice in the UK is “speculative selling”, where touts list tickets for resale without owning them.

There is no guarantee these touts will actually secure a ticket and “speculative selling” was one of the reasons two touts were jailed for fraud in 2020.

Our investigation found at least 104 seats being “speculatively” listed on Viagogo for Catfish and the Bottlemen’s August concert at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.

The exact seats appeared to be for sale at the same time on both Ticketmaster, the original point of sale, and Viagogo.

After we presented our evidence to Viagogo, it said: “Listings suspected to be in contravention of our policy have been removed from the site.”

The UK government is looking at measures to try and tackle the issue, but evidence of the challenges faced can be seen in the Republic of Ireland.

In 2021, laws were introduced there to stop the resale of tickets above face value, but the BBC found this being flouted.

This included tickets to see the band Kneecap selling for four times their face value of €59 (£50), while tickets for the Six Nations Ireland v France rugby clash in Dublin were selling for £3,000.

One of Ireland’s biggest promoters, Peter Aiken, said he had never heard of the company selling the tickets and questioned if the tickets existed at all.

Many ticket companies selling in Ireland are based overseas, which the BBC has been told helps them avoid punishment under Irish law.

Capping resale prices of tickets and regulating resale platforms was one of Sir Keir Starmer’s manifesto pledges ahead of last year’s general election.

Now he is prime minister, the UK government has held a consultation with proposals including a price cap that ranges from the original price to 30% above face value, introducing larger fines and a new licensing regime.

But Dame Caroline Dinenage, chairwoman of the UK government’s cross-party Culture, Media and Sport committee said: “It’s a minefield for people who just want to buy tickets for an event they want to enjoy.

“This evidence proves that there is not enough activity going on either from the government, in some cases from the police and certainly from some of these really big online organisations to be able to clamp down on this sort of activity.”

The Conservative MP said this investigation highlighted “what a lot of consumers are already seeing that there is a whole world of, in some cases illegal, but it all cases immoral activity going on in the ticketing sphere”.

“People are having to pay over the odds because others quite often are operating outside of the UK to make an absolute killing on buying up tickets, selling them at a huge premium and in some cases selling tickets that don’t exist at all,” she added.

The UK government’s aim is to “strengthen consumer protections and stop fans getting ripped off”, according to the UK culture secretary.

Lisa Nandy added she wanted to “ensure money spent on tickets goes back into our incredible live events sector, instead of into the pockets of greedy touts”.

The head of the CIA has said US strikes “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear facilities and set them back years, diverging from a leaked intelligence report that angered President Donald Trump by downplaying the raid’s impact.

John Ratcliffe, the US spy agency’s director, said key sites had been destroyed, though he stopped short of declaring that Iran’s nuclear programme had been eliminated outright.

It comes a day after a leaked preliminary assessment from a Pentagon intelligence agency suggested core components of Iran’s nuclear programme remained intact after the US bombings.

President Trump again maintained the raid had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Republican president took to social media on Wednesday to post that the “fake news” media had “lied and totally misrepresented the facts, none of which they had”.

He said Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and other military officials would hold an “interesting and irrefutable” news conference on Thursday at the Pentagon “in order to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots”.

It came as Israel and Iran seemed for a second day to be honouring a fragile ceasefire that Trump helped negotiate this week on the 12th day of the war.

Speaking at The Hague where he attended a Nato summit on Wednesday, Trump said of the strikes: “It was very severe. It was obliteration.”

He also said he would probably seek a commitment from Iran to end its nuclear ambitions at talks next week. Iran has not acknowledged any such negotiations.

But US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told US network NBC there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries.

The statement from Ratcliffe, who was appointed by Trump, said the CIA’s information included “new intelligence from an historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years”.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has also come out in support of Trump’s assessment on the damage to Iranian nuclear facilities.

“If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordo, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,” she wrote on X.

The US operation involved 125 military aircraft, targeting the three main Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday.

New satellite images show six craters clustered around two entry points at Fordo, with similar craters spotted at Isfahan. But it is unclear if the nuclear facilities located deep underground were wiped out.

A report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency was leaked to US media on Tuesday, estimating that the US bombing had set back Iran’s nuclear programme “only a few months”.

The US defence secretary said that assessment was made with “low confidence”.

Officials familiar with the evaluation cautioned it was an early assessment that could change as more information emerges. The US has 18 intelligence agencies, which sometimes produce conflicting reports based on their mission and area of expertise.

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday that there is a chance Tehran moved much of its highly enriched uranium elsewhere as it came under attack.

But Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Al Jazeera on Wednesday: “Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure.” He did not elaborate.

A report by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission said the strike on Fordo “destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure”.

The damage across all the sites, the report said, has pushed Iran’s timeline for nuclear weapons back by “many years”.

Yet Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to the chairman of the Iranian parliament, said shortly after the US strikes that “no irreversible damage was sustained” at Fordo.

Iran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is peaceful. US intelligence agencies have previously said Tehran was not actively building atomic weapons.

UK scientists say they have developed a test which can help identify women with an abnormal womb lining that increases their risk of miscarriage.

They say their work could pave the way for new treatments for those going through repeated pregnancy loss.

In some women with a history of miscarriage, the womb lining doesn’t react the way it should – transforming into a supportive place for the embryo to implant, the Warwick University team discovered.

Charities say the findings could help provide an explanation, in some cases, for the trauma and devastation of recurrent miscarriage.

Around one in six of all pregnancies are lost, most before twelve weeks, and each miscarriage increases the risk of another one happening.

To date, most research in this area has focused on the quality of the embryo, with much less known about the role of the womb lining.

Dr Jo Muter, study author and researcher at Warwick Medical School, said: “Many women are told they’ve just had ‘bad luck’, but our findings show that the womb itself may be setting the stage for pregnancy loss, even before conception takes place.”

The job of the womb lining is to receive the embryo and help it develop during pregnancy, thanks to a reaction which converts cells into a different, supportive state.

But when that reaction is messed up and doesn’t fully happen, the risk of bleeding and early pregnancy rises.

Once a woman has had one faulty reaction, she is more likely to have another, the researchers say.

They’ve developed a new test which can measure signs of a healthy or defective reaction in the womb lining, which is being piloted to help more than 1,000 patients at Tommy’s National Centre for Miscarriage Research at University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire (UHCW).

Charlie Beattie, 37, had countless early miscarriages over the course of four years, to the point where “a positive pregnancy test wasn’t exciting any more”, she says.

She and her husband Sam, from Leamington Spa, felt devastated and resigned to considering other options for having a family.

Then they found out about at a trial taking place at the miscarriage research centre.

Charlie had a sample of her womb taken, and the new test showed it was not “hospitable for babies”, she says.

After taking the drug sitagliptin for three months, she had a pregnancy which finally stuck – and nine-week-old June is the joyful result.

“She’s a tiny miracle. It doesn’t feel real,” says Charlie.

She admits being anxious all the way through her pregnancy until June was safely in her arms.

Even the pregnancy scans were a new experience.

“We’d never seen anything on a scan before that moved,” she says. “When they said ‘I can see it, it’s in the right place’, we both burst into tears.”

Anyone can refer themselves to the clinic, but it has a long waiting list and funding issues mean patients must contribute to the cost of the test.

Dr Jyotsna Vohra, director of research at Tommy’s, said care and treatment for those who experience pregnancy or baby loss varied unacceptably across the UK.

“There should be no barriers to accessing any test or treatment that has been proven to make a difference.

“We hope NHS decision-makers will look carefully at the results of the Coventry pilot project and consider rolling this test out nationwide, so that everyone who might benefit has that opportunity.”

Dr Muter says the next step is to use the test to assess potential drug treatments. Sitagliptin, usually used to treat diabetes, is the go-to option for womb lining issues but there may be other existing drugs which can be repurposed, she added.

With 80% of drugs not tested on pregnant women, it’s unclear which ones might be effective.