The Times - 04.11.2026 — 2026-11-05

Wednesday November 4 2026 | thetimes.com | No 75181

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President plays trump card by scrapping Israel aid on polling day

David Charter Washington

President Trump said the United States would stop providing almost \$4bn a year to Israel after complaining that the aid had become “the best talking point” for Democrats in yesterday’s midterm elections.

Trump said Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader seeking to stay in power in an election deadlock, had agreed “they don’t need it” any more.

Israel is the largest recipient of US overseas aid under a deal signed by President Obama to provide \$38bn over ten years to be spent on US military equipment. Trump said Israel would still be able to buy “whatever they want” but that the cash would stop at the end of the year. He made the announcement on the day of the midterm elections which, polls suggest, may hand control of Congress back to Democrats in a damning verdict on Trump's first two years back in office.

"The left uses the \$4bn payment ... as a signal of unfairness," Trump said on Fox & Friends. "It's almost too easy a target and Bibi [Netanyahu] and I have been talking and we've agreed." He

called the aid “the best talking point that these lunatics have on the left”. He singled out Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat running for the Senate in Michigan against the Republican Mike Rogers. Haley Stevens, the Democrat beaten by El-Sayed in a primary contest, has endorsed Rogers and called El-Sayed “not fit to serve” in a post online. Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu's main rival to form a government in Israel, called for answers from him.

"The fact that the defence establishment, along with Israeli citizens, is learning through the media about a change in the strategic relationship [with the US] shows just how much Netanyahu's conduct poses a real danger," Eisenkot said.

Trump: We're not at war, page 30

Slavery was evil but we helped end it, says King

Commonwealth speech stops short of apology

Kate Mansey Assistant Editor, Antigua Aubrey Allegretti

Chief Political Correspondent

The King has expressed his “most profound personal sorrow” over the transatlantic slave trade, telling Commonwealth leaders that the “shameful chapter of history” filled his “heart with horror”.

However, in a highly anticipated address to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM), Charles offered no apology, arguing instead that Britain's leading role in bringing an end to the trade should be commended.

The King said: “And yet history also teaches us that evil need not have the last word; that character and courage can combine to overcome the most monstrous injustice, as they did with the determination to end international trade in enslaved people, in which the Royal Navy played such a leading role.”

His 15-minute speech in St John's, the capital of Antigua, followed a suggestion from Andy Burnham, the prime minister, that he was “open to” calls for an apology.

Last night, Burnham, who is in Antigua, again ruled out direct financial reparations, but refused to be drawn on whether other taxpayer-funded initiatives could be used to fund investment in countries affected by slavery.

He told reporters the UK had supported “countries in the Commonwealth around development” and helped them “with debt issues” and “green finance”. He said: “That’s what we’ve done under all governments, and in my view, we should continue to do as part of being a Commonwealth.”

Burnham promised to oversee a “new approach” to Commonwealth relations, and acknowledged that some countries had felt there “wasn’t sufficient dialogue” on “that crucial issue of the slave trade”.

Burnham added the UK's offer of an apology meant a joint statement from the heads of governments “has just been unanimously agreed, and that hasn't happened in recent times”.

During a separate interview with ITV News, he denied he had overshadowed the King's trip by opening the door to an official apology for Britain's role in the slave trade.

In a meeting after the King had delivered his speech, Burnham told Charles that his speech was “perfect”.

Burnham also discussed the prospect of a formal apology for Britain's role in the slave trade with the prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, yesterday.

The “next steps” of the UK’s offer of a “structured dialogue for communities impacted by the transatlantic slave trade” were raised during the meeting, according to a Downing Street spokeswoman.

Burnham also discussed his plans to “reset international financial frameworks for debt through the UK-hosted G20 next year”, she added. No 10 has Continued on page 7

VICTORIA JONES/SHUTTERSTOCK

The Queen and Marie-France van Heel, the prime minister's wife, visited a school in St John's on Antigua as the island hosted a Commonwealth meeting

THE WEATHER

Dry for most with sunny spells. Cloudy with patchy rain across central Britain. Full forecast, page 55

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Almost 1 in 4 primary pupils are already obese by year 6

Poppy Koronka Health Correspondent

Nearly one in four children in the final year of primary school are now obese, official figures have shown.

Disregarding the pandemic, the data from this year shows that obesity in the first year of primary school is at the highest level since records began.

Some 10.7 per cent of children in the reception year of primary school, aged four and five, are obese. For 10 and 11-year-olds, in year 6, the proportion is 22.8 per cent, higher than pre-pandemic levels and higher than the figure for year 5, which is 22.2 per cent.

Boys in year 6 had a rate of 6.9 per cent severely obese, compared with 4.8 per cent of girls.

Girls in primary school were more likely than boys to be a healthy weight.

The obesity rate in the most deprived regions was also double that for the most affluent areas for reception pupils (14.2 per cent compared with 6.9 per cent) and for year 6 pupils (30.3 per cent compared with 13.9 per cent).

Some 1.1 million children were measured in state schools in England for the National Child Measurement

Programme, which records height and weight to inform public health interventions.

Anna Taylor, the executive director of the Food Foundation charity, said: "Today's data shows worsening childhood obesity levels and that the gulf in children's health between those living in deprived versus wealthy areas has widened. We keep measuring children but failing to act on what we find.

“Nearly 500 days ago the government committed to introduce mandatory reporting by large food businesses on the healthiness of their food sales with a commitment to a moonshot to end obesity. We’re still waiting for the consultation while the challenge of feeding children well has only got harder. Every day of delay carries cost in the communities who can afford it least — today around 93 children will have rotten teeth removed in hospital at a cost of £140,000. Delay is the most expensive policy we have.”

Black children and year 6 children from Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds tend to have higher obesity levels, while reception and year 6 children from the Indian ethnic group were most likely to be underweight, the data showed. Katharine Jenner, executive director of the Obesity Health Alliance, said: "All parents want the best start in life for their children but these concerning figures are the result of children and families being surrounded by unhealthy food that is heavily marketed, readily available and often cheaper than healthier alternatives. We cannot keep expecting families to fight an uphill battle against a food environment that makes healthy choices so difficult.

"The government has promised to create the healthiest generation of children ever, yet these figures show just how far we are from achieving that ambition. Promises alone will not improve children's health."

Jenner called for urgent government action to “make the healthy choice the easy choice”, including through mandatory health reporting and healthier sales targets for large food businesses, tougher restrictions on unhealthy food marketing, and measures that make healthier food more affordable and accessible for all families. “Without decisive action, we risk failing another generation of children,” she added.

Mahmood silent on return to freedom of movement

Geraldine Scott

Assistant Political Editor

Shabana Mahmood has refused to say whether she supports restoring freedom of movement with the European Union after Andy Burnham insisted he had not proposed bringing it back.

The home secretary acknowledged that Brexit had made it harder to control immigration because Britain had lost access to European databases, but said she would not be drawn on whether free movement should return.

Burnham sought to end confusion over his own position by insisting that he would not “run ahead of public opinion” on closer ties with the EU, although he called for an “honest discussion” about how immigration had changed since the Brexit referendum.

Mahmood, who revealed a tightening of immigration rules on Monday, said she would not “indulge” questions about her view on free movement.

She told Sky News: "What I am keen on is abiding by our manifesto.

"The prime minister has himself recognised that there were significant issues with the free movement of people, and that should also be part of the debate that we're going to have as a country about our Brexit settlement and what we do for the future." Asked whether she agreed with Burnham's assessment that Britain would have more control of migration if it rejoined the EU, Mahmood said that losing access to databases after Brexit had “had a very significant impact on us and our ability to manage migration into this country”.

The prime minister told ITV: "I have not proposed freedom of movement coming back.

"I do believe that we should have an honest discussion with people about how immigration has changed since the Brexit vote, because the shorter-term migration of people coming from Europe and then going back has been replaced with long-term settlement in bigger numbers, and that was the Boriswave."

He said this had “led to more illegal migration because we can’t share data any more” with European partners.

When Burnham fought a by-election in the Leave-voting Makerfield, which served as a stepping stone to No 10, he promised not to “re-run” Brexit arguments. He said he had noticed during the campaign that public opinion had changed since the 2016 referendum.

He said: “I think public opinion has changed nationally. But I want to be really clear on this issue, I will not run ahead of public opinion.”

Mahmood denies losing nerve, page 10

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Return of pet passports

the document from a vet in the EU. Andy Burnham will use the EU summit to start a “national conversation” about the future of Britain’s relationship with the bloc. He is expected to set out options, including a return to freedom of movement. The removal of checks on food exports and a youth mobility scheme will also be approved.

Ministers want to secure access at the summit to the EU's Made in Europe scheme, designed to help European car manufacturers compete against low-cost Chinese electric vehicles.

However, a draft of the summit conclusions, prepared by EU negotiators, shows that Brussels is demanding that the UK be bound by European restrictions on Chinese EVs and that ministers impose tariffs of up to 35 per cent on Chinese-made EVs. In return, the EU would make a commitment to “strive” to “limit negative effects” of any measures that would affect British and European supply chains.

In a separate negotiation, the EU is calling on the UK to pay into European development funds if British energy companies are to gain the freedom to trade in the EU's single market for electricity. Brussels would stipulate British taxpayer cash go into projects to build roads, airports and green energy facilities in the bloc's poorer member states.

Burnham said the British public would expect the government to grab “with both hands” the chance to boost economic growth by up to 0.4 per cent.

Tube fare-dodging crackdown criticised

Laurence Sleator

Transport Correspondent

A Transport for London “crackdown” on fare dodging has brought less than one arrest a day during its first month.

Operation Vector, a partnership between TfL and the British Transport Police, has resulted in 156 penalty fares — about five a day — and 24 arrests for fare evasion and wider criminality.

Plain-clothes police officers on the network work with revenue control teams to intercept persistent offenders.

TfL has set a goal of driving down fare evasion to below 1.5 per cent by 2031. It is currently at 3.5 per cent, costing TfL about £190m a year.

TfL said that 467 people had been stopped and 175 reports for “possible prosecution”. Anyone caught evading a fare on the Underground faces a penalty fare of £100. The more serious cases are referred for prosecution.

TfL issued 69,001 fines between April 2025 and March 2026, a rise of almost 10 per cent on the previous year.

Robert Jenrick, the Reform UK MP who confronted fare dodgers in a viral video last year, said: "Law-abiding commuters are being made to pay for the fare-dodging epidemic with higher prices. Nothing will change if we continue to see such pitiful enforcement."

Seb Dance, deputy mayor of London for transport, said: “It’s great to see our targeted enforcement work already having such positive results ... the mayor and I will continue to support TfL in protecting these vital funds.”

The British Transport Police said the operation had provided “valuable opportunities to identify and apprehend criminals” and had led to the seizure of weapons and drugs.

News

Brushes of genius brought fresco to life

GOVERNATORATO SCV

Customised tools let Michelangelo sculpt his paintwork on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Tom Kington writes

Michelangelo's The Last Judgment at the Sistine Chapel draws gasps from thousands of visitors every year thanks to its intense colours.

The vivid tones give life to the massive fresco of more than 300 figures rising to heaven and descending to hell, which adorns the wall behind the chapel's altar.

Now, an expert has revealed the secret behind their intensity. The colours were boosted by Michelangelo's use of a collection of unusual, homemade paintbrushes that helped him to recreate an effect he achieved in his sculptures, according to the Vatican restorer Paolo Violini.

“With his brushes, Michelangelo was trying to reproduce that vibration of light he managed as a sculptor,” said Violini, the chief restorer at the Vatican Museums’ Painting Laboratory.

Violini identified the artist's trick during a rare clean-up of the 16th-century painting in February, when the chapel was closed and scaffolding was erected, allowing Violini and his team to get a close look at the paintwork.

The experts used demineralised water and highly absorbent paper to remove from the paint white salt deposited by the perspiration from visitors. As the original colours of the painting reappeared, Violini noticed something odd. "I initially saw that Michelangelo painted with parallel strokes, often perpendicular to each to give a cross-hatching effect," he said.

“Then I saw that when a stroke wobbled slightly, other strokes parallel to it had an identical wobble. That meant one thing: Michelangelo was using special brushes with multiple heads, each with a small brush on the end of it, allowing him to produce parallel strokes with one large brush.”

Violini said the artist must have made the brushes himself. “The paintwork shows he used different types, one with three heads and others up to 15cm wide with up to ten brushes on them,” he said.

He thinks there were several reasons

behind Michelangelo's choice of the technique. "First of all, it allowed him to paint faster, but it also produced the same cross-hatching effect he got with the multipointed chisel he used in his sculpture, which makes the light on the stone vibrate," he said. Violini's findings have been published in a book about the cleaning, Michelangelo 2026: The Extraordinary Conservation of the Last Judgment, co-edited by Barbara Jatta, director of the Vatican

A restorer who saw The Last Judgment at close quarters during work to clean it this year realised that Michelangelo, below, combined up to ten brushes at a time to give parallel lines an identical wobble, reproducing the “vibration of light” evident in his sculptures

Museums. "Michelangelo painted magnificently — as a sculptor," Jatta writes.

The book also reveals how a second expert who mounted the scaffolding, Fabrizio Biferali, analysed a hidden self-portrait Michelangelo had painted on a strip of cloth worn by a figure representing death.

The face, which stares at the viewer, appears low down on the left side of The Last Judgement where the dead are rising from the ground before either ascending to paradise or heading for hell.

"It is the last section of The Last Judgment to be completed by Michelangelo in 1541 after he had started it in 1536, and while painting it he fell off the scaffolding," said Biferali, curator of the Vatican Museums' Renaissance department.

“Luckily, he was only a few metres off the ground, but still broke his leg and had to down tools for a few months.

"I believe he then painted his

own face among the dead being reborn because he felt reborn after his injury, as well as feeling reborn because he was coming to the end of five years of work," he added.

The self-portrait is the second to be found in the painting. Michelangelo also depicted St Bartholomew —

who was flayed alive — holding a stretch of skin in his hand. It features a face very similar to the artist's.

"The face on the cloth worn by death has been spotted before but our cleaning made it evident

for the first time," said Biferali. "Michelangelo was obsessed by death and rebirth."

Popped: Rice Krispies lose their rice

Callum Martin, Phoebe Davies

Presumably they will continue to be crispy, but Rice Krispies are no longer made with rice grains, Kellogg's announced yesterday.

The breakfast cereal, which for almost a century has been made with puffed rice kernels, has been reformulated to use a blend of rice flour and corn flour instead.

Kellogg's, which has produced Rice Krispies since 1928, blamed the shift on “changing weather conditions”, which it said had affected the quality and availability of ingredients.

Rice prices have increased sharply in recent years as extreme weather patterns have caused supply shocks.

The new recipe, which also affects Coco Pops, contains wheat gluten, which means that the cereals are no longer suitable for shoppers with a wheat allergy or coeliac disease.

Previously, Rice Krispies and Coco Pops were labelled “may contain gluten” because they were made in a factory where other cereals containing gluten were also handled.

Following the reformulation, wheat gluten is now an ingredient in the cereals, meaning wheat must be declared as an allergen on packaging and highlighted in bold on the list of ingredients.

A spokeswoman for Kellogg's said: "We appreciate that even small changes to a much-loved product can feel noticeable and that's why we have approached this with a lot of care

and consideration. The updated recipes have been carefully assessed for taste, appearance and texture, and we are continuing to listen closely to consumer feedback."

Kellogg's said that both cereals remained "non-HFSS" — or not

Rice Krispies are no longer gluten-free after the change high in fat, salt or sugar — contained no artificial colours, flavours or sweeteners and maintained the same levels of fibre, vitamin D and iron.

The company did not say whether the reformulation would affect the “snap, crackle and pop” sound created when milk is added to the cereal.

Kellogg's, which also makes Corn Flakes and Frosties, faced criticism in 2015 for fuelling childhood obesity.

This led it to cut sugar in Special K

and Bran Flakes by 30 per cent. Two years later,

the company also reduced sugar in its Coco Pops and Rice Krispies brands by 40 per cent and 20 per cent respectively. Sales of Rice Krispies have been in decline, both in value and volume, The Grocer, a trade magazine, reported.

Gregg Wallace takes BBC to court over ‘witch-hunt’

Gregg Wallace has said he is resuming legal action against the BBC after he was sacked from MasterChef.

Wallace, 62, was a co-host and judge on the BBC cooking show from 2005 to 2024, when it was announced that he would step away from his role while misconduct allegations were investigated. He was sacked in July last year after a review upheld 45 of the 83 allegations, which mostly occurred between 2005 and 2018 and included one of “unwelcome physical contact”.

He later sued the BBC and BBC Studios Distribution Limited for up to £10,000 in damages over allegations they failed to disclose his personal data to him, which caused him “distress and harassment”, but discontinued the High Court case in February this year. However, Wallace has now said he is restarting the legal action.

After an exchange with an account on X in which the allegations against him were mentioned, he responded: "The investigation overturned each of their complaints so you can imagine how upset I was that people were lying about me publicly." He added: "We are going down the legal route and I am the injured party. I'm a victim of a terrible witch-hunt. There you are."

Wallace later said that the “first court date is in spring next year”. However, it is understood a date has not been set and this is a case management hearing.

After the results of the review were released last year, Wallace said he was “deeply sorry for any distress caused” and that he “never set out to harm or humiliate”.

When Wallace initially began legal action against the BBC, the broadcaster said it would defend the claim and denied that Wallace had “suffered any distress or harassment”. The BBC and representatives of MasterChef UK were contacted for comment.

News

ANDREW MCCAREN/LNP

Lone beauty Derwent Island, in Derwentwater in the Lake District, offers a spectacular display of autumnal hues. The National Trust leases out the island and house

A rural retirement could be bad for your health, warns Whitty

Eleanor Hayward Health Editor

Many of us dream of a quiet retirement in the countryside, taking in the fresh air on salubrious scenic strolls — but Professor Sir Chris Whitty has urged people to be “clear-eyed” about the potential downsides.

England's chief medical officer highlighted “practical issues” of life in the country, including a lack of public transport, fewer supermarkets, poorer GP access, and housing that is unsuitable for elderly people.

Whitty said there has “been a tradition in the UK for a long time” of moving from a city to the country for retirement. Twenty-eight per cent of the rural population are over the age of 65, compared with 12 per cent of the population in London.

Whitty said: “There are clear advantages, where people can make use of the rural environment for walks and for the pleasures of being in green spaces.” But there are also “particular challenges”, he added, urging people to “be quite clear-eyed when they go into moving from an urban area to a rural area where they don’t have links”.

He said: “You often end up with people who move as a couple to a rural area, then one of them becomes incapacitated or dies before the other. They can often be left isolated or as a carer in a relatively isolated area, and they don't have a group of people necessarily around them to support them.”

Another big downside is that “a car is a necessity”, particularly to access hospital and GP appointments. Many elderly patients are no longer able to drive due to poor eyesight.

Whitty's annual report, Health in Rural Areas and Small Towns, called for a “national strategy for rural healthcare”. Rates of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and stroke are much higher in rural areas because there are “many more older people”

there, yet the NHS concentrates its resources in big cities.

“A lot of the burden of disease in the country is in rural areas, because that’s where older people live. In my view that is not reflected in the planning or provision of services,” Whitty said.

Overall about 9.7 million people, 17 per cent of the population, live in rural areas, and Whitty said that the challenges of caring for this group will increase as the population ages.

One of his key recommendations was for new housebuilding projects in rural areas to be adapted to suit frail and elderly residents.

“We ought to be making all new houses in these areas possible for someone to age in and maintain their independence,” he said, recommending adaptations such as “doors big enough for a Zimmer frame to get through” and a downstairs bathroom.

He added that the NHS should make better use of virtual appointments for patients living in rural areas, to save them long trips to and from hospitals or GPs.

He urged the NHS to adapt to the “unique needs” of rural workers such as farmers, who often do not have time to attend GP appointments.

Ellie Houlston, the author of the report, who is director of public health at Derbyshire county council, highlighted the success of local schemes including doing blood pressure and cholesterol checks for farmers on market days.

She added: “I think it’s important for people to recognise that living in a rural area is a different way of life to living in a city. They need to go into it clear-eyed about what is involved.

"There's not always the availability of services. You can't ring up and order food online, for example. You can't get a taxi very easily, if at all, in rural areas. So it's a very different way of life, and you have to think differently about it and prepare differently for it."

Misleading filter companies cash in on water failures

Adam Vaughan Environment Editor

Companies giving misleading information about tap water must be tackled with new legal powers, MPs have said.

A parasite in water in a Devon town and fortnight-long water outages in Tunbridge Wells had diminished trust, the environment, food and rural affairs committee (Efracom) found.

The MPs said supply interruptions had led companies to claim that tap water was contaminated so they could sell home water-filtration products.

One filter company, Water2, ran an advertisement during the cryptosporidium outbreak in Brixham in 2024 that said: "UK tap water is broken. Please protect yourself with a filter."

Puure, another company, recently ran an Instagram post that said: “Tap water isn’t as clean as you think.”

The MPs said misinformation had been “rife” online when South East

Water left people without water for a fortnight last December.

Yale and Columbia universities have ranked Britain's tap water among the best in the world. Checks have found that 99.7 per cent of drinking water complies with UK standards.

The Drinking Water Inspectorate has urged stronger regulatory powers to sanction deliberate misinformation about water quality. The DWI says on its website: "There is no need to install additional treatment within the home as a health protection measure."

Efracom recommended measures to tackle misinformation in a new statutory framework for drinking water regulations. “The high standard of drinking water in England and Wales is one of the few success stories of the privatised water sector,” the MPs said as they urged ministers to retain the distinct identity of the DWI when they merged it into a new water “super-regulator”.

Quintagram® No 2725 Solve all five concise clues using each letter underneath once only 1 Imperial units of distance (5)

2 Exclude, prohibit (5)

3 Rang, called (6)

4 Wonderfully enjoyable things (8)

5 Intermediate shoe measure (4-4) | A | A | B | D | D | D | E | E | E | E | E | F | G | H | H | H | I | I | I | L | L | L | M | N | O | P | R | S | S | S | T | Z | Solutions see MindGames page 15

Cryptic clues MindGames page 14

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News

Multiple airlines hit by blizzard of ‘malicious hoax threats’

Laurence Sleator

Transport Correspondent

Elizabeth Rushton Berlin

Bomb threats against at least seven airliners across Europe forced an airport to close and warplanes to scramble.

The authorities are investigating the threats, reported over four hours yesterday morning and affecting hundreds of passengers. Flights from Heathrow, Manchester and Dublin were among those targeted.

The aircraft were searched by sniffer dogs and bomb squads on landing, but no explosives were found. The British government described the alerts as “malicious hoax threats”.

Just before 10am local time there was a bomb alert onboard an LOT Polish Airlines aircraft carrying 181 people from Heathrow to Warsaw Chopin shortly before it was due to land. It diverted to Warsaw Modlin, northwest of the city. The airport was briefly closed as it went through safety protocols. About 30 minutes earlier, an SAS flight from Copenhagen, carrying about 60 people, was searched after landing at Chopin when a “potentially dangerous object” was reported on board.

Just before Ilam local time, a Ryanair flight from Manchester that had landed in Murcia, southeastern Spain, was investigated. Francisco Lucas Ayala, a government delegate in the region, blamed a bomb threat. He said the Il4 passengers and seven crew had disembarked and undergone a security check.

One passenger told the BBC that she and others had been unaware of the bomb threat. "The plane stopped quite suddenly and then we were kept on the runway for around 30 minutes," she said. "Then the fire engines turned up, the bomb squad turned up and we were asked to evacuate."

At Rome Fiumicino, two Ryanair flights — one from Lisbon, the other from Dublin — were searched after an “anonymous report” of a bomb. The Italian authorities scrambled air force jets to escort the Dublin flight.

In Bulgaria two aircraft, one from Dublin and one from Milan, were inspected at Sofia airport. Georgi Peev, the transport minister, said the threat on the Ryanair flight from Dublin was based on a report by the pilot.

Wizz Air, the airline operating the flight from Milan, said the threat had been communicated to it by the Bulgarian authorities.

Geoff Want, a former safety adviser at British Airways and easyJet, said that any pattern of bomb threats was “highly suspicious”.

A British government spokesperson said the UK had well-tested processes for dealing with potential threats.

OLIVER DIXON/RGB KEW

Stars come out Cate Blanchett checks out Kew Wakehurst's Glow Wild winter light trail in West Sussex. She is among a host of stars whose voices guide visitors

Police in Thomas Markle case have found child abuse images

Carmel Pedroza Cebu City

Mario Ledwith

Files containing child abuse images have been found among material allegedly left by the Duchess of Sussex's estranged father in the Philippines.

Investigators are trawling through boxes of possessions said to belong to Thomas Markle. Initial research into the haul, said to have been left at the retired lighting director's property in Cebu City, has identified multiple files containing depraved imagery featuring children, they have said.

The Philippine National Police (PNP) is investigating whether Markle appears in the images, who produced them and who owns the devices.

It is understood that no formal complaint has been made against Markle.

The investigation began last month after Markle's son, Thomas Markle Jr, told the authorities that he had uncovered “hundreds, if not thousands” of child abuse images at his father's former home in the Philippines. He handed over several boxes of material, triggering a multi-agency investigation in the southeast Asian country.

The FBI is assisting the authorities in the Philippines and looking into claims linking Markle to a second alleged hoard of child abuse imagery found at a storage unit, which he is said to have rented just miles from his previous home in Rosarito Beach on the Pacific coast. The Daily Mail gained access to the unit after Markle reportedly stopped his rental payments and the material has been seized by authorities.

Markle, 82, was moved to a dementia care home in Florida on Friday from a rehabilitation centre where he had been recovering from a leg amputation. He has denied the allegations against him, calling them “sick lies”.

Meghan has revealed that the Metropolitan Police showed her a letter containing “disturbing and troubling allegations” about her estranged father in 2019. The letter, which was apparently written by Markle’s former wife Roslyn Loveless, who died in 2024, alleged that Markle told her he went to Asia because “12-year-olds are legal there”. Markle would later marry Doria Ragland, Meghan's mother.

Thomas Markle, 82, the Duchess of Sussex's father, denies wrongdoing

The Met has referred itself to the police watchdog after failing to pass on allegations about Markle to foreign police forces. Investigators in the Philippines have not been in contact with British authorities, major general Wilson Asueta, the PNP's acting director for investigation management, said yesterday.

The material being searched by his team includes nine mobile phones, three SD cards, five hard drives, a camera and printed material. "If there is evidence then we will file a case," a police official said.

The initial forensic assessment suggests the material did not originate in the Philippines. A senior officer said the material appeared to involve Asian and Caucasian minors and included videos showing male and female children.

Markle moved to Cebu City with his son in January last year before returning to the US in May this year due to ill health.

The authorities have not confirmed the devices belonged to Markle but his son said they did. Asueta said ownership remained an active part of the investigation. He said said investigators were examining all possible leads as well as the circumstances surrounding the involvement of Thomas Markle Jr.

Reform poll campaigns manager on rape charge

Ben Ellery Deputy Chief Reporter

A senior Reform UK campaign manager has been charged with 35 offences including 12 of rape.

George Madgwick, 37, also faces charges of false imprisonment, stalking and making a threat to kill. He faces eight charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two each of sexual assault, assault by penetration and controlling and coercive behaviour, as well as criminal damage and theft. The charges also include two of making an indecent image of a child, one of distributing an indecent image of a child and one of causing or inciting the sexual exploitation of a child.

Police said the allegations involved four complainants who were aged 16 and 17 at the time. The alleged offences took place in Portsmouth and Wales between 2008 and 2021.

Reform UK said Madgwick had been suspended “with immediate effect”.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight police said they began investigating on July 24 last year after receiving a report of a sexual offence. Officers arrested Madgwick in Wandsworth, southwest London, on January 6. According to his

George Madgwick, 37, was elected to Hampshire county council in May

LinkedIn profile, Madgwick became a senior campaign manager at Reform UK's headquarters in July. He described his role as overseeing by-election campaigns and preparations for parliamentary contests across London and the southeast.

He previously worked as a regional campaign manager, overseeing candidate training and supporting by-election campaigns in the southeast.

Madgwick was elected to Hampshire county council in May, winning North East Havant by 1,400 votes with 49 per cent of the vote. He became the first leader of Reform's group on the county council. He represents Paulsgrove on Portsmouth city council, where he was first elected in 2021. He founded the Portsmouth Independents Party that year and led it into opposition on the council before joining Reform in July last year. He stepped down as leader of Reform's Portsmouth group in January.

Before entering local politics, he worked in the live music and hospitality industries.

Madgwick, of Portsmouth, is due to appear at the city's magistrates' court on November 25.

News Royal visit

King's diplomatic tightrope act

Kate Mansey Antigua

When the King stood to address Commonwealth leaders in Antigua, his message could be summed up as: times change.

After three decades of attending the biennial meeting, the internet had exploded, Charles said, and who could remember their first ever email password? Not him.

The speech on Tuesday appeared to be deliberately designed not to make history by offering a formal apology.

Nevertheless, it was bold in many ways.

Charles sought to remind Caribbean countries of Britain's positive contributions. He said that while Britain carried out atrocities, it also spent considerable time trying to make amends and became a leading force in ending the transatlantic slave trade.

Before the speech, a spokesman for the King said that Charles would address the issue of slavery with “unflinching honesty and profound personal sorrow”. And so he did.

Charles spoke of the “monstrous injustice” of the transatlantic slave trade that saw an estimated 12 million to 15 million enslaved people forced from Africa with around 4.7 million sent to the Caribbean.

At times the King showed some thoughtful soul searching on the issue of slavery, saying that it “fills my heart with horror and my soul with the most profound personal sorrow”.

But he added: "History can be hard to compass, viewed as it is through the prism of time, which can be both clarifying and distorting, and yet its consequences resonate with contemporary force. Our history inspires us, can appal us, yet it can always teach us."

In other words, there are nuances our polarised world needs to understand.

Like his speech on the US state visit this year, the King's speech to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM) was similarly brave.

Charles praised the role of the Royal Navy in ending the slave trade: the six decades when British sailors were on patrol to intercept slave ships and free thousands of enslaved people.

No doubt that reminder would play well to an audience watching in the UK.

But in the auditorium in Antigua it fell flat.

It wasn't what they had come to hear after Burnham raised the concept of apology talks while announcing a £40m package of funding over the next three years to accelerate critical infrastructure investment in the Caribbean.

The prime minister's words were not

Behind the story

Ministers have kept

schtum as to

whether Ellie

Reeves advised

Andy Burnham on

any potential legal ramifications for apologising for Britain's role in the North Atlantic slave trade (Jonathan Ames writes).

But if the attorney-general offered a view to the prime minister, it was likely to have been a fairly easy gig. As Britta Redwood, a former visiting professor at Howard University School of Law in Washington and founder of the Historical Redress Network, wrote in 2024 on the subject preoccupying Westminster, “while formal apologies for historical injustices have political force, they have almost no legal consequences”.

A primary point about the 400-year trade in human beings between Africa and North and South America — which was facilitated by Europeans as well as Africans — is that no matter how morally outrageous, it was lawful at the time. Indeed, lawful until the British legislated against the practice and acted to enforce that law internationally.

Apologising for an action that did not break the law hundreds of years ago is highly unlikely to lead to a sustainable legal claim for compensation today. As Redwood pointed out: “States can only be held responsible for breaches of international law that existed at the time of the conduct.”

That view is broadly supported by Lord Sumption, the former Supreme Court judge. He has said the legal case for reparations would have to depend “on more than moral indignation, however justified”.

Sumption summarised the argument as based on two positions. The first was that even two centuries on from abolition in the British empire, slavery had a continuing adverse effect on the Caribbean. Secondly, it is argued that Britain's industrial development was funded from the profits of slavery.

Sumption is “sceptical” about the first argument and believes the second has been “discredited” by research.

on the King's list, however. Charles did not mention the word “apology” or even make mention of the prime minister's recent offer to discuss one.

Outside, delegates attending the summit passed protesters outside the security perimeter as they made their way towards the National Performing Arts Centre of Antigua and Barbuda.

Inside, there may have been many who agreed with them.

The King was not applauded on his arrival, nor when he left.

During the speech, he received just one round of applause and a ripple of laughter during his speech. When Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbados, spoke, he received a far louder and longer applause.

In recent years, there have been questions about whether the Commonwealth or “family of nations” is still a force in the world. At the 2024 meeting, Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, skipped the event to go and see Vladimir Putin instead. This year, Modi again sent a representative in his place.

Despite the many divisions and disagreements within the “family of nations”, however, the King’s speech showed a fervent belief that this was a family worth preserving.

From his first visit to Malta at the age of five in 1954, Charles has been to almost every country in the Commonwealth. He told the audience: “From this remarkable family of nations, our people can draw inspiration and hope — just as I, myself, have always done”.

On a visit to a school on Tuesday with Marie-France van Heel, Burnham's wife, Camilla viewed a student art exhibition in which Yohander Jarvis Sanchez, 16, showed his work depicting "the history of slavery".

Titled The Rhythm of Freedom, the painting displayed an enslaved man in chains, breaking free from the shackles in a symbol of emancipation.

Next to him stood more enslaved people working on a plantation, with others in the picture representing children at school and university.

He told the Queen: “It shows our history and progress and how anything is possible for our future.”

Camilla replied: "Well, it is certainly very powerful. Well done."

Charles is looking forward. Once a sailor in the Royal Navy, palace sources say he wants to harness opportunities for young people to set a new course for the future of the Commonwealth.

As he told Commonwealth leaders: "For, as any sailor navigating the seas knows, we cannot command the winds, least of all where the winds of yesterday have delivered us — but we can choose how we set our sails."

For Burnham and his sovereign, sorry truly is the hardest word

Tom Peck

Political Sketch

No one seems to want to apologise for the transatlantic slave trade, do they? Not even Andy Burnham, who is one of

the great apologisers of his generation, and that seems a shame. We're living in a golden era of public apologies. We've had Hillsborough, the Post Office IT scandal, infected blood, Windrush, Bloody Sunday, forced adoption — the list goes on

and on and on, and not in a good way. What politicians seem to have worked out is that a grovelling public apology tends to draw attention to whoever's fault it actually was, which they know isn't theirs, and so there's at least a little bit of political capital to be made from it all.

But the transatlantic slave trade is a different matter. It was quite a big deal, it went on for quite a long time, the scale of the human suffering is not quantifiable, and “sorry” is a word from which no one, at least not in this country, really stands to gain.

How can anyone be expected to stand up, in the year 2026, and apologise for the fundamental way in which the entire economy of the western world was run for more than 400 years, and which Britain abolished in 1807? To say sorry is to admit to having events from the 18th century on your conscience which, wrongly or rightly, no one does.

The prime minister and His Majesty the King have both travelled to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Antigua to observe what is fast becoming a biannual ritual of carefully not apologising for the transatlantic slave trade and, even

more crucially, avoiding the question of the payment of reparations.

Two years ago, Sir Keir Starmer remember him? — spent more than 28 hours on an aeroplane so he could spend two days staring at the floor of a grand hotel in Samoa, so that no one could raise with him the subject of reparations for slavery, which the prime minister of the Bahamas, Philip Davis, had said should be set at the less-than-ideal sum of £19trn, or 16 entire years of UK government spending.

Andy Burnham has had to deny that he has put pressure on the King to issue a formal apology. His Majesty is head of the Commonwealth, and a

Andy Burnham offered £40m for Caribbean renewables

formal apology would therefore be quite a big deal, yet issuing one was something the King artfully declined to do.

"We cannot change the actions of those who came before us," he very clearly told the meeting. He spoke instead of his "horror" and his

"profound personal

profound personal sorrow" at the transatlantic trade in enslaved persons. "And yet, history also teaches us that evil need not have the last word," he said, a gently pointed reminder that Britain had not only been among the first to abolish slavery, the Royal Navy had also been instrumental in enforcing its abolition worldwide. The words were

falls flat with Caribbean crowd

VICTORIA JONES/SHUTTERSTOCK; DAVID POULTNEY/PA; BEN STANSALL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; ISABEL INFANTES/REUTERS

Charles and Camilla on Fort James beach in St John's, Antigua, where, far left, she and Marie-France van Heel visited a school; the King spoke to commonwealth leaders; and the Duchess of Edinburgh got into the spirit of things at an eye health event

News

Welby: The idea of reparations for slavery is wrong

Kaya Burgess

Religious Affairs Correspondent

The UK agreeing to pay reparations over slavery would be like imposing “a vast fine on the entire British people for a crime they did not commit”, the Right Rev Justin Welby, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has said.

Many British taxpayers are themselves descended from slaves while the vast majority of Britons alive today “have no connection to slavers’ profits”, which is why “the idea of reparations for slavery is wrong”, he said.

Welby, who was the Church of England's most senior cleric for 12 years, also highlighted the work of "sailors of the Royal Navy who died liberating the slaves", and the "UK parliamentarians who spent their lives campaigning for the abolition of slavery and its trade".

He suggested, however, that it could be right to invest money in projects that benefit regions that were affected by slavery, rather than paying direct sums to descendants of enslaved people.

During Welby's tenure in Lambeth Palace, the church agreed to create a £100m fund to “atone” for its own investment in slave trading companies during the 18th century, which has commonly been described as a reparations-type project.

Writing in The Independent, Welby argued that the church's project was different and said the Church Commissioners, who control more than £11bn of church assets, "deliberately did not propose reparations" but instead created an "endowment to be used for impact investment in improving the future for those regions affected by slavery and suffering the consequences."

He said this was “not reparations” but was instead “a variety of venture capital” and added: “You can’t repair a brutal past, but you can share in building a better

The Right Rev Justin Welby said that “too much time has passed”

future." During the King's nine-day tour of the Caribbean, protesters had called for a formal apology for Britain's role in the slave trade and reparations for those descended from enslaved people.

In his address to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, Charles yesterday expressed his “most profound personal sorrow” for a “shameful chapter of history”, but highlighted the “leading role” Britain played in ending the slave trade. It is understood that Andy Burnham is preparing a formal apology from the state, but that this will not lead to any commitments to pay monetary reparations.

Welby, who resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury last year after a report criticised his handling of abuse allegations, said of reparations: "You can't define who should receive or who should pay. The UK of 2026 is a totally different country from that of 1833, at the abolition of slavery in the British Empire."

He said that there was also “no straight line between victims of those times and their descendants,” adding: “Too much time has passed.”

He said that, during a visit to Jamaica, he was told on a radio show that the UK should pay \$21trn, to which he replied that this was “far more than the total wealth of the UK”.

As archbishop, Welby took part in a number of projects seeking ways to find reconciliation in conflict-hit areas. It is understood that he is focusing his time on similar work after leaving Lambeth Palace in January last year. He wrote: "New technologies and solving current existential dangers in partnership will build more wealth than a futile and unjust payment of fake 'reparations' ever could."

He described “group punishment” as “a moral evil”, adding: “It mixes up the guilty and the innocent even when it is about contemporary times, let alone two centuries past.”

meticulously chosen and the 's' word was not among them.

The prime minister, meanwhile, was not required to act with quite such dexterity. His trip to Antigua has coincided with an ITV documentary on his first 100 days, in which, among other things, he has talked about his deliberate strategy of prioritising social media.

"People want more involvement, more understanding of the way politics is being done and that's what I'm bringing," he said. "And hopefully it connects with people, particularly younger people, who may have felt quite distant from politics."

Almost to the second of these words emerging, he was once again all over social media, but this time not talking about his favourite crisps, or deploying a bread roll to make a point about devolution. This time he was being filmed wafting a cricket bat towards mid-on,

attempting a quick single, but then changing his mind, changing his mind again, then changing his mind for a third time and falling over. Somehow, he almost made it look elegant.

Of course, the main problem with apologising is that sorry will inevitably open the door to what it has always really been about, and it won't be cheap. Burnham's other big idea was to see off any demands for reparations with a £40m investment in Caribbean renewable energy projects, which may seem generous but is quite a bit less than £19trn. It might not be the most helpful analogy, but if the total demand for reparations were a £20 jumper on Vinted, the prime minister's offer comes in at £0.000042.

And if that's not enough, there'll be another Chogm soon enough. It's pronounced uncannily like "jog on", which for now, is also very much the policy.

We helped end evil trade, says Charles

Continued from page 1 ruled out direct financial reparations for slavery but the UK is offering to reduce debt payments for low-income countries.

The government has also pledged £40m for green infrastructure improvements in the Caribbean.

In a 15-minute address, which was written before Burnham's intervention, the King drew on his lifelong association with the Commonwealth and urged nations to find “ways for us to work in modern partnership to address the wrongs of the past with action for the future”.

Charles praised the people of Antigua and Barbuda for their “remarkable hospitality and for making us so welcome”. He received a round of applause when he described one of the smallest nations in the world as a “small island”

with “big vibes”. However, the room fell silent when the King turned to the subject of slavery and suggested that present generations were not responsible for the actions of their ancestors.

He said: "None of us, of course, would be here today were it not for our history, which has shaped us in myriad ways. History is not ours to choose or to change. It is bequeathed to us in complex synthesis by forebears we can never know.

"Our inheritance includes both their achievements and their failures — the good they did as well as the wrongs."

He went on: “Our history inspires us, can appal us, yet it can always teach us. We cannot change the actions of those who came before us. We can, however, learn from the past.

"The transatlantic trade in enslaved persons still casts a shadow over these islands and other members of our Commonwealth.

"The more I have furthered my own understanding, through listening, learning and looking, the more committed I have become to finding ways for us to work in modern partnership to address the wrongs of the past with action for the future ... As any sailor navigating the seas knows, we cannot command the winds, least of all where the winds of yesterday have delivered us — but we can choose how we set our sails."

After his speech, Charles hosted Burnham at a reception for new Commonwealth leaders who have come to power since the last meeting. Mark Carney, who became the prime minister of Canada in March 2025, told the King that his speech was “very good”. Burnham added: “Perfect, well done.” Slavery reparations, letters, page 28

News

Class act Dame

Judi Dench took

a ride in a buggy

renamed 007M

for her visit to

Hawthorns

School in

Bletchingley,

Surrey, where

she planted an

oak to mark its

centenary year.

The actress, M in

seven Bond

films, has a

longstanding

connection to the

school, which

her grandson

Sam Williams

attended

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Blood tests for 13 cancers are trialled by NHS

Eleanor Hayward Health Editor

Blood tests that can help to detect 13 types of cancer will be offered by GPs to thousands of patients as part of a world-leading NHS trial.

More than 20,000 patients who go to their doctors with abdominal symptoms such as discomfort or bloating will be recruited to the trial, aiming to detect cancer early. It will involve three different blood tests, which work by detecting tiny fragments of DNA shed by tumours, or by looking for proteins in the blood that indicate cancer.

The trial, led by the University of Birmingham, will assess whether the tests are an effective tool to help diagnose cancers early, boosting survival rates.

The scheme is being tried at more than 200 GP practices in England and will cover bowel, small bowel, stomach, oesophageal, pancreatic, liver, bile duct and gallbladder, ovarian, endometrial, kidney, bladder and prostate cancer. There are about 35,000 deaths from these cancers each year in England.

The tests will look for signs of several cancers in a single sample and suggest where in the body they come from.

One of the tests, Enlighten, developed by the UK biotechnology firm Proteotype Diagnostics, looks for proteins in the blood that indicate the immune system is responding to the first signs of cancer. Another, Signatera, is already used on the NHS to help detect if several types of cancer have returned after an initial diagnosis. Studies have shown it is 98 per cent accurate at detecting tumour DNA.

About nine in ten people diagnosed with bowel cancer at stage I survive at least five years, compared with about one in ten at stage 4. Professor Peter Johnson, NHS national clinical director for cancer and chair of the Office for Life Sciences Cancer Goal, said: "Detecting abdomen cancer early is notoriously difficult because the symptoms can easily be mistaken for other less serious conditions, but the NHS is determined to find a solution. We are at the start of revolution in cancer diagnosis, and this trial will help us to find out whether blood tests can help GPs get the right patients to the right tests sooner, supporting earlier diagnosis when treatment is most likely to be successful. It is vital that we gather the evidence about these new technologies and I am grateful to everyone taking part in this research."

Most of the tests in the trial, called STRIDE-RCT, will ask patients to have one or two tubes of blood taken at their GP practice. A positive result will help the GP and patient decide whether an urgent referral is needed but it is not by itself a confirmed cancer diagnosis.

Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, said: "The earlier cancers are diagnosed, the more chance they can be successfully treated and lives can be saved. This world-first trial will establish whether simple blood tests can help GPs identify much sooner the patients who need urgent support."

Professor Aneel Bhangu, the trial's co-leader who is a consultant colorectal surgeon and director of the Surgical Data and Policy Lab at the University of Birmingham, said: "Too many patients with cancer reach me after months of vague symptoms that were hard to pin down.

"At the same time, most people referred urgently do not have cancer, causing unnecessary worry and expense. These blood tests might help GPs tell the two apart, but we need to know for certain before they are used across the NHS, and this trial is designed to give that answer quickly."

Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: "Symptoms such as bloating and stomach pain are common and could have many causes, making it difficult for GPs to know when to investigate for cancer. As a result, some cancers may go undetected until they are at a later stage, when they are harder to treat.

“GPs have long needed better tools ... this trial [is] an important step towards addressing that need.”

MI5 chief admits serious failures over ‘abuser’ agent

Herbie Russell

The director-general of MI5 has admitted that the security service “fell badly short” over its use of false evidence to prevent the naming of an agent accused of abusing women.

MI5 has, however, avoided legal action after High Court judges said yesterday that pursuing contempt of court charges would be too complex and not in the public interest.

Sir Ken McCallum, the service's most senior official, said after the ruling that the judgment “underlines MI5’s serious failures in this case”, adding: “In this instance the agency I lead fell badly short.”

In 2022, MI5 secured an injunction preventing the media from identifying a covert human intelligence source, known as Agent X. He is alleged to have been a neo-Nazi who abused two women, including his girlfriend, who he allegedly attacked with a machete.

The court order, which remains in force, was obtained after MI5 submitted false information to judges and prevented a BBC documentary team from identifying the suspect in 2022.

For three years, the security service insisted that the false evidence it had provided was accurate. MI5 officials presented the evidence to three courts.

The false evidence aimed to show that the security service had kept to its secrecy policy known as “neither confirm nor deny”(NCND). However, during the legal battle, a senior MI5 officer confirmed that X was an agent.

When the agent's girlfriend brought a legal claim, MI5 falsely claimed that it had stood by the NCND policy.

In July this year, a report by Sir John Goldring, the deputy investigatory powers commissioner, found that an M15 officer had told the BBC journalist that Agent X had not been abusive to his girlfriend. He also said that Agent X was not a political extremist and that this was part of his undercover identity.

This tour of Turkish city's storied past is a true delight

Exhibition Peter Sarris

Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires The V&A, London ★★★★★

From its foundation under the Roman emperor Constantine in 324, to the abolition of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, Constantinople exercised a unique cultural magnetism, capturing the imagination of emperors and kings, caliphs and tsars, merchants, adventurers and pilgrims from both East and West. The V&A's new exhibition provides a visually stunning survey of its long history as the greatest imperial capital in western Eurasia under both Christian and Muslim rule.

Constantine established the city on the site of the Greek settlement of Byzantion in celebration of his victory over the last of his imperial rivals. He and his dynasty rapidly set about investing in its monumental architecture, building a magnificent palace complex, public squares adorned with exquisite statuary, and resplendent places of worship to heighten the profile of the emperor's newly adopted faith of Christianity.

It was under Justinian in the 6th century that the Christian character of the East Roman (or “Byzantine”) Empire was most forcibly impressed on the city landscape, epitomised by his construction of Hagia Sophia. Completed in a mere five years, Justinian’s vast domed cathedral was probably the largest structure in the world. In 988 Vladimir, the ruler of Kyiv, converted to Christianity after witnessing a service there.

As well as discussing Justinian's church, the exhibition displays enigmatic mosaics from the Great Palace and a fragment of the serpent column that Constantine placed in the heart of his city, originally from the Sanctuary of Apollo in Delphi.

Later, the empire was obliged to reached out to the Christian princes of western Europe for aid as it was confronted by a new foe in the form of the nascent forces of Islam. Portable religious art, such as icons of the Virgin Mary and finely enamelled and bejewelled reliquaries were used as diplomatic gifts to buy up support. One of the most stunning of the Byzantine exhibits is a remarkable silk pallium embroidered with gold that was sent to Italy in the 13th century to elicit support from the Genoese. It depicts the patron saint of Genoa, St Lawrence, guiding the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII, thereby sanctioning an alliance between the empire and the Italians.

The exhibition and its catalogue are especially good at conveying how Constantinople was used by both Christian and Muslim rulers as a

VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

A watercolour by an unknown Greek artist shows a scene from a bath house in the 19th century. Exhibits span almost 1,600 years, ranging from Ottoman robes to Byzantine carvings. The Trier Adventus depicts a 5th-century procession

stage for imperial ceremonial and the projection of power. Both at court and on the streets, the rhythm of life in the city was determined by a constant cycle of processions and ceremonies meant to enhance the authority of

rulers who claimed to be God's deputy on Earth and to display their religious and sacral power.

Such displays of authority are lavishly illustrated by delicate carvings and illuminated manuscripts

News

such as the 5th-century Trier Adventus or the 30ft 17th-century Procession Scroll depicting the sultan and his entourage as they set out from the palace.

The curators have also taken care to demonstrate how after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the city's new masters both drew upon and differentiated themselves from the city's Roman legacy and Christian past.

By turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque and, uniquely, keeping its original name, Mehmet II established Justinian's great Christian temple as the model for all high-status Muslim places of worship thereafter. At the same time, under Ottoman rule, cultural and artistic influences from Persia and the East would become increasingly palpable, especially in the decorative arts and calligraphy, in which the Ottomans excelled.

And we dive into less pious aspects of life in imperial Constantinople. Here we encounter scenes from the Hippodrome where the population of the Roman city thronged in their thousands to cheer on the chariot racers and wolf whistle dancing girls. The most famous of these performers would be Justinian's wife, the future Empress Theodora. There are also illustrations depicting the coffee houses, hammams and literary salons of the Ottoman city. This is Constantinople in all its glory.

From Saturday, vam.ac.uk.

Peter Sarris's latest book Byzantium — the Eternal Empire will be published by Basic Books in April

Giant leap towards the zeptoverse

A pair of tiny particles spotted by the Large Hadron Collider offer a huge opportunity, Kaya Burgess reports

Scientists are on the threshold of a first glimpse into the zeptoverse — a minuscule world where exotic new particles may be hiding — after British-led researchers made a breakthrough by observing a one-in-ten-billion event using the Large Hadron Collider.

After a 42-year search, an ultra-rare event has been captured at Cern in Switzerland in which a subatomic particle called a beauty meson decayed to produce two even smaller particles called muons.

Beauty mesons exist for less than two trillionths of a second before decaying, and only one in every ten billion undergoes this specific type of decay, making it incredibly difficult to detect.

The finding could unlock the door to discovering particles that exist at the scale of one zeptometre, which is one billionth of a trillionth of a metre.

“Physicists have been looking for this rare type of decay since 1984, before I was born,” said Dr Harry Cliff, who led the analysis team at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, where the first subatomic particle, the electron, was discovered in 1897. “Seeing clear evidence for this rarest decay for the first time was thrilling.”

The observation proves the power of the upgraded Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and paves the way for glimpsing the existence of never-before-seen particles that exist at extremely small scales with very high energy levels.

An international team led by scientists from the universities of Cambridge and Manchester have been analysing data from the Large Hadron Collider's beauty experiment (LHCb), which focuses on the behaviour of beauty quarks. Quarks are building blocks within larger particles called hadrons, which include protons and neutrons.

The collider slams protons together at close to the speed of light. The ex-

Mahmood denies losing nerve over leave to remain

Steven Swinford Political Editor

Emma Yeomans

Shabana Mahmood has insisted that she has not lost her nerve after exempting hundreds of thousands of foreign care workers from her immigration crackdown amid growing questions over the cost of the move.

The home secretary bowed to pressure on Monday from cabinet ministers and Labour MPs to water down her signature migration reforms. Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, had called them “un-British”.

Mahmood had originally proposed doubling the wait to qualify for permanent settlement from five to ten years for most migrants, increasing to 15 years for some. She said at the time that the plans could save £10bn.

Under the revised plans many foreign care workers and their families continue to wait for five years and other lower-skilled migrants will be given the right to claim indefinite leave to remain after ten.

The changes are expected to result in about 300,000 people, foreign care workers and their relatives, keeping the right to stay in the country permanently after five years. This will apply to care workers who arrived before May last year and earn at least £25,000.

Mahmood also dropped a ban on migrants granted settlement from claiming benefits and will allow dependants to use their spouse's income to support their application to stay.

Writing in The Times, Mahmood responded to a leading article in this newspaper that accused her and the government of a “failure of nerve”.

She said: “Some have criticised these policies as a weakening of our system. This newspaper has said I lost my nerve. The truth is anything but. Instead, these reforms instil a principle into our migration system that is long overdue: that rights must come with responsibilities; that contribution should be rewarded; and that a lack of contribution should not be accepted.”

Westminster 'is a fire risk'

Daisy Eastlake

Parliament faces a “significant risk” of burning down like Notre Dame if ministers do not commit to spending billions on restoring the building, MPs have warned.

A report by the public accounts committee, which oversees government expenditure, urges MPs to approve the restoration, saying that delaying the decision risks a “catastrophic event” that “endangers lives and interrupts the functioning of democracy in the UK”. The Palace of Westminster requires extensive work to address serious risks including failing mechanical and electrical systems, fire safety issues and high levels of asbestos.

Four options for the restoration have been examined, ranging in cost from £11bn to £56bn. The quickest could take as little as 19 years to complete but the longest could take up to 84 years.

Mahmood did not put a figure on how much the reforms would save, but said it would still be billions.

"I previously said, in a speech that has been much quoted, that the care workers alone could cost the taxpayer £10bn over their lifetimes in the United Kingdom. That would have been the price of inaction — the inevitable consequence of the Conservative's migration policies.

However, by delaying settlement applications for the 100,000 care visa holders who are not working, alongside 400,000 others who will wait longer, the Department of Work and Pensions now estimates that there will be a benefits bill saving in the billions." She said that the migration reforms would still be "transformative", with a "default" settlement period of ten years. High earners and highly skilled public service workers will be able to "earn" earlier settlement.

She said: “Taken together, these reforms are significant, even transformative. The principle of contribution is now embedded in our migration system. The legacy of the Conservative government’s lack of control is addressed, and a fair solution has been sought for those who answered our country’s call at a time of need.

“I asked in September to be judged by whether we found a solution that was fair to those who come here legally and fair for those citizens already here, who must not be asked to bear a greater burden. I believe that test has been passed.”

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, accused Mahmood of “giving up”, saying that her climbdown would cost taxpayers £10bn.

She said: “She was right when she said this was an affront to fairness. So why has she caved? It’s because Labour are addicted to welfare, and what they are doing gives potentially hundreds of thousands of foreign workers access to a life on benefits.”

The Home Office published research this year showing that giving low-paid care workers indefinite leave to remain after five years would cost the taxpayer nearly £10bn in benefits, lower tax receipts, healthcare and other state funds over their lifetimes.

However, economists have questioned the £10bn estimate. The Times understands that Home Office officials have acknowledged privately that the figure may have overestimated the effect of letting care workers remain under the old rules.

Most of the lifetime cost of care workers remaining in Britain is accrued after they retire, and it is not clear how far delaying settlement will actually reduce those costs.

Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, on board HMS Wellington on the Thames in London, where she criticised the government's defence policy

CUT WELFARE

FUND DEFENCE

My migration reforms instil a principle that is long overdue

Shabana Mahmood Comment

On Monday, I stood in the House of Commons and set out reforms to settlement rights for migrants. These are

some of the most significant privileges this country can provide, conferring the right to live here for ever as well as access to public services and our welfare state.

Some have criticised these policies as a weakening of our system. This newspaper has said I lost my nerve.

The truth is anything but. Instead, these reforms instil a principle into our migration system that is long overdue: that rights must come with responsibilities; that contribution should be rewarded; and that a lack of contribution should not be accepted.

I give little credence to criticisms from the Conservatives on this score. They oversaw four decades' worth of net migration in four years, having lost control of our migration system entirely. But I do think it is worth explaining, to the country at large, why I have taken the decisions I have and the impact they will have.

First, I believe that settlement should be based on contribution. Today, settlement is given essentially automatically after five years in the country. This new model will ensure that this is no longer the case. The contribution you have made will dictate when you can settle.

The default time period becomes ten years, though higher earners and highly skilled public service workers, such as doctors and teachers, will be able to earn an earlier settlement date.

So we can attract the brightest and the best, the very highest earners and most talented migrants will be able to earn settlement earlier still. An immigration breach will delay settlement to 20 years. No one will be able to settle unless they have a clean criminal record, no debt to the taxpayer, a high standard of English and a record of sustained national insurance payments.

Second, I believe this must be a fair deal for those who answered our country's call at a time of great need. One area of particular public focus has been our approach to care workers. I have sought a fair deal for care workers.

Those who met the conditions of their visas and worked difficult jobs in the sector after the pandemic will be able to settle after five years. However, the 100,000 visa holders who did not fulfil their promise will not be able to settle. They will have to apply for a new five-year visa, and make a new and full contribution, before they can apply for settlement again.

Third, we have to address the soaring migration under the last Conservative government. The

Conservatives allowed net migration to rise to highs we have never seen before. Five years on, those workers are coming up to settlement. By creating a system based on contribution, we will reduce the numbers able to settle between 2026 and 2030 by 500,000. Under the Conservatives, 1.9 million would have settled. Now, as a result of these changes, 1.4 million will.

I previously said, in a speech that has been much quoted, that the care workers alone could cost the taxpayer £10bn over their lifetimes in the United Kingdom. That would have been the price of inaction — the inevitable consequence of the Conservative's migration policies.

However, by delaying settlement applications for the 100,000 care visa holders who are not working, alongside 400,000 others who will wait longer, the Department of Work and Pensions now estimates that there will be a benefits bill saving in the billions.

Finally, we need to use settlement

News

Conservatives rise in popularity to close in on Labour

Oliver Wright Policy Editor

The Conservatives have recorded their highest level of support since the general election, to come within two points of Labour, YouGov polling for The Times has suggested.

Almost one in four voters (24 per cent) now say they would back Kemi Badenoch's party if an election were held tomorrow, up two points in a week.

The figure is broadly similar to the 23.7 per cent of voters who supported the party at the last general election, under Rishi Sunak. However, it is a marked improvement on the averages of I7-I9 per cent at which the party has polled for much of this year.

Sixty-seven per cent of Conservative voters from 2024 would now choose the party again, and 13 per cent of support comes from voters who backed the Liberal Democrats at the last election.

Significantly, the Tories also appear to be attracting younger voters, potentially drawn by the party's pledges to cut taxes. Seventeen per cent of voters aged between 18 and 24 now intend to back the party, a higher figure than for the Lib Dems and Reform UK combined. Labour remains the most popular party among that age group, with 29 per cent, while 28 per cent back the Greens.

The poll is the first YouGov survey of voting intentions since the budget last week. It suggests that Labour's rise in popularity after Andy Burnham's accession to No 10 may be levelling off.

Labour is down one point on 26 per cent, having increased from 19 per cent over the summer.

Reform is on 21 per cent, up one point from a YouGov poll last week that recorded the lowest share of a poll for Nigel Farage's party since the general election. The Lib Dems were unchanged on 11 per cent and the Greens were also static on 10 per cent.

The poll will be a boost for Badenoch after what party strategists believe was a successful conference and start to the new political term. They had pinned their hopes on creating a sustained lead over Reform, which they have now achieved for the past three weeks.

They believe many former Tories now backing Farage's party can be persuaded to return if they see Badenoch as the leader most likely to defeat Labour at the next election. The poll showed 23 per cent of Tory voters from the last election are now backing Reform, down from 28 per cent in April.

Badenoch's favourability has risen significantly since she became leader in 2024. After shoring up support on the right with a hardline stance on migration and the European Court of Human Rights, Badenoch has pivoted to concentrate on the economy with pledges to cut welfare spending to fund changes to stamp duty and inheritance tax. The party hopes this will allow the Tories to be competitive against Reform, and in southern English seats it lost to the Liberal Democrats in 2024.

Badenoch has highlighted defence as a dividing line with Labour. Burnham has failed so far to say how his party's planned rise in defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP will be paid for.

Yesterday she accused the Labour

Voting intention

2,355 British adults polled Nov 1-2.

Total does not equal 100% due to rounding. Source: YouGov

leadership of having “their heads in the sand, like ostriches”. She said: “Unconventional warfare is here now. We need to start getting ready. What’s Labour doing? Nothing.”

Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, the former prime minister, has been brought in to woo donors at Tory fundraising events. Sources told The Financial Times he had been booked as the star attraction at pre-Christmas events to “reflect on leadership, Britain’s place in the world and the Conservative future” and to support Badenoch.

He will appear at a £345-a-seat Cities of London and Westminster Conservative Association event next month and will address the annual lunch of Onward, a think tank, before Christmas. Success for Badenoch lies in promising to tax less, leading article, page 29

to help us tackle illegal migration. I have been clear that this country continues to welcome genuine refugees. I have opened new controlled, capped, safe and legal routes so we can do so. But we must tackle illegal entry.

tackle illegal entry, particularly by small boat. No one benefits from the regular tragedies of deaths in the Channel other than the vile people smugglers who operate that trade.

Our new settlement regime will mean that those who arrive by small boat wait as long as 30 years to settle, to discourage this evil business. Those on safe and

Shabana Mahmood says she has sought a fair deal for carers legal routes will settle at five years. Taken together, these reforms are significant, even transformative. The principle of contribution is now embedded in our migration system. The legacy of the Conservative government's

lack of control is addressed, and a fair solution has been sought for those who answered our country's call at a time of need.

I asked in September to be judged by whether we found a solution that was fair to those who come here legally and fair for those citizens already here, who must not be asked to bear a greater burden. I believe that test has been passed. Shabana Mahmood is the home secretary

Farage: Putin's invasion was rational

Constance Kampfner

Political Correspondent

Nigel Farage once said that President Putin acted rationally when he seized Crimea and territories in the Donbas because its residents wanted to join a “greater Russia”, The Times can reveal.

The Reform UK leader said he understood why Putin had annexed the Crimean peninsula and invaded parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Farage, who is understood no longer to stand by his comments, told The Times: “I think Putin has lost all rationality and poses a great danger to the world. Ukraine has my full support.”

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Farage said: "I'd always thought Putin to be a rational player and I think everything we've seen since 2008, whether we're talking about Georgia, whether we're talking about the Crimea, whether we're talking about the initial push into the Donbas region, I understood why he was doing it. He was doing it because they were Russian-speaking communities who in many ways would rather be part of a greater Russia ... I'm not justifying it, I'm explaining it.

“I didn’t for one moment think he would launch an all-out assault on Kyiv and western Ukraine. He’s done it; it makes me question now whether we’re dealing with a rational actor.”

Farage made the comments in a YouTube video called “What does the war in Ukraine mean for Bitcoin?” linked to his financial advice newsletter, Fortune and Freedom.

Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the Ukrainian committee on foreign policy, accused Farage of “repeating Putin’s narratives, trying to justify what cannot be justified”. He said: “If he becomes the prime minister, it doesn’t bode well for Ukraine, it doesn’t bode well for international law and it doesn't bode well for transatlantic solidarity and for Europe."

Farage denied being “an apologist or supporter of Putin” after he was criticised for saying Russia was “provoked” by Nato and EU expansion into starting the conflict. In an interview with GQ magazine in 2014, shortly before the annexation of Crimea, Farage named Putin as the world leader he most admired, “as an operator, but not as a human being”. He later said he had been “wildly misquoted”.

A Reform UK spokesman said: "Nigel Farage has said that if he was prime minister he would support shooting down Russian fighter jets that entered Nato airspace. He has also said that he would use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine and that he may put British troops on the ground in the country as part of a UN peacekeeping force after a ceasefire. Nigel's support for Ukraine is clear for everyone to see."

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Judge backs the right to name sex-claims celebrity

George Odling, Matthew Pellow

A celebrity has lost his fight to block the publication of allegations that he abused his status to exploit young women for sex.

The man used an “unprecedented” argument that he would commit suicide if the Guardian and ITN reported claims he used his power and status to engage in “inappropriate and exploitative sexual activities” with a large number of young women.

He had tried to take his own life on two previous occasions, a two-day trial was told last month.

But yesterday Mr Justice Nicklin said the evidence did not “establish that suicide is inevitable”. He dismissed the claims but confirmed that the celebrity’s identity could not be reported while he considered whether to appeal.

In written submissions, he said: "[The celebrity] has repeatedly said that he intends to take his own life if publication occurs. Those statements must be taken seriously, particularly because of his previous behaviour. They do not, however, establish that suicide is inevitable or that treatment cannot reduce the risk.

"This injunction would have been an exceptionally serious restriction upon freedom of expression. It would prevent [the media outlets] from publishing the results of investigations and prevent their sources from communicating their accounts. The restriction might also have continued for an uncertain and potentially indefinite amount of time."

The judge found that, although the proposed publication of the claims was a “powerful trigger”, they were not the sole cause of the man’s psychiatric condition or suicidality. He added that the likelihood of suicide could be reduced through in-patient psychiatric care, and publication while the man was in hospital would be “significantly safer”.

In his judgment at the High Court, Nicklin also said: “The injunction would not treat the claimant's underlying psychiatric condition or eliminate his elevated baseline risk.”

NHS psychiatric services were enough to fulfil the state's obligation to protect the celebrity's life, he added, and there was therefore no basis to silence the media.

“I have concluded that the court is not legally required and has no basis to restrain the [media outlets’] publications,” the judge said.

Sara Mansoori KC, for the celebrity, was given until 4.30pm on Monday to bring an appeal. The barrister has said that her client denies the allegations of wrongdoing and that publication “would have a potentially fatal impact”.

She told the court last month: “The only reason they would not be fatal is because the claimant would be locked up and prevented from his desire to end his life."

Mansoori said the celebrity had “no intention of returning to public life” and remained under medical care.

Gavin Millar KC, for ITN and The Guardian, said the case risked “dragging judges into assessing the causes of suicidal ideation, which are for professionals and not for a judge”. He added: “The obligation falls on the hospital to keep him safe.”

He later said: “Plainly, the proposed publication would make a valuable contribution to a debate of public importance about men using their power to be able to misconduct themselves against women in that area of society.”

Marcus Johnstone, the managing director at PCD Solicitors, said the case risked setting a dangerous precedent with the potential for serious misuse.

"As with so many issues in our legal system, this argument relied on a particular interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the view that publication of the details of this case would contravene their Article 2 ‘right to life’," he said.

"This could realistically set a standard whereby fair and balanced reporting, across a wide variety of matters and objectively in the public interest, is restricted and suppressed by the court, lest those involved kill themselves." The law should not be a tool to frustrate inquiry, leading article, page 29

Life through a lens The streets and people of 1960s London were David Bailey's earliest inspiration. Time After Time, at the Leica Gallery in Mayfair from next Wednesday, provides a glimpse at some of his first forays into photography

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News

Judge backs the right to name sex-claims celebrity

George Odling, Matthew Pellow

A celebrity has lost his fight to block the publication of allegations that he abused his status to exploit young women for sex.

The man used an “unprecedented” argument that he would commit suicide if the Guardian and ITN reported claims he used his power and status to engage in “inappropriate and exploitative sexual activities” with a large number of young women.

He had tried to take his own life on two previous occasions, a two-day trial was told last month.

But yesterday Mr Justice Nicklin said the evidence did not “establish that suicide is inevitable”. He dismissed the claims but confirmed that the celebrity’s identity could not be reported while he considered whether to appeal.

In written submissions, he said: "[The celebrity] has repeatedly said that he intends to take his own life if publication occurs. Those statements must be taken seriously, particularly because of his previous behaviour. They do not, however, establish that suicide is inevitable or that treatment cannot reduce the risk.

"This injunction would have been an exceptionally serious restriction upon freedom of expression. It would prevent [the media outlets] from publishing the results of investigations and prevent their sources from communicating their accounts. The restriction might also have continued for an uncertain and potentially indefinite amount of time."

The judge found that, although the proposed publication of the claims was a “powerful trigger”, they were not the sole cause of the man’s psychiatric condition or suicidality. He added that the likelihood of suicide could be reduced through in-patient psychiatric care, and publication while the man was in hospital would be “significantly safer”.

In his judgment at the High Court, Nicklin also said: “The injunction would not treat the claimant's underlying psychiatric condition or eliminate his elevated baseline risk.”

NHS psychiatric services were enough to fulfil the state's obligation to protect the celebrity's life, he added, and there was therefore no basis to silence the media.

“I have concluded that the court is not legally required and has no basis to restrain the [media outlets’] publications,” the judge said.

Sara Mansoori KC, for the celebrity, was given until 4.30pm on Monday to bring an appeal. The barrister has said that her client denies the allegations of wrongdoing and that publication “would have a potentially fatal impact”.

She told the court last month: “The only reason they would not be fatal is because the claimant would be locked up and prevented from his desire to end his life."

Mansoori said the celebrity had “no intention of returning to public life” and remained under medical care.

Gavin Millar KC, for ITN and The Guardian, said the case risked “dragging judges into assessing the causes of suicidal ideation, which are for professionals and not for a judge”. He added: “The obligation falls on the hospital to keep him safe.”

He later said: “Plainly, the proposed publication would make a valuable contribution to a debate of public importance about men using their power to be able to misconduct themselves against women in that area of society.”

Marcus Johnstone, the managing director at PCD Solicitors, said the case risked setting a dangerous precedent with the potential for serious misuse.

"As with so many issues in our legal system, this argument relied on a particular interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the view that publication of the details of this case would contravene their Article 2 ‘right to life’," he said.

"This could realistically set a standard whereby fair and balanced reporting, across a wide variety of matters and objectively in the public interest, is restricted and suppressed by the court, lest those involved kill themselves." The law should not be a tool to frustrate inquiry, leading article, page 29

Life through a lens The streets and people of 1960s London were David Bailey's earliest inspiration. Time After Time, at the Leica Gallery in Mayfair from next Wednesday, provides a glimpse at some of his first forays into photography

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BARCLAYS

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\*Must open a fixed term single access or Premier triple access cash ISA and use the ISA transfer-in service. Other reward amounts available based on the total balance transferred. Current account required. ISA rules, T&Cs, exclusions and eligibility criteria apply.

Barclays offers banking and credit products to its clients through Barclays Bank UK PLC. Barclays Bank UK PLC is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Registered in England. Registered No. 9740322. Registered Office: 1 Churchill Place, London E14 5HP.

News

Activists dive into trans row at court

A llowing trans

women to use

the female

swimming

pond on

Hampstead Heath is a breach of equality law, the High Court has been told (Sanchez Manning writes).

The beauty spot in north London has three ponds for outdoor bathing, a men's pond, a women's pond and a mixed pond. Sex Matters, which campaigns for services based on biological sex, is seeking permission to appeal against the City of London Corporation's decision to allow trans people to use the pond based on their gender identity. The corporation told the court there had been no substantiated incidents of inappropriate behaviour by a trans person since the policy was enacted, in 2017.

The Supreme Court ruled in April last year that the definition of men and women in the Equality Act 2010 was based on biological sex.

The City of London, which manages

Hampstead Heath, has had a trans-inclusive policy for access to the ponds since 2019, when it published guidance saying there should be a “presumption of inclusivity”. It decided in June this year, after a consultation of 38,000 people found that 86 per cent were in favour of the policy continuing, that the ponds should remain open to trans people according to

their gender identity. Signs were put up last year saying that “those who identify as women”, including trans women “with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment under the

Equality Act 2010", could use the pond.

Tom Cross KC, for Sex Matters, told the court that the policy gave “rise to discrimination on two bases”. He said it meant some men and women

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE

were excluded from pools designated for the opposite sex while trans people were not. He said: "It is not lawful to exclude persons from one sex but include others of that same sex."

The campaign group Sex Matters protested outside the High Court before the hearing to decide its application for a judicial review opened

Cross said that women were “more likely to experience compromise to their privacy, dignity and/or sense of safety than are men in the presence of a person of the opposite sex in what they expect to be a same-sex space”, adding: “There is no

"There is no requirement for a man who identifies as trans to have had any surgery when being permitted to undress and shower in front of women." He said the Equality and Human Rights Commission had "repeatedly advised" that the policy was unlawful.

On behalf of the City of London, Daniel Stilitz KC said the policy was justified. He said that a sex-based policy would have “been likely to give rise to claims of indirect discrimination by trans users, which the corporation would have struggled to justify”. He added that the pond had private facilities for those who did not wish to change or shower in a communal space.

Mr Justice Linden will hear arguments in a two-day hearing and decide whether a judicial review will be granted.

Fridge hack hits UK's organic food

Andrew Ellson

Consumer Affairs Correspondent

A supplier of organic fruit and vegetables to some of Britain's best-known food retailers, including Whole Foods Market, Riverford and Able & Cole, has become the latest victim of cybercriminals who have been hacking refrigeration systems across Europe.

Langridge Organic, a wholesaler based in west London, said hackers had seized control of six of its ten cold-room refrigeration systems, remotely activating defrost cycles and setting the maximum temperature to 66C. The attackers also disabled automated warnings designed to alert staff when the temperature of the fridges rose above safe food storage levels.

“It was amazing how many parameters they’d changed,” Alex Pearce, the company’s managing director, told The Grocer, a food industry publication. “It was like kids put in front of a mixing desk: how many levers can we move to the wrong place?”

Cybersecurity experts at GCHQ scrambled through Monday night to warn British companies that their refrigeration systems were vulnerable to hackers who have caused widespread disruption at supermarkets in Europe.

Richard Horne, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said that several British businesses had been warned about weaknesses in their equipment and some had fallen victim to attacks.

Yesterday morning, Horne said: "We have been working through the night alerting organisations where we can see they've got exposed technology that is vulnerable in this way."

"There are handfuls of organisations in the UK we've alerted and we're aware of a couple of impacts, we think. We don't know the full impact but can see there are a couple of incidents where vulnerable technology has been exploited," he told the BBC.

The attack on Langridge, whose customers also include Daylesford Organic and Planet Organic, is the latest sign that the hacking campaign has spread into the British food supply chain.

Pearce said that he discovered the problem at about 5.30am on Monday when he noticed two refrigeration units behaving strangely. As he investigated, a third began defrosting, leading him to suspect that he was witnessing an attack in progress. He disconnected the equipment from the internet.

Despite the hackers disabling automatic temperature warnings, no food was lost because staff carried out regular manual temperature checks. Pearce suspects that the criminals had no idea whose refrigeration systems they had accessed but had simply found a control panel they could manipulate remotely.

Several British meat suppliers have reported attacks on refrigeration equipment running Dixell XWEB software, owned by Copeland. One supplier discovered that its fridges had been instructed to defrost every hour, while another reported that temperatures had been set to about 38C.

The Association of Independent Meat Suppliers urged members to

Behind the story

In August security researchers from Claroty, a cybersecurity company,

revealed what they called a “chilling discovery”. Some of the most widely used refrigeration systems in Europe were exposed to the internet and easily hackable (Mark Sellman writes).

One of the flaws allowed someone to access the systems remotely by using the current date as a replacement for the password. Claroty shared its findings with the two companies that made the devices, Danfoss and Copeland, which issued “patches”—software updates — as a remedy.

In late August

fridges on at least six

US military bases had

their temperatures

turned up in a

suspected Iranian-

linked cyberattack.

On October 11 hundreds of French supermarkets had their fridges turned to “cleaning mode”. It spoilt food and started fires, with losses put in the tens of millions of euros.

On November 2 the same thing happened again across eight European countries.

Complacency, blunders and cost-cutting sit at the heart of the hacks. They were possible because supermarket cold aisles have a single controller that is connected to the internet. This enables an engineer to service and control the systems without going to each store, cutting costs. This works if those devices are secure, but in this case they were not. The chief

executive of a

refrigeration

company caught up in

the attack said

physical modifications

were also required to

safeguard the system.

High-profile attacks on this “operational technology” are now becoming more common.

The Belgian authorities warned that we may never be able to say who carried out the refrigerator attacks. Sean Tufts, field chief technical officer at Claroty, said the lack of financial motive — there was no ransom demand — was “troubling” as

troubling as "they're looking strictly at the destabilisation of our foodstuffs".

check their equipment urgently. It said some members had been affected but did not know whether any meat had been destroyed.

There was a second wave of cyberattacks across Europe on Monday, when hackers manipulated the computers controlling refrigeration equipment at more than 100 shops, forcing retailers to throw away large quantities of food worth hundreds of thousands of euros.

The affected businesses included supermarkets in Belgium, Sweden, Ireland and Luxembourg. At some stores temperatures reached 50C, according to reports.

Last month there were attacks on about 700 supermarkets in France, where hackers remotely activated defrost cycles, causing refrigeration units to overheat and destroying food worth millions of euros.

A senior UK industry figure told The Times that all major supermarkets were “reviewing and updating systems”. Sainsbury’s and other big supermarkets use refrigeration equipment made by Danfoss, whose technology was implicated in last month’s attacks in France. However, The Times understands that the systems used by British retailers are configured differently from those targeted on the Continent.

Horne said investigators remained in the dark about who was responsible and what they hoped to achieve. "It might be states, it might be criminals. It is a genuine unknown at this stage. They all have different motivations." Crypto hackers' tactics, page 18 Reality bites, leading article, page 29

Can exposure therapy cure my dog's fear of fireworks?

Tom Whipple Science Writer

It used to be just one evening. One evening, says Jackie Kent, a Guide Dog trainer, when they had to worry about fireworks. One evening when they had to tell dog owners to take a taxi home, get a lift or just stay in. No longer.

"Now, it's not just the fifth or the closest Saturday to the fifth. It's the week before, the week after," she said. "It can be events throughout the year: weddings, parties, birthdays, Diwali, Eid and of course new year."

Few months are now safe from fireworks, for dogs or their partially sighted owners. This year Guide Dogs created a National Fireworks Archive, a repository of recordings of whizzes, bangs and explosions. As pensive pooches prepare for November 5 they are asking for submissions from the public to use to train its dogs — and yours.

"The thing about fireworks is the dogs don't know what the noise is, they don't understand where it comes from and you can't tell them it's about to happen,"

Kent said. "Repeated scary experiences will affect the dog's ability to work because they can become anxious about going outside in the dark." The charity has had reports of guide dogs avoiding particular

routes after hearing loud bangs. In extremis the dogs have had to stop working.

"It's really important for us that our dogs are able to deal with fireworks," Kent said. That is why they like to expose them to the sounds of fireworks in advance. Their training works but it isn't perfect. A quarter of guide dog owners report fireworks anxiety in their dog compared to two thirds of the normal population.

Kent is working with Laika, a labrador trainee. As her name would suggest Laika is comfortable with rockets. This, however, has not necessarily come naturally. Desensitisation is a key part of puppy training. In the past months Laika has been played a selection of household sounds including washing machines, televisions and, that noted terror of puppies everywhere, the vacuum cleaner.

To this, Guide Dogs add firework sounds. Trainers used to do this from a

CD, gradually increasing the volume. But they found the dogs came to learn the sequence of bangs and whizzes and the training lost a key attribute of fireworks: the element of surprise. Now they want people to send in their own videos to the archive for a more realistic bonfire night soundscape.

My spaniel, Wellington, has come along to Guide Dogs HQ for tips. He is in the two thirds of firework-phobes but at the milder end. Fear is probably the wrong word for his attitude to fireworks; moral disgust seems a closer description.

Wellington, Tom Whipple's spaniel. Jackie Kent, below, uses a variety of sounds to help guide dogs cope with fireworks

At the first sight of a sparkler he retreats warily and hides in a corner, regarding the event with the distrustful air of an Edwardian spinster who has just witnessed her first automobile.

News

Kent says it is too late for desensitisation training for this fireworks night, but not for new year. This week owners should focus on making their dogs as comfortable as possible. "Make a nice

NATALIA SHAROMOVA FOR THE TIMES

soft, cosy bedroom for him to snuggle into. You can give him some chews, something long-lasting to distract him from the bigger bangs," she said.

“What you’ve got to be careful of is giving your dog all these new foods. You don’t want to end up with a dog with an upset stomach.”

That may overestimate Wellington's concern about dietary cleanliness. The day before we met was my son's birthday and his grandparents had made a cake version of Istanbul's Hagia Sophia cathedral. We left it alone for only ten minutes. That turned out to be a mistake. When Wellington meets Kent and Laika he still has one kilogram of Byzantine architecture in his stomach following the worst desecration the cathedral had seen since 1453.

At least over the day that followed that allowed him another option for acclimatising by familiarising himself with another sort of explosion, this time of a digestive nature.

Parents rack up debt helping Neets

Georgia Lambert

Education Correspondent

Parents are running up thousands of pounds in debt to fund training and support for the nearly one million 16 to 24-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training in Britain, research suggests.

The anonymised findings, from the first focus groups of affected families conducted by Public First and shared with The Times, expose the financial and emotional toll on parents supporting those known as Neets.

The government is overhauling post-16 pathways by introducing V-level vocational qualifications alongside more T-level technical courses. Ministers have also committed £2.5bn to curb youth unemployment through expanded training and local youth hubs. However, the government faces a considerable task to repair what parents describe as a broken system, as entry-level schemes increasingly demand GCSE benchmarks that lock out non-academic school-leavers.

A mother from the northwest said she had been plunged into “so much debt” supporting her 23-year-old son with additional needs, and was now trying to find £4,000 for a short forestry course after attempting to get financial support through the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). “There are no opportunities. He’s gone for umpteen apprenticeship trial days,” she said.

Families also warned that while universal credit payments were modest, they could remove the financial urgency for young people to confront a hostile jobs market. One mother said she attempted to charge her son rent to encourage him to look for work, only for him to cut back his spending. “His confidence levels are literally zero,” she said. “I gave up on that idea.”

The focus groups suggested long-term joblessness frequently began in the classroom through deficient special educational needs and disabilities (Send) provision and fragmented local authority support. One London father said his daughter's plight was a result of being “let down by the system”.

A government spokesperson said: "Our £2.5bn youth employment support package will create almost one million opportunities to earn or lean and we are reforming sickness benefits to end the culture of people being signed off and written off." Neet solution, Matthew Parris, page 26 Train up teens to tackle social care crisis, Alice Thomson, page 27

Third boy arrested over Halloween party stabbings

Will Humphries Southwest Correspondent

A third teenager has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after five teenage boys were stabbed at a Halloween party.

Hampshire police were called just after 10.30pm on Saturday to reports of multiple stabbings at a party in Chandler's Ford.

The victims, three aged 16 and two aged 17, were taken to hospital with serious injuries. Four have since left hospital, but a 17-year-old remains in a life-threatening condition.

On Monday, police confirmed that two boys aged 17 and 16, both from Southampton, had been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. Yesterday a 16-year-old boy from Bristol was also arrested. All three remain in custody.

Police said a group of uninvited males had gained entry to the supervised party by climbing a garden fence before attacking the five guests in the garden and surrounding roads.

Barton Peveril Sixth Form College, in Eastleigh, where two of the injured teenagers were said to be pupils, said: "Our thoughts are with the victims and their families."

Caroline Lowing, the head teacher at Thornden School in Chandler's Ford, confirmed that some of its former pupils had been injured. She added: "This news has been deeply upsetting for our school community."

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A study in scarlet A cascade of 6,250 crocheted poppies tumbles down St Peter's church in Inkberrow, Worcestershire, in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday

Raping drugged women is a fantasy of many men, trial told

Sian Bradley Northern Correspondent

A husband who drugged and raped his wife for more than 20 years found strangers online with a sexual interest in unconscious and unresponsive women, a jury was told.

Louise Oakley KC, prosecuting, told Manchester Minshull Street crown court that it was a “sad reality” that “many, many men” shared such fantasies and the husband “found a large number” of them.

The husband, in his sixties, from Stockport, has admitted offences including rape and administering a substance with intent to stupefy. He cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim. Nine other men deny charges against them.

The husband initially took advantage of occasions when his wife had drunk alcohol but later researched how to drug her, and from 2023 began inviting men to the home, where they abused her in the marital bed, the jury was told.

He realised that “alcohol alone was not going to be enough”, Oakley said. “So desperate was he, he would share imagery of his wife with complete strangers and then discuss how they would supply him with drugs in order that she be raped, and sharing their home address.” Oakley said that men who visited the home expected her to be “out of it”. She added: “Any right-minded human being who walked into that bedroom with two eyes, two ears and half a brain would have realised she was not conscious. They knew that. They wanted that.”

Over a decade of conversations, the prosecution suggests the husband “did not hide” that his wife was “unaware”. He described her as “wasted” on one website while using a pseudonym and asked if anyone had ideas on what to do to her, the jury was told. Oakley said the husband had met the first defendant, Robert Stewart, 70, on Craigslist in 2015, where he began to send him images of his “drunk” wife. Stewart asked if his wife would participate in a “threesome” and the husband made clear that would happen only if she was completely “passed out”.

Oakley said that they took their “first big step” to achieve his fantasy of other men sexually abusing his wife as they “began discussing how to render her unconscious”. Stewart provided a pain-killer and anti-depressants under the agreement that he would be contacted to go to their home if she was unconscious, it is alleged. On one occasion he attended, but left when the wife stirred.

This arrangement became the husband's “blueprint” for future offending, the court was told.

The jury was told that the husband researched date rape drugs, GHB, sleeping tablets, and the interaction of medication and alcohol.

With a second defendant, David Graves, 60, he discussed finding “something to knock her out completely”.

The court was told that the husband had tried the tablets in an Indian meal but they “tasted so bitter” that his wife “thought there was something wrong with the curry”.

The alleged “contact offenders” accused of various sexual offences are Jonathan Kirk, 43, Philip Wild, 59, Mohammed Sabir, 28, and Robert Stewart, 70, all of Stockport; Alan Keelan, 42, and Jordan Wallace, 31, both of Wythenshawe; and Richard Townsend, 38, of Heywood.

Daniel Rayner, 42, of Whitstable, and Graves, 60, of Ilkeston, are alleged “non-contact” offenders who did not attend the home. Four other men pleaded guilty at previous hearings.

The trial continues.

Craigslist is a den of perverts, accused told police

Will Humphries Southwest Correspondent

Craigslist is a “den of perverted guys wanting to do perverted things”, a man accused of sexually assaulting a drugged and bound woman told police.

Connor Sanderson-Doyle, 32, of Swindon, Wiltshire is one of four men on trial for sexually abusing Joanne Young, who has waived her right to anonymity.

Philip Young, 50, has pleaded guilty to drugging and sexually abusing his wife over 13 years at their home in Swindon. Sanderson-Doyle, who denies sexual assault by penetration and sexual touching in June 2016, said he did not know Mrs Young was an unwilling participant after he answered an online advert posted by her husband about “working through some fantasies” with anonymous men.

Sarah Jones KC, for the prosecution, said Sanderson-Doyle told police that Craigslist was “a den of perverted guys wanting to do perverted things”. During the trial, Sanderson-Doyle said he believed the advert when it said the fantasy was shared by Mrs Young, despite never having had any communication with her before or during the sex acts he performed on her as she was blindfolded and bound to the bed.

Jones told Sanderson-Doyle he was lying. “The fact Philip Young might not be a trustworthy individual was there in your mind,” she said.

Sanderson-Doyle responded: "It's the single guys [who are usually not trustworthy] but the couples [there] seemed to be more safety around that."

Jones interjected: “Well, not for the woman.”

Sanderson-Doyle agreed: “Clearly not, no.”

Sanderson-Doyle told the jury he was also a victim. "Mr Young is using pawns in his own sick little game. He did it to his wife and he did it to me.

“I had faith in the advert. You can paint me as a monster but I am not.”

The trial continues.

News

Worker sues theme park after stroke

Jonathan Ames Legal Editor

Britain's oldest amusement park is being sued for £200,000 by a worker who claimed to have suffered a stroke after avoiding a crash with a child on a water slide.

Kristian Wright, 38, told the High Court he had been descending the 100ft Waterforce slide in a small boat at the 183-year-old Blackgang Chine park on the Isle of Wight in 2022 when he realised a child was at the bottom.

He said he used his hands and feet to brake, sustaining burns to his hands and wrists and damage to an artery in his neck that triggered a stroke.

Wright is suing the park's operator, Vectis Ventures, arguing that the incident left him disabled and that an “incompetent” or poorly trained colleague had released the inflatable boat without checking that the slide was clear.

Vectis Ventures has admitted primary liability for the accident but disputed that it caused Wright's stroke and says that Wright was partly to blame. Its lawyers have argued that operators could see whether the slide was clear and had radios to communicate with staff at the bottom.

Wright, who had been using the slide to reach the next ride he was due to work on, was treated in hospital and three weeks later suffered an ischaemic stroke. If the parties fail to settle, the claim will go to a trial at a later date.

Brand jury considering its verdicts

Jessica Sharkey Crime Correspondent

The jury in the trial of Russell Brand has retired to consider its verdicts.

Brand, 51, denies three charges of rape, three charges of sexual assault and one charge of attempted indecent assault against six women between 1999 and 2009. The jury of eight men and four women left the courtroom to begin deliberations at about 2.45pm yesterday after Mr Justice Bennathan, the trial judge at Southwark crown court, told them: "I can only accept a verdict from all 12 of you that is a unanimous verdict."

The prosecution alleged that the comedian and actor was a “ruthless, calculated and manipulative” sexual predator. He is accused of assaulting women in a hotel room, workplaces, a lavatory in a bar and at his home.

Riel Karmy-Jones KC, for the prosecution, told the trial that Brand was “obsessed” with sex and treated women like a “disposable commodity”.

In her closing speech, she said all six complainants described a “pattern of behaviour” and their encounters with Brand had “haunted them for years”.

In his evidence, Brand said that he had “dedicated a lot of my life to what seems now beyond reckless philandering and idiocy”. However, he denied ever having had non-consensual sexual activity, telling the jury that “consent is more important than sex itself”.

In his closing speech, Ian Winter KC, for the defence, told the jury it was “not criminal to treat women unkindly before, during or after sex” and that “living a highly promiscuous life is entirely lawful, however morally distasteful you may find it”.

News

Fake job interviews led to £5bn Binance hack

Chris Dorrell

Technology Business Correspondent

Binance said the hackers behind one of the world's largest financial robberies used “fake job interviews” as well as malicious software to make off with the stolen funds.

The world's largest crypto platform suffered a \$6.3bn (£4.7bn) theft last week, which the FBI has traced back to North Korea. It is by far the largest crypto theft in history.

In an initial report on the incident, Binance said it was a “sophisticated, multi-stage campaign” conducted over many months.

The attackers set up a fake version of a developer tool in June and lured one of Binance's engineers who worked on the company's wallet infrastructure to install it.

Although Binance identified and replaced the compromised device, the software still exposed the engineer's name and role to the hackers. Binance said a second engineer was then contacted by representatives from a “fictitious company” through a “legitimate job-hunting platform” in September.

The engineer had a live video interview with a purported HR representative from the company, during which the Binance employee was shown personal photos and videos on a social media account “to build trust”. The company said: “This was more deceptive than previously seen social-engineering approaches.”

The engineer then had a second interview with “an individual claiming to be the CEO”. During the second interview, the engineer was instructed to download an assignment containing a “malicious code repository” on to his work computer.

Binance said the code used “sophisticated obfuscation and evasion techniques” which prevented the company from identifying the malware. It could be used to execute commands and establish communication with an external server controlled by the hackers.

More than a week before the attack took place, the hackers leveraged the compromised computer as well as one of Binance's internal artificial intelligence tools to gain access to two laptops belonging to members of the wallet engineering team. The first engineer stored digital access keys locally on their computer, which the hackers could then use to “trigger a malicious script” on the third engineer's laptop. Billions were drained from the exchange in a little over two hours.

The company said it had taken measures to improve its cybersecurity capabilities and had rebuilt the affected wallet. "We will continue to strengthen our measures as the investigation progresses," Binance said.

The FBI has traced the theft back to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking group with links to the government. However, North Korea has denied being behind the attack. Kim Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader, said the accusations were a “sinister attempt” by the US to damage the country’s international image.

Binance has been working with law enforcement agencies and industry partners to freeze some of the affected assets, with about \$3bn located as of Friday. “We’re working around the clock with law enforcement agencies and with industry partners to trace and freeze the stolen funds for that front.” Richard Teng, co-chief executive of Binance, told CNBC.

The company has committed itself to covering the costs of the theft. It has already covered roughly 95 per cent of the stolen funds by using part of its \$1bn emergency cash reserve, as well as cash from its balance sheet.

Binance allows users to buy, sell and trade digital assets. It has 335 million registered users globally and had about \$162.8bn in assets under custody as of its 2025 annual report.

Kim's military shopping list is now within reach, Roger Boyes, page 26

North Korea's hacker army, page 31

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Taste of Ceylon Dancers in traditional dress welcome visitors to the Sri Lanka stand at the World Travel Market London, at the Excel centre until tomorrow

Will you help fill a Winter Survival Kit?

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UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has the logistical reach to help the most vulnerable displaced families, but recent global aid cuts have left programmes desperately underfunded – will you help?

As you read this, displaced families in countries like Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria are facing a threat as dangerous as the conflict that forced them from their homes – the freezing winter weather. Living in flimsy shelters without heat or insulation, they are at the mercy of the icy winds and snowfall the coming weeks are set to bring.

Your gift of £89 could help provide a Winter Survival Kit containing lifesaving essentials such as bedding, warm clothes and a payment for fuel.

The situation in Russian-occupied Ukraine is especially dangerous. Attacks on energy infrastructure continue and power outages are common. People like Natalia, from Zaporizhzhia, don't know how they are going to survive: "It's very cold, and we now don't have a gas supply, which was cut off during the missile attack. It is very difficult to keep warm."

Winter Survival Kits are filled with items that displaced families, depending on their circumstances, most need.

Last winter, two-year-old Habib from Afghanistan fell ill with a chest infection. His family had to burn plastic to try and keep warm – they couldn't afford wood.

Refugee families are used to making do or going without. But when temperatures fall below zero, people living in uninsulated or bomb-damaged shelters are at grave risk of potentially fatal conditions like pneumonia and TB. And heavy rain, fierce winds and snow are on their way.

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Ashes show our first Roman capital was a melting pot

Rhys Blakely Science Editor

Nearly 2,000 years after their funerals, the inhabitants of Britain's first Roman capital are beginning to tell their stories.

Cremation was the dominant burial practice in Britain during the first two centuries of Roman rule, used for rich and poor alike. For archaeologists, this has posed a problem. Elements trapped in ancient bones can reveal where someone grew up. But funeral pyres, which can reach 900C, destroy much of the chemical evidence on which researchers typically rely.

"There's no teeth left usually, which is what we like to use if we're going to look at a skeleton and see where they've come from," Joanna Moore of Durham University, who led the study, said. Ancient DNA, which can also hold clues, goes up in smoke.

The result has been a gap in the story of Roman Britain. To help fill it, the isotope research technician and her colleagues applied an innovative technique to cremated bones from 22 Roman burials in Colchester, Essex.

[TMS | diary@thetimes.co.uk | @timesdiary] Hunt for the true feminist

Rachel Reeves has been out defending her record again. Well, she's been defending somebody's record, at any rate. At a talk with the Harvard Institute of Politics, the former chancellor spoke about having had a "gender lens" on her policies, and particularly cited the 30 hours of free childcare for babies over nine months. "I'm really proud of that," she said. In fact, she added: "There's no reason why a male chancellor couldn't prioritise some of the things I prioritised, but I'm not sure if any ever did." Now this is curious, as those in the lobby and those who write Hansard could have sworn that this policy was actually introduced by Jeremy Hunt who, despite his many attributes, is not famous for his gender lens. Asked about this, Reeves's predecessor took his cue from a very wise woman and replied simply: "Recollections may vary."

Andy Burnham has had to endure some teasing after being filmed falling over while playing cricket in the Caribbean, but perhaps this was yet another tribute from Burnham to one of Manchester's finest: our own Mike Atherton, to whom it also happened. In fact, the clip resulted in the PM getting a job offer. The organiser of the Chatty Bats Lobby XI has suggested that Burnham could "do a job for us at No 5". If his mañana approach to government has told us anything, it's that Burnham knows how to pad things out.

MANY A SLIP

The historian Simon Schama has indulged in some nostalgia after an old clip of Harold Macmillan started doing the rounds. It showed the former Tory PM giving an entertaining after-dinner speech in which he

Known to the Romans as Camulodunum, the town became capital of their new province of Britannia shortly after the conquest of AD43.

The researchers focused on finding a tiny, particularly dense part of the skull. known as the otic capsule. It is fully formed by the age of about two, meaning it can preserve a chemical record of very early childhood.

They looked for different isotopes, or forms, of strontium and lead, which are absorbed into bone from food and the broader environment.

The results confirm that Colchester was a melting pot. Three of the 22 people had chemical signatures pointing to Mediterranean origins around Italy, Spain and Lebanon.

One of them was buried in the famous Colchester Vase, a ceramic vessel decorated with scenes of gladiatorial combat. The vase has long offered a depiction of Roman entertainment. The results suggest its occupant, presumed to be a man, spent their early years in Italy or Spain.

Who was he? Glynn Davis, one of the study's authors doubts that the vase

recalled the introduction of premium bonds and the slogan, "If we cannot save sinners, let us at least make sinners save". Schama recalled seeing Macmillan in similarly humorous mood when he visited Cambridge. "I tripped over a loose rug at Christ's College and fell right in front of Mac," Schama said. "Without missing a beat, he said 'Gratitude is one thing young man, but prostration is quite unnecessary'."

The news that “mogging” is the Collins Dictionary word of the year was greeted very warmly in Somerset. “Since Mogna Carta, it is hard to think of any more moggnificent news,” the former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg said on Times Radio. “Moggs of England rejoice and expect the transmoggrification of the whole of the English language.” He’s at risk of mogging this to death.

EXPLOSIVE REVELATION

A Westminster gossip columnist has been unmasked. As part of The House magazine's 50th anniversary, it has revealed that its erstwhile diarist Guy Fawkes was in fact the old political editor of Tribune, Hugh Macpherson. He was a master of the craft, with favourite stories including a correction from Dod's Parliamentary Companion that read: "Reference to Lord Gibson on page 122. For 'National Front' read 'National Trust'." Macpherson also told the tale of the shadow Scotland secretary Teddy Taylor being heckled at a hustings by both an anti-censorship organisation and

a lone protester on Rhodesia. Having got the anti-censors to agree that the other man should be quiet, Taylor said: "Now you shut up and, as for the rest of you, you are in favour of censorship now and we're only haggling about what we intend banning."

JACK BLACKBURN

contains a gladiator. It seems more likely, he said, that he was a lanista (gladiator trainer) or a wealthy sponsor who paid for the spectacle.

"The strontium is telling us he's not from Colchester," Moore said. It pointed instead to somewhere with older geology.

The particularly novel part was the lead analysis, which had not been used on British Roman remains until now. The chemical signature here was unlike that seen in people exposed to metal from British ore. It was a close match for lead isotopes that had been found in the teeth of Roman-era people from Italy and Spain. Another 13 of the people analysed have chemical signatures that fit with growing up in Colchester or the surrounding area. Five spent their childhood in regions with older geologies, possibly Wales, Scotland or southwest England. Another may have

been raised in northern Britain or France, the research suggests.

Colchester was an important settlement even before the conquest. Afterwards, it became the capital and a strategically significant

Clues were found in ashes from the Colchester Vase

military base. Two surviving military tombstones from the town commemorate men from distant parts of the empire: an Italian centurion and an auxiliary cavalryman from what is now

Turkey.

The analysis, published in Royal Society Open Science, confirms Colchester's cosmopolitan character. "For me, this is a real game-changer piece of science," Davis said. "In a sense, we had been missing the first two centuries of the people of Roman Britain."

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Law won't protect my vulnerable son from romance fraudsters

A man with autism is deemed to have the capacity to make bad decisions, his mother tells Will Humphries

Louise\* feared she was losing her autistic adult son to Saudi Arabian romance fraudsters until his flight to Riyadh was cancelled when Houthi rebels attacked the airport last month.

Dean\*, who has needed supported care since birth, booked a flight in mid-October after meeting a woman via online gaming. He told his mother Britain had no prospects for his generation, taxes were too high and Europe was too full of immigrants.

Louise said Dean, who at an early age had autism, ADHD and several other conditions diagnosed, had told the suspected scammers about a five-figure payout he had received after a workplace discrimination tribunal, and claimed he stood to inherit a substantial sum. They told him to book a flight to Kuwait and said they would arrange for travel to Saudi Arabia.

Louise said social services told her Dean had mental capacity and could not be stopped if he wanted to make “unwise decisions”.

Dean has a long history of being taken advantage of and has previously been the victim of a romance fraud involving a woman supposedly called Rosie in Miami, who he also met via online gaming. Louise said that Dean sent Rosie hundreds of pounds towards the end of their three-year relationship, but when he flew to Florida with his mother on three occasions to marry her she did not materialise. On one occasion she claimed to be in hospital after back surgery and requested money to pay her medical bills.

Dean has since acknowledged in messages that his relationship with Rosie was “a mistake” but refused to believe he was the victim of a scam.

Louise said the relationship with the Saudi Arabian woman began weeks after the relationship with Rosie ended, and she feared they were part of the same romance fraud gang. She said her son had become increasingly isolated, spending up to 18 hours a day on his phone and PlayStation. "I have had one conversation with the woman through a headset during his gaming," she said. "She told me she is from Tabuk, in the north of Saudi Arabia. She refused to show her face or identity to me. She cut me off when I asked to do a video call."

Louise has sought the help of police, social services, her GP and MP in the past six months, after Dean began to talk about moving to Saudi Arabia to marry the woman and take up the offer of a promised \$50,000-a-year job and accommodation. Louise wants his passport to be blocked so he cannot leave the country. After her

Louise says her son will not admit his last relationship was a scam

concerns were raised by her MP, adult social services said that an assessment of Dean's capacity was ongoing, but added: "At this time, Dean is considered to have capacity and is making some unwise decisions, therefore we have no legal framework to apply.

“Dean continues to work with all agencies around his current travel plans to reduce and minimise risk and for further assessments to be undertaken around his level of ability and day to day level of needs.”

An email to Louise from the safeguarding leader at her GP surgery said the head of safeguarding for NHS Devon “shares my concerns that Dean’s lifelong vulnerabilities and neurodiversity may not have been fully considered in the context of the current Mental Capacity Act assessment". Louise said: "My concern here is that they're assessing my son while he is under the influence of groomers, scammers and brainwashers, so how are they going to get a true mental capacity assessment?"

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 states that a person “is not to be treated as unable to make a decision merely because he makes an unwise decision”. The legislation states that a person lacks capacity in relation to a matter if “at the material time he is unable to make a decision for himself in relation to the matter because of an impairment of, or a disturbance in the functioning of, the mind or brain”.

Fred Thomas, the Labour MP for Plymouth Moor View, has contacted the police, Home Office and social services regarding Louise's concerns. She said she had made three 999 calls to stop Dean from going to the airport in recent months. Officers came to their home and convinced him not to go while he was undergoing capacity assessments. "The police have been amazing and put an alert to border control on his passport but they can only pull him aside [at the airport] and tell him the threats he faces and if he says he still wants to go then they have to let him," she said.

Louise, who is her son's appointed carer, said Dean could take a flight any day and she was concerned the scam could end in danger to his life. "If he does this he will be away from his support network and they know his financial worth," she said. "I'm afraid his phone and passport will be taken off him and he will be threatened for money and family members will be threatened for their worth."

Louise said over the years she had removed Dean's gaming equipment, cancelled internet contracts and reported her concerns. She said: "I have reached out for help to every channel you could possibly speak of. Unfortunately when your child turns 18 and they are made aware by the system that we lose our parenting rights. Unless they want to help themselves there is nothing we can do except reach out for help."

\*Names have been changed

Suicide forum ‘played role in poison death’

James Beal Investigations Editor

A student who took his own life was “informed if not influenced” by a suicide forum linked to 160 deaths in Britain, an inquest has been told.

In his final moments Thomas Parfett messaged on the suicide forum telling others he had taken a poison posted to him by Kenneth Law, a Canadian.

None of the other users sought to get him medical help. Instead, some wished him a peaceful journey.

The inquest was told that he had been active on the forum for at least two weeks before his death and had accessed a guide on how to take the poison. The forum, which is based abroad, has been the target of gov-

Thomas Parfett died in a hotel room aged 22

ernment action. Ofcom fined it £950,000 this year for non-compliance with the Online Safety Act 2023 but it remains online.

Darren Stewart, assistant coroner for Surrey, talking about what he was minded to mention in his conclusion, told Woking coroner's court that the philosophy student had been on the suicide forum, which he called a "chat room", before his death. Stewart said: "I find his involvement in that chat room would have informed if not influenced his actions." He said that other forum users "may well have encouraged his actions".

Parfett, 22, who grew up in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, died in October 2021 in a hotel room in Sunbury-on-Thames after taking Law's poison, posted from Canada. Stewart, who said reform of the Poisons Act 1972 was "long overdue", adjourned the inquest until later this month.

Parfett's father, David, teamed up with The Times to help track down Law and expose him for selling the poison in 2023. Law, who has admitted sending packages linked to 79 deaths in the UK, is due to be sentenced in Ontario next year for aiding the suicides of 14 Canadians.

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THE OYSTER PERPETUAL

Sleuth leaves no stone unturned

A thief who stole £7,000 worth of 300-year-old coping stones from a wall was caught using an Apple AirTag.

In three separate incidents between May and October last year, about 30 stones went missing along a half-mile stretch of road between Rufford and Holmeswood in Lancashire. When the police said they could not help because the area had no CCTV coverage, Matt Smith, a parish councillor, and other residents took matters into their own hands.

Smith, 43, a father of two, decided to put a tracking device on a stone that was already loose in the hope that it would be taken and lead him to the perpetrator. Craig

Barker, 41, of Wigan, has now been sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for 22 months, after the stones were found in his garden. He was ordered to pay £587.

Smith, from Holmeswood, said: "The audacity of him to steal from the community for his own personal gain. That isn't what we stand for."

The wall is thought to have been built in about 1730 for the grade II listed Rufford New Hall, which was converted into a hospital in the 1900s. After the hospital closed, in the 1980s, it was refurbished and turned into apartments. A housing development was built on the surrounding grounds.

Once Smith was alerted to a change in location of the AirTag, he contacted police, who then found a “substantial amount” of stones. The stolen items were reinstalled in December last year by residents working free of charge. Smith said that it was a “great Christmas present for the villages”.

Matt Smith used an Apple AirTag to track down a thief who was destroying a 300-year-old wall

Barker was arrested on one charge of handling stolen goods and two of theft. He

initially denied the charges but changed his pleas in May. Smith said: "It was a great feeling to know we had found the man responsible for causing the community so much

News

pain. The magnitude of his offending was massive and I'm glad we stood up and didn't just tolerate it."

Mark Harrison, of Historic England, said: "The successful return of these stones demonstrates the important contribution that local communities and the police can make to safeguard our heritage. Traditional stone walls are an intrinsic part of the Lancashire landscape and their protection helps to maintain its distinctive character."

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Time has come to follow the Beta generation

Sanchez Manning

Social Affairs Correspondent

The nation may be wringing its hands over the prospects for Generation Z as they face up to unemployment, being stuck in parental homes and a lack of romantic relationships.

But in the shadow of this doom and gloom, it appears the focus may already be moving on to Britain's newest generation, dubbed Generation Beta. A study — titled Generation New Era — was launched this week to follow the lives of 30,000 babies born this year. Led by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at University College London (UCL), it is the largest of its kind.

Researchers have begun recruiting families from across the UK, sending letters to parents inviting them to join when their babies are nine or ten months old.

Professor Alissa Goodman, co-director of the study, predicted there would be more diversity among the participating families compared with studies of previous generations such as millennials. She suggested that as a result of a rise in immigration they were likely to be more ethnically diverse, with higher numbers of babies from families with mixed race ethnicities.

Goodman said there was also a “push” to recruit more fathers in acknowledgement of the growing involvement of men in raising children. “Fathers have often been quite absent from this type of research because it’s been difficult to recruit them,” she told The Times. “They don’t always see the value of their own voices in this kind of research.”

Goodman added the research was the first of its type to recruit parents who do not live with their children. "This includes families that are separate and parents that have not lived together from the outset," she said.

The team conducting the study includes researchers from Cambridge University, Swansea University, Edinburgh University, Ulster University and the Fatherhood Institute.

Parents selected to take part will be asked about a wide range of topics, such as what drives inequalities in child development in early life. There will be further questions on how cost of living pressures are affecting families with young children and how families are managing work and childcare responsibilities.

With parental consent, the survey responses will be linked to routine administrative data such as health, education and social care records, in order to give the researchers a “more comprehensive” picture of families’ lives.

The study team will invite parents to use a smartphone app to log their baby's language and wider development monthly.

Families will be asked to take part in another interview when their child is three years old, with the study aiming to follow the children throughout their lives from childhood into adulthood.

UCL said the researchers were aiming to build an up-to-date picture of children's development. They will examine how technology, including artificial intelligence, shapes family life and children's early development.

Goodman said she was “optimistic” about the possible impact of the study’s findings. “It will bring a very strong evidence base for the forming policies to support families with children,” she said.

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Crypto heist will revitalise Kim's power play Roger Boyes Page 26

Comment

Trump's failures are damning for Reform

Many American voters are concluding that voting for the president was a mistake — one that could cost Nigel Farage

Daniel Finkelstein

@DANNYTHEFINK

Nigel Farage campaigned for Donald Trump. To use an American term, he stumped for him. He spoke at rallies and

conventions, calling him “superb” and bigging him up in interviews. And he did this with sufficient enthusiasm, according it sufficient priority in his schedule, that it is reasonable now to hold him to account for his endorsement.

It was claimed by Farage's friends that he and Trump were “as close as two people can be in politics”. In 2016, Farage said: “If I was an American citizen, I wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me.” For Farage to assert that there was something he still wouldn't do even if you paid him suggests a very strong political commitment indeed.

It is perfectly obvious now (and should have been at the time) that Farage was advocating something that would damage his own country. Trump's election was profoundly against the interests of the British people. It has undermined, and may possibly destroy, our most important security relationship. More broadly, it has deprived the free world of a leader, because Trump is incapable of being a leader and doesn't believe in the free world. It is hard to think of a more serious blow to our foreign and defence policy.

But when Farage was celebrating Trump's election, saying his friend was full of good ideas and would be a good president, he was promoting

something that wasn't only bad for Britain. It was also bad for America.

That seems to be the conclusion Americans are reaching. Trump's approval ratings are terrible. The results of midterm elections to the House of Representatives and the Senate will be, for the president, moderately poor, really poor or (my guess) extremely poor.

By the time you read this, it should be clearer which of these it is.

The fact that Trump is losing the support of Americans is worth reflecting upon, given that his election, and especially his re-election, was accorded such huge significance by political analysts here. Along with the Brexit referendum, it was the herald of a global revolution against globalism. Reform UK felt confident enough in Trump's appeal to frame their offer as “make Britain great again”.

So what has happened, and how should we interpret it? The first thing

Price rises have come from the war Trump promised not to fight

to note is that Trump's appeal was real, there remains a strong demographic base for it and this base exists in almost every country, including our own. Farage was not wrong to think that if Trump could be elected, so could he — even though Britain is not America.

Also, Trump's various personal misdemeanours, ranging from his criminal antics to his incredibly crass and graceless conduct towards other people, didn't stop him winning the presidency twice. People simply didn't care. Some didn't notice, many did but rationalised it and a minority even liked it. Pollsters emphasised the importance to his appeal of The Apprentice, in which Trump was the apparent arbiter of capability. Online, you could buy the scent of Trump with the slogan “Smell of Success”.

He was the ultimate “succeed or you’re fired” business person. People really wanted that, and still do: the entrepreneur who can get things done, shake things up, slap down the talkers, hire the doers.

But if you vote for someone to get things done, you will be unimpressed if they do not. And this is what is now producing the downturn in Trump's fortunes.

Sarah Longwell, publisher of the website The Bulwark and host of the podcast The Focus Group, was a fiscally conservative Republican who was “never Trump, from the jump”. She began to conduct focus groups to see, particularly among Republicans, what might bring about his downfall. She quickly realised that “the things that animated me, like individual freedom, personal liberty, American leadership in the world, those were just not the things that were animating voters”.

Longwell found instead that if she asked an open question about how things were going in the world, focus group members would answer about their own life, their own experience. How things are going in the world, seen through how things are going for them.

And in her latest groups, leading up to the midterms, her question has been answered overwhelmingly with people talking about prices. How Trump had promised to make things better for them but had failed to do so. How when they buy meat in the supermarket, even the less good stuff was incredibly expensive.

From this follows their analysis. Trump has broken his promises. The price rises come from the war he promised not to fight. Their local energy prices result from the data centres he's allowing his friends to build. All of it is driven by the open corruption of the administration.

Nigel Farage now rarely boasts about his friendship with the US president

In other words, voters don't start with a position: "Trump is corrupt, so this won't work for me." Instead, they reason backwards from outcomes:

"This doesn't work for me and that must be the result of his corruption." As a result, they elected an obviously incompetent, corrupt narcissist who was unfit for office but didn't care about it until the results were (as one might expect) lamentable.

The fact that voters reason backwards from outcomes has clear implications for British politics. Andy Burnham has achieved a modest (but real) increase in Labour's support largely because he is not Sir Keir

Starmer. But the budget suggests difficult public spending decisions and grim disposable income figures beyond the very short term. Soon, voters will again be finding faults with the government that explain (at least to them) their own experience. Promising electoral reform won't help that much in these circumstances.

The other implication is that populism doesn't work. Something

His administration is packed with people who can't do their job

Farage thought would restore faith in democracy has proved a hot mess. The Doge project touted by Republicans and, later, by Reform as a way of making government more efficient was worse than a failure. The Trump immigration policy is now seen as crude and unpleasant. The administration is packed with people incapable of doing their jobs. And in the midterms, voters — reasoning backwards from their experience — have finally begun to notice how terrible their local Republican candidates are.

Of course, the problem with voters reasoning backwards is that it allows unfit people to be elected advancing terrible ideas and become unpopular only once the people and the policies have produced predictably dismal outcomes.

There's no saying this won't happen here next time. But it might help just a little — I wouldn't put it much higher than that — to point to what's happening with Trump. And how keen Nigel Farage was on the whole thing.

daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk

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Crypto heist will revitalise Kim's power play

Looted Binance billions put North Korea's expensive military shopping list within reach

Roger Boyes

@ROGERBOYES

Forget Ocean's Eleven and all the other great "break into Fort Knox" heist movies of yesteryear. The shuttered nuclear dictatorship of North

Korea has just pulled off the biggest smash-and-grab raid in history, stealing in 25 minutes flat more than \$6bn of cryptocurrencies from wallets controlled by the very embarrassed Binance exchange.

The motive could be an attempt by Kim Jong-un to attract the attention of President Trump. In Trump's first term the United States paid court to Kim, alarmed by Pyongyang's growing nuclear arsenal. Despite lathering on the flattery, Trump did not make headway. Distracted by busy wars elsewhere, he let Kim slip down the priority list of dictators to cultivate. How, Kim may have wondered, to reclaim my rightful place in the Trumpian sunshine?

The crypto hack must have seemed an attractive option. A large slice of Trump's personal income comes via the sale of tokens from World Liberty Financial, the crypto business co-founded by his sons, and he keeps half an eye on the crypto-based prediction markets that fringe his world. The heist, carried out by a North Korean front group with the made-for-TV moniker TraderTraitor, was designed to alert the president to the global reach of the leader he once called “Little Rocket Man”.

But this explanation risks infantilising the relationship between the two leaders. It misses the sound of war drums across the world. The lead-up to global conflict always throws up clues for alert intelligence services — the arrival, for example, of a large number of vans carrying blood plasma on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border before the Russian invasion in 2022 — and it's clear defences are currently being tested. Germany's information security office has just warned members of parliament their phones could be infected by spyware. Ukraine's air alert app has been hacked and fed with false radiation

Escalating its hacking operation was about creating a war chest

alerts. Supermarket freezers across Europe have been overheating after a hack apparently designed to test food security. And earlier this year suspected Iranian hackers targeted dozens of water utilities in the US.

These are not ransom attacks. Rather, they are an indication of how AI is transforming cyber operations, helping to identify vulnerabilities more quickly. They are also precursors of war, serving as part of a reconnaissance system. In this spirit, North Korea has been recruiting proxies and stealing identities online that bring them closer to the hub of western power. Plenty of systemic failures helped to enable the Binance hack but the entry point was the

compromised laptop of a software engineer. The operation's escalation was, thus, more than a petulant leader trying to snatch the attention of the American president. It was about creating a war chest.

Some of the swag was frozen before reaching the North Koreans but the rest will go towards rewarding the military elite and anchoring its loyalty to the Kim dynasty. Most will go towards the ballistic missile force and the broader nuclear programme. Foreign currency is needed for advanced solid fuel for the ballistic missiles, for hypersonic glide vehicles — tested by the regime only weeks ago — and uranium enrichment centrifuges that need expensive dual-use components. That's quite a shopping list for one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world. A crypto haul makes it possible.

When Xi Jinping told Chinese military commanders they should be combat ready by next year, many assumed this was a clue as to when Beijing would use force against Taiwan. But that is not nailed to the calendar. Rather, armies everywhere are trying to digest the lessons from the various kinetic wars in the Middle East and eastern Europe. Military academies can barely keep up with the pace of technical innovation, the tactical battlefield revolution, the shortage of troops and the economic challenge of keeping a defence industry going at full pelt.

North Korea entered the Ukraine war on Russia's side in 2024, sending 11,000 troops and more than 20,000 shipping containers of munitions, including at least six million heavy

artillery shells. A year later, the US was reporting that Russian expertise would create a surge in Kim's nuclear programme in the coming three years. The head of Ukrainian military intelligence conceded that North Korean missile accuracy "unfortunately, has increased after Russian modernisation".

Kim believes he has earned his spurs; his army has improved by leaps and bounds. Some 3,000 North Korean veterans of the Ukraine fight have returned home to serve as military instructors, all drone-savvy. The army remains loyal to him. In Russia and China, he now has two powerful nuclear patrons. And the biggest bonus of all: Trump is showing every sign that he wants to reduce the 30,000-strong US troop presence in South Korea. Kim could put Seoul, the South Korean capital barely 30 miles from the demilitarised zone, at risk with a powerful opening salvo from its 6,000 artillery systems.

Suddenly, the combination of a distracted American president, a battle-hardened army and a fistful of looted crypto makes Kim feel like a winner, no longer a pariah but a power player. If Trump is to avoid an outcome that would mark the beginning of the end of US influence in Asia, he should stop claiming that North Korea is solely South Korea's problem. In 1950 Dean Acheson, the US secretary of state, left out the Korean peninsula when he defined US defence interests in Asia. That was interpreted by Stalin and Mao as an invitation to back the North Korean invasion of the South. Kim and his friends may see Trumpian indifference in a similar way.

Matthew Parris Notebook

A procedure so private even I'm not fully in on it

You know those “mystery tours” pensioners go on? Well, I’ve just encountered a variant. I’m to have a mystery operation. By SMS

text came a message from Chesterfield Royal Hospital asking me to complete “an online assessment before your procedure”. Procedure? Yikes.

The form, which took ages to complete, inquired about my present state of health, so the op must be imminent. But what for? Or, indeed, when? I phoned the hospital but nobody seemed to know. I phoned my NHS medical practice but they explained that hospitals are nothing to do with them.

Wild speculation filled my thoughts. A frontal lobotomy to stop me scrapping with online readers below the line? That toe I dropped a hammer on that's gone crooked? My occasionally dislocating shoulder? The droopy eyelid? At my age we're all slowly falling apart, but which particular repair does the NHS have in mind? The form says I'll need someone to drive me home, so we can rule out mole removal. Most likely it's my knee, which last year (I think) a consultant did mention getting on to a waiting list for, but I heard nothing more. Anyway, I'll keep you posted. As if you care.

Above the fray

I've just returned from a long weekend at l'Avenc, an ancient house and (now) hotel my sister and her Catalan husband run, high in the mountains below the Pyrenees. In the chilly sunshine, vultures wheeling slow-motion over the cliffs where we walked, with the oak, beech and box forest just beginning to turn, Spain's problems seemed as distant as Britain's, but we did talk politics.

The country is still in a state of shock about the appalling train crash (Spain's second this year) in Castile-La Mancha. People blame the politicians and this looks like losing Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, the coming elections. The view is widespread that the UK is planning to rejoin the EU and I had to explain to my relatives that our daydreaming PM Andy Burnham is not to be taken seriously, and all that's really happening to Britain is higher taxes and another pointless reorganisation of local government: pure displacement activity. In that lovely place I felt my interest in politics drifting away.

March of the moths

[ore interesting is the progress of the Asian box-tree moth, whose caterpillars have ed great swathes of the

European countryside. I reported on this here, a couple of years ago, and it's time for an update.

Across the hills, valleys and mountains of Catalonia the damage has been colossal —

whole hillsides, where the targeted spraying you can do in Britain is impossible, turned brown. But the plague is receding. Most box bushes seem able to grow back from their roots and it looks as though in some places the birds and bats have multiplied and adapted to a new prey. In other places, though, the caterpillar army is still on the march.

As with our plague of ash-tree dieback in Britain,

I'm fascinated by variations in levels of resistance. This, surely, is where we begin looking for answers.

Neet solution

A ny moment now we'll have Alan Milburn's report on the swelling numbers and expense of disability claims from Neets (not in employment, education or training). He'll call for a response that costs, not saves, public money. Funny that. Whatever the state does, it seems somehow that cost is immediate and concrete, while benefit is always for the future and speculative — which is why welfarists love the word "investment". I hope the government spending watchdog refuses to ink in these hoped-for savings. I've said it in The Times so many times and will say it one last time: follow the money. Neets are human beings like you and me. If you want us to look for work, cut what we can get if we don't.

Blast post

I went last week to an event in memory of Ivan Barnes, who ran our Times room at the House of Commons when I started as a sketchwriter. We gathered in the café of Ivan's beloved Old Vic theatre in London. And there was a trumpeter!

“Sod the church organ,” I thought, as the thrillingly acid sound of the trumpet cut through the small café. Ivan would so have agreed.

Our children can't wait for politicians to wake up to AI Anthony Seldon

arents, students, teachers, heads and universities are bewildered by AI. They yearn for solid advice on how to optimise its

considerable potential to deepen and personalise learning, while guarding against its ever-clearer risks.

The government, specifically the Department for Education (DfE), should be offering that guidance based on what the best education systems in the world do. Instead, despite its claim in April that it was “leading the way” and had created “world-leading standards” on generative AI, there is no leadership.

In new PF Global polling of 4,001 UK parents of school-age children, two thirds said AI was moving faster than schools could follow. Three quarters wanted the government to set guidance and guardrails to protect young people from AI's risks; only one in six thought it was doing so. Persistent attempts by the charity I co-founded, AI in Education, to galvanise the DfE fell on deaf ears, so it filled the gap, as have others, with advice on AI literacy, pedagogy and AI leadership. But on training teachers, AI in the curriculum and safety, Britain lags behind other countries.

Last month, with the tech entrepreneur Tim Bunting, I published a report, “Britain’s Greatest Education Opportunity Ever”, arguing that we can wait no longer. The DfE’s failure to understand data alone condemns it. We are thus going ahead without it and setting up a high-powered AI in Education task force to report in March so that its recommendations can be heeded before the new academic year.

Rigorous research on AI in the classroom matters. But AI is moving far faster than the evidence. So what will be our principal research? Policies implemented by countries including Singapore, South Korea, Estonia and the United Arab Emirates, by private sector companies and by school pioneers including the Ark, Bourne and ULT multi-academy trusts, Oak National Academy and frontier individual schools.

We warmly welcome input from the DfE but we are forging ahead. Why? Because Britain's international competitiveness, a deep and rich education for all young people, preparation for the future job market and declining pupil mental health are all at stake.

The task force is a charitable undertaking that seeks to bring philanthropic money into state schools to allow them to prepare properly for the biggest education change in history. We are calling on all in education, employment and technology to feed into our work, starting later this month.

Sir Anthony Seldon is the author of The Fourth Education: Will Al Infantilise or Liberate Humanity? (2018)

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Train up teens to tackle crisis in social care

Young people need help finding meaningful careers and would learn valuable skills helping the elderly and disabled

Alice

Thomson

@ALICETTIMES

“B um-wiping” is what Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, calls it. That’s what I did as a teenager for cash. I enjoyed it,

caring for a young child with Down's syndrome after school to give her mother a break, strolling with her to the shops, distracting her from grinding her teeth, helping with the bath-and-bedtime routine.

One holiday I made money working at the local mental health hospital, sweeping floors and changing sheets while chatting to the patients. It made me feel lucky I was young, fit and healthy. My pay cheques were spent on leg warmers and mohair jumpers at Miss Selfridge. This was adult responsibility. I felt important.

Britain now has a problem with care workers. Few in the UK want to do the job any more. So we have to import people to look after our most vulnerable and elderly. The social care system employs 1.7 million staff and among care workers the annual turnover rate is 30 per cent. From

2022 to 2024, 616,266 health and social care-related visas were issued, half of them to dependants.

Yet vacancy rates remain at around 6 per cent. Meanwhile, demand for care has risen from young people with multiple disabilities and from the swelling ranks of the elderly. There are now 5.4 million people over 75 in the UK. The sector estimates it will need another 500,000 workers to look after them over the next decade.

Boris Johnson tried to solve the problem in the laziest way imaginable, importing staff from abroad after the pandemic. Now Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, is giving most of these care workers who arrived before

Nearly 1m Neets are languishing without anything to do

May last year indefinite leave to remain after five years, often with their families, when they will be able to claim benefits. Earlier this year Mahmood admitted that the welfare bill for this generous approach could come to £10bn. Many of those in this “Boriswave” — far from home, with few cultural points of contact or the language skills to chat — took these low-paid jobs attracted by the

possibility that they might one day gain citizenship.

At the same time, we have another major societal problem: the nearly one million young people who are not in education, employment or training (Neets), languishing without anything to do, stuck in their bedrooms, unable to mog about their pay cheque, often relying on benefits, feeling anxious and losing confidence.

These are two of our biggest issues. Surely the solution is for these young people to help to look after the fragile, physically disabled and old. It seems like a no-brainer. There are care homes in every town and elderly in every village. Many teenagers' first paid jobs could be as part of a national care scheme. It would be a way to learn the skills they will need in the workplace: how to arrive on time, talk to adults, follow instructions and do something for others with meaning and purpose. Schools could link up with care homes and 18-year-olds could be encouraged to take a year out to work in this sector.

They could massage cream into legs, give pedicures, brush hair, make tea and toast, go for walks and tidy up. Once a week, my father, who had dementia, would watch an old war film at his care home with a young receptionist who wanted to be an actor. It was a highlight for them

both. Teenagers and the elderly make good partners, as they discovered in the Netherlands, where students can receive free accommodation at several care homes in exchange for 30 hours' socialising with residents. They play board games, watch TV and swap life experiences, so no one feels lonely and forgotten.

If they enjoy it and find they have a calling for care, these teenagers could get more qualifications, be

Skilled care staff are often paid just above the minimum wage

trained to give injections, dispense pills, dress wounds and fit stoma bags. The advent of AI has made it increasingly hard for the young to find traditional entry jobs. But AI can't replace personal attention and affection. No one wants to end their days with a robot.

The sector would require help to accommodate this army of young employees and train them up. Skilled care staff are still often paid just above the minimum wage, earning only slightly more than supermarket stackers and baristas — yet they would now be responsible for mentoring the next generation as well as caring for the disabled and

elderly. A special social care minimum wage, £1 an hour above the standard rate, would cost about £1bn a year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The government threw away £2bn in last week's budget in giving 80 per cent of households £100 to help with energy bills. It was an expensive bribe when the money could be spent on paying these new super-carers adequately.

Teenagers don't need more money to enter this profession, just a sense they have made it onto the first rung of the career ladder. They also need a belief that this is a high-status, worthwhile position. Andy Burnham, whose father died this year with dementia, understands the importance of empathetic care for those who cannot look after themselves. The prime minister should stop posting TikTok videos of himself eating Twiglets in the Downing Street flat — and we don't need to see John Healey chugging a beer. They should instead be filmed spending a morning tending to the frail and dependent.

Angela Rayner's first job was as a carer. "I know what it's like to wash someone, cook for them, listen to them before rushing to the next call. It taught me everything," she once told me. Give the young a chance to help those in need and we'll solve two problems at once.

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Pensions overhaul

Sir, You report (Nov 3) the government's shiny new plan for company pensions — the “collective defined contribution” scheme — to provide a “guaranteed pension income for life” and to “close the gap between private and public sector pensions”. If the collective defined contribution model really is as good as the government says, why doesn't it immediately introduce it for all public sector workers, starting with ministers and MPs, thus reducing costs and risk for taxpayers?

Fans of the scheme claim that the collective defined contribution plan provides higher average pensions than defined contribution schemes because it can take more investment risk, which is smoothed through "intergenerational risk-sharing". But there is no magic. This scheme is just a Ponzi scheme that moves risk from older to younger members, who get no higher returns for taking higher risk. The collective defined contribution scheme also has much higher management costs, and much greater complexity, which certainly helps the pensions industry but does nothing for real people.

John Ralfe

Pensions consultant,

Hognaston, Derbyshire

Pensions overhaul

Sir, You report (Nov 3) the government's shiny new plan for company pensions — the “collective defined contribution” scheme — to provide a “guaranteed pension income for life” and to “close the gap between private and public sector pensions”. If the collective defined contribution model really is as good as the government says, why doesn't it immediately introduce it for all public sector workers, starting with ministers and MPs, thus reducing costs and risk for taxpayers?

Fans of the scheme claim that the collective defined contribution plan provides higher average pensions than defined contribution schemes because it can take more investment risk, which is smoothed through "intergenerational risk-sharing". But there is no magic. This scheme is just a Ponzi scheme that moves risk from older to younger members, who get no higher returns for taking higher risk. The collective defined contribution scheme also has much higher management costs, and much greater complexity, which certainly helps the pensions industry but does nothing for real people.

John Ralfe

Pensions consultant,

Hognaston, Derbyshire

Hooked on Vinted

Sir, I sympathise with Harriet Walker (“Do you have Vinted brain? Mine is now out of control”, Times2, Nov 3) but wonder if she is minded to list her tweed jacket, which she is pictured wearing in her article, on Vinted? Some prior warning would be great so I can be first in line.

Mrs Robin Kelly

St Helier, Jersey

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