News 20/10/25

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans will not be able to buy tickets for their away match against Aston Villa next month.

The Israeli club says the decision stands regardless of whether Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group overturns its supporter ban. In a statement, Maccabi said the wellbeing and safety of its fans is paramount, and that the move follows “hard lessons learned” from previous incidents.

Supporters of the Israeli side were told last week they’d be barred from attending the November fixture over safety concerns raised by local authorities.

Britain is prepared to spend well over £100 million on a potential deployment of troops to Ukraine if Donald Trump secures a peace deal with Russia, according to Defence Secretary John Healey.

He said Vladimir Putin views the UK as his “number one enemy” because of its support for Kyiv.

Meanwhile, President Trump has told reporters he doesn’t believe Ukraine can win the war, though he added that “war is a strange thing” and “a lot of bad things happen.”

His comments came during a joint appearance with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, as reports suggest a tense recent meeting between Trump and President Zelenskyy.

University tuition fees in England will rise every year in line with inflation from 2026.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson told MPs that full fees will only apply to universities offering high-quality teaching and good outcomes for students. Maintenance loans will also increase annually to reflect inflation, and new legislation will ensure the adjustments happen automatically in future.

Pizza Hut is to close 68 restaurants and 11 delivery sites across the UK, putting more than 1,200 jobs at risk.

Administrators FTI Consulting were appointed after operator DC London Pie Limited fell into administration. However, Pizza Hut’s parent company Yum! Brands has stepped in to save 64 outlets, preserving over 1,200 roles.

The chain, famous for its family dining and salad bar, has faced ongoing financial struggles, having entered administration less than a year ago.

The Metropolitan Police will stop recording “non-crime hate incidents” in a move aimed at reducing confusion over what counts as a criminal offence.

It follows prosecutors dropping their case against Father Ted creator Graham Linehan, who was arrested at Heathrow last month over social media posts about transgender people. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed no further action would be taken, while Linehan said he felt vindicated but angered by the ordeal.

Tributes are being paid to the son of former England footballer Stuart Pearce, who’s been killed in a crash in Gloucestershire.

Twenty-one-year-old Harley Pearce died when his tractor left the A417 at Witcombe on Thursday afternoon. Police say no other vehicles were involved. The family described him as a “hard-working young man” who loved his job and the outdoors.

Amazon Web Services has suffered one of its biggest global outages in years, disrupting more than a thousand companies and millions of internet users.

Major platforms including Snapchat, Reddit, and even online games like Roblox and Fortnite were affected. Banks such as Lloyds and Halifax also reported temporary issues. Cloudflare’s chief executive described it as “a bad day for AWS,” which operates much of the internet’s infrastructure. Amazon says services are gradually being restored.

A Merseyside man has become the first person in the UK jailed for encouraging a child to self-harm under the new Online Safety Act.

Karl Davies was sentenced to 20 years for grooming and manipulating a 13-year-old girl using fake online identities. Police say his conviction sets an important precedent for tackling digital exploitation.

The King has visited the scene of a fatal attack at a synagogue in Manchester.

His Majesty was greeted by Rabbi Daniel Walker at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation, where he spent time at a memorial area surrounded by flowers and messages from mourners. The visit marks the King’s first official engagement since Prince Andrew relinquished his titles amid renewed public scrutiny over allegations of sexual abuse by Virginia Giuffre, which he strongly denies.

And if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, there’s some disappointing news.

Popular treats like Club and Penguin have quietly switched to a “chocolate flavour coating” instead of real chocolate, due to soaring cocoa prices. The Grocer magazine says the new recipes contain more palm and shea oil than cocoa, though manufacturer Pladis insists the biscuits still deliver “the same great taste.”

There’s more news on our website and social media.

Amazon Web Services says it’s continuing to see recovery across most of its affected platforms following a major outage linked to its Northern Virginia data centre, known as “US-EAST-1.”

The company says global services that rely on that region are now back online but that full restoration is still under way. AWS added that engineers are “working towards complete resolution” and will share further updates once the issue is fully fixed.

Four councillors have been suspended by Reform UK following allegations they brought the party into disrepute.

A party spokesman confirmed Cllrs Paul Thomas, Oliver Bradshaw, Bill Barrett and Maxine Fothergill have had the whip withdrawn while an investigation takes place. All four serve on Kent Council — one of the local authorities where Nigel Farage’s party made gains in the May elections. The suspensions follow a video published by the Guardian at the weekend showing divisions among the councillors.

A major internet outage is causing disruption across dozens of websites, apps and online services, including Amazon, Snapchat and Vodafone.

The problems began earlier this morning and appear to be linked to an issue at Amazon Web Services. Downdetector reports more than 2,000 outage reports in the US alone.

Amazon says on its service status page that it is seeing “increased error rates” and delays across multiple AWS services.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has announced an independent inquiry into repeated failures at an NHS trust’s maternity units, following concerns about avoidable harm to babies and mothers.

Earlier this year, a BBC investigation revealed the deaths of at least 56 babies and two mothers at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust over the past five years may have been preventable. Streeting said a full investigation was needed to understand what went “so catastrophically wrong” at the trust’s maternity units at Leeds General Infirmary and St James’s University Hospital.

The trust said it was already “taking significant steps to address improvements”.

Housing Secretary Steve Reed says his job should be “on the line” over a pledge to build 1.5 million new homes in England, but experts warn the government looks set to miss the target.

Professor Paul Cheshire, who has advised previous governments on planning, said there was “absolutely no way” the goal would be reached. Meanwhile, Neil Jefferson of the Home Builders Federation described the target as “increasingly distant”.

Reed, however, insisted he would “absolutely” meet the goal and said the widespread scepticism would make the achievement “all the sweeter”.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has highlighted the long-term damage done to the UK economy by the 2020 Brexit deal during a meeting of international finance ministers and central bankers at the International Monetary Fund.

She said the UK’s productivity challenge had been compounded by leaving the European Union and quoted the Office for Budget Responsibility’s estimate of a 4% long-term hit compared with remaining in the EU.

Reeves added that the UK “acknowledges this” as it seeks stronger trade ties, marking a more open discussion of Brexit’s economic downsides by a Labour government.

Police are racing against time to recover priceless objects stolen in a daring heist at the Louvre museum in Paris.

The world-famous museum was forced to close on Sunday after thieves broke into a gallery containing the French Crown Jewels at around 9.30am local time. Art detective Arthur Brand described the theft as “the theft of the decade,” warning that in order to recover the items, police have just a week to track down the culprits.

He added that the crown jewels are so famous they cannot be sold intact, meaning thieves would likely have to melt down the silver and gold, dismantle the diamonds, and cut them up – making recovery extremely difficult.

 

A cargo plane has skidded off the runway and into the sea while landing at Hong Kong International Airport, killing two people on the ground.

The Boeing 747 freighter, operated by AirACT and travelling from Dubai, came off the runway at around 3.50am local time. Images show the aircraft partially submerged in water near the airport’s sea wall, with its nose and tail sections separated and emergency slides deployed. All four crew members on board survived, but two airport security staff were killed when the aircraft struck their vehicle and pushed it into the sea.

Airport officials say an investigation is underway into what caused the crash.