News 06/08/26

Reality TV contestant Stephen Bear has been jailed for sixteen months after admitting breaching a restraining order banning him from posting online about former partner Georgia Harrison.

The order was imposed when Bear was sentenced to twenty one months in prison in 2023 for sharing a sex video without consent. Chelmsford Crown Court heard his posts left Miss Harrison petrified and fearing for her safety.

Major rail disruption is affecting train services across Greater Manchester, the Midlands, and the North West.

National Rail has warned passengers to expect disruption until the end of the day following an electricity supply failure at a communications centre. As a result of the power outage, train services across the affected regions are being cancelled, delayed, or revised.

Two men have been arrested following a second night of disorder in Thetford, Norfolk, during which a female police officer was seriously bitten and another hit with a rock.

Officers responded to reports of people trying to enter a home on Clover Way. A man in his sixties has been charged with public order offences, while another remains in custody.

A former butcher who murdered his lodger, dismembered his body, and hid the remains in a concrete filled barrel for six years has been jailed for life.

Seventy three year old Christopher Wright must serve a minimum of thirty three years for killing Richard Dyson, who was reported missing in November 2019 after living in cars on Wright’s land in Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

Facebook owner Meta has revealed one of its artificial intelligence models connected to the internet and hacked into another organisation’s systems during testing.

The company said the breach occurred during an evaluation by an independent firm due to a setup misconfiguration. Similar recent incidents involving OpenAI and Anthropic have raised cybersecurity concerns and prompted calls for tougher safeguards and more rigorous testing.

Iran says it has reached an agreement with Oman on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

A spokesman warned the deal is in its final stages, but will not guarantee safe navigation while the United States blockade of Iranian ports continues. Washington and Oman have not yet commented. Tehran has largely blocked the strait since American and Israeli attacks in February.

Only one in seven of England’s rivers, lakes, and coastal waters is in good ecological condition, according to the Environment Agency’s first assessment in six years.

Data shows fifteen per cent of rivers and under seven per cent of lakes reached that level, while no waterway passed chemical tests. High phosphate levels from sewage and farm runoff remain the primary problem.

Four young women have told the BBC they were sexually assaulted and harassed at an army training college for teenagers in North Yorkshire.

One woman said she was raped by several fellow junior soldiers in an attack lasting hours. The women, who attended the Army Foundation College in Harrogate over the past five years when aged seventeen, reported a dangerous culture of misogyny. An Army spokesperson called the reports extremely distressing and serious.

More than nineteen hundred small high street businesses, including mini-marts, vape shops, and car washes, remain licensed to sponsor foreign workers under a specialist scheme intended for high-earning individuals, according to BBC Verify.

Despite Home Office rules being tightened in July 2025 to restrict the scheme mostly to graduate-level employees earning at least forty-one thousand seven hundred pounds, over fifteen hundred grocery stores and hundreds of other small businesses can still sponsor visas.

Disgraced funeral boss Robert Bush, who failed to bury or cremate bodies and gave grieving families the ashes of strangers, has offered affected families a written apology, sparking angry reactions.

Forty-eight-year-old Bush was jailed for twenty years at Hull Crown Court after police discovered thirty-five bodies and over one hundred sets of ashes at Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in March 2024. One mother said reading the letter left her feeling only anger.

Gianni Infantino has apologised for errors in controversial plans to sell off stakes in competitions to private investors, but will remain FIFA president after receiving backing from senior executives in Morocco.

European governing body UEFA stated it lost confidence in Infantino following his aborted proposals. Criticism has also come from within FIFA, with secretary general Mattias Grafstrom describing the situation as a sad series of events.

A man has been jailed after raping a woman while she slept in her caravan following the Royal Windsor Horse Show.

Thirty-two-year-old Ryan Dinnage, from Croydon, was sentenced at Reading Crown Court after being found guilty by a unanimous jury. The court heard Dinnage entered the victim’s caravan in the early hours of May sixteenth, 2022. The attack was reported to Thames Valley Police later that day.

A Latvian man has been extradited to the UK and charged over the death of a twelve-year-old boy in an alleged hit-and-run in Coventry.

Keaton Slater died after being struck by a car in June 2024. Twenty-three-year-old Dolars Aleksanders has been charged with causing death by dangerous driving. West Midlands Police said Aleksanders was detained in Latvia before being flown to Gatwick Airport on Wednesday.