News 13/02/26

Lord Mandelson has been asked to testify before the United States Congress over his relationship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Two Democrat members of the House of Representatives, Suhas Subramanyam and Robert Garcia, have written to the former US ambassador requesting that he answer questions from the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into Epstein. In their letter they said that although he no longer serves as British ambassador and has stepped down from the House of Lords, he had extensive social and business ties to Epstein and may hold critical information relevant to the inquiry.

Two Islamic State inspired extremists who plotted a deadly gun attack on Manchester’s Jewish community have been sentenced to decades in prison.

Walid Saadaoui, thirty eight, and Amar Hussein, fifty two, were found guilty by a jury at Preston Crown Court in December. They have now been jailed for life with minimum terms of thirty seven and twenty six years. The pair bought assault rifles, handguns and ammunition for the planned suicide attack on Jewish targets and regarded any Christian victims as a bonus.

The United Kingdom says it will spend more than four hundred million pounds this year developing new long range and hypersonic missiles with European allies.

One project with France and Italy aims to replace the Storm Shadow cruise missile, which the UK has supplied to Ukraine and which has been used to strike targets inside Russia. The Ministry of Defence said the new missiles will defeat high value targets, destroy enemy ships and suppress enemy air defences.

Former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell is facing a charge of embezzling four hundred and fifty nine thousand pounds from the party over more than twelve years.

An indictment seen by BBC News alleges the estranged husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon embezzled the funds between August twenty ten and January twenty twenty three. He is accused of buying luxury goods, jewellery, cosmetics, two cars and a motorhome.

Palestine Action’s co founder has won a legal challenge over the group’s ban as a terrorist organisation on two grounds.

The court found the proscription was unlawful because it was not consistent with the government’s own policy to limit the power to ban a terrorist group, and that it interfered with activists’ legal rights to freedom of speech and association. However, the organisation will remain banned for now to allow further arguments and to give the government time to consider an appeal, according to the ruling by Dame Victoria Sharp. Huda Ammori brought the case after then home secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision to proscribe the group came into force on the fifth of July last year.

The Met Office has issued snow and ice warnings covering large parts of the United Kingdom this weekend.

Alerts are in force for parts of northern England and Scotland, while most of the rest of England and Wales are under a separate ice warning. The warnings begin between four pm this afternoon and eight pm this evening and continue into Saturday. A further snow and ice warning for Scotland and northern England will take effect at nine pm on Saturday and run into Sunday morning.

Plans have been submitted to convert a Grade Two listed pub in Slough into offices and a car showroom.

The Three Tuns coaching inn on Bath Road has been vacant since May twenty twenty three. The building first appeared in historical records on maps from eighteen seventy six. When it closed, residents said they were devastated at the loss to the community. The proposal would see the listed building refurbished and converted into office space with a showroom extension.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has claimed a decisive victory in Bangladesh’s first election since the Gen Z-driven uprising of 2024.

The BNP secured a two-thirds majority, enough to form the next government and offer potential stability following the ousting of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina. The party is led by Tarique Rahman, its prime ministerial candidate, who returned to Bangladesh in December after seventeen years in self-exile in London. The sixty-year-old is the son of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, who passed away in December.

Authorities have released new details about a potential suspect in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of US television host Savannah Guthrie, and say they are doubling the reward for information.

The FBI has shared further identifying details about a possible suspect seen in images and video previously released, showing a masked individual on the porch of the eighty four year old’s home in Tucson, Arizona, shortly before she went missing in the early hours of the first of February. FBI Phoenix described the person as male, around five foot nine to five foot ten, with an average build, wearing a black twenty five litre Ozark Trail Hiker Pack backpack.

Vaping could be banned in cars carrying children, as well as in playgrounds and outside schools, under government proposals.

The plans, subject to a twelve week public consultation, aim to prevent smoking, vaping and the use of heated tobacco in these settings across England. Indoor spaces, where smoking is already banned, would also become vape and heated tobacco free, along with areas outside hospitals. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said children and patients should not have to suffer because others choose to smoke.

Two Met Office yellow weather warnings are in force for snow and ice across Scotland and northern England as Arctic air returns.

Friday is expected to feel much colder, with temperatures falling overnight and bringing the first widespread frost of February. The change follows weeks of record breaking damp and dismal conditions caused by a blocked weather pattern. There was some brighter news in Aberdeen, which saw its first sunshine on Thursday after three weeks of gloom.

US President Donald Trump has reversed the 2009 endangerment finding introduced under President Obama, which concluded greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health.

The ruling underpinned federal efforts to curb emissions, particularly from vehicles. The White House described the move as the largest deregulation in American history and said it would cut costs for automakers by two thousand four hundred dollars per vehicle. Environmental groups say it is the most significant rollback on climate change yet and plan legal challenges.