News 28/07/26

European nations are discussing a potential boycott of the World Cup if FIFA president Gianni Infantino pushes ahead with plans to sell off part of the organisation to private investors.

UEFA member nations will hold an emergency virtual meeting this week to address their opposition to launching a new commercial subsidiary worth fifteen billion pounds. It is understood the Football Association was kept completely in the dark before FIFA’s rushed announcement.

Families on benefits will be given up to four thousand five hundred pounds a year to encourage their children into apprenticeships under new government plans to boost youth employment.

The bursary will replace Universal Credit payments lost when starting work, benefiting thousands of households who currently face losing up to three hundred and thirty pounds a week. While welcoming support for apprenticeships, Conservatives criticised Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s funding method.

Education Secretary Lucy Powell says making the student loans system fair is at the very top of her priority list.

Speaking to the BBC, Labour’s deputy leader stood by earlier comments describing interest rates on Plan Two graduate loans as egregious. Although committing to investigate the issue, she acknowledged she cannot make any change guarantees. Plan Two repayments apply to English students between 2012 and 2023, and remain active across Wales.

Multiple people have been killed at a collapsed shopping centre in Kumamoto, according to local Japanese television station Fuji TV.

Aeon, the shopping centre’s parent company, confirmed staff and customers were evacuated immediately following an initial earthquake, though the cause of an ensuing explosion remains unclear. An eyewitness told local broadcasters that a huge impact sent a large cloud of smoke billowing into the air, causing ash-like debris to fall across the surrounding area.

A mother and her partner have been found guilty of murdering her two-year-old daughter.

Isabelle Rose Welsh collapsed at her Teesside home in September last year after suffering a massive head injury. Paramedics found the toddler at the foot of the stairs without a pulse. Her mother, twenty-six-year-old Alexandra Walker, and twenty-two-year-old Harrison Simpson had denied murder, child cruelty, and sexual assault charges.

A French Navy patrol boat has conducted a handgun shooting exercise without warning in the English Channel during a live BBC interview with Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp.

The MP described the exercise, carried out three hundred metres away as a warship passed the French coast, as an intimidation tactic regarding small boat crossings. French authorities insisted it was a routine training exercise unrelated to the presence of the British vessel.

Firefighters battling a massive inferno west of Bordeaux say the blaze has been stabilised, though it remains far from out.

Senior fire officials in the Gironde area described their strategy as a David and Goliath fight, while President Macron termed the situation France’s worst fire-related crisis since the Second World War. Emergency services across France and Spain remain on high alert as extreme heatwave conditions return.

Multiple people have been trapped inside the Aeon shopping centre following an explosion that occurred after an earthquake.

Emergency services say the cause of the blast remains unclear, though an Aeon spokesperson confirmed staff and customers were evacuated immediately after the initial tremor. Eye-witness Kazuya Tsurunaga, who was inside a nearby pub three hundred metres away, described a huge impact and a large cloud of smoke billowing up like falling volcanic ash.

BBC Breakfast co-host Naga Munchetty is leaving the television show after seventeen years to take over Radio 5 Live’s breakfast show.

Munchetty, who joined BBC One’s Breakfast as a finance reporter before becoming a lead anchor twelve years ago, currently presents the TV show three days a week. From January, she will present 5 Live Breakfast five days a week, describing her time on the TV sofa alongside talented colleagues as a privilege.

Children will be encouraged to take up technical education linked to local jobs rather than pursue university degrees under radical reforms to tackle youth unemployment, the government has announced.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said too many youngsters had been told to take the academic path, promising an education system based on parity with no dead ends when they leave school.

Donald Trump took to the stage at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and used it to attack the press.

The room, filled with the very journalists he was offending, was largely far from impressed. Meanwhile, with midterm elections less than one hundred days away, Trump is targeting Michigan, the auto capital of America and crucial swing state, to sell his economic record.

A fourth heatwave of the year is now under way for parts of the UK, with temperatures expected to climb into the mid-30s Celsius later this week.

The latest spell is expected to peak on Wednesday in south-east and eastern England. The UK Health Security Agency has warned of increased health risks for vulnerable groups, issuing amber heat health alerts for much of eastern England.