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Your annual spring clean ushers in a fresh lease on life – less clutter, more space, and (let’s be honest) a feeling of accomplishment.

But it can also make your home feel… kinda empty. If you ask us, the best part of getting rid of stuff is having space to buy more, and what better way to get into the mood for spring than by dotting seasonal touches around your home?

All it takes to brighten up your space is a few well-placed colours, and maybe some floral touches to boot.

These bargains in the DUSK sale are all you need to embrace a spring fling – and up to 50% off now! Don’t miss out, some are selling out already.

A paraplegic gang-rape victim said she will wear her “prettiest dress” and hopes to “finally rest” when she is euthanised today.

Warning: This article contains distressing content.

Noelia Castillo Ramos, 25, said she was raped on two occasions, once by her ex-boyfriend and the second time by three boys in 2022, describing this as a turning point in her life.

She jumped from the fifth-floor window of an apartment building in a cocaine-fuelled attempt to end her own life in October 2022 after previously overdosing on medication, according to legal rulings.

The fall left her paraplegic, and she is suffering severe, chronic and incapacitating pain with no possibility of improvement, her medical reports show.

Noelia, from Barcelona, Spain, will be euthanised today after a long legal battle with her father, which ended with a ruling in her favour from the European Court of Human Rights.

“I want to go now in peace and stop suffering, period,” Noelia told Spanish TV programme Y Ahora Sonsoles in her only interview, recorded at her maternal grandmother’s house.

Noelia, who is living in a Barcelona care home, said she has been “very clear” about her wish to die from the beginning.

“None of my family is in favour of euthanasia. But what about all the pain I’ve suffered during all these years,” she said.

“The happiness of a father, a mother, or a sister cannot be more important than the life of a daughter.”

She said she “always felt alone” and “saw my world as very dark”, even before requesting euthanasia. She doesn’t feel like “doing anything”, has back and leg pain and said sleeping was “very difficult”.

Her mother, Yolanda ‘Yoli’ Ramos, told the Spanish broadcaster that while she still hopes her daughter will change her mind, she will be by her side “until the very end”.

‘I want to die alone’

Noelia said she wants to “die looking pretty, I want to die beautiful”, adding that she will wear her prettiest dress and put on some makeup.

She said that while she has invited her family to say goodbye, she wants to be alone in her bedroom at the care facility at the moment of her death.

She will have four photos with her when she dies: one of her painting a portrait of her mother, one of her childhood puppy, another from her first day of school and a fourth from her childhood, which she said are reflecting “happy” moments in her life.

Noelia has been in psychiatric treatment since she was 13 and her parents separated. She was eventually diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Her father witnessed her attempt to take her own life in October 2022.

“My father saw me fall and couldn’t do anything. But after everything he’s done, I don’t feel sorry for him anymore,” she told Y Ahora Sonsoles, referencing his legal challenge to stop her euthanasia.

“He hasn’t respected my decision and he never will.”

Two-year legal battle

Noelia’s euthanasia request was initially granted by a specialised expert committee in Catalonia in July 2024, with the procedure scheduled for 2 August 2024, but her father has blocked it ever since.

Geronimo Castillo, supported by the ultra-conservative advocacy group Abogados Cristianos or Christian Lawyers, argued that Noelia’s mental illness impaired her ability to decide to end her life.

During a nearly two-year-long legal battle, he took the case through Spain’s courts, finally reaching Spain’s highest tribunal, the Constitutional Court, in February. The court rejected his argument, ruling that there had been no violation of fundamental rights.

As the final instance, Mr Castillo took the case to the European Court of Human Rights, where his request for interim measures to stop Noelia’s euthanasia was rejected on 10 March, according to newspaper El Pais.

As a last-ditch effort, his legal team on Wednesday asked an investigating court looking into Noelia’s medical-legal team to introduce “urgent precautionary measures” to stop her euthanasia, but a judge rejected the request due to lack of jurisdiction.

“I’ve finally done it,” Noelia said, adding: “Let’s see if I can finally rest”.

According to several sources, Noelia Castillo Ramos’s euthanasia is scheduled for 5pm Spanish time (4pm UK time).

Read more from Sky News:
Scotland’s assisted dying bill rejected by MSPs
German twin sister die in ‘joint suicide’, police say

In 2021, Spain became the fourth European Union country to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide for people with incurable or severely debilitating conditions who wish to end their lives.

The law was enacted after years of fierce opposition from conservative parties and the Catholic Church, which has historically shaped public attitudes on end-of-life issues.

Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK.

Alternatively, you can call Mind’s support line on 0300 102 1234, or NHS on 111.

In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.

Lucy has been Head of the Wetherby Office since 2021 and brings extensive experience in residential property law.

The company, which has offices in York, Malton and Wetherby, says her promotion to Director is a key part of Ware & Kay’s ambitious strategy for growth and development across all its offices.

In her new role, Lucy will offer strategic direction, leadership and support to the Wetherby team.  

RECOMMENDED READING:
Ware & Kay’s Malton office announces new leader of office

Lucy Gilman said: “Leading the Wetherby Office has been incredibly rewarding and I look forward to continuing to support our clients, develop our team and contribute to the firm’s future direction.”

David Hyams, Managing Director of Ware & Kay, said:  “I am delighted to congratulate Lucy on her well-deserved promotion as Director and welcome her to the Board.

“Not only is she an expert in her field of law, but she has also demonstrated exceptional leadership and client care.

“Lucy will make a valuable contribution to the firm’s future, actively participate in business planning, mentor staff, and ensure we continue to provide excellent service to our clients.”

GENEVA (AP) — Transgender women athletes are now excluded from women’s events at the Olympics after the IOC agreed to a new eligibility policy on Thursday which aligns with U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order on sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

“Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females,” the International Olympic Committee said, to be determined by a mandatory gene test once in an athlete’s career.

It is unclear how many, if any, transgender women are competing at an Olympic level. No woman who transitioned from being born male competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games, though weightlifter Laurel Hubbard did at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 without winning a medal.

The eligibility policy that will apply from the LA Olympics in July 2028 “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category,” the IOC said.

“It is not retroactive and does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programs,” said the IOC, whose Olympic Charter states that access to play sport is a human right.

After an executive board meeting, the International Olympic Committee published a 10-page policy document which also restricts female athletes such as two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya with medical conditions known as differences in sex development, or DSD.

The IOC and its president, Kirsty Coventry, have wanted a clear policy instead of continuing to advise sports’ governing bodies who previously have drafted their own rules.

“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” Coventry, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming, said in a statement. “So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”

She set up a review of “protecting the female category” as one of her first big decisions last June as the first woman to lead the Olympic body in its 132-year history.

Female eligibility was a strong theme in a seven-candidate IOC election last year — held after a furor around women’s boxing in Paris — when Coventry’s main rivals pledged a stronger policy to leading on the issue.

Before the 2024 Paris Olympics, three top-tier sports — track and field, swimming and cycling — excluded transgender women who had been through male puberty. Semenya, who was assigned female at birth in South Africa and has high natural testosterone levels, won a European Court of Human Rights judgment in her years-long legal challenge to track and field’s rules which did not overturn them.

The IOC document details its research that being born male gives physical advantages that a working group of experts believes are retained.

“Males experience three significant testosterone peaks: In utero, in mini-puberty of infancy and beginning in adolescent puberty through adulthood,” the document said.

It added this gives males “individual sex-based performance advantages in sports and events that rely on strength, power and/or endurance.”

The IOC said its expert group agreed the current gene test is “the most accurate and least intrusive method currently available.” It screened for “the SRY gene, a segment of DNA typically found on the Y chromosome that initiates male sex development in utero and indicates the presence of testes/testicles.”

Still, the mandatory gender screening — already conducted by the governing bodies of track and field, skiing and boxing — is likely to be criticized by human rights experts and activist groups.

One of the two women’s boxing gold medalists at the center of the gender controversy in Paris, Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, has passed her gene test and can return to competition, the World Boxing governing body said last week.

In the U.S., President Trump signed the executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” in February last year, and pledged to deny visas to some athletes attempting to compete at the L.A Olympics. The order also threatened to “rescind all funds” from organizations that allowed transgender athletes to take part in women’s sports.

Within months the U.S. Olympic body updated its guidance to national sports bodies citing an obligation to comply with the White House.

___

AP Winter Olympics at https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

But Paul Quinn, now 51, denies a notorious rape that prosecutors say happened on an isolated embankment between Little Hulton and Farnworth in July 2003.

The attack led the arrest and conviction of Andrew Malkinson, a security guard who prosecutors say was completely innocent of the crime, who would serve 17 years in prison.

Several weeks into a trial at Manchester Crown Court, Quinn himself was called to give evidence in the witness box before the jury.

Dressed in a black jumper, white shirt, blue jeans and grey trainers and glasses Quinn told the jury he had been born and bred in the area and had married his wife Catherine in 1996.

The trial opened at Manchester Crown Court (Image: Anthony Moss)

He said: “It was a together community, people knew everyone.

“You could talk to people in the street.”

Asked by Lisa Wilding KC how he now viewed his behaviour when he would often be unfaithful to his wife with other women while on nights out, Quinn said he “disgraced myself.”

Pressed on how much of this had been without using protection, Quinn said this was “disgusting”.

Quinn told the court how he had been working as a fencer alongside his childhood friend Clifford Minor at the time and that the pair would often go on nights out in Farnworth.

He said this would usually involve going out to pubs in the centre of the town, where they would have around 10 pints in total, before heading to Chuffers nightclub.

He described this as a busy basement club hat would usually have music playing

Quinn said this would often involve “copping off” with women, which could mean anything from a kiss on the dancefloor to going home with them.

He said they would usually leave when the club closed at around 2am, normally by taxi, but that “on a very rare occasion” he would walk home across the motorway bridge to Little Hulton.

Paul Quinn in his police interview (Image: GMP)

Questioned further by Ms Wilding, Quinn accepted that his DNA had been found on the alleged victim but said he did not know how it could have got there.

Quinn told the court that he and his wife separated in 2016 and that he later moved to Exeter in the south west in 2017..

During lengthy questioning on his internet searches from 2019 onwards, Quinn said he had no memory and “no explanation” why he had searched an article about Andrew Malkinson.

This had been an article that had been deleted and was inaccessible on the Justice Gap website.

Asked why he had searched “wrongly convicted cases UK”, Quinn said he had always been interested in true crime.

He said: “I’ve always shown an interest in crime programmes, its something I’ve always engaged watching and reading about.”

Quinn admitted to several Google Maps searches around the Cleggs Lane area and that he had made searches about how long the police could keep DNA on a database.

Quinn, of Whipton Barton Road, Exeter, denies two counts of rape, one count of attempt to strangle, and one count of assault, intending to cause grievous bodily harm.

He denies two alternative counts of indecent assault.

The trial, before Mr Justice Robert Bright, continues.

Transgender women and DSD athletes are now excluded from competing in female events at the Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee has said that ahead of the next Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, ‘eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females, determined on the basis of a one time SRY gene screening.’

The SRY screening is conducted via a saliva test, cheek swab or blood sample and will be a ‘once-in-a-lifetime test’, according to the IOC.

At the 2021 Games in Tokyo, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard became the first transgender woman to compete at an Olympics after transitioning but did not win a medal.

The ban will also extend to athletes with differences in sexual development (DSD) who are registered as female at birth but have male chromosomes and male testosterone levels.

This would mean two-time Olympic women’s 800m champion Caster Semenya and Imane Khelif, who won a gold medal in the women’s boxing in Paris in 2024, would be blocked from competing in female events.

Speaking in a video on X, IOC president Kirsty Coventry said: ‘Today, we the International Olympic Committee have published a policy on the protection of the female category.

‘I understand that this is a very sensitive topic. As a former athlete, I passionately believe in the rights of all Olympians to take part in fair competition.

‘The policy that we have announced is based on science and it has been led by medical experts with the best interests of athletes at its heart. The scientific evidence is very clear – male chromosomes give performance advantages in sports that rely on strength, power or endurance.’

For more stories like this, check our sport page.

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MORE: Excluding trans girls from the Guides isn’t just unfair – it’s dangerous

MORE: Trans girls must leave Girlguiding for good by September under new ruling

MORE: I came out as trans — a family member referred to me as ‘it’

The officer also told the inquest he had been “briefed” by a team at Musgrave Street police station in Belfast before giving evidence on Thursday

A police officer has said he cannot explain why he stated in evidence at the inquest into the death of Noah Donohoe that he had been tasked to search for a green coat belonging to the missing schoolboy.

The constable initially told a jury at Belfast Coroner’s Court he had searched a flat for the missing coat, but later conceded he “didn’t believe” he had been told about the item.

The officer also told the inquest he had been “briefed” by a team at Musgrave Street police station in Belfast before giving evidence on Thursday.

The inquest into the death of the schoolboy, which is being heard with a jury, is in its ninth week.

Noah, a pupil at St Malachy’s College, was 14 when his naked body was found in a storm drain tunnel in north Belfast in June 2020, six days after he left home on his bike to meet two friends in the Cavehill area of the city.

A post-mortem examination found the cause of death was likely to be drowning.

The inquest continued on Thursday with evidence from Constable Wharry.

He told the jury that on June 25 2020, four days after Noah disappeared, he was tasked to assist CID with the arrest of a male at a flat in Belfast.

The officer said nobody was in attendance at the address, but it was searched and shortly before 10pm he discovered items of schoolwork belonging to Noah in a rubbish bag in the kitchen of the flat.

Counsel to the coroner Peter Coll asked if the person police had been tasked to arrest on the evening was Daryl Paul.

The officer confirmed this.

Paul, of Cliftonville Avenue, previously pleaded guilty to stealing a rucksack containing Noah’s laptop and school books.

The officer told the court he had been advised that Noah’s laptop, bag and green coat were in the possession of Paul.

The officer said the flat was “extensively” searched but the laptop and green coat were not present.

He said the school books were bagged and taken to Musgrave Street police station.

The officer told the court that despite stating in his original statement there was body-worn camera evidence of the search, he later accepted he had not recorded footage.

The witness was then questioned by counsel for Noah’s mother Fiona Donohoe.

Brenda Campbell showed the witness a statement from Ms Donohoe setting out her concerns about the police investigation into the disappearance of her son, including the failure to recover items of his clothing.

She said: “Did you understand before you got into the witness box today that a concern was the failure of the police to look for Noah’s green coat?”

The officer said he had been “briefed” at Musgrave Street police station before he gave evidence that there had been concerns about the coat.

Ms Campbell said: “It is a concern that for the first time in your evidence, you mentioned three or four times a green coat… and yet it appears nowhere in your statements, nowhere in your contemporaneous notebook.

“You tell us today for the first time you were briefed in relation to the green coat, that you looked for the green coat and that you didn’t find the green coat.”

He said: “I looked for all the items we were told to look for.”The barrister said: “Which you tell us for the first time included the green coat. Is that true?”

He said: “I believe so. We were in the flat, when Daryl Paul was not there we were told items.”

Ms Campbell said: “What were you told?”

The officer responded: “The laptop and the bag.”

She continued: “Anything else?”

Mr Wharry said: “I don’t believe we were told about the green coat.

“We were told about items.”

Ms Campbell said: “You don’t believe you were told about the green coat, why have you told us repeatedly this morning that you were?”

When the officer did not reply, the barrister asked if he was able to answer the question.

He said: “I am not, no.”

Ms Campbell said this was a “serious matter” and “difficult evidence” for Noah’s mother to listen to.

The inquest continues.

For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here.

The broadcaster is not currently on our screens, with her self-titled show off air, and has been now for weeks

Lorraine Kelly has been flooded with messages of support as she shared some ‘big news’ amid her TV absence. The broadcaster is not currently on our screens, with her self-titled show off air, and has been now for weeks.

It was previously confirmed that both Lorraine and Loose Women would air for only 30 weeks of the year due to ITV’s cost-saving measures. Prior to this, both programmes aired all 52 weeks of the year.

Earlier this month, Lorraine shared a video as she addressed both her health concerns, having been forced off her show for a couple of days, and her programme’s absence from the television listings for the first time this year.

She said: “Hi there, I just want to say thanks for the get well wishes. I’m feeling a whole lot better. This has been a bad lurgy, if you’re going through it yourself, you have my sympathies. It’s a tough one. But I’m getting there. I will be off for a good few weeks, not because I’m not well, but because there’s been changes to the show and we now do 30 weeks a year.

“So, I won’t see you for a wee while but I want to thank you for sticking with me through all the changes and I hope to see you when I’m back on air.”

Now, Lorraine has returned to social media as she wanted to share some ‘huge news’. Speaking in a video posted to her Instagram page, in which she was heading to do a spot of babysitting, the 66-year-old said: “I’ve just found out that my show has been nominated for a BAFTA, which is very grown-up and fantastic.

“Of course, it’s all down to my amazing team, especially Victoria and Helen…. Helen Addis, who was the inspiration behind our change and check campaign. There’s not a day that goes by that people stop me and say, ‘thank you for that campaign that has saved so many lives.” She added: “It’s just amazing, so thank you BAFTA! Thank you to my great team. I love you all, and you’ve really cheered me up.”

Lorraine wrote alongside the post: “HUGE NEWS!! Thank you @bafta for the nomination – huge thank you to my old amazing team and my former editor and friend @vejk100 and of course @thetittygritty – I miss you all so much. good luck to all our fellow nominees who are class acts!!”

And she was quickly flooded with messages of support. Singer Craig David replied: “Congratulations. So deserved. Love you.” Loose Women star Katie Piper said: “Massive congratulations.” ITV co-star Amir Khan commented: “Yesssssss brilliant team brilliant effort!” Dr Hilary Jones also added: “Amazing news.”

The choir, a collective of real British farmers brought together by Hawkstone, has captured the nation’s heart

Jeremy Clarkson’s Hawkstone brewery is channelling its Farmers Choir BGT Golden Buzzer-winning fame into direct action for the farming community with the release of a limited-edition vinyl record, with 100% of profits being donated to the mental health charity, Shout.