The Department for Transport revealed that all speed cameras were to be painted yellow by October 2016.

This should make most of them easier to see, but what about speed cameras on the other side of the road? Well, you might be surprised to know the answer.

Can you get caught speeding on the other side of the road?

In a way, yes.

Many motorists believe that if a speed camera is located on the other side of the road, they can’t get caught speeding. However, this is not strictly true.

Fixed speed cameras can’t usually catch motorists on the other side of the road, but mobile police vans or manually operated speed guns most certainly can.

Mobile vans can be parked anywhere, so it’s best to always stick to the limit.

Since the first speed camera was installed in the UK in 1991, drivers have been trying to trick the system and avoid being caught. 

You should always drive safely and stay within the speed limit. This protects you and your passengers as well as all other road users and pedestrians.

It can also cost you penalty points and a speeding fine; if you are a repeat offender, you can lose your driving license altogether.

What happens if I am caught speeding?

It all comes down to the circumstances within which you were caught speeding, and how much you were more than the limit.

The minimum penalty for being caught speeding on the UK’s roads is a £100 fine.

In some circumstances, police can offer the option of attending a speed awareness course – an alternative to a fine and penalty points.

Have you ever been caught speeding? Let us know in the comments

Every mission to deep space is fraught with danger. A hardware failure during launch, an equipment malfunction far from Earth, or a small space rock hitting the vehicle are all scenarios astronauts will train for.

As humans set off on the Artemis II mission, visiting the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years, one persistent threat they face is from solar radiation.

Intense bursts of radiation from the Sun, known as solar particle events, can endanger the lives of space travellers, particularly those venturing beyond low Earth orbit (LEO). During these events, high speed, charged particles stream out from the Sun and into space.

Exposure to these particles could lead to radiation sickness or, in the worst cases, prove fatal. On space stations and other crewed vehicles travelling in LEO, astronauts are afforded a high degree of protection by the magnetic bubble surrounding Earth (the magnetosphere).

But in interplanetary space, where Artemis II is headed, humans are much more exposed to outpourings of solar radiation.

The Sun’s magnetic activity fluctuates on a cycle lasting roughly 11 years. During this cycle, sunspots (areas of reduced temperature caused by intense magnetic fields) can cause eruptions known as flares, as well as solar particle events. These rise and fall in frequency with the solar cycle.

The current solar cycle reached its maximum, when the Sun is generally at its most active, in 2024 and is now in a slowly declining phase leading to the minimum, when the Sun is quietest. The current cycle should reach the minimum in 2031.

Not all solar cycles are the same and the current one has been rather undistinguished in terms of activity, as was the previous cycle that reached maximum in 2014. Recently, however, the Sun woke from its slumber.

On November 11 2025, a large solar particle event increased ground level radiation by about 145% for two hours, as measured by the University of Surrey’s neutron monitor at the Met Office station at Lerwick, Shetland.

This was also detected by University of Surrey SAIRA (Smart Atmospheric Ionising Radiation) monitors installed on two transatlantic flights and on rapid response meteorological balloon flights at Lerwick, Cambourne and near Utrecht in the Netherlands.

Work is in hand to unscramble this complex event to determine the radiation increases worldwide using the University of Surrey computer model MAIRE (Model for Atmospheric Ionising Radiation Effects). This calculates radiation levels at aviation altitudes for normal atmospheric conditions, as well as for enhanced radiation events caused by increased solar activity.

Three immediate research papers are in production to describe the radiation monitors and their calibration, to summarise the flight data and to compare the data with available models.

A close call

The solar particle event on November 11 2025 serves to tell us that, whatever the probabilities might be, the Sun can always take us by surprise.

To underline the importance of such events for deep space missions, let’s rewind the clock to 1972. At the time, the Sun was in a similar declining phase in its 11-year cycle as we are today. Then, between August 2 and August 11 1972, the Sun unleashed one of the largest solar particle events of the space age.

This gigantic release of charged particles from the Sun occurred in between the Apollo 16 (April 1972) and Apollo 17 (December 1972) missions to the Moon.

This event was much bigger than the one in November 2025 – by a factor of 40. If it had taken place while astronauts were in space, the radiation dose could have caused severe illness or even death.

The Apollo crews had a lucky escape. But the solar particle event made an impact on Earth. The ensuing geomagnetic storm is thought to have caused 4,000 US-laid mines to spontaneously detonate in Hanoi harbour during the Vietnam war, causing confusion and alarm on both sides.

There are ways to prepare for similar events in future. The most dangerous aspect of this radiation is its high energy component, which can penetrate shielding on spacecraft. The Surrey Space Centre Space Environment & Protection team are currently working on a detector, called the High Energy Proton instrument, that definitively measures this high energy component of solar particle radiation.

It does this through the light flashes emitted when the particles transit a transparent medium at velocities exceeding the speed of light. Astronauts often report seeing such flashes of light, even with their eyes closed, that can be caused by solar particles or high-energy cosmic rays passing through the retina or optic nerve.

À lire aussi :
Why has it taken so long to return to the Moon?

Advance warning

The University of Surrey radiation detectors could now fly on a lunar orbiting mission towards the end of the decade. On this mission, they will characterise the danger to lunar bases as well as to the Earth. Nasa is planning to spend US$20 billion (£15 billion) on a base at the south pole of the Moon. A separate outpost is planned by China and Russia.

Radiation warning systems can give astronauts the time they need to retreat to storm shelters within a base or spacecraft where increased and specially designed shielding is used.

If astronauts travelling in Orion – the spacecraft used on Artemis II – receive advance word of a solar storm, they are instructed to get into storage lockers in the floor of the spacecraft. This places the crew next to Orion’s heat shield, making this area one of the most protected parts of the vehicle.

Warning systems can also help on Earth. During periods of high solar radiation, controllers could instruct aircraft to fly at lower altitudes and latitudes – and in extreme cases remain grounded.

Computing revolution

One big difference between the Apollo and Artemis missions is in the rapid development of microelectronics since the 1960s and 70s. This has led to trillion-fold increases in computer memory density and thousand-fold improvements in speed.

The Apollo computers were pioneering, but struggled to cope with the workload as Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin descended to the lunar surface during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. However, there is a downside to this as the technology packed into modern spacecraft is vulnerable to radiation.

À lire aussi :
Heat shield safety concerns raise stakes for Nasa’s Artemis II Moon mission

The charge depositions from individual particles often exceed the amount required to change the state of the computer memory bits. In some cases it could destroy the device. It is now arguable whether the greater hazard from solar particle events is to astronaut health or to the flight electronics aboard spacecraft.

In 1972, the Apollo astronauts were very lucky. In this new age of exploration, when so many nations have designs on travel to deep space, we can’t afford to leave astronaut safety to the whims of fortune.

The ITV series returned to Blackpool for more auditions

Britain’s Got Talent viewers weren’t impressed with the variety of acts in the most recent round of auditions on the hit ITV show.

With a £250,000 prize and a spot at the Royal Variety show at stake, contestants have been battling it out to claim their place in the coveted final through a very competitive set of auditions.

Last year, magician Harry Moulding won through the public vote and gave a showstopping routine at last year’s Royal Variety performance.

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On Saturday (April 4) night, the judges returned to Blackpool for another round of auditions. The night kicked off in a promising way as an acrobatic group impressed with four yes’ straight away.

It was then time for The Maverick Magicians, made up of three friends who were hoping to win over the audience and the panel, in the hopes of securing their slot in the live shows.

As they approached the panel, judge KSI was asked to write a word down that no one would know or be able to Google about him. He then scrunched up the piece of paper before Simon Cowell was led on an impromptu shopping trip to buy a watermelon.

Having purchased his goods, Simon returned to the studio and hiding inside the chosen watermelon, the name which KSI had secretly written down appeared inside the fruit.

The audience and judges were in shock over the trick, with Ant and Dec also unsure how they managed to pull it off. KSI said: “I’m literally lose for words. It was incredible!”

Although they received 100% yes votes from the panel, some viewers at home admitted that they were feeling quite “bored” of magician acts on the hit ITV series.

On X (formerly known as Twitter), @ryansoapking25 wrote: “Maverick Magicians: How many of these run of the mill magicans are we going to get? I’m bored at this point. Another staged magic act!”

@alltvukshows added: “here is far to much magicians but no one will beat that young boy”. However, some viewers added how much they enjoyed the act, as @agshizzle penned: “Got to love magic acts”.

Originally from New Zealand, three-year-old Islay was crowned the winner of the annual Easter corgi derby.

The promise of hot dogs at the finish line was enough to spur on a Pembroke Welsh corgi to victory in the annual Easter corgi derby at a Scottish racecourse. Three-year-old Islay, which was born in New Zealand, romped to victory in the race at Musselburgh Racecourse.

Owner Carolyne Ricardo, a vet at the University of Glasgow, said: “It’s a bit of surprise because we only found out two weeks ago she had been accepted for the race but I am delighted.” Ms Ricardo, originally from New York, added: “She likes a nap and is a slow starter in the morning but if she comes across a squirrel it’s a goner.”

Dogs from across the world competed in the race including Sadie, which travelled with her owner from Newquay, Cornwall, and Naomi, which lives in Glasgow with her owners, but was born in China. The annual race is in its fifth year and was created in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee in 2022.

Musselburgh Racecourse head of marketing and business development, Aisling Johnston, said: “Our Virgin Bet Scottish sprint cup race day is a fixture featuring lots of high quality horse racing with more than £300,000 on offer – but it’s no exaggeration to say our little, four-legged friends do their best to steal the show.”

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The dancers, joined by the Stacksteads Band, set off from the Old Travellers Rest in Britannia just after 9am before following their seven‑mile route through Bacup and Stacksteads to finish at the Glen Service Station in Waterfoot.

This year, the team dedicated their efforts to raising funds for ANDYSMANCLUB, a men’s mental health charity that offers free peer‑to‑peer support groups across the UK.

A message on the group’s website said: “We’re incredibly proud to support ANDYSMANCLUB this year. The message that it’s okay for men to talk about their mental health is such an important one, and we’re glad to play our part by helping raise awareness.”

Video by Phil Taylor shows the dancers performing at a man’s window in Stacksteads

Despite the drizzle, locals and visitors lined the streets to cheer as the dancers made their way through town to the sound of drums and clogs.

Among the onlookers were Anne and Graham Ireland, both from Bacup, who have watched the event for decades.

Anne said: “We come to it every year, we live in Bacup. We enjoy coming to it. My dad was in it for 26 years.

The dancers in Irwell Terrace, Bacup (Image: NQ)

“It’s silly, the controversy. They’ve done it for 150 years and it’s only recently there’s been any controversy. It’s a good event that brings the community out.”

The Coconutters’ website describes the event as “a magical day filled with pride, cheer and laughter” that draws supporters from across the region to celebrate a piece of Lancashire history dating back to the 19th century, when Cornish tin miners are thought to have brought the dance to Rossendale.

Another spectator, Tom Carver, said: “You can’t help but get swept up in it – the music, the energy, the sense of tradition. Whatever people think about it, there’s no denying it’s part of Bacup’s identity.”

The troupe’s trademark blackened faces have, however, drawn criticism in recent years, with some saying the look is racially insensitive.

The dancers made several stops along the 7-mile route (Image: NQ)

The Britannia men maintain that the colouring stems from their 19th‑century mining roots, when soot was used to disguise the dancers’ faces, and that it now forms part of the costume representing “Moorish pirates.”

The group left the country’s main Morris organisation in 2020 after it urged dance teams to drop full-face black makeup.

The dancers says the focus of the day remains on charity, community, and keeping one of Lancashire’s enduring traditions alive for another generation.

Literature expresses complex and nuanced ideas – the powerful feelings that define us as human beings and the detailed observations that illuminate all aspects of our lives. It does so with words put together with consummate skill.

So, surely silence is a nothingness, an affront to the communication of both rational argument and strong emotion – literature’s opposite, even its anathema?

Well, no. In my new book Silence: A Literary History, I’ve set out to show that, over 1,200 years, English literature has spoken to us – and spoken to us eloquently – through silences as well as through words. Without silences, both formal and thematic, we wouldn’t have the exquisite hush of medieval lullabies, the suspenseful secrets of the realist novel, or the jagged fragmentation of modernist poetry.

We would lose implicitness, a good deal of ambiguity, much precision, a powerful mode of protest and a variety of moods. Iago would explain exactly why he wanted to destroy Othello in Shakespeare’s play. The dog would bark in the night time in The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle. And D.H. Lawrence’s sex scenes would come with a running commentary.

The start of silence

If silence has a starting point in English literary history, it’s a man at sea. The 9th-century poem The Wanderer, composed in the Old English language of the Anglo-Saxons, communicates the sheer strangeness of silence via an alien grey seascape in which the protagonist is utterly alone.

This silence is composed not of complete noiselessness – the hail beats on the waves and a seabird occasionally mews – but of an intense and total absence of human voices.

The poem conveys the difficulty of this silence – its wretched, aching loneliness and its perpetual reminder of lost happiness. But it also portrays silence as a duty, the mark of a seasoned warrior forged by Graeco-Roman stoicism, the Germanic hero ethos and Christian asceticism.

And it confronts readers, here at the very beginnings of English literature, with a silent inner voice: the necessary basis of an interior life.

Scroll on 1,200 years. En route, we will take in the tongue-tied silences of Renaissance love poetry, the green silences of 18th-century pastoral scenes and the dumbfounded wonder of the romantic sublime.

We will pause, awestruck, at Tennyson’s great epic of speechless grief, In Memoriam. We will relish the social silences of the Victorian novel, from the hilariously awkward to the emotionally profound.

The fascism-bordering silences of Modernism will make us shiver, before we ponder 20th-century experiments with visual, acoustic and dramatic silences. And we will arrive at the genre-defying, multimedia poetry collection that is Jay Bernard’s Surge (2019).

Voices that we cannot hear

In 2016, Bernard took up a residency at the George Padmore Institute in London, an archive dedicated to radical Black history in Britain. The New Cross fire, which in 1981 had killed 13 young Black people, was playing on their mind. And then on June 14 2017, as Bernard puts it: “Grenfell happened”.

Bernard was sickened by the similarities: “The lack of closure, the lack of responsibility and the lack of accountability” at the centre of both conflagrations.

Surge’s response takes its title from a remark by the Black activist Darcus Howe, one of the organisers of the Black People’s Day of Action in 1981: “When you surge and you don’t deal with the question, barbarism expresses itself.”

Speaking over the barbarism, Surge registers a gamut of other silences as it winds between the New Cross and Grenfell fires, and historic and ongoing injustices to Black people.

There is the “muffling” of the New Cross fire by the police, and the details that were literally “tippex’d out” of the file. The silence of the media cannot dispel the weighty silences of the ghostly dead. Then there are the silences that surround transness: hiddenness, rejection and defiance of conventional categories.

With this last issue, we can scroll back up the centuries again. The 13th-century romance Silence, written in Old French by a Cornishman, Heldris de Cornualle, relates the legend of a girl-child being brought up as a boy called Silence because women are forbidden to inherit their parents’ estates. This causes a furious argument between the characters of Nature and Nurture, which anticipates our own age’s differences over transness by eight centuries.

“They have insulted me,” complains Nature, “by acting as if the work of Nurture / were superior to mine!”

But Reason, on behalf of Nurture, urges Silence to resist Nature’s blandishments, or “you will never train for knighthood afterwards. / You will lose your horse and chariot.”

Nature is the winner in the story, but the poem is able to accommodate Silence as both male and female – effortlessly embracing apparent contradictions in such lines as “he was a girl”.

I believe noticing silences in literature makes us better readers. We come to recognise that some things are better left unsaid – indeed, that some things can’t be said. As a result, our antennae become attuned to literature’s stock-in-trade: the indirect and the inexplicit.

Importantly, we become aware of who hasn’t spoken. All this means we gain a better understanding of what communication is, and how we interact with other people. As our reading acquires a new, slower tempo and a new rhythm, our interpretations change.

What can silences speak to us about? Some of the profoundest aspects of our existence: our understanding of what makes a self; our sense of sacredness; our most powerful and intimate feelings; our place in the natural world; our capacity for wonder. All we have to do is notice.

The excerpt from Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance was translated by Sarah Roche-Mahdi. This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

After losing at Brighton two weeks ago, Liverpool and Slot would have hoped that the international break would have provided the reset required before one final push until the end of the season.

The announcement that Mohamed Salah will leave in the summer, while significant, was not a surprise and had the potential to galvanise fans and players alike to give a club legend a memorable send off.

On top of that, the return of club-record signing Alexander Isak to team training after more than three months out provided another boost.

But 92 minutes in Manchester quickly did for any such optimism, with the number of potential trophies that might garnish Salah’s farewell swiftly halved.

Even a consolation goal was beyond them as Salah saw his second-half penalty saved – a moment Slot admitted “probably sums us up today and probably large parts of our season”.

“To get embarrassed like they did today is going to stick with them,” ex-Aston Villa striker Dion Dublin added on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Difficult as it is, though, Slot must find a way to rally his players before kick-off in Paris on Wednesday evening.

Another abject defeat could end Liverpool‘s hopes of progressing even before the second leg, at which point the season would become solely about trying to scrape back into the Champions League next season.

For all the mitigation that Slot can point to for the issues this season – injury problems, a severely disrupted pre-season, an unbalanced squad and, above all, the tragic death of Diogo Jota – failure to do so would leave him extremely vulnerable.

“We have to react to this defeat and this disappointing season,” he said. “There is a chance for us on Wednesday. We have shown today for only 35 minutes that we can compete.

“We can take positives from those 35 minutes but if we defend like the 20 minutes afterwards we will have a big problem. That is what we have to address.”

Time is fast running out for Slot to find those solutions and salvage something from Liverpool‘s season.

What that means for his future remains to be seen but those joyous scenes of last spring certainly seem a long time ago now.

President Donald Trump’s son and his fiancée could tie the knot at the White House, a new report reveals.

Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson, a socialite from Palm Beach, Florida, have considered hosting their wedding at the White House, according to People. But the timeline could be impacted by the president’s $400 million White House ballroom project.

“The ballroom probably has to be finished,” a source told the outlet.

Trump demolished the White House’s East Wing to make room for the ballroom last year — but now, the project’s future is unclear. Earlier this week, a federal judge ruled that Trump needs congressional approval to continue with construction.

The president pushed back on the ruling in a Truth Social post.

“In the Ballroom case, the Judge said we have to get Congressional approval. He is WRONG!” he wrote Tuesday. “Congressional approval has never been given on anything, in these circumstances, big or small, having to do with construction at the White House.”

A White House wedding could also have political implications for the president’s son, one source told People.

“This would set them up for future political roles, whether Don Jr. goes after the presidency or something else,” they said. “This is a consideration.”

The Independent has contacted the White House and Trump Jr.’s office for comment.

Trump Jr. and Anderson announced their engagement in December at a White House event.

“I want to wish all of you guys an incredible holiday season, a merry Christmas, a very happy New Year and to thank Bettina for that one word, ‘yes’,” Trump Jr. said.

Anderson added: “This has really been the most unforgettable weekend of my life, and I get to marry the love of my life, and I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.”

In 2005, Trump Jr. married Vanessa Trump, who is currently dating Tiger Woods. The pair had five children together before divorcing in 2018. Their oldest daughter, 18-year-old Kai Trump, is set to attend the University of Miami later this year and play for the school’s golf team.

Trump Jr. later dated Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was once married to California Governor Gavin Newsom and currently serves as the U.S. ambassador to Greece. The pair even got engaged in 2020, but in December 2024, Page Six reported they had broken up.

“Kimberly and I will never stop caring for each other and will always keep a special bond,” Trump Jr. told Page Six at the time.

Guilfoyle addressed Trump Jr.’s engagement during an interview with The New York Times published in January.

“I’m happy for Don,” she said. “I wish him, of course, all the best.”

Former President Joe Biden’s granddaughter Naomi Biden and Peter Neal were the last couple to get married at the White House. The pair exchanged vows on the South Lawn in November 2022.

Rory McColl, from Edinburgh, was only hours into his trip to Thailand when he accidentally picked up a woman’s phone in a bar – now his family says he is unable to come home and faces jail

A dad is facing jail in a Thai hellhole prison after he accidentally picked up a woman’s phone in a bar, his family said.

Rory McColl, from Edinburgh, told how he confused the woman’s phone with his own and picked it up just hours after arriving for a holiday in Bangkok on March 9.

The 37-year-old owned up to the mistake but was accused of theft and spent the first two nights of his trip in a filthy cell, the Daily Record reports.

After forking out £1,000 in bail money to be released from jail, cops seized Rory’s passport. He has now been stranded in the south-east Asian country for almost a month as he waits for a court date.

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His sister Joanna McLaughlin fears her brother will be sentenced to jail time.

She said: “Rory was arrested on the first night of his holiday due to a misunderstanding. He normally keeps his phone in his pocket and had forgotten that he had a travel waist bag where he was keeping his valuables.

“At some point, he went to get his phone, couldn’t find it in his pocket and saw the same phone as his sitting on the bar. He picked it up thinking it was his and put it in his pocket.

“The girl whose phone it actually was saw him taking it and involved the police, thinking he had stolen it. By the time Rory realised his mistake, the police were arresting him and taking all his belongings.”

Rory claims he was subjected to “horrendous conditions” in a Thai jail cell for two nights. Joanna said after his release, he went to the Embassy but was advised that they can’t get involved in criminal cases.

Rory, who works at Buck’s Bar in Edinburgh, is now awaiting his fate in a cheap hotel in Pattaya. Grim Thai prisons include Klong Prem Central, which has a brutal reputation, while another possibility is high-security and the overcrowded Bang Kwang Central.

Loved ones have set up a GoFundMe appeal to cover living costs and legal fees.

Joanna said: “A lawyer will be very expensive. He has already had to pay £1,000 bail money and various payments to the police.

“His travel insurance won’t cover the costs of missing his flight home and he hadn’t budgeted to pay for hotels for all this time.

“As a family, we are desperate to get Rory home. He has to get back for his son and his work. We are also extremely concerned that the police are still talking about jail sentences when he is innocent of the crime of theft.”

Chelsea are without Enzo Fernandez, who has been dropped for two games as a result of recent comments that cast doubt on his future at the club. Skipper Reece James is also still sidelined as Liam Rosenior ponders his selection against a Port Vale side who are all but certain to be back in the fourth tier next term, sitting 15 points adrift of safety with eight games left.