Arguing that Labour’s policies are “destroying jobs, squeezing wages, increasing prices and harming investment across Scotland and the UK”, Mr Doogan vowed: “As the SNP’s Westminster leader, I will be an unashamedly pro-business voice in the UK Parliament – championing support for our business community to create good local jobs, boost people’s wages, deliver investment in our communities and bring wealth back into our economy.

The third Health and Arts Mela was held today (Sunday, May 17) in Museum Gardens in York City Centre – bringing together people from across the world to celebrate culture, but also focus on their health and wellbeing.

Mela – meaning ‘gathering’ in Hindi – festivals first began in South India, but have become common in major cities across the UK, with the first York event being held in 2023.

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The festival, which was free to attend, took place between 10am and 5pm and showcased a range of cultural performances, free henna and face painting, and food from across the world.

Some of the live performances throughout the day included the Ebor Morris Dancers, the Hyde Family Jam, the East Asian Ensemble, York African Community, and Punjabi Roots, with a dance floor in front of the main stage to encourage people to join in.

Event organiser Shamim Eimaan said that the event had been a huge success with spectators getting involved and dancing along throughout the morning.

Shamim (left) and one of the participants (Image: Alice Kavanagh)

She said: “Honestly, it’s been great – the rain was threatening us earlier, but the sun’s still shining. All of this community support is fantastic and we’ve got all the stalls here to provide information for the community, which is great.”

Alongside the main stage festivities, 25 organisations from the health, wellbeing sector and arts community were also gathered at the event including St Leonard’s Hospice, Feeding Friendly York and Healthy Child Service, Kyra’s Women’s Project, York CVS, and the National Centre for Early Music.

Shamim added: “Part of this festival is about making healthcare and support accessible to everyone – sometimes it’s hard for people to know, what services are available to them.

The Ebor Morris Dancers (Image: Alice Kavanagh)

“”This is such a welcoming relaxed atmosphere that people can approach all our providers and ask about support. I think the biggest barrier is access and not knowing what services are available and this is a great opportunity to find out.”

One of these groups was the York Carers Centre, who were attending the group to promote their services and raise awareness for the support available to those who are caregivers – which includes support, conducting assessment of needs, and a mental health team.

Libby Crofts, lead officer for adult carers, said: “It’s fantastic to be here at this wonderful multicultural celebration to spread the word about unpaid carers and the support we can offer to people who care for family, friends, and neighbours.”

Libby (left) with another volunteer (Image: Alice Kavanagh)

She added that a lot of people take on care responsibilities for loved ones without realising that there was support systems in place that could help them.

Speakers at the event included MP Rachael Maskell, council leader Claire Douglas, Nimbuscare director Zulf Ali, and City of York Council Director of Public Health Peter Roderick – who all praised the event for not only bringing people together from across the world, but also reminding them how to stay healthy.

Cllr Douglas added: I think what we can see by coming together here is that our wellbeing and our health is really driven by the connection that we have got here today. There are people here, from all communities, from York from the wider North Yorkshire area as well.

The Chinese lion dance (Image: Alice Kavanagh)

“We have seen already amazing positivity that watching our young people, diverse communities, giving us some of this amazing entertainment that we’ve seen, we learn about each other. We enjoy each other. We come together, and it makes us feel better, and it is proven, it makes us healthier too.”

As part of efforts to get the project back on track, HS2 Ltd has previously said it would slow or pause work such as the line towards Handsacre, so it could focus spend on areas which had fallen behind; notably the central section across Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire.

He suffered a seizure linked to drug toxicity.

Leon Anthony Bent, of Central Place, Bolton, was pronounced dead at Royal Bolton Hospital on January 11, 2026, following 11 days in intensive care.

The hearing before coroner Michael J Pemberton, heard that Mr Bent had taken cocaine, amphetamines and alcohol during a New Year’s Eve “blowout” before becoming unwell the following day.

A report was read out at the inquest which stated that Mr Bent had “binged on cocaine, amphetamines and a large amount of solid food” the night before his collapse.

Evidence showed that on January 1, Mr Bent attended his parents’ home in Farnworth, where he appeared unwell.

Later that day, he suffered a prolonged seizure, with his body tensing and eyes rolling back.

An ambulance was called, and he was still fitting when paramedics arrived.

He was taken to Royal Bolton Hospital and placed into an induced coma in intensive care.

Despite treatment, he remained severely respiratory compromised and never recovered.

A post-mortem examination found Mr Bent had aspirated a large volume of stomach contents during the seizure, leading to severe aspiration pneumonia – a serious chest infection caused by inhaling vomit into the lungs.

The medical cause of death was given as aspiration pneumonia, caused by seizures brought on by drug toxicity.

The inquest heard that while it was not possible to confirm specific drug levels post-mortem, there was no other clear explanation for the seizures.

Detective Inspector Janet Malone said there was no evidence of third-party involvement or suspicious circumstances.

A statement from Mr Bent’s mother, Maxine Bent, described him as a “family-oriented man who enjoyed spending time at home and with his dog, Roxy.”

The inquest heard Mr Bent had faced challenges throughout his life, including a brain tumour diagnosed at 18 months old, which required multiple surgeries and left him with short-term memory difficulties.

The inquest heard he had recently received the keys to a new flat, saving money to furnish it.

Coroner Mr Pemberton concluded that Mr Bent died as a result of a drug-related incident.

He recorded a conclusion of death due to aspiration pneumonia, seizures and drug toxicity, noting that despite medical intervention, efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.

ROYAL Birkdale is undoubtedly one of the toughest golf courses to host The Open.

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Royal Birkdale legends

Previous Open champions at Royal Birkdale

1954: Peter Thomson (Australia)

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1961: Arnold Palmer (USA)

1965: Peter Thomson (Australia)

1971: Lee Trevino (USA)

1976: Johnny Miller (USA)

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1983: Tom Watson (USA)

1991: Ian Baker-Finch (Australia)

1998: Mark O’Meara (USA) – pictured

2008: Padraig Harrington (Ireland)

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2017: Jordan Spieth (USA)

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Channel 5’s new true crime documentary has left viewers shocked and devastated

Channel 5 audiences have been left shaken by a harrowing new true crime documentary.

Murder In Shetland: Trial by Jury chronicles the death of Claire Leveque, a woman discovered dead at an isolated property in Shetland.

Claire, originally from Canada, was just 24 years old when she was killed on 11 February 2024.

She was found with multiple severe injuries in a hot tub at a property in the Sandness area, and despite the arrival of emergency services, she was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.

A new documentary is now shedding light on the subsequent murder trial, while also giving voice to her bereaved family, reports the Mirror.

The Channel 5 synopsis teases: “Inside the courtroom as a grieving family and an accused partner collide in a murder trial.”

Posting a clip on social media, Channel 5 cautioned audiences: “Warning: Some viewers may find the following video distressing.”

They further stated: “Claire Leveque’s final months reveal a harrowing story of control and abuse. Now, her family cross continents in search of answers, and justice.”

The trailer featured excerpts from the trial, showing Claire’s loved ones breaking down in court.

It also sees testimonies from experts brought in to prove the case, as a person warns: “This is a horror story from the beginning.”

“This was horrific,” one viewer commented to the clip.

Another said: “Horrendous case – can’t imagine how her family and friends coped with that trial.”

Someone else called it “very chilling”, and said “it wasn’t an easy watch”.

“A hard watch,” another agreed, while someone else said: “#MurderinShetland is remarkable television. Do watch it if you can, although it is quite harrowing.”

Ahead of the documentary airing, Gary Davies, consultant editor for commissioning at 5, said: “This thoughtful series gives a deeply human account of an unimaginable tragedy. It shines a light on the justice process and honours the courage of Claire’s family as they seek truth and remembrance.”

Mark Procter, executive producer for Big Little Fish, echoed the sentiment, saying: “We are profoundly grateful to the Judicial Office for Scotland and to everyone who enabled our access to the trial.

“Above all, we are honoured that the Leveque family have entrusted us to document what happened to Claire. We hope this series serves as a respectful tribute – giving her the voice that was so cruelly taken from her.”

Murder in Shetland: Trial by Jury is available to watch on Channel 5.

The incident is affecting traffic heading southbound towards Stansted Airport

A crash on the M11 has caused miles of traffic on the Essex and Cambridgeshire border. A lane is closed in both directions on the M11 between Stansted Airport and Newmarket.

It all follows an earlier collision. National Highways said emergency barrier repairs are being carried out. There are currently 30 minutes of delays in both directions and three miles of congestion on approach.

Traffic camera pictures appear to show heavy congestion on one side of the road. The incident is affecting some people on their journey towards Stansted Airport.

National Highways posted on X (formerly Twitter ): “Lane 2 (of 2) is closed on the M11 in Essex in both directions between J8 (Stansted Airport) and J9 Newmarket following an earlier collision. Barrier repairs are being carried out. Current delays of 30 minutes in both directions, with 3 miles of congestion on approach.”

Traffic monitoring service Inrix said: “Queueing traffic and one lane closed due to emergency barrier repairs on M11 in both directions from J9 (Saffron Walden) to J8 A120 (Bishops Stortford). One lane closed on the Southbound and one lane closed on the Northbound.”

Mark Prince has spoken on the twentieth anniversary of his son’s murder to lay out his vision of how to help the nation’s young people to achieve their potential as he recalls the day his son dad

The father of murdered teenage footballer Kiyan Prince has told of his desire to meet his son’s killer to help him start a new life.

Mark Prince was just days away from visiting Hannad Hasan in jail where he was serving a life sentence for fatally stabbing his son, 15, who played for Queens Park Rangers’ youth team. But the appointment was cancelled at the last minute by prison bosses and Hasan was last year extradited to his native Somalia.

Kiyan was fatally stabbed trying to break up a fight outside his north London school in May 2006. Since then, Mr Prince, a former WBO and IBF title holder, has dedicated his life to The Kiyan Prince Foundation, which guides young people through boxing.

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On the twentieth anniversary of his son’s murder, Mr Prince is launching a new campaign, The Champions’ Club, which calls for more investment in youth services across the country. Speaking to the Daily Mirror he said: “I was eager to meet the guy who killed my son which sounds strange to some people but to me it makes sense.

“We know the dangers because grief is so impactful it could leave you angry enough to want to hurt someone but I wasn’t that guy. I had processed my grief to the point I wanted to live out what I had taught my son. I taught my son about love and forgiveness, that he was made by a god of love.

“I didn’t realise I would be tested on that subject the way I was. I realised this was my challenge that I had to step up to so I stood up to it and I wanted to do it for my son to show him that everything I showed you in your life now I’m going to demonstrate what it looks like so you can see it even though you’re not here.

“I wanted to be a part of that restorative process for him. Maybe that could have been of some help to him. How powerful is that? That the person that hurt you the most is the person that you reach out to to help? I know it’s hard to understand but it’s too powerful a legacy to shy away from. Because I’m a fighter and I don’t shy away from tough fights, that’s just another tough fight for me and I’ll have the same attitude and I’ll step up.”

Based at the Tottenham Community Sports Centre in Haringey, North London, the KPF has positively impacted over 100,000 young people in England and Wales. Around 80% of those on its Inspiring Future Changes programme were motivated to make positive changes in their lives or to help others in theirs.

Mr Prince has also supported a string of parents including the mum and dad of Harry Pitman, 16, who was fatally stabbed as he waited to watch fireworks over the Thames last New Year’s Eve. He said when Kiyan died all he thought about was “revenge and anger” towards his murderer, who was then 16.

On hearing the news his son had died from a doctor, he punched through a hospital wall, leaving blood on the floor. Mr Prince said: “I’ve never had police trying to restrain me. This is the situation I found myself in. But nobody could restrain me, the rage and the anger that I felt in that moment of my son going and not being able to handle the news. Not being able to deal with the thoughts that came into my head on finding that out. It was a bit much.”

Mr Prince found a way to channel his experiences into supporting parents and young people to realise their potential and give them opportunities. And he is keen to emphasise the positive rather than talking about knife crime and violence.

Mr Prince said: “We’ve been focusing on the potential and futures of our young people, because that’s what they’re hearing. They’re hearing about them, that they have a voice, that there are people who care about them and want to create opportunities to help them to thrive.

“This is what makes KPF stand out and what makes Kiyan Prince’s legacy so powerful and I believe that the public want to back something like that. We have got to have prevention, there’s many disenfranchised people out there and society can help change that.”

In 2024, Mr Prince won the Helen Rollason Award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony, for his work supporting at-risk young people. Research carried out by the Kiyan Prince Foundation and Savanta to mark the 20th anniversary of his death revealed that less than half of young people in Britain feel optimistic about their futures

A poll of 1,016 16 to 24-year-olds found that 49% of respondents are confident about their futures, while three quarters said it is difficult to be a young person in the UK today. Fewer than two in five (37%) believe British young people are “winning” – defined as having the opportunity to achieve their life goals.

Mr Prince, has called on the Government to provide more support to young people who feel “held back by a society which sees them as the problem”. He said: “Through our new campaign, we’re calling for more investment into youth services and want to create our own space, carrying Kiyan’s name, that helps young people feel like winners again.”

In its list of policy asks to the Government, the Kiyan Prince Foundation said youth clubs are a “lifeline” for youngsters who need “structure, safety, community and belief”. The charity said: “Without consistent funding, young people are left to find belonging elsewhere and many turn to gangs. If we are serious about giving young people a chance to win, then we must properly fund the places that make winning possible.”

In August last year, Sir Keir Starmer announced an expansion of youth services which included the promise of £30.5 million to improve youth club infrastructure in areas with the highest levels of child poverty. It formed a package of measures designed to support children the Prime Minister warned are often “isolated in their bedrooms” and spending “much too much time on social media”.

To donate £20 to the Kiyan Prince Foundation and to support the call for more youth clubs in the UK, text CHAMPIONSCLUB to 70490. Text messages will cost the standard network rate plus the £20 donation.

Direct transfers of money to those that need aid, as opposed to using aid to fund programmes such as food or water relief, could help make aid programmes more efficient in the era of aid cuts, a new report has found.

The analysis, which was commissioned by aid body the CALP Network, is based on an analysis of $11.4bn (£8.5bn) in aid spending across some 1,203 programmes, and has been published ahead of a landmark UK summit on the future of international development, The Global Partnerships Conference.

The authors of the report find that direct cash assistance, particularly when offered through local organisations and at significant scale, can help the humanitarian sector reach significantly more people within the shrinking pool of aid funding.

Specifically, they find that cash assistance can enable up to 38 per cent more aid to actually reach people in need, with the findings coming at a time when funding per person in need has fell 35 per cent between 2024 and 2025, the last available statistics.

“At a time when humanitarian needs are rising and aid budgets are under intense pressure, this is not a debate about efficiency for efficiency’s sake,” said Cate Turton, director of the CALP Network.

“Greater efficiency means more families receiving support, more dignity for crisis-affected people and fewer impossible trade-offs in humanitarian response.

“This report gives donors and agencies concrete evidence for reforms we already know work – prioritising cash assistance, investing in locally led delivery, and delivering cash at scale – so aid can reach more people within existing funding.”

Gideon Rabinowitz, director of advocacy at the NGO network Bond, added: “Today’s report highlights that cash assistance works to meet humanitarian needs among communities impacted by conflict and crisis: and works best when led and delivered at scale by local organisations.

“As international aid budgets shrink, there is a need to consider how remaining funds can deliver the best value for marginalised communities worldwide, and for taxpayers.

“Donors including the UK government should now heed the report’s evidence and take action to implement reforms that will facilitate locally led cash assistance delivery, and make every penny of international aid count – and reach the people who need it most.”

Direct cash transfers have increasingly been used by NGOs in humanitarian contexts, with the World Food Programme (WFP) – a UN agency, and the world’s largest humanitarian organisation – doing so as part of its ‘Anticipatory Action’ programme.

In Ethiopia, for example, WFP has been offering cash transfers to pastoral communities ahead of periods of drought, which enable families to purchase food and animal feed, and also to cultivate crops, instead of being largely helpless as their animals succumb to the climate shock.

“The goal is really to reduce the impact on vulnerable populations by saving lives and protecting livelihoods ahead of the shock,” Robert Ackatia-Armah, acting deputy country director for WFP Ethiopia, has previously told The Independent.

“The idea is that we cannot prevent the shock from happening, but we can prevent the humanitarian cost and caseload by intervening in advance,” he added.

There is currently a risk, though, that these programmes are deprioritised as NGOs are forced to cut back on everything except the most critical humanitarian work, such as food relief in famine-prone areas.

Last month, WFP in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) confirmed to The Independent that cash assistance has been cut back in the DRC as the agency has been forced to focus on more other kinds of life-saving humanitarian work.

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project

The head of the Royal College of Nursing is calling for an end to violence against nursing staff

Nurses have said they are just “trying to stay safe” to get through shifts without patients coming to harm, amid warnings of a “deadly mix” of increasingly complex care and widespread vacancies in the profession.

The boss of the Royal College of Nursing will tell the union’s congress on Monday that members face a “torrent of violence, sexual assaults, discrimination and abuse” while they go about their daily work, and she will accuse ministers of failing in the “most basic task” of keeping citizens safe.

Ahead of the gathering, the RCN surveyed more than 13,000 nursing staff across Wales and England about their experiences on their most recent shift. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here

In her speech Professor Nicola Ranger, general secretary and chief executive of the RCN, will say: “Widespread vacancies of registered nurses are always unsafe, but the risk is being compounded by the demands of delivering ever more complex care to an ageing, sicker population, with multiple conditions. It is a deadly mix.

“It is a government’s first priority to keep its citizens safe, but our analysis and the testimony of nursing staff show ministers are too often failing in this most basic task.

“We need a new approach, away from the flawed ‘finger in the wind’ workforce planning which led us here.

“It must be centred on new, sustained investment in the nursing workforce to the level that allows our profession to meet all patients’ needs – now and in the future. Anything else lays the ground for another patient safety disaster.”

Prof Ranger will also use her speech in Liverpool to call for an end to violence against nursing staff.

“There’s a torrent of violence, sexual assaults, discrimination and abuse faced by nursing staff while we provide care,” she is expected to say.

“It’s rising. And it has to be stopped. This is about respect, it’s about fairness and it’s about decency. But these problems run deep. What we see is sex, race and class being held against sections of our workforce. It’s not an equal playing field.”

She is also expected to highlight that nursing continues to “bear the brunt of funding restrictions and budgets cuts” which “makes a hard job even harder”.

In the speech the nurses union boss is expected to say: “It means no matter how far we push ourselves beyond our limits, we can’t make up for having too few staff. That can feel like our failure and we carry that pain home with us, long after our shifts have ended. It’s not our failure. It’s nursing set up to fail.”

In the RCN survey more than three-quarters (79%) of respondents told the union that clinical complexity has increased in the last two years, with one-in-10 saying staffing is at the right level to meet patient needs. More than two-thirds (69%) said the situation is forcing them to make tough decisions on prioritising care.

A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “We greatly value the nursing workforce in Wales and the vital work they do.

“The First Minister has now appointed his cabinet which he has said will have a relentless focus on doing what’s best for Wales. Each minister will be setting out their priorities shortly.”

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