The late American chef Barbara Tropp described the texture of perfectly poached chicken breasts as ‘plush’. It should be tender and soft, not overcooked but, just as importantly, not undercooked with a bloated ‘wet’ texture. If you cook the chicken in advance, keep it in the stock in which it has been poached until you want to serve it. The herby mayonnaise shouldn’t be made too far in advance or it will be less green and fresh. 

Requires 30 minutes soaking time. 

A two-storey semi-detached house was struck by lightning, causing a massive blaze in the roof of the home

Firefighters tackled a substantial blaze after lightning struck a property in Wales during the night. Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service confirmed crews were dispatched to Glanaman in Carmarthenshire at 11.23pm on Wednesday, May 27, after receiving reports of a fire at a two-storey semi-detached dwelling.

Footage circulating online captures the moment lightning hit the house before flames broke out on the roof. Fire teams from Ammanford, Amman Valley, Llandeilo and Morriston rushed to the location.

Firefighters deployed six breathing apparatus sets, two hose reel jets, three thermal imaging cameras, ladders and ceiling hooks to extinguish the flames. The blaze caused substantial damage to the building and extended to an adjacent property.

All residents were accounted for with no casualties reported.

A coordinated multi-agency operation was mounted, involving Dyfed-Powys Police, the Welsh Ambulance Service and the National Grid. Fire personnel remained on site until 2.45am on Thursday, May 28, reports Wales Online.

The Met Office had issued a weather warning for Wales on Wednesday for thunderstorms after a spell of sweltering temperatures throughout the region.

Across Scotland, the warm weather looks set to continue in the coming days, with highs of 18C forecast in Glasgow on Friday, May 29. Edinburgh meanwhile we see slightly warmer conditions this weekend, hitting highs of 22C on Saturday.

The sunny weather isn’t set to continue for too much longer though, with some showers forecast for Edinburgh on Sunday. Glasgow meanwhile can expect to see rain on Saturday, the Met Office reports.

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The European Club in Wicklow, consistently ranked among the world’s top 100 golf courses, has closed since December 2025 for a major Irish golf course renovation that promises to rival the best destinations internationally

One of Ireland’s most celebrated golf courses is undergoing a sweeping transformation, with the revamped venue beginning to take shape.

The European Club in Wicklow, consistently ranked amongst the world’s top 100 courses, has long been regarded as a notoriously demanding challenge for golfers of all abilities.

The course record stands at a relatively modest-sounding 67 — by professional standards — a score set by none other than Tiger Woods in 2002 as he prepared for that year’s Open at Muirfield.

Following his Irish Amateur title victory at the course in 2006, Rory McIlroy described it as “probably the best links course I have ever played”.

Founded by Pat Ruddy in 1987, the County Wicklow links was subsequently listed on the property market for in excess of €35m, reports the Irish Mirror.

Irish duo Raymond and Nicky Conlan acquired the club in 2025, with substantial investment and a comprehensive overhaul in the pipeline. The course shut its doors in December 2025, with a reopening pencilled in for spring 2027.

“This project represents a significant investment and will create a new and different golfing offering, designed to stand alongside the very best destinations internationally,” members were informed at the time of closure.

The Brittas Bay Club has been offering glimpses of the redevelopment progress and its impressive results across its social media platforms.

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A state-of-the-art 4,000-square-foot clubhouse will feature a comprehensively stocked pro shop, alongside dedicated changing facilities for both men and women, complete with shower amenities. A dining area will occupy the upper level, with expansive windows providing uninterrupted panoramas of the golf course and the Irish Sea beyond.

Kyle Phillips has designed the reimagined course. His approach, the club explains, ‘centres on exposing the site’s natural qualities. Rather than blindness and severe challenge, the new routing emphasises strategic variety and visual drama’.

Turfgrass consultancy oversees the agronomy, while Golf Link Evolve manages the construction work, having previously been involved with Royal Birkdale, St Andrews Old Course and Turnberry.

The Brittas Bay Club has invited golfers to ‘experience Kyle Phillips’ reimagining of one of Ireland’s most challenging links layouts’.

“The reopened venue will feature improved playability whilst retaining championship credentials at this spectacular Irish Sea location,” the club states.

“Phillips’ redesign prioritises playability improvements through expanded sightlines and multiple strategic options per hole. The routing will expose more sea vistas across all 18 holes whilst reducing the difficulty that characterised Ruddy’s original.

“Championship length remains at approximately 7,400 yards, but the new layout includes at least one drivable par-4 under 400 yards.”

During the refurbishment, agronomists were brought in to restore native plant species and grasses characteristic of the area, located 65km south of Dublin.

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Located off Craignethan Drive, the remaining properties are all three-bedroom semi-detached Braemar house styles, with prices starting from £274,995.

Avant Homes Scotland has released the final four homes for sale at its £9m, 31-home Craignethan Gate development in Glenboig.

The housebuilder is hosting a view home weekend event at the development on Saturday, May 30, and Sunday, May 31, allowing prospective buyers to experience the final homes for sale first hand.

Located off Craignethan Drive, the remaining properties are all three-bedroom semi-detached Braemar house styles, with prices starting from £274,995.

Avant Homes is offering potential buyers the opportunity to view the practically designed, energy-efficient Braemar house style at the weekend event.

The Braemar features a large open-plan kitchen with integrated appliances, dining and living space, with French doors leading out to a private garden. The ground floor also features a separate WC and storage cupboard.

Upstairs there are two generous double bedrooms and a single bedroom, all served by a family bathroom. There is an additional storage cupboard on the landing.

Appointments are not necessary to attend the event and the Avant Homes Scotland sales team will be present to advise on the available homes and incentives.

Avant Homes Scotland sales director, Lisa Archibald, said: “We’ve received an incredible response from buyers looking to join this vibrant community we have created at Craignethan Gate, so it’s great to now release the final homes for sale and invite prospective buyers to the event to learn more about the last homes available.

“Glenboig is a fantastic place to live. With the Seven Lochs Wetland Park on the doorstep and Glasgow just a 20-minute drive away, residents can enjoy the best of both country living and city convenience.

“We encourage anyone interested to come along to the event, explore the Braemar view home and speak with our sales team to find out how we can make their next move a reality.”

For more information on the development, search ‘Avant Homes Craignethan Gate’.

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A judge said Mateo Allmunca had come to the UK as an ‘economic migrant’

A man working in a Llanelli cannabis farm told police he was only visiting the town to go to the beach, a court has heard. Despite his claim, police had already raided the cannabis factory where Mateo Allmunca was working as a gardener tending a crop worth more than £80,000.

The Albanian national later came clean saying he had paid £20,000 to people smugglers to get him into the UK and that he was working off the debt he owed the gang by looking after the cannabis operation.

Abu Hussain, prosecuting, told Swansea Crown Court that on March 25 this year police executed a search warrant at a flat on Pentre Doc y Gogledd in the North Dock area of Llanelli. For the latest court stories sign up to our crime newsletter

He said when officers entered the property they were “immediately met by the smell of cannabis” and that a search found a total of 89 plants of various stages of maturity spread across three rooms along with associated growing equipment. The officers also found the flat’s electricity supply had been tampered with and the meter by-passed.

The court heard that Allmunca was not present during the search but neighbours were able to identify him as the man they had seen coming and going at the address. The 24-year-old defendant was located and arrested and told officers he was visiting Llanelli from Swansea in order to go to the beach. When searched he was found to be in possession of a key to the flat.

In his police interview Allmunca said he had paid £20,000 to be brought into the UK from Albania and that had been in the country for around 12 months. He said he had been living in Birmingham before being taken to Llanelli, and that threats had been made against him and his family.

The prosecutor said the value of the plants found at the flat had been estimated by police at up to £82,000.

Mateo Allmunca, of no fixed abode, had previously pleaded guilty to being concerned in the production of cannabis when he appeared in the dock for sentencing.

The plea was entered on the basis that he had paid £20,000 to be brought to the UK and that he was paying back the debt he owed at the rate of £3,000 a month by acting as a cannabis gardener.

The defendant has no previous convictions in the UK. The prosecutor said details of any foreign convictions were not known.

Matt Murphy, for Allmuna, said his client was a single man who had come to the UK to escape an “impoverished life” in Albania where he was earning as little as 200 euros per month. He said “out of desperation” his client had made the decision to move to the UK and that he had “little or no” influence on the cannabis growing operation.

Recorder Mark Powell KC said the reality was Allmunca had come to the UK as an “economic migrant” and had paid £20,000 to a criminal gang to organise his travel into the country. He said it was the same gang which facilitated the defendant’s entry into the UK that then put him to work growing cannabis.

With a one-quarter discount for his guilty plea Allmunca was sentenced to 24 months in prison. He will serve 40 per cent of the sentence in custody before becoming eligible for released on licence.

Recorder Powell told the defendant he was liable to be deported after serving his sentence.

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Breadcrumbed thighs are less hassle than battered, and you can prepare them in advance – just bring them out of the fridge before you want to cook them, otherwise they’ll take longer. Each coating layer needs to be seasoned – the flour, eggs and breadcrumbs. If the thighs are big you may need to halve them before putting them into the buns. Offer ketchup, corn salsa, mustard – whatever extras you want – on the side.

It’s best to put someone else on bun duty, so you can focus on cooking the chicken while they’re doing the toasting.

Requires minimum 2 hours marinating time.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for a Black death row inmate from Mississippi who claims there was racial bias in the makeup of the jury that convicted him.

By a 5-4 vote, the justices sided with Terry Pitchford, who was sentenced to death for his role in the killing of a grocery store owner.

“In this case, whether due to confusion, oversight, an overly hurried jury selection process, or some other cause, things broke down,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court. Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices joined with Kavanaugh.

There were 11 white jurors and one Black juror in a trial with similarities to that of another Black man on Mississippi’s death row, whose conviction the high court overturned seven years ago.

It’s unclear what happens next in Pitchford’s case. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who dissented, suggested the state still could argue Pitchford’s conviction should be sustained. If his conviction is overturned, the state could seek to retry him.

“Mr. Pitchford is now entitled to a fair trial in the state court,” Joseph Perkovich, who argued the case for Pitchford at the Supreme Court, wrote in an email.

Doug Evans, a now-retired prosecutor with a history of dismissing Black jurors for discriminatory reasons, had excused four other Black people at Pitchford’s trial. Black people make up more than 37% of Mississippi’s population.

The Supreme Court ruled 40 years ago in Batson v. Kentucky that jurors could not be excused from service because of their race and set up a system by which trial judges could evaluate claims of discrimination and the race-neutral explanations by prosecutors.

Pitchford’s case focused on whether his lawyers did enough to object to Judge Joseph Loper’s rulings and whether the state Supreme Court acted reasonably in ruling they had not.

Pitchford’s lawyers made the necessary arguments and the state high court acted unreasonably, Kavanaugh wrote.

In dissent, Gorsuch wrote that Pitchford had to show that no fair-minded judge could rule as the Mississippi court did and that the record in the case was crystal-clear in his favor.

“As I see things, Mr. Pitchford has failed to satisfy either of these standards,” Gorsuch wrote, joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas.

In 2019, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence and conviction of Curtis Flowers, because of what Kavanaugh then described as a “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals.” Evans was the prosecutor in that case, and Loper presided over the final two of Flowers’ six trials.

The case has been making its way through the court system for 20 years. In 2023, U.S District Judge Michael P. Mills overturned Pitchford’s conviction, holding that the trial judge did not give Pitchford’s lawyers enough of a chance to argue that the prosecution was improperly dismissing Black jurors.

Mills wrote that his ruling was partially motivated by Evans’ actions in prior cases. A unanimous panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling.

Evans did not respond to The Associated Press’ attempt to reach him for comment when he retired.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

Under cross-examination by Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s barrister, a woman who has accused him of sexually abusing her, told the trial that she had been sexually abused by another man when she was a child.

Donaldson, 63, is on trial at Newry Crown Court accused of rape and several counts of gross indecency and of indecent assault. The ex-MP has pleaded not guilty to the 18 alleged offences. The charges span a time period between 1985 and 2008 involving two alleged victims.

Donaldson’s wife, Lady Eleanor Donaldson, from Dublinhill Road, Dromore, Co Down, denies several charges of aiding and abetting her husband’s alleged offending. She is facing a trial of the facts after Judge Paul Ramsey ruled her unfit to stand trial on mental health grounds.

The trial of the facts will test the evidence in the case, but cannot result in a criminal conviction.

After lunch on Thursday, May 28, complainant A was questioned by Donaldson’s barrister Kieran Vaughan KC. The barrister asked her about an incident when she was sexually abused by another man when she was of primary school age.

She said: “That is correct. To my knowledge it was one incident.”

Asked why she had not told this abuse to police when she had reported alleged abuse by Donaldson, she said she saw it as the “lesser of two evils”.

Mr Vaughan pointed out in her police interview about the alleged Donaldson abuse that she had said events were “very unclear” and that she had used the words ‘I think’ about what she claimed had happened.

Complainant A said she had “great clarity” about some events while others were “foggy”.

He said: “All these incidents happened in your childhood. Your memory of those incidents are unclear?”

She said: “The incidents themselves I remember significant detail, due to the nature of what happened.”

He said: “I am suggesting to you that things were quite foggy in your mind about these events.”

She replied: “I do not agree with that.”

The barrister suggested that she may either have “fabricated” the abuse or else “dreamt it and over the years come to believe it is true”.

She said: “To imply someone would dream things without a reason is ridiculous, it is insulting.”

The trial, which is expected to last between three and four weeks, continues on Friday.

Jeffrey Donaldson, a former long-standing MP for Lagan Valley, was arrested and charged at the end of March 2024.

He resigned as DUP leader and was suspended from the party after the allegations emerged.

Weeks before his arrest, he had led the DUP back into devolved government at Stormont after a two-year boycott of the powersharing institutions.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is pushing to more records Thursday as companies like Dollar Tree, Snowflake and Hormel Foods keep piling up profits. That’s even as oil prices continue to swing and more data shows pressure building on the economy because of the war with Iran.

The S&P 500 added 0.4% to its all-time high set the day before after drifting between small gains and losses earlier in the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 9 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 11:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher after both indexes also set records the day before.

Even with worries about expensive oil and high inflation, the U.S. stock market has run to records largely because U.S. companies keep making more money. Stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate profits over the long term, and companies have been routinely topping analysts’ expectations for the first three months of 2026.

Dollar Tree’s stock soared 18.1% after it became the latest to report fatter profit than analysts expected. CEO Mike Creedon said improved store conditions helped the retailer make more profit off each $1 in sales during the latest quarter despite tariffs adding to its costs. The company also gave a forecast for profit over the full year that topped analysts’ expectations.

Kohl’s rallied 16.3% after the retailer reported better results for the latest quarter than analysts had feared, while Best Buy climbed 15.9% following its own better-than-expected profit report. Hormel Foods climbed 9.8% after a strong performance for its Jennie-O ground turkey and exports of its Spam luncheon meat helped it report a better profit than analysts expected.

Snowflake rose 34.1% after saying artificial intelligence continues to be a strong driver of its business, and profit and revenue for the latest quarter exceeded expectations.

They helped offset a dip for Marvell Technology, which fell 1.3% after its profit for the latest quarter only matched analysts’ expectations. It also said AI is driving big revenue growth for it, particularly its data center business.

In the oil market, prices ticked higher following their latest U-turns. The price for a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude oil rose 1.2% to $89.76, but only after bouncing between $87 and $92. It’s been swinging as hopes rise and fall that the United States and Iran may reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and get oil flowing again from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide.

The latest threat to the ceasefire in the war came after U.S. Central Command said Kuwait had intercepted missiles launched by Iran late Wednesday night. That followed earlier “defensive” strikes by the U.S. military on missile launch sites and minelaying boats in southern Iran.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased after a report said the measure of inflation that the Federal Reserve likes to use accelerated last month but was roughly within economists’ expectations.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.46% from 4.48% late Wednesday after giving up an earlier gain.

Data also showed how U.S. households are less able to save money, with the personal savings rate down to a four-year low of 2.6%, “pointing up the financial pressure on lower- and middle-income families,” according to Gary Schlossberg, global strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

U.S. households have been saying they’re feeling discouraged about the economy and inflation, even as the stock market keeps chugging along.

High yields in bond markets worldwide recently have threatened to slow economies and undercut prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments. High yields have already forced the average long-term U.S. mortgage rate to its most expensive level since last summer, and they could curtail companies’ borrowing to build the AI data centers that have supported the U.S. economy’s growth recently.

A report on Thursday said the pace of sales of new U.S. homes unexpectedly slowed last month, as the weight of higher mortgage rates hurts the market.

In stock markets abroad, indexes dipped across much of Europe and Asia. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.3% for one of the world’s larger losses.

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AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.