Call The Midwife star Helen George has addressed her split from businessman Dan Innes after she accused him of ‘disrespect’.

The actress, 42, had been dating property marketing agency boss Dan, 52, since March 2025 and he moved into the home she shares with her two children at the beginning of this year following a whirlwind romance. 

On the latest episode of her Mystic Mates podcast, released on Tuesday, Helen spoke about her heartache for the first time, saying: ‘There’s been voice notes, there’s been tears, it’s been pretty s**t.’ 

Earlier this month, it emerged Helen’s relationship had come to an end after Dan was seen moving his belongings out of her west London home – having only moved in at the start of the year.

Asked by her co-host Yvette Robinson what was weighing on her mind, she replied: ‘The recent events in my love life.’

The actress, 42, had been dating property marketing agency boss Dan, 52, since March 2025 and he moved into the home she shares with her two children at the beginning of this year (pictured in June)

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Yvette joked: ‘Do you think that’s because you got a little bit drunk at the weekend?’

Helen replied: ‘No, I’ve been going through some personal things. It’s been pretty s***.’

Later on in the podcast, Yvette decided to do a tarot card reading on Helen’s love life and what she can expect in the future.

She said: ‘You got some challenges ahead, you know. Challenges are good, they make you grow.’

‘Babe, don’t you think I’ve had enough challenge,’ Helen snapped.

Reassuring her friend, Yvette replied: ‘I do feel like with you, Hels, I feel like you’re getting your power back.

‘I feel like you’re such a strong, powerful, amazing woman, and sometimes, can I say, you lose that power a little bit.

‘And we lose you, and we go, “we’ve lost Hels, but she’ll come back.” And then you do come back.’

Shortly after their split, the mother of two shared a cryptic social media post about ‘disrespect’

The Daily Mail revealed last year that Helen had embarked on a new romance with Dan after they met on Raya

Helen split from Dan just seven months after they moved in together.

A source told The Sun at the time: ‘Helen and Dan have gone their separate ways. 

‘They had a whirlwind romance but their differences became apparent. It has been a difficult time for them both.’

Helen had spent that week sharing Instagram posts hinting at heartbreak, uploading a picture of her daughter walking alone through a field with the caption: ‘When the chaos leaves, the calm resumes.’ 

She also posted a popular online quote on her Instagram story, which read: ‘I absolutely take responsibility for when I am wrong. 

‘But I will never apologise for responding to disrespect. If you lit the match, do not stand in the flames pretending to be the victim.’ 

Another repost read: ‘I don’t want my daughter to be like me. I want her to speak up sooner. Walk away faster. Trust herself deeper. Apologise less. Take up more space. Ask bigger questions. Dream louder. And if that means she becomes everything I wasn’t good.’ 

At the time, Dan deleted his Instagram account.

Representatives for Helen were contacted by the Daily Mail for comment.  

The Daily Mail revealed last year that Helen had embarked on a new romance with Dan after they met on Raya. 

The pair spent Valentine’s Day together at a restaurant in Barnes, South London, which Helen documented on her Instagram Stories.

The couple enjoyed a meal at The Waterman Arms as Dan shared a snap of Helen beaming with a bottle of red wine as he joked: ‘Can I get this to go please? #yesyesyes’.

Helen also shared a photo of the two cuddled up in bed together during a Valentine’s break in Cornwall. 

Dan had also accompanied Helen to a number of industry events, including a Call The Midwife screening in March and a Radio Times party in January. 

Dan split up from the mother of his two children – who are 14 and 12 –  in 2016. They married in 2008. 

Before her relationship with Dan, Helen sadly lost her boyfriend to leukaemia.

Helen was dating the man – whose identity she did not disclose – in 2025 when she learnt he had cancer of the blood and bone marrow. 

The very next day, she had to travel to the Bahamas to film ITV series Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters.

‘I had been dating someone who very suddenly got diagnosed with leukaemia,’ she said on her Mystic Mates podcast. ‘It was pretty serious from the start and he knew. 

‘The next day after that happened, I had to fly out to the Bahamas to film the shark documentary.’

You can read Richard Eden’s full article on the ordeal here.

Prior to that, Helen was previously linked with her Call the Midwife co-star Olly Rix, who played her onscreen husband Matthew Aylward.

They reportedly grew close following splits from their respective long-term partners.

At the time, Helen had broken up with her partner of seven years, Jack Ashton, with whom she shares two daughters. 

Meanwhile, Olly had separated from his make-up artist girlfriend Natasha Fagri, whom he’d been dating since 2016.

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is a grand and stately title but the office tends to be whatever the minister makes of it.

And all the signs are that Louise Haigh will exploit it for all it’s worth – in handing such a fierce and loyal ally control of the all-powerful Cabinet Office, our new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has made clear what her real title is: The Enforcer.

From Burnham’s perspective, this appointment makes perfect sense. He and the MP for Sheffield Heeley first met a decade ago and the two soon realised they shared a desire to move the party on from the centrism of the Blair years.

She proved her worth to Burnham as a pivotal player in the long-term plot to oust Sir Keir Starmer, and it was she who managed the future PM’s by-election campaign in Makerfield, the emphatic result of which set the stage for his capture of the Labour leadership and arrival in Downing Street.

No one in government understands his thinking quite like Haigh. And with her down-to-earth take on politics, many see her as Burnham’s representative on Earth.

However, Haigh comes with baggage. Just four months after Starmer made her one of the youngest female Cabinet minister ever appointed, at the age of 36, her stint as Secretary of State for Transport ended in ignominy.

Her November 2024 resignation was prompted by news reports that, a decade earlier, while working for insurance giant Aviva, she had misled police about the fate of a work-issued mobile phone.

Haigh reported the device as stolen in a mugging incident but claimed to have later discovered it in a drawer. When her activation of the ‘missing’ phone alerted her employer, police were called in and Haigh was charged with false representation, a form of fraud.

Ms Haigh is seen as Burnham’s right-hand woman, after managing his by-election campaign in Makerfield that made him eligible to lead the Labour Party

The matter went to magistrates’ court shortly before Haigh became an MP in 2015. She was convicted of fraud by false representation after pleading guilty and was given a conditional discharge.

In her resignation letter, she stuck by her version of events but admitted it had been a ‘mistake’ not to inform her employer promptly upon finding the phone.

Starmer predicted Haigh would have ‘a huge contribution to make in the future’ but little did he know then that her contribution would be helping to bring him down and install his replacement. Politics is a ruthless business.

Given her abrupt exit from government last time, Burnham could be forgiven for harbouring concerns about a repeat performance. After all, Haigh has not always exercised the wisest political judgment.

In October 2024, she called P&O Ferries a ‘rogue operator’ for its 2022 decision to lay off 800 workers and replace them with cheaper agency hires.

The then-transport secretary told ITV News: ‘I’ve been boycotting P&O Ferries for two-and-a-half years and I would encourage consumers to do the same.’

The reaction was swift and ferocious, with P&O immediately pulling out of a Government investment summit and briefly pausing a planned £1billion investment in the London Gateway port expansion. 

Starmer was forced to rebuke his minister publicly to contain the fallout and get P&O back on board.

The P&O incident also provided an insight into Haigh’s immature brand of student-union politics: Rather than work with a sizeable employer, she preferred to grandstand and virtue signal against the hated boss class.

This, more than her plotting prowess, is key to Haigh’s political personality and her likely impact inside the Burnham Government.

It has been made clear by the now Prime Minister that dragging the Labour Party back to the Left is one of the major objectives of the Burnham project. 

Louise Haigh has stopped dyeing her hair but the truth is her roots remain a deep red, writes Stephen Daisley

Haigh, who is the product of a family of trade unionists, will be pivotal to this mission, for – like the boss – her natural territory is Labour’s soft-Left comfort zone, the place where difficult decisions are ducked and the party’s unworldly, economically illiterate core vote is pandered to.

The extent of her radicalism was revealed in a 3,000-word essay she wrote in May for Renewal, a Leftist current affairs journal. In it, she set out an economic vision that should chill the blood of every ambitious and hard-working Briton.

After bashing Brexit – apparently it ‘scarred our economy while dividing our people’ – she lamented that ‘the state’s capacity to play an active role in economic development was hollowed out’ during the Thatcher years, an approach which ‘prioritised market allocation’.

Not only in Britain, but across the world, ‘states retreated from direct economic co-ordination and relied more heavily on liberalised markets and complex regulatory regimes’. Haigh thinks this is a bad thing.

If you strip away the policy wonk verbiage, it’s clear that she is yearning for a return to the bossy-boots socialism of government-knows-best, with its suffocating state interference in the commanding heights of the economy. 

Haigh’s prospectus is a manifesto for a lurch not only to the Left but into the past, a repudiation of Thatcherism and the free market and a reversion to the crippling Keynesian collectivism of the 1970s. 

Haigh goes on to bemoan a policy of ‘meeting near-term fiscal targets’ to reassure the markets instead of ‘delivering long-term economic improvements’.

For the socialist ideologue now installed at the heart of Downing Street, the current economic model needs to be ripped up, and that means ‘looking at the role and mandate of organisations such as the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Treasury and the Bank of England’.

Again, it’s all very bland jargon on the surface but its underlying meaning is positively sinister: Haigh wants to ditch or dilute the very safeguards that prevent government from taxing and spending the country into economic calamity. Or, in her own Orwellian words: ‘The task is not to abandon fiscal discipline, but to redefine it.’

That this is who Burnham considers his right-hand woman is a red flag in all senses of the term. From her lofty perch in the Cabinet Office, Haigh will have considerable power to push the new Prime Minister’s agenda through Whitehall, regardless of any misgivings from the Civil Service.

It’s quite a rise for the Northern lass, whose parents separated when she was a teenager and she and her brother – the darts and snooker journalist Phil Haigh – moved in with their mother, who enrolled her in an all-girls’ private school in Sheffield.

Haigh, whose father was a solicitor, went on to study at the London School of Economics, Nottingham University and Birkbeck College.

Before politics she worked as a waitress for seven years in Sheffield, served as a special constable with the Metropolitan Police, and was a shop steward for the Unite union. 

Haigh was eventually selected for the safe seat of Sheffield Heeley in 2015, when the incumbent Meg Munn stood down.

She was appointed to a series of Shadow Cabinet posts under Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer, including Northern Ireland, and it was in this role she met her partner Colum Eastwood, the MP for Foyle and former leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. Prior to that, she was in a brief relationship with TV presenter Nick Knowles.

Today, Haigh keeps her personal life in Sheffield separate from her political role in Westminster. She lives with her lurcher, Milo, and seeks solace from Westminster with old friends.

Haigh has stopped dyeing her hair but the truth is her roots remain a deep red. Be warned: If you’re hard working, high earning, aspirational, or would like to keep just a little of your own money, Louise Haigh is coming for you.

Nick Clegg’s former special advisor has been charged with an historic sexual assault.

Neil Sherlock worked for the ex-Liberal Democrat leader from January 2012 until March 2013, when he was Deputy Prime Minister.

The 62-year-old is alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman over the age of 16 in Brighton, East Sussex, in September 2007. It was reported to police in September 2023.

At the time, he was a partner at professional services firm KPMG, where he worked from September 1985 until December 2011, before joining Clegg’s office.

Sherlock, from Godalming, Surrey, was charged in May with one count of sexual assault.

He appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on July 13 where he pleaded not guilty and was given unconditional bail. He will next appear at Portsmouth Crown Court on August 10.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Sherlock said: ‘I absolutely deny the charges that have been made against me.’ 

The former civil servant was awarded a CBE in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours list for public and political service.

Sherlock was awarded a CBE in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours list for public and political service

Clegg was leader of the Liberal Demorats and was approinted Deputy Prime Minister

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According to his LinkedIn, achievements during his time working for Clegg include bringing in shared parental leave and extending flexible working.

Clegg was appointed Liberal Democrat leader in 2007, before entering office as deputy PM in 2010, when his party’s coalition government with the Conservative Party was formed.

He resigned in 2015, after the Lib Dems performed disastrously at the general election.

Sherlock lives with his wife in a £1.3million detached house in the leafy market town of Godalming, Surrey. The couple have two adult children.

Sherlock is now a partner at Acuti Associates, which he co-founded in 2023. The firm advises CEOs across the public and private sector on navigating a ‘new, more uncertain’ age.

He has also served as special adviser to Jonathan Holt, UK chief executive KPMG, since 2021, as well as on the boards of several charities.

This includes The Britain Project, a cross-party political group in ‘the radical centre’ which aims ‘to put hope, decency and integrity at the heart of UK politics’.

Other organisations he works for include Surrey Drug and Alcohol Care, ‘reputation research’ firm Echo Research and Words Matter, which campaigns against verbal child abuse.

Sherlock has previously worked for the City professional services firm PwC, leading variously on communications, reputation strategy and the implications of Brexit for the firm.

His roles at PwC saw him publish a report on the company’s gender pay gap and help the firm fundraise for several charities, including Wellbeing of Women.

Previously, he was on the boards of the Centre for Justice Commission, the Armed Forces’ Pay Review and the National Literacy Trust.

Sherlock also served on the boards of charity Working Families, which advocates for flexible working, and the Prison Reform’s Trust Women’s Justice Taskforce.

He once sat on a civil service panel on fair access to the professions, as well as a City of London local authority advisory board on ‘the business of trust’.

Clegg and former Prime Minister David Cameron are pictured outside Number 10 Downing St

Sherlock will next appear at Portsmouth Crown Court on August 10. Speaking to the Daily Mail, Sherlock said: ‘I absolutely deny the charges that have been made against me.’

The former civil servant read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford, graduating with a first-class degree in 1984.

That year, he beat former prime minister Boris Johnson by more than 100 votes to become president of the Oxford Union, the university’s historic debating society.

A spokesperson for Sussex Police, which is leading the current investigation, said: ‘Police received a report in September 2023 of a non-recent sexual assault alleged to have taken place in Brighton in September 2007.

‘Following an investigation, Neil Sherlock, 62, of Godalming, Surrey, was charged on 15 May 2026 with one count of sexual assault on a female.

‘Sherlock will next appear at Portsmouth Crown Court on 10 August 2026.’

As part of the government’s Great British Summer Savings campaign, children aged five to 15 can travel for free in England, including on Bee Network bus services, throughout August.

In addition to this, 16-year-olds in Greater Manchester will be able to activate their Our Pass one month earlier (from 1 August instead of 1 September), giving them an extra month of free bus and cheaper tram travel.

The move means that all young people in Greater Manchester will be entitled to free bus travel for the whole month, with under-5s travelling free on the Bee Network all year round.

So, whether visiting the Imperial War Museum at Salford Quays, soaking up the sun in Heaton Park, or shopping at the Arndale in Manchester, all under-18s in Greater Manchester can travel for free on Bee Network buses this August.

Fran Wilkinson, Customer and Growth Director at Transport for Greater Manchester, said:

“We’re pleased to be taking part in the Greater British Summer Savings scheme which will mean free bus travel on the Bee Network for everyone aged five to 15 in August. This will help make days out more affordable for families this summer.

“To complement this national scheme, we are allowing Our Pass to be activated one month early which means no young person in Greater Manchester will miss out. The Bee Network is all about making it easier and more affordable to get around Greater Manchester and this national scheme will help us do just that.”

The government’s Great British Summer Savings scheme, which is aimed at making days out more affordable for families this summer, was announced earlier this year.

The scheme offers 5 to 15-year-olds free travel on participating local bus services in England throughout August and will be available on all Bee Network buses in Greater Manchester.

No registration or sign-up is required to benefit from the Summer Savings scheme on the Bee Network, anyone aged between five and 15 can just ask the driver for a free ticket as they board the bus.

In addition to the national Summer Savings scheme, 16-year-olds in Greater Manchester will be able to activate their Our Pass a month earlier than usual this year.

Launched in 2019, Our Pass is currently used by more than 50,000 young people across Greater Manchester who are entitled to free bus travel and some half-price tram tickets.

Anyone who was aged between 16 and 18 on 31 August 2026 and is a resident of Greater Manchester is eligible to apply for a digital Our Pass via the Bee Network app, with a one-off £10 admin fee.

Once approved, the Our Pass can be activated from 1 August, instead of 1 September – and for those who apply after August 1, once approved, it can be activated immediately.

For more information, visit the Our Pass website. Anyone who does not have access to a smartphone or the internet, or those who need additional help, can call 0161 244 1000 or visit their nearest Bee Network travel and information office for a paper application form.

‘Check out my bangers,’ says Holly Willoughby, holding up a string of uncooked sausages and falling into a fit of giggles at her swanky new kitchen island.

Unveiling her twice-a-week YouTube show, the former This Morning star gives free rein to the naughty, fun-loving side we only occasionally got to see on TV.

Another clip from her sparkly new project shows her being asked close-to-the-bone questions by comedian Katherine Ryan.

The notoriously risque Ryan starts a game of ‘S**g, Marry, Avoid’, giving as choices presenter Romesh Ranganathan, actor Rob Beckett and comedian Josh Widdecombe, which prompts the giddy admission from Willoughby that she would ‘s**g Romesh’.

And the 45-year-old is left further red-faced when her guest tells her: ‘I’m just sending Romesh the video of you saying you want to s**g him!’ (Ranganathan, Holly later told me, promised to send her a ‘right to reply’ response, though she remained tight-lipped about what exactly he said.)

More laughs come as another comedian guest, Joanne McNally, dresses her in a series of tracksuits for a fashion skit.

Yes, Holly is back, but the shackles are off and she’s laughing again. Two-and-a-half years after she sensationally quit This Morning after 14 years at its helm, she gave me a sneak peek yesterday of Holly Willoughby Together, the show she will launch next week.

Seven months after I revealed the project, which she has been working on in secret for almost a year, she showed me a montage of forthcoming episodes over avocado toast and Paloma cocktails at the Langham Hotel in central London, while her 15-year-old daughter Belle watched excitedly.

In fact, says Holly, Belle provided some inspiration, since she’s of a generation that no longer watches terrestrial TV but is glued to YouTube instead.

Willoughby left This Morning after she learned, to her great distress and fear, that former security guard Gavin Plumb had plotted to kidnap, rape and murder her.

Plumb was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 16 years, but the psychological damage to Holly was done. Overnight, Britain’s best known TV host disappeared from our screens.

Now all that is behind her. After a short clip of some of the new show’s highlights, she exclaimed: ‘I feel like I’ve just given birth!’

I ask if she’s worried about the reaction to her new project, after all that’s happened. ‘I know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea,’ she said. ‘I know that and that’s fine. I don’t want to try to convince people if they don’t want to watch. I don’t fear what people think. I’ve had real fear, I know what that’s like. Your perspective changes after something like that.’

The show will also, you sense, finally erase the trauma surrounding the end of her friendship with Philip Schofield, her former co-host, who left This Morning after lying about an affair with a much younger colleague.

Produced by her husband Dan Baldwin’s production company, Hungry Bear Media, and sponsored by online healthcare company and leading weight-loss provider Voy, Holly’s new offering is undoubtedly a lifestyle show in the This Morning mould, with content arranged into five sections: Talk Together, Cook Together, Look Good Together, Better Together and Hang Out Together. It is, though, far glossier with a logo in unmissable pink.

In fact, no one would be surprised if the upper echelons at ITV look on enviously at their former star’s fresh take on the genre, especially as the viewing figures for This Morning, now hosted Monday to Thursday by Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley, are in the doldrums. In its heyday with Holly and Phil, ITV’s daytime flagship pulled in an audience of two to three million, but today struggles to stay above 500,000.

In the Cook Together segment, Holly shares a recipe from an A-list pro. Stanley Tucci is one of the first guests, and she is also joined by younger chefs with largely online followings, such as Lauren Leyva, King The Chef and Original Flava.

Holly hosts the fashion slot herself, joined by make-up artist Victoria Penrose, while Better Together offers practical guidance from experts on issues such as health, wellness and ‘life admin’.

But it’s the Hang Out Together section which will no doubt draw fans, with Holly’s close friends – former Spice Girl Emma Bunton and All Saints singer Nicole Appleton, for example – joining her for a drink, chat and giggle.

‘Everyone knows what happened to me,’ she says. ‘Why should I not be able to carry on doing what I do because of what happened?’

The mother-of-three insists it isn’t all laughs, however. She also wants to tell difficult stories and raise awareness of social issues.

In one episode, she wipes away tears interviewing tech safety campaigner Ellen Roome, whose son Jools took his own life after a TikTok challenge went wrong.

The show is filmed at a new, purpose-built studio in London which resembles a rather luxurious house. White walls, pretty sofas and of course a sleek kitchen, which I predict will be much talked about. Gone are Holly’s expensive floral dresses, which she wore on This Morning, and the stilettos too. Instead she has gone for more of a ‘cosy’ look of jeans and casual tops.

Notably, she is presenting her show alone. She reminds me that the only time she has done this before was on a remake of Cilla Black’s Surprise Surprise from 2012 to 2015. But she insists she has ‘plenty of people around me’.

Does she miss anything about her old days at the helm of This Morning? ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I miss it so much. I miss my team, I miss the life. I loved that show. I really enjoyed it. We had 14 incredible years, and I felt really lucky that it was part of my life.

‘I don’t think you can work on something for 14 years, then just delete it in your mind. I had all my kids on that show. And I learned so much from it. I grew up on it, I was 28 when I started.’

Following her resignation from This Morning, Holly spent many months trying to regroup. She says she ‘couldn’t think about work’ at first, immersing herself in domestic life with her family.

Her return to TV was gradual, first hosting two episodes of You Bet for ITV and the Netflix reality show Bear Hunt in February 2025.

Since then, she has been a stay-at-home mum to Harry, 17, Belle, 15, and 11-year-old Chester, which she ‘loved’. Now, however, she is ready to get back out into the limelight.

‘Everyone knows what happened to me,’ she says.

‘Why should I not be able to carry on doing what I do because of what happened?’

The King said he was impressed by the design of the mosque, which has several environmentally-friendly features

King Charles said he was impressed by the design of Europe’s first eco mosque on a visit to Cambridge. He praised “all the care and attention which has been lavished on it”.

The King, 77, was told about the environmental credentials of Cambridge Central Mosque on a tour. He was greeted by cheers from well-wishers in the street as he stepped out of a maroon Bentley in front of the mosque on Monday afternoon (July 20).

He spoke to dignitaries in a paved garden area with a fountain before moving inside the mosque, where he spoke to more line-ups of people. Charles took off his shoes before walking through to a prayer hall where he spoke to more people. He joked with some schoolchildren that he hoped he had not “ruined the holidays too much by dragging you in here”.

Back in the first room, having put his shoes back on, Charles unveiled a plaque marking the 75th anniversary of Cambridge being granted city status by King George VI. Charles was then presented with a book about the mosque.

The mosque says that its “emphasis on sustainability and high reliance on green energy make this Europe’s first eco-mosque”. The building has solar panels on the roof and is heated and cooled by heat pumps in the basement that produce more energy than they consume.

Grey water – such as from bathroom sinks – and rainwater are collected to flush toilets and irrigate the grounds. The building is naturally lit all year round by large skylights in the roof, supplemented by low energy LED bulbs.

After Charles unveiled the plaque, he said it had been a “pleasure” to visit the mosque. Addressing those in the room, he said: “If I may say so I’m so impressed by the quality of the design, of all the care and attention which has been lavished on it, and the fact you have a purpose-built mosque here with the community centre attached.

“It makes a huge contribution I’m sure not only to the Muslim community but to Cambridge itself. So I congratulate you and I pray with all my heart that you continue with every possible success and that you continue your work together with other faiths in this area to set a remarkable example of integrated faith activity.” He thanked those present for having him to visit.

As he walked back to his waiting car Charles spotted a group of children with flowers among the crowd in the street and took the time to speak to them, with security staff following him to the crowd. The children gave him the flowers and the King spoke with them.

Angharad Walter, 45, of Cambridge, brought her nine-year-old daughter Indigo along after a friend told them that Charles would be visiting that day. She said one of the mosque volunteers had gone to a local cafe and got some flowers that “they get gifted… from companies when they’re going to go past their sell-by date”.

“We were really surprised when he came over, it was really nice,” said Ms Walter. Her daughter, Indigo, said it was “amazing” when Charles came across and “I felt so excited”. “He was very nice and kind,” she said.

Zeynep Coskun, a trustee at the mosque, said it was “such an honour to be able to host the King here today”. “He was very kind, he talked to everyone, he tried to understand everyone’s role,” she said.

She continued: “He was especially interested in the gardens and the environmental features of the mosque. This is an eco-friendly mosque. It’s a hot summer day but it’s still cool inside, it’s all passive heating and cooling.”

In a separate visit later in the day, Charles officially opened the city’s new Whittle Laboratory, a centre for disruptive innovation in net zero aviation and energy. He had broken ground on the project in 2023 and also previously visited in 2020 and in 2022.

The original Whittle Laboratory, an aerospace and energy laboratory, was opened in 1973 by Sir Frank Whittle, who founded the company that invented the jet engine while still an undergraduate at Cambridge.

The Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), founded by the King in 2020, has helped bring together leaders from across sectors to support the lab, and to unlock investment and foster cross-sector collaboration.

Michael Carrick’s Manchester United have been handed an update on the future of Roma star and France international Manu Kone, following the conclusion of the World Cup

Manchester United have reportedly begun talks to sign Roma star Manu Kone this summer, with the midfielder’s wish becoming clear. United have been linked with a move for the France international for some time as they continue their plans to strengthen their squad.

Two midfielders have already been signed by United this summer, with Andrey Santos the first through the door at Old Trafford after a £50million deal was agreed with Chelsea.

Youri Tielemans was then signed by United after the Reds agreed to pay the £35million release clause in the Belgium international’s contract at Aston Villa.

Even though two midfielders have already been signed, United are reportedly looking to go into the market again for reinforcements, with Kone emerging as a target over the last few weeks.

L’Equipe have now reported that United have opened initial talks with Roma about the possibility of signing Kone, and are also ahead of Arsenal in the battle to secure the 25-year-old’s signature.

The report also claims that Kone has expressed a desire to see his future sorted out as soon as possible, which could mean that a transfer may end up being finalised in the near future.

Kone starred for France at the World Cup this summer, where he helped Les Bleus reach the semi-final of the tournament before going on to get knocked out by Spain and subsequently lose to England in the third-place play-off match.

It has also been reported that United have identified Kone as a priority target this summer, but may also face competition from two unnamed Premier League clubs.

There have also been suggestions that Kone’s initial €50million (£42.5m) price tag may have increased to €60million (£51m) after featuring at the World Cup.

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The update on Kone comes amid continued uncertainty around the future of Atalanta star Ederson, with United having agreed a £38.8million package deal with the Serie A club earlier this summer, and it remains to be seen if the transfer will go ahead.

United are currently in the early days of their pre-season preparations and recently lost 1-0 to Wrexham in their opening friendly fixture of the summer in Finland.

Michael Carrick & Co will travel to Norway next as they prepare to face Rosenborg on Friday in their next pre-season friendly.

Why are Mercedes struggling to understand George Russell’s straight-line deficit? They must have all the data on his battery deployment, ICE output, e-motor power, plus how much drag his aero and car set-up, such as rake angle, generates – Sean

At the Belgian Grand Prix, Mercedes experienced unexplained behaviour from their power unit.

Russell suffered for this, by having a mystery lack of energy over a lap in qualifying. It cost him some but not all of his deficit to team-mate Kimi Antonelli. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff put the loss from the engine at about 0.2-0.25 seconds.

A pretty much identical thing happened at McLaren to Oscar Piastri in relation to Lando Norris.

Both drivers also experienced a shortfall of energy on the first lap that contributed both to Russell’s incident with Hamilton and Antonelli being passed by Max Verstappen on the approach to Eau Rouge.

As Wolff said: “All Mercedes engines had a lack of energy out of Turn One so that wasn’t only George. It affected him more than Kimi but also Kimi had that issue to a certain degree.”

The one in the race was, Wolff said, “a new issue”.

Mercedes said they did not understand why either situation had happened.

The fundamental issue is that the latest F1 hybrid engines are highly complex, as are the rules by which they have to be operated, and the manufacturers and teams are still learning about them.

One of the impacts of this is that small nuances of driving can have a disproportionately large impact on energy availability. It’s one of the reasons why the drivers do not like these engines.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, among the best technical communicators in the sport, has talked about this extensively this season.

At the weekend in Spa he said: “To operate these power units, you don’t operate them in an open-loop way, whereby I would be able to have an off-line simulation and say, ‘Oh, that’s how the electrical power will be deployed and it will always be identical to itself’.

“There’s a large component of the controller that operates the power unit that happens with live calculations and the power unit forward-thinks, forward-calculates what it has to do. There’s a lot that happens as the car goes.

“This is why it’s not so easy to understand what kind of calculations have been made as the car was going.

“I’m sure we will understand the reason, but at the same time you need to be able to anticipate and make sure that the operation of the power unit unfolds as expected.

“Because this is not only for the influence it has in the power-limited sections, [and] in the straights, but also because it affects the braking points.

“Because if you have an additional amount of harvest before braking, then you are approaching the braking 10km/h slower and your braking point changes.

“This is quite difficult to master for the drivers, and it’s one of the reasons why they talk about the difficulties of exploiting the power unit from a driving point of view.

“It’s not only to get the most out of the power unit, but also because the variations of the power unit affect the references as you approach a corner.

“But the variations that are significantly relevant are so small that they may happen from one lap to the other, even if you have learned from the previous laps.”

This complexity also explains why McLaren have been frustrated this season by some aspects of their relationship with Mercedes, particularly in terms of how much information they have been given about the operation of the engine.

As Stella said: “It’s only now, and we are mid-season, that we are starting to have the required tools in order to be able to anticipate, optimise, and study these sensitivities.”

It was revealed to viewers of the ITV soap last month that Sarah was the one responsible for the abuser’s death

Coronation Street fans think they have rumbled what will happen to Sarah Platt following her arrest for the murder of Theo Silverton, and it could see her get away with it.

It was revealed to viewers of the ITV soap last month that Sarah was the one responsible for the abuser’s death, after he lured her to his flat under false pretences by using his husband Todd Grimshaw’s phone.

Corrie fans will recall that Theo’s lifeless body was found by a horrified Betsy Swain on the night of her mum, Lisa Swain’s, wedding to Carla Connor back in April.

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Viewers first learned that Theo was among the five villains at risk of being killed off during an episode of Corrie in February, which featured flashforward scenes showing Betsy being interviewed by the police about finding the dead body of someone she knew.

Eventually, a week after the wedding aired, it was revealed that Theo was the victim, which came after he tried to torment Todd one last time. His death has since triggered a murder investigation, with Corrie confirming Todd as a suspect, along with George Shuttleworth, Summer Spellman, Christina Boyd, Gary Windass and Danielle Silverton.

But as Corrie fans now know, it wasn’t any of the six, as it was Sarah who appeared to deal the blow that sent a drunk Theo tumbling off the scaffolding outside his flat and plummeting to the ground – before she called on her former flame, Gary Windass, for help.

Corrie fans later watched as Sarah confessed the truth to Todd, while Kit remained determined to pin Theo’s murder on Gary, not realising that he has been covering for Sarah. That was until she confessed to her copper beau last week, just as he was trying to pop the question.

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Kit eventually promised that he would protect Sarah from getting arrested and offered to get her and Gary’s phones scrubbed clean. However, he could be heard asking for a copy of the phone’s data, suggesting his plan wasn’t to help Gary at all. But it was during Monday’s (July 20) edition of Corrie that the police finally made a major move in their investigation.

Aware that the police were closing in, a panicked Sarah was disrupted by her brother, David Platt, who wanted them to record a birthday message with her son, Harry, for Audrey Roberts. Bethany went on to join them in Sarah and Kit’s flat, but they were soon interrupted by the police barging in through the door and arresting Sarah on suspicion of murder.

Down at Weatherfield police station, Lisa interrogated Sarah before providing evidence that they had found splatters of Theo’s blood on her clothing from the night of the crime, after her clothes were taken in as evidence from her own attack by Jodie Ramsey, which came after Theo’s murder took place.