Holidaymakers could face major delays this summer

A new border control system is being rolled out at all European airports, including those in Spain, Portugal and Greece, from April 10. The new Entry Exit System (EES) requires British travellers to provide fingerprints and photographs when entering the Schengen Area.

British holidaymakers have been cautioned about potential queues due to the new biometric system, which was first introduced in October at some EU airports. All 29 Schengen countries are now expected to have it fully operational by April.

Some airport organisations have called for an “immediate review” of the Entry Exit System (EES) rollout as it “continues to cause significant delays,” and cautioned that queues for non-EU passengers could stretch to four hours during the summer months.

The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) stated: “EES checks are being introduced in a phased way across external borders, with full operation expected from April 10, 2026.”

The Foreign Office suggested that EES might take each passenger a “few minutes extra” to complete and advised they “be prepared to wait longer than usual” at border control, reports the Express.

The new checks at European airports follow the recent announcement that dual British nationals could be refused entry at the UK border unless they possess a British passport. The new regulation could impact holidaymakers returning to the UK from their European trips.

Full list of countries with the new Entry Exit System

1. Austria
2. Belgium
3. Bulgaria
4. Croatia
5. Czech Republic
6. Denmark
7. Estonia
8. Finland
9. France
10. Germany
11. Greece
12. Hungary
13. Iceland
14. Italy
15. Latvia
16. Liechtenstein
17. Lithuania
18. Luxembourg
19. Malta
20. Netherlands
21. Norway
22. Poland
23. Portugal
24. Romania
25. Slovakia
26. Slovenia
27. Spain
28. Sweden
29. Switzerland

Betty Brown, OBE — Post Office justice campaigner, Consett

Elizabeth Brown (Betty Brown) was made an OBE in the New Year Honours list. (Image: Lucy North)

Consett great-grandmother Betty Brown, 92, was the oldest person on the King’s New Year Honours List 2026 after receiving an OBE for services to justice.

She is believed to be the oldest surviving victim of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, having run Annfield Plain Post Office with her late husband Oswall from 1985 until they were forced out in 2003.

The couple lost around £100,000 of their own money covering non‑existent shortfalls.

One of the original 555 claimants in the landmark group action led by Sir Alan Bates, Betty has become a leading campaigner, fronting national TV interviews and challenging ministers as victims finally secure compensation.

Vera Parnaby — “Mrs Poppy”, Consett

‘Mrs Poppy’ was also named in the New Year’s Honours list. (Image: SARAH CALDECOTT)

Known affectionately as “Mrs Poppy”, Consett’s Vera Parnaby has been selling poppies for the Royal British Legion for eight decades, raising well over £1m.

She began collecting aged six after her father was killed serving in the Second World War, accompanying her mother door‑to‑door.

Now in her mid‑80s, Vera is the Legion’s longest‑serving poppy seller and leads a dedicated volunteer team in Consett, even introducing contactless machines to keep donations flowing.

Her tireless fundraising has earned her a string of honours and a Pride of Britain regional fundraiser nomination, but she insists she has no plans to stop.

Rhiannon Hiles — Chief Executive, Beamish Museum

Rhiannon Hiles, Chief Executive of Beamish Museum.

Rhiannon Hiles has spent three decades at Beamish, The Living Museum of the North, after joining as a volunteer in 1995 and working through curatorial, commercial and development roles.

She became chief executive in 2021 and has since led the open‑air museum to its biggest ever accolade – Art Fund Museum of the Year 2025, the world’s largest museum prize.

In February, she was named a North East Business Titan for outstanding leadership and contribution to the regional economy, praised for putting people and communities at the heart of Beamish’s success.

She also holds senior roles in European and UK museum bodies.

Hannah Fox — Executive Director, The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle

Hannah Fox, the director of The Bowes Museum.

Appointed director of The Bowes Museum in 2022, Hannah Fox arrived in Barnard Castle with a track record of transforming heritage sites.

In Derby she helped lead the £18m redevelopment of the Silk Mill into the Museum of Making, hailed as the UK’s first museum of its kind.

At Bowes, she has championed community‑led culture and co‑creation, fronting the Durham Creative Community Fellows programme, which supports 17 grassroots arts leaders from across County Durham in partnership with US‑based National Arts Strategies.

Fox regularly cites founder Josephine Bowes’ “tenacity, creativity and ambition” as the inspiration for the museum’s future direction.

Dr Sarah Price — Head of Locomotion, Shildon

Dr Sarah Price (right) with Bishop of Durham elect Rick Simpson. (Image: North News & Pictures Ltd)

Dr Sarah Price made history in 2018 when she became the first woman to lead Locomotion in Shildon, part of the national Science Museum Group.

The museum, on the world’s first public railway route, tells the story of railways and the people who built and worked on them.

Price has spoken about challenging the perception that railways are a male interest, noting that close to half of Locomotion’s visitors are women and girls.

Under her leadership the site has expanded its collection, events and outreach, using the region’s rail heritage to engage diverse audiences in science, engineering and history.

By choosing not to attend, Michelle O’Neill allowed the focus of the story to shift away from her argument about the war and towards the optics of her absence

Stormont rarely has much direct influence over foreign policy, but that has never stopped international events spilling quickly into the politics of this place.

The escalating conflict involving Iran is the latest example. While decisions about military intervention are being taken in London, Washington and elsewhere, the consequences are already being felt much closer to home. Families across Northern Ireland are watching developments anxiously as the situation in the Middle East deteriorates, aware that friends and relatives are among the large number of British nationals currently in countries that could become increasingly dangerous in the days and weeks ahead.

UK officials believe hundreds of thousands of Britons are in countries targeted by Iran, with more than 140,000 registered for Foreign Office updates. If the situation continues to escalate, the prospect of evacuations on a scale rarely attempted by the UK is now openly being discussed.

It was against that backdrop that the UK Government convened a series of briefings for devolved administrations last week, and First Minister Michelle O’Neill chose not to attend.

The First Minister’s explanation has been clear enough. She has said she remains in contact with both the British and Irish governments, and that her priority is to ensure that anyone from Northern Ireland who needs assistance leaving the region can do so safely. Her objection, she says, is to taking part in a briefing by the British Government on military operations when she fundamentally disagrees with the decision to join the conflict.

That position sits squarely within Sinn Féin’s long-established approach to international affairs. The party has consistently opposed British military intervention overseas, and Michelle O’Neill has framed the current conflict in similar terms, warning that the situation is spiralling and questioning where the escalation will end. She has also been careful to stress that the Iranian regime itself is brutal and repressive, while arguing that war will not deliver a peaceful outcome.

Taken in isolation, none of that is especially surprising. But the politics of the situation is not only about the substance of her argument. It is also about the moment in which the decision was taken and how it has been interpreted.

The briefings offered by London were not about seeking the endorsement of devolved ministers for military action. Stormont was hardly being invited to weigh in on strategic decisions about missile strikes. Their purpose, according to those who attended, was to ensure devolved administrations were updated on developments in the region and on the potential implications for citizens from their jurisdictions. In other words, they were about information rather than endorsement.

That distinction has allowed deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly to frame the situation in a way that is politically advantageous for her. By attending both briefings and speaking afterwards about the scale of the challenge involved in any potential evacuation, the deputy First Minister has been able to emphasise a more practical focus on the immediate consequences of the conflict for people here.

Her criticism of Michelle O’Neill was measured but pointed. It was, she said, “genuinely disappointing” that the First Minister had chosen not to attend a meeting designed to update local leaders on events that could affect thousands of people connected to Northern Ireland. In Stormont terms, the exchange quickly settled into a familiar dynamic.

Emma Little-Pengelly’s argument was not really about foreign policy at all. Instead, it presented a contrast of one side attending briefings and focusing on practical contingencies, while the other is standing back on the grounds of principle.

The deputy First Minister used an opportunity to launch a broader attack on what she described as Sinn Féin’s historical relationship with Iran, while DUP leader Gavin Robinson went further, arguing the UK should have been involved earlier.

None of that necessarily changes the substance of the First Minister’s critique of the war itself. Across Europe and beyond, there are serious questions being asked about the legality of military action and the risk that the current escalation could pull more countries into a widening conflict.

But politics, particularly in Northern Ireland, rarely unfolds in a purely substantive way. At a time when families here are worried about loved ones in the region, participation in a briefing designed to provide information about their safety carries a certain symbolic weight, regardless of the technical purpose of the meeting itself.

It is worth saying that had the First Minister attended the briefings, I don’t believe anyone would have batted an eyelid. By choosing not to attend, Michelle O’Neill allowed the focus of the story to shift away from her argument about the war and towards the optics of her absence, which has given Emma Little-Pengelly an opportunity to present herself as the steadier voice in the room.

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Jail bosses vetoed 187 inmates deemed eligible, considering them to be “an immediate risk of harm” to an individual or group.

Prison governors blocked nearly half of all inmates set to be freed early under a government scheme, ruling them too high risk new figures have revealed.

The Scottish Prison Service released 286 prisoners from November 11 and December 13 to ease the overcrowding crisis.

However jail bosses vetoed 40 per cent – equivalent to 187 inmates – deemed eligible after considering them to be “an immediate risk of harm” to an individual or group.

In spite of this, 127 of the 286 freed had convictions for violent offences – or 44 per cent, the largest share of the total, data shows.

It comes as plans going through Parliament would slash the automatic release point to 30 per cent for sentences under four years.Critics fear the move could effectively scrap the prison governor’s veto.

As the veto applies only to emergency early release schemes, governors would be powerless to stop offenders being freed once they reach 30 per cent.

Scots Tory justice spokesman Liam Kerr said: “The Justice Secretary must start paying attention to victims, to prison governors and realise this situation presents yet more risks to community safety.”

SPS data shows 75 (26 per cent) of those released in November had convictions for crimes including drug offences, weapons possession and bail violations.

Short-term offenders walked free after serving 50 per cent of their sentence, until it fell to 40 per cent in February last year.

If passed, the change to 30 per cent will come into force in May, a month after the end of the emergency early release programme.

It is limited to those serving less than four years and excludes sex offenders, domestic abusers or terrorists.

Rob Hay, president of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents said: “A declining prison population cannot be heralded as a success if it means a rise in crime and more victims.”

The Scottish Government said: “The governor’s veto remains in place – we have no intention of changing that.”

Double Olympic taekwondo champion Jade Jones marked her boxing debut with a second-round knockout victory against Egypt Criss in Derby.

After two decades in taekwondo, Wales’ Jones traded sports at the start of last year saying she needed a fresh challenge, setting herself a bold target of becoming a world champion in two sports.

Her maiden bout came against Criss, daughter of hip-hop stars Anthony ‘Treach’ Criss from Naughty by Nature and Sandra ‘Pepa’ Denton from Salt-N-Pepa.

Jones, who won Olympic gold in London 2012 and Rio 2016, needed only two rounds to claim victory, with three successive left hooks flooring her opponent.

The 32-year-old from Flint has been training with former professional boxer Stephen ‘Swifty’ Smith at Liverpool’s iconic 4 Corners Gym.

Jones has also taken inspiration from former room-mate, unified world boxing champion Lauren Price, who played football for Wales in addition to being a kickboxer and taekwondo player, prior to her own switch to boxing.

UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher has warned that the war in Iran and wider region is having a “massive impact” on civilians, describing it as “a moment of grave, grave peril”.

He also voiced concerns about “secondary impacts” of the violence, saying the conflict risked fuelling an increase in extremism and polarisation in the Middle East and beyond.

“We’ve got to step back from the brink right now”, he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

As attacks spread after the bombing of Iran by U.S. and Israeli forces, a video circulated widely of crowds peering up at fire, smoke and debris coming from the top of a high-rise building said to be in Bahrain.

Social media users claimed an Iranian attack had hit the skyscraper. But while buildings in Bahrain have been struck by Iranian missiles during the Iran war, this video wasn’t real. It was generated with artificial intelligence and shared by accounts associated with the Iranian government as part of an effort to amplify its successes.

There are multiple clues that the video was not authentic, including two cars on the left side of the clip that appear stuck together and a man in the bottom-right corner whose elbow seems to move straight through a backpack.

A deluge of misrepresented or fabricated videos has spread widely online since the Iran war began last weekend, fueled in part by state-linked propaganda and influence campaigns — particularly around who is winning the war and how many casualties there have been.

“The content that’s coming from state actors tends to be a little better targeted,” said Melanie Smith, senior director of policy and research on information operations at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “They have a very clear kind of narrative structure and the videos are just used to support some kind of statement they want to make about the conflict and about the kind of geopolitical situation writ large.”

Pro-Iran social media accounts have adopted a narrative that exaggerates the destruction and death tolls wrought by the country’s military — a position supported by what is being reported in Iranian state media. This has led to a large number of AI-generated videos of supposed air strikes, such as the one of the Bahraini high-rise on fire.

An ongoing Russia-aligned influence operation called Operation Overload, also referred to as Matryoshka or Storm-1679, has been posting videos designed to impersonate intelligence agencies and news outlets, undermining people’s sense of safety in an effort to sway their behavior — a tactic the network has previously used during election cycles. For example, it shared a warning falsely attributed to Israeli intelligence telling Israelis in Germany and the U.S. to be cautious when in public or to not go outside at all.

Iranian censorship confuses matters further

Misrepresented and fabricated videos have been a key feature of other recent conflicts, such as the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars, but experts say a major difference now is the lack of information from the Iranian public due to internet shutdowns and general censorship — a loss of perspectives that could have worked both for and against the Iranian government.

“In Ukraine, that message was so full-throated it really changed the entire dynamic of the conflict because the world really aligned with the perspective of Ukrainians facing the attacks and showing resilience in light of the attacks, but we’re sort of missing that story from Iran,” said Todd Helmus, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND who studies irregular warfare, terrorism and information operations.

In search of clicks, opportunistic social media users not affiliated with state actors have also contributed heavily to the misinformation that has spread during the first days of the Iran war, presenting old footage from other conflicts as recent, sharing video game clips as real and posting their own AI-generated content.

AI, in particular, has helped fuel misinformation in ways that weren’t possible during past conflicts, even just a few years ago. Coupled with state-linked disinformation and censorship, this creates an even wider vacuum in which the truth can get lost.

“The volume of AI content is starting to just pollute the information environment in these kinds of crisis settings to a really terrifying degree,” Smith said. “The inability to get access to verified and credible information in times like this — it’s getting harder and harder to do that.”

Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, wrote in a Tuesday post that the platform will suspend users from its revenue-sharing program if they post AI-generated content from an armed conflict without a proper disclosure. The suspensions are 90 days for a first offense and permanent after that. Emerson Brooking, director of strategy and resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, warns that social media platforms are now frontlines in war, and that users should be aware of their potential to be used by state actors, even if they are located thousands of miles away from on-the-ground action.

“If you’re in these spaces, just understand that this is an extension of the physical battle space,” he said. “That there are actors on all sides of the conflict that are actively trying to spread propaganda and disinformation to convince you that certain things are true that aren’t. That your eyeballs and your attention are an asset.”

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Councillors shared concerns from residents across the borough and questioned the usage of the current cycle paths. 

Work is ongoing to create a safe walking and cycling route from the town centre to West Park and Faverdale.

The first phase included making improvements to Duke Street and creating a cycle route along part of Woodland Road. A further phase to continue the active travel route through Cockerton to the Brinkburn Road junction will be developed later in 2026. 

Councillor Paul Walters, Conservative member for Hurworth, said: “I think it’s a great initiative – but my concern is, how are you going to get people out of their cars and onto their bikes? I have been on Duke Street many times and have not seen a bike on that cycle path. 

“It’s a great idea and wonderful initiative, but getting the public to use them is something that needs to be looked into.”

The comments were made during a debate on how active travel measures are being implemented across the town to encourage people to be less reliant on car travel.

Conservative councillor Pauline Culley, of Mowden ward, spoke of her previous experience cycling around Europe and said Darlington roads are not suitable for cycling. 

“We seem to be spending a lot of money on something people are not going to use,” she told the committee. 

Matthew Snedker, Green councillor for College ward, said Culley’s testimony was a “damning indictment” for Darlington’s infrastructure. He added: “The fact that many people in Darlington do not feel safe doing a completely normal thing cuts to the heart of why our low network isn’t serving more people.”

Darlington Borough Council said it aims to create a safe route for pedestrians and cyclists as part of the Tees Valley Combined Authority’s (TVCA) Tees Valley local cycling and walking infrastructure plan.

But Cllr James Coe, Independent for North Road, reported how the current cycle paths take people “to a dead end” and not where they want to go. 

He added: “Once we start connecting these areas up, it will encourage more people to use it.”

Anthony Hewitt, assistant director of highways and capital projects, admitted the council needs to improve the public’s perception of cycling throughout the borough. 

He told the committee: “We agree we need to do a lot more work to promote the cycle lanes. Hopefully, as active travel neighbourhoods and our network builds out, people can see more connectivity.”

Monitors are in place along Duke Street and Woodland Road to track the number of cyclists, the council said.