YORK is getting a unique new bakery from today – based in a garden shed with an honesty box for payment.

The Bread Box is a one-of-kind pop-up run by keen baker Rachael Bell.

Rachael is launching the bakery today from her home in Rawcliffe, York.

On the menu will be a range of savoury treats, many with an unusual twist, as well as homemade butter and treats for dogs.

Rachael, 37, who works full time in HR for an IT firm, told The Press: “I have always worked in the corporate and media industry but always loved baking.

“I tend to do it at the weekend – but there is only so much bread you can eat!”

She got the idea for the pop-up Bread Box after seeing similar enterprises springing up around York where bakers sell cakes and sweet treats from a home setting via an honesty box.

The idea is that customers choose what they want then pay either in cash or via a card machine. Rachael says she also has CCTV installed for everyone’s safety and peace of mind.

The Bread Box will open at 8am today (Friday April 10) and run through to Sunday, with Rachael topping up low supplies from her kitchen, where the oven will be fired up over the weekend.

Scones at The Bread Box Photo – supplied (Image: SUPPLIED)

The plan is to run the business every weekend from the drive at her home at 65 Manor Park Road in Rawcliffe, York. The location is near St Mark’s Church.

On the menu this weekend are a range of items priced from £2 for a pesto and parmesan twist to £3.50 for a farmhouse boule loaf.

Rachael has been experimenting with flavours too. Look out for a spelt loaf with fig and pumpkin seed, which she says is perfect for cheese on toast.

Another novelty is the use of Caramilk chocolate and brown butter, which add a caramel flavour and nuttiness to her products.

And she will be launching a ‘Buttered toast cookie’ – where cookie dough is rolled in buttered toast crumbs then baked.

Rachael Bell of The Bread Box, a pop-up she is running from her drive way in Rawcliffe, York, every weekend. Photo – supplied

“I had to find a way to use up all that bread!” she said.

Her favourite bread is her cheddar and hot honey, she added.

A dog lover – Rachael and her husband have a pet Golden Retriever – she will also be selling treats for dogs.

Rachael said after noticing pop-up home bakeries with honesty boxes springing up across York she thought there was a gap in the market for a bread-focussed one.

“I will be selling bread, scones, pastry and butter. I am self taught and a lot of it is experimental,” she said.

Also for sale will be granola.

And it has all happened rather quickly too. “I decided to do it and the next day I was doing my Amazon order!”

For all the latest updates, follow Rachael on Instagram at @thebreadboxyork.

The world will be watching on April 12 when Hungarians head to the polls in parliamentary elections that will determine the country’s next prime minister. This may sound exaggerated, but these parliamentary elections are about much more than simply whether the incumbent prime minister, Viktor Orbán, will serve another term as Hungary’s leader.

His main challenger, Péter Magyar, was until two years ago a close ally of the Hungarian prime minister. On some key issues – future oil purchases from Russia, resisting fast-track EU accession for Ukraine – Magyar is a continuity candidate who, at best, signals moderation, rather than radical change.

If he fails to win a two-thirds majority, which would allow him to change the constitution and undo many of the deeply undemocratic changes Orbán has made to Hungary’s political system, Magyar’s hands will also be tied domestically and he may not even be able to deliver on his key campaign promise – to clean up the systemic corruption that has thrived under Orbán.

But – while important in itself – the outcome of the elections is almost secondary in a bigger picture of an election campaign that has revealed much about the broader, and increasingly fraught, geopolitical dynamics of European politics.

Orbán has been leaning into his close relationship with the US president, Donald Trump. At one level, this is not surprising. Trump has publicly endorsed him twice this year alone – first in February and then again in March. The US president also dispatched both his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and vice president, J.D. Vance, to Hungary to add weight to his candidacy.

Vance, visiting Hungary just days before the elections, praised Orbán’s governance and leadership style as a model for Europe and attacked the EU for trying to influence the outcome of the vote.

Such blatant election interference by the US in a Nato and EU member state is as unprecedented as it is worrying. It signals a new level of determination by the White House to shape alliances with other far-right populists predicated on the vague notion of “moral cooperation … and the defence of western civilisation”, as Vance put it during his visit to Budapest on April 7.

But while Orbán revelled in Washington’s endorsements, his unconditional embrace of Trump is no longer the dominant approach to Washington among many of Europe’s rightwing populist parties. The appeal of the Maga movement is rapidly diminishing in Europe.

While fulsome in their support for Donald Trump for more than a decade, many European rightwing populists have begun to realise the fraught nature of their association with Trump. “America first” is exactly what it says on the tin. Moreover, Trump’s interpretation of what it means makes it even worse for some of his erstwhile supporters.

For Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki, Trump’s cosy relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin runs counter to the almost universal perception of Russia as the main threat to Polish security. For the Danish People’s Party, which sits with the far-right Patriots for Europe faction in the European parliament, Trump’s designs on Greenland were so unpalatable that one of its members, Anders Vistisen, told the US president to “fuck off”.

For others, like the French Rassemblement National (National Rally), Trump’s tariff threats have affected some of their core constituencies among farmers. Even more so, Trump’s illegal war against Iran, hugely unpopular across European electorates, highlights the electoral liabilities of an association with the US president.

This does not make these rightwing populist movements more liberal. They still share a broad resentment of liberalism and what it stands for: open societies, open borders and a commitment to global institutions. But many of these parties have staked their political legitimacy on the defence of the sovereignty of their individual nation states. They are now asking themselves whether this sovereignty is perhaps more threatened by Washington – and Moscow – than by Brussels.

The answer to this question will partly be determined by the outcome of Sunday’s elections in Hungary.

What an Orbán victory would mean

A win for Orbán would, at a minimum, indicate sufficient desire for an autocratic and illiberal model of governance and at least some residual appeal of an alignment with Trump. But that logic may not prevail for long in the face of the conflict in the Middle East and Russia’s continuing onslaught on Ukraine.

Orbán’s close relationship with Putin – and his persistent obstruction of the EU’s Ukraine policy – is likely to leave him increasingly isolated, even among otherwise ideologically close rightwing populists. This vulnerability became apparent as early as 2022 when Orbán’s long-time ally Jaroslaw Kaczynski, then Polish deputy prime minister, publicly bashed his pro-Russian leanings.

Divisions over the EU’s Russia policy have exposed one significant faultline among rightwing populist movements across Europe between those seeking accommodation with the Kremlin and those seeking deterrence and containment. The far-right Sweden Democrats, for example, threatened to leave the European Conservatives and Reformists parliamentary bloc if Orbán’s Fidesz party had been allowed to join. This is precisely because the Hungarian prime minister was seen as too close to Russia.

For these Russia-sceptical parties, Orbán’s alignment with Putin is clearly anathema. Trump’s apparently warm relationship with the Russian president is likely to deepen their unease about aligning too closely with the White House. Geographical proximity to Russia and a long history of confrontation with Russia will remain powerful drivers for these parties’ foreign and security policies.

Trump’s endorsement of Orbán may thus more effectively accelerate Orbán’s isolation among rightwing populists in Europe. This will undermine his agenda of building a powerful coalition of like-minded illiberal leaders eroding the EU from within.

These tensions and contradictions at the heart of a supposedly ideologically well-aligned transatlantic populist right movement predate Hungary’s parliamentary elections and they will outlast them. At a time of almost unprecedented global disorder and uncertainty, the battle for Hungary is both an election campaign and, more broadly, a key episode in the ongoing debate over the meaning of the west as a geopolitical project.

The National Emergency Co-ordination Group (NECG) said Ireland’s overall fuel supplies remain “robust and resilient” but said the obstruction of key routes from ports is threatening the provision of animal feed supplies, fertiliser and other vital materials, resulting in potential animal welfare issues and a threat to livelihoods in the agriculture sector.

We’ve all told the odd fib, or perhaps embellished the truth a little, but have you ever dived so deep into a falsehood that your entire life felt like a lie?

Back in the early 2000s, a couple of gutsy, talented Scottish rappers took a bus down to London to audition for a record company looking for the next Eminem. One of the executives dismissed them as the ‘rapping Proclaimers’, and they headed home, dejected and deflated.

But Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd (not to be confused with the Lord of the Rings actor) didn’t give up, deciding instead to reinvent themselves in the most audacious way possible. They renamed themselves Silibil N’ Brains, pretended they were an established duo from California and, before long, had a record deal, a big flat in Soho and all the excesses – and potential risks – that came with it. 

Were they out purely for themselves or were they aiming to expose the hypocrisy of the business? Maybe a bit of both.

It’s a cracking true story, and X-Men and Atonement star James McAvoy has turned it into a movie called California Schemin’, with a script by Elaine Gracie and Archie Thomson.

Asked why he picked this tale for his directorial debut, the Scottish-born star, 46, told Metro: ‘It gave me the opportunity to tell a unique story about people from a working-class background. It’s entertaining and with a possibility of reaching a mainstream audience – quite rare in the film business – while being funny and underpinned by some real stakes.’

In order to make their fake identities seem more believable, the boys agreed fully to inhabit their new characters, speaking with American accents and doing their best not to call each other by their real names. But, as is the case in many stories depicting a sharp, misguided trajectory to success, the two weren’t always on the same page, Gavin wrestling with his demons and ambition, and Billy trying to maintain a solid relationship with Mary, his girlfriend back home.

‘There was personal health, wellbeing and sanity at stake here, because the boys are faced with the opportunity to get ahead by sacrificing one of the most important things you have in this life, which is your personal identity, authenticity and integrity,’ says James, who plays a terrifying record company boss in the movie. ‘That’s also important to the art form, that they love each other so much.’

It’s not clear whether the two men’s friendship is still as tight in real life. Although they both continue to make music, Billy works on an oil rig and is devoted to his family. The film is based on Gavin’s book about the events, so he played a key part in the shape of California Schemin’. Billy got involved towards the end of the project (having previously been affiliated with another version of the story).

‘I think at times it’s difficult for them watching it, because we show them at their funniest and their best, and we also show them at their worst, making some bad choices and suffering because of it,’ says James. 

‘I can’t imagine what that would be like to watch, and reliving certain events, one of which has a guy in mortal danger at one point.’

Samuel Bottomley (who played the lead in Liam Williams coming-of-age comedy drama Ladhood) takes on the role of Billy, while Séamus McLean Ross (young Colum MacKenzie in Outlander, and the son of Deacon Blue’s Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh) plays the troubled Gavin.

While Bradford-born Samuel plays a lad with a Fife accent pretending to be American, Séamus’s starting point is a Glaswegian accent. But the biggest change for them both was the rapping; they’re both big fans of the genre, but doing it on stage (albeit on a film set) is far from easy.

‘I grew up on Eminem and Dr Dre, and I love that stuff, man,’ says Samuel. ‘We both spent a lot of time listening to the songs and practicing them.’

‘Their flows are so fast and they love putting in as many complex words into each sentence as they can,’ adds Séamus. ‘It’s like they’re tripping each other up and making it as hard as they can to impress with their battle rapping.’

Both actors felt a responsibility to respect the intensity of Gavin and Billy’s friendship, especially when you get the sense that Billy would much rather be telling the truth and being his true self with Mary (played with charm and wit by Lucy Halliday).

‘Getting into Gavin’s psyche prior to and after the lie was very interesting because it really was like two different characters – Gavin and Brains,’ says Séamus. ‘The ways in which Gavin starts and how he ends up are so different; we had to map out where we see Gavin and where we see Brains.

‘Billy’s like a catalyst for Gavin. He allows him to expand and be confident. Without him his light diminishes. We see that in some bits of the film when Billy’s not around and Gavin’s by himself. It’s almost as if he’s thinking, “I don’t know what to do when my best friend’s not here.”’

‘I was really nervous to see how Gavin took it when he saw the movie for the first time,’ adds Sam. ‘We were in the same room, watching him, and he was really happy with it.’

‘Yeah, that felt like the biggest pay-off – getting the nod from Gavin,’ echoes Séamus. Lucy also got a heartwarming message from Mary, who she describes as ‘a fiercely intelligent person who knew what she wanted, and was key in helping the boys achieve this, but also key in creating the life that she and Billy have to this day’.

James is keen to do more directing, and is particularly interested in bringing to the big screen stories about relationships – ‘the connection between people’. But first, he’s got to get back to the day job.

‘I need to make some money and be an actor for a while,’ he smiles. ‘I’ve been directing for a year and three quarters and it does not pay. Not yet anyway. Maybe film number two.’

California Schemin’ is out in UK and Irish cinemas from April 10.

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MORE: James McAvoy reveals scraggly transformation for gritty Frankie Boyle TV series

President Donald Trump has boasted over his new renovation project at the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool as part of his social media frenzy Thursday evening.

“We were told it was going to take YEARS to do this job, and it will take a fraction of that time, at a fraction of the cost — and it will be much more beautiful than the day it was built!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The reflecting pool has become one of the most iconic sites of Washington, D.C. It was completed after the Lincoln Memorial’s dedication in 1922. The reflecting pool was previously closed for renovations for two years and reopened in 2012.

Trump announced his plans to “fix” the reflecting pool with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum last November.

“You won’t be seeing this Biden filth and incompetence much longer!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, alongside a black-and-white video of the pool, edited to highlight green water.

Trump has turned the beautification of the White House and the D.C. area into his passion project.

He has demolished the East Wing of the White House for his estimated $400 million ballroom, paved over the Rose Garden for a new patio and redesigned the Palm Room and bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom.

The president also wants to build a massive “Independence Arch” near the Arlington National Cemetery and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, which Trump’s name is now attached to symbolically. The Center is set to close for two years of renovations.

Trump had a very active night on Truth Social, boasting about his latest renovation project while also threatening Tehran during the two-week ceasefire in his war with Iran.

The president bashed The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board for writing that Trump has declared “premature victory” in Iran.

“Actually, it is a Victory, and there’s nothing ‘premature’ about it! Because of me, IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON and, very quickly, you’ll see Oil start flowing, with or without the help of Iran and, to me, it makes no difference, either way,” Trump wrote.

Trump later accused Iran of doing “a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz. That is not the agreement we have!”

The strait typically carries about a fifth of the world’s oil, but after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran nearly six weeks ago, the country effectively closed the waterway.

When Trump announced the U.S.-Iran ceasefire Tuesday, he said it was contingent on Iran agreeing to the “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz.”

Trump also blasted prominent MAGA media figures Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Alex Jones, who have all criticized his war with Iran.

“They think it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon — Because they have one thing in common, Low IQs,” Trump wrote.

Trump then railed against former President Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats for their immigration policies after a Haitian immigrant allegedly beat a woman to death with a hammer at a convenience store in Florida.

The immigrant, Rolbert Joachin, confessed to the murder, the Tampa Bay Times reported, citing a police report. The Homeland Security Department said Joachin was an “illegal alien.”

“This animal was allowed to stay here because the Biden Administration granted him, and all Haitians, ‘Temporary Protective Status,’ a massively abused and fraudulent program which my Administration is working to terminate, but Deranged Liberal District Court Judges are standing in our way,” Trump wrote.

The man also pleaded guilty to possessing indecent photos of children

A man has appeared in court after being charged with possessing sexual images of a corpse. Ben Sharpe, 31, of Burlton Road, Cambridge, appeared at Cambridge Magistrates Court on Thursday (April 9).

The 31-year-old was charged with possessing an extreme pornographic image or images portraying acts which involved sexual interference with a corpse. This relates to three images on or before January 31, 2025, in Cambridge.

Sharpe pleaded guilty to this charge, as well as other offences. The other charges he faced and pleaded guilty to were:

• Making an indecent photograph/pseudo-photograph of a child relating to 962 category A images on/before January 31, 2025 in Cambridge;
• Making an indecent photograph/pseudo-photograph of a child relating to 388 category B images taken on/before January 31, 2025 in Cambridge;
• Making an indecent photograph/pseudo-photograph of a child relating to 838 category C images taken on/before January 31, 2025 in Cambridge;
• Possession of a prohibited image of a child taken on/before January 31, 2025;
• Four counts of breaching a sexual prevention harm disorder.

He will next appear at Cambridge Crown Court on May 21 for sentencing.

Do you want more of the latest Cambridgeshire news as it comes in from across the county? Sign up to our dedicated newsletter to make sure you never miss a big story from Cambridge or anywhere else in the county. You can also sign up to our dedicated Traffic and Crime newsletters for the latest updates on the topics you are most interested in.

A friend of the rape complainant claimed she saw Marc Ogilve, now  27, whom she did not know, on his knees next to the woman student who had her eyes closed.

“He just sat still and stared at me like a rabbit in the headlights,” she alleged as she gave evidence against him.

She alleged she sent a text to a male friend saying she had just gone into her friend’s room and “some random boy was helping himself to her whilst she was asleep. Please ring us”.

Prosecution barrister Nick Adlington asked her: “Do you have any doubt in your mind when you opened that door, you saw the defendant having sex with (the complainant).”

“No doubt at all,” she responded.

The alleged victim claimed in evidence that she had been woken earlier during the night by a pain and felt that Ogilve was raping her.

She claimed she sent a message to the friend, who was on a night out in the city centre. She claimed she didn’t know what to do, cried for a bit and then fell asleep again.

The friend alleged that when she read the message some time after it was sent, she cut short her night out and returned to the house she and the complainant shared with other students.  She alleged she opened the complainant’s bedroom door and saw Ogilve.

The incident happened when all three were students in York some years ago.

Ogilve, of Half Mile, Pudsey, denies two charges of rape.

Giving evidence, Ogilve claimed he had gone to sleep alongside the complainant and the next thing he knew was waking to see her leave the room before the friend came in and asked him to leave the house.    

He claimed he assumed the complainant had sobered up and decided she didn’t want to be in the same bed as him.

He denied that before the complainant left, the friend had opened the door and seen him as she had described.

Asked by his barrister Nicholas Hammond if the first alleged rape occurred, he replied: “No.”

“Are you sure about that?” he was asked and replied: “100 per cent.”

He made similar replies to identical questions about the second alleged rape and denied that the woman had texted from the bed.

He claimed he had no idea why he was asked to leave the house in the early hours.

The jury has seen texts he sent the complainant the next day asking if she was all right and including: “Sorry if I upset you. I am sorry if I did, I didn’t mean to.”

He claimed he sent that because he didn’t understand why he had been asked to leave and couldn’t understand why she didn’t respond to his texts.

He alleged he had had no expectation of sex between them that night as he had only met the complainant once before that night, and denied that he’d decided to “try it on”.

The jury heard that the complainant had been with her friend and others drinking alcohol in the city centre earlier in the night. She had become separated from her friends and Ogilve had walked her home.

Both told the jury they had agreed nothing sexual would happen, that they were not in a relationship, and they only knew each other casually.

The complainant claimed she let Ogilve stay at her house because she knew he lived in a different part of York and would otherwise have a long walk.

The trial continues.

NASA leaders have “high confidence” in the Artemis II crew spacecraft’s heat shield ahead of Friday’s historic return.

The shield is a critical part of the Orion capsule, protecting the crew from exposure to lethal temperatures – reaching up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit – during their high-speed descent.

There were problems with the heat shield on the first Artemis flight, which had no human passengers. Gases that generated inside the shield’s outer material were not able to vent as expected, causing cracks.

Since then, the shield has undergone extensive testing and Amit Kshatriya, the space agency’s associate administrator, says his confidence in the tech is backed up by engineering and flight data.

“The engineering supports it, the Artemis I flight data supports it, all of our ground tests support it, our analysis supports it,” he told reporters at a briefing from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, “and tomorrow, the crew’s going to put their lives behind that confidence.”

The astronauts, including NASA’s Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen were said to be in “high spirits” as they started their journey to Earth following a record-breaking slingshot around the Moon.

A splashdown in the Pacific set to conclude their test flight on Friday.

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How the Artemis II astronauts will get home

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Check out these cool pictures of the moon from the Artemis II mission

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The song that Artemis II started their day with

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NASA seeing ‘small leak’ in propulsion system

There is a small leak in the Artemis II propulsion system, Jeff Radigan, the flight director of Artemis II, told reporters on Thursday.

The two-part system uses fuel and an oxidizer: a substance that causes another substance to burn.

“We are seeing what is a small leak in our pressure system,” he said, adding that the “leak is internal to the system, across some of our valves.”

The crew still needs to characterize the leak to see what, if any, modifications they might need to make in the future.

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‘We are good to go’

“We are good to go,” Branelle Rodriguez, the Artemis II Orion vehicle manager, told reporters on Thursday.

She said that the Orion spacecraft remains “healthy.”

“Everything looks really, really well to continue on,” added Rodriguez.

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NASA shares Artemis II return times

Jeff Radigan, the flight director of Artemis II, announced several times of note ahead of the Orion crew’s splashdown.

The crew module and service module will separate at 6:33 p.m. local CT. There will be a communications blackout at 6:53 before parachutes deploy at 7:03 p.m.

Splashdown is planned for 7:07 p.m.

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Every system ‘depends on the final minutes of flight’

“Every system we’ve demonstrated over the past nine days, life support, navigation, propulsion, communications, all of it depends on the final minutes of flight,” Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, said Thursday afternoon.

“We have high confidence in the heat shield and the parachutes and the recovery systems we’ve put together. The engineering supports it, the Artemis I flight data supports it, all of our ground tests support it, our analysis supports it,” he continued, “ and tomorrow, the crew’s going to put their lives behind that confidence.”

“The crew has done their part. Now we have to do our’s,” said Kshatriya.

Julia Musto9 April 2026 20:53

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The industry body, UK Pet Food, estimates that we spend some £380 million a year on bird food. Separate figures suggest that amounts to more than 150,000 tonnes annually – enough to sustain three times the breeding populations of the ten commonest garden species if they relied on it alone all year round.