By SHANNON MCGUIGAN, NEWS REPORTER

Published: 01:50 BST, 31 July 2026 | Updated: 02:26 BST, 31 July 2026

The BBC has compared Guy Fawkes to Nelson Mandela and dubbed him an ‘astonishing activist’. 

The Beeb’s free online study support service, Bitesize, has listed the plotter, who attempted to blow up Parliament and King James I alongside his Catholic accomplices, with the likes of Rosa Parks and suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. 

In the history resources for youngsters, Mr Fawkes also stands alongside the likes of anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela in the section of civil rights activists ‘who wanted to change the world’. 

The material appears in an educational game called Back in time with…Astonishing Activists, where children can be transported back to the time periods of some world-renowned activists – as well as Guy Fawkes.

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The BBC website says the game allows children to go back in time and learn ‘all about the people who fought racism, campaigned for women’s rights… and changed the world forever’. 

Players learn about the 17th-century political conspirator’s failed 1605 plan to set alight gunpowder underneath Parliament during its state opening – in a move that could have killed the King as well as most of the Protestant aristocracy. 

The plan was sparked by disappointment among Catholic revolutionaries that the son of a Catholic Queen, Mary Queen of Scots, had not restored their liberties immediately upon his accession. 

They hoped his accession would mean a greater tolerance of their faith, and while he did moderate the relationship between Catholics and Protestants, and many welcomed his efforts, certain members of the faith remained unhappy. 

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The BBC has compared Guy Fawkes to Nelson Mandela and dubbed him an ‘astonishing activist’

The BBC has since taken the decision to remove the game as acknowledged ‘this description was too nuanced for the intended age group’

Rosa Parkes (left) and Nelson Mandela (right) were also included in the game called ‘Back in time with…Astonishing Activists’

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Following the failed plot, Mr Fawkes was captured, tortured and then executed, while his accomplices were tracked down and killed – including the gunpowder plot leader, Robert Catesby. 

The game, accompanied by factual material, explains how Bonfire Night, held on November 5, is a celebration of the failed Gunpowder Plot. 

Meanwhile, players can build digital bonfires, and help Mr Fawkes hide from a royal guard in Parliament’s basement as well as aid him in killing rats during his imprisonment at the Tower of London. 

It comes as questions previously emerged concerning the broadcaster’s educational material over the years, as in 2023 it alleged every Brit is ‘descended from immigrants’ – an assertion that has since been removed. 

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A BBC spokesman said: ‘We acknowledge this description was too nuanced for the intended age group and have taken the decision to remove the game. 

‘Bitesize contains thousands of educational resources that we regularly review to ensure they remain relevant and appropriate for the audience.’

In Greece, two firefighters, aged 25 and 58, were killed yesterday when they became trapped while battling a blaze at Krya Vrysi, a small mountain village in the Rethymno region, on the island of Crete.

Tragically, Padelis Diamadakis – the youngest of the two – had only just started working as a seasonal firefighter after completing his studies, according to Greek media.

A third firefighter, aged 27, died after being found unconscious yesterday while tackling a wildfire iin Gytheio, a port town on the Mani peninsula in the southern Peloponnese region.

Meanwhile, two firefighters narrowly escaped with minor burns after two fire engines were engulfed in flames yesterday during a wildfire in Sitia, Lasithi, on Crete, the Hellenic Fire Service said.

The three deaths came as wildfires ravaged the islands of Paros and Lesvos.

Members of the public helped officers apprehend Robinson

An enjoyable night out turned violent when a 21‑year‑old man trying to defend a woman was brutally stabbed in the back, cheek and shoulder.

Police say 49‑year‑old Shaki Robinson chased the victim after a row outside a fast‑food restaurant and repeatedly slashed him with a Stanley knife. The shocking attack happened on Beastmarket Hill in the early hours of November 22, 2025.

Officers found the young man bleeding from multiple wounds and arrested Robinson minutes later on Wollaton Street. Officers detained Robinson with the help of members of the public after the offender punched one officer in the head as he tried to resist arrest, Nottingham Post reports.

The 21-year-old victim had been waiting with his girlfriend for a taxi on Angel Row when they saw Robinson “acting aggressively” towards a woman. Footage obtained by detectives shows Robinson throwing his knife to the floor moments before he was apprehended and searched. Arresting officers found suspected class A drugs inside a sock in his pockets.

Robinson, of Radford Road in Nottingham, eventually admitted the attack just days before he was due to stand trial, pleading guilty to wounding with intent, possession of a knife in a public place, assault on an emergency worker and possession with intent to supply cocaine.

He also admitted possession of heroin and cannabis after further enquiries were carried out into his criminality. On Thursday (July 30), at Nottingham Crown Court, he was jailed for seven years and six months for his crimes.

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“A number of people enjoying a night out unwittingly became involved in this incident,” said Detective Constable Natalie Gooderham after the case was heard in court. Robinson not only violently attacked the victim, but proceeded to walk through the city centre brandishing a knife.

“It must have been frightening to witness and we’re grateful to the members of the public who bravely intervened by assisting officers to both detain Robinson and recover the knife.

“Violence of this nature has no place in our night-time economy and will always be met with a robust response by officers.”

Music is one of the most powerful tools through which films and TV programmes affect us. We might hear a sad melody that brings us to tears, a creepy tune that gives us goosebumps, or a funny song that compels us to laugh.

This effect is not limited to the silver and small screen. In his plays, William Shakespeare used music in a multitude of ways to delight, amuse, relax, confuse and frighten his audiences – and so did many of his contemporaries.

In my new book, Music and Emotion on the Caroline Stage, I demonstrate how emotions were controlled, provoked and directed through music in the early modern theatre. Specifically, in the Caroline period (1625-1649), during the reign of Charles I.

The most memorable instance of supernatural music in Shakespeare is the rhythmic chanting of “double, double toil and trouble” by the three witches in Macbeth. The witches’ rhythmical conjuring of apparitions in this play gave contemporary audiences an impression of what seeing “real” witches might have been like and the potential harm that they could do, provoking a fear response.

Although not everyone in the early modern period believed in witches, accusations of witchcraft were taken seriously by the authorities. There were several witch trials conducted in England. The most notable were in Pendle, Lancashire, including the 1612 case in which ten of the 16 people accused of being witches were executed.

Another case from 1634 was dramatised by Richard Brome and Thomas Heywood in their comedy, The Late Lancashire Witches. In this play, music is used in several ways to unsettle the audience. At one point church bells ring backwards (a known distress signal in the period) and witch characters sabotage singers and cause musicians to play their instruments out of tune.

Early modern audiences largely believed that music was connected to the celestial and that it had power over the body and the soul.

Harmonious music had a spiritual significance and was associated with God and heaven. Out of tune and discordant sound disrupted that harmony and was linked to the devil and supernatural activity.

Melancholy music

Turning to music was also an effective way for characters to express feelings of love-sickness and grief on the stage; something that is still widely recognisable today.

Ophelia famously sings snippets of sorrowful songs and bawdy ballads in Shakespeare’s Hamlet after her father’s death, and Desdemona sings the mournful song of willow in Othello when her husband falsely accuses her of infidelity. This tradition continued into the Caroline period. The title character of Richard Brome’s play The Northern Lass (1629) communicates her lovesickness by singing.

It is important to note that all female characters were played by men or boys in public theatres until the beginning of the Restoration period in 1660.

While it was acceptable for female characters to sing about their feelings onstage, if a male character appeared singing during the Caroline period, he was derided as effeminate or mad. For example, in Brome’s play, The Court Beggar (1653), the courtier, Ferdinand, is referred to as “mad” by the other characters on several occasions when he sings. If they wanted to sing, men frequently called for musicians or a servant figure to sing on their behalf.

This happens in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline in which the suitor, Cloten, hires musicians to serenade the princess, Imogen for him. It was also acceptable for other lower-class male characters to sing onstage, like shepherds. The text of Ben Jonson’s unfinished 1635 play, The Sad Shepherd, reveals that Eglamour, the sad shepherd of the title, is grieving after hearing that his beloved Earine has drowned. His friend and fellow shepherd, Karolin, comforts him with a song.

Calming music

Music was also recognised as having many other healing properties in the early modern period. It could calm people in distress and distract people from pain. There were even theories that music could bring people back from the dead.

Shakespeare was particularly fond of music’s ability to revive and resurrect. In The Winter’s Tale, a statue of the queen, Hermione, is brought to life when music is played. In Pericles, the physician, Cerimon, calls for music to revive the princess, Thaisa, when she is unconscious.

While alchemical philosophy claimed to provide “evidence” for music’s ability to resurrect the dead, it is also possible that people only believed in this theory to give them comfort from grief while knowing it was not true.

Many modern performances of The Winter’s Tale and Pericles have framed the action so that the “revived” characters are not actually dead and the music just so happens to coincide with the moment they reveal that they were alive. This seems to be what would have happened in The Sad Shepherd if it was finished.

These plays were written and performed over 400 years ago, but we are still attuned to the emotional powers of music today. Many of us listen to sad songs when we are heartbroken or grieving to bring us comfort, happy songs to give us energy and motivation and calming songs to reduce our stresses.

We listen to music so often and the different songs we listen to change our moods so often that sometimes we don’t even realise it is happening. It is no wonder that Shakespeare and his contemporaries were so fascinated by music’s seemingly otherworldly powers.

PHOENIX (AP) — The last person known to have seen Navajo elder Ella Mae Begay alive has been accused of burglary in an unrelated incident, raising questions about whether he will be sent back to federal prison in Begay’s disappearance.

Preston Tolth is the only person ever charged and convicted in connection with the 2021 disappearance of Begay, a weaver and grandmother of nine from a remote community on the Navajo Nation who has never been found. He acknowledged stealing her truck, beating her and leaving her on the side of the road.

Her case has become emblematic of the heartache felt across Indian Country when loved ones go missing or are killed. Begay’s photo appears at marches. Her name is regularly invoked at rallies calling attention to the crisis.

Phoenix police arrested Tolth, 27, on Tuesday after getting a call about a home break-in. Officers found him about a block away, wearing clothing that matched the description of the suspect and carrying a pocket knife, according to court records.

Tolth was released from federal prison in June, five years to the day Begay vanished and two years earlier than his sentence was scheduled to end. The Bureau of Prisons cited a federal statue that counts time served after the commission of a crime but before sentencing, including on unrelated charges, in releasing him early.

Tolth was sent to a transitional housing facility in Phoenix. Under the terms of his plea agreement in federal court, he was not to commit any additional crimes while on supervised release. He also was barred from possessing dangerous weapons.

He faces a single charge of burglary in Maricopa County. Court records did not have an attorney listed for him, and his public defender in the federal case did not respond to an emailed request for comment Thursday.

Esther Winne, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, said the office is aware of his arrest.

“There is a process for handling violations,” Winne said in an email Tuesday, declining further comment.

Gerald Foxworth, an employee at Phoenix Oasis where Tolth was staying, said Tolth returned to the facility drunk on July 4 in violation of program rules. Tolth left on his own after refusing to be transported to a medical center, Foxworth said, and the facility informed Tolth’s probation officer.

This story is published through the Global Indigenous Reporting Network at The Associated Press.

The ex-FM said she was given the advice by former US First Lady Hilary Clinton.

Nicola Sturgeon has recalled the moment former First Lady Hillary Clinton told her that women leaders are expected to “carry the can for the behaviour of a man”.

The former First Minister also said Prime Minister Andy Burnham has a “very southern view of what it means to be northern”, and predicted there would be an independent Scotland and a united Ireland in the next two decades.

In a talk at the Féile an Phobail at St Mary’s University College Belfast on Thursday she spoke of the misogyny she experienced in her time in the Scottish Parliament and said Mrs Clinton was a “huge inspiration” to her.

The former SNP leader’s estranged husband Peter Murrell was jailed for more than five years in June after pleading guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP over a 12-year period.

Sturgeon has said she is “innocent of any crime”, telling the BBC in May she felt she was “serving a sentence for a crime (she) did not commit”.

“I think she is hugely inspirational because she has suffered and been at the kind of leading edge of a lot of this misogyny and sexism and being expected to carry the can for the behaviour of a man that many women experience and she’s never kowtowed in the face of that,” she said.

“She’s been always resilient, standing up and fighting back every time somebody knocks her down, and she is also the most prepared and on top of her brief person that I’ve ever met, and she’s always inspired me.”

Sturgeon was also asked about the current state of UK politics and her views on the new Prime Minister, saying the two had a “massive fight” over Covid-19 regulations when he was mayor of Greater Manchester.

She said she hopes Mr Burnham succeeds in his tenure in No 10 because “him succeeding is potentially the only thing in England standing in the way of a Nigel Farage Reform government, and I definitely don’t want to see that”.

“I don’t think he offers much for Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland,” she said.

“I mean the whole No 10 of the North, right? I mean, can you just humour me here for a second while I rant about this? Go and look at the No 10 of the North on a map of mainland Britain. It’s in the bloody English Midlands.

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“Manchester, if you’re in London or the south-east of England, Manchester’s north, you don’t even have to go to Scotland to start questioning that, you know people in Newcastle don’t see Manchester as the north.

“So he’s got this kind of very southern view of what it means to be northern, so I don’t think he’s going to offer much for Scotland, and so I’m not sure that he’s going to make much difference to the debate or the arguments for Scottish independence.”

Sturgeon went on to reflect on the 2014 independence referendum when she was deputy FM, as nationalists in Scotland and Ireland continue to call for votes on constitutional change.

She said: “I had a kind of running joke a few years back with (Sinn Féin leader) Mary Lou McDonald about which would happen first: united Ireland or independent Scotland, and back then I was convinced it would be an independent Scotland. I’m more open to saying Ireland might get there first.

“There are differences as well as similarities, both of those campaigns stand on their own terms, but I do believe this: that if one happens, whichever one it is first, the other will happen pretty quickly after it.

“And so my prediction, and I think, don’t forget, and this is a massive thing that if somebody had said this even 10 years ago, the SNP have been in government now for 20 years, but if somebody had said 10, 20 years ago that one day three of the four UK nations would be led by nationalist governments, nobody would believe that – that’s the reality right now.”

She added: “The bonds that held the UK together are breaking down and – certainly in a Scottish context – the only thing holding it together right now is Westminster refusing to let people in Scotland decide on this, almost holding us prisoner, that can’t stand.

“So I do think I said 20 years. I think it may well be sooner, we’ll have a situation where Ireland is united, Scotland’s independent, Wales more autonomous, independent.”

The Belfast venue has made some big changes

Thompsons Garage has become a stalwart in Belfast’s nightlife scene since it opened in the 90s. The city centre club has stood firmly on Upper Arthur Street for over 30 years, but there are some big changes ahead, and we got in to have a look around.

Work has been ongoing to expand the club even further and add some new features to improve the clubgoers’ experience even more.

As part of the work, the club has added a brand-new glass-fronted balcony to the front of the establishment. This new feature allows drinkers to sit out and look down onto Upper Arthur Street and will be very popular during the summer months.

The new balcony also features colourful barrels alongside high stools for people to enjoy a drink. The new part can be accessed through the main club but will also have its own entrance.

Alongside the new outdoor area, there is a whole new room inside that will have a focus on music. The room features a stage, on which they plan to have live music, as well as a fully stocked bar.

Work was still underway when we visited, but the club plans to have its work finished in time for the Fleadh, which begins on Sunday, August 2.

The club plans to capitalise on this new area and will have a full line-up of events through the Fleadh Cheoil na Héireann from Sunday to Sunday. The new area will have space for up to 150 people.

However, their plans don’t stop there; once the summer is over, they plan to further develop the club by adding a food option to the new area.

The club was also recently granted permission by Belfast City Council to introduce acoustic evening sessions in its new function room.

Elected representatives at a meeting of the Belfast City Council Licensing Committee have granted an application for the variation of a seven-day annual entertainments licence for Thompson’s Garage.

For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here

Scott John-Hodgson, from Thornaby, has been appointed executive head chef for House of Tides and Solstice in Newcastle, both led by chef-owner Kenny Atkinson.

Speaking to Chronicle Live, Scott said: “House of Tides is where it all started for me; it’s where I found my love for this industry and Solstice has been a project I’ve given everything to since day one.

“To now have the opportunity to lead across both restaurants is a real privilege.”

The promotion follows his win as Restaurant Chef of the Year at the 2026 Craft Guild of Chefs Awards.

Scott joined Kenny’s team in 2018, the same year House of Tides earned its Michelin star.

He rose through the ranks to become sous chef before moving to Solstice in 2022, which secured a Michelin star within just eight months of opening.

A former student of Stockton Sixth Form College, Scott will now lead both kitchens while continuing to work closely with Kenny.

House of Tides, Newcastle. (Image: House of Tides)

Scott originally studied sport at university with plans to become a teacher, before switching to professional cooking in his mid-twenties.

Since then, he has become one of the region’s leading chefs, known for developing seasonal, locally focused menus and appearing twice on the BBC’s Great British Menu.

Scott said: “Taking on this executive chef role is something I’m incredibly proud of and genuinely excited about.

“Kenny has given me so much over the years, and I want to honour that by continuing to push both restaurants forward, alongside him, for the teams, for our guests, and for the wider North East food scene.

“The Craft Guild of Chefs award was a wonderful recognition, but what drives me every day is the people around me and the food we put on the plate.”

Solstice, Newcastle. (Image: Solstice Newcastle)

In addition to leading the kitchens, he mentors junior staff and supports Newcastle College students through the restaurants’ training partnership.

Chef-patron Kenny said: “Scott has been an integral part of what we’ve built here since the very beginning and this promotion is thoroughly deserved.

“His Craft Guild of Chefs award is a testament to the remarkable level he’s operating at, and I have complete confidence in his ability to lead both kitchens with the same passion, precision and warmth that define everything we do.”