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. 

One area of Cambridgeshire saw fly-tips that cost the taxpayer £65,800 in clean-up costs

Cambridgeshire’s fly-tipping hotspots have been revealed by a new map showing the parts of England with the worst rubbish problems. In the year ending March 2025, local authorities in England dealt with 1.25 million flytipping incidents, a 9% rise on the previous year.

That included 777,000 collections of household waste ranging from bin bags to old furniture and carpets, 7,000 of animal carcasses, 70,000 dumps of commercial waste, and 3,000 involving asbestos.

There were 19,224 separate illegal dumps in Cambridgeshire alone. In our area, fly-tippers dumped more rubbish in Peterborough than anywhere else, with a total of 10,474 separate fly-tipping incidents.

That included 188 large-scale incidents in which at least a tipper lorry-sized load of waste was dumped, costing taxpayers £65,800 in clean-up costs. That’s the equivalent of 29p from the pockets of everyone who lives in Peterborough on large-scale clean-ups alone. Defra has not published the clean-up costs for overall fly-tipping incidents, only the large-scale dumps.

In Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire had the next-largest rubbish problem, with 3,560 illegal dumps, followed by Cambridge with 2,166 fly-tipping incidents. Last year, councils in Cambridgeshire made a total of 9,392 enforcement actions, including issuing 482 fixed penalties and collecting £11,669 in fines.

You can see how badly your area is affected by fly-tipping and how it compares to the rest of England, using our interactive map.

Nearly two thirds of fly-tipping (62%) involved household waste, which ranges from black bags of day-to-day rubbish to old furniture, carpets, and bric-a-brac from loft and shed clearances.

Fly-tipping most commonly occurs on pavements and roads, accounting for more than a third of cases (37%), according to the figures. Almost a third of incidents (31%) were the size of a small van load, while 27% were the equivalent to a car boot or less.

However, 52,000 cases involved an amount of rubbish that was equivalent to a tipper lorry load or more, an 11% increase, costing councils in England £19.26 million to clear up.

In addition to the figures from local authorities, the Environment Agency dealt with 98 incidents of large-scale illegal dumping last year, Defra said. In response, councils issued 572,000 enforcement actions, an 8% increase on the previous year, and 69,000 fixed penalty notices, a 9% rise.

However, the number of court fines fell by 9% to 1,250, and the combined value of those fines dropped from £730,000 to £673,000. Councils also seized 139 vehicles last year.

New guidance has been published by Defra to help councils seize and crush more vehicles used for fly-tipping, or repurpose them for clean-up operations, along with advice on how to take cases to court. Councils are also being urged to name and shame fly-tippers on social media.

Defra Minister Mary Creagh said: “We are empowering local authorities to clamp down on waste cowboys and restore pride in our local areas. I share the public’s fury at seeing our streets, parks and fields used as dumping grounds.

“Fly-tippers should know – if you use your van to trash our countryside, don’t be surprised when it ends up on the scrapheap.”

Megan Walsh (Beth Nixon) thinks she’s God’s gift in Coronation Street, and because of that, it’s made her a woman who doesn’t believe anyone will suspect she’s got something to hide.

The newcomer, introduced to us towards the end of last year, currently works at Weatherfield High. She’s in a relationship with colleague Daniel Osbourne (Rob Mallard), and lets everyone believe she’s spending extra time with Will Driscoll (Lucas Hodgson-Wale) so he can reach his full potential as a young athlete.

In reality, Megan is only with Daniel to cover up her abuse of teenager Will. She has been grooming him for months and is now carrying his baby.

The only person on the cobbles who has worked out that Megan isn’t as nice as she says is Sam Blakeman (Jude Riordan). After reaching the conclusion that Megan had lied about a tracksuit top she had among her belongings, Sam suspected the teacher was having an inappropriate relationship with Will.

Proving this has been extremely difficult for Sam, as Megan has tried to be a step ahead of him at all times. This, and she’s also targeting Sam with manipulation and threats, which is now having a serious impact on his mental health.

Next week, Leanne Battersby (Jane Danson) picks the wrong person to open up to as she tells Megan that she’s concerned for Sam and thinks something is bothering him.

Megan assures her that she’s worrying over nothing and later, assuming that she’s alone, Megan takes a call and flirts with Will.

When Leanne emerges from the bathroom, Megan is horrified.

The next day, Sam appears at the flat for his school books and Megan takes the opportunity to have another dig at him.

Meanwhile, Leanne shares her concerns about Sam with Daniel, and apologises for interrupting his call with Megan the night before.

Leanne’s curiosity starts to grow when Megan ends up cancelling her date with Daniel. It’s clear that she’s picking up on Sam and Megan’s changes in behaviour, but will she make the connection and realise Megan is the reason Sam is becoming withdrawn?

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Or will Megan act fast and silence Leanne once she realises she’s becoming suspicious of her?

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