It will be funded through its public realm programme

Works by Bridgend County Borough Council to refurbish parts of a local bus station have begun.

The project will see improvements made to the clock tower at Bridgend’s town centre bus station over the coming weeks with the site now set to be re-rendered and refreshed.

The work will be funded through the council’s public realm programme and is expected to last for around four weeks in June. Stay in the know by making sure you’re receiving our daily newsletter.

It will be carried out with the aim of improving the appearance of what has been described as one of the “main gateways” into the borough.

A council spokesman said: “The refurbishment forms part of ongoing investment in public spaces across the county borough aimed at creating cleaner, more welcoming environments for residents, visitors, and commuters.

“To allow the works to be carried out safely some temporary changes will be introduced at the bus station.

“The outside footpath serving bays one to eight will be closed for the duration of the works.

“During normal opening hours passengers will still be able to access the bays from inside the bus station building.

“After the bus station closes each evening services that would normally use bays one to eight will instead operate from bays nine to 11 located outside the main building near the bus station entrance.

“These temporary arrangements will apply after 6pm from Monday to Saturda, and after 4pm on Sundays.”

Councillor Gary Haines of Aberkenfig added: “Bridgend Bus Station is one of the first places many people see when arriving in the town centre so it is important that it creates a positive first impression.”

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Former Attorney General Pam Bondi said “I don’t recall” at least 34 times during her closed-door interview with members of Congress investigating Jeffrey Epstein, a transcript of the meeting reveals.

Bondi, who was fired by Donald Trump in April, repeatedly told the House Oversight Committee that her deputy Todd Blanche was “in charge” of the “entire release” of the so-called Epstein files, a chaotic document dump of millions of pages and images stemming from the federal government’s investigations into the dead sex offender.

She also sought to get ahead of any allegations that she was “placing blame” on her successor at the Department of Justice and offered a full-throated endorsement of his position as acting attorney general.

“Todd Blanche is one of the most highly ethical individuals I know, and I think he is making an incredible Acting Attorney General. And he managed this investigation — and it was a Herculean task — with very little error,” she said, according to a transcript of her interview released Thursday. “And Todd did an excellent job, in my opinion, and is doing an excellent job as our Attorney General. I’m not blaming anything on Todd.”

But Bondi — who faced intense bipartisan scrutiny for the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files — repeatedly said she could not remember significant details when it came to questions about survivors, redactions in the documents, and the Justice Department’s work on the case while she was in office.

She also said she could not recall whether the Justice Department ever investigated high-profile administration figures, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, about their ties to Epstein, or if the Justice Department was investigating lawmakers who searched for the president’s name in unredacted copies of the files that have been made available to them.

Bondi claimed that she only learned about a controversial prison transfer for Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell after she had been moved to a minimum-security prison following her jailhouse interview with Blanche last summer.

Maxwell, she said, “should die in prison.”

“She was a monster, just like Jeffrey Epstein,” she said. “She recruited these young women to a life of prostitution and abuse. And I often think the women that do that are just as bad, if not worse, than the men, because she participated in it.”

Blanche, the president’s former criminal defense attorney now poised to be formally nominated for attorney general, “was in charge of the process and the entire release of the Epstein files,” Bondi said.

The Justice Department has released approximately 3 million files following legislation passed by Congress and signed by Trump that compelled their release.

But lawmakers asked Bondi why another 3 million documents still have not been released, sparking allegations of a government-wide cover up to protect powerful public figures accused of exploiting and abusing young women and girls

“To my knowledge, they’ve all been released,” Bondi said.

The release of the files and bipartisan pressure to investigate figures in Epstein’s orbit erupted into a massive political liability for the president and his allies, and the president removed Bondi from her post days before she was initially scheduled to testify to the committee.

The Justice Department sought to block her appearance after she left office, though she later agreed to participate in a closed-door, transcribed interview on May 29 after threats from Democratic lawmakers to hold her in contempt for defying a bipartisan subpoena.

During her sworn testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in February, Bondi repeatedly deflected questions about Epstein to talk about the stock market and chastised Democrats who questioned her.

“The Dow is over 50,000 right now,” she said after she was questioned about potential indictments against Epstein’s co-conspirators.

The Nasdaq is “smashing records” and Americans’ retirement accounts are “booming,” she said. “That’s what we should be talking about.”

After last week’s interview, Epstein survivor Maria Farmer said Bondi’s “continued evasion of questions about her grave mishandling of the release of the Epstein files was not surprising — it’s a pattern of behavior.”

“At every turn, Bondi has ignored and disregarded the will of Epstein survivors who have waited for justice for decades and even now, as a private citizen, she refuses responsibility for her missteps and failures,” Farmer said in a statement shared with The Independent.

On Thursday, the Republican-led committee referred former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

The referral follows the committee’s interview with Epstein’s former assistant Sarah Kellen on May 21. In their letter Blanche, Comer and four other House Republicans urged the Justice Department to use “all available tools” — including providing “immunity for certain witnesses” — to investigate Kellen’s allegations.

Lauren Hersh, co-founder and CEO of World Without Exploitation, which represents Epstein survivors, called the letter an “important step” in the investigation.

“It provides further proof that there are clear investigative leads in the files and underscores the importance of continued transparency, accountability, and a thorough review of all available evidence,” she said.

Speaking to the BBC for the documentary before the sentencing of Nowak’s killer Vickrum Digwa, Badenoch said: “This is not a racist country. But now we are seeing more and more hostility to people of every ethnicity, whether they’re English or not English, because people are bringing political conflict into an area where we didn’t have political conflict.

To understand where talks on ending the war between the US and Iran currently stand, all we can confidently assume is that Donald Trump’s pronouncements offer no guide. The US president said an agreement had been “largely negotiated” on May 23.

That proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for sanctions relief and the unfreezing of Iranian assets. But it would not have immediately extracted concessions on Iran’s nuclear activities and ballistic missile capabilities. In response to backlash from Republican hawks, Trump subsequently toughened the US position.

The following week, Trump again claimed he was “on the verge” of approving a peace deal and US officials started briefing that Iran had made critical concessions. Iranian officials denied reports they had accepted major concessions on uranium enrichment or the future of their nuclear programme.

Talks were then suspended on June 1 after Iran protested Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, and the US and Iran exchanged military strikes. Trump declared he “couldn’t care less” if the talks were over, but by the evening, was once again insisting negotiations were continuing “at a rapid pace”.

According to Iranian media, the current situation is that Iran is studying the latest US proposal but communications between the two countries are paused. The US and Iran have also traded military strikes in recent days. So why are the two sides seemingly unable to close the gap between their respective positions?

One obvious obstacle is the dysfunctional conditions under which negotiations are taking place. The simple act of communicating through intermediaries creates delays and complications. The fact that messages must then be considered by a reordered and fractured political system that is reluctant to use even basic communications technology for fear of revealing officials’ whereabouts adds another layer of complexity.

But even a more unified Iranian regime operating in peacetime would still have to contend with the message incoherence, unpredictability and unprofessionalism that masquerades as statesmanship in Washington. Iranian officials do not believe Trump has the attention span to negotiate a complex agreement, nor do they believe he can be relied upon to honour any agreement he signs.

In June 2025 and then again in February 2026, Iranian diplomats believed they were engaged in serious negotiations and were already working through the technical details of a potential agreement, only for US and Israeli military strikes to follow shortly afterwards.

This has important implications for the choreography of any deal to end the current hostilities. Iran wants Washington to make concessions – on sanctions relief, ending the US maritime blockade and unfreezing Iranian assets – first before it reciprocates. It also wants any agreement to be legally binding on future US administrations. The former is politically very difficult for Trump and the latter is constitutionally impossible.

Trump himself has made a very unconvincing case that he can force Iran to accept his maximalist demands. These include strict limits on Iran’s ballistic missile programme, an end to its support for proxy groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas and the dismantling of Tehran’s nuclear activities.

And yet he appears desperate to avoid signing a deal that could be compared to Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA). Trump recklessly vandalised the JCPOA by withdrawing the US from the deal in 2018.

The JCPOA contained 159 pages of commitments and technical annexes. It took 20 months for a small army of diplomats and nuclear experts to negotiate. Currently, American diplomacy is being spearheaded by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kuschner, and a billionaire real estate magnate, Steve Witkoff. And Trump himself seems unsure on what would qualify as reasonable safeguards for preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

At the same time, Iran’s enriched uranium is thought to be lying in highly hazardous gas form mostly buried under collapsed facilities bombed in the 12-day war of 2025. So the initial process of verifying how much enriched uranium Iran has poses a far greater technical challenge than it did in the lead up to the JCPOA. This in turn affects the negotiations because sanctions relief would be based on how much enriched uranium Iran ships out.

Iran’s strengthened hand

The US is also engaging in talks with greatly diminished leverage. By using military force against Iran, it has already played its ultimate coercive card. Both domestic and international opinion largely views the outcome as a failure.

Iran, by contrast, believes it has survived the conflict. It is now ruled by a generation of leaders shaped by the experiences of this war and by a renewed confidence that hard power and the strategic use of Iran’s geography can be used to reshape the regional order.

This has emboldened Iran to introduce demands that lay well beyond the scope of the JCPOA, most notably its insistence that any wider settlement addresses Israeli military operations against its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It seems highly doubtful that a comprehensive deal can be reached that adheres to Trump’s proclaimed red lines. More realistically, though by no means assuredly, a deal may emerge that sees Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz in return for financial incentives, with the other issues kicked into the long grass and postponed to an uncertain second phase of negotiations.

The lesson of this war is that the Gulf states will surely have much diminished faith in Washington’s ability to achieve a stable regional order. Its inability to contain Iran, prevent escalation or protect its allies from the consequences of its own failed military intervention is likely to accelerate efforts to build alternative security arrangements within the region.

Christopher Taylor was banned from the roads when he smashed into the nine-year-old and made off, claiming to have panicked, Teesside Crown Court heard.

He then commented on a Facebook post showing CCTV of the incident in Thornaby saying he was “truly sorry” and would hand himself in, but failed to and two days later police found him hiding in a kitchen cupboard, trying to conceal himself behind a black bag.

Cainan Lonsdale, prosecuting, said, “thankfully” the boy “only” suffered scratches and abrasions to his back and a cut to the head which required three stitches. He underwent an X-ray but the scan revealed no further injury.

Although his family did not wish to provide a victim impact statement for the court, they did tell police their son had recovered well from treatment.

Mr Lonsdale said CCTV from the scene was shared on social media and the defendant was identified, so he posted a response on Facebook apologising, claiming to be “truly sorry”, pledging he would hand himself in to police.

Teesside Crown Court heard that as he fled Taylor shouted to the boy to get up, but other road users and passers-by in the street did go to his aid. Taylor was said to “to feel sick with shame.”

Despite his pledge to hand himself in, following the incident in Imperial Avenue on March 26, it was only two days later that he was arrested after officers went to his home address in Middlesbrough.

He claimed he had tried to swerve to avoid the boy, who it was accepted had not looked before starting to cross the road.

Mr Lonsdale said Taylor told police he “panicked” and rode off, stopping around the corner in a neighbouring street.

ChristopherTaylor, 34, starting an 18-month prison sentence after colliding into a boy on a pedal cycle and riding off on an illegal e-bike without going to his aid (Image: Cleveland Police)

He said he had intended to hand himself in but accepted the e-bike he was riding was not “road legal” and, therefore, he was uninsured.

Mr Lonsdale said it was estimated Taylor was travelling at between 15 to 20-mph at the time and did attempt to swerve to avoid the boy on the bike but he could not avoid the collision.

Taylor, 34, of Maple Avenue, Grove Hill, admitted careless driving, failing to stop after an accident and having no insurance.

The court heard his 17 previous offences included drink and drug driving, for which he received a 14-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, with a three-year driving ban, in November.

Jonathan Gittins, for Taylor, said, “he knows things could have been much worse”, regarding the boy’s injuries, for which he has expressed his shame and remorse, offering an apology to the victim and his family.

Mr Gittins said the defendant did intend to hand himself in, but, again, “panicked”, knowing he was in breach of a suspended prison sentence.

He said since being admitted to custody, at Holme House Prison, Stockton, awaiting sentence, it has been the defendant’s first taste of life behind bars.

Mr Gittins added that it was, “time he hasn’t wasted”, as he has remained “substance free”, with the help of the prison drug and alcohol service, and has been working in the wood mill, making furniture.

Judge Nathan Adams said that viewing the brief CCTV footage of the incident was among the most “distressing” clips he had seen, watching the boy being dragged along the road for several metres before, “being left in a heap”.

The judge told Taylor: “He was quite clearly in pain and distressed, yet you reacted as you did, riding off.”

Judge Adams said just the use of the bike was illegal and noted that Taylor had never held a driving licence.

He activated the 14-month suspended sentence, imposing a total term of 18 months.

Banning him from the roads for a further 42 months, the judge told Taylor: “You have got to realise you must stay off a mechanical vehicle of any kind.

“Otherwise, you will only find yourself serving longer and longer periods in prison.”

Governments and car manufacturers sell electric cars as the future of green transport. But a less visible trend is challenging this story: many electric cars are getting bigger.

The International Energy Agency recently reported that larger models, including sports utility vehicles (SUVs), are taking up a major share of electric car markets.

In China, electric SUVs accounted for more than 60% of electric car sales in 2025. In Europe, SUVs accounted for almost 75% of electric models in 2025. In the US, the figure was even higher, at more than 85%.

SUV emissions are now so large that, if all SUVs were a country, they would be one of the world’s five biggest CO₂ emitters. The problem with SUVs is not only their tailpipe emissions. It is also their size, weight, cost and the way they reinforce car-dependent lifestyles.

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Why surging sales of large electric vehicles raises environmental red flags

Electric SUVs may reduce tailpipe emissions compared with petrol and diesel SUVs, but they still need larger batteries, more raw materials, more energy and more road space than smaller electric cars. Their greater weight can also contribute to pollution from tyre, brake and road wear, including fine particulate matter linked to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

Larger vehicles can also make streets more dangerous, especially for children. A study using Great Britain crash data found that children aged 0-18 hit by SUVs, rather than passenger cars, had 77% higher odds of fatal injury. For children under nine, the odds were more than three times higher.

When roads are dominated by heavy privately owned cars, walking and cycling become less attractive, even for short everyday journeys. This matters because active travel (such as walking and cycling) is one of the easiest ways to build physical activity into daily life while producing little or no direct carbon emissions.

Car-dominated streets affect people unequally. Lower-income households are less likely to own new electric cars, but they still experience the traffic, danger, noise and pollution created by them. This is why the green transport transition needs to be judged by more than the number of electric cars sold. It should also be judged by whether it reduces car dependency and creates healthier, fairer streets.

Avoid, shift, improve

Our new research in the journal Energy Economics uses the avoid-shift-improve framework to assess transport decarbonisation. Avoid means reducing the need for unnecessary car journeys through measures such as teleworking, compact development, and better access to local services. Shift means moving remaining trips to lower-carbon, healthier modes such as walking, cycling, public transport, and bike and car sharing. Improve means making the vehicles that are still needed cleaner, lighter and more energy efficient, including through electrification.

This order matters. If policy jumps straight to improve, it can reduce emissions per mile while leaving the wider system unchanged. A city full of electric SUVs may have no exhaust emissions, but it can still suffer from congestion, road danger, inactive travel, unequal access, non-exhaust pollution and streets dominated by large private vehicles.

Too big to be green?

In our study, the proposed model uses registrations of SUVs as an undesirable indicator of transport decarbonisation. Their growth works against the move towards smaller, lighter and more energy-efficient cars. Larger, more expensive vehicles can deepen car dependence: once people have invested in a costly car, switching to non-car modes of transport can feel like a loss.

The SUV boom illustrates this. Larger vehicles are marketed as safer, more comfortable and more desirable. Advertising presents them as symbols of freedom, family protection and status, helping to make large cars appear normal and necessary even when smaller cars and better transport options could meet many everyday needs.

This conflicts with UK and EU climate goals, which prioritise reducing emissions, improving public health and making sustainable transport more accessible.

There are practical alternatives. Policy can support smaller, lighter and more affordable electric cars where cars are still needed. It can also make walking, cycling and public transport the easiest choices for everyday journeys. This means protected cycle lanes, safe pavements, reliable buses, lower traffic neighbourhoods, and road pricing that reflects the space, weight and pollution costs of larger vehicles.

These measures are not about blaming drivers. They are pro-health, pro-equity and pro-climate. Many people require cars, especially in rural and poorly connected areas. But the goal should be to reduce unnecessary car dependence, not to replace every petrol SUV with an electric SUV.

The future of transport should not only be electric. It should be lighter, healthier, more affordable and less car dependent.

President Donald Trump has announced that he plans to attend the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs NBA finals game Monday night and may go to Game 4 as well.

The New York native will be at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan alongside a host of Knicks superfans, including the likes of filmmaker Spike Lee and actor Timothee Chalamet. Lee and Chalamet were among the celebrities who attended Game 1 in San Antonio Wednesday night, along with comedian Tracy Morgan and actor Ben Stiller.

When a reporter asked whether Trump would attend a finals game at MSG, he boasted about the Knicks and said he would be at the stadium to watch them.

“I’ve been a Knicks fan for a long time, and I’m also a Jim Dolan fan. He’s a nice guy,” Trump said from the Oval Office Thursday, referring to the owner of the Knicks.

“He’s been a long time wanting to win, and he’s a competitive guy, and he’s got a team that’s amazing.”

Trump said Dolan invited him to the finals, adding, “I’m going.”

When asked which game he’d attend, the president said he might go Monday for Game 3 and maybe to Game 4 next Wednesday.

The president commended both NBA teams for their performances at a nail-biting Game 1. The Knicks won the game 105 to 95 after coming back from a 14-point deficit in the third quarter.

“I saw the beginning of the game, and it wasn’t looking good [for the Knicks],” Trump said. “I missed the middle because I talk to generals all night long now. But I watched that end of the game, and they were dominant.”

Trump called Spurs Forward Victor Wembanyama “a great player.”

“How do you guard this guy? Seven-foot-five, and he’s got a great shot, right? But they find a way to do it,” Trump added.

Wembanyama towered over his competitors on Wednesday, but it didn’t stop the Knicks from squeaking out a victory.

Trump has a penchant for attending live sports, even with the beefed-up security needed to attend such games.

He became the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl in February and went to a New York Yankees versus Detroit Tigers game last year while marking the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

It’s unclear what type of welcome Trump will get at MSG.

He has a net approval rating of -25 percent, a new low for the president, according to a new The Economist/YouGov poll. New York is also a Democratic stronghold, which does not do any favors for the Republican president.

Game 2 will take place in San Antonio again on Friday before the teams head to New York.

Manhattan has been surging with energy this playoff season as the Knicks won their way to the finals for the first time in 27 years. This year will be a rematch between the Knicks and the Spurs, who went head-to-head in 1999, when San Antonio won the championship.

Bradley Passey was missing for over a week, after attending the TwitchCon event in Rotterdam

A British man missing in the Netherlands has now been found dead.

Bradley Passey, 21, had not been seen since May 30, when he was seen by friends outside a nightclub at around 2am.

He had attended the TwitchCon gaming convention and was reported to have been staying at a hostel in the Overblaak Cube Houses area but never returned after the night out.

Bradley’s family became worried when he didn’t board his flight home last Monday and there was no contact with him.

Members of his family travelled to Rotterdam as a major search was launched by local authorities. They are understood to have helped put up posters of him and made enquiries if anyone had footage, reports The Mirror.

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His sister Amy has now said on social media that the family were told he had drowned in a river.

Amy wrote on Facebook: “This isn’t a post we ever thought we would be sharing, but we have sadly had confirmation this morning that Bradley Passey unfortunately drown in River Maas.

“We hoped that we would have time as a family to process this, but unfortunately news has already spread in the media in Netherlands.

“We appreciate all the love sent over the last few days, the shares & any donations made so far on the go fund me.

“Please continue to do so because we don’t know how long my family will remain in Rotterdam. Thank you x x x.”

Many people have sent their condolences on social media, with one person writing: “Oh Amy I’m so sorry to read this. Sending condolences to you and your family. Xx.”

Another said: “I am absolutely heartbroken for you all, I’m so so sorry sending you all so much love and strength.”

A further comment read: “Can’t believe this! i went to school with brad.. so sorry for you and your family.”

During the search, a Rotterdam Police spokesperson, reported AD, said: “We are working hard to gather all the information. Unfortunately, no leads have been found at this moment.”

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of a British man who died in the Netherlands, and we are liaising with local authorities.”

Robinson was exiled for 24 Tests. In that time, 13 other men bowled seam in Test cricket for England. Fourteen, if you count Harry Brook’s wrong-footed part-time filth.

Robinson spent part of the Ashes winter playing club cricket in Sydney, mainly to work on his game, but also to be in the right place if England needed him. One wonders how many bowlers would have had to go down for Robinson to get the call, especially given a reserve Lions squad was also in Australia. Maybe 15, even 20?

But necessity is the mother of invention or, in this case, reinvention.

Humbled in Australia, England were badly in need of an attack-leader, a reliable tone-setter.

This summer is the first since 2007 that none of James Anderson, Stuart Broad or Chris Woakes will play a Test for England. Throw in the likelihood that Mark Wood will never play another Test and it means the four cornerstones of England’s pace attack have gone in the space of three years, taking 1,609 wickets with them.

So England reached out to Robinson, telling him at the start of the summer he was back on the radar. Already maturing with the captaincy, Robinson lasered-in on the goal of an international recall.

Those at Hove speak of an intense focus on a chance Robinson once thought had gone. Extra training sessions, leading on and off the field amid the turmoil of a points deduction for financial issues. The bowling was in good order, and there was even a vital century with the bat against Surrey.

When the England recall came, director of cricket Rob Key called Robinson “one of the best bowlers in the world”. McCullum said he had “banged the door down”, while Stokes challenged Robinson to “stay here as long as he can”.

On a murky and moody Thursday at Lord’s, Robinson rose to the challenge.

England had been rolled over for 140 by the excellent New Zealanders and all of Key, McCullum and Stokes must have been wondering if the Ashes rebuild was going to be reduced to rubble. Salvation came from the man they had shunned.

With the clouds hovering, rain threatening and pitch nibbling, Robinson was the perfect horse for this course.

Rumbling in from the Nursery End, nipping the ball down the slope to left-hander Devon Conway.

Third ball. Front pad. Finger up. Robinson’s eyes wide with delight, Conway aghast at a review that showed enough of leg stump was being clipped.