Temperatures will stay quite warm

The Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann will draw to a close this weekend with Northern Ireland set for a mixed spell of weather.

Saturday is expected to start rather cloudy across much of the region, although there will be some hazy sunshine in the southeast during the morning.

It will remain dry for much of the day before some outbreaks of rain develop later. Temperatures will stay quite warm, with a maximum of 21 °C forecast.

That means those attending the penultimate day of Fleadh events could see a largely dry and warm afternoon, although rain is expected to become more of a factor as the day progresses.

The outlook becomes more unsettled on Sunday, with outbreaks of rain expected before conditions turn drier later in the day.

Monday and Tuesday are then expected to bring an improvement, with both days forecast to be dry and feature sunny spells. Temperatures are also expected to turn warmer.

Looking further ahead, the Met Office’s long-range forecast suggests a mixed start to the period between Wednesday, 12 August and Friday, 21 August

Rain or showers are expected in the north alongside some breezier conditions, while southern parts of the UK are forecast to remain mostly dry, sunny and hot, with temperatures potentially becoming very hot in some areas.

Southern areas are expected to turn cooler and fresher next weekend, before the weather becomes more changeable further into August.

The Met Office says areas of low pressure may begin to track further south and east, increasing the chance of frontal systems or thundery spells affecting southern and eastern parts of the UK.

However, rainfall amounts are expected to be variable, meaning some areas could continue to see relatively little rain.

Temperatures are forecast to remain above average overall, particularly in the south, where conditions could be very warm or hot at times.

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Counter-terrorism police investigating the death of ex-MP Ann Widdecombe have reopened an inquiry into a report of an attempted burglary at a London address in April last year.

The BBC understands the reported incident occurred at a property used by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. No arrests were made and the investigation was closed.

On Friday Counter Terrorism Policing said a line of inquiry had been identified that was not “pursued by them at the time”.

Counter Terrorism Policing London has made a mandatory referral over its handling of the initial investigation to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

The Metropolitan Police had received a report of an attempted burglary in the Greater London area, the statement said, with the initial investigation carried out by the Metropolitan Police and Counter Terrorism Policing London.

The BBC understands that the incident being referred to as an “attempted burglary” in the statement from Counter Terrorism Policing was one at Nigel Farage’s home in south London.

Farage has previously referred to it as a “lit incendiary device” being pushed through his letterbox.

Police had said “damage was caused to a door but nothing was stolen”.

The police watchdog has said it is investigating allegations that a Counter Terrorism Policing London staff member “failed to identify and pursue a line of inquiry” related to the attempted burglary.

“We can confirm that the IOPC has decided to independently investigate the conduct of a Counter Terrorism Policing London staff member following a referral received earlier today,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“The conduct relates to an allegation the individual failed to identify and pursue a line of enquiry relating to an attempted burglary reported in April 2025.

“Counter Terrorism Policing London has been notified of our decision, and no further information is available at this early stage.”

Ann Widdecombe, the 78-year-old former Conservative minister and Reform UK spokeswoman, was found dead at her home in Devon last month with serious injuries.

Joshua Kerry, from Rotherham in South Yorkshire, was later charged with her murder.

Kerry was initially arrested on suspicion of murder on 11 July, before being additionally arrested on 13 July on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

Widdecombe had served as Tory MP for Maidstone in Kent for 23 years and was appointed to ministerial roles in Sir John Major’s government in the 1990s.

There are a selection of films being shown – including a shark movie

Film fanatics and swim lovers can experience the best of both worlds as a Cambridgeshire lido gears up to host a poolside movie night. For the first time, families and friends can pick from a selection of much-loved films – including The Meg – to watch while in the water or at the poolside.

The event, ‘Dine-in-Movies’ will take place on Saturday, August 8 at Peterborough Lido. With temperatures expected to reach 28C over the weekend, it’s the ideal time to be making the most of spending some time outdoors.

With a range of films being shown at different times of the day, there is something suitable for the whole family. Three water-themed films will be shown during the day including Finding Nemo, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants and The Meg.

The showtimes are:

• 12pm – 3pm: Finding Nemo (U)
• 3.30pm – 6.30pm: The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants (PG)
• 7pm – 10pm: The Meg (12)

Movie-night snacks will also be available at the Lido Cafe serving hot hogs, nachos, popcorn, ice creams and drinks until 6pm.

Tickets for each film cost £12 for adults and £8 for children. Inflatable chairs will be available to buy from reception for £7. Deckchairs will also be available on poolside or participants are welcome to bring their own chair.

The play is a single actor monologue in a pitch black space with only actor and singer Claire Booth’s mouth in the spotlight.

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Sir Rufus Norris is to direct Samuel Beckett’s Not I play as part of an Irish-British celebration of the playwright.

The show for the inaugural Samuel Beckett Biennale will be the first UK production Sir Rufus has worked on since leaving his role as artistic director of the National Theatre last year

The play is a single actor monologue in a pitch black space with only actor and singer Claire Booth’s mouth in the spotlight.

Sir Rufus said, “I have always been terrified of Beckett. There is something so open and yet so unforgivingly precise in his writing, and this is never more so than in Not I.

“The text is everything and any attempt at understanding it, in the usual sense, risks compromising its utter integrity. Charting a course through it has been a profound lesson in trust and humility.

“To do so with Claire, however, has been a joy. Her rigour and precision, borne of her complete musical control, has enabled us to find both footholds and a bespoke palette within the vertiginous face of Beckett’s sensory assault.

“It is a masterpiece in miniature, compellingly untameable and poetically, viscerally transcendent.”

The biennale sees Beckett’s plays performed in locations such as his Dublin birthplace, his Enniskillen school, in England, Belfast and the Wicklow Hills.

Along with Not I, the event curated by Artists Over Borders will see a performance by Booth – who was last year’s Royal Philharmonic Society singer of the year – of Sequenza III by Luciano Berio, before Booth and Sir Rufus have a live conversation, followed by a selected text reading.

Other events for the biennale include a performed-reading production of Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, in a new Ulster-Scots translation, on the Antrim Plateau and in the Wicklow Hills.

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

Michigan lake sturgeon were already known as “living dinosaurs” – but they may be a lot older than you might think, according to a new study from Michigan and Wisconsin officials and universities.

Some of the spiny, whiskered females may live for as long as 427 years, the groups found, following an analysis of populations in the Great Lakes.

That’s nearly as long as the lifespan of Greenland sharks. The longest-lived vertebrates on Earth, Greenland sharks can live for up to 512 years while swimming through the dark, frigid depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

And the researchers’ estimate is also hundreds of years longer than researchers previously believed.

Past research capped the age of lake sturgeons – which have been on the fossil record for 150 million years – at 150.

To reach these conclusions, the researchers didn’t actually catch a fish that was that old. Instead, they did some math using 44 years of data on five different populations of lake sturgeon.

The team captured and measured the fish, determined their sex, and marked and released them. Then they would do it again in future years, measuring the growth of fish they had already caught.

Unlike humans, fish continue to get bigger as they age.

Lake sturgeon are already one of the largest freshwater fish in North America, reaching up to 200-300 pounds, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

And some sturgeon can grow bigger than others in environments with more prey, such as small fish and mollusks that they suck up from lake bottoms using their large, extendable mouth.

Using these measurements, the researchers could estimate how low the fish lived and what their growth rate was.

“Simply stated, we used this data to estimate lake sturgeon longevity by asking ‘If a lake sturgeon grows X centimeters per year, then how many years does it take for a lake sturgeon to get to a particular size?’” the department explained in a release.

They related sturgeon growth rate to the size of the fish, finding that males that were 63 inches long could live between 90-279 years and larger 71-inch females could live between 99-427 years.

“We’ve concluded that sturgeon live far longer lives than initially thought based on looking at growth rings and fin ray cross sections,” Edward Baker, manager of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ Marquette Research Station, told News Channel 3.

Baker noted that less than one percent of the historic population of over two million lake sturgeon remain in the Great Lakes.

Understanding how long these fish live is important for the conservation of their species and habitats, the department says.

Lake sturgeon mature later than other fish and females may not reproduce until they are 15-25 years old. That means strict protections for the species are crucial to ensure their population can rebound.

The sturgeon were nearly wiped out by fishermen in the late 1800s, the station noted. There are still harvests allowed – but last year’s was only six, the department said.

“It sort of reinforces the need to be very restrictive in what we allow in terms of harvesting,” Baker said. “It’s not a fish that we just allow anybody to go out and catch as many as they want.”

But the species is also considered threatened by human pollution, infrastructure and climate change, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

The non-profit said it was suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service earlier this year after Endangered Species Act protections were denied for lake sturgeon in 2024.

President Donald Trump recently said he’d move to roll back protections under the 1973 law.

Gianni Infantino’s position as FIFA president could come under fresh scrutiny following allegations of an affair with a junior member of staff while he was general secretary of UEFA

Gianni Infantino allegedly arranged for his lover to be paid off by UEFA while he was in a position of power at European football’s governing body.

Infantino is now desperately trying to hold onto his position as president of FIFA, but allegations about the 56-year-old’s behaviour at his previous employer, which he denies, have now surfaced.

The Telegraph reports that a female employee of UEFA, who was allegedly in a relationship with Infantino, allegedly received a six-figure pay-off and funds to study an MBA after he was challenged over the situation.

Infantino, who is married with four children, was UEFA’s general secretary at the time of the alleged affair with a junior employee, who was promoted to a management position during the relationship.

He is said to have been challenged by Michel Platini, UEFA’s then president, over the alleged relationship, prompting her to leave the organisation with a substantial payment.

A UEFA spokesperson told the newspaper: “We are aware of the allegations and can confirm a departure payment was made to the individual in question, coupled with the payment of fees for an MBA course at a local business school. The payment was in line with the regulations that existed for departing staff at the time.

“Such UEFA have been tightened since 2016 and the current staff regulations – which apply to all UEFA employees at whatever level – reflect those found in a modern, high-profile organisation.” Mirror Football has contacted UEFA.

The allegations come at a time of increased scrutiny on Infantino, who is fighting to hold onto power at the top of FIFA following a backlash over his secretive plans to sell stakes in tournaments like the World Cup. His former employer, UEFA, are now the organisation leading the attempts to remove him from power.

“FIFA president Gianni Infantino strongly denies these allegations, and they are categorically untrue. Any insinuation of inappropriate conduct or violation of statutes or regulations is defamatory,” a FIFA spokesperson told the Telegraph.

“No employee at UEFA and FIFA has ever raised a complaint regarding Mr Infantino’s behaviour because there never was an incident where he was involved. All company actions related to employees, including any departure and severance packages, have always been approved by the appropriate directors in accordance with all applicable regulations.”

Infantino spent 16 years working for UEFA until leaving to become FIFA president in February 2016, a position he has held ever since.

He married Leena Al Ashqar in 2001 after they met through her work for the Lebanese Football Federation.

The helicopter was one of seven working on a fire in central Utah that was caused by lightning on July 27

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A helicopter assisting in tackling a major Utah wildfire came down on Friday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The aircraft was amongst seven deployed to combat a blaze in central Utah, which was sparked by lightning on July 27. By Friday, the fire had spread across 165 square miles and was 19% contained.

The FAA confirmed the helicopter went down in Richfield, roughly 160 miles south of Salt Lake City. The status of the two individuals aboard the aircraft remained unknown at the time.

Both the National Transportation Safety Board and FAA will launch investigations, though accessing the crash site may prove challenging if the wildfire continues burning in the vicinity, according to AP reports.

Teams fighting the flames on Friday contended with unpredictable winds, parched vegetation and scorching temperatures, alongside the threat of dry thunderstorms and lightning strikes. Red Flag warnings remained active, reports the Express.

This incident follows the deaths of four firefighters in Colorado who were overwhelmed by a rapidly spreading wildfire near the Utah border in June.

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By LIAM MORGAN, ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

Published: 22:36 BST, 7 August 2026 | Updated: 23:04 BST, 7 August 2026

The pressure on Gianni Infantino to resign as FIFA president has grown after it emerged UEFA paid off his alleged mistress during his time with the European governing body.

The Telegraph reported the woman received a six-figure sum following an alleged affair with Infantino when he was UEFA general secretary.

It is claimed the junior employee was promoted by Infantino and given a 30 per cent pay rise at the time of their relationship. UEFA’s then president, Michel Platini, was reportedly aware and raised concerns with Infantino.

The organisation decided she would depart her role with a substantial sum, paid for by UEFA, which also covered the costs for her to do an MBA course at a business school worth £45,000 per year.

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UEFA confirmed the payment and its awareness of the relationship between Infantino and the woman in a statement to The Telegraph. 

Infantino has been married to Leena Al Ashqar since 2001 and the couple have four daughters. 

UEFA paid off a female employee who had an alleged affair with Gianni Infantino during his time at the organisation

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Infantino is under pressure to quit following his failed FOFA Forward Enterprise scheme

‘We are aware of the allegations and can confirm a departure payment was made to the individual in question, coupled with the payment of fees for an MBA course at a local business school,’ UEFA said. ‘The payment was in line with the regulations that existed for departing staff at the time.

‘Such regulations have been tightened since 2016 and the current staff regulations – which apply to all UEFA employees at whatever level – reflect those found in a modern, high-profile organisation.’

The Telegraph also reported there had been complaints about Infantino’s behaviour at FIFA, claims strenuously denied by football’s worldwide governing body.

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Infantino became UEFA secretary general – a position second only to the presidency in terms of power – in 2009. He started in 2000 as a lawyer before working his way up in the organisation.

The now 56-year-old was elected FIFA president in 2016 following the downfall of Sepp Blatter. He was re-elected in 2019 and 2023, and had been expected to secure a fourth term in March.

The revelations cast further doubt on Infantino’s position at FIFA with the Swiss-Italian facing widespread calls to quit after he was forced to abandon a widely condemned plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors.

UEFA are leading the charge to dethrone Infantino as FIFA president in response to the scrapped proposal, pledging to boycott any FIFA tournaments so long as he remains in the role.

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But he appears to retain support from Africa, South America and Asia – which is enough to fend off any leadership challenge ahead of the election, scheduled to take place at the FIFA congress in Morocco in March.

Mexico this week broke ranks from CONCACAF’s opposition to Infantino, reaffirming their confidence in the FIFA leadership.

UEFA’s current refusal to play in FIFA competitions will cause the governing body significant commercial problems, potentially prompting Infantino to reconsider his position at the top of world football. 

But the FIFA president has shown no sign of relenting thus far after being supported by the governing body’s hierarchy following crisis talks on Wednesday, vowing to fight on despite demands he resign.

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Infantino is facing a possible investigation after Norwegian FA president Lise Klaveness said she would report him to FIFA’s Ethics Committee.

The complaint will not only challenge the proposed sale of a £3.1billion stake in the World Cup to private investors, but also the decision to award an ad hoc FIFA Peace Prize to President Donald Trump and the suspension of Folarin Balogun’s red card at the World Cup following alleged political pressure from Trump.

When a wildfire broke out in the Müritz National Park of north-eastern Germany in July, it was no routine firefighting job. Bomb disposal teams had to work alongside firefighters because the forest floor is contaminated with cold war-era munitions. Crews could not approach parts of the blaze directly for fear of detonations.

Soon after, a wildfire tore through 42,000 hectares of the Gironde region in south-western France. As it burned through fields near the village of Le Porge, the fire exposed a forgotten cache of second world war-era shells. At least 75 were recovered from the scorched earth.

Several of the shells had detonated during the fire and one projectile punched through the wall of a house that had been evacuated. The local mayor, Martial Zaninetti, said the municipality had no record the munitions were there at all.

These events are symptoms of a clear problem: Europe is full of buried explosives left over from 20th century wars, and the continent’s wildfires are now big enough, hot enough and last long enough to reach them.

While buried munitions are always dangerous, they are usually undisturbed enough not to go off. What changes during a wildfire is heat and pressure. Explosive fillings can ignite or detonate when heated past a critical threshold. Old ordnance is also often more unstable than it was when manufactured as decades of corrosion can make casings and fuses more sensitive.

A fire burning through leaf litter and topsoil for a few minutes generally is not hot enough to cause detonation. But a fire that burns for hours or days, or that sinks down into dry peat and smoulders underground for a prolonged period of time, can transfer enough sustained heat into the ground to trigger buried munitions directly.

This happened repeatedly in 2025 during the Langdale Moor fire in North Yorkshire, UK. Flames burrowing into deep peat set off more than 20 buried second world war shells over six weeks of burning.

Fires also expose ordnance that heat would not otherwise touch. Burning off vegetation and topsoil uncovers shells and mines buried further down, leaving them lying on the surface. This is how the Le Porge fire team ended up gathering 75 exposed shells from scorched fields that no one on the local council knew were there.

The underlying physics is not unique to wildfires. Six separate munitions sites exploded across Iraq during the summers of 2018 and 2019, when temperatures regularly climbed above 45°C. No fire was involved in this case – just prolonged, extreme ambient heat. A similar dynamic has been linked to a 2020 arms depot explosion in Jordan in 2020.

Europe’s buried munitions

Europe is contaminated with explosive remnants of two world wars and roughly four decades of cold war military activity. Many of these munitions sit precisely where wildfires now burn: in forests, moorland and heath that were requisitioned for military use and then largely left alone.

North-eastern Germany’s forests, including areas that are now nature reserves and Unesco world heritage sites, were Soviet and East German training grounds during the cold war. Germany’s ordnance-clearance service, the Munitionsbergungsdienst, works through this land area by area because the scale of contamination is too large to clear all at once.

Northern France and Belgium still produce a so-called annual “iron harvest” of first world war shells turned up by farmers every spring. Parts of the “Zone Rouge” near the French city of Verdun remain officially uninhabitable more than a century after the 1918 Armistice.

South-western France, including the Gironde forests that burned in 2026, also saw heavy fighting and stored ordnance during the second world war. And in the UK, moorland such as the North York Moors were used for tank training during the second world war, leaving buried ordnance in deep peat that is now increasingly prone to burning.

The nature of the fires that now burn in areas around this buried ordinance has changed. The devastating wildfires that have struck Spain and France in 2026 offer a striking illustration of Europe’s escalating wildfire crisis. Consecutive heatwaves, coupled with low rainfall and depleted soil moisture, created extreme fire weather conditions.

Climate change is a key factor driving the increase in fire weather in the region. Summer days featuring extreme fire-prone conditions across southern Europe doubled between 1981 and 2025, and climate change projections suggest this trajectory will continue. As temperature rise and rainfall patterns shift, the probability of extreme wildfires will continue to rise.

Climate is not the only factor behind Europe’s rising wildfire activity. While North America and Europe are seeing dramatic increases in fire frequency and intensity, global fire activity is declining. Changes in demographics and land management practices are changing the availability of fuel for fire.

In Africa, for instance, the fragmentation of grasslands and changing farming practices have contributed to a decline in wildfires. The opposite dynamic is at play in Europe. Rural abandonment in some parts of the continent has allowed vegetation to accumulate, creating the fuel loads that feed extreme wildfires.

The combination of drier ground, longer fire seasons and changing land use is turning Europe’s decades-old contamination problem into a live operational hazard.

Hunter Biden has told the BBC he is “the most privileged person there is” after receiving a presidential pardon from his father, former US President Joe Biden, acknowledging it was not a good choice for America or his father’s legacy.

In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC’s Newsnight, Hunter Biden defended the controversial pardon, reflected on his father’s declining health, ruled out seeking elected office and spoke about helping others recover from addiction.

Asked about the 2024 pardon, he said he understood the criticism but noted: “What would you have thought of my dad if he did not do that for me.”

“It’s something that is easily criticised and for good reason,” he added.

“It’s not fair… All I know is that I’m grateful that he did it for me,” he said, acknowledging the pardon was “not good” for the American people, the Constitution – or his father’s legacy.

He argued to the BBC that his father ultimately acted out of concern that he would become a target under Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

“I was the only one in the world that could have gotten what I got from the only person in the world who could give it, my father.”

Hunter Biden also insisted he and his father had never discussed the possibility of a pardon before it was granted.

“There is no way that you can have those kinds of discussions that would not become public,” he said.

President Biden granted his son a full and unconditional pardon in December 2024, despite repeatedly saying beforehand that he would not use the powers of the presidency to intervene in his son’s legal cases. In announcing the decision, the former president said his son had been “selectively and unfairly prosecuted”.

The pardon covered his son’s federal gun conviction, a tax case he’d pled guilty to and any federal offences committed between 2014 and 2024.