People are leaving their employer-based health insurance plans for cheaper coverage as costs soar.

Employees paid $6,850 on average towards coverage in 2025 – up nearly $1,300 from 2020, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

Jessica Balcerzak, a 33-year-old nurse in Buffalo, New York, told the outlet she saved more than $10,000 a year by dropping her employer’s family health insurance coverage in favor of a low-cost alternative option.

The percentage of employees on employer-based healthcare plans fell from 64 percent in 2020 to 61 percent in 2025, healthcare research firm KFF reported last year.

This drop is also a problem for companies – they rely on healthy people with fewer claims paying into group coverage to cover the cost of sick people with more claims. It typically results in sicker policyholders paying higher premiums, according to research university Johns Hopkins in a January report.

Worries over health insurance costs aren’t limited to employer plans, either – they carry over into the Health Insurance Marketplace, the Obama-era coverage offered to those who can’t get a policy through their employer.

Those with Marketplace coverage described their insurance as “fair” or “poor” when it comes to their monthly premium and out-of-pocket costs for doctor visits, according to an April analysis by KFF.

Options for cheaper health insurance are relatively sparse for those who can’t afford employer or Marketplace coverage.

Short-term health insurance coverage can be cheaper than Marketplace plans but has drawbacks. They tend to have high deductibles, which means higher out-of-pocket costs for policyholders. They don’t have to follow Affordable Care Act coverage rules, either, which means they can deny care for people with pre-existing conditions.

Then there are cost-share cooperatives, programs which pool together premiums and use them to pay for medical costs. However, there’s often a minimum cost for coverage and pre-existing conditions may be excluded.

The problem is likely to get worse from here. A 2025 Congressional Budget Office report predicts recent policy changes to Medicaid and the Health Insurance Marketplace will lead to 14 million people going uninsured by 2034.

Yet cost-based decisions to drop health insurance could backfire on consumers. Some 59 percent of uninsured adults have problems paying medical costs, compared to 30 percent of insured adults, KFF found. Another 62 percent of uninsured adults are likely to carry medical debt compared to 44 percent of insured adults.

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Earlier this month a number of strikes were carried out on oil infrastructure in the city of Tuapse on the Black Sea, leading to significant oil spills. On local Telegram chat groups, people shared photos of oil slicks in the sea, black puddles on the road and stray animals covered in oily droplets.

In an Instagram post, Social Bite shared images of the charity’s founder John Littlejohn with Clooney and Geldof, with a caption reading: “George Clooney, prior to his address at the 4th annual Gleneagles Gala Dinner for Social Bite, checking out one of the prototype homes from the new Social Bite Village with the charity’s founder, Josh Littlejohn and Sir Bob Geldof.”

The application for the homes on the site of Willow House, in Long Lane Close near Walmgate, have been recommended for approval by York Council planning officers.

Plans from the council stated the development would see the brownfield site transformed to create a new neighbourhood.

Two objections have been lodged claiming the development would cause parking problems and be too close to existing homes.

The application are set to go before the council’s Planning Committee on Thursday, May 7.

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It follows the approval of the demolition of Willow House, which was built in the 1970s, in March to make way for the new homes.

Six of the homes will have three bedrooms, 19 two bedrooms and 11 one, with three fifths offered for social rent and two fifths sold through shared ownership schemes.

The homes would have 117 residents in total at full occupancy.

Plans from the council, drawn up by Mikhail Riches, stated the development would also feature play spaces, an orchard, outdoor communal area, car-free ‘living streets’ and private back gardens.

The homes would be built next to a section of York’s bar walls.

The site is one of five earmarked for a total of 315 affordable homes by the council which are part of efforts to build 600 overall.

Homes at Willow House would be built to Healthy Homes England Standards following a recent council decision to move away from Passivhaus designs which have struggled to attract commercial interest.

An impression showing how some of the 36 homes planned on the site of the former Willow House care home, in Long Lane Close, York, could look (Image: City of York Council/Mikhail Riches)

Plans stated the development would provide much-needed affordable homes for the city.

The application stated: “The site is underutilised brownfield land, formerly occupied by the now vacant care home. It also includes garages and storage structures to the north and west of the main building, as well as the associated access and landscaped areas.

“The development would create a new mixed-use neighbourhood with a new and enhanced public realm, high-quality landscaping and play spaces, and a much improved pedestrian environment, all whilst retaining the significance of the adjacent historic York Walls and important views toward the city centre from these.”

The two objections to the plans claimed the development would result in the loss of trees and other plants and the new homes would be too close to existing ones.

They also claimed visitors to the homes would exacerbate parking problems in the area and called for commercial space to be included on the ground floor of the development.

Lampard continues to have admirers behind the scenes at Crystal Palace, who need a new head coach as Oliver Glasner is leaving.

The level of Palace’s interest will become clearer in due course as the club accelerate their efforts to identify Glasner’s successor. Departing Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola, former Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche, ex-Spurs boss Thomas Frank, Lens head coach Pierre Sage and Ipswich’s Kieran McKenna are among other possible contenders.

Moving to Selhurst Park would allow Lampard to return to London, as would the Fulham job.

The Craven Cottage side are still to confirm whether head coach Marco Silva is renewing his contract. As it stands, the Portuguese is due to leave at the end of the season when his existing deal expires.

Given his Chelsea connections, taking over at Fulham may require extra emotional consideration from Lampard.

But, like Palace, the west London side are an established Premier League outfit that can provide a stable platform for Lampard. Now he is back in the top league, he will want to stay there.

Then, of course, there is the Chelsea vacancy – though Lampard’s former club appear to be focused on others, with Iraola and Silva among their current targets.

Bournemouth were also linked with Lampard after confirming Iraola’s departure – but the Cherries have confirmed Marco Rose is replacing the Spaniard.

Should any club formalise their interest in Lampard in the coming weeks, compensation is likely to emerge as a factor.

Doug King – the club’s owner and chairman – appears relaxed.

Speaking to BBC CWR, King said: “Everybody is going to get linked with everything. It’s a merry-go-round. It’s a bit disappointing clubs are appointing three or four managers a season.

“You can see how emotionally connected [Lampard] is with the city, you can see what it meant to him to get promotion and then the title and I think he’s found a happy place at the moment.

“It doesn’t mean there’s not going to be some staggering bid for him in the summer and he’ll have to make his choices, because he’s shown his credentials as a high quality head coach, but I’m not going to comment on that, I can’t control it.

“I just think he’s happy, I’m happy, everybody’s happy, we’ve just got smiles on our faces and we don’t worry about what may or may not happen for the head coach.”

On Banksy’s Instagram post, one commentator wrote: “I love that he appears when enough time has passed to forget, and arrives with full force unnoticed” while another wrote: “As a long-time Banksy collector, this one really hits. Big monument energy, but the idea is brutally simple: a suited figure blinded by its own flag. Classic Banksy. Quiet at first, then impossible to unsee”.

For some players, moving to LIV made perfect sense. Veteran Englishman Richard Bland cashed in on the romance of his one DP World Tour victory, the 2021 British Masters, which effectively earned him an invitation to play LIV tournaments.

He did not receive a signing-on fee, but in 55 tournaments has netted nearly $20m (£14.8m).

In all, 105 players have so far competed on the LIV circuit. The lowest earners have been Englishman Oliver Fisher and Thailand’s Ratchanon Chantananuwat, who each picked up $136,000 (£100,000) from their lone appearances.

When LIV began in 2022, it attracted some of golf’s biggest names with huge signing-on fees. Phil Mickelson did not dispute reports that he was given $200m (£147m) to defect from the PGA Tour.

Smith, Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed (now back on the DP World Tour) and the then European Ryder Cup captain Henrik Stenson were other expensive recruits.

“If LIV takes five players a year for five years, they can gut us,” PGA Tour board member Jimmy Dunne told a senate committee in July 2023. The American circuit was rattled.

Initially, they struck a “framework agreement” with the Saudi PIF to try to heal the divide. That halted expensive and potentially, for both sides, revelatory legal proceedings.

But the faltering agreement foundered when the PGA Tour valued LIV at just $500m as Donald Trump tried to broker a peace deal in the White House at the start of his second term as US president in early 2025.

The Saudis felt the valuation was derisory and walked out of the talks. By then, the PGA Tour was much more bullish.

It was turning itself into a for-profit company with its players qualifying for potentially lucrative equity. The tour also won backing from the powerful Strategic Sports Group, which ploughed in an initial $1.5bn investment.

But with profit now the primary motive and a need to hammer down costs, the move has not been without pain. The PGA Tour is cutting 4% of its workforce with 56 job losses.

Prize money has gone through the roof, though. The Cadillac Championship, starting on Thursday, is one of several $20m Signature Events,, external with $3.6m going to the winner.

Those are LIV numbers. Such has been the inflationary effect of what seemed a bottomless pit of money coming into professional golf.

More than 1,000 homes in Plymouth have been evacuated after an unexploded Second World War bomb was discovered at a building site.

Officials have confirmed the device, identified as a 250kg German SC250, will be detonated in situ.

The discovery in Flamborough Road, Southway, led to a 400-metre cordon, with military experts concluding the device cannot be safely moved.

“Royal Navy and Army unexploded ordnance specialists have now completed a rigorous and detailed assessment of the device,” a council spokesman said.

“They have advised that it is not possible to safely remove it.

“The only safe option is to make the device safe in situ, which will involve a controlled detonation.

“This is planned to take place on Friday, once all safety measures are fully in place.”

The council said specialists were building a “sand mitigation structure” to reduce the impact of the blast.

“You will not be able to see the detonation and people are asked to stay well away from the area,” the spokesman said.

“A no-fly zone is also in place – drones are not permitted.”

The 400-metre cordon remains in place and residents will not be able to return home until the device has been made safe.

Southway Youth and Community Centre has been opened for use by evacuated residents.

Since it opened more than 50 residents have been helped and 25 households placed in temporary accommodation.

Oakwood Primary School, Little Acorns Pre-School and Beechwood Primary School will remain closed on Friday.

Colonel Nick Handy, from 8 Engineer Brigade, said the condition of the fuses in the bomb made it impossible to move it safely.

“Unfortunately we cannot get a definitive X-ray of the second fuse and therefore it is not safe to move that item,” Col Handy said.

“We are going to blow it in situ.

“When I say blow it in situ, we are going to try our hardest to deflagrate that item and burn it inside of a structure which will limit the damage to the local surroundings.

“I am pretty confident that the mitigation that we put up will limit most of the damage, but we will look to do that at some point on Friday.”

Col Handy said the device contained 130kg of explosives “that is 80 years old and it’s dangerous”.

“When that thing goes bang for want of a better expression, there will be damage,” he said.

“We will limit that as much as possible to ensure that nobody suffers.

“The mitigation that we put in place should affect only small amounts of damage on the outer extremities of the area.”

There were more than 50 Luftwaffe air raids on Plymouth between 1941 and 1944, killing 1,174 civilians in the city.

The first bombs fell on the city on July 6 1940, with the heaviest period of bombing occurring in March and April 1941.

Two years ago a 500kg German Second World War bomb was found in a garden in the Keyham area of Plymouth.

It forced the evacuation of thousands of people and was detonated at se

The Trump administration has called on TV network ABC to “take a stand” after a joke from its late night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel offended the US president and first lady.

Two days before the White House Correpondents’ dinner on April 25, Kimmel broadcast what he said was a “roast” of the Trump administration. Roasts are typically quite savage comedic attacks which have become a traditional part of the dinner.

Trump, who was famously the target of jokes from former president, Barack Obama, at a dinner in 2011, had never attended the dinner while in office. This year he opted to attend, but the comedian’s spot was taken by what was described as a “mentalist”.

So Kimmel said he decided to supply the roast on his show as an “all-American” version of the Correspondents’ Dinner. In what he said was a joke about the 24-year age difference between the couple, he described Melania Trump as “having a glow like an expectant widow”. But after a would-be assassin tried to launch a murderous attack two days later at the dinner, the Trumps have demanded his sacking.

“Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behaviour at the expense of our community,” Melania Trump wrote in a post on X.

But it appears that ABC, a subsidiary of Disney, is instead standing by Kimmel, who has not been taken off air, in contrast to an episode in September 2025 when Kimmel was suspended after comments he made following the death of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, a close friend of the Trumps. After a public outcry, ABC relented and restored Kimmel’s show.

In response, Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has brought forward a review of ABC’s station licences, which were previously not scheduled until 2028 or later. Carr’s actions follow a press conference at the White House on April 26 at which press secretary Karoline Leavitt said coverage critical of Trump, including from his Democrat opponents, was responsible for the rise in political violence in the US by creating what she called a “leftwing cult of hatred”.

These examples highlight the politicisation of “free speech” by the Trump administration as a cudgel to silence disfavoured viewpoints under the guise protecting the public from harm.

First amendment protection for free speech

But these political debates are becoming increasingly distanced from the first amendment. That is, the interpretation of the first amendment by the Supreme Court and the protections it provides to individuals and entities, including media outlets and broadcast companies, from government interference. The wider this gulf becomes, the greater the space between the principles underlying the expansive protections afforded to speech in the US and the public’s understanding of the democratic principles that underpin these protections.

This is more important than ever in the Trump era. Actions taken by the administration to target broadcast networks and individuals for political speech are precisely what the first amendment protects against. It was designed, among other things, to protect individuals, entities and the press from government interference by creating an open marketplace in which ideas compete freely.

This is particularly true for dissenting political speech, which is the core of the first amendment. This explains why government interference with speech based on “the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker” – known as “viewpoint discrimination” – is expressly prohibited.

Additionally, whether and to what extent speech is offensive is irrelevant to the protection it enjoys. When it comes to the value of public debate, the first amendment is not neutral. Indeed, as a Supreme Court judgment, Baumgartner v. United States (1944) found: “One of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures.” Moreover a more recent judgment, Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell (1988), found that “robust political debate” is expressly encouraged, given that such debate “is bound to produce speech that is critical of those who hold public office”.

Importantly, the Supreme Court found in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) that such criticism, inevitably, will not always be reasoned or moderate and that public figures as well as public officials will be subjected to “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks”.

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New York Times v Sullivan: the 60-year old Supreme Court judgment that press freedom depends on in Trump era

The motive of the speaker is also irrelevant, as the Supreme Court held in Hustler v Falwell that while a “bad motive” may be deemed controlling for tort liability and in other areas of the law, “the first amendment prohibits such a result in the area of public debate about public figures”.

Stakes couldn’t be higher

By expressly linking Democrat criticisms of the president, and pointed critiques (however off-colour) from Kimmel and his fellow political satirists to an upsurge in political violence, the Trump administration is trying to silence criticism of its actions. But it’s also clear that this behaviour is precisely what the first amendment prohibits.

Ironically, the media often portrays these episodes as “feuds” between Trump and his critics.

But when viewed through the lens of the first amendment and its core values in this context, the stakes are much higher. These episodes constitute an effort to wrest control of public discourse by interfering in the marketplace of ideas in order silence those critical of the government.

And history tells us that a government that can silence its critics often does so in pursuit of unchecked power. Viewed through this lens, perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy is the government itself.

Stephen Law and Anthony Lee Dickons were trapped inside their car by a gang of armed men who allegedly carried out a brutal attack before fleeing when they heard police sirens.

Accused Daniel Simpson, 32, was one of four men caught on CCTV when the violent attack was launched in Orme Court in North Ormesby on November 6.

He told a trial at Teesside Crown Court he wanted nothing to do with the violence but accepted that he stayed at the scene while Anthony Dickons and Stephen Hall were attacked.

Mr Dickons died several days later from his injuries, having been slashed with a machete.

A jury heard how the four – Daniel Simpson, Domonic Hall, Morgan Caldwell and a 17-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons – who all deny murder, were driving around in a black Chevrolet containing machetes and a BB gun.

Mr Dickons was attacked in the passenger seat of his car moments after it had been rammed when the gang were hunting for his friend Mr Law after a drug deal went wrong, the court was told.

Jurors watched CCTV of four people jump out of their 4×4 and launch the brutal attack on Mr Dickons and his friend Stephen Law.

James Bourne-Arton KC, representing Simpson, took his client through what happened in the moments after the Chevrolet was rammed into the VW Passat and the violence erupted.

He said he wasn’t expecting there to be violence and was shocked about what happened.

The barrister asked: “What was going on at that point?”

Simpson replied: “I wanted no part of it. I came to the back of the car.”

He asked: “What could you see?” Simpson replied: “I saw Anthony Dickons laid on the back seat.”

When asked what happened next, he replied: “I saw Morgan Caldwell trying to hit the window in. I just saw what was going on and I didn’t want to be involved in it.”

Earlier in the trial, jurors heard Mr Dickons suffered a 15cm wound to his thigh and another 8cm wound to his buttock as he was repeatedly struck with a machete when he was trapped inside his car.

The 44-year-old died nine days later after suffering brain damage after his heart stopped beating.

Simpson, of Coledale Road in Berwick Hills, 24-year-old Domonic Hall of Greencroft Walk, 26-year-old Caldwell of Cannock Road, and the teenager, all of Middlesbrough, also deny a charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm against Stephen Law.

The trial continues.