Four other energy-related sites have been approved in the surrounding area

A new solar farm could be built next to a major Cambridgeshire A-road. AGR Renewables has submitted an EIA screening request to East Cambridgeshire District Council to build the solar development.

The farm is proposed on land south of the A10 Cambridge Road in Stretham. If approved, the solar panels will be installed for a temporary period of 40 years.

After this, the panels will be decommissioned and the land will return to agricultural use. The solar farm, which would be set over 43 hectares, is projected to export up to 100 megawatts of electricity.

Other solar farms and energy-producing sites in the surrounding area have been previously approved. This includes one on land south west of Stow Bridge Farm in Newmarket Road in 2012, another in Green End in 2014, followed by another two in 2016 and 2023.

The applicant said it was “clear” that the surrounding area has been subject to a “number of energy related planning applications”. As well as the panels, the plans also seek to add security fencing, CCTV, storage buildings, a battery energy storage system, access tracks and more.

Existing hedgerow and plants that are already on site are set to be retained in the proposals. The site falls mainly on flood zone 1 land, meaning it is unlikely to flood.

However, there are “very small areas” that are flood zones two and three. The applicants do not believe the site would produce any harmful emissions or noise pollution.

It’s not also expected to “generate significant waste during construction or operation”.

Paris Saint-Germain star Achraf Hakimi is expected to be available for the Champions League final against Arsenal.

The Morocco international has been sidelined with a thigh injury he suffered in the first leg of the semi-final showdown with Bayern Munich.

The right-back, who has regularly captained the side with Marquinhos’ minutes managed in the league, missed the second leg in Munich last week as Luis Enrique’s side turned in a masterclass performance away from home to reach a second consecutive final.

Hakimi was expected to miss the rest of the season with doubts even emerging over his partitcpation in this summer’s World Cup campaign.

But according to RMC Sport, the former Real Madrid and Inter Milan star is recovering well and is expected to ready for the final in Budapest on 30 May.

PSG are also likely to be boosted by the availability of goalkeeper Lucas Chevalier. An injury suffered in training last week also raised fears his season could be over but the report states he too hopes to be available for the showdown with the Gunners.

Chevalier was signed from Lille last summer to be the new no1 with Gianluigi Donnarumma leaving the French capital to join Manchester City.

Matvei Safaonov however has been starting ahead of hm since January, overtaking him in the pecking order.

Should Hakimi recover in time and avoid any more injury scares, PSG will have a fully fit squad to choose from when they meet Mikel Arteta’s side at the Puskas Arena.

Arsenal have concerns at right-back themselves over Jurrien Timber.

Timber has not played since mid-March, missing the last 11 games due to a groin problem. There has been no clear timeframe on when the Dutchman could return to action with Arteta confirming on Friday there is ‘no chance’ he will be involved against West Ham United on Sunday, today.

Rather more worryingly, he raised doubts about whether Timber would be seen again before the end of the season.

‘I don’t know, there is still a fair bit to do,’ he said. ‘Everything needs to be so smooth and quick.’

MORE: Arsenal told they can sign ‘perfect’ Kylian Mbappe on one condition this summer

MORE: Theo Walcott urges Arsenal star to reject England call-up for the World Cup

MORE: ‘Sensational’ – Mikel Arteta urged to start Arsenal duo against West Ham

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The US president is going after his fellow Republicans in Kentucky and Indiana.
Donald Trump is getting involved in key state primaries – often in cases where US presidents don’t intervene – urging voters to stay away and not vote for candidates who Trump regards as his political enemies. From Indiana to Kentucky, Louisiana and beyond, Anthony and Justin look at how Trump’s MAGA Republican party is targeting fellow Republicans and whether it’s succeeding.
Trump’s top target is the seven term Republican congressman in Kentucky, Thomas Massie who has stood up to Trump on issues including the Epstein files, congressional spending and the war in Iran. Massie now faces a challenge from a multi million dollar funded Trump backed candidate… we look at Massie’s chances, and what this race tells us more widely about what happens to Republicans who stand up to Trump.
We also look at Louisiana and Indiana, where Trump has recently wiped out state senators he regarded as disloyal.

HOSTS:
• Justin Webb, Radio 4 presenter
• Anthony Zurcher, North America Correspondent

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This episode was made by Purvee Pattni, Alix Pickles and Grace Reeve. The technical producers were Jack Graysmark and Stephen Bailey. The series producer is Purvee Pattni. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

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Known for “boshing” – a term the England forwards like to use for swatting aside defenders – Muir smiled when discussing the skill.

However, to “bosh” is what she reckons the correct terminology is.

“It is running into someone and boshing them, or tackling them and boshing them,” Muir says.

Quietly spoken and humble off the field, the former Wasps front row is a powerful athlete on it, who enjoys physical confrontation.

Given she is “too aggressive” for a return to cricket, what she does hope to do one day is have a pottery room at the back of her house, complete with a wheel and kiln – a type of oven used for hardening and drying pottery.

Leading from the front is also done on the team bus, with ‘Maud’s Tours’ now part of the team’s itinerary.

“It started last Six Nations in York. I am at the front of the bus as my little mate Lucy Packer gets travel sick,” she explained.

“I am always at the front and the mic is always there. I started with the tour of York and it has stuck since. I do forget every week that I am doing it.

“It is last minute, trying to get as many facts as I can. True or false. They could be false as Meg Jones likes to send me some stuff.”

The next destination is Parma – yet to be researched by Muir – where Italy host the world champions on Saturday.

England sit top of the Six Nations table with three bonus-point wins over Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The 84-7 victory over Scotland was an ideal way to celebrate Muir’s 50th cap, where her father wore a kilt and an England top – another picture for her scrapbook.

“It was such a special occasion. Being at Murrayfield in Scotland made it so special for my family, especially my dad,” Muir said.

“I have photograph evidence. He is in my scrapbook.

“He had the best of both worlds. He is 77% Scottish.”

Before Saturday’s game, which will likely set up a fifth straight Grand Slam decider against France, Muir is planning to head to a local pottery centre to make a bowl for ramen.

Bowling Italian defenders out of her way will likely follow.

The Hendon Grange Hotel in Grangetown, Sunderland, has been operated successfully by the current owners for 31 years, who now wish to sell due to retirement.

It is noted to have provided a fantastic service to the local community and residents of the surrounding area, with many people visiting the pub to watch the football on match days.

(Image: Sidney Phillips Northern)

A property listing notes that the pub has been run as a “lifestyle business,” but has significant potential for further development, where a new owner could expand its opening hours and add a food offering and/or letting rooms, subject to necessary planning permissions.

The Hendon Grange Hotel is currently closed and has no trading information available.

The building spans three floors and features a main bar area with bench seating, a pool table, darts, and a wood-panelled bar – there is also a smaller seating area with additional darts facilities.

(Image: Sidney Phillips Northern)

On the first floor, a function room with its own bar can hold about 120 people and is equipped with a stage, which has been used for weddings and other events in the past.

The basement contains a chilled beer cellar and dry storage.

Private accommodation is included at the rear of the building, spread across three floors.

It offers four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large living room, kitchen, and a private courtyard.

External features include an old stable block and storage area with conversion potential.

The property also includes a full premises licence and is connected to all mains services.

Its current rateable value is listed as £2,200 as of April 2026.

An electronic advertisement on the gable end of the property currently generates an additional £4,000 per year.

Prospective buyers are advised to conduct their own assessments regarding future trading potential and profitability.

“What is evident is that the apparent collapse of the Placenames Project was a slow-motion administrative failure, compounded by poor planning, departmental buck-passing and a worrying absence of long-term strategic thinking.”

Once again, this week a controversy erupted at Stormont, with Sinn Féin and the DUP retreating to opposite trenches, and accusations flying across the Assembly chamber and social media. But somewhere beneath the noise lies a far more mundane but arguably more troubling reality, which appears to be precisely what has happened with the collapse of funding for the Northern Ireland Placenames Project.

Over the past week, Sinn Féin accused Communities Minister Gordon Lyons and his department of allowing the project to die through neglect. The DUP, meanwhile, has sought to push responsibility back towards Sinn Féin ministers who oversaw the original transfer of the project from the Department of Finance to the Department for Communities in 2022.

Both sides can point to evidence which partially supports their case. But the documents and correspondence now in the public domain suggest this was not a story of one dramatic ministerial decision or ideological attack. Instead, what is evident is that the apparent collapse of the Placenames Project was a slow-motion administrative failure, compounded by poor planning, departmental buck-passing and a worrying absence of long-term strategic thinking.

READ MORE: Department for Communities officials warned £6m would be ‘wasted’ if additional funding wasn’t allocated for Placenames ProjectREAD MORE: ‘I never heard misogynistic language in PSNI’, says UUP leader Jon Burrows

Since 1987, the project has researched and catalogued the history and Irish-language versions of place names across Northern Ireland. Councils and public bodies relied upon it as the authoritative source for bilingual signage and translation services, and officials themselves acknowledged it was the sole authoritative database for Irish versions of street names in Northern Ireland.

Yet, despite that acknowledged importance, a remarkable paper trail shows departments drifting towards a cliff edge while seemingly hoping that someone else would intervene before the funding finally ran out.

The Department of Finance are of the view that when the project was transferred to Communities in 2022, Finance agreed to continue funding it for three years as part of a transition arrangement. Officials repeatedly stressed in emails that the expectation was for Communities to absorb future funding requirements into their own budget planning exercises.

The Department for Communities, however, appears not to have done so.

Instead, officials spent months warning internally that the project was politically sensitive, that its collapse would waste public money already invested, and that the database itself risked being lost if funding ceased. At various points, they requested emergency funding from the Department of Finance while reviews and business cases were still being developed.

The correspondence paints a picture not of a department confidently managing a transition, but of one scrambling belatedly for stopgap solutions after the clock had almost expired.

None of this absolves Sinn Féin ministers entirely, either. The ministerial meeting note from January 2022 revealed that then Communities Minister, Deirdre Hargey, explicitly stated that no budget was available within her department to fund the project at that time and that any transfer would require accompanying resources.

That should have been the moment when the project’s long-term sustainability was nailed down in black and white. Instead, what emerged was a three-year holding arrangement, which appears to have postponed rather than resolved the fundamental issue.

It is no secret that Stormont has become increasingly vulnerable to this kind of governance failure. Departments operate within rigid silos, responsibilities are shuffled around without clear accountability, and politically sensitive projects can survive for years on temporary arrangements rather than a secure strategic footing. When financial pressure tightens, those unresolved problems eventually surface.

The danger is that this may not be an isolated case. If a project with acknowledged political sensitivity, cross-departmental relevance and repeated official warnings could drift towards collapse because future funding was never properly embedded into departmental planning, it inevitably raises wider questions.

How many other programmes currently exist on similar transitional arrangements? How many other projects are quietly dependent on temporary funding assumptions or unresolved departmental responsibilities?

Northern Ireland’s institutions already struggle with public confidence. Voters frequently hear ministers announcing strategies, commitments and long-term ambitions. But the machinery underneath often appears remarkably fragile, dependent upon short-term fixes and bureaucratic improvisation rather than coherent planning.

That fragility becomes particularly dangerous when political crises already consume enormous amounts of ministerial attention and civil service capacity.

What makes the Placenames Project saga especially frustrating is that nobody involved appears unaware of the risks. Officials explicitly warned about the consequences. They warned about the political implications. They warned about the loss of information. They warned about wasted public investment. Yet the system still drifted towards failure.

The row that unfolded inevitably descended into another orange-and-green blame game because that is the gravitational pull of our politics. But the more important story is the one sitting underneath the theatrics.

This was a test of whether Stormont’s institutions are capable of basic long-term governance. On the evidence now available, the answer is not especially reassuring.

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Ormskirk Medieval Festival is taking place at Coronation Park today and tomorrow running from 11am to 4pm each day.

The free event promises a vivid journey into West Lancashire’s past, set more than 1,000 years ago.

A spokesman for Visit Lancashire said:”Ormskirk Medieval Festival returns and Coronation Park will transform into a historical hamlet.”

“Watch the live battle re-enactments and learn some medieval domestic skills, including open-fire cooking and textile crafts.”

“Experience the sights, smells, sounds and tastes of West Lancashire 900 years ago, as living history reenactors Historia Normannis take you on a journey back through time.”

Organised by West Lancashire Parks and Countryside Service in partnership with Historia Normannis, the festival will include live-action battle re-enactments, craft demonstrations, and trade stalls.

Visitors can explore the sounds, sights, and tastes of medieval life.

Historia Normannis, (Image: Henry Liswoski)

Modern family entertainment and food and drink stalls will also be on offer throughout the weekend.

Historia Normannis is a Bolton- based 12th-century living history group transports audiences straight back into the heart of the medieval world.