The WASPI campaign has provided an update on next steps after the DWP rejected compensation for the second time, with legal teams reviewing whether to launch another judicial review challenge

The WASPI campaign (Women Against State Pension Inequality) has provided a fresh update on their fight for DWP compensation. The group suffered a significant blow recently when the DWP confirmed it would not be offering compensation.

This marked the second time the Labour Government has issued a statement on the matter. Ministers initially announced in December 2024 that no compensation would be forthcoming, but the WASPI campaign successfully secured a judicial review of that decision.

The campaigners were due to appear in court in December 2025, but ministers withdrew the decision at the last minute, stating they would reconsider it based on new evidence. Legal representatives for the DWP then agreed to an out-of-court settlement, paying out £120,000 to cover WASPI’s legal costs.

This raises questions about whether WASPI will mount another judicial review challenge against the latest decision. In an update, WASPI said: “Since our last update, WASPI’s legal team have undertaken a careful line by line scrutiny of the Government’s new decision and the barrister team has been fully briefed; we will meet with them in the coming days. We will update you on our next steps once we have received their advice.”

The WASPI campaign is amongst several organisations representing women born in the 1950s who were affected when the state pension age for women increased from 60 to 65 and later to 66, reports the Mirror.

Campaigners maintain the women weren’t properly informed about the changes, and the DWP should have communicated the alterations sooner.

An earlier investigation by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman found there was ‘maladministration’ by the DWP, as they ought to have sent letters to the affected women far earlier. The watchdog recommended compensation payments to the women ranging between £1,000 and £2,950.

Labour has accepted this finding of maladministration, but opted against providing financial compensation. In delivering the second decision, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden told MPs: “The evidence shows that the vast majority of 1950s-born women already knew the state pension age was increasing thanks to a wide range of public information, including through leaflets, education campaigns, information in GP surgeries, on TV, radio, cinema and online.

“To specifically compensate only those women who suffered injustice would require a scheme that could reliably verify the individual circumstances of millions of women.”

Grace Hardy, tax accountant at Hardy Accounting, highlighted several crucial takeaways from the WASPI situation. She said: “The overarching lesson is that the UK tax and benefits system is genuinely complex, changes frequently, and does not reliably notify those affected by changes.

“Treating your own financial position as something to actively and periodically review rather than something that will look after itself is probably the most valuable single habit anyone can develop.”

She urged individuals not to assume that current regulations will stay the same going forward. She said: “Pension ages, tax thresholds, allowances and benefit rules are all subject to change. Any plan that depends entirely on current rules holding indefinitely is fragile.”

This advice is particularly timely, as the state pension age will soon be rising again. The qualifying age currently sits at 66 for both men and women and will rise progressively from April 2026, reaching 67 by April 2028.

Ms Hardy pointed out some other financial matters worth keeping an eye on. She said: “Know what applies to you specifically. General media coverage tells you the average or headline rules.

“But your state pension age, your National Insurance record, your specific tax position, your pension entitlements these are individual. Use the Government Gateway to check your state pension forecast and National Insurance record.”

She also advised seeking independent financial guidance on significant decisions, including consolidating pensions, drawing down from defined benefit schemes, and inheritance planning. Ms Hardy stated: “These are areas where mistakes are costly and often irreversible.”

He was giving evidence in the trial of Stephen McCullagh who is denies murdering his pregnant girlfriend

A taxi driver in the Natalie McNally murder trial has told how he picked up a fare outside a Lurgan pub and dropped of in Lisburn the night she was killed.

He was giving evidence in the trial of Stephen McCullagh, 36, of Woodland Gardens, Lisburn, who is accused of murdering his pregnant girlfriend in December 2022.

She was 15 weeks pregnant when she was beaten, stabbed and strangled in her Silverwood Green home in Lurgan on the evening of Sunday, December 18, 2022. Stephen McCullagh denies murder.

During today’s trial at Belfast Crown Court the witness, a Fonacab driver, asked what he remembered about the evening of Sunday, December 18, 2022.

He recalled driving his grey Skoda Octavia along Carnegie Street and then parking up a fare outside Fa Joe’s public bar in Lurgan. Asked by Crown barrister Charles MacCreanor KC where his customer was, he replied: “I believe he came from standing by the entrance to the pub. He was alone. He got into the passenger seat. I didn’t recognise him as a regular customer.”

The fare was picked up at 10.46pm and the drop off time was at 11.13pm. The taxi driver said the only thing he recalled was that he was worried the fare would fall off the seat as he was a “big person.”

He remembered the customer had a bag with him and he put it down by his feet in the footwell. The witness said the customer asked him to take him to Lisburn and to use the Moira/Lisburn Road as the best route.

“He had said that his mother was unwell and the conversation was that everything had been left for him to sort out. He was sort of annoyed that he had to go to Lisburn to sort this out.”

He confirmed to the court that he didn’t know where the ‘end stop’ was for the fare and just followed the directions from his customer. The witness recalled making a couple of wrong turns on the journey.

He said the journey came to an end when the customer said to him that this was the address and he pulled up on the left side of the street beside a hedge and behind it was a small bungalow.

Asked to describe the hedge, the cabbie said: “I think I recall it being very high and I was unable to see the bungalow. The customer said he hoped the family had money to pay for this (fare). He left the car, went into the entrance and came back with the money.”

The driver said the passenger left his bag in the footwell and some customers do that as a sign that they were coming back with the money and then retrieve the bag.

“He came back after a couple of minutes. I would say no more than five minutes, probably.”

He recalled he was paid in cash, adding that normally a trip from Lurgan to Lisburn at that time would have been around £20. The witness said the customer retrieved his bag and went into the bungalow where he had pulled up and stopped his taxi.

Asked to describe his customer’s manner during the trip, he replied: “He was very polite but there were a couple of points when I made a wrong turn and the customer got a little anxious and irate and said: ‘You went the wrong way. It’s OK. A lot of people that make that mistake’.”

Under cross examination from defence counsel John Kearney KC, the witness confirmed he could not be accurate that the drop off time was 11.13pm.

Asked did he tell police that his customer spoke with a local Lurgan accent, the witness said what he was trying to say was that his fare did not speak with a foreign accent.

In a statement from a Foncab IT manager, he said the fare that was picked up outside Fa Joe’s had been dropped off at Woodland Gardens in Lisburn, according to the Skoda Octavia’s GPRS system.

The case resumes on Monday.

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Asteroids are some of the oldest objects in the Solar System: leftovers from the chaotic time when planets were assembling from dust and rock. They’re time capsules, preserving clues about what the early Solar System was like, and, ultimately, what the building blocks of planets are.

Knowing what an asteroid is made of also matters for very practical reasons. If an asteroid were ever on a collision course with Earth, its composition would affect how dangerous it is, how it breaks up in the atmosphere, and how we might successfully nudge it away. This area of research is called planetary defence.

Understanding the make-up of asteroids also matters for the future of exploration: some asteroids may contain metals, minerals, and even water – potentially useful resources. But how can we tell what asteroids are made of when most of them are millions of kilometres away?

Asteroid ‘fingerprints’

One of the most powerful techniques is spectroscopy, the science of splitting light into components and measuring what wavelengths are absorbed or reflected. Minerals interact with light in characteristic ways, leaving subtle dips and slopes in a spectrum. In effect, an asteroid’s surface leaves behind a chemical fingerprint in sunlight.

These fingerprints let us place asteroids into broad families. One of the most common groups near Earth is the S-complex, a class of relatively reflective asteroids often associated with silicate minerals such as olivine and pyroxene. For decades, researchers suspected that S-complex asteroids were linked to a particular category of meteorites that frequently fall to Earth: the ordinary chondrites.

A phenomenal example of how well this can work came from Japan’s sample-return mission Hayabusa, which visited the near-Earth asteroid (25143) Itokawa. Hayabusa reached the asteroid in September 2005. From its reflected light, Itokawa was inferred to be an S-complex asteroid, and spectroscopic comparisons suggested it should resemble ordinary chondrites, particularly the LL subgroup.

Hayabusa returned tiny grains of asteroid regolith to Earth, and laboratory analyses showed the mineralogy and mineral chemistry were identical to LL chondrites. In other words, the remote spectral prediction matched the physical reality of the samples.

Then Dart arrived — and raised the stakes. In September 2022, Nasa deliberately slammed a spacecraft into the small moonlet Dimorphos, which orbits the larger asteroid Didymos, in the Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission.

The goal wasn’t to destroy the asteroid; it was to test whether a kinetic impact could measurably change its orbit. Didymos has been observed extensively with spectroscopy and is classified as an S-complex and inferred to have a LL chondrite composition.

But is there a possibility we could we be misreading the make up of some space rocks? A 2026 paper argues that another meteorite group, brachinites, can show spectral properties that overlap with S-complex asteroids. One sample (NWA 14635) even shows spectroscopic band parameters similar to Didymos.

This is a big deal, because it means there may not be a neat one-to-one mapping between asteroid types and meteorite types. Asteroids are the left over building blocks of planets in our Solar System, often termed “space rocks”. Meteorites are space rocks that have survived the journey through a planet’s atmosphere, reaching the surface.

For planetary defence, this distinction matters. A chondritic “rubble pile”, composed of loosely bound rocks, and a more strongly processed, coherent igneous body (which would cover the brachinites) might respond differently when hit.

An ordinary chondrite-like surface might absorb energy like a “cosmic beanbag”, while a more magmatic surface might behave more like brittle rock. If we want to predict what happens when we try to deflect an asteroid, we need to know what its surface resembles.

This is exactly why the European Space Agency’s Hera mission is so exciting. Hera isn’t repeating Dart; it’s doing the follow-up crime scene investigation. Hera launched in October 2024 and is now on its way to the Didymos system, with arrival planned for late 2026. Once there, it will map both asteroids in detail.

Hera also comes with two small satellites known as cubesats: Juventas and Milani. Milani will help study the surface composition. This will give insights into not just what Dimorphos looks like from a distance, but what it’s made of, how it’s structured, and how it responded to Dart’s impact.

In the context of the new brachinite result, Hera’s role becomes even more important. If Didymos and Dimorphos turn out to be less “ordinary chondrite-like” than we assumed, or if their surfaces disguise a more complex origin, Hera is the mission that can test that assumption directly. It’s a reminder that asteroids still have the power to surprise us.

It can be worth looking around to find the cheapest garages

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The cheapest place in Cambridgeshire to fill up your car with petrol is at a Tesco garage in Huntingdonshire. According to the latest data supplied by retailers, a driver in an average family car could save up to £8 by filling up at this forecourt, compared to the most expensive petrol station.The Tesco garage at Neil Way, Huntingdonshire is charging motorists 128.9p per litre, which means it would cost £71 to fill up an average 55 litre tank. This is based on a feed of live petrol prices which was set up by the government’s Competition and Markets Authority last September. The average price for a litre of petrol across the Cambridgeshire region this week is 134.7p.

The most expensive filling station in Cambridgeshire is an ASDA station on Ness Road in Burwell. The cost of standard petrol at this station is 142.9p, meaning it would cost a total of £79 to fill up an average family car at this forecourt.

For the owners of diesel cars, the cheapest place to fill up is the Tesco garage on Hostmoor Avenue in March. The cost of a litre of standard diesel at this forecourt was 139.9p, according to prices supplied by retailers.

It comes as new figures suggest diesel prices have surged to a 16-month high since the start of the Middle East conflict. The RAC said the average price of a litre of the fuel at UK forecourts has gone up by 5p since Saturday to 147p. It has not been this expensive since mid-August 2024. Average petrol prices have risen by 3p per litre since Saturday to 136p.

Disruption to tanker traffic in the Middle East has sparked a rise in oil prices, which have a significant effect on wholesale fuel prices. The price of Brent crude oil has risen by about 21 percent over the past week, exceeding 88 US dollars (£66) a barrel on Friday.

RAC head of policy Simon Williams said: “While wholesale costs for any retailer buying in new stock will have gone up, it normally takes two weeks for price changes to work their way through to the forecourt. Brent crude jumped to 85 US dollars (£64) on Thursday, something we haven’t seen since July 2024.

“If the price of a barrel stays at this level, or increases, then further forecourt rises will be inevitable. While the rate of increase has been fast, we’re fortunately a long way from the record prices of 2022 when the average price of petrol hit 191.5p and diesel 199p.”

The common breakfast drink may be able to help you live longer

A popular morning beverage may offer more than just a caffeine hit. Cardiologist José Abellán explained in his latest video that having the drink regularly could help people “live longer and have fewer cardiovascular diseases”.

José Abellán said according to La Vanguardia: “People who drink up to five cups of coffee a day have a lower risk of suffering a cardiovascular event”. The expert explained, according to AS: “Coffee provides bioactive compounds such as chlorogenic acids, which are a group of antioxidant compounds that have various health benefits, diterpenes, triogoneline, phenolic acids, melanoidins, and minerals like magnesium and potassium.”

Altogether, these compounds are what make us feel alert, concentrated and energised after a cup of coffee. Abellán recommended sticking to around four cups of coffee per day as a “safe threshold” for most people, with evidence suggesting this amount could protect your heart and extend your life.

He also highlighted evidence that suggests filtered coffee may be the best for reducing cardiovascular risk, as it can eliminate compounds linked to an increase in cholesterol.

The cardiologist continued: “Those who drink it regularly live longer and have fewer cardiovascular diseases. Current data suggest that it can be part of a perfectly healthy lifestyle as long as it is consumed in moderation and individual caffeine intolerance and health conditions are taken into account.”

Coffee does cause a temporary increase in blood pressure and heart rate, which can trigger consequences, but the expert urged people to simply not consume it if they’re experiencing side effects like heart palpitations.

A number of recent studies have highlighted the potential underlying health benefits of coffee. A study in November found that people may be able to slow their biological ageing if they drink a maximum of four cups of coffee each day. It found that people with a severe mental illness may particularly benefit and could get an extra five biological years.

A different study last September in the British Journal of Nutrition also found that combining daily coffee intake with a mix of tea and water, too, could lower your risk of death from all causes.

The researchers recommended having coffee and tea daily in a ratio of 2:3 cups, and topping up with water to have a total of seven to eight cups a day. Once people reached nine or more cups a day, this was linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular mortality.

However, these scientists urged people to focus on just getting enough fluids to start with, around seven to eight drinks a day. Most adults aren’t getting the amount of fluids they need.

Once you are regularly having enough fluids, the researchers then recommended switching out plain water for a mix of coffee and tea. The scientists did admit their research had some limitations, namely that the study cannot prove that having these drinks caused this reduced risk in mortality, but only that it has an observational link.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia has provided Iran with information that could help Tehran strike American warships, aircraft and other assets in the region, according to two officials familiar with U.S. intelligence on the matter.

The people, who were not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity, cautioned that the U.S. intelligence has not uncovered that Russia is directing Iran on what to do with the information.

Still, it’s the first indication that Moscow has sought to get involved in the war that the U.S. and Israel launched on Iran a week ago. Russia is in the rare club of countries that maintains friendly relations with Tehran, which has faced years of isolation over its nuclear program and its support of proxy groups that have wreaked havoc in the Middle East, including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.

The White House downplayed reports that Russia was sharing intelligence with Iran about U.S. targets in the region. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday told reporters that “it clearly is not making any difference with respect to the military operations in Iran because we are completely decimating them.”

Leavitt declined to say if Trump had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the reported intelligence sharing or whether he believed Russia should face repercussions, saying she would let the president speak to that himself.

Asked whether Russia would go beyond political support and offer military assistance to Iran, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there has been no such request from Tehran.

“We are in dialogue with the Iranian side, with representatives of the Iranian leadership, and will certainly continue this dialogue,” he said Friday.

Pushed on whether Moscow has provided any military or intelligence assistance to Tehran since the Iran war’s start, he refrained from comment.

Russia has tightened its relationship with Iran as it looked for badly needed missiles and drones to utilize in its four-year war Ukraine.

The Biden administration declassified intelligence findings that showed Iran supplies Moscow with attack drones and has assisted the Kremlin with building a drone-manufacturing factory.

The former U.S. administration also accused Iran of transferring short-range ballistic missiles to Russia for its war in Ukraine.

Details about the U.S. intelligence were first reported by the Washington Post.

Asked whether the revelation had shaken Trump’s faith in Putin’s ability to cut any peace deal in the Russia-Ukraine war, Leavitt said, “I think the president would say that peace is still an achievable objective with respect to the Russia-Ukraine war.”

___

Associated Press writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.

All pharmacies and patients who use the widely prescribed medication have been told to urgently check the packaging

Pharmacies and patients using a commonly prescribed high blood pressure medication are being advised to urgently check the packaging. Crescent Pharma Limited is recalling one batch of Ramipril 5mg Capsules as a precaution due to a potential manufacturing error that may have resulted in two different blood pressure medicines being incorrectly packaged.

The recall was initiated after a pharmacy lodged a complaint when a patient reported that a pack labelled Ramipril 5mg Capsules (batch number GR164099) contained blister strips of Amlodipine 5mg Tablets inside the sealed box. Both medications are produced by the same company at the same facility, and it’s believed the error likely occurred during the packaging process.

Patients who use Ramipril are advised to inspect the packaging for the batch number GR164099 and return any packs with blister strips labelled “Amlodipine” to their pharmacist. According to a statement on Gov.uk, the likelihood of patients inadvertently receiving one common blood pressure medicine instead of another is low, the Mirror reports.

The most frequent side effect could be dizziness due to low blood pressure. The NHS states that Ramipril is a widely used medication for treating high blood pressure (hypertension) and heart failure, and is also prescribed following a heart attack.

Ramipril aids in preventing future strokes, heart attacks, and kidney problems, and improves survival rates if taken for heart failure or post-heart attack. Shareen Doak, Deputy Director, Benefit-Risk Evaluation, at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has issued a statement.

It reads: “If you take Ramipril, check the packaging for batch number GR164099. The batch number and expiry date information can be found on the outer carton. If you have received this batch, check that the medication name on the carton matches the blister strips inside.

“If the carton contains blister strips that are labelled as Amlodipine 5mg tablets, contact your dispensing pharmacy.

“If the carton contains blister strips that are correctly labelled as Ramipril 5mg Capsules, you do not need to take further action.

“If you have an affected pack and think you may have taken the Amlodipine 5mg Tablets that were supplied in error, and you are currently experiencing any side effects, then please seek immediate medical advice.

“Please take the leaflet that came with your medicine and any remaining tablets with you to your pharmacy or GP practice.

“If you’ve already taken Amlodipine, please be reassured that there is a very low risk to your health. Both medications are used to treat high blood pressure.

“However because your body may not be used to a different type of medicine, your blood pressure may become lower than normal, and you may experience dizziness because of taking amlodipine.

“Any suspected adverse reactions should also be reported via the MHRA Yellow Card scheme.”

The MHRA has instructed pharmacy and healthcare professionals to send back all remaining stock to their suppliers.

The regulator oversees all medicines and medical devices in the UK, ensuring they meet standards for effectiveness and acceptable safety.

The zoo was home to three Barbary lions- a species extinct in the wild – consisting of one male named Qays and the two females Thheiba and Fidda

Belfast Zoo has said a deeply sad farewell today to two of its most loved and rarest animals – Barbary lion sisters Thheiba and Fidda.

The 22-year-old siblings were put to sleep due to failing health and their inseparable nature. With the average lion living to just 14 the two were an essential lifeline to the survival of their sub species through international breeding programmes.

The last wild Barbary lion was shot in Morocco in 1942 and now they only live on in zoos and private collections. It’s thought there are just 200 Barbary lions left in the world. The zoo was home to three animals – consisting of one male named Qays and the two females.

A firm favourite at the zoo on the slopes of Cave Hill in North Belfast, where their roars often echoed out to the delight of children of all ages, the lion Thheiba started to experience weight loss and mobility issues and the call was make to euthanise her. As a result and to avoid highly stressing and compromising the welfare of Fidda, she too was put to sleep peacefully.

A statement from Belfast Zoo said: “We’re sad to share the news that our two remaining Barbary lionesses at Belfast Zoo, Thheiba and Fidda, have passed peacefully. Both were 22 years old – much older than the average life expectancy for lions, either in the wild or in captivity.

“During their lives, the sisters received exceptional care and became key contributors to conservation as part of the EAZA Ex-Situ Programme, producing multiple offspring and helping secure the future of Barbary lions, a lion sub-species now extinct in the wild.

“In recent weeks, Thheiba experienced mobility issues and weight loss. We took the decision to euthanise her and end her suffering after a veterinary assessment. Lions are highly social pride animals that rely on companionship within a group.

“Thheiba and Fidda had lived together their entire lives and shared a very strong bond. On veterinary advice, and to avoid significant stress and welfare challenges if left alone, Fidda was also euthanised.

“Belfast Zoo has had an association with lions for many decades, with Barbary lions first arriving at the Zoo in the 1960s. Thheiba and Fidda’s longevity, their strong bond and their vital role in conservation is testament to our long-standing commitment to the care and conservation of this iconic species.

“Both lionesses will be fondly remembered by the staff who cared for them and the thousands of visitors who loved them.”

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Somewhere in the North Atlantic, more than a kilometre beneath its surface, a cold-water coral reef stretches across an unnamed seamount. Despite never appearing on a chart, this underwater forest has existed for centuries, growing a centimetre or two each year.

The reef is a home and feeding ground for dozens of species that depend on it the way a woodland creature depends on trees. It has survived ice ages – but whether it will survive increasing pressures from industrial fishing, deep-sea mining and climate change is, in part, a question about data. If we don’t know it exists, how can we protect it?

A new project called Deep Vision could fundamentally transform our understanding of the deep ocean by digging into pictures and videos sat largely unexamined in research archives around the world. By using AI, thousands of hours of seafloor footage can be analysed to produce the first comprehensive maps of vulnerable marine ecosystems across the entire Atlantic basin.

Over the past two decades, robotic and autonomous underwater vehicles have collected vast quantities of footage from the deep sea. This represents an extraordinary resource – a record of ecosystems that most humans will never see.

The difficulty is that less than half of this imagery has ever been analysed. A single dive can take a trained human analyst two months to process. Multiply that by thousands of dives and you begin to appreciate why this treasure trove of information has remained largely locked away.

The solution, I am convinced, is artificial intelligence.

In research published in 2022, my colleagues and I showed that AI could be trained to successfully analyse over 58,000 deep-sea images in under ten days. The AI model helped us map the distribution of a fragile xenophyophore – a giant single-celled organism that is a recognised indicator of vulnerable marine ecosystems – at a depth of 1,200 metres in the north-east Atlantic. What would have taken a human analyst many months was accomplished in days.

AI also provides consistency. Human analysts, however expert, do not always agree with one another. Indeed, they do not always agree with themselves: a researcher identifying marine species may classify specimens differently at different times. A machine makes errors but it makes them consistently, which means these errors can be identified, corrected and accounted for.

Forests of the deep

Deep Vision is focusing specifically on what we call vulnerable marine ecosystem indicator taxa, such as deep-sea corals and sponges.

These are the organisms I think of as the forests of the deep. In an environment where there are no plants to provide habitats, these animals fulfil this role. They are keystone organisms in the most literal sense: remove them and the ecosystem collapses.

Once AI has extracted biodiversity observations from the imagery, the next stage is to build habitat-suitability models – predictive maps that extend our understanding beyond the specific locations where cameras have surveyed.

Our research shows that high-resolution habitat suitability models are a useful tool in spatial management, capable of informing decisions about where marine-protected areas should be located. However, the quality of the underlying seafloor data remains critical to how well they perform.

As a marine biologist, I sometimes get asked why people should care about a sponge living two kilometres beneath the surface of the Atlantic. It is a fair question, and the answer is more immediate than most people expect. These animals recycle essential nutrients and play a key role in the carbon cycle, and that effects us all.

The ocean is the engine room of a planetary life-support system, and effective management of it relies on having the best possible understanding of the species and ecosystems within it.

If this project succeeds in the Atlantic, the methods could be replicated in other ocean basins. The Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean all present the same challenges of insufficient data and vast unexplored territory.