Tag: News Story

STORY

The King has approved the nomination of the Venerable Dr Alexander James Hughes as the next Suffragan Bishop of Brixworth in the Diocese of Peterborough.

Dr Hughes, who is currently Archdeacon of Cambridge in the Diocese of Ely, will take up the role following the retirement of the Right Reverend John Holbrook. The appointment was announced by Downing Street on 8 May 2026.

Dr Hughes was educated at Greyfriars Hall, Oxford and St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, before training for ministry at Westcott House, Cambridge. He served his title at Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry in the Diocese of Oxford and was ordained priest in 2001.

He became Chaplain to the Bishop of Portsmouth in 2003, before serving from 2008 as Priest in charge and then Vicar at St Luke and St Peter, Southsea. In 2014 he was appointed Archdeacon of Cambridge, the post he has held for more than a decade.

STORY

The Conservatives have lost control of Hampshire County Council, ending almost three decades of dominance at one of England’s largest local authorities. The result is a setback for the party in what had long been regarded as secure Conservative territory. Hampshire had been under Conservative control since the late 1990s, but early results from the 2026 local elections showed the party no longer able to command a majority.

All 78 seats on Hampshire County Council were up for election, with 40 required for an overall majority. Before the election the Conservatives were defending a commanding position, having won 56 seats at the previous county contest in 2021 and holding 49 seats immediately before polling day.

STORY

The UK has accused Russia of launching a direct assault on Europe’s post-war security order, warning that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has undermined the principles designed to prevent another major conflict on the continent.

Ankur Narayan, the UK’s Charge d’Affaires and Politico-Military Counsellor at the OSCE, made the comments in Vienna on 7 May 2026, ahead of VE Day commemorations. He said remembrance of the Second World War was not “an exercise in nostalgia”, but a test of whether Europe had learned the lessons of the conflict.

The UK said the European security framework built after 1945 was based on sovereignty, territorial integrity, peaceful settlement of disputes and respect for human rights. Narayan said Russia’s war against Ukraine had violated those principles and represented the deadliest conflict in Europe for generations.

STORY

Reform UK has won control of Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council, securing an early local election breakthroughs and taking the authority from the Conservatives.

The party won 27 of the council’s 44 seats, comfortably passing the 23 needed for a majority. The Conservatives finished with 15 seats, while Labour was reduced to just two. Before the election, the Conservatives held 26 seats, Labour had 17 and Reform UK had only one.

The result marks a dramatic change in control for the Staffordshire authority, which had been run by the Conservatives since December 2017. All 44 seats were contested across 21 wards, with the count held overnight at Keele University sports centre and turnout rose to 47.8%, up from 43.01% in 2022.

STORY

Labour has lost control of Westminster City Council to the Conservatives, but the party will point to a wider London picture in which it remains a dominant force across much of the capital. The Conservatives won 32 seats in Westminster, with Labour reduced to 22, giving them control of one of the country’s most high-profile local authorities.

The result is symbolically important because Labour only won Westminster for the first time in 2022, ending decades of Conservative control in the borough. Despite stronger performances elsewhere in the capital, the result will still be disappointing for Labour, given the political significance attached to its 2022 breakthrough in Westminster. At the time, the victory was seen as evidence that the Conservatives were losing ground even in areas once regarded as natural territory. The Conservative recovery there will therefore be used by the party as evidence that it can still compete strongly in parts of London.

STORY

Voters have chosen six directly elected mayors in England as part of a major set of local elections that also included contests for thousands of council seats, alongside elections to the Scottish Parliament and Senedd.

The mayoral contests were held in Croydon, Hackney, Lewisham, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Watford. Five of the six were in London, where every borough council seat was also up for election, making the results an important test of political strength in the capital. Watford also held a mayoral election alongside its borough council contests, with the results of the Mayoral elections being announced later today.

The candidates for election are:

Croydon

Rowenna Davis (Labour)
Ben Flook (Reform)
Ben Goldstone (TUSC)
Richard Howard (Lib Dem)
Jose Joseph (ND)
Jason Perry (Conservative)
Michael Pusey (TTIP)
Peter Underwood (Green)

Hackney

Vahid Almasi (Reform)
Zoe Garbett (Green)
Tareke Gregg (Conservative)
Eva Steinhardt (Lib Dem)
Caroline Woodley (Labour)

Lewisham

Jay Coward (TUSC)
Kayode Damali (Independent)
Amanda De Ryk (Labour)
Josh Matthews (Lib Dem)
Roger Mighton (Independent)
Pete Newman (Reform)
Liam Shrivastava (Green)
Sylbourne Sydial (Conservative)

Newham

Terri Bloore (Conservative)
Areeq Chowdhury (Green)
Clive Furness (Reform)
Forhad Hussain (Labour)
Kamran Malik (Communities)
Mehmood Mirza (Newham)
Bharath Swamy (CPA)
Laura Willoughby (Lib Dem)

Tower Hamlets

Zami Ali (THI)
John Bullard (Reform)
Abdul Hannan (Lib Dem)
Sirajul Islam (Labour)
Hirra Khan Adeogun (Green)
Terence McGrenera (Independent)
Dominic Nolan (Conservative)
Hugo Pierre (TUSC)
Lutfur Rahman (Aspire)

Watford

Ryan Bonar (Independent)
Mark Dixon (Reform)
Abdul Laskar (Conservative)
Jake Mitchell (Green)
Keith Morgan (Labour)
Ketankumar Pipaliya (Voice)
Peter Taylor (Lib Dem)

STORY

An unauthorised traveller site at Willows Green in Essex has prompted anger from residents and criticism of Uttlesford District Council, after construction work began on a four-acre rural field over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Reports said vehicles, diggers, lights and generators arrived at the site near Felsted shortly after council offices closed, with work then beginning to prepare the land for hardcore and a possible caravan site. Residents said the sudden development caused noise and disruption, while local concerns have focused on the reported removal of vegetation, the creation of a new access road and the possible impact on wildlife including protected great crested newts.

Sir James Cleverly, the Conservative MP for Braintree and Shadow Housing Secretary, accused those behind the development of “gaming the system” by carrying out work outside normal office hours. He said the case showed the need for faster action where unauthorised building work appears to be timed to exploit gaps in planning enforcement.

Uttlesford District Council had previously said it was aware of local concerns, but that planning enforcement is reactive and formal action can only be taken once a breach has occurred. After the work began, the council said officers were working “at pace” to assess activity on the site and gather evidence before considering enforcement options.

STORY

Pope Leo XIV has rejected Donald Trump’s false claim that he supports Iran having a nuclear weapon, in the latest public clash between the Vatican and an increasingly beleaguered US President.

Trump had claimed that the Pope thought it was “OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon” and accused him of “endangering a lot of Catholics” because of his criticism of the US-Israeli war with Iran. The claim was not supported by the Pope’s public remarks, which have focused on calls for peace, restraint and dialogue.

Speaking to journalists outside Castel Gandolfo, Pope Leo calmly restated the Catholic Church’s opposition to nuclear weapons and said his mission was to preach peace. He said violence must always be a last resort, making clear that opposition to war should not be misrepresented as support for nuclear proliferation.

The Vatican has also pushed back against Trump’s comments. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, described the US President’s attacks on the Pope as “strange” and said the Holy See remained committed to its long-standing position against nuclear arms.

STORY

The UK has called on Russia to stop threatening Ukraine’s capital and end attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, warning that such actions breach international humanitarian law and undermine the European security order built after the Second World War.

Ankur Narayan, the UK’s Politico-Military Counsellor at the OSCE, made the statement in Vienna on 6 May 2026. He said Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine had caused “horrific casualties” and represented a clear breach of OSCE principles, including the Helsinki Final Act.

The UK said Ukraine was exercising its right of self-defence under the UN Charter and repeated that Britain would continue to support Kyiv in line with international law. Narayan also backed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s latest call for a ceasefire, saying Russia must demonstrate a commitment to peace by agreeing to a ceasefire as a first step towards a full and lasting end to hostilities.

The statement strongly criticised Moscow’s threats to strike the heart of Kyiv and warnings to diplomatic missions to leave. Narayan said any deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure and civilian objects would be a serious violation of international humanitarian law.

STORY

NHS England has said public information about screening tests in pregnancy is helping women make informed choices, after an evaluation found that 81% of women felt well-informed throughout the non-invasive prenatal testing process.

The evaluation looked at how women understand NHS public-facing information about screening for Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Patau’s syndrome. Non-invasive prenatal testing, known as NIPT, was added to the NHS fetal anomaly screening programme in 2021 after a recommendation from the UK National Screening Committee.

Eligible pregnant women in England are offered screening tests to assess the chance of their baby having one of the three conditions. Those who receive a higher chance result from the combined or quadruple test can then be offered NIPT as a secondary screening test. NHS England said the introduction of NIPT gives women access to more accurate information about their pregnancy in a safer way than immediately proceeding to diagnostic tests such as chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis, which carry a small risk of miscarriage.

The evaluation, carried out with Thinks Insight & Strategy, used qualitative work and a quantitative survey with women from a range of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds across England. Participants included women who were more than 20 weeks pregnant, or who had been pregnant within the previous 12 months.

NHS England said women valued information that was balanced, detailed without being overwhelming and clear that screening was a choice. An animated resource was praised for being engaging, colourful and free of jargon, helping women understand complex medical information during pregnancy.

The review also found that midwives remain the most trusted source of screening information. However, it warned that women often receive information verbally at the same time as large amounts of other pregnancy advice, meaning some struggle to retain details and are left with unanswered questions.