Celebrity Big Brother 2025 winner crowned after dramatic final
Coronation Street actor Jack P Shepherd has been crowned as the winner of Celebrity Big Brother 2025 after a dramatic final on Friday (25 April).
The star was named as the winner of the ITV reality show with pop star JoJo Siwa surprisingly finishing third on the evening. Drag queen Danny Beard finished second overall.
Elsewhere, comedian Donna Preston, singer Chesney Hawkes and TV presenter Chris Hughes finished fourth, fifth and sixth respectively.
Walking away victorious, Jack becomes the reigning champion, joining ITV’s cohort of winners including fellow Celebrity Big Brother winner David Potts, and Big Brother winners Jordan Sangha and Ali Bromley.
On Tuesday (22 April) ,three housemates, presenter Angellica Bell, The Only Way Is Essex star Ella Rae Wise, and EastEnders actor Patsy Palmer, were evicted from the competition, leaving just six contestants in with a chance of scooping the crown.
Singer Chesney Hawkes, comedian Donna Preston, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star Danny Beard and Coronation Street’s Jack P Shepherd all survived the eviction, alongside former Love Island contestant Chris Hughes and Dance Moms star JoJo Siwa – who have raised eyebrows with their tactile relationship in recent weeks.
Bell, Wise, and Palmer follow in the footsteps of Trisha Goddard, Daley Thompson and politician Michael Fabricant, who was the first of the housemates to be evicted. The Wrestler actor Mickey Rourke was next removed after a chaotic six-day stint in the house.
Rourke, 72, had been at the centre of controversy since his entrance when he “ogled” presenter AJ Odudu. He later faced calls to be ejected from the house after making homophobic comments to Siwa.
He was ultimately thrown off the show by producers for “inappropriate sexual language” aimed at Wise, 24, as well as “threatening and aggressive” behaviour towards Hughes, 32.
Rourke grew irate when Hughes, in character as a pirate for a shopping task, “eyeballed” him. Rourke later apologised to the former Love Island star, and told Big Brother he was “ashamed” of his actions. According to evicted housemate Fabricant, however, the worst of what Rourke said was not even broadcast.
Celebrity Big Brother launched earlier this month with a reach of 4.2 million (average of 2.7 million). The Big Brother brand has now surpassed a colossal 100 million streams on ITV, with the new series generating over 20 million streams so far on ITVX (an increase on the first series).
Applications for the next series of Big Brother are open. Hopefuls looking to embark on the ultimate social experiment can apply to be a part of the next series of Big Brother set to air in 2025.
UK scientists are about to attempt to dim the Sun
British scientists could experiment with techniques to block sunlight as part of a £50 million government funded scheme to combat global warming.
The geo-engineering project is set to be given the go-ahead within weeks and could see scientists explore techniques including launching clouds of reflective particles into the atmosphere or using seawater sprays to make clouds brighter.
Another method involves thinning natural cirrus clouds, which act as heat-trapping blankets.
If successful, less sunlight will reach the earth’s surface and in turn temporarily cool the surface of earth.
It’s thought to be a relatively cheap way to cool the planet, but critics have warned it could cause catastrophic disruption to weather patterns and even shift rain from areas that are vital for food production.
Other scientists say geo-engineering could reduce the drive to stop burning fossil fuels, which is the root cause of climate change.
The project will be funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, known as ARIA.
The government has set aside £50 million for the controversial experiment, but in total it has been given £800 million of taxpayers’ money to use over the next four years.
Professor Mark Symes, the programme director for ARIA, who is heading the geo-engineering project, said: “Decarbonisation is vital, but our current progress puts us at risk of triggering a large number of temperature-induced climate tipping points.
“This programme will explore critical unanswered questions as to how (or whether) we might cool the Earth safely and responsibly on the timescales required to avoid climate catastrophe.”
In a document published by ARIA last year he gave examples of such tipping points including the melting of the Artic winter sea ice, loss of the Amazon rainforest and consequent ecosystem loss, and collapse of the major land-based ice sheets, leading to significant global sea level rises.
He explained that although the solution is to cease the burning of fossil fuels and eliminate excess greenhouses gases, this may not happen fast enough to prevent the onset of these tipping points.
Instead, he hopes this project will help us “buy time to decarbonise”.
Professor Symes said the project would not use toxic substances and that an environmental impact assessment would be published before any outdoor experiments and that communities in the area would be consulted.
Further details of the projects are expected to be published in the following weeks.
BlackRock’s billions show it’s not all gloom for UK business
The mood around UK business has ranged from cautious to desperate in the past few months as the economy battles inflation, tax grabs, rising labour costs and the prospects of US tariffs.
Add in constant political pressures giving a bleak outlook and the stock market plummeting in early April on the back of those tariffs, and UK plc could be forgiven for thinking 2025 might become a year to forget.
But perhaps all is not as bad as it was beginning to appear, with some important signs giving relief and optimism to some businesses who got a share price backing boost thanks to the world’s biggest investor, BlackRock, building stakes in multiple companies.
And the most imminent boost will be a cut to interest rates.
The Bank of England meets on 8 May and a 0.25 per cent cut appears all but guaranteed at this stage. And back-to-back rates cuts are entirely possible, bringing the Bank Rate down to 4 per cent by summer.
It would be the first time since March 2023 that the interest rate returns to that level, easing costs for business owners with debt and perhaps allowing more consideration to investment on projects and other spending which could spark opportunities for the growth the economy desperately needs.
Some businesses already look well-positioned to capture that growth, believes Larry Fink, chief executive at BlackRock.
“[The company has] allocated more capital back to the UK tactically now with the belief that in the short run, the new administration is trying to tackle some of the hard issues,” Mr Fink toldThe Times. “I think the prime minister is articulating the needs of what we have to do. I have more confidence in the UK economy today than I did a year ago.”
Pointing to some of the financial institutions that had seen their share price hammered this year as the FTSE 100 dropped along with other major stock markets, Mr Fink explained how BlackRock had taken stakes in different sectors in the belief the selloff was overdone.
“So many of the UK stocks discounts were too deep, especially like in the banking system. Look at the rebound in the valuations of NatWest and Lloyds and how they bounced. We added to our positions across the board with the idea that we believe the market was discounting too much negativity. And we believe the negativity was probably not warranted,” he said.
Having seen a significant drop from 3 April onwards, the FTSE 100 – the biggest firms on the London Stock Exchange – have bounced back somewhat and now remain up more than two per cent since the start of 2025, even if they have collectively not reached March’s high points.
Interest rate drops – while affecting households in terms of mortgages, savings accounts and so on – also impact investing. That is in part due to lower guaranteed returns from cash or like-cash holdings, meaning more risk may be taken on in the form of stock market equities. Rising share prices help improve investor and business confidence, while consumers may then benefit from having more money in their own pockets if rate drops mean they pay less on mortgages and other debt.
There are further positives in other sectors.
Retail sales rose almost half a percent in the UK during March, and that came ahead of April when the rise to minimum wage kicked in meaning more money in some workers’ pockets.
Jacqui Baker, head of retail at RSM UK, said: “Glimpses of warmer weather and improving consumer confidence meant retail sales continued its upward trend in March. Sales volumes rose for the third consecutive month, reaching their highest level since July 2022. The first quarter of 2025 suggests consumer spending is slowly starting to return, which should provide some reason for optimism in the retail sector.”
Then there’s analysis from Barclays, showing both wage growth easing and contraction in employment. Both of these factors will further ease pressure on the Bank of England when it comes to deciding rates cuts.
Small wins they might seem, and with little impact of individuals, but as we so often see in businesses, it’s those small wins adding up continuously which lead to the potential to outperform.
Awful April might just be closing with reason to face May and beyond with a more careful measure of optimism.
Eubank Jr hit with massive fine for missing weight ahead of Benn bout
Chris Eubank Jr has been hit with a £375,000 fine after missing weight for Saturday’s fight with Conor Benn.
On Friday morning, Benn tipped the scales at 156.4lb, comfortably under the 160lb limit, while Eubank Jr was nowhere to be seen in the following hour.
And when he finally took to the scales, he came in at 160.2lb, before a second effort of 160.05lb. While it was a minuscule miss, Eubank Jr will have to pay £375,000 per his contract.
If the 35-year-old exceeds Saturday morning’s final limit of 170lb, he will be struck with a “further penalty”, according to event organisers The Ring.
In the build-up to Saturday’s main event at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Eubank Jr had teased that he might intentionally miss weight and accept a fine – to put his body through less stress, and to give himself an advantage on fight night. However, the miss was so minor that it surely cannot have been intentional.
With Saturday’s fight in London taking place at middleweight, Benn is venturing two divisions above his usual fighting weight of 147lb. He reacted to Eubank Jr’s weight miss in a video on social media, laughing and saying: “Show me the motherf****** money.”
Later, on social media, Eubank Jr wrote, “Pain is temporary, glory is forever,” before Benn hit back: “Christopher who are you trying to fool and get sympathy from, I’m coming UP to your weight, a weight you’ve made your last 3 fights and most of your career! It’s like you’re looking for excuses already? First time you’ve ever missed weight and first time you’ve ever posted a weight cut.”
At the evening’s ceremonial press conference, Benn added, “He should’ve made weight, he’s made this weight his whole career. He’s expecting sympathy but he’s not going to get sympathy from me,” while Eubank Jr had little to say on the matter.
When the pair fight this weekend, the bout will play out two-and-a-half years after they were first due to clash, and more than 30 years after their fathers last fought each other.
In 1990, Eubank Sr stopped Nigel Benn, before the British rivals fought to a draw in 1993. In late 2022, Eubank Jr vs Benn was booked as a unique extension of their fathers’ rivalry, but the contest collapsed on short notice upon the revelation that Benn had returned two adverse drug-test results.
He was then suspended from boxing in Britain until late 2024, though he did compete twice in the US in the meantime. In 2023, the WBC suggested that Benn’s adverse results could have been caused by excessive consumption of eggs. In reference to that suggestion, Eubank Jr slapped Benn in the face with an egg in February – and received a £100,000 fine for doing so.
How online schools can help children form friendships as they learn
When thinking about the best education for your child, it’s naturally not just academic success that comes to mind. A good quality school experience is made up of many parts and one key element is the socialising opportunities that school can provide. Socialisation is crucial for building social skills, growing emotional intelligence and helping children form their own individual identity, as well as giving them an additional incentive to attend a place where they have fun and feel part of a community.
While it might be assumed that the social options are reduced when children attend online school, this is not the case. In fact, there are a number of advantages in terms of the structures, support and diverse social opportunities offered to children who join online schools.
Online schools give students the opportunity to form connections with a much more diverse community of students. The online model allows schools to welcome young people from around the world and this gives pupils a chance to make friends with students from differing backgrounds and cultures. Furthermore, this means they can meet more like-minded individuals and form stronger bonds and more meaningful friendships. This access to such a big and vibrant community also ensures that students can really find ‘their people’ and avoids situations where students are stuck in small circles or forced to engage with classmates that don’t share the same interests or passions.
This is something that Grace, who is now in year 13, has experienced since moving to online school. At her previous school, she was struggling with socialisation and felt that she didn’t really have a self-identity. At an online school, she has found she can be more herself. “A lot of people think that online school is about being alone, but I’ve found that without the physical element, I can express myself better,” Grace explains. Subsequently, the majority of her closest friends are from her online school and many she has met offline too. “I feel like I’ve met my people,” she says.
Isabella, who is in year 10, has also found that her experience of socialising at an online school has suited her much more than previous bricks and mortar schools. With her father’s job meaning the family moves country every three years, she has always previously struggled forming new friendships at the schools she joins. “I’m always the ‘new’ student, and it’s tough,” she says. After experiences with bullying, she found that online school is an environment she can thrive in. “You don’t have to turn on your camera or use your microphones if you’re not feeling comfortable. I’m not really a ‘social’ person, but I have made some friends here because we have these breakout rooms where we can talk to each other,” she adds.
While young people might not be meeting their fellow students physically every day, online schools put in place extensive measures to ensure that socialising is available for those who want to. This can be seen clearly at King’s InterHigh, the UK’s leading global online school which welcomes children aged 7 to 19 from across the world. Here, students join a warm and welcoming community with a huge range of opportunities for socialising. There’s dozens of clubs and societies for students across all year groups, representing a vast range of interests from chess to technology, sculpture to debate. Throughout the yearly student calendar, there are a number of events, showcases, and competitions of all kinds that provide a chance to socialise in different settings. Some happen internally, like the King’s InterHigh Arts Festival, while others allow students to interact with peers from outside their school when attending events like the International Robotics Competition.
Assemblies bring students together on a weekly basis and give them the chance to celebrate each other’s achievements, hear from their Student Council representatives, and find out what’s coming up at school. Each student is also assigned to one of the school’s eight houses and these smaller, tight-knit communities bring students a sense of belonging and camaraderie. Additionally, inter-house competitions are a fun and friendly way for students to engage and bond.
Although much socialising can come as a result of activities organised by the school, students at King’s InterHigh who are aged over 13 can continue building these relationships in a more informal setting thanks to the in-house, monitored, social media platform. Restricted solely to school students, the platform is safe, secure, and monitored to ensure a positive socialising environment for all those who choose to use it.
Online schools don’t just offer opportunities to socialise online but also offer ample opportunities to cement these connections in offline settings. At King’s InterHigh, there are global meet-ups throughout the year which bring together families allowing both children and parents and guardians to connect in real life. Regular educational school trips, from Geography excursions to science practical exams at other Inspired schools (the group of premium schools of which King’s InterHigh is part of) also allow children to socialise and have fun together in different settings.
Meanwhile, the annual summer camps, themed around a variety of interests and passions, including adventure sports, fashion, football, and tennis, are open to students across all Inspired schools and are held at spectacular Inspired campuses worldwide. Furthermore, the Inspired Global Exchange Programme offers a range of school exchange opportunities, lasting from one week to a full academic year.
Choosing where to educate your children is a big decision for any parent or guardian that involves many factors. However, when it comes to the social benefits, for the right child, online schools offer something truly transformative. To find out more about King’s InterHigh and whether it might be the right learning choice for your family, visit King’s InterHigh
Cuts to food aid put more than 3 million people at risk in Ethiopia
Food aid for Ethiopia is set to be cut in half in 2025 compared to just last year, with more than 3 million currently facing the loss of life-saving food assistance, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).
“This is not normal. We have not faced such a drop in our funding in a long time,” WFP Ethiopia spokesperson Claire Nevill told The Independent.
According to Nevill, WFP’s operations in Ethiopia have around thirty key donors, including USAID, who have – unlike in other areas – exempted Ethiopia from its programme of cuts. But aid cuts from other donors mean that Ethiopia is facing a funding gap of $222 million over the next six months.
Unless that new financing is urgently found nutrition support for the 3.6 million people that WFP currently supports in Ethiopia is under threat, said Nevill.
Earlier this week, WFP Ethiopia had announced the suspension of malnutrition treatments for 650,000 malnourished women and children due to funding problems. These treatments are a form of nutritional medicine – in the form of peanut paste or corn-soy porridge – that help bring malnourished people back to health over the course of weeks.
Speaking to The Independent, Nevill said that WFP has managed to source commodities to treat malnutrition, which should be on their way to Ethiopia from Djibouti in the coming days. These should be able to protect WFP’s malnutrition programmes “probably until the summer”, said Nevill.
But those treatments represent only a fraction of WFP’s operations in a country where 10.2 million people are coping with food insecurity. Other programmes include the provision of daily school meals to about 470,000 children, and the delivery of food assistance to populations totalling more than three million people over the first quarter of 2025.
The squeeze in funding means that ration cuts in food assistance are already the norm, with severely food-insecure Ethiopians receiving 80 per cent rations, and refugees receiving 60 per cent rations.
“Those are cuts to food levels already deemed the minimum possible food assistance for people,” said Nevill.
But even those food supplies look set to dry up if new support is not urgently found. “It looks like by June we might not be able to support the influx of refugees coming into the country,” said Nevill. “We are really badly in the red, and it looks like we won’t be able to maintain our current response.”
WFP is not the only organisation in the country feeling the squeeze, with Oxfam country director in Ethiopia, Yodit Zenebe Mekuria, telling The Independent that their programmes are also feeling the squeeze.
“People living through unthinkable circumstances have now been deprived of lifesaving food, water, medical and hygiene support,” said Mekuria. “As programmes are forced to halt and scale back, their suffering will grow exponentially as needs rise.”
Recipients of WFP nutrition support in Ethiopia include 22-year-old Segen and her 14-month-old daughter Kisauet, from Tigray. A subsistence farmer with no formal occupation, Segen described to WFP on a recent fact-finding mission how insufficient food during her pregnancy and subsequent low levels of breast milk had left Kisauet malnourished.
“There was wasn’t enough food while she was inside my womb,” she said. “When she was born, she was 2kg. It was just scary to hold her, she was just tiny.”
The malnutrition treatments that the family has received – which are currently under threat from budget pressures – have been transformative.
“She has changed so much, I didn’t think she would stand up and walk away as a human being at all,” said Segen. “Now I find her running around.”
32-year-old Desta and her 8 month-old daughter Capital also receive food aid rations and malnourishment treatment. They currently reside in a camp for internally-displaced people after losing their homes during the Tigray War, the two-year civil war in the country’s North that ended in 2022.
After the war ended, they were allowed to return home, but found soldiers living in their house, forcing them to remain in the camp, Desta said.
“We are in a very bad situation here. We were good [back in our old home], we had jobs, we had agriculture, but there is no work and no agriculture here,” she said.
“Here we just sit around. If we could get it, we would work,” she continued. “All we have is enough food.”
According to Nevill, the situation facing Ethiopia represents a “perfect storm of overlapping crises”.
Communities are still recovering from a prolonged drought which saw multiple seasonal rain failures across 2020-23, while the story of Desta and Capital attests to how much of the country is continuing to recover from the affects of war.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing into the country from neighbouring countries, including Sudan, while difficult economic conditions, including high inflation stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic aftermath, remain a problem.
Recent months have also seen several earthquakes internally displace tens of thousands of Ethiopians.
At the same time, crises in territories including Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan have pushed food needs up globally, said Nevill, while many donor countries are now making the political decision to focus their spending more on domestic priorities.
The Horn of Africa is also one of the most climate vulnerable regions of the world, and is highly susceptible to challenges including prolonged droughts, devastating floods, and desertification.
The WFP would like to be investing in more climate resilience programmes to help support communities through the climate crisis, for example in pushing climate-resilient agricultural practices, or in developing novel irrigation schemes.
Around 30 per cent of spending in Ethiopia goes to such programmes, with 70 per cent going towards emergency responses.
“Humanitarian food aid should be a last resort, and we want to shift things even further towards helping people to strengthen their resilience in the face of climate shocks and ultimately build long term food security,” said Nevill. “But any reprioritisation of funding this year is currently looking very unlikely.”
This story is part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
Is the EU youth mobility scheme finally going to happen?
Well-sourced reports suggest that the government is willing to introduce a “one in, one out” youth mobility scheme in partnership with the European Union. The idea would be that people aged 18 to 30 could travel to the UK on a work or educational visa, on a time-limited basis, and with reciprocity for their British counterparts.
It’s an idea that’s been discussed and periodically dismissed for some time, but with an EU-UK “Brexit reset” summit approaching next month, it could be that its time has come…
As recently as February, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, insisted in the House of Commons that such a scheme “is not our plan, and we are clear that net migration needs to come down”. What’s different now, perhaps, is that the EU has agreed to impose a quota on the scheme – a rumoured figure of 70,000 people – and a time limit of one year for the visas; and that, therefore, Cooper was prepared to consider the idea more seriously.
It also seems No 10 is exerting pressure to agree the youth mobility scheme in an effort to secure much more important concessions from the EU Commission on trade barriers, and from other European national leaders on defence, security and the “Coalition of the Willing” in Ukraine.
Because it means that the flow (in both directions) wouldn’t inflate or otherwise distort the highly sensitive net migration figures. A relatively short visit also means that the scheme is less likely to be abused – or to be perceived, by its opponents, as being abused.
Well, there is always scope for “gaming” any system, and the Conservatives, Reform UK and their allies in the press can be expected to highlight the risks – such as the visas being used to enter the UK and then “disappear”, or as a way to make an asylum claim (albeit perfectly legitimately in international law). There is also the cost of any use the visitors might make of the NHS or other public services; and the idea that they will provide unwelcome competition for young British people trying to find work. The allegation is that the EU wishes to “export” its youth unemployment.
Sooner or later, someone on the youth scheme visa will commit a serious offence; the headlines and the attacks on Labour will write themselves.
The EU, principally, which places a disproportionate value on something that feels pretty tokenistic. But also many in the Labour Party: 70 Labour MPs and peers have written this week to Nick Thomas-Symonds, minister for Europe, urging the introduction of such a time-limited, capped youth visa scheme.
Only on the crudest of interpretations, and if you subscribe to the belief that the treaties signed by Boris Johnson in 2019 and 2020 were perfect.
The youth mobility scheme wasn’t even hinted at in the Labour election manifesto, but the relevant passage on Europe was just about flexible enough to accommodate such a limited initiative: “With Labour, Britain will stay outside of the EU. But to seize the opportunities ahead, we must make Brexit work. We will reset the relationship and seek to deepen ties with our European friends, neighbours and allies. That does not mean reopening the divisions of the past. There will be no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement.”
“Free movement” is not the same as “capped movement”, so it works. But just wait till the negotiations on fish get going again.
To encounter the cream of Britain’s Byronic youth, embarking on the modern equivalent of the “Grand Tour” of continental antiquities enjoyed by so many aristocrats in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The government, probably. A poll commissioned by Best for Britain a couple of months ago suggested that a majority (54 per cent) were in favour even if it was a four-year scheme, with two-thirds backing a two-year duration. So it would be popular, overall, even if it convinced more hardline Leavers that the Starmer administration was plotting to reverse Brexit (which would also in fact be fairly popular, especially if Donald Trump continues to spurn Britain’s “special relationship” with tariffs and threats to withdraw from Nato).
The more unpopular Brexit grows, the worse it is for the Conservatives and Reform UK.