Prince William ‘pressures Eugenie and Beatrice’ over Andrew’s Royal Lodge demands

Prince William “pressured” princesses Eugenie and Beatrice to encourage Andrew to leave Royal Lodge amid growing public fury over his rent-free arrangement, according to new reports.

The Prince of Wales reportedly sat down with Andrew’s daughters and threatened to “re-examine” their titles if they did not ask their father to leave the property, according to the News Agents podcast.

Prince Andrew is reported to be in “advanced talks” over leaving the 30-room mansion after it emerged he had paid a “peppercorn rent” for the last 20 years.

It comes after reports the disgraced royal hosted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein at Royal Lodge just days before the financier’s arrest.

Epstein stayed at the Windsor mansion alongside Ghislaine Maxwell and Harvey Weinstein as part of Andrew’s daughter Beatrice’s masked ball 18th birthday celebrations in 2006, reports the BBC.

The financier was arrested by police in Florida eight days after the event.

In 2019, Andrew told BBC Newsnight he “wasn’t aware” Epstein had an arrest warrant on his head when he was invited to his daughter’s birthday celebrations.

In recent weeks, Prince Andrew has faced continuing furore over his ties to Epstein, and the publication of the posthumous memoirs by his sexual assault accuser Virginia Giuffre. Andrew strenuously denies all accusations.

Dog walker killed in ‘senseless’ Uxbridge triple stabbing is named

A dog walker has died while another man was left seriously injured in a triple stabbing in west London.

A 49-year-old man, named locally as Wayne Broadhurst, was killed in the incident on Monday evening, while two others, including a 14-year-old boy, were injured in what police called a “senseless act of violence”.

A male, aged 45, suffered life-changing injuries, while the teenager’s injuries were not life-threatening or changing.

The Metropolitan Police said a 22-year-old man, who is an Afghan national, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

The Home Office confirmed that the man arrested entered the UK in a lorry before claiming asylum, which was granted in 2022.

Officials also confirmed that he is not resident in an asylum hotel or any other Home Office accommodation, despite claims on social media.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Our thoughts are with the family and friends of those impacted by this horrific incident.

“We are receiving regular updates from the Metropolitan Police. The priority must now be for the police to investigate so those responsible can be brought to justice.”

Police and ambulance crews were called to Midhurst Gardens in Uxbridge at around 5pm on Monday where the three victims were stabbed.

The attack is not being treated as terrorism, and detectives are working to establish any relationship between the suspect and the three victims, the Metropolitan Police said.

Footage posted online appears to show the suspect walking along a residential street, before two police officers sprint after him, one pointing a Taser and shouting “drop the knife” and “get on the floor”.

Several others join them before the Taser is fired and the man falls to the ground.

One neighbour who did not want to be named said the 49-year-old victim was a binman who was “just doing the normal dog walk that he does every day”.

“I’ve been here two years and would see him walk past the window,” she said.

She described him as “the last person on Earth that you would think somebody would go for”.

She said she took some flowers and a box of shortbread over for his wife and added: “I still can’t get over it.

“If he was five or 10 minutes later taking the dog out would the same thing have happened?”

A group of around 100 men, women and children gathered to lay flowers near the police tape at the junction between Midhurst Gardens and Leybourne Road on Tuesday night, with some lighting candles.

One Union flag was held above the crowd as they gathered shortly before 7.30pm.

One female neighbour who earlier left a bunch of flowers near to the cordon said: “Last night the police came down my road, it was about 5pm, I thought to myself ‘oh my god I wonder what’s happened’.”

“I just thought I’d come down and put some flowers down for the family,” the woman, who didn’t want to be named said.

She said she found out what happened early on Tuesday which made her feel “absolutely sick”, she added: “That somebody could actually do that, it’s just awful.

“The area used to be lovely, over the years it’s really gone downhill.”

Chief Superintendent Jill Horsfall said: “This was a shocking and senseless act of violence that has left one man dead and two others injured.

“Our thoughts are with the victim’s family and friends at this unimaginably difficult time.

“The incident will have understandably caused concern to the local community. I have deployed multiple officers to the local area, they will be here throughout the week to provide reassurance while detectives work intensely to piece together the circumstances.

“I understand that there has been a lot of speculation online following on from this incident. We ask that you rely on us for information, and that you do not share sensitive footage.

“If anyone saw or has any information about the incident, then please come forward to police. We appreciate any information that you may have.

“There will be a crime scene and a heavy police presence within the area over the next few days, I thank residents for their patience.”

Anyone with information can call police on 101 quoting the reference 5129/27OCT, or to remain anonymous contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555111 or online.

Zelensky says Ukraine ready for peace talks anywhere except Russia and Belarus

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, says he is ready for peace talks to end the war in Ukraine anywhere except Russia or Belarus.

Mr Zelensky said he would not withdraw Ukrainian troops from additional territory first as Moscow has demanded.

“It’s absolutely clear that we’re approaching diplomacy only from the position where we currently stand. We will not take any steps back and leave one part of our state or another,” he said.

“And the important result is that the American side finally made this a public signal: President Trump came out with such a message.”

Donald Trump warned Vladimir Putin that the US had a nuclear submarine off his country’s shore, as he condemned a Russian nuclear-capable cruise missile test as “inappropriate”.

Mr Putin said Russia had successfully tested its Burevestnik cruise missile, a weapon Moscow says can pierce any defence shield, in a move that has infuriated Washington. Moscow said the Burevestnik had flown for 14,000km.

Why Justin Trudeau dating Katy Perry makes more sense than you think

Let’s call it a PDF. A Post Divorce Flex. A celebrity marriage breaks down, one partner moves out, lawyers are called in, stuff and real estate gets divided, co-parenting strategies are mapped out and access to dogs is agreed on. From then on, it’s a race to see who can date the hottest, most glamorous and famous person first. A new, younger and shinier partner to be seen out and about with – essentially flexing that newfound freedom with a happy confidence that says, “I’ve moved on!”

But as the former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau makes it official with pop star Katy Perry, by holding hands after a date at the Crazy Horse Cabaret in Paris for her birthday, you have to ask, who’s flexing who exactly?

Is it multi-platinum-selling “Queen of Camp” hitmaker Katy, 41 – engaged to actor Orlando Bloom for five years, mother to his daughter Daisy Dove Bloom, and said to be worth around half a billion dollars (American $, not Canadian, obvs) – who is showing offJustin T? “Look at me! I used to be engaged to Legolas from fictional Middle-earth; now I’m dating a man who was a real world leader!”

Or is it the recently separated, now former Canadian prime minister Trudeau – married for 18 years to Sophie Gregoire, and a father to three children – who is flexing Katy like smooth maple syrup in his tight black T-shirt? “I was in a safe but dull, grown-up marriage to a first lady; now I’m walking out with a hot California pop-star girl… who kisses other girls!”

Perry and Trudeau first began fuelling dating rumours in July, when the pair were photographed out in Montreal. Trudeau then attended the singer’s Lifetimes Tour stop in the city two days later. Earlier this month, the “Firework” singer and her new beau were photographed on a yacht in Santa Barbara, California. And what did they talk about? Perhaps the common ground of parallel career slumps was something to bond over, politician and pop star having both endured recent, high-profile, career lows in 2025.

This was the year that super-liberal golden boy Trudeau turned into an unpopular and unvoteable political pariah, forced to resign as leader at the will of his own party. Meanwhile, Perry’s recent 143 album sold dismally, and her clunky live performances were widely ridiculed on social media… not to mention the cringey optics of that Jeff Bezos-funded farrago into outer space. So maybe the TruPerry/J-Kat union makes sense, as two currently un-hot celebrities making one battleworn but hyper-hot (and age-appropriate) couple?

Then again, the whole post-split rebound situation may all be part of a classic midlife crisis playbook that every newly single man in his fifties (yes, even this writer) falls into. And that particular script is basically a set of dumb, free and single lifestyle choices that revolve around showing off, trying out “new things”, indulging in frequent and unnecessary (and undignified) displays of buffness, and making questionable choices that are perhaps 10 or 15 years too young for a 53-year-old man.

The signs are there that this is where the J-Kat, TruPerry coupling is at. It’s not so much a match made in heaven as a midlife meltdown in motion. With Trudeau, it began with getting a Canadian Haida Raven tattoo on his 40th birthday, shown off on a muscly shoulder during a televised charity boxing match (fighting against Canadian senator Patrick Brazeau – Trudeau won, obvs).

Not long after the split from Gregoire, we were served shirtless pap shots of JT and KP canoodling on a yacht. And have you noticed how single Justin is now rocking that sartorial mullet of a combo – suits with trainers? More specifically, green and orange Adidas Gazelles with a Ted Baker whistle, to meet King Charles earlier this year.

While in power (and in wedlock), the PM used to travel around Ottawa in a series of boring Chevrolet Suburban people-movers. Nowadays, Trudeau’s ride of choice is the ultimate single man’s machine – a two-seater, pop-video-worthy 1960 Mercedes Benz 300SL roadster, inherited from his father. A trip to Coachella or the Burning Man festival must surely be on the TruPerry ’26 schedule.

This is the silly, regrettable stuff that happens when apparently sensible middle-aged people split up. Usually, the sort of amicable and respectful uncoupling one might hope for, prioritising minimal emotional harm and reframing the breakup not as a failure, but as a transition to a new life, does not play out.

It’s more of a sprint to the apps, and the one who gets spotted out with the fittest, cleverest, best-looking date first, wins. Reader, I did this too. Married for 20 years then divorced at 50, I was a PDF-ing cliche. Instead of a four-million-dollar Merc, a convertible Saab. No body ink, but definitely a few more buttons undone on my shirts, and some marked post-divorce weight loss (caused more by stress than by diet and gym visits). Best of all? A gazelle-legged fashion model on my arm at a high-profile media event. Was I ever so young and foolish?

Of course, the Trudeau boys have stellar form here. Justin’s dad, his predecessor as Canadian PM, aka “Swinging Pierre” and “Trendy Trudeau”, was an A-list modeliser and flexer. Trudeau senior dated Barbra Streisand, Superman actress Margot Kidder, and even Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall. “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation,” he once said.

In 1991, following the breakdown of his 13-year marriage to wife Margaret Trudeau, Pierre Trudeau fathered a daughter with Deborah Coyne, a lawyer who ran for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada in a 2013 election. Coyne came in fifth, soundly beaten by one Justin Trudeau… who won.

Pierre Trudeau, however, never wore Adidas Gazelle sneakers with a suit – the clearest sign yet that his son may not be cut from the same cloth, however much he thinks he is.

Plans to end asylum hotels ‘won’t save any money’

The government has admitted that plans to move hundreds of asylum seekers into military barracks are part of a bid to appease the public but might not save the taxpayer any money.

The Home Office has confirmed that Crowborough Training Camp in East Sussex and Cameron Barracks in Inverness will be used temporarily to house a total of around 900 men as ministers scramble to find a way to end migrant hotels after huge controversy surrounding their use.

But Downing Street has signalled that spending on the plan could prove to be higher than housing migrants in hotels, just one day after MPs on an influential committee described the use of such hotels as “failed, chaotic and expensive”.

It came as refugee charities and organisations described the plans as “cruel and costly” and accused the government of “exchanging one failed approach with another”.

Small-boat migrants will start being housed in the military accommodations by the end of next month as Labour ramps up its bid to move tens of thousands of migrants out of hotels. Officials are also working with the Ministry of Defence to identify other disused sites that can be used in the coming months.

Asked if the costs of using military sites will be higher than using hotels, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said on Tuesday: “The costs will vary site by site, but our priorities are security and fairness.”

Pushed later on whether this meant ministers thought barracks were a better option even if costs were higher, the spokesperson said that the matter is “also a core issue of public confidence”. “The public is very clear it does not want asylum seekers housed in hotels, and neither does the government,” they added.

The spokesperson also suggested that hotel accommodation currently used to house asylum seekers was “luxury” – a suggestion which was condemned by refugee charity Care4Calais.

“What we don’t want is there to be an entitlement to luxury sites as we’ve seen in recent years. Military sites can provide proper security, health and wellbeing standards. And that’s what we’re intent on delivering”, the Downing Street official said.

Responding, Steve Smith, CEO of Care4Calais, said: “It’s clear that the people who create policy are detached from reality. These are not ‘luxury’ hotels. Nothing screams ‘luxury’ like overcrowded rooms, inadequate food, filthy conditions, damp, rodents and bugs.”

On Monday, a parliamentary committee accused the Home Office of squandering billions of pounds on asylum accommodation as a result of incompetence.

But the committee also said that the use of military sites is likely to cost more than using hotels, and that it would present safety issues and legal risks.

Dame Karen Bradley, chair of the committee, cautioned ministers to “act carefully” when considering large sites. She added: “We have seen in the past that rushing in to sites that aren’t fit for purpose brings more problems.

“Before any asylum seekers are moved to these new sites, the government must make sure that the accommodation is of suitable quality and the support services are there”.

The defence minister Luke Pollard also appeared to suggest that the cost of moving people to the bases could be higher than housing them in hotels, but that the government needs to “reflect the public mood”, adding: “The public want to see those hotels close.”

Charities supporting refugees slammed the plans on Tuesday, with Jacob Burns at Médecins Sans Frontières saying it was “a pointlessly cruel and costly move that will do nothing to deter those seeking safety in the UK”.

Mr Burns pointed to conditions at former military base RAF Wethersfield, the Home Office’s largest asylum site, saying: “Our medical teams have seen first-hand the devastating impact of this approach at RAF Wethersfield in Essex, where prison-like conditions, barbed wire, and constant surveillance caused widespread and serious psychological distress.”

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said the government was “exchanging one failed approach with another”.

Steve Smith, CEO of Care4Calais, added: “How much evidence does the government need that camps are bad for people’s health and wellbeing? We’ve had Napier, Penally and Wethersfield, and hunger strikes, protests and attempted suicides have been a regular occurrence at all of them.”

Labour has pledged to end the use of hotels by 2029, but the prime minister has reportedly told ministers in private that he wants to end the practice within a year. Speaking on a visit to Lancashire on Tuesday, Sir Keir Starmer said he wants to see asylum hotels closed “as quickly as possible” and is “bearing down on this every day of the week”.

Mr Pollard told Sky News on Tuesday that ministers want to “go faster” in closing the hotels, and that the Ministry of Defence is “stepping up”.

He explained: “We are looking at the sites that we have available where we could house asylum seekers, allowing the Home Office to close more asylum hotels faster. It’s right that we step up and support our Home Office colleagues in this respect, because I don’t think anyone wants to see asylum hotels open.”

Both of the military sites were used to accommodate Afghan families evacuated during the withdrawal from Kabul in 2021. Those families were resettled elsewhere, and that process was completed earlier this year.

It is reported that the Scottish site will house around 300 people, while the site in Sussex will hold around 600.

Highland Council has raised concerns over “community cohesion” over the plans. In a joint statement from council convener Bill Lobban, leader Raymond Bremner and opposition leader Alasdair Christie, the trio said: “Inverness is a relatively small community but the potential impact locally and across the wider Highlands appears not to have been taken into consideration by the UK government.”

The MoD has previously been criticised for long-standing problems maintaining their homes for service personnel, some of which is also being used to house Afghan refugees, with issues with damp, mould, heating and hot water reported.

A 2024 parliamentary committee report concluded that the MoD had under-invested in its housing estate over decades, and contractors were often slow to make repairs. The government has not yet said what sort of accommodation asylum seekers will be housed in in Inverness and Wealden.

On Monday, housing secretary Steve Reed said the government was looking at “modular” buildings to ensure that the new sites can be ready in a short timeframe, as part of the plan to end the use of hotels “entirely”.

Pop-up cabins are already being used to expand capacity at former military base RAF Wethersfield, in Essex.

Plans had been floated to install cabins at RAF Scampton, in Lincolnshire, but this idea was scrapped when Labour came to power.

As of June this year, around 32,000 asylum seekers were being housed in hotels, down from a peak of more than 56,000 in 2023, but 2,500 more than at the same point last year.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are furious at the level of illegal migrants and asylum hotels. This government will close every asylum hotel. Work is well underway, with more suitable sites being brought forward to ease pressure on communities and cut asylum costs.”

Enriching escapes: find your perfect luxury break

Breath test could ‘revolutionise’ care for pancreatic cancer patients

A new breath test could “revolutionise” care for pancreatic cancer patients, experts have said.

A trial is to assess the effectiveness of a world-first breath test for the disease, which is notoriously hard to spot in its early stages.

Pancreatic Cancer UK, which is funding the study, said the launch of the trial was “the most significant step toward a lifesaving-breakthrough in 50 years”.

Vague symptoms of the disease, including back pain and indigestion, mean the disease is often not detected until it has spread to other parts of the body.

A recent audit of pancreatic cancer in England and Wales found that the majority of pancreatic cancer patients are diagnosed at a late stage – 62 per cent of patients in England and 65 per cent of patients in Wales are diagnosed at stage four.

Survival rates are particularly poor for this type of cancer – some 22 per cent do not survive for 30 days after diagnosis in England compared to 21 per cent in Wales.

Now scientists at Imperial College London are hoping to turn the tide on the disease with the new breath test.

It will be tested among 6,000 patients with an unknown diagnosis across 40 sites in England, Wales and Scotland.

If proven effective, it is hoped the test could be rolled out across GP surgeries within five years, meaning patients could be diagnosed sooner when treatment may be more effective.

The large trial follows a smaller study of 700 patients over two years which had “promising” results.

The test is used to detect a combination of “volatile organic compounds” present in the breath.

Thousands of these compounds travel around the bloodstream and are filtered out when the blood reaches the lungs and then expelled out with breath, the charity said.

It said these changes are evident even when the cancer is in its earliest stage of disease.

Isolating unique combinations of these compounds can pinpoint whether or not a person has pancreatic cancer, with results available for GPs in just three days.

At present, patients with suspected pancreatic cancer are referred for scans, or sent to the hospital for further investigations.

Diana Jupp, chief executive of Pancreatic Cancer UK – which is providing £1.1 million to fund the study, said: “The breath test has the potential to revolutionise the early detection of pancreatic cancer.

“It is, undoubtedly, the most significant step toward a lifesaving breakthrough in 50 years.

“While more years of development are still needed before we can put this exciting new technology into the hands of GPs across the country, thousands of patients with an unknown diagnosis will now help refine it in the real-world.

“This is the first pancreatic cancer breath test to ever reach a national clinical trial of this scale. That in itself makes this a moment of real, tangible hope.

“For decades the deadliest common cancer has been seen as too great a challenge to solve but we are determined to keep pushing the boundaries of what’s thought possible.”

Professor George Hanna, head of the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London – who is leading the project, said: “If our findings from the initial phase of the breath test study can be validated in a population of patients with an unknown diagnosis, it has huge potential to influence clinical practice and pancreatic cancer referral pathways.

“The funding announced today means we can now move quickly to that patient validation study stage, which is a very exciting next step for us. We look forward to seeing how the test performs in this group of patients with suspected cancer.”

Rachel Reeves has only one option to grow the economy

One of the many regrettable features of the government’s conduct of its economic policy is that there seems to be some dissonance both between and within No 10 and the Treasury.

As the experience of previous administrations bears out, if such differences are not resolved in a politically and economically coherent way, then trouble usually lies ahead. The enhanced economic clout drafted into the prime minister’s office at the last reshuffle – when Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, was moved to a new senior role in Downing Street – was supposed to give clearer focus to the economic “narrative”, but there is thus far little evidence of that, and it may have merely complicated matters.

All the more reason, therefore, for the Budget in a little less than a month to offer some much-needed clarity for the whole government.

The dissonance seems to be wider than ever. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) data, reported by the BBC, certainly confirms the scale of the challenge facing the chancellor, Rachel Reeves.

Ms Reeves already knew she faced a gap in the finances of between £30bn and £40bn. But she has been dealt a further blow with the decision by the OBR to downgrade its productivity forecast – which means she must find a further £20bn.

Obscure as it may be, that decision by the OBR is a bigger deal than it sounds. A reduction of 0.3 percentage points on an already anaemic projection is substantial, and points to lower overall economic growth in the years ahead. That, in turn, means that tax revenues will be lower, and public spending higher, than would have been the case on the previous estimate, with obvious dire implications for Britain’s strained public finances. It creates another, additional “black hole” in Ms Reeves’s plans, which will have to be covered by either tax hikes or cuts to state spending, as she has already indicated.

Yet to some extent, at least, this may be read as spin. Ever since George Osborne set up the independent OBR in 2010, the Budget process has been an iterative one, in which the Treasury and OBR swap proposals, projections, and policy assumptions in successive rounds for some weeks before Budget day. That is how the OBR invariably attaches its imprimatur to the chancellor’s package of measures; they are, in effect, pre-approved. At this still-early stage in proceedings, the Treasury will be looking to create policies for growth (such as radical reform of the planning system) and investment, in a bid to persuade the OBR to adjust its previously pessimistic view of productivity upwards.

The chancellor now knows that raising income tax is the only way she can balance her Budget. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has pointed out, trying to right the ship by raising lots of smaller taxes, instead of breaking Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, will “cause unnecessary amounts of economic damage”. That barrier has been repeated ad nauseum since last year, or least until fairly recently, when such radical action has obviously drifted from the realms of the unmentionable into the plausible.

On that column of her ledger, Ms Reeves faces a choice, broadly speaking, between policies that would be politically effective in limiting the historic slide in the government’s popularity, and those that would tend to protect longer-term economic growth.

As we have argued before, if the chancellor is going to break the manifesto pledge, she should do it openly, in a manner that raises significant sums, and in a manner that is fair. She should raise the basic rate of income tax, which will take money from the broadest base of taxpayers according to their ability to pay. It would apply to all forms of income, including rent, dividends and interest: everyone who can afford to do so would pay, with those on higher incomes paying more.

On the other hand, attacks on savers, pensions, capital gains, property (the “mansion tax”), banks, and companies more generally offer a politically palatable menu for Labour’s restive backbenchers, but wouldn’t help investment. Labour MPs have, after all, already vetoed the modest reform of social security, and a “soak the rich” Budget might, it is supposed in some circles, rescue the prime minister from a coup d’etat. But it would leave the UK economy crawling.

The Budget speech should make clear that control of public spending, given the demands of defence, cannot be left to one side, even by a Labour administration. The argument for welfare reform was lost for the time being earlier this year, but that doesn’t mean the project has to be abandoned: it has to be reinstated in this Budget and in the OBR’s judgements. Fuel duty, frozen since 2011, could raise a handy sum, as could a levy on online gambling, but these were never likely to generate enough revenue to fill the black hole.

Whatever else, this time around Ms Reeves has to give herself enough fiscal “headroom” for contingencies, so that she won’t have to come back with yet another “tough” Budget in 2026. Her fiscal plan has to be, and has to be seen to be, realistic and serious. Neither the voters’ patience nor that of the markets, already severely tested, would survive a repeat of this “doom loop” performance in a year’s time.