US aircraft carrier ‘headed to Middle East’ as Trump refuses to rule out strikes on Iran

The United States has reportedly started moving an aircraft carrier towards the Middle East as Donald Trump refused to rule out strikes on Iran.

The Pentagon was said to be moving a carrier strike group from the South China Sea to the US Central Command’s area of control, which includes the Middle East, according to US outlet NewsNation, citing unnamed sources.

Satellite imagery showed the 100,000-ton USS Abraham Lincoln travelling west past the Philippines on Wednesday, according to Sky News.

Donald Trump meanwhile hailed his own efforts, sharing a report that Iran would refrain from executing 26-year-old protester Erfan Soltani “after president Trump’s warnings”. He wrote: “This is good news. Hopefully, it will continue.”

Trump paused his threat of imminent strikes on Wednesday as Iran promised it would relent on its brutal crackdown of protests following more than two weeks of bitter nationwide unrest.

He did not rule out potential US military action, however, saying “we are going to watch what the process is” before noting that his administration had received a “very good statement” from Iran.

Harry Styles announces fourth album – Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally

Harry Styles has announced that he will release his new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, on 6 March this year.

The new album will feature 12 tracks, the artist revealed on Thursday. The artwork depicts the 31-year-old pop star in sunglasses, crouching beneath a disco ball that appears to hang from the night sky. Limited edition vinyls, CDs, exclusive merchandise, box sets, and more are available to pre-order through the singer’s website.

Rumours had been brewing that one of the UK’s biggest pop stars would make his hugely anticipated return this year after mysterious billboards – bearing the message “We belong together” – popped up in cities around the world, including New York, Manchester, Palermo and São Paulo.

Disco, Occasionally is executive-produced by Kid Harpoon, who won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and the Brit Award for Songwriter of the Year for his work on Styles’s last album, Harry’s House. The 2022 album featured hits like “Watermelon Sugar” and “As It Was”, and ranked as the second most-streamed album on Spotify that year.

In 2022, Styles also starred in two films: the psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling, and the romantic period drama My Policeman.

Noise of the former One Direction star’s impending musical comeback has been accompanied by suggestions that Styles could headline Glastonbury in 2027, when the festival returns after its traditional fallow year. The New York Post has reported that he has signed a deal for a residency at the city’s Madison Square Garden, where he previously performed for a consecutive 15 nights.

There are also suggestions that he could play a UK residency at Manchester’s Co-op Live arena, of which Styles is a significant investor. The venue will host this year’s Brit Awards – marking the first time the ceremony has been held outside London – next month.

Styles’s return comes after a period of dominance in pop by women, including Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, Olivia Rodrigo and Tate McRae. He is the latest One Direction star to announce new music following the loss of bandmate Liam Payne, who died after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires in October 2024.

One Direction formed on the reality TV show The X Factor in 2010. Despite coming in second place, Styles, Payne and bandmates Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan went on to become one of the most successful boy bands of all time, selling millions of records and achieving a string of hit singles before splitting indefinitely in 2016.

Tomlinson is currently preparing to release his latest album, How Did I Get Here?, on 23 January, and filming a Netflix documentary with Malik – due to air later this year – that will follow their travels around the US. Horan shared last year that he was back in the studio working on a follow-up to his 2023 album The Show.

Why doesn’t the home secretary have the power to fire police chiefs?

The strange case of Craig Guildford, the West Midlands chief constable who confessed to using AI in an official report and lost the confidence of the home secretary, highlights the difficult political dilemmas that arise around any “top cop” when things go badly awry. Indeed, it’s not too strong to suggest that this is actually a pivotal moment for the future of policing in Britain.

Well, they can be sacked, but it’s not easy, and there’s a very good reason for that. Quite aside from questions of fairness and due process, it’s a fundamental principle in a pluralist democracy that those who run the criminal justice system – police officers, judges, prison administrators – have to be independent and free of political pressure. If a home secretary had the power to summarily dismiss any senior police officer, then the scope for abuse is clear – ultimately, the government would be in a position to force the arrest of a political opponent.

It’s all set out in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act of 2011. In England and Wales, it’s down to the elected police and crime commissioner (PCC) for the relevant constabulary. In the mayoralties of Greater London, Greater Manchester, York and North Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire, PCC functions are undertaken by deputy mayors, and in South Yorkshire by the mayor.

The mayoralty of the West Midlands, the force overseen by Chief Constable Guildford, is an anomaly because the attempt to transfer powers to the West Midlands mayor was botched, failed a legal challenge, and was left with the West Midlands PCC. In London, uniquely, the home secretary has a reserve power to require the dismissal of the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

Analogous procedures are in place in Northern Ireland and Scotland. In all cases, a chief constable under pressure is entitled to due process and the right to put their own case, and this also involves the Police and Crime Panel, with strong representation from the local authorities. In the West Midlands this means councillors from Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Wolverhampton,Sandwell and so on, as well as a few independents.

Through the usual disciplinary procedures for misconduct – though it has been suggested (and disputed) that the home secretary maintains reserve powers under the Police Act 1996. In extreme cases, a chief constable could be prosecuted for a crime; they are not above the law, even if they are above politics. Normally they quit when the relevant people say they’ve no confidence in them – as with Cressida Dick in London in 2022, and Simon Byrne at the PSNI in 2023.

Yes. Labour is committed to abolishing the PCC system, so decisions will soon have to be taken as to who will in future be able to hire and fire our most senior police officers, how they will be able to do that, and in what circumstances it can happen.

Such powers can probably be left as they are now with the devolved administrations in Stormont and Holyrood, and the mayors in the big combined authorities. For the areas that previously had a PCC, the logical step would be for other forces to be overseen by their local authority or authorities, through some committee. These would have some democratic accountability.

However, the example of Guildford highlights how local councillors can be involved in decisions on policing events with a “political” dimension, such as demonstrations or a charged sports fixture, and the councillors might thus be compromised in the way they also exercise their duties of oversight. If a home secretary were to be given an ultimate role in this process, to overcome that potential weakness, that would also carry a different risk of politicisation and centralisation, and erode local responsibility, especially in the case of directly elected mayors.

Designing such machinery, preferably with cross-party consensus, and making it durable will be huge challenge for Shabana Mahmood in the months ahead, and she’s unlikely to get much help from her Tory opposite number, Chris Philp. Mahmood has already declared that “when a chief constable is responsible for a damaging failure of leadership, the public rightly expect the home secretary to act. And I intend to restore their ability to do so. This government will soon reintroduce the home secretary’s power to dismiss chief constables.”

The British tradition of independent policing is in some jeopardy.

Norovirus admissions soar 57% in a week as NHS trusts declare critical incidents

The number of people being admitted to hospital with norovirus has hit the highest level so far this winter, with cases soaring by 57 per cent in a week.

NHS hospitals are facing a surge in cases, with some trusts declaring critical incidents – the highest alert level – and having to cancel operations due to A&E pressures as it battles a combination of flu, vomiting bugs and other winter viruses.

Data released on Thursday revealed an average of 567 hospital beds were filled each day last week by patients with norovirus symptoms, up from the previous week’s average of 361 and the highest figure for norovirus patients so far this winter.

It comes as doctors warn that patients are being left languishing in waiting rooms and corridors for days on end in what is a “dreadful” week for the health service, with patients said to be waiting for up to two days for a bed.

Dr Vicky Price, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, told The Independent that pressures showed an “awful picture nationwide”.

She said: “The thing that’s so hard is seeing patients waiting for days in a waiting room and on corridors. That has certainly rocketed. It’s almost seen as acceptable now.

“For the people sitting in waiting rooms, once they have exceeded 12 hours, there is no emphasis to move them [onto wards]. We regularly hear about trusts dismissing anything other than ambulance patients because it is so target-driven, not patient-driven. So, patients are sat in waiting rooms waiting for beds for days.”

At least 10 trusts, including those in Kent, Sussex and the Midlands, have declared critical incidents this week.

On Tuesday, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust declared a critical incident warning, adding: “Since Christmas, rising demand, winter infections, and staff sickness have led to significant and unacceptable delays in our Emergency Department (ED) and across our hospital wards.”

The trust said it had experienced its busiest day of the year so far on 7 January 2026 with 550 patients attending A&E.

It added: “Patients are having unacceptable and lengthy waits on corridors. Staff are working under extreme pressure.”

Meanwhile, monthly data on A&E waiting times, also published on Thursday, showed 151,724 patients, 10.5 per cent, waited more than 12 hours to be seen, treated, or admitted, after arriving at A&E in December. The percentage waiting 12 hours is the highest recorded this winter, but lower than in winter 2024 and 2023.

The number waiting at least four hours from the decision to admit to admission also rose, standing at 137,763 last month, up from 133,799 in November.

Some 73.8 per cent of patients in England were seen within four hours in A&Es last month, down from 74.2 per cent in November.

The government and NHS England have set a target of March 2026 for 78 per cent of patients attending A&E to be admitted, discharged, or transferred within four hours.

One emergency care doctor at a major hospital, speaking toThe Independent, described A&E as “dreadful” this week. “We had a nice Christmas, then the cold snap afterwards made us very busy with many, many broken bones.

“And we’ve not recovered from that position.”

They added: “[This week] We were holding 50 plus people awaiting beds in the department on one night with 12 hours wait to be seen.”

But, as norovirus figures soar, the number of people in hospital with flu in England has fallen slightly.

An average of 2,725 flu patients were in the hospital each day during the week ending 11 January, down 7 per cent from 2,924 the previous week.

The figure had climbed as high as 3,140 in the week ending 14 December. Last winter, weekly flu numbers for England peaked at 5,408 patients.

Why Amol Rajan had to say goodbye to the Today programme

After five years in one of the BBC’s top jobs, Amol Rajan has decided that “the pips have sounded, and it’s time to get my coat”. On Thursday, the broadcaster announced that he would be stepping down from his role as the host of Radio 4’s Today programme, a decision he admitted “might be mad”, in order to “jump into the great digital Narnia of the creator economy, and build my own company”. He would, he added, be channelling his childhood hero, Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses, in order to “unleash my inner entrepreneur”.

The 42-year-old was keen to stress that he is “very much not leaving the BBC”, which he hailed as “Britain’s noblest cultural institution”, and he’ll continue to present University Challenge and his podcast, Radical with Amol Rajan.

His big news was met on social media with a blend of praise (“you have breathed new life into the Beeb,” one fan wrote on Instagram, while another echoed the same sentiments, hailing him as “a breath of fresh air”) and snark about his accent (“Maybe get some elocution lessons and stop speaking like a common market trader first?” read one snobbish comment on X/Twitter). It was pretty representative, then, of how Rajan divided Today listeners from the start; while his warmth, relatability and enthusiasm have won over many, there has always been a vocal core of detractors ready to critique his more informal, often colloquial style.

Since joining the BBC as its first media editor in 2016, after a stint as the youngest ever editor of The Independent, Rajan has become one of the broadcaster’s most prominent personalities. He’s hosted documentaries about the royal family and the British class system, filled in as a DJ on Radio 2, headlined his own interview series and chatted to celebrities on The One Show’s green sofa. In fact, you have to wonder whether he’s stepping down from Today because, well, he’s simply knackered.

In 2021, he joined the Today lineup, his most prestigious gig yet, and snagged another plum Beeb role when he took over from Jeremy Paxman as the quizmaster on University Challenge two years later. He’s also cropped up as a critic on MasterChef and as a host of Radio 4 shows like Start the Week and Any Answers?. Little surprise then that last summer, the BBC’s annual top earners list revealed his salary to be somewhere between £315,000 and £319,999, putting him just below his former Today colleague Mishal Husain and just above Sara Cox.

And yet despite all this ubiquity (or, let’s face it, perhaps because of it), Rajan still divided opinion. For every fan who’d praise his open, down-to-earth style and puppyish enthusiasm as being a breath of fresh air, you could find someone who is turned off by precisely that; they’d claim to find him over-familiar, over-matey and lacking the old-fashioned broadcasting gravitas synonymous with old school Radio 4.

He was even taken to task on air by politicians for his straight-talking manner. In 2024, Jeremy Hunt got riled up when Rajan referred to him as a “fiscal drag queen” and described some of his planned policies as “Soviet”; the then chancellor bristled that the remarks were “unworthy of the BBC” and “unworthy of you, Amol”.

Was he helping to modernise the BBC’s image and tone and draw in a new generation of listeners, or is he playing fast and loose with the traditions that Today’s devotees love? It seemed that the TV-watching and radio-listening public couldn’t reach a consensus.

What isn’t in dispute, however, is Rajan’s impressive rise. Born in Kolkata, India, in 1983, he and his family moved to Tooting in south London when he was three years old. He attended a local state school before heading to Downing College, Cambridge, to study English.

He ended up editing the student paper, Varsity, and later landed a job as an audience researcher and “mic boy” on Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff. He feared that his career in TV might be over before it had started when he was caught up in an on-air gaffe, offering the mic to an audience member who turned out to be a prankster from the hidden-camera comedy Balls of Steel, but clearly that wasn’t to be the case.

In 2007, he joined The Independent as a news reporter, then wrote columns and served as the editor of the Voices section and landed the top job of editor in 2013 at the age of 29, becoming the first non-white editor of a British national newspaper in over a century. Three successful years later, he made the jump to the BBC.

It is clear that Rajan is passionate about working for the broadcaster. In an endearingly earnest Instagram post shared last summer, he revealed that he touches the feet of a statue of George Orwell outside BBC HQ every time he heads into work in the early hours. “The security guys used to think it eccentric,” he wrote. “But now they give me a knowing glance of approval each time.”

When Rajan was unveiled as the latest member of the Today lineup, he said: “I’ve no intention of trying to reinvent news, and think the best thing is to keep it simple. Be fair, get to the truth, and don’t screw up.”

Shortly after his first broadcast, he revealed that he’d had “a full-on panic attack” and “worked myself up into a frenzy, catastrophising” the night before – and admitted he’d necked “three massive rums” in an attempt to soothe his nerves. His candour was met with a positive response, with many appreciating the honesty of a top-tier broadcaster getting real about just how nerve-wracking going live can be.

It wouldn’t be the last time that Rajan would open up about his mental health. He’s since spoken out about his and his wife Charlotte Faircloth’s “hellish” and “exhausting” IVF journey (the couple now have four children) and has been bracingly honest about the devastating grief he faced after the death of his father in 2022.

But he is also more than happy to embrace his less serious side on social media, too. He often shares video clips showing him bopping along to rap (like Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” or KRS-One’s “Sound of da Police”) during his early morning cab rides. “3.45am. Used to be just warming up at raves around about now. Yesterday and today I’m heading to work,” read one recent post. Elsewhere on his account, he bemoans the University Challenge sartorial decisions he regrets (”Not me or my colour at all,” he wrote of one offending purple tie) and regularly shares sweet tales from his childhood, like his early obsession with the Tube map. It’s hard to imagine another presenter of a flagship BBC news show having so much fun on Instagram.

His willingness to share personal stories puts him at the forefront of a new generation of BBC broadcasters who are ditching the stiff upper lip attitude in favour of something more relatable and empathetic. It also makes sense why he now might want to build Brand Amol on his own terms.

Much of the criticisms leveled at Rajan have been shot through with a certain classism, which feels out of step with the public mood, The Spectator’s James Delingpole once branded him “someone who drops his aitches and pronounces ‘h’ where it should be aspirated and landed a mere 2:2 from hearty, insufficiently medieval Downing [College]”, a list of infractions so riddled with cartoonish snobbery that it sounded like an Evelyn Waugh parody. Accent bias is something that Rajan has himself explored in a 2022 documentary about the “class ceiling”; at an Edinburgh TV Festival event that year, he took the BBC’s then director general Tim Davie to task about the lack of presenters with “working-class” voices.

Much of the disapproval levelled at Rajan’s presenting manner does reek of an old-fashioned, even archaic obsession with broadcasting etiquette. Did it really matter that, as commentator Christopher Hart pointed out in a 2023 takedown of Rajan’s style, that sometimes he would introduce himself first on air, rather than name-checking his on-air colleague, in defiance of the traditional “protocol”?

Comments from former Today host Mishal Husain, however, put forward an interesting potential counterpoint. Speaking to Vogue in April 2025, she suggested that “personality-focused journalism doesn’t have to be bombastic” and “doesn’t have to be about presenters centring themselves”. “What was true to me was that I would very rarely use the word ‘I’, actually, on air,” she added. Was Husain alluding to Rajan and newer colleagues like Emma Barnett? Wisely, she would not name names or be drawn on the subject.

But perhaps this is simply the way things are going. As Rajan says, he wants a piece of the creator economy pie, which suggests that he has sniffed the air and come to the conclusion that talent and personal brand building have the potential to become bigger than the “show”.

When Rajan first joined Radio 4, a New Statesman report claimed, he rather sweetly used to place a handwritten note on his desk as a reminder to pace himself. It apparently read: “Slow the f*** down”. Whatever your thoughts on his Today presenting style, everyone can surely agree that Amol Rajan’s career shows absolutely no signs of doing so.

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Andrew offered temporary home to speed up Royal Lodge exit

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has reportedly been offered a temporary home at Sandringham to speed up his relocation from the grade II mansion, Royal Lodge, where he has resided for the last two decades.

A more permanent home is being prepared for him on the Norfolk estate, but it is understood the King has offered him temporary property in the hope he would have left Windsor by Easter.

Other sources told The Times the prospect of an interim home could mean the disgraced former prince would be in more modest accommodation by his 66th birthday on 19 February.

Renovation and construction work are currently underway at Marsh Farm, which is expected to eventually become Andrew’s permanent base once it has been completed. It is understood that its security features require updating, with fences and a CCTV system installed ahead of his arrival.

After it was announced that Andrew would be leaving Royal Lodge last year, a no-fly restriction zone was extended in December to cover Marsh Farm, which had previously been held by a tenant farm and had been empty for years.

While few details have been given about the temporary accommodation being offered to Andrew, The Times reports that options include Wood Farm, where the late Prince Philip spent his final years, and York Cottage.

Removal vans have already been spotted at Royal Lodge, where Andrew has paid a peppercorn rent after signing a 75-year lease in 2003.

He was first advised to leave the 30-room mansion two years ago but refused, with Buckingham Palace confirming in October that he had returned his lease after further revelations emerged that he had continued to email convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein beyond when he had stated in his disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview that he had cut all contact with the paedophile in 2010.

As a result of these emails, the King stripped him of his titles and status and forced him to relocate to the Sandringham estate, with the monarch now due to privately fund his new lifestyle.

A source told The Sun: “The snow or rain hasn’t delayed the work on Marsh Farm but it still needs a lot of attention to make it habitable. But one thing for sure is that it is a lot, lot smaller and less luxurious than Royal Lodge.”

His ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, who had resided alongside him at Royal Lodge, is now understood to be separately house-hunting.

Neither she nor Andrew was invited to spend Christmas Day with the royal family and have remained out of the spotlight, while their two daughters, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice, were present at Sandringham over the festive period.

How your entire identity could be sold for £30 on the dark web

British “identity packages”, including an ID scan, a selfie, and a dossier of personal data, can be purchased by criminals on the dark web for as little as £30, new research suggests.

As identity theft continues to rise, experts have discovered the sale of national identity documents, driving licences, credit card details and UK “frequent traveller” passports for £2,000. 

The information can be exploited in multiple ways and used to apply for credit cards, mortgages, car loans, or to open bank accounts.

AMLTRIX, a group of anti-money laundering experts, analysed 25 active dark web marketplaces in early December last year, uncovering the many ways in which Britons’ stolen data is being used. 

Its co-founder, Gabrielius Erikas Bilkstys, said: “A full identity pack with ID scan and selfie is now cheap enough and accessible for criminals to buy in bulk, and if that is not enough, the dark web offers other, more reliable, although more expensive options.

“That reflects how often the same personal data is stolen and resold, and how industrialised this market has become.”

Some of the highest-value items were KYC-verified UK business bank accounts, ranging from £900 to £2,000. Accounts at major banks such as NatWest and Barclays were at the upper end of this range, according to AMLTRIX.

A NatWest spokesperson said: “We take protecting our customers from financial crime extremely seriously, which is why we operate robust fraud and security systems and work with partners across the wider digital ecosystem.”

Barclays has been contacted for comment.

The research also found hacked UK Amazon accounts listed at an average of £15, while login details for subscription services such as Netflix were going for around £10.

Counterfeit Bank of England banknotes were also being sold, typically going for around 25 to 35 per cent of their face value. Some vendors claimed that their notes pass UV light checks and offered low-value sample orders as proof of quality. 

While in many cases, the data being sold was legitimate, AMLTRIX also noted that there were several instances of scams.

Once the data is online, the same identity can be repeatedly used to commit identity theft. Often, the original victim will be unaware until debt collectors or law enforcement become involved, AMLTRIX said. 

Mr Bilkstys said that for organisations, one of the key misunderstandings was seeing the dark web as a completely separate world. “Many organisations still think of the dark web as a distant, exotic threat. 

“In reality, it is tightly connected to everyday phishing campaigns, large data breaches, account takeovers, and money laundering cases that compliance teams are already dealing with.”

UK fraud prevention service Cifas found that there were more than 118,000 cases of identity fraud recorded between January and June last year. 

David Wall, a cyber crime expert at the University of Leeds, said: “The problem exists at two levels. [Firstly], data of the individual who can fall victim to financial loss, this happens through account takeover, or more likely being defrauded via a phone call pretending to be from the victim’s own bank. The other level accesses data at the organisational level.”

In 2024, 43 per cent of UK businesses reported experiencing a cybersecurity breach or attack, according to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). 

Criminals will gather this data and process in to packages to be sold on to other criminals, Mr Wall said. “Some data sets are scams where one group of crooks try to scam another, but others are the real thing and provide initial access to organisations.

“This is very concerning as they have contributed to some of the larger cyber, mainly ransomware, attacks experienced by most Western countries in recent years.”