Patients with ‘invisible’ cancer being turned away by doctors

Experts warn patients with an “invisible” cancer are being turned away by doctors and waiting years for answers

Neuroendocrine Cancer UK (NCUK) says there is an urgent need to speed up the diagnosis of neuroendocrine cancer, which refers to a group of cancers that start in the nerve and gland cells that make and release hormones.

Analysis by NCUK suggests rates of the disease, which impacts more than 6,000 people a year in England, rose by 371 per cent between 1995 and 2018, compared to 116 per cent for other cancers in the same period, apart from non-melanoma skin cancer.

Diagnosis takes four-and-a-half years on average, the charity said, with almost half of patients not diagnosed at the first referral and 16 per cent returning more than 10 times before getting answers. More than half of the cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage.

There are two main types of neuroendocrine cancer: neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) and neuroendocrine carcinomas (NECs), which are fast-growing.

The disease can develop in different parts of the body, such as the stomach, bowel, pancreas and lungs.

Symptoms include unexplained weight loss, tiredness, pain, diarrhoea, bloating, wind, heartburn, asthma-like symptoms, a flushing rash and a persistent cough.

Common misdiagnoses include irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, or menopause, experts said.

Lisa Walker, chief executive of NCUK, said: “A key part of the challenge of neuroendocrine cancer is that it doesn’t align with the common cancer narrative many expect.

“It doesn’t act or look like more known cancers and unlike others, it isn’t always about recovery or decline, it often requires people to live with it for many years. That is why we need a conversation that reflects the reality of the condition.

“Delays to diagnosis and inconsistent care cause serious and lasting harm. Precious time is lost, allowing the cancer to progress before people receive the treatment they need.

“Patients and families describe these experiences as isolating and frightening, leaving them without support when they need it most.

“This is unacceptable and requires urgent attention.”

Professor Raj Srirajaskanthan, a consultant gastroenterologist at King’s College Hospital, said: “In my years as a NET clinician, I have sat across from thousands of patients, and while every story is unique, they often share a hauntingly similar prologue.

“A large number have undergone a long and circuitous journey to their diagnosis, commonly being misdiagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, or menopause.

“This period of ‘not knowing’ is often marked by a sense of being unheard, as patients struggle to reconcile their debilitating symptoms with ‘normal’ test results.”

Prof Srirajaskanthan said managing NETs is “often a marathon, not a sprint”.

“Many of my patients have been undergoing treatment for over a decade,” he added.

Craig Spiers, 46, from Glasgow, said it took five years of GP appointments before he was diagnosed in 2013.

The father-of-two has neuroendocrine cancer of the small bowel, which has spread to his liver and has also caused heart problems.

“These visits didn’t get me anywhere and I was even told there was nothing wrong with me and that I had to go home and calm down as it was a result of stress from work,” Mr Spiers said.

“My cancer was invisible to the doctor.”

Gordon Brown, 62, is a GP from Ashby De-La-Zouch who “missed” his own cancer.

“I had been experiencing many seemingly benign symptoms but I never thought they were a result of neuroendocrine cancer,” he said.

“I did go to the hospital a couple of times complaining about the abdominal pain/diarrhoea but no one did a scan. I’d ask my GP colleagues for advice but everyone, including myself, felt that the symptoms were not significant enough.”

Martyn Caplin, a professor of gastroenterology and neuroendocrine cancer at the Royal Free Hospital, said faster diagnosis can lead to more treatment options for patients, even if the disease cannot be removed surgically.

“Smaller volumes of neuroendocrine cancer are generally easier to manage than a more advanced disease, and larger tumours are more likely to cause significant symptoms, regardless of where they are in the body,” he added.

“Delays increase both the physical and emotional toll on patients and limit clinical options.”

Trump says Putin ‘kept his word’ despite massive attack on eve of talks

US president Donald Trump says Vladimir Putin “kept his word” by halting attacks on major Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure for one week – even though he then unleashed one of the biggest aerial attacks of the war.

Trump refused to criticise Putin despite Russia‘s massive attack on Kyiv early on Tuesday, which included a record number of ballistic missiles.“(The pause) was for Sunday to Sunday,” the US president said, speaking to reporters at the White House yesterday. “It opened up and (Putin) hit them hard… He kept his word on that. One week is a lot — we will take anything,” he said.

On being asked if he was disappointed with Putin, Trump said he wants Putin “to end the war”.

Russia’s major attack came just a day before Ukrainian, Russian and US delegations sit down for a second round of three-way peace talks in Abu Dhabi today.

Volodymyr Zelensky says the attack has changed the approach his team will take to the talks, and accused Moscow of using Trump’s ceasefire request to stockpile munitions rather than prepare for peace.

Melinda Gates: Epstein files bring back ‘very painful’ memories of marriage

Melinda French Gates has spoken out about being mentioned in the latest batch of Epstein files and addressed claims about her ex-husband, Bill Gates.

The 61-year-old, who shares three children with the billionaire, appeared on NPR’s Wild Card podcast this week and was quizzed by host Rachel Martin about the Jeffrey Epstein case after she was mentioned in documents released Friday by the Department of Justice.

Melinda Gates said society was “having a reckoning” over the case of the sex offender and that it “brings back memories of some very, very painful times” in her marriage to the Microsoft founder.

“But I have moved on from that. I purposely pushed it away and I moved on,” she said. “I’m in a really unexpected, beautiful place in my life, so whatever questions remain there of what…I can’t even begin to know all of it. Those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband,” she continued. “They need to answer to those things, not me.”

The couple announced their divorce in May 2021 after 27 years of marriage.

Martin asked the philanthropist specifically about the contents of one draft email Epstein allegedly wrote on July 18, 2013, regarding her ex-husband in which she is mentioned by name.

“The emails in the files suggest that Bill Gates had additional affairs, and that he tried to get medication to treat a sexually transmitted infection, and that he was going to give you the medicine without you knowing,” Martin summarized, and asked what “dominant emotion” Melinda Gates felt after reading news articles about the email.

“Just unbelievable sadness,” Melinda Gates responded. “I’m able to take my own sadness and look at those young girls and say, ‘My God, how did they…How did that happen to those girls, right?”

“At least for me, I’ve been able to move on in life, and I hope there’s some justice for those now women,” she added.

A spokesperson for Bill Gates vehemently denied the allegations made in the note.

“These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false,” the spokesperson previously told The Independent. “The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.”

The same year as the couple announced their divorce, Gates told PBS News that he had dinners with Epstein in the hopes of raising funds for global health. He described the meetings as “a mistake.”

Melinda Gates stepped down from the Gates Foundation in May 2024.

The newly released email was one of more than three million documents released Friday to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law in November.

Among the newly released files are thousands of emails, court documents and photos, many of which reference high-profile individuals, such as President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Elon Musk. Being named in the files does not in and of itself constitute evidence of wrongdoing.

Brendan Rascius contributed to this report

The BBC has axed its most life-affirming show when we need it more than ever

The BBC has sadly confirmed there are no plans for a fourth season of Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams, one of the best, most uplifting documentary series to hit our screens in recent years. In an age where reality commissioning either leans towards perma-tanned castmates having rows fuelled by producers, or PR-managed, glossy docuseries (David and Victoria Beckham, I’m looking at you), Field of Dreams was a shining light.

Its premise was simple: former all-rounder Flintoff – one of the few England cricketers to reach household name status – would return to his home city of Preston, and inspire teenagers in the former mill town to give the notoriously posh sport a go. But, as the Ashes winner soon found out, convincing a lively crew of working-class kids to don their cricket whites would not be easy.

The first season, which arrived like a breath of fresh air in 2022, began with Flintoff organising tryouts in his home city, where the poverty rate is above the national average and more than 21 per cent of children are in low-income families. While the ex-England player was too modest to say it on camera, he had clearly quietly – and understandably – assumed his celebrity status would result in a decent turnout. He was left dismayed then, when his desperate appeals resulted in just a handful of nonchalant teenagers turning up at trials.

Nevertheless, with the help of his former Lancashire teammate Kyle Hogg, Flintoff scraped (and I mean scraped) a team together. Hope thankfully arrived midway through series one in the form of Adnan, a softly spoken Afghan refugee with dreams of playing professionally (he has since made his debut for Lancashire’s second team).

As is often the case with the best shows inspired by sport, Field of Dreams wasn’t really about what was happening on the pitch. Instead, it was a tale of fighting against the odds, and the power of friendship and camaraderie, with more than a few hilarious one-liners, courtesy of the rambunctious teenage players.

The second series took a turn nobody saw coming. Early episodes saw Flintoff and Hogg lay out their ambitious plan to take the team on a life-changing trip to India. But it was Flintoff’s life that was suddenly altered immeasurably when a horrific accident while filming Top Gear left the presenter with severe injuries and in need of extensive facial surgery.

Assistant coach Hogg broke the news to the boys, and filming was put on pause. While enduring a recovery that involved multiple operations, and led to bouts of severe anxiety and flashbacks, Flintoff essentially went into hiding and later admitted he didn’t leave the house for eight months.

After an extended break, the show went on. Cameras were rolling as Flintoff, visibly changed and still shaken, reunited with the team. With their once seemingly fearless leader on the ropes, the teenagers stepped up. Field of Dreams morphed into something new and even more special, as the boys – with pot noodles and Pringles in their suitcases – supported Flintoff through his nervous return to the spotlight. Standout moments saw Flintoff and several of the teens join Adnan in fasting during Ramadan, before youngster Ben, who was homeless and unemployed, began considering a career in education after a visit to a Kolkata orphanage.

The ever-ambitious Flintoff took things up a notch in the third series and started three more teams, two for boys in Bootle and Manchester, and his first girls’ side in Blackpool. To put it bluntly, the Bootle lads made the Preston OGs look positively angelic. The embattled Kyle Hogg bore the brunt of their behaviour, along with a new recruit, ex-England bowler Kate Cross, who surely had no idea what she was getting herself into.

The star of the show this time around was Presley, a Manchester newbie with a heart of gold, who had suffered at the hands of bullies and struggled to make friends at school. He finally seemed to find his place in the world thanks to the ragtag team, which left his mum in floods of relieved, happy tears.

Why then, has the BBC called time on one of its most heartwarming offerings? With the news agenda dominated by ICE raids, the Epstein files and Iran-US tensions, we’re more in need than ever of a reminder that people can be kind. The season three finale delivered a fairytale ending of sorts, as Flintoff’s four teams faced each other in a tournament. Whether each side would survive beyond filming still felt uncertain, which surely left plenty of room for a fourth outing.

Perhaps Flintoff himself is behind the decision, or maybe execs at the BBC thought the story had run its course. Whatever happened behind the scenes, hopefully Field of Dreams gives commissioners food for thought. Leave over-produced efforts and fame-hungry casts behind; life-affirming shows like this are what we’re crying out for. And more Presleys. TV could definitely do with those, especially in these troubling times.

Colonel Gaddafi’s son shot dead by masked assailants at home

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the influential son of late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, was killed by “masked men” on Tuesday at his home in Libya, reports said.

The 53-year-old was shot dead in the northwestern town of Zintan in the northern African country, sources close to the family, his lawyer Khaled al-Zaidi, and Libyan media confirmed.

“Four masked men” stormed his house and killed him in a “cowardly and treacherous assassination”, his political team said in a statement. Mr Al-Zaidi also confirmed the death on Facebook, without providing further details.

Reports suggested that Gaddafi clashed with the assailants who had shut the CCTV camera at the house “in a desperate attempt to conceal traces of their heinous crimes”.

Gaddafi’s cousin, Hamid Kadhafi, said he had “fallen as a martyr”. He also said the address of the compound was meant to be a secret.

Gaddafi was widely seen as the most influential of his notorious father’s sons and the heir apparent, till Muammar Gaddafi was ousted and killed in the October 2011 uprising.

Born in June 1972 in Tripoli, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was the second-born son of the dictator and his second wife, Safia Farkash. He was seen as a powerful figure who had been part of his father’s inner circle, performing diplomatic roles on his behalf.

Fluent in English, he studied for a PhD at the London School of Economics and was seen as the reformist face of the Gaddafi regime.

After his father’s removal, Saif al-Islam was caught by anti-Gaddafi fighters in November 2011 and was jailed by a rival militia in the city of Zintan for almost six years. The fighters released him in June 2017 after one of Libya’s rival governments granted him amnesty. Since then, he lived in Zintan.

In 2015, a Libyan court passed a death sentence in absentia on Gaddafi for suppressing peaceful protests and murdering protesters during the country’s 2011 revolution that ended his father’s rule.

He was also wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity related to the 2011 uprising.

Gaddafi announced that he would run for president in the country in November 2021 in a controversial move that was met with outcry from anti-Gaddafi political forces in western and eastern Libya.

But the country’s High National Elections Committee, a body created for organising elections following the 2011 Libyan Civil War, disqualified him. The elections were cancelled over disputes between rival administrations and armed groups that have ruled Libya since the bloody ouster of Muammar Gaddafi.

Since the overthrow of his father’s regime, Libya has been politically fragmented with various factions, including the UN-supported unity government, militia groups and eastern-based competing for authority, with repeated attempts at elections and reconciliation stalling.

The smart moment to get ahead of your business budget

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Labour makes bold pledge to meet NHS cancer targets not hit since 2015

Labour has vowed to meet all NHS cancer waiting time targets – which have not been met for over a decade – within just three years and pledged that more people will survive cancer, as part of its flagship 10-year plan to tackle the disease.

Under the long-awaited National Cancer Plan, set to be unveiled on Wednesday, the government promised to meet all NHS waiting time targets for cancer by 2029, by accelerating diagnosis and speeding up treatment times across the country.

The government also pledged that 75 per cent of patients diagnosed from 2025 will be cancer-free or living well after five years – up from 60 per cent currently. It also said it will:

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting, who was himself treated for kidney cancer in 2021, said: “Cancer survival shouldn’t come down to who won the lottery of life. But cancer is more likely to be a death sentence in Britain than in other countries around the world.

“As a cancer survivor who owes my life to the NHS, I owe it to future patients to make sure they receive the same outstanding care I did.

“Thanks to the revolution in medical science and technology, we have the opportunity to transform the life chances of cancer patients. Our cancer plan will invest in and modernise the NHS, so that opportunity can be seized and our ambitions realised.”

But experts have warned that the government will need to scale up the workforce if the plan is to succeed.

Richard Evans, chief executive of the Society of Radiographers (SoR), said: “We had a cancer plan for England previously, but it wasn’t properly funded,” he says. “Nothing will happen without investment.”

The NHS has not met the 62-day treatment target, first introduced in 2000, since 2015, and the most recent data from November 2025 shows just 70 per cent of patients were treated within this time.

Meanwhile, 76.5 per cent of people were diagnosed, or had cancer ruled out, within 28 days of an urgent referral, and 91.7 per cent of people started treatment within 31 days of doctors deciding a treatment plan.

Sarah Scobie, deputy director of research at health think tank the Nuffield Trust, said the ambition in the new plan was “very welcome” but cautioned “the NHS will still find them incredibly difficult to meet based on current performance”.

She said between April and November 2025, there was only a 0.1 per cent improvement in the proportion of patients waiting under 62 days to start cancer treatment.

To meet its 85 per cent target by March 2029, the NHS would need to make improvements of 0.4 per cent each month – 30 times the improvement rate it has managed since April.

Among the announcements due to be featured in the new cancer plan, the Department for Health and Social Care also promised that 75 per cent of patients diagnosed from 2025 will be cancer-free or living well after five years.

The UK currently lags behind comparable countries such as Australia and Canada on cancer survival, and according to research by the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership published in 2024, people in the UK were treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy less frequently and faced longer waits to start treatment.

The cancer plan, due to be published in full on Wednesday, will also promise to increase the number of robot-assisted procedures from 70,000 to half a million by 2035 and deliver 9.5 million additional cancer tests by 2029.

The plan will also feature nods to increased use of genomic testing, which can analyse the DNA of cancers to help doctors tailor a more tailored and effective treatment for patients. Patients will also be able to get access to cancer tests at any hospital in their region.

Ms Scobie added: “This would be an enormous feat to maintain, and we are still awaiting details on how it would be funded. The UK lags behind other countries in cancer outcomes and faces longstanding gaps in investment and staff, with key equipment like diagnostic scanners in short supply compared to countries like Germany, Sweden and Italy…

“Making the UK ‘world-leading’ on cancer will take time and the commitment of scarce resources in a health service already under pressure.”

The SoR warned that for the plan to succeed, the government will also need to publish a plan to scale up the workforce to deliver it with funding to support it.

Mr Evans added: “The SoR hopes to be positive about the forthcoming cancer plan. But what matters really is how the plan will work in practice.

“Only with investment will therapeutic radiography once again become a viable – and desirable – career option for young people. Only by investing in the therapeutic radiography workforce can we guarantee that cancer patients receive the treatment they need, when they need it.”

Students unearth ancient burial pit with decapitated remains