John Torode left ‘heartbroken’ after learning of MasterChef sacking online

John Torode was left “heartbroken” after discovering he had been sacked from MasterChef online.

Shortly after news broke of the celebrity chef being dropped from the cookery show, he released a statement revealing he had not “heard from anyone at the BBC” or the production company behind the series.

It’s now been reported that Torode’s agent was called 11 minutes before his sacking was announced to the public and that his agent “hadn’t a chance to call him”.

“He read about it on the BBC News website,” a source told The Sun. “Obviously he’s heartbroken. He feels he’s been made a scapegoat off the back of the Gregg Wallace report.”

The Independent has contacted the BBC, Banijay UK and Torode for comment.

Torode, 59, was fired for using “an extremely offensive racist term”, which the chef said he has “no recollection” of making.

The allegation against him was upheld after being made during a seven-month investigation into the show, which substantiated 45 claims of misconduct against his co-host Wallace, including one of unwelcome physical contact.

Wallace, who joined the revamped version of the show with Torode in 2005, has also been fired.

On Monday (14 July), Torode confirmed that he was being investigated over his language, but said he was “shocked and saddened” by the allegation and said he knows any racial language “is wholly unacceptable in any environment”.

After being dropped from the show without consultation, he said: “I’d hoped that I’d have some say in my exit from a show I’ve worked on since its relaunch in 2005, but events in the last few days seem to have prevented that.”

“Over the past few months, I have been considering my life and the shape of it now and in the future,” he continued, revealing it was “time to pass the cutlery to someone else”.

Torode said he “will watch fondly from afar as I now focus on the many other exciting projects that I have been working towards”, adding that his “tummy will be grateful for a rest after 20 years of eating”.

He said his time on the show has been “a joy” and revealed that he had recently filmed a series of Celebrity MasterChef with Wallace’s replacement Grace Dent as well as two Christmas specials.

Torode has also filmed a MasterChef series with Wallace, the fate of which is currently unknown. BBC director-general Tim Davie said a decision is yet to be made about its broadcast but explained on Tuesday (15 July) that the “difficulty” surrounds the chef participants who spent time away from their jobs to be on the show.

In a statement , the BBC said that the allegation against Torode involved “an extremely offensive racist term being used in the workplace” and was investigated and substantiated by the independent investigation led by the law firm, Lewis Silkin.

“The BBC takes this upheld finding extremely seriously. We will not tolerate racist language of any kind and, as we have already said, we told Banijay UK, the makers of MasterChef, that action must be taken. John Torode’s contract on MasterChef will not be renewed.”

Meanwhile, more than half of the 83 allegations against Wallace, including inappropriate sexual language and being in a state of undress, were upheld.

The TV personality said he is “deeply sorry for any distress” caused and that he “never set out to harm or humiliate” anyone with his behaviour.

Emma Watson banned from driving for six months after speeding

Harry Potter actor Emma Watson has been banned from driving for six months after being caught speeding.

Watson, who played Hermione Granger in the film franchise, drove 38mph in a 30mph zone in Oxford on the evening of 31 July 2024.

The 35-year-old, who is now a student, was made to pay a total of £1,044 at High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday.

Watson already had nine points on her licence before the speeding incident occurred, the court heard.

A driver can be banned, typically for a six-month period, if they accumulate 12 or more penalty points on their licence within three years.

Watson did not attend the five-minute hearing.

The actor rose to fame after playing Hermione, one of the titular character’s best friends, in all eight of the Harry Potter films between 2001 and 2011.

As an adult, she had high-profile roles in the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast and Greta Gerwig’s Little Women.

Watson later turned her attention to her studies and began a Master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Oxford in September 2023.

She later switched to a DPhil, which is the university’s version of a PhD.

Separately, Zoe Wanamaker, who starred alongside Watson in Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone – the first film in the series – was also banned from driving for six months during a hearing at the same court on Wednesday.

Wanamaker appeared in the 2001 film as Madam Hooch, the Quidditch instructor.

The court heard she was caught speeding on 7 August 2024 on the M4 in Newbury, Berkshire.

The 76-year-old drove her blue Volvo at 46mph in a 40mph limit, the court heard.

Wanamaker, who like Watson already had nine points on her licence, was also fined £1,044 and banned for six months.

She also did not attend the short hearing.

US House Speaker breaks with Trump and calls for release of Epstein files

Popular podcaster Joe Rogan ripped into the Justice Department’s handling of the so-called Epstein files as House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans broke away from President Donald Trump over the issue.

Earlier this month, the DOJ and FBI said in a memo there was never any client list of high-profile names associated with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Trump administration has faced backlash over this new development, as it had promised to release files about the federal investigation into the late financier.

Rogan ranted about the feds on an episode of his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” released Tuesday.

“They’ve got videotape and all a sudden they don’t,” Rogan said. “You had the director of the FBI on this show saying, ‘If there was [a videotape], nothing you’re looking for is on those tapes,’” referring to Kash Patel’s interview with Rogan in June.

During his appearance, Patel indicated there was no video evidence of people committing crimes on Epstein’s private island.

“Why’d they say there was thousands of hours of tapes of people doing horrible s***? Why’d they say that? Didn’t [Attorney General] Pam Bondi say that?” Rogan said during Tuesday’s rant.

Bondi told reporters in May, “There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn and there are hundreds of victims,” according to the Miami Herald.

The feds’ July memo said there was “a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography.”

But when it came to potential allegations against third parties, the memo stated: “There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.”

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican and close ally to Trump, told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson in an interview Tuesday he supported the release of the Epstein files.

“I’m for transparency,” Johnson said, per The Washington Post. “It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.”

Despite his vocal support, Johnson opposed a procedural motion advanced by House Democrats Tuesday that would have allowed lawmakers to vote to release the Epstein files.

But Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, wrote on X Tuesday he would force a House vote on “releasing the COMPLETE files.”

“We all deserve to know what’s in the Epstein files, who’s implicated, and how deep this corruption goes. Americans were promised justice and transparency,” he said.

Earlier this month, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a prominent Georgia figure in Trump’s base, told Real America’s Voice network, “I think the Department of Justice and the FBI has more explaining to do — this is Jeffrey Epstein,” per The Hill.

“This is the most famous pedophile in modern-day history, and people are absolutely not going to accept just a memo that was written that says there is no client list,” she said.

Trump on Tuesday claimed that former President Barack Obama and former FBI Director James Comey “made up” the Epstein files.

Leaving for an event in Pennsylvania from the White House, the president was asked by a reporter if Attorney General Bondi had revealed whether his name appeared in any of the Justice Department’s files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“She’s given us just a very quick briefing, and in terms of the credibility of the different things that they’ve seen,” Trump said. “And I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama.”

Obama, a Democrat, served in the White House from 2009 to 2017, while Comey led the FBI from 2013 until May 2017. Epstein died in prison in 2019.

When asked about the memo at a recent Cabinet meeting, Trump said, “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years.”

“I mean, I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration,” Trump said, referring to the July 4 flooding disaster along the Guadalupe River.

Tesla culls top executives after months of turmoil and sales slump

Top executives have recently departed Tesla after months of turmoil caused by CEO Elon Musk’s stint in politics and a sales slump at the electric car company.

Troy Jones, vice president of sales, service and delivery in Tesla’s North American market, left the firm after 15 years,The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Several other Tesla higher-ups have left the company in the past year.

Milan Kovac, a vice president of engineering who oversaw Tesla’s development of its humanoid robot Optimus, announced his departure in June.

“This week, I’ve had to make the most difficult decision of my life and will be moving out of my position. I’ve been far away from home for too long, and will need to spend more time with family abroad,” Kovac, who had worked at the company for more than nine years, wrote on X at the time.

He added: “I want to make it clear that this is the only reason, and has absolutely nothing to do with anything else. My support for @elonmusk and the team is ironclad – Tesla team forever.”

Jenna Ferrura, Tesla’s director of human resources for North America, has also left. Bloomberg reported in June, citing people familiar with the matter, Ferrura no longer appeared in the company directory.

Omead Afshar, who oversaw sales and manufacturing operations in North America and Europe, has departed the company as well.

Forbes reported in June, citing people familiar with the matter, Afshar was fired by Musk after being promoted to his position in October. Bloomberg called Afshar one of Musk’s “closest confidants,” working at the company since 2017.

The E-suite shakeups come during a rough few months for Tesla. Musk made waves among a key demographic of EV buyers when he led President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. Musk left the White House in late May, and his relationship with Trump quickly soured.

There have been protests at Tesla dealerships and even some cases of attacks on property at car showrooms and lots, charging stations and involving privately owned Tesla cars.

Against this backdrop, Tesla’s global vehicle sales dropped 13.5 percent in the second fiscal quarter of 2025, the Journal reported earlier this month.

The company reported worse-than-expected Tesla deliveries. There were 384,122 Tesla vehicles delivered in the second quarter, off the 387,000 estimate from analysts, according to FactSet.

Tesla’s stock has also significantly decreased over the past six months. The stock was at around $413 per share on January 16, compared to about $308 per share on Tuesday, according to MarketWatch.

The company has been trying to entice customers with an updated Model Y midsize SUV and a cheaper version of its Cybertruck.

June was a particularly big month for Tesla as the company unveiled new versions of its Model S and Model X luxury cars and launched a pilot of its robotaxi service in Austin.

When my friends were facing cancer, a community of people stepped up

When I was younger, I used to worry incessantly about my parents getting cancer. I’d lay awake at night, ruminating on what would happen to my brother and I if they did. Who would support us? Thankfully, both are still cancer-free, well into their seventies.

However, now that I’m a parent myself, I worry about my children. Many people believe that cancer only really happens to people in old age, but that’s just not true. One beloved friend’s daughter died of leukaemia in 2020, aged just five; an unthinkable horror that changed the lives of everyone who knew her and her family.

And with Macmillan Cancer Support reporting that almost 3.5 million people in the UK are living with cancer, I also worry about my friends – parents themselves, their lives touched by cancer. One friend sat me down in our favourite local café, our toddlers playing at our feet, to break the news that she was about to undergo a double mastectomy. We cried together.

Another friend, Sarah, a single parent to two teenage girls, was diagnosed with breast cancer the day before we heard that King Charles had cancer, and a month before the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, announced her own diagnosis in March last year. It seemed like cancer was everywhere.

As a result, Sarah put 2024 on hold – she missed her daughter’s last sports day and last concert at primary school and had to find a whole new way of co-ordinating family life.

“I’m lucky in some ways that my children are teenagers, so they are able to look after themselves to some degree – but I’m also a single parent, so there are some things that they can’t do, or struggle with, due to their age,” she tells me.

“I have even set up multiple alarms on our Alexa reminding them to put their packed lunches in their bags or leave for school, just in case I can’t get up.”

Sarah says she thought she knew quite a lot about cancer prior to her diagnosis, but now admits she “really didn’t”. She explains: “There are so many terms and procedures to understand – stages and grades, not to mention over 100 different chemotherapy drugs.”

Sarah tells me about the exhausting cumulative effect of chemotherapy, which she endured every three weeks during her cancer treatment: “After the very first lot, I slept for a few hours and felt much better pretty quickly. For my last rounds, I slept for 48 hours solid and even days later, I needed to have a nap in the middle of the day and was in bed by 8pm.”

Sarah’s now finished chemotherapy and, a year on from her diagnosis, is turning 50. She’s throwing a huge party to celebrate not only the birthday milestone, but getting over this “annus horriblis” – a year she couldn’t have gotten through without the people around her.

“People can do so much for us when we are unwell – and I am forever grateful,” she says. “I’ve been really overwhelmed by the support that my friends have given me; from ferrying around my children to and from after-school events and sleepovers when things get bad, to my 75-year-old neighbour mowing the lawn. One friend popped round with a huge pot of pasta sauce and I even had a gift box from a recruiter at work.”

What talking to my strong, resilient friends about their cancer journeys has made me realise most, is the power of community: for when we receive the worst news imaginable, what we need is people around us to see us through. A community of other women: friends, school mums, neighbours.

They had people willing to make them food, pick up their children, go shopping for them or to just sit with them and listen. They had support when they decided to raise money for cancer support charities, when they did fundraisers such as hosting a Macmillan Coffee Morning.

It takes a village to raise a child – and that village will be with you every step of the way when you need them most.

Find out how you can help raise vital funds by hosting a Macmillan Coffee Morning. Sign up now on the Macmillan website

Macmillan Cancer Support, registered charity in England and Wales (261017), Scotland (SC039907) and the Isle of Man (604). Also operating in Northern Ireland.

Did Trump’s uncle teach the Unabomber? No. Here’s what really happened

At an energy and innovation summit in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, President Donald Trump insisted that his uncle, Dr. John Trump, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had once taught a “seriously good” student named Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski.

“He’d go around correcting everybody,” Trump boasted. “It didn’t work out too well for him… but it’s interesting in life.”

During his winding 30-minute speech at the inaugural “Energy and Innovation” summit at Carnegie Mellon University, Trump elaborated on the story, suggesting that the student was the domestic terrorist and mathematician known as the Unabomber.

After invoking his late paternal uncle, whom he falsely described as MIT’s “longest-serving professor,” Trump continued his implausible anecdote.

“Kaczynski was one of his students,” he continued. “Do you know who Kaczynski was? There’s very little difference between a madman and a genius.”

The crowd showed little reaction to the story, and it was unclear if the president was confusing Kaczynski, who died by suicide in a federal prison in 2023, with someone else.

The bizarre claim is not only highly unlikely, it is practically impossible.

Kaczynski attacked academics, businessmen, and random civilians with homemade bombs between 1978 and 1995, as part of a campaign aimed at collapsing modern society. He killed three people and injured 23.

Before being recognized as the Unabomber, Kaczynski earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1962, having entered at the age of 16, and Master’s and Doctoral degrees in mathematics from the University of Michigan by 1967.

Kaczynski taught as an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley, until 1969, before making a deliberate shift away from academic life and mainstream society, living in a remote cabin near Lincoln, Montana.

Despite Trump’s statements, Kaczynski never attended MIT. There is no record of him ever visiting or lecturing at the university either.

Meanwhile, Prof. Trump, a cancer research pioneer who received the National Medal of Science, taught at MIT for approximately four decades before his death in 1985 at the age of 78.

He focused on high-voltage phenomena, electron acceleration, and the interaction of radiation with both living and non-living matter, including the design of X-ray generators for cancer therapy.

His expertise has been repeatedly vaunted by his nephew, who on Tuesday described him as a “smart man.”

Unlike Kaczynski, John Trump was not a mathematician; he was a professor of electrical engineering and physics.

Even if the renowned physicist did cross paths with the infamous serial killer, he could not have known that Kaczynski was linked to the Unabomber attacks.

The alleged conversation would have taken place more than a decade before the FBI identified Kaczynski as the Unabomber in April 1996 after his brother, David Kaczynski, turned him in after reading his manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future.

The manifesto makes no mention of Prof. Trump, MIT, or any figures associated with that institution.

His autobiography and prison interviews also contain detailed recollections of his education and professors, with no mention of Trump’s uncle or his time at MIT.

While MIT geneticist Phillip Sharp received a threatening letter from Kaczynski before his arrest, no one from or affiliated with the technical college was physically attacked or injured.

The Independent has contacted the White House for more information.

Warning over ‘contaminated’ tomatoes sold across UK

A potentially deadly salmonella outbreak has been linked to tomatoes, health and safety watchdogs have warned.

The outbreak caused more than 100 people to get sick and at least 14 to be hospitalised with the diarrhoea-causing bug in 2024.

Food safety chiefs believe the outbreak was caused by multiple foods including eggs, red meat products and tomatoes.

The cases caused by the salad staple were not confined to a certain area of the UK, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). As a result, it is unknown whether they were grown in the UK or imported from another country.

Seven outbreaks of Salmonella were reported to national surveillance in 2024, comprising 304 cases of which 280 cases were confirmed in a lab.

Testing revealed all cases were caused by salmonella strains Blockley and Strathcona – which can cause diarrhoea, fever, abdominal cramps, nausea, and vomiting.

But health and safety watchdogs have warned the strain Salmonella Strathcona can cause particularly severe illness.

However, Salmonella Blockley – which is usually found in East Asia and the US – has only been recorded a handful of times across Europe, making this spike in the UK alarming.

Salmonella is one of the most common causes of food poisoning. It takes 12 to 72 hours for the symptoms to develop after swallowing a contaminated product.

While most people suffer with vomiting and diarrhoea those with weakened immune systems such as children and the elderly are most at risk of suffering with severe illness.

In some cases, those that become seriously ill need hospital care because dehydration caused by the illness can be life-threatening.

UKHSA data for 2024, revealed there were 81 cases of Salmonella Blockley confirmed by lab testing – of these 14 were hospitalised.

The Salmonella Strathcona outbreak, also caused by tomatoes, affected 24 people.

These infections are typically contracted through the consumption of contaminated food, such as undercooked poultry, meat, eggs, or unwashed raw fruit and vegetables. Unpasteurised milk and cheese also pose a risk.

Water supplies used to grow the tomatoes can cause salmonella contamination and can even persist in the soil and continue to contaminate them as they grow.

A separate Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak linked to red meat caused 109 cases. There were also 24 cases of Salmonella Enteritidis linked to eggs.

UKHSA figures released last month showed salmonella cases hit a record decade high in 2024 reaching more than 10,000 cases. Data showed a 17.1 per cent increase, from 8,872 cases in 2023 to 10,388 in 2024.