Suppressed DWP study told of hardship endured by carers forced to repay thousands after minor allowance breaches

Ministers were warned three years ago that unpaid carers were being treated unfairly and forced to repay huge sums for minor benefit breaches, a long suppressed government report has revealed.

A Department for Work and Pensions document presented to politicians in 2021 detailed how carers – the majority of whom were on low incomes and spending 65 hours a week caring for loved ones – endured financial hardship, stress and anger after being heavily penalised for falling foul of strict carer’s allowance eligibility rules.

Financial regulator brings charges against nine people including Lauren Goodger in crackdown on ‘finfluencers’

The UK’s financial watchdog has charged seven reality TV stars, including former Love Island contestants and cast members from The Only Way is Essex (Towie), with promoting an unauthorised foreign exchange trading scheme on Instagram.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has brought charges against nine people in a crackdown on “finfluencers” who have a total of 4.5m followers on the social media platform.

Party leader says six election pledges revealed at launch event will take two terms of government to materialise

• UK politics live –latest updates

There will be no “quick fix” to the deep problems Labour will inherit if it wins the next election, Keir Starmer has said while unveiling his party’s six election pledges amid a fanfare of endorsements from senior public figures.

The Labour leader said “most reasonable, tolerant people” in the country wanted what his party wanted for Britain, before he received an extraordinary endorsement from the Boots chief executive, Sebastian James, an Old Etonian who was a member of the private all-male Bullingdon Club alongside David Cameron.

Friends in town of Levice say 71-year-old showed no signs of planning attack, while Slovakian president says climate of hate is collective work

Mile L’udovit, like other residents of the unassuming grey apartment block on the outskirts of the sleepy central Slovakian town of Levice, considered Juraj Cintula a reliable neighbour and friend.

Having lived side by side with him for more than 40 years, L’udovit could never have imagined the 71-year-old former security guard and amateur poet would be suspected of perpetrating the worst political attack in Slovakian modern history – shooting the prime minister multiple times at point-blank range.

But coroner finds no evidence to suggest trust directly caused death of Maya Siek in December 2022

An inquest into the death of a six-year-old girl has concluded an NHS hospital trust made a number of failures in her care before she died.

However, a coroner found there was no evidence that suggested the trust had directly caused or contributed to the death of Maya Siek in December 2022.

Entire hush-money trial likely to succeed or fail on whether jurors believe Michael Cohen’s testimony

• Michael Cohen takes stand for cross-examination in Trump trial

Judge Juan Merchan is on the bench and the court is in session.

Donald Trump has arrived in the courtroom for day 18 of his criminal trial.

Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican representative

Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican congresswoman

Eric Trump

Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump aide

Some allege harassment, one claims she was sexually assaulted. His lawyers deny the allegations

• Revealed: Magician David Copperfield accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women
• ‘I honest to God believe I was drugged’: magician David Copperfield’s alleged victims speak out

It was September 1991 in New York and the grand finale of Look of the Year, a prestigious modeling contest that had helped launch the careers of supermodels Cindy Crawford and Helena Christensen.

The celebrity magician David Copperfield, one of the judges, watched from the front row as 58 contestants paraded across the runway in their branded hot pink and sorbet yellow swimsuits. Nearly all the contestants were teenagers; some were as young as 14.

Lesley Sewell said departed CEO had called for help ‘plugging gaps in her memory’ before select committee appearance

A former Post Office executive has told the inquiry into the Horizon scandal that she blocked Paula Vennells’s phone number after the company’s ex-CEO contacted her asking for help to “plug memory gaps” and to “avoid an independent inquiry”.

Lesley Sewell, who was chief information officer at the Post Office until she left in 2015, said that she had subsequently been contacted by her former boss four times in 2020 and 2021.

Hazel Behan, who says main suspect in Madeleine McCann case raped her in Portugal in 2004, tells court she will never forget his eyes

A woman who alleges she was raped at knifepoint by the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has told a court she would never forget the eyes of her attacker, which “bored into my skull”.

Giving evidence in the trial of Christian Brückner, who stands accused of five sexual assaults in Portugal of women aged between 10 and 80 between 2000 and 2017, Hazel Behan, 40, who was raped in June 2004, told the court: “I believe that this man was my attacker.”

Adrian Coghill ordered to leave in response to UK expelling Kremlin’s attache to London for alleged spying

Russia is expelling Britain’s defence attache to Moscow in the latest diplomatic tit for tat, after the UK accused it of sponsoring espionage and hacking attacks against top British officials in a years-long campaign of “malign activity”.

The Russian foreign ministry said it had declared the British defence attache, Adrian Coghill, as “persona non grata. He must leave the territory of the Russian Federation within a week.”