Industry

Disposable barbecues have been banned from a town's park after benches and tables were found damaged.

People can still hire barbecues at Swindon's Coate Water Country Park and bring in non-disposable ones.

Wayne Jones, duty manager at Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service, warned that flames can spread "very quickly" at the moment.

He said: "One of the biggest problems we've got at the moment is the ground drying out and the grass being relatively long. If there's an area where a disposable barbecue is brought into contact, there is a chance it could cause a fire."

A fire spokesperson explained that the disposal barbecue's metal trays stay hot for a long time and can cause fires in undergrowth and bins. They also warned people to never leave one unattended.

There are now several burnt benches and tables at Coate Water from incidents involving barbecues.

Visitor Chandru Balasubramaniam said: "There is no need to have a disposable barbecue at all. Definitely they should be banned, yes.

"Just look at the mess here. And they can also cause fires."

Another visitor at the park, John Kilderry, thinks barbecues need to be taken home after usage.

"They're fine if they're used properly, kept on bricks like you should do, off the floor, not on the grass," he added.

New cases of the sexually transmitted infection syphilis have risen again in England, continuing a trend dating back to the early 2000s.

While the overall number of people diagnosed with gonorrhoea has fallen, there has been a significant increase in the number of cases where the infection is drug resistant, new UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data shows.

Health experts say this is a real concern, although the actual number of drug-resistant cases remains very low.

The NHS recently announced the rollout of the world's first vaccine programme to protect against gonorrhoea, aimed principally at gay and bisexual men.

More than 1,300 buildings lost power in a Cornish seaside town following two separate incidents.

National Grid said a power outage had been reported in Penzance just before 19:55 BST in several areas including Market Jew Street and New Street which left 1,194 properties without power.

The company added a second outage was reported just after 20:00 which affected 175 properties on streets including Adelaide Street, Leskinnick Terrace and Penare Road.

In an update at 05:12, National Grid said power had been restored to all properties.

People have until Sunday to give their comments on plans for devolution, which includes an elected mayor and an overhaul of local government across Sussex and Brighton & Hove.

In December, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner announced plans for a 'devolution revolution' with elected mayors across England and an end to two-tier council structures.

In February, Sussex was confirmed as one of six areas accepted onto the government's priority scheme for devolution and county council elections due to take place this May were cancelled.

A government consultation into the plans will end at midnight on Sunday.

Reorganising our councils

Under the plans, all 12 of the boroughs and district councils and East and West Sussex county councils will be scrapped.

An elected mayor will take on responsibility for strategic decisions on the economy, transport and infrastructure and new unitary authorities will be created to run all of the day-to-day services.

Current council leaders have been thrashing out plans on how many unitary authorities there will be and which areas they will cover.

Brighton and Hove is already run by a unitary city council, but it is smaller than the government wants new authorities to be.

Initial plans published in January suggest the political map of Sussex could be significantly redrawn in the reorganisation.

Fast-track timetable

Leaders must finalise plans and submit them to the government by September and wait for a final ministerial decision on whether they can proceed.

The proposed timetable for fast-track devolution would see Sussex residents elect their first mayor in May 2026.

Elections to the new unitary authorities would take place in May 2027.

For the following year, existing councils would continue to run alongside the new unitary authorities while business is handed over, before being dissolved in 2028.

Greggs will move its self-serve food and drinks to behind the counter to stamp out shoplifting at the High Street bakery.

The company is trialling the measure at a handful of stores which, it said, are "exposed to higher levels of anti-social behaviour".

These include Whitechapel in east London which is one of five shops that will try out the new policy – the others are in Peckham and Ilford.

It is not expected that the change will be implemented across all Greggs' 2,600 bakeries in the UK, but it may be rolled out to sites where there are high levels of theft.

In 2024, shoplifting offences recorded by the police rose by 20% to 516,971, according the Office for National Statistics.

But the number of thefts recorded by retailers was far higher – for the year to last September shops saw a 3.7 million rise to 20.4 million, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said.

Greggs said customers can expect to see its full range behind its counters but added: "The safety of our colleagues and customers remains our number one priority."

Some retailers, including supermarkets, have reported been targeted by organised gangs who wear bluetooth headsets to communicate with each other and set off alarms in stores to create a distraction allowing their fellow shoplifters to escape.

Andy Higginson, chair of sportswear and trainer retailer JD Sports and the BRC, recently told the BBC that some see shoplifting as a "way of life", allowing them to trade or sell what they have stolen.

"There is an element of society that is starting to take stealing from stores as a way of life and that needs to be stopped," he said.

A man who travelled across England stealing about £40,000 from more than 500 cash machines has been jailed for four years.

Florin Ivascu, 40, worked alongside Andrei Matei, 35, to jam open the cash dispenser on the ATMs so they could take money from inside.

Ivascu admitted 545 thefts from cash machines and criminal damage, and was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court on Thursday. Matei was jailed for two years in February after admitting similar charges.

The Romanian nationals – Ivascu of Dagenham, London and Matei of Crumpsall, Manchester, will also face deportation once they are released.

West Yorkshire Police said Ivascu caused damage valued at over £60,000 to the cash machines which he tampered with.

Matei admitted theft and criminal damage to 483 machines and was jailed for two years and three months when he appeared at Leeds Crown Court in February.

Ivascu faced the same charges together with an additional 62 thefts and criminal damage relating to ATM incidents which took place in Merseyside.

Police said Ivascu would carry out the process while Matei kept lookout and provided cover so that people could not see what was happening.

An investigation into the pair's activities was launched by the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Organised Crime Unit (YHROCU) after a spate of thefts from cash machines in West Yorkshire.

But officers from the YHROCU's Proactive Economic Crime Team soon established the pair were carrying out their activities all over the country in several police force areas.

They were arrested in Nottingham in 2023 after CCTV footage showed them at hundreds of locations.

Speaking after the sentencing, economic crime investigator Neil Bottomley of the YHROCU's Proactive Economic Crime Team said: "We received reports of a number of incidents where two men were targeting cash points in Yorkshire, but it soon became very clear while we were piecing together their activities that they were active on a nationwide scale.

"The pair were committing thefts from ATMs across most of the country and leaving a trail of damage to the machines behind them.

"Several other forces assisted us as part of this investigation.

"Ivascu and Matei were nothing short of prolific and I'm pleased that we have been able to finally bring them to justice and put them behind bars."

Three YHROCU officers were commended by the judge for their role in the investigation.

The pair committed offences in 27 of England's 40 force areas, including Avon & Somerset, Bedfordshire, Derbyshire, Dorset, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Hampshire, Humberside, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside and the Metropolitan Police area.

They also targeted North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia, West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Wiltshire.

West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds

It was once unthinkable that Lyle and Erik Menendez, the men who murdered their wealthy parents by shooting them 16 times, would get the sympathy and forgiveness of the masses.

Their claims of sexual abuse at the hands of their father were mocked by prosecutors and comedians alike, from late-night TV to jokes at the Academy Awards.

But 35 years later – thanks in part to TikTok, Netflix and stars like Kim Kardashian – the Menendez brothers have a new generation of supporters – many who were not even born in 1989, the year the brothers ambushed their parents with shotguns in their Beverly Hills mansion.

At the time of their trials, the brothers were portrayed as greedy, entitled monsters who went on a $700,000 (£526,0000) spending spree in the weeks after the murders. Now, with a growing understanding of trauma and sexual abuse, many are more sympathetic – and that might just give the brothers a chance at freedom.

This week, a Los Angeles judge reduced the brothers' sentence to include the possibility of parole, which could be granted at a hearing next month.

Their fate will then be in the hands of California's Parole Board and, ultimately, Governor Gavin Newsom, who will be weighing the shifting public opinion about the divisive case with his own political ambitions.

How did we get here?

In 1989, Erik and Lyle Menendez burst into their Beverly Hills living room, both toting loaded shotguns, and opened fire on their parents, who were watching television. The crime would go unsolved for months.

They got tickets for the James Bond film License to Kill as an alibi and told law enforcement and members of the news media, who were covering the execution of the wealthy, high-powered couple in their mansion, that perhaps the mafia was to blame.

Meanwhile, they bought a new Porsche, Jeep, Rolex watches and other luxury items with cash from their parents' estate.

They weren't caught until police got word of their admissions to a psychologist.

Even at the time, their crime was divisive – the first trial ended un a mistrial after the jury couldn't reach a verdict. After the second, they were sentenced to life without parole.

During both trials, the brothers were characterised as bad boys and spoiled children who were motivated to kill their parents out of hatred and hopes to acquire their $14 million estate.

Saturday Night Live and other late-night shows mocked the pair's defence in court – including tearful testimony about their alleged sexual abuse, which prosecutors dubbed the "abuse excuse" – and documentary titles from that decade included phrases like "the bad sons" and "American sons, American murderers".

Appeal after appeal was denied but last year, everything seemed to change. New evidence about the alleged sexual abuse had surfaced and Netflix released a drama that captured the attention of a whole new generation. Soon, documentaries about the case included titles with words like "misjudged" and "boys betrayed".

TikTokers discussed the case with their followers. Reality star Kim Kardashian, a criminal justice advocate who has helped free imprisoned people, penned an opinion piece publicly backing their bid for freedom.

"Back then, there were limited resources for victims of sexual abuse, particularly for boys," Kardashian wrote in the NBC piece.

In the 1990s, society did not have the same understanding we do today of trauma, sexual abuse and harassment, Whitney Phillips, a University of Oregon professor who studies true crime, told the BBC. That gap in understanding was especially pronounced for boys who were abused, she added.

But after the MeToo movement, there was more cultural space created for people to speak about these experiences, she said.

"Not only does it create a permission structure," Prof Phillips said of people feeling encouraged to speak out about harassment and abuse, "in some ways it creates an incentive structure to feature stories about trauma".

Adding to that is the change in how the public views criminal justice, with more emphasis on rehabilitation and reducing prison populations instead of the tough-on-crime mentality that dominated Los Angeles at the end of the 20th Century.

"The lock people up forever attitude of the 1990s is fortunately long gone," said Robert Rand, a journalist who met and interviewed the brothers before they were arrested and uncovered new evidence in 2018 – a letter Erik had written as a teenager to a cousin about his father's sexual abuse.

In a documentary Mr Rand produced about the killings, released in 2023, a former member of the boy band called Menudo alleged that the brothers' father, Jose Menendez – who was an executive at RCA Records – had raped him when he was 14 years old. The accusation further bolstered the brothers' claims of abuse.

The new testimonies helped give new life to the brothers' claims, and provided a catalyst for what Prof Phillips called a "hurricane" of interest and support, from the Netflix drama to Kardashian's op-ed.

"The things that get really big online are things that have lots of sources of energy," she said.

Even Lyle Menendez noted the sea change.

"The followers who are younger that are on that sort of TikTok social media generation, they really have tremendous hope," Lyle Menendez said at a court hearing.

"I'm not as hopeless as I was as a 21-year-old, that's for sure. Obviously, I feel more hope when society seems to be understanding these experiences and sex abuse better."

Where do the Menendez brothers go from here?

The fate of the brothers – regardless of what social media, the courts or California's parole board recommends – ultimately rests with one man: Governor Newsom, who has the power to accept or reject any parole recommendation.

And many believe that man is considering a run for president in 2028.

Since the last election, Newsom has been undergoing a political transformation, shifting from crusading liberal pushing universal healthcare to a more moderate, pragmatic approach, most recently proposing freezing healthcare for undocumented immigrants.

Weighing in on such a divisive case could be "risky", said Pennsylvania-based Republican political strategist Sam Chen.

"Can you imagine a reality TV show of the Menendez brothers while Newsom is trying to run for president? Talk about free campaign airtime," he said. "That would be the worst thing for him."

Although no one knows which way he is leaning, Newsom has mentioned the case several times on social media and on his podcast.

"The question for the board is a rather simple one," Newsom said in February on TikTok. "Do they pose a current, what we call 'unreasonable' risk to public safety."

Mr Rand acknowledged the case is "risky" politically for Newsom.

"You can't get around the elephant in the room: They brutally murdered their parents," Rand told the BBC. "But if you do believe that they were abused and that they suffered from a lifetime of abuse – and there actually is evidence that supports their story – it's a very different situation."

The brothers have not committed violent crimes while in prison, a fact the judge in their resentencing hearing considered, although they did have infractions for using cell phones smuggled into prison.

They've also led productive lives while incarcerated, with Erik founding a hospice programme to help elderly and disabled inmates while Lyle has been working on prison beautification.

Remarkably, every single surviving member of their family – from cousins to aunts and uncles – want the Menendez brothers released, including the surviving siblings of Jose and Kitty Menendez.

"They chose to live their lives with clarity and a purpose of service," their cousin Anamaria Baralt said outside the court after they were resentenced.

If the board recommends parole in June, the governor has 30 days to accept or reject the recommendation. If they are paroled, the brothers will be released likely within five months, according to the California Department of Corrections.

The fact that Gov Newsom ordered the state parole board to conduct a comprehensive risk assessment before the brothers were even deemed eligible for parole has many thinking he's open to releasing them.

"He wants the political cover" of the parole board and court recommendations, said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor who has been following the brothers' legal saga but is not representing any of the participants.

A year ago, Mr Rahmani never would have predicted the Menendez brothers could be released. Now he thinks they will be free within the next few months.

But it wouldn't be unprecedented for Gov Newsom to reject a high-profile parole recommendation.

Several times he blocked the release of a Manson Family member. And in 2022, Newsom blocked the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the man who assassinated Sen Robert F Kennedy.

As far as the Menendez brothers go, Gov Newsom said on his podcast that he's mulling over the case and he's not planning to watch any of the documentaries or true crime dramas about the case.

"I'm obviously familiar with the Menendez brothers just through the news over the course of many decades, but not to the degree that many others are because of all of these documentaries and all of the attention they've received," he said. "So that won't bias my independent and objective review of the facts."

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A TikToker said he was "absolutely buzzing" to have been invited to host a fanzone during the National League play-off final at Wembley Stadium.

Alexis Cassar said he would be interviewing fans and former Southend United players at Boxpark Wembley when the Blues meet Oldham Athletic on Sunday.

The Essex club confirmed the partnership with the social media star on its own TikTok account.

"I'm absolutely buzzing but a bit nervous, though, because on my TikTok I can cut things… here, people will really see the real me," said the 26-year-old, whose videos showcasing his love of Leigh-on-Sea have attracted millions of views.

Up to 50,000 fans will travel to Wembley for the match, which will mark the end of a turbulent few years for Blues fans who have backed their team through financial turmoil and the threat of extinction.

Alexis told BBC Essex: "I think it's fair to say I don't think any Southend supporter thought they'd be in this position at the start of the year, even mid-way through the year.

"I think we can go to Wembley with nothing to lose."

Alexis said he had been "manifesting" tickets for Sunday's clash after failing to secure a seat.

The matchday capacity was initially limited because of the closure of Wembley Park Tube station for engineering works.

When the Shrimpers first got in touch, he "thought it would be filming something at Roots Hall… but for some reason I knew I'd end up at Wembley on Sunday".

The Green Party co-leader said he wanted to know how fire risks could be managed if plans for one of Europe's largest battery storage sites were approved.

Developers want to install more than a thousand battery containers on land on the outskirts of the small village of Rushall, near Diss in Norfolk.

Whilst the company behind the plan – Elmya – has said safety measures will be in place, residents fear the site could catch fire.

MP Adrian Ramsay – whose Waveney Valley constituency includes Rushall – said he did not "want to scaremonger" but would be meeting with Norfolk's fire chief to discuss their concerns.

Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are used to hold electricity generated by renewables like solar and wind farms, which can then be put into the grid when needed.

But the lithium used in the batteries can cause explosions if it overheats.

A fire at a small BESS site in Liverpool in 2020 took fire crews 59 hours to extinguish, whilst a blaze at a huge site in California was left to burn on the advice of fire experts.

Ramsay said he would speak to Norfolk's chief fire officer about the proposed site at Rushall, as well as one that would be part of the East Pye solar farm.

He said he wanted to know how fire risks could be managed and assessed, and how fire crews might access remote, countryside sites:

"I don't want to scaremonger on that at all, but I do take the questions residents are raising seriously."

Asher Minns, from the Tyndall Centre For Climate Research at the University of East Anglia, said data on BESS sites across the world "wasn't great" but he believed the risk of fire was "very low".

"There's better [safety] guidelines coming out all the time," he added.

Elmya – which has yet to submit its plans for the site at Rushall – said it would have "advanced monitoring, early fire detection, and suppression systems".

Development director James Innes insisted the project's safety was "paramount" and the company would be "following National Fire Chiefs Council guidance".

A Norfolk Fire and Rescue spokesperson said: "We continue to proactively work with site designers and operators of battery energy storage systems to help them improve both their site designs, and the accessibility for firefighting.

"This is to reduce and mitigate for the likelihood of any fire on their premises."