Industry

Parts of a town centre road will be closed during six months of work on a gas main.

Woodbridge Road in Ipswich will have traffic lights and side-road closures when the work begins on 22 April.

Gas distributor Cadent said it would be replacing 1.8 miles (3km) of gas pipes. The work is due to finish in October.

The work on Woodbridge Road will be carried out in phases, with closures moving along the 1.1 mile (1.7km) stretch of road.

Cadent said it needed to replace "ageing metallic gas pipes" dating from1907 with "tough new plastic ones".

Project manager Gary Tidman said: "We know it's far from ideal to have any sort of road closures or traffic management in place in what is a busy area, but we have worked hard with the local authorities to create a plan that keeps traffic flowing and maintains access for local businesses and residents.

"We are also making use of the school half-term and summer holidays to keep disruption to a minimum, but we will continue to work with the Highways Agency to ensure that they are happy with the progression we are making and the plans that are in place."

"In the past I would occasionally have seen several 2-3lb mullet follow the tide in, but on this occasion I saw a much larger shape in the water adjacent to Airport Road," Mr Davidson told BBC News NI.

He said this shape was "too big to be a mullet", so he stopped to take a closer look.

"A dorsal fin slowly broke the surface revealing that familiar profile that looked like a shark," he said.

"I quickly took out my phone and started to video this slow-moving fish as it meandered left and right up and downstream, getting mobbed by a few gulls.

"I couldn't believe what I was watching."

The shark continued swimming in this section of river for about 30 minutes before moving upstream into a shadow area and Mr Davidson lost sight of it.

"I felt very lucky to witness such a lengthy sighting and was left curious as to how far upstream it might go," he said.

The Connswater River rises in the Castlereagh hills and runs northwards through east Belfast, getting wider until it reaches the sea at Belfast Lough.

The river route includes the Connswater Greenway walking route and flows past CS Lewis Square and Connswater Shopping Centre.

Mr Davidson said it was "quite a surprise" and he will "continue to look out for it and others in the future".

'Probably having its lunch'

This type of shark mainly eat crabs and small crustaceans, marine biologist Dr Patrick Collins said.

The section of the river in Victoria Park probably contained crabs, and so this shark spotted by Mr Davidson was "probably just having its lunch", he explained.

He said it is "not very common to find smooth-hounds in cities, but they have been recorded in the last few years".

"It's a little bit unusual if you're walking your dog to find one that close to the city, and that easy to see, but they're not a rare animal," Dr Collins continued.

"They're found fairly commonly across the UK and Ireland. It's not an unusual occurrence to have them close to an urban centre because there's sea water there.

"It's a bit like seeing a deer in farmland."

He added that this type of shark poses no risk to the public.

"Because of movies like Jaws and some other strange public perceptions coming from that, there's this idea that all sharks are dangerous animals – they're a type of fish.

"These animals pose absolutely no threat to us whatsoever."

A fire that broke out under a bridge has caused train disruptions in parts of Kent.

At about 17:15 BST on Friday, Southeastern said trains were unable to run between Ebbsfleet and Ashford because of a fire near Ebbsfleet International.

Eurostar services were also delayed by up to an hour to and from London St Pancras International, and disruptions were expected until about 21:00, the service provider said.

The line was reopened at about 19:15, but trains had to run at a lower speed over the bridge.

Network Rail said the fire had been put out and apologised to passengers for any inconvenience

A teenager pulled a knife in a Cardiff school and held it to a child's neck area, a court has heard.

The 16-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to having a knife on the school premises on two occasions in 2024.

Video footage played in the youth court at Cardiff Magistrates' Court showed an incident in which a knife could be seen to be held.

The court heard the incident happened in the school toilets, and that the boy held the knife to a child's neck area but did not make contact.

Magistrates issued a nine-month referral order after the teenager pleaded guilty to possessing a bladed article.

A large fire has broken out at a derelict commercial property in Taunton, Somerset.

Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue service said two engines from Taunton and one from Wellington were dealing with the fire in the Comeytrowe area of the town.

The fire service said it had received multiple calls around 19:16 BST.

It advised residents to keep windows and doors closed due to the nature of the smoke coming from the fire.

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.