Author: BBC

Free sport sessions are set to be offered in Sheffield to “get families active” during the school summer holidays.More than a dozen parks and green spaces in the city will host the two-hour sessions, including Firth Park, Greenhill Park and Gleadless Common.The afternoon and evening slots will offer football, rounders and other multi-sport sessions, with family-friendly games for all ages and abilities also promised.Everyone Active – which has a contract with Sheffield City Council to run leisure, health and wellbeing facilities – will lead the events, with free food and drink also on offer.Lorenzo Clark, from Everyone Active, said: “The…

The GTA franchise is one of the biggest and most profitable entertainment properties in history.GTA V has sold nearly 230 million copies, and the launch of its successor is expected to be such a major economic event that Bank of America has weighed in on its price, external.Despite this, Rockstar’s announcement has prompted some independent retailers to refuse to stock the code-in-a-box version.VGP, an online retailer with a physical store in Toronto, said, external while it had “tremendous respect” for Rockstar, it was “committed to preserving the value of physical game ownership”, so would not be offering the product.Lootbox Gaming,…

Josh said: “I’ve been getting messages from people all around the world. “I’m very touched by it all, and it’s making a difficult time a lot easier.”He said his dad was born in Sierra Leone on 1 October 1944, graduated in law from the University of Oxford and trained in medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.The surgeon was also known for developing the B-Lynch brace suture, a technique for severe postpartum haemorrhage that helped save the lives of mothers across the world, Josh added.Josh described him as a “devoted father, grandfather, mentor, colleague and friend”. The GP said: “It…

US president Donald Trump has vowed to impose a 100% import tariff on any European country that introduces a digital services tax on American technology giants. Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said “Numerous European countries” had been discussing bringing in such a levy and some were close to doing so.He warned that the punitive penalties would be applied immediately and would completely “supersede” any existing bilateral trade agreements. While the post targets nations planning the “imminent implementation” of new levies, the precise implications for the UK were not immediately clear, given London has had such a tax in…

Flowers and Jubair’s trial heard they were part of the cyber-crime collective, Scattered Spider.The loosely organised gang of young English-speaking cyber-criminals has been linked to dozens of other cyber-attacks including on retailers Marks and Spencer and the Co-op.But the BBC has learned Flowers initially came to the attention of police shortly after he turned 16 years old.In October 2023 he was caught carrying out low-level cyber-crime and visited by West Midland’s Regional Cyber Crime Unit prevent officers.Police say that during the visit Flowers did not engage with officers and was given a cease and desist order to deter him from…

Could laughter do more than lift your mood?Researchers at King’s College London have launched a “Laughter Lab” to explore whether laughing can help people with chronic lung conditions by clearing airways, improving breathing, and boosting wellbeing.A simple laugh might one day become part of community-based healthcare.Follow BBC London on Facebook, external, X, external and Instagram, external. Send your story ideas to hellobbclondon@bbc.co.uk, external.

Asian stock markets fell sharply on Friday, led by a sell-off in technology firms as investors worried that recent jumps in share prices had gone too far.Trading on South Korea’s Kospi was temporarily halted as an 8% fall in the benchmark index triggered a mechanism intended to curb panic selling. The index closed 5.8% lower.It comes after shares in Apple fell sharply on Thursday after it announced it would raise the prices of its iPads and MacBooks due to the soaring cost of computer chips.Some investors are also concerned about the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent this year…

To put it simply, the GTA franchise is one of the biggest and most profitable entertainment properties in history.GTA 5 has sold nearly 230 million copies, making it one of the best-selling games of all time – which has generated billions of dollars in revenue for Rockstar.The game’s sandbox gameplay, where players can explore vast open worlds with considerable freedom – sometimes controversially – has seen it be continuously lauded as the ultimate expression for what the interactive medium can do. Freelance video games journalist Vic Hood said each entry in the series “continued to push technical and gameplay boundaries”,…

Earlier this month it was announced that 92% of resident doctors voted yes and 79% of consultants voted for strike action.The BMA also said 90% of SAS (specialist, associate specialist and speciality) doctors voted in favour of strike action.Both branches of practice voted in favour of industrial action in what they said was “over 18 years of pay erosion”.Representatives from the BMA will go to Stormont on Thursday where they will meet with the chair and deputy chair of the assembly’s health committee to discuss the pay dispute.SAS doctors are fully qualified doctors who work permanently with the healthcare team…

Families are expected to get cheaper access to theme parks, zoos and museums as well as kids’ meals as a temporary VAT cut comes in to force on Thursday for the school summer holidays.Ticket prices at various attractions are among the activities where VAT will be reduced from 20% to 5% in what the goverment said would help with the cost of living.The cut begins on 25 June, in time for schools breaking up in Scotland at the end of this month, followed by Northern Ireland, England and Wales in July, until 1 September.But families, charities and firms said the…