Author: BBC

More than £4m could be allocated to helping people meet their essential household living costs in Barnsley.Councillors are due to discuss plans to provide millions of pounds of support to people in the district who are struggling with the cost of living.If approved the money would be used to help residents with winter fuel payments, school meal vouchers, energy costs and provide debt and budgeting advice.Barnsley Council said in previous years the funding, provided from the government’s Household Support Fund, had been used to help hundreds of people.Robert Frost, cabinet spokesperson for core services, said: “Our work to deliver support…

Ofcom has launched investigations into two pornographic websites it believes may be falling foul of the UK’s newly introduced child safety rules.The regulator said Itai Tech Ltd – which operates a so-called “nudifying” site – and Score Internet Group LLC had failed to detail how they were preventing children from accessing their platforms.Ofcom announced in January that, in order to comply with the Online Safety Act, all websites on which pornographic material could be found must introduce “robust” age-checking techniques from July.It said the two services it was investigating did not appear to have any effective age checking mechanisms.Firms found…

Getty ImagesThe NHS in England is planning “previously unthinkable” cuts to try to balance the books, health bosses say.Services including diabetes care for young people, rehab centres and talking therapies are in the firing line, according to NHS Providers, which represents health managers.Staff, including doctors and nurses, also face the axe – and some NHS trusts are stopping overtime for doctors, putting the drive to cut the hospital waiting lists at risk.NHS Providers said some of the savings were “eye-watering”, but the Department of Health and Social Care said NHS services should focus on cutting bureaucracy and driving up productivity.The…

Annabel RackhamCulture reporterGetty ImagesTaylor Swift and Blake Lively, seen here in 2023, have been close friends for many yearsTaylor Swift’s representatives have told the BBC she is being brought into a legal row between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively to create “tabloid clickbait”.The 35-year-old singer was summoned to a US court after it was alleged she encouraged Baldoni to accept script re-writes by Lively for It Ends With Us, a film that both starred in and is the centre of a sexual harassment case.Baldoni says he was invited to Lively’s New York home in 2023 to discuss script changes, where…

Deborah GrushkinDeborah Grushkin says she felt panicked when she heard about the end of “de minimis”Earlier this year, Deborah Grushkin, an enthusiastic online shopper from New Jersey, “freaked out”.US President Donald Trump had signed an order to stop allowing packages from China worth less than $800 (£601) to enter the country free of import taxes and customs procedures.It was a move, backed by traditional retailers, that had been discussed in Washington for years amid an explosion of packages slipping into the US under the limit. Many countries, including the UK, are considering similar measures, spurred in part by the rapid…

Dua Lipa, Sir Elton John, Sir Ian McKellen and Florence Welch are among a list of stars calling on the prime minister to update copyright laws in a way that protects them from artificial intelligence.A letter signed by more than 400 British musicians, writers and artists, addressed to Sir Keir Starmer, says failing to give that protection would mean them “giving away” their work to tech firms.Also at risk, they write, is “the UK’s position as a creative powerhouse”.They want the PM to back an amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill that would require developers to be transparent…

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An art expert who has worked on the BBC’s Bargain Hunt has admitted failing to report a series of high-value art sales to a man suspected of financing the proscribed group Hezbollah.Oghenochuko Ojiri, 53, pleaded guilty to eight counts under the Terrorism Act 2000 of failing to make a disclosure during the course of business, the first prosecution of its kind.The court heard on Friday that Ojiri sold artwork worth £140,000 to Nazem Ahmad, who is accused of supporting the Lebanon-based group and was sanctioned by the US in 2019.Lyndon Harris, prosecuting, said Ojiri had read news reports showing Ahmad…

Jennifer MeierhansBusiness reporter, BBC NewsGetty ImagesThe UK and the US have reached a deal over tariffs on some goods traded between the countries.President Donald Trump’s blanket 10% tariffs on imports from countries around the world remains in place and still applies to most UK goods entering the US.But the deal has reduced or removed tariffs on some of the UK’s exports, including cars, steel and aluminium.Here’s an at-a-glance look at what’s in the deal.This isn’t a trade dealTrump declared on social media this announcement would be a “major trade deal” – it’s not.He does not have the authority to sign…

Adrienne MurrayTechnology ReporterReporting fromLongyearbyen, NorwayGetty ImagesNorway’s Longyearbyen is the world’s northernmost townHigh above the Arctic Circle, the archipelago of Svalbard lies halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.Frozen, mountainous, and remote, it’s home to hundreds of polar bears and a couple of sparse settlements.One of those is Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost town, and just outside the settlement, in a decommissioned coal mine, is The Arctic World Archive (AWA) – an underground vault for data.Customers pay to have their data stored on film and kept in the vault, for potentially hundreds of years. “This is a place to make sure…