BBC News

The latest report from the UK covid inquiry has found that the government did “too little, too late” to prevent deaths during the pandemic.

Chair of the inquiry, Baroness Hallett acknowleged that Boris Johnson’s government faced “unenviable choices” but said that 23 000 deaths could have been potentially avoided and added that regular rule breaking by officials undermined the public’s trust.

BBC health reporter Jim Reed and Dr Catherine Haddon, programme director at the Institute for Government, join Adam to unpick the report.

Plus, Adam is joined by Rachel Kyte UK special representative for climate who’s leading the UK’s delegation in Brazil at COP 30.

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Donald Trump says he will sign a bill to release the Epstein Files after it passed nearly unanimously through both houses of Congress.

It’s a notable shift in position from the president, who’s come under increasing pressure from Republicans and Democrats to release all files held by the Justice Department on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Will Trump be able to turn this into a victory, and will he be able to repair the rift that’s been growing among sections of his MAGA base?

Justin, Sarah and Marianna take a look at what we know so far about Epstein’s relationships with powerful figures in the US, and what we can expect to see from the Epstein Files once they’re released into the public domain.

And we assess just how significant a moment this is in Donald Trump’s second term as president, the tactics he may deploy to turn it into a political victory, and why he told one female reporter to be ‘quiet, piggy’ when asked about the Epstein Files on Air Force One.

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Reports surfaced on Wednesday that the US and Russia had prepared a new proposed framework to end the war, requiring major concessions from Ukraine.

Neither Washington nor Moscow have officially confirmed the plan.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said "contacts" had taken place with the US, but no "consultations or negotiations" were happening.

The Global News Podcast spoke to the Russia editor at BBC Monitoring, Vitaly Shevchenko.

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The UK Covid-19 Inquiry said the government response to the pandemic in March 2020 was "too little, too late”.

The 800-page report also said that imposing lockdown a week earlier could have saved 23,000 lives in the first wave in England.

But it also said lockdown could have been avoided altogether if steps such as social distancing and isolation had been introduced earlier.

The inquiry criticised all four UK governments, saying they "did not take the pandemic seriously enough until it was too late".

Just under 227,000 people in the UK died with Covid-19 listed as one of the causes on their death certificate between March 2020 and May 2023.

While former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she accepts mistakes were made, Boris Johnson's ex-adviser Dominic Cummings said the inquiry "has enabled a vast rewriting of history".

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Migrants who are in the UK legally could have to wait up to 20 years before they can settle permanently, under government proposals.

The UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain will be extended from five to 10 years, and will apply to the estimated 1.6 million who arrived since 2021.

The changes will not apply to people who had already obtained settlement.

The package is the latest in a string of changes to the immigration system announced by Mahmood over the past week.

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Qatar, a key mediator in the Israel-Hamas war, has condemned Israel’s airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, saying they were threatening to upend the fragile truce.

At least 25 Palestinians were killed in the strikes across on Wednesday, the Hamas-run health ministry has said, in what was one of the deadliest days since the ceasefire came into effect five weeks ago.

Israel's military said it struck "Hamas terrorist targets" after gunmen opened fire towards an area where its soldiers were operating in the southern city of Khan Younis in violation of the ceasefire deal.

Hamas questioned the claim and denounced what it said was a "dangerous escalation" that could jeopardise the ceasefire.

The flare-up of violence comes after the UN Security Council passed a resolution that endorsed US President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan to end two years of devastating war.

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Australian teenagers on Instagram, Facebook and Threads are being told their accounts will be shut down ahead of the country's social media ban for under-16s.

Meta, which owns the three brands, said it had begun notifying users it believes to be between 13 and 15 years old that their accounts would start being deactivated from 4 December.

It’s the world’s strictest law relating to social media and the way young people use it.

The ban comes into force on 10 December and affects a number of platforms which also include TikTok, YouTube, X and Reddit.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the ban was aimed at "letting kids be kids". Meta and other firms oppose the measure but said they would comply.

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Senior Pentagon officials have arrived in Ukraine to "discuss efforts to end the war" with Russia, the US military has said.

The team, led by US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, is expected to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Thursday.

Reports began surfacing on Wednesday that the US and Russia had prepared a new framework peace plan, requiring significant concessions from Ukraine including giving up territory it still controls and dramatically cutting the size of its military.

Neither Washington nor Moscow has officially confirmed the plan, drafted by President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

However, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X that achieving a "durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions".

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Maritime authorities are reporting a growing network of Russian "shadow" ships sailing without a valid national flag.

Some of these ships are even suspected of undersea sabotage, illicit drone launches or "spoofing" their location data.

That is a troubling trend, says senior maritime intelligence analyst at Windward AI, Michelle Wiese Bockmann, who adds that if there is an accident, "good luck with trying to find somebody responsible to pick up any cost".

Driven by record sanctions on Russian energy and tighter enforcement, the number of falsely flagged ships globally has more than doubled this year to over 450, most of them tankers, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) database.

Sea-born energy exports continue to generate billions for Russia, as the Kremlin wages war in Ukraine.

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What do kids want to know about the war in Ukraine? On this special Q&A edition of Ukrainecast, we’re teaming up with Newsround (the BBC's children's news programme) to find out. To mark World Children’s Day, we took a panel of BBC experts to Hammersmith Academy, a secondary school in London, to respond to questions from a live audience.

Victoria Derbyshire and Vitaly Shevchenko are joined on this episode by Newsround presenter Ricky Boleto, and Ukraine correspondent James Waterhouse. Why did the war start? Are there really any safe places in Ukraine? And who is working towards making peace? They answer all that, and we hear from some of those Ukrainian children who have been forced to start a new life in the UK.

If young listeners found any parts of this episode upsetting, you can find advice and support on the Newsround website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround

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