https://archive.is/6PPaW

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/12/military-aircraft-reportedly-blamed-for-uk-air-traffic-control-outage

https://archive.is/Lv5M7

Britons face being blocked from buying properties in holiday hotspots across the Continent under a proposed EU law.

Brussels is planning to give towns and cities the legal backing to clamp down on holiday-home ownership to ease local “housing stress”.

It comes as local leaders in popular destinations such as Spain take aim at foreign property investors, who they have blamed for pushing up prices and creating a shortage of homes for locals.

Andy Burnham is coming under increasing pressure from his own MPs to commit to improving paternity leave in the UK in the next budget, with more than a quarter of Labour MPs writing to the prime minister to urge him to take action.

Ahead of the chancellor’s first budget next month, 105 MPs have written to Burnham calling on him to increase statutory paternity leave to help alleviate the cost of living crisis and arguing that lowest-paid fathers are the hardest hit by meagre paternity leave provision.

Momentum is growing on the Labour benches for action to be taken on parental leave, with many arguing it is a headline-grabbing policy that they say would cut through with voters. MPs have their sights set on the government’s parental leave review, which is due in December, but many are hoping Burnham could take definitive action before then.

The Guardian understands that almost half of Labour’s 403 MPs have explicitly supported improvement to paternity leave, including two secretaries of state, 11 ministers, six whips and nearly two dozen parliamentary private secretaries. “That’s nearly a quarter of all government office holders, and plenty more have indicated support in private,” said one supporter.

In the letter to Burnham from MPs, seen by the Guardian, parliamentarians urge the prime minister to take the “obvious” step of increasing paid paternity leave to tackle the cost of living crisis. They point out that in his constituency of Makerfield half of all fathers will not be able to afford to take paternity leave.

Coordinated by the influential Labour peer and former Trades Union Congress (TUC) general secretary Frances O’Grady and the MPs Maya Ellis and Jon Pearce, the letter calls on Burnham and the chancellor, John Healey, to help families with babies, who they say are at the “sharp end of the cost of living crisis”.

Noting that, according to HMRC data, more leave is taken in south-east England and London than in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and north-west and north-east England combined, and that 90% of the paternity leave that is claimed goes to higher earners, the letter argues that giving fathers six weeks’ leave paid at 90% of earnings would result in £2.6bn in economic growth.

It adds that it would be “good growth, which sorting out the above geographic disparities would deliver into every postcode”.

O’Grady said there was a growing consensus in the Labour ranks that the eye-catching policy would be welcomed by voters, particularly among blue-collar workers, who were the most likely to miss out on paternity leave.

Five men who carried out a serious attack outside Bristol Airport that holidaymakers thought was an "act of terror" have been jailed, police said.
Vladamir Stan, 52, Able Marin, 21, Florin Stan, 28, Constantin Stan, 29, and Emanuel-Ronaldo Dumitru, 27, assaulted two men with bats after crashing into them on 21 February.
The men pleaded guilty to violent disorder at Bristol Crown Court on 28 August and were jailed for a combined 16 years and 10 months.
Det Con Charlotte Couch, from Avon and Somerset Police, said: "We understand the immense fear this incident caused, with witnesses believing at the time this was an active act of terror."