Resident doctors vote to strike in England

Resident doctors in England have once again voted in favour of strike action, in the latest chapter in a long-running pay dispute.

The doctors, previously known as junior doctors, were awarded a 5.4% pay rise for this financial year, following a 22% increase over the previous two years.

But the British Medical Association says wages are still around 20% lower in real terms than in 2008 and are demanding "pay restoration".

Ministers have previously said their door is open for talks on issues around working conditions but not on pay.

Israeli defence minister plans to move Gaza's population to camp in Rafah

Most of Gaza's population has also been displaced multiple times during the war

If conditions allowed, he added, construction would begin during a 60-day ceasefire that Israel and Hamas are trying to negotiate.

He said the goal was to bring people inside after security screening to ensure they were not Hamas operatives, and that they would not be allowed to leave.

Israel Katz told journalists on Monday he wanted to establish a "humanitarian city" on the ruins of the city of Rafah to initially house about 600,000 Palestinians - and eventually the whole 2.1 million population.

Israel's defence minister says he has instructed its military to prepare a plan to move all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp in the south of the territory, Israeli media reports say.

One Israeli human rights lawyer condemned it as nothing less than an "operational plan for a crime against humanity".

"It is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip," Michael Sfard told the Guardian newspaper.

The UN has also previously warned that the deportation or forcible transfer of an occupied territory's civilian population is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law and "tantamount to ethnic cleansing".

There was no immediate comment from the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.

Later on Monday, during a meeting at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about US President Donald Trump's proposal that the US take over post-war Gaza and permanently resettle its population elsewhere.

Netanyahu said: "I think President Trump has a brilliant vision. It's called free choice. If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave...

"We're working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realise what they always say - that they wanted to give the Palestinians a better future."

Trump said: "We've had great co-operation from... surrounding countries, great cooperation from every single one of them. So, something good will happen."

In March, Arab states backed a $53bn (£39bn) Egyptian alternative to Trump's plan for Gaza's reconstruction that would allow the Palestinians living there to stay in place.

They also stressed their "categorical rejection of any form of displacement of the Palestinian people", describing such an idea as "a gross violation of international law, a crime against humanity and ethnic cleansing".

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas also endorsed the Egyptian plan, but the US and Israel said it failed to address realities in Gaza.

Palestinians fear a repeat of the Nakba - the Arabic word for "catastrophe" - when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes before and during the war that followed the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza, where they and their descendants make up three-quarters of the population. Another 900,000 registered refugees live in the occupied West Bank, while 3.4 million others live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the UN.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

More than 57,500 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of Gaza's population has also been displaced multiple times. More than 90% of homes are estimated to be damaged or destroyed; the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed; and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

Pension triple lock to cost triple initial estimate

Just now Share Save Kevin Peachey Cost of living correspondent Share Save

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The cost of the state pension triple lock is forecast to be three times' higher by the end of the decade than its original estimate, according to the government's official forecaster. The triple lock, which came into force in 2011, means that the state pension rises each year in line with either inflation, wage increases or 2.5% - whichever is the highest. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said the annual cost is estimated to reach £15.5bn by 2030. Overall, the OBR said the UK's public finances were in a "relatively vulnerable position" owing to pressure from recent government U-turns on planned spending cuts.

The recent reversal of proposed the welfare bill, on top of restoring winter fuel payments for most claimants, have contributed to a continued rise in government debt, according to the report. It said: "Efforts to put the UK's public finances on a more sustainable footing have met with only limited and temporary success in recent years in the aftermath of the shocks, debt has also continued to rise and borrowing remained elevated because governments have reversed plans to consolidate the public finances. "Planned tax rises have been reversed, and, more significantly, planned spending reductions have been abandoned." Spending on the state pension has steadily risen, the OBR said, because the triple lock and a growing number of people above the state pension age. It added: "Due to inflation and earnings volatility over its first two decades in operation, the triple lock has cost around three times more than initial expectations."

'Unsustainable'

The OBR said the cost of the state pension has risen steadily over the past eight decades, from around 2% of the UK economy to a current 5%, equating to £138bn. It is forecast to increase to 7.7% of the economy by the early 2070s. Richard Hughes, chair of the OBR, said the triple lock "is one of a series of age-related pressures that pushes public spending upwards steadily over a number of years". "When you project trends in both pension spending and health and other age-related spending forward, the UK public finances are in an unsustainable position in the long-run," he said. "The UK cannot afford the array of promises that are displayed to the public if you just if you leave those unchanged based on a reasonable assumption about growth rates in the economy and in tax revenues."

Pensioner protection

The UK's state pension is the second-largest item in the government budget after health. In 2011, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition brought in the triple lock to ensure the value of the state pension was not overtaken by the increase in the cost of living or the incomes of working people. Since then, the non-earnings-linked element of the lock has been triggered "in eight of the 13 years to date", the OBR pointed out. That was because inflation "has turned out to be significantly more volatile" than expected. In April 2025, the earnings link meant the state pension increased by 4.1%, making it worth: £230.25 a week for the full, new flat-rate state pension (for those who reached state pension age after April 2016) - a rise of £472 a year

£176.45 a week for the full, old basic state pension (for those who reached state pension age before April 2016) - a rise of £363 a year Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said the Labour government will keep the triple lock until the end of the current Parliament.

In the minutes before the Lions ran out to play the Queensland Reds in Brisbane, Maro Itoje gathered his players together in the dressing room and appealed to their inner grunt.

The captain made a point about wanting to play hard and direct rugby. "Get us through the front door," he demanded of his team. "Forwards - set the tone with our physicality."

And that's the ongoing confusion with these Lions. They have all the artillery they need to blast through the guts of any team in Australia, but they just haven't done it nearly often enough.

Head coach Andy Farrell has said regularly that the Lions are absolutely at their best when driving at the heart of the opposition and then, when they have them beaten up, playing from there. It's like that old line about the first step to making chicken soup - catch a chicken.

And yet against the Waratahs they were still shovelling the ball out the backline without doing the hard yards up front. They should be better than this. They are better than this.

Last month, Itoje addressed some of the side-to-side stuff the Lions delivered in the defeat by Argentina and called it "tippy-tappy". And it's still a bit tippy-tappy.

Now that the Test series is looming on the horizon, maybe they're about to unload. Maybe now is the time the hounds of hell are unleashed and the gameplan shifts to a more balanced and more belligerent version of what we've seen so far.

Before the Brumbies game, Itoje was asked if more direct rugby was in the offing. "That's definitely the ambition," he replied.

"Rugby doesn't change too much, whether it's under-14s rugby or the Lions. You have to go forward. You have to earn the right - the famous saying - to go wide. And that is definitely the case for us. We need to punch holes, get forward, then space opens up, wherever that may be."

Does he feel they've been too lateral in their attack on this tour?

"At times, perhaps. At times we've been very good in playing direct and playing through teams. But at times we probably look to go wide before we earn the right."

And going wide before earning the right to go wide is why they ran into so much trouble against the Waratahs, who were waiting for them. The amount of handling errors from exceptionally talented players was maddening - not quite self-defeating, but a little too close for comfort.