Welsh first minister urged to pay back £200,000 to firm whose owner was convicted of environmental crimes

There is growing anger and concern within the Labour party that the new Welsh first minister, Vaughan Gething , took £200,000 from a company whose owner was convicted of environmental crimes, with insiders warning it was critically undermining his authority and could cost the party votes at the general election.

Gething, who made history when he became the first black leader of a European country in March, is facing growing calls to pay the money back and order an independent inquiry into the donations, which helped him secure a narrow victory in the race to replace Mark Drakeford.

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Met Office says storms may cause travel disruption and flooding, leading to difficult driving conditions

Heavy thunderstorms overnight could give way to the warmest day of the year so far in Britain.

The same storm caused mudslides in northern France, which started around midnight and killed at least one person, a 57-year-old woman, and injured her partner.

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• Footage appears to show volunteer being punched on sidelines
• Incident took place at Amlwch Town’s ground in Anglesey

Police in north Wales are investigating an incident in which a teenage volunteer assistant referee appeared to be punched while running the line.

The alleged assault took place during a game at Amlwch Town FC’s ground in Anglesey on 27 April. Footage circulating on social media appears to show the assistant referee, who is believed to be 17, pass a man on the touchline in front of a dugout.

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To protect our local river we had to prove it was being used for swimming. But that, bizarrely, is the reason we were rejected

The state of Britain’s rivers is incredibly depressing: the water companies dump too much sewage, the farmers dump too much muck, and the regulators are too cowed and underfunded to do their job and stop them.

It wasn’t always this way. As a child I used to swim in the River Wye and I remember the clouds of mayflies in the summer, as well as huge leaping salmon. It was thanks to this wealth of wildlife that the Wye was classified as a special area of conservation along its whole length. Sadly, however, thanks to the failure of the Welsh and British governments to protect the river, much of this abundance is gone, and the Wye’s official status is now “ unfavourable – declining ”, thanks to pollution from manure and sewage.

Oliver Bullough is the author of Butler to the World : How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals

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Cian Ó Cíobháin’s show, ‘one of the most radical in the world’, has been beguiling listeners in Irish for 25 years. Others, from Warsaw to Lyon, offer similar musical adventures

In the early 2000s, trudging through the static of mainstream radio, I stumbled upon RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, the Irish-language outpost of Ireland’s national broadcaster – and a programme that flipped the script on radio as I knew it. Presented by Cian Ó Cíobháin from the Atlantic-hugging west Kerry coast, a fair stretch from my home in rural Northern Ireland, An Taobh Tuathail (“The Other Side”) still feels like a portal to a far-flung realm.

Broadcast every weekday since May 1999, Ó Cíobháin expertly blends leftfield music: it has championed ambient and electronic pioneers such as Mexican composer Murcof and the late Japanese musician Susumu Yokota, and spotlighted the curveballing instrumentalism of Irish artists including cellist Eimear Reidy and revered Limerick producer Naive Ted. Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys is one of many artists to have hailed An Taobh Tuathail’s influence, calling it “one of the most radical radio shows in the world”.

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Councillors, mayors and police commissioners across England and Wales are facing voters this week. What’s at stake? Helen Pidd reports

This week voters in more than 100 local authorities in England and Wales are heading to the polls. And Labour are predicted to win big. Helen Pidd travelled to Accrington in Hyndburn, where the local authority has an equal number of Labour and Conservative councillors, to see what people there thought about the local elections.

What she found was a more complicated picture than predictions of a Labour landslide suggest. She found the Conservative council leader in a surprisingly confident mood – and the local Labour politicians unwilling to speak to her. She also met voters in the town who told her of their discontent with Labour over its approach to the conflict in Gaza and that it was the Green party who would be picking up their votes.

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Researchers say issue ‘urgently needs scrutiny’ after rap and drill music used as evidence against 252 defendants over three years

Rap and drill music was used as prosecution evidence for serious charges including alleged gang-related murders against at least 252 defendants in England and Wales over a three-year period, a study has found.

The researchers at the University of Manchester, who found 68 cases involving rap evidence covering the 252 charged individuals, said the issue “urgently needs scrutiny” as there was no meaningful regulation nor even monitoring of how the criminal justice system used rap as criminal evidence.

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Ex-Plaid leader Adam Jones, a leading proponent, says credibility gap in politics has become ‘gaping chasm’

It’s an old and not very funny joke: how do you tell if a politician is lying? Their lips are moving.

Members of the Senedd, the Welsh parliament, are intent on tackling this age-old problem by bringing in legislation that bans politicians from telling untruths.

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Tenants typically asked to pay £1,291 a month outside London and £2,633 in capital but pace of growth is slowing, say analysts

Average private rents in Great Britain have risen to record highs, with annual rental growth in hotspot locations such as Reading and Coventry running at almost 20%.

Data from the property website Rightmove shows that the average advertised rent outside London climbed to a record £1,291 a calendar month in the first quarter of 2024. That is 8.5% higher than a year earlier – a rate of growth well ahead of inflation .

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