The United Kingdom has removed Pakistan from its Air Safety List, clearing the way for Pakistani airlines to apply for flight operations to the country, UK’s Air Safety Committee announced on Wednesday.
Though Pakistani carriers can now apply to operate flights to the UK, each airline will still need to secure the necessary permits from the UK Civil Aviation Authority through a separate application process.
The move follows years of technical collaboration between the UK’s Air Safety Committee and Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA), with officials confirming that sufficient improvements have been made since Pakistan was first listed in 2021 due to safety concerns.
The decision is expected to ease travel for over 1.6 million people of Pakistani heritage living in the UK and thousands of British nationals in Pakistan. It may also support increased bilateral trade, which currently stands at £4.7 billion, making the UK Pakistan’s third-largest trading partner.
The UK’s Air Safety Committee made the decision through an independent, technically-driven safety review process, which found that Pakistan had made the required safety upgrades.
“I’m grateful to aviation experts in the UK and Pakistan for their collaborative work to drive improvements to meet international safety standards. While it will take time for flights to resume, once the logistics are in place, I look forward to using a Pakistani carrier when visiting family and friends,” said British High Commissioner Jane Marriott CMG OBE.
Prince Harry, Meghan Markle hit with setback amid King Charles peace talks
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s latest move fires back as the public peace summit with King Charles is dubbed a publicity stunt.
For the unversed, the Duke of Sussex’s chief of staff and communications director, Meredith Maines, and the Montecito couple’s U.K. spokesperson, Liam Maguire, were photographed with the monarch’s communications secretary, Tobyn Andreae, in London on July 9.
It was called a ‘first step’ towards reconciliation between Harry and his father, Charles, who is currently undergoing treatment for his undisclosed form of cancer.
However, royal expert Eric Schiffer called the Sussexes for making a private matter public.
As per Express, he said, “If this is a peace deal, why does every shutter click crack like a gunshot at the Firm’s credibility, turning a solemn summit into the potential for septic muck reputational carnage?”
He shared that the monarch kept the meeting low-key, but Harry had “unleashed paparazzi. The royal commentator added, “Charles craves calm; Harry brings carnival barkers with cameras.”
Eric further shared, “Guess who swaggered away looking regal and who looked like clickbait chaos.”
He warned the Duke of Sussex not to make the intimate moment into a talk for the media.
“Crisis comms 101—don’t torch your own olive branch; Harry just napalmed his,” Eic said.
Good morning. Normally when ministers make announcements in the House of Commons, we know at least some of the detail already because they been well trailed in advance. Yesterday was a rare example of a ministerial statement being used to reveal something utterly surprising and genuinely new (at least to anyone who had not seen the stories that dropped just 30 minutes earlier, when reporting restrictions were lifted). And this was a story about the murky operation of the Deep State. Here is our overnight story, by Dan Sabbagh and Emine Sinmaz.
Today attention is focusing on who is to blame. And two former Tory ministers are having their say in rival articles in the Daily Telegraph.
Ben Wallace, who was defence secretary when the leak happened, has used his article to defend going to court to stop the inadvertent release of names being reported. He said:
I make no apology for applying to the court for an injunction at the time. It was not, as some are childishly trying to claim, a cover up.
I took the view that if this leak was reported at the time, the existence of the list would put in peril those we needed to help out.
Some may disagree but imagine if the Taliban had been alerted to the existence of this list. I would dread to think what would have happened.
Wallace has also been on the Today programme this morning, and he insisted he was not to blame for the injunction being a superinjunction. He said:
When we applied in August 2023, when I was secretary of state, we didn’t apply for superinjunction. We applied for a four-month injunction, a normal injunction.
Wallace said it was the court that converted this into a superinjunction (meaning not just that the leak could not be reported, but the very existence of an injunction gagging the media could also not be reported). Wallace claimed he did not know why.
In his article Wallace largely defends the decisions taken by the previous government, but Johnny Mercer, who was veterans ministers in the same government (but not in the MoD – he worked out of the Cabinet Office), is very critical of the way the whole Afghan resettlement programme was handled. In his Telegraph article he said:
Whilst there will no doubt be a rush to blame the individual who sent it (I know who he is), it would be entirely unfair and wrong to do so. Because I can honestly say this whole farcical process has been the most hapless display of ineptitude by successive ministers and officials that I saw in my time in government, of which this poor individual was just the end of the line …
The MoD has tried at every turn to cut off those from Afghan special forces units from coming to the UK, for reasons I cannot fathom.
They also lied to themselves about doing it. The UK’s director of Special Forces told me personally that he was offended and angry by my suggestion that his organisation was blocking the Triples.
Certain MoD ministers had a criminal lack of professional curiosity as to why the Triples [members of the Afghan special forces] were being rejected when there were so many subject matter experts who said they clearly should be eligible.
They even tried for a long time to say that Afghan special forces were not eligible.
Mercer said the UK ended up letting the wrong people in.
And the net result of this spectacular cluster is that we’ve let into this country thousands with little or tenuous links to the UK, and still some Afghan special forces we set up the bloody schemes for, remain trapped in Afghanistan, Pakistan or worse, Iran.
I feel furious, sad and bitter about the whole thing, and do as much as I can to get through each day not thinking about Afghanistan.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Liz Kendall, work and pensions secretary, gives evidence to the Commons work and pensions committee.
10am: David Lammy, foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Commons international development committee.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
Noon: The Home Office is publishing a report by David Anderson KC into the Prevent programme.
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“Our new ice cream cups demonstrate Huhtamaki’s expertise in paperboard and barrier technologies, as well as our dedication to sustainable innovation,” says Fredrik Davidsson, President of Foodservice Packaging at Huhtamaki.
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“We are proud to offer a product that not only meets the highest environmental standards but also delivers the high quality our customers expect” continues Fredrik.
This launch reflects Huhtamaki’s commitment to sustainability and innovation, helping both consumers and businesses reduce their environmental footprint. Designed for home and industrial compostability and recyclability, the new ice cream cups are now available to customers, offering a sustainable choice without compromising quality or performance.
For more information visit our FMCG page and contact us
Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have discovered that amniotic fluid stem cells can be safely collected from vaginal fluid after childbirth rather than relying on more invasive methods that can pose some risk to the mother and fetus.
“We can then turn those cells into beating heart cells and use them later in treating congenital heart defects,” said the study’s senior author Jeffrey Jacot, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics and bioengineeringat theUniversity of Colorado Center for Bioengineeringin the CU School of Medicine.
These results allow for an expanded and readily available source of amniotic stem cells beyond traditional collection through amniocentesis.”
Jeffrey Jacot, Associate Professor, CU School of Medicine
The study was published today in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine.
Amniotic fluid surrounds and provides cushioning, nutrients and growth factors to the developing fetus. It also contains numerous cell types originating from the fetus and fetal membranes. For decades, the clear fluid has been used as a way to detect fetal genetic anomalies. This was often done through amniocentesis, a routine but invasive procedure. It is often done during the second trimester limiting access of these stem cells to certain pregnancies, Jacot said.
These limitations prompted research into collecting amniotic fluid at the full term of a pregnancy.
Jacot and his team set out to see if they could collect and isolate amniotic fluid stem cells during vaginal deliveries. The stem cells could later be used to create tissue to repair genetic defects including heart defects in the baby.
They successfully collected samples from four vaginal deliveries with infants, three of whom were diagnosed in utero with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. The researchers then reprogrammed the amniotic stem cells into induced pluripotent stem cells and sorted them into functional cardiomyocytes.
“These findings suggest that amniotic fluid collected from vaginal births is a readily available source of patient-specific stem cells for banking, in vitro disease modeling, and regenerative medicine applications,” said Jacot.
He said the current method of treating some heart defects in infants involves up to three surgeries. Stem cells from amniotic fluid can be used to generate heart tissue in the lab.
“We think you can reconstruct a heart to a more typical structure if you have functional heart tissue you can put into it,” Jacot said. “These heart cells would then grow with the infant and hopefully reduce the number of surgeries.”
Source:
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Journal reference:
Lennon, M. L., et al. (2025). Amniotic fluid collected from vaginal birth as a source of stem cells for clinical applications and disease modeling. Stem Cells Translational Medicine. doi.org/10.1093/stcltm/szaf017.
Why did you get into comedy? I’ve always loved making people laugh. I was raised on a diet of sketch shows (French and Saunders, Mitchell and Webb, Monty Python) and took any opportunity I could to be silly for an audience. I have a vivid memory of a very elaborate performance of We Three Kings for the Year 5 talent show (“sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, DYING!”) – I won. I’m drawn to big, playful characters – wigs, costumes, silly voices. At uni I started doing sketch comedy and never really stopped.
How would you describe what you do? Gentle absurdity. It’s a silly good-natured sending up of recognisable things. In my last show, I brought to life a series of inanimate objects – including an annoying Californian paper straw, a pathetic electric scooter desperate to be unlocked, and an incredibly anxious, sensitive smoke alarm. My new hour merges this kind of absurd character comedy with drag. I’m pretending to be a middle-aged cycling man, complete with Lycra bulges, devastating divorce, outrageous income and zero emotional intelligence.
What inspired the show? I used to cycle to work through central London, wearing jeans like a normal person, and I’d be overtaken by these guys all kitted out in the gear and I would just think to myself … surely, surely they cannot be cycling much further than me. Where are they going? From their central London flat to their slightly more central London office? Why won’t they put their feet down at the traffic lights? Are they OK?
Around a similar time, I became aware of drag kings as an art form (like drag queens, but performing heightened masculinity instead). I was so energised, inspired and amazed watching the iconic drag king collective Pecs and the Man Up! competition. It’s such an exciting, varied, DIY, punky art form and I started to wonder if I had a drag king character in me. The two ideas combined, and The Cycling Man was born …
‘Try and fail!’ … Kathy Maniura. Photograph: Akta Photography
What’s been one of your all-time favourite gigs? Sometimes the weird gigs are the most unexpectedly fun. Last summer I did a spot at a small festival. I was with some brilliant comedians (Rosalie Minnitt, Lorna Rose Treen and Emily Bampton). We turned up and the person on the stage before us was giving a very earnest presentation about his research into arctic foxes. Getting into drag in the cold backstage area of the tent listening to the lecture I thought, ah – they may not be in the mood for absurd character comedy after this. How wrong I was! The audience were wonderful, and all the more wonderful for defying our expectations. That’s a pro and con of the job – you never know quite what you’re going to get until you turn up for a show.
Can you recall a gig so bad, it’s now funny? When I was doing a show with my comedy partner Derek Mitchell, we booked a spot at one of the stages on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. It’s the main flyering thoroughfare during the fringe and there’s an open-air stage for acts to perform a snippet of their show. Lovely, in theory. Except what does well on that stage is juggling and a cappella singing, not alternative sketch comedy. I performed a solo piece – a wordy parody song. It was raining. The small crowd quickly dispersed. Derek laughed his head off as the light left my eyes while I continued to perform. There were two other people watching under an umbrella – my parents.
Any bugbears from the world of comedy? There’s still a lot of unpaid and poorly paid gigs, many of which you travel for and, while the Edinburgh fringe itself is still seen as a rite of passage, it’s becoming prohibitively expensive. Many working-class comedians can’t do it. A lot of comedy spaces are inaccessible in other ways – male dominated, all white, in basements or upstairs in old pubs. It puts comedians in marginalised groups at a huge disadvantage in an industry that’s already hard work.
Worst advice you’ve ever been given? A prospective agent once said to me that if you have a day job you like, you’re a “hobbyist”. Actually, creative work doesn’t have to be torture, and I think the idea that creative brilliance is born of hardship and that you have to give up everything to pursue your dreams is actually pretty toxic. That person did not become my agent!
What’s an important lesson you’ve learned from being a standup? To try and fail! The only way you get better at comedy is by saying a joke out loud, in front of people, and seeing what happens. Once you’ve bombed a decent number of times, you learn that dying doesn’t actually mean dying.
The critically acclaimed, Bafta nominated and RTS award winning Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams is back for a third series with sporting legend Freddie Flintoff taking on an even tougher challenge.
Determined to prove that his previous success wasn’t a one off, having created a cricket team like no other in his hometown of Preston and taken them on a life changing tour to India, he’s now set his sights on a much more ambitious plan.
Freddie wants to supersize the project right across the North West of England: He’ll attempt to form boys teams in Manchester and Liverpool while also attempting to create his first ever girls team in Blackpool at a club without any youth teams. Can he prove his blueprint for a league of dreams can work against a backdrop of a lack of funding, uninspired teens and derelict cricket clubs?
Joining Freddie in an extended coaching team is former Lancashire fast bowler Kyle Hogg and new recruit, current England Women’s international player Kate Cross.
Clare Sillery, Head of Commissioning BBC Documentaries says “Freddie Flintoff has proved himself an exceptional role model. To see his passion for and commitment to cricket shine through and the transformational impact it has had on the lives of the lads from Preston playing on his team has been incredible to witness. I’m so pleased that he is back for another series building on the success of the last one.”
Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams was commissioned for BBC One and iPlayer by Clare Sillery, BBC Head of Commissioning, Documentaries. The series is produced by South Shore, and the Executive Producers are Andrew Mackenzie and Naomi Templeton. The BBC Commissioning Editor is Fran Baker.
