ITV News at Ten

The broadcast led with a day of violent protests across France over the state of schools. A protest that began at a single school in Créteil spread into a national movement, with authorities saying around 250,000 people took part and organisers claiming almost double that. Demonstrations and blockades took place in cities including Paris, Marseille, Toulouse and Lille; some clashes saw projectiles, tear gas, water cannon and arrests, while the French Prime Minister rejected accusations of police violence. Student organisers expected further school blockades, the Prime Minister said classes were suspended for the rest of the week, and President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency meeting as the crisis unfolded seven months before a presidential election and amid pressure over public debt.

In the UK, two Sussex police officers were sacked for gross misconduct after using pepper spray, a baton and a taser on 92-year-old Donald Burgess, a wheelchair user with dementia who was holding a cutlery knife in his care home room in 2022. A disciplinary panel found he posed no risk and that the officers made no effort to de-escalate; they had previously been cleared of assault at a criminal trial, and Mr Burgess died with Covid in hospital less than a month after the incident. The programme also reported that the Green Party had passed a motion describing Zionism as racism, with leader Zack Polanski and deputy Mothin Ali declining to answer questions about it; a councillor said he had quit and called for Polanski to resign. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called the Green Party full of anti-Semites and the policy disgusting, and said she backed shadow minister Blake Stephenson over his comments that parts of Luton are no-go zones for white people; her party's plans discussed included free childcare, triple-lock reform and an inheritance tax cut announcement.

Abroad, German prosecutors arrested the former head of Germany's intelligence service, Dr August Hanning, on suspicion of passing state secrets to a foreign agency, along with his former chief of staff, identified only as Manfred D. Prosecutors alleged the two had agreed as far back as 2010 for Manfred to be paid to supply intelligence, including 2,000 documents and an analysis for a foreign intelligence officer, with reports suggesting the secrets went to Azerbaijan and were motivated by money. Separately, the death of 28-year-old Daria Shipalova, a researcher at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, raised concern that she may have contracted pneumonic plague; the Russian Public Health Agency said she died of pneumonia of unknown origin, the institute was locked down and 189 close contacts were traced with none showing signs of illness. The World Health Organization said pneumonic plague is severe and highly virulent but treatable if detected early, with the risk to Europe currently judged very low; Russia denied theories that the lab was trying to create bioweapons, and neighbouring countries were on high alert.