Mornings

President Trump suggested the identities of the suspected RAF Fairford terror plotters would soon be known. Five men had been arrested in the Welford area after police received a call about three suspicious vehicles travelling towards RAF Fairford early on Sunday; they were initially held on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act and later also on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act, and they remained in custody. A 400-metre cordon surrounded Welford, 85 homes were evacuated, and security at the base was increased. A potential link to Iran was being investigated, with the base central to US operations in Iran; the nationality of the men was not known. Trump said the arrest was fantastic and that the men were looking to do big damage to 'our port', while Prime Minister Andy Burnham said public safety and security were the first priority.

At the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Andy Burnham's first as leader, he pledged an NHS-style social care system and said the decision on how to fund it would be unpopular. The Chancellor was due to give a midday speech promising a new age of reindustrialisation, with a focus on British shipbuilding, three new floating docks for a Scottish submarine base built through UK-only procurement, and £150m for a new research vessel announced by Louise Haigh. The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, confirmed that a social media ban for under-16s would come into force from March next year. Donald Trump rejected Iran's seven-day peace deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and refused to rule out more military strikes on Iran before the US midterms. He also hosted Anthropic boss Dario Amodei at the White House, dismissing calls for greater AI regulation, and SpaceX was due to attempt its 14th Starship test flight, aiming for six orbits and deployment of 26 Starlink satellites.

A Sky News investigation found self-harm-themed avatars and clothing available to children as young as five on Roblox, along with a network known as the Comm operating across platforms including Discord, Telegram and TikTok, where content involved sexual abuse, coercion, extortion and self-harm, and was sometimes promoted by algorithms to children as young as 13. Ofcom said the Online Safety Act did not allow action on individual pieces of content but that it could act on patterns of failure and would not hesitate to enforce. A separate study from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine found one in eight people had made a health decision based on false or misleading information online, rising to one in five among 18- to 34-year-olds, with such claims seen on social media, chatbots, AI, work colleagues, family and friends, and traditional news media.