The Prime Minister is poised to put the National Crime Agency (NCA) at the heart of a new plan to hunt down organised crime gangs behind Britain’s illegal waste dumps.
The NCA, often dubbed the “British FBI” because of its focus on disrupting serious organised crime, will be tasked with a new crackdown on gangs profiting from large-scale fly-tipping.
The i Paper understands that the proposed model would bring together national and regional agencies, and councils and environmental authorities to share intelligence, identify links between illegal waste sites and target the criminal networks behind them.
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What you need to know as Tupac Shakur murder trial begins
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, allegedly orchestrated the killing of the rapper back in 1996.
It is the first time anyone has gone on trial in connection with the infamous drive-by shooting.
Everything we know so far
- Prosecutors allege that Davis did not fire the gun himself, but did mastermind the killing.
- He is a former gang leader and uncle of the man long suspected of shooting Tupac.
- Davis has pleaded not guilty and denies the allegations.
- The trial is expected to last up to six weeks and may feature testimony from one of the other passengers of the car.
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What happened on the night
There were witnesses to the murder who could put together a timeline of events, though police have never arrested a suspected killer.
- On 7 September, 1996, Tupac went to watch a Mike Tyson boxing match on the Las Vegas strip.
- He and Marion “Suge” Knight, the head of his record label, got into a fight with Orlando Anderson, Duane Davis’s nephew and a suspected member of the South Side Compton Crips gang.
- Leaving the match with Suge, Tupac was shot four times in a drive-by shooting from the back of a white Cadillac.
- Six days later, on 13 September, he died in hospital. He was 25 years old.
What have the lawyers said?
Prosecutor Binu Palal told the jury: “Let’s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew.”
Meanwhile, Davis’s attorneys questioned “what facts do they have after 30 years?” and labelled the allegations “fiction”.
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Wetherspoons bans playing music or taking calls on speaker
JD Wetherspoon founder and CEO Sir Tim Martin said “we are kindly asking phone users to pipe down” while in his pubs.
It joins widespread calls for measures to tackle antisocial phone use in public.
What you need to know
The pub chain said it had taken the decision across all of its 792 sites “following complaints from customers, who are being driven nuts by other people’s videos and amplified phone conversations”.
It requested that customers “switch their phones to silent” or “use earphones” rather than disturb others.
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The fight-back against noise
- The Liberal Democrats have previously called for fines of up to £1,000 for “headphone dodgers” who play music out loud on buses and trains.
- A YouGov poll published in 2025 suggested 62 per cent of people would back the move.
- In London, Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan rolled out a campaign last year encouraging people to use headphones when playing music on the city’s transport network.
The best and worst supermarkets for shelf life – ranked
New secret shopper market research by consumer champion Which? found “a striking difference” in how each shop delivery performed.
The official ranking
Each supermarket home delivery was tested by 12 different shoppers across 29 standard items.
Here is every supermarket delivery ranked according to average perishable shelf life from best to worst:
- – 10.4 days
- – 10.4 days
- – 10.2 days
- – 8.8 days
- – 7.7 days
How do they compare?
Asda performed the best, with an average 11-day period to use up perishables. This was more than three days better than the worst average time.
Which? noted Ocado, which came in joint second, also delivered on longevity, with two packs of honey roast ham arriving with more than 20 days left on the packet.
How did Waitrose respond?
Waitrose had the shortest average shelf life across all six supermarkets tested. Some of the shoppers even had packs of meat arrive with just one day before the use-by date.
The shop said this was partly due to removing preservatives from certain items “in response to increasing customer demand”. Its pickers are “trained to choose the longest dated products they can”.
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How top album releases are linked to rise in fatal crashes
A Harvard study has found new releases by the most popular artists are linked to a notable rise in car crash deaths in the US, thought to be linked to distracted driving.
What did the study find?
- Researchers looked at the release of 10 of the most streamed new albums between 2017 and 2022.
- They found new release days had a 15 per cent higher number of fatal crashes compared to the days either side of it.
- This is equivalent to 182 excess deaths in the US between those 10 albums.
- Albums included Taylor Swift’s Drake’s and Harry Styles’ .
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What does this mean?
Vishal Patel, lead author of the study, said searching for the new music likely distracts drivers. “You unlock the phone, open the app, find the release, read down a tracklist, tap the right song. That’s several seconds of looking at a screen,” he said.
Researchers also found the rise in deaths was more prominent among younger drivers, male drivers and those driving alone.
Areas in England have been ranked by friendliness, according to government data from the community life survey.
The survey takes into account sense of loneliness, local pride, participation in the local community and friendliness with neighbours.
The friendliest places
- 1The Isles of Scilly, a tiny archipelago off the coast of Cornwall.
- 2, Devon. On the coast just south of Dartmoor National Park.
- 3. Bordering South Hams to the north, encompassing much of wild Dartmoor.
- 4, including Bakewell, Ashbourne and parts of the Peak District.
- 5Richmond upon Thames in southwest London.
The bottom of the pile
Barking and Dagenham in east London placed as the least friendly part of England. The other lowest-ranking areas were Stoke-on-Trent, Ashfield, Mansfield and Ipswich.
The index was collated by National Conversation, a commission to better understand British cohesion and tackle division. It has launched its own survey people can take to give their view on their own area.
British couple on honeymoon killed in helicopter crash in Greece
Greek police believe a mechanical fault may have caused a helicopter to crash before it was due to land on the island of Sifnos.
The crash on Monday evening killed a British couple on honeymoon and the pilot.
What we know so far
- London-based couple Marie Ebert, 30, and Alexander Cromie, 31, died in the incident. They were celebrating their honeymoon.
- The pilot, Giorgos Raikos, 53, was a former air force officer and was “extremely experienced”. He also died in the crash.
- “The focus of the inquiry is now on the helicopter and possible engine failure. What has happened is nothing short of a tragedy,” a source told The Guardian.
How the crash unfolded
The private helicopter crashed just metres from a landing pad. CCTV footage showed the aircraft spinning out of control before plummeting to the ground and igniting a fireball. A thick plume of dark smoke was seen billowing into the sky from the site of the crash.
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A closer look at what may have gone wrong
People in the area have testified hearing the helicopter making a noise, a strange noise, probably a mechanical fault in the air and because the propeller was doing something strange.
Manolis Fountolakis, deputy mayor of Sifnos
Tribute paid to couple
- Asset management firm Blackstone, where Cromie worked, said it was “shocked” by the couple’s death.
- “We are shocked by the tragic passing of three people including our colleague Alex Cromie and his wife Marie Ebert, who were celebrating their honeymoon,” the firm said.
- “Alex was beloved by everyone who knew and worked with him at Blackstone, and our thoughts and prayers are with his loved ones.”
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Meta goes on federal trial for social media addiction
Dozens of states are seeking damages worth as much as $1.4trn in the federal trial kicking off in the US.
It is the biggest case of its kind to reach the courts.
What do we know so far
- Meta is accused of designing features which it knew would make children addicted to its social media platforms.
- The lawsuit alleges the tech giant illegally collects data on child users under 13 without parental consent.
- The trial will take place in front of a jury in Oakland, California
- CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify in the unprecedented trial.
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What does each side say?
Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general said: “Meta designed a dangerous product for young users, knew it to be dangerous, and then lied to children, families and the community about how dangerous it was.”
Meta denies any wrongdoing. It said it was “proud of our record in protecting teens on our platforms and the amount of effort that we’ve put into developing protections over the years”.
It would mark a significant escalation in the Government’s response to large-scale fly-tipping, shifting the emphasis from clearing waste after it has been dumped to identifying and dismantling the criminal networks making money from it.
Gangs can often pose as legitimate waste disposal businesses, advertising their services on the internet for a cost before ditching the rubbish at illegal sites.
The announcement is expected to form part of the Prime Minister’s summer tour of Britain, focused on solving the difficult problems he argues have been ignored for too long.
The wider programme includes action on rough sleeping, free bus travel for the disabled and regional public transport and connectivity.
The waste plans draw on Burnham’s experience as the mayor of Greater Manchester, where he repeatedly argued that large-scale illegal dumping should be treated as a serious organised crime issue rather than simply an environmental nuisance.
That experience includes the sprawling Bickershaw waste site in Wigan, where around 25,000 tonnes of waste accumulated next to homes and a primary school. A major fire at the site last summer burned for days and forced nearby schools to close.
On 4 August, the agency announced the arrest of four men over the Bickershaw operation: two from Wigan, aged 35 and 41, a 24-year-old from Leeds and a 59-year-old from Liverpool. They were arrested on suspicion of environmental offences, fraud and money laundering.
The 24-year-old man from Leeds was also arrested in connection with illegal waste dumping at Cave’s Inn Pits, a site of special scientific interest near Shawell, Leicestershire.
That site is the subject of a separate major investigation after around 30,000 tonnes of shredded waste was discovered there.
The connection does not prove that the two sites were operated by the same criminal organisation, but demonstrates why investigators are increasingly looking across geographical boundaries rather than treating major illegal dumps as isolated local incidents.
Burnham said the arrests would mark the beginning of tougher action against gangs suspected of making huge sums by illegally disposing of waste. “I have stood on Bolton House Road and seen what local people have had to live with,” he said.
“It is shocking – an ocean of rubbish piled up next to a primary school, and families unable to escape the smell in their own homes. This is not fly-tipping – this is organised crime, and it is local communities that are paying the price.
“For too long, this issue has been ignored, but not on my watch.”
A significant portion of the Wigan dump sits on land owned by the King through his Duchy of Lancaster estate. However, Bickershaw is far from an isolated case.
A recent Environment Agency (EA) survey found that respondents believed organised crime groups were responsible for 35 per cent of waste crime, up from 31 per cent in 2023, while an estimated 20 per cent of waste was being managed illegally.
While the figures are based on perceptions from 764 industry stakeholders, including landowners and farmers, rather than recorded offences, they offer one of the clearest indications of the scale of the problem.
In July, the regulator, which currently takes the lead on large-scale illegal dumping, inspected 42 waste sites suspected of criminal activity, leading to 17 permits being suspended or revoked and more than 30 criminal investigations.
The agency is also pursuing major cases in areas including Lancashire, Oxfordshire, Kent and Leicestershire.
Earlier this year, four men were jailed after an EA investigation into a sophisticated operation that illegally dumped controlled waste at six sites across London. One landowner was left facing a £300,000 clean-up bill.
And in Oxfordshire, a huge illegal dump near Kidlington became a national symbol of the problem, with thousands of tonnes of waste accumulating on private land.
The Government estimates waste crime costs the economy around £1bn a year.
The proposed role for the NCA is not without precedent. The Joint Unit for Waste Crime, hosted by the EA, already brings together national and regional enforcement agencies to target serious and organised illegal dumping – but it is hoped that the involvement of the NCA will allow the Government to go further to crack down on it.
Different organisations in Greater Manchester have also worked together to tackle the problem.