Moscow could expel British diplomats and journalists or even attempt to seize UK planes and ships in retaliation for supplying drones for Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets, experts believe.
The Kremlin has threatened consequences for Britain’s deepening involvement in the war after it emerged that drones built by two UK companies were used in attacks on military and industrial targets deep inside Russia.
On Monday, the Russian embassy in the UK accused Britain of escalating the Ukraine conflict and warned that the deeper the country’s involvement became, “the higher the price it will pay”.
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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”.
Defence experts said Vladimir Putin’s regime could respond as soon as within the next 48 hours. They warned it could involve an even greater escalation in the “grey zone” or “hybrid war” activity that Moscow has waged against Britain for the past few years, such as cyber attacks and shadowing of the UK’s undersea communications cables and ships in the English Channel.
But a retaliation could also be more overt – such as detaining British diplomats or journalists based in Russia or firing a weapon near a UK-owned oil rig.
Such activity would be below the threshold to trigger Article 5 of the Nato treaty (which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all and merits a comparative response), but would be enough to send a message to Britain over its involvement in the Ukraine war, experts said.
Ukraine’s strikes included attacks on refineries and warehouses of Russian online retailer Wildberries.
Russia said the UK was “acting as an accomplice and co-perpetrator” of “bloody crimes … committed by Ukrainian neo-Nazis” and “terrorist attacks”.
In response to the Russian rhetoric, Andy Burnham vowed on Tuesday that the UK will keep supporting Ukraine “100 per cent”.
He told The i Paper: “The war is escalating. Ukraine’s ability to strike deep into Russia challenges Putin’s claim the war is limited and under control. It’s also harming his oil revenues.
“I predict Russia will launch some major cyber attacks on the UK. In Ukraine, he could easily turn to WMD [weapons of mass destruction], probably chemical, though we should not rule out tactical nuclear.
“It all places Britain under Russian crosshairs and we will soon find out how woefully unprepared we are.”
However, Ellwood said reports that Russia could deploy Poseidon, a nuclear-armed torpedo, against the UK were not credible.
Retaliation could come within 48 hours
But Ellwood said: “An intentional nuclear attack on the UK would risk a Nato response and potentially a catastrophic nuclear exchange.
“Nothing in today’s reporting indicates Russia is preparing an imminent Poseidon strike. That said – the Russian warning therefore shouldn’t simply be dismissed. Relations are genuinely dangerous and escalation is possible.
“But headlines suggesting ‘Russia is about to Poseidon/nuke Britain go substantially beyond the evidence I see. This is about spooking the British people – attempting to pressure Britain over its support for Ukraine, with hybrid retaliation very likely in the next 48 hours.”
Russia’s sliding scale list of options
Tim Willasey-Wilsey, senior associate fellow at Rusi International and a former British diplomat, said he believed a Russian response could be more than just hybrid warfare.
He said: “The whole point about hybrid is it’s sort of implausibly deniable. So, we all know they’re doing it, whether it’s undersea cables or it’s cyber attacks or arson; we all know that’s happening, but they’re pretending it’s not them.
“In this particular case, they want to claim that it is them. It seems to me that this is something they want to badge as a response to us supplying drones to the Ukrainians.”
Willasey-Wilsey said it was likely that, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia had been assembling a sliding-scale list of potential retaliatory actions it might take against the UK or another Nato ally for assisting Kyiv.
Since the war began, Britain has already supplied Nlaw anti-tank missiles and Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine but Russia chose not to overtly retaliate against the UK – although Moscow has significantly increased its grey zone activity since 2022.
But Willasey-Wilsey added: “What’s changed now is Russia is in real trouble. The Ukrainian attacks on the oil infrastructure since April have been very considerable.
“The attacks on Wildberries have also been very successful, and the war for the first time is coming home to the Russian people. Hitherto they’ve been completely protected from it, but it’s coming home now to the population of Moscow and St Petersburg, that there’s a war going on, and this potentially threatens Putin’s position.
“I think this threat is partly driven by the difficult situation Russia finds itself in.”
Ships or aircraft could be seized
He added: “What we don’t want to find ourselves in is a situation where something happens, and all we can do is protest in the strongest possible manner, which makes us look foolish. It just makes us look really weak.
“Say, for example, a civilian aircraft was forced to land at a Russian airport, and 30 of the passengers on board were British. There would be calls saying … ‘Is what we’re doing for Ukraine really worth it?’ And of course, the Russians would love that. You don’t want to give them anything that introduces uncertainty, or the impression of weakness.
“I don’t think for a moment that the Russians would do something which infringes Article 5. But just remember that yesterday [Monday] Donald Trump criticised – more than criticised – he threatened Oman and he threatened South Korea, two allies.
“If you’re Russia, you’re thinking to yourself, actually, quite honestly, does Article 5 still apply? You can imagine if you’re Russia, you’d quite like to test Article 5 to see whether it really still pertains. Thank goodness they haven’t done that yet.
“It’s very easy for Andy Burnham, who’s completely new to this whole area, completely new to foreign policy, to say we stand 100 per cent by Ukraine. I only really hope that the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) have done the underpinning thinking behind that, so that he’s not caught looking foolish if something happens tomorrow, or maybe not tomorrow, maybe next week or next month. The Russians can choose their moment.”
Approached by The i Paper for comment, a MoD spokesperson said: “Russia should be in no doubt about the resolve of this Government to stand against Russian aggression, in Ukraine and against the UK and our allies.
“Security is contested in every domain, and we have called out Russian aggression in our seas, our skies, and in cyber space. Through the Defence Investment Plan we will invest over £3bn in space capabilities, £2.5bn in cyber and £400m to protect our undersea cables and pipelines – ensuring our Armed Forces have the capabilities they need to meet threats of today and tomorrow.”