Weather Warnings and Other News Updates

Serki Starmer has resigned as Labour leader and announced he'll step down as Prime Minister by September. He's been under pressure to quit since the former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by election. Mr Burnham will be sworn in as an empty this afternoon and has confirmed he will stand for the party leadership. Wester Streeting, who resigned as health secretary last month, saying he was ready for a leadership bid, has endors ed Mr Burnham. Nominations open on the ninth of July. The Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said Zakir deserved a lot of credit. He is a good man , principled , decent and I think we've seen in his resignation this morning the character of the man putting the country . Our political correspondent Joe Pike looks back at Saki's time as Prime Minister. Saki Starmer's premiership started with a stunning electoral success, but it's been on the slide for months. Within weeks of Labour's twenty twenty four landslide, the PM and Chancellor announced one of their most unpopular policies cuts to winter fuel payments for pensioners. They reversed on that almost a year later. And there were other major policy U turns on welfare cuts, inheritance tax for farmers and an inquiry into grooming gangs. His domestic legacy includes the scrapping of the two child benefit cap, free breakfast clubs in England, new laws to strengthen workers' rights and help those living in leasehold properties, as well as the social media ban for under sixteen's. In foreign policy he attempted to keep the US committed to Ukraine, diverge from Washington in recognizing a Palestinian state, but more recently disagreements over Iran fractured his friendship with Donald Trump . A red weather warning for heat has been issued by the Met Office for Parts of England and Wales later this week. The alert means the high temperatures pose a threat of serious illness or danger to life. Our environment correspondent Jonah Fisher reports. Much of southern England and parts of South Wales have been under an amber weather warning since this morning . As temperatures from the heat wave build this week, the Met Office has upgraded most of that area to a red warning on Wednesday and Thursday, with the Amber zone expanded to include the southwest of England and almost all of Wales. Temperatures are expected to reach forty Celsius in some places. A red warning, the most severe, indicates that dangerous weather is expected with a high likelihood of risk to life and disruption to travel and energy supplies. Police investigating maternity services at Nottingham's NHS Trust have arrested two men in connection with working practices at the Trust's mortuary . The men aged fifty five and fifty nine are being questioned on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. The trust will be the focus of a major report being released on Wednesday on fail ings in maternity care that led to some babies dying and families suffering serious harm . EasyJet has rejected a takeover offer of nearly five billion pounds from a U. S. investment company accus,ing it of trying to buy the airline on the cheap. Castle says it has made three approaches this month, which have all been turned down. A boy who was seriously injured in a crocodile enclosure at a zoo near Huntington last week is now in a stable condition in hospital. Cambridgeshice have arrested and bailed a thirty year old man on suspicion of attempted murder. The musician Johnny Maher is putting the majority of his guitars up to for sale. More than ninety instruments owned by the former Smith's guitarist will be auctioned in September. Our music correspondent Mark Savage has the details. For one hundred thousand pounds, you could be the new owner of the Cherry red gibson that Johnny Mar used to write this. A more reasonable eight thousand pounds would get you the fender played here . Mara says he's selling the instruments to ensure they keep being used. I didn't like the idea of my studio space becoming a museum and the idea of someone in Belfast, Dundee or Tokyo or whatever , coming down to breakfast in the morning and really loving one of these guitars for the rest of their lives and really cherishing. I thought it was much, much more appealing. The auction takes place at Christie's in September