Britain’s roads are being described as a “number-plate wild west”, with one in 15 cars featuring ghost number-plates to avoid detection. The illegal plates are being offered by “dodgy sellers” who can set up “with no questions asked”, according to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Transport Safety.

Security threat
A ghost number-plate appears normal to the eye but has been modified so that it can’t be read properly by Automatic Number Plate Recognition camera systems. Some ghost plates feature reflective sprays that create a bright glare when viewed through an ANPR camera, while others have clear coatings designed to blur or warp the letters and numbers. Sometimes, the characters themselves are subtly altered – for example, changing a “B” into an “8” – which bamboozles the recognition software used by the cameras.

The plates are being used to “avoid detection for speeding penalties, parking fines and low-level criminality”, said The Telegraph, and are increasingly popular among “grooming gangs, drug traffickers and organised crime groups”. They could also “pose a security threat”. According to experts, “would-be terrorists” could use them to “bypass surveillance systems around airports, train stations and iconic buildings”.

‘No questions asked’
A trading standards team that investigated ghost plates in Rochdale uncovered more than 600 suppliers in the city. “We were finding people making them in the back bedroom, in the shed, in the garden,” a spokesperson told The Telegraph.

Currently, criminals can “set themselves up as number-plate sellers with no questions asked”, said All-Party Parliamentary Group member Sarah Coombes, the Labour MP for West Bromwich. The UK has 34,455 suppliers licenced to provide registration plates, but the committee wants to reduce that number “significantly”, by bringing in higher standards and a more expansive annual fee.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency said a review of number-plate standards is ongoing, with the target of banning designs that evade ANPR. Transport for London is rolling out infra-red cameras to detect illegal number-plates on licensed taxis and private hire vehicles. If licensed drivers are found to have illegal plates on multiple occasions, they could lose their licences.

Britain will deploy HMS Dragon and helicopters with anti-drone capabilities in Cyprus, Keir Starmer has confirmed. In a post on X, the prime minister said he had spoken to the island’s president, and the UK was “fully committed to the security of Cyprus and British military personnel based there”. The deployment follows criticism of the UK by Cyprus following a drone strike on the RAF base of Akrotiri that forced locals to flee.

Why are there British bases in Cyprus?
Previously part of the Ottoman Empire, Cyprus became a British protectorate in 1878 and a Crown colony in 1925, before gaining independence in 1959. A “condition of the handover”, said The Telegraph, was that Britain retained two Sovereign Base areas: Akrotiri and Dhekelia. They cover “roughly 3% of the island” and are among the 14 surviving British Overseas Territories, which also include Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.

The Cyprus bases “enable the UK to maintain a permanent military presence at a strategic point in the Eastern Mediterranean”, according to the British Army. The RAF Akrotiri base has been used in the past for military operations in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Why is that causing problems now?
Sunday’s drone attack marked the first time that one of the UK bases on Cyprus has been hit since a rocket attack by Libyan ⁠militants in 1986, and has “effectively dragged the island into the unfolding crisis” in the Middle East, said Politico.

The potential use of the bases to conduct strikes on Iran is a major point of contention. Cypriot government spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis said that despite assurances to leaders in Nicosia, “there was no clear clarification” from Starmer that the UK’s Cyprus bases “would under no circumstances be used for any purpose other than humanitarian reasons”. Asked whether the Cypriot government will seek to renegotiate the status of the bases, Letymbiotis said that “in this context, we are not ruling anything out”.

Revellers pause for a selfie during Holi celebrations in the Indian city of Guwahati. The Hindu festival marks the arrival of spring and is traditionally celebrated with dancing, singing and the throwing of coloured powder and water.

David Talukdar / NurPhoto / Getty Images

Book lovers can enjoy an exciting range of new releases in 2026, with high-profile novels from the likes of Maggie O’Farrell and Douglas Stuart debuting alongside gripping works from emerging authors.

Land by Maggie O’Farrell
Inspired by her Irish heritage, “Hamnet” author O’Farrell’s latest novel is set in the aftermath of the Great Famine and tells “a multigenerational story of separation and reunion, colonisation and resistance, loyalty and survival”, said Julieanne Corr in The Sunday Times. The screen rights to “Land” have already been snapped up.

What am I, a Deer? by Polly Barton
Barton’s debut novel follows a young woman who moves to Frankfurt hoping for a fresh start, only to become consumed by an obsession with a stranger and a love of karaoke. Told in “a witty, explosive stream of consciousness”, this is “a sharp, mind-racing literary debut”, said Sofia de la Cruz at Wallpaper*.

John of John by Douglas Stuart
A Hebridean community shaped by tradition forms the backdrop to this story of a “troubled father-son bond”, said Daisy Lester in The Independent. “Shuggie Bain” and “Young Mungo” author Stuart continues to explore “masculinity, coming of age and working-class life in a Scottish setting”. This is “Stuart at his very best”.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
Set in modern-day Massachusetts, “The Things We Never Say” follows Artie Dam, a history teacher whose pedestrian life is upended when he uncovers a secret about his own past. “Always delightful”, Strout “illuminates the world in new, brighter colours with every book she writes”, said Julia Hass on Literary Hub.

How the Greens stole Reform’s mojo
Aaron Bastani on UnHerd
Reform’s “whinging” and claims of cheating at the Gorton and Denton by-election made them sound “like losers”, writes Novara Media co-founder Aaron Bastani. They “used to be all conviviality and connection”, but now it’s the Greens going “from strength to strength”. Zack Polanski’s “pick and mix pressure group will only become more successful” in a political world increasingly “mediated through online personalities and causes”. Reform’s TikTok success has “opened the door to new possibilities for the Left”.

Five years after Sarah Everard’s death, why do I still not feel safe?
Olivia Petter in The Independent
“As much as I’d like to think things have changed,” writes Olivia Petter, I fear that what happened to Sarah Everard “could still happen” to any woman. I resent hyperbole “casting us as melodramatic damsels in distress”, but it’s clear violence against women is still not taken seriously enough. Without “cultural change”, it will “continue until it escalates to the most horrifying degree”. Police failed Everard five years ago, and ”we have no reason to believe they wouldn’t fail her again now”.

Quit ChatGPT: right now! Your subscription is bankrolling authoritarianism
Rutger Bregman in The Guardian
“OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is on track to lose $14bn this year,” writes Rutger Bregman, author of “Humankind”. “All it takes to accelerate that decline is 10 seconds of your time” to join the “grassroots boycott” of “your friendly chatbot”. OpenAI is powering a screening tool used by Donald Trump’s Ice agents and has also “quietly signed a deal with the Pentagon”. I’m not against AI but I am against funding a company providing access to “mass surveillance and autonomous weapons”.