A woman and a seven-year-old girl died in a house fire in Grangetown, near Middlesbrough, on Wednesday - just one mile away from where two police officers and five young men were killed in a head-on car crash on Saturday.

A vehicle also crashed into a wall outside a house in Steele Crescent, South Bank, in the early hours of Thursday morning, minutes away from the two other scenes.

Alec Brown, leader of Redcar and Cleveland Council, said in a post on social media that authorities are "working 20-hour days to ensure the ongoing safety of innocent residents".

"Over 200 extra police officers from forces around the country are here and are en route, from detectives to armed response," he continued.

"I will be sending a letter today to our prime minister asking for even more resource."

Adding the police "really are doing an amazing job", he continued: "If it is any reassurance at all, jobs called in to the police are actually down this week, however, the seriousness of the ones that have been called in need serious and swift action."

Referring to the house fire, Mr Brown said: "Everyone is heartbroken over the loss of the aunt and little girl in Grangetown yesterday.

"People need to feel safe in their homes."

Redcar MP Anna Turley said in a Facebook post: "I know how worried people are, and understandably people want to know what is being done.

"There is a significant response under way, with additional officers and resources being brought into our area and agencies working together around the clock.

"People have a right to feel safe in their homes and in their communities. That is our absolute priority."

PCs Matthew Blades and Tom Clough died in the head-on collision with a Volkswagen Passat on the A66 on Saturday.

Cole Worthy, 17, Theo Rae, 17, Makai Saddington, 18, and 23-year-olds Michael Robert Cahill and Jakub Matusiak were also killed in the collision.

Inquests into the deaths opened on Thursday morning.

Police have arrested 17 people following the crash, as part of investigations into alleged organised crime. Two have been charged and the others have been bailed.

Meanwhile, two men have been arrested on suspicion of murder in relation to the house fire that killed Natalie McDonald, 34, and her niece Valentina Foster, and injured four others.

Mr Infantino is accused of trying to "fraudulently" sell off the tournaments in legal documents lodged by UEFA in the United States to subpoena FIFA and its financial partners to obtain evidence related to the scheme.

But the planned legal action would be launched in Switzerland, where FIFA has its main headquarters.

It is a significant move by UEFA in its bid to go beyond trying to oust Mr Infantino from power over the attempt to privatise part of the World Cup.

A legal document seen by Sky News said: "UEFA and other interested parties are preparing to bring criminal claims in Switzerland against Infantino and possibly other FIFA officials and advisors for criminal mismanagement under Article 158 of the Swiss Criminal Code and such further or alternative charges as the developed factual record may support, arising out of the secretive structuring, valuation, financing, and marketing of a transaction that inflicted direct and concrete injury on FIFA's reputation, governance authority, and commercial relationships to the detriment of FIFA as well as its 211 members, including UEFA's 55 member associations."

The application was lodged by UEFA in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against JP Morgan Bank as well as planned lead investor Thrive Capital and its CEO, Joshua Kushner, who is the brother of Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

UEFA is targeting FIFA through courts in Miami, where the world body's legal team is based.

UEFA says in the legal document about the World Cup venture: "It was a vehicle for Infantino and that small circle to acquire a permanent stake in and otherwise profit from FIFA's most valuable assets to the detriment of FIFA, its members, and other parties within the football family."

The aim was to sell about 20% of a new subsidiary to sell the rights to FIFA's competitions, raising $4.2bn from private investors - described by UEFA as "a fraudulently off-market price promoted by Infantino for his own benefit".

"Infantino claimed that the plan would 'unleash the commercial potential and opportunity that FIFA has'," UEFA's legal filing says.

"In truth, it was a vehicle for Infantino and that small circle to acquire a permanent stake in and otherwise profit from FIFA's most valuable assets to the detriment of FIFA, its members, and other parties within the football family.

"Under the terms Infantino announced, those investors stood to acquire a permanent financial interest in FIFA's commercial arm for $4.2 billion, implying an absurdly low enterprise value of only approximately $20bn, a figure that was neither the product of an open, competitive auction, nor tested by any independent valuer."

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While FIFA tried to portray the process as a consultation for members, the scheme was negotiated in secret by Mr Infantino away from the ruling council for months and was only confirmed after plans leaked out a week after the World Cup final.

"Infantino's exclusion of the FIFA Council was by itself a stunning dereliction of duty," UEFA's legal team told the American courts.

Sky News first revealed Mr Infantino's announcement that the scheme was being dropped to stave off a growing backlash at the start of the month, hours after we also disclosed how his senior adviser, Carlos Cordeiro, had quit in protest about the "bad deal".

Boycott plan scrapped

Confirming our report from Wednesday, UEFA has now said it is dropping a plan to boycott FIFA competitions so youth teams from Europe can still participate in the coming months.

But with a senior Women's World Cup next year, UEFA said after a meeting of member associations in Monaco: "This position will remain under constant review and may be reconsidered immediately if circumstances so require."

It is understood the UEFA meeting did not specifically discuss a candidate to take on Mr Infantino, but did look at preventing a future FIFA leader gaining as much individual control again.

"Those present unanimously mandated the UEFA President and Administration to pursue every available institutional, political and legal avenue necessary to secure fundamental reform, restore proper limits on presidential authority and ensure that FIFA is once again governed as an institution - not around one individual," UEFA said in a statement.

"FIFA must once again be governed as an institution serving football - not operate as an instrument of individual power."

Mladic, known as the "Butcher of Bosnia", was serving a life sentence for his role in the country's 1992-95 war.

Local media in Bosnia reported on Thursday that the 84-year-old had died in a United Nations prison hospital in The Hague, the Netherlands. A UN official then confirmed his death to Reuters news agency.

The ruthless ex-military chief was one of the most notorious figures of the conflict, which left more than 100,000 people dead and over one million homeless.

Mladic commanded the Bosnian Serb troops and took control of large swathes of the country, laying siege to the capital Sarajevo and killing civilians with snipers, while also establishing concentration camps for non-Serb civilians, enemy soldiers and prisoners.

In 1995, his troops slaughtered more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, in Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War.

The dead were bulldozed into mass graves, with some bodies later dug up and moved to remote mountains in an attempt to hide evidence of the killings.

Mladic had been in a United Nations detention centre since his arrest near Belgrade in 2011 after many years on the run.

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In 2017, a UN tribunal convicted him of charges including crimes against humanity, extermination, murder and war crimes after orchestrating massacres and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian towns.

When the court sentenced him to life in prison, Mladic shouted: "This is all lies, you are all liars."

The judge said: "The crimes committed rank among the most heinous known to mankind, and include genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity."

UN high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said Mladic was the "epitome of evil" and hailed the conviction as a "momentous victory for justice".

He had been in ill health in the last few years and was hospitalised repeatedly.

The companies, including tech heavyweights OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Microsoft warn of a "limited window to strengthen cyber-defences", saying that the attacks "will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models from around the world become increasingly capable", putting companies and public services at risk.

The group says "status quo security won't be enough", adding that security teams have been historically under-resourced and "need a surge in tools and resources" to tackle AI cyber attacks.

It also calls for defenders to be "empowered" with cyber-capable AI, with specialist skills to help security teams protect organisations, as well as a global response to find new solutions to emerging cyber threats.

The letter called on organisations to make cyber defence an immediate leadership priority and for governments to coordinate cyber defence at local, national and international levels, including intelligence sharing and giving public services access to capable defensive AI.

It's also calling on cybersecurity companies to make AI-powered defence accessible for critical infrastructure, and for AI companies to provide model access and training for defenders.

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The letter comes amid a rise in cyber attacks, including on Thursday when 8.7 million people's data held in three UK airports was stolen.

National Cybersecurity Centre head Richard Horne previously told Sky News AI models like Mythos are "warning shots" about the dangers of AI, saying new models were not finding new attacks, but instead "exposing more security vulnerabilities".

In June, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance - comprising the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - issued a rare joint statement warning of swift action to remain ahead of AI-powered cyber risks, as it called for organisations to use AI to strengthen defences.

In July, OpenAI - the company behind ChatGPT - revealed that some of the models they were testing managed to escape containment and break into a firm called Hugging Face, a platform used to host open-source large language models and datasets.

Sky News first reported in November 2025 how the field, located near the A34 and Kidlington, had been transformed into a mountain of illegal waste.

Satellite images from March 2025 showed the site largely covered in grass, but by 22 September, a 150-metre-long and 15-metre-wide area was piled with waste.

The land which hosted the illegal site is just over three acres in size and is largely hidden by trees on all sides, with the River Cherwell running along its west side.

The site was shut down in October 2025.

Specialist teams shifted up to 30 lorry loads of material a day to clear the illegal site, which was larger than the pitch at Wembley Stadium, and made up of commercial and household waste.

Concrete blocks have since been placed at the entrance to prevent access, with the main gate now securely padlocked.

The clean-up follows a new government crackdown to try to shut down criminal gangs running illegal waste sites.

Philip Duffy, chief executive of the EA, said: "We are very pleased that the clearance of this site has now been completed, and the EA has made a number of arrests as we pursue those responsible for this abhorrent offending."

He added that the organisation was improving the exchange of intelligence between agencies and revoking the permits of those who do not take adequate care.

The cost of removing the waste was estimated to be more than the entire annual budget of the local council, which is around £25m.

The incident sparked fears that toxins could leak into the River Cherwell and the wider Thames catchment; however, the EA said regular water quality sampling had shown no evidence of impacts to the local environment.

Four people have been arrested in connection with the incident.

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As part of the government's crackdown, the Environment Agency will be given stronger powers to tackle waste crime.

Under new plans, those who dump waste illegally or fail to treat it correctly could face fines of up to £5,000, up from the current maximum of £300.

Huge illegal waste dumps have been a growing problem in recent years and have been described as an "out of control plague" by the chair of the UK's Public Accounts Committee.

In the six months to July, Sky News worked with scientists from Oxford Indices to conduct testing of air, water and soil at three illegal waste sites across the country.

Across all three sites, the majority of chemicals found in the water samples were above the predicted no-effect concentration (PNEC) levels - the scientific measure above which there may be harmful effects on the environment.

In response, the EA said its scientists would "carefully consider these findings", adding that "waste crime is an absolute disgrace that harms our communities and blights our environment".