分类： society

More than two and a half years after his dramatic escape from a nomadic life in the Pyrenees Mountains, 20-year-old Alex Batty, who vanished as an 11-year-old boy while on a family holiday in Spain, is preparing to share his full, unfiltered story for the first time in a new BBC documentary titled *Kidnapped by My Mum*. The long-awaited program, set to air May 13 on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer, retraces every step of Batty’s six years in hiding, his daring escape, and the slow process of rebuilding his life back in his hometown of Oldham, Greater Manchester.

The case that captivated the UK began in September 2017, when 11-year-old Alex traveled to Marbella, Spain, for a pre-planned week-long holiday with his mother Melanie Batty and grandfather David Batty. The pair were not Alex’s legal guardians; he was set to return home to his grandmother Susan Caruana, his official custodian, after the trip. But the three never came back. Alex was last spotted at Malaga Port on October 8, 2017, the day their return to the UK was scheduled, sparking an international missing person investigation that would stretch on for six years with no breakthrough.

Police quickly classified the disappearance as a potential child abduction. What unfolded behind the scenes, as Alex now reveals, was a life rooted in his mother’s deep embrace of extreme conspiracy theories and the sovereign citizen movement, a fringe ideology that claims national governments are illegitimate and that followers can reject laws they disagree with. Melanie threw away Alex’s passport shortly after they left the UK, and the trio spent the next six years living an itinerant lifestyle, moving between remote communes, caravans, and off-grid communities across Spain and France. After years of roaming the Iberian Peninsula, they settled in a spiritual commune tucked in the valleys of the Pyrenees, in southwestern France, far from any populated area.

By December 2023, Alex had grown exhausted of the isolated, constantly shifting life. He made the risky decision to escape. For four days, he traveled by night to avoid detection, slept in hiding during the day, and foraged for food in fields and gardens along the route. It was 3 a.m. on a rainy night when a local delivery driver named Fabien Accidini spotted Alex walking along an unlit mountain road. The teenager had only 100 euros, a skateboard, and no mobile phone, and was heading for Toulouse to reach help. He was reunited with his grandmother in Oldham within days.

In 2025, Greater Manchester Police officially called off the criminal investigation into Alex’s alleged abduction. A department spokesperson confirmed the case was closed because Alex and his family did not support pursuing prosecution, and there was “no realistic chance of securing a conviction” anyway. Alex repeatedly told investigators he had no interest in pressing charges against his mother and grandfather, who were never taken into custody or charged. Det Supt Matt Walker noted at the time that closing the case was the right step to give Alex and his family the closure they wanted.

Now, starting a new life as a father to a baby girl, Alex is opening up about the complicated reality of his experience. In the documentary, he retraces the entire route he took across Spain and France with his mother and grandfather, unpacking not just how he was hidden from authorities for six years, but the ideological framework that kept him isolated. Back in the UK, investigating detectives reflect on the years of unsuccessful searches, and Caruana shares the agony of spending six years not knowing if her grandson was alive or dead. Most notably, Alex confronts the nuanced, difficult question of how he feels about his mother, who still has not commented on the documentary, while David Batty did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment. In a preview for the program, Alex summed up the deeply personal nature of the story: “For me it’s not a story, for me it’s my life.”

A devastating natural disaster has struck northern Turkey, where extreme torrential downpours have unleashed dangerous flash flooding near the Black Sea coast. The disaster has left local communities grappling with widespread damage, as floodwaters have swallowed residential and commercial properties and dragged automobiles off city streets.

According to Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu Agency, at least 12 individuals have been transported to local medical facilities for treatment of minor injuries sustained in the flood. All patients are reported to be in stable condition, with no life-threatening injuries recorded.

The intense rainfall struck the Havza district of Samsun province overnight Tuesday, pushing local river systems past their banks. Surge floodwater poured into urban areas, turning neighborhood streets into rushing brown torrents that carried away vehicles and scattered broken debris across the region.

Floodwaters have fully submerged the basements and ground floors of dozens of residential and commercial buildings across the district. Dramatic video footage captured from the scene shows one motorist stranded atop the roof of his submerged truck, waiting anxiously for emergency rescue teams to reach him.

Of the 12 injured people, some were able to make their own way to local hospitals, while emergency medical crews extracted others from trapped or dangerous positions. In response to the disaster, local authorities have mobilized a multi-agency emergency response: firefighters, local police units, and national disaster management teams have all been deployed to the district to pull stranded residents to safety, clear blocked roadways of debris, and begin initial damage assessments.

More than a century after white-tailed eagles vanished from Ireland, a landmark conservation initiative is bearing remarkable new fruit — and one young feathered adventurer has captured the public’s imagination with an unprecedented cross-country journey.

Aspen, a juvenile white-tailed eagle hatched in 2024 at Glengarriff Nature Reserve in County Cork as part of Ireland’s ongoing white-tailed eagle reintroduction programme, embarked on a cross-island odyssey that began on March 22. Over the course of just seven weeks, a satellite tracker fitted to the bird recorded its extraordinary route: spanning all four of Ireland’s provinces — Leinster, Ulster, Connaught, and finally back to its native Munster — and touching 26 of the island’s counties along the way. In Northern Ireland alone, Aspen visited Armagh, Down, Tyrone, Londonderry, and Fermanagh, making her journey one of the most widely documented young eagle movements in recent Irish conservation history.

This ambitious trek is no surprise to the ecologists who have monitored Aspen since the day she hatched. Clare Heardman, a National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) ecologist who has tracked the reintroduction programme since its launch in 2007 and currently monitors roughly 90 tagged eagles, shares a unique bond with the young bird. “I helped tag her when she was eight weeks old, then she fledged when I was 13 weeks,” Heardman explained. “On her first solo flight, she already did a massive loop of Munster — that isn’t unheard of for young eagles, but it proved right away that travelling is in her personality.”

Aspen’s name comes from an unusual aspen tree growing near her birth nest, a rarity among the untagged, unnamed eagles monitored by the programme. What makes her extra special for Heardman is her lineage: her mother is a Norwegian eagle brought into the programme as part of reintroduction efforts, while her father is the first generation of Irish-born eagles produced by the scheme — a milestone that marks the programme’s long-term success. Since the map of Aspen’s cross-country journey was shared on social media, the public has embraced the young eagle just as much as the conservation team, with Heardman noting “her route touched so many counties, it helped people across the island relate to her.”

White-tailed eagles, also called sea eagles for their coastal habitat and nicknamed “flying barn doors” for their massive 2.5-meter wingspan, were driven to extinction across Ireland and the United Kingdom by the early 20th century. Decades of deliberate reintroduction work, using founder birds sourced from healthy Norwegian populations, have reversed that decline. In 2024, a breeding pair in County Fermanagh made history as the first white-tailed eagles to successfully raise chicks in Northern Ireland in more than 150 years, and established mating populations have now been confirmed across Kerry, Cork, Clare, Galway, and Donegal.

Dr. Eimear Rooney, a member of the Northern Ireland Raptor Study Group which monitors birds of prey across Northern Ireland, explained that Aspen’s long wander is typical for young white-tailed eagles. “This time of year, it is common for sub-adult white-tailed eagles to go wandering. They catch thermal hot air currents, and with their size, they can cover hundreds of miles in a very short space of time,” Rooney said. The tracker’s data also reflects the species’ feeding habits: Aspen often stayed close to coastlines and wetlands, where the birds hunt for fish and marine prey, while her inland forays into higher ground like the hills of Donegal were likely driven by her scavenging instinct, as the eagles feed on carrion when it is available.

While Aspen’s journey is a heartwarming win for conservation, Rooney also highlighted the ongoing risks facing young eagles during their nomadic adolescent years. White-tailed eagles do not reach breeding age until they are four or five years old, and the sub-adult stage is the most dangerous period of their lives. “The people tracking these birds during this part of their lives are biting their nails constantly,” Rooney said. Major threats include accidental poisoning from carcasses laced with toxins — two eagles were confirmed killed by poisoning in County Antrim in 2023 — collisions with wind turbines (three eagles died from turbine strikes in South Donegal alone that same year, per NPWS data), severe storms, and exposure to avian influenza.

For now, Aspen has returned to her native Munster, but where she will settle long-term remains an open question. “Just because it was hatched in Cork doesn’t mean it’ll stay in Cork,” Rooney noted. “A very common path we see these birds follow takes them to the Antrim Hills, Rathlin Island, onto the Mull of Kintyre, then they’ll spend some time in Scotland before coming back. The point is, you can never be too sure where they’ll end up.”

LONDON – Almost five months after announcing her cancer is in full remission, Britain’s Princess of Wales, Catherine (commonly known as Kate), is preparing to step back onto the international stage for her first overseas trip since her 2024 cancer diagnosis. The two-day working visit to northern Italy will center entirely on deepening her work advancing early childhood education, a policy and advocacy area that has become the defining royal cause for the 44-year-old mother of three, who is set to become Britain’s queen in the future.

The princess will travel to the city of Reggio Emilia, a global hub of innovative early education practice that has drawn attention from educators across the world for its decades-old child-centered learning framework. Kensington Palace confirmed the trip is structured as an official international fact-finding mission, designed to examine how alternative education models can better support young children and the caregivers who guide their early development.

The choice of Reggio Emilia as the destination for Catherine’s first post-recovery international trip is no random selection. Early years development – focused on learning and growth from birth to age five – has been the signature issue of Catherine’s public work since she launched the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood in 2021. The organization’s core mission is to raise widespread public awareness of how investment in early childhood lays the foundation for lifelong health, resilience and success.

Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine, explained that the trip sends a clear signal about Catherine’s priorities moving forward. “She wants to make a point that she is going to keep making this her cause,” Little said, adding that the child-focused Reggio Emilia approach aligns perfectly with the launch of the center’s expanded international engagement work. A statement from Kensington Palace added that the visit will emphasize the critical role that supportive environments and positive human relationships play in building healthy, resilient futures for children.

The Reggio Emilia approach to early education is rooted in the core principle that children express understanding and make meaning of the world through hundreds of unique modes of communication, and that educators must meet young learners where they are rather than enforcing rigid, one-size-fits-all curricula. This model has been adopted and adapted by early education programs in more than 120 countries around the world since its development in the years following World War II.

Catherine’s return to international public duties comes after a highly personal, uncharacteristically open journey through cancer treatment that reshaped public discourse around royal health transparency. When she first announced her cancer diagnosis earlier this year, she broke with longstanding royal tradition of guarding personal health details closely by sharing her news in a warm, accessible social media video. Later, after completing chemotherapy and announcing her remission, she spent a full day meeting and supporting other cancer patients at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital, the facility where she received her treatment.

In a public note shared after the remission announcement, signed with her initial “C”, Catherine wrote: “It is a relief to now be in remission and I remain focused on recovery. As anyone who has experienced a cancer diagnosis will know, it takes time to adjust to a new normal.”

That new normal centers on expanding her advocacy for early childhood education in Britain, where advocates have long flagged systemic gaps: a nationwide shortage of accessible early education spaces and widespread gaps in specialized training for early years educators. Experts say Catherine’s high-profile engagement has already brought much-needed attention to an issue that is often overlooked in public policy debates.

Edoardo Masset, associate research director at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, noted that the princess’s focus on the issue is backed by robust academic research. “This relationship between early years education and success later in life is supported not only by strong theoretical arguments, but also by a large body of evidence on the effectiveness of programs for preschool children,” Masset explained. As one of Britain’s most popular royal figures, Catherine has a proven track record of drawing sustained public and media attention to the causes she champions, and her upcoming Italian trip is expected to generate global focus on early childhood education reform.