Four young women have told the BBC they were sexually assaulted and harassed at an army training college for teenagers – with one saying she was raped by several fellow junior soldiers in an attack that lasted hours.

The women all attended the Army Foundation College (AFC) at Harrogate, North Yorkshire, over the past five years and say the incidents happened when they were aged 17.

The BBC can also reveal that North Yorkshire Police received 16 reports of sexual offences linked to the college in the year to June, according to a Freedom of Information request.

Those reported offences include allegations of exposure, voyeurism and sexual assault. No information was provided as to whether they had led to prosecutions.

“Unacceptable and criminal behaviour has absolutely no place in our Armed Forces,” said the Army spokesperson.

“People join in the hope of having a fantastic career and any such reports are unacceptable and go completely against everything the Army stands for.”

AFC is the largest military training establishment for under-19s in the UK and it receives all the Army’s 16-year-old recruits. There are currently 70 female junior soldiers at the Harrogate site of a total of 889.

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The Democrats almost certainly need to win the US Senate race in Michigan if they are to take control of Congress in November’s midterm elections but picking a candidate is exposing a stark choice for the party.

Next week party members in the state will decide between a left wing candidate backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a centrist candidate backed by establishment Democrats like Gretchen Whitmer. It’s opened up a debate about whether the success of other progressive candidates like Zohran Mamdani could be replicated across the country as the Democrats build a strategy to take on the Republicans at the midterms and beyond.

Just how important is the race in Michigan for the Democrats, and will the outcome have an outsized role in deciding how they approach the 2028 presidential election?

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Millions of people visit Cornwall every year for its beaches, coastline and pretty coastal towns.

But for many young people growing up there, life can look very different.

From long journeys to work experience and university open days, to the challenge of accessing opportunities – some students say they face difficult choices about whether to stay or leave.

And the data that often makes the headlines, about poor outcomes in the North, don’t show the full picture. BBC Education Editor Branwen Jeffreys headed to the south west of England to see why it’s falling behind.

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French authorities have ordered the evacuation of the entirety of the Cap Ferret peninsula on the south-west coast, with hundreds of people escaping the area by boat.

Tens of thousands of people are being evacuated from the tourism destination west of Bordeaux, as firefighters continue to battle what has described as an “XXL fire” in the Gironde region.

The fires, which began on Tuesday, have burned for days, with officials saying 10,000 hectares (almost 25,000 acres) had been consumed by the flames.

Meanwhile, the government in Spain has declared a national emergency as wildfires burn out of control in several areas close to the capital Madrid.

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A group of 25 Democrat-led US states are suing President Donald Trump’s administration in an effort to block his latest round of trade tariffs.

The White House says the levies – which target 59 countries and the European Union – were imposed on nations that had not done enough to crack down on imports produced by forced labour. Among the countries affected are the UK, China, India, Canada and Mexico.

The states’ lawsuit claims that President Trump’s tariffs are “arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law”, accusing the administration of using the forced labour issue as a “pretext” to replace the “Liberation Day” tariffs, which the US Supreme Court struck down in February.

White House spokesman Kush Desai has said that the government is “using its lawful authority to obtain the elimination of unreasonable acts, policies, and practices that burden U.S. commerce”.

We speak to our North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher.

New episodes of the Global News Podcast are published twice a day. You can listen here: https://link.mgln.ai/GNP-YT

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00:00 Introduction
00:18 What the tariff lawsuit claims
00:59 Trump’s forced labour claims
02:37 Small businesses challenge Trump tariffs
06:07 What have Trump’s tariffs done for the US economy?
07:24 What impact could tariffs have on the midterm elections?

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