Politics

The mother of one of the babies murdered by Lucy Letby said she felt at one point like she had “failed as a mum” because she had not been able to protect her daughter.

The girl, known as “Baby D” in the neonatal nurse’s trial, died in June 2015. Letby was found to have injected air into her bloodstream.

In a new Netflix documentary, and using the pseudonym “Sarah”, the baby’s mum said the years since her daughter’s death had brought “storm after storm, and it’s not over, but I want to make it through”.

Letby is serving 15 whole life sentences for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others – one on two occasions – at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016.

The makers of the documentary, The Investigation of Lucy Letby, have given Baby D the pseudonym “Zoe”.

Speaking for the first time on camera, Sarah said Zoe had been born after 60 hours in labour.

She said Zoe had been taken to intensive care shortly after she was born.

“It was hard looking at her in the incubator… She was so fragile, small and precious,” said Sarah.

But she added: “The doctors told us she was responding very well, she was responding as expected and there were no concerns.”

Less than two days later, though, Sarah was woken up in the early hours of the morning by a nurse and wheeled into a room to a scene of “panic”.

“The doctor was trying everything to keep her heart pumping,” she said.

Tragically, Zoe could not be saved.

“That was it,” said Sarah. “It was finished. It was over.

“I was just so angry and so sad and so confused.”

The documentary makers had exclusive access to the key investigators at Cheshire Police, who spent years building the case against Letby.

The producers also had bodycam footage of the neonatal nurse’s three arrests and police interviews.

They also spoke to Dr John Gibbs, one of the consultant paediatricians who first raised concerns about Letby with hospital management.

He remembered Letby as being “quiet”, adding nothing about her had stood out.

But as the deaths continued, the neonatal consultants had noticed she was the one person who seemed to be on duty.

Gibbs said they raised their concerns on a number of occasions, but others defended her work.

When she was transferred from working nights to day shifts, he said the timings of the deaths and non-fatal collapses also changed.

Gibbs said: “At that stage, we as a consultant body realised that we could not delay any further. Lucy Letby had to be removed from the neonatal unit.”

Eventually the police were brought in and Letby was charged in 2020.

Sarah said she knew attending the subsequent trial would be challenging.

She said she also “knew Lucy Letby was going to take the stand, so I needed to face her”.

Sarah told the documentary: “I sat three metres away from her. She looked at me a dozen times, staring. Every time she looked at me I’d have to look down.”

Letby was eventually found guilty of murdering seven babies, including Baby D, and attempting to murder seven more.

In the years since her convictions, though, there has been a growing campaign questioning their safety.

The documentary also interviews Letby’s barrister Mark MacDonald.

Brought in to represent her in late 2024, he is convinced of her innocence.

“No-one saw her do anything wrong,” he said. “There is no CCTV. There is no motive – none.”

In early 2025, the findings of an international panel of medical experts working for Letby’s defence team were revealed at a press conference.

They concluded there were alternative explanations for each of Letby’s convictions.

The panel was led by a Canadian neonatal expert, Dr Shoo Lee, who told the assembled media: “We did not find any murders. In all cases, death or injury were due to natural causes or just bad medical care.”

Lee became involved after realising that a medical paper he had co-authored in 1989 had been used in the prosecution’s case. He said it had been misinterpreted.

Interviewed for the documentary, he said: “A young woman could be in jail for crimes that she did not commit.”

The panel’s findings, which have been submitted to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) as part of an application made by Letby’s lawyers for her case to be investigated as a potential miscarriage of justice, have been rejected by Gibbs.

“We were understaffed – that’s generally true in most departments on most wards on the NHS,” he said. “But we had had those same staffing pressures before 2015 and 2016 and we’d not had those increased deaths then.”

He said the consultants had been targeted online by amateur sleuths convinced of Letby’s innocence.

Gibbs said they accused the consultants of lying to cover up their own failings.

Gibbs said: “Where’s your evidence of that?

“Blaming a colleague – which is a dreadful thing to do – for possibly murdering and attempting to murder babies is the worst way in the world to try and cover up problems and inadequacies on the neonatal unit.”

But he added: “I live with two guilts. Guilt that we let the babies down.

“And tiny, tiny, tiny guilt – did we get the wrong person? Just in case – miscarriage of justice?”

“I don’t think there was a miscarriage of justice but you worry that no-one actually saw her do it.”

The police went through thousands of documents, and her original trial took more than 10 months.

Letby’s case is now with the CCRC and her defence team hopes this will result in a further appeal.

A government inquiry into the wider circumstances surrounding her crimes is due to report back in late spring.

Speculation surrounding the case shows no signs of abating.

Det Supt Paul Hughes, who led the Letby investigation, said one key element was still unknown.

“The only person who knows truly why she did each of these awful events is Lucy Letby herself,” he said.

Meanwhile, the parents of the babies who died do their best to carry on through each new revelation.

Sarah now has a son.

She said: “He’s our reason for everything.”

Sarah said she had always talked to him about Zoe.

“There’s no getting over any of this,” she said. “There’s the sorrow, but there’s the hope and the love we have for her.

“Ultimately, we’re still here and I want to count my blessings and appreciate what I have.”

The Investigation of Lucy Letby is available to watch on Netflix.

An Iranian drone was shot down as it “aggressively approached” an American aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea on Tuesday, a US military spokesman has said.

An F-35C stealth fighter jet which took off from the USS Abraham Lincoln warship shot down the drone “in self-defence” to protect the aircraft carrier and its personnel, US Central Command spokesman Capt Tim Hawkins said.

The ship was approximately 500 miles from the Iranian coast when the drone approached it with “unclear intent”.

No US equipment was damaged and no service members were harmed.

It comes as the US continues to build up a military presence in the region, with tensions high between Washington and Tehran.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to take military action against Iran if it does not negotiate an agreement to restrict its nuclear programme.

He previously raised the prospect of intervening during Tehran’s deadly crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.

Speaking after the downing of the Iranian drone, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that negotiations between the US and Iran are still scheduled for later this week.

She said Trump “remains committed to always pursuing diplomacy first”, but added he “has always a range of options on the table, and that includes the use of military force”.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has previously warned that any attack on the country would spark a “regional war”.

Tehran has not commented on Tuesday’s drone incident.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, the US military said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces had “harassed a US-flagged, US-crewed merchant vessel” in the Strait of Hormuz – the world’s busiest oil shipping channel.

Military support “de-escalated” the situation and the tanker proceeded safely, Capt Hawkins said.

Also on Tuesday, Leavitt said US special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s most senior overseas envoy, will attend the talks on behalf of the White House.

US media had previously reported he would meet Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Istanbul on Friday, with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also invited.

But US news website Axios has since cited two sources as saying Tehran wanted the venue moved to Oman, with only Iranian and US officials present.

The US had agreed to this request, the website reported, citing an Arab source. The BBC has reached out to the White House for comment.

Earlier on Tuesday, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran was ready to negotiate with the US “provided that a suitable environment exists”.

Ahead of the planned talks, Washington has repeatedly reminded Tehran of the US strikes on Iran last year, which Trump said had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear enrichment facilities.

He said a fresh attack would be “far worse” than those air strikes, which were launched last June during Israel’s 12-day war with Iran.

The Israeli military also targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities and scientists during a short direct conflict, as well as its military commanders and missile arsenal.

Tehran responded to the strikes by launching hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel. It also carried out a missile attack on a major US air base in Qatar.

Iran has insisted its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and denies that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Last week, Trump told reporters at the White House that Iranian officials “do want to make a deal”, and that they must commit to “no nuclear” and to “stop killing protesters”.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has said it has confirmed the killing of 6,424 protesters, 152 children, 214 people associated with the government, and 58 bystanders. It is also investigating reports of another 11,280 deaths.

Norway-based Iran Human Rights has warned that the final toll could exceed 25,000.

Iranian authorities have acknowledged that at least 3,117 people were killed, but said the majority were members of the security forces or bystanders killed by “rioters”.

The unrest was sparked by anger over the collapse of the Iranian currency and soaring cost of living, but it quickly developed into demands for political change.

Khamenei described the unrest as “sedition” orchestrated by the US and Israel.

Former US President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State, have agreed to testify in the congressional investigation into late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, allowing them to avoid being found in contempt of Congress.

The House of Representatives had been poised to vote this week on holding the couple in contempt for refusing to appear before the chamber’s Oversight Committee.

Bill Clinton was acquainted with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019, but has denied knowledge of his sex offending and says he cut off contact two decades ago.

He will appear for a deposition on 27 February, and Hillary Clinton will appear the day before.

It will be the first time a former US president has testified to a congressional panel since Gerald Ford did so in 1983.

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee has asked for the depositions to be filmed and transcribed, with no time limit.

On Tuesday, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer said: “Once it became clear that we would hold them in contempt, the Clintons completely caved.”

“Republicans and Democrats on the Oversight Committee have been clear: no one is above the law – and that includes the Clintons,” he added in a statement.

When the Clintons agreed to Comer’s requirements, they reportedly asked for the testimony to be public, multiple US news outlets reported. Whether or not Comer will oblige remains unclear.

The House was expected to vote this week on holding the former president and former secretary of state in criminal contempt of Congress, but the plans were abruptly put on hold on Monday as the Clintons’ legal team said they would agree to the committee’s terms.

The couple, both Democrats, had previously struck a defiant tone, saying they had already submitted sworn statements covering the “limited information” they had on Epstein.

They had dismissed the legal summonses issued by the panel as “nothing more than a ploy to attempt to embarrass political rivals, as President Trump has directed”.

The oversight committee then approved a measure to hold the Clintons in contempt late last month, with the support of several Democrats.

On Saturday, as a vote in the full House loomed, lawyers for the Clintons made an offer to provide limited testimony that would have centred on a four-hour interview by Bill Clinton. But Comer expressed concerns that the former president would stonewall questions and run down the clock.

On Monday evening, Bill Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff Angel Ureña posted on X confirming the couple would appear before the panel.

“They negotiated in good faith,” Ureña wrote in a tweet directed at the House Oversight Committee. “You did not.

“They told you under oath what they know, but you don’t care. But the former President and former Secretary of State will be there. They look forward to setting a precedent that applies to everyone.”

If the House had approved a contempt resolution, it would have been referred to the justice department, which then could have decided whether to prosecute the Clintons.

Neither Clinton has been accused of wrongdoing by survivors of Epstein’s abuse, and they have denied knowledge of his sex offending.

Hillary Clinton, former US senator and secretary of state, and the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, has said she never met or spoke to Epstein.

Epstein’s private jet logs show that Clinton took four international flights in 2002 and 2003.

Shortly after Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in July 2019, Clinton’s spokesperson said the former president took trips on the plane including “stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation”.

The former president also appears at the late financier’s estate in photos that were among a batch of records released by the justice department to comply with a law passed by Congress mandating the disclosure of all investigative material relating to the late convicted paedophile.

One picture shows the former president swimming in a pool, and another shows him lying on his back with his hands behind his head in what appears to be a hot tub.

Ureña, Clinton’s spokesman, said at the time the photos were released in December that they were decades old and Clinton had stopped associating with Epstein before his crimes came to light.

Last month, the Clintons wrote a letter to Comer criticising his handling of the Epstein investigation.

“The decisions you have made, and the priorities you have set as chairman regarding the Epstein investigation, have prevented progress in discovering the facts about the government’s role,” the letter said.

They added: “There is no plausible explanation for what you are doing other than partisan politics.”

The last nuclear weapons control treaty between the US and Russia is due to expire on Thursday, raising fears of a new arms race.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as “New START” and signed in 2010 was one of a handful of agreements designed to help prevent a catastrophic nuclear war.

The treaty capped the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads for each party to 1,550. It also established some transparency including data transfer, notifications and on site inspections.

The treaty’s expiry effectively marks an end to the arms control co-operation between Washington and Moscow that helped bring an end to the Cold War.

On Wednesday, Pope Leo urged the US and Russia to renew the treaty, saying the current world situation required “calls for doing everything possible to avert a new arms race”.

The original Start treaty – signed in 1991 by the US and the Soviet Union – barred each of the two signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads.

It was succeeded by New Start signed in 2010 in Prague by the US and Russia, the successor state to the dissolved Soviet Union.

Despite a technical suspension three years ago, both countries were still thought to be abiding by the treaty.

The agreement prevented the uncontrolled build-up of nuclear weapons and provided the two countries with the largest nuclear arsenals with transparency measures to avoid misjudging each other’s intentions.

Its expiry follows a worrying pattern. Other long-standing arms control treaties have already fallen by the wayside.

They include:

• The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Agreement, which largely eliminated the deployment of shorter-range nuclear weapons within Europe

• The Open Skies Treaty, which allowed signatories, including the US and Russia, to fly unarmed reconnaissance flights over each other’s territory to monitor military forces

• The Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, which limited the numbers of tanks, troops and artillery systems both Russia and Nato forces could deploy within Europe

Britain’s former head of the armed forces, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin has warned that the architecture and frameworks that helped keep the world safe “now risks unravelling”.

In a speech last year he described the collapse of these key arms control treaties as “one of the most dangerous aspects of our current global security”, along with “the increasing prominence of nuclear weapons”.

Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev, who as the then president signed the New Start treaty in 2010, said its expiration should “alarm everyone”. This is a sobering comment from a politician whose recent rhetoric has included nuclear threats.

US President Donald Trump has sounded less concerned. Last month, he told the New York Times: “If it expires, it expires… We’ll just do a better agreement”.

Washington believes that any future arms control treaty should also include China, which has been building up its nuclear arsenal.

Meanwhile, Russia has long argued that any future arms control treaty should include France and the UK – Europe’s nuclear powers.

Darya Dolzikova, a senior Research Fellow with the UK-based RUSI’s Proliferation and Nuclear Policy Programme, said the expiration of New Start was “concerning, because there are drivers on both sides to expand their strategic capabilities”.

Both the US and Russia are currently modernising their nuclear forces and increasing their strategic capabilities. A new arms race is already under way.

Dolzikova said that for Russia “there appears to be some concerns about their ability to penetrate US air defences”. This has only increased with Trump’s plans to build a “Golden Dome” to protect North America from long-range weapons.

But Russia has also been developing new weapons designed to overcome air defences. They include Poseidon – a new intercontinental, nuclear armed and nuclear powered undersea autonomous torpedo, and also Burevestnik – a nuclear armed and powered cruise missile.

The US, Russia and China are all developing long-range hypersonic missiles which can manoeuvre at speeds of more than 4,000 mph (6,437kmh), and are much harder to shoot down.

Dolzikova said those expanding military capabilities would “only make it harder” to reach a new arms control treaty.

This is along with what she called the “growing salience of nuclear weapons”. More, not fewer, countries appear to want them as a deterrent.

Nor does the US or Russia appear to be in a rush to sign a new arms control treaty.

The subject was on the agenda when Russian President Vladimir Putin met Trump in Alaska last year – but nothing happened.

A new deal is still possible – but the expiry of the New Start signals a more volatile, dangerous era.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says more than 200 repair crews are working to restore power in Kyiv following widespread deadly Russian attacks targeting the country’s energy sector.

More than 1,100 apartment buildings in the capital are still without power, Zelensky said, adding that he had spoken to officials about supporting communities in other affected parts of Ukraine.

In the eastern Ukrainian town of Druzhkivka, seven people were killed and fifteen injured in Russian cluster bomb strikes, the regional head said.

Moscow has recently renewed its attacks after a week-long pause that US President Donald Trump had asked Vladimir Putin to observe as a fierce cold swept Ukraine.

Meanwhile, US, Ukrainian and Russian officials are again meeting in Abu Dhabi to discuss details of a peace plan.

However, there a few signs a breakthrough is imminent during the second round of such trilateral talks in the United Arab Emirates.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“As of today, the toughest situation is in Kyiv and the region, Kharkiv and the region, Sumy region, and Poltava region,” Zelensky wrote on social media on Wednesday.

“It is also difficult in other parts of central Ukraine, including Dnipro and Cherkasy regions.”

He added that more repair teams would be brought in to help restore power “to ensure proper rotation of crew members – people are exhausted.”

Residents have been forced to spend the night sheltering in Kyiv’s metro stations, with some pitching tents on the platforms to protect them from the freezing cold.

Authorities have set up centres around the city for people to go to warm up. They are also importing more generators to cope with longer blackout periods as engineers try to fix the damage.

In the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, a power plant has been damaged beyond repair.

Ukraine’s Energy Minister, Denys Shmyhal, said the country’s energy system would take some time to fix. This includes Kyiv’s Darnytsia Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant, which Shmyhal said had been “severely damaged”.

Iryna Vovk is a psychologist who lives in Kyiv with her daughter. Her husband is away fighting.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Vovk said she was considering moving to her parents’ village because of the problems accessing electricity and water in the capital.

“Here in Kyiv, life is very awful,” she said.

Asked how her daughter is coping, Vovk said she was “okay in general”.

“She tries to smile and lead a normal life but it’s not a normal life. She cannot study [like] normal, she cannot use online lessons.”

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector on Monday night – as temperatures dropped to -20C (-4F) – were “barbaric” and “particularly depraved”.

He made the comments following a phone call with Trump hours after Russia hit power plants and critical infrastructure in Kyiv and elsewhere.

Trump told reporters that Putin had “kept his word” on the week-long pause.

The agreement “was on Sunday, and he [Putin] went from Sunday to Sunday”, Trump said when asked whether he was disappointed with Russia’s renewed attacks.

“It’s a lot, you know, one week, we’ll take anything, because it’s really, really cold over there.”

The US president has been leading efforts to end the war, but his Russian counterpart has refused calls for a ceasefire.

The Ukrainian Air Force said it was attacked by more than 100 drones early on Wednesday. While it had intercepted most of these, it added, drone strikes were reported in 14 locations, along with falling debris.

Seven casualties were reported in Druzhkivka by Vadym Filashkin, the head of the eastern Donetsk region.

He wrote on Telegram that Russians had hit the city with cluster shells, including a busy market.

The head of Dnipropetrovsk’s military administration, Oleksandr Ganzha, said a 68-year-old woman and a 38-year-old man were killed in a Russian attack.

In the Zaporizhzhia region, leader Ivan Federov said three people were killed and 11 wounded, including children, during attacks on Tuesday evening that continued overnight.

The Russian-controlled government in the neighbouring Luhansk region said a man and a woman were killed on Tuesday night in a drone attack, launched by Ukraine, which hit a minibus.

In Russia itself, the governor of the western Bryansk region, Alexandra Bogomaz, said Ukraine had launched a “combined attack” including drones and long-range missiles – destroying a residential building and injuring one person.

Further south in Belgorod, close to the border with Ukraine, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said work was continuing to restore power and water services following a Ukrainian missile strike there earlier in the week.

Meanwhile, peace talks continue, with top US envoys again meeting negotiators from Russia and Ukraine in the UAE on Wednesday and Thursday.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, are joining teams of Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the capital, Abu Dhabi, to try and thrash out a US-proposed peace deal.

The most difficult issue is territory, with Russia demanding that Ukraine cedes the rest of the eastern industrial region of Donbas that Moscow does not currently control.

The first talks between the three parties, which were also held in Abu Dhabi, ended earlier this month with no apparent result.