The Daily Clearing
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Thursday, April 30, 2026 · Ireland · Published by CPT-RI
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The World Health Organization’s 28 April 2026 progress report on global hepatitis elimination found that 1.34 million people died of hepatitis B and C in 2024, with 287 million living with chronic infection and around 1.8 million new infections each year — roughly 4,900 every day. Fewer than 5% of people living with chronic hepatitis B are on treatment; the WHO African Region carries 68% of new B infections but vaccinates only 17% of newborns at birth.
Treatment coverage remains far below where it needs to be. For hepatitis C, only 20% of people diagnosed have been treated since 2015 — the year direct-acting antivirals, which are curative for most patients, became widely available. The 2030 elimination target requires hepatitis B prevalence in children under five to fall to 0.1%; globally the figure is now 0.6%, and 85 countries have already met or surpassed the threshold.
Disease burden is concentrated. Ten countries — Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa and Viet Nam — account for 69% of global hepatitis B deaths. A different but overlapping ten — China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, the United States and Viet Nam — account for 58% of hepatitis C deaths. The WHO names Egypt, Georgia, Rwanda and the United Kingdom as concrete examples of national programmes delivering at scale.
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the report that “progress is too slow and uneven. Many people remain undiagnosed and untreated due to stigma, weak health systems” and the cost of testing and treatment. Hepatitis B and C are largely silent until liver damage is advanced, so without routine testing in primary care and at antenatal visits the diagnosis-treatment cascade does not start. The 2030 horizon is now under five years away. Source: WHO, 28 April 2026.
The Environment Agency fined South East Water £75,859.10 on Wednesday 29 April for abstracting 52 million litres of groundwater from a borehole at Tudeley farm near Tonbridge, Kent, between 4 May and 19 June 2021 without a valid abstraction licence in force. The licence had expired in March 2021 during a staff changeover; the company has since installed an automated licence-tracking system. South East Water’s appeal against the size of the penalty was dismissed on 4 March 2026. See p. 7. Source: Environment Agency
ComReg said on 11 March that Eircom — trading as eir — will refund a total of more than €305,000 to approximately 14,800 customers after a regulator investigation found that the operator’s contracts did not clearly identify which international destinations were excluded from bundled call allowances, breaching Regulation 87 and Schedule 7 of the European Union (Electronic Communications Code) Regulations 2022. Eircom will also publish a link to the full exclusions list. See p. 2. Source: ComReg
The WHO said on 27 April it had completed Exercise Polaris II, a two-day simulation of the global response to a fictional new bacterium with sustained human-to-human transmission. The exercise ran on 22–23 April with 26 countries and territories from across all six WHO regions, around 600 health emergency experts, and over 25 partner organisations. Polaris II is the second iteration of the exercise, following Polaris I last year. See p. 4. Source: WHO
Ireland Desk p. 2–3 · Science & Health p. 4–5 · Money Moves & Quiet Laws p. 6, p. 10–11 · Infrastructure p. 7 · The Wire p. 8 · What We’re Watching p. 9 · Crossword p. 12 · Diversions p. 13 · Life & Culture p. 16 · Sport p. 17
The British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIGC) meets at Hillsborough Castle today, Thursday 30 April 2026. The conference is a standing institution of the Good Friday Agreement, set up under Strand Three to handle bilateral matters that fall outside devolved competence.
The UK delegation is led by Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, accompanied by Matthew Patrick MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office. The Irish delegation is led by the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Helen McEntee TD, with the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, Jim O’Callaghan TD. Both governments said in advance of the meeting that they would reaffirm what the joint statement calls their “unshakeable commitment” to the Good Friday Agreement and to the stability of the devolved institutions in Belfast.
The agenda runs across several files. On security, the two governments will jointly condemn recent dissident republican attacks on police stations in Dunmurry and Lurgan and reaffirm the operational cooperation between the PSNI and An Garda Síochána that has, in the public framing of both sides, contained the dissident threat below the level of organised armed campaign.
On legacy, the conference will reaffirm both governments’ commitment to the joint legacy agreement reached in September 2025, which restructured how Troubles-era cases are investigated. The legacy file remains contested — by victims’ groups on the substance of investigations, and by some Northern Ireland parties on the bilateral nature of the agreement. Both governments will also commit to supporting Armed Forces families seeking information about loved ones killed during the Troubles, and will discuss cooperation on digital identity, cross-border economic resilience, and the export of Northern Ireland peace-process lessons to other post-conflict societies.
A joint communiqué is expected at the conclusion of the meeting. The BIIGC last met in October 2025; the cadence has been broadly half-yearly since the institution was reactivated under the current intergovernmental arrangements. Source: Northern Ireland Office press release, 30 April 2026
The Commission for Communications Regulation said on 11 March 2026 that Eircom — trading as eir — has agreed to refund a total of more than €305,000 to approximately 14,800 customers. The refunds follow a ComReg investigation into how clearly the operator communicated to customers that certain international destinations were excluded from the international-call allowance bundled into their contracts. The relevant rule is Regulation 87 and Schedule 7 of the European Union (Electronic Communications Code) Regulations 2022, which require electronic-communications providers to set out, in clear and accessible terms, the parameters and exclusions of any service allowance forming part of a contract. ComReg’s investigation found that Eircom’s contract documentation did not set out the excluded destinations clearly enough for affected customers to understand when calls would fall outside their bundled allowance. Under the agreement reached, Eircom will issue the refunds, clarify in its consumer contracts which international destinations are excluded, provide a link in those contracts to the complete list of excluded countries, and accept ongoing ComReg monitoring of compliance with notification obligations. ComReg has not stated the time period covered by the affected charges, nor named the specific destinations involved — the investigation focused on notification obligations rather than pricing. The case is one of the larger consumer-information actions ComReg has taken under the 2022 Code Regulations since they took effect, and signals that the regulator considers contract-clarity obligations enforceable in their own right rather than only when paired with overcharging. Source: ComReg press release, 11 March 2026
The Health Information and Quality Authority published its respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) immunisation health technology assessment on 28 April, prepared at the request of the Department of Health to inform a long-term policy decision by the Minister for Health on RSV immunisation for infants and older adults. The HTA is the formal document that translates clinical, epidemiological and cost-effectiveness evidence into a recommendation that the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) and the Minister can act on.
HIQA notes that more than 7,000 RSV cases are diagnosed in Ireland each winter, with infants under one and older adults at greatest risk of severe illness and hospitalisation. RSV is the leading cause of hospital admission for lower respiratory tract infection in Irish infants. The HTA is now with the National Immunisation Advisory Committee and the Minister, and forms the evidence base for any future programme decision on monoclonal antibodies (such as nirsevimab for infants), maternal vaccination, or older-adult RSV vaccines.
The publication is itself the news event — HIQA HTAs are statutory advice rather than direct public-health interventions. In Ireland, the typical pathway is HTA → NIAC recommendation → Ministerial decision → HSE implementation through primary care and the Maternity and Infant Care Scheme. The next published step on the RSV file will be NIAC’s response, expected over the coming months. Source: HIQA, 28 April 2026
The European Medicines Agency announced on 28 April that the first phase of a new pilot to support market access for high-risk innovative medical devices is now open to applications. Eligibility in this phase is restricted to Class III devices and Class IIb active devices that administer or remove medicines from the body. Selected manufacturers receive priority scientific advice from EMA’s medical-device expert panels. The pilot is run jointly with the European Commission and is described as “a first step” toward a formal EU breakthrough-devices framework, broadly equivalent to the FDA’s long-running Breakthrough Devices Program. Source: EMA
EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use recommended marketing authorisation on 24 April for Redemplo (plozasiran), an Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Ireland Limited treatment for adults with familial chylomicronaemia syndrome (FCS) — a rare inherited disorder that prevents normal lipid breakdown and produces extremely high blood triglycerides. After 10 months on Redemplo, trial patients achieved an average 80% reduction in blood triglycerides versus 17% on placebo, with significantly fewer acute pancreatitis episodes. The recommendation now goes to the European Commission for the formal authorisation decision, expected within roughly 67 days — placing the decision in late June or early July 2026. Source: EMA
The World Health Organization said on 29 April that Australia has eliminated trachoma — a bacterial eye infection that, repeated, causes blindness — as a public health problem. Australia is the 30th country globally and the 16th in the WHO Western Pacific Region to reach the elimination threshold, and the 63rd country worldwide to eliminate at least one neglected tropical disease. The result was achieved under the SAFE strategy (surgery, antibiotics, facial cleanliness, environmental improvement), backed by the National Trachoma Management Programme set up in 2006. Source: WHO
The World Health Organization said on 27 April that it had completed Exercise Polaris II, a two-day high-level simulation of the global response to an outbreak of a fictional new bacterium. The exercise ran on 22–23 April, with 26 countries and territories across all six WHO regions, around 600 health emergency experts, and over 25 partner organisations participating in real time.
Countries listed by name as taking part include Bangladesh, Brazil, France, India, Indonesia, Kenya, the Philippines, Thailand and Yemen. The exercise was designed to test the operational machinery of the Global Health Emergency Corps — the WHO framework, agreed by member states in 2023, that defines how countries deploy expert teams, share specimens and information, and coordinate procurement during cross-border health emergencies. Polaris II was the second iteration, following Polaris I last year.
The 2026 scenario was built around a novel bacterium with sustained human-to-human transmission, escalating across multiple countries with different health-system capacities. Participants were required to make sequenced decisions on alert escalation, cross-border information sharing, deployment of national rapid-response teams under WHO coordination, and requests for international technical support. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the exercise “demonstrates that global cooperation is not optional — it is essential.” Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, who heads WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, was named in the news release; Edenilo Baltazar Barreira Filho of Brazil’s Ministry of Health was the senior national official cited.
The substantive lesson emphasised in the public statement is that emergency plans only function if they are tested under conditions resembling a live event. Many of the 26 participating countries had updated their national pandemic plans since 2020 but had not stress-tested them against a coordinated cross-border scenario. Polaris II’s findings — gaps in alert thresholds, lab-network turnaround, and procurement coordination — are now routed back to participating countries through the regional WHO offices for follow-up actions. Source: WHO, 27 April 2026
On 14 April 2026 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research issued draft guidance on safety assessment for human gene-therapy products that use genome editing. The guidance — titled “Safety Assessment of Genome Editing in Human Gene Therapy Products Using Next-Generation Sequencing” — sets out recommended sequencing strategies, sample selection, analysis parameters and reporting for evaluating off-target editing and chromosomal-integrity risks.
The document applies to both ex vivo products (cells edited outside the body and then returned to the patient, as in the sickle-cell and beta-thalassaemia therapies authorised over the past three years) and in vivo products (those that deliver editing machinery directly into the body via a viral vector or lipid nanoparticle). It is technical rather than indication-specific: the focus is on what sponsors must show in their investigational and biologics-licence applications about where in the genome the edit landed, what unintended changes occurred, and at what frequency.
Commissioner Marty Makary framed the guidance as supporting the FDA’s February 2026 framework for individualised therapies for ultra-rare diseases — a separate workstream that allows accelerated review for “n-of-1” treatments where the patient population is too small for conventional trials. Genome-editing products are a primary candidate class for that pathway, because the active substance can in principle be re-targeted to a new mutation without re-engineering the underlying delivery system.
Draft guidance is non-binding but it is the document FDA reviewers will reference when negotiating clinical-hold conditions and BLA review questions. Comments from sponsors, academic groups and patient organisations are accepted on the FDA’s docket; final guidance typically follows 12–24 months later, after which the recommendations effectively become the standard expectation in agency interactions. Source: FDA, 14 April 2026
The World Health Organization reported on 24 April that the Big Catch-Up programme, set up in 2023 to recover ground lost during the COVID-19 pandemic when routine childhood immunisation coverage in many countries fell to its lowest level in three decades, has now concluded. WHO says it reached 18.3 million children aged one to five, including 12.3 million classed as “zero-dose” — children who had received no vaccinations at all. Of the doses delivered, more than 23 million were inactivated polio vaccine and 15 million were measles vaccine targeted at children who had not previously received it. The figures are below the original target of 80 million children; the post-pandemic backlog stood at roughly 67 million worldwide. Routine immunisation work in the participating countries continues through Gavi and country immunisation budgets. Source: WHO, 24 April 2026
The World Health Organization on 24 April prequalified artemether-lumefantrine in a formulation designed specifically for infants weighing between 2 and 5 kilograms — the first quality-assured antimalarial for the youngest malaria patients, previously managed off-label on adapted older-child regimens. Prequalification is the WHO assessment that allows procurement by UN agencies and national malaria programmes. The announcement is paired with the addition of three pf-LDH rapid diagnostic tests dated 14 April, addressing Plasmodium falciparum strains with HRP2 deletions, where WHO says “up to 80% of cases were missed” using the dominant HRP2-based tests in the Horn of Africa. National regulators still determine registration and indication in each country. Source: WHO, 24 April 2026
EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use, meeting 20–23 April, issued positive opinions on five new medicines and nine extensions to existing therapeutic indications. The five are Cenrifki (tolebrutinib, Sanofi) for non-relapsing secondary-progressive MS, a form of MS for which there has been no disease-modifying therapy with this specific indication; Itvisma (onasemnogene abeparvovec, Novartis), a gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy with orphan designation; Redemplo (plozasiran, Arrowhead) for familial chylomicronaemia syndrome (see p. 3); Rexatilux (ranibizumab, Intas), a biosimilar for wet AMD; and Palbociclib Viatris, a generic for breast cancer. A CHMP positive opinion is a recommendation; the European Commission now has a statutory period within which to adopt a binding decision. Source: EMA, 23 April 2026
The Federal Reserve Board announced on Thursday 9 April 2026 that it has terminated cease-and-desist orders against three large international banks. The terminations themselves were dated 25 March 2026, with the public announcement following two weeks later — the Board’s standard practice for enforcement closures.
The three orders ended: against Crédit Agricole S.A. and Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, an order dated 19 October 2015 concerning U.S. dollar transactions for parties subject to U.S. sanctions; against Mega International Commercial Bank Co., Ltd, an order dated 17 January 2018 concerning anti-money-laundering compliance failures in Mega International’s New York branch; and against The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., an order dated 1 May 2018, which arose from the firm’s role in the 1MDB Malaysian sovereign-fund scandal and required improvements to firmwide due-diligence and oversight processes.
The Board’s announcement does not detail what specifically each institution did to satisfy the underlying compliance requirements, nor does it impose any new monetary penalties — termination is a finding by Fed examiners that the conditions specified in the original order have been met and continued separate supervision is no longer required.
For each of the three banks the original orders had been in force for between roughly eight and eleven years. Cease-and-desist orders, unlike one-off civil money penalties, persist until terminated by a follow-up Board action; while in force they impose ongoing examiner oversight, internal-reporting obligations, and a non-trivial reputational tag in regulatory filings. Their removal does not reverse any past finding but signals that the Fed considers each institution’s remediation programme complete. Source: Federal Reserve Board press release — 9 April 2026
The Pension Schemes Act received Royal Assent on Wednesday 29 April 2026, the Department for Work and Pensions said in a statement the same day. The Act introduces a £25 billion minimum-size threshold for multi-employer defined contribution schemes, the consolidation of small pots, and a requirement that scheme managers offer a default route to retirement income for their members.
The £25 billion threshold creates what the department calls “megafunds” — the policy intent is that consolidating workplace pension assets into fewer, larger pools allows managers to lower fees and access a wider range of investments, including unlisted UK assets. The department’s own modelling estimates an average uplift of £29,000 in retirement income for someone on a typical career trajectory. Gendered estimates given in the press notice are £31,000 for male earners and £26,000 for female earners. These figures depend on assumed improvements in net investment performance, lower charges and longer-horizon investing.
The Local Government Pension Scheme is brought into the same architecture: scheme assets must be consolidated into pools managed by FCA-regulated investment managers, with a stated direction toward UK infrastructure, housing and clean energy. Workers who hold multiple small pots from previous employers will see those pots automatically consolidated by default, ending the well-documented loss of small balances to administration costs. Scheme managers will also have to offer members a clear default option for converting savings into retirement income — the press notice frames this as ending a structural gap in workplace defined contribution schemes, which until now had no default decumulation pathway. The pensions minister named in the announcement is Torsten Bell; commencement dates for the megafund and small-pots provisions will be set by secondary regulations under the Act. Source: HM Government press release — 29 April 2026
The Environment Agency fined South East Water £75,859.10 on Wednesday 29 April 2026 for abstracting 52 million litres of groundwater — equivalent to filling 300,000 baths — from a borehole at Tudeley farm near Tonbridge, Kent, without a valid abstraction licence in force. The water was taken between 4 May and 19 June 2021, a six-week window during which the company’s licence to abstract from the borehole had lapsed.
The Environment Agency framed the breach as the consequence of an administrative failure rather than environmental harm. South East Water attributed the lapse to human error during a staff changeover, where the responsibility for renewing the abstraction licence was not picked up after the relevant officer left. The company has since installed an automated licence-tracking system to prevent recurrence.
Fiona Kent, Senior Environment Officer with the Environment Agency in Kent, said in the gov.uk announcement: “South East Water acted negligently in letting the abstraction licence expire, putting the environment at risk.”
South East Water appealed the size of the penalty, arguing that no environmental harm had occurred during the six-week period. The appeal was dismissed by Judge Catherine Harris on 4 March 2026. The 29 April announcement formalises the penalty after the appeal route was exhausted.
Abstraction licences are the regulatory mechanism that controls how much water companies, farmers and industrial users can take from rivers, aquifers and other water bodies. The Environment Agency’s position — sustained by the appeal ruling — is that operating outside the licence framework is an offence in itself, regardless of whether downstream environmental indicators show measurable change. The volume in this case is meaningful in scale: 52 million litres is the daily public-supply use of around a quarter of a million households. The penalty does not affect South East Water’s ongoing supply operations or its other abstraction licences. The company is one of the smaller English water-only undertakings, supplying around 2.3 million people across Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire. Source: Environment Agency / gov.uk news release — 29 April 2026
WHO certifies Australia trachoma-free (29 April). The World Health Organization said yesterday that Australia has eliminated trachoma — a bacterial eye infection that, repeated, causes blindness — as a public health problem. Australia is the 30th country globally and the 16th in the WHO Western Pacific Region to reach the elimination threshold, and the 63rd country worldwide to eliminate at least one neglected tropical disease. The result was achieved under the SAFE strategy (surgery, antibiotics, facial cleanliness, environmental improvement), backed by the National Trachoma Management Programme set up in 2006. (WHO)
EMA opens pilot regulatory pathway for “breakthrough” medical devices (28 April). The European Medicines Agency announced on 28 April 2026 that the first phase of a new pilot to support market access for high-risk innovative medical devices is now open to applications. Eligibility in this phase is restricted to Class III devices and Class IIb active devices that administer or remove medicines from the body. Selected manufacturers receive priority scientific advice from EMA’s medical-device expert panels. The pilot is run jointly with the European Commission and is described as “a first step” toward a formal EU breakthrough-devices framework. (EMA)
PRA fines Bank of London £2m for misleading regulator on capital position (24 March). The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority said on 24 March 2026 that it had fined The Bank of London Group Limited and its parent Oplyse Holdings Limited a combined £2 million for misleading the PRA about their capital positions, providing fabricated documents to support a false picture of those positions, and failing to maintain adequate financial resources. The breaches ran from 7 October 2021 to 22 May 2024. The PRA said this is the first time it has fined a firm for failing to conduct its business with integrity, and the first time it has taken enforcement action against a parent financial holding company. The base penalty was £12 million; the regulator reduced it to £2 million on financial-hardship grounds. (Bank of England)
PRA consults on post-SVB liquidity reform proposals (17 March). On 17 March 2026 the PRA published a consultation on modernising the UK bank liquidity framework in light of the March 2023 collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse. The proposals would require firms to identify barriers to monetising liquid assets, run internal stress tests on a one-week outflow horizon (alongside the existing month-long horizon), remove an exemption that lets banks skip annual testing of how quickly Level 1 sovereign bonds can be sold, and prepare operationally to use central-bank facilities. The PRA has framed the changes as a usability rather than quantity reform — banks would not be required to hold more liquid assets, but the assets they do hold would have to be demonstrably saleable in a fast run. (Bank of England)
WHO Big Catch-Up reaches more than 100 million children across 36 countries (24 April). The World Health Organization, with Gavi and UNICEF, completed delivery of more than 100 million doses of routine childhood vaccines under the Big Catch-Up immunisation initiative running 2023–31 March 2026. The programme operated across 36 priority countries in Africa and Asia, reached approximately 18.3 million children aged one to five, and delivered first-dose immunisations to roughly 12.3 million zero-dose children — those who had not previously received any routine vaccine. Of doses delivered, more than 23 million were inactivated polio vaccine and 15 million were measles vaccine. (WHO)
WHO prequalifies first artemether-lumefantrine formulation for newborns and infants 2–5 kg (24 April). The World Health Organization announced prequalification of an artemether-lumefantrine formulation specifically dosed for the 2–5 kg newborn-to-infant weight band — the first antimalarial formulated for the smallest infants. Until now, infants in this band have been treated with formulations designed for older children, raising the risk of dosing errors and toxicity. WHO also prequalified three rapid diagnostic tests targeting the pf-LDH protein, addressing cases where the parasite has lost the gene encoding HRP2, the protein detected by most existing rapid tests. (WHO)
BIIGC joint communiqué — today, Hillsborough Castle
The British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference meets today, Thursday 30 April 2026, with Hilary Benn (NI Secretary), Matthew Patrick MP, Tánaiste Helen McEntee TD and Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan TD. A joint communiqué is expected at the conclusion of the meeting. We will be watching for the specific language on the September 2025 legacy agreement and on cross-border digital-ID cooperation, which were named in the agenda. Anchor: GOV.UK / Northern Ireland Office
Senate timetable for H.R. 7959 (IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act)
The bill passed the U.S. House on Monday 27 April 2026 by 346–10 under suspension of the rules. The two-thirds House majority and the absence of organised dissent are typically a green light for prompt Senate floor action, but the Senate calendar is currently dominated by appropriations work. We are watching for committee referral or a hotline request in the coming sitting weeks. Anchor: GovTrack roll call
European Commission decision on Redemplo (plozasiran)
EMA’s CHMP recommended marketing authorisation on 24 April 2026 for Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals’ triglyceride-lowering treatment for adults with familial chylomicronaemia syndrome. The European Commission ordinarily issues the formal authorisation decision within roughly 67 days of a positive CHMP opinion, which would place the decision in late June or early July 2026. Anchor: EMA
PRA captive insurance consultation — summer 2026
In its 15 January 2026 priorities letter the Prudential Regulation Authority committed to opening a formal consultation in summer 2026 on a new UK captive insurer regime, with a view to launch in 2027. Captives — wholly owned insurance subsidiaries that insure their parent’s risks — are currently regulated under the standard insurer framework. We are watching for the consultation paper’s publication and the proposed proportionality framework. Anchor: Bank of England
11th NPT Review Conference, through 22 May
The four-week conference at UN Headquarters opened on 27 April. Three subsidiary bodies will work through disarmament, safeguards and peaceful uses; agreement on a final document requires consensus and the previous two cycles failed at this stage. Watch the Friday weekly briefings and any signal from the U.S., U.K. and France delegations on Article VI language. Anchor: UN News
This is the Morning Edition — Thursday, April 30, 2026.
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The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) published its 2026 supervisory priorities on 15 January 2026. The headline change is operational rather than thematic: from 1 March 2026, larger PRA-regulated firms began moving to a two-year cycle for Periodic Summary Meetings, the formal internal review by which the PRA sets its supervisory strategy for an individual firm.
Periodic Summary Meetings have until now been broadly annual for larger banks and insurers. The PRA characterises the change as a continuation of a multi-year transition that has already moved some firms to biennial reviews. Routine engagement, the regulator says, will continue alongside ad hoc supervisory meetings; the change is to the cadence of the formal cycle, not to overall contact intensity.
The priorities letter — addressed to all PRA-regulated banks, building societies, insurers and other firms — also commits the regulator to faster decisions on senior-manager applications, new firm authorisations and pre-approval of changes to internal ratings-based credit models; a new UK captive insurance regime, with a formal consultation scheduled for summer 2026 and a view to launch in 2027; and reform of regulatory reporting under the “Future Banking Data” project. Captives — typically wholly owned subsidiaries that insure their parent’s risks — are currently regulated under the standard insurer framework, which the PRA acknowledges is heavier than required for many captive structures.
The letter is signed by Sam Woods, Deputy Governor for Prudential Regulation and CEO of the PRA. The PRA’s secondary objective on competitiveness and growth, given to it by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, is cited as the framing for the streamlining package. The 2026 priorities cycle is now live in the supervisory diaries of around 1,500 PRA-regulated firms; the captive consultation later this summer will be the first concrete piece of secondary policy work to land from the package. Source: Bank of England / PRA news release — 15 January 2026
The Prudential Regulation Authority published a consultation on Wednesday 29 April 2026 proposing materially higher capital requirements for funded reinsurance transactions used by UK life insurers. Funded reinsurance is the arrangement under which a UK life insurer pays a large up-front premium to a reinsurer — frequently offshore — in return for a stream of future payments matched to its annuity liabilities. The structure has grown rapidly as UK insurers have transferred bulk-purchase pension annuity risk in size, and the PRA’s concern is that the existing capital treatment under-prices the credit risk of the reinsurance counterparty.
Under the current regime, a UK life insurer typically holds capital worth 2-4% of the value of the annuity liabilities being reinsured. The consultation paper estimates that for an investment with a similar credit and collateral profile held directly on the insurer’s balance sheet, the capital figure would be 11-15%. The proposed treatment would lift the funded-reinsurance number to around 10%, which the regulator describes as “materially addressing the inconsistency” while preserving some difference to reflect the genuine economic features of the transactions. The capital uplift would be sensitive to the reinsurer’s credit rating and the riskiness of the collateral pool backing the deal: lower-rated counterparties or riskier collateral would attract proportionately more capital. Sam Woods, the PRA’s CEO, framed the proposal as protecting pensioners — UK life insurers are the primary holders of pension annuity liabilities for the bulk transfer market — and ironing out a regulatory inconsistency that has helped funded reinsurance grow faster than other forms of risk transfer. The PRA’s process from publication to final policy on prior insurance consultations has typically run six to nine months. Source: Bank of England / PRA news release — 29 April 2026
The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 7959, the IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act, on Monday 27 April 2026 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The vote was 346 yea to 10 nay, with 73 members not voting. Because the bill was brought up under suspension of the rules — a procedure that bypasses committee amendments and requires a two-thirds majority — the lopsided tally is required for passage rather than indicative of unanimity.
Of the 10 nay votes, nine came from Republicans and one from a Democrat, according to the House clerk’s roll call recorded by GovTrack. Of the 73 not voting, 45 were Republicans and 28 were Democrats.
The IRS Whistleblower Program is the federal mechanism by which informants can be paid a percentage of recovered tax underpayments where they provide actionable information leading to an enforcement action. Long-standing complaints about the programme — slow case handling, unpredictable awards, opaque communications with whistleblowers — have driven repeated bipartisan reform efforts in successive Congresses. The 2026 bill in this lineage tightens timelines for case acknowledgements, requires the IRS to provide whistleblowers with status updates at defined intervals, and clarifies grounds on which awards can be denied or reduced.
The bill now goes to the Senate. A bill must be passed by both chambers in identical form and signed by the President to become law. The Senate has not scheduled a vote as of 30 April. Bills passed in the House under suspension typically signal that there is no organised opposition, which can ease Senate passage but does not guarantee floor time on a calendar dominated by appropriations. Source: House roll call vote #138 of the 119th Congress, 27 April 2026 (via GovTrack)
Senator Martin Heinrich (Democrat, New Mexico) introduced S. 4420 in the U.S. Senate on Monday 28 April 2026. The bill amends two statutes: the Public Health Service Act, to make physical therapists eligible for the National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program; and Title XVIII of the Social Security Act, to allow Medicare’s Rural Health Clinic and Federally Qualified Health Center benefit categories to cover physical therapy services delivered by those clinics.
The National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program offers up to $50,000 in education-loan repayment in exchange for two years of full-time service in a federally designated Health Professional Shortage Area. The programme currently covers physicians, dentists, nurse practitioners, certified nurse-midwives, behavioural-health clinicians and a small number of allied professions, but not physical therapists. The bill would add physical therapists to that list, with the policy intent of pulling rehabilitative-care providers into rural and underserved geographies that struggle to retain them. The Medicare provisions go further into reimbursement plumbing: Rural Health Clinics and Federally Qualified Health Centers are paid by Medicare under a per-visit or prospective-payment formula that does not currently treat physical therapy as a covered service when delivered in those settings; the bill would extend that coverage. Status: introduced and referred to committee, with one Republican cosponsor as of 30 April. GovTrack’s prognosis model gives the bill a 1% chance of enactment, reflecting the low base rate for any introduced bill rather than any specific opposition. Source: S. 4420 (119th Congress) bill page (GovTrack, sourced from Congress.gov)
Senator Ruben Gallego (Democrat, Arizona) introduced S. 4421 in the U.S. Senate on Monday 28 April 2026. The bill amends the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of 2017 (CAATSA) to expand the role of Congress in reviewing executive-branch decisions on Russia sanctions. CAATSA, enacted at the end of the first Trump administration over the President’s reluctance, codified into statute the Obama-era Russia sanctions and required the President to seek congressional review before terminating, waiving or licensing exceptions to those sanctions. The original review framework imposed a 30-day window — extended to 60 days during congressional recesses — during which either chamber could pass a joint resolution of disapproval to block the action.
The Gallego bill expands the categories of executive sanctions actions that fall within that review window. The text of the bill is not yet publicly available; the procedural summary on Congress.gov lists the title only. Based on the bill title and the legislative pattern of recent CAATSA-amending bills, the changes are expected to bring sanctions licensing, delistings, and general-license amendments more fully within congressional sight before they take effect. The bill carries six cosponsors as of 30 April: three Democrats and three Republicans. The bipartisan-balanced cosponsorship pattern is consistent with CAATSA’s original passage. Status: introduced and referred to committee. GovTrack’s prognosis model gives the bill an 8% chance of enactment, above the 2% base rate for introduced legislation, reflecting the cosponsor profile. Source: S. 4421 (119th Congress) bill page (GovTrack, sourced from Congress.gov)
No. 24 (Wednesday) solution
Across: 1. GUTERRES; 3. HIQA; 4. MALARIA.
Down: 1. GAVI; 2. SMA; 3. HIM.
Past solutions are collected in the archive.
Sudoku No. 25 — Medium
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1789: George Washington takes the oath of office as the first President of the United States on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City. The oath is administered by Robert R. Livingston, Chancellor of New York, shortly after noon. Washington had been unanimously elected by the Electoral College on 4 February. He delivers the first inaugural address to a joint session of Congress in the Senate Chamber immediately afterwards, then walks to St Paul’s Chapel for a service of thanksgiving. The federal capital is in New York for the first sixteen months of the new government before moving to Philadelphia.
1803: The Louisiana Purchase Treaty is signed in Paris by U.S. Minister to France Robert R. Livingston and Special Envoy James Monroe for the United States, and by François Barbé-Marbois for the French Republic. The treaty transfers approximately 828,000 square miles — the western drainage basin of the Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border — for 60 million francs (about $15 million), of which 20 million is the cancellation of French debts owed to U.S. citizens. The territory roughly doubles the area of the United States; Senate ratification follows on 20 October.
1900: John Luther “Casey” Jones, engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad’s southbound “Cannonball” passenger express, is killed when his locomotive, No. 382, collides at approximately 3:52 a.m. with the rear of a stalled freight train at Vaughan, Mississippi. Jones, running roughly an hour and a half late and trying to make up time, holds the airbrake and the whistle to the last to give his fireman Sim Webb time to jump. He is the only fatality. Wallace Saunders, an Illinois Central engine wiper, composes the song that carries his name into American memory.
1945: At approximately 15:30 in his study in the Führerbunker beneath the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler shoots himself with a Walther PPK pistol. Eva Braun, whom he had married the previous day, takes potassium cyanide on the same sofa. Their bodies are carried up to the Chancellery garden, doused in petrol and burned. Soviet 8th Guards Army troops are within several hundred metres; the Reichstag, three blocks away, falls the same evening. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, named successor in Hitler’s Political Testament, learns of the death the following morning at Plön.
1975: At approximately 10:24 a.m. local time, a North Vietnamese People’s Army T-54 tank, number 843, crashes through the wrought-iron gates of the Independence Palace in Saigon. President Duong Van Minh, who had taken office two days earlier, announces unconditional surrender on Saigon Radio at noon. The PAVN flag is raised over the palace at 11:30. Operation Frequent Wind, the U.S. helicopter evacuation of remaining Americans and at-risk South Vietnamese from the U.S. embassy compound and rooftops, ends in the early afternoon; the last Marines lift off at 07:53 local time. The Vietnam War is over.
1980: At 11:25 a.m., six gunmen of the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan storm the Iranian Embassy at 16 Princes Gate in South Kensington, London, taking 26 hostages including a Metropolitan Police constable on protection duty, embassy staff, and visitors. They demand autonomy for the southwestern Iranian province of Khuzestan and the release of 91 prisoners. Police negotiations continue for six days. After hostage Abbas Lavasani is shot dead and his body pushed onto the front steps on 5 May, B Squadron, 22 Special Air Service Regiment, executes Operation Nimrod live on television in the early evening; five of the six gunmen are killed and 19 hostages are rescued.
1993: CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, places into the public domain the underlying source code of the World Wide Web — the HTTP protocol, the HTML markup standard, the URL addressing scheme, and the original line-mode and NeXTSTEP browsers — in a memorandum signed by Walter Hoogland and Helmut Weber. The decision waives any patent or licence claim CERN might have asserted. Tim Berners-Lee, who had built the system at CERN beginning in 1989, will leave for MIT to found the World Wide Web Consortium in October 1994. The April 1993 release is the legal foundation on which the open web is built.
Today’s Numbers
346–10 — House roll call by which the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 7959, the IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act, on Monday 27 April 2026 at 7 p.m. Eastern under suspension of the rules. Of the ten nay votes, nine were Republican and one was a Democrat; 73 members did not vote. The bill now goes to the Senate (page 11).
52 million litres — Volume of groundwater abstracted by South East Water from a borehole at Tudeley farm near Tonbridge between 4 May and 19 June 2021 without a valid abstraction licence in force. The Environment Agency fined the company £75,859.10 on Wednesday 29 April; the appeal against the size of the penalty was dismissed on 4 March 2026 (page 7).
£25 billion — Minimum-size threshold for multi-employer defined contribution pension schemes set by the UK Pension Schemes Act, which received Royal Assent on Wednesday 29 April 2026. The Department for Work and Pensions models an average uplift of £29,000 in retirement income on a typical career trajectory: £31,000 for male earners and £26,000 for female earners (page 6).
Word of the Day
SUSPENSION OF THE RULES
In the United States House of Representatives, an expedited procedure governed by Rule XV by which a measure is brought directly to the floor without going through the Rules Committee, debate is limited to forty minutes equally divided, and amendments from the floor are not permitted. The trade-off is procedural speed in exchange for a higher passage threshold: a measure considered under suspension requires a two-thirds majority of those present and voting, rather than a simple majority. The Speaker controls the suspension calendar, and the procedure is the standard channel for non-controversial bills, technical corrections, and Senate-passed measures the leadership wishes to clear quickly. Because the two-thirds threshold is high, suspension passages are typically lopsided by construction rather than by indication of unanimity. Today’s page 11 lead reports the U.S. House passing H.R. 7959, the IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act, 346–10 under suspension on Monday 27 April — a tally that comfortably clears the two-thirds bar but is not, by itself, evidence of consensus, since suspension would have failed at any tally below 247.
Quick Quiz — From Today’s Edition
1. By what vote did the U.S. House pass H.R. 7959, the IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act, on Monday 27 April under suspension of the rules?
2. How many countries and territories took part in WHO’s Exercise Polaris II, the two-day pandemic-readiness simulation run on 22–23 April?
3. What capital level does the Prudential Regulation Authority propose UK life insurers should hold against funded reinsurance, up from the current 2–4 per cent?
Answers: 1. 346–10 (page 11) 2. 26 (page 4) 3. Around 10 per cent (page 10)
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Recipe — Pan-fried Donegal organic salmon, brown butter, capers, Jersey Royals: A twenty-minute dinner that depends entirely on three things: the fish, the heat of the pan, and not moving the fillet once it goes in. Two notes on sourcing first. Buy organic Atlantic salmon from a BIM-certified Irish farm if you can. Wild Irish Atlantic salmon stocks are tightly conserved and the rod season has only just opened on a handful of rivers; almost all the salmon in Irish shops at this time of year is farmed. Look for the BIM “Origin Green” mark and an organic certifier (Naturland, the Soil Association); the best Irish farms run on the exposed Atlantic seaboard from Inver Bay in Donegal down through Connemara and Bantry Bay, with low stocking density, no antibiotics in the cycle, and feed certified deforestation-free. Buy fillets cut from the head end of the fish, with the skin on. The thicker end takes the heat better and the skin is the dish: rendered crisp, it is what turns a midweek dinner into one that you will want to make again on Saturday. For two: 2 fillets of organic Atlantic salmon, 160–180 g each, skin on, pin-bones removed; 500 g Jersey Royal new potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled; 60 g unsalted Irish butter (Cuinneog, Glenisk, Kerrygold — whichever you like); 1 tablespoon small capers, drained and rinsed; 1 small lemon; a small bunch of flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped; flaky sea salt (Achill Island Sea Salt is the textbook), black pepper; a teaspoon of neutral oil (rapeseed, not olive). To cook the potatoes: tip the Jerseys into a pot of well-salted cold water, bring to the boil, then drop to a fast simmer for 12 minutes until a small knife slides through. Drain, return to the dry pot, lid on, take off the heat. They will hold for 10 minutes. To cook the salmon: dry both fillets thoroughly with kitchen paper, particularly the skin side — this is the single thing that decides whether the skin crisps or steams. Season the skin generously with sea salt; the flesh side gets seasoned just before it goes flesh-down. Heat a heavy stainless-steel or cast-iron pan over a medium-high flame for two minutes dry, then add the teaspoon of oil and the moment it shimmers, lay the fillets in skin-side down, pressing each gently with a fish slice for the first ten seconds so the skin makes full contact. Do not move them. Cook 4–5 minutes on the skin side at this heat — you will see the colour change creep up the side of the fillet from translucent pink to opaque pale-pink — then flip, drop the heat to medium, and give the flesh side 90 seconds to two minutes. The fish is done when it just flakes under gentle pressure at the thickest point and the centre is the colour of unset jam. Lift onto warm plates, skin-up. For the brown butter: add the cold butter to the same pan off the heat; it will hiss briefly and start foaming. Return to a medium flame, swirling, until the milk solids on the base of the pan turn the colour of strong tea and the butter smells of toasted hazelnuts — about 90 seconds. Off the heat, throw in the capers (they will pop), a generous squeeze of lemon, and the chopped parsley; swirl. To serve: split the warm Jerseys and dress them with a knob of the brown butter and a pinch of salt. Spoon the rest of the brown butter over the fish, capers and all. A wedge of lemon. A glass of cold dry white — a Loire Sauvignon or, locally, a Crawford’s Albarino from the County Cork crawfordsbarrelaged range — and a green salad with a sharp mustard vinaigrette. Cooked plate to plate in twenty minutes once the potatoes are on. The salmon will not wait; sit down to eat as soon as the butter is on the fish.
Worth Your Time
Book: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday, 2019, 464 pages). Orwell Prize-winning narrative non-fiction reconstructed from the Boston College oral history archive and three decades of court records. The clearest single-volume account of the Troubles for readers approaching the legacy file from outside Ireland; essential context for today’s British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference at Hillsborough Castle, which is expected to reaffirm the September 2025 legacy agreement and condemn last week’s dissident attacks on PSNI stations in Dunmurry and Lurgan (page 2). Keefe’s chapters on the disappearance of Jean McConville and on Brendan Hughes are the indispensable preparation for understanding why “legacy” remains the most contested file at every BIIGC.
Book: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen (W. W. Norton, 2012, 592 pages). The reference work on zoonotic disease emergence, written before COVID-19 and read more carefully because of it. Quammen walks systematically through the ecology of the bat-coronavirus complex, the Hendra spillovers in Queensland, Marburg in Uganda and SARS in Guangdong, and lands on the ecological mechanics that determine whether a novel pathogen sustains human-to-human transmission. The right companion read for today’s page 4 lead on WHO’s Exercise Polaris II — the 26-country, 600-expert simulation of a fictional bacterium with sustained human-to-human transmission, the second iteration of the Global Health Emergency Corps stress-test — and for the WHO’s 24 April Big Catch-Up final tally of more than 100 million childhood vaccine doses delivered across 36 countries (page 5).
Book: Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich—and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston (Portfolio, 2003, 352 pages). The Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter’s account of how the modern U.S. tax-enforcement architecture took its current shape, with extended coverage of the IRS Whistleblower Program (created under the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, three years after the book) and of the slow administrative drift that has driven repeated bipartisan reform attempts in successive Congresses. The right pre-reading for today’s page 11 lead on H.R. 7959, the IRS Whistleblower Program Improvement Act, which the U.S. House passed 346–10 under suspension of the rules on Monday 27 April and which now sits on a Senate calendar dominated by appropriations.
Newsletter: Net Interest by Marc Rubinstein (netinterest.co, weekly Friday, free with paid extras). A former hedge-fund analyst writing the most consistently rigorous bank-equity and insurance-equity newsletter on the open web; back-issues cover the bulk-purchase annuity transfer market, funded reinsurance counterparty risk, the geometry of UK life-insurer balance sheets and the long history of post-failure prudential reform. The companion read for today’s page 10 PRA double bill: the move of larger UK firms onto a two-year Periodic Summary Meeting cycle and trail of the new captive-insurance regime under Sam Woods’s 15 January priorities letter, and the 29 April consultation proposing capital held against funded reinsurance lift from 2–4 per cent to around 10 per cent.
Place to visit: Tonbridge and the Medway Valley, Kent. The Environment Agency’s £75,859 fine of South East Water on Wednesday for unlicensed abstraction concerns a borehole at Tudeley farm just east of the town (page 7); the case itself is administrative but the landscape it has briefly placed on the news map is one of the most rewarding day-trips out of London. Tonbridge Castle’s motte-and-bailey ruins (built 1088, slighted in 1646), the Norman gatehouse, the Medway towpath walk west toward Penshurst Place (Tudor; gardens open through October), and the chain of working hop kilns and oast houses across the Weald are all reachable on foot from the railway station. Tonbridge is 35 minutes from London Bridge on Southeastern services running every 15 minutes; Penshurst Place is 6 km west on the towpath.
Snooker — World Championship semi-finals open today, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield: The fiftieth consecutive year the World Snooker Championship has been staged at the 980-seat Crucible thrust stage. The quarter-finals concluded yesterday evening (Wed 29 Apr); the two semi-finals begin today, played as the best of 33 frames split across four sessions over Thursday and Friday. Sessions open at 14:30 and 19:00 BST. The 35-frame final is played over four sessions on Saturday 2 and Sunday–Monday 3–4 May across the early-May bank-holiday weekend. Coverage on BBC Two and Eurosport / discovery+; full draw, frame-by-frame scoring and session times at wst.tv. The 17-day tournament dates are 18 April–4 May 2026.
Cycling — Tour de Romandie Stage 2 today, La Grande Béroche to Cossonay, 168.8 km: The 79th edition of the Romandie, the principal week-long stage race of the spring calendar in the French-speaking cantons of western Switzerland, opened with a short individual time trial prologue on Tuesday and Stage 1 from Martigny on Wednesday. Stage 2 today (Thu 30 Apr) is a 168.8 km road stage from La Grande Béroche on the south shore of Lake Neuchâtel through the Vaud foothills to Cossonay. The queen mountain stage runs Saturday; the final stage is a Lausanne time-trial finish on Sunday 3 May. The race is a regular pre-Giro d’Italia tune-up for general-classification riders. Live on Eurosport / discovery+; route and start lists at tourderomandie.ch.
Football — UEFA Champions League semi-final second legs next week: Both semi-final first legs were played at the home venues of the lower-seeded clubs on Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29 April at 20:00 BST. The second legs follow at the higher-seeded clubs on Tuesday 5 and Wednesday 6 May, both at 20:00 BST and broadcast on TNT Sports and discovery+. The final is at the Allianz Arena, Munich, on Saturday 30 May 2026 with kick-off at 20:00 BST. Confirmed pairings, first-leg results and the full broadcaster split are on uefa.com.
Tennis — Mutua Madrid Open quarter-finals from tomorrow, Caja Mágica, Madrid: The combined ATP 1000 / WTA 1000 European clay-court swing event runs from Tuesday 21 April to Sunday 3 May 2026 at the Park Manzanares complex. The round of 16 finishes today; the quarter-finals open tomorrow Friday with the women’s and men’s semi-finals on Saturday and the singles finals split across Saturday (women’s) and Sunday (men’s). Madrid is the highest-altitude clay event on the calendar at 667 m, which produces noticeably faster ball flight by clay standards. Live on Sky Sports and discovery+; daily order of play at madridopen.com.
Football — Premier League Matchday 35 across the bank-holiday weekend: Three matchdays remain in the 2025/26 season after Sunday 26 April closed MD34. MD35 opens with the Saturday 2 May card and runs across the early-May bank-holiday weekend through Monday 4 May; MD36 follows on the weekend of 9–10 May. The top of the table is still decided on goal difference, the final UEFA Champions League qualifying slot remains live, and the relegation picture is mathematically open at the foot. Full standings, fixture list and final-three-matchday permutations are on premierleague.com.
Football — League of Ireland Premier Division Round 11, Friday night: The 2026 LOI Premier Division season is in its third month after the 14 February opening weekend. Round 11 is split across Friday 1 May (the four standard 19:45 IST kick-offs) and Saturday 2 May, with broadcast picks on RTÉ News Now and LOITV. Six of the ten clubs are within four points at the top of the table; the title race in 2026 has so far been one of the tightest on record at this stage of the season. Fixtures, standings, and the broadcaster split are on loi.ie.
Results & Fixtures — Week in review & week ahead
| Mon 27 Apr | World Snooker Championship — closing day of the second round, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield (BBC Two / Eurosport); Madrid Open round of 32 |
| Tue 28 Apr | UEFA Champions League — semi-final first leg #1, 20:00 BST (TNT Sports / discovery+); Tour de Romandie prologue (Eurosport); World Snooker quarter-finals start (Crucible); Madrid Open round of 16 |
| Wed 29 Apr | UEFA Champions League — semi-final first leg #2, 20:00 BST (TNT Sports); Tour de Romandie Stage 1, Martigny–Martigny 171.2 km; World Snooker quarter-finals conclude (Crucible) |
| Thu 30 Apr (today) | World Snooker Championship semi-finals open, 14:30 / 19:00 BST (BBC Two / Eurosport); Tour de Romandie Stage 2, La Grande Béroche–Cossonay 168.8 km; Madrid Open round of 16 concludes |
| Fri 1 May | World Snooker semi-finals continue (Crucible); Madrid Open quarter-finals open; League of Ireland Premier Division Round 11, four 19:45 kick-offs (LOITV) |
| Sat 2 – Mon 4 May | Premier League MD35 across the bank-holiday weekend (Sky / TNT); Tour de Romandie queen stage Sat / final stage Sun; Madrid Open women’s final Sat / men’s final Sun; World Snooker final — 35 frames over four sessions Sat–Mon (BBC / Eurosport) |
| Tue 5 – Wed 6 May | UEFA Champions League — semi-final second legs at the higher-seeded clubs, 20:00 BST (TNT Sports / discovery+) |
| Sat 30 May | UEFA Champions League final — Allianz Arena, Munich, 20:00 BST (TNT) |
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