The Daily Clearing
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Monday, May 4, 2026 · Ireland · Published by CPT-RI
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UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday 3 May in Yerevan, ahead of the European Political Community summit hosted in the Armenian capital. The Downing Street readout of that meeting flagged that the two leaders would speak again the following day. Side announcements on Ukraine support, energy resilience and Russia sanctions are expected through 4 May.
The European Political Community is the cross-bloc forum convened by 47 European heads of state and government, including all EU member states, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and the Western Balkans. The Yerevan meeting is the seventh since the format was set up in 2022 in response to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Saturday bilateral is the only confirmed pre-summit meeting on the No. 10 published readout. Officials briefed that the follow-up conversation today would cover the latest movement on a coordinated package of Russia sanctions, on the use of frozen Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction, and on continued European energy resilience as the Middle East energy shock continues to push fuel prices through European markets.
Whether bilateral is followed by a joint statement or by language inside the summit communiqué will be the first signal. NIO Community Partnership Fund (Ireland Desk) on p. 2; PRA funded reinsurance proposals on p. 6; Ag-FDA appropriations bill (Quiet Laws) on p. 11. Source: GOV.UK — PM readout, 3 May 2026.
The UK Serious Fraud Office on 1 May 2026 announced a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with Ultra Electronics Maritime Systems, a subsidiary of Ultra Electronics Holdings, over corrupt payments related to defence contracts in Algeria and Oman between 2002 and 2020. The company will pay a £10 million financial penalty plus £4.8 million in SFO costs, and accept ongoing compliance monitoring. DPAs allow the SFO to suspend criminal prosecution in return for a guilty admission, reparations and oversight; if the company breaches the agreement the prosecution resumes. The DPA must be approved by a Crown Court judge before it takes effect. See p. 2. Source: Serious Fraud Office, 1 May 2026
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on 28 April 2026 published a Request for Information on a proposed Real-Time Clinical Trial pilot programme that the agency expects to launch later this summer. RTCT is the FDA’s name for an integrated trial-conduct model in which sponsors, sites, sponsors’ data systems and the agency itself work in something close to real time on patient enrolment, data quality monitoring and interim analyses. AstraZeneca’s TRAVERSE trial in mantle cell lymphoma, run at MD Anderson and Penn Medicine, and a separate Amgen trial were named as early test cases. The RFI period and pilot structure will determine which sponsors, sites and therapy areas can participate. See p. 4. Source: FDA, 28 April 2026
The UN Mine Action Service warned on 2 May 2026 that a global funding shortfall is leaving demining programmes across Ukraine, Gaza, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Myanmar critically under-resourced, even as the global stock of unexploded ordnance rises. UNMAS Director Kazumi Ogawa said in a briefing to the press at UN Headquarters in New York that the agency’s 2026 appeal is meeting only a fraction of needs. UNMAS estimates that 5–10 per cent of explosive munitions used in Gaza since October 2023 have failed to detonate, leaving an unexploded-ordnance footprint that will take a generation to clear. See p. 10. Source: UN News, 2 May 2026
Ireland Desk p. 2–3 · Science & Health p. 4–5 · Money Moves p. 6 · Money Moves & Infrastructure p. 7 · The Wire p. 8 · What We’re Watching p. 9 · Wires & Wars p. 10 · Quiet Laws p. 11 · Crossword p. 12 · Diversions p. 13 · Life & Culture p. 16 · Sport p. 17
The Northern Ireland Office on Friday 1 May 2026 launched a Community Partnership Fund worth up to £1 million over three years, with the grant intended to be awarded as a single competitive package to a forum of established voluntary-sector leaders that will in turn support smaller community organisations.
According to the GOV.UK notice, the fund is designed to “harness voluntary sector expertise to support local community organisations, particularly those operating in rural areas.” The successful applicant will be a forum of recognised sector leaders that takes on a guiding role for smaller groups — including those based in rural areas, or that lack the confidence to engage with established institutions and networks.
The structure is a single competitive grant of up to £1 million over three years, rather than a fund split among many small awards. Applicants are asked to propose programming that enhances the reach, depth or impact of existing supports, and to demonstrate where the proposal fills a gap in current provision. Required materials are an application form, a budget and delivery plan, and accounts. Applications must be submitted to [email protected] by 5pm on Friday 19 June 2026; submissions after that deadline will not be accepted, the Office said.
The instrument matters because Northern Ireland’s voluntary sector — covering community development, advice services, mental-health support, youth work and cross-community programmes — has been operating under sustained budgetary pressure for several years, with multi-year funding particularly hard to secure. A three-year horizon is meaningful: it allows a delivery body to plan staff, training and outreach beyond the usual annual cycle, and gives smaller community groups more stable access to advice and capacity-building.
For rural Northern Ireland, the structure also responds to a long-standing concern that smaller, geographically-isolated groups are underrepresented in major national funding rounds. Channelling £1m through a sector-led forum, instead of through a larger field of direct individual grants, is a deliberate choice — it concentrates capacity-building rather than diluting it across many small awards. Application guidance, the application form and a budget-and-delivery template are published alongside the GOV.UK notice. Watch for the announcement of the successful forum after 19 June. Watch list, p. 9. Source: GOV.UK — NIO Community Partnership Fund launch, 1 May 2026
A UK judge has approved a Deferred Prosecution Agreement requiring Ultra Electronics Holdings Ltd, a British manufacturer of electronic systems for the international defence and aerospace market, to pay a £10 million penalty plus £4.8 million in Serious Fraud Office investigation costs after the company accepted accountability for failure to prevent bribery, the SFO announced on 1 May 2026. A DPA is a court-supervised settlement under which a prosecution is suspended on condition the company pays a financial penalty and meets reform obligations. According to the SFO, the agreement covers conduct in connection with three public-sector contracts that the company sought through the use of agents: one awarded by the Omani Ministry of Transport and Communications and worth up to £200 million, plus two contracts sought in Algeria — one for IT and e-commerce solutions at Houari Boumediene Airport in Algiers, and a second for encryption technology for the Algerian Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. The SFO opened its investigation in 2018 after Ultra Electronics self-reported suspected corruption offences in Algeria; in 2024 the investigation was extended to all jurisdictions in which the company operated. SFO Director Graham McNulty QPM said: “Public services and critical national infrastructure depend on business being carried out honestly and lawfully. Bribery undermines that trust and corrodes the systems on which society relies.” Wires & Wars on p. 10. Source: GOV.UK — SFO release, 1 May 2026
The Bank of England on 13 April 2026 published new and updated operational guides on how it would implement the UK’s resolution regime if a bank fails. A new transfer-resolution guide covers sales of all or part of a failing firm to a private buyer or to a temporary Bank-owned bridge bank, and explains potential recapitalisation payments.
The bail-in resolution guide was updated with lessons from the Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse failures of 2023, including a new alternate approach in which affected creditors receive non-transferable contingent beneficial interests representing a future right to shares or sale proceeds. The Bank’s resolution regime was set up after the 2008–09 financial crisis to allow regulators to handle failing banks without taxpayer bailouts; the operational guides are how the Bank tells industry, counterparties and creditors what would happen, in practice, on the morning a bank failed.
The 2023 episodes — SVB’s rapid March collapse and the emergency state-brokered sale of Credit Suisse to UBS — are the reference cases for the updated guidance. Both demonstrated how quickly modern bank failures can move once depositors lose confidence and how creditor-loss-allocation mechanisms can interact with weekend resolution timetables. The Bank’s update is read alongside the parallel work of the Prudential Regulation Authority on funded reinsurance (see p. 6) as part of a broader post-2023 hardening of UK insurer-and-bank prudential regimes. Source: Bank of England news release, 13 April 2026
The UK Animal and Plant Health Agency on 1 May 2026 issued the latest annual bovine tuberculosis surveillance report for Great Britain, alongside the explanatory supplement and the open-format dataset. The report supports end-of-year epidemiology reports in the low risk area and sets out the methodology, definitions and control protocols used in the 2024 reporting year. The bovine TB programme is one of the longest-running disease-control programmes in UK livestock and a recurring item of all-island animal-health concern given cross-border cattle movements. Source: GOV.UK — APHA report, 1 May 2026
The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs updated its preliminary and rolling outbreak assessments for lumpy skin disease in Europe on 1 May 2026, including the most recent assessment dated 16 April 2026. Lumpy skin disease is a viral disease of cattle and water buffalo, endemic in parts of Africa and the Middle East, that has spread sporadically into Europe since 2015. Defra’s rolling assessments support the GB risk classification used by APHA and the Devolved Administrations and feed into trade-control decisions on imports of cattle and live ruminant products. Source: GOV.UK — Defra, 1 May 2026
The UK Health Security Agency on 1 May 2026 updated its cumulative weekly graphs of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) cases caused by serotypes not contained in the Prevenar 13 vaccine, with data running through December (week 53) 2025. The dataset covers four age bands — under two, two to four, five to 64, and 65 and over — across England. The series is one of the principal post-vaccine-introduction surveillance datasets used to monitor the residual disease burden as serotype replacement plays out across the population. Source: GOV.UK — UKHSA, 1 May 2026
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced on 28 April 2026 two formal steps in its push toward “real-time clinical trials” — drug studies that stream safety and efficacy signals to the regulator as they happen, rather than only after data is cleaned, locked and submitted. The FDA published the announcement through its Press Announcements channel.
The first step is the launch of two proof-of-concept trials. AstraZeneca is running a Phase 2 multi-site trial called TRAVERSE in patients with treatment-naïve mantle cell lymphoma, with participation from MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas and the University of Pennsylvania. Amgen is running a separate proof-of-concept trial that the FDA’s release identifies but for which further detail will be issued through the agency’s standard channels. Both studies will report endpoints and data signals to the agency in real time.
The second step is a Request for Information on a proposed pilot programme for Real-Time Clinical Trials (RTCT), which the agency expects to launch later this summer. A Request for Information is the FDA’s standard mechanism for gathering structured public comment before a formal programme is opened. The RFI period runs through the dates set out in the Federal Register notice. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H. framed the change as structural: “For 60 years, we’ve been conducting clinical trials in the same way, where key data signals can take years to reach the FDA.” He said the longer-term goal is “real-time, continuous trials across all phases of drug development.”
Three near-term consequences. First, for sponsors of early-phase oncology and rare-disease trials, where regulatory feedback pace often determines how fast a programme can adapt. Second, for clinical trial sites and contract research organisations, which may have to reconfigure data infrastructure to meet streaming requirements. Third, for patient safety review: real-time visibility means an emerging adverse-event signal can in principle be acted on faster. The RFI also asks how data quality is maintained when reviewers see signals before sponsors have completed monitoring, how patient privacy is protected in continuous streams, and how the regulator avoids acting on noisy interim signals. Watch list, p. 9. Source: FDA Press Announcement — 28 April 2026
A Senate bill introduced on 30 April 2026 would build a stronger coordination framework between the Federal government, State governments and Tribal authorities for the surveillance and management of wildlife disease and zoonotic disease outbreaks, GovTrack records show. S. 4451 — formally a bill “to support Federal, State, and Tribal coordination and management efforts relating to wildlife disease and zoonotic disease surveillance and ongoing and potential wildlife disease and zoonotic disease outbreaks” — has been referred to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
A zoonotic disease is one that can pass between animals and humans. Recent and ongoing examples include avian influenza H5N1, now circulating in U.S. dairy cattle and resulting in confirmed human infections among farm workers; chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, spreading across U.S. states for more than two decades; and longer-running surveillance work on rabies, plague, hantavirus, brucellosis and Lyme disease.
Surveillance in the United States runs through several agencies at once. USDA APHIS handles many livestock-adjacent threats; the USGS National Wildlife Health Center handles wildlife pathology; the CDC handles human-side surveillance; and Tribal natural resource agencies often hold primary jurisdiction on Tribal lands. State fish-and-wildlife agencies handle most field work. The bill aims to formalise data-sharing and operational coordination across these layers. GovTrack scores the bill at a 5% chance of passing committee and a 3% chance of enactment, partially lifted by referral to a committee that has previously moved similar wildlife and conservation measures. Source: GovTrack — S. 4451 (119th Congress)
The European Medicines Agency on 29 April 2026 launched a new advisory group on vaccine confidence, holding its first meeting that day. The panel of more than 20 European and international experts — academics, healthcare-professional representatives, medical-society and patient-organisation figures, and public-health body representatives — will meet quarterly and advise the agency on vaccine hesitancy, public communication, and benefit-risk messaging. Executive Director Emer Cooke said vaccine hesitancy is “a growing global threat to public health” and that EMA has “a vital role to play in sharing fact-based and transparent data.” The group sits within EMA’s Vaccine Outreach Strategy. Source: European Medicines Agency, 29 April 2026
The World Health Organization, marking World Hepatitis Day-related work on 28 April 2026, said global efforts to eliminate viral hepatitis are delivering measurable gains but the world remains short of its 2030 elimination targets agreed under the WHO global health sector strategies on viral hepatitis. The agency called for stepped-up action on testing, treatment access and birth-dose immunisation against hepatitis B. Approximately 1.3 million deaths a year are attributable to viral hepatitis worldwide, the bulk from chronic hepatitis B and C infections. Source: World Health Organization, 28 April 2026
A month after completing the farthest human spaceflight in history — a ten-day flyby of the far side of the Moon — the four-person Artemis II crew visited UN Headquarters in New York this week, UN News reported on 1 May 2026. The mission was a joint effort with the European Space Agency and other international partners. The visit continues a UN tradition that began with Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. US Ambassador Mike Waltz hosted the General Assembly evening event. Source: UN News, 1 May 2026
The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority has opened a consultation that would tighten capital rules for funded reinsurance — a fast-growing offshore arrangement now estimated at around £40 billion of exposure across UK life insurers — and bring the regulatory treatment closer into line with similar investments. The proposals were published on 29 April 2026.
In a funded reinsurance deal, a UK life insurer pays a large up-front premium to an offshore reinsurer in exchange for future payments. Many UK life insurers use this structure to support Bulk Purchase Annuities — the deals in which an insurer takes over the obligation to pay defined-benefit pension scheme members for life. Under the current regime, firms typically hold capital worth 2–4 per cent of the value of the annuity liabilities for the average funded reinsurance arrangement, against 11–15 per cent for similar investments. The proposed rules would raise the capital held against the average funded reinsurance to around 10 per cent.
“Funded reinsurance is growing rapidly and has the potential to undermine the resilience of insurers if not managed properly,” said Sam Woods, Deputy Governor for Prudential Regulation and PRA Chief Executive. “Today’s proposals aim to iron out the discrepancy in the regulatory treatment for these deals, to protect pensioners and improve insurers’ incentives to invest directly in the UK economy.”
The PRA’s 2025 life insurance stress test concluded that the structure could meaningfully impair life insurers’ solvency positions if its use kept growing. The new treatment would not apply to business “already executed or completing shortly”, but would apply to any new business written under the revised rules. Payments to UK insurance policyholders remain protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. The consultation document and timetable are on the Bank of England website. Source: Bank of England — PRA news release, 29 April 2026
The Bank of England has published a written summary of a closed-door evidence-gathering event held on 20 March 2026, in which the Financial Policy Committee took stakeholder views on whether UK bank capital requirements should be cut, held or raised. The summary was released on 20 April 2026 as part of an ongoing FPC review of UK bank capital. The committee, which oversees financial stability risk for the UK system, set out its assessment in a December 2025 Financial Stability in Focus publication and identified three areas for further work: the usability of regulatory buffers, the operation of the leverage ratio, and the interactions between the different layers of the capital stack, particularly for domestic exposures.
The summary records that “some participants argued that heightened macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, alongside reduced fiscal headroom globally, pointed towards maintaining or increasing the FPC’s bank capital benchmark, rather than reducing it.” Others argued the opposite, pointing to the banking system’s performance through recent shocks and Bank stress tests as evidence that requirements could be reduced without undermining resilience. A practical theme runs through: market discipline matters more than the regulatory minimum, and banks running close to the “maximum distributable amount” are penalised by markets even when the regulator allows them to operate there. The FPC’s next public update is scheduled for the June 2026 Financial Stability Report. Source: Bank of England — FPC summary, 20 April 2026
The European Central Bank’s chief economist, Philip R. Lane, used a speech to the European Systemic Risk Board’s joint advisory committees in Frankfurt on 22 April 2026 to argue that the euro area is structurally short of euro-denominated safe assets, and that this gap weighs on the euro’s ability to compete with the U.S. dollar in global markets.
A “safe asset” is the bond a financial system uses as the anchor for asset pricing — the security that stays liquid and tends to rise in value during stress. In the euro area today, the German Bund plays that role by default, because it is the highest-rated large-country euro government bond. But the stock of Bunds, Lane argued, is “too small relative to the size of the euro area or the global financial system to satiate the demand for euro-denominated safe assets.”
Lane acknowledged that other euro-area sovereign bonds have moved closer to behaving like a single market. Inter-country spreads, he said, have grown less volatile since the euro debt crisis, helped by post-crisis reforms: bank capitalisation, the Single Supervisory Mechanism, the Single Resolution Mechanism, the European Stability Mechanism, the pandemic-era Next Generation EU programme, and the ECB’s own Transmission Protection Instrument and Outright Monetary Transactions toolkit. EU-level common bonds — issued to fund SURE and NGEU — could in principle fill the gap, Lane said, but the stock is too small to support deep derivative and repo markets. The policy implications are pointed but indirect: the ECB does not itself issue safe assets — that is a fiscal function reserved to member states and to the European Commission acting under EU programmes. Source: European Central Bank — speech transcript, 22 April 2026
A Senate bill introduced on 30 April 2026 would direct the Comptroller General of the United States — head of the Government Accountability Office — to study how the Appalachian Regional Commission could include satellite-based broadband in the broadband projects it funds, GovTrack records show. S. 4459, formally “A bill to require the Comptroller General of the United States to conduct a study on the capability of the Appalachain Regional Commission to include satellites in broadband projects, and for other purposes,” has been referred to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
The Appalachian Regional Commission is a federal-state economic development partnership covering all of West Virginia and parts of twelve other states from southern New York to northern Mississippi. Satellite broadband — including low-earth-orbit constellations such as Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb, and traditional geostationary services — has become a practical option for the most rural and most expensive-to-reach addresses in the U.S. Federal broadband programmes have at times restricted the use of satellite service in favour of fibre. The bill effectively asks the GAO to evaluate where satellite fits inside ARC’s existing broadband investments. GovTrack scores the bill at an 8% chance of clearing committee and a 5% chance of enactment. Source: GovTrack — S. 4459 (119th Congress)
EMA opens advisory group on vaccine confidence (29 April). The European Medicines Agency launched a new advisory group on vaccine confidence on 29 April 2026, made up of more than 20 European and international experts who will meet quarterly to advise the agency on vaccine hesitancy and on its public communications about vaccine benefits and risks. Executive Director Emer Cooke said vaccine hesitancy is “a growing global threat to public health” and that EMA has “a vital role to play in sharing fact-based and transparent data.” The group sits within EMA’s Vaccine Outreach Strategy. Brief on p. 5. (EMA)
WHO: hepatitis elimination on track but short of 2030 targets (28 April). The World Health Organization, marking World Hepatitis Day-related work on 28 April 2026, said global efforts to eliminate viral hepatitis are delivering measurable gains but the world remains short of its 2030 elimination targets agreed under the WHO global health sector strategies on viral hepatitis. The agency called for stepped-up action on testing, treatment access and birth-dose immunisation against hepatitis B. Brief on p. 5. (WHO)
UK APHA publishes annual bovine TB epidemiology and surveillance report for Great Britain, 2024 (1 May). The UK Animal and Plant Health Agency on 1 May 2026 issued the latest annual bovine tuberculosis surveillance report for Great Britain, alongside the explanatory supplement and the open-format dataset. The report supports end-of-year epidemiology reports in the low risk area and sets out the methodology, definitions and control protocols used in the 2024 reporting year. Brief on p. 3. (GOV.UK — APHA)
Defra updates lumpy skin disease in Europe outbreak assessment (1 May). The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs updated its preliminary and rolling outbreak assessments for lumpy skin disease in Europe on 1 May 2026, including the most recent assessment dated 16 April 2026. Lumpy skin disease is a viral disease of cattle and water buffalo that is endemic in parts of Africa and the Middle East and has spread sporadically into Europe since 2015. Brief on p. 3. (GOV.UK — Defra)
UKHSA refreshes invasive pneumococcal disease data on serotypes not covered by PCV13 (1 May). The UK Health Security Agency on 1 May 2026 updated its cumulative weekly graphs of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) cases caused by serotypes not contained in the Prevenar 13 vaccine, with data running through December (week 53) 2025. The dataset covers four age bands — under two, two to four, five to 64, and 65 and over — across England. Brief on p. 3. (GOV.UK — UKHSA)
Bank of England updates UK bank-resolution operational guides (13 April). The Bank of England on 13 April 2026 published new and updated operational guides on how it would implement the UK’s resolution regime if a bank fails. A new transfer-resolution guide covers sales of all or part of a failing firm to a private buyer or to a temporary Bank-owned bridge bank, and explains potential recapitalisation payments. The bail-in resolution guide was updated with lessons from the Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse failures, including a new alternate approach in which affected creditors receive non-transferable contingent beneficial interests representing a future right to shares or sale proceeds. Lead on p. 3. (Bank of England)
Central Asia marks 20 years as a nuclear-weapon-free zone (30 April). The Semipalatinsk Treaty — under which Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan committed in 2006 not to develop, acquire, test or deploy nuclear weapons — reaches its 20-year anniversary, UN News reported on 30 April 2026. Christopher King, head of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Branch at the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, said nuclear-weapon-free zones are “living instruments of regional security, non-proliferation and nuclear risk reduction.” The anniversary lands during the 2026 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (UN News)
Artemis II crew visits UN Headquarters in New York (1 May). A month after completing the farthest human spaceflight in history — a ten-day flyby of the far side of the Moon — the four-person Artemis II crew visited UN Headquarters in New York this week, UN News reported on 1 May 2026. The mission was a joint effort with the European Space Agency and other international partners. The visit continues a UN tradition that began with Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. US Ambassador Mike Waltz hosted the General Assembly evening event. Brief on p. 5. (UN News)
Today — European Political Community summit, Yerevan
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday 3 May, ahead of the European Political Community summit hosted in Yerevan. The Downing Street readout flagged that the two leaders would speak again the following day. The summit’s communiqué and any side announcements on Ukraine support, energy resilience and Russia sanctions are expected during 4 May. Cover lead on p. 1. Anchor: GOV.UK
Open consultation — PRA funded reinsurance, life insurers
The Prudential Regulation Authority’s 29 April 2026 consultation on funded reinsurance — which would raise capital held against the average UK life insurer funded reinsurance arrangement from 2–4% of annuity liabilities to around 10% — is open for stakeholder responses. The PRA’s policy statement and final rules normally follow once responses are reviewed. Lead on p. 6. Anchor: Bank of England
Summer 2026 — FDA Real-Time Clinical Trial pilot launch
The Food and Drug Administration on 28 April 2026 published a Request for Information on a proposed Real-Time Clinical Trial (RTCT) pilot programme that the agency expects to launch later this summer. The RFI period and the eventual pilot programme structure will determine which sponsors, sites and therapy areas are eligible to participate. Lead on p. 4. Anchor: FDA
Friday 19 June (5pm) — NIO Community Partnership Fund deadline
The Northern Ireland Office’s £1m three-year Community Partnership Fund will be awarded as a single competitive grant to a forum of established voluntary-sector leaders who will support smaller community organisations. Applicants must submit application form, budget, delivery plan and accounts to [email protected] by 5pm Friday 19 June 2026. Anchor: GOV.UK / NIO
This is the Morning Edition — Monday, 4 May 2026.
Refreshed at 06:00 IST. Next update: Midday Edition (13:00 IST). Today’s lead pages cover the Starmer–Zelenskyy meeting ahead of the Yerevan EPC summit, the Serious Fraud Office’s £14.8m DPA with Ultra Electronics, the FDA Real-Time Clinical Trial pilot, the PRA funded reinsurance consultation, ECB chief economist Philip Lane on euro safe assets, the GAO study order on Appalachian satellite broadband, UN demining funding, and the FAA airborne position reference tools bill.
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The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) has warned that the world’s demining work is being strained simultaneously by a rising number of armed conflicts and by sharply falling humanitarian aid budgets, the new head of the agency said this week. UN News reported the warning on 2 May 2026, drawing on remarks from Kazumi Ogawa at the close of a Mine Action National Directors and UN advisers meeting in Geneva.
UNMAS coordinates the UN’s response to landmines, cluster munitions and other explosive remnants of war. Its work runs from physical clearance to risk education and victim assistance. Ms. Ogawa told UN News that demining experts at the Geneva meeting had “shared their collective shock at the widespread and growing threat from unexploded ordnance,” and that demining colleagues had told her: “Never in my career have I ever seen so many conflicts.”
The agency’s specific warning on Gaza is severe. UNMAS estimates that between five and ten per cent of all munitions fired during the Hamas–Israel war did not detonate, and that the resulting unexploded ordnance is now “ingrained” in the territory. Ninety per cent of people injured by explosive hazards in Gaza are civilians, and “the majority of them are children,” Ms. Ogawa said. The agency is currently able to cordon off explosive devices in Gaza but, she said, is not able to destroy them.
The funding picture compounds the operational problem. UN News records Ms. Ogawa stating that “for various reasons, the level of funding has gone down in terms of humanitarian assistance,” at the same time as the agency is trying to absorb more conflict zones. Syria, after nearly fourteen years of fighting, also accumulated significant landmine contamination during the war, the agency notes.
The story matters for three reasons. First, unexploded ordnance is a long-tail public health and economic problem: it kills and maims for decades, blocks return of displaced people, and prevents farmland and infrastructure repair. Second, the agency is publicly flagging that capacity is shrinking just as demand grows — a structural mismatch that is harder to resolve than a one-year funding shortfall. Third, the warning lands during the same week as the European Political Community summit in Yerevan and ahead of the UN’s autumn budget cycle, both venues where the funding gap will be visible.
Readers should watch the UN’s mid-year humanitarian funding tracker and any specific UNMAS appeals tied to Gaza, Syria or Ukraine. EPC summit watch item on p. 8. Source: UN News — UNMAS warning, 2 May 2026
A bill introduced in the U.S. House on 30 April 2026 would require the Federal Aviation Administration’s Administrator to acquire and install certified airborne position reference tools at the agency’s air traffic control towers, GovTrack records show.
H.R. 8597 — formally “To require the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration to acquire and install certified airborne position reference tools at air traffic control towers, and for other purposes” — has been referred to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. GovTrack puts the bill’s chance of clearing committee at 12% and its chance of enactment at 4%, with the prognosis lifted by bipartisan cosponsorship and dragged down by the size of the committee’s queue.
The bill text — to be published on Congress.gov — will spell out which tools meet the “certified airborne position reference” standard, what the rollout schedule is, and how the work would be funded. In broad terms, airborne position reference tools are systems that give controllers an independent way to confirm an aircraft’s location, altitude and identity beyond the primary radar and the aircraft’s own ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) transponder, which transmits the plane’s GPS-derived position once a second.
The legislative push follows a multi-year period in which the FAA has been under sustained congressional scrutiny over near-miss runway incursions, controller staffing levels, and the pace of NextGen modernisation. The National Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly cited the value of layered surveillance — having more than one independent way to know where an aircraft is — in its reports on close-call incidents at busy hubs.
For the travelling public, the immediate effect is procurement: if the bill becomes law, the FAA would have to identify a tool standard, run a contract, and equip an inventory of towers that runs into the hundreds. For aircraft operators, the indirect effect is data discipline — the equipment changes how positional information is logged and cross-checked at the tower level. Source: GovTrack — H.R. 8597 (119th Congress)
The House Appropriations Committee has reported H.R. 8646, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agency Appropriations Act, 2027, with updated bill text published on 1 May 2026. The bill sets discretionary spending for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, the Farm Service Agency and related rural development programmes for the fiscal year that begins on 1 October 2026.
It is the first of the twelve annual appropriations bills for FY2027 to clear committee. Failure to enact the twelve bills before 1 October triggers a continuing resolution or a partial government shutdown. The bill funds, among other lines, FDA medical product review, food safety inspection, WIC, rural housing loans, the Forest Service’s rural utility programmes, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight. The next step is floor consideration by the full House under a rule from the Rules Committee. The bill carries direct consequences for FDA drug review timelines and for inspection capacity at meat and poultry plants — including the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the agency on the front line of any livestock disease outbreak. Source: GovTrack — H.R. 8646 (119th Congress)
A House bill introduced on 30 April 2026 would temporarily suspend certain federal fuel excise taxes whenever the national average price of gasoline rises above $3.99 a gallon, and would deny specified tax credits and deductions to oil and gas companies during the same suspension periods. H.R. 8600 amends the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee. The federal excise tax on gasoline is currently 18.4 cents per gallon, with a separate 24.4 cents per gallon levy on diesel; both feed the Highway Trust Fund. The trigger price of $3.99 sits above the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s recent national weekly retail average for regular gasoline, so suspension would only activate during sustained price spikes — typically driven by global crude markets, refinery outages or geopolitical shocks. GovTrack puts the prognosis at 0% past committee in its first session, the standard rating for narrowly-targeted IRC amendments. Source: GovTrack — H.R. 8600 (119th Congress)
A bill introduced in the U.S. House on 30 April 2026 would direct the United States Postal Service to deliver a written report to Congress on mail and package delivery service performance in the St. Louis region. H.R. 8599 has been referred to committee. GovTrack scores the bill at a 13% chance of clearing committee, above the average for House measures, and notes that the bill carries cosponsors from both majority and minority parties — a marker correlated with higher passage probability. The bill is the latest in a string of regional USPS oversight measures introduced over the past two years; St. Louis is one of several metropolitan markets where local press and members of Congress have raised concerns about delivery delays, mis-sorts and the rollout of the Postal Service’s “Delivering for America” network consolidation. Source: GovTrack — H.R. 8599 (119th Congress)
No. 28 (Sunday) solution
Across: 1. HORMUZ; 4. IRAN.
Down: 1. HIQA; 2. MAYO; 3. ZONE; 5. RAY.
Past solutions are collected in the archive.
Sudoku No. 29 — Medium
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1626: Peter Minuit, born in the County of Wesel and recently arrived from the Dutch port of Amsterdam aboard the Zeemeeuw (Sea-mew), comes ashore at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan as the new Director of New Netherland for the Dutch West India Company. The colony is governed from a fort and a small cluster of trading houses on what is now the Battery; Minuit, in correspondence later that summer, secures the island from the Lenape in exchange for trade goods, an event reported by the Schaghen Letter received in Amsterdam in November and now held in the Dutch National Archive at The Hague.
1776: The General Assembly of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, sitting at the Old State House in Newport, passes “An Act repealing an Act… for the more effectual securing to His Majesty the Allegiance of his Subjects”. By striking the King’s name from official forms and writs, Rhode Island becomes the first of the thirteen American colonies to formally renounce allegiance to King George III, two months before the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The day is observed in the state as Rhode Island Independence Day.
1886: Haymarket Square, Chicago. Toward the end of an evening rally for the eight-hour day — called by labour organisers in response to police killings at the McCormick reaper works the previous afternoon — an unidentified person throws a dynamite bomb into a column of police ordering the crowd to disperse. Seven officers die in the explosion and the gunfire that follows; an unknown number of civilians are killed. Eight anarchists are tried under Illinois conspiracy law; four are hanged on 11 November 1887. The events lead to the international observance of 1 May as Workers’ Day; the bomb-thrower is never identified.
1919: Approximately three thousand students from thirteen Beijing universities and colleges march on Tiananmen Square and onward to the Legation Quarter to protest the Treaty of Versailles transfer of former German concessions in Shandong to Japan. The protest, dispersed and met with arrests, gives its name to the May Fourth Movement — an intellectual and political current that, over the following years, will reshape Chinese letters, propel the New Culture movement, and form the seedbed of both the Nationalist and Communist parties.
1945: On Lüneburg Heath, in a tent at 21st Army Group tactical headquarters near the village of Wendisch Evern in northern Germany, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery accepts the unconditional military surrender of all German forces in north-west Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark from a delegation led by General-Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg. The instrument is signed at 18:30 local time and takes effect at 08:00 BST the following morning. The text and Montgomery’s account are preserved in the Imperial War Museum.
1970: Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. At 12:24 in the afternoon, Ohio National Guardsmen ordered to disperse a demonstration against the Cambodian Campaign open fire on the campus, discharging sixty-seven rounds in thirteen seconds. Four students — Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder — are killed; nine others are wounded, one paralysed for life. The Scranton Commission report of October 1970 finds the shootings “unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable”.
1990: The Supreme Council of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, meeting in Riga, adopts the Declaration on the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia. The vote is 138 in favour, none against, with 1 abstention; the Declaration restores the 1922 Constitution and inaugurates a transition period that ends with full independence on 21 August 1991. The anniversary is observed in Latvia as Latvijas Republikas Neatkarības atjaunošanas diena — Restoration of Independence Day.
Today’s Numbers
£1 million / 5pm Friday 19 June — Size and closing time of the Northern Ireland Office’s three-year Community Partnership Fund, awarded as a single competitive grant to a forum of established voluntary-sector leaders that will then support smaller community organisations. Applications, including a budget, delivery plan and accounts, must reach [email protected] by the deadline (page 2).
2–4% → ~10% — Capital the average UK life insurer is currently required to hold against a funded reinsurance arrangement, and the level the Prudential Regulation Authority’s 29 April consultation would raise it to. Similar investments today carry an 11–15% charge; total exposure across UK life insurers is estimated at around £40 billion (page 6).
5–10% · 90% — Share of munitions fired in Gaza that did not detonate and now require clearance, and share of the UN-recorded explosive-injury victims since the war began who were civilians; UN Mine Action Service chief Kazumi Ogawa told reporters in New York on 2 May that “the majority of them are children”. Funding for global demining work has gone down even as conflict-affected casualties have risen (page 10).
30 April / 12% — Date H.R. 8597, the bill that would require the Federal Aviation Administration to acquire and install certified airborne position reference tools at air traffic control towers, was introduced and referred to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the GovTrack prognosis (lifted by bipartisan cosponsorship) that it clears committee. The same prognosis puts enacted-into-law odds at 4% (page 11).
Word of the Day
FUNDED REINSURANCE
A reinsurance arrangement in which a UK life insurer pays a large up-front premium to an offshore reinsurer in exchange for a future stream of payments — in effect, transferring both the longevity risk and the investment risk on a block of liabilities while keeping the policyholder relationship in the UK insurer’s name. The structure is most often used to support Bulk Purchase Annuity transactions, in which a defined-benefit pension scheme transfers the obligation to pay its members for life to an insurer in exchange for a single lump-sum premium. Total exposure across the UK life sector is estimated at about £40 billion. Capital held against the average funded reinsurance arrangement is at present 2–4 per cent of the annuity liabilities supported, against 11–15 per cent for similar non-reinsured investments; the Prudential Regulation Authority’s 29 April consultation, open for stakeholder responses, would raise the funded-reinsurance charge to around 10 per cent (see page 6).
Quick Quiz — From Today’s Edition
1. What size of grant does the Northern Ireland Office’s Community Partnership Fund offer, over what term, and at what time and date do applications close?
2. According to the UN Mine Action Service’s new chief, roughly what share of munitions fired in Gaza did not detonate, and what share of the UN-recorded explosive-injury victims since the war began have been civilians?
3. The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority opened a consultation on 29 April that would raise the average capital charge on UK life-insurer funded reinsurance arrangements. From what level, and to what level?
Answers: 1. £1 million over three years, awarded as a single competitive grant; applications close at 5pm on Friday 19 June 2026 (page 2). 2. Around 5 to 10 per cent of munitions fired in Gaza did not detonate; about 90 per cent of UN-recorded explosive-injury victims have been civilians, and UNMAS chief Kazumi Ogawa said “the majority of them are children” (page 10). 3. The Prudential Regulation Authority’s 29 April consultation under its Solvency UK rule-making powers; the proposal is to raise the average capital held against a funded reinsurance arrangement from 2–4 per cent of the annuity liabilities supported to around 10 per cent (page 6).
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Recipe — Brown soda bread with Cuinneog buttermilk, and the first Wexford asparagus of the year: Today is the May Bank Holiday Monday in Ireland — the first Monday in May, the older quarter-day of Lá Bealtaine brought into the formal calendar. It is also the right week for the first asparagus from south Wexford and the new buttermilk from Cuinneog in Mayo, and that is enough to build a whole lunch around. The bread takes ten minutes to mix, forty in the oven, and is the part everyone will remember; the asparagus takes seven minutes; the rest of the meal is butter and salt. For the soda bread: 350 g coarse wholemeal flour, 100 g plain flour, 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, 1 teaspoon flaky salt, 1 tablespoon pinhead oatmeal (optional), 425 ml Cuinneog buttermilk. Heat the oven to 200 °C / 180 °C fan / gas 6. Tip the dries into a wide bowl, whisk to combine, make a well in the centre, pour in the buttermilk, and bring it together with a wooden spoon and then a hand into a soft, sticky dough — thirty seconds, no kneading; do not work it. Tip onto a floured tray, shape into a round about 4 cm thick, and cut a deep cross right across the top with a floured knife. The cross is not decorative: it lets the loaf open up rather than rise, which is how soda bread cooks through without a long ferment. Bake 35–40 minutes until the underside sounds hollow when tapped, then wrap in a clean tea-towel and rest on a rack — this finishes the bake and softens the crust just enough. For the asparagus (for four): 500 g Wexford asparagus, woody ends snapped off where the spear bends naturally, washed; 30 g unsalted Irish butter (Cuinneog or Kerrygold), cut into small dice; flaky sea salt; cracked black pepper; a wedge of lemon. Bring 4 cm of well-salted water to a hard boil in a wide, lidded pan. Lay the spears in flat — they should be just submerged. Lid on, four minutes for medium-thick spears, three for thin. Lift out with tongs onto a warm serving plate. Scatter the diced butter across the hot spears so it melts into a quick sauce, finish with flaky salt, plenty of black pepper, and a brief squeeze of lemon. To serve: bring the warm bread to the table whole on a wooden board, with a slab of cold Irish butter on a small plate and a separate plate of the asparagus alongside. Cut wedges as you go; tear, butter, and a spear or two on top of each. A pot of strong tea or, if it is the kind of Bank Holiday Monday lunch that runs into afternoon, a bottle of dry cider or a chilled Riesling on the table. The bread is best the day it is made and toasted thereafter; asparagus does not keep, and that is part of its point.
Worth Your Time
Book: The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows by Brian Castner (Doubleday, 2012, 240 pages). The author commanded a US Air Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit on three tours in the Middle East. The book is half memoir of the work — rendering safe the home-made roadside bombs of the second Iraq war, often by walking, alone, towards the device — and half account of what the work does to the person doing it. The right reading for today’s page 10 lead, in which the new head of the UN Mine Action Service warns that 5 to 10 per cent of the munitions fired in Gaza did not detonate and that ninety per cent of the UN-recorded explosive-injury victims since the war began have been civilians, “the majority of them children”.
Book: Other People’s Money: The Real Business of Finance by John Kay (PublicAffairs, 2015, 352 pages). The British economist’s patient, plain-language case that the modern financial system has drifted from the work it was originally meant to do — matching savers with productive investment, managing risk over a lifetime, and clearing payments — into a much larger structure that mostly trades with itself. Read for chapter four (“Risk”) and chapter eight (“Reform”) alongside today’s page 6 lead on the Prudential Regulation Authority’s 29 April consultation, which would raise the average capital charge on UK life-insurer funded reinsurance arrangements from 2–4 per cent of the annuity liabilities supported to around 10 per cent.
Book: Inside the Sky: A Meditation on Flight by William Langewiesche (Vintage, 1999, 240 pages). The former Atlantic correspondent and pilot collects six long essays on the working geometry of aviation — the airspace above an airport, the inside of a control tower, the slow forensic logic of an air-accident investigation. The chapter on the controlled descent of a Boeing 727 in Cali in 1995 is a master class in how a tower’s knowledge of an aircraft’s real position lags its instrument trace. The right reading alongside today’s page 11 lead on H.R. 8597, the bill referred to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on 30 April that would require the Federal Aviation Administration to acquire and install certified airborne position reference tools at air traffic control towers.
Newsletter: Chartbook by Adam Tooze (Substack, twice weekly, free with paid edition). The Columbia historian’s working notebook on macroeconomy and political economy, with regular installments on the architecture of the euro area — sovereign-bond markets, common debt, the role of the German Bund as a benchmark, and the case for and against a larger stock of EU-level safe assets. The natural pair for today’s page 7 lead, in which European Central Bank chief economist Philip Lane told the European Systemic Risk Board joint advisory committees on 30 April that the German Bund stock is “too small relative to the size of the euro area or the global financial system to satiate the demand for euro-denominated safe assets”.
Place to visit: Hill of Tara, Co. Meath — the seat of the High Kings of Ireland and the textbook May Bank Holiday Monday walk. The OPW Heritage Ireland visitor centre, in the old Church of Ireland church on the hill, runs a seasonal opening from May to September; entry to the site itself is free year-round and unstaffed. Lá Bealtaine, the old Irish quarter-day, fell on 1 May; this Monday closes that long weekend at full season. The long views west to the Mournes, the Lia Fáil standing stone at the centre of the inner enclosure of Ráith na Ríog, and the early-summer hawthorn coming into white blossom across the surrounding grassland are the part of the day worth walking up the hill for. About 50 minutes from Dublin on the M3 (Junction 7, Blundelstown). Bring a light coat — the hill is exposed.
Football — Premier League Matchday 35 closes today, early-May bank holiday card: Three matchdays remain in the 2025/26 Premier League season after Sunday 26 April closed MD34. MD35 opened with Saturday’s card, continued through yesterday Sunday 3 May, and closes today Monday 4 May with the early-May bank-holiday fixtures; MD36 follows on the weekend of 9–10 May, and the season ends on Sunday 24 May with the simultaneous final-day card. 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, today’s bank-holiday fixture list and final-three-matchday permutations are on premierleague.com.
Football — UEFA Champions League semi-final second legs Tuesday and Wednesday this 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 May 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 men’s singles final today, Caja Mágica, Madrid: The combined ATP 1000 / WTA 1000 European clay-court swing event closes today Monday 4 May 2026 at the Park Manzanares complex after a fortnight that opened on Tuesday 21 April. The women’s singles final was played yesterday Sunday 3 May; the men’s singles final is today (start time published in the daily order of play, ordinarily late afternoon CEST). Madrid is the highest-altitude clay event on the calendar at 667 m, which produces a noticeably faster ball flight by clay standards. Live on Sky Sports and discovery+; daily order of play at madridopen.com.
Snooker — World Championship final, deciding session tonight if pushed, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield: The fiftieth consecutive year the World Snooker Championship has been staged at the 980-seat Crucible thrust stage. The 35-frame final opened on Saturday 2 May at 14:30 BST after the two semi-finals concluded on Thursday night; sessions 2 and 3 followed on Sunday afternoon and evening; the deciding session 4 is played at the Crucible tonight at 19:00 BST if a frame is still required after Sunday’s second session. The 17-day tournament dates are 18 April–4 May 2026; live coverage on BBC Two and Eurosport / discovery+, frame-by-frame scoring and session times at wst.tv.
Cycling — Tour de Romandie wrap, Stage 5 closing 17.1 km ITT in Geneva yesterday: The 79th edition of the Romandie, the principal week-long stage race of the spring calendar in the French-speaking cantons of western Switzerland, closed yesterday Sunday 3 May with the flat 17.1 km individual time trial that finished in central Geneva. The race had opened with the Bex prologue on Tuesday 28 April and run four road stages through the Jura foothills and the Lake Geneva basin; Saturday’s queen stage to the 2,000 m summit at Thyon above Sion did the heavy lifting on the general classification, and Sunday’s ITT was the final 17.1 km on which the GC was decided. The Romandie is a regular pre-Giro d’Italia tune-up for grand-tour general-classification riders. Stage results and final GC standings at tourderomandie.ch.
Football — League of Ireland Premier Division Round 12 next weekend: The 2026 LOI Premier Division season is in its third month after the 14 February opening weekend. Round 11 closed on Saturday 2 May with the final two of its six fixtures, after Friday 1 May’s four standard 19:45 IST kick-offs; six of the ten clubs are within four points at the top, and the title race in 2026 has so far been one of the tightest on record at this stage of the season. Round 12 follows on the weekend of 8–9 May. Fixtures, standings, and the broadcaster split (LOITV live, Soccer Republic highlights) are on loi.ie.
Results & Fixtures — Week in review & week ahead
| Wed 29 Apr | UEFA Champions League — semi-final first leg #2, 20:00 BST (TNT Sports); Tour de Romandie Stage 1, Martigny circuit; World Snooker quarter-finals conclude (Crucible) |
| Thu 30 Apr | World Snooker semi-finals open, 14:30 / 19:00 BST (BBC Two / Eurosport); Tour de Romandie Stage 2, La Grande Béroche–Cossonay; Madrid Open round of 16 |
| Fri 1 May | World Snooker Championship final opens, 14:30 BST (BBC Two / Eurosport); Tour de Romandie Stage 4, Sion circuit; Madrid Open quarter-finals; League of Ireland Round 11, four 19:45 IST kick-offs (LOITV) |
| Sat 2 May | Premier League MD35 opens (Sky / TNT); Tour de Romandie queen stage Aigle–Thyon 2000, 167.7 km (Eurosport); Madrid Open men’s & women’s semi-finals (Sky); World Snooker final sessions 2 and 3, 14:30 & 19:00 BST (BBC / Eurosport); League of Ireland Round 11 closing fixtures, 19:45 IST |
| Sun 3 May | Tour de Romandie Stage 5 closing ITT, 17.1 km in Geneva — final GC decided (Eurosport); Madrid Open women’s singles final, 16:00 CEST (Sky); Premier League MD35 Sunday card (Sky / TNT); World Snooker final session 4, 14:30 BST (BBC / Eurosport) |
| Mon 4 May (today) | Premier League MD35 closes — early-May bank-holiday card (Sky / TNT); Madrid Open men’s singles final, Caja Mágica (Sky); World Snooker final deciding session 19:00 BST if required (BBC / Eurosport) |
| Tue 5 May | UEFA Champions League — semi-final second leg #1 at the higher-seeded club, 20:00 BST (TNT Sports / discovery+) |
| Wed 6 May | UEFA Champions League — semi-final second leg #2 at the higher-seeded club, 20:00 BST (TNT Sports / discovery+) |
| Fri 8 – Sun 10 May | Premier League MD36 across the weekend; League of Ireland Round 12, Friday 19:45 IST and Saturday 19:45 IST kick-offs (LOITV) |
| Sat 30 May | UEFA Champions League final — Allianz Arena, Munich, 20:00 BST (TNT) |
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