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Tesla has denied reports that it has contacted recruitment firms to launch a search for a replacement for Elon Musk as chief executive.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the electric car firm's board began looking for a successor to Mr Musk last month.

It said this was because of frustration around Mr Musk's focus on his job in US President Donald Trump's administration and Tesla's sinking share price.

However, in statement on Thursday, Tesla said the report was "absolutely false" while Mr Musk wrote on his social media platform X that the paper was "a discredit to journalism".

Tesla chair Robyn Denholm wrote on X: "There was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company."

"This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published)."

She added: "The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead."

The suspended chief constable of Devon and Cornwall Police, Will Kerr, is not to be prosecuted over allegations of sexual offending and misconduct in office.

The allegations related to his time at the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service (PPS) said after careful consideration, the evidence was "insufficient" to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction.

Mr Kerr has been suspended from his position since July 2023, while an investigation took place.

The police and crime commissioner (PCC) of Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly said he would remain suspended until the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) concluded its own investigation into allegations of misconduct.

An IPOC spokesperson confirmed it would be resuming its investigation.

At the time he was first suspended, Mr Kerr issued a statement "strenuously" denying any allegations of criminality.

The PPS received an evidence file in May 2024, following an investigation by the Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland.

A PPS spokeswoman said: "We have carefully considered all the evidence in connection with this complex case.

"The standard of proof needed for a criminal prosecution is high.

"In order to prosecute, the evidence must be sufficient to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction.

"In this case, the available evidence did not reach this threshold.

"All relevant parties have been informed, with assurance that the decision was taken only after a most careful examination of all the evidence and information available."

Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly PCC Alison Hernandez said she was "delighted" to hear Mr Kerr was no longer under criminal investigation.

"This will be a significant relief to Mr Kerr and his family," she said.

"It is disappointing that it has taken nearly two years to get to this decision.

"While this is a major milestone, we await further instructions from the Independent Office for Police Conduct on any potential misconduct matters which may still need their oversight."

Long policing career

The PPS said the IOPC in England and Wales had also been notified.

In a statement, the ombudsman's office said: "The Police Ombudsman submitted a substantial file to the PPS, following a significant investigation into allegations of a serious criminal nature.

"Having considered the evidence, PPS has made a decision not to prosecute.

"The Police Ombudsman awaits the detailed reasoning which informed the decision and will give it careful consideration."

Mr Kerr spent almost three decades in policing in Northern Ireland with the PSNI and its predecessor the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

He rose to the rank of PSNI assistant chief constable and then left in 2018 to become deputy chief constable of Police Scotland, prior to taking the top job in Devon and Cornwall in December 2022.

He was made an OBE in 2015 and awarded the King's Police Medal in the 2023 New Year Honours.

RAF pilots, Army officers and a night-time fire warden are among the players remembered on a cricket club's new war memorial.

It will be unveiled at Essex Cricket Club's Chelmsford ground and lists the names of 16 cricketers who died during both world wars.

Club museum honorary curator David Pracy researched the background of each of the men because he "wanted to bring them alive as individuals".

"Some of the chaps were only about 18 years old, and I think of our young players today, the same age, yet those who died never made it to the first XI," he said.

Mr Pracy, from the club's official museum, the Peter Edwards Museum & Library, began his research in 2010 and picked it up again during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Three of the men died during World War Two and the rest during World War One. They were all volunteers.

An England bowler

"Ken Farnes (1911 to 1941) was a schoolmaster at Worksop College and used to play cricket in the school holidays – except he had a very understanding headmaster who let him go on three England tours as well," Mr Pracy said.

Son of a civil servant, he grew up in Romford, part of Essex until 1965, and made his county debut in 1930, playing for Essex 79 times and 15 times for England.

He was reputed to be one of the fastest bowlers of the 1930s – alongside the legendary inter-war bowler Harold Larwood, according to Mr Pracy.

Mr Farnes volunteered for the RAF and died on his first unsupervised night-time flight at Chipping Warden, part of Oxfordshire at the time.

Mr Pracy said: "His girlfriend was waiting for him at the airfield and heard the crash – she later said she knew it was him."

An all-round sportsman

Chartered accountant Claude Ashton (1901 to 1942) not only played for Essex, he was an international footballer.

Mr Pracy said: "He went to Winchester School, and later he was Cambridge University's cricket captain."

Mr Ashton was born in India, but was brought up in Essex.

"He also volunteered for the RAF, even though he was in his 40s and probably didn't need to, and was killed in a mid-air collision on a training flight in north Wales," said Mr Pracy.

The other pilot was also a cricketer – Roger Winlaw, who played for Cambridge, Bedfordshire and Surrey.

The pair were commemorated with a showcase previously used to hold the Ashes.

The professional cricketer

"Laurie Eastman (1897 to 1941) was his firm's ARP (Air Raid Precautions) warden on one of the worst days of the Blitz, doing night-time fire watch duties, when a bomb went off very close to him," said Mr Pracy.

Brought up in Leyton, also then part of Essex, he had served in World War One, receiving the Military Medal and the Distinguished Service Medal.

The professional cricketer played full-time for Essex from 1926 to 1939, and was "a hard-hitting batsman with lots of decent scores", said Mr Pracy.

Keen club supporter Clement Calnan offered Mr Eastman work as an accounts clerk at his Romford firm during the winter months and the married father-of-two worked for the firm full-time after war broke out.

Mr Pracy said: "He was very badly affected by the bomb blast and taken to a specialist hospital for treatment, where he died during an operation."

An Ipswich Town player

Doctor's son Roy Pallett (1895 to 1918) had only just left Repton School when he volunteered for Army service on the outbreak of World War One.

Mr Pracy said: "He grew up at Earls Colne, near Colchester, and was a very good all-round sportsman, who also played for Ipswich Town FC when it was in the amateur Southern League.

"He played three second XI matches for Essex and survived nearly four years of war before he was killed on 6 April 1918."

The majority of the World War One players listed on the memorial were amateurs and, like Mr Pallett, had been to public [private] schools.

"The thing is, the young public school boys tended to become junior officers and were often the first ones to be mowed down leading their men," Mr Pracy said.

The law student

"Wisden Cricketers' Almanack said there was 'little doubt' Geoffrey Davies (1892 to 1915) would have developed into an England player," said Mr Pracy.

He was from Woodford Green, also once part of Essex, and was "the only one of the 13 who died in World War One to have established a regular place in the first XI".

The University of Cambridge law student played in the club's first team during his holidays.

Mr Pracy said: "Of the Essex second XI who played at The Oval in August 1914, five of the Essex lads, including Pallett, were killed and two of the Surrey ones."

He also discovered two of the World War One casualties were past the age of conscription – Douglas Tosetti, 41, and 46-year-old Frank Street.

"The more you know about them, the more sad you are – but they were all doing their bit and it's absolutely vital they are remembered," he said.

Plans for 145 new homes on the edge of a Leicestershire village are set to be given the green light.

Developer Bloor Homes wants to build the properties on a 27-acre (9.34 hectare) site south of the A47 at Leicester Forest East.

Planning officers at Blaby District Council have recommended councillors approve the scheme when they meet to discuss it on Thursday, 8 May.

A number of parish councils have written to the district raising concerns about the impact a proposed access road on to the busy A47 will have on traffic flows

Leicester Forest East Parish Council said it was already a "battle each day" for residents trying to get out of side roads with "gridlock" in both directions.

It also said the area around the village had already been heavily developed with housing and new homes would add to pressure on school places and doctors' surgeries.

District council planning officers said financial contributions would be requested from the developer to mitigate the impact of the new homes.

They said the homes would be in a sustainable location with access to public transport.

Bloor said the site was already earmarked for development in the council's local plan strategy.

The site is made up of part of a former golf course and a farm and would require the demolition of a 19th-century farmhouse.

A pilot has died after a light aircraft crashed in East Lothian.

Emergency services including an air ambulance were sent to the site near East Fortune – where there is an airfield – at about 16:55.

The 40-year-old pilot was pronounced dead at the scene and his 42-year-old male passenger is now in hospital in a critical condition.

Police Scotland said inquiries were ongoing and the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) had been notified.

East Fortune Airfield is a former Royal Air Force station and is now home to the National Museum of Flight.

Urgent repairs to a secondary school will cost a council just over half a million pounds.

A survey carried out at Ysgol Greenhill in Tenby found 750 areas of concrete in "poor condition" with cracks in both brickwork and concrete slabs.

Pembrokeshire council leader Jon Harvey approved the £555,946 to rectify "external wall concrete frame failure" at the school.

The decision was published on Wednesday afternoon on the council's website in a highly unusual move.

Five boys have been released on bail after a 15-year-old boy was stabbed at a school in Birmingham.

The victim was attacked in the grounds of Moseley School on Wake Green Road just before 14:00 BST on Tuesday and police said he was taken to hospital with two slash injuries to his back, not thought to be life-threatening.

Six boys, aged 13 and 14, were arrested after the stabbing – four boys, aged 14 and a 13-year-old were released on bail while the investigation continues.

The sixth boy, aged 13, was released and will face no further action, a force spokesperson added.

West Midlands Police said they were examining CCTV footage and continuing to appeal for information over the attack while supporting the victim and his school.

A man has been arrested on suspicion of shining a laser at a police helicopter.

The crew reported a laser pen being shone at them and affecting their vision as they flew over the Grimsby area while searching for a missing person on Thursday at 21:50 BST.

A spokesperson for Humberside Police said a 23-year-old man "was swiftly identified" and remained in custody.

The helicopter was being operated by the National Police Air Service (NPAS), which responds to major and critical incidents.

In a statement, NPAS said a laser had been "directed at the crew multiple times".

Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Soundslatest episode of Look North here.

Nine people have been killed and more than 40 injured after a Russian drone hit a bus transporting workers in eastern Ukraine, officials say.

The attack occurred on Wednesday morning in the south-central city of Marhanets in the Dnipropetrovsk region, across a river from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called it "an egregiously brutal attack – and an absolutely deliberate war crime" on an "ordinary bus…clearly a civilian target."

He said most of the injured were women who worked at a mining and processing plant.

The strike came as top Trump officials pulled out of talks in London between UK, Europe and Ukraine aimed at securing a ceasefire.

The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff had been due to attend, but were later announced to have pulled out. They were replaced by Trump's Ukraine envoy, Gen Keith Kellogg, who referred to Wednesday's talks as "technical meetings".

Zelensky said on Wednesday the Ukrainian delegation was continuing talks with partners.

"Ukraine has repeatedly said that it does not exclude any of the formats that can lead to a ceasefire and, subsequently, to real peace. Stopping the killings is the number one task," he said.

He shared pictures of the bus attack, which showed the vehicle with a hole punctured through its roof, doors off their hinges and glass scattered across its floor.

Russia has not commented on the attack.

There have also been drone strikes on Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city located in the country's east, for a second consecutive day.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had declared a 30-hour ceasefire for Easter Sunday. Ukraine had said it would mirror Russia's actions. Each side accused the other of breaking the truce.

Last month, Moscow came up with a long list of conditions in response to a full ceasefire that had been agreed by the US and Ukraine.

The US has been holding talks with Russia and separately with Ukrainian and European officials to broker a truce.

Witkoff, a property mogul and Donald Trump's special envoy, has acted as a conduit between the White House and the Kremlin in recent months.

He is set to return to Moscow this week for another meeting with Putin. Rubio said on Wednesday he would focus on these talks in Moscow.

It comes after reports the US is considering proposing to recognise Crimea as Russian territory as a means to bring an end to fighting, which has been ruled out by Zelensky.

Crimea, internationally recognised as part of Ukraine, has been under Russian occupation since 2014.

US Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday repeated President Donald Trump's recent assertion that the US would walk away from brokering further Russia-Ukraine talks if Moscow or Kyiv did not agree to a deal.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or injured on all sides since then.