President Donald Trump described Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a “good friend” just one day after relatives of 9/11 victims called for greater accountability over the kingdom’s alleged connections to the September 11 attacks.

Trump addressed reporters during a Saturday visit to Ireland, where he appeared alongside Taoiseach Micheál Martin and was asked about a recent phone conversation with the Saudi crown prince, widely known as MBS.

The discussion reportedly centered on the growing strength of the Houthis, who have recently seized control of a substantial area of Yemen.

“Well, I had a call with MBS,” Trump said. “He’s a good friend of mine, and I can just say everything is gonna work out fine and dandy. It’s gonna be very good.”

The latest Houthi campaign has expanded the Islamist group’s influence over the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a strategically vital shipping route for global oil supplies that is often compared with the Strait of Hormuz.

According to Axios, MBS contacted Trump twice on Thursday to seek US military action against the Houthis. The president reportedly turned down the request.

Trump’s decision not to authorize strikes came after he faced criticism at a nationally televised Manhattan memorial service, where his relationship with Saudi Arabia was scrutinized because of the country’s alleged links to some of the 9/11 hijackers.

Terry Strada, whose husband Tom Strada was killed on September 11, received applause as she accused Saudi Arabia of promoting “anti-American terrorism” and dispatching agents to assist the hijackers.

‘For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,’ she said.

US-Saudi ties have flourished under Trump, who has for years touted his warm relationship with the 41-year-old MBS. 

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The two leaders have rolled out the red carpets for one another on state visits last year, and Trump cut Saudi a $1 trillion deal to exchange military tech, rare earths and nuclear. 

MBS’s reported request for help to combat the Houthi forces appears to be a reversal from July, when Saudi officials urged their US counterparts that they could handle the terrorist group on their own. 

Central Command (CENTCOM) boss Admiral Brett Cooper flew to Saudi Arabia this week for emergency meetings, Axios reported.  

Trump has engaged with Saudi and its leader despite the outcry, though he has not been the singular target of this particular critique. 

Friday at the 9/11 memorial, Strada urged the president to ‘tell the Saudis to stop lying’ and make clear they cannot be friends with the USA while denying their role in the attacks.

Though Trump was not present, instead at the Pentagon, Vice President JD Vance and former Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden were present in New York to receive the tongue-lashing themselves. 

The families are pressing the Trump administration to declassify records including phone logs purportedly belonging to Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national the FBI identified in 2022 documents as an agent of Saudi intelligence.

Their decade-old lawsuit against the kingdom is now moving toward trial.

The White House said last week that Trump’s team is working to identify records responsive to the families’ request.

9/11 survivors and victims’ families have long accused the Saudi government of helping the hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

Saudi Arabia has denied any role in the attacks and has fought the families’ lawsuit in federal court for years.

An Australian mum-of-three has shared how a surprising side hustle she launched in her early 20s developed into a thriving business bringing in $250,000 a year.

Amy Favro, 31, from the Central Coast, now earns a living rewriting resumes and cover letters for Australians seeking a new role, aiming for promotion or looking to leave careers they no longer enjoy.

When she was made redundant from her administration role in 2020, Amy chose to turn the resume-writing work she had been doing on the side into a full-time business.

The move came at an ideal moment. As the pandemic swept through the country and thousands of Australians began looking for jobs, demand for her resume-writing services surged.

In only three months, she had earned a remarkable $75,000.

Amy first promoted her services on Airtasker, charging just $50 to prepare a resume.

‘I was seeing if it was possible to do it, if I could build a client base and I guess what exactly I had to do,’ Amy told Daily Mail.

She said she was young at the time and knew little about running a business, relying on online guides to understand even the fundamentals, including how to set up an ABN.

As her reputation spread and her client list expanded, Amy steadily raised her rates. Her resume-writing packages now cost up to $250, depending on each client’s experience and individual needs.

A resume for a school leaver hoping to land an apprenticeship might take Amy two or three hours, while a more complex application for someone working in government can become an entire day’s work.

Today, the business brings in an impressive $250,000 a year, and Amy said there are three distinct groups increasingly turning to her for help.

‘A lot of teachers [are] wanting to leave teaching,’ she said.

Many come to Amy unsure how the skills they have spent years developing in the classroom could translate into an entirely different industry.

Healthcare workers, particularly nurses, are also regularly seeking her services, although Amy said they are more likely to be looking to move into different roles, upskill or climb the career ladder rather than leave the industry altogether.

Tradies are another major group, ranging from young Australians trying to score their first apprenticeship to experienced workers who are ready to get off the tools.

However, while demand for her expertise remains strong, the industry has undergone an enormous shake-up since she first started, largely thanks to artificial intelligence.

In fact, Amy believes relying too heavily on generative AI has now become one of the biggest mistakes jobseekers make.

‘Everyone’s doing it, and they all sound exactly the same.

‘The standout now is actually writing it yourself, or having someone write it for you, but having that human element to it.’

When ChatGPT first exploded in popularity and suddenly gave anyone the ability to generate a resume or cover letter for free in seconds, she noticed a significant drop in business.

‘My work did dip down significantly when that got really popular,’ she admitted.

But she believes the tide is already beginning to turn as people become more wary of generic AI-generated content.

‘There’s a big shift with people hating AI now,’ she said, explaining that consumers are increasingly noticing when everything from written content to marketing material begin to look and sound the same.

She doesn’t believe jobseekers need to abandon the technology completely, however, saying it can be ‘fantastic’ for generating ideas.

Instead, Amy recommended making a resume as easy as possible for a recruiter or hiring manager to skim and immediately understand why you’re suitable for the position.

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‘Don’t over-fluff it. Don’t add unnecessary sections,’ she said.

She suggested clearly highlighting position titles, metrics and key achievements rather than overwhelming recruiters with information they don’t need.

Cover letters should also add something new to an application instead of simply repeating the resume.

‘Speak to the why behind the application, personalise it and show your worth in a different way,’ she added.

Despite earning an impressive income from the business, Amy still completes most of the work herself.

When demand becomes too much, she hires subcontractors through Airtasker or locally rather than maintaining a large permanent team.

The unconventional career has also given the mum-of-three something increasingly valuable: the ability to work from home and fit her job around her family.

‘It’s amazing,’ she said.

She considers herself particularly fortunate to have that flexibility as more Australian workplaces begin winding back some of the work-from-home arrangements that became commonplace during the pandemic.

But after already watching AI disrupt her industry once, Amy is realistic about the possibility that her lucrative business may not look the same forever.

If resume writing disappeared tomorrow, she said she wouldn’t be afraid to pivot again.

Amy has previously considered moving into career coaching and has already expanded her skills beyond resumes and cover letters into copywriting, website development, branding, SEO and social media.

One particularly large project saw her build out a client’s website and branding as well as create an entire year’s worth of social media posts.

She also helps with administration and finance behind the scenes at her husband’s company and said she would likely pour her energy into growing his business if her own suddenly disappeared.

It’s a willingness to reinvent herself that Amy also encourages in the clients who come to her feeling trapped in careers they no longer enjoy.

For anyone desperate to make a change but unsure what to do next, she recommended starting by identifying which parts of their current career bring them joy.

For a teacher wanting to leave the classroom, for example, that could mean working out whether they still love education itself, working with children or another aspect of the role.

From there, they can begin looking at careers that incorporate those interests before identifying their transferable skills and working out where they may need to upskill.

The Bank of England spent more than £85,000 on research linked to its decision to remove Sir Winston Churchill and other prominent British figures from future banknotes, it has emerged.

Research commissioned by the Bank indicated that portraits of well-known Britons, including Churchill, Alan Turing and Jane Austen, should give way to wildlife-themed designs.

The findings warned that historical figures may be viewed as ‘elitist and divisive’, while a focus on the past could promote a ‘backward-looking vision of the UK’ and risk causing further division.

A Freedom of Information request found that the Bank spent £63,000 on reaching the decision and supporting its choice of nature as the replacement theme.

Market research consultancy Savanta received £49,000 to conduct focus groups on moving away from depictions of historical figures.

A further £22,500 was spent on public consultations exploring which animals should feature on the planned new banknote series.

The change would bring to an end a tradition that has placed leading Britons alongside the monarch on banknotes for more than half a century.

The proposal triggered a strong backlash. Critics branded it ‘bonkers’, while Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the Bank was ‘erasing our history’ and called the move ‘a silly thing to do’.

Currently, Churchill is depicted on the £5 note, Jane Austen on the £10, J.M.W. Turner on the £20, and Alan Turing on the £50.    

In response to the FOI request, the Bank told The Telegraph: ‘Savanta was selected following a competitive evaluation process in which research companies that applied were assessed against a range of criteria, including value for money.’

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It added that during the public consultation stage that ‘no external research or consultancy expenditure’ had been incurred, but it did not record the time staff spent on the project.

The Bank branded the move away from historical figures as a ‘positive evolution’, rather than ‘censorship’ or a ‘cancellation’ of history.  

More than 400,000 public votes were cast in a public consultation on a shortlist for the new nature-themed banknotes, which was divided into three categories by a panel of wildlife experts.

The first, mammals, included the bottlenose dolphin, brown hare, European hedgehog, grey seal, pine marten and red fox.

Six birds were also listed: the Atlantic puffin, barn owl, common kingfisher, Eurasian curlew, great spotted woodpecker, and white-tailed eagle.

The final category of amphibians, insects and fish consisted of the Atlantic salmon, basking shark, buff-tailed bumblebee, common frog, Emperor dragonfly and marsh fritillary butterfly.

The public consultation ended in July and Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s governor, is set to make the final decision on which animals will be used by the end of the year.

A spokesperson for the Bank of England previously said: ‘To select the theme for our next series of banknotes, the Bank canvassed a range of opinion through a public consultation last year.

‘This consultation received 44,000 responses and nature had the highest proportion of nominations and was the driver for our decision.

‘This theme also received additional positive feedback in Bank commissioned focus groups that took place once we had the results of the public consultation.’

Historical figures were first introduced on sterling notes more than half a century ago, when William Shakespeare appeared on the £20 note in 1970. 

The Bank has previously run into controversy over banknote designs after campaigners complained that too few women had featured in recent years, prior to Jane Austen appearing in 2017.

History has also proved uncomfortable due to links with slavery. In 2021 the Bank removed from display a series of paintings and busts of governors and directors who had connections to the slave trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Emily Atack is set to exchange vows again with scientist Dr Alistair Garner in Spain, with the couple planning a sun-soaked ceremony in the courtyard of a 16th-century church as temperatures reach 30C.

Up to 50 relatives and friends, including Atack’s Rivals co-stars Alex Hassell, Bella McClean and Victoria Smurfit, will be handed parasols to shield themselves from the fierce Spanish sunshine.

The celebration will grow later in the day, when further guests join the newlyweds for a three-course meal in the courtyard. Dinner will be served beneath a sprawling, century-old Ficus Benjamina tree, decorated with strings of fairy lights beneath its umbrella-like canopy.

Atack, 36, legally married Garner, 40, at her local church in Bedfordshire three weeks ago, followed by a garden party at their home. The couple are step-cousins but are not biologically related.

This week, as many as 200 guests travelled to Mojacar, the whitewashed hilltop town in southern Spain, for a second celebration of the couple’s marriage.

A more intimate group is expected to witness the pair receive a blessing before the larger party arrives. Atack and Garner first met in 1994, when Garner’s father married Atack’s aunt.

Earlier in the day, venue staff were seen arranging flowers around the courtyard after spending the morning preparing chairs for the procession.

A DJ booth has also been installed at one end of the dining courtyard, ready for guests to take to the dancefloor after dinner.

Cases of Cava, beer, wine and spirits were delivered to the two restaurants adjoining the church, which have been rented out by the couple.

Yesterday, the bride was spotted showing family and friends the set-up, which includes the courtyards of two neighbouring restaurants that she has rented.

The actress appeared relaxed in a vintage Diane von Furstenberg floral dress and Prada sunglasses.

After chatting to her wedding planner in the courtyard of the church, the group then headed in for a run-through of the (second) big day.

The wedding party included her pop musician father Keith Atack, who until 2018 owned a house in the town, and her actress-comedian mother Kate Robbins.

After the rehearsals, Ms Atack and her husband jumped into a taxi to spend the afternoon together. Meanwhile, cases of cava, beer and spirits were delivered for the reception.

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Hassell, 46, who famously appeared as Rupert Campbell-Black with Ms Atack in Rivals’ naked tennis scene, landed at Almeria airport in the south-eastern province with his wife, actress Emma King.

Ms Smurfit, who plays the wife of Aidan Turner’s character, was spotted hiring a car at the airport with her husband, banker Steve Jacobs.

Rufus Jones, who plays Ms Atack’s husband Paul, was seen sightseeing with his wife Philippa Allam.

Ms Atack – who has a two-year-old son with Mr Garner – has said it was her dream to marry in Mojacar after spending her childhood summers at her father’s property. 

‘It’s our favourite place on Earth,’ she said.