Commons report calls on Foreign Office to bail out soft-power flagship reeling from job cuts and asset sales

Ministers should explore writing off a crippling £197m loan to the British Council by converting as much of it as possible into “a grant or similar”, MPs have said.

The Commons public accounts committee said the government lacked a “positive vision” for the council, whose soft power value to the UK is put at £1bn a year. The MPs called on the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to set out what more it could do to support the council and its work.

The Audit Office has identified eight cases of questionable benefit payments to individuals recognised as prisoners of war during the 1974 Turkish invasion, warning that more ineligible recipients may exist and highlighting the absence of a single, reliable database to verify beneficiaries.

In a special report published on Thursday, the Audit Office called for a comprehensive review and updating of existing records after finding significant discrepancies between the authorities responsible for identifying prisoners of war and administering their benefits.

The investigation, which followed a complaint by the Association of Prisoners of War of 1974, found that 852 people received at least one of the relevant benefits in 2025, under schemes through which approximately €8.93 million was paid during the year.

Auditor-general Andreas Papaconstantinou warned that the findings went beyond isolated errors, exposing wider weaknesses in a system that remains fragmented, largely manual and reliant on historical records that are sometimes incomplete or impossible to verify.

In the report’s foreword, he stressed that recognising the contribution and ordeal of those held prisoner during the invasion was a fundamental obligation of the state, but that the honorary nature of the benefits made it essential to ensure payments reached genuine beneficiaries.

“The number of ineligible recipients receiving benefits may be higher,” he warned, pointing out that the audit examined only a sample of cases.

The investigation cross-checked information held by the social insurance services (SIS) and welfare benefits administration service (WBAS) against the defence ministry’s register of prisoners of war, military conscription records and Cyprus Red Cross archives.

Of the approximately €8.93 million paid in 2025, around €8.34 million was administered through the SIS and €588,099 through the WBAS. The benefits include a monthly honorary allowance ranging from €5.23 to €83.68 and a six-monthly lump-sum payment of €1,000. The report does not establish the amount potentially paid incorrectly.

The auditors initially identified 150 recipients who could not be matched with Cyprus Red Cross records. Of these, 130 were subsequently located in the defence ministry’s register, while 20 appeared in neither.

Of the 20, fifteen received benefits through the SIS and five through the WBAS.

Further examination of military records established that six of the 15 SIS recipients had indeed been prisoners of war and should have been included in the ministry’s register. Another three had been captured as civilian hostages before joining the National Guard and were entitled to benefits, although not as conscript prisoners of war.

For the remaining six, no evidence was found establishing that they had been prisoners of war, leaving their entitlement to payments under that category unsubstantiated.

The audit also questioned how the SIS verified another 22 individuals who appeared in Cyprus Red Cross records but for whom no prisoner-of-war certificate appeared to have been issued. They were also absent from the defence ministry’s register.

According to the report, the SIS failed to provide convincing explanations demonstrating that the six-monthly payments were being granted only to eligible recipients.

Two further questionable cases emerged from an examination of 77 military conscription records from Nicosia, Kyrenia and Morphou.

One concerned an individual declared a deserter in April 1975 who was subsequently arrested by Turkish forces and released the following month. Although his monthly allowance could be justified by additional military service, the auditors found that the six-monthly payment was not justified because his captivity occurred after the 1974 invasion.

In the second case, information relating to another person, including references to captivity, had mistakenly been entered into a military record. Although corrected in 1983, the erroneous information was subsequently used to compile the prisoner-of-war register.

The individual’s entitlement to both the six-monthly payment and the monthly allowance was questioned, particularly after a 2019 investigation found no evidence of reserve service during the invasion.

Beyond these cases, the Audit Office identified serious weaknesses in the underlying military records.

In 39 of the 77 cases examined, essential information was missing, including military units or the dates of captivity. Some entries had been added years or decades after 1974, including one in 2001, based on supporting documents that have since been destroyed.

Some original registers were also found to be badly deteriorated, prompting recommendations for further preservation work in cooperation with the State Archives.

The auditors found that the National Guard does not issue a specific prisoner-of-war certificate, instead providing a general military service certificate without retaining a copy, preventing subsequent verification.

The SIS was also criticised for relying on an outdated copy of the ministry’s register and failing to produce supporting evidence that verification procedures had been followed in the 15 cases examined.

Problems extended to application forms, with no dedicated form for the six-monthly payment for existing monthly allowance recipients.

Papaconstantinou acknowledged that the invasion, missing archives and incomplete initial records had created genuine difficulties, but said these did not justify allowing weaknesses to persist, “particularly when they result in someone who was not a prisoner of war becoming a benefit recipient”.

He also suggested that the sensitivity of the issue may have discouraged officials from revisiting records, possibly in the expectation that time would eventually resolve the problem.

“This, however, is unacceptable,” he said, adding that the possibility of deliberate errors could not be excluded.

By contrast, the audit found no procedural problems in 65 cases involving care allowances administered through the WBAS, where prisoner-of-war status was verified through Cyprus Red Cross certificates.

The Audit Office recommended a comprehensive reassessment of beneficiaries, corrections and systematic updates to the defence ministry’s register, improved verification procedures and closer coordination between authorities.

Where eligibility cannot be established after examining all available reliable evidence, the report calls for appropriate administrative measures.

It concluded that no single, complete and verifiable database currently exists on which all responsible authorities can reliably depend when determining eligibility and authorising payments.

• Charles Lamanna, head of Copilot, Agents, and Platform, just took over Office and Teams.
• Teams within his new combined unit have adopted flatter structures amid the rise of AI agents.
• He's also enforced a stricter RTO for senior staff, and offered employees relocation to major hubs.

Microsoft's head of the Copilot platform, AI agents, and now Office is making good on his promise to reshape how his teams work.

"The most important thing my team will do this year won't be any single product or feature we ship: instead, it will be changing how we work," Charles Lamanna, the new boss of this key Microsoft unit, wrote in August.

Lamanna has started requiring senior staff to work in offices four days a week, and he's offering relocation to major hubs, according to people familiar with the changes. Teams within his organization have also reorganized to a flatter structure removing middle managers in line with Lamanna's views about how agentic AI is changing engineering.

"We're rethinking where managerial layers are critical and where flatter structures can enable faster decision-making, clearer ownership and greater autonomy," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

The moves offer an early look at how Microsoft is reworking its software empire for the AI age. Lamanna, who already oversees the company's Copilot and AI agent platforms, now controls the Office productivity software and Teams workplace chat service that are used by millions of workers.

Lamanna took over those groups earlier in October when the previous boss, Ryan Roslansky, announced plans to leave at the end of the year. Roslansky was seen as a successor to Microsoft veteran Rajesh Jha, who retired in July. Roslansky and Lamanna were two of the three executives who made up the new Copilot leadership team.

The changes come as CEO Satya Nadella reshapes the company around AI. Microsoft has been consolidating responsibility for its AI products, and a wave of senior executive departures has made way for a new generation of leaders.

"Span of control"

Lamanna's expanding responsibilities make him a key player in this leadership transition, giving him oversight of Microsoft's flagship workplace software and the AI tools that could change how customers use its products.

Recently, the Teams unit now under Lamanna reorganized by increasing the "span of control" for managers in engineering, according to two of the people familiar with the changes.

This refers to the number of employees who report to each manager, and it's become common for tech companies to flatten engineering organizations like this in the AI era, as coding tools and agents write more software.

The reorganization included converting managers to individual contributors, the people said. The idea is that agentic coding capabilities mean Microsoft needs fewer managers, according to one of the people. The team will now have a ratio of one manager per 12 individual contributors.

"Agentic coding capabilities have changed every level of the engineering function," Microsoft's spokesperson said. "Software engineers are no longer hand-assembling every line of code. Instead, they are now designing and directing the 'agentic coding machine' that helps build the product."

As AI makes it easier to build software, skills like making sound technical decisions, designing systems, ensuring quality and security, and understanding customer needs become more valuable.

"At the same time, some tasks that traditionally required managerial coordination, such as managing handoffs and orchestrating work across teams, become less central," the spokesperson said.

Other teams have implemented similar restructuring, the spokesperson confirmed.

RTO and relocation

Lamanna has also started reshaping where employees work. Last week, Lamanna's Copilot, Agents, and Platform (CAP) organization offered select US employees the option to relocate to offices at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington headquarters, San Francisco, or New York, according to three people familiar with the plans.

The people who spoke with Business Insider for this story asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

Lamanna has also asked employees at the "partner" level and above — some of Microsoft's most senior staff — to start working in physical offices at least four days a week. The companywide standard is three days a week.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at astewart@businessinsider.com or Signal at +1-425-344-8242. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Commanders suspected of sexual violence during the largest and fastest slaughter of civilians in more than 30 years have been subjected to travel ban and asset freeze

Senior Sudanese commanders implicated in a “campaign of rape” have been targeted by the UK on the first anniversary of a mass atrocity that saw tens of thousands of civilians killed over several days.

A year after the fall of El Fasher, the British government said it had sanctioned military leaders from both sides in the country’s ongoing conflict whom it suspected of sexual violence during the siege of the city.

Calculations from the Center for Global Development say spending next year is likely to be £410m less than anticipated

The UK is on course to miss its target of spending 0.3% of national income on international aid by an estimated £400m by the end of next year.

Calculations from the Center for Global Development (CGD) found the UK was on course for a large shortfall in promised official development assistance at the end of 2027.

• The Elizabeth Holmes documentary "You Can See Everything" earned $15.6 million in its debut weekend.
• That makes it the second-highest-grossing traditional docufilm opening weekend of all time.
• Business Insider compiled the 25 biggest documentary opening weekends using Box Office Mojo data.

Something unusual is happening right now: a documentary is drawing crowds to theaters at a level rarely seen for the genre.

The Elizabeth Holmes documentary "You Can See Everything," directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, grossed $15.6 million in the US and Canada during its opening weekend in October.

That makes it the second-biggest theatrical docufilm debut ever, behind director Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which saw a nearly $24 million opening in 2004. "You Can See Everything" was filmed in the month before Holmes reported to prison in May 2023 after she was convicted of defrauding investors in connection with her now-defunct blood-testing company, Theranos.

Theatrical documentary premieres have become rarer since the streaming era began, as the genre has found a major audience on streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. Besides the new Holmes docufilm, only two others on the list were from this decade: "Melania" debuted to $7.1 million in January 2026, and "After Death," a documentary about near-death experiences, opened to $5 million in 2023.

Still, theatrical docufilms were once a cultural force, especially in the 2000s and 2010s, when a wave of nature-, political-, and celebrity-focused ones premiered in theaters to much fanfare.

Here are the 25 highest-grossing traditional documentary film openings at the box office, using data from Box Office Mojo. Several hit concert docufilms, like "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" and "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never," earned more but were omitted from this list to focus on traditional nonfiction documentaries.

25. Whitney (2018)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $1,265,572

Directed by Kevin Macdonald, "Whitney" chronicles the life and career of singer Whitney Houston.

The documentary uses archival footage and interviews with people close to Houston to explore her rise to fame, personal struggles, and her death in 2012.

24. Imagine: John Lennon (1988)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $1,412,213

The documentary, directed by Andrew Solt, looks back on John Lennon’s life and career through archival footage, home movies, interviews, and recordings.

It covers Lennon's time with the Beatles, his solo work, and his relationship with Yoko Ono.

23. That's Dancing! (1985)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $1,506,802

Directed by Jack Haley Jr., "That's Dancing!" chronicles how dance evolved in Hollywood films through clips from musicals.

It features performances by Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, and more.

22. Rize (2005)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $1,574,787

David LaChapelle directed the documentary that focuses on the different dance styles across Los Angeles, including krumping and clowning.

It follows dancers who use dance as an outlet in South Central LA.

21. Babies (2010)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $2,160,460

Directed by Thomas Balmès, the documentary follows four infants from birth through their first year in Namibia, Mongolia, Japan, and the US.

20. Penguins (2019)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $2,282,593

Directed by Alastair Fothergill and Jeff Wilson, the Disneynature documentary, narrated by Ed Helms, follows a penguin as he searches for a partner and starts a family in Antarctica.

19. The Real Cancun (2003)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $2,300,000

"The Real Cancun" follows 16 American college students on spring break in Mexico.

The documentary captures the students as they party, hook up, argue, and more during a 10-day stay in Cancún's Hotel Zone.

18. Death of a Nation (2018)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $2,356,522

Conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza co-directed "Death of a Nation" with Bruce Schooley.

The documentary uses reenactments and interviews to argue that Donald Trump is comparable to Abraham Lincoln and that the Democratic Party has historical ties to racism and fascism.

17. Meet the Mormons (2014)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $2,509,808

Produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the documentary follows six church members around the world, including the US, Costa Rica, and Nepal, to depict their daily lives and beliefs.

16. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $2,970,848

Directed by Nathan Frankowski, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" challenges the teaching of evolution and includes interviews with scientists, writers, and religious figures.

15. Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $3,008,563

Director Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 11/9," a follow-up to his 2004 documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," examines the political climate surrounding Donald Trump's election and presidency.

The documentary ranges from the Flint water crisis to the Parkland school shooting and criticism of Democratic leaders.

14. Religulous (2008)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $3,409,643

Comedian Bill Maher travels the world questioning believers, clergy members, and religious institutions in "Religulous," directed by Larry Charles.

The documentary takes a comedic and confrontational look at Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other religions.

13. Terror in the Aisles (1984)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $4,009,866

Directed by Andrew J. Kuehn, "Terror in the Aisles" dives into the history of horror cinema.

Actors Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen introduce clips from films including "Psycho," "The Exorcist," "Halloween," and "The Shining," while discussing why audiences enjoy being scared.

12. Monkey Kingdom (2015)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $4,577,861

"Monkey Kingdom" follows Maya, a toque macaque, as she raises her son within the Sri Lankan jungle.

Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill directed the Disneynature documentary, narrated by Tina Fey.

11. Tupac: Resurrection (2003)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $4,632,847

Director Lauren Lazin's documentary examines the life of Tupac Shakur through archive footage, home videos, interviews, and Shakur's own voice recordings.

The documentary lets Shakur's recordings guide the audience through his childhood, music career, activism, legal troubles, and his death in 1996.

10. Bears (2014)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $4,776,267

"Bears" follows a brown bear mother as she emerges from hibernation in Alaska with her two cubs.

Directed by Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey and narrated by John C. Reilly, the Disneynature documentary tracks the family's search for food and protection as they face wolves, rival bears, and the wilderness.

9. Born in China (2017)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $4,790,367

Director Lu Chuan takes viewers across China's mountains and forests in "Born in China," a Disneynature documentary narrated by John Krasinski.

It follows a giant panda mother and cub, a golden snub-nosed monkey family, and a snow leopard raising her young in the highlands.

8. After Death (2023)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $5,051,950

"After Death" interviews people who say they had near-death experiences and returned to life.

The documentary, co-directed by Stephen Gray and Chris Radtke, also includes interviews with doctors, scientists, and others about consciousness, death, and the possibility of an afterlife.

7. African Cats (2011)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $6,003,200

Set in Kenya, the Disneynature documentary, directed by Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey, focuses on a family of lions and a cheetah raising her cubs.

It was nominated for documentary awards by the Environmental Media Awards and the Phoenix Film Critics Society.

6. Oceans (2010)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $6,058,958

"Oceans," directed by Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, is a portrait of marine life around the world.

The documentary is largely filmed underwater, showcasing whales, sharks, schools of fish, and more.

5. Melania (2026)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $7,161,605

Directed by Brett Ratner, "Melania" follows first lady Melania Trump during the 20 days before Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration in January 2025.

The film offers behind-the-scenes footage of her preparations to return to the White House, including meetings, travel, and intimate moments among family members.

4. Earth (2009)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $8,825,760

Disneynature directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield directed "Earth," which follows polar bears, elephants, and humpback whales across the different seasons.

The documentary was the first release from Disneynature in the US and was among the highest-grossing nature documentaries at the time.

3. Chimpanzee (2012)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $10,673,748

"Chimpanzee" centers on a young chimp living in the forests of Ivory Coast who is orphaned after a rival troop attacks his group.

The Disneynature documentary was directed by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, with Tim Allen as the narrator.

2. You Can See Everything (2026)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $15,601,418

Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the documentary offers a revealing portrait of Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted of fraud and conspiracy connected to her fallen company, Theranos.

Holmes allowed the directors into her life during the 34 days before she reported to federal prison to serve an 11-year sentence. It's receiving wide critical acclaim and sparking online debate about its portrayal of Holmes.

1. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

Opening weekend domestic gross: $23,920,637

Director Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" takes a close look at President George W. Bush, the September 11 attacks, the war in Iraq, and the connections between American political and business leaders.

The documentary won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and became the highest-grossing traditional documentary in US box-office history.