Neighbour records shouting and banging at flat potential PM shares with Carrie Symonds
Police were called to the home of Boris Johnson and his partner, Carrie Symonds, in the early hours of Friday morning after neighbours heard a loud altercation involving screaming, shouting and banging.
The argument could be heard outside the property where the potential future prime minister is living with Symonds, a former Conservative party head of press.
Continue reading...Lisa Skidmore, 37, was raped and killed by sex offender Leroy Campbell in 2016
A nurse who was strangled, raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender was failed by police and probation services, an inquest has concluded.
Lisa Skidmore’s killer was under the supervision of the National Probation Service at the time of the attack at her home in Wolverhampton in November 2016.
Continue reading...Leaked letter from EU shows UK promised to act after polling mistakes in 2014
Problems that denied EU citizens their vote in last month’s European elections were evident five years ago, according to a leaked letter from the European commission.
Many EU nationals were unable to vote in the European elections on 23 May, through a series of bureaucratic muddles and mistakes that experts decried as a fiasco that a democracy should not tolerate.
Continue reading...Janet Barker recounts assault by suspended MP and says it will not stop her activism
Bruised and still shaken, Janet Barker is incredulous at the violent reaction of the Foreign Office minister Mark Field to her peaceful protest with fellow Greenpeace activists at the chancellor’s Mansion House speech.
However, she has no plans to press criminal charges over the physical assault. “I think it is something best dealt with in the court of opinion,” she said, while welcoming his suspension as a minister.
Continue reading...Bank of England governor says UK would be hit automatically by tariffs on exports to EU
The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, has said that the UK would be hit automatically by tariffs on exports to the EU in a no-deal Brexit, rejecting a claim made by Boris Johnson that this could be avoided.
Tory leadership candidate Johnson said this week that tariffs would not necessarily have to be paid if the UK left the EU without a deal because the UK could rely on article 24 of the general agreement on tariffs and trade (Gatt).
Continue reading...People across the UK have welcomed the summer solstice, the first day of summer. Stonehenge and Avebury stone circles were among the venues for celebrations marking the northern hemisphere’s longest day of the year
Continue reading...Video shows Foreign Office minister manhandling female demonstrator
The Conservatives have been plunged into controversy after a video showed a minister grab and manhandle a protester who disrupted the chancellor’s Mansion House speech.
Police began looking into the incident on Thursday night after footage seemed to show Mark Field pushing the female Greenpeace activist against a pillar and grabbing her neck. There were calls for Field to lose his position as a Foreign Office minister. In a statement, he apologised to the woman and said he would refer himself to the Cabinet Office over the incident.
Continue reading...Survey says teachers feel ill-equipped to educate pupils, as school strikes continue
A growing number of teachers want their pupils to learn more about the climate crisis and are calling for environmental training so they can prepare children for a rapidly changing world, according to a poll.
The findings from YouGov research commissioned by Oxfam come before the latest round of school climate strikes on Friday, in which it is expected that hundreds of thousands of young people will walk out of classrooms around the world.
Continue reading...The threat of war with Iran is terrifying and the behaviour of the US government risks making the danger real. Its categoric claim that Iran was responsible for last week’s attacks on the two tankers in the Straits of Hormuz has been challenged by the Japanese and the German governments. It has served only to make a dangerous situation more serious.
The context to this is Donald Trump’s scrapping of the nuclear deal with Iran last year, which blocked the way to normalising relations and immediately escalated tension. The accompanying sanctions have caused real economic damage and human suffering. In May the Trump administration turned the screw tighter by dropping exemptions for oil exports. These measures are part of the policy of regime change advocated by John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s two senior foreign policy officials, both of whom have called for military attacks on Iran.
Continue reading...Tory members now get chance to decide between two as Michael Gove is eliminated
Jeremy Hunt will go head to head with Boris Johnson in the race to be Britain’s next prime minister, after beating Michael Gove by just two votes in the fifth and final round of voting by Conservative MPs.
Johnson won 160 votes against 77 for Hunt and 75 for Gove. Johnson and Hunt’s names will now go forward to the Tory membership of around 140,000 – with Johnson the overwhelming favourite to take possession of the keys to 10 Downing Street next month.
Continue reading...Appeal for witnesses as murder investigation launched after suspected arson attack in Wanstead
A murder investigation has been launched after a tent was set alight in a suspected arson attack in east London.
Two men, who are both believed to be in their 40s, were taken to hospital with burn injuries after firefighters were called to the North Circular Road in Wanstead, east London, late on Tuesday night.
Continue reading...Company’s own upbeat figures thrown into doubt by business analytics firm Mixpanel
Facebook usage has plummeted over the last year, even as the company continues to insist that its use has stayed stable or even grown in the same period, according to data seen by the Guardian.
Since April 2018, the first full month after the news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in the Observer, actions on Facebook such as likes, shares and posts have dropped by almost 20%, according to the business analytics firm Mixpanel.
Continue reading...Zuzana Čaputová’s arrival in Prague comes as activists plan fresh protests against rightwing Czech government
Slovakia’s newly installed liberal president, Zuzana Čaputová, has arrived in the Czech Republic on an official visit that will culminate in a symbolic visit to the grave of Václav Havel, the former dissident who was the first post-communist leader of the former Czechoslovakia.
Čaputová lay flowers at the Havel family plot in Prague’s Vinohrady cemetery in a mark of respect to a man she has identified as a role model and a statement of her own self-avowed values of tolerance and decency. Havel led the protests that resulted in the fall of the communist regime in the 1989 Velvet Revolution.
Continue reading...Ruling prompts government to suspend new arms sales to Saudi Arabia while it urgently reviews its processes
British arms sales to Saudi Arabia have been declared unlawful by the court of appeal because ministers failed to properly assess their contribution to civilian casualties in indiscriminate bombing in Yemen.
The unexpected ruling has prompted the British government to suspend new arms sales to Saudi Arabia while it urgently reviews its processes – although Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, has said the government would also seek to appeal.
Continue reading...Jawahir Roble’s love of football was forged on the streets of wartorn Mogadishu. Now she is training and inspiring young female footballers in the UK
On a sunny afternoon, a group of mothers in hijabs sit on the bench of a football pitch, watching their daughters play football at the Stonebridge recreation ground in north-west London.
As World Cup fever grips the UK, the girls’ enthusiasm for the training session is matched by their obvious adoration of their coach and referee, Jawahir Roble, known as JJ to her friends.
Continue reading...Report outlines the war’s impact on civilians as well as fighters as the researchers call for resolution to conflict
As the court of appeal prepares to rule on the legitimacy of the British government’s continued supply of weapons to the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, new figures show the conflict’s total death toll is fast approaching the 100,000 mark.
With no clear resolution in sight, the extent of civilian casualties caused by direct targeting has also been outlined in a report by the the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (Acled) as the war with Houthi rebels enters its fifth year.
Continue reading...MPs suggest Johnson backers lent previous votes to Stewart to eliminate Brexiter rival Raab
Rory Stewart has been ousted from the Conservative leadership contest after losing 10 votes since the last round, sparking MPs’ speculation that Boris Johnson’s operatives may have previously pushed fellow supporters to vote for the outsider to help eliminate his Brexiter rival Dominic Raab.
Related: Rory Stewart knocked out of Tory leadership contest in third round - live news
Continue reading...Police investigating death of player in plane crash arrest man aged 64 from Yorkshire
Detectives investigating the death of the Cardiff City footballer Emiliano Sala have arrested a 64-year-old man from North Yorkshire on suspicion of manslaughter by an unlawful act, Dorset police have said.
The Argentinian forward, who had signed for the Welsh club, died in a plane crash in January.
Continue reading...Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including the third round of voting in the Tory leadership contest and Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs
The SNP’s Neil Gray say in-work poverty has risen dramatically. Isn’t that May’s legacy?
May says the relative poverty has gone up because pensioners are better off. Gray may want to see pensioners worse off, but she doesn’t.
Julian Lewis, a Conservative, asks what May feels about the principle of bringing a dying soldier to court in Northern Ireland on the basis of no new evidence.
May says no one wants to see cases like this coming to court. But previous investigations have not been found to be lawful. She says she wants to see terrorist being properly brought to justice.
Continue reading...British resident Nina Saleh unable to return home with adopted baby after being refused visa three times
A Norwegian woman who has lived in Britain for 20 years says she has been left stranded in Pakistan after travelling there to adopt a baby.
The UK Home Office has refused Nina Saleh a visa to return home with baby Sofia three times, despite Saleh going through a stringent and lengthy adoption process in the UK with British authorities’ involvement.
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