Up to 3,000 children born to foreign nationals like Shamima Begum may be at risk in Syria
In a place the British government says remains too difficult for diplomats to reach, scores of its officials have been present for at least the past two years.
MI6 officers, as well as SAS troopers and commanders have formed strong ties with local Kurdish officials in north-eastern Syria, where two refugee camps teeming with the remnants of Islamic State (Isis) are located.
Continue reading...Men went missing almost a fortnight ago while ascending mountain in Pakistan
The bodies of Tom Ballard and Daniele Nardi, the British and Italian climbers who went missing a fortnight ago, have been found on the mountain Nanga Parbat in Pakistan.
Italy’s ambassador to Pakistan, Stefano Pontecorvo, said on Saturday that the search team had confirmed that silhouettes spotted on the mountain “through telescope and pics beyond reasonable doubt” were the bodies of the two men.
Continue reading...Sajid Javid accused of appeasing populists by ordering UK citizenship to be revoked
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has come under fire for his decision to revoke the British citizenship of Shamima Begum, whose baby son has died in a Syrian refugee camp.
Begum, 19, left the UK in 2015 with two school friends to join Islamic State in Syria and said last month she wanted to return home. But Javid insisted he would do all in his power to prevent her coming back and ordered her citizenship to be revoked.
Continue reading...Rail Delivery Group says lessons have been learned following last summer’s chaotic timetable overhaul
Passengers face “teething problems” on the rail network when new timetables are introduced in May, the organisation that represents the industry has warned. However, the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) said that the introduction of more than 1,000 extra services will help to tackle overcrowding.
Last May there was chaos when Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) – the parent company of Southern Rail, Gatwick Express, Thameslink and Great Northern – and Northern overhauled their timetables with the aim of laying on hundreds of extra trains a day.
Continue reading...Three-week-old infant is the third child the teenager from east London has lost
The newborn son of Shamima Begum has died in a Syrian refugee camp. The baby boy, named Jarrah, was buried on Friday, three weeks after the east London teenager turned Islamic State devotee gave birth.
A Kurdish intelligence official said the infant had been taken to hospital in al-Roj camp in north-eastern Syria with breathing difficulties several times in the past week. A friend of Begum said “the baby turned blue and was cold” before being rushed to a clinic inside the camp. Jarrah is understood to have been buried along with two other children who were burned in a fire on Thursday night.
Continue reading...Prime minister rebuffed as she pleads for last-ditch EU concessions before MPs vote
Theresa May appears set for a second humiliating defeat when she brings her Brexit deal back to parliament next week, after the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, rebuffed her pleas for last-minute concessions.
The prime minister urged MPs to “get it done” and back her deal, in an impassioned speech at a dockside warehouse in the leave-voting town of Grimsby.
Continue reading...Concorde, whose maiden flight was 50 years ago this month, was the world’s first supersonic passenger plane. Its was taken out of service in 2003, but its delta-wing design and drooping nose cone still make it instantly recognisable even to people who have never seen one in person
Continue reading...On Saturday 6 March 1971, women from across the UK gathered in central London to join the first national demonstration by the newly formed Women’s Liberation Movement. Observer photographers Jane Bown and Tony McGrath documented the event for the following day’s paper.
Continue reading...‘Fragmented’ system inadequate to prevent influx of dirty money, says Treasury committee
Hundreds of billions of pounds could be being laundered through the UK every year, but the government is unable to give a precise figure of the scale of the problem, MPs have found.
In a report on economic crime, the Treasury committee said the scale of the problem in the UK was very uncertain, with estimates ranging from tens of billions of pounds upwards.
Continue reading...Man, 44, reportedly undergoes emergency operation after attack with ‘large blade’
A Manchester United fan is being treated in hospital in France for a stabbing injury shortly after the English side knocked Paris Saint-Germain out of the Champions League on Wednesday evening.
The Foreign Office said it was in touch with the French authorities over the incident, with reports suggesting the man is undergoing emergency surgery.
Continue reading...Peter Chesney says those who carry knives ‘are going to ruin their lives, and others’ lives’
The father of murdered 17-year-old Jodie Chesney has pleaded for justice for his daughter and urged people who carry knives to think before ruining people’s lives.
Jodie was with friends in a park in Romford, east London, on Friday evening when she was approached by two men and stabbed in the back without a word being exchanged.
Continue reading...Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen
Amber Rudd has apologised. According to the Press Association, she said she was “mortified at my clumsy language” and has apologised for describing Diane Abbott as “coloured”. (See 2.42pm.)
Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, has referred to Diane Abbott as “coloured”. As Patrick Maguire reports at the Staggers, she used the term in an interview with Jeremy Vine on Radio 2. Speaking about the abuse directed at MPs (see 1.12pm), Rudd said:
It definitely is worse if you’re a woman, and it’s worst of all if you’re a coloured woman. I know that Diane Abbott gets a huge amount of abuse, and I think that’s something we need to continue to call out.
Continue reading...Attorney general’s claims met with incredulity as talks to break Brexit deadlock stall
Geoffrey Cox is facing a backlash in Brussels and Dublin after claiming the Irish backstop posed a risk to the human rights of people in Northern Ireland.
In the latest round of negotiations in Brussels, the attorney general told Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, the arrangement could potentially breach the European convention on human rights (EHCR).
Continue reading...RAF says 4,315 Isis fighters were killed or injured in airstrikes and just one civilian
The Ministry of Defence claim that the RAF killed only one civilian in thousands of airstrikes against Isis has been dismissed as ludicrous and “stretching credibility”.
According figures released by the MoD following a freedom of information request by the charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), the RAF strikes between 2014 and January this year killed or injured 4,315 of the group’s fighters. It said 90% of those were killed.
Continue reading...Monarch posted image of 1843 Charles Babbage letter to Prince Albert during Science Museum visit on Thursday
The Queen has proved she is in touch with the touch screen by sharing her first Instagram post in the latest personal technological milestone of her lengthy reign.
The 92-year-old monarch shared an archive image to the 4.6 million followers of @theRoyalFamily’s Instagram account during a visit to the Science Museum to formally open the new Smith Centre and summer exhibition, Top Secret.
Continue reading...Young people taken to UK are exploited in transit through Europe as governments ‘pass the buck’ on protection
Thousands of children trafficked from Vietnam to the UK are being abused and exploited in transit through Europe because governments are “passing the buck” on their protection, research has found.
Victims are typically trafficked through eight countries before arriving in the UK, and at each point are vulnerable to labour and sexual exploitation. Yet governments routinely view Vietnamese children as the responsibility of other states, according to a report published on Thursday by Anti-Slavery International, the Pacific Links Foundation and Every Child Protected Against Trafficking UK (Ecpat UK).
Continue reading...‘Extremely frustrating and disheartening’: investigation held up by public inquiry
Survivors and the bereaved from the Grenfell Tower fire have expressed their “extreme frustration” at the pace of justice after Scotland Yard admitted no charges were likely for at least two years.
Detectives investigating the possibility of manslaughter and corporate manslaughter offences said their investigation must take into account the public inquiry into the disaster, the second phase of which will not start until the end of this year. Inquiry lawyers have been swamped with 476,000 separate documents.
Continue reading...Contamination found across UK lakes and rivers, in US groundwater, along the Yantze river and Spanish coast, and harbouring dangerous bacteria in Singapore
Microplastic pollution spans the world, according to new studies showing contamination in the UK’s lake and rivers, in groundwater in the US and along the Yangtze river in China and the coast of Spain.
Related: Rivers of waste: Pakistan's recyclers go out on patrol – in pictures
Continue reading...Brexit interventions have made British PM one of western Europe’s most populist orators
Theresa May has a reputation as a cautious and even robotic speaker. But a study that analysed speeches by world leaders has found that the British prime minister can be as populist – in her rhetoric at least – as Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
May’s public speeches were classified on average as at least “somewhat populist” in the research, which examined the discourse of prime ministers and presidents of all the major countries in Europe and the Americas in the last two decades. That made May the second-most populist female leader out of 138 heads of government since the turn of the century.
Continue reading...Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs
- The government are defeated on Labour’s amendment 13 in the House of Lords. The amendment makes it an “objective” of the government during negotiations to pursue a free trade deal allowing the UK to stay “in a customs union” with the EU after Brexit.
- The government was defeated on amendment 12 which called for parliamentary approval of future trade agreements.
Prince Charles has saluted the ”unparalleled bonds” between Britain and Ireland at a time of strained Anglo-Irish relations caused by Brexit.
The Prince of Wales was attending a special St Patrick’s Day dinner at the Irish embassy in London where British and Irish politicians mingled amid continuing uncertainty and recriminations over the Irish border issue in the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
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