Khadija Shah gave birth to daughter Malaika, now 6, while serving a life sentence for smuggling heroin
A six-year-old girl who has spent her entire life inside a Pakistani prison after her British mother was convicted of drug trafficking has been released and returned to the UK.
Khadija Shah, 32, gave birth to her daughter Malaika while serving a life sentence inside the notorious Adiala prison in Rawalpindi, in the Punjab province.
Continue reading...Investigation reveals exodus of party’s moderates and influx of more extreme newcomers
A surge in Ukip membership is shifting the party decisively towards the far right, as long-standing moderates are replaced by entrants attracted by an anti-Islam agenda based on street protest, a Guardian investigation can reveal.
Membership has risen by about 50% over the 12 months from a low point a year ago, rapidly reshaping the party in the image of its leader, Gerard Batten, who describes Islam as “a death cult” and has appointed the anti-Muslim activist Tommy Robinson as an adviser.
Continue reading...Jodie Chesney was killed on Friday evening after stabbing in Harold Hill
A 17-year-old girl has been stabbed in east London, taking the death toll from homicides in the capital to 18 so far this year.
She was named by the Metropolitan police on Saturday night as Jodie Chesney.
Continue reading...As 29 March nears, fears rise over US demands for greater access to Britain’s supermarkets
Continue reading...British mountaineer and his climbing partner are missing on Nanga Parbat in Pakistan
The search for a British climber who went missing on the world’s ninth-highest mountain in Pakistan is facing further delays due to bad weather.
Tom Ballard, who is originally from Derbyshire but lives in Scotland, was reported missing on Nanga Parbat mountain in the western Himalayas earlier this week with his Italian climbing partner Daniele Nardi after losing contact last Sunday as they went above 6,300 metres. They had been climbing the 8,126 metre (26,660ft) peak, also known as Killer Mountain.
Continue reading...Facebook has targeted politicians around the world – including the former UK chancellor, George Osborne – promising investments and incentives while seeking to pressure them into lobbying on Facebook’s behalf against data privacy legislation, an explosive new leak of internal Facebook documents has revealed.
The documents, which have been seen by the Observer and Computer Weekly, reveal a secretive global lobbying operation targeting hundreds of legislators and regulators in an attempt to procure influence across the world, including in the UK, US, Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and all 28 states of the EU. The documents include details of how Facebook:
Continue reading...Critics say process Woody Johnson called ‘no-brainer’ is ‘harmful’ to nation’s health
The US ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, has come under fire from a leading food critic, a farming union and trade justice campaigners over his push to open up the UK to American farmers post-Brexit.
Jay Rayner, the BBC presenter, Observer columnist and MasterChef critic, said the UK should tell Johnson where he can stick chlorinated chicken, the US’s preferred approach for protecting consumers from pathogens such as salmonella and campylobacter.
Continue reading...The Welsh government has given Sophie Howe statutory powers to represent people who haven’t yet been born
Sophie Howe is a public servant with a particularly tricky constituency. The people she represents are remote and unresponsive and they never show up to voice an opinion or tell her if she’s doing a good job.
They don’t even vote. That’s because they haven’t yet been born. Howe is the world’s first – and only – future generations commissioner with statutory powers. She’s there to represent the unborn citizens of Wales.
Continue reading...EU negotiator frustrated at UK demands over Irish backstop but is considering adjunct to deal
Michel Barnier has told EU ambassadors that he is having to repeatedly rebut British demands for a time limit on the Irish backstop but that he is working on a legal add-on to the Brexit deal to help the prime minister.
During a meeting on Friday in Brussels, the EU’s chief negotiator expressed frustration with the British demands after the latest round of talks. “The UK side keeps on insisting on the same two things,” one EU diplomat said following Barnier’s briefing after the latest week of talks. “And we keep on explaining why it won’t happen.”
Continue reading...Passengers describe ‘huge bang’ followed by evacuation of Vienna-bound flight
Flights were temporarily suspended at Stansted airport after an aborted takeoff by a Vienna-bound plane on Friday evening.
A spokesman for the Essex airport said the incident had happened shortly after 8pm and that all passengers had been safely evacuated. The runway was reopened around three hours later.
Continue reading...Ceon Broughton imprisoned for eight and a half years for manslaughter of Louella Fletcher-Michie
A musician who supplied his girlfriend with a lethal dose of drugs and filmed her as she lay dying at a music festival has been jailed for eight and a half years.
Ceon Broughton, 30, gave Louella Fletcher-Michie, 24, the party drug 2C-P at Bestival in Dorset in September 2017. Jurors at Winchester crown court were shown footage in which Fletcher-Michie repeatedly shouts at Broughton to phone her mother but he dismisses her, telling her to “put your phone away”.
Continue reading...Transport secretary agrees deal with Eurotunnel, which was suing government
The government has settled a high court case over the Brexit ferry fiasco after reaching an agreement worth up to £33m with Eurotunnel, which was suing it following the award of a contract to a company with no ships.
The transport secretary, Chris Grayling, said in a statement: “The agreement with Eurotunnel secures the government’s additional freight capacity, helping ensure that the NHS has essential medicines in the event of a no-deal Brexit.”
Continue reading...Huge and hazardous military clean-up operation on 12 sites comes to an end
The city of Salisbury has been judged safe almost 12 months after the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned with the nerve agent novichok.
The former spy’s house and 11 other potentially infected sites will be officially ruled safe on Friday following a huge and hazardous clean-up.
Continue reading...Hearing ruled claims against Met officers over musician’s death in 2008 were unproven
Five Metropolitan police officers have been cleared of misconduct over the arrest and detention of the musician Sean Rigg, who died in custody in 2008.
PCs Andrew Birks, Richard Glasson, Matthew Forward, Mark Harratt and Sgt Paul White all faced disciplinary proceedings more than a decade after the 40-year-old died.
Continue reading...US sets out aims for post-Brexit trade deal amid fears about chicken and beef standards
The US has outlined its objectives for a post-Brexit trade deal with the UK, demanding greater access to the food markets where products such as chlorinated chicken or hormone-fed beef are currently banned under EU rules.
The US laid out its aims for a trade deal to cut tariff and non-tariff barriers for US industrial and agricultural goods and reduce regulatory differences.
Continue reading...Nineteen-year-old Briton and newborn son relocated due to ‘safety concerns’
Shamima Begum and her newborn baby have been moved from a Syrian refugee camp after threats were made against them, according to her family’s lawyer.
The 19-year-old and her son were moved from the Al-Hol camp in the north of the country due to “safety concerns around her and her baby”, Tasnime Akunjee said.
Continue reading...Chair of inquiry ‘deeply disturbed’ by allegations from young offender institutions
Children in custody are still not safe from sexual abuse after more than 1,000 attacks were alleged from 2009 to 2017, a statutory inquiry has found.
Prof Alexis Jay, the chairwoman of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, said on Thursday she was deeply disturbed by what the inquiry found as it published a report that described the scale of alleged abuse in young offender institutions (YOIs) and secure training centres (STCs) as “shockingly high”.
Continue reading...Prime minister in diplomatic push with King Abdullah II at major London conference
Britain launched an economic and diplomatic push to protect Jordan as an oasis of political stability in the Middle East by staging a major conference designed to rescue the debt-ridden country, and help its leader King Abdullah II, mainly by an injection of private sector investment.
The crowded London conference was attended by the Jordanian monarch the British prime minister, Theresa May, the bulk of the Jordanian cabinet, the US treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, and a host of economic experts.
Continue reading...America’s economy cooled last quarter, but not as much as feared, as consumer spending slowed
Earlier:
Kay Daniel Neufeld, managing economist at the CEBR thinktank, is relieved that America avoided an abrupt slowdown in the last quarter.
However, he also expects growth will be slower in 2019 - averaging 2.3% (again, below that 3% target).
Contrary to most other large economies, the US has bucked the trend and recorded faster GDP growth in 2018 than in the previous year. The weak retail sales recorded for December alarmed analysts fearing an abrupt slowdown to the US expansion in the final quarter of last year, but today’s stronger than expected GDP data suggest the December figures might have been a blip.
Nevertheless, there is little room for complacency. With the world economy slowing and the US –China trade conflict merely on hold, there are plenty of pitfalls to avoid if the US wants to achieve another stellar performance in 2019.”
The US has “proved the doubters wrong” by growing faster than expected in the last quarter of 2018, says James Knightley, ING’s chief international economist.
Here’s his take:
The details show a partial slowdown in consumer spending growth (2.8% versus 3.5% in 3Q18), but it continues to make a strong contribution. In fact, given the equity market turmoil at the time and the poor official retail sales figure for December, this isn’t a bad outcome at all.
Non-residential investment spending actually posted a decent performance, recording growth of 6.2% despite the concerns about what escalating trade tensions could mean in terms of supply chains and corporate profitability.
Continue reading...Hope expressed that fatal collision near Canberra will be ‘catalyst for change’
The death of a renowned British endurance cyclist who was hit by a car while competing in a 3,500-mile race across Australia was avoidable, a coroner has concluded.
Mike Hall, 35, died almost instantly when he was struck from behind by a vehicle on a stretch of the Monaro Highway about 25 miles south of Canberra on 31 March 2017.
Continue reading...