Social media site announces action following criticism from British teenager’s father
Instagram has announced it will ban all graphic self-harm images from its platform after the father of British teenager Molly Russell said it was partly to blame for her death.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said “no graphic self-harm image” would in future be allowed on the platform.
Continue reading...Former South African president’s letters to family and Robben Island sleeping mat form part of exhibition
On 1 June 1970, Nelson Mandela wrote a letter to his young daughters Zeni and Zindzi from his prison cell on Robben Island. “My darlings,” he wrote. “It is more than eight years since I last saw you …”
The girls’ mother Winnie had also been imprisoned the previous year, and their father had no idea, he wrote, who was looking after them in the school holidays, who fed them, bought them clothing or paid their school fees. He had written two letters to the pre-teenage girls the previous year, he told them, but had learned neither had reached them.
Continue reading...Andy Nisbet named as one of two men killed on most northerly munro in Scotland
Andy Nisbet, one of Scotland’s most revered mountaineers, has been named as one of the two men who died during a climb on Ben Hope in Sutherland earlier this week.
Leading Scottish climbers paid tribute to Nisbet, 65, and his climbing partner Steve Perry, 47, after police confirmed rescue teams had recovered both men’s bodies from the snow and ice-covered mountain, the most northerly munro (a mountain with a height of more than 3,000ft) in Scotland.
Continue reading...No 10 and EU announce new negotiations on the ‘speed’ of post-Brexit trade talks
Theresa May clashed with Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk during Brexit talks in Brussels but has secured agreement for a fresh round of formal negotiations to break the impasse.
A meeting with the European commission president was described as “robust”, with Juncker resolutely rebuffing May’s demand for a renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement.
Continue reading...Joint committee on human rights says people should be held for no longer than 28 days
Indefinite detention in immigration centres is traumatic and the practice should be stopped, with people ideally held for no longer than 28 days, a parliamentary committee has recommended.
In a highly critical report, the joint committee on human rights (JCHR), made up of MPs and peers, described the UK’s immigration system as “slow, unfair and expensive to run”, and said detention should be authorised only by decision-makers independent of the Home Office.
Continue reading...Chinese and Hongkonger university applicants now outnumber those from Wales
Record numbers of students from China and Hong Kong are applying for places at British universities, overtaking the number of applicants from Wales, according to official figures.
Data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) shows a spike in demand for undergraduate places from mainland China and a small rise in applications from the EU, despite fears over Brexit.
Continue reading...Authorities yet to confirm if remains are those of missing footballer or pilot David Ibbotson
A body has been recovered from the wreckage of the plane that crashed in the Channel with footballer Emiliano Sala and pilot David Ibbotson on board, three days after the aircraft was found.
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has not said whether the body is that of the Argentinian striker or that of the pilot, following their disappearance on 21 January.
Continue reading...Letter offers Labour’s support if PM makes five binding commitments – including joining a customs union
Jeremy Corbyn has written to the prime minister, offering to throw Labour’s support behind her Brexit deal if she makes five legally binding commitments – including joining a customs union.
The Labour leader held private talks with Theresa May last week for the first time since her deal was rejected by a historic margin of 230 votes in January.
Continue reading...Campaigners raise concerns about ‘ad hoc reprieves’ as 29 offenders are deported
Last-minute legal interventions have led to a number of detainees being removed from a deportation flight to Jamaica, but the Home Office said 29 others were onboard the chartered plane.
More than 50 foreign national offenders who were being held in detention centres were reported to be due to be placed on the flight. But many of them were able to have their removal cancelled after their lawyers took action.
Continue reading...Donald Tusk should be criticised not for his malice, but his moderation. The European council president triggered a tsunami of confected outrage from leavers today when he observed, with some justice, that there should be a special place in hell for those who promoted Brexit without a plan. But he should have said far more. He should have added that, within that special place, there should be an executive suite of sleepless torment for those politicians who promoted Brexit without ever giving a stuff about Ireland.
Related: Dear Theresa May, your Brexit plan is doomed. Here’s a deal that will work | Gina Miller
Continue reading...Keith Williams criticises micromanaging by government as one of the failings driving passengers away
Britain’s rail industry will “drive passengers away” if it continues to operate as it does now, according to the man leading the government-commissioned review into the working of the railways.
Keith Williams, the former British Airways chief executive, also suggested that the government had compounded problems by “micromanaging the industry” through ever more specific rail franchises.
Continue reading...Brexiters fear PM’s Belfast speech steps back from previous assurances
Theresa May fired a warning shot at Brexit supporters on Tuesday, insisting there was “no suggestion” Britain would leave the EU without an insurance provision to protect against a hard border in Northern Ireland.
At a speech in Belfast, May would only accept that technology could “play a part” in any alternative arrangements and that she would not countenance anything that would disrupt the lives of border communities.
Continue reading...Two adults and another child treated in hospital with non-life-threatening injuries
Four children have died in a house fire in Stafford, police said.
A Staffordshire police spokesman said officers from police, fire and ambulance services attended a fire in the Highfields area at 2.40am on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Warnings on coercion and blackmailing over smartphones went unheeded, say experts, as child exploitation spirals
A failure to grasp how technology and social media is being used to coerce, control, blackmail and track the movements of children as young as 11 by “county lines” drug gangs has seen an epidemic of child criminal exploitation spiral out of control in the UK.
“For the past seven or eight years we have been warning the government, the authorities, teachers, anyone who would listen, that technology is the central organising feature of the county lines business model,” said Sheldon Thomas, a consultant on gang behaviour through his organisation Gangsline.
Continue reading...Prime minister’s speech in Belfast to underscore pledge to avoid hard border
Theresa May will attempt to reassure businesses and Northern Irish politicians by insisting during a visit to Belfast that she can find a way to deliver a Brexit deal MPs can support.
The prime minister is due to chair a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning before departing for a two-day visit to Northern Ireland to underscore her commitment to avoiding a hard border with Ireland.
Continue reading...Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen
Turning back to Marin Selmayr for a moment, Mina Andreeva, the European commission’s deputy chief spokeswoman has posted a tweet that seems intended to mollify Brexiters upset by the tone of his intervention earlier. She was responding to Fraser Nelson, editor of the pro-Brexit Spectator.
For the sake of completeness:
1/ @MartinSelmayr made clear that @MichelBarnier is @EU_Commission’s chief negotiator. https://t.co/AILUEJwCit
2/ @EU_Commission always open to listen - in full respect of national parliaments. Our position is expressed here: https://t.co/GKRKYR7pfM
Lord Trimble, the former Ulster Unionist party leader who won a Nobel peace prize for his role in the Good Friday agreement, has announced that he and others “are planning to take the government to court over the protocol on Northern Ireland - which includes the so-called “backstop” - as it breaches the terms of the Good Friday agreement.”
The announcement came in a three sentence press statement from Global Britain, a pro-Brexit thinktank. It said:
The Nobel peace prize winner and architect of the Good Friday agreement plans to initiate judicial review proceedings to ensure that the protocol is removed from the withdrawal agreement.
Lord Trimble says that alternative arrangements - as outlined in A Better Deal And A Better Future - should be put in place instead.
Continue reading...Artur Waszkiewicz is alleged to have mugged Zofija Kaczan in Derby last year, causing injuries that led to her death
A “vulnerable” 100-year-old woman was killed by a mugger who was so desperate for money that he needed an easy target to steal from, a court has heard.
Artur Waszkiewicz is alleged to have knocked Zofija Kaczan to the floor, robbed her green handbag and left her to bleed in the middle of the road as she made her way to church on 28 May last year.
Continue reading...Summons to spare Joseph Nembhard, 37, who came to UK from Caribbean as teenager
A man who came to the UK from the Caribbean as a teenager is set to be granted an 11th-hour reprieve from being placed on a deportation flight to Jamaica.
About 50 people are thought to have been booked on to Wednesday’s secretive charter flight, the first to Jamaica since the Home Office suspended the flights last April the Windrush scandal.
Continue reading...Actor speaks of ‘shame’ and ‘horror’ he feels over his actions many years ago
In a remarkable new interview, the actor Liam Neeson has claimed that he reacted to the rape of someone to whom he was close by loitering outside a pub for a week wanting to murder a black person.
Neeson, whose career for the past 15 years has been defined by a series of revenge thrillers, was speaking to promote the latest, Cold Pursuit, in which he plays a man avenging the murder of his son.
Continue reading...Cross-party group unable to tell EU official that MPs would back deal with added protocol
A suggestion by one of the EU’s most powerful officials of possible further legal assurances on the Irish backstop has failed to win over Brexiter MPs, leading to heightened talk of the UK leaving the bloc with no deal.
After a meeting with Martin Selmayr on Monday, the cross-party Brexit select committee emerged clear that the European commission secretary general had floated the possibility of a legally binding adjunct to the withdrawal agreement.
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