Category Archives: UK news

Toby Jones’s next campaign? Misinformation, and a huge immersive theatre show

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Meera Syal also to star in London production reflecting producer’s experience of censorship in Georgia

Hidden from view inside a south London warehouse, a new underground movement will be fighting the international blight of misinformation this summer.

The huge immersive event – half theatrical show, half social campaign – is to involve some of Britain’s leading acting talent, including Toby Jones and Meera Syal, and has been put together by a theatre company led by a woman who learned about misinformation the hard way, at the Georgian television station Imedi.

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UK police chiefs call for ban on social media for under-16s

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Four senior officers say more controls needed, amid claims platforms are ‘fuelling and enabling’ crime

Senior UK police officers have called for the government to ban children under 16 from social media, amid claims the platforms are “fuelling and enabling” crime.

In the most recent development in the moral panic that has gripped the media since Netflix’s Adolescence was released, four of the most senior policing figures in the country told the Times that further controls on social media platforms were necessary for public safety, national security and young people’s mental health.

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Did Trump’s tariffs kill economic populism?

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Lasting damage has been done not only to Trump’s political credibility but to globalisation as a system

At the beginning of this helter-skelter week, Downing Street was declaring globalisation not only dead but a failure. Now, only five trading days later, the autopsy is still under way but the victim may instead be economic populism, strangled by Wall Street, the citadel of globalisation. Donald Trump’s so-called liberation day may in fact have been the anti-globalist’s entombment day.

In an effort to deny even a tactical retreat, Trump’s aides insist the White House goal all along was not to weaken globalism, or even to protect the US economy with tariffs, but instead to get into a negotiation to lower tariffs around the world and to punish China. As cover stories go, it is hardly credible, partly because the tariffs were repeatedly lauded by Trump as a macroeconomic revenue-raising measure, or a means to bolster US manufacturing.

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Rageh Omaar returns to ITV’s News at Ten after illness on live programme

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International affairs editor was taken to hospital last year after appearing shaky and struggling to read news

The broadcaster Rageh Omaar has carried out his first foreign dispatch for ITV since he was taken to hospital last year after falling ill while presenting the News at Ten.

The ITV News international affairs editor, 57, featured in a prerecorded package on west Africa on ITV’s News at Ten on Friday evening.

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UK woman says she was arrested after confiscating her daughters’ iPads

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Vanessa Brown called police response in Cobham, Surrey, ‘a complete overreaction’ that left her ‘catatonic’

A history teacher has said she was arrested and blocked from seeing her daughters after she confiscated their iPads.

Vanessa Brown, 50, described her “unspeakable devastation and trauma” after spending seven-and-a-half hours in a cell on 26 March after a claim that she had stolen two iPads.

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Noel Clarke ‘precisely the man’ depicted in Guardian’s reporting, high court told

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Closing submission from Gavin Millar KC says actor’s legal team tried to portray an ‘elaborate conspiracy theory’

Noel Clarke has been shown to be “precisely the man” depicted in the Guardian’s articles accusing him of sexual misconduct, vindicating its journalism, the high court has heard.

In closing submissions in the former Doctor Who actor’s libel claim against Guardian News and Media (GNM), Gavin Millar KC said Clarke had been forced to come up with an “elaborate conspiracy theory” to try to rebut the “overwhelming evidence” against him.

Over 15 years, he used his power to prey on and harass female colleagues.

He sometimes bullied female colleagues.

He engaged in unwanted sexual contact, kissing, touching or groping.

He engaged in sexually inappropriate behaviour and comments.

He was involved in professional misconduct.

He took and shared explicit pictures and videos without consent, including secretly filming a young actor’s naked audition.

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Government scrambles to save British Steel as firm faces crisis within crisis

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Union leaders have welcomed moves towards public ownership but it is not an auspicious environment for nationalisation

Blast furnaces have been making steel in Britain for 300 years, ever since they helped start the Industrial Revolution. This weekend, parliament will sit for the first Saturday in decades as it tries to keep the last two furnaces running for a bit longer.

Keir Starmer has recalled MPs to discuss emergency powers to direct steel companies, including British Steel’s Scunthorpe steelworks, to “preserve capability and ensure public safety”. The move would be short of nationalisation, but it would give the government more influence on the steel industry than at any point since Margaret Thatcher.

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Homeland security apparently used British man’s tattoo to identify alleged gang members

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‘Average man from Derbyshire’ shocked to find photo of tattoo celebrating child’s birth was used to deport migrants

A British man was shocked to discover that a photo of his tattoo was included in a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document used to identify alleged members of a notorious Venezuelan criminal gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA).

Earlier this week, 44-year-old Pete Belton, who lives in the English county of Derbyshire, told the BBC that he was stunned to find a photo of his forearm tattoo featured in a DHS document among nine images of tattoos intended to assist in “detecting and identifying” TdA members.

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Labour MPs urge ministers to focus on rebuilding trading relationship with EU

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Call to prioritise reset with Europe comes after top adviser to Trump downplays prospect of US tariffs being reduced

Ministers should focus on rebuilding bridges with the EU, Labour politicians have said, after a senior adviser to Donald Trump downplayed the prospect of a breakthrough with the US.

MPs said the government should “prioritise our trading relationship with the EU” and “get a sugar rush of growth” instead of banking on the prospect of preferential treatment from Washington.

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GDP growth an ‘encouraging sign but we are not complacent’, says Reeves – UK politics live

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Chancellor says government ‘will remain pragmatic and cool-headed’ while seeking US trade deal

The care minister has defended the government’s cautious response to developments in global trade after the sweeping imposition of tariffs by the US administration in Washington.

Stephen Kinnock said “If we were to just jump in one direction or the other every time there’s a new development, we would be jumping around all over the place. I don’t think that that’s going to be in the interest of our economy or of our national security or of our business community.”

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UK economy far exceeds forecasts to grow 0.5% in boost to Rachel Reeves

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February GDP rise was bigger than forecast – but impact from Donald Trump’s tariff war is yet to come

The UK economy unexpectedly expanded by 0.5% in February, figures show, in a boost for the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, before an expected downturn sparked by Donald Trump’s tariff war.

The increase in gross domestic product in February was five times larger than the 0.1% that a poll of City economists had forecast, while January’s figure of a modest fall of 0.1% was revised up to 0.0% growth.

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‘People love being here’: London development shows harmony between nature and housing

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Five thousand new homes alongside a paradise for newts appears to fly in face of government’s ‘false wedge’

Arriving at the Kidbrooke Village housing development in Greenwich on a morning in early spring, the first thing you notice is the sound of birdsong and the scent of blossom. Geese are gently honking in the distance.

This was once the Ferrier estate, a postwar housing estate that was demolished in 2009 to regenerate the area.

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Polish woman, 80, can stay in UK after Home Office U-turn

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Elzbieta Olszewska had previously been told she faced deportation after mistakenly filling in form online

A Polish woman who had her application to remain in the UK rejected because she mistakenly filled in a form online instead of on paper has been granted permission to stay in Britain after a change of mind by the Home Office.

Elzbieta Olszewska, 80, had been living alone in her flat in Warsaw before arriving in the UK last September. Her only child, Michal Olszewski, 52, an aeronautical engineer and dual British-Polish citizen, who lives in Lincoln with his wife, had been travelling regularly to the Polish capital to support his mother.

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Hundreds of asylum seekers to be removed from hotels in England

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Exclusive: Government source confirms action at nine establishments including one near Windsor Castle

Hundreds of people seeking asylum are to be removed from nine hotels across England within weeks as the Home Office attempts to show it has got to grips with the issue.

The crackdown will remove asylum seekers from a hotel in a village near Windsor Castle after claims of community tensions and racism, and hotels in the West Midlands and Cheshire that have been targeted by far-right activists.

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Trump’s economic adviser dampens Starmer’s hopes of tariffs relief

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It would take an ‘extraordinary deal’ for any country to improve on 10% rate, says Kevin Hassett

A senior economic adviser to Donald Trump has said it would take “an extraordinary deal” for any country, including the UK, to improve on the 10% tariff rate the US has imposed almost worldwide, pouring cold water on Downing Street’s hopes for a breakthrough.

Trump succumbed to pressure from plunging financial markets on Wednesday and temporarily reduced “retaliatory” tariffs on all countries’ goods to 10%, except those from China, which face a rate of 145%.

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Elderly British couple ‘interrogated 29 times by Taliban’ since imprisonment

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Daughter of Peter and Barbie Reynolds, 79 and 75, says they have ‘no idea’ why they have been in jail for two months

An elderly British couple taken captive by the Taliban have been interrogated 29 times since they were imprisoned more than two months ago, and still have “absolutely no idea” why they have been incarcerated, their daughter has said.

No charges have been brought against Peter Reynolds, 79, and his wife, Barbie, 75, who ran school training programmes and were arrested alongside an American friend, Faye Hall, as they travelled to their home in Bamyan province, in central Afghanistan, in February.

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Somerset detective sacked for pretending to work from home

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Philippa Baskwill, who worked on child protection, found to have weighed down laptop keys with phone

A detective working on child protection, who was found to have weighed down the keys on her laptop to give the impression she was working at home, has been sacked without notice for gross misconduct after a disciplinary hearing.

Suspicions were raised when keystroke data – the record of the number of times the keys had been struck on the keyboard – revealed DC Philippa Baskwill had pressed the keys on her laptop nearly 3 million times in a single month – compared with the 80,000 to 200,000 average of her colleagues, the hearing was told.

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One in four women in England have serious reproductive health issue, survey finds

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Exclusive: Racial disparities highlighted as researchers estimate 10 million women have conditions such as fibroids or endometriosis

More than a quarter of women in England are living with a serious reproductive health issue, according to the largest survey of its kind, and experts say “systemic, operational, structural and cultural issues” prevent women from accessing care.

The survey of 60,000 women across England in 2023, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and analysed by academics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, found that 28% of respondents were living with a reproductive morbidity, such as pelvic organ prolapse, uterine fibroids, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, or cervical, uterine, ovarian or breast cancer.

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Starmer admits he has not spoken to Trump since he brought in trade tariffs

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Government sources say the UK also not given any advance warning of this week’s changes to US tariffs

Keir Starmer has admitted he has still not spoken to Donald Trump since the US president brought in trade tariffs, with government sources saying the UK was not given any advance warning of this week’s changes to US tariffs.

The prime minister defended his decision not to retaliate with tariffs on Thursday, after the UK did not appear to have been rewarded for holding off countermeasures.

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Ministers under pressure to nationalise British Steel if crisis talks fail

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Business select committee chair joins calls for Scunthorpe steelworks to be taken into public ownership

The government is under mounting pressure to nationalise British Steel if crunch talks aimed at a rescue deal fail, as the chair of the influential business and trade select committee added his voice to those calling for the Scunthorpe steelworks to be taken into public ownership.

Jingye, the Chinese owner of the company, and the UK government were not able to reach a deal on Thursday to supply the Scunthorpe plant with crucial raw materials, with talks expected to restart on Friday.

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