Category Archives: UK news

Man rearrested at Manchester airport after synagogue attack detention

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Police arrest 30-year-old on suspicion of failing to disclose information about potential terrorist acts

A 30-year-old man arrested over the Manchester synagogue attack has been rearrested at an airport shortly after being released.

Counter-terror police detained the man at Manchester airport on Thursday on suspicion of failing to disclose information about potential terrorist acts. The arrest came within 24 hours of the man being released from custody, where he had been held since the attack at Heaton Park synagogue on Yom Kippur last Thursday.

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Man rearrested at Manchester airport after synagogue attack detention

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Police arrest 30-year-old on suspicion of failing to disclose information about potential terrorist acts

A 30-year-old man arrested over the Manchester synagogue attack has been rearrested at an airport shortly after being released.

Counter-terror police detained the man at Manchester airport on Thursday on suspicion of failing to disclose information about potential terrorist acts. The arrest came within 24 hours of the man being released from custody, where he had been held since the attack at Heaton Park synagogue on Yom Kippur last Thursday.

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Prince William to attend Cop30 UN climate summit in Brazil

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Prince of Wales’s decision welcomed as a means of drawing attention to the event and galvanising talks

The Prince of Wales will attend the crunch Cop30 UN climate summit in Brazil next month, the Guardian has learned, but whether the prime minister will go is still to be decided.

Prince William will present the Earthshot prize, a global environmental award and attend the meeting of representatives of more than 190 governments in Belém.

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Millions of households face jump in water bills after regulator backs more price rises

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Competition watchdog agrees requests from Anglian, Northumbrian, Southern, Wessex and South East to raise household bills

Water bills for millions of households in England will increase by even more than expected after the competition regulator gave the green light for five water suppliers to raise charges to customers – but rejected most of the companies’ demands.

An independent group of experts appointed by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally decided to allow the companies to collectively charge customers an extra £556m over the next five years, it said on Thursday. That was only 21% of the £2.7bn that the firms had requested.

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Happy, stressed, overwhelmed: Palestinians evacuated from Gaza start their studies in UK

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Abdallah, 27, and Soha, 31, describe adjusting to their new lives after leaving their war-torn home

The young man emerging from a backstreet accommodation block in a bustling corner of east London looks much like any other student, getting to grips with his studies at the start of a new term. But 27-year-old Abdallah carries more of a burden than most. A qualified doctor, he has recently been evacuated from Gaza to begin his studies at Queen Mary University of London on a fully funded, government-backed Chevening scholarship.

As well as his work in hospitals, he has been striving for months on behalf of the dozens of Palestinian scholars like himself who have been stranded in war-torn Gaza awaiting evacuation by the British government to take up places in UK universities.

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NHS trust’s facilities staff vote to strike over pay discrimination claim

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Union accuses hospital group of ‘institutional racism’ as cleaners and porters get lower pay than colleagues

Hundreds of NHS hospital workers have voted for strike action after claims that they have lost more than £36m in pay and pension contributions over the last four years.

More than 330 low-paid workers, mainly cleaners, caterers and porters, known as facilities staff, at St George’s, Epsom and St Helier hospital group (GESH) are preparing to go on strike.

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Wife of synagogue terrorist says he showed no signs of extremism

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Exclusive: Wife of Jihad al-Shamie says he was ‘intimidating, aggressive and controlling’ but did not seem radicalised

The Manchester synagogue terrorist was “intimidating, aggressive and controlling” but showed no sign of extremism before carrying out his lethal antisemitic attack, one of his wives has said.

The woman, who married Jihad al-Shamie in an Islamic ceremony in 2021, said the 35-year-old was “glued to his phone” watching Arabic news channels but did not appear to be on the path to terror.

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Tory plan to abolish stamp duty ‘will benefit London and the wealthiest the most’ – as it happened

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This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

Voting in the Labour deputy leadership election opens today. Lucy Powell, the former Commons leader, is seen as the favourite and, as Jessica Elgot reports, Powell told supporters yesterday that, if she is elected, she will use the post to argue for changes in the way the government is operating. “We can’t sugarcoat the fact that things aren’t going well,” she said.

Powell is no longer a government minister and, if she is elected deputy leader, she will do the job from the backbenches. In an interview on Newsnight last night, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary standing against Powell, said a Powell victory would be “destabilising” for the party. She said:

[Electing Powell] risks destabilising the party … we best achieve what we need to do together when we have those fierce conversations, including disagreements, behind closed doors.

Members need to understand that there’s a potential challenge around all of that – that if you’re not inside when the big decisions are being made, you’re not at that table, you’re not in those conversations.

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Legal experts question reasoning behind CPS dropping China ‘spies’ case

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Ex-DPP Ken Macdonald says prosecutors may have been ‘over-fussy’ in seeking further assurances from government

Legal experts have questioned the explanation given by the Crown Prosecution Service for its sudden decision to drop charges against two Britons accused of spying for China amid a political row over who was responsible.

The expert lawyers expressed surprise that the CPS thought it needed further assurance from the government that China was an enemy insofar as it posed “a current threat to national security” before the trial of Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry could go ahead.

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UK opens up more driving test slots to help reduce backlog

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Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency says learners booking tests earlier has contributed to rising demand

More driving test slots are being made available to tackle a severe backlog as figures show a 15% increase in learner drivers with future tests booked compared with this time last year.

Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) figures show 668,128 people had a practical driving test booked in Britain at the end of September, up from 579,138 a year earlier.

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Guardian prison columnist Erwin James drowned in Devon marina, inquest finds

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Journalist who wrote column A Life Inside while jailed for murder fell into the sea in January 2024

A journalist and author who wrote much-admired columns from prison drowned in a Devon marina after spending an evening in a harbourside pub, an inquest has concluded.

Erwin James Monahan, who used the pen name Erwin James and wrote a regular column for the Guardian – the first of its kind in British journalism – fell into the sea at Brixham in Devon, close to where the boat he was staying in was moored, the inquest in Exeter heard.

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One in three UK workers have called in sick after work drinks, survey finds

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IPPR report warns of ‘productivity crisis’ and says many firms out of step with gen Z shift away from alcohol

One in three UK workers have called in sick after drinking at a work event or after hours with colleagues, research has found.

Many staff feel under pressure to drink in work-related settings against their wishes, despite a big shift among younger adults away from consuming as much alcohol as their predecessors.

32% of workers had called in sick the next day after drinking at a work event or with workmates in the last year.

41% of 18- to 24-year-olds had been too hungover to work, and 47% of 25- to 34-year-olds.

22% of staff in education and 24% in health and social care had cried off work the next day after drinking at or after work in the past six months, and a fifth in both sectors had turned up late the next day.

28% think drinking at work events excludes non-drinkers or creates cliques.

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Green groups criticise plans to weaken protections for English national parks

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Exclusive: Letter from 170-plus organisations calls on government to drop proposed changes to planning law

Plans to water down protections for national parks such as Dartmoor and the Lake District in a “kneejerk bid for growth” will be devastating for nature, more than 170 organisations have told the prime minister.

The Treasury is understood to be pushing for a weakening of protections for England’s national parks and national landscapes in changes to planning law to make it easier for developers to build houses and infrastructure projects.

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Lifetime of earnings not enough for UK workers to join wealthiest 10%, report says

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Research finds it would take average worker saving all their earnings for 52 years to match wealth of richest 10th of society

It would take the average earner in the UK 52 years’ worth of earnings to become as wealthy as the richest 10%, according to new research by the Resolution Foundation.

In a new report, the influential thinktank analyses the Office for National Statistics’ latest wealth and assets survey, which covers the Covid pandemic period of 2020-22.

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Brexit has done nothing to stem sharp decline of UK fish populations, shows study

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Experts call for urgent strategy to end overfishing as report shows just 41% of stocks of species such as cod and mackerel considered healthy

The UK’s populations of fish such as cod, herring and mackerel are still being “grossly mismanaged” by politicians and overfished, despite hitting unhealthy levels, a study has found.

British fish stocks have been under growing pressure for decades, but during the Brexit campaign some politicians promised that leaving the EU would allow the UK to take control.

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A British Ice and more stop and search: Badenoch’s Tories set out new policies

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Shadow ministers have announced far-reaching and often radical proposals – here is a roundup of some of them

Kemi Badenoch warned her shadow cabinet in January not to expect any detailed policies until 2027. “We’re not creating policies for 2028 in 2025,” a Tory spokesperson said at the time.

This week that changed. At the Conservative party’s annual conference in Manchester, shadow ministers have lined up to announce detailed, far-reaching and often radical new policies.

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Robert Jenrick accused of fuelling ‘toxic nationalism’ with Birmingham claims

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Shadow justice secretary stands by comments made in March amid criticism including from a Tory colleague

Robert Jenrick has been accused of fuelling a “fire of toxic nationalism” after he doubled down on his complaint about “not seeing another white face” in part of Birmingham.

The shadow justice secretary was criticised by politicians across the parties, local leaders and the bishop of Birmingham after the Guardian published his remarks from March.

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‘Not words that I would have used’: Stride distances himself from Jenrick’s ‘no white faces’ comments – UK politics live

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Shadow chancellor distances himself from words after Robert Jenrick accused of racism in comments he made about Handsworth

Asked about the Jenrick story, Badenoch again suggests Guardian reporting is reliable.

Q: Jenrick was making a distinction between white faces and brown faces.

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CPS to appeal against dismissal of terrorism charge against Kneecap’s Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh

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The rapper was accused of displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah but case was thrown out by magistrate

Prosecutors will appeal against a court’s decision to throw out a terrorism charge against the Kneecap rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh.

The 27-year-old was accused of displaying a flag in support of the proscribed terrorist organisation Hezbollah at a gig in November last year until a technical error in the way he was charged led to the chief magistrate ruling he could not try the case.

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Ineos to cut a fifth of Hull jobs, blaming ‘dirt-cheap’ imports from China

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Company says more roles will be at risk unless UK government supports tariffs to protect industry

Ineos, the chemicals company owned by the billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, is to cut a fifth of jobs at its East Yorkshire plant, blaming “sky high” energy costs and “dirt-cheap” imports from China.

The company founded in 1998 by Ratcliffe, who co-owns Manchester United FC, said it would cut 60 jobs at the Acetyls site in Hull, which makes petrochemical products such as acetic acid. It said more roles would be at risk across the industry unless the government stepped in.

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