Criticism over latest development in long-running libel dispute between the leading Brexit backer and the journalist
The award-winning Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr has been ordered to pay significant legal costs to the prominent Brexit backer Arron Banks.
Banks, who donated a record £8m to the pro-Brexit Leave.EU campaign group, originally lost his case against Cadwalladr in his libel action over her remarks in a speech and a tweet.
Continue reading...Leading art museums are reassessing their works after a Belgian journalist traced how a fascist sympathiser acquired a Jewish dealer’s collection
In August 1940, Samuel Hartveld and his wife, Clara Meiboom, boarded the SS Exeter ocean liner in Lisbon, bound for New York. Aged 62, Hartveld, a successful Jewish art dealer, left a world behind. The couple had fled their home city of Antwerp not long before the Nazi invasion of Belgium in May 1940, parting with their 23-year-old son, Adelin, who had decided to join the resistance.
Hartveld also said goodbye to a flourishing gallery in a fine art deco building in the Flemish capital, a rich library and more than 60 paintings. The couple survived the war, but Adelin was killed in January 1942. Hartveld was never reunited with his paintings, which were snapped up at a bargain-basement price by a Nazi sympathiser and today are scattered throughout galleries in north-western Europe, including Tate Britain.
Continue reading...Police name victim as Jonathan Hogg and say they have destroyed animal in Leigh that posed ‘significant risk’ to public
A Wigan man who died after being attacked by a dog has been named by police as Jonathan Hogg, 37.
Officers shot dead the animal after the attack in Leigh, Wigan, on Thursday evening.
Continue reading...PM says Labour criticism of family tax arrangements doesn’t bother him, as rich list shows he and his wife have lost £200m
Rishi Sunak has said he is “not bothered” by Labour’s criticism of his wealthy family’s tax arrangements and thinks the UK has “moved beyond” judging people on their money, as a new estimate said the UK prime minister’s fortune had fallen to around £500m.
Sunak, who is the wealthiest British prime minister ever on account of his wife’s shareholdings, said he did not pay attention to Labour’s personal attacks on his finances.
Continue reading...Leaders expected to form council that will discuss response if states such as Russia and China boycott trade for political reasons
The UK and other G7 countries are planning collective action against Russia and China if they threaten trade boycotts for political reasons, announcing a new body to deal with “economic coercion”.
Rishi Sunak will urge “bold and pragmatic collective action” against hostile states that stop trading with other countries when they disagree with their geopolitical decisions.
Continue reading...Wildlife and environment groups condemn plan promising renewable energy for 600,000 homes
Plans for a renewable energy tidal barrier linking Norfolk and Lincolnshire have sparked fierce debate between scientists, wildlife charities and a port company CEO who is leading the project.
Entrepreneur James Sutcliffe, who has managed and advised port companies in Sierra Leone and Bangladesh, has now set his sights on the Wash, which is the sea, mudflats and salt marsh between the two counties.
Continue reading...Annual RHS show uses theme of accessibility in effort to broaden appeal of horticulture
Chelsea flower show has long been a staple of the society calendar, with celebrities and royals making an appearance among the peonies and roses.
However, this year, the Royal Horticultural Society is trying to make the show – and horticulture – more inclusive, by putting on special events for children, and encouraging the creation of gardens with an accessibility theme.
Continue reading...Signs that NHS’s inability to offer prompt care is creating surge in people resorting to private care
Patients are paying up to £550 an hour to see private GPs amid frustration at the delays many face getting an appointment with an NHS family doctor.
Growing numbers of paid-for GP services are opening up across Britain, in the latest sign of how the NHS’s inability to offer prompt care is creating a surge in people resorting to private healthcare.
Continue reading...Latest updates: prime minister says he wants level of net immigration to fall below the 500,000 it was when he took over
It is a topic Rishi Sunak would no doubt prefer to avoid: the record-breaking jump in net immigration – soon to be revealed in official figures – which is already causing increasingly fractious rows within his cabinet.
Even a trip to the G7 summit in Japan was not far enough, with reporters on the flight asking directly whether the prime minister intended to stick to Boris Johnson’s 2019 manifesto pledge to bring net immigration down.
Continue reading...Incentive from Jeremy Hunt comes only days after three carmakers issued Brexit rules warning
The government has offered the owner of Jaguar Land Rover £500m in subsidies in an effort to persuade the carmaker to build a new electric battery plant in the UK.
The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has put forward a package of incentives to entice JLR, days after three global carmakers warned that Brexit rules on where parts were sourced threatened the future of the British automotive industry.
Continue reading...John Allan, a prominent business leader and former CBI president, to leave role at AGM on 16 June
John Allan will stand down as chair of Tesco after allegations of inappropriate behaviour.
Allan, who has been chair of the UK’s biggest supermarket since 2015, will stand down at the retailer’s annual meeting on 16 June.
Continue reading...Home secretary’s proposal to cut work visas likely to exacerbate post-Brexit staff shortages in low-wage industries
It is a topic Rishi Sunak would no doubt prefer to avoid: the record-breaking jump in net immigration – soon to be revealed in official figures – which is already causing increasingly fractious rows within his cabinet.
Even a trip to the G7 summit in Japan was not far enough, with reporters on the flight asking directly whether the prime minister intended to stick to Boris Johnson’s 2019 manifesto pledge to bring net immigration down.
Continue reading...Republican Mike Gallagher, leading delegation to London, says world is in ‘window of maximum danger’
Beijing wants to “subordinate and humiliate” the west, according to the Republican chair of a newly created China committee in Congress who is leading a delegation of hawkish US politicians on a two-day trip to the UK.
Mike Gallagher argued that China, under President Xi Jinping, believed in “the inevitable demise of capitalism”, and said he hoped to better understand how far British politicians of all parties shared his committee’s concerns.
Continue reading...But campaigners say it will not give much relief to struggling households as government support ends
Household energy bills could fall to an average of £2,053 a year this summer as the regulator prepares to lower its cap on energy prices next week, according to analysts.
However, campaigners have warned that the lower cap on energy bills, to be announced on Thursday, is unlikely to provide much relief to households that struggled to pay their bills over the winter because the government’s support schemes have come to an end.
Continue reading...Tejay Fletcher’s site offered tools allowing criminals to make phone calls that appeared to be from trusted companies
The mastermind behind an online fraud shop used to con victims out of more than £100m has been jailed for more than 13 years.
Tejay Fletcher, 35, bought a £230,000 Lamborghini, two Range Rovers worth £110,000 and an £11,000 Rolex after making about £2m from the iSpoof.cc website. He was the founder and leading administrator of the site, which was brought down last year in the UK’s biggest fraud sting.
Continue reading...PM sounds a more cautious note after calls from tech experts and business leaders for moratorium
The UK will lead on limiting the dangers of artificial intelligence, Rishi Sunak has said, after calls from some tech experts and business leaders for a moratorium.
Sunak said AI could bring benefits and prove transformative for society, but it had to be introduced “safely and securely with guard rails in place”.
Continue reading...Samantha Lee tells hearing she could not have prevented kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard
The former Met police officer accused of botching the Wayne Couzens flashing case has admitted she made some mistakes, but said nothing she could have done would have changed the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
Samantha Lee has been accused of conducting an “extremely poor” investigation after Couzens, 50, exposed himself to female staff at a drive-through McDonald’s in Kent on 14 and 27 February 2021, a police disciplinary hearing was told.
Continue reading...Supermarket is consulting about removing a 60p an hour supplement at 39 stores outside M25 despite the cost of living crisis
Asda is planning to cut pay for about 7,000 workers in stores close to London by about 5% despite the surge in the cost of living in Britain.
The UK’s third biggest supermarket, which was bought by the billionaire Issa brothers and private equity firm TDR Capital in 2020, said it was in consultation about removing a 60p an hour supplement from workers at 39 stores sited outside the M25 but near to the capital.
Continue reading...First official document on VAWG in England and Wales is similar to those used for threats such as serious organised crime, say chiefs
Police chiefs have issued the first official assessment of violence against women and girls in the UK, placing such offences on the same footing as terrorism and serious organised crime.
The 230-page intelligence document outlining the crimes that pose the greatest threats to women and girls has been shared with all forces by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC).
Domestic abuse.
Rape and serious sexual offences.
Child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Tech-enabled VAWG, such as online stalking and harassment.
Continue reading...Charlie Mclean says she has lost a child and parents of teenage murderers have lost two sons
A mother has called for an end to teenage knife violence after two boys who murdered her 15-year-old son on his way home from school were given life sentences.
Khayri Mclean was murdered as he walked with friends in Huddersfield at 2.50pm on 21 September last year. Cousins Jakele Pusey, 15, and Jovani Harriott, 17, had changed into black clothes and black balaclavas and were hiding, waiting to ambush him.
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