French president’s office confirms state visit off after mass strikes and demonstrations across the country
King Charles’s state visit to Paris has been postponed amid mass strikes and protests, the French president’s office has said.
The king had been scheduled to arrive in France on Sunday on his first state visit as monarch, before heading to Germany on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Olha fled the Ukrainian city a year ago this week and has faced many challenges, including enrolling her children in school
I’m just an ordinary mother. My children went to school and enjoyed after-school clubs. Last February, I was preparing to shoot a short film about Kherson’s streets. A rehearsal was scheduled – but it never took place.
That was the day they bombed airports simultaneously across the country. Public transport stopped running from our city. The frontline ran straight to our city and a week later we found ourselves under occupation. One morning changed our lives, and that of every Ukrainian family, for ever.
Continue reading...Kirsty Buchanan says her 15-year-old son, who is black, was buying shampoo in Chichester shop and was held by police until 1.15am
The mother of a black 15-year-old boy detained by civilian security staff while shopping for shampoo in Chichester has said he was thrown to the floor and handcuffed after joking about being followed.
Former Downing Street aide Kirsty Buchanan has called for a national review of the use of private security staff, saying her child had been targeted because of his race, and that the behaviour of the security guards was dangerous.
Continue reading...One-fifth of UK population was in relative poverty after first year of pandemic, when support measures scrapped
Families including 800,000 children were forced to turn to food banks to feed themselves as poverty levels started to rise again after the first year of the pandemic, the first official figures on UK food bank use show.
The statistics came in official poverty data, which revealed that the reduction in relative poverty achieved during the first year of the Covid crisis in 2020-21 was temporary and was reversed after ministers scrapped support measures.
In-work poverty remains high – half (54%) of people in poverty lived in a household where at least one adult was in work, while more than two-thirds of children in poverty (71%) lived in working families.
Child poverty rates were much higher among black (53%) and Asian (47%) families than white families (25%). About 44% of children in single-parent families, and 36% of children living in families where someone has a disability, were in poverty.
Continue reading...Former PM should refuse to accept outcome if privileges committee rules he knowingly misled MPs, say supporters
Boris Johnson should refuse to accept the outcome of the privileges committee investigation if it concludes that he intentionally misled the Commons over the Partygate scandal, his allies have said.
Some of the former prime minister’s supporters believe he should reject the cross-party group’s findings if they decide, based on written evidence and a fractious three-and-a-half-hour evidence session on Wednesday, that he broke strict parliamentary rules.
Continue reading...UK government not required to state whether Nnamdi Kanu, a British national, was victim of extraordinary rendition, judge rules
The brother of a British national being held in Nigeria after falling victim to extraordinary rendition has said he is disappointed after the high court dismissed his challenge to UK ministers’ handling of the case.
Kingsley Kanu, brother of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob), a prominent separatist movement proscribed in Nigeria, claimed that three foreign secretaries – Liz Truss, Dominic Raab and then James Cleverly – had acted unlawfully by failing to reach a view on whether he had been subjected to extraordinary rendition.
Continue reading...Labour’s plan would include dedicated rape courts and domestic violence experts taking 999 calls, says party leader
Keir Starmer has vowed to halve violence against women and girls within a decade, with measures including dedicated “rape courts” and domestic violence experts taking 999 calls.
Setting out one of Labour’s core missions on crime, Starmer said it was the “unfinished business in my life’s work to deliver justice” and said Tory attacks on him for being a human rights lawyer “only shows how far they’ve fallen, and how little they understand working people”.
Restore public confidence in the police and criminal justice system to its highest level.
Halve knife crime incidents, including with an enhanced police presence outside schools.
Drastically improve statistics for the proportion of crimes solved by the police.
Drive down violence against women and improve conviction rates.
Continue reading...Labour leader earned little outside his parliamentary income apart from windfall after sister sold home he helped her buy
Keir Starmer has released his tax returns for the last two years, showing that he earned little outside his parliamentary income except for a windfall when his sister sold the family home that he helped her buy.
The Labour leader released a summary of his past two years of tax payments on Thursday, a day after the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, released three years of his.
Continue reading...With uncollected rubbish lining Paris streets, critics are comparing the optics of the royal arrival to 1789
Striking workers in France are refusing to provide red carpets for King Charles’s first overseas trip as monarch amid protests over rises to the pension age.
French trade union CGT announced this week that its members at Mobilier National, the institution in charge of providing flags, red carpets and furniture for public buildings, would not help prepare a reception for the king upon his arrival in Paris on Sunday.
Continue reading...Report says UK armed service has ‘major questions to answer’ about conduct in war against Islamic State
Twenty-nine civilians are feared to have been killed in nine RAF airstrikes in Iraq and Syria between 2016 and 2018, 10 more than previous estimates, and far higher than the single non-combatant fatality accepted by the UK, according to analysis.
In the worst incident, 12 civilians were accepted as likely to have been killed in Raqqa, Syria in 2017 by a US strike, while research points to an RAF drone strike killing at least four member of the same family in Abu Kamal, Syria, in 2016, according to on-the-ground reports.
Continue reading...The ex-president is a painter, his VP an avid fly fisher, while Tony Blair has built a property empire. They appear unrepentant
US president who ordered invasion of Iraq has turned to painting
Continue reading...Company will review processes after reports allegations not properly handled by management at store
Ikea UK has made an agreement with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to improve its sexual harassment policies and practices after a complaint by a former employee.
The agreement comes after the EHRC was made aware of an allegation of sexual assault and harassment at Ikea UK and reports that these allegations were not appropriately handled by management at one of the company’s UK stores.
Continue reading...Findings reveal level of disruption over three days in July when temperatures reached as high as 40C
Almost a fifth of hospitals in the UK were forced to cancel operations during the three days in July last year when temperatures soared highest, research suggests.
The findings, published in a letter to the British Journal of Surgery, are based on surveys of surgeons, anaesthetists and critical care doctors who were working during the peak of last year’s heatwave, from 16-19 July, when temperatures reached as high as 40C in some parts of the country.
Continue reading...Headteachers forced to use non-specialists as turnover continues, education research body reports
Teacher vacancies in England have virtually doubled since before Covid, with school leaders increasingly forced to use non-specialist teachers, which threatens to drive down pupil attainment, according to research.
A report by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) found that teacher vacancies posted by schools were 93% higher in the academic year up to February 2023 than at the same point in the year before the start of the pandemic.
Continue reading...Unite says their analysis shows banks have made £7bn in extra profit from the rise in borrowing costs
Britain’s biggest banks are under pressure to pass on higher interest rates to savers after figures showing they have made an extra £7bn by refusing to do so, and as they stand to benefit from a tax cut announced by Jeremy Hunt.
On the day the Bank of England is expected to announce a further rise in interest rates, the Unite trade union said banks had already made billions of pounds in extra profit from the dramatic rise in borrowing costs.
Continue reading...Incident in Ealing last month also involved a man being set alight after leaving mosque
A man arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a 70-year-old man was set on fire while walking back from a mosque in Birmingham has been arrested over a similar incident in London last month.
On Monday evening Mohammed Rayaz was sprayed with a substance and set alight on Shenstone Road in Edgbaston and remains in hospital with life-changing injuries, including severe burns to his hands and face.
Continue reading...Former PM suggests ‘unsocially distanced farewell gatherings’ were allowed at work and that he didn’t think following guidance meant following it perfectly
Turning back to the Northern Ireland protocol deal vote for a moment, Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister, has said that Boris Johnson risks being remembered as a “pound shop Nigel Farage” for his stance on the Windsor framework.
Baker said that reviving the Northern Ireland protocol bill, Johnson’s declared alternative to Rishi Sunak’s deal (see 9.40am), would “wreck our relations with the European Union and damage our standing internationally”. Sky’s Sam Coates has posted the full quote on Twitter.
Continue reading...MPs and ministers support campaign to locate relatives of Peter Brown, who died alone in London aged 96
A search is under way to find the family of one of the RAF’s last black second world war veterans, who died recently.
Peter Brown, a retired flight sergeant, died alone aged 96 in Maida Vale, west London. Without any known family, Westminster council and the RAF are attempting to locate any relatives of Brown to pay tribute to him at Mortlake Crematorium on 29 March.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson and Liz Truss among 22 Tory rebels voting against deal agreed with European Commission
Rishi Sunak has escaped an overly damaging Commons rebellion over his revised plan for post-Brexit Northern Ireland trade, winning a vote on the measure with 22 of his own MPs voting against the deal.
Among the Conservative rebels were Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, another former party leader, Iain Duncan Smith, and the former cabinet ministers Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel and Simon Clarke.
Continue reading...Swiss firm’s withdrawal from Leqvio trial with NHS dents government plans to attract post-Brexit research and investment
The Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis has ditched plans for a large clinical trial in the UK, in a further blow to the government’s efforts to make Britain an attractive place for research and investment after Brexit.
The company decided to scrap the Orion-17 trial of its cholesterol-lowering drug Leqvio, involving 40,000 patients in partnership with NHS England.
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