Dense fog that could reduce visibility to below 100 metres set to blanket UK after sharp overnight frost
A yellow weather warning was issued on Friday, with a dangerous “freezing fog” set to blanket parts of the UK after a sharp frost overnight.
By Saturday morning, the fog could be so dense that visibility drops to below 100 metres in some places, the Met Office said.
Continue reading...Frontbencher to call for more help with energy bills for householders and to promise massive green power programme
Rachel Reeves has said she wants to be “Britain’s first green chancellor” ahead of a speech in which she will call on ministers to extend relief on energy bills and promise that Labour will reduce these in the longer term with a massive green power programme.
Addressing the Fabian Society conference on Saturday, the shadow chancellor is to argue that investment in renewable energies, plus a huge programme to retrofit insulation to homes – part of Labour’s flagship £28bn-a-year investment in climate measures – could save households up to £1,400 off annual bills each year.
Continue reading...Experts call major spike in deaths on 19 July and following day ‘extraordinary data’ and a wake-up call over dangers of extreme heat
The hottest day on record last summer resulted in 638 more deaths in England than normal, according to official figures, which experts said show the danger that extreme heat and climate change pose to human life.
The following day, when temperatures remained almost as high, 496 more people died than would usually be expected.
Continue reading...‘Brief error of judgment’ captured while PM was recording Instagram video in back of moving car
Rishi Sunak has become the second sitting prime minister in history – and in the last 12 months – to be fined by the police after he received a fixed-penalty notice for not wearing his seatbelt.
Lancashire constabulary announced on Friday it was fining the prime minister, who filmed a social media video earlier this week while travelling in the back of a car without his belt on.
Continue reading...WUC claimed UK unlawfully failed or refused to investigate cotton imports from Xinjiang
The World Uyghur Congress has said it is disappointed to have lost a legal challenge against UK authorities for not launching a criminal investigation into the importation of cotton products manufactured by forced labour in China’s Xinjiang province but would continue to fight for accountability.
The WUC took the home secretary, HM Revenue and Customs and the National Crime Agency (NCA), to the high court, claiming an unlawful failure or refusal to investigate imports from Xinjiang, allegedly home to 380 internment camps used to detain Uyghurs and people from other Muslim minorities.
Continue reading...Influencer and self-professed misogynist in custody after arrest on suspicion of human trafficking and rape
A court in Bucharest has ruled that Andrew Tate must remain in preventive custody until at least 27 February while an organised crime investigation continues into the former kickboxer, influencer and professed misogynist.
The court on Friday agreed to a request by the country’s organised crime agency, Diicot, to extend Tate’s detention, along with that of his brother Tristan and two Romanian female suspects, one a former police officer.
Continue reading...Trip to examine country’s rights record derailed as meetings with government officials also cancelled
A high-profile trip by two senior UK parliamentarians to Kazakhstan to examine its human rights record has almost immediately run into trouble as they were denied access to a jailed opposition leader who is the focus of the visit.
The former director of public prosecutions Ken Macdonald and the former justice secretary Robert Buckland were not permitted to meet the head of the unregistered Democratic party of Kazakhstan, Zhanbolat Mamai, or senior Kazakh diplomats.
Continue reading...St James’s hospital declares critical incident after suspicious package found outside Gledhow wing
A 27-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of a terror offence after he was allegedly seen with a suspected firearm and a suspicious package at a hospital’s maternity wing in Leeds.
Police ordered a partial evacuation of the Gledhow wing at St James’s hospital after the suspect was detained at about 5am on Friday.
Continue reading...Surprise December drop a result of cost of living crisis forcing people to cut budgets in run-up to Christmas
Retail sales in Great Britain unexpectedly fell by 1% last month as the cost of living crisis forced households to cut back on spending in the run-up to Christmas.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the surprise decline in sales volumes – economists had forecast a rise of 0.5% – was down to factors including rampant increases in food prices and a decline in online purchases as consumers worried about a wave of postal strikes affecting Christmas deliveries.
Continue reading...Latest updates: YouGov survey finds there is almost nowhere in Britain where people think their community has got better
Keir Starmer has held a meeting with Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach (Irish PM), at Davos this morning. According to a readout of the meeting from the Labour party, Starmer and Varadkar “discussed the importance of strengthening British-Irish relations, their mutual commitment to that enduring relationship, and talked about areas both countries could work together on in the future”.
They also talked about the need “to proceed at pace in finding agreement over the Northern Ireland protocol,” Labour said.
I know I’m not the only MP in the party who thinks this — I’m just the only one who feels I have nothing to lose by speaking out. After all, there’s no front-bench job offer for the only Labour MP in my county. Many of us know that self-identifying as a woman does not make a person a biological woman who shares our lived experience. But for obvious reasons, these views are not voiced outside of closed rooms or private and secret WhatsApp groups. Even there, the most senior MPs often do not post a single word; they know exactly what’s at stake and not many of them want to be me. So for now, they mostly remain silent.
One of the traits of being in an abusive relationship is “stonewalling”. The abuser will go quiet for days on end. They will stew, not speak to you, turn their back on you. Trust me when I say I don’t take this lightly: but what I feel now, after six years of being cold-shouldered by the Labour party, conjures memories of how I felt in that abusive relationship. When I come home at night, I feel low-level trauma at my political isolation.
In 2019, it was hard enough trying to convince my constituents that Labour wasn’t antisemitic. In the next election, when they inevitably ask whether Labour is sexist, I’m not sure I’ll be able to do the same.
Continue reading...Jim Auld, 72, was one of 14 ‘hooded men’ subjected to interrogation methods since ruled as torture
Jim Auld was so tortured by British army interrogators during the Troubles that he tried to kill himself. He survived but has never seen a counsellor or psychologist or psychiatrist, and never will.
“I don’t trust them that it wouldn’t end up in a paper somewhere. I don’t want the torturers learning from me so they can improve their techniques,” he said last week.
Continue reading...Full list of site closures, which will start in April and carry on through into June this year
Lloyds and Halifax have become the latest high street banks to announce a series of branch closures across England and Wales.
Lloyds Banking Group, which owns both banks, is to close 18 Halifax sites and 22 Lloyds branches, starting in April and through into June this year.
Continue reading...First minister says Alister Jack’s block on gender law marks ‘new and more dangerous phase for devolution’
Nicola Sturgeon has accused the Scotland secretary of acting “like a governor general” in a further escalation of hostilities between the Westminster and Holyrood governments.
Scotland’s first minister said Alister Jack’s decision to block her government’s gender recognition law marked “a new and more dangerous phase for devolution”, hours after he refused an invitation from the Holyrood equalities committee to discuss the move.
Continue reading...Ireland’s taoiseach regrets Brexit arrangement imposed without agreement of unionists and nationalists
Ireland’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has said he regrets that the Northern Ireland protocol he agreed with Boris Johnson to end a Brexit impasse was signed without the agreement of unionists and nationalists.
The admission came as the latest deadline to restore powersharing in Northern Ireland passed with the Democratic Unionist party continuing to refuse to take part in protest against the protocol.
Continue reading...Latest updates: West Midlands mayor Andy Street says it should be for local decision-makers to determine where money is spent
Rishi Sunak has defended the distribution of levelling up funds, saying that the north of England has received more per head than the south.
Speaking on a visit to Accrington, in Lancashire, he said:
The region that has done the best in the amount of funding per person is the north. That’s why we’re here talking to you in Accrington market, these are the places that are benefiting from the funding.
If you look at the overall funding in the levelling-up funds that we’ve done, about two-thirds of all that funding has gone to the most deprived part of our country.
With regard to Catterick Garrison, the thing you need to know is that’s home to our largest army base and it’s home to actually thousands of serving personnel who are often away from their own families serving our country.
Continue reading...Prosecution argue state of room and Kaylea’s physical deterioration reveal serious breach of parental duties
A 16-year-old girl who died from complications of obesity was surrounded by food wrappers and had a dirty deep-fat fryer in her bedroom when her body was found, a court has heard.
Kaylea Titford, from Newtown in Powys, Wales, was 146kg (22st 13lbs) when she died on 9 or 10 October 2020. She was born with spina bifida, a spine condition that meant she could not use her legs, and had hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluid in the brain.
Continue reading...PM suggests public understands what is affordable, but his stance could trigger fresh backlash from Tory MPs
Rishi Sunak has suggested the government cannot afford any immediate tax cuts, saying people are “not idiots” and understand what is unaffordable.
But the comments risked opening a fresh conflict with Conservative MPs who have been making the case for tax cuts in the spring budget, in light of improving economic forecasts and as a way to increase growth.
Continue reading...Companies have made a ‘final offer’ to union including pay rise of 9% over two years
The RMT has received a fresh offer from train operators, the union said, raising hopes of a breakthrough in the long-running pay dispute.
Talks have been ongoing in London this week with the RMT and the Rail Delivery Group (RDG), representing train firms, as well as separately with Network Rail.
Continue reading...Labour hits out at PM’s ‘recklessly expensive habits’ after latest flight to event in Lancashire
Rishi Sunak has been criticised for taking a domestic flight in an RAF jet for the third time in 10 days.
The prime minister flew on a 14-seat aircraft to an event in Lancashire to hold the first of what is due to be a series of events where he will take questions from the public.
Continue reading...Patients in England, Scotland and Wales missed out on starting blood pressure-lowering drugs, British Heart Foundation says
Thousands of people are at risk of avoidable heart attacks and strokes, experts have warned, after nearly 500,000 people in England, Scotland and Wales missed out on starting blood pressure-lowering drugs during the pandemic.
Researchers said that thousands of people could suffer a preventable cardiovascular event because they did not start taking vital medications known to stave off deadly heart and circulatory diseases amid the Covid related disruption to healthcare.
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