Union’s offices raided as part of investigation into allegations of bribery, fraud and money laundering
A police inquiry involving a Unite union official is examining contracts related to the construction of a £98m hotel and conference centre in Birmingham, the Guardian has learned.
South Wales police and HM Revenue and Customs raided the union’s offices in central London on Thursday as part of an investigation into allegations of bribery, fraud and money laundering.
Continue reading...Company’s lender, understood to be Petra Group, said to be considering possibility of opening stores
The shirtmaker TM Lewin could return to the high street after being rescued from administration by its main lender, understood to be Petra Group.
It is not clear if the group’s 50 staff will be kept on under the rescue deal for TM Lewin, which called in administrators last month for the second time in less than two years.
Continue reading...Guidance for England and Wales comes amid increasing concern over rate of obesity and cost to NHS
A health watchdog is urging millions of people for the first time to ensure their waist size is less than half their height in order to help stave off serious health problems.
The UK has one of the worst obesity rates in Europe, with two in three adults officially overweight or obese in an escalating crisis that now costs the NHS £6bn a year and wider society £27bn.
Continue reading...UK research could lead to development of techniques that will stave off diseases of old age
People could eventually be able to turn the clock back on the cell-ageing process by 30 years, according to researchers who have developed a technique for reprogramming skin cells to behave as if they are much younger.
Research from the Babraham Institute, which is affiliated to the University of Cambridge, could lead to the development of techniques that will stave off the diseases of old age by restoring the function of older cells and reducing their biological age.
Continue reading...Data from UK’s Zoe Covid study confirms reports Omicron patients recover more quickly and are less likely to lose sense of smell or taste
People who have the Omicron Covid variant tend to have symptoms for a shorter period, a lower risk of being admitted to hospital and a different set of symptoms from those who have Delta, research has suggested.
As the highly transmissible Omicron variant shot to dominance towards the end of last year, it emerged that, while it is better at dodging the body’s immune responses than Delta, it also produces less severe disease.
Continue reading...Koci Selamaj did not attend sentencing for murder of 28-year-old primary school teacher in London
Sabina Nessa’s family called her killer a “coward” when he refused to come to court to be sentenced for her murder on Thursday.
Koci Selamaj, 36, drove to London from his home in Eastbourne on the south coast to carry out a premeditated attack on a woman after being spurned by his estranged wife.
Continue reading...CWU bosses say increase is relative cut in salary but BT says it is its biggest award in two decades
BT has given 58,000 workers a £1,500 pay rise that it says is its biggest award in two decades, despite its largest union rejecting the deal and saying it intends to ballot members over strike action.
Last week BT had a £1,200 pay rise offer rejected by the Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents about 40,000 of the company’s 100,000 employees, with union bosses describing it as “insulting” and a “relative pay cut” as soaring inflation fuels a cost of living crisis.
Continue reading...72 people were killed in the fire but Pickles said 96, the number who died in the Hillsborough disaster
A former cabinet minister has challenged the Grenfell inquiry not to waste his time while giving evidence, before getting the death toll from the disaster wrong.
Lord Pickles, who served as secretary of state at the then Department for Communities and Local Government between 2010 and 2015, sparked anger after he advised the inquiry’s senior counsel to “use your time wisely” as he had an extremely busy day.
Continue reading...UK and Ukrainian ministers met to view missile systems and armoured vehicles that could be used in next phase of fighting
Britain is preparing to announce a fresh package of military aid for Ukraine and has demonstrated new missile systems and armoured vehicles that it believes can help Kyiv in the next phases of fighting.
Junior defence ministers Jeremy Quin and James Heappey invited Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Volodymyr Havrylov to Salisbury Plain on Wednesday, where they discussed what extra weapons the UK could supply.
Continue reading...Babis Anagnostopoulos alleged to have confessed to Athens murder and to hanging puppy
The trial of a Greek helicopter pilot accused of strangling his British wife as she slept next to their baby daughter is due to begin on Friday in Athens.
Nearly a year after Caroline Crouch was found dead in the couple’s maisonette, her husband, who had originally tried to blame the murder on ruthless “foreign thieves”, will appear before a mixed jury court in the Greek capital. It will be the first time Babis Anagnostopoulos, 33, has been seen in public since his alleged confession to a crime that has gripped the nation.
Continue reading...The group, which also includes a French woman and a Norwegian woman, disappeared during diving training off the southern town of Mersing
Malaysian authorities were searching on Thursday for four Europeans, including two Britons, who disappeared during diving training off a southern island.
The divers are a 46-year-old British man, a 14-year-old British boy, an 18-year-old French woman and a 35-year-old woman from Norway.
Continue reading...Letter signed by several MPs urges better enforcement of transparency law, as government accused of obstructing requests
More than 100 journalists, politicians and campaigners have signed an open letter warning that the UK’s freedom of information (FoI) laws are being undermined by a lack of resources and government departments obstructing lawful requests.
The signatories include the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Katharine Viner, the editor of the Observer, Paul Webster, as well as the shadow solicitor general, Andy Slaughter, the former Brexit secretary David Davis, and the former Green party leader Caroline Lucas.
Continue reading...Human rights group argues law unfairly attaches gang motives to black and minority-ethnic young men
The human rights group Liberty is threatening to sue the government and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) over the bitterly contested law of joint enterprise, arguing that it is discredited and racist in the way the authorities pursue it.
Under the law, people present when a person is killed can be convicted of murder despite not committing any serious violence themselves, if they are found to have “encouraged or assisted” the perpetrator. Liberty is acting for the campaign group Joint Enterprise Not Guilty By Association (Jengba), which supports approximately 1,400 people in prison who believe they have been unjustly convicted of serious crimes perpetrated by somebody else.
Continue reading...Plan will not please environmental campaigners, who say it fails to meet government’s net-zero targets
Boris Johnson is to put nuclear energy at the heart of the UK’s new energy strategy, but ministers have refused to set targets for onshore wind and vowed to continue the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas.
Amid deep divisions among senior Conservatives, the strategy will enrage environmentalists, who say the government’s plans are in defiance of its own net-zero targets and neglect alternative measures that experts say would provide much quicker relief from high energy bills.
Increasing nuclear capacity from 7 gigawatts to 24GW
Offshore wind target raised from 40GW to 50GW (from 11GW today)
Solar could grow five times from 14GW to 70GW by 2035
An “impartial” review into whether fracking is safe
Up to 10GW of hydrogen power by 2030
Continue reading...Bosses say 1.25-point rise heaps pressure on firms already enduring soaring costs linked to Covid and Brexit
Britain’s employers are being forced to shoulder a £9bn tax rise after the government pushed ahead with raising national insurance on Wednesday despite stiff opposition.
Company bosses said the 1.25-percentage-point rise in national insurance contributions (NICs), which is paid by workers and their employers, would add to already severe pressure from runaway inflation and soaring business costs this year linked to Covid, Brexit and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Continue reading...Tax status allows Akshata Murthy to avoid tax on foreign earnings
Rishi Sunak’s multi-millionaire wife claims non-domicile status, it has emerged, which allows her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from her family’s IT business empire.
Akshata Murthy, who receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from her stake in the Indian IT services company Infosys, declares non-dom status, a scheme that allows people to avoid tax on foreign earnings.
Continue reading...Funds for remediation including removal of flammable cladding still short of £4bn government estimate
Major UK housebuilders have so far promised to spend about £1.3bn to remove cladding and other fire hazards from mid-rise housing blocks, but are still short of the estimated £4bn needed to avoid another Grenfell Tower-style disaster.
On Wednesday Barratt Developments and Redrow were the latest to reveal how much they would put aside to address life-threatening fire safety issues in the housing developments constructed by the firms over the past 30 years. Barratt said the decision would cost it up to £400m, while the figure for Redrow is £200m.
Continue reading...Eight more oligarchs will also face sanctions and UK oil and coal imports will stop by end of year, says foreign secretary
The UK will impose a full asset freeze on Russia’s largest bank and end all imports of oil and coal by the end of the year, the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has said.
Eight more oligarchs will also be sanctioned, including Moshe Kantor, the largest shareholder of the fertiliser company Acron and Andrey Guryev, the founder of another key fertiliser company, whom the UK described as a close associate of Vladimir Putin.
Continue reading...Latest updates: PM admits households are facing ‘unquestionably tough times’, but says NI increase is right thing for the NHS
Keir Starmer says the national insurance rise is “the wrong tax at the wrong time”.
The Labour leader said:
People are really, really struggling to pay their bills. And this is just going to impact on them very, very hard.
There are lots of landlords who’ve got many, many properties and they are not going to be paying a penny more in tax. Their tenants, who are going out to work, are going to be paying more in tax.
Continue reading...PM also says women should have ‘dedicated’ spaces, amid fallout over decision to exclude trans conversion practices from ban
Boris Johnson has suggested athletes who are transgender should not be allowed to compete in sports competitions that do not match their biological sex, amid the fallout from his decision not to ban conversion practices for people questioning their gender.
The prime minister said the issue “wasn’t something I thought that I would have to consider in great detail”. Johnson also said that women should have spaces in hospitals, prisons and changing rooms which were “dedicated to women”.
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