Mohammed is among first asylum seekers to face removal under Home Office’s controversial scheme
It took Mohammed more than three years and a journey of more than 5,000 miles to reach the UK after fleeing a massacre in his village in Sudan.
Now, just over a week after arriving by kayak across the Channel, he is among the first tranche of asylum seekers facing forced removal to Rwanda, on the continent where his journey began.
Continue reading...Items including a handwritten letter from David Bowie and Peel’s horn gramophone will be up for sale next month
Records and music memorabilia once owned by the celebrated former BBC DJ John Peel, including a signed mono pressing of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1968 album Two Virgins, is to be sold at auction in June.
Peel’s family said in a statement: “John/Dad was in a position to have access to many of the most celebrated people and events in the history of popular music. This is reflected in a wealth of souvenirs he collected. In going through the accumulation of 40 years of pop music moments, we decided that some of the most interesting items might find a home, with fans of his programme or of the artists whose music he played.”
Continue reading...Pascal Lamy says row is solvable if PM stops using emotional Brexit politics to solve ‘technical problem’
Boris Johnson’s row with the EU over Northern Ireland’s Brexit arrangements is “absolutely solvable” but only if the UK accepts that a border is inevitable, the former head of the World Trade Organization has said.
But Pascal Lamy said the prime minister could only achieve a breakthrough if he stopped mixing “oil and vinegar” and throwing emotional Brexit politics on to what he said was essentially a technical problem.
Continue reading...Home Office initially had 100 people on list of Jamaican nationals to be removed, say reports
A Home Office deportation flight to Jamaica took off in the early hours of Wednesday morning with seven people onboard.
Some media reports said the Home Office initially had 100 people on the list of Jamaican nationals that officials hoped to remove.
Continue reading...Public Accounts Committee report says business department efforts to identify fraud came after trails had ‘long ago gone cold’
The business department’s handling of Covid support schemes left an “open goal” to fraudsters and embezzlers that has added “billions to taxpayer woes”, parliament’s spending watchdog has found.
In its review of the annual report of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said it recognised that the government offered crucial support to businesses at the height of the pandemic.
Continue reading...More nurses leave NHS than at any time since Covid struck, many reporting stress as their main reason
More than 27,000 nurses and midwives quit the NHS last year, with many blaming job pressures, the Covid pandemic and poor patient care for their decision.
The rise in staff leaving their posts across the UK – the first in four years – has prompted concern that frontline workers are under too much strain, especially with the NHS-wide shortage of nurses.
Continue reading...Man held liable for the Omagh bombing, is due to face charges related to weapons smuggling for the Real IRA
The man found civilly liable for the 1998 Omagh bombing in which 29 people were killed has been extradited to Lithuania after a lengthy legal process.
The Irish supreme court ruled last week that Liam Campbell could be extradited to the Baltic country in relation to offences of smuggling, the possession of firearms and terrorism.
Continue reading...Conservative MPs to urge chancellor to tackle inflation with VAT cuts, energy bill support and improved benefits
Tory MPs are piling pressure on Rishi Sunak to take decisive action to deal with the cost of living crisis with measures such as cutting VAT, increasing energy bill support and raising benefits, as inflation is forecast to top 9% on Wednesday.
A string of Conservatives from across different wings of the party called on the chancellor to intervene within weeks, amid dire economic predictions about the squeeze on households.
Continue reading...Heads reluctant to increase burden on families already caught in cost of living crisis
At St Jude’s, a small Church of England primary school in south London, the morning breakfast club is exceptionally busy. Over the past six weeks the number of pupils coming in to have porridge, scrambled egg and fruit smoothies before the school day begins has climbed from eight to 22 – nearly a quarter of the Southwark school’s population.
Families hit by the cost of living crisis are increasingly desperate, says the acting deputy head, Matt Jones. They need help with their debts; they can’t pay their bills. Staff are making more and more referrals to StepChange, a debt charity, and the school has made discretionary payments to help families unable to afford gas, electricity or nappies.
Continue reading...Analysis: leak blindsided US officials, caused shock waves in Europe and appears to have annoyed No 10
Given that it has just announced a bill that could spark a trade war in the middle of a cost of living crisis, it is remarkable how often members of the government say that what they want is for everyone to calm down.
The intention to legislate is now formally announced but when the bill will be seen by MPs is intentionally unclear. The Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, says it was never meant to be this week. Of course it wasn’t. Now the only commitment is “before the summer”.
Continue reading...Alex Davies, described in court as the ‘biggest Nazi of the lot’, found to have remained in the group after it was banned
The founder of a violent neo-Nazi group created to inspire a race war in the UK is facing jail after being found guilty of continuing to be a member of the organisation after it was banned.
Alex Davies, 27, who was described in court as the “biggest Nazi of the lot”, formed the group National Action (NA) when he was a teenager and acted as its main recruiter.
Continue reading...Owners of community land bought shares to join annual meeting of Fresnillo, a Mexican FTSE 100 company
Mexican farmers have travelled to London to demand that a FTSE 100 company compensates them for illegal mining on their land and explain violence against anti-mining activists.
Penmont mining, a subsidiary of Fresnillo, was ordered by an agrarian court in Mexico in 2013 to pay members of El Bajío community, co-owners of common land in Sonora, north-west Mexico, for the gold extracted and to restore the land to its original state.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Maroš Šefčovič responds to Truss, saying EU keen to reach a settlement but stresses UK actions raise ‘significant concerns’
In the Commons the government chief whip, Chris Heaton-Harris, has just moved the writ for two forthcoming byelections - in Wakefield, and in Tiverton and Honiton.
Both byelections are expected to be held on Thursday 23 June - the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum.
Under pressure from some Conservative MPs, some of whom have been threatening to write letters of no confidence in Boris Johnson unless they get their way, ministers have retreated from banning “Buy One Get One Free” deals and from imposing a watershed of 9pm on junk food advertising. While some measures, such as rules on the positioning of unhealthy foods by retailers, will still go ahead in October, this U-turn adds to the long history of failed obesity strategies.
Humans evolved, when food was scarce, to indulge in calorie-dense foods if the opportunity arose. Now, the abundance of food and its particularly highly processed nature, which means we go on eating for a long time before feeling full, leads us to eat a lot of the wrong things. Food companies have an overwhelming incentive to design products that lead us ever further down this chemically induced addiction to foods that make us overweight, more prone to disease, and less able to work and enjoy life to the full. This is not freedom ...
Freedom is, most crucially, being free from oppression, violence or discrimination. But it is also the freedom of a child to skip and somersault; of an adult to enjoy running down a country lane or in a city park; of an old person to keep their quality of life until their final days ... These are the freedoms being denied to vast numbers of people who are the victims, not the free agents, in a system that wants to fill them up with salt, sugar and saturated fat.
It is therefore a terrible error to associate conservatism with a reluctance to protect people from their natural appetites being abused, in an industrial age for which they were not designed. If we could liberate more people from that fate, they could enjoy greater personal freedom and have some chance of a lighter tax burden.
MPs who have pressed, seemingly successfully, for the dilution of the obesity strategy are profoundly mistaken. They are acquiescing in a future of higher dependence, greater costs, reduced lifestyle choice and endless pain. For the government to give in to them is intellectually shallow, politically weak and morally reprehensible.
Continue reading...Police say 48-year-old handed himself in after death of Daniel John Twigg on Sunday afternoon
A man has been arrested after a three-year-old boy was killed by a dog at a farm property in Greater Manchester.
Daniel John Twigg was named by police on Tuesday as the victim of the dog attack in Milnrow, Rochdale, on Sunday afternoon.
Continue reading...Monarch and Prince Edward attend event at London’s Paddington station before public opening of line named in her honour
The Queen has marked the completion of London’s Crossrail project by attending the opening ceremony of the Elizabeth line.
Accompanied by the Earl of Wessex, she was welcomed by the prime minister, Boris Johnson, the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, and the commissioner of Transport for London, Andy Byford, at Paddington station.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary confirms plans to ditch parts of deal, saying Good Friday agreement ‘under strain’
Liz Truss has claimed the east-west relationship between Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been “undermined” by the Northern Ireland protocol, as she confirmed plans to table legislation that would scrap parts of the agreement.
The UK foreign secretary, who is also responsible for Brexit, set out plans for the move in a statement in the House of Commons. The bill is not expected to be published for several weeks, but if enacted could spark a trade war with the EU.
Continue reading...High court to hear claims that judges ‘in a very precarious position’ hiding from Taliban have faced long delays
Alleged inconsistencies in the way the UK Home Office and Foreign Office process asylum applications from vulnerable judges in hiding in Afghanistan are being challenged at the high court on Tuesday.
If successful, the three separate judicial reviews will require the Home Office to undertake a wholesale rethink of how it is handling cases. The reviews – anonymised to protect the claimants from persecution by the Taliban – cover a male judge and a female judge who have had their applications for asylum rejected, and a prominent female women’s rights activist.
Continue reading...Archie Norman backs UK plans to scrap parts of protocol, saying lorries require ‘700 pages of documents’
The chairman of Marks & Spencer has backed government plans to override parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, saying that some food exported south of the border now requires 700 pages of customs documents, partly written in Latin.
Archie Norman, a former Conservative MP, called on the UK government and EU to come to an agreement, saying the rules for sending food between them were “highly bureaucratic and pretty pointless” given that British food standards were in line with or higher than those of Brussels.
Continue reading...Analysis: bloc has various retaliatory weapons available through the post-Brexit trade agreement
The EU could impose tariffs on UK fish and agricultural goods in just seven days if Boris Johnson goes ahead with moves to disapply parts of the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol, legal experts have said.
The short, sharp shock is one of the three key retaliatory weapons available through the trade agreement, according to Catherine Barnard, a professor of EU law at Cambridge University.
Continue reading...Tesla CEO and world’s richest person expressed concerns about presence of fake accounts on platform
Elon Musk has cast further doubt over his $44bn (£35bn) takeover of Twitter after stating the deal “cannot move forward” until the social media company proves that less than 5% of its users are fake or spam accounts.
The Tesla chief executive used his Twitter account to say the agreed deal would not progress until the firm showed proof that only a small proportion of its users were fake.
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