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Keir Starmer promises to build new towns and 1.5m homes - BBC News
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2023-10-11
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The Labour leader says he will "bulldoze through" the planning system in England if his party wins power.
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UK Politics
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Sir Keir Starmer has promised to build "the next generation" of new towns, along with 1.5 million homes, as part of a "decade of renewal under Labour".
The Labour leader said he would "bulldoze through" the planning system in England if his party wins power.
Without action, he said home ownership would become "a luxury for the few".
As Sir Keir readied himself for his conference speech, he was covered in glitter by a demonstrator calling for electoral reform.
But he received his biggest applause as he claimed he had moved Labour from a party "of protest" to a government in waiting.
Throughout the speech, the Labour leader set himself out as a reformer, promising to deliver economic growth and security.
Sir Keir promised to accelerate building on unused urban land to create the "next generation of new towns" near English cities, echoing those built by the first Labour government after World War Two.
He added that where there were good jobs and infrastructure nearby a Labour government would "get shovels in the ground".
However, he said this would not mean "tearing up the green belt".
"Labour is the party that protects our green spaces," he said.
"But where there are clearly ridiculous uses of it, disused car parks, dreary wasteland - not a green belt, a grey belt, sometimes within a city's boundary - then this cannot be justified as a reason to hold our future back."
Labour expects the majority of up-front investment in the new towns to come from the private sector, with local areas bidding for new towns required to seek out private backers.
He also pledged to build 1.5 million new homes during the five years of the next Parliament, arguing more housing was central to delivering economic growth.
Suggesting his party is aiming for two terms in power, he said a Labour victory would herald a "decade of national renewal" after 13 years of Conservative-led government.
Without economic security and stability people would not be able to break the "class ceiling", he said.
Sir Keir's speech in Liverpool could be his last before a general election, expected next year, and could be his final opportunity to make a speech to a conference audience setting out his pitch to be prime minister.
He made a bold appeal to Conservative voters who "despair" at their party to join Labour, adding that he now oversees a "changed Labour party, no longer in thrall to gesture politics".
This was contrasted with the Tories, who he accused of descending "into the murky waters of populism and conspiracy, with no argument for economic change".
He made several digs at former PM Boris Johnson in his speech, referencing the Downing Street partygate scandal.
Sir Keir went on to attack Labour's main rivals in Scotland, the Scottish National Party, who he said can "barely provide a ferry to the Hebrides".
The speech lasted just over an hour, including a pause as security dragged a protester off the stage.
Stood covered in glitter, Sir Keir said in response: "That's why we changed the party."
"If he thinks that bothers me he doesn't know me," he added.
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The speech exemplified Sir Keir's confidence as party leader, with praise for former PM Tony Blair, vows to reform the NHS and a declaration of support for Israel which led to a standing ovation.
But he warned that if Labour won the election, its task would be harder and longer than under Mr Blair or previous Labour regimes.
"There's no magic wand here," Sir Keir said. "Changing a country is not like ticking a box. It's not the click of a mouse."
The response from trades unions was broadly positive, but while Unite general secretary Sharon Graham welcomed the speech, she said "the devil will be in the detail" and called on Labour to "lay out a vision for a reshaped economy".
Martin McTague, chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said "it is good to see small business needs front and centre of this conference", adding: "The over-arching theme of this Labour conference has been build, build, build and that resonated well."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67058848
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news_uk-politics-67058848
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Tottenham 2-1 Liverpool: PGMOL admits 'significant human error' over disallowed Luis Diaz goal - BBC Sport
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2023-10-01
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PGMOL admits the decision to disallow Luis Diaz's goal in Liverpool's 2-1 defeat at Spurs was "a significant human error".
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Referees' body PGMOL has admitted the decision to disallow Luis Diaz's goal in nine-man Liverpool's 2-1 loss to Tottenham Hotspur was "a significant human error".
At 0-0 and with the Reds a man down, Liverpool winger Diaz's goal was ruled out following an unusually quick video assistant referee (VAR) check by Darren England, in which the customary offside line graphic was not shown.
It continued: "The goal by Luiz Diaz was disallowed for offside by the on-field team of match officials. This was a clear and obvious factual error and should have resulted in the goal being awarded through VAR intervention, however, the VAR failed to intervene."
BBC Sport understands the correct procedure was followed for the controversial decision but the mistake was down to human error.
The lines were drawn in accordance with normal procedure and every other aspect was checked.
However, what is being described by sources as a lapse of concentration led to a loss of focus around the initial on-field decision and then a 'check complete' being confirmed rather than an intervention which would have resulted in the goal being awarded.
It is understood referees' chief Howard Webb has spoken to Liverpool this evening.
The Reds also had Curtis Jones and Diogo Jota sent off, and lost to a stoppage-time Joel Matip own goal after resolutely keeping Spurs out.
Speaking after the match, Jurgen Klopp said his side's defeat came in "the most unfair circumstances" with "crazy decisions".
"That is not offside when you see it," he told Sky Sports.
"The ball is between Mo [Salah]'s legs, they drew the line wrong and didn't judge the moment when Mo passed the ball right."
'This will put so much doubt into decisions'
Former England striker Alan Shearer described VAR's error as "incomprehensible" on BBC Match of the Day.
"The one bit of VAR we have accepted and learnt we can't argue about was offside," he said.
"This will put so much doubt into decisions that go on. It is a monumental error, we spotted it straight away.
"We are led to believe Darren England, the VAR, and Daniel Cook, the assistant VAR, have done all they should have done in terms of drawing lines but, instead of saying 'goal' for some reason had a huge lapse and said 'check complete'.
"What is the point in having an assistant VAR? It was 30-35 seconds between that and allowing kick-off. The VAR had a momentary lapse, but why can't the assistant VAR say we need to stop this?"A horrendous day for the officials and VAR. We have seen some howlers but that is the biggest. Trust is going to be a big thing going forward."
'Everyone will agree' on 'horrendous' VAR decision
Klopp said the PGMOL statement "doesn't help" and referenced the apology Wolves received for the decision not to award a penalty at Manchester United earlier in the season.
"I don't think we should talk too much about that because it doesn't help at all," Klopp said.
"Wolves got a similar statement, or apology. They didn't get a point out of United and we won't get a point today so it doesn't help.
"I am pretty sure no-one is making mistakes on purpose but it still happened and at this moment I don't know why. [We] scored a fantastic goal - would it have changed the game? I don't know. But probably, because goals help.
"If you want to change you have to do without our voice, if we say something we get fined. They didn't do it on purpose but if we want to talk about it, do it properly."
Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk said he is "losing faith" in VAR after the referees' incorrect decision to disallow Diaz's goal without any intervention from Stockley Park [the VAR hub in West London].
"I'm losing faith, [which] is difficult to say," he said.
"The VAR should be absolutely clear and obvious with everything they're deciding on. I've seen the still back - on live TV there were no lines being shown. It's all a bit strange, I don't know who was in the VAR room and making that decision. It's not a good thing, it doesn't look well either. It is what it is, we lost."
Former Manchester United defender Gary Neville told Sky Sports the decision was "horrendous" and said it was "clear for everyone" to see that Diaz was onside.
"That is unbelievable! It is very significant. I have defended VAR and offsides being a matter of fact, but there have been a few which I thought were wrong in recent weeks," he said.
"It was all too quick. That is a horrendous one. It is clearly onside, clear for everyone. Something hasn't been right the last few weeks. They are picking the wrong cameras to draw the lines on. It is weird."
Former Liverpool midfielder Jamie Redknapp added: "Everyone will agree, this is onside and makes you wonder how many other decisions they got wrong. It looks like they got that wrong by a yard. It is not a good look. For me, they got that so badly wrong. We are making things so complicated."
The Diaz decision was not the first controversy of the match - that came when Jones was sent off with just over a quarter of the game played.
The midfielder was originally given a yellow card by referee Simon Hooper for his challenge on Spurs' Yves Bissouma, but after checking the on-field monitor it was changed to a red, another decision Klopp disagreed with.
Hooper was originally shown a still image of the end of the challenge by the VAR for several seconds when he first looked at the monitor, before the clip was replayed in slow motion.
"Curtis steps on the ball and goes over. Not a bad tackle. It looks different in slow motion. He steps full throttle on the ball and goes over the ball. That is unlucky," Klopp said.
Neville added: "It looks bad but his foot just slips off the top of the ball - that is not a red card for me. He has gone in genuinely. My initial reaction as an ex-player is that isn't a player looking to do the opposition player. If you see the end part in slow motion, you will think red card, but you have to look at the whole thing."
Former Liverpool and England defender Stephen Warnock agreed, telling BBC Radio 5 Live: "I think it is very harsh. The big thing is that VAR are slowing the incident down as opposed to the initial challenge.
"He gets the top of the ball and then his foot goes over the ball into the ankle of Bissouma. You can see both sides to the argument, though. I understand why the Spurs fans are disappointed with the tackle but everything looks worse slowed down."
Fellow Liverpool midfielder Alexis Mac Allister's red card against Bournemouth earlier this season was later rescinded on appeal after the referee's on-field decision was allowed to stand by VAR.
This is not the first time VAR has made the wrong decision or failed to intervene when necessary.
Referee Lee Mason left the PGMOL in February after failing to draw VAR's offside lines and rule out a Brentford goal against Arsenal.
The same month, an offside line was incorrectly drawn during Brighton's 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace, meaning Pervis Estupinan's goal was wrongly disallowed. The line was wrongly drawn parallel to Palace defender James Tomkins rather than team-mate Marc Guehi, who was standing behind him.
PGMOL also admitted that Brighton should have been awarded a penalty in their April defeat away at Tottenham, but after referee Stuart Attwell rejected the initial appeals, he was not asked to reverse the decision or go to the TV monitor for a second look despite VAR reviewing the footage.
The VAR official Michael Salisbury was dropped for the next round of Premier League fixtures.
In December last year, an independent panel found that video assistant referees had made six incorrect interventions by that stage of the 2022-23 season, and had missed another six where they should have stepped in.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66973987
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Keir Starmer grapples with how to keep Labour ahead - BBC News
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2023-10-09
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The Labour leader won't be short of advice in Liverpool - but how does he convert a commanding poll lead into a general election victory?
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UK Politics
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As Labour arrives in Liverpool for what could be its final conference before a general election, leader Sir Keir Starmer is grappling with how to convert a commanding poll lead into power.
"One of the most ambitious politicians I have ever met."
That was the verdict on Keir Starmer, before he had even been elected as an MP, by the veteran political journalist Michael Crick, quoted in a biography of the Labour leader by Lord Ashcroft.
The man who might be prime minister, who first arrived in the Commons in 2015 aged 52, is obsessed with winning.
Those who know him well say he detests opposition.
"I want to get on with the real job of winning the next election. I don't find the self-promotion of this process a comfortable experience."
That's another quote - this time from Keir Starmer himself - in Lord Ashcroft's biography, Red Knight.
It's a remark the Labour leader gave to his local paper in London, the Hampstead and Highgate Express, again before he became an MP.
"He's forced himself to get good at politics," observes a friend.
But the big question this weekend is this: what would be good politics for Labour at their party conference, getting under way in Liverpool?
A recent poll conducted by the communications company FGS Global suggested there was much more enthusiasm for getting rid of the Conservatives than there was for having Labour instead.
This implies there may be more uncertainty in the political landscape than some polls might suggest.
The Labour leadership know they still have work to do to answer the question "if not them - the Conservatives - why us?".
Nonetheless, the party arrives on Merseyside chipper: the scale of their victory in the Rutherglen and West Hamilton by election, just outside Glasgow, allows Labour folk to dream winning the next election really might be doable.
A year ago, the Labour conference felt revelatory. The place swarmed with expectation and there weren't any punch ups in the corner.
There was a harmony about the place, which felt novel.
But people will expect a professional, potential government-in-waiting vibe over the next few days.
That won't be enough to generate buzz and attention. But how much buzz and attention do they need?
"Let's Get Britain's Future Back," is the slogan that will be bandied about. Expect doses of reassurance and hope.
Reassurance that they can trusted with the economy - with a commitment to prioritising economic growth running though lots of the big speeches.
And hope they can make things better, with talk of housebuilding and cheaper, cleaner energy. But how much detail should they offer in terms of policy and ideas?
The general election must be held by January 2025. But the precise date will be chosen by Rishi Sunak. So how does Labour get its countdown right, to a date it doesn't know?
"If Labour are the smallest possible moving target, Labour wins," is one argument made to me.
Perhaps, some think, they have too many policies.
The Australian Labor Party's own review of its general election loss in 2019, despite opinion poll leads, blamed having too many policies as a significant factor.
Its then leader, Bill Shorten, had been dubbed by opponents "The Bill Australia Cannot Afford".
A sense of vision is more important, for some.
"Vision is the road, policies are the street lights. At the moment there is plenty of light, but not enough road," I'm told.
But others, equally hopeful of a Labour victory, aren't so sure.
As one put it to me: "It's only ever politicians who are told they have to have a vision. If someone came up to you in the street and said they had a vision, you'd be worried. Why do politicians need to do it?"
"Keir's great skill is being iterative, putting down another building block," they add.
The suggestion being that rather than a single, big thing being unveiled in the next few days, the plan will be about building a set of ideas that add up to something.
And how should Labour respond to the prime minister's policy blitz: ditching the northern stretch of the HS2 high speed rail line, banning smoking for the next generation, changing post-16 education in England?
There is fury at senior levels of the Labour Party at what one source described as Rishi Sunak "salting the earth for a Labour government. They are getting spending in the future off the books so they can spend the money now."
But if Labour accepts, even reluctantly, what Mr Sunak is advocating - as they have over HS2 - doesn't it leave the party looking weak?
"If your opponent wants you to do something, don't do it," says a source, explaining their strategy.
"They want us to be outraged, so clear water between us is created and they can point at all our extra spending."
Plus, they argue, reversing the cancellation of HS2 or some of the delayed green targets wouldn't be practical or promote stability.
But this does allow the Conservatives to portray Labour as callow, even empty.
The key, says one Labour grandee, is to ensure policy development is being turbo-charged in private.
One figure told me recently they felt underwhelmed by what the party currently has in its policy locker.
"The most intense period for me intellectually, in all my time in parliament, were the three years before 1997," a former minister says, describing the "intensely granular detail" that was gone into, to prepare themselves for government.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Keir Starmer says disaffected voters can now see how the Labour Party has changed
This figure suggests leaving announcements about these ideas until early next year, by which time the Conservatives may have run out of time to nick them and implement them before polling day.
They all need a ferocity and a hunger, not just a few close to the leader, says another figure, willing them on.
Develop policy. Announce policy. Don't announce policy yet. Ditch policy. Show vision. No, there's no need.
There are plenty of suggestions being made. All of which serves to prove an observation Keir Starmer has made publicly: as leader of the opposition, you're never short on advice.
And so is assembling an electable opposition.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67039284
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Keir Starmer speech latest: Labour leader promises new towns and 1.5m homes at Liverpool conference - BBC News
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2023-10-09
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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After being disrupted by a protester, the Labour leader tells his party's conference he would focus on NHS reform and home building as PM.
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UK Politics
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Things are going well for Starmer - and his confidence showed
In his three and a half years as Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer has slowly established near-total authority over his party. Today’s conference speech exemplified that. Praising Tony Blair, vowing reform of the NHS and leading a standing ovation in support of Israel - this was not a leader trying to nudge his party out of its comfort zone, but drawing attention to how far its comfort zone has already moved. It was also a testament to Starmer’s current boldness. Those who work with him closely say that he is a confidence performer - that he loosens up and takes risks when things are going well for him, but that he can lose a bit of his mojo in adversity. With a persistent lead over the Conservatives in the polls, things are going well for Starmer at the moment. That confidence showed in his speech. Though the promise to build a generation of new towns is eye-catching, it’s fair to say Starmer resisted calls from some in his party to unleash a torrent of policy in the speech. But those around him say that was less important than formulating an argument about why Starmer wants to be prime minister and why Labour deserve the voters’ trust.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-67052729
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news_live_uk-politics-67052729
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Spider-Man 2: PS5 developer on stories, game length, and what's next - BBC News
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2023-10-19
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The PS5 game's creative director Bryan Intihar talks about crafting a follow-up to a beloved hit.
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Newsbeat
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The game lets you play as two different versions of Spider-Man, Peter Parker and Miles Morales
Spider-Man 2, one of the biggest games of the year, is out on PlayStation 5 this week.
Reviews have praised the action-adventure's open world and technical leaps over its PS4 prequel.
The PS5 exclusive, priced at £69.99 in the UK, has also reignited a debate about game-length, with its main story mission estimated at about 15 hours.
But creative director Bryan Intihar tells BBC Newsbeat: "I feel confident in saying that it's worth it."
Like the previous game, Spider-Man 2 takes place in a virtual New York City, and offers more side missions once you finish the main story.
It's estimated that completing the game's main quest and its additional content will take roughly 40 hours in total.
That's in contrast to other major releases this year like Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3, which can potentially be played for hundreds of hours.
Some fans say they want more for their money, while others push back on the idea that longer is always better.
Bryan, from developer Insomniac Games, says the studio is aware of the arguments but his team is focused on making the game as good as it can be.
"For us, it really comes down to the experience we want to deliver with the quality we want to hit," he says.
"Obviously, there's a certain level of, 'hey, someone's going to spend this much money on a game', so we want to give them the experience that's worth it.
"Our job is to make sure that you feel no matter how long it is, it's worth that money, it's worth that investment."
Senior creative director Bryan Intihar worked on the first Spider-Man game on PlayStation 4 as well as this sequel
As well as praise for the game's graphics, combat and open-world setting, most of the reviews have highlighted the quality of the story it tells.
Bryan says his aim was to include themes players would connect with including grief, relationships, and growing up.
He says this was possible because the game's main characters, Peter Parker and Miles Morales, are relatable despite being superheroes.
"I love Tony Stark, but it's hard to identify with a billionaire, right?" he says.
"And look at Thor. Great hero, but it's hard to identify with a god."
So after years of work, and the validation of "universal acclaim" on Metacritic, what will Bryan be doing next?
"I can finally exhale," he says. "And I will definitely be taking some time off and playing some other games.
"This is probably one of the best years in gaming ever. I have a pile of amazing games I'm looking forward to playing."
It possibly won't be a long break though. Bryan and his team are already working on a new game based on fellow superhero Wolverine. And what about another sequel - a Spider-Man 3?
Bryan's not giving much away: "We'll see what the future holds."
Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-67155046
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news_newsbeat-67155046
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Biden attacked from both sides over new Texas border wall - BBC News
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2023-10-06
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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US officials say they are legally obliged to move ahead with a new section of the southern border wall.
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US & Canada
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The US-Mexico border has become a political challenge for the Biden administration
President Joe Biden is under fire from both Republicans and Democrats after his administration announced new border wall construction in Texas.
Mr Biden has said he "had no choice" because the funding was signed off while Donald Trump was president.
Members of his Democratic Party said walls did not work, while rival Republicans accused him of hypocrisy.
Some 20 miles (32km) of barriers will be built in a sparsely populated stretch of the Rio Grande Valley.
While campaigning for president in 2020, Mr Biden promised he would not build another foot of wall if elected. He said it was "not a serious policy solution".
But on Wednesday, his administration used its sweeping executive powers to waive more than two dozen federal laws, including some that are designed to protect wildlife, to allow more barriers to be built along the US-Mexico border in southern Texas.
In a notice announcing these waivers, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said there was an "acute and immediate need" for the construction.
It prompted swift criticism from both major parties as well as from environmental activists and human rights groups.
Mr Mayorkas said the Biden administration was required under law to use the money Congress allocated in 2019 for border barriers.
"I tried to get them to redirect that money. They didn't, they wouldn't," Mr Biden said. "I can't stop that."
On Friday, Mr Biden again said that he was "told I had no choice" but to move ahead on the wall's construction.
Jonathan Entin, a law and political science professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, told the BBC that while Mr Biden is "legally correct" in his argument about the budget, he was under no obligation to waive the federal laws that make construction of the border barrier possible.
"It's politically advantageous to him," Mr Entin said. "He will take a certain amount of heat from his supporters in the Democratic Party, and being able to say he doesn't have legal discretion might give him some excuse or explanation."
On the other hand, Mr Entin said that by waiving the federal requirements, Mr Biden can signal to his detractors that he is "serious" about border security, contrary to what Republican lawmakers have alleged.
Mr Entin's assessment was echoed by Tony Payan, the director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at Rice University's Baker Institute in Texas.
"The Biden administration has managed to drag its feet on a number of issues that have to do with a wall, even if the money was there," he said. "He doesn't have to spend it, at least not now."
In his remarks, Mr Biden repeated that he did not think border walls were effective.
In a later statement, Mr Mayorkas rejected the claim that the administration had changed its border policy by signing off on the new construction.
"This administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer," he said. "That remains our position and our position has never wavered."
But the comments did little to stem the criticism from all sides.
On Thursday, the administration also announced that it would resume deportations of illegal Venezuelan migrants, about 50,000 of who arrived at the US-Mexico border in September alone.
The growing number of migrants in cities such as New York has become a challenge for the president who has faced intense criticism over his handling of the border.
US authorities have detained more than 2.2 million migrants along the US-Mexico border since last October.
Building a border wall was a signature policy of Donald Trump as president and was fiercely opposed by Democrats, including Mr Biden.
Mr Trump himself said this new construction showed "I was right".
"Will Joe Biden apologise to me and America for taking so long to get moving?" he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday.
Republicans also criticised Mr Biden for what they see as an abrupt pivot to policies he campaigned against.
"He did not think walls work, which is total insanity," North Carolina Republican Representative Ralph Norman told the BBC. "What's changed? I'll tell you what's changed - the American people are sick and tired of seeing their cities overrun."
Democrats, meanwhile, also took aim at the president.
Representative Henry Cuellar, whose district encompasses Starr County where the new construction will take place, told the BBC he does not believe his constituents will be happy with the announcement.
"I am still against a 14th-Century solution - called 'the wall' - for a 21st-Century problem," he said. "I want to see more personnel, more technology".
Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called it a "cruel policy" and has urged President Biden to "reverse course".
The Biden administration is also facing criticism from advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, which called the decision "a profound failure".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67024003
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news_world-us-canada-67024003
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What could more European football mean for planet? - BBC Sport
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2023-10-24
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BBC Sport looks at what having more teams, more games and more flights in men's European club football could mean for the climate crisis.
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More teams, more games - and more flights. Next season will see men's European club football expand further, with an additional 177 fixtures across Uefa's three major tournaments - and with that comes an increasing impact on the planet.
BBC Sport research suggests the inflated fixture list could lead to teams and fans flying about two billion air miles across the 2024-25 campaign, up from 1.5 billion in 2022-23.
The projected figures for next season equate to more than 4,000 journeys to the Moon and back, and would result in the release of nearly half a million tonnes of greenhouse gases which cause global heating.
But how does that tally with Uefa's pledge to cut its climate impact? And what can be done?
Uefa's former head of social responsibility, Patrick Gasser, has suggested the governing body stops issuing tickets to away fans for Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League matches to help reduce its carbon footprint.
Here, BBC Sport breaks down the numbers and looks at the issue of sustainability in European football.
What do the numbers say?
The BBC's study looked at flights for teams and away fans, calculated using a Uefa minimum allocation of 5% of stadium capacity.
While some supporters will travel shorter journeys by rail, the study eliminated any journeys under 150 miles long. With the average journey almost 1,000 miles long, rail travel within the sample will likely be a very small percentage.
BBC Sport asked for any detail on the number of fans travelling by train but Uefa confirmed that type of analysis was not available.
The true footprint of next year's Champions League, Europa League and Conference League seasons will likely be considerably higher than these projections once emissions from the local travel of a projected 18 million domestic fans is factored in.
That footprint will also include stadium operating emissions and the travel of Uefa officials and media, as well as the use of less sustainable forms of air travel such as business class and private charter flights, not to mention any additional fans travelling on top of the 5% or from outside of Europe. The BBC study assumed economy class travel on scheduled airlines.
• Combined air miles for teams and fans in 2022-23:
Methodology: BBC calculation of air miles across two seasons. We have made certain assumptions, namely that teams would be flying from the closest airport to the team's stadium, that journeys less than 150 miles would not require a flight and that everyone was flying economy, on a scheduled airline. We used figures for number of matches and fans provided by Uefa.
Next season's European expansion comes just three years after an extra 63 matches were added with the introduction of the Conference League.
Uefa also added the biennial Nations League to its international calendar in 2018 on top of the European Championship which is held every four years. The men's Euros in 2020 was staged across 11 different European countries.
David Wheeler, the Professional Footballers' Association's sustainability spokesperson, accused Uefa of a "dereliction of duty" over its climate impact.
"They are not leading on this - they are not separate to society. Everything they do has an impact on the environment," Wycombe Wanderers midfielder Wheeler said.
"The way they are behaving suggests they think they are above that. It almost gives license to clubs, or even anyone in society, that you can do what you want.
"Instead of being a positive force for good they are exacerbating the problem and pushing us towards a very serious situation with a climate emergency.
"A lot of it [the tournament expansion] seems to be greed. Those organisations and many clubs want to make as much money as possible, regardless of the harm caused."
Uefa also has a growth strategy for women's football but Denmark midfielder Sofie Junge Pedersen says climate change must be a key focus given there are already "questions about the relative emissions both current and historical".
"There are no excuses for Uefa not to be very active in the green transition and live up to their goals. There is so much money in the football industry," Pedersen said.
"In my opinion, Uefa must spend much more of its budget on the green transition, for the sake of our planet and the people, including the ability to play football around the world.
"Players from my club and national teams whom I have told about this idea have shown huge support for this. Better to help fight climate change than to get a bit more money in your own pockets."
A Uefa spokesperson told BBC Sport the decision to expand its European competitions followed "an extensive consultation process" in which they "listened to the ideas of fans, players, coaches, national associations, clubs, and leagues".
"The new format will help us improve the competitive balance and generate solid revenues for clubs, leagues and grassroots football across our continent," Uefa's statement said.
No other sport sees supporters travel so regularly and in such large numbers as football - and the BBC study has focused on fan travel as the biggest single contributor to emissions, with estimates suggesting it contributes 80% or more. This fact is substantially re-enforced when much of the travel is by air.
Gasser, who worked at Uefa for 22 years, suggested European football's governing body should not require clubs to offer away fans tickets as they currently do - at a minimum 5% of capacity - or go even further and reintroduce the restrictions on travelling supporters which existed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
"It would have another benefit in terms of all the security precautions which need to be taken in host cities when teams arrive," he said.
"We know that travel creates the biggest carbon footprint in or around football.
"I would make an exception for the finals. I think we need to look at fundamental behaviour change and that would be a good way to start."
Gasser said the idea had been discussed "at the executive committee level" but was not approved or pursued "as far as I can see".
He accepts the move would be unpopular with some supporters, but argues the unprecedented nature of the climate crisis demands such measures.
Uefa said it had no record of such a suggestion being made.
"I think if you're serious about sustainability and making our sustainable contribution to fight climate change, this would be one of the measures you should implement," Gasser said.
"Obviously, this will not delight supporters. But as a global society we need to start to make fundamental behaviour changes.
"One of the arguments against it would be you would lose a bit of atmosphere in the stadium.
"But for the sake of the climate... if we look at the past summer, all the wildfires, the different disasters, it is starting to [have an] impact.
"If the climate collapses, we are all going to suffer."
Uefa said it would "closely monitor the evolution of competitions and implement a comprehensive assessment approach that will consider both positive and negative impacts generated through new competitions".
While fan flights contribute the largest total emissions to European football's footprint, the environmental impact per passenger of team travel is far greater because of the use of private charter planes. These journeys have a significantly higher footprint than regular scheduled services.
BBC Sport previously reported on the domestic private charter flights taken by Premier League clubs and the details of 'positioning flights' - where near-empty planes are flown to convenient airports, sometimes across the UK, in order to then transport players and staff to fixtures.
We have also looked at the knockout stages of last year's Champions League to see if private charter flights and positioning flights were being used at similar levels across greater distances in European football.
BBC Sport found that away teams chartered a flight in 26 of the 29 matches - one notable exception being the semi-finals between Inter Milan and AC Milan in the same city.
Of those 26 flights, we found evidence of 17 positioning flights. Four of those positioning flights were more than one hour long and two were over two hours long, with one plane flying two hours 48 minutes to then transport a team for just one hour 49 minutes.
How teams choose to travel is an issue for individual teams and not Uefa, but the most often cited reason for the use of private charters is fixture congestion - which is not an issue clubs have control of and will only be increased by expanding tournaments.
Uefa mandates the sale of away tickets but told BBC Sport it had "no operational control over travel of teams and ticketholders".
"Travel data is in the hands of each of the clubs, and to our knowledge there is no tool that is looking at the aggregation and analysis of these topics," it added.
'This is not only a Uefa journey, it is a football journey'
Uefa is a signatory to the United Nations Sport for Climate Action Framework which requires it to halve emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2040.
For next summer's Euro 2024 in Germany, Uefa is investing 32 million euros in sustainability initiatives. This includes a 29-euro flat rate discounted ticket for the Deutsche Bahn railway system and free 36-hour local transport for ticketholders.
However, the extent to which this will cut emissions or change behaviours remains to be seen. The majority of fans will not be local and 90% of emissions will mainly be from supporters travelling to Germany from other European nations. Uefa said it encouraged fans to travel to the tournament by rail or car share.
The German government has estimated the footprint of the Euros could be 500,000 tonnes CO2e but Uefa is aiming for a 20% reduction. However, that reduction is just for the finals tournament - meaning it does not include qualifying matches which were held across the continent.
The growth of club matches also means the annual men's football competitions are now far more polluting than the Euro finals.
Director of sustainability Michele Uva says Uefa has to balance a lot of issues.
"Environmental sustainability is only one chapter of the four sustainability topics we are taking into consideration. We also have social sustainability, sporting sustainability and economic sustainability," he said.
When asked if that meant economic sustainability - money and profit - was being put ahead of the environment, Uva responded: "96% of the money is redistributed to the clubs. We are providing all the clubs with a Uefa carbon footprint calculator to start to understand what their carbon footprint is and pushing them to reduce their emissions in such a way.
"It is now mandatory for the clubs to have a sustainability strategy and a sustainability manager. This is not only a Uefa journey, it is a football journey."
There is no doubt, however, that the addition of extra games makes it harder for clubs to be sustainable. The format changes themselves are, in part, a response to the threat of the breakaway European Super League in 2021.
Uva said Uefa's net-zero strategy did not apply to the travel of fans: "The net-zero commitment is on Uefa activity. The competitions are a club activity."
Critics say this message seems to go against much of what we know about Uefa competitions - the presentation, rules, advertising, match day and stadium operations, as well as the sale of TV rights.
Ultimately, the planet does not care whether the emissions of European football belong to Uefa or to the individual clubs.
And as football will continue to be affected by climate change and extreme weather, the majority of those impacts will be felt by football's smaller teams, lower leagues, and the grassroots players.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/67159156
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Defiant Trump turns up at $250m New York fraud trial to blast 'scam' - BBC News
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2023-10-02
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The ex-president lambasts a case that could see him lose control of Trump Tower and other properties.
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US & Canada
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Former President Donald Trump has attacked a judge and prosecutor in a day of courtroom drama as he attended the opening of a fraud trial that could threaten his business empire.
On entering the room on Monday dressed in a blue suit, Mr Trump - who turned up voluntarily - looked ahead as he walked past the prosecutor who brought the case.
State's attorney general Letitia James, sitting in the front row, averted her gaze.
Their paths did not cross for the rest of opening statements as both sides laid out their case.
Mr Trump, the Trump Organization, several executives and two of his children - Donald Jr and Eric - are the defendants in the civil trial in New York Superior Court.
They are accused of fraud, falsification of business records, issuing false financial statements and conspiracy.
As the trial got under way, the former president occasionally glanced in the direction of Judge Arthur Engoron as he addressed the court.
Moments beforehand, in a tirade outside court that echoed across the chamber, Mr Trump had called the judge a "rogue adjudicator".
Ms James was not spared either in his remarks to reporters at the top of the courtroom steps.
"It's a scam, it's a sham. Just so you know, my financial statements are phenomenal," Mr Trump added. "There was no crime - the crime was against me."
Given the former president's personal attacks, observers expected a tense atmosphere in the cramped confines of the court. But the three key figures in the legal drama had minimal direct interactions.
While prosecutors set out their case, Mr Trump for the most part sat still, occasionally whispering to his legal team.
Ms James kept her eyes on the lawyer unveiling a visual presentation that accompanied her team's opening statements.
Proceedings began with her team accusing Mr Trump and his co-defendants of intentionally and persistently committing fraud, which reaped Mr Trump over $100m (£83m).
Last week Judge Engoron ruled against Mr Trump in a central claim of the lawsuit, finding that he had overvalued his properties by hundreds of millions of dollars in order to get favourable bank loans.
Mr Trump's lawyers addressed the court shortly afterwards, attacking the New York attorney general's arguments. Alina Habba said Ms James' goal as attorney general was to "go to work, get Trump and go home".
She claimed that Mr Trump did not inflate the value of his assets - including his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Real estate was malleable, she said, and his properties were "Mona Lisas" - Mar-a-Lago would sell for at least a billion dollars, she argued.
Mr Trump's attorney, Chris Kise, argued with Judge Engoron about issues including whether expert opinion counted as testimony.
And Ms Habba's attacks on Ms James drew Judge Engoron's ire. The judge said he had already dismissed claims that the suit was politically motivated.
The afternoon in court proved calmer, with former Trump accountant Donald Bender testifying as the first witness called by the attorney general's office.
Mr Bender said he had worked on Trump's tax returns and completed accounting work for Mr Trump's corporate entities.
He testified in a criminal trial against the Trump Organization in Manhattan last year, claiming the company sought to evade taxes on bonuses and other luxury benefits.
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His two-hour testimony on Monday - largely focused on technical questions about his work for the Trump Organization - capped off the first day of the three-month long trial.
The case will be decided by Judge Engoron, not a jury.
None of the defendants will face jail time if convicted, because this is a civil case not a criminal one.
Ms James is seeking $250m (£207m) and sanctions that could prevent the Trumps from doing business in the state of New York.
There is even the possibility that Mr Trump could lose some of the properties that have become a signature part of his brand.
The stakes could not be higher.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66986808
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Why the change of message on Autumn Statement tax cuts? - BBC News
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2023-11-21
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The chancellor said personal tax cuts were "virtually impossible", now the PM says it's time - what's changed?
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Business
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It looks like the Autumn Statement will now include at least one crowd-pleasing personal tax cut - so why the change of message and which tax could be cut?
When I spoke to Jeremy Hunt 10 days ago, just after it was confirmed that the UK economy was not growing, I suggested to him that personal tax cuts might help.
He said there were "no shortcuts" and clearly signalled that his focus was on growth-enhancing business tax cuts.
A week on, I spoke to the chancellor again, at a hydrogen energy facility in Sheffield. The caution on such cuts had gone. And the prime minster has now suggested the time has come to cut tax.
For Rishi Sunak, last Wednesday's drop in inflation was a clear turning point in Britain's recent economic story.
During his time as chancellor and as prime minister - most of the past four years - the UK and most of the world have been hit by an unprecedented series of geopolitical crises that have led to big spending and rolling inflationary shocks.
The pandemic led to an inflationary supply chain crisis pushing prices up, and then the Russia-Ukraine conflict saw the double whammy of the world's biggest energy exporter invading one of the world's biggest food exporters.
At this precise time, the size of Britain's workforce was hit. In part, this was due to the aftermath of the pandemic, and in some key sectors, by more restrictive post-Brexit worker visas. It was a potent cocktail for inflation.
The government's argument therefore, is that last week's confirmation that inflation has more than halved since its peak is a turning point for inflation.
The UK is on a glidepath to normal inflation levels, and therefore, they argue, there is little risk of a personal tax cut adding to price pressures.
But the PM's argument goes further. He says that the 4.6% inflation figure also represents a turning point of a rolling series of economic crises since 2020. The time to put four years of higher public spending, borrowing, and taxation behind us.
He is taking aim at Labour's calls for a "new" post-pandemic world of more resilient local supply chains, and more borrowing-funded public spending especially on green infrastructure.
US President Joe Biden may be able to do this because the US has the privilege of printing the world's reserve currency, and is insulated from fears about its debts. The UK, especially after last year's mini budget, cannot do this, Mr Sunak argued.
This will be the dividing line of the next year with a Labour Party that aims to spend £28bn a year more on public investment by the end of the coming Parliament.
So the tax cuts will be part of a general message that, having seen inflation halve, now the focus is on growth.
The overwhelming focus of the cuts will be aimed at helping businesses to invest. But, a tax cut that helps "make work pay" and so improves the supply of workers, helping relieve a key constraint on growth, will also be delivered.
National Insurance seems to fit the bill, because it directly helps employers or workers keep more from wage packets. Another option is ironing out some of the inconsistencies in the tax system that see some universal credit recipients, working parents and higher earners facing effective tax rates so high that it makes little sense to work more hours.
Former pensions minister Steve Webb has also spotted his old department seeming to prepare an unusual announcement on benefit uprating on an obscure part of the Department for Work and Pensions website.
When setting how much benefits go up next April, the government could decide to use October's lower inflation figure instead of the usual September figure. That could squeeze between £2bn and £3bn from the welfare bill every year.
Both the PM and chancellor make the argument that the level of benefits may exacerbate worker shortage problems.
In Westminster, others point out that the loss of the Supreme Court case on a plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda, on the same day as the inflation figure, may also help explain the search for a headline personal tax cut to assuage his backbenchers. The speech the PM gave on Monday, when he said the government was now able to cut taxes, was due to be given last Wednesday, before the Supreme Court's ruling.
So the contours of the argument this week will be the government arguing that an economic turnaround has created space for a tax cut, and the opposition will instead say the PM is jumping the gun at the behest of backbenchers and in any case only reversing one of two dozen tax rises.
In making a turnaround argument, it is worth waiting for what the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says in its forecasts for the economy.
This month's Bank of England forecasts for quarterly growth next year are 0.01%, -0.04%, 0.01% and 0.02%. Over 2024, it adds up to zero.
The economy did avoid the recession predicted for this year, but how seriously can Downing Street proclaim a turnaround if the OBR predicts little or no growth over the next year?
It is also worth watching on what basis the government claims the PM's target on growth will be met.
So underneath a big call made on tax cuts at the Autumn Statement, there is a much wider, immediate political argument, and the outline of choice for the general election. But watch out for whether the OBR supports this "turnaround" picture.
What help would you like from the Autumn Statement? Do you have any questions you want answering? Get in touch by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also get in touch in the following ways:
If you are reading this page and can't see the form you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or comment or you can email us at HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk. Please include your name, age and location with any submission.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67473404
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Bowen: Five new realities after four weeks of Israel-Gaza war - BBC News
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2023-11-03
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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There are few known quantities in the conflict but some things have become clear, says Jeremy Bowen.
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Middle East
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The aftermath of a strike on Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp earlier this week
One of the first things to understand about the reportage, analysis and commentary that has poured out since the Hamas attacks of 7 October is that no-one has the full story. Not only is it, as ever, hard to penetrate the fog of war to work out what is happening on the battlefield. The new shape of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has not yet emerged.
Events are still moving fast. Fears that the war could spread are very real. New realities in the Middle East are out there somewhere, but their shape and the way that they will work depend on the way this war goes for the rest of the year, and probably beyond.
Here are a few things that we know, and a few that we do not. The list is not exhaustive. Some people mocked Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he talked of "unknown unknowns". But in this part of the world as much as any other, they exist - and when they emerge, they can make a big difference.
One certainty is that Israelis support the military campaign to break the power in Gaza of Hamas and its junior partner, Islamic Jihad. Their anger is driven by the shock of the Hamas attacks, the killing of more than 1,400 people and the fact that around 240 hostages are still being held in Gaza.
The Hamas attack on Israel killed 1,400 people, many of them residents of kibbutzes near Gaza
I met Noam Tibon, a retired general in the Israeli army, to hear about how he drove down with his wife to Nahal Oz, a kibbutz on the border with Gaza, after Hamas attacked on 7 October. His mission, which was successful, was to rescue his son, his daughter in law and their two young daughters who were in their safe room, hearing Hamas gunmen roaming around outside.
Tibon may be retired but he is a very fit-looking 62-year-old. He ended up armed with an assault rifle and a helmet he had taken from a dead Israeli soldier, leading a group of soldiers he had assembled in the chaos of that day, clearing the kibbutz and saving the lives of his family and many others.
The general was an old-school, straight-talking Israeli officer.
"Gaza is going to suffer… no nation will agree that your neighbour will slaughter babies, women or people. Just like you (Britons) crushed your enemy during World War Two. This is what we need to do in Gaza. No mercy."
What, I asked, about innocent Palestinian civilians who are getting killed?
"Unfortunately, it's happening. We live in a tough neighbourhood, and we need to survive… we have to be tough. We have no choice."
A lot of Israelis are echoing his sentiment that Palestinian civilian deaths are unfortunate, but they are being killed because of the actions of Hamas.
It is also clear that Israel's assault on Hamas is causing terrible bloodshed. The latest figure for Palestinian deaths from Gaza's health ministry, run by Hamas, has exceeded 9,000 - of whom around 65% are children and women.
It is not clear how many of the men who have been killed were civilians or fighting for Hamas or Islamic Jihad. US President Joe Biden and the Israelis do not trust the ministry figures. But in past conflicts, Palestinian casualty statistics have been considered accurate by international organisations.
One grim milestone is fast approaching. The United Nations (UN) says around 9,700 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion 21 months ago.
Some of the Palestinian dead would have been part of Hamas. But even if that proportion is as high as 10%, which is unlikely, it means that Israel is on course to have killed as many Palestinian civilians in just over a month as Russia has killed in Ukraine since February 2022. (The UN says its data for Ukraine is incomplete and the true number of civilians killed is likely higher, while in Gaza the number of dead is also likely to be higher as many Palestinians are believed to be buried under rubble).
The UN has suggested Israeli strikes on Gaza could constitute war crimes
The UN human rights office has said that so many civilians have been killed and wounded in Israeli air strikes that it has serious concerns that the attacks are disproportionate and could be war crimes.
From the first days after the Hamas attacks, President Biden has supported Israel's decision to use military force to remove Hamas from power. But he has also added the qualification that it needed to be done "the right way". He meant that Israel should observe the laws of war that protect civilians.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Tel Aviv. Before he took off, he said: "When I see a Palestinian child - a boy, a girl - pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, that hits me in the gut as much as seeing a child from Israel or anywhere else."
I have reported on all of Israel's wars in the last 30 years. I do not remember a US administration stating so publicly that Israel needs to observe the laws of war. Blinken's visit suggests that he believes Israel is not following Biden's advice.
Something else we know for certain is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under great pressure.
Unlike Israel's security and military chiefs, he has not accepted any personal responsibility for the catastrophic series of failures that left Israeli border communities virtually undefended on 7 October.
Last Sunday, 29 October, he caused uproar when he sent out a tweet blaming the intelligence agencies. Mr Netanyahu deleted the message and apologised.
The Israeli PM has taken the blame from some quarters for the events of 7 October
Three Israelis, a former peace negotiator, the ex-head of the Shin Bet (Israel's internal intelligence agency) and a tech entrepreneur, wrote an article in the journal Foreign Affairs saying that Mr Netanyahu should not have any part of the war and whatever follows. The Israeli PM has loyal supporters, but he has lost the confidence of prominent figures in Israel's military and security establishment.
Noam Tibon, the retired general who fought his way into kibbutz Nahal Oz to rescue his family, compares Mr Netanyahu to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who was forced to resign in 1940, and replaced by Winston Churchill.
Tibon told me: "This is the biggest failure in the history of the state of Israel. It was a military failure. It was an intelligence failure. And it was the failure of the government… the one really in charge - and all the blame is on him - is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu… He is in charge of the biggest failure in the history of Israel."
It is also clear that the old status quo has been smashed. It was unpleasant and dangerous, but it seemed to have a certain grimly-familiar stability. Since the end of the last Palestinian uprising around 2005 a pattern has emerged that Mr Netanyahu believed could be sustained indefinitely. That was a dangerous illusion, for all concerned - Palestinians as well as Israelis.
The argument went that the Palestinians were no longer a threat to Israel. Instead, they were a problem to be managed. The tools available include sticks, carrots and the ancient tactic of "divide and rule".
Mr Netanyahu, who has been prime minister for most of the time since 2009 - after an earlier spell between 1996 and 1999 - has argued consistently that Israel does not have a partner for peace.
Potentially, it did. The Palestinian Authority (PA), which is the main rival to Hamas, is a deeply flawed organisation, and many who support it believe its aged President Mahmoud Abbas needs to step aside. But it accepted the idea of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel back in the 1990s.
Mr Netanyahu has tried to drive a wedge between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas (pictured right, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken)
"Divide and rule" for Mr Netanyahu meant allowing Hamas to build its power in Gaza at the expense of the PA.
While Israel's longest-serving prime minister is always careful about what he says in public, his actions over many years show that he does not want to allow the Palestinians to have an independent state. That would involve giving up land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which the Israeli right wing believes belongs to the Jews.
From time to time, Mr Netanyahu's pronouncements would leak. In 2019, a number of Israeli sources say that he told a group of his Likud members of parliament that if they opposed a Palestinian state they should support schemes to pump money - mostly provided by Qatar - into Gaza. He told them that deepening the division between Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank would make it impossible to establish a state.
It is also clear that Israel, backed by the Americans, will not tolerate a deal that allows Hamas to stay in power. That guarantees a lot more bloodshed. It also raises big questions about what or who replaces them, which so far have not been answered.
The conflict between Arabs and Jews for control of the land between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea has lasted for more than 100 years. One lesson of its long and bloody history is that there will never be a military solution.
In the 1990s, the Oslo peace process was established to try to end the conflict by establishing a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem alongside Israel. The last attempt to revive it, after years of on-off negotiations, happened during the Obama administration. It failed a decade ago, and since then the conflict has been allowed to fester.
More than 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Israel began a ground operation in Gaza
As President Biden and many others have said, the only possible chance for avoiding more wars is to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel. That will not be possible with the current leaders on either side. Extremists, both Israeli and Palestinian, would do all they could to scupper the idea, as they have done since the 1990s. Some of them believe they are following the will of God, which makes it impossible to persuade them to accept a secular compromise.
But if this war does not deliver enough of a shock to break deeply-held prejudices and to make the idea of two states viable, nothing will. And without a mutually-acceptable way of ending the conflict, more generations of Palestinians and Israelis will be sentenced to more wars.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67306902
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Everton receive immediate 10-point Premier League deduction for financial rules breach - BBC Sport
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2023-11-17
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Everton receive an immediate 10-point deduction after being found to have breached the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules.
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Last updated on .From the section Everton
Everton have received an immediate 10-point deduction after being found to have breached the Premier League's financial rules.
English top-flight clubs are permitted to lose £105m over three years, and an independent commission found Everton's losses to 2021-22 amounted to £124.5m.
The punishment is the biggest sporting sanction in the competition's history and leaves Everton 19th in the table.
The club said they were "both shocked and disappointed" and would appeal.
The Premier League referred Everton to an independent commission in March but did not reveal the specifics of the club's alleged breach.
That month, Everton posted financial losses for the fifth successive year after reporting a £44.7m deficit in 2021-22.
They admitted to being in breach of the profit and sustainability rules (PSR) for the period ending 2021-22, and the commission found in favour of the Premier League following a five-day hearing in October.
In a statement, Everton said: "The club does not recognise the finding that it failed to act with the utmost good faith and it does not understand this to have been an allegation made by the Premier League during the course of proceedings.
"Both the harshness and severity of the sanction imposed by the commission are neither a fair nor a reasonable reflection of the evidence submitted.
"The club will also monitor with great interest the decisions made in any other cases concerning the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules."
The points deduction comes at a time of significant uncertainty at Everton.
In September, owner Farhad Moshiri agreed to sell his 94% stake in the club to American investment fund 777 Partners. The takeover is going through the regulatory processes and, before this ruling, sources said it was on course to be completed by next month.
The club are in the process of building a new stadium on the banks of the River Mersey at Bramley-Moore Dock, which is due to open in late 2024.
• None 'Dogs of War reborn' - Everton gear up for another challenge
• None What other big points deductions have there been?
• None Everton: The inside story of a turbulent 2022-23 season for the Toffees
Why was the points deduction so high?
Explaining why Everton's points deduction was so high, the commission said in its written reasons that the cause of the club's issues was because of overspending - largely on new players - along with an inability to sell players, and a lower than projected league finish.
The Premier League had argued for a 12-point sanction for the club.
The club's 16th-place finish in 2021-22 caused a loss of expected income of around £21m, the reasons state.
The commission added: "Everton's understandable desire to improve its on-pitch performance (to replace the non-existent midfield, as Mr Moshiri put it in evidence) led it to take chances with its PSR position.
"Those chances resulted in it exceeding the £105m threshold by £19.5m.
"The position that Everton finds itself in is of its own making. The excess over the threshold is significant. The consequence is that Everton's culpability is great.
"We take into account the fact that Everton's PSR trend over the relevant four years is positive, but cannot ignore the fact that the failure to comply with the PSR regime was the result of Everton irresponsibly taking a chance that things would turn out positively."
The commission ultimately found Everton's failure to comply with the Premier League's "generous threshold" was down to their own "mismanagement".
The chair of the commission, David Phillips KC, also referenced applications for financial compensation from current Premier League clubs Burnley and Nottingham Forest and last season's relegated sides, Leicester City, Leeds United and Southampton.
Phillips said he was "satisfied that the applicant clubs have potential claims for compensation" - but noted the commission holds no "inherent jurisdiction" and it is instead "the role of the Premier League to bring and prosecute complaints".
What was Everton's defence - six 'mitigating' factors
Everton advanced six mitigating factors in their defence. Among them, the club said they lost money on 'Player X' - who was released after being arrested.
The commission dismissed this argument as an event that can "occur in the management of football clubs", adding Everton's £10m valuation of the player was "speculative".
Further mitigating factors submitted by Everton surrounded the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
The Toffees said they had planned player sales exceeding £80m in the pandemic-impacted 2020 summer transfer window but the commission sided with the Premier League's assertion that Everton's inability to raise that money was "largely attributable" to market forces - namely the prices Everton were asking for.
Further, it stated the club should be expected to "plan for untoward eventualities", while it was also considered that Everton had benefitted from the Premier League's Covid-related concessions totalling £70.2m.
Similarly, the commission found that both the loss of a naming rights agreement with Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov's company USM Services Limited and a rise in stadium-related costs following Russia's invasion of Ukraine could be considered "the type of event that businesses experience".
The commission also dismissed Everton's claim that interest incurred in relation to the stadium development could have been capitalised after planning permission had been obtained as being "based on a false premise", adding Everton had been "less than frank" over the issue.
Everton also asked for their cooperation during the process to be considered in the ruling. In response, the commission said it did not find any aspect of the club's dealings to be of an "exceptional nature".
But the club's argument that the improving losses trend, as shown in the PSR calculation, was viewed more favourably and had gone a "limited way to diminish Everton's culpability", the commission said.
Biggest sanction in Premier League history - but can Everton survive?
In Premier League history only two other clubs have received a points deduction.
Middlesbrough were deducted three points for failing to fulfil a fixture against Blackburn during the 1996-97 season, while in 2010 Portsmouth were deducted nine points after going into administration.
Neither club was able to avoid relegation following those sanctions.
The deduction leaves the Toffees level with bottom club Burnley on four points after 12 matches - and two points adrift of safety.
Sean Dyche's side, who ended last season two points above the relegation places, had been 14th in the standings - and eight points clear of the bottom three.
On the three previous occasions when a Premier League club has had as few as four points after 12 games, Everton in 1994-95 were the only side to stay up.
Opta's data analysis gives them a 34.1% chance of going down - up from just 3.4% before the sanction, but still less than Burnley (80.6%), Sheffield United (78%) and Luton (70%).
And it is the first Premier League season where as many as three clubs - those newly promoted sides - failed to win at least seven points from their opening 12 games.
Manchester City are the only other club to have been charged by the Premier League for financial breaches, when they were referred to an independent commission over more than 100 alleged rule breaches between 2009 and 2018.
Treble winners City were charged in February - before Everton - and that case is still ongoing.
BBC Sport's Simon Stone said: "The verdict immediately raised questions from some Everton fans about how their club's case has been heard but Manchester City's awaits a hearing, even though the Premier League champions were charged before the Merseysiders.
"Firstly, Everton were defending themselves against a single charge relating to their spending. Manchester City have 115 to deal with, many of which are complex, and all of which they deny. It stands to reason the legalities of both sides in that case will take longer to get into shape.
"What today's decision has done is raise the bar in terms of punishment. Ten points is a big punishment for Everton, albeit, it seems certain, not as damaging in terms of their top-flight status as it would have been if the case had been dealt with last season, as the Premier League wanted.
"But City's charge sheet is such that if they are found guilty, the punishment, by definition, will have to be far heavier given they have effectively been accused of deception on a huge scale, albeit around issues from many years ago."
Meanwhile, Chelsea could face further scrutiny from football's authorities over reports of payments connected to the club's former owner Roman Abramovich.
Chelsea were fined £8.6m by European football governing body Uefa in July for "submitting incomplete financial information" between 2012 and 2019 as part of a settlement for breaking Financial Fair Play rules.
Reacting on X (formerly Twitter), former Liverpool and England defender Jamie Carragher said: "The 10-point deduction for Everton is excessive and not right, considering they have been working with the Premier League about this for the last couple of years. Would it have been better to be evasive and try to drag it out like other clubs?"
Carragher added: "No doubt relegated clubs will have put big pressure on the Premier League to deal with Everton, but when you consider six clubs tried to leave the league and there was no sanction at all it doesn't feel right.
"Until other clubs are sanctioned Everton will feel they are being used to show there is no need for an independent regulator, and they are right."
BBC Match of the Day host Gary Lineker said: "With Everton being docked 10 points it will be very interesting to see if other clubs are sanctioned."
Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram described the punishment as "excessive and grossly unfair" and added he would support Everton in the club's appeal.
• None Our coverage of Everton is bigger and better than ever before - here's everything you need to know to make sure you never miss a moment
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Ukraine war: Marines gain riverbank foothold but front lines barely move - BBC News
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2023-11-17
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Marines talk of progress on "several bridgeheads" but soldiers talk of fatigue at the front.
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Europe
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Ukraine's president posted pictures of Ukrainian marines, saying they were moving forward on the left bank of the Dnipro
Ukrainian forces say they have secured several positions on the Russian-occupied eastern bank of the Dnipro river, and their leaders have been keen to talk up their progress.
The marines have spoken of gaining a foothold on "several bridgeheads" on the left bank, as they try to push the Russians back in a bid to protect civilians on the opposite side of the river from constant Russian shelling.
"Thank you for your strength, for moving forward," President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on social media on Friday, alongside pictures of marines arriving in small boats.
The few hundred soldiers are outnumbered and surrounded in three directions, yet have managed to dig in for the best part of a month. This isn't the thousands needed to potentially liberate swathes of territory which Kyiv so desperately wants to do.
The front line has barely moved for a year and Ukraine finds itself in a tricky cycle. It needs Western help to deliver battlefield progress, but it also needs battlefield progress to convince western helpers.
General Valery Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine's armed forces, has described the situation as a stalemate and says a number of innovations are needed to break it.
President Zelensky has dismissed his view, and believes Ukraine can still be victorious.
Their argument has fuelled political fatigue among some of Ukraine's Western allies.
The south is one area where the mood is high.
A year ago, the southern Kherson region was seen as the least likely place for Ukraine to mount its counter-offensive.
For the Russians, there is no better defensive line than a huge body of water like the Dnipro river. It separates the third of the region liberated last year from the two-thirds still under occupation.
Ukrainian armoured vehicles have advanced 4km (2.5 miles) and Kyiv is framing these inroads as the start of something bigger.
"We are motivated by our families and we get decent financial support," one special forces fighter told the BBC.
The reality is there are simply not enough boots on the ground yet to justify Kyiv's hopes for a breakthrough there.
In the south-east, Ukrainian troops have thrown everything at trying to retake territory there, but have only liberated a handful of villages.
"Fatigue is the main thing, and it kills any motivation," explains a soldier with a mortar crew in the Zaporizhzhia region.
He's fighting with the 46th brigade in an area where Russian defences are at their strongest.
"We've killed many Russians, but lost no fewer," says the soldier. "Anyone who complained was removed from their position."
During the summer, this part of the front line was seen as the best place for Ukraine to try to break the land corridor Russia occupies in two.
Now, Western officials think neither side can mount a land offensive "in the near future". As far as they're concerned, it's a stalemate.
The soldier in the 46th Brigade believes next year will be difficult, but decisive: "It is impossible to fight forever. Hatred is soon replaced by apathy."
A Ukrainian soldier watches over a position on the Dnipro river, where raids by Kyiv's forces have been intensifying in recent weeks
It is on the eastern axis that Russian forces have been pushing hardest, and it is the city of Avdiivka that best reflects the state of this war.
It was briefly occupied in 2014 before being liberated, and the Russians have been trying to get it back since.
Ukraine has recently been repelling wave after wave of attacks, partly helped by the heavy fortifications it has built over the past nine years.
Western officials say Russia is suffering 500-1,000 casualties a day there.
"Our commanders and fighters have studied every hill and every road," says Ivan from Ukraine's 110 Brigade. He's been serving there since March 2022.
Avdiivka's strategic value is questionable, but clearly Kyiv thinks it's inflicting a significant enough number of losses compared to its own.
The mood can be described as "fatigue, rage and desire to expel evil", explains Ivan. "It's tiredness from the constant threat to your life, not from the front line not moving.
Ivan from 110 Brigade speaks of a mood of fatigue from the constant threat from Russian forces
In the north-east, more than 250km (155 miles) to the north, the city of Kupiansk was occupied for most of last year until Ukraine's counter-offensive last autumn.
As an important railway hub, Kupiansk has strategic value and during this war both sides have used it to supply the front lines.
Civilians were urged to leave in August because of constant shelling as Russia tried to take it back.
Denys is at the very sharpest edge of the fighting and after months on the front line he has had enough, complaining that his commanders do not listen to advice.
"They emphasise aviation and artillery, but we need the latest technologies, like drones," he says.
He believes Nato, which Ukraine desperately wants to join, needs to learn lessons from this very modern war.
Mines are one of the biggest challenges for Ukrainian troops across the frontline.
"The Russians have machines that can mine an area of tens of kilometres per day," explains Denys. "They use anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines, they lay three mines, one under the other."
Another hurdle has been the quality of Russian defences, which Denys describes as "underground cities".
From his position, as a rank-and-file soldier on the front line, Denys has seen a horrifying human cost on his own side of the incremental breakthroughs in recapturing territory. "The commander throws anyone - cooks or drivers - into the furnace. They simply die there in their hundreds."
"Those commanders will have to be arrested and tried after the war," he says.
These soldiers on Ukraine's front lines reflect the war of attrition this invasion has become. With its size and resources, that suits Russia.
What Kyiv is also having to grapple with, is sharing the spotlight with another conflict: the Israel-Hamas war.
President Zelensky has admitted it makes Ukraine's fight all the more difficult, with the risk of Western attention and aid being diluted.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67452832
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Suella Braverman: No flights before election under PM's Rwanda plan - BBC News
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2023-11-17
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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"Tinkering with a failed plan" will not achieve the government's aims, the former home secretary says.
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UK Politics
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The PM's current Rwanda plan will mean no asylum seekers are flown there before the next election, sacked home secretary Suella Braverman has said.
Writing in the Telegraph, she said "tinkering with a failed plan" would not achieve the government's aims.
She said ministers should ignore human rights laws and obligations in their "entirety" to push it through.
But ex-cabinet minister Damian Green called this the "most unconservative proposal I've ever heard".
A former First Secretary of State under Theresa May, Mr Green told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that overriding legal constraints was the behaviour of "dictators" like Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a ruling on the government's scheme to fly some asylum seekers to Rwanda, the Supreme Court said there were "substantial grounds" to believe that some of those deported to the country could be sent back to places where they would be unsafe.
After the judgement, Rishi Sunak announced he would bring in emergency legislation to certify that Rwanda was a "safe" country, despite the court's decision.
The prime minister also said he would sign a new treaty with Rwanda, so that the first flights could begin in the spring.
But Mrs Braverman said a new treaty was "magical thinking," repeating the language of her scathing letter to Mr Sunak after he sacked her.
The proposed treaty would not solve "the fundamental issue", that the UK's highest court had found Rwanda unsafe for deporting asylum seekers, she argued.
Mrs Braverman, who was sacked as home secretary on Monday, said that unless the prime minister went further than his current proposals, she could not see how the government could deliver on its pledge before running out of Parliamentary time.
A general election is expected to be held next year and one must take place by January 2025.
"Any new treaty would still require going back through the courts, a process that would likely take at least another year," she said.
She added that the process "could culminate in yet another defeat".
"That is why the plan outlined by the PM will not yield flights to Rwanda before an election if Plan B is simply a tweaked version of the failed Plan A," she said.
Mrs Braverman said the PM's proposed legislation should ignore "the entirety" of the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), as well as other relevant international obligations including the Refugee Convention.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Rishi Sunak tells the BBC's Chris Mason that flights to Rwanda will happen by spring
Mrs Braverman's arguments have been supported by some of her colleagues.
Former cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke said parliament was "entitled in extremis to say certain sections of the law are disapplied".
He argued it was wrong that "our human rights framework" was blocking the government's ability to police the UK's borders.
The Rwanda policy is central to Mr Sunak's plan to stop asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats - one of his key pledges - as it is designed to deter people from making the dangerous journey.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper told BBC Breakfast that the government was "committed" to getting the Rwanda policy working by the spring.
Any new legislation is expected to face strong opposition in the House of Lords, which contains several former Supreme Court judges. It would also be likely to face legal challenges in the courts.
Sir David Normington, former Home Office permanent secretary, told Today that Mrs Braverman was "right in one way" - that getting a working Rwanda policy "would be very difficult".
"We could pull out of all conventions, but that would be a very bad idea," he said, adding that it would always come down to a British court deciding whether Rwanda was safe.
"The courts say it is not a safe country. You can't say black is white."
Asked if international law was "outdated", Sir David said that "at the core" international agreements were written to protect the vulnerable.
"What is true is that the rights of people to not be tortured never goes out of date."
It's not immediately clear how Mrs Braverman's plan would legally work quickly.
The UK and other countries that are signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights can put to one side only some of its protections in times of war or some other emergency. The key protection at the heart of the Rwanda case - that nobody should be subjected to torture or to inhuman treatment - is not one of the rights that can be swept away in what's known as "derogation".
The UK has only derogated from the ECHR eight times in 70 years. Seven of those situations were related to detaining paramilitaries during the conflict in Northern Ireland. The most recent in 2001 concerned holding al-Qaeda suspects without charge - a move that the courts later said was illegal.
During Boris Johnson's time as prime minister, the government proposed limiting and replacing some human rights protections in a highly-criticised replacement bill which Rishi Sunak then scrapped.
Leaving the ECHR entirely would separately breach the 25-year-old Good Friday Agreement at the heart of Northern Ireland's power-sharing peace deal - and enrage the UK's partners on the other side of the English Channel - potentially making co-operation on stopping boats harder.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67446101
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David McBride: Australian war crimes whistleblower pleads guilty - BBC News
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2023-11-17
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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David McBride helped expose allegations of extrajudicial killings by Australian troops in Afghanistan.
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Australia
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A whistleblower who helped expose allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan has pleaded guilty to leaking classified information.
David McBride was due to face trial next week, but changed his plea after a legal ruling scuppered his defence.
McBride - an ex-military lawyer - said he felt a moral duty to speak up after his internal complaints were ignored.
A landmark inquiry later found evidence that Australian forces had unlawfully killed 39 Afghans during the war.
McBride admits he gave troves of documents to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), because he was concerned about what he then thought was the "over-investigation" of troops, the court heard.
He pleaded guilty on Friday to three charges of stealing and unlawfully sharing secret military information.
The information he provided underpinned a series of reports in 2017 called The Afghan Files, which gave unprecedented insight into the operations of Australia's elite special forces in Afghanistan, and contained allegations of war crimes.
Months after McBride's arrest in 2019, the ABC was raided by federal police, who were also building a case against the journalist, Dan Oakes, who wrote the reports. Prosecutors declined to charge Mr Oakes however, saying it was not in the public interest.
McBride - who initially faced five charges - had intended to argue his disclosure was protected by whistleblower safeguards in Australia. But his legal team say they were forced to withdraw that defence after much of their arguments were ruled to endanger national security.
After failed attempts to convince Attorney General Mark Dreyfus to intervene and drop the prosecution - as Mr Dreyfus did in the case of fellow whistleblower Bernard Collaery last year - McBride then tried to argue that he had a duty to leak the documents, because doing so was in the public interest.
After several days of pre-trial argument, a judge rejected the argument and ruled that they could not be put to a jury.
His defence lawyer Mark Davis said this would have dealt his defence a "fatal blow", with McBride eventually entering a guilty plea.
Advocates say his case showed that Australia's whistleblower protections were not strong enough.
"This is a dark day for democracy in Australia," said Rex Patrick, a former Senator and founder of the Whistleblower Justice Fund.
"There is no public interest in prosecuting whistleblowers, and certainly no public interest in sending them to jail," added Kieran Pender, from the Human Rights Law Centre, who called for McBride to be pardoned.
A spokesperson for the Attorney General said it would be inappropriate to comment while the proceedings are still before the court.
McBride will be sentenced early next year.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-67447254
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news_world-australia-67447254
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Peter Nygard: Fashion mogul guilty of sex assaults - BBC News
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2023-11-13
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The 82-year-old is still facing a trial in Montreal and extradition to the US.
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US & Canada
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Peter Nygard seen in a police vehicle in Toronto after the guilty verdict
A Canadian jury has found the former fashion mogul Peter Nygard guilty of sexual assault after a six-week trial.
Prosecutors told a Toronto court that Nygard, 82, used his "status" to assault five women in a series of incidents from the late 1980s to 2005.
Nygard denied the charges, and his defence team accused the victims of "gold-digging" for financial gain.
He was found not guilty on a fifth count of sexual assault and one count of forcible confinement.
Nygard appeared to show no emotion as the verdict was handed down on the jurors' fifth day of deliberations.
According to prosecutors, Nygard lured the women - aged 16 to 28 at the time - to a private luxury bedroom in his firm's Toronto headquarters.
One prosecutor described the room as having "a giant bed...and a bar and doors, doors with no handles and automatic locks controlled by Peter Nygard".
Prosecutors alleged that Nygard would assault the women once they were trapped in the room.
After Nygard's conviction, his son Kai Zen Bickle told reporters outside the Toronto court that the jury's ruling was "a victory" for all those "who came forward and were denied justice".
"One more child won't be affected, one more woman won't be affected, " Mr Bickle said. "(Nygard) has to actually sit down and think about all of these things."
Mr Bickle has become an outspoken supporter of his father's alleged victims and described the moment Nygard was found guilty on Sunday as "emotional".
"There are so many survivors out there, this is their day," he said.
Peter Nygard's son Kai Zen Bickle said: "It's not good brand association to be the son of a monster."
Nygard's lawyer Brian Greenspan said "we will consider the options" when asked by reporters whether Nygard would seek an appeal.
A sentencing hearing will be set on 21 November.
During closing arguments earlier this week, Crown prosecutors and Nygard's defence team painted dramatically different pictures of the man who once hobnobbed with celebrities and stood at the helm of a lucrative global apparel empire.
Mr Greenspan told jurors that the state's case rested on "revisionist history" built on "contradictions and innuendo", Canadian media reported.
He also claimed that four of the five women - who are also part of a US class action lawsuit - were motivated by financial gain.
Over five days of tense testimony and cross-examination earlier in the trial, Nygard said he could never have acted "in that kind of manner" and that he did not recall four of the five women, according to CBC.
Prosecutors relied heavily on the evidence of the women in court.
Crown Attorney Neville Golwalla addressed the media on Sunday after the verdict and thanked the women who had come forward.
"This is a crime that typically happens in private and profoundly impacts human dignity," Ms Golwalla said.
"To stand up and recount those indignities in a public forum such as a courtroom is never easy and takes great courage."
Nygard - who was once estimated to be worth at least $700m (£570m) - is still facing another trial in Montreal next year and assault and confinement charges in Winnipeg.
Once his criminal cases in Canada are completed, he is set to be extradited to the US, where authorities claim he engaged in a "decades-long pattern of criminal conduct" involving at least a dozen victims across the globe. He is currently fighting that extradition.
The guilty verdicts on Sunday cap a stunning fall from grace for Nygard.
In February 2020, he stepped down as chairman of his firm, Nygard International, shortly before it filed for bankruptcy after US authorities raided its New York headquarters.
He has been jailed since his arrest in December the same year.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67360004
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The return of David Cameron: What is going on? - BBC News
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2023-11-13
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Rishi Sunak could argue the ex-PM can unite the Tories. But his return to cabinet comes with baggage.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
"Cameron is the biggest upgrade in modern political history."
So texts a former cabinet minister, delighted to see the return of the now Lord Cameron as foreign secretary.
Yes, you read that sentence right: Lord Cameron, foreign secretary.
The accidental instigator of the biggest single moment in British foreign policy in a generation - Brexit - is now the face of British foreign policy, under a Brexit-supporting prime minister.
Accidental, you'll recall, because he called the EU referendum hopeful his argument for Remain would triumph. It didn't, and he was a goner. Or at least he was until today.
This appointment allows the prime minister to argue he is bringing the Conservative family back together.
David Cameron alluded to this, writing on X that he wants to "be part of the strongest possible team that serves the United Kingdom and that can be presented to the country when the general election is held."
The young, ambitious, then-unknown backbencher who came out for Brexit and defied the then-prime minister is now the prime minister himself, and appoints David Cameron to his cabinet.
Lord Cameron, as we will become used to calling him, is well-connected on the international stage, which comes in handy when you're an incoming foreign secretary.
And he'll have useful words of advice about winning general elections too.
But he comes with baggage: what he has been up to since leaving politics. Here's an article I wrote two and a half years ago about the Greensill affair, for a start.
And what do those post-Brexit referendum Conservatives - many elected in 2019 - make of David Cameron's return?
For a good number, not a lot. The Remain-campaigning, austerity-delivering former premier is a rather different Conservative from many of them.
"Just because something is a marmalade dropper, doesn't make it a good idea," says one figure on today's big surprise.
They argue it is a "big strategic blunder to kill off the change message they were trying to land by bringing back the Tory PM who started 13 years of failure."
And yes, just a month or so ago, Rishi Sunak was portraying himself as the change candidate - and in so doing defining himself against people like….David Cameron.
And here's a question: what next for Suella Braverman, the now former home secretary?
There are those loyal to her who say this is far from the last we will hear from her.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will announce whether the government's Rwanda migration plan can happen - sending some people who've arrived in the UK to east Africa.
If, as many in government expect, ministers lose and the Supreme Court says no, expect to see Mrs Braverman argue that the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
"It'll be like Brexit 2.0" is how one senior figure described it to me - with the same capacity to divide the Conservative Party.
Mrs Braverman would love to lead the Tories one day.
Oh, and allies of the former home secretary are gathering for a meeting in Parliament this afternoon.
Remember, this is a reshuffle still under way. All the indications are that it has breadth as well as depth - with changes at every rank within government.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67403223
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Northern Ireland Prison Service: Hundreds of inmates go missing - BBC News
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2023-11-07
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Figures show that on several occasions inmates were missing for years, raising fresh concerns.
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Northern Ireland
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There are three prisons sites in Northern Ireland at Maghaberry, Magilligan and Hydebank Wood College and Female Prison
Inmates have gone missing from Northern Ireland's prisons almost 250 times during the last decade.
Most of the cases relate to inmates who were unlawfully at large from Maghaberry Prison, near Lisburn.
On more than 100 occasions prisoners were taken back to custody within the same month of going missing.
But on several occasions inmates were missing for years and a prison watchdog has raised fresh concerns.
The chief inspector of criminal justice in Northern Ireland said when prisoners fail to return to custody it can "impact community confidence and raise public safety concerns".
The Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) said pre-release testing is a vital part of rehabilitation and resettlement for inmates.
A spokesperson added: "After being fully risk assessed, they begin graduated release into the community.
"Firstly under supervision, then progressing to short periods of unaccompanied release where they work in the community.
"The reality is that some will fail this test and will be returned to prison, while others will progress back into the community."
On five occasions prisoners were missing for more than a year
As of November 2023 there were seven prisoners still unlawfully at large in Northern Ireland.
Prisoners can be temporarily released for a number of reasons including compassionate leave or as part of rehabilitation and release planning under a range of schemes including home leave.
Earlier this year there was a UK-wide manhunt for terror suspect Daniel Khalife after he escaped from Wandsworth Prison in September.
He absconded from a prison kitchen by strapping himself to the underside of a delivery van.
He was re-arrested four days later.
There have also been a number of high-profile cases of prisoners going missing in Northern Ireland in recent months.
Thomas McCabe was given a life sentence after killing a teenager in London in 1990
Convicted murderer Thomas McCabe went on the run for the second time after failing to return to prison from day release in August.
He was previously at large for more than two years before being arrested by gardaí (Irish police) in 2020.
Figures obtained by BBC News NI from the Northern Ireland Prison Service show that of the 244 instances of prisoners going missing in Northern Ireland during the last decade, most were apprehended again within a month.
On 85 occasions, prisoners released by the courts on compassionate bail did not return to prison on time.
A spokesperson of the Lady Chief Justice's Office said: "The courts are required to apply the law governing bail as laid down in this jurisdiction and will hear all the arguments for and against admission to bail/variation of bail taking account of all relevant factors before arriving at a considered decision."
• None 14compensation payments to inmates who were overheld
On five occasions prisoners were missing for more than a year and the longest an inmate was unlawfully at large was four years and one month.
During the last decade the prison service also made 14 compensation payments in relation to inmates who were accidentally held beyond their sentence.
The prison service did not provide a detailed breakdown of these figures, confirming only that half of the inmates were paid up to £1,000 and the remaining inmates were paid more than £1,000.
A spokesperson confirmed 11 prisoners were overheld between one to five days and the remaining inmates were overheld by more than five days.
There are three prisons sites in Northern Ireland at Maghaberry, Magilligan and Hydebank Wood College and Female Prison.
In 2019, Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJI) published a report looking at pre-release testing arrangements.
Concerns were raised with the then-justice minister, and public confidence in the process was challenged, after a prisoner absconded and others were photographed during an escorted activity outing.
At that time, CJI made a number of recommendations to improve the system.
The chief inspector of criminal justice in Northern Ireland, Jacqui Durkan, said it was important that risk assessments are robust
The most recent inspection of Maghaberry Prison published in June 2023 noted that pre-release planning at the prison was "well co-ordinated".
The chief inspector of criminal justice in Northern Ireland said it was important that risk assessments are robust to support all decisions to release a prisoner temporarily.
Jacqui Durkin said: "The temporary release of prisoners is an important part of a prisoner's rehabilitative journey that can inform decision-making in assessing a prisoner's suitability for release back into the community.
"While it will never be risk free, conditions of release are an important part of the process for maintaining public safety and those who know the prisoner best and have been working with them are well placed to inform appropriate decisions and conditions."
She added that pre-release schemes will remain a focus for CJI in future prison inspections.
In a statement, the Northern Ireland Prison Service said: "Pre-release testing is an essential part of rehabilitation, not just for the individual but also for the wider community in Northern Ireland."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-67308605
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Boris Johnson wanted to be injected with Covid on TV - ex-adviser - BBC News
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2023-11-07
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The former PM suggested being injected with the virus on TV would calm public fears, an ex-adviser says.
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UK Politics
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Boris Johnson "wanted to be injected with Covid-19 on television" to calm public fears, an ex-aide has said.
The claim - by Lord Lister - came in a witness statement to the Covid inquiry.
He said Mr Johnson "suggested to senior civil servants and advisers that he wanted to be injected with Covid-19 on television to demonstrate to the public that it did not pose a threat".
It was "at a time when Covid was not seen as being the serious disease it subsequently became", he added.
He said it was an "unfortunate comment" that had been "made in the heat of the moment".
He also confirmed his former boss had said letting "the bodies pile high" was preferable to another lockdown.
The remark was made in September 2020 but first reported in April 2021,
At the time, Mr Johnson dismissed the report, calling it "total rubbish".
Lord Edward Udny-Lister said the comment was made at a time when the government was "trying to avoid a further lockdown given the already severe impact on the economy and education".
On Tuesday, the Covid inquiry was also shown messages in which the head of the civil service Simon Case said of his Downing Street colleagues: "These people are so mad... they are just so madly self-defeating. I've never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run the country."
And entries from the 2020 diaries of Sir Patrick Vallance revealed that the then-chief scientific advisor felt Mr Johnson was "all over the place" on the issue of implementing a second lockdown.
Lord Lister is a long-time ally of Mr Johnson, having worked with him during his time as mayor of London and prime minister.
In his evidence session to the Covid inquiry, which lasted over two hours, Lord Lister was asked about the atmosphere in the Downing Street operation.
Last week, Helen MacNamara, a senior civil servant during the Covid pandemic, said there had been a "macho" culture and that a "toxic" environment had affected decision-making.
Lord Lister said: "I think there was a lot of tension that was taking place" adding that Dominic Cummings, another senior adviser in Downing Street, was "not an easy man to deal with".
Later in the session, Lord Lister was asked about the UK government's relationship with the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales during the pandemic.
He said there had been "a great deal of mistrust and frustration" towards the Scottish government.
"It seemed to us in Downing Street, it didn't matter what the decision was, Scotland would want to do things slightly differently."
Asked if he felt the Scottish government was being "opportunistic", Lord Lister said "I think that is a good word".
He later added that Mr Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon, who was Scotland's first minister during the pandemic, "generally didn't like each other very much".
Questioned on the second lockdown, introduced in November 2020, Lord Lister suggested it could have been avoided if the tier system had been given more time to work.
Under the tier system, areas where subject to different restrictions depending on the prevalence of the disease. It was essentially made redundant around a month after being introduced, when Mr Johnson implemented a second national lockdown.
Lord Lister said the tier system was "messy but the right thing to do" adding: "If we kept going I believe it would have worked."
Earlier in the day, the Covid inquiry had seen further extracts from a diary written in October 2020 by the government's then chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.
The note says Mr Johnson and Rishi Sunak, who was chancellor at the time, were both "clutching at straws" while trying to argue against a second lockdown in October 2020.
Sir Patrick describes a meeting on 8 October as, "very bad".
After being shown the final slide in a presentation by the Covid-19 Taskforce, Sir Patrick wrote that Mr Johnson responded, "Whisky and revolver."
"He was all over the place", Sir Patrick says, adding that Mr Sunak was using "increasingly specific and spurious arguments against closing hospitality".
In another diary entry from 25 October, Sir Patrick says Mr Johnson "owns the reality for a day and then is buffeted by a discussion with [the chancellor]."
Simon Ridley, former Head of the Cabinet Office Covid taskforce also gave evidence to the inquiry on Tuesday.
He admitted the taskforce was not asked about the Eat Out To Help Out scheme introduced by Mr Sunak in summer 2020.
The scheme gave diners up to 50% of their bill off and was aimed at bolstering the hospitality industry, however some scientists have argued it helped the virus spread.
Asked whether his team had been "completely blindsided by the Treasury", Mr. Ridley responded, "correct."
The inquiry is taking witness evidence in London until Christmas, before moving to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
On Wednesday, it will hear from Sir Mark Sedwill who headed the civil service from April 2018 to September 2020.
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Fortnite maker Epic Games takes Google to court - BBC News
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2023-11-07
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Google faces another anti-trust trial - this time about its Google Play store
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Technology
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The maker of the popular video game Fortnite has begun its legal battle with Google in a San Francisco court.
The firm accused Google of acting as a monopoly - charging 30% commission on in-app purchases on Google Play store.
Epic Games accused Google of turning its back on its "Don't be Evil" motto, which the company coined when it was founded in 1998.
Google however argued that there were plenty of other ways to download apps on Android phones.
The company has long said that it competes with Apple - and rejects the idea Google Play is monopolistic.
The trial opens up another anti-trust front against Google. The company is also defending itself in a court in Washington - where the US justice department has accused the company of holding an illegal monopoly over search.
If Epic's arguments sound familiar, they are. Epic took Apple to court in 2021 with a very similar case.
In 2020, Fortnite was pulled from Google Play and the App Store, for using its own payments system.
The judge in that case rejected the idea that Apple was a monopoly, however did allow apps to steer users away from Apple's in-app charges.
Epic argues that Google has "eliminated competition in the distribution of Android apps using myriad contractual and technical barriers."
However Google argues there is more competition when it comes to apps than on any other operating system.
"Android is the only major mobile platform that gives developers multiple ways to distribute apps" the company says.
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Laura Kuenssberg: Questions politicians can't seem to answer on immigration - BBC News
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2023-11-25
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Outrage is no substitute for answers when it comes to record UK immigration, says Laura Kuenssberg.
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UK Politics
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It's a "betrayal". It's a "slap in the face". The numbers are "shockingly high" and it's simply "unsustainable".
Politicians all seem very cross about the numbers of people from around the world making the UK their home. And they nearly all seem to agree that old chestnut, that "something must be done".
Just wait until they look in the mirror and realise who came up with the new immigration system under which the levels have risen so much (and witness the former prime minister, Boris Johnson, raging in his newspaper column at the folly of the system that he himself introduced).
But the outrage in the last few days, real or not, is no substitute for answers to a set of questions that politicians must confront if they really want change - and many of them are difficult to answer.
Is immigration too high? With net migration adding the equivalent of the population of Glasgow or Leeds to the country each year, it's not politically fashionable to say that it shows the UK is an attractive destination, and the more the merrier. The stock answer for most politicians is yes, it's too high. We have a broad consensus - so far, so easy.
But this conversation gets tricky, fast. If the level is wrong, what is the right one? The Tories have bad memories of setting a limit and then failing over, and over, and over again to hit it. It was our now Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron who, in 2010 as prime minister, promised to get net immigration under 100,000. Back then it was around a quarter of a million, which seemed sky high, it's more than double that now.
There were plenty of people inside what was then David Cameron's party who argued the vow was crass because we were in the European Union, without the powers to limit the number of EU citizens who moved to the UK. The target was impossible to guarantee. But the political appeal was clear, so he ploughed on - and failed.
Then under Theresa May, there were plenty of Cabinet ministers who believed the promised cap should be junked, even when we were tortuously out of the EU and could manage the numbers ourselves. Her view, however, was that the target should stay - after all, what message would it send if she ditched it? She failed too.
Fast forward to 2023 and the argument for a cap is back, being pushed by the former home secretary, Suella Braverman, among others. But there doesn't seem much appetite to pick a number either inside No 10 or at the top of the Labour Party, who would be giving themselves a potential test that would be hard to pass if they won power.
If they won't say how high, will they say who?
This is where it gets emotive. First, understand the irony: we left the EU on a promise that immigration would get under control because the UK could say exactly who got their passport stamped at our borders. No longer would people from any of 23 European countries be able to arrive and set up home without limit - for good or ill. But since we left, the numbers of people from outside the EU has gone up and up and up.
It's fascinating to crunch those numbers. Nearly a million people from outside the EU came to live in the UK last year (the overall net migration number is lower because that's the difference between those who arrive and those who depart). There were about a quarter of a million Indians, the next biggest group were Nigerian, then Chinese, Pakistani, then Ukrainian, according to the ONS.
The most common reason was to come to study at our universities and colleges (nearly four in 10), but around a third came to work, with a particularly staggering increase in the numbers coming to work in health and social care. The OBR reported this week the numbers of visas granted in that sector had risen 150% in the last year.
If politicians want fewer people to come to the UK, who do they want to say no to? Who would not welcome Ukrainians after the Russian invasion? Who would argue the UK should turn its back on Hong Kongers? Who wants to say that the world's best and brightest students who come to study in the UK should take their talents elsewhere? Who will tell the public the NHS and social care system can't have the staff it needs? Not many people in Westminster have much stomach for picking and choosing.
But this brings us to the fundamental question - if you turn off the immigration taps who will do the jobs that are filled right now by hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world? It is argued that for the government's sums to add up - indeed for the Conservatives to be able to afford the tax cuts they are so eager to offer - the economy needs immigration.
The Migration Advisory Committee, an independent group, was meant to take some of the politics out of this, recommending who could come depending on the gaps in the economy. But trying to take politics out of immigration is like trying to take eggs out of an omelette.
So what decisions could politicians take? The committee itself has already suggested scrapping the list of "shortage occupations" it publishes, which determines the sectors that can bring in extra foreign workers. Labour, and it seems the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, also wants to end the practice where employers can pay immigrants 20% less than the going rate if their jobs are on the list.
Labour has cited examples such as civil engineers, for whom the official government "going rate" is £34,000 a year, but can instead be recruited from abroad at just £28,000 a year - a tasty incentive for employers to hire from abroad rather than spend the cash training up less experienced staff at home.
Ministers are cutting the number of family members some migrants can bring to the UK when they move. Some Conservatives argue for a cap on the number of social care workers who can come in. Labour argues for a crackdown on exploitation in that industry.
When it comes to the huge numbers of students coming in, some Tories reckon it's time to cut way back, arguing the need to cut immigration should come ahead of the balance sheets of our higher education institutions.
Conservative calls for extra steps are more like screams now. Perhaps the measures they come up with will start to make a difference - but they may seem like nips and tucks in the face of the sheer numbers.
There are plenty of politicians in both parties who'd agree privately that the only way to make a big change in the migration numbers is a massive effort to get the UK workforce into shape.
That is not an overnight fix - for the two decades I have covered politics I have heard politicians talk about the need to skill up the workforce, to improve education and training, to invest in British workers.
We heard it in Gordon Brown's ill fated "British jobs for British workers", David Cameron's apprenticeship levy, Theresa May's T-levels, Boris Johnson's Lifetime Skills Guarantee, and Rishi Sunak's planned reforms of the benefits system to get people back into work, the list goes on.
Looking at the numbers of workers firms are bringing in from other countries might lead you to conclude those ambitions didn't get very far.
The political risks from inaction are obvious. Not just because of the ructions in the increasingly restless Conservative Party, but because of what has gone before. Vote Leave insiders identify the day the migration figures were published during the EU referendum campaign as the moment they grabbed the momentum. Boris Johnson, who had previously been reluctant to take a harder line on migration, piled in. You don't need me to tell you what happened next.
The Conservative Party has seen the threat from parties willing to take a brasher line than them - from UKIP and now from Reform UK. Nigel Farage might currently be in the celebrity jungle, but his political arguments have not been banished.
Labour, meanwhile, has learnt painful lessons from failing to take public concern about immigration seriously - just ask Rochdale voter Gillian Duffy about Gordon Brown's infamous "bigoted woman" comment.
The noisy conversation over Channel crossings has been at the forefront of the political imagination for the last year, emblazoned on government lecterns. But that is dwarfed by the numbers of people making the UK their home perfectly legally.
Questions about immigration are not easy for politicians to respond to, and it's daft to suggest they are. But the pressure is on for them to come up with more credible answers. Saying it's too high again and again doesn't make the problem go away. When voters ask the important question of whether they can trust politicians' promises, the answer might be all too clear.
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Omegle: ‘How I got the dangerous chat site closed down’ - BBC News
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2023-11-22
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"Alice" speaks exclusively to the BBC after her successful lawsuit against Omegle forced it offline.
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Technology
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"Alice" was 11 when she was paired with a paedophile on Omegle
Warning: this story contains disturbing details of abuse
"I feel personal pride that no more children will be added to Omegle's body count," says the woman who successfully forced the infamous chat site to shut down.
Speaking for the first time since the platform was taken offline, "Alice" or "A.M." as she's known in court documents, tells the BBC she demanded the website's closure as part of an out-of-court settlement.
Alice (not her real name) says she feels "validated" by the "outpouring of gratitude", as people have been sharing disturbing stories about the site. She has spent years fighting to get compensation, after being randomly paired with a paedophile who made her his digital sex slave.
Alice launched her ground-breaking lawsuit in 2021 around the time her abuser - a father-of-two called Ryan Fordyce - was sentenced to eight years in prison in Canada.
Fordyce had collected 220 images and videos of Alice from the age of 11, carrying out sexual acts under his duress over three years of abuse. He had done the same to five other girls, meeting and grooming three of them on Omegle.
"He was able to manipulate me immediately, and very quickly I was being forced to do things that a child should not have to do," she said during an interview in New York last year for a BBC documentary about Omegle.
Throughout her legal fight, Alice said that she wanted to take the lawsuit to a jury trial where she hoped to get $22m (£15.6m) in compensation. But she now says settling out of court for an undisclosed sum earlier this month was better for her and others.
"Getting the site shut down was something I couldn't have achieved in court, so I got to tailor the outcome," she says.
"Accomplishing everything we were able to in court and then obtaining this result now - probably years earlier than we could have reached a jury verdict - is something I'll never stop being proud of."
Omegle was launched in 2009 by then 18-year-old Leif Brooks. His site gave users a chance to "talk to strangers" by pairing people for video chats.
The platform had around 73 million visitors a month, according to analysts at website watchers Semrush, with most visitors coming from India, the US, the UK, Mexico and Australia.
There was no age verification and little moderation, so Omegle gained a reputation for being a place for wild and sometimes sexual encounters online.
After years of disturbing cases, Mr Brooks added a warning to the homepage that "predators use this site" - but no other noticeable changes were made.
Omegle's popularity rose during the pandemic lockdowns in 2020, and was the subject of a BBC investigation which revealed that prepubescent boys were found to be explicitly touching themselves in front of strangers. Further BBC reporting showed users were recorded carrying out sexual acts, with predators using the footage to coerce others into activity.
In the last two years, the site has been mentioned in more than 50 cases against paedophiles, and calls from child protection charities like the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and the United Nations were ignored.
Leif Brooks created Omegle when he was 18 and was in the Forbes Under-30 list in 2018
On Friday, a week after Leif Brooks closed his chat service with a lengthy statement, he added a sentence at the bottom: "I thank A.M. for opening my eyes to the human cost of Omegle."
The acknowledgment with a link to the lawsuit was also part of his settlement agreement with Alice.
Despite the victory, Alice says she will never be able to return to normal life, but she is grateful that "Omegle doesn't have to be on my mind from sunrise to sunset".
Cyber Correspondent Joe Tidy speaks exclusively with child abuse survivor "Alice" and her legal team, as they prepare a case that could have major consequences for social media companies. Then he tracks down Omegle's elusive creator, Leif Brooks.
She adds: "I am forever proud to have accomplished what I have."
Omegle's legal team tried and failed several times to get the case dismissed. In his statement, Mr Brooks says the shutting down of his chat site is an attack on internet freedom: "The battle for Omegle has been lost, but the war against the Internet rages on."
Alice's case is a legal landmark, as most social media lawsuits in the US are dismissed under a catch-all protection law called Section 230, which exempts companies from being sued for things that users do on their platforms.
Alice's attorneys used a novel angle of attack called a Product Liability lawsuit, arguing that the site was defective in its design.
"This was the first case where the platform could be held liable for the harm from one user to another and that's largely because of our argument that the product design made the type of harm so foreseeable," says attorney Carrie Goldberg, who led the case with co-counsels Naomi Leeds and Barb Long.
Product Liability cases are a growing trend, with dozens of similar suits launched in the last year against platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat.
"We're holding Omegle liable for their own product operations," says Carrie Goldberg, who led Alice's lawsuit
No Product Liability case related to a social network has ever made it to a trial, but A.M. versus Omegle came very close, before a settlement was reached.
Alice's case also sets a new precedent in US law, by holding a social platform liable for an incident of child trafficking.
"As a trafficking venture, we argued, we should not have to prove that Omegle knew ahead of time about this specific predator. Instead, it should be enough that they know and financially benefit from the ubiquity of predation on its platform. The court agreed with our argument," Ms Goldberg says.
In February, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) - which removes child sex abuse content from the internet - told the BBC its analysts deal with around 20 Omegle videos a week. It says it welcomes the end of what it calls a "dangerous website".
"Predators used Omegle to contact children to abuse and we saw offenders discussing the use of the site among themselves, viewing it as a hunting ground. Despite our efforts to reach out to them, Omegle did not take the opportunity to work with us to address these issues," says Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of the IWF.
The BBC has asked Omegle's owner and founder Leif Brooks for a recorded interview many times since 2021, but he has refused.
He hasn't spoken publicly since around 2016, when he stopped posting on social media.
As part of the investigation into his website, the BBC visited Mr Brooks at his lakeside home in Florida, from where he ran the website with no other registered staff. He refused to answer any questions, but insisted later in email exchanges that he did pay a third-party company to safeguard his site.
In his closing statement on the Omegle homepage, he said there was "a great deal of moderation behind the scenes, including state-of-the-art AI operating in concert with a wonderful team of human moderators".
Previously Mr Brooks had said that he has worked with child protection groups and handed over information about predators, leading to successful convictions of child abusers.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Alice: "I was consistently being forced to do things that a child should not have to do"
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Why the change of message on Autumn Statement tax cuts? - BBC News
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2023-11-22
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The chancellor said personal tax cuts were "virtually impossible", now the PM says it's time - what's changed?
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Business
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It looks like the Autumn Statement will now include at least one crowd-pleasing personal tax cut - so why the change of message and which tax could be cut?
When I spoke to Jeremy Hunt 10 days ago, just after it was confirmed that the UK economy was not growing, I suggested to him that personal tax cuts might help.
He said there were "no shortcuts" and clearly signalled that his focus was on growth-enhancing business tax cuts.
A week on, I spoke to the chancellor again, at a hydrogen energy facility in Sheffield. The caution on such cuts had gone. And the prime minster has now suggested the time has come to cut tax.
For Rishi Sunak, last Wednesday's drop in inflation was a clear turning point in Britain's recent economic story.
During his time as chancellor and as prime minister - most of the past four years - the UK and most of the world have been hit by an unprecedented series of geopolitical crises that have led to big spending and rolling inflationary shocks.
The pandemic led to an inflationary supply chain crisis pushing prices up, and then the Russia-Ukraine conflict saw the double whammy of the world's biggest energy exporter invading one of the world's biggest food exporters.
At this precise time, the size of Britain's workforce was hit. In part, this was due to the aftermath of the pandemic, and in some key sectors, by more restrictive post-Brexit worker visas. It was a potent cocktail for inflation.
The government's argument therefore, is that last week's confirmation that inflation has more than halved since its peak is a turning point for inflation.
The UK is on a glidepath to normal inflation levels, and therefore, they argue, there is little risk of a personal tax cut adding to price pressures.
But the PM's argument goes further. He says that the 4.6% inflation figure also represents a turning point of a rolling series of economic crises since 2020. The time to put four years of higher public spending, borrowing, and taxation behind us.
He is taking aim at Labour's calls for a "new" post-pandemic world of more resilient local supply chains, and more borrowing-funded public spending especially on green infrastructure.
US President Joe Biden may be able to do this because the US has the privilege of printing the world's reserve currency, and is insulated from fears about its debts. The UK, especially after last year's mini budget, cannot do this, Mr Sunak argued.
This will be the dividing line of the next year with a Labour Party that aims to spend £28bn a year more on public investment by the end of the coming Parliament.
So the tax cuts will be part of a general message that, having seen inflation halve, now the focus is on growth.
The overwhelming focus of the cuts will be aimed at helping businesses to invest. But, a tax cut that helps "make work pay" and so improves the supply of workers, helping relieve a key constraint on growth, will also be delivered.
National Insurance seems to fit the bill, because it directly helps employers or workers keep more from wage packets. Another option is ironing out some of the inconsistencies in the tax system that see some universal credit recipients, working parents and higher earners facing effective tax rates so high that it makes little sense to work more hours.
Former pensions minister Steve Webb has also spotted his old department seeming to prepare an unusual announcement on benefit uprating on an obscure part of the Department for Work and Pensions website.
When setting how much benefits go up next April, the government could decide to use October's lower inflation figure instead of the usual September figure. That could squeeze between £2bn and £3bn from the welfare bill every year.
Both the PM and chancellor make the argument that the level of benefits may exacerbate worker shortage problems.
In Westminster, others point out that the loss of the Supreme Court case on a plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda, on the same day as the inflation figure, may also help explain the search for a headline personal tax cut to assuage his backbenchers. The speech the PM gave on Monday, when he said the government was now able to cut taxes, was due to be given last Wednesday, before the Supreme Court's ruling.
So the contours of the argument this week will be the government arguing that an economic turnaround has created space for a tax cut, and the opposition will instead say the PM is jumping the gun at the behest of backbenchers and in any case only reversing one of two dozen tax rises.
In making a turnaround argument, it is worth waiting for what the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says in its forecasts for the economy.
This month's Bank of England forecasts for quarterly growth next year are 0.01%, -0.04%, 0.01% and 0.02%. Over 2024, it adds up to zero.
The economy did avoid the recession predicted for this year, but how seriously can Downing Street proclaim a turnaround if the OBR predicts little or no growth over the next year?
It is also worth watching on what basis the government claims the PM's target on growth will be met.
So underneath a big call made on tax cuts at the Autumn Statement, there is a much wider, immediate political argument, and the outline of choice for the general election. But watch out for whether the OBR supports this "turnaround" picture.
What help would you like from the Autumn Statement? Do you have any questions you want answering? Get in touch by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.
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Who is Nella Rose, the influencer in the jungle? - BBC News
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2023-11-22
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The influencer is the talk of the jungle in I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Nella has a big following on social media Nella started posting beauty reviews, debates and vlogs to YouTube when she was an 18-year-old sociology student at the University of Leicester. After finding lots of fans she now focuses on Instagram and TikTok and has one million followers on each platform. She was awarded best media personality at the Mobo Awards 2022.
She was the second person eliminated from the show Nella was the second contestant to be booted off the show after receiving the fewest public votes. She spent 17 days in the jungle.
Last year, Nella was announced as a new host of MTV's Catfish UK. She's also presented from the Brit Awards red carpet and co-hosted BBC Radio 1Xtra podcast Pressed with Mariam Musa and Adeola Patronne before leaving for "personal reasons".
She was born in Belgium Nella, real name Ornella Rose Hollela, moved from Belgium to the UK as a child and grew up in London. Talking about her African heritage, she tweeted: "I'm so proud to be Congolese."
She has apologised for 'terrible' tweets The influencer said sorry for "unacceptable" tweets she posted as a teenager, including posts about black girls and Somali people. "I used to hate black girls because I used to hate myself," she explained in an apology video after the tweets resurfaced in 2020. "Those tweets were terrible especially to Somalian people."
She lost both her parents She said seeing her dad suffer before he died in 2020 was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life". Nella's said her mum's death in 2016, aged 46, was "something you don't expect, it just happened. She literally died in my arms". She said she was later evicted from her mother's council house.
Social media was divided over her argument with Fred Nella's parents' death came up in the jungle, when First Dates star Fred Sirieix told Nella: "I'm 51. I'm not 26 anymore am I? I could be your dad". They had been discussing his bad eyesight, but Nella said the comment made her feel "disrespected" and she no longer wanted to talk to him. Viewers took to social media in support of Fred, but others were angry at online abuse directed at Nella.
Nella has screamed her way through creepy-crawly and snake-infested bushtucker trials. So far, she has stuck her head in a box with snakes, eaten pizza topped with scorpions and cow anus, and faced electric shocks while crawling through a tunnel. Before coming into the jungle, she said: "I am scared of everything from red ants, tarantulas to rats or ostriches."
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Suella Braverman letter: The ex-home secretary's full letter to Rishi Sunak - BBC News
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2023-11-14
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The ex-home secretary's open letter criticising the leadership of her old boss Rishi Sunak.
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UK Politics
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Suella Braverman, who was sacked as home secretary by Rishi Sunak after she defied No 10 over an article accusing the Metropolitan Police of bias in the policing of protests, has sent a scathing open letter to her old boss.
Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave government. While disappointing, this is for the best.
It has been my privilege to serve as home secretary and deliver on what the British people have sent us to Westminster to do.
I want to thank all of those civil servants, police, Border Force officers and security professionals with whom I have worked and whose dedication to public safety is exemplary.
I am proud of what we achieved together: delivering on our manifesto pledge to recruit 20,000 new police officers and enacting new laws such as the Public Order Act 2023 and the National Security Act 2023.
I also led a programme of reform: on anti-social behaviour, police dismissals and standards, reasonable lines of enquiry, grooming gangs, knife crime, non-crime hate incidents and rape and serious sexual offences.
And I am proud of the strategic changes that I was delivering to Prevent, Contest, serious organised crime and fraud. I am sure that this work will continue with the new ministerial team.
As you know, I accepted your offer to serve as home secretary in October 2022 on certain conditions.
Despite you having been rejected by a majority of party members during the summer leadership contest and thus having no personal mandate to be prime minister, I agreed to support you because of the firm assurances you gave me on key policy priorities. These were, among other things:
This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you. It is generally agreed that my support was a pivotal factor in winning the leadership contest and thus enabling you to become prime minister.
For a year, as home secretary I have sent numerous letters to you on the key subjects contained in our agreement, made requests to discuss them with you and your team, and put forward proposals on how we might deliver these goals.
I worked up the legal advice, policy detail and action to take on these issues. This was often met with equivocation, disregard and a lack of interest.
You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies. Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises.
These are not just pet interests of mine. They are what we promised the British people in our 2019 manifesto which led to a landslide victory. They are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit Referendum.
Our deal was no mere promise over dinner, to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged.
I was clear from day one that if you did not wish to leave the ECHR, the way to securely and swiftly deliver our Rwanda partnership would be to block off the ECHR, the HRA and any other obligations which inhibit our ability to remove those with no right to be in the UK. Our deal expressly referenced "notwithstanding clauses" to that effect.
Your rejection of this path was not merely a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do "whatever it takes" to stop the boats.
At every stage of litigation I cautioned you and your team against assuming we would win. I repeatedly urged you to take legislative measures that would better secure us against the possibility of defeat. You ignored these arguments. You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices. This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position.
If we lose in the Supreme Court, an outcome that I have consistently argued we must be prepared for, you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one.
Worse than this, your magical thinking - believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion - has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible Plan B.
I wrote to you on multiple occasions setting out what a credible Plan B would entail, and making clear that unless you pursue these proposals, in the event of defeat, there is no hope of flights this side of an election. I received no reply from you.
I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people.
If, on the other hand, we win in the Supreme Court, because of the compromises that you insisted on in the Illegal Migration Act, the government will struggle to deliver our Rwanda partnership in the way that the public expects.
The Act is far from secure against legal challenge. People will not be removed as swiftly as I originally proposed. The average claimant will be entitled to months of process, challenge, and appeal. Your insistence that Rule 39 indications are binding in international law - against the views of leading lawyers, as set out in the House of Lords - will leave us vulnerable to being thwarted yet again by the Strasbourg Court.
Another cause for disappointment - and the context for my recent article in The Times - has been your failure to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets since Hamas's terrorist atrocities of 7 October.
I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion.
Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years.
I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs. Rather than fully acknowledge the severity of this threat, your team disagreed with me for weeks that the law needed changing.
As on so many other issues, you sought to put off tough decisions in order to minimise political risk to yourself. In doing so, you have increased the very real risk these marches present to everyone else.
In October of last year you were given an opportunity to lead our country. It is a privilege to serve and one we should not take for granted. Service requires bravery and thinking of the common good.
It is not about occupying the office as an end in itself.
Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time. You need to change course urgently.
I may not have always found the right words, but I have always striven to give voice to the quiet majority that supported us in 2019. I have endeavoured to be honest and true to the people who put us in these privileged positions.
I will, of course, continue to support the government in pursuit of policies which align with an authentic conservative agenda.
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The return of David Cameron: What is going on? - BBC News
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2023-11-14
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Rishi Sunak could argue the ex-PM can unite the Tories. But his return to cabinet comes with baggage.
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UK Politics
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"Cameron is the biggest upgrade in modern political history."
So texts a former cabinet minister, delighted to see the return of the now Lord Cameron as foreign secretary.
Yes, you read that sentence right: Lord Cameron, foreign secretary.
The accidental instigator of the biggest single moment in British foreign policy in a generation - Brexit - is now the face of British foreign policy, under a Brexit-supporting prime minister.
Accidental, you'll recall, because he called the EU referendum hopeful his argument for Remain would triumph. It didn't, and he was a goner. Or at least he was until today.
This appointment allows the prime minister to argue he is bringing the Conservative family back together.
David Cameron alluded to this, writing on X that he wants to "be part of the strongest possible team that serves the United Kingdom and that can be presented to the country when the general election is held."
The young, ambitious, then-unknown backbencher who came out for Brexit and defied the then-prime minister is now the prime minister himself, and appoints David Cameron to his cabinet.
Lord Cameron, as we will become used to calling him, is well-connected on the international stage, which comes in handy when you're an incoming foreign secretary.
And he'll have useful words of advice about winning general elections too.
But he comes with baggage: what he has been up to since leaving politics. Here's an article I wrote two and a half years ago about the Greensill affair, for a start.
And what do those post-Brexit referendum Conservatives - many elected in 2019 - make of David Cameron's return?
For a good number, not a lot. The Remain-campaigning, austerity-delivering former premier is a rather different Conservative from many of them.
"Just because something is a marmalade dropper, doesn't make it a good idea," says one figure on today's big surprise.
They argue it is a "big strategic blunder to kill off the change message they were trying to land by bringing back the Tory PM who started 13 years of failure."
And yes, just a month or so ago, Rishi Sunak was portraying himself as the change candidate - and in so doing defining himself against people like….David Cameron.
And here's a question: what next for Suella Braverman, the now former home secretary?
There are those loyal to her who say this is far from the last we will hear from her.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will announce whether the government's Rwanda migration plan can happen - sending some people who've arrived in the UK to east Africa.
If, as many in government expect, ministers lose and the Supreme Court says no, expect to see Mrs Braverman argue that the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
"It'll be like Brexit 2.0" is how one senior figure described it to me - with the same capacity to divide the Conservative Party.
Mrs Braverman would love to lead the Tories one day.
Oh, and allies of the former home secretary are gathering for a meeting in Parliament this afternoon.
Remember, this is a reshuffle still under way. All the indications are that it has breadth as well as depth - with changes at every rank within government.
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Elianne Andam: Family say funeral will be 'a celebration of her life' - BBC News
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2023-11-10
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Speaking to the BBC before Elianne's funeral, they said she will "forever remain in our hearts".
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London
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Elianne's aunt Ruby Paintsil (left) said: "If we could change the clock I wish we would not have to go through this"
The family of Elianne Andam say they are "broken" and "are not the same" since the day she was killed.
The 15-year-old girl was stabbed at about 08:30 BST on her way to school in Croydon, south London, on 27 September.
A 17-year-old boy is charged with murder and is due to appear in court on 19 December.
Speaking to the BBC the day before Elianne's funeral, they said it will be "a celebration of her life" and she will "forever remain in our hearts".
Shortly before a community event at Croydon Voluntary Action on Friday, Elianne's aunts Regina Boafo and Ruby Paintsil spoke of their "amazing" niece's dreams to be a lawyer and to "defend... the voiceless".
"She doesn't like injustice; she likes justice for people. Every time she'd get in trouble [it was] fighting for someone else," Ms Paintsil said.
Elianne's aunt Regina Boafo said her niece was a "good girl" and "she would never get into any fight with anyone"
They said although the teenager was "very quiet" she loved dancing and singing and was always "smiling a lot".
Ms Paintsil said Elianne was respectful of her family and enjoyed spending time with them, adding: "She doesn't like really a lot of arguments; she would never argue with her auntie or uncle."
The aunts said they never expected such a tragedy would happen to them, or that moments after Elianne said goodbye and set off for school she would be dead.
"That is the bit I cannot get out of my head," Ms Boafo said.
"She is very calm, she was the last person I would ever think someone would harm her with a knife," Ms Paintsil said.
She stressed Elianne didn't mix with "the wrong people" and the aunts said she would keep in touch with family if she went out to the cinema or a restaurant.
Speaking about the day Elianne was killed, Ms Boafo said after waking she saw her phone had been called "many times" and when she found out her niece had died she was "really destroyed, broken".
Since her niece's death, Ms Boafo said she hasn't been able to work and rarely leaves the house. She has moved in with her sister - Elianne's mother - to help support her.
"Up to now, I'm still not the same woman... I can't do anything. I get up and I don't even feel like dressing up, but you have to put clothes on because people are coming to sympathise with you," she explained.
"I wish nobody would ever go through this pain," Elianne's aunt Ruby Paintsil said
"If I can't even do things, just imagine how my sister feels - my sister who was trying to be strong and go to work, she can't."
"She is broken a lot... we have to keep comforting her. She hasn't been herself, every day broken into pieces," Ms Paintsil said.
"If we could change the clock I wish we would not have to go through this.
"You ask questions - why? Why does that have to happen?" she added. "I wish nobody would ever go through this pain."
Despite their grief, both women said they have been amazed at support from the community along with thousands of cards and messages sent from around the world - all of which has "really helped" their family.
Thousands of people attended a vigil in Croydon to remember Elianne
"We really appreciate everything the nation and everyone is doing... thank you," Ms Boafo said.
Elianne's funeral will be held in Croydon on Saturday.
Ms Paintsil said after her burial there will be a celebration of her life because "she's a girl that liked to bring joy to people's lives".
"If Elianne was here she'd say 'go on, have fun, don't break down', and things like that."
Ms Boafo added: "It will be nice to celebrate it and for us, she will forever remain in our hearts - she can never be gone.
"Even though she is gone, we know that her memory will forever be with us."
Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk
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Laura Kuenssberg: Why the PM could be drowned out at the King's Speech - BBC News
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2023-11-04
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The new monarch's big moment will also be a chance for Rishi Sunak to try to revive his government.
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UK Politics
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Grab your trumpet! Polish the golden carriage! Dust down the throne! It's nearly time. Time for Charles III to make history, giving the first King's Speech in 70 years.
Time for one of the country's finest ceremonial occasions, when a good chunk of all the King's horses and all the King's men trot from the Palace to Parliament before the monarch makes a speech to MPs, members of the House of Lords and all of us.
Tuesday's speech will be one of those bizarrely British mashups of arcane tradition (10 points if you know what the Cap of Maintenance is) and modern politics.
It's a big moment for a new monarch. And it's the last chance for a government in trouble to introduce a programme of new laws in the hope of shaking them out of the doldrums and grabbing your attention.
New laws take a long time to go through Parliament. So while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak still has at least a year to try to turn things around before he must call an election, the speech is, insiders admit privately, more or less the last chance for the Conservatives to transform ideas into reality - if they want to get them on the statute book before we all go to the polls.
But all the fancy regal fanfares in the world on Tuesday might be drowned out by bigger realities.
King Charles - as Prince of Wales - delivered the Queen's Speech in May 2022 on behalf of his mother for the first time
Top of the list, the conflict in the Middle East. Whether it is the fraught practicalities of helping Brits get out of Gaza, or the diplomatic efforts to coax Israel to pause hostilities there, the conflict is naturally gobbling up political time and energy - and dominating the headlines. Although it is Labour leader Keir Starmer, not Rishi Sunak, who is facing more political pressure on the matter from many within his own ranks.
Next, days of evidence at the Covid inquiry are confirming, in ever-more gruesome detail, just how grim the atmosphere was at the top of government during the pandemic.
And much more important than Dominic Cummings' habit of inventing ever more vile swear words, evidence this week suggested that in a moment of profound national emergency, our government just could not cope.
Memories of those agonising months have been stirred. We have seen in black and white, from messages between senior officials, that the notion of spreading the virus - "herd immunity" like chicken pox - was indeed part of the initial approach that was subsequently denied. And the civil service boss of the Department for Health said, on the record, that the first lockdown was a week too late. Remember just how bitter the political arguments were about the timing of the lockdown, and whether herd immunity had ever been the plan.
The Covid evidence this week is important for the simple reason that the inquiry is trying to build a complete record of what happened during those months of emergency. But the daily drip of claims hampers Rishi Sunak's ability to move on.
He was the second most senior minister in the government that struggled so badly, described by one of its most senior civil servants as a "terrible, tragic, joke". His "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme, it has already emerged, was branded "Eat out to help the virus" by government medics.
The prime minister consistently tries to present himself to the public as a clean break from several years of chaos. But the inquiry's reminders of the problems of the pandemic, and the political failures, dredge up memories of all that.
Even without those two huge blocks in his political path, is Mr Sunak planning to seize Tuesday as a day of radical action anyway?
Insiders caution against expecting any shiny new ideas or revolutionary plans. You can read a primer on what might be coming up here.
Some cabinet ministers worry it is all a bit "managerial", all a bit "tinkering", not really talking to the problems millions of voters are facing right now.
PM Rishi Sunak in conversation with Elon Musk, in London on 2 November
The AI summit, and Rishi Sunak's encounter with tech billionaire Elon Musk, complete with dropped consonants and a mid-Atlantic twang, showed that No 10 can generate attention - it can make things happen.
But whether that is translated into an energetic and packed actual programme to get things done on Tuesday? Don't be so sure.
While a senior source says the King's Speech is a "chance to reset the dynamic", don't expect big surprises to make that happen.
You will see laws coming to bring in changes on sentencing that were announced at party conference last month.
You will also likely see a new law on oil and gas licences that will try to set a trap for Labour. It is one of those strange things in politics where sometimes a government will introduce a law that isn't necessarily needed, but will just make life awkward for their opponents. There are divisions in the Labour Party over whether or not new licences should be granted for fossil fuel exploration. If the Tories make them vote on it, that could be politically tricky for Keir Starmer.
So on Tuesday, the biggest fanfare may be from the real trumpets that will sound in Parliament, not political excitement.
After delivering the Queen's Speech in May 2022, Charles and Camilla processed out behind the Imperial State Crown
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and last week's revelations from the Covid inquiry, both make it harder for the government to be heard.
But this coming week, a coming reminder of perhaps Rishi Sunak's biggest obstacle. Like any prime minister, he has to deal with "events" beyond his control that can knock any leader off course. The real nightmare though, is how to escape from under the weight of what has gone wrong under Conservative PMs who have gone before.
As King, Tuesday will be Charles's first outing in that grandest of ceremonies in Parliament. Without a dramatic turn for Rishi Sunak, this King's Speech could be this PM's last.
PS: The "Cap of Maintenance" is a red velvet hat, lined with ermine, that is one of the Royal Family's insignia. It's normally carried by the leader of the House of Lords on these big days as part of the procession.
If you got that right, 10 points and your prize, along with everyone else, is to watch the Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden in the studio with me tomorrow morning at 09:00 on BBC One, along with our other guests and a special interview with the Succession star, Sarah Snook.
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Bowen: Five new realities after four weeks of Israel-Gaza war - BBC News
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2023-11-04
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There are few known quantities in the conflict but some things have become clear, says Jeremy Bowen.
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Middle East
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The aftermath of a strike on Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp earlier this week
One of the first things to understand about the reportage, analysis and commentary that has poured out since the Hamas attacks of 7 October is that no-one has the full story. Not only is it, as ever, hard to penetrate the fog of war to work out what is happening on the battlefield. The new shape of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has not yet emerged.
Events are still moving fast. Fears that the war could spread are very real. New realities in the Middle East are out there somewhere, but their shape and the way that they will work depend on the way this war goes for the rest of the year, and probably beyond.
Here are a few things that we know, and a few that we do not. The list is not exhaustive. Some people mocked Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he talked of "unknown unknowns". But in this part of the world as much as any other, they exist - and when they emerge, they can make a big difference.
One certainty is that Israelis support the military campaign to break the power in Gaza of Hamas and its junior partner, Islamic Jihad. Their anger is driven by the shock of the Hamas attacks, the killing of more than 1,400 people and the fact that around 240 hostages are still being held in Gaza.
The Hamas attack on Israel killed 1,400 people, many of them residents of kibbutzes near Gaza
I met Noam Tibon, a retired general in the Israeli army, to hear about how he drove down with his wife to Nahal Oz, a kibbutz on the border with Gaza, after Hamas attacked on 7 October. His mission, which was successful, was to rescue his son, his daughter in law and their two young daughters who were in their safe room, hearing Hamas gunmen roaming around outside.
Tibon may be retired but he is a very fit-looking 62-year-old. He ended up armed with an assault rifle and a helmet he had taken from a dead Israeli soldier, leading a group of soldiers he had assembled in the chaos of that day, clearing the kibbutz and saving the lives of his family and many others.
The general was an old-school, straight-talking Israeli officer.
"Gaza is going to suffer… no nation will agree that your neighbour will slaughter babies, women or people. Just like you (Britons) crushed your enemy during World War Two. This is what we need to do in Gaza. No mercy."
What, I asked, about innocent Palestinian civilians who are getting killed?
"Unfortunately, it's happening. We live in a tough neighbourhood, and we need to survive… we have to be tough. We have no choice."
A lot of Israelis are echoing his sentiment that Palestinian civilian deaths are unfortunate, but they are being killed because of the actions of Hamas.
It is also clear that Israel's assault on Hamas is causing terrible bloodshed. The latest figure for Palestinian deaths from Gaza's health ministry, run by Hamas, has exceeded 9,000 - of whom around 65% are children and women.
It is not clear how many of the men who have been killed were civilians or fighting for Hamas or Islamic Jihad. US President Joe Biden and the Israelis do not trust the ministry figures. But in past conflicts, Palestinian casualty statistics have been considered accurate by international organisations.
One grim milestone is fast approaching. The United Nations (UN) says around 9,700 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion 21 months ago.
Some of the Palestinian dead would have been part of Hamas. But even if that proportion is as high as 10%, which is unlikely, it means that Israel is on course to have killed as many Palestinian civilians in just over a month as Russia has killed in Ukraine since February 2022. (The UN says its data for Ukraine is incomplete and the true number of civilians killed is likely higher, while in Gaza the number of dead is also likely to be higher as many Palestinians are believed to be buried under rubble).
The UN has suggested Israeli strikes on Gaza could constitute war crimes
The UN human rights office has said that so many civilians have been killed and wounded in Israeli air strikes that it has serious concerns that the attacks are disproportionate and could be war crimes.
From the first days after the Hamas attacks, President Biden has supported Israel's decision to use military force to remove Hamas from power. But he has also added the qualification that it needed to be done "the right way". He meant that Israel should observe the laws of war that protect civilians.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Tel Aviv. Before he took off, he said: "When I see a Palestinian child - a boy, a girl - pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, that hits me in the gut as much as seeing a child from Israel or anywhere else."
I have reported on all of Israel's wars in the last 30 years. I do not remember a US administration stating so publicly that Israel needs to observe the laws of war. Blinken's visit suggests that he believes Israel is not following Biden's advice.
Something else we know for certain is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under great pressure.
Unlike Israel's security and military chiefs, he has not accepted any personal responsibility for the catastrophic series of failures that left Israeli border communities virtually undefended on 7 October.
Last Sunday, 29 October, he caused uproar when he sent out a tweet blaming the intelligence agencies. Mr Netanyahu deleted the message and apologised.
The Israeli PM has taken the blame from some quarters for the events of 7 October
Three Israelis, a former peace negotiator, the ex-head of the Shin Bet (Israel's internal intelligence agency) and a tech entrepreneur, wrote an article in the journal Foreign Affairs saying that Mr Netanyahu should not have any part of the war and whatever follows. The Israeli PM has loyal supporters, but he has lost the confidence of prominent figures in Israel's military and security establishment.
Noam Tibon, the retired general who fought his way into kibbutz Nahal Oz to rescue his family, compares Mr Netanyahu to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who was forced to resign in 1940, and replaced by Winston Churchill.
Tibon told me: "This is the biggest failure in the history of the state of Israel. It was a military failure. It was an intelligence failure. And it was the failure of the government… the one really in charge - and all the blame is on him - is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu… He is in charge of the biggest failure in the history of Israel."
It is also clear that the old status quo has been smashed. It was unpleasant and dangerous, but it seemed to have a certain grimly-familiar stability. Since the end of the last Palestinian uprising around 2005 a pattern has emerged that Mr Netanyahu believed could be sustained indefinitely. That was a dangerous illusion, for all concerned - Palestinians as well as Israelis.
The argument went that the Palestinians were no longer a threat to Israel. Instead, they were a problem to be managed. The tools available include sticks, carrots and the ancient tactic of "divide and rule".
Mr Netanyahu, who has been prime minister for most of the time since 2009 - after an earlier spell between 1996 and 1999 - has argued consistently that Israel does not have a partner for peace.
Potentially, it did. The Palestinian Authority (PA), which is the main rival to Hamas, is a deeply flawed organisation, and many who support it believe its aged President Mahmoud Abbas needs to step aside. But it accepted the idea of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel back in the 1990s.
Mr Netanyahu has tried to drive a wedge between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas (pictured right, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken)
"Divide and rule" for Mr Netanyahu meant allowing Hamas to build its power in Gaza at the expense of the PA.
While Israel's longest-serving prime minister is always careful about what he says in public, his actions over many years show that he does not want to allow the Palestinians to have an independent state. That would involve giving up land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which the Israeli right wing believes belongs to the Jews.
From time to time, Mr Netanyahu's pronouncements would leak. In 2019, a number of Israeli sources say that he told a group of his Likud members of parliament that if they opposed a Palestinian state they should support schemes to pump money - mostly provided by Qatar - into Gaza. He told them that deepening the division between Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank would make it impossible to establish a state.
It is also clear that Israel, backed by the Americans, will not tolerate a deal that allows Hamas to stay in power. That guarantees a lot more bloodshed. It also raises big questions about what or who replaces them, which so far have not been answered.
The conflict between Arabs and Jews for control of the land between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea has lasted for more than 100 years. One lesson of its long and bloody history is that there will never be a military solution.
In the 1990s, the Oslo peace process was established to try to end the conflict by establishing a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem alongside Israel. The last attempt to revive it, after years of on-off negotiations, happened during the Obama administration. It failed a decade ago, and since then the conflict has been allowed to fester.
More than 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Israel began a ground operation in Gaza
As President Biden and many others have said, the only possible chance for avoiding more wars is to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel. That will not be possible with the current leaders on either side. Extremists, both Israeli and Palestinian, would do all they could to scupper the idea, as they have done since the 1990s. Some of them believe they are following the will of God, which makes it impossible to persuade them to accept a secular compromise.
But if this war does not deliver enough of a shock to break deeply-held prejudices and to make the idea of two states viable, nothing will. And without a mutually-acceptable way of ending the conflict, more generations of Palestinians and Israelis will be sentenced to more wars.
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Laura Kuenssberg: Questions politicians can't seem to answer on immigration - BBC News
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2023-11-26
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Outrage is no substitute for answers when it comes to record UK immigration, says Laura Kuenssberg.
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UK Politics
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It's a "betrayal". It's a "slap in the face". The numbers are "shockingly high" and it's simply "unsustainable".
Politicians all seem very cross about the numbers of people from around the world making the UK their home. And they nearly all seem to agree that old chestnut, that "something must be done".
Just wait until they look in the mirror and realise who came up with the new immigration system under which the levels have risen so much (and witness the former prime minister, Boris Johnson, raging in his newspaper column at the folly of the system that he himself introduced).
But the outrage in the last few days, real or not, is no substitute for answers to a set of questions that politicians must confront if they really want change - and many of them are difficult to answer.
Is immigration too high? With net migration adding the equivalent of the population of Glasgow or Leeds to the country each year, it's not politically fashionable to say that it shows the UK is an attractive destination, and the more the merrier. The stock answer for most politicians is yes, it's too high. We have a broad consensus - so far, so easy.
But this conversation gets tricky, fast. If the level is wrong, what is the right one? The Tories have bad memories of setting a limit and then failing over, and over, and over again to hit it. It was our now Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron who, in 2010 as prime minister, promised to get net immigration under 100,000. Back then it was around a quarter of a million, which seemed sky high, it's more than double that now.
There were plenty of people inside what was then David Cameron's party who argued the vow was crass because we were in the European Union, without the powers to limit the number of EU citizens who moved to the UK. The target was impossible to guarantee. But the political appeal was clear, so he ploughed on - and failed.
Then under Theresa May, there were plenty of Cabinet ministers who believed the promised cap should be junked, even when we were tortuously out of the EU and could manage the numbers ourselves. Her view, however, was that the target should stay - after all, what message would it send if she ditched it? She failed too.
Fast forward to 2023 and the argument for a cap is back, being pushed by the former home secretary, Suella Braverman, among others. But there doesn't seem much appetite to pick a number either inside No 10 or at the top of the Labour Party, who would be giving themselves a potential test that would be hard to pass if they won power.
If they won't say how high, will they say who?
This is where it gets emotive. First, understand the irony: we left the EU on a promise that immigration would get under control because the UK could say exactly who got their passport stamped at our borders. No longer would people from any of 23 European countries be able to arrive and set up home without limit - for good or ill. But since we left, the numbers of people from outside the EU has gone up and up and up.
It's fascinating to crunch those numbers. Nearly a million people from outside the EU came to live in the UK last year (the overall net migration number is lower because that's the difference between those who arrive and those who depart). There were about a quarter of a million Indians, the next biggest group were Nigerian, then Chinese, Pakistani, then Ukrainian, according to the ONS.
The most common reason was to come to study at our universities and colleges (nearly four in 10), but around a third came to work, with a particularly staggering increase in the numbers coming to work in health and social care. The OBR reported this week the numbers of visas granted in that sector had risen 150% in the last year.
If politicians want fewer people to come to the UK, who do they want to say no to? Who would not welcome Ukrainians after the Russian invasion? Who would argue the UK should turn its back on Hong Kongers? Who wants to say that the world's best and brightest students who come to study in the UK should take their talents elsewhere? Who will tell the public the NHS and social care system can't have the staff it needs? Not many people in Westminster have much stomach for picking and choosing.
But this brings us to the fundamental question - if you turn off the immigration taps who will do the jobs that are filled right now by hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world? It is argued that for the government's sums to add up - indeed for the Conservatives to be able to afford the tax cuts they are so eager to offer - the economy needs immigration.
The Migration Advisory Committee, an independent group, was meant to take some of the politics out of this, recommending who could come depending on the gaps in the economy. But trying to take politics out of immigration is like trying to take eggs out of an omelette.
So what decisions could politicians take? The committee itself has already suggested scrapping the list of "shortage occupations" it publishes, which determines the sectors that can bring in extra foreign workers. Labour, and it seems the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, also wants to end the practice where employers can pay immigrants 20% less than the going rate if their jobs are on the list.
Labour has cited examples such as civil engineers, for whom the official government "going rate" is £34,000 a year, but can instead be recruited from abroad at just £28,000 a year - a tasty incentive for employers to hire from abroad rather than spend the cash training up less experienced staff at home.
Ministers are cutting the number of family members some migrants can bring to the UK when they move. Some Conservatives argue for a cap on the number of social care workers who can come in. Labour argues for a crackdown on exploitation in that industry.
When it comes to the huge numbers of students coming in, some Tories reckon it's time to cut way back, arguing the need to cut immigration should come ahead of the balance sheets of our higher education institutions.
Conservative calls for extra steps are more like screams now. Perhaps the measures they come up with will start to make a difference - but they may seem like nips and tucks in the face of the sheer numbers.
There are plenty of politicians in both parties who'd agree privately that the only way to make a big change in the migration numbers is a massive effort to get the UK workforce into shape.
That is not an overnight fix - for the two decades I have covered politics I have heard politicians talk about the need to skill up the workforce, to improve education and training, to invest in British workers.
We heard it in Gordon Brown's ill fated "British jobs for British workers", David Cameron's apprenticeship levy, Theresa May's T-levels, Boris Johnson's Lifetime Skills Guarantee, and Rishi Sunak's planned reforms of the benefits system to get people back into work, the list goes on.
Looking at the numbers of workers firms are bringing in from other countries might lead you to conclude those ambitions didn't get very far.
The political risks from inaction are obvious. Not just because of the ructions in the increasingly restless Conservative Party, but because of what has gone before. Vote Leave insiders identify the day the migration figures were published during the EU referendum campaign as the moment they grabbed the momentum. Boris Johnson, who had previously been reluctant to take a harder line on migration, piled in. You don't need me to tell you what happened next.
The Conservative Party has seen the threat from parties willing to take a brasher line than them - from UKIP and now from Reform UK. Nigel Farage might currently be in the celebrity jungle, but his political arguments have not been banished.
Labour, meanwhile, has learnt painful lessons from failing to take public concern about immigration seriously - just ask Rochdale voter Gillian Duffy about Gordon Brown's infamous "bigoted woman" comment.
The noisy conversation over Channel crossings has been at the forefront of the political imagination for the last year, emblazoned on government lecterns. But that is dwarfed by the numbers of people making the UK their home perfectly legally.
Questions about immigration are not easy for politicians to respond to, and it's daft to suggest they are. But the pressure is on for them to come up with more credible answers. Saying it's too high again and again doesn't make the problem go away. When voters ask the important question of whether they can trust politicians' promises, the answer might be all too clear.
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Laura Kuenssberg: Reshuffle deals drama but voters more worried about wallets - BBC News
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2023-11-18
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Rishi Sunak brought back an ex-PM and is defiant on Rwanda - but voters are focused on their wallets, says Laura Kuenssberg.
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UK Politics
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Crash, bang, wallop! An adrenaline hit of headlines. A massive bust-up. A big surprise. And a clash in the courts.
Westminster's gorged itself this week on some of its favourite pastimes: obsessing over who is slithering up or down in the game of political snakes and ladders; pondering the edges of our stretchy, unwritten constitution as the courts and government do battle; and, of course, frantically trying to predict what is next.
Fully paid-up political nerds, myself included, have been glued to the spectacle of the last seven days.
Bitter sackings, vitriolic public letters, the prime minister vowing to take on the courts, even talk of letters calling for his resignation going in. ("You'd just look like idiots," one senior MP tells me he told his more excitable colleagues.)
But for the ultimate boss, the voter, all the drama might have fallen on confused, or even deaf, ears.
The signals from government have been mixed, to put it diplomatically. In all the soap opera, has the prime minister been moving to the left or to the right?
Getting rid of Suella Braverman at the start of the week, gave the impression No 10 wanted to take a softer tack.
But when the Supreme Court ruled against the government's plan to send migrants to Rwanda, up popped Rishi Sunak with seemingly tough language, claiming he won't let "foreign courts", stand in his way.
In fact, the ruling was based on both international and UK law, so the notion the problem has been created just by meddling courts in a faraway land is misleading. Whatever your view of the plans, the court referred to British laws that say refugees must not be put at a real risk of harm.
And the PM promised "emergency" new laws - political speak for plans that need to sound bold and important.
Yes, that's the party that sees itself as the bastion of law and order, saying when it doesn't like the long-predicted verdict of our highest court, it will just change the rules instead, with the prime minister vowing to do "whatever it takes" to make it happen.
That's not entirely true, because No 10 does not seem willing to follow the much more drastic steps sketched out, entirely predictably, by the departing home secretary to get planes in the sky.
It's worth saying whatever Downing Street comes up with (and watch this space), the chances of keeping the right of the Tory party happy appear vanishingly small. Members of the public would be absolutely entitled this weekend to be scratching their heads and wondering if the controversial plan the prime minister has committed to time and again, the "stop the boats" slogan that screeches from government lecterns, is ever really going to happen.
Research carried out by the polling group, More in Common, helps explore the real world reaction. And a flavour of voters' views from focus groups about Mrs Braverman suggests there is real division - the most common words chosen to describe her include, "brave" and "outspoken", but "racist" features there too.
Then a former PM was brought back into the fold.
"Cameron??" to quote one of the messages that blew up on my phone when the news broke.
It was job done for No 10 if they wanted to create headlines out of their reshuffle that would distract from the Suella show.
There were MPs on his former wing of the much-changed Conservative Party who were delighted that someone with his experience is back in town. That was reflected by voters too, with comments in focus groups such as: "Old knowledge in a team is always good", while another said: "He's probably been brought back to give the party some sort of stability because at the moment it just seems to be a lot of just infighting."
The word voters chose more than any other to describe the now Lord Cameron was "experienced". Tick!
But words like "Brexit" and "past" and "idiot" feature pretty heavily too.
Here are the words voters used:
You wouldn't be alone if you felt a bit puzzled.
That's not just because you might have to squint to imagine how the leader of the failed Remain campaign can become the architect of UK foreign policy after Brexit. As one voter said: "I'm really angry about it if I'm honest. I think he really divided the country down to families being one side of the argument or the other."
But it also risks highlighting the government's dreadful polling position, as well as the experience gap between the current and former prime minister, as if the much younger Rishi Sunak has got in trouble, lost his bus fare and has had to phone his dad to come and pick him up.
One senior party figure asked: "Who is the prime minister here? Sunak is the prefect and Cameron's the headmaster."
That point is picked up by some voters, one remarking: "It kind of smacks of desperation a bit, because they've had to resort to that in order to get any kind of stability in the party."
There's another point of confusion. Rishi Sunak's last big swing was at the Conservative Party conference when he styled himself as the candidate of change, hammering the point by criticising what he called the 30-year consensus and the status quo.
This was no small move, but a considered big strategic decision to pitch the prime minister like this, when other tacks had failed.
Now, in blunt terms, how can you convincingly be the change guy, if you are bringing back the old guy?
Inevitably this changing tack has been noticed by the backbenches. One senior figure says: "We have all been trying to read the tea leaves, but not able to drink the tea" because "No 10 keeps changing its mind all the time."
Whether on small boats or David Cameron sauntering back into government, all the hullabaloo in Westminster this week hasn't been on the stresses and strains most relevant to most voters' lives.
Jeremy Hunt has a chance to show the Tories are listening to people's concerns with the Autumn Statement
Research shared with us this week from More in Common, consistent with polling for months and months, shows that making ends meet is by miles at the top of the list - 71% of those asked put it as their highest concern.
Worries about the NHS was the next priority, but some distance behind at 40%.
Only 17% named asylum seekers crossing the channel as their biggest worry, behind climate change at 23%.
It's foolish to read too much into any one snapshot, and one week of polling is, of course, just that. But as the prime minister wriggles uncomfortably over his chosen small boats priority, as the Tory party wrangles over the direction No 10 really wants to take, it is a reminder that neither of those issues are the public's most common concern.
One senior Tory MP admits: "Most people just want to be able to pay their bills and get a doctor's appointment."
On Wednesday, the Chancellor has a chance to help people do just that with the Autumn Statement.
The pressure is on Jeremy Hunt to act on those very real concerns. Number 10 was cock-a-hoop, at least for half an hour or so, when this week's inflation numbers showed price rises slowing down, mainly due to falling energy prices. But remember, slowing inflation doesn't remove high prices, it just means costs aren't going up so fast.
As that polling suggests, making ends meet is a challenge for millions of families.
From the splurge of early briefings it is not clear what Jeremy Hunt will actually propose to do to help. There's also the potential political contradiction of dangling a tax cut for a tiny number of families affected by inheritance tax, while taking much more from millions in income tax.
That is not because the Chancellor has actually put income tax up, but because more and more people are getting dragged into paying higher rates. (This has one of the least attractive names in Treasury jargon, fiscal drag, but is one of the most significant and little talked about changes to how the government makes its sums add up.)
It is also, at the risk of sounding prim, worth noting how unusual it is for the Treasury to be teasing quite so much around tax cuts just before a big statement like this.
One former Treasury minister told me it's "extraordinary" they have been so open. Is it - as they archly note - "just to chuck red meat to the Suella brigade" after a bumpy week?
The overall economic picture is not pretty. Growth has stalled. The government is spending an absolute fortune paying interest on its huge debts. Taxes and government spending are both at historic levels, a nightmare for Conservative purists who, after all, hope their party stands for leaner government and lower tax.
It is a challenge to those in the Conservative Party, and, of course, the opposition, who want more resources for public services. Overall the former Treasury minister notes brutally, "we are in a really bad spot - do I see a coherent strategy? No!"
The overwhelming concern for the chancellor and the prime minister to respond to is to help families and firms feel consistently better off. The drama that's consumed Westminster these last seven days isn't likely to make much difference to that.
Jeremy Hunt has a chance to change that on Wednesday. But it's just not clear that the neighbours in No 10 and 11 can make the sums, and the politics, add up.
What questions would you like to ask the chancellor and the shadow chancellor?
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Ukraine war: Marines gain riverbank foothold but front lines barely move - BBC News
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2023-11-18
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Marines talk of progress on "several bridgeheads" but soldiers talk of fatigue at the front.
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Europe
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Ukraine's president posted pictures of Ukrainian marines, saying they were moving forward on the left bank of the Dnipro
Ukrainian forces say they have secured several positions on the Russian-occupied eastern bank of the Dnipro river, and their leaders have been keen to talk up their progress.
The marines have spoken of gaining a foothold on "several bridgeheads" on the left bank, as they try to push the Russians back in a bid to protect civilians on the opposite side of the river from constant Russian shelling.
"Thank you for your strength, for moving forward," President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on social media on Friday, alongside pictures of marines arriving in small boats.
The few hundred soldiers are outnumbered and surrounded in three directions, yet have managed to dig in for the best part of a month. This isn't the thousands needed to potentially liberate swathes of territory which Kyiv so desperately wants to do.
The front line has barely moved for a year and Ukraine finds itself in a tricky cycle. It needs Western help to deliver battlefield progress, but it also needs battlefield progress to convince western helpers.
General Valery Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine's armed forces, has described the situation as a stalemate and says a number of innovations are needed to break it.
President Zelensky has dismissed his view, and believes Ukraine can still be victorious.
Their argument has fuelled political fatigue among some of Ukraine's Western allies.
The south is one area where the mood is high.
A year ago, the southern Kherson region was seen as the least likely place for Ukraine to mount its counter-offensive.
For the Russians, there is no better defensive line than a huge body of water like the Dnipro river. It separates the third of the region liberated last year from the two-thirds still under occupation.
Ukrainian armoured vehicles have advanced 4km (2.5 miles) and Kyiv is framing these inroads as the start of something bigger.
"We are motivated by our families and we get decent financial support," one special forces fighter told the BBC.
The reality is there are simply not enough boots on the ground yet to justify Kyiv's hopes for a breakthrough there.
In the south-east, Ukrainian troops have thrown everything at trying to retake territory there, but have only liberated a handful of villages.
"Fatigue is the main thing, and it kills any motivation," explains a soldier with a mortar crew in the Zaporizhzhia region.
He's fighting with the 46th brigade in an area where Russian defences are at their strongest.
"We've killed many Russians, but lost no fewer," says the soldier. "Anyone who complained was removed from their position."
During the summer, this part of the front line was seen as the best place for Ukraine to try to break the land corridor Russia occupies in two.
Now, Western officials think neither side can mount a land offensive "in the near future". As far as they're concerned, it's a stalemate.
The soldier in the 46th Brigade believes next year will be difficult, but decisive: "It is impossible to fight forever. Hatred is soon replaced by apathy."
A Ukrainian soldier watches over a position on the Dnipro river, where raids by Kyiv's forces have been intensifying in recent weeks
It is on the eastern axis that Russian forces have been pushing hardest, and it is the city of Avdiivka that best reflects the state of this war.
It was briefly occupied in 2014 before being liberated, and the Russians have been trying to get it back since.
Ukraine has recently been repelling wave after wave of attacks, partly helped by the heavy fortifications it has built over the past nine years.
Western officials say Russia is suffering 500-1,000 casualties a day there.
"Our commanders and fighters have studied every hill and every road," says Ivan from Ukraine's 110 Brigade. He's been serving there since March 2022.
Avdiivka's strategic value is questionable, but clearly Kyiv thinks it's inflicting a significant enough number of losses compared to its own.
The mood can be described as "fatigue, rage and desire to expel evil", explains Ivan. "It's tiredness from the constant threat to your life, not from the front line not moving.
Ivan from 110 Brigade speaks of a mood of fatigue from the constant threat from Russian forces
In the north-east, more than 250km (155 miles) to the north, the city of Kupiansk was occupied for most of last year until Ukraine's counter-offensive last autumn.
As an important railway hub, Kupiansk has strategic value and during this war both sides have used it to supply the front lines.
Civilians were urged to leave in August because of constant shelling as Russia tried to take it back.
Denys is at the very sharpest edge of the fighting and after months on the front line he has had enough, complaining that his commanders do not listen to advice.
"They emphasise aviation and artillery, but we need the latest technologies, like drones," he says.
He believes Nato, which Ukraine desperately wants to join, needs to learn lessons from this very modern war.
Mines are one of the biggest challenges for Ukrainian troops across the frontline.
"The Russians have machines that can mine an area of tens of kilometres per day," explains Denys. "They use anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines, they lay three mines, one under the other."
Another hurdle has been the quality of Russian defences, which Denys describes as "underground cities".
From his position, as a rank-and-file soldier on the front line, Denys has seen a horrifying human cost on his own side of the incremental breakthroughs in recapturing territory. "The commander throws anyone - cooks or drivers - into the furnace. They simply die there in their hundreds."
"Those commanders will have to be arrested and tried after the war," he says.
These soldiers on Ukraine's front lines reflect the war of attrition this invasion has become. With its size and resources, that suits Russia.
What Kyiv is also having to grapple with, is sharing the spotlight with another conflict: the Israel-Hamas war.
President Zelensky has admitted it makes Ukraine's fight all the more difficult, with the risk of Western attention and aid being diluted.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67452832
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Northern Ireland Prison Service: Hundreds of inmates go missing - BBC News
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2023-11-08
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Figures show that on several occasions inmates were missing for years, raising fresh concerns.
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Northern Ireland
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There are three prisons sites in Northern Ireland at Maghaberry, Magilligan and Hydebank Wood College and Female Prison
Inmates have gone missing from Northern Ireland's prisons almost 250 times during the last decade.
Most of the cases relate to inmates who were unlawfully at large from Maghaberry Prison, near Lisburn.
On more than 100 occasions prisoners were taken back to custody within the same month of going missing.
But on several occasions inmates were missing for years and a prison watchdog has raised fresh concerns.
The chief inspector of criminal justice in Northern Ireland said when prisoners fail to return to custody it can "impact community confidence and raise public safety concerns".
The Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) said pre-release testing is a vital part of rehabilitation and resettlement for inmates.
A spokesperson added: "After being fully risk assessed, they begin graduated release into the community.
"Firstly under supervision, then progressing to short periods of unaccompanied release where they work in the community.
"The reality is that some will fail this test and will be returned to prison, while others will progress back into the community."
On five occasions prisoners were missing for more than a year
As of November 2023 there were seven prisoners still unlawfully at large in Northern Ireland.
Prisoners can be temporarily released for a number of reasons including compassionate leave or as part of rehabilitation and release planning under a range of schemes including home leave.
Earlier this year there was a UK-wide manhunt for terror suspect Daniel Khalife after he escaped from Wandsworth Prison in September.
He absconded from a prison kitchen by strapping himself to the underside of a delivery van.
He was re-arrested four days later.
There have also been a number of high-profile cases of prisoners going missing in Northern Ireland in recent months.
Thomas McCabe was given a life sentence after killing a teenager in London in 1990
Convicted murderer Thomas McCabe went on the run for the second time after failing to return to prison from day release in August.
He was previously at large for more than two years before being arrested by gardaí (Irish police) in 2020.
Figures obtained by BBC News NI from the Northern Ireland Prison Service show that of the 244 instances of prisoners going missing in Northern Ireland during the last decade, most were apprehended again within a month.
On 85 occasions, prisoners released by the courts on compassionate bail did not return to prison on time.
A spokesperson of the Lady Chief Justice's Office said: "The courts are required to apply the law governing bail as laid down in this jurisdiction and will hear all the arguments for and against admission to bail/variation of bail taking account of all relevant factors before arriving at a considered decision."
• None 14compensation payments to inmates who were overheld
On five occasions prisoners were missing for more than a year and the longest an inmate was unlawfully at large was four years and one month.
During the last decade the prison service also made 14 compensation payments in relation to inmates who were accidentally held beyond their sentence.
The prison service did not provide a detailed breakdown of these figures, confirming only that half of the inmates were paid up to £1,000 and the remaining inmates were paid more than £1,000.
A spokesperson confirmed 11 prisoners were overheld between one to five days and the remaining inmates were overheld by more than five days.
There are three prisons sites in Northern Ireland at Maghaberry, Magilligan and Hydebank Wood College and Female Prison.
In 2019, Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJI) published a report looking at pre-release testing arrangements.
Concerns were raised with the then-justice minister, and public confidence in the process was challenged, after a prisoner absconded and others were photographed during an escorted activity outing.
At that time, CJI made a number of recommendations to improve the system.
The chief inspector of criminal justice in Northern Ireland, Jacqui Durkan, said it was important that risk assessments are robust
The most recent inspection of Maghaberry Prison published in June 2023 noted that pre-release planning at the prison was "well co-ordinated".
The chief inspector of criminal justice in Northern Ireland said it was important that risk assessments are robust to support all decisions to release a prisoner temporarily.
Jacqui Durkin said: "The temporary release of prisoners is an important part of a prisoner's rehabilitative journey that can inform decision-making in assessing a prisoner's suitability for release back into the community.
"While it will never be risk free, conditions of release are an important part of the process for maintaining public safety and those who know the prisoner best and have been working with them are well placed to inform appropriate decisions and conditions."
She added that pre-release schemes will remain a focus for CJI in future prison inspections.
In a statement, the Northern Ireland Prison Service said: "Pre-release testing is an essential part of rehabilitation, not just for the individual but also for the wider community in Northern Ireland."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-67308605
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Boris Johnson wanted to be injected with Covid on TV - ex-adviser - BBC News
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2023-11-08
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The former PM suggested being injected with the virus on TV would calm public fears, an ex-adviser says.
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UK Politics
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Boris Johnson "wanted to be injected with Covid-19 on television" to calm public fears, an ex-aide has said.
The claim - by Lord Lister - came in a witness statement to the Covid inquiry.
He said Mr Johnson "suggested to senior civil servants and advisers that he wanted to be injected with Covid-19 on television to demonstrate to the public that it did not pose a threat".
It was "at a time when Covid was not seen as being the serious disease it subsequently became", he added.
He said it was an "unfortunate comment" that had been "made in the heat of the moment".
He also confirmed his former boss had said letting "the bodies pile high" was preferable to another lockdown.
The remark was made in September 2020 but first reported in April 2021,
At the time, Mr Johnson dismissed the report, calling it "total rubbish".
Lord Edward Udny-Lister said the comment was made at a time when the government was "trying to avoid a further lockdown given the already severe impact on the economy and education".
On Tuesday, the Covid inquiry was also shown messages in which the head of the civil service Simon Case said of his Downing Street colleagues: "These people are so mad... they are just so madly self-defeating. I've never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run the country."
And entries from the 2020 diaries of Sir Patrick Vallance revealed that the then-chief scientific advisor felt Mr Johnson was "all over the place" on the issue of implementing a second lockdown.
Lord Lister is a long-time ally of Mr Johnson, having worked with him during his time as mayor of London and prime minister.
In his evidence session to the Covid inquiry, which lasted over two hours, Lord Lister was asked about the atmosphere in the Downing Street operation.
Last week, Helen MacNamara, a senior civil servant during the Covid pandemic, said there had been a "macho" culture and that a "toxic" environment had affected decision-making.
Lord Lister said: "I think there was a lot of tension that was taking place" adding that Dominic Cummings, another senior adviser in Downing Street, was "not an easy man to deal with".
Later in the session, Lord Lister was asked about the UK government's relationship with the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales during the pandemic.
He said there had been "a great deal of mistrust and frustration" towards the Scottish government.
"It seemed to us in Downing Street, it didn't matter what the decision was, Scotland would want to do things slightly differently."
Asked if he felt the Scottish government was being "opportunistic", Lord Lister said "I think that is a good word".
He later added that Mr Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon, who was Scotland's first minister during the pandemic, "generally didn't like each other very much".
Questioned on the second lockdown, introduced in November 2020, Lord Lister suggested it could have been avoided if the tier system had been given more time to work.
Under the tier system, areas where subject to different restrictions depending on the prevalence of the disease. It was essentially made redundant around a month after being introduced, when Mr Johnson implemented a second national lockdown.
Lord Lister said the tier system was "messy but the right thing to do" adding: "If we kept going I believe it would have worked."
Earlier in the day, the Covid inquiry had seen further extracts from a diary written in October 2020 by the government's then chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.
The note says Mr Johnson and Rishi Sunak, who was chancellor at the time, were both "clutching at straws" while trying to argue against a second lockdown in October 2020.
Sir Patrick describes a meeting on 8 October as, "very bad".
After being shown the final slide in a presentation by the Covid-19 Taskforce, Sir Patrick wrote that Mr Johnson responded, "Whisky and revolver."
"He was all over the place", Sir Patrick says, adding that Mr Sunak was using "increasingly specific and spurious arguments against closing hospitality".
In another diary entry from 25 October, Sir Patrick says Mr Johnson "owns the reality for a day and then is buffeted by a discussion with [the chancellor]."
Simon Ridley, former Head of the Cabinet Office Covid taskforce also gave evidence to the inquiry on Tuesday.
He admitted the taskforce was not asked about the Eat Out To Help Out scheme introduced by Mr Sunak in summer 2020.
The scheme gave diners up to 50% of their bill off and was aimed at bolstering the hospitality industry, however some scientists have argued it helped the virus spread.
Asked whether his team had been "completely blindsided by the Treasury", Mr. Ridley responded, "correct."
The inquiry is taking witness evidence in London until Christmas, before moving to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
On Wednesday, it will hear from Sir Mark Sedwill who headed the civil service from April 2018 to September 2020.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67347456
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Bowen: Five new realities after four weeks of Israel-Gaza war - BBC News
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2023-11-08
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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There are few known quantities in the conflict but some things have become clear, says Jeremy Bowen.
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Middle East
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The aftermath of a strike on Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp earlier this week
One of the first things to understand about the reportage, analysis and commentary that has poured out since the Hamas attacks of 7 October is that no-one has the full story. Not only is it, as ever, hard to penetrate the fog of war to work out what is happening on the battlefield. The new shape of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has not yet emerged.
Events are still moving fast. Fears that the war could spread are very real. New realities in the Middle East are out there somewhere, but their shape and the way that they will work depend on the way this war goes for the rest of the year, and probably beyond.
Here are a few things that we know, and a few that we do not. The list is not exhaustive. Some people mocked Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he talked of "unknown unknowns". But in this part of the world as much as any other, they exist - and when they emerge, they can make a big difference.
One certainty is that Israelis support the military campaign to break the power in Gaza of Hamas and its junior partner, Islamic Jihad. Their anger is driven by the shock of the Hamas attacks, the killing of more than 1,400 people and the fact that around 240 hostages are still being held in Gaza.
The Hamas attack on Israel killed 1,400 people, many of them residents of kibbutzes near Gaza
I met Noam Tibon, a retired general in the Israeli army, to hear about how he drove down with his wife to Nahal Oz, a kibbutz on the border with Gaza, after Hamas attacked on 7 October. His mission, which was successful, was to rescue his son, his daughter in law and their two young daughters who were in their safe room, hearing Hamas gunmen roaming around outside.
Tibon may be retired but he is a very fit-looking 62-year-old. He ended up armed with an assault rifle and a helmet he had taken from a dead Israeli soldier, leading a group of soldiers he had assembled in the chaos of that day, clearing the kibbutz and saving the lives of his family and many others.
The general was an old-school, straight-talking Israeli officer.
"Gaza is going to suffer… no nation will agree that your neighbour will slaughter babies, women or people. Just like you (Britons) crushed your enemy during World War Two. This is what we need to do in Gaza. No mercy."
What, I asked, about innocent Palestinian civilians who are getting killed?
"Unfortunately, it's happening. We live in a tough neighbourhood, and we need to survive… we have to be tough. We have no choice."
A lot of Israelis are echoing his sentiment that Palestinian civilian deaths are unfortunate, but they are being killed because of the actions of Hamas.
It is also clear that Israel's assault on Hamas is causing terrible bloodshed. The latest figure for Palestinian deaths from Gaza's health ministry, run by Hamas, has exceeded 9,000 - of whom around 65% are children and women.
It is not clear how many of the men who have been killed were civilians or fighting for Hamas or Islamic Jihad. US President Joe Biden and the Israelis do not trust the ministry figures. But in past conflicts, Palestinian casualty statistics have been considered accurate by international organisations.
One grim milestone is fast approaching. The United Nations (UN) says around 9,700 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion 21 months ago.
Some of the Palestinian dead would have been part of Hamas. But even if that proportion is as high as 10%, which is unlikely, it means that Israel is on course to have killed as many Palestinian civilians in just over a month as Russia has killed in Ukraine since February 2022. (The UN says its data for Ukraine is incomplete and the true number of civilians killed is likely higher, while in Gaza the number of dead is also likely to be higher as many Palestinians are believed to be buried under rubble).
The UN has suggested Israeli strikes on Gaza could constitute war crimes
The UN human rights office has said that so many civilians have been killed and wounded in Israeli air strikes that it has serious concerns that the attacks are disproportionate and could be war crimes.
From the first days after the Hamas attacks, President Biden has supported Israel's decision to use military force to remove Hamas from power. But he has also added the qualification that it needed to be done "the right way". He meant that Israel should observe the laws of war that protect civilians.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Tel Aviv. Before he took off, he said: "When I see a Palestinian child - a boy, a girl - pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, that hits me in the gut as much as seeing a child from Israel or anywhere else."
I have reported on all of Israel's wars in the last 30 years. I do not remember a US administration stating so publicly that Israel needs to observe the laws of war. Blinken's visit suggests that he believes Israel is not following Biden's advice.
Something else we know for certain is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under great pressure.
Unlike Israel's security and military chiefs, he has not accepted any personal responsibility for the catastrophic series of failures that left Israeli border communities virtually undefended on 7 October.
Last Sunday, 29 October, he caused uproar when he sent out a tweet blaming the intelligence agencies. Mr Netanyahu deleted the message and apologised.
The Israeli PM has taken the blame from some quarters for the events of 7 October
Three Israelis, a former peace negotiator, the ex-head of the Shin Bet (Israel's internal intelligence agency) and a tech entrepreneur, wrote an article in the journal Foreign Affairs saying that Mr Netanyahu should not have any part of the war and whatever follows. The Israeli PM has loyal supporters, but he has lost the confidence of prominent figures in Israel's military and security establishment.
Noam Tibon, the retired general who fought his way into kibbutz Nahal Oz to rescue his family, compares Mr Netanyahu to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who was forced to resign in 1940, and replaced by Winston Churchill.
Tibon told me: "This is the biggest failure in the history of the state of Israel. It was a military failure. It was an intelligence failure. And it was the failure of the government… the one really in charge - and all the blame is on him - is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu… He is in charge of the biggest failure in the history of Israel."
It is also clear that the old status quo has been smashed. It was unpleasant and dangerous, but it seemed to have a certain grimly-familiar stability. Since the end of the last Palestinian uprising around 2005 a pattern has emerged that Mr Netanyahu believed could be sustained indefinitely. That was a dangerous illusion, for all concerned - Palestinians as well as Israelis.
The argument went that the Palestinians were no longer a threat to Israel. Instead, they were a problem to be managed. The tools available include sticks, carrots and the ancient tactic of "divide and rule".
Mr Netanyahu, who has been prime minister for most of the time since 2009 - after an earlier spell between 1996 and 1999 - has argued consistently that Israel does not have a partner for peace.
Potentially, it did. The Palestinian Authority (PA), which is the main rival to Hamas, is a deeply flawed organisation, and many who support it believe its aged President Mahmoud Abbas needs to step aside. But it accepted the idea of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel back in the 1990s.
Mr Netanyahu has tried to drive a wedge between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas (pictured right, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken)
"Divide and rule" for Mr Netanyahu meant allowing Hamas to build its power in Gaza at the expense of the PA.
While Israel's longest-serving prime minister is always careful about what he says in public, his actions over many years show that he does not want to allow the Palestinians to have an independent state. That would involve giving up land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which the Israeli right wing believes belongs to the Jews.
From time to time, Mr Netanyahu's pronouncements would leak. In 2019, a number of Israeli sources say that he told a group of his Likud members of parliament that if they opposed a Palestinian state they should support schemes to pump money - mostly provided by Qatar - into Gaza. He told them that deepening the division between Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank would make it impossible to establish a state.
It is also clear that Israel, backed by the Americans, will not tolerate a deal that allows Hamas to stay in power. That guarantees a lot more bloodshed. It also raises big questions about what or who replaces them, which so far have not been answered.
The conflict between Arabs and Jews for control of the land between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea has lasted for more than 100 years. One lesson of its long and bloody history is that there will never be a military solution.
In the 1990s, the Oslo peace process was established to try to end the conflict by establishing a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem alongside Israel. The last attempt to revive it, after years of on-off negotiations, happened during the Obama administration. It failed a decade ago, and since then the conflict has been allowed to fester.
More than 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Israel began a ground operation in Gaza
As President Biden and many others have said, the only possible chance for avoiding more wars is to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel. That will not be possible with the current leaders on either side. Extremists, both Israeli and Palestinian, would do all they could to scupper the idea, as they have done since the 1990s. Some of them believe they are following the will of God, which makes it impossible to persuade them to accept a secular compromise.
But if this war does not deliver enough of a shock to break deeply-held prejudices and to make the idea of two states viable, nothing will. And without a mutually-acceptable way of ending the conflict, more generations of Palestinians and Israelis will be sentenced to more wars.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67306902
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London Gaza rally: Rishi Sunak vows to hold Met chief 'accountable' over march - BBC News
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2023-11-08
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Thousands of protesters are due to march through London calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on Armistice Day.
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UK
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Rishi Sunak has said he will hold the Met Police chief "accountable" over a pro-Palestinian march set to take place this Saturday, on Armistice Day.
The prime minister has criticised the timing of the demonstration in London as "provocative and disrespectful".
Sir Mark Rowley rejected calls by campaigners to ban the protest, saying such a move would be a "last resort".
Organisers insist their march will not go near commemorations and accuse the government of manufacturing a row.
Protests have been held in London, and other cities globally, each Saturday since the Israel-Gaza war began.
Earlier, Mr Sunak met the Met Police commissioner to seek "reassurances" that remembrance services would be safeguarded, saying there was a risk of "those who seek to divide society using this weekend as a platform to do so".
In a statement, he said police had confirmed the demonstration would be far from the Cenotaph - the focal point of remembrance services - but that Sir Mark would keep the matter under constant review based on latest intelligence.
Mr Sunak spoke of the immense sacrifices made for our freedom and peace today.
"Part of that freedom is the right to peacefully protest," he said. "And the test of that freedom is whether our commitment to it can survive the discomfort and frustration of those who seek to use it, even if we disagree with them."
The organisers of the protest have resisted police pressure to postpone the demonstrations, and accuse the government of trying to undermine their cause.
Ben Jamal, of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign which is behind the march, said he believed the government was manufacturing a row and using the Armistice Day angle to try to "delegitimise" them.
"There's something particularly askew with an argument that says a protest calling for a ceasefire is somehow inappropriate on Armistice Day," he told the BBC.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman has accused the police of being more lax on left-wing protests than those organised by nationalists or right-wing activists.
Writing in the Times, she said there was "a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters".
Ms Braverman suggested there was a disparity in the policing of "lockdown objectors" and Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and said football fans were treated more harshly by the police than "politically-connected minority groups who are favoured by the left".
The home secretary has voiced her opposition to pro-Palestinian protests in the past, calling them "hate marches" in an interview with Sky News.
Protest organiser Chris Nineham, from the Stop the War Coalition, said: "We do everything we can as stewards to make sure there is nothing antisemitic or calling for violence in our demonstrations. For us, this isn't about religion, it isn't about race."
Dr Tom Thorpe, of the Western Front Association which organises the annual commemorations at the Cenotaph, said: "We don't want to stop other people enjoying their democratic rights - and we don't want them to interfere with our assembly and our ceremony that we've been doing for the last 30 years."
Earlier on Tuesday, Sir Mark said the protest organisers had shown "complete willingness to stay away from the Cenotaph and Whitehall and have no intention of disrupting the nation's remembrance events".
The demonstration on 11 November is due to begin at 12:45, more than an hour after the traditional two-minute silence.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has accused the prime minister of "picking a fight" with the police over the planned pro-Palestinian demonstration.
In a post on X, Sir Keir said: "Remembrance events must be respected. Full stop. But the person the PM needs to hold accountable is his Home Secretary."
Labour's London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on X that the government should be supporting the Met, not making officers' jobs more difficult.
Akshata Murty, the prime minister's wife, held a reception for Chelsea Pensioners at Downing Street ahead of Armistice Day
On Monday, the Met publicly urged organisers of the march to postpone the event, saying it would not be "appropriate".
Mr Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman also criticised the timing of the event, which tens of thousands of people are expected to attend, while Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, the former defence minister, appealed to organisers to "think again" and hold the rally on another day.
On Tuesday, Sir Mark resisted calls, including from pressure group Campaign Against Antisemitism, to request powers from the home secretary to ban the march.
The group claimed previous marches met the threshold test for public disorder that would justify the ban.
"As we approach remembrance weekend, where we remember the heroes who defended our freedoms and fought against antisemitic hatred, we must honour their memory by banning demonstrations that abuse those freedoms to call for violence against Jews," the group said.
Sir Mark said that while police can request such powers if a threat of serious disorder emerges, the "very high" threshold for doing so had not yet been reached.
He added that the use of the power was "incredibly rare" and there must be no other way for police to manage the event.
Sir Mark said he was concerned about the escalating risk of disorder caused by splinter groups breaking off from the main demonstration on Saturday, saying the threat posed by them would be monitored this week.
A former Metropolitan Police Commissioner is now urging for discussions around police operations for protests to be held privately, rather than aired publicly.
Independent crossbench peer Lord Hogan-Howe, who led the Met from 2011 to 2017, said: "We all know that there is a real challenge, both for politicians and the police, in deciding whether to ban a march. Never easy, very rarely done.
"These are difficult decisions where you are trying to balance the right to protest against the problem of serious disorder. I do worry that the pressures that are being placed on the police at the moment don't always form wise judgments in the end."
Earlier, Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer said he fully recognised "the tensions at play" but urged people to come to London for remembrance events.
"I know that elderly veterans will be coming to London and measures will all be in place to make sure that people can go about remembrance in the way they want to unmolested by any of the other events taking place this weekend," Mr Mercer said.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67355227
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Laura Kuenssberg: Why the PM could be drowned out at the King's Speech - BBC News
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2023-11-05
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The new monarch's big moment will also be a chance for Rishi Sunak to try to revive his government.
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UK Politics
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Grab your trumpet! Polish the golden carriage! Dust down the throne! It's nearly time. Time for Charles III to make history, giving the first King's Speech in 70 years.
Time for one of the country's finest ceremonial occasions, when a good chunk of all the King's horses and all the King's men trot from the Palace to Parliament before the monarch makes a speech to MPs, members of the House of Lords and all of us.
Tuesday's speech will be one of those bizarrely British mashups of arcane tradition (10 points if you know what the Cap of Maintenance is) and modern politics.
It's a big moment for a new monarch. And it's the last chance for a government in trouble to introduce a programme of new laws in the hope of shaking them out of the doldrums and grabbing your attention.
New laws take a long time to go through Parliament. So while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak still has at least a year to try to turn things around before he must call an election, the speech is, insiders admit privately, more or less the last chance for the Conservatives to transform ideas into reality - if they want to get them on the statute book before we all go to the polls.
But all the fancy regal fanfares in the world on Tuesday might be drowned out by bigger realities.
King Charles - as Prince of Wales - delivered the Queen's Speech in May 2022 on behalf of his mother for the first time
Top of the list, the conflict in the Middle East. Whether it is the fraught practicalities of helping Brits get out of Gaza, or the diplomatic efforts to coax Israel to pause hostilities there, the conflict is naturally gobbling up political time and energy - and dominating the headlines. Although it is Labour leader Keir Starmer, not Rishi Sunak, who is facing more political pressure on the matter from many within his own ranks.
Next, days of evidence at the Covid inquiry are confirming, in ever-more gruesome detail, just how grim the atmosphere was at the top of government during the pandemic.
And much more important than Dominic Cummings' habit of inventing ever more vile swear words, evidence this week suggested that in a moment of profound national emergency, our government just could not cope.
Memories of those agonising months have been stirred. We have seen in black and white, from messages between senior officials, that the notion of spreading the virus - "herd immunity" like chicken pox - was indeed part of the initial approach that was subsequently denied. And the civil service boss of the Department for Health said, on the record, that the first lockdown was a week too late. Remember just how bitter the political arguments were about the timing of the lockdown, and whether herd immunity had ever been the plan.
The Covid evidence this week is important for the simple reason that the inquiry is trying to build a complete record of what happened during those months of emergency. But the daily drip of claims hampers Rishi Sunak's ability to move on.
He was the second most senior minister in the government that struggled so badly, described by one of its most senior civil servants as a "terrible, tragic, joke". His "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme, it has already emerged, was branded "Eat out to help the virus" by government medics.
The prime minister consistently tries to present himself to the public as a clean break from several years of chaos. But the inquiry's reminders of the problems of the pandemic, and the political failures, dredge up memories of all that.
Even without those two huge blocks in his political path, is Mr Sunak planning to seize Tuesday as a day of radical action anyway?
Insiders caution against expecting any shiny new ideas or revolutionary plans. You can read a primer on what might be coming up here.
Some cabinet ministers worry it is all a bit "managerial", all a bit "tinkering", not really talking to the problems millions of voters are facing right now.
PM Rishi Sunak in conversation with Elon Musk, in London on 2 November
The AI summit, and Rishi Sunak's encounter with tech billionaire Elon Musk, complete with dropped consonants and a mid-Atlantic twang, showed that No 10 can generate attention - it can make things happen.
But whether that is translated into an energetic and packed actual programme to get things done on Tuesday? Don't be so sure.
While a senior source says the King's Speech is a "chance to reset the dynamic", don't expect big surprises to make that happen.
You will see laws coming to bring in changes on sentencing that were announced at party conference last month.
You will also likely see a new law on oil and gas licences that will try to set a trap for Labour. It is one of those strange things in politics where sometimes a government will introduce a law that isn't necessarily needed, but will just make life awkward for their opponents. There are divisions in the Labour Party over whether or not new licences should be granted for fossil fuel exploration. If the Tories make them vote on it, that could be politically tricky for Keir Starmer.
So on Tuesday, the biggest fanfare may be from the real trumpets that will sound in Parliament, not political excitement.
After delivering the Queen's Speech in May 2022, Charles and Camilla processed out behind the Imperial State Crown
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and last week's revelations from the Covid inquiry, both make it harder for the government to be heard.
But this coming week, a coming reminder of perhaps Rishi Sunak's biggest obstacle. Like any prime minister, he has to deal with "events" beyond his control that can knock any leader off course. The real nightmare though, is how to escape from under the weight of what has gone wrong under Conservative PMs who have gone before.
As King, Tuesday will be Charles's first outing in that grandest of ceremonies in Parliament. Without a dramatic turn for Rishi Sunak, this King's Speech could be this PM's last.
PS: The "Cap of Maintenance" is a red velvet hat, lined with ermine, that is one of the Royal Family's insignia. It's normally carried by the leader of the House of Lords on these big days as part of the procession.
If you got that right, 10 points and your prize, along with everyone else, is to watch the Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden in the studio with me tomorrow morning at 09:00 on BBC One, along with our other guests and a special interview with the Succession star, Sarah Snook.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67320861
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Bowen: Five new realities after four weeks of Israel-Gaza war - BBC News
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2023-11-05
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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There are few known quantities in the conflict but some things have become clear, says Jeremy Bowen.
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Middle East
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The aftermath of a strike on Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp earlier this week
One of the first things to understand about the reportage, analysis and commentary that has poured out since the Hamas attacks of 7 October is that no-one has the full story. Not only is it, as ever, hard to penetrate the fog of war to work out what is happening on the battlefield. The new shape of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has not yet emerged.
Events are still moving fast. Fears that the war could spread are very real. New realities in the Middle East are out there somewhere, but their shape and the way that they will work depend on the way this war goes for the rest of the year, and probably beyond.
Here are a few things that we know, and a few that we do not. The list is not exhaustive. Some people mocked Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he talked of "unknown unknowns". But in this part of the world as much as any other, they exist - and when they emerge, they can make a big difference.
One certainty is that Israelis support the military campaign to break the power in Gaza of Hamas and its junior partner, Islamic Jihad. Their anger is driven by the shock of the Hamas attacks, the killing of more than 1,400 people and the fact that around 240 hostages are still being held in Gaza.
The Hamas attack on Israel killed 1,400 people, many of them residents of kibbutzes near Gaza
I met Noam Tibon, a retired general in the Israeli army, to hear about how he drove down with his wife to Nahal Oz, a kibbutz on the border with Gaza, after Hamas attacked on 7 October. His mission, which was successful, was to rescue his son, his daughter in law and their two young daughters who were in their safe room, hearing Hamas gunmen roaming around outside.
Tibon may be retired but he is a very fit-looking 62-year-old. He ended up armed with an assault rifle and a helmet he had taken from a dead Israeli soldier, leading a group of soldiers he had assembled in the chaos of that day, clearing the kibbutz and saving the lives of his family and many others.
The general was an old-school, straight-talking Israeli officer.
"Gaza is going to suffer… no nation will agree that your neighbour will slaughter babies, women or people. Just like you (Britons) crushed your enemy during World War Two. This is what we need to do in Gaza. No mercy."
What, I asked, about innocent Palestinian civilians who are getting killed?
"Unfortunately, it's happening. We live in a tough neighbourhood, and we need to survive… we have to be tough. We have no choice."
A lot of Israelis are echoing his sentiment that Palestinian civilian deaths are unfortunate, but they are being killed because of the actions of Hamas.
It is also clear that Israel's assault on Hamas is causing terrible bloodshed. The latest figure for Palestinian deaths from Gaza's health ministry, run by Hamas, has exceeded 9,000 - of whom around 65% are children and women.
It is not clear how many of the men who have been killed were civilians or fighting for Hamas or Islamic Jihad. US President Joe Biden and the Israelis do not trust the ministry figures. But in past conflicts, Palestinian casualty statistics have been considered accurate by international organisations.
One grim milestone is fast approaching. The United Nations (UN) says around 9,700 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion 21 months ago.
Some of the Palestinian dead would have been part of Hamas. But even if that proportion is as high as 10%, which is unlikely, it means that Israel is on course to have killed as many Palestinian civilians in just over a month as Russia has killed in Ukraine since February 2022. (The UN says its data for Ukraine is incomplete and the true number of civilians killed is likely higher, while in Gaza the number of dead is also likely to be higher as many Palestinians are believed to be buried under rubble).
The UN has suggested Israeli strikes on Gaza could constitute war crimes
The UN human rights office has said that so many civilians have been killed and wounded in Israeli air strikes that it has serious concerns that the attacks are disproportionate and could be war crimes.
From the first days after the Hamas attacks, President Biden has supported Israel's decision to use military force to remove Hamas from power. But he has also added the qualification that it needed to be done "the right way". He meant that Israel should observe the laws of war that protect civilians.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Tel Aviv. Before he took off, he said: "When I see a Palestinian child - a boy, a girl - pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, that hits me in the gut as much as seeing a child from Israel or anywhere else."
I have reported on all of Israel's wars in the last 30 years. I do not remember a US administration stating so publicly that Israel needs to observe the laws of war. Blinken's visit suggests that he believes Israel is not following Biden's advice.
Something else we know for certain is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under great pressure.
Unlike Israel's security and military chiefs, he has not accepted any personal responsibility for the catastrophic series of failures that left Israeli border communities virtually undefended on 7 October.
Last Sunday, 29 October, he caused uproar when he sent out a tweet blaming the intelligence agencies. Mr Netanyahu deleted the message and apologised.
The Israeli PM has taken the blame from some quarters for the events of 7 October
Three Israelis, a former peace negotiator, the ex-head of the Shin Bet (Israel's internal intelligence agency) and a tech entrepreneur, wrote an article in the journal Foreign Affairs saying that Mr Netanyahu should not have any part of the war and whatever follows. The Israeli PM has loyal supporters, but he has lost the confidence of prominent figures in Israel's military and security establishment.
Noam Tibon, the retired general who fought his way into kibbutz Nahal Oz to rescue his family, compares Mr Netanyahu to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who was forced to resign in 1940, and replaced by Winston Churchill.
Tibon told me: "This is the biggest failure in the history of the state of Israel. It was a military failure. It was an intelligence failure. And it was the failure of the government… the one really in charge - and all the blame is on him - is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu… He is in charge of the biggest failure in the history of Israel."
It is also clear that the old status quo has been smashed. It was unpleasant and dangerous, but it seemed to have a certain grimly-familiar stability. Since the end of the last Palestinian uprising around 2005 a pattern has emerged that Mr Netanyahu believed could be sustained indefinitely. That was a dangerous illusion, for all concerned - Palestinians as well as Israelis.
The argument went that the Palestinians were no longer a threat to Israel. Instead, they were a problem to be managed. The tools available include sticks, carrots and the ancient tactic of "divide and rule".
Mr Netanyahu, who has been prime minister for most of the time since 2009 - after an earlier spell between 1996 and 1999 - has argued consistently that Israel does not have a partner for peace.
Potentially, it did. The Palestinian Authority (PA), which is the main rival to Hamas, is a deeply flawed organisation, and many who support it believe its aged President Mahmoud Abbas needs to step aside. But it accepted the idea of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel back in the 1990s.
Mr Netanyahu has tried to drive a wedge between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas (pictured right, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken)
"Divide and rule" for Mr Netanyahu meant allowing Hamas to build its power in Gaza at the expense of the PA.
While Israel's longest-serving prime minister is always careful about what he says in public, his actions over many years show that he does not want to allow the Palestinians to have an independent state. That would involve giving up land in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which the Israeli right wing believes belongs to the Jews.
From time to time, Mr Netanyahu's pronouncements would leak. In 2019, a number of Israeli sources say that he told a group of his Likud members of parliament that if they opposed a Palestinian state they should support schemes to pump money - mostly provided by Qatar - into Gaza. He told them that deepening the division between Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank would make it impossible to establish a state.
It is also clear that Israel, backed by the Americans, will not tolerate a deal that allows Hamas to stay in power. That guarantees a lot more bloodshed. It also raises big questions about what or who replaces them, which so far have not been answered.
The conflict between Arabs and Jews for control of the land between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea has lasted for more than 100 years. One lesson of its long and bloody history is that there will never be a military solution.
In the 1990s, the Oslo peace process was established to try to end the conflict by establishing a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem alongside Israel. The last attempt to revive it, after years of on-off negotiations, happened during the Obama administration. It failed a decade ago, and since then the conflict has been allowed to fester.
More than 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Israel began a ground operation in Gaza
As President Biden and many others have said, the only possible chance for avoiding more wars is to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel. That will not be possible with the current leaders on either side. Extremists, both Israeli and Palestinian, would do all they could to scupper the idea, as they have done since the 1990s. Some of them believe they are following the will of God, which makes it impossible to persuade them to accept a secular compromise.
But if this war does not deliver enough of a shock to break deeply-held prejudices and to make the idea of two states viable, nothing will. And without a mutually-acceptable way of ending the conflict, more generations of Palestinians and Israelis will be sentenced to more wars.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67306902
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news_world-middle-east-67306902
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Hamburg Airport hostage drama ends after 18 hours - BBC News
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2023-11-05
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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A man who drove through a barrier and parked under a plane with his daughter in the car has been arrested.
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Europe
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The suspect was detained by special forces
A hostage situation at Hamburg Airport involving a young child has ended after 18 hours, according to local police.
The man, 35, drove through a security barrier and on to the airport tarmac on Saturday night with his four-year-old daughter in the car and parked under a plane.
He eventually gave himself up to the authorities "without resistance", according to police, and was arrested.
"The child appears to be unharmed," they wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
The incident caused the disruption of several flights in and out of the airport. Operations have since resumed but there are significant delays.
It began at about 20:00 local time (19:00 GMT) when the suspect drove his car to the airport's apron, the area where aircraft are usually parked.
Police said the man shot his weapon twice in the air and threw burning bottles from the vehicle. It was unclear if the man had explosives.
They later clarified that he stopped the vehicle where a commercial flight full of passengers was preparing to take off. Everyone on board was evacuated safely.
According to local media, he parked under a Turkish Airlines plane.
Hundreds of other people waiting for flights in the airport had to be put up in hotels.
Hamburg police spokeswoman Sandra Levgruen said earlier on Sunday that the man did not agree with some decisions made by the authorities in relation to the custody arrangement and wanted to travel to Turkey with the child.
"He speaks about his life being a heap of shards," she told German broadcaster ZDF.
Following the incident, the authorities said the man had been in an "exceptional psychological situation due to custody disputes with his ex-wife".
They said he had taken their daughter following an argument and her mother then alerted emergency services - filing a complaint of suspected child abduction.
It is not the first time the man, who is a Turkish citizen, has been accused of kidnapping the young girl. Last year he was investigated after he travelled to Turkey with her without permission. The mother later brought the child back to Germany.
"I wish the mother, the child and her family a lot of strength to cope with this terrible experience," Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher wrote on X after the hostage situation ended.
The airport said it was working to resume operations as quickly as possible. A total of 286 flights with about 34,500 passengers had been scheduled for Sunday, it said earlier.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67326185
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news_world-europe-67326185
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Rock in a hard place: France-Spain border residents angry over road blocks - BBC News
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2023-11-05
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Members of a French coastal town are campaigning to reopen a road connecting it with Spain.
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Europe
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Banyuls-sur-Mer shares economic, cultural and personal ties with its neighbouring villages in Spain
Up the French coast from the Spanish border, tourists were enjoying a warm autumn day, basking in the Mediterranean and hiking along the arduous coastal paths.
But behind the idyllic appearances, local feelings have been running high. Two years ago, with little warning, the French government closed four small roads linking this area with its southern neighbour, Spain.
France says the aim of the closures is to stop illegal immigration. It has linked the move to anti-terrorism controls.
But Banyuls-sur-Mer's 6,000 residents have for decades shared numerous economic, cultural and personal ties with the population on the other side of the border in Spain. Posters all across the town now call for the re-opening of the border.
Of the four roads that were shut, the Col de Banyuls has almost mythical status here.
Tens of thousands of Spaniards fled along this route to France during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, while many allied forces and Jews escaped in the other direction during the Nazi occupation.
A pressure group of more than 1,000 people has held rallies along the border and gone to court to try and re-open the road. They call themselves "Alberes without borders", after this part of the Pyrenees mountain range.
"Most of the families in Banyuls - my own family, every family - have at different times in history had relatives on one side and part of the family on the other side," said the man behind the group, retired lawyer Pierre Becque.
Rallies have taken place on the border to try and re-open the road
Driving up the Col de Banyuls, past vineyards, scrubland and cactuses, he says for people like him there is no border: "In the recent past we would all meet up at various times. Some came to flee Franco, or for work, or better education, or for personal reasons."
You know you've reached the border because massive boulders have been placed in the middle of the road to stop cars going through.
However, one of the rocks appears to have been nudged to the side to allow small vehicles through. Pierre Becque winked as he suggested that strong local winds must have pushed it.
Cyclists from Switzerland and the UK passed through the boulders oblivious they had broken any law. Two British tourists on mountain bikes, Lisa and Patrick, said there were no signs to turn back and Google Maps told them the road was still open.
Cyclists using the route were oblivious that they had broken any law
A French government spokeswoman told the BBC that the purpose behind closing the smaller routes was to allow police to focus on the main roads and rail links between the two countries.
She said there had been an 82% jump in illegal migration along this part of the border in 2022, and that the roads could be re-opened when joint French-Spanish police units were up and running.
However, that appears to be a low priority for now, with France once again on its highest state of terror alert - "Emergency Attack" - after a French schoolteacher was fatally stabbed in the northern city of Arras.
The mayor of Banyuls, Jean-Michel Sole, spends a lot of time with his Spanish counterparts trying to persuade the French government to re-open the border. He believes the arguments for closing the roads make no sense, even with France on maximum terror alert.
"We all want to feel safe… but I find it hard to believe any terrorist would take a steep remote road to attack who knows who," he explained.
"And immigrants cross on foot, not by car, so a few rocks are not going to stop anyone."
Jean-Michel Sole is trying to convince his Spanish counterparts to reopen the border
The border closures are also having an effect on the region's important wine industry.
More than 120 wine-producers bring their grapes to the biggest co-operative here, L'Etoile. And in the past hundreds of grape-pickers would cross the border for seasonal work.
What would have been a 15km (9 mile) trip has now become 80km, says Jean-Pierre Centene, the head of the co-operative.
"For our Spanish workers it now takes too much time and is too expensive for them so our work ties have been cut.
"This year grapes withered on the vines because there weren't enough pickers."
The owner of wine cooperative L'Etoile says the road closures mean his business doesn't have enough grape-pickers
On the Spanish side of the border in the sleepy Catalan village of Espolla, a huge rock taken from the closed border has been placed on display in the main roundabout.
Farmer and local councillor Josep Maria Tegido has also been campaigning against the closed border, arguing that the road has been used for centuries to cross to the other side of the mountain, although he has never seen irregular migrants using it.
"The closure of the road represents a real impediment to traditional, cultural and economic activities from continuing."
Chris Bockman is the author of Are you the foie gras correspondent? Another slow news day in south-west France.
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Thai groom kills four at wedding, including bride - BBC News
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2023-11-27
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Police say the shooter, who killed himself, was "quite intoxicated at the time".
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Asia
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A Thai para-athlete and former soldier shot his bride and three others before killing himself on his wedding day, police told the BBC.
Groom Chaturong Suksuk, 29 and Kanchana Pachunthuek, 44, were married on Saturday in north-east Thailand.
According to reports, he left the wedding party abruptly and returned with a gun, shooting his wife, her 62-year-old mother and 38-year-old sister.
Stray bullets hit two guests, who were taken to hospital. One of them died.
Police told the BBC Chaturong "was quite intoxicated at the time", but his motive remains unclear. He had bought the gun and ammunition legally last year, they added.
Thai media, citing what guests at the party told the police, said the couple had an argument during the party. It also reported that Chaturong had felt insecure about the age gap between him and Kanchana.
But police said this was still speculation, adding that they had collected evidence and expected to close the case "soon".
Chaturong and Kanchana had lived together for three years before they married, according to Thai media.
Chaturong had clinched a silver medal in swimming at the Asean Para Games in Indonesia last year. He was also believed to be on the list of athletes competing in the World Abilitysport Games in Thailand next month.
He had lost his right leg while on duty with the paramilitary light infantry force, which patrols Thailand's borders.
While mass shootings are rare, gun ownership is common in Thailand.
Last month, three people were killed in a shooting in a luxury mall in Bangkok. And in October 2022, a former policeman killed 37 children in a gun and knife attack at a nursery in north-east Thailand.
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Sunak cancels Greek PM meeting in Parthenon Sculptures row - BBC News
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2023-11-27
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Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who wants the Parthenon Sculptures returned, says he is "deeply disappointed".
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UK Politics
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A diplomatic row has broken out between the British and Greek governments over the Parthenon Sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles.
The Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was due to meet Rishi Sunak in London, but No 10 cancelled the meeting at the last minute.
He told reporters he was "deeply disappointed by the abrupt cancellation" of the meeting.
Mr Mitsotakis rejected an alternative meeting with the deputy prime minister.
The cancellation came a day after Mr Mitsotakis told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that the marbles should be returned, as having some of the artefacts in London and the rest in Athens was like cutting the Mona Lisa in half.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis likens having some Elgin Marbles in the UK to 'cutting Mona Lisa in half'
The Greek prime minister told reporters on Monday evening he was disappointed the meeting had been cancelled "mere hours before its slated time", saying: "Those who firmly believe in the correctness and justice of their positions are never hesitant to engage in constructive argumentation and debate."
Mr Mitsotakis said: "Greece and Britain share longstanding ties of friendship, and the scope of our bilateral relations is extensive.
"Our positions on the matter of the Parthenon Sculptures are well-known. I had anticipated engaging in a discussion with my British counterpart on this issue, as well as addressing significant global challenges such as the situations in Gaza and Ukraine, the climate crisis, and migration."
Sources with knowledge of the mood in the Greek government said Mr Mitsotakis was "baffled" and "annoyed".
The meeting had been due to happen at lunchtime on Tuesday and, the BBC understands, was due to last 45 minutes.
But Mr Mitsotakis's appearance on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme had irritated Mr Sunak.
The British government confirmed the cancellation and offered the Greek PM a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden instead.
A senior Conservative source said: "It became impossible for this meeting to go ahead following commentary regarding the Elgin Marbles prior to it.
"Our position is clear - the Elgin Marbles are part of the permanent collection of the British Museum and belong here. It is reckless for any British politician to suggest that this is subject to negotiation."
He will now return to Greece on Tuesday after his scheduled meetings in the morning - declining the meeting with Mr Dowden.
Don't underestimate the politics of this row.
The Conservatives argue it was naive of Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer to meet the Greek leader, given the public view he expressed on the future of the marbles on Sunday.
Labour's view is they wouldn't stand in the way of a loan arrangement between the British Museum and Athens if one was arranged.
A spokesperson for the British government said there were "no plans" to change the 1963 British Museum Act - which prohibits the removal of objects from the institution's collection.
But a loan does not require a change in the law and so could happen irrespective of the view of the British prime minister.
Many Conservatives believe such an arrangement would be a "slippery slope", as one put it to me.
"Keir Starmer is clearly keen to ignore the contributions generations of British taxpayers have made to keep them safe and share them with the world," one party source claimed.
But a Labour source said their position was long-standing - a Labour government would not change the law to allow the sculptures to be permanently moved - and Mr Sunak's behaviour was "pathetic".
Another source said "what a bizarre piece of culture war theatre".
A Labour spokesperson said: "If the prime minister isn't able to meet with a European ally with whom Britain has important economic ties, this is further proof he isn't able to provide the serious economic leadership our country requires. Keir Starmer's Labour Party stands ready."
The sculptures are arguably the most high-profile artworks in the increasingly contested debate about whether museums across the world should return items to their countries of origin.
Lord Elgin, a British soldier and diplomat, removed them from the Parthenon temple in Athens in the early 19th Century. The sculptures were then bought by the British government in 1816 and placed in the British Museum.
The marble figures are part of a frieze that decorated the 2,500-year old temple, made by the sculptor Phidias.
The Parthenon Gallery at the Acropolis Museum was built more than a decade ago to house the sculptures. The exhibition combines the original marble sculptures with plaster copies of those held in the British Museum and other foreign museums.
The trustees of the British Museum are currently exploring the prospect of a loan arrangement with Greece.
The British Museum's Chair of Trustees, George Osborne, who is the former chancellor, has previously said he is looking to find "some kind of arrangement to allow some of the sculptures to spend some of their time in Greece".
Speaking to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in October, Mr Osborne said any deal would have to see "objects from Greece coming here" for the first time.
It is thought any decision is at least months away.
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Young Thug's lyrics used against him as gang trial starts - BBC News
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2023-11-27
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The Grammy-winning rapper is accused of co-founding a violent street gang in Atlanta, Georgia.
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US & Canada
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Rapper Young Thug's racketeering trial has begun with Georgia prosecutors accusing him of being a gang leader in charge of a "wolf pack".
The Atlanta rapper, born Jeffery Lamar Williams, is accused of co-founding a violent street gang in his hometown.
Prosecutors are using the critically acclaimed performer's own lyrics as evidence against him.
The rapper is accused of racketeering - the same charge facing ex-US President Donald Trump in the state.
Mr Williams, 32, has been in jail since his May 2022 arrest on charges that also include participating in criminal street gang activity.
He is being tried alongside five co-defendants.
Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love told the jury the rapper oversaw dozens of crimes that left a "crater" in Fulton County. That crater "sucked in the youth, innocence and even the lives of some of its youngest members", she alleged.
In Monday's colourful opening statement, which was interrupted several times by defence attorneys, Mrs Love said that Mr Williams' lyrics "bore a very eerie significance to real life" and the crimes the gang is alleged to have committed.
Her opening statement included portions of lyrics, including one from another allegedly associated gang member referring to a murder.
"We didn't chase any of the lyrics to solve any murders," she said. "Law enforcement in Fulton County chased the murders and found the lyrics."
Prosecutors in Fulton County argue that the rapper's music label YSL is not a true business, despite its success at producing Grammy-winning talent. Instead, they allege, it is a street gang affiliated with the US-based Bloods gang.
In an indictment in May, the district attorney's office alleged the YSL co-defendants were linked to offences including murder, armed robbery and carjacking.
Mrs Love said that the group "moved like a pack" that "had an agreement - unspoken, but no less an agreement" to obtain "things of value" and property through illegal activity.
If found guilty, Mr Williams could face decades in prison.
The opening day of the trial, however, was marred by repeated objections, delays and a call for a mistrial, prompting Judge Ural Glanville to remark that he is "not happy about this".
Georgia prosecutors used the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act - famously used in mafia prosecutions - to charge the rapper and 27 associates who were allegedly involved in the criminal enterprise at various levels.
Fulton County prosecutors also cited the Rico Act to build a case against Mr Trump and 18 co-defendants, alleging they "unlawfully conspired" to change the 2020 election outcome as part of a "criminal enterprise".
Neama Rahmani, a trial lawyer who is closely watching both cases in Fulton County, says that if prosecutors can win their case against YSL, they are more likely to succeed in prosecuting Mr Trump and his alleged co-conspirators.
The challenge, he says, is that "organisation" under the Rico law is "really loosely defined". In both YSL and the Trump campaign's case, prosecutors are wading into "uncharted waters", Mr Rahmani says, as it is unclear whether they will meet the legal standard.
Prosecutors say they plan to call up to 400 witnesses in Mr Williams' trial to clarify the "organisation" at its centre. Popular rappers such as Killer Mike, Lil Wayne, and TI could be among those set to testify.
The trial, which is expected to last around six months, is part of an investigation that prosecutors said has been ongoing for about 10 years.
During that period, Young Thug - who co-wrote the Donald Glover song This is America - has been a growing force in hip-hop.
This month Judge Glanville ruled that prosecutors would be allowed to use some of Mr Williams' rap lyrics as evidence that crimes had been committed by the defendants.
That lyrics from his songs are being used as evidence in the case has raised questions about free speech, artistic expression and racial bias, but prosecutors dismissed those arguments.
The judge's ruling allowed 17 sets of lyrics to be introduced, but only as long as prosecutors could tie them to crimes that they say were committed by YSL members.
Prosecutors argue that lyrics from the 2018 track Anybody featuring Nicki Minaj refer to a killing authorised by Mr Williams.
"I never killed anybody, but I got something to do with that body," he repeats in the song's chorus, adding that he is the "general" of the group.
Another lyric cited by prosecutors refers to a "hundred rounds in a Tahoe". They allege that one of YSL's murder victims was inside a Chevy Tahoe when he was gunned down.
Kevin Liles, the CEO of Warner Music's 300 Entertainment, which represents Mr Williams, was present at the trial on Monday and is among the witnesses expected to be called to testify.
"If this were country music, rock music," he told reporters outside court, "we wouldn't be here."
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Suella Braverman row: Who's scared of Rishi Sunak? - BBC News
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2023-11-11
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Suella Braverman may yet be sacked but the PM's handling of her disobedience has dented his authority.
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UK Politics
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You won't find a politician saying it loud, but fear matters.
Running a government or a political party is not a business where the aim is to hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
The task to is win power. To hold on to it. To get things done. And then win again.
Common beliefs, loyalty, and a desire to serve can bind politicians together.
But fear is one of the currencies prime ministers can require to succeed.
As one senior Conservative told me: "People need to be scared of Number 10."
That force can stop ministers doing daft things, or make them do things they don't want to, or just keep them in line.
Ultimately, it is the fear of losing their precious jobs, their red box, their ministerial limo, their standing, their reputation, that matters in the fraught day to day of government.
Rishi Sunak is never going to cosplay some kind of political hard man.
But he faces a political danger right now that every moment longer he keeps his headline-happy home secretary on, that fear falls away.
The prime minister is known not just for wanting to find the facts, but wanting to study them before making decisions.
We saw that in long running embarrassments over the tax affairs of the former Conservative Party chair, Nadhim Zahawi, and bullying claims about the previous foreign secretary, Dominic Raab.
In political terms both of those situations dragged on for aeons before the two ministers were shown the door.
But on this occasion there seems little need for a long-winded process or internal investigations into what happened.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman and her team were told to tone down her language in an article for The Times. They refused to make all the changes.
Either Rishi Sunak reckons that defiance merits a P45 or not.
But as I write Downing Street is in the uncomfortable position of having disowned the article, distancing themselves from the home secretary, but then delayed making a further decision.
Now they are stuck with almost impossible choreography.
"I think it all depends on this weekend," says one senior MP.
Mrs Braverman's language related to the policing of protests and Remembrance events.
There is a logic therefore in Number 10 getting through the next 48 hours before making a public decision on if she should stay or go.
If she had been fired already, and there was trouble on the streets - and there have been clashes between police and counter-protesters - Mrs Braverman would have been able to say a giant "I told you so".
But if the weekend's events pass relatively smoothly, then some in government are convinced that on Monday she is out.
"I'd put your money on it," one cabinet source told me, suggesting confidently the plan to fire her then has already been hatched, "the position is pretty entrenched".
Yet, other sources in government suggest Rishi Sunak's natural caution will see him wait for another big event to pass, Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling on the government's plan to send migrants to Rwanda.
Suella Braverman was appointed to keep the Tory right happy
Suella Braverman has been the biggest champion of this proposal all along.
If the government wins, and can get on with it, that's a victory for her as well as the PM.
If she is sacked then - after a positive verdict - there is less of a row to have, the message could be: "Thank you for your marvellous work, now time for a fresh start."
But if the government loses, and then she is shown the door, she has more ammunition to make things awkward, more likely to try to push the Tory Party further on immigration, reinvigorating calls to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, which is a source of argument in Conservative ranks.
Several ministers reckon therefore Mr Sunak will wait until that's clear. "Next Wednesday is a big day that is finally arriving and I'd be astonished if the PM did anything ahead of that," said one.
But there is always a reason politicians can find to wait.
Does Number 10 really want to change its cast list a few days before the chancellor's big Autumn Statement the week after?
Does the PM really want to carry out a major reshuffle, perhaps the last before a general election campaign, right now?
If politicians want to delay, there is, always a reason to wait.
The pause while Number 10 has been working out what to do has displayed the other reason for hanging on to Mrs Braverman.
The dangling prospect of sacking the home secretary has prompted screams from the Conservative right, and newspaper headlines about the revenge which would surely follow.
Trying to keep the right happy was the reason Rishi Sunak hired Suella Braverman in the first place.
Remember, she had previously been ditched by Liz Truss when found to have broken ministers' rules.
It was obvious from the very start that she would be highly likely to grab headlines and be willing to cause political trouble.
When he was trying to get to Number 10 - after the Truss implosion - Mrs Braverman's support was a valuable totem for Team Sunak from the right wing of the party.
Since then, while the PM and the home secretary differ hugely in how they use language, there isn't that much variation between the two of them on ideas.
And as far as some of Suella Braverman's backers are concerned she has done exactly what she was hired to do.
That is, talk to the public with conviction about the government's desire to get on top of immigration, and, in the words of one of her allies, "convince people that we mean it".
But there is no question Number 10 is, in the words of one cabinet minister "deeply hacked off" at her recent behaviour.
It's not just the fuss over her newspaper article.
Multiple sources have said her remarks about tents for homeless people have caused huge political damage.
"It's become the Suella show," a minister says. "It's cumulative," another claims.
And many Sunak loyalists don't believe the threat Mrs Braverman would present if she is sacked in a giant huff is as significant as her allies, and some headlines, suggest.
"There is no army that will rise up behind her," suggests one cabinet minister.
Another member of the government says "her support in Parliament is very, very over stated," take away the red box and the car, and she will look like what she was, "an outlier from the start".
But even a small group of politicians determined to make a racket can do so.
If Mrs Braverman is sacked there will be a backlash of a sort, in parts of the party, and parts of the press.
There are warnings, however credible, that a small number of other members of the government might leave alongside her if she is fired or walks.
Yet, there seems a growing sense in government that there is less and less to be gained from trying to trying to keep every MP happy.
And while Mrs Braverman's backers say time and again that she represents many of the public, she alienates others.
One pollster suggests Mrs Braverman's style could "peel back some Reform UK's voters, but the combination of alienating more Cameronite Tories and a total sense of government chaos and disunity far outweighs" that appeal.
The political question for Rishi Sunak is not whether the perfect process was followed in agreeing a cabinet minister's newspaper article.
But whether he is willing to keep using up political energy to try to preserve the fraying edges of the Conservative Party.
Mr Sunak is grappling with an almost impossible choreography, some Conservatives reckon the party is an almost impossible coalition now too.
However the prime minister decides to manage his way out of this tangle it has already dented Downing Street's authority.
One minister told me: "If you don't think that actions have consequences and you can say what you like, do what you want, it's harmful for Number 10."
There are logical reasons why Mr Sunak has not yet made a decision with the protests this weekend, and the court ruling on Wednesday.
There are political reasons why it's not a slam dunk, because there is a risk, although perhaps not as great as often billed, of retribution from the right of the Conservative Party that would be hard to manage, and indeed, to predict.
But the bigger reality for Downing Street is perhaps that Suella Braverman acted as she did because she didn't fear any consequences.
If members of any government ignore what the Number 10 machine says, but they get away with it, even for a few days, the prime minister's authority erodes, discipline disappears.
"Nobody is frightened of Downing Street any more," one senior Tory told me.
An administration that can't put the frighteners on is an administration in trouble.
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Elianne Andam: Family say funeral will be 'a celebration of her life' - BBC News
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2023-11-11
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Speaking to the BBC before Elianne's funeral, they said she will "forever remain in our hearts".
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London
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Elianne's aunt Ruby Paintsil (left) said: "If we could change the clock I wish we would not have to go through this"
The family of Elianne Andam say they are "broken" and "are not the same" since the day she was killed.
The 15-year-old girl was stabbed at about 08:30 BST on her way to school in Croydon, south London, on 27 September.
A 17-year-old boy is charged with murder and is due to appear in court on 19 December.
Speaking to the BBC the day before Elianne's funeral, they said it will be "a celebration of her life" and she will "forever remain in our hearts".
Shortly before a community event at Croydon Voluntary Action on Friday, Elianne's aunts Regina Boafo and Ruby Paintsil spoke of their "amazing" niece's dreams to be a lawyer and to "defend... the voiceless".
"She doesn't like injustice; she likes justice for people. Every time she'd get in trouble [it was] fighting for someone else," Ms Paintsil said.
Elianne's aunt Regina Boafo said her niece was a "good girl" and "she would never get into any fight with anyone"
They said although the teenager was "very quiet" she loved dancing and singing and was always "smiling a lot".
Ms Paintsil said Elianne was respectful of her family and enjoyed spending time with them, adding: "She doesn't like really a lot of arguments; she would never argue with her auntie or uncle."
The aunts said they never expected such a tragedy would happen to them, or that moments after Elianne said goodbye and set off for school she would be dead.
"That is the bit I cannot get out of my head," Ms Boafo said.
"She is very calm, she was the last person I would ever think someone would harm her with a knife," Ms Paintsil said.
She stressed Elianne didn't mix with "the wrong people" and the aunts said she would keep in touch with family if she went out to the cinema or a restaurant.
Speaking about the day Elianne was killed, Ms Boafo said after waking she saw her phone had been called "many times" and when she found out her niece had died she was "really destroyed, broken".
Since her niece's death, Ms Boafo said she hasn't been able to work and rarely leaves the house. She has moved in with her sister - Elianne's mother - to help support her.
"Up to now, I'm still not the same woman... I can't do anything. I get up and I don't even feel like dressing up, but you have to put clothes on because people are coming to sympathise with you," she explained.
"I wish nobody would ever go through this pain," Elianne's aunt Ruby Paintsil said
"If I can't even do things, just imagine how my sister feels - my sister who was trying to be strong and go to work, she can't."
"She is broken a lot... we have to keep comforting her. She hasn't been herself, every day broken into pieces," Ms Paintsil said.
"If we could change the clock I wish we would not have to go through this.
"You ask questions - why? Why does that have to happen?" she added. "I wish nobody would ever go through this pain."
Despite their grief, both women said they have been amazed at support from the community along with thousands of cards and messages sent from around the world - all of which has "really helped" their family.
Thousands of people attended a vigil in Croydon to remember Elianne
"We really appreciate everything the nation and everyone is doing... thank you," Ms Boafo said.
Elianne's funeral will be held in Croydon on Saturday.
Ms Paintsil said after her burial there will be a celebration of her life because "she's a girl that liked to bring joy to people's lives".
"If Elianne was here she'd say 'go on, have fun, don't break down', and things like that."
Ms Boafo added: "It will be nice to celebrate it and for us, she will forever remain in our hearts - she can never be gone.
"Even though she is gone, we know that her memory will forever be with us."
Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk
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International mafia bust shows US-Italy crime links still strong - BBC News
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2023-11-11
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While decades of prosecutions weakened the US and Italian mafia, transatlantic relations remain strong.
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US & Canada
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Francesco Vicari in a photo released by prosecutors, who said it was sent to associates after the collection of extortion money
Their names could have been ripped from the kind of Hollywood mafia script that once dominated US cinema.
But when an indictment dropped on Wednesday, Joseph "Joe Brooklyn" Lanni, Angelo "Fifi" Gradilone, and Francesco "Uncle Ciccio" Vicar were instead the faces of the justice department's latest attack on the notorious Gambino crime family in New York.
Charging documents filed by prosecutors used wiretaps, secret recordings and surveillance footage to lay out evidence against the men, accusing them of conspiracy to use violence and extortion to commit fraud and retaliate against witnesses.
However, as the initial excitement waned, experts observed that the latest round-up - which snared 16 alleged mafia members - was unlikely to have a major effect on criminal operations.
Instead, the real twist revealed by the documents was the ongoing and close relationship between the New York based mafia, and its progenitor in Sicily - where six of the suspects were detained.
Italian officials said the arrests demonstrated "the solidity of the existing relationship" between American and Sicilian gangsters.
Among those arrested were a father in Palermo and his New Jersey-based son.
Two of those arrested in the US were described as American-based members of the Sicilian Mafia, while at least one of the men arrested in Italy is believed to spend time in the US.
A photo released by US prosecutors shows one suspect allegedly setting fire to a victim's home
Similar raids in 2019 and 2020 also targeted people who led a "dual life" between the US and Italy, said criminology professor Anna Sergi, who has written several books about modern organised crime.
She told the BBC that the Italian gangsters consider New York to be a "gym" where their members go to be toughened up.
The usefulness of the recruits though, appears to vary.
In one intercepted discussion, US-based Sicilian Francesco "Uncle Ciccio" Vicari vented his frustrations about his American companions to Francesco Rappa back in Sicily.
"I'm 60 years old. I told them, and now they want me to do deliveries?" he said, complaining that he was not being given more important jobs.
Mr Rappa then contacted his son, Vito, and urged him to intervene, Professor Sergi said, adding that the elder Rappa is very well known to authorities in both the US and Italy and was once arrested in the 1970s for heroin trafficking. His influence - and "charisma" - are strong enough in both the US and Italy that he is able to facilitate debt collection through extortion and ensure that his friends are being treated well, she told BBC News.
Despite the varying quality of their Italian recruits, American crime families have continued to rely on a stream of such soldiers, as prosecutors have convinced scores of their own members to "rat" or inform on their families in exchange for reduced or more lenient prison sentences over the decades.
The trend has seen crime bosses appreciate the input of Italians, who are seen as being more loyal to a code of silence known as Omerta, experts told the BBC.
Among the Five Families that have run New York's Italian-American Mafia since 1931, the Gambino and Genovese groups have had the most success recruiting in Italy over the past 15 years, Professor Sergi observed.
The Gambinos - who were the primary targets of this week's arrests - are particularly close with the powerful Calabrian group, the 'Ndrangheta.
"The connection is strong because neither side is strong," says Professor Sergi.
"The Sicilian side is under siege since the 1990's and uses New York as a 'gym' to grow new guys," she said. For the New York families - beset by "recruitment" issues - the men are welcome additions.
In such a climate, some observers questioned whether the latest arrests would be seen as a serious blow to the mafia.
But long-time New York mob lawyer Murray Richman told the BBC that the US indictment doesn't seem particularly serious - or "heavy" - compared to other notable prosecutions.
Previous indictments against the Gambino family included murder, narcotics distribution and loan sharking charges, significantly more serious than those facing Wednesday's arrests.
"How is it different from any other mafia indictment you've ever seen? All you have to do is change the names," Mr Richman said.
The indictments also outline an obsession with respect among some mafia members.
In one particularly violent episode from September, alleged Staten Island Gambino captain Joseph "Joe Brooklyn" Lanni and Vincent "Vinny Slick" Minsquero took revenge on a restaurant owner who had asked them to leave after they got into a heated argument with another patron.
Mr Lanni allegedly threatened to burn down Roxy's Bar and Grille, with the owner inside, after boasting of his connections with the Gambino family.
He was seen on security camera footage 18 minutes later at a nearby petrol station filling a red gas container before Mr Minsquero yanked it away from him.
Mafia members struggle over a can of petrol, moments after one threatened to burn down a restaurant in a row
That night Mr Lanni called the restaurant 39 times, once reaching the owner while he was with a police officer whose body-worn camera recorded the encounter. The owner and the his wife were violently assaulted at knifepoint later that night.
Many of the alleged crimes targeted demolition companies and the carting industry - also known as waste management or rubbish collection.
Some plots intended to embezzle funds and defraud unions and employee benefit plans, officials say.
The Italian documents include extensive transcripts of phone calls and text messages between the accused in which they discuss developments in the US.
In one exchange, the men discussed the murder of Gambino family boss Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali, who was gunned down outside his New York home in 2019.
The killing was the highest-profile New York mafia murder in decades and fuelled false speculation of an assassination by a rival family.
Giovan Battista Badalamenti called Cali's death a blow to all in his network, saying "his death cut off all our legs", according to the Italian indictment.
A lawyer for Cali's killer later argued that his client was driven by QAnon conspiracy beliefs. The gunman, a young man who lived with his parents in Staten Island, was found unfit to stand trial due to mental health issues.
When Mr Badalamenti observed that only a madman would have killed Cali, due to his position as boss of the Gambinos, Mr Francesco responded: "And thank god".
Italian prosecutors said the response was "a clear reference to the fact that a bloody mafia war would have certainly erupted had the killer been from another mafia clan".
A photo purports to show two mobsters on the day they were 'made' - formally inducted into the syndicate
While the arrests may not cause serious challenges to the mafia, the indictments do indicate that FBI attention has again returned to organised crime, says former US Justice Department prosecutor Joseph Moreno.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, FBI resources lurched towards counter terrorism. In 2016, Selwyn Raab, author of the book Five Families, told Rolling Stone magazine that some FBI organised crime task forces dropped from about 400 agents to 20 or 30.
But during the Obama administration, the FBI began to combine national security and organised crime operations in an attempt to combat what it calls "transnational organized crime".
"The idea is that when organised crime groups reach a certain degree of sophistication they can pose not just the threat of street crimes but instead a danger on a national level," Mr Moreno said.
Italian organised crime families may not be as powerful as they once were, he added, but other organised crime groups, from Russia and East Asia, have stepped in to fill the vacuum.
"No single arrest or prosecution is likely to take down an entire mafia family, but no doubt decades of investigations have eroded their power and influence in major cities such as New York and Chicago," he told the BBC.
All 10 US defendants have pleaded not guilty, indicating that they will fight the charges. But some may turn on their allies.
"In my experience, one in every three persons is an informant," observed Mr Richman, who has represented several Genovese and Lucchese crime family mobsters in New York.
Professor Sergi agreed that the charges are unlikely to have a major immediate impact.
"The short term is not that important, what's important is the comeback," she said, predicting that there will be an increase in illicit trips in both directions in the near future.
Overall, "the connections that emerge from both sides of the Atlantic show a very well-oiled network of men that appear to be out of the old movies".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67387249
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news_world-us-canada-67387249
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Jury hears Canadian man who killed Muslim family was on drugs - BBC News
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2023-11-15
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Nathaniel Veltman has pleaded not guilty to the murders, arguing he was in a "dreamlike state".
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US & Canada
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From left to right: Yumna Afzaal, Madiha Salman, Salman's mother Talat Afzaal, and Salman Afzaal were "the best" of their community, friends said
A Canadian jury has heard closing arguments in the case of a man accused of murdering four members of a Muslim family with his vehicle.
Nathaniel Veltman, 22, faces four first-degree murder charges and one count of attempted murder.
Mr Veltman also faces terrorism counts, with prosecutors arguing that he targeted the Afzaal family because of their faith.
Both the defence and prosecutors agree that Mr Veltman was behind the wheel.
But Mr Veltman has pleaded not guilty, arguing that he was in a "dreamlike state" on 6 June, 2021, the day he allegedly ran over three generations of the Afzaal family in London, Ontario while they were out for an evening walk.
Salman Afzaal, 46, and his wife Madiha Salman, 44, were killed in the attack - along with their daughter Yumna Afzaal, 15, and Mr Afzaal's mother Talat Afzaal, 74.
The couple's nine-year-old son was seriously hurt but survived.
The case marks the first time a jury in Canada is hearing legal arguments on terrorism related to white supremacy. The jury will not only have to decide on whether Mr Veltman is guilty of murder, but also whether his actions can be described as terrorism.
Closing arguments were made on Tuesday in a Windsor, Ontario court, after 10 weeks of proceedings.
Testifying in his own defence, Mr Veltman told the jury during the trial he ingested a large quantity of magic mushrooms about 40 hours before the crash.
He admitted that the thought of running over Muslims came to him twice after taking the drug, but he resisted. Then, while out for food, he said he saw the family and could not stop the "urge".
Another witness, forensic psychiatrist Julian Gojer, told the jury that Mr Veltman has been diagnosed with several mental health issues, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, severe depression, anxiety and a personality disorder.
He testified that the magic mushrooms likely exacerbated his existing mental health conditions.
The murder of the Afzaal family was met with widespread grief and shock in Canada, where rallies were held in their honour
During their closing arguments, Christopher Hicks, the lawyer for Mr Veltman, described his client's mental state at the time as "a runaway freight train headed for explosion".
Prosecutors on the other hand have argued that Mr Veltman, who was 20 at the time of his arrest, was motivated by hate and white nationalist ideologies.
They had called a total of 19 witnesses to the stand and have shown the jury video of the crash.
In the video, Mr Veltman is seen wearing a bullet-proof vest and an army helmet. In an interview with police after the incident, he identified himself as a white nationalist and said he struck the family "because they were Muslim".
Prosecutors also played audio of a 911 call Mr Veltman made after the crash, in which he said: "Come over and arrest me. I did it on purpose."
Mr Hicks has argued that Mr Veltman made those statements under duress, and that it is difficult to prove he had intent to kill on the day of the crash because of his various mental disorders.
But Crown lawyer Fraser Ball told the jury that the case against Mr Veltman is "overwhelming" and that his confession is "logical and coherent".
He said that the accused had a message for Muslims: "That message was strong. That message was brutal. That message was terrible."
"He hit exactly who he wanted to hit, exactly how he wanted to hit them," Mr Ball said.
The trial has been watched closely by law experts in Canada to see if the country's terrorism charges, enacted in the wake of the 11 September attacks on the US, could be applied to someone who allegedly targeted a family because they are Muslim.
Andrew Botterell, a law professor at the University of Western Ontario in London, said he will also be watching to see if Mr Veltman's defence is successful, as it is "quite a high bar" to prove that a person is not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder.
"The mental disorder has to be such that it rendered you incapable of understanding what it was that you were doing, or understanding that what you were doing was wrong," Mr Botterell told the BBC.
The jury will now deliberate the fate of Mr Veltman, who faces life in prison if found guilty.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67409538
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news_world-us-canada-67409538
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Suella Braverman letter: The ex-home secretary's full letter to Rishi Sunak - BBC News
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2023-11-15
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The ex-home secretary's open letter criticising the leadership of her old boss Rishi Sunak.
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UK Politics
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Suella Braverman, who was sacked as home secretary by Rishi Sunak after she defied No 10 over an article accusing the Metropolitan Police of bias in the policing of protests, has sent a scathing open letter to her old boss.
Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave government. While disappointing, this is for the best.
It has been my privilege to serve as home secretary and deliver on what the British people have sent us to Westminster to do.
I want to thank all of those civil servants, police, Border Force officers and security professionals with whom I have worked and whose dedication to public safety is exemplary.
I am proud of what we achieved together: delivering on our manifesto pledge to recruit 20,000 new police officers and enacting new laws such as the Public Order Act 2023 and the National Security Act 2023.
I also led a programme of reform: on anti-social behaviour, police dismissals and standards, reasonable lines of enquiry, grooming gangs, knife crime, non-crime hate incidents and rape and serious sexual offences.
And I am proud of the strategic changes that I was delivering to Prevent, Contest, serious organised crime and fraud. I am sure that this work will continue with the new ministerial team.
As you know, I accepted your offer to serve as home secretary in October 2022 on certain conditions.
Despite you having been rejected by a majority of party members during the summer leadership contest and thus having no personal mandate to be prime minister, I agreed to support you because of the firm assurances you gave me on key policy priorities. These were, among other things:
This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you. It is generally agreed that my support was a pivotal factor in winning the leadership contest and thus enabling you to become prime minister.
For a year, as home secretary I have sent numerous letters to you on the key subjects contained in our agreement, made requests to discuss them with you and your team, and put forward proposals on how we might deliver these goals.
I worked up the legal advice, policy detail and action to take on these issues. This was often met with equivocation, disregard and a lack of interest.
You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies. Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises.
These are not just pet interests of mine. They are what we promised the British people in our 2019 manifesto which led to a landslide victory. They are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit Referendum.
Our deal was no mere promise over dinner, to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged.
I was clear from day one that if you did not wish to leave the ECHR, the way to securely and swiftly deliver our Rwanda partnership would be to block off the ECHR, the HRA and any other obligations which inhibit our ability to remove those with no right to be in the UK. Our deal expressly referenced "notwithstanding clauses" to that effect.
Your rejection of this path was not merely a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do "whatever it takes" to stop the boats.
At every stage of litigation I cautioned you and your team against assuming we would win. I repeatedly urged you to take legislative measures that would better secure us against the possibility of defeat. You ignored these arguments. You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices. This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position.
If we lose in the Supreme Court, an outcome that I have consistently argued we must be prepared for, you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one.
Worse than this, your magical thinking - believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion - has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible Plan B.
I wrote to you on multiple occasions setting out what a credible Plan B would entail, and making clear that unless you pursue these proposals, in the event of defeat, there is no hope of flights this side of an election. I received no reply from you.
I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people.
If, on the other hand, we win in the Supreme Court, because of the compromises that you insisted on in the Illegal Migration Act, the government will struggle to deliver our Rwanda partnership in the way that the public expects.
The Act is far from secure against legal challenge. People will not be removed as swiftly as I originally proposed. The average claimant will be entitled to months of process, challenge, and appeal. Your insistence that Rule 39 indications are binding in international law - against the views of leading lawyers, as set out in the House of Lords - will leave us vulnerable to being thwarted yet again by the Strasbourg Court.
Another cause for disappointment - and the context for my recent article in The Times - has been your failure to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets since Hamas's terrorist atrocities of 7 October.
I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion.
Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years.
I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs. Rather than fully acknowledge the severity of this threat, your team disagreed with me for weeks that the law needed changing.
As on so many other issues, you sought to put off tough decisions in order to minimise political risk to yourself. In doing so, you have increased the very real risk these marches present to everyone else.
In October of last year you were given an opportunity to lead our country. It is a privilege to serve and one we should not take for granted. Service requires bravery and thinking of the common good.
It is not about occupying the office as an end in itself.
Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time. You need to change course urgently.
I may not have always found the right words, but I have always striven to give voice to the quiet majority that supported us in 2019. I have endeavoured to be honest and true to the people who put us in these privileged positions.
I will, of course, continue to support the government in pursuit of policies which align with an authentic conservative agenda.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67416146
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news_uk-politics-67416146
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Xi Jinping arrives in US as his Chinese Dream sputters - BBC News
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2023-11-15
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Economic woes put the Chinese leader in a more vulnerable negotiating position on this visit.
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China
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Mr Xi faces a host of problems at home as he arrives in San Francisco
When Xi Jinping stepped off his plane in San Francisco for the Apec summit, it was in circumstances very different to the last time he landed on American soil.
Five years ago, when he was wined and dined by Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Mr Xi was in charge of a China still in the ascendancy.
It had a buoyant economy outperforming forecasts. Its unemployment rate was among the lowest in years. While consolidating his power for a second term, Mr Xi proudly pointed to China's "flourishing" growth model as something other countries could emulate.
By then, cracks were already appearing in what he calls his "Chinese Dream". They have only widened since then.
One view is that because of this, Mr Xi is in a more vulnerable negotiating position this time, though expectations of major breakthroughs are low.
After an initial bounce back, the post-Covid Chinese economy has turned sluggish. Its property market - once a key driver of growth - is now mired in a credit crisis, exacerbating a domestic "debt bomb" that has ballooned from years of borrowing by local government and state-owned enterprises. Many of these issues could be attributed to China's long-predicted structural slowdown finally making itself felt - painfully.
In the last two years crackdowns on various sectors of the economy, as well as prominent Chinese businessmen, have caused uncertainty. These have recently widened to include foreign nationals and firms, heightening worries in the international business community. Foreign investors and companies are now moving their money out of China in search of better investment returns elsewhere.
A real estate crisis is one of China's biggest economic problems currently
Youth unemployment has skyrocketed to the point that officials no longer publish that data. A fatalistic ennui is spreading among young Chinese, who talk about "lying flat" or leaving the country in search of better prospects elsewhere.
Mr Xi is also struggling with issues within his carefully-constructed power structure. The unexplained disappearances of key members of his leadership team and military top brass could be seen as either signs of pervasive corruption or political purges.
Some observers have contrasted China with the US, whose economy has weathered the post-Covid recovery better. Until recently, Americans may have feared the day China would overtake them as the world's largest economy, but now analysts doubt if this will happen.
China's current economic challenges will be an "important factor" in Mr Xi's negotiations and "would lead to a stronger desire to stabilise the economic, trade and investment relations with the US", Li Mingjiang, an associate professor at Singapore's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told the BBC.
"Mr Xi will want to receive reassurance from Joe Biden that the US will not expand its trade war or tech rivalry, nor take additional measures to decouple economically." Beijing has complained vociferously about the US imposing tariffs on Chinese imports, blacklisting Chinese companies, and restricting China's access to advanced chip-making tech.
The fact they are meeting in San Francisco, home of Silicon Valley and the world's leading technology companies, will not be lost on the two leaders. There is speculation they may announce a working group to discuss artificial intelligence, which the Chinese reportedly hope to use to persuade the Americans not to further extend US technology export restrictions.
With Taiwan's election round the corner, which has the potential of becoming a flashpoint, Chinese officials have made it clear they want the US to steer clear of supporting Taiwanese independence. But the US has repeatedly emphasised its support for the self-governed island in the face of Chinese aggression and claims over it. Taiwan remains a dicey tightrope for both countries.
US officials are also seeking a resumption of military-to-military communications and Chinese co-operation in stemming the flow of ingredients fuelling the fentanyl trade in the US - and there are already reports that the Chinese will agree to these.
Supporters of Chinese president Xi Jinping gathered in San Francisco for his arrival
Chinese state media has pressed pause on the US-bashing, releasing a raft of commentaries extolling the merits of resetting relations and working on co-operation.
There is talk of "returning from Bali, heading to San Francisco". This is a reference to the last time Mr Xi and Mr Biden met in person - at the G20 Bali summit almost exactly a year ago - which marked a high point in recent US-China relations before plunging to the nadir of the spy balloon incident.
"The propaganda preparations for the Xi-Biden meeting this week are making it clear it is okay to like America and Americans again… I think you could make the argument the propaganda 180 makes Xi look like he is quite eager for a stabilised relationship because of at least economic if not also political pressures," China analyst Bill Bishop wrote this week.
Mr Xi also appears equally, if not more, keen to woo the US business community.
The BBC understands he will be the guest of honour at a ritzy dinner on Wednesday night organised especially for him to meet top corporate executives. In what could be a sign of his true priorities, Chinese officials had initially demanded the dinner take place before Mr Xi's meeting with Mr Biden, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
But the Americans should also not expect Mr Xi to be arriving hat in hand and eager to please.
Many believe mutual suspicion will endure and the two leaders will not likely remove existing trade and economic roadblocks put up in the name of national security.
Mr Biden has preserved many of the Trump-era sanctions aimed at China, while initiating and then deepening the chip tech ban. Meanwhile Mr Xi has enacted a wide-ranging anti-espionage law, which has seen raids conducted on foreign consulting firms and exit bans reportedly used on foreign nationals.
The two sides are also likely to not budge on "core interest" issues such as Taiwan and the South China Sea, where Beijing continues to build up its military presence to defend its expansionist claims, while Washington does the same to reinforce its alliances in the region.
Faced with the need to "not appear weak" to the US, Dr Li says, "it's a difficult balance that the Chinese leadership has to strike - between the objective of seeking a more stable and positive relationship with US on one hand, and also appear to be strong and resilient against some of the American pressures."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-67423040
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news_world-asia-china-67423040
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Accused Pelosi hammer attacker David DePape tearfully testifies of bizarre plot - BBC News
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2023-11-15
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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David DePape says he planned to wear a unicorn costume and interrogate ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
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US & Canada
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David DePape, seen here in a 2013 file photo
A man accused of a hammer attack on ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband has testified how he hatched a plan to end US corruption after becoming absorbed in conspiracy theories.
David DePape, 43, has pleaded not guilty to two charges including attempted kidnap of a federal official.
He cried as he testified how he hatched a bizarre plot that included wearing a unicorn costume while interrogating Ms Pelosi and posting the video online.
If convicted, he faces life in prison.
Closing arguments in the trial are expected on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, in sometimes tearful testimony, Mr DePape told the court he used to have left-wing political beliefs before a political transformation that started when he was living in a garage without a toilet or shower, playing video games for hours at a time.
Giving evidence for more than an hour, he said that in the course of looking up information about video games he became interested in Gamergate, an anti-feminist campaign that targeted prominent women in the gaming world and became a huge online trend starting in 2014.
He began listening to right-wing podcasters and watching political YouTube videos.
"At that time, I was biased against Trump," Mr DePape said, "but there's, like, truth there. So if there's truth out there that I don't know, I want to know it."
He said he formulated a "grand plan" that involved luring "targets" to the Pelosi home.
The names on his list included University of Michigan academic Gayle Rubin, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Tom Hanks, congressman Adam Schiff, former Vice-President Mike Pence, former Attorney General Bill Barr, Senator Bernie Sanders and liberal mega-donor George Soros.
Ultimately, Mr DePape said, he wanted to confront President Joe Biden's son Hunter, and after he got his targets to admit to corruption, he planned to ask the president to pardon everyone he considered a "criminal".
"It's just easier giving them a pardon so we can move forward as a country," he said, crying on the stand.
Mr DePape said he went to the Pelosi home in the early hours of 28 October last year, hoping to talk to Mrs Pelosi about what he thought were false theories of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.
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He said he planned to wear an inflatable unicorn costume and upload his interrogation of her online. He was arrested with zip ties and duct tape in his possession.
When asked why he hit Mr Pelosi, he responded: "I reacted because my plan was basically ruined."
"He was never my target and I'm sorry that he got hurt," he said.
Mr Pelosi, 83, testified on Monday of his alarm upon waking up to find Mr DePape "standing in the doorway".
Mr Pelosi spent six days in hospital with a fractured skull and injuries to his arm and hand.
Defence lawyers are not denying that Mr DePape struck Mr Pelosi, but they are arguing he was motivated by his belief in conspiracy theories rather than Mrs Pelosi's status as Speaker of the House.
Because the charges involve assault on a federal official, prosecutors must prove that Mr DePape's actions were motivated by Mrs Pelosi's elected position.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67411189
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news_world-us-canada-67411189
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UK net migration in 2022 revised up to record 745,000 - BBC News
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2023-11-23
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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New figures show last year's net migration was far higher than previously thought, piling pressure on the PM.
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UK
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Net migration into the UK was a record 745,000 last year, figures show - far higher than originally thought.
Office for National Statistics data published on Thursday show that experts have revised up previous estimates.
In May, it said net migration - the difference between the number of people coming to live in the UK and those leaving - for 2022 had been 606,000, 139,000 lower than the true figure.
No 10 said migration was "far too high" but it was taking action.
PM Rishi Sunak's spokesman said migration was putting "unsustainable pressure on communities and councils" and it was clamping down on dependents of students arriving in the UK. "We believe there is more to do," he added.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said "shockingly high" net migration represented "a failure not just of immigration, but also of asylum and of the economy".
The ONS said the population of England and Wales grew by an estimated 1% in the year to June 2022 - the fastest rate since the baby boom in the 1960s, but this time it was driven by international migration.
But it cautioned its estimates could be revised again - and provisional figures to June of this year suggest the rate of net migration may now be slowing.
Statisticians said in the year to June net migration fell back to 672,000, after 1.2 million people came to live in the UK for at least a year, and 508,000 left.
The vast majority (968,000) arriving were from countries outside the European Union.
Students accounted for the largest group of non-EU migrants, also true of last year.
But there has been an increase in workers arriving with visas to fill chronic staff shortages in the NHS and social care, the ONS said.
Arrivals of people via humanitarian routes have fallen from 19% to 9% over the same period, the ONS said, with most of these made up of Ukrainians and British Nationals (Overseas) arrivals from Hong Kong.
They said estimates showed a marked change in immigration since 2021 following Brexit - when free movement for EU nationals ended, the easing of travel restrictions after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
However, the ONS said it was too early to know whether the latest falling net migration figure was the start of a downward trend, but recent estimates did indicate a slowing of immigration coupled with increasing emigration.
With more than a decade of Conservative-led governments promising to reduce numbers, these latest figures represent a political challenge for the prime minister.
Back in 2010, David Cameron, former Tory PM now foreign secretary, pledged to get net migration below 100,000 - "no ifs, no buts". And the party's 2019 manifesto also committed to bring the rate down, without setting a specific target.
Home Secretary James Cleverly said the government remained "completely committed" to reducing levels of legal migration while also focusing on "stopping the boats", referring to the issue of people making dangerous English Channel crossings in small boats.
He said the ONS figures did not show a "significant increase from last year's figures" and pointed to "a number of important and positive changes" affecting them.
"The biggest drivers of immigration to the UK are students and healthcare workers - [they] are testament to both our world-leading university sector and our ability to use our immigration system to prioritise the skills we need," he said.
He added that he was "proud" the UK had welcomed more than half a million people through humanitarian routes, principally from Hong Kong, Ukraine and Afghanistan, over the last decade but said they still needed to reduce numbers by "eliminating the abuse and exploitation of our visa system by both companies and individuals".
Some Conservative MPs are not convinced by his argument however.
The New Conservative group, on the right of the party, called for Rishi Sunak to "act now" on the "do or die" issue and propose a package of measures to bring down migration.
"Each of us made a promise to the electorate. We don't believe that such promises can be ignored," the group, led by Miriam Cates, Danny Kruger and Sir John Hayes, said in a statement.
It is understood the government is considering some new measures, including:
Downing Street said any next steps needed to be carefully considered.
Labour has criticised the government for the cost of using hotels to house asylum seekers who make up a tiny proportion of overall migration.
Home Office figures, also published on Thursday, showed hotel use reached a record high in September - despite a slight fall in the asylum backlog.
There were 56,042 people in hotel accommodation, while 58,444 people were in "dispersed" accommodation - usually housing provided by the Home Office through private companies.
The number of people in hotels rose by 5,500 over three months while the number in housing stayed broadly the same.
Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the number of asylum seekers in hotels was 10,000 more than when Rishi Sunak promised to end hotel use - and was costing almost £3bn a year.
"Once again, the British taxpayer is footing the bill for the Conservatives' chaos," she said.
The population of England and Wales was estimated to be 60.2 million mid-2022, an increase of around 578,000 - or 1% - since 2021.
The ONS's Neil Park said: "Unlike the baby boom driving population growth in the 1960s, the increases in our latest estimates are predominately being driven by international migration."
He said the picture varied across regions, with growth higher in the north of England than the south, and lowest in London.
Prof Brian Bell told the BBC's World At One programme net migration "is very high in the UK relative to historical trends", adding: "But there's probably some indication it's beginning to fall. I wouldn't want to bet my house on it, but I think the indications are that we've reached the peak."
He said the Government should raise the salary thresholds related to the skilled worker route - which have not been increased for a number of years - as a way to reduce net migration.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67506641
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news_uk-67506641
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Scottish school strikes go ahead in pay dispute - BBC News
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2023-11-01
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Council staff in four areas across Scotland walk out in pursuit of a better pay offer.
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Scotland
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Strike action has closed schools in four council areas as staff walked out in a dispute over pay.
The one-day walk-out by some council workers in Glasgow, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire and Inverclyde follows a three-day strike in September.
Council body Cosla has argued that a bigger pay rise is unaffordable.
Non-teaching staff involved in the dispute include catering, cleaning, pupil support, administration and janitorial workers.
As a general rule, primary schools in the four areas will be closed but some secondary schools will be open to S4, S5 and S6 students. Full details are on council websites.
For a number of pupils, this could be the 12th day they have lost to strike action within a year.
Some lost as many as eight days in school because of the teachers' strike between November and March, before they then lost a further three days when Unison staged a three-day strike across most of Scotland in September.
There will also be disruption to council-run nurseries.
More action is planned for four other council areas next week - South Lanarkshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Edinburgh and Fife.
The pay offer from Cosla would see the lowest-paid workers get a rise of about £2,000 a year while other staff would get rises worth at least 5.5%.
Members of the two other main council unions - Unite and the GMB - voted to accept this offer but Unison have argued that a better deal is possible.
The strike began in four local authority areas on the morning after Halloween
Earlier this month, Unison Scotland's head of local government Johanna Baxter said: "The strength of feeling amongst Unison's 91,000 local government members, who voted overwhelmingly to reject Cosla's latest pay offer, is clear. They are determined to continue to fight to get an improved pay offer."
Cosla previously stated that the proposal was "as far as local government can go".
Council leaders from across Scotland are due to decide on Friday whether to implement this offer despite Unison's opposition.
One argument in favour of doing this is that staff will receive their pay rise - including money backdated to April - in time for Christmas.
But it also risks escalating the dispute with Unison which is expected to announce more strikes within the next few days.
Unison is also warning that it could ballot other council workers - such as refuse collectors - to see if they would also be prepared to go on strike.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67273011
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XR founder convicted after four-year legal saga - BBC News
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2023-11-01
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Gail Bradbrook could be jailed after lengthy battle over criminal damage and right to protest.
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UK
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Significant damage: Courts have ruled there are no human rights defences to such protests
The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion has been convicted of causing £27,500 of damage after a four-year legal saga over protest rights.
Gail Bradbrook was unanimously found guilty of criminal damage to the Department for Transport in 2019 after a three-day trial.
At one stage, the judge warned he could use anti-jury tampering powers amid rows over what she could tell jurors.
She said she was silenced by the court - and will be sentenced next month.
The Extinction Rebellion mass demonstrations movement staged two major protests in London in 2019 - leading to thousands of arrests and a policing bill running to ten of millions after parts of the city were brought to a halt.
During the second protest in October, Gail Bradbrook climbed onto an entrance canopy at the Department for Transport's headquarters.
She then used tools to break a large pane of reinforced security glass. The specialist glass cost £27,500 to replace because it had to meet specific security standards and had to be quickly replaced.
Bradbrook said she had specifically chosen to target the DfT because of the huge environmental damage that was being caused by the HS2 project.
During her police interview, she said she was trying to stop crimes against humanity and "had permission from nature" to break the window.
The pandemic delayed her trial - and it was then put off amid a political row over the acquittal of protesters who had toppled the controversial Bristol statute of slave trader Edward Colston.
Protest: Gail Bradbrook on top of the government building's entrance
Following that case, the Court of Appeal ruled that the right to protest under human rights law could not be used to avoid conviction for violent demonstrations that cause significant damage.
During the preparations for Gail Bradbrook's trial in July this year, the former scientist, who did not have a lawyer, said she intended to tell jurors that she could not be found guilty because of her right to freedom of expression and that she was also trying to prevent a greater crime of climate destruction.
She also argued that breaking the glass had been legally necessary and it was possible that government officials may have consented had they known why she was doing it.
Judge Martin Edmunds KC ruled none of these arguments were valid legal defences that a jury could consider - but Dr Bradbrook then repeatedly tried to turn to them in her evidence, arguing that she was otherwise being silenced.
The judge stopped the hearing and gave a rare warning that he may have to decide the case alone under seldom-used powers originally drawn up to prevent gangsters influencing juries.
"It is evident that Dr Bradbrook, by reference to her beliefs, considers either that the rules that apply to every other criminal defendant do not apply to her or that she is entitled to disregard them," said the judge in his July ruling.
"Dr Bradbrook gave every appearance of seeking to engineer a situation where I was obliged to curtail her evidence in front of the jury and/or to commence contempt proceedings.
"The Crown [Prosecution Service] have given notice that, if there was an attempt at what they consider to be jury tampering, they may well make application... to seek a discharge of the jury and to seek a trial continued by judge alone."
Gail Bradbrook's trial was rescheduled for October - and she was banned again from reading out a 75-page on her beliefs and justifications for breaking the glass.
This time, when she began to tell the jury her reasoning, Judge Edmunds chose not to halt the trial - but instead intervened 15 times to stop her from breaching his ruling on admissible evidence.
Supporters stood outside the court during the trial
"I admit I broke the window," she said. "I intended to break the window. None of this is in dispute. I maintain I am not a criminal.
"I believed that I had a defence in law. The powers that be don't like it when people like me are acquitted and have made it more difficult."
Judge Edmunds told her that the law had not been changed since she had been charged.
"You are clear about my rulings?" he asked. "This is a trial about criminal damage. It is not and can never be a platform for your general views which you are welcome to share elsewhere."
"I have a defence as a mother," she replied at one point.
"We operate on the basis of rules of relevance and inadmissibility," said the judge.
Bradbrook replied: "To quote Gandhi, 'I have disregarded the order in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience'."
During the three days of the trial, supporters sat outside the court holding placards telling jurors they had a right to acquit according to their conscience.
One demonstrator is currently facing a Contempt of Court hearing over a previous identical incident at another trial.
Gail Bradbrook will be sentenced on 18 December. The judge said that the starting point was 18 months in jail - but a suspended sentence was an option.
The XR founder has been separately convicted of breaking the window of a bank - a case that was been dealt with as a less serious matter.
Earlier this week, a separate trial of eight environmental protesters who were accused of damaging the Treasury by spraying it with fake blood ended in acquittals.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67288289
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news_uk-67288289
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Sam Bankman-Fried pressed in court over past comments - BBC News
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2023-11-01
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As inconsistencies were put to him, the former crypto boss tried to distance himself from some decisions.
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US & Canada
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Sam Bankman-Fried struggled to account for the management of his now-bankrupt crypto exchange, FTX, as his fraud trial neared its conclusion on Tuesday.
Prosecutors in New York finished questioning the 31-year-old, who made the risky decision to take the stand in his own defence.
The former billionaire is accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers and lying to investors and lenders.
He has denied the charges.
But he is facing the task of convincing a jury to discount weeks of evidence they heard from his former top deputies, including his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who have already pleaded guilty and were testifying against him to reduce their sentences.
Prosecutors have tied Mr Bankman-Fried to decisions that allowed the crypto trading firm he owned, Alameda Research, to take billions of dollars deposited at FTX. He is accused of spending the money to repay lenders, buy property, and make investments and political donations.
Prosecutors say he tried to hide the transfers between the two firms and their close relationship - and have buttressed their allegations with text messages, spreadsheets and tweets.
When FTX went bankrupt last November, Alameda owed the company $8bn (£6.58bn), money prosecutors say had been taken from customers.
The court heard earlier in the trial from Ms Ellison that Alameda ultimately took about $14bn (£11.4bn) from FTX clients, using it for investments and repaying lenders.
During his testimony, which started last Thursday, Mr Bankman-Fried expressed a mix of defiance, regret and frustration at comments and actions he felt were being taken out of context.
On Tuesday, he told the court that he thought it was "permissible" for Alameda to spend FTX customer funds but had not been aware until October 2022, just a few weeks before the bankruptcy, that the company had actually done so.
"I deeply regret not taking a deeper look into it," he said.
Prosecutor Danielle Sassoon pressed Mr Bankman-Fried to explain why he had not tried to understand what was happening between Alameda and FTX by June 2022, when it appeared at one point that the trading firm had gone bankrupt.
He said that he had "trusted" that his former friends and deputies had the situation under control.
"I was told they were busy and should stop asking questions," he said.
Mr Bankman-Fried has maintained that he was far more absent from decision-making than his friends had suggested, saying he could not recall, for example, going over spreadsheets that had been presented to him.
He has said Ms Ellison failed to "hedge" bets to better protect Alameda from a downturn in the market, as he had instructed her to do. But he acknowledged that he did not take action in response to the failure.
"I wasn't particularly interested in trying to dole out blame," he said, in explaining his decision not to fire anyone. "It generally wasn't something I tried to prioritize as a leader."
At times during Ms Sassoon's questions, Mr Bankman-Fried appeared visibly restless, blinking furiously and shifting back and forth, responding with curt "yeps".
Questioned by his own attorney, Mark Cohen, he was more expansive.
Under questioning from Mr Cohen, he said that he had stepped back from Alameda after handing off the chief executive role and was "essentially uninvolved" in core operations like day-to-day trading.
Mr Bankman-Fried finished testifying around mid-day and the jury was dismissed, while the judge conducted a hearing with lawyers from the two sides on what instructions he will give to the jury.
The entrepreneur has pleaded not guilty to seven federal charges including wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering and could face a life sentence in prison if convicted.
Mr Bankman-Fried's defence team has argued he was following "reasonable" business practices, as his companies grew rapidly.
After the collapse of his companies last year, he admitted in media interviews, including with the BBC, to managerial mistakes but said he never intended fraud.
Closing arguments are expected to start on Wednesday.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Sam Bankman-Fried denies claims he knew FTX customer money was used for risky financial bets
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67272395
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London Gaza rally: Rishi Sunak vows to hold Met chief 'accountable' over march - BBC News
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2023-11-09
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Thousands of protesters are due to march through London calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on Armistice Day.
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UK
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Rishi Sunak has said he will hold the Met Police chief "accountable" over a pro-Palestinian march set to take place this Saturday, on Armistice Day.
The prime minister has criticised the timing of the demonstration in London as "provocative and disrespectful".
Sir Mark Rowley rejected calls by campaigners to ban the protest, saying such a move would be a "last resort".
Organisers insist their march will not go near commemorations and accuse the government of manufacturing a row.
Protests have been held in London, and other cities globally, each Saturday since the Israel-Gaza war began.
Earlier, Mr Sunak met the Met Police commissioner to seek "reassurances" that remembrance services would be safeguarded, saying there was a risk of "those who seek to divide society using this weekend as a platform to do so".
In a statement, he said police had confirmed the demonstration would be far from the Cenotaph - the focal point of remembrance services - but that Sir Mark would keep the matter under constant review based on latest intelligence.
Mr Sunak spoke of the immense sacrifices made for our freedom and peace today.
"Part of that freedom is the right to peacefully protest," he said. "And the test of that freedom is whether our commitment to it can survive the discomfort and frustration of those who seek to use it, even if we disagree with them."
The organisers of the protest have resisted police pressure to postpone the demonstrations, and accuse the government of trying to undermine their cause.
Ben Jamal, of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign which is behind the march, said he believed the government was manufacturing a row and using the Armistice Day angle to try to "delegitimise" them.
"There's something particularly askew with an argument that says a protest calling for a ceasefire is somehow inappropriate on Armistice Day," he told the BBC.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman has accused the police of being more lax on left-wing protests than those organised by nationalists or right-wing activists.
Writing in the Times, she said there was "a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters".
Ms Braverman suggested there was a disparity in the policing of "lockdown objectors" and Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and said football fans were treated more harshly by the police than "politically-connected minority groups who are favoured by the left".
The home secretary has voiced her opposition to pro-Palestinian protests in the past, calling them "hate marches" in an interview with Sky News.
Protest organiser Chris Nineham, from the Stop the War Coalition, said: "We do everything we can as stewards to make sure there is nothing antisemitic or calling for violence in our demonstrations. For us, this isn't about religion, it isn't about race."
Dr Tom Thorpe, of the Western Front Association which organises the annual commemorations at the Cenotaph, said: "We don't want to stop other people enjoying their democratic rights - and we don't want them to interfere with our assembly and our ceremony that we've been doing for the last 30 years."
Earlier on Tuesday, Sir Mark said the protest organisers had shown "complete willingness to stay away from the Cenotaph and Whitehall and have no intention of disrupting the nation's remembrance events".
The demonstration on 11 November is due to begin at 12:45, more than an hour after the traditional two-minute silence.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has accused the prime minister of "picking a fight" with the police over the planned pro-Palestinian demonstration.
In a post on X, Sir Keir said: "Remembrance events must be respected. Full stop. But the person the PM needs to hold accountable is his Home Secretary."
Labour's London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on X that the government should be supporting the Met, not making officers' jobs more difficult.
Akshata Murty, the prime minister's wife, held a reception for Chelsea Pensioners at Downing Street ahead of Armistice Day
On Monday, the Met publicly urged organisers of the march to postpone the event, saying it would not be "appropriate".
Mr Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman also criticised the timing of the event, which tens of thousands of people are expected to attend, while Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, the former defence minister, appealed to organisers to "think again" and hold the rally on another day.
On Tuesday, Sir Mark resisted calls, including from pressure group Campaign Against Antisemitism, to request powers from the home secretary to ban the march.
The group claimed previous marches met the threshold test for public disorder that would justify the ban.
"As we approach remembrance weekend, where we remember the heroes who defended our freedoms and fought against antisemitic hatred, we must honour their memory by banning demonstrations that abuse those freedoms to call for violence against Jews," the group said.
Sir Mark said that while police can request such powers if a threat of serious disorder emerges, the "very high" threshold for doing so had not yet been reached.
He added that the use of the power was "incredibly rare" and there must be no other way for police to manage the event.
Sir Mark said he was concerned about the escalating risk of disorder caused by splinter groups breaking off from the main demonstration on Saturday, saying the threat posed by them would be monitored this week.
A former Metropolitan Police Commissioner is now urging for discussions around police operations for protests to be held privately, rather than aired publicly.
Independent crossbench peer Lord Hogan-Howe, who led the Met from 2011 to 2017, said: "We all know that there is a real challenge, both for politicians and the police, in deciding whether to ban a march. Never easy, very rarely done.
"These are difficult decisions where you are trying to balance the right to protest against the problem of serious disorder. I do worry that the pressures that are being placed on the police at the moment don't always form wise judgments in the end."
Earlier, Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer said he fully recognised "the tensions at play" but urged people to come to London for remembrance events.
"I know that elderly veterans will be coming to London and measures will all be in place to make sure that people can go about remembrance in the way they want to unmolested by any of the other events taking place this weekend," Mr Mercer said.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67355227
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London Gaza rally: Commemoration, protest, freedom of speech - and yes, politics - BBC News
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2023-11-09
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The beginnings of what might become an almighty row within the Conservative Party are brewing, Chris Mason writes.
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UK Politics
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Police officers guarded The Cenotaph during protests last month
And it's cranked up further, again, with yet another intervention from the home secretary, this time accusing the police of bias.
It is quite the claim. And it is there in black and white in Suella Braverman's article in The Times.
"Unfortunately, there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters," she writes.
So did Downing Street sign off these words?
A No 10 source wouldn't comment on "internal processes" when asked if they had seen the home secretary's article before it was published. Those around Mrs Braverman claimed Downing Street had seen the full text in advance.
I note those two positions don't tessellate as neatly as they could.
And the beginnings of what might become an almighty row within the Conservative Party are brewing.
One senior figure told me: "These latest comments are unhinged."
Another party source said her remarks on Northern Ireland were "wholly offensive and ignorant".
In her article, Mrs Braverman writes: "I do not believe that these marches are merely a cry for help for Gaza. They are an assertion of primacy by certain groups - particularly Islamists - of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland. Also disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster are the reports that some of Saturday's march group organisers have links to terrorist groups, including Hamas."
For the last four Saturdays, parts of central London have been full of pro-Palestinian marchers.
Another demonstration and march is planned this Saturday.
But this Saturday is Armistice Day, and so a question: should a march go ahead on a day of commemoration?
There is what politicians might say about this.
There is what demonstrators might say about this.
And there is what the law says about this.
Let's look first at the law - and in particular, the Public Order Act 1986, section 13.
It spells out that if the "Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis" or, to use more everyday language, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, concludes there is a risk of "serious public disorder" they can ask the home secretary to ban the march.
(Incidentally, there is no mechanism to ban a static protest, as opposed to a moving one, a march).
Crucially, in this case, the Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, says there isn't intelligence suggesting there will be serious public disorder, and so he believes he doesn't need to ask the home secretary to ban it.
The prime minister said he thought the demonstration was "disrespectful".
And yes, some found it despicable that a video appeared to show a man shouting "jihad" at a separate event from one of the main marches last month.
The Metropolitan Police say since the horrific attacks on Israel a month ago, it has made a total of 188 arrests involving "hate crimes and acts such as violence" linked to protests in the capital.
What is notable here is plenty of rows within and between public bodies happen every day - many out of public sight.
But the prime minister and home secretary are actively choosing to publicise this one - and continue to lean into it.
Rishi Sunak stressed it was the commissioner's decision and "my job is to hold him accountable for that".
This involved Sir Mark being called into Downing Street.
For his part, he had already said: "Matters of taste and decency, whilst I understand them, aren't for us. The reason we have an independent police service is my concern and our concern is two things. It is the law. And the facts as they are today."
And those facts, he claims, don't point to serious public disorder.
That could change, but it hasn't yet.
Ben Jamal of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, the march organisers, told me "there was something askew with an argument that says a protest calling for a ceasefire is somehow inappropriate on Armistice Day".
He concludes the government has manufactured this row.
The shadow home secretary, Labour's Yvette Cooper, claimed: "Suella Braverman is out of control… No other Home Secretary of any party would ever do this."
But perhaps the most memorable conversation I've had about all this was with the Western Front Association.
They are the organisers of the Armistice Day commemorations at the Cenotaph on Whitehall.
In other words, the organisers of the very event the prime minister and home secretary are seeking to defend.
And yet they were at pains to try to avoid being dragged into all this.
After the meeting between the commissioner and the prime minister, Rishi Sunak confirmed that the march was going ahead.
The route, as had been known for some time, isn't going very close to the Cenotaph.
And it isn't starting until midday, in Hyde Park, an hour after the two-minute silence in Westminster.
He added that "there remains the risk of those who seek to divide society using this weekend as a platform to do so", and - rather archly - described the Metropolitan Police's judgement as a "posture".
There are highly political roles in public life that don't involve being a capital P politician.
Being the Metropolitan Police commissioner is one of them.
Sources at Scotland Yard said they wouldn't respond to the home secretary's remarks and their focus was on planning for events this weekend.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67364797
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Laura Kuenssberg: Reshuffle deals drama but voters more worried about wallets - BBC News
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2023-11-19
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Rishi Sunak brought back an ex-PM and is defiant on Rwanda - but voters are focused on their wallets, says Laura Kuenssberg.
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UK Politics
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Crash, bang, wallop! An adrenaline hit of headlines. A massive bust-up. A big surprise. And a clash in the courts.
Westminster's gorged itself this week on some of its favourite pastimes: obsessing over who is slithering up or down in the game of political snakes and ladders; pondering the edges of our stretchy, unwritten constitution as the courts and government do battle; and, of course, frantically trying to predict what is next.
Fully paid-up political nerds, myself included, have been glued to the spectacle of the last seven days.
Bitter sackings, vitriolic public letters, the prime minister vowing to take on the courts, even talk of letters calling for his resignation going in. ("You'd just look like idiots," one senior MP tells me he told his more excitable colleagues.)
But for the ultimate boss, the voter, all the drama might have fallen on confused, or even deaf, ears.
The signals from government have been mixed, to put it diplomatically. In all the soap opera, has the prime minister been moving to the left or to the right?
Getting rid of Suella Braverman at the start of the week, gave the impression No 10 wanted to take a softer tack.
But when the Supreme Court ruled against the government's plan to send migrants to Rwanda, up popped Rishi Sunak with seemingly tough language, claiming he won't let "foreign courts", stand in his way.
In fact, the ruling was based on both international and UK law, so the notion the problem has been created just by meddling courts in a faraway land is misleading. Whatever your view of the plans, the court referred to British laws that say refugees must not be put at a real risk of harm.
And the PM promised "emergency" new laws - political speak for plans that need to sound bold and important.
Yes, that's the party that sees itself as the bastion of law and order, saying when it doesn't like the long-predicted verdict of our highest court, it will just change the rules instead, with the prime minister vowing to do "whatever it takes" to make it happen.
That's not entirely true, because No 10 does not seem willing to follow the much more drastic steps sketched out, entirely predictably, by the departing home secretary to get planes in the sky.
It's worth saying whatever Downing Street comes up with (and watch this space), the chances of keeping the right of the Tory party happy appear vanishingly small. Members of the public would be absolutely entitled this weekend to be scratching their heads and wondering if the controversial plan the prime minister has committed to time and again, the "stop the boats" slogan that screeches from government lecterns, is ever really going to happen.
Research carried out by the polling group, More in Common, helps explore the real world reaction. And a flavour of voters' views from focus groups about Mrs Braverman suggests there is real division - the most common words chosen to describe her include, "brave" and "outspoken", but "racist" features there too.
Then a former PM was brought back into the fold.
"Cameron??" to quote one of the messages that blew up on my phone when the news broke.
It was job done for No 10 if they wanted to create headlines out of their reshuffle that would distract from the Suella show.
There were MPs on his former wing of the much-changed Conservative Party who were delighted that someone with his experience is back in town. That was reflected by voters too, with comments in focus groups such as: "Old knowledge in a team is always good", while another said: "He's probably been brought back to give the party some sort of stability because at the moment it just seems to be a lot of just infighting."
The word voters chose more than any other to describe the now Lord Cameron was "experienced". Tick!
But words like "Brexit" and "past" and "idiot" feature pretty heavily too.
Here are the words voters used:
You wouldn't be alone if you felt a bit puzzled.
That's not just because you might have to squint to imagine how the leader of the failed Remain campaign can become the architect of UK foreign policy after Brexit. As one voter said: "I'm really angry about it if I'm honest. I think he really divided the country down to families being one side of the argument or the other."
But it also risks highlighting the government's dreadful polling position, as well as the experience gap between the current and former prime minister, as if the much younger Rishi Sunak has got in trouble, lost his bus fare and has had to phone his dad to come and pick him up.
One senior party figure asked: "Who is the prime minister here? Sunak is the prefect and Cameron's the headmaster."
That point is picked up by some voters, one remarking: "It kind of smacks of desperation a bit, because they've had to resort to that in order to get any kind of stability in the party."
There's another point of confusion. Rishi Sunak's last big swing was at the Conservative Party conference when he styled himself as the candidate of change, hammering the point by criticising what he called the 30-year consensus and the status quo.
This was no small move, but a considered big strategic decision to pitch the prime minister like this, when other tacks had failed.
Now, in blunt terms, how can you convincingly be the change guy, if you are bringing back the old guy?
Inevitably this changing tack has been noticed by the backbenches. One senior figure says: "We have all been trying to read the tea leaves, but not able to drink the tea" because "No 10 keeps changing its mind all the time."
Whether on small boats or David Cameron sauntering back into government, all the hullabaloo in Westminster this week hasn't been on the stresses and strains most relevant to most voters' lives.
Jeremy Hunt has a chance to show the Tories are listening to people's concerns with the Autumn Statement
Research shared with us this week from More in Common, consistent with polling for months and months, shows that making ends meet is by miles at the top of the list - 71% of those asked put it as their highest concern.
Worries about the NHS was the next priority, but some distance behind at 40%.
Only 17% named asylum seekers crossing the channel as their biggest worry, behind climate change at 23%.
It's foolish to read too much into any one snapshot, and one week of polling is, of course, just that. But as the prime minister wriggles uncomfortably over his chosen small boats priority, as the Tory party wrangles over the direction No 10 really wants to take, it is a reminder that neither of those issues are the public's most common concern.
One senior Tory MP admits: "Most people just want to be able to pay their bills and get a doctor's appointment."
On Wednesday, the Chancellor has a chance to help people do just that with the Autumn Statement.
The pressure is on Jeremy Hunt to act on those very real concerns. Number 10 was cock-a-hoop, at least for half an hour or so, when this week's inflation numbers showed price rises slowing down, mainly due to falling energy prices. But remember, slowing inflation doesn't remove high prices, it just means costs aren't going up so fast.
As that polling suggests, making ends meet is a challenge for millions of families.
From the splurge of early briefings it is not clear what Jeremy Hunt will actually propose to do to help. There's also the potential political contradiction of dangling a tax cut for a tiny number of families affected by inheritance tax, while taking much more from millions in income tax.
That is not because the Chancellor has actually put income tax up, but because more and more people are getting dragged into paying higher rates. (This has one of the least attractive names in Treasury jargon, fiscal drag, but is one of the most significant and little talked about changes to how the government makes its sums add up.)
It is also, at the risk of sounding prim, worth noting how unusual it is for the Treasury to be teasing quite so much around tax cuts just before a big statement like this.
One former Treasury minister told me it's "extraordinary" they have been so open. Is it - as they archly note - "just to chuck red meat to the Suella brigade" after a bumpy week?
The overall economic picture is not pretty. Growth has stalled. The government is spending an absolute fortune paying interest on its huge debts. Taxes and government spending are both at historic levels, a nightmare for Conservative purists who, after all, hope their party stands for leaner government and lower tax.
It is a challenge to those in the Conservative Party, and, of course, the opposition, who want more resources for public services. Overall the former Treasury minister notes brutally, "we are in a really bad spot - do I see a coherent strategy? No!"
The overwhelming concern for the chancellor and the prime minister to respond to is to help families and firms feel consistently better off. The drama that's consumed Westminster these last seven days isn't likely to make much difference to that.
Jeremy Hunt has a chance to change that on Wednesday. But it's just not clear that the neighbours in No 10 and 11 can make the sums, and the politics, add up.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67462636
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news_uk-politics-67462636
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Hamburg Airport hostage drama ends after 18 hours - BBC News
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2023-11-06
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A man who drove through a barrier and parked under a plane with his daughter in the car has been arrested.
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Europe
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The suspect was detained by special forces
A hostage situation at Hamburg Airport involving a young child has ended after 18 hours, according to local police.
The man, 35, drove through a security barrier and on to the airport tarmac on Saturday night with his four-year-old daughter in the car and parked under a plane.
He eventually gave himself up to the authorities "without resistance", according to police, and was arrested.
"The child appears to be unharmed," they wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
The incident caused the disruption of several flights in and out of the airport. Operations have since resumed but there are significant delays.
It began at about 20:00 local time (19:00 GMT) when the suspect drove his car to the airport's apron, the area where aircraft are usually parked.
Police said the man shot his weapon twice in the air and threw burning bottles from the vehicle. It was unclear if the man had explosives.
They later clarified that he stopped the vehicle where a commercial flight full of passengers was preparing to take off. Everyone on board was evacuated safely.
According to local media, he parked under a Turkish Airlines plane.
Hundreds of other people waiting for flights in the airport had to be put up in hotels.
Hamburg police spokeswoman Sandra Levgruen said earlier on Sunday that the man did not agree with some decisions made by the authorities in relation to the custody arrangement and wanted to travel to Turkey with the child.
"He speaks about his life being a heap of shards," she told German broadcaster ZDF.
Following the incident, the authorities said the man had been in an "exceptional psychological situation due to custody disputes with his ex-wife".
They said he had taken their daughter following an argument and her mother then alerted emergency services - filing a complaint of suspected child abduction.
It is not the first time the man, who is a Turkish citizen, has been accused of kidnapping the young girl. Last year he was investigated after he travelled to Turkey with her without permission. The mother later brought the child back to Germany.
"I wish the mother, the child and her family a lot of strength to cope with this terrible experience," Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher wrote on X after the hostage situation ended.
The airport said it was working to resume operations as quickly as possible. A total of 286 flights with about 34,500 passengers had been scheduled for Sunday, it said earlier.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67326185
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news_world-europe-67326185
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Korean true crime fan murdered stranger 'out of curiosity' - BBC News
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2023-11-24
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The 23-year-old woman in South Korea was obsessed with crime shows and hunted for victims on a tutoring app.
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Asia
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Jung Yoo-jung, 23, posed as a high-school student to enter the house of the tutor she killed
A South Korean court has given a life sentence to a true crime fan who told police she murdered a stranger "out of curiosity".
Jung Yoo-jung, 23, had been obsessed with crime shows and novels and scored highly on psychopath tests, police said.
Fixated with the idea of "trying out a murder", she used an app to meet an English-language teacher, stabbing her to death at her home in May.
Prosecutors had asked for the death penalty - a request typically reserved for the gravest of offences.
They told the court that Jung, an unemployed loner who lived with her grandfather, had looked for victims for months, using an online tutoring app to find a target.
She contacted more than 50 people and favoured women, asking them if they conducted their lessons at home.
In May, posing as the mother of a high school student who needed English lessons, she contacted the 26-year-old victim, who lived in the south-eastern city of Busan. Her identity has not been disclosed by police.
Jung then showed up at the tutor's house dressed in a school uniform she had bought online, prosecutors said.
After the teacher let her in, she attacked the woman, stabbing her more than 100 times - continuing the frenzied attack even after the victim had died.
She then dismembered the woman's body and took a taxi ride to dump some of the remains in remote parkland near a river, north of Busan.
She was arrested after the taxi driver tipped off police about a customer who had dumped a blood-soaked suitcase in the woods.
Police said Jung's online browsing history showed she had researched for months on how to kill, and how to get rid of a body.
But she was also careless, police said, and took no effort to avoid CCTV cameras, which captured her entering and leaving the tutor's home several times.
On Friday, a sentencing judge in the Busan District Court said the killing had "spread fear in society that one can become a victim for no reason" and "incited a general distrust" among the community.
Jung, who confessed to the crime in June, pleaded for a more lenient sentence, saying she had suffered hallucinations and other mental disorders at the time.
But the court rejected her argument as the crime had been "carefully planned and carried out, and it is difficult to accept her claim of mental and physical disorder".
They noted that her statements to police had frequently changed. Initially Jung said she had only moved the body after someone else killed the woman, then later claimed that the killing had occurred as a result of an argument.
In the end, she confessed that her interest in committing a murder had been piqued by crime shows and TV programmes.
While South Korea retains the death penalty, it has not carried out an execution since 1997.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67517532
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news_world-asia-67517532
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Suella Braverman row: Who's scared of Rishi Sunak? - BBC News
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2023-11-12
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Suella Braverman may yet be sacked but the PM's handling of her disobedience has dented his authority.
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UK Politics
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You won't find a politician saying it loud, but fear matters.
Running a government or a political party is not a business where the aim is to hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
The task to is win power. To hold on to it. To get things done. And then win again.
Common beliefs, loyalty, and a desire to serve can bind politicians together.
But fear is one of the currencies prime ministers can require to succeed.
As one senior Conservative told me: "People need to be scared of Number 10."
That force can stop ministers doing daft things, or make them do things they don't want to, or just keep them in line.
Ultimately, it is the fear of losing their precious jobs, their red box, their ministerial limo, their standing, their reputation, that matters in the fraught day to day of government.
Rishi Sunak is never going to cosplay some kind of political hard man.
But he faces a political danger right now that every moment longer he keeps his headline-happy home secretary on, that fear falls away.
The prime minister is known not just for wanting to find the facts, but wanting to study them before making decisions.
We saw that in long running embarrassments over the tax affairs of the former Conservative Party chair, Nadhim Zahawi, and bullying claims about the previous foreign secretary, Dominic Raab.
In political terms both of those situations dragged on for aeons before the two ministers were shown the door.
But on this occasion there seems little need for a long-winded process or internal investigations into what happened.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman and her team were told to tone down her language in an article for The Times. They refused to make all the changes.
Either Rishi Sunak reckons that defiance merits a P45 or not.
But as I write Downing Street is in the uncomfortable position of having disowned the article, distancing themselves from the home secretary, but then delayed making a further decision.
Now they are stuck with almost impossible choreography.
"I think it all depends on this weekend," says one senior MP.
Mrs Braverman's language related to the policing of protests and Remembrance events.
There is a logic therefore in Number 10 getting through the next 48 hours before making a public decision on if she should stay or go.
If she had been fired already, and there was trouble on the streets - and there have been clashes between police and counter-protesters - Mrs Braverman would have been able to say a giant "I told you so".
But if the weekend's events pass relatively smoothly, then some in government are convinced that on Monday she is out.
"I'd put your money on it," one cabinet source told me, suggesting confidently the plan to fire her then has already been hatched, "the position is pretty entrenched".
Yet, other sources in government suggest Rishi Sunak's natural caution will see him wait for another big event to pass, Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling on the government's plan to send migrants to Rwanda.
Suella Braverman was appointed to keep the Tory right happy
Suella Braverman has been the biggest champion of this proposal all along.
If the government wins, and can get on with it, that's a victory for her as well as the PM.
If she is sacked then - after a positive verdict - there is less of a row to have, the message could be: "Thank you for your marvellous work, now time for a fresh start."
But if the government loses, and then she is shown the door, she has more ammunition to make things awkward, more likely to try to push the Tory Party further on immigration, reinvigorating calls to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, which is a source of argument in Conservative ranks.
Several ministers reckon therefore Mr Sunak will wait until that's clear. "Next Wednesday is a big day that is finally arriving and I'd be astonished if the PM did anything ahead of that," said one.
But there is always a reason politicians can find to wait.
Does Number 10 really want to change its cast list a few days before the chancellor's big Autumn Statement the week after?
Does the PM really want to carry out a major reshuffle, perhaps the last before a general election campaign, right now?
If politicians want to delay, there is, always a reason to wait.
The pause while Number 10 has been working out what to do has displayed the other reason for hanging on to Mrs Braverman.
The dangling prospect of sacking the home secretary has prompted screams from the Conservative right, and newspaper headlines about the revenge which would surely follow.
Trying to keep the right happy was the reason Rishi Sunak hired Suella Braverman in the first place.
Remember, she had previously been ditched by Liz Truss when found to have broken ministers' rules.
It was obvious from the very start that she would be highly likely to grab headlines and be willing to cause political trouble.
When he was trying to get to Number 10 - after the Truss implosion - Mrs Braverman's support was a valuable totem for Team Sunak from the right wing of the party.
Since then, while the PM and the home secretary differ hugely in how they use language, there isn't that much variation between the two of them on ideas.
And as far as some of Suella Braverman's backers are concerned she has done exactly what she was hired to do.
That is, talk to the public with conviction about the government's desire to get on top of immigration, and, in the words of one of her allies, "convince people that we mean it".
But there is no question Number 10 is, in the words of one cabinet minister "deeply hacked off" at her recent behaviour.
It's not just the fuss over her newspaper article.
Multiple sources have said her remarks about tents for homeless people have caused huge political damage.
"It's become the Suella show," a minister says. "It's cumulative," another claims.
And many Sunak loyalists don't believe the threat Mrs Braverman would present if she is sacked in a giant huff is as significant as her allies, and some headlines, suggest.
"There is no army that will rise up behind her," suggests one cabinet minister.
Another member of the government says "her support in Parliament is very, very over stated," take away the red box and the car, and she will look like what she was, "an outlier from the start".
But even a small group of politicians determined to make a racket can do so.
If Mrs Braverman is sacked there will be a backlash of a sort, in parts of the party, and parts of the press.
There are warnings, however credible, that a small number of other members of the government might leave alongside her if she is fired or walks.
Yet, there seems a growing sense in government that there is less and less to be gained from trying to trying to keep every MP happy.
And while Mrs Braverman's backers say time and again that she represents many of the public, she alienates others.
One pollster suggests Mrs Braverman's style could "peel back some Reform UK's voters, but the combination of alienating more Cameronite Tories and a total sense of government chaos and disunity far outweighs" that appeal.
The political question for Rishi Sunak is not whether the perfect process was followed in agreeing a cabinet minister's newspaper article.
But whether he is willing to keep using up political energy to try to preserve the fraying edges of the Conservative Party.
Mr Sunak is grappling with an almost impossible choreography, some Conservatives reckon the party is an almost impossible coalition now too.
However the prime minister decides to manage his way out of this tangle it has already dented Downing Street's authority.
One minister told me: "If you don't think that actions have consequences and you can say what you like, do what you want, it's harmful for Number 10."
There are logical reasons why Mr Sunak has not yet made a decision with the protests this weekend, and the court ruling on Wednesday.
There are political reasons why it's not a slam dunk, because there is a risk, although perhaps not as great as often billed, of retribution from the right of the Conservative Party that would be hard to manage, and indeed, to predict.
But the bigger reality for Downing Street is perhaps that Suella Braverman acted as she did because she didn't fear any consequences.
If members of any government ignore what the Number 10 machine says, but they get away with it, even for a few days, the prime minister's authority erodes, discipline disappears.
"Nobody is frightened of Downing Street any more," one senior Tory told me.
An administration that can't put the frighteners on is an administration in trouble.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67390200
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news_uk-politics-67390200
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Peter Nygard: Fashion mogul guilty of sex assaults - BBC News
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2023-11-12
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The 82-year-old is still facing a trial in Montreal and extradition to the US.
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US & Canada
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Peter Nygard seen in a police vehicle in Toronto after the guilty verdict
A Canadian jury has found the former fashion mogul Peter Nygard guilty of sexual assault after a six-week trial.
Prosecutors told a Toronto court that Nygard, 82, used his "status" to assault five women in a series of incidents from the late 1980s to 2005.
Nygard denied the charges, and his defence team accused the victims of "gold-digging" for financial gain.
He was found not guilty on a fifth count of sexual assault and one count of forcible confinement.
Nygard appeared to show no emotion as the verdict was handed down on the jurors' fifth day of deliberations.
According to prosecutors, Nygard lured the women - aged 16 to 28 at the time - to a private luxury bedroom in his firm's Toronto headquarters.
One prosecutor described the room as having "a giant bed...and a bar and doors, doors with no handles and automatic locks controlled by Peter Nygard".
Prosecutors alleged that Nygard would assault the women once they were trapped in the room.
After Nygard's conviction, his son Kai Zen Bickle told reporters outside the Toronto court that the jury's ruling was "a victory" for all those "who came forward and were denied justice".
"One more child won't be affected, one more woman won't be affected, " Mr Bickle said. "(Nygard) has to actually sit down and think about all of these things."
Mr Bickle has become an outspoken supporter of his father's alleged victims and described the moment Nygard was found guilty on Sunday as "emotional".
"There are so many survivors out there, this is their day," he said.
Peter Nygard's son Kai Zen Bickle said: "It's not good brand association to be the son of a monster."
Nygard's lawyer Brian Greenspan said "we will consider the options" when asked by reporters whether Nygard would seek an appeal.
A sentencing hearing will be set on 21 November.
During closing arguments earlier this week, Crown prosecutors and Nygard's defence team painted dramatically different pictures of the man who once hobnobbed with celebrities and stood at the helm of a lucrative global apparel empire.
Mr Greenspan told jurors that the state's case rested on "revisionist history" built on "contradictions and innuendo", Canadian media reported.
He also claimed that four of the five women - who are also part of a US class action lawsuit - were motivated by financial gain.
Over five days of tense testimony and cross-examination earlier in the trial, Nygard said he could never have acted "in that kind of manner" and that he did not recall four of the five women, according to CBC.
Prosecutors relied heavily on the evidence of the women in court.
Crown Attorney Neville Golwalla addressed the media on Sunday after the verdict and thanked the women who had come forward.
"This is a crime that typically happens in private and profoundly impacts human dignity," Ms Golwalla said.
"To stand up and recount those indignities in a public forum such as a courtroom is never easy and takes great courage."
Nygard - who was once estimated to be worth at least $700m (£570m) - is still facing another trial in Montreal next year and assault and confinement charges in Winnipeg.
Once his criminal cases in Canada are completed, he is set to be extradited to the US, where authorities claim he engaged in a "decades-long pattern of criminal conduct" involving at least a dozen victims across the globe. He is currently fighting that extradition.
The guilty verdicts on Sunday cap a stunning fall from grace for Nygard.
In February 2020, he stepped down as chairman of his firm, Nygard International, shortly before it filed for bankruptcy after US authorities raided its New York headquarters.
He has been jailed since his arrest in December the same year.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67360004
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news_world-us-canada-67360004
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International mafia bust shows US-Italy crime links still strong - BBC News
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2023-11-12
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While decades of prosecutions weakened the US and Italian mafia, transatlantic relations remain strong.
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US & Canada
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Francesco Vicari in a photo released by prosecutors, who said it was sent to associates after the collection of extortion money
Their names could have been ripped from the kind of Hollywood mafia script that once dominated US cinema.
But when an indictment dropped on Wednesday, Joseph "Joe Brooklyn" Lanni, Angelo "Fifi" Gradilone, and Francesco "Uncle Ciccio" Vicar were instead the faces of the justice department's latest attack on the notorious Gambino crime family in New York.
Charging documents filed by prosecutors used wiretaps, secret recordings and surveillance footage to lay out evidence against the men, accusing them of conspiracy to use violence and extortion to commit fraud and retaliate against witnesses.
However, as the initial excitement waned, experts observed that the latest round-up - which snared 16 alleged mafia members - was unlikely to have a major effect on criminal operations.
Instead, the real twist revealed by the documents was the ongoing and close relationship between the New York based mafia, and its progenitor in Sicily - where six of the suspects were detained.
Italian officials said the arrests demonstrated "the solidity of the existing relationship" between American and Sicilian gangsters.
Among those arrested were a father in Palermo and his New Jersey-based son.
Two of those arrested in the US were described as American-based members of the Sicilian Mafia, while at least one of the men arrested in Italy is believed to spend time in the US.
A photo released by US prosecutors shows one suspect allegedly setting fire to a victim's home
Similar raids in 2019 and 2020 also targeted people who led a "dual life" between the US and Italy, said criminology professor Anna Sergi, who has written several books about modern organised crime.
She told the BBC that the Italian gangsters consider New York to be a "gym" where their members go to be toughened up.
The usefulness of the recruits though, appears to vary.
In one intercepted discussion, US-based Sicilian Francesco "Uncle Ciccio" Vicari vented his frustrations about his American companions to Francesco Rappa back in Sicily.
"I'm 60 years old. I told them, and now they want me to do deliveries?" he said, complaining that he was not being given more important jobs.
Mr Rappa then contacted his son, Vito, and urged him to intervene, Professor Sergi said, adding that the elder Rappa is very well known to authorities in both the US and Italy and was once arrested in the 1970s for heroin trafficking. His influence - and "charisma" - are strong enough in both the US and Italy that he is able to facilitate debt collection through extortion and ensure that his friends are being treated well, she told BBC News.
Despite the varying quality of their Italian recruits, American crime families have continued to rely on a stream of such soldiers, as prosecutors have convinced scores of their own members to "rat" or inform on their families in exchange for reduced or more lenient prison sentences over the decades.
The trend has seen crime bosses appreciate the input of Italians, who are seen as being more loyal to a code of silence known as Omerta, experts told the BBC.
Among the Five Families that have run New York's Italian-American Mafia since 1931, the Gambino and Genovese groups have had the most success recruiting in Italy over the past 15 years, Professor Sergi observed.
The Gambinos - who were the primary targets of this week's arrests - are particularly close with the powerful Calabrian group, the 'Ndrangheta.
"The connection is strong because neither side is strong," says Professor Sergi.
"The Sicilian side is under siege since the 1990's and uses New York as a 'gym' to grow new guys," she said. For the New York families - beset by "recruitment" issues - the men are welcome additions.
In such a climate, some observers questioned whether the latest arrests would be seen as a serious blow to the mafia.
But long-time New York mob lawyer Murray Richman told the BBC that the US indictment doesn't seem particularly serious - or "heavy" - compared to other notable prosecutions.
Previous indictments against the Gambino family included murder, narcotics distribution and loan sharking charges, significantly more serious than those facing Wednesday's arrests.
"How is it different from any other mafia indictment you've ever seen? All you have to do is change the names," Mr Richman said.
The indictments also outline an obsession with respect among some mafia members.
In one particularly violent episode from September, alleged Staten Island Gambino captain Joseph "Joe Brooklyn" Lanni and Vincent "Vinny Slick" Minsquero took revenge on a restaurant owner who had asked them to leave after they got into a heated argument with another patron.
Mr Lanni allegedly threatened to burn down Roxy's Bar and Grille, with the owner inside, after boasting of his connections with the Gambino family.
He was seen on security camera footage 18 minutes later at a nearby petrol station filling a red gas container before Mr Minsquero yanked it away from him.
Mafia members struggle over a can of petrol, moments after one threatened to burn down a restaurant in a row
That night Mr Lanni called the restaurant 39 times, once reaching the owner while he was with a police officer whose body-worn camera recorded the encounter. The owner and the his wife were violently assaulted at knifepoint later that night.
Many of the alleged crimes targeted demolition companies and the carting industry - also known as waste management or rubbish collection.
Some plots intended to embezzle funds and defraud unions and employee benefit plans, officials say.
The Italian documents include extensive transcripts of phone calls and text messages between the accused in which they discuss developments in the US.
In one exchange, the men discussed the murder of Gambino family boss Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali, who was gunned down outside his New York home in 2019.
The killing was the highest-profile New York mafia murder in decades and fuelled false speculation of an assassination by a rival family.
Giovan Battista Badalamenti called Cali's death a blow to all in his network, saying "his death cut off all our legs", according to the Italian indictment.
A lawyer for Cali's killer later argued that his client was driven by QAnon conspiracy beliefs. The gunman, a young man who lived with his parents in Staten Island, was found unfit to stand trial due to mental health issues.
When Mr Badalamenti observed that only a madman would have killed Cali, due to his position as boss of the Gambinos, Mr Francesco responded: "And thank god".
Italian prosecutors said the response was "a clear reference to the fact that a bloody mafia war would have certainly erupted had the killer been from another mafia clan".
A photo purports to show two mobsters on the day they were 'made' - formally inducted into the syndicate
While the arrests may not cause serious challenges to the mafia, the indictments do indicate that FBI attention has again returned to organised crime, says former US Justice Department prosecutor Joseph Moreno.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, FBI resources lurched towards counter terrorism. In 2016, Selwyn Raab, author of the book Five Families, told Rolling Stone magazine that some FBI organised crime task forces dropped from about 400 agents to 20 or 30.
But during the Obama administration, the FBI began to combine national security and organised crime operations in an attempt to combat what it calls "transnational organized crime".
"The idea is that when organised crime groups reach a certain degree of sophistication they can pose not just the threat of street crimes but instead a danger on a national level," Mr Moreno said.
Italian organised crime families may not be as powerful as they once were, he added, but other organised crime groups, from Russia and East Asia, have stepped in to fill the vacuum.
"No single arrest or prosecution is likely to take down an entire mafia family, but no doubt decades of investigations have eroded their power and influence in major cities such as New York and Chicago," he told the BBC.
All 10 US defendants have pleaded not guilty, indicating that they will fight the charges. But some may turn on their allies.
"In my experience, one in every three persons is an informant," observed Mr Richman, who has represented several Genovese and Lucchese crime family mobsters in New York.
Professor Sergi agreed that the charges are unlikely to have a major immediate impact.
"The short term is not that important, what's important is the comeback," she said, predicting that there will be an increase in illicit trips in both directions in the near future.
Overall, "the connections that emerge from both sides of the Atlantic show a very well-oiled network of men that appear to be out of the old movies".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67387249
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Suella Braverman: No flights before election under PM's Rwanda plan - BBC News
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2023-11-16
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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"Tinkering with a failed plan" will not achieve the government's aims, the former home secretary says.
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UK Politics
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The PM's current Rwanda plan will mean no asylum seekers are flown there before the next election, sacked home secretary Suella Braverman has said.
Writing in the Telegraph, she said "tinkering with a failed plan" would not achieve the government's aims.
She said ministers should ignore human rights laws and obligations in their "entirety" to push it through.
But ex-cabinet minister Damian Green called this the "most unconservative proposal I've ever heard".
A former First Secretary of State under Theresa May, Mr Green told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that overriding legal constraints was the behaviour of "dictators" like Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a ruling on the government's scheme to fly some asylum seekers to Rwanda, the Supreme Court said there were "substantial grounds" to believe that some of those deported to the country could be sent back to places where they would be unsafe.
After the judgement, Rishi Sunak announced he would bring in emergency legislation to certify that Rwanda was a "safe" country, despite the court's decision.
The prime minister also said he would sign a new treaty with Rwanda, so that the first flights could begin in the spring.
But Mrs Braverman said a new treaty was "magical thinking," repeating the language of her scathing letter to Mr Sunak after he sacked her.
The proposed treaty would not solve "the fundamental issue", that the UK's highest court had found Rwanda unsafe for deporting asylum seekers, she argued.
Mrs Braverman, who was sacked as home secretary on Monday, said that unless the prime minister went further than his current proposals, she could not see how the government could deliver on its pledge before running out of Parliamentary time.
A general election is expected to be held next year and one must take place by January 2025.
"Any new treaty would still require going back through the courts, a process that would likely take at least another year," she said.
She added that the process "could culminate in yet another defeat".
"That is why the plan outlined by the PM will not yield flights to Rwanda before an election if Plan B is simply a tweaked version of the failed Plan A," she said.
Mrs Braverman said the PM's proposed legislation should ignore "the entirety" of the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), as well as other relevant international obligations including the Refugee Convention.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Rishi Sunak tells the BBC's Chris Mason that flights to Rwanda will happen by spring
Mrs Braverman's arguments have been supported by some of her colleagues.
Former cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke said parliament was "entitled in extremis to say certain sections of the law are disapplied".
He argued it was wrong that "our human rights framework" was blocking the government's ability to police the UK's borders.
The Rwanda policy is central to Mr Sunak's plan to stop asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats - one of his key pledges - as it is designed to deter people from making the dangerous journey.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper told BBC Breakfast that the government was "committed" to getting the Rwanda policy working by the spring.
Any new legislation is expected to face strong opposition in the House of Lords, which contains several former Supreme Court judges. It would also be likely to face legal challenges in the courts.
Sir David Normington, former Home Office permanent secretary, told Today that Mrs Braverman was "right in one way" - that getting a working Rwanda policy "would be very difficult".
"We could pull out of all conventions, but that would be a very bad idea," he said, adding that it would always come down to a British court deciding whether Rwanda was safe.
"The courts say it is not a safe country. You can't say black is white."
Asked if international law was "outdated", Sir David said that "at the core" international agreements were written to protect the vulnerable.
"What is true is that the rights of people to not be tortured never goes out of date."
It's not immediately clear how Mrs Braverman's plan would legally work quickly.
The UK and other countries that are signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights can put to one side only some of its protections in times of war or some other emergency. The key protection at the heart of the Rwanda case - that nobody should be subjected to torture or to inhuman treatment - is not one of the rights that can be swept away in what's known as "derogation".
The UK has only derogated from the ECHR eight times in 70 years. Seven of those situations were related to detaining paramilitaries during the conflict in Northern Ireland. The most recent in 2001 concerned holding al-Qaeda suspects without charge - a move that the courts later said was illegal.
During Boris Johnson's time as prime minister, the government proposed limiting and replacing some human rights protections in a highly-criticised replacement bill which Rishi Sunak then scrapped.
Leaving the ECHR entirely would separately breach the 25-year-old Good Friday Agreement at the heart of Northern Ireland's power-sharing peace deal - and enrage the UK's partners on the other side of the English Channel - potentially making co-operation on stopping boats harder.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67446101
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Canadian killed family to make Muslims fearful, jury hears - BBC News
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2023-11-16
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Prosecutors say Nathaniel Veltman wanted to send "a brutal message" to the world.
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US & Canada
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From left to right: Yumna Afzaal, Madiha Salman, Salman's mother Talat Afzaal, and Salman Afzaal were "the best" of their community, friends said
A Canadian man accused of killing a Muslim family in London, Ontario, wanted to make "all Muslims fearful for their safety", a jury has heard.
Prosecutors said in their closing argument that Nathaniel Veltman had planned to send "a brutal message".
Mr Veltman, 22, faces four first-degree murder charges and one count of attempted murder.
He also faces terrorism counts, with prosecutors arguing he targeted the family because of their faith.
The jury is now deliberating. The accused faces life in prison if found guilty.
Both the defence and prosecutors agree that Mr Veltman was behind the wheel on 6 June 2021, when a vehicle ran over three generations of the Afzaal family as they took an evening walk.
Mr Veltman has pleaded not guilty to the charges, arguing that he suffers from mental illness.
Salman Afzaal, 46, and his wife, Madiha Salman, 44, their daughter, Yumna Afzaal, 15, and Mr Afzaal's mother, Talat Afzaal, 74, died in the attack.
A nine-year-old boy was seriously hurt, but survived.
The case marks the first time a jury in Canada has heard legal arguments on terrorism related to white supremacy.
The panel will not only have to decide whether Mr Veltman is guilty of murder, but if his actions can be described as terrorism.
Prosecutors are looking to prove the murders were intentional and committed for a political, religious or ideological purpose to intimidate the public or a specific group.
In the second and final day of closing arguments on Wednesday, prosecutors sought to establish that Mr Veltman was motivated by white nationalist ideologies to attack the Afzaal family.
Crown lawyer Fraser Ball told the jury the accused became "highly radicalised" in the lead-up to the attack, and had been viewing "highly racist" content on the dark web.
Mr Ball added that Mr Veltman left a document behind, outlining his hatred for Muslims.
It was found by police on his computer shortly after his arrest, the court heard.
In his arguments, Mr Ball said the accused had looked into buying body armour as early as April 2021, and that right before leaving his apartment on the day of the attack he had re-read materials written by a mass shooter.
Mr Ball argued that Mr Veltman had "bigger goals" that day than committing murder.
"The Afzaals were just the medium. The brutal message was for a much bigger audience," he said.
On Tuesday, the 13-person jury heard closing arguments from Mr Veltman's lawyers, who said that the accused was in a "dreamlike state" on the day of the attack from consuming a large quantity of magic mushrooms.
They also argued that Mr Veltman suffered from mental conditions including depression, anxiety and a personality disorder, all exacerbated by his drug use.
Christopher Hicks, the lawyer for Mr Veltman, described his client's mental state at the time as "a runaway freight train headed for explosion".
He argued that his client was guilty of manslaughter, rather than first-degree murder.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67409539
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news_world-us-canada-67409539
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Chris Mason: Jeremy Hunt looks likely to cut taxes - the question is where? - BBC News
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2023-11-20
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The focus of the Autumn Statement is expected to be on business taxes and growing the economy.
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UK Politics
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A big focus of the Autumn Statement on Wednesday will be economic growth.
The reason for that is simple: there isn't any, or at least there isn't very much.
The Autumn Statement is Westminster's term for what amounts to a mini-budget.
The Budget itself will be in March, closer to the general election.
So ministers have to decide what to do now and what to do then.
You might have caught the rather absurd spectacle of Chancellor Jeremy Hunt volunteering for lengthy interrogations over the weekend, during which it felt like he started every other answer with "you'll have to wait until Wednesday" or words to that effect.
He managed to say everything and nothing when it came to specifics. And the range of the briefing to reporters has been pretty broad too.
From the conversations I have had, plus what we are hearing and crucially not hearing, both in public and in private, here's a sense of where we seem to be.
There are enough kites flying about tax that I think we can be reasonably confident there will be some tax cuts.
The Treasury has let most of the speculation run. In other words, it hasn't gone out of its way to dampen down some of it.
But I expect the focus to be on business taxes - as cutting them is seen to be key to helping to get the economy growing.
A cut in National Insurance for the self-employed is seen by many as likely. Could there be a wider cut to National Insurance?
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Jeremy Hunt says he will not take any risks on tax cuts
There has been a blizzard of headlines about inheritance tax.
And yes, the Treasury has considered a cut.
As discussed on the BBC's Newscast, cuts to inheritance tax can prove popular even among those who are not likely to have to pay it.
But, it appears the government might be having second thoughts about it, given the backlash against the idea from some who say it would benefit the most well off.
Within the Treasury, one of the merits of an inheritance tax cut is they believe it wouldn't be inflationary.
They are obsessed with ensuring that whatever they do doesn't contribute to higher inflation.
In fact we can expect a splash of pride from the prime minister and the chancellor this week that inflation has halved this year.
How they would have loved to talk about this last week.
But they were drowned out by the Supreme Court rejecting their Rwanda migrants plan.
Much of the fall in inflation is driven by factors beyond the government's control.
But it was, arguably, the prime minister's most important promise at the beginning of the year. And it has happened. They can at least point to things they didn't do which would have made inflation worse.
The balance Rishi Sunak and Mr Hunt have to pull off this week is to project a sense of economic optimism and cut some taxes, but not fuel inflation. Not easy.
The last thing they need is the Bank of England cancelling anything they do by jacking up interest rates as a result.
A couple of other things to watch out for: do benefits go up next April in line with September's (higher) inflation figure, as is convention, or October's (lower) one? The difference - as set out here by the Institute for Fiscal Studies - is big.
And does the triple lock - which guarantees the state pension goes up by 2.5%, inflation or wages, whichever is highest - take account of one-offs in wage packets or not? If it does, it'll be more generous, if it doesn't, it won't. Let's see.
The crux of what we will get is a government in trouble arguing that it and we have turned a corner; things are looking up.
They will try to argue that incentivising businesses to grow and rewarding work through tax cuts are Conservative instincts at odds with what Labour would do.
Labour will point out that the tax burden is higher than it's been in decades and that millions feel poorer than they did five or ten years ago - and make the argument that anything we hear from Mr Hunt won't change that.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67472113
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Tsingtao beer worker urinated into tank after argument - BBC News
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2023-11-02
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The worker has been detained after a video of the incident went viral last month.
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China
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A screengrab of the viral video shows the worker appearing to urinate in a container
A Chinese worker urinated into a Tsingtao beer tank after having an argument with a colleague, it has emerged.
The worker was filmed urinating into a tank used to store ingredients to make one of China's most popular beers last month.
The video then went viral on social media, gaining tens of millions of views.
The worker has since been detained, an official report said.
Officials from the city of Pingdu - where the factory is located - found that the worker in question was helping to unload malt containers from a truck at the time of the incident.
In a statement on the city's official Weibo page, they said the worker, surnamed Cui, got into an argument with a truck driver about moving the vehicle.
Mr Cui then climbed into the container, which had just been emptied, and urinated into it.
Mr Cui's actions were caught on camera by the driver, who then published the video on Douyin, China's version of TikTok.
In a statement published on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo, Tsingtao said the worker had been placed in administrative detention for property damage.
In China, administrative detention is a penalty that can be imposed by the police, acting with no judicial oversight, and usually involves being detained for between five to 15 days and sometimes comes with a warning and a fine.
Tsingtao added that the worker was not a direct employee of the brewery and worked for a company that provides outsourcing services to Tsingtao.
The brewer went on to say that they have adopted a number of measures to strengthen quality control and step up monitoring of employee behaviour to prevent such incidents in the future.
They also vowed to plug in what they called "loopholes in the management of raw material transportation," and said that the batches of malt involved in the incident have been sealed and will not enter production.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-67296857
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news_world-asia-china-67296857
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XR founder convicted after four-year legal saga - BBC News
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2023-11-02
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Gail Bradbrook could be jailed after lengthy battle over criminal damage and right to protest.
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UK
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Significant damage: Courts have ruled there are no human rights defences to such protests
The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion has been convicted of causing £27,500 of damage after a four-year legal saga over protest rights.
Gail Bradbrook was unanimously found guilty of criminal damage to the Department for Transport in 2019 after a three-day trial.
At one stage, the judge warned he could use anti-jury tampering powers amid rows over what she could tell jurors.
She said she was silenced by the court - and will be sentenced next month.
The Extinction Rebellion mass demonstrations movement staged two major protests in London in 2019 - leading to thousands of arrests and a policing bill running to ten of millions after parts of the city were brought to a halt.
During the second protest in October, Gail Bradbrook climbed onto an entrance canopy at the Department for Transport's headquarters.
She then used tools to break a large pane of reinforced security glass. The specialist glass cost £27,500 to replace because it had to meet specific security standards and had to be quickly replaced.
Bradbrook said she had specifically chosen to target the DfT because of the huge environmental damage that was being caused by the HS2 project.
During her police interview, she said she was trying to stop crimes against humanity and "had permission from nature" to break the window.
The pandemic delayed her trial - and it was then put off amid a political row over the acquittal of protesters who had toppled the controversial Bristol statute of slave trader Edward Colston.
Protest: Gail Bradbrook on top of the government building's entrance
Following that case, the Court of Appeal ruled that the right to protest under human rights law could not be used to avoid conviction for violent demonstrations that cause significant damage.
During the preparations for Gail Bradbrook's trial in July this year, the former scientist, who did not have a lawyer, said she intended to tell jurors that she could not be found guilty because of her right to freedom of expression and that she was also trying to prevent a greater crime of climate destruction.
She also argued that breaking the glass had been legally necessary and it was possible that government officials may have consented had they known why she was doing it.
Judge Martin Edmunds KC ruled none of these arguments were valid legal defences that a jury could consider - but Dr Bradbrook then repeatedly tried to turn to them in her evidence, arguing that she was otherwise being silenced.
The judge stopped the hearing and gave a rare warning that he may have to decide the case alone under seldom-used powers originally drawn up to prevent gangsters influencing juries.
"It is evident that Dr Bradbrook, by reference to her beliefs, considers either that the rules that apply to every other criminal defendant do not apply to her or that she is entitled to disregard them," said the judge in his July ruling.
"Dr Bradbrook gave every appearance of seeking to engineer a situation where I was obliged to curtail her evidence in front of the jury and/or to commence contempt proceedings.
"The Crown [Prosecution Service] have given notice that, if there was an attempt at what they consider to be jury tampering, they may well make application... to seek a discharge of the jury and to seek a trial continued by judge alone."
Gail Bradbrook's trial was rescheduled for October - and she was banned again from reading out a 75-page on her beliefs and justifications for breaking the glass.
This time, when she began to tell the jury her reasoning, Judge Edmunds chose not to halt the trial - but instead intervened 15 times to stop her from breaching his ruling on admissible evidence.
Supporters stood outside the court during the trial
"I admit I broke the window," she said. "I intended to break the window. None of this is in dispute. I maintain I am not a criminal.
"I believed that I had a defence in law. The powers that be don't like it when people like me are acquitted and have made it more difficult."
Judge Edmunds told her that the law had not been changed since she had been charged.
"You are clear about my rulings?" he asked. "This is a trial about criminal damage. It is not and can never be a platform for your general views which you are welcome to share elsewhere."
"I have a defence as a mother," she replied at one point.
"We operate on the basis of rules of relevance and inadmissibility," said the judge.
Bradbrook replied: "To quote Gandhi, 'I have disregarded the order in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience'."
During the three days of the trial, supporters sat outside the court holding placards telling jurors they had a right to acquit according to their conscience.
One demonstrator is currently facing a Contempt of Court hearing over a previous identical incident at another trial.
Gail Bradbrook will be sentenced on 18 December. The judge said that the starting point was 18 months in jail - but a suspended sentence was an option.
The XR founder has been separately convicted of breaking the window of a bank - a case that was been dealt with as a less serious matter.
Earlier this week, a separate trial of eight environmental protesters who were accused of damaging the Treasury by spraying it with fake blood ended in acquittals.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67288289
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FTX: Prosecutors accuse Crypto King Sam Bankman-Fried of 'deceit' - BBC News
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2023-11-02
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Sam Bankman-Fried is facing charges of fraud and money laundering, which he denies.
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Business
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Prosecutors have accused former crypto boss Sam Bankman-Fried of deceit as his US fraud trial draws to a close, claiming he repeatedly lied to customers, the public and the jury.
Mr Bankman-Fried is facing charges of fraud and money laundering.
Prosecutors say he precipitated the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, by stealing billions of dollars from customers.
He denies the charges and has claimed he was acting in "good faith".
Mr Bankman-Fried's defence lawyer said that prosecutors had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the entrepreneur had acted with criminal intent.
But prosecutor Nick Roos said that arguments that Mr Bankman-Fried was not aware of what was going on at his company were not "remotely credible".
"This was a pyramid of deceit built by the defendant on a foundation of lies and false promises," he told the jury that will decide his fate.
"He took the money, he knew it was wrong and he did it anyway because he thought he was smarter and better… He thought he could talk his way out of it," he added. "That ends with you."
Prosecutors for the US government have argued that Mr Bankman-Fried directed special systems to be set up, such as a massive line of credit, that allowed his crypto hedge fund Alameda Research to take billions in FTX customer deposits.
They say he then spent the money to repay Alameda lenders, buy property, make investments and political donations.
When FTX collapsed last year, $8bn (£6.6bn) in customer funds was missing, owed by Alameda.
"There is just one person who had the motive" for such activity, Mr Roos said.
"This is not about complicated issues of crypto urgency, it's not about hedging, it's not about technical jargon," Mr Roos said. "It's about deception, it's about stealing, it's about greed."
He challenged Mr Bankman-Fried's testimony, saying he had become a "different person" depending on whether he faced friendly questions from his own lawyers or cross-examination by the government.
Lawyers for the two sides summed up their cases for the jury on Wednesday, staying late to finish. Deliberations are expected to begin on Thursday.
The entrepreneur denies the charges and has claimed he was acting in "good faith".
He spent much of his lawyer's closing argument facing the jury, his hands resting below the desk, unlike the morning, when he could be seen passing notes to his team and typing on the internet-disabled laptop he received a special exception to have in the courtroom.
His lawyer, Mark Cohen, said the special features of Alameda's account that prosecutors focused on had been set up for "valid business reasons, not to carry out some grand fraudulent scheme".
"In the real world, things get messy," he said. "Bad business judgments are not a crime."
He also said that prosecutors had sought to portray Mr Bankman-Fried as a "villain" and "monster".
The 31-year-old is a former billionaire and was arrested last year after the collapse of his firm, FTX.
The downfall left many customers unable to recover their funds.
Before the collapse of his companies, Mr Bankman-Fried was known for socialising with celebrities and appearing frequently in Washington DC and in the media with a head of wild curls to discuss the sector.
Mr Cohen said the government had introduced elements like Mr Bankman-Fried's messy hair and cargo shorts that were irrelevant to criminality.
He added: "Every movie needs a villain... And let's face it, an awkward high school math nerd doesn't look particularly villainous.
"So what did they do? They wrote him into the movie as a villain."
The rapid growth of his firm and his deal-making last year, when a market downturn hit other firms, earned him the moniker the "Crypto King".
During the trial that began early in October, the entrepreneur admitted he had made "mistakes" in managing his business empire, but said that he never committed fraud.
He depicted himself as overwhelmed by work and claimed he only became aware of the issues facing Alameda when it was too late.
He said the problems at the company arose because his instructions were ignored by employees, including his former girlfriend.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67289430
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news_business-67289430
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Donald Trump Jr's courtroom debut: Chuckles, smiles and mispronunciation - BBC News
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2023-11-02
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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He testified that he knew nothing about the alleged financial fraud that now threatens the family's property empire.
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US & Canada
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
"I should have worn make-up," Donald Trump Jr quipped on Wednesday as a group of photographers rushed into court to take his picture.
As an executive at the Trump Organization, he was testifying in a multimillion-dollar civil trial that could see his family lose a sizable part of its business empire.
His comment set the tone for what was an hour-long charm offensive that saw Mr Trump Jr lightheartedly engaging with the judge while letting his lawyers do the brawling for him.
In under two hours of testimony in New York, he said he did not work on the financial statements at the centre of the case.
The eldest son of the former president appeared confident and relaxed on the witness stand. He smiled during proceedings, even making the occasional joke and drawing laughter from the courtroom.
The stakes, however, were high and the claims against him serious.
The judge has already found the Trump Organization falsified business records. This hearing will resolve other claims and potential penalties, which, in a worst-case scenario for the family, could see Mr Trump Jr, along with his father and brother Eric, essentially lose the ability to do business in New York
But Mr Trump Jr did not appear perturbed. Wearing a dark blue suit and flamingo-pink tie, the current Florida resident quipped to the judge that he had "kept the New York pace" after being asked to speak more slowly.
At another point, Judge Arthur Engoron noted humorously that Mr Trump Jr could settle a minor pronunciation argument: whether to pronounce "revocable" as "re-VOCK-able" or "re-VOKE-able".
Mr Trump Jr laughed and said he did not know.
When Colleen Faherty of the attorney general's office then phrased her question with one pronunciation, Mr Trump Jr joked that he only understood the other.
On another occasion, Ms Faherty pressed the 45-year-old on his understanding of the guidelines businesses use to ensure financial records are accurately maintained. He drew chuckles as he smiled and responded: "I have no understanding" - part of his broader argument that he was not involved in the minutiae of the company's accounting as prosecutors have claimed.
The attorney general's office argues he and his brother Eric were "intimately involved" in the Trump Organization, and said in court filings that they were "aware of the true financial performance of the company".
Mr Trump Jr's jovial persona on Wednesday was notably different to the hyper-masculine right-wing influencer he usually portrays.
In an appearance on the conservative Newsmax network earlier this week, he called the trial a "sham" and and labelled the chamber a "kangaroo court".
But he refrained from airing such bombastic criticism in court. While Judge Engoron appeared in decent spirits, he had earlier fined Mr Trump Jr's father $15,000 (£12,300) for levelling political attacks against court staff.
Most of Ms Faherty's questioning focused on establishing Mr Trump Jr's work at the Trump Organization and his involvement in the preparation of various financial documents that had come under the attorney general's scrutiny.
Anticipation for this phase of the trial had been building since it began on 2 October. Mr Trump Jr is the first of his siblings to give testimony, with Ivanka and Eric Trump scheduled to do so in the coming days. Donald Trump himself may take the stand next week.
And while Mr Trump Jr faced a relatively drama-free day on Wednesday, the tone could change as the attorney general's team resume their questioning on Thursday morning.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67293355
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Laura Kuenssberg: Health Secretary Victoria Atkins could decide Tory party's fate - BBC News
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2023-12-03
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Victoria Atkins' performance, when pressure mounts on the NHS, is vital for her party's prospects.
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UK Politics
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If you're feeling charitable, you might say things are not going well for the government.
But if you're feeling grumpy - perhaps because every morning you're leaving the warmth of your duvet to shiver in the freezing morning cold - then you might suggest No 10 is bouncing from bungle to bungle.
The bizarre diplomatic row with the Greeks over relatively niche artefacts (which has even piqued the King's interest). The home secretary's hot-mic swearing. Judges kicking out the centrepiece of Sunak's plan to "stop the boats" (more on that later). And as if that wasn't enough, Boris Johnson is getting his arguments in early before his appearance at the Covid inquiry - Rishi Sunak will soon take the stand too.
As the temperature plummets, there is a different risk that might trump all of them: what will happen to the NHS this winter?
Last year, pictures of ambulances queuing for hours outside hospitals became familiar - agonising stories of delays and long, dangerous waits dominated the news.
The Health Secretary, Victoria Atkins, is with us in the studio tomorrow and how she fares in the coming months is absolutely vital for her party's prospects. One of her MP colleagues told me: "I'm not sure she realised it when she took the job, but for a lot of us, whether we win is dependent on her."
Take a look at the broad state of the service and it's not pretty. Nearly 7.8 million people are on the NHS waiting list - a record high. This is partly explained by the pandemic, as government ministers always remind you with some justification.
But check the figures more thoroughly and you can see that many of the numbers - from cancer treatment times to waits for diagnostic tests - were trending the wrong way before Covid-19 hit.
Now, thousands of patients are in hospital not because they are too sick to leave, but because they don't have the help they need to get home. In October 2023, there were between 12,000 and 13,000 patients stuck like this, with the obvious knock-on effects for others needing care. That is roughly the same level as it was at last year, despite promises of action.
There are more than a 100,000 staff vacancies, shortages of NHS dentists and difficulties in getting mental health care. A series of bitter industrial disputes hasn't helped.
Victoria Atkins was appointed Health Secretary in last month's Cabinet reshuffle
It is not, of course, all bad. Every day millions of people receive brilliant life-saving care. The government trumpeted meeting its manifesto promise to hire 50,000 extra nurses this week, and there are amazing advances in some forms of treatment.
But there is acute concern about what is going on in wards, clinics and practices all around the country.
A nurse told me after finishing another long shift this week: "The government are making out they're doing a great job, patting themselves on the back, but nothing could be further than the truth. Patients and their families fill up bays and corridors and every shift is short staffed."
One of our viewers told us they had to wait nine hours to be seen in their local A&E in the North West last week, followed by an even longer wait for a bed on a ward.
Those fears go beyond anecdote and are widely felt, with the NHS often second only to the cost of living among voters' key concerns. One pollster tells me that in every focus group "there is an NHS horror story", alongside frustrations about not being able to see a GP or emergency wards being like "war zones".
The Prime Minister is well aware how important the service is to voters. Labour is well aware how vulnerable the Conservatives might be. In previous elections the party has had to struggle to get it onto the agenda, with their familiar cry of Labour having to "save the NHS". They won't struggle this time.
For whoever has the job after the election, a fundamental, long-term puzzle remains. The NHS has more money and more doctors than ever before. But according to the number crunchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank, it's treating about the same number of patients. In other words, the taxpayer seems to be getting less bang for its many billions of bucks.
NHS England says it's more complicated than that. The figures focus on acute hospital care and only look at the numbers of people treated, it says, not the quality of care. But it does admit there are productivity challenges.
The "productivity problem", as the IFS calls it, is a big deal. The less productive the NHS is, the more the government - and therefore taxpayers - have to spend for the same level of healthcare.
Our population is older and sicker, the health service more and more expensive, taking precedence over other parts of public spending. And just to remind you - as I seem to do every week - none of the big parties have yet come up with a fully worked-out plan for caring for the most elderly and vulnerable. Without that plan, the problems in the health service are much harder to solve.
Most politicians would privately say it's hard to have candid conversations about radical long-term solutions because the public has such affection for the NHS, even when their own experiences might fall far short. But in the next couple of months, with winter coming, and pressure building, longer term discussions are likely to have to wait.
Is Rwanda problem about to return?
P.S. As we talked about last week, the government has a nightmare job on handling migration. Do not underestimate how fractious this is becoming as an issue on the Conservative backbenches. Cabinet ministers deny there is a vicious stand-off over how far the government should be willing to go in new promised laws, in light of a court decision to kick out their plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
One source says there is a perfectly good reason for the delay to what was dramatically described as "emergency legislation" - it can't be sorted out until the revised treaty with Rwanda is concluded.
If that's true, no one seems to have told the backbenchers - and in the vacuum there is furious chatter. Several sources have even suggested to me in the last couple of days there could be real fireworks, potential ministerial resignations, and Rishi Sunak's leadership even questioned. One senior Conservative joked that there is someone who knows how to do the job back in Cabinet and could be a caretaker (yes, they mean the new Lord Cameron).
I stress, all this seems pretty far-fetched, but the fact that even those speculative conversations are happening is a symbol of the deep unease.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67600789
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COP28: Climate mums make themselves heard in halls of power - BBC News
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2023-12-13
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Three mothers from different continents say their love for their children has motivated them to take climate action.
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Science & Environment
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Aydah Akao, 43, travelled to COP28 while pregnant with her fifth child
With the COP28 climate talks drawing to a close, three mothers from different continents tell the BBC how their love for their children has motivated them to take their arguments to the people in power.
For the past week, in the sweltering heat of Dubai, Aydah Akao has been on a singular mission.
For her personally, there are five reasons the world needs to act far more urgently on climate change: her children. Four are at home in the Solomon Islands, and she is pregnant with the fifth.
"My children are so afraid," Mrs Akao tells the BBC. Rising sea levels are more than just lines on a chart for her family. It means their home, and heritage, are at risk of disappearing beneath the waves.
COP28 is her first UN climate summit, but as she marches around the vast Expo 2020 venue, she's not alone.
Mothers from across the world have joined forces at the summit in Dubai to ensure their voices are heard by the heads of state and policy-makers making the key decisions at this conference.
Mrs Akao said her community in the Temotu province of the Pacific country is bearing the brunt of natural disasters worsened by climate change - from cyclones to droughts.
It was a long journey to get here, but for her, the sense of urgency and the need to get that across to everyone she meets is palpable.
The Solomon Islands, north-east of Australia, are made up of nearly 1,000 tropical islands and atolls. The country of 670,000 people is extremely vulnerable to climate change.
Mrs Akao says some smaller islands are, in her words, "already out" - meaning unliveable due to sea levels. Some of her relatives in Temotu province - made up of two chains of islands - have had to move to larger islands, as houses were washed away.
"We could lose everything," she says. "We could lose our identity".
Aydah (middle) with her eldest daughter Eleanor Pago (left), four-year-old daughter Anika and son, Fernando (right) in the Solomon Islands
Asked about what she would like to see agreed by leaders at the summit, she's unequivocal - an end to the burning of fossil fuels for energy.
Over the past 27 COP summits, all that has so far been agreed on this is a "phase down" of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. At this conference, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, a major oil producer, there may be agreement to go further, but deciding whether the world should further commit to "phasing out" fossil fuels has been highly contentious.
Aosis, a negotiating group responsible for the interests of small island nations (including the Solomon Islands), is demanding that the conference agrees action that will ensure the world does not warm by more than 1.5C compared to pre-industrial levels - something that many scientists say has already become out of reach.
Aydah Akao's work on behalf of her children has inspired her eldest son, Zedi Cavord, to also get involved in climate activism.
Miriam Wanjiku, 35, is another mother making her voice heard at the conference.
From Kisumu in Kenya, Ms Wanjiku says her teenage daughter, Rahmina Paulette - the founder of a group called Kisumu Environmental Champions - inspired her to get involved with environmental action.
Ms Wanjiku now manages community projects in Kisumu with her daughter, focusing primarily on campaigns to safeguard Lake Victoria. It is the world's second largest freshwater lake but pollution has left it blighted.
Their campaign,"Let Lake Victoria Breathe Again" aims to bring attention to chemical and single-use plastic pollution in the lake, which is impacting its ecosystem.
Miriam Wanjiku (left) and her daughter Rahmina heading to COP28 in Dubai from Kisumu airport
Rahmina, who is also at COP28, is in charge of the Pavilion for Youth and Children at the summit, Ms Wanjiku tells us. The 18-year-old is also part of the Fridays for Future movement, which has seen millions of school students around the world skip classes to protest for climate action.
While Ms Wanjiku supports her daughter, she's worried that her relentless activism is getting in the way of her enjoying her youth.
"It is really distracting her because she wants to change things and sometimes it is like a force," she says. "And she also has to be a kid at the same time."
But both mother and daughter are keenly aware that the generational message that their joint activism sends is a powerful one.
A report from climate marketing firm Potential Energy Coalition, published in November, found that protecting the planet for future generations was an important motivating factor to solve the climate crisis across 23 countries surveyed - 18 of the G20 countries as well as Chile, Colombia, Kenya, Nigeria and Norway.
The report found that "love for the next generation" was identified by participants as 12 times more important than guaranteeing jobs.
Bhavreen Kandhari, 51, is a mother of twins passionate about a future with cleaner air
Bhavreen Kandhari, a mother of twins from India, shares that motivation but she is kept awake at night by a very specific issue - clean air.
She lives in Delhi, one of the world's most polluted cities, and joined the Indian clean air movement two decades ago, motivated by growing concerns over her then-baby girls' health outcomes.
"What are we doing to our children? They are breathing toxicity every second of their lives, and we are not even reacting," she says. "My daughters are turning 20 ... I still didn't manage to bring them clean air."
In polluted Delhi, one in three children has damaged lungs she says. "Unfortunately air is not visible. It's invisible. We don't see it, so we don't believe it."
In early November, the Supreme Court in India called for "immediate action" after air quality in the capital deteriorated to alarming levels. Similar orders in the past, targeting construction and crop burning, have had little impact.
Weeks later, Mrs Kandhari left the smog for the halls of climate power in Dubai.
Along with Mrs Akao and Ms Wanjiku, she's been able to attend COP28 with the support of Our Kids' Climate, an organisation that empowers parent leaders and activist groups around the world.
Miriam Wanjiku (left), Aydah Akao and Bhavreen Kandhari all came to COP28 in Dubai with the support of Our Kids' Climate, an organisation that unites parents to protect their kids from the climate crisis
Mrs Kandhari has been to many COP summits since her activism began but since Glasgow in 2021, she says parents - and mothers specifically - have increasingly found themselves coalescing around the same message.
"I think we've all been joining hands and I think that is what makes it so powerful."
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Rwanda bill must be in Goldilocks zone, says James Cleverly - BBC News
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2023-12-13
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The home secretary says a balance needs to be struck as he seeks to placate Tory backbench MPs.
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UK Politics
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The Rwanda bill must be in the "Goldilocks zone" between being "tough enough", abiding by international law and being acceptable to Rwanda, Home Secretary James Cleverly has said.
The bill passed its first parliamentary hurdle, despite 29 Tory MPs refusing to back it.
However, the government is expected to face trickier battles when the bill returns to the Commons next year.
Mr Cleverly said he would listen to "good faith" arguments from MPs.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said the Conservatives were "unified" in their commitment to deal with the problem posed by migration.
Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said disagreements over the Rwanda bill were part of an "ongoing psychodrama" in the Conservative Party.
The government's plan would see some asylum seekers sent to Rwanda, where they would have their claims processed and potentially be resettled.
Ministers hope this will deter people from trying to get to the UK by making the dangerous journey across the Channel in small boats.
The policy was blocked by the Supreme Court last month over safety concerns, forcing the government to introduce new emergency legislation.
The Safety of Rwanda bill has come under attack from different sides of the Conservative party.
The right-wingers on the European Research Group have argued the bill in its current form is not robust enough, with leader of the group Mark Francois saying they had been told Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was "prepared to entertain tightening the bill".
However, any attempt to change the language could anger other Conservatives who have concerns that could lead to the UK breaching its international obligations.
Mr Cleverly said he would listen to his colleagues' concerns and any "good faith arguments" about the legislation.
Ms Cooper told the BBC that Labour opposed the scheme because it comes with a "huge cost" and would only see a small number of people sent to Rwanda.
Asked if Labour opposed the principle of the idea of "offshoring" - handling claims overseas - she said her party would "look at whatever works".
Labour along with the Liberal Democrats and SNP voted against the bill on Tuesday night; however, no Conservative MP voted against the bill.
There had been fears in government that there could be a Tory rebellion, and in a sign of nerves, Climate Minister Graham Stuart flew back from the COP28 climate conference in Dubai to vote.
However, in the end the bill passed with a comfortable 44 majority - with 313 in favour and 270 opposed.
Twenty-nine Conservative MPs chose to abstain from voting on the bill - including former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
Altogether 37 Tory MPs did not record a vote, however some of those may have simply been unable to attend the vote rather than deliberately abstaining.
The bill will return to the House of Commons in January, where MPs will be able to propose amendments.
Before becoming law, the bill will also have to be approved by the House of Lords where it will meet stiff opposition from some peers.
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Contrite, shorn of theatrics - Johnson's first day at inquiry - BBC News
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2023-12-07
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Boris Johnson mixed contrition with an effort to take on former colleagues who questioned him.
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UK Politics
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Boris Johnson's evidence was, for the most part, shorn of his usual performative theatrics.
Sitting on the press bench in the hearing room, the contempt in which Mr Johnson was held by many of the families of the bereaved sitting metres away was obvious; sniggers of derision from some of them punctuated his early testimony.
The thrust of Mr Johnson's case - contrition, with hindsight, at his tardiness in clocking the imminent scale of the pandemic in early 2020 - was mixed with his best effort to take on the cavalry of his former colleagues who have questioned his competence and the culture of his Downing Street operation.
Crude WhatsApp exchanges were framed as entirely typical of the style of many on the messaging service; indulging in the "ephemeral, pejorative, hyperbolical" as he put it.
Private, internal anger at his failings was a good thing, he claimed, a "disputatious culture" better than a "quietly acquiescent" one.
Two sentence siblings appeared frequently: "I can't remember" and "I don't know."
Claims to this end may be judged individually plausible.
But their volume stood out.
More on Covid and the Covid Inquiry
The UK's governance structures - the wiring of where power lies and who takes decisions - also featured, and there was a parallel here with what the former health secretary Matt Hancock said last week.
Mr Johnson felt devolution didn't work during the pandemic because mixed messages were sent, depending on where you were in the UK, because devolved governments did different things, at different times, from the government at Westminster.
He suggested the Public Health Act 1984 had a consequence unforeseen at the time of its passing nearly 40 years ago, because the devolution that was to follow meant lots of pandemic powers rested away from Westminster.
What should now happen, he argued, was that this act should be amended to discount pandemics from it.
Some will see this as a self-serving argument for a former prime minister to make, perhaps keen on hoarding power at the centre. Others will insist at a time of emergency clarity is key and it was absent during Covid.
In big picture terms, Mr Johnson sought to remind the inquiry of his central role as a pandemic prime minister; judging trade offs of a colossal nature; confronting a scenario without modern precedent.
The question not asked explicitly but hanging over the inquiry is this: would the UK have coped better had there been a different prime minister?
Mr Johnson will fear evidence is already accumulating to suggest the answer to that is yes.
We have now seen and heard his first stab at trying to take on that hunch.
He is back on Thursday morning to face more questions.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67643903
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Prince Harry tells court he wants his children to feel at home in UK - BBC News
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2023-12-07
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The Duke of Sussex is challenging the Home Office over a decision to downgrade his protection.
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UK
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Prince Harry is challenging the fairness of how decisions over his security were made
Prince Harry wants his children to "feel at home" in the UK but they cannot if "it's not possible to keep them safe", the High Court has heard.
Calling the UK his home, the Duke of Sussex said it was "with great sadness" that he and his wife Meghan "felt forced" to leave the country in 2020.
He is challenging the Home Office over a decision to downgrade his security protection when visiting.
The government says his claim should be dismissed.
The court is considering the changes to publicly-funded protection when Prince Harry stopped being a "working royal" in early 2020. After stepping back he moved to the US, where he lives with his wife and their two children, Archie and Lilibet.
The committee that arranges security for members of the Royal Family and other VIPs - known as Ravec - decided in 2020 that Prince Harry would no longer have the automatic level of security for senior royals.
Instead the level of security would be arranged depending on the perceived risk, as is the case with other high-profile visiting dignitaries.
Prince Harry's lawyers say the decision was "unlawful and unfair".
At a hearing on Thursday his barrister, Shaheed Fatima KC, said references by the Home Office's lawyers to the prince no longer being a full-time working royal were "often said in a way that emphasised choice".
But she said he did not accept this.
She read out an excerpt of a statement written by Harry as part of his case, in which he said: "It was with great sadness for both of us that my wife and I felt forced to step back from this role and leave the country in 2020.
"The UK is my home. The UK is central to the heritage of my children and a place I want them to feel at home as much as where they live at the moment in the US. That cannot happen if it's not possible to keep them safe when they are on UK soil.
"I cannot put my wife in danger like that and, given my experiences in life, I am reluctant to unnecessarily put myself in harm's way too."
Thursday marks the end of the two-and-a-half day hearing - much of which concerned security arrangements for senior figures and took place in private.
Prince Harry, who did not attend in person, now waits for a ruling from Mr Justice Lane at a later date.
Earlier this week, Prince Harry's lawyers argued there had been a lack of transparency about the decision and the prince had been not been treated the same way as others.
There was "no good reason for singling out the claimant [Prince Harry] this way," said his legal team.
Ms Fatima KC told the court: "Ravec should have considered the 'impact' a successful attack on the claimant would have, bearing in mind his status, background and profile within the royal family - which he was born into and which he will have for the rest of his life - and his ongoing charity work and service to the public."
But the Home Office's case argued that as the prince was no longer a working royal and lived overseas, "his position has materially changed".
"In those circumstances protective security would not be provided on the same basis as before," said its lawyers.
There will still be publicly-funded police security for Prince Harry, the lawyers said, but these will be "bespoke arrangements, specifically tailored to him", rather than the automatic security provided for full-time working royals.
Sir James Eadie KC, for the Home Office, said in written arguments it was "simply incorrect" to suggest that there was no evidence that the issue of impact was considered, adding that the death of Diana, Princess of Wales - Harry's mother - was raised as part of the decision.
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I should have twigged Covid threat earlier, admits Boris Johnson - BBC News
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2023-12-07
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The former PM tells the pandemic inquiry he initially underestimated the challenge posed by the virus.
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UK Politics
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Boris Johnson has said he should have "twigged" the seriousness of Covid sooner, conceding earlier action could have been taken against the virus.
Giving evidence to the Covid inquiry, the former prime minister said he had underestimated the "scale and the pace of the challenge" posed.
But he said this was also true of scientists and the "entire Whitehall establishment".
And he insisted ministers did their "level best" in the circumstances.
In the first of two days of testimony, Mr Johnson sought to defend his record in office, which has come in for criticism from other witnesses who have given evidence to the inquiry.
He defended the timing of the first lockdown, saying that modelling had been incorrect and he had been advised not to impose measures too early.
He admitted to a "certain amount of incoherence in our thinking," but added: "Once we decided to act, I think it was pretty fast from flash to bang."
More on Covid and the Covid Inquiry
He began his testimony by saying he was sorry for the "pain and the loss and the suffering" people experienced during the pandemic.
His comments were interrupted by protesters, who were ordered to leave the inquiry room. Some members of bereaved families stood up holding pieces of paper, spelling out the message: "The dead can't hear your apologies."
Mr Johnson has been criticised for being slow to make decisions during the pandemic and being unable to make up his mind about what to do.
Over several hours of questioning by lead inquiry lawyer Hugo Keith KC he put in a measured performance, which largely lacked the tetchy exchanges seen during his grilling over Partygate by a committee of MPs earlier this year.
But the former prime minister had to take back an accusation that Mr Keith had suggested he "put his feet up" at his official country retreat during the 2020 February half-term, adding he had confused it with comments from someone else.
And he choked up when he described the return of the virus after the first national lockdown, describing 2020 as a "tragic, tragic year".
Mr Johnson defended his overall approach to the pandemic, adding that Covid had required "completely novel" measures and it was his job to "go through the arguments".
He added that people within government had collectively been reluctant to believe worse-case predictions about the impact of the virus, given the experience of previous diseases.
"It would certainly be fair to say of me, the entire Whitehall establishment, scientific community included, that we underestimated the scale and the pace of the challenge," he said.
He added that he was subsequently "rattled" by scenes of chaos in northern Italy in mid-February, when pictures of swamped hospitals hit the world's media.
"We should have collectively twigged much sooner. I should have twigged," he added.
Over more than five hours of testimony, he also:
He added, however, that given what is known now, mass gatherings should have been stopped earlier than they were.
"With hindsight, as a symbol of government earnestness rather than just being guided by the science, we should perhaps have done that," he said.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. "They partied while we all suffered" - bereaved relatives Larry Burn and Amos Waldman
He also defended his decision to keep Matt Hancock as health secretary, despite being urged to sack him by his former adviser Dominic Cummings, telling the inquiry he considered him a "good communicator".
He rejected suggestions that expletive-laden WhatsApp messages between his advisers revealed by the inquiry showed a "toxic" culture in his Downing Street operation.
The language in the messages reflected the "deep anxiety" of people doing their best, he said.
He added it also showed that the people around him were "naturally self-critical, and critical of others," adding that this was "creatively useful" when it came to making decisions.
And he revealed that he had spoken to former civil servant Helen MacNamara, who has previously accused him of failing to tackle "misogynistic language" used about her in a WhatsApp group by Mr Cummings.
"I don't remember seeing it at the time, but I must have seen it because I was on the group," he told the inquiry.
"I have rang Helen MacNamara to apologise to her for not having called it out."
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Covid inquiry: I did not back a 'let it rip' policy, says Boris Johnson - BBC News
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2023-12-07
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The former prime minister says he offered counter arguments but ultimately acted to curb Covid.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Boris Johnson rejects claims his Covid policy was "let it rip" across UK
Boris Johnson has insisted he did not pursue a "let it rip" strategy during the coronavirus pandemic.
Giving evidence to the Covid inquiry, he said he did offer counter arguments in order to challenge the consensus in meetings.
He argued his actions proved he worked to curb the virus, rather than allowing it to spread through the population.
He also rejected the idea that he was slow to act when cases began rising again in the autumn of 2020.
In his second day of testimony at the inquiry, he denied that he had been reluctant to lock down a second time because he was prepared to let older people die to keep the economy open.
In a tetchy exchange, he called the idea "rubbish" and insisted he had aimed to "save human life at all ages".
More on Covid and the Covid Inquiry
Mr Johnson has faced nearly ten hours of questioning this week, for which he has reportedly prepared for hours with his government-funded inquiry lawyers, and has submitted a 233-page witness statement.
His first day of testimony on Wednesday was interrupted by protesters, with demonstrators outside the inquiry building on both days holding up pictures of lost loved ones and jeering his departure.
His second day of evidence focused on the autumn of 2020, when Mr Johnson has been accused of being too slow to reimpose restrictions after cases shot back up again.
In one exchange, he was shown extracts from the diary of Sir Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientific adviser of the time.
In an entry from October, Sir Patrick said Mr Johnson had argued for "letting it all rip," quoting him as saying potential victims had "had a good innings" and "reached their time anyway".
When the inquiry's lead lawyer put it to him that these "secretly held" views had made him reluctant to reimpose restrictions in the autumn, he shook his head and could be heard saying "honestly" under his breath.
"The implication that you're trying to draw from those conversations is completely wrong," he replied. "My position was that we had to save human life at all ages".
"If you look at what we actually did, never mind the accounts that you have culled from people's jottings from meetings... if you look at what we actually did, we went into lockdown as soon as we could.
"I had to challenge the consensus in the meeting."
Mr Johnson later said he regretted the "hurt and offence" some of his language had caused, before adding: "A lot of what has been reported is incorrect, and there are words that are described to me that I simply don't recognise.
He explained that he spoke "in an unpolished way" because he wanted others to "speak freely".
The former prime minister also told the inquiry:
Mr Johnson was also asked about Eat Out to Help Out, the government-sponsored discount scheme to encourage people to go back to restaurants after they reopened.
He said the measure was not seen as a "gamble" when introduced, and that he had not subsequently seen evidence that proved it "made a big difference" to the infection rate.
There has been conflicting evidence as to whether the scheme did propel the virus, and a surge of cases in the UK mirrored rises in other European countries, which did not have the scheme.
In previous hearings, the inquiry has been told that neither senior scientific advisers nor Matt Hancock, health secretary at the time, were told about the scheme before it was announced.
Mr Johnson said he was "perplexed" at the suggestion top advisers had been unaware of the plan, adding that it was not a secret and had been "discussed several times in meetings in which I believe they must have been present".
The inquiry also saw extracts from Sir Patrick's diaries which included the line: "Wales very high - PM says 'it is the singing and the obesity...I never said that'."
Mr Johnson was not asked about the alleged remark about Wales, which appeared in a entry dated 11 September 2020.
The former prime minister was largely measured during the hearing but robustly defended himself against accusations he did not care about people's suffering during the pandemic.
Becoming emotional, he recalled his time in intensive care after contracting Covid.
"I saw around me a lot of people who were not actually elderly - in fact, they were middle aged men and they were quite like me.
"And some of us were going to make it and some of us weren't.
"I knew from that experience what an appalling disease this is... To say that I didn't care about the suffering that was being inflicted on the country is simply not right."
Mr Johnson's successor Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is due to give evidence to the inquiry on Monday.
Becky Kummer, spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, said Mr Johnson's evidence showed he "failed to take the pandemic seriously in early 2020 leaving us brutally unprepared, and failed to learn from his mistakes meaning that the second wave had an even higher death toll than the first".
"He delayed for fear of how it might impact his reputation with certain sections of the press.... there are many lessons from the pandemic that might save lives in the future, but one of them is undoubtedly that someone as self-serving as Boris Johnson is not fit for power."
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Supreme Court declines to fast-track Trump immunity case - BBC News
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2023-12-22
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This will aid Mr Trump's efforts to delay his trial, as the case must now work through appeals.
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US & Canada
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Donald Trump's lawyers argued the effort to expedite his trial was politically motivated.
The US Supreme Court has declined, for now, to decide whether former President Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr Trump's efforts to delay his trial appear to be working, as the case must now wind through the appeals process.
Special counsel Jack Smith had asked the court to take up the case in an expedited manner.
Mr Trump was indicted on election subversion charges earlier this year.
The court did not explain its decision, instead issuing an unsigned order saying that Mr Smith's petition "is denied".
The ruling is a setback for Mr Smith, who had asked the Supreme Court to intervene early for fear that the appeals process could delay the start of Mr Trump's trial, which was scheduled to begin on 4 March in Washington DC.
Mr Smith's office declined to comment on the ruling.
Mr Trump is being investigated for his alleged attempts to overturn the election leading up to the 6 January Capitol riot.
This delay marks a procedural victory for the former president, as his legal team appears intent on postponing the trial for as long as possible.
District Judge Tanya Chutkan has paused the case while Mr Trump appeals. The former president is claiming he is immune from prosecution because he was acting in his official capacity as president before and during the riot.
In court filings, Mr Smith argued the Supreme Court should consider the case because it presented "a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune" from being prosecuted for federal crimes allegedly committed while in the White House.
"The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request," he added. "This is an extraordinary case."
In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, Mr Trump said the Supreme Court had rejected a "desperate attempt to short circuit our Great Constitution", adding that he was "entitled to Presidential Immunity".
Mr Trump's lawyers had argued the request to expedite the trial was politically motivated, claiming in court filings that it was part of an effort to "ensure that President Trump - the leading Republican candidate for President, and the greatest electoral threat to President Biden - will face a months-long criminal trial at the height of his presidential campaign".
The ruling means the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit will have to hear the case before it can be appealed to the Supreme Court. It is expected that the US's highest court will eventually have to issue a ruling.
The appeals process may delay the start date of the trial, however, which prosecutors had hoped to hold before the election.
The concern for prosecutors is that the closer it gets to election day, the more mired in politics the case becomes. And if Mr Trump's attorneys succeed in pushing the date past the election the trial could be delayed indefinitely.
The possibility also looms that, with pressure from a newly inaugurated President Trump, a delayed case could be dropped entirely.
"Trump's delay strategy appears to be working," Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, told the BBC.
"All of [this] will consume time, and, thus, complicate efforts to start the trial before Judge Chutkan on the early March date."
The appeal comes after Judge Chutkan had previously rejected Mr Trump's immunity claims, writing in a ruling that the former president's "four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens".
In the meantime, however, arguments are set to be heard in the case in DC Circuit Court on 9 January.
Mr Trump currently faces dozens of criminal charges across four cases, including two related to his alleged election subversion efforts.
Friday's decision by the high court suggests that its nine justices are reluctant to insert themselves into Mr Trump's ongoing legal drama if at all possible.
That may hint at how the court handles some of the numerous high-profile legal challenges involving Mr Trump that will end up on the court's doorstep in the coming months.
The former president faces other charges in Florida, also brought by Mr Smith, for his handling of classified documents.
The decision on Friday also comes after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that Mr Trump could no longer appear on the state's 2024 Republican primary ballot because of a constitutional insurrection clause.
The justices ruled Mr Trump was ineligible as a candidate because of his actions related to the Capitol riots.
The former president has appealed that case to the US Supreme Court.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67808655
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Caroline Glachan: Three guilty of murdering schoolgirl 27 years ago - BBC News
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2023-12-14
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The body of Caroline Glachan was found on a riverbank in 1996 but her killers have only now been brought to justice.
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Scotland
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Caroline Glachan's friends have paid tribute to her memory
Two men and a woman have been found guilty of the murder of a schoolgirl in West Dunbartonshire more than 27 years ago.
The body of Caroline Glachan, 14, was discovered on the banks of the River Leven in Renton on 25 August 1996.
Robert O'Brien, 45, Andrew Kelly and Donna Marie Brand, both 44, were convicted after a trial at the High Court in Glasgow.
The killers were all teenagers at the time of Caroline's murder.
Caroline's mother, Margaret McKeich, praised the guilty verdicts. She said: "Now I think Caroline can rest in peace."
During the two-week trial, the jury heard Caroline was "infatuated" with O'Brien and left her home in Bonhill before midnight to meet him at a bridge on the River Leven.
Soon after she arrived, the teenager was subjected to what prosecutor Alex Prentice KC described as a "horrific and violent attack".
Her body was discovered by a passer-by that afternoon, face down in the river.
The jury heard locals identified her from her trainers and blue Chipie sweatshirt.
A post-mortem examination revealed Caroline had suffered at least 10 blows to the head and extensive skull fractures.
The jury heard she may have been alive but was most likely unconscious when she entered the water.
In a cruel twist, the date on her death certificate was also her mother Margaret's 40th birthday.
The now former Strathclyde Police force launched a massive murder investigation and the case twice featured on the BBC's Crimewatch UK programme.
However, a breakthrough eluded detectives until Police Scotland's Major Investigation Team re-examined the evidence in the summer of 2019.
The killers claimed they spent the night in 12 Allan Crescent in Renton.
But while officers were re-interviewing residents of the street, they made a discovery that challenged the killers' alibi.
Upstairs neighbour, Linda Dorrian, told police she has seen four people - including Kelly and his girlfriend, the late Sarah Jane O'Neill - leaving the flat before midnight.
Kelly and O'Neill had been babysitting two boys. They were also joined by O'Brien and his girlfriend Brand.
They took four-year old Archie Wilson and his baby brother Jamie along with them when they went out.
When they returned more than an hour later, Ms Dorrian heard a massive commotion and an argument.
This discovery enabled officers to corroborate an account given by Archie the day after Caroline was attacked
Archie had told his mother Betty that he had been at the river and that had seen fighting and a girl falling into the water.
Caroline was filmed in her local youth club performing a dance based on the Karate Kid movie
His evidence proved to be the key to finally convicting O'Brien, Kelly and Brand.
In the video of his police interview, the boy was sitting on an armchair, so small his legs didn't even reach the edge of the cushion.
He was chatty and bubbly with floppy fair hair, a pronounced west of Scotland accent and was playing with a drawing toy.
While the two male police officers asked questions about what he saw that night, Archie - who had just started school - answered in a matter-of-fact manner.
He also interspersed his answers with questions like: "What should I draw now?"
But when the focus returned to the night of the murder, Archie told them: "I saw Caroline in the water".
He also revealed he saw O'Brien hit Caroline with a stick and a metal pole, and that when she was pushed in the water he closed his eyes.
Joanne Menzies tried to stop Caroline from meeting O'Brien on the night she died
Caroline's best friend, Joanne Menzies, told BBC Scotland News that she always regretted not going with her on the night she died.
"I warned her not to go, but she was adamant," she said.
"She gave me her house keys and said: 'I'll be back up before my mum gets in'."
Joanne said she never liked O'Brien and admitted she was scared of him.
The mother-of-three said she always thinks about her friend - who she described as being "so full of fun" - and regularly visits her grave.
Julie O'Sullivan and Donna Talbot were friends of Caroline
Caroline's friends Julie O'Sullivan and Donna Talbot also gave evidence at the trial.
Donna admitted she had dreaded the prospect, but said she felt "empowered" in court.
"It was like: 'Bring it on. I am doing this for Caroline'," she said.
"She was such a happy, cheerful wee soul."
Julie said Caroline was "so big on family" and described her as a "wee blether" who loved to chat.
She told BBC Scotland News: "Caroline could just walk into a room and literally just light the place up, she was just always smiling, full of life, full of fun, full of cheek, full of banter."
Caroline's mother Margaret said she believed her daughter could now rest in peace
Outside court, after the guilty verdicts, Caroline's mother Margaret said it was a day the family thought they would never see.
"Now I think Caroline can rest in peace," she said.
"It will not bring her back but at least we know that who was responsible is serving time for it.
"Because for the past 25 years they've had their life and they've had their Christmases and their birthdays and my Caroline was in the ground.
"So, this is a great day."
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I'm A Celebrity winner named after Sam Thompson, Tony Bellew and Nigel Farage made final - BBC News
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2023-12-10
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Sam Thompson, Tony Bellew and Nigel Farage were the last men standing on the reality TV show.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Sam Thompson said winning was "a dream come true"
An average audience of 6.6 million watched this year's finale of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, overnight ratings show.
Made In Chelsea star Sam Thompson was crowned king of the jungle in the ITV reality show's final on Sunday.
Thompson held off competition from boxer Tony Bellew and former UKIP and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage.
Viewing figures will be significantly higher when those watching later and on other platforms are added.
Although overnight figures have been lower than last year's, consolidated figures show episodes have generally attracted audiences of well over eight million - making it still one of the most popular programmes ITV makes.
Of the three finalists, Thompson was the bookmakers' favourite to win. The reality star and DJ, who has ADHD, endeared himself to many viewers with his positive personality and attitude.
Former heavyweight Bellew was second, with Farage - who was the best-paid campmate with a reported £1.5m fee - in third.
Figures released by ITV show Thompson won with 56.6% of the vote, to Bellew's 43.4%.
The earlier vote, before Nigel Farage was eliminated, saw the politician take 25.8% of the vote share, against Bellew's 30.9% and Thompson's 43.3%.
The three finalists were among 12 celebrities who entered the Australian jungle three weeks ago - although Bellew and Frankie Dettori joined a few days after the launch.
Thompson said he was "really overwhelmed" by his win, adding: "I didn't think I was even going to be invited onto this show, let alone be sat here [on the winner's throne]."
He told viewers: "I am so grateful, thank you so much. I've dreamed of doing this show and being invited on for years and years, and you've just made a boy's dream come true."
Thompson's likeable and enthusiastic personality proved to be a hit with viewers.
Earlier on Sunday's final, he said being on the show had been "like a dream that I don't even want you to wake me up from".
"I've had the best time and I'm the luckiest person in the world," he told hosts Ant & Dec.
That positivity came despite being asked to eat items including a pig's vagina and a camel's penis in the last bushtucker trial.
Left-right: Sam Thompson, Tony Bellew and Nigel Farage were in the final
Thompson has improved on his third-place finish on Celebrity Big Brother in 2017. He left Made In Chelsea in 2019 and currently hosts a show on Hits Radio and co-presented the official Love Island podcast.
Thompson's girlfriend is Zara McDermott, who found fame on Love Island before moving to Made In Chelsea and then this year's Strictly Come Dancing.
She posted a video of herself with other supporters cheering when Thompson was named the I'm A Celebrity... winner.
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On the way to the I'm A Celebrity final, Thompson was praised for talking about receiving an ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) diagnosis last year.
"I'm not ashamed of having ADHD in any way," he said last week. "But I know that I would have felt better about myself at school if I had been diagnosed with it at a younger age.
"Because I really was just like, 'I just suck at everything.'"
Farage's supporters rallied for him to win, but the GB News presenter said he "couldn't be more thrilled" with the third-placed finish.
Despite some disagreements during the show, the divisive political figure said he was surprised the other contestants were so nice to him.
"It was interesting. Obviously there were people there that have very different views on Brexit and other subjects, and I never raised one political debate in there - not one in the whole time I was there," he said.
"Others did with me, but I think I managed to persuade them that we should respect the right of the other person to have a different point of view. And I had no screaming arguments... But we had proper debates. And I think in the end, I hope, the other candidates respected my point of view."
However, a heated conversation about immigration between Farage and YouTuber Nella Rose attracted more than 800 complaints to media regulator Ofcom.
An average of 8.3 million people watched the show every night during the first two weeks of the series, according to consolidated ratings, which are not yet available for the final week.
That is down by more than two million on the same period last year, when footballer Jill Scott went on to win.
However, the 2022 series attracted a higher audience than the previous year due to the huge media interest in former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who finished third.
Following Hancock and Farage's controversial involvement, the show's presenters Ant and Dec recently called for a year without politicians in the line-up.
Asked recently whether Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was a potential future campmate, Dec said: "I think we do a year without any politicians."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67661729
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Israel-Gaza: The status quo is smashed. The future is messy and dangerous - BBC News
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2023-12-10
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Even when the war between Israel and Hamas ends, there is no easy future, the BBC's Jeremy Bowen says.
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Middle East
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At the end of the war that started on 7 October lies a big, unknown place called the future. The old status quo was dangerous and painful, especially for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But it was familiar. Then after 7 October it was smashed by the Hamas attacks, and Israel's response.
The shock of war can speed up change, when it sweeps away old thinking, forcing difficult choices for a better future. Or it drives leaders and their citizens deeper into their bunkers, as they prepare for the next round.
For more than a century, Jews and Arabs have been confronting each other, and sometimes going to war, over control of the small, highly coveted piece of land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Perhaps the safest, saddest bet is to assume that the conflict, reshaped, will go on. After all, that is what has happened after every other Middle East war since 1948, when Israel won its independence.
But there are other options. Here are some of the arguments made by individuals at the centre of events.
Israel's prime minister has not spelt out his plan for the day after, if he has one. His opponents in Israel, who blame him for security and intelligence failures that made the Hamas attacks on 7 October possible, say Netanyahu's only real plan is to stay in power and avoid conviction on the serious corruption charges he faces.
Netanyahu built his career on the message he was Mr Security, the only man who could keep Israel safe. Hamas shattered his brand, which was already badly damaged by political strife inside Israel.
Netanyahu has not spelt out his plans for Gaza after the war ends
The prime minister's broad statements about what happens after the war, assuming Israel can declare victory, all point to continued occupation of Gaza. Israeli officials have reportedly talked about setting up buffer zones along the border, without offering any details.
Netanyahu has rejected a role for foreign peacekeepers, assuming they can be found. Jordan's foreign minister Ayman Safadi has already said that Arab states would not "clean the mess" left by Israel.
"There will be no Arab troops going to Gaza. None. We are not going to be seen as the enemy."
Netanyahu has also dismissed US President Joe Biden's plan to replace Hamas with the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu claims the PA cannot be trusted and supports terrorism, even though it recognises Israel and cooperates with it on security.
President Biden's vision of the future is very different to Benjamin Netanyahu's. Biden continues to give considerable military, diplomatic and emotional support to Israelis. He visited, embraced the families of hostages and has ordered his diplomats at the United Nations Security Council to use the US veto to block ceasefire resolutions. Biden ordered two aircraft carrier strike groups to the region and has sent Israel vast amounts of weaponry.
In return, the US president wants Israel to return to some kind of revitalised peace process. He wants the Palestinian Authority (PA) eventually to run Gaza while Israel agrees arrangements for an independent Palestine alongside Israel.
The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas agrees. He has largely been a bystander since 7 October. In a rare interview this week, with Reuters, he said there should be a peace conference after the war to work out a political solution that would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Biden wants a revitalised peace process in the region
The "two state solution" has been the official objective of America and its western allies since the early 1990s. Years of negotiations to make it happen failed. For almost a quarter of a century, since the peace process collapsed, the phrase has been an empty slogan. Biden wants to revive it, arguing correctly that only a political solution will end the conflict.
Biden sent his vice president, Kamala Harris, to Dubai last week to make a speech laying out America's red lines for Gaza on the day after.
She laid out five principles.
"No forcible displacement, no re-occupation, no siege or blockade, no reduction in territory, and no use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism."
"We want to see a unified Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian voices and aspirations must be at the centre of this work."
In and out of office, Benjamin Netanyahu has worked consistently hard to thwart Palestinian independence. It is safe to say he is not about to change his mind. If the two-state solution can be revived, it won't happen while he is prime minister.
I went to see Simcha Rotman at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, where he is a prominent MP for the far-right Religious Zionist Party. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu depends on the support of Rotman's party and other hard-line Jewish nationalists. Their power comes from the dynamism of the movement to settle Jews on the land captured in 1967. From that moment of victory, some Israelis were set on extending the Zionist enterprise into the newly occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
Since 1967 they have been highly successful, despite being forced to leave Gaza when Israel pulled out in 2005. Around 700,000 Israeli Jews now live in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Settler leaders are in the cabinet, and their enterprise is at the centre of Israeli politics.
Simcha Rotman is a prominent MP for the far-right Religious Zionist Party
Now that Israel is fighting Hamas, vowing to smash the organisation once and for all, Jewish nationalists see the biggest opportunity they have had since 1967, when Israel beat all its Arab neighbours in a war that lasted for six days.
Since 7 October, armed settlers in the West Bank, backed by soldiers and police, have prevented Palestinian farmers from harvesting their olives or tending their fields. Settlers have paved illegal roads and sought to entrench themselves even deeper by consolidating outposts that are illegal under Israeli as well as international law. Posters are everywhere demanding the return of Jewish settlers to Gaza.
Settlers have also killed Palestinians and invaded their homes. Men with bulldozers came at night to destroy the tiny village of Khirbet Zanuta, near Hebron. Its population of 200 Palestinians had already left, forced out by armed and aggressive settlers.
International law says an occupying power should not settle its citizens in land it has captured. Israel says the law does not apply.
"Occupation is not the word," Simcha Rotman told me at the Knesset.
"You cannot occupy your own land. Israel is not an occupier in Israel because that's the land of Israel."
For Simcha Rotman and other Jewish nationalists, Gaza is also part of the land of Israel.
"We need to make sure that the only people that are in charge of our security in the land of Israel are the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]. We cannot have any terrorist organisation, doesn't matter what its name. Would it be Hamas? Would it be Fatah? Doesn't matter. The terrorist organisation cannot have control of our lives."
If there are Palestinian elections after the 7 October war ends, Mustafa Barghouti is likely to run for president. He is the secretary general of the Palestine National Initiative. It wants to be the third force in Palestinian politics, an alternative to the Islamist extremists in Hamas and to Fatah, the faction led by President Mahmoud Abbas, which it regards as corrupt and incompetent. Barghouthi believes resistance to occupation is legitimate and legal, though he wants it to be non-violent.
In his office in Ramallah on the West Bank, Mustafa Barghouthi told me that Israel is using the war to deliver a crushing blow not just to Hamas but to the idea of Palestinian independence and freedom. Like many Palestinians, Barghouthi sees what's happening as a grim echo of the events of 1948 when Israel won its independence and more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced at gunpoint to leave their homes in what became Israel. Palestinians call it al-Naqba, "the catastrophe" and believe Israel wants it to happen again.
Mustafa Barghouti is the secretary general of the Palestine National Initiative
"I am 100% sure that their main goal right from the beginning was the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, trying to push people to Egypt, a terrible war crime. And if they managed to do so, I think their next goal will be to try to ethnically cleanse the West Bank and force people to join them."
"If they fail to ethnically cleanse all Gazans, I am sure that Netanyahu's plan B is to annexe Gaza City and the north of Gaza completely to Israel and claim it as a security area."
Barghouthi warns that Israel faces dire prospects if its troops stay in Gaza long term.
"Israel did that before and it didn't work. And there will be resistance to their occupation, which they cannot tolerate. And that's why Netanyahu's goal really is to ethnically cleanse people. He wants to have military control of Gaza without people. He knows very well that Gaza with people is something that is unmanageable."
Barghouthi believes Gaza should be part of a democratic Palestinian state.
"We Palestinians are grown up people. We don't need any patronage of anybody. And no, we don't need any other country to tell us how we should rule ourselves."
This crisis looks as if it will have more chapters. The US veto of the latest ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council gives Israel more time to wage war. But that extra time is not indefinite, and continued Biden support for Israel carries a political price in America's coming election year. Influential members of his own Democratic party oppose what he's doing, and so do younger voters whose support he needs. The Biden Administration is already deeply uncomfortable that Israel is ignoring its repeated requests to protect civilians and respect the laws of war.
Israel may struggle to achieve the crushing victory Benjamin Netanyahu has promised. He set a high bar for victory; not just annihilating Hamas as a military force, but also destroying its capacity to govern. Israel's vast military power, reinforced by American resupply, has not yet destroyed the capacity of Hamas to fight. The Hamas creed of Islamist nationalism is also embedded in the minds of many Palestinians. Guns often don't kill ideas but reinforce them.
The future is messy and dangerous. The war in Gaza will not end neatly.
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Robert Jenrick pledges 'serious reforms' to curb migration - BBC News
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2023-12-04
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Right-wing Tory MPs say they are relying on the immigration minister to take action to cut numbers.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Lee Anderson and Sir Edward Leigh call on Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick for tougher lines on immigration.
Home Office Minister Robert Jenrick has promised to bring forward a "serious package of fundamental reforms" to reduce net migration numbers.
He said there were "strong arguments" for introducing a cap on migration and restricting the number of dependents who can accompany migrants to the UK.
His comments came as he fielded questions from Tory MPs, frustrated at growing migration levels.
Last week, figures revealed that in 2022 net migration hit a record high.
On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said levels of net migration were "too high" and that the government needed to "do more", without giving details of what that might be.
He added that the government's decision earlier this year to restrict certain students from bringing dependents to the UK was "the single biggest measure to bring down legal migration that anyone has ever taken".
Mr Jenrick - together with former Home Secretary Suella Braverman - has been calling for tougher measures to curb legal migration.
Answering an urgent Commons question, he went further than Mr Sunak in setting out what the government is considering, saying "substantive measures" would be announced "as soon as possible".
Asked if these plans would be announced before Christmas, Mr Jenrick said: "My plan would have been brought to the House [of Commons] before last Christmas if I could have done, but let's hope we can bring forward a substantive package of reforms very quickly."
He said that reducing net migration would mean "taking difficult choices" adding: "The public are sick of talk - they want action."
Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said Mr Jenrick would be "furious when he discovers who's been in charge of the immigration system for the last 13 years".
Right-wing Conservative MPs lined up to urge Mr Jenrick to push Mr Sunak to take action.
Sir Edward Leigh said immigration levels had grown in part due to care worker visas being handed out "like sweeties".
He accused the care home sector of paying "starvation wages of £20,000-a -year" to foreign workers and called for the salary threshold for workers coming to the UK to be raised.
Speaking of the immigration minister, Sir Edward said: "We know he is on the right side - he's just got to persuade the prime minister now."
Another Conservative MP, Jonathan Gullis, said Mr Jenrick had his "full support" and added that he was "deeply concerned and confused" by Mr Sunak's approach.
Sir John Hayes argued for further restrictions on the number of dependents allowed to accompany migrants working in the UK. Sir John said: "We are relying on [Mr Jenrick] because we know he shares our concerns."
Deputy Conservative chairman Lee Anderson and MP Marco Longhi both called for a cap on net migration, with Mr Anderson saying his constituents had "had enough".
Mr Jenrick expressed sympathy for the ideas saying there were "strong arguments" for a cap on migration numbers "whether in general or in specific visas".
"But these are conversations that we need to conclude within government," he added.
On salary thresholds for care workers, he said the government needed to "take a more sensible, sustainable attitude to how we pay and look after people in such an important career".
And responding to questions about dependents, he said: "There is a strong argument for saying that it is unsustainable for the country to continue to take so many dependents who, in turn, put pressure on housing, public services, school places and so on.
"With respect to care workers, we have seen a very substantial number of visas issued and an almost one-for-one in terms of those care workers bringing dependents with them. And that is something ... we're actively considering."
Many of the ideas suggested by Conservative MPs echoed proposals Mr Jenrick has already drawn up - but which have not yet been adopted as government policy.
Conservative MPs queued up to urge the government to take action
Responding to the debate in Parliament, a No 10 spokesman said: "We always welcome contributions from MPs on this important debate. We are listening carefully to what they have got to say.
During the question session, Yvette Cooper said: "Net migration should come down. Immigration is important for Britain and always will be, but the system needs to be properly controlled and managed so it's fair and effective and is properly linked to the economy."
She urged the government to ensure salary thresholds for migrant workers would be reviewed.
The SNP's Alison Thewliss said migrants made "our society and economy all the richer".
She asked the government if they had "thought this through - who is going to carry out the vital tasks of those who come to our shores as they raised the drawbridge and send people away.
"Pressures on services are helped by people coming here, not hindered."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67557049
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British lawyers could be based in Rwandan courts as part of asylum plans - BBC News
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2023-12-04
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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It comes after the Supreme Court ruled proposals unlawful amid concerns about the Rwandan justice system.
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UK Politics
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British lawyers could be stationed in courts in Rwanda as part of a treaty to allow the UK government to send asylum seekers to the country.
It would aim to address concerns from the Supreme Court, which ruled the Rwanda plan unlawful last month.
Details are expected on Tuesday, with Home Secretary James Cleverly flying to Rwanda to sign the agreement.
It would be followed by a new law aiming to prevent the scheme being blocked again in the courts.
Meanwhile, the government is expected to announce plans later to reduce legal migration, after figures published last week showed net migration hit a record high in 2022.
The Rwanda policy, first announced in April 2022, would see some asylum seekers sent to the east African country to claim asylum there.
After last month's Supreme Court ruling, ministers are racing to revive the policy before the spring, when they want the first flights to take off.
Those not granted refugee status to stay in Rwanda could apply to settle there on other grounds, or seek asylum in another "safe third country".
The Supreme Court, the UK's highest court, rejected the policy on the grounds that it could not be guaranteed the Rwandan courts would honour a principle of international law known as non-refoulment.
The principle forbids a country that receives asylum seekers from returning them to their country of origin if doing so would put them at risk of harm.
Following the decision, the government said it would seek a formal treaty with Rwanda, a move it believed would provide stronger legal guarantees than its current bilateral agreement.
A new deal is now close, and could see British lawyers stationed in Rwandan courts as part of efforts to address the Supreme Court's concerns, the BBC has been told.
The Sunday Times reported that the treaty would also give Rwanda an extra £15m to pay for additional staff to improve and expand its asylum processing system.
However, Downing Street has rejected the claim with the prime minister's spokesman telling reporters: "I don't recognise that figure of £15m, there's been no request for additional funding for the treaty made by Rwanda, or not offered by the UK government."
The UK has already paid the Rwanda government £140m for the scheme. The first flight was scheduled to go in June 2022 but was cancelled because of legal challenges.
The Rwanda policy was proposed following a steady rise in recent years in the number of people arriving in the UK illegally via Channel crossings in small boats.
As of 2 December, 28,972 people had made the journey in 2023.
Last year, 45,755 people made the crossing, the highest number since figures began to be collected in 2018.
Ministers have also been under pressure to act from backbenchers after official statistics showed net migration was 745,000 last year - far higher than originally thought.
There have been reports ministers are looking at scrapping the list of occupations where foreign workers can be hired below the standard salary thresholds.
Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick has also recently said there are "strong arguments" for introducing a cap on migration, and restricting the number of dependents who can accompany migrants to the UK.
Home Secretary James Cleverly will make a statement to the Commons later on Monday.
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Chris Mason: Ministers in new bid to reduce immigration - BBC News
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2023-12-04
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The government has failed to meet its own promises - this week it makes renewed efforts to rectify that.
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UK Politics
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On migration policy, the government confronts a transparent, significant and emotionally charged failure.
A failure against its own promises and targets.
That is why this week their focus is on trying to do something about it.
It has shot up to record levels, and is currently three times what it was when the Conservatives won the last election and promised it would fall.
Little wonder so many Tory MPs are desperate to see it come down.
And secondly, illegal migration. The prime minister has promised to 'stop the boats'.
The numbers are down on last year, but still high - and the government's plan to send some to Rwanda has been bogged down in multiple courts, over an even greater multiple of months.
And so, before Boris Johnson does what he does best - grabs attention - at the Covid Inquiry on Wednesday and Thursday, expect two days of the latest iterations of the government's migration plans.
Firstly, on Monday afternoon, the plans for legal migration - and getting the numbers coming here down.
I am told relations between the Home Office and Downing Street are considerably improved since the sacking of former Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
For the last few weeks the prime minister has been working with the new Home Secretary, James Cleverly, and the Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick to come up with a plan.
Robert Jenrick had presented Rishi Sunak with a plan - the details of which I wrote about here about 10 days ago.
We'll be able to measure what the government announces against this wish list - from what I hear the announcement and what was being called for privately may be similar.
Look out for details on a salary threshold, the rights of migrants to bring dependents and whether the Shortage Occupation List is retained, for instance.
We will also be able to measure the government's plan against the one Suella Braverman said she called for in government.
The key question is whether it will make any difference in bringing the numbers down.
And next, on Tuesday, the Rwanda plan.
It looks likely James Cleverly will fly to Rwanda to sign a treaty.
After that, as soon as Wednesday, a planned new law relating to it will be introduced in the Commons.
Ministers say part of their plan for beefing up the deal with Rwanda is seconding British lawyers to Rwandan courts.
Incidentally, I am detecting scepticism in the Home Office about withdrawing from or somehow exempting the Rwanda plan from the UK's commitments to the European Convention on Human Rights.
The argument goes that the ECHR and the UK's membership of it is useful for the bits of illegal migration policy that actually work: the returns agreement with Albania, cooperation with France.
But there are plenty of Conservative backbenchers who are fed up with the European Convention and desperate to remove any obstacles to the Rwanda plan.
The key question again when we step back from the detail on all this is just the same as with legal migration: How soon could this make a difference?
Ministers say they are committed to getting migrants on planes to Rwanda by the spring.
Plenty, within the Conservative Party and beyond, think that is highly unlikely.
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UK net migration in 2022 revised up to record 745,000 - BBC News
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2023-12-04
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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New figures show last year's net migration was far higher than previously thought, piling pressure on the PM.
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UK
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Net migration into the UK was a record 745,000 last year, figures show - far higher than originally thought.
Office for National Statistics data published on Thursday show that experts have revised up previous estimates.
In May, it said net migration - the difference between the number of people coming to live in the UK and those leaving - for 2022 had been 606,000, 139,000 lower than the true figure.
No 10 said migration was "far too high" but it was taking action.
PM Rishi Sunak's spokesman said migration was putting "unsustainable pressure on communities and councils" and it was clamping down on dependents of students arriving in the UK. "We believe there is more to do," he added.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said "shockingly high" net migration represented "a failure not just of immigration, but also of asylum and of the economy".
The ONS said the population of England and Wales grew by an estimated 1% in the year to June 2022 - the fastest rate since the baby boom in the 1960s, but this time it was driven by international migration.
But it cautioned its estimates could be revised again - and provisional figures to June of this year suggest the rate of net migration may now be slowing.
Statisticians said in the year to June net migration fell back to 672,000, after 1.2 million people came to live in the UK for at least a year, and 508,000 left.
The vast majority (968,000) arriving were from countries outside the European Union.
Students accounted for the largest group of non-EU migrants, also true of last year.
But there has been an increase in workers arriving with visas to fill chronic staff shortages in the NHS and social care, the ONS said.
Arrivals of people via humanitarian routes have fallen from 19% to 9% over the same period, the ONS said, with most of these made up of Ukrainians and British Nationals (Overseas) arrivals from Hong Kong.
They said estimates showed a marked change in immigration since 2021 following Brexit - when free movement for EU nationals ended, the easing of travel restrictions after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
However, the ONS said it was too early to know whether the latest falling net migration figure was the start of a downward trend, but recent estimates did indicate a slowing of immigration coupled with increasing emigration.
With more than a decade of Conservative-led governments promising to reduce numbers, these latest figures represent a political challenge for the prime minister.
Back in 2010, David Cameron, former Tory PM now foreign secretary, pledged to get net migration below 100,000 - "no ifs, no buts". And the party's 2019 manifesto also committed to bring the rate down, without setting a specific target.
Home Secretary James Cleverly said the government remained "completely committed" to reducing levels of legal migration while also focusing on "stopping the boats", referring to the issue of people making dangerous English Channel crossings in small boats.
He said the ONS figures did not show a "significant increase from last year's figures" and pointed to "a number of important and positive changes" affecting them.
"The biggest drivers of immigration to the UK are students and healthcare workers - [they] are testament to both our world-leading university sector and our ability to use our immigration system to prioritise the skills we need," he said.
He added that he was "proud" the UK had welcomed more than half a million people through humanitarian routes, principally from Hong Kong, Ukraine and Afghanistan, over the last decade but said they still needed to reduce numbers by "eliminating the abuse and exploitation of our visa system by both companies and individuals".
Some Conservative MPs are not convinced by his argument however.
The New Conservative group, on the right of the party, called for Rishi Sunak to "act now" on the "do or die" issue and propose a package of measures to bring down migration.
"Each of us made a promise to the electorate. We don't believe that such promises can be ignored," the group, led by Miriam Cates, Danny Kruger and Sir John Hayes, said in a statement.
It is understood the government is considering some new measures, including:
Downing Street said any next steps needed to be carefully considered.
Labour has criticised the government for the cost of using hotels to house asylum seekers who make up a tiny proportion of overall migration.
Home Office figures, also published on Thursday, showed hotel use reached a record high in September - despite a slight fall in the asylum backlog.
There were 56,042 people in hotel accommodation, while 58,444 people were in "dispersed" accommodation - usually housing provided by the Home Office through private companies.
The number of people in hotels rose by 5,500 over three months while the number in housing stayed broadly the same.
Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the number of asylum seekers in hotels was 10,000 more than when Rishi Sunak promised to end hotel use - and was costing almost £3bn a year.
"Once again, the British taxpayer is footing the bill for the Conservatives' chaos," she said.
The population of England and Wales was estimated to be 60.2 million mid-2022, an increase of around 578,000 - or 1% - since 2021.
The ONS's Neil Park said: "Unlike the baby boom driving population growth in the 1960s, the increases in our latest estimates are predominately being driven by international migration."
He said the picture varied across regions, with growth higher in the north of England than the south, and lowest in London.
Prof Brian Bell told the BBC's World At One programme net migration "is very high in the UK relative to historical trends", adding: "But there's probably some indication it's beginning to fall. I wouldn't want to bet my house on it, but I think the indications are that we've reached the peak."
He said the Government should raise the salary thresholds related to the skilled worker route - which have not been increased for a number of years - as a way to reduce net migration.
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End culture of hatred, says mother of man shot dead in US - BBC News
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2023-12-18
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Glasgow-born Susan Swimm's 23-year-old son Rory was shot dead by a teenager in Utah in October.
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Scotland
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Rory died in Salt Lake City, Utah, a week after his 23rd birthday
A Scottish mother whose son was shot dead in the US has called for an end to the country's "culture of hatred".
Detectives in Utah believe Rory Swimm was killed by a 15-year-old schoolboy who had been given a handgun by his grandfather as a gift.
His Glasgow-born mother Susan and his American father Robb want his death to lead to change.
Susan said there was a culture of hatred among teenagers in the US, and that they needed to be educated to be kind.
Speaking from the family home in Colorado, she said the loss of 23-year-old Rory had devastated friends around the world.
"It's a tsunami of destruction that has spread to Scotland, to Switzerland, to Utah, to Seattle, to Washington, to Montana," she said.
"There's a lack of culpability in America. It's totally fine that you can go out and shoot somebody because it happens all the time here."
She says education needs to begin with young teenagers "to be kind, to have empathy for other people".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Susan and Robb Swimm want something positive to come out of Rory's death
Susan added: "I've had to tell myself hundreds of times a day that Rory's been murdered, that Rory's not going to come home, that my wee boy is dead because somebody shot him.
"I don't believe for a single minute that we can change any of the gun laws in America, but I feel that today within the teenage youth there's a terrible culture of hatred.
"Instead of raising kids to be positive in society, they're being struck down by all the negativity that's out there."
She said parents should be teaching their children empathy and love.
"I feel that it's become acceptable to be full of hate towards your peers in this country," she added.
Rory, a dual UK/US citizen born in Dundee, died in Salt Lake City in Utah in October - a week after his 23rd birthday.
His parents' grief has been compounded by anger after they discovered more about the 15-year-old accused of his murder.
At a memorial service attended by hundreds of people on 21 October, Susan Swimm's American husband Robb asked mourners to cry out a single word: "Why?"
They want something positive to come out of his death, no matter how impossible that might seem in a country so divided over gun control and gun rights.
Robb told BBC Scotland News: "It may not be the biggest story or the worst or the most tragic, but it's only because a gun was involved that there was a murder."
Rory, seen here with his sister Maggie, was a passionate skier and snowboarder
The incident began with an early morning argument between Rory and his friends and three teenagers outside a 7-Eleven convenience store.
According to court papers detailing the investigation by the Salt Lake City Police Department, the two groups hadn't even reached the stage of exchanging blows when a single shot was fired, hitting Rory in the chest.
His friends Jimmy Ledford and Will Griffith later showed Rory's parents where he died.
Jimmy told them: "When the paramedics were trying to figure out what was wrong with him, they lifted up his shirt and that's when we saw the bullet hole in his chest."
Detectives say they found a spent 9mm shell casing 100ft (30m) away.
They used video footage to trace the 15-year-old at his home and discovered a 9mm handgun in a safe in his bedroom.
Jimmy Ledford and Will Griffith were with Rory when he was shot
The police report said the 15-year-old's grandfather told them he had given the teenager the weapon as a present and took him shooting almost weekly.
The suspect is said to have told his friends that he had "shot into the air" instead of aiming.
Under Utah law, he can't be named because of his age.
Rory's parents moved from Scotland to the States when he was six weeks old.
He grew up to be a passionate skier and skateboarder. His family said they would always remember his wild stunts and acrobatics, and ear-to-ear grin.
Every year Rory returned to visit relatives in Scotland. His older brother lives in Glasgow.
Rory Swimm (front centre) with family and friends on their annual Scottish trip to the village of Elie in Fife
At the time of his death, Rory was the 14th killing in Salt Lake City in 2023.
Utah has one of the lowest homicide rates in the United States but it's still twice that of the UK's.
"There's a gun culture in Utah specifically that we're looking to expose," said Robb.
"The biggest tragedy is this was so preventable in so many ways."
He talks of a boycott of America over its gun laws, like the boycott of South Africa over apartheid.
"I don't want my son to just be a statistic, I want him to be remembered in a way that's positive," he said.
"The repercussions of this little act of a finger pulling a trigger ripples in so many directions."
Rory's family placed a memorial wreath at the scene where he was shot
The Swimms said a court hearing in January may determine whether the teenager is tried as a juvenile or an adult, a decision which will have a major impact on potential sentences if he's convicted. Either way, the death penalty would not apply.
The teenager has also been charged with illegal possession of the handgun. He has not yet entered a plea or made public his defence.
Allison Anderman from the Gifford Law Centre, a US gun control campaign group, said: "It is not illegal for someone to buy a gun as a bona fide gift for someone else.
"It seems as though, in Utah, the grandfather could have legally purchased the firearm for his grandson, provided the gun was used only as allowed under state law."
Robb Swimm wants it made illegal to buy a firearm for someone aged under 18 or, failing that, for new restrictions on where weapons given to teenagers can be stored.
"I want to see if we can shake the tree a little bit with this," said Robb.
"I want this whole city of Salt Lake to know who Rory Swimm was. I want everybody in this country to know who Rory Swimm was. And that he got stolen from us, by one bullet."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67694134
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Marvel actor Jonathan Majors guilty of assaulting ex-girlfriend - BBC News
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2023-12-18
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Jonathan Majors, known for starring in the Marvel universe, has been dropped by the Marvel studios.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Majors seen arriving at court on Monday
US actor Jonathan Majors has been found guilty of assaulting his then-girlfriend after a trial in New York.
The jury found Majors, known for playing Kang in the Marvel films, attacked British choreographer Grace Jabbari during an altercation in March.
She told the court she was left with a fractured finger, bruising, a cut behind her ear and "excruciating" pain.
Majors, 34, faces up to a year in jail, and has been dropped from starring roles in forthcoming Marvel movies.
The six-person jury's verdict was announced on Monday following three days of deliberations.
As their decision was read in court, Majors pursed his lips and looked downwards but gave no other reaction, according to reporters in court.
Following the verdict, a spokesperson for Marvel said the studio will not be moving forward with Majors on future projects.
The crime took place when the couple were in a car in New York and Ms Jabbari saw a text message from another woman on Majors' phone, which said: "Wish I was kissing you right now."
According to prosecutors, when she took the phone, he then grabbed her, twisted her arm behind her back and hit her in the head to get it back.
"I felt like a hard blow across my head," Ms Jabbari testified.
The jury found him guilty of two of the four domestic violence charges that he was facing.
He was found guilty of assault by recklessly causing physical injury, as well as harassment.
But the jury declined to convict him on charges of aggravated harassment and assault with intent to cause physical harm.
The prosecution painted the assault as the latest escalation in Majors' attempts to "exert control" over his girlfriend through physical and emotional violence. They shared voice recordings and text messages between the former couple with the jury.
"I'm a monster. A horrible man. Not capable of love," the actor sent in a text in September 2022 while threatening to kill himself.
Grace Jabbari, seen during 2021's London Fashion Week, was a movement coach on Ant-Man and the Wasp
In audio from an argument that same month, Majors told her she needed to act more like Coretta Scott King and Michelle Obama, the wives of Martin Luther King and former President Barack Obama.
"I am doing great things, not just for me but for my culture and the world," he said, adding that she would need to "make sacrifices" for him.
Majors did not testify. His lawyer had argued the actor was the victim, and that Ms Jabbari assaulted him in a jealous rage after seeing the text message in the car.
Majors, who also starred in Creed III, countersued her in June, alleging that she was the aggressor, but prosecutors declined to charge her due to a lack of evidence.
Sentencing will be in February. The judge also issued a new protection order, requiring him to have no contact with Ms Jabbari.
She was "gratified to see justice served" by the verdict, her lawyer said, adding that it should serve as an inspiration for other abused women to come forward.
"Ms Jabbari testified publicly and truthfully, even though reliving these traumatic events on the witness stand was obviously painful," lawyer Ross Kramer said in a statement to BBC News.
Majors shown in a court sketch lowering his eyes as the verdict is read
Jurors were shown CCTV footage of the assault
A lawyer for Majors said in a statement that his legal team is "grateful" that the jury notably did not find that he had intended to cause physical injuries to Ms Jabbari.
"Mr Majors is grateful to God, his family, his friends, and his fans for their love and support during these harrowing eight months," said lawyer Priya Chaudhry.
"Mr Majors still has faith in the process and looks forward to fully clearing his name."
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the criminal charges, said after the verdict that the psychological and emotional abuses carried out by the movie star were "far too common across the many intimate partner violence cases we see each and every day".
Ms Jabbari had met Majors two years earlier on the set of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where she was a movement coach.
After his arrest, Marvel pushed back until 2026 the release of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, in which Majors had been due to play the lead villain.
Another film, Magazine Dreams, which had been touted as a possible Oscar contender, also had its release postponed following the allegations.
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Extinction Rebellion co-founder Gail Bradbrook sentenced - BBC News
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2023-12-18
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Gail Bradbrook has tried to argue she was justified in causing damage to government property.
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London
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Gail Bradbrook (addressing spectators) was joined by a group of supporters dressed as suffragettes for Monday's sentencing hearing
The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion has received a 15-month suspended jail sentence after a marathon legal battle over her breaking a pane of glass.
Dr Gail Bradbrook was convicted last month of causing more than £27,500 of damage to the Department for Transport.
At Isleworth Crown Court, Judge Martin Edmunds KC said Bradbrook had a conscientious motive but that did not excuse her actions.
During the sentencing hearing, she accused judges of "mansplaining".
Bradbrook, from Stroud, Gloucestershire, was joined by a group of supporters dressed as suffragettes. In court, there was applause as the Extinction Rebellion (XR) activist finished her address to Judge Edmunds.
In October 2019, during XR's second major protest that brought traffic chaos to parts of central London, Bradbrook climbed on to an entrance canopy at the headquarters of the Department for Transport (DfT).
She used tools to break a large pane of reinforced security glass, which cost £27,660 to replace.
During her police interview, she said she had been trying to stop crimes against humanity and "had permission from nature" to break the window.
Over two trials she tried to make similar arguments despite being repeatedly directed not to do so by the judge because none of them amounted to a defence that a jury could consider.
On Monday, Bradbrook told Judge Edmunds: "It can't be that there's compelling, objective evidence of a threat to life, and that's just completely irrelevant to the whole legal process.
"I know that is not what justice seeks to serve."
Bradbrook, pictured here causing criminal damage to the DfT window, could be jailed she commits another crime in the next 15 months
Bradbrook's case is one of scores linked to environmental protests since 2018 in which activists said damage, or serious disruption, caused as part of civil disobedience was legally justified.
She accused the courts in these cases of "condescension" and treating activists "as if we were acting in good faith but slightly deranged".
"I've had to listen to judges incorrectly characterising and, worse still, mansplaining the effectiveness of civil disobedience," she said.
Becoming tearful, she concluded: "God help us... life is being actively killed. We are compelled to act. The court systems of the UK are on trial, not myself.
"I wonder how history will judge this sentencing."
Judge Edmunds said Bradbrook had "actively sought" prosecution to attract publicity, and had wrongly tried to tell the jury that her actions had been legally necessary.
"As a matter of law, that was certainly incorrect for damage on this scale," he said.
"I put it down to an echo chamber of misinformation and wishful thinking. In many pre-trial hearings you accepted that the law did not provide you with a defence. Yet throughout, you have sought to avoid those penalties [for damaging the window] rather than accept them."
Dr Gail Bradbrook is a high-profile member of Extinction Rebellion, whose mission statement is to create a culture that is "healthy, resilient and adaptable"
Earlier this year the Court of Appeal ruled that judges hearing environmental protest cases should not evaluate the merits of the cause.
If a protester had been motivated by conscience, and the damage or disruption caused had not been excessive, judges were told to consider reducing the sentence.
Judge Edmunds said that the damage and disruption caused by Bradbrook meant she would have normally have been jailed.
But taking into account the Court of Appeal ruling and wider personal factors he suspended Bradbrook's prison sentence, meaning she could leave court a free woman - but could be jailed if she commits another crime in the next 15 months.
She was also ordered to also carry out 150 hours of unpaid work.
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Prince Harry tells court he wants his children to feel at home in UK - BBC News
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2023-12-08
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The Duke of Sussex is challenging the Home Office over a decision to downgrade his protection.
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UK
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Prince Harry is challenging the fairness of how decisions over his security were made
Prince Harry wants his children to "feel at home" in the UK but they cannot if "it's not possible to keep them safe", the High Court has heard.
Calling the UK his home, the Duke of Sussex said it was "with great sadness" that he and his wife Meghan "felt forced" to leave the country in 2020.
He is challenging the Home Office over a decision to downgrade his security protection when visiting.
The government says his claim should be dismissed.
The court is considering the changes to publicly-funded protection when Prince Harry stopped being a "working royal" in early 2020. After stepping back he moved to the US, where he lives with his wife and their two children, Archie and Lilibet.
The committee that arranges security for members of the Royal Family and other VIPs - known as Ravec - decided in 2020 that Prince Harry would no longer have the automatic level of security for senior royals.
Instead the level of security would be arranged depending on the perceived risk, as is the case with other high-profile visiting dignitaries.
Prince Harry's lawyers say the decision was "unlawful and unfair".
At a hearing on Thursday his barrister, Shaheed Fatima KC, said references by the Home Office's lawyers to the prince no longer being a full-time working royal were "often said in a way that emphasised choice".
But she said he did not accept this.
She read out an excerpt of a statement written by Harry as part of his case, in which he said: "It was with great sadness for both of us that my wife and I felt forced to step back from this role and leave the country in 2020.
"The UK is my home. The UK is central to the heritage of my children and a place I want them to feel at home as much as where they live at the moment in the US. That cannot happen if it's not possible to keep them safe when they are on UK soil.
"I cannot put my wife in danger like that and, given my experiences in life, I am reluctant to unnecessarily put myself in harm's way too."
Thursday marks the end of the two-and-a-half day hearing - much of which concerned security arrangements for senior figures and took place in private.
Prince Harry, who did not attend in person, now waits for a ruling from Mr Justice Lane at a later date.
Earlier this week, Prince Harry's lawyers argued there had been a lack of transparency about the decision and the prince had been not been treated the same way as others.
There was "no good reason for singling out the claimant [Prince Harry] this way," said his legal team.
Ms Fatima KC told the court: "Ravec should have considered the 'impact' a successful attack on the claimant would have, bearing in mind his status, background and profile within the royal family - which he was born into and which he will have for the rest of his life - and his ongoing charity work and service to the public."
But the Home Office's case argued that as the prince was no longer a working royal and lived overseas, "his position has materially changed".
"In those circumstances protective security would not be provided on the same basis as before," said its lawyers.
There will still be publicly-funded police security for Prince Harry, the lawyers said, but these will be "bespoke arrangements, specifically tailored to him", rather than the automatic security provided for full-time working royals.
Sir James Eadie KC, for the Home Office, said in written arguments it was "simply incorrect" to suggest that there was no evidence that the issue of impact was considered, adding that the death of Diana, Princess of Wales - Harry's mother - was raised as part of the decision.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67653280
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Chris Mason: Rwanda bill a reminder of Brexit Tory divisions - BBC News
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2023-12-08
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This weekend different groupings of MPs in the party are scrutinising the government's planned new law on Rwanda.
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UK Politics
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The prime minister will face the Covid enquiry ahead of the vote on Rwanda legislation
It had been a while since I'd heard mention of a "Star Chamber".
But it is back in the lingo of Westminster.
This weekend different groupings of Conservative MPs are scrutinising the government's planned new law on the Rwanda migrants plan.
It will come to a vote on Tuesday.
It is provoking flashbacks for me of the Brexit years, where deep, wide, passionate and angry arguments within the Conservative Party dominated.
Enter next, a grouping of that era, the Conservative European Research Group.
During the Brexit debates, they sought to ensure ministers remained committed to what they saw as a proper Brexit, leaving all the main structures of the EU and not diluted compromise.
Its chairman, Mark Francois said: "We all agree with the prime minister that we need to stop the boats but the legislation to do this must be assuredly fit for purpose.
"To that end, I spoke with Sir Bill Cash this morning, who confirmed that his Star Chamber Team are already analysing the Rwanda Bill, in detail.
"This may still take a few days to complete but he was confident their findings will be available, at the very latest, prior to the Second Reading debate on Tuesday."
There you have it, the Star Chamber of legal experts chaired by Sir Bill is back.
It will want to test the instincts of the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman and the former immigration minister Robert Jenrick who have both concluded the Rwanda Bill is a dud.
The former Home Secretary Suella Braverman thinks the Rwanda legislation is "destined to fail"
Other groupings of different instincts have similar approaches.
A leading member of the so-called One Nation caucus of Conservative MPs told the BBC a decision on whether to vote for, against, or abstain on the Rwanda bill will not be taken until Monday evening's meeting of the group.
However, he described the mood generally as one of "deep concern".
They are taking legal advice from the former Solicitor General Lord Garnier, who told Radio 4's PM programme he'd vote against the bill in the Lords, and that declaring in law that Rwanda was safe was rather like declaring "all dogs are cats".
But here's another twist: These groups are not homogenous and those who appear on their behalf don't represent the views of all of their members.
So where does all this leave Rishi Sunak?
Being at the mercy of clumps of your own backbenchers is never a comfortable place for any prime minister to be in.
Plenty of Tory MPs now think it is entirely possible a sufficient number of their colleagues will register a loss of confidence in Mr Sunak that he faces a vote of confidence.
In all likelihood he would win such a vote, but it even happening would be crippling to his authority.
Let's be clear: It may well not happen.
But a range of folk with a deep knowledge of the parliamentary party think it could.
Oh and one final thought.
Before that moment on Tuesday, Mr Sunak has another big moment on Monday: Appearing at the Covid inquiry.
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Met Police officer speaks of ordeal as knife attacker is sentenced - BBC News
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2023-12-08
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PC Joe Gerrard has spoken to the BBC about his ordeal as the man who tried to kill him is jailed.
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London
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PC Joe Gerrard said officers faced such jeopardy "day in, day out"
A police officer who was stabbed five times has told the BBC that he thought he was going to die.
PC Joe Gerrard suffered a punctured a lung and was unable to work for about a year as a result of the stabbing.
He spoke to BBC London ahead of the sentencing of his attacker Mohammed Rahman for attempted murder.
At Kingston Crown Court on Friday, 25-year-old Rahman was given a life sentence. He received a minimum prison term of 20 years.
Rahman stabbed PC Gerrard and his colleague PC Alannah Mulhall after they responded to a report of a drink being spiked at a nightclub in Soho, on 16 September 2022. PC Mulhall sustained a deep knife wound to her arm.
PC Gerrard said he was left "absolutely dripping in blood" and struggling to breathe. "I knew it was serious and I was thinking 'I'm probably going to die here'," he said.
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Recounting the events leading up to the stabbing, PC Gerrard said he and another female colleague were joined by PC Mulhall and a male officer to deal with the drink-spiking report.
PC Mulhall and the other female officer took the disorientated victim to an ambulance, where a member of the public approached them and said Rahman had taken his phone at knifepoint
At this point, PC Gerrard and his male colleague were making inquiries inside the club.
PCs Gerard and Mulhall are back on duty after long recoveries
"When we were in the ambulance, I can hear an argument going on outside," PC Mulhall said.
"[It] sounds a bit silly but I've never had a gut feeling in my life about anything, but the second I saw the suspect walking towards us, I knew something wasn't right."
The two female officers approached Rahman and he lunged at them before running off.
Alerted to the situation, PC Gerrard and the other male officer went outside.
"There was no-one in the ambulance; our colleagues were gone, there were no paramedics," he said.
PC Gerrard and his colleague soon found the other two officers. Rahman reappeared and was Tasered, but it had little effect due to his thick clothing.
"It's clear he was intent on killing one of us," said PC Gerrard, who tried to restrain him but was stabbed in the arm.
Rahman then turned to PC Mulhall and stabbed her right arm, cutting her down to the bone. "It all happened so quick," she said.
Mohammed Rahman, of Westbourne Park Road in Notting Hill, was convicted of attempted murder and other offences in October
Backup had arrived and Rahman was Tasered again, at which point he dropped his knife.
PC Gerrard tried to kick the knife away from Rahman but the 25-year-old got back up, punched the officer and grabbed the knife again.
"He then grabbed hold of me, grabbed hold of my body-worn camera, and he was just repeatedly stabbing me," PC Gerrard said.
Rahman was finally restrained when he was Tasered once more.
PC Gerrard said: "The injuries have lasted. It has taken me a good year to recover."
He has been back at work for less than two months and remains on limited duties. PC Mulhall, who was off work for five months, is now back on patrol.
"I don't want to let this incident shape my whole life," she said.
Reflecting on the challenges police officers face, PC Gerrard said the situation that night was "not really abnormal".
"We see stuff like this day in, day out. It happens all over London, all over the country; dealing with people brandishing knives, attacking people and hurting people," he said.
"We are not the last police officers to be stabbed. There's been plenty since and, hopefully not, but it will probably happen again."
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Robert Jenrick pledges 'serious reforms' to curb migration - BBC News
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2023-12-05
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Right-wing Tory MPs say they are relying on the immigration minister to take action to cut numbers.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Lee Anderson and Sir Edward Leigh call on Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick for tougher lines on immigration.
Home Office Minister Robert Jenrick has promised to bring forward a "serious package of fundamental reforms" to reduce net migration numbers.
He said there were "strong arguments" for introducing a cap on migration and restricting the number of dependents who can accompany migrants to the UK.
His comments came as he fielded questions from Tory MPs, frustrated at growing migration levels.
Last week, figures revealed that in 2022 net migration hit a record high.
On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said levels of net migration were "too high" and that the government needed to "do more", without giving details of what that might be.
He added that the government's decision earlier this year to restrict certain students from bringing dependents to the UK was "the single biggest measure to bring down legal migration that anyone has ever taken".
Mr Jenrick - together with former Home Secretary Suella Braverman - has been calling for tougher measures to curb legal migration.
Answering an urgent Commons question, he went further than Mr Sunak in setting out what the government is considering, saying "substantive measures" would be announced "as soon as possible".
Asked if these plans would be announced before Christmas, Mr Jenrick said: "My plan would have been brought to the House [of Commons] before last Christmas if I could have done, but let's hope we can bring forward a substantive package of reforms very quickly."
He said that reducing net migration would mean "taking difficult choices" adding: "The public are sick of talk - they want action."
Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said Mr Jenrick would be "furious when he discovers who's been in charge of the immigration system for the last 13 years".
Right-wing Conservative MPs lined up to urge Mr Jenrick to push Mr Sunak to take action.
Sir Edward Leigh said immigration levels had grown in part due to care worker visas being handed out "like sweeties".
He accused the care home sector of paying "starvation wages of £20,000-a -year" to foreign workers and called for the salary threshold for workers coming to the UK to be raised.
Speaking of the immigration minister, Sir Edward said: "We know he is on the right side - he's just got to persuade the prime minister now."
Another Conservative MP, Jonathan Gullis, said Mr Jenrick had his "full support" and added that he was "deeply concerned and confused" by Mr Sunak's approach.
Sir John Hayes argued for further restrictions on the number of dependents allowed to accompany migrants working in the UK. Sir John said: "We are relying on [Mr Jenrick] because we know he shares our concerns."
Deputy Conservative chairman Lee Anderson and MP Marco Longhi both called for a cap on net migration, with Mr Anderson saying his constituents had "had enough".
Mr Jenrick expressed sympathy for the ideas saying there were "strong arguments" for a cap on migration numbers "whether in general or in specific visas".
"But these are conversations that we need to conclude within government," he added.
On salary thresholds for care workers, he said the government needed to "take a more sensible, sustainable attitude to how we pay and look after people in such an important career".
And responding to questions about dependents, he said: "There is a strong argument for saying that it is unsustainable for the country to continue to take so many dependents who, in turn, put pressure on housing, public services, school places and so on.
"With respect to care workers, we have seen a very substantial number of visas issued and an almost one-for-one in terms of those care workers bringing dependents with them. And that is something ... we're actively considering."
Many of the ideas suggested by Conservative MPs echoed proposals Mr Jenrick has already drawn up - but which have not yet been adopted as government policy.
Conservative MPs queued up to urge the government to take action
Responding to the debate in Parliament, a No 10 spokesman said: "We always welcome contributions from MPs on this important debate. We are listening carefully to what they have got to say.
During the question session, Yvette Cooper said: "Net migration should come down. Immigration is important for Britain and always will be, but the system needs to be properly controlled and managed so it's fair and effective and is properly linked to the economy."
She urged the government to ensure salary thresholds for migrant workers would be reviewed.
The SNP's Alison Thewliss said migrants made "our society and economy all the richer".
She asked the government if they had "thought this through - who is going to carry out the vital tasks of those who come to our shores as they raised the drawbridge and send people away.
"Pressures on services are helped by people coming here, not hindered."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67557049
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I'm A Celebrity: Nella Rose eliminated from jungle - BBC News
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2023-12-05
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The influencer is the second contestant to be kicked off the show after getting the fewest public votes.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Nella Rose has left the jungle after being eliminated from I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!
The influencer became the second contestant to be kicked off the ITV reality show after receiving the fewest public votes.
Her 17 days in camp were marked by rows with politician Nigel Farage and First Dates star Fred Siriex after he said was he was old enough to be her dad.
"You shouldn't bring up sensitive topics," she told hosts Ant and Dec.
Rose, who has lost both her parents, said: "In the middle of a disagreement, he brought up a sensitive topic. I didn't understand why he would do that."
Fred had been discussing his age with Nella when he said the common phrase "I could be your dad", which she took offence to because her father died in 2020. Their argument over the exchange attracted 861 Ofcom complaints.
Asked in a post-elimination interview if it was a misunderstanding, she said: "It could have been, but things are so heightened in the jungle that everything is a big thing."
Speaking about being around people from different backgrounds, she said: "So when they have different mindsets, and I hear them, I'm shocked because I'm like, 'People think like this?'"
The internet personality also addressed her row with Farage, the former UKIP and Brexit Party leader, over his views on immigration, which attracted 856 Ofcom complaints.
"I think that Nigel is an amazing person, until he speaks about what he really believes in, and it's like, 'You're a cool guy but why do you think like that?'"
She is yet to address the much-talked about online abuse she received while in the camp.
Nella's exit follows that of jockey Frankie Dettori who left on Sunday.
Previously restaurant critic Grace Dent and Jamie Lynn Spears, sister of Britney Spears, left the show on medical grounds.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67621807
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UK net migration in 2022 revised up to record 745,000 - BBC News
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2023-12-05
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New figures show last year's net migration was far higher than previously thought, piling pressure on the PM.
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UK
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Net migration into the UK was a record 745,000 last year, figures show - far higher than originally thought.
Office for National Statistics data published on Thursday show that experts have revised up previous estimates.
In May, it said net migration - the difference between the number of people coming to live in the UK and those leaving - for 2022 had been 606,000, 139,000 lower than the true figure.
No 10 said migration was "far too high" but it was taking action.
PM Rishi Sunak's spokesman said migration was putting "unsustainable pressure on communities and councils" and it was clamping down on dependents of students arriving in the UK. "We believe there is more to do," he added.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said "shockingly high" net migration represented "a failure not just of immigration, but also of asylum and of the economy".
The ONS said the population of England and Wales grew by an estimated 1% in the year to June 2022 - the fastest rate since the baby boom in the 1960s, but this time it was driven by international migration.
But it cautioned its estimates could be revised again - and provisional figures to June of this year suggest the rate of net migration may now be slowing.
Statisticians said in the year to June net migration fell back to 672,000, after 1.2 million people came to live in the UK for at least a year, and 508,000 left.
The vast majority (968,000) arriving were from countries outside the European Union.
Students accounted for the largest group of non-EU migrants, also true of last year.
But there has been an increase in workers arriving with visas to fill chronic staff shortages in the NHS and social care, the ONS said.
Arrivals of people via humanitarian routes have fallen from 19% to 9% over the same period, the ONS said, with most of these made up of Ukrainians and British Nationals (Overseas) arrivals from Hong Kong.
They said estimates showed a marked change in immigration since 2021 following Brexit - when free movement for EU nationals ended, the easing of travel restrictions after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
However, the ONS said it was too early to know whether the latest falling net migration figure was the start of a downward trend, but recent estimates did indicate a slowing of immigration coupled with increasing emigration.
With more than a decade of Conservative-led governments promising to reduce numbers, these latest figures represent a political challenge for the prime minister.
Back in 2010, David Cameron, former Tory PM now foreign secretary, pledged to get net migration below 100,000 - "no ifs, no buts". And the party's 2019 manifesto also committed to bring the rate down, without setting a specific target.
Home Secretary James Cleverly said the government remained "completely committed" to reducing levels of legal migration while also focusing on "stopping the boats", referring to the issue of people making dangerous English Channel crossings in small boats.
He said the ONS figures did not show a "significant increase from last year's figures" and pointed to "a number of important and positive changes" affecting them.
"The biggest drivers of immigration to the UK are students and healthcare workers - [they] are testament to both our world-leading university sector and our ability to use our immigration system to prioritise the skills we need," he said.
He added that he was "proud" the UK had welcomed more than half a million people through humanitarian routes, principally from Hong Kong, Ukraine and Afghanistan, over the last decade but said they still needed to reduce numbers by "eliminating the abuse and exploitation of our visa system by both companies and individuals".
Some Conservative MPs are not convinced by his argument however.
The New Conservative group, on the right of the party, called for Rishi Sunak to "act now" on the "do or die" issue and propose a package of measures to bring down migration.
"Each of us made a promise to the electorate. We don't believe that such promises can be ignored," the group, led by Miriam Cates, Danny Kruger and Sir John Hayes, said in a statement.
It is understood the government is considering some new measures, including:
Downing Street said any next steps needed to be carefully considered.
Labour has criticised the government for the cost of using hotels to house asylum seekers who make up a tiny proportion of overall migration.
Home Office figures, also published on Thursday, showed hotel use reached a record high in September - despite a slight fall in the asylum backlog.
There were 56,042 people in hotel accommodation, while 58,444 people were in "dispersed" accommodation - usually housing provided by the Home Office through private companies.
The number of people in hotels rose by 5,500 over three months while the number in housing stayed broadly the same.
Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the number of asylum seekers in hotels was 10,000 more than when Rishi Sunak promised to end hotel use - and was costing almost £3bn a year.
"Once again, the British taxpayer is footing the bill for the Conservatives' chaos," she said.
The population of England and Wales was estimated to be 60.2 million mid-2022, an increase of around 578,000 - or 1% - since 2021.
The ONS's Neil Park said: "Unlike the baby boom driving population growth in the 1960s, the increases in our latest estimates are predominately being driven by international migration."
He said the picture varied across regions, with growth higher in the north of England than the south, and lowest in London.
Prof Brian Bell told the BBC's World At One programme net migration "is very high in the UK relative to historical trends", adding: "But there's probably some indication it's beginning to fall. I wouldn't want to bet my house on it, but I think the indications are that we've reached the peak."
He said the Government should raise the salary thresholds related to the skilled worker route - which have not been increased for a number of years - as a way to reduce net migration.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67506641
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Rishi Sunak Covid inquiry live: Eat Out to Help Out was safe and designed to save jobs - Sunak - BBC News
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2023-12-11
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The prime minister, who was chancellor during the pandemic, says the summer 2020 policy was not a major risk.
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UK Politics
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Sighs and groans from public gallery - while Sunak sticks to script
Unlike the scrutiny of some recent witnesses, the questioning of Rishi Sunak by Hugo Keith KC hasn’t been strictly chronological and has appeared broader in its framing. The prime minister — rarely less than disciplined and cautious in public and even more rarely lured by the temptation to use colourful language — stuck to his principal and unsurprising argument that the country’s economic welfare was his primary concern. We heard of real worry in the Treasury in March 2020 that the government was briefly struggling to borrow money. This was resolved but Sunak pointed out the consequences of having to do so then still has economic consequences now. And without ever saying it pithily, there is a recurring theme of the prime minister saying he constantly emphasised in private the downsides of lockdown measures while accepting that public messaging had to be more simply expressed, especially in the early months. The frequency with which Sunak has said he is unable to recall particular meetings has become a source of irritation in the public gallery — the sighs and groans from some of the relatives of the bereaved became louder during the morning session.
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Israel-Gaza: The status quo is smashed. The future is messy and dangerous - BBC News
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2023-12-11
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Even when the war between Israel and Hamas ends, there is no easy future, the BBC's Jeremy Bowen says.
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Middle East
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At the end of the war that started on 7 October lies a big, unknown place called the future. The old status quo was dangerous and painful, especially for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But it was familiar. Then after 7 October it was smashed by the Hamas attacks, and Israel's response.
The shock of war can speed up change, when it sweeps away old thinking, forcing difficult choices for a better future. Or it drives leaders and their citizens deeper into their bunkers, as they prepare for the next round.
For more than a century, Jews and Arabs have been confronting each other, and sometimes going to war, over control of the small, highly coveted piece of land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Perhaps the safest, saddest bet is to assume that the conflict, reshaped, will go on. After all, that is what has happened after every other Middle East war since 1948, when Israel won its independence.
But there are other options. Here are some of the arguments made by individuals at the centre of events.
Israel's prime minister has not spelt out his plan for the day after, if he has one. His opponents in Israel, who blame him for security and intelligence failures that made the Hamas attacks on 7 October possible, say Netanyahu's only real plan is to stay in power and avoid conviction on the serious corruption charges he faces.
Netanyahu built his career on the message he was Mr Security, the only man who could keep Israel safe. Hamas shattered his brand, which was already badly damaged by political strife inside Israel.
Netanyahu has not spelt out his plans for Gaza after the war ends
The prime minister's broad statements about what happens after the war, assuming Israel can declare victory, all point to continued occupation of Gaza. Israeli officials have reportedly talked about setting up buffer zones along the border, without offering any details.
Netanyahu has rejected a role for foreign peacekeepers, assuming they can be found. Jordan's foreign minister Ayman Safadi has already said that Arab states would not "clean the mess" left by Israel.
"There will be no Arab troops going to Gaza. None. We are not going to be seen as the enemy."
Netanyahu has also dismissed US President Joe Biden's plan to replace Hamas with the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu claims the PA cannot be trusted and supports terrorism, even though it recognises Israel and cooperates with it on security.
President Biden's vision of the future is very different to Benjamin Netanyahu's. Biden continues to give considerable military, diplomatic and emotional support to Israelis. He visited, embraced the families of hostages and has ordered his diplomats at the United Nations Security Council to use the US veto to block ceasefire resolutions. Biden ordered two aircraft carrier strike groups to the region and has sent Israel vast amounts of weaponry.
In return, the US president wants Israel to return to some kind of revitalised peace process. He wants the Palestinian Authority (PA) eventually to run Gaza while Israel agrees arrangements for an independent Palestine alongside Israel.
The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas agrees. He has largely been a bystander since 7 October. In a rare interview this week, with Reuters, he said there should be a peace conference after the war to work out a political solution that would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Biden wants a revitalised peace process in the region
The "two state solution" has been the official objective of America and its western allies since the early 1990s. Years of negotiations to make it happen failed. For almost a quarter of a century, since the peace process collapsed, the phrase has been an empty slogan. Biden wants to revive it, arguing correctly that only a political solution will end the conflict.
Biden sent his vice president, Kamala Harris, to Dubai last week to make a speech laying out America's red lines for Gaza on the day after.
She laid out five principles.
"No forcible displacement, no re-occupation, no siege or blockade, no reduction in territory, and no use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism."
"We want to see a unified Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian voices and aspirations must be at the centre of this work."
In and out of office, Benjamin Netanyahu has worked consistently hard to thwart Palestinian independence. It is safe to say he is not about to change his mind. If the two-state solution can be revived, it won't happen while he is prime minister.
I went to see Simcha Rotman at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, where he is a prominent MP for the far-right Religious Zionist Party. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu depends on the support of Rotman's party and other hard-line Jewish nationalists. Their power comes from the dynamism of the movement to settle Jews on the land captured in 1967. From that moment of victory, some Israelis were set on extending the Zionist enterprise into the newly occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
Since 1967 they have been highly successful, despite being forced to leave Gaza when Israel pulled out in 2005. Around 700,000 Israeli Jews now live in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Settler leaders are in the cabinet, and their enterprise is at the centre of Israeli politics.
Simcha Rotman is a prominent MP for the far-right Religious Zionist Party
Now that Israel is fighting Hamas, vowing to smash the organisation once and for all, Jewish nationalists see the biggest opportunity they have had since 1967, when Israel beat all its Arab neighbours in a war that lasted for six days.
Since 7 October, armed settlers in the West Bank, backed by soldiers and police, have prevented Palestinian farmers from harvesting their olives or tending their fields. Settlers have paved illegal roads and sought to entrench themselves even deeper by consolidating outposts that are illegal under Israeli as well as international law. Posters are everywhere demanding the return of Jewish settlers to Gaza.
Settlers have also killed Palestinians and invaded their homes. Men with bulldozers came at night to destroy the tiny village of Khirbet Zanuta, near Hebron. Its population of 200 Palestinians had already left, forced out by armed and aggressive settlers.
International law says an occupying power should not settle its citizens in land it has captured. Israel says the law does not apply.
"Occupation is not the word," Simcha Rotman told me at the Knesset.
"You cannot occupy your own land. Israel is not an occupier in Israel because that's the land of Israel."
For Simcha Rotman and other Jewish nationalists, Gaza is also part of the land of Israel.
"We need to make sure that the only people that are in charge of our security in the land of Israel are the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]. We cannot have any terrorist organisation, doesn't matter what its name. Would it be Hamas? Would it be Fatah? Doesn't matter. The terrorist organisation cannot have control of our lives."
If there are Palestinian elections after the 7 October war ends, Mustafa Barghouti is likely to run for president. He is the secretary general of the Palestine National Initiative. It wants to be the third force in Palestinian politics, an alternative to the Islamist extremists in Hamas and to Fatah, the faction led by President Mahmoud Abbas, which it regards as corrupt and incompetent. Barghouthi believes resistance to occupation is legitimate and legal, though he wants it to be non-violent.
In his office in Ramallah on the West Bank, Mustafa Barghouthi told me that Israel is using the war to deliver a crushing blow not just to Hamas but to the idea of Palestinian independence and freedom. Like many Palestinians, Barghouthi sees what's happening as a grim echo of the events of 1948 when Israel won its independence and more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced at gunpoint to leave their homes in what became Israel. Palestinians call it al-Naqba, "the catastrophe" and believe Israel wants it to happen again.
Mustafa Barghouti is the secretary general of the Palestine National Initiative
"I am 100% sure that their main goal right from the beginning was the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, trying to push people to Egypt, a terrible war crime. And if they managed to do so, I think their next goal will be to try to ethnically cleanse the West Bank and force people to join them."
"If they fail to ethnically cleanse all Gazans, I am sure that Netanyahu's plan B is to annexe Gaza City and the north of Gaza completely to Israel and claim it as a security area."
Barghouthi warns that Israel faces dire prospects if its troops stay in Gaza long term.
"Israel did that before and it didn't work. And there will be resistance to their occupation, which they cannot tolerate. And that's why Netanyahu's goal really is to ethnically cleanse people. He wants to have military control of Gaza without people. He knows very well that Gaza with people is something that is unmanageable."
Barghouthi believes Gaza should be part of a democratic Palestinian state.
"We Palestinians are grown up people. We don't need any patronage of anybody. And no, we don't need any other country to tell us how we should rule ourselves."
This crisis looks as if it will have more chapters. The US veto of the latest ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council gives Israel more time to wage war. But that extra time is not indefinite, and continued Biden support for Israel carries a political price in America's coming election year. Influential members of his own Democratic party oppose what he's doing, and so do younger voters whose support he needs. The Biden Administration is already deeply uncomfortable that Israel is ignoring its repeated requests to protect civilians and respect the laws of war.
Israel may struggle to achieve the crushing victory Benjamin Netanyahu has promised. He set a high bar for victory; not just annihilating Hamas as a military force, but also destroying its capacity to govern. Israel's vast military power, reinforced by American resupply, has not yet destroyed the capacity of Hamas to fight. The Hamas creed of Islamist nationalism is also embedded in the minds of many Palestinians. Guns often don't kill ideas but reinforce them.
The future is messy and dangerous. The war in Gaza will not end neatly.
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Covid inquiry: Eat Out To Help Out curbed devastating job losses - PM - BBC News
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2023-12-11
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Rishi Sunak defends the scheme and says advisers and ministers had "ample" chances to raise concerns.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Defending Eat Out to Help Out - Rishi Sunak's day at the Covid inquiry
Rishi Sunak has robustly defended his Eat Out To Help Out scheme, implemented in summer 2020, saying it prevented "devastating" job losses.
The scheme encouraged people to attend pubs and restaurants by subsidising meals after lockdown rules were eased.
Mr Sunak said it was introduced after the safe reopening of restaurants.
He dismissed criticism that senior advisers were not consulted, saying they had had "ample opportunity" to raise concerns.
In previous sessions of the inquiry Matt Hancock and Sir Patrick Vallance - the health secretary and the government's chief scientific adviser during the pandemic - have both said they did not know about the Eat Out To Help Out Scheme before it was announced.
The inquiry has also been told that chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty referred to the scheme as "eat out to help out the virus" and Sir Patrick said it was "highly likely" to have fuelled deaths.
However, Mr Sunak - who was chancellor during the pandemic - strongly backed his decision to introduce the scheme.
More on Covid and the Covid Inquiry
He said it was announced on 8 July and came into force at the beginning of August, and that in that period the chief medical officer had identified children returning to school, and winter, as "two significant risk moments".
"He did not mention Eat Out To Help Out," Mr Sunak said.
He also argued it was a "micro policy" introduced along with other safety measures such as table-only service, contactless payments and one-way systems.
"This was a very reasonable, sensible policy intervention to help safeguard those jobs in that safe reopening.
"I didn't believe that it was a risk. I believe it was the right thing to do.
"All the data, all the evidence, all the polling, all the input from those companies suggested that unless we did something, many of those jobs would have been at risk with devastating consequences for those people and their families."
He added that the evidence "conclusively demonstrates that this was in no way, shape or form responsible for a second wave".
Protestors gathered outside the inquiry where Mr Sunak was giving evidence
Rishi Sunak served food at Wagamama as part of a promotional event for Eat Out to Help Out
Mr Sunak was also asked about claims the Treasury had been nicknamed the "pro-death squad" due to its stance on keeping hospitality and retail sectors open.
The prime minister said that wasn't "a fair characterisation", adding that the Treasury had worked "very hard" and "done things to save millions of people's livelihoods".
He argued that the sectors most impacted by the lockdown, such as retail and hospitality, were more likely to employ "the most vulnerable in society" such as those on the lowest incomes.
He said trying to protect jobs in those areas was a "matter of social justice".
The inquiry has also heard criticism about Boris Johnson's leadership style, with advisers saying he had a tendency to change his mind.
However, Mr Sunak defended his former boss, saying his interactions with No 10 "felt fine" and that Mr Johnson was right to "go over the arguments".
He added he was not aware of complaints from advisers about Mr Johnson's approach.
The prime minister began his evidence by saying he was "deeply sorry" to all of those who lost loved ones and family members in the pandemic.
He also offered an apology to "all those who suffered in the various different ways throughout the pandemic as a result of the actions that were taken".
He added it was "important we learn the lessons so we can better prepare in the future".
Speaking after the six-hour hearing, Aamer Anwar, the lead solicitor for the Scottish Covid Bereaved group, said: "Rishi Sunak's one-man mission to torpedo lockdown to gain a competitive advantage resulted in the false economy of sacrificing tens of thousands of lives to save the economy.
"Today the Covid bereaved do not accept his empty words of sorrow."
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I'm A Celebrity winner named after Sam Thompson, Tony Bellew and Nigel Farage made final - BBC News
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2023-12-11
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Sam Thompson, Tony Bellew and Nigel Farage were the last men standing on the reality TV show.
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Entertainment & Arts
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Sam Thompson said winning was "a dream come true"
An average audience of 6.6 million watched this year's finale of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, overnight ratings show.
Made In Chelsea star Sam Thompson was crowned king of the jungle in the ITV reality show's final on Sunday.
Thompson held off competition from boxer Tony Bellew and former UKIP and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage.
Viewing figures will be significantly higher when those watching later and on other platforms are added.
Although overnight figures have been lower than last year's, consolidated figures show episodes have generally attracted audiences of well over eight million - making it still one of the most popular programmes ITV makes.
Of the three finalists, Thompson was the bookmakers' favourite to win. The reality star and DJ, who has ADHD, endeared himself to many viewers with his positive personality and attitude.
Former heavyweight Bellew was second, with Farage - who was the best-paid campmate with a reported £1.5m fee - in third.
Figures released by ITV show Thompson won with 56.6% of the vote, to Bellew's 43.4%.
The earlier vote, before Nigel Farage was eliminated, saw the politician take 25.8% of the vote share, against Bellew's 30.9% and Thompson's 43.3%.
The three finalists were among 12 celebrities who entered the Australian jungle three weeks ago - although Bellew and Frankie Dettori joined a few days after the launch.
Thompson said he was "really overwhelmed" by his win, adding: "I didn't think I was even going to be invited onto this show, let alone be sat here [on the winner's throne]."
He told viewers: "I am so grateful, thank you so much. I've dreamed of doing this show and being invited on for years and years, and you've just made a boy's dream come true."
Thompson's likeable and enthusiastic personality proved to be a hit with viewers.
Earlier on Sunday's final, he said being on the show had been "like a dream that I don't even want you to wake me up from".
"I've had the best time and I'm the luckiest person in the world," he told hosts Ant & Dec.
That positivity came despite being asked to eat items including a pig's vagina and a camel's penis in the last bushtucker trial.
Left-right: Sam Thompson, Tony Bellew and Nigel Farage were in the final
Thompson has improved on his third-place finish on Celebrity Big Brother in 2017. He left Made In Chelsea in 2019 and currently hosts a show on Hits Radio and co-presented the official Love Island podcast.
Thompson's girlfriend is Zara McDermott, who found fame on Love Island before moving to Made In Chelsea and then this year's Strictly Come Dancing.
She posted a video of herself with other supporters cheering when Thompson was named the I'm A Celebrity... winner.
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On the way to the I'm A Celebrity final, Thompson was praised for talking about receiving an ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) diagnosis last year.
"I'm not ashamed of having ADHD in any way," he said last week. "But I know that I would have felt better about myself at school if I had been diagnosed with it at a younger age.
"Because I really was just like, 'I just suck at everything.'"
Farage's supporters rallied for him to win, but the GB News presenter said he "couldn't be more thrilled" with the third-placed finish.
Despite some disagreements during the show, the divisive political figure said he was surprised the other contestants were so nice to him.
"It was interesting. Obviously there were people there that have very different views on Brexit and other subjects, and I never raised one political debate in there - not one in the whole time I was there," he said.
"Others did with me, but I think I managed to persuade them that we should respect the right of the other person to have a different point of view. And I had no screaming arguments... But we had proper debates. And I think in the end, I hope, the other candidates respected my point of view."
However, a heated conversation about immigration between Farage and YouTuber Nella Rose attracted more than 800 complaints to media regulator Ofcom.
An average of 8.3 million people watched the show every night during the first two weeks of the series, according to consolidated ratings, which are not yet available for the final week.
That is down by more than two million on the same period last year, when footballer Jill Scott went on to win.
However, the 2022 series attracted a higher audience than the previous year due to the huge media interest in former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who finished third.
Following Hancock and Farage's controversial involvement, the show's presenters Ant and Dec recently called for a year without politicians in the line-up.
Asked recently whether Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was a potential future campmate, Dec said: "I think we do a year without any politicians."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67661729
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Prince Harry to pay legal costs to Mail on Sunday - BBC News
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2023-12-11
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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The Duke of Sussex faces £48,000 in legal costs after losing part of an ongoing libel battle.
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UK
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Prince Harry will have to pay more than £48,000 in legal costs to the publishers of the Mail on Sunday, after losing part of a libel battle.
It follows a failed attempt by his lawyers to strike out part of a defence against a libel claim he is bringing against the newspaper.
The libel claim itself can still go ahead to a trial, to be heard between mid-May and the end of July next year.
The dispute relates to an article about Prince Harry's security arrangements.
The Mail on Sunday article had discussed changes to the prince's publicly funded security that had happened after he had stopped being a working royal and had moved to the United States.
In this long-running libel case, the prince has claimed the story falsely suggested he had "lied" and "cynically" tried to manipulate public opinion.
The headline said the duke had "tried to keep his legal fight with the government over police bodyguards a secret", but that his "PR machine tried to put a positive spin on the dispute" after the story broke.
The prince's lawyers had sought to throw out Associated Newspapers' defence, arguing it had "no real prospect of success" - but in a ruling last week, the judge rejected this, saying that the case should go forward to a trial.
Mr Justice Nicklin said the newspaper group's argument that this was "honest opinion" had a "real prospect" of successfully defending the case.
He also said there was a real prospect of the newspaper proving its side of a dispute over the timing of when Prince Harry first offered to make a private payment towards the cost of his police protection.
The libel claims will now be decided in a trial, expected to last three to four days.
The costs in this part of the case, £48,447 to be paid this month, will be only a small fraction of the overall legal costs.
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Rudy Giuliani must pay more than $148m over false election claims - BBC News
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2023-12-15
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Donald Trump's former personal lawyer was sued by ex-poll workers he accused of vote tampering.
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US & Canada
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Watch: Rudy Giuliani says he plans to appeal 'absurd' penalty
Rudy Giuliani, a longtime associate of former President Donald Trump, has been ordered to pay more than $148m (£116m) to two women over false claims they tampered with votes in 2020.
A judge had already found Mr Giuliani liable of making defamatory claims about Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea "Shaye" Moss.
Ms Moss said after the verdict that the past few years had been "devastating".
The verdict came after a four-day trial to determine the penalty.
On Friday, the eight-person jury ordered $20m payments for defamation to be made to each victim.
They were also each awarded over $16m for emotional distress, the jury ruled. Another payment of $75m in punitive damages was ordered to be split between them.
They had originally sought between $15m and $43m in damages from Mr Giuliani, Mr Trump's former personal lawyer.
Addressing reporters outside the court, Mr Giuliani said: "I don't regret a damn thing."
Michael Gottlieb, the lawyer for Ms Freeman and Ms Moss, said during closing arguments on Thursday that Mr Giuliani was "patient zero" of the misinformation.
He said that, during three days of evidence and testimony, the jury had "experienced a sliver of the unspeakable horror that [Ms Freeman and Ms Moss] suffered".
He said a stiff financial penalty was necessary to "send a message" to Mr Giuliani and to "any other powerful figure with a platform".
Mr Giuliani had been expected to testify in his own defence on Thursday, but those plans were abruptly cancelled.
"Honestly, I didn't believe it would do any good," Mr Giuliani said after the verdict on Friday, adding that he planned to appeal the "absurd" penalty.
Mr Giuliani is worth about $50m, according to an estimate by CBS News, the BBC's US partner.
His lawyers earlier urged the jury to be measured as they considered the penalty.
They said that, although the former mayor of New York did spread lies after the 2020 presidential election, he was not as responsible - or as malicious - as lawyers for the two women argued.
In courtroom testimony in Washington DC on Wednesday, Ms Freeman recounted having to flee her home after a group of Trump supporters gathered outside and the FBI told her she was in danger.
The incident happened after Mr Giuliani shared a video of them, which he falsely said showed evidence of ballot tampering.
Ruby Freeman (in front) and her daughter Shaye Moss say they are still rebuilding their lives
"I took it as though they were going to hang me with their ropes on my street," Ms Freeman said. "I was scared. I didn't know if they were coming to kill me."
Ms Freeman said that she was left isolated by Mr Giuliani's actions. Friends and acquaintances grew afraid to be linked to her, she said, and she has felt forced to live a life of seclusion because of lingering fears she will be recognised publicly.
Addressing reporters on Friday, the women said that more lawsuits may be forthcoming for other public figures that had spread lies about them.
"They must be held accountable too," said Ms Freeman.
"Money will not solve all of my problems," she continued. "I can't move home, I will always have to be careful... I miss my home, I miss my neighbours and I miss my name."
The trial in Washington DC was just one of the legal cases Mr Giuliani is facing.
In Georgia, Mr Giuliani faces criminal charges, including making false statements, in an election-subversion case against Mr Trump. Mr Giuliani has pleaded not guilty.
A former business associate is also suing him for $10m over sexual harassment claims.
And according to recent court filings from the Internal Revenue Service, Mr Giuliani owes more than half a million dollars in federal taxes.
In September, Mr Trump reportedly hosted a $100,000-a-plate dinner at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to raise money for a legal defence fund for Mr Giuliani.
Back in 2018, Mr Giuliani's divorce case heard claims of his lavish spending. His ex-wife, Judith Giuliani, said that in a five-month period he spent nearly a million dollars.
This was said to include $12,012 on cigars, $7,131 on fountain pens, $286,000 on an alleged mistress, $447,938 "for his own enjoyment" and $165,000 on travel.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67723332
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'Betrayed' Afghan special forces references ignored - BBC News
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2023-12-15
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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Members of the Afghan special forces were denied help under a UK scheme to settle those in danger.
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UK Politics
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Some British Army members who say they tried to vouch for Afghan special forces, who are now in danger of being sent back to the Taliban, were never contacted by the Ministry of Defence.
Multiple sources have told the BBC that some people who offered to give Afghan soldiers references never heard back.
Many of the soldiers were subsequently denied help by a scheme designed to settle those in danger in the UK.
The Cabinet Office says it is "working across government to meet our commitment to resettle eligible Afghans in the UK".
The issue has resulted in tensions between two senior ministers.
About 200 members of Afghan special forces, trained and funded by the UK, currently living in Pakistan face imminent deportation to Afghanistan, BBC Newsnight reported this week.
The men were told they did not fall under the UK's Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP), which was designed to help those who served alongside the UK military.
But members of the armed forces who served with them have called their treatment a betrayal.
Over the course of nearly two decades, the British trained, funded and worked with two units of Afghan special forces, CF-333 and ATF-444, collectively known as the Triples.
They were elite troops who went on the most challenging missions, often alongside British special forces.
When the Taliban returned to Afghanistan in 2021, the Triples were considered to be top of their list for retribution. Some managed to escape in the chaotic evacuation of Kabul, but many did not.
Those who were left behind either in Afghanistan or neighbouring countries were told to seek help from the UK's ARAP scheme.
The policy states it was set up to help "Afghan citizens who worked for or with the UK government in Afghanistan in exposed or meaningful roles", a criteria any of those who fought alongside the Triples were certain they met.
Many Triples were given references by their British colleagues. One of them was Alex, a former British soldier, who said: "I provided details about the individual that I served with on the ground in Afghanistan to the ARAP team and never got a response.
"I am aware of a number of other people who served alongside the Triples and never received any contact from the MoD or ARAP.
"The cases were all rejected in the first place and were then rejected on appeal."
BBC Newsnight has heard evidence from multiple sources that people who offered to provide those references were never contacted by the ARAP team, before the case was rejected.
Supporters of the Triples have said it led to a large number of former special forces being left in limbo in Afghanistan and neighbouring countries.
"We talk a lot about veterans and their mental health," said Alex.
British and Afghan special forces fought together in Afghanistan
"To think that you've left these people behind, you hear what they're going through. They were looking after you on the ground and you can't help them."
Previously it has said: "Each ARAP application is assessed individually and in accordance with published policy, and we do not automatically make a decision on eligibility based on a job role."
Following the BBC's report, armed forces minister James Heappey defended the government's record in the Commons on Monday.
He said that identification was a huge issue, telling MPs: "There is also the reality of how hard it is to verify the service of those who just served in the unit rather than explicitly alongside UK personnel."
Alex said: "It makes me so angry, particularly to hear the minister say that it's hard to verify these people, when they've clearly made no attempt to verify them, not even reaching out to their own people."
The armed forces minister also told the Commons: "CF333 and ATF444, known as the Triples, were Afghan-led taskforces set up to counter drug trafficking and organised crime and they reported into the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs. They are therefore a component of the Afghan national security forces and are not automatically in scope for relocation under ARAP."
But on Wednesday, his government colleague Johnny Mercer, the minister for veterans, appeared to contradict him.
Mr Mercer said: "I am clear that we have a duty to these individuals. While technically the minister for armed forces was right that they were led and had direct command chains into the Afghan government, there will be no attempt whatsoever from this government to close down avenues for those who served in 333 and 444."
Security Minister Tom Tugendhat weighed in behind Mr Mercer, posting on X: "Many of us served alongside TF333/444. They were integral to our combat strength. Good to hear @JohnnyMercerUK's words."
The pair are among a number of MPs who served alongside the Triples, resulting in clear tensions within government.
Another issue at the heart of the row was pay. The Ministry of Defence has maintained that the Triples were employed by the Afghan interior ministry, rather than the British.
Tory MP Adam Holloway said in the Commons that he had been told by a friend that the MoD position was "the most ludicrous argument I have heard in my life. If it was not so sad, it would be hilarious."
BBC Newsnight has been told by a former officer, who had intimate knowledge of the Triples, that they were explicitly paid by the British.
The officer told us the money "would be apportioned and delivered in person by a British officer and then signed for by the Afghan personnel who would then take it away and we would keep the invoice, which would then be sent back so that it was it was above board and the money was all accounted for."
The cash payments ranged from a few hundred dollars for a soldier to around $1,000 for an officer, at least doubling their wage.
"We didn't store that amount of cash in and just deal with it autonomously," the officer told me. "It came from high headquarters in London."
This new evidence contradicts one of the key arguments made in relation to the Triples, namely that the records of their employment do not exist.
The officer said it would be "fairly easily derived information to the effect that the money changed hands and the audit for the money exists somewhere. If they needed to find out, they could find out."
Names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67714584
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Supreme Court declines to fast-track Trump immunity case - BBC News
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2023-12-23
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['https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews']
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This will aid Mr Trump's efforts to delay his trial, as the case must now work through appeals.
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US & Canada
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Donald Trump's lawyers argued the effort to expedite his trial was politically motivated.
The US Supreme Court has declined, for now, to decide whether former President Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Mr Trump's efforts to delay his trial appear to be working, as the case must now wind through the appeals process.
Special counsel Jack Smith had asked the court to take up the case in an expedited manner.
Mr Trump was indicted on election subversion charges earlier this year.
The court did not explain its decision, instead issuing an unsigned order saying that Mr Smith's petition "is denied".
The ruling is a setback for Mr Smith, who had asked the Supreme Court to intervene early for fear that the appeals process could delay the start of Mr Trump's trial, which was scheduled to begin on 4 March in Washington DC.
Mr Smith's office declined to comment on the ruling.
Mr Trump is being investigated for his alleged attempts to overturn the election leading up to the 6 January Capitol riot.
This delay marks a procedural victory for the former president, as his legal team appears intent on postponing the trial for as long as possible.
District Judge Tanya Chutkan has paused the case while Mr Trump appeals. The former president is claiming he is immune from prosecution because he was acting in his official capacity as president before and during the riot.
In court filings, Mr Smith argued the Supreme Court should consider the case because it presented "a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune" from being prosecuted for federal crimes allegedly committed while in the White House.
"The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request," he added. "This is an extraordinary case."
In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, Mr Trump said the Supreme Court had rejected a "desperate attempt to short circuit our Great Constitution", adding that he was "entitled to Presidential Immunity".
Mr Trump's lawyers had argued the request to expedite the trial was politically motivated, claiming in court filings that it was part of an effort to "ensure that President Trump - the leading Republican candidate for President, and the greatest electoral threat to President Biden - will face a months-long criminal trial at the height of his presidential campaign".
The ruling means the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit will have to hear the case before it can be appealed to the Supreme Court. It is expected that the US's highest court will eventually have to issue a ruling.
The appeals process may delay the start date of the trial, however, which prosecutors had hoped to hold before the election.
The concern for prosecutors is that the closer it gets to election day, the more mired in politics the case becomes. And if Mr Trump's attorneys succeed in pushing the date past the election the trial could be delayed indefinitely.
The possibility also looms that, with pressure from a newly inaugurated President Trump, a delayed case could be dropped entirely.
"Trump's delay strategy appears to be working," Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, told the BBC.
"All of [this] will consume time, and, thus, complicate efforts to start the trial before Judge Chutkan on the early March date."
The appeal comes after Judge Chutkan had previously rejected Mr Trump's immunity claims, writing in a ruling that the former president's "four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens".
In the meantime, however, arguments are set to be heard in the case in DC Circuit Court on 9 January.
Mr Trump currently faces dozens of criminal charges across four cases, including two related to his alleged election subversion efforts.
Friday's decision by the high court suggests that its nine justices are reluctant to insert themselves into Mr Trump's ongoing legal drama if at all possible.
That may hint at how the court handles some of the numerous high-profile legal challenges involving Mr Trump that will end up on the court's doorstep in the coming months.
The former president faces other charges in Florida, also brought by Mr Smith, for his handling of classified documents.
The decision on Friday also comes after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that Mr Trump could no longer appear on the state's 2024 Republican primary ballot because of a constitutional insurrection clause.
The justices ruled Mr Trump was ineligible as a candidate because of his actions related to the Capitol riots.
The former president has appealed that case to the US Supreme Court.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67808655
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news_world-us-canada-67808655
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