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Whether in the Irish Sea or the Channel, the legacy of separation from the single market is pointless friction and economic pain The first fallacy of Brexit was that leaving the European Union would be a one-off event. It was bound to be an open-ended process. This week’s anniversary of the day of separation coincides with two developments illustrating the perpetual nature of a project that was, in the promise of Boris Johnson’s 2019 election campaign, meant to be “done” four years ago. On Wednesday the government published proposed changes to Northern Ireland’s trading arrangements. This is the deal that has persuaded the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) to resume power-sharing at Stormont. The core DUP objection to the Brexit settlement has been exceptional customs arrangements for Northern Ireland. These imply a degree of constitutional detachment from the UK that is unacceptable to unionists. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/PTqIzxk

Bucharest court upholds restriction on online influencer, who is charged with human trafficking and rape A Romanian court has rejected an appeal by the online influencer Andrew Tate to ease judicial control measures imposed while the legal case continues in which he is charged with human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. The Bucharest court of appeal’s decision on Tuesday upheld a ruling by another court on 18 January that extended by 60 days the geographical restrictions against Tate, 37, stipulating that he cannot leave the country. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/bO4eAsu

After their emphatic victory in court this week the drag artist, real name Colin Seymour, says the anxiety hasn’t gone away The drag artist Crystal may have marked Monday by winning an emphatic libel victory against the rightwing activist Laurence Fox but celebrations after the judgment were muted. That was partly thanks to the date – “I’m trying to do dry January” – and partly because the performer had agreed to appear on Sky News on Tuesday morning, which meant a 3am start to fit in two hours of meticulous drag makeup. Crystal , real name Colin Seymour, and Simon Blake, a former Stonewall trustee, had sued the former actor after he called each of them a paedophile on X (formerly Twitter) in October 2020. In response, Fox countersued Seymour, Blake and Nicola Thorp, a former Coronation Street actor, saying all three had defamed him by calling him racist in tweets of their own, which were in response to comments he made criticising support for Black History Month. Continue reading....

The Trump-Smiths feud is the latest episode in a story that re-emerges every four years: the war between musicians and politicians over campaign songs Somewhere in Donald Trump’s orbit, embedded among the wild conspiracy theorists, worshipful toadies and dead-eyed schemers, there’s a Smiths fan. This fact came to the nation’s attention last week after a video showed a Trump rally blasting the 1984 B-side Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want over the PA. And Johnny Marr, the onetime Smiths guitarist, wasn’t happy – in a tweet, the songwriter told fans to “consider this shit shut right down”. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/P4vtVXL

New parenthood can be isolating, but these solutions are helping some people feel happier and more socially connected A few toddlers and their parents walk into a bar. By about 5pm, it’s popping off; thirty-odd children play on the floor while parents, many with babies in arms, mingle, sip cocktails and order tacos from a food truck outside. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/FytuHOl

The dwindling band of UK loyalists should send a message that exiting to the US is not as easy as flicking a switch Flutter, the FTSE 100 gambling firm that owns Paddy Power, Betfair and Sky Bet, has been teasing us for the past year about moving its primary share listing to the US “in due course”. Now, on the first day of New York trading in its shares in add-on secondary form, the company says it likes the place so much it wants to go all in . Shareholders will vote in May on a proposal to relegate the London listing to secondary status, which would amount to making it virtually irrelevant, and adopt New York for the primary. The lure of membership of the S&P 500 index beats the (dwindling) prestige of the Footsie. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/fIjJV5M

Teams meet with place in Super Bowl LVIII on the line Championship Game predictions: who will win out? The other football: sign up for Jonathan Wilson’s soccer newsletter Email David with your thoughts or tweet @LengelDavid National Anthem The anthem is done extremely well by the Morgan State Choir, I give it 8/10. Ray Lewis makes an appearance to fire up the crowd. It’s 47 degrees, about three degrees Celsius, a chance of rain and a wee bit of wind. Here comes kickoff! Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/CPf3MqW

Jürgen Klopp raised a smile after You’ll Never Walk Alone with more fans than usual waiting for him in the players’ car park “I feel the same way as when Bill Shankly left, I am devastated,” Ken Buckley, a Liverpool season-ticket holder for 50 years, says of Jürgen Klopp’s impending exit. “It is hard to take in, it really is. It is like losing a family member.” Buckley is in front of a mural depicting Klopp lifting the Champions League, one of seven major honours won under the German. Fans flocked to have their photos taken in front of their hero, wanting to remember the impact he has made at the club. One pilgrim wears a “Thank you Klopp” hoodie, in homage. Where once Steve Gerrard was the face of the club, it is now Klopp who has become symbolic of everything it stands for, which explains the number of limbs exhibiting a tattoo of his face. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/eqyrgoU

Manager and club are perfect fit and will be hoping for a suitable ending to his tenure as they chase silverware on four fronts It would go down as one of Jürgen Klopp’s most famous lines and it served to project him to a wider and increasingly captivated audience. It was November 2013 and the spotlight was on the superstar Borussia Dortmund manager, who had his admirers everywhere but especially in England. Manchester City and Chelsea had wanted him in the summer of that year and now he was preparing to host Arsenal, another Premier League club who had him on their radar, in a Champions League group game . Many Arsenal supporters considered Klopp as the ideal successor to Arsène Wenger which, as an aside, reminds us of the drawn-out nature of the latter’s endgame. The Frenchman would not depart until 2018. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/q6RBdEi

Afcon updates from the 8pm GMT kick-off in Ivory Coast Cameroon’s new generation aim to ‘create own history’ The four Nigeria players who were rested or injured for the match Guinea-Bissau return tonight: the captain William Troost-Ekong , Alex Iwobi , Zaidu Sanusi and Ademola Lookman come in for Kenneth Omeruo, Bright Osayi-Samuel, Joe Aribo and Samuel Chukwueze. Fabrice Ondoa is again preferred to Andre Onana in goal for Cameroon. They make two changes from that dramatic win over The Gambia. Oumar Gonzalez and Moumi Ngamaleu come in for Enzo Tchato Mbiayi and Darline Zidane Yongwa Ngameni. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/jdz1Cof

The Nottingham killer has been detained under a hospital order with restrictions – how does this work? On Thursday, Valdo Calocane, an engineering graduate diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was sentenced to a hospital order with restrictions for killing three people and attempting to kill three others in a violent spree across Nottingham. The decision enraged the families of his victims, who believe he should have been prosecuted for murder, with one saying they were “railroaded” into accepting Calocane’s plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/IG3LOB7

Vincent Reynouard discovered living double life in Scottish village where he worked as a tutor, reports say A Holocaust denier who was arrested in a Scottish fishing village will be extradited back to France after spending two years on the run from the authorities. Vincent Reynouard lost his extradition battle after his arrest in November 2022. He had been discovered living a double life in Anstruther, Fife, where he worked as a private tutor, according to reports. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/dbx0jiK

As its own finance director warned: EDF understood exactly what it was signing in 2016 In the troubled history of Hinkley Point C, the resignation of Thomas Piquemal in 2016 ranks as a footnote, but he deserves a heroic mention in the week EDF, developer of the nuclear power station in Somerset, announced yet more cost overruns and delays . Piquemal was the EDF finance director who took the dissenting view in the French boardroom that rushing to sign a contract with the UK government to build Hinkley would be a risk too far for his debt-laden employer. The energy company’s financial future could be put in jeopardy, he was reported to have said. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/JXMqwL0

The threat from Russia is real, but with public money so tight, the military must join the queue for resources Few will dispute that the international situation has darkened and is darkening. Neither Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nor the renewed Middle East conflict will end soon or conclusively. Across the Atlantic, a second Trump presidency is moving closer. As an era of peace ebbs, and with a widening prospect of an era of war, how should nations, including Britain, respond? By being ready to mobilise against Russia , says the head of Britain’s army, Gen Sir Patrick Sanders. In a speech on Tuesday, Gen Sanders said that armed citizens still win modern wars, just as in the last century. Britain therefore needed to “train and equip” a new “citizen army” that would be ready to fight a land war against Russia. The current professional army, set to fall to 72,500 by 2025, is too small for that. Even a force of 120,000 would not be capable of fighting an all-out war. In the general’s vi...

After Simon Clarke proposed yet another leadership switch, most Tory MPs looked the other way – but Nadine sees deeper intrigue Cometh the hour … At times like these, we can only turn to one person. The woman with her finger on the dark heart of the Tory party. The woman who managed to expose a secret even MI6 didn’t realise it had. Even though it was MI6 who told her. Step forward, Nadine Dorries. Her seminal work of fiction, The Plot: the Political Assassination of Boris Johnson , uncovered a new history of the last 25 years. Nothing had been quite as it seemed. Here’s where her fearless research took her. Back in 1997, William Hague and Michael Gove had conspired to divert the Tory party from its true nature as the home of the deranged. So they had deliberately failed to make the party electable to allow David Cameron and George Osborne to take over. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/4TxQBfp

If Conservatives seek salvation in a more radical rightwing agenda, they will hasten their already steep decline The Tory party is carrying out a postmortem on Rishi Sunak’s leadership before it has expired. It is a gruesome spectacle. Simon Clarke, a former cabinet minister, has called on the prime minister to resign on the grounds that he is navigating the Conservatives towards electoral calamity and incapable of steering them to safety. MPs who might privately agree with Mr Clarke’s analysis have denounced the intervention as counterproductive. The majority of Conservatives recognise that defeat looms under their current leader and also that it would loom larger still if he were defenestrated. The succession would be chaotic; the government’s threadbare mandate would be void. Fourteen years in office would make any administration feel stale. The lack of tangible achievements, coupled with economic stagnation and decline in public services, gives Mr Sunak’s reign an unsha...

The US oil company is off to court to try and block a green activist motion aimed at accelerating the company’s attempts to cut emissions ExxonMobil is “committed to responsibly meeting the world’s energy needs”, according to the corporate blah blah, but it is clearly not committed to allowing its shareholders to express their own opinions on the “responsibly” bit of the boast. The US oil company is off to court in Texas to try to block a vote on a resolution tabled by Follow This , a Dutch green activist investor group that would like Exxon to move faster (a lot faster) on reducing emissions. Exxon has an argument of sorts, one might say, in that Follow This tabled similar-sounding resolutions at the last two annual meetings and neither passed. Some 27.1% of shareholders aligned with the rebels in 2022 and 10.5% last year. Why go through the same process again, the company will argue. And, since last year’s meeting at Exxon contained 13 shareholder motions in total, haven’t US regul...

From initial hopes of radical reform, we’ve ended up with a slight adjustment to the corporate governance code Here it is, then, six years after the collapse of Carillion : the UK’s response to the massive governance failure at a major government contractor that folded only six months after its first profits warning . From 2026 – so after yet more delay – the boards of quoted companies with a premium listing on the London Stock Exchange will have to declare that their firms’ internal controls are up to scratch. If this rule change sounds like a watery imitation of what was promised in the aftermath of the Carillion fiasco, you’d be right. Back then, there was a zeal to take radical measures to reform the responsibilities of company directors, as well as to shake up the entire audit industry and the audit regulator, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). Instead, in terms of what will be required of directors, we’ve ended up with a tweak to the UK corporate governance code. Continue ...

The inauguration of the temple erased divisions between politics and religion in a theoretically secular state Monday’s inauguration of the new Ram Mandir in Ayodhya by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, was a moment decades in the making. Yet it also came too early. Despite the grand spectacle of the ceremony, with celebrities, tycoons and politicians in attendance, the temple is still incomplete. There is an obvious explanation for this rushed endeavour, and it is not religious. India will go to the polls in late spring and while Mr Modi is all but guaranteed to win a third term , he wants a large majority for his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). Mr Modi rode to power, and has entrenched it, on the back of rightwing Hindu nationalism. On Monday he went beyond the exploitation of ethno-religious sentiment. He did not merely attend the ceremony; he carried out rituals. Religion and authoritarianism have proceeded hand-in-hand in recent years. But few strongm...

Challenge on Areola and non-award for Bowen enrage manager ‘We don’t know what referees are going to do,’ says Moyes David Moyes claimed the level of officiating has plunged so low that no one knows what referees are “going to do”, after chaotic scenes in stoppage time at Bramall Lane. The West Ham manager was unhappy at the referee, Michael Salisbury, ­awarding a late penalty to Sheffield United, scored by Oli McBurnie in the 103rd minute, before refusing to give ­Jarrod Bowen a penalty at the other end 60 seconds later. McBurnie’s equaliser made it 2-2 for Sheffield United and, when Bowen and Anel Ahmedhodzic came together in the hosts’ area a minute later, Salisbury’s decision incensed Moyes, who also believed his goalkeeper, Alphonse Areola, had been fouled in the buildup to McBurnie’s spot-kick. Moyes said: “I’m certainly not going to talk about any referees. I don’t want to get myself in trouble. You should ask the referee [about these decisions]. We’ve got to a st...

Hundreds pay respects to Kids Company founder at defiant north London funeral and glowing wake in Waterloo church There was colour, as requested, plus fine clothes, hopeful faces and joyful music. Camila Batmanghelidjh’s hundreds of mourners may have been a little wary and gloomy packed into Golders Green crematorium, but they didn’t stay that way for long. They were too restless, hopeful and full of mischief. It was never going to be a drily formal ceremony, even in the elegant north London chapel, and it didn’t take long for spontaneous clapping and cheering to break out. An angry aside at Batmanghelidjh’s treatment by the tabloid press. Anecdotes of kindness and fun. A sing-along to the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/hfED1Sr

The past 10 months have been an exciting yet excruciating battle of self-control before her Australia tour begins in February With only 33 sleeps until the biggest pop star on the planet arrives, already I can hear the groans from some readers, exhausted over the amount of space one singer and her tour can take up. How can the Eras Tour still be going? It’s surely been years, a colleague might complain. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/teQNp1g

Journalist who started out on the Nottingham Evening Post and went on to become the sports editor of the Observer Ronald Atkin, a former sports editor of the Observer, was a journalist of impeccably high standards, whether looking after other writers’ copy or fashioning his own, usually on top-level tennis or football matches. But as a representative of an old Fleet Street newspaper community that did not take itself too seriously, he also had an ability to laugh at the foibles of his profession. In an amusing piece written in 2012 for the website of the Sports Journalists’ Association, which had voted him their journalist of the year almost 30 years earlier, he listed some of the many ways in which his byline had been mangled over the years. Among the variations, he had been Atkins, Aitken, Atkinson and Hatchkin, and sometimes Rod or Tim rather than Ronald. In the citation for their supreme award in 1984, even the SJA had managed to get it wrong. Continue reading... from The Guar...

Freezing temperatures across central US have cut electric vehicles’ range and left drivers facing long waits at charging stations For nearly a week, frigid temperatures from Chicago to northern Texas have made life painful for electric-vehicle owners, with reduced driving range and hours of waiting at charging stations. In Oak Brook, Illinois, near Chicago, on Monday, television reporters found Teslas that were running out of juice while in long lines for plugs at a Supercharger station. The temperature hit a low of -9F (-23C). Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/F0d8qjS

Scores of media professionals have been killed in the last three months. The truth itself is under threat No war has killed so many journalists so quickly. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says that at least 83 media workers have died since 7 October. Seventy-six of them were Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, while three Lebanese citizens were also killed, and four Israelis were killed by Hamas in the 7 October attacks. Even given the total number of deaths in Gaza – at least 24,600, the Palestinian authorities say – the media toll is shocking and disproportionate. On one estimate, it amounts to a tenth of all journalists there compared with a reported one in 100 of the overall population. Reporters Without Borders has warned that journalism is “being eradicated in the Gaza Strip”. Chillingly, the CPJ describes “an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families” – including at least two cases where journalists reported threa...

There is method in the oil conglomerate’s decision that the best candidate for CEO is the one already doing the job After a “robust and competitive” hunt for a new chief executive, the board of BP has decided that the best appointment is the bloke who has been sitting in the boardroom for three and a half years already and doing the job on a stand-in basis since the defenestration of Bernard Looney last September. No surprise there. BP has never appointed a boss from outside, and Murray Auchincloss , the former chief financial officer, fits the bill as a continuity candidate. He has been in the company for 25 years and is wedded to Looney’s – and chair Helge Lund’s – strategy of “orderly” transition to net zero by 2050 or sooner. He did the numbers on the approach, after all. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/cv2wUML

A cult of personality has ensured that believers are blinded to the means employed by the former president to take power Before voters in Iowa kicked off the US presidential election cycle on Monday, Donald Trump shared a bizarre campaign video on his Truth Social platform that declared him to be God’s chosen emissary on Earth, sent to deliver prosperity to America. It seemed unlikely that evangelicals in a rural state would buy into such narcissism. Sadly, Mr Trump has blinded believers to the means and fixed their gaze on the ends. Despite being charged with 91 felonies in four criminal cases, he won an unprecedented majority of Republican caucus-goers. The rest of the Republican electorate doesn’t always follow Iowa’s lead. This, however, is a small comfort. In 2016, Mr Trump lost out to Ted Cruz in the state before winning his party’s nomination with a mendacious, racist, misogynistic campaign that encouraged violence and dealt in the politics of personal insult. His spell ...

Seoul believes that Kim Jong-un sees 10-year-old Ju-ae as his successor. A female leader would be a dramatic change – but not a shift towards equality Strolling hand-in-hand with her father at a missile launch. Celebrating Pyongyang’s first spy satellite alongside him . Lauded not only as “most-beloved” but as “respected”, the “morning star of Korea” and “female general”. Kim Ju-ae’s extensive promotion in North Korean media has prompted South Korea’s intelligence agency to name her this month as the likely heir to supreme leader Kim Jong-un. Though she is thought to have an elder brother and a younger sibling, they have remained anonymous. While her father is still young, at just 40, there have been persistent questions about his health . Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here . Continue reading... from The Guar...

Before a watching Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Manchester United were an athletic vibrant proposition who came up against the precise same entity in Tottenham in this sense-tingling, rip-roarer of an encounter. As United’s new incoming 25% owner Ratcliffe could be warmed, too, by the fight and unity of Erik ten Hag’s team, elements that have not always been visible this season. Tottenham, too, showed similar, as they twice went behind and twice fought back to leave Ange Postecoglou’s side departing as they arrived: in fifth place, eight points ahead of United, who are down in seventh with a goal difference of minus five. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/P6W2noC

Josie Knight takes pursuit gold in thrilling final battle Great Britain finish with 14 medals to top the table Great Britain’s Josie Knight claimed her first international individual title after winning pursuit gold at the European Track Cycling Championships in the Netherlands. The 26-year-old secured the top prize in a nail-biting finish against Franziska Brausse, pipping the German by three-thousandths of a second having trailed by over a second with five laps to go. Her gold was one of six won by Britain as they secured 14 medals overall in the competition – their highest tally at a European Championships – to top the medal table. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/DyI3gL8

By their military intervention, Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden have started something they may not be able to finish There are, broadly, three ways of looking at last week’s US and British military strikes on Houthi bases in Yemen : necessary, futile, dangerous. Yet, however the world views this action, taken in response to repeated, unprovoked attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea, the possible consequences are all the more alarming because they are unknowable and unpredictable. Joe Biden, the US president, and Rishi Sunak have started something they may find difficult to finish. The US-British bombardment of dozens of targets, Succeeded by a limited “follow-on” attack a day later, was necessary in the sense that the Houthi leaders had rejected numerous pleas, public and private, to end their Red Sea mayhem. Ships and crews were at risk. There was real fear that anti-ship missiles could hit an oil tanker, causing an environmental disaster. The global economy faced supply disru...

Foreign policy displays in Yemen and Ukraine may win PM reflected glory – but capping inflationary pressures will be his foremost wish Returning from an overseas trip last year that had been broadly seen as a success, Rishi Sunak was heard privately observing that a truism of foreign policy is that even when you get things right, voters tend to not especially notice or care. Time will tell whether Sunak’s decision to throw in the UK’s lot with US-led attacks on Houthi forces will stem a spate of attacks on international shipping. But for now, the strike has won support from the bulk of British MPs, despite a few qualms about a lack of prior parliamentary consultation . Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/LQA843U

Luxury brands and celebrities are launching male-focused makeup and skincare ranges, with sales up 77% year on year Michael has been getting manicures and pedicures for the last 15 years, ever since he and his wife began attending goth club nights in his southern state of the US. The number of treatments Michael indulges in has increased ever since: two-and-a-half years ago, the 65-year-old former forecast analyst escalated to regular full-body waxes. Now he gets “waxed from fingers to toes, and everything in between, every six weeks”, he said. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/YN3ynLe

Public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal has been repeatedly halted by obstacles such as a ‘series of disclosure failings’ Progress in the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal has been repeatedly halted by obstacles, many of them put in place by the Post Office itself. The company, which is wholly owned by the state and thus the British taxpayer, has been accused of trying to slow down or frustrate attempts to piece together its part in what has been described by the prime minister himself as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/1QnqMxK

With crossings opened for longer, water supplies restored and UN staff able to safely distribute food, we can limit the scale of this catastrophe It was heartbreaking to read the latest independent assessment of hunger in Gaza. The situation is desperate – and projected to get worse. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), nine out of every 10 Palestinians in northern Gaza may be eating less than one meal a day. With families displaced and sanitation close to nonexistent, disease and illness will spread. Almost 40% of Gaza’s population is aged under 15. Death and despair haunt these children’s lives. We all know we must act. The question is how. David Cameron is Britain’s foreign secretary Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/TKADNcQ

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Clauses in the former CEO’s contract could easily be enforced – but the whole rotten saga goes deeper Government urged to review £2bn in Fujitsu contracts PM announces plan to quash Horizon scandal convictions Handing back a CBE costs nothing, financially speaking. So it is little wonder that Paula Vennells, former chief executive of the Post Office, , has discovered that returning her absurd award has prompted another question. Yes, but what about your bonuses? The demand is obviously fair. And, critically, it is fair even according to the rules of the bonus scheme that operated during her seven years at the top from 2012 and 2019. Both the short-term incentive plan (STIP) and long-term (LTIP) at the Post Office clearly stated that there could be situations in which bonuses could be cancelled and individuals told to return cash. Part of the job of a chair is meant to be about challenging groupthink and confirmation bias and spotting when an organisation may have got something ...

Compensation for innocent victims of the Post Office scandal must be accompanied by a ruthless process of holding their tormentors to account A scandal as vast as the wrongful conviction of hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters is no single person’s fault, but it should plague many consciences. The government’s plan, announced in parliament on Wednesday, to exonerate all victims and expedite compensation is only the start of the reckoning. Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have all been in government over the long period when insufficient interest was taken in the case. Ministers accepted reassurances that should have been challenged. A malfunctioning IT system was given more credence than evidence of an appalling miscarriage of justice, arguably the biggest in modern British legal history. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/5iq9Z1Y

Israeli and Hezbollah forces exchanging almost daily fire across boundary zone, say observers Middle East crisis – live updates Nancy Faraj was eating lunch with her family at her home in the village of Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon when Israel bombed the house next door, killing two of her neighbours. Within hours she and her family had grabbed a handful of possessions and headed north-west for the city of Tyre, 50 miles (80km) south of Beirut, where they are now living in a school with several hundred others. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/hZzMTeB

Gabriel Attal, the youngest-ever occupant of the Matignon, has his work cut out to turn around the government’s fortunes ahead of June elections Emmanuel Macron’s decision to appoint the youthful Gabriel Attal as France’s new prime minister represents a double first in the country’s history. At 34, Mr Attal will be the youngest politician ever to hold the office. Upliftingly, he will also be the first openly gay occupant of the Matignon. In his book, Revolution , written prior to his first presidential campaign, Mr Macron wrote: “What keeps France united is the acceptance of the diversity of origins and destinies and the refusal of fatalism.” As the final phase of the two‑term Macron presidency begins, Mr Attal is a choice designed to re-evoke the optimism and hopes for democratic renewal present at its outset. More narrowly, Mr Macron’s move to replace Élisabeth Borne after only 20 months in office constitutes a political throw of the dice, ahead of European...

The cruel treatment of thousands of subpostmasters is a cautionary tale about technology as well as access to justice Between 1999 and 2015 at least 3,500 sub-postmasters across the UK were wrongly blamed for discrepancies in the accounts of the post offices they ran – when the real cause was faulty software. This is the crux of a scandal that involves Fujitsu, Japan’s biggest technology company, as well as the Post Office and the UK government that owned it. At the time the Horizon system, which cost £1bn, was the largest non-military IT system in Europe. An ITV drama screened last week, Mr Bates vs the Post Office , has pushed this disgraceful saga back into the news. But in many cases justice, if it comes at all, will be too late. At least four sub-postmasters have taken their own lives in the intervening years, while others died of natural causes before receiving compensation. Two decades after victims first identified IT problems as the probable cause of the discrepancies, ...

Charismatic founder of Kids Company who stepped down after the charity’s collapse in 2015 For two decades Camila Batmanghelidjh, who has died after a long illness aged 61, was one of the most passionate and readily recognisable figures on the UK charity circuit. Kids Company, the charity she founded in 1996 to help distressed, abused and abandoned children and teenagers in south London, undoubtedly helped several thousand young people. Batmanghelidjh and her assistants surrounded them with unquestioning love, meals, support, advice, therapy and even clothes and pocket money, and the charity eventually spawned other outposts in Bristol and Liverpool. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/yPxtABg

Nearly 200 planes out of commission as FAA investigates Saturday flight from Portland, Oregon, where cabin panel blew out mid-air US regulators have ordered the temporary grounding of 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft following a cabin panel blowout late Friday that forced a brand-new airplane operated by Alaska Airlines to make an emergency landing. “The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes before they can return to flight,” said Mike Whitaker, a Federal Aviation Administration administrator, on Saturday. “Safety will continue to drive our decision-making as we assist the NTSB’s [National Transportation Safety Board] investigation into Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.” Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/DdsgAVt

Coverage that omits plight of Palestinians leaves Israeli public dangerously disconnected from the rest of the world, critical journalists say Middle East crisis – live updates The TikTok videos feature Israeli soldiers, standing under the concrete blast barriers of a military base, in front of a rolling green landscape or beside an armoured vehicles. Most are in full military gear, in settings that make clear these are men at war, with one message to their country’s journalists. “If you don’t have something unifying to say, just shut your mouth.” To someone who made a cursory scan of the country’s TV channels and newspapers after 7 October, the reservists’ anger might be confusing – the Israeli media have rarely presented their audiences with such a uniformly patriotic vision of reality as they have over the past three months. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/1wGIUk7

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Midwinter is for hibernation and the chance to make different kinds of connections “Disconnect from the internet for at least two hours a day and treat your own thoughts like a garden through which you are strolling,” was the advice offered by the novelist Ian McEwan to younger writers after being made a Companion of Honour in December. The capacity to be curious about mental processes – while simultaneously experiencing them – is an important one for an author seeking to describe the human condition. But anyone who values self-awareness will be used to noticing how their mind works and wondering why. “ Only connect ” was the maxim of another famous novelist, EM Forster. Forster used the characters in his novels to put flesh on his arguments against the emotionally repressive code of the time. But McEwan’s recommendation to disconnect should not be understood as a repudiation of Forster’s humanism. He was not warning writers off paying attention to other people’s minds and ideas – b...

It’s almost as if Sunak is ashamed of his record and slipping under the radar as Starmer takes the initiative The Curious Incident of the Dog That Didn’t Bark in the Night-time. Exactly a year ago today, Rishi Sunak began the first of his many relaunches with a speech in which he announced his five pledges. Pledges that were downgraded over the course of the next few months first to promises and then to vague aspirations. Pledges that had been chosen not because they were hard, but because they weren’t. Come 2024, he would be able to boast that he wasn’t a complete failure. Now the election year is upon us and … nada. Normally a prime minister would choose to mark the occasion with a big set-piece speech. A few Tory donors and supporters to make up the numbers and loads of hacks to report every word. A live TV feed to every news network. This month, not so much. It’s almost as if Sunak is ashamed of his record and is trying to slip under the radar. His latest relaunch – the softest o...

Children’s campaigner lived an extraordinary life encompassing social entrepreneurship, fame, politics, a fall from grace and a dramatic courtroom exoneration Family and friends are squashed into the late Camila Batmanghelidjh’s neat, tiny, kaleidoscopically colourful flat in north-west London. There are tears and hugs. Dates are passed round and cups of tea. “One thing is for sure,” said Lindita Berila, who has dropped in to pay her respects, “everyone knew Camila was special.” A few days previously, Batmanghelidjh had been here with colleagues helping to wrap thousands of Christmas presents to be delivered the next day to disadvantaged children. “She looked fabulous,” said her brother Bobby. “There was no indication she was going to leave us.” Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/RdXfMjb

The assassination of a Hamas leader in Beirut and Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea increase the risks From the moment that the full extent of the 7 October atrocities by Hamas in southern Israel became evident, the spectre of an ensuing regional conflict loomed in the background. Since then, attention has been fixed on Israel’s pummelling of Gaza, where the death toll passed 22,000 this week , according to Palestinian health authorities. Yet in recent weeks the risk of a greater conflagration has grown . The assassination of the senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut marks a new and dangerous moment, as Israel (which did not publicly claim responsibility) will have known. Arouri was the group’s key conduit to Lebanon-based Hezbollah and to Iran. His death is a blow not only to Hamas but the broader network. It follows last week’s killing – which Tehran blames on Israel – of an Iranian military official who oversaw the shipping of arms to Hezbollah. Continue reading...

Flawed elections confirm Europe is being strung along by a government intent on an authoritarian, ethno-nationalist agenda According to Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, the country’s recent parliamentary elections were the “cleanest and most honest” in its history. They were also a triumph for his misnamed Serbian Progressive party (SNS), which won by a landslide. But the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe had a different take. The 17 December poll, said a statement by its international observer team, took place in “unjust conditions”, marred by “bias in the media, pressure on public sector employees and misuse of public resources”. Instances of intimidation and “serious irregularities” including vote-buying and ballot-stuffing were noted. Other allegations have been made that Bosnian Serbs were bussed-in en masse to fraudulently vote in Belgrade. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/OowuIeT

Exclusive: Proliferation comes amid treatment shortage and poses major public health threat, say experts Doctors are reporting a surge in scabies cases across the UK amid an acute shortage of treatments, and say the “nightmare” situation poses a major public health threat. Scabies is a highly contagious condition caused by mites, that results in an itchy rash. It is spread through close skin contact, anyone can get it, and it should be treated quickly to stop it spreading. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/NVgX8IH