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Bild publishes leaked photos showing Gerhard Schröder with his wife and others at Victory Day reception in BerlinLeaked photographs have emerged in the German press of former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has refused to denounce his friendship to and business ties with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as the guest of honour at a reception hosted by the Russian embassy in Berlin.Schröder and his wife, So-yeon Schröder-Kim, reportedly rubbed shoulders at the event on Tuesday with Egon Krenz, 86, the last Communist leader of East Germany (GDR). Krenz was forced to resign when the Berlin Wall fell, and was later sentenced to six and a half years in prison for his role in the crimes of the Communist regime, in particular the fatal shootings of people trying to escape the GDR. Continue reading...

Alexei Zalesskiy and Conor Ryan found to have lied in statements about incident in Finsbury Park in April 2021Two Metropolitan police officers have been sacked immediately after a gross misconduct hearing for punching and kicking a child during his arrest and lying about the incident.The hearing, which followed an investigation by the IOPC, heard that police constables Alexei Zalesskiy and Conor Ryan were accused of using excessive force on the 14-year-old boy, who was part of a group of young people gathered at Finsbury Park, north London in April 2021. Continue reading...

Controversial expansion prompts worry and frustration from residents that a ‘sacred place’ could soon be destroyedBefore sunrise on the morning of 29 April 1903, a deep rumble echoed through Crowsnest Valley in western Alberta, Canada. The peak of Turtle Mountain had collapsed, sending a block of limestone nearly 1km wide and weighing 110m metric tonnes hurtling towards the town of Frank, a coalmining community of 600 people.In less than two minutes, 100 people are believed to have been killed in what remains Canada’s deadliest rockslide. A dozen bodies were recovered, but the vast majority of victims remain buried under boulders the size of vehicles. Continue reading...

Key questions answered on the fallout from a report on the culture within the Welsh nationalist partyWhy did Plaid Cymru commission a report on the party’s culture?For months Plaid has been dogged by claims of a toxic culture, and it emerged last November that an allegation of sexual assault had been made against a senior member of staff. In December the party asked the former Plaid Senedd member Nerys Evans to look at the scale and scope of the issues. Continue reading...

The 20-year-old from Aldridge built a crude gun in his garden shed and experimented with explosivesFar-right extremist Vaughn Dolphin, who built a crude gun in his garden shed and experimented with explosives, has been ordered to be detained in a young offender institution for eight and a half years.Dolphin, 20, of Walsall Wood Road, Aldridge, West Midlands, was found guilty last month of explosives, terrorism and firearm offences. Continue reading...

The proposed bill would offer three meals and a snack to all students regardless of incomeRepresentative Ilhan Omar, Senator Bernie Sanders and colleagues are set to introduce legislation on Thursday to revive one of the coronavirus pandemic era’s most popular social experiments: universal free school meals.The bill would permanently end child hunger in schools, they argue, by offering free breakfast, lunch and dinner plus a snack to all students from preschool to high school, regardless of income. Continue reading...

DCI Banks lead actor was accused of punching drunk man making noise outside his houseThe actor Stephen Tompkinson has been found not guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm on a drunken man he confronted outside his home.Tompkinson, a familiar face on television programmes from Drop the Dead Donkey to DCI Banks, had been accused of lashing out at Karl Poole who was, with a friend, drinking at the end of the actor’s driveway in the early hours of the morning. Continue reading...

Northern rail network to be run by state-owned operator of last resort when contract expires on 28 MayTransPennine Express (TPE) is to be run by the state after ministers announced that the failing rail company would not have its contract renewed.The transport secretary, Mark Harper, said the northern rail network would be run by the state-owned operator of last resort after passengers experienced disruption, cancellations and a significant decline in the extent and reliability of the service. Continue reading...

Losses would be unacceptable without more heavy weapons promised by west, says president

Exclusive: For 21 years, the detainee has been in US custody without charge, tortured and sexually humiliated, with no prospect for release• Warning: the images and descriptions of torture in this article are extremely graphicA detainee held in the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay who was used as a human guinea pig in the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program has produced the most comprehensive and detailed account yet seen of the brutal techniques to which he was subjected.Abu Zubaydah has created a series of 40 drawings that chronicle the torture he endured in a number of CIA dark sites between 2002 and 2006 and at Guantánamo Bay. In the absence of a full official accounting of the torture program, which the CIA and the FBI have labored for years to keep secret, the images give a unique and searing insight into a grisly period in US history. Continue reading...

Liz Saville Roberts denies party tried to put own interests before need to ‘detoxify’ internal culture

MPs expected to proceed with a vote to determine if Deeming is expelled from the party on Friday

Lost cricket rights prompts outflow but streaming service almost halves losses while theme parks boomDisney, known for Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel movies, said its flagship streaming service lost 4 million subscribers in the first three months of the year.Subscribers to Disney+ services, home to movies such as Toy Story, Monsters, Thor and Black Panther, fell to nearly 158m from January to March, the second quarter of customer losses after a 2.4 million drop in the previous three months. Analysts had expected Disney to add more than 1 million customers in the quarter. The shares fell nearly 5% in after-hours trading. Continue reading...

Wilkinson says Shane Drumgold did not tell her publicity over the case posed risk to the trial, contradicting ACT director of public prosecutions

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Prosecutor Shane Drumgold claims the juror who brought in outside research papers on sexual assault was not in favour of guilty verdict

Rescue teams lifted the 10-tonne light rail carriage in Haymarket, but the 16-year-old girl suffered critical injuries and could not be revived

General secretary of FDA union makes plea to Rishi Sunak after multiple ‘culture war’ incidentsThe head of the union for senior civil servants has urged Rishi Sunak to stop letting ministers call officials “lazy, woke, inefficient, remainer snowflakes” or brand them “machiavellian geniuses” trying to unseat the government.In comments released ahead of its annual conference, Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, also accused the prime minister of treating civil servants like “second-class public-sector workers” after the government offered them a worse pay deal than teachers and health staff. Continue reading...

In today’s newsletter: Protests could mark the start of a violent showdown that threatens the country’s fragile political system

Skills may be lost for good due to ‘perfect storm’ of economic stresses, says heritage charityFrom building wooden boats and Cornish hedges to making marionettes and painting canal barges, many traditional British crafts are under threat because of a “perfect storm” of economic stresses including the aftermath of Brexit, a heritage charity has said.Heritage Crafts has added 17 crafts to its “red list” of endangered skills that could be lost unless the economy improves or more action is taken to protect them. Continue reading...

More than 160 luxury homes worth £10m or more have been sold in past year at a combined price of £3.1bnMore than 160 properties worth £10m or more were sold in London over the past year – the most since 2016 when Brexit spooked the global super-rich from investing in the UK’s “super-prime” market.A total of 161 such sales – or three a week – were made in the capital in the year to March, according to analysis of Land Registry data by the estate agent Knight Frank and the data provider LonRes. Continue reading...

War in Ukraine and Pakistan’s ‘monsoon on steroids’ among events driving surge on ‘scale never seen before’ as 71m people displacedThe number of people around the world who were forced to flee their homes leapt by a fifth last year, as a “perfect storm” of Russia’s assault on Ukraine and climate disasters brought displacement on an unprecedented scale.By the end of 2022 the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) – those forced from their homes but remaining within their country of residence – reached 71 million, according to figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), up from 59.1 million in 2021. Continue reading...

Penny Wong withdrew comments personally targeting the Greens’ housing spokesperson, but accused the party of joining a ‘filibuster’

Russia plans to relocate thousands of staff from nuclear plant, atomic energy company claims, warning of ‘catastrophic lack of qualified personnel’Russia plans to relocate about 2,700 Ukrainian staff from Europe’s largest nuclear plant, Ukraine’s atomic energy company has claimed, warning of a potential “catastrophic lack of qualified personnel” at the Zaporizhzhia facility in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine.Workers who signed employment contracts with Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom following Moscow’s capture of the Zaporizhzhia plant early in the war are set to be taken to Russia along with their families, Energoatom said in a Telegram post on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Boss of industry body UK Finance accuses tech companies of ‘profiting’ from scams on their platformsThe boss of the banking industry body UK Finance has called on social media companies to reimburse victims of online fraud, accusing them of “profiting” from scams taking place on their platforms.Figures from its fraud report show that 78% of authorised push payment scams, where a victim is tricked into approving a transaction, started online in the second half of last year, with about three-quarters of those beginning on social media. Continue reading...

Government’s advisers say doctors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland can prescribe glucose monitorsHundreds of children who manage their type 2 diabetes by regularly pricking their finger can now monitor their glucose levels using automated sensors, the government’s expert health advisers have announced.Doctors and nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have been advised they can now give glucose monitoring devices to children with type 2 diabetes who currently use the more intrusive finger-prick testing methods, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) said on Thursday. Continue reading...

Some MPs uneasy over independent complaints system following case which took three years to investigateLabour has defended its complaints system after taking three years to investigate an allegation of sexual harassment made by a woman against a senior aide.The man, who is 20 years the complainant’s senior, has been allowed to continue working for the party advising a Labour frontbencher, according to Politico, even though the complaint was upheld. Continue reading...

Too few teachers have training in how to deliver lessons in relationships and sex, committee toldChildren need more and better sex and relationship education in England’s schools, to help them navigate the issues they are likely to face as they get older, experts have told MPs.The Commons women and equalities committee heard that too few teachers in England have received training in how to deliver lessons in relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) since it became a compulsory topic in 2019. Continue reading...

Nina Cresswell says move is 13 years too late after court found on balance of probabilities she was assaultedNorthumbria police are reopening a sexual assault investigation after a woman who was sued for writing about her experience defeated the libel action against her.Last month, the high court found that Nina Cresswell had “proved on the balance of probabilities that she was violently sexually assaulted” by Billy Hay, a tattoo artist, in Sunderland in 2010 when she was 20. Continue reading...

Row between Michael Gove and No 10 results in end of promise to scrap leaseholds

Military unit claims to confirm report by Wagner boss that Russian brigade has been routedA Ukrainian military unit has said it has routed a Russian infantry brigade from frontline territory near Bakhmut, claiming to corroborate an account by the head of Russia’s Wagner group that the Russian forces had fled.Later on Wednesday, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, who heads Ukraine’s ground forces, said Russian units in some parts of Bakhmut had retreated by up to 2km (1.2 miles) as the result of counterattacks. He did not give details. Continue reading...

‘We want everything back to the way it was’, says Don Farrell but cautions that problems won’t be fixed overnight

Ukraine’s military says Russia increasingly relying on regular forces after heavy losses to mercenary group in eastern city. This blog is closed

Piero Scartoni, 91, who has been running stand in Arezzo since 1953, can now retire after former customer Patrizio Bertelli steps inThe owner of an historic newsstand in a Tuscan city said he was “delighted” the business has been saved by one of his old customers – Patrizio Bertelli, the chair of the Italian fashion house Prada.Piero Scartoni, 91, who has been getting up at 5am to run the newsstand in Piazza San Jacopo in the centre of Arezzo since 1953, can finally retire after it was bought by Bertelli, who was born in the city and is the husband of the fashion designer Miuccia Prada. Continue reading...

Clock dials atop Elizabeth Tower in London briefly stopped at 12.55pm on WednesdayTime stood still in London on Wednesday, it has emerged.Big Ben, the famous bell at the top of the 96-metre Elizabeth Tower in Westminster, failed to chime when the dials of the clock briefly stopped. Continue reading...

Attacker reportedly first shot dead colleague and stole ammunition before heading towards synagogueA police officer killed three police officers and two visitors in an attack near Africa’s oldest synagogue in Tunisia, the government has said, amid an annual pilgrimage to the island of Djerba that draws hundreds of Jews from Europe and Israel.In the attack on Tuesday, a police officer at a naval installation on Djerba used his weapon to shoot a colleague and seize his ammunition before heading towards the Ghriba synagogue, the interior ministry said in a statement. Continue reading...

Leicestershire MP was kicked out by Conservatives for comparing Covid vaccines to Holocaust

Lost students, dwindling relief funds and a juggernaut of new schooling options could portend layoffs and school closuresThree years and counting since the pandemic shuttered schools and tethered students to their laptops, new data shows that enrollment in the vast majority of the nation’s largest school districts has yet to recover.Kindergarten counts continue to dwindle in many states – evidence of falling birth rates and an ever-growing array of options luring parents away from traditional public schools. Experts fear those trends, as well as a possible recession and the looming cut-off of federal relief funds, amount to a perfect storm for US education. Continue reading...

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Premier Mark McGowan said the behaviour of the youths was “a form of terrorism” but advocates are concerned about the treatment of young people in the facility

Eric Wong, who has pleaded guilty to two counts of filming a person’s private parts without consent, has case adjourned until July

Up to one in 10 doctors and a third of nurses could be trained through vocational path under NHS workforce planSchool-leavers could receive on-the-job training as part of an attempt to help address NHS workforce shortages, under plans to allow tens of thousands of doctors and nurses to join the health service via apprenticeships.Up to one in 10 doctors and a third of nurses could be trained through this vocational path in the coming years under the NHS workforce plan, the PA news agency reported. The NHS’s doctor apprenticeship scheme is due to start in September, where medics in training will be able to earn money while they study. Continue reading...

NHS in England missed target that patients waiting 18 months for an operation would be treated by AprilA key government pledge to reduce the size of the NHS’s record-breaking care backlog has been broken, the health secretary has admitted.Steve Barclay slipped out the news in a Commons statement on Tuesday about a totally unrelated area of NHS policy – his new plan to improve access to GP care. Continue reading...

Tributes pour in for founder of Os Mutantes, who sardonically named her tumour after far-right president Jair BolsonaroRita Lee, the legendary Brazilian musician, composer and founder of the trailblazing band Os Mutantes, has died at 75, prompting emotional tributes to Brazil’s undisputed “Queen of Rock”.Rita Lee was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2021, memorably nicknaming her tumour “Jair” – a sardonic reference to Brazil’s widely loathed then president, Jair Bolsonaro. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Aysen Dennis says plans to bulldoze Aylesbury estate are unlawful and amount to ‘social cleansing’A woman who has lived on the same council estate for 30 years has taken developers and her local authority to the high court over plans to demolish her home.Aysen Dennis, 64, is fighting to keep her two-bedroom council flat on a south London estate and says plans for redevelopment amount to “social cleansing”. Continue reading...

Customers say lives upended by ripped up schedules and woeful performanceOnce, it seemed like a good idea to live in the Pennines and commute by train. Susannah Simmons, a violinist at Opera North, moved to Marsden for quick and easy access to her work in Leeds and Manchester. “The service was far from perfect but satisfactory,” she says. “But for at least the past year nearly all trains I would have used have been cancelled or delayed, forcing me to drive everywhere.”Like countless others, her life has been upended by ripped up schedules and woeful performance of TransPennine Express. Continue reading...

About 5,500 people still missing after intense floods and landslides with thousands also left homelessAt least 411 people are now known to have died in intense flooding and landslides that hit the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s South Kivu province last week.Efforts to rescue inhabitants and recover bodies in Kalehe, where the flooding happened, are continuing. Some houses, schools and hospitals have collapsed or become dilapidated or unsafe. Others were entirely swept away. Continue reading...

Prime minister provokes anger after flying to Southampton and back, which would have cost £30 by rail

China’s foreign ministry said it would expel Canadian envoy for Ottawa’s ‘unreasonable action’ of ejecting Chinese diplomatCanada will not be intimidated by China’s tit-for-tat expulsion of a Canadian consul in retaliation for Ottawa’s ejection of a Chinese official, Justin Trudeau has said.Canada expelled the Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei on Tuesday over allegations he tried to intimidate a Canadian lawmaker critical of China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority. Hours later, China’s ministry of foreign affairs said it would expel a Canadian diplomat from Shanghai in retaliation for what it called Ottawa’s “unreasonable actions”. Continue reading...

Much depends on the housing market and there’s no agreement on how that’s faring right nowWith hindsight, one of Britain’s biggest building societies could definitely have picked a better day to launch a first-of-its-kind 100% mortgage.On Tuesday morning, just as the press release was being sent out and Skipton building society boss Stuart Haire was preparing for his BBC Radio 4 Today programme interview, the Halifax reported that average UK house prices fell in April, by 0.3% month on month, and that “we should expect some further downward pressure on house prices over the course of this year”. To add to the gloom, the struggling online estate agent Purplebricks reported a further worsening in trading, there was a profit warning from another firm reliant on the housing sector, and many housebuilders saw their share prices fall. Continue reading...