Lorry traffic is turning picturesque village into ‘wild west’, say residents after death of Eloise JacksonA seven-year-old girl died when she cycled into a lorry outside her home, an inquest heard, as residents expressed anger over the number of HGVs turning the picturesque Wiltshire village where she lived into the “wild west”.Eloise Jackson had only recently learned to ride when she fatally collided with the wheels of a moving HGV metres outside her front door on 13 July 2021, a coroner was told. Continue reading...
Police joked in WhatsApp group about raping female colleague and Tasering children and people with disabilitiesTwo Metropolitan police officers have each been sentenced to three months in prison after being found guilty of sharing racist, homophobic, misogynistic and ableist messages in a WhatsApp group with the officer who murdered Sarah Everard.PC Jonathon Cobban, 35, and Joel Borders, 45, who has left the force, joked on the encrypted messaging platform about beating and sexually assaulting women, raping a colleague and using Taser weapons on children. Continue reading...
by Constance Malleret in Rio de Janeiro on (#65CWZ)
Protesters baselessly alleging electoral fraud and refusing to accept defeat to Lula have been blocking roads since electionBrazilian football ultras keen to reach away games have been hailed as democratic heroes after breaking through road blockades set up by far-right supporters of president Jair Bolsonaro, who refuse to accept his defeat to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s tightly contested presidential election.Pro-Bolsonaro demonstrators baselessly alleging electoral fraud have been blocking roads and highways across the country since Sunday night, causing chaos, cancelled flights and fears of fuel shortages. On Tuesday morning, Brazil’s supreme court ruled that the federal highway police must immediately take measures to clear the roads. Videos showed that some police officers were encouraging the protests. Continue reading...
Israeli politics has been shifting rightwards for decades, but this new coalition could go further than any beforeAn hour after the election exit polls predicted a comeback for former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday night, Israel’s Channel 13 switched from vote count drama to its satirical late-night current affairs show, Wonderful Country.The host was immediately joined by a comedian sporting round glasses, a yellow tie, knitted kippah and bulging fake belly, made up to look like the country’s new political kingmaker, the extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir. Brandishing a pistol – as Ben-Gvir did recently in a Palestinian neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem – he danced his way across the set before taking a seat. Continue reading...
Corruption at FTSE 100 firm described as endemic at sentence hearingGlencore flew cash bribes to officials in Africa via private jet amid “endemic” corruption within the mining company, a London court has heard, in sentencing of the first ever UK corporate conviction on charges of bribing another person.Third-party agents used Glencore’s money to bribe officials in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan, causing harms worth $128m, a sentencing hearing at Southwark crown court heard. Continue reading...
Only 11 out of 53 charges of rape heard by service justice system in past three years led to guilty chargesA scandal over sexual abuse in the submarine service has deepened as it emerged that eight in 10 rape charges tried by military court martial over the past three years ended without conviction.The service justice system heard 53 charges of rape between 2019 and 2021, of which just 11 ended in guilty charges, according to Ministry of Defence figures. Continue reading...
Eleven emergency callers used Korean word for ‘crushed to death’ 13 times hours before incidentSouth Korea’s National Police Agency on has raided local police departments in the capital, Seoul, and the city’s Yongsan district office as it investigates whether official ineptitude contributed to a crowd surge that killed 156 people in the neighbourhood of Itaewon.The raids came a day after the national agency acknowledged Seoul police failed to act for hours despite receiving at least 11 emergency calls from pedestrians warning about a swelling crowd of Halloween revellers getting out of control ahead of the crush on Saturday in a narrow alley near Hamilton Hotel. Continue reading...
Exclusive: CT Group’s activities on behalf of energy, tobacco and property firms raise questions over potential conflict of interestSir Lynton Crosby’s CT Group was lobbying ministers on behalf of a coal trader, a tobacco company, and property firms at the same time as providing political advice to Boris Johnson, the Guardian can reveal.The Australian election guru returned to provide “strategic political advice” to Johnson and his party after the Partygate scandal earlier this year, with the then prime minister promising discontented Conservative MPs in February that Crosby would be playing a bigger role. Continue reading...
Commission to focus on detention of journalist and political leader Zhanbolat Mamai after nationwide protestsThe state of human rights in the vast, mineral-rich central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan, including the continued detention of opposition leaders, is to be formally examined by senior UK parliamentarians including the former director of public prosecutions Lord MacDonald.He will lead an independent investigation into the detention and treatment of Zhanbolat Mamai, the leader of the unregistered opposition Democratic party in Kazakhstan. Continue reading...
Anonymous letter warned Lord Monteagle not to attend opening of parliament on 5 November 1605More than six centuries after Edward III first enshrined the crime of treason in English law, the letter that thwarted one of the most infamous acts in the nation’s history is to go on public display.The anonymous “Monteagle letter”, of 26 October 1605, warned the peer Lord Monteagle not to attend the opening of parliament on 5 November, “for they shall recyeve a terrible blowe this parleament and yet they shall not seie who hurts them”. Continue reading...
‘Extraordinary sale’ of 350 lots of seized customs contraband is valued collectively at about €1mFrance’s finance ministry is auctioning off customs contraband in an “extraordinary sale” featuring platinum bars seized en route to the UK, designer handbags, valuable historic coins, several collections of uncut diamonds and 2,016 bottles of vodka.The 350 lots – valued collectively at about €1m – also include a Volkswagen Golf stopped at France’s border with Spain and found to contain 480 kilograms of cannabis resin. Continue reading...
Sicilian mobsters said to have received more than €5m for farmland that was stolen or non-existentJudges in Italy have handed down prison sentences to 91 people, including alleged mafia members, following a large-scale EU agricultural subsidies fraud.According to magistrates in the city of Messina, Sicilian mobsters fraudulently received more than €5m (£4.3m) in subsidies between 2010 to 2017, including funds for thousands of hectares of “ghost” farmland in the east of the island that was either non-existent, stolen from farmers or owned by the Italian state or regional government. Continue reading...
UK dismisses Moscow’s accusations of Royal Navy involvement as ‘false claims of an epic scale’Moscow will “shortly” summon the UK ambassador to Russia, Deborah Bronnert, over its accusation that “British specialists” had been involved in a Ukrainian drone attack on the Crimean port of Sevastopol, the Russia foreign ministry has said.Russia has, without providing evidence, repeatedly blamed the UK for Saturday’s audacious attack, in which a swarm of drones attacked Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Continue reading...
Bolsonaro previously failed to explicitly concede defeat to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in presidential voteJair Bolsonaro has reportedly thrown in the towel after his presidential election defeat in Brazil on Sunday, telling members of the supreme court: “It’s over.”He went silent for nearly two days after being beaten by the leftwing former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the historic vote. When the rightwing populist finally appeared before the cameras on Tuesday afternoon, he failed to explicitly concede defeat or congratulate his vanquisher. Continue reading...
by Gwyn Topham Transport correspondent on (#65CEB)
About 20% of normal services will run on strike days as passengers warned to travel only if necessaryA series of RMT walkouts will bring a week of disruption for rail passengers across the UK from Saturday, as unions consider the possibility of further strike action in the future.Three 24-hour national rail strikes will bring many train services around Britain to a halt. A London Underground strike is also planned. Passengers have been warned to travel only if necessary. Continue reading...
Electric vehicle battery startup still seeking buyer or longer-term investor to avoid administrationBritishvolt has said it has secured five weeks of funding and its 300 staff have agreed to take a steep pay cut, as the UK government-backed battery startup races to find a buyer or new longer-term investor to avoid collapse.The company, which planned to develop a £3.8bn “gigafactory” creating 3,000 jobs in the north-east of England, had been preparing to appoint administrators on Monday after the government refused to bring forward £30m in previously promised grant funding. Continue reading...
Former PM appears likely to form next government, mostly thanks to alliance with Religious ZionistsDon’t call it a comeback. Benjamin Netanyahu was booted from office last summer by a broad coalition united by their distaste for the conservative Likud leader. But after Tuesday’s election – an unprecedented fifth poll in less than four years – the short-lived “government of change” is probably going to prove no more than a brief intermission in the political behemoth’s long career.With 80% of votes counted on Wednesday, but official results not due until next week, Bibi, as he is commonly known, appears the most likely candidate to form a new government. Continue reading...
by Felicity Lawrence and Ella McSweeney on (#65CCG)
Parties agree to settle claim over article about undocumented foreign workers Irish fishing industryA libel case against the Guardian brought by two Irish fishers accused of exploiting undocumented foreign workers as cheap labour on their trawler has been settled at the 11th hour by agreement of the parties.Lenny Hyde and Pat O’Mahony, the Cork-based owners of the Labardie Fisher vessel, sued the Guardian for libel after it published allegations made by one of their Filipino deckhands about his working conditions in 2015. Continue reading...
State regulator tightens advertising rules to align society with ‘core socialist values’China has banned all celebrities from endorsing a range of products and banned those with “lapsed morals” from endorsing anything, as part of an ongoing drive to align society with “core socialist values”.The new regulations, announced by state regulators this week, bar Chinese celebrities from publicly endorsing or advertising health, education and financial commodities including e-cigarettes and baby formula. Continue reading...
Rallies from Perth to Sydney pay tribute to 15-year-old killed on his way home from school in Western AustraliaThousands of Australians have turned out for vigils in towns and cities across the country to mourn the death of Noongar-Yamatji schoolboy Cassius Turvey.A 21-year-old man has been charged with murder after the alleged attack when Cassius and his friends were walking home from school in Middle Swan on 13 October. He died from injuries sustained during the attack 10 days later. Continue reading...
by Carmen Aguilar García, Michael Goodier and Pamela on (#65CBF)
Non-UK-born population increased to 10 million in 2021, latest figures show, a 33% rise in 10 yearsOne in six people living in England and Wales in 2021 were born in a different country, according to the latest census figures.Some 10 million people, usually resident in England and Wales (16.8%), were born outside the UK on Census Day, 21 March 2021, up from 7.5 million (13.4%) at the time of the last census in 2011. Continue reading...
Immigration minister says number of people at Manston processing centre has fallen substantially• UK politics live – latest news updatesHundreds of migrants have been moved out of an immigration centre in Kent amid concerns it had become dangerously overcrowded.The immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, said the number of people at the Manston migrant processing centre had fallen substantially on Tuesday, with more expected to be moved on Wednesday. Continue reading...
Atlanta-based Quality Control issues statement speaking of ‘monumental loss’, as Houston police appeal for any of 40 people at scene to come forwardMigos’s Atlanta-based record label Quality Control has shared a statement on the fatal shooting of their rapper Takeoff. “It is with broken hearts and deep sadness that we mourn the loss of our beloved brother Kirshnik Khari Ball, known to the world as Takeoff,” the label wrote on Instagram. “Senseless violence and a stray bullet has taken another life from this world and we are devastated. Please respect his family and friends as we all continue to process this monumental loss.”At a press conference, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and police chief Troy Finner responded to the shooting, asking any of the supposedly 40 people who were present on the scene to come forward with details. Continue reading...
by Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent on (#65C8M)
Councils receiving 5,400 new requests for help each day while capacity has reduced significantlyThe state of social care in England has “never been so bad”, the country’s leading social services chief has said, with half a million people now waiting for help.Sarah McClinton, president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), told a conference of council care bosses in Manchester: “The shocking situation is that we have more people requesting help from councils, more older and disabled with complex needs, yet social care capacity has reduced and we have 50,000 fewer paid carers.” Continue reading...
Former health secretary says politicians ‘must wake up and embrace popular culture’Matt Hancock has said his decision to appear on I’m a Celebrity was motivated by a desire to showcase his “human side” and to use reality TV as a platform to “deliver important messages to the masses”.
Communication Workers Union rejects latest pay offer, describing it as ‘declaration of war on posties’Royal Mail workers will stage two 48-hour strikes around Black Friday and Cyber Monday after their union rejected the company’s latest pay offer and programme for change, describing it as a “declaration of war on posties”.The Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents Royal Mail staff, announced on Tuesday night that workers would be striking on 24 November and 25 November, known as Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year.
Greg Jackson says he hopes to return profit to taxpayers after buying rival energy group following its government bailoutThe founder of Octopus Energy has said taxpayers need to benefit from the “upside” of emergency government bailout deals, after snapping up stricken former rival Bulb.Greg Jackson’s Octopus bought Bulb out of government-handled special administration last weekend and is set to take control of the company later this month, a year after it collapsed. Continue reading...
More than 40 psychologists speak out together for first time after ACP-UK’s statement on young people’s treatmentSome of the most senior gender identity specialists in the UK have accused their professional body of “contributing to an atmosphere of fear” around young people receiving gender-related healthcare.More than 40 clinical psychologists have signed an open letter to the Association of Clinical Psychologists UK in protest at the organisation’s recent position statement on the provision of services for gender-questioning children and young people. They say they believe there was a failure to properly consult experts in the field or service users, resulting in a “misleading” statement that “perpetuates damaging discourses about the work and gender-diverse identities more broadly”. Continue reading...
Government sources in Tirana say UK has failed to provide information or agree a deportation dealAn alleged failure by the Home Office to share with the Albanian government the routes taken by those arriving in Britain is being blamed for holding back efforts to stop the Channel crossings.Government sources in Tirana said that repeated attempts to get information from the UK about those travelling on the small boats had come to nothing, leaving them operating in the dark. Continue reading...
Friends of twice jailed human rights activist call for independent inquiry after body found in damaged wetsuit at Base G beach, JayapuraThe human rights campaigner Filep Karma – one of West Papua’s most famous former political prisoners – has been found dead on a beach in Jayapura, sparking calls for a full and independent inquiry into his death.Twice jailed for raising the West Papuan Morning Star flag banned by Indonesia, 63-year-old Karma was one of the most prominent and influential campaigners for West Papuan independence. Continue reading...
UK intelligence agencies to broaden pool of talent by accepting anyone with British citizenshipThe selection criteria for spies are, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite opaque and presumed to be fairly stringent. But there is one thing that will no longer be required of would-be British agents: British parentage.The UK’s three intelligence agencies are seeking to broaden the pool of talent they can recruit from by accepting anyone who has British citizenship – regardless of where their parents are from. Continue reading...
ASA rules that UK Facebook ad showing white officer with black prisoner showed an ‘imbalanced power dynamic’An advertising campaign run by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) featuring a white prison officer and a black prisoner has been banned for perpetuating negative stereotypes linking race with criminal activity.The Facebook ad promoting jobs at HMP Wormwood Scrubs in London featured a prison officer talking to an inmate wearing an afro comb in his hair, alongside the caption: “We’re key workers, problem solvers, life changers.” Continue reading...
by Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent on (#65BX6)
Inspectorate uncovers widespread vetting failures with officers cleared to join after committing serious crimesDefective vetting and failures by police leaders have allowed a “prevalent” culture of potentially thousands of officers who are “predatory” towards women to join and stay in the ranks, a damning official report has concluded.Officers staged unwarranted stops of women in an abuse of power known as “booty patrols”, with crimes such as sexual assault covered up and ignored along with large-scale harassment of female officers and members of the public.A special constable cleared to join despite a past conviction for indecent exposure seven times over a two-week period as a juvenile, when he had masturbated at his bedroom window, coughing to attract the attention of a woman. He also had a caution for threats to commit criminal damage.A support officer cleared to join after slapping his partner in the face.A police officer allowed to join despite robbing an 80-year-old woman, who was knocked to the ground and had her handbag stolen.A police officer cleared to join despite concerns he had a theft conviction and potential criminal links.A police officer arrested twice for assaults on women who were left with marks on their necks, and witness intimidation, as well as having a historical drink-driving conviction.An officer cleared to join despite an arrest for rape while a juvenile, about 20 years earlier.An officer, who still works with vulnerable people, given a final written warning for sending extremely sexually explicit and racist messages to a female colleague. Continue reading...
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