Octopus Energy boss: some people would accept occasional blackouts if bills cut

President says reality star a ‘big Maga person’ but backing may prove more hindrance than help in deep-blue bastionDonald Trump’s endorsement is typically a boon for candidates seeking elected office – a show of support, or disapproval, from the president has proved significant in races across the US this year.But Trump’s recent comments on the Los Angeles mayor’s race, just weeks before the primary, are sure to benefit Democrats. The president spoke favorably of Spencer Pratt, a former Republican and reality TV star who is polling second in the contest to lead America’s second largest city. Continue reading...

Policy adviser Jen Reed says tech-facilitated abuse has become ‘increasingly prevalent’ and calls for its inclusion in Domestic Abuse ActThe Domestic Abuse Act fails to fully recognise the danger of technology-facilitated abuse, such as location tracking or hidden stalkerware, a Lords select committee has heard.Tech abuse has become “increasingly prevalent” and “very commonplace now within a domestic abuse context”, said Jen Reed, the head of policy at University College London’s Gender and Tech Research Lab, during an evidence session. Continue reading...

Approval marks key step forward for project dubbed ‘Arc de Trump’, which will be near Arlington National CemeteryThe Commission of Fine Arts on Thursday approved designs for Donald Trump’s proposed 250-ft triumphal arch in Washington DC.The vote on Thursday by the panel, which is made up of Trump appointees, marks a key step forward for the project. Next month, the proposed design is set to be reviewed by the National Capital Planning Commission, another federal panel that oversees planning for federal buildings and land. Continue reading...

Updated code of practice covering England, Wales and Scotland also relates to changing rooms and follows supreme court rulingSingle sex toilets and changing rooms in England, Wales and Scotland must exclude transgender men and women, according to a new code of practice from the equalities watchdog.But the long-awaited guidance also says that businesses and service providers have to offer practical alternatives such as gender-neutral toilets for people who don’t wish to use services for their biological sex. Continue reading...

Boys physically overpowered and then filmed attacks on teenage victims in separate incidents in HampshireThree teenage boys convicted of knife-point rape and other serious sexual offences against two teenage girls in Hampshire have not been given custodial sentences because the judge said he “should avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily”.The boys, who were aged between 13 and 14 at the time of their offences, physically overpowered and sexually assaulted the girls, who were aged 14 and 15, in separate incidents two months apart. Continue reading...

Court throws out state’s challenge to judicial finding that inmate convicted of murder is ineligible for death penaltyThe US supreme court on Thursday threw out a challenge by the state of Alabama to a judicial finding that a death row inmate convicted of a 1997 murder is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible under the US constitution for the death penalty.In this highly unusual move, and in a single-sentence, unsigned order, the court dismissed Alabama’s petition for review in Hamm v Smith without deciding it, effectively undoing its earlier decision to take up an appeal by state officials to the method used by a lower court to determine that Joseph Clifton Smith was intellectually disabled and therefore could not be executed. Continue reading...

Music is banned on Wednesdays on island of Stromboli where Rolling Stones frontman was celebrating wrapping a filmPolice on an Italian island stopped a party attended by Mick Jagger – because music is banned on Wednesdays.The Rolling Stones frontman was on Stromboli, the volcanic island among Sicily’s Aeolian archipelago, for the production of Three Incestuous Sisters, a film by the Italian director Alice Rohrwacher in which he stars. Continue reading...

Sarah Kellen told lawmakers that convicted sex offender ‘sexually and psychologically abused me … and gaslit me’Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email One of Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime assistants has fiercely denied she was an accomplice of the convicted sex offender during a congressional interview, claiming she was “sexually and psychologically abused” by the late financier.“I am here today to answer your questions, to dispel rumors and conspiracies, and to tell you the truth,” Sarah Kellen told lawmakers on the House of Representatives oversight and reform committee on Thursday morning, as part of its ongoing review of the federal investigation into Epstein. Continue reading...

UK’s largest police force says Palantir is only company that can supply what it needs. Is that worth the controversy that comes with it?London mayor Sadiq Khan blocks £50m Met police deal with PalantirIt’s bot vs bobby. The row over whether the controversial US AI company Palantir should be paid £50m to help the Metropolitan police hits to the heart of how public services will be delivered in the coming years.A similar dynamic is playing out in hospitals, schools and town halls, but right now police chiefs are turning to AI to escape a fiscal bind. The UK’s largest police force is shrinking; a £125m funding shortfall means it faces cutting 1,150 posts. Scotland Yard wants to use AI to deploy Palantir’s systems to comb through human intelligence reports, email caches, phone records and the rest of the torrent of digital evidence trail left by 21st century crime. Continue reading...

Highest ranking staff will get 2.5% pay rise with bonuses for top performers in plan to ‘rewire’ civil serviceSenior civil servants will get bonuses for exceptional performance for the first time under a new system that Darren Jones, the Cabinet Office minister, said would reward the “doers, not the talkers”.Jones, who is also chief secretary to the prime minister, said most civil servants would get a 3.5% pay rise, but senior staff would have a base increase of 2.5%, with 1% held back for bonuses for the highest performing officials. Continue reading...

Africa CDC says restrictions could increase public health risks and highlight ‘deeper structural injustice’ in global healthA US travel ban for people coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in response to the Ebola outbreak could make the situation worse, critics have warned.Declared a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday, the outbreak continues to spread with a new case reported in the DRC’s South Kivu province, an area under the control of armed rebel groups. Continue reading...

Burnham and Streeting’s latest stances confound caricatures of left and right as party faces electoral bindThe Labour party has seemed to inhabit three parallel worlds over the past fortnight.There is a prime minister celebrating good news on the economy and lower migration figures and breezily insisting he will fight the next election, but with his party intent on deposing him. Continue reading...