‘Tiger mum’ Lucy Powell on Labour’s vocational skills drive: ‘It’s about ambition for everybody’

Review goes down to the wire after ministers speak with victims’ representatives and support servicesAndy Burnham is focused on preventing the release of child sexual abuse perpetrators as part of the government’s early release scheme, as urgent talks on which serious criminals could be exempted go down to the wire.Government ministers are understood to have 24 hours to assess which criminals can be released early to free up prison space, with every exemption weighed up against the threat of the criminal justice system’s collapse. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Outsourced guards, largely from ethnic minority backgrounds, barred from staff hub for mainly white employeesThe National Gallery’s security staff, of whom the vast majority are from ethnic minority backgrounds, are facing shocking segregation, a senior curator has claimed.Its outsourced guards are barred from the building’s high-quality “hub” – bright and airy recreation rooms that are available to the institution’s mainly white employees. Continue reading...

The 85-year-old former broadcaster faces 22 charges from six different complainants in what is expected to be a four-month trialGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThe high-profile trial of former broadcaster Alan Jones for indecent assault and sexual touching charges begins on Monday in Sydney’s Downing Centre local court and is expected to run for four months and hear from 76 witnesses.Judge Glenn Walsh will hear from six complainants who were allegedly indecently assaulted by the 85-year-old between 2003 and 2020. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Karlene Whitton says her son Matthew Roberts took his own life three months into his jail term. ‘I keep picturing it every night’Warning: This article contains images and names of Indigenous Australians who have diedGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastFirst Nations advocates warn that prisons in New South Wales could exceed the record number of Indigenous deaths in custody set last year, after two men died this month.Matthew Roberts, a 27-year-old Bundjalung, Yaegl and Gamilaroi man and father of two young boys, took his life inside Lithgow correctional centre on 7 July after he was remanded in custody in March. Another First Nations man, 21, died a week later at Clarence correctional centre. Continue reading...

Greek police say 26-year-old foreigner is believed to have left Elisabeth-Jane Ross’s body in derelict buildingA man has been arrested after the death of a Scottish woman whose body was found inside a suitcase in Athens.The 26-year-old man, who Greek police said was a foreigner, was arrested after the death of Elisabeth-Jane Ross. The 38-year-old’s body was discovered inside a suitcase by a homeless man in a derelict building in the Kypseli area of Athens on 18 July. Continue reading...

Labour chair accuses Reform of making ‘grubby pacts’ after contradictory reports emerge on timeline of eventsReform UK is operating under a “stench of sleaze” Labour have said, after reports that Nigel Farage struck a secret deal to return as leader of Reform UK months before the general election.Farage was in discussions about a return to the political frontline from as early as March 2024, despite claiming that he had no intention of returning to politics until June 2024, the Sunday Times reported. Continue reading...

Cotality data shows a drop in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, as nation’s median home price falls about $19,000 below its March peakGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastHouse prices have fallen in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth as the market downturn spreads across Australia.New Cotality data, released on Monday, showed prices have fallen across most of the nation since May. Continue reading...

People among the more than 50,000 who entered Spanish enclave this week describe the journey and their prospectsFour days ago, Youssef El Abbas saw an opportunity to reclaim the life he had lost years seven earlier. News was circulating that about 400 people had swum from Morocco to the neighbouring Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the north African coast, approximately 12 miles (19km) across the strait of Gibraltar from mainland Spain.Here was a chance for the 44-year-old Moroccan father of four to return to Spain, from which he had been deported when his residency expired after the loss of his job in Bilbao in 2019. Continue reading...

High winds prevent firefighting aircraft from collecting seawater as flames spread through AtticaEurope’s wildfire crisis fractured along starkly different fronts on Sunday: gale-force winds drove flames deeper into the Athens region and forced fresh evacuations, France guarded a still-burning scar four times the size of Paris against renewed spread, and Spain’s major fires finally stopped advancing.The centre of immediate danger was Greece. Gale-force winds drove flames deeper into western Attica, the administrative region that includes the capital, threatening villages and an industrial district outside the city of Megara as violent wind gusts prevented firefighting aircraft from collecting water from the sea. Continue reading...

Volunteers painstakingly gather plastic pellets washing up on beaches after ship collision on 19 July“You’ve got a local community that really cares about the coastline,” said Alice Laverty, reflecting on the huge army of volunteers who had taken to crisis-hit beaches in north-east England with passion and only the most basic tools. “They’ve all got a dustpan, a brush, a bucket, a kitchen sieve.”On beaches from Cambois in Northumberland to Seaburn on Wearside, up to 2,000 dedicated volunteers have been painstakingly sifting through sand to find tiny, lentil-sized pellets of plastic. Continue reading...

After years of building lives in UK, potentially hundreds of thousands of EU citizens are being told they have no right to remain The UK Home Office has started stripping some EU citizens of their post-Brexit residency rights, in a move that has raised concerns about Britain’s compliance with its withdrawal agreement with Europe.The UK internal affairs authority has told at least 100 people that they were given residency rights “in error”, disrupting their lives just as they come to the end of their five-year “pre-settled status” and prepare to upgrade to the permanent “settled status”. Continue reading...