Dismisses

Downing Street says focus to remains on cutting bills, backing renters and lowering energy pricesDowning Street has dismissed a freeze on private sector rents even as Rachel Reeves left the door open to the idea, after the Guardian revealed the chancellor has been considering it as an option to cut the cost of living.A No 10 spokesperson said on Tuesday freezing private sector rents was “not the approach we will be taking” after sources told the Guardian it was Reeves’s preferred solution for dealing with a spike in housing costs in the wake of the Iran war. Continue reading...

Protester says he migrated from Malaysia as a child and describes home secretary’s immigration policies as cruelUK politics live – latest updatesA protester who heckled Shabana Mahmood said he came to the UK as a child from Malaysia, describing the home secretary’s claim that he was a white liberal as “laughable”.Joe, 32, who did not wish to give his last name, migrated from Malaysia at the age of four with his family. He said the home secretary’s proposed immigration reforms would have left him, and thousands of children like him, in limbo. Continue reading...

Special envoy to Donald Trump suggested the idea‘Firstly not possible … secondly not appropriate’The Italian sports minister, Andrea Abodi, has described a proposal for his country to replace Iran at the World Cup as “not appropriate”, rejecting any idea that the Azzurri will be granted a last-minute berth at this summer’s tournament.On Wednesday it emerged that Paolo Zampolli, a special envoy to Donald Trump, had suggested Italy should be fast-tracked to the World Cup despite their shock defeat by Bosnia & Herzegovina in last month’s playoffs. Zampolli proposed the four-time winners Italy replace Iran and said they would “have the pedigree to justify their inclusion”. But Abodi said that football’s showpiece tournament should remain meritocratic. Continue reading...

Judge rules complaint fails to outline malice after Trump argued lewd drawing allegedly sent to Epstein at heart of story was fakeA Florida judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed last summer by Donald Trump over a Wall Street Journal report that he had sent a “bawdy” letter to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, though the judge has given the US president two weeks to re-file the case.Trump, who has had a habit of suing media companies both inside and outside the White House, had argued that a lewd drawing at the heart of the story was fake. The lawsuit was especially notable because one of the defendants was Rupert Murdoch, one of Trump’s top media allies, whose News Corporation media empire owns the Journal. Continue reading...

• A federal judge in New York dismissed actor Blake Lively's sexual harassment claims against Justin Baldoni related to their work on the movie 'It Ends With Us.' • The dismissal occurred on April 11, 2026, but the judge allowed Lively's retaliation claim to proceed. • The ruling stems from an ongoing legal dispute between the co-stars amid production tensions.

US vice-president says on visit to Budapest ‘we had to show’ support for Viktor Orbán, as opposition leads pollsHungary elections: what is at stake and who is likely to win?JD Vance has pushed back against claims that the US is interfering in Hungarian politics, describing the accusations as “darkly ironic”, as a set of polls suggested the opposition Tisza party could win a supermajority in the upcoming elections.After spending his first day in Budapest excoriating the EU and accusing it of being behind one of the “worst examples” of foreign interference, the US vice-president spent part of Wednesday morning speaking at a thinktank and educational institution linked to Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán. Continue reading...

• A New York federal judge dismissed Blake Lively's sexual harassment claims against Justin Baldoni related to the film It Ends With Us on April 3, 2026. • The ruling comes amid ongoing disputes from the movie's production. • This decision impacts Hollywood's #MeToo era accountability efforts.

Abdullah Baig alleged Meta ignored flaws putting billions at risk, but a US judge ruled he lacked sufficient evidenceA US court has dismissed a lawsuit from WhatsApp’s former security chief, who alleged that parent company Meta ignored internal flaws he flagged about the messaging app’s digital defenses.Abdullah Baig, who claims he was fired in retaliation for raising these concerns, had alleged that billions of users had been put at risk because of these vulnerabilities. Thousands of employees could view sensitive user data, including profile photos and location, Baig claimed in the lawsuit filed in September. A judge ruled he had not presented enough evidence to move forward. Continue reading...

Prime minister threatens to withdraw NHS training posts for residents doctors if they don’t call off strikeGood morning. Keir Starmer is chairing a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee later to discuss the Iran war, but domestic issues don’t go away and he (or, to be more accurate, his staff) have also found time to write an article for the Times delivering a warning to resident doctors in England planning to go on strike. As Jamie Grierson reports, the PM is threatening to withdraw an offer of thousands of extra NHS training posts for resident doctors if they do not call off the strike within 48 hours.Judging by what Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the BMA resident doctors committee, told the Today programme in an interview this morning, Starmer may have as little success with his ultimatum as Donald Trump seems to be having with his inconsistent and increasingly apocalyptic warnings to what is left of the Iranian government.I’m very happy to sit down with the government at any point to try and negotiate a settlement, but I don’t think that’s done by writing in newspapers and issuing threats unilaterally.The government made very late changes to the pay offer, reducing the pay investment and stretching it over a longer period in a way that had not been previously talked about.Ministers effectively moved the goalposts on the deal at the last minute.Two weeks ago, the government took that investment, reduced it, and then stretched it over three years. That is a very, very, very different outcome to the one that we were discussing just two weeks ago. Continue reading...

Iranian parliament speaker says ‘no negotiations’ held with US, as Trump postpones energy strikes for five days; European Commission chief says war must come to negotiated endTrump claims ‘productive’ talks with Iran but Tehran denies contactIsrael launches new strikes on Tehran as Trump pauses Iran energy attacksWelcome to our ongoing coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran and its wider repercussions in the Middle East and globally.Donald Trump has claimed the US and Iran have held talks in which the two sides had “major points of agreement”, and speculated that a deal could soon be done to end the war, a claim contradicted by Tehran.Trump said the threatened US strikes on Iranian power plants had been postponed after “very good and productive” discussions with Iran about a “complete and total resolution of our hostilities” in the Middle East. After hitting a four-year high, the price of oil fell dramatically following Trump’s comments, while stocks in Asia rallied.Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said he had spoken with Trump, who saw a chance of an agreement with Iran, but added that Israel would continue its strikes against Iran and Lebanon. Trump believed there was a possibility of “leveraging the mighty achievements obtained by the Israeli and the US military, in order to realise the goals of the war in a deal – a deal that will preserve our vital interests”, the Israeli prime minister claimed in a video statement released by his office.Israel said it had launched “wide-scale” strikes on Iran on Monday morning, while Tehran continued to fire missiles at the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The Israeli military also claimed to have hit struck the main security headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as part of a “wave of strikes that was completed a short while ago in the heart of Tehran”.An Israeli strike also hit Beirut’s southern suburbs on Monday, Agence France-Presse quoted state media as saying, hours after the Israeli army issued an order for residents of the area to evacuate. An AFPTV live broadcast showed a cloud of smoke over the densely populated southern suburbs, which are considered a Hezbollah stronghold and have not been hit since Friday night. Continue reading...

A German tourist filed a lawsuit claiming he felt unpleasant symptoms after eating tacos with salsa at Los Tacos No 1A German tourist’s attempt to pursue $100,000 in damages from a New York City taqueria whose salsa he found to be too spicy has failed after a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit.In a complaint filed in October 2024, German national Faycal Manz said he was visiting New York City two months earlier when he stopped at the Times Square location of Los Tacos No 1. Continue reading...