The former Brexit negotiator Oliver Robbins has been appointed as the UK Foreign Office’s most senior civil servant, taking over from Sir Philip Barton. Robbins, who was on the shortlist last year but failed to get the civil service’s top job, was believed to be David Lammy’s favoured candidate for the role of permanent undersecretary….
A rapper has been convicted of posting a “menacing” video on social media directed towards Tommy Robinson, in which he mentioned artillery and made a gun gesture while shouting “pow, pow, pow”. Omar Abdirizak, a 31-year-old Birmingham-based rapper known as Twista Cheese, posted the minute-long TikTok video in August last year. He pleaded not guilty…
Democrats in Virginia preserved their majority in the state legislature late on Tuesday in the first statewide elections since Donald Trump’s presidential victory in November. In special elections for open seats, Kannan Srinivasan, a Democratic state representative, defeated Republican Tumay Harding in a race for an open state senate seat in Loudon county, Virginia, just…
Keir Starmer has accused Kemi Badenoch of “bandwagon jumping” in calling for a new inquiry into sexual abuse gangs, as he condemned the Conservative leader for her plan to try to vote down a bill on children’s wellbeing. In sometimes bitter exchanges at prime minister’s questions, as the topic of grooming gangs continued to dominate…
The sister of the OpenAI chief executive, Sam Altman, has filed a lawsuit alleging that he regularly sexually abused her for several years, starting when they were children. The lawsuit filed on 6 January in a US district court in the Eastern District of Missouri alleges that the abuse began when Ann Altman was three…
Giving a colleague an “air kiss” does not amount to sexual harassment, a UK employment judge has ruled. Judge Perry said the gesture, a trope in the 1990s British comedy Absolutely Fabulous, could not be regarded as “unwanted conduct of a sexual nature”. The ruling came at the end of the case of a hospitality…
France has warned Donald Trump against threatening the “sovereign borders” of the European Union after the US president-elect refused to rule out military action to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of EU member Denmark. The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, told France Inter radio: “There is no question of the EU letting other…
If you’d asked me which rare bird I might see in Somerset in early January, the least sandpiper would have been very low on my list. Yet on a fine, bright, chilly morning here it was: running along the edge of the water like a clockwork toy, probing the mud for food with its stubby…
A police sergeant who allegedly performed two Nazi salutes in front of colleagues at the police academy will not be charged despite the gesture being banned in Victoria, the force says. The 65-year-old woman, who has been in the force for 40 years, was suspended with pay last October, after police launched a criminal investigation…
A 23-year-old hiker who has been missing since Boxing Day in the remote Kosciuszko national park has been found alive. Police confirmed on Wednesday that Hadi Nazari had been found alive. Hikers found Nazari at about 3.15pm on Wednesday off the circuit walk near Blue Lake, police said in a statement. Nazari has been winched…
