The radical plan from David Lammy has been criticised by senior lawyers, who say it could ‘destroy justice as we know it’
Jury trials for all except the most serious crimes such as rape, murder and manslaughter are set to be scrapped under radical proposals drawn up by David Lammy.
In proposals that drew a swift backlash from senior lawyers, who said that they would not reduce court backlogs and could “destroy justice as we know it”, the justice secretary has proposed that juries will only pass judgment on public interest offences with possible prison sentences of more than five years.
The Rugby Football Union has no plans to begin talks with Steve Borthwick over extending his contract beyond 2027 “for the foreseeable future” despite England’s 11-match winning streak and autumn clean sweep.
Borthwick’s contract runs until the end of 2027 but with England halfway through the current World Cup cycle and currently third in the world rankings, the RFU chief executive, Bill Sweeney, has no immediate intention of discussing an extension in a sea change from the union’s previous approach.
Chancellor says people must be ‘properly rewarded for their hard work’ with 16- to 21-year-olds also in line for raise
Millions of low-paid workers in the UK are to get a pay rise of 4.1% next year, as Rachel Reeves confirmed that minimum wage rates will go up as part of the government’s ambition to improve living standards.
The national living wage will rise from £12.21 to £12.71 an hour from April for over-21s, which the government said would increase the annual earnings of about 2.4 million workers by £900.
‘We are not there yet,’ Mikel Arteta said on club’s standing
Bayern visit Arsenal in Champions League on Wednesday
Mikel Arteta believes Arsenal remain in a “different universe” to European heavyweights such as Real Madrid and Bayern Munich given they have yet to win the Champions League.
The Premier League leaders head into their meeting with Bayern at the Emirates Stadium on Wednesday having won all four matches so far in the league phase and are the only team yet to concede a goal.
Parliamentary group urges government to clamp down on overseas territories before flagship anti-corruption summit
The UK government has been accused of caving-in to pressure from the British Virgin Islands by allowing it to limit access to a register of company share ownership to only those deemed to have a legitimate interest.
The restriction, to be discussed at talks starting on Tuesday between Foreign Office ministers and leaders of the British overseas territories (BOTs) in London, is in defiance of legislation passed by the UK government as long ago as 2008 that would make the register available to all.
Villagers demonstrate against drive for alternative funeral practices instead of burial to preserve land resources
Protests have erupted in China’s southern Guizhou province, the latest in a string of rural demonstrations that have seen incidents of unrest increase by 70% compared with last year.
The protests in Shidong town started over the weekend in response to a directive from local authorities that people should be cremated rather than buried after their death.
Spain, Argentina, France, England will be the top seeds
Fifa introducing format it utilised at Club World Cup
The world’s top four teams will not be able to meet until the semi-finals of next year’s World Cup if they win their groups under a seeding system used by Fifa at the tournament for the first time.
It means England would benefit from tennis-style seeding and avoid Spain and Argentina until the semi-finals and France until the final if they win their group.
It’s not the sexiest of garments. It arguably looks more like a discarded fishing net. And yet it has cast a spell over the internet
Name: Elphaba’s sex cardigan.
Age: Elphaba is a character in Wicked: For Good – Jon M Chu’s fantasy film, the sequel to last year’s mega hit Wicked Part 1, which was adapted from the 2003 stage musical, and has just been released. That was loosely based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, which was a reimagining of L Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaptation starring Judy Garland.
Portugal forward was sent off against Republic of Ireland
He missed Armenia game so is free to play at tournament
Cristiano Ronaldo has been cleared to play in the opening matches of Portugal’s World Cup campaign after he was handed a suspended sentence for his red card against the Republic of Ireland.
The Portugal forward, who was a guest of president Donald Trump in the White House last week, had a customary three-match ban for violent conduct commuted by Fifa’s disciplinary committee on Tuesday to a one-game ban, with two further matches suspended under a year’s probation. In effect Ronaldo has served his suspension, having sat out Portugal’s final World Cup qualifying match against Armenia.
Here’s what you should know before getting an epidural – and why it might not provide full pain relief as expected
The first time I got an epidural, it was too late.
I’d heard it was best to wait, for fear the medication would run out mid-labor (I later found out this is a myth). So I gritted my teeth through hours of contractions, and when I finally told the nurses I was ready, the anesthesiologist was with another patient.
Follow-up to 2016 animation about talking animals living in a utopia is a soulless film-by-numbers affair filled with corporately approved jokes
Another day, another supremely competent, passably-but-not-overwhelmingly funny digitally animated family comedy featuring talking animals. It’s not AI, but it might as well be. This is Zootropolis 2, which is named Zootopia 2 on its home turf in the US. (Is the reference to lefty ideas such as “utopia” too dangerous for the all-important foreign territories?) If this is the second in what promises to be a continuing series, perhaps Z3 will be cautiously hailed as a return to the franchise’s “dark” roots.
We are back in the magical wonderland of Zootropolis, in which all animals live together, big and small, prey and predator; a place, in fact, where the comedy lion can lie down with the hilarious back-talking lamb, and all the animals provide undemanding voiceover work for comedy talent such as Alan Tudyk, who makes a minor vocal appearance. As before, our heroes are an odd couple of cops in the ZPD or Zootropolis Police Department: idealistic young rabbit Judy Hopps (geddit?), voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, and sly fox Nick Wilde, voiced by Jason Bateman, a creature once on the wrong side of the law but now a supposedly reformed character who has joined the police.
Will AI take all our jobs? Prevent all crimes from being committed? Or finally develop skills beyond that of a trainee copywriter? Here are television’s finest depictions of our imminent future…
There aren’t many television shows yet about how AI affects our daily lives. After all, there isn’t much dramatic potential in shows about creatively flaccid people using ChatGPT to write woeful little Facebook updates. But that is not to say we haven’t come close.
For years, fiction about AI tended to be exclusively about killer robots, but some shows have taken a more nuanced look at how AI will shape our lives over the next few years. Here are the best of them.
A new documentary from the makers of Jesus Camp follows the students enrolled at one of Norway’s 85 ‘folk high schools’. Can sledding and survival skills cure their social media-induced anxiety?
Nineteen-year-old Hege is stricken by all the common anxieties of her generation. She spends too much time scrolling through socials on her phone, and as a result she is obsessed with how other people perceive her, and highly stressed when it comes to interacting with real humans in the flesh. “I think a lot about what people think about me,” she says. “You get tired of it.”
The young adult from Sandnes in the south-west of Norway is one of the three teenage protagonists of Folktales, a new documentary that proposes a refreshingly simple remedy for zoomer angst: “Give yourself a fire, a dog, and the starry sky above you.”
Gramma came to San Diego Zoo from Bronx Zoo in 1928 or 1931 and lived through 20 US presidents
After more than a century of munching on her favorite foods of romaine lettuce and cactus fruit, beloved Galapagos tortoise Gramma, the oldest resident of the San Diego Zoo, has died.
Gramma was born in her native habitat and was estimated to be about 141 years old, zoo officials said. She died on 20 November.
A Shakers-inspired exhibition has united the three-time Oscar winner and conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra
A small-town police chief of plainspoken decency in Fargo. A working-class mother driven to seek justice for her daughter in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. A modest, resilient woman finding dignity in life on the road in Nomadland.
The actor Frances McDormand’s three Oscar-winning performances display rare versatility but have empathy at their core. But qualities were on display last week when she joined the conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra at the opening of an exhibition featuring adult-sized cradles.
The VP wouldn’t be where he is today without the patronage of the Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel. But with voters becoming more and more concerned about the firm’s surveillance tech, could that relationship affect his chances?
The US is the land of the free and the home of the world’s most expensive, and most excruciatingly drawn-out, elections. In most democracies, the election cycle lasts just a few weeks or months. In most democracies there are strict laws regulating how long politicians can campaign, and how much money political parties can accept. But the US is not most democracies.
Every chancellor likes to float ideas before a budget to test how they might land with the public.
However, the sheer volume of policy ideas floated – and in some cases quickly jettisoned – through the media in the run-up to Wednesday’s Westminster set-piece has set Rachel Reeves’s second budget apart.
Tate Britain, London JMW Turner is beaten by John Constable in this mighty show. But who cares when the work is so sublime you can hear the squelching and smell the river?
Turner or Constable: who’s the boss? Tate Britain’s exhibition of work by the two artists, subtitled Rivals and Originals, fudges the question. Born a year apart and both alumni of the Royal Academy schools in London, each was keenly aware of what the other was doing, in a British art world that was as febrile and competitive, if immeasurably smaller, than it is today (although you should try the Italian Renaissance if you want full-blooded rivalries and enmities). Sometimes, they sought the same collectors and painted the same subjects. Turner was encouraged from an early age by his father, a Covent Garden wigmaker and barber; Constable was the son of a Suffolk mill owner and grain merchant who wanted him to take over the family business.
As well as their contrasting backgrounds, their temperaments could not have been more different. A scene from Mike Leigh’s 2014 film Mr Turner, starring Timothy Spall as Turner and James Fleet as Constable, plays in the show, presenting the two painters bickering on Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy in 1832. Turner added a touch of red, in the form of a buoy, to his seascape Helvoetsluys; the City of Utrecht, 64, Going to Sea in order to upstage Constable’s The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, on which the painter had been working for more than a decade. But whatever their rivalry entailed, it was hardly the odd-couple bromance between Van Gogh and Gauguin depicted in the 1956 Vincente Minnelli movie Lust for Life (Gauguin: “You paint too fast!” Van Gogh: “You look too fast!”). It is worth remembering that Constable once wrote in a letter: “Did you ever see a picture by Turner, and not wish to possess it?”
When Jordan Pickford’s time as England and Everton’s eternal No 1 comes to its end, a career in peacekeeping, or failing that, manning the doors back in Sunderland, may await. As Idrissa Gueye and Michael Keane, teammates let us recall, went for each other at Old Trafford in full hold-me-back, hold-me-back mode, in stepped Pickford’s strong hands. Too late, it turned out. By then, Tony Harrington, the referee, had reached for his red card. Harrington had seen Gueye slap Keane, and the PGMO (no L these days, all you pedants) doesn’t agree with that in the workplace.
I see Spurs have signed the perfect ‘global partner’ for fans who found themselves pulling their hair out as the fourth Arsenal goal went in on Sunday: Turkish hair-transplant company Elithair. Sometimes, you just have to look in the mirror and acknowledge the bald truth of your shortcomings” – Justin Kavanagh.
Re: Patrick Connolly (yesterday’s Football Daily letters). Mate being responsible for a player not being able to perform at their best? I didn’t even know Ange Postecoglou had managed the Portland Timbers” – Derek McGee.
Will Leo Messi and Inter Miami winning a playoff game mean they will now be invited to participate in the World Cup finals next summer?” – Martyn Shapter.
Report says Israel’s operations ‘significantly undermined every pillar of survival’ and reduced the economy by 87%
Israel’s war in Gaza has created a “human-made abyss”, and reconstruction is likely to cost more than $70bn (£53bn) over several decades, the United Nations has said.
The UN’s trade and development agency (Unctad) said in a report that Israel’s military operations had “significantly undermined every pillar of survival” and that the entire population of 2.3 million people faced “extreme, multidimensional impoverishment”.
Man from Borgo Virgilio investigated for benefit fraud and hiding body since woman’s death in 2022
An Italian man is under investigation for benefit fraud and hiding a body after allegedly dressing up as his dead mother – including mimicking her hairstyle with a wig and wearing makeup and jewellery – in order to claim her pension.
The man, from Borgo Virgilio close to the northern Italian city of Mantua, allegedly claimed thousands of euros in pension payments after the death of his mother in 2022. Instead of reporting her death, he allegedly hid her body in his home.
French media say those held include alleged final member of four-person gang who broke into museum
French authorities have arrested four more people in connection with last month’s spectacular heist of an estimated €88m (£77m) worth of crown jewels from the Louvre, the Paris prosecutor has said.
“They are two men aged 38 and 39, and two women aged 31 and 40, all from the Paris region,” Laure Beccuau said. French media said the arrests included the last remaining alleged member of the four-person gang who broke into the museum.
In this hypnotic, meditative film, a family’s breakdown sets a 12-year-old girl’s coming-of-age in motion as she constructs various ploys to reverse her parents’ separation
During a science class, 12-year-old Renko Urushiba (Tomoko Tabata) is confronted by her classmates for befriending Tachibana (Nagiko Tono), a girl from Tokyo who is shunned for having divorced parents. Refusing to give up her friendship, Renko hurls a laboratory burner on to her desk, setting it ablaze and throwing the class into chaos. Unbeknown to most of her friends, Renko’s parents are separated, too.
Equal parts perceptive and mischievous, little Renko is the protagonist of 1993’s Moving, the acclaimed 10th feature by the Japanese auteur Shinji Sōmai. Attuned to the sensibilities of childhood, Moving delicately traces the uncertainties that line the thorny path towards adolescence. With Sōmai’s signature long takes and elaborate camera movements, the film tries to keep up with Renko’s hurried footsteps as she dashes between her discordant parents.
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