Sebastian Gorka says letting people in prison camps return to Britain would benefit the ‘special relationship’ with US
British nationals being held in Syrian prison camps for fighting on behalf of Islamic State should be allowed to return to the UK, Donald Trump’s incoming counter-terrorism chief has said.
Any country that wants to be a “serious ally” to the United States should commit to the international fight against the extremist group by repatriating its citizens, according to Sebastian Gorka.
New leader Alcide Ponga says people want a ‘signal of hope’ after turmoil in the French Pacific territory
Weeks after its first ever pro-independence government collapsed, New Caledonia has named a French loyalist as its new president as the territory seeks to rebuild from deadly riots and destruction that battered the economy.
Alcide Ponga, from the Le Rassemblement party, was elected president by the newly installed executive in Congress on Wednesday. Ponga’s party is affiliated with French right-wing party LR, Les Républicains. The loyalists are in favour of keeping New Caledonia within France.
An alleged arsonist has had to shed their burning pants after seeking to set a Melbourne fast-food business alight on Christmas morning.
Victoria police said emergency services were called to a blaze at a strip of shops off Doncaster Road in Doncaster East at about 2.40am on 25 December.
Diplomatic and military ties with Moscow making Pyongyang ‘more capable of waging war’, official says
North Korea is benefiting from its troops fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine, gaining experience that makes Pyongyang “more capable of waging war against its neighbours” a senior US official has warned.
Russia has forged closer diplomatic and military ties with North Korea since Moscow’s full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Sportsbank Group fronted by two Crystal Palace fans
Firm set to invest £230m in Eagle Football Holdings
Sportsbank, a group of investors fronted by two Crystal Palace supporters, has announced that it has signed an exclusivity agreement with John Textor’s Eagle Football Holdings – the south London club’s co-owner – and intends to make a “significant financial investment”.
A statement on Wednesday from Sportsbank, which is led by Zechariah Janjua and Navshir Jaffer and is understood to include investors mainly from the United Arab Emirates but also North America, Canada and Europe, confirmed that it has entered a period of exclusivity while due diligence is conducted. It is understood that they have agreed to invest around £230m in Eagle Football, which owns a 45% stake in Palace as well as French club Lyon, Brazilian side Botafogo and RWD Molenbeek in Belgium.
Foreign secretary says keeping the British people safe means standing up to Russia
The post-cold war era is “well and truly over” and keeping the British people safe means standing up to Russia, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has warned.
Writing in the Guardian before a meeting likely to be focused on Ukraine between the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in Downing Street, Lammy insists “keeping the British people safe means standing up to the Kremlin. Working with our friends and allies to deter Putin’s mafia state.”
Meta has provided over $100m for certified organizations to conduct factchecks on its platforms since 2016
Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to end factchecking on Facebook and Instagram in the US already has factchecking journalists bracing for cuts at their organizations, given the size of Meta’s funding.
The social media giant has provided more than $100m for outside organizations certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to conduct factchecks on its social networks since 2016, which would result in posts receiving accuracy ratings and having their reach reduced if false. Major outlets like USA Today and Reuters have partnered with the social media company for these factchecks, as have factcheck specific sites like FactCheck.org. In all, 10 outlets are listed by Meta as current partners in the US.
Tottenham feared they had found a novel way to feel a kick where it most hurts, something entirely in keeping with the moment they are in. There were 77 minutes on the clock, this Carabao Cup semi-final first leg had finally started to bubble and Dominic Solanke thought he had put them in front.
It was not only a fine finish from Pedro Porro’s searching through-ball but a goal of rich narrative strands. This was the striker, remember, who could not make it happen during a spell at Liverpool earlier in his career.
Standing before a global map in her daily press briefing, Sheinbaum proposed dryly that the continent should be known as “América Mexicana”, or “Mexican America”, because an 1814 founding document that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way.
Spaniard was always the wrong choice and Potter is walking into a job where surgery is required alongside a clear vision
Julen Lopetegui was always the wrong choice. West Ham were warned against appointing him last May, but they pressed ahead and have paid the price. They are seven points above the bottom three after spending more than £100m last summer, the football has been drab, supporters are disengaged and the only surprise is that it has taken this long for West Ham to part with the Spaniard.
So much for a fresh start. West Ham were ready to move on from David Moyes, whose reign ran out of steam last season, but they have made a spectacular hash of the succession plan. Lopetegui was not the coach to oversee a style revolution.
Five people have died in the Eaton fire in Altadena, an increase from the two reported deaths earlier today, Los Angeles county sheriff Robert Luna told ABC Los Angeles station KABC.
Here are some of the latest images from the newswires from the wildfires raging though Los Angeles County.
In new paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, leading researchers to propose action to protect kids
Children are suffering and dying from diseases that emerging scientific research has linked to chemical exposures, findings that require urgent revamping of laws around the world, according to a new paper published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
Authored by more than 20 leading public health researchers, including one from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and another from the United Nations, the paper lays out “a large body of evidence” linking multiple childhood diseases to synthetic chemicals and recommends a series of aggressive actions to try to better protect children.
Sports council grants players temporary registration
Barcelona beat Athletic to reach Spanish Super Cup final
Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor will be able to play for Barcelona after Spain’s supreme sports council (CSD) granted them temporary registration while it investigates an appeal lodged by the club against the removal of their licences by La Liga.
Registration did not arrive in time for Olmo or Víctor to play the semi-final of the Super Cup in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday night, but they will be available for Sunday’s final against Real Madrid or Real Mallorca.
Organization said paper’s refusal ‘outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth’, choosing ‘silence over accountability’
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization that advocates for peace, said on Monday the group cancelled a planned advertisement in the New York Times in response to the paper refusing to allow it to refer to Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.
“The refusal of The New York Times to run paid digital ads that call for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is an outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth,” said Joyce Ajlouny, general secretary for the AFSC, in a press release. “Palestinians and allies have been silenced and marginalized in the media for decades as these institutions choose silence over accountability. It is only by challenging this reality that we can hope to forge a path toward a more just and equitable world.”
MP tells parliament he believes justice has not been done after hearing experts’ concerns over former nurse’s murder convictions
Fundamental flaws in the criminal trial system led to the former nurse Lucy Letby being convicted of murder in a “clear miscarriage of justice”, David Davis has said in parliament.
In a parliamentary debate, the former cabinet minister detailed the mounting concerns of leading experts about the convictions and said there should quickly be a retrial. He said he believed Letby would be cleared in it.
Rapper alleges inconsistencies in woman’s accusation that he and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs assaulted her at 2000 afterparty
Jay-Z filed a new motion on Wednesday seeking to dismiss the lawsuit brought by a woman who alleges that he and Sean “Diddy” Combs sexually assaulted her in 2000 when she was 13 years old.
In the court filing, filed on Wednesday, the rapper and his lawyers reference what they claim are inconsistencies in the woman’s account of the events from that night. They also requested that the judge impose a monetary sanction on the woman’s lawyer, Anthony Buzbee, claiming that he failed to adequately investigate the woman’s allegations before filing the suit.
Isaac Steidl, 44, is being interviewed by Paris detectives over the use of the website by criminals involved in more than 23,000 crimes including rape, murder and paedophilia.
Meta’s rewritten policies mean different things may be allowed to pass on Facebook, Instagram and Threads
Meta’s rewritten policies on “hateful conduct” mean users will now be able to say different types of things on its platforms, Facebook, Instagram and Threads. After Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of sweeping changes to oversight of content on its platforms, multiple edits have been made to its policies.
Among them are:
A specific injunction against calling transgender or non-binary people “it” has been deleted. A new section has been added making clear that “we do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation”. It said this was a reflection of “political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird’”. It also says the policies are designed to allow room for types of speech including people calling “for exclusion or [using] insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration or homosexuality”.
Meta’s policies are unchanged in saying that users should not post content targeting a person or group of people on the basis of their protected characteristics or immigration status with dehumanising speech with comparisons to animals, pathogens or sub-human life forms such as cockroaches and locusts. But the changes suggest it may now be possible to compare women to household objects or property and to compare people to faeces, filth, bacteria, viruses, diseases and primitives.
It should also be possible now to say transgender people “do not exist”.
Meta has deleted warnings against self-admission of racism, homophobia and Islamophobia. It has also deleted warnings against expressions of hate, such as calling people “cunt”, “dick” and “asshole”.
The changes may also mean it is acceptable to post about the “China virus”, a term the US president-elect, Donald Trump, has frequently used in relation to coronavirus.
“I’m not usually one to cut any of the Big Six some slack (even with PSR most of them have got more brass na wit, as they might say in Yorkshire),” begins Richard Hirst, “but you look at the strength of the two benches and you feel just a little bit of sympathy for Ange.”
Yeah but look at the strength of Spurs’ treatment room.
Sweeping changes to the policing of Meta’s social media platforms have set the tech company on a collision course with legislators in the UK and the European Union, experts and political figures have said.
Lawmakers in Brussels and London criticised Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to scrap factcheckers in the US for Facebook, Instagram and Threads, with one labelling it “quite frightening”.
US Anti Doping Agency says move ‘protects athletes’
Wada retaliates by barring US from key committees
The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) is facing a crisis after the US government defaulted on a $3.6m contribution to the global sport watchdog’s annual budget.
Wada said the US had missed the 31 December 2024 deadline for payment and retaliated by saying representatives from the US would now be ineligible to sit on its foundation board or executive committee.
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