Top story: ‘Blames everyone else for his criminal choices’
Good morning, Warren Murray here with news you can swallow at a gulp.
Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, has been jailed for 47 months for bank and tax fraud uncovered during the Trump-Russia investigation. Manafort, 69, was convicted after prosecutors accused him of hiding from the US government millions of dollars he earned as a consultant for Ukraine’s former pro-Russia government. Authorities said the influential Republican high-flyer lied to banks to secure loans and maintain an opulent lifestyle. “The defendant blames everyone from the special counsel’s office to his Ukrainian clients for his own criminal choices,” prosecutors wrote.
Addressing the court on Thursday, Manafort said he hoped to have a chance to show the world “who I know I really am … Saying I feel humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement.” The judge, TS Ellis, told the court a sentence of 19 to 24 years, as prosecutors recommended, was excessive. Manafort faces sentencing in a separate conspiracy case in Washington on 13 March. A judge has ruled Manafort breached his agreement to cooperate with Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation by lying about subjects including his interactions with a business partner suspected of ties to Russian intelligence.
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Note sent home – The education secretary has been criticised by a head teachers’ campaign group for refusing to hear firsthand their struggles with funding cuts. A letter sent home with millions of schoolchildren across England calls for parents to lobby their MPs and the government for more money to help schools. The letter says that since 2010, state schools budgets have been reduced on average by 8% in real terms, rising to cuts of 20% in funding for sixth form and post-16 students. The spotlight is also thrown on austerity by NHS bosses who warn that services are straining under the extra demand for mental health services as people find themselves unable to cope with the benefits system shake-up and introduction of universal credit.
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Hunt hardens line with Iran – The Foreign Office has escalated its conflict with Iran over the jailing of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe by granting her diplomatic protection, which means that an injury to her is viewed as an injury to the British state. The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, toughened his stance amid claims that the Iranians had defied international law by spurning her request for better medical treatment, including regular access to drugs and her own doctor. The British-Iranian dual national has been in a Tehran jail for three years, after being sentenced to five years for alleged spying.
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International Women’s Day – As the world marks International Women’s Day, FTSE companies have been accused of lying about not being able to recruit enough female executives. “Do we really think that’s difficult? It’s a lie. It’s not difficult,” said Charlotte Valeur, the new head of the Institute of Directors. “I will be very unpopular with FTSE 100 [companies], but I don’t actually mind, because it’s not true that it’s difficult.”
Meanwhile, in Pakistan marches will be held in several cities calling for women’s place in society to be rewritten. Organisers hope the aurat march (“women’s march”) and aurat azadi march(“women’s liberation march”) will bring a cross-section of society on to the streets to draw attention to the struggle for reproductive, economic, and social justice across Pakistan. We are following the day’s developments in our live blog.
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Be Brexit-wise – Going into next week’s “meaningful vote” (in itself, a phrase at risk of losing all meaning) you need to read our primer on what happens if Theresa May’s deal passes, and indeed what happens if it fails. Hopes of resolving the Irish border deadlock seem slim, with EU and UK negotiators still at odds. Britain’s attorney general has resorted to the novel argument that the backstop could breach the Northern Ireland people’s human rights, by keeping them under the European Union’s jurisdiction indefinitely without the right to vote for its parliament. “He said a lot of surprising things this week,” said a senior EU source (though the most surprising was yet to come).
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Ketamine’s cousin – Experts think a drug related to ketamine that has been approved by US regulators could become the first true “rapid acting” medicine for depression. Esketamine, branded as Spravato, will be administered at clinics to depression patients who do not respond to traditional drugs. Ketamine is an anaesthetic but has also been used in clinics to treat depression for some years. However, it has a history of abuse as a “party drug”. Dr Walter S Dunn, a member of the FDA advisory committee that recommended esketamine’s approval, said it was importantly not just another SSRI-based compound. “It was time to explore some of these other compounds that, yes, have been associated with recreation and abuse as potential pathways or compounds to treat depression.” Separately, blood pressure drugs will be offered to thousands more people in the UK as part of a drive to prevent heart attacks and strokes.
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Spaced out – Elon Musk’s Pentagon security clearance may be in jeopardy because he smoked marijuana on a podcast. Musk has the clearance because his SpaceX company provides satellite launch services to the US government. An incident report was started by the Pentagon some time after the pot-cast, Bloomberg reported, quoting a source.
Today in Focus podcast: Let’s talk about Michael Jackson
The biggest music star in the world was also a paedophile, according to new documentary Leaving Neverland. Hadley Freeman, who interviewed survivors James Safechuck and Wade Robson, looks at how Jackson’s celebrity protected him. And on International Women’s Day, the writer Jeanette Winterson asks who will benefit from a revolution in artificial intelligence.
Lunchtime read: ‘Hollywood didn’t grasp my talent’
Taraji P Henson had been in the business for two decades when she finally won a Golden Globe in 2016 for her work on Empire. Even longer if you count her presence as an extra in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X in 1991 as the real beginning of her screen career, when she told herself: “One day, I’m gonna be on the Denzel side of things.’” And now she is.
Success, though, was a long time coming. Harvey Weinstein obstructed her rise – now, with her new film What Men Want, Henson is calling the shots. Will the reign of the old, rich, white man ever come to an end, as the movie suggests? “I don’t think it’ll come to an end, but there’s room for all sorts of stories, and Hollywood is finally seeing what’s needed.”
Sport
Katherine Brunt and Danielle Wyatt ushered England to a five-wicket victory over India in Guwahati as the tourists moved into an unassailable 2-0 lead in the women’s Twenty20 series. Manchester United players have backed Ole Gunnar Solskjær being appointed as the club’s permanent manager, with Romelu Lukaku asking “what else” the Norwegian needs to do to get the job after he displayed he gets what his club are all about. Uefa has launched a formal investigation into Manchester City following the allegations that the club violated financial fair play rules – made in the German magazine Der Spiegel – and based on “leaked” documents. Hatem Ben Arfa, who had a spectacularly stormy relationship with Unai Emery at Paris Saint-Germain, said he spent some of Arsenal’s 3-1 loss to Rennes laughing at the Gunners’ manager.
Graeme McDowell opened with a 68 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational as he chases for one of the places up for grabs this week at the Open Championship. And Ross Brawn, Formula One’s sporting director, has said Ferrari have emerged strong after a difficult year, but that a new commercial deal was needed to address the “unfair distribution of funds”.
Business
Weak export figures from China compounded news of an impending eurozone recession to send Asian shares plunging overnight. Investors had already begun selling after the ECB cut growth and inflation forecasts on Thursday, but stocks fell further when China said exports in February were 20% lower than the same month last year. The FTSE100 is set to fall nearly 0.5% at the opening this morning. The pound is at $1.309 and €1.169.
The papers
There is a mix of knife crime and Brexit on the front pages today. The Mirror has a report from inside the London hospital where a stabbed teenager was being treated, with the headline “Britain on a knife edge”. The Express runs with calls from one of Britain’s most senior police officers for criminals caught with knives to be jailed immediately.
The Guardian, Times and the i lead on the latest bad news for Theresa May. The Times carries a warning from MPs that the PM will “lose control of Brexit” unless she allows a series of “humiliating votes”. The Guardian splashes on the PM seeking a better exit deal from Brussels and struggling to hold her government together: “May pleads with EU leaders after a day of cabinet chaos”. The i runs with a similar line: “May makes last-ditch EU plea to save deal”.
Elsewhere, the Mail declares “Corbyn’s final humiliation” as the new equalities watchdog is set to probe allegations that Labour is antisemitic. The Telegraph has a story about a new code of conduct that will require institutions to report how much they invest in women: “Banks must come clean on funding gender gap”. The paper’s front page image is a rather Game-of-Thrones-style photograph of Jacob Rees-Mogg complete with penetrating stare and steepled fingers. The Financial Times has the grim economic news that the European Central Bank is reverting to crisis-era measures: “ECB performs stimulus U-turn to head off economic headwinds”.
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