Top story: ‘a clear two-fingered salute’
Good morning everyone, Graham Russell here with your post-Easter basket of goods.
Jeremy Corbyn has faced renewed criticism of his handling of antisemitism allegations against Labour after last night attending a meeting of a radical leftwing Jewish group called Jewdas, which has criticised mainstream Jewish organisations. A Corbyn spokesman said he was meeting Jewish people from his constituency in a personal capacity but the Campaign Against Antisemitism described it as “a very clear two-fingered salute at mainstream British Jewry”.
It follows Momentum’s statement that claims of antisemitism in the party “cannot be dismissed simply as rightwing smears”, and that it runs deeper in the party than many had thought. The grassroots group said it was not down to just a few “bad apples” but a more widespread unconscious bias, and criticised Labour for failing to deal with the issue. Yesterday it also emerged another Labour local election candidate, Roy Smart, had been suspended after apparently sharing Facebook posts urging people to question the Holocaust.
Momentum has pointed out that the issue had been used by others to undermine Corbyn’s leadership and a sizeable group of academics seem to agree. Dozens signed an open letter calling for an end to his “trial by media”. The group itself is reviewing its constitution and complaints procedures as a “practical commitment to stamping out antisemitism and all forms of discrimination”. The Jewish Labour Movement said Momentum had “belatedly woken up to the challenges”.
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Winter horribilis – Fresh light has been shed on the plight of the NHS, with cancelled cancer operations, ambulances stuck in A&E units too busy to cope with their patients and screening procedures dogged by staff and IT problems. Figures gained exclusively by the Guardian show thousands of ambulances a day are being prevented from taking top-priority 999 calls because A&E units are too busy to take their patients. Hundreds of cancer operations were scrapped during the winter crisis, despite NHS England pledging that they would be exempt from planned cuts. A total of 530 were cancelled, something Macmillan Cancer Support said could have affected patients’ survival chances.
Separately, the former health secretary Andrew Lansley has revealed he has stage 3 bowel cancer and called for improved screening to be made available to the whole country. The rollout of the “bowelscope” test, which Lansley launched in office, has been hampered by IT problems and a lack of trained staff.
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Teenager shot dead – A 17-year-old girl has been fatally shot in north London, continuing the capital’s rising trend of violent crime this year. The teenager was found with a gunshot wound in Tottenham and died at the scene. The first quarter of 2018 has seen 46 murders in the capital, a rate of more than three a week. If that continues, London could surpass 180 murders this year, a figure not seen for more than a decade. This week, Metropolitan police commissioner Cressida Dick blamed social media for playing a part in fomenting youth violence, and experts have called for the government to fund programs to make youth workers aware of how gangs use social media to taunt each other.
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Scotland’s T rex – Fresh dinosaur footprints have emerged dating back to when the Isle of Skye was a “subtropical paradise”. They show not only the lumbering 10-tonne sauropods (which we already knew lived there) but also the upright prints of a six-metre meat-eater, described by palaeontologist Dr Stephen Brusatte as “kind of a primitive cousin of a T rex”. “[The find] is exciting, especially in Scotland because the record is so limited and also because these are Middle Jurassic dinosaurs and there are very few dinosaur fossils of that age anywhere in the world,” said palaeontologist Dr Stephen Brusatte.
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They shall Rue the day - The Brexit proxy wars continue apace, with British company De La Rue challenging the government over its decision to hand the contract for the fabled blue passport (aka “British icon”) to a French-Dutch firm. “It’s our view that ours was the highest quality and technically most secure bid,” it said, though it accepted it wasn’t the cheapest. Ministers have said the tender process was a “rigorous, fair and open competition”.
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A private affair – Donald Trump and his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, have asked a judge to rule that the case brought by adult film actor Stormy Daniels be heard in private rather than before a jury. Daniels claims to have had sex with the president in 2006 and has been seeking to invalidate the non-disclosure agreement she signed days before the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied he affair and his attorneys have argued Daniels could owe about $20m for violating the non-disclosure deal.
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Men think they’re funny – Most female politicians are just too modest to have a go at hosting Have I Got News For You and keep refusing to appear, Ian Hislop has said. “Everyone you think should have been asked has been. Really, they really have,” the Private Eye editor told the Radio Times as the show returns for series #55. Ann Widdecombe is the lone flag bearer, whose second appearance Paul Merton ranked as among his worst experiences on the panel show.
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Lunchtime read: ‘How do Zuckerberg and co sleep at night’
“Facebook definitely helped certain elements of society to determine the narrative of the conflict in Myanmar.” This is the view of Raymond Serrato, a digital researcher and analyst who examined thousands of online posts during the peak of the crisis in Myanmar that forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to flee for their lives into Bangladesh. He found activity by an anti-Rohingya group spiked on 24 and 25 August last year, when Rohingya militants attacked government forces, prompting security forces to launch a largescale “clearance operation”. Another analyst, Alan Davis, said that in the months before August he noticed Facebook becoming “more organised and odious, and more militarised”. His team found fake stories stating that mosques in Yangon were stockpiling weapons to blow up sites including the Shwedagon pagoda, the most sacred Buddhist site in Yangon. Signs denoting “Muslim-free” areas were shared more than 11,000 times. One analyst in Yangon, who asked to remain anonymous, said Facebook was arguably the only source of information online for most people in Myanmar. On Monday, the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, told Vox that the spread of hate speech on the platform in Myanmar was “a real issue”.
Sport
As England’s marathon tour to Australia and New Zealand nears the end, see our liveblog for the latest from Christchurch on the final day of the second Test.
Downsizing the European Champions Cup has been proposed as a way to protect player welfare if the Premiership is ring-fenced with more than 12 teams. Deontay Wilder is ready to fight Anthony Joshua in the UK this summer to decide the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, according to his co-manager.
Tiger Woods is in his best form for years after back surgery, but there are plenty of other homegrown golfers with a chance of winning the Masters. And the Australian Cricketers’ Association has called on Cricket Australia to take into account “extraordinary contrition” shown by Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft and recalibrate their bans in the wake of the ball-tampering scandal.
Business
Food exporters were predictably among the worst hit after Beijing hit back against Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminium with a swath of retaliatory duties on 128 imported American products, including pork and apples. The Dow Jones tumbled by more than 730 points, or 3%, but recovered to end the day down 459 points, or 1.9%. Spotify is poised to press play on a stock market float that will test investors’ faith in its future prospects.
The pound is buying $1.406 and €1.142.
The papers
The papers have rebounded after Easter with a cornucopia of stories on the front pages.
The Times has a dossier that apparently shows police are “trained to hide vital evidence” from the defence during criminal cases.
The Daily Mail has a fight on its hands, declaring “Passports: the gloves are off” at the top of a story about the cross-border scrap for the contract to produce the new blue British passports.
Andrew Lansley reveals to the Daily Telegraph that he has bowel cancer and blames Treasury cuts to health screening programmes for it not being spotted sooner.
The Guardian also has a story about the healthy system: “Revealed: hidden toll of ambulance delays at A&E puts lives at risk.”
The red tops make for harrowing reading. The Daily Mirror asks “Why no justice?” after 25 years for the young victim of an IRA bombing. The Sun has a story about gangs snatching mobile phones from people on the street to fund crime gangs in Nigeria. The headline? “Crime lords of the rings” of course. The Daily Express has the story of a boy who was raped by a nun when he was 12.
The FT splashes on bad news for Elon Musk: “Investors dent Tesla after censure from watchdog over fatal crash.”
For more news: www.theguardian.com
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