Benny Gantz’s threat to withdraw his opposition party from coalition calls into question future of government
The Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has threatened to resign if Benjamin Netanyahu fails to adopt an agreed plan for Gaza, calling into question the future of the Israeli government.
During a press conference on Saturday, Gantz announced that if a plan for postwar governance of the territory is not consolidated and approved by 8 June, his opposition National Unity party will withdraw from the coalition government.
Continue reading...Oleksandr Usyk has made his entrance. He walks quickly and methodically to the ring like a tiger as his personal hymn (Гімн Олександра Усика by Браття) plays on the arena sound system.
Ring announcer Michael Buffer has emerged from the tunnel. He’s just called for a performance of Saudi Arabia’s national anthem, a brief instrumental rendition that’s played through quickly. Now the (great) Atlanta rapper JID is performing in an open-air cube that descended from the rafters directly above the ring.
Continue reading...Head of Church of England Justin Welby tells Observer that ending policy would lift thousands of UK children out of poverty
Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has issued an impassioned plea to the government and Keir Starmer’s Labour party to scrap the two-child limit on benefit payments to families, branding it as a cruel and immoral policy that plunges hundreds of thousands of children into poverty.
The intervention by the head of the Church of England will place particular pressure on Starmer to make a firm commitment to end the policy, which he has so far refused to do, as he tries to position Labour as being responsible with the public finances.
Continue reading...In latest Opinium poll, only 16% say accepting rightwing Tory MP’s defection was the right move – against 33% who see it as a mistake
More voters believe Keir Starmer was wrong to allow a rightwing Tory MP into Labour than think it was the right move, after anger from within the party’s ranks over the defection.
Natalie Elphicke, the Dover MP, said the Tories had become “a byword for incompetence and division” when she made her shock departure to Labour earlier in May. The party leadership regarded it as a major coup to win the support of the MP on the frontline of the Channel crossings issue that Rishi Sunak has attempted to prioritise. The move came despite concerns among MPs that her views conflict with Labour in a variety of areas.
Continue reading...Former chancellor, who was one of those who urged Johnson to go, says Tories should have realised ‘Twitter was not the country’
Former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has said he and his Conservative colleagues were wrong to force out Boris Johnson as prime minister in 2022.
Johnson resigned after less than three years in No 10 after more than 50 resignations from government of MPs and staff and waves of backbenchers urging him to quit over the handling of the Chris Pincher affair and numerous other scandals. He resigned as an MP a year later.
Continue reading...Party says pooling resources across regions would deliver 40,000 extra appointments a week for patients
Hospitals would have to share waiting lists and pool resources under Labour’s plans to reduce waiting times by delivering up to 40,000 extra NHS appointments a week.
The party has announced that patients would be offered appointments at nearby hospitals, rather than necessarily at their local one, which would enable people to receive faster treatment. Hospital staff and resources would be pooled across a region and would run evening and weekend surgeries.
Continue reading...O’Reilly, who was also an international rugby player for Ireland and the British and Irish Lions, died in Dublin on Saturday
Tony O’Reilly, one of Ireland’s leading business figures, has died at the age of 88.
O’Reilly, who had a career in the media as well as being an international rugby player for Ireland and the British and Irish Lions, died in St Vincent’s hospital in Dublin on Saturday.
Continue reading...Salome Zourabichvili says bill contradicts constitution but ruling party is expected to override her action in coming days
Georgia’s president has vetoed a “foreign agents” bill that has split the country and appealed to the government not to overrule her over a law she said was “Russian in sprit and essence”.
Salome Zourabichvil followed through on her stated intention to use her veto on Saturday although the governing Georgian Dream party has the votes to disregard her intervention.
Continue reading...The cultural sector falls short on other measures of diversity too, with 9o% of workers white, says new report
Six in 10 of all arts and culture workers in the UK now come from middle-class backgrounds, compared with just over 42% of the wider workforce, according to new research.
And while 23% of the UK workforce is from a working-class background, working-class people are underrepresented in every area of arts and culture. They make up 8.4% of those working in film, TV, radio and photography, while in museums, archives and libraries, the proportion is only 5.2%.
Continue reading...When on holiday in Berwick the artist often gave his work away. Now a new exhibition reveals the value of drawings that survived in a shoebox
A 1958 drawing of a family with their dogs by LS Lowry from one of his many holidays in Berwick-upon-Tweed is to go on public display for the first time. But the sketch is lucky to have survived: it was kept in a shoe box for 43 years, emerging somewhat creased because its recipient had little idea of Lowry’s significance.
The signed and dated drawing on headed notepaper from the Castle Hotel, where the artist stayed for most summers from the 1930s until the 1970s, was given to hotel receptionist, Anne Mather. “I didn’t think much about it, and only after he died did I remember it,” Mather told the Berwick Advertiser in 2001 when she put the sketch up for auction. “He was quiet and reclusive, but I can still visualise him in the lounge. He would sit and doodle, with his glasses at the end of his nose.”
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