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The government would invest 2.6 per cent of GDP a year to create growth, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in a speech. Standing behind a placard reading ‘Kickstart economic growth’, she kept repeating the word ‘growth’. Welfare and the visa system would be reformed. A third runway at Heathrow would bring 100,000 jobs. But net zero, she said, was the ‘industrial opportunity of the 21st century’. Earlier she had said that the government’s own Finance Bill implementing October’s Budget would be amended to soften the effects of its tax measures against non-domiciled residents. The Ministry of Defence ordered £9 billion worth of nuclear submarine reactors from Rolls-Royce. Sainsbury’s was to cut 3,000 jobs. WHSmith said it was in talks to sell its 520 high-street shops, but said the 195 post offices in the shops would remain. Shops will not be compelled to accept cash, Emma Reynolds, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, said. NatWest is to close branches in Goole, Bridlington, Willerby and Louth, pushing customers to use digital banking.
For the decade 2022-32, 9.91 million people will settle in Britain, the Office for National Statistics predicted, with net migration of 4.9 million raising the total population to 72.5 million. Axel Rudakubana, the Southport murderer, was sentenced to at least 52 years in prison, but could not be given a whole-life sentence because he was under 18 at the time of the crime. Alder Hey Children’s Hospital Trust said he had been under the care of its community mental health service from 2019 to 2023. Police should record more non-crime hate incidents, a Home Office review said; a recommendation that ‘extremists’ should include environmentalists, the far left and misogynists was rejected by the government. England and Scotland were put under restrictions to slow the spread of avian influenza.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill reached its committee stage. News Group Newspapers, the publisher of the Sun, agreed to pay ‘substantial damages’ and apologised to the Duke of Sussex, settling a long-running legal dispute over claims of unlawful intrusion into his life. The Rt Revd John Perumbalath, Bishop of Liverpool, said that accusations by a female bishop of sexual harassment and by another woman of sexual assault were untrue. More than a million people in the UK and Ireland had their electricity cut off by storm Eowyn.
Abroad
A new Chinese AI resource called DeepSeek was the most downloaded app in America a week after its launch. The markets were alarmed by the low cost claimed for its development. President Donald Trump ordered a pause on grants, loans and other federal assistance. A federal judge froze the order until 3 February. Another federal judge blocked the execution of a presidential order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the United States for undocumented migrants, calling the curtailment ‘blatantly unconstitutional’. President Gustavo Petro of Colombia sent air force planes to the United States to fetch deported migrants after refusing landing to US aeroplanes with deportees handcuffed ‘like criminals’. The Gulf of Mexico will be changed to the Gulf of America in the Google Maps app, in line with President Trump’s order for it to be renamed in US government documents.
Seven female hostages had in total been freed from Gaza in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Of the remaining 26 hostages due to be released by Hamas in the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire, eight are dead, Israel said. Refugees returned to the north of the Gaza strip – 200,000 in two hours, a security official in Gaza told AFP news agency. Mr Trump suggested that Palestinians should leave Gaza for Egypt or Jordan. Ukraine said many humanitarian programmes funded by the US had been suspended since Mr Trump halted nearly all foreign aid. A fireball rose above a Russian oil refinery in Ryazan in a reported attack by 121 Ukrainian drones. Micheal Martin was confirmed as the new Taoiseach. The ‘Mona Lisa’ will be moved to a new space at the Louvre, President Emmanuel Macron announced, and visitors will be charged separately to see it.
Bodies lay in the streets of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo as M23 rebels pressed in; 13 soldiers in peacekeeping forces were killed by the rebels. An iceberg called A23a, the size of Cornwall and 900ft thick, was 170 miles from colliding with the British possession of South Georgia, threatening penguin breeding grounds. CSH
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