Politics

On 1 July, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, known as the ‘Butcher of Mariupol’, delivered a statement about recent attacks on apartment blocks in Odesa. In a familiar tone of Soviet bureaucratese, he read aloud: ‘To implement the provocation across 26–28 June, twenty foreign mass-media representatives, as well as employees of the international organisation UNICEF, were brought to Odessa [to watch] a mock attack, planned by the military administration of theOdessa region, on a social facility where a crowd of up to 30 anti-Russian activists had been prepared in advance to act as victims and casualties. Each participant in the staged scenes was paid $100 in advance and they also received a

No one really expects much in the way of principles or morality from those charged with running international sport. The Qatar World Cup was merely the latest, most blatant example of the iron rule that money and greed conquers all in sport. But for a brief moment — 16 months to be precise — the Women’s Tennis Association appeared to offer hope of something better. The WTA announced to the world in December 2021 that it would indefinitely boycott all tournaments in China over the regime’s treatment of tennis star, Peng Shuai, who vanished after making allegations of sexual assault against a senior politician. The WTA was widely praised at

There’s disappointment in Downing Street this evening after nurses at the Royal College of Nursing voted to reject the government’s offer of a 5 per cent pay rise for 2023-24, along with a one-off lump sum payment. It was a close result, with 54 per cent rejecting the offer and 46 per cent voting to accept it. Following the result, the union promised fresh strikes as they attempt to put pressure on the government to come up with a more generous offer. The first of these is a 48-hour walkout over the May Bank Holiday weekend. In response, a government spokesperson branded the move ‘hugely disappointing’ and blasted the escalation

There’s more trouble in Scotland’s nationalist paradise. A storm is brewing amongst members of the SNP’s innermost ruling group as it is revealed that party secrets have been kept from its very own National Executive Committee. The resignation of the party’s auditors, details on finances and the exodus of party members all came as much as a surprise to the party’s ruling group as they had to the rest of the nation.  But it doesn’t stop there. Fresh allegations have sprung from a source deep within the party: an NEC whistleblower described how a group of senior figures including ‘power couple’ Sturgeon and Murrell demanded that the NEC be ‘disbanded’