Home Office tells Gaza academic his bid to bring family to UK not urgent

A Palestinian academic has failed in his latest attempt to be reunited with his family in the UK after the Home Office concluded their case was not urgent and it was more appropriate for his two children to remain with their mother in a tent in Gaza.Bassem Abudagga was also told in a letter from Home Office officials that no reason had been found that was “sufficiently compelling” to defer a requirement that his wife attend a visa application centre (VAC) in Gaza so she could provide fingerprints to satisfy the conditions for evacuation.No such facility remains in Gaza as a result of Israeli bombardments, which have continued despite the fragile ceasefire – a fact that Abudagga says the Home Office is well aware of.Abudagga last saw his wife, Marim, son Karim, six, and daughter Talya, 10, four weeks before the October 7 attack in 2023 when he returned for a visit to Gaza.He had won a scholarship to study for a PhD at York St John University in 2022 and is regarded by his tutors as a model student

The world is in chaos. So thank God for the UK’s lone fixed point: Liz Truss

A world on the brink. Regime change in Venezuela. Greenland under threat from Donald Trump. Shadow fleet tanker seized by the US and the Brits in the North Atlantic. The Europeans battling to keep America onside in any Ukraine peace deal

Labour’s swift pubs U-turn shows government learning – and repeating Treasury mistakes

Political U-turns come in various forms, and as news of the latest government reversal drifted out, this one connected to the plight of the pub trade, Labour MPs could take comfort in one thing: at least it happened quickly.While last summer’s change of stance on benefit reforms was forced on Downing Street by open rebellion, and those for pensioners’ winter fuel payments and inheritance tax for farmers followed months of dissent, the decision to revisit decisions on business rates took a matter of weeks.“It would have been better if we hadn’t done it at all, but at least it was reversed quickly,” said one MP about the promised new look at business rates valuations, which the hospitality trade say would have seen major increases for pubs and hotels.“Maybe they are learning. And to give the government credit, they have been in proper listening mode over this

Software tackling deepfakes to be piloted for Scottish and Welsh elections

Election officials are working “at speed” with the Home Office on a pilot project to combat the use of deepfakes to target candidates standing in this year’s Scottish and Welsh elections.Officials at the Electoral Commission in Scotland said they and the Home Office expected software capable of detecting AI-generated deepfake videos and images to be operational before election campaigns begin in late March.Sarah Mackie, the commission’s chief in Scotland, said that if the software detected a hoax video or image, officials would contact the police, the candidate concerned and inform the public, although she acknowledged it could not always provide 100% certainty.They would then urge the social media platform to take the content down, she said. However, because such action is currently voluntary, the commission also wants legally enforceable “takedown” powers that would require media platforms to remove hoax material

Badenoch claims forthcoming business rates U-turn for pubs ‘too little, too late’ – as it happened

We don’t yet know the extent of the government U-turn shortly to be announced related to business rates for pubs and other parts of the hospitality sector. (See 2.24pm.)But Kemi Badenoch is already saying it is “too little, too late”. In a post on social media, she says:Yesterday Keir Starmer told us Labour had ‘turned a corner

‘Go back home’: Farage schoolmate accounts bring total alleging racist behaviour to 34

Thirty-four school contemporaries of Nigel Farage have now come forward to claim they saw him behave in a racist or antisemitic manner, raising fresh questions over the Reform leader’s evolving denials.One of those with new allegations is Jason Meredith, who was three years below Farage at Dulwich college, a private school in south-east London. He claims that Farage called him a “paki” and would use taunts such as “go back home”.Meredith, 58, who is of Anglo-Indian heritage and has lived in Switzerland where he works as a product manager since 1999, said it was support for anti-racism that motivated him to come forward.He told the Guardian: “What really irked me was the denial [by Farage] of being racist