News Round-Up

• “Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage row over Reform membership numbers” – Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch became embroiled in an extraordinary public row last night over whose party had the most support, reports the Mail.
• “Keir Starmer faces fresh calls to abandon surrender of Chagos Islands” – Downing Street insists that the controversial agreement to give up sovereignty of the Indian Ocean archipelago is still on track, as it scrambles to get it signed before Donald Trump takes office, says the Mail.
• “Labour has established new quango every week since election win” – Fears extra red tape being brought in by Labour will smother Britain and further dampen economic growth, according to the Telegraph.
• “Four asylum-seekers living in a £575,000 luxury home” – Gurbakhsh Singh, 72, his wife Ardet Kaur, 68, their son Guljeet Singh, 43, and his wife Kawaljeet Kaur, 37, all of whom appeared on bail at Croydon Magistrates Court earlier this month, are living in a luxury home, reports the Mail.
• “Hospital wards ‘full to bursting’, leading doctor warns” – Dr. Ian Higginson has warned that half of Britain’s A&E units are at full capacity because of the sharp increase in winter illnesses, says the Mail. Plus ca change.
• “ONS civil servants still working from home despite year of mistakes” – Daily average attendance at the ONS is as low as 5% in some offices, with attendance rates averaging less than 10% in other buildings, reports the Telegraph.
• “A quarter of council tax raised goes on staff pensions, figures reveal” – New data show that over £141 million was paid into pension pots by Birmingham City Council, which declared effective bankruptcy last year, says the Telegraph.
• “More than 450 Channel migrants reached U.K. on Christmas Day” – The latest figures about new arrivals takes the total number of arrivals this year to 35,491 – 21% higher than last year, according to the Telegraph.
• “Nadhim Zahawi lawyer fined for trying to ‘silence’ tax blogger” – Ashley Hurst must pay more than £300,000 after he was found to have tried to restrict Dan Neidle’s right to publish criticisms of the former chancellor, reports the Times.
• “Failure to tell sexual partner about gender history ‘may not be a crime’” – Updated Crown Prosecution Service guidance emphasises that someone expressing a gender identity different to their birth sex is not always ‘a deception’, according to the Times.
• “Schoolgirls’ Snapchat argument logged as non-crime hate incident” – Over 14,000 NCHI cases in a year have been recorded by the police including Derbyshire Constabulary which logged a pupil being called a ‘Polish t–t’, says the Telegraph.
• “Pharmacists banned from saying patients suffer ‘blackouts’” – In what critics are calling woke “language policing”, a union has given staff a list of terms to avoid due to their “racial undertones”, according to the Telegraph.
• “Draconian ivory bans will not save animals, but will wreck our heritage” – Trading in the teeth and tusks of more species is about to become a crime, says the Telegraph. But it won’t save any animals’ lives.
• “The Magdeburg Christmas market attacker had a long history of erratic and threatening behaviour that police routinely minimised and prosecutors studiously ignored” – Many new details about the biography and past criminal history of Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the Magdeburg Christmas market attacker, have emerged in the past week, writes Eugyppius.
• “WHO chief was at Yemen airport when Israeli airstrikes hit” – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he and his colleagues were safe after an IDF strike on “Houthi terror regime” targets at Sanaa airport and power stations while the WHO chief was visiting, reports the Times.
• “Trump says Canada should become part of U.S. to lower its taxes” – The President-elect has trolled Justin Trudeau again by suggesting Canada should become the 51st state of America, says the Telegraph.
• “It’s time to become the 51st state of the U.S.” – It’s Britain that should become the 51st state, says Poppy Coburn in the Telegraph.
• “How Left-wing media fell behind in the race to cash in on Trump” – News outlets hoping to benefit from the outspoken President’s return face a starkly different landscape to 2016, reports James Warrington in the Telegraph.
• “Tech giants face £70 million charge to police online safety laws” – Levy on companies’ worldwide revenue would help pay for the enforcement of new internet rules, according to the Telegraph.
• “Chinese stealth jet is ‘super weapon’ that could control the skies” – The new Chinese ‘super weapon’ – a stealth aircraft – was spotted over China, giving rise to speculation that the country may be on the edge of unveiling new high-performance combat aircraft, says the Mail.
• “Finland seizes Russian-linked ‘shadow ship’ after undersea cable ‘cut’” – Eagle S has been described by Finnish customs officials as a suspected part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of fuel tankers used to circumnavigate sanctions, reports the Mail.
• “Judge tells court to respect pronouns of transgender rapist” – Californian Judge Katherine Rigby ruled last week that prosecutors must refer to transgender prisoner Tremaine Carroll, 52, by his female pronouns, according to the Mail.
• “Terminator set in Liverpool” – Stevo Stonko has grafted Scouse dialogue onto some scenes from Terminator 2.

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