News Round-Up

• “Female hostages forced to wear Palestinian flag necklaces on release” – Hostages Emily Damari, Romi Gonen and Doron Steinbrecher were forced to wear Palestinian flag lanyards during their release and were given ‘gift bags’ with mementos of their time in captivity, the Mail reports.
• “After 15 months in tunnels, Israeli hostages see the light of freedom” – Their location in Gaza was unknown for months, says the Times, then their mothers were able to see video footage of their release.
• “Emily Damari’s mum: every day has been living nightmare – until now” – Mandy Damari has thanked officials for bringing her daughter home, reports theTimes, after she initiated a global campaign to secure her release as a hostage from Hamas.
• “To see Emily back with her mother is a starburst of pure joy – but the road to normality will be hard” – The Telegraph’s Allison Pearson celebrates the news that Emily Damari has been reunited with her mother.
• “The heinous crimes of Hamas’s Palestinian prisoners” – Convicted murderers serving multiple life sentences are among those who could be freed as part of a landmark ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, according to the Mail.
• “Trump’s plan to ‘save TikTok’ with executive order” – The president-elect has announced plans to give TikTok’s China-based parent company more time to find a buyer before ban comes into effect, says the Telegraph.
• “Is Mandelson’s ambassador job under threat from Maga?” – Donald Trump could yet block Keir Starmer’s choice for the plum role in Washington, the Sunday Times reports.
• “Starmer scrambles to secure trade deal with Trump” – Kier Starmer has set up a ‘mini-cabinet’ of senior ministers to pursue a trade deal with the U.S., but, according to the Telegraph, the meetings will be convened by Jonathan Powell, the architect of the Chagos Islands deal.
• “Sadiq Khan: Trump’s return brings march of fascism” – The Mayor of London says incoming U.S. President’s return to the White House marks a “perilous moment” for Western civilisation, the Telegraph reports, and he has called for lawmakers and regulators to “get tough” on social media companies.
• “Is the new $TRUMP Memecoin a way to send anonymous crypto bribes to the President?” – Is Donald Trump’s new cryptocurrency “a conduit for bribes”, asks Igor Chudov, “or a new way to make America great?”
• “‘DEI is dead’ as American businesses prepare for Trump presidency” – U.S. corporations are pulling back on diversity initiatives, says the Telegraph. It would appear they no longer want to go woke, go broke!
• “U.S. Suspends EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak after COVID-19 evidence uncovered by House Committee” – ZeroHedge reports that the U.S. Government has suspended funding to the EcoHealth Alliance and its former President Peter Daszak following scrutiny over their work in Wuhan.
• “Why do some vaccine-injured people wake up – but others don’t?” – Writing on Dystopian Down Under, Rebekah Barnett considers why some vaccine injured people can accept what happened to them while others remain in deep denial.
• “NESO’s Margin Call” – David Turver takes the National Energy System Operator (NESO) to task for its false optimism about the state of our electricity generation system.
• “Lord Frost joins Net Zero Watch” – Net Zero Watch announces that David Frost, the Rt Hon Lord Frost of Allenton, has joined its board.
• “How Pakistan’s rape culture led to the U.K. grooming gangs” – Writing in the Spectator, Kunwar Khuldune Shahid calls for a more robust response to the crimes of the grooming gangs from within the Pakistani community.  
• “Grooming gangs: the making of a scandal” – Tim Black sets out how fears of social unrest and accusations of racism led the state to look away from industrial-scale abuse, in Spiked’s long read.
• “Brit, 19, describes harrowing sexual assault in Milan NYE crowd” – Imogen and her friends were out to see the New Year fireworks in Milan, the Mail reports, but finished the night fending off a mass sexual assault attack.
• “Britain at closing time” – “The corpse of the British state has attracted bottom feeders of every shape and size,” writes Clement Knox in the Critic. “But any understanding of how we got here should start and end with the rolling grooming gang scandal.”
• “Reeves must cut taxes or risk driving the economy off a cliff” – “Labour’s ideological state expansion is a major reason for surging borrowing costs,” says Liam Halligan in the Sunday Telegraph.
• “Priti Patel: Starmer has put up the white flag of surrender over Chagos – his deal is an epic failure” – The Telegraph’s Gordon Rayner interviews Dame Priti Patel, one of the “friendliest front-line politicians in Westminster”, but also “perhaps the angriest”.
• “No 10 chiefs frustrated over how long Liz Kendall is taking to find benefit cuts” – According to the Sun, Downing Street chiefs are “pulling their hair out” over how long the Welfare Secretary, Liz Kendall, is taking to find benefit cuts.
• “My pick for economic hero of 2024 may be a surprise: Javier Milei” – “The Argentine president’s goal was to bring down inflation,” says Seema Shah in the Sunday Times, and “he has delivered, albeit with savage short-term ramifications for jobs and household income”.
• “Cabinet Secretary told to investigate Attorney General over conflicts of interest” – Robert Jenrick has called for an investigation into Lord Hermer’s potential conflicts of interest over past clients such as Gerry Adams, the Telegraph says.
• “Robert Jenrick: Attorney-General’s prior work threatens trust” –  According to the Sunday Times, the Shadow Justice Secretary says there are at least four major areas where Lord Hermer KC’s “conflicts of interests” should be investigated.
• “Attorney General ‘blocked U.K.’ from sharing intelligence with U.S. about I.S. Beatles” – The Telegraph reports that Lord Hermer won a Supreme Court appeal which prevented the Government from sharing intelligence on El Shafee El-Sheikh, one of the I.S. Beatles implicated in the deaths of British and U.S. citizens.
• “Keir Starmer’s human rights law worldview is dying” – “Starmer is learning,” says Aris Roussinos in UnHerd, “that in a democracy the popular will counts for more than the approval of fellow human rights lawyers.”
• “Facebook’s free speech reforms fall short of the mark” – Dr. Frederick Attenborough warns Conservative Woman readers that Facebook’s ongoing reliance on ‘back-end’ machine-learning-based algorithms “casts doubt on the platform’s commitment to reform”.
• “We’ve always had free speech on campus. It’s vital to ‘disagree well’” – “Changes to the Freedom of Speech Act will help students rediscover the lost art of “hearing opposing views and disagreeing well”, says Dr Michael Spence, President of University College, London in the Sunday Times.
• “Ministers ‘foot-dragging’ over Telegraph sale because ‘they don’t want to upset the UAE’” – Sir Iain Duncan Smith is calling on the Government to enforce a ban on foreign state ownership of newspapers, the Telegraph reports, to ensure the paper is sold by Abu Dhabi fund.
• “Elon Musk doesn’t care if you hate him” –  “Not since the days of Citizen Kane has anyone had so much power through media, let alone seemed to enjoy it so much,” writes Spiked columnist Simon Evans.
• “The West stands on the brink of destruction” – Jake Wallis Simons recommends Melanie Phillips new book on the role of Judeo-Christian faith as the foundation of the West to readers of the Telegraph.
• “Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell interviewed by police over pro-Palestinian protest” – Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell agreed to be interviewed by the Met under caution, the Telegraph reports, following a pro-Palestinian rally which allegedly breached police conditions.
• “That‘s all folks!” – The Patriot Oasis sees President Biden draw his time in office to an end.

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