6:56 am, February 10, 2023
University staff continue 48-hour strike despite move for fresh talks
University staff will continue a 48-hour strike on Friday despite an announcement of fresh talks aimed at resolving a dispute over pay, jobs, pensions and conditions.
Members of the University and College Union (UCU) will remain on strike at around 150 universities.
The union welcomed a decision by university employers to enter negotiations under the auspices of the conciliation service Acas. UCU and four other higher education unions – EIS, GMB, Unison and Unite – will meet employer representatives for talks next week.
Push to find survivors of ‘disaster of the century’ as death toll tops 20,000
Rescue workers are making a final push to find survivors of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria that rendered many communities unrecognisable to their inhabitants and led the Turkish president to declare it “the disaster of the century”.
The death toll from the quake has now topped 20,000.
The earthquake affected an area that is home to 13.5m people in Turkey and an unknown number in Syria and stretches further than the distance from London to Paris or Boston to Philadelphia.
Sunak to announce second Global Investment Summit for the autumn
The prime minister is set to announce that a second Global Investment Summit will take place in the autumn.
Rishi Sunak is expected to tell global investors on Friday that the October summit is a chance for the UK government to deliver on ‘our ambition to be a world-leading destination for international finance and investment’.
More than 200 of the world’s highest-profile investors, chief executives and financiers will be invited to come to the UK for the gathering, the Department for Business and Trade said. It follows a similar event focused on green investment that was held in 2021 in the lead-up to the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.
Labour’s West Lancashire by-election winner calls for general election
Labour’s Ashley Dalton told the Conservatives ‘move out of the way’ after a comfortable win in the West Lancashire by-election.
She demanded a general election, telling Rishi Sunak that it was time for Labour to take over. Bitterly cold conditions on polling day and the expectation of an easy Labour hold contributed to a turnout of less than 32 per cent.
Dalton, who works part-time for a local charity, secured a majority of 8,326 over Conservative candidate Mike Prendergast, with a 10.52 per cent swing from the Tories to Labour.
Travellers warned of delays returning to UK ahead of Border Force staff strike
Travellers are being warned of delays returning to the UK next week because of a strike by Border Force staff.
Members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) based in Dover and French ports including Calais and Dunkirk will take industrial action between February 17 and 20 as part of the long-running dispute over pay, jobs and pensions in the civil service.
The government said it has undertaken extensive planning to minimise disruption, including training military personnel, civil servants and volunteers from across government to step in and keep borders safe.
Nadine Dorries to stand down as MP at next election
Former culture secretary Nadine Dorries has announced she is standing down as an MP at the next general election.
Dorries, who represents Mid Bedfordshire and has been an MP since 2005, hit out at her party’s decision to remove Boris Johnson as prime minister as she used her new TalkTV show to confirm her departure.
The Tory MP has been a vocal critic of Rishi Sunak and his government since he entered Number 10, hitting out again on Thursday at those who ‘bet everything on a Rishi bounce’.
Press regulator launches probe into Jeremy Clarkson’s article about Meghan
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) has launched an investigation into the column written by Jeremy Clarkson for The Sun newspaper about the Duchess of Sussex.
The media regulator confirmed it is taking forward two groups of complaints, from The Fawcett Society and the Wilde Foundation, which claim they were affected by breaches in accuracy, harassment and discrimination.
The article, in which 62-year-old Clarkson said he hated Meghan and dreamed of her being paraded through British towns and publicly shamed, became Ipso’s most complained-about article after its publication, receiving more than 25,100 complaints.
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- Nissan enjoys leap in profits but Toyota suffers downturn
- Cost-of-living crisis causing third of drivers to keep cars for longer, What Car? survey finds
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Porsche’s updated Cayenne enters final testing stages
Porsche’s upcoming Cayenne has entered the final stretch of testing ahead of its reveal this spring.
First launched in 2017, the third-generation Cayenne has now received various ‘far-reaching’ changes to its powertrain, chassis and equipment levels to improve it for the new version. New tech includes an ‘extensively digitalised display’ for the interior.
To enable it to be as good as possible when launched, Porsche has been putting the new Cayenne through ‘challenging endurance tests’ completing over 200,000km (124,274 miles) of urban, countryside and motorway driving. In addition, the Cayenne has been taken to locations across the globe to test it in more extreme environments. This process has seen the SUV being pushed to the limit in off-road tests in Spain, punished in the sand dunes of Morocco or subjected to the ice-cold chill of Finland.
Weather outlook
Cloudy but milder than of late in the north today, reports BBC Weather. The brightest areas will be in the south-east, but the south-west and Wales will see outbreaks of light rain.
Tonight, it’ll remain cloud and mild with just with the addition of a few light spots of rain for the north. The south will be clear but will turn cloudy later on.
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