Top World News

UK government welcomes sharp fall in net migration but says more needs to be done

The British government has welcomed the news that net migration in the U.K., the difference between people moving to the country long-term and those leaving, fell by more than two-thirds in the year to June, but insisted that the figure must fall furth...

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Former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre to be witness in trial brought by Prince Harry and others

Judge warns he will not permit case ‘to descend into a wide-ranging public inquiry’The former editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, is to be called as a witness in the legal action brought by the Duke of Sussex and six other household names against the newspaper’s publishers over allegations of unlawful information gathering, the high court was told.Antony White KC, for Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), said Dacre, 77, now the editor-in-chief of ANL’s DMG Media company, and Peter Wright, a former editor of the Mail on Sunday, could be called as early defence witnesses in the trial, scheduled to begin on 19 January. Continue reading...

Peru’s ousted ‘president of the poor’ gets 11-year sentence for rebellion

Pedro Castillo was sentenced by the supreme court for trying to disband Congress and rule by decree in 2022Peru’s supreme court on Thursday sentenced the former leftwing president Pedro Castillo to 11 years, five months and 15 days in prison for trying to disband Congress and rule by decree in December 2022.Labelled Peru’s first poor president, the former rural schoolteacher, who had never held elected office before winning the presidency, was impeached by Congress and jailed on the same day after his attempted power grab. Continue reading...

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‘Mortified’ OBR chair hopes inquiry into budget leak will report next week

Reuters news agency says it obtained document after visiting URL it predicted file would be uploaded toHow Rachel Reeves’s budget was leaked 40 minutes earlyThe chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility has said he felt mortified by the early release of its budget forecasts as the watchdog launched a rapid inquiry into how it had “inadvertently made it possible” to see the documents.Richard Hughes said he had written to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the chair of the Treasury select committee, Meg Hillier, to apologise. Continue reading...

Budget tax rises may be ‘fiscal fiction’ as pain delayed for election year, IFS warns

Labour MPs welcome scrapping of two-child benefit cap but worry about hefty future tax increases on constituentsRachel Reeves has been warned that her plans for tax rises and spending restraint in the run-up to the next general election resemble a work of “fiscal fiction”, as MPs expressed concern about the impact of her budget on their constituents.A day after the chancellor’s statement, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said Reeves had chosen a high-risk strategy by backloading the squeeze to just before voters go to the polls in 2029. Continue reading...