Editorial: Shabana Mahmood promises to deal with a ‘national emergency’, but the home secretary must match her rhetoric with action

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In its rush to force private landlords to sell their buildings to nonprofit outfits, the City Council looks to be favoring a new, even-harder-to-control class of slumlords.

Let’s hand it to Glen Cove, the Long Island town that just banned pot-smoking in public areas; if only New York City would follow suit.

Editorial: With the NHS under pressures not seen since the once-in-a-century Covid pandemic, the BMA’s refusal to reconsider the timing of its industrial action is dangerous and wrong

© Independent

The US is ramping up the pressure on Nicolás Maduro with a tanker seizure and expanded sanctions following threats and boat strikes

Early in his first term, Donald Trump mooted a “military option” for Venezuela to dislodge its president, Nicolás Maduro. Reports suggest that he eagerly discussed the prospect of an invasion behind closed doors. Advisers eventually talked him down. Instead, the US pursued a “maximum pressure” strategy of sanctions and threats.

But Mr Maduro is still in place. And Mr Trump’s attempts to remove him are ramping up again. The US has amassed its largest military presence in the Caribbean since the 1989 invasion of Panama. It has carried out more than 20 shocking strikes on alleged drug boats. Mr Trump reportedly delivered an ultimatum late last month, telling the Venezuelan leader that he could have safe passage from his country if he left immediately. There was already a $50m bounty on his head. This week came expanded sanctions and the seizure of a tanker.

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© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

The UK art world is finally becoming more inclusive. But greater support must be given to the organisations that enable disabled artists to flourish

The Turner prize is no stranger to sparking debate or pushing boundaries. This year it has achieved both. For the first time, an artist with learning disabilities has won. Glasgow-born Nnena Kalu took the award for her colourful, cocoon-like sculptures made from VHS tape, clingfilm and other abandoned materials, along with her large swirling vortex drawings. Kalu is autistic, with limited verbal communication. In an acceptance speech on her behalf, Kalu’s facilitator, Charlotte Hollinshead, said that “a very stubborn glass ceiling” had been broken.

Kalu’s win is a high-profile symbol of a shift towards greater inclusivity that has been happening in the UK arts world over the past five years. Last month, Beyond the Visual opened at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, in which everything is curated or created by blind and partially sighted artists. The exhibits range from Moore sculptures (which visitors are encouraged to touch) to David Johnson’s 10,000 stone-plaster digestive biscuits stamped with braille. Design and Disability at the V&A South Kensington is showcasing the ways in which disabled, deaf and neurodivergent people have shaped culture from the 1940s to now.

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© Photograph: James Speakman/PA

© Photograph: James Speakman/PA

© Photograph: James Speakman/PA

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is rushing to build one last piece of her legacy of ... accelerating the exodus from the NYPD.

The Southeastern Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of four Long Islanders over a New York state guidance that effectively bans dissent on trans issues from school board meetings.

Erika Kirk plainly doesn’t need our help in confronting the conspiracy-mongers and other trolls who exploit her husband’s assassination with no regard to his survivors’ feeling or the truth — but we’re absolutely with her.

Former President Joe Biden claimed that his administration actually lowered the price of "everything" — despite data showing prices rising and real wages falling during his term.

Editorial: The health secretary will point to a ‘worst-case’ outbreak of flu sweeping hospital wards, a public losing sympathy with the strikes and a sensible offer on the negotiating table as he bids to steer a way through this NHS crisis

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Sir Keir Starmer promised to bring meaningful reform to the House of Lords. He is failing to introduce it

In opposition, Sir Keir Starmer called the unelected House of Lords “indefensible”. This week, barely 18 months into his prime ministership, Sir Keir took the total of unelected peers he has appointed since July 2024 to 96. Remarkably, Wednesday’s 34 new life peerages, mainly Labour supporters, take his appointment total above those of each of his four most recent Conservative predecessors. You must go back to David Cameron to find a prime minister who did more to stuff the Lords than Sir Keir.

At the last election, Labour presented itself to the voters as a party of Lords reform. The party manifesto promised to remove the remaining hereditary peers, to reform the appointments process, to impose a peers’ retirement age, and to consult on proposals for replacing the Lords with an alternative second chamber. The House of Lords, the manifesto flatly declared, was “too big”.

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© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

A Tommy Robinson-inspired carol service is the latest sign of a burgeoning Christian nationalist movement. The Church of England is right to push back

The story of Christmas is a tale of poverty and flight from persecution. According to Christian tradition, humanity’s saviour is born in a stable, since Mary and Joseph are unable to find a room in Bethlehem. The holy family subsequently flee to Egypt to escape the murderous intentions of King Herod. This drama grounds the New Testament message of compassion for the stranger, the fugitive and all those who find themselves far from home. “I was hungry and you gave me food to eat,” says Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

The spirit of a far-right show of force planned on Saturday by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, AKA Tommy Robinson, will be somewhat different. Since reportedly converting fully to Christianity while serving a prison sentence for contempt of court, Mr Yaxley-Lennon has energetically deployed his faith to promote his own gospel of ethnic discord and political polarisation. The Unite the Kingdom rally he organised in July featured hymns, a plethora of wooden crosses and a Christian preacher who spoke of a war against “the Muslim”. His latest provocation is a “carol service” in central London, ostensibly to “put Christ back in Christmas”.

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© Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

© Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

© Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

It looks like the days are numbered for the terrorist-infested UN Relief and Works Agency, as UNRWA loses support from major European nations that have long backed it.

The Responsible Artificial Intelligence Safety and Education (RAISE) Act would require large AI developers to create and publicize safety plans and make tech-sharing impossible.

Editorial: The scandal of 200 people being deprived of their right to citizenship at the stroke of a government pen is a moral failure – a country has a duty to those who have rightly called it home

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Nick Fuentes turns out to matter a lot less than his promoters and detractors have been assuming: His rapid rise is built on foreign bots, not any genuine American fanbase.

Amazing: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson thinks “nonpartisan experts” should be controlling key parts of the federal government while the president and other “people who don’t know anything” sit on the sidelines letting “Ph.D.s” make the important decisions.

The idea that bottomless aid and endless permissiveness will heal all society's ills is pure fantasy.

It's plainly time for President Trump to up the economic pressure on Russia to get Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.

President Donald Trump is stepping out of his White House bubble to address economic gloom; we expect he'll make time to listen as well as speechify.