UK: Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Wednesday 24 Apr 2019
One of the suicide bombers who killed at least 359 people in the Easter Sunday blasts in churches and hotels in Sri Lanka studied in the UK, according to the South Asian’s deputy defence minister. Ruwan Wijewardene said that eight of the nine bombers had been identified and that all of them were well-educated and “financially independent”.
The UK is to discuss cybersecurity with the rest of the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ group of nations that share intelligence – the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – following reports that Britain is to allow Chinese firm Huawei to play a role in constructing its 5G network. The US says Huawei is too closely controlled by the Chinese state.
The Treasury is posting an advert today for a new governor of the Bank of England to replace Mark Carney, who is stepping down on 31 January 2020. The Canadian has been in the job since July 2013 and has twice agreed to stay on longer to ensure stability ahead of Brexit. The job will be advertised with an annual salary of £480,000.
Conservative MP Johnny Mercer is facing calls to quit politics following reports that a company behind a failed bond scheme that lost savers £236m is paying him a private salary of £85,000 for four hours’ work a week. Surge Financial Ltd took 25% commission from London Capital and Finance, which has since gone into administration. Surge also funds Crucial Academy, which trains Army veterans in cybersecurity and of which former soldier Mercer is a non-executive director.
The Labour party says it would scrap a government scheme that allows offices and industrial buildings to be converted into housing without planning permission. Labour claims changes to permitted development laws in England have led to the creation of “slum housing and rabbit hutch flats”. The scheme was introduced in 2013 in a bid to increase housebuilding.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove yesterday promised increased action to fight climate change, saying he had been inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. The teenager - who has sparked a global wave of youth environment protests - visited Parliament yesterday and met senior politicians including Jeremy Corbyn and Sir Vince Cable.
Scientists have detected what they believe is a “Marsquake”, marking the first time a seismological tremor has been recorded on another planet. Nasa has revealed that its InSight Mars rover recorded a faint rumbling earlier this month, five months after arriving on the surface of the red planet. Scientists say that the rumble sounds like a soft wind but that they believe it came from within Mars.
A group of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong have been sentenced to prison terms of up to 16 months each for their part in the biggest civil disobedience ever seen in the China-controlled nation. The Umbrella Nine - so called because they used umbrellas as defence against tear gas - were found guilty of public nuisance charges over the 79-day mass protest in 2014.
A woman whose car was hit by a school bus in 1991 has woken after spending 27 years in a coma. Munira Abdulla, now 59, was cradling her four-year-old son, Omar, when the accident occurred. The first word she uttered on waking at a clinic in Bavaria was the name of her son, now 32.
Theresa May has ditched plans to reorganise her cabinet after the upcoming local elections amid fears that voters are set to punish the Tories for the Brexit chaos.
So where are the elections taking place and what is likely to happen?
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