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Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, no longer believes that a trans woman is a woman, his official spokesman said at a lobby briefing. He was asked about this six days after the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex in equalities law. The justices unanimously allowed an appeal by the campaign group For Women Scotland in a case against the Scottish government. Sex-based protections, notably in the Equality Act 2010, the court found, only apply to people who are born in that sex, not to those whose gender is reassigned. The court emphasised that transgender people still have protections against discrimination and harassment written into the Equality Act. J.K. Rowling, the pro-woman campaigner, tweeted: ‘Spare a thought today for the UK employers, government departments, health boards, academic institutions and sporting bodies who’ve been breaking equality law to appease activist groups. So many HR manuals to pulp.’ The sculptural banner held by the statue of the suffragist Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square was scrawled with the words ‘Fag rights’ during a rally by thousands of trans rights protestors.
Government borrowing in the year to March reached £151.9 billion, £14.6 billion higher than projections last month by the Office for Budget Responsibility. The International Monetary Fund said that ‘domestic factors’ meant that it now expected the British economy to grow by 1.1 per cent this year, not the 1.6 per cent predicted in January. A fall in petrol prices reduced the annual inflation rate in March to 2.6 per cent from 2.8 per cent in February. General practitioners will be paid £20 each time they decide not to send a patient to hospital under a government scheme to help reduce the NHS waiting list. Pubs in England and Wales that close at 11 p.m. will be able to stay open until two hours later to celebrate VE Day on 8 May.
The nationalities of foreign criminals in the UK are to be published from next year, the Home Secretary said. A man died trying to cross the Channel in a small boat, Kent Police said. In the seven days to 21 April, 1,377 migrants succeeded in crossing. The government imposed a temporary ban on travellers bringing in cheese and meat products from the EU, in a bid to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. Toblerone withdrew its dark chocolate version in Britain, introduced in 1969.
Abroad
The Pope died aged 88 on Easter Monday, after defying his ill health by visiting prisoners, giving a short private audience to J.D. Vance and wishing crowds in St Peter’s Square a happy Easter. He is to be buried in St Mary Major on 26 April, with Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky, Emmanuel Macron, the Prince of Wales and Sir Keir Starmer among those attending.
In London, American officials put to Ukraine a peace plan that would leave Russia with almost all the land it took – nearly 20 per cent of the country. The United States had said it would abandon trying to find a peace agreement, unless there were clear signs a truce could be reached. This rather put in the shade a ‘framework’ mineral agreement between Ukraine and the United States. President Vladimir Putin of Russia said he had ordered his forces to ‘stop all military activity’ in Ukraine for 30 hours until the end of Easter Day. But Ukraine reported 812 incidents of Russian shelling with heavy weaponry; Russia also reported attacks. Two days later, explosions ripped through one of Russia’s largest weapons arsenals, in the Vladimir region.
The US Commerce Department announced plans for tariffs of up to 3,521 per cent on imports of solar panels from Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. The US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to suspend the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador. President Trump repeatedly attacked the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, calling him ‘a major loser’ for not lowering interest rates, but later said he had ‘no intention of firing’ him. Gold reached $3,500 a troy ounce. The Israeli military said that ‘professional failures’ led to the killing of 15 emergency workers in Gaza on 23 March; the deputy commander of the unit involved has been dismissed ‘for providing an incomplete and inaccurate report during the debrief’. At least two dozen domestic tourists were killed by gunmen in Indian-administered Kashmir. Steel cables broke, letting a cable car fall 100ft into a mountainside south of Naples, killing four, two of them English. CSH
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