Owner of Facebook and Instagram agreed to stop targeting human rights campaigner after legal agreement The owner of Facebook and Instagram is considering charging UK users for an advert-free version of its platforms after agreeing a settlement in a landmark privacy case. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta agreed to stop targeting a user with adverts based on their personal data after a legal agreement that avoided a trial in the high court in London. Continue reading...

Government plans for Pip cuts will drive up costs for local authority social care services and NHS, campaigners warn The government’s plans to cut at least £5bn from disability benefits could end up driving more costs on to cash-strapped councils, according to campaigners and local government officials. Last week, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall published a green paper including a package of cuts to disability benefits. Up to 1.2 million fewer people could be eligible for Pip by 2029/30 as a result of the changes, according to the Resolution Foundation thinktank, including existing claimants losing their benefits when their needs are reassessed. Continue reading...

Musk lambastes judges as leftwing activists in more than 20 posts as Trump administration’s judiciary clash intensifies In the days after a federal judge ruled Elon Musk’s dismantling of USAID likely violated the constitution, the world’s richest person issued a series of online attacks against the American judiciary, offered money to voters to sign a petition opposing “activist judges”, and called on Congress to remove his newfound legal opponents from office. “This is a judicial coup,” Musk wrote on Wednesday, asking lawmakers to “impeach the judges”. Continue reading...

A new exhibition at the National Archives in London will reveal the extent of MI5 operation to expose the British double agent who was also Observer reporter Secret surveillance of Britain’s ­notorious double agent, Kim Philby, made public for the first time in archived documents, reveals how keenly the Security Service wanted to confirm or disprove early suspicions of his high-level treachery. In daily bulletins submitted to MI5 in November 1951, undercover operatives describe how Philby, codenamed Peach, moved about London. Continue reading...

Keir Starmer has been dealt a fresh blow to his living standards pledge in advance of the spring statement Living standards for all UK families are set to fall by 2030, with those on the lowest incomes declining twice as fast as middle and high earners, according to new data that raises serious questions about Keir Starmer’s pledge to make working people better off. The grim economic analysis, produced by the respected Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), comes before the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, makes her spring statement on Wednesday in which she will announce new cuts to public spending rather than increase borrowing or raise taxes, so as to keep within the government’s “iron clad” fiscal rules. Continue reading...

In Friday memo, president also pulls clearances for Antony Blinken, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and Letitia James Donald Trump moved to revoke security clearances for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and a string of other top Democrats and political enemies in a presidential memo issued late on Friday. The security-clearance revocations also cover the former secretary of state Antony Blinken, the former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, the former Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump for fraud, as well as Biden’s entire family. They all will no longer have access to classified information – a courtesy typically offered to former presidents and some officials after they have left public service. Continue reading...