Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Tuesday 27 Jan 2015

1. POLL: LABOUR TO SCRAPE NARROW WIN

A ‘poll of polls’ collated by Sky News suggests that Labour will be the main party in a hung parliament after this year’s general election. Sky forecasts that Labour will fall short of an absolute majority by around 40 seats - which could give Scotland’s SNP a decisive role in forming the next government.

2. NEW YORK SHUTS DOWN FOR BLIZZARD

All non-emergency vehicles have been banned from the streets of New York City and Boston as the north-eastern US braces for a storm bringing “crippling” amounts of snow which could affect 60m people. Winter Storm Juno is expected to dump as much as 30 inches of snow in some parts of the region.

3. FBI CHARGES RUSSIAN ‘SPY RING’ IN NEW YORK

The FBI has charged three Russian men with forming a spy ring, trying to gain intelligence about US sanctions against Russia - and on alternative energy plans. Evgeny Buryako, 39, who appeared in court last night, worked at a Russian bank in Manhattan. The other two men are no longer in the US.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

4. GREECE: REPAYING DEBTS ‘UNREALISTIC’

It is “unrealistic” to expect Greece to repay its national debt in full, says the newly-elected radical left-wing party Syriza. However, economics spokesman Euclid Tsakalotos insited to the BBC that he wanted to negotiate a “just, mutually beneficial and viable solution” with leaders from the rest of the eurozone.

5. HACKERS: FACEBOOK OUTAGE OUR WORK

Hackers calling themselves Lizard Squad, who say they were behind an attack on the Xbox and Playstation sites at Christmas, have claimed responsibility for a brief outage of three of the most-used social networking sites on the web - Facebook, Instagram and Tindr - at around 6.30am UK time this morning.

6. ARGENTINA WINDS UP INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

Argentine president Christina Fernandez de Kirchner is to disband her country’s intelligence agency after the mysterious death of a state prosecutor. Alberto Nisman was found dead after alleging Fernandez and others covered up the supposed role of Iran in the bombing of a Jewish centre in 1994.

7. TEN DEAD IN SPAIN AS F-16 JET CRASHES

Ten people have died after a Nato F-16 fighter jet crashed on take-off at a military base in Spain. Thirteen others were injured, seven of them very seriously. Most of the victims were said to be French or Greek. The plane was on a training exercise as part of Nato’s Tactical Leadership Programme (TLP).

8. CUMBERBATCH SORRY FOR RACIAL EPITHET

Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch has said he was an “idiot” and apologised for using the term “coloured” to refer to black actors in an interview. The Hobbit star said he was “devastated” to have caused offence. He was telling a US TV show it was harder for black actors to find work in the UK than the US.

9. ‘NEAR MISS’ ASTEROID HAS ITS OWN MOON

The asteroid 2004 BL86, which delighted astronomers with a fly-past close enough to be dubbed a “near miss” of the Earth yesterday, has been revealed as having its own moon. BL86, properly called a minor planet, is less than half a mile across. Its newly-seen “companion” is a rock some 70-metres in diameter.

10. BRIEFING: 70 YEARS AFTER AUSCHWITZ

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where more than one million people, most of them Jewish, were killed during World War Two. Winston Churchill described it as "the most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world", but press attention was, at first, relatively sparse.

Auschwitz liberation 75 years on: how the world reacted