Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Thursday 1 Feb 2018

1. May and EU at loggerheads over transition

Theresa May has set herself in opposition to the EU over the status of non-Britons who arrive in the UK to work during the transition period before Brexit. Speaking in China this morning, the Prime Minister said they would not be given the right to remain because UK citizens “did not vote for nothing to change”.

2. USA Gymnastics doctor Nassar had 265 victims

Larry Nassar, the former team doctor for USA Gymnastics, will be confronted by another 65 women he abused, many when they were girls, in a third day of pre-sentence hearings. The judge trying Nassar said yesterday that it’s now known he had at least 265 victims. The 54-year-old has already been sentenced to 175 years in jail.

3. Minister offers to resign for arriving late

The International Development Minister and Conservative peer Lord Bates will stay in his position after the Government said his resignation over lateness was “unnecessary”. Arriving between 20 and 30 minutes late to answer questions put to him by Labour’s Baroness Lister, Bates said he was “thoroughly ashamed” and would resign.

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4. Baby leave to end ‘Rees-Mogg model’ for MPs

MPs are expected to approve a new system today, under which those of their number with babies will be able to nominate a colleague to vote for them in the Commons. Labour MP Harriet Harman, a driving force behind the plan, says it will end the “Rees-Mogg model” of parenthood, a reference to the Tory MP’s disavowal of nappy changing.

5. News Feed changes hit Facebook statistics

Facebook has admitted changes it made late last year that resulted in fewer viral videos appearing in users’ news feeds have caused a drop-off in time spent on the social network, at least among users in the US and Canada. Founder Mark Zuckerberg believes the changes will help restore trust in Facebook after criticism of fake news stories on the site.

6. Breast cancer drug Perjeta approved by NHS

NHS England will now provide patients with incurable breast cancer with the drug Perjeta, which can potentially prolong their lives and allow them to live a reasonably normal life when used in concert with two other drugs. Since 2013, the drug has only been available through the Cancer Drugs Fund, which meant that many patients missed out on it.

7. Ofsted to support hijab ban for under-eights

The education watchdog’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, will make a speech today in which she supports Neena Lall, the headteacher of a predominantly-Muslim primary school in east London who has banned the hijab for under-eights. She will call on school leaders to show “muscular liberalism” to defend sensitive decisions.

8. Wales: ‘intimate piercings’ banned for minors

Piercings of intimate areas of the body, including the tongue, nipples and genitalia, have been banned for under-18s in Wales for health and wellbeing reasons. From today, it will be illegal to pierce ten specific areas. Wales’s chief medical officer, Dr Frank Atherton, noted that a third of young people with intimate piercings have reported “complications”.

9. Locusts threaten Russia World Cup

The Russian authorities have warned that plagues of locusts could ruin this year’s football World Cup, potentially descending on pitches and stripping them of grass. An agriculture minister asked: “How do we not fall into a global scandal with locusts this year? Football fields are green. Locusts love it where there is lots of green.”

10. Briefing: how folic acid in flour can reduce birth defects

Health experts are urging the government to help reduce the number of babies born with birth defects by ensuring that folic acid is added to flour, a practice already mandatory in 81 other countries including the US.

“One in every 500 to 1,000 pregnancies in the UK is affected by life-changing neural tube defects, like anencephaly and spina bifida,” Sky News reports.

How folic acid in flour can reduce birth defects in babies