Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Friday 4 May 2018

1. Labour misses Tory strongholds as UKIP flags

With votes still being counted from yesterday’s English local elections, early analysis suggests a mixed night for the main parties as UKIP’s vote collapses. The Times says the Tories seemed to benefit most from the UKIP slump, while The Guardian reports a shift to Labour in London – but the party did not take flagship Tory councils.

2. Bercow vows to stay on despite bullying claims

Commons Speaker John Bercow has said he will “keep buggering on” despite further allegations of bullying in his office. His former private secretary Angus Sinclair claimed this week that Bercow physically intimidated and demeaned him. Yesterday former Black Rod David Leakey also spoke out against Bercow, saying the minister showed “intolerable” rudeness to subordinates.

3. Twitter tells all 336m users to change passwords

Social networking site Twitter is urging all of its 336 million users to change their passwords after some were stored as a plain text file in an internal log, instead of being encrypted. The error, caused by a software bug, meant Twitter employees may have been able to access the passwords, which would also have been more vulnerable to attacks by hackers.

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4. People move house less than in 1970s, data shows

People are less likely to move house today than they were in the 1970s, according to a new study at Queen’s University Belfast. The researchers examined census data and found that around a million more people moved between 1971 and 1981 than in the first decade of the 2000s. Dr Ian Shuttleworth said the change could reflect a decline in social mobility.

5. Hottest April day ever on Earth recorded

The hottest April day ever on Earth was recorded in Pakistan this week. Meteorologist in the country say temperatures recorded a blistering 50.2C on Monday. Dozens of people are reported to have fainted from heatstroke and two teenagers drowned while trying to cool off in a canal.

6. Pirates ‘massacred’ Guyana fishermen

The president of Guyana says at least 12 fishermen were killed by pirates off the coast of neighbouring Suriname, in South America, last week. David Granger said the attack was “a great massacre, a great tragedy”. Some of the men, who were mostly Guyanese, were forced into the water with weights tied to their legs.

7. Polanksi and Cosby expelled from Academy

Disgraced film director Roman Polanski and actor Bill Cosby have been expelled from the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the body which awards the Oscars. Cosby was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand last week and has been accused by many other women of similar actions. Oscar-winning director Polanski admitted statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

8. Capture of Golden State Killer explained

US police have revealed how they caught Joseph DeAngelo, the 72-year-old suspected of being the Golden State Killer, a serial killer and rapist who terrorised California in the 1970s and 1980s. Officers uploaded crime scene DNA to a publicly accessible genealogy site and traced people related to the killer. DeAngelo was arrested in April.

9. New Jersey ‘mystery pooper was schools chief’

A sting operation by police in New Jersey hunting a “mystery pooper” has ended in the arrest of a senior education official. Students at Holmdel High School had repeatedly complained of finding human excrement near their running track, sparking an investigation that led to the arrest of 42-year-old Thomas Tramaglini, the superintendent of a nearby school district, on Monday. His alleged motive is unclear.

10. Briefing: the EU budget

The European Commission has opened what is expected to be a long and arduous re-negotiation of the EU budget, unveiling plans for higher spending and controversial cuts to farming subsidies.

Commission President Jean-Claude Junker has set out a financial blueprint of €1.279trn for 2021 to 2027. Politico says this “smashes through the previous budget cap of 1% of the bloc’s gross national income” and seeks to push overall spending to around 1.1% — even as the UK and its 65 million people make their Brexit.

EU budget: more money for ever-closer union