Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Monday 31 Dec 2018

1. Javid: ‘no easy answers’ to migrant crossings

Home Secretary Sajid Javid writes in The Daily Telegraph today that there are “no easy answers” to the recent crisis of migrants crossing the English channel in small boats. Javid cut short a family holiday in South Africa to work on the problem this week but warns the reasons are “complicated and in many cases outside our control”.

2. Stabbing in London leads to 39 arrests

Police in London have arrested 39 people for attempted murder in connection with a single stabbing. Details are scant, but the victim was in his 30s and was found with life-threatening injuries on Fulham Road in Hammersmith at 1am this morning. The arrests were made at a property near the scene of the attack.

3. Dry and mild weather for New Year’s Eve

Most of the UK will enjoy dry, mild weather tonight as it celebrates the beginning of 2019, the Met Office says. The day will start with drizzle and remain cloudy but forecasters expect the “whole of the UK” to be “mostly dry” by midnight. However, there is a weather warning in place for Orkney and Shetland, with 70mph winds expected.

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4. No-deal ferry firm ‘has never sailed before’

One of three firms signed up by the government to operate a ferry service for freight in the event of a no-deal Brexit does not own any ships and has never previously run ferries, a Conservative councillor has warned. Seaborne Freight was awarded a £13.8m contract to sail from Ramsgate to Ostend, with no tendering process.

5. Netherlands: New Year terror plot arrests

Dutch police have arrested four people – with a fifth man held in Germany – for allegedly plotting a terror attack for New Year’s Day. The target was in the Netherlands, where there will be large fireworks parties. The suspects are said to be between 20 and 30 with a “non-Western” background.

6. Trump aide: we dropped wall plan early on

US President Donald Trump’s outgoing chief of staff, John Kelly, has said Trump’s team dropped the idea of a concrete wall on the Mexico-US border “early on” in his administration. Kelly told the LA Times: “To be honest, it’s not a wall.” Trump, however, has tweeted the word “wall” 59 times this month alone, the BBC notes.

7. Failure to crack down on blue badge abuse

The Press Association has discovered 62% of local councils in England took no action against anybody for abusing the blue badge disabled parking scheme last year. Disability charity Scope said the news was “disgraceful” and warned thefts of the permits are on the rise. Government figures say 4,246 have been stolen in total.

8. Fifteen charged over Morocco beheadings

Fifteen people have been charged in connection with the beheading of two Scandinavian hikers in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. Norwegian Maren Ueland, 28, and 24-year-old Louisa Vesterager from Denmark were found dead on 17 December in an isolated area. Some 20 suspects are accused of being an Islamist terror gang led by a Swiss man.

9. Minority take up NHS free health-check offer

Fewer than half of those eligible for a free NHS health check in England have taken up the offer, NHS England says. The routine check is available to anyone over the age of 40, takes 20 minutes and is carried out by a GP or nurse. The test can be repeated every five years up to the age of 74. Around 7.15 million have taken the offer up.

10. Briefing: celebrities who died in 2018

The world lost more than a few iconic stars in 2018, from Hollywood heartthrob Burt Reynolds and the “Queen of Soul” Aretha Franklin to theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and the 41st US president George H.W. Bush.

Remember some of the prominent public figures that we said goodbye to this year with The Week’s gallery of late celebrities.

Celebrities who died in 2018