Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 27 August 2022

1. Zahawi says middle class may need help

Middle earners, as well as low earners, are likely to need government help to pay their energy bills this winter, said chancellor Nadhim Zahawi. After the energy regulator hiked the price cap on household bills by 80%, Zahawi told The Telegraph that even those earning £45,000 a year may need support. He said the Treasury was exploring “all the options” to help households. Warning that the country was in a “national economic emergency” that “could go on for 18 months, two years,” he also urged households to cut their energy use.

2. Truss ‘to cull Patel and Raab’

Priti Patel will be the highest profile casualty in a cull of Tory “big beasts” from the cabinet if Liz Truss becomes PM, according to reports. The Home Secretary does not currently figure in Truss’s plans for government, said The Telegraph, with Dominic Raab, Steve Barclay, Rishi Sunak, Michael Gove and Grant Shapps also said to be “in jeopardy”. Patel’s decision to remain neutral in the leadership race by refusing publicly to declare support for either candidate appears to have “backfired badly,” said the paper.

3. Khan ‘furious’ over Dick report

The mayor of London wrongly ousted Cressida Dick as commissioner of the Metropolitan police, an official inquiry is expected to conclude. A draft of the government-ordered report from Sir Tom Winsor, the former chief inspector of constabulary, finds that Sadiq Khan did not follow due process and that Dick was unfairly treated, said The Guardian. The report is expected to deem the mayor’s actions and decision-making as “irrational” and “unreasonable”. A “furious” Khan is consulting lawyers, said the paper.

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4. English boys drown in German lake

Police in Germany are investigating the death of two British boys who drowned in a lake in western Germany on Thursday evening. After the boys, aged seven and nine, were pulled from the Eiserbachsee near Aachen, doctors fought overnight to save their lives but they were pronounced dead in hospital in the early hours of Friday morning. The public prosecutor’s office in Aachen said it was trying to determine whether there was any suspicion of a criminal offence, including negligence.

5. Trump affidavit unsealed

Newly unsealed court filings have suggested that the FBI searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after speaking to a significant number of witnesses and finding probable cause that national defense information existed at the former president’s property. The FBI told a judge they expected to find “evidence of obstruction” of justice in a search of the former president’s Florida home. Trump has described the affidavit as a “total public relations subterfuge”.

6. Assange lawyers file appeal

Lawyers for Julian Assange have filed an appeal against his extradition to the US, as the UN’s human rights chief lends support to the Australian’s cause. The WikiLeaks publisher has been indicted on 17 espionage charges in the US and one charge of computer misuse over the publication of thousands of military and diplomatic documents leaked by whistleblower Chelsea Manning. WikiLeaks says Assange’s legal team filed “perfected grounds of appeal” in the UK’s high court. The charges he is facing carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.

7. Macron responds to Truss comment

Emmanuel Macron said France and Britain would be facing “serious problems” if they could not say whether they were friends or enemies. His remark came after Liz Truss told the penultimate Tory leadership hustings that “the jury is still out” on whether the French president was “friend or foe”. Asked for his response, Macron said it was “not good to lose your bearings too much”. Were he was asked the same question, he said: “I wouldn’t hesitate for a second. France is a friend of the British people.”

8. ‘Turkey’s Madonna’ arrested

Turkey has ordered the arrest of a pop star for allegedly insulting the country’s Islamic high schools system. Gulsen, who is often described as the Turkish Madonna, was arrested after a video clip of a comment she made about a band member during a performance in April went viral on social media. She said of the band member: “He attended the Imam Hatip schools. That’s where the perversion comes from.” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also attended an Imam Hatip school.

9. Moderna sues jab rivals

Moderna is suing Pfizer and BioNTech, accusing them of copying technology that helped to create its Covid jab. The US pharma giant has filed patent infringement lawsuits against the two companies, seeking undetermined damages. Moderna said that Pfizer and BioNTech copied two features of its patented technologies and “knowingly followed” its lead when developing their own coronavirus jabs. Pfizer said it had not yet “fully reviewed” Moderna’s complaint and BioNTech said it “remains confident” in its intellectual property.

10. Dinosaur remains found in back garden

The remains of what could be the largest dinosaur ever discovered in Europe are being excavated in a Portuguese back garden. The fossilised skeleton of a sauropod was discovered in the central city of Pombal when a man began building work on his house. Sauropods are plant-eating, four-legged dinosaurs characterised by long necks and tails. “It is not usual to find all the ribs of an animal like this, let alone in this position, maintaining their original anatomical position,” Elisabete Malafaia, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lisbon, said.