Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 18 October 2022

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1. Energy bills ‘to hit £4k’
2. ‘Sorry’ Truss ‘has 48 hours’
3. Power chief warns of blackouts
4. Four dead in ‘kamikaze’ attacks
5. Bannon ‘should get six months’ in prison
6. Oil activists protest at bridge
7. Pressure grows on Chinese embassy incident
8. Thunberg says politics is ‘too toxic’
9. Woman shot during boar hunt
10. Sri Lankan novel wins Booker

published 18 October 2022

1. Energy bills ‘to hit £4k’

The average annual energy bill will rise to more than £4,000 from April after Liz Truss’s latest U-turn, according to the consultancy Cornwall Insight. The leading energy forecaster said the price cap for a typical dual-fuel tariff will now be £4,347 in six months’ time if the government does not offer special support. The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said the universal energy price guarantee will finish next April, with a review being launched on how to then support bills after this period.

Liz Truss has insisted she will lead the Conservatives into the next general election, despite accepting that mistakes had been made in the last 40 days. Speaking to the BBC, she said she accepted responsibility for going “too far, too fast” on the economy - and she wanted to “say sorry for the mistakes that have been made”. Truss has “48 hours to save her premiership” said the inews site with The Sun describing her as the “ghost PM”. Sources told the paper that although the PM remains defiant is in public, she has privately acknowledged that she faces a battle to survive this week.

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The National Grid chief has told households to prepare for blackouts between 4pm and 7pm on weekdays during “really, really cold” days in January and February if gas imports are reduced. Speaking at the Financial Times’s Energy Transition Summit, John Pettigrew, the head of Britain’s electricity and gas systems’ operator, said in a a “worst case” scenario, blackouts would have to be imposed during the “deepest darkest evenings” if electricity generators did not have enough gas to meet demand.

Russia has attacked Kyiv with nearly 30 so-called “kamikaze” drones just days after President Vladimir Putin said there would be no more “massive strikes” on Ukraine. Yesterday’s attacks killed four people, including a pregnant woman and her partner. Separately, at least 13 people died after a Russian fighter-bomber plane crashed into an apartment block in the southern Russian town of Yeysk. The port town is near the eastern Ukrainian war zone, across the Sea of Azov from the city of Mariupol.

Federal prosecutors want former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to be sentenced to six months in prison for contempt of Congress, according to a new court filing. The prosecutors said that “for his sustained, bad-faith contempt of Congress, the defendant should be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment – the top end of the Sentencing Guidelines’ range – and fined $200,000”. Bannon was found guilty by a jury in July of two counts of contempt of Congress. His sentencing is set for Friday but Bannon is asking for the sentencing to be delayed pending his appeal.

Just Stop Oil activists caused six-mile long queues after scaling the 84m masts of the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge. The bridge at the Dartford Crossing and connecting the M25 over the Thames, was closed all day after the climate campaigners climbed the structure just before 4am yesterday. The group said that it was blocking the bridge because there were several oil depots in the area. The protest marked the 17th successive day that the group has been active.

Pressure is growing on the UK government to act against China after police confirmed that a man was assaulted after being dragged into the grounds of the country’s consulate in Manchester. The victim, who said he had hair pulled from his scalp during the attack, is believed to have spent the night in hospital. A photograph published by VOA Cantonese showed some of his injuries, just below his eyes, which left him bleeding and bruised. Labour and senior Tories have called for the Chinese ambassador to explain what occurred.

Greta Thunberg has told the BBC she will not pursue a career in politics because it is too “toxic”. The Swedish climate activist said the necessary changes to political discourse “will only come if there's enough public pressure from the outside - and that is something that we create”. Speaking of when she was targeted on Twitter by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, she said: “I just think it’s genuinely funny. I mean, the most powerful people in the world feel intimidated by teenagers. That is funny. It says more about them than it does about me.”

A British woman died after she was shot by her companion while accompanying him on a wild boar hunt in Brittany. Jacqueline Taylor, 67, was fatally wounded after the loaded rifle of Pierre Philippot, 69, went off as he carried it on his shoulder without the security latch on. The local mayor described the incident as a “dumb and stupid” accident. The latest death will “add fuel to a bitter debate in France” over whether stricter regulations should be imposed on French hunters, said The Telegraph.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka has won the Booker Prize. The Sri Lankan writer’s novel is a “supernatural satire set amid a murderous Sri Lankan civil war”, said the BBC. Lead judge Neil MacGregor praised the “scope and the skill, the daring, the audacity and hilarity” of the work, calling it an “afterlife noir”. The esteemed £50,000 prize, for a single work of fiction published in the UK in English, also awards the other five writers on the shortlist £2,500 each.

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