Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 10 January 2023

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1. Cabins in car parks for NHS
2. Rocket launch ends in failure
3. ‘Flawed’ Harry book released
4. Ex-Tory minister joins Labour
5. Brits go missing in Ukraine
6. New energy package ‘catastrophic’
7. ‘Best restaurant’ to close
8. Vatican to probe 1983 disappearance
9. Man drives wrong way down M4
10. Tributes as Bale retires

published 10 January 2023

1. Cabins in car parks for NHS

NHS patients may be treated in “temporary cabins set up in hospital car parks”, said The Times. Health Secretary Steve Barclay promised £50m to pay for temporary buildings to ease pressure on overcrowded accident and emergency departments and admitted that patients’ recent experiences had “not been acceptable”. He said he would fund “more physical capacity in and around emergency departments”, and said that temporary structures could provide this “in weeks not months”.

The team behind plans for a historic rocket launch from UK soil have promised to bounce back after their much-hyped space mission ended in failure. LauncherOne suffered an “anomaly” in its bid to reach orbit on Monday night, after being carried skyward from Spaceport Cornwall by a converted jumbo jet named Cosmic Girl. The satellites it was carrying could not be released and were lost but the carrier jet returned safely to base. “It’s gutting,” said Melissa Thorpe, the head of Spaceport Cornwall.

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Bookshops across London opened at midnight as Prince Harry’s much-anticipated memoir officially went on sale. Waterstones said the book has been one of its “biggest pre-order titles for a decade” and Sky News said it has made headlines across the world thanks to “bombshell revelations”. Meanwhile, the first reviews are in. The Guardian described Spare as a “flawed attempt to reclaim the narrative”, The Times said it is a “400-page therapy session for mystic Harry” and The Telegraph said the “poignant memories of his mother” are “undermined by petty point-scoring”.

A former Tory minister who served under Theresa May has quit the party and backed Labour to govern Britain in a “sober, competent” fashion. Claire Perry O’Neill said she had torn up her membership card after she lost faith in the “cavalier” and “self-obsessed” Conservatives. Her announcement will “come as a setback” to the “embattled” Rishi Sunak after a poll revealed that his personal ratings have slumped over the last week, said The Telegraph.

Police in Ukraine said two British nationals have gone missing in the eastern Donetsk region of the country. Andrew Bagshaw, 48, and Christopher Parry, 28, who were reportedly doing voluntary work, were last seen on Friday heading to the town of Soledar, where there has been “intense” fighting, said the BBC. Meanwhile, the British government is considering sending tanks to help Ukraine. Government sources told Sky News the UK could supply about a dozen Challenger 2s and become the first country in western Europe to send tanks to Ukraine.

Business leaders have warned that tens of thousands of businesses will be at risk of collapse after ministers slashed financial support for their energy costs by 85%. The government has announced a maximum support package of £5.5bn over the 12 months from April, down from an estimated £18bn over the six months of this winter. The Federation of Small Businesses described the move as “catastrophic” but the current arrangement had been described as “unsustainably expensive” by the chancellor.

The world’s ‘best restaurant’ is closing in 2025 because of gastronomy’s “unsustainable” economics, said its owner. Noma in Copenhagen has served unorthodox dishes, including reindeer gullets with crispy moss, mouldy egg yolk, and duck brain served in its own skull and eaten with a spoon made from its own tongue. “We have to rethink the industry,” René Redzepi, told The New York Times. “This is simply too hard, and we have to work in a different way . . . It’s unsustainable. Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn’t work.”

The Vatican is launching an inquiry into the disappearance of a teenage schoolgirl four decades ago. Emanuela Orlandi was 15 when she disappeared from the streets of Rome in 1983 while on her way home from a music class. The case of the daughter of a long-serving employee of the Holy See has been “linked to Cold War intrigue involving Pope John Paul II, Turkish nationalist extremists, the KGB, money allegedly owed by the Vatican to the criminal underworld and even allegations of sex slavery”, said The Telegraph.

A man was arrested after driving on the wrong side of the M4 for more than 20 miles. Police responded yesterday morning to reports that a Mercedes was driving at “excess speed” on the wrong side of the motorway between junctions 14 and 15. Officers said it was a “miracle” no one was hurt. They eventually apprehended the driver, a man in his sixties, at Leigh Delamere services in Wiltshire. On Sunday evening a car was hit head-on by a Ford Focus as it was driven down the wrong side of the A6120 ring road in Leeds.

Welsh football star Gareth Bale has announced his retirement from the game at the age of 33. Bale is a five-time Champions League winner, his nation’s most-capped male player and record men’s goalscorer. The BBC said he was “arguably” Wales’ finest ever footballer. “Thank you Gareth Bale, we will tell our grandchildren how privileged we were to have you,” said Wales Online, while The Guardian said that the “joy of the playground defined Gareth Bale more than records or trophies”.

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