Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 13 March 2023

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1. History at ‘heartfelt’ Oscars
2. Lineker ‘to be reinstated’
3. Bakhmut battle rages on
4. Sunak plays down crisis fears
5. Chain restaurants ‘won’t recover’
6. Capaldi helps Tourette’s trial
7. PM’s heated pool requires local upgrade
8. Sex offender bludgeoned with antler
9. Board sorry for rogue tweet
10. Attenborough warns of ‘crisis’

published 13 March 2023

1. History at ‘heartfelt’ Oscars

Michelle Yeoh has won best actress at the Oscars, becoming the first Asian woman to receive the award. “Dreams do come true,” said the actress as she collected the gong for her part in Everything Everywhere All at Once. The movie cleaned up at the ceremony, grabbing seven awards including best picture, director and original screenplay. After last year’s incident involving Will Smith and Chris Rock, the Academy can “breathe a sigh of relief”, that this year it got a “frequently heartfelt and moving ceremony”, said CNN.

Reports this morning suggest the row between Gary Lineker and the BBC is set to be resolved. The football broadcaster is expected to be reinstated and the BBC’s director general is set to announce a review of rules for presenters on the use of social media, said the i news site. Talks between the BBC and Lineker are thought to be “moving in the right direction”, said Metro, but the Mirror said that a return for Lineker would “infuriate Tories”. The Match of the Day host was suspended after he criticised the government’s immigration policy.

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There have been reports of heavy losses on both sides as the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut continues. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces had suffered more than 1,100 deaths in the past few days while Moscow said it had killed more than 220 Ukrainian service members over the past 24 hours. Ukraine has insisted that the defence of Bakhmut would continue, said Al Jazeera, with top commanders explaining that the battle there allows them to gain time needed to prepare a broader counterattack.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank will not trigger new financial crisis, said Rishi Sunak. Speaking to reporters on a flight to the United States, the prime minister said that there was “no systemic contagion risk” following the collapse of the lender. The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said yesterday that he was working to find a solution for clients of its UK branch that “minimises, or if we possibly can, avoids” losses to companies caught up in the chaos. Some tech firms have told the BBC they could go bust if help does not come soon enough.

Chain restaurants will never be as commonplace as they were before the Covid pandemic, said the chief executive of Wagamama. Speaking to The Telegraph, Andy Hornby, chief executive of The Restaurant Group, which owns the noodles chain, said: “I don’t think the [casual dining] industry will ever be quite as big as it was.” However, he added, people were still “prepared to spend money on good quality food and drink” and predicted that “good performing, well-run food and drink operators do have a good future in this country”.

Scientists have devised a bracelet that delivers electrical pulses that can significantly reduce the severity and frequency of tics for people with Tourette’s Syndrome. The Neupulse device works by “stimulating a motor nerve in the arm with rhythmic electrical pulses” that “trigger brain oscillations linked to the suppression of movement”, said The Telegraph. The pop singer Lewis Capaldi was among those who took part in trials, said Sky News. It helped him “feel calmer”, he said.

The prime minister’s new private heated swimming pool uses so much energy that the local electricity network had to be upgraded to satisfy its power demands, according to The Guardian. Additional equipment has been installed in a remote part of North Yorkshire to provide extra capacity from the National Grid to Rishi Sunak’s constituency home. Sunak will personally pick up the cost of the electricity upgrade work and there is no suggestion he enjoyed preferential treatment.

A 27-year-old father in the US used a moose antler and shovel to fatally attack an elderly sex offender he believed had been harassing his daughter. After bludgeoning 77-year-old Lawrence Scully, Levi Axtell drove to the sheriff’s office and handed himself in, covered in blood. Axtell from Cook County, Minnesota “had long been suspicious of Scully parking his vehicle at locations where children were present”, said the Daily Mail. Scully, who was convicted of molesting a six-year-old girl in 1979, died following the attack and Axtell has been charged with second-degree murder.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has apologised to a journalist after a message on its Twitter account described her as an “asshole”. The tweet from the organisation’s account on Saturday was in response to Rachel Shabi’s comments about Gary Lineker and the government’s immigration policy. After the Board removed the tweet and apologised, Shabi tweeted: “Thanks for the apology, though the problem isn’t just the language but the substance of the post. I’m concerned that the person intending to post this on their personal account is responsible for your Twitter account.”

“Nature is in crisis”, said David Attenborough. “It’s easy to feel overwhelmed or powerless by the scale of the issues facing our planet, but we have the solutions,” said the 96-year-old. “Although nature is in crisis, now is the time for action, and together we can save it.” The veteran spoke as the National Trust, RSPB and WWF launched their first joint campaign, Save Our Wild Isles, which encourages people to “go wild” once a week, by doing activities such as sowing bee-friendly plants or creating “hedgehog highways”. It follows the release of the first episode of Wild Isles, the BBC nature documentary widely believed to be Attenborough’s last on location.

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