Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 28 March 2023

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1. SNP to change tactics
2. DeSantis ahead in key state
3. Daily Mail accused again
4. Economically inactive worry
5. Deaths in US school shooting
6. More protests after Israel u-turn
7. Video game addicts attack parents
8. New rights for landlords and tenants
9. German tanks sent to Ukraine
10. US cops use facial recognition

published 28 March 2023

1. SNP to change tactics

The SNP’s focus will switch to a longer-term policy of converting voters to the case for independence, rather than “agitating” for a second referendum, said the i news site. The party’s new leader, Humza Yousaf, hopes to push popular support for leaving the UK to a level where it is consistently higher than 50%. Speaking to ITV, he said: “I hope we can get independence within five years.” Following his narrow victory to become party leader, he will decide whether he wants to offer his defeated rivals jobs in government in order to try and unify the party.

Ron DeSantis leads Donald Trump by eight points in the early battleground of Iowa, a poll showed. The two men “face a tight battle” for the Republican presidential nomination in states holding early primaries, said The Times, despite wider surveys putting Trump ahead. The national polling shows a comfortable lead for Trump, with a Monmouth University survey last week putting him on 41% among party voters and DeSantis on 27%.

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Doreen Lawrence said the Daily Mail hired private investigators to hack her phone, potentially disrupting the police investigation into the murder of her son, Stephen. The Duke of Sussex and Elton John were also present at the High Court yesterday, to hear legal arguments in the cases they have brought against Associated Newspapers, the owner of the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline. They accuse the titles of making widespread use of illegal tactics to obtain stories over more than two decades but the Mail has dismissed all the claims as “preposterous smears”.

Andrew Bailey said a trend for early retirement has forced up interest rates and inflation. The Bank of England governor said that a decline in the number of people in the workforce was “part of the reason why we have had to raise Bank Rate by as much as we have”. His comments, during a speech at the London School of Economics, are the “clearest sign yet” that the Bank is concerned about the number of people retiring early “amid a race by the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to get more people back into work”, said The Telegraph.

Six people, three of them children, have been killed in a primary school shooting in Nashville The student victims were all aged eight or nine. The Covenant School in Nashville is a private Christian school for students aged three to 11. The shooter, identified as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, was killed by police. Law enforcement officials told ABC News that Hale may have once attended the school. He left behind writings and scouted a second possible attack location, police added.

A leading activist has vowed that protests will continue in Israel after prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he would delay controversial judicial reforms until next month. “As long as the legislation continues and is not shelved, we will be on the streets,” said Dr Shikma Bressler, one of the main leaders of the protest movement. Israeli newspaper Haaretz said that Netanyahu’s decision to delay the reforms shows he has “lost his touch”. Opposition leader Yair Lapid called it the “biggest crisis in the history of the country”.

Children addicted to computers games are attacking their parents, according to a a specialist NHS clinic. The NHS centre for gaming disorders, the first of its kind, has dealt with 745 patients since it opened in October 2019, including 327 people last year. The majority were teenage boys. Some patients told doctors that they would “rather be dead than not game”, according to The Times, while others have dropped out of school and skip meals so they can continue to play their games. The problem was worsened during lockdown when children “took refuge in online friendships”, said the report.

Landlords will be allowed to evict tenants who are disruptive to neighbours, cause damage or fall behind on their rent, reported The Times. Among the grounds for eviction will be “persistently problematic tenants” who cause disturbance through noise, drunken behaviour, drug use and damage to property. However, the Renters Reform Bill will also include protections for tenants, including bans on no-fault evictions and on landlords raising rent more than once a year. It comes as the cost-of-living crisis saw the attention on landlords intensify.

The first shipment of tanks from Germany has been sent to Ukraine, Berlin has announced. Eighteen Leopard 2 main battle tanks were delivered after Ukrainian crews were fully trained to use them. About 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles have also reached Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported, citing unnamed sources. According to reports from Ukraine, Challenger 2 tanks from the UK have also arrived in the country.

Facial recognition technology has been used nearly one million times by US police, a company has told the BBC. Clearview boss Hoan Ton-That also claimed that his company now has 30bn images scraped from platforms such as Facebook, downloaded without the permission of users. Critics say that the police’s use of the technology is “far too invasive” and puts everyone into a “perpetual police line-up”. A US police chief said officers treat facial recognition “like a tip”.

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