Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 19 April 2023

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1. Fox News settles lawsuit
2. Cleverly calls for China nuance
3. Starmer says NHS is ‘broken’
4. US warns Russia on nuclear tech
5. Soup diet ‘can reverse diabetes’
6. Sunak childcare allegations deepen
7. Sacked CBI boss ‘destroyed’
8. Tory backlash against alert plan
9. Activists may disrupt Marathon
10. Greggs ready for legal ‘showdown’

published 19 April 2023

1. Fox News settles lawsuit

Fox has reached a $787.5m (£633m) settlement with the voting equipment company Dominion, bringing an end to the dispute over whether the network and its parent company knowingly broadcast false allegations that Dominion was involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election. During the closely watched defamation lawsuit, Dominion argued its business was harmed by Fox spreading false claims the vote had been rigged against Donald Trump. The result means Rupert Murdoch is “paying the price for Trump’s election lies”, said CNN.

It would be counterproductive for Britain to “pull the shutters down” on China, the foreign secretary has told The Guardian. “I get why a number of my colleagues are hawkish”, said James Cleverly, but he insisted that “we’re not going to get them to completely redefine themselves” and “if we don’t engage, we lose that influence”. Influential Tory MPs are encouraging the government to take a harder line on Beijing and the head of the National Cyber Security Centre is expected to issue a warning over the “dramatic rise of China as a technology superpower”.

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The NHS is “broken”, said Keir Starmer. Speaking to The Telegraph, the Labour leader accused the Conservatives of presiding over a “cycle of decline” that could bring the NHS to an end. In a separate interview, with the i news site, Starmer said a Labour government would reintroduce Blair-style NHS targets to improve waiting times for patients. If Labour wins the next election he would want to “see a difference straight away” in NHS waiting times and patient care, he added.

The US is warning Russia not to touch its sensitive nuclear technology at a nuclear power plant inside Ukraine, according to a letter the US Department of Energy sent to Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom. In the letter, seen by CNN, the Energy Department Office of Nonproliferation Policy tells Rosatom’s director general that the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar “contains US-origin nuclear technical data that is export-controlled by the United States Government”. It adds that it is “unlawful” for any Russian citizens or entities to handle the US technology.

A landmark study has found that a “soup and shake” diet can permanently reverse type 2 diabetes. In the latest findings from the Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial, patients who kept to an 800-calorie-a-day diet for three months, then kept the weight off, were free from symptoms five years later and no longer needed medication. “This result is wildly important,” said Professor Roy Taylor, of Newcastle University, who led the study. “I avoid saying ‘cure’ because it has not gone away completely,” he added.

Rishi Sunak’s wife’s stake in a childcare firm is not mentioned in six ministerial registers, according to The Guardian. The paper tracks Companies House records, which reveal that Akshata Murty first took a stake in Koru Kids, one of six childcare companies that stand to benefit from last month’s budget, in 2019, when she held 20,000 shares in the firm. Downing Street said that the shareholding had been “transparently declared as a ministerial interest”. However, the six registers published since then make no mention of it.

The former boss of the CBI admitted that his reputation “has been totally destroyed” after he was sacked over complaints about his behaviour. Acknowledging that he had made some staff feel “very uncomfortable”, Tony Danker said: “I apologise for that.” However, he insisted that his name had been wrongly associated with separate claims, including rape, which allegedly occurred at the business group before he joined. The CBI said he was dismissed on strong legal grounds.

The government has urged the public not to deactivate the new emergency alert system on their phones following a backlash from Conservative MPs. Mobile phones across Britain will produce a loud 10-second blast at 3pm on Sunday in a test of the new electronic warning, intended to notify the public of major emergencies. However, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, told The Telegraph that he had disabled the alert on his phone because he did not want to be “shouted at by the government”. A Whitehall source noted that Rees-Mogg was a Cabinet Office minister at the time the policy was signed off.

A coalition of more than 200 environmental groups, including Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, have said it might disrupt the London Marathon on Sunday. Although spokesperson Marijn van de Geer insisted the activists were not aiming to directly inconvenience runners, he admitted the race might face “logistical disruption” as the activists stage an event centred on the “final stretch” of the marathon, where the 50,000 runners will be completing the 26.2 mile course. Tory MPs have called on police and judges to end the country's “growing wave of eco protests”, said the Daily Mail.

Greggs is warming up for a “court showdown” with Westminster Council after the bakery was banned from selling late night snacks from its flagship Leicester Square store. The sausage roll chain was refused permission to keep its doors open from 11pm until 5am at the central London location after Westminster Council called the application “half baked” and police argued that the location would become a hotspot for “crime and disorder”. However, a three-day appeal hearing is set for next month, said the Evening Standard.

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