Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 6 May 2023

1. King ‘will pledge to serve’

Crowds are gathering in London ahead of the Coronation of King Charles III and Camilla, the Queen Consort. “Lavish displays of royal pageantry are expected” said the BBC, with processions before and after the service at Westminster Abbey, which will be led by the Archbishop of Canterbury at 11am. It is the King’s “day of destiny” said The Times and the Daily Mail, while The Telegraph reported that Charles will pledge to “not be served but to serve” during his Coronation vow.

2. Labour ‘set for power’

Sir Keir Starmer says Labour is on course to win the next general election after the Conservatives endured a tough night in local polls across England. The Tories have lost 48 councils and more than 1,000 councillors, exceeding their worst predictions. Recriminations have begun, with one Tory source telling The Telegraph that Rishi Sunak is to blame. “He started that chaos by knifing the most successful Tory election winner in 50 years,” said the source. Sunak has been warned by ministers that he must “go up a gear, said The Times.

3. Covid pandemic ‘over’

The Covid-19 pandemic is no longer a global health emergency said the World Health Organization, effectively announcing an end to the pandemic. However, scientists have warned that the virus will remain a serious problem for years to come. Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College who runs the ZOE health care app which monitors Covid-19 levels in the UK, said “we should still keep monitoring it” and there will still be “millions of people” getting infected. “The main danger is complacency,” professor Steve Griffin, a virologist at Leeds University, told the ipaper.

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4. Trump video released

A video of a deposition given by former US president Donald Trump as part of his civil rape trial has been released. The video shows the former US president mistaking his accuser E Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples in a photo and repeating his denial of Carroll’s allegations by claiming she is “not my type”. He also said “over the last million years ... unfortunately or fortunately,” people who are considered “stars” could grab women sexually without their consent.

5. Home Office resumes animal testing

The government has allowed animal testing for makeup to resume despite a 25-year ban. The Home Office changed a policy on animal testing to align with EU chemical rules and the High Court ruled yesterday that the government was acting legally. Animal testing for makeup or its ingredients was completely banned in the UK in 1998 but during the case it was revealed that, since 2019, the government had been issuing licences for animal testing of cosmetic ingredients. Cruelty Free International described this as “outrageous”.

6. Ex-marine defends subway chokehold

A 24-year-old ex-Marine who placed a subway passenger in a deadly chokehold on the New York subway has insisted that he and other passengers were acting in self-defence. In a statement issued by his lawyers, Daniel Penny said that Jordan Neely had been “aggressively threatening” their client and other passengers, and that Penny and others “acted to protect themselves, until help arrived”. CBS News said that a grand jury will probably meet next week to determine whether there is enough evidence to press charges.

7. Compensation for care nurse

A charity must pay a care worker £17,000 in damages after she was sacked for giving a centenarian a hot water bottle and two pain killers. The woman’s niece reported the care worker to managers at the Jewish Blind & Disabled charity, who fired her. However, a judge at an employment tribunal ruled that the sacking was unfair because Tarlow had not behaved “dangerously”. Rebecca Tarlow said that she had checked the temperature of the hot water bottle with the back of her hand before giving it to a woman, who was complaining of pain after a fall.

8. Saudi hosts Sudan talks

Saudi Arabia will host the first in-person talks between the warring armies in Sudan. A joint US-Saudi statement welcomed the start of “pre-negotiation talks” in Jeddah between the Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The army delegation will discuss “details of the truce in the process of being extended” with its paramilitary foes, the Sudanese army said. The RSF has not commented. “Multiple truces” have been agreed to since the fighting between the rival security forces erupted on April 15, said Al Jazeera, but “none has been respected”.

9. Teen attacker escapes detention

A teenage boy who carried out a series of sex attacks has avoided a prison sentence after a judge said he feared he would come out of detention “bigger, stronger and more sexually active”. The 13-year-old tried to rape two teenage girls and sexually assaulted a woman in her 30s in separate incidents in Telford in Shropshire. Although the boy was convicted of the attacks at Kidderminster Youth Court he was spared a custodial sentence when the judge said he had “absolutely no idea” what the driving force behind the attacks had been.

10. Assange writes to Charles

Julian Assange has written to King Charles inviting him to visit the prison where the WikiLeaks founder has been captive for more than four years “on behalf of an embarrassed foreign sovereign”. He writes that “on the coronation of my liege” he is extending “a heartfelt invitation to you to commemorate this momentous occasion by visiting your very own kingdom within a kingdom: his majesty’s prison Belmarsh”. Assange is battling a US attempt to extradite him in connection with the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.