Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 24 August 2023

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1. Wagner chief ‘on crashed plane’
2. Ramaswamy stars at GOP debate
3. Manifesto author says Tories failed
4. Fundraiser for Letby appeal
5. GCSE disappointment expected
6. Sunak rapped by watchdog
7. Banned Northern Ireland terms revealed
8. Barnacles may solve MH370 mystery
9. Concern over MPs’ ‘freebies’
10. Conductor accused of assault

published 24 August 2023

1. Wagner chief ‘on crashed plane’

Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a failed coup against Vladimir Putin, was on a plane that crashed in Russia, according to officials. All 10 people on board were killed after the private aircraft came down near the village of Kuzhenkino. Speculation is mounting that the incident may have been Vladimir Putin’s “terrible revenge” on his enemy, said the Daily Mail, and CNN said the episode was “the stuff of a second-rate thriller”. The Wagner-linked Grey Zone Telegram channel claimed the plane had been shot down by the Russian military’s air defence systems.

The first Republican primary debate of the 2024 campaign was held in Milwaukee last night, with eight candidates pitching themselves as the most viable alternative to frontrunner Donald Trump. The debate, which Trump did not attend, was a “rowdy affair” that saw the eight candidates “leap headlong into heated exchanges”, said the BBC. Vivek Ramaswamy was the “central figure”, said CNN, with The Guardian agreeing that he was the “surprise focal point”. A panel of 15 Iowa voters also declared Ramaswamy the winner on the night, noted the New York Post.

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The Conservatives have failed to deliver the primary aims of their 2019 election manifesto, said one of the authors behind the policy paper. Rachel Wolf told the i news site that the public would not consider the government to have “consistently and competently delivered the spirit of the 2019 manifesto”, in the form of “better public services in better local areas, and decent economic management” at the next election. She said this failure was “in part” because of the decisions of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss and the “simultaneous chaos and inactivity that resulted”.

A campaign to raise funds for Lucy Letby’s appeal has been launched, claiming the nurse’s conviction “may represent the greatest miscarriage of justice the UK has ever witnessed”. Even before Letby’s lawyers reveal whether they plan to appeal, campaigners are trying to gather public support for a project they have named Science on Trial. “Through fundraising, researching, and legal assistance, we aim to ensure that Lucy Letby can have a fair trial where evidence is reliable”, stated the group’s website.

GCSE results in England are set to drop for a second year running, bringing grades back in line with 2019 levels. There was a surge in higher grades in 2020 and 2021, when exams were cancelled because of the Covid pandemics and results were based on teachers’ assessments. On the eve of results day, a union leader called for a “more humane qualification system” where students failing to achieve a ‘pass’ grade in English and maths are not accepted as “collateral damage”, said the Times Education Supplement.

The prime minister failed to correctly declare his wife’s financial interest in a child-minding agency, the MPs watchdog has ruled. The regulator concluded that Rishi Sunak breached parliament’s code of conduct by failing to properly declare his wife’s shareholding in Koru Kids, which stood to benefit from new government policy, but did so inadvertently. In a letter to Daniel Greenberg, parliamentary commissioner for standards, Sunak said he accepted the ruling and apologised.

Declassified files from 1999 have revealed the terms ministers were warned not to use in Northern Ireland. The briefing paper said that politicians should not refer to Protestants as “Prods”, or to Catholics as “Fenians” or “Taigs”, or refer to their visit as “being out here” because “it smacks of the colonial outpost attitude”. The advice was part of a briefing paper for Peter Mandelson after he became the Labour government’s Northern Ireland secretary, said The Guardian.

A study of barnacles has found that the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have drifted further south than search parties originally believed. Marine biologists have realised they could use the barnacles attached to plane debris as a history of where it had been. “The geochemistry of their shells could provide clues to the crash location”, said Dr Gregor Herbert, Associate Professor from the University of South Florida. The flight went missing over the Indian Ocean in October 2014.

More than 100 MPs have received “freebies” worth more than £180,000 this summer, with hospitality tickets given away by banks, oil companies, the gambling industry and media firms, said The Guardian. Among the politicians who have benefited from a “growing trend” for giveaways are Jeremy Hunt, Oliver Dowden, and Keir Starmer, said the paper. “Hospitality enables private interests with the deepest pockets” to access and “potentially influence MPs and ministers”, said Alex Beatty, of Spotlight on Corruption.

A world-renowned conductor has been accused of assaulting a member of his choir and calling him a “dozy bastard” for allegedly entering the stage incorrectly. John Eliot Gardiner, 80, is said to have punched and slapped the singer William Thomas, 29, a bass, following an opera performance at the Berlioz Festival in France. “Questions have been raised” over whether Gardiner, who has a reputation for “being tempestuous”, should be allowed to perform at the BBC Proms next month, said The Times.

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