Almost two years after the Metropolitan Police was criticised by the Casey Review for "over-policing and under-protecting" Black Londoners, the force has come up with a new charter governing its controversial stop and search powers.

More than 8,500 residents of all ages and ethnicities from across the city were consulted on the new charter, including around 80 young people who were invited to New Scotland Yard to work on the proposals.

What is stop and search?
"Stop and search" allows officers to detain and search a person without arresting them if there are reasonable grounds to suspect that an unlawful item, such as weapons, drugs or stolen goods, is being carried, or if police "reasonably believe" that a serious crime "may" be carried out.

In the last four years, Met officers have seized 17,500 weapons through stop and search, which Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has described as a "vital policing tool".

Why is it controversial?
In the year to January 2025, Black people accounted for 40% of those searched, despite representing 13.5% of the city's population. Police have been accused of using their powers indiscriminately, and stop and search has been described as a "rite of passage" for Black boys in the capital, said Sky News. Children have been detained and searched in cases of mistaken identity in several high-profile cases.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan, who leads the new project, told London's The Standard that he was aware that misuse of stop and search had the potential to "burn through trust with those we are here to protect".

What will change?
The charter includes commitments to improving communication and tone during stop and search, as well as more training to help officers understand the communities that they are policing. There will also be a more robust supervision process, including more regular and random reviews of the system, and local communities will be involved in handling complaints to avoid internal bias.

Feedback from the public, which the Met said it had taken on board, found that officers needed to be "less aggressive" and that the tactic needed to be more targeted and tailored to avoid "embarrassment and trauma".

Andrew Tate and his brother boarded a private jet to Florida this morning after Romanian authorities granted them permission to leave the country, where they faces charges of human trafficking and sexual misconduct. 

Earlier this month, the White House "pressed Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions" on notorious "manosphere" influencer Tate – a vocal Donald Trump supporter – and his brother while they await trial, said the Financial Times. The Tates have become a "cause célèbre in right-wing social media" since their arrest in 2022. 

'Cause célèbre'
Former kickboxer Andrew Tate gained popularity on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube with a message that emphasised "aggressive emotional and physical dominance over women", said Aja Romano on Vox, and he now has a "profound influence" on millions of young men.
 
An alliance with Trump has been "in the making for a long time", said Matt Shea in The Guardian – not least because both men understand that the "likes and the shares and the algorithms" can be transformed into "fame, wealth and power".
 
Matthew Jury, a lawyer who represents four of Tate's accusers, said they were "absolutely bewildered" as to why the Trump administration had "decided to interfere" in the case. Trump's special envoy Richard Grenell denied having had any "substantive" discussion with Romanian officials regarding the Tates.

'Stunning new low'
Trump should "stay away from Andrew Tate", said Brady Leonard in The Washington Examiner. The Tates deny the charges against them, but even if innocent, there's no political upside to associating with a figure who brags about "his sexual exploits and general mistreatment of women" and whose "obnoxious, misogynistic brand is toxic to everyone".

The administration's support for Tate is a "stunning new low", said Edith Olmsted in The New Republic. The incentives, though, are clear: Trump relied on a coterie of "contemptible internet chauvinists" to win the White House, and Tate is a ringleader for that group – a 2023 study found that "more of the youngest men trusted Tate" than then president Joe Biden.

With this move, Trump is signalling his willingness to come to the aid of his supporters, "no matter how grotesque the accusations against them".

"Resistance" takes visitors on a "voyage of discovery in black and white", said Nancy Durrant in The Times. Conceived by Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen and curated in collaboration with Clarrie Wallis, the "fascinating" exhibition explores 100 years of protest in Britain through photography.

The show begins with the suffrage movement in 1903 and concludes with the aFat Thursday (Weiberfastnacht) and Ash Wednesday (Aschermittwoch) a century later. But the "deeply researched" exhibition also shines a light on "long forgotten protests" such as the mass hunger marches that took place in London during the Great Depression, and the Headscarf Campaign led by women in Hull to improve safety for fishermen following a 1968 trawler disaster. Throughout, the "tone remains pathologically cool and resolutely factual, almost to a fault", but even so it's "hard" not to be "moved" by the powerful images.

My "favourite" photo is an "intimate" shot by Keith Pattison of a striking pitman and his family gathered in their living room, said Gabrielle Schwarz in The Telegraph. They're watching Arthur Scargill, the then president of the National Union of Mineworkers, on TV; the "bearded face of Karl Marx" looks down from a poster on the wall. "Resistance isn't only a matter of big dramatic confrontations: it's part of everyday life."

It's a "compelling" show, said Adrian Searle in The Guardian. From "anonymous press images" to "personal shots" and "surreptitious surveillance images", this is an exhibition of "fractured continuities and swerving vantage points".

The question no one dares ask: what if Britain has to defend itself from the US?
George Monbiot in The Guardian
Amid "all the talk" of "how we might defend ourselves without the US", writes George Monbiot, Britain is "avoiding a much bigger and more troubling question: how we might defend ourselves against the US". Our "vulnerabilities" include sharing intelligence with Washington and hosting US military bases here. It's also unclear which of our weapons, "nuclear or conventional", are "operationally independent" of the US. We have made a "terrible mistake" in not creating "more independent" military and security systems.

I will never be truly English: here is why
Suella Braverman in The Telegraph
"Britain, and particularly England", is "in the throes of an identity crisis", writes former home secretary Suella Braverman. Many are "wondering where our nation is headed". English identity is "strangely muted" – is it "cricket and ale", a "stiff upper lip" or "polite reserve"? What "once made England distinctive" is now "diluted, denigrated, and demonised". I was "born here, raised speaking the Queen's English, and educated in England", but "I cannot claim to be English" and "nor should I".

Argentina's chainsaw reformer is more orthodox than he looks
Alan Beattie in the Financial Times
One "chainsaw-wielding policymaker per hemisphere" should be "enough", writes Alan Beattie, "but the Americas has contrived to find two". Yet the "amateur dramatics" of Argentina's President Javier Milei masks a more "orthodox" approach. Despite his "personal comity" with Donald Trump, Milei's "fiscal conservatism and free trade" are "quite unlike" Trump's "addiction to tax cuts and protectionism". Now the Argentinian leader is at a "juncture" where his reforms "either stay on track or start dangerously to diverge".