The former prime minister of Bangladesh has been sentenced to death for her role in the deadly crackdown on protesters last year. The months-long trial found that Sheikh Hasina had ordered the violence against the student-led uprising, resulting in more than 1,400 deaths and thousands of injuries. A UN report said that the “vast majority” of the victims were shot by Bangladesh’s security forces and that around one in eight killed was a child. Hasina denied the charges.

Who is Sheikh Hasina?
The former leader is the eldest daughter of the “founding father” of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was instrumental in the country gaining independence in 1971. She was forced into exile in India in 1975 following the assassination of her father, mother and three brothers in a military coup. Having returned to Bangladesh from exile in 1981 to lead her father’s Awami League, she became prime minister in 1996 until 2001, and again from 2009 to 2024.

Why was she convicted?
Many view her second term as a “reign of terror”, said The Guardian. Her tenure, as both the longest-serving prime minister and longest-serving female leader in the world, was “marred by allegations of corruption, torture and enforced disappearances”. Following last year’s student protests over civil service job quotas, she led a “ruthless, state-led crackdown” regarded as the “worst political violence in Bangladesh since its 1971 independence war”. In August last year, she went into self-imposed exile in India.

Along with her former home minister and police chief, Hasina was convicted by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, a court established by her government to try war criminals in the 1971 fight for independence.

What happens now?
The verdict could “set off a wave of political chaos” in the lead-up to Bangladesh’s national elections, expected to take place in February, said CNN. Hasina’s son and adviser, Sajeeb Wazed, warned that supporters of his mother might block February’s election, and protests risk escalating into violence if the current ban on the Awami League is not lifted.

Today’s sentence is also “likely to put pressure on the Indian government to extradite Hasina to Bangladesh”, said Bloomberg. Indian officials did not respond to a formal request for her return last year, despite an extradition agreement between the two countries.

Talk of Downing Street rifts remains rife following reports over the weekend of a “very shouty” row between Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. Streeting demanded to know whether Morgan McSweeney was the source of an apparent pre-emptive strike accusing him of leadership plotting, according to The Sunday Times.

Starmer told House of Commons last week that he had full confidence in his top aide, insisting that “McSweeney, my team and I are absolutely focused on delivering for this country”.

Darker sequel
McSweeney “derives his power and influence from his track record as a political strategist”, said the BBC: he masterminded Labour’s landslide 2024 general election victory and Starmer’s 2020 Labour leadership bid.

But this isn’t the first time that McSweeney has been the subject of the story, rather than the conduit. In September, the “heat” was on him because of the “furore” around the failure of his Labour Together campaign group to declare donations to the Electoral Commission, said The New Statesman. But “the sequel is more serious, darker even”. Although the “picture is murky”, the “subject is clear: a lack of control at the centre”.

After this fresh crisis “roiled” Downing Street, talk has “inevitably turned” to how long McSweeney can “cling to his job”, said The Telegraph. There’s a “broader dysfunction within the Downing Street regime”, with insiders claiming that a “toxic atmosphere is paralysing the government and contributing to a collapse in support for Labour”.

Brain dead
“The barbs against McSweeney are a modern twist on the words that have echoed down English history from dissidents who don’t want to go after the principal: ‘God save the King and damn his accursed ministers’,” said The New Statesman.

There is “a hope, possibly a vain one”, that McSweeney’s exit would make Labour “cuddly and nice again”. But what would it “actually bring”? Would Starmer come “out of his shell”, or would his premiership be left “essentially brain dead” and “living on borrowed time”?

Starmer should “bring in someone that actually knows what they are doing”, an unnamed Labour minister told The Independent. Asked about McSweeney’s future, another senior Labour figure said he was “toast”.

A Sumatran elephant is sprayed with water by a keeper at Indonesia’s Bandung Zoo, which has been closed to the public since August. The future of the West Java attraction and its 710 animal inhabitants is hanging in the balance amid an ongoing management dispute.

Timur Matahari / AFP / Getty Images

Beans are “having a moment”, said Andrew Ellson in The Times. “Small, dry and often flavourless”, the humble legumes have never been particularly “glamorous”. But bean sales are “soaring” amid growing recognition of their “versatility and health benefits  – not to mention affordability”. Canned beans sales are up by 122% year-on-year at Waitrose, with demand for chickpeas and butter beans increasing the most.

A major “culprit” for the bean renaissance is a newcomer to the market, Bold Bean Co, said Charlotte McCaughan-Hawes in House & Garden. The brand’s butter beans are “fat, creamy, wonderful nuggets of joy”.

But “versatility” is what makes beans really stand out in general. They can be “an excellent foil for fatty meats like hunks of pork or as a purée with lamb”, but they also make a good pasta substitute. And you can happily “chop and change” ingredients depending on what’s in the fridge  – “there is, simply, no right way to cook a bean dish and the fun, for me at least, has been in the process”.

The simplest recipes can pack the biggest punch. Charred tomato beans, for example, are quick and easy to make: just add stock and pan-softened tomatoes with chilli and garlic to a tin of beans for a “hot, tasty, nourishing bowl of food on the table in 15 minutes”.

There are multiple reasons to make beans a “bedrock” of your cooking, Jenny Chandler, author of “Super Pules”, told The Guardian. “Salads, soups, purees, curries, stews and even puddings”; all sorts of dishes can be heightened by the addition of legumes, which are also packed with protein and minerals.

And beans can be good for the environment too, food writer Eleanor Maidment told the publication. Growing them can be beneficial for other crops, as many beans are “nitrogen fixers”, converting nitrogen from the atmosphere into the ground, which ends up making the soil “more fertile”.

Curbing refugee rights is no solution to Britain’s problems
Morning Star’s editorial board
The government wants to “claw back electoral credibility” by “appeasing” deluded voters who think that “restricting the rights of refugees” will solve “Britain’s immigration problems”, says the Morning Star. But the boats “are only a small part of migration to these islands”. In our “geriatric capitalist system”, mass migration is “inevitable” when employers “drive the government” to meet the “inevitable labour market dislocation” that is “in the DNA” of the “pursuit of private profit”.

We must save Britain’s oldest curry house. It represents everything that’s good about our country
William Sitwell in The Telegraph
Veeraswamy is “under threat” and “it ought not to be”, writes restaurant critic William Sitwell. The landlords of “Britain’s oldest Indian restaurant” want to turn it “into a nice big reception area for the offices upstairs”. But this “symbol” of “Britain’s immigrant story” should “be saved”: “it is a beacon” of nations linked “in mutual appreciation” of the “delicious food” that is now “part of our national character”. Curry houses are “an unbridled success story of multiculturalism”.

Relax, humans! Here’s why I find ChatGPT reassuringly stupid
Jonathan Margolis in The Independent
I’m a technology writer “in awe” of the “explosion in generative AI”, writes Jonathan Margolis, but I’m “increasingly unsure” that it could bring about the predicted “extinction of humanity”. Artificial intelligence is “useful as a tool” but “it knows nothing”, has “zero experience” and has “no sense”. AI agents, such as ChatGPT, are “scavenger technologies”. They “parrot what’s appeared online, rubbish or not” and “synthesise” data “into a plausible-looking response”. AI “is not evil, merely efficient and single-minded”.